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Well, what I had in mind in singling out Microsoft Word was not that it was the first word processor. (In my opinion, TJ-2 was the first word processor).

But Wordstar, and Wordperfect, and Wang word processing before that (which was arguably superior to either of them) all fell into the same mould: they were designed for fixed-pitch, monospaced, daisywheel output. And it would be better to describe them as having an integrated full-screen text editor than as having a WYSIWYG display. I was never a Wordstar user but if I recall correctly it even relied on significant usage of RUNOFF-like dot commands that you needed to know, and which were visible onscreen.

Microsoft Word broke that mould. It derived its heritage from, um, what WAS it called? Bravo? on the Alto. Its design center assumed multiple typefaces, proportionally spaced fonts, and full-bore true WYSIWYG screen displays.

And it separated structure from appearance and introduced style sheets.

It didn't make much impact when it was introduced in 1983. People couldn't figure it out right away. Why would you want all that stuff? It was just going to slow down screen drawing. In 1983, people were still excited about systems that could produce boldface on daisywheels by shifting the wheel 1/120th of an inch AND could show you bold on the screen by intensifying the display.

The idea that you would want to see italics as italic was utterly alien to most users at the time.

There was prehistory, notably Bravo, but, once again, Microsoft Word put ALL that stuff together into a real, usable, product that was dramatically different from anything else available at the time and got most of the important stuff right.

The World's Index of Customers' Home Pages

Depends on what you mean by "didn't work". If you're talking about civil liberties being preserved while reducing the flow of illegal substances... sure.

I think the War On (some) Drugs worked wonderfully for its real intents and real beneficiaries.

I suppose you could find similar intent in the case of RIAA/MPAA, s/Drugs/Media/ etc...

PATENTS: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn't done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us.

of the same subject

How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate

In general, there's a lot of confusion about Public Key Infrastructures, partly because of the big gap in the middle of "1. Write Marketing Hype!! 2. ???? 3. ???? 6. PROFIT!!" chain, but mainly because there are different ways to answer questions about "Who's certifying whom or what to do what or be who or what?" which lead to different applications and solve (or fail to solve) different business problems. One major effort to address this systematically is the IETF SPKI Simple Public Key Infrastructure group, much of which is based on the work of Carl Ellison and Ron Rivest (RFC2692, Requirements, RFC2693, Theory.) It turns out that, while the "Some Authority Certifies that You have Documents with your True Name" model that's popularly used is often useful, it's often not the right model, and there are often more useful relationships, such as the DNSSEC authentication used for web sites and email.

about how little the debugging process has improved over the last 5,10 or even 30 years.

A big part of the reason is that the languages paradigms that are popular today are directly copied from what was popular 5, 10, or even 30 years ago, with a little bit of a half-baked object system thrown on top (think C++, Java, etc.). Statically compiled "structured" programs don't lend themselves well to debugging, period. First of all, the debugger has to do a lot of contortion to do relatively simple stuff like stack and variable inspection. Then comes the problem of the "structured" style itself, which depends heavily on variable assignment and is very un-modular.

OO-design does reduce the granularity of program modularization and lessens the dependence on global variables somewhat, but inside, the objects are still programmed in a "structured" way. Even worse, object-overuse leads to a rat's nest of an object graph (my big beef with single-inheritance only object systems is that they encourage this).

For debuggers, steppers and stack-tracing to be really effective, a program has to be modularized with as fine granularity as possible. This is why functional and pseudo-functional languages generally tend to have and develop the best debuggers. Even before implementing any features, an interactive top-level is probably the best debugging tool available. But implementing stuff like advanced condition handling/breakpoints, stack-tracing/variable inspection, and function-tracing/steppers fits naturally into the language environment with minimal detriments to code size (anyone up for a little Java catch?) and performance.

You can't use RSA to encrypt 6 if the both p and q are that small but your right 4 and 9 were a lame example. Its been years since I messed with this stuff...

However my mistake there doesn't go agisnt my point that a number thats not prime but somehow passes the prime tests will give other solutions to the RSA puzzle. A simple example is E=17, P=61, Q=123. That gives some interesting results even though q is 3*41.

If we take this:
This example we can see for P=61, Q=53 and E=17
we can generate a key tuple of (17,3233,2753) which will encrypt 123 as 855. The odd thing is that the key tuple of (17,3233,5873), (17,3233,8993), and (17,3233,124433) also decode (or encode) data the same way. A slow perl program to show this is here.

If you pick the wrong prime, there are other solutions. It appears if you pick the right prime, there also might be other solutions. The whole point of my original point is that you don't need to find one number in a 2^2048 haystack, you just have to find a number that also works.

they really had keyboards with 50,000 keys on them!

Dr. Mitchell Swartz, who publishes the Cold Fusion Times, is able to procure and distribute heavy water for about $15/liter plus shipping and handling, I believe.

Dr. Mitchell Swartz, who publishes the Cold Fusion Times, is able to procure and distribute heavy water for about $15/liter plus shipping and handling, I believe.

written by Lem, a French author

Actually, he's Polish. ...

And about the review:
Your quota for using the word "conceit" is used up now. You can't use it for another two weeks. Thank you for using the Thesaurus.

I'm a major webaholic. Recipes, chip pinouts, code snippets, news, weather, TV listings, Slashdot, Drudge Report, etc... I want one with the Transmeta Astro chip powered by new fuel cells so I can extend the battery life to a full 8 hours. Now if somebody can just get it to run seventeen hours and charge in seven! Sitting chained to my desk really puts a cramp on my lifestyle. Can't cook, can't go to the bathroom, never see much of outside except out my window, let alone gardening, house cleaning, or any other non-computer activities. Hmmm, maybe this is exactly what I DON'T NEED!

In Lisp, you not only modify the system dynamically, you fix the bugs dynamically. Whenever an unhandled exception pops up, by default the stack isn't unwound (this is the big thing about Lisp exceptions. There is also a flag to make the exception unwind the stack, if you need it). Lisp interrupts execution and puts you into the break loop - right in the middle of where the error occured. You can see and change what is currently on the stack, what values of local variables are, etc. When you are done, you can just tell Lisp to continue, and execution resumes with whatever modifications you made to it.

This isn't just a neat trick - this is the way to do debugging.

You can put Lisp into a break loop manually, interrupting the current processes, and save a memory image. When you load that image, the computation will resume right where you left off.

And this isn't something new or amazing - "quite a long time ago" (what, 5 years?) is not a lot compared to the 20-30 years (about as early as system memory considerations made these things possible) that Smalltalk and Lisp systems have had these features.

g4dget wrote: "The open source community should not touch either of them.".
Opens source development often follows the very successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it. It is possible to reimplement standards based on proprietary products but due care should still take place

GNU/Linux is a implementation based on Unix and the Posix standards. Unix was proprietary licensed by AT&T, and early open source BSD386 (what became FreeBSD and NetBSD ) development, which replaced the remaining proprietary AT&T code in BSD, was greatly hampered by threats and lawsuits from AT&T. Early Linux development escaped legal entanglement precisely because the developers took steps to insure no such code mixing with AT&T's source took place. However, this took place before software patents were in widespread use, in fact it was not until 1991 that most software companies took any interest in software patents at all.To quote Bill Gates May 16, 1991 email "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

Does this mean that the open source development community should avoid any and all frameworks and patented methords? NO - There is a better way.

The solution is to start a negotiation "dialog" with all the parties involved, getting them to actually support open source implementations and licensing based on their proprietary products. How? It's not easy but it is possible.
1) Win-Win: demonstrate how it is in there best interest to work with the open source community - using open source developed code to ad value to there own products
2) Reward : Any relatively good behavour, incomparison to other players, reward - say thank you and promote them.
3) Converted partners : When you have made a "convert" to open source, such as IBM and SAP, them to badger other partners into also adopting open source friendly licenses.
4) Comparison : play one against the other, Get Microsoft to open it's .NET spec and patent licensing by continualy comparing them to Sun's terms.

5) Badger, Badger, Badger them with the truth : Long conversations and confontations are tiring but it forces the other side to truly consider the issues.

In the long term, does it work? Yes. With the X Window System, in 1998 the Open Group releases X11R6.4 under restrictive licensing, after months of haggling and bitter arguing, The Open Group rescinded the restrictive licensing. On November 14th of this year, again after months of similar haggling and bitter arguing, the Patent Policy Working Group of the W3C announced the Royalty-Free Patent Policy.

It's ironic, but the open source friendly licensing model actualy bring about a solution to the software patient problem proposed by Bill Gates himself in the same email, patent exchanges - "The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can". Since no company can aparently truly trust the competition in long term relationships, open source friendly licensing provides a methord where competing parties can build upon each others patents.

g4dget wrote: "You think everybody who isn't enamored with Sun must be a Microsoft shill?"
Well, the tactics you employ under the shear weight of contradictory linked evidence is a tactic I find often applied by members of the Microsoft Shill persuasion. No, I don't work for Sun, IBM or any other vendor in the IT industry, but I do admire and promote postive behavour when I see it.

g4dget wrote: "The open source community should not touch either of them.".
Opens source development often follows the very successful strategy of finding a standard that works and re-implementing it and building upon it. It is possible to reimplement standards based on proprietary products but due care should still take place

GNU/Linux is a implementation based on Unix and the Posix standards. Unix was proprietary licensed by AT&T, and early open source BSD386 (what became FreeBSD and NetBSD ) development, which replaced the remaining proprietary AT&T code in BSD, was greatly hampered by threats and lawsuits from AT&T. Early Linux development escaped legal entanglement precisely because the developers took steps to insure no such code mixing with AT&T's source took place. However, this took place before software patents were in widespread use, in fact it was not until 1991 that most software companies took any interest in software patents at all.To quote Bill Gates May 16, 1991 email "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

Does this mean that the open source development community should avoid any and all frameworks and patented methords? NO - There is a better way.

The solution is to start a negotiation "dialog" with all the parties involved, getting them to actually support open source implementations and licensing based on their proprietary products. How? It's not easy but it is possible.
1) Win-Win: demonstrate how it is in there best interest to work with the open source community - using open source developed code to ad value to there own products
2) Reward : Any relatively good behavour, incomparison to other players, reward - say thank you and promote them.
3) Converted partners : When you have made a "convert" to open source, such as IBM and SAP, them to badger other partners into also adopting open source friendly licenses.
4) Comparison : play one against the other, Get Microsoft to open it's .NET spec and patent licensing by continualy comparing them to Sun's terms.

5) Badger, Badger, Badger them with the truth : Long conversations and confontations are tiring but it forces the other side to truly consider the issues.

In the long term, does it work? Yes. With the X Window System, in 1998 the Open Group releases X11R6.4 under restrictive licensing, after months of haggling and bitter arguing, The Open Group rescinded the restrictive licensing. On November 14th of this year, again after months of similar haggling and bitter arguing, the Patent Policy Working Group of the W3C announced the Royalty-Free Patent Policy.

It's ironic, but the open source friendly licensing model actualy bring about a solution to the software patient problem proposed by Bill Gates himself in the same email, patent exchanges - "The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can". Since no company can aparently truly trust the competition in long term relationships, open source friendly licensing provides a methord where competing parties can build upon each others patents.

g4dget wrote: "You think everybody who isn't enamored with Sun must be a Microsoft shill?"
Well, the tactics you employ under the shear weight of contradictory linked evidence is a tactic I find often applied by members of the Microsoft Shill persuasion. No, I don't work for Sun, IBM or any other vendor in the IT industry, but I do admire and promote postive behavour when I see it.

I keep a bunch of "classic" bookmarks around. Some are undisputed gems, others are, well, to my taste. Bytes being cheap here's a batch.

• Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
• AmbySoft Inc. White Papers: Scott Ambler's Online Writings
• windows.oreilly.com -- Deep Inside C#: An Interview with Microsoft Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg
• TQ
• The Rise of ``Worse is Better''
  
• A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux
  
• Theist Hall of Shame
• Internetworking Technology Overview
  
• Software Technology Review
  Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics
• P.S.: More Than Just Words
• Welcome to the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
• John McCarthy
  
• Slashdot | Net Translations of Dead-Tree IT Classics
  
• advICE
  
• 0xdeadbeef archives
  

Where does that time go? I haven't implemented RSA myself, but it sounds like you just fob a few primes around. If the two-line RSA code on this site was written in two months, that's a rate of 2.36 characters per day...

Enough with the "Skynet" and "Deep Thought" references!

Be true to your geek nature! What about "GOLEM or HONEST ANNIE"?!

Oh, this is fantastic! Instead of launching building materials into space, you could simply supergun material into orbit or, safer, Lagrange points for longer-term parking, and then coagulate and shape them as needed. Of course space material could be used but if that was impractical for the need -- such as not providing the type of radiation shielding needed, for example -- this would be a cheap alternative.

This is the best news I've heard all day.

I thought that XForms was pretty much moribund, mostly caused (IMHO) by the "only free for non-comercial use" license. It appears that I was wrong, though. In fact, it looks like the soon to be released 1.0 will be licensed under LGPL. Too bad about the name clash, though.

I tried sending this image to a friend but here is what he got.

XS Mechanics

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Tools
• Modules
• Align::NW

XS Mechanics

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Tools
• Modules
• Align::NW

XS Mechanics

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Tools
• Modules
• Align::NW

XS Mechanics

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Tools
• Modules
• Align::NW

XS Mechanics

• Introduction
• Architecture
• Tools
• Modules
• Align::NW

Anyone who is more interested in rational thought than rediculous selfishitarian arguments should check out the Non-Libertarian FAQ.

For a balanced perspective, make sure you also read the non-libertarian FAQ.

The classic OTP was a pad of sheets with keys for character by character substititutions. Once a sheet is used for one message it is destroyed. See a more complete definition of OTP for more details. Since a given key is only used once, known-plaintext attacks can't compromise multiple messages.

For even more info see Why Are One-Time Pads Perfectly Secure? where it says that OTP is "perfectly secure, as long as the key is random and is not compromised".

So is poster claiming to have found a flaw in OTP?

Abundant yes. In a free form, no. Most oxygen is bound up in different oxides.

Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide

... this elipse has come full circle.

Groan. Elliptic Curves are not an ellipse (similar to a deformed circle), but elliptic curve.

E.g. y^2 + y = x^3 - x^2

OTP is not unbreakable.

OTP *is* unbreakable.

This is a well established fact. Like I said elewhere in this thread, its clear that I mean "when it is implimented correctly", as it would make absolutely no sense to imply "OTP is unbreakable when it is implimented poorly".

Since when has any crypto been considered even remotely permanently unbreakable?

Since the one-time pad, that's when. This has been mathematically proven, as well, as early as 1910 or 1920, if I remember well.

OTOH, it is true that a one-time pad is symmetric (sp?) crypto. modern crypto, such as AES, DES, Serpent and others mentioned in Cryptogram are assymetric, and, as such, more susceptible to cracking methods.

Date: 12 APR 1979 1736-PST
From: MACKENZIE at USC-ECL
Subject: MSGGROUP#1015 METHICS and the Fast Draw(cont'd)
To: ~drxal-hda at OFFICE-1
cc: msggroup at MIT-MC, malasky at PARC-MAXC

In regard to your message a few days ago concerning the loss
of meaning in this medium:

I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too have
suffered from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressions
etc. May I suggest the beginning of a solution? Perhaps we could
extend the set of punctuation we use, i.e:

If I wish to indicate that a particular sentence is meant
with tongue-in-cheek, I would write it so:

"Of course you know I agree with all the current
administration's policies -)."

The "-)" indicates tongue-in-cheek.

This idea is not mine, but stolen from a Reader's Digest article
I read long ago on a completly different subject. I'm sure there
are many other, better ways to improve our punctuation.

Any comments?

Kevin

't be cool to have a board with a bit of radioactive alpha source and a counter to make genuine random numbers. Like this, or, ha, here's one (3rd from the top) that proposes using disk drive air turbulance to generate random numbers!

Can be found in the memo here.

Found sever google references to it citing 'Bill Gates, 1991 memo'. FWIF Here's a link to what is supposed to be the actual memo. (std.com)

The poster says:

I believe that the GNU and at least a few commercial fortran compilers translate the code to C before it compiles.

This isn't true, and I don't think has ever been true. Below is a quote from a g77 page:

The g77 compiler is a combination of a front end that translates Fortran source programs and a back end that uses the results of the translation to make an object or executable file that performs the actions specified by the source programs when run. The back end is the same back end used by GNU C, C++, and Objective-C, which have their own front ends to translate their respective languages. Other front ends for Pascal and ADA are available or in progress. (Note: g77 does not translate Fortran to C code at any point. It is a native portable compiler, just like gcc. They share the same back end.)

No commercial compiler I'm aware of does anything similar, either. Obviously, one should be wary of taking language advice from someone who is this ill-informed about compilers.

As for unrelated bugs, this can be an issue. If all one wants to do is a fourier transform, or a singular-value decomposition, or something similar, on some data, it's clearly ridiculous to have to learn the C++ STL, or similar libraries in other languages, to just mess with some matricies. FORTRAN, for all its problems, Will Just Work as long as you're doing something simple.

On the other hand, if you're just doing some small stuff and you don't want to deal with more complicated languages, the best bet is probably to use Matlab/IDL/Maple/Mathematica and not worry about computer programming at all. Even if you're planning on doing big calculations at this point, prototyping your algorithm and methods in these interpreted special-purpose tools can be a very good way to get your code up and running.

1. Control. The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation...When faced with a new technology...that will revolutionize their business, their response is...
   
   a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
   b. Control it. And if they cannot,
   c. Control the consumer...

For further analysis along these lines, see
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate.

Elliptic Curves:

curves of the form y^2 = Ax^3 + Bx^2 + Cx + D

pick values for A B C and D, the locus in 2 space (the cartesian plane, or R2) is the type of curve Escher was using.

In analysis, which is where all of the headline making math using Elliptic Curves, A B C and D (as well as x and y) can be complex numbers.

At this point things get complicated. I'm not going to fill up 1000 words explaining Riemann surfaces, algebraic functions, etc.

There are a lot of good pages out there.

You can proclaim you are a god, but it won't make you one, the same holds for your attempt to hijack the word Libertarian.

Hey, you're the one who has the god complex, here, not me: IIRC you're the one who said he was "objective" - something which, as every philosophy teacher will tell you, is only an utopic goal for mere humans.

In the 19th Century the word "Liberal" ment someone who beleaved in freedom from state controls. In the 20th Century Statists hijacked the word for political purposes and are ready to toss it away now that Liberal dosen't confuse people anymore, and are trying to pull the same scam on the word "Libertarian" which was coined for the ideas that Liberal represented 100 years ago.

Yes, we have hijacked your precious word and we will kill it if you don't give us William F. Buckley, bound and gagged.

Give me a freakin' break! That word doesn't belong to anyone, much less a buch on laissez-faire fanatics who can't stand governments but don't seem to mind that we live in a dictatorship of the transnationals. You just don't like you oppressor to be elected - you want to be a rich boy's bitch instead, that's fine with me. But don't delude yourself if you think that word belongs to you. I'm a Libertarian Leftist, deal with it. I'm not trying to confuse anyone: I believe people are intelligent enough to judge me on what I say, not base the correctness of my discourse on what I call myself. Same for you, you call yourself an objectivist, when it's clear for anyone who reads your drivel that you're just another anarcho-capitalist, a Reaganoholic who's ready to let the whole world be guided by Milton's Invisible Hand - all the while history teaches us that unregulated markets are not self-correcting, and that they eventually crash.

As an aside, Webster's definition of Libertarian:
1 : an advocate of the doctrine of free will
2 a : a person who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty especially of thought and action b capitalized : a member of a political party advocating libertarian principles

I don't see any reference to Adam Smith or any of the early liberal thinkers here. In fact I believe you are quite mistaken about the meaning of the word. It means a lot more than the narrow definition you would give it. Et cela est encore plus apparent dans d'autres langues que l'anglais; en français, le mot "libertaire" est en fait plus associé à la gauche qu'à la droite.

BTW your admission that yo use words to mean anything you want them to was a mistake. Now it's apparent that nothing you say is trustworthy

What the hell are you smoking? I did nothing of the sort - you interpreted something to that effect, I imagine. Which doesn't surprise me, my discourse being leagues above your pitiful excuse for a political paradigm. Ergo, as with all your previous posts, you don't actually challenge any of my arguments. None. Rather, you try to associate me with political philosophies I abhor, you insult me, you try to distort my words and you refuse to acknowledge simple facts. In other words you are a Troll. Thanks for wasting my time, Troll.

Just out of curiosity, how old are you? Your lack of arguments and tendency to rely on blatant distortions, prefab definitions and personal attacks show that you haven't really been doing this for long. I'd say, what 18? 20? You've still got a lot to learn about the world, son... Here, try these few Liberterian Leftist sites:

Movement of the Libertarian Left

A People's Libertarian Index

Critiques of Libertarianism

In the real world, a word's definition is derived from its general usage, not according to the desires of those, like you, who would hijack it (and accuse others of doing it when they want to revalidate the broader meaning of the word). It's quite obvious, looking at just these few web sites, that Libertarian is used both for the left and the right. So it seems that you have lost: the word is broadly recognized to describe both political options. But of course that's beyond your intellectual reach. Work on it, you'll get it eventually...I already know how you're going to respond to this, so I say to you: goodbye, Troll. I wish I could say this had been fun but you're just not up to task. Crawl back under your bridge and try to actually make a point instead of attacking your interlocutor. It might actually make other people take you seriously.

I hear it leaked fuel like a sill on he runway, it needed to expand with friction heat just to seal up! Unbelievable speed and altitude.

Being probably my favorite aircraft since sometime in the '70s, I've paid some attention to information such as TV documentaries on it, for what that's worth.

It not only leaked fuel on the runway, it leaked it well into and beyond takeoff. It therefore had to be refueled shortly after takeoff, that is, while in flight.

Moreover, flying it slowly enough to refuel it (the refueling plane had to fly at top speed) was not an easy matter.

The SR-71 is one of many examples of how practical engineering often demands solutions that are inelegant and inefficient except when they're performing their intended function.

I.e. the SR-71's intended function was to fly very fast, very high, not to take off and land in a nice, comfy, low-maintenance fashion. So to make the former happen, they sacrificed the latter.

Oh, the other "cool" thing I remember about a documentary I watched on the SR-71 was that it always had a special companion vehicle (or whatever they called it) to manage the runway taxi process.

It was a Chevrolet Camaro! Almost made me decide to not sell mine last year, but I did anyway. If I'd kept it, I might have given up my personal prohibition on bumper stickers and done up a customized one saying "My other vehicle is an SR-71 Blackbird".

(At least I can say the sound system in my Camaro blew away anything ever deployed in the SR-71/Camaro combinations. I sure miss that system, much moreso than the drive itself. Sigh.)

No, not everything can be broken; see, for instance, Why Are One-Time Pads Perfectly Secure?

This absolutely correct, and Ian seems to not quite get it

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store...It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant...a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs.

Further discussion at How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate .

Just to show how cool I am.

One of his best books is also "The Futurological Congress".

There are many more:

Stanislaw Lem

The writing of Stanislaw Lem

For those who are interested in the author, Vitrifax is a very good website dedicated to Lem.

Is this the same Stanislaw Lem that wrote Solaris... ?

Yes, it is the same author. "Solaris" is generally thought of as his best novel. I was always particularly fond of "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub;" it was one of the first I'd read, and I was pleased to see it reviewed here.

Other notable Lem works (IMHO of course) are "Fiasco" (a novel) and "The Star Diaries" (series of short stories). Lem would also write other fascinating truly future-science works of fiction, such as reviews of books that don't exist (e.g. "One Human Minute").

One note of caution is that many of his oldest works are coming out in recent translations, and they're not as good.

Vitrifax is a very good website dedicated to his work.

Nice to see you drop by, Ayn. Now stop trotting out this tired old bullshit. Seriously: what you might expect is that you would be rewarded for your efforts, and in a capitalist society that works by providing some incentive for investment to occur in your business. This is what temporary intellectual monopolies (copyrights and patents; the term "intellectual property" is misleading, and you should avoid using it) were supposed to make happen.

The idea of you having control, and your cold dead fingers around your idea as the gub'mint is dragging it away from you, is dishonest propaganda by those in power who want to keep it. You don't need control per se to innovate; it has almost nothing directly to do with the economics of the situation.