Re:No more 16-bit DOS code... again?
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MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
Uh... So how do you assemble a piece of code more than once?
Should have been "Assambling the code three times (with different assemblers of course) you can run the same code on all Intel chips from the 4004 through to the p4." Now, come to think of it, the start of the line may have been the 8008, the 8-bit variant of the 4004, my memory is unclear as to whether the 4004 will actually work. The 4004 was much more limited than the 8008, that's for certain.
As for the "operate on 4-bit numbers" the 4004 actually had 8-bit instructions, and either 16 4-bit, or 8 8-bit registers, it wasn't a pure 4-bit machine, much as the 8-bit processors weren't pure 8-bit machines, most handled 16-bit quantities natively, even though they neede two trips over the bus to get them.
So, the 4004, and 8008 was one line, the 8080 was the next, and the 8088/8086 was the third. All backwards compatible on the assembly instruction level, though binary compatibility was sacrificed.
My original post was not a model of clarity, that much is certain.
But lots of non-technical people want to install their OS once, and never have to worry about recompiling the kernel because they didn't have SCSI support and wanted to plug in a new device they just brought home.
Well, if we ignore the combination of SCSI and non-technical, if were to venture a guess, that would be a small number of people indeed. What you're complaining about has little to do with the kernel as such. There's simply no need to recompile a kernel to add SCSI support (or any other HW support for that matter) since many (most) distro kernels comes with that support right out of the box. There may be an insmod involved, but that's not any different (or needent be any different) from installing the same HW on Windows. (You have to install a driver there to).
No, the reason people recompile kernels is either to stay on the bleeding edge, or to remove features and support from the kernel, not add it! I myself never bothered to recompile the latest few RedHat kernels, just used them out of the box. Sure, they're twice as big, but I can live with that, I just haven't got the energy to work myself up over the issue any more. And neither does the newbie need to...
Re:MS-DOS doesn't deserve a fond remembrance
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
As opposed to Unix in which it only took, what, fifteen years before those things made it to a shell?
Well, to be fair, the early UNIX systems didn't really have the resources for such extravaganza. When they had, features such as these followed fairly quickly. And more to the point had been in place in UNIX shells for almost a decade before MS-DOS finally followed suit.
And that's the problem here, MS needed only have followed the example, not innovate, and they couldn't even manage that.
Re:No more 16-bit DOS code... again?
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
Intel 4004, arguably the first microprocessor. With two reassamblations, code for the 4004 can be run on the P4. Some say that's too much backwards compatibility, and they're right.
And the 8-bit command line is most likely a reference to the humble CP/M beginnings of MS-DOS, that was coded to run on 8-bit microprocessors, such as the z80.
Re:Retard.. how the fuck is this "Insightful"
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
Well, sbin is both for "system files" i.e. binares that absolutely must be there for the system to function AND for system administration binares (of programs) that are considered a must for running the system. These are often one and the same, ifconfig for example is typically run by the boot scripts to configure the network interfaces, but can be used by root to bring then up/down temporarily, do fault finding, and a host of other things.
Hence the/usr/local/sbin is for the latter, i.e. administratitive commands that the user typically has no business running (or even cannot run due to insufficient privileges). A typical UNIX installation includes the 'sbin' directories in root's path, but not the path of ordinary users.
Now, as for/usr/local itself, the origins if I'm not mistaken is for files that are "local" to the installation (not necessarily the workstation, I've seen/usr/locals long before workstations were in vogue). In a Redhat Linux system this is often translated to/usr etc is for files handled by RPM, i.e. prepacked binaries, that are part of distributions. More informally managed packages, or applications that you've developed yourself goes into/usr/local. You untar into/usr/local/src, configure, make and make install from there, and the files end up in/usr/local/{bin, lib} etc.
You know, these standards often make sense, and were developed in a time where you could actually OAM a machine, apart from the three 'R's of MS sys admin (reboot, reboot, reinstall). With UNIX you still can.
I live in the US...I have no access to the Change logs...if you would read the thread
He didn't talk about the change logs, he said specifically "diffs", i.e. suggesting you do the reverse engineering yourself. Which would make a nice addition to the case, since that might be illegal itself? I wouldn't really know.
Well correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the college students of today the PHBs of tomorrow? Why do you think that UNIX in the workplace came from in the first place? Let me tell you that AT&Ts commercial version had very little to do with it...
Let's face it, the "workers" don't get to choose what system the company standardises on, the PHBs do that. If I have a choice I'd much rather have the support of the college students, than the "end users". When one of my places of work was swayed over to the dark side, the power "users" fought tooth and nail to keep UNIX, but lost.
You're not going to get Linux on the desktops by getting grass roots support from the the secretaries, I'm sure. Granted it won't hurt, but it won't help much either. Now, that might sound a bit harsh, sure, but nevertheless true, IMHO.
P.S. And everyone goes on as if MSFT has always dominated the desktop (office) market, and that's simply not true. They were marginal once, and they can become so again, believe me. It'll probably take ten years or so, but we can get there, there's not doubt about that.
Well, all that repetition that you claim one must do to program in Lisp (Scheme in my case) should translate to longer development times, shouldn't it?
Then how do you explain that the development times reported for Lisp were about half those of Java, comparing the median?
I can only second that. When I asked arround in my corridor at university (half of which wrote their doctoral theses in Word, the other half in LaTeX/BiBTex) the Word crowd almost without exception lamented the fact that they'd choosen Word.
They were about even split on preferring what used to be our old standard (FrameMaker) and converting to LaTeX.
Well, that part of Star Trek isn't that physics defying. It's quite simple really, all you have to do is push a sufficiently heavy object in front of you, the gravity of which will counteract any forces felt from acceleration.
Sure for shipboard use you'd want a sufficiently heavy object of small compass, such as a black hole...
Granted, getting such a system to work, is a tall order, but that's an engineering problem, not a physics one.;-)
No, what irks me about the inertial dampers is the human factors thing; with the crew being thrown out of their chairs with every phaser blast, having to take precious time out to scramble back into them, why on earth don't they have seat belts?;-)
Well, it was prof Spafford that said (paraphrased) that even if the tradition of UNIX wasn't security, the features are there to build a secure system. (Though a few design decisions could be debated IMHO).
And that's really what one aspect of OpenBSD (of which I'm an avid fan) and Linux+Bastille (whatever) is all about. Secure defaults. Linux distros on their own tend more towards the 'UNIX' tradition of everything and the kitchen sink, on by default, to make installation 'easy.'
Bastille seeks to at least check that the windows and doors are closed. OpenBSD then went one step further and went on with a code audit to ensure that the services and tools that actually have to run (i.e. that aren't 'unnecessary') don't have obvious weaknesses in them. Here Linux obviously lags behind, and here's where the core developers could play a part, and also where OpenBSD has the edge. Note however, that TANSTAAFL, and the Linux core developers may well have other priorites, that preclude them from investing all that time in a code audit. These things are expensive.
I don't have a problem with this, there are niches for all the above solutions, i.e. in order of increasing (potential) security 'plain' Linux, Linux + Bastille, and OpenBSD. There are plenty of people out there with diverse enough security needs, and threats, to have room for them all.
Oh that's bull! I've left and rejoined on at least two occasions, with no problems what so ever. Forcing union memebership would be against the law (in all but one case, that's not relevant here).
And I find the rest of your post hard to believe as well. You'll have to clarify that substantially, before you'll have any credibility.
Well, getting used to it is much of the problem as well. Here in Sweden for example, where every foreign (read Bamerican) film or TV show is subtitled, you never hear anyone complain about it, or horror of horrors that they'd perfer dubbing. Plenty of snide stories about watching John Wayne in german abound though.
There's really only one segment of the market that's dubbed, and that's children's material, aka Disney flicks. However, even though we have the best actors available and occasionally manage to surpass the original (even Disney themselves admit to the characters Timon and Pumba in ''The lion king'' being better i.e. funnier in Swedish) you'll see those in their original english with subtitles later in the evening at theatres in the major cities.
The benefits are several of course, it really motivates the children to start reading, if the want to understand what's on after the small childrens segment on TV they'd better be able to read. It's not the only reason our litteracy rates are among the highest in the world, but it is IMHO an important one.
It also teaches english (the American variant unfortunately, but it's better than nothing). Which plays no small part in putting our proficiency in the english language on par with the dutch. And an added benefit is that you can watch TV in bed w/o disturbing your (sleepy) spouse, just turn the sound real low, or off altogether.
The reason it's done is of course one of economy, it's a tenth of the cost compared with dubbing. But belive me, if you had had any exposure to it, you wouldn't know it was there. I don't anymore, I've been surprised more than once when a show was cut off after a few minutes with the announcement that they were working on getting the subtitling machine working again.
P.S. I'm of course discussing real subtitles here, not the awful closed captioning you have in the states, that really is distracting, and I'm not sure anyone could ever truly get used to it. Not that it doesn't help the hearing impared, it's a tremendous aid I would imagine, but it's not for general use in it's current form, I'd say.
But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage, compensation must be guaranteed for that investment, otherwise there is no incentive other than charity to undertake the work, and the most intelligent minds may not have the funds to obtain the necessary equipment and assistance to leverage their genius - they will need to leverage a future asset to borrow those funds in the present.
The degree to which that is true today is a debatable question. Even in the manufacturing industry (I have personal experience from the bearing industry) patents have become less important over the past ten years, even there the battle cry is "short time to market."
As I had it explained to me; "today applying for patents is only interesting as a way to block competitors, and for barter" not actually protecting our investements.
We are of course sidestepping the issue of software here, where the design cost is the only production cost (a good enough approximation). Where indeed the effort required to "bring them to a consumer ready stage" is a totally different animal than in the manufacturing industry. Witness for example Linux, which is already "consumer ready" for many interesting applications, and the success of which would only have been hindered by patent protection.
As for "in the U.S. your [sic] supposed to be entitled to a free education", this simply does not apply to university. This, in fact, is patently false. This, of course, is the reason why the US university system has developed strong partnerships with industry, why there are private universities, and why the US university system has significantly larger resources at its disposal than other nations' systems.
Well, coming from a country (or indeed a part of the world) where free university education is the norm, I'd like to see a few references for the above statements.
I'll take exception to the last one right off the bat. If you're referring to the research funding of some of your more prestigeous private universities, then the US govt has everything to do with it, since they are by far the largest sponsor of fundamental research in the world.
The fact that the students pay tuition has nothing whatsoever to do with the research funding situation. And I haven't witnessed that many "strong partnerships with industry", but quite a few "strong partnerships with government funding organisations" especially in the most prestigeous (technical) private universities.
Well, just because ones natural life wouldn't end at a certain date, medling with ones genes wouldn't make you immortal. There'd still be plenty of opportunity to die by the sword (at the steering wheel?), or any number of other of your favourite (or not so favourite) activities.
If you get that tired of living life safely, just take up BASE jumping or whatever.;-)
And you're not alone in believing that, quite a few historians agree,
but I gather you already knew that... Anyway, had Kursk gone the other
way, then the situation would have looked bleak for the USSR, victory
at Stalingrad or not.
Considering the blunders made by Hitler/the German high command, it's
sobering to contemplate how relatively close it got.
Trivia: name that Russian tank driver who was wounded at Kursk and
spent his long convalescence studying automatic weapons design. Yes,
that's none other than Michail Kalshnikov.
Re:It's good to see Soviet history on the big scre
on
Enemy At The Gates
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· Score: 1
Well, recently declassified documents from British intelligence regarding the debriefing of the German nuclear scientists demonstrates that they weren't as far ahead scientifically as previously thought.
Remember the effort that went into the US bomb, the industrial complex of which went unmolested by the Axis powers, and how late in the war that effort still materialised.
Arguably, if Hitler hadn't invaded the USSR, then the first nuclear weapons would have been used against him, not by him.
Re:My Norwegian is a little rusty...
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Norway Bans Spam
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· Score: 1
Translators note: Well Norwegian isn't my native language, but anyway. Also there's a good word for "advertisement" that can be applied to UCE aka "junk mail" in the Nordic languages, I'm going to use "advertisement" through out, even though I know it's not current usage.
End email advertisement
by Jon Martin Larsen
From now on no-one will have the right to send "advertisements" to your mail box unless you allow them yourself---N.B. in Norway. It takes more than a Norwegian EU harmonised law to stop the stream of advertisements over the Internet.
Watch out to whom you give your email address. If you participate in news groups, mailing lists or raffles, then you are particularly at risk.
"Spam" is the term for unwanted advertisements directed towards your mail box. Spam (pronounced spam") was named after an old Monty Python sketch where a band of Vikings constantly interrupt the show and sing "Spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."
This spam is sent out by more or less unscrupulous business men hoping to sell services and gods. Their means is to shower your mailbox with offers.
Illegal in many countries
In many countries spam is illegal, and from 1 March Norway enacts one of the strictest regulations in this area, as has Denmark, Finland, Germany, Austria, and Italy. A new more EU harmonised marketing law then comes into effect, and it forbidds advertisement via email and SMS (textmessages) unless the recipients have given their consent in advance.
Businesses that break the law have to deal with the public consumer "ombudsman". (A state official that investigates consumer complaints against businesses. Transl. Rem.) The penalties by the new marketing law have also been markedly stiffened. You now risk stiff fines or imprisonment up to six months. Or both.
Sharp slap (as in "on the wrist" Transl. rem.).
Norwegian businesses and businesses that market themselves in Norway thus gets slapped sharply if they send spam to you --- unless you have been asked beforehand. - "The consumers have greater power," states chief information officer Anne Nyeggen of the Norwegian Data Inspection Board. The new marketing law overlaps and extends the protection of personal information act when it comes to rights (for the consumer), and results in much stricter protection against advertisement and sales through email and SMS.
- "We mean that this is a type of marketing that intrudes into the private sphere, and therefore we wish the receivers to give their prior consent," says Harlad Hilton. He is an advisor to the child and family departments consumer protection board.
Individual enterprises have already begun to adhere to the new law. They are mainly enterprises that operate wholly or in part on the Internet. One example is the new "phone book.no". Here you have to register to receive any information, and your email address is your username. The service is closed to meet the Norwegian Data protection boards demands on the protection of personal information, and avoid abuse.
Identifies you
This means that you have to identify yourself to gain access. Telenor Media have been given the right to verify your identity by asking you for your personal identification number (like, but not at all similar to the US soc. sec. no. transl. rem.) and verify this against the Norwegian population register. You are also asked whether you allow your email address to be passed on - both to individuals and businesses. You have to agree separately to recive product information and advertisement for the 'phone book' or Telenors other products.
But Norwegian law is not binding on the Internet. When you operate abroad on the net, you have to watch out. Often you have yourself to thank when you are being massively spammed.
Tempted
When you surf the internet, you can easily be tempted by offers and links. You surf on, happily download an image on the way, and click on the next link.
Don't be surprised in someone have entered a small "hacker program" on one of the pages. The programs break into your browser and collect your email address. The address is recorded, and sold, and sold, and sold to anyone who wants it. That way you get email from the strangest senders, with the most unusual contents and offers.
Re:Problem with biowarfare is not killing yourself
on
Living Terrors
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· Score: 1
A quote from Che Guevarra comes to mind:
"Of the comrades assigned to the manufacture of improvised incendiaries and explosives, half were subsequently killed or maimed."
So if you can accept that kind of casualty rate, there's ample historic evidence that you can find the work force (and sufficiently skilled at that) to do the dirty work. Given the right (or wrong) cause.
Re:Fearmongering, silly fearmongering
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Living Terrors
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· Score: 1
Well I'd say you're making a common fallacy, in comparing what microbial agents can accomplish by and of themselves, in the wild so to say, to the scenario where some intelligent human entity uses the agent in the most effective manner possible.
The reason that Anthrax hasn't developed into "Bubonic type plagues" on its own is that it is indeed not that easy to contract from dead animals etc, since dead animals e.g. don't tend to blow up spontaneously. When military tests with the agent has been conducted, such as was done on Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland, then indeed the subjects (mainly sheep) contracted the disease with high probability.
When we're thinking terrorism, we're thinking about e.g. someone driving a truck around with the proper aerosol equipment (which is cheap to buy, and easy to make). Not about cattle dying in the pastures.
Delivery mechanism makes all the difference in this case. And the proper way to deliver this agent has been known for the past fifty years.
Slashdot Mirror
Should have been "Assambling the code three times (with different assemblers of course) you can run the same code on all Intel chips from the 4004 through to the p4." Now, come to think of it, the start of the line may have been the 8008, the 8-bit variant of the 4004, my memory is unclear as to whether the 4004 will actually work. The 4004 was much more limited than the 8008, that's for certain.
As for the "operate on 4-bit numbers" the 4004 actually had 8-bit instructions, and either 16 4-bit, or 8 8-bit registers, it wasn't a pure 4-bit machine, much as the 8-bit processors weren't pure 8-bit machines, most handled 16-bit quantities natively, even though they neede two trips over the bus to get them.
So, the 4004, and 8008 was one line, the 8080 was the next, and the 8088/8086 was the third. All backwards compatible on the assembly instruction level, though binary compatibility was sacrificed.
My original post was not a model of clarity, that much is certain.
Well, if we ignore the combination of SCSI and non-technical, if were to venture a guess, that would be a small number of people indeed. What you're complaining about has little to do with the kernel as such. There's simply no need to recompile a kernel to add SCSI support (or any other HW support for that matter) since many (most) distro kernels comes with that support right out of the box. There may be an insmod involved, but that's not any different (or needent be any different) from installing the same HW on Windows. (You have to install a driver there to).
No, the reason people recompile kernels is either to stay on the bleeding edge, or to remove features and support from the kernel, not add it! I myself never bothered to recompile the latest few RedHat kernels, just used them out of the box. Sure, they're twice as big, but I can live with that, I just haven't got the energy to work myself up over the issue any more. And neither does the newbie need to...
Well, to be fair, the early UNIX systems didn't really have the resources for such extravaganza. When they had, features such as these followed fairly quickly. And more to the point had been in place in UNIX shells for almost a decade before MS-DOS finally followed suit.
And that's the problem here, MS needed only have followed the example, not innovate, and they couldn't even manage that.
And the 8-bit command line is most likely a reference to the humble CP/M beginnings of MS-DOS, that was coded to run on 8-bit microprocessors, such as the z80.
Hence the /usr/local/sbin is for the latter, i.e. administratitive commands that the user typically has no business running (or even cannot run due to insufficient privileges). A typical UNIX installation includes the 'sbin' directories in root's path, but not the path of ordinary users.
Now, as for /usr/local itself, the origins if I'm not mistaken is for files that are "local" to the installation (not necessarily the workstation, I've seen /usr/locals long before workstations were in vogue). In a Redhat Linux system this is often translated to /usr etc is for files handled by RPM, i.e. prepacked binaries, that are part of distributions. More informally managed packages, or applications that you've developed yourself goes into /usr/local. You untar into /usr/local/src, configure, make and make install from there, and the files end up in /usr/local/{bin, lib} etc.
You know, these standards often make sense, and were developed in a time where you could actually OAM a machine, apart from the three 'R's of MS sys admin (reboot, reboot, reinstall). With UNIX you still can.
He didn't talk about the change logs, he said specifically "diffs", i.e. suggesting you do the reverse engineering yourself. Which would make a nice addition to the case, since that might be illegal itself? I wouldn't really know.
Let's face it, the "workers" don't get to choose what system the company standardises on, the PHBs do that. If I have a choice I'd much rather have the support of the college students, than the "end users". When one of my places of work was swayed over to the dark side, the power "users" fought tooth and nail to keep UNIX, but lost.
You're not going to get Linux on the desktops by getting grass roots support from the the secretaries, I'm sure. Granted it won't hurt, but it won't help much either. Now, that might sound a bit harsh, sure, but nevertheless true, IMHO.
P.S. And everyone goes on as if MSFT has always dominated the desktop (office) market, and that's simply not true. They were marginal once, and they can become so again, believe me. It'll probably take ten years or so, but we can get there, there's not doubt about that.
That state of affairs where the power of government is divided between a few hands, we usually call "civil war."
That state of affairs where the power of government is divided between many hands, we usually call "anarchy", or "lawlessness".
Then how do you explain that the development times reported for Lisp were about half those of Java, comparing the median?
They were about even split on preferring what used to be our old standard (FrameMaker) and converting to LaTeX.
Sure for shipboard use you'd want a sufficiently heavy object of small compass, such as a black hole...
Granted, getting such a system to work, is a tall order, but that's an engineering problem, not a physics one. ;-)
No, what irks me about the inertial dampers is the human factors thing; with the crew being thrown out of their chairs with every phaser blast, having to take precious time out to scramble back into them, why on earth don't they have seat belts? ;-)
Or you could say that they've learnt from their namesake, and are focusing on the right thing.
And that's really what one aspect of OpenBSD (of which I'm an avid fan) and Linux+Bastille (whatever) is all about. Secure defaults. Linux distros on their own tend more towards the 'UNIX' tradition of everything and the kitchen sink, on by default, to make installation 'easy.'
Bastille seeks to at least check that the windows and doors are closed. OpenBSD then went one step further and went on with a code audit to ensure that the services and tools that actually have to run (i.e. that aren't 'unnecessary') don't have obvious weaknesses in them. Here Linux obviously lags behind, and here's where the core developers could play a part, and also where OpenBSD has the edge. Note however, that TANSTAAFL, and the Linux core developers may well have other priorites, that preclude them from investing all that time in a code audit. These things are expensive.
I don't have a problem with this, there are niches for all the above solutions, i.e. in order of increasing (potential) security 'plain' Linux, Linux + Bastille, and OpenBSD. There are plenty of people out there with diverse enough security needs, and threats, to have room for them all.
And I find the rest of your post hard to believe as well. You'll have to clarify that substantially, before you'll have any credibility.
There's really only one segment of the market that's dubbed, and that's children's material, aka Disney flicks. However, even though we have the best actors available and occasionally manage to surpass the original (even Disney themselves admit to the characters Timon and Pumba in ''The lion king'' being better i.e. funnier in Swedish) you'll see those in their original english with subtitles later in the evening at theatres in the major cities.
The benefits are several of course, it really motivates the children to start reading, if the want to understand what's on after the small childrens segment on TV they'd better be able to read. It's not the only reason our litteracy rates are among the highest in the world, but it is IMHO an important one.
It also teaches english (the American variant unfortunately, but it's better than nothing). Which plays no small part in putting our proficiency in the english language on par with the dutch. And an added benefit is that you can watch TV in bed w/o disturbing your (sleepy) spouse, just turn the sound real low, or off altogether.
The reason it's done is of course one of economy, it's a tenth of the cost compared with dubbing. But belive me, if you had had any exposure to it, you wouldn't know it was there. I don't anymore, I've been surprised more than once when a show was cut off after a few minutes with the announcement that they were working on getting the subtitling machine working again.
P.S. I'm of course discussing real subtitles here, not the awful closed captioning you have in the states, that really is distracting, and I'm not sure anyone could ever truly get used to it. Not that it doesn't help the hearing impared, it's a tremendous aid I would imagine, but it's not for general use in it's current form, I'd say.
As I had it explained to me; "today applying for patents is only interesting as a way to block competitors, and for barter" not actually protecting our investements.
We are of course sidestepping the issue of software here, where the design cost is the only production cost (a good enough approximation). Where indeed the effort required to "bring them to a consumer ready stage" is a totally different animal than in the manufacturing industry. Witness for example Linux, which is already "consumer ready" for many interesting applications, and the success of which would only have been hindered by patent protection.
Stefan,
I'll take exception to the last one right off the bat. If you're referring to the research funding of some of your more prestigeous private universities, then the US govt has everything to do with it, since they are by far the largest sponsor of fundamental research in the world.
The fact that the students pay tuition has nothing whatsoever to do with the research funding situation. And I haven't witnessed that many "strong partnerships with industry", but quite a few "strong partnerships with government funding organisations" especially in the most prestigeous (technical) private universities.
If you get that tired of living life safely, just take up BASE jumping or whatever. ;-)
Considering the blunders made by Hitler/the German high command, it's sobering to contemplate how relatively close it got.
Trivia: name that Russian tank driver who was wounded at Kursk and spent his long convalescence studying automatic weapons design. Yes, that's none other than Michail Kalshnikov.
Remember the effort that went into the US bomb, the industrial complex of which went unmolested by the Axis powers, and how late in the war that effort still materialised.
Arguably, if Hitler hadn't invaded the USSR, then the first nuclear weapons would have been used against him, not by him.
End email advertisement
by Jon Martin Larsen
From now on no-one will have the right to send "advertisements" to your mail box unless you allow them yourself---N.B. in Norway. It takes more than a Norwegian EU harmonised law to stop the stream of advertisements over the Internet.
Watch out to whom you give your email address. If you participate in news groups, mailing lists or raffles, then you are particularly at risk.
"Spam" is the term for unwanted advertisements directed towards your mail box. Spam (pronounced spam") was named after an old Monty Python sketch where a band of Vikings constantly interrupt the show and sing "Spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."
This spam is sent out by more or less unscrupulous business men hoping to sell services and gods. Their means is to shower your mailbox with offers.
Illegal in many countries
In many countries spam is illegal, and from 1 March Norway enacts one of the strictest regulations in this area, as has Denmark, Finland, Germany, Austria, and Italy. A new more EU harmonised marketing law then comes into effect, and it forbidds advertisement via email and SMS (textmessages) unless the recipients have given their consent in advance.
Businesses that break the law have to deal with the public consumer "ombudsman". (A state official that investigates consumer complaints against businesses. Transl. Rem.) The penalties by the new marketing law have also been markedly stiffened. You now risk stiff fines or imprisonment up to six months. Or both.
Sharp slap (as in "on the wrist" Transl. rem.).
Norwegian businesses and businesses that market themselves in Norway thus gets slapped sharply if they send spam to you --- unless you have been asked beforehand. - "The consumers have greater power," states chief information officer Anne Nyeggen of the Norwegian Data Inspection Board. The new marketing law overlaps and extends the protection of personal information act when it comes to rights (for the consumer), and results in much stricter protection against advertisement and sales through email and SMS.
- "We mean that this is a type of marketing that intrudes into the private sphere, and therefore we wish the receivers to give their prior consent," says Harlad Hilton. He is an advisor to the child and family departments consumer protection board.
Individual enterprises have already begun to adhere to the new law. They are mainly enterprises that operate wholly or in part on the Internet. One example is the new "phone book.no". Here you have to register to receive any information, and your email address is your username. The service is closed to meet the Norwegian Data protection boards demands on the protection of personal information, and avoid abuse.
Identifies you
This means that you have to identify yourself to gain access. Telenor Media have been given the right to verify your identity by asking you for your personal identification number (like, but not at all similar to the US soc. sec. no. transl. rem.) and verify this against the Norwegian population register. You are also asked whether you allow your email address to be passed on - both to individuals and businesses. You have to agree separately to recive product information and advertisement for the 'phone book' or Telenors other products.
But Norwegian law is not binding on the Internet. When you operate abroad on the net, you have to watch out. Often you have yourself to thank when you are being massively spammed.
Tempted
When you surf the internet, you can easily be tempted by offers and links. You surf on, happily download an image on the way, and click on the next link.
Don't be surprised in someone have entered a small "hacker program" on one of the pages. The programs break into your browser and collect your email address. The address is recorded, and sold, and sold, and sold to anyone who wants it. That way you get email from the strangest senders, with the most unusual contents and offers.
"Of the comrades assigned to the manufacture of improvised incendiaries and explosives, half were subsequently killed or maimed."
So if you can accept that kind of casualty rate, there's ample historic evidence that you can find the work force (and sufficiently skilled at that) to do the dirty work. Given the right (or wrong) cause.
The reason that Anthrax hasn't developed into "Bubonic type plagues" on its own is that it is indeed not that easy to contract from dead animals etc, since dead animals e.g. don't tend to blow up spontaneously. When military tests with the agent has been conducted, such as was done on Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland, then indeed the subjects (mainly sheep) contracted the disease with high probability.
When we're thinking terrorism, we're thinking about e.g. someone driving a truck around with the proper aerosol equipment (which is cheap to buy, and easy to make). Not about cattle dying in the pastures.
Delivery mechanism makes all the difference in this case. And the proper way to deliver this agent has been known for the past fifty years.