However, we deployed military RADAR designed to watch for Soviet ICBM's. One strand runs up and down the Atlantic side of the US and one runs up and down the Pacific side. As the Earth rotates these very powerful beams sweep out into space. An extraterrestrial civilization would see an extremely regular double-pulse pattern coming from Earth. It should show up as a big red flag that a technological civilization is on Earth. The signal strength from the RADAR is huge compared to our TV/radio noise. ET has a good shot at detecting it.
You already have a free memory monitoring utility. OS X *is* Unix-based, after all. Just open a terminal and type: top. You'll get memory stats, threads, processor usage, virtual memory stats and more!
Actually, in this case there is no reason for them to do something like that. The company is owned by the town. Many communities all across the country still get their electricity from municipal companies or co-ops. These companies aren't really meant to be "for profit".
Now, what strikes me is that usually a government-owned venture is nowhere near as competitive as the private sector. The real question here is why the heck private companies are charging so much more than these quasi-governmental companies. The private sector SHOULD see very little threat from these ventures. The fact that it can be done this way at so little cost simply reveals how badly we are being gouged by our local cable and broadband providers currently.
Feynmann was very unhappy with the report on the Challenger disaster. As a member of the committee responsible for the report he refused to sign off on it unless he could include his views on shuttle safety as an appendix. As another/. reader pointed out previously, you can read Feynmann's appendix here:
Down near the end of the appendix Feynmann places the odds of catastrophic failure for a shuttle to be "on the order of 1%". This does NOT mean he said it was 1%: when a physicist says "on the order of" he means "the same order of magnitude" or (for the less mathematically rigorous) "about the same power of 10 as". He even went on to apologize for being unable to be more specific.
So, Feynmann's estimate was really that the chance of failure is CLOSER TO 1 IN 100 than to 1 in a thousand or 1 in 10.
NWLINK pulled SDF based off the fact that SDF was attacked by an outside hacker??? That's the kind of stupid stunt that invites a REAL denial of service attack:
It *is* basic economics except in the case where a monopoly is involved. If Microsoft is using their monopoly revenue stream to allow them to sell their products at levels below which they can profit from those sales in order to create another monopoly in another arena, then Microsoft's competitors DO have a legitimate gripe.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is actually licensing at levels that are profitable for Microsoft, then their competitors need to shut up and get their acts together.
I'm a sysadmin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We're in the process of hiring a person for our desktop support team in my department. Now, university training in Comp Sci is a minor plus, but it comes NO WHERE NEAR experience for me. I'm interested in real world experience and an ability to communicate well with others. Personally, the best sysadmins I've known have tended to have come to IT after first being in some other (usually technical) discipline.
I have a stack of 50 resumes for the support position right now. Not having any degree will tend to count against you in my book, but lacking an IT-related degree won't. In my book 8 years IT work can count for more than a degree + 3 years.
Many of the resumes I see overrate the importance of degrees and underrate experience. I don't find that academic performance is necessarily a reliable indicator of job performance. Experience (with good recommendations from previous employers) does serve as a good indicator for making wise hiring choices.
Economists at the Brookings Institution have estimated that widespread, high-speed broadband access would increase the national GDP by $500 billion annually by 2006.
Does anyone SERIOUSLY believe a number like that? Will wireless broadband make us suddenly spend, spend, spend? What's the deal?
As far as I know, there is nowhere that MS Office only costs $20. Here at UNC-Chapel Hill, I can pay $20 for the "media duplication costs" at the Student Stores to get a copy of Office.
UNC, however, ponies up several hundred thousand dollars every year to pay for the site license that lets me do that. Sure, I don't pay for a license at the checkout counter: students pay for it in their tuition and departments see it paid for out of the university IT budget -- which I'd rather see spent on infrastructure than on pushing MS software!
Back in college we (the Society of Physics Students) would have a demonstration of stupid physics tricks. Try some:
1 - Spewing liquid nitrogen. WARNING: I've done this but if you screw it up it is your own fault and will HURT YOU. It is possible to take a mouthful of LN2 then immediately spray it back out in an impressive cloud of vapor. This works because a tiny layer of LN2 vaporizes when it hits your tongue, thereby insulating you from the LN2. This effect is very short-lived and you can FROSTBITE YOUR TONGUE if you don't immediately spew it back out!!!
2 -- Balloons in a trash can. Put 1 inch of LN2 in the bottom of a trash can (you *might* get this to work with dry ice -- easier to come by). Ask the audience to guess how many balloons will fit in the trash can (don't let them see the LN2!)Begin dropping balloons into the trash can. The balloons will shrink to a fraction of their room temp size as they cool down. Think "clowns in a car" for geeks.
3 -- Bed of Nails. I've lain on a bed of nails built out of heavy plywood and standard nails. This takes work to build: the nails MUST all stick out exactly the same distance through the wood, and you should remove any burrs or extremely sharp tips. I *believe* we used nails on a 1 inch grid (which was overkill for safety). USE A PILLOW! Your head is heavy and ROUNDED -- it will end up supported on only about 4 nails: NOT ENOUGH. You may want to do a little research to get the optimal grid size "nailed down".
4 -- Corn starch solution: Cool stuff. Under pressure a thick corn starch solution will act like a solid. Without pressure it is a liquid. Fill a pan with it, demonstrate that it flows, then (with viewers gathered around) slap your hand into it hard. They'll expect a splash that never comes. This works because corn starch is a long molecule that curls under pressure, interlocking the molecules into a "pseudo-solid". Throw it back and forth like a ball. Don't pause, though: the impact with your hand will keep it solid only for a second before it "melts" again!
5 -- Get a large piece of Transparent Aluminum, a sonic screwdriver, and a tribble.
Actually, that one tends to offend squemish members of the audience, so we'll skip it here...
Seems to me that if Sun designs a system that makes sysadmins obsolete then they are also obsoleting the people most likely to advocate for more IT spending on Sun technology. I think they may be shooting themselves in the foot if it works.
Of course, if it doesn't work as promised then they are STILL shooting themselves in the foot by delivering a product that doesn't live up to its claims...
I'm not sure I see "the future of digital rights management" in this situation. The future IS that you will find more restrictions on what you can copy (barring court rulings that uphold consumer rights in the digital age). However, I think the idea that we won't ever be able to record any digital show (as seems to be suggested by this article) is a bit extreme. There are too many giant electronics companies that make big money off selling home video recorders -- they won't go quietly. Likewise, Joe Consumer WILL get up in arms if he can't record one football game on one channel while watching another on a second. Will we enjoy all the same freedoms that we currently enjoy? Doubtful. Will we find all our rights gone in the digital age? That's doubtful too.
The article points less to the future than to the present: software bugs keep people from being able to do what the set out to do. That's nothing new...
I'm afraid that the label "third world" is sticking in the minds of many westerners even though some "third world" countries have technological accomplishments that are getting closer and closer to our own. Lumping India among nations that are "unstable and undeveloped" seems to fly in the face of the facts, but is still a common perception. India is the world's largest democracy (well more than twice the size of the U.S.) and has been quite stable for many decades. Technologically, India builds their own nuclear weapons, launches satellites into geosync orbit (a BIG challenge), and is home to more and more contract programming from U.S. firms. While it is also true that India has large numbers of horribly impoverished individuals, India is well on it's way to being a true world power. The "third world" label applied to India appears less and less accurate with each passing year. We're making a big mistake if we continue to think of them as such.
The Reuters article is currently be carried at the NY Times as well in a much longer form than the MSNBC article. Check it out if you want more than the MSNBC short version!
You can also power fuel cells off the hydrogen found in ethanol or methanol, both of which can be produced from biomass. Biomass fuels have the advantage that growing plants actually removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. DaimlerChrysler drove a fuel cell car powered by methanol across the US in June. Wired covered it.
Correction to your comment
on
Ununoctium Wrapup
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
I'm SURE you meant to say:
"we have those who doubt alien abductions and believe in the moon landing."
Although it was an OBVIOUS typo, I thought we should clear it up so as not to confuse anyone...
If Jimmy Buffett has his way (and looks like he is attracting some takers), the RIAA has more to fear from J.B. than from P2P. Check out this article on Buffett leading the charge against the big labels.
With CD's cheap and easy to make, the RIAA and the big labels that make it up are going to have a harder and harder time justifying their existence. They can keep blaming P2P, but they'd better wake up to the fact that they can't keep treating their artists and customers like dirt -- the artists and customers CAN and WILL get together with or without them.
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore -- from Fruitcakes by J.B.
According to an article currently running on Wired:
Bluetooth is a radio frequency technology that lets gadgets within 30 feet of each other interact wirelessly. It is more powerful than infrared and can transport data at 1 megabit per second.
A one megabyte pic should therefore transfer in 8 seconds. 47 seconds should make the picture just under 6MB in size -- that's pretty huge for a single jpeg!
I have to wonder if this doesn't hint at upcoming Vaios with Bluetooth. Rumor has it that the next PowerBooks will have it (Octoberish?) Looks to me like Bluetooth is about ready to go mainstream.
One of the interesting footnotes from aviation is the first attempt at breaking the sound barrier. As you approach the speed of sound turbulence increases dramatically. However, when you break it you are in a new aerodynamic regime and suddenly the turbulence plummets. A very pleasant surprise to Chuck Yeager, the first supersonic pilot.
You can find more information about the "Wall of Air" that was believed to prevent supersonic flight, as well as Yeager's breaking on the barrier here:
http://www.capstonestudio.com/supersonic/main.ht ml
Actually the DOS vulnerability is even more trivial. You don't need junk packets at all -- just a strong transmitter blasting static. Any signal is drowned out in the resulting noise. This is actually true of any wireless device that depends on a single frequency.
Of course, if you build such a thing you shouldn't stand too close since you've constructed an unshielded microwave oven...
That Dell Dude is cooler than any of the Mac users in these ads. Even that Gateway CEO and his cow are cooler.
The Dell Dude doesn't exist -- he is a fictitious character. So is the Gateway cow, but I hope that's obvious. The Apple ads are based on Real People -- something that I personally enjoy.
To play existing DVD's the units have to decrypt the DVD's. Several people have made comments on the legality of this and compared it to DeCSS. However, the DeCSS code has been in big trouble because the courts see it as a means to copy DVD's rather than to play them. However, these are STRICTLY PLAYBACK UNITS. The MPAA is going to have a HARD time claiming that they are devices meant to allow ripping of DVD's to share on the net. Seems to me that using code similar to DeCSS for these players is simply a case of reverse engineering the technology -- and that's protected by law as well.
Slashdot Mirror
However, we deployed military RADAR designed to watch for Soviet ICBM's. One strand runs up and down the Atlantic side of the US and one runs up and down the Pacific side. As the Earth rotates these very powerful beams sweep out into space. An extraterrestrial civilization would see an extremely regular double-pulse pattern coming from Earth. It should show up as a big red flag that a technological civilization is on Earth. The signal strength from the RADAR is huge compared to our TV/radio noise. ET has a good shot at detecting it.
Curious, but if your name is so important to you why do you sign your posts:
Boromir, son of Faramir
????
You already have a free memory monitoring utility. OS X *is* Unix-based, after all. Just open a terminal and type: top. You'll get memory stats, threads, processor usage, virtual memory stats and more!
Actually, in this case there is no reason for them to do something like that. The company is owned by the town. Many communities all across the country still get their electricity from municipal companies or co-ops. These companies aren't really meant to be "for profit".
Now, what strikes me is that usually a government-owned venture is nowhere near as competitive as the private sector. The real question here is why the heck private companies are charging so much more than these quasi-governmental companies. The private sector SHOULD see very little threat from these ventures. The fact that it can be done this way at so little cost simply reveals how badly we are being gouged by our local cable and broadband providers currently.
Feynmann was very unhappy with the report on the Challenger disaster. As a member of the committee responsible for the report he refused to sign off on it unless he could include his views on shuttle safety as an appendix. As another /. reader pointed out previously, you can read Feynmann's appendix here:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/ docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt
Down near the end of the appendix Feynmann places the odds of catastrophic failure for a shuttle to be "on the order of 1%". This does NOT mean he said it was 1%: when a physicist says "on the order of" he means "the same order of magnitude" or (for the less mathematically rigorous) "about the same power of 10 as". He even went on to apologize for being unable to be more specific.
So, Feynmann's estimate was really that the chance of failure is CLOSER TO 1 IN 100 than to 1 in a thousand or 1 in 10.
NWLINK pulled SDF based off the fact that SDF was attacked by an outside hacker??? That's the kind of stupid stunt that invites a REAL denial of service attack:
The Slashdot Effect
It *is* basic economics except in the case where a monopoly is involved. If Microsoft is using their monopoly revenue stream to allow them to sell their products at levels below which they can profit from those sales in order to create another monopoly in another arena, then Microsoft's competitors DO have a legitimate gripe.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is actually licensing at levels that are profitable for Microsoft, then their competitors need to shut up and get their acts together.
I'm a sysadmin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We're in the process of hiring a person for our desktop support team in my department. Now, university training in Comp Sci is a minor plus, but it comes NO WHERE NEAR experience for me. I'm interested in real world experience and an ability to communicate well with others. Personally, the best sysadmins I've known have tended to have come to IT after first being in some other (usually technical) discipline.
I have a stack of 50 resumes for the support position right now. Not having any degree will tend to count against you in my book, but lacking an IT-related degree won't. In my book 8 years IT work can count for more than a degree + 3 years.
Many of the resumes I see overrate the importance of degrees and underrate experience. I don't find that academic performance is necessarily a reliable indicator of job performance. Experience (with good recommendations from previous employers) does serve as a good indicator for making wise hiring choices.
From the Internet News article:
Economists at the Brookings Institution have estimated that widespread, high-speed broadband access would increase the national GDP by $500 billion annually by 2006.
Does anyone SERIOUSLY believe a number like that? Will wireless broadband make us suddenly spend, spend, spend? What's the deal?
there doesn't appear to be a good way of marking multiple messages as spam or not spam
Just select all the messages you wish to mark, then choose
Tools | Mark Selected Messages as Junk or
Tools | Mark Selected Messages as Not Junk
At least, that's how the OS X build handles it.
As far as I know, there is nowhere that MS Office only costs $20. Here at UNC-Chapel Hill, I can pay $20 for the "media duplication costs" at the Student Stores to get a copy of Office.
UNC, however, ponies up several hundred thousand dollars every year to pay for the site license that lets me do that. Sure, I don't pay for a license at the checkout counter: students pay for it in their tuition and departments see it paid for out of the university IT budget -- which I'd rather see spent on infrastructure than on pushing MS software!
Back in college we (the Society of Physics Students) would have a demonstration of stupid physics tricks. Try some:
1 - Spewing liquid nitrogen. WARNING: I've done this but if you screw it up it is your own fault and will HURT YOU. It is possible to take a mouthful of LN2 then immediately spray it back out in an impressive cloud of vapor. This works because a tiny layer of LN2 vaporizes when it hits your tongue, thereby insulating you from the LN2. This effect is very short-lived and you can FROSTBITE YOUR TONGUE if you don't immediately spew it back out!!!
2 -- Balloons in a trash can. Put 1 inch of LN2 in the bottom of a trash can (you *might* get this to work with dry ice -- easier to come by). Ask the audience to guess how many balloons will fit in the trash can (don't let them see the LN2!)Begin dropping balloons into the trash can. The balloons will shrink to a fraction of their room temp size as they cool down. Think "clowns in a car" for geeks.
3 -- Bed of Nails. I've lain on a bed of nails built out of heavy plywood and standard nails. This takes work to build: the nails MUST all stick out exactly the same distance through the wood, and you should remove any burrs or extremely sharp tips. I *believe* we used nails on a 1 inch grid (which was overkill for safety). USE A PILLOW! Your head is heavy and ROUNDED -- it will end up supported on only about 4 nails: NOT ENOUGH. You may want to do a little research to get the optimal grid size "nailed down".
4 -- Corn starch solution: Cool stuff. Under pressure a thick corn starch solution will act like a solid. Without pressure it is a liquid. Fill a pan with it, demonstrate that it flows, then (with viewers gathered around) slap your hand into it hard. They'll expect a splash that never comes. This works because corn starch is a long molecule that curls under pressure, interlocking the molecules into a "pseudo-solid". Throw it back and forth like a ball. Don't pause, though: the impact with your hand will keep it solid only for a second before it "melts" again!
5 -- Get a large piece of Transparent Aluminum, a sonic screwdriver, and a tribble.
Actually, that one tends to offend squemish members of the audience, so we'll skip it here...
Seems to me that if Sun designs a system that makes sysadmins obsolete then they are also obsoleting the people most likely to advocate for more IT spending on Sun technology. I think they may be shooting themselves in the foot if it works.
Of course, if it doesn't work as promised then they are STILL shooting themselves in the foot by delivering a product that doesn't live up to its claims...
I'm not sure I see "the future of digital rights management" in this situation. The future IS that you will find more restrictions on what you can copy (barring court rulings that uphold consumer rights in the digital age). However, I think the idea that we won't ever be able to record any digital show (as seems to be suggested by this article) is a bit extreme. There are too many giant electronics companies that make big money off selling home video recorders -- they won't go quietly. Likewise, Joe Consumer WILL get up in arms if he can't record one football game on one channel while watching another on a second. Will we enjoy all the same freedoms that we currently enjoy? Doubtful. Will we find all our rights gone in the digital age? That's doubtful too.
The article points less to the future than to the present: software bugs keep people from being able to do what the set out to do. That's nothing new...
I'm afraid that the label "third world" is sticking in the minds of many westerners even though some "third world" countries have technological accomplishments that are getting closer and closer to our own. Lumping India among nations that are "unstable and undeveloped" seems to fly in the face of the facts, but is still a common perception. India is the world's largest democracy (well more than twice the size of the U.S.) and has been quite stable for many decades. Technologically, India builds their own nuclear weapons, launches satellites into geosync orbit (a BIG challenge), and is home to more and more contract programming from U.S. firms. While it is also true that India has large numbers of horribly impoverished individuals, India is well on it's way to being a true world power. The "third world" label applied to India appears less and less accurate with each passing year. We're making a big mistake if we continue to think of them as such.
The Reuters article is currently be carried at the NY Times as well in a much longer form than the MSNBC article. Check it out if you want more than the MSNBC short version!
You can also power fuel cells off the hydrogen found in ethanol or methanol, both of which can be produced from biomass. Biomass fuels have the advantage that growing plants actually removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. DaimlerChrysler drove a fuel cell car powered by methanol across the US in June. Wired covered it.
I'm SURE you meant to say:
"we have those who doubt alien abductions and believe in the moon landing."
Although it was an OBVIOUS typo, I thought we should clear it up so as not to confuse anyone...
If Jimmy Buffett has his way (and looks like he is attracting some takers), the RIAA has more to fear from J.B. than from P2P. Check out this article on Buffett leading the charge against the big labels. With CD's cheap and easy to make, the RIAA and the big labels that make it up are going to have a harder and harder time justifying their existence. They can keep blaming P2P, but they'd better wake up to the fact that they can't keep treating their artists and customers like dirt -- the artists and customers CAN and WILL get together with or without them. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore -- from Fruitcakes by J.B.
According to an article currently running on Wired:
Bluetooth is a radio frequency technology that lets gadgets within 30 feet of each other interact wirelessly. It is more powerful than infrared and can transport data at 1 megabit per second.
A one megabyte pic should therefore transfer in 8 seconds. 47 seconds should make the picture just under 6MB in size -- that's pretty huge for a single jpeg!
I have to wonder if this doesn't hint at upcoming Vaios with Bluetooth. Rumor has it that the next PowerBooks will have it (Octoberish?) Looks to me like Bluetooth is about ready to go mainstream.
One of the interesting footnotes from aviation is the first attempt at breaking the sound barrier. As you approach the speed of sound turbulence increases dramatically. However, when you break it you are in a new aerodynamic regime and suddenly the turbulence plummets. A very pleasant surprise to Chuck Yeager, the first supersonic pilot.
t ml
You can find more information about the "Wall of Air" that was believed to prevent supersonic flight, as well as Yeager's breaking on the barrier here:
http://www.capstonestudio.com/supersonic/main.h
Actually the DOS vulnerability is even more trivial. You don't need junk packets at all -- just a strong transmitter blasting static. Any signal is drowned out in the resulting noise. This is actually true of any wireless device that depends on a single frequency.
Of course, if you build such a thing you shouldn't stand too close since you've constructed an unshielded microwave oven...
That Dell Dude is cooler than any of the Mac users in these ads. Even that Gateway CEO and his cow are cooler.
The Dell Dude doesn't exist -- he is a fictitious character. So is the Gateway cow, but I hope that's obvious. The Apple ads are based on Real People -- something that I personally enjoy.
To play existing DVD's the units have to decrypt the DVD's. Several people have made comments on the legality of this and compared it to DeCSS. However, the DeCSS code has been in big trouble because the courts see it as a means to copy DVD's rather than to play them. However, these are STRICTLY PLAYBACK UNITS. The MPAA is going to have a HARD time claiming that they are devices meant to allow ripping of DVD's to share on the net. Seems to me that using code similar to DeCSS for these players is simply a case of reverse engineering the technology -- and that's protected by law as well.