... Brandyn White, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, and Scott Greenberg, a PhD candidate at MIT...
At least this time we can blame Network World for the crappy headline, and not someone here at Slashdot. We can just blame them for not bothering to read the summary, much less the article.
Are we going to have to use Swatch Time with this calendar?
All kidding aside, they mention:
MINUTES, SECONDS, & FRACTIONS OF A SECOND Both minutes and seconds have a range from 0 to 59. If including a fraction of a second, write it as a decimal at the end: 41.13.27.23.59.59.999 TC.
... so no handling of leap seconds. I know some people would be happy about this, but if you're not going to care about solar noon, why deal with leap days and such, too?
(and for those who complain that UTC shouldn't have leap seconds... I say go and use TAI or GPS, but don't change UTC because you don't want to deal with the complexity)
Last month, I was at the International Digital Curation Conference, and Atel Butte started talking about outsourcing lab tests.... and put video of rat colonoscopies in the talk. It's about 32 min in, but you should watch the whole thing for the context:
Here's what I see -- the majority of scientists believe that there are real problems with global warming, even if there may be some cyclic effects (heat kills off all the humans, they stop causing problems, everything cools back down).
So instead we have groups trying to sow disinformation with questions about the incidence of some severe weather events (are we just monitoring better and catching more, in part because humans are in more places, or are they actually increasing), and are the increases in intensity statistically significant?
And at this point, I've seen some data that might've been tainted (eg, temperature monitors that have had buildings encroach), but the general concensus is that yes, storms are getting worse.
I'm not going to say his results are completely bunk, as he's likely right in that some of the problems can be explained by how and where people build (eg, in the flood plain -- but the flood plain was resurveyed and is growing in my area... that might be because of silting up of rivers from construction, it could be because of increased rainfall))
Where I do fault the article is for referencing a 'recent' UN report that hasn't been released yet (website says "The Summary for Policymakers will be released on 31 March 2014"), so we can't actually get to the underlying data that he's basing his claims on.
Or even Netflix, Amazon, or some other form of episodic content.
The problem was that Max Brook's World War Z was a bunch of interwoven stories. Some of them didn't end so well. (eg, the story w/ fuel air explosives).
They *did* have someone trying to get to the bottom of what had happened, but in the book it seemed that it was years after the fact, as interviews, rather than as things were going south.
If you have good backups, you should still be able to restore. Sure, you trash whatever you might've done since the upgrade, but sometimes it's worth it.
Of course, that's not the case on the iPad -- you might've done the smart thing and backed up everything before testing a new iOS update, but once it's applied, it *will* *not* let you restore the old OS.
If that's the case, can someone finally explain to me how to figure out when operations are functions, and when they're methods of the 'DoCmd' object in VBA?
(I'm serious... this has bugged me for years... and I haven't had to do VB programming since about 1999... that experience has told me that I should walk away from any job offer or interview that mentions VB, and has tainted my views of.NET as well)
Um... I've developed cyanotype, as I've had almost 3 years of drafting classes between high school and college.
After you finish your technical drawing, you trace the whole thing onto velum, which is semi-transparent. To make copies, you then place the drawing against the cyanotype paper, and expose it to UV light. (you can use sunlight, but most shops will have a system of rollers and UV lamps to handle longer drawings, or a large lightbox that might be able to handle 3'x4' or so.)
After the UV exposure, the dye on the (white) paper will turn blue where the drawing didn't block the light. You then wash off the paper to remove any of the uncured dye, and you might send it through another chemical wash to deepen the colors.
So... you have a white paper, that's coated in a blue ink. Where you see white lines on the blueprint, you're seeing the paper, not the dye.
And there's a similar product used in the screen printing industry. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's this sheet of coated acetate. You place your image on it, expose it to UV, and then when you wash the unexposed part away, the whole thing gets kinda gooey. You then press the sheet against your silkscreen (and by press, I mean, with a *lot* of force... rollers, etc, to force it into the screen), let it dry, and then peel away the acetate. You mask off the surrounding area, and you're reading to print shirts or whatever. (for single colors, at least... you'll want a carousel & spot dryer for multi-color)
It's actually a light-sensitive chemical reaction (cyanotype). The back side of blueprints (without the dye) are white. Before it's been exposed to UV and cured, the dye is kinda yellow-ish.
Some of the complaints is in how much it costs to scrub out all of the soot, CO2, etc, and how the costs from going to 80% to 90% clean is so much more expensive than cleaning the first 50%.
How about just fund to put the cheap technology to get at least some level of scrubbing in China or whoever else is using coal?
(yes, I know... there are two major flaws in this argument; (1) the particles that aren't caught may be the ones that have more significant health effects; (2) if coal is then seen as 'clean', when only less bad relative to unscrubbed coal (and not other alternative energy sources), we reduce the arguments for why people should cut off coal all together... but it still seems more cost effective than just thinking you'll buy out all of the production)
They might have some useful contacts to get things moved, with the simple request that they be able to use your tower when there's an emergency. (I think they also like some inside space where they can set up their gear, but it doesn't have to be dedicated space... they were looking at using our conference room 'til they determined that we didn't have good propagation from our town hall))
If they don't have the contacts, they might be able to help you raise funds... like at their various hamfests or relay events. Cash might seem like the best thing to ask for, but in-kind donations go a hell of a lot further and can sometimes be easier to get... it just requires having good contacts or lots of cold calls (trucking companies, crane companies, etc... might also ask telecom companies)
It doesn't have to be math heavy... you can focus more on 'web design' or even 'user experience design' rather than heavy programming 'web development'.
Prince George's Community College (PG County, Maryland) offers a lot of certificate programs, including ones on 'Computer Graphics' and 'Web Technology', that can be expanded into a AAS in IT (which would require you to take some programming courses, even if concentrating graphics)
Take a look at the pages numbered 116 to 124 the PDF of their 'programs of study' from their course catalog : https://www.pgcc.edu/uploadedF...
I was talking to someone from Boulder last night, and they (scientific data archive) had three of their programmers poached (got contacted out of the blue, they hadn't been looking to jump ship before that), and haven't had much luck finding replacements.
She said the programmer unemployment rate was 0.5% in their area. So, if you're an unemployed programmer, who's in a position to pick up and move, you might want to look at job postings in that area. (although I'd advise doing research into cost of living there.... it's not ungodly expensive, but it's not the cheapest place, either)
... or if you don't want to just write a toy program that you're going to throw away, then find some open source project that you can contribute to.
Or check Code For America (or whatever the equivalent is in your country) to help out on local projects... then you're also networking in your area, if you're looking for a new job.
Go to school for learning the fundamentals of programming ('this is a variable', 'this is a function'), or maybe to get a deeper understanding of different styles of programming (procedural / functional / OO / event-driven, etc.)... but for learning languages you're often better off working on a project you care about and maybe finding a support community (local users group for that language, or the support community behind that project) or a mentor (eg, someone else from that project)
If you're one of those people who learn better from structured education... then maybe look into a MOOC or community college. This is not one of those situations where shelling out university prices is appropriate.
For years people have complained about how much of an idiot security guards have to be for Solid Snake to be able to sneak around under their noses by hiding in a cardboard box.
Now someone's actually built a system that would make it completely effective... and they used video game controlers to do it. Coincidence?
(conspiracy theorists can now discuss the probability that Konami paid them to it)
This would likely qualify as an honorarium (a payment given for professional services that are rendered nominally without charge)... which is taxable in the US.
As with anything else... the government *might* not care about it for most people, but once they've decided they don't like you, they're more than willing to find any little law they can to get you.
Until the money gets to be high enough that it's worth contacting a tax attorney about, it's better to just not take it.
(I am *not* a tax attorney, but I have received honoraria before (I think it was $500), and they gave me the appropriate paperwork to include when filing my taxes)
If you think about it, most sports teams are after-care for the kids, but with this one, there's little chance of injury and the kids aren't missing class on a regular basis to go on bus trips to other schools.
Personally, I think it's a great idea; when I was 2nd through 4th grade, I went to a DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schooling) school in Europe -- on the days that my mom was working at Family Services (basically a thrift store) on the base, we'd have to kill time... choir practice, library, rec. center, bowling alley, etc. Sometimes we'd go and visit my mom or dad at their work, but mostly we'd hang out with the other kids who were in a similar situation.
If you get to the kids early enough, and teach them to appreciate the library, I think you've got a chance. My local library system has a policy of intentionally *not* opening up libraries near high schools, because of the kids who come in there and goof off and talk back to the librarians when they're told to calm down.
Most of us haven't been in a school library in years, unless we have kids who are of that age.
There are a *lot* of librarian mailing lists out there... if you want the geek perspective, try code4lib. They won't suggest that you try to hack together your own loan system using smartphones & barcode readers. (they'll instead tell you about the one they made that you can have a copy of)
Most of the innovation in library spaces is happening in public & college libraries these days, adding makerspaces or going high-tech... but that's not applicable to an elementary school. I wouldn't even suggest it for a high school (where you'd have seperate computer labs, shop classes, home ec., etc.)
I wouldn't even bother with educating them on the benefits of real, deep research vs. satisficing with the top hit from Google... leave that for middle or high school. In elementary school, just focus on making reading accessible and fun.
The only thing that you I think is wrong with school libraries is that they're closed in summer, so the books are sitting going to waste. I'd love to see there be better coordination between our local school & library systems, but our current library system is so disfunctional that I don't see that changing without them getting rid of the director who thought it was a good idea to fire all of the branch managers.
Slashdot Mirror
Super heroes to save us from the zombies?
If you haven't read 'Ex-Heroes', I highly recommend it. (Ex-Patriots was good, but not great ... I haven't read the other two)
At least this time we can blame Network World for the crappy headline, and not someone here at Slashdot. We can just blame them for not bothering to read the summary, much less the article.
The good news about being late to post stories (that aren't for nerds and don't matter), is that they've already been debunked:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
Are we going to have to use Swatch Time with this calendar?
All kidding aside, they mention:
(and for those who complain that UTC shouldn't have leap seconds ... I say go and use TAI or GPS, but don't change UTC because you don't want to deal with the complexity)
Last month, I was at the International Digital Curation Conference, and Atel Butte started talking about outsourcing lab tests .... and put video of rat colonoscopies in the talk. It's about 32 min in, but you should watch the whole thing for the context:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/id...
He went downhill after Meet the Feebles. He should go back to docmentaries
The day before this article came out, the AAAS released a report on The Reality, Risks and Response to Climate Change, and seems to be starting a publicity push on the topic.
Here's what I see -- the majority of scientists believe that there are real problems with global warming, even if there may be some cyclic effects (heat kills off all the humans, they stop causing problems, everything cools back down).
So instead we have groups trying to sow disinformation with questions about the incidence of some severe weather events (are we just monitoring better and catching more, in part because humans are in more places, or are they actually increasing), and are the increases in intensity statistically significant?
And at this point, I've seen some data that might've been tainted (eg, temperature monitors that have had buildings encroach), but the general concensus is that yes, storms are getting worse.
I'm not going to say his results are completely bunk, as he's likely right in that some of the problems can be explained by how and where people build (eg, in the flood plain -- but the flood plain was resurveyed and is growing in my area ... that might be because of silting up of rivers from construction, it could be because of increased rainfall))
Where I do fault the article is for referencing a 'recent' UN report that hasn't been released yet (website says "The Summary for Policymakers will be released on 31 March 2014"), so we can't actually get to the underlying data that he's basing his claims on.
He also did a slashdot interview last year:
Or even Netflix, Amazon, or some other form of episodic content.
The problem was that Max Brook's World War Z was a bunch of interwoven stories. Some of them didn't end so well. (eg, the story w/ fuel air explosives).
They *did* have someone trying to get to the bottom of what had happened, but in the book it seemed that it was years after the fact, as interviews, rather than as things were going south.
If you have good backups, you should still be able to restore. Sure, you trash whatever you might've done since the upgrade, but sometimes it's worth it.
Of course, that's not the case on the iPad -- you might've done the smart thing and backed up everything before testing a new iOS update, but once it's applied, it *will* *not* let you restore the old OS.
It's possible to actually write good code in VB?
If that's the case, can someone finally explain to me how to figure out when operations are functions, and when they're methods of the 'DoCmd' object in VBA?
(I'm serious ... this has bugged me for years ... and I haven't had to do VB programming since about 1999 ... that experience has told me that I should walk away from any job offer or interview that mentions VB, and has tainted my views of .NET as well)
Um ... I've developed cyanotype, as I've had almost 3 years of drafting classes between high school and college.
After you finish your technical drawing, you trace the whole thing onto velum, which is semi-transparent. To make copies, you then place the drawing against the cyanotype paper, and expose it to UV light. (you can use sunlight, but most shops will have a system of rollers and UV lamps to handle longer drawings, or a large lightbox that might be able to handle 3'x4' or so.)
After the UV exposure, the dye on the (white) paper will turn blue where the drawing didn't block the light. You then wash off the paper to remove any of the uncured dye, and you might send it through another chemical wash to deepen the colors.
So ... you have a white paper, that's coated in a blue ink. Where you see white lines on the blueprint, you're seeing the paper, not the dye.
And there's a similar product used in the screen printing industry. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's this sheet of coated acetate. You place your image on it, expose it to UV, and then when you wash the unexposed part away, the whole thing gets kinda gooey. You then press the sheet against your silkscreen (and by press, I mean, with a *lot* of force ... rollers, etc, to force it into the screen), let it dry, and then peel away the acetate. You mask off the surrounding area, and you're reading to print shirts or whatever. (for single colors, at least ... you'll want a carousel & spot dryer for multi-color)
Blueprints aren't blue paper.
It's actually a light-sensitive chemical reaction (cyanotype). The back side of blueprints (without the dye) are white. Before it's been exposed to UV and cured, the dye is kinda yellow-ish.
Some of the complaints is in how much it costs to scrub out all of the soot, CO2, etc, and how the costs from going to 80% to 90% clean is so much more expensive than cleaning the first 50%.
How about just fund to put the cheap technology to get at least some level of scrubbing in China or whoever else is using coal?
(yes, I know ... there are two major flaws in this argument; (1) the particles that aren't caught may be the ones that have more significant health effects; (2) if coal is then seen as 'clean', when only less bad relative to unscrubbed coal (and not other alternative energy sources), we reduce the arguments for why people should cut off coal all together ... but it still seems more cost effective than just thinking you'll buy out all of the production)
Check to see if there's an ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) in your area.
They might have some useful contacts to get things moved, with the simple request that they be able to use your tower when there's an emergency. (I think they also like some inside space where they can set up their gear, but it doesn't have to be dedicated space ... they were looking at using our conference room 'til they determined that we didn't have good propagation from our town hall))
If they don't have the contacts, they might be able to help you raise funds ... like at their various hamfests or relay events. Cash might seem like the best thing to ask for, but in-kind donations go a hell of a lot further and can sometimes be easier to get ... it just requires having good contacts or lots of cold calls (trucking companies, crane companies, etc ... might also ask telecom companies)
Maybe not exactly ... but for some reason it reminded me of the truck from Highwayman.
It doesn't have to be math heavy ... you can focus more on 'web design' or even 'user experience design' rather than heavy programming 'web development'.
Prince George's Community College (PG County, Maryland) offers a lot of certificate programs, including ones on 'Computer Graphics' and 'Web Technology', that can be expanded into a AAS in IT (which would require you to take some programming courses, even if concentrating graphics)
Take a look at the pages numbered 116 to 124 the PDF of their 'programs of study' from their course catalog : https://www.pgcc.edu/uploadedF...
I was talking to someone from Boulder last night, and they (scientific data archive) had three of their programmers poached (got contacted out of the blue, they hadn't been looking to jump ship before that), and haven't had much luck finding replacements.
She said the programmer unemployment rate was 0.5% in their area. So, if you're an unemployed programmer, who's in a position to pick up and move, you might want to look at job postings in that area. (although I'd advise doing research into cost of living there .... it's not ungodly expensive, but it's not the cheapest place, either)
... or if you don't want to just write a toy program that you're going to throw away, then find some open source project that you can contribute to.
Or check Code For America (or whatever the equivalent is in your country) to help out on local projects ... then you're also networking in your area, if you're looking for a new job.
Go to school for learning the fundamentals of programming ('this is a variable', 'this is a function'), or maybe to get a deeper understanding of different styles of programming (procedural / functional / OO / event-driven, etc.) ... but for learning languages you're often better off working on a project you care about and maybe finding a support community (local users group for that language, or the support community behind that project) or a mentor (eg, someone else from that project)
If you're one of those people who learn better from structured education ... then maybe look into a MOOC or community college. This is not one of those situations where shelling out university prices is appropriate.
For years people have complained about how much of an idiot security guards have to be for Solid Snake to be able to sneak around under their noses by hiding in a cardboard box.
Now someone's actually built a system that would make it completely effective ... and they used video game controlers to do it. Coincidence?
(conspiracy theorists can now discuss the probability that Konami paid them to it)
"Flexible hours" can also mean "You know that sign-off you need? They might show up at 2pm, or they might work from home today"
Or it might mean "We're okay with you coming in late so long as you put in 12 hrs each day"
This would likely qualify as an honorarium (a payment given for professional services that are rendered nominally without charge) ... which is taxable in the US.
As with anything else ... the government *might* not care about it for most people, but once they've decided they don't like you, they're more than willing to find any little law they can to get you.
Until the money gets to be high enough that it's worth contacting a tax attorney about, it's better to just not take it.
(I am *not* a tax attorney, but I have received honoraria before (I think it was $500), and they gave me the appropriate paperwork to include when filing my taxes)
Just today, I sent some mail and got :
Too bad AOL seems to have taken those URLs down. A quick hop to archive.org told me that my ISP's been blocked for sending spam ... oh, joy.
No, you have after care *in* the library.
If you think about it, most sports teams are after-care for the kids, but with this one, there's little chance of injury and the kids aren't missing class on a regular basis to go on bus trips to other schools.
Personally, I think it's a great idea; when I was 2nd through 4th grade, I went to a DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schooling) school in Europe -- on the days that my mom was working at Family Services (basically a thrift store) on the base, we'd have to kill time ... choir practice, library, rec. center, bowling alley, etc. Sometimes we'd go and visit my mom or dad at their work, but mostly we'd hang out with the other kids who were in a similar situation.
If you get to the kids early enough, and teach them to appreciate the library, I think you've got a chance. My local library system has a policy of intentionally *not* opening up libraries near high schools, because of the kids who come in there and goof off and talk back to the librarians when they're told to calm down.
Most of us haven't been in a school library in years, unless we have kids who are of that age.
There are a *lot* of librarian mailing lists out there ... if you want the geek perspective, try code4lib. They won't suggest that you try to hack together your own loan system using smartphones & barcode readers. (they'll instead tell you about the one they made that you can have a copy of)
Most of the innovation in library spaces is happening in public & college libraries these days, adding makerspaces or going high-tech ... but that's not applicable to an elementary school. I wouldn't even suggest it for a high school (where you'd have seperate computer labs, shop classes, home ec., etc.)
I wouldn't even bother with educating them on the benefits of real, deep research vs. satisficing with the top hit from Google ... leave that for middle or high school. In elementary school, just focus on making reading accessible and fun.
The only thing that you I think is wrong with school libraries is that they're closed in summer, so the books are sitting going to waste. I'd love to see there be better coordination between our local school & library systems, but our current library system is so disfunctional that I don't see that changing without them getting rid of the director who thought it was a good idea to fire all of the branch managers.