This is an unpopular opinion here, but frankly: I think the chances of a manned mission in our lifetime (well, say, before the end of the century) is NIL. And - strap yourselves in - I think that's a good thing. Even the most swivel-eyed Destiny of Man is Beyond This Earth lunatics concede that the most drastically trimmed down, everything-works-first-time mission with hopelessly optimistic assumptions about private industry, producing food and fuel in situ mission - one where they're trying desperately to get the cost down as low as possible - would cost 30 billion dollars. And for what? Basically, it all boils down to "it'd be cool!!". Sorry folks, no matter how cool the pictures, no-ones going to spend that kind of money on something so risky with such small returns. --
Looking on the bright side of making a tit of myself, it's good to see that Slashdotters pay attention to the numbers, rather than just nodding sagely, stroking theeir chins and murmering "Yes, yes, just as I suspected"...
Alternatively: Ah, but these are *British* miles - not your wacky American ones - and of course I was thinking in metric.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I picked up the album cos 'Go fuck yourself' was on a magazine coverdisk. Going totally off-topic, strange but true: promotional copies of music are usually exempted from publishing and recording deals - that is, the artists don't get a penny for them. Discuss [shotputt, javelin... ] --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
>Meteors typically enter the atmosphere at 20-70 miles
> per SECOND, not hour.
Correct.
> Terminal velocity doesn't really apply to meteors, the
> meteor hits the ground or burns up long before it
>can slow down enough to reach terminal velocity.
Sorry, I'm afraid you are mistaken. It's true that the vast
majority of objects entering the earth's atmosphere are vaporised
long before reaching the ground - these are meteors, the
familiar shooting stars. (You can normally see one or two meteors
per hour on a good dark night.)
Meteorites are objects sufficiently large that they
don't completely vaporise. Instead, they become bolides - fireballs -
as it sounds like this one did. It's pieces of these objects that
end up in museums , labs or collectors. Contrary to popular belief,
these *DO* hit the ground relatively slowly - plenty hard enough
to kill you if it hit you, but no faster than if it had been dropped
from an aeroplane. They're also NOT red hot, glowing or smoking -
they often feel cool to the touch immediately after impact. (The
reasons are left as an exercise for the reader;)
The things that leave dirty great holes in the ground, wipe out
dinosaurs, etc, are way bigger, so big that they don't become fireballs
before smacking into the earth. These *do* hit at 20, 30, 50 thousand
miles per second.
Good references for such matters:
http://medicine.wustl.edu/~kronkg/namn.html
http://www.meteoritecentral.com/
http://home.pi.net/~terkuile/meteors/dms.htm
(some of these may be a bit broken, it's been a few years since I
was an active meteor observer - Google for 'NAMN' and 'IMO' (Int'l Meteor Org. Oh, and MeteorObs mailing list.) --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Excellent news - but just the beginning
on
Adobe Backs Down
·
· Score: 2
Of course, this is fantastic news - Alan Cox can reapply for his old job! But then... assuming that, as seems likely, the FBI simply snap Adobe a quick salute and "Yessir, right away sir" he's on the first flight back to Russia (with a large cheque to buy off his suit for damages against Adobe?)... the frustrating thing is that they might just be able to squirm out of this with a sheepish grin. The RIAA claim that they didn't really/mean/ what they said about prosecuting Professor Felton, and it looks like that's been completely forgotten by the general public (if it ever registered at all?) And so the DMCA lives to fight another day.
Well done the EFF, and here's hoping that's the last action brought before it's thrown out following one of the deCSS cases or the Felten action... let this be the beginning of the end for one of the most evil of the world's growing number of Stupid Internet Laws[tm]. --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
If your company puts up with apps that force you to use particular other apps to get generic functionality (like, say, MicroSquish Exchange), then it has a serious management problem.
Only if other companies behave differently. If (as is indeed the case
in the real world) 99.9% of companies have IT Directors or VPs who are
convinced that Microsoft Groupware is the bees knees (wow, look!
you can email appointments back and forth, book time slots, see
attendee's schedule to see if there's a better time..!) then they
are all equally handicapped. You see much the same thing with
Big Bang systems like Oracle Financials or SAP; and on a wider
basis, with management fads like TQM, flattening the pyramid, customer
focus, 360 degree reviews and all the rest of the buzzword bullshit.
They're the most sheeplike, gullible people imaginable. No wonder
companies like Marconi lose 90% of their value in 24 hours when
it turns out their expensive Solutions are less use than a bunch
of spreadsheets.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
The long and short of it is, that microsquish still fails to understand even the rudiments of multi-user systems, let alone networked systems that require serious security. MicroSquish apps and OS's are unsecure and unsecureable, and it's about fucking time that people started to get fired for buying this kind of shit.
Sir, you are mistaken! (Well, actually, you're trolling like a
penisbird, but wtf, I'm on holiday this week:D )
Some of Microsoft's software is broken in some respects -
certainly, Outlook's security model is one of the best (worst?) examples.
But it's not all insecure, and it/definitely/ isn't
unsecurable to the typical level of security required for day-to-day
corporate desktop use (and even departmental file & print.)
But have you taken a look at Bugtraq recently? In my mail right now
I happen to have 1084 mails since the 18th of May. And I'm sorry to
tell you that (a) the vast majority concern Linux, BSD, or commercial
Unixen; (b) many are remote root vulnerabilities; (c) for every
conscientious sysadmin who checks every post, every day, and immediately
applies (or starts regression testing to apply) relevant patches, there
are *hundreds* of admins who don't even read Bugtraq, or distro security
alerts, let alone apply the damn patches.
Some of these holes have been absolutely horrendous; the ftp globbing
issue that turned out to be a bug in the C library and affected many
different ftp daemons. The current ssh vulnerabilities. The BIND fiasco.
xinetd. Mutt. fingerd. yppasswd. Sendmail. Tripwire, FFS!! And so on,
and on.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I'd love to, if you could show me how. I spent a very frustrating weekend poring over docs and googling around trying to get the damn thing to work. It doesn't appear to support POP3... that, or I'm going blind.
I did finally move email client last week, tho - from Netscape 4.7 to mozilla; the mail+news client finally seems fast & stable enough for daily use (to me, YMMV) --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
And who does Bug Finder General
Georgi Guninski work for? Why, Netscape!
Oddly, though, he seems to be doing much more work for Microsoft... why, he lists forty security holes in Internet Explorer/Outlook, alone!
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
How long can it be before one of these uber-worms carries a really malicious payload, or doesn't get reversed in time? We escaped Code Red (if you can call it 'escaping' when the security and network admins of half the world spend 12 hours on Friday working on it) largely because eEye reversed the worm , giving the Whitehouse.gov people enough time to blackhole the IP the worm author had hard-coded. If that hadn't happened - or if the IP was looked up in DNS - or the thing hadn't happened to be programmed to stop spreading itself on the 20th, the day after it exploded around the world (not that the author could have predicted that)... things could have got/really/ messy.
How long before one of these reformats it's host after reproducing 500 times?
Rhetorical questions - I hope. --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
the more I hear about this whole Ximian/Microsoft interaction, the more it looks to me like Ximian is a skilled but naive bunch of American Indians being offered a sweet deal on some really nice beads.
Hear, hear.
Microsoft are Evil, nasty, amoral, ruthless bunch of... the sort of thing that lusers called HP a few stories back. NEVER trust them. NEVER co-operate with them. They are the death incarnate, you might as well co-operate with a black widow spider or a rattlesnake or a scorpion. Smash them to bits with a big stick, from a safe distance, or run away. Otherwise, you're lunch.
No, I'm not trolling or flamebaiting or anything (hey, I'd post anonymously if I was;)... I really believe this to be the case. I've asked several times for someone to provide ANY sort of rational justification for this dot-GNU nonsense and I've yet to see a single one. It's a mistake, and I predict it will end in tears.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
My NT 4 box has 105 days' uptime at present. Not that it's running much... just BIND, a mail server, Apache, mod_perl, NAT-ing Internet gateway... oh and it's my workstation, too, so I'm using mozilla for mail and web, and experimenting with a load of stuff under cygwin.
Of course, I'm probably just lucky, and yes I know 105 days is NBD. But it doesn't crash every 5 minutes, whatever your local neighbourhood zealot would have you believe. --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I think you're attempting to imply that IIS server, which comes free - though hobbled to various degrees - with all versions of NT and 2000, is the number one webserver.
That's mighty good crack that you're smoking.
Sorry to burst your bubble of self-righteousness, but... Bzzzt! Wrong on both counts, sorry.
IIS is not free, with NT4 at any rate - it comes with the NT 4 Option Pack, which costs $$$.
IIS/is/ the leading server... of SSL sites. (Obviously the vast majority of ecommerce sites run SSL.) Check out netcraft's SSL survey before you gloat...
A while back I was threatened with a court case over something I put on a website in the UK; several Americans mailed me offering mirror space, even financial support (!) This is a global fight... and no, I don't just mean North America and Europe. Take a look at the distribution of decss mirrors... they're in tens of countries, all round the world. American corporations have a long arm, but not *that* long. --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Good luck getting sued! I'm just updating my CV, I was seriously wondering about putting a "geek cred" section at the bottom...
"activism: sued by the DVDCCA; mirroring deCSS; member of the EFF; Slashdot: two karma-capped users, one with a 4 digit ID; two stories posted on the front page;... yadda yadda"
Anywhere sad enough to hire me despite that stuff would be a cool place to work, I reckon;) --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
"I will be absent from the office from July 16 through August 3 and will not be accessing email during this period. In my absence, Lew Epstein (lepstein@adobe.com) will be assuming my responsibilities. For matters requiring prompt attention during my absence please contact either Lew or Lisa Sellers (lsellers@adobe.com).
2. blamkin [love the userid! ]:
I will be out of the office on vacation until July 30, and will not be checking email. If you have an urgent issue, please contact my assistant, Laura Giffin at 408-536-4375 (lgiffin@adobe.com)
3. ttownsley:
(reason: 550 5.1.1 ttownsley@inner-relay-1.adobe.com... User unknown)
(expanded from: ttownsley@adobe.com)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Transcript of session follows
... while talking to inner-relay-1.adobe.com.:
>>> RCPT To: NOTIFY=FAILURE,DELAY
... User unknown
550 5.1.1... User unknown
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Last time I threw up a quick mirror in response to a Slashdot story I ended up as a "J.Doe" on the DVDCCA case in California. Not sure how they think Californian law works in the UK, but there you go...
When will these people learn that you can't pout the toothpaste back in the tube? *sigh* --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
*giggle* yeah,... that's me;)
I'm into a lot of other stuff too, though - "indie" (well, Spiritualised, Verve, Blur, et al), classical, barouque, bebop, flamenco, techno, hell I even have some happy hardcore. Variety eq spice of life, init.
Personally I think "Clutching at Straws" even better than Misplaced Chikldhood, but then I'm a pisshead;)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
So M$ will have the master certificates, and thousands of ASPs will each purchase a certificate signed by M$, and their customers will then only need to authenticate with the local ASPs servers. A certificate from one ASP will be valid with all other ASPs, and will need very little communication with the central M$ site.
Can you say "security nightmare"? Can you say "script kiddie heaven"? is it just me, or does this whole things (including dot GNU or whatever the hell they're calling it) stink to heaven? Sorry, I just can't bring myself to belive that *anything* Microsoft does is anything but pure evil. Sounds a little extreme (er, well, perhaps not on Slashdot;) but seriously,.. Miguel... what the HELL are you playing at [ thinking of ], giving credibility to Microsoft? Huh? Can someone explain to me why anyone involved in Free software is backing Microsoft? I just don't get it.
*shakes head*
I just hope we're not all sitting around here in a couple of year's time posting "See? I said so at the time!!!"
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Whoo! $prog++!! I was just listening nostalgically to B'Sides themselves, and Misplaced Childhood, last night.
I'm also gradually accquiring the Yes back catalogue, but also wanting more-or-less complete King Crimson, Genesis (up until Steve Hackett left, anyways), some obscure British stuff like Strawbs (np: "Autumn [The Winter Long]") and IQ... and of course, the mighty Hawkwind!!:)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Nonsense. The big market for CD audio is the 18-30 age group - reasonable incomes with no kids or houses to pay for, buying up everything they wanted when they were 16.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
...until the TTLs start timing out. If the putative 15 y.o. could keep it going more than a week it would get ugly, I suspect. --
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Slashdot Mirror
This is an unpopular opinion here, but frankly: I think the chances of a manned mission in our lifetime (well, say, before the end of the century) is NIL. And - strap yourselves in - I think that's a good thing. Even the most swivel-eyed Destiny of Man is Beyond This Earth lunatics concede that the most drastically trimmed down, everything-works-first-time mission with hopelessly optimistic assumptions about private industry, producing food and fuel in situ mission - one where they're trying desperately to get the cost down as low as possible - would cost 30 billion dollars. And for what? Basically, it all boils down to "it'd be cool!!". Sorry folks, no matter how cool the pictures, no-ones going to spend that kind of money on something so risky with such small returns.
--
Alternatively: Ah, but these are *British* miles - not your wacky American ones - and of course I was thinking in metric.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I picked up the album cos 'Go fuck yourself' was on a magazine coverdisk. Going totally off-topic, strange but true: promotional copies of music are usually exempted from publishing and recording deals - that is, the artists don't get a penny for them. Discuss [shotputt, javelin... ]
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
>double thwack
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
> per SECOND, not hour.
Correct. > Terminal velocity doesn't really apply to meteors, the
> meteor hits the ground or burns up long before it
>can slow down enough to reach terminal velocity.
Sorry, I'm afraid you are mistaken. It's true that the vast majority of objects entering the earth's atmosphere are vaporised long before reaching the ground - these are meteors, the familiar shooting stars. (You can normally see one or two meteors per hour on a good dark night.)
Meteorites are objects sufficiently large that they don't completely vaporise. Instead, they become bolides - fireballs - as it sounds like this one did. It's pieces of these objects that end up in museums , labs or collectors. Contrary to popular belief, these *DO* hit the ground relatively slowly - plenty hard enough to kill you if it hit you, but no faster than if it had been dropped from an aeroplane. They're also NOT red hot, glowing or smoking - they often feel cool to the touch immediately after impact. (The reasons are left as an exercise for the reader ;)
The things that leave dirty great holes in the ground, wipe out dinosaurs, etc, are way bigger, so big that they don't become fireballs before smacking into the earth. These *do* hit at 20, 30, 50 thousand miles per second.
Good references for such matters:
- http://medicine.wustl.edu/~kronkg/namn.html
- http://www.meteoritecentral.com/
- http://home.pi.net/~terkuile/meteors/dms.htm
(some of these may be a bit broken, it's been a few years since I was an active meteor observer - Google for 'NAMN' and 'IMO' (Int'l Meteor Org. Oh, and MeteorObs mailing list.)--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Well done the EFF, and here's hoping that's the last action brought before it's thrown out following one of the deCSS cases or the Felten action... let this be the beginning of the end for one of the most evil of the world's growing number of Stupid Internet Laws[tm].
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Sir, you are mistaken! (Well, actually, you're trolling like a penisbird, but wtf, I'm on holiday this week :D )
Some of Microsoft's software is broken in some respects -
certainly, Outlook's security model is one of the best (worst?) examples.
But it's not all insecure, and it /definitely/ isn't
unsecurable to the typical level of security required for day-to-day
corporate desktop use (and even departmental file & print.)
But have you taken a look at Bugtraq recently? In my mail right now I happen to have 1084 mails since the 18th of May. And I'm sorry to tell you that (a) the vast majority concern Linux, BSD, or commercial Unixen; (b) many are remote root vulnerabilities; (c) for every conscientious sysadmin who checks every post, every day, and immediately applies (or starts regression testing to apply) relevant patches, there are *hundreds* of admins who don't even read Bugtraq, or distro security alerts, let alone apply the damn patches.
Some of these holes have been absolutely horrendous; the ftp globbing issue that turned out to be a bug in the C library and affected many different ftp daemons. The current ssh vulnerabilities. The BIND fiasco. xinetd. Mutt. fingerd. yppasswd. Sendmail. Tripwire, FFS!! And so on, and on.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I did finally move email client last week, tho - from Netscape 4.7 to mozilla; the mail+news client finally seems fast & stable enough for daily use (to me, YMMV)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Oddly, though, he seems to be doing much more work for Microsoft... why, he lists forty security holes in Internet Explorer/Outlook, alone!
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
How long before one of these reformats it's host after reproducing 500 times?
Rhetorical questions - I hope.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Microsoft are Evil, nasty, amoral, ruthless bunch of... the sort of thing that lusers called HP a few stories back. NEVER trust them. NEVER co-operate with them. They are the death incarnate, you might as well co-operate with a black widow spider or a rattlesnake or a scorpion. Smash them to bits with a big stick, from a safe distance, or run away. Otherwise, you're lunch.
No, I'm not trolling or flamebaiting or anything (hey, I'd post anonymously if I was ;)... I really believe this to be the case. I've asked several times for someone to provide ANY sort of rational justification for this dot-GNU nonsense and I've yet to see a single one. It's a mistake, and I predict it will end in tears.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
My NT 4 box has 105 days' uptime at present. Not that it's running much... just BIND, a mail server, Apache, mod_perl, NAT-ing Internet gateway... oh and it's my workstation, too, so I'm using mozilla for mail and web, and experimenting with a load of stuff under cygwin. Of course, I'm probably just lucky, and yes I know 105 days is NBD. But it doesn't crash every 5 minutes, whatever your local neighbourhood zealot would have you believe.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Sorry to burst your bubble of self-righteousness, but... Bzzzt! Wrong on both counts, sorry.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
A while back I was threatened with a court case over something I put on a website in the UK; several Americans mailed me offering mirror space, even financial support (!) This is a global fight... and no, I don't just mean North America and Europe. Take a look at the distribution of decss mirrors... they're in tens of countries, all round the world. American corporations have a long arm, but not *that* long .
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Anywhere sad enough to hire me despite that stuff would be a cool place to work, I reckon ;)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Last try
1. gfreeman:
2. blamkin [love the userid! ]:
3. ttownsley: (reason: 550 5.1.1 ttownsley@inner-relay-1.adobe.com... User unknown) (expanded from: ttownsley@adobe.com)--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
DUH, -1 "didn't preview". Sorry ... >thwack
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
(reason: 550 5.1.1
... User unknown)
(expanded from: )
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Transcript of session follows ... User unknown
... while talking to inner-relay-1.adobe.com.:
>>> RCPT To:
NOTIFY=FAILURE,DELAY
... User unknown
550 5.1.1
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Last time I threw up a quick mirror in response to a Slashdot story I ended up as a "J.Doe" on the DVDCCA case in California. Not sure how they think Californian law works in the UK, but there you go...
When will these people learn that you can't pout the toothpaste back in the tube? *sigh*
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
*giggle* yeah,... that's me ;)
I'm into a lot of other stuff too, though - "indie" (well, Spiritualised, Verve, Blur, et al), classical, barouque, bebop, flamenco, techno, hell I even have some happy hardcore. Variety eq spice of life, init.
Personally I think "Clutching at Straws" even better than Misplaced Chikldhood, but then I'm a pisshead ;)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Can you say "security nightmare"? Can you say "script kiddie heaven"? is it just me, or does this whole things (including dot GNU or whatever the hell they're calling it) stink to heaven? Sorry, I just can't bring myself to belive that *anything* Microsoft does is anything but pure evil. Sounds a little extreme (er, well, perhaps not on Slashdot ;) but seriously,.. Miguel... what the HELL are you playing at [ thinking of ], giving credibility to Microsoft? Huh? Can someone explain to me why anyone involved in Free software is backing Microsoft? I just don't get it.
*shakes head*
I just hope we're not all sitting around here in a couple of year's time posting "See? I said so at the time!!!"
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I'm also gradually accquiring the Yes back catalogue, but also wanting more-or-less complete King Crimson, Genesis (up until Steve Hackett left, anyways), some obscure British stuff like Strawbs (np: "Autumn [The Winter Long]") and IQ... and of course, the mighty Hawkwind!! :)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Nonsense. The big market for CD audio is the 18-30 age group - reasonable incomes with no kids or houses to pay for, buying up everything they wanted when they were 16.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
...until the TTLs start timing out. If the putative 15 y.o. could keep it going more than a week it would get ugly, I suspect.
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"