Disclaimer: I'm the lead developer of Ren'Py, one of the projects that will benefit from this sale.
I think this is basically right.
Humble's model is that it runs pay-what-you want sales, with the proceeds being split between themselves, developers, and charities. In the current ebook bundle, the charities are SFWA and Openreader. In the weekly sale, the charities are open source projects - FlashDevelop, OpenFL, Haxe, and Ren'Py. So when you buy through this sale, you support open source projects in the same way that if you buy the book bundle, you support SFWA and Openreader.
An idea I had was to try to figure out a way to make pirating difficult enough that people would prefer to purchase the real version. I'd also like a way to do this that doesn't overly inconvenience legit users - and allows them to continue using the program even if the entity that created it in the first place went out of business. Note that I haven't actually tried this method in practice - it's at the idea stage right now.
The idea is that each download comes with some sort of keyfile that lets it run. When started, it contacts the server and asks for permission to run. If the server denys permission, the program deletes the keyfile, and refuses to run in the future. If it can't contact the server due to network problems, it waits several minutes and then runs. Otherwise, it runs normally.
The developer would then monitor places that may host pirated versions of the software. When he or she sees a pirated key, he adds it to a server-based block list. This causes the top of the google rankings to fill with broken versions of the software - making it increasingly more difficult to find an illegitimate copy - and hopefully pushing people to buy the legit version.
On the other hand, if the creator of the software stops monitoring for pirated copies, then those copies continue to work. This is, I think, a good property - it allows the software to become abandonware once the creator is no longer interested in making money from it. What's more, this method gives legitimate users the ability to run the software they paid for indefinitely.
News has surfaced in the wake of Thursday that the UN is mulling total inter-governmental regulation of the internet.
The UN has wanted control of the net for a while now, the WikiLeaks thing is just the excuse of the day for trying to take it.If it wasn't WikiLeaks, it would be some other reason.
That's why they did three slingshot maneuvers to get there. The navigation team at JPL has really outdone themselves with this flight, and are to be commended.
Interestingly enough, the navigation of this flight was outsourced to Kintex. The mission itself is managed by APL... AFAIK, JPL wasn't particularly involved.
The obvious difference here is that those astronauts only had to go to the moon, getting astronauts to mars, much less getting them back, would be nearly impossible with 100x the budget for Spirit and Opportunity.
You're right of course. Manned exploration would be far more expensive than unmanned. But my point was that manned explorers are also far more capable than unmanned explorers. What's more, I suspect that the increase in science returned would be more than proportional to the increase in cost. If it cost 100x to get astronauts to Mars, the amount of science performed could be 1,000x or even 10,000x that done using the mars rovers, especially when you realize a manned mission would also return a large number of samples.
So why do politicians and NASA spend 100x to put a human in the tin can?
In 4 years, Spirit has driven a total of 4.6 miles, while Opportunity has gone 7.2 miles.
On Apollo 17, two astronauts on a manned rover went 12.5 miles, in a single drive, in a single day.
When they came back to Earth, they brought 243 pounds of rock and soil from the lunar surface along with them.
Spirit and Opportunity are a phenomenal achievement, and the men and women who created them should be justifiably proud of all they've accomplished. But it's sobering to realize that much of what the rovers have done in the past four years could be accomplished by humans in a few hours.
In addition, with the Internet you can basically walk to your computer and email the person you just talked to halfway around the world.
The thing is, I can talk to and email people around the world without first contacting them using a radio. That is, I think, the fundamental change that's hurting ham radio as a hobby. Things like this article, which talks about the usefulness of ham in emergency situations, is what might motivate me to get into it... talking to people around the world is not anything to write home about anymore.
(For the record, I have a license, but never really used it, since I wasn't in a position to invest in hardware.)
But here in the US, I have yet to see a poppy in anyone's lapel, and haven't met anyone familiar with the In Flanders Fields poem or who otherwise knows much about Rememberance Day in general.
At least around where I grew up, we would do the poppy thing on Memorial Day, rather than Veteran's Day. Memorial Day in the US dates back to the aftermath of the US Civil War, and is probably the closer in spirit to Rememberance Day than Veteran's Day is.
Correction, private citizens can pay a government (Russia) to launch them into space. They cannot do it by themselves.
Actually, Burt Rutan proved last year that it was possible for private citizens to launch themselves into space. Now, space isn't orbit, but we're talking about space here, and the private sector can do that. (Or will be able to once the next-gen vehicle happens.)
(Btw, instead of a wiper, which could potentially get gritty and scratch the panels, I'd just be inclined to implement the panels such that they can be "flipped over" once a day to dump the dust off -- shouldn't be too hard depending on how they're already mounted.)
The problem with this is that, if the motors that flip the solar panels fail, we have one dead rover. So is it better to live with a slow degredation of the rovers' performance (which still lets them accomplish everythings they need to, almost a year after they landed), or risk a sudden and dramatic end to the mission?
Falcon-1 (not Eagle-1) and Falcon-5 aren't contenders for the X-Prize. The X-Prize is for a reusable manned craft to make it into space twice in two weeks. The Falcon rockets are not reusable (except potentially for the first stage), nor or they manned, and they are intended to launch satellites into orbit, not passengers into the much easier suborbital trajectory.
The general hope is that the Falcon-series will be able to do unmanned space launch for significantly less that existing designs, both saving clients money and letting SpaceX profit.
The worst movie ever, by far, is Incubus, starring William Shatner, filmed in Esperanto.
I do have to reccomend Shatner's commentary track. (In fact, my usual inflicting of this movie involves switching the audio over to the commentary track at the earliest opportunity, as the movie is subtitled and noone understands esperanto anyway.)
A bomb went off while you were doing your arithmetic and killed 20 school children plus fifty other people.
A bomb that was set off, not by the US military, but by the sort of terrorists and miscreants they are fighting against. It's important to make that distinction.
If a round penetrates the diesel fuel tank of a current vehicle, the crew is pretty screwed anyway.
This is less true of the M1 Abrams tank than Soviet models. A big problem with Soviet models is that they tend to do things like storing ammunition in the turret, or even worse in cut-outs in the fuel tank. This makes it very bad if the tank is hit, and leads to the classic image of a tank with its turret blown off.
The M1 stores ammunition in the turret itself, and has-blow out panels on the turret so that if the ammunition explodes, the energy is taken away from the crew.
It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)
Actually, one of the main problems with the HST is that it can rarely do 24/7 monitoring. It's in orbit around the earth, and for the majority of targets, the earth will be between the HST and the target for some portion of the orbit.
One of big advantages of the new space telescope is that it will orbit much further from the earth, and so the earth will rarely block it's view.
An easier way to get to it is to go to the second special features menu and hit the '6' key on the DVD remote.
Jayyynee!!! The man they call Jayynee!!! He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor. Stood up to the man and he gave him what for, Our love for him now is hard to explain, The Hero of Canton, the man they call Jayynee!!!
A problem with these sources is that they all seem to be skewed to a single point of view, and the environmental movement has, at least to me, blown most of its credibility on forecasts of doom that repeatedly fail to come true.
The numbers I have do show a drop off in the total food production after 1990, but that seems to be mostly explained by a drop in the number of acres cultivated, as crop subsidies and the collapse of the soviet union's command economy lead to much acerage being taken out of production.
Indeed, the figures I have (conveniently organized on pages 95 to 98 of "the skeptical environmentalist") show production per hectacre actually increasing over any reasonable timescale.
Now, many of the things you list may be considered to be problems by some. I consider farming to be sustainable if it leads to there being enough food to feed the world for the forseeable future. And as far as I can tell from the evidence, that's the case.
Since those yields are not sustainable, we're headed for trouble with or without global dimming.
What evidence is there that modern farming methods are unsustainable? Yes, the methods introduced in the green revolution do require the use of fertilizer, but they've been in use since the 60s without major problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Well played, sir. Well played.
Three digits...
Disclaimer: I'm the lead developer of Ren'Py, one of the projects that will benefit from this sale.
I think this is basically right.
Humble's model is that it runs pay-what-you want sales, with the proceeds being split between themselves, developers, and charities. In the current ebook bundle, the charities are SFWA and Openreader. In the weekly sale, the charities are open source projects - FlashDevelop, OpenFL, Haxe, and Ren'Py. So when you buy through this sale, you support open source projects in the same way that if you buy the book bundle, you support SFWA and Openreader.
An idea I had was to try to figure out a way to make pirating difficult enough that people would prefer to purchase the real version. I'd also like a way to do this that doesn't overly inconvenience legit users - and allows them to continue using the program even if the entity that created it in the first place went out of business. Note that I haven't actually tried this method in practice - it's at the idea stage right now.
The idea is that each download comes with some sort of keyfile that lets it run. When started, it contacts the server and asks for permission to run. If the server denys permission, the program deletes the keyfile, and refuses to run in the future. If it can't contact the server due to network problems, it waits several minutes and then runs. Otherwise, it runs normally.
The developer would then monitor places that may host pirated versions of the software. When he or she sees a pirated key, he adds it to a server-based block list. This causes the top of the google rankings to fill with broken versions of the software - making it increasingly more difficult to find an illegitimate copy - and hopefully pushing people to buy the legit version.
On the other hand, if the creator of the software stops monitoring for pirated copies, then those copies continue to work. This is, I think, a good property - it allows the software to become abandonware once the creator is no longer interested in making money from it. What's more, this method gives legitimate users the ability to run the software they paid for indefinitely.
News has surfaced in the wake of Thursday that the UN is mulling total inter-governmental regulation of the internet.
The UN has wanted control of the net for a while now, the WikiLeaks thing is just the excuse of the day for trying to take it.If it wasn't WikiLeaks, it would be some other reason.
Interestingly enough, the navigation of this flight was outsourced to Kintex. The mission itself is managed by APL... AFAIK, JPL wasn't particularly involved.
You're right of course. Manned exploration would be far more expensive than unmanned. But my point was that manned explorers are also far more capable than unmanned explorers. What's more, I suspect that the increase in science returned would be more than proportional to the increase in cost. If it cost 100x to get astronauts to Mars, the amount of science performed could be 1,000x or even 10,000x that done using the mars rovers, especially when you realize a manned mission would also return a large number of samples.
In 4 years, Spirit has driven a total of 4.6 miles, while Opportunity has gone 7.2 miles.
On Apollo 17, two astronauts on a manned rover went 12.5 miles, in a single drive, in a single day.
When they came back to Earth, they brought 243 pounds of rock and soil from the lunar surface along with them.
Spirit and Opportunity are a phenomenal achievement, and the men and women who created them should be justifiably proud of all they've accomplished. But it's sobering to realize that much of what the rovers have done in the past four years could be accomplished by humans in a few hours.
The thing is, I can talk to and email people around the world without first contacting them using a radio. That is, I think, the fundamental change that's hurting ham radio as a hobby. Things like this article, which talks about the usefulness of ham in emergency situations, is what might motivate me to get into it... talking to people around the world is not anything to write home about anymore.
(For the record, I have a license, but never really used it, since I wasn't in a position to invest in hardware.)
At least around where I grew up, we would do the poppy thing on Memorial Day, rather than Veteran's Day. Memorial Day in the US dates back to the aftermath of the US Civil War, and is probably the closer in spirit to Rememberance Day than Veteran's Day is.
I agree. I see one all the time.
Actually, I'm wondering if there's a way to get a list of Slashdot users by UID.
Grant did, however write the book on making battlebots type robots... too bad it came out after the fad had died down.
Correction, private citizens can pay a government (Russia) to launch them into space. They cannot do it by themselves.
Actually, Burt Rutan proved last year that it was possible for private citizens to launch themselves into space. Now, space isn't orbit, but we're talking about space here, and the private sector can do that. (Or will be able to once the next-gen vehicle happens.)
(Btw, instead of a wiper, which could potentially get gritty and scratch the panels, I'd just be inclined to implement the panels such that they can be "flipped over" once a day to dump the dust off -- shouldn't be too hard depending on how they're already mounted.)
The problem with this is that, if the motors that flip the solar panels fail, we have one dead rover. So is it better to live with a slow degredation of the rovers' performance (which still lets them accomplish everythings they need to, almost a year after they landed), or risk a sudden and dramatic end to the mission?
Falcon-1 (not Eagle-1) and Falcon-5 aren't contenders for the X-Prize. The X-Prize is for a reusable manned craft to make it into space twice in two weeks. The Falcon rockets are not reusable (except potentially for the first stage), nor or they manned, and they are intended to launch satellites into orbit, not passengers into the much easier suborbital trajectory.
The general hope is that the Falcon-series will be able to do unmanned space launch for significantly less that existing designs, both saving clients money and letting SpaceX profit.
The worst movie ever, by far, is Incubus, starring William Shatner, filmed in Esperanto.
I do have to reccomend Shatner's commentary track. (In fact, my usual inflicting of this movie involves switching the audio over to the commentary track at the earliest opportunity, as the movie is subtitled and noone understands esperanto anyway.)
Perhaps a black monolith with proportions 1 x 4 x 9?
Nope. They won't find that until Cassini images Iapetus.
Now to see who's read the book.
A bomb went off while you were doing your arithmetic and killed 20 school children plus fifty other people.
A bomb that was set off, not by the US military, but by the sort of terrorists and miscreants they are fighting against. It's important to make that distinction.
The funny thing is the fortune that appeared in the appropriate slashbox when I first saw this article.
;-)
"Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for.
-- Unknown source"
If a round penetrates the diesel fuel tank of a current vehicle, the crew is pretty screwed anyway.
This is less true of the M1 Abrams tank than Soviet models. A big problem with Soviet models is that they tend to do things like storing ammunition in the turret, or even worse in cut-outs in the fuel tank. This makes it very bad if the tank is hit, and leads to the classic image of a tank with its turret blown off.
The M1 stores ammunition in the turret itself, and has-blow out panels on the turret so that if the ammunition explodes, the energy is taken away from the crew.
It could potentially be used for 24/7 monitoring of targets (which you can't do from earth)
Actually, one of the main problems with the HST is that it can rarely do 24/7 monitoring. It's in orbit around the earth, and for the majority of targets, the earth will be between the HST and the target for some portion of the orbit.
One of big advantages of the new space telescope is that it will orbit much further from the earth, and so the earth will rarely block it's view.
A problem with these sources is that they all seem to be skewed to a single point of view, and the environmental movement has, at least to me, blown most of its credibility on forecasts of doom that repeatedly fail to come true.
The numbers I have do show a drop off in the total food production after 1990, but that seems to be mostly explained by a drop in the number of acres cultivated, as crop subsidies and the collapse of the soviet union's command economy lead to much acerage being taken out of production.
Indeed, the figures I have (conveniently organized on pages 95 to 98 of "the skeptical environmentalist") show production per hectacre actually increasing over any reasonable timescale.
Now, many of the things you list may be considered to be problems by some. I consider farming to be sustainable if it leads to there being enough food to feed the world for the forseeable future. And as far as I can tell from the evidence, that's the case.
Since those yields are not sustainable, we're headed for trouble with or without global dimming.
What evidence is there that modern farming methods are unsustainable? Yes, the methods introduced in the green revolution do require the use of fertilizer, but they've been in use since the 60s without major problems.