Comment My camera uses glass plates... (Score 1) 342
... that I coat myself.
I've raised anachronism to an artform.
Comment Good idea, but very hard to do well... (Score 4, Insightful) 105
I like the idea of exposing your students to CFD packages, particularly the variation between experimental results & results off of a theoretical model. My concern would be that mastering a CFD package (or even become a basic user of one) is pretty time consuming. As others have pointed out you usually don't touch CFD packages until late undergrad or grad school.
Consider building the models yourself and running them as a demonstration rather than asking your students: They get the benefits of seeing what the software can do & being able to reference the theoretical data generated, but won't have to deal with the frustration/learning curve of CFD software.
If there's an interest you can offer an extra credit project where students design (or modify) a mesh & report the results.
Comment THANKS PETA! (Score 1) 356
... Because what we really need is another damn open source license. I was just thinking to myself the other day, I said "Self, what the world needs is just ONE MORE open source license. That would just make everything SO MUCH BETTER!"
And why only Chordata? It's not OK to kill cows, dogs, land-fish or sea-kittens, but killing arachnids (scorpions, spiders) or crustaceans (crabs, lobsters) is OK? Is it because they're not cute?
Morons.
Comment Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score 1) 263
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!?
Comment Re:Last option's clever, but not TOO clever (Score 1) 194
Tents are not particularly aerodynamic when set up, and pretty heavy when folded - might have about the same range as a laptop
Comment Re: automatic binary updates (Score 2, Insightful) 299
From now on, my recommended course of action is that all mail administrators running clamav should REMOVE or DISABLE any automatic updates of ClamAV rules, make sure to comment out any crontab entries for freshclam.
<SARCASM>
Mmhmm, yes. I agree 1000%. Don't update your virus signatures. Because ya know, new viruses don't get created very often. You can run with signatures over a year old and still have great protection!
</SARCASM>
Or do what they should do... include a method for automatically applying version updates.
Or force auto version update instead of disabling.
<SARCASM>
Yes, because distributing software for several versions of Free/Net/OpenBSD, each Linux distribution, Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. is totally feasible for a free project.
It's not like they would have to fund the time, equipment and distribution bandwidth for that, or have to deal with irate admins screaming about how ClamAV breaks their change control policies by automatically installing binaries on production servers.
And software with automatic updates never ships an update that bricks production servers (*cough*Exchange*cough*), so this is a perfect solution.
</SARCASM>
Sometimes I really wonder what happened to the Slashdot crowd's common sense.
Comment Re:*Correction* (Score 1) 299
Well, you *can* configure your email system in such a way that when ClamAV goes away it still passes mail (though obviously most people, myself included, do not configure our systems that way).
That's an admin's choice to make, and like almost every choice there are tradeoffs: Potentially pass virus-laden mail, or potentially queue/defer/reject mail until the scanner comes back on line.
Comment Re:It's not like they didn't tell... (Score 1) 299
Or maybe people should
No, that would be too radical. Who ever heard of updates causing problems ? It would never happen.
Tell me, do you sandbox a full environment and test every virus signature update prior to rolling it out?
If so, what is the length of your pre-deployment testing cycle? How many people are dedicated to your test team, and how do you justify their salaries?
(Not trying to be a dick, I'm genuinely curious if anyone goes to this level of overkill, and how they manage to get it approved. I had to fight uphill both ways in the snow to get a dev environment built...)
Comment Yes, they did the right thing... (Score 4, Insightful) 299
As someone who was bitten by the issue (yeah, I'll man up and admit it - my company's mail server went wonky for about a half hour while I upgraded) I agree -- they pretty much did the right thing.
There was plenty of notice -- The fact that many of us weren't on the clamav-announce list is OUR fault, not theirs.
A kill command may not be the most "polite" way of retiring an old version of software, but for a free service I certainly don't expect them to invest huge amounts of time and money in figuring out how to support the old stuff forever.
Comment Re:Got This Bounce This Morning (Score 1) 299
At least their error messages are descriptive and informative.
Seriously -- I got a bunch of qmail deferrals & the bounce/deferral messages were all utter shit ("451 qq error").
This guy wins 100 internets for having a FUCKING USEFUL BOUNCE MESSAGE -- I want to buy him a case of his preferred alcoholic beverage.
Comment *Correction* (Score 5, Interesting) 299
The method SourceFire chose to use was to encode a kill command in the ClamAV updates. If they had simply "shut down the [update] server" ClamAV would have continued to work, just without new signatures.
See their announcement at http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/2009/10/05/eol-clamav-094/
xkcd, Devotion To Duty 167
xkcd really hit the nail on the head today.
Robots To Clear the Baltic Seafloor of WW-II Mines 286
An anonymous reader writes "A Russian company is building a massive natural gas pipeline that will run across the Baltic Sea floor. But first, they must clear some of the 150,000 unexploded bombs sitting at the bottom of the sea, left there by the Russian and German armies in the 1940s. About 70 of these mines, each filled with 300 kg of explosive charge, sit in the pipeline's path, mostly in its northern section just south of Finland. And so the company contracted to remove the mines is bringing in robots to do the dirty work. Here's how it will work: A research ship deploys the robot to the seabed, where it identifies the exact location of the explosive. After sounding a warning to surrounding ship traffic, scaring fish away using a small explosive, and then emitting a 'seal screamer' of high intensity noises designed to make the area around the blast quite uncomfortable for marine mammals, Bactec's engineers erupt a 5 kg blast, forcing the mine to detonate. This process ensures the safety of humans plus any animals living in the surrounding environment. The operation concludes with the robot being redeployed to clear up the scrap of the now-destroyed bomb."
Measuring the Speed of Light With Valentine's Day Chocolate 126
Cytotoxic writes "What to do with all of those leftover Valentine's Day chocolates? — a common problem for the Slashdot crowd. The folks over at Wired magazine have an answer for you in a nice article showing how to measure the speed of light with a microwave and some chocolate. A simple yet surprisingly accurate method that can be used to introduce the scientific method to children and others in need of a scientific education."
Breaking the Squid Barrier 126
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Steve O'Shea of Auckland, New Zealand is attempting to break the record for keeping deep sea squid alive in captivity, with the goal of being able to raise a giant squid one day. Right now, he's raising the broad squid, sepioteuthis australis, from egg masses found in seaweed. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the squid he's studying grow rapidly and eat only live prey, making it hard for them to keep the squid from becoming prey themselves. If his research works out, you might one day be able to visit an aquarium and see giant squid."
