Many years ago, I was interested in buying some UNIX utilities from AT&T. I was surprised when AT&T mailed me several copies of their standard software licensing contract, printed out on legal contract paper and bound, for me to review, sign and return one copy. This was before any order had been placed. That seemed like the proper way to llicense software. Each party could read and agree to the terms before any money or product had changed hands.
The Shuttle has crypto boxes on board to support DOD missions that require secure air-to-ground voice communications links. This isn't as much of an issue as it used to be since the military has lost interest in using the Shuttle to launch military satellites.
I'd be interested in finding out what are the causes of the problems with Java. Virtual machines don't have to be pigs. When the IBM PC was first introduced, I wrote a lot of software in Pascal using the UCSD p-System. The applications ran comfortably on machines with a 4.77 Mhz 8088, 8087 FPU and 512KB RAM. Most of the applications and operating system were compiled into p-code, which is similar to Java byte codes. The p-machine interpreter was a small resident module written in 8086 assembly language. The p-code was actually more memory efficient than the machine code produced by conventional compilers.
That is the price you pay for having integrated systems that take orders, ring up sales, manage inventory and keep track of prices. All of the fast food chains and grocery stores in my area are dependent on these systems. They don't have the people, skills or processes to do things the old-fashioned way in an emergency. I've seen the same thing happen with many businesses. They automate a process and discard the employees, procedures and forms needed to do it manually. After all, one of the major attractions of automation was the money that could be saved by eliminated skilled employees. I can go into a local burger joint and watch the illegal immigrant at the counter push buttons labeled with pictures on the cash register, which computes the total and change, sends the order to the kitchen, updates the inventory, and compiles statistics on store and employee performance.
I've been in numerous stores that shut down when the power fails or the store's server crashes. They have no procedures for handling sales by manual methods. It is frustrating to have cash and product in hand, only to be told that they can't make the sale while the computer is down.
The Shuttle flight control computers run a hard real-time operating system. The functional requirements of the operating system are very different than those of a general purpose operating system like UNIX. It isn't apples and oranges, it's apples and digital watches.
The suppliers may not want the possible legal liability of selling such a dangerous material to non-industrial customers. Many chemical supply companies refuse to sell anything to private citizens for this reason.
The last time I checked, DES was only authorized for the protection of SBU (Sensitive But Unclassified) data. This would include things like personnel and medical records. Classified information requires protection by NSA approved algorithms and hardware. As far as I know, Skipjack is the only published algorithm that has been approved for the protection of classified information, and that is only for the lower levels of classification.
Maybe if you have a few billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket. The normal link between the Shuttle and the ground is through the TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay System) satellite network. This is a set of satellites in geosynchronous orbit that relay data between NASA spacecraft and the WSGT (White Sands Ground Terminal) in New Mexico. This is not something that you are going to emulate with a Pringles can and some surplus microwave equipment.
What level of data protection was specified in the contract? It's easy to blame ISM/IBM but I've worked on too many government contracts where the staffing and funding was totally inadequate to do everything the right way.
I've wondered why encryption isn't a standard feature in IDE hard disks. It would be so simple for the controller to encrypt everything written to the disk. IBM has passwords in some of their laptop hard drives. You can't pull the drive, connect it to another PC, and access the disk without the correct password.
Does that mean that I can invade the United States with my fleet of zeppelins? The user-friendly computers in the air defense radars will suppress the radar returns from my airships as noise or birds.
The MIT Radiation Lab did an immense amount of work during World War II in research, development, design, testing and training for radar systems. It was second only to the Manhattan Project as a concentration of scientific and engineering talent. Their contribution to the war effort was very significant.
Roosevelt helped as much as he could, within the constraints of American politics. The United States may have been "neutral" on paper, in practice it provided substantial assistance to the UK and USSR. Roosevelt conceived, and pushed through congress, the Lend-Lease Act, and ordered the Navy to patrol and escort merchant ships in the Western Atlantic.
Modern US and Russian nuclear weapons are designed to function in extremely hostile environments. The assumption is that in a large-scale nuclear war, there will be many nuclear weapons, both offensive and defensive, being detonated near the target. Any important city or military installation will have many weapons assigned to it in the war plan, assuring a high probability of complete destruction of the target.
The federal government uses them for call precedence. The extra buttons are labelled:
P (Priority)
I (immediate)
F (Flash)
FO (Flash Override)
If no button is pushed, the call's priority is "routine". A high precedence call will preempt a low precedence call. That means that your call will be automatically disconnected if the circuit is needed for a higher precedence call, like the general calling his girlfriend.
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I know people who started businesses that didn't make a profit until the businesses were 5+ years old. They were willing to keep investing money as the business grew large enough to become profitable.
The FCC ruled that it was prohibited because it discriminated against new telephone companies and was anticompetitive.
The incumbent telephone company would have all of the desirable phone numbers and competitors would be stuck with "weird" numbers.
Every time an area code is split, something similar happens. A political fight over who gets to keep the original, and desirable, area code and who gets exiled to the new area code.
In some areas of the USA, toll numbers within the same area code are dialed as 1-XXX-XXXX. The leading 1 is being used as a toll indicator, instead of an indication that the switch should expect 10 more digits.
The problem is that dialing rules are set by a number of bodies, the FCC, the North America Numbering Plan administrator, regional telephone companies, state public utility commissions and state legislatures. That is why there are no consistent rules across the country.
The problem is when a telco does not complete, or misroutes, local calls dialed with 11 digits. This has been a problem in many areas of the country, although I believe most have fixed it. It was a problem where I live. The rule was that local calls must be dialed with 10 digits and toll calls must be dialed with 11 digits. Toll calls dialed with 10 digits or local calls dialed with 11 digits would get routed to an intercept message.
Local calling areas are not static, they may change when area codes are split or when population growth/movements change calling patterns, or because of local/state politics.
The problem with embedded devices is that it should be possible to program them in a way that is relatively immune to changes in the telephone network. In North America, that means 11 digit dialing. Many companies have had a lot of trouble when their area code was split or 10 digit dialing was mandated. They had to find and reprogram all of the devices that stored telephone numbers. What is worse, some devices, like burglar alarms may get overlooked. The device may be non-functional but nobody knows about it.
If you travel with a laptop computer, this is a real pain in the neck. Can you dial your ISP, or company, locally and away from home without having to modify your dialup settings?
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Many years ago, I was interested in buying some UNIX utilities from AT&T. I was surprised when AT&T mailed me several copies of their standard software licensing contract, printed out on legal contract paper and bound, for me to review, sign and return one copy. This was before any order had been placed. That seemed like the proper way to llicense software. Each party could read and agree to the terms before any money or product had changed hands.
I could do it very easily by downloading some of the experiment data from a scientific project I work on.
The Shuttle has crypto boxes on board to support DOD missions that require secure air-to-ground voice communications links. This isn't as much of an issue as it used to be since the military has lost interest in using the Shuttle to launch military satellites.
I'd be interested in finding out what are the causes of the problems with Java. Virtual machines don't have to be pigs. When the IBM PC was first introduced, I wrote a lot of software in Pascal using the UCSD p-System. The applications ran comfortably on machines with a 4.77 Mhz 8088, 8087 FPU and 512KB RAM. Most of the applications and operating system were compiled into p-code, which is similar to Java byte codes. The p-machine interpreter was a small resident module written in 8086 assembly language. The p-code was actually more memory efficient than the machine code produced by conventional compilers.
That is the price you pay for having integrated systems that take orders, ring up sales, manage inventory and keep track of prices. All of the fast food chains and grocery stores in my area are dependent on these systems. They don't have the people, skills or processes to do things the old-fashioned way in an emergency. I've seen the same thing happen with many businesses. They automate a process and discard the employees, procedures and forms needed to do it manually. After all, one of the major attractions of automation was the money that could be saved by eliminated skilled employees. I can go into a local burger joint and watch the illegal immigrant at the counter push buttons labeled with pictures on the cash register, which computes the total and change, sends the order to the kitchen, updates the inventory, and compiles statistics on store and employee performance.
I've been in numerous stores that shut down when the power fails or the store's server crashes. They have no procedures for handling sales by manual methods. It is frustrating to have cash and product in hand, only to be told that they can't make the sale while the computer is down.
It might become popular with shop owners, by reducing the costs involved with handling cash.
The Shuttle flight control computers run a hard real-time operating system. The functional requirements of the operating system are very different than those of a general purpose operating system like UNIX. It isn't apples and oranges, it's apples and digital watches.
The suppliers may not want the possible legal liability of selling such a dangerous material to non-industrial customers. Many chemical supply companies refuse to sell anything to private citizens for this reason.
The last time I checked, DES was only authorized for the protection of SBU (Sensitive But Unclassified) data. This would include things like personnel and medical records. Classified information requires protection by NSA approved algorithms and hardware. As far as I know, Skipjack is the only published algorithm that has been approved for the protection of classified information, and that is only for the lower levels of classification.
Maybe if you have a few billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket. The normal link between the Shuttle and the ground is through the TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay System) satellite network. This is a set of satellites in geosynchronous orbit that relay data between NASA spacecraft and the WSGT (White Sands Ground Terminal) in New Mexico. This is not something that you are going to emulate with a Pringles can and some surplus microwave equipment.
What level of data protection was specified in the contract? It's easy to blame ISM/IBM but I've worked on too many government contracts where the staffing and funding was totally inadequate to do everything the right way.
I've wondered why encryption isn't a standard feature in IDE hard disks. It would be so simple for the controller to encrypt everything written to the disk. IBM has passwords in some of their laptop hard drives. You can't pull the drive, connect it to another PC, and access the disk without the correct password.
Does that mean that I can invade the United States with my fleet of zeppelins? The user-friendly computers in the air defense radars will suppress the radar returns from my airships as noise or birds.
I've received almost no spam today. Probably because most of the spammers are on Asian networks that have imploded.
Have you ever seen a picture of the British Chain-Home system? It was a major accomplishment for the time but it was huge and immobile.
The MIT Radiation Lab did an immense amount of work during World War II in research, development, design, testing and training for radar systems. It was second only to the Manhattan Project as a concentration of scientific and engineering talent. Their contribution to the war effort was very significant.
Roosevelt helped as much as he could, within the constraints of American politics. The United States may have been "neutral" on paper, in practice it provided substantial assistance to the UK and USSR. Roosevelt conceived, and pushed through congress, the Lend-Lease Act, and ordered the Navy to patrol and escort merchant ships in the Western Atlantic.
Modern US and Russian nuclear weapons are designed to function in extremely hostile environments. The assumption is that in a large-scale nuclear war, there will be many nuclear weapons, both offensive and defensive, being detonated near the target. Any important city or military installation will have many weapons assigned to it in the war plan, assuring a high probability of complete destruction of the target.
- P (Priority)
- I (immediate)
- F (Flash)
- FO (Flash Override)
If no button is pushed, the call's priority is "routine". A high precedence call will preempt a low precedence call. That means that your call will be automatically disconnected if the circuit is needed for a higher precedence call, like the general calling his girlfriend.I know people who started businesses that didn't make a profit until the businesses were 5+ years old. They were willing to keep investing money as the business grew large enough to become profitable.
Company switchboards are a pain in the neck and expensive to run. Direct dialing is cheaper and simpler for everyone.
The incumbent telephone company would have all of the desirable phone numbers and competitors would be stuck with "weird" numbers.
Every time an area code is split, something similar happens. A political fight over who gets to keep the original, and desirable, area code and who gets exiled to the new area code.
The problem is that dialing rules are set by a number of bodies, the FCC, the North America Numbering Plan administrator, regional telephone companies, state public utility commissions and state legislatures. That is why there are no consistent rules across the country.
Local calling areas are not static, they may change when area codes are split or when population growth/movements change calling patterns, or because of local/state politics.
The problem with embedded devices is that it should be possible to program them in a way that is relatively immune to changes in the telephone network. In North America, that means 11 digit dialing. Many companies have had a lot of trouble when their area code was split or 10 digit dialing was mandated. They had to find and reprogram all of the devices that stored telephone numbers. What is worse, some devices, like burglar alarms may get overlooked. The device may be non-functional but nobody knows about it.
If you travel with a laptop computer, this is a real pain in the neck. Can you dial your ISP, or company, locally and away from home without having to modify your dialup settings?