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This reminds me about the billions that were spent on the so called space pen. The Soviets showed us common sense, (and sadly continue to do so despite their economic troubles), by employing the time tested and proven hard black (HB) pencil.

Your own link debunks you:

"Be that as it may, beginning with the Apollo program astronauts did begin using a specially-designed zero-gravity pen called the Fisher Space Pen. The nitrogen-pressurized space pen worked in "freezing cold, desert heat, underwater and upside down," as well as in the weightless conditions of outer space.

It was developed not by NASA, however, but by one enterprising individual, Paul C. Fisher, owner of the Fisher Space Pen Company. By his own account, Fisher spent "thousands of hours and millions of dollars" of his own money in research and development — not billions.

The Fisher Space Pen is still used by both American and Russian astronauts on every space flight, and you can even buy one yourself direct from the company for a measly 50 bucks."

From http://www.spack.org/wiki/SpacePen:

"I hate to spam you, but on your quotes page you've tripped one of my pet peeves. The Space Pen. There is a common email circulating that describes how much money NASA wasted on making a pen that writes upside down, in vacuum blah blah blah. You know how much it really cost the US Gov't? Nothing. Fisher developed it at TREMENDOUS cost, all of it absorbed by them. In return they got to be the sole provider. Normally this means that they would sell these pens to NASA at some obscene amount. They charged just a few dollars. Admittedly, a few dollars for a pen was a lot in the 60's, but 1/100th what they could have charged. Fischer did this out of True Faith, True Faith that knowledge and research is its' own reward. And since that day, they have sold so many of their pens to the private sector, that they have made their money back a ten times, and still never charged that much. I have one of these pens, you can buy them at any stationary store, even Hallmark stores carry them. I recommend them, they're damn good pens.

Oh, and the bit about the pencil is true, the russians did use pencils. Remember the space station fires that they had? At least one of these, I forget which, but it caused a fatality, at least one was caused by airborn pencil shavings mixing with sensitive electronics. Their solution? Mail order Fischer Space Pens."

I don't get it. What makes this news? Some dude wrote a book. So what? It happens every day.

What am I missing? That's a genuine question.

He's Neal Stephenson. If you want an idea of why Slashdotters enjoy him, check out his (free to read) non-fiction piece In the Beginning was the Command Line.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

http://www.spack.org/wiki/InTheBeginningWasTheCommandLine
And somebody help me find the essay about the command line vs. GUI environments, where the author rants about how inefficient GUIs are for development work. It may have been written by Larry Wall or somebody like him.

And here I was thinking that Linux is a tank (full text).

Original link to Neal Stephenson's website which no longer has the full text inline.

-l

First off, Microsoft makes the OS, which can be hacked. So their efforts to make vista drm secure are undone due to the plastic nature of software. AMD is a hardware manufacturer, and should they put a limitation on the hardware, then, extreme effort asside, it will no longer be possible to circumvent drm, which will then make vista into a real bitch. So these things compound themselves once AMD places unmovable ground upon which drm will rest.

No, I don't think this problem will manifest itself in the form of some kind of apocalypse. But looking at what has happened, I am close to surrenduring my hopes in people to recognize antithetical "progress" in the form of computing technology. I do not resign my beliefs in people's good intentions though, but what isn't apparent or understood, is not readily objected to. This is the general public's nature. There is no blame nor attribution; it is simply the nature of any mass uncoordinated system. So I do think that this will go largely unprotested by the general public. You and I understand what this means, and I believe we both share a distaste for DRM -- and so it is up to people like us to recognize, avert, and warn whom and whatever when we see these things.

It is when we do nothing about it now, and left unadulterated, that one more freedom we enjoy starts fading into the dark. For a parallel, Disney has turned copyright into a terminal plague, ideas are not spread amongst the populace, there is legalistic locktight in the gears of society. Stagnation is evident, though not consolidated. Terminal, in the sense, that you and I will likely die before we are unrestricted to build off any idea that was published during our early childhood and forwards. And to what purpose is Shakespeare copyrighted? That who was responsible for any truely passionate creation, I'm sure of, views its lucritive side as an afterthought. Why does someone get to claim an idea first, and then prevent the rest of us (now), from utilizing it? Wait 75 years and let our grandkids use it? Why not now, or 3 years max? Can't we all realize that all of humanity needs to work together to better life around the world. It is futile to work individually, and due to its very nature, is the result of copyright law. That person, who had an idea, gets to exploit people for money, and take it to the grave. I don't have a problem with someone wanting to be able to make money off of their creation. The problem rests with the impossibility of others to take parts of it and, in turn, create even more. This will ultimately get us nowhere. The end of this world will not be marked by the rain of fire, but the slow rise of a beaurocratic sea of inhumanity.

This is my point -- our society has veered far from an actual path of enlightenment. Of course it can't be fixed in a day, but we should change our focus from capitalization and profit, to enriching the global quality of life. This trusted computing bullshit is an insulting slap in the face of what great and capable beings we could be.

Also, would you mind further explaining your point on the current market and legal climates? I'm not saying you don't have a point -- it's just that I don't understand your angle.

Then, why not go for the Batmobile?

(Sorry, couldn't resist :)
In reference to: In The Beginning Was The Command Line

          -dZ.

No, I don't think it's really about the fragmentation. It's about the mindset. You can always teach someone to use a modern Linux distro, as many anecdotes have recounted. As long as you're there to answer questions, the users can make it through the difficult parts. The problem is that this isn't 1995 anymore. Back then GUIs were a new thing for the IBM PC, and everyone was willing to seek out a local computer geek to help them make it work. Now that users are comfortable in Windows, however, why should they switch to a completely different system that requires them to relearn how to do everything?

Apple has answered that question. "If you move to the Mac, your applications are simple to install, your files are well laid out, the computer self-manages itself, the user interface is less confusing, you can quickly search for files, organize them in new way, nearly all maintenence is automatic, the system is free of spyware and viruses, AND you can still use Microsoft Office!."

The Linux community's answer has been, "Hey, we don't have viruses either! Erm... except for those one or two. But someone released an anti-virus that spread itself to eliminate the first virus! Oh, and did I mention that it's free! And you can have a home server!"

Unfortunately, the Linux answer has not been very appealing to the market.

This link contains a great analogy of the situation.

MGBs, Tanks, and Batmobiles

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro- sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old- fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a

Programmers are Morlocks, users are Eloi

The shortest Neil Stephenson book ever (and non fiction) In the Beginning Was the Command Line says, "Disney does mediated experiences better than anyone. If they understood what OSes are, and why people use them, they would crush Microsoft in a year or two." Maybe they read the book.

You can also download it here or read it here.

So, Apple is half-hearted about security vulnerabilities because they released a bunch of patches? I fail to see how this is in any way a bad thing. Releasing information about exploits in a closed-source system is kinda stupid. At least Apple is patching these things before they become a problem.

On the most part though, it's a lot easier to administrate a *nix system and keep it secure than it is to do so with a Windows system. It all, for me, comes down to the root/user system. You have a root that you don't use normal stuff for, and so therefore it's a lot more difficult to place undetectable things on a computer on the basis that the only places someone with user access to your comp has is in user-defined places. Namely, /tmp, ~, and anywhere else the user decides to place low restrictions for themselves (say, for me, my /filez partition).

As much as people want to bitch about how "insecure" *nix systems are, frankly, they're just better designed from a coding perspective than Windows. Windows seems to have been spending a lot of its time playing catchup with features, and now they're feeling the brunt of not practicing efficient coding, and the result is going to be Longhorn (supposedly... I don't know how many times I've heard the "The Next Windows is going to be better" argument... pretty much since 3.1), which is, in effect, a major overhaul and an attempt to make Microsoft's Station Wagons a bit more like BeOS' Batmobiles.... but it seems like it's more likely to become a 12-cylander Viper with the amount of resources they're claiming it's going to need to consume.

I'm happy with my fuel efficient tank that'll work on any road, thank you very much.

(Apologies to Neal Stephenson for borrowing the metaphor)

Nope, there is a difference, a good discussion of the differences between text and graphical interfaces can be found here.

Especially your last paragraph: 'Granted CLI is nice and powerful. When I used a UNIX machine more intensively, I liked CLI. But when I stopped using UNIX intensively (dropped below 5 hrs per week of Unix use), I found that I quickly forgot all the commands and spent most of my time grepping man pages. CLI is mega keen and faster if you're doing batch file transfer, but for single file transfer, I can drag and drop faster than I can try and remember and then type the correct command, path, and file name.

The bottom line is I want to "use" my computer, not "learn" my computer. Although *nix requires you learn before using, some OSes don't have such a steep learning curve. What I like is Bill Joy's statement in a recent wired article about Linux vs. Mac -- he chooses the Mac because it "just works."'

is what Stephenson concludes too, and basicly what the whole essay is about.

Hey Anthony,

GPL'd software is much better than leasing. It's more like someone has an endless supply of self-replicating cars and is giving them away to anyone who will agree not to lock theirs up in a garage, and let anyone who asks get a copy of their car. Hmm, this illustrates the problems with equating software with material objects!

[This post somewhat inspired by Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line"...but his analogy is much better :)]

In the beginning was the command line is a fun introduction...

I read this essay a long time ago. I even find myself re-reading it from time totime. It's what made me try linux in the first place.
I wanted a free tank :^)

When I got started, it was (chagrin) through Stephenson's ITBWTCL, which piqued my interest along with ESR's work.

Beginner courses should probably focus on what Linux does really well conceptually. Like how it's a hot-rodder's dream - that you can really trick out the system the way you like it. Or appeal to the political side and talk about the freedoms you get with the switch.

Geeks need to appeal to things other than reason and logic. Right?

This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.

In a market saturated with various OS vendors, the prices for the OS could not be too high, maybe 5-10 times smaller than what MS Windows costs. If the prices are low, the OS still remains a commodity but it is not critical for open source developers to build their own OS if they could just buy one that suits their needs for 10$.

Very interesting idea!

Check

this out!!

To answer the previous poster's gripe about non-standard replacement PSU's - the case and the power brick cost the same or less than a nice quiet Zalman or EnerMax power supply, so buy a spare and keep it around.

You can also use a tiny LinkSys USB100M dongle if you track down the rtl8150 drivers and get them in your kernel. See http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/LinksysUSB100MLinux for driver info. The usb device will come up as eth0, and the built-in ethernet on the motherboard as eth1.

I've bought a copy to lend to friends/parents etc to help describe what this Linux thing is all about.

was the command line.

Anyone who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's essay
In the Beginning... Was the Command Line should do so now. He treats this subject in his trademark enjoyable style. This essay can also be purchased as a thin little paperback. I love the car-lot analogy(although it harks back to the glory days of Be).

If you haven't had a chance to read "In the beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson , I would suggest it as it is good reading. In particular, from the text Neal says

"In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

So, it's not that I don't believe you, but it seems like a good thing for those who haven't read it to read. =)

Speaking of MS and command lines, one of my favorite essays is In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. It must be read in the context of this discussion...the CLI is yet another virtualization to threaten the true way...

Okay, I can accept you if you can accept me. I'm tolerant. But I just want to clear up my own image.

For one thing, I'm not a Liberal . I'm a Libertarian, which means I'm right of center on economic issues, but I support individual rights more than either major political party. I think Clinton and Gore are both assholes who corrupted their respective offices and should never have been elected, let alone re-elected. I think people should have the right to make a living without 'environmentalists' (read: nutballs) wrapping chains around trees to kill them and living in trees daring them to commit homicide. Protecting the environment does not involve putting people in harm's way. I'm pro-choice, pro-seperation of church and state, anti-welfare, and pro-flat tax. I think the DMCA is anti-Constitutional in that it spits on the fundamental freedoms the Constitution guarantees.

Okay, are you still with me? Good. That was a hell of a rant. Sorry. :-)

Now, more about why I like Linux. I'm more than willing to learn a complex system if it makes my life easier. And that is what Linux promises: It isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn, but the investment of my time is paid off thousandfold whenever I have to, say, delete massive amounts of files with a certain kind of name in a directory. Say what you will about 'intuitiveness' and 'ease of learning', being able to pound a few keys and do something that would have taken hours on a GUI-centric system is a highly useful feature. And with the piping command I can link features in ways that do rather complex tasks (like searching for all files that match a certain type, convert them into a different type, and compress them into one file, for example). With cron, I can automate complex tasks so they're done on the second Tuesday of every other month, for example. I can do all that using simple, powerful commands that sacrifice a little intutitiveness for sheer useability. A good tradeoff, in my book.

I can give you something to read as a parting shot as well. In the beginning was the command line... is a useful, yet concise, overview of not only the history of computing, but the philosophies of different operating systems and groups. It's worth a read, and will hopefully get you thinking about computers in very different ways.

Microsoft has some advantages. So does authoritarian government. It simply isn't for me. Just for your edification, The New Linux Myth Dispeller. If you want to be anti-Linux, be anti-Linux for the right reasons, and don't spread BS. (Not that you did.) It doesn't help your position.

Well, it's been interesting debating with you. Neither one of us has convinced the other, but I don't think either one of us expected to. I guess I'll be happily piping commands and adding to my crontab while you keep your NT machine running, and we'll just take divergent roads. Good luck keeping NT functional, by the way. :-)

Whatever is done in modern western countries brought not just the wealth but also some strange phenomenons like Microsoft domination caused by another phenomenon: pepole unwiling to THINK.

Btw, it looks like your top goal is wealth. Mine is to be content. While to be content I need some wealth, wealth is not everything I need to be content.

Those interested in details please read for example Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line".
Note: it's quite a long article (it took me 3.5 hours to read) but it is very good.

Niel Stevenson wrote In The Begenning Was the Command Line NOT Gibson. You can find it here

It's often hard to think outside the box when you've become accustomed to doing something one way for so long. The current state of GUI's seems like 'the right way' now, but that could all change in 5 years.

Although my reflexive response to this is "5 years? Unlikely!" I think you have a very good point. A moments reflection on the grand sweep of human computer interfaces (HCI) is instructive:

• 1950-1970: sequential batch processing
• 1968-1988: interactive command lines
• 1984-????: windows, icons, and mice

Note, as well, that, contrary to Neil Stephenson's well known essay In the Beginning was the Command Line, the command line was far from the beginning...

the mailing list archives are here....
http://lists.spack.org/pipermail/ptp/

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the mailing list archives are here....
http://lists.spack.org/pipermail/ptp/

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Well, I looked at this site. And this Gibson story seems really boring. I mean, I know he's a dry writer and all that, but he's gone downhill since Neuromancer. This story was densely written, lacked plot development, and the character progression was minimal. Personally, I think he's trying to capture the "hard sci-fi" that Neal Stephenson does so well. Hopefully Gibson will return to more familiar ground and produce a better story next time.

Oh, do you mean "In the Beginning was the Command Line"?

Now, is it just me, or is this is too much of a coincidence for Stephenson? Hmm?