Interesting Links for 19-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• Alex Salmond signs renewable energy deal with Abu Dhabi-based company
  (tags: Scotland energy renewables )
• UK rendition and torture collusion inquiry scrapped.
  (tags: torture uk rendition )
• Northern Ireland cigarette vending machine ban due in March
  (tags: cigarettes northernireland )
• FactCheck: Will disabled people suffer under the Welfare Reform Bill?
  (tags: welfare disabled uk )
• Judge Dredd artist Brett Ewins badly injured after his arrest in Hanwell
  (tags: 2000ad comics mentalhealth )
• EU report calls for action against Israeli settlements
  (tags: israel europe )
• How Firefox massively reduced its memory consumption
  (tags: memory performance firefox )
• NASA blocking the release of the first science fiction movie filmed in space
  (tags: nasa space movies )
• Photos of Russia in color, a century ago
  (tags: russia photos history )
• Stupid High School Kids (and Teachers) Freak Out Over Wikipedia Blackout
  (tags: wikipedia SOPA funny )
• Where (the now bankrupt) Kodak went wrong.
  (tags: kodak business fujifilm technology film photography economics )
• Time experts debate whether to abolish the leap second
  (tags: time )

Comments

[skington.livejournal.com]

"Judge Dredd artist Brett Ewins badly injured after stabbing a policeman" would have been a more informative headline. The police didn't truncheon him in the head for no reason.

[simont]

I've always thought the 'International Earth Rotation Service' is a fantastic name for an organisation. It's a little disappointing that all they do is monitor the Earth's rotation; with a name like that one feels they ought to maintain large rooms deep underground, full of people frantically pedalling! :-)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Abolishing the leap second seems really stupid to me -- given we'd have to have leap minutes instead, just less frequently. It would be just as disruptive, and I don't see how having to deal with it less often would simplify anything.

[andrewducker]

Yup - you'd be basically saying "We're doing nothing, you people in 30-60 years will have to deal with the problem instead."

Of course, _those_ people would probably push it out again, and eventually our far-flung future cyborg descendants would curse us for 11am being dark.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I read an article a while back about how Google solved the problem of all their servers being in sync and running cron jobs and everything at the time the leap-second is added. Seemed fairly sensible.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, they slowly increment the time by tiny fractions of a millisecond that don't cause problems.

Edit: Found it! http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It does say about 'being so tiny a change that the systems don't notice it'.

But as systems get faster, perhaps that's going to get harder and harder to manage?

Simple solution: turn EVERYTHING OFF for 1 second at midnight on December 31!

[andrewducker]

I think that time systems are set to allow a certain amount of jitter between different systems. So if two servers are talking and one end thinks the time is a millisecond out from another system then they're fine - it's only when it jumps by a larger amount that one of the systems thinks it's being tampered with.

If you're bored enough then google "NTP jitter"

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Seems Salmond is being quite canny -- Scotland has heaps of wind and running water, the UAE presumably has a lot of sunshine. And making Scotland a pioneer of renewables means we'll eventually be in a position to export expertise.

[andrewducker]

Yup. It's a move I definitely agree with.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The UAE chap has some interest in Masdar who are very renewables orientated.

They even have their own city.

http://www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> Kodak thought that the thousands of chemicals its researchers had created for use in film might instead be turned into drugs.

Hmm yes, drugs that make your skin react to light! LOL!

[soon_lee]

Well, there would be a market for both insta-Tan & insta-Goth. Is safety a consideration?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

People I know already buy what are sold as tan accelerant pills before going on holiday :-)

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Those century-old Russian photos are brilliant -- and of particular interest to my wife and her father, who have significant Cherkess/Turkish heritage from the Caucusus region, and have old family photos in very similar attire to some of those photos. :D

[andrewducker]

Glad you liked them. I also have Russian heritage, albeit not from that area (and more from the people that left during the pogroms 100-odd years ago), but it's amazing to see photos in colour from that era at all.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Check out this set, too -- not all color, and not all Russia, but a fair bit of overlap -- Clothing & Dress | Photographium Historic Photo Archive

[andrewducker]

Cheers, those were interesting.

[chess]

What really strikes me about the century-old pictures is the difference in clothing. The countryside is the same, the buildings are only slighly different (more timber frames, no endless suburbs), but everyone's clothing is very different from modern clothing, which has become so cheap it's got basically everywhere (see: all the Tribespeople In Old T-Shirts photos) and basically completely displaced the old styles of clothing apart from people who are very specifically trying to replicate them...

[andrewducker]

Yup. Obviously all handmade to fit, which means it looks simultaneously more old-fashioned and higher quality than a lot of modern clothing.