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Though it was inevitable that a carrier would be named after FDR in 1945, up through the 1960's, most of our carriers were equally given historically important names, either being named after important battles or after earlier ships. But beginning with the John F. Kennedy (one of about ten thousand things sentimentally named after JFK after 1963) that tradition was broken. The next carrier which was launched was named after Admiral Chester Nimitz, but to me that was appropriate since Nimitz was the naval commander who won the Pacific war, and commanded the greatest concentration of air craft carriers the world has ever known (more than 35 at a time). When Eisenhower died, they named a carrier after him, though I'm not sure he ever saw a carrier while serving. Then a carrier was named after Carl Vinson, a US Congressman -- and the floodgates were opened. Now nearly all our carriers are named after politicians, and I don't like it. I suppose I can accept carriers named after Washington and Lincoln, though a carrier named after Teddy Roosevelt is a bit strange, and who the hell was Carl Vinson? Fortunately, that idiocy isn't percolating down to our light carriers and cruisers, which still carry names honoring military history. Wasp, Essex, Kearsarge and Bonhomme Richard are named after honored ships from the past. Boxer, Bataan, Tarawa, Saipan, Belleau Wood, Nassau and Peleliu are named after battles where the US Marines fought well -- which is appropriate because our light carriers are designed to support Marine amphibious landings. It is proper to commemorate battles this way. Nearly all of our cruisers are named after famous battles; to a student of US military history those ship names bring back strong images (except for Thomas S. Gates; I don't have the faintest idea who that was). Our destroyers are nearly all named after individuals from military history. Attack subs are named after cities and states, and boomers are named after states. Except Seawolf, but I think that's a pretty cool name for an attack sub, and that in turn harkens back to the old convention of naming attack submarines after predatory fish, the convention used during WWII. Names like Narwhal, Shark, Tuna, Dace, Darter and the oddly-named Wahoo bring back memories of brave and desperate men to the student, and Squalus is a source of much sorrow (as, indeed, is Wahoo). I am disappointed that there is no longer a USS England. She was a destroyer-escort (sort of a cut-rate destroyer) named after Ensign John C. England who was killed at Pearl Harbor, and she was part of a group of destroyers deployed as a hunter-killer squadron for anti-submarine warfare. The Japanese often used their submarines for scouting duty, and an order to a group of them was intercepted and decoded by the Americans, who determined where they would be. This DE group was dispatched to the area, and rolled up the line of submarines. Over the course of about about two weeks, despite being one of about five ships in this group, England was responsible for sinking six Japanese submarines, a record unmatched in history. The Chief of Naval Operations radioed: "There will always be an England in the US Navy." Alas, there no longer is. I am happy to see that the newest light carrier in the US Navy will be commissioned with the honored name Iwo Jima. It almost removes the sour taste I have in my mouth from knowing that our next big-deck carrier will be named Ronald Reagan. (God forbid we should ever name one "Clinton".) (discuss) Update 20010701: A reader writes in with this link which describes who Thomas S. Gates was. Based on that, I have to say it was completely reasonable to name a ship after him.
The answer is that trademark holders are running scared. If fifty new domains show up, they'll be in a race with cybersquatters to nab all the desirable ones. I'm not sympathetic with that problem, and I see no justification in creating an artificial shortage of domains. (discuss) Update 20010701: ICANN, this is your wakeup call. Off your asses!
The biggest flaw of those kinds of tests is that they are not appropriate for testing certain kinds of things, and the ETS is now going to use an essay in some of its tests. I have deep misgivings about this. How do you objectively grade essays? And how do you grade 400,000 essays a year regardless? It can't be automated, and it isn't going to be economically possible for the grader to spend more than five minutes per essay. Also, one grader would give a different score to a given essay than another would, so the result will contain a strong element of chance. The fundamental problem with the whole concept of continuously testing students for achievement in order to track the effectiveness of schools is that it can't really be done. You can try, but it isn't really possible to test effectively, efficiently and objectively. (You can have any two of those.) (discuss)
Who I can't see using these any time soon is front line troops. That's because to a front line infantryman, silence is life. The last thing that a rifleman needs is to walk around sounding like a lawnmower. Until these things can be made to operate using a silent power source, you're going to see minimal use of them at the front. If you don't mind making noise, a tank will serve much better. (discuss)
The two most commonly chosen passwords by novice users are "sex" and "secret". When making a "dictionary" attack, they would start with a list of popular music groups, the names of members of those groups, sporting teams, sports stars, fifty or so male first names, a hundred female first names, and other things like that. Surprisingly, about half of accounts would fall to this short list of perhaps a thousand words. Those who did not would then be subject to a broader dictionary attack of hundreds of thousands of words. Passwords are a secure or insecure protection based only on the intelligence with which they are chosen and protected. A few years ago I was briefly the system manager at a company where I worked, and I wrote and distributed a memo discussing password choice. The best password is a meaningless string of letters and numbers, but that's also difficult to remember. (Still, that's used some places where a password is given to you without you having any ability to change it.) The best way to form a good password that is relatively easy to remember is to concatanate two words together: "galaxyegg". But not words which make a normal English phrase or phrase from pop culture. Don't use "coldbeer" or "redbrick" or "purplerain". (discuss)
Judge Jackson is a citizen of the US and has a right of free speech. But professionals in various professions have an obligation of silence beyond that of the law. I am an engineer and I know a great deal about the business dealings of the various companies for which I have worked over the years. This is inevitable, because I can't do my job of product design without knowing that, and if I were to reveal my knowledge it could cause my former employers a great deal of damage. I don't reveal that information; I feel a professional obligation to keep silent unless there's an overriding concern. I would reveal information about a crime, for instance. Doctors and ministers receive information from their patients under confidence. They are not legally compelled to keep that information confidential, but they are professionally compelled to do so, and a priest will go to prison rather than violate the confidentiality of the confessional. Our legal system has as its foundation the idea of the impartiality of the judges who make it work. If no-one believes in impartiality, then the legal system will ultimately collapse. Judges know this, and there is a strong professional ethics among judges to not mouth off about cases as they're being tried. It would take a very compelling reason in a specific case to make doing so more important than the resulting overall damage this would do to the judiciary. Even if Judge Jackson did think the things he talked about, and even if his evaluations of the parties in the case were valid, there was no compelling reason for him to talk about them while the case was being tried. He was scathingly denounced for it by the appellate ruling, and rightly so. (discuss)
But that's not the real problem with this study. He interviews these patients after the fact and find that some of them claim to have memories of the times in question. His basic mistake is to assume that if someone remembers something then it must have happened, which is provably false. This flaw is universal among people who study this phenomenon, also demonstrated by people claiming "out of body" experiences; it is far easier to explain as hallucination. (discuss)
I simply cannot think of another actor who could have played that role and made it work; it might as well have been written with him in mind. (For all I know it was.) I'm deliberately not describing the plot line or characters, because if I did it would spoil one of the best jokes in the movie, which plays out in the first ten minutes of the film. If you haven't seen it, don't read any plot summaries; just get the thing and watch it. You'll be glad you did. (discuss)
A UN chartered committee has set the goal of reducing the new HIV infection rate by "25% by the year 2005". That is entirely too round a number for my taste, because it indicates that it isn't based on a detailed analysis of the expected result of specific efforts. Rather, someone tossed a number in the air and everyone else said "That sounds good." Now everyone involved in the process can go home with a warm feeling of having done something important. About the only concrete action here was a pledge of more money, which is definitely a good thing (if the pledgers actually follow through, which remains to be seen). But I would have felt a lot better about this if the plan had rather involved things like "distribution of at least 300 million condoms world wide over the next four years", along with an analysis of where the condoms were going to come from, where they were going to go, and who was going to pay for them. Now that is a "plan". (discuss)
But that's a simplistic black-and-white way of looking at it. For instance, depending on the "game", a kid may also be learning typing skills. Is this a bad thing? I sure don't think so; I didn't learn to type until I was in seventh grade (when I took a summer school class), or to use a mouse until I was 32. But a lot of kids are entering kindergarten now with at least some ability to type and use a mouse. These are valuable skills. Another thing is that a lot of games involve reading, at least to some extent, and in some games there is a very strong written component. Likewise, many of the games being played involve sharpening a kid's reflexes and eye-hand coordination, plus learning to make quick decisions. And depending on the game there will be observation, object recognition, problem solving, planning and organizational skills. These are all valuable. (I bet a lot more first graders now have at least some reading skills than was the case when I was that age.) I'm certainly not saying that this means that playing "Elmo's alphabet game" (or some such) is a waste of time and that all kids should be concentrating on Quake 3 Arena, though I would suggest that a kid playing Sim City or Roller Coaster Tycoon is learning a heck of a lot. I'm trying to say that education operates on a lot of levels, and having fun almost always involve some degree of learning. Anything which engages a kid's brain is a good thing. I'd much rather a kid be interactive with a game then passive watching TV. (And if you can't get kids to read books, then getting them to read web pages is the next best thing.) (discuss)
There isn't actually any contradiction, because the two are not related. The difference is one of efficiency. For the targeted advertising to work, it only has to be mostly correct. The idea is simply to boost the relevance rate for advertising, but it doesn't have to be 100%. If, say, 10% of the ads fly to the wrong places then it will succeed. Among other things, this article claims that the targeted advertising will know where the user is. That's not correct. What it will know is where the licensee of the IP block is. But, for instance, if I were to access an account at Software Tool and Die (world.std.com), then Yahoo's system would think I was in Massachusetts even though I'm in San Diego. (For the first few months after I moved here from Boston, I did exactly that, dialing into STD via long distance. That only ended when I got my RR cable modem.) Most people using a dynamically allocated IP will indeed be geographically near the system which licenses it, but not all. To stop hate material from reaching France, it would require nearly 100% success, and that's not possible; how is Yahoo to know whether someone in France is using a local network access point to use an account on a server in the US? It can't, but it would have to in order to fully comply with the French court order. Moreover, targeted advertising will be handled by a specific server, and the people purchasing the advertising will do the work of deciding where they want it delivered. But to suppress hate material, Yahoo itself would have to monitor all the things posted on its site (including its auctions) and categorize them, because the people setting the auctions surely won't do it. It's not a comparable situation. So while it makes a great laugh-line, ZDNet is off base here. (discuss)
Military spending should not be a form of welfare. It is unfortunate that this is what it has become. Make-work jobs are a drain on the economy. And the record of base closings is interesting: in nearly every case employment in the area has risen afterwards, because it turns out that the land gets used for other things afterwards. Sometimes they become commercial airports, or office parks, or real parks, but whatever they are it usually turns out that the closing was a good thing overall for the community. But even if that were not true, the argument that people will lose their jobs should not be a factor in the decision. Bases should exist if and only if they really benefit the military. In the 1980's this got so scummy, with attempts to close bases constantly being derailed, that Congress created a bi-partisan commission to recommend base closings and adopted rules which made it so that the resulting report could only be accepted or rejected in total, with no amendments. This did indeed result in the closing of some bases, but not enough. It's too bad that this is what it takes. (discuss)
This could be interpreted two different ways. First, Dell might actually be considering breaking with its historical Intel-exclusive policy and bringing out an Athlon-based computer. The rumors have been that they're working on a notebook computer with a Palomino in it. Or... Or they might be looking for marketing ammunition. It is interesting that this survey includes a place where you are supposed to rate Intel and AMD on a number of characteristics. If one of those comes out seriously favoring Intel, and if Dell decides it wants to stay the course with Intel, then that characteristic would get heavily featured in Dell's advertising. The mere fact that they're asking is significant, however, and indicates how deep of trouble Intel really is in, and how much of a threat AMD has become. Intel says it wants to regain 80% market share. AMD is going to try for 30%. They can't both succeed, but the historical timeline favors AMD on this one, and in my opinion so do the products being offered right now. Intel is in trouble because the Pentium IV is not what it should have been. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. Dell is the only remaining major PC maker who does not offer AMD. If they, too, break ranks then it's going to be a major black-eye for Intel. (discuss)
In this, as in so much else, "Africa" seems to mean sub-Saharan Africa, or the part of Africa not inhabited primarily by caucasions. In other words, it doesn't include the part of the continent historically inhabited by Arabs, Berbers, Romans, Greeks, and the like: The parts bordering the Mediterranean, where they speak semitic languages. In this news article, "Africa" doesn't seem to include Egypt. You can tell because it says that the US gives $745 million annually to "Africa". In fact, the number is far, far higher than that. But nearly all of our foreign aid to that continent goes to Egypt. In 1999, Egypt alone received $2 billion in foreign aid from the US (a legacy of the Camp David peace accord). On the other hand, to lump Egypt in with the rest of Africa when calculating US foreign aid to the continent would be deceptive, in a sense. (But leaving it out is also deceptive. It depends on what you're trying to prove.)(discuss)
The best evidence seems to be that in the early part of the life of the solar system, there were numerous small bodies moving around, and collisions (and cratering) was common. After some period (a few hundred million years) most of these smaller bodies had either hit something or been gravitationally flung out of the system, or had been segregated into stable orbits, and in any case the result was a marked decrease in cratering events. So surface areas which are old tend to be very cratered (e.g. the surface of Luna or Mercury or Ganymede) while younger surfaces (Europa, Io) or surfaces subject to weather (Earth, Venus, Titan) are not. Mars is curious because some parts of its surface are heavily cratered and some are not. There are three relatively uncratered features in particular which stand out. First, there is a massive impact crater in the southern hemisphere at (70,-40). There are a few craters in that area but not many; it appears to be the result of a really big impact after the main cratering interval was over. Second is a large area of active vulcanism centered at -110 degrees longitude, on the equator. This includes the largest known mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons, which is so tall that its peak is outside the atmosphere of Mars. Given that these volcanos were erupting long after the cratering event, it's not surprising that the surface there is quite smooth since the craters have long since been buried by lava flows. The third, and largest, uncratered region is the northern depression. It is not an impact crater and there's no evidence of vulcanism there. With just an occasional crater it contrasts strongly with the heavily cratered ancient areas of the surface. So why is the surface of the northern depression so free of craters? I think there can be no doubt: water. For most of the interval of heavy cratering, that part of the surface was under water. That did two things: it prevented most of the craters from forming at all, and any really big ones which did form were eliminated by erosion and sedimentation. After the oceans vanished, later rare impacts formed craters sitting in isolation. (There are features which are clearly rivers.) So where did the water go? Not yet known, and it may have gone a lot of different places. First, some of it may be underground in permafrost. Second, a fair amount of it is probably locked up in the ice caps. But it is unlikely that all the water could be stored in that way. The majority of it (IMHO) probably evaporated off into space along with most of Mars' atmosphere. The problem Mars had was that it just didn't have enough mass to hold an atmosphere for 4 billion years (especially since it also ceased being volcanically active a long time ago, removing a major source of new atmospheric gasses), and once most of the air was gone, the water would go next. But that process is a slow one, taking hundreds of millions of years. Mars is the most exciting body in the solar system (besides Earth) because it is the one which future humans are most likely to terraform and colonize. It's almost tailor-made for it, in fact, given that its day is nearly the same as that of Earth. (Agriculture on the Moon would require substantial infrastructure because a lunar "day" is 29 earth-days long.) If we could create a new atmosphere on Mars (not impossible; the required gasses are there, stored in rocks) it would last longer than the human race. (discuss) Update: If you have a very fast PC running Windows, you should definitely go here and download the Mars Explorer program, and also the Mars screen saver.
But the real commercial basket-case is VA Linux, which has decided to get out of the hardware business (which was originally its entire business). In a supreme irony, at this point VA Linux consists of little more than ex-Andover.net. But then there's damned little surprise about this actually. VA Linux is bleeding money like its carotid had been severed. In the quarter ending 20010428, it had a net loss of $109.7 million on sales of just $20.3 million. For every dollar in revenue they spent $6.39. Even for a dot-com that's impressive. The trends are horrible: from the year ago quarter sales dropped 40%, but expenditures rose 135%. Even more scary is negative cash flow of $56.8 million in that quarter, leaving VA Linux with just $67 million in cash and cash equivalents. Total convertible assets were $131.1 million at the end of April. Of about $450 million in stockholder equity, nearly two thirds is "goodwill and intangible assets" (which means things which can't be turned into cash upon bankrupcy). Of course, there's no reason to believe that these trends changed in the last seven weeks, so their financial picture will be even worse now. (If they've continued bleeding cash at the same rate, they're down an additional $30 million by now.) A few days ago there was an outage which shut down SlashDot for a couple of days. It was actually a router failure, but some wags suggested that VA Linux had decided to shut down. At this rate, next time that really will be the reason why -- and it's likely before the end of the calender year. After years of red ink, the board at Corel finally decided last year, as Corel lay on its deathbed, that Michael Cowpland was not an asset. Corel just announced its second consecutive profitable quarter, despite the bad times. I wonder whether VA Linux's board might need to consider how valuable Larry Augustin really is. (I bet he's got a doozy of a golden parachute.) (discuss) Update 20010628: This rings hollow now.
There's another security approach in between these two. Make it so that there's a moderate time expense per miss. If five password attempts fail, then lock the account for ten minutes. Then unlock it again. That has the effect of preventing a dictionary attack (because the rate of probes drops too far to be feasible) while not permitting the DOS (because the account isn't permanently locked). (discuss)
So we're not going to get just one recordable DVD format. We're going to get three, all mutually incompatible. There are subtle differences between them but they're not dramatic and any of the three would be acceptable if it were universal; the real reason they're incompatible is because each has been proposed by a different company or group of companies who want to get rich off everyone else's sales. There are two lessons from history which need to be observed. The first lesson is from the great VHS-Beta war: VHS didn't take off until after it had already defeated Beta and become the de-facto standard. The second lesson is from Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Based on blackmail from the recording industry, DAT was designed (crippled would be a better word) with severe copy protection mechanisms, so that it could not be used to reasonably record from CDs. DAT died and vanished without hardly leaving a ripple, even though it was technically vastly superior to the audio cassette. The lesson is this: customers want one format and won't buy a copy-protected format. They want to record anything and everything and be able to give the copies to any of their friends without having to worry about standards compatibility. (For all its quality problems, VHS gives them that.) Without that, none of these standards is going to succeed. Recordable DVD doesn't offer enough over CDs and VHS tapes to make it worthwhile to customers if it is severely restricted by copy-protection mechanisms and incompatible formats. (discuss)
Leave us be reasonable for a moment, shall we? We're reaching the point of diminishing returns on travel speeds. When aircraft were able to reduce the travel time across the Atlantic from five days to 1 day, that was a major gain. More important, the cost of implementing air travel in that way was relatively low, so that it was profitable to do so. Indeed, it ultimately became no more expensive than sea travel had been, because ships are big and expensive in their own right. A 747 can move the more people across the Atlantic in two weeks than the Queen Mary, but the 747 costs a lot less to buy and to operate. But this system? Is there really any economic need for a system this fast, especially when it will cost as much as it will? After the system has moved its first million passengers, it will have had an amortized cost of $45,000 per passenger, not counting operating expenses. (Assuming, that is, the proposed expense is accurate. These kinds of projects tend to come in way over budget.) I'd also like to know just how one evacuates a 2000 mile tube and keeps it in a vacuum (say, 20 torr or lower). (discuss)
Palm did the same thing to itself this last quarter. With huge inventories of monochrome units, it announced its color units -- and sales collapsed. It remains to be seen whether it will survive this debacle. (discuss)
In this particular case, the only things which are binding on the state of Arizona are the US Constitution and the laws deriving from it, and the constitution of the state of Arizona and the laws deriving from that. I could set up a "Clueless Court" here in San Diego and start issuing court orders which included statements that they were binding, but that wouldn't "make it so". (discuss) Update: The World Court also doesn't have the power to order delays of executions scheduled in the US.
It should come as no surprise that all of these articles were researched by students with "faculty advisers"; I have noticed that students tend to be a lot more idealistic and extreme until they get out of the ivory tower and earn a living for a
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