Those bastards! I should sue the faculty for forcing me to consume large quantities of alcohol! We actually did some pretty stupid things to blow off some steam back then. Large quantities of beer may or may not have played a role in these antics.
A few years ago I went back to attend a wedding and chatted with one of the more humorless strict faculty member. I was rather shocked when he said that he knew about some of rather wild behavior. He also said that he accepted this because he knew that the faculty were putting us under a great deal of stress, pushing us to our limits. As long as we performed, he and others were willing to look the other way.
But I don't think that he knew *everything* that we did. For instance, I don't think he knows that I once stuck an ax in his door.:)
My parents didn't spend a dime on me when I was in grad school. They also didn't spend a lot when I was an undergrad as I went to an extremely cheap university and also worked. Hmmm, I am now out in the real world and do not work in academia. Plus I love what I do. All I was saying was that grad school can be highly stressful. It can make you a stronger person. It can also leave you disillusioned.
However, the sciences do face an ongoing challenge in that many entering grad students don't fully realize the limited number of job openings in academia. I was fortunate to enter the real-world job market just before the employment crunch hit. Many of my younger friends were not as fortunate.
From my crude set of observations of the real-world, it would seem that many in the IT industry are facing the same set of problems encountered in the sciences. Use, abuse, then toss away young talent.
The dd command is *the* major command if one deals with data/tapes. Get a weird tape? Don't know the format? Don't know the block size? Use dd! Byte swapped? conv=swab! Fricking old IBM EBCDIC character set? conv=ascii.
I always wondered how much of a difference there was between a young IT slave and a graduate student. When I was in grad school my typical day went like this: Wake up, get coffee and donuts, 8 or 9 a.m. class, study, another class, lunch, study or research, dinner, watch the Muppet Show on TV, then go back to study or do research. At around 11 p.m., meet at the campus bar to unwind with my classmates. Close down the bar at 1 a.m., go home and sleep. Repeat M to F.
Catch up on sleep on Saturday morning. Study and do research on the weekends, once again working to about 11, then go to the bar. Occassionally, there would be a party, or we would go to a movie. We weren't being paid a lot, so most of our money went towards rent, food, and beer.
Stress? Homework, exams, research projects, and presentations at meetings contributed to the high stress level. All this takes place while the powers to be are evaluating your worthiness to continue. And then there is your Ph.D. qualifying exam. The stress level before that exam is difficult to describe.
The reward for all of this? A totally unchartered future where you find yourself in a highly competitive environment. Financial rewards? Hopefully a good paying job, but probably no IPO. Did I mention that in some of the sciences, many academic job vacancies attract over 100 applicants? I don't know if this more stressful than the IT business, but IT cannot be much worse.
Go to google and do a search on Tim Kyger. Mucho number of reference. It seems that he is a former Senate senior staff person (Science, Technology, and Space sub-committee) who is now (or was) a lobbyist for Universal Space Network/Lines. It would appear the USL was/is in the reusable space launch vehicle business. USL was founded about a few yrs ago by Pete Conrad, Jr, the former astronaut. Universal Space Network was also founded by Conrad. Here's one interesting quote that I found.
Universal Space Lines bid on NASA SLI (Space Launch Initiative) and lost, then didn't bid on AA (Alternative Access). Much of the USL group of companies' current efforts are focussed on their Universal Space Network spacecraft tracking and communications operation, which has, unlike the low-cost launch business lately, attracted substantial commercial investment.
Kyger is a lobbyist. What he says is probably sincere, but he is still a lobbyist.
After Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown's plane crashed into the side of a mountain, the DoD ordered that GPS be installed in all military aircraft. The Block III Tomahawk cruise missile uses GPS to augment their other navigational/targeting systems.
Do not equate the cheap civilian handheld GPS sets with the military grade equipment.
Jeezus! Boy did I learn a bunch of new words: polypyrrole, genomics, proteomics, polyimide, polyaniline, dodecyl, benzocyclobutene, photopolymerization, electropolymerized, voltammetry, and dimethylsiloxane. I won't even venture a guess of how words started with micro (but no nano's).
I'm pretty knowledgeable in the ways of science (what also floats? A duck!), but even I had problems reading this one. So, raise your hands, who really understood all of this one? Actually I read Science on a regular basis but usually skip over stuff that make my head hurt.
May I remind you that the 20th century's greatest conflicts were World War I & II, which were essentially wars of imperialism, not religion. This is not to say the religion did not play some role. For instance, in WWII Japan believed itself to be chosen ruler of Asia. Did this attitude come from religion? Perhaps yes, but they still would have killed people in other countries that had similiar religious beliefs. Germany wanted revenge for World War I. Furthermore, the Final Solution was an internal ethnic/religious cleaning, not the reason for Germany's imperialism.
WWI had some religious undertones at the beginning, but it was very minor compared to the other factors. The major belligerent nations had been preparing for conflict for many years. An intricate set of alliances that automatically triggered when diplomatic efforts failed.
In the past, great wars were fought because of religious differences. However, religion had a greater control over politics centuries ago. Now national interests supercede religion when it comes to conquest and war.
Jacob Bronowski put it best in the old PBS series, "The Accent of Man." Wars and conflicts happen when humans believe that they have absolute knowledge. This may be due to religious dogma, but it can also happen because of secular reasons (e.g., Hitler). Finally, the various skirmishes that characterized the Cold War (e.g., Angola, Vietnam, Afgahnistan, Korea) were ones of non-religious ideology.
Wow, BOredAtWork and jafac scored -1 redundant. Huh? As a high 4-digit person, I find this highly offensive.:) I would find your posts to be +1 informative. A sengan sighting is news worthy. Sort of like seeing a UFO or Elvis.
Where's pinguin?
IIRC, the/. login user ids started when ppl started posting using nicks like BOredAtWork. Some of you moderators are probably saying, huh? what the hell are you talking about.
I miss Meeept!!!
Re:I don't want to see the Russki's power supply
on
2001: A Space Laptop
·
· Score: 1
Russians will be using a Weiner Power laptop
I think that you (and others) are thinking about a wiener (not weiner) powered laptop. Besides, they're Russians not Germans. They would be more likely to use a potato powered laptop.
A few years ago I was involved in a project (non-CS) concerning metadata attributes for a particular type of data. Much of this past experience is pertinent to this discussion. At the base level some things are obvious:
Name, Title, Organization, Address, Phone #, Fax #, URL, Date, etc... These metadata get assigned to the higher level of metadata such as: Originator, Copyright holder, Maintainer, Mirror Sites, etc...
It gets more complicated at the next description level. For instance, a set of metadata for software would be something like: Programming language, Operating System, Compiler, Library requirements (dependencies), Hardware requirements, License, Distribution restrictions, Lines of code, etc... Along with this would be tags like version number.
Then comes the software description: Application type (e.g., graphic converter, audio playback), User interface, Data input, Data output, Data formats, Batch/Interactive, Algorithms, Previous versions, Code stolen from, etc...
Metadata should be flexible enough to take in new types. Metadata sometimes points to more metadata which points to more metadata. Not all the metadata attributes need to be filled in. One should strongly attempt to standardize some of the key words. Metadata are a bitch to come up with.:-)
Re:Bawls: Official beverege??
on
IT Olympics
·
· Score: 1
Geez, I was hoping that this was going to be a drug and scandal free Olympics. I'm not competing against some hacker artificially pumped up with caffeine, nicotine, and Hostess HoHo's.:-)
Here'e some of the evidence, some stronger than others. Dinosaurs died out 65 MA ago. There was also a mass extinction at this time among other life on this planet (especially in the oceans). Walter Alvarez and collegues (Walter is the son of the Nobel Prize winner, Luis) discover a layer (dated at 65 MA) with an abnormally high level of iridium. Later this layer is found elsewhere on this planet.
Soot from burnt biomass is discovered that date back to 65 MA. IIRC, the soot contains buckyballs (fullerenes). Global wildfires are hypothesized. Paleontologist narrow down the time span during which the dinosaurs disappeared. Micropaleontologist studying seafloor microfossils get a better picture of the "recovery" period after the mass ocean extinctions.
Volcanologist propose an alternative theory; Deccan Traps flood basalt is a likely suspect. Volcano theory has problems with the seafloor microfossil data. However, the impact ppl don't have a crater. Some tsunami deposits identified that seem to support the ocean impact hypothesis. Some (all) of the tsunami deposit evidence later refuted.
Chicxulub crater (Yucan) is discovered and is dated to be 65 MA. Material from Chicxulub found elsewhere. Ocean floor deep-sea drilling project finds previous molten fragments deposited off New Jersey in a sediment layer that date back to 65 MA.
A speculative paper is published (it was previously reject 5 times back in 1990). It hypothesizes that tsunamis caused by the impact will significantly and almost instantaneously alter oceanic hydrostatic pressure. Changes in pressure results in the instant destablization of methane hyrdrates and the release of underlying methane. This methane then burns and is part of the soot that was found.
There more evidence, but this post is getting rather long.
This is interesting. One hopefully good thing about such an device would be to make natural gas more economically viable. If you have ever been a petroleum producing region, you might notice the sight of flames on top oil rigs. What they are doing is burning off the natural gas so that they can later pump the crude oil out without the danger of gas blowouts. Right now it is not economically feasible to save this natural gas.
There is also another potential source of fuel that has been underutilized. Methane is a common by-product of the breakdown of organic material. Under certain conditions undersea sediments accumulate trapped methane. When the temperature and hydrostatic pressure are ideal, then the methane solidifies to form gas hydrates/clathrates. This acts as a solid "cap" that overlies the gaseous methane. There is a lot of gas hydrates trapped in undersea sediments. This resource will be used when the economic factors make methane a viable source of energy.
There is also a fair amount of gas hydrates trapped in the Siberian permafrost. Hmmm, if the permafrost melts, then this will release a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But this is another topic of interest.
Good answer. What is important is your comment about software written by a contractor. This committee understands that there needs to be a common licencing agreement for the development of OSS software for performing high speed computing. Note ppl, high speed computing; that is what this is all about. It is probably not ideal to have NASA contracting out some software development under a restrictive licence, while DOE did the same under a more OSS agreement.
I would also like to point out the government has the option of patenting software applications just like in the commercial sector. In some groups, this is encouraged as a successful patent could be a source of revenue. For instance, the lab that I work at uses revenue from various patents as a sort of slush fund that is controlled by the lab director.
Your last point that one does not have to hand out the source code is also correct. I've had ppl (other government employees) ask me for some of my source code. They were going to then try to use it to show to funders that they were experts in my particular field. Hmmm, for some odd reason they never did get my code.
I kind of surprise by the lack seriousness displayed by some of the posts. Well maybe I shouldn't be surprise. But the rpc exploit is well known and has been a real source of concern as displayed by the various CERT advisories/current activity reports. Keep in mind that CERT is not a TLA.
Last week I downloaded some code, from a popular security web site, which demonstrated this exploit. I was trying to convince somebody that he had to immediately apply the RH patch. So I compiled and ran the program. What the program essential did was: cd/;ls -alF;id
Nice, user id 0, group 0.
BTW, if you do run nfs/portmap, then please use a firewall to block port 111. Furthermore, it also very highly educational to run some net logging software. You'll get a sense of what the script kiddies are looking for.
I heard the rumors that Sun wanted to licence the MacOS GUI. I also heard that other companies wanted to licence the NeXT interface. Then came X Window. There was also rumors about the revolutionary NeXT object oriented programming interface. These, AFAIK, were just rumors and chest thumping manipulatings.
As I said earlier, this was in the midst of the UNIX war. I don't trust any of the manipulations that were done during that time. This backstabbing was the reason why UNIX fragmented. A common GUI would have helped. But the GUI war (that was only practical when workstation graphics matured) then reared its nasty head with the Motif/OpenLook division. NextStep would no have been adopted as the common platform. The PHB had already denuded themselves on the value to their inteface.
I write this rant, but I'm in agreement with your central premise,
I don't quite understand your last statement. By the time NeXT was being established, UNIX had taken a life of its own outside the realm of Bell Labs. This was in the midst of the UNIX wars when many factors were trying to control the future of UNIX. By this time, AT&T had a lesser influence than some of the other computer vendors. I don't understand how Jobs could have had a major impact.
I don't equate the influence of the evolution of the GUI with the surviability of UNIX in the context of the 80's. Furthermore, one should clarity when one says greedy with respect to Jobs. Jobs is driven by his ego. This is greed but not in the usual perspective of a monetary factor.
I remember when fractal compression was the paradigm de jour. Now wavelet compression is the method de jour. The biggest difference is that wavelets are a lot more flexible, robust, and can be highly efficient (if the right wavelet method is used).
The lifting method is highly efficient and sort of represents the FFT equivalent for wavelet transforms. Wavelets also have the major advantage that EE's can understand them as there is the equivalence between some wavelets and bank-filters. Forget theory, EE's will search for a practical solution that may or may not violate pristine mathematical constraints.
Someone also showed me a wavelet compressed movie on a MS Pocket PC based system. Looked good. I also believe that the movie would fit on a CD or a next generation plug-in memory module.
You and I have seen the future. And it will fit in palms of our hand.
I think it must be something like what happened to John Bobbitt (aka Magic Johnson). You know the song.
In the bedroom, the quiet bedroom, John Bobbitt sleeps tonight.
In the kitchen, the quiet kitchen, Lorena grabs a knife.
A wiener whack, a wiener whack,...
As some of you know the Japanese periodically conduct "scientific" whaling studies. A few years ago, this involved the sampling of several minke whales; no other whale species was supposed to involved. After conducting their test, the whale meat was then sold in Japan.
A foreign (American?) scientist wanted to test the veracity of the Japanese claims that only minke whales were killed. So he bought some of the canned whale meat in Japan, then did DNA testing on the meat. Surprise, several other whales species were identified.
Please no flames about the evil or virtue of whaling. You can make OJ jokes, although his DNA was not found in sampled whale meat.:)
Your site was a help to me too! Do you know where I can find a ghostview print driver for an Epson Stylus Color 900?:)
I also can't figure out the moderation abuse that you get. My guess that some are involuntary eunuchs that don't like your domain name or they are jealous of your low-digit/. user number.:)
While the management of government computers is performed by government employees, much of the actual hands on admin work is done by contractors. This has been the general trend (contracting out) that is pervasive as the government has reduced their workforce. Additionally, the government is good at training people (sending them to classes, etc...). However, once trained, some ppl then leave to enter the more lucrative private sector.
An overlooked aspect, is the general need in many agencies for the sysadmin to have a security clearance. This cuts down on the available list of potential workers. Then again, once a person does obtain a security clearance, he/she becomes a more highly desirable employee who is then likely to leave to become a contractor.
So the problem is one of recruitment and retention. And you spelled out some of the problems; lower pay, poor working conditions, and mismanagement. Additionally, cutbacks in funding tend to affect the more junior staff employees. They don't have senority and are easier to RIF (reduction in force). Unfortunately, the ones affected by cutbacks include admin and support ppl.
In the section that I work in, I have seen about a 80% reduction in the computer staff. This has forced me to do sysadmin work (6 computers); I'm really suppose to be doing research. However, I do care about computer security and have spent a considerable amount of time working on this. In routine network security audits, none of my computers have turned up a single warning for the past two years. However, having me do computer security is not the proper way to operate.
I was involved in a case of credit card fraud. I was charged with about $1K worth of charges (in one month) from various gas stations in California. Unfortunately, I don't live there. The credit card rep that I talked to when I reported this was very nice. Asked me for my account number and some identifying info, then brought up my account. She then said, "Oh gawd".
All the fraudulent charges were removed. I later found out that my account number was used, but it had a different name associated with it.
And you are correct, debit cards are definitely another matter. Oh cool. I'm also watching TV (multi-tasking) and they just ran the Western Union story. Where was I? Woops, pre-emptive multi-tasking failure.
There was an outstanding PBS series called the Accent of Man that featured the wisdom and insight of Jacob Bronowski. It was the most profound series that I ever saw. It was much better than Carl Sagan's Cosmo that appeared later. One show was on mankind's search for absolute knowledge, how we search the knowledge of the gods. However, human knowledge is imperfect and our search for absolute understanding is doom to failure.
As a scientist I know all about models and the limitations inherent in them. Challenge the basic assumption and question the models based on them. Never be blinded by absolutism. Lord Kelvin was convinced that the Earth was much younger than that proposed by geologists. Kelvin based his model on the thermal cooling of a molten body. Unfortunately, he did not factor in an additional factor that was just discovered, radioactive heating.
I can't remember what T.C. Chamberlain's exact published quote was in response to Lord Kelvin, but it went something like this: The facinating impressionism of mathematical models with all their precision and elegance should not blind us to the deficits that premise the whole process.
This was published 100 yrs ago. If you need a translation, then here it is: If your fancy pants model is wrong, it is wrong. This also applies for those that choose to predict the future.
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago I went back to attend a wedding and chatted with one of the more humorless strict faculty member. I was rather shocked when he said that he knew about some of rather wild behavior. He also said that he accepted this because he knew that the faculty were putting us under a great deal of stress, pushing us to our limits. As long as we performed, he and others were willing to look the other way.
But I don't think that he knew *everything* that we did. For instance, I don't think he knows that I once stuck an ax in his door. :)
However, the sciences do face an ongoing challenge in that many entering grad students don't fully realize the limited number of job openings in academia. I was fortunate to enter the real-world job market just before the employment crunch hit. Many of my younger friends were not as fortunate.
From my crude set of observations of the real-world, it would seem that many in the IT industry are facing the same set of problems encountered in the sciences. Use, abuse, then toss away young talent.
Here comes the data!
/*
//
The dd command is *the* major command if one deals with data/tapes. Get a weird tape? Don't know the format? Don't know the block size? Use dd! Byte swapped? conv=swab! Fricking old IBM EBCDIC character set? conv=ascii.
Catch up on sleep on Saturday morning. Study and do research on the weekends, once again working to about 11, then go to the bar. Occassionally, there would be a party, or we would go to a movie. We weren't being paid a lot, so most of our money went towards rent, food, and beer.
Stress? Homework, exams, research projects, and presentations at meetings contributed to the high stress level. All this takes place while the powers to be are evaluating your worthiness to continue. And then there is your Ph.D. qualifying exam. The stress level before that exam is difficult to describe.
The reward for all of this? A totally unchartered future where you find yourself in a highly competitive environment. Financial rewards? Hopefully a good paying job, but probably no IPO. Did I mention that in some of the sciences, many academic job vacancies attract over 100 applicants? I don't know if this more stressful than the IT business, but IT cannot be much worse.
Universal Space Lines bid on NASA SLI (Space Launch Initiative) and lost, then didn't bid on AA (Alternative Access). Much of the USL group of companies' current efforts are focussed on their Universal Space Network spacecraft tracking and communications operation, which has, unlike the low-cost launch business lately, attracted substantial commercial investment.
Kyger is a lobbyist. What he says is probably sincere, but he is still a lobbyist.
Do not equate the cheap civilian handheld GPS sets with the military grade equipment.
I'm pretty knowledgeable in the ways of science (what also floats? A duck!), but even I had problems reading this one. So, raise your hands, who really understood all of this one? Actually I read Science on a regular basis but usually skip over stuff that make my head hurt.
Still, this is a pretty cool device.
WWI had some religious undertones at the beginning, but it was very minor compared to the other factors. The major belligerent nations had been preparing for conflict for many years. An intricate set of alliances that automatically triggered when diplomatic efforts failed.
In the past, great wars were fought because of religious differences. However, religion had a greater control over politics centuries ago. Now national interests supercede religion when it comes to conquest and war.
Jacob Bronowski put it best in the old PBS series, "The Accent of Man." Wars and conflicts happen when humans believe that they have absolute knowledge. This may be due to religious dogma, but it can also happen because of secular reasons (e.g., Hitler). Finally, the various skirmishes that characterized the Cold War (e.g., Angola, Vietnam, Afgahnistan, Korea) were ones of non-religious ideology.
Where's pinguin?
IIRC, the /. login user ids started when ppl started posting using nicks like BOredAtWork. Some of you moderators are probably saying, huh? what the hell are you talking about.
I miss Meeept!!!
I think that you (and others) are thinking about a wiener (not weiner) powered laptop. Besides, they're Russians not Germans. They would be more likely to use a potato powered laptop.
Name, Title, Organization, Address, Phone #, Fax #, URL, Date, etc... These metadata get assigned to the higher level of metadata such as: Originator, Copyright holder, Maintainer, Mirror Sites, etc...
It gets more complicated at the next description level. For instance, a set of metadata for software would be something like: Programming language, Operating System, Compiler, Library requirements (dependencies), Hardware requirements, License, Distribution restrictions, Lines of code, etc... Along with this would be tags like version number.
Then comes the software description: Application type (e.g., graphic converter, audio playback), User interface, Data input, Data output, Data formats, Batch/Interactive, Algorithms, Previous versions, Code stolen from, etc...
Metadata should be flexible enough to take in new types. Metadata sometimes points to more metadata which points to more metadata. Not all the metadata attributes need to be filled in. One should strongly attempt to standardize some of the key words. Metadata are a bitch to come up with.:-)
Geez, I was hoping that this was going to be a drug and scandal free Olympics. I'm not competing against some hacker artificially pumped up with caffeine, nicotine, and Hostess HoHo's.:-)
Soot from burnt biomass is discovered that date back to 65 MA. IIRC, the soot contains buckyballs (fullerenes). Global wildfires are hypothesized. Paleontologist narrow down the time span during which the dinosaurs disappeared. Micropaleontologist studying seafloor microfossils get a better picture of the "recovery" period after the mass ocean extinctions.
Volcanologist propose an alternative theory; Deccan Traps flood basalt is a likely suspect. Volcano theory has problems with the seafloor microfossil data. However, the impact ppl don't have a crater. Some tsunami deposits identified that seem to support the ocean impact hypothesis. Some (all) of the tsunami deposit evidence later refuted.
Chicxulub crater (Yucan) is discovered and is dated to be 65 MA. Material from Chicxulub found elsewhere. Ocean floor deep-sea drilling project finds previous molten fragments deposited off New Jersey in a sediment layer that date back to 65 MA.
A speculative paper is published (it was previously reject 5 times back in 1990). It hypothesizes that tsunamis caused by the impact will significantly and almost instantaneously alter oceanic hydrostatic pressure. Changes in pressure results in the instant destablization of methane hyrdrates and the release of underlying methane. This methane then burns and is part of the soot that was found.
There more evidence, but this post is getting rather long.
There is also another potential source of fuel that has been underutilized. Methane is a common by-product of the breakdown of organic material. Under certain conditions undersea sediments accumulate trapped methane. When the temperature and hydrostatic pressure are ideal, then the methane solidifies to form gas hydrates/clathrates. This acts as a solid "cap" that overlies the gaseous methane. There is a lot of gas hydrates trapped in undersea sediments. This resource will be used when the economic factors make methane a viable source of energy.
There is also a fair amount of gas hydrates trapped in the Siberian permafrost. Hmmm, if the permafrost melts, then this will release a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But this is another topic of interest.
I would also like to point out the government has the option of patenting software applications just like in the commercial sector. In some groups, this is encouraged as a successful patent could be a source of revenue. For instance, the lab that I work at uses revenue from various patents as a sort of slush fund that is controlled by the lab director.
Your last point that one does not have to hand out the source code is also correct. I've had ppl (other government employees) ask me for some of my source code. They were going to then try to use it to show to funders that they were experts in my particular field. Hmmm, for some odd reason they never did get my code.
Last week I downloaded some code, from a popular security web site, which demonstrated this exploit. I was trying to convince somebody that he had to immediately apply the RH patch. So I compiled and ran the program. What the program essential did was: cd /;ls -alF;id
Nice, user id 0, group 0.
BTW, if you do run nfs/portmap, then please use a firewall to block port 111. Furthermore, it also very highly educational to run some net logging software. You'll get a sense of what the script kiddies are looking for.
As I said earlier, this was in the midst of the UNIX war. I don't trust any of the manipulations that were done during that time. This backstabbing was the reason why UNIX fragmented. A common GUI would have helped. But the GUI war (that was only practical when workstation graphics matured) then reared its nasty head with the Motif/OpenLook division. NextStep would no have been adopted as the common platform. The PHB had already denuded themselves on the value to their inteface.
I write this rant, but I'm in agreement with your central premise,
I don't equate the influence of the evolution of the GUI with the surviability of UNIX in the context of the 80's. Furthermore, one should clarity when one says greedy with respect to Jobs. Jobs is driven by his ego. This is greed but not in the usual perspective of a monetary factor.
The lifting method is highly efficient and sort of represents the FFT equivalent for wavelet transforms. Wavelets also have the major advantage that EE's can understand them as there is the equivalence between some wavelets and bank-filters. Forget theory, EE's will search for a practical solution that may or may not violate pristine mathematical constraints.
Someone also showed me a wavelet compressed movie on a MS Pocket PC based system. Looked good. I also believe that the movie would fit on a CD or a next generation plug-in memory module.
You and I have seen the future. And it will fit in palms of our hand.
In the bedroom, the quiet bedroom, John Bobbitt sleeps tonight. ...
In the kitchen, the quiet kitchen, Lorena grabs a knife.
A wiener whack, a wiener whack,
A foreign (American?) scientist wanted to test the veracity of the Japanese claims that only minke whales were killed. So he bought some of the canned whale meat in Japan, then did DNA testing on the meat. Surprise, several other whales species were identified.
Please no flames about the evil or virtue of whaling. You can make OJ jokes, although his DNA was not found in sampled whale meat.:)
I also can't figure out the moderation abuse that you get. My guess that some are involuntary eunuchs that don't like your domain name or they are jealous of your low-digit /. user number.:)
An overlooked aspect, is the general need in many agencies for the sysadmin to have a security clearance. This cuts down on the available list of potential workers. Then again, once a person does obtain a security clearance, he/she becomes a more highly desirable employee who is then likely to leave to become a contractor.
So the problem is one of recruitment and retention. And you spelled out some of the problems; lower pay, poor working conditions, and mismanagement. Additionally, cutbacks in funding tend to affect the more junior staff employees. They don't have senority and are easier to RIF (reduction in force). Unfortunately, the ones affected by cutbacks include admin and support ppl.
In the section that I work in, I have seen about a 80% reduction in the computer staff. This has forced me to do sysadmin work (6 computers); I'm really suppose to be doing research. However, I do care about computer security and have spent a considerable amount of time working on this. In routine network security audits, none of my computers have turned up a single warning for the past two years. However, having me do computer security is not the proper way to operate.
All the fraudulent charges were removed. I later found out that my account number was used, but it had a different name associated with it.
And you are correct, debit cards are definitely another matter. Oh cool. I'm also watching TV (multi-tasking) and they just ran the Western Union story. Where was I? Woops, pre-emptive multi-tasking failure.
As a scientist I know all about models and the limitations inherent in them. Challenge the basic assumption and question the models based on them. Never be blinded by absolutism. Lord Kelvin was convinced that the Earth was much younger than that proposed by geologists. Kelvin based his model on the thermal cooling of a molten body. Unfortunately, he did not factor in an additional factor that was just discovered, radioactive heating.
I can't remember what T.C. Chamberlain's exact published quote was in response to Lord Kelvin, but it went something like this: The facinating impressionism of mathematical models with all their precision and elegance should not blind us to the deficits that premise the whole process.
This was published 100 yrs ago. If you need a translation, then here it is: If your fancy pants model is wrong, it is wrong. This also applies for those that choose to predict the future.