Something like that... I've got the whole Minitel philosophy vs Internet philosophy all worked out in your post.
Minitel is everything online life was not supposed to be, for instance if you are looking for science related or making a research for yourself then Minitel has nothing to offer you. It was (still is?? hahah) like Compuserve or Prodigy was before their first IP connection: Like hundreds of BBSes owned by corporations with only sales pahmplets to offer and order online services.
Those who criticize Internet in favour of Minitel really have not grasped the basics of the Internet's original purpose. Funny no one mentioned TRANSPAC. IT was an X.25 network that trully held info
You normally get to the Net to escape TV and highly educational things like the Olympics, STNG or Chuck Norris...
Now the Net is sports free, and the IOC has done its worst public campaign ever. I am in a jolly good mood. It's not like the New Scientist is pulling off the Net.
It just depends on what they mean by all communications. All you need for phone is to take the stub sent from exchanges to exchanges and used for billing in the phone industry.
(Eg: call is routed from BT to Telstra from Telstra to... this is all done live by the switches and logged into systems for end of month billing.) This is a simple stub with the time stamp when a call is started and finished. It doesn't goble much space since most telcos want to store them for a while for accounting and thus has been made to be tiny. I just doubt they will bother to capture and encode the communications themselves, just unfeasable and the telcos will just say: Up yours. All you need is to prove X called Y at that time the day an investigation occurs (harassment, crime, fraud...)
As for News and Mail, well most main backbone acting telcos don't even use regular products and just serve a a big cache. I have seen it in a past contract. They (won't say here) even wrote their own inode based optimizations so much the flow is mental. Forget Cnews or INN here. Mail is not even worth being stored in big national backbone site as well and has to be evacuated as fast as possible. Just opening files to save the headers as they go is going to be like tapping in a high pressure oil lines. The gvt in question better provide the gear for free or subsidize and pay a rent to those who integrate that sort of tap into an already implemeted system without breaking it. In other words, even if a judge says something, they can't just implement something that would break a backbone site.
In other occasions it's just the cost of implementing the system that is not feasable, like it just happened to Russia as they imposed ISPs to pay as far as $100,000 for a system, no subsidies.
The industry just couldn't follow, the russian gvt realized how much spaced out they have been and decided to call it off.
As for storage, since all we need are stubs, choice isn't that hard. Besides with 2 Echelon sites in the UK what the hell are they crying about. Can't they just pass on requests?
"Oh we missed last week's Dr Who on BBC 1, you MOD fellows won't happen to have this on tape?"
"... err.. No no, just PAL, not NTSC..."
"Thanxs."
BTW: Word of mouth says NSA/NATO uses DLTs for Echelon. Surpised? You were expecting some obscure black box with laser beams in it?
Really... Check the German, French, Italian, Russian, Arab, Israeli, Portuguese... Press and the same articles are written like what they don't want to end up like Esperanto.
This is why many many YEARS AGO they started having their own web site in their pown languages.
But still as far a technology, it's been english since the days of the first Radio Operators and Sonar/Radar specialist, Pilots... Nothing new here.:>
Sorry no, you are thinking about http and web browsers here...
Before the hordes of infuriated "hackers" start a flame war I just suggest you read on about DARPA, ARPANET, and look for names in the early RFCs.
Please slashdoters, don't start a flamefest, we can still diffuse this incident..
I HATE when they do that! Even The Good the Bad and the Ugly is just in german. Though they might have a point as Akira is Japanese as much as A Chinese Ghost Story is Chinese, so why should the actors speak english automaticaly? (though I HATE that logic.) Anyway, good opportunity to brush up a foreign language anyway.
Try belgium or Dutch sites. Point is, there are 12 countries there so one might have it. And then there are 100+ other ones too:>
I'd like to say thank you for pointing to this list, as I was signing it and see the results I realised that the total number of signatures was increasing by the second. Was about 6035 at the time and rises steady like a for loop.
It has to be the nicest Slashdot effect I have seen.:> And probably a chance, whatever tiny, to show a different point of view.
Yup! Aren't the rules of international distribution funny??? It was there in my video store and I have also seen it on shelves as a DVD. Try searching for it on German sites, it's a zone 2 DVD though... Though chip-ing is legal here, the manufacturer of the DVD player offers it as an extra service, just pay $40.
Also be VERY carefull when ordering DVDs from Europe, every country has it's own company that prints a DVD version according to their taste. Sometime you can find an american of italian movie with only the German sound track for instance. And in the next country it is available in english, turkish and hungarian. (which is the whole point of DVDs... Multilanguage.) Sometimes you will find it with macrovision encoding, sometimes the company did not even bother. In general DVD made by Warner are pretty standard, but for other imported films it is not necessary. Expect to see rogue DVD prints comming from outside the Western World sphere that are just MPEG-1 cheap ripoff or amazing 2 in one packages in 5.1 dolby.
Hey, you have NO excuses, you have The Net at your service. Remember Kusanagi's last words "The Net is vast and infinite":>:>
BTW: There is a rumor about Star War Episode 1 on DVD in France, can someone confirm? Has it got an english soundtrack? Ooops, I should use the Net too:>
Re:Don't bother - The Observer was suckered
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Don't talk like that about my Furby! Not only it is offensive to other respectable Furby owners but it is also very narrow minded!
Think about it, if Eliza once qualified as AI to accute observers from the press why can't it still be a gem of AI today? And if so, why can't this new HAL be even better... To the press that is.
Now it doesn't have to run or even be built, all it has to do is to make those cyber-whatever and men of letters write about it and it keeps a lot of people in business. Look at Nano-Technology or the F22, it's a huge success in the books or games market although the real product is not even on the shelves.
After all what did A.C. Clarke do? He just took a typewriter, and like any other SciFi writer, all he had to do is describe is "thing", an Intelligent Computer. Do those SciFi people care about building them? Do they etch boards and work hard to make something that trully proves the concept out of it? No, they just expect sacrificed generations of overworked and underpaid tech people to do it for them and then expect to take the credits for it. Gee, what an easy job it is to be a SciFi writer.
So if there is a way techies can get even for all those impractical flying cars (that would probably need FAA approval to drive) and other easy to write dreams the world is awaiting, then let it be. Tell them it's done, that you have one and that you are very happy with it. That will keep them writing and flaming each others while we laugh!
I like that Sri Lanka chap after all, a very entertaining fellow...
Re:I wonder what happens if I shut it down...
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Hehehehe Good one there!
It turned out to be the 1st ever computer generated music in MIT Tech Square using the buzzs the instructions made by loading a whole slew of well written data.
Archie was the way to get to your files once you knew what they were called, outside of newsgroups.
Archie went down already some couple of years, but the sad thing is that its functionality hasn't really been replaced. There are search engines, but they don't concentrate on just files you can download. In fact they are cramed full of useless commercial information and such. If you look around even FTP servers seem to slow down and apart from the old sunsites, funet.fi and other good old places there number is receeding. I wonder sometimes if your modern net user even has a clue of what FTP is. (As if http file transfers were any reliable, you can't even know when your file as been received in full and discover later you only have 85% of a 20 megs Zip file.)
As for Archie, it requires a telnet connection, something the equivalent of a Masters Degree for a Windows User, no wonder Joe User hasn't got a clue about it.
It is scarry, I wonder if in 10 years there would still be anything to download at all apart from drivers and press releases. I already feel the effect of archives that just can't be found anymore, like practical good old tools called Terminate/Telemate/Zmodem and I am not even talking about old docs and the lot. Only GNU software seems to stick around.
If you are lucky enuff to be stuck with a bunch of other contractors who are as bored as you are in a maddening computer room full of noisy fans, and if the false floor is not carpeted and you have chairs with wheels... Then a certain endorphin related to the neuropeptides might kick in and get you to grab the nearest screwdriver and challenge your friends in a screwdriver joust. I know it sounds barbaric and completely stupid, but the chairs rarely go to where you want them to go in the first place and seldom with enuff momentum to cause major injuries on the opponent. It kinda hurts, but the exitment this game brings make you unaware of this. But I guess you need a couple of years of exposure to HP-UX or VMS to get to that desperate stage. HP-9000 front panels make excellent shields, but beware when you push them back in the servers as you might push the power button with it and draw the attention of 200 other employees.
You can use plastic rulers in the first weeks if the screwdriver thing scares you.
No, clothes as in it moves like fabrics. A model for the dynamic motions that your clothes have when you walk, sit, twist your torso, jump.
And stop nicking lame quotes from Jurassic Park's dinner scene and putting coders instead.
A while ago in 1993-94, or when SPARCs were like 25 Mhz, Softimage in Montreal did some work on a roller coaster animation where clothes just had to look convincing. Dunno if it made it into their software as I never go it for X-mass. Of course we are still not talking games, this is just for doing adverts only. Anyone seen that at a Sigraph?
Since then Microsoft bought it, and errr... well...
Nice job, a very interesting project you have uncovered here actualy. This should even make the news at slashdot (I am serious, this stuff IS hot)
Still the questions were related to the USSR. And they are very easy to answer eg:
q) "Who were the leaders of that technology?"
a) Whoever the state appoints, they have final control.
Now did the USSR provided the people with one computer for each like a communist state is expected to do? Of course not, just a very small priviledged class which superseeds the Prols like the military or high party members Mmmm?! Strange contradictions, has the USSR gone out of the original specs carefully laid out?
So did they have a popular computing revolution like we did? The answer comming from the story of early virus writters in Bulgaria seems to say: one shared by a dozen, and all in MS-DOS, so I coded Sophia or xyz out of disgust.
Sorry, there was a confusion here.
The Alice was an other red (color:>) crap computer made in France, I can't remember the codename for that russian one. It was published in an old out business magazine called L'Ordinateur Individuel which was a techy heaven with assembly code taking the last 40 pages. (Wooooh hoooh!)
This is back in those wonderfull days where Microsoft meant Microsoft BASIC only, the label of quality for any of the 20 or so new computer makers on the block (ahem). And also where keyboards had the Error Correcting device. Basicaly it beep when you pressed a key so who wouldn't have blank or 20 times duplicate letter "p" when you entered "print" on a flat keyboard. Great fingers killing devices!
In about 1983-84 I remember one russian Apple II ripoff evaluated in a French computer magazine. The computer was named alice if I remember and had a red case. Since the Apple II was a really cool hack employing no state of the art technology and was even sold with the complete electronical diagrams (Gee I wish PC Mobos were still sold like that too instead of this 20 page ill written pamphlet full of buzzwords you get these days) Anyways, it just wasn't Woz-ardry to clone the whole system and get the parts anywhere in Asia, Europe, India.. whatever. Hong Kong and even Italy was making clones (The Lemon). The RAM were also completely ripped off of course (just go and sue the 80's Warsaw Pact). Things haven't changed for long until PC's came in and I suppose they also ripped them off once any asian country could provide them with chips. Last I heard they were looking for VMS source code right? That was in The Hacker's Crackdown and other told about a second hand market for super computer like crays using Pakistan or India as a middle man. Not hard to believe and it's a US friendly solution.:>:> Why bother investing millions in the development of a product like a PDP if you can get it from "Natsha". Sorry if I sound too 1960-ish, but even a cheap R. Moore James Bond used that line as an ending pun. (The one with Walken)
A fun story, once looking at a football match on TV (I mean the one with the foot. Foot and the ball.. soccer!) homed in russia (Dynamo of Kiev vs ???) I was watching with a friend the slow teletyped cyrilic results overlayed on the screen in complete amazement. Not only was Russian technology not so bad but the fonts displayed were kindy familiar to us (I mean the size, the bitmap resolution not the alphabet) Then all of a suddent the computer crashed and we were even more amazed as what we saw was:
] CATALOG
Yep! They were using Apple DOS, a complete replica where the OS was in plain English and used probably a program where Cyrilic fonts in a bitmap were cut and pasted like you did in old VGA game designs.
Sometimes we even used to think the USSR was a hoax, not just it's technology but the whole idea and methods of production. Didn't it turn out to be in the end?
Not only does it use IDE where it shouldn't but the floating point performances of the UltraSPARC-IIi are pretty poor. (Used in Ultra 5 and 10) I guess the real fun of running Linux on a Sparc is when dealing with a multi processor machine and comparing the threading and all.
But Slowlaris isn't so bad, it actually pretty usefull to learn... It brings BIG MONEY in the bank account, money with which one can buy Alphas to run Linux on.
Talking about Quake and Doom to explain what QNX can do gets the idea across but compared to what QNX is trully used for, these description are pretty weak. I have seen QNX used in satellite control, telemetry, GPIB and all the wonder stuff. QNX will always have its niche guaranteed and has been around for ages, it doesn't need to make its proof like BeOS does (an other comparison which makes me uneasy).
All I can think of is they though "Hey those Slashdot kiddos only play quake, let's talk their language and avoid the serious stuff... Oh and the GPL, tell them it's not seen as good in the suit and tie environement."
A bit disapointing from them. They have a heck of a product. Also what was the heading again? Perfect symbiosis with Linux? The letter doesn't seem to coroborate this statement.
PS: Mr QNX, could you make you RTS Free CD boot from SCSI CDROMs? Somehow it doesn't look very "serious" either.
In a few words. There are plenty of H1B visa holders we all identify with, as we are all "techies". But it would violate the spirit (if any) of the immigration laws. The same will actually apply to Canada btw. People with other status or requesting a green card from the limited number deliverable per year for other reasons than "I'm smart, I can code" will be left behind. This will be the doom of the administration if they are criticized by minority or human right groups, accused in fact of favoritizing geeks over political asylum seekers. This might even spark a hell of a crisis. The governement, especialy since the 80's has alway tried to keep the lowest profile on these issues and please everyone. It is in fact 10 times harder for a "clean cut German ex-BMW engineer" with all chances in the world as some people say to get a green card than an ex-viet minh member who barely reads English. "Who are we to judge?" is the question that sums it up. And based on that principle, the US immigration does not want to hear one complaint about them being racialy discriminating or reviving nazi doctrines on selection. "So I'm not a programer like your perfect society wants, I am just myself and I just seek assylum" would be yet again a terrible blow for any government that try to be as blend and neutral as the US government.
In Singapour by contrast, they would have you out in no time... No high diplomas, not a huge ammount of money, and even something like a parking ticket at age 16 and you are good for the firing squad. Oh and I didn't even mentioned religious criterias, damn shame!
So OK, H1B visas holders are not given a fair treatment (heck, they are exploited). "But that's ok, as foreigners can't vote" will say any good politian, leaving things the way they are. Israel,I believe, works like that too...
Yeah, and it's called contracting... and then?
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In the UK it was social laws that pushed the employers to rely on contractors, so a lot of people started contracting and pushed the prices up. Still is cheaper for the employer than to pay all the social benefits for a full-timer, and as contracor you get paid extra hours in premium rates. But that was news in early 1990's. Now the trend has even reversed in some cases where employers start to err.. care about employees and what their aspiration? Still, a few job search engine here and there will show you the pros of contracting ($/h)
John K., have you ever worked for a living? You remind me of a "journalist" called Tristan Louis who was in my class. You two share the same writting style. Look for him on the Net, see what people say about him:> No offense, just a feedback.
How dumb can that get? You would think thye would provide you with a UNIX tar ball? A UNIX Sys-V pkg file? Or even the old detested CPIO archive? NOPE! The only way to get RPM for systems without RPM, that is every UNIX system apart from Linux, is to get an RPM package with the binaries compiled for your platform or an rpm with the source.
Honnestly, I remember Linux as 40 diskettes install, way back when you compiled your own stuff and Linux wasn't that "pretentious" and quite open. Today I have the feeling Linux users don't have a clue about UNIX, just look at how un-portable some of the code is today.
Why bitch like an old WWI veteran? Cause it's Sys-V that still brings the moohla home for the employed sysadmin.
pkgtools are my choice. Anyone feeling for a port?
For those impatient.. just check out the already 2 existing Xray able orbital observatories. (sometimes I wonder what would this 3 rd is for, but hey better hardware I guess)
Chandra some specs and the main pics directory.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/sts -93/cargo/chandra_cargo.html
http://chandra.nasa.gov/
XMM is found here... but no pics???
http://www.estec.esa.nl/spdwww/xmm/factsheet.htm l
http://www.estec.esa.nl/spdwww/xmm/html/spacecra ft.html
Meanwhile the International Space Station is going on... Don't forget to reserve your seats!
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html
Slashdot Mirror
Something like that... I've got the whole Minitel philosophy vs Internet philosophy all worked out in your post.
Minitel is everything online life was not supposed to be, for instance if you are looking for science related or making a research for yourself then Minitel has nothing to offer you. It was (still is?? hahah) like Compuserve or Prodigy was before their first IP connection: Like hundreds of BBSes owned by corporations with only sales pahmplets to offer and order online services.
Those who criticize Internet in favour of Minitel really have not grasped the basics of the Internet's original purpose. Funny no one mentioned TRANSPAC. IT was an X.25 network that trully held info
You normally get to the Net to escape TV and highly educational things like the Olympics, STNG or Chuck Norris...
Now the Net is sports free, and the IOC has done its worst public campaign ever. I am in a jolly good mood. It's not like the New Scientist is pulling off the Net.
Really good question..
It just depends on what they mean by all communications. All you need for phone is to take the stub sent from exchanges to exchanges and used for billing in the phone industry.
(Eg: call is routed from BT to Telstra from Telstra to... this is all done live by the switches and logged into systems for end of month billing.) This is a simple stub with the time stamp when a call is started and finished. It doesn't goble much space since most telcos want to store them for a while for accounting and thus has been made to be tiny. I just doubt they will bother to capture and encode the communications themselves, just unfeasable and the telcos will just say: Up yours. All you need is to prove X called Y at that time the day an investigation occurs (harassment, crime, fraud...)
As for News and Mail, well most main backbone acting telcos don't even use regular products and just serve a a big cache. I have seen it in a past contract. They (won't say here) even wrote their own inode based optimizations so much the flow is mental. Forget Cnews or INN here. Mail is not even worth being stored in big national backbone site as well and has to be evacuated as fast as possible. Just opening files to save the headers as they go is going to be like tapping in a high pressure oil lines. The gvt in question better provide the gear for free or subsidize and pay a rent to those who integrate that sort of tap into an already implemeted system without breaking it. In other words, even if a judge says something, they can't just implement something that would break a backbone site.
In other occasions it's just the cost of implementing the system that is not feasable, like it just happened to Russia as they imposed ISPs to pay as far as $100,000 for a system, no subsidies.
The industry just couldn't follow, the russian gvt realized how much spaced out they have been and decided to call it off.
As for storage, since all we need are stubs, choice isn't that hard. Besides with 2 Echelon sites in the UK what the hell are they crying about. Can't they just pass on requests?
"Oh we missed last week's Dr Who on BBC 1, you MOD fellows won't happen to have this on tape?"
"... err.. No no, just PAL, not NTSC..."
"Thanxs."
BTW: Word of mouth says NSA/NATO uses DLTs for Echelon. Surpised? You were expecting some obscure black box with laser beams in it?
Really... Check the German, French, Italian, Russian, Arab, Israeli, Portuguese... Press and the same articles are written like what they don't want to end up like Esperanto.
:>
This is why many many YEARS AGO they started having their own web site in their pown languages.
But still as far a technology, it's been english since the days of the first Radio Operators and Sonar/Radar specialist, Pilots... Nothing new here.
Sorry no, you are thinking about http and web browsers here... Before the hordes of infuriated "hackers" start a flame war I just suggest you read on about DARPA, ARPANET, and look for names in the early RFCs. Please slashdoters, don't start a flamefest, we can still diffuse this incident..
That sucks, but here it is:
r /h ardmangade/302-6740692-4954448
:>
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/asin/b00004ryi
I HATE when they do that! Even The Good the Bad and the Ugly is just in german. Though they might have a point as Akira is Japanese as much as A Chinese Ghost Story is Chinese, so why should the actors speak english automaticaly? (though I HATE that logic.) Anyway, good opportunity to brush up a foreign language anyway.
Try belgium or Dutch sites. Point is, there are 12 countries there so one might have it. And then there are 100+ other ones too
I'd like to say thank you for pointing to this list, as I was signing it and see the results I realised that the total number of signatures was increasing by the second. Was about 6035 at the time and rises steady like a for loop.
:> And probably a chance, whatever tiny, to show a different point of view.
It has to be the nicest Slashdot effect I have seen.
Yup! Aren't the rules of international distribution funny??? It was there in my video store and I have also seen it on shelves as a DVD. Try searching for it on German sites, it's a zone 2 DVD though... Though chip-ing is legal here, the manufacturer of the DVD player offers it as an extra service, just pay $40.
:> :>
:>
Also be VERY carefull when ordering DVDs from Europe, every country has it's own company that prints a DVD version according to their taste. Sometime you can find an american of italian movie with only the German sound track for instance. And in the next country it is available in english, turkish and hungarian. (which is the whole point of DVDs... Multilanguage.) Sometimes you will find it with macrovision encoding, sometimes the company did not even bother. In general DVD made by Warner are pretty standard, but for other imported films it is not necessary. Expect to see rogue DVD prints comming from outside the Western World sphere that are just MPEG-1 cheap ripoff or amazing 2 in one packages in 5.1 dolby.
Hey, you have NO excuses, you have The Net at your service. Remember Kusanagi's last words "The Net is vast and infinite"
BTW: There is a rumor about Star War Episode 1 on DVD in France, can someone confirm? Has it got an english soundtrack? Ooops, I should use the Net too
Don't talk like that about my Furby! Not only it is offensive to other respectable Furby owners but it is also very narrow minded!
Think about it, if Eliza once qualified as AI to accute observers from the press why can't it still be a gem of AI today? And if so, why can't this new HAL be even better... To the press that is.
Now it doesn't have to run or even be built, all it has to do is to make those cyber-whatever and men of letters write about it and it keeps a lot of people in business. Look at Nano-Technology or the F22, it's a huge success in the books or games market although the real product is not even on the shelves.
After all what did A.C. Clarke do? He just took a typewriter, and like any other SciFi writer, all he had to do is describe is "thing", an Intelligent Computer. Do those SciFi people care about building them? Do they etch boards and work hard to make something that trully proves the concept out of it? No, they just expect sacrificed generations of overworked and underpaid tech people to do it for them and then expect to take the credits for it. Gee, what an easy job it is to be a SciFi writer.
So if there is a way techies can get even for all those impractical flying cars (that would probably need FAA approval to drive) and other easy to write dreams the world is awaiting, then let it be. Tell them it's done, that you have one and that you are very happy with it. That will keep them writing and flaming each others while we laugh!
I like that Sri Lanka chap after all, a very entertaining fellow...
Hehehehe Good one there!
It turned out to be the 1st ever computer generated music in MIT Tech Square using the buzzs the instructions made by loading a whole slew of well written data.
Archie was the way to get to your files once you knew what they were called, outside of newsgroups.
Archie went down already some couple of years, but the sad thing is that its functionality hasn't really been replaced. There are search engines, but they don't concentrate on just files you can download. In fact they are cramed full of useless commercial information and such. If you look around even FTP servers seem to slow down and apart from the old sunsites, funet.fi and other good old places there number is receeding. I wonder sometimes if your modern net user even has a clue of what FTP is. (As if http file transfers were any reliable, you can't even know when your file as been received in full and discover later you only have 85% of a 20 megs Zip file.)
As for Archie, it requires a telnet connection, something the equivalent of a Masters Degree for a Windows User, no wonder Joe User hasn't got a clue about it.
It is scarry, I wonder if in 10 years there would still be anything to download at all apart from drivers and press releases. I already feel the effect of archives that just can't be found anymore, like practical good old tools called Terminate/Telemate/Zmodem and I am not even talking about old docs and the lot. Only GNU software seems to stick around.
If you are lucky enuff to be stuck with a bunch of other contractors who are as bored as you are in a maddening computer room full of noisy fans, and if the false floor is not carpeted and you have chairs with wheels... Then a certain endorphin related to the neuropeptides might kick in and get you to grab the nearest screwdriver and challenge your friends in a screwdriver joust. I know it sounds barbaric and completely stupid, but the chairs rarely go to where you want them to go in the first place and seldom with enuff momentum to cause major injuries on the opponent. It kinda hurts, but the exitment this game brings make you unaware of this. But I guess you need a couple of years of exposure to HP-UX or VMS to get to that desperate stage. HP-9000 front panels make excellent shields, but beware when you push them back in the servers as you might push the power button with it and draw the attention of 200 other employees.
You can use plastic rulers in the first weeks if the screwdriver thing scares you.
No, clothes as in it moves like fabrics. A model for the dynamic motions that your clothes have when you walk, sit, twist your torso, jump. And stop nicking lame quotes from Jurassic Park's dinner scene and putting coders instead.
A while ago in 1993-94, or when SPARCs were like 25 Mhz, Softimage in Montreal did some work on a roller coaster animation where clothes just had to look convincing. Dunno if it made it into their software as I never go it for X-mass. Of course we are still not talking games, this is just for doing adverts only. Anyone seen that at a Sigraph?
Since then Microsoft bought it, and errr... well...
Nice job, a very interesting project you have uncovered here actualy. This should even make the news at slashdot (I am serious, this stuff IS hot)
Still the questions were related to the USSR. And they are very easy to answer eg:
q) "Who were the leaders of that technology?"
a) Whoever the state appoints, they have final control.
Now did the USSR provided the people with one computer for each like a communist state is expected to do? Of course not, just a very small priviledged class which superseeds the Prols like the military or high party members Mmmm?! Strange contradictions, has the USSR gone out of the original specs carefully laid out?
So did they have a popular computing revolution like we did? The answer comming from the story of early virus writters in Bulgaria seems to say: one shared by a dozen, and all in MS-DOS, so I coded Sophia or xyz out of disgust.
Now Russia has changed... Pfewww!
Sorry, there was a confusion here. :>) crap computer made in France, I can't remember the codename for that russian one. It was published in an old out business magazine called L'Ordinateur Individuel which was a techy heaven with assembly code taking the last 40 pages. (Wooooh hoooh!)
The Alice was an other red (color
This is back in those wonderfull days where Microsoft meant Microsoft BASIC only, the label of quality for any of the 20 or so new computer makers on the block (ahem). And also where keyboards had the Error Correcting device. Basicaly it beep when you pressed a key so who wouldn't have blank or 20 times duplicate letter "p" when you entered "print" on a flat keyboard. Great fingers killing devices!
In about 1983-84 I remember one russian Apple II ripoff evaluated in a French computer magazine. The computer was named alice if I remember and had a red case. Since the Apple II was a really cool hack employing no state of the art technology and was even sold with the complete electronical diagrams (Gee I wish PC Mobos were still sold like that too instead of this 20 page ill written pamphlet full of buzzwords you get these days) Anyways, it just wasn't Woz-ardry to clone the whole system and get the parts anywhere in Asia, Europe, India.. whatever. Hong Kong and even Italy was making clones (The Lemon). The RAM were also completely ripped off of course (just go and sue the 80's Warsaw Pact). Things haven't changed for long until PC's came in and I suppose they also ripped them off once any asian country could provide them with chips. Last I heard they were looking for VMS source code right? That was in The Hacker's Crackdown and other told about a second hand market for super computer like crays using Pakistan or India as a middle man. Not hard to believe and it's a US friendly solution. :> :> Why bother investing millions in the development of a product like a PDP if you can get it from "Natsha". Sorry if I sound too 1960-ish, but even a cheap R. Moore James Bond used that line as an ending pun. (The one with Walken)
A fun story, once looking at a football match on TV (I mean the one with the foot. Foot and the ball.. soccer!) homed in russia (Dynamo of Kiev vs ???) I was watching with a friend the slow teletyped cyrilic results overlayed on the screen in complete amazement. Not only was Russian technology not so bad but the fonts displayed were kindy familiar to us (I mean the size, the bitmap resolution not the alphabet) Then all of a suddent the computer crashed and we were even more amazed as what we saw was:
] CATALOG
Yep! They were using Apple DOS, a complete replica where the OS was in plain English and used probably a program where Cyrilic fonts in a bitmap were cut and pasted like you did in old VGA game designs.
Sometimes we even used to think the USSR was a hoax, not just it's technology but the whole idea and methods of production. Didn't it turn out to be in the end?
Not only does it use IDE where it shouldn't but the floating point performances of the UltraSPARC-IIi are pretty poor. (Used in Ultra 5 and 10) I guess the real fun of running Linux on a Sparc is when dealing with a multi processor machine and comparing the threading and all. But Slowlaris isn't so bad, it actually pretty usefull to learn... It brings BIG MONEY in the bank account, money with which one can buy Alphas to run Linux on.
that just starts a bit like that and then goes:
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology...
Talking about Quake and Doom to explain what QNX can do gets the idea across but compared to what QNX is trully used for, these description are pretty weak. I have seen QNX used in satellite control, telemetry, GPIB and all the wonder stuff. QNX will always have its niche guaranteed and has been around for ages, it doesn't need to make its proof like BeOS does (an other comparison which makes me uneasy).
All I can think of is they though "Hey those Slashdot kiddos only play quake, let's talk their language and avoid the serious stuff... Oh and the GPL, tell them it's not seen as good in the suit and tie environement."
A bit disapointing from them. They have a heck of a product. Also what was the heading again? Perfect symbiosis with Linux? The letter doesn't seem to coroborate this statement.
PS: Mr QNX, could you make you RTS Free CD boot from SCSI CDROMs? Somehow it doesn't look very "serious" either.
Oh my god!! Yes!
Gee, I guess it's under this thread that we will recognise the geekiest of them all.
The GRiD compass, with it's sexy red plasma display. Always had dreams about it...
In a few words. There are plenty of H1B visa holders we all identify with, as we are all "techies". But it would violate the spirit (if any) of the immigration laws. The same will actually apply to Canada btw. People with other status or requesting a green card from the limited number deliverable per year for other reasons than "I'm smart, I can code" will be left behind. This will be the doom of the administration if they are criticized by minority or human right groups, accused in fact of favoritizing geeks over political asylum seekers. This might even spark a hell of a crisis. The governement, especialy since the 80's has alway tried to keep the lowest profile on these issues and please everyone. It is in fact 10 times harder for a "clean cut German ex-BMW engineer" with all chances in the world as some people say to get a green card than an ex-viet minh member who barely reads English. "Who are we to judge?" is the question that sums it up. And based on that principle, the US immigration does not want to hear one complaint about them being racialy discriminating or reviving nazi doctrines on selection. "So I'm not a programer like your perfect society wants, I am just myself and I just seek assylum" would be yet again a terrible blow for any government that try to be as blend and neutral as the US government.
,I believe, works like that too...
In Singapour by contrast, they would have you out in no time... No high diplomas, not a huge ammount of money, and even something like a parking ticket at age 16 and you are good for the firing squad. Oh and I didn't even mentioned religious criterias, damn shame!
So OK, H1B visas holders are not given a fair treatment (heck, they are exploited). "But that's ok, as foreigners can't vote" will say any good politian, leaving things the way they are. Israel
In the UK it was social laws that pushed the employers to rely on contractors, so a lot of people started contracting and pushed the prices up. Still is cheaper for the employer than to pay all the social benefits for a full-timer, and as contracor you get paid extra hours in premium rates. But that was news in early 1990's. Now the trend has even reversed in some cases where employers start to err.. care about employees and what their aspiration? Still, a few job search engine here and there will show you the pros of contracting ($/h)
:> No offense, just a feedback.
John K., have you ever worked for a living? You remind me of a "journalist" called Tristan Louis who was in my class. You two share the same writting style. Look for him on the Net, see what people say about him
How dumb can that get? You would think thye would provide you with a UNIX tar ball? A UNIX Sys-V pkg file? Or even the old detested CPIO archive? NOPE! The only way to get RPM for systems without RPM, that is every UNIX system apart from Linux, is to get an RPM package with the binaries compiled for your platform or an rpm with the source.
Honnestly, I remember Linux as 40 diskettes install, way back when you compiled your own stuff and Linux wasn't that "pretentious" and quite open. Today I have the feeling Linux users don't have a clue about UNIX, just look at how un-portable some of the code is today.
Why bitch like an old WWI veteran? Cause it's Sys-V that still brings the moohla home for the employed sysadmin.
pkgtools are my choice. Anyone feeling for a port?
For those impatient.. just check out the already 2 existing Xray able orbital observatories. (sometimes I wonder what would this 3 rd is for, but hey better hardware I guess)
s -93/cargo/chandra_cargo.html
m l
a ft.html
Chandra some specs and the main pics directory.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/archives/st
http://chandra.nasa.gov/
XMM is found here... but no pics???
http://www.estec.esa.nl/spdwww/xmm/factsheet.ht
http://www.estec.esa.nl/spdwww/xmm/html/spacecr
Meanwhile the International Space Station is going on... Don't forget to reserve your seats!
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/index.html