Every time someone metions "digital signitures" I want to scream "digital seals".
They bear much more similarity to the medieval "royal seal" than an actual signiture. Like the "prince and the pauper" story by Mark Twian where the evil baron steals the royal seal so he can make his own laws.
Also, the signiture is a very hazy legal device having become accepted over hundreds of years of common law. Depending on the type od contract it is usually only one of many "indications of intent" a signature alone, unwitnessed, is not legally binding on anyone.
The basic premise is that everything is housed on a single PCI card.
The card is "tamper sensitive" i.e. it goes into one enormous sulk if the the case is opened, it feels its electorodes being tweaked etc. etc.
As hardware this is tried and tested technoligy. What is new is that IBM are dumping there specially written, proprietory (an presumably short of applications and development tools) "CP/OS" for LINUX.
In the financial information business there is a big demand for this type of device. e.g. you are a company which has at great expense aquired data on every trade from every major stock exchange as it happens, you broadacast this compressed and encrypted via satelite to all your cutomers, but, each customer only pays for a subset of this data, easy, you program one of these cards to decompress and decrypt the data, then, filter out all the data the customer hasn't paid for.
Pay is a very good point. But not pay for science teachers but pay for scientists!
Being a scientist doesn't pay that well. The founders of intel etc. did quite well out of it but all that happened in the '80s.
Why should we have an education system that prepares our children for lower paid lower esteem jobs. Very few scientists get paid anything near what lawyers, sportsmen, tv evangelists etc.etc.
Even car salesmen get better paid.
I would be careful about making any predictions where money and healthcare are involved.
The economics of health care are extremly complex. All the normal supply and demand type equations still apply, but, the "demand" is infinate.
Question:- how much would you be prepared to save a loved one?
Answer:- Everything youve got, plus everything you can borrow, plus anything you can steal.
The sheer wierdness of the health care system in the UK is a case in point. Its actaully very efficient in terms of money (the UK spends less per person on health care than any other first world country), but we have the lowest paid doctors, the longest waiting lists, and the grottiest hospitals.
If anywhere in the network two CISCO or two NORTEL routers are talking to each other, if your backbone provider is reasonably competant and wants to make money.
Then your web traffic is already being compressed.
One of the great things about HTML and XML is that it compresses really easily using comparitively simple compression algorithms.
So any effort you put in "compressing" XML traffic is wasted as your network hardware would probably have done it anyway.
What you mean is that the Soviet Union was not a "Marxist" or "Socialist" system.
It was certainly "communist" as the word was specificly invented to describe the form of government that came to the Soviet Union in 1917, by those people who formed that government.
If the communists aren't allowed to decide what constutes cimmunism then who is?
Besides the "that wasn't really a socialist/communist/marxist state" argument doesn't hold water. "True" socialism seem a bit like those exotic particals in physics which only exist for a millionth of a second after some massive explosion.
The "open Source is a virus" argument is completely spurious.
When a fully lawyer-ed up company like IBM is prepared to release versions of its software on LINUX (free to non-comercila users -- but no source code!).
Among the products released on Linux are DB2, MQ & Websphere which togther account for about half of IBMs considerable software revenues.
If IBM seriously considered that I might be able to claim all the source code for a major revenue generating produc there is no way they would be releasing it on Linux.
Lotus Notes.....not many people would actually consider this good software. For a product that is mostly about end users to get a whole chapter in the "User interface Hall Of Shame" to itself is quite an acheivment.
Oracle......was basically finished in about 1989 since then its been mostly window dressing and interfaces to new stuff that came along. It should be noted that the definitve and original relational database "DB2" reached a usable, stable and pretty much final form in about 1988 after about five years development, this includes Codd thinking up the origonal idea and developing a subset of set theory for use by computers.
And what about XML from a gleam in a devlopers eye to stable, standard used software in three years,the BSD tcp/ip stack about 1 week, "vi" editor 36 hours and lots of coffee!
It reall all depends on the scope of the problem, the quality of your thinking, and, the "Hacker Quotent" (TM) of your programmers.
I think it will be some time before we see the GPL testedted in court.
The simple reason for this is it is a very well written and well thought out piece of "legalize".
Like one of those obfuscated perl programs that also compiles in C the GPL reads the same in both normal english and lawspeak.
The sheer clarity of the wording would scare the hell out of most contract lawers, there are no "a normal person would interpret" or other ambiguities to weasel around. So anyone who is clearly violating a GPL would be best advised to settle out of court.
The other reason we will not see it challenged in court for a long time is the the FSF does not bother with trivial maybe he was, maybe he wasn't abuses. It only follows up clear and obvious violations of the GPL agreement.
I think the first time the GPL will be tested in court will be as a side show in some other dispute.
E.G. When writing programs for my own purposes or my own entertainment I always copy some GPLed code into my source code (usually "getopt" as source, but, generaly whatevers useful). My company (NOT ME!) signed a contract with a customer which states that any code written by me belongs to them. If the customer ever tried to claim ownership of my code, which is laced with GPLed code, the resulting mess could take years to resolve -- which is excatly how I want it:-)
In late 70s early 80s Queens University of Belfast did pioneering work on Gas flow simulation (sponsored by Yamaha -- it got them five motorcycle GP chanpionships!).
It was a pretty slick model, trking individual molecules from carbureter to muffler in a two stroke engine. It did however take about 1 days to go through a single engine "stroke".
In southern Eurpoe (especially Greece) solar power is used extensively to heat water.
The basic technoligy is a no-brainer you just trickle water over black painted panels which sit on the roof.
There is some messing around with pumps and valves to make the system more users friendly.
A basic low cost system with 2 meter square panel heats enough water for about five really hot showers per day.
The system is used a lot on islands where energy costs are high, and, the whole thing is driven purely by market forces. Its cheaper in the long run so people buy and install the systems.
Electricity companies are not stupid. They do everything they can to avoid generating "exess" electricity. Matching as closely as possable the power generated to the expected/actual consumption.
Sometimes excess elcetrictity is generated. Usually because nukes need to generate a minimum amout of electricity to remain safe, and, because it is often not worth the shutdown/restart overheads in really large oil/coal burners.
In these cases energy is stored by pumping water uphill for later use by hydro stations.
I doubt if IBM is trying to dump AIX, it is after all by far the best implemtation of UNIX and is constantly improving.
There are several features such as workload management, cluster management, high availability features which are pretty much unique to AIX and which make running really large systems easier and less nerve racking.
IBMs interest in LINUX is two fold.
1. As LINUX and AIX converge, (LINUX gets JSF, pThreads, DB2 MQSeries etc. -- AIX gets LINUX comaptable libraries, linkers and package management), then IBM gets a super cheap platform for developing software that can run commercially on AIX.
2. Very few people are going to replace a large AIX server with a LINUX one, but they are likely to replace an NT or low end Solaris server with a cheap linux box -- so stuffing thier competitors.
All recent IBM AIX|AS/400, all recent sparcs from sun, plus all Nintendos and Sony PS/2 are running 64 bit chips.
Its the Wintel dinosaurs which have fallen behibd.
Incidently (I know it was mentioned in passing be another poster) Intel bought the alpha FAB from DEC, all current aplha chips are manufactured by Intel, the latest Alphas were largley designed by Intel engineers, it makes sense for Intel to own the archirecture outright.
What compaq owns is the VMS and Tru64 operating systems and associated software.
First I apoligize if this subject was covered in the RMS talk, but, I havn't got the right software to listen to the speech on the companies kit.
The argument the various suits and accountants always give for not using "free" software boils down to "support" and "product liability".
Yet they end up buying software from companies whose idea of support is to give the customer a call centre number where they can speak to dozens of untrained minimum wage serfs until they get bored or thier product license runs out.
Furthermore, nearly all the wording on the average software license is about freeing the software vendor from any responsiblity or liability whatsoever. According to the terms of most license agreements you cannot even get your money back if the product plain does not work.
This article describes a proprieteary digital wireless protocol.
So what there are dozens of these and they have been around for years.
When I wiggle my mouse it is a cordless Logitec which uses logitecs proprietory wireless protocol. ( I think Logtec also do a cordless console for the popular gaming platforms).
As for the article describing voice traffic as a possable use, this is just laughable. All rcent cordless phones use the "DACT" protocol, which, is a true standard, and, ensures interoprability between base sations and handsets from different manufacturers and supports all the stuff you would expect a cordless phone to do. ( I don't think SPIKEs private protocol includes "call on another line" and "hold current call"!).
Sure the SPIKE chipset will find a niche in the gaming console market but its not new, it is not an innivation, its not even different.
The article also failed to mention the real threat to bleutooth is form competing open protocols (like IEEE 20??? ) and from wireless network cards which tunnel existing protocols (ethernet, TCP/IP and LAN etc.).
While sybase are a very viable database vendor, MS really just arent.
Being stuck with NT as the only platform, and, a general corporate lack of trust are disadvantages that I don't think MS will ever overcome.
Incidentaly if you want to see how big databases can get and what they are running on check out:-- http://www.wintercorp.com/VLDB/2000_VLDB_Survey/wi nners/
Its a little self selecting and as your probably unfamiliar with the products "CA" usually mean "Computer Associates IDMS" and especially in the "transactional" category "IBM" usually means the ancient but high performing IMS/DB rather than DB2.
Slashdot Mirror
For a more coherent explanation of this:-l
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0011.htm
Ever so slightly off topic.
Every time someone metions "digital signitures" I want to scream "digital seals".
They bear much more similarity to the medieval "royal seal" than an actual signiture. Like the "prince and the pauper" story by Mark Twian where the evil baron steals the royal seal so he can make his own laws.
Also, the signiture is a very hazy legal device having become accepted over hundreds of years of common law. Depending on the type od contract it is usually only one of many "indications of intent" a signature alone, unwitnessed, is not legally binding on anyone.
The basic premise is that everything is housed on a single PCI card.
The card is "tamper sensitive" i.e. it goes into one enormous sulk if the the case is opened, it feels its electorodes being tweaked etc. etc.
As hardware this is tried and tested technoligy. What is new is that IBM are dumping there specially written, proprietory (an presumably short of applications and development tools) "CP/OS" for LINUX.
In the financial information business there is a big demand for this type of device. e.g. you are a company which has at great expense aquired data on every trade from every major stock exchange as it happens, you broadacast this compressed and encrypted via satelite to all your cutomers, but, each customer only pays for a subset of this data, easy, you program one of these cards to decompress and decrypt the data, then, filter out all the data the customer hasn't paid for.
Pay is a very good point. But not pay for science teachers but pay for scientists!
Being a scientist doesn't pay that well. The founders of intel etc. did quite well out of it but all that happened in the '80s.
Why should we have an education system that prepares our children for lower paid lower esteem jobs. Very few scientists get paid anything near what lawyers, sportsmen, tv evangelists etc.etc.
Even car salesmen get better paid.
I would be careful about making any predictions where money and healthcare are involved.
The economics of health care are extremly complex. All the normal supply and demand type equations still apply, but, the "demand" is infinate.
Question:- how much would you be prepared to save a loved one?
Answer:- Everything youve got, plus everything you can borrow, plus anything you can steal.
The sheer wierdness of the health care system in the UK is a case in point. Its actaully very efficient in terms of money (the UK spends less per person on health care than any other first world country), but we have the lowest paid doctors, the longest waiting lists, and the grottiest hospitals.
And "throw" is not a "goto" ?
Same for "EXEC SQL .... ON ERROR ...."
Plus all those callbacks in "X" are fundementally the hated COBOL "ALTER .. GO TO".
If you are using a modem with a "V54" or "Vnn".
If anywhere in the network two CISCO or two NORTEL routers are talking to each other, if your backbone provider is reasonably competant and wants to make money.
Then your web traffic is already being compressed.
One of the great things about HTML and XML is that it compresses really easily using comparitively simple compression algorithms.
So any effort you put in "compressing" XML traffic is wasted as your network hardware would probably have done it anyway.
What you mean is that the Soviet Union was not a "Marxist" or "Socialist" system.
It was certainly "communist" as the word was specificly invented to describe the form of government that came to the Soviet Union in 1917, by those people who formed that government.
If the communists aren't allowed to decide what constutes cimmunism then who is?
Besides the "that wasn't really a socialist/communist/marxist state" argument doesn't hold water. "True" socialism seem a bit like those exotic particals in physics which only exist for a millionth of a second after some massive explosion.
The "open Source is a virus" argument is completely spurious.
When a fully lawyer-ed up company like IBM is prepared to release versions of its software on LINUX (free to non-comercila users -- but no source code!).
Among the products released on Linux are DB2, MQ & Websphere which togther account for about half of IBMs considerable software revenues.
If IBM seriously considered that I might be able to claim all the source code for a major revenue generating produc there is no way they would be releasing it on Linux.
Lotus Notes.....not many people would actually consider this good software. For a product that is mostly about end users to get a whole chapter in the "User interface Hall Of Shame" to itself is quite an acheivment.
Oracle......was basically finished in about 1989 since then its been mostly window dressing and interfaces to new stuff that came along. It should be noted that the definitve and original relational database "DB2" reached a usable, stable and pretty much final form in about 1988 after about five years development, this includes Codd thinking up the origonal idea and developing a subset of set theory for use by computers.
And what about XML from a gleam in a devlopers eye to stable, standard used software in three years,the BSD tcp/ip stack about 1 week, "vi" editor 36 hours and lots of coffee!
It reall all depends on the scope of the problem, the quality of your thinking, and, the "Hacker Quotent" (TM) of your programmers.
I think it will be some time before we see the GPL testedted in court.
The simple reason for this is it is a very well written and well thought out piece of "legalize".
Like one of those obfuscated perl programs that also compiles in C the GPL reads the same in both normal english and lawspeak.
The sheer clarity of the wording would scare the hell out of most contract lawers, there are no "a normal person would interpret" or other ambiguities to weasel around. So anyone who is clearly violating a GPL would be best advised to settle out of court.
The other reason we will not see it challenged in court for a long time is the the FSF does not bother with trivial maybe he was, maybe he wasn't abuses. It only follows up clear and obvious violations of the GPL agreement.
I think the first time the GPL will be tested in court will be as a side show in some other dispute.
E.G. When writing programs for my own purposes or my own entertainment I always copy some GPLed code into my source code (usually "getopt" as source, but, generaly whatevers useful). My company (NOT ME!) signed a contract with a customer which states that any code written by me belongs to them. If the customer ever tried to claim ownership of my code, which is laced with GPLed code, the resulting mess could take years to resolve -- which is excatly how I want it :-)
A lot more people survived the Hindenberg crash than survived the Concord crash. So I will take my chances with hydrogen.
At lot of people have been doing this for years!
In late 70s early 80s Queens University of Belfast did pioneering work on Gas flow simulation (sponsored by Yamaha -- it got them five motorcycle GP chanpionships!).
It was a pretty slick model, trking individual molecules from carbureter to muffler in a two stroke engine. It did however take about 1 days to go through a single engine "stroke".
Yes the water doplets are losing thier energy to the air. But this energy in manifested in motion (turbulence) rhather than heat.
The originator of this thread is exactly right, Bernouli, pretty much completely explained the phenominum with some rudimentary maths and a quill pen.
Its seems to me like the reasearcher had too much tecnoligy and not enough sense!
In southern Eurpoe (especially Greece) solar power is used extensively to heat water.
The basic technoligy is a no-brainer you just trickle water over black painted panels which sit on the roof.
There is some messing around with pumps and valves to make the system more users friendly.
A basic low cost system with 2 meter square panel heats enough water for about five really hot showers per day.
The system is used a lot on islands where energy costs are high, and, the whole thing is driven purely by market forces. Its cheaper in the long run so people buy and install the systems.
Electricity companies are not stupid. They do everything they can to avoid generating "exess" electricity. Matching as closely as possable the power generated to the expected/actual consumption.
Sometimes excess elcetrictity is generated. Usually because nukes need to generate a minimum amout of electricity to remain safe, and, because it is often not worth the shutdown/restart overheads in really large oil/coal burners.
In these cases energy is stored by pumping water uphill for later use by hydro stations.
I doubt if IBM is trying to dump AIX, it is after all by far the best implemtation of UNIX and is constantly improving.
There are several features such as workload management, cluster management, high availability features which are pretty much unique to AIX and which make running really large systems easier and less nerve racking.
IBMs interest in LINUX is two fold.
1. As LINUX and AIX converge, (LINUX gets JSF, pThreads, DB2 MQSeries etc. -- AIX gets LINUX comaptable libraries, linkers and package management), then IBM gets a super cheap platform for developing software that can run commercially on AIX.
2. Very few people are going to replace a large AIX server with a LINUX one, but they are likely to replace an NT or low end Solaris server with a cheap linux box -- so stuffing thier competitors.
All recent IBM AIX|AS/400, all recent sparcs from sun, plus all Nintendos and Sony PS/2 are running 64 bit chips.
Its the Wintel dinosaurs which have fallen behibd.
Incidently (I know it was mentioned in passing be another poster) Intel bought the alpha FAB from DEC, all current aplha chips are manufactured by Intel, the latest Alphas were largley designed by Intel engineers, it makes sense for Intel to own the archirecture outright.
What compaq owns is the VMS and Tru64 operating systems and associated software.
Now I can subscribe to "Nuns In Chains" without getting funny entries on my credit card bill.
First I apoligize if this subject was covered in the RMS talk, but, I havn't got the right software to listen to the speech on the companies kit.
The argument the various suits and accountants always give for not using "free" software boils down to "support" and "product liability".
Yet they end up buying software from companies whose idea of support is to give the customer a call centre number where they can speak to dozens of untrained minimum wage serfs until they get bored or thier product license runs out.
Furthermore, nearly all the wording on the average software license is about freeing the software vendor from any responsiblity or liability whatsoever. According to the terms of most license agreements you cannot even get your money back if the product plain does not work.
My first law of software:-
The more you pay for it, the worse it gets.
No thanks.
Did you see Bill Gates shambling, rambling, incoherent performance at the anti-trust trial?
It seems the guy can't actually talk without the aid of a team of speach writers.
So what there are dozens of these and they have been around for years.
When I wiggle my mouse it is a cordless Logitec which uses logitecs proprietory wireless protocol. ( I think Logtec also do a cordless console for the popular gaming platforms).
As for the article describing voice traffic as a possable use, this is just laughable. All rcent cordless phones use the "DACT" protocol, which, is a true standard, and, ensures interoprability between base sations and handsets from different manufacturers and supports all the stuff you would expect a cordless phone to do. ( I don't think SPIKEs private protocol includes "call on another line" and "hold current call"!).
Sure the SPIKE chipset will find a niche in the gaming console market but its not new, it is not an innivation, its not even different.
The article also failed to mention the real threat to bleutooth is form competing open protocols (like IEEE 20??? ) and from wireless network cards which tunnel existing protocols (ethernet, TCP/IP and LAN etc.).
If he was serious he should have worded the competition this way:-
"I will send you a 1.44 MB file on a standard DOS formatted HDD diskette".
"To earn 5,000 you must return the compressed file AND the decompressor on a similar standard 1.44MB standard formatted HDD diskette".
Tricky but still possable.
While sybase are a very viable database vendor, MS really just arent.
Being stuck with NT as the only platform, and, a general corporate lack of trust are disadvantages that I don't think MS will ever overcome.
Incidentaly if you want to see how big databases can get and what they are running on check out :-- http://www.wintercorp.com/VLDB/2000_VLDB_Survey/wi nners/
Its a little self selecting and as your probably unfamiliar with the products "CA" usually mean "Computer Associates IDMS" and especially in the "transactional" category "IBM" usually means the ancient but high performing IMS/DB rather than DB2.
On UNIX & NT DB2 UDB is actually preetty cheap.
On linux it's free (as in beer.).
They are probably just after the Informix cutomer base, plus, there very nifty datawarehousing extensions.
Plus the cheapest way to recruit staff is to buy a company.