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Slashback: Invitation, MIR, History
(This item ceremonially closer to orbit) pcidevel writes: "According to this page at Mirstation.com there is no plans to down Mir and in fact a launch has been approved to make sure Mir has a long stay in orbit." I'm sure everyone with plans to visit (James Cameron on down / up) will be cheered to the cockles. I think I'll wait till the .1 release;)
To hell with anyone who won't help out ;) jonathan_atkinson writes: "The V2_OS (www.v2os.cx) that you featured twice a while back is currently undergoing a kernel rewrite. Having taken on some of the criticisms that Slashdot readers threw at us at the time (it hurt back then... but this is our baby :P), the kernel is being rewritten from scratch, using a fully modular architecture. An interesting project to be involved with ... So, any Slashdot readers who have wanted to get involved with a cool project like this, contact one of the project leaders in #v2os on EFnet or visit the website. Plenty of you had criticisms and ideas the last time this story was posted, lets see if anyone wants to put them into practise!"
"I was here first! No I was here first! Mom!" afrop writes: "Like Tesla vs Marconi in the field of radio, history seems to have already sealed the fate of ENIAC vs ABC. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is almost always overlooked when people say 'first digital computer', despite the 1973 court decision invalidating the ENIAC patents, and declaring Atanasoff the inventor of the first digital computer. History may have forgotten the ABC, but we shouldn't."
Similarly, An unnamed correspondent writes: "You've posted several things recently about the computing history, and you always claim the ENIAC or whatever was first. You really should post this link to the first electronic digital computer, from which the creators of ENIAC got some of their ideas. http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml"
Interesting links, both. Of course, there are a lot of interesting devices which predate both of these, including the mysterious bronze computing device found aboard an Agean wreck.
And if you feel like turning over the rocks of history to find those little bugs that curl into balls, and wondering what the ancients would have called them, wonder, if not no more, at least a bit less -- GE Bickford writes: "While there is certainly a distinction between various individuals who hack, I have found a very early usage of "hacker" that demonstrates that the artificial semantic distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is a vain conceit. This citation proves that the term "hacker" from the very beginning involved an implicit violation of 'territory' (trespassing) and threat to system integrity (vandalism). It also shows that hackers were considered at least a potential threat from the earliest days of the internet (then ARPANET). I note that the term 'cracker' didn't come into use until at least the late 1980s if not 1990s:
"We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage "hackers",
although it is obviously insufficient to protect a node against a
determined and malicious attack."
- RCF521."
Bring me the head of Michelle Pong! You may have thought it was cool that a neural net could be taught to recognize the spoken word "one," but how about one that does useful work instead? Specifically, LinuxBand writes: "http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/~watta/MM/pong/pong5.html this thing is pretty cool, teach it by hitting the ball for awhile and then try playing against it and watch it kick yer arse."
Its too bad when the stories have to put up that disclaimer.
Icebox
I LOVE YOU
great comedy company.
When did /. (yep its a slash and a dot) start with small presentation post?
I thought the idea was to post single post under each heading so we could sort it the way we wanted.
Nothing wrong in trying to make a site a bit more userfriendly (no pun intended) but pls. don't go any further. I am getting fed up of sites that are so userfriendly that you don't get more info above the technical treshold of "right-clicking" and "left-clicking" (first option said in a whisper with the air of computerwiz magic surrounding it)
Ranglefant
Why does it seem so difficult for these people to decide which digital computer came first? All they have to do is look at the freaking date at which they were manufactured. Maybe then this big pissing contest can end.
---
Can't most computers kick your ass before they start learning in ping pong.
Actually this is pretty impressive.
To steer a Mir, you clearly need a beer!
Comrades have got it? Comrades have got it! To steer a Mir, you clearly need a beer!How will we get from there to here?
We will steer, we will steer! Yeah, and what is crystal clear? Our beer! Our beer! Ya!To Steer a Mir, you clearly need a beer!
Houston, we have a drinking problem! Objects in Mir are nearer than they appear!!!"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You know, with all the problems Mir had, it's now evident that it was the perfect place to test out what might happen on very long space travel. We've seen the effects of people staying on much longer than expected, the effect of colliding with another craft and surviving it, fires, equipement failures, infiltration by hostile lifeforms (moss); we've also seen that with little ressources and a lot of ingenuity, it's possible to make extensive repairs even when it seems like a hopeless cause.
After witnessing all these things and learning a lot from them, we really are better prepared for say something like a jaunt to the red planet.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Can you imagine the dismay of the person who first canned something?
Scene from the First Cannery:
Minion: "Hey boss, so like, how do you get it back out?"
Boss: "Doh!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well this isnt really a single post is it? Its a collection of many postings. Not that I didnt like it. Just never seen a post with several issues before here.
They started doing this long ago. They even had a special icon. They called 'em quickies.
Slashback is a corrections/followup piece for stories that have already been subjected to the "single post under each heading" treatment.
It started on April 29, 2000
This MP3 is perfectly legal; it was referenced from their website.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The first person to invent the radio was not Marconi (or Tesla) but a Russian named Popov. Popov was aware of Marconi's work in EM waves, and he was the first to build a device that carried information via radio waves. The device was used to relay messages from Russia's mainland to an outpost on an island in the Gulf of Finland.
It is actually a fascinating story, if you are interested in the history of science and technology.
Thank you for pointing out that the ABC computer came first. This thing was developed in the early part of the 20th century...well before ENIAC. If Atanasoff had patented that puppy, Silicon Valley would have been in Iowa and I don't care what CmdrTaco thinks about patents!
Now don't you think that achievement should put an end to the weenie arguments against drinking?
That's it! I've got me a bottle of single malt scotch, and I'm goin' to invent me the warp drive tonight! That means from now on every starship engineer's gonna have a Scots accent!
YEEEE-HAAAAAA!
And the brethren went away edified.
a) secrecy / obscurity -- which is why the colossus project was quiet when others were getting credit for a while. How many people have even heard of Konrad Zuse? Even with more modern computers, there are sometimes disputes about provenance / heritage (I was reminded as I re-read a little bit of The Soul of New Machine this evening).
... what exactly constitutes "a computer" / "a digital computer" / etc.? A turing machine? Babbage's engine is pretty cool. What about projects which may have been there theorectically but never really reached fruition.
b) definitions
But yeah, the truth will out at some point. It's one of those things that some people like to argue the fine points of because they're interested in / fascinated by those fine points. Earliest flight, earliest automobile, earliest steam engine, earliest language all raise the same kind of questions, eh?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Malda probably thought it was "über-pimp!" Seriously, isn't the nose ring a little too much?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
(rimshot)
Since the V2OS people took the advice of Slashdotters before, I'll just say that they could do without the gratuitous splash screen on their site.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
an OS written in pure assembler.. hehehe, that OS sounds like a speed demon, I'm going to be looking into it from now on.
Alas, I have no floppy drive, so I will have to wait a bit... The little gumby looking mascot is a little odd, my favorite OS mascot is always the BSD devil. Tux is fat, someone tell him to lose some weight...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
thats not ANSI, thats ASCII... damnit, trolls are bad enough, but dumb trolls... ANSI is a standards group that creates standards for things like C++ (which, of course, no compiler actually follows...)... anyway, this is offtopic, but i could not allow the idiocy to exist..
I cant wait to see what the gui for v2os is going to be like. Maybe I'll join up, and help out a little...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
I guess Mir, after all, isn't going to that big space station home in the sky- er- ground.
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
call it a fit of pique. I was maybe experiencing a pre-emptive headache, as people often complain that slashback doesn't do their dishes, bring them to orgasm, etc. or that I'm an awful guy for assembling it ;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Thanks, v2os, for placing a bunch of 'hidden' keywords at the top of your page. These "hidden" keywords sure look great (and hide themselves really well) in my text-based browser.
Seriously, that's what the keyword meta tag is for. Please don't stuff your page full of words like that. If your project is good, people will find you.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
true enough -- good point. And certain questions are semantic enough it doesn't matter, eh? ;) The reconstructed (well, newly constructed) Babbage engines rock, too.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Slightly off topic, but... If the Russian government wanted to pocket some quick cash, they should sell the Mir space-fungus on eBay. It's probably worth more than the space station it's devouring..
he asked the nanny if she did anything unusual with the knives. No, she said. Were the knives unfamiliar to her? No, they were familar - perfectly ordinary - and worked quite well, she said. Since the nanny was unable to explain how it happened, he watched the nanny prepare a meal every now and then, just to see if he could discern whether she was flinging the knives into the sink, or doing something dangerous with them that might cause the points to break off. On the contrary: she handled then with great care, washing them immediately after use, drying them, and putting them straight back into the knife block. He was utterly puzzled.
One day, the nanny made tuna salad sandwiches for the kids, and this guy happened to stop in at home at lunchtime that day. To his horror, he observed the nanny take a beatiful German stainless steel chef's knife and plunge it into the tuna can, proceeding to sort of saw the lid off.
So there are still places where can openers are considered unneccessary.
I wrote parts of this stuff
there certainly are some "update" stories that are important enough by themselves that you'll (I hope) not see them in Slashback, but there are a lot of issues which sort of simmer. Or things where it takes two or three related bits to be meaningful / relevant (or sometimes funny) ...
:)
:)
The truth is, there are a lot of submissions to Slashdot that we'd like to run, but looking at the reality of the day some of them would be nearly redundant or just out of place on the main page, so I like to toss in some of those as well -- like orphan stew!
I hope you enjoy it -- my job (which is fun anyhow) is more fun because I get to read / collate this stuff into a readable form.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
On December 24, 1906, at 9 P.M. eastern standard time, Reginald Fessenden transmitted human voices from Brant Rock near Boston, Massachusetts to several ships at sea owned by the United Fruit Company. Fessenden concluded the broadcast by extending Christmas greetings to his listeners - as well as asking them to write and report to him on the broadcast wherever they were. The mail response confirmed that Fessenden had successfully invented radio as we know it. Technically, he had invented radio telephony or what radio listeners would call "real" radio as opposed to Marconi's Morse code broadcasting. Fessenden could truly lay claim to be the inventor of radio and he fully expected the world to beat a path to his door. Instead, he never received his due recognition, lost control of his patents and the ensuing revenue which made other inventors and companies immensely wealthy. Even today the Encyclopedia Canadiana does not give him a separate listing. Mention of him is only included under the listing for his mother Clementina.
/radio/radio_unsung.html
http://www.ieee.ca/millenn ium
This citation proves that the term "hacker" from the very beginning involved an implicit violation of 'territory' (trespassing) and threat to system integrity (vandalism).
This interpretation is dubious in my opinion. It would seem that this text is intentionally making a distinction between a "hacker" who might be merely poking around and who will be sufficiently discouraged, and a "determined and malicious" attacker who will not be stopped by "this change".
This seems to demonstrate a clear separation between the concepts of the curious 'hacker' and the malicious 'cracker', contrary to what Mr. Bickford claims.
"Sure... we'll thaw you out... when we figure out how
-Nev
To Steer on Mir, possibly. That's what I always though it was.
Heh, whatever. Funny bunch, those capitol steps.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Put in networking and TCP/IP and maybe it'd be useful for something...
Until then? Uh...
A designer in the UK makes reproductions of orreries and other devices, as well as this working replica of the Antikythera Device.
http://www.orreries.freeserve.co.uk/
An orrery is a model of the solar system, and his prices range from affordable to... dare I say it... astronomical. Beautiful pieces.
A photo of the original lumps of sea-bed rock, with the bronze Antikythera device embedded, available through a link or two.
[
...are called pill bugs. The rainbow butterfly has a nice picture here. It seems that they are isopods, and they are also known as woodlice. It's rather confusing; I still ahven't figured it out. In any event, there's an extensive site all about woodlice, in various forms, here. A sample: "They have no waterproof waxy cuticle on their exoskeleton and are therefore more likely to suffer from desiccation compared with other arthropods such as insects which have a well developed waxy layer." (credit to the author) Now i'm all self-conscious about my waxy cuticle...
But I am confused. Are these "woodlice," which seem to be New Zealand beasts, the same as the pill bugs in my garden? Am I anywhere close to being on-topic?
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Something interesting:
even if you leave the app in PTRAIN for a long time, have it play against itself (use RECALL) and the only time it will lose is when the ball is in the uppermost left corner. i tried this on about 12 attempts with varying lengths of training time, ball speed, size, etc... i find it hard to believe that this situation never comes up in training going by the assumption that the training is simply how to respond to the ball being at each point on the y axis of the court....
Why troll?
/.
Clearly, the person was making reference to the fact that the link looks quite similar to the goatsex domain. That was the first thing I thought of, too. Too much
The above post is not offtopic. Discussing the posts is what you are supposed to do. Just because this post is critical of slashdot does not mean that it is offtopic.
Discussing moderation of posts especially in a string that is incorrectly moderated is not offtopic. (but if your a moderator that disagrees go ahead and moderate me down instead of doing your job and moderating up the really good/interesting posts, I have the Karma to spare.)
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
There was also the ANSI terminal standard, sort of like VT-100, better in some ways (and not in others).. back in the good old days, we had animated ANSI movies! heh.
We all know that Mir is falling apart, and has some nasty fungus that could probably challenge human survival. How can we put to use such a deserted and dangerous setting? Survivor 3! Instead of eating rice you get MOLD! Instead of holding your breath underwater you hold your breath in space! And for the final immunity challenge (sort of a double meaining there with the mold and all) you have to survive re-entry. PS I'm aware that you can't survive in outerspace due to pressure concerns, but we have this thing called humor. Learn to like it, its great.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I would be all in favor of a separate word for malicions vs. non malicious hackers, but "cracker" is already too overloaded.
A cracker is something you eat. A cracker is the theme for a Christmas ballet. A cracker is used to refine petroleum. A cracker is derogitory slang used by people of color to refer to whites.
Whenever I hear people call hackers crackers, I always think of the first overloaded definition--Shades of Ich bin ein Berliner. Yes, we can tell the difference based on context, just as the Berliners could, but there is no city named Crack. It just doesn't sound right.
Actually, the phrase "black hat" is widely used, and not terribly overloaded. Yes, the bad guys in westerns wore black hats, but they were not *called* black hats. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the phrase "black hat" is not used this way in any other context.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, sure...a scam perpetuated by the television documentary Empire of the Air (written by the same guy who did The Civil War). Not to mention more than a few books on radio history.
Damn, that's some scam...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
That's a parody of the gospel tune "Put Your Hand in the Hand".
The use in RFC521 was not unique.
From RFC691:
"430 430 Foo, you are a password hacker!"
This is an EX-PARROT!
Yes, but could she cut a tomato with the knife afterward?
More fodder for my argument that we were not as dumb as the western tradition would like us to believe we are. Humans built pyramids, built fantastic cities, great works of art and engineering. Sure, they didn't have palm pilots that us clever, obviously more advanced homo sapiens have, but that doesn't mean they were *dumb*. It seems like every year some archeologist finds some *amazing* thing that we would *never* believe was possible to ancient humans (how about that frozen medicine man from Italy, eh?). It's a sort of arrogance. As if all of our great advancements are the natural outcome of the superior "western" civilized mind.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Maybe if I can find it, I could salvage a 64Kbps MP3 from it. Too bad the NPR station in my area isn't allowed to boost power during the Capitol Steps show (or did they? Hmmmm.)
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
anybody remember thedraw?
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
you're an ass
I noticed that on the main page, the nose ring is in the chip's right nostril, and once you get into the site, it's on his left nostril. I don't know why I always get bogged down in the little details...
I modded the Troll Investigation and I got
If I were to write, " We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage murderers, although it is obviously insufficient to protect people against a determined and malicious attack," would you conclude that I was talking about two different kinds of attackers: murderers and 'people who kill in a determined and malicious way, but who aren't murderers'?
The sense of the comment is clearly that hackers are people who make illicit entry into systems. Modern-day computer hobbyists may redefine the term hacker if they want, but the reference cited above makes it apparent that the word's original use was synonymous with 'cracker.'
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
If I were to write, "We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage people, although it is obviously insufficient to protect people against a determined and malicious attack." this sentence makes a lot more sense than your sentance with "murderers" instead of "people" thereby prooving the point that hacker is a good thing (except in the eyes of suits (like you?))