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Showing posts from September, 2009

Chewing tobacco

I read this line from a novel: "He reached into his pocket for a wad of tobacco and placing it in his mouth began to chew." "Steel spat a mouthful of the acrid tobacco juice on to the ground." I've never actually seen chewing tobacco, but tried cigarettes, cigar, and rolling tobaccos. Chewing tobacco is called smokeless tobacco. Is it same thing as the one in a cigarettes, cigar or sold in a pouch for rolling? Does chewing tobacco really do such harm to human mouth? Lots of scary pictures on the internet.

Punishment in the British army in 18 Century

Reading the book "Man of Honour -- Jack Steel: for queen and Country" by Iain Gale. This is a story of lieutenant Jack Steel , a gentleman, a soldier, and a hero. The battle happened in Upper Bavaria, 1704. The enemy was Louis XIV of France, a megalomaniac intent on possessing all Europe. Lieutenant Jack Steel leads his men, the finest infantry in Queen Anne's army, through the battle of Blenheim, risking death and destruction in the fight against the tyrant. In chapter three, the author wrote about the rules and punishment in the British army in 18 century. Through lieutenant Jack Steel's observation and feeling, the author presented for us a horrible scene of brutality and barbarian. In the army, every major or captain has the responsibility of telling every man in his company that if one of them steals so much as an egg they will be either hanged or flogged without mercy. All men found gathering peas or beans or under pretence of rooting to be hanged as marauders

Use Future Markets of the Nonstorable Commodity

IT resources are generally not storable, in the sense that capacity not used today cannot be put aside for future use. Since the resources cannot be stored, there need be no link between the price for a resource now and the price that the resource (if available) will fetch at any future time (even in 1 second!). Given that it is impossible to build up inventories to smooth out the differences between supply and demand, prices can be arbitrarily volatile (this has been observed in practice for other nonstorable commodities. To avoid this price volatility and o enable planning and risk management, conventional nonstorable commodities have developed futures markets, that is, markets for reservations. The most significant non-IT commodity that is also nonstorable is electrical power (with the notable exceptions of hydroelectric and pumped storage). In electricity markets, as in several others for nonstorables (e.g., live cattle, interest rates), contracts for future delivery (forward or f

What is “phishing”?

Phishing is the practice of masquerading as a legitimate organization, such as an Internet service provider (ISP), bank, or online auction site, in order to acquire sensitive information including user names, passwords, and credit card numbers. Typically, phishing is carried out by an email or instant message directing you to enter your sensitive information at a fake website that appears nearly identical to a legitimate one.

Time Shifting of off-the-air television program

Time-shifting is recording a program the consumer cannot view as it is being televised and then watching it once at a later time. The Court held that so-called time shifting of off-the-air television program constituted fair use, given its noncommercial nature and the absence of any proven harm to the market for the copyrighted shows.

Safest, cheapest method to treat head lice

Head lice, are parasitic insects that feed on human blod and cause severe itching of the head. Pediculosis is the general term used for infestation of the body or hair with adult lice, lavae and nits (eggs). Head lice are relatively common and are not a major health hazard. Many chemical treatments are available however, the safest, cheapest and currently the most popular method of treatment is by Mechanical Removal. Mechanically removing lice and nits by combing is the most effective method of removing the adult louse, thereby breaking the cycle. Using a nit comb through hair which has had conditioner applied will help lubricate the hair to ease combing. Clean the comb frequently to remove any caught Lice or eggs by dipping in a bowl of warm water containing a small amount of baby oil. There are several new lotions on the market which have proved to be effective. Please ask you local Pharmacy for advice. These can be quite expensive, some GP's will write prescriptions for he

Juno

Juno, Roman mythology's Queen of the Goddesses, traditionally depicted as a woman of majestic size and beauty. Juno gave us the word "Junoesque," which is used to describe women of influence and femininity. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister (but also the wife) of the chief god Jupiter. Juno is the patroness of marriage, and many people believe that the most favorable time to marry is June, the month named after the goddess.

Failstop faults and Byzantine faults in a Fault-tolerant system

Within the discipline of computer science and electronic engineering, a great deal of thought has gone into this area in order to meet the requirements of fault-tolerant systems. Within falt-tolerant systems, there are two different types of faults that are of most interest to us: failstop faults and Byzantine faults. In many ways there two faults represent extremes of a spectrum: a failstop fault occurs when a faulty process ceases operation and other processes are notified of the fault - a kind of failure rare in real-world systems, where processes tend to fail and other processes are left to pick up the pieces as best they can. At the other end of the scale is a Byzantine fault, where a fault process may continue to operate but can send arbitrary messages. Byzantine refers to the Byzantine Generals' Problem, an agreement problem in which generals of the Byzantine Empire's army must decide unanimously whether to attack some enemy army. The problem is complicated by the

Denial-of-Service Attacks

One of the popular methods of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on a database server in a peer-to-pper network is by creating a 'UDP packet storm' on the server. The effect is an attack on one host causes that host to perform poorly. (When it comes to moving all that information across the Internet there is not only one choice when it comes to transport protocols. There are two. Namely, TCP and UDP. In this article we will look at the User Datagram Protocol, aka UDP.  Don Parker ) An attack between two hosts can cause extreme network congestion in addition to adversely affecting host performance. When a connection is established between two UDP service, each of which produces a very high number of packets. This causes packet flooding leading to a denial of service on the machines where the services are offered. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is another form of threat to database security in a peer-to-peer network. These attacks involve breaking into thousands o

Newsgroups in Bulletin Board News Systems

Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) are worldwide distributed discussion systems. A BBS consists of a set of newsgroups. News groups are typically classified hierarchically by subject and contain collections of messages with a common theme. Users can discover and connect to newsgroups (for example, interest groups), and subscribe to and publish messages on the newsgroups. Usenet is one of the earliest BBSs. Recently, the number of BBSs has grown and they have become a popular means of communication.

Chinglish

Portmanteau word is used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) words. for example, ‘Slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’, ‘Mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’. 'Chinglish' is another portmanteau word, means 'Chinese English', and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese. The terms "Chinese English" and "China English" are also used. Sometimes, Chinglish is also written as 'Chineglish'. Chinglish is a big problem on public signs in China. A sign reading "safety export" means "exit", an elevator designed for handicapped is a 'disabled elevator', a warning to be careful not to slip' could be 'slip carefully', cash recycling system is an 'ATM' Machine.

a funny dialogue ( Chinenglish)

waitress:Hello. a american:Hi. waitress:You have what thing? a american:Can you speak english? waitress:If I not speak english, I am speaking what? a american:Can anybody else speak english? waitress:You yourself look. All people are playing, no people have time, you can wait, you wait, you not wait, you go. a american:Good heavens. Anybody here can speak English? waitress:Shout what shout, quiet a little, you on earth have what thing? a american:I want to speak to your head. waitress:Shit,you speak to my mouth not my head! another one: a Chinese child are 10 yesrs old, he have learnt English for one month. one day, he are running on the way home, and he hit an american. the Chinese Child: I am sorry! the American: I am sorry too!( the Chinese Child thinks "too" is "two" , his teacher told him to be polite to foreigners ) the Chinese Child: I am sorry three! the American: What are you sorry for?( the Chinese Child thinks "for" is "fou

SETI@home

SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI@home is a scientific initiative launched by the University of California, Berkeley, with the goal of discovering radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. For this purpose, a radio telescope in Puerto Rico records a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum from outer space. This data is sent to the central SETI@home server in California. There, they take advantage of the fact that the greater part of processor cycles on private and business computers remains idle. Rather than analyzing the data in a costly supercomputer, the SETI server divides the data into smaller units and sends these units to the several million computers made available by the volunteers who have registered to participate in this project. The SETI client carries out the calculations during the idle processor cycles of the participants' computers and then sends back the results.

Peer to Peer computing

Peer to Peer computing: The Evolution of a Disruptive Technology, by Ramesh Subramanian & Brian D. Goodman Hype Cycles Disruptive techonologies are at the heart of change in research and industry. The obvious challenge is to distinguish the hype from reality. Gartner Research's "Hype Cycles" work charts technologies along a life-cycle path, identifying when the technology is just a buzzword through to its late maturation or productivity. Technology trigger Positive Hype Peak of inflated expectations (Don't join in just because it's 'in') Negative Hype Trough of disillusionment (Don't miss out just because it's 'out') Slope of enlightenment Plateau of productivity