The problem was that the software was reused from an earlier Ariane launch vehicle without rechecking the requirements and assumptions to see if they were still valid. The flight dynamics of the Ariane-5 were different enough to trigger an overflow in the software. Sort of like taking the engine control software from a Toyota and dropping it into a Porsche.
I've seen similar legal language in British books. For example:
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
I've seen similar statements, without the disclaimer for the USA, in other books published in the UK. As I understand it, there is no "First Sale Doctrine" in the UK.
I'm not quite sure what the legal meaning of the statement is supposed to be. Lending libraries in Europe appear to be treated differently by copyright law.
Microsoft is porting Internet Explorer and Outlook Express to Carbon, the updated version of the Mac OS API. Carbon is Apple proprietary code and I doubt that you will ever see it on a non-Apple Unix box.
The language changes, the meanings of words drift and mutate. Deal with it.
There were a lot of unhappy people when "gay" started to be used as a synonym for homosexual. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
Re:E-Commerce has a long way to go
on
Boo No More
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· Score: 2
Government interference? The government gave huge subsidies to the railroads in the form of land grants. The free market worked so well that the Interstate Commerce Commission was formed to regulate rates.
It takes three weeks because the RBOCs wasted no time in getting rid of skilled (AKA union) crafts people to cut their labor costs and increase their profits. They don't care if service quality declines, who else can provide local phone service? Besides Microsoft, the RBOCs are the most pernicious monopolies in the United States.
(Incidentally, in case you have any doubts about what people at Microsoft think about fair use, let me relate this story: While working at Microsoft during the summer of 1997, one of my students went to the annual summer intern hot-dog party at which Bill Gates invited questions from the interns. My student asked Bill Gates what he thought about fair use. Bill's first response was to laugh. And then he said, "you don't need fair use; we'll give you fair use rights when you need them." That's what's got some of us worried, Bill.)
When I look at lists of top selling/grossing films, records and TV shows in other countries, U.S. "product" always seems to occupy most of the lists. You would think that Bill Gates had taken over the entertainment industry. How else do you explain the world-wide popularity of dreck like Bay Watch?
People in other countries should be concerned about the DMCA. The RIAA, MPAA and U.S. Government are probably going to attempt to shove it down your throat.
Re:StinkyMeat: in the proud tradition of Spam Cam
on
Totally 31337 Quickies
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· Score: 1
Somebody did this with Hostess Twinkies. I think the result was that NASA should seriously consider replacing the thermal protection tiles on the shuttle with twinkies.
One way of preventing these problems is to require all executable programs/scripts to be digitally signed by the vendor or a local administrator or security officer. I've read about some old operating systems that made the creation of executable files a privileged operation. The compiler had the privilege of creating an executable file. It enforced security policy by treating certain actions in the source code as fatal compilation errors. This allowed an insecure operating system to be protected from the programs of unprivileged users. A problem is that you can't use languages like C that allow the programmer to dynamically generate and execute code.
My question is when are the phone companies going to offer DSL as a service with 100% availability? Instead of telling customers that their local loop is too long, or that they are connected to a SLC that is incompatible with DSL, they make a commitment to fix any problems that prevent them from offering DSL to a customer.
The last time this came up, it wasn't the major carriers that were pushing for access charges. It was the small/medium carriers in ACTA. My guess is that the major carriers figured they would make money either way, whether the call was carried over the traditional network or over IP.
I think the VC's lawyers are idiots. They are so concerned with protecting their client that they have ignored the effect this will have on recruitment. The people that they would most like to hire are likely to be the most offended by efforts to turn them into company slaves. I can understand an NDA, but what I do on my own time is none of their business. I would only sign a non-compete agreement if they agreed to continue my salary and benefits during the non-compete period.
The problem with putting streaming video on your cell phone is power. It takes much more transmitter power (proportional to the bit rate) to send video instead of audio. Plus you have the problem of getting new frequency allocations for the higher bandwidth signals needed for video.
Uncompressed HDTV is 1.5 gbit/s, and that doesn't occupy the eye's full field of vision. Something that was indistinguishable from reality would need better resolution, a wider field and more dynamic range.
You use a time division multiplexer (TDM) to combine 20 2 gbit/s signals into a 40 gbit/s signal, or you can use a frequency division multiplexer (FDM) to put 20 2 gbit/s signals on 20 carriers or optical wavelengths. Analog cable TV systems use FDM, a T1 line used to carry digitized 64 kbit/s voice streams is using TDM. Very high speed fiber systems use a combination of TDM and FDM.
I don't think that convention is universally accepted. I've been working in data communications for a long time and BPS, as in BPS, KBPS and MBPS, has always stood for bits per second. Bytes per second, or more properly, octets per second, has never been a popular unit of measurement. When multi-bit units are involved, symbols per second is commonly used. Most data communications are serial, and at the hardware level, serial streams of bits. It seems that bytes/sec is primarily relevant to the parallel buses used in computers.
There were a lot of people running character mode Unix on 80286 and 80386 PCs. No GUI or TCP/IP, just vanilla System V with UUCP. Many people wanted to run Unix but couldn't afford a Sun or a VAX. You could get Unix System V for a PC for less than $1000.
The plan makes little sense, even if you think scaring people with a nuclear test is a good idea.
Nuclear explosions in a vacuum are boring, just a quick flash and they are over. Most of the impressive effects seen on Earth during nuclear tests are due to the fact that the atmosphere is opaque to soft x-rays. An exploding nuclear device can be looked at as a black-body radiator with its peak in the soft x-ray region. The fireball that we see on Earth is caused by the repeated absorption and emission of photons by molecules in the atmosphere in an expanding shell around the nuclear device. This converts the energy from soft x-rays into visible light and heat. The radiation also converts nitrogen in the atmosphere into an opaque nitrogen oxide "smog". The blast wave is produced by the heating and expansion of the atmosphere. The mushroom cloud is the result of the hot fireball of heated gases rising through the atmosphere like an air bubble in water. None of this would happen on the Moon.
Plutonium's high toxicity doesn't mean that is a public health threat. To be toxic, it must be ingested or inhaled. Most ingested plutonium passes straight through the digestive tract. To be inhaled, it must first be reduced to very small particles and released into the atmosphere. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is one of the few efficient ways of doing this. Above ground nuclear testing released thousands of kilograms of Plutonium into the atmosphere.
If you like to be scared, take a look at some of the non-radioactive toxic materials such as organic mercury compounds. Karen Wetterhahn, a Dartmouth chemistry professor, died in 1997 after spilling a few drops of dimethylmercury, a highly toxic and volatile liquid, on her latex glove. The compound passed through the latex glove in seconds and into her skin. She died about 6 months after the exposure from mercury poisoning.
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The problem was that the software was reused from an earlier Ariane launch vehicle without rechecking the requirements and assumptions to see if they were still valid. The flight dynamics of the Ariane-5 were different enough to trigger an overflow in the software. Sort of like taking the engine control software from a Toyota and dropping it into a Porsche.
The Shuttle was flying before Ada had been developed.
The 56K modem restriction is to prevent crosstalk from excessive power levels.
I've seen similar statements, without the disclaimer for the USA, in other books published in the UK. As I understand it, there is no "First Sale Doctrine" in the UK.
I'm not quite sure what the legal meaning of the statement is supposed to be. Lending libraries in Europe appear to be treated differently by copyright law.
Microsoft is porting Internet Explorer and Outlook Express to Carbon, the updated version of the Mac OS API. Carbon is Apple proprietary code and I doubt that you will ever see it on a non-Apple Unix box.
There were a lot of unhappy people when "gay" started to be used as a synonym for homosexual. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
Government interference? The government gave huge subsidies to the railroads in the form of land grants. The free market worked so well that the Interstate Commerce Commission was formed to regulate rates.
It takes three weeks because the RBOCs wasted no time in getting rid of skilled (AKA union) crafts people to cut their labor costs and increase their profits. They don't care if service quality declines, who else can provide local phone service? Besides Microsoft, the RBOCs are the most pernicious monopolies in the United States.
People in other countries should be concerned about the DMCA. The RIAA, MPAA and U.S. Government are probably going to attempt to shove it down your throat.
Somebody did this with Hostess Twinkies. I think the result was that NASA should seriously consider replacing the thermal protection tiles on the shuttle with twinkies.
One way of preventing these problems is to require all executable programs/scripts to be digitally signed by the vendor or a local administrator or security officer. I've read about some old operating systems that made the creation of executable files a privileged operation. The compiler had the privilege of creating an executable file. It enforced security policy by treating certain actions in the source code as fatal compilation errors. This allowed an insecure operating system to be protected from the programs of unprivileged users. A problem is that you can't use languages like C that allow the programmer to dynamically generate and execute code.
186,282 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters per second. Adjust for the velocity factor or refractive index for the transmission medium.
My question is when are the phone companies going to offer DSL as a service with 100% availability? Instead of telling customers that their local loop is too long, or that they are connected to a SLC that is incompatible with DSL, they make a commitment to fix any problems that prevent them from offering DSL to a customer.
The last time this came up, it wasn't the major carriers that were pushing for access charges. It was the small/medium carriers in ACTA. My guess is that the major carriers figured they would make money either way, whether the call was carried over the traditional network or over IP.
I think the VC's lawyers are idiots. They are so concerned with protecting their client that they have ignored the effect this will have on recruitment. The people that they would most like to hire are likely to be the most offended by efforts to turn them into company slaves. I can understand an NDA, but what I do on my own time is none of their business. I would only sign a non-compete agreement if they agreed to continue my salary and benefits during the non-compete period.
Why would they use TCP? I would have expected them to use UDP for real-time audio and video, plus you can multicast UDP.
The problem with putting streaming video on your cell phone is power. It takes much more transmitter power (proportional to the bit rate) to send video instead of audio. Plus you have the problem of getting new frequency allocations for the higher bandwidth signals needed for video.
Uncompressed HDTV is 1.5 gbit/s, and that doesn't occupy the eye's full field of vision. Something that was indistinguishable from reality would need better resolution, a wider field and more dynamic range.
Click here for a picture of a woody station wagon, or watch an old surfing movie.
You use a time division multiplexer (TDM) to combine 20 2 gbit/s signals into a 40 gbit/s signal, or you can use a frequency division multiplexer (FDM) to put 20 2 gbit/s signals on 20 carriers or optical wavelengths. Analog cable TV systems use FDM, a T1 line used to carry digitized 64 kbit/s voice streams is using TDM. Very high speed fiber systems use a combination of TDM and FDM.
I don't think that convention is universally accepted. I've been working in data communications for a long time and BPS, as in BPS, KBPS and MBPS, has always stood for bits per second. Bytes per second, or more properly, octets per second, has never been a popular unit of measurement. When multi-bit units are involved, symbols per second is commonly used. Most data communications are serial, and at the hardware level, serial streams of bits. It seems that bytes/sec is primarily relevant to the parallel buses used in computers.
There were a lot of people running character mode Unix on 80286 and 80386 PCs. No GUI or TCP/IP, just vanilla System V with UUCP. Many people wanted to run Unix but couldn't afford a Sun or a VAX. You could get Unix System V for a PC for less than $1000.
Nuclear explosions in a vacuum are boring, just a quick flash and they are over. Most of the impressive effects seen on Earth during nuclear tests are due to the fact that the atmosphere is opaque to soft x-rays. An exploding nuclear device can be looked at as a black-body radiator with its peak in the soft x-ray region. The fireball that we see on Earth is caused by the repeated absorption and emission of photons by molecules in the atmosphere in an expanding shell around the nuclear device. This converts the energy from soft x-rays into visible light and heat. The radiation also converts nitrogen in the atmosphere into an opaque nitrogen oxide "smog". The blast wave is produced by the heating and expansion of the atmosphere. The mushroom cloud is the result of the hot fireball of heated gases rising through the atmosphere like an air bubble in water. None of this would happen on the Moon.
If you like to be scared, take a look at some of the non-radioactive toxic materials such as organic mercury compounds. Karen Wetterhahn, a Dartmouth chemistry professor, died in 1997 after spilling a few drops of dimethylmercury, a highly toxic and volatile liquid, on her latex glove. The compound passed through the latex glove in seconds and into her skin. She died about 6 months after the exposure from mercury poisoning.