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Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |
Scientific American The Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer. "Our solution was to construct a computing cluster using obsolete PCs that ORNL would have otherwise discarded. Dubbed the Stone SouperComputer because it was built essentially at no cost, our cluster of PCs was powerful enough to produce ecoregion maps of unprecedented detail. Other research groups have devised even more capable clusters that rival the performance of the world's best supercomputers at a mere fraction of their cost. This advantageous price-to-performance ratio has already attrac [snowdeal.org > {bio,medical}informatics]
8:55:59 PM 
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Dave has a disclaimer on Scripting.com, honestly I don't really get the point: is there any rule that once something is written on a web page it cannot be changed? Is it because if you point to the post commenting it and in the meanwhile the post changes, then you look stupid? You can change your post to, uh? Well, whatever. Talking (writing?) about disclaimers, there's a kind of disclaimers that I find particulary stupid: the ones at the bottom of email messages (usually coming from consulting firms) claiming that all you are reading doesn not belong to you and that if the message was not addressed to you, you should destroy your computer. Some time ago I found on the web the following disclaimer, which I have added to my signatures set and I use from time to time with these people:
IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or no grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email, although the kelpie next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft. However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites, whisk and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]
8:33:52 PM
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Very Cool Article: Email Interface Design 101.
Very Cool Article: Email Interface Design 101
Talk about serendipity. As I go to the www.evolt.org site to unsubscribe from their mailing lists (I'm dumping all mailing lists for a while), I find this article:
http://www.evolt.org/article/Email_Interface_Design_101/4090/32613/index.html
And, what have I been coding all day? A natural language parser for treating emails sent to a common address like todo@ yourdomain.com as task list items -- but inferring properties like Priority, Status, Project, Categories, Who to Assign them to, etc. Serendipity in action. It's all database driven a pretty cool piece of code that knows that "Paolo" = www.evectors.com = IdeaTools and that tasks from Paolo have a higher priority than tasks from other sources, etc. More details as it gets more features and such. [The FuzzyBlog!]
8:32:34 PM
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Sounds Cool: Business Plan Archive..
Sounds Cool: Business Plan Archive.
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To help us learn from history, we are creating the Business Plan Archive (BPA) to collect business plans and related documents from the dot com era -- the "blueprints" that lay out the assumptions and strategies of Internet entrepreneurs.
Thanks Tony! | [The FuzzyBlog!]
8:31:25 PM
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Google Art. Metafilter uncovers a neat new thing: Posting to Usenet in such a way that when you search for a keyword... [Ben Hammersley.com]
8:18:07 PM
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Frank McPherson Thinks Churches Need To "Shift," Too.
"Today I had a good conversation with Matt and his wife, Kim, about the unique perspective that Gen-Xers have on church. In particular, Gen-Xers expect far more use of computers and electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messaging, and yes, even PowerPoint.
One of the things that Matt said that really stood out is that he and his wife checked to see whether our church had a web site, and if it didn't that would have told them a lot about our church. The lack of a web site might have caused them to not come to our church.
I think that for anyone associated with Christian churches today, Matt's comment has got to make you think about how you are reaching out and communicating with today's generation.
The conversation inspired many thoughts. One would be, wouldn't it be cool if churches provided mail servers, message forums, online chats, and web server space for weblogs tools to extend their community into cyberspace? When a person joined the church they would be given an email address. They would be provided the webloging tools to contribute to the community by providing their own content. Not many churches have the ability to provide all this themselves, but it wouldn't take much for technology providers to provide this type of service. Take for example Yahoo, which provides mail, forums, and web server space.
Another thought I had would be to set up the entire church with a wireless LAN. When I say entire church I mean even the sanctuary. Then I would set up an internal web server (effectively building an intranet within the church) and put as much information on that server as I could. You could simply store PowerPoint files on that server to retrieve and view from anywhere, but a church really doesn't need PowerPoint for the types of things it would use. Here again simple weblogging or HTML generation tools would suffice to do things like project words to a song up on a wall. (Of course, you would need the projection hardware to do that too.) Video can be played using many different free tools.
Actually, projection might even be too old today. With a wireless LAN worshipers could access the words to songs, scripture readings, sermon notes, etc.. directly on their PDAs. This could also be an nice application for Mira and Tablet PCs....
The label doens't matter, but the spirit does. The point is that churches today have got to start using technology as a means to reach out to their membership and communicate with them in ways that make sense to the membership." [Notes From The Cave] [The Shifted Librarian]
8:14:18 PM
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Wolfram's A New Kind of Science is execrable. It's 1100 pages based on a point that everyone interested in the subject already knew: simple cellular automata can have arbitrarily complex behavior. Given that CAs and Turing Machines are the particle accelerators of computer science, and given the heavy buzz related to algorithmic thermodynamics, and given Wolfram's claims, a reasonable expectation of this book is that the "new kind of science" might, oh I don't know, consist of something more than 1100 pages of "Look at the pictures and you'll develop an intuition that I'm a genius." Instead, Wolfram seems to think that the generation of complex sequences from simple rules is some kind of shattering revelation. At first, you think "Okay, maybe I'm missing something," but there's no there there. It's as if Wolfram had never heard of complex numbers, had never heard of pi (which can also be generated from a simple formula).
For a much better popular book on the deep relationship between computer science and physics, try Fire In The Mind. For something meatier, I like Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information: The Proceedings of the 1988 Workshop on Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. [Larry O'Brien's Radio Weblog] [Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]
8:02:03 PM
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For people trying to understand programming in the new .NET Framework, I higly suggest watching this episode of the .NET Show. In this episode, the presenters talk with Brad Abrams and Chris Anderson, two of the people who structured the .NET Framework in a consistant and straightforward fashion. They provide some of the background and concepts that gave birth to the .NET Framework and explain how they worked with the various groups to provide a consistent object model.
[Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]
8:00:33 PM
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Shape Memory Alloy May Be Ready for Market. Nanomuscle, a private company 45 miles northeast of San Francisco, uses shape-memory for a number of high-tech applications. Investors and analysts are eagerly watching. By Barnaby J. Feder. [New York Times: Technology]
Nitinol is an alloy that has been around since the early 60's. What makes this alloy unique is it's ability to change shape based on the temperature that it is exposed to. So, you heat the metal and form it into one shape, and then cool it and form it into a second. From then on, all you need to do is re-heat the metal to get it to "pop" into it's original heated state. Nitinol can also be made to change shape by applying an electrical charge to heat the metal. The metal can only contract about 4-5% of it's length, so this somewhat limits it's applications.
Toy makers have already comitted to developing toys for the 2003 christmas season that will have this technology in it. The medical device market has been using this product since the 1990's, and it has also has been used for remote telecom switches as well as in shower heads to prevent scalding.
Possible Uses: To unfurl an umbrella in the heat of the day, the expand a radiatior when it gets hot/constrict the vanes when it is cold, to power the legs on a mechanical insect. [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]
7:56:07 PM
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For the story behind the story...
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Who Says the Communists Lost?
The Soviet Union is no more, and communism has been discredited as a political system. Despite these facts, many of the goals set forth by the Communist thugs in the Soviet Union to bring about a world socialist order have been implemented or are in the process of being implemented down to this very day.
NewsMax.com is indebted to reader Ed Werner for reminding us of the following 45 goals of the Communist Party that were exposed 40 years ago in "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen, who was head of communications at the FBI for 16 years.
45 GOALS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY*
- U.S. acceptance of co-existence as the only alternative to atomic war.
- U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
- Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the U.S. would be a demonstration of moral strength.
- Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist domination.
- Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
- Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
- Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
- Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
- Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests, because the U.S. has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
- Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
- Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
- Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
- Do away with loyalty oaths.
- Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
- Capture one or both political parties.
- Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
- Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of "teacher" associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
- Gain control of all student newspapers.
- Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
- Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
- Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.
- Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate" all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
- Control art critics and directors of museums. "Plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
- Eliminate laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and violation of free speech and free press.
- Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
- Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
- Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
- Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of "Separation of Church and State."
- Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
- Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
- Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the grounds that it was only a minor part of "the big picture." Give emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
- Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
- Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
- Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
- Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
- Infiltrate and gain control of more "unions"!
- Infiltrate and gain control of "big business"!
- Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which "no one but psychiatrists" can understand and treat.
- Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
- Discredit the "family" as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
- Emphasize the need to raise children away from the "negative" influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blanks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
- Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition, that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use "united force" to solve economic, political or social problems.
- Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
- Internationalize the PANAMA CANAL.
- Repeal the Connally Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the WORLD COURT from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the WORLD COURT jurisdiction over "Nations and Individuals" alike.
*All 45 Goals above are from "The Naked Communist," W. Cleon Skousen, November 1961, pp. 259-262. TAKE NOTE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER CONVENTION FOLLOWING THE 45 GOALS.
7:36:26 PM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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