This may sound obvious, but what does an oxygen generator really do?
What does it create oxygen from? If it takes it from compressed tanks, then it really isn't a generator at all. That would be like calling my gasoline tank a petroleum generator. Does it recycle oxgen from the air? Does it create it from some other source? We don't actually have a device to make O2 from CO2, do we?
The rover got stuck because they are driving over a series of long ridges in the sand. These ridges are in rows that run mostly along one direction. The rover was originally expecting these ridges to be solid and it drove straight perpendicular across them. Unfortunately they are not as solid so it got stuck.
Once they get the rover un-stuck, they will instruct it to move parallel to the ridges, and to weave in between them when possible to make forward progress. It will be slow, but it should minimize the chances of getting stuck again.
I think that when a company releases a patch for this type of thing, they should also make the patch report attempts to abuse the exploit. That would make it possible not only to secure against the exploit, but to catch the black hats who try to use it.
So if a site tries to use the Mozilla/XPI script exploit to install a rogue extension, Mozilla should send a report to mozilla.org. Then they can blacklist the site, or even pursue legal action.
This would be GREAT for anti-spyware programs. When someone tries to auto-install spyware on to IE, Microsoft could get a report and the spyware company would feel the wrath of a monopolistic giant crushing them.
Today, you can buy a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera. Now I want to buy a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player. In 6 months, I will want a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player / Video game system. Then it will be a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player / Video game / Toaster.
This isn't progress. PCs and TVs are popular partially because you can add new things on to them. But today, to add something to a cell phone requires buying a new cell phone. That aint cheap. Soon, we will need a standardized expandable cell phone so that we can add the drink mixer attachment easily without replacing the whole device.
Until then, I won't waste $1000 to buy the ultimate integrated device, knowing I will need to throw it out very soon.
The real tragedy here is not the use of a national ID. There are legitimate merits to both sides of that discussion, and I will not address them here. The real tragedy is that this is an "Emergency military spending bill" which a HUGE rider on it.
This is why the line item veto was popular, despite being blatently unconstitutional. A few congress persons sitting on a committee can completely disrupt the validity of a bill. Nobody is going to veto a bill that gives money to the military and be responsible for leaving them high and dry. And the bill also gives tsunami aid. Nobody will veto that either.
It should be unconstitutional to place this type of stuff on a bill. It is also highly irresponsible of our congress people to not flame anyone who tries to do this stuff. I don't know how to word the ammendment, but it would probably do a LOT to clean up some of the obnoxious laws that sneak into place.
I agree with all of your points. But you seem to think that I said all regulatory agencies are bad, and the someone else should do their job. I did not. Let me make that clearer by answering your question:
Q: Supposing you were in charge, where would you place regulatory authority for wire/opticable-less communication and EM emmisions?
A: I would put that in the FCC.
If that is all the FCC did, I would be happy. The problem has nothing to do with the FCC performing simple regulatory actions. The problem is when the FCC thinks it has the power of Congress.
Good to see skepticism, but you missed what is significant here.
The FCC has been extending its power significantly, with the broadcast flag being just a small piece of that. The courts telling the FCC that they do not have this power is huge. It eliminates the possibility of the FCC taking away citizen's rights without the democratic process being involved. At least Congress persons are answerable to their constituents. The FCC is not. (This is the whole problem with Congress creating agencies. It's a way to extend government power without making it answerable to the other branches.)
Now is the time to start sending positive letters to justices and congress persons to prevent Congress from trying to enact the broadcast flag themselves.
You are right. And as far as I know, MS was one of the first.
I just wish Microsoft better documented what is in their patches. Sometimes they say that it fixes an exploit, but doesn't say which part of that 50MB download is for that exploit. Or exactly what the exploit was. If I recall, they've even sued people for publishing the exploit!
And if I may put on my tin foil hat here, I've noticed that some MS patches do surreptitious things. For example, several Win2k patches connected to a 3rd party server, by IP address since it had no DNS entry, and made and HTTP request. When my firewall denied the connection, the patch refused to install. No problem! I connected to that server myself to see what it is. As soon as I enter an HTTP GET, it immediately disconnects me. Hmmmmmmm!? Why does an MS patch connect to a mysterious server with no DNS record that goes to extra lengths to hide other connections?
When I was in my teens, I had more time and less money. That made it worth the effort to keep up to the minute on hardware and to tweak and overclock things as much as I could. I also had other people giving me their old hardware (or at least, hardware that was old to them), so I had lots of spare parts lying around.
Now, if I need a newer system, I can go out and buy it. It's more economical to me that way than to devote a week to assembling and tweaking a system to the Nth degree.
[2]
Hardware advances have slowed. The jump from a 286-12 to a 386-16 was enormous. The 486 was incredible. Now, it's just "ho-hum" to see the latest CPU & video card running the newest technology. Smoother edges. Higher res. Better framerates. Bah, I've seen that cycle too many times for it to matter anymore.
Do not confuse technological improvement with deflation. Today, I can buy a gig of ram for $100. 10 years ago, it would have cost me $10000.
That's not deflation. The product has changed, not the price.
A more accurate comparison is to say that today I could buy "a reasonable amount of RAM" for $100, and that 10 years ago that same "reasonable amount of RAM" would have been $100 well.
The only trend toward deflation in this industry comes with the general increase in demand due to computers getting easier to use and more people using them.
Okay, I'll bite. I do 3 of the 4 of the things you mentioned, and I find it highly productive. One thing I've learned over the years is that no one can tell you how to organize. Different systems work for different people. (And some people are hopeless) I have several friends who swear by Franklin Covey. Others who hate it. Let me show you what works for me, since it matches your "suggestions" very well.
My Inbox is my to do list. I see many people use their paper inbox (or equivalent) as their todo list. (Actually, I think it is the most common system I've seen people use.) I would use it too, except that I hate paper. Why would you have something in your in-box, if there wasn't some action to be associated with it? If I want me to do something, I send myself an email.
I do not allocate time to process my Inbox. I do that when I complete a task (an email), when I receive a new email, or at regular intervals. It's like an OS: process for a while, then task switch whenever you get an interrupt or after a fixed time slice. I do agree that stopping of the Nth message without having gone through them all will cause things to pile up. This is a function of scheduling. Read through all your tasks before embarking on any one.
I look at email as soon as I get it. I may get an email every 15 to 30 minutes at work, and every 4 hours at home. That isn't a problem. If you get more emails than that, then you aren't managing the people around you properly. I know many managers who get 100 emails a day. IMHO, they aren't managing properly. Status messages and FYI type things should be done at regular meetings. I treat snail mail the same way.
Agreed! Even better, try physically travelling to them! I hate people who send 15 emails back-and-forth when a 5 minute meeting or conversation would be better.
With this information, it should be possible to build a robot to play the piano the way the original artist did. That would be very interesting to watch, especially if it were done over every year, and we could the robot's progression.
Because the speed of light is constant and matter cannot exceed the speed of light. No amount of continuous force applied to matter can ever allow the matter to exceed the speed of light. The energy required to accelerate matter to the speed of light is infinite. That's why particle accelerators like CERN can never actually test collisions of particles at light-speed. Only at near light-speed.
Black holes and high speed matter are all part of Einstein's relativity. Read up on that to understand black holes better.
MySQL fits a niche. Once all these features are added, will it still be the small, fast, easy to install SQL server? If so, I think someone should fork it and keep the old version. Can anyone address this?
...So unless these contracts are written, interpreted, and enforced in some Orwellian world where the lingua franca is Doublespeak...
You do. But in this world we call it legaleze. Its a trick where you create a sarcastic or humorous word for something so that the people ignore the true meaning.
I am a contract worker as well, and so far, the only thing I've had to sign are NDAs. Decent NDAs too. I find that most boss's won't argue with you over the wording - they will just send you to the HR or legal departments. The hiring manager really doesn't care about the contract details. It can say they own everything or nothing. They just want the work done. Don't talk to the boss, take it to legal.
Instead of a contract, you might want to try something like a "Statement of work" that simply states who you are working for, the scope of work, and the money. It's still a contract technically.
You can also make modifications to their contract and initial them. One thing you can do is to explicitly add language excluding certain areas of work. If you are building a giant robot cocktail mixing machine, you can add "does not apply to research on dexteritous robots..." or something. You can also say do the reverse. If you are coding a C++ search engine then add "...only applying to C++ development of pornographic search engines." if that is all the company is working on. I have not had trouble with either approach.
How can schools report every students SSN when the colleges are required, by law, not to ask for SSN? Yes, yes, I know that they all DO ask for it, but it seems like this is going from ignorance of the law to intentionally going against it.
On a note of that, I've been told that the social security act banned certain uses of the SSN as ID. Is that really really true? If so, where does it say that? I would love to actually take a university to court and make them change. Why hasn't anyone done this?
Those 'applied technology' courses are IT courses. The 'theory based' courses are CS courses. That's usually a different department. You should ask the university if they offer IT courses and what is comparable to the ones in the community college. I know that in Maryland, the community colleges don't offer much in CS.
I don't know your state, but I know that in Maryland, the community colleges, colleges, and universities have a shared system. You are guaranteed that any course you take in a state community college will transfer to any state school (and most non-state schools too).
These treads prevent the snakebot from stalling or becoming stuck on rough terrain because, similar to a tire touching a road, t the treads propel the robot forward like a tire touching a road.
...requires Internet content providers that create or host data in Utah to properly rate the data...
(7) "Properly rated" means content using a labeling system to label material harmful to minors provided by the content provider in a way that... (a) accurately apprises a consumer of the presence of material harmful to minors; and (b) allows the consumer the ability to control access to material harmful to minors based on the material's rating by use of reasonably priced commercially available software, including software in the public domain.
So they are essentially requiring something like ICRA self-rating systems. I don't object to that, since these systems are fairly broad and allow people to control for themselves what is filtered. I just wish that more webmasters had used these systems voluntarily. It is always a shame when the government must start passing laws telling people to do things that can only serve to help themselves.
This is the kind of news that PHBs need to hear. These types of migrations are possible! I plan to write some similar articles on migrating some other proprietary produces to F/OSS software, including:
Microsoft Office --> VI ASP.NET --> sh scripts Peachtree Accounting --> GnuCash PeopleSoft --> awk Rational Rose --> GIMP
We need APIs for accessing configuration data instead of relying on static file locations. That leaves programmers free to change the locations and formats of files in the future without breaking compatibility. And it leaves distros free to put the files wherever they want. And it allows standard tools and installers to find and update the configuration data. While still preserving the ability for sysadmins to manually edit the files.
Then you can make some simple command-line tools would make it easy for admins to find configuration files if they forgot where they are.
root>sysfindconfig eth0 /etc/network/config.file
This is one place where Mac and Windows have a benefit. There are standard APIs for configuring most things (even though Windows keeps the files hidden in a massive and ugly registry). It makes it easy to write reliable configuration tools. We don't have to have a big registry to do that. Just some nice wrappers on top of what we have would be good.
If they could get to about 14hp, this could be used for a small aircraft. The biggest problem with trikes and powered hang gliders is that the engines are loud. But a lightweight, silent engine would be a great replacement for something like a mosquito harness
In that example, ATI should devote manpower to testing nVidia drivers to see if they cheated, rather than applying the same dirty trick themselves. It pays off better. They can make a press release about it and proclaim their honesty. The publishers would likely report this with the benchmarks, and the gamer would buy the ATI card.
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This may sound obvious, but what does an oxygen generator really do?
What does it create oxygen from? If it takes it from compressed tanks, then it really isn't a generator at all. That would be like calling my gasoline tank a petroleum generator. Does it recycle oxgen from the air? Does it create it from some other source? We don't actually have a device to make O2 from CO2, do we?
They have a plan.
The rover got stuck because they are driving over a series of long ridges in the sand. These ridges are in rows that run mostly along one direction. The rover was originally expecting these ridges to be solid and it drove straight perpendicular across them. Unfortunately they are not as solid so it got stuck.
Once they get the rover un-stuck, they will instruct it to move parallel to the ridges, and to weave in between them when possible to make forward progress. It will be slow, but it should minimize the chances of getting stuck again.
I think that when a company releases a patch for this type of thing, they should also make the patch report attempts to abuse the exploit. That would make it possible not only to secure against the exploit, but to catch the black hats who try to use it.
So if a site tries to use the Mozilla/XPI script exploit to install a rogue extension, Mozilla should send a report to mozilla.org. Then they can blacklist the site, or even pursue legal action.
This would be GREAT for anti-spyware programs. When someone tries to auto-install spyware on to IE, Microsoft could get a report and the spyware company would feel the wrath of a monopolistic giant crushing them.
Today, you can buy a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera. Now I want to buy a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player. In 6 months, I will want a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player / Video game system. Then it will be a PDA / Cell Phone / Camera / MP3 player / Video game / Toaster.
This isn't progress. PCs and TVs are popular partially because you can add new things on to them. But today, to add something to a cell phone requires buying a new cell phone. That aint cheap. Soon, we will need a standardized expandable cell phone so that we can add the drink mixer attachment easily without replacing the whole device.
Until then, I won't waste $1000 to buy the ultimate integrated device, knowing I will need to throw it out very soon.
That would be believable had they not JUST DONE THE EXACT SAME THING with the REAL ID act!
BTW - Who was the 1 who voted against the Patriot Act?
The real tragedy here is not the use of a national ID. There are legitimate merits to both sides of that discussion, and I will not address them here. The real tragedy is that this is an "Emergency military spending bill" which a HUGE rider on it.
This is why the line item veto was popular, despite being blatently unconstitutional. A few congress persons sitting on a committee can completely disrupt the validity of a bill. Nobody is going to veto a bill that gives money to the military and be responsible for leaving them high and dry. And the bill also gives tsunami aid. Nobody will veto that either.
It should be unconstitutional to place this type of stuff on a bill. It is also highly irresponsible of our congress people to not flame anyone who tries to do this stuff. I don't know how to word the ammendment, but it would probably do a LOT to clean up some of the obnoxious laws that sneak into place.
A: I would put that in the FCC.
If that is all the FCC did, I would be happy. The problem has nothing to do with the FCC performing simple regulatory actions. The problem is when the FCC thinks it has the power of Congress.
Good to see skepticism, but you missed what is significant here.
The FCC has been extending its power significantly, with the broadcast flag being just a small piece of that. The courts telling the FCC that they do not have this power is huge. It eliminates the possibility of the FCC taking away citizen's rights without the democratic process being involved. At least Congress persons are answerable to their constituents. The FCC is not. (This is the whole problem with Congress creating agencies. It's a way to extend government power without making it answerable to the other branches.)
Now is the time to start sending positive letters to justices and congress persons to prevent Congress from trying to enact the broadcast flag themselves.
You are right. And as far as I know, MS was one of the first.
I just wish Microsoft better documented what is in their patches. Sometimes they say that it fixes an exploit, but doesn't say which part of that 50MB download is for that exploit. Or exactly what the exploit was. If I recall, they've even sued people for publishing the exploit!
And if I may put on my tin foil hat here, I've noticed that some MS patches do surreptitious things. For example, several Win2k patches connected to a 3rd party server, by IP address since it had no DNS entry, and made and HTTP request. When my firewall denied the connection, the patch refused to install. No problem! I connected to that server myself to see what it is. As soon as I enter an HTTP GET, it immediately disconnects me. Hmmmmmmm!? Why does an MS patch connect to a mysterious server with no DNS record that goes to extra lengths to hide other connections?
Sometimes this hat feels kinda comfy.
I think I know why.
[1]
When I was in my teens, I had more time and less money. That made it worth the effort to keep up to the minute on hardware and to tweak and overclock things as much as I could. I also had other people giving me their old hardware (or at least, hardware that was old to them), so I had lots of spare parts lying around.
Now, if I need a newer system, I can go out and buy it. It's more economical to me that way than to devote a week to assembling and tweaking a system to the Nth degree.
[2]
Hardware advances have slowed. The jump from a 286-12 to a 386-16 was enormous. The 486 was incredible. Now, it's just "ho-hum" to see the latest CPU & video card running the newest technology. Smoother edges. Higher res. Better framerates. Bah, I've seen that cycle too many times for it to matter anymore.
Do not confuse technological improvement with deflation. Today, I can buy a gig of ram for $100. 10 years ago, it would have cost me $10000.
That's not deflation. The product has changed, not the price.
A more accurate comparison is to say that today I could buy "a reasonable amount of RAM" for $100, and that 10 years ago that same "reasonable amount of RAM" would have been $100 well.
The only trend toward deflation in this industry comes with the general increase in demand due to computers getting easier to use and more people using them.
I do agree that stopping of the Nth message without having gone through them all will cause things to pile up. This is a function of scheduling. Read through all your tasks before embarking on any one.
With this information, it should be possible to build a robot to play the piano the way the original artist did. That would be very interesting to watch, especially if it were done over every year, and we could the robot's progression.
Because the speed of light is constant and matter cannot exceed the speed of light. No amount of continuous force applied to matter can ever allow the matter to exceed the speed of light. The energy required to accelerate matter to the speed of light is infinite. That's why particle accelerators like CERN can never actually test collisions of particles at light-speed. Only at near light-speed.
Black holes and high speed matter are all part of Einstein's relativity. Read up on that to understand black holes better.
MySQL fits a niche. Once all these features are added, will it still be the small, fast, easy to install SQL server? If so, I think someone should fork it and keep the old version. Can anyone address this?
I am a contract worker as well, and so far, the only thing I've had to sign are NDAs. Decent NDAs too. I find that most boss's won't argue with you over the wording - they will just send you to the HR or legal departments. The hiring manager really doesn't care about the contract details. It can say they own everything or nothing. They just want the work done. Don't talk to the boss, take it to legal.
Instead of a contract, you might want to try something like a "Statement of work" that simply states who you are working for, the scope of work, and the money. It's still a contract technically.
You can also make modifications to their contract and initial them. One thing you can do is to explicitly add language excluding certain areas of work. If you are building a giant robot cocktail mixing machine, you can add "does not apply to research on dexteritous robots..." or something. You can also say do the reverse. If you are coding a C++ search engine then add "...only applying to C++ development of pornographic search engines." if that is all the company is working on. I have not had trouble with either approach.
How can schools report every students SSN when the colleges are required, by law, not to ask for SSN? Yes, yes, I know that they all DO ask for it, but it seems like this is going from ignorance of the law to intentionally going against it.
On a note of that, I've been told that the social security act banned certain uses of the SSN as ID. Is that really really true? If so, where does it say that? I would love to actually take a university to court and make them change. Why hasn't anyone done this?
Those 'applied technology' courses are IT courses. The 'theory based' courses are CS courses. That's usually a different department. You should ask the university if they offer IT courses and what is comparable to the ones in the community college. I know that in Maryland, the community colleges don't offer much in CS.
I don't know your state, but I know that in Maryland, the community colleges, colleges, and universities have a shared system. You are guaranteed that any course you take in a state community college will transfer to any state school (and most non-state schools too).
This is the kind of news that PHBs need to hear. These types of migrations are possible! I plan to write some similar articles on migrating some other proprietary produces to F/OSS software, including:
Microsoft Office --> VI
ASP.NET --> sh scripts
Peachtree Accounting --> GnuCash
PeopleSoft --> awk
Rational Rose --> GIMP
Then you can make some simple command-line tools would make it easy for admins to find configuration files if they forgot where they are.
This is one place where Mac and Windows have a benefit. There are standard APIs for configuring most things (even though Windows keeps the files hidden in a massive and ugly registry). It makes it easy to write reliable configuration tools. We don't have to have a big registry to do that. Just some nice wrappers on top of what we have would be good.
If they could get to about 14hp, this could be used for a small aircraft. The biggest problem with trikes and powered hang gliders is that the engines are loud. But a lightweight, silent engine would be a great replacement for something like a mosquito harness
In that example, ATI should devote manpower to testing nVidia drivers to see if they cheated, rather than applying the same dirty trick themselves. It pays off better. They can make a press release about it and proclaim their honesty. The publishers would likely report this with the benchmarks, and the gamer would buy the ATI card.
Instead of joining 'em, beat 'em.