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November 28, 2005
What they should expect?
Sony is now under atgtack due to the outrageous violation of the consumers right (spyware installation).
On the other hand, these consumers are windows users and they probably should not expect any better treatment. I suggest that Sony should pay damages but these payment should be directed only towards rehabilitation of windows users and their migration to more respected platform.
Posted by Victor at 06:16 AM
November 06, 2005
Alien or just smoking?
This is an abstract of the Colloquium in our Department. I wonder, if the speaker is an alien or just smoking?
| We show how to construct measures on Banach manifolds associated= to supersymmetric quantum field theories. We give three concrete examples of our construction. The first example is a family $\mu_P^{s,t}$ of measures on a space of functions on the two-torus, parametrized by a polynomial $P$ (the Wess-Zumino-Landau-Ginzburg model). The second is a family $\mu_\cG^{s,t}$ of measures on a space $\cG$ of maps from $\P^1$ to a Lie group (the Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten model). Finally we study a family $\mu_{M,G}^{s,t}$ of measures on the product of a space of connections on the trivial principal bundle with structure group $G$ on a three-dimensional manifold $M$ with a space of $\fg$-valued three-forms on $M.$ We show that these measures are positive, and that the measures $\mu_\cG^{s,t}$ are Borel probability measures. As an application we show that formulas arising from expectations in the measures $\mu_\cG^{s,1}$ reproduce formulas discovered by Frenkel and Zhu in the theory of vertex operator algebras. We conjecture that a similar computation for the measures $\mu_{M,SU(2)}^{s,t},$ where $M$ is a homology three-sphere, will yield the Casson invariant of $M.$ |
Posted by Victor at 03:18 PM
Fobia
To provide our security to our Department the fob access was designed. Certain rooms were supposed to be open with the fobs. Two staircase accesses have fob readers as well as some of elevators.
So far fob access does not work for the Library and Seminar Rooms (first and second type errors). Only one of two staircases accesses work. It is not the fault of fob readers but rather locks. And so far elevator fob readers are no more than a decoration.
No wonder that some faculties and staff developped fobophobia.
Posted by Victor at 06:38 AM
To the spammer
Looking through my spam folder I find usually just a spam and looking in headers I find in absolute majority of the cases that it was sent using M$ software: Microsoft MimeOLE or Outluck Excess. And often I am suggested to buy Windoze s/w. So, my poem to the senders of these emails and owners of the site, using their services:
Microsoft software user,
You are lamer, you are loser,
We don't need your stupid spam,
You are spammer - you are scum!
Posted by Victor at 04:12 AM | Comments (1)
November 05, 2005
Data projectors
We also ordered a buch of gadgets for our Seminar Room:
Two data projectors. document camera, audio, PC to control them and Podium to keep all this great staff. And two motorized screens. Some equipment came, some is coming.
- When? - Suppliers know...
- What is missing? - This is the Big Secret.
- Why?
The trouble is that the guys who are going to install the staff are not ordinary humans. They will come only once to install all the staff, and their Second Coming would be a real miracle. Well, the miraculous would be the price paid for this. And therefore heck with all professors who are desperately waiting for the equipment which is probably already here - the suppliers and service people should be kept happy.
...................................................................................................................................To be continued
Posted by Victor at 03:13 PM
Wireless
Our Department moved into great new location [Well, not everyone moved]. We were supposed to get a bunch of new toys. Partially we did. The rest is coming - with the speed of the dying snail.
One of the most desired items for me was a wireless network and hardware was ordered well in advance but it still arrived late. During this period we were told: 2 weeks more and it should arrive and installation will take 1-2 weeks (because many departments ordered wireless). Finally hardware arrive - something around October 16.
The Great Day came - Late in October access points were installed. Hooray!
Not so fast: it appeared that Network People should install switches in the Data Closet. Surely they could do it while waiting for Access Points but ... they did not .... and we waited until the switches were installed... and finally they came and installed the switches... Hallelujah!!!
Oops! The Wireless People did not connect access points to the network during the installation. So, we are waiting the next visit of them... and hope that Network People did their job in full...
..................................................................................................................................... To be continued
Posted by Victor at 08:09 AM