There is no "space race" for the United States. The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, is likely to terminate the remains of the US manned program. Except perhaps a few flights using Russian hardware. And I say this as a lifelong supporter of manned exploration who fully expected in 1969 to be able to tour the Moon before the end of my life (2040 or so).
Do you know anything baout barcodes? Barcodes do not have serial numbers encoded on them. Every printer of the same brand and model has the same barcode. Any other system would increase the cost of printing boxes tenfold.
Every one of the 5,000 or so pieces of computer equipment I have unpacked over the last 10 years has had the serial number barcoded on the outside of the shipping carton.
And yes, stores can be required to scan those S/Ns if the feds so desire, and it can be made to stick. Bank tellers don't get paid all that much more than Best Buy clerks, but the threat of 20 years in the federal pen gives them a bit of incentive to follow the money-laundering reporting procedures. Heck, I heard a discussion between two entry-level postal clerks the other day about how much fun they had spotting drug dealers and reporting them.
On a good day, I get 50mpg on my 1987 Honda CRX HF. My car performs, and runs in top condition. It has 186k miles on it, out of which I've put 12k myself. I bought this car for $500 and the only money spent on it was on gas and oil changes. 4x25 = 100 bucks in oil change. 12,000/40 = $300.00 in gas (conservative guess). Thus, for about 500 + 400 = 900 dollars, I got 12k out of my car.
Pretty much the same with my 1985 CRX DX (neither and HF nor an Si). 45 mpg was typical in heavy city + highway. Last I heard the guy I sold it to at 165,000 had it up to 300,000 (albeit with a new #1 piston, the weak point of that otherwise perfect engine).
And that was with essentially zero computer control of the engine, and a 5-speed. I figure if Honda really wanted to, they could produce a SmartCar equivalent that would hold two people, have reasonable performance and safety, and get 100 mpg. Or a 4-seater at 75 mpg. That tells me they don't think the US market will accept anything like that. Perhaps after a few years of $5/gal.
When they use the electric traction motors for braking, the resulting electricity is burned off in a grid, and this is called dynamic braking, as opposed to using the brake shoes around the wheels for braking.
Electric-powered locomotives (in the US, only found in commuter services and a few locations around NYC these days) use regenerative braking and dump the energy back into the electric supply. The Milwaukee Road used to use electric locomotives in the Cascades for that reason: they could recover a high percentage of the energy otherwise lost to braking in the mountains.
The ISS had its start under Reagan, and there were no doubt many political and bureaucratic reasons for it getting started. But by the Clinton Administration, it was _continued_ primarily for one purpose: to allow the US to indirectly subsidize the Russian space industry, and give all those soon-to-be-unemployed Russian rocket scientists a paycheck. Thus giving them less reason to wander off to Iran, Pakistan, China, etc. And that seems to have been fairly successful.
Does the Washington Post, or any other mainstream media outlet, publish a story whenever an exploit is released in the wild for Internet Explorer? In the last year, maybe if it is actually affecting some media companies. Otherwise no.
So why the constant drumbeat of breathless stories about bugs (flaws) and exploits in Firefox? Could it be that the MSM is being seeded by someone? Say.... Microsoft's PR firm?
The Odyssey II was a cartiridge-based machine. We had one in the early 80s.
Had a home "Pong" game before that with 4 games: Pong, Hockey (Pong with walls on the sides), Handball, and a solitare practice mode.
That sounds like mine, which was yellow and had 4 rheostats but did not have a cartridge slot of any type. I threw it away during a move about 4 years before eBay appeared on the scene. There's another mistake on my ledger.
I played Computer Space, which preceeded Pong, and once had the opportunity to buy one. Which I did not do, to my great regret since. I also had a Magnavox Odyssey, although since it had 4 games instead of just a pong-clone it might have been an Odyssey II or something like that. pong-hockey! Whoo hoo!
One small flaw in the argument: Microsoft wasn't always hated. During the 1980-1990 time period (approximately), they were seen as one of the "good guys". In particular, during the movement of PCs into large corporations in the 1984-1990 period, Microsoft was viewed by many as a strong supporter of personally-directed computing resources against the tyranny of the Data Processing Department. While their technology was never the best, it had its good points (MS-DOS 3.3; even Windows 3.1), and as Steve Gibson has pointed out its openness allowed a huge industry of improvements to spring up, which formed the basis for today's software industry.
So, my question to Microsoft fans is, what happened between 1990 and 2000 that turned Microsoft from hero to goat? You be the judge.
It is amazing how a person can do a small amount of good work (and edit a book based on the contributions of others), which is fine, gain a small amount of fame as a result, which is fine, and then abuse that tiny amount of fame/reputation to make pontificating pronouncements for years afterward, possibly doing a lot of damage to the cause that orignally made him notorious.
There is this thing out there called Google News. You might want to give it a try:
(IsraelNN.com) The first charges in the "Trojan Horse" mass industrial espionage case, which implicates many of Israel's economic powerhouses, have been filed with a Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court today.
The charges were filed against the private investigator alleged to have obtained sensitive business information from Israeli businesses illegally by means of a Trojan Horse computer program. He then sold the information obtained to the targeted businesses' competitors.
It is in fact not teenagers, but directed industrial espionage at best, international espionage at worst.
Please name one serious, high-profile hacking case (to include authoring viriii & worms) in which the perpetrator was caught and didn't turn out to be a teenager or a still adolescent 20 something.
Um, you might want to check the current news. Israeli corporations, including defense contractors, are battling an attack of corporate espionage conducted via targeted worms and keyloggers right at the moment.
And per basic logic: what is the simplest explanation for why for the last two years worms have been sucking data off hard drives and transmitting it to various east asian countries? Lot of curious teenagers sitting around over there just dying to read American powerpoints?
Well, I know for a fact that our municipal electric utility is adding utility pole data to our town's GIS, and that they are not using legal survey data to do it, just ordinary industrial-resolution GPS, as I have watched them do it and asked the GIS manager about it.
Geographers claim domain over everything on the surface of the earth, so I think you will find just about everything in someone's GIS, legally surveyed or not.
You have to consider the possibility that there were some secret clauses to the Apple-Intel agreement. A volume of 1 million units per year would do a lot to kickstart the cost/price loop for the Itanic.
Everyone is assuming that Jobs is speaking of only the x86 architecture, whether 32 or 64 bit. What if part of the deal is for Apple to test and if possible deploy Itanium for their high-end desktops and servers? 2-3 million Itanium units per year might be enough to get a positive feedback loop working for Intel on that product line.
Usually I defend Dvorak here, because despite his annoying style and habit of shit-stirring I think he is very knowledgable and as insighful as any industry commentator out there.
So honesty compels me to point out: Dvorak has been predicting an Apple switch to Intel processors since at least 1984. Given the rate of change in the microprocessor industry since 1980, it was inevitable that if he kept at it long enough he would be right eventually.
I imagine he will now start predicting that Apple will buy all rights to the Alpha from HP and start a secret program to move to that!
> Yeah, but let's face it, you were going to buy a > new Mac in that timescale anyway.
The problem, as the OP noted, is the software. Most home users can afford to buy a new computer every 3-5 years. They cannot afford to re-buy all the software they own, and oftentimes a critical application is no longer in development or even available.
sPh
Re:Too many keyboard layouts
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
Well, on my current Dell laptop it is to the _right_ of the F12 key; totally unreachable.
I too love French keyboards, especially because at my last company it was always a dude Vice-President or above who showed up with one and needed his laptop fixed NOW OR ELSE;-(
sPh
Too many keyboard layouts
on
Blank Keyboard
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> which the maker touts will make you type 100% > faster in a few weeks since it will keep you from > looking at the keyboard.
10-15 years ago I might have agreed with this, but today there are so many keyboard layouts that it is impossible not to look. The ~ and | symbols are in a different place on every one of the 10 keyboards I use daily, for example.
POSIX is an IEEE standard, not a US Government standard, and no doubt is copyright protected like almost any other written work.
POSIX was originally a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard); I believe the Department of Defense orginated the request to whatever entity of the USG handled FIPS'.
When that entity terminated, they transferred stewardship of POSIX to the IEEE. IEEE may have copyrighted subsequent versions (but see the Veeck case), but they can't retroactively copyright US Government documents.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no "space race" for the United States. The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, is likely to terminate the remains of the US manned program. Except perhaps a few flights using Russian hardware. And I say this as a lifelong supporter of manned exploration who fully expected in 1969 to be able to tour the Moon before the end of my life (2040 or so).
sPh
And yes, stores can be required to scan those S/Ns if the feds so desire, and it can be made to stick. Bank tellers don't get paid all that much more than Best Buy clerks, but the threat of 20 years in the federal pen gives them a bit of incentive to follow the money-laundering reporting procedures. Heck, I heard a discussion between two entry-level postal clerks the other day about how much fun they had spotting drug dealers and reporting them.
sPh
And that was with essentially zero computer control of the engine, and a 5-speed. I figure if Honda really wanted to, they could produce a SmartCar equivalent that would hold two people, have reasonable performance and safety, and get 100 mpg. Or a 4-seater at 75 mpg. That tells me they don't think the US market will accept anything like that. Perhaps after a few years of $5/gal.
sPh
sPh
The ISS had its start under Reagan, and there were no doubt many political and bureaucratic reasons for it getting started. But by the Clinton Administration, it was _continued_ primarily for one purpose: to allow the US to indirectly subsidize the Russian space industry, and give all those soon-to-be-unemployed Russian rocket scientists a paycheck. Thus giving them less reason to wander off to Iran, Pakistan, China, etc. And that seems to have been fairly successful.
sPh
Does the Washington Post, or any other mainstream media outlet, publish a story whenever an exploit is released in the wild for Internet Explorer? In the last year, maybe if it is actually affecting some media companies. Otherwise no.
.... Microsoft's PR firm?
So why the constant drumbeat of breathless stories about bugs (flaws) and exploits in Firefox? Could it be that the MSM is being seeded by someone? Say
sPh
sPh
I played Computer Space, which preceeded Pong, and once had the opportunity to buy one. Which I did not do, to my great regret since. I also had a Magnavox Odyssey, although since it had 4 games instead of just a pong-clone it might have been an Odyssey II or something like that. pong-hockey! Whoo hoo!
sPh
One small flaw in the argument: Microsoft wasn't always hated. During the 1980-1990 time period (approximately), they were seen as one of the "good guys". In particular, during the movement of PCs into large corporations in the 1984-1990 period, Microsoft was viewed by many as a strong supporter of personally-directed computing resources against the tyranny of the Data Processing Department. While their technology was never the best, it had its good points (MS-DOS 3.3; even Windows 3.1), and as Steve Gibson has pointed out its openness allowed a huge industry of improvements to spring up, which formed the basis for today's software industry.
So, my question to Microsoft fans is, what happened between 1990 and 2000 that turned Microsoft from hero to goat? You be the judge.
sPh
Great reference - thanks. Have you heard of many sites using it in production?
sPh
sPh
It is amazing how a person can do a small amount of good work (and edit a book based on the contributions of others), which is fine, gain a small amount of fame as a result, which is fine, and then abuse that tiny amount of fame/reputation to make pontificating pronouncements for years afterward, possibly doing a lot of damage to the cause that orignally made him notorious.
sPh
sPh
And per basic logic: what is the simplest explanation for why for the last two years worms have been sucking data off hard drives and transmitting it to various east asian countries? Lot of curious teenagers sitting around over there just dying to read American powerpoints?
sPh
Well, I know for a fact that our municipal electric utility is adding utility pole data to our town's GIS, and that they are not using legal survey data to do it, just ordinary industrial-resolution GPS, as I have watched them do it and asked the GIS manager about it.
Geographers claim domain over everything on the surface of the earth, so I think you will find just about everything in someone's GIS, legally surveyed or not.
sPh
It can also include other data such as sewer line routes, utility pole locations, etc.
sPh
sPh
You have to consider the possibility that there were some secret clauses to the Apple-Intel agreement. A volume of 1 million units per year would do a lot to kickstart the cost/price loop for the Itanic.
sPh
Everyone is assuming that Jobs is speaking of only the x86 architecture, whether 32 or 64 bit. What if part of the deal is for Apple to test and if possible deploy Itanium for their high-end desktops and servers? 2-3 million Itanium units per year might be enough to get a positive feedback loop working for Intel on that product line.
sPh
Usually I defend Dvorak here, because despite his annoying style and habit of shit-stirring I think he is very knowledgable and as insighful as any industry commentator out there.
So honesty compels me to point out: Dvorak has been predicting an Apple switch to Intel processors since at least 1984. Given the rate of change in the microprocessor industry since 1980, it was inevitable that if he kept at it long enough he would be right eventually.
I imagine he will now start predicting that Apple will buy all rights to the Alpha from HP and start a secret program to move to that!
sPh
> Yeah, but let's face it, you were going to buy a
> new Mac in that timescale anyway.
The problem, as the OP noted, is the software. Most home users can afford to buy a new computer every 3-5 years. They cannot afford to re-buy all the software they own, and oftentimes a critical application is no longer in development or even available.
sPh
Well, on my current Dell laptop it is to the _right_ of the F12 key; totally unreachable.
;-(
I too love French keyboards, especially because at my last company it was always a dude Vice-President or above who showed up with one and needed his laptop fixed NOW OR ELSE
sPh
> which the maker touts will make you type 100%
> faster in a few weeks since it will keep you from
> looking at the keyboard.
10-15 years ago I might have agreed with this, but today there are so many keyboard layouts that it is impossible not to look. The ~ and | symbols are in a different place on every one of the 10 keyboards I use daily, for example.
sPh
sPh
When that entity terminated, they transferred stewardship of POSIX to the IEEE. IEEE may have copyrighted subsequent versions (but see the Veeck case), but they can't retroactively copyright US Government documents.
sPh