Of course, if you weren't a young pup still wet behind the ears, you'd remember that Archie in _Archie_Comics_ had that checker-board thingy on the sides of his head, and Veronica didn't. And I've heard that Archie was latently homosexual, and Veronica wasn't (that's why he was always chasing the unattainable Veronica instead of scoring with hot-to-trot Betty).
I'm sure Bhil will correct me if I'm wrong.
--Charlie
Do you trust "sourcebank?" I just followed your link to their site and they tried to fill up my harddisk with cookies... I use Cookie Pal, so I get an audible warning each time a cookie is discarded, and that site beeps twenty or thirty times a minute as long as you stay on the page.
There is no excuse for that sort of behavior; it's like a smoker purposely blowing smoke in your face (no offense meant to courteous smokers).
--Charlie
Pyromage wrote:
Look at what the prices did once the standard was published, eh? Nothing!
That's simply not true. I priced the USR 56 Kbps "sportster" modem less than two months before the V9.0 standard was published and then again six months or so later - the price drop was, as I recall, quite noticeable - especially compared to the way the 56-flex and 56x2 had been holding their prices for the previous year.
The sportster is not a *great* modem, but it's a good modem, to use your terminology - I have close to a hundred of them on site here and they have always worked just fine. And of course the price of crappy winmodems is down to about $10 now. I got one for free ($10 - $10 rebate) at Best Buy, but I haven't found any use for it as yet.
Sorry I haven't any non-anecdotal evidence to post...
--Charlie
/.
While DVD+RW may eventually become the industry standard, you're still gambling until a true standard unequivocally (sp?) emerges.
Look at what 56Kb modem prices did once the v.90 standard was published.
/.
Well, lighting and windmills is pretty much a solved problem... Lighting is not 100% predictable, though, so there are occasional weirdnesses that should be planned for.
Owners of large towers have found that you can prevent lighting from occurring by burying three cables radiating outwards to the height of the tower, then installing large metal "dissapators" at a couple of points on the sides. Take look at lightning prevention.vs. protection for a more detailed description of the technology.
There's also a lot of discussion of this sort of thing on the "Towertalk" list if you're interested; for example this post.
--Charlie
/.
Don't lock down your mind so tight - the problem is to capture "250 kilowatt hours in a fraction of a second" not to "come up with a battery that can".
Such a device might resemble a capacitor more than a battery, I'd guess.... or maybe you could convert the bolt to heat and store it in a thermal mass (like a couple of tonnes of stone, perhaps) to be converted to electricity at leisure.
You don't need 100% efficiency when the incoming energy doesn't cost anything. And you don't need to predict where it'll strike - it's pretty easy to build an attractor.
--Charlie
This DOJ filing seems to be saying "put a label on it that says RESEARCH USE ONLY, keep your nose clean, and you are protected from the DMCA." Which is pretty much the best face you can possibly put on such ill advised legislation.
--Charlie
/.
No, if the antivirus is going to be able to tell the difference between the FBI's code and that of imitators, it will have to know some characteristics of both.
Remember, these vendors claim to be able to detect polymorphic encryptors and other virii with indistinct signatures. That may be just marketing hype, but supposedly there is more to their system than simply listing some bits from each known virus.
Incidentally, other sources (SlashDuh for one) are reporting that this story is bogus.
--Charlie
Well, if the antivirus vendors are going to include a sufficiently detailed signature in their products for the FBI's virii, that should help anyone trying to build a detector.
I'm sure somebody will try to build malware that impersonates this so-called "Magic Lantern" - I hope they call it "Magic Latrine":^).
But wouldn't it be nice to see a GPL'd program to detect the FBI's virus? Then, if I found it on my machine, I could stop the goverment-sponsored theft of my CPU cycles. Of course, I'd then call the FBI and offer to let them reinstall it given adequate monetary compensation - but that's just me, you might take some other action.
/.
Generally one pumps it through cooling baffles into the atmosphere. Then, of course, you have to manage the condensate drip.
It's an excellent question, and one that will have to be answered before this thing can see practical use.
I'd like to see what the actual generator design will be - all I see in the articles is a motor, not any sort of electrical generator.
This motor is interesting as pure research. I'd have done a bladeless turbine (if I could manage to get paid for doing stuff like this) but that might not be as much of a challenge to build and thus less interesting on grant applications.
I haven't seen anyone proposing any commercially viable use as yet - without a generator, ignition system and waste gas management scheme it's just a cool toy.
--Charlie
1) I'm not aware of any way to legally obtain free copies of Solaris source for use in a commercial environment. Got a link? Seriously, I know some people who'll be overjoyed - not everyone is fed up with the Solaris patch-fest.
2) I have eliminated Solaris & expensive big boxes by using linux on cheap little boxes. Scalability is achievable for most purposes through proper process design, and in those idustries where this is not possible it will be in the near future as free OSes continue to evolve - much faster than Sun's OS is evolving, incidentally. Besides, IBM's mainframe OS-390 scales bigger than Sun, so if scalability is the only criteria for worth Sun loses there too.
3) Always willing to listen to critique. But Solaris, like MacOS, is more religion than philosophy. Have you tried to replace your Suns? I've done it sucessfully, though your business may not be able to yet. My employer avoids costs of more than $600,000 US a year thanks to the deep-sixing of proprietary systems.
You have no idea what the poster can or cannot hear. Yet you're not afraid to spout your own completely fabricated statistics and totally unresearched generalizations. Get a grip, man, quit projecting your own inadequacies onto others.
--Charlie
/.
The Apollo LEM was originally designed with spikes on the tips of the landing legs. In response to Arthur C. Clarke's novel "A Fall of Moondust" those spikes were (frantically, at the last minute) redesigned to become the familiar mushroom-like pads.
You must independently verify this if you wish to follow the scientific method. Don't worry, it's not hard to do.
Therefore, a novel (ACC's aFoM) has had an effect on a scientific development (the creation of a viable moon lander), therefore, your statement (Novels have no effect upon scientific development) is incorrect.
Another way to disprove your premise is to call NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. JPL has a friendly public relations group who will probably be quite willing to share with you the details of their collaborations with science fiction authors. I believe Niven, Clarke, and Pournelle have all been guests of JPL at times.
Here's a clip from a NASA site for you:
Copies of Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), are now available again. Edited by Frederick I. Ordway III and Randy Liebermann, this Emme Award-winning publication has a prologue by Michael Collins and an epilogue by Arthur C. Clarke. It is profusely illustrated with black&white and color, and is divided into four major parts: "From Dreams to Reality," "Rocketry and Space Flight," "The Golden Age of Space Travel," and "Where Do We Go from Here?" Among the contributors are science fiction writers, former astronauts, educators, a former NASA administrator, astronomers, and leaders in many aspects of the space program. Copies are now available for $11.80 plus $3.20 for priority mail postage, for a total of $15 per copy. It was originally sold for $24.95. Checks should be sent to Frederick I. Ordway III, 2401 N. Taylor Street, Arlington, VA 22207.
While Red Hat is certainly a major offender, HP-UX 11.0 has device log files in the/etc hierarchy, and the runlevels are still under/sbin, and every "optional software" dumping ground ever invented (share, contrib, usr/local, opt, and more) as well as a totally brain-dead depot system that makes RPM look inspired.
I've said it before - and I'm not the first or last to notice - HP-UX is a *train wreck* of a unix. HP puts Fibre Channel controllers that are necessary for the system to BOOT in the/opt folder!
--Charlie
To be INSIGHTFUL mean sharing a non-obvious INSIGHT.
The prior post, ironically, dumbs down the whole point of the original rant to the point of ignoring any and all deeper issues such as the desirability of elegant structure, the foolishness of relying on a single tool when this is unnecessary, and many others no doubt raised below.
C'mon, moderators, get a grip! Interesting, maybe, flamebait, maybe, but INSIGHTFUL? Geez.
/.
I'm not sure how to write URLs for dumpsters behind hospitals and large corporations. But here, I'll try:
http:://Your.house/like.your.mouth/full.of.crap
Big hospitals periodically throw out vast quantities of useful equipment. Most big corporations have a steady trickle of stuff getting thrown away.
I've occasionally gotten >1 GB HDDs this way, and I have a 3com 100bT hub also, but generally the stuff is a bit less current. Most of my nodes are P166mmx at this point which is fine for running FreeCiv or Civ II gold or Mechwarrior II but not sufficient for later releases of Mechwarrior.
Oh, I also picked up a crate full of unopened copies of Win95 - I still have a dozen or so since I don't use it myself, I just give it away. But usually you don't find software of any value.
This morning I picked up a big piece of ductwork from the side of the road which must've fallen off a truck. I'm going to use it to fix my furnace this weekend.
ABG is right, and you should isolate core functionality from data access and user interface - this is critical to portability and leads to evolution of strong, mature systems.
You will note that many business systems written in COBOL as "code monoliths" now require extremely expensive support in the form of CICS compatibility and cumbersome, user-unfriendly security layers. And their interfaces are still "green-screen" or, in many cases, have actually lost function and ease of use through poor GUI integration.
Meanwhile, many scientific systems written in a modular fashion live on despite having their underlying hardware replaced and their user interfaces re-written repeatedly. I'm sure there are systems that started on PDP-11s, are now running on Alpha VAXen, and are planning ports to linux clusters. Some will have been fitted with very pretty web interfaces.
Write your core modules, where the work is done, in ANSI C. Write your data access routines in the most portable language available on your preferred platform, and keep the code entirely distinct from the core functionality and user interface. If you're already invested in something like Rdb, Oracle, MySQL, whatever, then leverage the expertise and investment you already have but make sure your API is callable from C. Don't be afraid to use a fast, simple data store like Berkeley DB or plain old flat files - cheaper is better. But be sure to define a data access API in any case (such as Replace_Leaf_Record() and Create_New_Root(), for example) and keep the code cleanly separated into modules.
Provide a "raw text" interface, written in C, and keep that as the base functionality canon. Use it to test the GUI, which you can write in Java or C++ or Eiffel or whatever (I'd say use your favorite, since you'll get prettier results if you enjoy using the language). Make sure the API for the GUI is entirely documented in the core code itself so that it can be seamlessly replaced when the fabled post-GUI interface finally appears.
--Charlie
Um, I suspect most of these "cheap and small" things are more expensive than any two nodes on my network. I can get PC-compatible hardware cheap or free (all my hubs were free, most of my monitors under $20) and they all run FreeCiv just fine.
--Charlie
Obviously there must be a reason for the sucess, but I never buy game machines - I already have plenty of computing devices that can easily be used to play games.
If I'm away from home & desk, I generally have a book in my pocket (Marcus Aurelius typically) that can provide mental stimulation.
I just don't understand the appeal of these dinguses... so I guess this is a troll.
--Charlie
You're right, making it "Monopoly is Competition" removes the non-sequitur.
The book is a thorough debunking of the famous aphorism "form follows function". By following the history of common items such as wheelbarrows, forks, paper clips, and the zipper, the author shows that innovation is a response to perceived deficiencies in previously existing usage, said usage generally being predicated on existing (sub-optimal) form.
It's a bit overlong, but worth reading. Lots of interesting history and some worthwhile cross-cultural comparisons.
--Charlie
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Monopolies Create Competition
false tautology / noun passively equated to noun
false tautology / noun passively equated to noun
false tautology / noun passively equated to noun
non-sequitur / plural noun, active verb, noun
Hey, given the current political climate, shouldn't you have added "Revenge is Justice"?
Orwell would probably be darkly amused.
I recommend to you the book "The Evolution of Useful Things".
Slashdot Mirror
/.
Well, RECENTLY, Veronica was mouse-driven.
Of course, if you weren't a young pup still wet behind the ears, you'd remember that Archie in _Archie_Comics_ had that checker-board thingy on the sides of his head, and Veronica didn't. And I've heard that Archie was latently homosexual, and Veronica wasn't (that's why he was always chasing the unattainable Veronica instead of scoring with hot-to-trot Betty).
I'm sure Bhil will correct me if I'm wrong.
--Charlie
Do you trust "sourcebank?" I just followed your link to their site and they tried to fill up my harddisk with cookies... I use Cookie Pal, so I get an audible warning each time a cookie is discarded, and that site beeps twenty or thirty times a minute as long as you stay on the page.
There is no excuse for that sort of behavior; it's like a smoker purposely blowing smoke in your face (no offense meant to courteous smokers).
--Charlie
Pyromage wrote:
Look at what the prices did once the standard was published, eh? Nothing!
That's simply not true. I priced the USR 56 Kbps "sportster" modem less than two months before the V9.0 standard was published and then again six months or so later - the price drop was, as I recall, quite noticeable - especially compared to the way the 56-flex and 56x2 had been holding their prices for the previous year.
The sportster is not a *great* modem, but it's a good modem, to use your terminology - I have close to a hundred of them on site here and they have always worked just fine. And of course the price of crappy winmodems is down to about $10 now. I got one for free ($10 - $10 rebate) at Best Buy, but I haven't found any use for it as yet.
Sorry I haven't any non-anecdotal evidence to post...
--Charlie
/.
While DVD+RW may eventually become the industry standard, you're still gambling until a true standard unequivocally (sp?) emerges.
Look at what 56Kb modem prices did once the v.90 standard was published.
SO, I'm still waiting!
--Charlie
/. .vs. protection for a more detailed description of the technology.
Well, lighting and windmills is pretty much a solved problem... Lighting is not 100% predictable, though, so there are occasional weirdnesses that should be planned for.
Owners of large towers have found that you can prevent lighting from occurring by burying three cables radiating outwards to the height of the tower, then installing large metal "dissapators" at a couple of points on the sides. Take look at lightning prevention
There's also a lot of discussion of this sort of thing on the "Towertalk" list if you're interested; for example this post.
--Charlie
/.
Don't lock down your mind so tight - the problem is to capture "250 kilowatt hours in a fraction of a second" not to "come up with a battery that can".
Such a device might resemble a capacitor more than a battery, I'd guess.... or maybe you could convert the bolt to heat and store it in a thermal mass (like a couple of tonnes of stone, perhaps) to be converted to electricity at leisure.
You don't need 100% efficiency when the incoming energy doesn't cost anything. And you don't need to predict where it'll strike - it's pretty easy to build an attractor.
--Charlie
This DOJ filing seems to be saying "put a label on it that says RESEARCH USE ONLY, keep your nose clean, and you are protected from the DMCA." Which is pretty much the best face you can possibly put on such ill advised legislation.
--Charlie
/.
No, if the antivirus is going to be able to tell the difference between the FBI's code and that of imitators, it will have to know some characteristics of both.
Remember, these vendors claim to be able to detect polymorphic encryptors and other virii with indistinct signatures. That may be just marketing hype, but supposedly there is more to their system than simply listing some bits from each known virus.
Incidentally, other sources (SlashDuh for one) are reporting that this story is bogus.
--Charlie
Well, if the antivirus vendors are going to include a sufficiently detailed signature in their products for the FBI's virii, that should help anyone trying to build a detector.
I'm sure somebody will try to build malware that impersonates this so-called "Magic Lantern" - I hope they call it "Magic Latrine" :^).
But wouldn't it be nice to see a GPL'd program to detect the FBI's virus? Then, if I found it on my machine, I could stop the goverment-sponsored theft of my CPU cycles. Of course, I'd then call the FBI and offer to let them reinstall it given adequate monetary compensation - but that's just me, you might take some other action.
--Charlie
/.
Generally one pumps it through cooling baffles into the atmosphere. Then, of course, you have to manage the condensate drip.
It's an excellent question, and one that will have to be answered before this thing can see practical use.
I'd like to see what the actual generator design will be - all I see in the articles is a motor, not any sort of electrical generator.
This motor is interesting as pure research. I'd have done a bladeless turbine (if I could manage to get paid for doing stuff like this) but that might not be as much of a challenge to build and thus less interesting on grant applications.
I haven't seen anyone proposing any commercially viable use as yet - without a generator, ignition system and waste gas management scheme it's just a cool toy.
--Charlie
1) I'm not aware of any way to legally obtain free copies of Solaris source for use in a commercial environment. Got a link? Seriously, I know some people who'll be overjoyed - not everyone is fed up with the Solaris patch-fest.
2) I have eliminated Solaris & expensive big boxes by using linux on cheap little boxes. Scalability is achievable for most purposes through proper process design, and in those idustries where this is not possible it will be in the near future as free OSes continue to evolve - much faster than Sun's OS is evolving, incidentally. Besides, IBM's mainframe OS-390 scales bigger than Sun, so if scalability is the only criteria for worth Sun loses there too.
3) Always willing to listen to critique. But Solaris, like MacOS, is more religion than philosophy. Have you tried to replace your Suns? I've done it sucessfully, though your business may not be able to yet. My employer avoids costs of more than $600,000 US a year thanks to the deep-sixing of proprietary systems.
--Charlie
You have no idea what the poster can or cannot hear. Yet you're not afraid to spout your own completely fabricated statistics and totally unresearched generalizations. Get a grip, man, quit projecting your own inadequacies onto others.
--Charlie
The Apollo LEM was originally designed with spikes on the tips of the landing legs. In response to Arthur C. Clarke's novel "A Fall of Moondust" those spikes were (frantically, at the last minute) redesigned to become the familiar mushroom-like pads.
You must independently verify this if you wish to follow the scientific method. Don't worry, it's not hard to do.
Therefore, a novel (ACC's aFoM) has had an effect on a scientific development (the creation of a viable moon lander), therefore, your statement (Novels have no effect upon scientific development) is incorrect.
Another way to disprove your premise is to call NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. JPL has a friendly public relations group who will probably be quite willing to share with you the details of their collaborations with science fiction authors. I believe Niven, Clarke, and Pournelle have all been guests of JPL at times.
Here's a clip from a NASA site for you:
Good point. Thank the gods for meta-moderation.
--Charlie
Doesn't really matter, Solaris must either go OSS or die, and HP-UX is already a lame-duck zombie.
--Charlie
While Red Hat is certainly a major offender, HP-UX 11.0 has device log files in the /etc hierarchy, and the runlevels are still under /sbin, and every "optional software" dumping ground ever invented (share, contrib, usr/local, opt, and more) as well as a totally brain-dead depot system that makes RPM look inspired.
/opt folder!
I've said it before - and I'm not the first or last to notice - HP-UX is a *train wreck* of a unix. HP puts Fibre Channel controllers that are necessary for the system to BOOT in the
--Charlie
SSH is your friend.
Sorry, couldn't resist. Your point in re: symlinks is of course excellent. I will mod myself down now.
--Charlie
Unfortunately I don't have any mod points today.
To be INSIGHTFUL mean sharing a non-obvious INSIGHT.
The prior post, ironically, dumbs down the whole point of the original rant to the point of ignoring any and all deeper issues such as the desirability of elegant structure, the foolishness of relying on a single tool when this is unnecessary, and many others no doubt raised below.
C'mon, moderators, get a grip! Interesting, maybe, flamebait, maybe, but INSIGHTFUL? Geez.
--Charlie
/.
I'm not sure how to write URLs for dumpsters behind hospitals and large corporations. But here, I'll try:
http:://Your.house/like.your.mouth/full.of.crap
Big hospitals periodically throw out vast quantities of useful equipment. Most big corporations have a steady trickle of stuff getting thrown away.
I've occasionally gotten >1 GB HDDs this way, and I have a 3com 100bT hub also, but generally the stuff is a bit less current. Most of my nodes are P166mmx at this point which is fine for running FreeCiv or Civ II gold or Mechwarrior II but not sufficient for later releases of Mechwarrior.
Oh, I also picked up a crate full of unopened copies of Win95 - I still have a dozen or so since I don't use it myself, I just give it away. But usually you don't find software of any value.
This morning I picked up a big piece of ductwork from the side of the road which must've fallen off a truck. I'm going to use it to fix my furnace this weekend.
--Charlie
ABG is right, and you should isolate core functionality from data access and user interface - this is critical to portability and leads to evolution of strong, mature systems.
You will note that many business systems written in COBOL as "code monoliths" now require extremely expensive support in the form of CICS compatibility and cumbersome, user-unfriendly security layers. And their interfaces are still "green-screen" or, in many cases, have actually lost function and ease of use through poor GUI integration.
Meanwhile, many scientific systems written in a modular fashion live on despite having their underlying hardware replaced and their user interfaces re-written repeatedly. I'm sure there are systems that started on PDP-11s, are now running on Alpha VAXen, and are planning ports to linux clusters. Some will have been fitted with very pretty web interfaces.
Write your core modules, where the work is done, in ANSI C. Write your data access routines in the most portable language available on your preferred platform, and keep the code entirely distinct from the core functionality and user interface. If you're already invested in something like Rdb, Oracle, MySQL, whatever, then leverage the expertise and investment you already have but make sure your API is callable from C. Don't be afraid to use a fast, simple data store like Berkeley DB or plain old flat files - cheaper is better. But be sure to define a data access API in any case (such as Replace_Leaf_Record() and Create_New_Root(), for example) and keep the code cleanly separated into modules.
Provide a "raw text" interface, written in C, and keep that as the base functionality canon. Use it to test the GUI, which you can write in Java or C++ or Eiffel or whatever (I'd say use your favorite, since you'll get prettier results if you enjoy using the language). Make sure the API for the GUI is entirely documented in the core code itself so that it can be seamlessly replaced when the fabled post-GUI interface finally appears.
--Charlie
Um, I suspect most of these "cheap and small" things are more expensive than any two nodes on my network. I can get PC-compatible hardware cheap or free (all my hubs were free, most of my monitors under $20) and they all run FreeCiv just fine.
--Charlie
Well, I got a bet going on how fast I can burn off karma. I did pretty good on this one.
--Charlie
Obviously there must be a reason for the sucess, but I never buy game machines - I already have plenty of computing devices that can easily be used to play games.
If I'm away from home & desk, I generally have a book in my pocket (Marcus Aurelius typically) that can provide mental stimulation.
I just don't understand the appeal of these dinguses... so I guess this is a troll.
--Charlie
You're right, making it "Monopoly is Competition" removes the non-sequitur.
The book is a thorough debunking of the famous aphorism "form follows function". By following the history of common items such as wheelbarrows, forks, paper clips, and the zipper, the author shows that innovation is a response to perceived deficiencies in previously existing usage, said usage generally being predicated on existing (sub-optimal) form.
It's a bit overlong, but worth reading. Lots of interesting history and some worthwhile cross-cultural comparisons.
--Charlie
false tautology / noun passively equated to noun
false tautology / noun passively equated to noun
non-sequitur / plural noun, active verb, noun
Hey, given the current political climate, shouldn't you have added "Revenge is Justice"?
Orwell would probably be darkly amused.
I recommend to you the book "The Evolution of Useful Things".
--C