NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
Well why the hell not? Our space program owes its existance to the arms race anyway.
In the early days of the space program we had a choice between missiles and spaceplanes. Spaceplanes we would have had to develop from scratch, but missiles we had plenty of.
Just take out the warhead and put in a payload and voila, you have a space program.
That would be a good idea except that driver's licenses don't exist to guarantee the qualifications of the driver, they exist to ensure the driver remains liable for his or her traffic violations.
Actually, there's hard evidence to support your position.
Just before the USDOT lifted the limits on interstate speeds, results from a study on traffic accidents and fatalities revealed that the likelihood of being in an accident correlated with only one number - the amount of time spent driving.
Speed, geography, road type, age, sex none of that correlated well with increased accident rates. The only thing that correlated strongly was time on the road.
Now, fatalities on the other hand, are different. Fatality rates do correlate with speed, up to a certain point. Once you get above 60, they start to level off.
So, the logical conclusion is, if you're going to drive freeway speeds, then you might as well drive over the limit and get there sooner!
Did any significant number of users jump ship when Office was ported to Mac OS?
Yes, at least at one office I know of. And especially among the heavy laptop users. When Office 2000 was released for the Mac, IS started offering the choice of IBM laptops or Powerbooks to the staff that travelled heavily. Most people chose the Powerbook.
And the exodus is continuing, partially the general dissatisfaction with Win2000 and the recent arrival of the eminently sexy TiBook.
The historic landmark Rialto in South Pasadena, CA will also be screening MP&THG starting Friday June 22, with three shows a day on weekdays and five on weekends.
(I've been given a free guest pass by the manager! I can't wait!)
Well, others who appear to remember them better than I have responded, so I'll reply tangentially:
The Dune novels represent only a small part of Frank Herbert's bibliography. He has written many other similarly amazing novels, some of which are much better than, say, God Emporer of Dune. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are long out of print. But if you really liked his Dune series, then it's worth hunting down some of these.
I personally recommend the following:
Whipping Star
The Dosadi Experiment (set in the same universe as above)
Santoroga Barrier
Hellstrom's Hive
The Worlds of Frank Herbert (shorts)
The White Plague
And, a very dark and disturbing trilogy, co-written with Bill Ransom, I also highly recommend:
The Jesus Experiment
The Lazarus Effect
The Ascension Factor
In fact, these represent nearly every Frank Herbert novel I've read. The only exception is Man of Two Worlds, cowritten with his son, Brian. I barely remember reading it.
I received ProcessTree's email yesterday, and when I opened it, it was nothing but an html attachment.
So I trashed it.
If someone doesn't have the courtesy to put at least a "please read the attached letter for a very important announcement" in the plaintext portion of an email, I don't read it. Assuming we all use either a Microsoft or a Netscape client for our email belies some kind of ignorance or arrogance, or both.
And those qualities are also probably also the reason they're failing.
While I don't disagree with your conclusions, I must object to your characterization of SecurID.
It's NOT that cumbersome. It's a smart card that fits in your wallet, like any credit card. When you need the passcode, you whip out the SecurID, type in the number it displays, and you're on your way.
Some people REALLY love AOL, but it still isn't a corporate system.
I subscribed to AOL for three years, and I can testify that the people who "love AOL" like that are the ones who can tolerate the piss-poor interface and implementation because they don't know any better.
What they love is the community, the other people they've grown close to. Some of these people are even technically literate, but they place more value on their friendships rather than having a more efficient email system or being able to browse the web like a net_god...
Now, that's not a defense. I can't stand most of these people. They're generally ostrich-minded, single-issue people who you can't talk to without them working in that one pet topic that rules their lives, be it guns or Tolkein... And what's most scary that there are so many of them!
The AOL software is adequate for these people. But you put it in the hands of 86,000 serious, workaholic businesspeople - journalists, many of them - and they're going to scream bloody murder. I predict that within two years, the impact on their business will be such a burden that they will either 1) abandon it, or 2) rewrite it.
And based on my experience with AOL, if they choose 2), it will not be a solution, because management will move on to another "solution" before they get this one right.
Prince (you know, the artist formerly known as "the artist formerly known as Prince") was on the Tonight Show last nite and implied he had a pretty favorable impression of Napster. He may not be entirely, 100% gung ho about it, but he certainly doesn't see it as a threat.
He spent a bit of time trying to illustrate how it's not the artists who are being hurt by Naspter - the artists already got burned by the Record Companies. If you want to get this kind of message across, Prince or one of his entourage may be willing to speak.
Re:Some things the reviewer missed...
on
Noir
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, Farrell, I know, but I couldn't include everything... I felt the review was getting too long, anyway.
At least there's someone else here that can enjoy fiction that's not written at a 9th-grade level. You appear to be a fan of Wilson and Shea's novels -- I expect that if "Illuminatus!" was published today, and reviewed here, the same pack of hyenas would dismiss it as "tripe" for it's "dense" style of prose and obtuse plot.
I wouldn't have bothered to post a review here if it wasn't for Jeter's "joke" about where the current trends in IP/copyrights are taking us. But scarce few others even commented on it, and none of them recieved any mod points.
Despite the badmouthing Jeter's obtuse writing style received in this forum, it's one that has been used by many widely acclaimed authors, from Faulkner to Joyce, Hemingway to Pohl. I feel sorry for those whose capacity to enjoy literature is limited to high school grammatically correct prose.
There are thousands of these nodes in the United States, ranging from PC clone hamlets of a few users to mainframe metros like CompuServe, with its 550,000 subscribers.
ahh the good old days
I'm with ya. I know there are deeper issues associated with this topic, but I just could not get over the nostalgia that pervades this article.
It reminds me of the days when I felt violated upon finding my archived posts on the Steve Jackson BBS were property of the Treasury Dept., when busy signals and 30 minute login time limits influenced the flavor of my posts, and when the Z-modem protocol was a near-miracle.
Please allow me to second your "Ahh... the good old days."
Re:Other groups working on similar stuff
on
FPGA Supercomputers
·
· Score: 1
for typical pc use it would be to expensive and painstaking to program
Bullshit. No more expensive and painstaking than it was to make a pentium processor and a Windows operating system. Christ but both of those architectures are nightmares of complexity, and yet they still got built.
No, the real problem is that it's a wholesale change in the way of thinking about solutions and applications, and we don't have enough engineers and programmers trained to think that way.
Those are nothing compared to the fact that the RIAA wants me to spend $12-$20 on a tiny piece of plastic that I can lose between the seat cushions of my car. Even in that little plastic frame, it's too small. No thanks.
Small is just not ergonomic. It's why wristwatch calculators are still just an ultrageek niche, and Dick Tracy radios never caught on.
Anything smaller than a floppy is just too hard to handle, organize, and keep track of. Imagine storing 500 of those little discs, and then finding the one you need? What a pain in the butt.
The pdf linked to from that page has spaces in the URL. The piece of crap proxy my employer uses gets confused by either spaces (" ") or ("%20") - it's infuriating sometimes.
Anyway, is there a mirror somewhere that does NOT use space characters in the URL?
block all ifnringing materials from being searched for
Now answer me this: how can they tell it's "infringing?" Just because it's copyrighted doesn't mean it's being infringed upon. There's a possibility, yes, but... well, here's a ferinstance:
I bought Blue Man Group's album, Audio, last month. It plays fine on my portable CD player, but put it in the CD-ROM drive, and it misbehaves. I can't even rip it. I have a license to make fair use copies of it, so presumably, if I can find MP3s of this album, aren't I entitled to download them?
Similarly, the Beatles' White Album. I bought that on vinyl, and later on cassette. Am I really required to buy it AGAIN to legally download MP3s that other licenseholders have made?
Forget the technical problems for a sec, and just look at the legal presumption of guilt here.
Yeah, you make funny-haha, but it is almost that easy to defeat.
A suit made out of a fine mesh of conductors, thermally insulated on the inside, would effectively protect the wearer. Of course, it would have to completely enclose the wearer.
This may not be apparent from the PR and buzz that you've been exposed to, but a lot of us are planning on creating Persistent Worlds using NWN. Of course, NWN servers won't support the huge populations that, ahem, grace such institutions as EverQuest and Asheron's Call. But then, we see that as an advantage: smaller populations make it easier to weed out the munchkins, twinks and d00ds, and thus "make the world safe for real roleplayers."
And at this point, I'd like to plug the project I enjoy being a member of, Neverwinter Nights Online. NWNO is devoted to reproducing the Forgotten Realms' forest nation of Cormyr on a dedicated 24/7/365 NWN server with a T1 link. A lot of other projects plan to use a network of volunteers with DSL and cable to run world "modules" that will be linked via "portals." While we at NWNO applaud and cooperate with all persistent world efforts, the senior DM (and server owner) decided that this approach is subject to too many avenues for abuse, inconsistency, and preferred more control over the platform... and the environment. We hope to retake the definition of Roleplaying from EQ, AC and the other munchkinlands, and restore its original meaning.
Slashdot Mirror
If these putzadmins can't or won't patch the holes, then a "white hat" virus can use the same holes to apply the patches.
I'm not endorsing it, just making a prediction. (But it does have its elegance.)
--
- NASA needs to simply glue machine guns to every launch vehicle they have to assure permanent funding.
Well why the hell not? Our space program owes its existance to the arms race anyway.In the early days of the space program we had a choice between missiles and spaceplanes. Spaceplanes we would have had to develop from scratch, but missiles we had plenty of.
Just take out the warhead and put in a payload and voila, you have a space program.
--
If my mod points that were awarded on Friday hadn't expired already, I'd have given you some.
--
--
- how long will it take before the Internet only becomes usable between the 20th and the end of each month?
And then how long will it take before someone feels compelled to release a countervirus that patches the security hole, or cripples Code Red?Hell, why stop there? How long until the internet becomes just one giant code battlefield, a la Core Wars?
My God - it just hit me. The language used in Core Wars is Redcode!
--
They could make it work if they wanted to. Heck, in Boulder, CO, they have sensors that work for bicycles.
Just before the USDOT lifted the limits on interstate speeds, results from a study on traffic accidents and fatalities revealed that the likelihood of being in an accident correlated with only one number - the amount of time spent driving.
Speed, geography, road type, age, sex none of that correlated well with increased accident rates. The only thing that correlated strongly was time on the road.
Now, fatalities on the other hand, are different. Fatality rates do correlate with speed, up to a certain point. Once you get above 60, they start to level off.
So, the logical conclusion is, if you're going to drive freeway speeds, then you might as well drive over the limit and get there sooner!
Yes, at least at one office I know of. And especially among the heavy laptop users. When Office 2000 was released for the Mac, IS started offering the choice of IBM laptops or Powerbooks to the staff that travelled heavily. Most people chose the Powerbook.
And the exodus is continuing, partially the general dissatisfaction with Win2000 and the recent arrival of the eminently sexy TiBook.
That may have been true in 1999, but those companies who relied on clue-insulated management are on the rolls of the dead in 2001.
They may not be geeks, but the ones who survive know when to heed geek counsel.
The historic landmark Rialto in South Pasadena, CA will also be screening MP&THG starting Friday June 22, with three shows a day on weekdays and five on weekends.
(I've been given a free guest pass by the manager! I can't wait!)
The Dune novels represent only a small part of Frank Herbert's bibliography. He has written many other similarly amazing novels, some of which are much better than, say, God Emporer of Dune. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are long out of print. But if you really liked his Dune series, then it's worth hunting down some of these.
I personally recommend the following:
- Whipping Star
- The Dosadi Experiment (set in the same universe as above)
- Santoroga Barrier
- Hellstrom's Hive
- The Worlds of Frank Herbert (shorts)
- The White Plague
And, a very dark and disturbing trilogy, co-written with Bill Ransom, I also highly recommend:- The Jesus Experiment
- The Lazarus Effect
- The Ascension Factor
In fact, these represent nearly every Frank Herbert novel I've read. The only exception is Man of Two Worlds, cowritten with his son, Brian. I barely remember reading it.So I trashed it.
If someone doesn't have the courtesy to put at least a "please read the attached letter for a very important announcement" in the plaintext portion of an email, I don't read it. Assuming we all use either a Microsoft or a Netscape client for our email belies some kind of ignorance or arrogance, or both.
And those qualities are also probably also the reason they're failing.
It's NOT that cumbersome. It's a smart card that fits in your wallet, like any credit card. When you need the passcode, you whip out the SecurID, type in the number it displays, and you're on your way.
I subscribed to AOL for three years, and I can testify that the people who "love AOL" like that are the ones who can tolerate the piss-poor interface and implementation because they don't know any better.
What they love is the community, the other people they've grown close to. Some of these people are even technically literate, but they place more value on their friendships rather than having a more efficient email system or being able to browse the web like a net_god...
Now, that's not a defense. I can't stand most of these people. They're generally ostrich-minded, single-issue people who you can't talk to without them working in that one pet topic that rules their lives, be it guns or Tolkein... And what's most scary that there are so many of them!
The AOL software is adequate for these people. But you put it in the hands of 86,000 serious, workaholic businesspeople - journalists, many of them - and they're going to scream bloody murder. I predict that within two years, the impact on their business will be such a burden that they will either 1) abandon it, or 2) rewrite it.
And based on my experience with AOL, if they choose 2), it will not be a solution, because management will move on to another "solution" before they get this one right.
He spent a bit of time trying to illustrate how it's not the artists who are being hurt by Naspter - the artists already got burned by the Record Companies. If you want to get this kind of message across, Prince or one of his entourage may be willing to speak.
At least there's someone else here that can enjoy fiction that's not written at a 9th-grade level. You appear to be a fan of Wilson and Shea's novels -- I expect that if "Illuminatus!" was published today, and reviewed here, the same pack of hyenas would dismiss it as "tripe" for it's "dense" style of prose and obtuse plot.
I wouldn't have bothered to post a review here if it wasn't for Jeter's "joke" about where the current trends in IP/copyrights are taking us. But scarce few others even commented on it, and none of them recieved any mod points.
Despite the badmouthing Jeter's obtuse writing style received in this forum, it's one that has been used by many widely acclaimed authors, from Faulkner to Joyce, Hemingway to Pohl. I feel sorry for those whose capacity to enjoy literature is limited to high school grammatically correct prose.
ahh the good old days I'm with ya. I know there are deeper issues associated with this topic, but I just could not get over the nostalgia that pervades this article.
It reminds me of the days when I felt violated upon finding my archived posts on the Steve Jackson BBS were property of the Treasury Dept., when busy signals and 30 minute login time limits influenced the flavor of my posts, and when the Z-modem protocol was a near-miracle.
Please allow me to second your "Ahh... the good old days."
Bullshit. No more expensive and painstaking than it was to make a pentium processor and a Windows operating system. Christ but both of those architectures are nightmares of complexity, and yet they still got built.
No, the real problem is that it's a wholesale change in the way of thinking about solutions and applications, and we don't have enough engineers and programmers trained to think that way.
Yet.
Small is just not ergonomic. It's why wristwatch calculators are still just an ultrageek niche, and Dick Tracy radios never caught on.
Anything smaller than a floppy is just too hard to handle, organize, and keep track of. Imagine storing 500 of those little discs, and then finding the one you need? What a pain in the butt.
The pdf linked to from that page has spaces in the URL. The piece of crap proxy my employer uses gets confused by either spaces (" ") or ("%20") - it's infuriating sometimes.
Anyway, is there a mirror somewhere that does NOT use space characters in the URL?
Thanks.
Now answer me this: how can they tell it's "infringing?" Just because it's copyrighted doesn't mean it's being infringed upon. There's a possibility, yes, but... well, here's a ferinstance:
I bought Blue Man Group's album, Audio, last month. It plays fine on my portable CD player, but put it in the CD-ROM drive, and it misbehaves. I can't even rip it. I have a license to make fair use copies of it, so presumably, if I can find MP3s of this album, aren't I entitled to download them?
Similarly, the Beatles' White Album. I bought that on vinyl, and later on cassette. Am I really required to buy it AGAIN to legally download MP3s that other licenseholders have made?
Forget the technical problems for a sec, and just look at the legal presumption of guilt here.
I'm offended. I really am.
Every time I deal with executive management, the same thought runs through my mind...
A suit made out of a fine mesh of conductors, thermally insulated on the inside, would effectively protect the wearer. Of course, it would have to completely enclose the wearer.
It's called a Faraday Cage.
Try some of the publications that dedicate themselves to exposing poor reporting, or at least making a living doing good reporting that the other ones miss: Salon Magazine might just pick this /. story up on their own... Romenesko's Media News... Brill's Content... Reason Online... USC's Online Journalism Review... FAIR
And at this point, I'd like to plug the project I enjoy being a member of, Neverwinter Nights Online. NWNO is devoted to reproducing the Forgotten Realms' forest nation of Cormyr on a dedicated 24/7/365 NWN server with a T1 link. A lot of other projects plan to use a network of volunteers with DSL and cable to run world "modules" that will be linked via "portals." While we at NWNO applaud and cooperate with all persistent world efforts, the senior DM (and server owner) decided that this approach is subject to too many avenues for abuse, inconsistency, and preferred more control over the platform... and the environment. We hope to retake the definition of Roleplaying from EQ, AC and the other munchkinlands, and restore its original meaning.