Genral Web Comments
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Wired News: Intel Fields Wireless Desktop Hub: "Intel is building into a forthcoming microchip an ability to let desktop computers act as a hub in home and office wireless networks, taking aim at the market for stand-alone wireless access points. "
Eating in Space: "
Eating in Space
What do you think astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) ate for Thanksgiving? Roasted turkey? Wrong answer. In 'Orbital Thanksgiving,' NASA tells us they had stuffed tortillas. The news release also gives details about food in space."
NOVELL CLE Home Page: "what is a Novell Certified Linux Engineer?
Novell's newest certification, the Novell Certified Linux Engineer, is the Linux services certification of the future-- today. Not only will this certification validate your knowledge of Linux, but it will also qualify you to install and administer Novell Nterprise Linux Services in either an exclusive Linux environment or a mixed OS environment."
News: IBM gives glimpse of Blue Gene performance: "IBM on Friday talked up its Blue Gene/L supercomputer, the first module of which is a relatively small, dishwasher-size machine that can perform 1.4 trillion calculations per second. "
Saturday, November 29, 2003
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Forbes.com - Magazine Article: "Search 500,000 Documents, Review 160,000 Pages In 20 Hours, And Then Do It All Over Again
Quentin Hardy, 06.24.02
The detailed life of a patent examiner."
book: "The pi-calculus: a Theory of Mobile Processes": "Mobile systems, whose components communicate and change their structure,
now pervade the informational world and the wider world of which it is a
part. The science of mobile systems is as yet immature, however.
This book presents the pi-calculus, a theory of mobile systems. The
pi-calculus provides a conceptual framework for understanding mobility, and
mathematical tools for expressing systems and reasoning about their
behaviours.
The book serves both as a reference for the theory and as an extended
demonstration of how to use pi-calculus to describe systems and analyse
their properties. It covers the basic theory of pi-calculus, typed
pi-calculi, higher-order processes, the relationship between pi-calculus
and lambda-calculus, and applications of pi-calculus to object-oriented
design and programming.
The book is written at the graduate level, assuming no prior acquaintance
with the subject, and is intended for computer scientists interested in
mobile systems."
NASA - NASA Successfully Tests Ion Engine: "NASA Successfully Tests Ion Engine
NASA's Project Prometheus recently reached an important milestone with the first successful test of an engine that could lead to revolutionary propulsion capabilities for space exploration missions throughout the solar system and beyond.
"
News in Science - Meteorite impact creates new mineral - 26/11/2003: "Meteorite impact creates new mineral
Heather Catchpole
ABC Science Online
Wednesday, 26 November 2003
meteor
A meteorite striking Earth has led to a new form of chromite (NASA)
A new mineral made by a meteorite smashing into the Earth has been found by Chinese researchers."
Wiki Wiki Web: "This Web site is written by its users. Everybody can change any page or create new pages! Read the TextFormattingRules to find out how, and then go to the WikiWikiSandbox to try it yourself. If you make a page you don't want to keep, just replace its text with the word 'delete'."
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Europe puts France up for reactor: "The European Union has chosen France as its preferred location for a nuclear reactor that scientists hope will revolutionise world power production."
Gaming, networks, multiplayer, strategy, personal technology, consoles, mobile. Got Game? Corante.: "There are two very distint crowds that play games, the 'casual gamer' and the 'hard core gamer' - or at least thats what the gaming industry says. There is probably a third category of 'I want to be a hard core gamer but I'm an adult and have a life'. We'll talk about that some other time. In any event, the casual and the hard core. I consider myself to be fairly hard core, only because I (a) love playing games, and (b) play them a lot. But I saw the true die hards last week, and I saw just how little the gaming industry understands some of them."
Do game ratings really do their job? - Nov. 26, 2003: "Snuff games and ratings
Are game ratings as relevant as they need to be? 'Manhunt' makes you wonder."
Monday, November 24, 2003
Saturday, November 22, 2003
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
AmphetaDesk 0.93.1: "20-Nov-03 Moving away from RSSify Unfortunately I can no longer bear the bandwidth cost of running this service so I'm turning it off. There's a mirror at http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/rssify/rssify.php. There may be others.
RSSify is a rather horrible hack that shouldn't be needed any more. Please ask the owner of the site you're reading (http://www.lights.com/scott/) to change to a system that generates RSS natively such as Blogger Pro or Movable Type. Alternatively consider hosting RSSify yourself rather than using my bandwidth. "
AmphetaDesk 0.93.1: "20-Nov-03 Moving away from RSSify Unfortunately I can no longer bear the bandwidth cost of running this service so I'm turning it off. There's a mirror at http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/rssify/rssify.php. There may be others.
RSSify is a rather horrible hack that shouldn't be needed any more. Please ask the owner of the site you're reading (http://www.lights.com/scott/) to change to a system that generates RSS natively such as Blogger Pro or Movable Type. Alternatively consider hosting RSSify yourself rather than using my bandwidth. "
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
An Evolutionary Analysis of GNU C Optimizations
an instering paper about using gentic algrothems to optmize compiler options for the 'fastest' progam...or whatever you want to look at.
Monday, November 17, 2003
theKompany.com
Press & Media: theKompany.com's news and information center
Location / Home / Press & Media
theKompany.com GPL’s Rekall RAD DBMS Tool for Linux and Windows.
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA – 17 November 2003 -- theKompany.com just recently released version 2.1 of Rekall, a personal, programmable DBMS system for Linux and Windows. Rekall is the only viable alternative to MS Access for
Linux. With Rekall you will be able to quickly and easily build database applications using Rekall forms and reports. A full complement of widgets means that applications built in Rekall will be able to have the look and
feel of any other application. Rekall applications can be extended in their functionality to perform virtually any task via embedded Python as a scripting language.
Ever since the release of dBase many years ago, the idea of a programmable DBMS has become increasingly popular. Major systems have been written in applications like Paradox and MS Access. By focusing on the database, users
are able to leverage their business knowledge into working applications. One of the limitations of the aforementioned products is that their native database didn't scale well or support multiple users very well. Rekall avoids this problem by dispensing with a native database.
When we first developed Rekall we had a mind to GPL it and make it part of Koffice, but a variety of issues set us down a different track, however we’ve always looked for a way that made sense to open source Rekall so that it could be used in suites like OpenOffice and Koffice. We’ve now come to a point where we think we can GPL Rekall and make it work for everyone, and so starting today with the 2.2 beta code, Rekall is now dual licensed under the GPL, theKompany and the developers retain commercial rights to continue to use the code and provide for non-GPL versions to customers and companies that want it.
It is felt that this is the best way to grow the Rekall user base while at the same time adding new features and functionality to the codebase. Some of the options being currently under development or being considered include:
* The ability to store and work with formatted documents, such as from KOffice and OpenOffice, and in general any documents for which suitable plugins exist. It is conceivable to use the database wizard and database access engine from Rekall to create applications that will allow a spreadsheet to browse a database, or do mail merge in word processing documents for example.
* Improvement to enhance the development and maintenance of large database applications, including reusability and object oriented extensions.
* Alternative scripting languages, for instance Javascript (ECMAscript), to make scripting available to a wider audience.
* More database plug ins such as SQLite, CSQL, etc.
Rekall will be supported via a community portal www.rekallrevealed.org. The codebase will be available as source tarballs, and CVS access will also be available for those who wish to stay on the (b)leeding edge. Feedback, bug fixes and contributions are actively sought. This is meant to be totally community driven and oriented.
Pre-packeged versions, commercial licenses, run times and commercial database plug ins can still be purchased from
www.thekompany.com/products/rekall. Rekall currently runs on Linux and Windows, a Mac build is almost
ready. Rekall supports the following databases by default:
* xBase
* MySQL
* PostgreSQL
Commercial plug ins are:
* DB2
* ODBC
* Oracle (*****under development*****)
In addition, Rekall comes with a thorough demonstration database that illustrates the various features of the applications. This is build on top of xBase so the the user need not have an RDBMS server such as MySQL or PostgreSQL installed.
RocketBelt_Scandal
more on rocket belts
11/23/99- Updated 02:24 PM ET
Rocket belt rights returned
HOUSTON (AP) -- Fed up with years of stalling, a judge Tuesday granted an aviation enthusiast the rights to a one-man rocket belt, awarded him more than $10 million in damages and ordered the belt returned to him.
Trouble is, no one has seen the contraption since 1995. And one of the defendants was beaten to death shortly before a trial was to have begun.
Larry Stanley won the default judgment Tuesday from State District Judge John T. Wooldridge at the end of a two-day trial. No one appeared to present a defense.
Stanley, of Houston, contended his former American Rocket Belt Corp. partner, Brad Barker, and Joe Wright, a Barker associate who provided office space for the fledgling outfit, bilked him out of the company and the belt in 1995.
''I'm relieved this is over with,'' Stanley said after the ruling. ''Hopefully, this will exert public pressure on them to finally return the belt.''
Barker, who has not responded to the lawsuit since giving a deposition in 1996, did not attend the trial. Wright was bludgeoned to death on July 16, 1998, 11 days before the trial was supposed to begin.
The RB-2000 rocket belt was one of only three such devices operational in the world. In its first and last public flight, in 1995, a test pilot strapped it on, shot into the air and flew over the Houston Ship Channel for 28 seconds.
Then one of the developers put it in his trailer and drove off.
Stanley and Wright's attorney, Ronald Bass, have said Wright agreed to try to find out from Barker where the belt was in exchange for getting out of the lawsuit. He was killed shortly thereafter; no one was been charged. Barker was questioned but never charged and he vehemently denies the slaying had anything to do with the belt.
The size of a bulky backpack and weighing 120 pounds when fueled, the belt has two tanks filled with hydrogen peroxide and a third containing nitrogen. When the throttle is opened, a high-pressure stream blasts out two nozzles, providing the lifting thrust.
Bell Aircraft first developed the device in the early 1960s for the Defense Department, which wanted a rocket to improve soldiers' mobility. But its fuel capacity allowed for only a 20-second flight, making it impractical.
Others, like Barker, were intrigued and dreamed of building their own machine. He enlisted the help of Stanley, an old acquaintance, pilot and aeronautics buff.
Wright, a friend of Barker's who owned a car audio shop in Houston, offered them space at his business to build the belt with the understanding that rent would be paid after the rocket belt became successful.
In November 1994, the belt was ready for test flights, but suspicion already hung over the project.
Stanley believed Barker had been charging him at least twice what the parts and machinery cost and pocketing whatever money was left over.
Stanley confronted Barker. A fight broke out, and Barker beat his partner with a 4-pound hammer. Both men were charged with assault, though the charges against Stanley were dropped. Barker was convicted and placed on probation.
Wright quickly placed a lien on the rocket belt, claiming Stanley owed him back rent. Stanley never saw the belt again.
After that test flight, Barker put it in his trailer and drove away.
Barker hasn't said whether he still has the belt.
''I could tell you yes, I could tell you no,'' he told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Stanley, who believes the device ''conservatively'' would command $500,000 a year in rentals, says he's still willing to cut Barker in if he relinquishes the belt.
Stanley doubts Barker has sold or destroyed the contraption.
''He worships that belt,'' he said. ''It's his golden calf.''
Stanley is seeking reimbursement for the rental value of the rocket belt since December 1994 -- an estimated $500,000 a year.
But Stanley says all he really wants is the rocket belt back.
Dumb Stunts, Smart Show: "Myth-information investigators Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman leaning against a rocket-powered Chevy Impala, just like the one your cousin's friend's brother told you about
IMG: mythbusters
Dumb Stunts, Smart Show
The Discovery Channel"
Dumb Stunts, Smart Show
The Discovery Channel’s new Friday-night hit ‘Mythbusters’ applies the scientific method to hoary urban legends. Don’t eat another poppy-seed bagel until you’ve seen it
Nov. 13 — Can soldiers crossing a bridge actually collapse it with shock waves resulting from synchronized marching? Mathematicians, ponder all the equations you want. On a recent breezy afternoon in San Francisco, a couple of garage gearheads actually tested out the tall tale that’s been around since the 1800s.
TEN PAIRS of military-surplus boots, each capped with an army helmet and connected to each other by pneumatic actuators, stomped on a home-brewed, 50-foot-long steel bridge. The bridge sagged under the weight of the marching boots but didn’t resonate with enough force to collapse the bridge. In other words: myth busted.
The experiment in question was performed for the entertaining new Discovery Channel weekly series “Mythbusters.” The concept is simple: a pair of curious and resourceful science guys wander the country road-testing the urban legends we’ve all heard and wondered about. Can a penny thrown off the top of a tall building kill someone at street level? (Answer: no.) If a flammable substance is flushed down a toilet, will a carelessly discarded cigarette blow up the bathroom? (Again, no.) Can you safely relieve yourself on the electrified third rail of the subway train? (We haven’t seen this one yet, but the suspense is overwhelming.)
Several weeks into its 16-episode maiden season, “Mythbusters” is distinguishing itself from the pack of rival reality-TV fare. Around 1 million people watch the show each Friday, making it Discovery’s highest-rated program ever for that night of the week. “Mythbusters” also serves as a lightning rod for discussion and debate on the Net as folklorists seek to dissect age-old myths. “It’s a good show; these guys approach each legend with an open mind and do their own dirty work,” says urban-legend researcher Richard Joltes.
Others urge the Mythbusters to crack specific quandaries that have long plagued them. “Was Mr. Ed actually a zebra?” one poster asks on the show’s Web site.
The key ingredient is the show’s quirky hosts, two decidedly nontelegenic San Francisco special-effects designers. Quick-witted, destruction-loving Adam Savage, 36, zings one-liners off his straight-man partner, Jamie Hyneman, 47. Hyneman sports a handlebar mustache, wears a beret and speaks in laconic murmurs, as if he’s trying hard not to get too worried about the fireball likely to erupt from their latest contraption. His unconventional style seems to be attracting an online cult following. “I love his voice for one thing. And he’s so smart,” writes one of the fans.
IMG: nav The show was conceived by Peter Rees of Beyond International, an Australian production company. Rees, whose team of five crewmembers rented Sausalito houseboats for the seven-month shoot, says the show “asks the really tough questions that keep people up at night.” Such as, did Frank Lee Morris and two accomplices really escape from Alcatraz in 1962 on a raft made from raincoats and inflated with an accordion? The Mythbusters recreated such a life raft based on documented information about the escape then dressed in period costumes and made it across the choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay to the Marin Headlands. Take that, FBI—which concluded that Morris’s plan failed. Rees says he gets show ideas by surfing urban-legend sites on the Internet.
The show examines not just urban myths but the weird flotsam that floats in all our heads. Is Jimmy Hoffa’s body lying perfectly preserved in the concrete foundation of the Meadowlands sports stadium? Savage and Hyneman encased pig carcasses in wet cement then retrieved them after a few months. All that was left “were the bones and a bit of offal,” Rees says. Can you water-ski behind a rowboat? Hyneman tried it behind a crew boat with eight rowers and was able to get up on two skis. Can you fail a drug test after eating poppy seeds? The co-hosts scarfed down poppy-seed bagels and cake and failed urine tests within the hour.
The co-hosts often make the ultimate sacrifice, putting their own bodies at risk. Hyneman was locked into a coffin with atmosphere monitors to see how quickly someone could survive being buried alive (you wouldn’t last three hours before carbon dioxide built up to poisonous levels, they found). Savage manned a lawn chair attached to 55 helium-filled weather balloons in a recreation of Lawnchair Larry’s famous 1973 flight. Fortunately, says Hyneman, “We have a crash-test dummy that does the really dangerous stuff.” Like getting shot with ice bullets, blasted off toilets, fired out a three-foot-wide cannon barrel, spun in a washing machine, blasted into the air by a rocket-propelled trombone… all to assess the far-fetched stories we hear at the water cooler. Incidentally, the crash-test dummy looks like hell.
The show is headquartered in Hyneman’s San Francisco visual-effects firm, M5 Industries. M5 builds props for commercials for companies like Coca-Cola, Yahoo and Nike. But walking around the shop these days is like a taking a tour through the quandaries that have bedeviled armchair scientists for ages. Could your toothbrush lying near your sink pick up airborne bacteria from the toilet? In one actively used bathroom, the Mythbusters have lined dozens of toothbrushes along the walls, and they test them periodically for airborne coliform bacteria. Do fish have memories? The crew has set up an obstacle course for their goldfish in an effort to see how long they remember the proper route to the food dispenser.
“Everyone has theories about this stuff, but no one ever tests it,” says Rees. As the show gets older—they are currently negotiating for a second season—he has plans to answer the even more ephemeral questions. Are any two snowflakes alike? Does the quack of a duck echo? Let’s hope we eventually find out.
 Big Science has a Twenty-Year Plan |
   |
Posted by
jamie
on Friday November 14, @11:40PM
from the four-times-five dept.
Earlier
this week, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham laid out the Office of
Science's 20-year plan for building and upgrading the U.S.'s "Big
Science" facilities. Twenty-eight programs got the nod, in all. The top
priorities -- fusion, and a massive supercomputer. Other goals on the
wish list include studying dark energy, high-speed atomic-scale imaging
with an electron laser, and fulfilling several particle-physics dreams,
including a collider to rival CERN's LHC. Here's the press release and the full list (PDF). Your grandchildren may write school papers on the discoveries these tools will make...
Slashdot | MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call?: "MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call?
Science
Toys
Entertainment
Posted by simoniker on Monday November 17, @03:22PM
from the very-good-show dept.
An anonymous reader writes 'The currently-airing Discovery Channel show MythBusters has been profiled in a Newsweek article. Basically, the show takes two former Hollywood effects designers as they set out to prove or disprove various folklore myths that have come about over the years, such as the actual effect of a poppy-seed bagel on a drug test, or what effect a penny dropped from the Empire State Building observation deck will have on a human at ground level.'"
Slashdot | NASA Debates How And When To Kill Hubble Telescope: "NASA Debates How And When To Kill Hubble Telescope
Space
Technology/IT
Science
Posted by timothy on Monday November 17, @12:46PM
from the roasted-on-a-bier-of-tax-dollars dept.
Amy's Robot writes 'The Washington Post reports that after 13 years of wear and tear, the Hubble telescope may be on the way out. NASA and some outside scientists have become involved in a heated debate about how and when to end the Hubble telescope program. Keeping Hubble in service until 2020 would require an extra maintenance visit by astronauts at a cost of at least $600 million. Some even worry the batteries could fail by 2010, since the next maintenance visit has been delayed by the Columbia accident and space station priorities. Is it worth maintaining our old friend Hubble, or should NASA let him go out in a blaze of glory?'"
| Big Science has a Twenty-Year Plan |
|
|
Posted by
jamie
on Friday November 14, @11:40PM
from the four-times-five dept.
Earlier
this week, Energy Secretary Spence Abraham laid out the Office of
Science's 20-year plan for building and upgrading the U.S.'s "Big
Science" facilities. Twenty-eight programs got the nod, in all. The top
priorities -- fusion, and a massive supercomputer. Other goals on the
wish list include studying dark energy, high-speed atomic-scale imaging
with an electron laser, and fulfilling several particle-physics dreams,
including a collider to rival CERN's LHC. Here's the press release and the full list (PDF). Your grandchildren may write school papers on the discoveries these tools will make...
2001 wwwedu list archives: [WWWEDU] Cyber Bullies
another article on cyber bulling
and another....
more crap
more
...
Sunday, November 16, 2003
e4engineering.com - Engineering news, engineering information and engineering jobs for engineering professionals
a cool little article.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Severe Weather - National Weather Service - Lake Charles, LA
phots from a lightning strike at a building. broken and cracked concreate, good bit of damage.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
