Comment Re:Engineers love python? (Score 1) 155
Sounds like a personal problem, stop giving us excuses and just admit you don't like writing maintainable code.
See how easy that was!
Comment Re:The Color of God (Score 1) 720
Nope, all of your suggestions rely on the fact that you are telling someone who just sees variations in grey that a particular shade of gray is red. You are still asking them to believe you that what you describe is the color red. They can not observe the fact for themselves so in the end they just have to accept it on faith since the color red is just a concept to them. Your logic is circular which is just plain funny, I love watching people like you go around in circles.
lol
Comment Re:Intimidation (Score 1) 252
The police never asked for Mr. King's logs, they just busted in and seized his equipment.
[citation needed]
It appears to me that they simply assumed the guy responsible for the Internet connection was... you know... responsible.
They assumed and therein lies the problem, but hey don't let the facts get in the way because that's inconvenient.
Comment Re:Funniest thing is... (Score 1) 411
I assume you meant "than they ever will gain mining bitcoins."
If that's the case, it's hard to say what their expected ROI will be. I know that in my case, I already had a 5850 in my machine (a very good mining GPU) and thus, with a little bit of luck I've 'mined' 150 coins in a month. At the current exchange rate, those coins would we worth ~$1000 dollars if I cashed out now, and I really only paid for electricity. Depending on the hardware they bought, and when they started (the difficulty has really ramped up in the last couple weeks), they could be sitting on a nice payout, assuming they aren't dumb enough to try dumping them all onto the market at once.
For my part, I'm interested in bitcoins as a viable currency and not just as some bizarre experiment in cryptographic "stock" to dump when I need some extra spending cash, so I expect I'll be holding onto mine until I can get some actual goods with them.
(Also, I hate the term 'mining'. It's really more like 'accounting', but it's probably too late to change anything.)
I am waiting for the botnets to start pillaging this "economy". Talk about return on investment, lol.
Comment Re:and where's heisenberg? (Score 1) 566
But again, this data does not come from the CCD. It is merely added as the images are stored.
Do you seriously believe your CCD knows your lens model, and authoring information?
All of this stuff is added AFTER the image is in the camera computer's memory and documents the data at the time the file is written.
Unless you have citations to offer for your assumptions regarding the equipment used then you are making assumptions about consumer camera equipment and applying to purpose built equipment used in these setups. So, do you have the specs for the speed camera ticket systems or are you just giving us you anecdotal observations regarding your personal camera? Do you design systems such as these?
You seem to think you are an authority on the topic, but you have not provided any verifiable information.
Comment Re:In my corporate environment.... (Score 1) 1307
Yes, some of the people responding are upset by the circumstances of your post. In their defense they get raked over the proverbial coals by internal/external auditors and security for the most minor of offenses regardless if they were aware of a rogue service/device on the network or not.The issue is that any device/service connecting to the network where sensitive(personal/financial/etc) info is held is a liability even if there is nothing sensitive stored on the machine. This is especially true if the machine is opened up to the internet because then it is available for any external attacker to use as a way to breach the network security. In regards to using a cloud service the main issues are what data will be placed there and who will access it.
You sound like an intelligent person and I am sure you can work something out with IT that will meet everyone's needs and comply with the auditors. My suggestion is to approach it like this: " Hey you guys are the professionals and I need your help setting up a group calendar/scheduling system." You would be surprised how well that one works, assuming that your IT folks are up to the task
In the end it is all about working with people to get things done and usually a little patience and understanding goes a long ways.
Good luck!
Comment Re:Google (Score 1) 99
I felt your statement was spot on in regards to Smith's position on profit seeking agents. Shaka's remark says more about his/her own position than yours. Shaka reminds me of Jack Nicholson's character Colonel Nathan Jessep in the movie "A Few Good Men", when the good Colonel scolds the prosecutors for sleeping under the very blanket of freedom he provides and then questioning the manner in which he provides it.
I recently read Smith's "Wealth of Nations" again and found his insights very profound in light of the recent economic crisis.
Just my 2 cents.
Submission + - Thermoelectrics Turn Waste Heat into Electricity (smartertechnology.com)
An anonymous reader writes: This breakthrough in thermoelectric generator efficiency may soon be turning waste heat into electricity for everything from your cars exhaust to your overheated CPU.
'Excess heat remains a major headache for everything from server farms to automobile exhausts, but breakthroughs in solid-state thermoelectric materials aim to turn waste heat into electricity...promising to bring energy harvesting technologies into the mainstream.'
Thermoelectric have been around for a while, but were only used for niche applications where size and weight were more important than efficiency--like those coolers you plug into a cigarette lighter. But this boost could make them standard equipment on anything that generates heat.
'Excess heat remains a major headache for everything from server farms to automobile exhausts, but breakthroughs in solid-state thermoelectric materials aim to turn waste heat into electricity...promising to bring energy harvesting technologies into the mainstream.'
Thermoelectric have been around for a while, but were only used for niche applications where size and weight were more important than efficiency--like those coolers you plug into a cigarette lighter. But this boost could make them standard equipment on anything that generates heat.
Comment Re:pr0n (Score 1) 194
That's where you went wrong. I always test the evidence first. I certaintly would not want to waste the time/resources of Law Enforcement with flawed evidence. Right?
Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375
mmmscience writes "In 2009, a series of small earthquakes shook the region of L'Aquila, Italy. Seismologists investigated the tremors, but concluded that there was no direct indication of a big quake on the horizon. Less than a month later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed more than 300 people. Now, the chief prosecutor of L'Aquila is
looking to charge the scientists with gross negligent manslaughter for not predicting the quake."
Comment Re:Python for Scientific use (Score 2, Informative) 119
Yes, I saw that and had similar thoughts. Also they should look at virtual environment and look at Interactive python
Comment Re:I'm still confused by something... (Score 1) 291
Hmm, here in the U.S. where I am utility workers are not government employees. The very situation you described happened and the individual was arrested, arraigned and prosecuted.
Comment Re:Hang Gliding while being paid to write code... (Score 1) 709
Same here, IT and IS are separate groups but both are under CIO. The funny part is that most of the people outside IS think we are IT even though it is clearly not the case(the departmental listings say Information Services for us not Information Technology). To be honest I don't bother correcting people when they say IT, they could care less about the distinction between the terms and I have better things to do than be pedantic and piss people off.
Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115
feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."
Gigantic Air Gun To Blast Cargo Into Orbit 384
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New Scientist reports that with a hat tip to Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon , physicist John Hunter has outlined the design of a gigantic gun that could slash the cost of putting cargo into orbit. At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described the design for a 1.1-kilometer-long gun that he says could launch 450-kilogram payloads at 6 kilometers per second. A small rocket engine would then boost the projectile into low-Earth orbit. The gun would cost $500 million to build, says Hunter, but individual launch costs would be lower than current methods. 'We think it's at least a factor of 10 cheaper than anything else,' Hunter says. The gun is based on the SHARP (Super High Altitude Research Project) light gas gun Hunter helped to build in the 1990s while at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California. With a barrel 47 meters long, it used compressed hydrogen gas to fire projectiles weighing a few kilograms at speeds of up to 3 kilometers per second."
