EM shielding won't help as it's not that the transformers themselves are directly affected...
The long power lines act as antenna, so it comes in as a surge in the normal input (or feedback from the output). I know it's not cost-effective to re-string every power line with something that's shielded (and that in turn could reduce the transmission ability, as they don't like making power cables more than about 5cm thick, so you minimize wind and ice loads).
So, you'd have to put in some sort of a surge suppressor into the transformer... which of course adds cost, but also gives you something else that can go wrong... and for something that only happens once a decade, it might not be worth the potential for extra failures, the possible efficiency loss, etc.
As for circuit breakers... wasn't that what took out the whole north-east when Ohio lost a section of their grid?
Currently, almost all IT support in the US government is contracted out... so in a way, they're already hiring mercenaries, but I won't get into that bat.
All you need to do is to have a pool of talent within the government that under normal situations does pentests at the request of government agencies / divisions / whatever, and in a situation when something big happens, they can be pulled from those assignments to actively attack something.
This way, they get practice, we harden our systems, but it's not just some random hacker being contracted to make an attack... they'd be regular government employees (although, likely contractors), who have had the necessary background checks, etc.
My ISP e-mailed me 'my invoice' as an attachment last week, when they had previously sent a summary in text, and a link to their site to view the invoice.
I e-mailed and told them that I wouldn't open attachments from them, and I wanted the plain, boring, text summary... and I get a response back about how the invoice has always been PDF, and they closed the ticket.
So, anyone know of any good ISPs in the Maryland/DC area? (and Verizon and Comcast don't qualify as 'good' in my opinion).
It's almost like they didn't bother putting the term 'CDF file' into a search engine to see if anyoneelse was using that acronym already for a file extension. (of course, w3 even used it twice)
Maybe linearly, but I'm guessing that some of the CAVE systems offer more in terms of area of display when you scale to 6 surfaces. Or what's the largest hyperwall?
Can we come up with some meaningful measurements of data display, before someone tries setting a world record for the heaviest or ugliest?
We just need network and disk drive sizes to keep doubling at the rate they have, and we'll be laughing about how we thought 30TB/night was going to be a problem.
SDO finally launched last year with a date rate of over 1TB/day... and all through planning, people were complaining about the data rates... it's a lot, but it's not insurmountable as it might've been 8 years ago, when we were looking at 80 to 120GB disks.
Although, it'd be nice if monitor resolutions had kept growing... if anything, they've gotten worse the last couple of years.
(Disclaimer : I work in science informatics; I've run into Kirk Bourne at a lot of meetings, and we used to work in the same building, but we we deal with different science disciplines)
So, the infamous 'HSPD-12 badge', aka, the 'CAC card'...
Supposedly they run $200 each. We all got bitched at for it... have I *ever* used it to slot into a computer? Nope, because our network runs OSes that don't support the CAC functionality, and a lot of the folks on our machines aren't federal employees and remote users, so we'd have to have them run a background check (which we already do), then come in (from out of the country), finger print 'em, wait a month, then have them come back for a badge.
And then we'd have to issue them CAC readers and force them to use Windows or some OS that can use the CAC readers (MacOS? nope).
And if you loose the badge? Well, good luck on that one. Took me months to get a replacement. All the while, I couldn't enter any secured rooms, so I had to get issues a 'temporary' key card, and a 'temporary' badge... which were EXACTLY like what we had before, only not at $200 a pop.
And the temp badges? They have HUGE text on them for the things that matter -- expiration date (the HSPD12 badges run for 5 years, no matter the length of your contract), affiliation (just says 'Contractor' in tiny type), and has an indication of your security access more than just foreign national / US cltizen / civil servant (I'm guessing because then they'd have to issue new people badges 3-4 times as their various background checks get done).
So... more expensive, no new functionality that actually gets used... and less secure, in that it's possible to enter the facility with an expired badge because the text is so tiny the guards can't read it, and they don't tie badge expiration to your contract, so a person with 1 year on their contract still gets issued a 5 year badge.
I had a math teacher who would assign you problems before she had explained how to do 'em in class.
That way, you'd read the book, try to do the problems, and then the next day, be pepared to ask questions on the stuff you were having difficulties with when she actually taught the lessons. She'd then give you another night to fix whatever you needed to on the homework before turning it in.
I found it so much better than just listening to a teacher droning on for an hour or more, then having to go and read the book to figure out what they should've been explaining.
.... at least by my friend's tastes, as they didn't give me shit about getting them watch it... which I get occassionally, but they were complaining for years, and brought it up whenever I'd select a movie to watch.
... and even by my tastes, My Name is Bruce was the better of the two movies, especially with the self-deprecating humor:
The issue is the requirement to collect sales tax -- ie, the reason that Amazon keeps dropping affiliates in selected states.
Basically, most states have laws that say that residents have to pay sales tax on everything they buy in the state. In my case, for Maryland, there's a line on the state income tax forms where I'm required to declare all purchases I purchased via mail-order where the company didn't already collect sales tax.
Now, companes who have a presence in the state are required to collect sales tax in that state. So when I buy from Amazon, I'm required to pay it directly to the state, rather than Amazon collecting it at the time of sale, as they don't have a presence in Maryland.
The problem is, sales taxes are *really* messy. What gets taxed? Food doesn't in Maryland... but it does in DC if it's sold individually ready to eat. (which I don't think would count for mail order), so you have to know if a given item is or isn't taxed in each state. Then you also have cases where it's not only the state that has sales tax authority, but also the town or county... so you might have an area that's differently taxed.
And then you get into the message cases where the municipality doesn't match up with the postal designation, so you can't just rely on the zip code or city on the shipping address to determine taxing district.
This has been a long-running issue since at least the late 1990s, when I first saw mention of attempts to come up with simpler taxing rules for mail order companies, but I don't know if anything's ever come out of those efforts.
SOHO is at L1, and they don't have a space weather stream like STEREO or SDO (well, SDO's in geosyncronous orbit, and has its own ground stations, so it all comes down in near real time)
But you can get the most recent LASCO images from the SOHO website:
Since the launch of SDO, as AIA has a 12 second cadence for each of its EUV channels, EIT (the EUV full disk telescopes on SOHO) have been turned down to a minimal cadence (6hrs) so there's a long-term record from the same instrument, but there aren't any science planners for it anymore.
So, to answer the question -- yes.
(Note -- I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center, the primary U.S. archive for SOHO data, and I'm in the same hallway as the remaining full-time SOHO operators (all two of 'em... it's like a ghost town, even with their consolidating our two groups last year))
For the comet, though... no splash. And they haven't finished the final processing of the last bit of the comet's track across the sun, so I haven't seen it 'evaporate' as others have mentioned.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a solar physicist, but I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center, and on the distribution systems for SDO data)
I like movies 100 times more simply because I can SEE what the author meant.
No, you're seeing the director's interpretation of what the author meant, as constrained by the producers, budget, ratings system, skill of the actors, etc.
Even with the adaptation of comic books to movies (both visual mediums), some authors (eg, Alan Moore) have made comments on how they are effectively two different stories, as how the reader/viewer interacts with the medium is different. (pause the movie, and go check out what happened 5 minutes before to see how it relates to what just happened? Maybe in your own home, but in theatres, it means you have to watch it over and over again.)
If you think that the movie is what the author intended, you're deluding yourself. The only time that *might* be true is when the movie came first, and the book was released second, or at the same time. (and not the 'book based on the movie', written by someone completely different). The only one that comes to mind where the movie and book are near equals was a TV series, not a movie -- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
Mind you, they said it was specifically using a windows exploit, but there's nothing to keep 'em from loading it up with exploits for multiple OSes... dunno of the USB device can query for that sort of information or not.
You gotta love supreme court opinion that reference both Lord of the Flies:
California's argument would fare better if there were a longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children's access to depictions of violence, but there is none. Certainly the books we give children to read--or read to them when they are younger--contain no shortage of gore.... And Golding's Lord of the Flies recounts how a schoolboy called Piggy is savagely murdered by other children while marooned on an island.
...and 'Pick a Path' / 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type books:
California claims that video games present special problems because they are "interactive," in that the player participates in the violent action on screen and determines its outcome. The latter feature is nothing new: Since at least the publication of The Adventures of You: Sugarcane Island in 1969, young readers of choose-your-own- adventure stories have been able to make decisions that determine the plot by following instructions about which page to turn to.
And understands the difference between causation and correlation:
The State's evidence is not compelling. California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children. These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them,6 and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, "[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology." [] They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children's feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game.7
First, there's two different issues here... porn vs. violence. The courts have long established that porn is considered obscenity, and therefore, does not qualify under the First Amendment. They've never said the same thing about violence, which they're re-affirming here. (Although, I wasn't sure if they were saying that animal cruelty was or wasn't considered obscene)
In the case of kids seeing R-rated movies -- it's not illegal. It's the movie producers an theatres acting as a group to set standards, but it's *not* the law.
Likewise, the video game producers could voluntarily rate their games (and many do), but as people's experience may vary depending on how you play the game, they're notoriously difficult. And the ratings only serve as a recommendation system for the purchaser, unless the retailer makes it their policy to not sell items with stronger categories of markings to children....
And oddly enough, for some of my formative years, I lived in Europe... where they were much more accepting of the naked human body (not porn, just nakedness), but that violence was to be avoided. The A-Team was considered violent, but there was nothing wrong with naked people in toilet paper commercials.
I got it, too, and I don't remember using any forum, although I think I remember playing it years ago.
I suspected it was a phishing attempt of some sort, as although the link text goes to 'support.ea.com', the actual link goes to 'em.ea.com', with what looks to be a unique key in it.
Because 'coondoggie' posts summaries of all of blog articles on here, it seems, with only links back to his blog.
At least Roland Piquepaille learned, and started linking to places other than his blog... especially as coondoggie's blog spam tends to just be regurgitated press releases with mostly self-referrential links or broken links when he does link externally (eg, whenever he tries linking to the SDO website).
Check Google News -- there have been well over a hundred groups responding to the press -- NatGeo, Space.com... all are better informed than coondoggie's recycled crap with his own conjecture inserted. (maybe that's why Slashdot likes posting his stuff so much... because they get more people responding to how mis-informed he is)
Also, it seems very unlikely to me that we might experience another global cooling period due to this weakened sunspot cycle, but it shows you that there are very sensitive effects going on here that are very difficult to predict -- and let me take this chance here to say that no, the Sun is not responsible for global warming, as has been shown fairly conclusively. It can mildly amplify or suppress such things, but is not the main driver of it. If it were, we'd see very strong correlations between the climate and solar activity on a decade-by-decade basis (or even shorter as sunspots form and dissipate over the course of days and weeks). We don't, and therefore the Sun is not the culprit.
(disclaimer... I'm actually at the SPD meeting, and I've co-authoried with Frank Hill, but I didn't go to his talk today)
You have to deal with not just ECMA Script changing, but also the different implementations of it (JavaScript, JScipt, ActionScript, etc.) and then there's the issue of how it behaves in HTML3 vs. HTML4 vs. XHTML vs. HTML5.
I've got an older version, but there were a lot of useful sections about the dfferent implementations in each browser, and how to deal with something as simple as getting a script to fire before the user does stuff. (as Netscape and IE handled things differently, and for some things, you had to wait for the page to be rendered before you could modify it, etc.)
Much of that complexity's been dealt with by various JavaScript libraries, but then you have to explain what the ideosyncracies of the libraries are.
Slashdot Mirror
EM shielding won't help as it's not that the transformers themselves are directly affected ...
The long power lines act as antenna, so it comes in as a surge in the normal input (or feedback from the output). I know it's not cost-effective to re-string every power line with something that's shielded (and that in turn could reduce the transmission ability, as they don't like making power cables more than about 5cm thick, so you minimize wind and ice loads).
So, you'd have to put in some sort of a surge suppressor into the transformer ... which of course adds cost, but also gives you something else that can go wrong ... and for something that only happens once a decade, it might not be worth the potential for extra failures, the possible efficiency loss, etc.
As for circuit breakers ... wasn't that what took out the whole north-east when Ohio lost a section of their grid?
Currently, almost all IT support in the US government is contracted out ... so in a way, they're already hiring mercenaries, but I won't get into that bat.
All you need to do is to have a pool of talent within the government that under normal situations does pentests at the request of government agencies / divisions / whatever, and in a situation when something big happens, they can be pulled from those assignments to actively attack something.
This way, they get practice, we harden our systems, but it's not just some random hacker being contracted to make an attack ... they'd be regular government employees (although, likely contractors), who have had the necessary background checks, etc.
Well, the article does ... unfortunately, we have Slashdot linking to Gizmodo linking to CNet, where the actual article was:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20082026-47/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/?tag=mncol;txt
My ISP e-mailed me 'my invoice' as an attachment last week, when they had previously sent a summary in text, and a link to their site to view the invoice.
I e-mailed and told them that I wouldn't open attachments from them, and I wanted the plain, boring, text summary ... and I get a response back about how the invoice has always been PDF, and they closed the ticket.
So, anyone know of any good ISPs in the Maryland/DC area? (and Verizon and Comcast don't qualify as 'good' in my opinion).
They have to take the same acronym as a 20+ year old file format for storing numbers?
It's almost like they didn't bother putting the term 'CDF file' into a search engine to see if anyone else was using that acronym already for a file extension. (of course, w3 even used it twice)
And that's the largest?
Maybe linearly, but I'm guessing that some of the CAVE systems offer more in terms of area of display when you scale to 6 surfaces. Or what's the largest hyperwall?
Can we come up with some meaningful measurements of data display, before someone tries setting a world record for the heaviest or ugliest?
And there's also 'nearline'. (when it's a jukebox or similar tape robot so you can request stuff to be mounted without going and manually loading it).
*WILL* generate. LSST isn't operating yet.
And yes, 30TB is a lot of data now, but we have some time before they finally have first light.
Operations isn't supposed to start 'til 2019 : http://www.lsst.org/lsst/science/timeline
We just need network and disk drive sizes to keep doubling at the rate they have, and we'll be laughing about how we thought 30TB/night was going to be a problem.
SDO finally launched last year with a date rate of over 1TB/day ... and all through planning, people were complaining about the data rates ... it's a lot, but it's not insurmountable as it might've been 8 years ago, when we were looking at 80 to 120GB disks.
Although, it'd be nice if monitor resolutions had kept growing ... if anything, they've gotten worse the last couple of years.
(Disclaimer : I work in science informatics; I've run into Kirk Bourne at a lot of meetings, and we used to work in the same building, but we we deal with different science disciplines)
So, the infamous 'HSPD-12 badge', aka, the 'CAC card' ...
Supposedly they run $200 each. We all got bitched at for it ... have I *ever* used it to slot into a computer? Nope, because our network runs OSes that don't support the CAC functionality, and a lot of the folks on our machines aren't federal employees and remote users, so we'd have to have them run a background check (which we already do), then come in (from out of the country), finger print 'em, wait a month, then have them come back for a badge.
And then we'd have to issue them CAC readers and force them to use Windows or some OS that can use the CAC readers (MacOS? nope).
And if you loose the badge? Well, good luck on that one. Took me months to get a replacement. All the while, I couldn't enter any secured rooms, so I had to get issues a 'temporary' key card, and a 'temporary' badge ... which were EXACTLY like what we had before, only not at $200 a pop.
And the temp badges? They have HUGE text on them for the things that matter -- expiration date (the HSPD12 badges run for 5 years, no matter the length of your contract), affiliation (just says 'Contractor' in tiny type), and has an indication of your security access more than just foreign national / US cltizen / civil servant (I'm guessing because then they'd have to issue new people badges 3-4 times as their various background checks get done).
So ... more expensive, no new functionality that actually gets used ... and less secure, in that it's possible to enter the facility with an expired badge because the text is so tiny the guards can't read it, and they don't tie badge expiration to your contract, so a person with 1 year on their contract still gets issued a 5 year badge.
I had a math teacher who would assign you problems before she had explained how to do 'em in class.
That way, you'd read the book, try to do the problems, and then the next day, be pepared to ask questions on the stuff you were having difficulties with when she actually taught the lessons. She'd then give you another night to fix whatever you needed to on the homework before turning it in.
I found it so much better than just listening to a teacher droning on for an hour or more, then having to go and read the book to figure out what they should've been explaining.
.... at least by my friend's tastes, as they didn't give me shit about getting them watch it ... which I get occassionally, but they were complaining for years, and brought it up whenever I'd select a movie to watch.
... and even by my tastes, My Name is Bruce was the better of the two movies, especially with the self-deprecating humor:
Which unfortunately, wasn't quite true.
The issue is the requirement to collect sales tax -- ie, the reason that Amazon keeps dropping affiliates in selected states.
Basically, most states have laws that say that residents have to pay sales tax on everything they buy in the state. In my case, for Maryland, there's a line on the state income tax forms where I'm required to declare all purchases I purchased via mail-order where the company didn't already collect sales tax.
Now, companes who have a presence in the state are required to collect sales tax in that state. So when I buy from Amazon, I'm required to pay it directly to the state, rather than Amazon collecting it at the time of sale, as they don't have a presence in Maryland.
The problem is, sales taxes are *really* messy. What gets taxed? Food doesn't in Maryland ... but it does in DC if it's sold individually ready to eat. (which I don't think would count for mail order), so you have to know if a given item is or isn't taxed in each state. Then you also have cases where it's not only the state that has sales tax authority, but also the town or county ... so you might have an area that's differently taxed.
And then you get into the message cases where the municipality doesn't match up with the postal designation, so you can't just rely on the zip code or city on the shipping address to determine taxing district.
This has been a long-running issue since at least the late 1990s, when I first saw mention of attempts to come up with simpler taxing rules for mail order companies, but I don't know if anything's ever come out of those efforts.
That was my first reaction, too. It's like it was copy & pasted out of a PDF. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a press-release originally.
SOHO is at L1, and they don't have a space weather stream like STEREO or SDO (well, SDO's in geosyncronous orbit, and has its own ground stations, so it all comes down in near real time)
But you can get the most recent LASCO images from the SOHO website:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
Um ... 'LASCO' is the coronograph package on SOHO.
Since the launch of SDO, as AIA has a 12 second cadence for each of its EUV channels, EIT (the EUV full disk telescopes on SOHO) have been turned down to a minimal cadence (6hrs) so there's a long-term record from the same instrument, but there aren't any science planners for it anymore.
So, to answer the question -- yes.
(Note -- I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center, the primary U.S. archive for SOHO data, and I'm in the same hallway as the remaining full-time SOHO operators (all two of 'em ... it's like a ghost town, even with their consolidating our two groups last year))
The closest thing I've seen to a 'splash' was during the June 7th CME, where a significant amount of the eruption didn't escape the sun's gravity:
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw.php?v=item&id=54
For the comet, though ... no splash. And they haven't finished the final processing of the last bit of the comet's track across the sun, so I haven't seen it 'evaporate' as others have mentioned.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a solar physicist, but I work for the Solar Data Analysis Center, and on the distribution systems for SDO data)
No, you're seeing the director's interpretation of what the author meant, as constrained by the producers, budget, ratings system, skill of the actors, etc.
Even with the adaptation of comic books to movies (both visual mediums), some authors (eg, Alan Moore) have made comments on how they are effectively two different stories, as how the reader/viewer interacts with the medium is different. (pause the movie, and go check out what happened 5 minutes before to see how it relates to what just happened? Maybe in your own home, but in theatres, it means you have to watch it over and over again.)
If you think that the movie is what the author intended, you're deluding yourself. The only time that *might* be true is when the movie came first, and the book was released second, or at the same time. (and not the 'book based on the movie', written by someone completely different). The only one that comes to mind where the movie and book are near equals was a TV series, not a movie -- Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
The Register has an article claiming a security company used a mouse rigged to do something similar ... only it was installing malware.
Mind you, they said it was specifically using a windows exploit, but there's nothing to keep 'em from loading it up with exploits for multiple OSes ... dunno of the USB device can query for that sort of information or not.
You gotta love supreme court opinion that reference both Lord of the Flies:
...and 'Pick a Path' / 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type books:
And understands the difference between causation and correlation:
First, there's two different issues here ... porn vs. violence. The courts have long established that porn is considered obscenity, and therefore, does not qualify under the First Amendment. They've never said the same thing about violence, which they're re-affirming here. (Although, I wasn't sure if they were saying that animal cruelty was or wasn't considered obscene)
In the case of kids seeing R-rated movies -- it's not illegal. It's the movie producers an theatres acting as a group to set standards, but it's *not* the law.
Likewise, the video game producers could voluntarily rate their games (and many do), but as people's experience may vary depending on how you play the game, they're notoriously difficult. And the ratings only serve as a recommendation system for the purchaser, unless the retailer makes it their policy to not sell items with stronger categories of markings to children. ...
And oddly enough, for some of my formative years, I lived in Europe ... where they were much more accepting of the naked human body (not porn, just nakedness), but that violence was to be avoided. The A-Team was considered violent, but there was nothing wrong with naked people in toilet paper commercials.
I got it, too, and I don't remember using any forum, although I think I remember playing it years ago.
I suspected it was a phishing attempt of some sort, as although the link text goes to 'support.ea.com', the actual link goes to 'em.ea.com', with what looks to be a unique key in it.
Because 'coondoggie' posts summaries of all of blog articles on here, it seems, with only links back to his blog.
At least Roland Piquepaille learned, and started linking to places other than his blog ... especially as coondoggie's blog spam tends to just be regurgitated press releases with mostly self-referrential links or broken links when he does link externally (eg, whenever he tries linking to the SDO website).
Check Google News -- there have been well over a hundred groups responding to the press -- NatGeo, Space.com ... all are better informed than coondoggie's recycled crap with his own conjecture inserted. (maybe that's why Slashdot likes posting his stuff so much ... because they get more people responding to how mis-informed he is)
http://news.google.com/news/more?hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=frank+hill&biw=1169&bih=793&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=d-UvhPYxunMkI0MlB6BfoT_DWec-M&ei=1OL3TZfwLoKisAPG2LzxDA&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CC4QqgIwAA
Discover Magazine had a good article -- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/14/the-sun-may-be-headed-for-a-little-quiet-time/
And let me quote them:
(disclaimer ... I'm actually at the SPD meeting, and I've co-authoried with Frank Hill, but I didn't go to his talk today)
And that would match with J.D. Power's customer satsfaction reports for 2011:
http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/traditional/
Although, when you compare the "Low Cost" airlines, there's a few others that had similar bad ratings:
http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/low-cost/
You have to deal with not just ECMA Script changing, but also the different implementations of it (JavaScript, JScipt, ActionScript, etc.) and then there's the issue of how it behaves in HTML3 vs. HTML4 vs. XHTML vs. HTML5.
I've got an older version, but there were a lot of useful sections about the dfferent implementations in each browser, and how to deal with something as simple as getting a script to fire before the user does stuff. (as Netscape and IE handled things differently, and for some things, you had to wait for the page to be rendered before you could modify it, etc.)
Much of that complexity's been dealt with by various JavaScript libraries, but then you have to explain what the ideosyncracies of the libraries are.
Anytime someone starts obsessing about the count of something as a sign of quality, I'm reminded of this conversation between Beavis & Butthead:
I'd rather have a 10-page pamphlet that didn't suck than that same information stretched out over 1000 pages.