Okay yall... being a paleomagnetist and dealing with this topic all the time, I have to say that it is NOT LIKELY that this is the beginning of a reversal. The field goes up and down at all kinds of frequencies. If you look at a graph of the Sint 800 (sorry it's a tiny figure) you will see all sorts of ups and downs for the last 800000 years during the bruhnes normal period. The last big low is called the Laschamp and was about 35-40 thousand years ago. Today's field is so far above that.
The magnetic field is a 'random process'. There is no real good statistical predictor of when the next reversal will happen.
Yes, so it doesn't take long to discover that there is a mountain of data available for free here in the US. The problem is GETTING the data. What a nightmare. The DataDepot is truely a hideous system. And ArcWeb (or what ever their web map server thing is) is totally frustrating to all but the most patient. Data comes from 10000 sources in 100's of formats and require a different way to get each one. Please don't make me separately click to download the 50 different files just to make a basemap of a new field area.
I've triend to make an effort to show how to do this, but it gets frustrating! You can see what I did here at my Visualization Classes. I used to be a Arc/Info hardcore user, but got so frustrated I gave up. It's easier for a programmer to write their own than deal with all the cruft in Arc. However, it's great for creating funny war stories.
How about Coin version of OpenInventor (or the TGS version i fyou have to). It's free if you don't make a commercial app out of it. The support is great. The basic API has been stable for > 10 years. It's now got pthread support or you can use MPI or some other networking solution to coordinate multiple boxes.
You could have a 4 headed G5 drive this thing... I set one up a few months ago. That plus a space mouse and you are in business. Now with 8 GB of ram and dual 2.5 GHz G5's. Very fun till you loose your mouse somewhere. Or you could go with Linux, Windows, or IRIX (if you want to pay big $$$).
To late for me, but hats of to them on this. If they had done this about 5 years ago, I would have put my energy into learning, but now that Coin has implemented OpenInventor and then some, I have little interest in java. I was always worried about sun letting java 3d drop off the face of the earth or only updating for solaris (which might be a worse fate)
One example - La Jolla, CA
on
Open Maps?
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· Score: 1
Hey All,
We've been trying to lay foundations for similiar type stuff at a local level here at Scripps Inst. of Oceanography. I've been working with a large range of data formats and programs. Take a look at our sample project:
You'll need to get the iview3d free browser to view the model. I'm just taking a break from getting it ready for the NSF visualization competition. Someday soon, I will export this stuff to a more open format (probably my prefered form of OpenInventor/Coin).
Back when I had a Sprint cell phone, I had a week where I could make outgoing calls, but couldn't receive calls. When I talked to tech support and the guy asked me where I had been for the last few days. When I said that I had mostly been at work which was at NASA Ames, he said:
"Oh. NASA reprogrammed your cell phone."
How do you respond to that? The next day, my cell phone started working again. I guess NASA must have reprogrammed it back!?!?!
Not too surprising. We used this all the time for the MER rovers at JPL. We used aim chat groups with a logging robot (easy enough to write one using say Net::AIM). Lots of design discussions and training sessions were done through IM and then became a part of the project documentation. Then grep and search when you forget something. Just don't say anything too obnoxious while chatting...
I think it was about 1997 that a bunch of us at NASA started replacing VxWorks systems on robots such as the Marsokhod and Nomad with Linux systems. Much more pleasant to develope Linux based systems. Then there was the time we were forced to cope with a WinNT box on Nomad when it went to Chile. Bad memories.
Carlo Tomasi, formerly of CMU and Stanford, at Duke as done some really nice work with this kind of thing. See his publications
Laser range finders are not that exciting. Kind of stuff you buy pre built. Unless you do some interesting processing with the data, it's nothing new, but always fun to play with.
Thanks to those who gave good info. When I posted the message to slashdot, I was talking to my sister, who is a producer at NBC. They were the best info, but two stations were down and KUSI had a camera on the roof looking at the flames across the street.
The worst coverage out there was KOGO. One guy called in his porn site. Thanks... the fire got 3 miles from my house and 1.5 from my storage place. Not what I want to hear. Just figured that tons of people have hand help GPS units. It's easy to use GMT if you've got the info to make maps. The most critical time was the first 24-48 hours when the stations were all scrambling to figure out how to deal. Now there is tons of info.
Anyway, we have some local info at http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~schwehr/fire.html
I've been impressed with the modis info.
Anyways... it's nice to be back home and back to working my thesis.
I've been getting more and more pissed everytime I go to a movie and see this damn intro about the carpenter who is loosing work because of pirates. As long as movies keep getting made, he has got a job. If someone pirates something, that just takes out of the the actors and studios monster profits, right? This guy gets his paycheck and then is off the job once the movie is made. It's insulting.
I'm sitting here staring at my collection of LEGAL dvd, vhs, cd, and tape media wondering just how much money I've spent in my life on these morons? I'm just a student, so it's a big percentage of my income that goes to the entertainment industry. I wish I could know that creative people got most of my money.
I personally quit filesharing recently... I used it to find new music that was worth my money. Now I'm less likely to buy a new CD if I haven't downloaded a least a couple good songs first.
No kidding... not too different than what Fourth Planet was selling with their nScope product. Did that about 1997/1998 or so. Also saw a number of programs like this in the Stanford Computer Graphics labs back in 95/96 in Levoy and Hanrahans' classes. Ah... the joys of watching network traffic with etherman (??) on IRIX 4.x. Also very similiar to the winner.
Okay, okay... I entered and didn't win with xcore. Not quite as flashy, but I thought I'd have a good chance.
Congrats to all the winners. Those finalist projects are pretty amazing.
Virtual worlds for spacecraft and underwater
on
Designing Virtual Worlds
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I was pleasantly surprised when I went to slashdot this morning and found this article. I just spent the morning teaching some people how to use OpenInventor to visualize some Martian datasets for the upcoming MER missions.
I've been writing some lecture notes for a class on designing virtual worlds that illustrate the real world (usually under water here) and have not discussed with those in the class the how, why, and philosophy of designing virtual worlds.
What a painful exit strategy... I usedta be a professional sysadmin and it takes me two days to get solaris 8 from CDs to taking at least some thought on how to hack in. When with Linux, I showed a postdoc windows user how to do a more secure install plus have him install the system in under an hour.
You should do one of the BSD's for an exit strategy! At least they have the ports collection that someone with a brain maintains. If solaris 9 is anything like solaris 8, good luck!
How is the Deep Space Network (DSN) going to handle 7 spacecraft at Mars? It was tough enough with just 2 orbiters. Anyone in the know want to comment?
Sounds like a good law until you find out some of the implications. How do you know if a computer contains person information under the law? If you are at for example a university of california institution and an email with someone's ssn in it is on a random computer that gets hacked. The responsible sysadmin (thankfully not me) is must notify that individual. How do you find out which of thousands of personal machines by staff has someone else person info... many machines a day get hacked at just one UC campus. It is near impossible for the campus I'm at to comply...
I do like the intent of the law, just not some of the implications
Can anyone using SCO non-linux systems comment on how much opensource software is in a SCO unix or SCOx system? They mention all sorts of things that lead me to guess that they are using Apache, PHP, and others. Any one want to do a run down?
It's in the commercial distributions only, right? So we can just go look at when the code appeared on kernel.org in which patch???? Would be so easy to at least find out when the code got in the kernel and then maybe find out who submitted it? Then maybe we'll find out it's a SCO engineer who submitted the code?
Slashdot Mirror
The magnetic field is a 'random process'. There is no real good statistical predictor of when the next reversal will happen.
I've triend to make an effort to show how to do this, but it gets frustrating! You can see what I did here at my Visualization Classes. I used to be a Arc/Info hardcore user, but got so frustrated I gave up. It's easier for a programmer to write their own than deal with all the cruft in Arc. However, it's great for creating funny war stories.
That would be the $ in the "BUDGET". I wonder what the real total costs were... money doesn't always flow in the straightests of paths.
You could have a 4 headed G5 drive this thing... I set one up a few months ago. That plus a space mouse and you are in business. Now with 8 GB of ram and dual 2.5 GHz G5's. Very fun till you loose your mouse somewhere. Or you could go with Linux, Windows, or IRIX (if you want to pay big $$$).
To late for me, but hats of to them on this. If they had done this about 5 years ago, I would have put my energy into learning, but now that Coin has implemented OpenInventor and then some, I have little interest in java. I was always worried about sun letting java 3d drop off the face of the earth or only updating for solaris (which might be a worse fate)
LaJolla - Topography, Bathymetry, air photo, dive photos, helicopter photos, geologic map, seismic lines, ...
You'll need to get the iview3d free browser to view the model. I'm just taking a break from getting it ready for the NSF visualization competition. Someday soon, I will export this stuff to a more open format (probably my prefered form of OpenInventor/Coin).
Back when I had a Sprint cell phone, I had a week where I could make outgoing calls, but couldn't receive calls. When I talked to tech support and the guy asked me where I had been for the last few days. When I said that I had mostly been at work which was at NASA Ames, he said:
"Oh. NASA reprogrammed your cell phone."
How do you respond to that? The next day, my cell phone started working again. I guess NASA must have reprogrammed it back!?!?!
Not too surprising. We used this all the time for the MER rovers at JPL. We used aim chat groups with a logging robot (easy enough to write one using say Net::AIM). Lots of design discussions and training sessions were done through IM and then became a part of the project documentation. Then grep and search when you forget something. Just don't say anything too obnoxious while chatting...
There wouldn't have been much on land at 2Ga.
Not MPL!! from the 6th floor party
I think it was about 1997 that a bunch of us at NASA started replacing VxWorks systems on robots such as the Marsokhod and Nomad with Linux systems. Much more pleasant to develope Linux based systems. Then there was the time we were forced to cope with a WinNT box on Nomad when it went to Chile. Bad memories.
Laser range finders are not that exciting. Kind of stuff you buy pre built. Unless you do some interesting processing with the data, it's nothing new, but always fun to play with.
The worst coverage out there was KOGO. One guy called in his porn site. Thanks... the fire got 3 miles from my house and 1.5 from my storage place. Not what I want to hear. Just figured that tons of people have hand help GPS units. It's easy to use GMT if you've got the info to make maps. The most critical time was the first 24-48 hours when the stations were all scrambling to figure out how to deal. Now there is tons of info.
Anyway, we have some local info at http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~schwehr/fire.html
I've been impressed with the modis info.
Anyways... it's nice to be back home and back to working my thesis.
Have these guys ever heard of fair use?
I've been getting more and more pissed everytime I go to a movie and see this damn intro about the carpenter who is loosing work because of pirates. As long as movies keep getting made, he has got a job. If someone pirates something, that just takes out of the the actors and studios monster profits, right? This guy gets his paycheck and then is off the job once the movie is made. It's insulting.
I'm sitting here staring at my collection of LEGAL dvd, vhs, cd, and tape media wondering just how much money I've spent in my life on these morons? I'm just a student, so it's a big percentage of my income that goes to the entertainment industry. I wish I could know that creative people got most of my money.
I personally quit filesharing recently... I used it to find new music that was worth my money. Now I'm less likely to buy a new CD if I haven't downloaded a least a couple good songs first.
-k
But, hey, there is always buttonfly :) !!
Okay, okay... I entered and didn't win with xcore. Not quite as flashy, but I thought I'd have a good chance.
Congrats to all the winners. Those finalist projects are pretty amazing.
I've been writing some lecture notes for a class on designing virtual worlds that illustrate the real world (usually under water here) and have not discussed with those in the class the how, why, and philosophy of designing virtual worlds.
thanks for the review!
You should do one of the BSD's for an exit strategy! At least they have the ports collection that someone with a brain maintains. If solaris 9 is anything like solaris 8, good luck!
Hmmm... this is not the only group doing this. I put my hands on another group doing exactly this couple weeks ago.
Also got to ride a segway. I thought they were pretty lame before I tried one. Especially off road.
How is the Deep Space Network (DSN) going to handle 7 spacecraft at Mars? It was tough enough with just 2 orbiters. Anyone in the know want to comment?
Sounds like a good law until you find out some of the implications. How do you know if a computer contains person information under the law? If you are at for example a university of california institution and an email with someone's ssn in it is on a random computer that gets hacked. The responsible sysadmin (thankfully not me) is must notify that individual. How do you find out which of thousands of personal machines by staff has someone else person info... many machines a day get hacked at just one UC campus. It is near impossible for the campus I'm at to comply... I do like the intent of the law, just not some of the implications
Can anyone using SCO non-linux systems comment on how much opensource software is in a SCO unix or SCOx system? They mention all sorts of things that lead me to guess that they are using Apache, PHP, and others. Any one want to do a run down?
Not only Qt, but a Linux company too...
It's in the commercial distributions only, right? So we can just go look at when the code appeared on kernel.org in which patch???? Would be so easy to at least find out when the code got in the kernel and then maybe find out who submitted it? Then maybe we'll find out it's a SCO engineer who submitted the code?