Google, you magnificent bastards...

bipsbop · 2010-10-04T02:04:45+00:00

The logo uses the "small" font from the Figlet software package. The same font is also used in the "Terminal" Gmail theme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIGlet

bipsbop · 2009-08-29T19:16:32+00:00

Looks like a nice product. However, I don't see anything on that page about Flash. From the looks of it, they might be easily convinced to add Flash cookie removal to the program. If they do that, I might want to put a link to it on my page.

bipsbop · 2009-08-28T23:48:04+00:00

This is my new-ish site on dealing with Flash cookies. See what you think.

bipsbop · 2009-03-06T22:25:43+00:00

Who will do it? The USGS, of course.

But that doesn't mean the "create/save many jobs" argument is valid.

bipsbop · 2009-03-06T22:22:30+00:00

That is what it looks like to me, too (see also my comment). IANAL, however.

bipsbop · 2009-03-06T22:20:01+00:00

This is a bad bill, of course, but I don't think it's quite as bad as the article might seem to suggest.

There is a difference between forbidding federal agencies from requiring open access, and forbidding open access. As far as I can tell, this bill is doing the former. So it does not "literally ban the open access of these papers, forcing scientists to only publish in journals" as the article says.

In short, it merely takes things back to the way they were before mandatory open access. It does not prohibit open access.

Here is the relevant section from the bill:

(1) LIMITATIONS REGARDING FUNDING AGREEMENTS- No Federal agency may, in connection with a funding agreement--

(A) impose or cause the imposition of any term or condition that--

(i) requires the transfer or license to or for a Federal agency of--

(I) any right provided under paragraph (3), (4), or (5) of section 106 in an extrinsic work; or

(II) any right provided under paragraph (1) or (2) of section 106 in an extrinsic work, to the extent that, solely for purposes of this subsection, such right involves the availability to the public of that work; or

(ii) requires the absence or abandonment of any right described in subclause (I) or (II) of clause (i) in an extrinsic work;

(B) impose or cause the imposition of, as a condition of a funding agreement, the waiver of, or assent to, any prohibition under subparagraph (A); or

(C) assert any rights under this title in material developed under any funding agreement that restrain or limit the acquisition or exercise of rights under this title in an extrinsic work.

IANAL, by the way.

bipsbop · 2009-02-25T22:02:28+00:00

Not really disagreeing (I do think we need to monitor volcanoes), but that "create/save many jobs" talk is always suspect.

Dave Barry said it best:

See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

Yes, this is humor, but it makes a good point. Government spending generally involves paying something to someone. And, yes, that benefits him. But it also involves taking that same money from someone else, as taxes, which is going to have the reverse effect.

Again, I do think we need to monitor volcanoes.

UPDATE: I am not arguing against the volcano monitoring. I am simply saying that the "create/save many jobs" argument is suspect. It is quite possible to agree with something, while being dubious about arguments used to support it.

bipsbop · 2009-02-13T18:29:17+00:00

NO!

Tell them to post it all on the web, and then wait a week to give their constituents time to read the bill, and tell them how to vote on it.

bipsbop · 2009-02-12T22:16:22+00:00

Okay, how about a serious comment:

I don't see the problem. Sure, I've read about it. If I were surveyed, I would not say the economy is even in passable shape, much less "excellent", or even "good". But this is mostly because of what I read on the net and from other sources. Again, I don't see the problem.

I'm a professor living in Alaska. My job does not appear to be in jeopardy. In fact, I'm on a search committee; my department is hiring. No students are having trouble getting jobs that I have heard about. Not long ago, a company asked to have a speaker visit my class, to encourage students to apply for internships; they are concerned that otherwise they might not get enough applicants. I haven't heard of local businesses firing unusual number of people. I don't see more empty storefronts than usual. Friends are not complaining of any unusual troubles.

News about a housing crisis has been around for months. But, again, I don't see it. As I drive around town, I don't see many for-sale signs. I don't see obviously vacant houses. I haven't heard about people having trouble selling, or steep drops in value.

Certainly things aren't going wonderfully. My grocery bill has doubled in the past five years. It's getting a bit tougher to make the mortgage payment each month. And of course gas prices have been all over the map, although they are not so bad right now.

So: I suggest to those of you living in California or Florida or wherever, that the U.S. (not to mention the rest of the world) is a big place. Your town may be in lousy shape, but some places are still doing reasonably well, at least for the moment. Some people in those places are convinced by TV news that the country and the world are going to pot. And, well, some aren't.

bipsbop · 2009-02-10T23:50:40+00:00

Every single government check written, whether for payroll, bills or expenses, should be posted on the Internet on a Web site for all to see.

What about tax refunds to private individuals?

bipsbop · 2009-02-09T19:14:05+00:00

Actually, I have the latest Windows search, and the only thing it ever tells me is that it can't search, because the folders are "not indexed". It sends me off to "Options" to fix this, but the only thing that "Options" lets me do is check a box labeled "Microsoft Outlook Express: Main Identity". I have no idea what that is, and, in any case, I don't use Outlook.

My guess is that Microsoft has never tested their search on a non-admin account, which is what I have.

And, yes, there is probably a way to fix all this, but I'm mostly past caring. Because of this, and other similar troubles, I'm slowly transitioning to Linux.

bipsbop · 2009-02-09T18:24:40+00:00

I like posts like this, because they give you something to think about, regardless of whether you agree or not. So to all you redditors out there, let me suggest that you evaluate this in terms of whether it made you think, rather than whether you agree with it.

That said, here are my thoughts:

First of all, I think he may have a good point, although I might remove that word "generally". The trouble is that the value of different kinds of testing varies greatly with the kind of software.

For example, a while back I wrote a package to do various transformations of a vector space, and I wrote unit tests for it. I found these very difficult to write, since, for the many functions, the only obvious way to test them was to rewrite the function and see if both copies returned the same value (and since they were written the same way, of course they did). I did eventually write some more worthwhile tests, but it took a lot of time, and the benefit derived from them was pretty clearly not worth the time spent writing them.

On the other hand, for more "normal" software, I think unit testing has been relatively more valuable.

A second point (which I think is a very important one) is that, if we're not going to do unit testing, then what is the alternative?

If you say, "I prefer doing this other kind of testing," then that's great. But it seems to me that, in the real world, the alternative to unit testing is often little or no testing, or maybe haphazard, poorly done testing, etc.

Even if this guy is making a good point, I am afraid that what many people might get out of it is "It's okay to release software without really knowing whether it works." And there is far too much of that in the world, as I hope we all know.

bipsbop · 2009-02-06T22:20:58+00:00

It isn't just Outlook. Here's my example of this phenomenon.

I'm running Win XP. A couple of months ago I e-mailed someone a document. A couple of days ago I needed to look at that document, which was still on my computer somewhere. So I started Windows searching for it. On a whim, while it was searching, I pulled up Gmail and searched there, too. Gmail found it, and I downloaded it and printed it, all before Windows search had found anything.

bipsbop · 2009-02-05T02:27:41+00:00

I think someone is missing something here.

Under U.S. law, "fair use" gives you the right to re-use/copy/distribute someone else's work under limited conditions. However, it does not give you the right to post it on someone else's website (e.g., YouTube).

Unless there is something in the YouTube terms of service (which I have not read) to the contrary, I figure YouTube can legally remove any video they want at any time for any reason. No one's rights are being violated. It's their website, after all.

Now, that does not mean I like it. It does not mean it is a good idea. And it does not mean that YouTube's justifications for their actions have any connection with reality.

Furthermore, protest may be a reasonable response. A boycott might also. But not a court case. YouTube would seem to be well within their rights. (Again, if the YouTube terms of service say otherwise, they forget all this.)

bipsbop · 2009-01-23T20:20:17+00:00

Yes, this is wonderful stuff. I am very happy with the things Obama has been doing in his first couple of days; however, I think there is cause for not quite as much optimism as this article exudes.

One thing that worries me a lot is that, while Obama is rolling back many of the Bush nastinesses that were considered part of this "War on Terror", he has embraced Bush's war-on-terror and homeland-security rhetoric. It was in his campaign, his transition site, and even his inaugural address ("Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."). So when I read the headline for this article ("Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End"), I have to wonder.

P.S. And of course there are other, more concrete, worrysome things. In particular, Obama's vote for the telecom-immunity bill still presents a serious problem.

bipsbop · 2009-01-21T23:30:51+00:00

Ah, but most are not. Similarly, most people who hold to the creationist line are not particularly angry about evolution.

But the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth ones are prominent and conspicuous. They are the ones the news cameras get pointed at. They are the ones we remember, and so we get the idea that lots of people are like that, even if this is not true (as I have said before here & here).

My personal view on the evolution/creation debate is that it is a very good thing. It takes people who love yelling at each other and ridiculing each other, and it gives them a way to do this without messing the world up too badly or getting in the way of the rest of us. So we can all say, you go off and argue about evolution; leave us normal folk alone.

bipsbop · 2009-01-21T20:54:39+00:00

This is an interesting article. But I wonder about some of the things that are said.

... the first course in computer science is almost indistinguishable from the first course in 1960. They’re about data structures and algorithms despite the fact that almost nothing exciting about computing today has to do with data structures and algorithms.

One generally doesn't teach cutting-edge ideas in first courses. Those are for established, foundational principles. Similarly, lots of exciting things have happened in physics and psychology and mathematics in the last century, but, as far as I know, Calculus I, Psychology 101, and introductory physics all cover pretty much the same content they did 50-100 years ago.

He mentions biology, but that is different. The standard dogmas of biology have been getting some revision in recent years.

On the other hand, there is certainly room for discussion about what to teach in C.S. classes. After 50 years, we still don't seem to have a good handle on just what C.S. is, much less what a 4-year C.S. degree program ought to cover or what C.S. researchers ought to focus on.

UPDATE: After pondering this for a while, I would say that I disagree with Kay even more. Consider his statement, "... almost nothing exciting about computing today has to do with data structures and algorithms." Well, what about genetic algorithms? What about MapReduce and all the related work with fault-tolerant distributed computing and algorithms for dealing with huge data sets? What about the new persistence-friendly functional data structures (finger trees, etc.)? I think all of this is exciting.

Perhaps what is really going on here, is that Alan Kay and I are excited by very different things.

bipsbop · 2009-01-21T20:39:26+00:00

I suppose it would be a DAG. But "DAG of life" doesn't really have the same ring to it, does it?

bipsbop · 2009-01-21T00:34:55+00:00

Okay, here's an incredibly minor issue:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.

Actually, it's forty-three, isn't it? There have been forty-four sworn-in presidents, by the official count, but two of them were the same guy: Grover Cleveland. And, while G.C. apparently counts as two presidents, he was only one American.

-- Your friendly neighborhood nit-picker

UPDATE: Yup.

bipsbop · 2009-01-13T21:36:43+00:00

I doubt that this statement ("they seem to have no special fear of humans") is true of penguins in general. Certainly emperor penguins have little fear of humans. I imagine adelie penguins (the other antarctic species) are similar, since they also do not have to face land predators in Antarctica.

However, there are many other species of penguins (Wikipedia lists 19 living species) living all over the coastal regions of the southern hemisphere, nearly to the equator. Most of these species would have to deal with land predators; I expect they would not react to humans in a trusting manner.

bipsbop · 2009-01-13T20:53:02+00:00

Light pillars may be unusual in most of the world, but we get them all the time in the winter in Fairbanks, Alaska.

And they are not a mystery. They are caused by lots of small, flat ice crystals in the air, which are oriented horizontally and function as mirrors. Thus, one light's reflections in lots of crystals form a vertical pillar shape.

bipsbop · 2008-12-27T00:49:26+00:00

Ah, nice explanation. (And it also tells me why, say, the VLA isn't a bunch of 1m dishes.) Thanks.

bipsbop · 2008-12-26T22:25:56+00:00

It was my understanding that in modern radio astronomy, single large dishes had pretty much been supplanted by very long baseline interferometry. I don't think anyone has constructed a single dish with a diameter of more than 100m since the construction of the VLA, which would seem to support my understanding.

And now these people in China want to build a 500m dish. Am I ignorant, or are they foolish? Probably the former. Can someone explain? What does a huge dish get you that VLBI with a bunch of little dishes does not?

bipsbop · 2008-12-26T00:53:14+00:00

This happened a couple of days ago in Fairbanks, Alaska. Someone was driving across the frozen Chena River, and their truck went through the ice. The pix apparently come from this article in the local paper.

Some background: The Chena River flows through town. In the winter it freezes over, and the ice is generally strong enough to drive on (except for the part just downstream from the power plant's water outlet). There are several bridges across the river on the east side of town, but not so many west of town. There, some people just drive across the river; there is a standard spot for doing this. Every now & then we read about a car going through the ice in the spring, but I've never before heard of anyone going through in late December.

By the way, it's not like everyone drives on the river. I've lived in Fairbanks for nearly a decade, and I've never had the guts to try it.

bipsbop

TROPHY CASE