This is more of a render setting for on screen objects. RGBam will not have any effect on external light-sources overpowering the LCD backlight or reflecting off at shiny screen, but I am sure you were just joking.

First off, a smoke detector is not a good source for testing a geiger counter. The high voltage gas canister inside is usually tuned for Cesium and Americium (the source in a smoke detector) usually gives a false high reading.

To test properly, you need a known source. The better counters come with a source, usually taped to the side of the unit, but you can get sources off of Ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Radioactive-Mantle-Geiger-Counter-Detector-Test-Source-/160587370187?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2563c0cecb

I don't have much time this morning, so here is an excerpt from my radiation monitor manual for how it works and what it detects. Good luck.

How the Radiation Monitor Works The Radiation Monitor senses ionizing radiation by means of a Geiger-Mueller (GM) tube. The tube is fully enclosed inside the instrument. When ionizing radiation or a particle strikes the tube, it is sensed electronically and monitored by its own display, a computer, or by a flashing count light. When the switch is in the AUDIO position, the instrument will also beep with each ionizing event. It is calibrated for Cesium-137, but also serves as an excellent indicator of relative intensities for other sources of ionizing radiation. Gamma radiation is measured in milli-Roentgens per hour. Alpha and beta are measured in counts/minute (CPM). About 5 to 25 counts at random intervals (depending on location and altitude) can be expected every minute from naturally occurring background radiation. The end of the GM tube has a thin mica window. This mica window is protected by the screen at the end of the sensor. It allows alpha particles to reach the GM tube and be detected. The mica window will also sense low energy beta particles and gamma radiation that cannot penetrate the plastic case or the side of the tube. Note: Some very low energy radiation cannot be detected through the mica window. The Radiation Monitor does not detect neutron, microwave, radio frequency (RF), laser, infrared, or ultraviolet radiation. It is calibrated for Cesium-137, and is most accurate for it and other isotopes of similar energies. Some isotopes it will detect relatively well are cobalt-60, technicium-99m, phosphorus-32, and strontium-90. Some types of radiation are very difficult or impossible for this GM tube to detect. Beta emissions from tritium are too weak to detect using the Radiation Monitor. Americium-241, used in some smoke detectors, can overexcite the GM tube and give an indication of a higher level of radiation than is actually there.

From the Warner Bros. Counsel:
“That’s the real question: the copyright act balances the copyright owners’ rights and not stifling the creativity of the owners — it would stifle creativity to not be able to make a parody,” Mr. Harkins said.
It is good to know that Warner Bros. has such a good handle on copyright law and I am sure they will stop sending DMCA takedown notices to people who post parody videos on YouTube.

I agree totally. It's a $250 /yr decision. As a former admin, I was in a situation where I was well paid, but had an el-crapo machine and no laptop. So, instead of fighting the bean-counters, I just brought in the hardware I needed to be productive.

Not working efficiently because the beancounters won't get you another mouse, keyboard, harddrive, or chair is no excuse for personal heart-ache or poor performance. Just bring it what you need to do your job effectively and your boss will feel sorry for your at bonus time and give you an extra big check to compensate. Better yet, go to lunch with your boss and let him see you purchase the new hardware. Bean-counters are typically short-sighted and focus on cash-flow and quarterly earnings. They tend not to focus on long-term expenditures that will position a company and the employees for maximum productivity and success.

I am not going to let a chump-change item stand in the way of my job performance. You can probably even write it off on your taxes as a job expense if you itemize.

Then hang a big sign up that reads, "I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN."

The network admins at Sony are probably not at fault for the trespass and data theft. I think this debacle squarely falls into the lap of Sony's rock-star programmers. Anyone with a high value target like a customer database with 75 million online accounts and credit card numbers needs to make sure all that data is heavily encrypted. If the database was clear text, shame on Sony and it's programmers. This is probably just the tip of what was stolen. The intruders probably cleaned out the source code repositories as well. Sony was totally owned and the network was so reliable that no one even knew it was happening.

Sony also needs to ask itself, why did this happen? Was this simply organized crime or was it payback for breaking their word to customers? Some very, very clever people are using the PS3 cell processor as the core of supercomputers. The data theft might just be a cover for what was actually stolen (PS3 firmware source and O/S). In any case, Sony is going to be in pain for quite sometime as the subpoenas start rolling in from state attorney generals.

I look forward to learning the details of how this intrusion occurred. My money is on social engineering in tandem with poor quality, buggy, exploitable code.

The US successfully switched from analog to digital TV which in my opinion was more traumatic than switching units of measure. I think we can do this and while we are at it, we need to standardize on a national language. I vote for Java or Perl.

Is this seriously an excuse? Whining about RTFM is as old as documentation itself. These days for nearly ANYTHING you want to know, you can do a Google search and get the answer in 5-clicks or less since there are many others who refused to RTFM and asked the Interwebs for help. Documentation and programming examples are so easy to get to these days, everyone should be programming and using the command line.

If you are going to SysAdmin for any platform, you have to be able to quickly and efficiently wield a toolbox of command line tools. You need to be able to work quickly, accurately, and logically. GUI's are too slow and prone to typos. In fact, I write Greasemonkey scripts to automate talking to systems that only offer web management :)

Dude... develop on the same O/S that you are going to deploy on! OS/X is not Linux! Repeat after me, OS/X is not Linux! If I your target is RedHat Linux with a specific kernel version, guess what you should do, install it in a VM on your machine and develop there. Better yet, make it the native environment on your the system. That is what the big boys do.

This is one of those questions that is asked frequently. This thread breaks down the differences and I agree with the poster as an owner of both.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1886760&cid=34370614

Get an IBM Thinkpad T-Series. T61, T410

Backward compatible to Windows NT with intelligent hardware and a really, really good keyboard and trackstick.

Good luck!

This is truly sad news for MS and the new Nokia relationship. I know their are a lot of hardware variations out there but bricking a paying customer's phone is truly bad form, especially when you are paying $400-$500 for a phone that isn't an iPhone. While everyone hates that Apple fan boys, one nice thing that Apple has going for them with the iPhone is a very controlled hardware platform. This simplifies patch testing to alleviate problems like bricking phones. This also begs the question, who is on the hook for the repair when the warranty for the phone runs out? Will MS pay for the repair or is the customer going to have to sign another 2-year contract to get a new phone? This reminds me of the BlueRay player firmware patches that bricked the out of warranty players. Interesting problem.

I do not think this argument is valid... the school management has 5-6 years to fire a new teacher for nearly any reason. If they can't determine that the teacher is bad in 5 years and grant tenure anyway something is seriously broken in the system. As I see it a more significant problem is that principals rotate in an out ever 2-3 years at most middle/high schools. The turnover in education staff both at the management level as well as the classroom level continues to grow.

1/3 of teachers quit in the first three years.
1/2 quit in the first 5 years.


So maybe it's the never ending wave of new teachers who are bad teachers, cycling in and out. I do not have any statistics for it, but I know it takes awhile to become a master teacher. Being a master of your subject, great showman, and able to effectively manage bureaucracy must be difficult. I suspect a good way to test this would be to get a job as a substitute teacher for a month.

Standardization is the thief of creativity and creativity robs standardization.

It seems that no one is ever happy. The countries with high graduation rates and high standardization like South Korea have a low dropout rate. However the annual standardized test in South Korea always coincides with massstudent suicides.

Education is the USA is moving to a point where there is no depth, no love of learning, and no respect for the transormative power of education. Much of this is a direct result of standardized tests and limited teacher autonomy and resources. The weekly cycle of cover the standard: Powerpoint Lecture -> Read the Chapter -> Do your worksheet -> Scantron on Friday. move on to next state standard then rinse and repeat crushes any love of learning.

I would rather see a USA where we foster a love of learning, go deep on interesting topics then work on them in a meaningful project based way rather than the drive-by, inch-deep mile wide education system that we have become. If we work in a meaningful way the questions about math and science will come and apply to a realworld situation instead of being taught in abstract isolation.

When the USA can not longer produce innovators with a love for learning and/or attract innovators from foreign countries, we will become the low-cost labor market for those who do innovate. I implore everyone who reads this to help stop this madness. When George W. Bush was in office, he had a plan to take the Perkins-IV funding and shift it away from career and technical learning programs (nursing, welding, computer programming, cad, autobody) and shift that money to fund more standardized testing. If that would have happened, programs would have ceased to exist and dropout rates would have soared even higher.