It seems that the valley is full of companies in which the 'engineers' are 'testing' wireless networks, and that these 'tests' coincidentally were supposed to stop around the day an article is published about them.
yeah, right, if it wasn't for all this control, my head would be spinning right out of my neck...
You should have been at the Apache conference this month: one of the lecturers was showing a Java program that emulated a magic 8 ball, while going back and forth between the windows, people in the audience noticed that he was running MS Outlook.
After a while the guy ran the program and asked for questions to put to it, a guy from mid-back shouted 'Ask the program if MS sponsors you to use Outlook'
The guy ran the program, and yes, it printed out 'Outlook not so good'.
Now, the probability of that coming out is already like 1 out of 20, but what is the likelyhood of somebody asking that question? If it was a set-up it was done extremely well, since everybody laughed for quite a while...
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Subject says it all, size is great, but how long does it take to get the femtosecond laser to focus on a different part of the cube to read other data? (not to mention *finding* where this data is stored)
Also, what would the transfer rate be? And how is the data encoded? (CRCs etc. you wouldn't want a speck of dust to prevent you from reading a couple of gigs from the cube...)
I wish there was a more technical article published somewhere (hopefully not in Japanese;)
Hmmmm... I have to be cynical, but couldn't this be a case of Sony noticing that there is a definite lack of quality titles for the PS2 (no flames please, fanboys please abstain) and trying to put out an affortable SDK to create some buzz?
I might be wrong, obviously, but given the extremely low price of this SDK, and that it runs a very buzz-friendly OS, I have to wonder...
after all, given that the XBox is a MS product, I assume that it would be very easy for MS to give out some sort of SDK that runs on a standard PC, since the hardware is pretty much the same.
Every article is signed by the researcher *and by all the peer reviewers*
It would be then trivial to check the signatures to find out that the electronic copy you downloaded it's the real thing.
This would probably also streamline the peer review process quite a bit, since a peer reviewer will be sure that the copy that was peer reviewed will be the actual copy that gets published without any changes you weren't aware of.
ok, I'll bite: since when all debian packages are distributed source-only?
If you so desire, you can download source RPMs for RedHat and compile those, or you can install the binaries. The same goes for debian, most people install the binaries, but if you want to, you can compile from source packages.
Disclaimer: I am currently running an old debian at home, and RH 7 at work.
Before everybody starts repeating this (it's already 2 people)
The story said that the site is not accepting orders not that the site is down. If you go to the site, go to the shopping area and try to order stuff, it says that the order section is down 'for maintenance'
The rest of the site is up, and the story never implied otherwise.
Forget CRLs, they should just create some nice OCSP responders, so everybody can be *really* sure that the certificate they are being presented is still valid.
OCSP = online status checking protocol
This means that instead of checking your cert against a huge CRL (that you have to download every day) you just query the appropriate OCSP responder for that issuer, and you do a realtime query.
The dialog should be of the type:
software xyz presented certificate abc: what do you want me to do?
accept cert refuse cert check cert cancel
where 'check cert' does a query. Problem with this approach is that they have to beef up their hardware to handle all these requests, but if you don't care if the cert is valid at all, why even bother with certs in the first place.
I really really really doubt it, remember that Sony makes quite a pretty penny from all of these 'specialized units'.
What they want, is to get you to buy one, period. Then, if you want the features that a 'real' DVD player has (progressive component outputs, better remote control, HDCD compatibility etc.) they will steer you towards one of their 'specialized' players.
The same can be said about hi-fi systems: while the drive pick up mechanics are pretty much the same in your cdrom vs in a dedicated cd unit that goes in an hi-fi, all of the other electronics is very different (converters, preamplifiers etc.) since the objective of your cheap playstation is to play games, while the objective of a (sometimes twice as) expensive cd drive, is to provide the most faithful possible music reproduction.
Also remember that the 'specialized' CD player will have a good remote control, and a nice led display that tells you a lot of information without having to turn on the tv all the time...
All of this talk of 'digital convergence' is IMHO marketing doublespeak, since if they really wanted things to converge, the form factor of a console would much more closely resemble the form factor of a 'standard' dvd/cd/hi-fi component, with a nice, big, illuminated programmable LCD display at the front, that can display relevant information (track number, cd-text, whatever). Let's also not forget a really nice remote control, maybe similar to a palm device, so the 'keys' can be reprogrammed on the fly.
Obviously, if they did indeed create such a component, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, since they wouldn't be taken seriously by the audiophiles (my CD player plays games? bleurgh) by the gamers (what's with this big square console, the Xbox looks nicer and it's way smaller) and by the average user (1500$ for this thing? I don't need all this stuff, I just want to play games/play dvds/play CDs).
My 2c, 'specialized' units will not die for a long time coming, not really because of technical reasons (even if, like I said, nobody has yet tried to produce a *real* universal player) but mostly because a specialized unit, obviously, will be better and cheaper at what it does, and because the designer will be able to target its visual appearance to its target market (that's why you'll never see wood panelings in a console and transparent orange plastic in a high-end stereo equipment;)
I was wondering about the safety as well, but you are not going to tell me that liquid gas vehicles are any safer, and there's quite some of those going around, especially in Europe, where it seems that this car is aimed to.
I personally have seen may cars with a big huge cylinder of liquid gas stored in the trunk (very unsafe in case somebody slams into you) or even on the roof of the car (need I say more?). It's obvious that a 300psi air tank has hazards, but not more than what I said above.
Also, on a related note, does anybody know how 'safe' are the fuel cells/batteries used in electric cars if they are broken? Is the inside a gel-like material that won't react with, say, fire or splatter everywhere, or is there some hidden safety hazard?
I am so tired of this marketspeak coming from everywhere that seems to imply that if you buy the latest processor you're going to be able to surf faster.
Come on, even if I stick a pentium IV, or one of these vaporware chips and connect to the internet via a modem, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via a cable connection shared with 200 other people who download stuff all day at the same time, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via whatever connection you want, and the proverbial backhoe operator cuts some fibers causing massive lag spikes everywhere, it's not going to be faster than a 486, and it has the potential to be slower than a carrying pigeon if you happen to be on the wrong side of the cut hop.
basically it's an air compressed car that goes at about 60mph top speed that can go for about 120 miles between charges. To charge it you basically plug it in an electrical outlet, and the compressor compresses the air to fill the tank.
It's also interesting that, due to some carbon filters, the exhaust air is cleaner than the air that goes in;)
I wonder why there's not more buzz about it, it seems really cool for short range movements, I know if I had one I would surely use it for the work/home commute...
Since when does a shopping cart program does have to be authoritative on prices? A shopping cart should send to the back-end just the item numbers, and any promotional code.
Next step, the back-end takes this information, and computes the actual order: to be sure to cover all legal bases, this order is given a serial number, the shopping cart shows the user a final recap with all the charges as determined by the back-end with a big I agree button at the bottom.
If the user agrees, the shopping cart then sends to the back-end just the serial number of the current order, which then gets processed.
When I was younger, similar arguments were made regarding pocket calculators: so many people were fussing about it that we in fact weren't allowed to use them at all (not even for square roots and logarithms) until something like grade 7 (this happened in Italy BTW, not sure what's the situation here in North America).
I personally think that electronic aids *help* people become smarter, since one has to use less brain power for trivial things (i.e. remembering your doctor's phone number or that you have a dentist appointment in three weeks). Being able to calculate a logarithm or a square root by hand doesn't mean that you're smart, most of the time it means that you are able to find your way around logarithmic table books;)
I am sure that similar arguments can be made about cars: since when car usage has become widespread, the population has become much more sedentary (with all the problems associated with it) but at the same time the quality of life has become better in many ways (if you get sick, you don't have to wait hours/days for a doctor to travel to your neck of the woods).
If PDAs are so bad, why don't we ask the author of this article to stop using his computer and write future articles with a chisel in a slab of stone? I'm sure that overreliance on word processors has made as many people stupid as overreliance on PDAs...
Now, IANAL, but unless the people who submit scores to the site created them by looking at the composer's original scores, I assume that sooner or later some lawyer will go after them for copyright infringement.
Am I being too paranoid? If so, why is that most sheet music I've bought has a very prominent 'do not photocopy' sign on its first page? It's not that they can copyright the music itself, but it seems they sure can copyright that particular transcription.
So, if a score contains an extraneous # somewhere, or some extra ligature or something that can be attributed to a specific edition, and you blindly copy it and post it to the site, what do you think your legal position would be?
I know this is a can of worms, and I can understand the book publishers that want to protect their investment (especially if the score in question is an arrangement or a reduction of an orchestral score to a piano score) but at the same time I would love that somebody created a repository with freely available sheet music, so musicologists and enthusiasts would be able to study a composer's work without having to resort to online ordering to find the score they're looking for.
P.S. the last time I bought sheet music I was still living in Europe, so maybe here in North America the 'do not photocopy' signs do not exist
As the subject says, it's Sega of America that denied the report, which is really interesting, considering that it is no secret that while the dreamcast has done fairly well over here, it did pretty badly in Japan.
I wonder if the story should be read as 'Sega of Japan is going to stop producing Dreamcasts, Sega of America instead will keep producing consoles and software'.
OT: personally I bought a dreamcast for basically three games: House of the dead, Crazy taxi and Dance dance revolution. At work instead we mostly played Virtua Tennis (*awesome* game) and Ultimate Fighting Championship.
disclaimer: I live in Canada, and was born in Italy.
First of all, here in Canada I pay most my bills via direct withdrawal on my bank account or via the very convenient web payment options that my bank provides.
The only things that I pay via the 'put a check in the envelope' routine are:
- Some credit card bills (my bank doesn't let me webpay other banks' credit card bills unfortunately)
- Charity things
- The odd thing I don't feel like paying with a credit card, which happens like once a year or so.
that's it. If you can't do the same, change your bank to a more technologically advanced one !
Games programming is one of the last bastions of 'pure' code;
don't believe the hype, I had fairly recently a short stint at a games development company (whom I will not name) and nowadays pure coding doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
I should know, we had to use an IMHO sucky gaming engine just because our publisher wanted us to, and we wouldn't have offered a contract if we offered to write our own engine (which IMHO would have been a zillion times better than what we were forced to use).
Nowadays games programming is getting closer and closer to assembly line programming, it's all milestones, milestones, milestones, using pieces that you can buy off the shelf as much as possible to minimize publisher's exposure (your team tanks ? who cares, the publisher still has the license to the engine you are using, while if you were developing from scratch, they wouldn't have anything).
IMHO (again) games programming used to be fun and 'pure', now for many developers it's as rewarding as sucking rocks through a straw, I mean, to get into games programming (I wanted to see it first hand) I had to take a significant pay cut, work nearly twice as many hours, and have far less freedom in my technical decisions than I had at any other company I worked in: after a while I figured it was not for me, and found a much much more rewarding (financially and professionally) job elsewhere.
Before buying in the hype, please do yourself a favour and research how the games industry really is nowadays. While there are some fun software houses to work in, the likelyhood you're going to end up in one of them (especially as your first job) is not that high.
While some of what's posted there is mostly flames etc. reading Fatbabies will give you at least an idea of the flip side of the coin.
This article (the one on 3drage) might not win, but I would bet it would place fairly well in the 'least-content-per-page-to-increase-banner-ads-rev enue' contest.
Seriously, on my screen, I'd say that at least 3/4 of the page is composed of sidebars, banners, ads, table of contents etc. and at 1600x1200 I can see no more than two paragraphs of content: this is totally ridiculous.
Even the NYT switched to multi-page format as a default, but at least their chunks are page-length, and one can easily see the article on a single page via the handy link at the bottom (which I usually use when the article is more than two pages).
Anybody has a link to a similar article in a more reasonable format ? I refuse to give money to a site that cares (much) more about banner revenue than reader comfort.
Now, I might be going a bit off track here, but if my memory serves me right, magnetic bubble memories are still used in hostile environments (satellites, for example) where a 'conventional' RAM wouldn't last very long.
Actually a quick search on google shows that at least in Japan there is still some development going on in this field
Re:Great, except that...
on
Deja.com Vu!
·
· Score: 2
Ditto, I was just going to post asking if anybody knows when this temporary situation was going to end.
While some groups shouldn't really be archived for more than a couple of months (who is going to want to read comp.os.linux.setup messages of five years ago ?) there are others that deserve to be archived as far back as possible (algorithms, chess, and anything that's not moving too fast)
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that the valley is full of companies in which the 'engineers' are 'testing' wireless networks, and that these 'tests' coincidentally were supposed to stop around the day an article is published about them.
yeah, right, if it wasn't for all this control, my head would be spinning right out of my neck...
This is a true story, hard to believe, but true.
You should have been at the Apache conference this month: one of the lecturers was showing a Java program that emulated a magic 8 ball, while going back and forth between the windows, people in the audience noticed that he was running MS Outlook.
After a while the guy ran the program and asked for questions to put to it, a guy from mid-back shouted 'Ask the program if MS sponsors you to use Outlook'
The guy ran the program, and yes, it printed out 'Outlook not so good'.
Now, the probability of that coming out is already like 1 out of 20, but what is the likelyhood of somebody asking that question? If it was a set-up it was done extremely well, since everybody laughed for quite a while...
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Subject says it all, size is great, but how long does it take to get the femtosecond laser to focus on a different part of the cube to read other data? (not to mention *finding* where this data is stored)
;)
Also, what would the transfer rate be? And how is the data encoded? (CRCs etc. you wouldn't want a speck of dust to prevent you from reading a couple of gigs from the cube...)
I wish there was a more technical article published somewhere (hopefully not in Japanese
Hmmmm... I have to be cynical, but couldn't this be a case of Sony noticing that there is a definite lack of quality titles for the PS2 (no flames please, fanboys please abstain) and trying to put out an affortable SDK to create some buzz?
I might be wrong, obviously, but given the extremely low price of this SDK, and that it runs a very buzz-friendly OS, I have to wonder...
after all, given that the XBox is a MS product, I assume that it would be very easy for MS to give out some sort of SDK that runs on a standard PC, since the hardware is pretty much the same.
What do you all think?
Why not PKI?
Every researchers has a key pair
Every article is signed by the researcher *and by all the peer reviewers*
It would be then trivial to check the signatures to find out that the electronic copy you downloaded it's the real thing.
This would probably also streamline the peer review process quite a bit, since a peer reviewer will be sure that the copy that was peer reviewed will be the actual copy that gets published without any changes you weren't aware of.
ok, I'll bite: since when all debian packages are distributed source-only?
If you so desire, you can download source RPMs for RedHat and compile those, or you can install the binaries. The same goes for debian, most people install the binaries, but if you want to, you can compile from source packages.
Disclaimer: I am currently running an old debian at home, and RH 7 at work.
The story said that the site is not accepting orders not that the site is down. If you go to the site, go to the shopping area and try to order stuff, it says that the order section is down 'for maintenance'
The rest of the site is up, and the story never implied otherwise.
The site is up, but the shopping cart doesn't accept orders.
nt
Forget CRLs, they should just create some nice OCSP responders, so everybody can be *really* sure that the certificate they are being presented is still valid.
OCSP = online status checking protocol
This means that instead of checking your cert against a huge CRL (that you have to download every day) you just query the appropriate OCSP responder for that issuer, and you do a realtime query.
The dialog should be of the type:
software xyz presented certificate abc: what do you want me to do?
accept cert refuse cert check cert cancel
where 'check cert' does a query. Problem with this approach is that they have to beef up their hardware to handle all these requests, but if you don't care if the cert is valid at all, why even bother with certs in the first place.
I really really really doubt it, remember that Sony makes quite a pretty penny from all of these 'specialized units'.
;)
What they want, is to get you to buy one, period. Then, if you want the features that a 'real' DVD player has (progressive component outputs, better remote control, HDCD compatibility etc.) they will steer you towards one of their 'specialized' players.
The same can be said about hi-fi systems: while the drive pick up mechanics are pretty much the same in your cdrom vs in a dedicated cd unit that goes in an hi-fi, all of the other electronics is very different (converters, preamplifiers etc.) since the objective of your cheap playstation is to play games, while the objective of a (sometimes twice as) expensive cd drive, is to provide the most faithful possible music reproduction.
Also remember that the 'specialized' CD player will have a good remote control, and a nice led display that tells you a lot of information without having to turn on the tv all the time...
All of this talk of 'digital convergence' is IMHO marketing doublespeak, since if they really wanted things to converge, the form factor of a console would much more closely resemble the form factor of a 'standard' dvd/cd/hi-fi component, with a nice, big, illuminated programmable LCD display at the front, that can display relevant information (track number, cd-text, whatever). Let's also not forget a really nice remote control, maybe similar to a palm device, so the 'keys' can be reprogrammed on the fly.
Obviously, if they did indeed create such a component, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, since they wouldn't be taken seriously by the audiophiles (my CD player plays games? bleurgh) by the gamers (what's with this big square console, the Xbox looks nicer and it's way smaller) and by the average user (1500$ for this thing? I don't need all this stuff, I just want to play games/play dvds/play CDs).
My 2c, 'specialized' units will not die for a long time coming, not really because of technical reasons (even if, like I said, nobody has yet tried to produce a *real* universal player) but mostly because a specialized unit, obviously, will be better and cheaper at what it does, and because the designer will be able to target its visual appearance to its target market (that's why you'll never see wood panelings in a console and transparent orange plastic in a high-end stereo equipment
I was wondering about the safety as well, but you are not going to tell me that liquid gas vehicles are any safer, and there's quite some of those going around, especially in Europe, where it seems that this car is aimed to.
I personally have seen may cars with a big huge cylinder of liquid gas stored in the trunk (very unsafe in case somebody slams into you) or even on the roof of the car (need I say more?). It's obvious that a 300psi air tank has hazards, but not more than what I said above.
Also, on a related note, does anybody know how 'safe' are the fuel cells/batteries used in electric cars if they are broken? Is the inside a gel-like material that won't react with, say, fire or splatter everywhere, or is there some hidden safety hazard?
I am so tired of this marketspeak coming from everywhere that seems to imply that if you buy the latest processor you're going to be able to surf faster.
Come on, even if I stick a pentium IV, or one of these vaporware chips and connect to the internet via a modem, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via a cable connection shared with 200 other people who download stuff all day at the same time, it's not going to be faster than a 486.
If I connect via whatever connection you want, and the proverbial backhoe operator cuts some fibers causing massive lag spikes everywhere, it's not going to be faster than a 486, and it has the potential to be slower than a carrying pigeon if you happen to be on the wrong side of the cut hop.
Check this out
h tml
;)
http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/guynegre.html
and
http://www.zeropollution.com/zeropollution/index.
basically it's an air compressed car that goes at about 60mph top speed that can go for about 120 miles between charges. To charge it you basically plug it in an electrical outlet, and the compressor compresses the air to fill the tank.
It's also interesting that, due to some carbon filters, the exhaust air is cleaner than the air that goes in
I wonder why there's not more buzz about it, it seems really cool for short range movements, I know if I had one I would surely use it for the work/home commute...
Since when does a shopping cart program does have to be authoritative on prices? A shopping cart should send to the back-end just the item numbers, and any promotional code.
Next step, the back-end takes this information, and computes the actual order: to be sure to cover all legal bases, this order is given a serial number, the shopping cart shows the user a final recap with all the charges as determined by the back-end with a big I agree button at the bottom.
If the user agrees, the shopping cart then sends to the back-end just the serial number of the current order, which then gets processed.
Am I missing something ?
When I was younger, similar arguments were made regarding pocket calculators: so many people were fussing about it that we in fact weren't allowed to use them at all (not even for square roots and logarithms) until something like grade 7 (this happened in Italy BTW, not sure what's the situation here in North America).
;)
I personally think that electronic aids *help* people become smarter, since one has to use less brain power for trivial things (i.e. remembering your doctor's phone number or that you have a dentist appointment in three weeks). Being able to calculate a logarithm or a square root by hand doesn't mean that you're smart, most of the time it means that you are able to find your way around logarithmic table books
I am sure that similar arguments can be made about cars: since when car usage has become widespread, the population has become much more sedentary (with all the problems associated with it) but at the same time the quality of life has become better in many ways (if you get sick, you don't have to wait hours/days for a doctor to travel to your neck of the woods).
If PDAs are so bad, why don't we ask the author of this article to stop using his computer and write future articles with a chisel in a slab of stone? I'm sure that overreliance on word processors has made as many people stupid as overreliance on PDAs...
still
blue = US
red = China
brown = Taiwan
seems fairly plausible, doesn't it ?
Now, IANAL, but unless the people who submit scores to the site created them by looking at the composer's original scores, I assume that sooner or later some lawyer will go after them for copyright infringement.
Am I being too paranoid? If so, why is that most sheet music I've bought has a very prominent 'do not photocopy' sign on its first page? It's not that they can copyright the music itself, but it seems they sure can copyright that particular transcription.
So, if a score contains an extraneous # somewhere, or some extra ligature or something that can be attributed to a specific edition, and you blindly copy it and post it to the site, what do you think your legal position would be?
I know this is a can of worms, and I can understand the book publishers that want to protect their investment (especially if the score in question is an arrangement or a reduction of an orchestral score to a piano score) but at the same time I would love that somebody created a repository with freely available sheet music, so musicologists and enthusiasts would be able to study a composer's work without having to resort to online ordering to find the score they're looking for.
P.S. the last time I bought sheet music I was still living in Europe, so maybe here in North America the 'do not photocopy' signs do not exist
As the subject says, it's Sega of America that denied the report, which is really interesting, considering that it is no secret that while the dreamcast has done fairly well over here, it did pretty badly in Japan.
I wonder if the story should be read as 'Sega of Japan is going to stop producing Dreamcasts, Sega of America instead will keep producing consoles and software'.
OT: personally I bought a dreamcast for basically three games: House of the dead, Crazy taxi and Dance dance revolution. At work instead we mostly played Virtua Tennis (*awesome* game) and Ultimate Fighting Championship.
disclaimer: I live in Canada, and was born in Italy.
First of all, here in Canada I pay most my bills via direct withdrawal on my bank account or via the very convenient web payment options that my bank provides.
The only things that I pay via the 'put a check in the envelope' routine are:
- Some credit card bills (my bank doesn't let me webpay other banks' credit card bills unfortunately)
- Charity things
- The odd thing I don't feel like paying with a credit card, which happens like once a year or so.
that's it. If you can't do the same, change your bank to a more technologically advanced one !
Games programming is one of the last bastions of 'pure' code;
don't believe the hype, I had fairly recently a short stint at a games development company (whom I will not name) and nowadays pure coding doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
I should know, we had to use an IMHO sucky gaming engine just because our publisher wanted us to, and we wouldn't have offered a contract if we offered to write our own engine (which IMHO would have been a zillion times better than what we were forced to use).
Nowadays games programming is getting closer and closer to assembly line programming, it's all milestones, milestones, milestones, using pieces that you can buy off the shelf as much as possible to minimize publisher's exposure (your team tanks ? who cares, the publisher still has the license to the engine you are using, while if you were developing from scratch, they wouldn't have anything).
IMHO (again) games programming used to be fun and 'pure', now for many developers it's as rewarding as sucking rocks through a straw, I mean, to get into games programming (I wanted to see it first hand) I had to take a significant pay cut, work nearly twice as many hours, and have far less freedom in my technical decisions than I had at any other company I worked in: after a while I figured it was not for me, and found a much much more rewarding (financially and professionally) job elsewhere.
Before buying in the hype, please do yourself a favour and research how the games industry really is nowadays. While there are some fun software houses to work in, the likelyhood you're going to end up in one of them (especially as your first job) is not that high.
While some of what's posted there is mostly flames etc. reading Fatbabies will give you at least an idea of the flip side of the coin.
... not give the person interviewed 5 tin cans of penguin mints just before the interview.
...check that they didn't SCREW WILDLY the night before.
...disable the perl script that inserts RANDOM capitalizations IN the TEXT.
This article (the one on 3drage) might not win, but I would bet it would place fairly well in the 'least-content-per-page-to-increase-banner-ads-rev enue' contest.
Seriously, on my screen, I'd say that at least 3/4 of the page is composed of sidebars, banners, ads, table of contents etc. and at 1600x1200 I can see no more than two paragraphs of content: this is totally ridiculous.
Even the NYT switched to multi-page format as a default, but at least their chunks are page-length, and one can easily see the article on a single page via the handy link at the bottom (which I usually use when the article is more than two pages).
Anybody has a link to a similar article in a more reasonable format ? I refuse to give money to a site that cares (much) more about banner revenue than reader comfort.
Now, I might be going a bit off track here, but if my memory serves me right, magnetic bubble memories are still used in hostile environments (satellites, for example) where a 'conventional' RAM wouldn't last very long.
Actually a quick search on google shows that at least in Japan there is still some development going on in this field
http://www.sta.go.jp/sonota/sonota/e9908_10.html
Ditto, I was just going to post asking if anybody knows when this temporary situation was going to end.
While some groups shouldn't really be archived for more than a couple of months (who is going to want to read comp.os.linux.setup messages of five years ago ?) there are others that deserve to be archived as far back as possible (algorithms, chess, and anything that's not moving too fast)