text:
WASHINGTON (AP) - New airplanes are grounded, investigations of fatal air and car crashes are going undone and scientific studies dependent on government funding have ground to a halt because of the partial government shutdown now in its second week, the Senate Commerce Committee was told Friday.
The economic impact will only intensify as the shutdown continues, affecting everything from the aviation industry to Alaska crab fishermen who may see their lucrative, one-month harvest delayed, witnesses told the panel.
Marion Blakey, CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, said the shutdown already has virtually stopped certification of new aircraft, equipment and training simulators because the Federal Aviation Administration has furloughed more than 90 percent of its employees who work on those issues. Blakey is a former FAA administrator.
New planes aren't being delivered to buyers because routine government approvals "essential for our manufacturers to compete and for our industry to grow" aren't taking place, Blakey said.
Deborah Hersman, who chairs the government's National Transportation Safety Board, said furloughs have stopped her agency from sending investigators to most air and motor vehicle accident sites, including those with fatalities. Already, she said, the agency has ignored a fatal bus crash that killed six people in Tennessee, an oil spill site in North Dakota and a small airplane crash in Arizona that killed four people.
The NTSB has said it will send investigators to accidents where it believes there are safety concerns that pose a threat to lives or property. The board recently kept investigators on a train collision in Chicago after the shutdown for that reason.
But the agency has suspended as many as 1,500 active accident investigations because of the shutdown, Hersman said. The agency has also stayed out of the investigation of a battery fire in a Tesla Model S car. Battery fires are a key safety issue the agency has been focused on.
Routine NTSB help for the State Department and civil aviation authorities in other countries also has stopped, Hersman said.
Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said the shutdown was "a serious blow to an already beleaguered American scientific enterprise" and could disrupt or halt many studies because grants aren't being renewed. Even the accuracy of studies could come into question, he said.
Keith Colburn, a crab fisherman featured on the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch," said a lucrative, one-month crab season harvest scheduled to begin Oct. 15 is endangered because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is not assigning quotas to boats and permits during the shutdown.
"Collectively, the fleet already has (spent) millions of dollars out of pocket just gearing up for the season," Colburn said. "Each day tied to the docks will cost these boats thousands more. Many fishermen and coastal communities are already facing tough times. This unnecessary shutdown may be the tipping point if the situation isn't resolved soon."


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Cash, Credit or Debit?
When you shop this holiday season, weigh the options.
En español | Ramona Zaragoza is using strictly cash this year to buy holidays gifts. Last year, she used credit — then lost her job when her employer closed its doors. "I got into too much debt, and now I'm trying to get myself out," she says.
Like Zaragoza, 55, Hispanics overall prefer cash. A poll by AARP VIVA found that for your upcoming holiday purchases, 60 percent of you plan to use cash; 25 percent, a debit card; and just 15 percent, credit.
Cash is often the quickest way to get through a checkout line. It's anonymous, so there's no risk of identity theft. And you're less likely to get mired in debt. But cash lacks the benefits of a credit card, like extended warranties and rewards, or the protections. So when choosing a payment method, ask yourself:
What am I buying? Do you need the protection of a credit card? Carmen Santiago, 59, a certified credit counselor for the nonprofit InCharge Debt Solutions, uses her debit card for most everything, pulling out her credit card only for airline tickets and online purchases, where she might need to dispute a charge.
Can I handle credit? While Latinos use credit less often than the general population, they're more likely to run up a high balance and incur hefty interest. "Especially Hispanics who have recently come from countries where credit is rarely used can find themselves over their heads," says Colombia-born Beatriz Hartman of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services.
Can I get special deals? You will not get cash back or points for purchases using greenbacks, but you'll often get a sweet deal with credit cards and, sometimes, debit cards. Santiago shopped around and found a debit card where, she says, "I get $40 to $50 back every month." And some store credit cards offer instant discounts — sometimes 10 percent or more off all purchases on the day you apply.
Bottom line: Use credit if you manage it well and pay off balances monthly. Otherwise, stick to cash or debit. Whatever method of payment you use, says Hubert Rivera, vice president of outreach for InCharge Debt Solutions, you may need to budget.
That's just what Zaragoza is doing.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Cricket is corrupt in every sense. It is broken beyond any hope of being fixed.THE ONLY surprise about the Ross Taylor fiasco and subsequent fallout is that so many were surprised that such a shambolic state of affairs could develop.
All that outrage, disbelief and incredulity that the captain of the national team could be removed in such a dreadfully clumsy and botched fashion ... please, where has everyone been?
Goodness gracious, a major bungle in cricket - quelle surprise. Are memories so short or is everyone so pious that they have conveniently forgotten the endless scandals, stuff-ups and general corruption that are a permanent part of cricket?
Surely all the venting this last week is being done for form's sake rather than any genuine sense of outrage?
It seems strange that Martin Crowe chose to metaphorically burn his New Zealand cricket blazer in the wake of the Taylor scandal when there were so many more lasting and damaging scandals to choose from.
Why now? Why not when Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were dubiously involved with 'John the Bookmaker' back in the mid-1990s? Why not when former Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room after the 2007 World Cup in supposedly suspicious circumstances? Why not over the spot fixing scandal in 2010 with the three Pakistan players? Why not over the Hansie Cronje match-fixing disgrace?
Seriously, the Taylor stuff is small beer - par for the course in a sport that is almost a parody these days. The moral compass went haywire some time ago and even in New Zealand, there have been much bigger scandals to get het up about.
What about when Sir Richard Hadlee infamously kept the Alfa Romeo for himself, breaking the gentleman's agreement that all prizes and prizemoney would be pooled, sold and split evenly among the team? Or the dope smoking debacle in 1994, when Stephen Fleming, Dion Nash and Matthew Hart were hung out to dry by team-mates and management - their honesty punished by a gutless crew who hid behind it.
So really we have been staring at a molehill these last few weeks wrongly believing it was a mountain. The sad truth in all this, the only conclusion to be reached, is that cricket is destined to be forever beset by scandal, incompetence and hijacked by Machiavellian characters and general Charlatan-like behaviour.
This latest escapade of treachery is just one more chapter in a long and rather shameful history.
Cricket, whether it be in New Zealand or globally, is quite fantastically corrupt in every sense. It is broken beyond any hope of being fixed.
So much is wrong, where do you begin trying to fix it? What even is cricket these days? Is it tests, one-dayers, Twenty20s? Who knows? It just seems to be one amorphous blob of bowling and batting - actually, not so much batting as swinging and slashing.
If Crowe really wanted a worthy cause on which to mount his despair, how about the total absence of cultured stroke makers on the national scene? The art of forging and crafting a big score has almost been lost entirely and no one cares because a big slog out of the ground is what keeps the masses happy. How long before T20 is considered too long and dull for the modern attention span to cope?
And that, ultimately, is at the core of cricket's problem. It has been reinvented as a sport for the vacuous. It has remodelled itself to suit Generation Y, created a culture of instant gratification. Essentially, it has lost its soul.
The Indian Premier League typifies much of what is wrong; huge sums paid to players who have virtually no emotional attachment to the teams they represent. That's ugly - mercenary and unsustainable.
Sport doesn't work when players feel little or nothing for the jersey they wear. There has to be more than just a cheque keeping them there. Cricket doesn't seem to think so and has fostered this idea that athletes are commodities to the extent they are even traded much like oil and coffee, their prices fluctuating in line with demand.
New Zealand Cricket was, in some ways, merely extending the culture of commodity trading in the way it shuffled Brendon McCullum for Taylor.
This particular saga is over but it won't be long before there is another and the last thing anyone should be when the next drama erupts is surprised.
Be surprised if someone jumps out of your fridge, or if butter prices come down or if peace breaks out in Syria, but a cricket scandal ... that's just what happens.


text:
NAme: Ha A
Age: 3 (way to young!)
Gender: GIrl
Color: Light Purple with cirlces
Oh Ha A I knew I should have paused you when I went to bed. I miss you and hope you have a peaceful time, I promise I will take good care of the others for you!!
So long Ha A
Started by tamagirlio12 , Sep 05 2004 07:16 AM


text:
|2013-03-05, 17:44
|Link #1541
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
I do have to say that I also love the fact that Yuusha did NOTHING this episode. It comes to show that the title of Yuusha is just a title that is given to him for political means. Yuusha knows this and which is why he wonders what he should do once the war is over. The only thing he has above all others is his combat strength and nothing else. That is why he said he admires all the other characters who is able to DO something. At the same time, his own recognition of his biggest flaw is probably one of the things leads the other people to trust and care for him so much. Him not doing anything this episode when big sister Ann is the one who gave such an awesome speech and was able to do something drives home that fact even more.
|2013-03-05, 21:19
|Link #1542
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
Personally... if I was the Hero and had his power.
I would wipe out the Church regardless of the end result, LOL
And I laughed at the poor Kings that looks like children and can't do a thing until after older maid was about to die. (and I said Kings, because it seems in Hero's world, all Kings are under the Church no matter what Kings they are - Church is probably even larger than the Merchant Alliance)
(Modern world, still quite similar with "church beliefs" where they tend to force others to believe and if you don't, they'll smack you with rants - which I personally experienced before, not to mention it's probably why the Pope decided to leave, LOL, maybe he realized how sucky the Church really was)
And instead of stones at the messenger, I would just throw a knife straight at their heads, way more effective than stones.
Also, about that "last message" of episode 9...
I wonder if that means "Maou" is declaring she's actually the Creator and can feel the birth and death of every single living being in the world and she's gone through millions of years and met with thousands of "Heros" already.
OR was this just the incarnation of "Demon Kings" all in one fused with Maou to share their thoughts?
Tho it might also explain why Maou looks extremely sad whenever she saw someone suffering or dying (cause she can experience their pain?)
That's just my theory tho, LOL (but really... Da Yuusha in this Timeskipped anime looks so boring and useless, since we didn't get to see Yuusha doing his things and how he's actually shaping the world in the background.)
|2013-03-09, 10:11
|Link #1547
Black Steel Knight
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Indonesia
|2013-03-09, 21:33
|Link #1550
Sisterhood of the Desu
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: in a van by the river
I forgot this was on. Looks like nothing came on this week anyway.
I was close to dropping this until last week's excellent, tearful episode and the Big Sister's stunning moment. Christ that made me cry.
Bring on the next few episodes! Now I wanna see what happens to Maou.
|2013-03-14, 05:20
|Link #1551
Hardcore meets Casual
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Age: 29
|2013-03-14, 18:56
|Link #1552
Not Enough Sleep
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: R'lyeh
Age: 42
|2013-03-15, 15:09
|Link #1553
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2011
Things are getting complex in this anime.
I got lost watching this episode.
You really have to watch it with complete interest.
This episode reminded me of Wolf and Spice even more than others.
This time it was mostly about trade.
Flashback about Maou and Yuusha as a baby projection was nice.
|2013-03-15, 15:14
|Link #1554
One-Eyed Dragon
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: NJ, USA
So the merchant isn't on their side? Lol how the princess showed up to meet him. Liked the flashback about Maou before she became Maou. She really needs to come back now. So that guy with the blue face was referenced this week.
|2013-03-15, 16:06
|Link #1555
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: California
Bad pacing this episode. They blazed through a lot of the material in order to fit into one cour. This really hurt the explanations for what the Young Merchant was trying to accomplish through his rapid purchase of wheat.
|2013-03-15, 17:52
|Link #1557
I disagree with you all.
Join Date: Dec 2005
I never really got what the merchant was trying to do with his price manipulation. Can someone explain?
And also, what's he going to do if all the nobles end up owing him a lot of money and decide it's cheaper to get the Church to declare him and his alliance a bunch of heretics?
|2013-03-15, 18:18
|Link #1558
Join Date: Aug 2010
Age: 30
The Winter country had to make sure to secure its food for the winter so they inevitably had to introduce some trade restictions.
The other countries took this as a reason to start a war over the winter countries ressources as an asnwer.
So he got what he wanted.
I'm not sure if he is working with or against them though tbh lol
|2013-03-15, 19:01
|Link #1559
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
Spoiler for footnote:
Yes that guy was one of the blue demons.
Last edited by kagato3; 2013-03-15 at 19:11.
|2013-03-15, 19:12
|Link #1560
Emperor of the Expected
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Florida
|economics, fantasy, harem
|Thread Tools


text:
Pharrell Williams and long-time girlfriend Helen Lasichanh got pretty lucky over the weekend -- they tied the knot!
The "Get Lucky" singer and his new wife boarded a yacht in Miami called "Never Say Never,"People and Us Weekly reported, before setting sail for the Kampong National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Coconut Grove where they reportedly exchanged vows.
The Grammy-winning record producer and Lasichanh have been dating for more than five years and have a 4-year-old son named Rocket together. They reportedly got engaged last summer and it was widely reported that the couple said "I Do" earlier this summer, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
It turns out the pair applied for a marriage license in person and it was issued on Oct. 7, E! News reported, citing the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts Marriage License Bureau Manager Robert Reboso.
The bride and groom opted for non-traditional wedding attire for their big day. Williams, 40, wore red and green tartan tuxedo and the bride wore a voluminous blue and green tartan coat over a white gown, reported the Daily Mail, which obtained photos of the couple in their garb.
Guests reportedly went with the plaid and tartan theme too, Us Weekly said.
Famed photographer Terry Richardson snapped their photos on the boat and musicians Usher and Busta Rhymes feted the bride, groom and their guests.
"Usher and Busta Rhymes did a mini concert at the wedding," a source told the mag. "It was so fun. The little concert was amazing. It [was] the most fun wedding I've ever been to."
"Of course they're playing some of [Williams'] hits tonight," another insider said.
Williams, who saw major success this year with collaborative hits like "Get Lucky," "Blurred Lines" and "Holy Grail," spoke about the impact his family has on him during an appearance on the "Today" show over the summer.
"[Rocket is] best song that I've ever co-written," the fashion designer told host Savannah Guthrie in August. "It's awesome ... I can't tell anyone what to do. I can't give anyone relationship advice. But the bestie thing is awesome. Every night is like a sleepover."


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Cape Cod-Style Retreat
To kick off the month, it's time for another round of Where In the World Is This? If you'd like to skip ahead, you can check out the listing here. Otherwise, take a look at the following shots, and see if you can guess where this house is located.
This grey clapboard saltbox has a charming porch across the front and a chimney at each end. Though it's in a traditional style, it was built in 2006 and is a very roomy 7,000 square feet. (This includes the attic and cellar, but not the two-car garage or pool house.)
The relaxed, Cape Cod-farmhouse vibe is evident in the kitchen; beadboard cabinets painted sage green and an apron sink add country character. It's too bad the fireplace (right) is almost blocked by the lamp in this photo, because even when it's not in use, it lends real warmth to the space.
A sun-soaked, conservatory-style breakfast nook looks out over the lush green lawn and in-ground pool. This is the only room in the house that's a little more formal, thanks to the chandelier and plinths, but it's nice to see that the space could be dressed up a little.
In the living room, the grey horizontal panelling from the exterior continues behind built-in bookcases but is lightened by a creamy beadboard ceiling and wide wooden floors. I'll be perfectly honest: given the room's slightly rumpled, unpretentious feel, I think the moose head is a perfect touch.
I could probably enthuse for a whole blog post about that pink roadster and miniature silver armchair, but let's skip the toys and go right to the enclosed bed. Not only is it perfectly in tune with the cottage notes in the rest of the house, it creates the perfect child-sized reading and sleeping spot, and can easily be closed off to hide an unmade bed.
Now for the reveal: this house is actually in Schoten, Belgium! Even though it's just outside of Antwerp and about 45 minutes from Brussels, the house comes on sizeable acreage, and much of the town itself is still forested and rural. For this kind of country living, $2.4 million doesn't seem too bad.
For more on Belgian style, check out our Flemish-inspired decorating finds.
Photo credits:
1-5. Emile Garcin Properties


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I "visualize" four dimensions and more often, when programming and setting up multi-dimensional arrays of more than three dimensions.
All one has to do is acknowledge that adding a dimension simply adds a range of points that map to every single point in the (n-1) dimensional range. So, the easiest way to visualize a four dimensional cube is to simply imagine multiple identical cubes, side by side, for as many as the range has been specified. Five dimensions is a flat square arrangement, six is a cube arranged array of cubes, and so on. This way, an infinite number of dimensions can be visualized. Perhaps the term "mental addressing" is more appropriate a name for this mental method.
The limit is, of course, this only works directly for finite and discrete arrays. I find it can be extrapolated to use non-discrete spectra, but describing the way that works in my head will not be possible using this clumsy tool we call "language".
After thinking about this some more, I find that the animations in the article are not at all four dimensional, as the so called "fourth" dimension they are representing exists in the same physical space as the third.
This breaks the dimensional relationship. Imagine, if you will, a single point with no dimensions. Then extrapolate that into a line to get one dimension, imagine that line them extrapolating perpendicular to the line to form a square, and then imagine that square extruding into a cube. So far, no physical overlap has occurred. The fourth dimention as represented in these videos, does nothing but add more "balls and sticks", which is not adding another dimension, it's simply adding detail to the existing dimension.
Likewise, those 2D imaginings of a 3D object are not visualizations of a 3D object in 2d, they are the visualization of a changing 2D object, with the simulated third dimension being time.
In other words, the method that they have used does not actually visualize a fourth dimension in any mathematical or logical sense, they are really just optical illusions. Personally, my method of visualization that I described in my previous post is far superior, and more accurate from a logical and mathematical point of view, as it truly does represent a 1:M maping of every dimensional unit in the (n-1) dimensional space.
P.S., I've always wanted to start a sentence with "Imagine, if you will...".
I find that the animations in the article are not at all four dimensional
Duh. That's because our screens are two dimensional, and you and I are three dimensional. Certainly you can't fault them for this? (Please tell me that I'm somehow misunderstanding this objection..)
In other words, the method that they have used does not actually visualize a fourth dimension in any mathematical or logical sense
That's nonsense. Their videos show the edges of the object (although distorted) as well as the interconnections of each of the vertices. What would qualify to you as a "real" mathematical or logical way of viewing these objects in a 3-D world?
As for your previous post:
So, the easiest way to visualize a four dimensional cube is to simply imagine multiple identical cubes, side by side, for as many as the range has been specified. Five dimensions is a flat square arrangement, six is a cube arranged array of cubes, and so on. This way, an infinite number of dimensions can be visualized. Perhaps the term "mental addressing" is more appropriate a name for this mental method.
Okay, when you get down to it, this is stuff that any programmer knows when working with arrays. (ie- int[][][][][], etc.) Now your task is to *draw* your example for us in 3-D space.
I find that the animations in the article are not at all four dimensional
Duh. That's because our screens are two dimensional, and you and I are three dimensional. Certainly you can't fault them for this? (Please tell me that I'm somehow misunderstanding this objection..)
In other words, the method that they have used does not actually visualize a fourth dimension in any mathematical or logical sense
Wow. That makes a lot of sense. You sorta remind me of this other guy [ubertragen.com]...
Yeah I've had arrays with double digit dimensions.
I think my record is 16 or so.
I dont know why but I work with them incredibly easily.
Without them its like programming with a hand tied behind your back.
Cant visualize them at all, I can work with them though.
Cool story bro
I am interested in what problem space you are working with.
In some very extreme cases, I can see it being a requirement to work the way you are, but in most real-world code, what you suggest would be far simpler to maintain (for you AND others) if you would just take a few extra minutes to think about what your data structures need to be.
Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD. If it is a one-off script to solve a complex problem, then you have my respect. If anyone else EVER has to grok your code, for any reason, then you are just incompetent
BTW, this is probably an incredibly stupid question, but I just want to clarify. "The fourth dimension" is such an incredibly loaded term. In the context of this article, it is referring to time, correct?
Assuming I am correct, I have always had a very simple theory I use to wrap my mind around it. Bear in mind I am a high-level programmer, not a quantum physicist. I think that we (humans) exist within the first three dimensions while we travel along the fourth. Hence we are aware of, and can, to some extent, measure the fourth, but it is very difficult to perceive it in any concrete manner.
Personally, I visualize the fourth dimension in a figure as a kind of color, and the fifth as a variation (say, blinking) of that color; but I rarely need to go that high. This is weird stuff.
"The third dimension is a theoretical realm of space and time in which the particles of dark matter of this parallel alternate reality bends light to collide with the electrical charges of the subconscious mind to create the illusion of movement where what is dark becomes light, what is light becomes dark. Some look at the third dimension and see nothingness. Others believe they see the very face of God."
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6T0UQfKTcQw [youtube.com]
Take LSD and sure you'll see 4th dimension.
One of the most common sensations (along with the sense of absolute terror at being ripped into a void in space/time) is the feeling of moving through between more than 3 dimensions of space. In my travels I usually feel like I'm spinning and being folded in about 7 different dimensions before my visions start to settle.
To anyone who decides to take me seriously, make sure you have a sober sitter
I prefer melange.
Take LSD and sure you'll see 4th dimension.
I once heard the 5th dimension... it was back in the 70s, I think.
*lick* *lick*......I see dimensions one through three.......and five.....but no fourth dimension
What really opened up my mind to really thinking about different dimensions and infinity was nitrous oxide, preferably mixed with other substances like marijuana or opiates. The fourth dimension? Many nitrous users report experiencing an infinite number of dimensions, which you then feel as being equivalent to zero dimensional space, or a space that defines itself over and over. It's almost impossible to explain with words, but if you can get to that point, it's quite beautiful and freaky. After my extensiv
Why is the story tagged scientology?
Obviously, Lord Xenu has a Slashdot account.
Damn straight.
I see a flash scientology , rather very big ad at bottom of article and in "videos", there are Google Adsense ads mentioning scientology youtube channel.
It could be related to people who sees those ads (must be scientific terms used triggering them) and think the site is Scientology supported. It could be possible but it could be the adsense only too.
BTW Google Adsense advertising Scientology Youtube channel is not really a good, pretty sight. What next? Doubleclick ads too?
then set N = 4....
Sorry it's on my screen, so it's a 2 dimensional representation of a 4 dimensional idea in 3 dimensional space.
Close one eye.
Your retinas are, even together, a 2 dimensional array. You never "saw" anything but what your brain constructed from 2 dimensional arrays. Turns out your brain is very, very good at visualizing a 3d object based on this input. Would you say you can't visualize an actor's physical body because the screen is 2 dimensional?
The techniques begin by imagining how two-dimensional creatures, [...] could get a feeling for three-dimensional objects.
I guess that's already way past my abilities.
http://shambala.net/3d/tess3d1.gif [shambala.net]
And speaking of the full videos...
http://bittornado.com/torrents/Dimensions-English.torrent [bittornado.com]
BitTorrent download for all the movies.
oO [is.gd]
Just go to any Burning Man concert and eat the multi colored Brownies.
Does anyone remember in how a good way Carl Sagan explained the problem if there are more or less than 3 dimensions exist?
I remember he was explaining the imaginary 2d creatures not being able to see 3d creatures and so on. It was on a TV documentary. Sorry if I remember it all wrong. I was like 13
It must be an episode of "Cosmos" http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0755981/filmoseries#tt0081846 [imdb.com]
Here you go. It was Cosmo's take on "flatland":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIadtFJYWhw [youtube.com]
Indeed it was...
You can watch them (except part 5) on Guba [guba.com] (change query to find the rest)
I think it was part 8 specifically. I got the DVD but its been awhile since I wandered through it... But its fairly brief, everything on the difference between 2, 3 and 4 Dimensions is basically described as it was here, and just as brief.
However, its still a good way to spend 13 hours because of everything else he covered in that series.
A 4D object is mathematically projected to a 3D representation, that is then projected into a 2D representation for display on the monitor, that is then transformed by my brain back into a 3D representation, and then further needs to be transformed into a 4D object...
In a way, it's also projected into a 1-dimensional stream of bits.
...that is then projected into a 2D representation for display on the monitor, that is then transformed by my brain back into a 3D representation, and then further needs to be transformed into a 4D object...
Except that it's a 2D representation that is interpreted by your brain as a 3D representation, which is then put into motion in movie form, making it essentially a 4 dimensional representation already, which you're then being asked to imagine extending into yet another (5th) dimension.
Since this is
I'm a science nerd, you insensitive clod!
Awesome. However, mathematicians and physicist usually don't try to "see" or "get a feeling" of higher (or infinite) dimensional objects.
They familiarize themselves with mathematic properties of two and three-dimensional objects and space and what they mean, and then just use these properties in higher dimensional spaces.
Trying to see these spaces or getting a feeling on how these objects would look like most likely confuses for calculations (our brain wasn't really made for this).
Nice and interesting video
That completely depends on the mathematicians, and the kind of mathematics they do. For proofs that rely only on calculations, you do not need even to understand the low dimension case, just do the computations right.
But proofs with computations are rarely elegant. Some mathematicians prefer a more geometric approach, and for that, they need to see, un to a certain level, the objects in higher dimensions.
Furthermore, the 2D or 3D spaces we have direct access to are really limited. There are lots of phenomen
However, mathematicians and physicist usually don't try to "see" or "get a feeling" of higher (or infinite) dimensional objects. They familiarize themselves with mathematic properties of two and three-dimensional objects and space and what they mean, and then just use these properties in higher dimensional spaces.
Is that you Mr. Spock? I'm sure that Albert Einstein (not a mathematician for sure), Richard Feynman, and Stephen Hawking, would beg to differ.
Trying to see these spaces or getting a feeling on ho
That reminds me of a joke:
An engineer, physicist, and a mathematician are sitting at a bar, and the bartender asks, "Can any of you guys think about four dimensions?"
"Sorry, not me," the engineer replies.
The physicist chimes in, "I suppose I can, if the fourth dimension is time."
The mathematician starts laughing. "Oh, you guys, this is easy! Picture n-dimensional space. Now, let n be equal to four..."
A physicist, and engineer, and a mathematician are sleeping in a hotel when fires break out in all their rooms. The physicist get up, does some quick calculations, and then gets the exact amount of water required to put the fire out, not a drop wasted. The engineer also does some calculations to work out the amount needed, then proceeds to flood most of the floor, to ensure that there is a sufficient tolerance for error. The mathematician wakes up, and does some extremely complex calculations but does them much quicker than the other two. He then exclaims "I have proven I can put the fire out!" and goes back to bed.
[...] runs to the sink, empties it, and returns it to the dresser. The problem has now been reduced to one that has been previously solved.
This is the software engineer way too.
Here is a one dimensional projection of a 5 billion dimensional sphere: _
Here is a one dimensional projection of a 5 billion dimensional sphere:
Fixed that for you.
To begin, consider that a 2d picture can either be a picture (things can fall), or a map (things don't fall). Since the corresponding 3d thing is a picture/map of four dimensions, we can build objects like houses, furniture, etc from plan and views.
Not all seems to be aimple. A knife cuts: literally, it makes a surface by motion, and is therefore tipped by a space of N-2 dimensions. Rivers can be either "latrous" (1d) or "hedrous" (2d). A fault lake is 2d (since faults are a break of surface).
Holes come in two types, although these are topologically the same. One can have a "bridge" or "tunnel" kind of hole: in 3d, these are the same, in 4d they are different.
The planet rotates on clifford motion. This makes every point of the 4-sphere go around the centre. One sees this by equality of energy in modes of rotation.
None the same, there can be seasons. If the sun does not follow in the year-circle any of the circles of the earth rotating, then there will be seasons. You don't just have hemispheres in summer vs winter, but season-zones to match the time-zones. That is, for example, Christmas (normally in summer), can fall in early spring, or late winter.
The poles are replaced by circles of extreme climate. One has a "equator circle", and a "polar" circle. At the tropics (a singular torus-shape thing), the sun becomes to the zenith once a year. At the artic torus, the sun hugs the horizon for the equate of the shortest day.
Because the sun is relatively still in the sky, there is no variation in the number of hours. What makes the seasons is that the the sun is lower in the horizon, even at midday.
See, eg my site http://www.geocities.com/os2fan2/gloss/index.html [geocities.com]
You read just like the timecube guy did, before he took that last hit of bad acid.
Worse than that, 4+1 dimentions just dont make sense. 5+1 is where it's at.
And if the math is correct, there's no stable orbits in 4+1 OR 5+1. 4+1 would have some sort of wonky 1/x^3 field strength in respect to gravity and em, and 5+1 would have 1/x^4. If we were able to go to dimensions with that body of physics, we would either fall or float away.
For the same reasons you can't visualize a 3D object on a 1D space you can't visualize a 4D object on a 2D space.
You cannot go up 2 dimensions.
Just as we can visualize a 3D object on a 2D space we can visualize a 4D object on a 3D space.
Thus we need something like this:
*Click the Stereo button 2 times to switch it to cross-eyed view for no glasses. Simply cross your eyes to bring both shapes together in the center and it should become clear.
The 2nd explanation for projection of 3D objects onto a plane so as to allow the 2d lizards to perceive the objects is simply ridiculous as it requires them to have an external view point defeating the purpose altogether. The 1st example was ok, but its nearly 100 years old, something new/unique/novel would have been more interesting to watch, also the presentation drags on for too long, it should be sped up.
Of course, we can't really see in 3 dimensions, otherwise, we'd be able to see through stuff. The image projected onto our eyes is a 2D image, and we have 2 eyes, so it's (x*y)+(x*y), not (x*y*z). The third dimension is a cheat and is represented as 'stuff getting smaller'.
If we really could see in 3D, we can use the 'getting smaller' trick to visualize 4 dimensions much more easily.
Anyone know of some images or videos on the net using reverse perspective, where things behind get bigger instead of smaller?
We may see in 2D, but we can perceive in 3D, due to a combination of depth perception and our brain's habit of assuming the world is made of straight lines.
The same works for audio... A stereo recording only has one dimension spatially (a line going through the speakers). But it's quite easy to make something sound nearby (full frequency range, mostly direct sound) or far away (muted high frequencies, mostly indirect sound / reverb). Thus, you really get an extra dimension for free, same as for our eye
But I can guess how it works. A sphere passing through a plane would look at first like a dot, then a gradually wider line, then a dot. I remember flatland saying something about brightness at ends of the line.
So, a hyperball passing through a 3-space would look like a dot, gradually expanding to a sphere, and gradually shrinking to a dot.
These 2D videos show 2D diagrams of what a 4D projection into 3D would look like if it were flat. Entirely unsatisfying.
Want a 4D-in-3D demo? Take a small balloon, blow it up then let it go flat. That's what a 4D sphere projecting into 3D would look like.
You can imagine in 4D fairly easily if you decide to ignore your senses and decide that the smaller faces on the internal cube in a tesseract are indeed the same size (an in fact coincide with) the larger, outer faces, and so the outer pseudo-cubes are in fact cubes with all 90 degree corners. You see perpective with fake apparent angles, you can use the same trick your mind uses to see more.
By the way, we do not see in 3 dimensions. We see in 2.5. We can't see the backs of things. We can feel in 3 dimensions if we can get our hands all the way around it.
We do NOT see in 2 dimensions (as a previous comment stated) unless we have no depth perception. Stereoscopic vision gives us much more than flat projection, and stereointegration in the visual cortex gives us even more. In fact, a one-eyed being with stereointegration need only moves its head around and collect visual images from different angles in order to create a successfully adequate 3D concept.
And ask the previous commenter asked, yes we do have examples of reverse perspective where things behind get bigger. Gravitational lensing of galaxies passing behind smaller, intense gravity fields (theoretically black holes or neutron stars). Can't point to any I've seen on the web offhand, but I've seen them there as well as on some astronomy shows on TV.
Speaking as the previous commenter, the extra information (such as stereo depth perception or blurring of non-focused areas), helps to get a good idea of the real 3D object.
However, the jump from 2D to actual 3D where you're experiencing all widths, depths and heights at once is far greater in terms of raw information than the jump from 2D to our 'pseudo'-3D vision. Needless to say, the qualitative experience of actual 3D vision would also be vastly different (as would being able to see in 1D), and probably
To download any of the videos directly, go here:
http://www.sciencenews.org/pictures/mathtrek/082208/ [sciencenews.org]
Except the entire server is slasdhotted.
"Think it's impossible to see four-dimensional objects? These videos will show you otherwise."
No they won't. Submitter needs to learn math.
This has nothing to do with string theory, so let's all do a !stringtheory up on the tagline. There is nothing about cosmology in this; it's about methods used for years by mathematicians to visualize 4D abstract objects as they move through 3D space.
It's not even new.
Please help, Slashdot seems to be totaly fucked since yesterday. New comments format is not working, I can't change the comments level, dropdown box is gone, just a number is there.
Also, I can't go to my preferences, it all comes up as a big empy box, so no way to change, or even see, anything. I hope somebody is aware of this.
This is on IE7. Also, there will be no way for me to see any replies to this. geez.
Oh, those things that look like sliders actually are really stupid sliders (you have to move them one fifth of the screen for them to actually move).
Still, "preferences" comes as an empty box, just the words "Discussion 2" on the top, and hint of some text on the bottom, you can only see the top of the letters. ftw?
If you click through the sciencenews.org article, you can get to the actual website of the people who made these videos. From there you'll find that these videos are Creative Commons licensed, and available for download [dimensions-math.org] as high res MOVs. I tried the torrents, but they all stalled, so I just used wget to grab them from the US mirror [povray.org].
...not Edwin Abbot.
Edwin Abbot Abbot wrote Flatland, not Edwin Abbot, who was Edwin Abbot Abbot's father.
objects all the time. Functional analysis, anyone?
"Hey Ivan, check your six." -- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail of a Russian Su-27


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The Hood River County Board of Commissioners is allowing motorsport events to continue being held on county roads but at a significantly higher cost.
Commissioners voted unanimously during their Monday meeting last week to approve a recommendation from the county's forestry and public works departments to increase road restoration fees charged to event organizers from $400 per mile to $1,700 per mile.
The fee increase was proposed to offset damage done to unpaved county roads where road rallies have been held the past 10 years.
County departments originally recommended charging $2-$6 per lineal foot of track in restoration fees — significantly higher than the previous rate of 7.5 cents.
Rally proponents, however, spoke out against what they considered to be exorbitant fees and commissioners decided to table the issue while the forestry and engineering departments re-examined their fee proposals.
A rally scheduled for October was cancelled and with another event looming in May, Hood River County Public Works Director Mikel Diwan wanted to offer a rate that he said was "more of a compromise."
"We're not trying to run the road rally out of business," he told commissioners last week. "We're just trying to protect the roads and I think it should be reflective of the damage that is caused."
The new fee was based off the cost of laying an eighth of an inch of rock on a 16-foot-wide section of road, but Diwan still thought it should be more.
"I don't think it really reflects the damage that is caused by this event," he said.
After commissioners voted to approve the recommended fees, County Administrator Dave Meriwether asked Jeff Lemley, a race organizer who attended the meeting, whether the new rate would work for the rally groups.
"We'll have to see," Lemley said. "It'll be a pretty healthy entry fee."
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Through the Eyes of Juliet
For those reading Romeo and Juliet, this takes place during chapter nine when Quil and Terra are at the Newton's. This is what happened between Edward and Terra when they left to have a chat and when Terra went over to the Cullen's.
1. Admitting my Mistakes
Rating 0/5 Word Count 1844 Review this Chapter
"I don't think that's any of your business.""It's my business if you start something with the werewolves and they threaten my family for it."
"Yes but they haven't now have they?" I was definitely getting mad, he had no right to ruin my friendship however wrong it was for me to have it in the first place."They might not have yet but with how you see things your sure to get to close to that dog and ruin everything."
"He is not a dog!" my fists were clenched and I held them tightly to my sides."Yet!" he retorted back at me."He might not become a werewolf you know."
"You know he will, you saw it yourself.""I wouldn't be talking, you seem to be close to that Bella girl.""Don't you dare bring Bella into this."
"I was just telling the truth. If your going to hassle me about Quil then I have no problem stating that you too are getting mixed up with the wrong crowd." Edward pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to make an effort to retain some calm. "Well as long as you're here, no matter what you choose to do with your time, I feel you should at least meet my family."
"Fine, but if you say one word about Quil I'm turning around."
"Fair enough. But before we go I'd like to say good bye to Bella."
"And I would like to say the same to Quil." He just strode in front of me back into the tiny store as confirmation that I should follow. I didn't' want my time with Quil to be shortened like this but it looked as I had no other choice, so I walked back in after Edward.
Quil was looking at a pair of boots when I walked over to him. "Umm, Quil I have to go over to the Cullen's for a little while. I guess they think I'm ditching them by spending all this time with you. You understand right?" I said trying not to hurt his feelings with my unexpected ditching."Yeah I understand. It's not fair for me to hog you all the time like this." My laugh was hard and unnatural sounding even to my own ears. Stretching up on my toes I gave Quil a light peck on the cheek and walked back out the door with Edward soon on my tail. I walked over to my car and got in the drivers seat and as once Edward got in a raced off at 120mph."Where to?" I asked not knowing where exactly I was going. He told me the directions and with a minute we were there thanks to my reckless driving. The house was three stories high, white and brilliantly restored. Inside I could hear that there were two vampires in the front room there voices giving them away as a man and woman. Stepping into the house I saw I was right, for there in the large living room were Carlisle and Esme Cullen; once again their destinies were clear as to what they already were. "Carlisle, Esme, this is Terra, she is staying in the area for awhile." Two pairs of topaz eyes turned to me at the sound of Edwards confident voice."Hello, I'm Carlisle, this is my wife Esme."
"Nice to meet you dear." Their voices were warm and inviting, but it looked like Carlisle was telling something to Edward through his thoughts as he looked away from me."It's a pleasure to meet you as well." Keep thing casual, no need to bring up Quil. Wait now Edward will bring it up because he knows I'm telling myself not to. Stupid mind-reading vampire."Well if you insist on telling them," he gleamed at me, satisfied to be talking about exactly what it was I was doing during my stay. "You see while Terra has been here she has been staying in the La Push region and has been spending time with one of their soon to be werewolves." He said matter-of-factly making me want to claw out his eyes for deliberately doing that."Is this true Terra." Carlisle looked to me wanting my side of the story."Yes, but Quil is not a werewolf."
"But you know he will be, you saw it yourself." Carlisle then lifted a hand to silence Edward, which I was thankful for, until he began to speak."You knew he was to become a werewolf? How is that you know?" I really didn't want to answer, to tell them of my gift. It wasn't anything special but it would confirm that I knew what I was dealing with, and that I was nonetheless going against our ways. "Well, it's kind of my gift.""Do tell." It was Esme now that prompted me forward."In my human life I was the person who knew everyone. From my friends and family I was always being told of other people, where they worked what school they went to, how they knew the person who told me of them. I could walk up to someone and just from a descript ion I had heard of them I would remember everything I knew of their life. So now when I look at someone I can instantly see their name in my mind and I can see what they're destined to be." They were now able to fill in the blanks, that once I saw Quil I knew he was going to change into a werewolf,."That's a very interesting power." Was all Esme said after my lame explanation."But how does that tie into what Edward was saying." Carlisle chimed in with a business like tone."Well Terra here has been spending a great deal of time with Quil, even after she knew that he was one of them.""You seem to spend a whole lot more time with Bella who just happens to be a human and I don't see you being stopped. How is my situation any different?"
"Because Bella is not my sworn enemy!" ours expressions mirrored each other, clenched fists, and hard looks on our faces."Edward she does have a point. Even if Bella is not our enemy she is still not supposed to know our existence." Carlisle's words sent Edward flaring and he stormed out of the house, whisper something under his breath. "I'm sorry about the situation you are in but Bella or no Bella you still should know better than to hang around a potential werewolf.""I know." My lavender eyes darted to the floor. "I didn't mean for this to happen it just sort of did.""How so?" I began telling them the whole story, starting with the family I met in Alaska, how they told me about the Cullen's. Then I went on to when I met Quil, that it was unexpected and that I did run away in an attempt to avoid contact. My tale went through the last few days and how it was my life seem to become intertwined with Quil's and how I had become friends with him. "Well I can't say I approve but I guess so far you've done no harm. Although I wouldn't recommend making this a long trip and that you should end this relationship before something does happen." His words cut, I didn't want to stop spending time with Quil, he was my only friend I have had in over 60 years. "Also I would refrain from hunting in this immediate area, it might draw suspicion."
"Of course, and I am interested in how you survive without drinking from humans." They had a look that told me they had been asked this before."You see we hunt animals instead.""That might explain your eye color. And I am fascinated truly, I too do not enjoy the idea of killing humans, I just never decided to take initiative." "Well you can always try our way of life. It doesn't completely detain the thirst but it allows us to be civil in the company of humans.""I'll definitely consider it, but if you don't mind I have to go meet someone."
"No not at all, please don't let us stop you." Esme said after not speaking for sometime, and with that I stood up from the couch I had over the conversation ended up on and walked to the door. I was going to see Quil now, whether they approved or not.
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- DormantHeart
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Mike Martinez has written a guide that tells dealers how to connect with today's customers.
Martinez with new book.
At first, Mike Martinez doubted the potential success of dealerships having their own mobile apps. Now, he's written a book about how great those apps are.
"When we started this journey, I have to admit I wondered why someone would want a dealer app on a smartphone," says the chief marketing officer of DMEautomotive.
The project went ahead anyway, and the results have made Martinez a believer. About 200 dealerships now offer DME's Driver Connect app. Customers who download it spend an average of 21 minutes per visit.
"That is five times higher than the average for a dealership website," says the lead author of "The Pocket Revolution – The Complete Guide to a Killer Mobile App."
DMEautomotive sells the app to dealers who brand it as their own when offering it to customers.
A section of Martinez's book tells how to get dealers to encourage employees to persuade customers to put the app on their smartphones and computer tablets. "That can be the hard work," he says. "It requires management and personnel commitment, enforcement and buy-in."
"Let-me-show-you-our-cool-app" word tracks for salespeople and service advisers help. So do stickers and windshield hanger tags with QR codes for easy aim-and-click downloads.
People in the market for a car often are reluctant to download dealership apps because they feel it limits their shopping choices. They are more likely to go to a dealership website. A study indicates shoppers visit as many as eight dealer websites during the buying process.
But the DMEautomotive app is intended mainly for use by established customers, not shoppers, Martinez says.
"The goal is to make their car ownership experience better," he says. For the dealer, "it is a chance to stay connected with customers, create loyalty, deliver hyper-targeted offers and sell additional products and services."
A dealership has 10 to 12 selling opportunities during the course of a 3-year car ownership, Martinez says. "Think of the ability to communicate constantly through the most intimate device consumers have, one that is always with them. Think of the impact on the service department."
A customer can use the app to schedule a repair or maintenance appointment. After that, the customer can track when a technician starts working on the vehicle and when it is ready for pickup.
App features include a service history record, parking-lot finder and flashlight function.
"The fourth most-popular feature is the new-and-used vehicle inventory listing," Martinez says. "People often like to spend time browsing through dealer inventory, even though they might not be in the market at that particular time."
He is a realist. "You are not going to get every customer to download this app, but if you get 40% from your customer base, that is about 5,000 people for the average dealership."
About 50% of the adult population has smartphones. A majority of those are under age 35, he says, adding that using mobile strategies to capture Generation Y business is vital for dealerships.
One message of the book, as evidenced by its title, is that "mobile apps are going to revolutionize retail," Martinez says. "They already are having an effect." Another message to dealers is to join the revolution. "I remember how we went through the web revolution of about 10 or 11 years ago," he says. "There was a lot of chaos and time spent trying to figure out how everything should work. With this book, we are trying to short-circuit that confusion."
To download the book for free, go to http://www.dmeautomotive.com/the-pocket-revolution. Print and electronic versions are available at amazon.com.


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So...we were just told that with every new application comes a new series of security flaws? That's what keeps the industry running!
Yup, and that's what keeps
Aw crap guys, you got the Security Emo all depressed. Now's he gonna try to cut his wrists with a rusty Zip Disk.
Bad Internet! Bad!
I once coded for a free MMO and discovered a vulnerability in how they handled web autolinking -- you know, when you say something and it turns the text into a clickable link that will open in your web browser. At least for the unix client, they were handling it with popen (I forget how they did it for windows). Just the straight, raw, unmodified string. Talk about a huge freaking command injection target.
They *wouldn't* let me patch lesser security issues, such as those that would actually verify that data being sent back and forth was from who it said it was, to avoid a man-in-the-middle attack. They were purely reliant on the TCP stream; that was their only "security". And they did nothing to maintain a secure channel to prevent sniffing.
Be careful with what you run on your system.
Much more innocently, the first thing I ever did along these lines was back in the mid/late '90s and had to do with the MUD client zMud. It had an obscure feature that would let muds embed sound effects; if the mud output a particular string, it'd interpret part of it as a path to a sound file. So I had fun SHOUTing those commands with the path to windows system sounds included and making everyone's computer who used zMud start making noise
I love technology. You made people's computers burst into noise thousands of miles away, and were repremanded by a sorceror. What a great time to be alive.
I once coded for a free MMO
This wouldn't happen to be the MMO wherein there is a lot of Entropy, if you know what I mean?
P.S. -- Some of the best special effects I coded were never used.
He doesn't really explain, but he says that he used the shell access that the QuickTime exploit gave him to inject code into the main event loop of the Second Life client. I too would be really interested in knowing how he managed to patch the binary on the fly.
Now, what would be useful and unique - stealing the user's stuff by infecting the client or MITMing the connection at the client machine (between the client software and the network card.)
Was doable once upon a time, if you had the ability to fake source IP addresses on packets and a bit of patience (or alternatively knew a clever trick to make the server treat you as a trusted part of the Second Life grid). Both issues have now been fixed, but there may be others. Didn't even need to compromise the client.
SecondLife didn't balk when they embedded a malformed QuickTime media file on their pink cube?
Even 4chan scans
Yeah. I almost self-replied to that effect, but I figured somebody else would. Thanks...
A wretched hive of scum and villainy!
Keep in mind that Obi-Wan said "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum an villany." That implies that there is more than one such hive.
The GP called Second Life the Mos Eisley of Gaming. You will never find a game world that is a more wretched hive yada yada. That doesn't preclude 4chan being the Mos Eisley of the Whole Damned Internet.
Yes, but to put the credit where the credit belongs, I directly implied it before he explicitly stated it.
Why would you verify an entire file structure instead of just checking that the header looks right?
Transcoding perhaps? Every video site I've ever uploaded to transcoded the video...
Even 4chan scans
Well fine, but that is a specific check for a known attack. How to you scan for all the unknown attacks?
It is just a URL that you enter into a field in the in-world parcel data. The simulator hands it to the viewer (client/browser) and tells it to play that and put it onto a texture that is drawn on a 3D surface. The viewer hands the URL to Quickslime, which then plays it. SL's backend never sees the video file/data, as it is directly downloaded from the target host specified in the URL.
I supposed you could argue why don't they run some kind of scanner on the URL before allowing it to be posted. Of course, that is pointless for any number of reasons, including:
1) There is no scanner to check all possible video formats that Quickslime plays, nor one which is foolproof in terms of detecting vulnerabilities.
2) Since the file/data is not hosted by Linden Lab, a single scan would be useless, as an attacker could put up a valid file, run the scan, then replace the file with a malicious one anytime afterwards.
As long as the data is being transferred from one client to another without any intermediation on the part of Linden Labs, vulnerabilities like this will continue to exist. The solution is to have all data exchange pass through Linden Labs' servers. Of course, whether this is feasible in terms of bandwidth is an entirely different matter.
It isn't feasible, and it isn't the direction or intention of Linden Lab to host such content going forward.
For many years now, they have been approaching their viewer design as a "browser", potentially adding the ability to pull assets (textures, sounds, animations, etc) via http from any source. That's sort of what their newest feature "html-on-a-prim" or "media-on-a-prim" is all about; the beginning of a move towards that. It is a good idea, as it allows for the same decentralization of asset services wh
You're thinking too small and short term...
The skys the limit once you gain a foothold on the users machine.
You can do ALOT if you don't do anything too noticable or damaging or too much at once.
And many people play games from their work machines. Or from the inside of their 'secure network'.
Seriously, the media seems to have a massive hard on for Second Life because they think it is the way the Internet ought to go. In reality Second Life is a pretty sub standard MMO with very few players. Why the hell do the fluff stories about it make Slashdot front page news?
Goes double since it sounds like this problem is fairly unique to SL. If you start seeing this in WoW and Aeon and EVE and so on then that's a story. However this is just a case of a poor excuse for an MMO having poor security. This would be the same as posting "Hey, Cadence SBP 16.3 have a security vulnerability and you need to upgrade to 16.3.014!" Nobody gives a shit, at least not enough people for it to be worth front page Slashdot. I understand if there's a security issue in a major OS, or an app that is widely used but in SL? Who cares? Not enough people to make it
Not only that the exploit is 2 years old.. There is no mention of anything thats recent in the article.. Quite the pointless article.
SL also inspired a whole episode of CSI:New York
Seriously, the media seems to have a massive hard on for Second Life...
So does the entire populous of Second Life as well, from what I am told.
Seriously, the media seems to have a massive hard on for Second Life because they think it is the way the Internet ought to go. In reality Second Life is a pretty sub standard MMO with very few players. Why the hell do the fluff stories about it make Slashdot front page news?
Uh... Second Life is mostly dead these days. Everyone's moved to Facebook. Even companies which were racing to setup SL storefronts are abandoning them in droves after it turns out ROI isn't there and it's just costing money. When the r
Who would care about the games you mentioned? (Although you can play games in SL, the majority of the worldwide users are not "players".) I generate hundreds of dollars annually from my activities in SL, I know others who earn their entire salaries there.
I've never even seen the games you listed, and if there were similar problems with them, I bet a fraction of the people would be affected compared to Second Life.
That being said, I don't presume that similar information shouldn't be shared--in an informat
The safest airplane is the one that never leaves the ground.
Obviously you've never seen Die Hard 2.
The first exploit that prevents is the installing of Quicktime.
I thought we already knew that.
Here's what happened in one of Linden Lab's internal IRC channel today...
[16:42] [Linden001] hey, we made slashdot: http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/08/18/2154207/Owning-Virtual-Worlds-For-Fun-and-Profit [slashdot.org]
[16:45] [Linden002] fascinating.
[17:11] [Linden003] besides, we enforced the patched version of QuickTime to close this exploit.
[17:12] [Linden003] there is no mention of that in the article either.
[17:14] [Linden003] he's writing about ancient history here (2007) -- it must be slow in the internet security guru business.
of course thanks to the new SL 2.0 feature of Media On A Prim there can be a huge new set of exploits
(unless they lock down the builtin browser (webkit based))
Of course, the QuickTime exploit was one of the few Second Life exploits that was actually made public. For example, I had a T-Shirt that would open a remotely-accessible command shell on the wearer's PC in older Second Life client versions (that are no longer in use anywhere). Quietly patched in a new release that was made mandatory a few days later.
[17:14] [Linden003] he's writing about ancient history here (2007) -- it must be slow in the internet security guru business.
Windows users can easily be crashed using this still, but I don't know if it can be used to execute code etc.
You know had the Author of TFA used an unpatched exploit as an example there would have been all sorts of clamor about not giving Linden Labs time to patch it. The article itself was on the subject of this attack vector, not this specific vulnerability. Let's not turn Slashdot into a bashing competition, shall we?
> if there were a decent, free (as in beer) disassembler out there.
Define decent?
Hiew or something here doesn't fit the bill ?
http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/disassemblers.shtml [thefreecountry.com]
(Granted, hiew isn't open-source, and technically a hex editor, but it is good.)
Why not clone IDA Pro and OllyDbg ?
A clone of IDA Pro (as in interactive disassembly) with a somewhat intuitive interface would be a good start, although I'm not really sure one would ever say any interactive-disassembler could be intuitive
[Victim] Oh! Shiny!
*Victim is now a drooling idiot*
First Snow Crash reference is waaaay down the page. This is bloody shameful, Slashdot! >:(
I think the exact same attack could work in SL, except you're pwning the client machine instead of the user's brain.
Well I guess you could try to crash the user's brain once you have control of their machine, by running a high-speed horror slideshow of shock images in fullscreen.
A small, insignificant niche game that practically nobody plays. For some reason, the press loves it though.
The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.


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Saturday, October 21, 2006
Know Your Foe - Iowa
History – The University of Iowa was founded as the State Univeristy of Iowa in 1847. The official university Web site claims that Iowa was the first public university to admit men and women on an equal basis. In 1868 the university established the first law school west of the Mississippi. In 1870 the university opened the first co-ed medical school, allowing all of the lawyers from the first western law school to sue both male and female physicians. In 1932, the first educational television station was established on campus. So that must mean that Arthur and Clifford are big Hawkeye fans.
Location – Iowa City, Iowa. It's the sixth largest city in Iowa, and was the first state capitol until 1857. The Old Capitol building remains and is a centerpiece of the Iowa campus. It's tied with Stamford, Connecticut as the U.S. Metropolitan area with the highest percentage of adult's holding a bachelor degree (44%). Much like so many of the locales that are home to Big Ten schools, Iowa City is a stereotypical college town. There's a pedestrian mall that includes many of the town's restaurants and bars. There's a lively music scene. And it's been ranked as the eighth most enlightened town by Utne Reader, and the tenth smartest place to live by Kiplinger's. It's also the home to the ACT, so if you don't "test well" and your ACT score kept you out of the school you really wanted to go to, you have someone in Iowa City to blame. Because I'm sure that 18 had nothing to do with you getting drunk the night before the exam.
Nickname/Mascot – Hawkeyes, named for the state of Iowa which is known as the Hawkeye state. Hey, that's the same way that U of M is known as the Wovlerines. But how did the state, and thus the university's sports teams get the name Hawkeyes? Well that's subject to a bit of debate. There's no questioning that the efforts of two men, Judge David Rorer and James G. Edwards, were the driving force behind the adoption of the name. But the origin is still unclear. Wikipedia claims it's a tribute to Chief Black Hawk, following the Black Hawk War of 1832. But the Iowa Athletics site maintains that it originally came from the novel, The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper. In the book, Hawkeye was the name bestowed on a white scout who hunted and lived with the Delaware Indians.
The university has a costumed Hawkeye, known as Herky, who has been a symbol of the university since 1948. The university had had gone through a number of mascots, including Burch, a black bear cub who lived under the football bleachers until he was found drowned in the Iowa River in 1910. Herky was conceived by a journalism instructor and his name was selected based on a statewide contest. His first appearance at a football game came in 1959. But why Herky? It's not for herky-jerky, which could describe the Hawkeyes' offense this season, but rather is a shortened version of Hercules.
Colors/Logo/Fight Song – Black and Gold. But is it really gold? If I remember my Crayolas correctly, gold is what Purdue or Notre Dame wears. The "gold" on Iowa's helmet is more of a corn yellow, or dare I say, maize. The colors have always been the same for Iowa, but the football uniforms purposely mimic those of the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Hayden Fry came to coach the Hawkeyes in 1979, his main task was to eradicate the atmosphere of losing in the program – Iowa hadn't had a winning season since 1960. Since Iowa had the same colors as the most dominant NFL team of the day, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Fry copied the wide stripe on the pants, and the black helmet with single yellow stripe. Whether it was the uniforms, or more likely his coaching ability and getting better players at Iowa, Fry turned around the Iowa program quickly, and made it into one of the Big Ten's best.
The Iowa logo showed up at the same time as Fry, and the football team's success since then has ensured that the logo will be around for a while. It's actually a very clever design, consisting of four separate pieces to make up a hawk's head. It's not only the helmet logo, but is a symbol of all of the sports teams and the university itself. Just about any piece of Iowa memorabilia contains the logo.
The Iowa Fight Song is rather generic, especially when compared to many of its Big Ten counterparts. The song only has 61 words, yet the word "Fight!" appears nine times. Even "Iowa" only shows up four times. Even the word "Rafters" shows up once, but that's not surprising – this is a farming state.
Academics – Surprisingly, Iowa only rates as #64 on the U.S. News rankings of the nation's universities, tied with Big Ten cohort Purdue. That's even lower than tOSU. I never would have imagined. Maybe U.S. News is taking into account the past two beat downs that the Buckeyes have administered on the Hawkeyes. Or maybe Iowa's #8 ranking as the best party school by the Princeton Review.
The pride and joy of the University is probably the Writers' Workshop. The Workshop is a two-year residency program which ultimately requires a creative thesis, usually a novel or a collection of stories. It was the first creative writing degree program in the country and it's alumni have won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, and four graduates of the program have been named U.S. Poet Laureates. So I'm sure if Know Your Foe was in the hands of a Writers' Workshop grad it would be much more interesting.
Athletics – As mentioned above, Hayden Fry breathed life into the moribund football program starting in the early '80s. Though only appearing in three Rose bowls since then (and losing them all), the Hawkeyes are a consistently tough Big Ten opponent. Under legendary wrestling coach Dan Gable, the Hawkweyes won 20 national and 31 Big Ten titles. This includes nine straight national titles from '78 through '86. So even though the basketball team has had some success, and the trampoline was invented by university members George Nissen and Larry Griswold around 1935, when you're talking Iowa athletics, you're talking wrestling.
Famous alums – While not a super-impressive list, it sure kicks the alumni asses of Michigan's two most recent opponents, Sparty and Penn State. They pick up points for being able to claim Tom Brokaw, John Irving, Tennessee Williams, Eddie Robinson and Gene Wilder (who was married to Michigan alum Gilda Radner). But they have to lose some points for having Tom Arnold, Ashton Kutcher, and Lou Holtz as alumni. And though she didn't attend school in Iowa City, current U of M President Mary Sue Coleman held the same post and the University of Iowa prior to moving to Ann Arbor.
The Game – Before last week, many pointed to this game as Michigan's Waterloo. But then Iowa crapped the bed against Indiana - Indiana!!! – and people started to look at the Hawkeyes' body of work and realized this isn't a very good team. Michigan 27, Iowa 10.
16 comments:
The MZone has a lot of great articles every week, but "Know Your Foe" is one of the best. Well done, Benny.
- October 20, 2006 6:28 AM
You forgot to mention that, turned sideways, the Hawkeye logo looks strikingly similar to a certain cartoon character.
- October 20, 2006 8:02 AM
Actually, Lou Holtz graduated from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio
- October 20, 2006 8:18 AM
That's a distinguished list of literary alums, and there are many others that could have been mentioned (I would mention them myself, but I really don't want to do the research). Two of my best profs were products of the Writers Workshop.
The Hawkeyes nickname is derived from J.F. Cooper? I never knew that. Guess it's better than the "Iowa Natty Bumpos."
Wasn't Herbert Hoover an Iowa graduate? Or was he just from Iowa?
- October 20, 2006 9:10 AM
- IC said...
Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa. When he was six years old his father died of heart disease and his mother died of pneumonia three years later. Hoover eventually moved to Oregon and was raised by his uncle before attending Stanford.
Following his 1932 election loss to FDR, Hoover left the presidency after one (bad--very, very bad) term. He lived for more than thirty years and established his presidential library in West Branch on his 88th birthday. He died two years later.
- October 20, 2006 10:36 AM
To be fair, I don't think Ashton Kutcher graduated...I'm going to go kill myself now, for knowing this...
- October 20, 2006 10:37 AM
As an Iowa alum, I enjoyed this piece. However, please clear the good name of the University of Iowa - Ashton Kuchar is not an alum, he's only from Iowa.
- October 20, 2006 12:15 PM
Thanks for answering that. Hoover was a great public servant OUT of elective office. In office, not so much...
- October 20, 2006 3:06 PM
Not true about always being black and gold. It used to be "old gold" and black. I think "old gold" is what Purdon'ts could be described as.
- October 20, 2006 4:40 PM
And Holtz graduated from the grad school at Iowa, and had his first assistant coaching job there. Sadly.
- October 20, 2006 4:42 PM
Not to criticize the great post, but I don't think Brokaw graduated from U of I either. I believe he partied it up while he was there and then transferred to South Dakota State, or something like that.
- October 20, 2006 4:45 PM
If you really want to get under a UM fans skin, point out that they lost to Notre Dame, Ohio State, Texas, and Nebraska all in the same calendar year. Those are the other four of the five winningest programs in CFB. If you go back to the 2004 season, then the Wolverweenies have also lost to Ohio State (again) and Notre Dame (again), making them 0-6 versus the other four of the five winningest programs in the country in just the last two years.
- October 20, 2006 5:07 PM
what's the news on Arrington? is he suspended?
- October 20, 2006 5:55 PM
Okay. So, I think Iowa is entitled to that shade of maize, if Michigan (alma mater #2) is entitled to wear the Day-Glo yellow that it does instead of maize. BTW, gold is what UCLA wears. Cal (alma mater #1) claims to have gold as one of its colors, but we're all over the place there, too.
- October 20, 2006 6:24 PM
Hey flamer - you might want to check your facts again; I'm pretty sure UM beat ND this season.
- October 20, 2006 7:10 PM
- Aram said...
Iowa's fight song is also written by famous Iowan Meredith Willson, of Music Man fame.
- October 20, 2006 10:04 PM


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Sounds good: Let's get the patents that MPEG-LA claims might affect VP8 out in the open. Let's get an explicit listing of exactly where they think it infringes. And then we'll fix it.
This as opposed to Microsoft's approach to everything else, and Apple's approach so-far, of obliquely threatening that someone may someday find something that vaguely infringes some potential patent by some unknown party.
Let's get the patents that MPEG-LA claims might affect VP8 out in the open.
The last article linked to an analysis of VP8 [multimedia.cx] that pointed out its striking similarity to H.264 Baseline [ytmnd.com]. So I guess you can start with the H.264 patent list on mpegla.com [mpegla.com]. Removing these patented parts would turn it into Theora, which is closer to DivX (MPEG-4 Part 2).
AFAIK VP8 was designed with avoiding infringing patents in the first place. The easiest way to do that is to exactly like h264, while changing enough so as to be different from at least one claim of each patent. IIRC if you can show you're not doing something exactly like the claim, you're not infringing. That doesn't work when the patent is too vague, but then the patent owner faces the risk of having his patent rejected and/or having prior art.
The key is whether they are too similar on the specific claims. Everything surrounding the claims section (which is a small fraction of the patent) is just fluff or description that has no bearing on the legality of it.
For example, MP3, if taking a broad view, is very similar to H.264. They do the same thing (compress media), and share most of the same concepts. In fact they are both rather similar to ZIP files. Yet on the very specifics of MP3's patent claims and H.264, they are quite different.
The same can be true of VP8, it's not the generalities that matter, it's the specific. They can be 99% identical, but if that 1% is all the specific claims of the patent, then it doesn't infringe.
This also bites a lot of people the other way - two technologies can be extremely different, yet if the patent's specific claims apply, then it doesn't matter it's still infringing.
When do the patents expire and the invention fall into the public domain?
- "Sometime after both you and your grandchildren are dead."
Well that's a bad plan.
You're confusing patent and copyright. The last of the h.264 patents should expire around 2025. Approximately 15 years from now.
I'm very much hoping (and it's very realistic to expect) that I will be alive at that point, and so will my parents. If you got a kitten today, it might not make it, though. Sorry.
Given my daughter's current age, it's likely that any potential grandchildren wouldn't even be born by then.
The last of the h.264 patents should expire around 2025. Approximately 15 years from now.
That does, of course, assume no-one manages to successfully lobby for increased patent terms any time during the next 15 years.
You are right about the 15 years.
Anyhow, h.264 will be about as useful 15 years from now as Intel Indeo is right now.
Patents on nineteenth century machines kind of made sense, because they might have helped moving some industries forward. Of course, patents did last a short amount of time compared to the usefulness of the invention. Right now we are still using combustion engines, and for the most part of the time they had no patents.
Patents in software, right now, cover a lot more than the lifetime of the invention. That way, they are useless to the general public.
It's not that you and your grandchildren will be dead, it's that patents will expire long after the technology becomes obsolete.
Well I'm sure that the current companies paying royalties could put some money into a hitman fund to kill both him and his grandchildren, and hasten the patent expiry...
It'd be cheaper in the long run.
AV is really the area worst affected by software patents. The media talks a lot about "silly patents", but they're *not* the real problem. MPEG-LA holds over 1000 patents - no amount of raised standards will solve this problem. Patents on playing video have to be declared null and void.
Oh and just so you know doing a patent search I can barely come up with a half dozen patents held by On2. That hardly sounds like they'd be able to make any "serious" patent retaliation.
Quite so. Google now owns every On2 patent, and except for the ones in VP3 (Theora), which On2 already basically relinquished, Google has exclusive control over those licenses.
Google are a search company, and they are very, very good at it. They routinely search millions of terabytes of data in seconds. They have a patent search database: http://www.google.com/patents - and presumably have international data as well as USPTO data but don't yet make that public.
It is reasonable to assume that before they spent $100 million buying On2 for the sole purpose of being able to know a video codec is clean, they could have done an exhaustive patent search. Exhaustive. As in every extant US patent prior to the date of On2's patents. They could quite reasonably have done so. They have the resources to do so, all of the data, a very good search algorithm, and a lot of smart people. Frankly, nobody else, including MPEG-LA or any of its members, could have reasonably done so, and would scoff at whether it was even possible. They very probably did exactly that—that's my guess, anyway. They won't guarantee you, because they're not in the business of selling you insurance (and of course, MPEG-LA are, hence the "nice codec you got here, shame if something were to happen to it" tone).
But I'd bet a fair sum that VP8 was specifically designed by On2 to skirt, but carefully avoid, every MPEG-LA patent (which is why it uses a standard DCT, and why it doesn't have B-frames). (Remember you have to infringe all of the claims of a patent to be infringing.) If On2 had infringed an MPEG-LA patent, MPEG-LA would have been on the attack years ago.
Unless, of course, they know an ugly truth. Maybe H.264 infringes on an On2 patent, and MPEG-LA don't have a licence for it.
Google are now in a position to simply say that they will license those patents to anyone under the license they just published, of course—which simply prohibits any meaningful retaliatory strikes against WebM—and not under any other license. If you want to use H.264, fine, no problem by them, although you'd need an MPEG-LA licence as well. As long as you don't attack WebM or anything in it.
Presto: mutually assured patent destruction defuses the situation, and VP8 gets just as good an assurance as MPEG-LA have.
Also, you know, they kind of own YouTube. You know, the site that serves more video than everything else combined. If your browser, say, Safari, stops working with YouTube, people are not going to view it as a problem with YouTube, especially given Google Chrome is built on the same core but is significantly faster.
VP8 doesn't look too bad. It isn't quite x264 quality but it's way better than Theora, it's vastly faster to decode than H.264 is in software, hardware stuff is already on fab and possible with many of the same parts and extensions (any Android phone will be able to do it, and will in 2.2 I think). The encoder is kind of poor, but will get much better after a bunch of open-source tinkering I think. It prefers blur to block, which is much better when you're talking about a small screen too; really, H.264 can be overly grainy and blocky and in many cases tries to be too sharp. VP8 is good enough for the web, and it's open, and though it isn't going to be evil, it does has a powerful gorilla protecting it now.
Also, y'know, by the by, so does Matroska and Vorbis.
Win-win. Bring it on.
But I'd bet a fair sum that VP8 was specifically designed by On2 to skirt, but carefully avoid, every MPEG-LA patent
This. There's absolutely no other reason why the spec would "borrow" so much from h.264 and yet come out worse... unless they started with h.264 and removed everything that was patented.
But I'd bet a fair sum that VP8 was specifically designed by On2 to skirt, but carefully avoid, every MPEG-LA patent (which is why it uses a standard DCT, and why it doesn't have B-frames). (Remember you have to infringe all of the claims of a patent to be infringing.)
No, that's not how patents work (and yes, I've successfully contested a few in court). You infringe a patent if you infringe all the terms of any single claim.
The claims of a patent are independent unless they say otherwise. Often they s
Google is not stupid. They have a lot of smart people working there. They also, as with any company, have a plenty large legal staff. Given that they bought On2 some time ago, this is clearly not a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision. They've considered this. Well that tells me that they have come to the conclusion that either VP8 doesn't infringe, or that they have the resources to fight it.
Something else to remember is that while it might infringe on some patents, perhaps those patents are invalid, perhaps there's prior art. Now, who would be able to find that sort of thing the best? Probably someone who had access to a lot of information and was good at data mining. Well, that would be Google. They are the kings of data mining, they have access to more information than, well, probalby anyone except maybe the NSA.
So perhaps they looked at the MPEG-LA patents and said "Well, all of the ones VP8 might infringe on have prior art out there, so we can get them shot down."
Whatever the case, I bet this was a reasoned, thought out, move. They didn't just say "Hey, let's open source some shit for fun!" Also please note the coincides with their Google TV stuff. Google wants in to the video distribution market in a big way, they've been working on this and planning.
Now that doesn't mean they'd be successful. This could all get fought in court, Google could lose, etc. However they have the resources, in terms of money, brainpower, technology, and so on to fight. I'm guessing they think they can win.
Apple is just scared because they were starting to believe they were going to become the kings of all media, that everything would have to come through their devices, and Google is now threatening to take that away.
There are ways to fight software patents within the current legal system.
Create a very large patent pool, but one that isn't defensive. All it takes is for every single company with commercial interest in free software to pool their patents together. Let's call this the good-pool. The companies donate legal fees to this entity. Now,
1. Wait for _ANY_ other software patent licensing pool to be created, such as the MPEG-LA. Call this the bad-pool. Such a group basically consists of companies that have 'donated' their software patents for threatening/suing others and getting paid. Once such a pool is formed, go after the member companies by asserting relevant patents from the good-pool. Don't wait to defend, but go on the offensive. Also, if any individual company threatens/sues another company with software patents, the good-pool again goes on the offensive.
After some time, no company will dare join a pool, or threaten another company again. This works, except for patent troll companies that have no valid business, but that of suing others. We'll come to this in a moment.
2. Software engineers in the community *read the patents in the bad-pool*, and engineer methods very similar to such patents, but those that do not infringe claims in the patents. This is not so tough. Most software patents are ridiculous. Create a wiki and provide alternative methods to avoid each patent.
After some time, no company will dare join a pool again.
In the case of patent trolls, where the company's only reason for existing is to sue others, follow the money. Find out who's behind the company. Even if litigation happens, and there's a payout, the matter doesn't end there. Find out who is benefiting. These people definitely have investments in other companies. Use the good pool to sue these other companies.
Note that this approach is much like the MPEG-LA licensing pool and does not involve companies giving up patents to the pool.
Yet another reason software patents should not exist. Someone develops software it should be a copyright, period. Patents for what is blatantly obvious is just plain wrong. There will be a point where every bit of software is patented and no one will be able to develop anything better. For the US and any other country with software patents they are screwing themselves. New and better things will be developed outside of these countries and be sold outside of these countries and that patent protection becomes
(Warning: Contains far more than usual amount of fuming.)
There's only one chance to make a first impression. MPEG-LA just used theirs, in relation to the WebM. And good grief, what did that reveal.
The MPEG-LA wants patent-encumbered video format as a web standard. That'd allow them to rake in the money. The whole "H.264 is free of charge for time being" thing is a giant big smokescreen. Google is already allowing VP8 to be freely used in perpetuity; in light of that, what other purpose than long-term plan to start charging for the whole thing would MPEG-LA's patent pool have than to start charging for the stuff after all? If they really wanted a free standard, they'd just leave Google alone.
This attitude alone, in my opinion, weighs far more than any technological merit H.264 has. MPEG-LA not in to produce any sort of amicable, altruistic solution to the whole thing. They're not interested in creating a standard that could be used royalty-free. Take any further tokens of niceness with a grain of salt.
Pardon me for getting a little bit cynical here: Part of me wants to say "December 31, 2015 is the day people will start paying for H.264 Internet production and streaming", but since the chance that we'll ever see a HTML5 video standard due to bullshit just like this is close to zero, it's all academic anyway and nothing remarkable will ever happen.
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. -- Christopher Morley


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Wyoming High Court To Hear Frack Disclosure Lawsuit
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The Wyoming Supreme Court will hear arguments next month over whether the public has the right to obtain lists of chemicals used in the process of hydraulic fracturing.
Environmental groups are suing to see the lists that companies have submitted to state regulators. The groups say they have a right to see the information under Wyoming's public records law.
Attorneys for Wyoming and Halliburton Energy Services say the chemicals are shielded from public disclosure because they're protected trade secrets.
The supreme court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case Nov. 20.
Fracking boosts production of oil and gas wells by pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals into the wells to create underground fractures.
A district court judge in March sided with state regulators and ruled against the environmentalists.


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BlackRay is a relational database system designed to offer performance features commonly associated with search engines. It offers SQL support and sophisticated operational and management features. Load-balancing and operational stability by means of N+1 redundance are included. BlackRay is called a "Data Engine" since it combines traditional, relational database features and SQL with the power and flexibility of search engines. It is a true hybrid, offering transaction support, data-versioned snapshots, and sophisticated function-based indices. Wildcards, phonetic, and fuzzy logic searches are supported, as well. BlackRay supports a subset of the SQL92 standard and provides JDBC/ODBC/native driver options via the PostgreSQL protocol, in addition to an API based query option. The project is released under the GPLv2, with some drivers available under BSD-style licenses. Commercial support contracts are available as well.
The Easysoft ODBC-Access Driver is an ODBC driver that supports both the MDB (Access 2000–2003 and Office Access 2007) and ACCDB (Office Access 2007 and later) database formats. It provides read-write access to Access databases for Linux/Unix applications. You do not need to change where your database file is located, as it supports shared locations such as a Windows or Samba share. It uses Access' locking file mechanism and prevents users from opening a database if another user has the database opened for exclusive access, again mirroring the Access front-end's behavior for seamless integration. It supports encrypted/encoded .mdb files, which is an Access security feature that protects Access data from unauthorized viewing.
ODBC-link is a dblink-style implementation of PostgreSQL database links. It allows users to connect from PostgreSQL to any other ODBC compliant database such as Informix, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, etc. You can integrate data from remote databases into your local query results. Writing requests is fully supported. The implementation is SQL/MED compliant.
TbsSQL is a small wrapper class for working with SQL databases within PHP scripts. It has few methods and two properties and it's only one file per database for installation. Its most interesting feature is that it can protect and format values before merging them into the SQL statement. It has a cache feature, a trace mode, a debug console, and it can return data as arrays, standard objects, specific class objects, or clone objects. It can also delete PHP connection variables after making the connection.
The YB.ORM library aims to simplify writing C++ code that has to deal with SQL databases. The goal is to provide a convenient interface like SQLAlchemy (Python) or Hibernate (Java). The library itself is cross-platform and supports a variety of SQL dialects: SQLite3, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, and Firebird. Integration with Boost, Qt4, and wxWidgets is built-in. In a typical usage scenario, you would describe your database schema and table relationships in a simple XML-based format, generate SQL code to populate database schema with tables, generate C++ classes, add application-specific logic to the classes, and use these classes in cooperation with the Session object to query objects from the database, create new or modify/delete existing objects, or link and unlink objects using relations. Simple serialization to XML is supported along with connection pooling.
email@Scanner is an application that parses email from either an email server, email files, or one of several Macintosh email clients, selecting only those email that satisfy given criteria. Data may be extracted from anywhere within the selected email and further refined via data filters and scripts and then used to update a FileMaker or ODBC database. An optional outgoing email may be sent, created with data from the email and/or the associated database record.


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Thursday, January 08, 2009
Alo Pura to win as Jebel Ali rearranges fixture
There is racing at Jebel Ali on Friday afternoon with the course having rescheduled the meeting called off last week after the sad death of His Highness Sheikh Rashid Bin Ahmad Al Mualla, the ruler of Umm Al Quwain.
The Shadwell organisation of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum again sponsor the feature race with the name of Kingwood House Stables attached to the main 1600m handicap.
The race has attracted a quality entry with Sheikh Hamdan's Great Plains heading the weights but overlooked by his retained jockey, Richard Hills, who rides the Doug Watson-trained Mostashaar who is returning from a long lay-off.
Watson said: "He will come on for the run but is ready for an outing and hopefully will go on the dirt."
Dhruba Selvaratnam, who trains on the track, saddles Mulaqat who could go close but the trainer looks more likely to have a winner with Alo Pura who will be hard to beat in the following 1600m handicap which is confined to fillies and mares.
She will be ridden by Willie Supple who said: "She won well last time but has been penalised severely for that win. Hopefully the step up in trip can bring about the necessary improvement."
South African Mike De Kock returns to Jebel Ali action and, a regular visitor to the track, he saddles Musaytir in the concluding 1000m handicap but is a bit concerned about the trip: "It is certainly his minimum requirement but the hill should help negate that.
"He has been off a while and will certainly come on for the run but he is ready for an outing."
Read more articles in the Emirates Racing Authority category.


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It will produce approximately 65,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy annually, offsetting energy used by site lighting and two light-rail electrical system buildings. The excess energy produced will add clean energy to the Portland General Electric grid. The total energy produced is equivalent to reducing 29 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Estimated first year energy savings for TriMet is $4,880, based on 2011 rates. Over the 25-plus-year life of the solar system, TriMet will earn more than 25 times its initial investment as the value of electricity generated continues to be credited against its power bill. This credit will increase as electricity rates rise over time.
"Since MAX trains are all-electric vehicles, we want the electricity they run on to be as clean and local as possible," said Dan Blocher, executive director of TriMet's Capital Projects Division. "This solar system leads in the right direction for the future of TriMet and the region."
Installation cost totaled $366,000, with $263,151 in grants and credit offset, making the net installation cost is about $102,849. TriMet's share is $4,936 and recouped in a little more than a year.