They have no reason to care, and that is how it should be. If you want China to become a democracy, then go tell the Chinese. Ultimately, it is up to them.
But how do you tell the chinese how to become a democracy if your message is filtered?
I do keep up with science. As a solid state engineer, I am quite aware of the developments in physics. I have also watched past theories progress from theory to actual product. I know the difference between a scientific pipe dream from something that will actually be useful. As another poster said, theories abound, but few theories are actually solid enough to build upon.
We have antimatter in the labs for millionths of a second. These particles are extremely unstable and take huge volumes of energy to produce. We have no way to create stable antimatter, nor would we have a way to transport it, even if we did have it. Keep in mind that the creators of Star Trek introduced the "dilithium crystal" which was a fictional material that made anitmatter useful because it was the one form of matter that would not react with antimatter. Nature is not nearly as convenient as fiction.
We have fusion in the labs. We have had fusion in the labs for nearly 40 years. For the last 30 years, press releases have said we're 10 years away. Fortunately, fusion is not a pipe dream. It is a workable technology because fusion theory is relatively well understood. It will be useful, but not any time soon.
If we can't get fusion on the ground, then the fusion engine is not going to fly anytime soon.
Warp technology is not solved. We do not know exactly how to do it. If we did, we would be doing it. There are limits to what you can do and when you get to any practical scale, many quantum theories yield to classical mechanics. This is not a barrier that is even remotely close to being overcome.
Consider the particle accelerator. With it scinetists can accelerate things to nearly the speed of light. We have been doing this since the 30's. By your logic, it should be a simple matter to create a large scale accelerator to accelerate space probes to the nearby stars. The problem is that accelerating something with any appreciable mass to those speeds requires more energy than we could ever hope to generate in our lifetimes. Yes on paper it could work, but there are a great many reasons why it won't work in real life.
Also consider the single electron switch. IBM demonstrated the technology several years ago where they were able to move an electron and measure the change. Theoretically this could be used to make extremely small electronic devices. But there still is no practical switch. Relative to a warp drive, this is fairly simple stuff, and yet we still cannot make this happen on the scale that it needs to happen to be useful. The problem is that they developed this in an electron microscope. These things are at least the size of your desk and require an almost perfect vaccuum to operate effectively. Translating this technology from an electron microscope environment to a device in a silicon crystal has proved extremely daunting. Who knows how long it will take them? (They are still working on this last time I checked).
Your oversimplification of the engineering process is the root of your delusion. I suggest that you actually try solving some of these problems instead of simply reading news articles and press releases and making uninformed assumptions. Also, keep in mind that many of these researchers are trying to defend their budgets and need some publicity to hand the director come budget time. You'd be suprised how many theories and observations can get lumped into this category. I'm not attacking the researchers, its just that if they want to continue their work, they might have to make some grandiose claims to attract grant money. You do what you need to do to continue your work. Much of the work they are doing is very interesting and will at least start filling in pieces of the puzzle. But right now we don't even know what the puzzle is supposed to look like, let alone where all the pieces fit in.
Let's not mix fact with fiction. The pace of human develpment is much slower than you seem to realize. Could it happen in your timeframe? Sure. Will it happen. I strongly doubt it.
In a hundred years or so we will have the ability to use nano technology and completely control matter, extend life with genetic technology, and use warp drives, anti matter could provide the energy source.
In a hundred years we will probably still be trying to get fusion running and anti-matter will still be a woefully energy consuming excercise limited to the lab environment.
Think of it this way, we can send a sail out into space, but it would be like creating a hot air balloon knowing that next week you'll have a MACH6 speed jet plane which will surpass the air balloon in a few hours.
Balloons and jets were not developed weeks apart, but centuries. And the invention of the jet engine was a simple excercise in thermodynamics (compress air+fuel, burn, use thrust), not quantum physics (fold space-time).
What we should be doing right now, is gathering information with probes, exploring planets like mars, and developing nano technologies.
Well said. But the reason we should do this is more than likely because we will not soon see convenient travel amongst the stars.
We may however have the technology to teleport or travel through worm holes within the next hundred years, just because the technology exsists doesnt mean we'd use it, we have technology now to let us run our cars on air itself, on water, on sunlight and so on and we dont.
We don't use these technologies because they are too damned expensive to use. Cars do not run on air (even now). Fuel cells, which I assume that you are referring to, require fuel just like any other energy producing device. The reason we don't use them is twofold. (1) Fuel cells are damned expensive because they rely on expensive materials and processes for manufacture. (2) The energy density of gasoline is much better than any production fuel cell. This is why the good old combustion engine is still in production. It produces more power, and is cheaper to build and operate.
I realize that there are cells in the lab which use diesel as a fuel. This solves the energy density problem, but diesel fuel is still non-renewable and there is a waste product that we still do not know what to do with.
The bottom line is understand the difference between fact and fiction. SciFi is like a religion where people start believing the science presented. Remember, this is fiction and often the science is invented in order to provide an appropriate setting in which to tell a story. Star Trek would not be the same if it took hundreds of years to get from planet to planet. The story line depends on the crew visiting strange new worlds on a weekly basis.
Throw a couple of armchair physicists together and you have your "warp" capability. But this was done to solve the problem of weekly encounters for a TV show. There is no basis in science as how one would "warp" space artificially.
I have no problem when people dream. It provides a very useful impetus for development. But don't lose your hold on reality. We still live on this world, not in the United Federation of Planets.
This means the one hack(crack) will effect net-snmp but not MS's crappy agent and vice-versa.
Tee-hee. A little of the slashdot trademark smack-MS-at-every-opportunity-even-when-it-isn't-r elevant comes through. The poster could have made his point without it, but instead chose to insert the "crappy" modifier before MS.
I don't know much about the various implementations and Microsoft's implementation may very well leave much to be desired. But cheap shots are still cheap shots.
If this post is not moderated -1:Offtopic, then Slashdot's crappy moderation system must be at fault.
As a parent of a two-year old and a newborn, telecommuting is not an option. I come to work to get away from my family. Work is so serene and peaceful, even when we have a code freeze tomorrow.
In my case telecommuting is not really an option because I do work that ends up on some big-ass equipment that I just cannot take home. I am usually in our lab for a couple hours a day doing testing. But the option to stay at home once and a while and do documentation or paperwork would be nice.
Our company also has a computer purchase program where you can buy older computers that are being rotated out. They are typically nothing special, but make good little experiment boxes or charity donations.
Also, encouraging side projects while at work can provide a well needed diversion while letting the employee explore something new. The company may find that a linux-controlled squirrel-navigated dune buggy has some useful code snippets.
2) DeCSS based software shows up on international websites which copies DVDs with a single click of the mouse (patent pending).
3) Movie studios declare such sites as sponsoring "corporate terrorism" and insist that the US gov't do something.
These methods are doomed to failure because of the existence of DVD decryption technology and cheap recordable DVD media. If I can get a blank DVD for $1 and rent a movie for $4 then I can make a copy for $5, which is much less than the $15-$20 you usually get charged. Adam Smith's invisible hand deals these companies a swift slap of reality.
I think that he meant to say "fewer people die before having offspring". Before when we were less developed, people had a harder time making it to adulthood and being able to procreate. This provided for natural selection in which inferior genes are removed. With modern medicine, people with inferior genes that would have been selected out are now able to make it to adulthood and procreate.
But I agree, evolution goes on and people will continue to evolve. The pressures will be differant because our environment will be differant. Old traits that are now manageable will no longer be selected out, but new traits will be promoted and discouraged.
So we will never be rid of certian genetic defects (until we can do gene manipulation) because we have learned to live with them. We will acquire new traits that are more fitting to our environment and this will be our new path of evolution.
People often argue this point that giving up X will save N lives. There are several problems with this.
First is the definition of N. Where do you draw the line? Would you give up X to save one life?
The next problem is the obvious potential for abuse. Would you subject yourself and almost 300 million (more if you count those that will be born into a nation without X) of your countrymen to abuse to save N lives? To save one life?
Thousands of people die every day from various dangers to society (automobiles, guns, drugs, etc) and yet we as a society are not willing to give up these things. There are those that want perfect security by eliminating all dangers and those that want perfect freedom by allowing put near anything. The dabate is where you draw the line in between these two extremes to say what is acceptable.
To answer your question, I feel that the possible abuse of power on hundreds of millions of people is too high of a price to pay to save a few thousand lives.
Informally, each standard in the POSIX set is defined by a decimal following the POSIX. Thus, POSIX.1 is the standard for an application program interface in the C language. POSIX.2 is the standard shell and utility interface (that is to say, the user's command interface with the operating system). These are the main two interfaces, but additional interfaces, such as POSIX.4 for thread management, have been developed or are being developed. The POSIX interfaces were developed under the auspices of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Is there a POSIX definition as to where packages go in the filesystem and what libraries are to be included? If so then I would say that your post is on target. If not then perhaps the LSB and FHS should be rolled into the POSIX standard. One stop standards shopping.
These probabilities are usually the computed from an analysis of death reports. As such these odds indicate that more people are killed every year by satellite debris than win the lottery. If twenty or so people win the lottery annually, then how many people die from satellite debris each year? This seems to be a more newsworthy event, but yet I never seem to hear about it.
My handy-dandy SMC Barricade router will clone the MAC address of a PC connected to the LAN side. Thus the company could not rely on this method to catch this particular router.
Like ants at a picnic, there are plenty of similies in this review. No doubt the work of someone who has actually read things other than programming manuals.
The idea of the "job for life" has disappeared, temporarily creating a political economy of insecurity
The dynamic nature of business also presents opportunities to those willing to embrace change. I never thought I'd be doing any one thing for more than ten years. As I learn new skills I move into new jobs and learn other skills. Keep moving. I feel sorry for those who want to sit and do the same thing until death's cold hand summons them to the grave. Variety is life.
Expecting to go through life without changing jobs is like expecting to drive on the expressway without changing lanes.
1) Do not upgrade from Windows95. Do a fresh install.
2) Install a minimum amount of software. Each new package that you install undermines the stability with extra DLLs and registry hacks.
3) Do not use exotic, state-of-the-art hardware. Use slightly older hardware with more mature drivers.
If you follow these simple rules you to can run Windows98 for months at a time. I have a small fileserver at my job which has been rebooted twice in as many years.
If you can afford it, get another computer or install a hard drive tray. Make one your works system and the other a "sandbox". Use the sandbox to evaluate new software and incorporate it into your work box once you completely understand it. Most of Win98's problems seem to happen to people that install all kinds of different software that they never use. The problem is that many vendors give you a computer that is pre-fucked (much useless software already installed). Your best bet is to reformat these disks and reinstall.
Problems
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Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Has anyone built a 100% automated large scale power plant? Even here on Earth, such a task is daunting. Saying that it can be easily done on the moon, and done cost effectively is like saying that I could build cheaper cars on the moon because my machinery will only have to cope with 1/6th of the gravity.
"But satellites and the space shuttle use solar power all the time." They also have either a 5-10 year lifespan or are serviced regularly. The article said that it could be profitable in 5 years. So when it finally becomes profitable, many of its components will be nearing the end of their lifespan. Then you have to chunk down some more money to build a replacement.
Nevermind that there will still need to be multiple ground stations in remote areas to catch the radiation. The moon is not geosynchronous. Build a station at the poles you say? There goes your costs again. Also, say what you want about safety, nobody will want to live near these things. And they will have to be in different countries which brings politics into the mix.
This is pie-in-the-sky dreaming. If you ask me, I think the money is better spent designing and running a good nuclear power plant or for some fusion research.
Not too paranoid. Dealerships make a lot of their money servicing cars. Granted, most of the money comes from the parent company for warranty work. But this practice will not be opposed because there is a lot of money to be made.
1) End user maintenance. Why can't the car tell you why the check engine light is on? Because the dealers want you to come down to the shop and pay them $40 just to do a diagnosis.
2) Mechanics will get the machines that they need to read the computer codes. The car companies make money indirectly by working with the folks who build these boxes. The mechanics make money because they can charge somebody $40 because a light came on.
#2 really burns me. The computers in the shop are typically PCs housed in a big console with several cables coming out. The cables are simply a black box to the parallel port. There is no reason that this black box cannot be made available in you local Discount Auto.
Once my car is paid for, I'm going to set out to develop a replacement computer of my own design - Just to spite those guys. If anyone is interested or knows where I can get info on the Ford 4.6L engine, please let me know. I've got the shop manuals, and they do a pretty good job of describing the signals coming from the equipment. The next step is to design the hardware. OpenCar anyone? No...wait...that's a lousy name. How about RagTop?
Re:Aegis is considered to be a sophisticated syste
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Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 2
Causes
1) Airbus IFF was not active.
2) Airbus was off course.
3) Airbus did not respond to voice queries on several channels.
4) Vincennes did not broadcast warning on Air Traffic Control channel.
5) Vincennes had no way to visually ID the Airbus.
6) Vincennes' helicopter had been attacked by gunboats.
It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From the Washington Post...
The Pentagon at first denied the Iranian claims, declaring that information from the fleet indicated that the Vincennes, equipped with the Aegis electronic battle management system, had shot down an attacking Iranian F14 jet fighter. But after sifting through more detailed reports and electronic intelligence, Reagan directed the Pentagon to confirm there had been a tragic case of mistaken identity in the war-torn gulf.
Crowe, in his hastily called news conference at the Pentagon, also backed up the skipper of the Vincennes and faulted the Iranian airline pilot. Crowe said the Airbus had flown four miles west of the usual commercial airline route from Bandar Abbas to Dubai and that the pilot ignored repeated radioed warnings from the Vincennes to change course.
Why and how the Vincennes mistook the bulky, wide-bodied Airbus A300 for a sleek, supersonic F14 fighter plane barely a third the transport's size will be the subject of "a full investigation," Reagan promised. A military team under the command of Rear Adm. William N. Fogarty of the U.S. Central Command will leave this week to begin that investigation, Defense Department officials said.
The shootdown of the Airbus represents the biggest loss of life on the strategic waterway since the U.S. warships began escorting Kuwaiti tankers in and out of the Persian Gulf last July. Pentagon officials then said the increased U.S. naval presence would have from a "low to moderate risk" of provoking confrontations with Iran.
But in the past year, although the United States and Iran are not in a formal state of war, there have been a series of brief but fierce sea battles in the gulf between the two countries' military forces. Vigilance and readiness among U.S. forces intensified after the near-sinking of the patrol frigate USS Stark by an Iraqi fighter-bomber on May 17, 1987, in a missile attack that killed 37 sailors.
Yesterday started out as another sea battle, and ended with what the Vincennes commanders misinterpreted as a "Stark profile" attack on the high-tech cruiser. Crowe in his briefing and other Navy and Defense Department officials offered a detailed version of how the shoot-down occurred.
At 2:10 a.m. EDT, the Pentagon said, three Iranian Boghammar gunboats fired on a helicopter that had flown off the Vincennes on a reconnaissance mission. The helicopter flew back to the cruiser unscathed. The Vincennes and a smaller warship, the frigate USS Elmer Montgomery, a half-hour later closed on the gunboats and put them under fire with 5-inch guns, sinking two and damaging the third.
At 2:47 a.m. EDT, the Iranian Airbus with almost a full load of passengers took off from Bandar Abbas, a big Iranian naval base on the northern coastal elbow of the Strait of Hormuz. The field at the base is used by civilian and military aircraft and recently had become the center for Iran's dwindling force of F14s, a twin-engine, two-place fighter that the United States sold to Iran during the rule of the shah.
Two minutes after the Airbus took off, the far-reaching radars of the Vincennes Aegis cruiser saw the plane was coming its way. The skipper of the ship, operating under liberalized rules of engagement that call for U.S. captains in the Persian Gulf to fire before being fired upon to avoid another Stark disaster, warned the approaching aircraft to change course, according to the Pentagon.
The Vincennes and most airliners are equipped with identification of friend or foe (IFF) electronic boxes that query each other across the sky to establish identities. The Vincennes' IFF questioned the Airbus IFF via telemetry, but received no response. A response would come in radio pulses that would be deciphered and displayed as an identifying number on the ship's combat information center consoles.
Failing to raise the Airbus by IFF, the Pentagon said, the Vincennes broadcast its warnings by voice radio, using the emergency UHF and VHF channels that aircraft crews would hear if they followed standard practice of monitoring those frequencies. Crowe said three warnings were sent over the civilian emergency channel and four over the military one, called "Guard." The Pentagon said the Vincennes could have issued the warning over the air traffic control channel but did not.
"The suspect aircraft was outside the prescribed commercial air corridor," Crowe told reporters. Defense Department officials said later that the Airbus was four miles west of commercial air corridor. "More importantly," Crowe continued, "the aircraft headed directly for Vincennes on a constant bearing at high speed, approximately 450 knots."
Without becoming specific, Crowe said there were "electronic indications on Vincennes" that led the U.S. crew to conclude the approaching airliner was an F14. "Given the threatening flight profile and decreasing range, the aircraft was declared 'hostile' " at 2:51 a.m. EDT. The airliner at that crucial moment was on a course of almost due south, 185 degrees, and descending toward the Vincennes from an altitude of 7,800 feet, according to Crowe. Visibility was no more than five miles, Crowe said.
Three minutes later, at 2:54 a.m. EDT, the Vincennes launched two Standard surface-to-air missiles from its deck. The missiles whooshed toward the twin-jet airliner, which was nine miles away and not visible to the naked eye because of the haze hanging over the gulf. The Standard missiles homed in on the heat of the quarry's engines and at least one of them exploded when it pulled abreast of the Airbus. Such a missile hit usually slices an aircraft apart and turns it into a fireball of burning fuel.
Everyone seems to think that communicating with aliens will be like talking to somebody from another country. More than likely it will be like talking to another species, such as whales. Communication is dictated by evolution and environment.
For instance, on a distant planet with a thin atmosphere and dim light, communication may primarily be through touch. Various sensations to different parts of the body would convey meaning. This species may very well design its radios to carry signals to these tactile communications gadgets. Without those same body parts, how are we supposed to decode any message sent to us? On the flip side, how do we know that our signals, carrying visual and auditory information will be comprehended by a blind, deaf species?
You do not need to go that far. Just get it into Earth orbit and the Shuttle can return it. Or get it to the ISS and send it back in a Russian cargo pod. You could probably use a reuseable bus to ferry stuff between Earth orbit and the moon base.
Once production really gets going, keep it aloft and use the materials for expanding the space station and moon station. The whole reasoning for a moon mine is to reduce the cost of getting materials into orbit. Getting station components built on the moon may be cheaper than lofting it up from the Earth. It'll also help to have that production capability on the moon and in orbit when we decide to go to Mars.
Re:we never landed on the moon (offtopic)
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Mining On The Moon
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
If I recall, that was a joke show that the execs at Fox thought would be received by the audience as such. When people started believing the stuff, Fox had to issue a press release indicating that the show was not to be taken seriously. I think they even had another show to point this out. But the original is the one that gets all the ratings, and therefore gets played more often.
If somebody is writing mission-critical software, I hope they inspect imported code as closely (if not closer) than the code they write themselves. Anyone who reuses code designed for another application without reviewing it deserves every bug they encounter.
I agree that a strong compiler is a good tool, but it is still a tool. This may be good for inexperienced programmers, but an experienced programmer should be able to avoid most of the errors with vigilance.
Most of the code I produce today is not radically different from code I wrote 4 years ago. I'm just doing different things with different data. The same good programming principles still apply and are adequate for my needs.
I guess to ensure that no children are harmed during the distribution of a movie, all movies will default to a Rated-G version. Films like Robocop would consist primarily of opening and closing credits. Soundtracks would be similarly altered so that the music is altered to appropriately tilted tracks from "KidTunes".
I'd enjoy being SysAdmin - if it weren't for the users...
That is to say that you do not enjoy being a sysadmin.
If it weren't for the users there would be no system to admin. Give them their sandbox and when they trash it, delete the user and their resources. If they complain, then tell them not to fuck around and hand them a policy sheet.
Admining a system is not about tinkering with the OS and hardware, it is about making the box useable to others. This implies dealing with users. If you don't like dealing with users then you need to look elsewhere for another job, because this one doesn't fit the description.
Having a system admin who hates dealing with the users is like having a developer that hates writing code.
Slashdot Mirror
They have no reason to care, and that is how it should be. If you want China to become a democracy, then go tell the Chinese. Ultimately, it is up to them.
But how do you tell the chinese how to become a democracy if your message is filtered?
I do keep up with science. As a solid state engineer, I am quite aware of the developments in physics. I have also watched past theories progress from theory to actual product. I know the difference between a scientific pipe dream from something that will actually be useful. As another poster said, theories abound, but few theories are actually solid enough to build upon.
We have antimatter in the labs for millionths of a second. These particles are extremely unstable and take huge volumes of energy to produce. We have no way to create stable antimatter, nor would we have a way to transport it, even if we did have it. Keep in mind that the creators of Star Trek introduced the "dilithium crystal" which was a fictional material that made anitmatter useful because it was the one form of matter that would not react with antimatter. Nature is not nearly as convenient as fiction.
We have fusion in the labs. We have had fusion in the labs for nearly 40 years. For the last 30 years, press releases have said we're 10 years away. Fortunately, fusion is not a pipe dream. It is a workable technology because fusion theory is relatively well understood. It will be useful, but not any time soon.
If we can't get fusion on the ground, then the fusion engine is not going to fly anytime soon.
Warp technology is not solved. We do not know exactly how to do it. If we did, we would be doing it. There are limits to what you can do and when you get to any practical scale, many quantum theories yield to classical mechanics. This is not a barrier that is even remotely close to being overcome.
Consider the particle accelerator. With it scinetists can accelerate things to nearly the speed of light. We have been doing this since the 30's. By your logic, it should be a simple matter to create a large scale accelerator to accelerate space probes to the nearby stars. The problem is that accelerating something with any appreciable mass to those speeds requires more energy than we could ever hope to generate in our lifetimes. Yes on paper it could work, but there are a great many reasons why it won't work in real life.
Also consider the single electron switch. IBM demonstrated the technology several years ago where they were able to move an electron and measure the change. Theoretically this could be used to make extremely small electronic devices. But there still is no practical switch. Relative to a warp drive, this is fairly simple stuff, and yet we still cannot make this happen on the scale that it needs to happen to be useful. The problem is that they developed this in an electron microscope. These things are at least the size of your desk and require an almost perfect vaccuum to operate effectively. Translating this technology from an electron microscope environment to a device in a silicon crystal has proved extremely daunting. Who knows how long it will take them? (They are still working on this last time I checked).
Your oversimplification of the engineering process is the root of your delusion. I suggest that you actually try solving some of these problems instead of simply reading news articles and press releases and making uninformed assumptions. Also, keep in mind that many of these researchers are trying to defend their budgets and need some publicity to hand the director come budget time. You'd be suprised how many theories and observations can get lumped into this category. I'm not attacking the researchers, its just that if they want to continue their work, they might have to make some grandiose claims to attract grant money. You do what you need to do to continue your work. Much of the work they are doing is very interesting and will at least start filling in pieces of the puzzle. But right now we don't even know what the puzzle is supposed to look like, let alone where all the pieces fit in.
Let's not mix fact with fiction. The pace of human develpment is much slower than you seem to realize. Could it happen in your timeframe? Sure. Will it happen. I strongly doubt it.
In a hundred years or so we will have the ability to use nano technology and completely control matter, extend life with genetic technology, and use warp drives, anti matter could provide the energy source.
In a hundred years we will probably still be trying to get fusion running and anti-matter will still be a woefully energy consuming excercise limited to the lab environment.
Think of it this way, we can send a sail out into space, but it would be like creating a hot air balloon knowing that next week you'll have a MACH6 speed jet plane which will surpass the air balloon in a few hours.
Balloons and jets were not developed weeks apart, but centuries. And the invention of the jet engine was a simple excercise in thermodynamics (compress air+fuel, burn, use thrust), not quantum physics (fold space-time).
What we should be doing right now, is gathering information with probes, exploring planets like mars, and developing nano technologies.
Well said. But the reason we should do this is more than likely because we will not soon see convenient travel amongst the stars.
We may however have the technology to teleport or travel through worm holes within the next hundred years, just because the technology exsists doesnt mean we'd use it, we have technology now to let us run our cars on air itself, on water, on sunlight and so on and we dont.
We don't use these technologies because they are too damned expensive to use. Cars do not run on air (even now). Fuel cells, which I assume that you are referring to, require fuel just like any other energy producing device. The reason we don't use them is twofold. (1) Fuel cells are damned expensive because they rely on expensive materials and processes for manufacture. (2) The energy density of gasoline is much better than any production fuel cell. This is why the good old combustion engine is still in production. It produces more power, and is cheaper to build and operate.
I realize that there are cells in the lab which use diesel as a fuel. This solves the energy density problem, but diesel fuel is still non-renewable and there is a waste product that we still do not know what to do with.
The bottom line is understand the difference between fact and fiction. SciFi is like a religion where people start believing the science presented. Remember, this is fiction and often the science is invented in order to provide an appropriate setting in which to tell a story. Star Trek would not be the same if it took hundreds of years to get from planet to planet. The story line depends on the crew visiting strange new worlds on a weekly basis.
Throw a couple of armchair physicists together and you have your "warp" capability. But this was done to solve the problem of weekly encounters for a TV show. There is no basis in science as how one would "warp" space artificially.
I have no problem when people dream. It provides a very useful impetus for development. But don't lose your hold on reality. We still live on this world, not in the United Federation of Planets.
This means the one hack(crack) will effect net-snmp but not MS's crappy agent and vice-versa.
r elevant comes through. The poster could have made his point without it, but instead chose to insert the "crappy" modifier before MS.
Tee-hee. A little of the slashdot trademark smack-MS-at-every-opportunity-even-when-it-isn't-
I don't know much about the various implementations and Microsoft's implementation may very well leave much to be desired. But cheap shots are still cheap shots.
If this post is not moderated -1:Offtopic, then Slashdot's crappy moderation system must be at fault.
As a parent of a two-year old and a newborn, telecommuting is not an option. I come to work to get away from my family. Work is so serene and peaceful, even when we have a code freeze tomorrow.
In my case telecommuting is not really an option because I do work that ends up on some big-ass equipment that I just cannot take home. I am usually in our lab for a couple hours a day doing testing. But the option to stay at home once and a while and do documentation or paperwork would be nice.
Our company also has a computer purchase program where you can buy older computers that are being rotated out. They are typically nothing special, but make good little experiment boxes or charity donations.
Also, encouraging side projects while at work can provide a well needed diversion while letting the employee explore something new. The company may find that a linux-controlled squirrel-navigated dune buggy has some useful code snippets.
1) Movies are released on these limited use DVDs.
2) DeCSS based software shows up on international websites which copies DVDs with a single click of the mouse (patent pending).
3) Movie studios declare such sites as sponsoring "corporate terrorism" and insist that the US gov't do something.
These methods are doomed to failure because of the existence of DVD decryption technology and cheap recordable DVD media. If I can get a blank DVD for $1 and rent a movie for $4 then I can make a copy for $5, which is much less than the $15-$20 you usually get charged. Adam Smith's invisible hand deals these companies a swift slap of reality.
I think that he meant to say "fewer people die before having offspring". Before when we were less developed, people had a harder time making it to adulthood and being able to procreate. This provided for natural selection in which inferior genes are removed. With modern medicine, people with inferior genes that would have been selected out are now able to make it to adulthood and procreate.
But I agree, evolution goes on and people will continue to evolve. The pressures will be differant because our environment will be differant. Old traits that are now manageable will no longer be selected out, but new traits will be promoted and discouraged.
So we will never be rid of certian genetic defects (until we can do gene manipulation) because we have learned to live with them. We will acquire new traits that are more fitting to our environment and this will be our new path of evolution.
I hate to seem cold-hearted, but here goes.
People often argue this point that giving up X will save N lives. There are several problems with this.
First is the definition of N. Where do you draw the line? Would you give up X to save one life?
The next problem is the obvious potential for abuse. Would you subject yourself and almost 300 million (more if you count those that will be born into a nation without X) of your countrymen to abuse to save N lives? To save one life?
Thousands of people die every day from various dangers to society (automobiles, guns, drugs, etc) and yet we as a society are not willing to give up these things. There are those that want perfect security by eliminating all dangers and those that want perfect freedom by allowing put near anything. The dabate is where you draw the line in between these two extremes to say what is acceptable.
To answer your question, I feel that the possible abuse of power on hundreds of millions of people is too high of a price to pay to save a few thousand lives.
Informally, each standard in the POSIX set is defined by a decimal following the POSIX. Thus, POSIX.1 is the standard for an application program interface in the C language. POSIX.2 is the standard shell and utility interface (that is to say, the user's command interface with the operating system). These are the main two interfaces, but additional interfaces, such as POSIX.4 for thread management, have been developed or are being developed. The POSIX interfaces were developed under the auspices of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Is there a POSIX definition as to where packages go in the filesystem and what libraries are to be included? If so then I would say that your post is on target. If not then perhaps the LSB and FHS should be rolled into the POSIX standard. One stop standards shopping.
Hell I live in Orlando AND have annual passes. I've never heard of this attraction, but I'm definitely going to do some recon.
These probabilities are usually the computed from an analysis of death reports. As such these odds indicate that more people are killed every year by satellite debris than win the lottery. If twenty or so people win the lottery annually, then how many people die from satellite debris each year? This seems to be a more newsworthy event, but yet I never seem to hear about it.
My handy-dandy SMC Barricade router will clone the MAC address of a PC connected to the LAN side. Thus the company could not rely on this method to catch this particular router.
Like ants at a picnic, there are plenty of similies in this review. No doubt the work of someone who has actually read things other than programming manuals.
The idea of the "job for life" has disappeared, temporarily creating a political economy of insecurity
The dynamic nature of business also presents opportunities to those willing to embrace change. I never thought I'd be doing any one thing for more than ten years. As I learn new skills I move into new jobs and learn other skills. Keep moving. I feel sorry for those who want to sit and do the same thing until death's cold hand summons them to the grave. Variety is life.
Expecting to go through life without changing jobs is like expecting to drive on the expressway without changing lanes.
I remember the OpenSSH guys were having trademark problems. Could it be related to that?
1) Do not upgrade from Windows95. Do a fresh install.
2) Install a minimum amount of software. Each new package that you install undermines the stability with extra DLLs and registry hacks.
3) Do not use exotic, state-of-the-art hardware. Use slightly older hardware with more mature drivers.
If you follow these simple rules you to can run Windows98 for months at a time. I have a small fileserver at my job which has been rebooted twice in as many years.
If you can afford it, get another computer or install a hard drive tray. Make one your works system and the other a "sandbox". Use the sandbox to evaluate new software and incorporate it into your work box once you completely understand it. Most of Win98's problems seem to happen to people that install all kinds of different software that they never use. The problem is that many vendors give you a computer that is pre-fucked (much useless software already installed). Your best bet is to reformat these disks and reinstall.
Has anyone built a 100% automated large scale power plant? Even here on Earth, such a task is daunting. Saying that it can be easily done on the moon, and done cost effectively is like saying that I could build cheaper cars on the moon because my machinery will only have to cope with 1/6th of the gravity.
"But satellites and the space shuttle use solar power all the time." They also have either a 5-10 year lifespan or are serviced regularly. The article said that it could be profitable in 5 years. So when it finally becomes profitable, many of its components will be nearing the end of their lifespan. Then you have to chunk down some more money to build a replacement.
Nevermind that there will still need to be multiple ground stations in remote areas to catch the radiation. The moon is not geosynchronous. Build a station at the poles you say? There goes your costs again. Also, say what you want about safety, nobody will want to live near these things. And they will have to be in different countries which brings politics into the mix.
This is pie-in-the-sky dreaming. If you ask me, I think the money is better spent designing and running a good nuclear power plant or for some fusion research.
Not too paranoid. Dealerships make a lot of their money servicing cars. Granted, most of the money comes from the parent company for warranty work. But this practice will not be opposed because there is a lot of money to be made.
1) End user maintenance. Why can't the car tell you why the check engine light is on? Because the dealers want you to come down to the shop and pay them $40 just to do a diagnosis.
2) Mechanics will get the machines that they need to read the computer codes. The car companies make money indirectly by working with the folks who build these boxes. The mechanics make money because they can charge somebody $40 because a light came on.
#2 really burns me. The computers in the shop are typically PCs housed in a big console with several cables coming out. The cables are simply a black box to the parallel port. There is no reason that this black box cannot be made available in you local Discount Auto.
Once my car is paid for, I'm going to set out to develop a replacement computer of my own design - Just to spite those guys. If anyone is interested or knows where I can get info on the Ford 4.6L engine, please let me know. I've got the shop manuals, and they do a pretty good job of describing the signals coming from the equipment. The next step is to design the hardware. OpenCar anyone? No...wait...that's a lousy name. How about RagTop?
1) Airbus IFF was not active.
2) Airbus was off course.
3) Airbus did not respond to voice queries on several channels.
4) Vincennes did not broadcast warning on Air Traffic Control channel.
5) Vincennes had no way to visually ID the Airbus.
6) Vincennes' helicopter had been attacked by gunboats.
It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From the Washington Post...
Everyone seems to think that communicating with aliens will be like talking to somebody from another country. More than likely it will be like talking to another species, such as whales. Communication is dictated by evolution and environment.
For instance, on a distant planet with a thin atmosphere and dim light, communication may primarily be through touch. Various sensations to different parts of the body would convey meaning. This species may very well design its radios to carry signals to these tactile communications gadgets. Without those same body parts, how are we supposed to decode any message sent to us? On the flip side, how do we know that our signals, carrying visual and auditory information will be comprehended by a blind, deaf species?
You do not need to go that far. Just get it into Earth orbit and the Shuttle can return it. Or get it to the ISS and send it back in a Russian cargo pod. You could probably use a reuseable bus to ferry stuff between Earth orbit and the moon base.
Once production really gets going, keep it aloft and use the materials for expanding the space station and moon station. The whole reasoning for a moon mine is to reduce the cost of getting materials into orbit. Getting station components built on the moon may be cheaper than lofting it up from the Earth. It'll also help to have that production capability on the moon and in orbit when we decide to go to Mars.
If I recall, that was a joke show that the execs at Fox thought would be received by the audience as such. When people started believing the stuff, Fox had to issue a press release indicating that the show was not to be taken seriously. I think they even had another show to point this out. But the original is the one that gets all the ratings, and therefore gets played more often.
If somebody is writing mission-critical software, I hope they inspect imported code as closely (if not closer) than the code they write themselves. Anyone who reuses code designed for another application without reviewing it deserves every bug they encounter.
I agree that a strong compiler is a good tool, but it is still a tool. This may be good for inexperienced programmers, but an experienced programmer should be able to avoid most of the errors with vigilance.
Most of the code I produce today is not radically different from code I wrote 4 years ago. I'm just doing different things with different data. The same good programming principles still apply and are adequate for my needs.
I guess to ensure that no children are harmed during the distribution of a movie, all movies will default to a Rated-G version. Films like Robocop would consist primarily of opening and closing credits. Soundtracks would be similarly altered so that the music is altered to appropriately tilted tracks from "KidTunes".
I'd enjoy being SysAdmin - if it weren't for the users...
That is to say that you do not enjoy being a sysadmin.
If it weren't for the users there would be no system to admin. Give them their sandbox and when they trash it, delete the user and their resources. If they complain, then tell them not to fuck around and hand them a policy sheet.
Admining a system is not about tinkering with the OS and hardware, it is about making the box useable to others. This implies dealing with users. If you don't like dealing with users then you need to look elsewhere for another job, because this one doesn't fit the description.
Having a system admin who hates dealing with the users is like having a developer that hates writing code.