Spray a firehose upwards through something that will make a fine mist. Most will evaporate, sucking vast amounts of heat out of the air, which will flow downwards onto the crowd, along with the remaining chilled water. You want pressure rather than sheer volume.
Burlap/canvas tents can be cooled with a constant trickle over them in the same way.
Slightly less messy might be a series of hoses that carry chilled water from a tank out to modified hot-water-bottles strapped to people, and then away again, maybe even back to the tank to close the system. Rip a few fridges apart and put the cooling pipes in the tank. Run any waste water over the hotside pipes and then into the drains.
IP-over-carrier-pigeon was a classic joke, but it made an interesting point... Internet Protocols don't have to be confined to computers. The exact same protocols can be enacted by people. (Just packet size and latency go up:-)
What you describe is already happening. I've read reports of one guy who's barely slept in a week because he keeps driving back and forth across the border, shuttling hard drives to foreign journalists.
Get some BIG spools of optic fibre, a plough, and some telco-grade routers. Then just run dozens of cables across the border into the edge towns. Then run the local routers (that all lead to Tripoli and their central telecoms hub) backwards.
Failing that, there's an old Interop saying: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon full of tapes on the freeway."
And over in Telco-Update-Brisbane-Flood is where all the telecommunication engineers are discussing the floods; specifically why their fibre is dark, who's fault it is, and which data centers are running on gens.
At the time of writing, the graph seems to have levelled out at what is expected (hoped) to be the peak of the Ipswich floods.
This curve should be repeated a few hours later in brisbane, when the water reaches us. How long this graph remains at it's currently insanely high mark will determine how much of Ipswich and Brisbane get washed away.
This is rather important to know about, too. It implies you should not be wading through the floodwaters with anything less than rubber overalls. You should especially not be wandering around in unprotective clothing, with any kind of injuries to your feet or legs that would admit cholera.
ie: In board shorts, getting hit in the legs with sharp flotsam, while standing in sewage contaminated water. Just don't do it.
Brisbane City Council has warned that as sewerage treatment plants become impacted by rising water, some untreated sewage will begin to enter floodwaters and is urging residents to stay away.
In addition to untreated sewage, floodwaters could also contain other ground contaminants that could be potentially dangerous.
Residents are urged however, to conserve water as much as possible to ensure reservoirs remain in maximum supply – this does not apply to infants, elderly residents and people with health issues.
For further information, contact the SEQ Water Grid Manager on 1800 771 497.
Just found the Brisbane City Council Newsroom, which has recent updates. For example, this new information (to me) on evacuation centres:
Residents urged to bring own bedding to evacuation centres12/1/2011 Brisbane City Council advises that although there will be some bedding provided at evacuation centres across the city, residents are urged to bring their own bedding when accessing the centres.
Council expects high demand for access to the evacuation centres and recommends residents bring their own supplies for their own comfort.
Residents are encouraged to bring pillows and sheets, any medication, important documents such as insurance papers and spare clothing.
Two major evacuation centres have been activated at the RNA Showgrounds at Bowen Hills and QEII at Nathan.
Three smaller evacuation centres were activated this morning at St Catherine’s Anglican Church and the Salvation Army Church at Middle Park and Good News Lutheran Church and Jamboree Heights.
The evacuation centres have been established for those who wish to evacuate of their own accord and cannot be accommodated with family or friends. Please note there have been no forced evacuations.
Ha! They had to. The opt-in early warning site (http://brisbane.gov.au/earlywarning) broke sometime yesterday. All trace has since been removed that it was ever there.
Yes indeed, Facebook has actually served quite well under the strain, for both the Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Police, who grew surprisingly popular overnight, with many many new 'friends' and many many new 'likes'. Conversations are continuing in both:
Remember that this was mostly written from sources where 'tomorrow' is Thursday the 12th, and the latest updates are at about 2-3am on the 12th, so the information is now dating fast. Most of the links are still perfectly useful, and will usually take you to the latest information available from that site, so that's good.
This is a couple of hours old now, but it was mostly accurate at the time I was trying to get it into wikipedia: (sorry if some wiki synax leaks through, I'm doing this fast)
The following information may be of help to those currently caught in the unfolding emergency.
=Evacuations=
* Evacuations of a number of Brisbane suburbs are likely tomorrow when the river peaks and it is planned to have an increased police presence in and around all evacuated properties.http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/floodrelief/flood-info-centre-updates-reports-warnings-advice-and-how-you-can-help/story-fn7ik2te-1225985436806
* Police are evacuating residents on Dohles Rocks Road, Griffin as well as Goburra Street at Rocklea and McKuulla Street and Skew Street at Sherwood. Stimpson Road and Brisbane Corso at Fairfield are closed. Mt Ommaney area under threat with the rising river levels - 11 January 2011 at 20:50
* An emergency alert has been issued for Dalby residents. Myall Creek will rise to 3.8 metres by 10pm 11/1/11. Concerned residents should evacuate to family, friends or evacuation centres. Call 46626666 for more information.http://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/emergency-alert-issued-for-dalby-residents-thebigwetqldfloods/159601107421243 - Tuesday, 11 January 2011 at 20:22
* All members of the community who live or are currently near the Brisbane River at West End are advised to move to higher ground. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/australian-police-urge-brisbane-flood-evacuations-20110111-19m1s.html
* Evacuation Centre set up - RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hillshttp://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/evacuation-centre-set-up-rna-showgrounds-bowen-hills-qldfloods-thebigwet/159557807425573 Evacuation Centre set up - RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hills The Red Cross says it will be able to accommodate about 1,000 people.
** A Brisbane City Council statement said the centre had been set up for those who wanted to evacuate of their own accord and could not be accommodated with family or friends. Residents were advised to take their own pillows and sheets, medication, important documents and spare clothing. Pets are unable to be accommodated at the evacuation centre.http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/100000-to-lose-power-supermarkets-bare-as-flooding-crisis-continues-20110110-19l56.html
** Evacuations began in Brisbane last night with the RNA Showgrounds expected to house up to 3000 people. Concerns were raised that this space would be insufficient and more than 6000 people would possibly need temporary accommodation.http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/brisbane-braces-for-the-worst-as-record-floodwaters-loom/story-e6freon6-1225985939905
* Evacuation centre reported at Ipswich Showgrounds.http://kempsey.iprime.com.au/index.php/news/national-news/evacuations-under-way-across-southeast - more information needed
* The Queensland flood crisis has triggered evacuations in the heart of Brisbane, amid [[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queensland-floods/police-warn-that-queensland-floods-death-toll-will-exceed-20/story-fn7iwx3v-1225985503963 reports]] that another five bodies have been found.
* [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Queensland-Floods-Temporary-Accommodation-Help/100641316678419?v=wall Queensland Floods Temporary Accommodation Help] is a facebook group which contains offers of accomodation and contact details.
* [http://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/from-bom-severe-weather-warning-cancellation/159618004086220 Severe Weather Warning Cancellation] Heavy rain areas have eased during the past few hours and further flash flooding due to rainfall is no longer expected. - 11 January 2011 at 22:04
=Affected Areas=
* Bereau of Meteorology [http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/warnings/ Queensland Warning Summary] containing [http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20885.html flood warnings] for (at 7am, 12th January 2011): ** Fitzroy River ** Burnett River ** Mary River *
I'm surprised by the number of people who seem hostile to this question, mostly because they can't imagine any circumstances where they would want to do this. I can think of several. In fact, I was thinking about something similar with optical disks just earlier today. (I'm curious whether small holograms could be created by writing an interference pattern directly onto a CD or DVD, but I would need exact control over how the tracks lined up to achieve this.)
Here's some concepts just off the top of my head: * He's come up with a new disk encoding scheme, and wants to try it out. * He's doing research into how long disks retain data, and is questioning basic assumptions like whether surface bits permanently magnetize the platter underneath, affecting later bits in the same location. Or how far the domains spread. * He's working with self-assembling molecules and needs to give them a patterned magnetic surface to build on. * He wants to 'print' a 2-D picture onto a small portion of the hard drive, and bounce a laser off it. (The magnetic alignment of the surface domains would polarize the photons slightly.) * He's making a high-resolution rotational position encoder, so by reading across 32 tracks knows the rotation of the platter down to a few nanoarcminutes. * He wants to totally destroy the contents of a disk. (I assume this is what most of the hostile people think is the intention, presumably as the payload of some virus)
Those are just the ones off the top of my head.
However, the ranting people do have a point that without knowing WHY you want to do this, we can't really suggest the best solutions. A lot of people have recommended going back to super-old MFM hard drives that allowed this, but we don't know if you require the density of modern hard drives.
To do this with a modern drive, you're basically going to have to rebuild the controller. Either totally remove the controller board (leaving handy raw connections to the stepper motors and drive heads) or cut the connections between the microcontroller and the low-level electrical functions of the drive, and substitute your own. Here's where knowing your accuracy requirements could have help, because if you want relatively large bits, you can get away with fairly low-frequency components. A 20Mhz microcontroller can, with say an external high-speed shift register, push out an 80mbit/s serial stream, which equates to >120,000 bits around the track of a 6,000RPM drive. Not quite the same density as the manufacturer, but better than the old MFM drives.
Your next problem is going to be this: It's really, really hard to tell where the head is on a platter. I've no idea how modern drives do it, but it used to be done with 'marker' bits either in the track, or on a nearby 'index' track, plus a little timing. Preserving these location marker bits is actually the most important job of the drive controller.
It's not impossible, merely very difficult. I could probably make one with only several weeks of hard work.
Alternately, you could try getting into the firmware and re-writing it to your specifications, but that might take longer. You would have to reverse-engineer a lot of stuff that is specifically hardened against this, but at least the hardware would be stable.
Ha! I was actually just about to suggest something very, very similar, although with a twist.
I think it wouldn't be too hard to have some junctions which switch based on the ball colour. Effectively being able to sort a whole series of random coloured balls and send all the red ones, for example, to the red ball output slot. That's the clearest demonstration of the primary action of networking: ie, 'routing', I can think of. Not just random paths, but deliberate sorting.
I suppose Ted Stevens was right. It IS a series of tubes!
First, you have to understand the psychology of the thief, and them make him NOT want to steal any of your stuff.
The simplest way is to make it not worth their while, and I personally think the fastest way is with a can of spraypaint and some artistic licence.
Ever wanted to spraypaint your deck cool camoflage colours just like the 'leet Hackers in That Film With The Cute Girl? Go ahead! You'll screw it up, repaint it silver, get funny bubbles on the case where the paint reacted with the plastic, and accidentally wipe off the key labels with acetone... and then your gear will be completely unique, instantly recogniziable, and often unsellable at pawn shops.
The more beige and standard your gear, the more likely it will get nicked.
My laptop got "stolen" (possibly by someone I knew) some years back, and turned up a few days later under a nearby tree. It was covered in unique PsiCore stickers, and whoever had "borrowed" it had failed to even get past the linux login prompt... CLI's are another great theft-prevention device.
Some final words of advice, since many, many other threads seem to be filled with hints on how to have Frequi Sex with Crazy Girls...
1. Never forget: Safe, Sane, Consensual. 2. Everyone else in University is having a LOT less sex than they say they are, or you think they are. (Trust me on this.) 3. The ones that tell you they're having sex don't realize how badly they're doing it. (One night fumbles simply don't compare to a lover who knows you well. Trust me on that too.) 4. Crazy girls are fun, but they're still crazy.
Since this is something I've known was coming (and no-so-patiently waiting) for a couple of years now, I feel I can put this in context and draw a few conclusions.
Everyone wants a Replicator. The things we see on Trek, in Science Fiction, resonate with us so deeply because it's all stuff we really, really want. That's the best purpose of SF, to show you a nice shiny concept and have you go "Yeah. I'd love one of those." and then (for some people) spend surprisingly large amounts of time trying to make it happen.
Go back through history. We've always wanted Magic in our lives, and any technology sufficiently advanced...
Matter Replicators are coming. The technology began when we started carving things from wood, and will reach it's zenith when we finally get true nanotech in maybe a century. But there are many milestones along the way.
One we've been living with for a decade now is the Laser Printer, which is essentially a personal Replicator for books. This is an improvement on the old Gutenberg press, which was the industrial equivalent. Never forget that... the modern laser printer would effectively BE magic to Gutenberg. One look and he'd probably break down and cry with awe and joy.
Of course, then he'd get very angry at the entire copyright situation we've put ourselves in. He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
Most of us now own a device that can, in minutes, 'burn' a data storage media capable of holding more information than exists in the human genome. How cool is that? What we did for books, we also did for audio and video media. And then the same copyright issues closed in to hold the technology back.
Again, CD burners started as multi-thousand dollar devices that only companies could afford. Microwave ovens followed a similar course into our homes. (though being devices that only convert food from cold to hot, they strain the replicator analogy a little)
We are slowly surrounding ourselves with specific-purpose replicators, while trying to create all-purpose ones.
It seems fairly obvious to me that these multi-thousand dollar 3D printers used by industry will eventually drop in price, and soon enter the home, to be played with by hobbyists around the world. And the moment that happens, be prepared for some rather large changes.
First, expect to see the whole Intellectual Property issue hit another level. Controlling the reproduction of physical objects is what the Patent system is best at, remember? Imagine a world where your personal replicator will only produce licenced objects after the appropriate payment has gone back to a commercial entity. There are a lot of powerful people who want that to happen.
Then consider the other side, some guy in Guatemala who designs a series of 'patterns' that, if you print them in your 3D printer and assemble the parts, makes another 3D printer. An 'open' printer. When that happens, a wave of change will sweep across the world like nothing we've ever seen.
The first 'industrial revolution' created factories and warehouses and supply chains. The second one (coming soon to a theatre near you) will mostly tear it all back down.
Replicators will change the way we percieve physical 'products' in a way we can't predict right now. Will we start keeping most of our 'things' in data storage, printing them out (and then recycling the materials) at need, so our homes are nice and empty? Will we become pack rats, filling our rooms with pointless crap? Probably both.
Any new view which sees physical products as transient and temporary will be another blow to capitalism, (and materialism, for that matter) which is only kept honest by the transfer of 'real' commodities. What happens to the law of supply and demand when scarcity suddenly cannot possibly exist for a large class of consumer products? We may be facing the end of capitalism as we know it. The only way to keep it in it's current form is to engineer scarcity back into the model, which as the copyright wars show us, is only possible through totalitarian control of each consumer's tools. I don't think we want to go there.
Yes, 3D printers require processed raw materials (the polymer inks) which initally will have supply/demand issues, but those will dissapear quickly as millions of individuals prototype and play with recycling machines, or automated chemistry sets. In the medium term we might even co-opt nature's replicators and make a few strains of yeast which excrete the relevant polymers (or precursors) after eating recycled waste. There are many paths.
None of this can happen without computers and the Internet, and without the intellectual freedom to use them.
The great thing is, it seems to be pretty much inevitable. Whatever the precise mix of technologies turns out to be, these devices are going to forever change our relationship with the physical world.
This might be useful information for some people out there. It took me long enough to figure it out!
Taurine is the principal ingredient in Red Bull energy drinks, and in Australia, recent relaxations in the various what-you-can-put-in-drinks laws means that Taurine is now an additive in most energy beverages.
That's all fine, except I'm apparently allergic to Taurine. I started throwing up for no apparent reason last year, and it turned out to be the Taurine, which just got added to my favorite energy drink, but didn't kick in until three days after ingestion, which is why it took so long to figure out.
Taurine is a bull protein, in the same way that Lactose is a cow protein. Some people are lactose intolerant. I seem to be Taurine intolerant, with many of the same symptoms.
The only energy drink left in Australia that does not contain Taurine is called 'Lift', it is quite tasty, and has Guarana and Ginseng in it. Try it.
Since I figured all this out, I ran into another Jeremy who had precisely the same reaction. So, if your name is 'Jeremy', you might want to stay away from the Red Bull.
Any faulty logical inferences in the above message are left as excercises for the reader.
DNS doesn't work instantly. Never has, never will. And with the profusion of names, it will just get slower. It's only the local caching which seems to make DNS fast. Throwing away that caching would just be stupid, so the only difference between any two schemes comes down to the time for "first discovery"
I suggested the FreeNet system as a good conceptual base because of one P2P property which would be beneficial... the more a file is used, the wider it's replicated.
DNS has a big advantage over other P2P systems that the 'files' it's trading are very small. As people have been mentioning, it's possible to download the whole DNS tree to a beefy laptop, uncompressed.
Yes, if it's a really uncommon site that no-one has ever been to before, then the initial discovery might take whole minutes. Woo.
DNS is slowly being broken by commercial interests. Eveyone knows it. Anything this vital to the internet is worth big money, and if it's centralized, that invariably leads to a power elite, which eventually takes the path of self-interest...
To make a highly emotional analogy, the current DNS system is like an RIAA or MPAA in it's infancy. We now have the chance to turn off from that branch of time, that terrible future history, where it's illegal to host nonauthoritive records and Seattle has been nuked by the nameless.:^)
Don't get me wrong. It's a great system, it's worked for a very long time, it does it's basic job admirably. My single main issues with it are it's centralization, and increasing politicization.
I've given this a little thought over the years. There's a few fundamental issues with the centralized DNS system.
I've tried kicking around a few replacements ideas, like a peer-to-peer exchange system carrying certificates that act a little like resource search records.
The FreeNet project actually gives a good model for how to distribute and search for these 'domain certificates'.
I'd like to see a system that you essentially 'anonymously' submit namespace entries to. Conflicts are resolved based on context. If a dozen people want "money.domain", fine. If you try to browse to it without any context, you have to choose which one you want based on other information in the certificates (full name, location, nickname etc) and once you've chosen, that context sticks. URL's would need to be extended to also carry this context, which probably need to be a cryptographic signature to prevent abuse.
It constantly amazes me that people are willing to pay $50 to 'own' a record in a database. The domain land grab was just stupid... in virtual space, you can always just make more land. As.info proves.
DNS will obviously persist for decades, (simply because of the financial and general mindspace investment in 'dots') but hopefully as only one of a plethora of address resolution systems. Name resolution needs to be a pool, not a tree.
"For as long as the DNS system exists, the Internet will never be free" - Morpheus, while very Drunk
I have been watching my television for slightly over three hours, starting only a few minutes from the first collision. I watched everything. I have tried to imagine the terror and fear of the victims, but cannot.
Rhetoric and ideology should never overshadow the tragedies of the individual victims, but more than lives have been lost today. The United States seems also to have lost it's ability to reason. Already I hear spokesmen and anchorwomen chanting the words: "Hunt them down". The lust for revenge is staggering. It will grow worse.
Nothing can be said to assuage the terrible need for vengance. The American people will act, driven by the very same emotions as the terrorists. The cycle will continue.
The United States is not the target of terrorism because it is a democracy, or because of it's beliefs, or because the terrorists are jealous. If that were so, there are closer and easier targets.
The US is the target of terrorism because of how it involves itself in the affairs of other countries. Therefore, the first response to this tragedy should be a change in how the US conducts it's foreign policy.
The US has set itself up as the world's policeman and banker, not it's doctor or engineer. It has deliberately engendered fear, not love. It has a history of projecting it's ideology on other countries through the use of force. It is those factors which have lead to the horror I have seen today.
If the United States cannot put aside it's pride and apologise to the very people who have just attacked it, if it cannot make amends by loving those who hate it... things will just get worse.
Slashdot Mirror
For extra effect, put the burlap tents under the firehose spray, and try to get the mist to block the sun. (Small artificial clouds.)
Spray a firehose upwards through something that will make a fine mist. Most will evaporate, sucking vast amounts of heat out of the air, which will flow downwards onto the crowd, along with the remaining chilled water. You want pressure rather than sheer volume.
Burlap/canvas tents can be cooled with a constant trickle over them in the same way.
Slightly less messy might be a series of hoses that carry chilled water from a tank out to modified hot-water-bottles strapped to people, and then away again, maybe even back to the tank to close the system. Rip a few fridges apart and put the cooling pipes in the tank. Run any waste water over the hotside pipes and then into the drains.
It's like CPU cooling, just on a larger scale: :-)
Wasn't this the plot of an episode of Max Headroom?
Congrats, dude. My best friend was at the launch last year. I hear it's damn cool.
First no Concorde, now no Shuttle. Can't help but feel civilisation is slipping a little.
IP-over-carrier-pigeon was a classic joke, but it made an interesting point... Internet Protocols don't have to be confined to computers. The exact same protocols can be enacted by people. (Just packet size and latency go up :-)
What you describe is already happening. I've read reports of one guy who's barely slept in a week because he keeps driving back and forth across the border, shuttling hard drives to foreign journalists.
Ha! Gonna have to write that one down.
Get some BIG spools of optic fibre, a plough, and some telco-grade routers. Then just run dozens of cables across the border into the edge towns. Then run the local routers (that all lead to Tripoli and their central telecoms hub) backwards.
Failing that, there's an old Interop saying: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon full of tapes on the freeway."
And over in Telco-Update-Brisbane-Flood is where all the telecommunication engineers are discussing the floods; specifically why their fibre is dark, who's fault it is, and which data centers are running on gens.
This is quite beautiful in it's way: Latest River Heights for Bremer R at Ipswich
At the time of writing, the graph seems to have levelled out at what is expected (hoped) to be the peak of the Ipswich floods.
This curve should be repeated a few hours later in brisbane, when the water reaches us. How long this graph remains at it's currently insanely high mark will determine how much of Ipswich and Brisbane get washed away.
Isn't math pretty?
The Queensland Police Service have revised the number of missing people from about 90 down to, at last count, 48.
Unfortunately, the death toll has increased from ten to twelve.
This is rather important to know about, too. It implies you should not be wading through the floodwaters with anything less than rubber overalls. You should especially not be wandering around in unprotective clothing, with any kind of injuries to your feet or legs that would admit cholera.
ie: In board shorts, getting hit in the legs with sharp flotsam, while standing in sewage contaminated water. Just don't do it.
Untreated sewage to enter floodwaters
12 January, 2011
Brisbane City Council has warned that as sewerage treatment plants become impacted by rising water, some untreated sewage will begin to enter floodwaters and is urging residents to stay away.
In addition to untreated sewage, floodwaters could also contain other ground contaminants that could be potentially dangerous.
Residents are urged however, to conserve water as much as possible to ensure reservoirs remain in maximum supply – this does not apply to infants, elderly residents and people with health issues.
For further information, contact the SEQ Water Grid Manager on 1800 771 497.
Just found the Brisbane City Council Newsroom, which has recent updates. For example, this new information (to me) on evacuation centres:
Residents urged to bring own bedding to evacuation centres12/1/2011
Brisbane City Council advises that although there will be some bedding provided at evacuation centres across the city, residents are urged to bring their own bedding when accessing the centres.
Council expects high demand for access to the evacuation centres and recommends residents bring their own supplies for their own comfort.
Residents are encouraged to bring pillows and sheets, any medication, important documents such as insurance papers and spare clothing.
Two major evacuation centres have been activated at the RNA Showgrounds at Bowen Hills and QEII at Nathan.
Three smaller evacuation centres were activated this morning at St Catherine’s Anglican Church and the Salvation Army Church at Middle Park and Good News Lutheran Church and Jamboree Heights.
The evacuation centres have been established for those who wish to evacuate of their own accord and cannot be accommodated with family or friends. Please note there have been no forced evacuations.
Ha! They had to. The opt-in early warning site (http://brisbane.gov.au/earlywarning) broke sometime yesterday. All trace has since been removed that it was ever there.
Yes indeed, Facebook has actually served quite well under the strain, for both the Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Police, who grew surprisingly popular overnight, with many many new 'friends' and many many new 'likes'. Conversations are continuing in both:
http://www.facebook.com/BrisbaneCityCouncil
http://www.facebook.com/QueenslandPolice
Remember that this was mostly written from sources where 'tomorrow' is Thursday the 12th, and the latest updates are at about 2-3am on the 12th, so the information is now dating fast. Most of the links are still perfectly useful, and will usually take you to the latest information available from that site, so that's good.
This is a couple of hours old now, but it was mostly accurate at the time I was trying to get it into wikipedia: (sorry if some wiki synax leaks through, I'm doing this fast)
The following information may be of help to those currently caught in the unfolding emergency.
=Evacuations=
* Evacuations of a number of Brisbane suburbs are likely tomorrow when the river peaks and it is planned to have an increased police presence in and around all evacuated properties.http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/floodrelief/flood-info-centre-updates-reports-warnings-advice-and-how-you-can-help/story-fn7ik2te-1225985436806
* Police are evacuating residents on Dohles Rocks Road, Griffin as well as Goburra Street at Rocklea and McKuulla Street and Skew Street at Sherwood. Stimpson Road and Brisbane Corso at Fairfield are closed. Mt Ommaney area under threat with the rising river levels - 11 January 2011 at 20:50
* An emergency alert has been issued for Dalby residents. Myall Creek will rise to 3.8 metres by 10pm 11/1/11. Concerned residents should evacuate to family, friends or evacuation centres. Call 46626666 for more information.http://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/emergency-alert-issued-for-dalby-residents-thebigwetqldfloods/159601107421243 - Tuesday, 11 January 2011 at 20:22
* All members of the community who live or are currently near the Brisbane River at West End are advised to move to higher ground. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/australian-police-urge-brisbane-flood-evacuations-20110111-19m1s.html
* Evacuation Centre set up - RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hillshttp://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/evacuation-centre-set-up-rna-showgrounds-bowen-hills-qldfloods-thebigwet/159557807425573 Evacuation Centre set up - RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hills The Red Cross says it will be able to accommodate about 1,000 people.
** A Brisbane City Council statement said the centre had been set up for those who wanted to evacuate of their own accord and could not be accommodated with family or friends. Residents were advised to take their own pillows and sheets, medication, important documents and spare clothing. Pets are unable to be accommodated at the evacuation centre.http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/100000-to-lose-power-supermarkets-bare-as-flooding-crisis-continues-20110110-19l56.html
** Evacuations began in Brisbane last night with the RNA Showgrounds expected to house up to 3000 people. Concerns were raised that this space would be insufficient and more than 6000 people would possibly need temporary accommodation.http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/brisbane-braces-for-the-worst-as-record-floodwaters-loom/story-e6freon6-1225985939905
* Evacuation centre reported at Ipswich Showgrounds.http://kempsey.iprime.com.au/index.php/news/national-news/evacuations-under-way-across-southeast - more information needed
* The Queensland flood crisis has triggered evacuations in the heart of Brisbane, amid [[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queensland-floods/police-warn-that-queensland-floods-death-toll-will-exceed-20/story-fn7iwx3v-1225985503963 reports]] that another five bodies have been found.
* [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Queensland-Floods-Temporary-Accommodation-Help/100641316678419?v=wall Queensland Floods Temporary Accommodation Help] is a facebook group which contains offers of accomodation and contact details.
* [http://www.facebook.com/notes/queensland-police-service/from-bom-severe-weather-warning-cancellation/159618004086220 Severe Weather Warning Cancellation] Heavy rain areas have eased during the past few hours and further flash flooding due to rainfall is no longer expected. - 11 January 2011 at 22:04
=Affected Areas=
* Bereau of Meteorology [http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/warnings/ Queensland Warning Summary] containing [http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/wrap_fwo.pl?IDQ20885.html flood warnings] for (at 7am, 12th January 2011):
** Fitzroy River
** Burnett River
** Mary River
*
I'm surprised by the number of people who seem hostile to this question, mostly because they can't imagine any circumstances where they would want to do this. I can think of several. In fact, I was thinking about something similar with optical disks just earlier today. (I'm curious whether small holograms could be created by writing an interference pattern directly onto a CD or DVD, but I would need exact control over how the tracks lined up to achieve this.)
Here's some concepts just off the top of my head:
* He's come up with a new disk encoding scheme, and wants to try it out.
* He's doing research into how long disks retain data, and is questioning basic assumptions like whether surface bits permanently magnetize the platter underneath, affecting later bits in the same location. Or how far the domains spread.
* He's working with self-assembling molecules and needs to give them a patterned magnetic surface to build on.
* He wants to 'print' a 2-D picture onto a small portion of the hard drive, and bounce a laser off it. (The magnetic alignment of the surface domains would polarize the photons slightly.)
* He's making a high-resolution rotational position encoder, so by reading across 32 tracks knows the rotation of the platter down to a few nanoarcminutes.
* He wants to totally destroy the contents of a disk. (I assume this is what most of the hostile people think is the intention, presumably as the payload of some virus)
Those are just the ones off the top of my head.
However, the ranting people do have a point that without knowing WHY you want to do this, we can't really suggest the best solutions. A lot of people have recommended going back to super-old MFM hard drives that allowed this, but we don't know if you require the density of modern hard drives.
To do this with a modern drive, you're basically going to have to rebuild the controller. Either totally remove the controller board (leaving handy raw connections to the stepper motors and drive heads) or cut the connections between the microcontroller and the low-level electrical functions of the drive, and substitute your own. Here's where knowing your accuracy requirements could have help, because if you want relatively large bits, you can get away with fairly low-frequency components. A 20Mhz microcontroller can, with say an external high-speed shift register, push out an 80mbit/s serial stream, which equates to >120,000 bits around the track of a 6,000RPM drive. Not quite the same density as the manufacturer, but better than the old MFM drives.
Your next problem is going to be this: It's really, really hard to tell where the head is on a platter. I've no idea how modern drives do it, but it used to be done with 'marker' bits either in the track, or on a nearby 'index' track, plus a little timing. Preserving these location marker bits is actually the most important job of the drive controller.
It's not impossible, merely very difficult. I could probably make one with only several weeks of hard work.
Alternately, you could try getting into the firmware and re-writing it to your specifications, but that might take longer. You would have to reverse-engineer a lot of stuff that is specifically hardened against this, but at least the hardware would be stable.
C#, Pascal, Javascript??? Sure, and while we're at it why not give him an ADA compiler and the DoD style guide.
Logo was designed and built to teach programming concepts to kids, and excels at it. Has done for 20 years.
I've got a CNC 3-Axis milling machine at home that I don't use much, but we still gave my 6-year old nephew LEGO for Christmas. Think about it.
Ha! I was actually just about to suggest something very, very similar, although with a twist.
I think it wouldn't be too hard to have some junctions which switch based on the ball colour. Effectively being able to sort a whole series of random coloured balls and send all the red ones, for example, to the red ball output slot. That's the clearest demonstration of the primary action of networking: ie, 'routing', I can think of. Not just random paths, but deliberate sorting.
I suppose Ted Stevens was right. It IS a series of tubes!
First, you have to understand the psychology of the thief, and them make him NOT want to steal any of your stuff.
The simplest way is to make it not worth their while, and I personally think the fastest way is with a can of spraypaint and some artistic licence.
Ever wanted to spraypaint your deck cool camoflage colours just like the 'leet Hackers in That Film With The Cute Girl? Go ahead! You'll screw it up, repaint it silver, get funny bubbles on the case where the paint reacted with the plastic, and accidentally wipe off the key labels with acetone... and then your gear will be completely unique, instantly recogniziable, and often unsellable at pawn shops.
The more beige and standard your gear, the more likely it will get nicked.
My laptop got "stolen" (possibly by someone I knew) some years back, and turned up a few days later under a nearby tree. It was covered in unique PsiCore stickers, and whoever had "borrowed" it had failed to even get past the linux login prompt... CLI's are another great theft-prevention device.
Some final words of advice, since many, many other threads seem to be filled with hints on how to have Frequi Sex with Crazy Girls...
1. Never forget: Safe, Sane, Consensual.
2. Everyone else in University is having a LOT less sex than they say they are, or you think they are. (Trust me on this.)
3. The ones that tell you they're having sex don't realize how badly they're doing it. (One night fumbles simply don't compare to a lover who knows you well. Trust me on that too.)
4. Crazy girls are fun, but they're still crazy.
Since this is something I've known was coming (and no-so-patiently waiting) for a couple of years now, I feel I can put this in context and draw a few conclusions.
Everyone wants a Replicator. The things we see on Trek, in Science Fiction, resonate with us so deeply because it's all stuff we really, really want. That's the best purpose of SF, to show you a nice shiny concept and have you go "Yeah. I'd love one of those." and then (for some people) spend surprisingly large amounts of time trying to make it happen.
Go back through history. We've always wanted Magic in our lives, and any technology sufficiently advanced...
Matter Replicators are coming. The technology began when we started carving things from wood, and will reach it's zenith when we finally get true nanotech in maybe a century. But there are many milestones along the way.
One we've been living with for a decade now is the Laser Printer, which is essentially a personal Replicator for books. This is an improvement on the old Gutenberg press, which was the industrial equivalent. Never forget that... the modern laser printer would effectively BE magic to Gutenberg. One look and he'd probably break down and cry with awe and joy.
Of course, then he'd get very angry at the entire copyright situation we've put ourselves in. He'd marvel at our stupidity, inventing a machine that can churn out books faster than you can read them, and then Not Allowing ourselves to use it.
Most of us now own a device that can, in minutes, 'burn' a data storage media capable of holding more information than exists in the human genome. How cool is that? What we did for books, we also did for audio and video media. And then the same copyright issues closed in to hold the technology back.
Again, CD burners started as multi-thousand dollar devices that only companies could afford. Microwave ovens followed a similar course into our homes. (though being devices that only convert food from cold to hot, they strain the replicator analogy a little)
We are slowly surrounding ourselves with specific-purpose replicators, while trying to create all-purpose ones.
It seems fairly obvious to me that these multi-thousand dollar 3D printers used by industry will eventually drop in price, and soon enter the home, to be played with by hobbyists around the world. And the moment that happens, be prepared for some rather large changes.
First, expect to see the whole Intellectual Property issue hit another level. Controlling the reproduction of physical objects is what the Patent system is best at, remember? Imagine a world where your personal replicator will only produce licenced objects after the appropriate payment has gone back to a commercial entity. There are a lot of powerful people who want that to happen.
Then consider the other side, some guy in Guatemala who designs a series of 'patterns' that, if you print them in your 3D printer and assemble the parts, makes another 3D printer. An 'open' printer. When that happens, a wave of change will sweep across the world like nothing we've ever seen.
The first 'industrial revolution' created factories and warehouses and supply chains. The second one (coming soon to a theatre near you) will mostly tear it all back down.
Replicators will change the way we percieve physical 'products' in a way we can't predict right now. Will we start keeping most of our 'things' in data storage, printing them out (and then recycling the materials) at need, so our homes are nice and empty? Will we become pack rats, filling our rooms with pointless crap? Probably both.
Any new view which sees physical products as transient and temporary will be another blow to capitalism, (and materialism, for that matter) which is only kept honest by the transfer of 'real' commodities. What happens to the law of supply and demand when scarcity suddenly cannot possibly exist for a large class of consumer products? We may be facing the end of capitalism as we know it. The only way to keep it in it's current form is to engineer scarcity back into the model, which as the copyright wars show us, is only possible through totalitarian control of each consumer's tools. I don't think we want to go there.
Yes, 3D printers require processed raw materials (the polymer inks) which initally will have supply/demand issues, but those will dissapear quickly as millions of individuals prototype and play with recycling machines, or automated chemistry sets. In the medium term we might even co-opt nature's replicators and make a few strains of yeast which excrete the relevant polymers (or precursors) after eating recycled waste. There are many paths.
None of this can happen without computers and the Internet, and without the intellectual freedom to use them.
The great thing is, it seems to be pretty much inevitable. Whatever the precise mix of technologies turns out to be, these devices are going to forever change our relationship with the physical world.
I'm ready. Are you?
This might be useful information for some people out there. It took me long enough to figure it out!
Taurine is the principal ingredient in Red Bull energy drinks, and in Australia, recent relaxations in the various what-you-can-put-in-drinks laws means that Taurine is now an additive in most energy beverages.
That's all fine, except I'm apparently allergic to Taurine. I started throwing up for no apparent reason last year, and it turned out to be the Taurine, which just got added to my favorite energy drink, but didn't kick in until three days after ingestion, which is why it took so long to figure out.
Taurine is a bull protein, in the same way that Lactose is a cow protein. Some people are lactose intolerant. I seem to be Taurine intolerant, with many of the same symptoms.
The only energy drink left in Australia that does not contain Taurine is called 'Lift', it is quite tasty, and has Guarana and Ginseng in it. Try it.
Since I figured all this out, I ran into another Jeremy who had precisely the same reaction. So, if your name is 'Jeremy', you might want to stay away from the Red Bull.
Any faulty logical inferences in the above message are left as excercises for the reader.
DNS doesn't work instantly. Never has, never will. And with the profusion of names, it will just get slower. It's only the local caching which seems to make DNS fast. Throwing away that caching would just be stupid, so the only difference between any two schemes comes down to the time for "first discovery"
:^)
I suggested the FreeNet system as a good conceptual base because of one P2P property which would be beneficial... the more a file is used, the wider it's replicated.
DNS has a big advantage over other P2P systems that the 'files' it's trading are very small. As people have been mentioning, it's possible to download the whole DNS tree to a beefy laptop, uncompressed.
Yes, if it's a really uncommon site that no-one has ever been to before, then the initial discovery might take whole minutes. Woo.
DNS is slowly being broken by commercial interests. Eveyone knows it. Anything this vital to the internet is worth big money, and if it's centralized, that invariably leads to a power elite, which eventually takes the path of self-interest...
To make a highly emotional analogy, the current DNS system is like an RIAA or MPAA in it's infancy. We now have the chance to turn off from that branch of time, that terrible future history, where it's illegal to host nonauthoritive records and Seattle has been nuked by the nameless.
Don't get me wrong. It's a great system, it's worked for a very long time, it does it's basic job admirably. My single main issues with it are it's centralization, and increasing politicization.
.info proves.
I've given this a little thought over the years. There's a few fundamental issues with the centralized DNS system.
I've tried kicking around a few replacements ideas, like a peer-to-peer exchange system carrying certificates that act a little like resource search records.
The FreeNet project actually gives a good model for how to distribute and search for these 'domain certificates'.
I'd like to see a system that you essentially 'anonymously' submit namespace entries to. Conflicts are resolved based on context. If a dozen people want "money.domain", fine. If you try to browse to it without any context, you have to choose which one you want based on other information in the certificates (full name, location, nickname etc) and once you've chosen, that context sticks. URL's would need to be extended to also carry this context, which probably need to be a cryptographic signature to prevent abuse.
It constantly amazes me that people are willing to pay $50 to 'own' a record in a database. The domain land grab was just stupid... in virtual space, you can always just make more land. As
DNS will obviously persist for decades, (simply because of the financial and general mindspace investment in 'dots') but hopefully as only one of a plethora of address resolution systems. Name resolution needs to be a pool, not a tree.
"For as long as the DNS system exists, the Internet will never be free" - Morpheus, while very Drunk
I have been watching my television for slightly over three hours, starting only a few minutes from the first collision. I watched everything. I have tried to imagine the terror and fear of the victims, but cannot.
Rhetoric and ideology should never overshadow the tragedies of the individual victims, but more than lives have been lost today. The United States seems also to have lost it's ability to reason. Already I hear spokesmen and anchorwomen chanting the words: "Hunt them down". The lust for revenge is staggering. It will grow worse.
Nothing can be said to assuage the terrible need for vengance. The American people will act, driven by the very same emotions as the terrorists. The cycle will continue.
The United States is not the target of terrorism because it is a democracy, or because of it's beliefs, or because the terrorists are jealous. If that were so, there are closer and easier targets.
The US is the target of terrorism because of how it involves itself in the affairs of other countries. Therefore, the first response to this tragedy should be a change in how the US conducts it's foreign policy.
The US has set itself up as the world's policeman and banker, not it's doctor or engineer. It has deliberately engendered fear, not love. It has a history of projecting it's ideology on other countries through the use of force. It is those factors which have lead to the horror I have seen today.
If the United States cannot put aside it's pride and apologise to the very people who have just attacked it, if it cannot make amends by loving those who hate it... things will just get worse.
Thanks and kudos to whoever moderated this rant up. I haven't laughed so hard in a while. It's gotta be a troll, though.