I worked in bookstores to help put myself through college, and would quickly become known as the person to send customers to who were asking for those weirdo books on sed and awk or lex and yacc. Even as recently as 2002-2005, though, some bookstores and computer shops still had excellent selections on some pretty obscure topics.
Some of the guys who worked at the college back in the early 90s, though, and who had been there since the 50s and 60s -- analog radio and broadcast engineers -- man, those guys were walking encyclopedias. It was great to hear their stories of how the college radio station was first set up, in 1960, and how things were back then. I always felt as if I had missed a really important time in our nation's history.
When email first started becoming a "thing," we used to send emails using a manually edited from field. The real sending info could still be found, but most people back then did not know to look for it. Great fun. Oh and outdials.
Good times, good times.
Maryland is testing today and flying this weekend -- it's entirely possible that they may win the prize tomorrow. AeroVelo made some attempts over the past couple weeks, and came very close, but damage to the aircraft has evidently put them out of commission for at least another couple weeks or so -- no chance of them winning it for a while. Hope that helps! Latest news here.
The contest rules state that the height requirement has to be reached only momentarily (albeit by the part of the aircraft closest to the ground). So they can cruise at 4 ft, 5 ft, and then really pump it for a one- or two-second flight up to 10 ft, and then come back down. Which even that is proving far easier said than done -- a third requirement is that some reference origin point on the aircraft must stay within a 10 square meter box, for the entirety of the time requirement.
Both the Canada and Maryland teams have suffered some pretty spectacular crashes, trying to meet all three of those requirements. Luckily nobody has been hurt. Yet! The rules don't say anything about a safe or controlled landing!
Well, the craft suffered another malfunction, this time in flight. It appeared that nothing touched the ground or hit anything, it just broke in mid-flight. Nobody was hurt, and it appears that a new record for height was reached, as the last flight unofficially broke nine feet. More info on the team's twitter feed.
Today they unofficially broke nine feet. There was an NAA observer there who will certify the altitude, but even he said it was about 9.3 feet. And if 3 meters is about 9.8 feet, they were really close. Unfortunately, something broke and the vehicle crashed, well short of the required 60 seconds.
They use the center of the aircraft -- the pilot's position -- as the origin or reference. As long as the reference does not drift beyond the 10 sq meter box, they are good.
Not yet -- the rules of the contest are pretty specific, but basically they have achieved the duration and stability requirements, and have almost gotten the altitude requirements -- but never on the same flight. They are hoping to win the prize today. Interestingly enough, another competing team in Canada is flying this very weekend.
The aircraft was damaged Thursday evening after another attempt at altitude. The team has repaired the craft though and resumed testing just a few minutes ago. The flights are taking place at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex, 8001 Sheriff Road, Landover, MD 20785, if you want to see their latest attempts!
You have evidently not read nearly enough of what the "blogosphere" (MAN I hate that word) had to say on the subject. Otherwise you would not refer to much of the analysis as "woefully uninformed." And to sum up the entire analysis as a "brief obsession with kerning" is just silly.
Likewise your notion that the best the bloggers could offer was "cheerleading" from "friends of friends." The credentials of just one analyst:
"I am one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting. I was doing work with computer typesetting technology in 1972 (it actually started in late 1969), and I personally created one of the earliest typesetting programs for what later became laser printers, but in 1970 when this work was first done, lasers were not part of the electronic printer technology (my way of expressing this is "I was working with laser printers before they had lasers", which is only a mild stretch of the truth). We published a paper about our work (graphics, printer hardware, printer software, and typesetting) in one of the important professional journals of the time (D.R. Reddy, W. Broadley, L.D. Erman, R. Johnsson, J. Newcomer, G. Robertson, and J. Wright, "XCRIBL: A Hardcopy Scan Line Graphics System for Document Generation," Information Processing Letters (1972, pp.246-251)). I have been involved in many aspects of computer typography, including computer music typesetting (1987-1990). I have personally created computer fonts, and helped create programs that created computer fonts. At one time in my life, I was a certified Adobe PostScript developer, and could make laser printers practically stand up and tap dance. I have written about Microsoft Windows font technology in a book I co-authored, and taught courses in it. I therefore assert that I am a qualified expert in computer typography."
Perhaps that does not compare with CBS' typewriter repairman (ha), but when this person says "the probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft's Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero," then he says it with quite a fair degree of credibility. Go read http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/newcomer/index.htm and tell me with a straight face that it can be summed up as a "woefully uninformed discussion."
Inconsistencies with Killian's writing style are one indication that the memos are fake, to be sure; but they are most certainly NOT the only ones! All of the discussion regarding proportional spacing, line spacing, superscripting, the almost exact matching of Word's default settings with the memos, and yes, even inconsistencies in the writing style, were all discussed on the blogs, in sometimes excruciating detail, several days before the WaPo horned in and tried to take the credit. To pass it all off as nothing more than getting lucky is itself "woefully uninformed."
I am sure you have rec'd OT comments similar to mine already - however, I must say that your Pentium *can* run Linux, at least a lightweight version of it. And I am not talking floppy-based. My wife has a Pentium 100, 16mb ram, that still performs yeoman service as a gateway/router, running SuSe 7 (no X). So if you want to have some fun, dust off that old machine and put it to work! I have come to love working on that old box. Learning a lot, too.
Well, yeah, since you put it that way, what you say does make more sense. I was not thinking it through all the way, I guess. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me in a "calm and rational manner," haha - a real breath of fresh air, thanks a lot.
BTW, if you have not read any biographical information on Viet Dinh, it is pretty interesting.
Thanks again!:-)
I don't think that was the implication at all. And I certainly don't think the jokester was suggesting that all Vietnamese should be stigmatized by the war. But to the American mind, the Vietnam war *is*, by far and away, the most interesting or important thing about Vietnam. Granted, we do not know if the jokester is even American or not, but given the general composition of Slashdot's audience, we can assume he is, right? Therefore, it seems to me to be especially, uhh, prickly to rag on an American for making a war-related joke about Vietnam.
For example, I once dated a Vietnamese girl who had a cousin named Charlie (I swear I am not making this up). He lived in Cocoa Beach and was a surfer. (you all know what is coming) She told me about him, and I said "well that is strange, because I had always heard that Charlie don't surf," which was so funny to me that I almost pissed my pants. I *still* chuckle about it in fact. It went right over *her* head, btw - so you tell me, was my joke racist? Offensive? To *you* maybe, but not to me and not to her, even after I explained it!!!
I agree - I believe that what most westerners think of when they say "Vietnamese" is the Kinh ethnic group, which comprises some 85% of the population of modern Viet Nam. They certainly are a distinct racial group, by every way most people would define the term. The Hmong, for example, also live within the political entity known as Viet Nam and thus are considered "Vietnamese" (at least by the VN government, haha), but they are not Kinh. They are not what most people think of when they say "Vietnamese."
As far as racial vs. cultural jokes, who can say? I mean, if I taunt, say, a black person from Kenya, by saying "fried chicken" and "watermelon," then would I be a racist? I would tend to think that I would be. Because while it would probably be true that the Kenyan would have no clue what I was talking about, in *my* mind I would be equating a cultural stereotype with all black people - which is the very definition of racist, isn't it?
FIAT = Feeble Italian Attempt at Transportation
FORD = Found on Roadside Dead
Q: Why do the British drink warm beer?
A: Because Lucas makes all their refrigerators!
(Lucas was the firm responsible for the electrical systems in the British car industry in the 70s and early 80s)
Not if it won't do CMYK or vector images, it won't. Well, at least not entirely. You could create the logo in the Gimp, but then it would have to be converted to CMYK in some other software. Also, if they are looking for an easy-to-reproduce logo, vector art is the way to go, and the Gimp is a raster-based program, isn't it? I am looking forward to the day when there is an industrial-strength image editing program for Linux....
Hmmmm....now that you mention it, I think I am not up to 2.4.22 yet. I have an Intel D865PERL board, and man I sure would like to try out Blender and the Gimp with that machine....maybe trying to get 2.4.22 going will be my project for the weekend? Thanks for the advice....
I am very much looking forward to improved hardware support in the 2.6 kernel, because even 2.4.2 doesn't seem to work as advertised. I cannot get Red Hat or Slackware to play nicely with my Maxtor SATA hd (ICH5 on the motherboard), even though SATA support is supposed to be native. Anybody have any info yet on how well 2.6 will work with SATA?
Actually, red is not the "color of poison," it does not mean stop, and people certainly do not avoid it. They are drawn to it. Red certainly DOES command attention - it insists that we notice it. THAT is why it is used for stop signs, red lights, warnings, many flowers, sports cars, sexy dresses, etc - there is no intrinsic warning instinct triggered by red - only the demand to be seen. In fact, in nearly every spoken language, red is the color named most frequently after black and white. Furthermore, "seeing red" causes the brain to release epinephrine, which increases blood pressure and pulse. It actually causes us to breathe faster.
Red is an excellent color to use for branding.
I believe it is a paper pulp processing plant near Emporia, Virginia (right on the border). The chemicals, bleach, etc used in preparing pulp to be made into paper is what generates that one-of-a-kind smell. I'm a bit of a paper geek, and I always get a kick out of the people in the grocery store who specially request paper bags because of some misguided notion that paper is more environmentally friendly than horrible old plastic. Oh if only they knew.....:-)
Oh I almost forgot, if you are in Orlando (Disney, Epcot, etc etc, not far from Kennedy Space Center) do check out the Keyboard Museum (http://www.keyboardmuseum.com/play.html) if you have any interest in vintage synths and electronic keyboards. Awesome collection. And the Orlando Science Center (http://www.osc.org/index.htm). Mostly for younger folk but a lot of neat stuff there for others!!
I second the comment to visit Kennedy Space Center. It is a very enjoyable trip; a great way to spend the day. The Saturn V exhibit alone is worth it! Also, about 3 hours from Titusville, in the central part of the state, are the burgeoning metropoli of Bartow and Mulberry (ha). There are a great many working phosphate mines around there - huge, open-pit monstrosities. Several will give you tours. The drag lines (gigantic cranes) are simply amazing, and some mines will even let you dig for fossils! I found several - some dinosaur bones and fossil sand dollars. Very cool. Not much else in that area though.....
Except that is not really an accurate picture of what the PTO actually *does.* You make it sound as if the PTO merely rubber-stamps any patent application that may have the least bit of potential trouble with lawyers. In reality, the PTO denies many more applications than it allows. For example, from 1996 to 2000 the PTO granted 372,079 patents to US companies and individuals. (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/ us_stat.pdf) During the same period, PTO received 677,440 applications from US companies and individuals. Hardly the results one would expect from "better to pass the patent and pass the buck." And FYI, the average examiner deals with lawyers every day, on the phone and in person.
I don't mean to be argumentative - there is a lot that needs to be fixed with our current system - but it just seems too easy to me to dismiss PTO workers as mindless gov't drones, trying only to collect their paychecks......if that is not what you meant, then I apologize, but that is what it sounds like.....
Slashdot Mirror
I worked in bookstores to help put myself through college, and would quickly become known as the person to send customers to who were asking for those weirdo books on sed and awk or lex and yacc. Even as recently as 2002-2005, though, some bookstores and computer shops still had excellent selections on some pretty obscure topics. Some of the guys who worked at the college back in the early 90s, though, and who had been there since the 50s and 60s -- analog radio and broadcast engineers -- man, those guys were walking encyclopedias. It was great to hear their stories of how the college radio station was first set up, in 1960, and how things were back then. I always felt as if I had missed a really important time in our nation's history.
When email first started becoming a "thing," we used to send emails using a manually edited from field. The real sending info could still be found, but most people back then did not know to look for it. Great fun. Oh and outdials. Good times, good times.
Maryland is testing today and flying this weekend -- it's entirely possible that they may win the prize tomorrow. AeroVelo made some attempts over the past couple weeks, and came very close, but damage to the aircraft has evidently put them out of commission for at least another couple weeks or so -- no chance of them winning it for a while. Hope that helps! Latest news here.
The contest rules state that the height requirement has to be reached only momentarily (albeit by the part of the aircraft closest to the ground). So they can cruise at 4 ft, 5 ft, and then really pump it for a one- or two-second flight up to 10 ft, and then come back down. Which even that is proving far easier said than done -- a third requirement is that some reference origin point on the aircraft must stay within a 10 square meter box, for the entirety of the time requirement. Both the Canada and Maryland teams have suffered some pretty spectacular crashes, trying to meet all three of those requirements. Luckily nobody has been hurt. Yet! The rules don't say anything about a safe or controlled landing!
Well, the craft suffered another malfunction, this time in flight. It appeared that nothing touched the ground or hit anything, it just broke in mid-flight. Nobody was hurt, and it appears that a new record for height was reached, as the last flight unofficially broke nine feet. More info on the team's twitter feed.
Today they unofficially broke nine feet. There was an NAA observer there who will certify the altitude, but even he said it was about 9.3 feet. And if 3 meters is about 9.8 feet, they were really close. Unfortunately, something broke and the vehicle crashed, well short of the required 60 seconds.
It was indeed repaired, and they are preparing to try again for altitude, even now. That is what did them in Thursday, so fingers crossed!
They use the center of the aircraft -- the pilot's position -- as the origin or reference. As long as the reference does not drift beyond the 10 sq meter box, they are good.
Not yet -- the rules of the contest are pretty specific, but basically they have achieved the duration and stability requirements, and have almost gotten the altitude requirements -- but never on the same flight. They are hoping to win the prize today. Interestingly enough, another competing team in Canada is flying this very weekend.
The aircraft was damaged Thursday evening after another attempt at altitude. The team has repaired the craft though and resumed testing just a few minutes ago. The flights are taking place at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex, 8001 Sheriff Road, Landover, MD 20785, if you want to see their latest attempts!
You have evidently not read nearly enough of what the "blogosphere" (MAN I hate that word) had to say on the subject. Otherwise you would not refer to much of the analysis as "woefully uninformed." And to sum up the entire analysis as a "brief obsession with kerning" is just silly.
Likewise your notion that the best the bloggers could offer was "cheerleading" from "friends of friends." The credentials of just one analyst:
"I am one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting. I was doing work with computer typesetting technology in 1972 (it actually started in late 1969), and I personally created one of the earliest typesetting programs for what later became laser printers, but in 1970 when this work was first done, lasers were not part of the electronic printer technology (my way of expressing this is "I was working with laser printers before they had lasers", which is only a mild stretch of the truth). We published a paper about our work (graphics, printer hardware, printer software, and typesetting) in one of the important professional journals of the time (D.R. Reddy, W. Broadley, L.D. Erman, R. Johnsson, J. Newcomer, G. Robertson, and J. Wright, "XCRIBL: A Hardcopy Scan Line Graphics System for Document Generation," Information Processing Letters (1972, pp.246-251)). I have been involved in many aspects of computer typography, including computer music typesetting (1987-1990). I have personally created computer fonts, and helped create programs that created computer fonts. At one time in my life, I was a certified Adobe PostScript developer, and could make laser printers practically stand up and tap dance. I have written about Microsoft Windows font technology in a book I co-authored, and taught courses in it. I therefore assert that I am a qualified expert in computer typography."
Perhaps that does not compare with CBS' typewriter repairman (ha), but when this person says "the probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft's Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero," then he says it with quite a fair degree of credibility. Go read http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/newcomer/index.htm and tell me with a straight face that it can be summed up as a "woefully uninformed discussion."
Inconsistencies with Killian's writing style are one indication that the memos are fake, to be sure; but they are most certainly NOT the only ones! All of the discussion regarding proportional spacing, line spacing, superscripting, the almost exact matching of Word's default settings with the memos, and yes, even inconsistencies in the writing style, were all discussed on the blogs, in sometimes excruciating detail, several days before the WaPo horned in and tried to take the credit. To pass it all off as nothing more than getting lucky is itself "woefully uninformed."
I am sure you have rec'd OT comments similar to mine already - however, I must say that your Pentium *can* run Linux, at least a lightweight version of it. And I am not talking floppy-based. My wife has a Pentium 100, 16mb ram, that still performs yeoman service as a gateway/router, running SuSe 7 (no X). So if you want to have some fun, dust off that old machine and put it to work! I have come to love working on that old box. Learning a lot, too.
Well, yeah, since you put it that way, what you say does make more sense. I was not thinking it through all the way, I guess. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me in a "calm and rational manner," haha - a real breath of fresh air, thanks a lot. BTW, if you have not read any biographical information on Viet Dinh, it is pretty interesting. Thanks again! :-)
I don't think that was the implication at all. And I certainly don't think the jokester was suggesting that all Vietnamese should be stigmatized by the war. But to the American mind, the Vietnam war *is*, by far and away, the most interesting or important thing about Vietnam. Granted, we do not know if the jokester is even American or not, but given the general composition of Slashdot's audience, we can assume he is, right? Therefore, it seems to me to be especially, uhh, prickly to rag on an American for making a war-related joke about Vietnam. For example, I once dated a Vietnamese girl who had a cousin named Charlie (I swear I am not making this up). He lived in Cocoa Beach and was a surfer. (you all know what is coming) She told me about him, and I said "well that is strange, because I had always heard that Charlie don't surf," which was so funny to me that I almost pissed my pants. I *still* chuckle about it in fact. It went right over *her* head, btw - so you tell me, was my joke racist? Offensive? To *you* maybe, but not to me and not to her, even after I explained it!!!
I agree - I believe that what most westerners think of when they say "Vietnamese" is the Kinh ethnic group, which comprises some 85% of the population of modern Viet Nam. They certainly are a distinct racial group, by every way most people would define the term. The Hmong, for example, also live within the political entity known as Viet Nam and thus are considered "Vietnamese" (at least by the VN government, haha), but they are not Kinh. They are not what most people think of when they say "Vietnamese." As far as racial vs. cultural jokes, who can say? I mean, if I taunt, say, a black person from Kenya, by saying "fried chicken" and "watermelon," then would I be a racist? I would tend to think that I would be. Because while it would probably be true that the Kenyan would have no clue what I was talking about, in *my* mind I would be equating a cultural stereotype with all black people - which is the very definition of racist, isn't it?
FIAT = Feeble Italian Attempt at Transportation FORD = Found on Roadside Dead Q: Why do the British drink warm beer? A: Because Lucas makes all their refrigerators! (Lucas was the firm responsible for the electrical systems in the British car industry in the 70s and early 80s)
Not if it won't do CMYK or vector images, it won't. Well, at least not entirely. You could create the logo in the Gimp, but then it would have to be converted to CMYK in some other software. Also, if they are looking for an easy-to-reproduce logo, vector art is the way to go, and the Gimp is a raster-based program, isn't it? I am looking forward to the day when there is an industrial-strength image editing program for Linux....
Hmmmm....now that you mention it, I think I am not up to 2.4.22 yet. I have an Intel D865PERL board, and man I sure would like to try out Blender and the Gimp with that machine....maybe trying to get 2.4.22 going will be my project for the weekend? Thanks for the advice....
Thanks, I have SuSE 8 on another machine - looks like going to 9 might fix my problems! Appreciate the assistance!
I am very much looking forward to improved hardware support in the 2.6 kernel, because even 2.4.2 doesn't seem to work as advertised. I cannot get Red Hat or Slackware to play nicely with my Maxtor SATA hd (ICH5 on the motherboard), even though SATA support is supposed to be native. Anybody have any info yet on how well 2.6 will work with SATA?
Actually, red is not the "color of poison," it does not mean stop, and people certainly do not avoid it. They are drawn to it. Red certainly DOES command attention - it insists that we notice it. THAT is why it is used for stop signs, red lights, warnings, many flowers, sports cars, sexy dresses, etc - there is no intrinsic warning instinct triggered by red - only the demand to be seen. In fact, in nearly every spoken language, red is the color named most frequently after black and white. Furthermore, "seeing red" causes the brain to release epinephrine, which increases blood pressure and pulse. It actually causes us to breathe faster. Red is an excellent color to use for branding.
I believe it is a paper pulp processing plant near Emporia, Virginia (right on the border). The chemicals, bleach, etc used in preparing pulp to be made into paper is what generates that one-of-a-kind smell. I'm a bit of a paper geek, and I always get a kick out of the people in the grocery store who specially request paper bags because of some misguided notion that paper is more environmentally friendly than horrible old plastic. Oh if only they knew..... :-)
Oh I almost forgot, if you are in Orlando (Disney, Epcot, etc etc, not far from Kennedy Space Center) do check out the Keyboard Museum (http://www.keyboardmuseum.com/play.html) if you have any interest in vintage synths and electronic keyboards. Awesome collection. And the Orlando Science Center (http://www.osc.org/index.htm). Mostly for younger folk but a lot of neat stuff there for others!!
I second the comment to visit Kennedy Space Center. It is a very enjoyable trip; a great way to spend the day. The Saturn V exhibit alone is worth it! Also, about 3 hours from Titusville, in the central part of the state, are the burgeoning metropoli of Bartow and Mulberry (ha). There are a great many working phosphate mines around there - huge, open-pit monstrosities. Several will give you tours. The drag lines (gigantic cranes) are simply amazing, and some mines will even let you dig for fossils! I found several - some dinosaur bones and fossil sand dollars. Very cool. Not much else in that area though.....
Except that is not really an accurate picture of what the PTO actually *does.* You make it sound as if the PTO merely rubber-stamps any patent application that may have the least bit of potential trouble with lawyers. In reality, the PTO denies many more applications than it allows. For example, from 1996 to 2000 the PTO granted 372,079 patents to US companies and individuals. (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/ us_stat.pdf) During the same period, PTO received 677,440 applications from US companies and individuals. Hardly the results one would expect from "better to pass the patent and pass the buck." And FYI, the average examiner deals with lawyers every day, on the phone and in person.
I don't mean to be argumentative - there is a lot that needs to be fixed with our current system - but it just seems too easy to me to dismiss PTO workers as mindless gov't drones, trying only to collect their paychecks......if that is not what you meant, then I apologize, but that is what it sounds like.....