I do. I like my Canon quite a bit, but there are some functions that are software controlled that annoy me by not allowing the flexibility I need to take some really great shots - particularly in low light situations.
For example, I'd like to be able to turn off the flash and keep the shutter speed up fast - but the camera forces the shutter open longer (despite changing the ASA speed setting). The result is that I can't get good pics of, say, the moon through a telescope (yes I built a Canon digital camera holder for the telescope with stuff from Home Depot) because the photos are overexposed from the light. If I "trick" the camera by turning the flash on and just holding my finger over it (or, put duct tape over it) I can get some usable shots.
Anyway, that's one reason. I'm sure if I thought about it I could find alot more things I'd like to do with the shutter speeds/exposure time/etc.
BTW, I did manage to get some cool pictures of Mars last year using the old 'tape over the flash' method to bump down the shutter speed...clearly visible were the ice caps and some of the dark regions...
Too many to even list here, but here's a typical example (from the Center for American Progress claim vs. fact db):
Claim: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons...And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes." [Source: White House Web site - since taken down]
Fact: "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections." - Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03
Bush knew, or should have known, that his claim was false.
It's easy to look at hindsight and say 'he should have known'. However, this is clearly not proof of a lie, as you initially claim. In fact, by saying he 'should have known' you are actually admitting that it might not be a lie.
As for that hindsight, history is riddled with such things that seem obvious to us now, but at the time are very much more muddled.
I would like to see a more objective view of the subject matter in this movie. While many people here say 'you need to see this and then do your own research', I wonder how many of the masses you REALLY expect to do that?
That is why Moore is disturbing. He knows many people are sheep of the media and movies, and will latch onto the intended impressions as veracity.
-Pre 9/11, many Bush administration officials are ON THE RECORD as saying that Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction nor was he capable and wasn't a threat. AFTER 9/11, their tune was exactly opposite. Why?
It seems to me that there are alot of people on both sides of the aisle following the 'party line' on WMD and the Iraqi threat. Look how many today are wish-washing the other direction. It's called politics.
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D - MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has . chosen to spend his money on building! weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 1! 9, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President! of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arse
Considering the above interpretations of the reason behind Microsoft's patent direction, Longhorn, DRM and BIOS lock-in, Sun's settlement doesn't sound as bad as all the "Sun caved in" pundits would have us believe. At least for Sun.
If Sun has an agreement to be on the 'inside' and is guaranteed access to MS protocols, formats and APIs in the future they stand to profit nicely from Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Meanwhile, other server/UNIX vendors might be locked out.
Sun will be able to share files, directory services, access Exchange and all.Net/web platform APIs in the future, while MS tightens the noose in general and other software vendors get locked out.
Of course, this doens't help open-source, but Sun has never seemed very comfortable with OSS anyway.
"I wonder if I could make a nice firewall with one of these for my home network..." Maybe, but if you thought the latency on your modem was bad, do you think you'd be happy bouncing your signal off Mars?
I work for a very large aerospace company and put the SunBlade 1500 (with the XVR500 graphics) through it's paces last fall, and compared this machine to a Dell 650/dual 2.8Ghz Quadra 1000, Dell 530 dual 2.4Ghz Quadra 900, and a Dell 270 3.2Ghz Quadra 1000(all running W2K, the company standard engineering image).
The tests were with three different datasets using Pro/Engineer in a repitition of activating these assemblies and performing various operations on them. The results were not shocking, but the SunBlade performed much better than many of you predict, or that the raw Spec numbers might suggest.
The SunBlade performed better than the Dell 530 and slower than the Dell 650. The Dell 270 was the fastest machine, suggesting that the benchmarks were slanted towards raw CPU/integer performance.
However, the Windows machines could not perform the third assembly benchmark because the data sets were too large. Pro/Engineer would randomly CTD when the memory footprint got above 1.5G and never made it to 1.8G. The limit per process on a W2K machine is supposedly 2G (anyone, anyone?), so this is not surprising.
In fact, the W2K machines were not what I would consider stable - crashing far too often and unpredictably throughout the benchmarks. Since they have been issued to some former Sun CAD jockeys there have been a host of complaints about them (though they do like the speed).
Our final conclusions: the Dell machines and W2K were usable for smaller parts, but larger assemblies would be modelled on Sun machines.
The real asset here was Solaris, not so much the hardware itself. If the full suite of Pro/Engineer was available on any x86 box running UNIX we'd be looking very strongly at that combination.
On a side note as to how stable and solid the Solaris virtual memory system is, several years ago I ran a CAD package on a Sun box stripped down to 16M of RAM (but with gobs of swap space) and booted Solaris, launched this memory-hungry CAD app, and created a solid parametric model. The software stated that it required a minimum of 64M to run and recommended 128M, and Solaris itself stated a requirement of 16M for itself alone (at that time). Yet it ran fine (though you can imagine how slow), allowed me to shade the 3D objects, and save the parts before exitting. I'm not sure how many OSes could manage that - certainly not Windows.
I understand many of the comments here which say "put in a big honkin' server and hardware RAID". That would be a better solution from a purely 'let's serve files and protect data' standpoint if you can accomodate a single, large server and want the best performance.
However, I see a use for a network LAN storage system. Every machine these days comes with a 72G drive or larger installed locally, yet we are trained as IT personnel to say 'don't store anything locally, it's not secure or safe, put it on one of our nice big honkin' servers'. Unfortunately, those big servers cost alot of money, often require specific admins (eg SAN experts to deal with the management software, dividing up LUNs, etc), and may involve alot of red tape to justify additional storage allocation for your project.
What to do with all that local disk space that, if unused as most centralized IT would rather have you do it, would be a vast untapped storage resource?
The concerns regarding latency are well understood, but this might not be a factor if this LAN storage array was used for 'archive' storage where real-time high speed access isn't the driving factor. A RAID 5 system would be far too fragile, as if two nodes were offline/rebooting the entire network storage LAN would be unavailable. You'd need to have more redundancy than that.
I could see an interesting application using multiple nodes each contributing disk space to a LAN archive storage array which would be 'written to' and retrieved with similar expectations as writing to a tape drive. The bonus would be that you could work on files in realtime over such a network, just quite slowly (many vendors used to offer archive file systems which worked this way using tape or optical drives as the storage medium - AMASS was one such vendor).
...then I turned down a job to work for them last year. It's a startup division owned by Disney, located somewhere near Burbank. Basically they were kinda lowballing the salary, and had all of the problems (risk/no security should the product fail) of a startup with none of the perks - eg stock options. Plus it would have been a long drive..
Anyway, the back end of their digital distribution system was a large Linux-based storage system which received the digital content nightly from another facility IIRC. So, if you buy this you are supporing open source:)
It was interesting to hear about the security those digitized movie images went through - there was quite alot of paranoia surrounding the possibility of an employee copying the content and walking out with it.
Consider the X33 program. MacDonnel Douglas built their Delta Clipper prototype (scaled down), and Lockeed Martin the aerospike engine and some smaller-scale mockups. Lockheed won the contract, and then the entire project was scrapped by NASA.
It's financially impractical to build a full-scale man-rated spacecraft as a prototype in a competitive bid system. No company has an amount of capital sufficient for this that they can afford to lose if they don't win the bid.
IMO the general approach used with X33 was a correct one: publish a Request For Proposal and see which aerospace companies come up with something that meets the requirements.
The requirements on X33 were far too loose. Tighten them up, focus the general configuration of the vehicle (capsule, lifting body, winged) and get some prototypes built at the expense of the bidding companies. Then award a contract and penalize the company for these massive cost overruns. Some decent project management skills would go a long way here!
I was at the Oshkosh airshow recently and the Air Force had a pulse-detonation powered Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft on display. Doing a quick search on the 'net finds some links to it here: http://www.af.mil/stories/story.asp?storyID=123005 352
I spoke with one of the engineers for awhile. This engine only produces 200 lbs of thrust, which is barely enough to get the Long-EZ airborne (contrast this to the EZ-Rocket project, in which each of two engines produce 400lbs of thrust IIRC). It is built from low-cost autmotive parts -- imagine a 4cyl engine with ~4' exhaust tubes coming straight off the exhaust ports of the head. The exhaust reaches speeds of up to mach 5 IIRC.
They do not forsee commercial applications for their design, but rather for use as an efficient missile powerplant.
This is nothing new. That it gets reported as an 'innovation' by the BBC is a bit ridiculous.
One more technology that Micro$oft will "invent" that really was created well before them by someone else.
A better description would be Micro$oft is 'popularizing' or 'marketting' or 'giving a nod' to 2-axis scrolling. Certainly there is no 'innovation' here.
If you move video drivers into the kernel then you risk kernel stability! This was one of the big controversies when NT4 came out: MS had moved the video subsystem into the kernel and out of user space. MS was criticized for choosing performance over stability, and that NT was really meant for the desktop, not the server room (which is perhaps still a valid statement:)).
Up to this point I had thought it was a conscious and valid choice to keep the video drivers in user space.
However, I wouldn't be opposed to a choice upon installation: kernel or user-space video subsystem depending on whether the target box was going to perform end-user or server duty.
Amen! The Linux NFS implementation (client and server) are several notches below Sun's in stability and flexibility from my experience. Not that Sun's is perfect, but Linux's has a way to go to go yet.
On the client side, (even when soft-) mounting a remote NFS filesystem on a server that is rebooted/shut down will cause the stale handle issue to surface & persist after the server is brought up. There is no way to kill this that I've seen without a reboot (how Windowslike!) & some times a cold power cycle (maybe I wasn't patient after 5 minutes).
I've also observed erratic behavior in the automounting implementations. I've only used autofs of late, since amd seemed well short on flexibility when I last tried to use it. It's annoying in the syntax required to setup something that works exactly like Sun's automount clients for mounting nested, exported filesystems -- the deeper nested in the tree filesystem doesn't appear exported, particularly if it wasn't initially and was then exported moments latern - to fix this requires a reboot (and while there may be a resolution to this, I couldn't get it to work). Actually related to the above, once you scan a machine for exported filesystems, realize the FS you need isn't exported, then scan again.. it will not appear. Perhaps there is some timeout to rescan, but it's long enough to be well beyond my patience.
On the server side I still get occasional, random NFS lockups, particularly when doing large, streaming transfers. I can't say what causes it because it's intermittent, but it's happened across several different hardware types running different distros.
I just don't have these issues with Solaris.
Is Linux NFS up to the latest NFS version compatability? The last time I cared enough to check it was behind Sun (which, by being the reference implementation, is to be expected I guess). EG when Sun was V3 Linux was still only V2 compliant.
And you mean Arianspace is not funded in any way by European governments? In the socialist states running the parent companies I find that hard to believe.
Yes, this material is hard, not strong perhaps like steel. That's doesn't mean it might not be useful. Regular glass is also hard but not strong, yet it's used to make shatterproof glass. Many ceramics are very hard/not strong until layered/bonded with something.
Perhaps you'll see a similar development as in conventional layered shatterproof/spallproof glass with layers of transparent aluminum oxide sandwiched with transparent polycarbonate(?) material. Using a combination of something very hard (aluminum oxide) and some way to distribute the energy of a colliding body (the bonded layering material) we may find this application of transparent aluminum oxide produces a very strong, clear barrier material.
17 year ago, after observing a demonstration in chemistry class of the electrical seperation of hydrogen and oxygen using electrical discharge and having discussion in class about it, I was fascinated with the idea of running an internal combustion engine on hydrogen. I went so far as to get a 4-cycle lawn mower engine and began to attempt to engineer (if such a term applies to a high-schooler) a fuel system for it for use in the science fair. This idea was promptly squelched by the science teacher as "too dangerous".
Well, I'm glad someone is taking my pioneering efforts towards some fruition! LOL.
I guess you don't live in England, then. By law in the UK, from what I understand, you can be ordered by a court to disclose keys/passwords to your information; failure to do so (em, I forgot the p/w) means, you guessed it, possible jail time (depends on the "crime").
The Dream Police live inside of my head....
This is one of the least understood topics for most people about the war - especially in the US - it's almost a synonym with the French: this dark chapter of their history and the words "surrender".
I won't go into the military defeat - that could have been averted as well - the French had more and better tanks than the Germans, and some truly fine aircraft (though in much less numbers). This is a topic very well discussed in a book titled "To Lose a Battle: France 1940" by Alistair Horne.
There were many complicated contributing factors to the French surrender in 1940 - the loss of the battle a catalyst for action hoped for in some camps of the upper echelon. Surrounded by facists to the east, west and southeast, there were a good number of high ranking French that wanted German/Italian alliance, not war, as they saw democracy as decrepit and unworkable (remember, the French were on their 3rd republic by this time) and the only social choices being facism or communism. Few believed that democracy could survive a confrontation with the absolute power of a strong central regime like facism or communism.
The people were cleverly manipulated during the brief confrontation and a plot to overthrow the government and install a facist regime was hatched at the time of military defeat. The "anti-revolutionaries" took advantage of confused events during the defeat to install a facist-like leader (Petain, a military "hero" of WW1, trusted and worshiped as such, but not a great statesman, and aged nearly senile) and arrange an armistice rather than continue the war from the colonies. Many did not expect Britain to survive and saw no help coming from the US; some wanted to arrange better treatment for France in the "new world order". The whole saga evokes images of rats running from the sinking ship - crew first, women and children last, and no one manning the pumps...
I highly encourage the reading of the book "The Gravediggers of France" by Pertinax (pn); extremely detailed and enlightened view of the political/economic/social environment of France leading up to 1940, and on through to the Allied landings. The book pulls no punches, criticizing all the players of the disaster.
It's amazing to me how close things were to being very different, and how the schemings of relatively few and the blindness of so many caused a disaster for a nation.
Yes, the tanks that the Germans ran into when they invaded Russia in 1941 were much better than what the Germans had to fight them with - Pz-III and Pz-IV's. The Panthers and Tigers came later. The Russian KV85, KV1, and T34/76 were better armored, more reliable, faster and had better guns than the German contemporaries. The Russians learned early on that sloping armor gave a huge advantage - the Germans were slow to adopt this, first seen on the Panther.
The Germans succeeded early with vastly superior training and leadership and command-control efficiency. Remember, the Stalin "purge" wiped out almost all officers above the rank of lieutenant; loyal but incompetant fools ran the Russian army in 1941.
Once "survival of the fittest" started placing better soldiers in command positions in the Red Army, it was harder for the Germans to fight the overwhelming numbers of Russian tanks.
A T34/85 (upgraded with better armour and a better gun) was a very tough opponent, only a little inferior to the Panther (armor/gun), more reliable, faster, and available in much greater numbers.
The JS seriers of heavy Russian tanks were downright nasty. A late war JS-3 would make short work of most German tanks (King Tigers excepted, but there weren't many to go around...)
I have worked with Sun products in engineering companies for 6 years, and I can assure you that they are in this market. They are definitely scared of the NT workstations that are starting to show up, running CAD and Analysis software faster than a similarly priced Sun workstation. While working at Hughes Space and Communications I could only watch the Sun guys go green at the mention of the new NT workstations rolling out... with nothing to compare pricewise available from Sun.
However, for serious CAD work and the huge assemblies being created, the NT boxes would choke, die, crash. Anyone who says NT takes away the BSOD is not pushing around 10,000 part 3D assemblies.
So, the Sun machines manage to hold out in the upper levels of engineering and design...but Sun has lost alot of spots on the lower-end users's desks to NT.
I'm not sure why you only got a "1" for your post, because you raise an excellent point. The value-add of the Cobalt is that is *IS* an appliance. You should NOT add software to it - period! All administration *should* be done through the web interface; anything else not only voids the warranty, but defeats the purpose of spending the extra money you did to buy a slow 1U machine (my RaQ3 is only 300MHz K6/2). If you want something to run other software on, you should just go buy a standard 1U server and install Linux. You'll save money and get a better performing box.
Sun had this problem with their NetraNFS servers that they tried to sell as "appliances" a few years ago and flopped. They were based on Ultra2 workstations with some packages added to Solaris. The whole thing could be administered through a web interface. The problem was that everyone wanted it to do this and that just a little differently... and this would break the Netra NFS, or the package you add wouldn't work, or...
The result was that Sun dropped the NetraNFS line. Now, they are buying what amounts to a new product line (though positioned downmarket) which does the same thing, though is admittedly much more flexible and has more add-on packages that support integration with it's web interface.
But I digress.. the moral of the story is leave appliances alone!
Slashdot Mirror
I do. I like my Canon quite a bit, but there are some functions that are software controlled that annoy me by not allowing the flexibility I need to take some really great shots - particularly in low light situations.
For example, I'd like to be able to turn off the flash and keep the shutter speed up fast - but the camera forces the shutter open longer (despite changing the ASA speed setting). The result is that I can't get good pics of, say, the moon through a telescope (yes I built a Canon digital camera holder for the telescope with stuff from Home Depot) because the photos are overexposed from the light. If I "trick" the camera by turning the flash on and just holding my finger over it (or, put duct tape over it) I can get some usable shots.
Anyway, that's one reason. I'm sure if I thought about it I could find alot more things I'd like to do with the shutter speeds/exposure time/etc.
BTW, I did manage to get some cool pictures of Mars last year using the old 'tape over the flash' method to bump down the shutter speed...clearly visible were the ice caps and some of the dark regions...
So, let's hope he doesn't screw this one up! Don't press the red button....whatever it does, don't press it!
- launch_0715.html
Here's an article with a bit more info than the quoted CNN story:
http://planetary.org/news/2004/messenger_ready-to
Claim: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons...And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes." [Source: White House Web site - since taken down]
Fact: "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections." - Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03
Bush knew, or should have known, that his claim was false.
It's easy to look at hindsight and say 'he should have known'. However, this is clearly not proof of a lie, as you initially claim. In fact, by saying he 'should have known' you are actually admitting that it might not be a lie.
As for that hindsight, history is riddled with such things that seem obvious to us now, but at the time are very much more muddled.
I would like to see a more objective view of the subject matter in this movie. While many people here say 'you need to see this and then do your own research', I wonder how many of the masses you REALLY expect to do that?
That is why Moore is disturbing. He knows many people are sheep of the media and movies, and will latch onto the intended impressions as veracity.
It seems to me that there are alot of people on both sides of the aisle following the 'party line' on WMD and the Iraqi threat. Look how many today are wish-washing the other direction. It's called politics.
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." - Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D - MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has . chosen to spend his money on building! weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 1! 9, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President! of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arse
Considering the above interpretations of the reason behind Microsoft's patent direction, Longhorn, DRM and BIOS lock-in, Sun's settlement doesn't sound as bad as all the "Sun caved in" pundits would have us believe. At least for Sun.
.Net/web platform APIs in the future, while MS tightens the noose in general and other software vendors get locked out.
If Sun has an agreement to be on the 'inside' and is guaranteed access to MS protocols, formats and APIs in the future they stand to profit nicely from Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior. Meanwhile, other server/UNIX vendors might be locked out.
Sun will be able to share files, directory services, access Exchange and all
Of course, this doens't help open-source, but Sun has never seemed very comfortable with OSS anyway.
"I wonder if I could make a nice firewall with one of these for my home network..."
Maybe, but if you thought the latency on your modem was bad, do you think you'd be happy bouncing your signal off Mars?
I work for a very large aerospace company and put the SunBlade 1500 (with the XVR500 graphics) through it's paces last fall, and compared this machine to a Dell 650/dual 2.8Ghz Quadra 1000, Dell 530 dual 2.4Ghz Quadra 900, and a Dell 270 3.2Ghz Quadra 1000(all running W2K, the company standard engineering image).
The tests were with three different datasets using Pro/Engineer in a repitition of activating these assemblies and performing various operations on them. The results were not shocking, but the SunBlade performed much better than many of you predict, or that the raw Spec numbers might suggest.
The SunBlade performed better than the Dell 530 and slower than the Dell 650. The Dell 270 was the fastest machine, suggesting that the benchmarks were slanted towards raw CPU/integer performance.
However, the Windows machines could not perform the third assembly benchmark because the data sets were too large. Pro/Engineer would randomly CTD when the memory footprint got above 1.5G and never made it to 1.8G. The limit per process on a W2K machine is supposedly 2G (anyone, anyone?), so this is not surprising.
In fact, the W2K machines were not what I would consider stable - crashing far too often and unpredictably throughout the benchmarks. Since they have been issued to some former Sun CAD jockeys there have been a host of complaints about them (though they do like the speed).
Our final conclusions: the Dell machines and W2K were usable for smaller parts, but larger assemblies would be modelled on Sun machines.
The real asset here was Solaris, not so much the hardware itself. If the full suite of Pro/Engineer was available on any x86 box running UNIX we'd be looking very strongly at that combination.
On a side note as to how stable and solid the Solaris virtual memory system is, several years ago I ran a CAD package on a Sun box stripped down to 16M of RAM (but with gobs of swap space) and booted Solaris, launched this memory-hungry CAD app, and created a solid parametric model. The software stated that it required a minimum of 64M to run and recommended 128M, and Solaris itself stated a requirement of 16M for itself alone (at that time). Yet it ran fine (though you can imagine how slow), allowed me to shade the 3D objects, and save the parts before exitting. I'm not sure how many OSes could manage that - certainly not Windows.
I understand many of the comments here which say "put in a big honkin' server and hardware RAID". That would be a better solution from a purely 'let's serve files and protect data' standpoint if you can accomodate a single, large server and want the best performance.
However, I see a use for a network LAN storage system. Every machine these days comes with a 72G drive or larger installed locally, yet we are trained as IT personnel to say 'don't store anything locally, it's not secure or safe, put it on one of our nice big honkin' servers'. Unfortunately, those big servers cost alot of money, often require specific admins (eg SAN experts to deal with the management software, dividing up LUNs, etc), and may involve alot of red tape to justify additional storage allocation for your project.
What to do with all that local disk space that, if unused as most centralized IT would rather have you do it, would be a vast untapped storage resource?
The concerns regarding latency are well understood, but this might not be a factor if this LAN storage array was used for 'archive' storage where real-time high speed access isn't the driving factor. A RAID 5 system would be far too fragile, as if two nodes were offline/rebooting the entire network storage LAN would be unavailable. You'd need to have more redundancy than that.
I could see an interesting application using multiple nodes each contributing disk space to a LAN archive storage array which would be 'written to' and retrieved with similar expectations as writing to a tape drive. The bonus would be that you could work on files in realtime over such a network, just quite slowly (many vendors used to offer archive file systems which worked this way using tape or optical drives as the storage medium - AMASS was one such vendor).
...then I turned down a job to work for them last year. It's a startup division owned by Disney, located somewhere near Burbank. Basically they were kinda lowballing the salary, and had all of the problems (risk/no security should the product fail) of a startup with none of the perks - eg stock options. Plus it would have been a long drive..
:)
Anyway, the back end of their digital distribution system was a large Linux-based storage system which received the digital content nightly from another facility IIRC. So, if you buy this you are supporing open source
It was interesting to hear about the security those digitized movie images went through - there was quite alot of paranoia surrounding the possibility of an employee copying the content and walking out with it.
So put the solar farms on the 'dark' side of the moon. It isn't really dark, you know :)
It's 300 HUNDRED million, not three million. And it is the amount of savings, not the dollars' worth of boxen.
Consider the X33 program. MacDonnel Douglas built their Delta Clipper prototype (scaled down), and Lockeed Martin the aerospike engine and some smaller-scale mockups. Lockheed won the contract, and then the entire project was scrapped by NASA.
It's financially impractical to build a full-scale man-rated spacecraft as a prototype in a competitive bid system. No company has an amount of capital sufficient for this that they can afford to lose if they don't win the bid.
IMO the general approach used with X33 was a correct one: publish a Request For Proposal and see which aerospace companies come up with something that meets the requirements.
The requirements on X33 were far too loose. Tighten them up, focus the general configuration of the vehicle (capsule, lifting body, winged) and get some prototypes built at the expense of the bidding companies. Then award a contract and penalize the company for these massive cost overruns. Some decent project management skills would go a long way here!
I was at the Oshkosh airshow recently and the Air Force had a pulse-detonation powered Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft on display. Doing a quick search on the 'net finds some links to it here: http://www.af.mil/stories/story.asp?storyID=123005 352
I spoke with one of the engineers for awhile. This engine only produces 200 lbs of thrust, which is barely enough to get the Long-EZ airborne (contrast this to the EZ-Rocket project, in which each of two engines produce 400lbs of thrust IIRC). It is built from low-cost autmotive parts -- imagine a 4cyl engine with ~4' exhaust tubes coming straight off the exhaust ports of the head. The exhaust reaches speeds of up to mach 5 IIRC.
They do not forsee commercial applications for their design, but rather for use as an efficient missile powerplant.
This is nothing new. That it gets reported as an 'innovation' by the BBC is a bit ridiculous.
One more technology that Micro$oft will "invent" that really was created well before them by someone else.
A better description would be Micro$oft is 'popularizing' or 'marketting' or 'giving a nod' to 2-axis scrolling. Certainly there is no 'innovation' here.
If you move video drivers into the kernel then you risk kernel stability! This was one of the big controversies when NT4 came out: MS had moved the video subsystem into the kernel and out of user space. MS was criticized for choosing performance over stability, and that NT was really meant for the desktop, not the server room (which is perhaps still a valid statement :)).
Up to this point I had thought it was a conscious and valid choice to keep the video drivers in user space.
However, I wouldn't be opposed to a choice upon installation: kernel or user-space video subsystem depending on whether the target box was going to perform end-user or server duty.
Amen! The Linux NFS implementation (client and server) are several notches below Sun's in stability and flexibility from my experience. Not that Sun's is perfect, but Linux's has a way to go to go yet.
On the client side, (even when soft-) mounting a remote NFS filesystem on a server that is rebooted/shut down will cause the stale handle issue to surface & persist after the server is brought up. There is no way to kill this that I've seen without a reboot (how Windowslike!) & some times a cold power cycle (maybe I wasn't patient after 5 minutes).
I've also observed erratic behavior in the automounting implementations. I've only used autofs of late, since amd seemed well short on flexibility when I last tried to use it. It's annoying in the syntax required to setup something that works exactly like Sun's automount clients for mounting nested, exported filesystems -- the deeper nested in the tree filesystem doesn't appear exported, particularly if it wasn't initially and was then exported moments latern - to fix this requires a reboot (and while there may be a resolution to this, I couldn't get it to work). Actually related to the above, once you scan a machine for exported filesystems, realize the FS you need isn't exported, then scan again.. it will not appear. Perhaps there is some timeout to rescan, but it's long enough to be well beyond my patience.
On the server side I still get occasional, random NFS lockups, particularly when doing large, streaming transfers. I can't say what causes it because it's intermittent, but it's happened across several different hardware types running different distros.
I just don't have these issues with Solaris.
Is Linux NFS up to the latest NFS version compatability? The last time I cared enough to check it was behind Sun (which, by being the reference implementation, is to be expected I guess). EG when Sun was V3 Linux was still only V2 compliant.
And you mean Arianspace is not funded in any way by European governments? In the socialist states running the parent companies I find that hard to believe.
Yes, this material is hard, not strong perhaps like steel. That's doesn't mean it might not be useful. Regular glass is also hard but not strong, yet it's used to make shatterproof glass. Many ceramics are very hard/not strong until layered/bonded with something.
Perhaps you'll see a similar development as in conventional layered shatterproof/spallproof glass with layers of transparent aluminum oxide sandwiched with transparent polycarbonate(?) material. Using a combination of something very hard (aluminum oxide) and some way to distribute the energy of a colliding body (the bonded layering material) we may find this application of transparent aluminum oxide produces a very strong, clear barrier material.
17 year ago, after observing a demonstration in chemistry class of the electrical seperation of hydrogen and oxygen using electrical discharge and having discussion in class about it, I was fascinated with the idea of running an internal combustion engine on hydrogen. I went so far as to get a 4-cycle lawn mower engine and began to attempt to engineer (if such a term applies to a high-schooler) a fuel system for it for use in the science fair. This idea was promptly squelched by the science teacher as "too dangerous".
Well, I'm glad someone is taking my pioneering efforts towards some fruition! LOL.
I guess you don't live in England, then. By law in the UK, from what I understand, you can be ordered by a court to disclose keys/passwords to your information; failure to do so (em, I forgot the p/w) means, you guessed it, possible jail time (depends on the "crime"). The Dream Police live inside of my head....
This is one of the least understood topics for most people about the war - especially in the US - it's almost a synonym with the French: this dark chapter of their history and the words "surrender".
I won't go into the military defeat - that could have been averted as well - the French had more and better tanks than the Germans, and some truly fine aircraft (though in much less numbers). This is a topic very well discussed in a book titled "To Lose a Battle: France 1940" by Alistair Horne.
There were many complicated contributing factors to the French surrender in 1940 - the loss of the battle a catalyst for action hoped for in some camps of the upper echelon. Surrounded by facists to the east, west and southeast, there were a good number of high ranking French that wanted German/Italian alliance, not war, as they saw democracy as decrepit and unworkable (remember, the French were on their 3rd republic by this time) and the only social choices being facism or communism. Few believed that democracy could survive a confrontation with the absolute power of a strong central regime like facism or communism.
The people were cleverly manipulated during the brief confrontation and a plot to overthrow the government and install a facist regime was hatched at the time of military defeat. The "anti-revolutionaries" took advantage of confused events during the defeat to install a facist-like leader (Petain, a military "hero" of WW1, trusted and worshiped as such, but not a great statesman, and aged nearly senile) and arrange an armistice rather than continue the war from the colonies. Many did not expect Britain to survive and saw no help coming from the US; some wanted to arrange better treatment for France in the "new world order". The whole saga evokes images of rats running from the sinking ship - crew first, women and children last, and no one manning the pumps...
I highly encourage the reading of the book "The Gravediggers of France" by Pertinax (pn); extremely detailed and enlightened view of the political/economic/social environment of France leading up to 1940, and on through to the Allied landings. The book pulls no punches, criticizing all the players of the disaster.
It's amazing to me how close things were to being very different, and how the schemings of relatively few and the blindness of so many caused a disaster for a nation.
Yes, the tanks that the Germans ran into when they invaded Russia in 1941 were much better than what the Germans had to fight them with - Pz-III and Pz-IV's. The Panthers and Tigers came later. The Russian KV85, KV1, and T34/76 were better armored, more reliable, faster and had better guns than the German contemporaries. The Russians learned early on that sloping armor gave a huge advantage - the Germans were slow to adopt this, first seen on the Panther. The Germans succeeded early with vastly superior training and leadership and command-control efficiency. Remember, the Stalin "purge" wiped out almost all officers above the rank of lieutenant; loyal but incompetant fools ran the Russian army in 1941. Once "survival of the fittest" started placing better soldiers in command positions in the Red Army, it was harder for the Germans to fight the overwhelming numbers of Russian tanks. A T34/85 (upgraded with better armour and a better gun) was a very tough opponent, only a little inferior to the Panther (armor/gun), more reliable, faster, and available in much greater numbers. The JS seriers of heavy Russian tanks were downright nasty. A late war JS-3 would make short work of most German tanks (King Tigers excepted, but there weren't many to go around...)
if it wasn't for those pesky kids! Or if he at least was clever enough to use a different identity to post with/from...
I have worked with Sun products in engineering companies for 6 years, and I can assure you that they are in this market. They are definitely scared of the NT workstations that are starting to show up, running CAD and Analysis software faster than a similarly priced Sun workstation. While working at Hughes Space and Communications I could only watch the Sun guys go green at the mention of the new NT workstations rolling out... with nothing to compare pricewise available from Sun. However, for serious CAD work and the huge assemblies being created, the NT boxes would choke, die, crash. Anyone who says NT takes away the BSOD is not pushing around 10,000 part 3D assemblies. So, the Sun machines manage to hold out in the upper levels of engineering and design...but Sun has lost alot of spots on the lower-end users's desks to NT.
I'm not sure why you only got a "1" for your post, because you raise an excellent point. The value-add of the Cobalt is that is *IS* an appliance. You should NOT add software to it - period! All administration *should* be done through the web interface; anything else not only voids the warranty, but defeats the purpose of spending the extra money you did to buy a slow 1U machine (my RaQ3 is only 300MHz K6/2). If you want something to run other software on, you should just go buy a standard 1U server and install Linux. You'll save money and get a better performing box. Sun had this problem with their NetraNFS servers that they tried to sell as "appliances" a few years ago and flopped. They were based on Ultra2 workstations with some packages added to Solaris. The whole thing could be administered through a web interface. The problem was that everyone wanted it to do this and that just a little differently... and this would break the Netra NFS, or the package you add wouldn't work, or... The result was that Sun dropped the NetraNFS line. Now, they are buying what amounts to a new product line (though positioned downmarket) which does the same thing, though is admittedly much more flexible and has more add-on packages that support integration with it's web interface. But I digress.. the moral of the story is leave appliances alone!