Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Snapshots, Amends, Bazaarity
Microsoft is just as secure as the competition, says Microsoft. Jon_E writes: "According to this article Microsoft is responding to the Gartner Report which recommends that enterprises drop IIS by claiming unfair targeting due to their popularity."
Whether because of better-trained or more vigilant administrators, or some other factors, the Apache servers running many web sites certainly haven't seen the devastating outages in the past month (Code Red, Nimda) as certain large IIS installations have.
If animated, this might make a really good Saturday cartoon. cconnell writes "Last September, slashdot published my critique of Eric Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. There was a lively (and sometimes scorching) discussion that followed. Here is Eric's reply to my critique, which Slashdot readers might enjoy. And here is my reply to Eric."
This was not faked in the same studio as the "lunar landings." mrsmalkav writes "Deep Space 1 has passed by Comet Borrelly within 1400 miles and took some very pretty pictures of the comet's core, all while collecting lots of data about said comet. NASA's press release discusses some of the details and findings of the flyby.
This is actually really impressive given that there was very little hope for this mission. From the Mission Logs on DS1's site, '[T]o be honest, DS1's visit with the comet simply is unlikely to work as well as we hope. Many mission logs have described the difficulty of keeping this aged and wounded bird aloft, and the encounter with Borrelly will present Deep Space 1 with the greatest challenge yet in its historic trek through the solar system.'"
Saint Aardvark writes "Space.com has an article about the images taken by DS-1, and they're stunning." And eldurbarn points to the NASA Images of comet Borrelly online at JPL.
How to satisfy customers with license objections, Part II brtb writes: "Soon after Slashdot posted my DiscZerver-GPL writeup last week, xStore added a link in their Download section for information about the use of GPL software in their products. Below is the e-mail I received in response (address changed to protect the spamless). Congratulations to xStore for supporting Free Software and bringing the DiscZervers into compliance with the GPL.
From: "Support" [support@xstoreonline.com]
To: "brtb" [slashdot@brtb.org]
Subject: "RE: GPL SOURCE CODE"xStore is committed to complying to the full letter and spirit of the GPL. We are currently investigating the allegations of non-GPL compliance and communicating with the GNU.ORG and Free Software Foundation on this issue. We will produce a response to your request that is mutually acceptable to the copyright holders of the programs we have used that fall under the GPL and xStore itself. Due to the recent acquisition of this product, we are still in the process of preparing the required source code for distribution. xStore is commited to bring the DiscZerver product into GPL compliance, if it is indeed found to be not in compliance.
In the meantime, please provide xStore with information so that we can send you, the user of this product, the package that you are entitled to. Please provide the serial number of your DiscZerver product and the 'system page' with your response. The 'system page' is located at [http://your_Zerver_name_or_IP_address/admin-cgi/s ystem]. In addition, please send us a self addressed stamped envelope suitable for mailing a CD-ROM along with $14.95 to:
xStore, Inc.
Federal Highway Center
1200 North Federal Highway
Suite 200
Boca Raton, FL 33432After we receive your written request along with the above items, we will process it and promptly send you the disc when it becomes available.
This thanks to the mostly behind-the-scenes work of people at the FSF. Congratulations to xStore for respecting the intent of the programmers whose work they're consolidating and packaging.
There's another article in the NYT about the encryption restrictions being brought up for debate and it includes a nice jab at the Washington Post for misquoting Zimmermann on his PGP interview. Check it out here:
D E.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/technology/25CO
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
An ion engine ionizes neural atoms then accelerates the charged particles and emits them as a high energy stream. The ship accelerates in the opposite direction of course. One potential source of atoms ( rather than carrying them along as a payload ) is to use a magnetic field to gather material that is just out ther in "space".
Before you flame: yes, I know that was meant as a joke, and yes, this post is more than slightly off topic (but Slashback threads often are), but this is probably going to be discussed here sooner or later anyhow so I might as well take some preventative measures.
The lunar landings were not fake. The "evidence" is poor at best, and just blatantly stupid otherwise. I won't reiterate all arguments against this silly conspiracy theorys validity, as you can read all about it, for example, here or here.
There are lots of nice conspiracy theories that really have some nice arguments that actually speak for them, but this is not one of those. This one should really die. Seriously, I'd go for Illuminati or Elvis any day of the week if this was my only alternative.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Technology /Mechanical_Engineering/Propulsion/Aerospace/Space /Electric/
DS1 How the Ion Engine Works
Has a great description. It even has pretty pictures.
For the best explanation of ion propulsion that's used in the DS1 probe, see the Ion Propulsion FAQ at NASA's JPL site.
For more information on the DS1 probe itself (and the technologies that it tested), see the DS1 Home Page, also on the JPL site.
subject says it all.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/206711.asp
pw: testtest
'Nuff said.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Ion engines work by accelerating charged particles (ions) electrically rather than accelerating molecules chemically. A conventional rocket motor works by taking a fuel/oxidizer mix that contains stored chemical energy, releasing the chemical energy by burning the fuel/oxidizer, and using the generated heat to accelerate the combustion products out of the rocket. In an ion engine, OTOH, an inert gas (xenon) is ionized and the ions are accelerated by passing them through an electric field (and then throwing them out of the engine).
There are two important criteria to use in judging an engine: thrust and specific impulse. The thrust is how hard the rocket can push (i.e. its force) and is a combination of how rapidly it can push reaction products out and how fast they're going. Specific impulse measures how fuel efficient the rocket is, i.e. how much thrust it can get from a given amount of 'fuel', and basically depends on the velocity of the reaction products leaving the thruster. Chemical rockets can achieve much higher burn rates than ion engines, so they can produce much higher thrust. Ion engines, though, can achieve much higher specific impulse, because they can accelerate ions to much higher velocities by using energy accumulated from solar panels or radiothermal generators.
Overall which one you want to use depends on circumstances. Chemical rockets are necessary for things like getting into orbit in the first place, because you need to have a thrust/weight ratio > 1 to get off the ground, and ion engines can't get there. OTOH, once you're in space you can't easily get more fuel, so the greater efficiency of ion engines means that they make a good propultion system for long, deep space flights.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
--
We apologise for the inconvenience.
Hmm... where do I remember him from?
Always nice to have a few staunch supporters ready to jump to your defense
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Umm... about 6.5 years ago many university Mac labs were completely overrun -- shut down -- because of fast spreading viruses that moved like wildfire. I remember watching a lab shut down within 15 minutes (25 machines). Cleaned by the next day and then shut down again in another 15 minutes.
The Mac is not invulnerable. Far from it. Webstar hasn't been hacked yet -- congratulations! That's good news and the developers deserve thanks.
Of course if the Mac were in any way a significant platform for web serving it might make more of an impact. Right now it isn't nor does it look like it will be in the near future. As a matter of fact it is an extremely tiny server platform.
The reasons that the Mac is a marginal platform for servers are many but center around a few significant facts. In the past they have not been built as true servers that can compete on a price/performance module -- not the cpu but the entire system. The development platforms for open source (Linux, etc.) and NT (IIS/ASP/etc.) implementations are easy, powerful and productive -- the Mac is not really superior and in some areas doesn't come close to the base functionality of either Linux or NT/2000.
Frankly the Mac is a marginal system. Always has been. May always be. To move away from marginality it needs to present a compelling technical ability (i.e.: price/performance must soundly trounce the competition), an ability to deliver solutions swiftly and/or an ability to deliver web solutions that no other platform can do.
Doesn't look good for the Mac.
Mac viruses aren't in wide circulation for reasons beyond numbers. Apple, unlike MS, actually secures things so that scripting can't run amok, as with ILOVEYOU and all the others. Fully scriptable OS are trouble waiting to happen and everyone BUT Microsoft knows it.
And yes, Macs get viruses. There are also ways to trash a Mac system with scripting, but most of them aren't even a tenth as evil as this stuff coming to a Windows machine near you. Ironic, the last virus problem that I had to watch for were macro viruses that came through corrupted Word files. If you don't have Office on the machine, you don't have a problem--Appleworks and MacLink get the job done.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Excerpted from Netcraft's Web Server Survey http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
Take that, marketroid!
Snickersnee3: Build your own 3-watt Luxeon Star headlamp from scratch
This is also true of the GPL:
At some point, of course, it was decided that distributing source in a 650MB CD-ROM image was OK under these terms (!?), but that's another argument for another day. ;)
http:// www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/mcwo/0818/mcwo0001.html
I'm sure more astute individuals will find more. If you'd have spent five minutes with Google instead of simply spouting off in a public forum, you would not appear as nearly the zealot that you do now.
Yep. If popularity was the source of all worms, Apache would be 3 times the can-of-worms that IIS is....
The problems is pretty simple-- IIS trusts itself to police itself, and this trust is misplaced. The default installation of Apache does not do this. That being said, I have serious reservations about many other proprietary and open source web servers including Tux and Websphere for this reason.
Does IIS remind one of Sendmail, anyone?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP