Interesting TouchTable video

the whole Iranian nuclear facility is interesting also...

xkcd: converting To Metric

The Temperature list is actually pretty handy. Original - full size

xkcd: I Know You Are Listening

InternetNews Realtime IT News - Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control

InternetNews Realtime IT News - Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control:

"The need for 'attention,' rather than 'hard work,' as the centerpiece of
the new work ethic has arisen along with the rise of distractions carried on the
wings of Internet protocol. In one generation, we've gone from a total
separation of 'work' from 'non-work' to one in which both work and play are
always sitting right in front of us.

Now, we find ourselves with absolutely nothing standing between us and
a universe of distractions -- nothing except our own abilities to control
attention. Porn, gambling, funny videos, flirting, socializing, playing games,
shopping -- it's all literally one click away. Making matters worse, indulging
these distractions looks just like work. And it's easy to work and play at the
same time -- and call it work. These new, increasingly compelling distractions
get piled on to older ones -- office pop-ins, e-mail, IM, text messages,
meetings and others.

Kids now grow up with the whole range of distractions, from big-screen
TVs to video games to cell phones to PCs in their rooms. They're addicted to
screens before they even start high school. Their attention spans have been
whittled down to seconds, and their expectations for constant amusement are
highly developed.
In a world in which entire industries bet their businesses
on gaining access to our attention, which value leads to better personal
success: hard work or the ability to control attention?"

The Cigarette Camps: U. S. Army Camps in the Le Havre Area -- Introduction

My grandpa on my Dad's side was a PX Officer at Lucky Strike and Chesterfield.

The Cigarette Camps: U. S. Army Camps in the Le Havre Area -- Introduction: "Introduction: The Cigarette Camps"

TaxProf Blog: Inside Higher Ed: Women Profs Spend More Time on Teaching, Less on Research

TaxProf Blog: Inside Higher Ed: Women Profs Spend More Time on Teaching, Less on Research:

"Joycelyn K. Moody, the Sue E. Denman Distinguished Chair in American Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said that what most troubled her about the responses was that women reported feeling shame about their interest and success in teaching. Women should be feeling pride in their success as teachers, she said, but are “perceiving themselves as performing below expectations,” because they aren’t doing more research. It’s time to “dismantle those institutional values,” Moody said, so that the shame disappears."

What If New York Goes Bust? - The Daily Beast

What If New York Goes Bust? - The Daily Beast: "The Alice in Wonderland absurdity of the current budget debates was nicely illustrated by the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. She was quoted without irony in The New York Times saying, 'We understand there will be cuts. The real question, will there be cuts, not just cuts against growth, but real cuts that will turn back the clock.'

A close reading reveals that for union leaders like Ms. Weingarten, the only acceptable 'cuts' are not cuts at all, but rather reductions in the rate of increase for public spending. She is willing, in effect, to receive a reduced bonus this year, but not the cut in pay or benefits that would constitute shared sacrifice in a financial crisis."

Armchair Commentary: Exclusive Interview: Fillion on Captain Hammer & Classic "Firefly"

Armchair Commentary: Exclusive Interview: Fillion on Captain Hammer & Classic "Firefly": "Exclusive Interview: Fillion on Captain Hammer & Classic 'Firefly'"

xkcd - A Webcomic - 11th Grade

xkcd - A Webcomic - 11th Grade

LiveWeb - insert and update web pages real-time in PowerPoint

LiveWeb - insert and update web pages real-time in PowerPoint

Christmas bokeh | dooce ®

Christmas bokeh | dooce ®

The picture at this link is the first I have seen that starts to capture what a Christmas tree looks like to me when I don' have my glasses on. For years, I have enjoyed sitting with my glasses off and staring at the tree after it is decorated. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The only difference between this picture and what I see is that I don't see a smooth circle. Instead I see a pattern of lighter and darker in each circle. Note that each light circle is the same size, regardless of how obscured some of it may be. If it is mostly obscured, it appears not as bright, but it exactly the same size and has the same pattern in it.

One of the few joys of wearing glasses.

CD/DVD drives disappear after installing iTunes - GEAR CD / DVD Software Support Knowledgebase

CD/DVD drives disappear after installing iTunes - GEAR CD / DVD Software Support Knowledgebase: "Summary:
After installing a GEAR Software or a GEARWorks GEAR Powered Product (such as Apple iTunes and Norton Ghost) on Vista, the CD/DVD drives disappear in Windows Explorer and the installed software is unable to detect any CD/DVD drives on the system"

CIO - SOA What? Why You Need SOA Governance Framework

CIO - SOA What? Why You Need SOA Governance Framework:

"Without an established governance plan and policy, the original author and
support organization may not even know this 'use' of their software is
happening. This can lead to a lawless environment where: 1.) Increased volume
may cause a jump in users from hundreds to thousands overnight. Servers or
networks being used for this process may not be able to handle the load; 2)
Contrarily a service is created but 'no one comes' to re-use it because there is
no established procedure about how to communicate service availability within
the enterprise; 3) Finally, it is easy for a developer to read a service
definition and create a sample request message in minutes. In a SOA world, the
data travels on the wire in the clear and even has tags identifying each and
every data element. Ease of access to SOA services raises an important issue of
security policies and SOA governance.

So without a well-thought out governance plan SOA can seem like the lawless Wild, Wild West."

Op-Ed Contributor - What They Hate About Mumbai - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - What They Hate About Mumbai - NYTimes.com

Minnesota Management Institute

EDC General Management Programs - Minnesota Management Institute

Obama's small donor base image is a myth, new study reveals | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

When people try to make something look like something else, it makes me wonder why...

Obama's small donor base image is a myth, new study reveals | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times:

"Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama's amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.

Except, it turns out, that's not really true.

In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking."

Slashdot | Suggestions For Cheap Metrics Eye Candy Software?

Slashdot | Suggestions For Cheap Metrics Eye Candy Software?: "Suggestions For Cheap Metrics Eye Candy Software?"

An Online Journal of the Stories & Passions Behind The Research ‎(The Heart Of Research‎)

An Online Journal of the Stories & Passions Behind The Research ‎(The Heart Of Research‎)

Sorting 1PB with MapReduce

This is just crazy..... If you are a computer person, you understand just how crazy this is. If you aren't, this is similar to sorting all the junk mail, junk email, everything on your computer, everything in your cupboards, under the sink, sock drawers, that one junk drawer everyone has (yes, you do!), the nightstand, the basement and the garage, and basically every single piece of somethingt you and everyone in your city has every owned, possessed, touched, looked at, or smelled in the last 5 years...sorted *all* of that in, oh, a few seconds. All of it...every piece...sorted, organized, and arranged...oh yeah, and copied 3 times (before the sort) for disaster recovery.

Official Google Blog: Sorting 1PB with MapReduce: "We are excited to announce we were able to sort 1TB (stored on the Google File System as 10 billion 100-byte records in uncompressed text files) on 1,000 computers in 68 seconds. By comparison, the previous 1TB sorting record is 209 seconds on 910 computers.

Sometimes you need to sort more than a terabyte, so we were curious to find out what happens when you sort more and gave one petabyte (PB) a try. One petabyte is a thousand terabytes, or, to put this amount in perspective, it is 12 times the amount of archived web data in the U.S. Library of Congress as of May 2008. In comparison, consider that the aggregate size of data processed by all instances of MapReduce at Google was on average 20PB per day in January 2008."

Missing CD/DVD drives: solution?

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39) « Barugon’s Cave (^_^): "A few days ago I ran into an issue where my DVD drives no longer appeared in Windows and were not accessible either. What was strange was that I have two physical DVD drives (a DVD-RW and an Xbox HD DVD drive), as well as a virtual drive provided by Daemon Tools for loading ISOs - yet all three were highlighted with an exclamation mark and the same error code: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)."