To be a bit more accurate, whether there was a population in North America earlier than 15-20,000 years ago, there is no genetic markers to support it.
Saying that there were no people in North America before this, is akin to claiming a mathematical proof by absense of a counter example is valid. It isn't a proof, it is a lack of a counter example.
Likewise there appear to be situations where there are genetic markers which do not match the 15-20,000 year window, and appear to be branches frome Europe, rather than Asia. There are questions as to exactly where and when these markers actually come from as there are very few Europeans who have enough of these genetic markers to do an accurate assesment of when the branch happened, or even to confirm it is a good match. Note that since I am neither an Archaeologist, nor a geneticist, I am not a solid source for this information.
I could be wrong, but my experience with a lot of hologram store holograms is that they work best when they are lit by a point type light source. My suspicion is that the result of this procedure is one of that type of hologram, and any 'single point' light source (a flashlight would qualify, but a light bouncing off the celing, florescent tube, or a multi-bulb lamp would not) would work well.
A laser pointer is probably a better gadget then. At least when you get tired of antagonizing the pups, you can put it away, and they calm down again. If you intend to use the Roomba for it's intended use, rather than your currently hoped for effect, you will have to make sure the MinPins are in a different room.
My Eski pretty much ignores my Roomba after five minutes or so, unlike his ongoing reaction and attacking of the upright vacume. The first five minutes he is looking for a reaction from me for how he responds to the Roomba. If I ignore him, he ends up ignoring the Roomba. (Well, except when it's meandering ends up taking it in his direction.)
Recomendation for anyone with a Labrador Retriever. Don't get a Roomba. Labs tend to shed enough that you will never be able to keep the bearings for the brushes clear of dog hair, which will ultimately cause the bearings to sieze, or melt out of the system. This is prbably true for other dogs that shed continuously, and is a problem as well for dogs that shed seasonally. (If yours only sheds seasonally, it may even be more of a problem as you will be used to not having to clean things out carefully, and will probably get burned.) I can't speak for how well it works around cat hair. I don't currently have a cat, and have no immediate plans for getting one.
Considering that the second is defined by the NIST as: 'exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of the cesium atom's resonant frequency'
I am not sure I want the 'second' to be the standard increment of time.
Remember, we use the second because we have divided the clock first into 12 hours, (12 day, and 12 night when the sun casts no shadow) then divided each hour into 60 increments called minutes, followed by another 60 increments of those called Minutes. The last two breakdowns were based upon the fact that the number 60 has more even combinations than any number less than it (1,60;2,30;3,20;4,15;5,12;6,10).
The second is a convienence of earth bound existence. Once you step off earth, you need to adjust your clock to the local environment, meaning that the basic unit of time, (the second for us) is going to be different.
To go with a purely metric time, you would want to start by acknowledging that the local time is not going to easily map to the current Metric time. Now use a convienent multiple of the resonant frequency of the cesium atom. Options would be 10,000,000,000 oscilations, 9,000,000,000 oscilations (to be closer to the current definition) or 1,000,000,000 oscilations. (My recomendation.)
Are there some serious problems that this would present? Sure. Hz frequency measurements would all have to be revised. (and yes that would affect your cpu processor speed calculations) Speed of Light constants would have to be recalculated (these recalculations would really be a simple ratio function, but it would annoy all sorts of people.) Natural frequencies would have to be revised. Etc.
Just my own thoughts. (Now go take a look at some of the later definitions of the length of a meter, and see how these ideas would affect that.)
I would presume that with the earlier story about the MPAA suing file sharers, one of the things they expect to get is a record of ip addresses which did a download from some of the file sharers server logs.
My own assumption is that this will depend upon the file sharers having logging of that material turned on, and that they are keeping copies of those logs on their system continually eating up disk space. That seems unlikely to me, considering that the sharer's are presumably trying to keep as much space on their systems available for the files they are acruing and sharing, but I don't 'Know' that this is the case. Nor do I know if the software these people are using to share files does logging of downloaders by default.
Another possiblity is that they plan on putting some sort of carnivor device in front of one or more of the servers sharing files, and log the IP's of devices the bittorent servers connect back to.
Just a couple of ideas that don't include them making these files available themselves, or alternatives to them in some sort of bait program.
I doubt that I am the only one who can think of these, so I don't think I am putting ideas into their heads. (Additionally while the FBI may be albe to set up a carnivore device at an ISP, I tend to suspect that an ISP would be far more concerned about doing the same with a private agency such as the MPAA or RIAA.)
I don't use my cell phone for most of my calls. I have it primarily as a way to be available to my kids and other family members, who also have my home number. I generally use less than 60 min a month on my cell phone.
Using the Virgin Mobile system, I use less than $20 for 3 months of service, since paying $20 every three months is the minimum requirement to maintain service, and so long as I do that the money I haven't used acrues, I can also comfortably call into conference calls when necessary.
Note that the phones available range in capabilities from what I have, which simply has a monocrome lcd, organizer, voice activated dialing, and callendar, on up to phones with camera's, slide phones, etc. Phones are available at Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City, (probably your local Sam Goodey, or Virgin Records store as well) and at some stores you may find older discontinued models for a lot less, that may work well for you at a lower cost. (Bought one for my son for $14.96 that is working out just fine for him.)
Down sides. Service is part of the Sprint PCS network, which some people have issues with. If I am out of range, and have the need to call 911, I have an old AT&T lugable phone in the trunk that I can use. If you use a cell phone a lot, (say $100 min or more a month) this service will probably get expensive for you, you might want to look into something else.
For those that are interested in complaining that $.25 a min for the first 10 min is an excessive amount, consider that I use less than 60 min a month, and tell me what rate I would be paying per min for a $39.99 a month service. $.55 per min. Thanks, but no thanks.
For that plug a phone into it, and get dial tone, I like Vonage, but then I already have a broadband connection (Cable) that I don't think of as being part of the cost of the phone line. I would have the Broadband connection anyway. All told, with four different phone numbers, including an 800 number that my kids out of state can use to call me on, I am spending less than $50 a month. (Cell, home, 800, seprate area code home for appartment complex calling system which needs a number in it's own area code.)
Specific details such as what the computer name was? No.
There were some minor "glitches" with the computer however. For some time during the evening, or overnight, they refused to report the predictions the computer was generating as the results were very different from the telephone poll results that had been being performed up to the election.
It turns out that a vast segment of the population who did not have phones were a part of the public that tended to vote in a way different from the segment of the population with phones. And they did vote that year.
Since CBS was unsure which was correct, and the discrepency was as great as it was, as early as the computer was making it's prediction, they witheld the results until later in the evening when even more of the results were known.
A slight parallel has been pointed out a few times this election, noting that there are a significant number of voters who have cell phones which are not available to pollers. How significant the variation will be is somewhat up in the air. I think that it might be ballanced by the number of people with Caller-ID who refuse to accept calls from people they don't know or recognize. Who this might benifit, I don't know, and won't predict.
The extra pair of limbs I want generally are attached to some other features that I happen to like. Since I prefer them attached where they are, I think I will just keep the collection together and have a much better time.
Since there is a java based emulator of it, (it even runs on a Sharp Zaurus) you could freely distribute the emulator and point people at the right resources for programing the Z80/1.
It's the same concept as has been used at a lot of universities in teaching Assembly. Since a lot of professors teaching when I went to school cut their teeth on the PDP-11, guess what platform we coded in Assembly for. Did anyone have a PDP-11 to run that code on? Nope. It was nearly all run on a vax-vms system.
A lot of instructors today probably cut their teeth on the Apple II, or early AT/XT computers. I doubt that they will actively promote working with ZX80 instructions, or basic, but who knows.
IBM has provided SCO with the full source code to several versions of AIX that they were ordered to by Judge Brook Wells, within one week of being so ordered. SCO was directed to parse those source code files and identify the files and lines of that source code, that they believed were specifically relevent to the case they are persuing related to IBM.
So far all SCO has done has been to complain that the code (which they specifically requested and which was granted by Judge Wells) was not sufficient for them. Further they have requested copies of all versions, sub-versions, itterative builds, notes, and so forth for AIX, back to the very begining of AIX, as well as e-mail and memos from executive management that might be relevent to the case.
IBM has basically responded, 'you will have to take the results of your code review of the material you have received so far, present them to the Judge, and show what part of those results entitles you to further discovery.' Additionally they have pointed out that what they are asking for will take orders of magnitude more work to provide than what they had requested earlier.
SCO has made the interesting response that IBM's versioning software should make these responses easy to comply with, and 'Hey, just give us direct/remote access to it, and we won't have to bother you about it.'
Umm, yeah, anyone else think that the judge granted them the opportunity to make a brief fishing trip to some streams they have named, and SCO is saying 'Hey the fish have not been biting, let's make it a flight to a deep water fishing expedition.'
I am not a lawyer, much less a judge. Based upon what I have seen published, I would have a very hard time approving further discovery into AIX code, much less AIX-on-Power code, which was not asked for in the first place.
It's a proprietary development environment used by a large number of developers to create the type of software they wish to create.
I remember writing in Pascal, and paying for the Pro edition of Borland Pascal with Objects. It was a great environment for the level of development I was doing. It included a large block of source code for OWL which if you spent enough time tweeking, you could have even rebuilt the IDE out of, including the compiler and debugger.
I don't know if the Pro release of Builder C++ provides the same type of set of source code. If it does, then there is no real reason to force Borland to try to continue supporting the software. The 'Pro' or 'Enterprise' customers can review the code, modify it, and create patch files that can be distributed to other developers at the pro and enterprise levels.
So they won't be blessed by Borland. Like Borland has done a lot of other good for you this past year?
Yes. However without a lawn of my own, (appartment dweller, not basement dweller) I don't worry too much about bringing in signs. Perhaps I should pick up some of those bushes that have been sprouting up in the neighborhood. Then again, perhaps it is just too much to kerry.
-Rusty
p.s. Sorry about the puns, they just seemed to appropriate.
For those bemoning the lack of an ethernet adapter, have a look at the Hawking Technology H-CF686TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter.
Since it is CF based, I would be really surprised if it could seriously keep up with a 100 mbps saturated network stream, but for just about anything else it should work out fine for you.
I have had one for about a year now, and have found that it works without searching for additional drivers, etc.
If you are attempting to sniff a network that is prone to broadcast storms, you will probably want more than a this, but if you just want to plug in, get an IP address to see what network the jack belongs to, and what capabilities the hub or switch you are connected to supports, this CF device and an old 5500 off of E-bay are going to run you a bit less than $200. (unless the news of Sharp dropping sales in the US bumps prices on the older units up as well.)
Obviously you would need to include Mplayer, which will probably want to include the ability to do video playback. As long as you only include a CD player, and don't introduce your folks to VCD's, you should be alright.
Design error: implementor installs the switch as it was designed, which was backwards.
Implementation error: design was correct, but the implementor reversed the polarity of the switch.
Remember Murphy's law is not 'Whatever can go wrong will.' it is 'Whenever there are two possible ways to implement something and one of them will result in a catastropic result, it can be certian that someone will configure things that way.' (paraphrased.)
In this case the report is that there were two possible ways that the switch could be installed by the implementor, one of which would result in the catastrophy that was wittnesed. (And the designers are saying it was that implementation.)
Post event analysis will say 'Yes, it was implemented incorrectly. Our recomendation is that the design be improved to prevent future implementations this way.'
The claim is that the design was correct, had things been implemented 'as designed'. The recomendation is that the design be improved so that an incorrect implementation is less likely to happen in the future.
Someone in Europe got a court order allowing them to sieze the hard drives. The company hosting the servers was an American company (Rackspace) so the entity in Europe who instantiated the court order co-ordinated with the FBI to perform the raid and sieze the hard drives.
A subsequent court order has dicated that the drives be returned. The drives have been returned, however the people at IndyMedia consider their content compromized, and are working on getting non-compromized drives prepared and the site back online.
I leave it to others to report on whether IndyMedia is actually back online, or reporting on who the entity was who ordered the initial siezure of the hard drives to begin with.
My own suspicion is that someone in the EU's equivalent of the RIAA browsed the song selections and found a couple of file names that looked suspiciously like a song from a signed artist, and initiated court actions. However I don't know.
The next version of Office is going to be identified in accordance with whatever "outside" versioning system they decide to use when it is released.
It would not surprise me if they label it something like OfficeXP2, or even OfficeYQ.
Remember the version of Office that came out during the Win9x releases was labeled Office9x. Along with Windows2000 came Office2000. Along came WindowsXP, and up pops OfficeXP.
The Version 12.0 identifier is the internal identifier for Microsoft developers. It will show up in the 'About xxxx' screen, likely in the form 12.xxxx.yyyy, where xxxx and yyyy are design and build numbers.
I presume you want to do some sort of heads up display where you are looking through a 'transparent and reflective' surface, both at the screen and at the road.
If you can work with a CRT, all you need to do is flip either the vertical or horizontal leads to the CRT. All well and good except be careful about the high voltages within the housing you have to get into to do that. It can really ruin your day, and then some.
With a bitmapped display, you could rewrite the display drivers and subtract the horizontal position value from the max screen width, or if you wanted to flip vertically, the vertical value from the current screen vertical resolution.
Note that this will play havoc with overlay modes, so if you are going to throw the output of a video camera, or video capture card on the screen, you are probably going to run into some serious problems. The overlain video is probably not going to get flipped, and will very likely be positioned wrong. The other major issue would be if you are using sub-pixel drivers. This should not be a problem if you are using a TV out driver, but for those thinking about directly driving a flat pannel, it's something to be concerned about. You will probably have to tell the drivers to flip the rgb sequence as well.
If all else fails, and you are doing your own grapics for letters and numbers, you could always write the app to flip it's output horizontally or vertically. If you have a fast enough system you could even display to a virtual screen, and use a screen grabber to capture an image, flip it via a gimp or other graphic manipulation scrip, and throw that image up onto the user screen. If you can do this every 30th of a second, it will appear as if you are outputting to the user screen directly.
If you have access to plenty of money, you could even pick up several lcd flat panels and start a chip fab to flip the video in and output it to one of those screens. That sounds like more than I am comfortable with, but really all an lcd display is (at the level we are talking about here) is a I/O processor using the lcd screen as a memory storage array. If you can access the processor and tell it to flip either the vertical or horizontal storage addresses for the screen, you won't need to modify anything on the PC, other then possibly telling the sub-pixel driver that the rgb orientation is different.
As a side note for those considering just rotating a display (changing from landscape to portriate) check into the xwindows feature for screen rotation. It may provide you the capabilities you are looking for, even if it means you need to use xnest as a full screen output system. This may also be handy for creating a psuedo tablet system.
First they need to find one of those 'starving artists' who are happy that they have signed over their rights to the songs they have written or performed over to the local equivalent of the RIAA. Or at least happy enough about the deal that they will play the front man for the local anti-pirating campaign.
I think that the general concensus here is that the specific agency in question does have serious problems that need to be addressed.
Specifically they have hired a programer who installed and operated SetiAtHome on their servers, and have subsequently fired him specifically for that offense. While there are a number of people who think that the act of firing him was unjustified, and others (apparently including the state in question) think it was justified, it's easily clear that for this offense it is not a reasonable expectation that appologizing after the fact is easier than asking for permission. Granted he may have gotten a 'no' from asking permission, but he would not have gotten a 'no job' in response.
The second great indicator of serious problems that need to be addressed is the statements of this guy's boss. If we can assume that this is not unusual commentary from this person, I seriously doubt that there is an IT technician worth his salt who has any respect for this person, and by extension the people who manage this person. If your IT techs have no respect for you, it doesn't matter what rules are written down, there are going to be a lot of people not following them. Including the people who might want to use good practices and lock down individual workstations.
Additionally if the 'chick in HR' happens to be the '"hot" chick in HR' who calls in the IT tech and flirts with him to get him to relax the lockdown on 'her' pc, or threatens to report him for Sexual Harassment, forget whether you want to lock down PCs against unauthorized software. It will be circumvented.
Tin foil hats and conspiracy theories asside, NASA is technically a govornment research facility, doing research in a wide variety of fields, not just Air and Space.
I have not seen a copy lately, but one of the publications that NASA has generated in the past was a report on all the research projects they have been involved in, and the interim and final results of most if not all of those projects. The end result of this publication is the free availability of those research results to any company interested in new products and the efficacy of new procedures.
As you note there is some loss of efficiency within NASA because of its size and the size of its administration. Additionally the fact that it is doing basic research in a variety of areas, including research that will result in a dead end, (it's not at all unusual for some area of basic research to result in the discovery that 'that doesn't work') and you will see expenses that outweigh what you would like to see.
Additionally the data that NASA collects has provided a significant boost to the accuracy of information that had been collected in the past, but no one was sure of it. As an example if you collect sea floor toppology information by sounding from the surface, how much varience should you allow for to deal with the fact that your 'surface' is varying in hight as an artifact of the relationship of the sun, and moon with respect to your own position? Additionally as a result of the different densities of the sea floor and the underlying magma, the absolute surface gravity at the 'surface' has an effect on where you are actually positioned relative to 'sea level'. At least one NASA project was able to provide a surface gravitational topology map that was used to improve the accuracy of the sea floor maps generated by earlier methods. The results make it easier for sea floor studies to be persued as a result of having a better idea of what can be done at the actual depths the new maps predict.
As another example of why NASA is one of the better agencies for this type of research, Bill Gates and Co. have been asking various legislative branches to increas spending on basic research. Why? because for someone like Microsoft, Basic Research is a black hole for funding. They know that in the long term doing basic research is a great source of earning money, however the timeframes involved are outside of what they feel is reasonable to ask their stockholders to support.
As a place to look for another organization that 'might' be 'better' for doing earthquake research, the USGS (United States Geological Society) http://www.usgs.gov/ does do earthquake research as part of their stock in trade. See their Science link http://www.usgs.gov/science.html for their general topics, and their Earthquake tracking page http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ for earthquakes in the US, and around the world for the past week.
Summary, I would expect nothing less of NASA than that they persue basic research in a variety of fields and publish their results so that anyone, govornment, or civilian, can make use of those results. The fact exists that there are other civilian and govornment agencies that are producing useful research, who may not be able to spend the time, money, or other resources that NASA may be able to produce. I strongly suspect that the USGS doesn't feel like their toes have been stomped on by the publication of these findings.
Nahh, they need the Shuttle back in operation to resume causing the quakes.
This study is great for most of us. It's reasonably obvious that if this application can effectively predict 15 out of 16 earthquakes, that the 16th the software was not able to predict is highly likely to be an artifact of someone's testing their earthquake generator.
The reasonable expectation is that the study that produced this report is about to be de-funded, and the methods used will be declared a national security concern. The scientists working on the project will be debriefed, and some will find themselves working at a new private venture corp, with really new security methods to get into work.
Slashdot Mirror
To be a bit more accurate, whether there was a population in North America earlier than 15-20,000 years ago, there is no genetic markers to support it.
Saying that there were no people in North America before this, is akin to claiming a mathematical proof by absense of a counter example is valid. It isn't a proof, it is a lack of a counter example.
Likewise there appear to be situations where there are genetic markers which do not match the 15-20,000 year window, and appear to be branches frome Europe, rather than Asia. There are questions as to exactly where and when these markers actually come from as there are very few Europeans who have enough of these genetic markers to do an accurate assesment of when the branch happened, or even to confirm it is a good match. Note that since I am neither an Archaeologist, nor a geneticist, I am not a solid source for this information.
-Rusty
I could be wrong, but my experience with a lot of hologram store holograms is that they work best when they are lit by a point type light source. My suspicion is that the result of this procedure is one of that type of hologram, and any 'single point' light source (a flashlight would qualify, but a light bouncing off the celing, florescent tube, or a multi-bulb lamp would not) would work well.
As I say, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
A laser pointer is probably a better gadget then. At least when you get tired of antagonizing the pups, you can put it away, and they calm down again. If you intend to use the Roomba for it's intended use, rather than your currently hoped for effect, you will have to make sure the MinPins are in a different room.
My Eski pretty much ignores my Roomba after five minutes or so, unlike his ongoing reaction and attacking of the upright vacume. The first five minutes he is looking for a reaction from me for how he responds to the Roomba. If I ignore him, he ends up ignoring the Roomba. (Well, except when it's meandering ends up taking it in his direction.)
Recomendation for anyone with a Labrador Retriever. Don't get a Roomba. Labs tend to shed enough that you will never be able to keep the bearings for the brushes clear of dog hair, which will ultimately cause the bearings to sieze, or melt out of the system. This is prbably true for other dogs that shed continuously, and is a problem as well for dogs that shed seasonally. (If yours only sheds seasonally, it may even be more of a problem as you will be used to not having to clean things out carefully, and will probably get burned.) I can't speak for how well it works around cat hair. I don't currently have a cat, and have no immediate plans for getting one.
-Rusty
-Rusty
Considering that the second is defined by the NIST as:
'exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of the cesium atom's resonant frequency'
I am not sure I want the 'second' to be the standard increment of time.
Remember, we use the second because we have divided the clock first into 12 hours, (12 day, and 12 night when the sun casts no shadow) then divided each hour into 60 increments called minutes, followed by another 60 increments of those called Minutes. The last two breakdowns were based upon the fact that the number 60 has more even combinations than any number less than it (1,60;2,30;3,20;4,15;5,12;6,10).
The second is a convienence of earth bound existence. Once you step off earth, you need to adjust your clock to the local environment, meaning that the basic unit of time, (the second for us) is going to be different.
To go with a purely metric time, you would want to start by acknowledging that the local time is not going to easily map to the current Metric time. Now use a convienent multiple of the resonant frequency of the cesium atom. Options would be 10,000,000,000 oscilations, 9,000,000,000 oscilations (to be closer to the current definition) or 1,000,000,000 oscilations. (My recomendation.)
Are there some serious problems that this would present? Sure. Hz frequency measurements would all have to be revised. (and yes that would affect your cpu processor speed calculations) Speed of Light constants would have to be recalculated (these recalculations would really be a simple ratio function, but it would annoy all sorts of people.) Natural frequencies would have to be revised. Etc.
Just my own thoughts. (Now go take a look at some of the later definitions of the length of a meter, and see how these ideas would affect that.)
-Rusty
I would presume that with the earlier story about the MPAA suing file sharers, one of the things they expect to get is a record of ip addresses which did a download from some of the file sharers server logs.
My own assumption is that this will depend upon the file sharers having logging of that material turned on, and that they are keeping copies of those logs on their system continually eating up disk space. That seems unlikely to me, considering that the sharer's are presumably trying to keep as much space on their systems available for the files they are acruing and sharing, but I don't 'Know' that this is the case. Nor do I know if the software these people are using to share files does logging of downloaders by default.
Another possiblity is that they plan on putting some sort of carnivor device in front of one or more of the servers sharing files, and log the IP's of devices the bittorent servers connect back to.
Just a couple of ideas that don't include them making these files available themselves, or alternatives to them in some sort of bait program.
I doubt that I am the only one who can think of these, so I don't think I am putting ideas into their heads. (Additionally while the FBI may be albe to set up a carnivore device at an ISP, I tend to suspect that an ISP would be far more concerned about doing the same with a private agency such as the MPAA or RIAA.)
Just my ideas, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
I don't use my cell phone for most of my calls. I have it primarily as a way to be available to my kids and other family members, who also have my home number. I generally use less than 60 min a month on my cell phone.
Using the Virgin Mobile system, I use less than $20 for 3 months of service, since paying $20 every three months is the minimum requirement to maintain service, and so long as I do that the money I haven't used acrues, I can also comfortably call into conference calls when necessary.
Note that the phones available range in capabilities from what I have, which simply has a monocrome lcd, organizer, voice activated dialing, and callendar, on up to phones with camera's, slide phones, etc. Phones are available at Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City, (probably your local Sam Goodey, or Virgin Records store as well) and at some stores you may find older discontinued models for a lot less, that may work well for you at a lower cost. (Bought one for my son for $14.96 that is working out just fine for him.)
Down sides. Service is part of the Sprint PCS network, which some people have issues with. If I am out of range, and have the need to call 911, I have an old AT&T lugable phone in the trunk that I can use. If you use a cell phone a lot, (say $100 min or more a month) this service will probably get expensive for you, you might want to look into something else.
For those that are interested in complaining that $.25 a min for the first 10 min is an excessive amount, consider that I use less than 60 min a month, and tell me what rate I would be paying per min for a $39.99 a month service. $.55 per min. Thanks, but no thanks.
For that plug a phone into it, and get dial tone, I like Vonage, but then I already have a broadband connection (Cable) that I don't think of as being part of the cost of the phone line. I would have the Broadband connection anyway. All told, with four different phone numbers, including an 800 number that my kids out of state can use to call me on, I am spending less than $50 a month. (Cell, home, 800, seprate area code home for appartment complex calling system which needs a number in it's own area code.)
Specific details such as what the computer name was? No.
There were some minor "glitches" with the computer however. For some time during the evening, or overnight, they refused to report the predictions the computer was generating as the results were very different from the telephone poll results that had been being performed up to the election.
It turns out that a vast segment of the population who did not have phones were a part of the public that tended to vote in a way different from the segment of the population with phones. And they did vote that year.
Since CBS was unsure which was correct, and the discrepency was as great as it was, as early as the computer was making it's prediction, they witheld the results until later in the evening when even more of the results were known.
A slight parallel has been pointed out a few times this election, noting that there are a significant number of voters who have cell phones which are not available to pollers. How significant the variation will be is somewhat up in the air. I think that it might be ballanced by the number of people with Caller-ID who refuse to accept calls from people they don't know or recognize. Who this might benifit, I don't know, and won't predict.
-Rusty
The extra pair of limbs I want generally are attached to some other features that I happen to like. Since I prefer them attached where they are, I think I will just keep the collection together and have a much better time.
Since there is a java based emulator of it, (it even runs on a Sharp Zaurus) you could freely distribute the emulator and point people at the right resources for programing the Z80/1.
It's the same concept as has been used at a lot of universities in teaching Assembly. Since a lot of professors teaching when I went to school cut their teeth on the PDP-11, guess what platform we coded in Assembly for. Did anyone have a PDP-11 to run that code on? Nope. It was nearly all run on a vax-vms system.
A lot of instructors today probably cut their teeth on the Apple II, or early AT/XT computers. I doubt that they will actively promote working with ZX80 instructions, or basic, but who knows.
-Rusty
IBM has provided SCO with the full source code to several versions of AIX that they were ordered to by Judge Brook Wells, within one week of being so ordered. SCO was directed to parse those source code files and identify the files and lines of that source code, that they believed were specifically relevent to the case they are persuing related to IBM.
So far all SCO has done has been to complain that the code (which they specifically requested and which was granted by Judge Wells) was not sufficient for them. Further they have requested copies of all versions, sub-versions, itterative builds, notes, and so forth for AIX, back to the very begining of AIX, as well as e-mail and memos from executive management that might be relevent to the case.
IBM has basically responded, 'you will have to take the results of your code review of the material you have received so far, present them to the Judge, and show what part of those results entitles you to further discovery.' Additionally they have pointed out that what they are asking for will take orders of magnitude more work to provide than what they had requested earlier.
SCO has made the interesting response that IBM's versioning software should make these responses easy to comply with, and 'Hey, just give us direct/remote access to it, and we won't have to bother you about it.'
Umm, yeah, anyone else think that the judge granted them the opportunity to make a brief fishing trip to some streams they have named, and SCO is saying 'Hey the fish have not been biting, let's make it a flight to a deep water fishing expedition.'
I am not a lawyer, much less a judge. Based upon what I have seen published, I would have a very hard time approving further discovery into AIX code, much less AIX-on-Power code, which was not asked for in the first place.
-Rusty
It's a proprietary development environment used by a large number of developers to create the type of software they wish to create.
I remember writing in Pascal, and paying for the Pro edition of Borland Pascal with Objects. It was a great environment for the level of development I was doing. It included a large block of source code for OWL which if you spent enough time tweeking, you could have even rebuilt the IDE out of, including the compiler and debugger.
I don't know if the Pro release of Builder C++ provides the same type of set of source code. If it does, then there is no real reason to force Borland to try to continue supporting the software. The 'Pro' or 'Enterprise' customers can review the code, modify it, and create patch files that can be distributed to other developers at the pro and enterprise levels.
So they won't be blessed by Borland. Like Borland has done a lot of other good for you this past year?
-Rusty
What did the puns seem to appropriate?
Signs.
couldn't you have spotted that yourself?
Yes. However without a lawn of my own, (appartment dweller, not basement dweller) I don't worry too much about bringing in signs. Perhaps I should pick up some of those bushes that have been sprouting up in the neighborhood. Then again, perhaps it is just too much to kerry.
-Rusty
p.s. Sorry about the puns, they just seemed to appropriate.
For those bemoning the lack of an ethernet adapter, have a look at the Hawking Technology H-CF686TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter.
Since it is CF based, I would be really surprised if it could seriously keep up with a 100 mbps saturated network stream, but for just about anything else it should work out fine for you.
I have had one for about a year now, and have found that it works without searching for additional drivers, etc.
If you are attempting to sniff a network that is prone to broadcast storms, you will probably want more than a this, but if you just want to plug in, get an IP address to see what network the jack belongs to, and what capabilities the hub or switch you are connected to supports, this CF device and an old 5500 off of E-bay are going to run you a bit less than $200. (unless the news of Sharp dropping sales in the US bumps prices on the older units up as well.)
-Rusty
AutoRip http://freshmeat.net/projects/autorip/ should take care of the dropping a disk in and ripping it.
mplay http://freshmeat.net/projects/mplay/ should take care of a text mode front end for mplayer.
Obviously you would need to include Mplayer, which will probably want to include the ability to do video playback. As long as you only include a CD player, and don't introduce your folks to VCD's, you should be alright.
Hey, hope this helps...
-Rusty
backbiters, yes, I should have read the article myself.
Design error: implementor installs the switch as it was designed, which was backwards.
Implementation error: design was correct, but the implementor reversed the polarity of the switch.
Remember Murphy's law is not 'Whatever can go wrong will.' it is 'Whenever there are two possible ways to implement something and one of them will result in a catastropic result, it can be certian that someone will configure things that way.' (paraphrased.)
In this case the report is that there were two possible ways that the switch could be installed by the implementor, one of which would result in the catastrophy that was wittnesed. (And the designers are saying it was that implementation.)
Post event analysis will say 'Yes, it was implemented incorrectly. Our recomendation is that the design be improved to prevent future implementations this way.'
The claim is that the design was correct, had things been implemented 'as designed'. The recomendation is that the design be improved so that an incorrect implementation is less likely to happen in the future.
-Rusty
Someone in Europe got a court order allowing them to sieze the hard drives. The company hosting the servers was an American company (Rackspace) so the entity in Europe who instantiated the court order co-ordinated with the FBI to perform the raid and sieze the hard drives.
A subsequent court order has dicated that the drives be returned. The drives have been returned, however the people at IndyMedia consider their content compromized, and are working on getting non-compromized drives prepared and the site back online.
I leave it to others to report on whether IndyMedia is actually back online, or reporting on who the entity was who ordered the initial siezure of the hard drives to begin with.
My own suspicion is that someone in the EU's equivalent of the RIAA browsed the song selections and found a couple of file names that looked suspiciously like a song from a signed artist, and initiated court actions. However I don't know.
-Rusty
The next version of Office is going to be identified in accordance with whatever "outside" versioning system they decide to use when it is released.
It would not surprise me if they label it something like OfficeXP2, or even OfficeYQ.
Remember the version of Office that came out during the Win9x releases was labeled Office9x. Along with Windows2000 came Office2000. Along came WindowsXP, and up pops OfficeXP.
The Version 12.0 identifier is the internal identifier for Microsoft developers. It will show up in the 'About xxxx' screen, likely in the form 12.xxxx.yyyy, where xxxx and yyyy are design and build numbers.
-Rusty
I presume you want to do some sort of heads up display where you are looking through a 'transparent and reflective' surface, both at the screen and at the road.
If you can work with a CRT, all you need to do is flip either the vertical or horizontal leads to the CRT. All well and good except be careful about the high voltages within the housing you have to get into to do that. It can really ruin your day, and then some.
With a bitmapped display, you could rewrite the display drivers and subtract the horizontal position value from the max screen width, or if you wanted to flip vertically, the vertical value from the current screen vertical resolution.
Note that this will play havoc with overlay modes, so if you are going to throw the output of a video camera, or video capture card on the screen, you are probably going to run into some serious problems. The overlain video is probably not going to get flipped, and will very likely be positioned wrong. The other major issue would be if you are using sub-pixel drivers. This should not be a problem if you are using a TV out driver, but for those thinking about directly driving a flat pannel, it's something to be concerned about. You will probably have to tell the drivers to flip the rgb sequence as well.
If all else fails, and you are doing your own grapics for letters and numbers, you could always write the app to flip it's output horizontally or vertically. If you have a fast enough system you could even display to a virtual screen, and use a screen grabber to capture an image, flip it via a gimp or other graphic manipulation scrip, and throw that image up onto the user screen. If you can do this every 30th of a second, it will appear as if you are outputting to the user screen directly.
If you have access to plenty of money, you could even pick up several lcd flat panels and start a chip fab to flip the video in and output it to one of those screens. That sounds like more than I am comfortable with, but really all an lcd display is (at the level we are talking about here) is a I/O processor using the lcd screen as a memory storage array. If you can access the processor and tell it to flip either the vertical or horizontal storage addresses for the screen, you won't need to modify anything on the PC, other then possibly telling the sub-pixel driver that the rgb orientation is different.
As a side note for those considering just rotating a display (changing from landscape to portriate) check into the xwindows feature for screen rotation. It may provide you the capabilities you are looking for, even if it means you need to use xnest as a full screen output system. This may also be handy for creating a psuedo tablet system.
-Rusty
First they need to find one of those 'starving artists' who are happy that they have signed over their rights to the songs they have written or performed over to the local equivalent of the RIAA. Or at least happy enough about the deal that they will play the front man for the local anti-pirating campaign.
Nope, I don't think they will find many either.
-Rusty
I think that the general concensus here is that the specific agency in question does have serious problems that need to be addressed.
Specifically they have hired a programer who installed and operated SetiAtHome on their servers, and have subsequently fired him specifically for that offense. While there are a number of people who think that the act of firing him was unjustified, and others (apparently including the state in question) think it was justified, it's easily clear that for this offense it is not a reasonable expectation that appologizing after the fact is easier than asking for permission. Granted he may have gotten a 'no' from asking permission, but he would not have gotten a 'no job' in response.
The second great indicator of serious problems that need to be addressed is the statements of this guy's boss. If we can assume that this is not unusual commentary from this person, I seriously doubt that there is an IT technician worth his salt who has any respect for this person, and by extension the people who manage this person. If your IT techs have no respect for you, it doesn't matter what rules are written down, there are going to be a lot of people not following them. Including the people who might want to use good practices and lock down individual workstations.
Additionally if the 'chick in HR' happens to be the '"hot" chick in HR' who calls in the IT tech and flirts with him to get him to relax the lockdown on 'her' pc, or threatens to report him for Sexual Harassment, forget whether you want to lock down PCs against unauthorized software. It will be circumvented.
-Rusty
Tin foil hats and conspiracy theories asside, NASA is technically a govornment research facility, doing research in a wide variety of fields, not just Air and Space.
I have not seen a copy lately, but one of the publications that NASA has generated in the past was a report on all the research projects they have been involved in, and the interim and final results of most if not all of those projects. The end result of this publication is the free availability of those research results to any company interested in new products and the efficacy of new procedures.
As you note there is some loss of efficiency within NASA because of its size and the size of its administration. Additionally the fact that it is doing basic research in a variety of areas, including research that will result in a dead end, (it's not at all unusual for some area of basic research to result in the discovery that 'that doesn't work') and you will see expenses that outweigh what you would like to see.
Additionally the data that NASA collects has provided a significant boost to the accuracy of information that had been collected in the past, but no one was sure of it. As an example if you collect sea floor toppology information by sounding from the surface, how much varience should you allow for to deal with the fact that your 'surface' is varying in hight as an artifact of the relationship of the sun, and moon with respect to your own position? Additionally as a result of the different densities of the sea floor and the underlying magma, the absolute surface gravity at the 'surface' has an effect on where you are actually positioned relative to 'sea level'. At least one NASA project was able to provide a surface gravitational topology map that was used to improve the accuracy of the sea floor maps generated by earlier methods. The results make it easier for sea floor studies to be persued as a result of having a better idea of what can be done at the actual depths the new maps predict.
As another example of why NASA is one of the better agencies for this type of research, Bill Gates and Co. have been asking various legislative branches to increas spending on basic research. Why? because for someone like Microsoft, Basic Research is a black hole for funding. They know that in the long term doing basic research is a great source of earning money, however the timeframes involved are outside of what they feel is reasonable to ask their stockholders to support.
As a place to look for another organization that 'might' be 'better' for doing earthquake research, the USGS (United States Geological Society) http://www.usgs.gov/ does do earthquake research as part of their stock in trade. See their Science link http://www.usgs.gov/science.html for their general topics, and their Earthquake tracking page http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ for earthquakes in the US, and around the world for the past week.
Summary, I would expect nothing less of NASA than that they persue basic research in a variety of fields and publish their results so that anyone, govornment, or civilian, can make use of those results. The fact exists that there are other civilian and govornment agencies that are producing useful research, who may not be able to spend the time, money, or other resources that NASA may be able to produce. I strongly suspect that the USGS doesn't feel like their toes have been stomped on by the publication of these findings.
-Rusty
Nahh, they need the Shuttle back in operation to resume causing the quakes.
This study is great for most of us. It's reasonably obvious that if this application can effectively predict 15 out of 16 earthquakes, that the 16th the software was not able to predict is highly likely to be an artifact of someone's testing their earthquake generator.
The reasonable expectation is that the study that produced this report is about to be de-funded, and the methods used will be declared a national security concern. The scientists working on the project will be debriefed, and some will find themselves working at a new private venture corp, with really new security methods to get into work.
-Rusty
Or better... 'Would you like to be one of the lucky ladies to receive the retro-virus giving you immunity to HIV?"
Nahh, sounds too geeky...