There is nothing new here: Earth's natural VLF emissions have been known and studied for decades. The
only thing new here is a new standard of bad reporting.
I just tried my company's external IP address and got reasonable answers. The MaxMind location is consistent with what I get when my iPod asks Google Maps where it is. The IP2Location coordinates are down the street, possibly the central office (our internet is through the phone company).
I'm not sure which service they are using, but I see a number of web sites that think I'm in Blaine, Washington. This is the nearest town in the U.S. (30 km away).
We've all gotten burned on projects that
got out of hand, but I often wonder why it happens,
over and over. Hubris?
I've seen projects where the requirements document was 1000 pages and growing exponentially. For an email server. I remember one project
where it didn't matter if code even compiled: we
had to ship what we had, because we couldn't delay any further. I made the mistake of expressing
my views to the wrong people on that one,
and was told in no uncertain terms to shut up
if I wanted to continue working there.
I've seen more than one project fall flat on its face because the original requirements
were wrong, like trying to develop PC software for
an industry that was 100% Mac.
I was always amazed at how well Jeremy Clarkson did on GT4 with the joystick controller. I find most cars uncontrollable on it. The steering wheel controller, on the other hand...
The limits of GT4's car physics models are clear. But they're modeled a lot. This is, after all, a game. Not a NASA simulator.
...laura who has yet to do a clean lap of Laguna Seca
For various reasons (including this one), people have
come up with ways to enhance the accuracy of GPS.
I've used differential GPS for several applications. Terrestrial beacon stations listen to GPS, and compare where they know
they are with where GPS says they are. They broadcast these
corrections and anybody in the vicinity can use them.
WAAS is a similar concept. I've played with it too.
Global warming/Little Ice Age issues aside, I'm
more concerned with the enormous amount of satellite-based technology that
we've deployed in the past few years. The time of solar minimum,
a minimum that seems to be taking its time about not being a minimum anymore.
When the sun wakes up again we may find stuff in space getting
fried. And techie stuff on Earth stopping working. Important, mission-critical
stuff.
It's always been fashion vs. utility for this one. Very few people actually need the
size and off-road capability of the typical
SUV. If they have any off-road capability at all;
a lot of them
have obviously never even been on a gravel road.
The people who need pickups and things will continue to have them and use them. The people who don't, won't. Few people actually need anything bigger than a Corolla or a Golf.
I ride the bus to work, but have a little van (an L300
Mitsubishi Delica) for weekends. I bought it with an eye to
camping, and carrying cameras and telescopes
and things up mountains. It does this very well,
and has proven unstoppable in snow.
Diesel is currently $CDN 1.47 a litre here. That's 0.93 Euros.
I feel part of this is a reaction of people to slow,
buggy computers that crash all the time: a computer is useless if it doesn't actually work. User
don't care how fast the computer
is. They don't care how fancy the OS is or how many
bells and whistles the applications have. As long as it does what they need it to do, they're happy.
I've actually met people who are suspicious of Macs. They're too easy. They're too reliable.
They're not like other (i.e. Windows) computers. There has to be a catch, somewhere. Us Mac fans just say this is how
computers are supposed to work, and it's Windows that
has it wrong.
No encryption is truly unbreakable.
All will, eventually, fall victim to a brute-force attack.
No. This is well-established.
One-time pads are unbreakable in a carefully defined sense: of all the possible decrypted messages, there is no way to decide which is the correct one. All are equally probable.
I've toyed with setting up one-time pad encryption so my Mom and I could send secret email to
each other. I'd probably go low-tech and hook a geiger counter up to a computer to generate a CD of random key material, then give her a copy.
The only examples of decrypted one-time pad messages are ones where the agents misused their pads, like the Venona decrypts.
The 1920s stock market bubble had a number of features in common with the 1990s bubble. There
was a trendy new technology, lots of VC folks desperate
to throw money at any company that had anything even remotely to do with it,
and lots of people lost their shirts when the bubble burst.
I've just started a new project at work. I was told what it needed to do, and left to fill in the blanks myself.
My boss suggested I have a look at a system that did
some of the things we want to do. It's clearly not the answer to our problem, but does some interesting things with python and twisted. A bit more digging suggested django as a web application
framework. So that's how I'm doing it: python, with twisted to talk to stuff on the network and django to serve up a web-based user interface.
I've worked with tomcat and java server pages, but wanted to
try something new. Preferably solving a real problem.
See if experience had come up with newer, better ways to solve the old problems. So far, it looks good.
At least for me python is more successful than java, because it was my choice when starting a new project.
If nothing else, I've sexed up my resume a bit.:-)
Wise companies use the time to regroup, upgrade skills, and research new things. Then, when the economy picks up again, they are well-positioned
to take advantage of new business.
All the ingredients have been around for a while, but it's
only now that they have come together in a big enough way
to be noticed:
battery power, compute power, UI design,
display quality,
applications that people will actually buy.
I have an iPod Touch and love it as a portable media/information gadget. But I also despise the way Apple are handling the SDK rollout. I'm not going to invest a dime on
development for it if I have no guarantee that I will ever be able
to run what I write on a real device.
Your problem, not ours, and entirely
self-inflicted. The size of U.S. ballots is the problem.
How the votes are tallied is beside the point.
In the last Federal election I was the first person to vote in my area (on my way to work), so I was the one who looked in the ballot box, certified to the Returning Officer that it was empty, and taped it shut. How much more democracy do you want?
In our last provincial election we also had a referendum on adopting a single-transferrable vote system for our elections. I voted yes, but not enough people did, and the referendum failed. We
would have stuck with paper ballots (a paper trail is non-negotiable, IMHO), but most versions of STV require computers to tabulate the results in a timely
manner.
When we moved things around late last year I was
given an empty cubicle and told to set it up as I saw fit. It's my work environment, and
I need to be both efficient and comfortable. The
result looks like an explosion in a computer junk
store, but my weakly-chaotic work style gets
things done.
The excessively trendy workplaces with all
the non-work goodies make me nervous. Work is work,
play is play, and I like to keep the two separate.
Lessee now...4 monitors, 2 PCs (one XP, one Linux), 2 Sun boxes (Ultra 5 with Solaris, Netra T1 with Linux), Gumstix, assorted other stuff. Just the way I like it!
I've been to Vetco (interesting, but not
that interesting), but must check out Alphatronics next time I'm down that way.
What we really need in the Vancouver/Seattle/Portland corridor is something along the lines of Tanner's in Dallas. Our company head office is in Dallas, so I'm a quasi-regular customer.
No more Boeing Surplus? Tragic. The last time I was there I bought some nice offcuts of sheet aluminum. The time before that, a couple of junky computers...first Radar, now Boeing Surplus. Fry's is fun, but it's just not the same.
The Boeing surplus auction site sucks. I just had a look at it.
My only beef with Powell's is that I spend too much money whenever I go there. Last time
I was there I dropped about $500 at the main
store, then about $500 more at the technical store.
I particularly like the fact that the technical store
is all kinds of technical stuff. The "technical" sections in the bookstores here (Vancouver) are 99%
computer stuff, with a handful of pop science books.
I've heard of people who take vacations in Portland for
the express purpose of shopping at Powell's. Sure, I
can get just about anything I want through Amazon, but there
is still no substitute for browsing the shelves to
see what you can find.
I think I feel another Powell's trip coming on. I always stop at Boeing Surplus (Seattle) on the way back. Sometimes
all they have is just plain junk, but they often have lots
of really cool sh*t.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just plain shoddy reporting.
There is nothing new here: Earth's natural VLF emissions have been known and studied for decades. The only thing new here is a new standard of bad reporting.
Sigh.
...laura
What's the difference?
I just tried my company's external IP address and got reasonable answers. The MaxMind location is consistent with what I get when my iPod asks Google Maps where it is. The IP2Location coordinates are down the street, possibly the central office (our internet is through the phone company).
I'm not sure which service they are using, but I see a number of web sites that think I'm in Blaine, Washington. This is the nearest town in the U.S. (30 km away).
...laura
Yeah, but microfilm readers would have taken up too much space! :-)
...laura
We've all gotten burned on projects that got out of hand, but I often wonder why it happens, over and over. Hubris?
I've seen projects where the requirements document was 1000 pages and growing exponentially. For an email server. I remember one project where it didn't matter if code even compiled: we had to ship what we had, because we couldn't delay any further. I made the mistake of expressing my views to the wrong people on that one, and was told in no uncertain terms to shut up if I wanted to continue working there.
I've seen more than one project fall flat on its face because the original requirements were wrong, like trying to develop PC software for an industry that was 100% Mac.
...laura
I was always amazed at how well Jeremy Clarkson did on GT4 with the joystick controller. I find most cars uncontrollable on it. The steering wheel controller, on the other hand...
The limits of GT4's car physics models are clear. But they're modeled a lot. This is, after all, a game. Not a NASA simulator.
...laura who has yet to do a clean lap of Laguna Seca
For various reasons (including this one), people have come up with ways to enhance the accuracy of GPS.
I've used differential GPS for several applications. Terrestrial beacon stations listen to GPS, and compare where they know they are with where GPS says they are. They broadcast these corrections and anybody in the vicinity can use them.
WAAS is a similar concept. I've played with it too.
...laura
Global warming/Little Ice Age issues aside, I'm more concerned with the enormous amount of satellite-based technology that we've deployed in the past few years. The time of solar minimum, a minimum that seems to be taking its time about not being a minimum anymore.
When the sun wakes up again we may find stuff in space getting fried. And techie stuff on Earth stopping working. Important, mission-critical stuff.
...laura
It's always been fashion vs. utility for this one. Very few people actually need the size and off-road capability of the typical SUV. If they have any off-road capability at all; a lot of them have obviously never even been on a gravel road.
The people who need pickups and things will continue to have them and use them. The people who don't, won't. Few people actually need anything bigger than a Corolla or a Golf.
I ride the bus to work, but have a little van (an L300 Mitsubishi Delica) for weekends. I bought it with an eye to camping, and carrying cameras and telescopes and things up mountains. It does this very well, and has proven unstoppable in snow.
Diesel is currently $CDN 1.47 a litre here. That's 0.93 Euros.
...laura
Would you rather I said "We're not all Americans around here?"
...laura
One small request: when you post stuff like this, please post the original link. We're not all illiterates around here.
...laura
There is an underlying question: why are the developers all on the other side of the world, making all this stuff necessary in the first place?
No, I won't ask that question.
...laura
E-voting is a priori suspicious.
...laura
I feel part of this is a reaction of people to slow, buggy computers that crash all the time: a computer is useless if it doesn't actually work. User don't care how fast the computer is. They don't care how fancy the OS is or how many bells and whistles the applications have. As long as it does what they need it to do, they're happy.
I've actually met people who are suspicious of Macs. They're too easy. They're too reliable. They're not like other (i.e. Windows) computers. There has to be a catch, somewhere. Us Mac fans just say this is how computers are supposed to work, and it's Windows that has it wrong.
...laura
No. This is well-established.
One-time pads are unbreakable in a carefully defined sense: of all the possible decrypted messages, there is no way to decide which is the correct one. All are equally probable.
I've toyed with setting up one-time pad encryption so my Mom and I could send secret email to each other. I'd probably go low-tech and hook a geiger counter up to a computer to generate a CD of random key material, then give her a copy.
The only examples of decrypted one-time pad messages are ones where the agents misused their pads, like the Venona decrypts.
...laura
You forgot one:
'20s - Radio
The 1920s stock market bubble had a number of features in common with the 1990s bubble. There was a trendy new technology, lots of VC folks desperate to throw money at any company that had anything even remotely to do with it, and lots of people lost their shirts when the bubble burst.
...laura
I've just started a new project at work. I was told what it needed to do, and left to fill in the blanks myself.
My boss suggested I have a look at a system that did some of the things we want to do. It's clearly not the answer to our problem, but does some interesting things with python and twisted. A bit more digging suggested django as a web application framework. So that's how I'm doing it: python, with twisted to talk to stuff on the network and django to serve up a web-based user interface.
I've worked with tomcat and java server pages, but wanted to try something new. Preferably solving a real problem. See if experience had come up with newer, better ways to solve the old problems. So far, it looks good.
At least for me python is more successful than java, because it was my choice when starting a new project. If nothing else, I've sexed up my resume a bit. :-)
...laura
Wise companies use the time to regroup, upgrade skills, and research new things. Then, when the economy picks up again, they are well-positioned to take advantage of new business.
Few companies are wise, alas.
...laura
All the ingredients have been around for a while, but it's only now that they have come together in a big enough way to be noticed: battery power, compute power, UI design, display quality, applications that people will actually buy.
I have an iPod Touch and love it as a portable media/information gadget. But I also despise the way Apple are handling the SDK rollout. I'm not going to invest a dime on development for it if I have no guarantee that I will ever be able to run what I write on a real device.
...laura
Your problem, not ours, and entirely self-inflicted. The size of U.S. ballots is the problem. How the votes are tallied is beside the point.
In the last Federal election I was the first person to vote in my area (on my way to work), so I was the one who looked in the ballot box, certified to the Returning Officer that it was empty, and taped it shut. How much more democracy do you want?
In our last provincial election we also had a referendum on adopting a single-transferrable vote system for our elections. I voted yes, but not enough people did, and the referendum failed. We would have stuck with paper ballots (a paper trail is non-negotiable, IMHO), but most versions of STV require computers to tabulate the results in a timely manner.
...laura, proudly Canadian
That's about right for me, too.
When we moved things around late last year I was given an empty cubicle and told to set it up as I saw fit. It's my work environment, and I need to be both efficient and comfortable. The result looks like an explosion in a computer junk store, but my weakly-chaotic work style gets things done.
The excessively trendy workplaces with all the non-work goodies make me nervous. Work is work, play is play, and I like to keep the two separate.
Lessee now...4 monitors, 2 PCs (one XP, one Linux), 2 Sun boxes (Ultra 5 with Solaris, Netra T1 with Linux), Gumstix, assorted other stuff. Just the way I like it!
...laura
Yes!
Horowitz and Hill may be a bit old now, but the principles still apply, and its still one of the definitive references on the subject. Buy it!
For a practical nuts and bolts book, consider the ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs.
...laura
I've been to Vetco (interesting, but not that interesting), but must check out Alphatronics next time I'm down that way.
What we really need in the Vancouver/Seattle/Portland corridor is something along the lines of Tanner's in Dallas. Our company head office is in Dallas, so I'm a quasi-regular customer.
...laura
No more Boeing Surplus? Tragic. The last time I was there I bought some nice offcuts of sheet aluminum. The time before that, a couple of junky computers...first Radar, now Boeing Surplus. Fry's is fun, but it's just not the same.
The Boeing surplus auction site sucks. I just had a look at it.
...laura
My only beef with Powell's is that I spend too much money whenever I go there. Last time I was there I dropped about $500 at the main store, then about $500 more at the technical store. I particularly like the fact that the technical store is all kinds of technical stuff. The "technical" sections in the bookstores here (Vancouver) are 99% computer stuff, with a handful of pop science books.
I've heard of people who take vacations in Portland for the express purpose of shopping at Powell's. Sure, I can get just about anything I want through Amazon, but there is still no substitute for browsing the shelves to see what you can find.
I think I feel another Powell's trip coming on. I always stop at Boeing Surplus (Seattle) on the way back. Sometimes all they have is just plain junk, but they often have lots of really cool sh*t.
...laura