I believe the English car manufacturers mastered automatic breaking of their cars years ago: simply starting the engine was often enough to make my old Rover break. I'm surprised that Mercedes would want to reduce their reliability to the same level.
I was amused to see that while you can get a perfectly
good picture of Area 51 from Google Maps, Area 51 does
not show on the FAA aircraft navigation charts
(e.g. the Las Vegas VFR sectional chart).
Groom Lake itself is on the map, but there is no sign of any
aircraft facilities.
The Las Vegas chart is also the only one I've
seen that threatens
deadly force if you don't do as you're told by The Authorities.
The whole point of these charts is to provide information
to pilots, including the nearest place to land if they're
in trouble. Suppressing Area 51
must have taken some pretty high-level string-pulling.
An astronomical detail Shakespeare got wrong. Thanks to
the precession of the equinoxes (known in Roman times), there
was no Northern Star in Julius Caesar's time. From the latitude
of Rome the elevation of Polaris varied over a 2:1 range in 44 BC.
There were no brighter stars closer to the pole in that epoch, either.
Everything at such a high frequency will have to be line-of-site, however, as there's no hope of bouncing off the ionosphere or anything.
The 1.7 and 2.1 GHz frequencies that are the subject of this article
don't bounce off the ionosphere worth a shit either.
I suspect the real reason is the relative maturity
and low cost of L band microwave doodads, as opposed to the cost and
development effort required to deploy devices at (say) 90 GHz
that develop more than a few milliwatts of RF.
>blockquote> I watched the time at Time.gov: 23:59:56 (UTC) =>23:59:57=>23:59:58=>23:59:59=>23:59:60!=>00:00:0 0
It was Amazing! This was the first time for me... *remebers where I was at that moment
I listened to it on WWV. They drop the 29th and 59th tick of each minute, and at 2359 UTC it
sounded like (I counted the seconds myself):
tick (57)
tick (58)
silent (59, as usual)
silent (60, leap second)
BEEP (0000 UTC 1 January 2006)
titick
titick
titick
tick
tick
...and so on. The UT1 time correction went from -0.6 to +0.3
seconds. It's encoded in the double ticks.
I get a completely different selection of spam on my home and
work email accounts.
At work it's 99% online pharmaceuticals. They charge less but give better
service, apparently. All 1000 of them.
At home it's sex ads, fake prestige watches and some moron who bombards me
with inane stock tips. Possibly morons, because they use two
different
ways of getting past spam filters.
Then there are the usual subterfuges, like the all-graphics email, the emails with blank times to screw up inbox date sorting,
and the random words email subjects (just what the fuck does
"that begin an exclusion seventeen" mean, anyway?).
The less said about my various hotmail accounts the better. Shudder.
I survived Glenayre's implosion and mass layoffs in Vancouver in 2001, and now work for
a company
that we set up ourselves, initially to support one of Glenayre's old product
lines, but also to grow the business in new directions. We're
doing well, but not well enough (yet...:-) to hire anybody new.
Certainly not an entire team.
I know of one team who were able
to move en masse, but they were very specialized,
and still took a while (and several employers) to land on their feet.
Others went their separate ways. Some
quit the computer biz and went on to other things. It happens.
The AC-vs-windows open myth was one of the few I found to be experimentally unsound, but since it's Mythbusters, I let it slide.
I sometimes wonder what was their most memorable Buster moment, like the time he fell off the life raft while it was being hoisted
by the helicopter. Adam seemed genuinely upset at the carnage...
Jamie and Adam may not have flipped a car with jet engines, but
Top Gear did. It doesn't
take much to flip a 2CV, but the Mundano, er, Mondeo was another matter.
We as in "we people with high memory requirements" will need 64 bits because we actually need them.
Yeah. The outfit I work for uses 64 bit database servers exclusively,
running on Sun hardware. The extra efficiency for really big databases is
more than welcome.
Really, kiddies, the only people who think 64 bits is anything novel
are those who have had their heads buried in the WinTel sand for the last
10 years. 64 bits is old hat to UltraSPARC and PowerPC folks. And
lots of others.
The usual setup (used by both Solaris and Linux on 64 bit boxes)
is a 64 bit kernel, with most applications using 32 bit addressing.
Big applications can use 64 bits if they need to. Code
that assumes sizeof(void *) == 4 breaks. Badly.
Basicly, undergrad is to learn the field. A masters is to specialize in one domain. A doctorate is to research a single problem in as much depth as possible.
When I went back to school a few years ago for my Masters, I described
the levels of degrees like this:
Undergrad: Do XYZ.
Masters: Find out something interesting about XYZ.
People have done a lot of thinking about this, and
one of the slicker solutions I've seen (and played with) is the
Pacsat
Broadcast Protocol suite.
The general idea was that a single downlink could serve all
ground stations in the footprint, and that the data were of general interest.
So it broadcast data for anybody
who wanted it. Exactly what it chose to broadcast was based
on requests from ground stations. The downlink protocol
also allowed ground stations to piece files together from
multiple passes, particularly important when your downlink
bit rate is only 1200 bps.
You could have a completely passive ground station that
received data broadcast as a result of other stations' requests.
This works well for general stuff like bulletins and things.
Interpreting xrays depends on really subtle shadows and things,
and it will take some doing to get it right in digital form. Do
the right thing and ask the hospital/doctor for reprints.
If it's that important, it's worth doing right. Unless you're
some sort of idiot.
No, make that a fucking idiot. Sheesh.
A couple of years ago I found myself in the emergency ward after
stumbling in the dark (distracted by Jupiter...) and going head first
in to a brick wall. They did a CAT scan, and when I asked if I could
get reprints, they said sure. Come back at the end of the month
and we'll run you off a set. Didn't cost me a dime.
...laura who actually does have a brain, and who has the pictures to prove it!
Want to stop this nonsense from happening in the future? Actually run a non-mainstream OS. That shouldn't be hard for most of the visitors of this website, shouldn't it?
Indeed. I've actually been a little disappointed with the DRM on CDs. When I put
them in my Linux boxes they just play. I can rip to MP3 until the cows come home. No problem.
I actually wanted
one to fail so I could see how it was failing and maybe do something
about it. Contribute something to the community, ya know.
...laura, not a U.S. resident, not covered by the DMCA
Xena and Gabrielle were never characterized as lesbian. Yes, they
played around, and the writers and producers had a field day with
the lesbian subtext. But subtext is all it ever was.
As others have pointed out, all current cellphones have network-assisted GPS
in them. The intent
is to be able to locate you if you call 911. The way most of
the cell networks work nowadays, you can only get an accurate location if a phone call
is in progress, i.e. the 911 dispatcher wants to know where you
are.
The networks can triangulate on cell sites at any time. Cops have used this
data for years. This is also how the network can
tell the assisted GPS in the phone approximately where it is, so it can
listen to satellites and figure
out exactly where it is. With this help from the network it can work in
environments (particularly urban canyons) where a conventional GPS might not be able to hear enough
satellites to get a fix.
To get an accurate location
without your knowledge or cooperation has significant privacy issues, and
it's correct to expect The Authorities to jump
through hoops to get such information. You can buy boxes from various companies
that you can put in a vehicle (some vehicles
come with these gadgets anyway)
or package and follow it around. Some of these
boxes use cellphone networks, but since you have, in effect, given permission
for your location to be known, there are no privacy issues. I don't know what
would happen if The Authorities came around later with a warrant and asked
where somebody had been.
I wonder how they would handle the fact that so many Simpsons characters
are left-handed, and Arab culture doesn't have much use for left-handed people.
It's relatively common to remake movies and TV shows for different cultures. If
theU.S.candoit,
so can the Arabs.
Does anyone recognise (by the nature of the output) what CMS system this MI6 system is using?
They could tell you. But then they'd have to kill you.
The HTML looks handwritten to me. They're probably using something on a standalone
system, then transferring it to an ISP. There will be no wired connection
from the Internet to their internal systems. Q will have seen to that.
Apart from the fact that film loses quality as it ages
Huh?
Properly processed film is good for a very long time. We can print
negatives from the 19th century that have suffered no degradation
at all. I've printed negatives myself from the 1950s. They look as good
as new. Better, even, since my enlarger is of better optical
quality than was common then, and printing materials are better too.
There are some aspects of digital that are indeed attractive
(my Digital Rebel is fun, and takes decent pictures),
but for real photography, not snapshots, film is awfully nice,
and will be so for some time to come.
Many scientists now believe that Pluto should be more properly classified as the largest Kuiper Belt Object ever found.
Even that is debatable, if the figures
on 2003 UB313 are anywhere near correct. If it's
as shiny as white snow, it's bigger than Pluto. If
it's darker, it's bigger still.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the old joke:
Q: Why do the British drink their beer warm?
A: Because they have Lucas refrigerators.
...laura
I was amused to see that while you can get a perfectly good picture of Area 51 from Google Maps, Area 51 does not show on the FAA aircraft navigation charts (e.g. the Las Vegas VFR sectional chart). Groom Lake itself is on the map, but there is no sign of any aircraft facilities.
The Las Vegas chart is also the only one I've seen that threatens deadly force if you don't do as you're told by The Authorities.
The whole point of these charts is to provide information to pilots, including the nearest place to land if they're in trouble. Suppressing Area 51 must have taken some pretty high-level string-pulling.
...laura
An astronomical detail Shakespeare got wrong. Thanks to the precession of the equinoxes (known in Roman times), there was no Northern Star in Julius Caesar's time. From the latitude of Rome the elevation of Polaris varied over a 2:1 range in 44 BC. There were no brighter stars closer to the pole in that epoch, either.
One of Isaac Asimov's essays discussed this.
...laura
The 1.7 and 2.1 GHz frequencies that are the subject of this article don't bounce off the ionosphere worth a shit either.
I suspect the real reason is the relative maturity and low cost of L band microwave doodads, as opposed to the cost and development effort required to deploy devices at (say) 90 GHz that develop more than a few milliwatts of RF.
...laura
I listened to it on WWV. They drop the 29th and 59th tick of each minute, and at 2359 UTC it sounded like (I counted the seconds myself):
...and so on. The UT1 time correction went from -0.6 to +0.3 seconds. It's encoded in the double ticks.
Yes, I got a recording. Lame or what?
...laura
I've toyed with this one myself to send chitchat back and forth to my Mum.
Use a geiger counter to fill a CD with random numbers, send a copy to Mum, and drive CSIS/NSA/GCHQ/etc. nuts with email that they can't decode.
Given a CD full of random numbers, a couple of lines of perl would do the rest...
Yeah, I know, I need to get out more. I even recorded the leap second on WWV earlier today. Sad or what?
...tick...tick...tick...(blank)...(blank)...BEEP ...tick...tick...
...laura
I get a completely different selection of spam on my home and work email accounts.
At work it's 99% online pharmaceuticals. They charge less but give better service, apparently. All 1000 of them.
At home it's sex ads, fake prestige watches and some moron who bombards me with inane stock tips. Possibly morons, because they use two different ways of getting past spam filters.
Then there are the usual subterfuges, like the all-graphics email, the emails with blank times to screw up inbox date sorting, and the random words email subjects (just what the fuck does "that begin an exclusion seventeen" mean, anyway?).
The less said about my various hotmail accounts the better. Shudder.
...laura
I wish you luck.
I survived Glenayre's implosion and mass layoffs in Vancouver in 2001, and now work for a company that we set up ourselves, initially to support one of Glenayre's old product lines, but also to grow the business in new directions. We're doing well, but not well enough (yet... :-) to hire anybody new.
Certainly not an entire team.
I know of one team who were able to move en masse, but they were very specialized, and still took a while (and several employers) to land on their feet. Others went their separate ways. Some quit the computer biz and went on to other things. It happens.
...laura
Never heard of it happening for faces, but bone marrow transplants can, and do, mess up forensic DNA analysis.
Yikes!
...laura
The AC-vs-windows open myth was one of the few I found to be experimentally unsound, but since it's Mythbusters, I let it slide.
I sometimes wonder what was their most memorable Buster moment, like the time he fell off the life raft while it was being hoisted by the helicopter. Adam seemed genuinely upset at the carnage...
Jamie and Adam may not have flipped a car with jet engines, but Top Gear did. It doesn't take much to flip a 2CV, but the Mundano, er, Mondeo was another matter.
...laura
Yeah. The outfit I work for uses 64 bit database servers exclusively, running on Sun hardware. The extra efficiency for really big databases is more than welcome.
Really, kiddies, the only people who think 64 bits is anything novel are those who have had their heads buried in the WinTel sand for the last 10 years. 64 bits is old hat to UltraSPARC and PowerPC folks. And lots of others.
The usual setup (used by both Solaris and Linux on 64 bit boxes) is a 64 bit kernel, with most applications using 32 bit addressing. Big applications can use 64 bits if they need to. Code that assumes sizeof(void *) == 4 breaks. Badly.
...laura
When I went back to school a few years ago for my Masters, I described the levels of degrees like this:
Undergrad: Do XYZ.
Masters: Find out something interesting about XYZ.
Ph.D.: Based on XYZ, invent ABC.
Yes, I found out interesting things.
...laura, B.Sc, M.A.Sc.
People have done a lot of thinking about this, and one of the slicker solutions I've seen (and played with) is the Pacsat Broadcast Protocol suite.
The general idea was that a single downlink could serve all ground stations in the footprint, and that the data were of general interest. So it broadcast data for anybody who wanted it. Exactly what it chose to broadcast was based on requests from ground stations. The downlink protocol also allowed ground stations to piece files together from multiple passes, particularly important when your downlink bit rate is only 1200 bps.
You could have a completely passive ground station that received data broadcast as a result of other stations' requests. This works well for general stuff like bulletins and things.
...laura
Interpreting xrays depends on really subtle shadows and things, and it will take some doing to get it right in digital form. Do the right thing and ask the hospital/doctor for reprints. If it's that important, it's worth doing right. Unless you're some sort of idiot.
No, make that a fucking idiot. Sheesh.
A couple of years ago I found myself in the emergency ward after stumbling in the dark (distracted by Jupiter...) and going head first in to a brick wall. They did a CAT scan, and when I asked if I could get reprints, they said sure. Come back at the end of the month and we'll run you off a set. Didn't cost me a dime.
...laura who actually does have a brain, and who has the pictures to prove it!
Indeed. I've actually been a little disappointed with the DRM on CDs. When I put them in my Linux boxes they just play. I can rip to MP3 until the cows come home. No problem.
I actually wanted one to fail so I could see how it was failing and maybe do something about it. Contribute something to the community, ya know.
...laura, not a U.S. resident, not covered by the DMCA
Xena and Gabrielle were never characterized as lesbian. Yes, they played around, and the writers and producers had a field day with the lesbian subtext. But subtext is all it ever was.
Sigh.
...laura
Yeah..finger trouble. It happens.
Not that I blabbed anything that isn't publicly available.
...laura
It's actually more accurate, and more robust.
As others have pointed out, all current cellphones have network-assisted GPS in them. The intent is to be able to locate you if you call 911. The way most of the cell networks work nowadays, you can only get an accurate location if a phone call is in progress, i.e. the 911 dispatcher wants to know where you are.
The networks can triangulate on cell sites at any time. Cops have used this data for years. This is also how the network can tell the assisted GPS in the phone approximately where it is, so it can listen to satellites and figure out exactly where it is. With this help from the network it can work in environments (particularly urban canyons) where a conventional GPS might not be able to hear enough satellites to get a fix.
To get an accurate location without your knowledge or cooperation has significant privacy issues, and it's correct to expect The Authorities to jump through hoops to get such information. You can buy boxes from various companies that you can put in a vehicle (some vehicles come with these gadgets anyway) or package and follow it around. Some of these boxes use cellphone networks, but since you have, in effect, given permission for your location to be known, there are no privacy issues. I don't know what would happen if The Authorities came around later with a warrant and asked where somebody had been.
Yes, I do this for a living. Hence the AC post.
Last time I checked that was a pretty good summary of Slackware.
:-)
The only non-Slackware Linux box I have is my Sun Ultra 5, which runs Debian. 64 bit kernels are fun.
...laura, typing this on a Slackware system
Hiring people on H1B visas gives people from all over the world an opportunity to come work in the United States of America (tm).
The deal is excellent: a chance to start at the bottom. And stay there.
...laura, more than a little pissed off today (no, nothing to do with visas)
I wonder how they would handle the fact that so many Simpsons characters are left-handed, and Arab culture doesn't have much use for left-handed people.
It's relatively common to remake movies and TV shows for different cultures. If the U.S. can do it, so can the Arabs.
...laura
They could tell you. But then they'd have to kill you.
The HTML looks handwritten to me. They're probably using something on a standalone system, then transferring it to an ISP. There will be no wired connection from the Internet to their internal systems. Q will have seen to that.
...laura
Apart from the fact that film loses quality as it ages
Huh?
Properly processed film is good for a very long time. We can print negatives from the 19th century that have suffered no degradation at all. I've printed negatives myself from the 1950s. They look as good as new. Better, even, since my enlarger is of better optical quality than was common then, and printing materials are better too.
There are some aspects of digital that are indeed attractive (my Digital Rebel is fun, and takes decent pictures), but for real photography, not snapshots, film is awfully nice, and will be so for some time to come.
...laura
Even that is debatable, if the figures on 2003 UB313 are anywhere near correct. If it's as shiny as white snow, it's bigger than Pluto. If it's darker, it's bigger still.
...laura
zcat mycoolapp.tar.gz | tar xfv -
Package managers are for Windows users.
:-) :-)