you are trying to say i can look at nothing, but it's clearly a gray area or no one would be able to look at MS word/excel files and render the data from them.
so, you blanket statement is further from reality than my right to look at the registers on my machine however i choose, whenever i choose.
in fact, before you are so fast to yap and ship at my post, at least on major was considering legalizing reverse engineering -- not just protocols and commands, but *reverse engineering* -- the disassembly of code.
think before you post. your response is fairly small minded.
those were the good old days. if a company tried something like this, their buildings would be burned and the owner tarred and feathered in front of his house. sure it's dangerous, but how dangerous is it to let someone step on your freedom? is it really better to die on your feet than live on your knees?
are these companies paying me to allow their software and data run though MY computer and MY cables in MY house? do I have the right to put a logic analyzer or debugger on my system and look at the registers, memory and I/O or the various hardware and programs? can i use than information in turn for whatever purpose i choose? when will this become a "fair use" issue? reselling someone's app as your own is one issue, but using their protocols and command set should be quite another.
sometimes i think that the only reason corporations get away with this stuff is that we've become so acclimated to greed and selfishness that we have forgotten how to stand together and fight when we see it.
c'mon everyone, join me in a rousing chorus of "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
they will lose in the long run. make it sexy, make it warez.
this was a year ago, they said they'd try to have it to me before xmas, but it came a week late. they were very nice about the refund/return.
my family/friends got some generic gifts cuz i had to run in circles at the mall buying stuff to cover the loss.
this year, i bought zip/nada off the net for xmas. it's just too crazy having to depend on UPS/FEDEX *and* overloaded retailers.
i went early to the malls, and searched carefully in the offbeat stores. it came out okay. Actually, I prefer the malls now. There is something impersonal and uncaring about last year -- i like holding the gift in my hand and checking it out.
I'll buy stuff off the web for myself, and maybe for birthday presents, cuz those dates are pretty random through the year, but not xmas. It's too chaotic to consider.
The wierdest thing is, the Toys R Us near my house was fully stocked about ten days ago. But they can't keep up with the web? Something funny there.
BTW, bless you all these holidays -- linux, slash, andover, ACs, first posters, MEEPT!, nice posters (and mean). Tis the season for forgiveness and time for a new year!
(Bill Gates and Microsoft are still getting coals -- bastards).
For Linux to really take off, it needs to be a better Windows.
I don't know if it's better now, but a year or so ago, installing E + Gnome on my system brought it to a halt. I was stunned by the performance improvement that came from switching to a more lightweight UI. Programmers need to be more careful what they release, and let let their s/w kill people's systems.
As far as installs, I'm embarassed to say that I work with several engineers who can barely install Windows, let alone any version of Linux. People, even technical people, are dumbing down. I grew up with a soldering iron in my hand (my parents wouldn't let me plug it in til I was 10 -- just kidding) wire-wrapping boards, modifying BIOS, burning EPROMs. To me, a glitch in an install is just something to be researched and fixed. To many others, it's a sign that "this thing sucks" and they give up. Corel Linux is the only distro that installs cleanly on my notebook. All others break on the install and need massaging. Corel's acheivement is moving Linux forward.
Sun has a good start with StarOffice. But the whole UI (taking over the interface) is confusing. I hope the new version they are working on will do things a little smarter -- like have a small dock to launch the individual apps. I saw StarOffice (open, modify, save) a 19 MB. word document in a fraction of the time that NT + Word took -- on a computer with (literally) 1/4 the CPU and memory. Apps like StarOffice show great promise, but they need not be o "wierd". It was obviously laid out during the GUI wars.
As a final note, I suspect that most people do little more than surf the web with their PCs. Corel Linux, once again, has focused on this. They have a simple install, KDE ends up with a netscape icon on the desktop, but I will say the ISP info should be easier for the mainstream person.
One big concern I have for Linux is the shift to NT servers. Many pages I visit have "FrontPage" generated html now, asp, and the cgi stuff is going away. In my opinion, they who control the server will control the desktop. For example, if NT see a Linux/Netscape machine attach, just refuse to serve. Or server an error page -- "Your browser needs to be upgraded".
Linux needs better software on both ends, and also to pick up slack in ecommerce, video streaming, etc., as well as online software distribution and searching. In many ways, I think Linux is falling back. But I did notice the bookstore in the local mall had SUSE Linux on the shelves. That's a plus.
I saw a display for Windows 2000 at Staples last night. Special introductory offer : $695. Well at that price, it must have been some kind of bundle.
Linux and Linux software is priced well, but where is the Linux Media Player? Or an Exchange-compatible mail client? Web content is going to kill Linux, I can practically guarantee that. Remember, all those windows media streams popping up everywhere are presumable created on NT boxen...
A lot of posters are saying the previous computer was i386 based. I didn't design or build it, but the NASA page states that the previous computer was designed in the late 1970s and was it was difficult and expensive to maintain the original software. It does have a i386-based coprocessor that was added at a later date.
The press release states that the new computer allows the use of a more modern programming language. Presumably, they are using something like VxWorks for the OS?
Does anyone recognize the name of the old computer mentioned on the link, or know anymore details about the old (or new) computer? I wish NASA would be more open with details -- the average slashdotter knows more about his mobo than NASA is telling us about the hubble's brains!
sorry about quoting the wrong weapon, and i wish i could recall which class i heard that tale in. it's been 5 yrs. out now, so my memory is fading.
i think it may have a gen ed. class on infectious diseases, but it's just been too long.
So, perhaps I can evade the wrath of the moderator with a quick story on kill ratios, which is really what this story is about.
How about a kill ratio of 150,000 to 1?
Richard Lederer, in his book "The Miracle of Language", describes a translation error that some feel led directly to the nuclear attack on Japan.
July 26th, 1945: The Potsdam Declaration demands Japan's unconditional surrender.
Japan's Imperial cabinet is interested in surrender, in the face of the fall of the other axis powers, but needs time to politically organize the military and citizens of Japan.
The cabinet releases a statement using the word "Mokusatsu", which is usually translated as "We are considering it" or "We are ignoring it" (depending on context). The english translator erred, and the official english broadcast from Japan stated the the Imperial Cabinet was ignoring the Potsdam Declaration.
Not wanting to lose face in the aftermath of the error, the Imperial Cabinet decided not to retract the statement, and instead ignored the Declaration!
On July 28th, most allied newspapers carried the story that Japan had chosen to ignore the Potsdam Declaration. Within weeks, 150,000 Japanese were dead, and a world nuclear race ensued.
Now this is a pretty good article. I am eager to buy it.
By the way, during the Roman Empire, I have heard the Roman army had a small sword called a "Pike".
Most opposing forces were no match for the Roman army, so the enemy would turn and run after a short fight with the Romans.
The Romans would sheath their battle sword, pull out this short sword, and chase down the enemy from behind, using the "Pike" to stab the anus and genitals of the fleeing enemy, leaving the injured to a slow painful death by infection.
I have heard this was the Roman's favorite part of the battle. Confirm or deny, anyone? Brutal, to say the least.
Actually, negative publicity is better than none at all.
I hate the way people roll (bend?) over when a situation like this happens.
There obligation is not to walk away, but to fix the problem and move ahead. That means getting funding, and a new ISP.
I have to admit I'm curious about who ended up depositing those checks -- it almost sounds like they were deposited by an unscrupulous employee at the ISP. But the ISP's management would be foolish to go to court...so it all sounds odd.
Well, if you can't handle the struggle, you should go do something else. I don't like the way they are letting a "Linux" site get fucked up without trying to fix it.
That's what Linux means -- you have a problem, you fix it, you come back stronger. The MassLinux behavior doesn't really represent Linux behavior very well.
TV started in the late forties. There were no VCRs. There was, however, a single standard for television signals on the major continents.
All manufacturers made TVs that could decode the signal and view the program content.
This is not the case at all with PCs. Sure, we all use TCP/IP (for the most part) but the programming is completely alien between manufactuers of warez.
...and have had good results with it. for some reason it never can start X properly at the end, and gives an error that I'm "..running on the wrong console.." but "startx" and all is well.
...sometimes, Xconfigurator works better.
Incidentally, I could never get my notebook running right without hours of frustrating config issues, until the other night when I tried Corel Linux.
Corel Linux installed from start to finish with only two minor issues:
1) It kept showing invalid numbers for the 8GB. drive -- like "7 MB. Free". But the drive was almost open! So, I entered impossibly large numbers, and it scaled them down to what was actually there. Then, I massaged that into a few partitions.
2) The software update thingy assumes you have a net connection, and basically freezes up when it atttempts to go out to the net and get the latest package info. Make sure you disable the net update portion if you don't have net up yet.
Otherwise, everthing is great. I think you will see these kind of issues issues continue to fade as more (and better) support gets into the various X configuration tools and distros.
I will assimilate you -- see my announcement at www.bestbuy.com -- I'm taking over everything, and no one can stop me! Bwaahahahahahah!
I will make ALL the money, and register ALL the software, hardware, and bandwidth!
No one will will ever need more than 128 kb/s! If you ask me about that claim in two years, I'll say I meant "Bytes", not "Bits"!
If you ask me in five years, I'll say I meant I meant "Kilo-Bills", an incredibly large (and innovative) number that scales in such a manner that I can never be proven to underestimate the computing needs of the global populace again!
---------------------------- Bill "King of BestBuy" Gates
I can't see removing choice when there is a much bigger issue -- interoperability.
Can you imagine if radio or television was allowed to mature the way computers have? Only apple radios could recieve apple signals, only microsoft tvs could decode mirosoft signals.
I would much rather see governments demand that all I/O (network or file formats) be open and standardized so any client software can utilize and server packages or files.
I know we're talking standards organization here, but in this case it could be worth it.
with star office. i mean, it the next step to stopping the microsoft onslaught, forcing the people who say "we'll just use MS" to consider other packages.
as much as i'm against frivolous lawsuits, microsoft has bs'd the globe to the point where there is no choice but lawsuits to return sanity to the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
you are trying to say i can look at nothing, but it's clearly a gray area or no one would be able to look at MS word/excel files and render the data from them.
so, you blanket statement is further from reality than my right to look at the registers on my machine however i choose, whenever i choose.
in fact, before you are so fast to yap and ship at my post, at least on major was considering legalizing reverse engineering -- not just protocols and commands, but *reverse engineering* -- the disassembly of code.
think before you post. your response is fairly small minded.
remember the machine-breakers of england?
those were the good old days. if a company tried something like this, their buildings would be burned and the owner tarred and feathered in front of his house. sure it's dangerous, but how dangerous is it to let someone step on your freedom? is it really better to die on your feet than live on your knees?
are these companies paying me to allow their software and data run though MY computer and MY cables in MY house? do I have the right to put a logic analyzer or debugger on my system and look at the registers, memory and I/O or the various hardware and programs? can i use than information in turn for whatever purpose i choose? when will this become a "fair use" issue? reselling someone's app as your own is one issue, but using their protocols and command set should be quite another.
sometimes i think that the only reason corporations get away with this stuff is that we've become so acclimated to greed and selfishness that we have forgotten how to stand together and fight when we see it.
c'mon everyone, join me in a rousing chorus of "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
they will lose in the long run. make it sexy, make it warez.
this was a year ago, they said they'd try to have it to me before xmas, but it came a week late. they were very nice about the refund/return.
my family/friends got some generic gifts cuz i had to run in circles at the mall buying stuff to cover the loss.
this year, i bought zip/nada off the net for xmas. it's just too crazy having to depend on UPS/FEDEX *and* overloaded retailers.
i went early to the malls, and searched carefully in the offbeat stores. it came out okay. Actually, I prefer the malls now. There is something impersonal and uncaring about last year -- i like holding the gift in my hand and checking it out.
I'll buy stuff off the web for myself, and maybe for birthday presents, cuz those dates are pretty random through the year, but not xmas. It's too chaotic to consider.
The wierdest thing is, the Toys R Us near my house was fully stocked about ten days ago. But they can't keep up with the web? Something funny there.
BTW, bless you all these holidays -- linux, slash, andover, ACs, first posters, MEEPT!, nice posters (and mean). Tis the season for forgiveness and time for a new year!
(Bill Gates and Microsoft are still getting coals -- bastards).
For Linux to really take off, it needs to be a better Windows.
I don't know if it's better now, but a year or so ago, installing E + Gnome on my system brought it to a halt. I was stunned by the performance improvement that came from switching to a more lightweight UI. Programmers need to be more careful what they release, and let let their s/w kill people's systems.
As far as installs, I'm embarassed to say that I work with several engineers who can barely install Windows, let alone any version of Linux. People, even technical people, are dumbing down. I grew up with a soldering iron in my hand (my parents wouldn't let me plug it in til I was 10 -- just kidding) wire-wrapping boards, modifying BIOS, burning EPROMs. To me, a glitch in an install is just something to be researched and fixed. To many others, it's a sign that "this thing sucks" and they give up. Corel Linux is the only distro that installs cleanly on my notebook. All others break on the install and need massaging. Corel's acheivement is moving Linux forward.
Sun has a good start with StarOffice. But the whole UI (taking over the interface) is confusing. I hope the new version they are working on will do things a little smarter -- like have a small dock to launch the individual apps. I saw StarOffice (open, modify, save) a 19 MB. word document in a fraction of the time that NT + Word took -- on a computer with (literally) 1/4 the CPU and memory. Apps like StarOffice show great promise, but they need not be o "wierd". It was obviously laid out during the GUI wars.
As a final note, I suspect that most people do little more than surf the web with their PCs. Corel Linux, once again, has focused on this. They have a simple install, KDE ends up with a netscape icon on the desktop, but I will say the ISP info should be easier for the mainstream person.
One big concern I have for Linux is the shift to NT servers. Many pages I visit have "FrontPage" generated html now, asp, and the cgi stuff is going away. In my opinion, they who control the server will control the desktop. For example, if NT see a Linux/Netscape machine attach, just refuse to serve. Or server an error page -- "Your browser needs to be upgraded".
Linux needs better software on both ends, and also to pick up slack in ecommerce, video streaming, etc., as well as online software distribution and searching. In many ways, I think Linux is falling back. But I did notice the bookstore in the local mall had SUSE Linux on the shelves. That's a plus.
I saw a display for Windows 2000 at Staples last night. Special introductory offer : $695. Well at that price, it must have been some kind of bundle.
Linux and Linux software is priced well, but where is the Linux Media Player? Or an Exchange-compatible mail client? Web content is going to kill Linux, I can practically guarantee that. Remember, all those windows media streams popping up everywhere are presumable created on NT boxen...
A lot of posters are saying the previous computer was i386 based. I didn't design or build it, but the NASA page states that the previous computer was designed in the late 1970s and was it was difficult and expensive to maintain the original software. It does have a i386-based coprocessor that was added at a later date.
The press release states that the new computer allows the use of a more modern programming language. Presumably, they are using something like VxWorks for the OS?
Does anyone recognize the name of the old computer mentioned on the link, or know anymore details about the old (or new) computer? I wish NASA would be more open with details -- the average slashdotter knows more about his mobo than NASA is telling us about the hubble's brains!
sorry about quoting the wrong weapon, and i wish i could recall which class i heard that tale in. it's been 5 yrs. out now, so my memory is fading.
i think it may have a gen ed. class on infectious diseases, but it's just been too long.
So, perhaps I can evade the wrath of the moderator with a quick story on kill ratios, which is really what this story is about.
How about a kill ratio of 150,000 to 1?
Richard Lederer, in his book "The Miracle of Language", describes a translation error that some feel led directly to the nuclear attack on Japan.
July 26th, 1945: The Potsdam Declaration demands Japan's unconditional surrender.
Japan's Imperial cabinet is interested in surrender, in the face of the fall of the other axis powers, but needs time to politically organize the military and citizens of Japan.
The cabinet releases a statement using the word "Mokusatsu", which is usually translated as "We are considering it" or "We are ignoring it" (depending on context). The english translator erred, and the official english broadcast from Japan stated the the Imperial Cabinet was ignoring the Potsdam Declaration.
Not wanting to lose face in the aftermath of the error, the Imperial Cabinet decided not to retract the statement, and instead ignored the Declaration!
On July 28th, most allied newspapers carried the story that Japan had chosen to ignore the Potsdam Declaration. Within weeks, 150,000 Japanese were dead, and a world nuclear race ensued.
(ISBN: 0-671-02811-1; paperback, ppgs. 77-78).
I saw an article on cnn today that the hubble's brain was replaced by i486's.
running...any guesses? my guess would be one of those elite RTOS...QNX or something.
I smell a non-IPO related news-for-nerds story coming up...oh well, there goes my karma. it sucked anyway.
RMS was asked, and he answered. In a single, clearly worded page.
As others have said, without RMS, there would be...well, apple and microsoft.
Insightful. Of course, but only in the sense that "Moderators are competent". Moderation has always been wrong, it was a mistake.
It splintered off a group of elites, and isolated/removed a lot of quality posts.
I like how he can write a single page analysis of a situation that pretty much wraps his opinion up without a lot of filler or posturing.
Not that I wouldn't mind seeing RMS go up against Bill Joy or Scott McNealy in person.
Dress 'em in gasmasks and jock straps, and tour them with wrestlemania. Winner fights Bill Gates at the end of the tour.
I'd pay to see that.
Now this is a pretty good article. I am eager to buy it.
By the way, during the Roman Empire, I have heard the Roman army had a small sword called a "Pike".
Most opposing forces were no match for the Roman army, so the enemy would turn and run after a short fight with the Romans.
The Romans would sheath their battle sword, pull out this short sword, and chase down the enemy from behind, using the "Pike" to stab the anus and genitals of the fleeing enemy, leaving the injured to a slow painful death by infection.
I have heard this was the Roman's favorite part of the battle. Confirm or deny, anyone? Brutal, to say the least.
Actually, negative publicity is better than none at all.
I hate the way people roll (bend?) over when a situation like this happens.
There obligation is not to walk away, but to fix the problem and move ahead. That means getting funding, and a new ISP.
I have to admit I'm curious about who ended up depositing those checks -- it almost sounds like they were deposited by an unscrupulous employee at the ISP. But the ISP's management would be foolish to go to court...so it all sounds odd.
Well, if you can't handle the struggle, you should go do something else. I don't like the way they are letting a "Linux" site get fucked up without trying to fix it.
That's what Linux means -- you have a problem, you fix it, you come back stronger. The MassLinux behavior doesn't really represent Linux behavior very well.
FUCK ALL HUMOR-CHALLENGED MODERATORS.
Now *that's* offtopic.
TV started in the late forties. There were no VCRs. There was, however, a single standard for television signals on the major continents.
All manufacturers made TVs that could decode the signal and view the program content.
This is not the case at all with PCs. Sure, we all use TCP/IP (for the most part) but the programming is completely alien between manufactuers of warez.
...and have had good results with it. for some reason it never can start X properly at the end, and gives an error that I'm "..running on the wrong console.." but "startx" and all is well.
...sometimes, Xconfigurator works better.
Incidentally, I could never get my notebook running right without hours of frustrating config issues, until the other night when I tried Corel Linux.
Corel Linux installed from start to finish with only two minor issues:
1) It kept showing invalid numbers for the 8GB. drive -- like "7 MB. Free". But the drive was almost open! So, I entered impossibly large numbers, and it scaled them down to what was actually there. Then, I massaged that into a few partitions.
2) The software update thingy assumes you have a net connection, and basically freezes up when it atttempts to go out to the net and get the latest package info. Make sure you disable the net update portion if you don't have net up yet.
Otherwise, everthing is great. I think you will see these kind of issues issues continue to fade as more (and better) support gets into the various X configuration tools and distros.
I will assimilate you -- see my announcement at www.bestbuy.com -- I'm taking over everything, and no one can stop me! Bwaahahahahahah!
I will make ALL the money, and register ALL the software, hardware, and bandwidth!
No one will will ever need more than 128 kb/s! If you ask me about that claim in two years, I'll say I meant "Bytes", not "Bits"!
If you ask me in five years, I'll say I meant I meant "Kilo-Bills", an incredibly large (and innovative) number that scales in such a manner that I can never be proven to underestimate the computing needs of the global populace again!
----------------------------
Bill "King of BestBuy" Gates
I can't see removing choice when there is a much bigger issue -- interoperability.
Can you imagine if radio or television was allowed to mature the way computers have? Only apple radios could recieve apple signals, only microsoft tvs could decode mirosoft signals.
I would much rather see governments demand that all I/O (network or file formats) be open and standardized so any client software can utilize and server packages or files.
I know we're talking standards organization here, but in this case it could be worth it.
with star office. i mean, it the next step to stopping the microsoft onslaught, forcing the people who say "we'll just use MS" to consider other packages.
as much as i'm against frivolous lawsuits, microsoft has bs'd the globe to the point where there is no choice but lawsuits to return sanity to the industry.