It'd be nice if we could harness nuclear fusion as a power source, since we could "import" hydrogen from the air to fuel it. As a nice perk, there's no radiation or waste.
Dr. Robert Bussard has made demonstrable progress in doing this very thing. To quote him, "We are probably the only people on the planet who know how to make a real net power clean fusion system, and we are out of support! Somewhat ironical!" Indeed.
I read something recently that nicely summarizes leadership in general. Paraphrasing:
The measure of a leader can be found in the eyes of his or her direct reports.
Concise, and so true!
The context of the quote was a book on military leadership, but it applies to the corporate arena just as well.
It's nice to have a definitive source for debunking why specific fringe theories are incorrect, instead of "you just have to trust the consensus".
(It must be true, a committee said so!)
I've read that ice core samples definitely show a trend between the CO2 levels and temerature. But it isn't the cause...it lags behind temperature by about 800 years.
So if that's true, this obsession with carbon emissions as absolutely pointless.
I find it disturbing that our planet seems to have taken the man-made global warming theory as Truth (thanks Al) but criticisms like this are never refuted, just dismissed as crackpot theories or (gasp) partisan politics!
Siemens said in a statement it had processed data using exclusively electrical means at 107 gigabits per second -- roughly two full DVDs per second [...]
Damn, I can barely keep up with the 5 DVDs at a time I get from Netflix.
I've wondered in the past if the traditional web-browser bookmark system will be replaced with a web-service (like del.icio.us?) or maybe even a combination of a web-service and firefox extension.
I cancelled my trip to HOPE this year to avoid the political bullshit that's almost guarranteed to dominate the con. Here's what I wrote in my blog:
I'm starting to get really disturbed by the politics going on right now.
There's nothing wrong with questioning your government. When you start blindly protesting every single action of the government, I think it's time to take a step back and get a little perspective on things.
I'm starting to think twice about going to HOPE next month. Last time I went (2002) it was *incredibly* political. Jello Biafra gave a talk, and said a bunch of things about the "Bush conspiracy"--stuff that was easily debunked as bullshit on snopes.com--but everyone there just ate it up like it was hard fact. Random people would yell out "Bush sucks!" and everyone would laugh like it was the funniest shit in the world.
I've never seen a better example of herd mentality in my life. This is free thinking?
This was before the war, and before I gave a shit one way or the other about Bush and his policies, and I was probably more than likely to say "fuck Bush" based on what I knew about him at the time... and I still remember looking around and thinking these were a bunch of anarchist-wannabe children (many of whom were well past childhood.)
This was supposed to be a gathering of free-thinking people... individuals. Instead, it was a bunch of scene whores trying to act cool in front of "all the other hackers"... spouting ill-informed mass-media opinions without any actual information to back it up. And then they have the nerve to talk about how fucked up the media is. Hah. I'd feel different if I had seen anything but eagerly nodding heads slack-jawed idiots drinking up the bullshit like it was gospel.
I donno, I'd like to go to HOPE, it'd be fun in some ways... but I just cringe every time I think of the immature shit that Emannuel used to spout on his radio show, and I can only imagine how much more political HOPE will be with the current assault on Bush. Something tells me I won't really enjoy myself too much there.
I bet money that they show Fahrenheit 911 in the screening room and spend endless hours spouting mindless propaganda. And no, I'm not trolling. I'm not even a republican. I just hate people who don't think things through for themselves.
If you're interested in community-sponsored wifi projects, you should take a look at this. It's run by Rob Flickenger, the guy who wrote Linux Server Hacks and a couple of wifi books for O'Reilly.
We just had Bob Butler (IBM executive) speak at our Linux user group meeting. He gave a huge pitch on Linux in the enterprise, but when I asked why his presentation was running on Windows 98 he got really defensive (actually, he got downright insulting) and made several comments about how Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
I love the software. I *don't* love spending an hour or more every time I need it to run on a new distribution, thanks to the assload of picky dependencies.
Why is Gnucash unpopular? Because 3 out of every 4 people I've talked with who've wanted to try it couldn't satisfy the dependencies for their distribution (most of these people aren't newbies to Linux either.)
That said, it truly is in a league of its own in the Linux software world, and I hope it finds what it's looking for in new developers.
Disclaimer: I haven't used it for a year or more, so it may have overcome some of this already
Slashdot Mirror
If something like indentation is a show-stopper for your choice of language, then you are missing the point.
Computer languages are about data structures and idioms for manipulating them efficiently. In contrast, whitespace is a cosmetic, superficial thing.
Yes, I adore Python. (I wish I had paid attention to it ten years sooner than I did.)
s/Disproved/Improved/
Ahem. *Cough*. Hello?
Dr. Robert Bussard has made demonstrable progress in doing this very thing. To quote him, "We are probably the only people on the planet who know how to make a real net power clean fusion system, and we are out of support! Somewhat ironical!" Indeed.
http://www.rexresearch.com/bussard/bussard.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
For $200M in funding, Bussard can build his final prototype and change the entire world.
I read something recently that nicely summarizes leadership in general. Paraphrasing: The measure of a leader can be found in the eyes of his or her direct reports. Concise, and so true! The context of the quote was a book on military leadership, but it applies to the corporate arena just as well.
It's nice to have a definitive source for debunking why specific fringe theories are incorrect, instead of "you just have to trust the consensus". (It must be true, a committee said so!)
Yeah, good point. I personally don't care about the politics involved; I'd like to see all scientific viewpoints taken seriously, however.
Yeah, this is pretty much what I mean. Nobody answers stuff like this on its own merit, they just get snarky and duck the question.
I've read that ice core samples definitely show a trend between the CO2 levels and temerature. But it isn't the cause...it lags behind temperature by about 800 years.
2 478442170&q=global+warming+swindle&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=449956202
So if that's true, this obsession with carbon emissions as absolutely pointless.
I find it disturbing that our planet seems to have taken the man-made global warming theory as Truth (thanks Al) but criticisms like this are never refuted, just dismissed as crackpot theories or (gasp) partisan politics!
Yes, you can associate multiple domains with a single Google Apps account now.
Damn, I can barely keep up with the 5 DVDs at a time I get from Netflix.
I've wondered in the past if the traditional web-browser bookmark system will be replaced with a web-service (like del.icio.us?) or maybe even a combination of a web-service and firefox extension.
HEH! funniest meant-to-be-serious acronym ever.
If you need a book with "Skillz" in the title to get a career in security, then--for the love of all things sacred--I hope you fail miserably.
[email to daskeyboard...]
Hi,
Can I get a version that has the letters on all the wrong keys, so I'm
punished if I get weak and look at the keyboard?
----
[reply...]
That's a great idea. I will let you know when we can send you your punishment.
Thanks
Birgit
I'm starting to get really disturbed by the politics going on right now.
There's nothing wrong with questioning your government. When you start blindly protesting every single action of the government, I think it's time to take a step back and get a little perspective on things.
I'm starting to think twice about going to HOPE next month. Last time I went (2002) it was *incredibly* political. Jello Biafra gave a talk, and said a bunch of things about the "Bush conspiracy"--stuff that was easily debunked as bullshit on snopes.com--but everyone there just ate it up like it was hard fact. Random people would yell out "Bush sucks!" and everyone would laugh like it was the funniest shit in the world.
I've never seen a better example of herd mentality in my life. This is free thinking?
This was before the war, and before I gave a shit one way or the other about Bush and his policies, and I was probably more than likely to say "fuck Bush" based on what I knew about him at the time... and I still remember looking around and thinking these were a bunch of anarchist-wannabe children (many of whom were well past childhood.)
This was supposed to be a gathering of free-thinking people... individuals. Instead, it was a bunch of scene whores trying to act cool in front of "all the other hackers"... spouting ill-informed mass-media opinions without any actual information to back it up. And then they have the nerve to talk about how fucked up the media is. Hah. I'd feel different if I had seen anything but eagerly nodding heads slack-jawed idiots drinking up the bullshit like it was gospel.
I donno, I'd like to go to HOPE, it'd be fun in some ways... but I just cringe every time I think of the immature shit that Emannuel used to spout on his radio show, and I can only imagine how much more political HOPE will be with the current assault on Bush. Something tells me I won't really enjoy myself too much there.
I bet money that they show Fahrenheit 911 in the screening room and spend endless hours spouting mindless propaganda. And no, I'm not trolling. I'm not even a republican. I just hate people who don't think things through for themselves.
If you are new to wireless networking, I stumbled across this tutorial.
If you're interested in community-sponsored wifi projects, you should take a look at this. It's run by Rob Flickenger, the guy who wrote Linux Server Hacks and a couple of wifi books for O'Reilly.
This is awesome. My local LUG just did a meeting on wifi, and community wifi-projects. I hope we see a lot more initiatives like this!
It's actually based on libdvdcss, which has nothing to do with DeCSS (other than the fact it cracks CSS keys.)
And now, two days later, this! LMAO.
No shit, Sherlock. Gnucash is a part of your distribution.
Why is Gnucash unpopular? Because 3 out of every 4 people I've talked with who've wanted to try it couldn't satisfy the dependencies for their distribution (most of these people aren't newbies to Linux either.)
That said, it truly is in a league of its own in the Linux software world, and I hope it finds what it's looking for in new developers.
Disclaimer: I haven't used it for a year or more, so it may have overcome some of this already
I would think that writing a massively popular security-oriented program (Bastille) would qualify him to comment on secure programming, wouldn't you?