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Slashback: 640K, Pioneer, Payback
Kudos to the guys behind Pioneer 10! Soft writes: "As a follow-up to yesterday's story, Pioneer 10 was successfully contacted for its 30th birthday, as announced in sci.space.news. The commands that were sent yesterday have been executed by the spacecraft, and more data has been collected by the Geiger Tube Telescope." lostchicken adds a link to Associated Press wire story on Yahoo!', writing "Not bad for a 30 year-old spacecraft. Perhaps those making time capsules could learn something from this?" Several readers also pointed out the SpaceDaily version of the goings on.
What, in the middle of Canadian winter?! schon writes: "An update to this /. story - The Canadian Copyright Board has announced the details of the public hearings on Canadian Digital Copyrights, at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00838e.html. Interested parties should register before attending (details available on the page.)"
Sent to you in compliance with the current Federal legislation An Anonymous Coward writes: "Back in June of 2000 Slashdot.org reported a story called ' Taking On A Spammer' about a spammer being hacked by a pissed sys-admin. The Behind Enemy Lines web page talked about a pump-and-dump spam done by Premier Services and Mark Rice."
(See this page for more information on that scam.)
"Well on February 25, 2002 the SEC filed charges against Mark Rice!"
Death of a legend? Jean-Luc writes "The New York Review of Books has published an article that contains an e-mail from Bill Gates denying he ever said the infamous "640K should be enough for anyone" quote. He foists the blame on IBM and claims he tried to convince them to include more address space from the get go. Very technical and fairly convincing, showing that for all his might Bill is still basically a geek's geek."
They hadn't even gotten to the bowlderizing chip yet ... Dan Gilmor pointed out Intel's strong statement Thursday on copy protection front, "much stronger than the letter sent yesterday. Surprising given their history..." Maybe Intel believes they can do a better job of what deciding what goes into Silicon than a committee of bureaucrats steered by the entertainment moguls can.
do they have any plans to have voyager ten still be usefull?
I thought it was Pioneer 10, not Voyager 10. IIRC, there was no such thing as voyager 10.
No, I don't want a free iPod
I love music and movies. I'm slowly becoming an afficiando of the art of film--more so than most other J6P I know. The SSSCA would only introvert me--I would not consider to purchase any product that met the required compliance. I'd buy everything I could from Taiwan--mostly b/c you damn well know they are going to capitalize on any openings in the market that they can.
I've written my representitives, have you?
... but he is also still Microsoft's Chief Software Architect. He very much isn't stupid when it comes to the internals of the PC. MS-DOS tried to work around the 640k limitations IBM set in place using EMM386 and HIMEM.
We have just recently passed through the 32-bit limit and are going to 64-bit
I'm sorry I must have just been dreaming about alpha's and sparcs these past few years.
It probably cost less silicon space to access the next portion of the segment than to hardwire to zero. This could also be a benefit in some ways but having a true 32 bit addressing would of been the thing to opt to at that time.
Indeed props to intel for standing up to the RIAA and MPAA. Of course Intel could buy them both and still have enough money to purchase Rhode Island, but I digrees. But, give credit to microsoft also. Steve ballmer is mentioned as a signee of the letter sent to the Recording/Movie industy. Give credit to all EIGHT companies who signed the letter. They all realized that this would be the death of the PC as we know it and are trying to stop it - course I wonder why they haven't bought a few senators yet..
7.42 billion miles, a little over 22 light hours away. Lesseee, divide by 22, times 2, divide by 27380 mph, divide by 24 hours/day: so in 1026 days, or about 3 years, it will cross the 1 light day boundary...
Never mind embedded, the regular Linux kernel has to switch into protected mode itself.
:) We don't want to be one of the people that are forcing Intel to keep backward compatibility cruft in the CPU, do we?
By the way, why is the obsolete (286 compatibility) "lmsw" instruction used there instead of mov cr0, eax, which works just as well. mov cr0, eax won't work on a 286, but since Linux doesn't run on those that's not a issue.
Also, the Intel docs say you should immediately do an intersegment jump after entering protected mode - linux does a local jump first.
I patched my kernel to address these issues and it worked fine. Any comments?
(*) Also, the new SMM (System Management Mode) is a quasi-real mode which is becoming more popular for certain functions (such as power management, etc).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I was working in the compiler group at Microsoft in the early '80s, so I remember some of the historical context.
:-))
I recall suggesting to my boss (who reported to Bill back then) that Apple made a mistake by choosing 128K as the initial memory size for the Mac. My argument was that they'd need 256K to eliminate code swapping in the apps that were under development. The next-generation memory chips would make 1MB machines affordable, and I thought that would be enough for the foreseeable future. (I'm not claiming I was a visionary, either.
My boss replied that the consensus opinion at Microsoft was that no one would ever buy machines with a megabyte of memory. Even if it were affordable, just consider how long it would take to clear it! An app would never really *use* that much memory on a PC; it would just be too slow.
(CPU speeds and memory speeds were not only much lower than they are today, they tended to be more closely coupled. Datapaths were much narrower. And Moore's Law wasn't widely understood outside a relatively small group of hardware-savvy folks.)
So Bill may have been fully prescient, and busy paving the way for large-memory machines. But that definitely wasn't the general belief at Microsoft around 1983. If he really did understand things as well as he says, he didn't manage to communicate it successfully even to his direct reports in engineering.
I can make a good case for 192 bit addressing.
64 bits local memory address plus
128 bits of IPv6 address.
So you could have a pointer to memory location X on IP address Y. Distributed memory access over a network.
256 bits might make more sense, then both parts would be equal (128 bits).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Not really that cold. But then if you consider that it has a pretty hot on board heat source (i.e. reactor), and the ONLY means for dissippating it is black body radiation (yup, its a hard vaccuum)... This means its pretty dark (i.e. cold, since its a vaccuum, the only external heat source would be incident radiation).
;)
So, ya, its cold out in deep space
Gates didn't design the hardware.
The original PC came with a choice of 3 operating systems, CPM/86, Windoze (a cheap knockoff of CPM) and UCSD P system. It was _not_ 'designed' to Microsofts specs.
The software designers were (as usual) not consulted, and had to work with what they were given.
I work with embedded systems, and those mistakes keep getting made. Hardware designers design minimum-cost boards, without consulting the softies at all. We're presented with a finished board, and told to put s/w on it. I've seen hundreds of man-hours wasted on working around design decisions that saved 5 cents a board, and we typically ship in quantities of 100-200 boards per project.
The solution, of course, is to have a prolonged session with the hardware designers and a large bit of 4 by 2, but management doesn't see it that way.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Cold? The thing's practically burning up! I thought it was getting cold, too, until I saw that the most recent temperatures are actually negative, and then realised that the table is in degrees Farenheit.
As of 1991, the spacecraft was still at 251K, and it had only cooled off about 40K in the twenty years since launch.
I mean, -7F is still pretty cold -- you'd probably get your tongue stuck to it out there -- but it's a lot warmer than its environment. Probably has a lot to do with the onboard nuclear reactor...
Living better through chemicals
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As I am a South Carolina resident, I'm about to ship off a letter to Fritz Hollings. Please critique it and feel free to suggest ways to improve it before it goes. I wonder if complaining about the draft of the SSSCA at this point is worthwhile since they seem to ignore its existence. I also wonder if I'm going overboard by insinuating he's acting in the interests of his contributors and not citizens. It seems fair to me, but I want my arguments to look reasonable and not have my letter ignored.
The Honorable Ernest F. Hollings
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Mr. Hollings,
I am a professional software developer and a constituent in your state. I've recently become concerned with your proposed bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). I am against such a bill, and I'll explain why below.
No Public Participation / No Regard for Fair Use: In Section 104(b)(1)(A), the proposed bill describes the security standard as being determined by "representatives of interactive digital device manufacturers and representatives of copyright owners." In effect, you are permitting corporations to determine the scope of this law, with no input from the public who will be using such devices. The public's fair-use rights have been slowly whittled away by recent laws. The SSSCA will continue this disappointing trend of protecting the profits of media companies at the expense of the consumer.
Open Source Software: There is an entire industry of software manufacturers and support organizations that write software that is freely available. This software is installed on millions of computers around the world, including servers that run the Internet. Software engineers like myself earn a living supporting this software. Open source software contains software code that is freely published. Your draft bill could, in effect, make this type of software illegal, since developers would be unable to "hide" security software in open code.
Digital Devices: There are any number of digital devices that have no need for these protection schemes. My scientific calculator is a "digital device." So is my Global Positioning System unit. They have absolutely no need for built-in protection systems. Your bill would place an undue burden on digital hardware manufacturers to protect things that don't need it. This will result in less hardware being produced, and increased development expenses which will be passed on to consumers.
Copyright protection can be maintained with state-of-the-art technology. Your bill will encourage companies to create mediocre protection schemes backed by the threat of prosecution. Piracy will continue unabated in foreign countries.
I am not sure exactly how you think you are benefiting South Carolina with this bill. My reading of the proposal is that it will only benefit the large corporations in this country, especially the media conglomerates. Please don't act solely in the interest of your high-dollar contributors.
I believe you are doing a disservice to South Carolinians and Americans by proposing this bill, and I urge you to do away with it.
From Encyclopedia.com
(William Henry Gates 3d), 1955-, American business executive, b. Seattle, Wash. At the age of 19, Gates founded (1974) the Microsoft Company, a computer software firm, with Paul Allen. They began by purchasing the rights to convert an existing software package. In 1980 they agreed to produce the operating system for the personal computer being developed by International Business Machines (IBM). That system, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), and subsequent programs (including the Windows operating systems) made Microsoft the world's largest producer of software for microcomputers.
In 1997 the U.S. Justice Dept. accused Microsoft of violating a 1995 antitrust agreement, because the Windows 95 operating system required consumers to load Microsoft's Internet browser-thus giving Microsoft a monopolistic advantage over other browser manufacturers. In late 1999 the trial judge decided that Microsoft was a monopoly that had stifled competition.
Gates, who is chairman of Microsoft, is the wealthiest person in the world. He founded (1994) the William H. Gates Foundation (focusing on health issues in developing countries) and the Gates Learning Foundation (1997), renamed the Gates Library Foundation (providing education assistance). In 1999, he merged the foundations into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropy that was worth $17.1 billion, after Gates's donation of $5 billion that year.
Gates has written The Road Ahead (1995, with N. Myhrvold and P. Rinearson) and Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999).
From Encarta.com
Gates, William Henry, III (1955- ), American business executive, who serves as chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the leading computer software company in the United States. Gates cofounded Microsoft in 1975 with high school friend Paul Allen. The company's success made Gates one of the most influential figures in the computer industry and, eventually, one of the richest people in the world.
Born in Seattle, Washington, Gates attended public school through the sixth grade. In the seventh grade he entered Seattle's exclusive Lakeside School, where he met Paul Allen. Gates was first introduced to computers and programming languages in 1968, when he was in the eighth grade. That year Lakeside bought a teletype machine that connected to a mainframe computer over phone lines. At the time, the school was one of the few that provided students with access to a computer.
Soon afterward, Gates, Allen, and other students convinced a local computer company to give them free access to its PDP-10, a new minicomputer made by Digital Equipment Corporation.
In exchange for the computer time, the students tried to find flaws in the system. Gates spent much of his free time on the PDP-10 learning programming languages such as BASIC, Fortran, and LISP. In 1972 Gates and Allen founded Traf-O-Data, a company that designed and built computerized car-counting machines for traffic analysis. The project introduced them to the programmable 8008 microprocessor from Intel Corporation.
While attending Harvard University in 1975, Gates teamed with Allen to develop a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair 8800, the first personal computer. They licensed the software to the manufacturer of the Altair, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), and formed Microsoft (originally Micro-soft) to develop versions of BASIC for other computer companies. Gates decided to drop out of Harvard in his junior year to devote his time to Microsoft. In 1980 Microsoft closed a pivotal deal with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) to provide the operating system for the IBM PC personal computer. As part of the deal, Microsoft retained the right to license the operating system to other companies. The success of the IBM PC made the operating system, MS-DOS, an industry standard. Microsoft's revenues skyrocketed as other computer makers licensed MS-DOS and demand for personal computers surged. In 1986 Microsoft offered its stock to the public; by 1987 rapid appreciation of the stock had made Gates, 31, the youngest ever self-made billionaire. In the 1990s, as Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office application software achieved worldwide market dominance, Gates amassed a fortune worth tens of billions of dollars. Alongside his successes, however, Gates was accused of using his company's power to stifle competition. In 2000 a federal judge found Microsoft guilty of violating antitrust laws and ordered it split into two companies. An appeals court overturned the breakup order but upheld the judge's ruling that Microsoft had abused its power to protect its Windows monopoly. (For more information on the history of Microsoft, see Microsoft Corporation.)
Gates has made personal investments in other high-technology companies. In 1989 he founded Corbis Corporation, which now owns the largest collection of digital images in the world. In 1995 Corbis purchased the Bettmann Archive of 16 million photographic images and announced plans to digitize part of the collection. In 1994 Gates and Craig McCaw, a pioneer in the cellular telecommunications industry, became primary investors in Teledesic Corporation. Teledesic planned to launch several hundred low-orbiting artificial satellites to create a global, high-speed telecommunications network.
In the late 1990s Gates became more involved in philanthropy. With his wife he established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which, ranked by assets, quickly became one of the largest foundations in the world. Gates has also authored two books: The Road Ahead (1995; revised, 1996), which details his vision of technology's role in society, and Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999), which discusses the role technology can play in running a business.
In 1998 Gates appointed an executive vice president of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, to the position of president, but Gates continued to serve as Microsoft's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). In 2000 Gates transferred the title of CEO to Ballmer. Gates, in turn, took on the title of chief software architect to focus on the development of new products and technologies.
What's a sig?
That it was not correct seems to pinpoint it. This interview with Bill Gates that's in the Smithsonian paints a slightly different picture:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/gates.h tm (A transcript of a 1993 interview). Specifically under the mouse: http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/gates.h tm#tc44
So he seems quite clear that he himself did that. In the same interview he used "Microsoft" and "we" when appropriate, so it seems that in context this is indeed claiming that he himself did that.
Now, let's compare to the "spin" version of things:
contrast that statement to the earlier one of:
D'oh! By 1996 he 'forgot' that he was the one who did that. Ooops.
contrast that with his statement from the SI interview:
Look's like 20-20 revisionist history. Seems to be in-line with having held the opinion that 640K (ten times the shipping memory of the IBM PC) would be enough. In 1993 he was defending it. In 1996 he was denying it.
In five years the cost of computation will really be effectively decreased. We'll be able to put on somebody's desk, for an incredibly low cost, a processor with far more capability than you could ever take advantage of. Hardware in effect will become a lot less interesting. The total job will be in the software, and we'll be able to write big fat programs. We can let them run somewhat inefficiently because there will be so much horsepower that just sits there.
This makes is unlikely he ever thought 640K would be enough...but he also said, in the same interview (p. 18-19):
16-bits is extremely important, and it is not because of speed...the main reason for the 16-bit micro being advantageous is its increased address space...The logical address space limit...is for all practical purposes gone away. The chip is designed to address a megabyte."
So he did seem to indicate that one megabyte address space was basically limitless.
- adam
Seems to be in-line with having held the opinion that 640K (ten times the shipping memory of the IBM PC) would be enough.
Which brings up the good point that in 1981, the IBM PC was a "machine" and not a "architecture". Gates refers to other machines that supported 800K (and weren't 100% PC compatible).
Given the history of PCs up to that point it's reasonable that nobody would have expected 20 years of hardware-level compatibility. Solutions (OS/2) that broke software but abstracted the hardware weren't popular.
There's still many many PCs being shipped today that do not support memory expansion to 10x the shipping size. For example, the very common Intel i815 chipset only supports 512MB and ususally shipped with 128 or 256MB. Probably seemed like enough for anyone at the time a couple years ago.