Google is removing the cookies. Here’s a direct link to the actual work by Jonathan Mayer. And here’s the WSJ report, which does not appear to be behind a paywall.
Edited to add: LAT:
Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category
And yet, Apple is evil.
Friday, February 17th, 2012The Worm Ouroboros.
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012Reading more of In the Land of Invented Languages
- The page on Esperanto has been partially translated into Lojban.
- The Lojban page has been translated into Esperanto.
- Both the Lojban and Esperanto pages have been translated into Simple English (aka “Basic English“).
- The Volapük page has been translated to Esperanto. However, there is only a very minimal Esperanto page in the Volapük wiki.
- Here’s the Wikipedia list of Wikipedias in “Indo-European-based Constructed languages”. Lojban is apparently considered an “A priori Constructed Language”.
I don’t know why; this just tickles my fancy somehow.
Edited to add: In case you were wondering (and I got to wondering after posting that): there was a Klingon Wikipedia, but it was locked by Jimmy Wales in August of 2005. (A non-locked version exists here.)
As a liberatarian…
Monday, February 13th, 2012…I am generally opposed to the use of my tax dollars for things other than the basic functions of government: police, courts, and the military.
However, if the government is going to spend my tax money on other things, I prefer that the government spend it on cool stuff: things that go fast, things that explode, things that go fast and explode, or just simply engineering marvels.
Like the 50,000 ton forging press.
According to Alcoa’s web site, the Fifty is back in service. And they have video (which I can’t watch on my work machine).
I wonder if they offer tours? If not to the general public, to polite bloggers who agree to wear a hard hat and safety goggles, and promise not to put their hands in the press?
(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter.)
Bad signs.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012I picked up a copy of Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages
Now, this may be a fine book; I haven’t finished it yet. But I am a little put off by her opening sentence:
Klingon speakers, those who have devoted themselves to the study of a language invented for the Star Trek franchise, inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder.
Bzzzzz! Wrong! As we all know, the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder is occupied by “People Who Write Erotic Versions of Star Trek Where All the Characters Are Furries, Like Kirk is an Ocelot or Something, and They Put a Furry Version of Themselves as the Star of the Story.”
(Seriously, as much as I hate Trek, I have a lot of respect for people who can speak Klingon, or any other invented language. I don’t know anybody who looks down on the Klingon speakers.)
I heartily endorse this event or product. (#7 in a series)
Friday, February 3rd, 2012Back in May of last year, I wrote about upgrading my wireless router to a dual-band Netgear WNDR3700, and the problem posed by the lack of a dual-band wireless adapter in the Project e netbook.
Since then, I’ve been looking for a dual-band 2.4GHz – 5GHz 802.11N USB adapter that was fully supported by Ubuntu out of the box; no NDIS wrapper, just straight plug it in and have it work. I actually bought and returned one adapter that ended up not meeting those requirements. I kept looking, and kept beating my head against a wall.
The last time the issue came up, I noticed a mention of ThinkPenguin on the Ubuntu “WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported” page. “Okay,” I said to myself. “Why not check to see what they have?”
Sure enough, ThinkPenguin offered a dual-band USB wireless 802.11N adapter that they claimed would work right out of the box with all current versions of Ubuntu. It was a little more expensive than the 802.11N adapters that you find on sale at Fry’s, but by this point I was willing to pay a few extra dollars for something that would Just. Freaking. Work. So I placed an order.
I picked up the adapter last night, booted up the netbook, plugged it in, and…
…It. Just. Works. Right out of the box. Ubuntu had no problems recognizing the device, I had no problems connecting to my 5 GHz network (even without external antennas; more on this in a moment), and I’m getting the expected substantial speed improvement. If I get a chance, I’ll see if I can post some direct speed comparisons between ThinkPenguin’s adapter and the Asus built-in one.
I’ve also had occasion to communicate with ThinkPenguin support, and I was extremely impressed with the speed of their response; using their online support form, I got a response back to my questions in less than one hour. I consider that outstanding.
I will concede, as I said above, that ThinkPenguin’s offerings are a little more expensive than the stuff you find at Fry’s. I paid $64 for the adapter I ordered (plus about $6 for priority mail shipping); dual-band adapters at Fry’s typically seem to run about $40 (plus local tax of 8.25%) for name brands. The thing is, my time is worth more than $20/hour to me; I’m willing to pay for stuff that works right away, and does what I want it to do without limits.
If that’s the way you feel, I recommend you check out ThinkPenguin.
(One other point: you’ll note that I didn’t offer a specific link to the adapter I bought. That’s because, according to ThinkPenguin support, they’ve dropped that adapter from their catalog. TP states they plan to introduce a new adapter in the next month or two, as soon as they can raise funds to get the adapter produced. In the meantime, while the adapter I ordered is not listed on their site, TP still has a small stock available, and you can purchase it by contacting them through their website or calling 1-888-39-THINK (84465). Please note that I haven’t received any freebies from TP; I’m just a very satisfied customer.)
(Edited to add: Also, if you’re going to order an adapter that supports external antennas, just a note: it is easier to order both the adapter and the antennas at the same time. TP will still sell you the antennas as a separate item; they just don’t have them cataloged, and it will require an email/phone call.)
The snakes try to get there around 3:30 in the afternoon…
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012People having too much fun with headlines:
1. “Burmese pythons turn Everglades into a buffet”. There’s also an interesting FARK thread based on a similar article from another source.
(As everyone who has a senior citizen in the family knows, you try to get to the buffet around 3:30 so you can pay the lunch price, but still get the stuff they put out for dinner starting around 4 PM.)
Edited to add: In the same vein, this Reason “Hit and Run” entry, which links to this Jonah Goldberg piece:
2. “USAF’s Big Penetrator Needs to Be Harder”. (Hattip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)
Making it harder sounds like a good thing, but perhaps they also need to add more thrust. Maybe a rocket assist?
A quick one that kicked over my giggle box.
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012I’m particularly fond of this one. (Yes, that is a real status code, although it is technically HTCPCP, not HTTP. See RFC 2324. Yes, there are documented implementations of this.)
Noted.
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012Today is “Bad Website Day” over at Lawrence’s.
We’re talking really bad. Awesomely bad. Eyeballs bleeding bad.
So bad that I’m linking to his posts, rather than the websites themselves, just for your protection.
See how kind and caring I am?
Very interesting indeed, Mr. Bond.
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012One might go so far as to say “Damn Interesting”.
Many of my friends and some bloggers seem to be regular followers of this site:
- Lawrence sent me a link a while back to the story of William Rankin, who spent 40 minutes inside a thunderstorm after ejecting from his F-8 Crusader. (I actually own a copy of The Man Who Rode the Thunder
, which is not easy to find.)
- Roberta X linked earlier today to the story of a motley crew of mountain climbers and other folks who were enlisted by the CIA to plant equipment on Nanda Devi in order to monitor Chinese nuclear tests. Basically; imagine climbing Mount Everest. Now imagine climbing Mount Everest with a bunch of heavy equipment, including an RTG.
- The most recent “Damn Interesting” posting is on a little known, and frightening event, in aviation history: the attempted takeover of FedEx flight 705 on April 7, 1994. (Speaking of “Gun Death“, Weer’d, there’s a prototype for you; though nobody was actually killed, it was a damn close thing…)
Pancho’s Mexican Buffet.
Thursday, January 19th, 2012The thing I always liked best there were the sopaipillas.
(Wow. They’re still in business.)
But I digress. (Thanks to the Atomic Nerds for the pointer on that.)
Anyway, speaking of SOPA and PIPA, I’ve seen a lot of people today asking the musical question: “If you were opposed to the Citizen’s United decision, then why were you not also opposed to Google changing their logo to signify opposition to SOPA/PIPA?”
It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.
Thursday, January 19th, 2012WCD did not go on strike yesterday because of SOPA and PIPA (though we did call our Congress slime and make our views known).
(By the way, we think the “Congress” app for Android is pretty spiffy.)
Basically, there just wasn’t much going on yesterday.
Today, we note the NYT‘s article on discussions of doing away with the leap second.
Also noteworthy: Penn State trustees discuss the decision to fire Paterno.
We have no joke here, we ust like saying “feral burros”.
Fun “fact” of the day.
Sunday, January 15th, 2012On my way to breakfast with some friends, we got into a discussion of whether you could get butter from goat’s milk. (I had thought that I’d read elsewhere that goat milk was too low in fat to get butter from. It turns out that not only was I mistaken, but you can purchase goat butter
This led me to the Wikipedia article on goats, which notes:
Somehow, I am less than shocked by this.
Nice, bright colors.
Sunday, January 15th, 2012I wanted to throw up a link to Zander Robin’s “Kodachrome 2010” documentary on Vimeo, but I felt like I should watch it first.
After watching it…well, there’s some interesting stuff in it about the chemistry involved in processing Kodachrome, and quite a few lovely images, but I really wish there was more to it. At less than 10 minutes, it seems like it is just the beginning of the story of Dwayne’s Photo and the final days of Kodachrome. I know it might have been a tough sell on the festival circuit, but I, for one, would have paid money to see a 90 minute version of this, or to download it from iTunes.
In any case, here’s “Kodachrome 2010” if you want to watch for yourself.
KODACHROME 2010 from Xander Robin on Vimeo.
(Hattip: PetaPixel.)
Like Steve McQueen.
Thursday, January 12th, 2012Today’s NYT has an interesting article about an attempt to unearth and recreate the tunnel system used in Stalag Luft III.
It turns out that the team was unable to excavate “Harry”, but they did manage to dig down to “George”. They also constructed a new tunnel called “Roger”, “but in a trench just beneath the surface; anything deeper was deemed too dangerous”. (The original tunnels ran 30 feet below the surface.)
I am looking forward to this documentary showing up on PBS. (At least, I’m hoping it will show up on PBS instead of The Hitler History Channel.) I think this is a review of it from the Telegraph. Here’s a link to an older NOVA documentary. For any of my younger readers who are unfamiliar with the story, here’s the Wikipedia entry to use as a starting point. The Great Escape
Should have been a doctor.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012More specifically, I guess I should have been a hand surgeon.
For those of you previously unfamiliar with the saga of Dr. Michael Brown, you can find a good introduction here.
The latest development? According to the HouChron, Dr. Brown was spending $60,000 a month on strippers (between, at least, December 2010 and August 2011).
Now, that sounds bad, but let’s think this through. An average month has 30 days, so that’s really just $2,000 a day. And according to the article, he was paying four strippers, so that’s really $500/day/stripper, which doesn’t sound too bad. (I guess, like everything else, strippers are cheaper when you buy in bulk.)
(Please forgive me for not linking to anything related to “Stacy Shey”, but, once again, my journalistic obligations have to take a back seat to the limitations imposed by writing these posts at work.)
Edited to add: Let’s give this some thought. Assume a construct called a “stripper-day” (similar to a “man-month
So working on the $500/stripper-day figure and the assumptions above, we’re looking at an hourly rate of $62.50. Which doesn’t sound like bad money. Of course, we can assume the strippers are independent contractors, so their health insurance/retirement/work expenses (such as high heels) have to come out of that $62.50/hour. On the other hand, we can figure that the strippers are young and in good health, so their health insurance rates are probably low.
Question: would $62.50/hour be pretty much the standard going rate everywhere? I suspect that in NYC and LA the rate might be much higher; then again, in larger cities there may be more competition, which would tend to drive down rates.
Question: are strippers fungible? I suspect so, at least within a certain general subset of physical characteristics (some of which are under the stripper’s control, such as hair color and bust size).
This sounds like a subject for the Freakonomics guys.