Let me rephrase my post so that it doesn't attract the attention of crack-smoking moderators who'll mark anything offtopic if mentions anything besides Linux in the first sentence. If you had actually read beyond the first sentence, you would have seen that the rest of the post was all about Linux.
I wish there was more Linux support for Sparc. A few distros losing interest in SPARC is not the end of the world. Most people who have Sparcs already have an OS that makes them happy (and that OS is not always Linux:-O!!!, so if that makes you upset as a Linux zealot, get off your ass and start working on SPARC-Linux! It's that simple;-) Sparcs kick ass, they're really sweet, elegant machines. Get one off eBay and have fun with it.
Linux for SPARC is not going to die just because RHAT thinks Sparc isn't profitable. Debian, Slackware and others have good SPARC distros and they've attracted a base of smart, motivated Linux developers to keep things going
Sun4 (the 32 bit Sparc platform) is as strong as ever. The architecture is elegant and well documented. Compared to developing for Mac/PPC, developing for Sparc is a breeze. With Apple you have to reverse engineer it onto a closed architecture. With Sparc, the vast majority of the stuff is documented and based on open standards.
In a few years, 64 bit UltraSPARCs are going to start appearing on the surplus market in large numbers. Lots of folks picked up SparcStation 2's, 5's, 10's, and 20's for cheap from surplus sales or from eBay. Like those pizza boxes that us Sparc nuts use today, the Ultras will soon be very accessibly to hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers. We're going to need better support for all our OS'es on UltraSPARC.
NOTE: the phrase "OpenBSD" was excluded from this version of my post it order to keep it on-topic. Grahhh... moderators."
OpenBSD has always had very strong support for Sparc. AFAIK, Theo still works on OpenBSD using his Sparcs.
I do wish there was more Linux support for Sparc, but it's not the end of the world. Most people who have Sparcs already have an OS that makes them happy. It's not like Sparc-Linux is going away just because RHAT decided Sparc isn't in the best interest of their shareholders.
Nor is the Sparc platform going away. Sun4 architecture is elegant and well documented. Compared to developing Linux for Mac/PPC, developing for Sparc is a breeze. With Apple you have to reverse engineer it onto a closed architecture. With Sparc, the vast majority of the stuff is documented and based on open standards.
I've had DSL for 2 years. There were some rough periods when the phone company megacoroporations did stupid things, but overall things have been ok. The worst part for my local connection is that I'm limited to 128k upstream.
Cable is also available here, but (1) i don't watch television and (2) you can't get a static IP.
Yup. Kiddies will go after things that are plentiful and easy. If MacOS becomes popular with consumers, it'll be popular with crackers. The more common and easy to own something is, the more popular it becomes with the kiddies.
One thing that makes it tricky nowadays is that more homes are NATing/ipmasqing through boxes like the D-Link and Linksys routers, or through *nix machines these days. You can't just scan some ISP's block of ips and assume that there's 1 box by itself for each customer. When mom & dad and the kids are NATed onto one cable or dsl line, you're going to have a hard time telling one box from another when you're outside their subnet.
Of course, kiddies just grab the hottest exploit and try it at random on everyone, so it doesn't matter.
Re:Look on the bright side
on
Cracking OSX
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· Score: 2
if lots of shiny new Cubes are hacked and found to be serving warez FTP sites and IRC
Is it so bad, if the worst thing that happens after being cracked is that you end up with a harddrive full of warez?:-P But seriously, Apple seems to have turned all services off by default. The average Mac user doesn't want to leave their machine on 24/7 or run services, anyhow.
Everyone knows that anything fired from a railgun reaches its target *instantly*. With that kind of technology there would be no need for a scramjet as well.
Unfortunately, everyone also knows that in order to get any kind of accuracy with a railgun, you need a really high framerate and fast reflexes.
Re:modern day gaming is alienating, though
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 2
I was tormented in highschool. The school system was horribly broken, but there were safe havens as well, where you could escape for a while.
We had a history teacher who was a big war gaming geek, and during study hall kids would play simulation games and even (gasp) AD&D. Of course, we had to keep it on the down low so the religious nuts wouldn't freak out and claim that we were practicing satanism.
My computer science teacher was also the track and basketball coach. My math teacher coached football. After a long day in the zone coding pascal on IIgs'es, we'd learn the benefits of being in good physical shape. (Hint: bullies tend not to pick on people that are bigger or stronger than themselves.)
To this very day I enjoy gaming. My favorites tend to be multiplayer team games like Tribes and Team Fortress Classic. Pure deathmatch style games just aren't terribly appealing to me.
I also find it hilarious that is a NASA project manager talking...
NASA project managers are just as prone to say hilarious things as anyone else. They are managers, after all.
A hypersonic cruise missile, however, actually would be pretty darn hard to intercept. With ballistic missiles you can usually detect them about 10 minutes or so before they reach their target. A hypersonic cruise missle at only 100000 feet altitude is both harder to detect and harder to intercept.
...One is, yes, adequate even enough to induce some fun and pleasure for an instant, miserably brief.
ISS isn't made by Microsoft, but it *is* proprietary
Not true. Per the Natioanl Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958: "The Administraction shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof."
Getting specs from contractors is more difficult, however, because they've got contacts (surprisingly enough) that allow them to keep their own stuff proprietary. Anything NASA does purely on its own, however, is meant to be freely available.
Some things like parts of the ISS expedidion #1 crew's log entries, were "redacted" by NASA PAO office. That doesn't mean it's classified, however. You can still get all that stuff throug a FOIA (freedom of informatio act) request. The redacted stuff was mostly Shep cursing out flaky software, or the crew talking about going to the bathroom, or losing a small part cause it drifted away behind a rack. No conspiracies to cover up... just silly things that for whatever reason the public affairs folks "sanitized".
NASA is a bunch of blundering idiots. They're the only ones in the entire world with a space program that is even worth a damn.
All things considered, NASA has a damn good space program. Rocket scientists, unfortuntately, don't make the greatest politicians. And politicians usually don't have a clue when it comes to making technical decisions.
IANAP (I am not a politician), so I can't tell you why X-33 was cancelled, or why the International Space Station is getting butchered. I can tell you that NASA has a limited budget and they have to go before Congress every year to beg and plead for what they do get.
There are three laws of government operations:
The amount of sense made by any given proposal or idea is inversely proportional to its probability of being adopted
1st corollary: If you want to screw something up to the maximum extent possible, let the government do it.
2nd corollary: Consider only your own little corner of the world - never mind that your brilliant solution may wreck the whole system.
3rd corollary: Never apply lessons learned from previous programs or mistakes.
Whenever possible, the government will always strive to be penny-wise and pound-foolish
1st corollary: Let someone else worry about solving the problem ten years from now - that way, the money won't come out of your budget.
2nd corollary: Be success-oriented: When in doubt, assume that the system will work as advertised - all that matters is that you bring in the project on time and under cost. (In other words, "You wanted it to work too? -- That will cost extra!")
3rd corollary: Crash programs are based on the theory that if you have 9 pregnant women, you will get a baby in 30 days.
If you try to build something which is all things to all people, it will end up being nothing to anybody
1st corollary: There is such a thing as being too generic.
2nd corollary: Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing - the communication will waste too much time.
3rd corollary: Keep trying to do more with less. No one will notice that you are actually doing less with less until it is too late. By then, you will likely be gone or retired.
A problem that DOD is quietly worried about is the declining number of . . . welders, pipefitters, and the like
Good point. The US performed so well in WWII because they were able to outproduce the Axis. A Liberty ship every 48 hours... Sherman tanks by the thousands, plenty of food, scrap metal, rubber, gasoline, etc.
Isn't it ironic that the greatest capitalist superpower is worried about losing the means of production? Heh. You can't outsource production of guns and bombs when the bad guys own all the factories you used to buy from.
Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) is commonly used as a rocket engine monopropellant. In the presence of a catalyst, UDMH decomposes on its own without the need for any oxidizer.
TEB requires contact with oxygen to burn. UDMH however, can spontaneously decompose all by itself.
The SR-71 uses triethyl borane (TEB) to start. TEB is very volatile and will burst into flames when exposed to air.
Urban legend in the USAF has it that the SR-71 is Mach 4+
Could be... The officially quoted top speed of the SR-71 is "Mach 3+". It all depends on how big the "+" is.
I tend to think that the USAF flew the SR-71 right up to the edge of what it was capable of doing. It was a special-purpose aircraft with highly trained pilots, flying very precise mission profiles. It was designed to do one thing very well (go fast). If it turned out that the SR-71 could go no faster than Mach 3.5 before something horrible happened, I bet the USAF would fly it right at Mach 3.49.
Way back in 1996 on rec.aviation.military, Mary Shaver from NASA Dryden wrote an interesting description of TEB:
TEB is the "igniter" for JP-7. You can't get JP-7 to burn without it in the SR-71, as the ignition of JP-7 takes a higher temperature than
is conveniently produced otherwise. You drop in a shot of TEB, which bursts into very hot flames the minute it has any oxygen, and this ignites the JP-7. Once ignited, the JP-7 keeps burning. The plane has twelve shots of TEB (either total or per engine, I forget), using one shot for each engine start and one for each burner light.
I watched them TEBbing the plane once, keeping well back and being careful to not stand between the big green firetruck and the crew. They had a very, very tiny leak between the TEB nozzle and the aircraft fitting and were getting a drop of TEB released about every 20 seconds. These drops would be on fire as they fell, but they (sort of like most meteorites) burned completely before they reached the ground. It was really pretty, but I was glad it wasn't me in the
silver fire suit.
Opentracker.org was able to get a pretty good deal from Perforce. Be Inc uses P4 in house and I'm assuming they got permission to use it for open source development. Working on OpenTracker was my first exposure to Perforce, and I like it at least as much as CVS.
Anyone can get anonymous, read-only access to OpenTracker for free and you can P4 sync, edit, diff and resolve all you want. Patches still have to be manually emailed, however. The only only users who can commit changes thru P4 are people who already have P4 seats because they work at Be, plus also Scott and Thorbjorn who don't work at Be but they're still l33t anyhow;-)
I'll put in two cents worth for Perforce. The open source version of the BeOS Tracker uses P4 and it works pretty well, although it's not free.
CVS, on the other hand IS free and it also works wonderfully. Good luck with that troll infestation at your office.
Actually, Soyuz spacecraft have a gun onboard as part of the standard kit. It's included in the emergency kit along with first aid supplies and survival equipment in case of a landing in some remote area. The gun has a folding stock with that doubles as a saw, and it has two barrels, one for signal flares and one that fires a real bullet. The design requirement was that it should be powerful enough to stop a bear if the Soyuz crew ever found themselves stranded in the wilderness after a landing, although I doubt it's really that big.
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I wish there was more Linux support for Sparc. A few distros losing interest in SPARC is not the end of the world. Most people who have Sparcs already have an OS that makes them happy (and that OS is not always Linux :-O!!!, so if that makes you upset as a Linux zealot, get off your ass and start working on SPARC-Linux! It's that simple ;-) Sparcs kick ass, they're really sweet, elegant machines. Get one off eBay and have fun with it.
Linux for SPARC is not going to die just because RHAT thinks Sparc isn't profitable. Debian, Slackware and others have good SPARC distros and they've attracted a base of smart, motivated Linux developers to keep things going
Sun4 (the 32 bit Sparc platform) is as strong as ever. The architecture is elegant and well documented. Compared to developing for Mac/PPC, developing for Sparc is a breeze. With Apple you have to reverse engineer it onto a closed architecture. With Sparc, the vast majority of the stuff is documented and based on open standards.
In a few years, 64 bit UltraSPARCs are going to start appearing on the surplus market in large numbers. Lots of folks picked up SparcStation 2's, 5's, 10's, and 20's for cheap from surplus sales or from eBay. Like those pizza boxes that us Sparc nuts use today, the Ultras will soon be very accessibly to hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers. We're going to need better support for all our OS'es on UltraSPARC.
NOTE: the phrase "OpenBSD" was excluded from this version of my post it order to keep it on-topic. Grahhh... moderators."
I do wish there was more Linux support for Sparc, but it's not the end of the world. Most people who have Sparcs already have an OS that makes them happy. It's not like Sparc-Linux is going away just because RHAT decided Sparc isn't in the best interest of their shareholders.
Nor is the Sparc platform going away. Sun4 architecture is elegant and well documented. Compared to developing Linux for Mac/PPC, developing for Sparc is a breeze. With Apple you have to reverse engineer it onto a closed architecture. With Sparc, the vast majority of the stuff is documented and based on open standards.
In a few years, 64 bit UltraSPARCs are going to start appearing on the surplus market in large numbers. Like the pizza boxes that us Sparc nuts use today, there are going to be a bunch of cheap Ultras available for geeks to tinker with. Continuing to develop all Sparc-capable OS'es is important.
Cable is also available here, but (1) i don't watch television and (2) you can't get a static IP.
Pfft. Heh. That's because any more than that is enough to completely saturate fast ethernet.
One thing that makes it tricky nowadays is that more homes are NATing/ipmasqing through boxes like the D-Link and Linksys routers, or through *nix machines these days. You can't just scan some ISP's block of ips and assume that there's 1 box by itself for each customer. When mom & dad and the kids are NATed onto one cable or dsl line, you're going to have a hard time telling one box from another when you're outside their subnet.
Of course, kiddies just grab the hottest exploit and try it at random on everyone, so it doesn't matter.
Is it so bad, if the worst thing that happens after being cracked is that you end up with a harddrive full of warez? :-P But seriously, Apple seems to have turned all services off by default. The average Mac user doesn't want to leave their machine on 24/7 or run services, anyhow.
Unfortunately, everyone also knows that in order to get any kind of accuracy with a railgun, you need a really high framerate and fast reflexes.
We had a history teacher who was a big war gaming geek, and during study hall kids would play simulation games and even (gasp) AD&D. Of course, we had to keep it on the down low so the religious nuts wouldn't freak out and claim that we were practicing satanism.
My computer science teacher was also the track and basketball coach. My math teacher coached football. After a long day in the zone coding pascal on IIgs'es, we'd learn the benefits of being in good physical shape. (Hint: bullies tend not to pick on people that are bigger or stronger than themselves.)
To this very day I enjoy gaming. My favorites tend to be multiplayer team games like Tribes and Team Fortress Classic. Pure deathmatch style games just aren't terribly appealing to me.
NASA project managers are just as prone to say hilarious things as anyone else. They are managers, after all.
A hypersonic cruise missile, however, actually would be pretty darn hard to intercept. With ballistic missiles you can usually detect them about 10 minutes or so before they reach their target. A hypersonic cruise missle at only 100000 feet altitude is both harder to detect and harder to intercept.
...besides, if you remove the first "A" from "NASA", you get an acronym that's already in use.
So then we'd be the "National Space Administration". Cool! I always wanted a super-l33t firstname.lastname@nsa.gov email address ;-)
Historians cleverly employed an early type of data compression by using the same value for the date and the name of the war ;-)
: what happen?
: we get signal
: main radio turn on!
: d00d!!! 3y3 g07 f1r5t p0st0rz on the 5p4c3 573710n!!! uhmm, all your base are belong to me!
Not true. Per the Natioanl Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958: "The Administraction shall provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof."
Getting specs from contractors is more difficult, however, because they've got contacts (surprisingly enough) that allow them to keep their own stuff proprietary. Anything NASA does purely on its own, however, is meant to be freely available.
Some things like parts of the ISS expedidion #1 crew's log entries, were "redacted" by NASA PAO office. That doesn't mean it's classified, however. You can still get all that stuff throug a FOIA (freedom of informatio act) request. The redacted stuff was mostly Shep cursing out flaky software, or the crew talking about going to the bathroom, or losing a small part cause it drifted away behind a rack. No conspiracies to cover up... just silly things that for whatever reason the public affairs folks "sanitized".
All things considered, NASA has a damn good space program. Rocket scientists, unfortuntately, don't make the greatest politicians. And politicians usually don't have a clue when it comes to making technical decisions.
IANAP (I am not a politician), so I can't tell you why X-33 was cancelled, or why the International Space Station is getting butchered. I can tell you that NASA has a limited budget and they have to go before Congress every year to beg and plead for what they do get.
There are three laws of government operations:
Good point. The US performed so well in WWII because they were able to outproduce the Axis. A Liberty ship every 48 hours... Sherman tanks by the thousands, plenty of food, scrap metal, rubber, gasoline, etc.
Isn't it ironic that the greatest capitalist superpower is worried about losing the means of production? Heh. You can't outsource production of guns and bombs when the bad guys own all the factories you used to buy from.
You are correct. Unfortunately I hit "submit" before catching the mistake.
TEB requires contact with oxygen to burn. UDMH however, can spontaneously decompose all by itself.
The SR-71 uses triethyl borane (TEB) to start. TEB is very volatile and will burst into flames when exposed to air.
Urban legend in the USAF has it that the SR-71 is Mach 4+
Could be... The officially quoted top speed of the SR-71 is "Mach 3+". It all depends on how big the "+" is.
I tend to think that the USAF flew the SR-71 right up to the edge of what it was capable of doing. It was a special-purpose aircraft with highly trained pilots, flying very precise mission profiles. It was designed to do one thing very well (go fast). If it turned out that the SR-71 could go no faster than Mach 3.5 before something horrible happened, I bet the USAF would fly it right at Mach 3.49.
Way back in 1996 on rec.aviation.military, Mary Shaver from NASA Dryden wrote an interesting description of TEB:
TEB is the "igniter" for JP-7. You can't get JP-7 to burn without it in the SR-71, as the ignition of JP-7 takes a higher temperature than is conveniently produced otherwise. You drop in a shot of TEB, which bursts into very hot flames the minute it has any oxygen, and this ignites the JP-7. Once ignited, the JP-7 keeps burning. The plane has twelve shots of TEB (either total or per engine, I forget), using one shot for each engine start and one for each burner light.
I watched them TEBbing the plane once, keeping well back and being careful to not stand between the big green firetruck and the crew. They had a very, very tiny leak between the TEB nozzle and the aircraft fitting and were getting a drop of TEB released about every 20 seconds. These drops would be on fire as they fell, but they (sort of like most meteorites) burned completely before they reached the ground. It was really pretty, but I was glad it wasn't me in the silver fire suit.
Anyone can get anonymous, read-only access to OpenTracker for free and you can P4 sync, edit, diff and resolve all you want. Patches still have to be manually emailed, however. The only only users who can commit changes thru P4 are people who already have P4 seats because they work at Be, plus also Scott and Thorbjorn who don't work at Be but they're still l33t anyhow ;-)
I'll put in two cents worth for Perforce. The open source version of the BeOS Tracker uses P4 and it works pretty well, although it's not free.
CVS, on the other hand IS free and it also works wonderfully. Good luck with that troll infestation at your office.
Pi. Nice sig ;-)
Dragonfly, by Bryan Burrough.
Actually, Soyuz spacecraft have a gun onboard as part of the standard kit. It's included in the emergency kit along with first aid supplies and survival equipment in case of a landing in some remote area. The gun has a folding stock with that doubles as a saw, and it has two barrels, one for signal flares and one that fires a real bullet. The design requirement was that it should be powerful enough to stop a bear if the Soyuz crew ever found themselves stranded in the wilderness after a landing, although I doubt it's really that big.
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