The flare travels at the speed of light... so we've already been hit by it. The CME is what's going to come tomorrow morning (or tonight, depending on your time zone)
And the "spot number" as this article called it is actually NOAA Active Region #11429. I'm sick of this modulo 10000 value -- AR1429 was decades ago. (the list I'm looking at starts at AR6777, which was in August 1991)
I'll leave it for some other time to rant about the difference between 'sunspot number' (a subjective number to describe the amount of spot coverage on the sun in the visible spectrum which goes back centuries) vs. 'active region number' (a NOAA index of spots seen in x-ray)
I highly recommend the Stainless Steel Rat series from Harry Harrison.
I'm currently reading the third Deathworld book, which is good, but not quite as good at the Rat books.
And I'd also recommend that you ask for the books people recommend at your library. Most of 'em have reserve funds to get books if they're not already in the system, which means that you can get your library to start filling out their SciFi section, so maybe other people will read them too.
Michaelangelo was *supposed* to go off on a Tuesday. So everyone would have that Monday to go in, make sure all of their machines were clean, and be all prepared for Tuesday.
Except many system at the time didn't handle the leap day correctly, so they came in on Monday, booted up the machine... and the payload hit.
Internet Archive's last published generation Petabox (now more than a year old, so they were using smaller drives), would take two racks... which is still reasonable, but you could probably fit it in a single rack with today's drives. A Backblaze Pod is 42 disks in 4U, so you could do it yourself and assuming you can get enough large disks after that whole flooding thing, be able to get a TB in a single rack easily. The Sun Thumper took 48 disks in 4U... I don't know if the X4540 ever supported larger than 1TB disks, though.
My department just got a Nexsan E60 in yesterday... 60 3TB disks in 4U, so you can squeeze 1.8PB raw in a 42U rack. (usable space... still more than a PB, even with spares.)
So, space isn't the issue... power and cooling way be, though.
It's a freaking CRT screen. A 1280x960 CRT screen. I would absolutely hate trying to do graphics work on one of them.
I can see complaining about the pixel count -- that's comparable to many laptops these days. But complaining about it being a CRT? I'd rather have a CRT for serious graphics works with all other things being equal. And until Apple went to the glass-front LCD screens, I wouldn't have put an LCD in a classroom as they're so obnoxious to keep fingerprints off 'em.
If you're going to complain about CRTs, at least complain about the power consumption vs. LCDs with LED backlighting.
What's going to be the killer is that if they have to upgrade the hardware, odds are they haven't upgraded software in years... and there's no Rosetta in 10.7, so they can't run PPC software on the latest released OS and I don't know how easy it is to put 10.6 on the current generation of hardware.
I'll wait 'til I've seen verification before I believe it or not... but it's real or not, I still found this line funny:
Regarding the latest breach, Stratfor is fully in control of the situation
If it's real, I also wonder about:
To be clear: We certainly do not condone any criminal activities by groups like Anonymous or other hackers
I mean, this is a group that makes their money by paying off people to get them information, in ways that are hinted are against the law (likely they're getting other people to break the law of other countries, even if the company themselves aren't)... but they're against hackers that break the law? It seems a a bit hypocritical to me.
(Although I don't know how well OpenLDAP handled replication -- the 'many servers' part... I've only administered the Netscape/SunOne LDAP servers... which are also key/value stores)
They could've just shown multi tasking... (while you were making a call, even!), and they'd have been ahead of the iPhone at the time.
Instead, we got a horrible ad campaign, a pretty lack-luster push from Sprint (which might've been from Palm giving the 'Pre+' to Verizon, I think it was, with 2x the RAM).
I was *really* hoping for the Pre 3, as I've been on an original Pre for 2+ years, and I almost bought a UK phone and was considering switching providers (mind you, I've been a Sprint user for ~14 years... back in the 'Sprint PCS' days)... but then the Google Maps incident happened, and I'm not so sure if I want to stick with an HP phone.
I seem to remember in one of the episodes, he was actually transporting stuff (and I think it was nuclear), rather than being the unstealthiest police officer driving a semi that converted into a helicopter.
I don't know if it was a local thing, or nation wide, but in the late 1990s, after AOL went to per-month rather than per-minute plans, they got hammered. You'd have to leave the machine re-dialing 'til you finally connected. So they had a 'no busy signal' promise.
Instead, they'd not connect a modem to the last number in the rollover, so it'd just ring and ring and never pick up.... but it wasn't the busy signal.
(disclaimer : in the late 1990s, I worked for a small regional ISP)
And even that won't work... unless you're going to monitor all of their traffic and make sure they aren't using some sort of handshaking to enable access to the proxy, or are doing something fancy with websockets
Most of the scientific community knows at least a *little* bit of Perl... they might not know all of the idiosyncrasies (eg, I've found more than a fair share of '{IDL,Fortran,C} written in Perl'), but it's far greater than those who know any Python.
We don't have that many Matlab users in our department, and no Octave users that I'm aware of... most use IDL, but IDL has the problem that you can't freely distribute your code for others to use. (There's a free runtime, but it can't open or write external files, which isn't so useful for writing tools for others to use)
We do have a small handful of GDL users, and a growing number of NumPy users (via SunPuy), but the problem they're running into is trying to get the scientists to learn Python -- there's enough odd conventions that it's a fair bit of hand-holding initially.
So we'd have to funnel people through a chokepoint to isolate them... and it might not work if they had more than one RFID enabled card in their wallet? And then you have to use it quickly, like this was done (while still on stage), rather than waiting for the person to try to make a legit transaction.
I'm guessing that someone standing near the entrance to a subway system could work within those restrictions well enough that even if they got less than 1% success rate per person entering could still turn a nice little "profit" during rush-hour.
And NASA and ESA are working on two more, but my understanding is that they won't be as coordinated like STEREO (they'll be rotating around the sun faster, so they won't necessarily get the 100% coverage that we currently get with STEREO):
The goals vary from place to place -- I admit, some are more social clubs than anything else, some are lobbying cooperatives, etc... but the goal isn't necessarily to join them... use their directory listings to find all the local businesses to do your cold calling Then you get your foot in the door with one of them, who will then talk about their 'new website' with the others, and maybe push more work your way.
In my area, there's actually two county-wide chamber of commerces (one focusing on small and minority-owned businesses), a few smaller chambers of commerce focused around some of the more built-up areas, a 'business roundtable, and a number of regional 'business associations'. The thing that matters is (1) getting a list of small local businesses to contact and (2) getting a foothold into those business groups so the work comes to you and you don't have to do as much cold-calling.
I admit, you might need to get a babysitter for those times when you're actually doing initial networking and later meeting with clients, but you might be able to find a high schooler in the afternoon, depending on when the local high school lets out. In the summer, it might be even easier.
Anyway, the local chamber of commerce -- do your research first:
Get a list of the members, and what their businesses are.
Look over the websites of each of the businesses
Pick one or two smaller websites that you think could use major improvement.
Make a mock up / prototype showing how the site(s) could be improved (and 'improved' might even be simplifying -- if you find a flash-intensive site, show them how it doesn't work on smartphones or iPad)
Present it to the business owner(s)
If you can get a job from that, then you use that (and their contacts) to build up more clients. (and you might want to join the Chamber of Commerce, too, once you're established). If you can't, then you go for other ways to build up your portfolio -- find business with no web presence, or you might check on what the local non-profits are in your area, or if there's a small municipality, or even just check 1-800-Volunteer to see if there are local groups that might need website work. (eg, I volunteer for the local Friends of the LIbrary, and our town's annual street festival, run through the local Recreation Council; both could use help, and maybe also a presence on social networking sites so we can do more 'push' of information).
If none of those work out, I'd then look to see if you can help out with Code for America or any other open source group you feel passionately about, while still trying to network to find local work. You could even look to start up a local community website if there isn't one already (list local businesses, events, what's going on in local government, etc.).
Basically, don't just look it as a way to make money -- look at is as a way to help local businesses/non-profits/government to improve... making it easier for people to find important information (when do you open on Sunday? does the restaurant offer anything vegan/gluten free? What services do you offer? etc.), presenting the information in a better way (ie, the website is too disorganized; it might be how their business is organized, but the general public doesn't expect to find (x) under (y)), or helping them reach out via social networking or e-mail (eg, this week's specials; important upcoming events; etc.)
I can see your argument, but that assumes we have someone in power who's willing to ignore it because it was improperly done.
I would assume the rationale would be to force it to be discussed in open, as opposed to these behind the scenes ways in which it might've been approved without ever having seen the light of day if it hadn't been for leaks. We'd be up with the lobbying efforts dumping money into it, but we'd also have a chance to for the citizens to petition congress as was done with SOPA.
... and, not ACTA related, but as I'm an ALA member, there's also one that needs another 6k signatures by next week for funding for school libraries. (although, personally, I'd rather it go to regular public libraries, so they have access over the summer)
(for those who don't get the joke -- RT is Russia Today, an English language news program which tends to bash the U.S. in general, and be borderline Russian propoganda.... and right now, they don't have anything on this incident, but they'd probably have an interesting spin if/when they put it up.)
Of course, anyone who really cared about other coverage can just put 'Soyuz' into Google News:
I've heard some interesting arguments for putting QA overseas, but keeping the main development folks local.
Basically, the idea is:
Your developers work their normal hours, and commit before they leave
The nightly build runs
The QA team (in a different time zone) does all of their necessary testing, and enters issues into your ticket systems (while the main developers are sleeping)
The developers come in the next morning (not having pulled an all-nighter), and check to see what the QA group found while they slept / went to the movies / had a social life / etc.
I've never participated in something like this, so I don't know if it's a great idea on paper that sucks in real life, but it seems on the surface that it could be useful.
Of course, you could probably get similar effects by outsourcing to more than one place with sufficient offset in their time zones.
I think that's part of why the Public Library of Science went with their model -- authors pay to submit their article (which *does* get peer reviewed, but on technical merits, not if it's "interesting" to the edior). And then it's free to read forever.
ArXiv has shown their value to the community, but they currently rely on support from organizations. Many people who use the site don't even know the issues -- it's not like they're running banner ads asking for donations like Wikipedia.
Now, with the pay-up-front model, some people might balk at the PLoS $1500 submission fee, but that's actually cheaper than some of the existing publishers charge for 'making an article open access' (ie, if you're published with them, you can pay a fee so that no one else has to pay a per-article charge... but that doesn't help the libraries who have subscriptions). And it's not unheard of for peer-reviewed journals to have submission or publishing fees. Some are per page, some add extra charges for color images, etc.
It seems that NOAA started classifying events from their Space Weather Prediction Center last cycle, but it's not considered of 'science quality' like the flare classifications, so the community I deal with doesn't care about them.
So, high R (eg, R4) would be 'GPS doesn't work', S would be 'could kill people in space' (or satellites), and G would be the stuff that could induce current into electrical systems.
So, to summarize:
C, M, X : x-ray flare energy level (with numbers 1 to 9.9 for C&M, but no limit on X)
F, N, B : h-alpha flare 'importance' (numbers going from 0 to 4)
G, S, R : predicted impact at Earth (numbers 1 to 5)
And NOAA still has 17 letters left to come up with more confusing scales.
It's amazing how efforts like this work... if the telcon has the rights to build the network, but just can't get off their ass to actually build it out, they seem to like to wait until the municipality has paid for all of the up-front costs (telco gear, etc.), and then suddenly, the phone company is calling up everyone in the area, telling 'em they'll have their service in place really soon, and a month later, they've strung everything and are signing up customers, trying to undercut the municipality so they can show it as yet another case where 'municipal broadband didn't work'. (this was Frankfort, KY in the 1990s... municipal was going to run fiber to the home, and suddenly Bell South is rolling out DSL)
It also happened with other non-municipal competition... in my current town in Maryland, we were on the bottom of the list with Comcast to upgrade to fiber.... but we sign a franchise agreement with Verizon for TV service, and suddenly we're at the top of their list and they're installing weeks later (without notifying us that they were going to be blocking off streets for the work)
Slashdot Mirror
The flare travels at the speed of light ... so we've already been hit by it. The CME is what's going to come tomorrow morning (or tonight, depending on your time zone)
And the "spot number" as this article called it is actually NOAA Active Region #11429. I'm sick of this modulo 10000 value -- AR1429 was decades ago. (the list I'm looking at starts at AR6777, which was in August 1991)
I'll leave it for some other time to rant about the difference between 'sunspot number' (a subjective number to describe the amount of spot coverage on the sun in the visible spectrum which goes back centuries) vs. 'active region number' (a NOAA index of spots seen in x-ray)
I highly recommend the Stainless Steel Rat series from Harry Harrison.
I'm currently reading the third Deathworld book, which is good, but not quite as good at the Rat books.
And I'd also recommend that you ask for the books people recommend at your library. Most of 'em have reserve funds to get books if they're not already in the system, which means that you can get your library to start filling out their SciFi section, so maybe other people will read them too.
Michaelangelo was *supposed* to go off on a Tuesday. So everyone would have that Monday to go in, make sure all of their machines were clean, and be all prepared for Tuesday.
Except many system at the time didn't handle the leap day correctly, so they came in on Monday, booted up the machine ... and the payload hit.
Internet Archive's last published generation Petabox (now more than a year old, so they were using smaller drives), would take two racks ... which is still reasonable, but you could probably fit it in a single rack with today's drives. A Backblaze Pod is 42 disks in 4U, so you could do it yourself and assuming you can get enough large disks after that whole flooding thing, be able to get a TB in a single rack easily. The Sun Thumper took 48 disks in 4U ... I don't know if the X4540 ever supported larger than 1TB disks, though.
My department just got a Nexsan E60 in yesterday ... 60 3TB disks in 4U, so you can squeeze 1.8PB raw in a 42U rack. (usable space ... still more than a PB, even with spares.)
So, space isn't the issue ... power and cooling way be, though.
I can see complaining about the pixel count -- that's comparable to many laptops these days. But complaining about it being a CRT? I'd rather have a CRT for serious graphics works with all other things being equal. And until Apple went to the glass-front LCD screens, I wouldn't have put an LCD in a classroom as they're so obnoxious to keep fingerprints off 'em.
If you're going to complain about CRTs, at least complain about the power consumption vs. LCDs with LED backlighting.
What's going to be the killer is that if they have to upgrade the hardware, odds are they haven't upgraded software in years ... and there's no Rosetta in 10.7, so they can't run PPC software on the latest released OS and I don't know how easy it is to put 10.6 on the current generation of hardware.
I'm pretty sure that research causes cancer.
I have no evidence if lawyers cause cancer, but if we study it, we'd likely cause more cancer in the process.
I'll wait 'til I've seen verification before I believe it or not ... but it's real or not, I still found this line funny:
If it's real, I also wonder about:
I mean, this is a group that makes their money by paying off people to get them information, in ways that are hinted are against the law (likely they're getting other people to break the law of other countries, even if the company themselves aren't) ... but they're against hackers that break the law? It seems a a bit hypocritical to me.
Oh ... so it's more like an LDAP server, instead.
Wasn't OpenLDAP written on top of BDB?
(Although I don't know how well OpenLDAP handled replication -- the 'many servers' part ... I've only administered the Netscape/SunOne LDAP servers ... which are also key/value stores)
I wouldn't say DOA ...
But WTF was up with the girl in that commercial?
They could've just shown multi tasking ... (while you were making a call, even!), and they'd have been ahead of the iPhone at the time.
Instead, we got a horrible ad campaign, a pretty lack-luster push from Sprint (which might've been from Palm giving the 'Pre+' to Verizon, I think it was, with 2x the RAM).
I was *really* hoping for the Pre 3, as I've been on an original Pre for 2+ years, and I almost bought a UK phone and was considering switching providers (mind you, I've been a Sprint user for ~14 years ... back in the 'Sprint PCS' days) ... but then the Google Maps incident happened, and I'm not so sure if I want to stick with an HP phone.
Who remembers the 1980s tv show 'The Highwayman' ?
I seem to remember in one of the episodes, he was actually transporting stuff (and I think it was nuclear), rather than being the unstealthiest police officer driving a semi that converted into a helicopter.
(it was like Knight Rider crossed with MASK)
I don't know if it was a local thing, or nation wide, but in the late 1990s, after AOL went to per-month rather than per-minute plans, they got hammered. You'd have to leave the machine re-dialing 'til you finally connected. So they had a 'no busy signal' promise.
Instead, they'd not connect a modem to the last number in the rollover, so it'd just ring and ring and never pick up .... but it wasn't the busy signal.
(disclaimer : in the late 1990s, I worked for a small regional ISP)
And even that won't work ... unless you're going to monitor all of their traffic and make sure they aren't using some sort of handshaking to enable access to the proxy, or are doing something fancy with websockets
Am I the only one who remembers the study that found people would give up their passwords for a chocolate bar?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3639679.stm
(and that a good percentage didn't even need the chocolate)
user base.
Most of the scientific community knows at least a *little* bit of Perl ... they might not know all of the idiosyncrasies (eg, I've found more than a fair share of '{IDL,Fortran,C} written in Perl'), but it's far greater than those who know any Python.
We don't have that many Matlab users in our department, and no Octave users that I'm aware of ... most use IDL, but IDL has the problem that you can't freely distribute your code for others to use. (There's a free runtime, but it can't open or write external files, which isn't so useful for writing tools for others to use)
We do have a small handful of GDL users, and a growing number of NumPy users (via SunPuy), but the problem they're running into is trying to get the scientists to learn Python -- there's enough odd conventions that it's a fair bit of hand-holding initially.
So we'd have to funnel people through a chokepoint to isolate them ... and it might not work if they had more than one RFID enabled card in their wallet? And then you have to use it quickly, like this was done (while still on stage), rather than waiting for the person to try to make a legit transaction.
I'm guessing that someone standing near the entrance to a subway system could work within those restrictions well enough that even if they got less than 1% success rate per person entering could still turn a nice little "profit" during rush-hour.
And NASA and ESA are working on two more, but my understanding is that they won't be as coordinated like STEREO (they'll be rotating around the sun faster, so they won't necessarily get the 100% coverage that we currently get with STEREO):
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/sunearthsystem/main/solarprobeplus.html
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=45
(disclaimer: I work for the STEREO Science Center)
The goals vary from place to place -- I admit, some are more social clubs than anything else, some are lobbying cooperatives, etc ... but the goal isn't necessarily to join them ... use their directory listings to find all the local businesses to do your cold calling Then you get your foot in the door with one of them, who will then talk about their 'new website' with the others, and maybe push more work your way.
In my area, there's actually two county-wide chamber of commerces (one focusing on small and minority-owned businesses), a few smaller chambers of commerce focused around some of the more built-up areas, a 'business roundtable, and a number of regional 'business associations'. The thing that matters is (1) getting a list of small local businesses to contact and (2) getting a foothold into those business groups so the work comes to you and you don't have to do as much cold-calling.
I admit, you might need to get a babysitter for those times when you're actually doing initial networking and later meeting with clients, but you might be able to find a high schooler in the afternoon, depending on when the local high school lets out. In the summer, it might be even easier.
Anyway, the local chamber of commerce -- do your research first:
If you can get a job from that, then you use that (and their contacts) to build up more clients. (and you might want to join the Chamber of Commerce, too, once you're established). If you can't, then you go for other ways to build up your portfolio -- find business with no web presence, or you might check on what the local non-profits are in your area, or if there's a small municipality, or even just check 1-800-Volunteer to see if there are local groups that might need website work. (eg, I volunteer for the local Friends of the LIbrary, and our town's annual street festival, run through the local Recreation Council; both could use help, and maybe also a presence on social networking sites so we can do more 'push' of information).
If none of those work out, I'd then look to see if you can help out with Code for America or any other open source group you feel passionately about, while still trying to network to find local work. You could even look to start up a local community website if there isn't one already (list local businesses, events, what's going on in local government, etc.).
Basically, don't just look it as a way to make money -- look at is as a way to help local businesses/non-profits/government to improve ... making it easier for people to find important information (when do you open on Sunday? does the restaurant offer anything vegan/gluten free? What services do you offer? etc.), presenting the information in a better way (ie, the website is too disorganized; it might be how their business is organized, but the general public doesn't expect to find (x) under (y)), or helping them reach out via social networking or e-mail (eg, this week's specials; important upcoming events; etc.)
I can see your argument, but that assumes we have someone in power who's willing to ignore it because it was improperly done.
I would assume the rationale would be to force it to be discussed in open, as opposed to these behind the scenes ways in which it might've been approved without ever having seen the light of day if it hadn't been for leaks. We'd be up with the lobbying efforts dumping money into it, but we'd also have a chance to for the citizens to petition congress as was done with SOPA.
Assuming that the White House actually takes the petitions seriously, the current ACTA related petitions are:
... and, not ACTA related, but as I'm an ALA member, there's also one that needs another 6k signatures by next week for funding for school libraries. (although, personally, I'd rather it go to regular public libraries, so they have access over the summer)
Well, you could always try RT:
http://rt.com/search/?q=Soyuz&filter=news
(for those who don't get the joke -- RT is Russia Today, an English language news program which tends to bash the U.S. in general, and be borderline Russian propoganda. ... and right now, they don't have anything on this incident, but they'd probably have an interesting spin if/when they put it up.)
Of course, anyone who really cared about other coverage can just put 'Soyuz' into Google News:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=Soyuz
Unless you're boycotting Google, and then you can just go to space.com:
http://www.space.com/14381-russian-soyuz-spacecraft-cracks-march-launch.html
I've heard some interesting arguments for putting QA overseas, but keeping the main development folks local.
Basically, the idea is:
I've never participated in something like this, so I don't know if it's a great idea on paper that sucks in real life, but it seems on the surface that it could be useful.
Of course, you could probably get similar effects by outsourcing to more than one place with sufficient offset in their time zones.
I think that's part of why the Public Library of Science went with their model -- authors pay to submit their article (which *does* get peer reviewed, but on technical merits, not if it's "interesting" to the edior). And then it's free to read forever.
ArXiv has shown their value to the community, but they currently rely on support from organizations. Many people who use the site don't even know the issues -- it's not like they're running banner ads asking for donations like Wikipedia.
Now, with the pay-up-front model, some people might balk at the PLoS $1500 submission fee, but that's actually cheaper than some of the existing publishers charge for 'making an article open access' (ie, if you're published with them, you can pay a fee so that no one else has to pay a per-article charge ... but that doesn't help the libraries who have subscriptions). And it's not unheard of for peer-reviewed journals to have submission or publishing fees. Some are per page, some add extra charges for color images, etc.
It seems that NOAA started classifying events from their Space Weather Prediction Center last cycle, but it's not considered of 'science quality' like the flare classifications, so the community I deal with doesn't care about them.
There are three scales, all from 1 to 5, prefixed by G for Geomagnetic Storms, S for Solar Radiation, and R for Radio Blackouts.
So, high R (eg, R4) would be 'GPS doesn't work', S would be 'could kill people in space' (or satellites), and G would be the stuff that could induce current into electrical systems.
So, to summarize:
And NOAA still has 17 letters left to come up with more confusing scales.
It's amazing how efforts like this work ... if the telcon has the rights to build the network, but just can't get off their ass to actually build it out, they seem to like to wait until the municipality has paid for all of the up-front costs (telco gear, etc.), and then suddenly, the phone company is calling up everyone in the area, telling 'em they'll have their service in place really soon, and a month later, they've strung everything and are signing up customers, trying to undercut the municipality so they can show it as yet another case where 'municipal broadband didn't work'. (this was Frankfort, KY in the 1990s ... municipal was going to run fiber to the home, and suddenly Bell South is rolling out DSL)
It also happened with other non-municipal competition ... in my current town in Maryland, we were on the bottom of the list with Comcast to upgrade to fiber .... but we sign a franchise agreement with Verizon for TV service, and suddenly we're at the top of their list and they're installing weeks later (without notifying us that they were going to be blocking off streets for the work)