The CERN SPS control room had carpet on the walls. This to stop us hurting ourselves when it all got too much and the headbanging started.
There were also jokes
>> Also, comparing Tritium to Plutonium is pretty weak sauce as well. They are only alike in that they're both radioactive.
And they both end in -ium. That's pretty significant. Like Strontium and Boneium.
OK, maybe not
Acceleration is done by RF power : the magnetic fields bends the particles round the ring, and focusses the beams (yes, that is an acceleration, but ramping up to the TeVs is RF)
Most of the UK is SI now. Road signs still use miles and you can get two metres of two-by-four but it's liable to be 5cm by 10cm, whatever it's called.
And asking for a kilo of tomatoes got me 'That's two pounds, sir, and f*ck the French'
>> That's not to say that C++ isn't important. It is, because of its widespread adoption. It is baroque, however.
I beg to differ. It is byzantine. Or perhaps gothic.
Whatever, it ain't post-modern.
And do it. There's plenty of FOSS projects who could do with some help. When you've got a job to do, you'll get the idea of what tools to use.
Maybe it's kernel, maybe it's AJAX. Find the job and then find the tools. If you're any good, a new language will give you a week of pure panic followed by....oh, I get this....
My nightmare has been people who had deep, even obsessive, knowledge of X, X++ and Z-- and little ability to analyse the problem in the first place.
From PDP assembler to Javascript and Java, it's how to find the appropriate 'ammer, not being a pin-hammer specialist.
Except Cobol, of course. You're safe there.
I'd back that.In the UK there are various journalistic columns that do this kind of story - the Beeb, the Grauniad etc run them
Get hold of PR for Dell (if they have such a thing) and mention the basics of the story and who it's going to. That'll rattle their cage.
It's quite unacceptable as customer service for anyone, but you've got an awful lot of cred so you'll frighten the hell out of their PR.
Then you can tell CNN anyway
If anyone at Dell PR reads slashdot you'll probably get a pre-emptive laptop drop pretty sharpish. If they have any sense.
Oh, wait...
If it is real (that is, an indication of underlying physics) the probability of doing it again is close to 1, and the LHC will certainly be able to help that.
If it's an artifact - from detector response, or mistaken analysis, or whatever - the Fermi physicists will find that out.
So, it'll get sorted one way or another. The interesting result would be new physics, but either way it'll get done.
Interesting. I'd guess that the Tev and the SPS (which is now the LHC injector) are sort of the-same-money physics, in real terms, as the LHC. But I don't know. The SSC, which was going to reach higher energy than the LHC, got far too expensive, mostly because of gross mismanagement. Disclaimer: I've worked on all the mentioned machines, and the demise of SSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider hurt a lot.
you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows
I'm very fond of X, it has done and still does a good job, even if it is bit-wise braindead
But when I saw that line I got sardine sandwich on the damn screen. What on earth is Mr Kay on about?
That's the point. Does it need to run Vista? I think not. I have a box with a 486 in it, it still does what it was supposed to do. (yes, linux)
I doubt there's any NASA engineers lusting for a dual-core whoopie-doo. They just want their backup to come alive, after all these years.
The original deserves a medal, for service beyond, and a pension. Perhaps it could run for president.
I did a gig at M*rg*n St*nl*y in London for a couple of months, on the options floor.
I got that via a connection to Standford theoretical physicist who'd found loadsa money that way (I used to be a CERN experimentalist).
They were all fascinated with the Black-Scholes pde; but no-one - I mean NO-ONE - had any clue what the model was about.
They just hired geeks to make up a number.
One of the in-house coders (and they are good coders, and paid) had to stick a random-number generator onto the back of a calculator for a set of exotics.
He presented the available information. It wasn't 'accurate' enough. So - quit, or stick in spurions. He did the latter.
It is NOT rubbish data in. It's a complete inability to understand what to do with the data.
Offtopic.
Should they pull their heads (plural) out of their arse (singular).
Do they have their individual heads up a collective arse, or each one up their own arse, or some sort of ring of head up the next arse?
Sorry, too late, it just made me laugh.
Data is generated at a huge rate, then filtered by smart fast analysis at various levels. Possibly both numbers are right - 4 orders of magnitude of realtime rejection before you write the rest to media.
What you do write is mostly rubbish, and (one) of the clever things to do is not to junk the good stuff during your realtime
I don't work on LHC (I went to the wrong one, SSC) but those ratios seem OK from my time on SPS (now the LHC injector)
The ratios don't change, but the numbers do - the SPS control system ran with a main winchester of 70 megabytes, the size of a washing machine, which would occasionally go walkabout when the head crashed. Shows how ancient I am
And you, sir, are quite right.
To the people who are moaning about heavy work put out free and unencumbered on the web:
Type 'Totem experiment lhc' into google. Then you'll get CERN general-purpose descriptions or the hairy details.
All sorts of levels of detail.Choose what you want.
If you can't be arsed, don't whine that it isn't spoon fed.
Better, spend some time looking into it. This stuff ain't easy, but it is wonderful.
And yes, I am a physicist, although my time at CERN was in SPS and LEP days, and then the ill-fated SSC
Feynman had authority, but he also had genius. What he said was crazy, but then you thought Holy crap, that's so obvious I should have thought of it myself. The authority meant you gave him a lot more time than the people who write letters in purple ink showing why Einstein was wrong. Feynman was also a mean bongo player, and a really lovely man. He was one of the great physicists. I tell my grandchild that I had lunch with a Great Man in Fermilab cafeteria. Grandchild is not impressed, as he's not yet two, but one day....
I did the sum in reply. I think your response is more satisfying; at least I got a smile out of it instead of...oh, horror at people's ability to quote technical from a basis of complete ignorance.
As it happens, a lot of this sort of stuff is answered quite gently in the NIST's
FAQ
But that would require reading
Gravity gives an acceleration of 32 ft/sec/sec. That's not a constant velocity. Falling things start off slow, get faster up to a limit which is determined by shape, air resistance etc
Drop a cannon-ball from 741 ft, solve 2*s = f*t^2 for t, you get about 6 seconds. It took longer because it wasn't free-falling.
Your sum is incorrect
Chaos theory isn't in it
NIST may be lying, but what you say is wrong, and irrelevant
Correct. It's probably less likely with postgres, because it isn't as common, but I could write crap code on my linux/tomcat/postgres stack to let in such an attack. Well, I say I could, but I'd probably bite my arm off first.
No, I don't necessarily feel screwed at all. Ryanair seems to be asking me to pay taxes and airport fees to the tune of about 20 quid, and something else including 'Wheelchair levy' which is a bit more. It is a bit ingenuous, but I'm not into a 200 quid flight, the whole shebang is 230 quid for three adults.Including the taxes etc etc
It's better than the bullshit of the old airlines - TWA, Delta and so on - who ripped you and pretended they were doing you a favour. At least these guys are honest - it's shit, it's cheap, deal with it
Well, it's sort of a fib. It's PR release, not what's on the site. It ends up you pay a lot more than the 5 quid, but O'Leary moans on about all the other government stuff you have to pay.
As it happens, I've been poking around the net for a flight london-> pisa and back; my flight times are constrained and the Ryanair site is by far the best price, and pretty honest about what the price is. Reading the small print I could be in for an extra 5 euro or so if I don't check in in the approved manner.
And for one of the return flights, the ticket was quoted as £0 - total cost about £35 with taxes.
But you're right, it is intended to mislead. On the other hand, they shake up the others and on balance probably help the consumer.
It is stupid, but to be fair they are complaining about screen-scraper sites. They have no contact or contract with these sites and say that extra fees are imposed; and it's a small percentage of their business. But it's still pretty stupid. The guy who runs it (O'Leary) is consistently stupid, and successful, and sells loads of people cheap flights. Go figure.
Another recent idiocy is to push cheap tickets (£5 - less than taxes) because he needs his aircraft to be 80% full. Difficult because of the current heavy fuel costs. But he reckons that'll screw his competitors in the same space, and when times get easier he'll still be standing.
I'd rather not fly Ryanair, but when needs must...O'Leary will piss off loads of people, but I'd put money in his company. If I had any
Slashdot Mirror
The CERN SPS control room had carpet on the walls. This to stop us hurting ourselves when it all got too much and the headbanging started.
There were also jokes
>> Also, comparing Tritium to Plutonium is pretty weak sauce as well. They are only alike in that they're both radioactive.
And they both end in -ium. That's pretty significant. Like Strontium and Boneium.
OK, maybe not
Acceleration is done by RF power : the magnetic fields bends the particles round the ring, and focusses the beams (yes, that is an acceleration, but ramping up to the TeVs is RF)
Most of the UK is SI now. Road signs still use miles and you can get two metres of two-by-four but it's liable to be 5cm by 10cm, whatever it's called. And asking for a kilo of tomatoes got me 'That's two pounds, sir, and f*ck the French'
>> That's not to say that C++ isn't important. It is, because of its widespread adoption. It is baroque, however.
I beg to differ. It is byzantine. Or perhaps gothic.
Whatever, it ain't post-modern.
And do it. There's plenty of FOSS projects who could do with some help. When you've got a job to do, you'll get the idea of what tools to use.
Maybe it's kernel, maybe it's AJAX. Find the job and then find the tools. If you're any good, a new language will give you a week of pure panic followed by....oh, I get this....
My nightmare has been people who had deep, even obsessive, knowledge of X, X++ and Z-- and little ability to analyse the problem in the first place.
From PDP assembler to Javascript and Java, it's how to find the appropriate 'ammer, not being a pin-hammer specialist.
Except Cobol, of course. You're safe there.
I'd back that.In the UK there are various journalistic columns that do this kind of story - the Beeb, the Grauniad etc run them
Get hold of PR for Dell (if they have such a thing) and mention the basics of the story and who it's going to. That'll rattle their cage.
It's quite unacceptable as customer service for anyone, but you've got an awful lot of cred so you'll frighten the hell out of their PR.
Then you can tell CNN anyway
If anyone at Dell PR reads slashdot you'll probably get a pre-emptive laptop drop pretty sharpish. If they have any sense.
Oh, wait...
If it is real (that is, an indication of underlying physics) the probability of doing it again is close to 1, and the LHC will certainly be able to help that.
If it's an artifact - from detector response, or mistaken analysis, or whatever - the Fermi physicists will find that out.
So, it'll get sorted one way or another. The interesting result would be new physics, but either way it'll get done.
Interesting. I'd guess that the Tev and the SPS (which is now the LHC injector) are sort of the-same-money physics, in real terms, as the LHC. But I don't know. The SSC, which was going to reach higher energy than the LHC, got far too expensive, mostly because of gross mismanagement. Disclaimer: I've worked on all the mentioned machines, and the demise of SSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider hurt a lot.
you don't need anything more complex than something like X Windows
I'm very fond of X, it has done and still does a good job, even if it is bit-wise braindead
But when I saw that line I got sardine sandwich on the damn screen. What on earth is Mr Kay on about?
That's the point. Does it need to run Vista? I think not. I have a box with a 486 in it, it still does what it was supposed to do. (yes, linux)
I doubt there's any NASA engineers lusting for a dual-core whoopie-doo. They just want their backup to come alive, after all these years.
The original deserves a medal, for service beyond, and a pension. Perhaps it could run for president.
In c*se I got s*ed by l*wy*rs
Dunno, really, habit I suppose. They are buggered now so I can MORGAN STANLEY all over the place
I did a gig at M*rg*n St*nl*y in London for a couple of months, on the options floor.
I got that via a connection to Standford theoretical physicist who'd found loadsa money that way (I used to be a CERN experimentalist).
They were all fascinated with the Black-Scholes pde; but no-one - I mean NO-ONE - had any clue what the model was about.
They just hired geeks to make up a number.
One of the in-house coders (and they are good coders, and paid) had to stick a random-number generator onto the back of a calculator for a set of exotics.
He presented the available information. It wasn't 'accurate' enough. So - quit, or stick in spurions. He did the latter.
It is NOT rubbish data in. It's a complete inability to understand what to do with the data.
Offtopic.
Should they pull their heads (plural) out of their arse (singular).
Do they have their individual heads up a collective arse, or each one up their own arse, or some sort of ring of head up the next arse?
Sorry, too late, it just made me laugh.
Data is generated at a huge rate, then filtered by smart fast analysis at various levels. Possibly both numbers are right - 4 orders of magnitude of realtime rejection before you write the rest to media.
What you do write is mostly rubbish, and (one) of the clever things to do is not to junk the good stuff during your realtime
I don't work on LHC (I went to the wrong one, SSC) but those ratios seem OK from my time on SPS (now the LHC injector)
The ratios don't change, but the numbers do - the SPS control system ran with a main winchester of 70 megabytes, the size of a washing machine, which would occasionally go walkabout when the head crashed. Shows how ancient I am
And you, sir, are quite right.
To the people who are moaning about heavy work put out free and unencumbered on the web:
Type 'Totem experiment lhc' into google. Then you'll get CERN general-purpose descriptions or the hairy details.
All sorts of levels of detail.Choose what you want.
If you can't be arsed, don't whine that it isn't spoon fed.
Better, spend some time looking into it. This stuff ain't easy, but it is wonderful.
And yes, I am a physicist, although my time at CERN was in SPS and LEP days, and then the ill-fated SSC
Feynman had authority, but he also had genius. What he said was crazy, but then you thought Holy crap, that's so obvious I should have thought of it myself.
The authority meant you gave him a lot more time than the people who write letters in purple ink showing why Einstein was wrong.
Feynman was also a mean bongo player, and a really lovely man. He was one of the great physicists. I tell my grandchild that I had lunch with a Great Man in Fermilab cafeteria.
Grandchild is not impressed, as he's not yet two, but one day....
I did the sum in reply. I think your response is more satisfying; at least I got a smile out of it instead of...oh, horror at people's ability to quote technical from a basis of complete ignorance.
As it happens, a lot of this sort of stuff is answered quite gently in the NIST's FAQ
But that would require reading
Gravity gives an acceleration of 32 ft/sec/sec. That's not a constant velocity. Falling things start off slow, get faster up to a limit which is determined by shape, air resistance etc
Drop a cannon-ball from 741 ft, solve 2*s = f*t^2 for t, you get about 6 seconds. It took longer because it wasn't free-falling.
Your sum is incorrect
Chaos theory isn't in it
NIST may be lying, but what you say is wrong, and irrelevant
Correct. It's probably less likely with postgres, because it isn't as common, but I could write crap code on my linux/tomcat/postgres stack to let in such an attack. Well, I say I could, but I'd probably bite my arm off first.
No, I don't necessarily feel screwed at all. Ryanair seems to be asking me to pay taxes and airport fees to the tune of about 20 quid, and something else including 'Wheelchair levy' which is a bit more. It is a bit ingenuous, but I'm not into a 200 quid flight, the whole shebang is 230 quid for three adults.Including the taxes etc etc
It's better than the bullshit of the old airlines - TWA, Delta and so on - who ripped you and pretended they were doing you a favour. At least these guys are honest - it's shit, it's cheap, deal with it
Well, it's sort of a fib. It's PR release, not what's on the site. It ends up you pay a lot more than the 5 quid, but O'Leary moans on about all the other government stuff you have to pay.
As it happens, I've been poking around the net for a flight london-> pisa and back; my flight times are constrained and the Ryanair site is by far the best price, and pretty honest about what the price is. Reading the small print I could be in for an extra 5 euro or so if I don't check in in the approved manner.
And for one of the return flights, the ticket was quoted as £0 - total cost about £35 with taxes.
But you're right, it is intended to mislead. On the other hand, they shake up the others and on balance probably help the consumer.
It is stupid, but to be fair they are complaining about screen-scraper sites. They have no contact or contract with these sites and say that extra fees are imposed; and it's a small percentage of their business. But it's still pretty stupid. The guy who runs it (O'Leary) is consistently stupid, and successful, and sells loads of people cheap flights. Go figure.
Another recent idiocy is to push cheap tickets (£5 - less than taxes) because he needs his aircraft to be 80% full. Difficult because of the current heavy fuel costs. But he reckons that'll screw his competitors in the same space, and when times get easier he'll still be standing.
I'd rather not fly Ryanair, but when needs must...O'Leary will piss off loads of people, but I'd put money in his company. If I had any
No. the kids just die. RTFA
Mine's on the screen, the curtain and the wallpaper. I looked up