Damascus Steel in fact was never lost, at least in Soviet Russia. Several articles But in the west, it might not be taught in metalurgy classes. There is this article found on the net from 1994 where someone had "rediscovered" the secret back in 1981, with the development of "ultrahigh carbon steels". I also recall an old Scientific american article from the 1980s (?) which went into the making of Dasmacus Steel So I imagine that the secret has been rediscovered several times over the past 20 years, There is more on this from another source here and also here. Other resources are here on the Materials Science and Engineering newsletter. I see that that the people in the article are right now looking to put a patent on it. They won't be able to get a pattent if it was already developed in recent history.
So what would people do with it, assumming that it is found, and put up for action? A nice touch would be to have an original early version of the slash code on it that you ran, with maybe the first 100 messages, just for good historical sentimentality.
I can seem someone doing this to it (as seen here).
Toshiba and Matsushita developed CSS, most likely answering requests from the movie mafia. One Toshiba employee, John Hoy, then left Toshiba and formed the DVD CCA, whose sole business is the management of CSS licenses. [...] The diagram shows boxes for the Executive Director of every organization, but does not put a name there. We can correct that omission. The name in every one of those boxes is "John Hoy". [...] If identical presidents and postal addresses are not enough, here is additional proof for the theory that all the organisations above are just different fronts for the same group: [etc]
So it looks like out chief criminal in charge out of all this stuff is "John Hoy". This is important. One of the things that a criminal mind hates is exposure, especially of their crimes.
Sounds like a job for some someone out there skilled in investigation. It _is_ important. As it is noted:
Judging from the history of these organisations, and the extreme care everyone has shown to make the various arrangements as complex and bullet-proof as possible, the main reason is almost surely an attempt at exploiting the law and legal system to the fullest extent, and the avoidance of cartel and anti-trust investigations.
This is likely the result of the advantadges of having Linux being supported/marketed by IBM. I can see it as part of an IBM marketing solution. Because of this, I can see IBM putting the whole package though vigourous QA.
Not so suddenly, the words of warning from MS are appearing more and more feable.
if you want to compare, a better match is what NCSA is already running. 1024 processors, over half a TFLOP sustained, a full TFLOP at peak.
Most people can visualize a hundred or so boxen a lot easier than a thousand or so. It gets a little unreal. So the Brit site with pretty pictures of the system is a good site for those not familiar with the larger systems.
For comparision there is the Cosmology Machine in Britain, which among other things consists of an integrated cluster of 128 Ultra-SparcIII processors and a 24-processor SunFire, and has a total of 112 Gigabytes of RAM and 7 Terabytes of data storage. With all of this power it can perform up to 456 billion arithmetic operations in a second (228 billion floating point and 228 billion integer operations)
This is impressive, but the nasa machine will blow it out of the water.
The Core thing about the MIT Flea market is having a large and well developed technical community. They have some truly wild stuff. Where else could you get a Travelling Wave Amplifier Tube for your science project?
So the thing would be to find out what are the major tech/science schools in the DC area. Approach them with the MIT model, and then, when the arrangements are made, promote it to all of those tech/science schools. You should be able to break even, and maybe even make a buck or to to help finance your other research projects.
Heck, you might even wind up with tables of surplus spook gear.
Technology envy
on
HDTV Over IP
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is the old adage I remember from retail, given the way people behaved sometimes. Some people would ask around for a system that would not cost much, and not be obsolete for 4 or 5 years.
The eventual answer was that "If you can buy it, it is obsolete."
What gets me is how it seems like DS is arrested for violation of American law for things here did in Russia, really. And the rest was merely a snow job to make it look legal. I guess that since he is russian, free speech rights do not apply?. Because he was speaking. Maybe he even said "Go to my webiste and buy stuff".
The last time I checked, even though the west won ther cold war US law was NOT the Law of the Land in Russia.
There is the legal concept of "Fighting Words". This covers things like inciting to riot, or other illegal acts. The Supreme Court has issued many rulings on this. These are the rulings that allow Nazis to stroll through a jewish neighborhood, while under police protection. This area of law is part of free speech rights, and basically knocks down the idea that you can be arrested for incitement to an illegal act. IANAL. A search for the phrase will turn up many referances.
People can buy instruments of violence in the US. But tread on someone's imagined profits, and watch out. Even if you are just speaking, or selling.
There could be a tremendous constitutional legal issue tied up with this. I hope the DCMA gets nailed.
I know of at least one small ISP that had very serious problems this week.
First one of the top dogs in the place sent sircam throughout the company. This was a really bad hair day.
Then they had a separate second problem where user mail boxes flooded out crashing the mail server, among other strange things. Imagine users with DSL lines sending out multimegabyte files that bounce. Considering that most ISPs configure the drive space for mail based on average usage of users, and do not set aside the actual amount of drive space for user mail, etc. that has been promised for all users.
BOOM!
If this keeps happening, this is going to be bad for business in a lot of places.
They even say so in plain english, on this "East European" news site.
;-)
I love the style of the writing of the press release:
Trust no one!
It has come to our attention that rumors are floating regardingthe appearance of a Red Hat Linux beta release, named ROSWELL. We
would like to reassure you that there is nothing of the sort. No other object has been misidentified as a Red Hat Linux beta release
more often than Rawhide. Rawhide was updated just recently. Reporters probably thought they saw something on an FTP site other than Rawhide,
but we assure you, it was Rawhide.
Reports cite that this supposed ROSWELL beta included 4 CDs of software, with such things as a 2.4.6 Linux kernel, XFree86 4.1.0, KDE 2.2pre,
GNOME 1.4, and journaling file system support, and included support for both x86 and ia64.
Were any such Red Hat Linux beta release to exist, it would not be recommended for use on mission-critical hardware, and any casualties
due to data loss, mutation, swamp gas, radiation, or strange glowing lights with such a release would be scoffed at. Any problems or bugs with such a release would most likely be the effect of passing weather balloons.
These problems would be reported at:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/
However, there is no evidence to suggest the actual presence of a ROSWELL beta release. Those who claim otherwise would best not flaunt their
naivete by telling anyone that they saw anything other than Rawhide.
Etc.
Too bad we can't say the same about XP
MS World Domination: 2002 Edition
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 2
Right now there are two Internets: The AOL one, with its own client, servers, content, email, messaging, authentication, billing, security, and all the rest; and the plain old Internet. Microsoft wants to create a third Internet, the.NET Internet, with all the stuff that the AOL Internet has. Then it will pursue a lock-in like the world has never seen before.
Sums it up for me.
I would not mind a three or four way break up of MS:
Office and related; Windows/desktops; Browser/email/related clients; Backend Servers and database apps (includes.NET); Dev tools
No, the problem is trust. Microsoft has done just about everything possible to ensure that they don't have mine. Remember the truism: fuck me once, fuck you. Fuck me twice, fuck me! Bill can go find another hunny to take from. He can't have any more of mine.
Agreed. It has gotten to the point that I no longer trust their technology solutions, because of all of this enhancement in ther marketing and monopoly functionalities.
Let me repeat this. I do not trust their technology. I do not trust their marketing. There is the old joke revisted: How can you tell when an MS exec tells a lie? Answer: [fill in the blank]
Many MS geeks live inside a microsoft world depicted by microsoft marketing. Imagine the vaporware presentations they give the staff about the new technology coming out 5 to 10 years down the road! No wonder they go OOO and AHHH. But it is vaporware all the same. MS probably lies to thier staff as much as they lie to us. They got to keep the vision alive, sell the microserfs on the long term dream enough to get get 5 or 10 years of juicey code out of them before they burn out.
The author has this bit on the next to the last page about WIPO. It starts what could be a called a utopian vision. I guess it is important to remember that this is not impractical, that it could be achieved, and is therefore not utopian. But it will take people with bigger souls than are working in WIPO than are currently there.
It is certainly worth thinking about.
Let's take a look at some of the values implicit in the WIPO's vision:
Content producers should be paid for their work.
Those who contribute to the production and distribution of content (investors, distributors, etc.) should be compensated.
Existing power arrangements (i.e. between content producers and middlemen, between G8 and developing nations, etc.) should be
maintained.
The protection of commercial interests through universal compliance with the IP regime should override humanitarian considerations,
ethical considerations, or ease-of-use considerations.
I don't have a problem with the first two values, but the last two really stick in my craw. Furthermore, the list is telling
for what it leaves out. Consider the following values that would be expressed in an ideal intellectual property regime if it
were up to me:
The possibility of being a content producer should be open to everyone, and not just the few who can afford to buy their way into the
game.
Content producers should be paid for their work.
Those who contribute to the production and distribution of content (investors, distributors, etc.) should be compensated.
The cost and hassle of being compliant with the IP regime (i.e. compliance with national laws for IP protection) should always be less than
the cost and hassle of being non-compliant.
The public should have ready access to products of the intellect, regardless of social location.
The capabilities of digital media for archiving and distribution should be fully exploited for the good of the many, and not artificially constrained by the interests of the few for the purpose of maintaining existing power arrangements.
Finding enough capable programmers and system administrators proved to be the primary obstacle for the project. "We need a lot of people trained in Linux here in Mexico," Ibarra said. "It's a problem we didn't expect, and that has slowed our progress. We must prepare people.
reminds me of the old rhyme, "For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe a horse was lost, for want of a horse a skirmish was lost, etc etc etc, all for want of a nail"
It is going to be interesting to see how the PR Weasles at MS worm out of this one.
This decision is consistent with the reuling that the original judge screwed up badly by mouthing off. The original findings of FACT remain, and someone else has to redo the penalities.
In this case, if there is no breakup, then a huge fine, say equal to most of their cash reserves, and a prohibition from releasing any new versions of Windows or other similar platform programs, such as their.NET effort for 4 or 5 years should be adequate. (one or two would not be enough) I might include Passport in this as well.
We need to drive home that they screwed up. They need the thousand watt lightbulb experience on this. They need to get it. Wrist slap penalties do not do this.
The primary target has to be the PR weasles, who have promoted a certain vision and way of doing business. The dev crew buys off on the vision, but they are kept in the dark on the PR wealse inner secrets on how to do business. The result is that the Dev crew maintains its loyalty, and doesn't realize their inadvertant complicity with the destructiveness of the PR Weasles.
The PR Weasles have grown a destructive culture in Microsoft.
They don't know you have to let your competitors breath.
Sadly, the way the mass culture is developing with visual media, with things like quake and MTV, well these things are not the things of great literature.
In history, during times when many men did not read, nothing much was written in the way of literature. This seems rather obvious to say it that way.
The question is, with the passing of these great authors, are we entering into another age when many men do not read?
Still, did you know that 41 percent of images attached to British business e-mail messages are pornographic? Does that say more about business or the British?
He seems to have bought the Steve Gibson line to some degree although he is more reasonable. The problem is that the scenario Cringely paints is likely to be painted as unlikely because it is so unbelievable. Sadly, this does not make it any less likely in fact. As he says:
At this point, I'm supposed to write, "Ah, but here's what we do about it," only I can't. Our vulnerability is too great and our lack of defensive talent too profound. There are ways to protect systems and networks against these kinds of attacks, but no depth of will to really fight them. The Internet is already such an ingrained and incompetently managed part of our lives that it is already too late."
Because nobody at CNN has been infected with sircam yet.
Actually, Sircam is an agent for CNN, ABC, National Enquirer, etc.( and the other media.) Sircam is a reporters dream. All those gigabytes of confidential documents, being sent at random.
I wonder how many wind up in the hands of CNN, ABC, Fox, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
Damascus Steel in fact was never lost, at least in Soviet Russia. Several articles But in the west, it might not be taught in metalurgy classes. There is this article found on the net from 1994 where someone had "rediscovered" the secret back in 1981, with the development of "ultrahigh carbon steels". I also recall an old Scientific american article from the 1980s (?) which went into the making of Dasmacus Steel So I imagine that the secret has been rediscovered several times over the past 20 years, There is more on this from another source here and also here. Other resources are here on the Materials Science and Engineering newsletter. I see that that the people in the article are right now looking to put a patent on it. They won't be able to get a pattent if it was already developed in recent history.
These drugs would be okay for Quake, etc, but not for Chess, given their side effects inhelping a person going postal.
On the other hand, Olympic Quake sounds like fun
[note - XP =18, etc. depending on how you count it.]
I can seem someone doing this to it (as seen here).
Just to take out a few frustrations
So it looks like out chief criminal in charge out of all this stuff is "John Hoy". This is important. One of the things that a criminal mind hates is exposure, especially of their crimes.
Sounds like a job for some someone out there skilled in investigation. It _is_ important. As it is noted:
Judging from the history of these organisations, and the extreme care everyone has shown to make the various arrangements as complex and bullet-proof as possible, the main reason is almost surely an attempt at exploiting the law and legal system to the fullest extent, and the avoidance of cartel and anti-trust investigations.
Not so suddenly, the words of warning from MS are appearing more and more feable.
I wonder how much of this is tied into the comtnuing fine that AT&T has been paying, and will continue to pay, for screwing up its lesser competitors.
Most people can visualize a hundred or so boxen a lot easier than a thousand or so. It gets a little unreal. So the Brit site with pretty pictures of the system is a good site for those not familiar with the larger systems.
They have other pretty pictures from their work as well.
This is impressive, but the nasa machine will blow it out of the water.
So the thing would be to find out what are the major tech/science schools in the DC area. Approach them with the MIT model, and then, when the arrangements are made, promote it to all of those tech/science schools. You should be able to break even, and maybe even make a buck or to to help finance your other research projects.
Heck, you might even wind up with tables of surplus spook gear.
The eventual answer was that "If you can buy it, it is obsolete."
Technology envy strikes again
The last time I checked, even though the west won ther cold war US law was NOT the Law of the Land in Russia.
There is the legal concept of "Fighting Words". This covers things like inciting to riot, or other illegal acts. The Supreme Court has issued many rulings on this. These are the rulings that allow Nazis to stroll through a jewish neighborhood, while under police protection. This area of law is part of free speech rights, and basically knocks down the idea that you can be arrested for incitement to an illegal act. IANAL. A search for the phrase will turn up many referances.
People can buy instruments of violence in the US. But tread on someone's imagined profits, and watch out. Even if you are just speaking, or selling.
There could be a tremendous constitutional legal issue tied up with this. I hope the DCMA gets nailed.
This is the Frankenstein approach to building a monster operating system.
First one of the top dogs in the place sent sircam throughout the company. This was a really bad hair day.
Then they had a separate second problem where user mail boxes flooded out crashing the mail server, among other strange things. Imagine users with DSL lines sending out multimegabyte files that bounce. Considering that most ISPs configure the drive space for mail based on average usage of users, and do not set aside the actual amount of drive space for user mail, etc. that has been promised for all users.
BOOM!
If this keeps happening, this is going to be bad for business in a lot of places.
;-)
I love the style of the writing of the press release:
Etc.Too bad we can't say the same about XP
Sums it up for me.
I would not mind a three or four way break up of MS:
Office and related; Windows/desktops; Browser/email/related clients; Backend Servers and database apps (includes .NET); Dev tools
okay a five way breakup
;-)
Agreed. It has gotten to the point that I no longer trust their technology solutions, because of all of this enhancement in ther marketing and monopoly functionalities.
Let me repeat this. I do not trust their technology. I do not trust their marketing. There is the old joke revisted: How can you tell when an MS exec tells a lie? Answer: [fill in the blank]
Many MS geeks live inside a microsoft world depicted by microsoft marketing. Imagine the vaporware presentations they give the staff about the new technology coming out 5 to 10 years down the road! No wonder they go OOO and AHHH. But it is vaporware all the same. MS probably lies to thier staff as much as they lie to us. They got to keep the vision alive, sell the microserfs on the long term dream enough to get get 5 or 10 years of juicey code out of them before they burn out.
It is certainly worth thinking about.
reminds me of the old rhyme, "For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe a horse was lost, for want of a horse a skirmish was lost, etc etc etc, all for want of a nail"
The misspelling was semi-deliberate, to distinguish the PR Weasles from other far more noble life forms.
;-)
This decision is consistent with the reuling that the original judge screwed up badly by mouthing off. The original findings of FACT remain, and someone else has to redo the penalities.
In this case, if there is no breakup, then a huge fine, say equal to most of their cash reserves, and a prohibition from releasing any new versions of Windows or other similar platform programs, such as their .NET effort for 4 or 5 years should be adequate. (one or two would not be enough) I might include Passport in this as well.
We need to drive home that they screwed up. They need the thousand watt lightbulb experience on this. They need to get it. Wrist slap penalties do not do this.
The primary target has to be the PR weasles, who have promoted a certain vision and way of doing business. The dev crew buys off on the vision, but they are kept in the dark on the PR wealse inner secrets on how to do business. The result is that the Dev crew maintains its loyalty, and doesn't realize their inadvertant complicity with the destructiveness of the PR Weasles.
The PR Weasles have grown a destructive culture in Microsoft.
They don't know you have to let your competitors breath.
Sadly, the way the mass culture is developing with visual media, with things like quake and MTV, well these things are not the things of great literature.
In history, during times when many men did not read, nothing much was written in the way of literature. This seems rather obvious to say it that way.
The question is, with the passing of these great authors, are we entering into another age when many men do not read?
We seem to be in an age of shallow men.
heck, this was possible even under windows 95. there is a hack setting in the system ini someplace that you can edit for this.
Personally. I like Black Letters on a deep Satanic Red background. Seems apporpriate.
You can see how to do it here. If you know how, it will take you 15 seconds to set up.
Microsoft just gave you a gui interface to make it easy.
Internet Winter - Why Internet Security is an Oxymoron
There is this interesting factoid:
Still, did you know that 41 percent of images attached to British business e-mail messages are pornographic? Does that say more about business or the British?
He seems to have bought the Steve Gibson line to some degree although he is more reasonable. The problem is that the scenario Cringely paints is likely to be painted as unlikely because it is so unbelievable. Sadly, this does not make it any less likely in fact. As he says:
At this point, I'm supposed to write, "Ah, but here's what we do about it," only I can't. Our vulnerability is too great and our lack of defensive talent too profound. There are ways to protect systems and networks against these kinds of attacks, but no depth of will to really fight them. The Internet is already such an ingrained and incompetently managed part of our lives that it is already too late."
Actually, Sircam is an agent for CNN, ABC, National Enquirer, etc.( and the other media.) Sircam is a reporters dream. All those gigabytes of confidential documents, being sent at random.
I wonder how many wind up in the hands of CNN, ABC, Fox, etc?