Why would a money-losing company cheat any more than a money-making company? Afterall, the money-making company is more likely to have succeded at cheating...
Lisa: Dad, I think he's an ivory dealer! His boots are ivory, his hat is ivory, and I'm pretty sure that check is ivory. Homer: Lisa, a guy who's got lots of ivory is less likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low.
Well, just to be a techno-geek, I'll aknowledge that styrofoam makes a much nicer napalm mixer (with gasoline). The preceeding discussion just reminded me of the movie quote, though, and your point about the content of this thread is very well made.
Disclaimer: I am not a terrorist. Who makes THAT t-shirt? I need it for airport checkpoints.
Tyler: "Did you know that if you mix equal parts of gasoline and equal parts frozen orange juice concentrate, you can make napalm?" Narrator: "No, I did not know that, is that true? Tyler: "That's right. One can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items." Narrator: "Really." Tyler: "If one were so inclined." ... Narrator: Tyler was full of useful information.
India is not a poor country, where everyone is just trying to break free of poverty. Please.
No, but 25% of Indians do live below the poverty line, in a country where per capita GDP for 2002 was only $2,540. Please, indeed.
- source, CIA World Factbook
You must remember that you are speaking with an American. In their eyes, if you don't live in the "Good Ol' US of A" then you are living in a gutter and probably a terrorist.
And, of course, to our credulous Aussie:
Australia per capita GDP $27,000 (2002 est.) -
U.S. per capita GDP, $36,300 (2001 est.). Same source.
Suck on it, gutter-dweller.
(With apologies to the big dog, Luxembourg, at $44,000. Source)
from Citizen Kane: Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place... in 60 years.
I'm not really sure what I mean by posting this, but it seems appropriate somehow.
My only take on this is that when I first started teaching Linux, I (and everyone else that I talked to) thought that we'd be pitching Linux against Microsoft. Against Windows NT/2000 first on the server platforms, then when KDE and GNOME matured, against Windows XP on the desktops. Instead in the past year, I've pretty much spent my time teaching Fortune 50 companies how to transition from proprietary unix (Solaris) running on proprietary hardware (Sun servers) to commodity, free, unix (Linux) running on commodity servers ("Dude, you're getting a HPaq.") for a cost savings of 80% PER SERVER. (Based on Linux/DL380G2 @ ~$10K doing the work of a ~$50K Solaris/Sun box) In many cases, such as Sendmail and other network services, where throughput is more important than computation the HPaq 2 processor solution is actually faster than the Sun 4P solution. It's counterintuitive, but we've had the Pepsi challenge in the lab wih Sun and Red Hat people there to do OS tweaks, and it's true.
Linux isn't killing Windows, but it's giving the prison love to proprietary Unix.
Perhaps the US hasn't been in a real war for so long they forgot how to design for damage?
It depends on what you call a "real war," I suppose. The U.S. has been so busy lately picking up the slack from our fair weather "allies" that we haven't had the spare time to fight what you would probably call a "real war." Ever since France, Germany and Russia abdicated their roles as great powers and began to act like American protectorates, we've been pretty busy. Int the past 20 years:
Grenada, 1983
Panama, 1990
The Gulf War, Allied Liberation of Kuwait, 1991
Somalia, 1992-1994
Kosovo, 1999
Afghanistan, 2001-
Gulf War, part deux, 2003 (?)
My god, it's worse than that, Malfourmed! You're doing bits from Friends!
(episode 319, "The one with the tiny t-shirt.")
Phoebe: Hey! Why isn't it pronounced "Spidermun?" Ya know, like Goldman, or Silverman? Chandler: It's not his last name. Phoebe: It isn't? Chandler: No. It's not like... like "Phil Spidermun". He's a spider man. You know, like, uh, like Goldman is a last name, but there's no Gold Man. Phoebe: Oh, okay! There should be a "Gold Man!"
Windows NT Cripples US Navy Cruiser
GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN July 13, 1998
Software Glitches Leave Navy Smart Ship Dead In The Water
By Gregory Slabodkin, GCN Staff
The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service contends.
Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.
Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.
But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The very information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.
The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk.
"We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain and, when it fails, results in a critical failure," DiGiorgio said. It took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem.
The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he said.
Not officially
Atlantic Fleet officials acknowledged that the Yorktown last September experienced what they termed "an engineering local area network casualty," but denied that the ship's systems failure lasted as long as DiGiorgio said. The Yorktown was dead in the water for about two hours and 45 minutes, fleet officials said, and did not have to be towed in.
"This is the only time this casualty has occurred and the only propulsion casualty involved with the control system since May 2, 1997, when software configuration was frozen," Vice Adm. Henry Giffin, commander of the Atlantic Fleet's Naval Surface Force, reported in an Oct. 24, 1997, memorandum.
Giffin wrote the memo to describe "what really happened in hope of clearing the scuttlebutt" surrounding the incident, he noted.
The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.
The program administrators are trained to bypass a bad data field and change the value if such a problem occurs again, Atlantic Fleet officials said.
But "the Yorktown's failure in September 1997 was not as simple as reported," DiGiorgio said. If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings
Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."
The Navy reduced the Yorktown crew by 10 percent and saved more than $2.8 million a year using the computers. The ship uses dual 200-MHz Pentium Pros from Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala. The PCs and server run NT 4.0 over a high-speed, fiber-optic LAN.
Navy prepares to take Smart Ship full steam ahead
Despite the USS Yorktown's setbacks, the Navy plans to use Smart Ship technology on other classes of ships.
The Naval Sea Systems Command in May awarded Litton Integrated Systems Corp. of Woodland Hills, Calif., a $138.6 million contract to build Engineering Control System Equipment and Integrated Bridge Systems for CG-47 Class Aegis cruisers. The Navy also might install the equipment on DDG-51 class destroyers.
Electronic Design Inc. of Metairie, La., filed a protest of the award in late May with the General Accounting Office. The Navy has issued a stop-work order that will last until GAO rules on the protest.
Smart Ship technology is also on the amphibious ship USS Rushmore, Navy officials said.
Free Enterprise was farking AWESOME! Remember, it came out around the same time as Galaxy Quest, so it didn't get nearly the attention that it deserved, but I've always considered it Galaxy Quest's "Evil Twin." It actually had Shatner AS Shatner, doing a much better job at skewering himself than Tim Fucking Allen.
(If I live to be a thousand and have extensive electroshock therapy, it won't be enough to get "the Artist Formerly Known As Shatner" - as he was credited along with The Rated R - RAPPING Mark Anthony's funeral oration out of my head! "Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -- For Brutus is an honorable man,
So are they all, all honorable men ")
It was at once "pee yourself funny", and (if you're a big honking Star Trek geek like me) kinda painful to watch. This movie is for you if you get the reference:
[Shatner just asked Robert why he started the fight.] Young Robert: Well... it was something he said. Imaginary William Shatner: What'd he say? Young Robert: You really don't want to know. Imaginary William Shatner: I really do want to know! Young Robert: He said that Han Solo was cooler than Captain Kirk. [Pause] Imaginary William Shatner: Kick the little fucker's ass.
"Coming Soon: The Artist Formerly Known as Shatner in "William Shatner vs.
the World Crime League""
> If the government was to let the free market allocate the spectrum,
Yeah. Free market will solve everything. Bandwidth ? Free market. Energy ? Free market. IP laws ? Free market. Pollution ? Free market. World hunger ? Free market. Greed ? Free market.
How lucky you are about having a religion that gives you an answer to everything.
> If the government was to let the free market allocate the spectrum,
one company would have ended with a de-facto monopoly on the spectrum.
Basil Exposition: The cold war is over!
Austin Powers: Well! Finally those capitalistic pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, groovy, smashing! Yea capitalism!
The original text of the email to EMI: per BabelFish
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." I don't think that that's a problem, yet.
Mail of EMI (attention, long text) RF600R (27 October 2002 17:13) Hello,
After bought CD ran in none of my devices, I had one Mail written EMI. Here can do you my Mail and the answer from EMI read.
schnipp --
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Yesterday I acquired the CD of TOTO "Through the looking glass". Up the back is to be read: "It is designed tons compatible with CD audioplayers, DVD players and PC-OS, ms Windows 95, Pentium II 233 MHz 64MB RAM or more higher. "
These statements are definitely wrong!
* Only the pieces of 1-8 in my DVD Player leave themselves actual play. The pieces of 9-11 appear not and are not playable. A common CD Player does not possess I no more, so that these CD becomes worthless.
* My Macintosh with MACOS X 10,2,1 with that actually plays Software of itunes only the pieces of 1-7. All remaining pieces appear as only one audio TRACK, which is playable to the half only. Result: the CD is worthless.
* My PC with Windows XP actually plays the CD only with up that CD Player present off. Unfortunately you conceal the fact, that this Player is mandatory on the CD Cover. There I very much carefully the software selects, which I on my computer is installed and I do not force themselves leave, proprietaere Software to use, is worthless as result these CD.
I insured myself fortunately with the purchase that I these CD if necessary. under refunding the purchase price to return can. This is but only possible, since the dealer was so obliging.
In the long run, the copy protection does not fulfill its task, because it applies obviously: Copy protection = purchase protection!
This is the more unfortunaty, there I an expressed fan of the group TOTO among other thing are and. all albums possesses. Too it harms that IT prevented that I also the most current work at my cabinet to place can. Because I tend to also hear the music, which I buy. PilotFederal Labour Office-close I do not need.
Altogether, I would like you from given cause mine comment to Topic copy protection convey:
Unfortunately, you that not only the bad robbery copiers debt survey on Their recession in sales are. Rather are the rather following reasons decisive:
* The main consumer - young people - give a majority of their Budget for Handys out,
* with the DVD a competition medium appeared on the market, that deeply into the Gefilden of the music industry it fishes because it applies that one a euro only once to spend can and everyone more or less limited budget has
* by the copy protection is playing the CDs on DVD Playern not or only very reduced possible. Many households are only still with DVD Playern equips. Unfortunately you cut yourselves thereby in own meat. Much toericht.
* there is no copy protection, which is not to be cracked : -)
Altogether you ignore simply the fact that each salesman by law is permitted to make a copy of its bought CD. Their behavior is altogether illegal. Unfortunately, it shows up here that those Disk industry obviously a too strong lobby has.
Result: I become no more CD from their still from another house buy, which is equipped with a copy protection. They are in my household not playable and thus worthlessly.
How do you intend to recover me in the future as customers?
Faithfully,
xxx
Sounds about like most of what I read on Slashdot or the Register.
I was looking for the UT2K3 Demo LiveCD from Gentoo. I fired it up and ran it on my system. VERY impressive. Runs like a dream, and more importantly, it does what what Windows has done all along - it detected and used everything I had. I was online with DHCP, it knew my video card, everything.
Maybe I'm just a 'tard who didn't think of this earlier, but what a boon for game developers! "HERE you go! Just like your PS2, dump this CD (with live Linux filesystem & game of the week) in your PC and hit the power button..." Now, a REAL reason for game developers to develop for Linux! Control of the *PC* platform - no DLLs, MSIs, or DX crap to work with - THIS is the environment that your customer gets, every PC an Idrema with a live filesystem + app on CD. On the surface, it seems like a great leap back, but it appears that the benefits outweigh the fs overhead on each CD.
What a fsking GREAT idea! (Or am I missing something? Besides hardware, I mean, this is supposed to be somewhat tolerant in that regard, anyway.) It seems to work for Gentoo and Epic Games, anyway.
Episode 18, Season 1, Tin Man.
Original Air Date: February 13, 1998 O'Neill and the SG-1 team arrive on P3X-989, only to be zapped by an electrical trap that renders them unconscious. When they awake, they find themselves in an underground lab with Harlan, a strange but apparently peaceful native of P3X-989 who claims to be 11,000 years old. Harlan, the planet's last survivor, who has lived for 11,000 years in a synthetic (that is, "robot") body, has also created robot duplicates of SG-1. Hilarity ensues.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your colonel speaking. Welcome to P3X-niner-eight-niner where it's a balmy... room temperature." - Col. Jack O'Neill
WHY, wouldn't the Federation start making projectile weapons for fighting the Borg? Dumbasses...
Coming back to topic (*cough*), this is just what happened in Stargate SG-1 with regards to the Asgard - a highly evolved extragalactic civilization - and the Replicators - just like it sounds, a bunch of erector-set robots that simply kept "eating" the Asgard's technology and reproducing themselves. (Where is Bill Joy when you need him?) The replicators were (for some twisted logic reason) "immune" to the Asgard's energy weapons and other defenses, but sure blowed apart pretty when hit with SG-1's MP-5s and P90s!
All that being said, Stargate sucks without Daniel Jackson. We used to play a drinking game where we'd watch Stargate and drink whenever we'd hear Teal'c refer to him as Danieljackson (as though it were one word). Now we're just sober, and what fun is that?
For those who couldn't be bothered to read the article:
"We're lucky in the computer industry that the companies are young and many of them are still run by their founders. I may not always agree with what Scott McNealy does as CEO of Sun Microsystems, but I know McNealy understands what Sun is about because he was there at the beginning and built the first few Sun workstations by hand. Certainly, as long as Microsoft and Dell and Oracle and Adobe have been around, there has been a founder at the helm, and it shows. Love them or hate them, at least these companies have identifiable characters."
we'll want, although we'll probably expect those to be speed-limit free toll roads. Other things, like
- provide accurate time bases for their devices
- keep the GPS birds flying
- keep stronger out-of-state entities from swamping their wireless frequencies
we think that individuals could probably do themselves, if there's a real need for such things. Or, for things like protection of wireless frequencies, perhaps we could find remedy in contract law, rather than federal regulation. After all, for the state to manage these things, we have to presume that the state owns them. Finally,
- back their currency so that they can do commerce with other states and countries
- prevent their utility companies from gouging them
are things which we explicitly would not want the government to do "for" us. Only a fiduciary currency (paper money, not backed by anything other than the trust of the State) needs the "backing" of that state. As far as "prevent[ing] their utility companies from gouging them" goes, I can't even imagine a free people making that kind of Soviet request of their government. (Except perhaps in California, where it's been said that the best thing that can happen for them is to have economics textbooks airdropped over Sacramento. I suggest New Ideas From Dead Economists by Todd Buchholz.)
Pave the roads (maybe), keep the Canadians at bay. That's all that I really want from the State. Everything else, a free people can do on their own.
P.J. O'Rourke describes this approach to Libertarian philosophy as it relates to federal spending much more tidily in his essay Would You Kill Your Mother To Pave I-95?.
Slashdot Mirror
Homer: Lisa, a guy who's got lots of ivory is less likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low.
-- Simpsons [1F15] "Bart Gets an Elephant"
Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language?
An American, damnit.
Besides, we all know from Star Trek that when we meet the aliens, that's what they'll all be speaking anyway.
Well, just to be a techno-geek, I'll aknowledge that styrofoam makes a much nicer napalm mixer (with gasoline). The preceeding discussion just reminded me of the movie quote, though, and your point about the content of this thread is very well made.
Disclaimer: I am not a terrorist. Who makes THAT t-shirt? I need it for airport checkpoints.
Tyler: "Did you know that if you mix equal parts of gasoline and equal parts frozen orange juice concentrate, you can make napalm?"
...
Narrator: "No, I did not know that, is that true?
Tyler: "That's right. One can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items."
Narrator: "Really."
Tyler: "If one were so inclined."
Narrator: Tyler was full of useful information.
- Fight Club
- source, CIA World Factbook
And, of course, to our credulous Aussie: Australia per capita GDP $27,000 (2002 est.) - U.S. per capita GDP, $36,300 (2001 est.). Same source.
Suck on it, gutter-dweller.
(With apologies to the big dog, Luxembourg, at $44,000. Source)
if a virus of this sort were possible, and bandwidth bigger it would be interesting to see a rampant virus of Penguins.
You mean, like in xbill?
from Citizen Kane:
Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place... in 60 years.
I'm not really sure what I mean by posting this, but it seems appropriate somehow.
My only take on this is that when I first started teaching Linux, I (and everyone else that I talked to) thought that we'd be pitching Linux against Microsoft. Against Windows NT/2000 first on the server platforms, then when KDE and GNOME matured, against Windows XP on the desktops. Instead in the past year, I've pretty much spent my time teaching Fortune 50 companies how to transition from proprietary unix (Solaris) running on proprietary hardware (Sun servers) to commodity, free, unix (Linux) running on commodity servers ("Dude, you're getting a HPaq.") for a cost savings of 80% PER SERVER. (Based on Linux/DL380G2 @ ~$10K doing the work of a ~$50K Solaris/Sun box) In many cases, such as Sendmail and other network services, where throughput is more important than computation the HPaq 2 processor solution is actually faster than the Sun 4P solution. It's counterintuitive, but we've had the Pepsi challenge in the lab wih Sun and Red Hat people there to do OS tweaks, and it's true.
Linux isn't killing Windows, but it's giving the prison love to proprietary Unix.
Yeah, if you want to secure your Rendevous, all you have to do is to lock the doors.
(OnStar helps, too.)
In Soviet Russia, XBoX uses YOU as room divider!
It depends on what you call a "real war," I suppose. The U.S. has been so busy lately picking up the slack from our fair weather "allies" that we haven't had the spare time to fight what you would probably call a "real war." Ever since France, Germany and Russia abdicated their roles as great powers and began to act like American protectorates, we've been pretty busy. Int the past 20 years:
Grenada, 1983
Panama, 1990
The Gulf War, Allied Liberation of Kuwait, 1991
Somalia, 1992-1994
Kosovo, 1999
Afghanistan, 2001-
Gulf War, part deux, 2003 (?)
You're welcome, by the way.
Same thing we play every night, Pinky, Harpoon!
comic geek pedant mode
My god, it's worse than that, Malfourmed! You're doing bits from Friends!
(episode 319, "The one with the tiny t-shirt.")
Phoebe: Hey! Why isn't it pronounced "Spidermun?" Ya know, like Goldman, or Silverman?
Chandler: It's not his last name.
Phoebe: It isn't?
Chandler: No. It's not like... like "Phil Spidermun". He's a spider man. You know, like, uh, like Goldman is a last name, but there's no Gold Man.
Phoebe: Oh, okay! There should be a "Gold Man!"
This is a duplicate of the above post.
Golly, it must be hard to keep up with everything posted on this site.
An oldie, but a goodie...
Windows NT Cripples US Navy Cruiser
7/28/98
Windows NT Cripples US Navy Cruiser
GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN July 13, 1998
Software Glitches Leave Navy Smart Ship Dead In The Water
By Gregory Slabodkin, GCN Staff
The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service contends.
Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.
Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.
But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The very information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.
The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk.
"We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain and, when it fails, results in a critical failure," DiGiorgio said. It took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem.
The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he said.
Not officially
Atlantic Fleet officials acknowledged that the Yorktown last September experienced what they termed "an engineering local area network casualty," but denied that the ship's systems failure lasted as long as DiGiorgio said. The Yorktown was dead in the water for about two hours and 45 minutes, fleet officials said, and did not have to be towed in.
"This is the only time this casualty has occurred and the only propulsion casualty involved with the control system since May 2, 1997, when software configuration was frozen," Vice Adm. Henry Giffin, commander of the Atlantic Fleet's Naval Surface Force, reported in an Oct. 24, 1997, memorandum.
Giffin wrote the memo to describe "what really happened in hope of clearing the scuttlebutt" surrounding the incident, he noted.
The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.
The program administrators are trained to bypass a bad data field and change the value if such a problem occurs again, Atlantic Fleet officials said.
But "the Yorktown's failure in September 1997 was not as simple as reported," DiGiorgio said. If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."
The Navy reduced the Yorktown crew by 10 percent and saved more than $2.8 million a year using the computers. The ship uses dual 200-MHz Pentium Pros from Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala. The PCs and server run NT 4.0 over a high-speed, fiber-optic LAN.
Navy prepares to take Smart Ship full steam ahead
Despite the USS Yorktown's setbacks, the Navy plans to use Smart Ship technology on other classes of ships.
The Naval Sea Systems Command in May awarded Litton Integrated Systems Corp. of Woodland Hills, Calif., a $138.6 million contract to build Engineering Control System Equipment and Integrated Bridge Systems for CG-47 Class Aegis cruisers. The Navy also might install the equipment on DDG-51 class destroyers.
Electronic Design Inc. of Metairie, La., filed a protest of the award in late May with the General Accounting Office. The Navy has issued a stop-work order that will last until GAO rules on the protest.
Smart Ship technology is also on the amphibious ship USS Rushmore, Navy officials said.
Blame it on the OS
But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said he has serviced automated control systems on Navy ships for the past 26 years, the NT operating system is the source of the Yorktown's computer problems. NT applications aboard the Yorktown provide damage control, run the ship's control center on the bridge, monitor the engines and navigate the ship when under way. "Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor," DiGiorgio said. Pacific and Atlantic fleets in March 1997 selected NT 4.0 as the standard OS for both networks and PCs as part of the Navy's Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative. Current guidance approved by the Navy's chief information officer calls for all new applications to run under NT. Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been numerous software failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown. "Refining that is an ongoing process," Redman said. "Unix is a better system for control of equipment and machinery, whereas NT is a better system for the transfer of information and data. NT has never been fully refined and there are times when we have had shutdowns that resulted from NT." Hauled in The Yorktown has been towed into port several times because of the systems failures, he said. "Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT," Redman said. "If it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particular application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a tendency to go down." Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time. The Navy is moving the service's command and control applications from Unix to NT as part of IT-21. Under IT-21, the Navy also plans to modernize ships in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets with asynchronous transfer mode LANs. Large ATM networks running NT have already been installed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Essex. But DiGiorgio said the LANs might experience a chain reaction of computer failures like those experienced on the Yorktown. That domino effect is inherent to the system design of shipboard LANs, he said. "There is very little segregation of error when software shares bad data," DiGiorgio said. "Instead of one computer knocking off on the Yorktown, they all did, one after the other. What if this happened in actual combat?" Although the Yorktown did not have backup systems, Redman said that future Smart Ships will have systems redundancy to ensure that ships can continue to operate. But DiGiorgio said that the Smart Ship project needs to do more engineering up front. "Installing a control system on a warship and resolving problems as the project progresses is a costly and naive process," DiGiorgio wrote in the Proceedings article. "Now, with the top people rotated off the Smart Ship Project, it would be wise for the Navy to investigate this fiasco more fully. Redman has a different perspective. "If it were me, I wouldn't say all the things that Tony [DiGiorgio] has said out of discretion and consideration for being a long-term employee," he said. "But I will say this about Tony, he's a very bright engineer." "Everybody plays the obedience role where you cannot criticize the system," said DiGiorgio, a self-described whistle-blower. "I'm not that kind of guy." GOVERNMENT COMPUTER NEWS Copyright © 1998 by Post-Newsweek Business Information, Inc. , a division of the Washington Post company. All rights reserved. Infowar.Com & Interpact, Inc. WebWarrior@Info-sec.Com Submit articles to: info-sec@info-sec.com Voice: 813-288-1955 Fax: 813-288-1985
And, in a related note, say "Who put the tribbles in the quatrotriticale, and what was in the wheat that kiiled them?" Three times fast.
Was there really something? On. The. Wing?
Aargh!
Free Enterprise was farking AWESOME! Remember, it came out around the same time as Galaxy Quest, so it didn't get nearly the attention that it deserved, but I've always considered it Galaxy Quest's "Evil Twin." It actually had Shatner AS Shatner, doing a much better job at skewering himself than Tim Fucking Allen.
(If I live to be a thousand and have extensive electroshock therapy, it won't be enough to get "the Artist Formerly Known As Shatner" - as he was credited along with The Rated R - RAPPING Mark Anthony's funeral oration out of my head! "Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -- For Brutus is an honorable man, So are they all, all honorable men ")
It was at once "pee yourself funny", and (if you're a big honking Star Trek geek like me) kinda painful to watch. This movie is for you if you get the reference:
"Coming Soon: The Artist Formerly Known as Shatner in "William Shatner vs. the World Crime League""
Austin Powers: Well! Finally those capitalistic pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, groovy, smashing! Yea capitalism!
The original text of the email to EMI: per BabelFish
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." I don't think that that's a problem, yet.
Sounds about like most of what I read on Slashdot or the Register.
I was looking for the UT2K3 Demo LiveCD from Gentoo. I fired it up and ran it on my system. VERY impressive. Runs like a dream, and more importantly, it does what what Windows has done all along - it detected and used everything I had. I was online with DHCP, it knew my video card, everything.
Maybe I'm just a 'tard who didn't think of this earlier, but what a boon for game developers! "HERE you go! Just like your PS2, dump this CD (with live Linux filesystem & game of the week) in your PC and hit the power button..." Now, a REAL reason for game developers to develop for Linux! Control of the *PC* platform - no DLLs, MSIs, or DX crap to work with - THIS is the environment that your customer gets, every PC an Idrema with a live filesystem + app on CD. On the surface, it seems like a great leap back, but it appears that the benefits outweigh the fs overhead on each CD.
What a fsking GREAT idea! (Or am I missing something? Besides hardware, I mean, this is supposed to be somewhat tolerant in that regard, anyway.) It seems to work for Gentoo and Epic Games, anyway.
[Nerd alert]
Episode 18, Season 1, Tin Man.
Original Air Date: February 13, 1998
O'Neill and the SG-1 team arrive on P3X-989, only to be zapped by an electrical trap that renders them unconscious. When they awake, they find themselves in an underground lab with Harlan, a strange but apparently peaceful native of P3X-989 who claims to be 11,000 years old. Harlan, the planet's last survivor, who has lived for 11,000 years in a synthetic (that is, "robot") body, has also created robot duplicates of SG-1. Hilarity ensues.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your colonel speaking. Welcome to P3X-niner-eight-niner where it's a balmy... room temperature." - Col. Jack O'Neill
How embarrassing for me.
Coming back to topic (*cough*), this is just what happened in Stargate SG-1 with regards to the Asgard - a highly evolved extragalactic civilization - and the Replicators - just like it sounds, a bunch of erector-set robots that simply kept "eating" the Asgard's technology and reproducing themselves. (Where is Bill Joy when you need him?) The replicators were (for some twisted logic reason) "immune" to the Asgard's energy weapons and other defenses, but sure blowed apart pretty when hit with SG-1's MP-5s and P90s!
All that being said, Stargate sucks without Daniel Jackson. We used to play a drinking game where we'd watch Stargate and drink whenever we'd hear Teal'c refer to him as Danieljackson (as though it were one word). Now we're just sober, and what fun is that?
*sigh*
Some of those things, like
- pave their interstate highways
we'll want, although we'll probably expect those to be speed-limit free toll roads. Other things, like
- provide accurate time bases for their devices
- keep the GPS birds flying
- keep stronger out-of-state entities from swamping their wireless frequencies
we think that individuals could probably do themselves, if there's a real need for such things. Or, for things like protection of wireless frequencies, perhaps we could find remedy in contract law, rather than federal regulation. After all, for the state to manage these things, we have to presume that the state owns them. Finally,
- back their currency so that they can do commerce with other states and countries
- prevent their utility companies from gouging them
are things which we explicitly would not want the government to do "for" us. Only a fiduciary currency (paper money, not backed by anything other than the trust of the State) needs the "backing" of that state. As far as "prevent[ing] their utility companies from gouging them" goes, I can't even imagine a free people making that kind of Soviet request of their government. (Except perhaps in California, where it's been said that the best thing that can happen for them is to have economics textbooks airdropped over Sacramento. I suggest New Ideas From Dead Economists by Todd Buchholz.)
Pave the roads (maybe), keep the Canadians at bay. That's all that I really want from the State. Everything else, a free people can do on their own.
P.J. O'Rourke describes this approach to Libertarian philosophy as it relates to federal spending much more tidily in his essay Would You Kill Your Mother To Pave I-95?.