AI always makes a safe bet for vapourware each year. I've never been ever to figure out how the human species can possibly build an intelligent machine when man himself does not possess intelligence itself.
As the old Trek joke goes, "Bean me up Scotty, no intelligent life here!"
It's a matter of star density. Right now, where we are, it is relatively sparse, with there being only 48 stars within 5 parsecs of the sun. (That's approx 16.5 light years, or 97,000,000,000,000 (billion) miles), the nearest being 1.5 parsecs away and the average being between 3 and 4.5 parsecs (10 to 14.85 ly).
Imagine when this group of 48 stars, re-enters the spiral arm where the distance between local stars drops to less than a light year between them. The gravitational interactions between these stars would turn all the chunks of rock floating around in the solar system, not to mention the Oort cloud, where most of the comets come from, into a virtual hurricane of debris.
We're lucky to have Jupiter where it is to deflect most of it away from us. But even Jupiter wouldn't be able protect us from an onslaught a million times greater.
But, that's about 30 million years from now. As the old saying goes, don't worry, be happy.
Don't sweat it. I knew that the last paragraph would bring out the real trolls. It's not as if they could IGNORE the bits they didn't like, they had to pass judgment on them. They are free to do so.
I live my faith, and am not afraid to express it. I'm a scientist, and am not afraid to share my insights. I'm Catholic and not afraid to tell everyone else that they've got it wrong.
I turn the other cheek and pray for my enemy. However, between you and me, in a contest between a Destructor type asteroid and the Earth, I'm on the side of the asteroid.
We are certainly in no position to prevent an impact with a large comet, meteor or asteroid. What we've learned from space observation in the last several decades is space is a very dangerous place.
Three million years ago, the Sun left one of the main arms of the galaxy. Scientists have found evidence of 27 distinct extinctions on the planet, all of them when we were in the arm. That means there have been more, many more, in the 4 billion year history of the planet.
Currently, we are in a fairly quiet place, a little above the arm but not quite out of the galaxy.
25 million years from now, the orbit of our local group of stars will return back into the spiral arm. When we return back to the arm, where the star density is far higher than it is out in the boonies away from the arm, the odds of the earth not having a major impact event is nill.
In fact, the odds of not having a major impact event between now and when we will be back in harms way is almost as small.
In the mean time, since it is likely that none of you will live to see the next impact event, don't worry about it. When it happens, enjoy the event from your spectacular view from Heaven itself, if that's where you end up. On the other hand, if you're stoking the fires of Hell, you'll be too busy to worry about it. I suggest, then, that you spend your time working to get into heaven and to avoiding hell. That's the only thing that you can control, through faith and good works.
Either the record companies will say "Keep you pittance you collect on the blank media" or they will simply start a smear campaign on the senator and all others that bring this up to discredit them or to try and direct the public's focus away from the issue.
Are you suggesting that the recording industry, or more specifically, the entertainment industry is going to indulge in a form of `reverse MacCarthyism' in order to further it's own agenda in the same way that Old Joe MacCarthy himself used anti-Communist paranoia to further his?
No, never in America, land of the brave and the free! Wait, no, it's the land of the robber bandit and the rabidly litiginous lawyers.
Most people don't really live on the internet. In fact, many people think that cellphones are kind of silly.
Tell that to the Japanese who have more electronic toys than any other humans on earth. Desktops are an oddity to them, but internet phones, notebooks and other appliances are all the rage.
It's no wonder. They live in telephone booth sized apartments that have little room for anything so large as a desktop.
I noticed that while vaporware is in the Jargon File, abandonware itself is nowhere to be found even though the term has been in general usage for a while.
Perhaps, then, that allows us to define `abandoned software' in two senses. First, abandonware might mean software that is abandoned but made Open Source or placed in the Public Domain. This makes sense in that once you've abandoned something, anybody may be able to pick it up and use itbecause, after all, you've thrown it away.
Secondly, perhaps we can have vaporizedware to mean abandoned software made to disappear because the `owner' of the software is either too lazy, too disappointed by the commerical failure of the company that owns it, or too greedy to place it in the Public Domain. It's the "if I can't be as rich Bill Gates with this stuff, nobody can" mentality.
The Jargon File, even though it purports to be a dictionary, is still a political document (cf. the cracker vs hacker controversy) and word usage is a political activity. Let's then claim the word abandonware in the sense that we wish it to mean as well, that is, discarded software made Open Source or even placed in the Public Domain?
In engineering applications, I have found the principles of OOP to be most useful when my problem is not simply to solve a problem in modelling something, but in creating a system.
Let me give a simple example. You have a vessel containing some liquid. This liquid must be maintained at a specific temperature and a there is a certain level. At the same time you have to allow for some liquid to be removed and new liquid to replenish it. This liquid must be removed at certain times, controlled by a certain algorithm, and replenished at other times. As well, the level of the liquid in the vessel must only be allowed to be now lower than (say) half full and no higher then (say) 75% full.
You have guages and valves to control and monitor. As well you also want to be able to display what's going on in your system and have certain control over it (like overriding the low/high levels or the times that liquid is added and removed) as needed.
This, in other words, is a control system. In my experience, control systems make ideal applications to be considered as OOP candidates.
Naturally, this is a simple example, and in so-called real-life applications, the requirements are usually more complex. My experience tells me that the more complex a control problem, the easier it is to solve it using the OOP model.
There are commercial packages you can buy that allow you to build control systems using OOPs and to be able to programme guages and set alarms points and what not.
But all you were looking for was an example of an engineering app that are suited to OOP.
I've yet to see the film, but I intend to. However, I'm wondering how many people are going to see the film because LoTR is derigeur for the geek crowd? Even when I was a young lad, attending university in the mid-sevnties, the LoTR was required reading for anybody that wanted to fit in with those who spent more time at computer terminals than at their studies. I liked the books, but I didn't think they ranked as great literature.
But, did you know that for a large portion of the source code to Perl, after the usual copyright disclaimer, there is a quote from something by J. R. R. Tolkien?
Yes, there are people who DO read source code, and I'm one of them. It's a great source of education and inspiration if the code is well written and a wonderful source of amusement from code that is badly written.
What has any of this to do with the Schwartz case? He was caught red handed using someone else's computer to run a password cracking programme on Intel's password file. To make matters even worse, he was also cracking the password file of an outside company, namely O'Reilly.
His contract with Intel had nothing to do with security, as far as I know, and so he had no business using those computers for anything other than Intel related work, most specifically, what he had been hired to do. I would have done the same.
The point is not that he was doing cracking on someone else's computer, but the fact that he was using those computers to do unauthorized work that could leave Intel itself open to charges of industrial espionage, since it is ultimately responsible for how it's resources are utilized.
Whatever the legal aspects of the case. Schwartz should simply not have done what he was doing on those computers. If he was doing password cracking on his own computer at home, fine. To use someone else's computer to do the same, without their permission is something else.
I like knowing exactly what my computer is doing at all times. That's why I use linux. That's why I'm a open source advocate. I would not have tolerated such clandestine work either, regardless of what he was doing. I would have done the same even if he were factoring numbers to discover large primes or engaging in the stupidity of the SETI project.
It's MY computer and I decide what to do with it. Intel has the same right, and nobody, including Schwartz, has anything to do say about it. Schwartz violated Intel's computer rights, and he should be severely punished.
Ten thousand lashes with a wet noodle would suffice.
"It will never cease to amaze me that there is this army of trolls just lying in wait to come up with the stupidest, most knee-jerk, ignorant and uninformed comment on damn near anything withing moments of its appearance. There's almost a sort of genius to it..."
Is it trolling or just a complete lack of education and understanding of things nuclear? There is an paranoia that many people have concerning nuclear issues, and most of it fed by ignorance. What's more frightening is that many people prefer to not understand these issues. Ignornace is bliss, and leads to trollism.
While there are many things that we all need to be concerned about regarding nuclear safety, it should be approached from the standpoint of knowledge and understanding, not fear and loathing.
Having worked in the nuclear industry for ten years, including breifly as an advisor on the validation of the software at the TRIUMF facility and this accelerator in particular, I know what I'm talking about.
If you want to stop this sort of troll-like responses, work toward educating everyone on what nuclear science is all about. It's not hsi fault he is stupid and ignorant, but the educational system that teaches people everything nuclear is evil.
I like this idea, although some may think that advertisments are a free speach issue. I don't.
Next up, doubleclick and all those other idiots collecting information about you without your permission and then sells it, again without your permission.
This should be illegal, but at the very least multi-billion dollar class action law suits in several countries simultaneously to put them out of business is a good start.
You'd think that the US government would have more courage here. They had no problems breaking up AT&T, and I don't think that there was ever a question of illegal activities there.
Here, in Microsoft, we have a convicted "criminal organization" that is a monopoly in the world, let alone in the US, and the government seems all of a sudden loosing it's nerve.
I've heard some rumours that the US government is actively studying the impact of completely abandoning Microsoft and going elsewhere, and Linux was definetly being considered.
Here in Canada, the same thing is happening. The governemnt has several pilot projects running Linux and there are currently several configurations being considered running the Federal Parlamentary networks as well as in the Bank of Canada and the Department of Defence.
Furthermore, we have no vested interest in keeping foreign companies that don't benefit our economy as viable entities in Canada.
While this is totally off topic, I'll respond nonetheless. I hope it doesn't jeapordize my karma level.
This situation is quickly changing and Micro-softdick may soon find itself in more trouble than the mere impotent government.
Real people in real companies are looking very favourably on Open Source as a means of making lots of money. Free software of course is still foreign to them. But, for some companies, the very notion of opening up their code to public scrutiny terrifies not only companies, but the programmers who produce that crap in the first place.
Most programmers that claim that "title" are really very, very bad. I've made a career out of fixing problems that other people make.
If this sounds like a trashing of the programming community you're right. But the blame can be placed squarely on Microsoft's door.
I've been around computers now for a long time. Hey I've been around so long that I feel like I was in the stands when Oscar Wilde went on trial in 1895. Anyway, I've never seen so bad a crop of programmers as we have today.
As always the best programmers are the "hackers" and the ones coming out of schools that accept large sums of money from MS are worse than useless.
Enough ranting, you get the picture. I have to live with it and try to change it.
Well I suppose that the person(s) who hired these people would want the machine for historical reasons.
That magic catch phrase has been a standard on old Unix man pages for the entire 3 decades of it's history. Don't forget, the original crypt programme was based on Enigma.
However, your sig is much more interesting:
"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt" which translates as "Computers don't think, therefore they don't exist (they are not)."
Absolutely! I couldn't agree more. What really worries me though are the ethical concerns.
They are going to sequence the genomes of a total of five people. What five people? I'd interested in certain peculiar characteristics of these people. Things like colour, race, sexual orientation, hair and eye colour, heck maybe even what brand of beer they like.
The horrors of what the Nazis were trying to do during their disasterous 12 years in power should be a foremost in these researchers and, more importantly, their bosses minds.
Perhaps the little icon for this topic should be two a headed monster.
What do we do about proprietary, closed source, binary only computer programmes running on our machines that we have no access to the source?
Do we trust the suppliers of these software products to not do unrepairable damage to our computers? Do you feel comfortable running other people's software on your machine without the knowledge of what it's doing?
Windows owners do. I persoanlly don't. Except for Corel's WordPerfect, I have no closed source software on my Linux box at home.
To me, by allowing software to run on my computer without the knowledge that I can inspect the source code to find out what it's really doing is like inviting a stranger into my house and then giving him free reign to it without supervision. Would you do that?
Do we need civil rights protection to enable us to view the source code for these binary only, proprietary programmes for our own protection?
As these satellites start burning up in the atmosphere, they should be naked-eye events. In fact, most of the satellites in orbit currently can be seen with the naked eye as they are right now.
I remember when I was a kid lying on my back on our back lawn watching the stars. Occasionally, I'd see meteors and quite often see the quick moving satellites zip by. They were as bright as about magnitude 3 stars. Alas, these days I live in a city with lots of light pollution so I don't get to see too many stars (sob).
In any case, I think that it is very likely we'd be able to see these Iridium satellites burning up without any aid. All we need to know is an estimate of about when and where these things are expected to come down.
Hold it here. The E = mc^2 equation assumes that mass is the rest mass. For objects in motion, then the equation becomes E = mc^2/sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2).
For objects in motion at the speed of light, such as a photon, this equation has no meaning since v will equal c and thus the denominator becomes zero.
As a result, it doesn't matter what the mass of the photon is, zero or otherwise, since the E becomes undefined, which fits perfectly with Heizenburg's Uncertainty Principle. So all these momentum equations are meaningless.
In any case, for those of you interested in this sort of pseudo-science, here's a book for you: How to Build a Flying Saucer, and other Proposals in Speculative Engineering by T. B.Pawlioki. I don't know if it's still in print but it's a great read if you believe in this sort of thing and a huge laugh if you know science.
You know, sometimes I really regret my belief in free speech and against censorship.
This isn't one of them! It's wonderful to see these pro-Microsoft sycophants make fools of themselves. Deep down, I'm sure that it's their "operating" systems that are truly dead meat. I'm also quite convinced that they know it too.
Windows-CE is already effectively dead. Windows-flavour-of-the-month, that bloated, slow, and unreliable non-operating system is not far behind.
I look forward to the end of Microsoft, the company that should never have been, (gone by 2010) and I would be proud to hang a sign on old Bill Gate's home that reads "Condemed" because his Microsoft controlled house went wild and destroyed it.
There is so much junk out there today that these satellites are quickly going to be a hazard to future navigation in orbit. The new space station is already at risk for such debris. With a life span of only ten years, the Iridium satellites (all 66 of them) would become part of the junkyard in not so many years hence.
The best thing to do is to order these pieces of junk to crash into the sea someplace. This should reduce the space hazard a little bit (less than 0.1%?) but every little bit helps.
Why is it that articles of this sort talk about the perspective of investors, corporations and IT managers (Microsoft collaborators mostly)? Linux has managed very well indeed without these assorted "people" and will continue to do so, fork or no fork. Berst and Wall Street have so far had a perfect score of "zero" when it comes to Linux, and I suspect this is more of the same.
Slashdot Mirror
AI always makes a safe bet for vapourware each year. I've never been ever to figure out how the human species can possibly build an intelligent machine when man himself does not possess intelligence itself.
As the old Trek joke goes, "Bean me up Scotty, no intelligent life here!"
It's a matter of star density. Right now, where we are, it is relatively sparse, with there being only 48 stars within 5 parsecs of the sun. (That's approx 16.5 light years, or 97,000,000,000,000 (billion) miles), the nearest being 1.5 parsecs away and the average being between 3 and 4.5 parsecs (10 to 14.85 ly).
Imagine when this group of 48 stars, re-enters the spiral arm where the distance between local stars drops to less than a light year between them. The gravitational interactions between these stars would turn all the chunks of rock floating around in the solar system, not to mention the Oort cloud, where most of the comets come from, into a virtual hurricane of debris.
We're lucky to have Jupiter where it is to deflect most of it away from us. But even Jupiter wouldn't be able protect us from an onslaught a million times greater.
But, that's about 30 million years from now. As the old saying goes, don't worry, be happy.
You want arrogance? Read my essay entitled
On Genius
That, is true arrogance.
Don't sweat it. I knew that the last paragraph would bring out the real trolls. It's not as if they could IGNORE the bits they didn't like, they had to pass judgment on them. They are free to do so.
I live my faith, and am not afraid to express it. I'm a scientist, and am not afraid to share my insights. I'm Catholic and not afraid to tell everyone else that they've got it wrong.
I turn the other cheek and pray for my enemy. However, between you and me, in a contest between a Destructor type asteroid and the Earth, I'm on the side of the asteroid.
We are certainly in no position to prevent an impact with a large comet, meteor or asteroid. What we've learned from space observation in the last several decades is space is a very dangerous place.
Three million years ago, the Sun left one of the main arms of the galaxy. Scientists have found evidence of 27 distinct extinctions on the planet, all of them when we were in the arm. That means there have been more, many more, in the 4 billion year history of the planet. Currently, we are in a fairly quiet place, a little above the arm but not quite out of the galaxy.
25 million years from now, the orbit of our local group of stars will return back into the spiral arm. When we return back to the arm, where the star density is far higher than it is out in the boonies away from the arm, the odds of the earth not having a major impact event is nill. In fact, the odds of not having a major impact event between now and when we will be back in harms way is almost as small.
In the mean time, since it is likely that none of you will live to see the next impact event, don't worry about it. When it happens, enjoy the event from your spectacular view from Heaven itself, if that's where you end up. On the other hand, if you're stoking the fires of Hell, you'll be too busy to worry about it. I suggest, then, that you spend your time working to get into heaven and to avoiding hell. That's the only thing that you can control, through faith and good works.
Either the record companies will say "Keep you pittance you collect on the blank media" or they will simply start a smear campaign on the senator and all others that bring this up to discredit them or to try and direct the public's focus away from the issue.
Are you suggesting that the recording industry, or more specifically, the entertainment industry is going to indulge in a form of `reverse MacCarthyism' in order to further it's own agenda in the same way that Old Joe MacCarthy himself used anti-Communist paranoia to further his?
No, never in America, land of the brave and the free! Wait, no, it's the land of the robber bandit and the rabidly litiginous lawyers.
Most people don't really live on the internet. In fact, many people think that cellphones are kind of silly.
Tell that to the Japanese who have more electronic toys than any other humans on earth. Desktops are an oddity to them, but internet phones, notebooks and other appliances are all the rage.
It's no wonder. They live in telephone booth sized apartments that have little room for anything so large as a desktop.
I noticed that while vaporware is in the Jargon File, abandonware itself is nowhere to be found even though the term has been in general usage for a while.
Perhaps, then, that allows us to define `abandoned software' in two senses. First, abandonware might mean software that is abandoned but made Open Source or placed in the Public Domain. This makes sense in that once you've abandoned something, anybody may be able to pick it up and use itbecause, after all, you've thrown it away.
Secondly, perhaps we can have vaporizedware to mean abandoned software made to disappear because the `owner' of the software is either too lazy, too disappointed by the commerical failure of the company that owns it, or too greedy to place it in the Public Domain. It's the "if I can't be as rich Bill Gates with this stuff, nobody can" mentality.
The Jargon File, even though it purports to be a dictionary, is still a political document (cf. the cracker vs hacker controversy) and word usage is a political activity. Let's then claim the word abandonware in the sense that we wish it to mean as well, that is, discarded software made Open Source or even placed in the Public Domain?
Yes, I like the sound of that.
In engineering applications, I have found the principles of OOP to be most useful when my problem is not simply to solve a problem in modelling something, but in creating a system.
Let me give a simple example. You have a vessel containing some liquid. This liquid must be maintained at a specific temperature and a there is a certain level. At the same time you have to allow for some liquid to be removed and new liquid to replenish it. This liquid must be removed at certain times, controlled by a certain algorithm, and replenished at other times. As well, the level of the liquid in the vessel must only be allowed to be now lower than (say) half full and no higher then (say) 75% full.
You have guages and valves to control and monitor. As well you also want to be able to display what's going on in your system and have certain control over it (like overriding the low/high levels or the times that liquid is added and removed) as needed.
This, in other words, is a control system. In my experience, control systems make ideal applications to be considered as OOP candidates.
Naturally, this is a simple example, and in so-called real-life applications, the requirements are usually more complex. My experience tells me that the more complex a control problem, the easier it is to solve it using the OOP model.
There are commercial packages you can buy that allow you to build control systems using OOPs and to be able to programme guages and set alarms points and what not.
But all you were looking for was an example of an engineering app that are suited to OOP.
I've yet to see the film, but I intend to. However, I'm wondering how many people are going to see the film because LoTR is derigeur for the geek crowd? Even when I was a young lad, attending university in the mid-sevnties, the LoTR was required reading for anybody that wanted to fit in with those who spent more time at computer terminals than at their studies. I liked the books, but I didn't think they ranked as great literature.
But, did you know that for a large portion of the source code to Perl, after the usual copyright disclaimer, there is a quote from something by J. R. R. Tolkien?
Yes, there are people who DO read source code, and I'm one of them. It's a great source of education and inspiration if the code is well written and a wonderful source of amusement from code that is badly written.
What has any of this to do with the Schwartz case? He was caught red handed using someone else's computer to run a password cracking programme on Intel's password file. To make matters even worse, he was also cracking the password file of an outside company, namely O'Reilly.
His contract with Intel had nothing to do with security, as far as I know, and so he had no business using those computers for anything other than Intel related work, most specifically, what he had been hired to do. I would have done the same.
The point is not that he was doing cracking on someone else's computer, but the fact that he was using those computers to do unauthorized work that could leave Intel itself open to charges of industrial espionage, since it is ultimately responsible for how it's resources are utilized.
Whatever the legal aspects of the case. Schwartz should simply not have done what he was doing on those computers. If he was doing password cracking on his own computer at home, fine. To use someone else's computer to do the same, without their permission is something else.
I like knowing exactly what my computer is doing at all times. That's why I use linux. That's why I'm a open source advocate. I would not have tolerated such clandestine work either, regardless of what he was doing. I would have done the same even if he were factoring numbers to discover large primes or engaging in the stupidity of the SETI project.
It's MY computer and I decide what to do with it. Intel has the same right, and nobody, including Schwartz, has anything to do say about it. Schwartz violated Intel's computer rights, and he should be severely punished.
Ten thousand lashes with a wet noodle would suffice.
"It will never cease to amaze me that there is this army of trolls just lying in wait to come up with the stupidest, most knee-jerk, ignorant and uninformed comment on damn near anything withing moments of its appearance. There's almost a sort of genius to it..."
Is it trolling or just a complete lack of education and understanding of things nuclear? There is an paranoia that many people have concerning nuclear issues, and most of it fed by ignorance. What's more frightening is that many people prefer to not understand these issues. Ignornace is bliss, and leads to trollism.
While there are many things that we all need to be concerned about regarding nuclear safety, it should be approached from the standpoint of knowledge and understanding, not fear and loathing.
Having worked in the nuclear industry for ten years, including breifly as an advisor on the validation of the software at the TRIUMF facility and this accelerator in particular, I know what I'm talking about.
If you want to stop this sort of troll-like responses, work toward educating everyone on what nuclear science is all about. It's not hsi fault he is stupid and ignorant, but the educational system that teaches people everything nuclear is evil.
Next up, doubleclick and all those other idiots collecting information about you without your permission and then sells it, again without your permission.
This should be illegal, but at the very least multi-billion dollar class action law suits in several countries simultaneously to put them out of business is a good start.
I suppose that's why we call you anonymous posters Cowards....
Here, in Microsoft, we have a convicted "criminal organization" that is a monopoly in the world, let alone in the US, and the government seems all of a sudden loosing it's nerve.
I've heard some rumours that the US government is actively studying the impact of completely abandoning Microsoft and going elsewhere, and Linux was definetly being considered.
Here in Canada, the same thing is happening. The governemnt has several pilot projects running Linux and there are currently several configurations being considered running the Federal Parlamentary networks as well as in the Bank of Canada and the Department of Defence.
Furthermore, we have no vested interest in keeping foreign companies that don't benefit our economy as viable entities in Canada.
This situation is quickly changing and Micro-softdick may soon find itself in more trouble than the mere impotent government.
Real people in real companies are looking very favourably on Open Source as a means of making lots of money. Free software of course is still foreign to them. But, for some companies, the very notion of opening up their code to public scrutiny terrifies not only companies, but the programmers who produce that crap in the first place.
Most programmers that claim that "title" are really very, very bad. I've made a career out of fixing problems that other people make.
If this sounds like a trashing of the programming community you're right. But the blame can be placed squarely on Microsoft's door.
I've been around computers now for a long time. Hey I've been around so long that I feel like I was in the stands when Oscar Wilde went on trial in 1895. Anyway, I've never seen so bad a crop of programmers as we have today.
As always the best programmers are the "hackers" and the ones coming out of schools that accept large sums of money from MS are worse than useless.
Enough ranting, you get the picture. I have to live with it and try to change it.
That magic catch phrase has been a standard on old Unix man pages for the entire 3 decades of it's history. Don't forget, the original crypt programme was based on Enigma.
However, your sig is much more interesting:
"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt" which translates as "Computers don't think, therefore they don't exist (they are not)."
Love it.
They are going to sequence the genomes of a total of five people. What five people? I'd interested in certain peculiar characteristics of these people. Things like colour, race, sexual orientation, hair and eye colour, heck maybe even what brand of beer they like.
The horrors of what the Nazis were trying to do during their disasterous 12 years in power should be a foremost in these researchers and, more importantly, their bosses minds.
Perhaps the little icon for this topic should be two a headed monster.
What do we do about proprietary, closed source, binary only computer programmes running on our machines that we have no access to the source?
Do we trust the suppliers of these software products to not do unrepairable damage to our computers? Do you feel comfortable running other people's software on your machine without the knowledge of what it's doing?
Windows owners do. I persoanlly don't. Except for Corel's WordPerfect, I have no closed source software on my Linux box at home.
To me, by allowing software to run on my computer without the knowledge that I can inspect the source code to find out what it's really doing is like inviting a stranger into my house and then giving him free reign to it without supervision. Would you do that?
Do we need civil rights protection to enable us to view the source code for these binary only, proprietary programmes for our own protection?
Questions, questions, nothing but questions.
Really, I thought that was part of any well rounded education...
I remember when I was a kid lying on my back on our back lawn watching the stars. Occasionally, I'd see meteors and quite often see the quick moving satellites zip by. They were as bright as about magnitude 3 stars. Alas, these days I live in a city with lots of light pollution so I don't get to see too many stars (sob).
In any case, I think that it is very likely we'd be able to see these Iridium satellites burning up without any aid. All we need to know is an estimate of about when and where these things are expected to come down.
For objects in motion at the speed of light, such as a photon, this equation has no meaning since v will equal c and thus the denominator becomes zero.
As a result, it doesn't matter what the mass of the photon is, zero or otherwise, since the E becomes undefined, which fits perfectly with Heizenburg's Uncertainty Principle. So all these momentum equations are meaningless.
In any case, for those of you interested in this sort of pseudo-science, here's a book for you: How to Build a Flying Saucer, and other Proposals in Speculative Engineering by T. B.Pawlioki. I don't know if it's still in print but it's a great read if you believe in this sort of thing and a huge laugh if you know science.
This isn't one of them! It's wonderful to see these pro-Microsoft sycophants make fools of themselves. Deep down, I'm sure that it's their "operating" systems that are truly dead meat. I'm also quite convinced that they know it too.
Windows-CE is already effectively dead. Windows-flavour-of-the-month, that bloated, slow, and unreliable non-operating system is not far behind.
I look forward to the end of Microsoft, the company that should never have been, (gone by 2010) and I would be proud to hang a sign on old Bill Gate's home that reads "Condemed" because his Microsoft controlled house went wild and destroyed it.
Ahh, such pleasant thoughts.
The best thing to do is to order these pieces of junk to crash into the sea someplace. This should reduce the space hazard a little bit (less than 0.1%?) but every little bit helps.
Why is it that articles of this sort talk about the perspective of investors, corporations and IT managers (Microsoft collaborators mostly)? Linux has managed very well indeed without these assorted "people" and will continue to do so, fork or no fork. Berst and Wall Street have so far had a perfect score of "zero" when it comes to Linux, and I suspect this is more of the same.