well, yah -- we have the right to pursue happiness, success, and love. Nowhere does anything guarantee we will get any of them. Patents just keep someone else from screwing you, they don't promise to make your product sell and make a profit.
Yes, but a patent gives you exclusive rights for a period of time to allow you (among other things) to recoup the cost of development. If I lose any chance to reap the benefits of my labor, then why should I bother?
Why should we be worried that it's too late? Because when the products lose too much popularity, they get yanked. If Netscape and the rest can't keep a decent footing, we may end up with no choice but to use MSIE.
Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Whether it's the 15 years I've heard geologists estimate, or 30, 40, or 500 years, we will run out. And when we do, there will be large gaping holes where Kentucky, Ohio, and other coal-rich states used to be, not to mention all the other energy resources (uranium for example). God knows how much poison there'll be from the byproducts of producing and using mineral resources for energy.
At some time, there will be a real crisis -- either the resources will be gone or the environment will be damaged. There will be a major shift in the way the world works, and it can be a positive change or it can be disasterous. It may not be in our lifetime, but it will happen. It's a fact, and your own numbers show it. Unless we can come up with renewable or unlimited energy. Being more efficient and turning to resources that were once not economically feasible only postpones the inevitable.
Saying it's okay to rape and abuse the Earth simply because we won't see the effects in our lifetimes is irresponsible and ignorant.
And, so you know, I'm a registered Republican, so don't mumble your "damn liberals" gibberish at me. Sound capitalism thinks about future profits as well as today's -- an economy that depends on non-renewable resources without looking for alternatives and destroys the Earth in the process is not an economy with a future.
Hey - I wouldn't have sex with Pam Anderson! How come no one ever asks me for my opinion?
On the other hand, I would kill/bin/laden with a sniper rifle -- if my hours playing UT don't gimme the clue I need, hell, at 40 ft I'd go beat the sonofabitch with it.
Change Pam to Angelina Jolie and throw in a trip on the Shuttle and you might get me on the bandwagon;-)
I am so tired of hearing this "America is a bunch of prudes" crap from Europeans and Ozzies. You are confusing what you hear in the media and some of the crap our government does with the American people. Judging all Americans as fitting a certain stereotype because the FCC bans the work fuck on TV or because some soccer mom in Iowa got upset over Britney Spears' belly button shows ignorance and closed mindedness.
As for the issue at hand, I hafta agree Cingular can do what they want. But, I won't buy their service. First of all, if they're filtering "porn", what else are they filtering either by design or accident. If I want to access the web, I want to be able to depend on getting to whatever sites I need to see -- so that's what I'm going to pay for - web access, not some subset of the web Cingular wants me to be able to access. Secondly, I like "porn" -- mature content on the topic of sexuality covers a wide range of topics, and frankly I like some of it. If I don't get my fix of Nerve's This Week in Sex, I'm lost.
You want me to put something on my head that has spent countless hours on other people's lice-ridden, danruff-laden, haven't-been-washed-in-a-week heads? And suffer loss in listening quality to boot? I'd rather wait for the movie to come out on DVD and watch it in the comfort of my home... and, yes, I do take my own headphones on the plane.
Windoze is no longer just a window manager anymore -- it is the operating system now. DOS (now called "the command prompt") is just a mere accessory like Mine Sweeper.
Are you maybe thinking of the Census Bureau's TIGER data (which are the data Bruce Perens is distributing)?
The USGS has over 400 web sites, and they don't appear to be distributing TIGR data on their bureau level home page (I don't have the patience to hit all the others, and a search didn't turn up much). The USGS distributes data in SDTS, GeoTIFF, and other handy semi-generic formats that Arc loves.
If you are looking for data (the original askslashdot doesn't mention needing any, but jic) EROS Data Center and the GIS Data Depot are my favorite spots. Oh, yes, and the data are free.
Worse yet, they'll acheive their evil plans by mesmerizing us with hypnotic pop-ups from the AdWare hidden in the client, rendering our brains mush....
Well, the kickoff of the Virtual IT Job Fair brought down the house, or at least the servers. OPM is desperately adding computers to keep up with demand...
I do find my position satisfying, despite the pay. I am given creative control, and like a private sector job, I have a set of policies to follow. I get to live in a great place, I have perks like FlexiTime and FlexiPlace, and there's no dress code. And, remember, we aren't talking about paper pushers here. Programmers, systems administrators, web developers -- people can't do our jobs and don't know how to tell us to do them, that's why they hire us. They ask for a result, and we deliver.
You think government jobs aren't satisfying? Ask the guys who put men on the Moon and the rover on Mars. Ask the guys who designed some of the first software for processing satellite, spacecraft, and sonar imagery. Ask the guys who get to work in interesting environments with interesting people, like the guys managing electical and computer systems on ships involved in ocean exploration or on mountain tops and volcanos collecting climatological and earth processes data. Ask the guys working in the EPA, Forest Service, Park Service, and USGS who are part of protecting and maintaining the country's natural resources and natural beauty. There's a lot more to the government than just taxes, censuses, and human resources.
Okay. You're wrong. Did you visit the sites to get more information?
The "government" has offices in every state -- not all of the positions are in Washington DC. For example, the USDA has positions in both D.C. and New Orleans. The Navy is hiring for Orlando, San Diego, Georia, and even Puerto Rico. The Department of the Interior is everywhere -- I have no idea what locations they are hiring for.
And if you don't like the choices offered for the job fair, try going to the USA Jobs home page and doing a Quick Search for 2210 (IT jobs), 1550 (Computer Scientist), 0854 (Computer Engineer), or a position title/keyword, or city. I searched for "web" and found three positions.
There's an advanced search in IT as well as other types of positions and search options (such as Agency search, in case you're only interested in NOAA or the CIA).
SCUBA opens a whole new realm of toys
on
Geek Outdoor Hobbies?
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· Score: 2, Informative
My SO and I love to SCUBA dive, and part of the joy is the toys! We both have wireless dive computers, so we can download our dive data, graph it, analyze it, post it to the web if we were so inclined. Plus, we have underwater photography equipment, and there's numerous SCUBA-tech-toys we don't have, like the masks with wireless mikes and speakers that would let us chat while diving. If you start small and work your way up, SCUBA's not very expensive. Or, if you have $3K to $5K to blow, you can go whole hog and be tekked out all at once.
Hiking (or "taking the digital camera and GPS for a stroll" if you prefer) is another favorite. Four-wheeling and boating are other favorites that allow us to get before-during-after geekiness in (generating custom maps, GPS, digital camera). We also enjoy gardening (geek toys: self-installed programmable automatic watering system, digital camera again, and we're working on "bird feeder cams").
Of course, some of what we get out of all this is that there are perfectly interesting non-geeks to meet (I have the digital photos to prove there really are non-geeks in the world!).
I can't account for the 16 missing processors - possibly the 640 nodes include not only processing nodes but also various management/admin nodes that do not have the full 8 processors. Maybe it's just mis-information that propagated through the news. If someone finds better as-built specs, drop me a line.
Using third-party processing is an invaluable tool that helps me keep my credit card inforamtion secure. By using services such as PayPal and BillPoint, the merchant does not get access to my credit information. While I may trust a merchant to deliver goods and services, I may not trust him to safeguard my credit card information and keep it secure. Using my credit/debit card for payments like this is far more convenient and secure than sending a money order or check. The end result of this action can only be to reduce sales, and thus, your profit.
For those merchants who use third-party processing, they will probably not get their own merchant accounts. They will need to pay not only the expense of getting a MasterCard account, but the expense of a secure web server and additional man-hours for paperwork administration. Small merchants and individuals will not be able to make this kind of investment.
Whether or not you are a MasterCard holder, I encourage you all to give MasterCard your $.02!
Shred your MasterCard and send each piece back to them in a separate envelope with a letter telling them why you're cancelling your account and why you'll never use them again.
This article was not intended to be read by experienced webmasters with knowledge in the area of JPG compression, but webmasters who don't know how to tweak images by compressing them...
/. is for experienced webmasters (and maybe even web developers, too). This article, on the other hand, is for newbies hacking their first pages in Front Page, complete with flaming titles, blinking text, and loud backgrounds. These people are not web developers (let alone web masters, god forbid), no more than my mother's a computer scientist cuz she programmed her VCR to record Murder She Wrote reruns. These people sure as hell don't read/. This article does not belong anywhere on/., especially not the front page. It's insulting to the readership.
Additionally, basic JPEG sucks and I don't condone singing its praises. It introduces artifacts and destroys the image. It might be fine for pretty graphics that GIF won't do justice to, or thumbnails in a photo gallery. But, to deliver high quality images (photos, wallpapers, or scientific imagery) it's a lousy choice, but the only one if you want your users to view the data in their browsers.
As for JPEG 2000, wavelet technology is already in use (such as LizardTech's MrSid software, which is not unimpressive). Certainly a fun and interesting idea, but it takes longer to decode and doesn't compress near as well as PNG (90k PDF). Considering how long it's taken PNG to gain acceptance (I'm still not convinced there's enough browser support to use pure PNG on my sites), I'm not holding my breath for JPEG 2000 as a web medium, and looking at the numbers, I'll take PNG over JPEG in a heartbeat.
I'm all for Flash. The arguments about what "geeks" want aren't important. Yes, adding animation and interactivity to a website can help users learn and comprehend the information.
But, you must supply the same information in an accessible format, and that is not Flash, especially for the audience your site will have. Go ahead and use Flash, but make sure you supply the same information in an accessible format. Navigation and interactivity must be usable from both keyboard and mouse. All the text must be readable by text readers. Users must be able to have the ability to stop the animation and be given an unlimited amount of time to interact with the information (e.g. automatic slideshow should have a "manual" option).
I don't know if you've taken all this into consideration, but here are some links that will help you address accessibility issues:
I'm a geek. I think Flash rocks (I don't use it myself). Sometimes the browser I am using is not the latest greatest Mozilla/Netscape/IE/Opera -- it's Lynx.
As I've been reading this discussion, the whole thing with Cali's juice has been on my mind, especially the part where Cali reps paid way too much for electricity then tried to reneg on the deal when the situation got under control. One's gotta wonder what's going on here -- I'm sure it's a coincidence, but if we dig deeper will we discover Cali's buyers regularly pay too much/buy too many, and generally throw money in the Pacific?
My guess is that California got raped by Oracle cuz they didn't put the right people on the job. Either a shortage of IT people or badly formed government committees resulted in a bunch of sheep being sent willingly to Oracle's slaughter.
Hey, thanks for the info! You put forth a good sales pitch/argument:-D I suspect the X10 fiasco's not the last time I'll run into the 2.4 GHz problem. I have some barely working corded phone (would that be the opposite to cordless?) that I have to drag out during outages. Headset? Nice! Our biggest problem is the money we laid out for the phone -- pitching a $100 phone so we can play with a couple hundred bucks worth of silly cameras didn't really seem logical, but eventually we will have to replace the damn thing!
Hey, thanks for the tip on endnote. Very nice export feature that will output any format you can imagine! In a matter of a couple hours of playing around, I managed to tweak a custom output template to export the data to XML, and create a rudimentary style sheet to transform what I wanted to see into a table. The biggest pain was catching all the "special" characters, but a few global-replaces and I was done. This is perfect for my own need to track not only what books I do have but what I want to get.
This seems to be a potentially good tool for what the author might need. It will be a two step process -- 1) find what you want using endnote and export the results in XML (or some other easy to manipulate format), 2) an automated procedure for importing and storing the information in the local database.
Slashdot Mirror
well, yah -- we have the right to pursue happiness, success, and love. Nowhere does anything guarantee we will get any of them. Patents just keep someone else from screwing you, they don't promise to make your product sell and make a profit.
Yes, but a patent gives you exclusive rights for a period of time to allow you (among other things) to recoup the cost of development. If I lose any chance to reap the benefits of my labor, then why should I bother?
Why should we be worried that it's too late? Because when the products lose too much popularity, they get yanked. If Netscape and the rest can't keep a decent footing, we may end up with no choice but to use MSIE.
Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Whether it's the 15 years I've heard geologists estimate, or 30, 40, or 500 years, we will run out. And when we do, there will be large gaping holes where Kentucky, Ohio, and other coal-rich states used to be, not to mention all the other energy resources (uranium for example). God knows how much poison there'll be from the byproducts of producing and using mineral resources for energy.
At some time, there will be a real crisis -- either the resources will be gone or the environment will be damaged. There will be a major shift in the way the world works, and it can be a positive change or it can be disasterous. It may not be in our lifetime, but it will happen. It's a fact, and your own numbers show it. Unless we can come up with renewable or unlimited energy. Being more efficient and turning to resources that were once not economically feasible only postpones the inevitable.
Saying it's okay to rape and abuse the Earth simply because we won't see the effects in our lifetimes is irresponsible and ignorant.
And, so you know, I'm a registered Republican, so don't mumble your "damn liberals" gibberish at me. Sound capitalism thinks about future profits as well as today's -- an economy that depends on non-renewable resources without looking for alternatives and destroys the Earth in the process is not an economy with a future.
Hey - I wouldn't have sex with Pam Anderson! How come no one ever asks me for my opinion?
On the other hand, I would kill /bin/laden with a sniper rifle -- if my hours playing UT don't gimme the clue I need, hell, at 40 ft I'd go beat the sonofabitch with it.
Change Pam to Angelina Jolie and throw in a trip on the Shuttle and you might get me on the bandwagon ;-)
As for the issue at hand, I hafta agree Cingular can do what they want. But, I won't buy their service. First of all, if they're filtering "porn", what else are they filtering either by design or accident. If I want to access the web, I want to be able to depend on getting to whatever sites I need to see -- so that's what I'm going to pay for - web access, not some subset of the web Cingular wants me to be able to access. Secondly, I like "porn" -- mature content on the topic of sexuality covers a wide range of topics, and frankly I like some of it. If I don't get my fix of Nerve's This Week in Sex, I'm lost.
You want me to put something on my head that has spent countless hours on other people's lice-ridden, danruff-laden, haven't-been-washed-in-a-week heads? And suffer loss in listening quality to boot? I'd rather wait for the movie to come out on DVD and watch it in the comfort of my home... and, yes, I do take my own headphones on the plane.
Windoze is no longer just a window manager anymore -- it is the operating system now. DOS (now called "the command prompt") is just a mere accessory like Mine Sweeper.
If you are looking for data (the original askslashdot doesn't mention needing any, but jic) EROS Data Center and the GIS Data Depot are my favorite spots. Oh, yes, and the data are free.
Worse yet, they'll acheive their evil plans by mesmerizing us with hypnotic pop-ups from the AdWare hidden in the client, rendering our brains mush....
I haven't had any problems -- are you using version 3.03?
Well, the kickoff of the Virtual IT Job Fair brought down the house, or at least the servers. OPM is desperately adding computers to keep up with demand...
You think government jobs aren't satisfying? Ask the guys who put men on the Moon and the rover on Mars. Ask the guys who designed some of the first software for processing satellite, spacecraft, and sonar imagery. Ask the guys who get to work in interesting environments with interesting people, like the guys managing electical and computer systems on ships involved in ocean exploration or on mountain tops and volcanos collecting climatological and earth processes data. Ask the guys working in the EPA, Forest Service, Park Service, and USGS who are part of protecting and maintaining the country's natural resources and natural beauty. There's a lot more to the government than just taxes, censuses, and human resources.
The "government" has offices in every state -- not all of the positions are in Washington DC. For example, the USDA has positions in both D.C. and New Orleans. The Navy is hiring for Orlando, San Diego, Georia, and even Puerto Rico. The Department of the Interior is everywhere -- I have no idea what locations they are hiring for.
And if you don't like the choices offered for the job fair, try going to the USA Jobs home page and doing a Quick Search for 2210 (IT jobs), 1550 (Computer Scientist), 0854 (Computer Engineer), or a position title/keyword, or city. I searched for "web" and found three positions. There's an advanced search in IT as well as other types of positions and search options (such as Agency search, in case you're only interested in NOAA or the CIA).
Hiking (or "taking the digital camera and GPS for a stroll" if you prefer) is another favorite. Four-wheeling and boating are other favorites that allow us to get before-during-after geekiness in (generating custom maps, GPS, digital camera). We also enjoy gardening (geek toys: self-installed programmable automatic watering system, digital camera again, and we're working on "bird feeder cams").
Of course, some of what we get out of all this is that there are perfectly interesting non-geeks to meet (I have the digital photos to prove there really are non-geeks in the world!).
-
Overview of the design: note that it's 640 nodes with 8 processors each
-
Earth Simulator entry/home page
-
Jamstec -- Japan Marine Science and Technology Center: Looks pretty much like the USA's NOAA
-
News on Top500 Supercomputer Sites where y'all should have been getting this kind of info from to begin with
I can't account for the 16 missing processors - possibly the 640 nodes include not only processing nodes but also various management/admin nodes that do not have the full 8 processors. Maybe it's just mis-information that propagated through the news. If someone finds better as-built specs, drop me a line.Additionally, basic JPEG sucks and I don't condone singing its praises. It introduces artifacts and destroys the image. It might be fine for pretty graphics that GIF won't do justice to, or thumbnails in a photo gallery. But, to deliver high quality images (photos, wallpapers, or scientific imagery) it's a lousy choice, but the only one if you want your users to view the data in their browsers.
As for JPEG 2000, wavelet technology is already in use (such as LizardTech's MrSid software, which is not unimpressive). Certainly a fun and interesting idea, but it takes longer to decode and doesn't compress near as well as PNG (90k PDF). Considering how long it's taken PNG to gain acceptance (I'm still not convinced there's enough browser support to use pure PNG on my sites), I'm not holding my breath for JPEG 2000 as a web medium, and looking at the numbers, I'll take PNG over JPEG in a heartbeat.
But, you must supply the same information in an accessible format, and that is not Flash, especially for the audience your site will have. Go ahead and use Flash, but make sure you supply the same information in an accessible format. Navigation and interactivity must be usable from both keyboard and mouse. All the text must be readable by text readers. Users must be able to have the ability to stop the animation and be given an unlimited amount of time to interact with the information (e.g. automatic slideshow should have a "manual" option).
I don't know if you've taken all this into consideration, but here are some links that will help you address accessibility issues:
I'm a geek. I think Flash rocks (I don't use it myself). Sometimes the browser I am using is not the latest greatest Mozilla/Netscape/IE/Opera -- it's Lynx.
As I've been reading this discussion, the whole thing with Cali's juice has been on my mind, especially the part where Cali reps paid way too much for electricity then tried to reneg on the deal when the situation got under control. One's gotta wonder what's going on here -- I'm sure it's a coincidence, but if we dig deeper will we discover Cali's buyers regularly pay too much/buy too many, and generally throw money in the Pacific?
My guess is that California got raped by Oracle cuz they didn't put the right people on the job. Either a shortage of IT people or badly formed government committees resulted in a bunch of sheep being sent willingly to Oracle's slaughter.
Hey, thanks for the info! You put forth a good sales pitch/argument :-D I suspect the X10 fiasco's not the last time I'll run into the 2.4 GHz problem. I have some barely working corded phone (would that be the opposite to cordless?) that I have to drag out during outages. Headset? Nice! Our biggest problem is the money we laid out for the phone -- pitching a $100 phone so we can play with a couple hundred bucks worth of silly cameras didn't really seem logical, but eventually we will have to replace the damn thing!
Hey, thanks for the tip on endnote. Very nice export feature that will output any format you can imagine! In a matter of a couple hours of playing around, I managed to tweak a custom output template to export the data to XML, and create a rudimentary style sheet to transform what I wanted to see into a table. The biggest pain was catching all the "special" characters, but a few global-replaces and I was done. This is perfect for my own need to track not only what books I do have but what I want to get.
This seems to be a potentially good tool for what the author might need. It will be a two step process -- 1) find what you want using endnote and export the results in XML (or some other easy to manipulate format), 2) an automated procedure for importing and storing the information in the local database.