Last post till after July 4th...

Ha, wouldn't this be neat?

The Dilbert Blog: My Own Army

I think he was enjoying it...

Operation removes lightbulb from anus - Yahoo! News

OK, since when can you just say, "No officer, I don't know how that *insert object name* got into my anus." I think he got bored in his cell and his fingers just weren't doing it. I wonder who he was selling the alcohol to, obviously there is a market.

Joke? or not... Modern Art

Empty plinth sidelines sculpture

So, the modern art guys thought that the two pieces were separate? They somehow got a picture of them together, I wonder how that happened. He either pissed someone off, and they wanted to spite him. Or, they really believe that modern art bullshit and are retarded.

Fight Isothymia!

I just found out that there is a word for the "fanatical desire for equal recognition". Fight Isothymia where and when you can! Ha, basically it is a fancy way of talking about all the stupid political correctness. I was reading a post somewhere and it was talking about how if you took a sentence and exchanged the words woman and man, you would get two completely different responses. In one case, it is empowering, in the other, it is putting down the other. If both sides of anything (this post isn't about gender) are equal, then you should be able to do that without different responses. The problem with isothymia is that people are not completely equal (and good thing too, or this whole specialization of labor thing wouldn't be working out) and artificial methods of equalizing are unfair to someone. Ha, define fair! Fukuyama mentions that democracy will be brought down by isothymia or megalothymia. He puts more stock in the isothymia.

Current events:

North Korea? who knows what is going to happen. I don't know much about the leadership, but it looks like they wanted more attention. Now they realize that we control what happens next, via bombing the launch pad, shooting the missile in the air, or letting it go. We get to decide which of those choices are better for us. We aren't completely sure that they wanted to launch.

The Israeli's are getting ready for a big "removal of Hama's head" operation. They are using the kidnapping of a soldier as an excuse to go in, basically kill all Hamas/Hamas leadership, and then leave. They even have made threats against the Hamas #1 dude in Syria. I wonder on the rules there. I mean, if Israeli agents go into another country and wack a group that is state sponsored, what is the Syrian response going to be? Overreacting to the kidnapping of this soldier is a bad idea. From the way that things are reported, it looks like the group that did this operation were acting sort of semi-autonomously. Hamas today/yesterday recognized that Israel is real (god I hope so, I mean, wtf, did they think that Allah was raining down that artillery/hellfires?). I understand that the Israeli's are pissed off cuz they got punked, but I mean, guard your rear. It has been real interesting to watch what works with Hamas. It is not negotiations. When Israel says "ok, we start the killing of the leadership, not the grunts" Hamas listens. Recently the Israelis have been taking a harder line, and it is working. Hamas understands the language of violence. The problem with this crisis is that Hamas does not have control of the group that took the Israeli soldier. The Israelis can threaten/kill/yell all they want to Hamas, but it won't get this guy back. Massing troops for a big operation into the Gaza Strip to punish the people that may not directly have been involved would just inflame the situation. Not sure exactly what Israel should do, because what can they do? They need to send messages that digging tunnels into their land is not a good idea. But WHO to send that message to is the problem. It is harder to kill a swarm of cockroaches than a wolf. A price is being paid by the Gaza residents, who just want to work. I believe that the border is more restricted than it was.

Snakes on a PLANE! yeah! who wants to go see it with me?

Johnson and Johnson buying a whole bunch of consumer stuff from Pfizer. Thats big news. I am glad an American company got it.

Iran: Ali Khamenei says "fuck the USA, talk to the hand, biatches" I don't know that his comments really matter. He hasn't said anything about talking to the EU or the UN or some random country. I don't think that the United States cares that much about who he is talking to, just that he starts talking, and stops enrichment until the talking is over. It was a smart move for him, because he gets to give us the finger, but he can still enter negotiations if he wants to later. His response is not being treated as the final response to the package that the EU and US were offering. That buys time, which is what the Iranians need. On day, instead of "more negotiations needed" you are going to see the headline "Iran tests nuclear bomb".

TOO LONG OF A POST. I should have split it up.

Ouch

Yeah, that probably hurt. Anyone else watching the world cup?

Demographics

Microsoft adCenter Labs Demonstration

Query :joseph iacobucci


Gender: Female Oriented with following Confidence:


male:0.47

female:0.53

How cool is that?

For reference:

Josh has 0.62 male, Andykerr has male 0.47 (like me), and Nic has 0.75 male.
Microsoft says, Josh F. is gaaaay.

Play with interesting queries and add them to the comments. I made it so that you don't have to register to comment. That should make less "I can't comment" excuses.

School...HUH ... what is it good for?... Absolutely Nothing!

Marshall Brain's Blog: Do you have anything to say?

That is a very interesting question. I haven't had as many problems with that question, but it did come up in college for a bit. Its hard to work on school with low morale. It ends up spiraling out of control, because low grades make you care less, and then you work less, which lead to lower grades, which make you care less, which .... etc. It seems to me, that the biggest thing that comes out of going to school, is that people know that you went through the same shit, and you made it. Frats have hazing for the same reason. The ordeal bonds you to people that went through the same thing. You don't learn that much in school that is directly applicable.  Like, at most, if I went to work right now, I would have had 2 or 3 classes on the subject that I would directly use everyday. It is hard to tell someone that they have to spend 4 years in college (5-6 at Gatech) for 2-3 classes worth of material. I am not saying that you don't learn anything, but most of the time it won't be a pop quiz.

You learn how to learn, and how to solve problems, but they often pretend that you are supposed to be learning specific knowledge (which you are, just not all the time, most problem solving methods can and should be generalized to all problems). School shows that you can met deadlines and normally can interact with other human beings. You can start and finish projects. A slight bit of time management stills  is necessary. Instead of having to directly test you, another person or employer can estimate the lower end of your abilities by putting faith in the agent of the government or a school that they trust because of the consistent quality. Once you prove yourself useful to some aspect of society, the schooling that you had becomes less important.

I have a lot to say about this topic, just don't think I have time here to fully develop them.

What would you tell this teenager?

What would you tell your kids? (ha, its coming up sooner than you think!)

Australia And Grubs

"In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard.''"

Ha, how awesome is that. Most of our congresswomen/men couldn't even approach being that cool.

Something not considered?

Iran to halt gasoline imports, impose rationing - Yahoo! News

This is something that I have not considered in my prior analyzes of the Iran situation. The fact that Iran can not indigenously refine oil into gasoline is something that may have a big impact on what is a possible solution to Iran having nuclear weapons. Much has been said about Iran shutting down the Straits of Hormuz if the United States or Israel attacks the nuclear facilities. This would shutdown most of Iran/Kuwait/Upper Saudi Arabian/others crude oil flow. I highly doubt that stopping tankers will actually be accomplished, many nations besides the Unites States need them to stay open, and will ensure that they do. This does not mean that no tankers would be sunk, I just think that control would swing in the World's favor relatively quickly. The only major city/town in Iran on the other side is Chabahar (missing accents).

India has been working with the Iranians to develop the port of Chabahar for oil pipelines and other trade. I don't know if it has been completed, I know that they had been talking about this. It would go through Pakistan though. Now, this is for getting oil OUT. For Indian consumption and refining. Having a bunch of light sweet crude does you no good if all of your cars are gasoline. Or your fighter run on kerosene. Heating oil, not sure if they use it. They are only pumping 4 million barrels of crude a day, not the 6 million that they were in 1974. Some of that is because they don't have as much technology but some of that is because you control prices using supply. Check this out for more current information.

So, you have a gasoline shortage. This leads to a very pissed off populace. Currently, gas is really cheap in Iran. They need to raise prices or ration. Both make the public mad. In Saudi Arabia, earlier this year they decided to try and raise oil prices. It didn't completely stick, the people didn't like it. Word on the streets is that there are some in Iran that aren't the happiest with the government. Something like higher gas prices, or rationing could become a catalyst for a regime change. Iran wants to make it expensive to buy oil, we need to make it more expensive to buy gasoline. Public dissent was pretty high in Atlanta, when everyone freaked out about a hurricane. Can you imagine if gasoline prices doubled? It's easier for that to happen the cheaper that the gas is. Using the estimate of 10 cents a gallon, 20 cents a gallon is not an unreasonable increase in price. I can't find where I got this initial 10 cents estimate, if anyone can find it, please tell me. This would devastate the poorer people (most likely to revolt anyway). Gas in Iraq went from 5 cents a gallon to 10 cents after the fall of Saddam, so doubling has happened historically. Washington Post says 33 cents, but that still works. Say it rises to 50 cents a gallon. thats still a big percentage difference. When the dude running the gas pump makes $2.30 a day, it could be a big deal. "Because Iran's refineries can pump out only 10 1/2 million gallons of gasoline a day, and Iranian motorists burn 17 million gallons, the gap is filled by gasoline purchased at full price from other countries." This is from the same article from the Washington Post. That is a big deficit. Hopefully Iran does not fix this problem, and it can be used to the World's advantage.

I support countries using nuclear power for electricity. I don't support nuclear weapon owning governments that proclaim that they want to destroy another country in a fire, and will sacrifice their country and its people to be able to do so. We need to stop insane people, and right now they are winning with the whole "just a minute" routine.


off topic:

haha, Al Gore quote of the day "The earth has a fever". Sorry I was watching/listening to some videos of news clips. It was from an interview with him by ABC. He got fat, btw, or at least looks like it. I like all the carbon-neutral/ emissions reductions stuff. He just sounds stupid sometimes.

Global Warming

Ok, so whats the difference between these studies?

Earth hottest it's been in 2,000 years

Earth's temperature at 400-year high - study

THE HEADLINE! And, they are from the same page of the same site! (Yahoo!)

I know that most people don't actually read the reports that come out about many different things. To me, those two headlines should not be able to come from the same study. In one case, we have a hottest temperature since Jesus, in the other, we have the hottest temperature since Galileo Galilei. Seems like a big difference to me. Also, what does the hottest temperature over 2,000 years mean, if 2,000 years is always considered less than a blink of an eye in earth time? Is it the hottest temperature ever? The hottest temperature since the dinosaurs? Where is this hottest temperature? Is it some sort of average? I should read the report it seems. Hopefully, it can answer some of those questions.

So, page 2. Interesting. Using the multiproxy method, two different groups separated by three years estimate different temperatures, sometimes with a difference of 0.3 degrees. It does seem to be inescapable that the trend is sharply turning up. ah ha! Another group using the multiproxy in 2005... They also don't track well. They hit peaks and troughs at approximately the same time. I would love to see the uncertainty on the same plot. I don't know why they don't show it, but just talk about how bad it gets as you go back in time. They do basically say that anything pre-900 is pretty much a guess. The report is guarded against saying that global warming is all us, all pollution. "Not all proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented" this is in contrast to Mann et al. 's statement that the "late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented". It is "plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium". Listen to this quote you won't hear in the news, "Even less confidence can be placed on the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that 'the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium' because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for larger time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales"

In the Overview, they state that we should see 2-6 degrees of increase temperature on average. It looks to me like this is based on a linear-type interpolation of the last part of the "hockey stick". It could be quadratic, but whatever. My point is that if you look at the slope of the tree rings data right before the year 1000, you will see something just as alarming. I am wondering if all of the data is using the same amount of time between points.



The overview is pretty good, I like what it focuses on, and what it tells you about each method. Recommended reading. Found it! Here is a graph with uncertainty.


It also says this about those uncertainties "It should also be emphasized that the error bars in this particular figure, and others like it, do not reflect all of the uncertainties inherant in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions based on proxy data". Another interesting point. How big are the uncertainties? Like, the uncertainty in the year 1000 is greater than the amount that we are higher than the 0 degree value. How can we say that its the hottest since year 0, if the uncertainty is larger than the amount that we are believed to be higher by? Also on uncertainties, "Nor is it possible to assign error bars to either individual reconstructions or to the ensemble of reconstructions that reflect all of the uncertainties inherent in the conversion of proxy data into large-scale surface temperature estimates." God I wish they released this in a cut and paste - able format.

Good graphs on page 18. Even will all of the uncertainties, it still looks like there is warming happening. I am not going to read the technical chapters. It was illuminating to read the overview, but most readers won't read about how they know that they are not sure. I am not casting doubt on the conclusions that they have made, but wanted to make sure that the conclusions were based on valid data. Garbage data in, garbage conclusions out. With a bit or massaging, you could seem to call this either way. The thing that points to global warming is that in the other cases of peaks, like around year 1000, or troughs like the mini-ice age, they normally know of events in the world that could account for it. Solar emissions changes, volcanic eruptions, meteors, etc. I have heard some grumbling about solar emissions, but the report mentions that those variations can not account for the magnitude of the change.

Wow. I just had the most serious case of reliving something in a dream that I have had. I had to get up and walk around it freaked me out so much. I had a dream a long time ago with me typing into a little text box about global warming and mentioning the mini-ice age. Ha, now I am not sure that I remember the dream at all... or do I? Thats the problem with Deja Vu/weird dreams that you might or might not have had. How do you know that you had them? I need to start writing down ones like that, and then making it so I can search them.

Ok, so I got suckered in. I'll be reading the first chapter until I get bored.

The report that I talk about in this post is "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (2006)" by the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.

What is this?

Official: 7 arrested in Sears Tower plot - Yahoo! New

Wait until the press conference? Let's make it an event! ... thats really stupid.

mmmmm, I want one!

Fla. restaurant sells $100 hamburger - Yahoo! News

Geez, the club has a 40k fee, + 3.6k every year!. And then.... ! the burgers are $124.50
At least is has Kobe... I want to try some of that.

F18 C/D pic of the day

China pleased after watching U.S. wargames - Yahoo! News

Mob mentality

Stock article

"Beating an imperfect market

The strategy these greats have all followed is known as value investing. Here's how it works:

1. Figure out what a company is really worth.
   
2. Determine how much the stock market is asking for the business.
   
3. Invest based on the difference between No. 1 and No. 2.
   
4. Wait for the market to realize and correct its mistake."

The thing is, that strategy is exactly what you do when you day trade. You profit from the market's slow (relative to you) correction mechanism.

"No matter what the academics say, the stock market doesn't predict the future any better than my broken crystal ball does. At its best, the market reflects the aggregate opinion of its participants. Like any other mob, it's often wrong."

What I try and do, is identify when the Mob is changing direction, and they don't know it. From that example, you can see that most stocks don't do the average. Now, try this out for a strategy, buy those listed stocks in the table, BUT! do the Joe thing. Set a limit of like, -2% or something sort of small. Now, when you average the stocks, you get 26.9% returns. Thats double the average without stops.

Also, the other good advice in there, is that you should buy if the company gets knocked around, but is still a strong company. A huge stock fall is often your best friend because of the capability for rebound. This works on all timescales also. My problem with longer time scales is that it allows for more external events to happen. These external events post prediction would mess up your prediction because they weren't taken into account. Short term, I don't have to worry as much about unforseen events, because there just isn't time.

Women First!

Let women walk in front of you, not behind you.

Its a much better view that way :-)


Today's joke brought to you by the letters A-M-E-N   B-R-O-T-H-A.

Interesting way to explain standards...

GROKLAW

"thought there was no STREAMS support in the official kernel, just an
add-on set of sources, which I think Caldera used to ship
as part of their system back in their non-loony days, so I'm puzzled by
SCO's claim. I'm also puzzled because it is an implementation of a
standard. Just because Linux implements something SCO once
licensed an implementation of, that doesn't make SCO the owner of other
people's implementations.
It's like if we both take a picture of a nice sunset. Just because you
license your picture, it doesn't mean you now own mine as well. The
sunset is there for us both to photograph. It's the same with
standards. If you implement a standard, and I'm sitting right next to
you and I implement a standard, the same standard, it's like the two
photographs of the sunset. And yes, inevitably they will look a lot
alike."

If only SCO would STFU and just go home and stop wasting everyone's time and money. If only I could short SCO stock (SCOX)
Groklaw is good stuff, she gets the court documents that are public. The IBM lawyers are AWESOME, and I definitely recommend reading some of their work sometime.

Nic, I got some numbers for you...

Ok, so Isreal has $154,500,000,000 dollars GDP, from CIA. The total US aid is approximately $3 billion (from a anti-aid site). I'll call it my original estimate of $4 billion. (thats 4,000,000,000). As a percentage of GDP of Israel the US aid is 2.6%. I am going to state that I have my doubts that if we cut off aid to Israel that it would cease to exist. Now, lets look at aid to Palestine, which has a fun time chanting "Death to America!" US aid has averaged $85 million per year since 1993. (see this) Ok, so the GDP of the West Bank and Gaza was $3.273 billion in 2003, and about 5.4 ish billion as a max since 1998. (from pipa.gov.ps) So I'll use 5.4 billion as the GDP (even though they make less now, not sure about 2005 numbers though). So approximately we give the Palestinians 1.57% of their GDP in aid. Considering their anti-US stance, I find that the aid given seems reasonable. Using the $3 billion dollar number for Israel, we arrive at 1.9% of the GDP in aid.

I don't really have a point, except that Israel wouldn't be extremely effected by the lack of United States aid. Whether that is a smart plan or not I leave up to the reader. The Palestinians need to step up and use the aid that we give them, like the Israelis did. Not hating on us would help also. They have been getting away with growling at the hands that feed. I found it amusing that Israel gave Palestine tax money that it collects, and that they held it back from a government that is openly hostile (why couldn't they be closeted hostile like the PLA?)

About the Israel economy,
"Once a traditional economy based mainly on agriculture, light industry and labor-intensive production, Israel has matured into a knowledge-based economy with internationally competitive telecommunications, IT, electronics, and life sciences industries.  As a result of its small size and limited natural resources, Israeli industry is export-driven and capitalizes on a highly skilled, educated and innovative workforce." (from www.israel-mfa.gov.il)

Please check sources/data/math. I didn't know how this would turn out before I found the numbers. I had a hunch about the aid and it turned out to be correct. It might be interesting to look at aid/person, I think that that would end up showing more aid per person to Israelis because I have a hunch that the Israeli people are slightly more productive per person.

Ok, so I had to look it up. Using a population of 7,026,000 in May 2006 (est) from wikipedia for Israel. The Palestinian population is approximately 2.5 million (low end). Curiously, the wikipedia GDP for Israel is higher, so it would just lower the percentage of GDP in aid to 1.84% to 2.45%. The per capita aid is $426 dollars per Israeli, and $34 per Palestinian. That tells a slightly different story. In that case you can see that we spend more money on each Israeli. 12.5 times infact. Thats a pretty large difference, if one uses the high population estimate, then it obviously would increase in difference. The question is whether aid should be given per person, or as a percentage of GDP (or world-usefulness).

Comments? I know I learned something, I didn't know that the per person disparity was so high. Now, I might have included the Palestinians in the Israel calculation (it wasn't clear). If you remove them, then it would just go up even more. The aid to Palestinians has been varying wildly, so all of these calculations are sort of average-y/order of magnitude.

More Pandas!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/ap_on_re_as/china_more_pandas

Lets hope they don't go on Panda Attacks... panda attack

Damnit, I need to find a good one, that one only makes sense if you follow it.
http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20060222
and another  .. those aren't the best.

Interesting quotes

"You don't normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch
intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it's not a way to produce a
conversation because if you acquiesce in aberrant behavior, you simply
encourage the repetition of it, which we're obviously not going to do,"
Bolton told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

"It should make people nervous when non-transparent regimes who have
announced they have nuclear warheads, fire missiles," Bush said at a
meeting with European leaders in Vienna, Austria. "This is not the way
you conduct business in the world."

"If North Korea test-fires a missile, it might have an impact on aid of
rice and fertilizer to North Korea," South Korean Unification Minister
Lee Jong-seok told opposition lawmakers, according to his spokesman.

At the Vienna summit, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said
that if North Korea fires the missile, Europe would join the United
States in condemning it.
"There will be a strong statement, strong answer from the
international community and Europe will be part of it," Schuessel said.

"North Korea as a sovereign state has the right to develop, deploy,
test-fire and export a missile," he said. "We are aware of the U.S.
concerns about our missile test-launch. So our position is that we
should resolve the issue through negotiations."

One comment on the PRNK, if you launch into someone else's airspace, do they have the right to autonomy and defense of their land/airspace? (specifically Japan)

Debt and the Economy

The Skeptical Optimist: Why Debt Doomsday is a Myth

Just an interesting link. I think that we do need to cut spending, but sometimes a little debt is ok. The debt had gotten out of control, but we also need to be looking at debt as a % of GDP or some other % metric.

3D shark, in motion!

Have you ever done those magiceye pics when you were a kid? I used to generate them, but only in black and white. Anyway, here is a really neato animated one!

Image:Stereogram Tut Animated Shark Small.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So yeah, I'm an addict...

'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving

Article says:
One only stops knowledge addiction for food (wrong, I bring the food to the knowledge).

I guess if you have an addiction, that an addiction to learning isn't the worst.

Sophrosyne

So I was reading "Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A concept for Leadership Analysis" put out by David Ronfeldt of RAND, and found a neat word. "Sophrosyne" It is a pretty neat concept. It is hard to translate into English, so I won't try to. Try, http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-sop1.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophrosyne .

Awesome pic

Thought you guys might enjoy a picture of the war games in the pacific.

060618-N-8591H-383-h.jpg (JPEG Image, 4288x2848 pixels) - Scaled (29%)

MK-84

Down with AFX-794, use MNX-795! More info at AF-746.

Crazy Chavez

Chavez Kalashnikov factory plan stirs fear - Yahoo! News

A definite read, Chavez is really starting to turn insane. He has delusions that the United States wants to invade his country and  is supporting efforts that will bring about problems that will take many years to fix. Morales has fallen for this romantic idea of socialism that will not work. Many of the programs that he is supporting sound good on the surface, but they have huge flaws. Back to the article, I think that a new AK factory is a horrible idea for the stability of the region. They just bought 100,000 AK's for a military that has 87,500 people. Now they are building a factory to make more and the numbers just don't add up. Astute readers will say, "but Joe, what about the 100,000 Armed Reserve Soldiers, don't they need guns?" Yes, those soldiers need guns, but Venezuela already has FN-FAL's and other arms that it had before this deal. Guns just don't "rot" and unless they have been shot alot, there is no reason to not use a gun that is 75 years old. People buy rifles that were put away in grease during WWII to shoot today. As I see it, the AK factory is being built to arm the approximately 2 million reservists and for giving/selling arms to local troublemakers like Morales and the FARC. Once Chavez has his military built up, he will begin to look for ways to use it. The non-substance Bolivian farmers have recently formed militias to defend against Morales plan to take land from the rich to give to the poor. I bet that Venezuelan AK's will be used against them if it comes to an armed struggle. Other nations such as Brazil are getting fed up with Bolivia's antics, and Chavez is promoting these actions. Some of these AK's will end up in Columbia, or the ammunition will. This will be used to keep the drugs flowing to keep the United States distracted. Chavez is pretty smart though. He has that heating oil subsidy for poor americans, and the Venezuelian state-owned oil company owns CITGO. Some of his plan may be to use his new military to keep oil investors on their toes, and make the "Venezuelan premium" even higher. Current light sweet crude prices are trading at a premium to what people would expect it to cost without fears of problems in certain areas of the world (mid-east/south america/hurricanes in the US). Btw, wtf is up with that. If a hurricane occurs, and we lose refining capability, then the world market would have more oil. Then, the supply should increase, and the prices of unrefined oil should go down. The price of gas for our cars would go up, because supply goes down for refined gas in the United States. Does anyone know how much of our refined oil is sold to other countries?  There is uncertainty and fear about what Chavez is planning and what will happen next with Venezuelan oil. This has increased the price of a barrel of oil. Chavez wants to keep it that way, because that gives him money for his military and for wining over the hearts of the poor in Venezuela.

I keep wanting to yell at Morales, but I'll save that for another post.

Sudoku Solver

Well, I finally have finished the "brains" of the sudoku solver that I have been writing to practice python. It can solve every sudoku that it can solve, and partially fill out any that it can't. I have tested a few from Todd's "Sudoku Daily" calender. It can solve all of those, including the dreaded ~~~ ***** ~~~. It is pretty slow, the five star one took 0.56 seconds, and the one star took 0.29 seconds. This is including some display on a remote x terminal. I have been toying with the idea of writing a nice GUI for entering in the sudokus, just to learn how that stuff works. All of this was developed and run on a POS linux box running Ubuntu, its a celeron 333, 660 bogomips. The PIV 2.2 Ghz that I call my main computer gets 0.12 seconds for the five star, and 0.06 seconds for the one star (but thats with me running a bunch of stuff). So, I learned something about python. I know there is a lot of room for improvement, I coded this project so that it would be simple to understand (but hard to debug!). I deliberately traded simplicity in the program for execution time, with more information passed between the parts, it could be made much faster. I haven't looked for any mathematical algorithms for solving sudokus, and just thought about how I would approach it. Maybe I'll talk to Josh for a web based sudoku solver, using my python code as the backend. I know the demand must be extremely small, I thought of this small project back when Todd first got the calender and the whole house was doing them in their spare time. It was a small/simple project that I knew I could finish in a few hours of real work.

An interesting thing happened when I tried to run my code on my windows box, their was an error caused by python in the NTVDM CPU getting an illegal instruction. This was in the 16-bit MS-DOS Subsystem. (No, I don't have a clue what that means). This may lead to the solution of the random "Kernel_inpage_errors" that I have been having that shutdown my computer. This time, the error was because the python that I tried to run was designed to be used with cygwin, and ran perfectly there. Seems that NTVDM is a virtual machine for ms-dos and 16-bit windows programs. Windows will run NTVDM.EXE as a 32 bit application, and then the other non win-32 processes are run as children to it. ... whew. Moral of the story, use cygwin for happiness in life.

Dhimmi Watch: ‘Sex slave’ trial starts in US

Dhimmi Watch: ‘Sex slave’ trial starts in US


All I can say is, I agree with Charles James Napier. Wtf, the defense of "well, my culture allows slaves, rapes, child molestation, or human sacrifice" can not be a valid defense.

Nice public photos...

Japan and US warn N.Korea against missile launch - Yahoo! News


I find it very interesting that we have released photos of exactly where we expect the launch control to occur. In the picture from the article, it says "possible vehicle".  I don't know about you, but that looks like a truck to me. Now, the eVil  North Koreans could have fake dummy trucks, but I don't see why. So what if people are driving to work, at a launch control center. We have to have better evidence than that, a rocket on a launch pad (harder to hide), and lots of fuel would be nice. I bet that we have one, as we seem to know that the launch is 33 m high, which is extended from the TD-1 launcher height. The TD-2 is about 100ft tall and the TD-2's use TM-185 (20% Gasoline + 80% Kerosene) and AK-27I (27% N₂O₄ + 73% HNO₃ + Iodium Inhibitor) last time I checked.

The picture is a good way to send a message to the North Koreans, with one public picture you tell them that you could shut down and missile launch with one attack, and you don't even have to destroy their missile. We have currently have assets that would make an attack on the mainland United States a non-issue. The problem comes in when the North Koreans want to attack Japan or other nations in the area. Japan just bought a nice set of radars and defensive missile from us, after the TD-1 launch that went into it's airspace. The Japanese (in early June 2006) have 4 AEGIS destroyers with SM-2's (soon SM-3's), and will also use PAC-3's for land based defense. 


The TD-2 does have the range to hit parts of the United stages, but I don't think that the North Koreans have the capability to launch the TD-2 and have a successful warhead separation. They tried before to launch the TD-1 and told everyone that they were launching a satellite into orbit. There was a problem with the launch and nothing ever was placed into orbit. The rumor is the the third stage blew up, right before separation or burnout. They pretended that they had been successful though.

I wonder what will happen. The South Koreans say that the launch is looking like it can be ready by June 17th or 18th.


Update: I just found out that Japan has sent two of those AEGIS destroyers to the Sea of Japan and Pacific Ocean. So the Japanese are taking it seriously.

Spell checker

Interesting thought today, about the spell checker that I added to firefox for this blog. Now that I have an extension for spell checking in my browser, every web app that I use, automatically gets a spell checker. Thats a pretty powerful concept. Can you imagine if an operating system had the ability to add stuff like that?

Test of Performancing

Finance: The pain of mortgage over-extension - Yahoo! News

I need to find a blog editing tool, that has a spell checker. This Performancing extension is pretty cool. I don't know if it is better than the Blogthis one though.

House, Senate members disclose finances - Yahoo! News

House, Senate members disclose finances - Yahoo! News

Testing out the "blog this" extension ...

Requirements

I need a first post to check out the templates...