Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
Trans-USA Challenge Shatters North America Driving Record
Trans-USA Challenge Shatters North America Driving Record: "July 13, 2005 -- The Trans-USA Challenge driving team has broken one of the most hallowed long distance driving records in the world. The journey began at the northern-most point in the United States accessible by road, Deadhorse Alaska. From there, the Trans-USA team drove to Key West, Florida, the southern-most point. The entire trip, which mapped out at 5440 miles, took only 82 hours and 24 minutes, shattering the 1996 record of 96 hours.
The Trans-USA team was comprised of two Americans, Jason Miklian and Scott Roecker. For their expedition, the team equipped their 2005
Volkswagen Jetta TDI with several enhancements, including both a Dieselgeek Panzer skid plate and fuel tank modifications to limit possible delays. These enhancements, along with shrewd map reading, enabled the two man team to shatter the previous time. In the words of Miklian, 'We feel that this record is now impossible to beat.'
"
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Transterrestrial Musings
Transterrestrial Musings: "you can tell a newspaper is 'serious' because it requires its on-line readers to register, so that it can spam them"
Daily Kos: Government Harassment: Climate change scientists investigated
Daily Kos: Government Harassment: Climate change scientists investigated: "In letters to the three scientists last week, Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, demanded detailed documentation about the hundreds of studies on which they were an author or co-author. Mr. Barton also sent a letter to the director of the National Science Foundation that requests information
about the work of the three professors, as well as a list of all grants and
awards in the area of climate and paleoclimate science, which number 2,700
in the past 10 years."
Hunting Witches
Hunting Witches: "Mr. Barton's attempt to dismiss all this as turf-battling on the part of Mr. Boehlert, like his spokesman's claim that such demands for data are normal, is disingenuous. While the Energy and Commerce Committee does sometimes ask for raw data when it looks at regulatory decisions or particular government technology purchases, there is no precedent for congressional intervention in a scientific debate. As Mr. Bradley pointed out in his response to Mr. Barton, scientific progress is incremental: 'We publish a paper, and others may point out why its conclusions or methods might be wrong. We publish the results of additional studies . . . as time goes on robust results generally become accepted.' Science moves forward following these 'well-established procedures,' and not through the intervention of a congressional committee that is partial to one side of the argument."
Hunting Witches
Hunting Witches: "'THIS IS HIGHLY usual,' declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes."
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Born To Explore! The Other Side of ADD
Born To Explore! The Other Side of ADD: "After going through a quick read of Unequal Protection, I still believe that Thom Hartman is not going far enough with his direction of where the real problem lies. The only reason that corporations have got away with this is because our goverment/s have alowed it. Why? The usual, greed for money, greed for power, greed for notoriety. Kickbacks from large companies is too large an incentive, for some politicians to ignore. The same as the owner of a large corporation seeing the easy profits to be made, misleading the masses.
But the same core problem that is causing all of our grief/s, is the same. People who have no ethics, no morality, no real caring for the rest of mankind. They are selfish, and only interested in enhancement for themselves, not realizing that they are hurting themselves in the long run, as well as everybody else."
distal.htm
Gordon R. Dickson: "This one is going to be a somber one. Gordon R. Dickson died this year, just recently as I write this, at age 77. In an era wherein we grow accustomed to people hitting 80 and 90 plus, it's beginning to seem a bit unfair when someone we love goes 'so soon.' But really 77 is not a bad run when you consider what life expectancies used to be and, in most of the rest of the world, still are. It's just that when it comes to certain people, we really want them to stay around forever. Especially those who meant something to us when we were growing up and beginning to embrace the cool things which would form the foundations of our life's aesthetics"
Solipsistic Meanderings ? 2003 ? April
Solipsistic Meanderings ? 2003 ? April: "I then read a bit of Sir Walter Scott by way of “Flodden” and then went on to Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon” which while having some beautiful lines - “A frantic feeling, when we know, that what we love shall ne’er be so”, “For I had buried one and all who loved me in a human shape; And the whole world would henceforth be, A wider prison unto me:” - made me sad again. So I moved on to tarry a bit with Keats’ “The Eve of St. Agnes” before moving on to Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”.
Now this is a poem which has a lot of significance to me because I know of at least two series of books which are based on the poem - one is Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series whereas the other is Gordon R. Dickson’s “Childe Cycle”. I love the imagery in that poem but it has been a while since I’ve read it - in fact, I’m not sure if I’ve read it fully before. I’m currently reading the “Childe Cycle” and am on the last book and am reluctant to finish it since the cycle remains incomplete due to Gordon R. Dickson’s death."
carmstro: The Childe Cycle
carmstro: The Childe Cycle: "The Childe Cycle
I just got finished with Three To Dorsai! , a compilation of 3 books (I can't find it for sale online anywhere, and it's too bad, because there is some extra dialogue not found in the 3 books alone). It's part of a large series that I'm reading called The Childe Cycle, by Gordon Dickson (who unfortunately died before finishing the Cycle. aaagh. :-( ). Man oh man. I've really been exposed to some damned good entertainment lately, if you include Deus Ex with this. Dickson is *brilliant*."
I have to agree, Dickson is brilliant, and I really wish someone would complete the "Cycle."
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
James Doohan - Memory Alpha
James Doohan - Memory Alpha
James Montgomery Doohan (1920-2005) portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on Star Trek: The Original Series and the first seven Star Trek movies.
He was born on March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia. During World War II, he served as a Captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery. He lost the middle finger of his right hand while in combat in Normandy on D-Day. After the war, he started work in radio, but quickly branched out into TV, movies, and plays. A skilled voice actor, Doohan contributed many voices to both the original series and the animated series, including (amongst others) Lt. Arex.
EXN.ca | Video
Backyard Stonehenge
Construction worker from Mishigan, Wally Wallington, tries to re-construct Stonehenge...
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Local News - The Lafayette Daily Advertiser - www.theadvertiser.com
Local News - The Lafayette Daily Advertiser - www.theadvertiser.com: "Lafayette voters turned out in surprising numbers Saturday for an election with a single issue. With a 27 percent turnout, they voted 12,290 to 7,507, or 62 percent to 38 percent, to proceed with the controversial fiber-to-the-home project."
UCLA chemists create nano valve
UCLA chemists create nano valve: "UCLA chemists have created the first nano valve that can be opened and closed at will to trap and release molecules."
World's First Film Substrate-based Bendable Color Electronic Paper featuring Image Memory Function
World's First Film Substrate-based Bendable Color Electronic Paper featuring Image Memory Function: "Electronic paper offers all of the same characteristics of paper such as being thin, flexible, and lightweight. It also boasts low power consumption in that it does not require electricity except during screen image changes, making electronic paper especially suited for advertisements or information bulletins in public places for which paper is currently used. Electronic paper is especially convenient for use on curved surfaces, such as columns. In addition, electronic paper can be conveniently used in conjunction with mobile devices as an easy-to-read and portable display device."
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
AMD Alleges Intel Compilers Create Slower AMD Code
AMD Alleges Intel Compilers Create Slower AMD Code: "I noticed this problem back in January of 2004, with Intel C 8.0, and went through heck over nine months with Intel's customer support to get it fixed until I eventually had to abandon their compiler.
On any non-Intel processors, it specifically included an alternate code path for 'memcpy' that actually used 'rep movsb' to copy one byte at a time, instead of (for example) 'rep movsd' to copy a doubleword at a time (or MMX instructions to copy quadwords). This was probably the most brain-dead memcpy I'd ever seen, and was around 4X slower than even a typical naive assembly memcpy:
push ecx
shr ecx, 2
rep movsd
pop ecx
and ecx, 3
rep movsb
They responded with completely ridiculous answers, such as:
'Our 8.0 memcpy was indeed optimized for a Pentium(r)4 Processor,when we reworked this routine we used the simplest, most robust, and straightforward implementation for older processors so that we didn't need the extra code to check for alignment, length, overlap, and other conditions.'
BS. I went and added the following line to the beginning of my source code:
extern 'C' int __intel_cpu_indicator;
then I added:
__intel_cpu_indicator = -512;
to the 'main' function.
This forced Intel C to use the 'Pentium 4' memcpy regardless of which processor in in the machine. It turns out that their special 'Pentium 4' memcpy which I tested thoroughly in all kinds of situations, and it worked perfectly fine on an AMD Athlon and a Pentium III. I pointed this out to them.
I received the following response:
'The fast mempcy is over 2000 lines of hand coded assembly, with lots of special cases where different code paths are chosen based on relative alignment of the source and destination. ... If the performance of memcpy/memset only are improved for Pentium III will that satisfy you?'
I answered 'No,' saying that I needed support for AMD processors as well. I also gave them a copy of my own memcpy routine that was 50% faster than theirs--and just used MMX. They closed the support issue and did nothing to resolve it.
I switched back to Visual C ."
Monday, July 11, 2005
Sustainable energy source could solve Bermuda Triangle riddle | Science Blog
Sustainable energy source could solve Bermuda Triangle riddle | Science Blog
"DNA analysis of deep sediments has shown diverse bacterial populations, including major new types, but we have been unable to culture them and this might be because we have not been able to keep them at the very high pressures which they need to survive," said Professor Parkes.
The Manufacturing Engineering Centre in the School of Engineering has helped design and produce a high-pressure system, which is the first of its kind in the world.
Using titanium and stainless steel alloys, and sapphire windows, the Centre’s experts have built an isolation system, as well as a special cutting chamber to enable scientists to take precise sediment samples and grow bacteria from them at pressures as high as 1,000 atmospheres. A special ram for the system was produced by the Technical University, Berlin.
As well as studying potentially the deepest organisms on Earth this research might also throw light on the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle by finding out more about the behaviour of the mysterious hydrates.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Timing Of BMDO Tests Must Be Based On Performance Benchmarks, Not White House Schedule: Experts
Timing Of BMDO Tests Must Be Based On Performance Benchmarks, Not White House Schedule: Experts: "Three outside experts commissioned by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency have warned that the ground-based strategic missile defense system being developed by the Bush administration is bound to suffer additional test failures and may not function properly if its testing regime is not revamped and made a higher priority."
Cingular has massive problems
Cingular has massive problems: "CINGULAR IS A SINGULARLY AWFUL phone company, but then again, I am a little biased. Having spent all morning yesterday trying to find out why my phone mysteriously stopped working, and was it related to the abysmal call quality and drops over the last month, I finally gave them a call.
It seems that Cingular has a massive US-wide problem with their network, or in their parlance, a feature. This new feature, one that they don't charge extra for, yet, makes it impossible for you to get inbound calls, they just drop to voice mail.
As an added bonus, if you are one of the lucky subscribers with this feature added, at no charge yet, you don't get notified of the voice mails. I was wondering why my phone was so quiet over the last 24 hours, the usual 7:45am ringing did not occur. Lucky day I thought, until I walked up to someone leaving me a voice mail, and he wondered why I blew him off.
Well, Cingular, when confronted admitted it has a problem, and if you spend an hour on the phone with them, it can correct this one, manually, one at a time. Sigh. It won't tell you about it unless you call first, it is nationwide and from what I gather, irregular. If you are on Cingular, I would heartily recommend you check if your inbound works a couple of times a day until it comes clean on this one, if it ever does"
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Intellectual Property Is Costing Me My Life || kuro5hin.org
Intellectual Property Is Costing Me My Life || kuro5hin.org: "In an unbelievable twist of fate, a combination of terrible drug laws, intellectual property laws, and misguided patents and copyrights have come together to prevent me from receiving lifesaving medecine. I need your help to publicize this issue, take it to the mainstream, and let it start the ball rolling to take out this immoral copyright system. The story of the death of my family and my current life-threatening illness, caused in no small part by IP law, is a perfect starting point to bring this into the next level of public discourse. Let's expose the copyright barons for what they are. It's not just me; 200 million others are also infected, and 95% don't know the problem, yet. It could even be you. Let's become lifesavers."
Near friction free lube discovered
Near friction free lube discovered
The graphite layers are around 1.3 nanometres, says the paper, with the fullerene balls about .7 nanometres in diameter, with molecular forces keeping the balls spaced evenly.
The report claims that when pressure is applied, it operates at a friction force of less than .4 nanonewtons - that compares to top lubricants exerting one nanonewton.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Epson Inkjet Cartridges
Epson Inkjet Cartridges
Bulk Ink System for the Epson Stylus C66 / C86 / CX6600 / R200 / R320 / 1280 (Wide Format) / RX500
Never replace another ink cartridge again! This C. I. (continuous inking) system will dramatically lower your printing costs. Print quality remains at the same high standard, so you can print those great looking photos. Print an 8 x 10 photo for 2 - 3 cents a print, emails for a fraction of a penny!
The C.I. System consists of a set of large ink tanks which feed the printer through a series of tubes. Unlike the ordinary cartridge, you place this C.I. System outside the printer. Unlike other printing systems, this one is PRE-CHARGED, ready to go. Just run the tubing, turn on your printer and you are printing. No priming, no filling, NO MESS!
The advantages of this C.I. System are that no cartridge replacment is needed. When ink is running low, all you need is to refill the system by pouring ink directly into it. The capacity of this system is ten times that of a set of cartridges. The superstores sell a set of cartridges for this machine at around $70 for Epson inks. So you are basically getting $700.00 worth of ink with this system. When you finally run out of ink, just order in bulk ink ($30 a color, $100 for a set of 4) to continue saving even more. The C.I. System has a longer printing period because you have an unlimted ink supply.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Friday, July 01, 2005
Science Blog -- Grizzly-sized catfish caught in Thailand -- (Slashdot Effect Version)
Science Blog -- Grizzly-sized catfish caught in Thailand -- (Slashdot Effect Version): "Fishermen in northern Thailand have netted a fish as big as a grizzly bear, a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish, the heaviest recorded since Thai officials started keeping records in 1981. The behemoth was caught in the Mekong River and may be the largest freshwater fish ever found.
'It's amazing to think that giants like this still swim in some of the world's rivers,' said Dr. Zeb Hogan, a WWF Conservation Science fellow and leader of a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and National Geographic Society project to identify and study all freshwater fish over 6 feet long or 200 pounds. 'We've now confirmed now that this catfish is the current record holder, an astonishing find.'
The fish was caught and eaten in a remote village in Thailand along the Mekong River, home to more species of giant fish than any other river. Local environmentalists and government officials negotiated to release the record-breaking animal so it could continue its spawning migration in the far north of Thailand, near the borders of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and China - also known as the 'Golden Triangle'). But the fish, an adult male, later died. The species is declining, which fishermen in the region blame on upstream dams and environmental deterioration. The specimen is the largest giant catfish ever recorded; it is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest freshwater fish."
• Key Players in the Plame Affair