No. Executable files are not executable through the Apple GUI. If you try to open a file marked as executable, it simply opens in Textpad. This was one of the more brilliant security moves by Apple, because it means that it is impossible to run anything less than a well formed Mac application. (Which, again, requires a full directory tree, ususally packed into a DMG for distribution. ZIP files work as well, though.)
This POV is betrayed by the fact that the Unix platform was being hacked, rootkits and viruses eating into them, long before Microsoft was anything more than some company placing quarter page ads in computer magazines for something called "DOS".
This POV is betrayed by the fact that parent doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
You've posited a great deal of hyperbole, but you haven't actually backed up any of it. Yes, viruses were a problem on early networked Unix machines. Then again, network security (and security in general) was not taken as seriously back then. Since the early days of the Morris Worm, there have been very few viruses and worms directed at Unix systems. The majority has actually targetted Linux, a heritage that OS X does not share.
Yet even the oldest Linux box could be made secure if you turned off every network service on the machine. How can you remotely attack a machine that has no ports open? Answer: You can't. You have to find another vector.
Which means that you need to use social engineering to trick the user. On a wide scale that has meant email attachments and browser flaws. Email attachments simply can't cause the problems on Macs that they do on Windows. The Mac interface *will not* execute even files that are marked as executable! It will only execute.APP directories, which means that the attacker would need to pack the app into a DMG file, then somehow convince the user to extract and run the file. None of this "mydoc.doc.pif" crap.
So that leaves the web browser. Putting aside the difficulty of convincing tons of people to visit your site that will hack their computer, yes this is a problem even on Macs. However, any sort of damage is mitigated by the fact that root access cannot be obtained without a password. Which means that access and/or damage would be limited at best. More likely you'd just crash the browser in your attempts due to the more complicated Macintosh memory model.
The end result is that Macs simply aren't vulnerable in the same ways that Windows machines are. They aren't even as vulnerable are other Unix machines! And spouting tons of hyperbole isn't going to change that fact.
Apple is now the fourth largest home computer distributor, experienced 30% growth last year, and has been slowly reducing the market share of Windows XP. Some figures place the current Mac market share as high as 16%. If you have a point, you're not making it.
Q: How can we expect them to secure their Macs, when they barely know how to shutdown or turn on the computer.
A: We don't. That's why the Macintosh comes in a secure configuration. No open ports, no root access without password verification, no root password at all, no way to send executable attachments (short of putting an entire.APP inside a.DMG and sending that as an attachment), etc. Not to mention that the Mac auto-upgrades are far less obtrusive than the Windows auto-update, and are very easy to install. So why worry about users who can't be a liability?
I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is, "Does it come with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, all on a sesame seed bun?" If so, BRING IT ON! I'm hungry! =)
(And in case anyone is wondering why I'm making a joke out of this, it's because it *is* a joke. While Macs can and have had security issues, the system is nowhere near as vulnerable as your average Windows box. The design of the system guarantees that most of the problems we see on Windows can't happen on a Mac. No default open ports to send overflows through, no default root access to the system, no easy way to send executable email attachments, etc., etc., etc. We'll need a completely new class of highly sophisticated attacks to make a dent in the stronghold that is OS X. Nothing like this skript-kittee crap we've seen.)
Adding a database layer makes it even worse, typically increasing the chance the box will start swapping, while helping to drain the CPUs, and eat most of the memory you could have used for an index cache.
Um no. Adding an index to the data (what a DBFS really is) would speed up the search, not slow it down. The idea is to find the information you need as fast as you possibly can. There is no way that walking an index is going to be slower than churning through 2 gigabytes of data.
I'd like to introduce you to (my little friend...) the concept of creating subdirectories as a way of organizing data.:)
Um, no again. When I refer to 2GB of mail, I mean 2GB per user. When I was in tech support (back when drives weren't much larger than 2GBs!) we constantly had to repair the PST files of some poor sap who had inadvertantly gone beyond the storage capacity of a single PST file. (FYI, PSTs corrupt silently instead of complaining about being full. It's quite annoying.)
There is no need to store everything in a single directory though -- the subdirectories could be further subdivided based on month or even day.
To what end? If I'm searching my entire mailbox, I still need to churn through all those subdirectories. Not to mention that your organization scheme may be counter-intuitive to me. I may prefer to organize my mail by project instead of date. (In fact, I really don't know of anyone who orders their mail by date.)
The filenames themselves could be chosen so that commonly searched fields are available without needing to search the contents of the files.
Or, the meta-data of a database file system could extract the necessary components, index them, and store them with the file itself. No need to munge one type of meta-data (filename) to support other types of meta-data (subject, from, to, etc.). Not to mention that your scheme hangs by a very lose thread. What happens if a user decides to rename the file?
Question, did you read the link I gave in the great grandparent post? You may find it informative.
Since 99% of searches are looking for something that happened the same day or a previous week,
No, that's not the normal pattern I see. Most searches are an attempt to find some obscure piece of information that's been lying dormant for years. For example, if a coworker gives me a username and password for use when they're unavailble, it could be anywhere from months to years before I need that information. Other examples include procedure documents, URLs, code documentation, and project information needed by follow-up projects.
That's what makes GMail so effective. None of that info is lost. It's all indexed and tagged so that you can easily search for it in the future. Filesystems should be able to replicate that experience.
I was thinking the same thing. All browsers are vulnerable and all will need to be updated.
The ridiculous part, though, is that software doesn't *have* to be vulnerable to buffer overflows! We've had languages for more than 20 years that are completely invulnerable to such a simplistic attack. Even C/C++ have large numbers of libraries available to make such overflows a thing of the past. Yet here we are in 2005 and the number one exploit across systems is still...
(wait for it)
Buffer overflows.
Am I the only one who's getting just a smidge annoyed by this? No wonder we don't have any flying cars! We can't debug the darn things worth a damn!;-)
Just to make sure that this open invite is out there, if you see something that you'd like to help with or take ownership of, you can always email me and I'll see if I can get you to work.:-)
Just to be clear, those guys *do* accept who they are. And because of that, they can't be bothered with crazed Linux users. No one feels a need to support Linux. Some programs do (which is really nice of them) but the majority of the fan projects outright ignore Linux.
Also, the one fellow who was scared off from Linux was just a regular user on the forums. As a regular user, why would he want to deal with a percieved fanaticism that may be turned toward him at any point just for asking a simple question.
Take, for example, the fellow farther down this thread who upgraded his hard drive. Look at the response he got. Was it a, "Sorry you had trouble. Here's an article that might help?" No, it was a, "Idiot. It's on Google. Why can't you sort through three hundred metric tons of documentation and find it yourself? Here a link. I'm doing you a favor. Idiot."
And I think that either you or him missed my point.
Linux is more than any single distro, and shouldn't be co-opted by a single distro.
Which is precisely what I said. However, much of the response I get is from people who think RPMs are the best, or that DEBs are impossible to break, and that any other suggestion intended for different situations (such as a user who just wants to quickly install/uninstall programs) should be berated.
Out of general curiosity, were there any positive responses to your article?
Yes, indeed! Several people offered very some very helpful thoughts, while others asked to help work on some of the concepts I presented. Things are still in the early stages and may fall apart (especially since I just learned that at least one of the guys I'm working with was near New Orleans), but hopefully we can pull this stuff together and make something happen.:-)
So why are you paying attention to one person's ideas as if they were important?
Marketing. As I was attempting to communicate in my original post above (though perhaps not with complete success), the perceived attitude of the Linux community is one of elitism. So even if Linux distros currently meet all the critera of a Windows replacement, many users will avoid Linux simply because they don't want to deal with the community.
As a result, all this "it's our toys, go away" nonsense is counterproductive to the stated goal of spreading freedom (as in chili peppers and nonsensical ranting*) through software.
* Sorry, I always have fun coming up with new pairings for the "freedom" definitions. Someone should make a game out of it.;-)
Indeed. However, that association has been causing significant harm to Linux adoption. I met a fellow over on WCNews who claimed that the Linux community "scared him." As a result, he tried to have as little to do with Linux as possible. (Although from his wording, I think his point extended beyond Linux to the GNU community as well.)
As any businessman can tell you, scaring away the customers is not good for business.:-)
Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:
If people can make some money off of Linux then good luck to them, but Linux should not change to meet some commercial wish list.
Why not? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet commercial desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet home user desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet scientific researchers' desires?
What is wrong with different Linux distros to meet the desires of different markets? Isn't that the entire point of Linux? "It's just a kernel," we say. But then the community berates anyone who attempts to reuse that kernel in Community Unapproved Ways(TM). How does that help anyone?
Did you know that nuclear fusion is only 20 years away? Just like it was in 1950! (No, I'm not skeptical. Not at all.)
When I wrote my article and its follow-up on directions I think a Linux Distribution could take, I expected that there would be some controversy. However, I hardly expected the shear number of responses to the effect of, "Linux is great as it is! Never change it!"
Which is surprising, because the very point of the Linux design is that different distributions were supposed to be able to explore completely different tracks. There shouldn't be any "one distro to rule them all", yet many of the respondants demanded exactly that! (Amusingly, they couldn't agree on *which* distro to rule them all.)
When I pointed this out to many responders, and mentioned the fact that I'm merely attempting to suggest a Desktop environment that would help Linux adoption, I got another surprising response: "Who said we wanted regular users? Linux is for the elite. If you're too stupid to recompile your kernel or read all the scattered HOWTOs, you're too stupid to use Linux!"
I understand that the Linux community is wide and varied, but this sort of attitude is not helping anyone. In fact, this sort of attitude causes Linux to take two steps back for every one step forward it takes in the market.
It's normal that Linux users will disagree. That's why Linux is just a kernel, KDE/GNOME are just desktop environments, and the GNU System is just a collection of Unix utilities. It's so the end distributions can build the OS necessary to meet their users. But such a design DOES NOT require that users berate each other! Rather, Linux users should understand that "idiot" users using an "idiot" distribution is okay. Gentoo users can still recompile Gentoo to their hearts content even though Ubuntu exists. Ubuntu users can still use Ubuntu workstations even though Fedora exists. Fedora users can still a have 100% "Free as in socks and gun ownership" OS even though SuSE exists.
There's no reason for this OS bigotry. It's causing confusion in the marketplace, and generally turning the public off to Linux. Just pick the distro you like, and be happy for other people who use something that works for them. K?
Mo it doesn't. Grep searches horribly slow. If you're sorting through 2 gigabytes of email (a fairly common amount per user in corporations), you're going to be heavily limited by the disk speed and processor time. i.e. Searches could take on the order of minutes. Not good when you want to show a list of emails and the user attempts to sort by something, or search for that email from three years ago.
And a database file system would give you the best of both worlds. One message per file, yet the ability to quickly query for messages, and organize with a label system similar to GMail.
I believe the reviewers point was that the iPod put out enough power for the car stereo to do its job. I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of previous generation equipment (from tape players, to CD->Tape conversions, to early MP3 players) often were unable to produce much volume, period. Many suffered from loud hissing that further degraded the quality of the sound.
In short, the reviewer's point was that the iPod puts out a crystal clear audio signal that sounds good and can be easily amplified with no apparent loss in quality. Make sense?
Also, if you've ever grown corn before, it's a very easy plant to deal with.
I grew up in Wisconsin. Corn is darn near a weed.;-)
The main issue is, with all of the steps, not getting the raw materials but refining them. In the case of ethanol, you need mashers, cooking vats, fermenting vats, heating, a system for dealing with waste gasses (mostly steam and CO2, but not just those gasses) and waste heat (you'll want to recapture as much as possible), mash filtration and squeezing, and purification (vaporization and condensing - i.e., a cooling tower, which on Mars means big heat radiators). Plus, all the obvious associated stuff - storage bins, ethanol containers, water/wastewater holding tanks, pumps, cranes (depends on the amount), etc.
My hope would be to develop these processing facilities on Mars. There's certainly plenty of raw materials and open space to work with. So dig some holes, throw in a few LHOx pumped fires, and build a moonshine distillery. Primitive (and highly illegal in the States!), but effective for early crops. As Mars' industrial capacity grows, more complex devices can be built.
Speaking of which, I'm starting to wonder if the heavy stuff is not so much of a problem as the really light techno stuff is. For example, a filiment for a light bulb or heating device is not easy to manufacture. Whereas a locomotive can be built out of fairly crude smelting technologies. Rechargable oxygen tanks would be another problem. Pretty much any powerplant technology would rely on oxygen injection for combustion. Unless, that is, we shipped over hydrogen fuel cells. Which would likely be even less useful pound for pound.
I'd think it would be more efficient to go with a ram accelerator or a H2/O2 propelled light gas gun - make it so your only reactants come from water:). You'd still have huge initial casting operations, but I'd think your operating costs on Mars would be cheaper.
What's the advantage over electric propulsion like a Mass Driver? With a mass driver you could run a track straight up the side of Olympus Mons and be happy. (Wouldn't it be wonderful to have such a gentle slope here on Earth that ran right above 98% of the atmosphere? Forget the space elevator, we'd put a real elevator in the side of the mountain, and launch from there!);-)
I'm sure by the time anyone touches down on Mars, descendants of DART will have made automated docking essentially standard, so it shouldn't be an issue.
Or alternatively, it could be guided in by remote control. Either option shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
I assume refuelling of the towing craft in LEO?
Correct. As I said above, Earth orbit would make an ideal place for refueling. Just change out the noble gas canisters, and you're off for several more runs.
I'd hope that maintenance on it could remain low..
AFAIK, the performance of the ION engines has been exemplary, with the exception of minor contanmination snafus shortly after the engines are first started. Such snafus are usually cleared, and the ION engines perform beautifully afrer that. Worst case is that maintenence would include the swapping of a few other minor components. Still a steal (operationally) any way you cut it.:-)
Of course, all of this is entirely dependant on things at least *remotely* valuable being found on Mars in sizable, reasonably pure deposits.
Mmm. I still think that the asteroids are the best bet for mining (no need to perform any more "launch" than a few puffs of propellant), but that doesn't meet the goals of 4Frontiers to colonize Mars.;-)
As you say, a Project HARP style launch would be difficult from a materials perspective, but not impossible.
How do you cast the barrel in-situ (certainly you wouldn't ship it!)
You would need a manufacturing presence on Mars first. Everything required for a machine shop could be shipped, leaving smelting as the primary issue. There's certainly enough iron ore on Mars, so it would need to be decided whether to ship a blast furnace and materials, or whether to build primitive forms out of Martian materials and allow the colonists to work their way up to a better design.
How do you make the 1/3 tonne of custom cordite mix (or equivalent) for each 82 kilograms of return mass?
Cordite and other nitrates are probably the biggest issue. Our current knowledge of martian soil suggests that Nitrogen is in mighty short supply. Unless we can find Nitrogen pockets on Mars, we'll have issues trying to manufacture any nitrogren based chemicals.
H2O would need to be mined and cracked anyway, so both of these products should be readily available. I don't know enough about Project HARP, but I assume that sealed cartriges are used just like any other modern munition.
ethanol
Grow corn.:-)
Seriously, the colonists need to eat something. Corn is one of the easiest crops to grow, responds well to high CO2 levels (although it affects the taste), and should be easy enough for the colonists to take with. The biggest problem is still Nitrogen.
Which brings me to the point of saying, Mass Drivers just make more sense. You have to bring nuclear power production with you anyway, and the catapults could either be manufactured on Mars (out of martian iron or aluminum) or shipped to Mars using the ION cargo delivery ship. (The reentry would have to be worked out though, since parachutes and water landings are not an option on Mars.)
How do you get a delicate thing like an ion engine to survive launch?
They won't. My point was that a cargo vessel would make the run between Earth and Mars via the Superhighway. i.e. The engines will always be in orbit. They'd simply drop down into LMO, scoop up the packages, thrust back to the L1 point of Phobos, then ride the Superhighway all the way back to Earth. The best place to refuel such a craft (which would be hopefully rare given the efficiencies of ION thrusters) would be in Earth orbit.
Things may be made more efficient through the use of orbital spacestations on *both* sides, so that someone can manipulate the cargo manually if necessary. (Actually, a Mars space station prior to a surface colony may make a lot of sense anyway.)
A lot more required infrastructure, for sure, than rocket return, but potentially a lot cheaper. After all, Mars's atmosphere is paper-thin.
Indeed. I believe that the atmospheric pressure at the lowest points is around 10 mbars, whereas Olympus Mons has a pressure of around 1 mbar. Anything fired from a cannon or mass driver is going to encounter VERY little resistence.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I find it interesting that this gets an insightful mod, while an intelligent response that cuts through the hyperbole gets a "Troll". Bias? Nah.
Linky 1
Linky 2
And I made a mistake on the growth figure. It's 37%. But then again, you're just trolling to see how many Mac users you can make mad, aren't you?
No. Executable files are not executable through the Apple GUI. If you try to open a file marked as executable, it simply opens in Textpad. This was one of the more brilliant security moves by Apple, because it means that it is impossible to run anything less than a well formed Mac application. (Which, again, requires a full directory tree, ususally packed into a DMG for distribution. ZIP files work as well, though.)
This POV is betrayed by the fact that the Unix platform was being hacked, rootkits and viruses eating into them, long before Microsoft was anything more than some company placing quarter page ads in computer magazines for something called "DOS".
.APP directories, which means that the attacker would need to pack the app into a DMG file, then somehow convince the user to extract and run the file. None of this "mydoc.doc .pif" crap.
This POV is betrayed by the fact that parent doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
You've posited a great deal of hyperbole, but you haven't actually backed up any of it. Yes, viruses were a problem on early networked Unix machines. Then again, network security (and security in general) was not taken as seriously back then. Since the early days of the Morris Worm, there have been very few viruses and worms directed at Unix systems. The majority has actually targetted Linux, a heritage that OS X does not share.
Yet even the oldest Linux box could be made secure if you turned off every network service on the machine. How can you remotely attack a machine that has no ports open? Answer: You can't. You have to find another vector.
Which means that you need to use social engineering to trick the user. On a wide scale that has meant email attachments and browser flaws. Email attachments simply can't cause the problems on Macs that they do on Windows. The Mac interface *will not* execute even files that are marked as executable! It will only execute
So that leaves the web browser. Putting aside the difficulty of convincing tons of people to visit your site that will hack their computer, yes this is a problem even on Macs. However, any sort of damage is mitigated by the fact that root access cannot be obtained without a password. Which means that access and/or damage would be limited at best. More likely you'd just crash the browser in your attempts due to the more complicated Macintosh memory model.
The end result is that Macs simply aren't vulnerable in the same ways that Windows machines are. They aren't even as vulnerable are other Unix machines! And spouting tons of hyperbole isn't going to change that fact.
*BAM* goes the strawman.
Apple is now the fourth largest home computer distributor, experienced 30% growth last year, and has been slowly reducing the market share of Windows XP. Some figures place the current Mac market share as high as 16%. If you have a point, you're not making it.
Q: How can we expect them to secure their Macs, when they barely know how to shutdown or turn on the computer.
.APP inside a .DMG and sending that as an attachment), etc. Not to mention that the Mac auto-upgrades are far less obtrusive than the Windows auto-update, and are very easy to install. So why worry about users who can't be a liability?
A: We don't. That's why the Macintosh comes in a secure configuration. No open ports, no root access without password verification, no root password at all, no way to send executable attachments (short of putting an entire
Ready For the Big Mac Virus?
I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is, "Does it come with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, all on a sesame seed bun?" If so, BRING IT ON! I'm hungry! =)
(And in case anyone is wondering why I'm making a joke out of this, it's because it *is* a joke. While Macs can and have had security issues, the system is nowhere near as vulnerable as your average Windows box. The design of the system guarantees that most of the problems we see on Windows can't happen on a Mac. No default open ports to send overflows through, no default root access to the system, no easy way to send executable email attachments, etc., etc., etc. We'll need a completely new class of highly sophisticated attacks to make a dent in the stronghold that is OS X. Nothing like this skript-kittee crap we've seen.)
Adding a database layer makes it even worse, typically increasing the chance the box will start swapping, while helping to drain the CPUs, and eat most of the memory you could have used for an index cache.
:)
Um no. Adding an index to the data (what a DBFS really is) would speed up the search, not slow it down. The idea is to find the information you need as fast as you possibly can. There is no way that walking an index is going to be slower than churning through 2 gigabytes of data.
I'd like to introduce you to (my little friend...) the concept of creating subdirectories as a way of organizing data.
Um, no again. When I refer to 2GB of mail, I mean 2GB per user. When I was in tech support (back when drives weren't much larger than 2GBs!) we constantly had to repair the PST files of some poor sap who had inadvertantly gone beyond the storage capacity of a single PST file. (FYI, PSTs corrupt silently instead of complaining about being full. It's quite annoying.)
There is no need to store everything in a single directory though -- the subdirectories could be further subdivided based on month or even day.
To what end? If I'm searching my entire mailbox, I still need to churn through all those subdirectories. Not to mention that your organization scheme may be counter-intuitive to me. I may prefer to organize my mail by project instead of date. (In fact, I really don't know of anyone who orders their mail by date.)
The filenames themselves could be chosen so that commonly searched fields are available without needing to search the contents of the files.
Or, the meta-data of a database file system could extract the necessary components, index them, and store them with the file itself. No need to munge one type of meta-data (filename) to support other types of meta-data (subject, from, to, etc.). Not to mention that your scheme hangs by a very lose thread. What happens if a user decides to rename the file?
Question, did you read the link I gave in the great grandparent post? You may find it informative.
Since 99% of searches are looking for something that happened the same day or a previous week,
No, that's not the normal pattern I see. Most searches are an attempt to find some obscure piece of information that's been lying dormant for years. For example, if a coworker gives me a username and password for use when they're unavailble, it could be anywhere from months to years before I need that information. Other examples include procedure documents, URLs, code documentation, and project information needed by follow-up projects.
That's what makes GMail so effective. None of that info is lost. It's all indexed and tagged so that you can easily search for it in the future. Filesystems should be able to replicate that experience.
If you mean the WCNews discussion, no. It was private communication that came up while we were discussing portability.
If you mean the hard drive thread, go here.
I was thinking the same thing. All browsers are vulnerable and all will need to be updated.
;-)
The ridiculous part, though, is that software doesn't *have* to be vulnerable to buffer overflows! We've had languages for more than 20 years that are completely invulnerable to such a simplistic attack. Even C/C++ have large numbers of libraries available to make such overflows a thing of the past. Yet here we are in 2005 and the number one exploit across systems is still...
(wait for it)
Buffer overflows.
Am I the only one who's getting just a smidge annoyed by this? No wonder we don't have any flying cars! We can't debug the darn things worth a damn!
Just to make sure that this open invite is out there, if you see something that you'd like to help with or take ownership of, you can always email me and I'll see if I can get you to work. :-)
Just to be clear, those guys *do* accept who they are. And because of that, they can't be bothered with crazed Linux users. No one feels a need to support Linux. Some programs do (which is really nice of them) but the majority of the fan projects outright ignore Linux.
Also, the one fellow who was scared off from Linux was just a regular user on the forums. As a regular user, why would he want to deal with a percieved fanaticism that may be turned toward him at any point just for asking a simple question.
Take, for example, the fellow farther down this thread who upgraded his hard drive. Look at the response he got. Was it a, "Sorry you had trouble. Here's an article that might help?" No, it was a, "Idiot. It's on Google. Why can't you sort through three hundred metric tons of documentation and find it yourself? Here a link. I'm doing you a favor. Idiot."
Nice response, eh?
I think you've missed the poster's point.
And I think that either you or him missed my point.
Linux is more than any single distro, and shouldn't be co-opted by a single distro.
Which is precisely what I said. However, much of the response I get is from people who think RPMs are the best, or that DEBs are impossible to break, and that any other suggestion intended for different situations (such as a user who just wants to quickly install/uninstall programs) should be berated.
Out of general curiosity, were there any positive responses to your article?
:-)
Yes, indeed! Several people offered very some very helpful thoughts, while others asked to help work on some of the concepts I presented. Things are still in the early stages and may fall apart (especially since I just learned that at least one of the guys I'm working with was near New Orleans), but hopefully we can pull this stuff together and make something happen.
So why are you paying attention to one person's ideas as if they were important?
;-)
Marketing. As I was attempting to communicate in my original post above (though perhaps not with complete success), the perceived attitude of the Linux community is one of elitism. So even if Linux distros currently meet all the critera of a Windows replacement, many users will avoid Linux simply because they don't want to deal with the community.
As a result, all this "it's our toys, go away" nonsense is counterproductive to the stated goal of spreading freedom (as in chili peppers and nonsensical ranting*) through software.
* Sorry, I always have fun coming up with new pairings for the "freedom" definitions. Someone should make a game out of it.
Indeed. However, that association has been causing significant harm to Linux adoption. I met a fellow over on WCNews who claimed that the Linux community "scared him." As a result, he tried to have as little to do with Linux as possible. (Although from his wording, I think his point extended beyond Linux to the GNU community as well.)
:-)
As any businessman can tell you, scaring away the customers is not good for business.
Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:
If people can make some money off of Linux then good luck to them, but Linux should not change to meet some commercial wish list.
Why not? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet commercial desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet home user desires? Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet scientific researchers' desires?
What is wrong with different Linux distros to meet the desires of different markets? Isn't that the entire point of Linux? "It's just a kernel," we say. But then the community berates anyone who attempts to reuse that kernel in Community Unapproved Ways(TM). How does that help anyone?
Did you know that nuclear fusion is only 20 years away? Just like it was in 1950! (No, I'm not skeptical. Not at all.)
When I wrote my article and its follow-up on directions I think a Linux Distribution could take, I expected that there would be some controversy. However, I hardly expected the shear number of responses to the effect of, "Linux is great as it is! Never change it!"
Which is surprising, because the very point of the Linux design is that different distributions were supposed to be able to explore completely different tracks. There shouldn't be any "one distro to rule them all", yet many of the respondants demanded exactly that! (Amusingly, they couldn't agree on *which* distro to rule them all.)
When I pointed this out to many responders, and mentioned the fact that I'm merely attempting to suggest a Desktop environment that would help Linux adoption, I got another surprising response: "Who said we wanted regular users? Linux is for the elite. If you're too stupid to recompile your kernel or read all the scattered HOWTOs, you're too stupid to use Linux!"
I understand that the Linux community is wide and varied, but this sort of attitude is not helping anyone. In fact, this sort of attitude causes Linux to take two steps back for every one step forward it takes in the market.
It's normal that Linux users will disagree. That's why Linux is just a kernel, KDE/GNOME are just desktop environments, and the GNU System is just a collection of Unix utilities. It's so the end distributions can build the OS necessary to meet their users. But such a design DOES NOT require that users berate each other! Rather, Linux users should understand that "idiot" users using an "idiot" distribution is okay. Gentoo users can still recompile Gentoo to their hearts content even though Ubuntu exists. Ubuntu users can still use Ubuntu workstations even though Fedora exists. Fedora users can still a have 100% "Free as in socks and gun ownership" OS even though SuSE exists.
There's no reason for this OS bigotry. It's causing confusion in the marketplace, and generally turning the public off to Linux. Just pick the distro you like, and be happy for other people who use something that works for them. K?
System and method for obtaining information relating to an item of commerce using a portable imaging device.
;-)
So... they took a picture?
Mo it doesn't. Grep searches horribly slow. If you're sorting through 2 gigabytes of email (a fairly common amount per user in corporations), you're going to be heavily limited by the disk speed and processor time. i.e. Searches could take on the order of minutes. Not good when you want to show a list of emails and the user attempts to sort by something, or search for that email from three years ago.
And a database file system would give you the best of both worlds. One message per file, yet the ability to quickly query for messages, and organize with a label system similar to GMail.
upon which the OP will end up paying an IBM consultant to set up his company's email.
At which point the highly paid consultant will post a question to Ask Slashdot...
I believe the reviewers point was that the iPod put out enough power for the car stereo to do its job. I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of previous generation equipment (from tape players, to CD->Tape conversions, to early MP3 players) often were unable to produce much volume, period. Many suffered from loud hissing that further degraded the quality of the sound.
In short, the reviewer's point was that the iPod puts out a crystal clear audio signal that sounds good and can be easily amplified with no apparent loss in quality. Make sense?
Also, if you've ever grown corn before, it's a very easy plant to deal with.
;-)
:). You'd still have huge initial casting operations, but I'd think your operating costs on Mars would be cheaper.
;-)
:-)
;-)
I grew up in Wisconsin. Corn is darn near a weed.
The main issue is, with all of the steps, not getting the raw materials but refining them. In the case of ethanol, you need mashers, cooking vats, fermenting vats, heating, a system for dealing with waste gasses (mostly steam and CO2, but not just those gasses) and waste heat (you'll want to recapture as much as possible), mash filtration and squeezing, and purification (vaporization and condensing - i.e., a cooling tower, which on Mars means big heat radiators). Plus, all the obvious associated stuff - storage bins, ethanol containers, water/wastewater holding tanks, pumps, cranes (depends on the amount), etc.
My hope would be to develop these processing facilities on Mars. There's certainly plenty of raw materials and open space to work with. So dig some holes, throw in a few LHOx pumped fires, and build a moonshine distillery. Primitive (and highly illegal in the States!), but effective for early crops. As Mars' industrial capacity grows, more complex devices can be built.
Speaking of which, I'm starting to wonder if the heavy stuff is not so much of a problem as the really light techno stuff is. For example, a filiment for a light bulb or heating device is not easy to manufacture. Whereas a locomotive can be built out of fairly crude smelting technologies. Rechargable oxygen tanks would be another problem. Pretty much any powerplant technology would rely on oxygen injection for combustion. Unless, that is, we shipped over hydrogen fuel cells. Which would likely be even less useful pound for pound.
I'd think it would be more efficient to go with a ram accelerator or a H2/O2 propelled light gas gun - make it so your only reactants come from water
What's the advantage over electric propulsion like a Mass Driver? With a mass driver you could run a track straight up the side of Olympus Mons and be happy. (Wouldn't it be wonderful to have such a gentle slope here on Earth that ran right above 98% of the atmosphere? Forget the space elevator, we'd put a real elevator in the side of the mountain, and launch from there!)
I'm sure by the time anyone touches down on Mars, descendants of DART will have made automated docking essentially standard, so it shouldn't be an issue.
Or alternatively, it could be guided in by remote control. Either option shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
I assume refuelling of the towing craft in LEO?
Correct. As I said above, Earth orbit would make an ideal place for refueling. Just change out the noble gas canisters, and you're off for several more runs.
I'd hope that maintenance on it could remain low..
AFAIK, the performance of the ION engines has been exemplary, with the exception of minor contanmination snafus shortly after the engines are first started. Such snafus are usually cleared, and the ION engines perform beautifully afrer that. Worst case is that maintenence would include the swapping of a few other minor components. Still a steal (operationally) any way you cut it.
Of course, all of this is entirely dependant on things at least *remotely* valuable being found on Mars in sizable, reasonably pure deposits.
Mmm. I still think that the asteroids are the best bet for mining (no need to perform any more "launch" than a few puffs of propellant), but that doesn't meet the goals of 4Frontiers to colonize Mars.
As you say, a Project HARP style launch would be difficult from a materials perspective, but not impossible.
:-)
:-)
How do you cast the barrel in-situ (certainly you wouldn't ship it!)
You would need a manufacturing presence on Mars first. Everything required for a machine shop could be shipped, leaving smelting as the primary issue. There's certainly enough iron ore on Mars, so it would need to be decided whether to ship a blast furnace and materials, or whether to build primitive forms out of Martian materials and allow the colonists to work their way up to a better design.
How do you make the 1/3 tonne of custom cordite mix (or equivalent) for each 82 kilograms of return mass?
Cordite and other nitrates are probably the biggest issue. Our current knowledge of martian soil suggests that Nitrogen is in mighty short supply. Unless we can find Nitrogen pockets on Mars, we'll have issues trying to manufacture any nitrogren based chemicals.
sulfuric acid
sulfur
Now *that* is easy
O2
H2O
H2O would need to be mined and cracked anyway, so both of these products should be readily available. I don't know enough about Project HARP, but I assume that sealed cartriges are used just like any other modern munition.
ethanol
Grow corn.
Seriously, the colonists need to eat something. Corn is one of the easiest crops to grow, responds well to high CO2 levels (although it affects the taste), and should be easy enough for the colonists to take with. The biggest problem is still Nitrogen.
Which brings me to the point of saying, Mass Drivers just make more sense. You have to bring nuclear power production with you anyway, and the catapults could either be manufactured on Mars (out of martian iron or aluminum) or shipped to Mars using the ION cargo delivery ship. (The reentry would have to be worked out though, since parachutes and water landings are not an option on Mars.)
How do you get a delicate thing like an ion engine to survive launch?
They won't. My point was that a cargo vessel would make the run between Earth and Mars via the Superhighway. i.e. The engines will always be in orbit. They'd simply drop down into LMO, scoop up the packages, thrust back to the L1 point of Phobos, then ride the Superhighway all the way back to Earth. The best place to refuel such a craft (which would be hopefully rare given the efficiencies of ION thrusters) would be in Earth orbit.
Things may be made more efficient through the use of orbital spacestations on *both* sides, so that someone can manipulate the cargo manually if necessary. (Actually, a Mars space station prior to a surface colony may make a lot of sense anyway.)
A lot more required infrastructure, for sure, than rocket return, but potentially a lot cheaper. After all, Mars's atmosphere is paper-thin.
Indeed. I believe that the atmospheric pressure at the lowest points is around 10 mbars, whereas Olympus Mons has a pressure of around 1 mbar. Anything fired from a cannon or mass driver is going to encounter VERY little resistence.