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User: djfiander

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Comments · 34

  1. Ask a librarian on Storage System for Thousands of CDs and DVDs? · · Score: 1

    Try Brodart or Vernon (just a couple of examples) for custom storage solutions for the library market. They're quite happy to sell to anybody, even in small quantities. Searching either site for "CD Storage" should take you to the good stuff.

  2. Re:Artificial on Fedora Welcomes Women to FOSS · · Score: 1

    Oh, and to be a bit more concrete about this. Ask (a) the woman in your class about why there are so few of them and (b) make that same statement in front of any woman professor in your faculty, or even say it to your dean (who's probbably male). I bet your male dean will have some interesting things to say to you about your attitude.

    Make sure to report back.

  3. Looking around a CS Engineering class on Fedora Welcomes Women to FOSS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Man, this crap is old. One can hardly wonder why there are so few women around. Try reading what some women have to say about their experiences in computing. But don't expect too many to out themselves here. And don't point out that Spertus's paper is old and things have changed. This thread just demonstrated that it hasn't.

  4. Renting Books on Librarians to the Rescue · · Score: 1

    Actually, the libraries do lend books for free (except for a couple of provinces where they're allowed to charge a fee for a library card). You can put yourself on the list for the latest King thriller and wait your turn. You'll be #237 in line.

    Some libraries provide this rental option as an "enhanced service". The library leases a couple of hundred extra copies from a service (yes, there are such things), and then leases them out to willing patrons for a few bucks for three or five days (a much shorter lending period than the normal boks). They use the fee to recoup the leasing costs, they're not stuck with two hundred extra copies of the latest flash in the pan, and people that want to read the book quickly, but can't afford $35.00CAD can get it almost as fast as at the book store.

    My current library doesn't do this, but my old library did. And fortunately, I was in library school when my old library started doing this, so I had a reason to chat up the staff at the branch about the service. It's mostly a safety valve for the pent-up demand for certain books.

  5. Another study, in a _reputable_ source_ on Nanotechnology: Nanoscale Particles A Health Hazard? · · Score: 2, Informative

    This has also been reported at the American Chemical Society Meeting in New Orleans. See the report

    Service, RF. "Nanomaterials show signs of toxicity." Science [yes, _Science_] April 11, 2003: 243.

    Groups from Johnson Space Center and DuPont report that single-walled carbon nanotubes cause scarring in mouse lungs.

  6. So what about viewing CA porn in TN? on Yahoo! Not Bound by French Court Ruling · · Score: 1

    So, why can't a Californian web site operator consider herself safe from prosecution under Tennessee "community standards"? Or is that the next one to fall?

  7. Re:Golly, why are SS#'s everywhere? on All The World Over, Your Stolen I.D. · · Score: 1

    Of course, in Canada it's been illegal to request (our equivalent of) a person's SSN unless the requestor needed it to provide income tax information to the government for several years now. Thus, my bank, (maybe) my credit card company, and my employer all know my SSN, nobody else does. I don't even need it to get my passport.

  8. Re:has anyone noticed on SDMI Researchers Cancel Presentation After RIAA Threat · · Score: 2

    And here is US Patent 05940135, as mentioned above.

    - David

  9. Re:a 64bit OS... on OS/390 Replaced By z/OS · · Score: 1

    *mumble* was the Cyber 180. I did the networking utilities and a bit of kernel hacking in the streams stuff. It wrapped up in the fall of `89.

    The easiest way to get an old HCR-hand to cheer is to show him Die Hard 2.

    - David

  10. Re:Because.. on OS/390 Replaced By z/OS · · Score: 1

    OS/390 has two interfaces: the old "green screen" view that we all remember from the `70s and the new Unix view, accessible via telnet, rlogin, or even X-Windows. I can barely cope with the green screen, but I wrote big chunks of the Unix part.

    The shell and utilities are all based on an OEM'd version of the MKS toolkit. I'll tell you, getting dd to do something approximately standard-conforming when reblocking characters in a multi-byte (ie, asian) locale was a bitch.

  11. Re:a 64bit OS... on OS/390 Replaced By z/OS · · Score: 1

    It wasn't the first 64-bit OS, but it _might_ have been the 64-bit Unix. I was part of a team that port System V to *mumble* back in `89.

    It was kinda painful, because the compiler didn't have a 16-bit datatype, which made the TCP header kinda hard; everything had to be bitfields.

    In case you're wondering, sizeof(char) == 8, sizeof(short) == 32, sizeof(int) == 64, sizeof(long) = 64

    - David

  12. Consider this a warning on Canadians Hang Bug Off Golden Gate · · Score: 2

    > - suspended below the Lions Gate Bridge
    > - suspended above the Lions Gate Bridge

    So, what you're telling me is that they're going to hit San Francisco again next year?

    - David

  13. And now for some deep philosphy of science on Online 'Sand Mouse' Tests Neurobiologists · · Score: 2

    Our second and more important motivation for presenting the material in two parts is
    to open a discussion on the role of deductive thinking in neurobiology. As we have described in
    the introduction, we firmly believe that careful and rigorous deductive analysis based on
    incomplete knowledge may still lead to novel conclusions and clearly indicate what the most
    incisive next experiments are. Nevertheless, incomplete data all too often discourages deep
    deductive thinking in neurobiology.


    The whole point of doing science is to think. If, as they claim, there's too much data-collection and not enough synthesis, then this is a fun way to get people going.

    Good science starts in the lab, but it reaches it's zenith in the shower (or bathtub, if you're Archimedes). Time to pull out Popper and Kuhn and think about how and why science is done.

  14. Re:Whiskey? on Techies Rampant on Drugs · · Score: 1

    Whiskey? I hope you drink the good stuff (Jameson's).

    Jameson's is good? Well, I wouldn't know, since I've never had it. I drink Glenmorangie and Craganmore. If it's not 12 years old, it's horse-piss.

  15. Re:Xanadu, Xanadu... on British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart · · Score: 1

    Aside from the fact that Xanadu apparently _did_ work, according to another poster, you don't actually have to generate a working copy to create a patent (or prior art), you just have to describe a practical way to do it. The BBC won't be getting royalties because they never explained the mechanism behind the travelling policebox.

    Robert Heinlein, however, did generate prior art for the waterbed when he wrote "Stranger in a strange land", even though he never actually built one.

    - David

  16. Re:A big nit-pick about censorware on Foil-The-Filters Contest · · Score: 1

    I don't see congress making any laws about having to use censorware.

    Then you're not paying attention. Congress has tried several times to pass laws that require schools to install filtering, if they want federal funding.

    Then, of course, there's the fact that the courts have interpreted this part of the constitution to apply to _all_ levels of government, which is why local laws requiring filtering software in libraries have been overturned. This regularly leads to civic leaders saying things like, "I don't care what the supreme court says, we want filtering!".

    - David

  17. Re:History Lessons... on The First Mouse · · Score: 1

    One of the more interesting "millenial" magazine issues was that of the Economist, which gave a 200-page history of the last 1000 years. The basic theme for the entire technology section was "The Europeans then invented such-and-such (200 years after it's first use in China)"

  18. McDonalds supports local farmers on Happy Independence Day, Jose · · Score: 1

    You don't think that McD's ships beef and potatoes from the US over to France to turn into burgers and fries, do you?

    That "local farmer" protesting against McD's is fighting to destory a _huge_ market for locally grown FRENCH beef and produce. And French beer, I might add, since one can get a cold draught in McD's on the continent.

  19. Re:Miranda and Ki on Girls Don't Want To Be Geeks · · Score: 1

    Maybe on your planet women need fancy clothes and a hot car. I manage all right with neither.

    Of course, the fact that lawyers are capable of holding an intelligent, witty conversation might have as much to do with the female selections as the car. Face it, they're _paid_ to talk. That's an incentive to boost one's social skills.

    My social skills greatly improved when talking to customers without embarassing myself became part of my job description.

  20. Nits to Pick on Frankenstein Time · · Score: 1

    Frankenstein's monster went north, not south. And, in the last bit of the article, you forgot that Frankie was the Dr, not the (anonymous) monster.

    At least you got the moral of the story right: that man needs to take responsibility for his work, rather than the old "things man wasn't meant to know" line.

  21. Re:Determining your Canadian on iCraveTV To Relaunch · · Score: 1

    > #1: Say "The Rant" blindfolded.

    I can't. I only watch TVO.

    > #2: What is Canada's greatest aerospace acheivement?

    Greatest ever actually put into production, or the greatest one covered up and buried to save the US aerospace program?

  22. Problems with your ideas isn't necessarily bad on What AI Elements Could Improve the Web? · · Score: 1

    Just because you think of problems with the ideas you've already come up with doesn't mean they're not worth implementing (depending on the problems of course). Regardless of what you do, you're going to have to cast a critical eye upon it when you're done.

    My area of interest is access to and organization of information, so things that smarten up indexes and semi-automate classification of resources would be what I'd go for. Maybe something to recommend Dublin Core tagging data, but then, that's probably too small.

  23. Re:Old issue (at least in real life) on On Preservation of Digital Information · · Score: 1

    Data preservation is not a new problem, it's one that traditional librarians and archivists have been dealing with for the entire 100 years of modern librarianship, and certainly for much longer than that in less academic ways. Can you say acidic paper? How about the restorations of the Mona Lisa and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

    It's not at all surprising, to me at least, that this paper was written by somebody at what was once the UMich school of library science, until they discovered that they could pump up their prestige and funding by by going dot-edu.

    - David

  24. Re:Sounds like you got out - played.. on Filtering Internet in Public Libraries · · Score: 1

    Librarians are paid to excercise exactly the sort of judgement that you claim doesn't exist. If the librarian thinks its trash, it doesn't get on the shelves. That's filter level 1.

    Ah, but the librarian will select good works that are in violation of "community standards". I never said that librarians don't filter out crap.

    Beyond that, most libraries that stock adults only materials have them in areas that children have no physical access to. Playboy, if stocked, is not located in a public stack, 2 feet off the ground. This is filter level 2.

    Well, yes and no. Playboy is probably out of reach, but because of concerns about damage, rather than concerns about children's access. If you look at one of my other posts on this thread you will find that a small MI library has quite a bit of sexually explicit information available for teens, as well as quite a bit of erotica, all available on the open stacks for "children" to browse.

    - David, librarian in training

  25. Re:Sounds like you got out - played.. on Filtering Internet in Public Libraries · · Score: 1

    >However, the library provides access in various ways which are necessarily anonymous.

    Such as?? The only thing that comes to mind is browsing books on the shelf. That, however, is not what we're debating.


    Ah, but we are. We're debating access to information. What's the difference between the print and online/electronic resources that the library provides?

    I know that at least one video rental place had such a system in place.

    When video rental places are funded by the taxpayers, and are thus required to honour the first amendment, then I will protest such a system.