text:
Family Practice Associates of Easley has a passionate commitment to breast cancer awareness and screening. Eight women of this office family have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Thanks to early diagnosis on the St. Francis Mobile Mammography, this practice is affectionately known as the Pink Sisters who took on cancer, fought like girls and won! Watch as they tell their story as to how they come together as a family and support one another throughout each diagnosis, treatment and recovery.
The 2013 Breast Cancer Awareness Tiger Paw pins, courtesy of Dabo Swinney's All In Team Foundation, along with Coca-Cola Consolidated, OOBE and St. Francis Hospital, are now available for sale. Click HERE to purchase the pin at the Official Online Store of Clemson Athletics on ClemsonTigers.com. The pins are also available locally at Tiger Town Graphics in downtown Clemson and at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the Clemson campus. On football game-days, the pins will be available in the novelty stands at Memorial Stadium, the WestZone store and the Littlejohn Coliseum store.
October 28, 2020


text:
shopping bag: 0 items
sign in | register | my account
Product info
UK Delivery
Returns policy
This Cream / Brown Travel Carrier is an amazing fantastic versatile item. You will wonder how you managed without it. When you extend the telescopic handle it can be used as a wheeled carrier and can be pulled along on its wheels, just like a regular suitcase, the only difference this time is that the contents are more precious. It can also be used as a backpack using the shoulder straps at the rear and if you are feeling particularly strong it can be carried underarm using the handle on top of the carrier. Both sides have a zip opening with netting on each side for good air circulation. The front has a large flap which can be raised to allow for even more air circulation and while he/she can see out it is not so easy for passers-by to see in. The interior features a lead that will attach to a collar or harness so when the door is opened the dog cannot make a run for it until you have control. Also another feature is an animal print design with a removable mat for easy cleaning.
Key FeaturesCan be used as a wheeled carrier and pulled along on its wheelsCan be used as a backpack carrier using the shoulder strapsCan be used as a carry on using the handle on top of the carrierSuitable for dogs up to 33lbs / 15kgsDimensions: (LxBxH) 47cm x 27cm x 42cm
Delivery United Kingdom:
£3.25 delivery fee or FREE if you spend over £25.00
Standard delivery 1-3 working days. Orders will be sent out via the most suitable carrier, depending
on destination & weight.
Special Delivery™ Royal Mail available as a shipping extra on the "Shopping Bag" page. Orders placed before 1pm
should arrive
next working day before 1pm
(supplement fee of £4.00 applies).
All items are dispatched from within the UK & include VAT.
click here to view international delivery rates.
We guarantee to replace or refund any item you are not completely happy
with when you return it to us by post, in a saleable condition within 14 days of receipt.
Items should be returned new, unused, and with all garment tags still
attached. Returns that are damaged or soiled may not be accepted and
may be sent back to the customer.
Refunds will be credited to your original method of payment and excludes
import duties / outside EU taxes.
click here for our complete Returns Policy.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Research internship with Microsoft Research Redmond (USA). I joined the Computational User Experiences (CUE) group and explored haptics for Kinect.
3 months
Microsoft Research Redmond
Asta Roseway, Dan Morris and Desney Tan
Check the video at the bottom of the page for details of the interaction.
Design explorations for handheld boxes that give simple directional cues (front/back) in a Kinect-like setup.
Video mov, 640 x 360px , 6.25 MB


text:
Crime Prevention: Working Together To
Create Safer Schools
PamphletsDownload the printable pamphlet
Students, Parents, School Staff, Community Partners and Law Enforcement
Ideas on how to create a safe school
Creating a safe place where children can learn and grow depends on a partnership among students, parents, teachers, and other community institutions. To prevent school violence each partner has to take action.
Here are some practical suggestions for young people, parents, school staff and others in the community.
- Settle arguments with words, not fists or weapons. If you don't know how, learn how.
- Don't carry guns, knives, or other weapons to school.
- Report crimes or suspicious activities to the police, school authorities or parents.
- Tell a school official immediately if you see another student with a gun, knife or other weapon.
- Tell a teacher, parent or trusted adult if you're worried about a bully, threats or violence by another student.
- Learn safe routes for traveling to and from school and stick to them. Know good places to seek help.
- Don't use alcohol or other drugs, and stay away from places and people associated with them.
- Get involved in your school's anti-violence activities. Hold an anti-violence poster contest, hold an anti-drug rally, volunteer to counsel peers. If there isn't a program at your school, help start one.
- Sharpen your parenting skills. Emphasize and build on your children's strengths.
- Teach your children how to reduce their risks of becoming crime victims.
- Know where your kids are, what they are doing, and who they are with, at all times.
- Set clear rules about acceptable activities, in advance.
- Ask your children about what goes on during the school day. Listen to what they say and take their concerns and worries seriously.
- Help your children learn non-violent ways to handle frustration, anger and conflict.
- Do not allow your child to carry guns, knives or other weapons.
- Become involved in your child's school activities, PTA and field trips, and help out in class or the lunchroom.
- Work with other parents in your neighborhood to start a block parent program.
School staff
- Evaluate your school's safety objectively. Set targets for improvement. Be honest about crime problems and work toward improving the situation.
- Develop consistent disciplinary policies, good security procedures and incident response plans.
- Train school personnel in conflict resolution, problem solving, drug prevention, crisis intervention cultural sensitivity, classroom management and counseling skills.
- Make sure staff can recognize trouble signs and identify potentially violent students.
- Encourage students to talk about concerns about activities in their school, home and neighborhood. Carefully listen to what they say.
- If a student makes a threat of violence, take him or her seriously. Address the problem immediately and act to prevent a potential conflict.
- When something violent and frightening happens at school or in the neighborhood, take time to talk about it. Discuss the consequences and get students to think about what other choices, besides violence, might have been available. Get help from trained counselors, if necessary.
- Work with students, parents, law enforcement, local government, and community-based groups to develop community-wide crime prevention efforts.
Community partners
- Law enforcement can report on the type of crimes in the surrounding community and suggest ways to make schools safer.
- Have police or organized groups of adults patrol routes students take to and from school.
- Community-based groups, church organizations, and other service groups can provide counseling, extended learning programs, before and after school activities and other community crime prevention programs.
- State and local governments can develop model school safety plans and provide funding for schools to implement the programs.
- Local businesses can provide apprenticeship programs, participate in adopt-a-school programs or serve as mentors to area students.
- Colleges and universities can offer conflict management courses to teachers or assist school officials in implementing violence prevention curricula.
When crime drugs and violence spill over from the streets into the schools, providing a safe learning environment becomes increasingly difficult.
Many students must travel through gang turf or groups of drug dealers. More students are carrying weapons for protection; gunfights replace fistfights.
Violence has become an acceptable way to settle conflicts. This kind of an environment makes it difficult for teachers to teach and children to learn.


text:
Small Plant News: Volume 5, Number 10
|Small Plant News Archive Page. This is an archive page. No new content is being added. While these newsletters remain available for reference purposes, the documents do not reflect changes to Agency policy that may have been instituted since the newsletters were published. Also note that resources and websites mentioned in older issues may have moved or may no longer be available. Points of contact for various initiatives may have changed.
In This Issue:
- Common Food Safety Violations Documented by Federal Regulatory Agencies, Part II
- Guidance for Establishments Affected by a Natural Disaster
- Countertop Food Safety Training Program Provides a Hands-On, Easy Approach for Food Service Workers
- Commonly Asked Questions & Answers
Common Food Safety Violations Documented by Federal Regulatory Agencies, Part II
By Commander Jeff Tarrant, U.S. Public Health Service
In July 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) developed a food safety cross-training program to strengthen communication and collaboration efforts among USDA and HHS agencies on food safety issues in shared jurisdiction facilities. As part of the program, the agencies devised a method to ensure that any food safety violations that employees observe while conducting their normal day-to-day duties at federally regulated establishments are reported to the agency with jurisdiction over the violation.
What were the common violations noted by the three agencies? The Small Plant News editorial staff decided to answer this question by examining "significant observations" from each agency's training material. What we found is best broken down into the following categories: General Facility, Processing, Storage, and Employee Health and Hygiene.
In Small Plant News, Volume 5, Number 8, we looked at common food safety violations documented by Federal regulatory agencies related to General Facility and Processing observations. In this issue, we'll examine Storage and Employee Health and Hygiene violations.
First, let's review Storage violations. Some common issues that arise during inspections involve the placement of pesticides, insecticides, and cleaning solutions in storage areas. On numerous occasions, open containers of pesticide bait placed near food products have been noted by inspectors. During one inspection, for instance, rodent bait was found in apple storage bins and in the raw-ingredient side of a baby food processing line. If the problem hadn't been detected, infants could have been sickened and/or killed. This is why pesticides, insecticides, and cleaning supplies must be used and stored properly. Rodent and insect bait stations should be designed to eliminate spillage into processing and storage areas and placed where they will not contaminate food or food contact surfaces.
Another observation involves improperly cooling food products in storage areas. For instance, potentially hazardous food items (e.g., those high in protein or carbohydrates, with a pH above 4.6 and a water activity above 0.85) have been documented as being held for long periods of time at room temperature (usually more than 2 hours) and not being actively processed. Some of the items included cooked vegetables and grains, soups, gravy, raw shell eggs, egg products, meat, seafood, and ready-to-eat foods. Often times, improperly cooked products can be a result of coolers and freezers that are not properly maintained. Remember that coolers should maintain food at or below 41 °F, and freezers should maintain food in a frozen state, ideally between 0 and 10 °F. Be aware that the air temperature can fluctuate in coolers because of the frequent opening and closing of the doors. Therefore, collect your readings prior to opening the door or entering the area.
Other observations include the possibility of cross contamination when raw ingredients are stored near finished product in a manner that exposes them to microbial contamination. An example of this involves storing raw meat above or adjacent to ready-to-eat foods, such as cooked product or raw vegetables, in a refrigerated storage area. Ideally, facilities should have dedicated coolers for storing raw meat products. In addition, cross contamination can occur when food products are improperly covered or when retained/quarantined products are accidentally mixed with products not under quarantine or retention. Products must be covered or sealed in a container to reduce the likelihood of accidental or intentional contamination, and establishments should segregate and label damaged and/or retained/quarantined containers of food to ensure that they are not used by mistake.
One issue that should be addressed is the transportation of raw and finished products. Product contamination can occur when raw materials are transported on unclean or improperly maintained vehicles. As a result, containers can become grossly contaminated, and frozen or refrigerated ingredients may become contaminated if not held at a cold temperature. Essentially, trucks should be dedicated to transporting food and not used for waste products and toxic substances. When a vehicle is used to transport both raw and finished products, they should not be mixed together. The raw products should be transported separately, and the vehicle should be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before transporting finished products.
One real-life scenario involved the cross contamination of ready-to-eat food in 1994, which led to a nationwide outbreak of salmonellosis that was responsible for sickening an estimated 224,000 people in the United States. It was later determined that the outbreak occurred because the pasteurized ice cream pre-mix was delivered to a facility in a tanker truck that had previously transported raw, unpasteurized eggs. The tank hadn't been properly washed and sanitized between loads, and the raw egg mix was contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis bacteria.
Next, we'll look at Employee Health and Hygiene violations that have been documented by Federal inspectors. One of the gravest violations, and often the simplest to fix, is a lack of accessible hand washing facilities (with soap, water, and a dryer or towels) within an establishment. Since proper hand washing is a key defense against the spread of pathogens between employees and product, it is critical and required by law to provide and properly maintain hand washing stations.
Another issue that arises is the lack of an employee health and hygiene training program in food service facilities. Usually, poor hygienic practices demonstrated by employees indicates a lack of proper training and interest in the quality of products produced by the establishment. Good hygienic practices include the wearing of clean lab coats, hair nets, arm guards, and intact gloves. If food service gloves are used as a barrier against contamination, they must be changed when they become soiled or damaged. In addition, employees must wash their hands prior to putting the gloves on.
When it comes to employee health, Federal inspectors have documented incalculable instances of employees who exhibited symptoms of infectious disease while handling or processing food products in establishments. After a recent foodborne illness outbreak investigation in the United States, it was determined that the causative agent, Staphylococcus aureus, was traced back to an infectious employee at a bakery. Don't allow this to happen in your facility. If employees are diagnosed with or exhibiting symptoms of an infectious disease while at work, send them home and recommend they visit their primary healthcare facility. Do not permit them to return to work until cleared by a doctor.
For more information on food safety regulatory requirements, visit the following food safety Web sites: www.fsis.usda.gov, www.fda.gov, and www.ams.usda.gov.
[Back to Top]
Guidance for Establishments Affected by a Natural Disaster
By Jane Johnson, DVM
If you own or operate a meat, poultry, egg products, or retail and foodservice establishment, you may have asked yourself at some point, "where on the FSIS Web site can I find guidance that identifies food safety factors that I should consider as I resume operations in an area affected by a hurricane, flood, natural, or other disaster?" You can find this type of information at www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Employees/TSC_Technical_Guidance/index.asp .
On this Web page, you'll find links to technical guidance such as a checklist outlining the steps to take in the event of flooding; questions and answers identifying food safety and other issues in areas affected by natural disasters; emergency action food safety suggestions and information for retail and foodservice establishments resuming business in the aftermath of natural or other disasters; and guidelines for FSIS personnel that you may also find useful regarding information for discussion to assist in identifying possible food safety issues in processing and slaughter establishments.
For more information or if you have any questions, feel free to contact the Small Plant Help Desk at 1-877-FSISHelp 1-877-374-7435) or email email@example.com
[Back to Top]
Countertop Food Safety Training Program Provides a Hands-On, Easy Approach for Food Service Workers
By Jane Johnson, DVM
The Countertop Food Safety Training Program for Employees of USDA-Inspected Egg, Meat, and Poultry Establishments is a bilingual (English and Spanish) training program that provides an educational tool for the processed egg, meat, poultry, and other food processing industries to train their Spanish-speaking line employees on essential concepts in short periods of time. It is intended to provide operators an educational tool that recognizes these workers' cultural and linguistic differences.
The following eight modules can be presented to small audiences in informal settings in 20-30 minutes: the ABCs of Food Safety; Cross Contamination; Personal Hygiene; Hand Washing and Gloves; Sanitation; Allergens; Food Defense; and ABCs of HACCP.
The training program was prepared under a USDA-FSIS cooperative agreement by Cathy Cutter of Pennsylvania State University, in cooperation with Sergio Nieto-Montenegro of Hispanic Workforce Management, LLC. The modules are posted on FSIS' Web site at www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Employees/Counter_Top_FS_Training/index.asp . Limited hard copies are also available for distribution. Please contact the Small Plant Help Desk at 1-877-FSISHelp (1-877-374-7435) or email firstname.lastname@example.com
[Back to Top]
Commonly Asked Questions & Answers
Q. Does the agency expect cattle slaughter establishments to determine that Escherichia coli ( E. coli) O157:H7 is a hazard reasonably likely to occur (RLTO)?
A. Yes, the agency expects cattle slaughter establishments to address the food safety hazard of E. coli O157:H7 in their Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans because of the prevalence of the pathogen shed by cattle transported to slaughter. In 2002, the agency published a Federal Register Notice (Docket No. 00-022N), titled E. coli O157:H7 Contamination of Beef Products, in which FSIS outlined the agency's position:
"The regulations require that establishments develop HACCP plans that include critical control points (CCPs): points, steps, or procedures in a food process at which a control can be applied, and, as a result, a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to acceptable levels. FSIS considers an acceptable reduction for E. coli O157:H7 to be a reduction to an undetectable level. Because controls to reduce the risk of E. coli O157:H7 contamination when the product is still intact may be the best means of controlling the hazard, FSIS believes that slaughter establishments…should strongly consider putting in place one or more validated CCPs that are designed to eliminate or reduce E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens. If such establishments have controls in place to address E. coli O157:H7 specifically, they cannot conclude that the pathogen is not a hazard reasonably likely to occur in the absence of those controls. FSIS believes that any interventions that slaughter establishments…use to address E. coli O157:H7 should be incorporated into their HACCP plans. At this time, FSIS is not aware of any prerequisite programs that are appropriate for use in slaughter…to address E. coli O157:H7."
The agency is not aware of any pre-harvest strategy that can reduce or eliminate the pathogen to non-detectable levels prior to cattle being transported for slaughtering. Therefore, a cattle slaughter establishment needs to address this known food safety hazard in its cattle slaughter process with a CCP (9 CFR 417.1). Cattle slaughter establishments need to ensure that the design and execution of the CCP addressing E. coli O157:H7 ensures that by the end of the slaughter process, the pathogen is reduced to non-detectable levels or is eliminated on the cattle carcasses that establishments fabricate or ship into commerce. Robust verification testing results from trim manufacturing, applied through appropriate statistical process control systems, have proven to be an accurate way for slaughter establishments to assess the effectiveness of the slaughter operation. Published scientific studies have demonstrated that there are effective decontamination methods that can be used for preventing, eliminating, or reducing E. coli O157:H7. The slaughter establishment may use antimicrobial agents (FSIS Directive 7120.1, Safe and Suitable Ingredients Used in the Production of Meat, Poultry, and Egg Products) or other interventions to ensure its slaughter process reduces or eliminates the pathogen to nondetectable levels. Posted on FSIS' Web site are resources to assist small and very small slaughter establishments ( www.fsis.usda.gov/Science/Small_Very_Small_Plant_Outreach/index.asp ).
Q. The 2008 Farm Bill provides that establishments selected to participate in the cooperative interstate shipment program must be "in compliance with" with all Federal standards. Why does the new interstate shipment program need to operate under standards that are the "same as" those imposed under the Federal program when States already have programs that are "at least equal to"?
A. The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA), as amended by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill, expressly state that the cooperative interstate shipment program must operate under standards that are the "same as" those imposed under the Federal program.
[Back to Top]
Small Plant NEWS
Editor: Keith Payne
Managing Editor: Jane Johnson, DVM
Production: Joan Lindenberger, Sally Fernandez
Design: Gordon Wilson, Duane Robinson
Contact: Small Plant News, USDA/FSIS, Patriots Plaza III, Rm. 9-267A, Mailstop 3778 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Employers looking to hire workers on the spot
If you or someone you know is looking for work, 30 employers are ready to fill their open positions.
The fourth annual Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce is working with Fayetteville Schools and will host the event at Guesthouse International Hotel and Suites on 1255 S. Shiloh Drive in Fayetteville.
The job fair will be exclusively for high school students when the doors open at 9:30 a.m.
"This job expo is the opportunity for them to come out and talk to employers and practice what they have learned and hopefully help them become more successful in landing a job," said Chung Tan, director of Economic Development.
Teens will be able to talk to employers and apply for jobs from 9:30 until 11:30 a.m.
The job fair will open the doors to everyone from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m
There is a long list of employers participating.
Retailers, banks, hospitals, police and fire departments are all among them.
"They can talk to employers directly to find out what vacancies are out there," said Tan.
Job training providers will also be in attendance.


text:
freenode/#lisp - IRC ChatlogSearch
13:03:06 beach Then, errors and warnings signaled by the reader and the compiler need to be handled and presented to the user as appropriate feedback.
13:03:12 beach All this at typing speed.
13:04:41 beach LdBeth: As you can see, there are a lot of mutual dependencies here, and all the modules are being worked on. But getting them all done and working together is going to take some more time.
13:19:00 LdBeth beach: yes. I'm planning on a tool help deriving code from specification and documents and keep docs updated with them. All these seem can be fit into my design, but I should keep up with the progress now
13:19:41 beach Sounds like a very useful thing.
13:20:16 beach I think I have seen examples of your work. You must have exposed some examples.
13:30:00 beach scymtym: Speaking of which, did you ever get around to extracting that new function in Eclector, the one that reads either something that can be returned or something that is skipped?
13:31:56 beach scymtym: As it turns out, in Second Climacs I couldn't find a suitable way of customizing the SICL reader to do what I need, so I copied the main reader function and modified it. That solution is clearly undesirable, so I would like to rip out that code and replace it with Eclector at some point.
13:36:03 ebrasca beach: You have someting in mind for climacs , have you read someting about lem?
13:37:19 dlowe another name would be a good start
13:38:23 ebrasca dlowe: What do you mean with another name?
13:40:08 beach ebrasca: Yes, but it looks like a traditional Emacs clone.
13:41:09 ebrasca beach: Can you explain what climacs is?
13:41:15 beach ebrasca: Some people feel queasy about the word "climax".
13:42:31 ebrasca ACTION is searching what "climax" is.
13:42:43 LdBeth GG
13:42:53 jackdaniel it is an orgasm
13:43:02 beach ebrasca: In American English, it means "orgasm", and in Russian it means "menopause".
13:43:25 v0|d lol.
13:43:40 v0|d i bet there is menoplay.
13:43:48 ebrasca But google say it is "culminate in an exciting or impressive event"
13:43:50 beach ebrasca: I'll explain the plan for Second Climacs. The plan is to use a very efficient buffer implementation, and to use the Common Lisp READ function to parse the contents of the buffer, as opposed to using regular expressions. Then the result of parsing the buffer will be handed to the compiler, for further analysis, all at typing speed.
13:44:08 v0|d jackdaniel: hey sup?
13:44:09 beach ebrasca: yes, technically that's all it means.
13:45:12 jackdaniel v0|d: I'm fine, thank you
13:45:29 ebrasca beach: It sound strange.
13:45:41 v0|d jackdaniel: :)
13:45:59 v0|d jackdaniel: does it make sense to make an ecl binary as an efi app?
13:46:34 v0|d i am thinking about it for a while still couldn't get a proper use case.
13:46:36 beach ebrasca: What does?
13:46:54 jackdaniel ecl depends on posix features. unless you put a posix system in your bios it will be hard
13:47:14 v0|d jackdaniel: I know.
13:47:37 ebrasca beach: Does it auto compile when you end someting?
13:48:11 beach ebrasca: It is supposed to do all this for every character typed.
13:48:36 beach ebrasca: So that the feedback will be instantaneous and without any particular keystrokes on the part of the user.
13:49:22 v0|d jackdaniel: i am interested in possible use cases
13:49:35 v0|d let me know if you think a nice one:0
13:49:57 jackdaniel I'm not a big fan of efi myself, so I doubt I'll find any
13:50:05 LdBeth Emacs does that by saving file to disk and call the lint tool on it, which makes me worried about my disk life
13:50:11 ebrasca beach: Can you destroy your system with it? (Like if you editing tcp of your system and you are working remotely on it.)
13:50:48 ebrasca ACTION is afk , he goes to buy someting and come back later.
13:50:53 beach ebrasca: There are various ways of protecting against such problems.
13:51:12 LdBeth If TCP is handled by a service manager it could be probably restarted, for example
13:52:11 p_l v0|d: it's possible to build ECL as EFI app, though it might take some wrangling in libs
13:52:34 p_l it would be statically linked, though
13:52:50 beach LdBeth: Emacs doesn't analyze Common Lisp code at typing speed. Maybe it does it with some other language.
13:52:54 p_l (unless you implement your own dynamic loader, afaik)
13:53:08 v0|d p_l: yeah it sounds to me like porting ecl to DOS 6.22
13:53:40 v0|d yet other than building a bios configurator, no use cases :(
13:53:42 LdBeth beach: I was talk about another language, haven't made that clear
13:53:49 beach Got it.
13:53:58 p_l the difference is that instead of crappy mishmash of CP/M emulation you're getting interesting API and modern environment
13:54:15 v0|d p_l: don't say, 1k pages of API, read it.
13:54:33 p_l v0|d: you could do more things at EFI level, including things like diagnostic software
13:54:39 p_l v0|d: I've read EFI API
13:54:42 p_l and source code
13:54:50 p_l (first time ~2001?)
13:54:59 v0|d p_l: I share your pain.
13:55:03 p_l no pain there
13:55:09 v0|d heh ok.
13:55:54 p_l v0|d: the biggest issue, IMO, is intel pulling bytecode compiler behind expensive license, so bytecode use dropped heavily
13:56:09 p_l and of course GNU didn't care
13:56:40 v0|d so does that mean I cannot write my interpreter in lisp for efi bytecode?
13:56:44 v0|d wow, didn't know that.
13:56:56 p_l you can
13:57:02 p_l it's just that you need to write your own compiler for it
13:57:27 p_l because the only available tools stopped being available for free and now involve hefty license fee
13:57:32 v0|d what 'bout iasl?
13:57:34 p_l the interpreter is open source
13:57:39 p_l v0|d: that's a different bytecode
13:57:46 v0|d i know, does the same apply to it?
13:57:51 p_l no
13:57:59 v0|d thank god.
13:58:01 p_l for ACPI, intel open sourced their tools
14:00:06 p_l for EFI, the compiler was originally free-as-in-beer included with EFI 1.10 devkit
14:00:55 v0|d how come the name Uefi than?
14:00:58 p_l the devkit remained open source (though was hard to find for some time) but the compiler ended up with high license fee
14:01:00 v0|d meh.
14:01:26 p_l v0|d: significant changes between 1.10 and 2.0 which also became something actually deployed to more than just Itanium or experimental boards
14:02:26 p_l then they put whole reference implementation (also place where some vendors put their extensions) as open source again, with all the changes since 1.10
14:02:29 p_l (that's TianoCore)
14:02:50 v0|d see. that what you've been calling as *read* right?
14:03:03 v0|d i mean the tiano.
14:03:24 p_l I had the devkit in 2001-2002 or so
14:03:27 p_l for EFI 1.10
14:03:44 p_l when TianoCore became available, I of course updated :)
14:04:44 dale_ ** NICK dale
14:04:53 v0|d p_l: thnx, you've been most helpful.
14:05:07 p_l v0|d: part of the complexity of UEFI API is that, like in Lisp or Smalltalk, it's very late-binding
14:05:26 v0|d umm?
14:05:38 v0|d late as in runtime services are late?
14:06:04 p_l v0|d: late as in "linking happens late at runtime"
14:06:19 LdBeth Or you mean dynamic typing
14:06:23 p_l and the "set of symbols and packages" changes dynamically
14:06:44 LdBeth I see
14:06:44 p_l LdBeth: no, the typing is static~ish
14:07:15 v0|d p_l: you must be refering to system table
14:07:33 v0|d its seems like a gc root to me but nothing else.
14:07:37 p_l you have "protocols" which have static definitions (essentially an array of function pointers), and which are identified by GUID
14:07:54 p_l v0|d: oblist/obarray in older lisps served similar dual purpose
14:08:16 p_l or in SBCL, the global database (iirc?)
14:09:06 v0|d interesting.
14:09:26 p_l COM, CORBA could be considered to have similar approach in many a place
14:10:19 p_l anyway, it's very nice in the sense that you can for example write a disk editor that will understand the same kind of disks that your firmware supports, without actually caring about details other than "block device"
14:10:34 p_l something impossible to fully do on BIOS
14:11:16 v0|d p_l: my eyes bleed when I see those new bios config screens, they are better than win3.1
14:12:07 p_l v0|d: some people go crazy on designing them, yes. OTOH, UEFI having a gui toolkit built in means I could actually safely use serial terminal to configure everything on several machines I managed in the past
14:12:53 p_l becuse you have a toolkit for defining menus, variables available for editing, things like that, and this is then consumed by a component which renders it on console
14:13:11 p_l most people see whatever graphic monstrosity was made to skin it by vendor...
14:13:19 v0|d p_l: heh, a 14.4k BBS perhaps?
14:13:34 p_l I enjoyed the fact that there's a built in so-called VT-UF8 renderer
14:13:47 p_l *VT-UTF8
14:15:12 v0|d llvm ir is so common these days, why don't uefi use it, maybe i'm wrong that llvm doesnt do real 16 code, and this sentence doesn't make sense.
14:15:52 p_l v0|d: LLVM is compiler tech, and its bitcode is not actually hw independent
14:16:11 p_l plus it didn't exist when EFI started out
14:16:33 p_l both FCode and EFIBC are better fits for OPROMs than LLVM bitcode
14:17:14 p_l (hell, x86 real16 code was better choice than LLVM bitcode, because you could reasonably write an emulator for that, and LLVM bitcode is extensible)
14:18:21 v0|d p_l: i agree but since only we are old :p
14:18:29 v0|d nobody knows how to code16 these days.
14:18:36 v0|d ask what a cr0 is.
14:18:38 p_l it's also shitty environment, so there
14:18:44 p_l :P
14:19:07 v0|d i am blamed daily for not knowing pythong programming.
14:19:36 Josh_2 good
14:19:42 Josh_2 let people be mad
14:19:45 p_l I switched to saying "If it's algol derived I probably can write it, and very probably read it"
14:24:35 v0|d i might try to write an acpi shell in lisp.
14:24:41 v0|d it sounds like a phun project.
14:25:22 p_l more like UEFI. ACPI bytecode itself isn't that capable, even if it's theoretically turing complete (so is x86 page fault...)
14:25:52 v0|d haha.
14:26:02 ebrasca beach: I am back!
14:30:47 ebrasca beach: I am making mezzano updates, I like to get some ideas!
14:31:54 beach Good.
14:42:24 ebrasca beach: I think you can see more abstract than me.
14:42:51 beach ebrasca: Possibly. I have many years of training and experience.
14:44:21 ebrasca beach: I have some experience and i don't think I have good abstract vision!
14:45:07 beach ebrasca: The literature claims anything can be learned.
14:46:04 beach ebrasca: "experience" does not come by itself with time. It takes active work.
14:47:07 beach ebrasca: But people often need some initial training in order to know how to learn in an efficient and effective way.
14:47:54 Josh_2 oof
14:48:07 Josh_2 someone should probably show me that xD
14:48:24 Josh_2 I have about tree fiddy
14:49:21 beach I frequently say something like "in software development, many developers don't have 5 years of experience, but 1 year of experience 5 times". Because they don't learn from it.
14:49:21 beach So even after a very long activity, they don't have much experience.
14:49:50 Oladon_work beach: Yes! I keep running into that while trying to hire! :)(
14:49:51 Oladon_work :( rather
14:50:18 dlowe you know what I find weird is that I never see job openings for more than 5 years experience
14:50:38 beach` ** NICK beach
14:50:38 dlowe Like, do you want your applicants to all be 29?
14:51:07 dlowe Don't you have jobs that could use people with 15 years experience? 20?
14:51:12 beach Oladon_work: I see, yes.
14:51:35 Josh_2 beach: what do you mean?
14:51:54 beach Josh_2: By what?
14:52:03 beach Sorry lost connection for a short while.
14:52:29 Josh_2 "in software development, many developers don't have 5 years of experience, but 1 year of experience 5 times"
14:52:59 Oladon_work dlowe: I actually hate "years of experience" as a metric, partly because of the "1 year of experience 12 times" issue, but also partly due to the fact that people learn and grow and _experience_ at different rates
14:53:08 beach Josh_2: It's a way of saying that people don't learn and train themselves according to what they did in the past.
14:53:25 p_l dlowe: dunno, I'm currently banking of bedazzling people with "I have as many years of experience as the *TERM* is used"
14:54:13 Josh_2 beach: yes I understand that, but what is that like in practice?
14:54:15 Oladon_work dlowe: Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out a way around using it to weed out all the brand-spanking-new "developers" who just graduated from a coding school and think they're qualified for a senior developer role.
14:54:20 Josh_2 5 different jobs doing 5 different things?
14:54:37 Oladon_work Josh_2: Obviously not beach, but typically I see it when someone's been doing the same thing, over and over and over again, for x years
14:54:41 p_l Oladon_work: pretty hard to do without actually going to interview
14:54:41 beach dlowe: That would require management to realize that this kind of experience is needed. And they usually don't.
14:54:46 Oladon_work No learning, no growing, etc.
14:55:01 p_l and long term experience apparently tends to go into consulting
14:55:40 Oladon_work p_l: Eh, it does help with weeding people out, but I assume you're saying hard to replace it without going to an interview — that's what I've found, but I'm still hopeful that I can discover a way :)
14:55:45 beach Josh_2: They stick to the same language category. If they program in (say) C++, they don't try out a language with automatic memory management, or a dynamic language. They assume all languages are basically the same. They don't analyze their mistakes to improve in the future.
14:55:47 beach etc, etc.
14:56:07 p_l when outside of FAANG 10 years of experience tends to not get you anything better than if you had 3y of experience....
14:56:08 Josh_2 hmm alrighty
14:56:13 Oladon_work Ugh, FAANG.
14:56:23 Oladon_work ACTION has a very low opinion of FAANG developers in general.
14:56:32 Josh_2 I have used C++ and Java, I do not like them compared to CL :P
14:56:33 p_l Oladon_work: there's a big variety there
14:56:37 Oladon_work I'm sure there is
14:56:38 Josh_2 What is FAANG?
14:57:13 p_l for example, I'm starting to get why first three rungs of hierarchy at Google involve "promoted or out"
14:57:18 Oladon_work But my experience with them thus far is (limited, but) that they all drink the Kool-Aid and think they've been working with "the best of the best" at <company>
14:57:20 dlowe Josh_2: the top paying tech companies
14:57:31 Oladon_work That does all sorts of things to one's world view
14:57:43 p_l Oladon_work: some of them even have best-in-class in many areas
14:57:50 dlowe Oladon_work: just because the best people work at a place doesn't mean you're one of them
14:57:54 p_l but are siloed
14:57:55 Oladon_work For one, it means that if you saw something not working at <company>, it can't possibly work anywhere
14:58:01 Oladon_work dlowe: Of course not, but they're told they are
14:58:30 p_l Oladon_work: people who end up at FAANG straight from uni where they didn't do much work outside of coursework are worst
14:58:55 Oladon_work Yeah
14:59:01 p_l Oladon_work: OTOH, I figure it's exactly why L3 and L4 (with new grads starting at L3) aren't levels you can stay at at Google
14:59:06 dlowe I can't imagine the warped perspective that would come from being hired right from education
14:59:11 Josh_2 facebook amazon apple netflix google
14:59:14 Josh_2 I see
14:59:18 dlowe p_l: you can stay at L4 now
14:59:30 Oladon_work I'm looking forward to when I can afford to hire promising juniors and train them up myself (well, I and my team)
14:59:39 Josh_2 :O
14:59:55 Josh_2 You can whip me xD
15:00:00 Oladon_work In the meantime, I'm stuck looking for really good _actual_ senior developers... and finding people who think they're "senior" because they've been doing it for 2 years.
15:00:02 Oladon_work sigh
15:00:16 Josh_2 I'll make cups of tea and say nice things sometimes
15:00:26 Oladon_work Josh_2: Heh
15:00:33 Josh_2 xD I'll know my place
15:02:33 beach Josh_2: I often give talks to people who have been working for many years with software development. But they have no idea about the difference between static and dynamic languages, and they have no clue how a static memory allocator works, nor how automatic memory management works. They know nothing about compiler design, so they have no clue about the relationship between the code they write and what ends up being executed by the
15:02:33 beach processor.
15:03:30 Josh_2 hmmm
15:03:43 beach So they think that a dynamic language has to be interpreted, and they think manual memory management has no cost and no pauses, whereas they think that automatic memory management is expensive and gives long pauses.
15:04:16 Josh_2 I see
15:04:35 beach I mean, how could they miss something like that after (say) 5 years of working.
15:04:41 beach That is a disgrace.
15:05:55 schweers beach: please tell me that at least the part of not knowing about the differnce in static and dynamic languages is hyperbole.
15:06:47 dlowe I too have seen plenty of people who have that assumption
15:07:04 beach schweers: They sometimes know about the difference between static and dynamic *typing*, but I am talking about the separation (or no separation) between compile time and run time.
15:07:06 schweers dlowe: which assumption? The one about memory management?
15:07:33 schweers If that's what you mean it sounds more realistic. Still pretty sad.
15:07:43 schweers Probably the fault of our education system.
15:07:49 beach Nope, not only.
15:08:05 beach They just don't do any studying on their own.
15:08:15 beach They read no books, no papers, nothing.
15:08:50 schweers Oh right, years of experience. Yeah, then it's their fault.
15:08:53 Josh_2 can't say I read papers, I wouldn't even know where to start
15:09:04 Josh_2 but I do try to read books, currenly only CL stuff tho
15:09:06 Josh_2 so much to learn!
15:15:22 schweers I still find an idea that Steve Yegge put forth at some time quite interesting. According to him, many programmers only know a single language (or few languages which are very similar to each other). They think that learning a second language will be as hard as learing the first. During this time they will be unproductive and hence they fear for their livelihood.
15:16:17 Oladon_work The second language (as with human languages) is generally _almost_ as hard as the first, minus the concepts you learn the first time around which aren't language-specific
15:16:38 Oladon_work The thing I encounter a lot is people who claim to know multiple languages, but write them all as if they're the same
15:16:45 ecraven Oladon_work: ah, but aren't those concepts very close for most mainstream languages?
15:17:04 beach schweers: I don't think most developers even think that much about what they know and what they should learn.
15:17:05 schweers ecraven: the key may be: mainstream
15:17:48 Oladon_work ecraven: Many concepts are shared across all languages
15:18:20 Oladon_work ecraven: Those concepts don't have to be re-learned when learning a second language — but they also aren't technically part of learning the first language
15:19:03 schweers Learning a new language is also not a thing you do while dropping everything else, although it does help to have proper time and attention for this task.
15:19:49 beach schweers: I tell the industry people I give talk to, to take 4 hours per week for self study.
15:19:56 beach Say, Friday afternoon.
15:20:20 schweers Do you know whether or not this advice is followed?
15:20:31 beach Probably not.
15:20:46 Josh_2 How one can sit down and do one thing for four hours
15:20:47 beach If their manager does not allow that, then the manager does not have the best interest of the company and its stakeholders in mind.
15:20:48 Josh_2 baffling
15:21:04 beach Josh_2: Did I say "one thing"?
15:21:08 schweers I then do wonder why they bothered to listen to you in the first place.
15:21:14 Josh_2 no
15:21:34 beach schweers: Someone bought food.
15:22:09 schweers I mean: why did the company ask you to give that talk in the first place? They could have enjoyed the food without you :D
15:22:21 beach schweers: I also tell them that there is such a huge difference in productivity between developers and that this difference is so hard to measure, that nobody will notice that they work on their own stuff 4 hours per week.
15:22:55 beach schweers: Usually because their is a company-wide policy to organize talks, and someone knew me.
15:23:44 beach That part is somewhat sane.
15:24:04 beach External speakers usually say interesting things.
15:24:06 schweers So the people who decide to ask you for a talk, and the people who should follow your advice are different people. This kind of makes sence, in a sad way.
15:24:28 beach Yes, very different people.
15:25:11 beach Often the people organizing the talks are admin or management people with no training in software.
15:25:38 beach They do ask the participants for feedback, which is why I get invited back regularly.
15:26:01 Oladon_work Also, we like to convince ourselves we're "doing stuff" by listening to people tell us to do stuff.
15:26:06 Oladon_work (we = humans)
15:26:11 beach Indeed.
15:26:57 beach As a professor, I have gotten used to that a talk or a lecture is understood by around 10% of the participants. But that's better than 0.
15:27:07 Oladon_work Quite so
15:28:45 schweers Is is actually a normal thing that professors give talks at private companies? My employer is quite small, so I guess we won't enjoy this luxury (also I've only been working in industry for 2 years).
15:30:23 beach I don't know how common it is. I am close to retirement, so I do it for fun. And I only require that I not lose money, so I just ask for the travel and the hotel room to be reimbursed or paid for.
15:30:56 schweers So booking you isn't all that expensive for the company, depending on where they are.
15:31:16 schweers sorry, booking sounds a bit wrong in this context.
15:31:34 beach Right, it depends on how far I have to travel.
15:32:30 beach One company said their "budget is 1000€" which was plenty to cover travel from Bordeaux to Gothenburg and a few nights of hotel.
15:34:26 schweers Plus, you get to see Gothenburg :)
15:35:02 beach I did my military service there, and I spent one summer working as an intern there. :)
15:35:53 schweers I hope the memories you have are fond ones.
15:36:15 beach Fantastic!
15:43:36 schweers Cool. Well, I'm off home. Have a good evening everyone!
15:43:44 beach You too.
15:43:50 schweers thanks
16:09:38 jonatack beach: Bordeaux? Biarritz here, sometimes in Paris
16:10:44 beach jonatack: Great! Nice place!
16:13:30 jonatack beach: true, though too many tourists here ATM and then in nine days there's the g7 summit that locks down the whole city/region
16:13:46 beach Ah, yes. Get out!
16:14:24 jonatack hehe. Stocking up on food and supplies in advance.
16:14:43 beach Mhm!
16:23:43 Xach What would you say are the defining characteristics of a thunk?
16:24:07 beach A closure with no parameters.
16:24:30 Xach beach: is "no parameters" a key requirement?
16:24:38 beach Yes.
16:24:49 Xach Thanks. I have been using the term wrong for a while now.
16:24:58 beach Oh! I see.
16:25:20 Xach I think the term I want is "callback" - I mean a function passed to another function that may be called with some arguments if that is the agreed-upon protocol
16:26:31 Xach I don't like that name much either, though.
16:26:32 beach That is a reasonable name for such a function.
16:26:36 Xach (call-with-open-file (lambda (stream) ...) "foo.txt")
16:26:52 beach I don't like the word callback very much either.
16:27:12 beach Because it is often used in languages that don't support closures.
16:27:49 Xach I'm not sure plain "function" is clear enough
16:28:07 beach Right, "function" is more general.
16:28:15 beach It doesn't explain the purpose.
16:28:35 Xach I do often write docstrings that say something like "FUN must be a function of two arguments that blah blah ..."
16:29:09 beach Sure, I do too. The context explains how it is being called.
16:50:42 scymtym Xach: in the context of CALL-WITH-* functions accompanying a WITH-* macros, McCLIM uses the term "continuation" which is kind of accurate but also has suboptimal connotations
16:56:03 Xach scymtym: i see, thanks.
17:04:43 Josh_2 describe in clos is no longer a thing right? am looking at page 40 of OO pogramming in CL 1989 by Sonya Keene
17:06:15 Josh_2 no longer a generic function provided by CLOS, what is the alternative?
17:08:12 scymtym DESCRIBE is an ordinary function whose behavior can be customized by defining methods on DESCRIBE-OBJECT
17:08:35 Josh_2 ah
17:08:39 Josh_2 so describe-object
18:10:03 CEnnis91__ ** NICK CEnnis91
18:57:53 vms14 what image libraries do you use?
18:58:08 vms14 I'm tempted to use the imagemagick wrapper
18:58:35 vms14 did you play with images and lisp? I'm looking at cliki, there are a lot of libraries to choose
18:59:38 vms14 I just want to edit and create some images, but for a server
19:00:01 aeth PNG is well-supported natively. I'm not sure about the rest.
19:00:04 vms14 stuff like add text to an image, reescale and so on
19:00:25 vms14 aeth: you mean common lisp supports png natively?
19:00:42 aeth vms14: as in no need to FFI
19:00:48 vms14 ah
19:00:58 aeth although technically speaking since that's true any implementation is free to build it in :-p
19:01:14 vms14 xD
19:01:56 vms14 aeth: do you mean cl-png?
19:02:11 vms14 CL-PNG depends on libpng (your operating system distribution may have a separate package, called libpng-dev or
19:02:13 vms14 something similar, that contains the required png.h header file) and CFFI
19:02:21 aeth pngload
19:02:40 aeth I'm not sure about writing, but I remember doing that, too
19:02:46 vms14 ty
19:02:50 vms14 it's not listed in cliki
19:03:05 aeth oh, opticl
19:03:12 vms14 well, there is one named png-read
19:03:27 pjb It only reads.
19:03:32 vms14 yeah
19:03:51 aeth vms14: pngload was written to replace pngread in opticl and other places according to the readme, I think. https://github.com/HackerTheory/pngload
19:03:56 pjb And sometimes you want to read jpeg, but cl-jpeg can't read JPEG format C2 (and others).
19:03:58 Josh_2 I have done image manipulation with cl-png
19:04:11 vms14 hmm
19:04:14 dlowe I think there were some good libcairo bindings
19:04:21 aeth vms14: opticl also has PNG write but it's probably not as optimized or flexible
19:04:26 pjb Let's all play lotto, so we may finance development of complete CL libraries!
19:04:42 Josh_2 Wrote some image steganography tool with it
19:04:45 vms14 I did noob stuff with imagemagick and perl
19:04:49 vms14 I like imagemagick
19:05:11 vms14 but I need to install it, so if I have a pure library for images in lisp, better
19:05:11 Josh_2 actually I used opticl
19:05:40 Josh_2 http://quickdocs.org/opticl/
19:05:50 vms14 I'm looking at opticl just now
19:06:20 aeth ImageMagick is nice on Unix in general. I use import all of the time as my main screenshot program for stumpwm since stumpwm afaik doesn't come with one. Using all-in-CL libraries reduces headaches, though.
19:06:53 vms14 XD I use import too for screenshots
19:06:57 Josh_2 https://plaster.tymoon.eu/view/1474#1474 that is the code I wrote :P
19:07:01 pjb If you keep using FFI, you're not putting pressure on the lisp ecosystem (implementations, libraries) to improve!
19:07:05 pjb Don't use FFI!
19:07:13 pjb (or libraries using FFI)
19:07:22 vms14 hmm
19:07:43 vms14 then opticl?
19:07:48 vms14 does not use ffi?
19:07:49 Xach vms14: when i was running a server that did a lot of image stuff, i wound up using sb-ext:run-program with imagemagick tools. i wrapped it up with functions so it looked like lisp code rather than shell code. i processed tens of thousands of files per day, worked fine for me.
19:07:53 jackdaniel (or implementations which operate in FFI land! - that leaves movitz and mezzano)
19:07:59 aeth pjb: You generally have to eventually use FFI somewhere for input/output unless it's built into the particular implementation. clx is quite possibly the only exception there due to how X works.
19:08:18 vms14 Xach: xD I was thinking on doing that, but I thought meh, better if I just use a library from lisp
19:08:24 Xach I did that with a mix of other things that drew into their own file
19:08:25 pjb aeth: I/O is built into all CL implementations!
19:08:36 pjb OPEN READ-BYTE WRITE-BYTE CLOSE !
19:08:59 Xach e.g. i would do something like (combine (make-caption-file "Hello!" "caption.png") (scale-base-image "original.jpg" "scaled.jpg")) or some nonsense like that!
19:09:07 aeth pjb: hence "unless it's built in". You don't need to use FFI to be part of a Unix pipe, for instance.
19:13:15 aeth although a full unix-philosophy OS where everything's a file wouldn't need FFI either, I guess, if that's what you meant
19:14:14 vms14 you broke my mind just saying that, plus what Xach told about using "commands"
19:14:27 vms14 because I was considering doing that
19:15:03 aeth That's what a scripting language is. bash without the landmines.
19:15:05 vms14 but meh, I'll look for a way to do it directly in lisp
19:16:01 vms14 the fact is unix philosophy has some rules I like to consider
19:16:16 vms14 and one of them is "make one thing and make it well"
19:16:57 aeth I prefer function-level/module-level composition to program-level composition like Unix or, more recently, microservices
19:17:11 aeth CL has quite a few things you could consider a "module", though
19:17:17 vms14 so having imagemagick which handles image stuff I have yet something that does "one" thing, not one really,
19:17:17 jackdaniel certainly passing argument by reference is cheaper
19:17:47 vms14 but at the end is the same if you just use a library
19:17:55 White_Flame it's generally impossible to "make one thing well", because different usage cases want different access styles & prioritization of its feature sets
19:18:12 vms14 well not, because the unix philosophy relies on connect programs
19:18:15 vms14 but meh
19:18:43 aeth White_Flame: There's only a finite amount, though. So what if different people need 10 PNG libraries with different use cases? There's room for them as long as their names are unique.
19:19:02 vms14 White_Flame: in a program yes, but not in a function
19:19:20 vms14 and in unix programs work like they were functions
19:19:21 White_Flame vms14: push vs pull semantics are an example of function-level impedance mismatches
19:20:32 aeth Somewhat tangentially, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20689932 about Amiga was on HN recently and it referred to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9935892 about how Amiga handled images through an OS-level abstraction called "datatypes"
19:21:36 aeth beach: I wonder what your thoughts on that are, and if something similar could work for Lisp, since you're the OS expert here
19:23:34 aeth Essentially, it made programs forwards compatible so proprietary Amiga programs that haven't been touched in decades can handle things like PNG, apparently.
19:23:36 vms14 btw did someone dreamed with a browser which uses lisp instead of js css and html?
19:23:38 vms14 I do xD
19:23:53 White_Flame aeth: well, it also introduced a lowest common denominator that you access stuff through as well
19:23:54 vms14 dream*
19:24:11 jackdaniel vms14: how that would be a browser then?
19:24:27 vms14 I saw also some browsers written in lisp, but not sure if they're alive
19:24:31 White_Flame afaik, datatypes were more about generic display than actual data processing, but I'm not sure
19:24:37 aeth White_Flame: If you're saying that as a disadvantage, I don't see how. Nothing stops an application from also supporting other things.
19:24:53 White_Flame you don't fully "support" something, you only have minimal interaction with it
19:24:54 jackdaniel vms14: you need to differentiate html/js/css (which is input for a browser) from a language it is written in
19:24:57 vms14 jackdaniel: (title "hi" :color red :onclick do-something)
19:25:03 jackdaniel i.e firefox is not written in html
19:25:12 Josh_2 There is Next browser :P
19:25:20 jackdaniel vms14: and what you talk about are html generators, check out cl-who
19:25:41 vms14 jackdaniel: xD yeah, but in a browser written in lisp we would be able to implement this stuff quicker
19:25:48 aeth I know Firefox can't be written in HTML, but I'm not sure why Firefox isn't written in XML. You can program with XML! It definitely was a mistake to (mostly) kill XHTML.
19:26:01 vms14 firefox is written in rust
19:26:12 vms14 I'm compiling rust just because is a dependency of ff
19:26:33 vms14 partly*
19:26:35 jackdaniel I think I'm lost and I'm sure I don't want to follow anyway ,) I can only say that we are getting into offtopic
19:28:41 White_Flame aeth: re-googling the topic, yeah it was basically for showing pictures, playing sounds, and displaying some documents, with minimal program interaction with the data
19:28:53 jackdaniel you can't have lisp browser, but what about lisp checkers, hmm? https://imgur.com/XvjBCp3 ;-)
19:28:59 White_Flame so you tell the OS to opaquely present a blob file to the user
19:29:40 White_Flame certainly handy for generic presentation use, but it's not a programmatical data access mechanism for program code to be able to process arbitrary file contents
19:30:01 aeth White_Flame: I think you could also convert it to the standard IFF format? at least according to a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20690995 if I'm reading it correctly
19:30:13 aeth certainly would be enough to handle every case forwards compatibly, but not optimally
19:30:30 vms14 jackdaniel: I cannot see the image until the fucking ff compiles
19:30:40 aeth White_Flame: and no need to wait for a LispOS, it could be added to something like CLIM (if it's not already there)
19:30:41 vms14 I'm with lynx atm
19:30:45 jackdaniel shame, it is a good one! ;)
19:30:58 jackdaniel here is a link for wget: https://i.imgur.com/XvjBCp3.png
19:30:58 vms14 also I'm using weechat chrooting the other disk
19:31:00 vms14 xD
19:31:16 Josh_2 like always Next doesn't work for me :P
19:31:52 vms14 downloaded, I'll look at it when I'll install viewnior
19:32:24 vms14 Josh_2: you were able to try Next browser?
19:32:27 vms14 I tried but nope
19:32:54 statically ()
19:33:02 vms14 nil
19:33:06 Josh_2 I tried it but it never works
19:33:12 Josh_2 I tried from source as well and didn't work
19:33:58 vms14 the only lisp program I've used is stumpwm
19:34:08 vms14 it's nice, but I prefer a stacking wm
19:34:12 Josh_2 https://next.atlas.engineer/download
19:35:14 semz vms14: lynx can display images if you install xli (read: make a shell script of that name that calls your favorite image viewer). it's not a bad browser
19:37:00 ebrasca aeth: What about Mezzano? ( mezzano have support for mcclim )
19:38:20 vms14 semz: didn't know about, I was thinking in stuff like ansi images
19:38:27 vms14 ascii art*
19:38:46 vms14 ebrasca: isn't dead?
19:38:56 vms14 I looked at it, and there were others
19:39:31 vms14 but never tried, just showed them to the people to say lisp makes you able to write stuff you couldn't write in other languages
19:39:57 vms14 like writing an entire OS alone
19:40:34 vms14 I'd like to sell lisp to people, but it's hard
19:41:04 vms14 pjb pointed that we shouldn't use ffi in order to increase the number of lisp libraries instead of relying the existing ones
19:41:35 vms14 but I guess for improving lisp usage we should make programs that users could use
19:42:18 ebrasca vms14: It is alive , I have add fat12/16/32 read and write , ext2/3/4 only read and more.
19:42:41 vms14 wow
19:43:06 ebrasca vms14: It start in my PC bare metal.
19:43:40 semz why is mass adoption a goal in itself? i'd definitely not want it if that means rotten compromises like lots of libraries that rely on C blobs
19:44:13 aeth ebrasca: I guess Mezzano could add it
19:44:19 vms14 semz: more developers make grow the ecosystem, and the ecosystem is important
19:44:51 vms14 also, I think lisp is a very powerful language and I'd like to make others realize that
19:44:55 vms14 but they won't
19:45:00 aeth semz: even if 90% of every library is garbage, then more users => more developers => more libraries => more non-garbage options that can save you time
19:45:14 aeth and we only have so much time
19:45:22 ebrasca aeth: could add it ... what is it?
19:47:12 aeth ebrasca: afaik, what was going on is that AmigaOS had a library that could handle the presentation of multimedia formats, and possibly even (not sure here) convert that to a standard format on demand, in a way where an application wouldn't need to be recompiled to support a new file format
19:48:00 White_Flame really, that just degenerates to methods in lisp-land :-P
19:48:07 White_Flame presentations etc
19:48:10 aeth This means that any application that used that, at least as a fallback, would be forwards compatible
19:48:28 ebrasca aeth: I don't know how to add it.
19:48:31 White_Flame maybe with a little introspection to detect which functions are possible
19:48:42 semz aeth: this did not happen in many popular languages though. PHP and JS come to mind as particularly offensive examples. polemicizing a bit here, but if the ecosystem's full of shit this fact also drowns any effort to counteract that and causes the users to expect more of the same
19:48:44 dlowe aeth: doesn't that break when you have file formats with different features?
19:48:54 ebrasca aeth: What if you get 3D images or 4D images?
19:49:34 nonlinear[m] minion: registration, please?
19:49:34 minion The URL https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/users/sign_in?secret=523128fa will be valid until 20:00 UTC.
19:49:55 semz cl-ppcre is a great example of a library that would be FFI in other languages imo
19:50:28 White_Flame semz: agreed
19:51:11 White_Flame it's crazy seeing the C version cobble together asm instructions, compared to lisp's solution
19:52:28 jackdaniel native lisp checkers game, that's what we need in the ecosystem if you ask me ;-) (sorry, I had to, I'll keep quiet about checkers for a few days)
19:53:18 jackdaniel *but* I have a half-baked ansi terminal emulator written (with some extensions)
19:53:28 jackdaniel maybe I'll polish it after finishing console backend
19:55:01 aeth semz: JS is a unique case because (1) it's (or was) a tiny language and (2) because of the way it's distributed, microlibraries make sense because you don't want to load what you're not using because that will directly add to page load times.
19:55:29 aeth semz: A lot of other popular languages (e.g. Java) prefer to have (or at least do have) gigantic frameworks
19:55:43 aeth (frameworks have their own issue, mainly that you can usually only have one)
19:56:59 aeth dlowe: I'm not actually sure if that would break (or at least wouldn't break *everything*) because I think the programs were giving control to the OS for the rendering of the image
19:59:17 vms14 btw about images, do you know if there is a library which will let me convert images to xlib images?
19:59:33 vms14 the "old" clx does not provide xpm
19:59:43 vms14 and the new-clx does not work in sbcl
19:59:49 vms14 or I wasn't able to make it work in it
20:00:08 aeth ebrasca: 3D is hard because there are so many ways to do it
20:03:24 White_Flame if all you want is a "display this" GUI element, then it's not hard
20:03:33 vms14 White_Flame: how?
20:03:40 White_Flame which is what a lot of amiga datatype usage is about
20:03:44 vms14 ah lol
20:03:47 vms14 xD
20:04:06 White_Flame vms14: see, for instance, your web browser ;)
20:04:18 White_Flame but then abstract that out to the OS, deferring that UI element
20:04:41 vms14 nah, nvm I thought you were talking about converting images to X.org images
20:05:05 vms14 I have no way to load an image with clx
20:05:21 vms14 with xlib I was using xpm files, and worked well
20:05:30 vms14 but in C
20:21:11 Lord_of_Life_ ** NICK Lord_of_Life
20:45:48 ebrasca What if this image use some torus projection in 4D space + 2D time space?
20:46:56 pjb vms14: you right, the first priority is to make programs the users want to use. Given the choice between no program and a program using FFI, the later is better. But given the choice between a program using FFI and a program using pure lisp code, the later is better too!
20:49:20 ebrasca Yea mezano can start bare metal , it can see images , videos , probably audio and it support mcclim.
20:50:26 ebrasca ACTION don't know what to write.
20:59:59 ebrasca pjb,vms14: Do you have ideas what people want to use?
21:09:31 whartung I've forked to imagemagick in the past. It's great if you can handle the overhead of the fork and the copying of the data. It would work fine. Given that, you can instead of using imagemagick, just go straight to Postscript and render using that (since someone mentioned writing text on images). I honestly don't know if there is a "postscript" server (that is, something besides a printer which IS a postscript server) that you can connect to more
21:09:32 whartung cheaply than continually execing.
21:10:00 whartung I don't know if there's a standalone SVG renderer avaliable or not either, but that may be another option.
21:11:09 whartung as for not using FFI, it's all a matter of timing and whether you can wait for a native CL implementation of a functionality.
21:11:59 whartung In java, I avoid JNI in general simply because most of my work is with app servers and an NPE in Java is an exception, but an NPE in a .so is a core dump — not a happy state for an app server.
21:12:44 whartung That siad, I have exec'd imagemagick from Java in teh past, as I was getting better results from it than native java code. I could have JNId and use the imagemagick directly in Java, but see my previous comment about JNI
21:14:52 pjb ebrasca: porn, food, money. (for what remains legal).
21:15:12 pjb ebrasca: B2B, anything that can help B to make money.
21:23:51 whartung I'm casually working on an ecad board layout to in CL…pretty sure nobody wants that. Especially being it'll be command driven vs a GUI.
21:24:25 whartung but, hey, I actaully saw someone the other day ask for a CLI based ecad program, so, who know what niche I may tap in to.
21:52:17 aeth What makes people run Windows are games and random niche professional tools which are different for every profession
21:53:47 aeth For everything else, there's the web
22:29:06 vms14 the Let over Lamba is a great book
22:29:32 vms14 Lambda*
23:04:52 vms14 it's also nice to have it online since you could download it with wget -R and I can read it with lynx, like the author took care of text browsers


text:
Market Scene: Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem
Note: Each day this week, Leah will be sharing a delicious bite from her recent trip to Israel. Follow along on her Snapshots from Israel. —The Mgmt.
Many of my absolute favorite travel memories revolve around exploring the town's local marketplace. The colors and smells; the cries of bargaining salesmen and shoppers. So naturally I was drawn to Shuk Mahane Yehuda, a bustling marketplace in Jerusalem. On a Friday afternoon, the market is overrun by men, women, and children shopping for the Sabbath and feasting on delicious local delicacies.
Mahane Yehuda is comprised of several full blocks of small, narrow stalls selling everything from fresh citrus to loose candy. Play your cards right and a halvah salesman may just slip you a couple samples of the buttery, nutty sesame treat. And don't be scared off by the hustle and bustle—this food is worth fielding a couple shoves.
Mahane Yehuda Market Jerusalem, Israel (map)


text:
In December 2006, a woman in New York who received a gift of a large mass of some sort of waxy substance began hoping against hope that it would turn out to be that rare "floating gold" of the sea: whale vomit. Her sister sent her the 4-pound (1.8-kg) glob, found on a beach 50 years before, as a holiday gift. No one knew what it was, and whale vomit -- or what some say is really more like a whale gallstone -- was suggested as a possibility. But identifying it as whale vomit, or ambergris, is a daunting task. If it does turn out to be ambergris, the gift could be worth up to $20,000.
Ambergris is an ingredient in fine perfumes. It has what some describe as an inconceivably "smooth" scent. Some say it's musky, earthy, sweet, or simply indescribable. Aside from its unique odor, it has the trait of causing a scent to stick -- in perfumes, it causes the scent to bind to the surface of the skin and stick around, instead of quickly evaporating. Ambergris forms in the intestines of a sperm whale. The whale throws it up because it apparently can't digest it. Scientist have found squid beaks in clumps of ambergris, leading many to surmise the ambergris is something of a protective secretion that protects sperm whales' digestive tracts from the scratching of those hard beaks.
When a whale initially vomits up ambergris, it is soft and has a terrible smell. Some marine biologists compare it to scented cow dung. But after floating on the salty ocean for about a decade, the substance hardens into a smooth, waxy, usually rounded piece of nostril heaven. The dung smell is gone, replaced by a scent that has been famous for hundreds of years, probably more. In addition to its use in the perfume industry, it is said to be an aphrodisiac, a homeopathic remedy, and an excellent flavoring for food.
And it's a collector's item -- ambergris is in short supply. No other whale besides sperm whales produce it, and when the whale burps it up, it's somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Someone finds a piece of the stuff on a beach somewhere every few years, tops. That makes it extremely valuable, but not in the way it once was. Chemists have replicated some of the traits of ambergris synthetically, making it a less necessary component in perfumes. But it's still valuable for its rarity, and certain perfume makers still insist on it. In some countries, including the United States, endangered-species legislation makes it illegal to buy or sell the stuff. Of course, that only makes it more desirable in certain circles. Experts quote the current going rate for ambergris at about $10 to $20 per gram, depending on its quality. But legal issues can make it difficult to find a buyer, depending on where the ambergris washes up.
Identifying the ambergris is the hard part. Most of the time, when people go to an expert with a chunk of a waxy substance they found on a beach, sure they've hit the jackpot, it turn out to be wax or rocks or the petrified remains of an animal.
Ambergris is white, gray, black, or all three. It has a hard, waxy texture and an unusual, pleasant smell. Aside from that, there's not much to go on. But there are a couple of tests that you can perform at home to find out if you should even bring that waxy substance to an expert in the first place.
- Needle testHeat a needle over a flame for 15 seconds, and then insert it about an eighth of an inch (.3 cm) into the substance. Does it melt around the needle into a pool of thick, black, bubbling liquid? When you touch that liquid, do you end up with a stringy, tar-like residue on your finger? When you reheat the needle, covered in the melted substance, does it let off a white smoke?
- Methyl-alcohol testDoes a sample of the substance dissolve in hot methyl alcohol and crystallize when the alcohol cools?
If the substance passes those tests, the next ones take place in a lab. Chemists will test for benzoic acid and cholesterol in the sample. If the amounts are indicative of ambergris, it will usually be tentatively confirmed as ambergris at this time, although perfume companies will typically order more chemical tests before purchasing the would-be whale vomit. Some experts, though, say that the only test that can absolutely identify ambergris is extensive experience with the look, feel and scent of it.
To learn more about ambergris and related topics, check out the links on the next page.


text:
We've recently changed the audio format for our live stream in order to improve the quality and to support more devices and services such as iHeartRadio.
Unfortunately, this means we can no longer support Internet Explorer for listening to our live stream as it does not support the new format. Please see our Streaming Guide for alternative ways to listen to our live stream on your computer, mobile or smart speaker devices.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause!
RTRFM is an eclectic and diverse world of sound, and on Up Late you'll hear anything and everything that we play on the station.
Anything goes stylistically on Up Late, populated alternately by seasoned night owls who prefer to spin their tunes by the cover of darkness, and by some of the station's freshest recruits gaining valuable experience behind the desk.
On Up Late you might catch anything from indie rock to leftfield beats, with deviations through jazz, world music, folk, roots, latin, hip hop, soul and any other genre you care to mention.


text: Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocali… Read More


text:
Videos | December 7, 2012
Rover Results at Rocknest
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover team wraps up its scientific study at Rocknest.
Transcript:Hi, I'm Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory and this is your Curiosity rover update.
It's been a momentous week for Curiosity. We've wrapped up our scientific study of Rocknest, which also means that we've completed the checkout and first scientific use of all our instruments on the rover and it truly is working great.
We began the Rocknest campaign by searching for a suitable drift of sandy sol using our Mastcam color cameras. We used out ChemCam laser and our APXS chemical sensor to do an initial technical analysis of the soil, determining whether it was similar to soils that we understand from Spirit and Opportunity and therefore safe for scooping and sending to our laboratories.
We use MAHLI, our hand lens imager to take close up views of the soil to look at different particle sizes, shapes and colors and how they change with depth.
We then scooped up the soil and analyzed it if our X-ray diffraction instrument that can identify minerals in the soil based on their unique crystal structure. But it turned out that a good amount of the material in the soil was not crystalline but that's not a problem for our other laboratory, SAM.
SAM heated up the soil in an oven, measured various gases released as the soil components broke down, such as water, carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur.
Not surprisingly, the results show a composition that is typical of Mars soils studied at other sites with perhaps some very simple carbon containing molecules and perchlorate salts.
We haven't yet seen any complex organic molecules but sand isn't the best place to look.
Finally, it's worth remembering that the big questions in science whether Copernicus finding that the Earth goes around the sun or Darwin showing that natural selection drives biological evolution, were answered only after many measurements were taken compared against one another and hypotheses were proposed and tested against data. Only then can the big picture emerge and the theory get accepted.
It'll be no different for Curiosity in its mission to understand the habitability of ancient Mars at Gale Crater. There won't be any single image or measurement that'll answer everything. We're in it for the long haul. But now we know that we have a fantastic rover, a great set of tools and a fully functional scientific payload. So let's get on exploring.
This has been your Curiosity rover report. Please check back for more updates.


text:
|Everything you need to know about buying or selling a home can be found right here on my real estate website!
As a prominent Real Estate Professional in the Greater Atlanta area, I am dedicated to providing the finest real estate services. I am available, whether you are looking for residential resales, custom homes, golf course, pool or tennis communities, in addition to helping relocation buyers.
Over the course of 25 years, I have successfully managed to sell to/for high-end clientele such as Athletes, Entertainers, Corporate Executives, and First Time Buyers with the help of a strong team and network.
I work hard to make sure my clients receive the best care possible, but that doesn't end at the closing. I am a firm believer in maintaining contact with my buyers and sellers. The satisfaction of helping them plan and achieve their dream home gives me my own special reward.
Contact me today to find out how I can help you!
|Keller Williams Realty
|Licensed in Georgia
| Copyright
© 2000-2020 Keller Williams ® Realty. - a real estate franchise company.
All information provided is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified.
Properties subject to prior sale or rental. Each brokerage is independently owned and operated.
Site Enhanced by Michael Tritthart.com


text:
The European Youth Go Championship got under way with the Opening Ceremony on the Friday night. The players were called to order by the Arundel town crier and after short speeches they were entertained by Rhubarb the clown. Some players then took part in the British Lightning, others took an early night after long journeys.
The first round was held on Saturday morning. 89 young players took part in the three age groups: Under-20 (12), Under-16 (35), Under-12 (42). Results will be posted after the second round this afternoon.
The British Open is also under way with nearly 60 players from both the UK and the rest of Europe.


text:
Galaxy Quest: Samsung Now King of the Androids
Motorola's Droid is no longer the doer it once was when it first debuted–in market share terms, anyway. The company has ceded its Android crown to Samsung, which now ranks as first in the United States among Android manufacturers. The company was responsible for 32.1 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the States in the third quarter, according to Gartner, a massive 300 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2009, when it sold only 9.2 percent of them.
The engine for that spike in sales? Samsung's Galaxy S phones, which the company distributes through six U.S. carriers, among them AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Samsung says it has now shipped three million Galaxy S smartphones since the line's mid-July launch.
And how did other Android vendors fare in Gartner's rankings? Motorola placed second, HTC came in a close third and LG a very distant fourth.
- Samsung
- Motorola
Seems Motorola's alliance with Verizon is finally beginning to cost it a bit of market share.
"Motorola, by launching its key Android devices on Verizon Wireless, was able to gain significant market share in the U.S. but is now in a difficult position as their Android business is too reliant on Verizon Wireless with roughly 40-50% of their worldwide Android sales coming from Verizon," Gartner analyst Hugues De La Vergne told me. "With a rumored iPhone coming to Verizon in Q1, Motorola is the hardware vendor that has the most to lose."


text:
As you may know, the legal field is complex but filled with opportunities. In addition to popular fields such as prosecution and defense for criminal matters and litigating civil procedures, lawyers fill important roles in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. In this way, not all lawyers go to court and not all lawyers practice law—for instance, some teach law, while others advise corporations. Career vectors are truly limitless. With that in mind, law school admissions committees attempt to reflect the diversity of the field with the diversity of its admissions offers. Not all accepted applicants will have similar background and educational experiences.
Admissions committees receive thousands of applications each year—and there are too many applications for too few available seats. Under these conditions, law schools value the LSAT score and undergraduate GPA slightly more than they do a well-written personal statement. However, many admissions committees do not set a ceiling or floor LSAT score threshold and therefore are willing to look at a file holistically.
Aside from having a good LSAT score and GPA, you must determine how you will differentiate yourself from your peers with similar scores and GPAs. Keep in mind that some of your competitors are going to read similar advice on how to differentiate themselves and try the same things, so what will truly set you apart is a sense of demonstrable passion. It's not enough to want to go to law school; you have to prove it. You might be interested in criminal law, but have you witnessed cases being argued in court? Have you volunteered for a case you believed in? Have you championed a cause on student government? Did you learn anything along the way? These are just several of hundreds of possible questions you could ask yourself—so, if you cannot answer these questions, then pose others related to your future goals.
Where you apply is important. Consider not only the likelihood of being accepted to the schools where you apply, but also factors such as out-of-state tuition, if applicable. You may consider going to an out-of-state-school and prepare for that state's bar exam if you intend to practice law in that state.
How you apply is equally important. You should apply early—and be prepared to do so—when more seats are available, so that already selective schools do not consider your file with increasingly stringent application standards.
The application and admissions process isn't terribly difficult to navigate—as long as you're prepared and do not wait until the last moment to apply. It is complex and involves multiple steps, but like organizing your coursework and life priorities, it's really about managing logistics. If you've come this far in your education, you know enough about time management and goal setting to successfully complete the application requirements.


text:
Geriatric Member
[QUOTE=6cylVWguy;77775801]I thought I'd update those who care about my 2012 Mustang GT--especially since the online reputation for the current mustangs isn't all that stellar. I know most of the attention has moved away from the Mustang, but I know there are several on this forum who have some level of interest in the most current version.
Almost a year ago I posted the following about the initial purchase of the mustang: [url]https://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5412041-quot-Putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is-quot-101-Adding-a-little-vitamin-V8-to-my-diet[/url]
As of this writing, I've had the mustang for a few thousand miles and the car is still pretty stock. So that begs the question, is the car actually fun to drive or is it strictly a numbers car? This installment will review what it's like for a German car fan to own something so strongly American.
My natural automotive proclivity is towards a balanced driving experience over something
So after about 3-4 days of looking and thinking, I decided that the mustang GT was my car. I started going to all the Ford dealers I could find in my area to try and purchase a base model car with the BBK. Well, there were none in my area. All the BBK cars I had access to were premium package cars that were just more than I wanted to spend. I mean, in a 3 state radius, there wasn't a car available that fit my requirements. So I ordered the car directly from the factory.
I never
I often hear the term "dark side" when someone who is an enthusiastic owner of a car or brand suddenly changes teams and buys something from another brand. In the VW world, I have often heard this term used in reference to someone who buys something Asian. I think for most rational VW people, Asian cars are an object of respect, but not something to desire, in other words, not something that one can develop an emotional relationship with. And domestic cars? Meh, those are ok, but for


text:
Founded in 1961, Johnson Space Center in Houston was a hub of aerospace activity in the 1960s and 70s. The facility trained the astronauts who first walked on the moon and helped develop the Space Shuttle program. Then Kennedy Space Center at Florida's Cape Canaveral came online in 1962 and became the epicenter of space exploration during the 80s and 90s. So where is America's next spaceport?
Virgin Galactic is betting heavily on the future of space tourism with the sleek SpaceShip Two passenger ship. It can reach sub-orbit space.
The Mojave Air & Space Port sits in the middle of the California desert and it's already attracting new legions of ambitious young rocketeers and space scientists.
If you want to see where the future takes flight, this is it, approximately 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The Mojave Air & Space Port compound is a former military base that occupies some 3,300 acres and is home to about 100 aircraft hangars. The flat desert terrain provides a great location for the 2-mile-long runway. And there's lots of room for blasting rockets off into the wild blue yonder.
Look around and you'll find not only genius scientists but inventors and space engineers of every type. At one end of the spectrum, small groups of rocketeers launching their first DIY experiments. At the other end, well-financed corporations planning how to make space travel (including space tourism) and the further exploration of space into profit-making enterprises that could also help unlock the mysteries of the universe.
NASA's New Business Model
The Mojave Air & Space Port is a new idea for a tougher economic age. The business of space exploration has changed dramatically lately with NASA's decision to end America's space shuttle program. In essence, NASA has been cutting away some of its more expensive programs as a means of making America's space agency financially leaner and more sound. The space shuttle and its operation was intensive and costly. Although NASA is still sponsoring unmanned explorations (such as the Mars Rover project, and its probe to Venus), the days of U.S. space shuttles transporting cargo and people into space—at least for now—are over.
The Mojave Air & Space Port plays home to deep-pocketed corporations as well as small, passionate groups of DIY rocketeers.
The Mojave Air & Space Port fills that gap by providing a location where all types of corporations and individuals can work on their various space-oriented projects. The concept for the space port was originated by Virgin corporation president, Richard Branson. Branson, a thrill-seeker himself, was attracted to the idea, as were other corporate heads (such as Microsoft's Paul Allen).
See Outer Space (And Be Back for Dinner)
Each company based at the Mojave Air & Space Port has a stake of some kind in space travel. Branson's company, for example, plans to be the first to fly space tourists into low-levels of outer space via space shuttle-like craft. These passengers would take off from landing strips on the desert floor and embark on short, multi-hour excursions to the nearest edge of outer space. The ultimate in sight-seeing—a quick trip out of this world and then back down to earth in time for dinner.
Virgin Galactic recently acquired The Spaceship Company (here unveiling a new hangar at the Mojave Air & Space Port), showing its intention of shaping the space-tourism marketplace.
Other companies are busily tinkering with exploration and cargo-transport projects, in hopes of winning contracts with NASA itself. As the agency embraces its new business model, that means that (like many corporations these days) NASA will be outsourcing some of its activities to private space contractors.
Boldly Going to Space Camp
While the Space Shuttle program may have ended, it's the dawn of a new age in space exploration. For kids interested in space exploration, space camp is the place to start. At Digital Media Academy's tech camp, kids learn science and engineering in a fun and creative way. Blasting off water rockets and learning how things work can turn your curious child into an aeronautics engineer. After all, it's the new generation of discoverers that will lead us into tomorrow…and deeper into the far reaches of space.
SIGN IN TO LEAVE A COMMENT – or – SHARE THIS ARTICLE WITH OTHERS:


text:
If a picture could tell a thousand words, Advisor Perspectives' Doug Short, speaking at the Retirement Income Industry Association's spring conference, probably hit the trillion mark.
Short, whose daily blog analyzes economic data from gas prices to unemployment, deployed his trademark graphs and charts on Tuesday to paint a picture of the demographic challenges ahead. While it is no simple thing to summarize, a long downward slope may give some inkling of the direction of GDP and household income, but on a positive note for financial advisors with the right demographics, Short (below) says "the focus on pre- and post-retirement planning will increase dramatically in the years ahead."
Demographics was the key to Short's presentation, and he used ample data from the Census Bureau and other sources to show just how profound has been the effect of population changes on the economy. The U.S. economy over the past generation has been riding a baby boomer wave – a wave that is now cresting. The 76 million births that occurred in the 19 years starting in 1946 have influenced everything in the U.S. economy.
For example, the ratio of services to goods in the economy changed from two to one in 1939 to 10 to 1 today; employment in services has grown 506% since 1939 compared to a 65% increase in the production of goods. In the broader economy, real GDP growth has averaged, since 1930, 3.34% a year. The current 10-year moving average is 1.17%. While the averages conceal ups and downs, with growth rates typically peaking before a recession, our current year-over-year GDP rate of 1.62% is historically low for a period of growth but reflects "the reality of the U.S. economy," according to Short.
Slicing and dicing the data further, Short broke down the four key components of GDP: personal consumption; private domestic investment; net exports of goods and services; and government consumption – with special emphasis on personal consumption, which has long been the driver of economic growth.
What one sees through this demographic lense is the remarkable extent to which U.S. economic growth has tracked personal consumption growth, which in turn has closely followed the progress of baby boomers. The economy and markets were in growth mode when the boomers' parents were raising their children, then paused until the boomers started turning 35 in 1981. GDP and the stock market surged from that point on, but really rocketed in the '90s when the boomers hit their peak earning years at ages 45 to 54. At that stage, in the year 2000 and since, GDP and the stock market started heading down as personal consumption began to contract.
Using Census Bureau estimates for the next four decades, Short showed the age 45 to 49 bracket of consumers in their peak spending years is flat over the next 20 years and then declines, while the 65-plus population expands rapidly. Most categories of consumer spending are expected to fall, while prescription drugs and medicine expenditures will be rising. The number of dependent elders is expected to skyrocket in the next 20 years.
At the same time these demographic trends portend a weakening of GDP, growth in government spending threatens fiscal havoc. Short says the U.S. is already spending more in entitlements alone than it is taking in tax revenue, a trend former Obama Administration economic advisor Christine Roemer described as a "collision course with reality."
Short concludes that declining personal consumption and an increasing federal debt burden are the economic headwinds against which policy makers today must act.


text:
It's no longer just about those 140-character tweets. Now Twitter is helping people discover their inner filmmaker.
Twitter announced Thursday the launch of Vine, a service that lets mobile users capture and share short, looping videos. They're serious about the short videos. Each one will be six seconds or less.
"Posts on Vine are about abbreviation -- the shortened form of something larger," wrote Dom Hofmann, co-founder and general manager of Vine, in a blog post. "They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They're quirky, and we think that's part of what makes them so special."
Hofmann also said that Twitter has acquired Vine, but financial details were released.
Vine, which is available on the AppleiPhone and iPod touch, is a free download on the App Store. Twitter noted that it's working on making Vine available on other platforms.
Vine users don't need to have a Twitter account, Hofmann said, but signing up is quicker if they do.
"This is a good move for Twitter," said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner Inc. "We believe for Twitter to become even more integrated into the consumer and business social ecosystem, it's new product initiatives like Vine that will help propel them in this direction. Adding media types, such as video, is a natural extension for Twitter users to consider and adopt."
Video is more popular than ever given that more consumers have smartphones with video capability, Blau added, and he expects that trend to swell over time.
Twitter's video launch, however, will be a challenge for companies like Tout.com and Viddy, which both offer apps for taking short videos and posting them on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said he doesn't see Twitter under serious attack from Tout or Viddy, but said it's smart for Twitter to try to keep users' eyeballs on the microblogging site, instead of sharing them with third-party apps.
"I don't think they'll lose users to a video-based service, but why not include enhancements," added Gottheil. "So it's a nice new feature, but maybe not a game-changer or a business requirement."
Blau, though, sees a video app being more important for Twitter's continued growth.
"Twitter needs to take care of [itself], and that means a continued horizontal expansion of their platform and features," he added. "We will see more core services from Twitter come out and we will also see improvements to existing features, including Vine. I would not be surprised to see Vine become a more useful app over time, and that may mean they tread even more over Tout's features."
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is email@example.com.
See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.
Read more about social media in Computerworld's Social Media Topic Center.