Jason Ohler just gave a talk at NASA/Goddard, in which he discussed the problems with technology, and in teaching students about art as related to communication.
He also touched upon issues with manipulated information, and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax].
One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible, but incorrect, rather than just ranting. [He cited a webpage about Martin Luther King, that was indirectly tied to a white supremicist group, that just slightly skewed the details] Unfortunately, kids don't understand that a website has no due diligence required in confirming their sources -- and newspapers and television news are trying so hard to scoop each other, that we end up with Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, and the like.
Cloud cover -- there are plenty of arid regions where there isn't significant cloud cover where this isn't a limitation
Night -- a properly designed solar system either does not need power at times when the sun isn't shining, or has enough storage capacity to ride out the interuption
Structures -- some buildings are short and wide, rather than tall and skinny. And not all solar power is necessarily on a structure.
I'm not saying that solar power is right for everyone, but the limitations you mention aren't as much a problem as you're suggesting.
I personally think that we need to work of getting more power efficient devices to replace current hogs. Better designed buildings can reduce the load on an HVAC system.
I do agree that bigger is not necessarily better -- if for no other reason than by having smaller power production facilities, you lesson the distribution distance required, which reduces loss. I don't know how economies of scale work out with power production, however.
My assumption is that as other power sources become more expensive to maintain [increased security cost for nuclear; increased fuel cost for oil, etc], then those sources which were considered to not be cost effective will be given new consideration.
The quickest way to make this happen is a one-way trip. I doubt NASA is going to fund an group to kill someone, no matter if the person is a volunteer who's willing to do it.
[Now, there's other groups in the US government who might be willing to provide funds for killing people, I just don't think that NASA is the one, though]
But let's think about it -- you'd probably have to find someone who's willing to make the one-way trip, but wouldn't be crazy enough to commit suicide on the trip there. That's a pretty dedicated person. [Although, I am making the assumption that they'd be looking for a live human on Mars, and not just someone shooting a corpse up there because of a poorly worded contest]
Block all exhaust ports, stop all of the fans, and put in a 15k RPM drive or overclocked CPU.
Depending on the exact strictness of the 'nothing but', you can either place something inside that's likely to combust, or at the very least, use an old system that's filled with dust.
KRYTEN
You don't know what it's like, being classified as a woman, sir. The
humiliation.
LISTER
I know, I know.
KRYTEN
I mean, why should I - a Series 4000 mechanoid - have to endure the turgid
monotony of showering with the girls? Three times a week! Tell me that!
LISTER
It's not fair, I know! It's just that -
You shower with the girls?
KRYTEN
Oh! It's so hideously dull I can't describe it, as they stand around
soaping themselves. Their bodies all wet and foamy.
Can you imagine it?
Oh my goodness, we've been frozen in time again!
Hello?
Extraordinary! It must be a warp in the time-space continuum! How curious
it isn't affecting me...
RIMMER
We're not frozen in time, Krytie - we were just thinking about what you
were saying...
(and so Kryten tries to get himself reclassified as a male)
KOCHANSKI
There's a mouse under here, its been scuttling around for about ten
minutes.
KRYTEN
It's not a mouse, ma'am, it's Archie.
KOCHANSKI
Archie?
KRYTEN
My penis. It must have escaped.
KOCHANSKI
You know, I'm really going to have to get my ears syringed; do you know
what that sounded like to me?
KRYTEN
I made one.
KOCHANSKI
Forget my ears, maybe my whole *brain* needs syringing... You made one?
KRYTEN
Mmm. Out of an old electron board, a loo roll, some sticky-backed plastic
and an Action Man's polo-neck jumper.
KOCHANSKI
Kryten, why do you want one?
KRYTEN
It's so humiliating, being posted to the Women's Wing just because I'm
genitally challenged! So I decided to make one like Mister Lister's.
Little rascal must have got bored jumping in and out of his hoop and made
a break for it during the night.
If my memory of my class in Medieval Literature is correct, the Icelandic people had two terms that had a similar connotation to gender that were used to refer to people, but were closer to 'strong' and 'weak'.
So an an improper translation, a female leader might be refered to as 'he', while an elderly male might be refered to as 'she'.
But in today's context, I think my brother's gone out with women who were more masculine than he was.
I freely admit that the main reason I pay for satellite programming in the US is to get BBC America. I'd be willing to drop back to a minimal package (so I still got Food Network, HGTV, TLC and the Discovery Channel), if I could get BBC shows over the internet.
As I see it, I'd get more offerings (not just the stuff that's on BBC America, as it'd be all BBC programming), it'd be more current (eg, Coupling when it airs in the UK... no delay before it's shown on BBC America), and I could set my own relative schedule. [so long as I download 'em within a week of them being on the air].
I would think that in the case of BBC America, it's the BBC competing with themselves, and it wouldn't be as much of an issue. [whereas shows like Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard Wars) or Robot Wars are shown in the US on non-BBC channels], so they might have some issues with those.
I'm most interested in the shows that they don't show in the US, or if they do, it's on PBS stations that aren't in my local area.
Of course, I'd probably only be willing to spend about $200-300/yr for the service. I don't know if they'd make a profit at that rate, on top of the other issues. How much is the BBC license fee?
Anyone else find it odd that the first page of this supposed 'new' study was marked June 2003? And the second page said it's version 3.1.
Which goes to show -- even if we had specifications for these things, we're just going to gloss over the details, and do whatever the hell we want, anyway. People don't read what's sitting in front of them, unless it's on some blog, it seems. If it were really important, they'd have made a TV show out of it.
[and those of you with moderator points get to vote if you think sarcasm is funny -- you can select 'troll' to vote no, 'funny' to vote yes. 'overrated' if you'd like to abstain, and 'insightful' if you read the first line, and are just trying to burn your moderator points]
A shirt with a collar for when your management gets obsessed with 'people looking professional'.
[As much as I tried to explain to them, they just wouldn't accept that your average t-shirt has a "crew neck collar", and I was in compliance with their dress code -- they also didn't like that I got an embroidery machine and put 'A COLLAR']
And don't forget, a club shirt has a collar, even when they're getting picky about the definition of 'collar'.
And then, you might want to get a nice dress shirt and tie, just in case you have to start looking for a new job. [however, my new work likes my wardrobe...although they told me after the first week that if I wore another tie in, they'd string me up by it.... even by Dogbert or Taz ties]
My neighbor did some wiring at a dentist's office, and they were using video converters to push the signal over Cat5. [they didn't need it so much for the distance, but because the wrong sized conduit was put in the floor. It was cheaper to shell out an extra US$150 per computer than to have the floor jackhammered and repoured]
You also require an extra power tap at each end for most models, from the research that I did about a year ago.
Here's a few links, but you'll probably want to do some searching on your own, find some customer feedback, etc --
... You get the idea. search for 'cat5 VGA' on google for more. Anyway, look 'em over, as they have different ranges, max. resolutions, prices, and some of 'em will also do your PS/2 ports and such.
I've seen a few computer classrooms set up (Oracle coms to mind), where they keep all of the machines away from the students, so you can't put a disk in... and they had some sort of multiplexor, so the teacher could push her screen down to everyone at once.
Desktop provider? What about SunPS and SunOne?
on
Should Sun Just Fold Now?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sure, they're still looking to finally validate the whole 'we can provide you with a SmartTerminal' concept they came up with years ago, and they're still pushing at the low end desktop, but I'm guessing that's not where the real money is --
They own what's now JavaOne, which was SunOne, which was iPlanet, which was the Sun/Netscape Alliance products. iDS (iPlanet Directory Server) is a very good directory server. [okay, there's a few nice features in OpenLDAP that I wish they'd implement, such as being able to request '+' as an attribute list], and iWS [iPlanet Web Server] is a very stable product as well. I've never played with a production install of iMS (iPlanet Messaging Server), but it has the robust MTA from Sun Messaging Server [which was PMDF, a while back], combined with the message store from Netscape's mail server.
AOL may still hold the name 'Netscape', but that's just for the desktop products -- Sun basically owns the server products. And let's not forget the money they make from Solaris [which again, is a decent product, although I've only used 2.5 to 8... my only real complaint was the lack of support for group quotas]
And the reason that people buy Sun software when they can run NetBSD on the same hardware, with other open source applications? Because they can get support contracts -- SunPS [Sun Professional Services] will do just about everything for you, so you don't have to concentrate on the IT side -- you can just hand it over to Sun, and focus on whatever it takes for you to be a company.
Sure, there are applications where information can be well distributed over a cluster of systems -- but not every problem is unique. Some companies, for whatever reason (even if it's just management's penis envy), are going to go for big iron.
This report said that Sun was decreasing in revenue -- never did it say they were losing money. There's no reason for a company to kill itself off when it's still making a profit.
Sun's got enough arms out there, that I'm guessing they will never completely fold. They might cut off a part that they don't think they can save (like the SparcV development), but so long as one segment still makes a profit, they should stay in business.
[if for no other reason than we don't need all of their engineers fighting with the rest of the currently unemployed people for jobs]
Personally, I find that when I was changing my input devices or setup in some way, it'd only help in the short term. Yes, the wrist rest helps, but then it's just a different repetative motion that I'm making.
I've found that switching to a laptop at home (which I actually use from my lap, not a desk), and a desktop at work has helped significantly.
This way, I'm getting my hand/wrists making two different sets of slightly different repetitive motions, rather than the same thing every time I'm in front of a computer.
I also find that large amounts of caffeine helps -- just because it forces you to take more frequent bathroom breaks, so I'm not sitting there typing for 4-6hrs at a time.
And when I used to game quite a bit, I'd use a completely different hand position for gaming than for doing work (number pad and mouse, as opposed to hands near the home row)
[yes, it's a reason for you to bug your employer for more computers on your desk -- I suggest getting enough systems to build your own tanning booth from the amount of EMF radiation -- my best so far was 2x21", 2x17", 1x15" (all CRT... which isn't that impressive, unless you consider it was in 1996, and one of those machines was just to play quake...I mean...perform network testing)]
Although univerisities may be lower stress on average than other areas, there are more significant factors, such as the management of the organization.
My experience working for The George Washington University was rather similar to what you describe -- you work hard, and are criticised for it. In the end, I was fired for not going through the extra hoops that management kept trying to get me to jump through, while others in my department weren't producing work.
I found my health significantly improved after being fired, and I'm now working in a government job that's much less stressful, although there was a drop in pay involved.
And as for the above advice -- teammates mean nothing if most of them are slacking off.
Here's part of the intro to the letter that I sent to HR and the CIO after I was fired:
The GW Work Environment =======================
I have worked under eight different IT managers at GW in these ten years, and an additional two managers while not at GW. From this variety of management, I feel that I can provide insight on the shortcomings of the current organization, and can compare and contrast different groups within the organizational structure. Although things may look different to someone looking in from the outside, or down from the top, these are my observations as someone working on the inside. During my time at the university, there have been periods of time that have been very successful for the organization. For example, from the spring of 2001, while under Mark Harris, in the Systems Administration Group, our group worked cohesively as a unit, with Mark bringing out the best in people. Our systems set high standards for reliability; our group worked well with IT Services and ISS and GW organizations, and we built a record number of new systems. Since Mark was transferred in April 2002, there has been by my count, just one new system in our group under our new management.
Projects have stalled, while social interaction both intradepartmental and interdepartmental has dramatically suffered. I receive numerous direct communications from people in other departments such as IMAG, ITS, the helpdesk, and SASS, because they know that I can ensure that their requests are expedited. More important, is that there is no longer the sense of purpose there once was in what is now Tech Engineering Unix. Even worse is this lack of purpose is spreading through the rest of ISS, and being spurred on by general uncertainty from the Loudon move and the general 'hands-off' approach from upper management.
I realize that there are a number of significant projects that have needed your time and focused attention as part of the upper management structure, and you haven't had the leisure to devote time and attention to some of the work place issues. However, from the trenches, it can look as if the skilled working staff have been abandoned. I can't even remember when the last ISS All Hands staff meeting was held. Even if there were budget concerns, and not run as a holiday party with food over the winter break, it still is nice, as a member of the working staff, to have recognition for your work, and to know what the goals are for the future.
Unfortunately, goals aren't communicated directly from the upper levels to the technical staff, and instead trickles down through many different communication channels. Many of these goals that we are informed about are conflicting, and the priorities seem to change based on the source of the communication, or may change from the same source through the course of a day.
At many times, I feel let down by my immediate management, especially after attending courses in engineering management, and gaining insight into what can make a successful organization, but don't see them reflected in my immediate surroundings. My work assignments don't seem to mirror the goals as I have been led to understand them.
The replacement mail project is my sole priority, although producti
I know I've never been a fan of Front Page, with the security problems it has had in the past, but if this message was about that, then it's not directly offtopic.
Of course, the lack of a real message makes it rather useless, so it should probably be scored down for some reason or another.
Even seasoned (hardened?) programmers may learn new tricks or methodologies from the second chapter of this book.
I don't know about you, but one whole chapter seems to be little reason to purchase a book.
As there are already books such as Programming the Perl DBI and Web Development with Apache and Perl, is the niche that this book is trying to fill actually worth it? Would I be better off reading Writing CGI Applications with Perl and The Official Guide to Programming with CGI.pm?
Personally, I haven't read a single one of them, so I'd really love to know. (one of these days, I'll actually read the copy of Practical mod_perl that's been collecting dust on my shelf.)
Strength is a measure of the amount of energy an object can absorb before failure. It is not a measure that's related to deformation.
After you undergo elastic deformation (where the item returns back to its original shape, within tolerance), you reach plastic deformation, where the item will not return to its original shape.
Different materials have different strength ratings for compression (crushing), tension (pulling), sheer opposite forces in a different place), moment (bending), etc.
Ductility the ability of an item to take on a new shape. Although it's different from tensile (tension) strength, ductility is a not a 'strength', it's a measure of maleability.
The above's off the top of my head (civil engineering undergrad 7yrs ago that I never did anything with), but the following seems to explain some of the concepts:
Oh -- and don't forget that strength is typically a function of temperature. [steel's biggest enemy is fire, even though it doesn't burn.... it just becomes really weak, really quickly]
So far, it's been two hours since this was posted, and no one's mentioned tiberium? [Okay, someone mentioned Command & Conquer, and was maked 'offtopic', even though he wasn't.]
For those of you non-gamer geeks, the basic premise for money production in the game was that there was this plant, tiberium, which would leech minerals from the ground, and you would collect it up, and you'd get a source of funding that you could use to produce troops, tanks, buildings, whatever to take out your opponents.
Of couse, the problem was, that regular troopers were harmed if they went into a tiberium field. [However, they only took damage for moving, in the original game]. Later sequels introduced a mutant army, who healed if they were in a tiberium field.
Red Alert had crystal fields, which just wasn't the same [they didn't regenerate for one], and C&C Generals uses supply depots -- no concept of tiberium at all. [The best thing about tiberium was that it grew over time, as opposed to being a fixed resource]
In the 6th grade, I learned statistics -- through M&Ms.
First, the teacher broke us into pairs. Each pair got a bag of candy. It was our job to count how many of each color we had. We then had to tell our teacher how many we had, and he had this chalkboard that he kept all of the numbers on, for each group. He got the numbers from all of the other classes in our grade [there were three].
We first started off with basic totals -- how many green in each class? in the entire grade? How many total candies?
From there, we learned to divide to get a mean. We also did sorting to get medians, and counting to get modes. One all that was done, we did variance and standard deviations.
Mind you, we also had to do square roots -- by hand. [And this was less than 20 years ago].
As I see it, it comes down to two major things --
Every person learns differently.
You can't expect that some canned lesson is going to work for every kid. You need to use tasks that kids can work on independantly while the teacher can help those that aren't getting it, and maybe explain it a little differently
You have to be able to relate to the lesson.
If the kid can't understand a practical application to something, it doesn't do them any good. One of my friends in college said he learned geometry through land surveying... in middle school. You have to get the explaination down to something that they can see a practical application to, and that they actually care about. Not every kid is going to be an abstract thinker. In some ways, I think it's more important once the kids have a basic foundation, that they work more on how to aquire knowledge, rather than memorizing facts. I mean, to me it's more important that I know why the civil war happened, and a concept of when it happened in relation to the rest of history, than in knowing what particular date some particular event occurred.
Likewise, in physics, it's more important know the general concepts. Some major constants are worth knowing (9.8m/s**2), but the overall concepts of gravity and acceleration are more important.
After the directly commercial applications were persued (most notably, Marconi's radio telegraph), we moved to the period of finding other ways to make a profit off of radio... such as stock fraud.
So why were they providing free broadcasts? To sell radios to people. You couldn't listen the broadcasts, without buying a radio. Well, you could go to someone else's house, but that'd be admitting you didn't have one. That's why RCA and the other radio manufacturers are the ones who are doing the broadcasts -- they spend money in one area, to make a profit in another.
The concept of 'toll broadcasting' [think of today's infomercials], came from AT&T, and the government came down on them, in a completely ineffective way. [Although, there are indications that there were other paid commercials before that point].
In europe, however, they wnt a different route -- which is why there are television taxes and the like today. The government provided the information broadcast, but they weren't going to do it at a loss, so they had to get some money for doing it.
Yes, there are problems with how the spectrum is sold to corporations. [for one, why is it 'sold', and not 'rented'... that was a major oversight on the Commerce Department]. And there are problems with the cable monopolies, and with the government being pushed by lobbyists who have the corporations, not the public's best interests in mind.
But it's just wrong to say that broadcast radio wasn't commercial... broadcasts were made to sell radios. It's just that it was a short-sighted business plan, and once there was major market penetration, they had to move to something else to continue to make a profit.
Just because the guy gives you a reason why it's possible doesn't mean that it's true.
Why am I reminded of the episode of Pinky and the Brain, where Brain stages an 'accident' involving a microwave, and non-dairy creamer?
I don't have the exact transcript, but Brain had gotten a job (while wearing his human suit), and hides the suit, turns the microwave on, covers himself in non-dairy creamer, and then sues for workman's comp, as it was 'obvious' that the microwaves had turned him into a mouse.
During the trial, the lawyer explains how rediculous the claim is, and explains how microwaves work, and how it would be impossible for microwaves to have done this. And Brain asks something to the effect of 'but what about the non-dairy creamer?'
Just because it's unknown, doesn't mean that it's the reason that your problem works out. By Occam's Razor, it's quite possibly more likely that you just made a mistake somewhere else in the problem.
Yes, it's against the law to copy the movie with a camcorder... And yes, they used night vision goggles to catch someone.
But the other guy that's been arrested for suspicion didn't even cover up or in someway disable the red 'recording' light on the camcorder. So he's also distracting other people around him, who have paid their money to see the movie.
C'mon, at least have some common curtesy for the rest of the people in the theatre with you.
At least I haven't any dumbasses playing the laser pointers in the movie theatres in a while. Or throwing things. Or with screaming children in an R-rated movie. Although, come to think of it, I also don't go to the movies very often anymore... that might have something to do with it.
I sent an anonymous packet of informtion to the dean through campus mail, regarding a faculty member's use of equipment purchased for a university project, and his taking that equipment for a company that he started, and giving us instead dated equipment with 'property of NASA' stickers on it. [where he worked part time, it was my understanding]. He also claimed the work of one of the students for whom he was an advisor, as the work of his company.
Unfortunately, as there were relatively few people who had access to all of the information that I did, it was rather easy for them to track it back to me. I was called into a meeting with the dean, and the faculty member, and they threatened me with expusion. They also weren't happy with something that I posted to the group's web page (which was in fact, a violation of the university's policies regarding use of computer systems)
I also wasn't aware that the dean had a vested interest in keeping the faculty member, as he had received a multi-million dollar grant for some of the research that he was doing.
So, my recomendation is -- if you're going to do anything, go straight to the feds. More than likely, whomever you complain to internally knows what's going on, and wants it to continue, for some reason that you don't know about. [It might even just be a cover-your-ass approach].
Oh -- and after graduating, years later, I needed to get a transcript for a job. It turns out the university had shipped me a diploma, but didn't have my graduation listed in their computer system. It took me over four months to get the issue resolved, and even then, as the last meeting I had with the assistant dean, he had the balls to appologize to me -- not for someone missing to update a flag in the computer system, but for them sending out an incorrect letter informing me of what classes I needed for graduation and sending me the diploma in error.
[They only flagged me as graduated, as I had taken a number of graduate level classes, and they applied those to make up for the two one credit classes they claimed I needed, 6 years later].
Unfortunately, I don't think that this is a direct violation of FERPA, but I know there was some new law, that I think is now in effect, that made it so they had to stop using SSNs as tracking numbers. I've been out of higher ed for almost a year now [working as a systems programmer, and speaking up about problems -- which got me fired], so I'm not as current as I used to be.
If you really want to report this to the school, take it to the student government, or some other body that the school doesn't have direct control over.
You're just reading it in. It is however, stating that attacks seem to come rather quickly after patches are released.
Personally, I'd prefer if they didn't use valid scientific methods to prove if this is or isn't the case, if the result is network being saturated when the exploits finally hit, and manage to take out a significant number of hosts.
One of the key points that he didn't mention is that there was an attack about two years ago (sorry I can't be more specific, I was working on other projects at the time, as wasn't responsible for cleaning up after it where I worked), that one of the virus companies had a 'prefered customer' system, where they'd let certain customers know about virus outbreaks before the general public, and put out a press release that if you had been one of their clients, you'd have been protected from the virus outbreak. [I think it was one of the more hard hitting ones, too...like CodeRed, or at least near that time]
I would think that the issue that this article is talking about has absolutely nothing to do with speed -- it comes down to issues with the current procedures being exploitable, and needing to be fixed. He is simply giving a recommendation to fix the problem, which has a (not quite desired) side effect of longer times before systems are patched.
I would think that there's most likely some other solution out there that would have the desired end result (more difficult to reverse engineer the patches before the majority of users have patched their system), without creating some sort of intentional delay in the procedures. (and whoever comes up with it should probably patent it, to protect themselves and screw others, or should make sure to get it published, so it can be claimed as prior art before someone else patents it)
For anyone who's interested in the actual text of the bill (now law, I guess), it's not yet in Utah's laegal database, only the listing of current bills.
That's dirt cheep around here. My neighbor got quoted US$4000 for a tree less than 50 foot tall, in the Washington, DC area.
He went with the lowest bid (one of his wife's clients), for $2500. I've been helping him cut and split wood almost every weekend since they dropped it, almost two months ago, but he got a citation from the county for having a dead tree or its products on his property not even two weeks after it was dropped. [we're assuming they were citing him for the downed tree, and not mulch, or the wood frame of his house].
Of course, the folks who dropped it let it lay on the ground for the better part of a week before they cut it into segments, and even then, it was too big for us to feed through a splitter.
And so, we've found the most valuable lesson when getting a tree dropped -- when people say 'sure, I'll take some firewood', they're lying.
Slashdot Mirror
Jason Ohler just gave a talk at NASA/Goddard, in which he discussed the problems with technology, and in teaching students about art as related to communication.
He also touched upon issues with manipulated information, and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax].
One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible, but incorrect, rather than just ranting. [He cited a webpage about Martin Luther King, that was indirectly tied to a white supremicist group, that just slightly skewed the details] Unfortunately, kids don't understand that a website has no due diligence required in confirming their sources -- and newspapers and television news are trying so hard to scoop each other, that we end up with Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, and the like.
- Cloud cover -- there are plenty of arid regions where there isn't significant cloud cover where this isn't a limitation
- Night -- a properly designed solar system either does not need power at times when the sun isn't shining, or has enough storage capacity to ride out the interuption
- Structures -- some buildings are short and wide, rather than tall and skinny. And not all solar power is necessarily on a structure.
I'm not saying that solar power is right for everyone, but the limitations you mention aren't as much a problem as you're suggesting.I personally think that we need to work of getting more power efficient devices to replace current hogs. Better designed buildings can reduce the load on an HVAC system.
I do agree that bigger is not necessarily better -- if for no other reason than by having smaller power production facilities, you lesson the distribution distance required, which reduces loss. I don't know how economies of scale work out with power production, however.
My assumption is that as other power sources become more expensive to maintain [increased security cost for nuclear; increased fuel cost for oil, etc], then those sources which were considered to not be cost effective will be given new consideration.
The quickest way to make this happen is a one-way trip. I doubt NASA is going to fund an group to kill someone, no matter if the person is a volunteer who's willing to do it.
[Now, there's other groups in the US government who might be willing to provide funds for killing people, I just don't think that NASA is the one, though]
But let's think about it -- you'd probably have to find someone who's willing to make the one-way trip, but wouldn't be crazy enough to commit suicide on the trip there. That's a pretty dedicated person. [Although, I am making the assumption that they'd be looking for a live human on Mars, and not just someone shooting a corpse up there because of a poorly worded contest]
Block all exhaust ports, stop all of the fans, and put in a 15k RPM drive or overclocked CPU.
Depending on the exact strictness of the 'nothing but', you can either place something inside that's likely to combust, or at the very least, use an old system that's filled with dust.
(and so Kryten tries to get himself reclassified as a male)
KOCHANSKI There's a mouse under here, its been scuttling around for about ten minutes. KRYTEN It's not a mouse, ma'am, it's Archie. KOCHANSKI Archie? KRYTEN My penis. It must have escaped. KOCHANSKI You know, I'm really going to have to get my ears syringed; do you know what that sounded like to me? KRYTEN I made one. KOCHANSKI Forget my ears, maybe my whole *brain* needs syringing... You made one? KRYTEN Mmm. Out of an old electron board, a loo roll, some sticky-backed plastic and an Action Man's polo-neck jumper. KOCHANSKI Kryten, why do you want one? KRYTEN It's so humiliating, being posted to the Women's Wing just because I'm genitally challenged! So I decided to make one like Mister Lister's. Little rascal must have got bored jumping in and out of his hoop and made a break for it during the night.If my memory of my class in Medieval Literature is correct, the Icelandic people had two terms that had a similar connotation to gender that were used to refer to people, but were closer to 'strong' and 'weak'.
So an an improper translation, a female leader might be refered to as 'he', while an elderly male might be refered to as 'she'.
But in today's context, I think my brother's gone out with women who were more masculine than he was.
I freely admit that the main reason I pay for satellite programming in the US is to get BBC America. I'd be willing to drop back to a minimal package (so I still got Food Network, HGTV, TLC and the Discovery Channel), if I could get BBC shows over the internet.
As I see it, I'd get more offerings (not just the stuff that's on BBC America, as it'd be all BBC programming), it'd be more current (eg, Coupling when it airs in the UK... no delay before it's shown on BBC America), and I could set my own relative schedule. [so long as I download 'em within a week of them being on the air].
I would think that in the case of BBC America, it's the BBC competing with themselves, and it wouldn't be as much of an issue. [whereas shows like Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard Wars) or Robot Wars are shown in the US on non-BBC channels], so they might have some issues with those.
I'm most interested in the shows that they don't show in the US, or if they do, it's on PBS stations that aren't in my local area.
Of course, I'd probably only be willing to spend about $200-300/yr for the service. I don't know if they'd make a profit at that rate, on top of the other issues. How much is the BBC license fee?
Anyone else find it odd that the first page of this supposed 'new' study was marked June 2003? And the second page said it's version 3.1.
Which goes to show -- even if we had specifications for these things, we're just going to gloss over the details, and do whatever the hell we want, anyway. People don't read what's sitting in front of them, unless it's on some blog, it seems. If it were really important, they'd have made a TV show out of it.
[and those of you with moderator points get to vote if you think sarcasm is funny -- you can select 'troll' to vote no, 'funny' to vote yes. 'overrated' if you'd like to abstain, and 'insightful' if you read the first line, and are just trying to burn your moderator points]
A shirt with a collar for when your management gets obsessed with 'people looking professional'.
[As much as I tried to explain to them, they just wouldn't accept that your average t-shirt has a "crew neck collar", and I was in compliance with their dress code -- they also didn't like that I got an embroidery machine and put 'A COLLAR']
And don't forget, a club shirt has a collar, even when they're getting picky about the definition of 'collar'.
And then, you might want to get a nice dress shirt and tie, just in case you have to start looking for a new job. [however, my new work likes my wardrobe...although they told me after the first week that if I wore another tie in, they'd string me up by it.... even by Dogbert or Taz ties]
You also require an extra power tap at each end for most models, from the research that I did about a year ago.
Here's a few links, but you'll probably want to do some searching on your own, find some customer feedback, etc --
- CAT5 Video Extenders
- Line extender for VGA monitor
- CAT5 Extender Products
... You get the idea. search for 'cat5 VGA' on google for more. Anyway, look 'em over, as they have different ranges, max. resolutions, prices, and some of 'em will also do your PS/2 ports and such.I've seen a few computer classrooms set up (Oracle coms to mind), where they keep all of the machines away from the students, so you can't put a disk in... and they had some sort of multiplexor, so the teacher could push her screen down to everyone at once.
Sure, they're still looking to finally validate the whole 'we can provide you with a SmartTerminal' concept they came up with years ago, and they're still pushing at the low end desktop, but I'm guessing that's not where the real money is --
They own what's now JavaOne, which was SunOne, which was iPlanet, which was the Sun/Netscape Alliance products. iDS (iPlanet Directory Server) is a very good directory server. [okay, there's a few nice features in OpenLDAP that I wish they'd implement, such as being able to request '+' as an attribute list], and iWS [iPlanet Web Server] is a very stable product as well. I've never played with a production install of iMS (iPlanet Messaging Server), but it has the robust MTA from Sun Messaging Server [which was PMDF, a while back], combined with the message store from Netscape's mail server.
AOL may still hold the name 'Netscape', but that's just for the desktop products -- Sun basically owns the server products. And let's not forget the money they make from Solaris [which again, is a decent product, although I've only used 2.5 to 8... my only real complaint was the lack of support for group quotas]
And the reason that people buy Sun software when they can run NetBSD on the same hardware, with other open source applications? Because they can get support contracts -- SunPS [Sun Professional Services] will do just about everything for you, so you don't have to concentrate on the IT side -- you can just hand it over to Sun, and focus on whatever it takes for you to be a company.
Sure, there are applications where information can be well distributed over a cluster of systems -- but not every problem is unique. Some companies, for whatever reason (even if it's just management's penis envy), are going to go for big iron.
This report said that Sun was decreasing in revenue -- never did it say they were losing money. There's no reason for a company to kill itself off when it's still making a profit.
Sun's got enough arms out there, that I'm guessing they will never completely fold. They might cut off a part that they don't think they can save (like the SparcV development), but so long as one segment still makes a profit, they should stay in business.
[if for no other reason than we don't need all of their engineers fighting with the rest of the currently unemployed people for jobs]
Personally, I find that when I was changing my input devices or setup in some way, it'd only help in the short term. Yes, the wrist rest helps, but then it's just a different repetative motion that I'm making.
I've found that switching to a laptop at home (which I actually use from my lap, not a desk), and a desktop at work has helped significantly.
This way, I'm getting my hand/wrists making two different sets of slightly different repetitive motions, rather than the same thing every time I'm in front of a computer.
I also find that large amounts of caffeine helps -- just because it forces you to take more frequent bathroom breaks, so I'm not sitting there typing for 4-6hrs at a time.
And when I used to game quite a bit, I'd use a completely different hand position for gaming than for doing work (number pad and mouse, as opposed to hands near the home row)
[yes, it's a reason for you to bug your employer for more computers on your desk -- I suggest getting enough systems to build your own tanning booth from the amount of EMF radiation -- my best so far was 2x21", 2x17", 1x15" (all CRT... which isn't that impressive, unless you consider it was in 1996, and one of those machines was just to play quake...I mean...perform network testing)]
My experience working for The George Washington University was rather similar to what you describe -- you work hard, and are criticised for it. In the end, I was fired for not going through the extra hoops that management kept trying to get me to jump through, while others in my department weren't producing work.
I found my health significantly improved after being fired, and I'm now working in a government job that's much less stressful, although there was a drop in pay involved.
And as for the above advice -- teammates mean nothing if most of them are slacking off.
Here's part of the intro to the letter that I sent to HR and the CIO after I was fired:
I know I've never been a fan of Front Page, with the security problems it has had in the past, but if this message was about that, then it's not directly offtopic.
Of course, the lack of a real message makes it rather useless, so it should probably be scored down for some reason or another.
As there are already books such as Programming the Perl DBI and Web Development with Apache and Perl, is the niche that this book is trying to fill actually worth it? Would I be better off reading Writing CGI Applications with Perl and The Official Guide to Programming with CGI.pm?
Personally, I haven't read a single one of them, so I'd really love to know. (one of these days, I'll actually read the copy of Practical mod_perl that's been collecting dust on my shelf.)
After you undergo elastic deformation (where the item returns back to its original shape, within tolerance), you reach plastic deformation, where the item will not return to its original shape.
Different materials have different strength ratings for compression (crushing), tension (pulling), sheer opposite forces in a different place), moment (bending), etc.
Ductility the ability of an item to take on a new shape. Although it's different from tensile (tension) strength, ductility is a not a 'strength', it's a measure of maleability.
The above's off the top of my head (civil engineering undergrad 7yrs ago that I never did anything with), but the following seems to explain some of the concepts:Oh -- and don't forget that strength is typically a function of temperature. [steel's biggest enemy is fire, even though it doesn't burn.... it just becomes really weak, really quickly]
So far, it's been two hours since this was posted, and no one's mentioned tiberium? [Okay, someone mentioned Command & Conquer, and was maked 'offtopic', even though he wasn't.]
For those of you non-gamer geeks, the basic premise for money production in the game was that there was this plant, tiberium, which would leech minerals from the ground, and you would collect it up, and you'd get a source of funding that you could use to produce troops, tanks, buildings, whatever to take out your opponents.
Of couse, the problem was, that regular troopers were harmed if they went into a tiberium field. [However, they only took damage for moving, in the original game]. Later sequels introduced a mutant army, who healed if they were in a tiberium field.
Red Alert had crystal fields, which just wasn't the same [they didn't regenerate for one], and C&C Generals uses supply depots -- no concept of tiberium at all. [The best thing about tiberium was that it grew over time, as opposed to being a fixed resource]
In the 6th grade, I learned statistics -- through M&Ms.
... in middle school. You have to get the explaination down to something that they can see a practical application to, and that they actually care about. Not every kid is going to be an abstract thinker. In some ways, I think it's more important once the kids have a basic foundation, that they work more on how to aquire knowledge, rather than memorizing facts. I mean, to me it's more important that I know why the civil war happened, and a concept of when it happened in relation to the rest of history, than in knowing what particular date some particular event occurred.
First, the teacher broke us into pairs. Each pair got a bag of candy. It was our job to count how many of each color we had. We then had to tell our teacher how many we had, and he had this chalkboard that he kept all of the numbers on, for each group. He got the numbers from all of the other classes in our grade [there were three].
We first started off with basic totals -- how many green in each class? in the entire grade? How many total candies?
From there, we learned to divide to get a mean. We also did sorting to get medians, and counting to get modes. One all that was done, we did variance and standard deviations.
Mind you, we also had to do square roots -- by hand. [And this was less than 20 years ago].
As I see it, it comes down to two major things -- Every person learns differently. You can't expect that some canned lesson is going to work for every kid. You need to use tasks that kids can work on independantly while the teacher can help those that aren't getting it, and maybe explain it a little differently You have to be able to relate to the lesson. If the kid can't understand a practical application to something, it doesn't do them any good. One of my friends in college said he learned geometry through land surveying
Likewise, in physics, it's more important know the general concepts. Some major constants are worth knowing (9.8m/s**2), but the overall concepts of gravity and acceleration are more important.
After the directly commercial applications were persued (most notably, Marconi's radio telegraph), we moved to the period of finding other ways to make a profit off of radio ... such as stock fraud.
... broadcasts were made to sell radios. It's just that it was a short-sighted business plan, and once there was major market penetration, they had to move to something else to continue to make a profit.
We didn't have widespead broadcast radio until after World War One, as the US government has outlawed private use during the war. Radio came back after the war, but it took some time before we had the birth of RCA, and a little while later before other companies figured out how to make a profit off of radio.
So why were they providing free broadcasts? To sell radios to people. You couldn't listen the broadcasts, without buying a radio. Well, you could go to someone else's house, but that'd be admitting you didn't have one. That's why RCA and the other radio manufacturers are the ones who are doing the broadcasts -- they spend money in one area, to make a profit in another.
The concept of 'toll broadcasting' [think of today's infomercials], came from AT&T, and the government came down on them, in a completely ineffective way. [Although, there are indications that there were other paid commercials before that point].
In europe, however, they wnt a different route -- which is why there are television taxes and the like today. The government provided the information broadcast, but they weren't going to do it at a loss, so they had to get some money for doing it.
Yes, there are problems with how the spectrum is sold to corporations. [for one, why is it 'sold', and not 'rented'... that was a major oversight on the Commerce Department]. And there are problems with the cable monopolies, and with the government being pushed by lobbyists who have the corporations, not the public's best interests in mind.
But it's just wrong to say that broadcast radio wasn't commercial
I don't have the exact transcript, but Brain had gotten a job (while wearing his human suit), and hides the suit, turns the microwave on, covers himself in non-dairy creamer, and then sues for workman's comp, as it was 'obvious' that the microwaves had turned him into a mouse.
During the trial, the lawyer explains how rediculous the claim is, and explains how microwaves work, and how it would be impossible for microwaves to have done this. And Brain asks something to the effect of 'but what about the non-dairy creamer?'
Just because it's unknown, doesn't mean that it's the reason that your problem works out. By Occam's Razor, it's quite possibly more likely that you just made a mistake somewhere else in the problem.
Yes, it's against the law to copy the movie with a camcorder... And yes, they used night vision goggles to catch someone.
But the other guy that's been arrested for suspicion didn't even cover up or in someway disable the red 'recording' light on the camcorder. So he's also distracting other people around him, who have paid their money to see the movie.
C'mon, at least have some common curtesy for the rest of the people in the theatre with you.
At least I haven't any dumbasses playing the laser pointers in the movie theatres in a while. Or throwing things. Or with screaming children in an R-rated movie. Although, come to think of it, I also don't go to the movies very often anymore... that might have something to do with it.
I sent an anonymous packet of informtion to the dean through campus mail, regarding a faculty member's use of equipment purchased for a university project, and his taking that equipment for a company that he started, and giving us instead dated equipment with 'property of NASA' stickers on it. [where he worked part time, it was my understanding]. He also claimed the work of one of the students for whom he was an advisor, as the work of his company.
Unfortunately, as there were relatively few people who had access to all of the information that I did, it was rather easy for them to track it back to me. I was called into a meeting with the dean, and the faculty member, and they threatened me with expusion. They also weren't happy with something that I posted to the group's web page (which was in fact, a violation of the university's policies regarding use of computer systems)
I also wasn't aware that the dean had a vested interest in keeping the faculty member, as he had received a multi-million dollar grant for some of the research that he was doing.
So, my recomendation is -- if you're going to do anything, go straight to the feds. More than likely, whomever you complain to internally knows what's going on, and wants it to continue, for some reason that you don't know about. [It might even just be a cover-your-ass approach].
Oh -- and after graduating, years later, I needed to get a transcript for a job. It turns out the university had shipped me a diploma, but didn't have my graduation listed in their computer system. It took me over four months to get the issue resolved, and even then, as the last meeting I had with the assistant dean, he had the balls to appologize to me -- not for someone missing to update a flag in the computer system, but for them sending out an incorrect letter informing me of what classes I needed for graduation and sending me the diploma in error.
[They only flagged me as graduated, as I had taken a number of graduate level classes, and they applied those to make up for the two one credit classes they claimed I needed, 6 years later].
Unfortunately, I don't think that this is a direct violation of FERPA, but I know there was some new law, that I think is now in effect, that made it so they had to stop using SSNs as tracking numbers. I've been out of higher ed for almost a year now [working as a systems programmer, and speaking up about problems -- which got me fired], so I'm not as current as I used to be.
If you really want to report this to the school, take it to the student government, or some other body that the school doesn't have direct control over.
You're just reading it in. It is however, stating that attacks seem to come rather quickly after patches are released.
Personally, I'd prefer if they didn't use valid scientific methods to prove if this is or isn't the case, if the result is network being saturated when the exploits finally hit, and manage to take out a significant number of hosts.
One of the key points that he didn't mention is that there was an attack about two years ago (sorry I can't be more specific, I was working on other projects at the time, as wasn't responsible for cleaning up after it where I worked), that one of the virus companies had a 'prefered customer' system, where they'd let certain customers know about virus outbreaks before the general public, and put out a press release that if you had been one of their clients, you'd have been protected from the virus outbreak. [I think it was one of the more hard hitting ones, too...like CodeRed, or at least near that time]
I would think that the issue that this article is talking about has absolutely nothing to do with speed -- it comes down to issues with the current procedures being exploitable, and needing to be fixed. He is simply giving a recommendation to fix the problem, which has a (not quite desired) side effect of longer times before systems are patched.
I would think that there's most likely some other solution out there that would have the desired end result (more difficult to reverse engineer the patches before the majority of users have patched their system), without creating some sort of intentional delay in the procedures. (and whoever comes up with it should probably patent it, to protect themselves and screw others, or should make sure to get it published, so it can be claimed as prior art before someone else patents it)
I just thought I'd share, so no one else has to waste their time looking for it. (I haven't read it yet, however)
That's dirt cheep around here. My neighbor got quoted US$4000 for a tree less than 50 foot tall, in the Washington, DC area.
He went with the lowest bid (one of his wife's clients), for $2500. I've been helping him cut and split wood almost every weekend since they dropped it, almost two months ago, but he got a citation from the county for having a dead tree or its products on his property not even two weeks after it was dropped. [we're assuming they were citing him for the downed tree, and not mulch, or the wood frame of his house].
Of course, the folks who dropped it let it lay on the ground for the better part of a week before they cut it into segments, and even then, it was too big for us to feed through a splitter.
And so, we've found the most valuable lesson when getting a tree dropped -- when people say 'sure, I'll take some firewood', they're lying.