Watch where you point that thing...
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 1
You could put somebody's eye out!!!
Seriously, you point low density microwave (maser) emitters from the moon to earth... you use a BIG antenna here to pick up the energy, and you make sure the maser is aimed at unpopulated areas (though the critter should be detuned for resonant frequencies of important stuff like water, protein, myelin, cellulose, stuff like that.)
With the maser detuned for living stuff, it would be of relatively little consequence to living critters. Since microwave get's through the atmosphere better than most light frequencies, you can convert all that light into microwave, and you lose relatively little in the trasmission. Much better than trying to shoot high intensity laser to earth.
By the way... anybody who wants to build an asteroid blaster on the side of the moon facing earth... is not your friend. Explain to this person (with a large blunt instrument) that high energy beam weapons pointed earthward make really poor sense. I can almost see the generals getting wood at the thought...
By the way... anybody got an idea how to stop GW from building a half trillion dollar missile shield that almost certainly won't work (and that would be the good news.) That if successful would completely destabalize the world nuclear balance, almost certainly begin a new arms race, and almost certainly cause four and five star idiots drooling over the big red button the mistaken belief that tactical nukes could be a viable tool in enforcing American opinions on the world?!!! Somebody just needs to have a talk with that boy!!!
I actually have two spook stories for the general fun and enjoyment of this crowd. The first is a personal experience, and to this day gives me a seriouscase of the creeps. The other I read about in a trade journal and laughed hard enough that I feel obligated to pass it on.
My first professional job out of college was as an EE at a Forge plant in Southern CA. They had three huge hydraulic presses that were perfectly capable of squishing a compact car into metal foil. The controls for the presses were so cool. Under the control panel of each of the three presses was a cabinet with a discrete four bit processor inside, consisting of 30+ circuit cards plugged into a wirewrapped backplain. The logic was literally DTL, and the ROM, consisted of a card with doxens of 1n2001 diodes on pegs. Cut out a diode for a 0 or leave it in for a 1.
So the electronics were designed in the 50s, and for it's time it was cutting edge. The platten position was controled by a digitizer feeding a gray code output to the control package. The problem was, the system didn't have bugs... it had rodents! A chew here, a nibble there. Eventually the system developed shorts and wierdass ground loops. Suddenly on cool damp nights, for no good apparent reason, the presses would come on all by themselves, begin cycling, and might end an evening stint by hammering up and down 10 or 15 times scaring the bejesus out of the poor guys on the night shift. Personally I though drug abuse was involved. Meds had to be part of the issue.
So I was there late one night, doing maintenance checking, and suddenly the presses came on. I ran into the booth, tried to turn the damn thing off, but everything was already off. I banged on things, cursed at things, hunted for a main breaker. Just as a goof I screamed "Begone Demon, the power of Christ compels you!!!" (One too many rewatchings of the Exorcist.) Suddenly everything stopped. The problem never happened again on my watch.
************
The other story was one I read about in a trade journal. This guy was down in Florida starting up a huge supercomputer in the early 80s, and he was in the system room, which was a class 1000 cleanroom.
He went to his car, grabbed the boot loader tape, went back into the cleanroom, and tried to install the tape. To his chagrin, the tape was blank, and he had to explain to the customer, that somehow, he'd brought a blank tape from the main office with him.
So he called the main office, and asked them to please send him a new tape ASAP. They were only too happy to express that critter down, time is money, right?
So he get's the tape. Walks into the computer room, loads the critter up and it's as blank as G.W.s frontal lobes. Now he's bugged. He has to explain to the customer, that there'll be another days delay sending a good tape down.
Now something just isn't right here. One tape he can say is a mistake. Two... that's just one too many. So he's scratching his head... how could he have gotten two blank tapes.
While he's sitting in front of the big dead box, and a worker suddenly comes in through the cleanroom door.
All the tools hanging on the workers belt suddenly jump straight out as if he's some kind of wierd cross between Black and Decker and a porcupine. He asked the guy, what the hell was that that made the tools jump like that.
The worker looks at him nonchalantly and says, "Oh that, That's the high powered electromagnets in the door... They're designed to remove any ferro magnetic dust or particles from your body as you enter the cleanroom."
The installation tech. just begins laughing hysterically, like he 's gonna need his meds changed... Can you say Degauss!!!
It's back to the drawing board for you (Blond high five!)
It's neither Open Sores, or Open Source...
It's OBENSAURS, O - BEN - SAURS, a small, fast, warm blooded, carniverous dinosaur, that ran circles around it's larger, dumber, cold blooded relatives.
During it's remarkably long stay on the planet, it hunted to extinction, large stupid lumbering giants. Fossil records indicate that it's favorite prey was a particularly ill mannered, slow witted beast whose massive remains were found in cold moist places near what is now called Redmond, Washington.
Hey folks... This is so simple... M$ hasn't gotten the message yet! At one end, the DOJ has M$ by the tail as it sharpens it's knife, and at the other end this stupid dog keeps barking and snapping, clearly not having gotten the message to stop biting people.
I say we contact the justice department, and say, "Hey Guys, apparently this bad dog thinks it's immune to your ire, that or they believe you have no balls... because here they are doing the same 'ol dirty deeds, shoving illegal copywrites down peoples' throats', threatening first amendment rights, attempting to pave clean over honest and decent programmers in the process of simply discussing software, and generally claiming that they got the right to do any 'ol thing they please. Isn't there something you can do to muzzle this mutt? It's really getting old having to tell them "They Can't Do That", mayhaps you need to use a larger "Clue-Stick(tm)".
I a nutshell, Hey! DOJ, They haven't gotten the message... sik'em!!!
Sure HTML is copywriteable. You just want to make sure that your posterior is adequately covered. So by the numbers;
1. Get your own lawyer. 2. Determine if the part of the code that you used was itself copywriteable. That is, if you only kept simple HTML boiler plate to support functions you wrote, it will be much harder for them to claim it as their intellectual property... that is, you could just go run out and get the dev. application yourself, generate identical code, and it would have been your generation. In fact that may settle the case, tell the judge that you didn't realize that this was "Their code... and that you'll just go out by the generator and roll it yourself." 3. Counter sue on the grounds that their suit is a frivolous personal attack designed to deny you of fair compensation for cleaning up their mess. Sue them for the cost of your lawyer, lost productivity, and any other obvious costs you can justify. 4. Talk to your lawyer to see if you ca have their case dismissed on the grounds that they don't own the HTML... the company you work for does.
You'll get a lot of interesting takes from folks who have a variing degree of legal knowlege. The best advice is to first get some personal representation.
If this shift from selling software to selling services comes to pass, then it will be disastrous to software engineers.
Since the person writing the software isn't a direct revenue producer, then his importance within the corporate structure is diminished. It will be the non-engineers (training/support departments) and those that add dubious "value added services" that will be perceived to be the most important. That's just the way it works, don't blame me.
Also, the engineer will be ASKED to produce MORE buggy and convoluted software, since that is going to be what brings in the most revenue. Who is going to purchase support and services for software that works properly, and is easy to use and maintain?
Don't work for the corporations for free. Say no to free software.
This is important... so you may want to go over it a couple times. The shape of the future is not necessarily determined by the shape of the past. Or for that matter, even the present. Using the current "paradigm of business" to predict the value or feasibility of future technological constructs and organization is itself wrong headed. Yes removing existing managers from the loop would be bad... bad for the status quo. But would it be bad for the future of technology, bad for programmers and creators of intellectual property? I think not.
If coders became autonomous, like doctors, or lawyers, or any one of a thousand other professions. If their work was deemed intellectual property, and they got royalties just like other artists. This would completely alter the relationship between existing companies and the development of future products. There are dozens of different models for the way that coders could interact with companies, it's up to us to begin to look at these different world views, weigh their benefits and costs and begin designing something saner and more workable than that which currently exists. The idea is not to work for free. The idea is to free ourselves from the oppressive binds of corporate ignorance and stupidity.
As for the programmers;
Imagine not having to code up some Frankensteinian code module because you had to satisfy some sales dweeb who had final say on your project. A sales dweeb who was performing some unnatural sex act on a potential client (read pointy haired manager) who in a psychotic fit had decided that your database engine should support their 40 year old Cobol and Fortran legacy code. A huge amount of talented development energy is being pissed down rat-holes expressly dug by men with no foresight, no knowledge, and no real concept (other than the concept of stroking a potential client to make a dollar) of what's possible with the talent they employ. The results is that we live in a Microsoft world where the ubiquitous scripting language is BASIC!!! You tell me what's wrong with this picture?
Look at the various Open Source projects. They are being managed beautifully for the most part. Because the people who chose to manage them had technical vision and foresight.
The technolati know what needs to be done. They know how to do it right. They have sane measures for quality, interoperability, and reliability. They even have ways to manage accountability. Let the sales people contract the Open Source Consortia, for including a needed feature or functionality in existing code. The Consortia can then say, fine, we can do that, or sorry, your brain tumor seems to be flaring up... please up your meds before coming back and talking to us. Sane minds rule... code by political expedience is (if not eliminated), dramatically reduced.
Technology is coming very soon, that will have broad sweeping impact on the concepts of property, wealth, and all aspects of social interaction. The social order is going to go through a massive shake out. Ideas and practices that are long honored traditions in business and every other field of human endeavor will almost certainly go the way of the fossil record. It would be best if we started planning for that inevitability now. Designing a future that is engineered to serve and succeed, rather than waiting for what happens to us by default. You can almost be certain that random chance won't give us anything so nice as what we can design by intent.
Look, it's always safer to suck up to the powers that be, then to stand up and create something new and better. The guys who froze their butts off on the Potomac fighting the British certainly suffered to create a new country. The problem is that cynicism, complacence, and resignation, don't provide anything except more of what we've already seen. The future isn't going to wait for us. We need to suck it up, and cause something. Create the new paradigm and begin living it.
You have nothing choose but your lains - an unknown dyslexic.
But simply inserting a CD into your computer once doesn't prove you purchased it. The way it worked was that the first time you wanted access from a computer, you insert the original CD into your drive and register it with my.mp3.com. Afterwards, you can listen to it without the CD.
So if I borrowed 100 CDs from a friend for an afternoon and registered them, then returned the CDs, I would be able to listen to music I hadn't purchased. Hence copyright violation... they can't really guarantee that users have purchased the CDs, just that they had them in their possession for a minute or so.
This isn't about whether or not folks were in "Bad Faith" trying to fake out MP3.com. Folks will always do slimy tricks, it's no different than that same guy borrowing his friends 100 CDs and ripping illegal.mp3 copies for himself.
A person who is committed to circumventing the law and fair use could also give away his user id & password to all his friends so that they could all illegally listen to his CD collection on MP3.com.
There're probably a dozen ways a person could use and abuse "ANY" system (a system with MP3.com and/or a system without), to circumvent fair use. That isn't MP3.com's fault and they shouldn't incure any undo liability because there're deceiptful and dishonest people in the world.
Of course, you or I shouldn't have to pay a royalty charge with every single blank tape that is sold over the counter, on the presumption that we are going to make an illegal copies with them. I mean there are a hundred valid uses for blank tape, & we're all taking about fair use right? Unfortunately, we do pay a nominal royalty fee with each blank tape, video and audio. As a culture we've been found guilty until proven innocent by an industry who is incredibly wealthy and irrevocably determined to buy whatever laws it needs to maintain a strangle hold on artistic media. That is how it plans to guarantee it's continued wealth. Y'all may want to read the/. item about the Corporate Republic posted yesterday... it talks a lot about this kind of thinking.
Anne Marie
"A friend of mine passed away last Saturday... her name is Bonnie, and on her deathbed, she created a new nonprofit organization, and filled it's board of directors. She must have said goodbye to dozens of people. She laughed and joked and played with the people she loved. Sick as she was, she went out more alive, than most of the cut and dried, half dead SOBs I see walking the streets this very day. I wanna live and then go out like that. Kicking hinny and forgetin' names cuz I just don't have the time to bother." - Me
Slashdot Mirror
You could put somebody's eye out!!!
Seriously, you point low density microwave (maser) emitters from the moon to earth... you use a BIG antenna here to pick up the energy, and you make sure the maser is aimed at unpopulated areas (though the critter should be detuned for resonant frequencies of important stuff like water, protein, myelin, cellulose, stuff like that.)
With the maser detuned for living stuff, it would be of relatively little consequence to living critters. Since microwave get's through the atmosphere better than most light frequencies, you can convert all that light into microwave, and you lose relatively little in the trasmission. Much better than trying to shoot high intensity laser to earth.
By the way... anybody who wants to build an asteroid blaster on the side of the moon facing earth... is not your friend. Explain to this person (with a large blunt instrument) that high energy beam weapons pointed earthward make really poor sense. I can almost see the generals getting wood at the thought...
By the way... anybody got an idea how to stop GW from building a half trillion dollar missile shield that almost certainly won't work (and that would be the good news.) That if successful would completely destabalize the world nuclear balance, almost certainly begin a new arms race, and almost certainly cause four and five star idiots drooling over the big red button the mistaken belief that tactical nukes could be a viable tool in enforcing American opinions on the world?!!! Somebody just needs to have a talk with that boy!!!
I actually have two spook stories for the general fun and enjoyment of this crowd. The first is a personal experience, and to this day gives me a seriouscase of the creeps. The other I read about in a trade journal and laughed hard enough that I feel obligated to pass it on.
My first professional job out of college was as an EE at a Forge plant in Southern CA. They had three huge hydraulic presses that were perfectly capable of squishing a compact car into metal foil. The controls for the presses were so cool. Under the control panel of each of the three presses was a cabinet with a discrete four bit processor inside, consisting of 30+ circuit cards plugged into a wirewrapped backplain. The logic was literally DTL, and the ROM, consisted of a card with doxens of 1n2001 diodes on pegs. Cut out a diode for a 0 or leave it in for a 1.
So the electronics were designed in the 50s, and for it's time it was cutting edge. The platten position was controled by a digitizer feeding a gray code output to the control package. The problem was, the system didn't have bugs... it had rodents! A chew here, a nibble there. Eventually the system developed shorts and wierdass ground loops. Suddenly on cool damp nights, for no good apparent reason, the presses would come on all by themselves, begin cycling, and might end an evening stint by hammering up and down 10 or 15 times scaring the bejesus out of the poor guys on the night shift. Personally I though drug abuse was involved. Meds had to be part of the issue.
So I was there late one night, doing maintenance checking, and suddenly the presses came on. I ran into the booth, tried to turn the damn thing off, but everything was already off. I banged on things, cursed at things, hunted for a main breaker. Just as a goof I screamed "Begone Demon, the power of Christ compels you!!!" (One too many rewatchings of the Exorcist.) Suddenly everything stopped. The problem never happened again on my watch.
************
The other story was one I read about in a trade journal. This guy was down in Florida starting up a huge supercomputer in the early 80s, and he was in the system room, which was a class 1000 cleanroom.
He went to his car, grabbed the boot loader tape, went back into the cleanroom, and tried to install the tape. To his chagrin, the tape was blank, and he had to explain to the customer, that somehow, he'd brought a blank tape from the main office with him.
So he called the main office, and asked them to please send him a new tape ASAP. They were only too happy to express that critter down, time is money, right?
So he get's the tape. Walks into the computer room, loads the critter up and it's as blank as G.W.s frontal lobes. Now he's bugged. He has to explain to the customer, that there'll be another days delay sending a good tape down.
Now something just isn't right here. One tape he can say is a mistake. Two... that's just one too many. So he's scratching his head... how could he have gotten two blank tapes.
While he's sitting in front of the big dead box, and a worker suddenly comes in through the cleanroom door.
All the tools hanging on the workers belt suddenly jump straight out as if he's some kind of wierd cross between Black and Decker and a porcupine. He asked the guy, what the hell was that that made the tools jump like that.
The worker looks at him nonchalantly and says, "Oh that, That's the high powered electromagnets in the door... They're designed to remove any ferro magnetic dust or particles from your body as you enter the cleanroom."
The installation tech. just begins laughing hysterically, like he 's gonna need his meds changed... Can you say Degauss!!!
Happy spook day...
Marie T.
Sorry Kiddo,
It's back to the drawing board for you (Blond high five!)
It's neither Open Sores, or Open Source...
It's OBENSAURS, O - BEN - SAURS, a small, fast, warm blooded, carniverous dinosaur, that ran circles around it's larger, dumber, cold blooded relatives.
During it's remarkably long stay on the planet, it hunted to extinction, large stupid lumbering giants. Fossil records indicate that it's favorite prey was a particularly ill mannered, slow witted beast whose massive remains were found in cold moist places near what is now called Redmond, Washington.
Anne Marie
Hey folks... This is so simple... M$ hasn't gotten the message yet! At one end, the DOJ has M$ by the tail as it sharpens it's knife, and at the other end this stupid dog keeps barking and snapping, clearly not having gotten the message to stop biting people.
I say we contact the justice department, and say, "Hey Guys, apparently this bad dog thinks it's immune to your ire, that or they believe you have no balls... because here they are doing the same 'ol dirty deeds, shoving illegal copywrites down peoples' throats', threatening first amendment rights, attempting to pave clean over honest and decent programmers in the process of simply discussing software, and generally claiming that they got the right to do any 'ol thing they please. Isn't there something you can do to muzzle this mutt? It's really getting old having to tell them "They Can't Do That", mayhaps you need to use a larger "Clue-Stick(tm)".
I a nutshell, Hey! DOJ, They haven't gotten the message... sik'em!!!
Anne Marie
Sure HTML is copywriteable. You just want to make sure that your posterior is adequately covered. So by the numbers;
1. Get your own lawyer.
2. Determine if the part of the code that you used was itself copywriteable. That is, if you only kept simple HTML boiler plate to support functions you wrote, it will be much harder for them to claim it as their intellectual property... that is, you could just go run out and get the dev. application yourself, generate identical code, and it would have been your generation. In fact that may settle the case, tell the judge that you didn't realize that this was "Their code... and that you'll just go out by the generator and roll it yourself."
3. Counter sue on the grounds that their suit is a frivolous personal attack designed to deny you of fair compensation for cleaning up their mess. Sue them for the cost of your lawyer, lost productivity, and any other obvious costs you can justify.
4. Talk to your lawyer to see if you ca have their case dismissed on the grounds that they don't own the HTML... the company you work for does.
You'll get a lot of interesting takes from folks who have a variing degree of legal knowlege. The best advice is to first get some personal representation.
Anne Marie
If this shift from selling software to selling services comes to pass, then it will be disastrous to software engineers.
Since the person writing the software isn't a direct revenue producer, then his importance within the corporate structure is diminished. It will be the non-engineers (training/support departments) and those that add dubious "value added services" that will be perceived to be the most important. That's just the way it works, don't blame me.
Also, the engineer will be ASKED to produce MORE buggy and convoluted software, since that is going to be what brings in the most revenue. Who is going to purchase support and services for software that works properly, and is easy to use and maintain?
Don't work for the corporations for free. Say no to free software.
This is important... so you may want to go over it a couple times. The shape of the future is not necessarily determined by the shape of the past. Or for that matter, even the present. Using the current "paradigm of business" to predict the value or feasibility of future technological constructs and organization is itself wrong headed. Yes removing existing managers from the loop would be bad... bad for the status quo. But would it be bad for the future of technology, bad for programmers and creators of intellectual property? I think not.
If coders became autonomous, like doctors, or lawyers, or any one of a thousand other professions. If their work was deemed intellectual property, and they got royalties just like other artists. This would completely alter the relationship between existing companies and the development of future products. There are dozens of different models for the way that coders could interact with companies, it's up to us to begin to look at these different world views, weigh their benefits and costs and begin designing something saner and more workable than that which currently exists. The idea is not to work for free. The idea is to free ourselves from the oppressive binds of corporate ignorance and stupidity.
As for the programmers;
Imagine not having to code up some Frankensteinian code module because you had to satisfy some sales dweeb who had final say on your project. A sales dweeb who was performing some unnatural sex act on a potential client (read pointy haired manager) who in a psychotic fit had decided that your database engine should support their 40 year old Cobol and Fortran legacy code. A huge amount of talented development energy is being pissed down rat-holes expressly dug by men with no foresight, no knowledge, and no real concept (other than the concept of stroking a potential client to make a dollar) of what's possible with the talent they employ. The results is that we live in a Microsoft world where the ubiquitous scripting language is BASIC!!! You tell me what's wrong with this picture?
Look at the various Open Source projects. They are being managed beautifully for the most part. Because the people who chose to manage them had technical vision and foresight.
The technolati know what needs to be done. They know how to do it right. They have sane measures for quality, interoperability, and reliability. They even have ways to manage accountability. Let the sales people contract the Open Source Consortia, for including a needed feature or functionality in existing code. The Consortia can then say, fine, we can do that, or sorry, your brain tumor seems to be flaring up... please up your meds before coming back and talking to us. Sane minds rule... code by political expedience is (if not eliminated), dramatically reduced.
Technology is coming very soon, that will have broad sweeping impact on the concepts of property, wealth, and all aspects of social interaction. The social order is going to go through a massive shake out. Ideas and practices that are long honored traditions in business and every other field of human endeavor will almost certainly go the way of the fossil record. It would be best if we started planning for that inevitability now. Designing a future that is engineered to serve and succeed, rather than waiting for what happens to us by default. You can almost be certain that random chance won't give us anything so nice as what we can design by intent.
Look, it's always safer to suck up to the powers that be, then to stand up and create something new and better. The guys who froze their butts off on the Potomac fighting the British certainly suffered to create a new country. The problem is that cynicism, complacence, and resignation, don't provide anything except more of what we've already seen. The future isn't going to wait for us. We need to suck it up, and cause something. Create the new paradigm and begin living it.
You have nothing choose but your lains - an unknown dyslexic.
Anne Marie Tobias
But simply inserting a CD into your computer once doesn't prove you purchased it. The way it worked was that the first time you wanted access from a computer, you insert the original CD into your drive and register it with my.mp3.com. Afterwards, you can listen to it without the CD.
.mp3 copies for himself.
/. item about the Corporate Republic posted yesterday... it talks a lot about this kind of thinking.
So if I borrowed 100 CDs from a friend for an afternoon and registered them, then returned the CDs, I would be able to listen to music I hadn't purchased. Hence copyright violation... they can't really guarantee that users have purchased the CDs, just that they had them in their possession for a minute or so.
This isn't about whether or not folks were in "Bad Faith" trying to fake out MP3.com. Folks will always do slimy tricks, it's no different than that same guy borrowing his friends 100 CDs and ripping illegal
A person who is committed to circumventing the law and fair use could also give away his user id & password to all his friends so that they could all illegally listen to his CD collection on MP3.com.
There're probably a dozen ways a person could use and abuse "ANY" system (a system with MP3.com and/or a system without), to circumvent fair use. That isn't MP3.com's fault and they shouldn't incure any undo liability because there're deceiptful and dishonest people in the world.
Of course, you or I shouldn't have to pay a royalty charge with every single blank tape that is sold over the counter, on the presumption that we are going to make an illegal copies with them. I mean there are a hundred valid uses for blank tape, & we're all taking about fair use right? Unfortunately, we do pay a nominal royalty fee with each blank tape, video and audio. As a culture we've been found guilty until proven innocent by an industry who is incredibly wealthy and irrevocably determined to buy whatever laws it needs to maintain a strangle hold on artistic media. That is how it plans to guarantee it's continued wealth. Y'all may want to read the
Anne Marie
"A friend of mine passed away last Saturday... her name is Bonnie, and on her deathbed, she created a new nonprofit organization, and filled it's board of directors. She must have said goodbye to dozens of people. She laughed and joked and played with the people she loved. Sick as she was, she went out more alive, than most of the cut and dried, half dead SOBs I see walking the streets this very day. I wanna live and then go out like that. Kicking hinny and forgetin' names cuz I just don't have the time to bother." - Me