Underheight.com

No good can come of this, especially when the left coasters in Oregon were the first state to try it.

Due to filesystem space issues, I had to upload a tar file to filesystem A but needed to extract it on filesystem B.

The tar file was less than the size of filesystem A. The tar file was less than the size of filesystem B. However, doubling the size of the tar file was greater than the size of filesystem A. Also, doubling the size of the tar file was greater than the size of filesystem B. That is, the extracted contents of the tarball should be the same size as the tarball itself; and the tar file is not deleted as a result of the extraction process.

In other words, I couldn’t do the typical upload to filesystem A and extract to filesystem A. I also couldn’t set the directory path when creating the tarball since that path didn’t exist on the destination server (and also couldn’t be created — the tar was created from a DVD).

LinuxQuestions.org provided the answer. I actually needed to do this on a Solaris 10 system and it worked fine.

cd /path/to/where/files/are/required
cat /path/to/file.tar | tar xf -

Although, I would do this command instead
– to add verbosity (the v) so I could monitor easier
– and throw it in the background (the &) so if my network connection dropped it would still run fine

cat /path/to/file.tar | tar xvf - &

Here’s a good site with basic info on how to use tar if you need more help.

Major League Baseball will soon be installing cameras in all stadiums to gather petabytes of positional data.

A half-century after Branch Rickey harrumphed, “There is nothing on earth anybody can do with fielding,” all these pixels and bits will almost certainly revolutionize the analysis of baseball glovework. Even the most traditional fans may appreciate the importance of on-base percentage and other modern offensive statistics, but they still rate fielders by errors and fielding percentage, which are about as computationally sophisticated as a horse clomping its hoof.

The primary job of a fielder is to turn batted balls into outs: an infielder by gobbling up ground balls and throwing them to a base, and an outfielder by catching as many fly balls as possible. But errors (and the rate of not making errors, which is fielding percentage) measure only a fielder’s glaring mistakes — they ignore the more important matter of who reaches balls that others do not.A half-century after Branch Rickey harrumphed, “There is nothing on earth anybody can do with fielding,” all these pixels and bits will almost certainly revolutionize the analysis of baseball glovework. Even the most traditional fans may appreciate the importance of on-base percentage and other modern offensive statistics, but they still rate fielders by errors and fielding percentage, which are about as computationally sophisticated as a horse clomping its hoof.

The primary job of a fielder is to turn batted balls into outs: an infielder by gobbling up ground balls and throwing them to a base, and an outfielder by catching as many fly balls as possible. But errors (and the rate of not making errors, which is fielding percentage) measure only a fielder’s glaring mistakes — they ignore the more important matter of who reaches balls that others do not.

Fans and team executives have recently developed systems to track how many balls are hit to each area of the field, where fielders are positioned and whether balls are hit hard, but they rely on eyeballed estimates. The new camera-tracking system will assess it all to the inch.

This is a much more robust system than the GPS-enabled shoes I mentioned in a post a couple years ago.

The camera system has been quietly tested and refined in the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark this season by Sportvision, the Bay Area company that developed the yellow first-down line for football broadcasts and car-tracking software for Nascar races. Sportvision has worked with Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league’s Internet subsidiary, in the venture that will eventually cost upward of $5 million to install the system in all 30 stadiums, according to executives involved with the project.

Toyota Develops Mind-Controlled Wheelchair

As featured in Popular Science, a one eyed filmmaker gets a camera eye: The Eyeborg Project. More videos here.

Prof. Volokh’s legal analysis: Federal Felony To Use Blogs, the Web, Etc. To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through “Severe, Repeated, and Hostile” Speech?

From the NY Times — Iranians and Others Outwit Net Censors

Great summary of the newly proposed federal legislation to give the government massive oversight and intrusion into private computer networks.

Well, that was rather anti-climactic and technical.

Here’s a really good summary; a longer and quite readable rundown; and the actual FCC doc.

A factory in the heartland of America that produced fuel from food waste has just closed down.

Changing World Technologies owns a plant in Carthage Missouri that converts leftover turkey parts from a neighboring Butterball plant into oil. It uses the process of “thermal depolymerization” it has perfected over the years. In effect, instead of letting nature do the job with dinosaur remains over tens of millions of years, CWT developed a way to do it in hours. CWT was featured twice in Discover magazine as the “Anything Into Oil” company - in May 2003 and April 2006.

But now, the company has filed for bankruptcy after Butterball stopped sending turkey leftovers to the plant. There’s also been an ongoing issue with the odors coming from the plant. It hopes to reorganize and reopen at some point in the near feature. In the meantime, nearly 50 workers are out of a job and applying for unemployment.

I view this more as a national security issue above all else and would prefer the government stay out of the way of this project. But if we’re going to waste billions on other pet pork projects with little to no economical “stimulating” effect; and, if this is truly critical to a future free from foreign oil, with lots of homegrown “green collar” and “renewable energy” jobs; isn’t this exactly the kind of operation we should have at the top of the priority list? Why has there been little action from the National Science Foundation or even DARPA on this fuel creation process and this plant?

Many other bifuel projects have come and gone - some promising, some not. But it doesn’t appear we’re serious as a matter of national policy about leading the world in this kind of research and industry. Despite lip service to “green collar jobs” and “renewable energy”, have we actually done anything about it yet?

Maybe the next time you talk with your local Chamber of Commerce or economic development folks, or your state or federal legislator, mention this to them. They’re probably not even aware it exists, let alone the job possibilities that could be created if a plant opened in your area.

A truly fascinating article by a former officer in the CIA’s clandestine service: “What the CIA’s Censors Can Teach Us about Plans to Muzzle Talk Radio”.