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Premature Earth Shield by Baldrson · 2000-09-09 15:59 · Score: 1 · on United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope

It will also allow astronomers to plot in detail the courses of asteroids and comets that threaten to collide with the Earth. Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from their impact.

The UN might actually pull off the construction of this, because it is a pretty straight forward repeating task -- something bureaucracies can generally pull off. But the real agenda is a bit more sinister. Like NASA, they're trying to buy their way, with about $1 billion investment, into the hearts of people like you so they can get taxes out of you and give your money out to their friends, and, as I've said before, central authorities are not your friends!

Furthermore, they are trying to become an earth shielding entity a bit prematurely. This really can wait a few decades until after agriculture has moved out of natural ecosystems, the infosphere has moved into Earth orbit followed by ecosystems moving into Earth orbit as part of humanity's ultimate drive to disperse life.

Premature Earth Shield by Baldrson · 2000-09-09 15:59 · Score: 1 · on United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope

It will also allow astronomers to plot in detail the courses of asteroids and comets that threaten to collide with the Earth. Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from their impact.

The UN might actually pull off the construction of this, because it is a pretty straight forward repeating task -- something bureaucracies can generally pull off. But the real agenda is a bit more sinister. Like NASA, they're trying to buy their way, with about $1 billion investment, into the hearts of people like you so they can get taxes out of you and give your money out to their friends, and, as I've said before, central authorities are not your friends!

Furthermore, they are trying to become an earth shielding entity a bit prematurely. This really can wait a few decades until after agriculture has moved out of natural ecosystems, the infosphere has moved into Earth orbit followed by ecosystems moving into Earth orbit as part of humanity's ultimate drive to disperse life.

Premature Earth Shield by Baldrson · 2000-09-09 15:59 · Score: 1 · on United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope

It will also allow astronomers to plot in detail the courses of asteroids and comets that threaten to collide with the Earth. Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from their impact.

The UN might actually pull off the construction of this, because it is a pretty straight forward repeating task -- something bureaucracies can generally pull off. But the real agenda is a bit more sinister. Like NASA, they're trying to buy their way, with about $1 billion investment, into the hearts of people like you so they can get taxes out of you and give your money out to their friends, and, as I've said before, central authorities are not your friends!

Furthermore, they are trying to become an earth shielding entity a bit prematurely. This really can wait a few decades until after agriculture has moved out of natural ecosystems, the infosphere has moved into Earth orbit followed by ecosystems moving into Earth orbit as part of humanity's ultimate drive to disperse life.

Premature Earth Shield by Baldrson · 2000-09-09 15:59 · Score: 1 · on United Nations Brings You ... A Telescope

It will also allow astronomers to plot in detail the courses of asteroids and comets that threaten to collide with the Earth. Professor Peter Wilkinson, a senior astronomer at Jodrell Bank, Britain's renowned radio telescope centre, said that the SKA could enable humanity to protect itself from their impact.

The UN might actually pull off the construction of this, because it is a pretty straight forward repeating task -- something bureaucracies can generally pull off. But the real agenda is a bit more sinister. Like NASA, they're trying to buy their way, with about $1 billion investment, into the hearts of people like you so they can get taxes out of you and give your money out to their friends, and, as I've said before, central authorities are not your friends!

Furthermore, they are trying to become an earth shielding entity a bit prematurely. This really can wait a few decades until after agriculture has moved out of natural ecosystems, the infosphere has moved into Earth orbit followed by ecosystems moving into Earth orbit as part of humanity's ultimate drive to disperse life.

Re:Usenet? by titus-g · 2000-09-09 03:24 · Score: 2 · on Developing Subversive Software?

Yeah this is a case where IDRC :)

I have an account with them from when my ISP didn't have newsgroup access (barbaric or what?, but hey they gave me unmetered calls)

There is some info on anonymous usenet posting at http://www.geocities.com/Capi tolHill/1236/howto2.html, also a lot of info if you search on google.

Actually I guess if nothing else this is probably going to end the old hacker (coder) / hacker (system breaker) argument as we're all going to have to be both the way things are going...

Re:I find it hard to believe... by Baldrson · 2000-09-08 10:51 · Score: 2 · on Company Uses Grain Elevators for Internet Access

That "hicks" might want high speed internet access to? The whole thing strikes me as terribly obvious.

A lot things aren't obvious to you.

For example, that there are enormous hidden taxes applied to any physical wiring due to right of ways that exceed even the FCC's red tape by a huge amount.

That the first Cray supercomputer was built on Seymour's farm using guys from rural Iowa and Wisconsin.

That wireless will probably displace physical cable in urban areas once places like Iowa, Montana, Canada, China, Siberia, etc. make the advantages manifestly clear.

That the wireless revolution will relocate the infosphere to orbit.

Or, finally, an example of something that clearly is not obvious to you is the ranking of states by academic achievement.

1. Minnesota
2. Montana
3. Iowa
4. Wisconsin
5. New Hampshire
6. Oregon
7. Washington
8. Kansas
9. Nebraska
10. Alaska
11. Connecticut
12. Massachusetts
13. Maine
14. Vermont
15. Missouri
16. Colorado
17. Arizona
18. Utah
19. Virginia
20. North Dakota
21. Oklahoma
22. Wyoming
23. Illinois
24. New York
25. New Jersey
26. Maryland
27. Nevada
28. Rhode Island
29. Idaho
30. Ohio
31. Texas
32. Michigan
33. North Carolina
34. California
35. South Dakota
36. West Virginia
37. Kentucky
38. Delaware
39. Arkansas
40. Florida
41. Indiana
42. Alabama
43. New Mexico
44. Tennessee
45. Pennsylvania
46. Georgia
47. Hawaii
48. South Carolina
49. Louisiana
50. District of Columbia
51. Mississippi

Now, which state are you from? :-)

Re:Color-blindness too by Speed+Racer · 2000-09-08 04:40 · Score: 2 · on Destroying The Myth Of The Web-Safe Palette

Brilliant. Give this man a cigar.

The common forms of color blindness do not refer to the inability to distinguish any color, merely certain colors and shades. Take a color blindness test and see if you are a sufferer.

Disperse Life Now by Baldrson · 2000-09-08 04:34 · Score: 2 · on Riding The Space Elevator

Disperse life now -- not in 50 years.

People keep thinking there has to be some international mega engineering project before we can disperse life. There doesn't, and relying on such a project will guarantee failure for the same reason that political leaders have increasingly drawn population from the countryside into the cities:

Central authorities want control because that's what it takes to become a central authority and dispersion means loss of control.

Read the above sentence over and over until you either get bored or you finally understand why central authorities are not your friends.

Positive sum games like the Internet happen despite central authorities, not because of them.

Re:The proof is in the power... by Nehemiah+S. · 2000-09-05 23:05 · Score: 1 · on Lord Of The Rings Being Rendered Under Linux

low end I2's had 100, 150, 200 or 250 mhz R4400's while high end I2's had 175 or 195 R10000's. Some also has 150 or 180 mhz R5000's. There was also a R8000 variant which used a 75-80 mhz chip. Sgi hrware faq is here.

My experience with I2's shows that an R4400 is about comperable to 1.25 mhz on a Pentium 2, while an R8k or R10k is about 2-3 mhz P2. I've never used an R5k; they seem to be aimed at the graphics types, while the 44k, 8k, and 10k were aimed at the numerical simulation folks. Your results may vary, of course; Spec 95 CINT results for an R10k 195 were very disappointing- comparable to a PII 266. Some similar POV-ray render speed benchmarks can be found here as well.

Rev Neh

Fortify by gbarta · 2000-09-05 15:40 · Score: 1 · on What is the Best Memory Debugger?

I have found Fortify to be a very helpful memory debugger. It supports both new/delete and malloc/free memory management. It traps memory leaks, writes beyond and before memory blocks, writes to freed memory, free twice, freeing memory never allocated, amongst others. It's performance hit is certainly noticeable, but should scale well under heavy use. I have only ever used it on one platform, but it claims to be very portable.

It is free and includes source code, but does not have an open source license.

old angry man by perfecto · 2000-09-05 07:00 · Score: 1 · on Bob Metcalfe On NPR

open source has already gained critical mass. this ignoramus is acting as if this is something new. some gnu utilites are over 25 years old! where is this even heard of in the commercial/wintel world??

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And Justice for None

Re:Who fscking cares? by Denor · 2000-09-05 02:49 · Score: 2 · on NASM Public License Not GPL-compatible?

Agreed! I have, in the past, considered releasing works under the No problem, bugroff license.
Essentially, it's everything we're looking for :)

Connie Willis won AGAIN! by DHartung · 2000-09-04 15:17 · Score: 3 · on The Hugo Awards: Word From A Winner

...for her novella, The Winds of Marble Arch (online at Asimov's).

If the count is up to date, this makes her fourteenth major award -- six Nebulas, and eight Hugos. That's more than any other sf author, even some of the big names ... and she's still in the prime of her career.

Frankly, I had a hard time with The Doomsday Book, for various reasons including the fact that major characters playing with dangerous technology acted like idiots, but in the end it was very worthwhile. I'm just surprised it took me so many years to discover her. (Easy to do when you quit reading new sf, like I did.)

But I've now read more of her "Dunsworthy time machine" stories, the collection Fire Watch, which is top-notch, and I've jsut begun last year's Hugo winner for novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog. Not to be missed. If you've been off the SF beat for a while, pick up some Willis, you'll be glad you did.
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Michael Milken anyone? by perfecto · 2000-09-03 23:51 · Score: 1 · on Convicted Hackers Snubbed by Security Firms?

michael milken is a venture capitalist i believe. what hypocrisy!

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And Justice for None

well shit, most web tools produce the same crap!! by perfecto · 2000-09-01 01:37 · Score: 1 · on Copyrights on Web Interfaces

i've seen tons of sites that have the same layouts. alot of times it's because people used the same tool with one of the builtin layouts. if someone apes someone else's style so what? sites continually get redesigned and the styles diverge anyway. which is basically happenned with my biography and the guy whose site i aped. this is a nonissue.

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And Justice for None

Re:I don't buy it by Master+of+Kode+Fu · 2000-08-31 23:20 · Score: 1 · on Ash: A Secret History

It did happen: I give you the example of Queen Bodicea, Celtic ass-kicker extraordinaire.

As for the societal structures demanding that women stay at home while men be breadwinners, oh yes, they're still around.

Re:Programming DirectX is HELL by yomahz · 2000-08-31 01:55 · Score: 1 · on Gamespy on Linux Gaming

Also interesting to see how the latest revision of the document by Brian Hook is 0.46, which seems to be somewhere from the pre DX5 timeframe. I'm sure 3D programming on Linux was great fun 3 years ago. (Oh, oops, there wasn't even a single 3d driver out yet :)

Perhaps you have a snappy comeback for David Joffe's article which is up to date.

The argument wasn't only that directx is a nightmare but that OpenGL was much easier to accomplish the same results.

Do you want to work to get this performance? No? Then get another job. Not smart enough to understand all the issues at play? Then get another job.

Or get a job working with a better API than the POS that is DirectX. Why would someone want to work w/ a non-portable, nightmare protocol like directx when there are simpler, portable solutions unless they are a masochist(or have some sort of 37337 complex)? It's a pretty obvious answer to me.

If you ask me, you're the one throwing out flame bait.

/me bites
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A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Programming DirectX is HELL by Lightwarrior · 2000-08-31 00:47 · Score: 3 · on Gamespy on Linux Gaming

you've got a really well written post; but i question the amount of time you've spent programming DirectX. you seem to know a lot about it... but when you say "...DirectX is a little complex to program...", that's much like saying "the sun is a little bigger than the earth".

DirectX is a nightmare. I've only been programming for seven years, so maybe I'm too young/new to really be experienced enough to program it - but I doubt it. The brief/important list of languages I know include C, C++, Perl, Java, and LISP. I've done work with OpenGL on Linux stations, and DirectX on Windows95. By FAR the easiest to use was OpenGL. DirectX wasn't what you'd call an easy-to-use environment; frankly, I'm amazed that any programmer can get through the MS BS and get anything accomplished.

Don't want to take my word for it? Ask David Joffe - "However, DirectX is (in my opinion) the most horribly designed API I've ever seen, and I would hate for any newbie game programmers, whose first API might be DirectX,to walk away thinking that it is in any way an example of how a games API should look. DirectX is bulky, poorly documented, unnecessarily overcomplicated, proprietary, and there was never any technical for the existence of large portions of it, such as Direct3D (Microsoft ignored the existing industry standard OpenGL simply because it wasn't theirs and it wasn't tied to the Windows platform, not because they thought they could offer a better solution.)"
Check out his Game programming with DirectX guide.

But he's not the only one; Brian Hook (of wksoftware.com) litterally thinks DirectX is Hell. From the introduction to his Guide: "Microsoft designed and released game development library called DirectX. Part of this library is a 3D graphics immediate mode rendering API called Direct3D. Everyone said it was going to be The Standard for 3D Graphics. I decided to learn it. It sucked. It was difficult. It was poorly documented. It was error prone. Since I've subjected myself to this pain, I figure that others may want to learn a bit from my own experiences, so I'm writing this document."
Read the rest of his Guide if you want to know more about DirectX and pain.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me; there's a couple other resources on the web that gives DirectX a better-than-average glance, and (appears) to like it. Check out Andre' LaMothe's DirectX-tasy guide at loriak.com. His conclusion? "...DirectX isn't as bad as we thought it was, and it really does work and allows accelerators and other hardware to be supported very easily."

So I guess it depends on who you talk to, but in my opinion, DirectX is pure pain. If you're only going to read one, look at Brian Hook's; it is by far the most complete.

But we all knew it was better to be programming on Linux, anyway, right?

The state of Linux gaming comes right down to the big companies not wanting to write modular code; look at Terminus. Terminus was released at the same time for Win, Mac, and Linux. This proves accomodating Linux gamers can be done. Most just don't want to bother with it; which is sad. But if Linux continues this upward trend it's on... I'm willing to bet Blizzard will start porting its newest hit games over, like they did with the Mac. I believe Linux gaming will catch on, if only because of the hordes of people that Microsoft continues to alienate.

just my thoughts.

-lw

Well, how about Linux DVD player?? by Sachs · 2000-08-30 14:35 · Score: 1 · on More Threats From The MPAA

Here's my copy...

Click here to Get a Linux DVD player. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp______________ &nbsp&nbsp/DDD.V.....VDDD\ &nbsp/.D..D.V...V.D..D\ /..D..D..V.V..D..D.\ |..DDD....V...DDD..| |......./XXX\......| |.......|XOX|......| |.......\XXX/......| |..................| \................../ &nbsp\................/ &nbsp&nbsp\______________/

meept!

just like prohibition, this will fail! by perfecto · 2000-08-30 02:41 · Score: 1 · on More Threats From The MPAA

personally, i'm glad that they're illegalizing stuff like this. when things go underground, they become even more rampant. our marijuana laws are a joke. my grandmother smokes weed whenever she wants. anyone that wants to rip dvds will be able to regardless of whether its on a website or not. in fact as it goes underground pirating technology will get better as these big manufacturers outprice themselves from the market and broadband over the internet takes hold.

my policy on software is that i only buy it if it's priced reasonably. if it's not, i copy. why do i buy movies when i could get a videotape copy?? because nowadays they sell for between $9.99 and $14.99. that's called the convenience pricepoint. it's worth it for me to buy it rather than go through the hassle of finding it and copying it. if you don't meet it, you're going to get robbed. period.

this action is useless.

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And Justice for None

Re:Not yet... by Anonymous Coward · 2000-08-30 00:26 · Score: 3 · on More Threats From The MPAA

Free home pages. by ucblockhead · 2000-08-30 00:17 · Score: 1 · on More Threats From The MPAA

It took a friend of mine five minutes and no money to create this page, which I'm told links to DeCSS.

Everyone ought to get their friends to do so as well.

George ain't learning - Remember the Oscars? by valmont · 2000-08-29 09:28 · Score: 1 · on R2D2 (Kenny Baker) Replaced with CGI for Ep2

The Matrix and EP1 were competing for the best special effects' Oscar.

Remember WHICH MOVIE got it?

The Matrix!

Try to imagine the slap in Mr. Lucas's face: ILM had almost consistently been winning best visual effects Oscars over the last few years, and the very year his so highly anticipated movie comes out, with all its overhyped and highly bragged-about slew of ILM special effects, SOMEONE ELSE gets the title!

I think this should have taught George Lucas the lesson that visual effects DO NOT make a movie: as snazzy (not necessarily GOOD) as they can be, if your characters are not interesting enough for the moviegoer to care about them, they're as good as non-existent.

It appears He's not learning.

In any case, I ain't going thru this sh*t again with my friends for EP2 .

A little late by GlassUser · 2000-08-29 00:25 · Score: 1 · on Salon on the XBox

It sounds nice, sure, but like the story says, I think it's going to be a little too late. Perhaps if it was out a little earlier, to compete with the PS2, it would have a good run, but I predict that it will not be all that hot (anyone remember the TurboGrafx16? - sorry, best link I could find).
Given that it's already a little underpowered, at least for high-quality gaming (specs), I don't think it has that long a life. My money is on the Nintendo GameCube and my lust for the rumored metroid game.

Lego Mosaic by Hairy_Potter · 2000-08-27 19:10 · Score: 1 · on The LEGO Desk

With such a large surface and so many 1x1 bricks the guy could have actually made an image. All someone would have to do is open a nice desktop image (like some wallpaper of a nature scene or a space scene or hell, render something cool) and then convert it to a 2-bit (4 color) image. Scale to the size of your LEGO desktop.

Well, this isn't a new idea, someone's already beat you to it.

A quick search for mosaic on lugnet brings up a few interesting images.

Audrey Hepburn
Someone's wife, along with screenshots of the MosaicMaker app and images.
And finally, the homepage for MosaicMaker.

Re:Sell != Property by UnknownSoldier · 2000-08-27 08:00 · Score: 1 · on URLs Aren't Property?

> In the case of the license plate, the state owns it, and you're just putting it on your car.
Correct.

> The only reason it's there is because the law says you have to attach it.

Probably because you don't have the Manufactor's Statement of Origin for your automobile, and hence, do NOT own your vehicle:
Vehicle Manufacturer's Certificate/Statement of Origin
Manufacturer's Statement of Origin - Key To ownership

When you buy a new autmobile, WHY does the goverment want you to surrender the MSO?
Licensing your new vehicle in Washington
LOUISIANA OFFICE OF MOTOR VEHICLES VEHICLE REGISTRATION & TITLE
Massachusetts Title Law

Travelling is a RIGHT, Driving is a privilege. You DON'T need a license to travel. I travel without one, and have yet to be given a ticket for speeding or for driving without a license.

Here is a list of DOCUMENTED rulings.
Driver Licensing vs. the Right to Travel
http://www.justiceprose.8m.com/carl/ carl1.html

Speeding is NOT a crime, UNLESS you went to the government asking for permission (DRIVER'S LICENSE) to use their property (REGISTERED VEHICLE.) If you don't want to be harassed by the good law officers, you can get an International Driver's Permit, which is valid in over 200 countries. No Socialist Slave Number is required.

Research the above links and see for yourself.

Re:That's way the world works by perfecto · 2000-08-26 01:12 · Score: 1 · on Coding Classes & Required Development Environments?

t's worth pointing out that, most likely, this issue never would have been raised if the course required the program to compile under g++ on the schools mainframes/UNIX boxes.

well shit, anyone can get a g++ compiler for free on almost any platform! why would they complain?

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And Justice for None

Re:That's way the world works by perfecto · 2000-08-26 01:05 · Score: 1 · on Coding Classes & Required Development Environments?

hilarious!

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And Justice for None

Re:Valid Teaching Method by perfecto · 2000-08-26 00:55 · Score: 1 · on Coding Classes & Required Development Environments?

the basics to me is text editor and compiler... NOT gui! it drives me nuts when i have to work with programmers that learned exclusively on gui. they don't seem to realize why he ide is really useful and just think all there is to programming is clicking a component and adding code. they have no idea of how the program is really structured and could read code to get themselves out of a paper bag (or however the saying goes). all beginner courses should be taught at the fundemental level not the superficial one!

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And Justice for None

I SO HATE LAZY ASS TEACHERS!! by perfecto · 2000-08-26 00:49 · Score: 1 · on Coding Classes & Required Development Environments?

you should really bring this up with your department head. either that or look for a better teacher or a better school. i'd definitely do the former because it's people like him that produce bad tool dependent programmers rather than real programmers. every programmer should know how to command line compile and link but i know so make that don't know how.

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And Justice for None

History of The Baddies in Hollywood film by -Harlequin- · 2000-08-25 18:17 · Score: 4 · on Hollywood Says If You Support Open Source, You're ...

As we know, the USA, or more precisely, Hollywood, always needs a Bad Guy.

1970's - The Red Commie Threat.
1980's - Those evil arab nations that sell us our oil and have corrupt military leaders.
1990's - Drug runners (with links to evil S. American nations with corrupt military leaders).
Late 90's - Those terrible two-dimensional Terrorists whose sole purpose in life is to kill as many Americans as possible. Why this is, we're not told (perhaps we might sympathise with them?). They're just born that way apparently.
Coming up next - those evil computer thieves and hackers who wield greater threat to your lives than all the above combined.

In most movies to date, hackers have usually been the good guys, and bad hackers are usually just opposition for the good hackers to defeat. Movies in which a Joe Average hero is besieged on all sides by a foe with unlimited resources have usually had the foe played by things like intelligence services, corrupt institutions and the like.
I suspect that as Hollywood execs in their isolated circles hear more and more about how great a threat is posed by these computer people, and as the net remains a sexy background for movies, but familiar to more people, we may start to see more movies in which we get to play the archvillain, whether we want to or not. And we'll have powers we never dreamed of (like hacking Russian spy satellites in order to take telephoto pictures of your credit card number as you pay for something, or your wife undressing*. Actually, they would have to be US satellites because Hollywood is currently dedicated to the idea that all Russian technology is stuck in the 50's)

Hmmm, writing this incredibly 2d summary of Hollywood movies yet having it so aptly sum up so many movies sorta rams home how numbingly stupid the films are.

Harlequin - Archvillain for hire...
hire details

(And offended at the idea of working for hollywood against my will :)

*Telephoto pictures of your wife undressing, not pictures of you paying your wife to undress...

Re:Intel's undue credit.. by perfecto · 2000-08-24 23:03 · Score: 1 · on Intel Unveils New StrongARMs

Actually the StrongARM was designed by Digital, independently of the main ARM processors line.

so is intel a licensee of arm or not?

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And Justice for None

Re:Switching OSes for Free Internet? by MadChicken · 2000-08-24 10:02 · Score: 1 · on Neither Stable Nor Unstable: A Midrange Debian?

You mean like this? It was great fun, but I think Freesco was better... it all fits on a floppy.

Re:What about robotech ? by azabaro · 2000-08-24 06:58 · Score: 2 · on Cartoon Network, Tenchi, Silverhawks, and DBZ

Robotech was shown on Toonami during weekday afternoons until about two years ago. For several months after that, it was shown during the late Saturday night showing (actually, the time slot was something like 3 AM Sunday).

Toonami stopped playing Robotech because it wasn't being watched (see this interview, question 8). But don't let it get you down; Animeigo has picked up the rights to release Macross (the first of three series that was altered to make Robotech), and ADV is apparently going to be releasing Robotech. Both releases on DVD.

Alan Zabaro

Re:Card catalogues in libraries by Anonymous Coward · 2000-08-23 05:37 · Score: 1 · on More On Kaplan's Ruling Making Links Illegal

Whenever people discuss tech laws on Slashdot, the same 2 points seem to keep coming up:

1. "This is crazy and illogical, because ..." and then some kind of reductio ad absurdum argument. Hey folks, laws do not have to be logical or sensible. Lots of laws are absolutely crazy. Governments are free to make and enforce illogical, bizarre laws.

2. "They can't put the genie back in the bottle, the Internet inherently can't be regulated, we'll always find ways around these things, they'll have to give up." But governments fight unwinnable wars all the time, and there are casualties even in unwinnable wars, that's the important part. Look at the war on drugs, for example. Despite the fact that it hasn't managed to stop drug use, the U.S. keeps on putting people behind bars for drug-related offenses. So the fact that the government can't manage to stop everyone from hyperlinking to "dangerous" material won't be much consolation if you are in jail because they did manage to catch you.

Re:Default password bloopers by Cable · 2000-08-23 00:56 · Score: 1 · on The World's Most Secure OS (?)

Yeah but who can change that default password to something else? I've seen Unix systems that assign a generic password like "ABCDEF" or "PASSWORD" to users and they have to log in and use the password command to change them. Most of them didn't. Real secure, right?

My point is that it takes more than security patches to make a system secure. Users have to be trained to change their password after logging in for the first time, and to change them peroidically. Also not to use common words for their password and mix in numbers and letters with an ocassional symbol (!,@,#,$,%,etc) to throw off the dictionary cracker programs.

Or just use a Mac, because True Hackers wouldn't touch a Mac with a ten foot pole! :) Just kidding folks.

Slippery When Sarcastic

Re:Woo hoo! Watcom Kicks Ass! by byvis · 2000-08-22 04:26 · Score: 1 · on Sybase to Open Souce Watcom C/C++ & Fortran Compiler

In what way it is better than DJGPP? Look there Disclaimer: I don't have watcom c myself, so I cannot verify info there.

Screen Writing and Historical Accounts by Baldrson · 2000-08-21 03:57 · Score: 2 · on Computer Historian?

Getting a job as a historian is a little higher class than screen writing. Just figure out what the de facto state religion is and support its myths with your writing, whether "fiction" or "historical" -- it doesn't matter. Only when you figure out what the dominant elites want to hear about and want to forget about, can you make a career of being a historian -- otherwise you might face bankruptcy or even jail time (although things haven't gotten all that bad in computer history yet). For a few examples, here are the sorts of histories you don't want to write about if you want to make money as a computer historian:

http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/potc.html

Sherwin Gooch's Account of John Bardeen's Lecture (Score:1)
by Baldrson (jabowery@netcom.com) on Tuesday December 28, @08:58AM EST
(User Info) http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery

In any case, I'll check with Sherwin Gooch to see if he has any more direct evidence from Bardeen himself to support the controversial account of the hide-away experimental stand.

I did, and here is Sherwin's response:

Jim,

Thank you for alerting me to your discussion.

To provide a more solid foundation, one should be aware that I heard this story from the horse's mouth.

John Bardeen himself gave a talk one evening at Altgeld Hall on the University of Illinois campus, circa 1978, in which he related various experiences surrounding his inventing the transistor. At the time, people suspected that the scheduling of this presentation may have been related to Bardeen's health.

Professor Bardeen showed us the B&W 16mm film BB&S had made at Bell Labs immediately after they got the first transistor to work (and, presumably, before Bardeen's boss got to work the next morning...) I have seen individual frames and out-takes of this film since, but I don't know if the entire film still exists. The "rolly-cart" with their experimental set-up is plainly in evidence on the film.

It was John Bardeen himself, at Altgeld Hall, who related that his boss had said that the "solid-state amplifying device" which they wanted to develop was "not feasible," and that, "even if it were possible, it would have no practical application." Dr. Bardeen related that sometimes, when his boss stayed at work past 5 p.m., the three of them would become very impatient waiting for him to leave so they could roll their setup out of the coat-closet, and get busy on what they, apparently, thought was the greatest "cool hack" of the day.

I wonder who Bardeen's boss was. His boss should be immortalized in history next to the NASA manager who advised the last engineer withholding approval of the Challenger launch to "put on your management hat!"

One of the anecdotes John Bardeen related was how he had left his set of photographic slides in the taxi which took him to the ceremony to collect his Nobel prize, and all the trouble to which he and the Swedish government had gone in trying to recover them. But their efforts were unsuccessful; the slides were never recovered. Professor Bardeen was extremely apologetic that he didn't have them to use in his presentation, and so we would just have to make-do with his relating the incidents to us.

With my background in computer music, I found one of the pieces of supporting paraphernalia that Dr. Bardeen didn't lose in Sweden quite interesting. He brought along a transparent plexiglas box, approximately the shape of a 6" cube, with randomly distributed 3/4" or so holes (apparently for cooling?) in the sides. On the top were a number (6 or so) of black SPST N.O. push buttons. A small loudspeaker was mounted inside. (There must have also been a battery of some kind, but I don't recall it.) The box contained a collection of electronic components, their leads soldered to one-another ("tacked together"), and hanging in "free space." (He hadn't bothered to use a prototyping board or connecting strip.) There were resistors, capacitors, possibly some coils, and these ~1" long bar things (which were the transistors), of which there were 3. Dr. Bardeen explained that he had had chosen to build this device because it embodied what he considered to be the fundamental 3 types of circuit: an amplifier, an oscillator, and a filter. He remarked that he thought that pretty much covered everything you could do with electronics. Each of these had been implemented as a single-transistor circuit. Dr. Bardeen then demonstrated the device (which still worked!) by playing "a drinking song of the time, which some of you may recognize" by pressing the few buttons on top of the box in the proper sequence. He apologized because it had gone so badly out of tune (which it had). He apologetically related that he had never re-tuned it. (I'm afraid I didn't recognize the song, nor did anyone sitting around me. I believe he said he had chosen it, in part, because the chorus could be played using a minimal number of different notes. I got the impression that he was somewhat embarrassed by the song, and that's the reason he didn't tell us it's name. I wish I knew what it was.) Even though this makeshift musical instrument was out of tune, I believe the monotonicity of pitches, as one traveled from one end to the other of the row of buttons, still held. The pitches were also all still of a central musical frequency.

Professor Bardeen then passed this device around the audience for everyone to examine, which amazed me at the time, and still does. I wish I had a picture of it. I think this first all solid-state device -- an electronic organ -- should be in the Smithsonian. After all, it contained 3 of the first transistors ever made, AND THEY WERE STILL WORKING!

But I wax nostalgic. Jim, if your point was that Bell Labs did not support Bardeen's research into solid state amplifying devices, you are in good company; John Bardeen, himself, was certainly in agreement. If there were teams being supported to research that area, perhaps he just wasn't lucky enough to be on one of them. I have no idea. All I know is what he told us.

Please feel free to copy this e-mail (less my e-mail address) into any discussions in which you were involved. I find it particularly upsetting when people or organizations fraudulently assume credit.

While it is true that many research facilities can be viewed as "sand boxes" which, independent of management, enable invention, and that many great breakthroughs could not have been accomplished without the collections of tools and talent amassed therein, in reality the role played by management in R&D is much closer to what Scott Adams has chronicled in "Dilbert" than it is to any accepted management text or theory.

Sherwin Gooch
991227

Nor are you advised to allow anything like this to shape your dreamwork:

http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInqu iry.asp?isbn=0471048852#customerReviews

Jim Bowery (jim_bowery@hotmail.com), 46-year old network architect., August 18, 2000,
The Rise and Fall of Midwest Computing Sans PLATO
This is a great book, conveying much of the flavor of what it was like to be in the midwest's computing culture in its heyday of the 60's through the 70's. What it failed to do was tell the real story of the midwest's demise as computing leader of the world -- which isn't the story of Seymour's obsession with packaging over on-chip integration, as implied by this book. Rather it is the story of the failure to deploy the network revolution, now embodied in the Internet, to the mass market 20 years early on Seymour's matured hardware via the PLATO networking project at Control Data Corporation. PLATO was a $1 billion 'bet the company' investment by Bill Norris, the farmer/CEO of CDC who put a windmill pump from his Nebraska farm in front of CDC's corporate towers to remind people where they came from. That is the story of epic proportions only grazed on by this book. PLATO was ready to go to mass market, but Wall Street combined with classic middle mismanagement killed the mass market version of PLATO before it could even be test marketed -- for which it was ready. Had it gone otherwise, Seymour probably would never have left the midwest, and his supercomputer architecture would have focused more on the directions now being taken by Sun and Hewlett Packard -- except with Seymour's inimitable qualities.

I personally worked with the PLATO project and tested a version of it that would have leased a network computer with Macintosh-like interface, including network service, for a flat rate of $40/month with capital payback in 3 years. It had everything -- email, conferencing, user-programmable electronic commerce, multiuser realtime graphics games not to mention thousands of hours of computer based education courseware for which the PLATO system was originally designed. We could get this performance because the culture surrounding the land grant colleges of the midwest, such as the University of Illinois where PLATO originated, combined with Seymour's astounding performance levels created the right tradeoffs between hardware/software. Some of us were looking forward to incorporating Seymour's newly marketed Cray-1 as the foundation for the next generation of mass-market PLATO system -- and initial benchmarks looked to provide an outstanding bang for the buck as an information utility hub -- even without some of the more obvious architectural optimizations that would help in this new kind of application of his systems. This would have shielded Seymour from the vargaries of the government-dominated supercomputer market and driven his architectures into higher levels of silicon integration faster -- possibly providing the kind of capital in the kind of organization that could have delivered on gallium arsenide's potential, unlike the disaster that occured when Seymour left his farm and went cheek-to-cheek with the military in Colorado Springs, CO.

If you look at your Internet Explorer Help menu and select About Internet Explorer, you'll notice it is based on the NCSA Mosaic web browser and that it was developed at the University of Illinois -- right across the street from where PLATO was invented. This was no fluke. PLATO had a profound impact on the culture of the University of Illinois particularly its young students who wanted to push the envelope in networking. The NCSA also gave rise the most widely used web server, Apache, and the the founders of Netscape. The loss of possibly 20 years of 'new economy' is incalculable, but suffice to say, comparable losses have been suffered as the result of open war.

There are a lot of anecdotes this book doesn't tell that will probably die with the people who lived the tale. Just one, to capture a bit of what will be lost to history:

People looking for Cray Research's facility in the fields of Wisconsin could drive up to a farm house and ask where 'Cray Reserach' was located and friendly neighbor would say, 'Oh, you mean Seymour's place...' and then give directions to an area surrounded by an almost invisible network of intelligence agency surveillance equipment -- protecting what was seen as a national treasure from potential espionage. In a speech to one of these agencies, Seymour told them they could come out and protect his folks but only if they never got in the way, and that meant not even letting anyone know they were around. Well, you could tell they were around, but at least they didn't get in the way!

--------
Good luck -- and when they ask you to please consider castration -- tell them that went out with the pharaoh's eunichs (which has nothing to do with UNIX as obvious as such an association may be to them).

Re:Not surprising at all... by perfecto · 2000-08-20 20:56 · Score: 1 · on Java Rocks On Linux

Why isn't sun doing this stuff?

and end up with another microsoft that screws its partners by changing the spec so their products can get to market first? NO THANK YOU! i like it better this way. i'm glad that sun is letting companies that can do it better do it. i use jikes almost exclusively. i use jserv and gnujsp for servlets and am now evaluating caucho. i love the amount of choice i have and the idea that if i change app servers, i don't have to change much code. this is the way it should be!

--
And Justice for None

Re:No. Caldera has no clue how to beat Red Hat by perfecto · 2000-08-18 14:55 · Score: 1 · on IBM Kills project Monterey

Caldera is to Red Hat as Corel was to Microsoft - a perrenial loser trying to get a leg up on the leader by buying a once-was-could-beena-contender.

i guess the same could be said about compaq vs sun.

--
And Justice for None

LodeRunner Apple ][ !! by UnknownSoldier · 2000-08-18 07:13 · Score: 1 · on Vanishing Game Genres

> I've played the Apple II version as well, but wasn't it in monochrome?

Not if your apple was hooked up to a TV. ;-)
(I only had my Apple hooked up to a green monitor. My uncle had his hooked up to a TV, and it was great to see *COLOR* graphics ;-) I could FINALY play GumBall hehe

All you Lode Runner fan, check this site out:
Lode Runner Museum !

> Every play the advanced version with all new levels? That was almost impossible.

Championship Lode Runner ?
That was dam hard, but fun.

You can find it and some emu's here:
http://www.geocitie s.com/SiliconValley/Byte/6508/apple2/emu.htm

Cheers

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