Great! Kliper is about 14.5 tons in launch configuration, and Ariane 5G can launch 16 tons to LEO. Ariane 5G was designed for the Hermes space plane, so it should be feasible to man-rate it.
Let's hope that there will be a close cooperation between Europe and Russia. Rumours about Russia joining ESA already surface now and then. AFAIK the main prolem (next to authoritarian, non-democratic tendencies in Russia) is that the cuurent ESA treaty requires every member to pay a share of the common space projects. The treaty would have to be altered to allow Russia to pay it's share in hardware and services.
Nevertheless, this seems as a promising opportunity to me. Especially as a the article on russianspaceweb.com states that a major portion of the 10 bn. Rubel development costs is for the Onega booster, which wouldn't be required if Ariane 5 could be used.
Are these public broadcasters goverment owned or are they private companies?
Neither - nor.;-)
Actually, they are "öffentlich-rechtlich", that means "regulated by public law".
To explain the status of public broadcasters in Germany to Americans, think of some kind of foundation under public law: the states and the federal republic are legally obliged to maintain public broadcasting and ensure its funding. The studios itself are regulated by a board of directors which are delegated from important public groups, like the state governments, the churches, the unions, the red cross, the trade chambers, industrial lobby groups, political parties, and so on.
The programs itself deliver some very high quality journalism, which is in contrast to private broadcaster which mostly only look for spectacular pictures and satisfaction of "public opinion".
Child programs (which are ad-free!) and scientific programs (usually late at night only) are also very good on public stations. OTOH, most entertainment running on the public stations is somewhat cheesy, or at least focused only on minorities (e.g. theatre or opera broadcasts).
This fee is for the Gebühreneinzugszentrale (GEZ). The GEZ is the administration which collects the fees for the public broadcasters (ARD, ZDF, Deutsche Welle,...) in Germany. The GEZ is in place for about 50 years.
Not many people will be hurt by this:
if you already have a TV set, you already pay this fee. (Most households already have a TV set and pay 48.45 EUR every three months to the GEZ.)
it's per household, not per computer
I have four machines connected to the net at home, and I can ignore this new regulation, cause I registered with GEZ as a TV owner. So who cares?
(BTW, the point that public broadcasting should be financed from taxes and not have a special authority for this is IMHO very valid. Would mean less bureaucracy, and a more fair distribution of burden.)
If you know a little german, there are some local, cost-free access points in Germany. I don't know if they all accept international calls. ISDN line bundling should be possible.
German overview page offered by teltarif.de, a well-known site here which hosts rate information and news about telcos.
(The reason why there are free access points in Germany? Well, the -in some parts insane- regulations on German telecoms guarantee a nice amount of interconnection fees for the providers of these lines.)
There are no mail headers. The Received headers give the clue about where a mail came from.
For the Phishing IQ Test, the Link has been disabled. - WTF? Looking at the link in the mails source code is the second test. If there is no link, no sane judgement on legitimacy or fraud can be made.
Sorry, but I don't want to make judgements about the way some PHB wants the mails sent to his customers look like. I'll stick to the facts - the Received headers and the link.
Charles Krauthammer (another republican editor from US news and world report) once called for parking an US aircraft carrier off the coast of france to intimidate them. It will be interesting to see if something like that happens.
It already happens.
Or how can somebody explain at whom this weapon is targeted?
War against terror? What fucking terrorist has satellites?
No, the ATV is intended only as a cargo vessel. It will eventually replace the russian Progress which supply ISS. ATV will offer a significant increase in paylod capacity compared to progress.
Nevertheless, together which this Soyuz successor it makes sense - ESA will provide an enhanced replacement for Progress, Russia is developing a new crew capsule.
I hope that way Europe and Russia can provide a replacement for the aging Shuttle fleet.
It would be interesting to know if ESA does transfer technology from ARD to the new russian project....
Gee, this is Italia. Ya know, Europe, Rest of the World, Non-US?
Dya *really* think anybody there counts something in bushels, pints, hogspots, PSI, inches or WTF?
Funny - never trust the client. That's rule number one when developing web applications.
I don't know what proprietary extension to HTTP MS wants to employ to transmit this information (maybe some fscked up User-Agent header), but I pretty sure it can be circumvented in less than 10 LOC.
It's always nice to see two evil forces fighting each other. Only sad thing is that this will again put money into the pockets of some greedy lawyers. But anyway, let's fetch some beer and popcorn.
ObJoke:
Q: What are 20,000 lawyers on the bottom of the Northern Sea?
A: A good start.
I am completely in favor of space exploration. But this article find some very true words on what pushes space exploration forward and what doesn't.
Human presence in space is a very good thing if the task can only be accomplished by humans - like closely exploring a moons or planets surface (Apollo), or repairing an otherwise unmanned but very valuable vehicle (Hubble repair missions). But most kind of science done on shuttle or ISS missions could better and cheaper be done on unmanned platforms - and in other places it already is done on remotely controlled unmanned vessels.
Just imagine how the american space program could have developed without the shuttle, but continuing to use Apollo and Saturn for useful manned missions - heck, there could already be orbiters around all outer planets, and missions like the Interstellar Probe or Terrestrial Planet finder could be well on their way. In contrast to the dull shuttle, extended Apollo journeys could have even sent humans to some near-earth asteroids...
If this is a correct screenshot here, it looks like a hell-of-a-boatload of copyright infringement, as the artwork looks to be directly taken from Warcraft 2, which is a BIG no-no.
(Who the f*ck modded this up?)
The screenshot is right.
It is the artwork from WC2. FreeCraft gives you the opportunity to choose the artwork to play with, they provide scripts to extract the artwork from a regular WC2 windows version or use free artwork, called FCMP.
There's no copyright violation, stupid, you need a WC2 CD to play FreeCraft with WC2 artwork.
It's no "BIG no-no", I think I'm allowed to play a game I've legally purchased in the way I like it. Bli**ard never even thought about releasing a Linux version of WC2!
Heck, never seen a story with so many moronic bogus comments modded up. Is this still/.?
Only an idiot would start a project to produce a RTS with a name that's only a few letters away from an established line of RTS games
Just for the records - the idiots did it:
about six years ago - why does Bli**ard start to sue them now, he?
it was first under the name "ale-clone", and renamed to FreeCraft some time later
FreeCraft is configurable - you can tune the engine to any kind of RTS you like. No copycat!
If you liked to play the default W*rCr*ft-style game, you needed the free graphics provided by FreeCraft or an original W*rCr*ft2 CD to get the graphics from
AFAIK there was a Windows version of FreeCraft, but IMHO this project was primarily targeted at the Linux and BSD communities, people about which Bli**ard cares a f*ck
I imagine there will be a day where at least some free software can only be published under pseudonyme any more, and only in places like Sealand or Russia. :-(
This event is getting more and more like some strange kind of sitcom.
Is there any place where I can placed bets when SCO will get stomped by IBM and how hard their crack-smoking mgmt. will be sued by their own shareholders?
As a german citizen, I have to tell you this is a very old story.
A VAT (yes, that's the 16%) is applied to all consumer goods in Germany, with a few exceptions like food for which a lower rate of 8% is applied. And yes, it's deductable. A company or a freelancer will get tax returns on the VAT paid.
The 13$ going to the media outlets (don't know the Euro amount) was expected for some years know. Similar fees have to be paid to recording devices and media, like tapes, since really long time ago.
The only thing that happened was that PCs were recognized as devices capable to make copies of music records.
This fee is officially meant as a compensation for private copies you are allowed to make, see it as a fair use compensation.
And that's were we get to the really interesting point: If the media corps already get compensated for fair use, how can it be legal to implement copy protection schemes in the first place?
I think this is a bad decision. Especially big companies and governmental web sites should be easily accessible for disabled people, too. And it's not difficult, too: If you are running a big website, you will need a CMS anyway, as well as separation between content, structure, and layout.
Not to mention that valid HTML is quite comprehensible on text or braille displays, too.
Germany has choosen a different way: Since July 2002 all german federal agencies are required to make their web presence accessible for disabled people until 2005. The
Regulation for the creation of barrier-free information technology according to the disabled equalization law can be downloaded online, as well as a german article on Heise.
Although this only applies to federal agencies, and not to companies, state agencies or citizens, I think this sets a precedence for a best practice in web site design.
Could someone who has the different OS installed or some knowledge about this MS media crap be so kind to post the URL to the movie on msnbc so I can fed it into Linux Media Player? TIA
Being a developer of Java web applications myself, I always wonder why Firebird doesn't find any broader use.
I mean, in an commercial environment, there's always the reason to have someone to blame if you choose a closed-source solution like Oracle or DB2, so the managers refuse to accept Free Software or Open Source. Plus there are features in Oracle etc. still missing in the free alternatives.
But what about all the small, non-commercial projects? Firebird is really easy to install, it's scalable as hell and is, contrary to MySQL, a real database.
Naturally the home account filled up pretty quickly at which point the remote and local servers began a game of ping pong betwen "Out of office" and "Mailbox is full" emails.
Hope you used this rare opportunity to fix your broken mail server, as the lusers ISP should have done with their one, too.
I suggest that implementors of MS specifications should use a license that allows authors of derivative works a choice:
distribute these derivative works in source code, and under the same license, as it is required by the GPL
or hand over the changes and all rights attached to them to the original author
IANAL, but this would seem to make perfect sense to me, as it avoids the discriminatory clauses in MS' license agreement, and keeps the control the implementor (read: the SAMBA team) has on the same level as it is with the GPL.
Could someone who is German or who has studied German law please clarify?
Article 1: (quoting by heart)
Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu schützen und zu bewahren ist Aufgabe jeder staatlichen Gewalt.
In English:
A humans dignity is inviolable. To protect and retain it is the task of every governmental power.
So it has to be considered which right has to be protected more in every single case - the dignity of someone who feels offended by certain speech or the freedom of speech of someone else.
Considerations like this are very common in German law (and possibly elsewhere) - just think nuclear power plant (property against health) or genetic engineering (property against dignity).
In general, I think it's perfectly correct that serious forms of offensive speech are forbidden - it is illegal to publish hate material in Germany.
But this measure goes way to far - beside the fact that it is technically impossible to suppress content on the internet, and they're running in danger giving a kind of popularity to those sites which they definitely do not deserve.
Some states/jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.
Does this really mean anything?
Yep. I'm in Germany, here you can't completely license away the liability for your products, even if you donate them - you are always liable in case of intent (i.e. given away trojans) or gross negligence (when you could have expected damage).
Guess this was the reason that the GPL got a similar clause, too.
Could somebody in some state conceivably sue them successfully?
Why is this being launched from a submarine?
Coz russian SLBMs are available in high numbers, at cheap prices, and they are reliable. I think it's a Really Great Thing[tm] to use these military missiles for an application which is useful for all of us, and would like to see if if they would be used more often. It's better to spend money for russian space engineers than fearing they would be hired by Iran, North Korea, you name it.
"I know, lets launch it from a moving submerged vehicle"
If you would happen to know anything about SLBM and rocketry, you would know that they can only be launched submerged - the engine is not ignited while the missile is still in its silo, instead the missile is ejected by compressed air and ignited just before it's the surface.
Slashdot Mirror
Great! Kliper is about 14.5 tons in launch configuration, and Ariane 5G can launch 16 tons to LEO. Ariane 5G was designed for the Hermes space plane, so it should be feasible to man-rate it.
Let's hope that there will be a close cooperation between Europe and Russia. Rumours about Russia joining ESA already surface now and then. AFAIK the main prolem (next to authoritarian, non-democratic tendencies in Russia) is that the cuurent ESA treaty requires every member to pay a share of the common space projects. The treaty would have to be altered to allow Russia to pay it's share in hardware and services.
Nevertheless, this seems as a promising opportunity to me. Especially as a the article on russianspaceweb.com states that a major portion of the 10 bn. Rubel development costs is for the Onega booster, which wouldn't be required if Ariane 5 could be used.
Neither - nor. ;-)
Actually, they are "öffentlich-rechtlich", that means "regulated by public law".
To explain the status of public broadcasters in Germany to Americans, think of some kind of foundation under public law: the states and the federal republic are legally obliged to maintain public broadcasting and ensure its funding. The studios itself are regulated by a board of directors which are delegated from important public groups, like the state governments, the churches, the unions, the red cross, the trade chambers, industrial lobby groups, political parties, and so on.
The programs itself deliver some very high quality journalism, which is in contrast to private broadcaster which mostly only look for spectacular pictures and satisfaction of "public opinion". Child programs (which are ad-free!) and scientific programs (usually late at night only) are also very good on public stations. OTOH, most entertainment running on the public stations is somewhat cheesy, or at least focused only on minorities (e.g. theatre or opera broadcasts).
Not many people will be hurt by this:
- if you already have a TV set, you already pay this fee. (Most households already have a TV set and pay 48.45 EUR every three months to the GEZ.)
- it's per household, not per computer
I have four machines connected to the net at home, and I can ignore this new regulation, cause I registered with GEZ as a TV owner. So who cares?(BTW, the point that public broadcasting should be financed from taxes and not have a special authority for this is IMHO very valid. Would mean less bureaucracy, and a more fair distribution of burden.)
(The reason why there are free access points in Germany? Well, the -in some parts insane- regulations on German telecoms guarantee a nice amount of interconnection fees for the providers of these lines.)
- There are no mail headers. The Received headers give the clue about where a mail came from.
- For the Phishing IQ Test, the Link has been disabled. - WTF? Looking at the link in the mails source code is the second test. If there is no link, no sane judgement on legitimacy or fraud can be made.
Sorry, but I don't want to make judgements about the way some PHB wants the mails sent to his customers look like. I'll stick to the facts - the Received headers and the link.Or how can somebody explain at whom this weapon is targeted?
War against terror? What fucking terrorist has satellites?
Nevertheless, together which this Soyuz successor it makes sense - ESA will provide an enhanced replacement for Progress, Russia is developing a new crew capsule.
I hope that way Europe and Russia can provide a replacement for the aging Shuttle fleet.
It would be interesting to know if ESA does transfer technology from ARD to the new russian project....
Dya *really* think anybody there counts something in bushels, pints, hogspots, PSI, inches or WTF?
Certainly it's metric.
Funny - never trust the client. That's rule number one when developing web applications.
I don't know what proprietary extension to HTTP MS wants to employ to transmit this information (maybe some fscked up User-Agent header), but I pretty sure it can be circumvented in less than 10 LOC.
ObJoke:
Q: What are 20,000 lawyers on the bottom of the Northern Sea?
A: A good start.
Human presence in space is a very good thing if the task can only be accomplished by humans - like closely exploring a moons or planets surface (Apollo), or repairing an otherwise unmanned but very valuable vehicle (Hubble repair missions). But most kind of science done on shuttle or ISS missions could better and cheaper be done on unmanned platforms - and in other places it already is done on remotely controlled unmanned vessels.
Just imagine how the american space program could have developed without the shuttle, but continuing to use Apollo and Saturn for useful manned missions - heck, there could already be orbiters around all outer planets, and missions like the Interstellar Probe or Terrestrial Planet finder could be well on their way. In contrast to the dull shuttle, extended Apollo journeys could have even sent humans to some near-earth asteroids...
(Who the f*ck modded this up?)
Heck, never seen a story with so many moronic bogus comments modded up. Is this still /.?
Just for the records - the idiots did it:
- about six years ago - why does Bli**ard start to sue them now, he?
- it was first under the name "ale-clone", and renamed to FreeCraft some time later
- FreeCraft is configurable - you can tune the engine to any kind of RTS you like. No copycat!
- If you liked to play the default W*rCr*ft-style game, you needed the free graphics provided by FreeCraft or an original W*rCr*ft2 CD to get the graphics from
- AFAIK there was a Windows version of FreeCraft, but IMHO this project was primarily targeted at the Linux and BSD communities, people about which Bli**ard cares a f*ck
I imagine there will be a day where at least some free software can only be published under pseudonyme any more, and only in places like Sealand or Russia.This event is getting more and more like some strange kind of sitcom.
Is there any place where I can placed bets when SCO will get stomped by IBM and how hard their crack-smoking mgmt. will be sued by their own shareholders?
Not bad for something that cost 15% of the Federal Foodstamp budget in FY2001.
Or only three days (<1%) of the current USA defense budget...
- A VAT (yes, that's the 16%) is applied to all consumer goods in Germany, with a few exceptions like food for which a lower rate of 8% is applied. And yes, it's deductable. A company or a freelancer will get tax returns on the VAT paid.
- The 13$ going to the media outlets (don't know the Euro amount) was expected for some years know. Similar fees have to be paid to recording devices and media, like tapes, since really long time ago.
This fee is officially meant as a compensation for private copies you are allowed to make, see it as a fair use compensation. And that's were we get to the really interesting point: If the media corps already get compensated for fair use, how can it be legal to implement copy protection schemes in the first place?The only thing that happened was that PCs were recognized as devices capable to make copies of music records.
Great!
So all I have to do is entering his coordinates in my USENET map database and I can employ this baby.
I think this is a bad decision. Especially big companies and governmental web sites should be easily accessible for disabled people, too. And it's not difficult, too: If you are running a big website, you will need a CMS anyway, as well as separation between content, structure, and layout.
Not to mention that valid HTML is quite comprehensible on text or braille displays, too.
Germany has choosen a different way: Since July 2002 all german federal agencies are required to make their web presence accessible for disabled people until 2005. The Regulation for the creation of barrier-free information technology according to the disabled equalization law can be downloaded online, as well as a german article on Heise.
Although this only applies to federal agencies, and not to companies, state agencies or citizens, I think this sets a precedence for a best practice in web site design.
Could someone who has the different OS installed or some knowledge about this MS media crap be so kind to post the URL to the movie on msnbc so I can fed it into Linux Media Player? TIA
Being a developer of Java web applications myself, I always wonder why Firebird doesn't find any broader use.
I mean, in an commercial environment, there's always the reason to have someone to blame if you choose a closed-source solution like Oracle or DB2, so the managers refuse to accept Free Software or Open Source. Plus there are features in Oracle etc. still missing in the free alternatives.
But what about all the small, non-commercial projects? Firebird is really easy to install, it's scalable as hell and is, contrary to MySQL, a real database.
Naturally the home account filled up pretty quickly at which point the remote and local servers began a game of ping pong betwen "Out of office" and "Mailbox is full" emails.
Hope you used this rare opportunity to fix your broken mail server, as the lusers ISP should have done with their one, too.
- distribute these derivative works in source code, and under the same license, as it is required by the GPL
- or hand over the changes and all rights attached to them to the original author
IANAL, but this would seem to make perfect sense to me, as it avoids the discriminatory clauses in MS' license agreement, and keeps the control the implementor (read: the SAMBA team) has on the same level as it is with the GPL.Could someone who is German or who has studied German law please clarify?
Article 1: (quoting by heart)
Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu schützen und zu bewahren ist Aufgabe jeder staatlichen Gewalt.
In English:
A humans dignity is inviolable. To protect and retain it is the task of every governmental power.
So it has to be considered which right has to be protected more in every single case - the dignity of someone who feels offended by certain speech or the freedom of speech of someone else.
Considerations like this are very common in German law (and possibly elsewhere) - just think nuclear power plant (property against health) or genetic engineering (property against dignity).
In general, I think it's perfectly correct that serious forms of offensive speech are forbidden - it is illegal to publish hate material in Germany.
But this measure goes way to far - beside the fact that it is technically impossible to suppress content on the internet, and they're running in danger giving a kind of popularity to those sites which they definitely do not deserve.
Some states/jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you.
... ;)
Does this really mean anything?
Yep. I'm in Germany, here you can't completely license away the liability for your products, even if you donate them - you are always liable in case of intent (i.e. given away trojans) or gross negligence (when you could have expected damage).
Guess this was the reason that the GPL got a similar clause, too.
Could somebody in some state conceivably sue them successfully?
Dunno, IANAL. But would be a nice try
Why is this being launched from a submarine?
Coz russian SLBMs are available in high numbers, at cheap prices, and they are reliable. I think it's a Really Great Thing[tm] to use these military missiles for an application which is useful for all of us, and would like to see if if they would be used more often. It's better to spend money for russian space engineers than fearing they would be hired by Iran, North Korea, you name it.
"I know, lets launch it from a moving submerged vehicle"
If you would happen to know anything about SLBM and rocketry, you would know that they can only be launched submerged - the engine is not ignited while the missile is still in its silo, instead the missile is ejected by compressed air and ignited just before it's the surface.