Afghanistans sliding back into chaos. And this is no ordiniary country. It has borders with six others, each of which can be a base for future criminal / terrorist bases if ignored like Afghanistan was during the soviet times. The Taliban are already recruiting people and preparing for the next round. Do not forget Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still at large and possibly quite busy.
So Afghanistan should be reconstructed and nursed till the first generation passes through school and take on the reigns of power. This is a far better investment than spending another 17 billion in the future chasing the next bin laden (or the same one?).
And then science has to be given priority. Mainly in the theoretical areas like nanotech, quantum computers and the Big Science labs like LANL and BNL. You do not become and remain free by pointing guns in all directions ready to pull the trigger. You cherish the benefits of freedom and lead civilization and technology forward. This is the only way conspiracy theorists in orthodox muslim countries realize they dont have a case. America has done very well since the WWII in this regard. Dont change it.
Think of the probability bell curve. If we can have such quark matter of that size pass through even once a millennium, we should have enough smaller samples per hour that we can detect with all the equipment looking at the skies. The giant Kamiokande and Sudbury detectors would surely detect even tiny quantities of quark clumps, should I dare say single quarks? No the skies have been clear of such powerful thingies unless a single quark can cause earthquakes, THEN we can say the chances of them hitting the earth are so small, that we only had one in 93.
Secondly there have been enough earthquakes in earth-quake recorded history that we can expect almost simultaneous quakes sometime. The source that emitted even one quark of that much power towards us is likely a stellar event, sending more than one of these quarks or quarklumps. We should have had a series of earthquakes just like the leonids.
Thirdly, as I imagine tiny centers of enormous gravity, me thinks it should really break the rigid structure of rocks and other crystal-like things. Say we have one tonne of mass, on how much area should we put it to have enough pressure to crush rocks?? I think a little under a square inch. Therefore a little circle of this ballpark size can be discovered (assuming the material was about a tonne's worth of mass. If more, we get lucky with a bigger powdery circle). The circle would be dark with a burn and so easily noticed. Then again, shockwaves would move enough earth (if the can cause an earthquake)to form little mound circle.
This is just one of those junk pieces of news that get media attention since the physics behind it is so beautiful and believable. The publics appetite is wet for major scientific discoveries after a centurys bullish discoveries and a decade's slump.
I changed and still use linux on and off, with icewm... openoffice, opera, xmms etc. For me for one, change isnt a problem. The fact that I have to switch back to windows is. If windows runs EVERYTHING and linux a subset of it, I'll use that lesser OS. Dotn get me wrong I'm feet in into free software, even developed some. I strongly suggest linux/bsd to clients over M$, but for the desktop, until everyone starts producing linux ports too, or someone finds a way to integrate wine/X/kde/ nicely, I'll stick to an option that doesnt require me to reboot and wait 30 seconds
With my beowolf underperforming, I was considering this idea:
the nodes are kept REALLY close together... maybe stacked. custom-made PCI cards have their entire 32-bit pins ganged together... However a simple and really fast (66MHz?) 32-bit latch or multiplexer is needed for each pci card. The 'bus' of 32 wires runs across all the nodes... practically this should be no more than 2 nodes. The cpu sends pci data to a specific address.
Now the pci card has one address where it listens from from the outside.. the 32 wires. On the inside it simply blasts out all pci data to other pci cards. a bit like ethernets connected to a hub. Unless we can build a switching mechanism, 2 nodes will be easy to start with. (update: will need a simple buffer to counter the lack of synchronization between the pci clocks of the nodes) So when pci data comes in from the cpu, the card blasts it out to the 32 wires.. and the other card listens if it hears its address, puts data in its buffer which on the next clock interrupts the cpu and goes to the cpu.
Other variations include using just the DMA to put the data straight into a software-allocated region of memory. Please note I'm thinking multiprocessing systems rather than this gentleman's beowulf. With shared memory IPC, we can have a ball.
Using the PCI directly has the limitation of distance... not more than 2 feet I think. But I dont remember if this was for 33MHz or 66. I am also running the risk of not understanding the workings (and other unknown limitations) of PCI.
I hereby patent these Ideas under the BSD license.
I know the answer to your problem. But I will not tell you because youre a MS reseller. See, its just like the time I had to make several vbscripts that automated many common tasks in windows2000, but refused to submit it anywhere to technet or newsgroups.
I will echo this sentiment from the above poster.. as a voice from (at least part of ) the linux community when in time of economic need, companies come running to the geek community to help them sell windows: fuck off.
I have tried lightware, maya, truspace and 3dsmax. Both TruSpace and 3Dsmax have proved to be the most useful pair in different situations for modelling. 3dsmax is powerful. truspace is quickndirty and really fast. If you are planning this for high speed applications like gaming... you should be spending more time looking for proper fileformat convertors like polytrans (too expensive?) and other tools that will polish your models for usage like removing inward-pointing faces and that will add physics areas to the model files.
Wouldnt it be nice if gimp and blender were integrated for quick and powerful texture creations?
Drivers in microcode or,machinecode would be quite small, especially if gzipped. Make the microcode a standard instead of just assembly machine code, and it will work easily for any windows linux solaris macosx computer.
Toughest part is making a standard. Once a standard companies will theoretically flock to do this..
Secondly I think it should allow for just putting in a URL that the OS could use to download the driver. This will be used by cheaper parts like special headphones or mice.
Thirdly for older products.. there should be ONE standard online database of the product numbers and serial numbers where companies would submit their drivers, and OSes would download them as needed. Strong crypto will be needed for this.
Overall this shows the severe lack of standards dominant in this industry.
If it were like RAM, voltage would have to be applied to maintain the display.. removal of voltage would mean loss of data. Did you mean EEPROM or Flash?
Please note the injunction has been Suspened not Suspended. This new verb might not mean its closely sounding couterpart, so we cannot assume the injunction has been Suspended.
Here's dictionary.com's take on this new word, and Merriam-Webster's take on it is to blurt out "The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the Dictionary search box to the right."
As a side note, statistics say most new words are borne out of careless spelling mistakes.
The very method of banning people using their ip or domain is wrong. Ive been behind multiple domains that have been banned by various channels and irc servers because ONE person did something undesirable. In Pakistan, there is a government-run ISP that hosts hundereds of thousands of people behind ONE ip address. Dont expect anyone from Pakistan at least to be a part of your channel.
As a result of such banning practices, Ive quitted using IRC in the first place. Most of my discussions are through yahoo messenger, newsgroups and mailing lists. IRC's technology, or at least its operators' mindsets arent keeping up with the technology....
And please dont give me I'm not running an ident server. I tried various ident settings, fake and real, and even tried using a personally-registered domain.. but either they ban blocks of IP or reverse domain resolutions dont work for personal domains unless you fork out $600 per month for a business internet account. Go check out other channels related to linux and ask the people in there why they arent in your channel
I think that trend was set during the tech boom when companies would hire as many as it would take and get em to work as fast as they can.
Specialization is still important but more in overall offerable services than in products. Network admins now come in customer support experience, knowledge of various Microsoft products, pager support among other things rather than just a sneaker-wielding loosely-dressed UNIX hacker.
However this trend is emphasized upon still by colleges, where beside the theory theres no breadth of knowledge offered. Students know all about relational databases, theoretically speaking, but never knew the practical differences between PostGRE or MySQL or why Oracle is so expensive. Similarly they will not be able to set up an environment for themselves to start Perl programming for Apache in Linux. They'll need a Sys admin to do that for them, while companies are looking for exactly that, all the experience rolled into one to save costs.
Savvy Colleges and Institutes will expose their students to the top 5 or more products in that region to allow them to offer more to employers nowadays. They'll be able to offer some support on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris, possibly AIX and others beside Windows 2000.
However theres never a substitute for having the experience of GWBasic and Commodore-64 and DOS 3.0, and having known all the major products and trends and quirks through the times uptil now. Thats exactly what companies are looking for by must have at least 10 years experience in the field.
We're getting more and more project-specific help calls in slashdot now. They dont belong here. A major quirk.. maybe. Massive bug.. fine. But not a plain compatiblity question like that.
Please take no offence from this.. But I usually have 3 problems a week I need to ask, and newsgroups solve them better.
Take it outside on a clear day. Hold it in your right hand. Take a deep breath. Look upwards. Take a few steps and fling it into the sky as hard as you can. Should a martian grandpa give it to its martian sub-product, I think it will prefer to keep it even if its living in a $270 per month apartment.
2) Screw in a tiny ring to it and give it to your girlfriend.
Head for the nearest IBM service center and show em the laptop. This doesnt sound like a FreeBSD problem.. hey, the same kernel that booted into installation is used to boot the OS. And if you cant boot from a floppy try removing the hdd, still cant boot? International Business Machines is at fault and not FreeBSD.
P.S. To the moderators of slashdot. How in the world did this posting ever make it?? Tone down on the free beer for a while...
A while back I needed to automate a few things without wanting to start VB or VC programming on several Win2000 pro computers. I tried perl and searched all modules, but never found one that adds a user, changes password and profile dir etc. In the end I settled on learning vbscript and after many a trial n error it worked. Since I maintain several *nix hosts and know perl well, it would be great to have either a perl2exe that works plus modules that are useful, eg ones that have ADSI equivalents. It would be even better if they could produce a perl compiler.
You sound like youre underestimating the power of your computers. I have for over a year collected 486 and pentium machines people throw away and used them on the network here. With the VERY cheap token ring cards and hubs available, I have a full lan almost for free.
Use TWM with X, well maybe youll have to fork out some for the RAM. I could get by with 32mb RAM with the latest distro (debian or slackware) but had this pain waiting for the system to work until I upgraded to a VGA card with 2mb+ mem and 64mb ram. With this combination thing will run smoothly. I also set major software to be installed over a common NFS share, which altho gets slower than the HDD, the system can get by even with 256mb hdd, Still need more speed and have highly compatible vga cards?? use netbsd and older versions of xfree86!!
Many companies here in Toronto have dumped massive amounts of Token ring cards and switches. a 16mpbs pci card manufactured in 98 costs $2.5 and a 16 port switch costs $14. Massive reason for their drivers to be ported to FreeBSD. For now i'll just let the internet thru my freebsd nat firewall, then into the debian box into the switch and over to other computers. and hey the total latency chopped off here is about 2-5ms.. acceptable
Any idea how many people from other countries try to come to USA for the work here? If theres a slump here there never was a boom there.
In short, land a contract from home ground, or get employed in a multinational and then transfer.
On a side note China, Taiwan, India and Korea are fresh markets that are slightly growing compared to most others now that are shrinking. They might have a use for you.
1) The bugs created are made during the programming and compiling phase, and prevention is better than cure. I develop some small progs in bsd and do a cc -Wall -ansi -pedantic -O to make sure things are good, and this is after a thorough lint stops giving errors and warnings.
2) Modular progs should be preferrably compiled etc on similar or the same machine.
3) And probably the most important, the programming style. Be very clear about what you're programming and decrease the places where the prog can break to a zero. Use libraries that have proven to be resilient etc and the final application no matter how complex should give little or no errors.
PS dont forget a thorough script based testing system to test the app and leave it for a few nights to test all possible inputs/loads etc.
I know whats cool and what will make you a million quickly. But you know what? I'm not telling. I'm going in it myself..
In other developments, I am writing a great book on the Tech Sector. Costs $300 but worth it. Buy two copies from me in case one gets lost.. Oh and also.. If you're deep in debt and need relief click here and here. Also Ive got great porn...
I know USB devices at least have a simple usb interface chip that has a parallel like interface to other devices. Try the semiconductor menufacturers and get their datasheets, then see if they have packaging for you (you couldnt work with BGA), then look for a distributer.
Slashdot Mirror
Afghanistans sliding back into chaos. And this is no ordiniary country. It has borders with six others, each of which can be a base for future criminal / terrorist bases if ignored like Afghanistan was during the soviet times. The Taliban are already recruiting people and preparing for the next round. Do not forget Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still at large and possibly quite busy.
So Afghanistan should be reconstructed and nursed till the first generation passes through school and take on the reigns of power. This is a far better investment than spending another 17 billion in the future chasing the next bin laden (or the same one?).
And then science has to be given priority. Mainly in the theoretical areas like nanotech, quantum computers and the Big Science labs like LANL and BNL. You do not become and remain free by pointing guns in all directions ready to pull the trigger. You cherish the benefits of freedom and lead civilization and technology forward. This is the only way conspiracy theorists in orthodox muslim countries realize they dont have a case. America has done very well since the WWII in this regard. Dont change it.
Think of the probability bell curve. If we can have such quark matter of that size pass through even once a millennium, we should have enough smaller samples per hour that we can detect with all the equipment looking at the skies. The giant Kamiokande and Sudbury detectors would surely detect even tiny quantities of quark clumps, should I dare say single quarks? No the skies have been clear of such powerful thingies unless a single quark can cause earthquakes, THEN we can say the chances of them hitting the earth are so small, that we only had one in 93.
Secondly there have been enough earthquakes in earth-quake recorded history that we can expect almost simultaneous quakes sometime. The source that emitted even one quark of that much power towards us is likely a stellar event, sending more than one of these quarks or quarklumps. We should have had a series of earthquakes just like the leonids.
Thirdly, as I imagine tiny centers of enormous gravity, me thinks it should really break the rigid structure of rocks and other crystal-like things. Say we have one tonne of mass, on how much area should we put it to have enough pressure to crush rocks?? I think a little under a square inch. Therefore a little circle of this ballpark size can be discovered (assuming the material was about a tonne's worth of mass. If more, we get lucky with a bigger powdery circle). The circle would be dark with a burn and so easily noticed. Then again, shockwaves would move enough earth (if the can cause an earthquake)to form little mound circle.
This is just one of those junk pieces of news that get media attention since the physics behind it is so beautiful and believable. The publics appetite is wet for major scientific discoveries after a centurys bullish discoveries and a decade's slump.
I changed and still use linux on and off, with icewm... openoffice, opera, xmms etc. For me for one, change isnt a problem. The fact that I have to switch back to windows is. If windows runs EVERYTHING and linux a subset of it, I'll use that lesser OS. Dotn get me wrong I'm feet in into free software, even developed some. I strongly suggest linux/bsd to clients over M$, but for the desktop, until everyone starts producing linux ports too, or someone finds a way to integrate wine/X/kde/ nicely, I'll stick to an option that doesnt require me to reboot and wait 30 seconds
With my beowolf underperforming, I was considering this idea:
the nodes are kept REALLY close together... maybe stacked. custom-made PCI cards have their entire 32-bit pins ganged together... However a simple and really fast (66MHz?) 32-bit latch or multiplexer is needed for each pci card. The 'bus' of 32 wires runs across all the nodes... practically this should be no more than 2 nodes. The cpu sends pci data to a specific address.
Now the pci card has one address where it listens from from the outside.. the 32 wires. On the inside it simply blasts out all pci data to other pci cards. a bit like ethernets connected to a hub. Unless we can build a switching mechanism, 2 nodes will be easy to start with. (update: will need a simple buffer to counter the lack of synchronization between the pci clocks of the nodes) So when pci data comes in from the cpu, the card blasts it out to the 32 wires.. and the other card listens if it hears its address, puts data in its buffer which on the next clock interrupts the cpu and goes to the cpu.
Other variations include using just the DMA to put the data straight into a software-allocated region of memory. Please note I'm thinking multiprocessing systems rather than this gentleman's beowulf. With shared memory IPC, we can have a ball.
Using the PCI directly has the limitation of distance... not more than 2 feet I think. But I dont remember if this was for 33MHz or 66. I am also running the risk of not understanding the workings (and other unknown limitations) of PCI.
I hereby patent these Ideas under the BSD license.
I know the answer to your problem. But I will not tell you because youre a MS reseller. See, its just like the time I had to make several vbscripts that automated many common tasks in windows2000, but refused to submit it anywhere to technet or newsgroups.
I will echo this sentiment from the above poster.. as a voice from (at least part of ) the linux community when in time of economic need, companies come running to the geek community to help them sell windows: fuck off.
I have tried lightware, maya, truspace and 3dsmax. Both TruSpace and 3Dsmax have proved to be the most useful pair in different situations for modelling. 3dsmax is powerful. truspace is quickndirty and really fast. If you are planning this for high speed applications like gaming... you should be spending more time looking for proper fileformat convertors like polytrans (too expensive?) and other tools that will polish your models for usage like removing inward-pointing faces and that will add physics areas to the model files.
Wouldnt it be nice if gimp and blender were integrated for quick and powerful texture creations?
Drivers in microcode or ,machinecode would be quite small, especially if gzipped. Make the microcode a standard instead of just assembly machine code, and it will work easily for any windows linux solaris macosx computer.
Toughest part is making a standard. Once a standard companies will theoretically flock to do this..
Secondly I think it should allow for just putting in a URL that the OS could use to download the driver. This will be used by cheaper parts like special headphones or mice.
Thirdly for older products.. there should be ONE standard online database of the product numbers and serial numbers where companies would submit their drivers, and OSes would download them as needed. Strong crypto will be needed for this.
Overall this shows the severe lack of standards dominant in this industry.
If it were like RAM, voltage would have to be applied to maintain the display.. removal of voltage would mean loss of data. Did you mean EEPROM or Flash?
Please note the injunction has been Suspened not Suspended. This new verb might not mean its closely sounding couterpart, so we cannot assume the injunction has been Suspended.
Here's dictionary.com's take on this new word, and Merriam-Webster's take on it is to blurt out "The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the Dictionary search box to the right."
As a side note, statistics say most new words are borne out of careless spelling mistakes.
The very method of banning people using their ip or domain is wrong. Ive been behind multiple domains that have been banned by various channels and irc servers because ONE person did something undesirable. In Pakistan, there is a government-run ISP that hosts hundereds of thousands of people behind ONE ip address. Dont expect anyone from Pakistan at least to be a part of your channel.
As a result of such banning practices, Ive quitted using IRC in the first place. Most of my discussions are through yahoo messenger, newsgroups and mailing lists. IRC's technology, or at least its operators' mindsets arent keeping up with the technology....
And please dont give me I'm not running an ident server. I tried various ident settings, fake and real, and even tried using a personally-registered domain.. but either they ban blocks of IP or reverse domain resolutions dont work for personal domains unless you fork out $600 per month for a business internet account. Go check out other channels related to linux and ask the people in there why they arent in your channel
I think that trend was set during the tech boom when companies would hire as many as it would take and get em to work as fast as they can.
Specialization is still important but more in overall offerable services than in products. Network admins now come in customer support experience, knowledge of various Microsoft products, pager support among other things rather than just a sneaker-wielding loosely-dressed UNIX hacker.
However this trend is emphasized upon still by colleges, where beside the theory theres no breadth of knowledge offered. Students know all about relational databases, theoretically speaking, but never knew the practical differences between PostGRE or MySQL or why Oracle is so expensive. Similarly they will not be able to set up an environment for themselves to start Perl programming for Apache in Linux. They'll need a Sys admin to do that for them, while companies are looking for exactly that, all the experience rolled into one to save costs.
Savvy Colleges and Institutes will expose their students to the top 5 or more products in that region to allow them to offer more to employers nowadays. They'll be able to offer some support on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris, possibly AIX and others beside Windows 2000.
However theres never a substitute for having the experience of GWBasic and Commodore-64 and DOS 3.0, and having known all the major products and trends and quirks through the times uptil now. Thats exactly what companies are looking for by must have at least 10 years experience in the field.
In case noone noticed. Its not an STM 486. STM planned to start making 486s but doesnt produce them now. The site says its an Intel(r) Embedded 486.
We're getting more and more project-specific help calls in slashdot now. They dont belong here. A major quirk.. maybe. Massive bug.. fine. But not a plain compatiblity question like that.
Please take no offence from this.. But I usually have 3 problems a week I need to ask, and newsgroups solve them better.
Take it outside on a clear day. Hold it in your right hand. Take a deep breath. Look upwards. Take a few steps and fling it into the sky as hard as you can. Should a martian grandpa give it to its martian sub-product, I think it will prefer to keep it even if its living in a $270 per month apartment.
2) Screw in a tiny ring to it and give it to your girlfriend.
Head for the nearest IBM service center and show em the laptop. This doesnt sound like a FreeBSD problem.. hey, the same kernel that booted into installation is used to boot the OS. And if you cant boot from a floppy try removing the hdd, still cant boot? International Business Machines is at fault and not FreeBSD.
P.S. To the moderators of slashdot. How in the world did this posting ever make it?? Tone down on the free beer for a while...
They just have the 3d drivers for the most open cards else for cards that had simple 3d implementations in xfree86 like s3 and friends.
A while back I needed to automate a few things without wanting to start VB or VC programming on several Win2000 pro computers. I tried perl and searched all modules, but never found one that adds a user, changes password and profile dir etc. In the end I settled on learning vbscript and after many a trial n error it worked. Since I maintain several *nix hosts and know perl well, it would be great to have either a perl2exe that works plus modules that are useful, eg ones that have ADSI equivalents. It would be even better if they could produce a perl compiler.
You sound like youre underestimating the power of your computers. I have for over a year collected 486 and pentium machines people throw away and used them on the network here. With the VERY cheap token ring cards and hubs available, I have a full lan almost for free.
Use TWM with X, well maybe youll have to fork out some for the RAM. I could get by with 32mb RAM with the latest distro (debian or slackware) but had this pain waiting for the system to work until I upgraded to a VGA card with 2mb+ mem and 64mb ram. With this combination thing will run smoothly. I also set major software to be installed over a common NFS share, which altho gets slower than the HDD, the system can get by even with 256mb hdd, Still need more speed and have highly compatible vga cards?? use netbsd and older versions of xfree86!!
Many companies here in Toronto have dumped massive amounts of Token ring cards and switches. a 16mpbs pci card manufactured in 98 costs $2.5 and a 16 port switch costs $14. Massive reason for their drivers to be ported to FreeBSD. For now i'll just let the internet thru my freebsd nat firewall, then into the debian box into the switch and over to other computers. and hey the total latency chopped off here is about 2-5ms.. acceptable
dont mess the corporate up now for us geeks
A diamond is a girl's best friend.
becomes...
That diamond was the girls best friend.
You could even argue with vampire wannabes:
But a diamond is forever!
Or you could convert a "hard on" to the hardest substance known. I wonder if the nerves will be preserved.
So having a fat mother can be beneficial now.
Arent graveyard keepers running on the streets celebrating now?
What did the lady say to the diamond as she was wearing it? "up yours"
Any idea how many people from other countries try to come to USA for the work here? If theres a slump here there never was a boom there.
In short, land a contract from home ground, or get employed in a multinational and then transfer.
On a side note China, Taiwan, India and Korea are fresh markets that are slightly growing compared to most others now that are shrinking. They might have a use for you.
1) The bugs created are made during the programming and compiling phase, and prevention is better than cure. I develop some small progs in bsd and do a cc -Wall -ansi -pedantic -O to make sure things are good, and this is after a thorough lint stops giving errors and warnings.
2) Modular progs should be preferrably compiled etc on similar or the same machine.
3) And probably the most important, the programming style. Be very clear about what you're programming and decrease the places where the prog can break to a zero. Use libraries that have proven to be resilient etc and the final application no matter how complex should give little or no errors.
PS dont forget a thorough script based testing system to test the app and leave it for a few nights to test all possible inputs/loads etc.
Hope this helps.
I know whats cool and what will make you a million quickly. But you know what? I'm not telling. I'm going in it myself..
In other developments, I am writing a great book on the Tech Sector. Costs $300 but worth it. Buy two copies from me in case one gets lost.. Oh and also.. If you're deep in debt and need relief click here and here. Also Ive got great porn...
I know USB devices at least have a simple usb interface chip that has a parallel like interface to other devices. Try the semiconductor menufacturers and get their datasheets, then see if they have packaging for you (you couldnt work with BGA), then look for a distributer.