It's almost like flying. It reminds me of the story of Icarus. Trapped on a lonely island with only
his mother and father, Icarus developed a way to fly by encasing feathers in wax, and attaching them to his
arms. He then learned God's lesson when his wings of wax melted in the hot sun. With a bright flash God
spoke to Icarus, and advised him not to attempt it again.
Yeah, except that the "gods" that Icarus pissed off were Greek, not Christian. But I agree with you, man. I think Zeus should break out a can of whoop-ass on anyone trying to live forever.
NASA spokesperson Leslie Williams said a press conference would be held later today to discuss the failure. No details about the cause of the problem were immediately available, she said.
On the bright side, at least it was unmanned. Hopefully we got a little data before we shot it down and it won't be a total loss.
Why is he even bothering with the FAA and United States legal BS? If he launches from
some other country, like one near the equator to decrease the amount of fuel needed to
get into orbit, he should have to deal with the FAA and the US government at
all.
Because he wants it to be convenient and viable and open to Americans. I'm much more likely to spend money and risk my life on a space ship that has been okay'd by American regulatory agencies, rather than okay'd by some Vegas tycoon's wallet. Furthermore, why would I want to have to get a passport and visa to fly for ten or fifteen hours before I can go into space.
This isn't just about Earth-to-Space tourism. It's about opening up space travel for the masses. One of the major points of using space for travel is that it reduces intercontinental travel times -- Washington to Tokyo in less than four hours. If you only have one launch point and it's in Africa, it isn't going to be viable.
You must maintain a higher level of paranoia. Whining simply won't help. If you whine to the legislators and include large numbers of signatures and big checks, that can help... but do you have as much money to throw at the politicos as Amazon.com or AOL/TimeWarner or Microsoft? Nope.
But you can stop signing up for "special offers".
You can stop giving out your private e-mail address.
You can stop using "free" services like hotmail.com.
You can host your own e-mail servers and set them up to drop packets from untrusted sources.
You can get internet access and e-mail accounts from Mom & Pop shops that you know and trust and aren't called AOL and haven't had a merger since their daughter got married.
You can public key encrypt all of your e-mail communications.
You can lobby for public terminals.
You can call credit reporting agencies and have yourself removed from their lists while you still can (the number is 888-567-8688).
When you buy a new house, car, whatever, make sure you read the contract and CROSS OUT the section that is there 75% of the time that allows the company to sell your personal information to marketers.
You can complain to ISPs of companies that violate their privacy policies or whose policies do not provide the level of protection required by the ISP.
You can take corporations to court.
The list goes on. When was the last time you wrote to your congressmen? Actually boycotted something? You can maintain privacy, but it takes effort. As your convenience of getting "out there" improves, so improves the ability of "them" to get your personal information and use it to their profit.
If you want absolute privacy, you need to absolutely prevent any contact with the outside world. Or you can be careful and think about your behaviour and the precautions you've taken and maintain some sort of happy medium.
This is going to become harder and harder to attain while corporations become more and more powerful, so best you start now.
It seems to me that if we want people to only run this on free Operating Systems, then, rather than requiring it by license, we ought to simply make sure that our free OSes are so good that no one would ever consider using a non-free OS.
I mean, really, isn't that how we wish companies like Microsoft would behave? Use our stuff because it's better... not because you have to.
According to this note posted last week on the Vidomi web site, they will "no longer provide an option of including the GPL code with the Vidomi code in the same download and installer." Furthermore, they say they have "contacted... the Free Software Foundation (FSF) last week to request their input on this situation." And finally, they say, "in no way do we mean to disrespect Avery Lee".
It seems to me that their product relies on the features of readily available libraries, and for the convenience of the users, they were shipping them together.
Imagine you write an application in Java... the Sun JVM is freely downloadable, so you can expect the user to go get it himself. But for the convenience of the user, some companies bundle the JVM with the product. Not a really big licensing issue. And besides, for the GPL components, they are making the source code available.
This is like saying that any application that runs on Linux must be GPL'd because it relies on the open source platform. As much as we'd like that, the license does not actually require it.
I think this will be worked out without any litigation and that when everyone gets together and talks about it, they'll find everyone is within their rights.
So, you NEVER make mistakes in vi? You never forget that you are are not in insert mode and start typing? You never accidentally use CAPS LOCK when inserting some caps text and then when you are back in command mode, start executing the shifted commands instead of the regular commands? If you never make a mistake, is it because you have to stop and think about it?
No, but I do frequently find myself typing in random "h", "j", "k", and "l" letters all over my MS Office documents -- no matter how many times I whack the ESC key.
And frequently I finding myself searching through menus for stuff that I ought to be able to do without leaving home position on the keyboard.
I also had to remap the F1 key on my Thinkpad to act like ESC in vi because they're placed one above the other, rather than next to each other, and I got sick of help popping up when switching modes due to incoordination. But that's a keyboard design issue, not a software design issue.
I spent almost a year in Germany during 1999 and 2000 working for an American company. Find a company that has a strong international presence. The easiest engineering positions to find are for professional services type jobs -- where the engineer is needed on-site at the customer, even when the customer is in another country.
However, this requires strong language skills in the country of your choice. Of course a number of my colleagues were able to work in Great Britain and Australia where language was not a problem.
Good luck! Working in Europe is a truly wonderful experience.
Wow, this will really increase the throughput of major backbones... but image how much we could increase the throughput using today's technology, simply by eliminating Spam and pr0n. (Or maybe just Spam...)
--brian
Oh please, Daddy,(sob) help me! No way.
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 1
Gimme a break. My parents always wondered why I was so depressed in middle school, but I couldn't say anything to them about it! My dad would have thought I was a wimp and told me I should stand up for myself (in fact, he did once stand there and watch while the neighborhood bully beat the ever-loving-shit out of me, thinking I was building character).
And of course, my mother would have come into school and caused all sorts of trouble. Then it would be, "Brian's a geek... and he has to have his parents to take care of him... ha ha ha." No f***ing way. No self respecting kid is going to invite more harassment by pussying out (unless he really is a pussy, which is VERY rare in reality).
That doesn't mean my parents weren't good parents, there's just no good solution. If I had invited my parents to protect me (which would have required a parent to escort me to the bus stop, the bus driver (who I'm still friends with to this day) to protect me en route, and an administrator following me from class to class) it wouldn't have stopped the taunting or helped me making friends -- I would have been physically safe, but even more depressed.
I stood up for myself, learned to disguise myself (I lettered two varsity sports in high school), and eventually, most of the bullies found easier targets. But not until after I'd spent a great deal of time in trouble in the principle's office in middle school.
Take your pick, but most bullied kids aren't going to have their parents duke it out until there is NO other option.
I've been running linux for years now, started with Slackware, upgraded to Red Hat "'cause that's what everyone else has". After trying to upgrade from Red Hat 5.2 to Red Hat 6.0 and watching my machine fry on the same level as a Windows upgrade, I decided to switch to Debian. The only glitch I had was that the book I bought had a bad install CD... so I downloaded the Potato CD image from a Debian mirror, and had not another second of trouble. Installing an OS shouldn't be mind-numbingly simple... if it is, that means that it will invariably do something mind-numbingly wrong. If I wanted cutesy easy crap, I'd stick with Red Hat or Windows. I don't and I won't.
They ripped me off -- I've developed numerous lossy compression programs... mostly the result of my not being patient enough to implement LZW correctly. And like the LZip team, I never worked out a successful method of restoring the mangled^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H compressed files.
Thanks JonKatz. I found this opinion piece on the Detroit Free Press web site written by a 19 year old, expressing the same insights from the depressed kids' point of view.
I think it's also worthwhile to point out that this isn't just a problem with kids. There are plenty of adult bullies. And plenty of adults that "go postal" as a result. Where do you think the phrase came from? The best way to teach kids compassion is to demonstrate it in our own behaviour.
C'mon 'Taco the line is "Riff-raff, street-rat; I don't buy that". And anyway, what does the misquoted-disney-musicals dept. have to do with these quickies?
Rep. Boucher writes: As a part of our grassroots effort, I am
collecting the electronic mail addresses of individuals who will serve as "activists" on behalf of our measure... send their electronic mail address to jody.olson@mail.house.gov.
If you want to thank Rep. Boucher, drop Jody an e-mail so that when legislation we care about is going through, they can coordinate our efforts to contact our representatives. You may also want to pass along a warm "thank you" to Rep. Boucher for his continuing support.
And here I was all worried. But it seems I over-reacted. I just downloaded Verdi's Triumphant March, and a search for some of my favorite DJs like Sandra Collins, ATB, and Alice Deejay still return the max results.
If I wanted Metallica, I could go to the store and buy it. But I still haven't been able to find the DJ Juergen mix of "Better Off Alone" on a CD. Maybe I just live in the wrong country.
So, at least some of us can still listen to cool music as we fight the tyranny.
For server-side scripting results that blow Java, Perl, and C out of the water, your best bet is to go with the MS QBasic interpreter. If you're set on compiled code as the way to go, you'll have to settle for COBOL.
Sorry, I just hate these "my language is better than your language" arguments. Anything can be coded for speed and anything can be coded to suck.
It's not Perl that makes Perl based sites suck -- it's the fact that CGI scripts spawn a new process every time they are called. More advanced server side scripting languages use a single process to handle requests. I'd personally like to see a Perl CGI gateway that doesn't have to spawn a new interpreter everytime.
Frankly, I think ASM will have the same problems that you'd see with Perl -- the overhead is not execution of the script, it's the initial setup time for each request.
Remember, if high performance was just a matter of switching to a faster language, we'd all be using that faster language. Usually it's something else that makes it fast or slow.
Sounds cool... too bad it's Not Right For Me -- no Linux support, no server support. It's also $69.99 per month, with $400 equipment charge and $200 set up fee (professional installation required).
It's also not at 1.5 Mbps. Download speeds are up to 500 kbps (150 kbps minimum... unless it's raining). Upload speeds "burst" up to 150 kbps, and average around 50 kbps, depending on peak usage.
But it's available now! So if you can't wait for the phone company, and you're willing to settle for Windows, and you don't need to upload anything, then go for it!
These weapons aren't like Star Trek, folks. I'm sure they can be tuned up to punch holes in whatever armour people happen to develop. But heat based energy weapons aren't ever going to simply knock people out -- it uses heat not concussion (although I've heard that the one of the missle defense projects used a concussion laser... but that required a HUGE capacitance and wouldn't be practical for small arms).
It will be interesting to see how long it takes before energy weapons like this replace standard projectile weapons -- at high energies, they can cause as much damage without as much mess and zero tracability (no ballisitics). Could be good for assasins.
Another interesting point here is for the development of energy shields -- people will need to where kevlar (or the next material of the week) plus some sort of field generator that can disrupt incoming energy beams.
Last interesting thing is whether at higher energies they can increase the effective target area from a narrow killer beam to a wide, shotgun-ish field that can repel crowds.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, except that the "gods" that Icarus pissed off were Greek, not Christian. But I agree with you, man. I think Zeus should break out a can of whoop-ass on anyone trying to live forever.
--brian
NASA spokesperson Leslie Williams said a press conference would be held later today to discuss the failure. No details about the cause of the problem were immediately available, she said.
On the bright side, at least it was unmanned. Hopefully we got a little data before we shot it down and it won't be a total loss.
--brian
Because he wants it to be convenient and viable and open to Americans. I'm much more likely to spend money and risk my life on a space ship that has been okay'd by American regulatory agencies, rather than okay'd by some Vegas tycoon's wallet. Furthermore, why would I want to have to get a passport and visa to fly for ten or fifteen hours before I can go into space.
This isn't just about Earth-to-Space tourism. It's about opening up space travel for the masses. One of the major points of using space for travel is that it reduces intercontinental travel times -- Washington to Tokyo in less than four hours. If you only have one launch point and it's in Africa, it isn't going to be viable.
--brian
- But you can stop signing up for "special offers".
- You can stop giving out your private e-mail address.
- You can stop using "free" services like hotmail.com.
- You can host your own e-mail servers and set them up to drop packets from untrusted sources.
- You can get internet access and e-mail accounts from Mom & Pop shops that you know and trust and aren't called AOL and haven't had a merger since their daughter got married.
- You can public key encrypt all of your e-mail communications.
- You can lobby for public terminals.
- You can call credit reporting agencies and have yourself removed from their lists while you still can (the number is 888-567-8688).
- When you buy a new house, car, whatever, make sure you read the contract and CROSS OUT the section that is there 75% of the time that allows the company to sell your personal information to marketers.
- You can complain to ISPs of companies that violate their privacy policies or whose policies do not provide the level of protection required by the ISP.
- You can take corporations to court.
The list goes on. When was the last time you wrote to your congressmen? Actually boycotted something? You can maintain privacy, but it takes effort. As your convenience of getting "out there" improves, so improves the ability of "them" to get your personal information and use it to their profit.If you want absolute privacy, you need to absolutely prevent any contact with the outside world. Or you can be careful and think about your behaviour and the precautions you've taken and maintain some sort of happy medium.
This is going to become harder and harder to attain while corporations become more and more powerful, so best you start now.
--brian
--brian
I mean, really, isn't that how we wish companies like Microsoft would behave? Use our stuff because it's better... not because you have to.
--brian
It seems to me that their product relies on the features of readily available libraries, and for the convenience of the users, they were shipping them together.
Imagine you write an application in Java... the Sun JVM is freely downloadable, so you can expect the user to go get it himself. But for the convenience of the user, some companies bundle the JVM with the product. Not a really big licensing issue. And besides, for the GPL components, they are making the source code available.
This is like saying that any application that runs on Linux must be GPL'd because it relies on the open source platform. As much as we'd like that, the license does not actually require it.
I think this will be worked out without any litigation and that when everyone gets together and talks about it, they'll find everyone is within their rights.
--brian
--brian
No, but I do frequently find myself typing in random "h", "j", "k", and "l" letters all over my MS Office documents -- no matter how many times I whack the ESC key.
And frequently I finding myself searching through menus for stuff that I ought to be able to do without leaving home position on the keyboard.
I also had to remap the F1 key on my Thinkpad to act like ESC in vi because they're placed one above the other, rather than next to each other, and I got sick of help popping up when switching modes due to incoordination. But that's a keyboard design issue, not a software design issue.
--brian
--brian
However, this requires strong language skills in the country of your choice. Of course a number of my colleagues were able to work in Great Britain and Australia where language was not a problem.
Good luck! Working in Europe is a truly wonderful experience.
--brian
The two articles have the same artist rendition at the top, and drops the same numbers, but the September article has more cool pictures.
--brian
--brian
And of course, my mother would have come into school and caused all sorts of trouble. Then it would be, "Brian's a geek... and he has to have his parents to take care of him... ha ha ha." No f***ing way. No self respecting kid is going to invite more harassment by pussying out (unless he really is a pussy, which is VERY rare in reality).
That doesn't mean my parents weren't good parents, there's just no good solution. If I had invited my parents to protect me (which would have required a parent to escort me to the bus stop, the bus driver (who I'm still friends with to this day) to protect me en route, and an administrator following me from class to class) it wouldn't have stopped the taunting or helped me making friends -- I would have been physically safe, but even more depressed.
I stood up for myself, learned to disguise myself (I lettered two varsity sports in high school), and eventually, most of the bullies found easier targets. But not until after I'd spent a great deal of time in trouble in the principle's office in middle school.
Take your pick, but most bullied kids aren't going to have their parents duke it out until there is NO other option.
--brian
--brian
Happy 4/1/2001,
--brian
I think it's also worthwhile to point out that this isn't just a problem with kids. There are plenty of adult bullies. And plenty of adults that "go postal" as a result. Where do you think the phrase came from? The best way to teach kids compassion is to demonstrate it in our own behaviour.
--brian
--brian
As a part of our grassroots effort, I am collecting the electronic mail addresses of individuals who will serve as "activists" on behalf of our measure... send their electronic mail address to jody.olson@mail.house.gov.
If you want to thank Rep. Boucher, drop Jody an e-mail so that when legislation we care about is going through, they can coordinate our efforts to contact our representatives. You may also want to pass along a warm "thank you" to Rep. Boucher for his continuing support.
--brian
> know who she's dating? No.
Who cares how she sounds -- I want to know if I have a chance to date her. And anyway, she sounds just as good as she looks.
--brian
P.S. -- Don't tell me you don't care about who Natalie Portman is dating!
If I wanted Metallica, I could go to the store and buy it. But I still haven't been able to find the DJ Juergen mix of "Better Off Alone" on a CD. Maybe I just live in the wrong country.
So, at least some of us can still listen to cool music as we fight the tyranny.
--brian
Sorry, I just hate these "my language is better than your language" arguments. Anything can be coded for speed and anything can be coded to suck.
It's not Perl that makes Perl based sites suck -- it's the fact that CGI scripts spawn a new process every time they are called. More advanced server side scripting languages use a single process to handle requests. I'd personally like to see a Perl CGI gateway that doesn't have to spawn a new interpreter everytime.
Frankly, I think ASM will have the same problems that you'd see with Perl -- the overhead is not execution of the script, it's the initial setup time for each request.
Remember, if high performance was just a matter of switching to a faster language, we'd all be using that faster language. Usually it's something else that makes it fast or slow.
--brian
It's also not at 1.5 Mbps. Download speeds are up to 500 kbps (150 kbps minimum... unless it's raining). Upload speeds "burst" up to 150 kbps, and average around 50 kbps, depending on peak usage.
But it's available now! So if you can't wait for the phone company, and you're willing to settle for Windows, and you don't need to upload anything, then go for it!
--brian
It will be interesting to see how long it takes before energy weapons like this replace standard projectile weapons -- at high energies, they can cause as much damage without as much mess and zero tracability (no ballisitics). Could be good for assasins.
Another interesting point here is for the development of energy shields -- people will need to where kevlar (or the next material of the week) plus some sort of field generator that can disrupt incoming energy beams.
Last interesting thing is whether at higher energies they can increase the effective target area from a narrow killer beam to a wide, shotgun-ish field that can repel crowds.
Just flexing the brain,
--brian
- Your battery dies...
- The book prompts you to renew your license...
- The embedded Windows OS GPF's...
- A kid runs by with a squirt gun and shorts out your e-book...
And damn, you can't pick up your new thousand volume capable device at the local grocery store.I'll keep my paperbacks for now...
--brian