castanyes blaves
Random ramblings about some random stuff, and things; but more stuff than things -- all in a mesmerizing and kaleidoscopic soapbox-like flow of words.5/26/2006
5/24/2006
This pledge's permanent location: www.pledgebank.com/100laptop
5/23/2006
> the code creates files umpteen
> so many they've filled the machine
> can some disk space be found?
> there's just none around
> you'll have to ask others to clean
Trivial the command,
Profound its effect.
By the tapping of
The disk is freed.
5/21/2006
A rather special first floor apartment with 2 bedrooms, bathroom and ensuite. The living accommodation comprises:- a well appointed kitchen which is open to the generous sitting room and this in turn opens onto a superb balcony which is part covered with a southerly aspect. The property benefits from underground parking and is situated close to the train station and within easy reach of the city.
5/17/2006
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d6C0bNDqf3Y&search=el%20koala%20yo%20via%20jase%20un%20corra
5/16/2006
It is truly amazing how this small tools can make your life much easier...
http://www.google.com/notebook
http://opensource.motorola.com
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Ensembl&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
http://www.diarioadn.com/tv/detail.php?id=5764
5/15/2006
http://www.biodiv.org/programmes/outreach/awareness/biodiv-day-2006-ctrs.shtml
Protect Biodiversity in Drylands!
Can we restore biodiversity?
When dryland ecosystems become degraded, valuable biodiversity services are lost. Restoration in drylands can be very complex and can take many forms depending on the type of degradation observed. Find out some of the ways that China and India are addressing the problem. . . . .
5/14/2006
There are two basic guiding principles. Principle one is "Clean Before Dirty" (CBD), and Principle two is "Small Before Large" (SBL).
* CBD means you wash the cleanest -- e.g. the least dirty dishes -- before the most dirty ones. For example: always do the glassware first while the water is clean. That way you will not get greasy smears on the glasses.
* SBL is aimed at making stacking easier. Place all the small items underneath and the large items stacked on top. Place everything upside down to aid draining.
Use water that is as hot as you can stand; it makes cleaning easier and draining quicker.
Dishes with baked-on stains should be pre-soaked if possible.
5/13/2006
Monoculturalism: In most Old World nations, notably with the exception of the UK [citation needed], culture is very closely linked to nationalism, thus government policy is to assimilate immigrants. These countries have policies aiming at the social integration of immigrant groups to the national culture. This is typical of nations that define themselves as one and indivisible and do not recognize the existence of other nations within their midst.
I'm thinking in PP's idea of Spain here...
Multiculturalism: a policy that immigrants and others should preserve their cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation. Today, this is the official policy of Canada, Australia and the UK.
Particularism is exclusive devotion to one's own group's interests.
In discussions of multiculturalism, historian and educator Diane Ravitich draws a distinction between what she terms "pluralistic" and "particularistic" varieties. Other writers often blur or ignore this distinction; it is often difficult to discern whether advocacy for "diversity" or "multiculturalism" is intended to promote particularism or not. In some quarters, even to raise the issue is taboo.
In a long essay about multiculturalism in American education, Ravitch praises the inclusiveness of multicultural pluralism while decrying what she says as multiple flaws and failures of multicultural particularism. [1]
It makes me think about icons like the Spanish National Football Team and its slightly-racist head coach...
5/11/2006
U.S. 10-Year Treasury Notes Fall After $13 Billion Auction
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. 10-year Treasuries fell the most in more than a week after the government sold $13 billion of the securities, adding supply at a time when the Federal Reserve is signaling that it may raise interest rates further.
Investors pushed yields higher even after a Commerce Department report showed retail sales in April rose less than forecast. Fed policy makers yesterday boosted their target rate to 5 percent from 4.75 percent and said ``further policy firming may yet be needed.''
``Since the Fed's statement, the market has been left with a bearish tone,'' said Mustafa Chowdhury, head of U.S. interest- rate research at Deutsche Bank AG in New York. The firm is one of the 22 primary dealers of U.S. government securities that are obligated to bid at the auctions. ``The prospect of more rate increases is significant for investors.''
The yield on the benchmark 10-year note rose 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 5.17 percent at 1:26 p.m. in New York, according to bond broker Cantor Fitzgerald LP. Yields move inversely to bond prices. The price of the 4 1/2 percent security due in February 2016 fell almost 3/8, or $3.75 per $1,000 face amount, to 94 7/8, the biggest drop since May 1.
The securities sold today drew a yield of 5.14, the highest yield since May 2002. For every $1 sold, there was $2.53 worth of bids, down from $2.87 at March's sale. Indirect bidders, a group that includes foreign central banks, bought 30.7 percent of the securities. Since the Treasury began releasing such data in May 2003, the share of 10-year notes won by indirect bidders has ranged from 2.9 percent to 54.7 percent.
Ten-year Treasuries have lost 4.3 percent this year, compared with a gain of 1.4 percent at this point in 2005, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. index data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasury_security
Treasury notes (or T-Notes) mature in one to ten years. They have a coupon payment every six months, and are commonly issued with maturities dates of 2, 3, 5 or 10 years, for denominations from $1,000 to $1,000,000. T-Notes and T-Bonds are quoted on the secondary market at percentage of par in thirty-seconds of a point. Thus, for example, a quote of 95.7 on a note indicates that it is trading at a discount: $952.19 for a $1,000 bond.
The 10-year Treasury note has become the security most frequently quoted when discussing the performance of the U.S. government-bond market and is used to convey the market's take on longer-term macroeconomic expectations. It is also important to the U.S. mortgage market, which uses the yield on the 10-year Treasury note as a benchmark for setting mortgage interest rates.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=toyota+prius%2C+oil+prices&ctab=2&date=all&geo=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=gyms,+new+years+resolutions
this is a nice example of things that correlate
in a very global way of thinking, this contains a lot of information about what we are interested in
Try it now if you haven't yet:
http://www.google.com/trends
5/09/2006
http://www.mediacenterpcworld.com/news/724
AVerMedia technologies has today announced that it has developed drivers for its Hybrid TV Tuner product range to support the following distributions of Linux; Fedora core3, Fedora core4, Mandriva and SUSE.
Currently only a hand-full of AVerMedia products are able to support Linux users but AVerMedia are dedicated to expanding availability.
The development of Linux support on its most popular products is yet another differentiator that shows that AVerMedia are at the forefront of the TV Tuner market. With over 300 global R&D staff, AVerMedia are pleased to be able to dedicate time and resources to support a community that is often overlooked.
?We are developing these in response to the demands of the Linux community as part of our commitment to offering complete solutions for the market?, says, Jon Rainford, Multimedia product manager, AverMedia, UK. ?Linux is an ideal base for PVR solutions for the more advanced user and we have developed drivers for the most popular distributions. We plan to develop similar support for other products in our range over the next 12 months.
5/08/2006
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/8172/image0019ib.gif
http://www.bio.cam.ac.uk/gradschool/current/courses/bioinformatics.html
5/07/2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett
Views on taxes
Estate tax
Buffett told The New York Times that the estate tax played a "critical
role" in promoting economic growth by helping create a society in
which success is based on merit rather than inheritance. Repealing the
estate tax, he said, would be equivalent to "choosing the 2020 Olympic
team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000
Olympics."
5/05/2006
5/04/2006
http://www.macosx.com/newsgroups/showthread.php?p=1394510
5/03/2006
Microsoft Corp.'s new Web advertising software, three years in the making, may fail to crack Google Inc.'s dominance of the Internet ad market.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aoxKbnwb5qQA&refer=us
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1186330,00.html
5/01/2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_%28psychology%29
Like most personality traits, perfectionism tends to run in families and probably has a genetic component. Parents who practise an authoritarian style combined with conditional love may contribute to perfectionism in their children[8]. Culture may play a role. In one study (Castro & Rice 2003), Asian-American students reported higher levels of perfectionism than did African-American or European-American students [9].
Perfectionism may be a legacy of our evolutionary past. Hominids who were motivated for prolonged, incremental improvement (perfectionism) could create better tools and this would provide significant survival advantages[10].
Linux-2.6.16 has now support for dropping the clean caches, dentries and inodes from memory, causing that memory to be free.
Add /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free. This is mainly useful for benchmarking, for getting consistent results between filesystem benchmarks without rebooting. To free pagecache: "echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches", to free dentries and inodes: "echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches", to free pagecache, dentries and inodes: "echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches". As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the user should run `sync' first (commit)
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