I loved ROTT. If fact I still play it occasionally nowdays. Also cannot forget HERETIC. I loved playing networked casting the egg/chicken spell only my poor hapless victims.
There's a technological barrier too. A big one. Even when you use computer control on the multiple ducted fans which provide the vectored powered lift to make the thing fly, if the slightest thing goes wrong with the control systems or if just even one of the ducted fans/powerplant loses any thrust, the stability and controllability of the aircraft goes to hell in a handbag instantly. You have to immediately shut down all thrust and deploy your BRS 'chute to survive the forced landing, and hope you have enough altitude for the 'chute to deploy and slow you down before you have a date with a smoking crater. A dead-stick landing in a winged aircraft gives you a much greater opportunity for a survivable forced landing. Hell, even a rotorcraft in auto-rotation gives you some semblance of a chance at surviving a forced landing.
Of course this was not written by BG, it even says it wasn't. It was written by someone who understands the problems that open source has right now... it was written by one of us... and addressed to us... and we should heed those admonishments because right now we're opening quite a few important eyes with some seriously useful Open Source software products and while we've got the momentum going, we should not slack off, but rather shift into a higher gear and roll past the competition rather than only jeering at them. It's time to get off our collective duffs and start cranking out the code. We've got the big boys of the closed source proprietary software world quite nervous about Open Source. Now let's make them downright terrified ( petrified?:-) ) about it. That's what Halloween is really supposed to be all about, eh?
Now MS gets to know and understand, firsthand experience, just how negligent and slipshod their products are designed which allow too easily the insertion of backdoors via automatically executing email attachments. I have no pity.
Most small to mid-size ISPs have a single backbone provider router. That's where the sniffer box will be inserted. If you're an ISP and wanna make your network unfriendly to sniffing, use NO ETHERNET DEVICES AT ALL in your network. Make sure that all your hardware talks to one another via FDDI or ATM over single-mode fiberoptic cables. The oddball nature of such layer 1 hardware will throw a monkeywrench into the sniffing plans. It won't stop it, but it certainly will make the expense of inserting a sniffer way more unpalateable. Of course, it'll make your network expensive as hell to build too. It also wont stop anyone from sniffing your entire traffic at your backbone provider's end either.
Now we have a way to deliberately make Linux instable.... if you subscribe to the theory that if a DIMM has bad areas then that increases the probability that more of its areas will fail in the future.
Air traffic control software is all written internally by the FAA. None of it is purchased from vendors... except the operating systems of the computers upon which it runs. Guess what hardware it runs upon? IBM big iron, that's right, mainframes. Seems only that the FAA-written software ever fails, though. The IBM mainframe OS software has legendary stability, owing to its maturity level.
The CarterCopter is an actual, flying prototype of an experimental aircraft. It's technologies stand a much greater chance of really making it to some form of actual production than any of these vectored-thrust, powered-lift machines. I live two blocks down the street from where the CarterCopter prototype was constructed and have seen it personally from about ten feet away (as close as they'd let me get to it:) and it is quite an awesome looking machine. IMHO, I'd have to take some of its performance claims with a grain of salt, however. And bear in mind that it's only a flying testbed for certain technologies, not necessarily an intended-for-production complete aircraft.
I'm a private pilot, and within the general consensus of the aviation world, these vectored thrust - powered lift type of aircraft such as this Skycar and SoloTrek things are pretty much the laughing stock, especially the Skycar. No-one with any serious technical understanding of powered lift aircraft will take this machine seriously. If it ever will fly at all, it will be so extremely prone to stability problems that every flight would be playing russian roulette. Remember the "flying bedstead" that almost killed Neil Armstrong in the Apollo mission training days ? That's how a powered-lift machine flies when everything isn't working perfect, and no aircraft is ever "perfect". As for the SoloTrek, the most often heard comment about this contraption is that "it looks like a lonely way to die".
Not so sure. OEM copies are illegal to distribute without a computer BUT it doesn't limit fair use. In other words the manufacturer of that Celeron in your example cannot distribute his relatively cheap license without a computer BUT you as the consumer can use it as you wish. Again one use at a time. Now MS and others may disagree since they want to shape license agreements in the most favorable light for MS. But fair use is not yet dead though the lobbiests stand above its body with sharpened knives.
"Fair Use" applies only to copyright... because the software is "licensed" under original strict terms that you agreed with before you ever first used it, the concept of "fair use" is no longer applicable as you've already waived any rights you might have had under fair use doctrine.
So, at what 'legal' point are you no longer running the orignal PC, but a new PC? If you just upgrade the CPU, is it still the same PC? How about the MB, the HD? If these occur in steps months apart? When is it a new PC? I had a PC that over 4 years, upgraded and transformed dozens of times. Came to a point that the floppy drive was the only truely orignal component. But, I still considered it the same PC, especially since the parts never became a single 2nd computer, but migrated in chunks to various other computers.
You bought the copy, you get to run it on ONE computer.
According to the suit-wearing thugs armed with briefcases where I work(lawyers) the original machine pretty much legally ceases to exist after substituting in a motherboard that "substantially differs" from the original in either performance or features, and they claim to have supporting case law decisions on hand to back up that assertion. Curiously though, the HD is still considered an "upgrade", no matter how big it is... maybe the legal world is starting to get a clue about computer technology...And to rebut your last comment, no, when you have an OEM copy of an MS software, you don't get to freely run it on any *one* computer that you may own... you only get to run it upon the *original* computer upon which it came installed. Whether or not you consider it to be the same computer is irrelevant: MS has dictated otherwise, and it's their license and their software (even though you may be in personal posession of a copy), not yours. All the more reason to move totally towards free open source operating system and application software;-)
I sometimes upgrade my system, without buying a new copy of windoze. That's legal, right? Since Linux runs better on less hardware, it goes on the older systems.
Let's say, for instance, that back in 1999 you bought that super cool, multimedia-ready "GeeWhiz 2000" PC with a Celeron 400 processor and it came with an OEM edition of Windows 98 on it. Lucky you, for that OEM install cdrom of Windows was not one of those deliberately crippled "system restore ONLY" types, but just happened to be a real install cdrom with a real setup.exe program that only wants you to type in that 8-mile long product ID key to run.
Now that the year 2000 has come and almost gone, that little old Celery 400 just doesn't jazz your 'nads any more, but will make a fine Linux box so you go to the local computer flea market and buy a whole shopping cart full of enough parts to build your own uber-fast hotrod AMD Gigahertz Thunderbird gaming rocketship dream machine. You get home and assemble all the stuff and justify your next couple of actions(since the "network is the computer", according to Scott McNealy... and all your collective hardware is your "system" (as in singular) because you network it all together with a cheezy little 5-port 10/100 hub). You install your favorite Linux distro onto the old machine (maybe all its innards in a new case) and are not surprised at all to find that it runs beautifully great at 400MHz, even with only a 66MHz FSB. You then pop that oem Windows 98 cdrom into your new assemblage of "upgrade parts" and proceed to commit software piracy.
That's right, that oem copy of Win98 is legally valid only for the original pile of parts that it was purchased with. Even if you kept the same old "GeeWhiz 2000" case, with its serial number, because you installed a new "system" into it, it is now in the eyes of MS, the SPA, and whatever other gestapo,... a different "computer", and hence illegal upon which to install that oem copy of Windows that came with the original PC.
We shouldn't have an income tax, we should have a federal sales tax instead. That way, when we're sick of something the federal government is doing, we could stop all unnecessary spending (and put our excess money into savings instead) for a while to starve the fed gov of income. That way the citizens will once again regain control over our government.
Too bad the Russians never completed their space shuttle fleet. It would be neat if they had the spacecraft, and money, to send crews up to dismantle MIR, section by section, and bring the sections back down in the cargo bays of shuttles, to be re-assembled on the ground and kept in a museum.
Slashdot Mirror
I loved ROTT. If fact I still play it occasionally nowdays. Also cannot forget HERETIC. I loved playing networked casting the egg/chicken spell only my poor hapless victims.
It needs a better name.
It does already have a better name. It's called "Unix".
8^}
There's a technological barrier too. A big one. Even when you use computer control on the multiple ducted fans which provide the vectored powered lift to make the thing fly, if the slightest thing goes wrong with the control systems or if just even one of the ducted fans/powerplant loses any thrust, the stability and controllability of the aircraft goes to hell in a handbag instantly. You have to immediately shut down all thrust and deploy your BRS 'chute to survive the forced landing, and hope you have enough altitude for the 'chute to deploy and slow you down before you have a date with a smoking crater. A dead-stick landing in a winged aircraft gives you a much greater opportunity for a survivable forced landing. Hell, even a rotorcraft in auto-rotation gives you some semblance of a chance at surviving a forced landing.
I've wriiten some of my best code while under the influence of "Jolt Propulsion"
And holding a cup of coffee too.
the average *NIX geek doesn't have sex... so flying really is better.
I just recently got my pp-asel. What I wouldn't give to take a lesson from you someday ;-)
IMHO, these school officials need to undergo psychiatric evaluation to determine their fitness for continued employment in the education profession.
Of course this was not written by BG, it even says it wasn't. It was written by someone who understands the problems that open source has right now... it was written by one of us... and addressed to us... and we should heed those admonishments because right now we're opening quite a few important eyes with some seriously useful Open Source software products and while we've got the momentum going, we should not slack off, but rather shift into a higher gear and roll past the competition rather than only jeering at them. It's time to get off our collective duffs and start cranking out the code. We've got the big boys of the closed source proprietary software world quite nervous about Open Source. Now let's make them downright terrified ( petrified? :-) ) about it. That's what Halloween is really supposed to be all about, eh?
Now MS gets to know and understand, firsthand experience, just how negligent and slipshod their products are designed which allow too easily the insertion of backdoors via automatically executing email attachments. I have no pity.
Most small to mid-size ISPs have a single backbone provider router. That's where the sniffer box will be inserted. If you're an ISP and wanna make your network unfriendly to sniffing, use NO ETHERNET DEVICES AT ALL in your network. Make sure that all your hardware talks to one another via FDDI or ATM over single-mode fiberoptic cables. The oddball nature of such layer 1 hardware will throw a monkeywrench into the sniffing plans. It won't stop it, but it certainly will make the expense of inserting a sniffer way more unpalateable. Of course, it'll make your network expensive as hell to build too. It also wont stop anyone from sniffing your entire traffic at your backbone provider's end either.
Now we have a way to deliberately make Linux instable.... if you subscribe to the theory that if a DIMM has bad areas then that increases the probability that more of its areas will fail in the future.
Air traffic control software is all written internally by the FAA. None of it is purchased from vendors... except the operating systems of the computers upon which it runs. Guess what hardware it runs upon? IBM big iron, that's right, mainframes. Seems only that the FAA-written software ever fails, though. The IBM mainframe OS software has legendary stability, owing to its maturity level.
That's what this machine will be.... if it ever flies.
The CarterCopter is an actual, flying prototype of an experimental aircraft. It's technologies stand a much greater chance of really making it to some form of actual production than any of these vectored-thrust, powered-lift machines. I live two blocks down the street from where the CarterCopter prototype was constructed and have seen it personally from about ten feet away (as close as they'd let me get to it :) and it is quite an awesome looking machine. IMHO, I'd have to take some of its performance claims with a grain of salt, however. And bear in mind that it's only a flying testbed for certain technologies, not necessarily an intended-for-production complete aircraft.
I'm a private pilot, and within the general consensus of the aviation world, these vectored thrust - powered lift type of aircraft such as this Skycar and SoloTrek things are pretty much the laughing stock, especially the Skycar. No-one with any serious technical understanding of powered lift aircraft will take this machine seriously. If it ever will fly at all, it will be so extremely prone to stability problems that every flight would be playing russian roulette. Remember the "flying bedstead" that almost killed Neil Armstrong in the Apollo mission training days ? That's how a powered-lift machine flies when everything isn't working perfect, and no aircraft is ever "perfect". As for the SoloTrek, the most often heard comment about this contraption is that "it looks like a lonely way to die".
That story is so good it should be posted as a Slashdot headline by itself.
Correct title was indeed Brainwave but the author was Poul Anderson (1954). An intriguing story too, I quite enjoyed it.
Funny similarity of one sci-fi author's first name with the other's last name. Close spelling, but different dudes.
boy, Discover certainly is discovering how wimpy their server and internet connection is...
Not so sure. OEM copies are illegal to distribute without a computer BUT it doesn't limit fair use. In other words the manufacturer of that Celeron in your example cannot distribute his relatively cheap license without a computer BUT you as the consumer can use it as you wish. Again one use at a time. Now MS and others may disagree since they want to shape license agreements in the most favorable light for MS. But fair use is not yet dead though the lobbiests stand above its body with sharpened knives.
"Fair Use" applies only to copyright... because the software is "licensed" under original strict terms that you agreed with before you ever first used it, the concept of "fair use" is no longer applicable as you've already waived any rights you might have had under fair use doctrine.
So, at what 'legal' point are you no longer running the orignal PC, but a new PC? If you just upgrade the CPU, is it still the same PC? How about the MB, the HD? If these occur in steps months apart? When is it a new PC? I had a PC that over 4 years, upgraded and transformed dozens of times. Came to a point that the floppy drive was the only truely orignal component. But, I still considered it the same PC, especially since the parts never became a single 2nd computer, but migrated in chunks to various other computers.
;-)
You bought the copy, you get to run it on ONE computer.
According to the suit-wearing thugs armed with briefcases where I work(lawyers) the original machine pretty much legally ceases to exist after substituting in a motherboard that "substantially differs" from the original in either performance or features, and they claim to have supporting case law decisions on hand to back up that assertion. Curiously though, the HD is still considered an "upgrade", no matter how big it is... maybe the legal world is starting to get a clue about computer technology...And to rebut your last comment, no, when you have an OEM copy of an MS software, you don't get to freely run it on any *one* computer that you may own... you only get to run it upon the *original* computer upon which it came installed. Whether or not you consider it to be the same computer is irrelevant: MS has dictated otherwise, and it's their license and their software (even though you may be in personal posession of a copy), not yours. All the more reason to move totally towards free open source operating system and application software
I sometimes upgrade my system, without buying a new copy of windoze. That's legal, right? Since Linux runs better on less hardware, it goes on the older systems.
Let's say, for instance, that back in 1999 you bought that super cool, multimedia-ready "GeeWhiz 2000" PC with a Celeron 400 processor and it came with an OEM edition of Windows 98 on it. Lucky you, for that OEM install cdrom of Windows was not one of those deliberately crippled "system restore ONLY" types, but just happened to be a real install cdrom with a real setup.exe program that only wants you to type in that 8-mile long product ID key to run.
Now that the year 2000 has come and almost gone, that little old Celery 400 just doesn't jazz your 'nads any more, but will make a fine Linux box so you go to the local computer flea market and buy a whole shopping cart full of enough parts to build your own uber-fast hotrod AMD Gigahertz Thunderbird gaming rocketship dream machine. You get home and assemble all the stuff and justify your next couple of actions(since the "network is the computer", according to Scott McNealy... and all your collective hardware is your "system" (as in singular) because you network it all together with a cheezy little 5-port 10/100 hub). You install your favorite Linux distro onto the old machine (maybe all its innards in a new case) and are not surprised at all to find that it runs beautifully great at 400MHz, even with only a 66MHz FSB. You then pop that oem Windows 98 cdrom into your new assemblage of "upgrade parts" and proceed to commit software piracy.
That's right, that oem copy of Win98 is legally valid only for the original pile of parts that it was purchased with. Even if you kept the same old "GeeWhiz 2000" case, with its serial number, because you installed a new "system" into it, it is now in the eyes of MS, the SPA, and whatever other gestapo,... a different "computer", and hence illegal upon which to install that oem copy of Windows that came with the original PC.
We shouldn't have an income tax, we should have a federal sales tax instead. That way, when we're sick of something the federal government is doing, we could stop all unnecessary spending (and put our excess money into savings instead) for a while to starve the fed gov of income. That way the citizens will once again regain control over our government.
Lots of city and county government I.S./data processing shops run unix and often have intern positions open.
Too bad the Russians never completed their space shuttle fleet. It would be neat if they had the spacecraft, and money, to send crews up to dismantle MIR, section by section, and bring the sections back down in the cargo bays of shuttles, to be re-assembled on the ground and kept in a museum.
turns the earth into bubbling sulfuric acid!
All the surfuric acid will end up bein in gaseous state, not liquid, and hence won't bubble.