Technology
gregladen | October 22, 2009By now I assume you've experimented with Alpine, as a character-based email client. Well, I have another tip for you.
I have been using alpine almost exclusively for a few weeks now. I switch to Evolution now and then because it is easier to gather groups of emails and move them to storage folders, etc. in a fully GUI program, but for the most part, if you have been communicating with me via email at all over the last few weeks, you have to imagine me on this end looking at a terminal window, using a character based program, mouse-free, typing rather than clicking.
I've provided a few…
ejohnson | October 19, 2009
The world of X-ray photography is a very interesting place and surprises are often found in every image. X-rays are similar to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) in the sense that the collected images are only black and white. To take these image I use a scientific X-ray machine at a local company. The source is much finer than a medical device and the exposure has to be taken on film since the large digital detectors have not yet come down in price. Here an antique alarm clock is X-rayed. The film is then scanned into a high resolution digital file that has to be meticulously hand…
hrynyshyn | October 16, 2009Every now and then a commenter at this or any number of other climate-oriented blogs spews out the phrase "the height of arrogance" and uses it in a way that defies logic. For example, one "Bruce" recently wrote
"It is the height of arrgoance [sic] to suggest a trace gas like CO2 has anything to do with the climate cycles."
No, Bruce, it's not arrogant to accurately portray the chemistry and thermodynamics of climatology. This morning, however, I did find a case to which the phrase might be applied with some degree of accuracy:
Alberta's oil sands producers should be allowed to significantly…
clock | October 15, 2009NCSU AND UNC-CHAPEL HILL PROFESSOR TROY NAGLE TO DISCUSS THE JOINT DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING AT OCTOBER RESEARCH DIRECTORS MEETING
The Research Triangle Park, N.C. - The Triangle Area Research Directors Council (TARDC) has announced that Dr. Troy Nagle, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill, will be the keynote speaker at next week's TARDC event, to be held at The Research Triangle Park's Headquarters building. Dr. Nagle will speak on the joint departments of biomedical engineering at NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill and bridging academic and research cultures.
Dr…
ejohnson | October 13, 2009
This is how.
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This image was provided by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
drorzel | October 13, 2009The abbreviation here has a double meaning-- both "Open Access" and "Operator Algebra." In my Quantum Optics class yesterday, I was talking about how to describe "coherent states" in the photon number state formalism. Coherent states are the best quantum description of a classical light field-- something like a laser, which behaves very much as if it were a smoothly oscillating electromagnetic field with a well-defined frequency and phase.
Mathematically, one of the important features of a coherent state is that it is unchanged by the photon annihilation operator (in formal terms, it's an "…
gregladen | October 13, 2009I don't think I've poked anybody on Facebook. I was afraid. And I'm so glad I didn't do it!
A woman in Tennessee was, apparently, arrested in September for poking someone. Arrested by real police, not some kind of facebook "police" app.
According to an affidavit filed with the Sumner County General Sessions Court on Sept. 25, Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tenn., allegedly violated a legal order of protection that had been previously filed against her when she sent a virtual "poke" to another woman on Facebook.
Well, OK. I've especially not poked anyone who has a current…
gregladen | October 13, 2009October 13th was the eigth birthday of the Office Suite OpenOffice.Org. This is an OpenSource office suite that will look familiar to anyone using Microsoft Office, WordPefect Office, etc. It has a word processor (Writer) that does pretty much everything Microsoft Word does, but with a more logical layout for menus and some other cool features; a spreadsheet (Calc) that is comparable to Excel and other spreadsheets; a database system (Base) which is an SQL system that can integrate seamlessly with MySQL an other high end databases; a chart making utility; a Presentation application (Impress)…
clock | October 9, 2009Yesterday, North Carolinians woke up to some very unpleasant news that Dell decided to close its computer manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, Forsyth Co, NC by the end of this year and lay off its entire workforce of 905 employees.
While I may not like it, I can understand the economics of shutting down a textile mill or a furniture plant. It's a new world we are living in. But Dell? Computers?! If the leading computer manufacturer is suffering during the recession, what can anyone else hope for? Is there any industry that can still compete and grow?
And it seems that the answer may,…
razib | October 8, 2009From Matt Springer of Built on Facts. For what it's worth, many people at the Summit were skeptical of Kurzweil's specific vision. I mean in the audience, not just among the speakers.
neurophilosophy | October 8, 2009SECOND LIFE is an online "virtual world" which enables users to create a customised avatar, or digital persona, with which they can interact with each other. It has become incredibly popular since its launch just over 6 years ago, with millions of "residents" now using it regularly to meet others, socialize and even to have virtual sex. Second Life is now filled with virtual communities and institutions - it has businesses and universities, and its own virtual economy.
Now, imagine a futuristic version of Second Life, in which avatars can transfer sensations to the bodies of their users.…
ejohnson | October 8, 2009What moves human beings to innovate measures of security? History will tell us that the most inventive and industrious times are fraught with warfare, uncertainty, and widespread fear. Greg Laden, a longtime ScienceBlogger, helps tackle this topic this month on the new Collective Imagination blog with Peter Tu, a systems design engineer who has developed algorithms for the FBI Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, and is the principle investigator for the ReFace Program at the Visualization and Computer Vision Group at the GE Global Research Center. Greg and Peter discuss the important…
gregladen | October 8, 2009By default, the text-based email client 'alpine' requests a password the first time, per session, that it is requested a password from any email services it checks. For the duration of that session, it remembers the password, but forgets it if you quit alpine so you have to enter it again later. From a security point of view, that is probably a good thing, but most people do like to have their email client remember the password between sessions.
The way this works in alpine seems a little obscure at first, but actually makes a lot of sense. Alpine checks for a file in which passwords should…
razib | October 7, 2009My thoughts on the talks at The Singularity Summit 2009 below the fold....
Shaping the Intelligence Explosion - Anna Salamon: A qualitative analysis of the implications of the emergence of artificial general intelligence. Having talked to Anna before, and knowing the general thrust of the work of the SIAI, not too surprising. AGI will come fast if it comes, it will be beyond our comprehension, etc. The main issue with Anna's talk was that it was hurried at the end, so perhaps we missed some points.
Technical Roadmap for Whole Brain Emulation - Anders Sandberg: Interesting. Lots of pictures.…
gregladen | October 6, 2009Do these look similar to you?
According to Apple corp, th e one on the left may be too similar to the one on the right.
The other day Julia and I went to a coffee shop together to work on our stuff. When she opened her laptop I was shocked to see the Apple Logo on it! I thought she was still using the old hand me down laptop from grandpa on which I had installed Linux.
"Where did you get the Mac???" I said.
"What?" she looked at me quizically. Then a grin as she realized what I was talking about. "That apple thingie came with my iPod. I stuck it on this old clunker so I'd look cool…
gregladen | October 6, 2009Welcome to Bizzaro Land, computer users.
Since June 26, retailers and computer manufacturers have urged shoppers to buy computers already on store shelves loaded with the much-maligned Windows Vista operating system because they would qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it was released in October. As it turns out, Mouse Print* has learned that some computer purchasers will be asked to pay shipping, handling and other junk fees that total between $11 and $17 to receive their "free" upgrade disks.
The story is here.
gregladen | October 5, 2009For today's Linux Hint: How to pick which browser will open when you pick a link while using apine in Ubuntu.
Sometimes there is a URL in an email that you want to visit. In a GUI email brower, you click on it with the mouse. In apine you navigate to the link with the usual navigation keys (but the first link will already be selected for you) and hit enter to open the link.
The default that alpine comes with, at least on my machine, seems to be the Epiphany browser I have no idea why. And when it goes there, it opens the browser and freezes the alpine screen, so I have to close the…
gregladen | October 3, 2009If you are using alpine as your email client, you may find that hitting ctrl-T to invoke a spell checker does not work, in alpine 1.0 as installed in Ubuntu. It is easy to fix.
I looked around for the answer to this question, but it is a bit esoteric so there is very little, and what there is stands mainly as examples of the down side of community support. People state that the spell checker is not working, and others answer with various bits of advice that do not work at all because they are nothing other than vague guesses that do not address the problem.
It is possible, even probable,…