Comment Re:Canada (Score 1) 304
About 1000 km each way here. And we got another dump of snow last night, so I get double-credit for driving in it!
Comment Re:It's a sad sign of the times (Score 1) 467
> Honest question, do the Canadians give us "special pricing", or do they sell at market rates?
Short answer is "special pricing", for two reasons.
First reason is the "Brent-WTI spread" that makes land-locked oil delivered to Oklahoma (WTI, today= $85.12) cheaper than sea-borne oil (Brent $107.78). Second reason is that a lot of Canada's current exports to the USA are "heavy crude" that trade at a discount to WTI (varies up to $30) because they require extra equipment to process (delayed cokers or hydrotreaters). This equipment is common in refineries near tide-water (Texas gulf coast, for example), but few exist in the US mid-west. The glut of heavy crude in that market has driven down the land-locked price that Canadians get by about $50/bbl.
Most oil in Canada comes from land-locked Alberta and Saskatchewan. Since Canada doesn't have a major pipeline connecting these provinces to the Pacific coast (yet), our American neighbours are getting our oil at a discount to what, for example, Korea would pay.
Comment Keep it simple (Score 2, Informative) 265
Avoid using overly abstract concepts, and try to put things in terms they can understand. Since you are teaching statistics, try to use a lot of gambling references (lotto, roulette, etc.) since nearly all the students will have some familiarity with those.
I've found I can teach engineering concepts to elementary school teachers as long as I avoid formulae (and avoid using Latin references, so use the term "formulas"
Journal Journal: OpenSuSE 12.1 install - sound problem
I wiped my computer and installed OpenSuSE 12.1 from scratch, reformating the root directory (but not the home directory). Bad news - the sound didn't work.
Comment Re:Ok, someone explain this to me. (Score 1) 182
2. "A pox on both their houses". What the hell? Which are the two houses you want to put a pox on? AT&T and T-Mo? AT&Tmo and the USG? AT&Tmo and Verizon/Sprint?
Yes.
Comment Only root account works (Score 1) 1
Good news: rsync works as root.
Bad news: After numerous reboots and combinations of user passwords, I'm still only able to rsync using the root account. Next step will be to dig through the user permissions in the device (ssh as root and play with combinations of groups and maybe the settings for ssh in the
Journal Journal: Enabling rsync on Iomega StorCenter 1
Recently bought an Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 for our small office. I've got three Linux machines that I want to synchronize to this device using rsync.
I set the machine up with security, passwords, and so on. Using the web control panel, enabled that "rsync" option (on "Settings|Network Services" page), but that actually didn't do anything -- I get the following:
Comment Engineering programming - SQL and PHP (Score 1) 434
I do process engineering calculations in some pretty big applications. Many of them are web-based since I'm too lazy to program user interfaces. Side bonus is two of us can work on the application at the same time if it is web-based.
The single most useful thing I can recommend for engineering & science students is SQL. I can't tell you how many people I've seen using spreadsheets for a completely inappropriate application because they don't know how a proper database works.
But SQL doesn't do much by itself - I use PHP to interface with it. PHP has its problems, but it is simple, forgiving, and widespread.
Comment Re:I voted Climatology (Score 0, Flamebait) 515
Both these articles are written by cheeleaders for the "stop everything and give me all your money, we've got a crisis" crowd. The validity of the top two charts on the Wikipedia site, for example, are being challenged by sceptics.
Here are a couple from the "No" crowd:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/012714.html
Comment Re:Applied maths? (Score 1) 515
Agree. I am an engineer and find myself frequently unable to solve a problem because my pure math skills are not up to the task.
The most useful one is statistics (ok, mathematics profs don't consider statistics a math, but meh). Next most useful is classical geometry (which they don't teach any more - been replaced by trigonometry). Most of the really advanced maths engineers get taught (differential equations, even most calculus) are not useful to most of the daily problems faced by engineers.
The best math course I ever took in first-year engineering was linear (matrix) algebra. Awesome branch of math and useful for computer programming as well (arrays).
Comment Re:It's the freeloaders time (Score 1) 1051
I frequently click the ads of companies and organizations I disagree with (eg. PETA, soft) to bleed money from the advertiser to the website. Except I open the ad in a background tab on Firefox, then close the tab without viewing it.
This is the same thing as send back those pre-paid envelopes for 'business reply' to groups I dislike and leaving the envelope empty.
Long-Term Storage of Moderately Large Datasets? 411
hawkeyeMI writes "I have a small scientific services company, and we end up generating fairly large datasets (2-3 TB) for each customer. We don't have to ship all of that, but we do need to keep some compressed archives. The best I can come up with right now is to buy some large hard drives, use software RAID in linux to make a RAID5 set out of them, and store them in a safe deposit box. I feel like there must be a better way for a small business, but despite some research into Blu-ray, I've not been able to find a good, cost-effective alternative. A tape library would be impractical at the present time. What do you recommend?"
Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."
Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
The End Of Gravity As a Fundamental Force 650
An anonymous reader writes "At a symposium at the Dutch Spinoza-instituut on 8 December, 2009, string theorist Erik Verlinde introduced a theory that derives Newton's classical mechanics. In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings. He does not consider gravity as fundamental, but as an emergent phenomenon that arises from a deeper microscopic reality. A relativistic extension of his argument leads directly to Einstein's equations." Here are two blog entries discussing Verlinde's proposal in somewhat more accessible terms.
Update: 01/12 04:48 GMT by KD : Dr. Verlinde has put up a blog post explaining in simpler terms the logic of the gravity from entropy paper. He introduces it with: "Because the logic of the paper is being misrepresented in some reports, I add here some clarifications."
Update: 01/12 04:48 GMT by KD : Dr. Verlinde has put up a blog post explaining in simpler terms the logic of the gravity from entropy paper. He introduces it with: "Because the logic of the paper is being misrepresented in some reports, I add here some clarifications."
