I'm sure they would too, but it's one of those issues where it really points out the hypocrisy of the party. It's like when a Republican violates family values and has a homosexual affair. It invokes a Nelson "ha ha" response.
You mean Senator Ben "Diaperman" Nelson (he reportedly had an adult baby fetish with his prostitute, not sure about his wife. I'm sorry, but even as a registered Independent I *have* to laugh at him!
Also, he and his wife had no problem making maximum political exploitation of Bill Clinton's affair, his wife even criticized Hillary saying if *her* husband did that she'd do a Loreana Bobbit on him (apparently she failed to live up to her promise, at least I *think* she didn't)!
You're the one showing the typical Republican hypocracy that if an Democrat has an affair its a serious public policy issue, but if a Republican has an affair its a "private matter" (even if that same Republican has made political hay on affairs of the opposition).
My issue with Republicans and Tea Partiers is that they don't want Big Government, except they want their Social Security, Corporate Welfare, Tax Cuts borrowed from future generations *and* they want the Government to be in everybody's bedrooms (anti-gay marriage, anti-gay adoption, don't ask don't tell, anti-polygamy) and every doctor's exam room (anti-abortion, some oppose it even if the life of the mother is at risk -- 'cause Jesus will save 'em -- and in case of rape and incest -- 'cause Jesus had incest in his family tree according to a careful reading of the Christian Bible, and what a same it would have been if Mary of Nazareth had taken some Pennyroyal and Black Cohosh...).
> How do these fabled African cell towers get electricity?
I can't say for sure, but a friend of mine is a solar power engineer and his corporation's best-selling third world product is solar-powered cellular base stations (with batteries and "sleep" modes for smooth 24-hour operation). They are built to last 20 years with annual maintenance, and are usually placed in locations so difficult to get to (like mountain ledges) that petty thievery is unlikely (and the major thieves want the cellular system working). Good thing he's a mountain climber...
Their second best selling product is solar-powered desalination plants, BTW (which have both battery and diesel backup). Solar power plants run third and have to be customized to the environment and needs of each customer; he mentioned that its often much cheaper to have a solar-diesel hybrid plant than try and build the array and batteries to support 24x7x365 peak usage -- solar-battery arrays cover a bit above average usage and the diesel kicks in beyond that.
Maybe they should sell the rights to MTV, REAL WORLD: AI
"the true story of 1000 strangers picked to live in a virtual world and have their lives logged. Find out what happens when sentients stop being polite, and start being real."
One correction, the 6502 had 16-bit addressing, hence the 64K Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.
You might be thinking of the 8-bit X and Y index registers, and of course the *Accumulator* register was 8-bit.
As for the 8086 and beyond, I'm of the school that thinks there's a special place in hell reserved for the IBM Engineers who chose Intel's 16-bit architecture over Motorola's for a savings of what amounted to chump change even at the time. How many here have had days/weeks/months/years of their lives drained into the millions of developer person-years that have been wasted on working around the horrible memory models spawned by the x86 architecture. Of course, there's plenty of room for the Microsoft OS *cough* Eng *cough* in *cough* eers *cough* and their memory models.
I, for one, will not miss the demise of Win32 as the last relic of this dark age!
Among the reasons the analyst lists (in case you don't want to subscribe to the WSJ Online):
Sun buying Novell would eliminate Novell's (and SuSe's) hardware neutrality, upseting the interests of major Novell partners/shareholders IBM and HP/Compaq.
A hostile takeover of Novell would seriously drain Sun's cash per share, removing a major price support for Sun's stock.
After acquisition it is likely that Sun's hardware competitors (e.g. IBM, HP) would withdraw support for SuSe Linux. This would be bad for SuSe and bad for Linux in general, since part of IBM's and HP's investment and partnerships with SuSe are intended to prevent Red Hat from dominating Enterprise Linux.
I would add:
Spending a substantial portion of your company's cash reserves to buy a technology and intellectual property portfolio in order to suppress it (instead of exploiting it for profit) is a suicidal strategy. I don't think shareholders on either side would vote for that.
If analyst consensus builds against this purchase, then its even more suicidal for Sun, since their stock would fall off a cliff (again) if they attempted it.
I should also mention Novell recently raised $600 million in a corporate debt offering, about $125 million of which was for a stock buyback (not sure how that might affect their takeover prospects). The rest was for future acquisitions, the rumor on Wall Street is that the inside favorite for a future Novell acquisition is MySQL AB.
That would be a great acquisition, adding MySQL to their software stack would complement both Novell's Mono and J2EE application server offerings. My personal favorite other acquisition would be Zend, giving Novell a LAMP application server software stack!
One of Strassman's major observations is that outsourcing is a telling symptom of a company in financial trouble, and an important signal to analysts and shareholders that its going to be a downhill ride. Now add that to old.com downhill indicator, MS has cancelled the free Soda...
As if Micro$oft and other closed-source DOD suppliers don't use H1B Visa software developers.
Or even better, a foreign intelligence service can offer H1B developers *and* H1B QA people who can cover the tracks of the H1B developers as they plant Trojans against the US.
Or even better still, the spymasters could arrange to bid on outsouced pieces of the Windows OS and other products to Indian Consulting firms, that way there's even more code to hide Trojans in!
Nanobots the size of Red Blood Cells (around 2-5 microns in length) would have a top speed of 2mm/sec in air by Dyson's calculation, or 7.2M/hour, hardly fodder for a high-speed chase!
By my quick calculation Dust Mites (about 200 microns in length), as I've mentioned in another post on this article, could travel up to 20cm/sec or 720M/hour, slow but still scary, especially if there's are trillons of them swarming (as in the novel "Dust"). And Dust Mites, like their fellow arachnids the spiders, can spin webs into parachutes and fly! I think spiderman has used that web-parachute trick, too.:-)
First use of the term "Biomorphing"
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hmmm...seems to me the first use of the term "Biomporphing" was in scientist and SF writer Dr. Charles Pellegrino's 1998 ecological thriller "Dust," I wasn't aware that it has come into use. That was the term in the novel for synthetic life forms like Dinosaurs cloned from recovered DNA, but with modifications to make them smaller and more docile for use as house pets.
"Dust" describes a meltdown of the global ecology, one of the symptoms of which is swarms of trillions of suddenly-carniverous Dust Mites that consume whole towns full of people (and animals). This may have inspired Crichton to try for the some of the same scares in his 2002 novel "Prey," although its physically impossible for Crichton's nanites to move as fast as they do in the novel (due to Reynold's number), no so for Dust Mites. It wouldn't be the first time Crichton has borrowed from Pellegrino, who wrote a speculative article on "Dinosaur World Park," a place filled with Dinosaurs cloned from DNA traces on insects in amber in a 1985 issue of Omni, which Crichton acknowledges inspired Jurrasic Park.
Strangely enough, the novel "Dust" also features technologies based on spider silk grown from genetically modified corn silk. I wonder if the poster has read this novel? Great read if you're into hard SF and thrillers, BTW.
The article mentioned Earth's punctuality may be realted to magnetic phenomenon. The Earth's magentic field has reduced by 10% in the past 150 years according to a study released this month (link below), and they projected that if the tend continues, our magnetic field (and the protection it provides from solar flares) could be gone altogether in 1500 to 2000 years (and it would then take several centuries for a "flip" to occur as happened 780,000 years ago when the field settled into its more recent equilibrium state). Of course, the Geophysical union said this is an "unlikely" scenario, perhaps they're thinking the natural history of earth is calm, peaceful, and gradual -- its NOT!
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/12/12/magneti c.poles.ap/index.html
It might interest my fellow slashdotters to know that the originator of what is now called "The Europa Theory" and the co-discoverer of the communal lifeform "Rusticalus Titanicus," scientific polymath Dr. Charles Pellegrino, was on Cameron's expedition to the Titanic last summer (you can find out more about that at http://earthship.tv/ .
In addition to a dozen science and science fiction books on fields like Paleobiology, Archaeology and advanced rocket design, Dr. Pellegrino has written two books about the Titanic that talk about Europa and Rusticles, "Her Name, Titanic" in 1987 (which was also cited by Cameron as one of the inspirations for his movie, since it tells the survivors' stories in paralell with the story of Titanic's discovery) and "Ghosts of The Titanic" in 2001 (which Cameron wrote the introduction to). Pellegrino originally got involved with the Titanic as part of his study of underwater robot technology, and in addition to relaying survivor accounts, he has long discussions in the book about life on Europa and the robots that may one day discover them. Its amazing how it all connects, exploration of outer and inner space. When Pellegrino's colleage and Rusticle co-discoverer microbiologist Dr. Roy Cullimore first saw the Rusticle samples in his microscope, he is reported to have said "Welcome to Mars!" Its a shame reporters these days just vaguely refer to "scientists" and their "theories" without knowing the personalities and stories involved in *real* scientific exploration!
You can find out more about my friend and former teacher Dr. Pellegrino, his writings and his inventions at http://www.charlespellegrino.com/
I should mention I'm also the webmaster for the site (which is viewable but under construction)!
I haven't noticed any drop in bandwidth on *my* comcast connection, my average download times still range from 128K- to 640K-Bytes per second (depending on time of day), which still beats the heck out of 56K-Bits per second (and my office internet connection on a bad day)!
Keep in mind that cable modems use a shared ethernet link, so the link will get slower as more people on your block get cable modems (as I recall, shared Ethernet performance falls off a cliff above 2/3 bandwidth capacity anyway). In addition, I believe anybody on your block's shared Ethernet segment can capture *all* your traffic as well if they have the right software to put their Ethernet card in promiscuous mode and do frame captures!
However, there could be an additional reason why *Comcast* might be monitoring http traffic so closely -- this is also a very good way to track sharing of an IP address! According to my firm's chief network engineer (i.e., a CCNP), one of the signatures of a NATed IP address fronting many web browsers is multiple http requests almost on top of one another in time, something an individual PC would be very unlikely to generate.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they would too, but it's one of those issues where it really points out the hypocrisy of the party. It's like when a Republican violates family values and has a homosexual affair. It invokes a Nelson "ha ha" response.
You mean Senator Ben "Diaperman" Nelson (he reportedly had an adult baby fetish with his prostitute, not sure about his wife. I'm sorry, but even as a registered Independent I *have* to laugh at him!
Also, he and his wife had no problem making maximum political exploitation of Bill Clinton's affair, his wife even criticized Hillary saying if *her* husband did that she'd do a Loreana Bobbit on him (apparently she failed to live up to her promise, at least I *think* she didn't)!
You're the one showing the typical Republican hypocracy that if an Democrat has an affair its a serious public policy issue, but if a Republican has an affair its a "private matter" (even if that same Republican has made political hay on affairs of the opposition).
My issue with Republicans and Tea Partiers is that they don't want Big Government, except they want their Social Security, Corporate Welfare, Tax Cuts borrowed from future generations *and* they want the Government to be in everybody's bedrooms (anti-gay marriage, anti-gay adoption, don't ask don't tell, anti-polygamy) and every doctor's exam room (anti-abortion, some oppose it even if the life of the mother is at risk -- 'cause Jesus will save 'em -- and in case of rape and incest -- 'cause Jesus had incest in his family tree according to a careful reading of the Christian Bible, and what a same it would have been if Mary of Nazareth had taken some Pennyroyal and Black Cohosh...).
> How do these fabled African cell towers get electricity?
I can't say for sure, but a friend of mine is a solar power engineer and his corporation's best-selling third world product is solar-powered cellular base stations (with batteries and "sleep" modes for smooth 24-hour operation). They are built to last 20 years with annual maintenance, and are usually placed in locations so difficult to get to (like mountain ledges) that petty thievery is unlikely (and the major thieves want the cellular system working). Good thing he's a mountain climber...
Their second best selling product is solar-powered desalination plants, BTW (which have both battery and diesel backup). Solar power plants run third and have to be customized to the environment and needs of each customer; he mentioned that its often much cheaper to have a solar-diesel hybrid plant than try and build the array and batteries to support 24x7x365 peak usage -- solar-battery arrays cover a bit above average usage and the diesel kicks in beyond that.
Maybe they should sell the rights to MTV, REAL WORLD: AI "the true story of 1000 strangers picked to live in a virtual world and have their lives logged. Find out what happens when sentients stop being polite, and start being real."
One correction, the 6502 had 16-bit addressing, hence the 64K Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.
You might be thinking of the 8-bit X and Y index registers, and of course the *Accumulator* register was 8-bit.
As for the 8086 and beyond, I'm of the school that thinks there's a special place in hell reserved for the IBM Engineers who chose Intel's 16-bit architecture over Motorola's for a savings of what amounted to chump change even at the time. How many here have had days/weeks/months/years of their lives drained into the millions of developer person-years that have been wasted on working around the horrible memory models spawned by the x86 architecture. Of course, there's plenty of room for the Microsoft OS *cough* Eng *cough* in *cough* eers *cough* and their memory models.
I, for one, will not miss the demise of Win32 as the last relic of this dark age!
In addition to slashdotters thinking its a bad idea, the Wall Street Journal Online has a follow-up report Novell Acquisition Would Be Bad Move for Sun, Analyst Says
Among the reasons the analyst lists (in case you don't want to subscribe to the WSJ Online):
I would add:
I should also mention Novell recently raised $600 million in a corporate debt offering, about $125 million of which was for a stock buyback (not sure how that might affect their takeover prospects). The rest was for future acquisitions, the rumor on Wall Street is that the inside favorite for a future Novell acquisition is MySQL AB.
That would be a great acquisition, adding MySQL to their software stack would complement both Novell's Mono and J2EE application server offerings. My personal favorite other acquisition would be Zend, giving Novell a LAMP application server software stack!
Economist Paul A. Strassman has done several studies on the economics of outsourcing. He did a famous article in Computerworld in 1995 Outsourcing: A Game for Losers and a follow-up in 2002 Still A Loser's Game.
One of Strassman's major observations is that outsourcing is a telling symptom of a company in financial trouble, and an important signal to analysts and shareholders that its going to be a downhill ride. Now add that to old .com downhill indicator, MS has cancelled the free Soda...
As if Micro$oft and other closed-source DOD suppliers don't use H1B Visa software developers.
Or even better, a foreign intelligence service can offer H1B developers *and* H1B QA people who can cover the tracks of the H1B developers as they plant Trojans against the US.
Or even better still, the spymasters could arrange to bid on outsouced pieces of the Windows OS and other products to Indian Consulting firms, that way there's even more code to hide Trojans in!
Hmmm....
Ridiculous *and* physically impossible, as was mentioned on slashdot here:
Slashdot Article on PreyNanobots the size of Red Blood Cells (around 2-5 microns in length) would have a top speed of 2mm/sec in air by Dyson's calculation, or 7.2M/hour, hardly fodder for a high-speed chase!
By my quick calculation Dust Mites (about 200 microns in length), as I've mentioned in another post on this article, could travel up to 20cm/sec or 720M/hour, slow but still scary, especially if there's are trillons of them swarming (as in the novel "Dust"). And Dust Mites, like their fellow arachnids the spiders, can spin webs into parachutes and fly! I think spiderman has used that web-parachute trick, too. :-)
Hmmm...seems to me the first use of the term "Biomporphing" was in scientist and SF writer Dr. Charles Pellegrino's 1998 ecological thriller "Dust," I wasn't aware that it has come into use. That was the term in the novel for synthetic life forms like Dinosaurs cloned from recovered DNA, but with modifications to make them smaller and more docile for use as house pets. "Dust" describes a meltdown of the global ecology, one of the symptoms of which is swarms of trillions of suddenly-carniverous Dust Mites that consume whole towns full of people (and animals). This may have inspired Crichton to try for the some of the same scares in his 2002 novel "Prey," although its physically impossible for Crichton's nanites to move as fast as they do in the novel (due to Reynold's number), no so for Dust Mites. It wouldn't be the first time Crichton has borrowed from Pellegrino, who wrote a speculative article on "Dinosaur World Park," a place filled with Dinosaurs cloned from DNA traces on insects in amber in a 1985 issue of Omni, which Crichton acknowledges inspired Jurrasic Park. Strangely enough, the novel "Dust" also features technologies based on spider silk grown from genetically modified corn silk. I wonder if the poster has read this novel? Great read if you're into hard SF and thrillers, BTW.
The article mentioned Earth's punctuality may be realted to magnetic phenomenon. The Earth's magentic field has reduced by 10% in the past 150 years according to a study released this month (link below), and they projected that if the tend continues, our magnetic field (and the protection it provides from solar flares) could be gone altogether in 1500 to 2000 years (and it would then take several centuries for a "flip" to occur as happened 780,000 years ago when the field settled into its more recent equilibrium state). Of course, the Geophysical union said this is an "unlikely" scenario, perhaps they're thinking the natural history of earth is calm, peaceful, and gradual -- its NOT! http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/12/12/magneti c.poles.ap/index.html
It might interest my fellow slashdotters to know that the originator of what is now called "The Europa Theory" and the co-discoverer of the communal lifeform "Rusticalus Titanicus," scientific polymath Dr. Charles Pellegrino, was on Cameron's expedition to the Titanic last summer (you can find out more about that at http://earthship.tv/ .
In addition to a dozen science and science fiction books on fields like Paleobiology, Archaeology and advanced rocket design, Dr. Pellegrino has written two books about the Titanic that talk about Europa and Rusticles, "Her Name, Titanic" in 1987 (which was also cited by Cameron as one of the inspirations for his movie, since it tells the survivors' stories in paralell with the story of Titanic's discovery) and "Ghosts of The Titanic" in 2001 (which Cameron wrote the introduction to). Pellegrino originally got involved with the Titanic as part of his study of underwater robot technology, and in addition to relaying survivor accounts, he has long discussions in the book about life on Europa and the robots that may one day discover them. Its amazing how it all connects, exploration of outer and inner space. When Pellegrino's colleage and Rusticle co-discoverer microbiologist Dr. Roy Cullimore first saw the Rusticle samples in his microscope, he is reported to have said "Welcome to Mars!" Its a shame reporters these days just vaguely refer to "scientists" and their "theories" without knowing the personalities and stories involved in *real* scientific exploration!
You can find out more about my friend and former teacher Dr. Pellegrino, his writings and his inventions at http://www.charlespellegrino.com/
I should mention I'm also the webmaster for the site (which is viewable but under construction)!
I haven't noticed any drop in bandwidth on *my* comcast connection, my average download times still range from 128K- to 640K-Bytes per second (depending on time of day), which still beats the heck out of 56K-Bits per second (and my office internet connection on a bad day)!
Keep in mind that cable modems use a shared ethernet link, so the link will get slower as more people on your block get cable modems (as I recall, shared Ethernet performance falls off a cliff above 2/3 bandwidth capacity anyway). In addition, I believe anybody on your block's shared Ethernet segment can capture *all* your traffic as well if they have the right software to put their Ethernet card in promiscuous mode and do frame captures!
However, there could be an additional reason why *Comcast* might be monitoring http traffic so closely -- this is also a very good way to track sharing of an IP address! According to my firm's chief network engineer (i.e., a CCNP), one of the signatures of a NATed IP address fronting many web browsers is multiple http requests almost on top of one another in time, something an individual PC would be very unlikely to generate.
Just my two cents.