When I was working at a factory last year, I was part of an IT team supporting 1000+ PCs. An idea I thought of, but haven't had much time or chance to flesh out, was a "peer-redundant file system," whereas all those computers could have background hosts serving up a specified amount of space for use by anyone on the same network. The space would be treated like a block of sectors on a network-based drive, allocated by a master server, and made redundant through a desired number of hosts (anytime data gets posted, it should go to at least one random host, plus any more needed for redundancy). As people leave systems on, or turn them off, their shares could be updated by peers or the master server, and be able to sustain the desired space with as few as 1/3 hosts. Using the space would be easy: all client systems would have the same mount or drive letter, with the background software managing the behavior of the drive.
This situation solves two problems: one, having a network file share run out of space; two, a need for redundant backup. I suspect it could be done using exisiting peer-sharing software as a core.
These lists of banned books often provoke the idea of what is to be banned, or controlled for that matter. The other night, I stumbled across Vigilence, a Macromedia game where you watch cameras and try to catch people committing certain crimes. The catch is that while looking for one crime, another could be occuring, and failing to punish offenses, leads to more offenses.
As for books, at the end of my senior year in High School, I inadvertantly got Billions and Billions recommeded to be stocked in the school library. At least Sagan's works aren't being banned, but they do espouse ideas conservatives may find anethema (limitations of religion; abortion feasibility; science as the savior of the people; etc). Its a lot harder to get someone for ideas, than it is for mere words.
150-170KBs over Sprint-Earthlink DSL, using Firefox 0.9.3. Thanks for the post, of course.
Also been a beta tester of RC1 & RC2: RC2 still had bugs, but performance has been excellent, and the firewall works a lot better than it did in RC1. We'll see how this pans out: I get to unload RC2 first, load this, fix my apps...
I read this book after 9-11, and it talked a lot about the desire of foreign companies, American included, to build oil pipelines to get at new finds near the Caspian Sea, and pipe it to ports in Pakistan & India. As the Taliban expanded control over the region in the 90s, the U.S. originally supported their "stability," and oil companies courted them to ensure construction could proceed. Obviously, when Bin Laden began attacking U.S. installations, the desired stability evaporated. The book ends in late 2000, before 9-11 and the assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Massoud. If anyone wants a good followup, National Geographic had an article in late 2001.
I got my WinTV card back in 1999 around the time I had an AMD K6-3-400 processor on a VIA MVP3 chipset. Besides the occasional lockups (MVP3 was not a good chipset), I was able to encode into Windows Media back then, and DivX & MPEG now on my XP1800+. Worked "out-of-box" in BeOS PE 5, and Linux support has been good: sound support was the only hangup I encountered (try getting it to play nice with a s***ty ISA sound card). The only reason I'd need a newer one is for stereo sound & guaranteed encoding past 320x240 res (the Windows drivers have a quirk, but I remember being able to do 640x480 before).
I found this little gem
while going over AMD64 reviews...
#8, I'm typing this on an XP2100+ and we can both sleep soundly tonight knowing this has nothing to do with my ego or with blinders. I am farting sunshine over the fact the A64 performs so well clock-for-clock and I am looking forward to building my next workstation as a 64-bit platform.
Granted it was a few months back, but I think we're all farting sunshine now.
I finished a project for my last employer @ the beginning of May. Some tweaking of the resume; a lot of advice; and 150+ resumes later I've had 5 job interviews. 2 of those interviews have been for helpdesk positions: 2 certs and working with desktops since HS, I should be qualified to work @ a help desk. Personally, I think I've been passed up for those positions because my field experience negates any "joy" I'd derive from doing "User Friendly" work. If I have to consider delivering pizzas as the only way to make $10/hr (Central Florida is NOT a tech-mecca), I can certainly work a "lesser" IT job.
Having said that, there's 2 things I'm aware of when trying to get a job...
1. Location, location, location. My last interview was yesterday: already been turned down, but it would've been an 80-mile commute (Palm Bay to Orlando-Alafaya; the high-tech firms are outside Orlando or near the Melbourne airport) until I moved out of my folks' place. West Palm Beach, I'd need to find a roommate; Tampa, there are friends & relatives there.
2. I think its cheaper for companies to reject prospects despite personal pleas: my generation is the first to be heavily drug-tested, and I've already had a few jobs where peeing in a cup & background screenings are mandated, and they didn't even pay $9/hr! If an employer has to spend $200-$1000 to make sure you're the equivalent of a Christian Saint, they're going to be more scrupulous of whom they hire.
Basically you're saying "poleshift," as the incredulous call it, is a symptom & not a cause? That could work: however, you have to be wary of those that have been lead to believe it to be a cause.
As far as the things I've read, magnetism has no real effect on climate. Poleshifts do not tend to corrolate with mass extinction events either. Birds may get lost, and we may get nice Aurora, but otherwise don't expect anything to happen like in "The Core."
1. I was attempting to find articles to suppliment the story at hand. The aerosol thing looked interesting & I only vaguely remember hearing about it before. Otherwise, I've been reading up on this stuff as I come across it for years now.
2. The only sprays I use are cleaning sprays: I gel my hair & use stick deodorant. If you live in the US, CFCs have been banned from sprays since 1978 anyhow: before I was even born.
3. Republican? Hah! Maybe the people around here (Brevard County, FL), but I'm actually a Democrat who would like to own a hybrid & doesn't mind nuclear power.
4. I orignally submitted the story with an 'Ironic' title. I am fully aware of the situation with Greenland & Antarctica. The article in question only refers to the situation @ the North Pole. If anyone wishes to search Google, or go back over the other 500 posts, they can discern that the land-ice issue is of concern & is plenty addressed.
5. I was stupid on one thing: I didn't remember why the water ice wouldn't be a problem with water levels. But we're all here to learn, aren't we?
I saw that note on the Gulfstream being cooled by more polar water. I wonder if a cooler Gulfstream would reduce hurricanes, but otherwise Europe in general could feel more like Alaska does now.
Reactor design article by Scientific American
Read that article in print before & it talked about using spheres to contain the nuclear fuel, like a giant gumball machine spitting out spent fuel balls. Discover or SciAm also had an article in the past year regarding cleanup of exisiting sites: apparently, the rules as they are now, or proposed, suggest people may actually want less radiation there than NATURALLY occurs!
I also grew up watching "Silkwood" & reading about Chernobyl, so you're going to have the nuclear genie in people's heads for a long time. Also consider if we're producing enough nuclear engineers or not to keep the existing plants running, let alone expand nuclear use. I live not far from Kennedy Space Center, and there were people in this county opposing a new gas plant being built out by the swamplands; mix that with the blurbs about the proposed wind field in Martha's Vineyard: for ANY plant, there will be a "Not In My Backyard" issue.
Before I was introduced to Snopes by my humanities teacher 2 years ago, I had found a "Straight Dope" book that had some questions like those addressed by Snopes: urban legends & "my friend said" kind-of-stuff. Cecil Adams (no relation) and his crew publish their stuff online @ http://www.straightdope.com
By the way, I've also been known to my friends to send them to Snopes on a regular basis for the "crap" they love to fill my email box with. There's a lot of disinformation floating around out there.
If anyone's interested, I have made a Win32 GUI port of rfstool on my website. I found Kurz's tool 2 months ago & thought it'd be nice to have something like Explore2fs. Open source works!
RFSGUI is at http://rain.prohosting.com/mpadams/map
*. Kurz is nice enough to link to a few other GUIs on his site. My link would still work if koolhost.com hadn't been taken down a month or two ago: I have no idea who runs that server now, but their main page is complete junk.
For the most of my life, I have said that "life is irony." Irony is not something you so much look back on & think about: it is more often applicable to a situation that develops. I believe I also saw someone mention coincidence: if you consider coincidence a form of irony, then you must also consider irony to be a "modifier" on reality; coincidences are sometimes considered miracles by those who must seek their faith in all things, in order to comprehend them. I am not a man of faith, and would rather apply irony as an "anti-miracle:" more like a joke of the Gods vs. an act of salvation. Irony is one of those tools people use to rationalize their existence: I have had a not so stable life, so I use irony for that purpose; it brings order & meaning to my worldview.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was working at a factory last year, I was part of an IT team supporting 1000+ PCs. An idea I thought of, but haven't had much time or chance to flesh out, was a "peer-redundant file system," whereas all those computers could have background hosts serving up a specified amount of space for use by anyone on the same network. The space would be treated like a block of sectors on a network-based drive, allocated by a master server, and made redundant through a desired number of hosts (anytime data gets posted, it should go to at least one random host, plus any more needed for redundancy). As people leave systems on, or turn them off, their shares could be updated by peers or the master server, and be able to sustain the desired space with as few as 1/3 hosts. Using the space would be easy: all client systems would have the same mount or drive letter, with the background software managing the behavior of the drive.
This situation solves two problems: one, having a network file share run out of space; two, a need for redundant backup. I suspect it could be done using exisiting peer-sharing software as a core.
These lists of banned books often provoke the idea of what is to be banned, or controlled for that matter. The other night, I stumbled across Vigilence, a Macromedia game where you watch cameras and try to catch people committing certain crimes. The catch is that while looking for one crime, another could be occuring, and failing to punish offenses, leads to more offenses.
As for books, at the end of my senior year in High School, I inadvertantly got Billions and Billions recommeded to be stocked in the school library. At least Sagan's works aren't being banned, but they do espouse ideas conservatives may find anethema (limitations of religion; abortion feasibility; science as the savior of the people; etc). Its a lot harder to get someone for ideas, than it is for mere words.
150-170KBs over Sprint-Earthlink DSL, using Firefox 0.9.3. Thanks for the post, of course.
Also been a beta tester of RC1 & RC2: RC2 still had bugs, but performance has been excellent, and the firewall works a lot better than it did in RC1. We'll see how this pans out: I get to unload RC2 first, load this, fix my apps...
"Taliban," by Ahmed Rashid
I read this book after 9-11, and it talked a lot about the desire of foreign companies, American included, to build oil pipelines to get at new finds near the Caspian Sea, and pipe it to ports in Pakistan & India. As the Taliban expanded control over the region in the 90s, the U.S. originally supported their "stability," and oil companies courted them to ensure construction could proceed. Obviously, when Bin Laden began attacking U.S. installations, the desired stability evaporated. The book ends in late 2000, before 9-11 and the assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Massoud. If anyone wants a good followup, National Geographic had an article in late 2001.
Latest Yahoo story
The Brazilians dispute "Catarina" isn't a hurricane. But they've never had one before. (shrugs)
1. I first found out about the storm on Weather Underground.
;)
2. Dvorak Source
3. CNN's 1st page on it. 4. CNN's follow-up page on it.
*. Hats off to the person that beat me to a first post.
1. "Twelve Days of Christmas:" you get 6 "geese a laying" & 4 "calling birds," but 5 expensive "gold rings." You can shoot the birds. ;)
2. 5 is not an even number: it makes slow people stop thinking when they try to divide it.
3. A family of 5 usually means 2 parents & 3 children: nobody wants to be the middle child.
I got my WinTV card back in 1999 around the time I had an AMD K6-3-400 processor on a VIA MVP3 chipset. Besides the occasional lockups (MVP3 was not a good chipset), I was able to encode into Windows Media back then, and DivX & MPEG now on my XP1800+. Worked "out-of-box" in BeOS PE 5, and Linux support has been good: sound support was the only hangup I encountered (try getting it to play nice with a s***ty ISA sound card). The only reason I'd need a newer one is for stereo sound & guaranteed encoding past 320x240 res (the Windows drivers have a quirk, but I remember being able to do 640x480 before).
I found this little gem while going over AMD64 reviews...
#8, I'm typing this on an XP2100+ and we can both sleep soundly tonight knowing this has nothing to do with my ego or with blinders. I am farting sunshine over the fact the A64 performs so well clock-for-clock and I am looking forward to building my next workstation as a 64-bit platform.
Granted it was a few months back, but I think we're all farting sunshine now.
Maybe we can hire gnomes for the job.
Wait: he lost his.
Damn.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005B4B 6-1CEC-1F5D-905980A84189EEDF&catID=2
They covered it quite extensively in the latest issue.
I finished a project for my last employer @ the beginning of May. Some tweaking of the resume; a lot of advice; and 150+ resumes later I've had 5 job interviews. 2 of those interviews have been for helpdesk positions: 2 certs and working with desktops since HS, I should be qualified to work @ a help desk. Personally, I think I've been passed up for those positions because my field experience negates any "joy" I'd derive from doing "User Friendly" work. If I have to consider delivering pizzas as the only way to make $10/hr (Central Florida is NOT a tech-mecca), I can certainly work a "lesser" IT job.
Having said that, there's 2 things I'm aware of when trying to get a job...
1. Location, location, location. My last interview was yesterday: already been turned down, but it would've been an 80-mile commute (Palm Bay to Orlando-Alafaya; the high-tech firms are outside Orlando or near the Melbourne airport) until I moved out of my folks' place. West Palm Beach, I'd need to find a roommate; Tampa, there are friends & relatives there.
2. I think its cheaper for companies to reject prospects despite personal pleas: my generation is the first to be heavily drug-tested, and I've already had a few jobs where peeing in a cup & background screenings are mandated, and they didn't even pay $9/hr! If an employer has to spend $200-$1000 to make sure you're the equivalent of a Christian Saint, they're going to be more scrupulous of whom they hire.
Basically you're saying "poleshift," as the incredulous call it, is a symptom & not a cause? That could work: however, you have to be wary of those that have been lead to believe it to be a cause.
Hey, if you live by Orlando, you'd realize that it still gets pretty damn cold in Winter. That's also when there are the least amount of tourists ;)
As far as the things I've read, magnetism has no real effect on climate. Poleshifts do not tend to corrolate with mass extinction events either. Birds may get lost, and we may get nice Aurora, but otherwise don't expect anything to happen like in "The Core."
1. I was attempting to find articles to suppliment the story at hand. The aerosol thing looked interesting & I only vaguely remember hearing about it before. Otherwise, I've been reading up on this stuff as I come across it for years now.
2. The only sprays I use are cleaning sprays: I gel my hair & use stick deodorant. If you live in the US, CFCs have been banned from sprays since 1978 anyhow: before I was even born.
3. Republican? Hah! Maybe the people around here (Brevard County, FL), but I'm actually a Democrat who would like to own a hybrid & doesn't mind nuclear power.
4. I orignally submitted the story with an 'Ironic' title. I am fully aware of the situation with Greenland & Antarctica. The article in question only refers to the situation @ the North Pole. If anyone wishes to search Google, or go back over the other 500 posts, they can discern that the land-ice issue is of concern & is plenty addressed.
5. I was stupid on one thing: I didn't remember why the water ice wouldn't be a problem with water levels. But we're all here to learn, aren't we?
I saw that note on the Gulfstream being cooled by more polar water. I wonder if a cooler Gulfstream would reduce hurricanes, but otherwise Europe in general could feel more like Alaska does now.
Reactor design article by Scientific American
Read that article in print before & it talked about using spheres to contain the nuclear fuel, like a giant gumball machine spitting out spent fuel balls. Discover or SciAm also had an article in the past year regarding cleanup of exisiting sites: apparently, the rules as they are now, or proposed, suggest people may actually want less radiation there than NATURALLY occurs! I also grew up watching "Silkwood" & reading about Chernobyl, so you're going to have the nuclear genie in people's heads for a long time. Also consider if we're producing enough nuclear engineers or not to keep the existing plants running, let alone expand nuclear use. I live not far from Kennedy Space Center, and there were people in this county opposing a new gas plant being built out by the swamplands; mix that with the blurbs about the proposed wind field in Martha's Vineyard: for ANY plant, there will be a "Not In My Backyard" issue.
Before I was introduced to Snopes by my humanities teacher 2 years ago, I had found a "Straight Dope" book that had some questions like those addressed by Snopes: urban legends & "my friend said" kind-of-stuff. Cecil Adams (no relation) and his crew publish their stuff online @ http://www.straightdope.com By the way, I've also been known to my friends to send them to Snopes on a regular basis for the "crap" they love to fill my email box with. There's a lot of disinformation floating around out there.
If anyone's interested, I have made a Win32 GUI port of rfstool on my website. I found Kurz's tool 2 months ago & thought it'd be nice to have something like Explore2fs. Open source works!
RFSGUI is at http://rain.prohosting.com/mpadams/map
*. Kurz is nice enough to link to a few other GUIs on his site. My link would still work if koolhost.com hadn't been taken down a month or two ago: I have no idea who runs that server now, but their main page is complete junk.
For the most of my life, I have said that "life is irony." Irony is not something you so much look back on & think about: it is more often applicable to a situation that develops. I believe I also saw someone mention coincidence: if you consider coincidence a form of irony, then you must also consider irony to be a "modifier" on reality; coincidences are sometimes considered miracles by those who must seek their faith in all things, in order to comprehend them. I am not a man of faith, and would rather apply irony as an "anti-miracle:" more like a joke of the Gods vs. an act of salvation. Irony is one of those tools people use to rationalize their existence: I have had a not so stable life, so I use irony for that purpose; it brings order & meaning to my worldview.