"fascinating, innovative machine having little to do with its more well-known bretheren, which completely failed to catch on, and had surprisingly little direct influence on future devices of the same style which didn't appear until much, much later, but which changed the computing paradigm forever"
Quite a pretty puzzle here. There's wealth, and there's mega-wealth, and then you have shadowy god-money folk- suchlike Gates, Carnegie and Soros. Most people who reach the super-mega level get there by similar processes; they discover some unexploited con, and exploit it for all its worth, and get lucky repeatedly (early on) and then proceed to exploit, strangle and swarm over their competitors. Soros arguably used some of the classic techniques of power to get there, but where he got is another matter entirely. In their old, febrile age, moguls like Carnegie and Rockefeller unleashed gobs of money on establishing charities and endowments to assure that their name is remembered for something other than ugly, ugly thuggery. Bill is starting to do some of the same, though at this stage hardly anyone is paying attention.
What makes Soros different, how he stands aside from the other giants is in his thoughtful, abstract approach to the mechanisms of profit, and the rise and fall of economies.
His "public works" have taken place throughout his career, not merely as an afterthought. He appears to be quite intelligent, and seems to surround himself with intelligent, critical advisors. Most of his oddball adventures and forays in Europe have been profitable, or at least, had the intention of bringing back some compensation, but there seems to be a broader plan at work.
A naive western observer might see the Hand of Soros offering charity and kindness to a world that desperately needs his help. The natives who've endured his schemes probably see him as a standard-model Ugly American, his interference in their culture and economies don't seem to be quite as welcome as advertised. He appears to regret (sincerely?) the harm he's caused, but his answer seems to be... try new schemes. He quite baldly treats Economics as an Experimental and not a Theoretical science. He seems to take the broad perspective, in his field, that a Machievelli took in the realm of Renaissance politics, though he's had far more success.
I suspect history will look on him with more interest than his contemporaries do; he's one of the most influential single humans on Earth today, but tries to work stealthily and quietly. Whether they will approve or disapprove... ultimately depends on who gets to write those histories.
Check your facts
on
Dot.Con
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I haven't read the book, but from the review it certainly sounds as though the author overlooked some really elemental fact-checking. He probably overheard or remembered some story about how the Altair 8800 was named, and then printed it verbatim from memory.
Simple sanity-checking should have pointed out to him that The Altair(tm) was invented before the Star Wars franchise ever got under steam. Just a bit of googling around would have found him the story he was looking for...
Not for a character from Star Wars, but a planet, from Forbidden Planet.
The planet, too, was named for the star, Alpha Aquilae. but is outside the scope of the movie, the book, and apparently the author's skull.
There's also a persistent rumor (through Google, that may be part of the souce of his confusion) that the computer was named after a character or a planet from a Star Trek episode, but no such episode apparently exists.
It's a strange day indeed, when Slashdot editors find themselves in better stead, for typos and fact-checking than the subjects of their articles, but these be strange days surely.
A lot of NASA bashing, some NASA praising in Slashdot here, tonight, but I think a great many of you are missing the point of this exercise. The survey was reportedly put together by joint effort of NASA and The Planetary Society, but if you read the details of just what they're surveying for, some things stand out sharply.
Make no mistake, it does read like a PR stunt, but its not NASA trying to spin to us. This "survey" is in large part an effort by The Planetary Society to justify their goals and priorities, in the near future to NASA and a highly volatile U.S. congress.
Notice, no manned missions? Do you think ordinary people care about them? In large part, having live people on the scene is something that most ordinary folk can relate to more than having robots crawling around or some deep space probe whizzing by. Its also, tremendously greater expense, and there's some debate within the scientific community over the relative value of manned vs unmanned flight, however, the Planetary Society has pretty much always come out dead-set against manned exploration- its just not their priority or interest.I find it curious that while many individual members/supporters of PS (like their founder, Sagan himself) acknowledge an interest in discovering habitats and environments suitable for future human settlement, they've been very loath to begin acting on that today. I suspect that results of the survey are likely to aid PS in representing their agendas to NASA as "what the people really want".
So... NASA wins, PS wins, Zubrin loses, everyone else goes home happy.
Note, I personally appreciate the agendas that both the rabid "humans in space!" and "robots in space!" camps further. Its important to keep them both in perspective, since they each have value.
I find it somewhat scary that 'content companies' have willing allies in congress for this kind of oppressive legislation.
To me, that's not the scary part
What's really frightening, when you consider that the 'content companies' claim to speak for the myriads of silent 'content creators' aka artists, is that the voice of 'content company' allies in congress COMPLETELY overwhelms and surpasses that of actual content creators, who ARE members of congress! If Senator Orrin Hatch and other musicians (who publish and sell their work) in Congress are unable to convince their peers that RIAA are as much thieves as the napsteroids, then we're in trouble.
It has been said that "You can't legislate morality." But that is a falacy because what else is legislation for?
It's only half a fallacy. Morality can be legislated, but only very poorly. Morality is about our core beliefs and values, and most attempts to regulate these turn up laughable.
What legislation CAN be used for, and can be very effective at times, is for enforcing Ethics, which is in essence more about behaviors and how we apply our personal idiosyncratic moral frameworks to a multimoral society.
Here's an example.
I personally believe Nudity (not wearing clothes) is EVIL, is bad and would like for people not ever to not have clothes on.
That's a moral judgement, being a belief and a value. If I decide I want everyone else to feel the same way about clothes, I have a pretty difficult row to hoe, since some people (Say, the girl next door) do not like wearing clothes at all! What I can do, however, is lobby my congresscritter to pass a law regulating what people *do* with clothes, i.e. that they must wear clothes when walking outside where members of the sensitive public as myself, can see them.
It's an ethical guideline because it it bridges between my morals and the morals of the girl next door. She might see it as an imposition, because it prevents her from trapising about naked on my lawn, but it does not prevent her from doing so indoors, or in some other setting that I might not notice.
Moral edicts come from people like God and Mom, and possibly Osama (if you follow his advice??? Bad advice if you do) but ethics come from people like Nietzche, Rheinquist and Orrin. You might notice that ALL of these people suggest both moral and ethical ideas, but the main weight of their discourse falls into the one or the other.
In general, it seems that Moral people will regard you as immoral if you dispute their morals, but Ethical people may still grant you ethical, while in dispute, since disagreement and resolution seem to be what Ethics is all about.
The first *actual* usenet posting from USSR was in spring of 1990 (possibly May?)
From Dimitry Volodin (dvv@hq.demos.su) to the talk.politics.soviet group, crossposted to a few other russian culture groups I think. There was quite an involved thread following it, debating whether this was another kremvax hoax, but Dima, and a few others from Demos continued to post, and assert that they were actual, real live people. Their link was 9600 modem, originally dialup, eventually leased line to an EUNET site in Sweden. I did witness the original, and did print it out, but subsequently passed it on to my aunt who lost it. Ah well.
Anyway the first extant post from.su appears to be google
If anyone can refine this, would be much appreciated
I don't think any one company is rich enough to set up the infrastructure needed to be sustainable and commercially successful, and no government can dump that much money into a project with no short-term returns.
Oh, I think one company is about rich enough to do it. A pity, the DOJ couldn't direct them to divert all their resources into commercial space development.
Could be, the reason they shrugged off this proposed remedy is that it would set MSFT up for cis-lunar monopoly as well.
Aww shucks!
Re:Let me get this straight...
on
Mapping Gravity
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ok, Troll-feeding time!
Since I don't have any karma I can't lose it:)
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred on September 11th, and now we're involved in a WAR against Islam and you people have the gall to be discussing mapping gravity????
Yes, we have the gall.
Ask NAVO (the Naval Oceanographic Office) just how much gall they have, mapping gravity over the surface of the seas! In the Old Days, before nifty toys like Satellite Gravity, we used to grid the earth's field by taking in situ measurements all over; *much* of which was done by oceanographic research vessels
Now, a good portion of that gravity grid was done for nice oceanographic or geologic reasons; if you know the density of the stuff below you, you can get a pretty good guess at the shape and contents of the seafloor below, but curiously, the more sensitive and more accurate gravity meters were owned and operated by the USN.
Why is that? Because a good map of the gravity patterns of the sea floor can help with navigating around it, when you *haven't* the luxuries of GPS or loran or other positioning systems.
Submarines!
Gravity maps done by NAVO ships in the Indian Ocean (which have greater detail and precision than the NASA maps, even if they are much narrower and smaller region of coverage) are quite possibly as we speak, helping guide USN subs in the vicinity, as they prepare for any lurking regional threats.
For a quick glimpse of grav fluctuations in the south pacific, as recorded on a Navy Gravimeter (aboard a civilian research ship) try at the bottom
Anyway, most everyone in the Oceanographic community is really excited about satellite gravity, since its coverage is just about universal (except for the poles) but we still lug out the Bell Aerospace meters (ugly black things) from port to port.
If anyone were interested, I could post descriptions of how some or any of these things work, except this is slashdot and this post will probably end up as (Score:-1, TrollFood)
Editors, please read the articles, before you comment. The proposed interferometric telescope is intended only to work in xray frequencies, not visible light,
which is the vast majority of what any ordinary nearby star will produce. The article used analogies (poor, because they were not explained) of, successive images of a nearby star, to explain the resolution capability of this device, but made no claims about actually trying to image these nearby stars. You'd want an array of optical telescopes for that.
I just got off the phone, with a vendor who had, until recently been supplying me with Expendable Bathythermographs. I've always liked their model "T5" probes because they range deeper and faster than anything currently available. Sadly, all that the vendor could tell me was, "they aren't too commonly requested, so we stopped making them."
Damn. I need to consult slashdot before making any purchasing decisions in the future....
This is one hack that impresses me, for many reasons. Not the least of which, is the language. Perhaps I should get drunk, and write all my documentation in Japanese. The English page is great poetry-
Too bad Slashdot won't allow tags so
that I can do it proper justice.
Molly, you just made my.sig. Thanks!
First, nothing begins if not opening.
Since the body isn't composed of glue like PalmV about m100,
Great as it is to see these other teams working to develop linux apps and systems for PDAs, I find it interesting that Compaq's internal linux team is the *only* group that's seriously trying to build a system that runs under X.
Now, its quite possible that the Microwindows, XML, and various other GUI variants could be
Faster
less memory hog
features more directly pertinant to PDA use
The bald fact is that the vast majority of existing applications are written for X.
Many apps, perhaps, may be portable from X to [GUI of choice] with relatively little effort, many X apps may still require some kludging to work on PDAs, but it would seem to me that the chance of having a significant number of useful apps on a PDA platform changes dramatically when you consider [GUI of choice] vs X.
X is thestandard. I use it on Suns, I use it on PCs and Macs. I would strongly welcome its presence on a PDA. For this reason, while I wish-well the YOPY, Transvirtual's effort, and others, I feel much more comfortable supporting the Compaq dev team.
Does anyone feel the advantages of heterogenous GUIs outweigh the broad cross-platform support of X?
Slashdot Mirror
-can't seem to make up his mind whether to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to oppose and end them.
Something rotten in Denmar...err. edmond, hmm?
Model 100 : TRS-80 :. Newton : Macintosh
actually.
"fascinating, innovative machine having little to do with its more well-known bretheren, which completely failed to catch on, and had surprisingly little direct influence on future devices of the same style which didn't appear until much, much later, but which changed the computing paradigm forever"
Model 100 : laptop :. Newton : PDA
What makes Soros different, how he stands aside from the other giants is in his thoughtful, abstract approach to the mechanisms of profit, and the rise and fall of economies.
His "public works" have taken place throughout his career, not merely as an afterthought. He appears to be quite intelligent, and seems to surround himself with intelligent, critical advisors. Most of his oddball adventures and forays in Europe have been profitable, or at least, had the intention of bringing back some compensation, but there seems to be a broader plan at work.
A naive western observer might see the Hand of Soros offering charity and kindness to a world that desperately needs his help. The natives who've endured his schemes probably see him as a standard-model Ugly American, his interference in their culture and economies don't seem to be quite as welcome as advertised. He appears to regret (sincerely?) the harm he's caused, but his answer seems to be... try new schemes. He quite baldly treats Economics as an Experimental and not a Theoretical science. He seems to take the broad perspective, in his field, that a Machievelli took in the realm of Renaissance politics, though he's had far more success.
I suspect history will look on him with more interest than his contemporaries do; he's one of the most influential single humans on Earth today, but tries to work stealthily and quietly. Whether they will approve or disapprove... ultimately depends on who gets to write those histories.
Simple sanity-checking should have pointed out to him that The Altair(tm) was invented before the Star Wars franchise ever got under steam. Just a bit of googling around would have found him the story he was looking for...
Not for a character from Star Wars, but a planet, from Forbidden Planet.
The planet, too, was named for the star, Alpha Aquilae. but is outside the scope of the movie, the book, and apparently the author's skull.
There's also a persistent rumor (through Google, that may be part of the souce of his confusion) that the computer was named after a character or a planet from a Star Trek episode, but no such episode apparently exists.
It's a strange day indeed, when Slashdot editors find themselves in better stead, for typos and fact-checking than the subjects of their articles, but these be strange days surely.
Make no mistake, it does read like a PR stunt, but its not NASA trying to spin to us. This "survey" is in large part an effort by The Planetary Society to justify their goals and priorities, in the near future to NASA and a highly volatile U.S. congress.
Notice, no manned missions? Do you think ordinary people care about them? In large part, having live people on the scene is something that most ordinary folk can relate to more than having robots crawling around or some deep space probe whizzing by. Its also, tremendously greater expense, and there's some debate within the scientific community over the relative value of manned vs unmanned flight, however, the Planetary Society has pretty much always come out dead-set against manned exploration- its just not their priority or interest.I find it curious that while many individual members/supporters of PS (like their founder, Sagan himself) acknowledge an interest in discovering habitats and environments suitable for future human settlement, they've been very loath to begin acting on that today. I suspect that results of the survey are likely to aid PS in representing their agendas to NASA as "what the people really want".
So... NASA wins, PS wins, Zubrin loses, everyone else goes home happy.
Note, I personally appreciate the agendas that both the rabid "humans in space!" and "robots in space!" camps further. Its important to keep them both in perspective, since they each have value.
To me, that's not the scary part
What's really frightening, when you consider that the 'content companies' claim to speak for the myriads of silent 'content creators' aka artists, is that the voice of 'content company' allies in congress COMPLETELY overwhelms and surpasses that of actual content creators, who ARE members of congress! If Senator Orrin Hatch and other musicians (who publish and sell their work) in Congress are unable to convince their peers that RIAA are as much thieves as the napsteroids, then we're in trouble.
It has been said that "You can't legislate morality." But that is a falacy because what else is legislation for?
It's only half a fallacy. Morality can be legislated, but only very poorly. Morality is about our core beliefs and values, and most attempts to regulate these turn up laughable.
What legislation CAN be used for, and can be very effective at times, is for enforcing Ethics, which is in essence more about behaviors and how we apply our personal idiosyncratic moral frameworks to a multimoral society.
Here's an example.
-
I personally believe Nudity (not wearing clothes) is EVIL, is bad and would like for people not ever to not have clothes on.
Moral edicts come from people like God and Mom, and possibly Osama (if you follow his advice??? Bad advice if you do) but ethics come from people like Nietzche, Rheinquist and Orrin. You might notice that ALL of these people suggest both moral and ethical ideas, but the main weight of their discourse falls into the one or the other.That's a moral judgement, being a belief and a value. If I decide I want everyone else to feel the same way about clothes, I have a pretty difficult row to hoe, since some people (Say, the girl next door) do not like wearing clothes at all! What I can do, however, is lobby my congresscritter to pass a law regulating what people *do* with clothes, i.e. that they must wear clothes when walking outside where members of the sensitive public as myself, can see them.
It's an ethical guideline because it it bridges between my morals and the morals of the girl next door. She might see it as an imposition, because it prevents her from trapising about naked on my lawn, but it does not prevent her from doing so indoors, or in some other setting that I might not notice.
In general, it seems that Moral people will regard you as immoral if you dispute their morals, but Ethical people may still grant you ethical, while in dispute, since disagreement and resolution seem to be what Ethics is all about.
The first *actual* usenet posting from USSR was in spring of 1990 (possibly May?)
From Dimitry Volodin (dvv@hq.demos.su) to the talk.politics.soviet group, crossposted to a few other russian culture groups I think. There was quite an involved thread following it, debating whether this was another kremvax hoax, but Dima, and a few others from Demos continued to post, and assert that they were actual, real live people. Their link was 9600 modem, originally dialup, eventually leased line to an EUNET site in Sweden. I did witness the original, and did print it out, but subsequently passed it on to my aunt who lost it. Ah well.
Anyway the first extant post from .su appears to be google
If anyone can refine this, would be much appreciated
Oh, I think one company is about rich enough to do it. A pity, the DOJ couldn't direct them to divert all their resources into commercial space development. Could be, the reason they shrugged off this proposed remedy is that it would set MSFT up for cis-lunar monopoly as well.
Aww shucks!
Since I don't have any karma I can't lose it
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred on September 11th, and now we're involved in a WAR against Islam and you people have the gall to be discussing mapping gravity????
Yes, we have the gall.
Ask NAVO (the Naval Oceanographic Office) just how much gall they have, mapping gravity over the surface of the seas! In the Old Days, before nifty toys like Satellite Gravity, we used to grid the earth's field by taking in situ measurements all over; *much* of which was done by oceanographic research vessels
Now, a good portion of that gravity grid was done for nice oceanographic or geologic reasons; if you know the density of the stuff below you, you can get a pretty good guess at the shape and contents of the seafloor below, but curiously, the more sensitive and more accurate gravity meters were owned and operated by the USN.
Why is that? Because a good map of the gravity patterns of the sea floor can help with navigating around it, when you *haven't* the luxuries of GPS or loran or other positioning systems.
Submarines!
Gravity maps done by NAVO ships in the Indian Ocean (which have greater detail and precision than the NASA maps, even if they are much narrower and smaller region of coverage) are quite possibly as we speak, helping guide USN subs in the vicinity, as they prepare for any lurking regional threats.
For a quick glimpse of grav fluctuations in the south pacific, as recorded on a Navy Gravimeter (aboard a civilian research ship) try at the bottom
Anyway, most everyone in the Oceanographic community is really excited about satellite gravity, since its coverage is just about universal (except for the poles) but we still lug out the Bell Aerospace meters (ugly black things) from port to port.
If anyone were interested, I could post descriptions of how some or any of these things work, except this is slashdot and this post will probably end up as (Score:-1, TrollFood)
Yes,
Please!
Bring back John! (and paul, ringo, george)
this nation could use some Real Leadership again!!!
Please post a mirror! (so we can all mirror it ourselves, and spread the insidious Propaganda throughout the inter net)
much obliged
Or... maybe a beowulf clus^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H crap
I just got off the phone, with a vendor who had, until recently been supplying me with Expendable Bathythermographs. I've always liked their model "T5" probes because they range deeper and faster than anything currently available. Sadly, all that the vendor could tell me was, "they aren't too commonly requested, so we stopped making them."
Damn. I need to consult slashdot before making any purchasing decisions in the future....
This is one hack that impresses me, for many reasons. Not the least of which, is the language. Perhaps I should get drunk, and write all my documentation in Japanese. The English page is great poetry- Too bad Slashdot won't allow tags so that I can do it proper justice.
Molly, you just made my .sig. Thanks!
First, nothing begins if not opening.
Since the body isn't composed of glue like PalmV about m100,
opening out is simple.
But, it is because the used screw is special.
" T5-Type" not too generally is necessary.
_________________
It seems you've forgotten the First Rule of Acquisition
- Faster
- less memory hog
- features more directly pertinant to PDA use
The bald fact is that the vast majority of existing applications are written for X.Many apps, perhaps, may be portable from X to [GUI of choice] with relatively little effort, many X apps may still require some kludging to work on PDAs, but it would seem to me that the chance of having a significant number of useful apps on a PDA platform changes dramatically when you consider [GUI of choice] vs X.
X is thestandard. I use it on Suns, I use it on PCs and Macs. I would strongly welcome its presence on a PDA. For this reason, while I wish-well the YOPY, Transvirtual's effort, and others, I feel much more comfortable supporting the Compaq dev team.
Does anyone feel the advantages of heterogenous GUIs outweigh the broad cross-platform support of X?