The VAR for which I was the Tech Support Department became a reseller for SUN, NOVEL, and AutoCAD during one busy six month growth spurt. Most of my training consisted of "here's the manual, read it and explain it to us tomorrow". When they handed me the document crate [ about 10,000 pages ] for UNIX and the Sun system I suggested that a bit of formal training might be in order. I got a 4 day System Admin class from SUN that included an afternoon on the X-window system.
By 1988 we were networking PCs and Sparcstations using PCNFS and running X11 clients on the PCs using Hummingbird software. That allowed us to move the workstation out of the engineers office and into the server room where no one person could horde the physical machine by virtue of it being located on his/her desktop. It was a giant step backward for personal computing but a leap forward in productivity since the grunts didn't have to wait for the boss to leave for lunch in order to get into his office to use the decent computer.
I also have one of the flat, credit union issued debit cards. Not only can it not be imprinted, it plainly states, in bold red letters across the top of the back of the card," FOR ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS ONLY". If you don't swipe the card, submit, and get approval at the point and time of purchase, you aren't getting paid.
I've been driving for over 50 years and I have never seen a vehicle with a sideview mirror. It's no wonder we're going to have to require backup cameras on every vehicle what with all you idoits aiming your mirrors to see sideways.
I was reared on a farm and learned to drive on tractors and large trucks. In a farm truck, when you look in the center mounted rear view mirror all you see is the livestock staring back at you from the bed of the truck, or the bed of the truck itself if you're hauling grain. You learn to backup using the outside rearview mirrors. They're aimed down the side of the vehicle and give you at least the idea of where the rear wheels are even if you don't actually see them. You draw an immaginary line for those wheels to follow and stear the truck along it. But you never look back, only in the mirror. With a 30 foot long vehicle the front end can swing 20 feet to either side while you're lining the backend up to a loading dock or the barn door. After you run over a few outbuildings and your favorite motorcycle because you weren't looking where the front end was going you learn to pay attention to both ends. You NEVER face backward to back up a vehicle.
So what's with this thing about sideview mirrors? Yes, I know about those little round convex stick on things that let you see the people who insist on driving in your blind spot and who deserve to get run over when somebody bigger than them changes lanes. I have them. They came with the aftermarket turn signals mounted on my mirrors. The only thing I hate worse than having to share the road with idiot drivers is having to fill out insurance claims after I run over one of them. Would I like to have a camera to replace the blind spot mirrors. NO. What I'd like is some type of short range collision avoidance system that, when I turn on my blinker, it checks for a clear path, and gives me a verbal OK or tells me to WAIT. I don't need anything that distracts my eyes while I'm trying to navigate a path between vehicles moving at different speeds of upwards of 80 miles an hour.
If Microsoft wants me to ever run anything windows on any of my computers EVER again they will have to pay for the priviledge. I had no choice but to deal with their monopoly for twenty years when I was employed but, now that I'm retired, I don't have to put up with them anymore. I'll build my next computer from discrete transistors if I have to before I buy another machine pre-installed with windows and all the OEM bloatware that comes with them these days.
I studied Physics and Chemistry in the College of Science at the University of Southern Mississippi from 1969 to 1973. Our degree requirements called for passing either a proficiency test in one of several 'scientifically' relevant foreign languages or passing one in FORTRAN. I took one semester of FORTRAN and passed the test. I went on to minor in computer science.
In 15 years of formal education in the English language no one ever mentioned the word 'syntax'. We diagrammed sentences and conjugated verbs and identified parts of speech but no one ever explained the mechanics of what or why we were doing it. It was just English and it was necessary. Two weeks into computer programming and I knew WHY it was necessary. Understanding the structure of language, be it a computer language or a human one, I'm better equiped to learn new ones of either type.
Are learning to program and learning a foreign language equlivant? NO. We talk to machines: we communicate in a foreign language.
Back in the days of yore [ late 60's ] I was a physics / computer science student who worked part time as a newspaper photographer. The newspaper got a newfangled computerized typesetter that used punched paper tape for it's input. The bootstrap program was about 10' of 1" wide paper tape. The machine crashed and had to be rebooted at least fifteen to twenty times a day. We didn't have a duplicator for punched tape and we were having to re-punch the entire program every five or six days. Until we found a punch that handled a thin stainless steel tape that the reader would accept. I still have several short programs that were read hundreds of times and have been sitting on a shelf for over 40 years. I can still read the data on the tape manually bit by bit and, if a machine existed, I'm sure the tape would still work fine. I'm pretty sure it'll still be both machine and human readable after another 500 years assuming it doesn't get hot enough to fuse the reel together or get exposed to enough radiation to make the stainless steel brittle. Program code was straight octal machine code and text was encoded as 7 bit ASCII with an 8th entropy bit.
for having gotten into this situation in the first place. Any jury of your peers will rule your death a suicide. Your life insurance isn't going to pay off. When you call home and say, "Houston, We have a problem." they're going to say,"No, we have a cancled program. You have some free time on your hands. Enjoy the ride."
Despite public opinion, government policy, or personal preference, this universe is only equipped with a single source of energy and it happens to be Nuclear. We can either obtain our energy needs directly from the natural sources of fusion (stars) by using photo cells, indirectly by using wind, wave, hydro or stored biomass carbon fuel, or we can produce it directly ourselves in fission or fusion reactors. Our current solar technologies,fully exploited, are not capable of supplying the energy needs of 7 billion plus humans. We will, of necessity, require nuclear fission to generate the balance of the power to maintain a minimum standard of living for the worlds population for the foreseeable future. We do not, however, have to locate that generating capacity inside the Earth's gravity well/environmental cocoon. We have the technology to place that generating capacity either in an unstable high earth orbit ( so that it flies away from the Earth if the orbit decays ) or on the Moon. The energy can be transmitted back to earth by laser, microwave, or as chemical reagents ready to be recombined into harmless byproducts ( like water ). We can, and should, be moving in this direction as a matter of policy. We aren't because no one has figured out a way to turn a profit by doing it.
How is it we can have several billion dollars worth of Remotely Operated Vehicles running around a mile away from their operators without some effective swarm controller software installed?
I realize that with a dozen ROV's we're probably talking at least half a dozen different operating systems from as many different vendors but it ought to be possible to overlay some basic swarm intelligence onto the top of these bots to keep them out of each others way. It might just increase the efficiency of the operation in the process as the swarm intelligence reallocates tasks based on which bot was nearest to the task, or best equipped, or could travel fastest/safest to transport material.
I'd like to just get it somewhere close and I don't much think a second or two is gonna help. I'm just outside of Chattanooga, TN at about longitude -84.90037 or physically at GMT -5.66 hours. [-84.90037 degrees / 15 degrees/hour ~= -5.66 hours ]. Legally, thanks to the idiots we elect to congress and the lobbyists who love them, my civil clock has to be set to GMT -4 for most of the year. In the cold of winter my sundial and the atomic clock only differ by about 40 minuets. The rest of the year the sun reaches zenith between 1:40 and 1:50. I can't bring myself to add post meridian to the time that the sun is actually at meridian. And 1:42 NOON just doesn't quit sound right either.
I think we should set aside leap seconds and make them the only time during the year that Congress is allowed to vote on anything that has to do with physical constants like time and distance.
I have a reasonably fast DSL connection and use (but don't abuse) what I'm paying for. I used to be an Ancestry.com subscriber (for one year). They are, without exception, the most overpriced, under-powered subscription service I have ever used. My actual, tested bandwidth this morning is 6287 kbps which is a little below my average speed. My typical connection and download speed from ancestry.com never exceeded 256 kbps and was more often in the range of 90-150. This could be due to any number of causes:
All of their outgoing connections to the net are still 56K modems. I was actually lucky and snagged several of them in parallel.
Someone at my ISP doesn't like Ancestry.com and intentionally throttles their connections.
I'm on a branch of the net with ten million little old ladies who were trying to use ancestry.com at the same time and we bogged down the router.
Ancestry.com is simply incapable of pushing data fast enough to keep up with their marketing department.
Whatever the cause, I found that I could actually drive to a library and look up the information in books ( sacrilege! ) quicker than I could get it online from these folks.
Yes, you can write major applications using excel and VBA. You can also build houses using legos. Neither is a very efficient approach.
When I started as a freshman Physics student in 1969 we were required to take Fortran. After almost 40 years of working in Scientific Applications Programing I'm convinced that introductory programing should be taught using pseudo code so that a student learns concepts and structure separately from the syntax of any given language. Once you know the logic of programing, and the particular problem that you need to solve, then you can make an intelligent choice about what tool (language) to use to solve the problem. The one that you are most familiar with is NOT necessarily the best tool available.
We could build a voluntary enrollment bot net that could be loaned to the government in time of crisis. Other times we could use it for basic research or rent it out for LEGAL super computer use.
It might also come in handy for keeping our own government under our control in case some over zealous patriot gets their hands on the military's control equipment.
for the providers of the infrastructure are the only logical reasons for a regionalized internet.
We're all on the same boat here. If you don't don't like being around all these other people, your only choices are to die or get off the planet. Otherwise, you have to learn to get along. You can't go isolating yourself.
I visit sites outside the USA daily. I like to see what other cultures think, especially about the idoits that run this country. I buy and sell stuff online that has a very small niche market. A lot of that market is overseas. I couldn't reach them without a world-wide web.
I grew up with one-quarter of my face missing in action. When I was two, doctors removed the upper left quadrant of my face including the eyelids and the skin down to the bottom of my nose. Twenty operations and fifteen years later I finally got working (but not very pretty) eyelids again. The person undergoing the face transplant has already suffered the psychological impact of loosing their original face and the impact of being treated like some kind of monster. The trauma of getting a different face can't possibly be any worse.
The worst thing that could happen is that the engineer goes to jail and they no longer need a license for your software.
I normally write under a fixed sum contract and the company that hires me owns the code. I make a tidy income maintaining the code as the company upgrades to new hardware.
If I sign a contract to produce code that implements a given algorithm and there is a hidden flaw that appears later, the engineer goes to jail and the company sues me. Not exactly the way I want to spend my retirement fund.
Humorous but true. I've spent 25 years writing engineering (and other scientific applications) software. The development cycle is LONG because the problems being addressed are complex. Most any idiot can program a text processor. Programming a complex mathematical analysis that guarantees the bridge won't fall down in a stiff wind is a bit harder. It requires a bit of skill and esoteric knowledge. Having that knowledge, I whore my services out to the highest bidder. Companies pay me to design programs that make their engineers more efficient. Why would they want to share that knowledge with the competition?
There is also liability involved when doing engineering software.
But OpenSource is alive and well in this arena.
http://www.opendwg.org/ is just one example.
You would think that a bunch of geeks could at least tell time. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 12AM OR 12 PM. It's NOON and MIDNIGHT. Just because your clock shows the am & pm indicator does not make it right!
So, what you are saying is God believes in the theory of evolution?
I asked God this very question. She said She didn't give a damn what we called it but that She wasn't about to reinvent life from scratch every time She needed a new critter to fill a niche somewhere.
My car goes sub-oribital every day. Anything under 17.5k mph is suborbital. The question is: How high up did your rocket get. And did you have some way to measure the altitude?
These guys had multiple GPS units broadcasting back the position of their payload.
The material that in not being properly guarded in NOT lowlevel waste. It is highly-enriched, bomb-grade uranium. Something like 400 metric tons in Oak Ridge (Y12) alone. It does not take a genius to detonate this material. It doesn't even require an implosion. The uranium bomb (little boy) droped on Japan in WWII was a gun assembly weapon. It fired a conical bullet of enriched uranium down a six foot barrel and into a target with a matching hole. It worked quite nicely. Anyone with a few 10 pound blocks of this stuff can build a bomb. The only safe thing to do with it is dilute it back to less than a few percent u235.
It's not the stability of the OS that makes me reformat the drive ever two or three months. It's simply easier to zap everything that has accumulated and start over than to uninstall every piece of junk that I've tested and rejected.
I have an image cd that I restore that has all the OS with updates and patches and the following stuff that helps me make a living:
Firefox -- Browser and Java VM
Thunderbird -- Email and news reader
AutoCAD -- Gotta do something productive to pay the bills
Visual Studio-- more production level software
The Gimp and CorelDraw -- for heavy lifting in the graphics department.
HAPEdit--great freeware editor/project manager for HTML,ASP,PHP, and all the other text files for managing a web site.
CutePDF virtual printer--so I can debug print output without killing off another forest
Adobe Reader-- I have to read the PDF printer output and see if it actually fit on a normal sheet size.
PowerArchiver -- almost universal compress/decompress program
WinAmp--stress managment
Yes, coriolis. Going fast in a straight line doesn't work well in a rotating coordinate system. The natrual tendency (north of the equator) is to veer to the left. There's less work involved if you turn left. NASCAR is devoted to racing without having to do much physical exertion--otherwise, they'd peddle the cars. Therefore, they turn left.
Slashdot Mirror
The VAR for which I was the Tech Support Department became a reseller for SUN, NOVEL, and AutoCAD during one busy six month growth spurt. Most of my training consisted of "here's the manual, read it and explain it to us tomorrow". When they handed me the document crate [ about 10,000 pages ] for UNIX and the Sun system I suggested that a bit of formal training might be in order. I got a 4 day System Admin class from SUN that included an afternoon on the X-window system.
By 1988 we were networking PCs and Sparcstations using PCNFS and running X11 clients on the PCs using Hummingbird software. That allowed us to move the workstation out of the engineers office and into the server room where no one person could horde the physical machine by virtue of it being located on his/her desktop. It was a giant step backward for personal computing but a leap forward in productivity since the grunts didn't have to wait for the boss to leave for lunch in order to get into his office to use the decent computer.
I also have one of the flat, credit union issued debit cards. Not only can it not be imprinted, it plainly states, in bold red letters across the top of the back of the card," FOR ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS ONLY". If you don't swipe the card, submit, and get approval at the point and time of purchase, you aren't getting paid.
I've been driving for over 50 years and I have never seen a vehicle with a sideview mirror. It's no wonder we're going to have to require backup cameras on every vehicle what with all you idoits aiming your mirrors to see sideways.
I was reared on a farm and learned to drive on tractors and large trucks. In a farm truck, when you look in the center mounted rear view mirror all you see is the livestock staring back at you from the bed of the truck, or the bed of the truck itself if you're hauling grain. You learn to backup using the outside rearview mirrors. They're aimed down the side of the vehicle and give you at least the idea of where the rear wheels are even if you don't actually see them. You draw an immaginary line for those wheels to follow and stear the truck along it. But you never look back, only in the mirror. With a 30 foot long vehicle the front end can swing 20 feet to either side while you're lining the backend up to a loading dock or the barn door. After you run over a few outbuildings and your favorite motorcycle because you weren't looking where the front end was going you learn to pay attention to both ends. You NEVER face backward to back up a vehicle.
So what's with this thing about sideview mirrors? Yes, I know about those little round convex stick on things that let you see the people who insist on driving in your blind spot and who deserve to get run over when somebody bigger than them changes lanes. I have them. They came with the aftermarket turn signals mounted on my mirrors. The only thing I hate worse than having to share the road with idiot drivers is having to fill out insurance claims after I run over one of them. Would I like to have a camera to replace the blind spot mirrors. NO. What I'd like is some type of short range collision avoidance system that, when I turn on my blinker, it checks for a clear path, and gives me a verbal OK or tells me to WAIT. I don't need anything that distracts my eyes while I'm trying to navigate a path between vehicles moving at different speeds of upwards of 80 miles an hour.
If Microsoft wants me to ever run anything windows on any of my computers EVER again they will have to pay for the priviledge. I had no choice but to deal with their monopoly for twenty years when I was employed but, now that I'm retired, I don't have to put up with them anymore. I'll build my next computer from discrete transistors if I have to before I buy another machine pre-installed with windows and all the OEM bloatware that comes with them these days.
I studied Physics and Chemistry in the College of Science at the University of Southern Mississippi from 1969 to 1973. Our degree requirements called for passing either a proficiency test in one of several 'scientifically' relevant foreign languages or passing one in FORTRAN. I took one semester of FORTRAN and passed the test. I went on to minor in computer science.
In 15 years of formal education in the English language no one ever mentioned the word 'syntax'. We diagrammed sentences and conjugated verbs and identified parts of speech but no one ever explained the mechanics of what or why we were doing it. It was just English and it was necessary. Two weeks into computer programming and I knew WHY it was necessary. Understanding the structure of language, be it a computer language or a human one, I'm better equiped to learn new ones of either type.
Are learning to program and learning a foreign language equlivant? NO. We talk to machines: we communicate in a foreign language.
Back in the days of yore [ late 60's ] I was a physics / computer science student who worked part time as a newspaper photographer. The newspaper got a newfangled computerized typesetter that used punched paper tape for it's input. The bootstrap program was about 10' of 1" wide paper tape. The machine crashed and had to be rebooted at least fifteen to twenty times a day. We didn't have a duplicator for punched tape and we were having to re-punch the entire program every five or six days. Until we found a punch that handled a thin stainless steel tape that the reader would accept. I still have several short programs that were read hundreds of times and have been sitting on a shelf for over 40 years. I can still read the data on the tape manually bit by bit and, if a machine existed, I'm sure the tape would still work fine. I'm pretty sure it'll still be both machine and human readable after another 500 years assuming it doesn't get hot enough to fuse the reel together or get exposed to enough radiation to make the stainless steel brittle. Program code was straight octal machine code and text was encoded as 7 bit ASCII with an 8th entropy bit.
for having gotten into this situation in the first place. Any jury of your peers will rule your death a suicide. Your life insurance isn't going to pay off. When you call home and say, "Houston, We have a problem." they're going to say,"No, we have a cancled program. You have some free time on your hands. Enjoy the ride."
Despite public opinion, government policy, or personal preference, this universe is only equipped with a single source of energy and it happens to be Nuclear. We can either obtain our energy needs directly from the natural sources of fusion (stars) by using photo cells, indirectly by using wind, wave, hydro or stored biomass carbon fuel, or we can produce it directly ourselves in fission or fusion reactors. Our current solar technologies,fully exploited, are not capable of supplying the energy needs of 7 billion plus humans. We will, of necessity, require nuclear fission to generate the balance of the power to maintain a minimum standard of living for the worlds population for the foreseeable future. We do not, however, have to locate that generating capacity inside the Earth's gravity well/environmental cocoon. We have the technology to place that generating capacity either in an unstable high earth orbit ( so that it flies away from the Earth if the orbit decays ) or on the Moon. The energy can be transmitted back to earth by laser, microwave, or as chemical reagents ready to be recombined into harmless byproducts ( like water ). We can, and should, be moving in this direction as a matter of policy. We aren't because no one has figured out a way to turn a profit by doing it.
she'd say "If you just keep standing there you're gonna take root". She always was ahead of the curve when it came to stuff like this.
How is it we can have several billion dollars worth of Remotely Operated Vehicles running around a mile away from their operators without some effective swarm controller software installed?
I realize that with a dozen ROV's we're probably talking at least half a dozen different operating systems from as many different vendors but it ought to be possible to overlay some basic swarm intelligence onto the top of these bots to keep them out of each others way. It might just increase the efficiency of the operation in the process as the swarm intelligence reallocates tasks based on which bot was nearest to the task, or best equipped, or could travel fastest/safest to transport material.
I'd like to just get it somewhere close and I don't much think a second or two is gonna help. I'm just outside of Chattanooga, TN at about longitude -84.90037 or physically at GMT -5.66 hours. [-84.90037 degrees / 15 degrees/hour ~= -5.66 hours ]. Legally, thanks to the idiots we elect to congress and the lobbyists who love them, my civil clock has to be set to GMT -4 for most of the year. In the cold of winter my sundial and the atomic clock only differ by about 40 minuets. The rest of the year the sun reaches zenith between 1:40 and 1:50. I can't bring myself to add post meridian to the time that the sun is actually at meridian. And 1:42 NOON just doesn't quit sound right either.
I think we should set aside leap seconds and make them the only time during the year that Congress is allowed to vote on anything that has to do with physical constants like time and distance.
Whatever the cause, I found that I could actually drive to a library and look up the information in books ( sacrilege! ) quicker than I could get it online from these folks.
Do I get to pick which relative? If I pay extra will he kidnap two of them? just curious how this works.
Yes, you can write major applications using excel and VBA. You can also build houses using legos. Neither is a very efficient approach.
When I started as a freshman Physics student in 1969 we were required to take Fortran. After almost 40 years of working in Scientific Applications Programing I'm convinced that introductory programing should be taught using pseudo code so that a student learns concepts and structure separately from the syntax of any given language. Once you know the logic of programing, and the particular problem that you need to solve, then you can make an intelligent choice about what tool (language) to use to solve the problem. The one that you are most familiar with is NOT necessarily the best tool available.
We could build a voluntary enrollment bot net that could be loaned to the government in time of crisis. Other times we could use it for basic research or rent it out for LEGAL super computer use.
It might also come in handy for keeping our own government under our control in case some over zealous patriot gets their hands on the military's control equipment.
We're all on the same boat here. If you don't don't like being around all these other people, your only choices are to die or get off the planet. Otherwise, you have to learn to get along. You can't go isolating yourself.
I visit sites outside the USA daily. I like to see what other cultures think, especially about the idoits that run this country. I buy and sell stuff online that has a very small niche market. A lot of that market is overseas. I couldn't reach them without a world-wide web.
I grew up with one-quarter of my face missing in action. When I was two, doctors removed the upper left quadrant of my face including the eyelids and the skin down to the bottom of my nose. Twenty operations and fifteen years later I finally got working (but not very pretty) eyelids again. The person undergoing the face transplant has already suffered the psychological impact of loosing their original face and the impact of being treated like some kind of monster. The trauma of getting a different face can't possibly be any worse.
I normally write under a fixed sum contract and the company that hires me owns the code. I make a tidy income maintaining the code as the company upgrades to new hardware.
If I sign a contract to produce code that implements a given algorithm and there is a hidden flaw that appears later, the engineer goes to jail and the company sues me. Not exactly the way I want to spend my retirement fund.
There is also liability involved when doing engineering software.
But OpenSource is alive and well in this arena. http://www.opendwg.org/ is just one example.
You would think that a bunch of geeks could at least tell time. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 12AM OR 12 PM. It's NOON and MIDNIGHT. Just because your clock shows the am & pm indicator does not make it right!
I asked God this very question. She said She didn't give a damn what we called it but that She wasn't about to reinvent life from scratch every time She needed a new critter to fill a niche somewhere.
These guys had multiple GPS units broadcasting back the position of their payload.
The material that in not being properly guarded in NOT lowlevel waste. It is highly-enriched, bomb-grade uranium. Something like 400 metric tons in Oak Ridge (Y12) alone. It does not take a genius to detonate this material. It doesn't even require an implosion. The uranium bomb (little boy) droped on Japan in WWII was a gun assembly weapon. It fired a conical bullet of enriched uranium down a six foot barrel and into a target with a matching hole. It worked quite nicely. Anyone with a few 10 pound blocks of this stuff can build a bomb. The only safe thing to do with it is dilute it back to less than a few percent u235.
I have an image cd that I restore that has all the OS with updates and patches and the following stuff that helps me make a living:
Firefox -- Browser and Java VM
Thunderbird -- Email and news reader
AutoCAD -- Gotta do something productive to pay the bills
Visual Studio-- more production level software
The Gimp and CorelDraw -- for heavy lifting in the graphics department.
HAPEdit--great freeware editor/project manager for HTML,ASP,PHP, and all the other text files for managing a web site.
CutePDF virtual printer--so I can debug print output without killing off another forest
Adobe Reader-- I have to read the PDF printer output and see if it actually fit on a normal sheet size.
PowerArchiver -- almost universal compress/decompress program
WinAmp--stress managment
Yes, coriolis. Going fast in a straight line doesn't work well in a rotating coordinate system. The natrual tendency (north of the equator) is to veer to the left. There's less work involved if you turn left. NASCAR is devoted to racing without having to do much physical exertion--otherwise, they'd peddle the cars. Therefore, they turn left.