Slashdot Mirror
Interplanetary Superhighway
rotenberry writes "The current issue of Caltech's Engineering and Science magizine contains the article "Next Exit 0.5 Million Kilometers - A Caltech/JPL collaboration explores the 'Interplanetary Superhighway.'" which describes "...the Interplanetary Superhighway - 'a vast network of winding tunnels in space' that connects the sun, the planets, their moons, and a
host of other destinations as well. But unlike the wormholes beloved of science-fiction writers, these things are real. In fact, they are already being used." However, it takes a very long time to get there."
I DID IT!
First +1 bonus post. Aw yeah.
All over your face!
first, we had to ride on the back of the bus, and now this.
That's just asking for trouble. Didn't we all see Star Trek 2? Kahn will be after it, and we all know that proto-matter is unstable and dangerously unpredictable.
Everything's bigger.. yet smaller.
Then how did you just post that?
Does your vehicle cost more than your home? If you reside in southeast Missouri, it's quite possible. In fact, it's expected.
Men and women of all races here are in love, infatuated, and all-around smitten with their cars and trucks. We pamper them with washes and waxes, obsess over their stereos, lose sleep over their chrome wheels, and fret over horsepower. It's like a hot steamy romance, with everything but the lovemaking itself. (Unless you view tailpipes as an erogenous zone, in which case you need to seek counseling. And the burn unit at your local hospital. Immediately.)
In my line of work, I meet all kinds of people. I see their homes and their cars. And many times, the car is worth quite a bit more than their house. Or apartment, condo, Section 8 unit, or hovel. It's inexplicable, but common. People in general see no moral dilemma in paying twice as much for their car as they do for their living quarters.
This phenomenon is most common with pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. People do some really weird stuff to their "rigs". Including:
1. Wacky two-tone paint jobs.
2. Hideously expensive chrome wheels.
3. Equally hideously expensive and large tires.
4. Lift kits.
5. Four wheel drive, even if you never go "out in the sticks". You never know when you might need to climb a mountain in the middle of Cape Girardeau.
6. Lowering kits.
7. Roll bars.
8. Running boards.
9. Ground effects.
10. Chrome bed rails.
11. Bed liners.
12. Dual rear wheels (the ultimate in Southern style, the Jeff Foxworthy equivalent of the Holy Grail. Only for the hardcore).
13. Fog lamps.
14. Gun racks.
15. Longhorns attached to the grille (primarily a phenomenon in Texas and Oklahoma, but spreading.)
16. Decals of Ford or Chevy emblems.
17. Decals of erstwhile cartoon character Calvin gleefully urinating on Ford or Chevy emblems. (Does the cartoonist make any money off all those?)
18. Decals of the number of your favorite NASCAR driver.
19. Decals of Calvin urinating on the number of your least favorite NASCAR driver (usually Jeff Gordon but there are a few deviations.)
20. Extended cabs.
21. Four doors.
22. Gas-guzzling monster turbo diesel engines.
23. Bug shields.
24. Dual exhaust pipes.
25. Flare-sided bed panels.
26. Window shades.
27. Towing packages.
28. Confederate battle flag bumper stickers/license plate frames/decals (i.e., anything with a rebel flag on it will suffice).
29. For the really shameless, the original sticker from the dealer that stays on your passenger window for at least a year so everyone can tell how much you paid for it.
30. A stereo system that may well cost more than the truck and the house combined.
31. Typically, no liability insurance despite all of the above options.
It used to be fashionable to soup up a big conversion van, sticking TV's, VCR's, captain's chairs, beds, stoves and wet bars in the back. This still happens, but conversion vans are now primarily used only by aged hippies and serial killers.
Truck customization, not too long ago, was a realm reserved only for the dedicated, card-carrying redneck. Not anymore. With the economy booming and SUV's all the rage, wanton and reckless customization of trucks is commonplace. Everyone's in competition to have the "baddest-ass" truck, and this stuff adds up fast.
In no time flat, you have a $35,000 vehicle sitting in the driveway of your $30,000 home. In fact, the paint on the house may be peeling, the roof rotting, the yard overgrown with weeds and littered with discarded appliances and trash. But that truck will be pristine. You can bet on it.
Your vehicle is typically your second largest investment, next to your house, so it is a big deal. Folks are therefore quite conscientious about their ride. The general public may never see your house unless you specifically invite them over. But anytime you go to church, a bar, the store, a ballgame... they do see your car. And that's probably why folks put so much time and effort into them.
But the average Joe Six-Pack doesn't do nearly the things to a car that they will do to a truck. Trucks and SUV's get such exotic treatment, even JonBenet's parents would think it obsessive and slightly creepy. Sometimes I wonder if there should be a law against "Cruelty to Vehicles".
I do not condemn materialism; Americans like their toys. I believe that if you can afford to pay upwards of $30,000 for a vehicle, you should be allowed to do so. That's part of what makes this country so great.
I also do not believe that the size of a man's truck is inversely proportional to the size of his schlong. (I do believe this myth is true about stereos and belt buckles, though.)
Nor do I bemoan the damage that these SUV's and large trucks supposedly do to the environment due to their gas consumption. Surely if you can afford the truck, you can afford the gas. Pissing off the environmentalist crowd is kind of fun, anyway. They're cute when they're angry.
However, I must question the common sense of putting so much love and money into a vehicle while neglecting everything else. It's a tough sell when your wife wants to put braces on your kids, or buy a new washing machine, and you can't because your truck payment is too high.
The old lady won't buy that argument, and soon you'll be living out of that truck. And that's the way it probably should be, if it indeed costs more than your house. It will become your house.
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
h itheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogeta rroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstall edtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomo lamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeepthebl ackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilte rthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Ga rbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshit headinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarr oundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalled tokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomola menessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblac kmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltert hatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garb agetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithe adinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarrou ndthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledto keeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolame nessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackm andown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltertha tcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbag etogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithead installedtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarround thehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtoke eptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamene ssfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackman down!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatc mdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)SLASHBOTS_(___>___/__\____s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_e_x_*_
Goatse in your EYE!
Brought to you by the Deepside Nigs
KILL WHITEY!
Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrs
marie antoinette should have said, 'let them eat fast food!'
<applause>
now talk!
wow, /. readers have girlfriends?
http://www.boners.com/grub/788973.html
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
enjoy your new life
webriot3@hotmail.com
In the mid-1960s, AT&T Bell Laboratories (among others) was participating in an effort to develop a new operating system called Multics. Multics was intended to supply large-scale computing services as a utility, much like electrical power. Many people who worked on the Bell Labs contributions to Multics later worked
on UNIX.
In 1969, Bell Labs pulled out of the Multics effort, and the members of the Computing Science Research
center were left with no computing environment. Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others developed and
simulated an initial design for a file system that later evolved into the UNIX file system. An early version of
the system was developed to take advantage of a PDP-7 computer that was available to the group.
An early project that helped lead to the success of UNIX was its deployment to do text processing for the
patent department at AT&T. This project moved UNIX to the PDP-11 and resulted in a system known for its
small size. Shortly afterward, the now famous C programming language was developed on and for UNIX, and
the UNIX operating system itself was rewritten into C. This then radical implementation decision is one of the
factors that enabled UNIX to become the open system it is today.
AT&T was not allowed to market computer systems, so it had no way to sell this creative work from Bell
Labs. Nonetheless, the popularity of UNIX grew through internal use at AT&T and licensing to universities
for educational use. By 1977 commercial licenses for UNIX were being granted, and the first UNIX vendor,
Interactive Systems Corporation, began selling UNIX systems for office automation.
Later versions developed at AT&T (or its successor, Unix System Laboratories, now owned by Novell)
included System III and several releases of System V. The two most recent releases of System V, Release 3
http://docs.rinet.ru/UNIXy/unx01.htm (4 of 9) [4/27/1999 10:45:56 AM]
(SVR3.2) and Release 4 (SVR4; the most recent version of SVR4 is SVR4.2) remain popular for computers
ranging from PCs to mainframes.
All versions of UNIX based on the AT&T work require a license from the current owner, UNIX System
Laboratories.
Berkeley Software Distributions
In 1978 the research group turned over distribution of UNIX to the UNIX Support Group (USG), which had
distributed an internal version called the Programmer's Workbench. In 1982 USG introduced System III,
which incorporated ideas from several different internal versions of and modifications to UNIX, developed by
various groups. In 1983 USG released the original UNIX System V, and thanks to the divestiture of AT&T,
was able to market it aggressively. A series of follow-on releases continued to introduce new features from
other versions of UNIX, including the internal versions from the research group and the Berkeley Software
Distribution.
While AT&T (through the research group and USG) developed UNIX, the universities that had acquired
educational licenses were far from inactive. Most notably, the Computer Science Research Group at the
University of California at Berkeley (UCB) developed a series of releases known as the Berkeley Software
Distribution, or BSD. The original PDP-11 modifications were called 1BSD and 2BSD. Support for the
Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computers was introduced in 3BSD. VAX development continued with
4.0BSD, 4.1BSD, 4.2BSD, and 4.3BSD, all of which (especially 4.2 and 4.3) had many features (and much
source code) adopted into commercial products. Various later releases from UCB have attempted to create a
publicly redistributable version of UNIX (prior releases had source code available only to source licensees).
Notably, the "Second Networking Release" (Net2) was intended to make available all the parts of the Berkeley
Software Distribution that were not subject to license restrictions. UNIX System Laboratories (USL) brought a
lawsuit against the University and a company called Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI). USL
claimed license infringements by the BSD releases and BSDI's BSD/386 product, which was based in part on
the BSD code. Recently the lawsuit was settled; the result is that BSDI is shipping BSD/386, and a new
4.4-Lite release of BSD, which requires no license from USL, will be available from UCB.
UNIX and Standards
Because of the multiple versions of UNIX and frequent cross-pollination between variants, many features
have diverged in the different versions of UNIX. With the increasing popularity of UNIX in the commercial
and government sector came the desire to standardize the features of UNIX so that a user or developer using
UNIX could depend on those features.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers created a series of standards committees to create
standards for "An Industry-Recognized Operating Systems Interface Standard based on the UNIX Operating
System." The results of two of the committees are important for the general user and developer. The POSIX.1
committee standardizes the C library interface used to write programs for UNIX. (See Chapter 17, "C
Language.") The POSIX.2 committee standardizes the commands that are available for the general user. (See
especially Chapter 4, "Listing Files," Chapter 5, "Popular Tools," Chapter 6, "Popular File Tools," Chapter 7, "
Editing Text Files," Chapter 10, "What Is a Shell?" Chapter 11, "Bourne Shell," Chapter 12, "Korn Shell,"
Chapter 13, "C Shell," Chapter 14, "Which Shell Is Right for You? Shell Comparison," and Chapter 15, "Awk,
Awk.")
In Europe, the X/Open Consortium brings together various UNIX-related standards, including the current
attempt at a Common Open System Environment (COSE) specification. X/Open publishes a series of
specifications called the X/Open Portability Guide, currently at Version 4. XPG4 is a popular specification in
Europe, and many companies in the United States supply versions of UNIX that meet XPG.
The United States government has specified a series of standards based on XPG and POSIX. Currently FIPS
151-2 specifies the open systems requirements for federal purchases.
UNIX for Mainframes and Workstations
Many mainframe and workstation vendors make a version of UNIX for their machines. The best way to get
information on these is directly from the manufacturer.
UNIX for Intel Platforms
Thanks to the great popularity of personal computers, there are a great number of UNIX versions available for
Intel platforms. Choosing from the versions and trying to find software for the version you have can be a
tricky business because the UNIX industry has not settled on a complete binary standard for the Intel platform.
There are two basic categories of UNIX systems on Intel hardware, the SVR4-based systems and the older,
more established SVR3.2 systems.
SVR4 vendors include NCR, IBM, Sequent, SunSoft (which sells Solaris for Intel), and Novell (which sells
UnixWare). The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) is the main vendor in the SVR3.2 camp. Vendors in the first
camp are working toward cleaning up the standards to gain full "shrink-wrap portability" between their
versions of UNIX. The goal is that this will make UNIX-on-Intel applications available, shrink-wrapped for
any version of UNIX, just as you can now buy applications for MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows. SCO UNIX
currently has a much larger base of available applications and is working to achieve binary compatibility with
UnixWare.
Source Versions of "UNIX"
Several versions of UNIX and UNIX-like systems have been made that are free or extremely cheap and
include source code. These versions have become particularly attractive to the modern-day hobbyist, who can
now run a UNIX system at home for little investment and with great opportunity to experiment with the
operating system or make changes to suit his or her needs.
An early UNIX-like system was MINIX, by Andrew Tanenbaum. His books Operating Systems: Design and
Implementations describes MINIX and includes a source listing of the original version of MINIX. The latest
version of MINIX is available from the publisher. MINIX is available in binary form for several machines
(PC, Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, and SPARCStation).
In addition to the BSD386 product from BSDI, there is a free version of UNIX also based on the BSD
releases, and called, confusingly, 386BSD. This is an effort by Bill and Lynne Jolitz to create a system for
operating system research and experimentation. The source is freely available, and 386BSD has been
described in a series of articles in Dr. Dobbs' Journal.
Another popular source version of UNIX is Linux. Linux was designed from the ground up by Linus Torvalds
to be a free replacement for UNIX, and it aims for POSIX compliance. There are current efforts to make
Linux reliably run both SVR3.2 and SVR4 binaries. There is also a project called WINE to create Microsoft
Windows emulation capability for Linux.
Making Changes to UNIX
Many people considering making the transition to UNIX have a significant base of PC-based MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows applications. There have been a number of efforts to create programs or packages on
UNIX that would ease the migration by allowing users to run their existing DOS and Windows applications on
the same machine on which they run UNIX. Products in this arena include SoftPC and SoftWindows from
Insignia, WABI from SunSoft, and WINE for Linux and 386BSD.
Introduction to the UNIX Philosophy
As described in the section "The History of UNIX," UNIX has its roots in a system that was intended to be
small and supply orthogonal common pieces. Although most UNIX systems have grown to be fairly large and
monolithic applications are not uncommon, the original philosophy still lives in the core commands available
on all UNIX systems. There are several common key items throughout UNIX:
Simple, orthogonal commands l
Commands connected through pipes l
A (mostly) common option interface style l
No file types l
For detailed information on commands and connecting them together, see the chapters on shells (Chapters
10--14) and common commands (Chapters 5--9 and Chapter 15).
Simple, Orthogonal Commands
The original UNIX systems were very small, and the designers tried to take every advantage of those small
machines by writing small commands. Each command attempted to do one thing well. The tools could then be
combined (either with a shell script or a C program) to do more complicated tasks. One command, called wc,
was written solely to count the lines, words, and characters in a file. To count all the words in all the files, you
would type wc * and get output like that in Listing 1.1.
Listing 1.1. Using a simple command.
$ wc *
351 2514 17021 minix-faq
1011 5982 42139 minix-info
1362 8496 59160 total
$
Commands Connected Through Pipes
To turn the simple, orthogonal commands into a powerful toolset, UNIX enables the user to use the output of
one command as the input to another. This connection is called a pipe, and a series of commands connected by
pipes is called a pipeline. For example, to count the number of lines that reference MINIX in all the files, one
would type grep MINIX * | wc and get output like that in Listing 1.2.
Listing 1.2. Using a pipeline.
$ grep MINIX * | wc
105 982 6895
$
A (Mostly) Common Option Interface Style
Each command has actions that can be controlled with options, which are specified by a hyphen followed by a
single letter option (for example, -l). Some options take option arguments, which are specified by a hyphen
followed by a single letter, followed by the argument (for example, -h Header). For example, to print on pages
with 16 lines each all the lines in the file minix-info that mention Tanenbaum, you would enter wc minix-info |
pr -l 16 and get output like that in Listing 1.3.
Listing 1.3. Using options in a pipeline.
$ grep Tanenbaum minix-info | pr -l 16
Feb 14 16:02 1994 Page 1
[From Andy Tanenbaum 28 August 1993]
The author of MINIX, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, has written a book describing
Author: Andrew S. Tanenbaum
subjects.ast (list of Andy Tanenbaum's
Andy Tanenbaum since 1987 (on tape)
Version 1.0 is the version in Tanenbaum's book, "Operating Systems: Design
$
The bad news is that some UNIX commands have some quirks in the way they handle options. As more
systems adopt the standards mentioned in the section "The History of UNIX," you will find fewer examples of
commands with quirks.
No File Types
UNIX pays no attention to the contents of a file (except when you try to run a file as a command). It does not
know the difference between a spreadsheet file and a word processor file. The meaning of the characters in a
file is entirely supplied by the command(s) that uses the file. This concept is familiar to most PC users, but
was a significant difference between UNIX and other earlier operating systems. The power of this concept is
that any program can be used to operate on any file. The downside is that only a program that understands the
file format can fully decode the information in the file.
Summary
UNIX has a long history as an open development environment. More recently, it has become the system of
choice for both commercial and some personal uses. UNIX performs the typical operating system tasks, but
also includes a standard set of commands and library interfaces. The building-block approach of UNIX makes
it an ideal system for creating new applications.
I found this interesting. Imagine a spacecraft going through the solar system over the course of hundreds of years without really having to use fuel.
Want to hear about how I came up with that? My girlfriend's friend + boyfriend came over, and my girlfriend and her friend got high. Then I think her boyfriend got a BJ in my bathroom after. She was like screaming about his enormous penis while we sat on my couch. Wacky. She will so regret that tomorrow.
We played Gamecube and listened to old hip-hop and and a Screw tape I have. And ate some pizza.
Then they went home, and my girlfriend and I fucked. I even got hard and fucked her again after I came. The I ate her out (I love it!), and then she fell asleep after orgasming. Cool!!
So I went and smoked the roaches while taking a hot bubble bath, got a good feeling in my neck, and pigged out on some chips and macaroni salad. The I listened to some Apoptygma Berzerk while reading this article.
And that's when I thought about a spacecraft going through the solar system over the course of hundreds of years without really having to use fuel. But, it's listening to Apoptygma Berzerk - Electricity.
Time to go brush my teeth and go to bed. Bed with my girlfriend, and wake up with my boner pressing into her butt and I can cuddle with her. She's cool! She so doesn't mind when I wake her up like that! She's hot! She's into UNIX and PHP too!
,
faeryman
Here's a drunken' rhyme I just wrote. Somehow it turned into a rant against high school teahcers?!
wait up hold up
with your face on stuck
chickens will cluck
when they see this ill canuck
koivu beat cancer
thats exactly the answer
to the deceptive prancer
war is not the answer
you must respond to the rancor
and accept your death
its a possibility
do everything in your power
to delay the hour
when the clock strikes twelve
and your body lay in a well
of soil
ready to broil
under 6 feet of spoil
the world's fucked
you better have tools
or get your ass back in school
pyschology won't help
when you're screaming help
what you gonna say
frued would have done it this way
thats not practical
schools teach you how to be an actor
you gotta adapt to the present dude
forget about all the metaphysical
bullshit
reverends preaching in their pulpit
convinced that what they spit is the ish
allow me to retort
you bastards is now saying shit that I tought
the ill mic master c-rot
coming to emancipate your erroneous thoughts
help all yall reach the top
i aint in this for simply thought
i'm all about actions
reacting to reactions
fluid
like water
ready to adapt to some new shit
your ways to get under my skin is bullshit
i've already thought of your tactic before you've pulled it
thats why high school teachers are foolish
thinking they are superior to their students
No, they have ex-girlfriends.
Can't you read?
Dear Apple,
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.