I see the flame fest continues, but could you please take a little time out and give me an answer to a question I have.
I've posted this in the past. I see a problem for us (humanity) in the future. We would like to be able to go to a digital world. As things stand now we can't. The reason is file formats.
Documents like birth and death certificates, property deeds, legal writs, treaty's etc. need to be available and readable for CENTURIES. File formats for the last 30 years or so change every 3 years. After two or at most 3 cycles, the format is no longer readable. That makes digital documents unacceptable. We need centuries for file retention, with full readability. We get a couple of years.
The only real contender right now is ASCII text. That file format has been with us for 50 years now, and continues to remain readable.
I work for a government body, with buildings. Permits are a matter of life safety. If we can't keep track of what is in a building, people die. There is still no substitute for paper records. They are the ONLY long term recourse we currently have. the great need is for a file format that can remain unchanged for centuries. (The best long term recording medium seems to be mud. Summarian records and literature from 5,000 years ago are still readable, if you know the language.)
we desperately need a real long term document format.
ODF tries to be that. I believe that the jury is still out on whether it can fulfill that need or not. OOXML seems to be too linked to a product that will continue to change. OOXML also has those digital blobs that will NEVER be human readable without the originating program. The standard will change radically in the next few years too. That renders it unusable for my needs.
Ideally, I'd like to have a file that would allow setting up forms that would be relatively easily for a human to read, and would explain itself adequately for document recreation. It needs to have this without having to have the originating program, or any other reference than the file itself. I need that for drawings too. It doesn't exist. Even for relatively easy things like forms and written reports it doesn't really exist.
*Shouldn't we all be pushing for standards that are independent of any product?* That seems to be the only way we'll get what we really need.
Maybe TeX? HTML showed promise for a while, but it keeps changing too. OOXML doesn't have what I need. I'm not at all sure that ODF does either.
You don't understand because you have a deliberate blind spot. The blind spot was built into your political definitions over 70 years ago. It is a problem of definition.
You said "As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"
First you should realize that many people will share ANY ideological view. It's a large world out there. On any question, there are going to be differing views. There will always be divergent voices. If you listen to those who agree with you, you will find there are many who share them. Doesn't matter what those views of yours are. At the same time, there will be many who disagree with you. That is not logic or sense, it's just statistics.
Second, your inability to understand Libertarians is based on your use of definitions. You appear to want to see politics in terms of Left and Right. The terms are derived from the Italian Parliament in the early 1930's. The Communists sat on the left. The Fascists sat on the right. This really forms the basis of your political world view.
The Communists were the international socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises though direct management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support an international system of dominance or control.
The Fascists were the National Socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises through indirect management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support a national system of dominance or control.
In the Center were those who agreed with some of each wing.
Since that time, Fascist has become a bad name. They won initially in Italy, Germany and Spain, then launched and lost a war. Nobody likes a looser. Communists and their friends in the center now call anybody they don't like a Fascist. Actually, only a socialist can be a Fascist. Anyone else is really something else, but political labeling has never been about honesty.
Your problem with the Libertarians is that they are not even on your political definition spectrum, which includes only socialists. Libertarians want 1. Freedom from government control, to the greatest extent necessary. 2. Freedom from economic coercion to the greatest extent necessary.
This can also be likened to the Philosophers you chose to follow. Socialists seek to follow in one way or another the philosophies of Plato (the Republic) or Moore (Utopia). Libertarians seek to follow those of Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)and Henry David Thoreau (Essay on Civil Disobedience). The economics for each are expressed by Karl Marx Das Kapital) and Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations). However, you should understand that the economics are not the basis of the philosophy, but merely an expression of it.
As a political party, Libertarians are in the minority. They are a vocal and thoughtful group who will probably never have a great deal of direct power, but are influencing both the Left and Right on your political spectrum as those official groups continue to try and find some way of distracting from the obvious failures of their peculiar socialist policies.
I should state here that not all socialist policies are failures, Merely that the majority of ALL economic actions are failures. A libertarian system allows them to fail and be done with. A socialist system supports them for years. Not deliberate, only a natural result of inefficiencies of scale. Libertarians support localized control. Socialists support centralized control. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages.
Think about this. You won't be 'converted', but you may come to understand.
If I recall correctly, the flap is all about some BSD code that is in Linux. The problem here is that the original author of the code seems to have submitted the same code to both projects. Theo being Theo, he claims total ownership of everything. The guy is known to be a total head case.
Upshot here is that the code in question is just dual licensed.
This whole thing is a non-issue. If he had just contacted the author instead of shooting off his mouth, this would never have happened.
Of course, I may be wrong. I haven't contacted the original author either. Hopefully the kernel guys have.
Your boss is really asking you to report what you actually do. If you can't tell him that, your answer is that you don't do anything.
It's scary, but it may also be necessary.
Your boss is probably being pushed into this.
You need to find out what you can measure. Some suggestions,
1. Try keeping a journal recording your time for a couple of days. What takes up your time? 2. Try to write down what your responsibilities are. Make a list. It may be a long list. 3. Look at your to do list. (You really should have one.) Look at old lists, keep them for a while. 4. Look at your phone log. How many of those were trouble calls. How many were resolved? You do have a phone log, right?
A couple of things to remember. IT is not a profit center, it is a cost center in most organizations. Your benefit may be more in how you get out of the way, than how many things you can control. The best metrics may be benefit/cost. Make the benefits high, and the costs as low as possible. Your contribution is best done without dominating or controlling others. If you can do that and still contribute, you are doing your job. Now you just need to find a way to demonstrate that. You boss needs to do that for the department too. That's why he (she?) is asking for the information.
One last thing, what is important here is not how you view things, it is how your bosses bosses view them. If you want to find out what that difference means, talk to some of the people who are in the major profit centers of your organization. Those folks are usually in manufacturing or sales. Everything else is overhead. You may find that they don't have a very good opinion of your group. A lot of IT groups have a reputation for empire building, and a lot of self aggrandizement. Many are real big on their own systems, and not interested in others problems. If that is the case for you, then your boss may have orders to shake things up. Then you might be in for some major job changes. The best way to survive that kind of thing is to find what is really important to the organization, then make sure you are supporting that function.
Good luck. If you can weather the changes, you will be better for it.
The containers are usually barrels. The important consideration here is the total mass of the material stored. US facilities usually store the Uranium/Plutonium/Thorium/etc as disolved salts. The whole suspension is then labeled as radioactive waste, but the total mass of the material is fairly low. If the concentration gets too high, considerable heat can be generated. That has happened at some US plants in the past. The solution is to limit the volume stored in any one container. If you don't plan to ever use it for anything, a little boron helps too.
To get a chain reaction, you need to moderate the reaction somehow. The neutrons have specific energy bands (read temperatures) where they are absorbed by the tartet neuclei When emitted, they have too high an energy. (Un)Fortunatly, the hydrogen in the water is a moderator, so it CAN work. The next requriement is to concentrate the solution, to increase the mass of the reactant. You need something that is the exact opposit of the puddle on the floor. That spreads (thins) the reactant out, reducing any ability to sustain a chain reaction. A mop bucket would work better.
A lot of the posts above were positing a 'blue flash' you won't see one of those unless you are getting close to a bomb type of reaction. If you do see one, you are already dead. The blue is secondary radiation. To get enough to see in a lit room, you have to be way over the amount of hard radiation that would kill you. You probably have around enough time to arrange your funeral. Say a couple of days. Don't count on being able to do anything on the last day, though.
What does that mean? It probably means that if things had been very different, there might have been a problem. The reporter, (Guardian, UK) doesn't seem to understand the words he's using. Facts are hard to find here.
There seems to have been a leak in a pipe, and a puddle of dirty water ran out under a door. The stuff was radioactive, well above the legal limit. That's still not much.
No quantities are used, except the estimate of total liquid leaked. That doesn't mean much without knowing the molarity of the liquid. For a chain reaction, it could be anywhere from a mild increase in background radiation and a few jouls of heat, all the way up to a prompt critical reaction (bomb). I don't believe that the bomb end is possible here.
Most of the article is just typical European Green Nuclear scare stuff with little substance and even less understanding. The main thrust seems to be that we can't trust the evil Americans. Or those evil scientists. Or anybody who doesn't support the cause de jour.
Accidents do happen, no matter who is in charge. There were controls, they did work to fix the problem. I saw no report that any of the material go out of the plant. Congress wasn't notified, but then, Congress can't overview several million reports a year. They need to prioritize too.
Word did get out, as the article shows. It seems the system worked. The problem appears to be that some persons political preferences were not vindicated here. In the end, it's just another case of much ado about nothing. Perfect for Slashdot.
The program is rife with problems, from the mandates that ALL students achieve in the top 10% to the numerous program requirements that have no funding means. The first thing I noticed when my teacher wife showed me the program goals is that the people who drafted this are math illiterate. They seem to be the same folks who balance the federal budget. Man! are those poor kids screwed.
To top it all off, the program seems geared to eliminate Music, the Arts, Phys Ed (and at a time when youth obesity is at epidemic highs). any science more specialized than 'General Science', History, and any other extras. Just good old country schools producing narrowly educated kids that can take a single test, and who are capable of little else. Forget a well rounded education, forget being able to think. It's just to be able to tell the voters you did something, and hope they don't ask what you did.
A perfect program for the sound bite political system we seem to be stuck with.
After a decade or two of this, we will be living in a third world country.
This is just a restating of a theory that has been around since the 1960's. The author of this is one of the origional authors. The problem it has always had is that there is no real proof. There can't be until we have the ability to go out and survey a large number of comets. Not going to happen real soon.
The origional authors were Sir Fred Hoyle, an astronomer, and Mr. Wickramasinge, a mathematician. Both were major level scholars in thier respective fields. Mr. Hoyle also did not believe in the Big Bang or universal exspansion. The evidence was not all in at that time. It seems to be now.
The panspemia theory was that comets or large meteorites could harbor some forms of primitive life, and that the life forms carried could survive intact in some impact events. Life then would be 'seeded' in new planets by debris from other star systems. In this view, most of the planets that could harbor life forms, will have (or have had) at least simple bacteria. Everything more complex was explained by evolution.
It was origionally a way to get from non-life to life, by effectivly doubling the time available. At the time (and to a large extent even today), the jump from non-life to bacteria is larger than the jump from bacteria to us.
The theory was rejected in the 1960's by most scientists because they knew that no life form could survive in space. They also knew that while collision events can expel tons of surface debris into space, that no life form could survive being blasted off the earth, and even if it did, that it couldn't survive the impact of landing on a planet.
We now know that all of the objections were wrong. Fungus has survuved for a decade or more in space with vacuum, radiation and extreems of heat and cold. Some bacteria is millions of times more resistant than we are to radiation, and frozen/dried out bacteria are known to have survived for many millions of years entomed in amber, only to come 'back to life' when the conditions are right. Bacteria have also survived earth re-entry on space junk. So, all of the conditions for panspermia CAN be met.
At this point it is near certain that earth and Mars had at least the potential to exchange life forms early in thier history, probably both ways several times. There should have been bacteria ladened rocks hitting some of the moons of the outer planets too. A few rocks would have been exchanged with passing stars, so even if we weren't origionally seeded from elsewhere, we have probably seeded some other stars.
Still that's a lot of if's. All of that doesn't really prove anything, and it would take visiting and analyzing DNA on site to determine if there is any relationship between any earth life and any life (present or past) on another planet.
As an Idea, panspermia will not die, but it also can not be accepted as true by main stream science. It's just not able to be proven. I don't expect to live long enough to see that change. I don't think you will either.
... a climate prediction that was EVER correct that was more than 10 years out. The closest to correct predictions that I have found are in the Farmers Almanac. They use records of the climate for the past 100 years. They assume there are long term cylical patterns. What will happen is a repeat of what has happened. They actually have a better than 60% track record. You should look at the track records for your Climatologists. It's nowhere near to 50%.
Here's what I remember having seen in my lifetime from the researchers on the subject.
1970's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. A new Ice Age is just around the corner. New York will be under year round Ice by the mid 1980's. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
1980's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. The ice age still comming, it's just delayed. The whole north half of North America and Europe will be frozen by 2000. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
1990's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. There won't be an Ice Age, instead, we are all going to die of heat. The next couple of years will break all records for heat waves. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
2000's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. Global Warming is still the problem, but you won't be able to actually measure the real effects for a couple more years. Sometime in the next 30 years (after the predicter is safely dead!) temperatures will break all records for heat waves. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
2010 - If the recent past trend continues, we will be hearing more and more about Global Cooling. The introductions, reccomendations and conclusions will continue to be the same. Only the predictions changes.
When it finally becomes obvious that they don't really know more than anybody else, they will trot out a new set of dramatic predictions. Supporters will continue to castigate those who question the latest prophecies of doom, and opponents will continue to reply in the same vein. Meanwhile, the dance of demand for support of new political power structures based on this will continue unabated. Because, for the last 40 years, only the predictions have changed.
For the parent, please consider. You decry those who remind you of past failures for 'mere meterology' while this is glorius 'climatology'. Climatology IS meterology. All that changes is the time frame. If they can't predict the immediate future, how can they have any real basis for believing they can be right about the far future. If you want to dispute that, please give me some facts. References to published data that can be used to corroborate a track record are facts. Models of the future do not cut it They are not facts, only tools. They can be made to say literally anything. The only model that really counts is the Earth. There is really no substitute for a track record of accurate predictions. Do you have any? Those I have seen are all worth less than a flip of the coin for accuracy.
Sorry predictions like 'There will be a storm' don't count. Specificity please.
Run the numbers. Your premise is wrong. We have as many high power broadcast stations as we ever did. The number of 50 KW stations in the US (largest licensed power output) has not gone down. The number of 100 KW stations in other countries (largest licensed broadcasters) has not declined either. The number of mid power broadcast stations has climed over the entire world. The number is still rising. The total radiated power used in radio communications other than broadcast has also continued to climb. Ask any radio astronomer. We are currently broadcasting Gigawatts into space. Soon it will be 10s of Gigawatts.
What you do see is that there are more small broadcasts. 1 million 802.11 base stations is still a Megawatt of broadcast power. the real number is probably closer to a Billion than a million. Also, in the earlier times you referred to, lower frequencies were used. Most of those are trapped inside the ionosphere. The higher frequencies we use today go right on through. Earth as seen from space is continuing to get noisier in the radio spectrum.
What was once Kilowatts is now Gigawatts. From a distance, of course the separate signals are all smeared together. That's what we'll see. Not a single signal, but a large radio noise source. We have been brighter that the Sun in the radio spectrum for quite a few years, and we are still brightening. That is the type of signal we should be looking for. We can figure out what is being broadcast later.
We should be looking for their domestic broadcasts, because that's what we'll see. They don't know we are here.
It'll take a very large array to resolve individual broadcasts over interstellar distances. We don't have access to such an array for checking random signals yet. We should be looking for any anomalous radio signals. Any star that is 'brighter' than it should be is a candidate. Frequency doesn't matter so much, volume does. Frequency shifts on the order of months would indicate that the source is in orbit around the star, like we are. Like us, they will be smeared out over the whole HF to near infrared part of the spectrum. Expect the whole planet to be radiating. individually Signals will be generally small, but some will be very large. One clue is that it won't look like a black body radiation distribution pattern, nor will it be a single sharp frequency like some naturally occurring radio source. It will be an anomaly.
We can build a receiver able to resolve individual signals after we know where to look and what to look at. Right now, we don't even know what the receiver sensitivity will need to be in order to resolve any of the separate signals. Then we MIGHT be able to separate out the strongest broadcasts. It will probably take a space based set of radio antennas with a baseline of tens of thousands of Kilometers. A system like that wouldn't even fit on the Earth. we'd need to isolate it from our own generated noise anyway. It does no good to try to receive and filter/translate a billion independent transmissions at the same time.
We should also expect the decoding time to be on the order of decades. After all, we are likely to be listening to an internet where we know none of the encodings or standards. We are also not likely to be getting complete transmissions. We will be seeing parts of files only. The Rosetta Stone was simple by comparison.
You may not listen to a little nightmusic, but I do. Mozart after 230+ years is still more popular than almost anything you can hear on the pop/rock stations right now will be in 2 years time. Let alone 50 years time. Amadeus is not just better, he's orders of magnitude better.
In his day, he was straining against the standard way of doing things too. If he were alive today he would definitly be releasing over the net.
you'll probably get your wish. Flamers are rampant. I do however disagree with your premise.
Unfortunately, you can't actually eat money, or plastic, or semi-conductors, or even rocket fuel. To feed the kid down the street, you would be much better served by getting the corn used to make ethanol, and feed it to people instead.
Meanwhile, learn some old wisdom. "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." The end result of the programs started in the 1930's here in the US was to create a segment of the population that for generations believed that they had a right to income without work. As a solution to poverty, Welfare was a complete failure. Yes, it fed them, but so did what came before it. Welfare also destroyed a lot of families and ruined a lot of peoples chance for a better life.
Yes, we do need to feed hungry children. We also need to provide them with opportunities to stop being poor and hungry. You don't want to do that. You just seem to want to help a little, while at the same time destroying any chance they have to better themselves. OLPC is an effort to provide a way out of hopelessness. It may not work, but if we don't try many different things then nothing will really change.
OLPC is just one thing to try. We need to do several things and see what works. Why do you want to stop that? Going to bed hungry is a tragedy. Condemning generations to the same fate is worse.
Yes, but can it save to ODF as default. Many formats can be set that way in Word. If so, then Word could be the largest ODF using product. That would help make archiving digital documents more stable in some instances.
I don't need all the bells and whistles, but I do need the basic formating to be stable betwen products and versions.
Scientific American covered this in an article 2 months ago. (print version yet!)
It is cool though. There may be some nice tech possibilities here. The SA article mentioned higher density HDDs and some chip interface effects. Maybe even a direct optical/electronic interface. Still, the work was done over a year ago. Reports have been coming in. Just not a new report here.
You assumed that the elected representative looked at your letter. Bad assumption. That is the job of a staffer, who compiles a list of opinions each way for the Rep/Sen. They don't physically have time to read all of thier mail. Bulk e-mail just gets bulk deleted. Unread. Even staffers don't have time to read all the botnet sent letters they get. There are only occasional letters actually read by your elected representative. The best of the best, or one from an identified large donor, or one from someone who needs help that can make the elected official look or feel good.
You can figure it out, at 3 minutes per letter, 10,000 letters means they would need about 30,000 minutes per week just to read the mail. that's 500 hours per week. A full time job for about 12 people. This is assuming the letters actually get read. the staffer using a form letter to answer will not have that much time. More like 20 seconds really. Do the math.
Still, your opinion will be entered into the matrix, what's done will usually be where the majority opinion lies on that matrix.
How long before some enterprising lawyer manages to get this applied to broadcast radio? what would Clear Channel owe I wonder?
The only real impact of this will be to move all of the internet radio industry overseas. Why does the government want to lose the US employment base, I wonder?
What will happen when this becomes an issue in the next election? It will, as this is a decision of the FCC, not a result of any act of Congress. The Dem's are gonna blame the Republicans solidly for this fiasco.
All you really need is a Java VM, (or Python) with some standard libraries, and you can use the apps already developed that are out there. Apple just needs to get the base libraries out there, and the VM in there.
It's nice to start your product with a library of several hundred applications, with more commercial ones available soon. (weeks at most.)Remember, ease of porting is the goal.
Safari on Windows is not necessary. May not even be enough by itself.
Hey, this is Apple. They love to be seen as 'hip', but they are really sharply focused on the bottom line. If they can't find a way to make a profit on Safari for Windows, they'll drop it like a red hot rock.
There will either be a strong tie in to some commercial Apple service, or there will be no future for Safari on Windows.
This is no different than many other Apple offerings. See what happened with iTunes, Newton, and others. If the profit is there, they will push it. If not, they will abandon you and move on.
Sorry, Apple Fans, but the truth is Apple is a company, not a charity.
An excelent article, if you bother to go to where you find what the man actually said.
When active ridicule and suppression are used as the tools of 'concensus' you don't have real science. that is a good summary of global warming today. And that is the Authors problem with the Global Warming movement. It isn't science, it is a political power grab. A propoganda machine that has produced lots of really scary predictions, none of which have proven true. Like any propoganda machine, the failure of these predictions means only that more and scarier predictions are made. Never any admission of error.
The Author is not a scientist, he is a politician with a lot of experience dealing with totalitarian dictatorships and wanna be's. This is an area on which he is a real expert. He is talking here about the politics, not the Science. The things he says make sense. That means that he will be reviled by the liberal college kids who usually post on Slashdot.
Does anyone here remember the Dutch statistician who analysed the data selection for global warming 5 or 6 years ago, intending to prove that it was rigorous and accurate, and ended up proving it was mostly hoax. He published a book around 700 pages detailing what he found, and how he got the results he did. The climate groups loved to hate him for about 2 years, then ignored it. He was actually a global warming believer. All he really wanted to do was get them to fix the data problem. They never did. Their problem was he documented everything and used the same algorithms used to identify hoaxes in other areas of Science.
The poster above who said that in 25 years this whole Global Warming thing will be pointed to as THE classic example of 'junk science' may be right. It beats out pyrimid power, crystal power, magnetic medicine, maybe even UFO's ESP and Creation Science.
Lots of emotion, evidence that requires a lot of adjustment to get favorable results, pushed by 'scientists' whose jobs and incomes depend on reaching the predetermined conclusion, sharply devisive, never a real prediction that can be tested, no wonder Al Gore loves it.
Once again a patent has been issued for 40 year old technology. Proof once again that if you insert the word COMPUTER in the application, you can get a patent grant for ANYTHING.
Our patent system is seriously broken, and needs fixing.
Does this mean that they will go after real criminals now, who are and have been making millions for decades instead of spending thier time and money attacking young children?
That would be expecting way too much humanity from them.
You missed the point. The real purpose of Patents is to slow the rate of innovation to the point where society (and Law) can keep up. The Patent time frame is set to allow around a generation to adapt. Many people (including lawyers and judges) need that much time to come to grips with the many ramifications of change. That is why the only things a patent holder can really do (forbid use, or liscense use at restrictive rates)act to limit others from using an idea. It's all just a delaying mechanism. It might even be a necessary one. Future Shock and all that.
Slashdot Mirror
Miguel,
I see the flame fest continues, but could you please take a little time out and give me an answer to a question I have.
I've posted this in the past. I see a problem for us (humanity) in the future. We would like to be able to go to a digital world. As things stand now we can't. The reason is file formats.
Documents like birth and death certificates, property deeds, legal writs, treaty's etc. need to be available and readable for CENTURIES. File formats for the last 30 years or so change every 3 years. After two or at most 3 cycles, the format is no longer readable. That makes digital documents unacceptable. We need centuries for file retention, with full readability. We get a couple of years.
The only real contender right now is ASCII text. That file format has been with us for 50 years now, and continues to remain readable.
I work for a government body, with buildings. Permits are a matter of life safety. If we can't keep track of what is in a building, people die. There is still no substitute for paper records. They are the ONLY long term recourse we currently have. the great need is for a file format that can remain unchanged for centuries. (The best long term recording medium seems to be mud. Summarian records and literature from 5,000 years ago are still readable, if you know the language.)
we desperately need a real long term document format.
ODF tries to be that. I believe that the jury is still out on whether it can fulfill that need or not. OOXML seems to be too linked to a product that will continue to change. OOXML also has those digital blobs that will NEVER be human readable without the originating program. The standard will change radically in the next few years too. That renders it unusable for my needs.
Ideally, I'd like to have a file that would allow setting up forms that would be relatively easily for a human to read, and would explain itself adequately for document recreation. It needs to have this without having to have the originating program, or any other reference than the file itself. I need that for drawings too. It doesn't exist. Even for relatively easy things like forms and written reports it doesn't really exist.
*Shouldn't we all be pushing for standards that are independent of any product?* That seems to be the only way we'll get what we really need.
Maybe TeX? HTML showed promise for a while, but it keeps changing too. OOXML doesn't have what I need. I'm not at all sure that ODF does either.
Oh well, I guess paper is not going to go away.
You don't understand because you have a deliberate blind spot. The blind spot was built into your political definitions over 70 years ago. It is a problem of definition.
You said "As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"
First you should realize that many people will share ANY ideological view. It's a large world out there. On any question, there are going to be differing views. There will always be divergent voices. If you listen to those who agree with you, you will find there are many who share them. Doesn't matter what those views of yours are. At the same time, there will be many who disagree with you. That is not logic or sense, it's just statistics.
Second, your inability to understand Libertarians is based on your use of definitions. You appear to want to see politics in terms of Left and Right. The terms are derived from the Italian Parliament in the early 1930's. The Communists sat on the left. The Fascists sat on the right. This really forms the basis of your political world view.
The Communists were the international socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises though direct management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support an international system of dominance or control.
The Fascists were the National Socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises through indirect management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support a national system of dominance or control.
In the Center were those who agreed with some of each wing.
Since that time, Fascist has become a bad name. They won initially in Italy, Germany and Spain, then launched and lost a war. Nobody likes a looser. Communists and their friends in the center now call anybody they don't like a Fascist. Actually, only a socialist can be a Fascist. Anyone else is really something else, but political labeling has never been about honesty.
Your problem with the Libertarians is that they are not even on your political definition spectrum, which includes only socialists. Libertarians want 1. Freedom from government control, to the greatest extent necessary. 2. Freedom from economic coercion to the greatest extent necessary.
This can also be likened to the Philosophers you chose to follow. Socialists seek to follow in one way or another the philosophies of Plato (the Republic) or Moore (Utopia). Libertarians seek to follow those of Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)and Henry David Thoreau (Essay on Civil Disobedience). The economics for each are expressed by Karl Marx Das Kapital) and Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations). However, you should understand that the economics are not the basis of the philosophy, but merely an expression of it.
As a political party, Libertarians are in the minority. They are a vocal and thoughtful group who will probably never have a great deal of direct power, but are influencing both the Left and Right on your political spectrum as those official groups continue to try and find some way of distracting from the obvious failures of their peculiar socialist policies.
I should state here that not all socialist policies are failures, Merely that the majority of ALL economic actions are failures. A libertarian system allows them to fail and be done with. A socialist system supports them for years. Not deliberate, only a natural result of inefficiencies of scale. Libertarians support localized control. Socialists support centralized control. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages.
Think about this. You won't be 'converted', but you may come to understand.
If I recall correctly, the flap is all about some BSD code that is in Linux. The problem here is that the original author of the code seems to have submitted the same code to both projects. Theo being Theo, he claims total ownership of everything. The guy is known to be a total head case.
Upshot here is that the code in question is just dual licensed.
This whole thing is a non-issue. If he had just contacted the author instead of shooting off his mouth, this would never have happened.
Of course, I may be wrong. I haven't contacted the original author either. Hopefully the kernel guys have.
Enjoy the fireworks.
The time when this could have been done was in the 1970's. now, with Globalization, the technical 'secrets' are spread out all over the world.
Quick, somebody lock the door, the horse just go out of the barn!
Your boss is really asking you to report what you actually do. If you can't tell him that, your answer is that you don't do anything.
It's scary, but it may also be necessary.
Your boss is probably being pushed into this.
You need to find out what you can measure. Some suggestions,
1. Try keeping a journal recording your time for a couple of days. What takes up your time?
2. Try to write down what your responsibilities are. Make a list. It may be a long list.
3. Look at your to do list. (You really should have one.) Look at old lists, keep them for a while.
4. Look at your phone log. How many of those were trouble calls. How many were resolved? You do have a phone log, right?
A couple of things to remember. IT is not a profit center, it is a cost center in most organizations. Your benefit may be more in how you get out of the way, than how many things you can control. The best metrics may be benefit/cost. Make the benefits high, and the costs as low as possible. Your contribution is best done without dominating or controlling others. If you can do that and still contribute, you are doing your job. Now you just need to find a way to demonstrate that. You boss needs to do that for the department too. That's why he (she?) is asking for the information.
One last thing, what is important here is not how you view things, it is how your bosses bosses view them. If you want to find out what that difference means, talk to some of the people who are in the major profit centers of your organization. Those folks are usually in manufacturing or sales. Everything else is overhead. You may find that they don't have a very good opinion of your group. A lot of IT groups have a reputation for empire building, and a lot of self aggrandizement. Many are real big on their own systems, and not interested in others problems. If that is the case for you, then your boss may have orders to shake things up. Then you might be in for some major job changes. The best way to survive that kind of thing is to find what is really important to the organization, then make sure you are supporting that function.
Good luck. If you can weather the changes, you will be better for it.
The containers are usually barrels. The important consideration here is the total mass of the material stored. US facilities usually store the Uranium/Plutonium/Thorium/etc as disolved salts. The whole suspension is then labeled as radioactive waste, but the total mass of the material is fairly low. If the concentration gets too high, considerable heat can be generated. That has happened at some US plants in the past. The solution is to limit the volume stored in any one container. If you don't plan to ever use it for anything, a little boron helps too. To get a chain reaction, you need to moderate the reaction somehow. The neutrons have specific energy bands (read temperatures) where they are absorbed by the tartet neuclei When emitted, they have too high an energy. (Un)Fortunatly, the hydrogen in the water is a moderator, so it CAN work. The next requriement is to concentrate the solution, to increase the mass of the reactant. You need something that is the exact opposit of the puddle on the floor. That spreads (thins) the reactant out, reducing any ability to sustain a chain reaction. A mop bucket would work better. A lot of the posts above were positing a 'blue flash' you won't see one of those unless you are getting close to a bomb type of reaction. If you do see one, you are already dead. The blue is secondary radiation. To get enough to see in a lit room, you have to be way over the amount of hard radiation that would kill you. You probably have around enough time to arrange your funeral. Say a couple of days. Don't count on being able to do anything on the last day, though.
What does that mean? It probably means that if things had been very different, there might have been a problem. The reporter, (Guardian, UK) doesn't seem to understand the words he's using. Facts are hard to find here.
There seems to have been a leak in a pipe, and a puddle of dirty water ran out under a door. The stuff was radioactive, well above the legal limit. That's still not much.
No quantities are used, except the estimate of total liquid leaked. That doesn't mean much without knowing the molarity of the liquid. For a chain reaction, it could be anywhere from a mild increase in background radiation and a few jouls of heat, all the way up to a prompt critical reaction (bomb). I don't believe that the bomb end is possible here.
Most of the article is just typical European Green Nuclear scare stuff with little substance and even less understanding. The main thrust seems to be that we can't trust the evil Americans. Or those evil scientists. Or anybody who doesn't support the cause de jour.
Accidents do happen, no matter who is in charge. There were controls, they did work to fix the problem. I saw no report that any of the material go out of the plant. Congress wasn't notified, but then, Congress can't overview several million reports a year. They need to prioritize too.
Word did get out, as the article shows. It seems the system worked. The problem appears to be that some persons political preferences were not vindicated here. In the end, it's just another case of much ado about nothing. Perfect for Slashdot.
. . .
Every Child Left Behind.
The program is rife with problems, from the mandates that ALL students achieve in the top 10% to the numerous program requirements that have no funding means. The first thing I noticed when my teacher wife showed me the program goals is that the people who drafted this are math illiterate. They seem to be the same folks who balance the federal budget. Man! are those poor kids screwed.
To top it all off, the program seems geared to eliminate Music, the Arts, Phys Ed (and at a time when youth obesity is at epidemic highs). any science more specialized than 'General Science', History, and any other extras. Just good old country schools producing narrowly educated kids that can take a single test, and who are capable of little else. Forget a well rounded education, forget being able to think. It's just to be able to tell the voters you did something, and hope they don't ask what you did.
A perfect program for the sound bite political system we seem to be stuck with.
After a decade or two of this, we will be living in a third world country.
This is just a restating of a theory that has been around since the 1960's. The author of this is one of the origional authors. The problem it has always had is that there is no real proof. There can't be until we have the ability to go out and survey a large number of comets. Not going to happen real soon.
The origional authors were Sir Fred Hoyle, an astronomer, and Mr. Wickramasinge, a mathematician. Both were major level scholars in thier respective fields. Mr. Hoyle also did not believe in the Big Bang or universal exspansion. The evidence was not all in at that time. It seems to be now.
The panspemia theory was that comets or large meteorites could harbor some forms of primitive life, and that the life forms carried could survive intact in some impact events. Life then would be 'seeded' in new planets by debris from other star systems. In this view, most of the planets that could harbor life forms, will have (or have had) at least simple bacteria. Everything more complex was explained by evolution.
It was origionally a way to get from non-life to life, by effectivly doubling the time available. At the time (and to a large extent even today), the jump from non-life to bacteria is larger than the jump from bacteria to us.
The theory was rejected in the 1960's by most scientists because they knew that no life form could survive in space. They also knew that while collision events can expel tons of surface debris into space, that no life form could survive being blasted off the earth, and even if it did, that it couldn't survive the impact of landing on a planet.
We now know that all of the objections were wrong. Fungus has survuved for a decade or more in space with vacuum, radiation and extreems of heat and cold. Some bacteria is millions of times more resistant than we are to radiation, and frozen/dried out bacteria are known to have survived for many millions of years entomed in amber, only to come 'back to life' when the conditions are right. Bacteria have also survived earth re-entry on space junk. So, all of the conditions for panspermia CAN be met.
At this point it is near certain that earth and Mars had at least the potential to exchange life forms early in thier history, probably both ways several times. There should have been bacteria ladened rocks hitting some of the moons of the outer planets too. A few rocks would have been exchanged with passing stars, so even if we weren't origionally seeded from elsewhere, we have probably seeded some other stars.
Still that's a lot of if's. All of that doesn't really prove anything, and it would take visiting and analyzing DNA on site to determine if there is any relationship between any earth life and any life (present or past) on another planet.
As an Idea, panspermia will not die, but it also can not be accepted as true by main stream science. It's just not able to be proven. I don't expect to live long enough to see that change. I don't think you will either.
... a climate prediction that was EVER correct that was more than 10 years out. The closest to correct predictions that I have found are in the Farmers Almanac. They use records of the climate for the past 100 years. They assume there are long term cylical patterns. What will happen is a repeat of what has happened. They actually have a better than 60% track record. You should look at the track records for your Climatologists. It's nowhere near to 50%.
Here's what I remember having seen in my lifetime from the researchers on the subject.
1970's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. A new Ice Age is just around the corner. New York will be under year round Ice by the mid 1980's. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
1980's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. The ice age still comming, it's just delayed. The whole north half of North America and Europe will be frozen by 2000. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
1990's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. There won't be an Ice Age, instead, we are all going to die of heat. The next couple of years will break all records for heat waves. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
2000's - Climate Science has advanced in the past few years. It is now possible to make accurate predications based on SCIENTIFIC models. All the predictions of a few years ago are meaningless. Global Warming is still the problem, but you won't be able to actually measure the real effects for a couple more years. Sometime in the next 30 years (after the predicter is safely dead!) temperatures will break all records for heat waves. It's all caused by Western Technology, mostly America.
2010 - If the recent past trend continues, we will be hearing more and more about Global Cooling. The introductions, reccomendations and conclusions will continue to be the same. Only the predictions changes.
When it finally becomes obvious that they don't really know more than anybody else, they will trot out a new set of dramatic predictions. Supporters will continue to castigate those who question the latest prophecies of doom, and opponents will continue to reply in the same vein. Meanwhile, the dance of demand for support of new political power structures based on this will continue unabated. Because, for the last 40 years, only the predictions have changed.
For the parent, please consider. You decry those who remind you of past failures for 'mere meterology' while this is glorius 'climatology'. Climatology IS meterology. All that changes is the time frame. If they can't predict the immediate future, how can they have any real basis for believing they can be right about the far future. If you want to dispute that, please give me some facts. References to published data that can be used to corroborate a track record are facts. Models of the future do not cut it They are not facts, only tools. They can be made to say literally anything. The only model that really counts is the Earth. There is really no substitute for a track record of accurate predictions. Do you have any? Those I have seen are all worth less than a flip of the coin for accuracy.
Sorry predictions like 'There will be a storm' don't count. Specificity please.
Run the numbers. Your premise is wrong. We have as many high power broadcast stations as we ever did. The number of 50 KW stations in the US (largest licensed power output) has not gone down. The number of 100 KW stations in other countries (largest licensed broadcasters) has not declined either. The number of mid power broadcast stations has climed over the entire world. The number is still rising. The total radiated power used in radio communications other than broadcast has also continued to climb. Ask any radio astronomer. We are currently broadcasting Gigawatts into space. Soon it will be 10s of Gigawatts.
What you do see is that there are more small broadcasts. 1 million 802.11 base stations is still a Megawatt of broadcast power. the real number is probably closer to a Billion than a million. Also, in the earlier times you referred to, lower frequencies were used. Most of those are trapped inside the ionosphere. The higher frequencies we use today go right on through. Earth as seen from space is continuing to get noisier in the radio spectrum.
What was once Kilowatts is now Gigawatts. From a distance, of course the separate signals are all smeared together. That's what we'll see. Not a single signal, but a large radio noise source. We have been brighter that the Sun in the radio spectrum for quite a few years, and we are still brightening. That is the type of signal we should be looking for. We can figure out what is being broadcast later.
We should be looking for their domestic broadcasts, because that's what we'll see. They don't know we are here.
It'll take a very large array to resolve individual broadcasts over interstellar distances. We don't have access to such an array for checking random signals yet. We should be looking for any anomalous radio signals. Any star that is 'brighter' than it should be is a candidate. Frequency doesn't matter so much, volume does. Frequency shifts on the order of months would indicate that the source is in orbit around the star, like we are. Like us, they will be smeared out over the whole HF to near infrared part of the spectrum. Expect the whole planet to be radiating. individually Signals will be generally small, but some will be very large. One clue is that it won't look like a black body radiation distribution pattern, nor will it be a single sharp frequency like some naturally occurring radio source. It will be an anomaly.
We can build a receiver able to resolve individual signals after we know where to look and what to look at. Right now, we don't even know what the receiver sensitivity will need to be in order to resolve any of the separate signals. Then we MIGHT be able to separate out the strongest broadcasts. It will probably take a space based set of radio antennas with a baseline of tens of thousands of Kilometers. A system like that wouldn't even fit on the Earth. we'd need to isolate it from our own generated noise anyway. It does no good to try to receive and filter/translate a billion independent transmissions at the same time.
We should also expect the decoding time to be on the order of decades. After all, we are likely to be listening to an internet where we know none of the encodings or standards. We are also not likely to be getting complete transmissions. We will be seeing parts of files only. The Rosetta Stone was simple by comparison.
You may not listen to a little nightmusic, but I do. Mozart after 230+ years is still more popular than almost anything you can hear on the pop/rock stations right now will be in 2 years time. Let alone 50 years time. Amadeus is not just better, he's orders of magnitude better.
In his day, he was straining against the standard way of doing things too. If he were alive today he would definitly be releasing over the net.
Looks like it's election year again. More bills put up to make it look like they are doing something. This'll never pass the courts.
you'll probably get your wish. Flamers are rampant. I do however disagree with your premise.
Unfortunately, you can't actually eat money, or plastic, or semi-conductors, or even rocket fuel. To feed the kid down the street, you would be much better served by getting the corn used to make ethanol, and feed it to people instead.
Meanwhile, learn some old wisdom. "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." The end result of the programs started in the 1930's here in the US was to create a segment of the population that for generations believed that they had a right to income without work. As a solution to poverty, Welfare was a complete failure. Yes, it fed them, but so did what came before it. Welfare also destroyed a lot of families and ruined a lot of peoples chance for a better life.
Yes, we do need to feed hungry children. We also need to provide them with opportunities to stop being poor and hungry. You don't want to do that. You just seem to want to help a little, while at the same time destroying any chance they have to better themselves. OLPC is an effort to provide a way out of hopelessness. It may not work, but if we don't try many different things then nothing will really change.
OLPC is just one thing to try. We need to do several things and see what works. Why do you want to stop that? Going to bed hungry is a tragedy. Condemning generations to the same fate is worse.
I sincerely hope I have misunderstood you.
Yes, but can it save to ODF as default. Many formats can be set that way in Word. If so, then Word could be the largest ODF using product. That would help make archiving digital documents more stable in some instances.
I don't need all the bells and whistles, but I do need the basic formating to be stable betwen products and versions.
Right now, it isn't.
Scientific American covered this in an article 2 months ago. (print version yet!)
It is cool though. There may be some nice tech possibilities here. The SA article mentioned higher density HDDs and some chip interface effects. Maybe even a direct optical/electronic interface. Still, the work was done over a year ago. Reports have been coming in. Just not a new report here.
You assumed that the elected representative looked at your letter. Bad assumption. That is the job of a staffer, who compiles a list of opinions each way for the Rep/Sen. They don't physically have time to read all of thier mail. Bulk e-mail just gets bulk deleted. Unread. Even staffers don't have time to read all the botnet sent letters they get. There are only occasional letters actually read by your elected representative. The best of the best, or one from an identified large donor, or one from someone who needs help that can make the elected official look or feel good.
You can figure it out, at 3 minutes per letter, 10,000 letters means they would need about 30,000 minutes per week just to read the mail. that's 500 hours per week. A full time job for about 12 people. This is assuming the letters actually get read. the staffer using a form letter to answer will not have that much time. More like 20 seconds really. Do the math.
Still, your opinion will be entered into the matrix, what's done will usually be where the majority opinion lies on that matrix.
How long before some enterprising lawyer manages to get this applied to broadcast radio? what would Clear Channel owe I wonder?
The only real impact of this will be to move all of the internet radio industry overseas. Why does the government want to lose the US employment base, I wonder?
What will happen when this becomes an issue in the next election? It will, as this is a decision of the FCC, not a result of any act of Congress. The Dem's are gonna blame the Republicans solidly for this fiasco.
Just a few questions. No answers yet.
Look at what the Zarus, and now Nokia 8800 did.
All you really need is a Java VM, (or Python) with some standard libraries, and you can use the apps already developed that are out there. Apple just needs to get the base libraries out there, and the VM in there.
It's nice to start your product with a library of several hundred applications, with more commercial ones available soon. (weeks at most.)Remember, ease of porting is the goal.
Safari on Windows is not necessary. May not even be enough by itself.
Hey, this is Apple. They love to be seen as 'hip', but they are really sharply focused on the bottom line. If they can't find a way to make a profit on Safari for Windows, they'll drop it like a red hot rock.
There will either be a strong tie in to some commercial Apple service, or there will be no future for Safari on Windows.
This is no different than many other Apple offerings. See what happened with iTunes, Newton, and others. If the profit is there, they will push it. If not, they will abandon you and move on.
Sorry, Apple Fans, but the truth is Apple is a company, not a charity.
An excelent article, if you bother to go to where you find what the man actually said.
When active ridicule and suppression are used as the tools of 'concensus' you don't have real science. that is a good summary of global warming today. And that is the Authors problem with the Global Warming movement. It isn't science, it is a political power grab. A propoganda machine that has produced lots of really scary predictions, none of which have proven true. Like any propoganda machine, the failure of these predictions means only that more and scarier predictions are made. Never any admission of error.
The Author is not a scientist, he is a politician with a lot of experience dealing with totalitarian dictatorships and wanna be's. This is an area on which he is a real expert. He is talking here about the politics, not the Science. The things he says make sense. That means that he will be reviled by the liberal college kids who usually post on Slashdot.
Does anyone here remember the Dutch statistician who analysed the data selection for global warming 5 or 6 years ago, intending to prove that it was rigorous and accurate, and ended up proving it was mostly hoax. He published a book around 700 pages detailing what he found, and how he got the results he did. The climate groups loved to hate him for about 2 years, then ignored it. He was actually a global warming believer. All he really wanted to do was get them to fix the data problem. They never did. Their problem was he documented everything and used the same algorithms used to identify hoaxes in other areas of Science.
The poster above who said that in 25 years this whole Global Warming thing will be pointed to as THE classic example of 'junk science' may be right. It beats out pyrimid power, crystal power, magnetic medicine, maybe even UFO's ESP and Creation Science.
Lots of emotion, evidence that requires a lot of adjustment to get favorable results, pushed by
'scientists' whose jobs and incomes depend on reaching the predetermined conclusion, sharply devisive, never a real prediction that can be tested, no wonder Al Gore loves it.
Once again a patent has been issued for 40 year old technology. Proof once again that if you insert the word COMPUTER in the application, you can get a patent grant for ANYTHING.
Our patent system is seriously broken, and needs fixing.
Does this mean that they will go after real criminals now, who are and have been making millions for decades instead of spending thier time and money attacking young children?
That would be expecting way too much humanity from them.
"No matter what laws you enact, they will be abused in ways you do not approve of."
That is a truely important lesson to learn if you want to improve the Public Situation. It's a shame that Legislators seem never to understand that.
You missed the point. The real purpose of Patents is to slow the rate of innovation to the point where society (and Law) can keep up. The Patent time frame is set to allow around a generation to adapt. Many people (including lawyers and judges) need that much time to come to grips with the many ramifications of change. That is why the only things a patent holder can really do (forbid use, or liscense use at restrictive rates)act to limit others from using an idea. It's all just a delaying mechanism. It might even be a necessary one. Future Shock and all that.