Just a suggestion to make the best of a bad situation: Alter the name slightly to "Ev1lServers" and market to supervillains. It's a tight market, but if you've got salespeople willing to check hollowed-out volcanos and old missile silos and the like, they've got mountains of under-utilised capitol. Just make sure you get as much money as you can up-front - they're prone to dissolve without warning despire their large resource base, or to kill your salespeople once the product is delivered. But with names like SCO and Ev1lServers, it's hard to go wrong!
[The above is not intended as real advice - I feel compelled to mention this because their company actually did get an SCO license]
My father got into building and flying RC aircraft - he even became the president of his local RC flying organization. It is a cool hobby to play with - but there's two things you have to expect.
One: You are going to crash and damage your toys. Be prepared for the emotional effects this may have. Having a camera up front is a nice way to tie controls in with movement, certainly nicer than the fly-by-watching indirect controls my dad had to use - but the dynamics of RC scale speed Vs. large scale wind means that you are still going to have to contend with hard landings and rapid unexpected direction changes. Always stay clear of ANY obstacles, never fly around people or property, and come prepared to climb trees to retrieve your toy.
Two: This is NOT a cheap hobby. In terms of time and resources, the $750 is just the tip of the iceburg in terms of the resources you are going to spend to maintain this little aircraft if you plan on flying it regularly. You'll need a little workshop, epoxies and other wear-and-tear repair equipment, scraps of all kinds to repair larger issues, spark plugs, oils and other maintenence tools depending on engine, carrying equipment, etc., etc. You've got to be fairly finantially devoted to keep this hobby up - and I'm not even mentioning the costs of a serious crash.
It is a hobby you can be proud of in your accoplishments - but it's also one you have to take great care with, and be ready for literally crushing emotions when gravity takes its toll.
Any questions or comments more than welcome - I'll be updating that resume soon based on some, actually. It's a fair representation still, so feel free to share it.
I'm not worried about germs or anything... but seeing a bunch of finger-print crud on one place on the screen when you're about to place your vote might have some impact, not even considering the basic security concerns.
What's wrong with paper & pencil? Countries all over the world count those in remarkably small ammounts of time - do we HAVE to have an instant ballot in exchange for a loss of a paper trail and many layers of security concerns? This part is already redundant... but it NEEDS to be redundantly said to as many people as possible.
It would be cool to see other nations being able to make useful progress in non-weapons science, being able to actively thank and give tribute to NASA advancements along the way.
I just hope the sharing might keep going if it starts being seen as a good thing. For some reason, I get the impression we'll get some crazy results too, like French agencies stipulating that no documents may be translated to non-French and still be visible in France. Still, it's definetly problems I'd rather have to deal with then not.
As someone mentioned, this would be fascinating to just read the comments. Would it be possible for someone to strip out all the code, leaving only the comments for each file, minus comment lines that ARE code? It would be GREAT just to read the "intention" and "questions" living in that code and be able to associate each with a filename. Purely for entertainment value. It would also be neat to compare comment-to-code ratio in areas of MS code.:^)
"21. By way of example, in the personal computing market, Microsoft Windows is the best known operating system. The Windows operating system was designed to operate on computer processors ("chips") built by Intel. Thus, Windows serves as the link between Intel-based processors and the various software application that run on personal computers."
I count at least 3 major logical errors in that section, and find it's existence in this document unjustified.
1. Windows is not an operating system, but a family of them - Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT are the operating systems. 2. They were not all designed with Intel as the only manufacturer of systems that the OS should work on. 3. The OS does much more than work with processor "chips".
It seems unlikely to me that lawyers proefficient with modern computer systems worked on this document.
The unemployed are most likely comprised primarily of those MANY people who are either IT people who without a huge portfolio or over 5 years of experience, CS people who haven't graduated, or have less than 3 years recognizeable experience. It's hard to push through phone networks to speak to people who would ordinarilly throw away your resume, and it's very hard to get acceptable experience in this market. Without experience, and without the money that comes with it, it's VERY hard to start a business that other businesses would give regular business to. The experienced people can still find jobs.
It's that span between "cheap high school/early college labor" and "unquestionably valuable asset" that gets people in this market.
This is a nice commercial site for navy ship photos from a site made by a former employer of mine. You have to search to find a ship, but there's some nice pictures there. It's owned by a long-time professional navy ship photographer living in Florida, who is a pretty cool guy.
Actually, I do lucidly fairly often - presuming you mean being in control of and aware of the dream as a dream state. I haven't found it to be a magical thing that needs a trigger, just a simple exploration of thought. Flashing lights haven't had anything to do with my experiences, as I have always slept in darkness. I also haven't experied any special therapudic effects from such dreams either. If anything, it's just an open-ended mental game, like a daydream, and definetly not something to obsess over, or waste time on instead of sleeping. This is just another testimonial of course, and an oppinionated one at that. I encourage scientific exploration for those in the field - but distrust those with something to sell, so to speak.
If anything, this is just a translation of a much older concept, throwing in pop-psychology in the form of staring at a picture, and self-fullfilling prophesies about dreaming something. It's still flim-flam though - no better than psychic surgery or magic lottery numbers.
Classic flim-flam. Variations of these flashing-light eye-glasses have been around for decades, claiming to be everything from a headache cure to, in this case a dream machine. The nice thing about claiming things about dreams is that most dreams aren't remembered, so there's nothing to be able to go after when it comes to false advertising.
Yes, I'm a skeptic. I suppose I should want to try this product beforhand to be scientifically valid... but testimonial "evidence" with this sort of product does not give me any motivation to hand out money so I can reward these people to test their wild theory.
That's one thing I've been wondering about. If it takes a HUGE construct of boosters, launching equipment, and fuel just to escape earth's atmosphere, how exactly do we expect to return anyone from mars? We can't exactly land a launching pad on Mars in any acceptable timeframe, and it would be incredibly difficult to land a craft that would have the required fuel to escape from Mars.
Somehow I doubt that the desire to have someone walk on Mars is going to be the magical trick that makes fusion a viable energy source. We need more general science, not just a space program.
It was a nice ride, but I guess it's time to shut it all down. Goodbye, DNS. Farewell, email. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to try all the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx permutations to bookmark my favorite sites again.
Their document is clearly integrating Adobe Acrobat technology into their software without permission. But don't tell them... wait for the damages to pile up first. It wouldn't be fair for Adobe to have to show any damages before they can claim copious ammounts of money.
I really don't think that the idea of a 1-click micropayment system would be appealing (to me at least). It doesn't matter how little each payment is - if enough sites start demanding I pay them in an ongong basis to see their content, I would just give them all up. I can't stand the abstract psychologcal thought of each of these inputs that I'd rarely use individually taking their own bite, no matter how small, from my income. I can stomach an up-front cost, a known trade of resources, or even a subscription with an opt-in approach to re-subscribing, but there's something about the the leech-like nature of these micro-payment schemes I have a strong urge to stay away from.
Why do we need to spend billions and trillions of dollars, just so that people can dream the "dream" and be inspired? This goes WAY beyond science or investment - this is ridiculous. Science much better served by deciding what we want, sending probes, deciding if anything useful can be gained by sending live human bodies to a hostile world, then deciding the best way to spend resources. This plan is like saying we should build open-air condos on the Mars without even thinking of terraforming it yet. Mars holds far more mysteries than what's going to happen when a size-9 space boot displaces some dust.
Yes - we should develop technologies that will eventually allow us to have longer-term access to extra-atmosphere environments, etc. But that's just a small part of the research we should be doing... instead, we're going to end up spending almost all our research expenses on doing exactly what is needed for this trip (which other have mentioned is almost all old technology), and even further ignoring almost all other research avenues.
If you want an adventure of the imagination - try imagining bigger! This is a prime example of how a mild imagination will make a trip to Mars seem like the pinacle of human possibility.
Ryan Fenton
P.S. Can you imagine the backlash from those opposed to science-related philosophies if this mission ends up as dissapointing, much less a large failure. "Man on the moon" was a spectacular achievement, what happens when "Man on Mars" ends up a joke? Not intending doom and gloom - just an issue of priorities with our explorations and asperations.
So maybe every few hundred years 15% to 30% of living organisms die out. And likely 15% to 30% of new organisms develop.
About 100% of living organisms die off every few hundred years. From the Zoology course I just finished (I'm no expert), it takes a whole lot for a new species to develop. Just from your own experience - for wildly-reproducing fast-dying species, like say the common cold, you get one new noticeable strain every few years - and that's actually from a lot of sources, so the mutation rate there is actually much less often for a new true species to develop. A couple hundred years would not create 15-30% more species there.
For insects, the process would be slower - they only reproduce one to a few times a year, with an order of magnitude less reproduction, because they tend to live more successfully than bacteria. If you have ever studies fruit flies in a science class, it's not rare to see mutation - but to see a beneficial mutation is rare, and to have those build up to the point where groups grow so different they cannot reproduce together would take a long time. We don't tend to see completely new species of insects pop up in areas that have been observed... only shifts in populations. A couple hundred years does not create 15-30% more species there.
Mammals take MUCH longer to reproduce and live. In our own recorded history, we've never found groups of humans that could not inter-breed. In our history of dog breeding, it takes dozens of generations of carefully controlled breeding to even intelligently select one trait in one species of dog, often at cost. A couple hundred years would not even come close to 1% more species there.
I didn't study plants, but I don't believe they multiply or mutate at a higher rate than those animals.
Perhaps the study is wrong - but it's warnings ARE more dire than is gong to be fixed with natural diversification, from what little I know.
~50 years is a remarkably small time span to lose that many species, even in theory. It takes many, many generations for enough reproductive barriers to stabilize to make one recognizeable species... for this much genetic diversity to be lost would be a true catastrophe. If these theories are even remotely true, this is not something that should be brushed off with a "Life is just adjusting to new conditions"... this much "adjustment" to one life condition leaves what life that survives afterward vulnerable in their new monogenetic state.
It will be good for some species of reptiles and fish though. Though algea blooms might kill off even those fish that live, and a lack of prey may hurt the reptiles.
"Ok, if you have 10,000 more the space, it all disappears when you power off right?"
Actually, no. The basic technology from the last story (can't find it now - slashdot's search seems disabled now) implied that the memory would not require constant charge, but would instead be based on van-der-waals effect on many nanotubes to make up one bit. It's not the most efficient method - it's just much more data-dense than current methods.
Error numbers, IO control function names, and abstract type specifications? Repeated 6 times, once for each platform?
This is a joke. Less than a joke - this is like the framework of a joke, without the topics or punchline filled in. It's like Microsoft hiring Yakov Smirnoff to sue anyone on Slashdot who had a.sig that could be seen as somewhat like his humor style.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a suggestion to make the best of a bad situation: Alter the name slightly to "Ev1lServers" and market to supervillains. It's a tight market, but if you've got salespeople willing to check hollowed-out volcanos and old missile silos and the like, they've got mountains of under-utilised capitol. Just make sure you get as much money as you can up-front - they're prone to dissolve without warning despire their large resource base, or to kill your salespeople once the product is delivered. But with names like SCO and Ev1lServers, it's hard to go wrong!
[The above is not intended as real advice - I feel compelled to mention this because their company actually did get an SCO license]
Ryan Fenton
My father got into building and flying RC aircraft - he even became the president of his local RC flying organization. It is a cool hobby to play with - but there's two things you have to expect.
One: You are going to crash and damage your toys. Be prepared for the emotional effects this may have. Having a camera up front is a nice way to tie controls in with movement, certainly nicer than the fly-by-watching indirect controls my dad had to use - but the dynamics of RC scale speed Vs. large scale wind means that you are still going to have to contend with hard landings and rapid unexpected direction changes. Always stay clear of ANY obstacles, never fly around people or property, and come prepared to climb trees to retrieve your toy.
Two: This is NOT a cheap hobby. In terms of time and resources, the $750 is just the tip of the iceburg in terms of the resources you are going to spend to maintain this little aircraft if you plan on flying it regularly. You'll need a little workshop, epoxies and other wear-and-tear repair equipment, scraps of all kinds to repair larger issues, spark plugs, oils and other maintenence tools depending on engine, carrying equipment, etc., etc. You've got to be fairly finantially devoted to keep this hobby up - and I'm not even mentioning the costs of a serious crash.
It is a hobby you can be proud of in your accoplishments - but it's also one you have to take great care with, and be ready for literally crushing emotions when gravity takes its toll.
Ryan Fenton
ryanfenton@email.com
http://www.whilezero.com/Resume.html
Any questions or comments more than welcome - I'll be updating that resume soon based on some, actually. It's a fair representation still, so feel free to share it.
Ryan Fenton
I'm not worried about germs or anything... but seeing a bunch of finger-print crud on one place on the screen when you're about to place your vote might have some impact, not even considering the basic security concerns.
What's wrong with paper & pencil? Countries all over the world count those in remarkably small ammounts of time - do we HAVE to have an instant ballot in exchange for a loss of a paper trail and many layers of security concerns? This part is already redundant... but it NEEDS to be redundantly said to as many people as possible.
Ryan Fenton
It would be cool to see other nations being able to make useful progress in non-weapons science, being able to actively thank and give tribute to NASA advancements along the way.
I just hope the sharing might keep going if it starts being seen as a good thing. For some reason, I get the impression we'll get some crazy results too, like French agencies stipulating that no documents may be translated to non-French and still be visible in France. Still, it's definetly problems I'd rather have to deal with then not.
Ryan Fenton
As someone mentioned, this would be fascinating to just read the comments. Would it be possible for someone to strip out all the code, leaving only the comments for each file, minus comment lines that ARE code? It would be GREAT just to read the "intention" and "questions" living in that code and be able to associate each with a filename. Purely for entertainment value. It would also be neat to compare comment-to-code ratio in areas of MS code.
Ryan Fenton
"21. By way of example, in the personal computing market, Microsoft Windows is the best known operating system. The Windows operating system was designed to operate on computer processors ("chips") built by Intel. Thus, Windows serves as the link between Intel-based processors and the various software application that run on personal computers."
I count at least 3 major logical errors in that section, and find it's existence in this document unjustified.
1. Windows is not an operating system, but a family of them - Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT are the operating systems.
2. They were not all designed with Intel as the only manufacturer of systems that the OS should work on.
3. The OS does much more than work with processor "chips".
It seems unlikely to me that lawyers proefficient with modern computer systems worked on this document.
What an [interesting interview]! The [subject of the interview] was [interesting].
[Several paragraphs of, more or less, praise for BW Online's work]
[This post edited by BW Online.]
Ryan Fenton
The unemployed are most likely comprised primarily of those MANY people who are either IT people who without a huge portfolio or over 5 years of experience, CS people who haven't graduated, or have less than 3 years recognizeable experience. It's hard to push through phone networks to speak to people who would ordinarilly throw away your resume, and it's very hard to get acceptable experience in this market. Without experience, and without the money that comes with it, it's VERY hard to start a business that other businesses would give regular business to. The experienced people can still find jobs.
It's that span between "cheap high school/early college labor" and "unquestionably valuable asset" that gets people in this market.
On that note - Anyone interested in a CS Major with around 3 years professional experience? - I'm friendly, helpful, quick of mind, and have paid my dues.
Ryan Fenton
Navy Ship Photos
This is a nice commercial site for navy ship photos from a site made by a former employer of mine. You have to search to find a ship, but there's some nice pictures there. It's owned by a long-time professional navy ship photographer living in Florida, who is a pretty cool guy.
Ryan Fenton
Actually, I do lucidly fairly often - presuming you mean being in control of and aware of the dream as a dream state. I haven't found it to be a magical thing that needs a trigger, just a simple exploration of thought. Flashing lights haven't had anything to do with my experiences, as I have always slept in darkness. I also haven't experied any special therapudic effects from such dreams either. If anything, it's just an open-ended mental game, like a daydream, and definetly not something to obsess over, or waste time on instead of sleeping. This is just another testimonial of course, and an oppinionated one at that. I encourage scientific exploration for those in the field - but distrust those with something to sell, so to speak.
Ryan Fenton
One model
New and improved - no flashing lights!
If anything, this is just a translation of a much older concept, throwing in pop-psychology in the form of staring at a picture, and self-fullfilling prophesies about dreaming something. It's still flim-flam though - no better than psychic surgery or magic lottery numbers.
Ryan Fenton
Classic flim-flam. Variations of these flashing-light eye-glasses have been around for decades, claiming to be everything from a headache cure to, in this case a dream machine. The nice thing about claiming things about dreams is that most dreams aren't remembered, so there's nothing to be able to go after when it comes to false advertising.
Yes, I'm a skeptic. I suppose I should want to try this product beforhand to be scientifically valid... but testimonial "evidence" with this sort of product does not give me any motivation to hand out money so I can reward these people to test their wild theory.
Ryan Fenton
That's one thing I've been wondering about. If it takes a HUGE construct of boosters, launching equipment, and fuel just to escape earth's atmosphere, how exactly do we expect to return anyone from mars? We can't exactly land a launching pad on Mars in any acceptable timeframe, and it would be incredibly difficult to land a craft that would have the required fuel to escape from Mars.
Somehow I doubt that the desire to have someone walk on Mars is going to be the magical trick that makes fusion a viable energy source. We need more general science, not just a space program.
Ryan Fenton
It was a nice ride, but I guess it's time to shut it all down. Goodbye, DNS. Farewell, email. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to try all the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx permutations to bookmark my favorite sites again.
Ryan Fenton
Whew - Spirit was busy enough, and Beagle II was in enough trouble. It's a good thing they never plan to bring those things back home.
Ryan Fenton
Their document is clearly integrating Adobe Acrobat technology into their software without permission. But don't tell them... wait for the damages to pile up first. It wouldn't be fair for Adobe to have to show any damages before they can claim copious ammounts of money.
Ryan Fenton
I really don't think that the idea of a 1-click micropayment system would be appealing (to me at least). It doesn't matter how little each payment is - if enough sites start demanding I pay them in an ongong basis to see their content, I would just give them all up. I can't stand the abstract psychologcal thought of each of these inputs that I'd rarely use individually taking their own bite, no matter how small, from my income. I can stomach an up-front cost, a known trade of resources, or even a subscription with an opt-in approach to re-subscribing, but there's something about the the leech-like nature of these micro-payment schemes I have a strong urge to stay away from.
Ryan Fenton
Why do we need to spend billions and trillions of dollars, just so that people can dream the "dream" and be inspired? This goes WAY beyond science or investment - this is ridiculous. Science much better served by deciding what we want, sending probes, deciding if anything useful can be gained by sending live human bodies to a hostile world, then deciding the best way to spend resources. This plan is like saying we should build open-air condos on the Mars without even thinking of terraforming it yet. Mars holds far more mysteries than what's going to happen when a size-9 space boot displaces some dust.
Yes - we should develop technologies that will eventually allow us to have longer-term access to extra-atmosphere environments, etc. But that's just a small part of the research we should be doing... instead, we're going to end up spending almost all our research expenses on doing exactly what is needed for this trip (which other have mentioned is almost all old technology), and even further ignoring almost all other research avenues.
If you want an adventure of the imagination - try imagining bigger! This is a prime example of how a mild imagination will make a trip to Mars seem like the pinacle of human possibility.
Ryan Fenton
P.S. Can you imagine the backlash from those opposed to science-related philosophies if this mission ends up as dissapointing, much less a large failure. "Man on the moon" was a spectacular achievement, what happens when "Man on Mars" ends up a joke? Not intending doom and gloom - just an issue of priorities with our explorations and asperations.
About 100% of living organisms die off every few hundred years. From the Zoology course I just finished (I'm no expert), it takes a whole lot for a new species to develop. Just from your own experience - for wildly-reproducing fast-dying species, like say the common cold, you get one new noticeable strain every few years - and that's actually from a lot of sources, so the mutation rate there is actually much less often for a new true species to develop. A couple hundred years would not create 15-30% more species there.
For insects, the process would be slower - they only reproduce one to a few times a year, with an order of magnitude less reproduction, because they tend to live more successfully than bacteria. If you have ever studies fruit flies in a science class, it's not rare to see mutation - but to see a beneficial mutation is rare, and to have those build up to the point where groups grow so different they cannot reproduce together would take a long time. We don't tend to see completely new species of insects pop up in areas that have been observed... only shifts in populations. A couple hundred years does not create 15-30% more species there.
Mammals take MUCH longer to reproduce and live. In our own recorded history, we've never found groups of humans that could not inter-breed. In our history of dog breeding, it takes dozens of generations of carefully controlled breeding to even intelligently select one trait in one species of dog, often at cost. A couple hundred years would not even come close to 1% more species there.
I didn't study plants, but I don't believe they multiply or mutate at a higher rate than those animals.
Perhaps the study is wrong - but it's warnings ARE more dire than is gong to be fixed with natural diversification, from what little I know.
Ryan Fenton
~50 years is a remarkably small time span to lose that many species, even in theory. It takes many, many generations for enough reproductive barriers to stabilize to make one recognizeable species... for this much genetic diversity to be lost would be a true catastrophe. If these theories are even remotely true, this is not something that should be brushed off with a "Life is just adjusting to new conditions"... this much "adjustment" to one life condition leaves what life that survives afterward vulnerable in their new monogenetic state.
It will be good for some species of reptiles and fish though. Though algea blooms might kill off even those fish that live, and a lack of prey may hurt the reptiles.
Ryan Fenton
Put any software that can be labelled as spyware in your product, become an instant pariah. I'm already VERY wary of any Real-player-related product.
Ryan Fenton
"Ok, if you have 10,000 more the space, it all disappears when you power off right?"
Actually, no. The basic technology from the last story (can't find it now - slashdot's search seems disabled now) implied that the memory would not require constant charge, but would instead be based on van-der-waals effect on many nanotubes to make up one bit. It's not the most efficient method - it's just much more data-dense than current methods.
Ryan Fenton
So, Microsoft hosts a story that encourages other companies to try and fail more often, suggesting it might be good for them... great idea!
Ryan Fenton
Error numbers, IO control function names, and abstract type specifications? Repeated 6 times, once for each platform?
.sig that could be seen as somewhat like his humor style.
This is a joke. Less than a joke - this is like the framework of a joke, without the topics or punchline filled in. It's like Microsoft hiring Yakov Smirnoff to sue anyone on Slashdot who had a
Ryan Fenton