There is no particular reason that observatories need to be located in the US or Canada.
From the point of view of pure science, perhaps not. But from the point of view of a US citizen it would be preferable that that $1 billion of high-tech spending occur in North America. Sorry for being greedy and self-serving;-(
There are many usable spots way out in the middle of nowhere.
Well, I have flown over a lot of nowhere in North America over the last two years. I would agree that there are a lot of spots, but as I understand it the best location for an observatory is on top of a mountain. And from what I can see out of the airplane window, people are rapidly building in the foothills and lower slopes of all the North American ranges. Which is not surprising as those would tend to be great locations - but does that leave any locations for telescopes?
Well, no, actually. The India of 20 years ago had plenty of good scientists and a lot of good scientific research going on. It isn't knowledge or understanding I am pointing out: it is the ability to turn that knowledge into something useful via a long-term, structured development project. Which is what India seems to have trouble with. Of course, that is a gross generalization given the size and diversity of the country, but the last few big aerospace projects haven't turned out so well.
That said, contrary to many comments above I think a big high-technology project is an excellent way to jump-start an economy, regardless of whether there is still has poverty and inequality in that economy. That is essentially what England and the US did from 1840 - 1880 (and again 1950 - 1960) after all.
India has been working for more than 20 years on an indigenous jet figher to replace its Mig-21s, and also a jet trainer to replace its Hawks. The latest report: some Mig-29s and new Hawks have been rented "temporarily" from Russia and England to "fill in" until the local products are ready.
So - if it has taken India 20 years to produce some Mach 1.5 aircraft, how long will it take to produce a usuable Mach 20 spacecraft?
Your organization's service departments and contractors exist (or should exist) to provide service to and improve the operations of the business units. In all well-run organizations I have worked at this has been the case.
Lawyers and engineers usually work well together (better than MBAs and managers or even MBAs and lawyers). If you present a good, solid package of facts and reference material to a lawyer he will be more than willing to work with you.
My suggestion is that, rather than letting the SCO problem build FUD under the surface, be proactive (buzzword alert) and take care of it upfront. Thus reducing the amount of tension over the question and winning points from your org's Ruling Powers for not letting them get blindsided. Better to attend some meetings at the lawywer's office (where you can learn a lot if you listen and ask intelligent questions) than to have the SCO letter dumped on the table at a Board of Directors' meeting with no warning.
A memo was sent by a manager (non techy) to my team leader (very techy) about the possibility of us having to pay linux license fees on our servers....his reaction "They can shove it" and "Im not f*cking paying anything to SCO".
I would suggest that a better approach might be to reply, "Let's sit down with Legal (or our counsel on retainer) and talk it over". Prior to the meeting with Legal, forward the lawyer (barrister in your area?) both the plain and the annotated filings from Groklaw, plus some links to Groklaw, Lessig's analysis, and Moglen's statements. Lawyers love to bill for time spent surfing the Internet, and once they have read through SCO's filings the meeting is almost certain to go your way. Then everyone is happy.
Which means you dont have a clue about how he feels about the whole thing. If he would know about the lawsuit, he might think/act differently...
Depends on the size of the company. When I worked for a Fortune 50 company, our (relatively small) division received about one patent/copyright/trade secret shakedown letter per week. We forwarded them to Legal without a second throught. 99.95% of them turned out to be bogus; for the remaining 0.05% we negotiated a fair payment.
Even assuming that SCO fell into the 0.05% (and I have talked with quite a few lawyers who think it won't) we would not have considered $600 per Linux install a "fair" payment, and I don't think Legal would have either.
Lands End don't seem to carry the exact briefcase that I use now, but this one looks fairly close. Its cousin has seen me from Brussels to Sydney with no damage to my laptop, including the occasional fall off the top of my roller suitcase.
If you believe SCO's share value will plummet in the medium term you should sell it "short" (i.e. buy a derivative of the share so you make money if it falls).
Not a bad idea, but (a) there are no derivatives of SCOX on the market, meaning you have to buy/sell/short actual shares (b) the lack of liquidity and the number of shares controlled by investment companies with a hand in SCO's management (e.g. Baystar) makes it very hazardous to short. The price rise over the last two weeks is likely the result of a short squeeze, for instance.
I think we can all agree that 24 months from now SCOX's price will be close to zero. However, between now and that time experts in market trading can squeeze a lot of money out of novices' pockets.
Umm, if every slashdotter bought a couple hundred dollars worth of stock, would that make us (as a group, disparate though it would be) majority stockholders, in which case we would have more pull to make them drop the suit?
I haven't done the math, but there can't be that many outstanding shares of stock compared to the number of registered slashdotters.
The majority of SCOX is currently held by insiders and various investment firms. The amount available for general trading isn't enough to gain control of the company. If FOSSers were to start buying the outstanding shares, that would only drive the price up to the benefit of Darl and Baystar.
Now, if thousands of Slashdotters were to place orders to buy at $0.50 with their brokers, that might get Wall Street's attention.
In reading various volume's of Tolkien's personal letters, I found that he was very well aware that LOTR would not survive the translation to film intact. In fact during the first round of talks with Hollywood in the early 1960s, he instructed his agent "either full creative control or bags of money, but we won't give up both".
That said, I do wish Peter Jackson had spent some more time watching the character movies (and even the action movies) of the 1930s and 1940s to see that faster + louder does not always equal better.
Given that this sort of incident is inevitable in a distributed editing system, why not have a tool that moves the text and threads from the second article into the first, and then deletes or hides the second article? Seems a lot cleaner.
Au contraire, Mr. Sposky, most Windows people I deal with are ignorant of anything that doesn't come from Redmond, and not willing to learn. God knows I've meant plenty of UNIX bigots, but at least they know something about Windows - they have to, there's no avoiding it. The same is not true about Windows bigots: they combine their parochialism with a triumphalism that is as infuriating as it is unmerited.
In fact, I believe that Bill Gates stated during the 90s that one of his hiring goals at Microsoft was to get very smart people who did not have extensive experience with the systems of the 60s and 70s, so they would have no "preconceptions". And from what I see of Microsoft products (particuarly networking products) he succeeded in that goal, but it turned out to be double-edged sword with two very sharp edges. At least from the end-users' perspective (hard to argue anything against the size of Mr. Gates' wallet).
I think you missed Sposky's point completely, but...
If you read the article, you would notice that the ENTIRE POINT was that there isn't one true way of doing things. The secondary point is that some *nix people are pulled into some sort superiority complex.
The cultural schism is so sharp that Unix has never really made any inroads on the desktop. Aunt Marge can't really use Unix, and repeated efforts to make a pretty front end for Unix that Aunt Marge can use have failed, entirely because these efforts were done by programmers who were steeped in the Unix culture.
Well, I actually did read the article. Although over breakfast, and of course not as deeply as I would have like. Then again, reading deeply is against the Slashdot Code of Posting anyway;-).
However, as the snippet from the original article above shows, I don't think my interpretation is entirely (if at all) incorrect. Mr. Sposky seems to me to be saying that the Unix metaphor is "less usable" to "Aunt Minnie" (pretty insulting, BTW: my Aunt Minnie was programming calcuating machines before Mr. Sposky was born, but that's another topic) due to its inherent nature.
I am observing that the Windows metaphor works great for the first 2-3 years, but then the end user runs into a brick wall where he can't do what he wants, doesn't know why, and has no tools or path at his disposal to move forward. I have seldom seen a person who grew up in the Unix (or VMS, or TOPS-20) metaphor hit that same wall and not be able to figure out a way around it. It was primarly my Unix and VMS background that allowed me to figure out how to make Microsoft LAN Manager 1.1 actually work, for example, when the Microsoft technicians were clueless (another long story).
I>Accepting (at least for argument sake) that sphealey is dead on, that is NOTNOT the same as saying 2/3rds of users (or "useage") is for dp.
Just a WAG, but doesn't it seem likely - given the widespread availability and use of 'puter's - that 2/3rds of users are writing a memo/report/letter to their bosses or kin, or browsing the web, or trying to balance their checkbook? If so, we may want to give weight to two Sposky observations:
I am aware of what you say. Perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed by working in the corporate business information world, but as much web surfing and letter writing as does go on in the world, it is my intuitive impressions that 2/3 of the total bits being moved on desktop computers are being moved for the purpose of processing one form of data into another, and the vast majority of that in the work arena, not the personal arena. Most office workers have their desktop PC staring them in the face for 8-9 hours, after all, but their home computer for 60-90 minutes at most.
Interesting essay, but Mr. Sposky seems to miss out on a situation I have observed more and more over the last five years: as Windows-based personal computers have moved out of the realm of the "power users" and into the hands of the general public, including the general management ranks, the initial sense of elation, power, and control is gradually replaced by a sense of bubbling frustration.
To wit: why is it so difficult to accomplish this seeming simple task? Why can't straightforward business task x be accomplished with these shiny new computers? What do you mean we need to hire 5 VB programmers for 3 months to move this data from here to there, or cause this function (which should have happened automatically) to occur every night on schedule?
Yet when I drop down to the command line to run an NT Posix utility which replaces those five VB programmers with a simple script, or pull up SQL*Plus to quickly make mass changes to the database, they sneer "why are you still using that archiac technology?".
The problem that Mr. Sposky doesn't address is this: 2/3 of the problems addressed with computers today (even so-called personal computers) are data processing problems, and there is absolutely no evidence that a GUI is an efficient way to handle those problems. Yet rather than use the best currently available tool (the command line and scripts), or devise a better one, Mr. Sposky and the Windows advocates would have us shoehorn every task into a GUI + complex API world. Um, those don't work very well, I am afraid. If you don't like the command line, fine, but could you propose something better? Because all I see right now is frustration.
It's also this intense stupidity that has prevented us from having a major vendor that actually provides a real RDBMS to this very day. If DBMS people would actually invest a little time in learning about the Relational Model, maybe they'd stop purchasing the crap that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc. keep forcing out and (flamebait here) maybe people would stop installing MySQL and Access and thinking they're going to be good for anything more important than cookie recipes).
That's exactly how Larry Ellison got his start - he saw a good idea in an IBM tech journal, hired some programmers to implement it, and the result was Oracle. Why don't you (and the others who post this stuff to database-related forums and threads) go ahead and do the same? Actually write and market a "real relational system based on theory"? Then you could stop yelling at everyone else about it.
The Minolta SRt line (SRt-101 and SRt-201 are the most common) has similar characteristics and usually go on eBay for around 175 USD. Plus you arm muscles will be stronger after you use it for a while.
I must admit that I disagree with the assertion that "Pressure to Respond Quickly" is some sort of negative issue with e-mail; in fact, I'd go so far as to say that with the volume of mail in inboxes today, people are actually not feeling enough pressure to respond quickly. Sure, sometimes we're okay with waiting for a response for a while, but oftentimes nowadays email is used in the role that voicemail used to play, and if one receives a voicemail, one tends to reply directly afterwards. Sometimes, the same attitude needs to be taken in regards to email.
I worked in engineering offices prior to the widespread use of voice mail and e-mail, and I have worked in them through both deployments. As far as I can see, engineers were more productive prior to the arrival of e-mail. Voice mail was a bit of a wash, with some positive and some negative effects.
sPh
Re:Not the source, really
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 1
Depends on how you define 'better'. A smartcard that did RSA signatures would kick a passwords ass. (A simple PIN system that locks the device after N bad attempts would be a good idea for this). The problem is that you need special hardware to interface with it, and it's not going to be supported by a lot of stuff.
That's kind of my point. Smart cards, PIN generators, all kinds of fancy technology would be better than passwords. Except that passwords are implemented in every system and work everywhere (even under water or in space), whereas the other named technologies are not and do not. I don't like passwords myself - but every attempt I have seen to do away with them (stretching over 20 years now) eventually runs into a brick wall due to the universality problem.
sPh
Not the source, really
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
So works the mind of a D'ohLTish security engineer, working feverishly away in his cubicle in the basement next to the steam plant.
Take him out for a walk. Let him see the sunshine for the first time in years. Introduce him to some normal human beings. Be gentle at first; these are creatures with whom he has had no contact since being sucked into the depths of the university system.
Then, when his pallor begins to fade and he begins to take on signs of socialization, take him into the offices in the hospital and let him see the four sets of user names and password clinging to the monitors on yellow stickies (e. g., Post-It Notes) or, for the more security-minded, slid into the top drawer where no one would think to look.
Besides being offensive, this scenario is, 99.5% of the time, blatently untrue. The security professionals are very much aware that the password systems don't work, and that the userids and passwords are sticky-noted to the monitor. But they have not choice: (1) no better system than passwords has yet been devised (2) they are responding to the demands of UPPER MANAGEMENT for "security NOW, dammit!" (3) upper management in turn is responding to the demands of auditors, regulatory agencies, and ultimately Congress.
The guy in the basement office has about as much control over this process as Pvt. Beetle Bailey does over the war in Iraq.
And really - would those same people who tape the password to the monitor tape their garage door key to the doorframe because "it is too much trouble to carry 3 keys around"? I have 15 keys on my keyring, personally, yet no one makes offensive statements about architects and locksmiths re: "door design".
Slashdot Mirror
sPh
sPh
Is there a usable spot for a large telescope in the US or Canada that isn't affected by light pollution?
sPh
Well, no, actually. The India of 20 years ago had plenty of good scientists and a lot of good scientific research going on. It isn't knowledge or understanding I am pointing out: it is the ability to turn that knowledge into something useful via a long-term, structured development project. Which is what India seems to have trouble with. Of course, that is a gross generalization given the size and diversity of the country, but the last few big aerospace projects haven't turned out so well.
That said, contrary to many comments above I think a big high-technology project is an excellent way to jump-start an economy, regardless of whether there is still has poverty and inequality in that economy. That is essentially what England and the US did from 1840 - 1880 (and again 1950 - 1960) after all.
sPh
India has been working for more than 20 years on an indigenous jet figher to replace its Mig-21s, and also a jet trainer to replace its Hawks. The latest report: some Mig-29s and new Hawks have been rented "temporarily" from Russia and England to "fill in" until the local products are ready.
So - if it has taken India 20 years to produce some Mach 1.5 aircraft, how long will it take to produce a usuable Mach 20 spacecraft?
sPh
Lawyers and engineers usually work well together (better than MBAs and managers or even MBAs and lawyers). If you present a good, solid package of facts and reference material to a lawyer he will be more than willing to work with you.
My suggestion is that, rather than letting the SCO problem build FUD under the surface, be proactive (buzzword alert) and take care of it upfront. Thus reducing the amount of tension over the question and winning points from your org's Ruling Powers for not letting them get blindsided. Better to attend some meetings at the lawywer's office (where you can learn a lot if you listen and ask intelligent questions) than to have the SCO letter dumped on the table at a Board of Directors' meeting with no warning.
sPh
sPh
Even assuming that SCO fell into the 0.05% (and I have talked with quite a few lawyers who think it won't) we would not have considered $600 per Linux install a "fair" payment, and I don't think Legal would have either.
sPh
sPh
I think we can all agree that 24 months from now SCOX's price will be close to zero. However, between now and that time experts in market trading can squeeze a lot of money out of novices' pockets.
sPh
Now, if thousands of Slashdotters were to place orders to buy at $0.50 with their brokers, that might get Wall Street's attention.
sPh
sPh
That said, I do wish Peter Jackson had spent some more time watching the character movies (and even the action movies) of the 1930s and 1940s to see that faster + louder does not always equal better.
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
However, as the snippet from the original article above shows, I don't think my interpretation is entirely (if at all) incorrect. Mr. Sposky seems to me to be saying that the Unix metaphor is "less usable" to "Aunt Minnie" (pretty insulting, BTW: my Aunt Minnie was programming calcuating machines before Mr. Sposky was born, but that's another topic) due to its inherent nature.
I am observing that the Windows metaphor works great for the first 2-3 years, but then the end user runs into a brick wall where he can't do what he wants, doesn't know why, and has no tools or path at his disposal to move forward. I have seldom seen a person who grew up in the Unix (or VMS, or TOPS-20) metaphor hit that same wall and not be able to figure out a way around it. It was primarly my Unix and VMS background that allowed me to figure out how to make Microsoft LAN Manager 1.1 actually work, for example, when the Microsoft technicians were clueless (another long story).
sPh
Arguments to the contrary cheerfully accepted.
sPh
To wit: why is it so difficult to accomplish this seeming simple task? Why can't straightforward business task x be accomplished with these shiny new computers? What do you mean we need to hire 5 VB programmers for 3 months to move this data from here to there, or cause this function (which should have happened automatically) to occur every night on schedule?
Yet when I drop down to the command line to run an NT Posix utility which replaces those five VB programmers with a simple script, or pull up SQL*Plus to quickly make mass changes to the database, they sneer "why are you still using that archiac technology?".
The problem that Mr. Sposky doesn't address is this: 2/3 of the problems addressed with computers today (even so-called personal computers) are data processing problems, and there is absolutely no evidence that a GUI is an efficient way to handle those problems. Yet rather than use the best currently available tool (the command line and scripts), or devise a better one, Mr. Sposky and the Windows advocates would have us shoehorn every task into a GUI + complex API world. Um, those don't work very well, I am afraid. If you don't like the command line, fine, but could you propose something better? Because all I see right now is frustration.
sPh
sPh
The Minolta SRt line (SRt-101 and SRt-201 are the most common) has similar characteristics and usually go on eBay for around 175 USD. Plus you arm muscles will be stronger after you use it for a while.
sPh
sPh
sPh
sPh
The guy in the basement office has about as much control over this process as Pvt. Beetle Bailey does over the war in Iraq.
And really - would those same people who tape the password to the monitor tape their garage door key to the doorframe because "it is too much trouble to carry 3 keys around"? I have 15 keys on my keyring, personally, yet no one makes offensive statements about architects and locksmiths re: "door design".
sPh