Duke the menace

[Duke of Buckingham]

I am really bad at computers. I am bad as anyone can be. But somehow I love/hate computers as I should, don't you? I love them almost as I hate them. They are my worst nightmare but sometimes they come into my dream...

Video Duke vacations for a week. I will let Einstein running for the team. and I will be there for you.

[EmSti]

I understand the love/hate relationship with computers. I troubleshoot system problems for a living and I often remind folks on the the real hard problems - "If it were easy, they wouldn't need us." They drive me mad, but it pays the bill and funds the computing charity hobby. Full circle.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Thanks EmSti. Meanwhile 2 things is always good to remind before going on vacations. I wanted to know your opinion on this 2 issues.

Hippocratic Oath
Original, translated into English

I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:

To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art; and that by my teaching, I will impart a knowledge of this art to my own sons, and to my teacher's sons, and to disciples bound by an indenture and oath according to the medical laws, and no others.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all humanity and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my life.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hello Duke the menace is back and now is time to lunch. I will post Today in History soon.

Crazy Duke

[Duke of Buckingham]

I am having very big trouble with the computer. mainly with the xml files made by me. I will try to reinstall the system tonight. What a big ........ geez.

Duke

[Duke of Buckingham]

Wow! signal

The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University then located at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-Solar System origin. It lasted for the full 72-second duration that Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. The signal has been the subject of significant media attention.

Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the intensity variation of the signal. A space denotes an intensity between 0 and 1, the numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1.000 to 10.000), and intensities of 10.0 and above are denoted by a letter ('A' corresponds to intensities between 10.0 and 11.0, 'B' to 11.0 to 12.0, etc.). The value 'U' (an intensity between 30.0 and 31.0) was the highest detected by the radio telescope, on a linear scale it was over 30 times louder than normal deep space.[1] The intensity in this case is the unitless signal-to-noise ratio, where noise was averaged for that band over the previous few minutes.

Two different values for its frequency have been given: 1420.356 MHz (J. D. Kraus) and 1420.4556 MHz (J. R. Ehman). The frequency 1420 is significant for SETI searchers because, it is reasoned, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and hydrogen resonates at about 1420 MHz, thus extraterrestrials might use that frequency on which to transmit a strong signal. The frequency of the Wow! signal matches very closely with the hydrogen line, which is at 1420.40575177 MHz. The two different values given for the frequency of the Wow! signal (1420.356 MHz and 1420.4556 MHz) are the same distance apart to the hydrogen line—the first being about 0.0498 MHz less than the hydrogen line, and the second being about 0.0498 MHz more than the hydrogen line. The bandwidth of the signal is less than 10 kHz (each column on the printout corresponds to a 10 kHz-wide channel; the signal is only present in one column).

The original print out of the Wow! signal, complete with Jerry Ehman's famous exclamation, is preserved by the Ohio Historical Society.

Determining a precise location in the sky was complicated by the fact that the Big Ear telescope used two feed horns to search for signals, each pointing to a slightly different direction in the sky following Earth's rotation; the Wow! signal was detected in one of the horns but not in the other, although the data were processed in such a way that it is impossible to determine in which of the two horns the signal entered. There are, therefore, two possible right ascension values:

19h22m24.64s ± 5s (positive horn)
19h25m17.01s ± 5s (negative horn)

The declination was unambiguously determined to be −27°03′ ± 20′. The preceding values are all expressed in terms of the B1950.0 equinox.

Converted into the J2000.0 equinox, the coordinates become RA= 19h25m31s ± 10s or 19h28m22s ± 10s and declination= −26°57′ ± 20′

This region of the sky lies in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii. Tau Sagittarii is the closest easily visible star.

The Big Ear telescope was fixed and used the rotation of the Earth to scan the sky. At the speed of the Earth's rotation, and given the width of the Big Ear's observation "window", the Big Ear could observe any given point for just 72 seconds. A continuous extraterrestrial signal, therefore, would be expected to register for exactly 72 seconds, and the recorded intensity of that signal would show a gradual peaking for the first 36 seconds—until the signal reached the center of Big Ear's observation "window"— and then a gradual decrease.

Therefore, both the length of the Wow! signal, 72 seconds, and the shape of the intensity graph may correspond to a possible extraterrestrial origin.

The signal was expected to appear three minutes apart in each of the horns, but this did not happen. Ehman unsuccessfully looked for recurrences of the signal using Big Ear in the months after the detection.

In 1987 and 1989, Robert Gray searched for the event using the META array at Oak Ridge Observatory, but did not re-detect it.

In a July 1995 test of signal detection software to be used in its upcoming Project Argus search, SETI League executive director H. Paul Shuch made several drift-scan observations of the 'Wow' signal's coordinates with a 12 meter radio telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank WV, also achieving a null result.

In 1995 and 1996, Gray also searched for the signal using the Very Large Array, which is significantly more sensitive than Big Ear.

Gray and Simon Ellingsen later searched for recurrences of the event in 1999 using the 26m radio telescope at the University of Tasmania's Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory. Six 14-hour observations were made at positions in the vicinity, but did not detect anything similar to the Wow! signal.

Interstellar scintillation of a weaker continuous signal—similar, in effect, to atmospheric twinkling—could be a possible explanation, although this still would not exclude the possibility of the signal being artificial in its nature. However, even by using the significantly more sensitive Very Large Array, such a signal could not be detected, and the probability that a signal below the Very Large Array level could be detected by the Big Ear radio telescope due to interstellar scintillation is low. Other speculations include a rotating lighthouse-like source, a signal sweeping in frequency, or a one-time burst.

Ehman has stated his doubts that the signal is of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

He later recanted his skepticism somewhat, after further research showed an Earth-borne signal to be very unlikely, due to the requirements of a space-borne reflector being bound to certain unrealistic requirements to sufficiently explain the nature of the signal. Also, the 1420 MHz signal is problematic in itself in that it is "protected spectrum": it is bandwidth in which terrestrial transmitters are forbidden to transmit due to it being reserved for astronomical purposes. In his most recent writings, Ehman resists "drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data"—acknowledging the possibility that the source may have been military in nature or otherwise may have been a production of Earth-bound humans.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Iceland Volcano: Lava Explodes From Ice Cap


Fire and Ice
Photograph by Ragnar Axelsson, AP

Ash and roughly thirty-story-tall lava fountains shoot from a half-mile-long (0.8-kilometer-long) rupture in the icy cap of southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced AY-uh-full-ay-ho-kul) volcano early Sunday.

Because volcanic ash can cripple jet engines, flights were not allowed in Icelandic airspace Sunday. As of Monday, air travel was gradually returning to normal, the Associated Press reported.

The geology of Iceland, though, is anything but normal. The volcanic island lies just south of the Arctic Circle atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where two tectonic plates are forever pulling apart.

Magma from deep inside Earth rushes upward, filling the gaps and fueling Iceland's volcanic eruptions, which occur about once every five years.


Lava Fountains
Photograph by Ragnar Axelsson, AP

No damage or injuries have been reported as a result of the Icelandvolcanic eruption (pictured early Sunday), despite pooling magma, ash clouds, and towering lava fountains—as well as hundreds of small earthquakes felt by area residents this month, according to the Web site of the London Times.

The last volcanic eruption in the Eyjafjallajokull glacier area took place in 1821 and continued for roughly two years, according to the Associated Press.


Lava Glow
Photograph by Halldor Kolbeins, AFP, Getty Images

Seen from a distance, Sunday's eruptions greet the Icelandic countryside like a sunrise.

The lava fountains on Eyjafallajoekull volcano, which is 5,466 feet (1,666 meters) tall, threatened to melt parts of the adjacent Eyjafjallajokull glacier, sparking fears of flooding in the sparsely populated farmland below.

"We estimate no one is in danger in the area, but we have started an evacuation plan, and between 500 and 600 people are being evacuated," Sigurgeir Gudmundsson of Iceland's civil-protections agency told the AFP news service Sunday.

Late Sunday some residents from the outskirts of the evacuation zone were permitted to go home as floods failed to materialize. Scientific overflights Monday aimed to determine whether the rest of the evacuees could do the same, the Associated Press reported.


Volcanic Chain Reaction?
Photograph by Hans Strand, Corbis

Not far from Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the much larger Mýrdalsjökull glacier (satellite map) hides the fiery, gently sloping Katla volcano that lies under the ice.

Considered one of Iceland's most dangerous volcanoes, Katla last erupted in 1918 and could be roused by the nearby rumblings that began over the weekend, scientists warned Monday.


"Historically, we know of three eruptions in Katla linked to eruptions in Eyjafjallajokull," Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics and civil-protection adviser, told the AFP news service. For now, though, the giant's sleep appears undisturbed.


Slow Burn?
Photograph by Halldor Kolbeins, AFP, Getty Images

Burning brightly above the rim of the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) Eyjafallajoekull volcano crater, lava fountains in Iceland showed few signs of stopping on Sunday.

The unpredictable eruption could fizzle tomorrow or flourish for two years, geophysicist Magnús Tumi Gudmundsson said at a press conference Monday, according to Iceland Review Online.

[Duke of Buckingham]

“A single death is a tragedy;
a million deaths is a statistic.”

Joseph Stalin

[Duke of Buckingham]

Every day's a perfect gift of time for us to use. Hours waiting to be filled in any way we choose. Each morning brings a quiet hope that rises with the sun. Each evening brings the sweet content that comes with work well done.

You can come in here and be one of us, serve mankind and feel the happyness of a job well done.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Funny Pictures