Hubble has done a great job, but IIRC it is a few billion dollars and a 2.5 meter mirror. A 100-meter mirror is 1600 time more collecting area, and given the atmosphere, at least 200 times more photons. So, you can do some things Hubble can't.
When you need a 20-ton spectrometer that needs a new dose of liquid nitrogen every six hours, and have a set of 30 grisms and filters that need to be switched manually, space is not an option. At a ground-based telescope, you can have several such instruments and swap them in and out when needed.
You certainly won't find a launcher that could carry a 100-meter mirror, so it should be built in space. Assembling a 1000-element mosaic mirror with 50-nanometer precision is not easy on ground, and in space it is impossible.
I'm rather bemused as to why a major business hasn't sued Microsoft over some of the security scandals this past couple of years.
A few reasons come immediately to mind:
1. Money: Sue Microsoft, and it takes years and millions of dollars before a decision is reached. Microsoft has really deep pockets.
2. EULA: Read the MS Office EULA you accepted. Do you think big businesses gets better agreements? A monopoly can dicatate. Maybe the court finds the EULA non-acceptable, but you have a weak starting point.
3. Risk: MS refuses to sell you their products after you sue them. I guess no-one can force them to do business with you.
So actually you answered your question:
Migrating desktops for plain ordinary business work (mail, Word, Excel) from Windows is never even discussed.
At my University, the Science Student Association has a deal with the professors of the Physics and Math Departments. They write their own textbook (and get paid), and the SSA publishes it. A Paperback textbook costs 10-20 EUR, and is customized for the course. The prices can be kept low by the following: 1) no fancy color pictures, no color diagrams, just plain old B/W. 2) SSA is non-profit: no taxes, no profit margins. Someone majoring in Physics/Math gets most of his books for less than 100 EUR per year for the first three years.
Department of Computing Science has a similar arrangement. They do not make actual books, just a bunch of photocopied A4:s, and the SSA is not involved, instead the dept. sells these for a non-profit price.
This is price-fixing, it is anti-competitive and anti-business, but most of the students seem to like it. Maybe these policies (business is not always the first priority) have inspired Linus Torvalds to release Linux under GPL. He graduated from our university.
Good thing this doesn't apply to European net stations.
Several European countries have already killed their internet radio in a way similar to this. Here the radio companies had to pay per potential listener, and 'potential listener' was interpreted in court as the entire population, even if the server could handle a few hundred connections. Talk about clueless judges.
I see this as a new way of concentrating energy.
Unleashing the energy in an uncontrolled, destructive way is easy, and therefore weapons are the first use. Compare this to nuclear technology: Atomic bomb comes first, nuclear power later.
The article states that at present the lasers are 50-ton monsters, so they are immobile unless you mount one on a ship. I bet that the US Navy already has at least a few of these under testing.
If you can destroy a missile in a fraction of second, this would be a good way of treating any threatening asteroids. In a few days/weeks, you could vaporize a portion on one side of the asteroid, and the off-flowing hot vapor would push the rock to a safer orbit. (The comets have unpredictable orbits just because volatiles are released from their surfaces. Sunlight heats the darker spots more, these release vapor jets that push the core to a different orbit.) I think this is faster and less risky than nukes. Clouds are not an issue, you could move the ships to a place with clear skies. Or have a few of these permanently on high-altitude clear-sky positions, like on top of Mauna Kea and somewhere in Arizona, Utah or Colorado.
In case of a large oil spill, maybe the laser could be used to burn the oil. Sometimes the oil is in a layer a few molecules thick. Maybe this layer could be swept away with a laser beam. And the oil that has already reached the shore is collected manually today, maybe you could also burn it away with this laser. Much faster, cleaner and probably also cheaper.
If the Chinese use 1/7th of NASA:s budget, I think it is expensive. I haven't heard of any big Chinese Space achievements before this. (They have their military satellites, but so has the USA, and no-one knows exactly of these.) NASA has Science missions like Hubble and Chandra. Deep Space Network to operate planetary probes like Cassini and the Mars missions. GPS. Manned spaceflight program was operating several space shuttles and building the space station. And of course past missions to be proud of (Apollo, Viking, Pioneer, Voyager, Skylab, and so on and so forth.)
The China of today is, if anything, a fascist market state. The ignorance displayed here on Chinese (well, on any non US) poiltics is symbolic of a nation stearing blindly to its own future. The nominally Communist party has very little in common with collectivisation or any other tenets of Marx or Mao's preachings.
Sorry for going off-topic. Honestly speaking, I see very little difference between practical applications of Fascism (3rd Reich, Mussolini's Italy) and Communism (Soviet Union, China). The rhetoric is different, but the practical effects are similar: a totalitarian state. Minorities (Jews or Tibetans or whatever) are persecuted, no criticism of the government is allowed, censorship and corruption are part of everyday life, military has a very important role in politics,... the rant goes on and on.
A political decision ("put more money in a space program") is made in an entirely different environment in the USA. When the small, monolithic elite decides something in China, everyone has to shut up, expect when they are told to cheer. In USA, congress, elections, mass media and all the NGO:s influence the politics. Threefolding the Space Program spending for a decade is so much easier when you have no checks or balances.
Brazil would be better than Cape Canaveral for American rockets, and Indonesia better than Tanegashima for Japanese rockets. The economy of French Guayana has not boomed because ESA rockets are launched from Kourou. Most of the jobs a launch pad creates are for space engineers and other highly qualified professionals. It would take at least a decade before the Nigerian universities would produce any of those.
Technically Nigeria is better, but politically Plesetsk. Control of launcher and space technology is not given up on loose grounds. And Russians want to keep the jobs and economic development for themselves. Another point is that when the launch fails, you have debris and poisonous fuel all over the place, and Nigeria is densely populated.
The article also goes on to say that the only living creature to be harmed by a meteor in recorded history was an Egyptian Dog which had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Nakhla meteorite you are referring to killed just one dog. Several people have been injured by meteorites. (I remember at least one local newspaper story of a guy who got a fist-sized meteorite through his windshield at 80 km/h, and was injured when he drove off the road.)
A meteor does not necessarily reach ground, it may burn entirely in the atmosphere. In contrast, a meteorite hits the ground.
In 1908 the
Tunguska meteor injured several people, one of them died a few days later. Dozens of reindeer got killed, and they were 30 km away. I assume some wild animals closer to the site were also killed, but the site was searched only in 1920s so we have no record on that. The blast was equivalent to 15 Megatonnes, so only one dead human is really good luck.
Assuming the 1E6 ton storm cloud mentioned there (200,000 6-ton elephants) is about three kilometers across, or 25 cubic km, you get about 40 grams per cubic meter.
The density of air is about 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter, so the water does not contribute significantly to the mass.
Let's assume the 1E6 ton cloud rains down, entirely: (40 grams per cubic meter) x 3 kilometers is 120 kilograms (liters) per square meter, or about 120 mm of water. This is a lot, and shows that my 3 km is likely a lower limit.
Compare the 120 mm of water to atmosphere. The normal air pressure, which is about 760 mm of mercury. Multiplying with density (about 13 times more than water), you get about 10000 mm or ten meters, or ten tonnes.
Summarizing, the atmosphere is about two elephants per square meter.
Or you might just get replaced with someone who is less annoying.
You have to adapt to your environment, of course.
Anyone taking something directly from a Slashdot post with cut-paste-and-email-to-boss deserves to get fired. I expect that you, your boss and even his boss have to live with the company policy. Our policy is just easier to live with than yours.
Our department has 50+ PC:s, and we have four different OSes to live with: Linux, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS. (IRIX:es are being phased out this year.) We have a Darwinistic policy of not interfering with the software you use, as long as you do your work. Compatibility issues are relatively common. The Darwinism with all its backsides is a policy decision, and also the bosses have to live with that. Firing half the department because you think the big bosses have no clue is not an option.
A Windows monoculture would be another policy decision, with a different and IMHO bigger can of worms. I would never have applied for the job if this were one. If I worked in a monoculture, I'd live with that policy and would expect my boss to do the same. Maybe I'd use some non-standard software or even have dual-boot, but only with my bosses (written) consent.
When communicating with MS-users, I send files as PDF. If it doesn't work, you can blame Adobe.
As soon as 'the boss' is unable to open your budget report written in OpenOffice, guess what he'll demand from you...
Assuming you are a Linux user,
you could reply with:
"I can install OpenOffice in your computer anytime. Just let me know. You know, it does not cost a dime, and is just as easy to use as MS Office."
If boss says no, then ask if PDF is OK.
And if he says no again:
"If you want me to use Office, (explain the problems of installing Windows on top of Linux) I need a new HDD or a new computer, with Windows + Office. As I haven't used Windows after 3.1, I'll probably need some Windows training. BTW, can you postpone my deadlines by two weeks?"
Now, realizing the problems of MS Office, he (just like my boss) probably settles with PDF. You might get new hardware, or more time to complete your project.
(practically, reduce unpaid overtime)
The Torino scale (a number of the danger level) is nicely explained by NASA.
To get some idea on how it works, look at this
Note that a 1 on Torino scale is still in the "Green" (press release) region. This one is also very near the edge of "White" (no press release) region, and likely falls there in a few weeks.
I think this scale was mainly created to reduce the number of press releases.
Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3)
and increasing with time.
These are really beautiful clouds, I have seen them almost every summer since 1980:s.
Note the photographer of the last link. Some more of his pictures can be seen at
www.polarimage.fi They are really cool.
Almost every Russian rocket launch from a base near the Finnish border is seen also as really beutiful clouds, similar to nocitlucents at least in appearance. The rockets are a lot smaller.
Some of my older relatives have seen noctilucents also in the 1930:s, so they are not always related to the shuttle or rockets.
One downside is that noctilucents appear in conditions favourable to ozone depletion.
This is the start of a changing of how third world countries will act.
Seriously, lets see "PAY LICENSES" or "FEED PEOPLE"
We Europeans are facing the same problem. It is not licenses vs. food, but something like licenses vs. education, health care, rebuilding the country after 50 years of communist rule,... These are on the priority list after food. Most of the software license fees go to US. Same applies to many copyrighted things, like movies and music.
I think Germany (or actually Munich) is showing the way to Europeans.
Paying license fees is not what third world countries want to do. I mention this as a start because it will shift to other things other than software...
The people in poor countries have stopped paying license fees a long time ago. Visit any bazaar in China or Russia to check what is their attitude to Copyright. It is more about ability, not willingness. Governments can't hide behind the corner, the DVD pirates can. They are much easier to sue, and software vendors have their lobbyists.
In practice, software vendors has US government, WTO, and other powerful supporters. Corruption is also an issue. Finally, getting any major change through a government is very slow. Changing anything in a democracy takes at least five years.
I am advocating for free software in a political party (about 10% election support at local level, 3rd largest). At first, most people were not interested. In January 2002 we had to buy a new computer, and I suggested we try OpenOffice before buying the MS version. "It's free, you won't lose a dime." And we never bought MS Office. At September 2002, we suggested that the local government should consider OpenOffice.
(Before that, we had a few words on free software, mainly to keep me silent). Now, we are suggesting that again. Office 97 (yes, we are poor and backward) "dies" in January 2005, so maybe we
have a chance of getting this through next year.
After that, migration takes at least one year.
Microsoft is now going to spends billions to kill the current patent system. They're going to buy every Congressman.
They will just transfer the legal costs to prices of Windows and Office. That is the easy way. I assume MS holds loads of software patents, and they are not going to throw all that investment away because of one lost lawsuit.
But in the long run, this patent BS ruins software. If every idea any developer had in the last 20 years was patented, any code you write is bound to violate someones copyright.
If someone had patented object-oriented programming, he would still be collecting royalties (IANAL). This will just encourage anyone with a patent to sue everyone in sight. All the money wasted in legal battles on software patents is away from real R&D work. Companies will hire lawyers, not coders.
I think the Chinese ("Patent? What is a patent?") will produce better software in the long run. Free Software developers will be in SCOish legal trouble for decades, unless we reform the patent system, and I'm not optimistic about that.
I actually took the time to fill this out with proper information. Here is a copy of my question.
This is exactly what we should do. Give them real questions. SCO spends time and money answering. I asked them (stuff in parentheses was not sent to them):
1. You define 'server' as a machine providing services to other machines. Does running CVS,...,X,... or SSH server make my PC a 'server'?
Note that our department has plenty of machines, all running different services, so I really need a detailed answer on this.
(Do you know what you are talking about?
Maybe I'm stupid, but I am a 'potential customer'. And if running an X server makes it 'server', who has a workstation?)
2. Do you provide patches, driver updates, security advisories or security e-mail alerts? (Are you serious about selling software? Selling software with no intention of supporting it should be a federal felony.)
3. If you do not provide patches, am I allowed to use 3rd party patches? (If you are not serious about selling software, am I allowed to be serious about using it? Am I allowed to patch the kernel, as you don't tell me what part you own?)
4. If you do not patch and I'm not allowed to use 3rd party patches, do you accept any liabilities?
Answering yes to 3 or 4 would open a can of worms.
They do not have the resources to give an honest yes to 2. (maintain the kernel?)
If they answer no to numbers 2-3-4, as I assume, they look like the mafia they are.
A US member state can't tell the US government where to stick that law. Any EU member state can.
Of course it is illegal, but some EU directives are such that no-one cares breaking them - not even the goverments of the member states. No-one is going to invade Greece if they don't enact the cucumber directive. And even if they have a formal "cucmber law" in accord of the directive, the police and courts are most likely not interested in the crime you committed (selling cucumbers that had a too large curvature). I think our parliament has better things to do. And this does not mean the Christmas tree directive.
EU has much less power on member states than US. Several problematic directives have never been implemented in some countries. EU is at the beginning of integration, but it is a long way to "United States of Europe". We are moving towards USE, but it is still very far away.
EU is heterogenous and loosely bound when compared to US. Compare EU/Finland to US/Michigan. Finland and US have their own army. Michigan and EU don't. Finland has full control over Finnish police and Finnish borders. I don't know about the "normal" police, but US has FBI. I assume anyone from Michigan is free to visit Florida, without passport control.
Finland collects taxes, just as Michigan and the US government. EU gets a share of some Finnish taxes, and a membership fee from the Finnish government. Just a few years ago, Finland had it's own currency. Now we use the Euro of EU. I assume Michigan has always used the US dollar. If US signs an international treaty, Michigan must follow. EU may sign international treaties, but if Finland does not sign, it does not apply. It is possible to be a citizen of US, or a citizen of Finland. But there is no EU citizenship (yet).
And so on and so forth, but I hope you already got the point.
It's unbelievable that our government would pour all of these man hours into a problem that is easily fixed: use a secure and open alternative.
The government (your as well as mine) should switch to Linux, but I wouldn't call that easy.
Rebooting a single computer, and installing Linux instead of Windows is relatively easy.
Rebooting the US government, and installing Linux is relatively hard. I think no-one even knows if the BIOS supports booting from CD.
How many man-hours would it take just to install Linux (or BSD) on all federal computers? Training all the government tech support and sysadmins, not to mention all other workers? How many closed-format files (.doc etc) would have to be manually fine-tuned after the change? And so on and so forth. I guess the time and money spent on this worm would not be enough for photocopying the plans for changing to open source.
get up out of your chair, slowly so not to make your body go into shock, and walk to the other side of the room and back. Now do that every hour and you should be right
Does that mean I should drink one cup of coffee every hour, or should I start smoking? Or print something useless every hour?
These are the legitimate reasons for leaving your computer at my workplace.
Of course I could start disturbing the pointy-haired ones, but that increases the
risk of getting fired.
From now on, I make one wasted print/hour just to be on the safe side. At least my son will now get all the drawing paper he needs. But some poor owl will lose its home, again.
The Finnish parliamentary elections will be held in a few months (around 16.3). So the politicians are busy, trying to show that they have done something, and deserve re-election.
A mall was bombed last year. (try googling for "Myyrmanni bomb") Several people got killed, including the bomber. It turned out that the bomber was active poster on several discussion forums. Some of these were crackpot forums, and one was for people interested in explosives. The moderator of the explosives forum got arrested, but was released afterwards.
Another point is that the Finnish telecom, (Sonera) got thoroughly blasted by an anonymous book first published on the web. The book seemed credible enough, and later a police investigation showed that the security department of Sonera had been scanning the e-mail and the phone calls of the employees, without their consent. Probably this was done by a pissed-off employee. However, a big company got in trouble because the net allowed fast spreading of the book, and there was no way to press the publisher.
The outcome is logical, as the politicians and voters do not understand the net. Large campaign financiers have an interest in regulating the net.
Play with the fears of the people and get paid when you desperately need good press and money for the commercials.
I'm getting more and more ashamed for being Finnish.
Your greed is one step less than that of the money-changers that Christ threw out of the temple.
At least the Finns are one step ahead, not behind. Teosto (Finnish RIAA equivalent) has sued the churches, as some hymns are copyrighted, and they don't pay fees. The court ruled that churches don't have to pay, but they have appealed. The ministry of education pays fees for teaching music at schools.
And so on and so forth.
I wish more people on slashdot would understand that.
I've lived all over the world, and it's amazing how different the media handles things. Here in the US, it's Palestinians bombing busses. In Europe, it's Israelis shooting houses.
I wouldn't put it that simply. In Europe, the view
you get depends on what you read or watch. The media on the left (labour/social democratic) side of the political axis is more pro-palestinian. On the right (conservative) side the opinions seem to be more pro-israel. (The right/left-wing loudmouths seem to be anti-Israel, but no-one listens them anyway).
If you really want an anti-Israel view, you could
check for example IRNA (IRanian News Agency).
As soon as we can simulate life (any life) completely, we have no way of proving we are not a simulation being run by a higher life form.
Would you expect that a higher life form has the same capabilities of making simulations as we have? On the other hand, maybe the ones running the simulation are not higher life forms, they just have decided that the best hardware and software is not available in the simulation.
I think you could just as well say it directly: We have no way of proving we are not a simulation.
Maybe our parents got stuck on the Enterprise holodeck for good, and we are the only 'real' thing?
The 'blue screen of death' sounds really scary now. I hope they are not running Windows.
times guns are used (annually) to _prevent_ crimes at somewhere between 2 and 4 million
(an admittedly _VERY_ fuzzy number, but undisputably huge)
Usually, crimes are deterred by the mere display of a firearm, no shots are fired
10-15,000 criminal shootings (no cops, not self- defense, no suicides, just criminal gun use).
You compare 'crimes prevented by display of firearm' and 'criminal shootings'.
However, often people get robbed by 'display of firearm', as they are afraid of 'criminal shootings'. Count also this, and I think your numbers would change considerably.
Your 'fuzziness' argument applies also to both your numbers. Divide the numbers so that you get one for the smaller, and you have:
1 to 1.5 (times constant) for 'criminal shootings'
1 to 2 (times constant) for 'crimes prevented'
I've been saying this for a few years now. The best way to "adjust" MSFT "way of business" is to hurt them fairly. Sell a better product.
I most wholeheartedly agree. The MS dominant market position and unfair competition (closed and fluctuating file formats etc.) just makes this really hard. Playing fair against someone who is 100 times bigger and plays dirty is too much for most people. I have not yet given up the hope.
Linux is a good product, but it is not being actively sold, at least not here. I have never seen a Linux/OpenOffice/pine/gcc/whatever commercial outside the geek-world.
Open source advocacy si the solution. MS-bashing may speed things up, but I'll not waste my time on that. Most people I know don't like MS, they feel it is a blood-sucking monopoly. What needs to be done is to show them the alternatives, and let them rationally decide whether they want to try it. I have started actively advocating for Open Source a few months ago (when I was forced to get a Windows workstation to our workplace, but that's another story.). Two successes so far.
When my wife got a new laptop for her birthday, I installed Linux and asked her to try it. She used to have an ancient 386DX with Win 3.1 and Word 6.0. (The main use is stadard text editing, so 386 was perfectly good for that.). After a few weeks, I asked if it's OK to remove Windows, as she had not used it. And now it's gone.
A political association I'm active in decided to get a part-time employee. We have an old Pentium, and it has so far been used mainly for updating our webpages (Win95 + Frontpage, the people are used to that.). Now, we needed Office suite so that the employee could actually. I asked whether we could try OpenOffice first, as it's free. If it would suck, we could buy Office later anyway. And people seem to be happy with it. Propagating this to the OS side seems to be perfectly possible, and also forwarding it to our sister associations.
Starting form the grassroots, and just asking 'couldn't you try the free one 1st and buy something only if you really need' seems to work. I'm just asking the question when people are forced to upgrade or buy something new. This may not work for large corporations, but you have to start somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Hubble has done a great job, but IIRC it is a few billion dollars and a 2.5 meter mirror. A 100-meter mirror is 1600 time more collecting area, and given the atmosphere, at least 200 times more photons. So, you can do some things Hubble can't. When you need a 20-ton spectrometer that needs a new dose of liquid nitrogen every six hours, and have a set of 30 grisms and filters that need to be switched manually, space is not an option. At a ground-based telescope, you can have several such instruments and swap them in and out when needed. You certainly won't find a launcher that could carry a 100-meter mirror, so it should be built in space. Assembling a 1000-element mosaic mirror with 50-nanometer precision is not easy on ground, and in space it is impossible.
A few reasons come immediately to mind:
1. Money: Sue Microsoft, and it takes years and millions of dollars before a decision is reached. Microsoft has really deep pockets.
2. EULA: Read the MS Office EULA you accepted. Do you think big businesses gets better agreements? A monopoly can dicatate. Maybe the court finds the EULA non-acceptable, but you have a weak starting point.
3. Risk: MS refuses to sell you their products after you sue them. I guess no-one can force them to do business with you.
So actually you answered your question:
Migrating desktops for plain ordinary business work (mail, Word, Excel) from Windows is never even discussed.
Department of Computing Science has a similar arrangement. They do not make actual books, just a bunch of photocopied A4:s, and the SSA is not involved, instead the dept. sells these for a non-profit price.
This is price-fixing, it is anti-competitive and anti-business, but most of the students seem to like it. Maybe these policies (business is not always the first priority) have inspired Linus Torvalds to release Linux under GPL. He graduated from our university.
Several European countries have already killed their internet radio in a way similar to this. Here the radio companies had to pay per potential listener, and 'potential listener' was interpreted in court as the entire population, even if the server could handle a few hundred connections. Talk about clueless judges.
The article states that at present the lasers are 50-ton monsters, so they are immobile unless you mount one on a ship. I bet that the US Navy already has at least a few of these under testing.
If you can destroy a missile in a fraction of second, this would be a good way of treating any threatening asteroids. In a few days/weeks, you could vaporize a portion on one side of the asteroid, and the off-flowing hot vapor would push the rock to a safer orbit. (The comets have unpredictable orbits just because volatiles are released from their surfaces. Sunlight heats the darker spots more, these release vapor jets that push the core to a different orbit.) I think this is faster and less risky than nukes. Clouds are not an issue, you could move the ships to a place with clear skies. Or have a few of these permanently on high-altitude clear-sky positions, like on top of Mauna Kea and somewhere in Arizona, Utah or Colorado.
In case of a large oil spill, maybe the laser could be used to burn the oil. Sometimes the oil is in a layer a few molecules thick. Maybe this layer could be swept away with a laser beam. And the oil that has already reached the shore is collected manually today, maybe you could also burn it away with this laser. Much faster, cleaner and probably also cheaper.
The China of today is, if anything, a fascist market state. The ignorance displayed here on Chinese (well, on any non US) poiltics is symbolic of a nation stearing blindly to its own future. The nominally Communist party has very little in common with collectivisation or any other tenets of Marx or Mao's preachings.
Sorry for going off-topic. Honestly speaking, I see very little difference between practical applications of Fascism (3rd Reich, Mussolini's Italy) and Communism (Soviet Union, China). The rhetoric is different, but the practical effects are similar: a totalitarian state. Minorities (Jews or Tibetans or whatever) are persecuted, no criticism of the government is allowed, censorship and corruption are part of everyday life, military has a very important role in politics, ... the rant goes on and on.
A political decision ("put more money in a space program") is made in an entirely different environment in the USA. When the small, monolithic elite decides something in China, everyone has to shut up, expect when they are told to cheer. In USA, congress, elections, mass media and all the NGO:s influence the politics. Threefolding the Space Program spending for a decade is so much easier when you have no checks or balances.
Technically Nigeria is better, but politically Plesetsk. Control of launcher and space technology is not given up on loose grounds. And Russians want to keep the jobs and economic development for themselves. Another point is that when the launch fails, you have debris and poisonous fuel all over the place, and Nigeria is densely populated.
The Nakhla meteorite you are referring to killed just one dog. Several people have been injured by meteorites. (I remember at least one local newspaper story of a guy who got a fist-sized meteorite through his windshield at 80 km/h, and was injured when he drove off the road.)
A meteor does not necessarily reach ground, it may burn entirely in the atmosphere. In contrast, a meteorite hits the ground.
In 1908 the Tunguska meteor injured several people, one of them died a few days later. Dozens of reindeer got killed, and they were 30 km away. I assume some wild animals closer to the site were also killed, but the site was searched only in 1920s so we have no record on that. The blast was equivalent to 15 Megatonnes, so only one dead human is really good luck.
Assuming the 1E6 ton storm cloud mentioned there (200,000 6-ton elephants) is about three kilometers across, or 25 cubic km, you get about 40 grams per cubic meter.
The density of air is about 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter, so the water does not contribute significantly to the mass.
Let's assume the 1E6 ton cloud rains down, entirely: (40 grams per cubic meter) x 3 kilometers is 120 kilograms (liters) per square meter, or about 120 mm of water. This is a lot, and shows that my 3 km is likely a lower limit.
Compare the 120 mm of water to atmosphere. The normal air pressure, which is about 760 mm of mercury. Multiplying with density (about 13 times more than water), you get about 10000 mm or ten meters, or ten tonnes.
Summarizing, the atmosphere is about two elephants per square meter.
You have to adapt to your environment, of course. Anyone taking something directly from a Slashdot post with cut-paste-and-email-to-boss deserves to get fired. I expect that you, your boss and even his boss have to live with the company policy. Our policy is just easier to live with than yours.
Our department has 50+ PC:s, and we have four different OSes to live with: Linux, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS. (IRIX:es are being phased out this year.) We have a Darwinistic policy of not interfering with the software you use, as long as you do your work. Compatibility issues are relatively common. The Darwinism with all its backsides is a policy decision, and also the bosses have to live with that. Firing half the department because you think the big bosses have no clue is not an option.
A Windows monoculture would be another policy decision, with a different and IMHO bigger can of worms. I would never have applied for the job if this were one. If I worked in a monoculture, I'd live with that policy and would expect my boss to do the same. Maybe I'd use some non-standard software or even have dual-boot, but only with my bosses (written) consent.
As soon as 'the boss' is unable to open your budget report written in OpenOffice, guess what he'll demand from you...
Assuming you are a Linux user, you could reply with:
"I can install OpenOffice in your computer anytime. Just let me know. You know, it does not cost a dime, and is just as easy to use as MS Office."
If boss says no, then ask if PDF is OK. And if he says no again:
"If you want me to use Office, (explain the problems of installing Windows on top of Linux) I need a new HDD or a new computer, with Windows + Office. As I haven't used Windows after 3.1, I'll probably need some Windows training. BTW, can you postpone my deadlines by two weeks?"
Now, realizing the problems of MS Office, he (just like my boss) probably settles with PDF. You might get new hardware, or more time to complete your project. (practically, reduce unpaid overtime)
Personally, I'll start worrying when the propability is more than 1% (Torino Scale 3) and increasing with time.
Note the photographer of the last link. Some more of his pictures can be seen at www.polarimage.fi They are really cool.
Almost every Russian rocket launch from a base near the Finnish border is seen also as really beutiful clouds, similar to nocitlucents at least in appearance. The rockets are a lot smaller.
Some of my older relatives have seen noctilucents also in the 1930:s, so they are not always related to the shuttle or rockets.
One downside is that noctilucents appear in conditions favourable to ozone depletion.
Seriously, lets see "PAY LICENSES" or "FEED PEOPLE"
We Europeans are facing the same problem. It is not licenses vs. food, but something like licenses vs. education, health care, rebuilding the country after 50 years of communist rule, ... These are on the priority list after food. Most of the software license fees go to US. Same applies to many copyrighted things, like movies and music.
I think Germany (or actually Munich) is showing the way to Europeans.
Paying license fees is not what third world countries want to do. I mention this as a start because it will shift to other things other than software ...
The people in poor countries have stopped paying license fees a long time ago. Visit any bazaar in China or Russia to check what is their attitude to Copyright. It is more about ability, not willingness. Governments can't hide behind the corner, the DVD pirates can. They are much easier to sue, and software vendors have their lobbyists. In practice, software vendors has US government, WTO, and other powerful supporters. Corruption is also an issue. Finally, getting any major change through a government is very slow. Changing anything in a democracy takes at least five years.
I am advocating for free software in a political party (about 10% election support at local level, 3rd largest). At first, most people were not interested. In January 2002 we had to buy a new computer, and I suggested we try OpenOffice before buying the MS version. "It's free, you won't lose a dime." And we never bought MS Office. At September 2002, we suggested that the local government should consider OpenOffice. (Before that, we had a few words on free software, mainly to keep me silent). Now, we are suggesting that again. Office 97 (yes, we are poor and backward) "dies" in January 2005, so maybe we have a chance of getting this through next year. After that, migration takes at least one year.
They will just transfer the legal costs to prices of Windows and Office. That is the easy way. I assume MS holds loads of software patents, and they are not going to throw all that investment away because of one lost lawsuit.
But in the long run, this patent BS ruins software. If every idea any developer had in the last 20 years was patented, any code you write is bound to violate someones copyright. If someone had patented object-oriented programming, he would still be collecting royalties (IANAL). This will just encourage anyone with a patent to sue everyone in sight. All the money wasted in legal battles on software patents is away from real R&D work. Companies will hire lawyers, not coders.
I think the Chinese ("Patent? What is a patent?") will produce better software in the long run. Free Software developers will be in SCOish legal trouble for decades, unless we reform the patent system, and I'm not optimistic about that.
This is exactly what we should do. Give them real questions. SCO spends time and money answering. I asked them (stuff in parentheses was not sent to them):
1. You define 'server' as a machine providing services to other machines. Does running CVS, ... ,X, ... or SSH server make my PC a 'server'?
Note that our department has plenty of machines, all running different services, so I really need a detailed answer on this.
(Do you know what you are talking about?
Maybe I'm stupid, but I am a 'potential customer'. And if running an X server makes it 'server', who has a workstation?)
2. Do you provide patches, driver updates, security advisories or security e-mail alerts? (Are you serious about selling software? Selling software with no intention of supporting it should be a federal felony.)
3. If you do not provide patches, am I allowed to use 3rd party patches? (If you are not serious about selling software, am I allowed to be serious about using it? Am I allowed to patch the kernel, as you don't tell me what part you own?)
4. If you do not patch and I'm not allowed to use 3rd party patches, do you accept any liabilities?
Answering yes to 3 or 4 would open a can of worms. They do not have the resources to give an honest yes to 2. (maintain the kernel?) If they answer no to numbers 2-3-4, as I assume, they look like the mafia they are.
Of course it is illegal, but some EU directives are such that no-one cares breaking them - not even the goverments of the member states. No-one is going to invade Greece if they don't enact the cucumber directive. And even if they have a formal "cucmber law" in accord of the directive, the police and courts are most likely not interested in the crime you committed (selling cucumbers that had a too large curvature). I think our parliament has better things to do. And this does not mean the Christmas tree directive.
EU has much less power on member states than US. Several problematic directives have never been implemented in some countries. EU is at the beginning of integration, but it is a long way to "United States of Europe". We are moving towards USE, but it is still very far away.
EU is heterogenous and loosely bound when compared to US. Compare EU/Finland to US/Michigan. Finland and US have their own army. Michigan and EU don't. Finland has full control over Finnish police and Finnish borders. I don't know about the "normal" police, but US has FBI. I assume anyone from Michigan is free to visit Florida, without passport control.
Finland collects taxes, just as Michigan and the US government. EU gets a share of some Finnish taxes, and a membership fee from the Finnish government. Just a few years ago, Finland had it's own currency. Now we use the Euro of EU. I assume Michigan has always used the US dollar. If US signs an international treaty, Michigan must follow. EU may sign international treaties, but if Finland does not sign, it does not apply. It is possible to be a citizen of US, or a citizen of Finland. But there is no EU citizenship (yet). And so on and so forth, but I hope you already got the point.
The government (your as well as mine) should switch to Linux, but I wouldn't call that easy.
Rebooting a single computer, and installing Linux instead of Windows is relatively easy.
Rebooting the US government, and installing Linux is relatively hard. I think no-one even knows if the BIOS supports booting from CD.
How many man-hours would it take just to install Linux (or BSD) on all federal computers? Training all the government tech support and sysadmins, not to mention all other workers? How many closed-format files (.doc etc) would have to be manually fine-tuned after the change? And so on and so forth. I guess the time and money spent on this worm would not be enough for photocopying the plans for changing to open source.
Does that mean I should drink one cup of coffee every hour, or should I start smoking? Or print something useless every hour?
These are the legitimate reasons for leaving your computer at my workplace.
Of course I could start disturbing the pointy-haired ones, but that increases the risk of getting fired.
From now on, I make one wasted print/hour just to be on the safe side. At least my son will now get all the drawing paper he needs. But some poor owl will lose its home, again.
A mall was bombed last year. (try googling for "Myyrmanni bomb") Several people got killed, including the bomber. It turned out that the bomber was active poster on several discussion forums. Some of these were crackpot forums, and one was for people interested in explosives. The moderator of the explosives forum got arrested, but was released afterwards.
Another point is that the Finnish telecom, (Sonera) got thoroughly blasted by an anonymous book first published on the web. The book seemed credible enough, and later a police investigation showed that the security department of Sonera had been scanning the e-mail and the phone calls of the employees, without their consent. Probably this was done by a pissed-off employee. However, a big company got in trouble because the net allowed fast spreading of the book, and there was no way to press the publisher.
The outcome is logical, as the politicians and voters do not understand the net. Large campaign financiers have an interest in regulating the net. Play with the fears of the people and get paid when you desperately need good press and money for the commercials.
I'm getting more and more ashamed for being Finnish.
At least the Finns are one step ahead, not behind. Teosto (Finnish RIAA equivalent) has sued the churches, as some hymns are copyrighted, and they don't pay fees. The court ruled that churches don't have to pay, but they have appealed. The ministry of education pays fees for teaching music at schools. And so on and so forth.
The media takes sides, don't forget
I wish more people on slashdot would understand that.
I've lived all over the world, and it's amazing how different the media handles things. Here in the US, it's Palestinians bombing busses. In Europe, it's Israelis shooting houses.
I wouldn't put it that simply. In Europe, the view you get depends on what you read or watch. The media on the left (labour/social democratic) side of the political axis is more pro-palestinian. On the right (conservative) side the opinions seem to be more pro-israel. (The right/left-wing loudmouths seem to be anti-Israel, but no-one listens them anyway).
If you really want an anti-Israel view, you could check for example IRNA (IRanian News Agency).
Would you expect that a higher life form has the same capabilities of making simulations as we have? On the other hand, maybe the ones running the simulation are not higher life forms, they just have decided that the best hardware and software is not available in the simulation. I think you could just as well say it directly: We have no way of proving we are not a simulation.
Maybe our parents got stuck on the Enterprise holodeck for good, and we are the only 'real' thing?
The 'blue screen of death' sounds really scary now. I hope they are not running Windows.
You made me paranoid. I hope you are happier now.
Usually, crimes are deterred by the mere display of a firearm, no shots are fired
10-15,000 criminal shootings (no cops, not self- defense, no suicides, just criminal gun use).
You compare 'crimes prevented by display of firearm' and 'criminal shootings'.
However, often people get robbed by 'display of firearm', as they are afraid of 'criminal shootings'. Count also this, and I think your numbers would change considerably.
Your 'fuzziness' argument applies also to both your numbers. Divide the numbers so that you get one for the smaller, and you have:
1 to 1.5 (times constant) for 'criminal shootings'
1 to 2 (times constant) for 'crimes prevented'
I most wholeheartedly agree. The MS dominant market position and unfair competition (closed and fluctuating file formats etc.) just makes this really hard. Playing fair against someone who is 100 times bigger and plays dirty is too much for most people. I have not yet given up the hope.
Linux is a good product, but it is not being actively sold, at least not here. I have never seen a Linux/OpenOffice/pine/gcc/whatever commercial outside the geek-world.
Open source advocacy si the solution. MS-bashing may speed things up, but I'll not waste my time on that. Most people I know don't like MS, they feel it is a blood-sucking monopoly. What needs to be done is to show them the alternatives, and let them rationally decide whether they want to try it. I have started actively advocating for Open Source a few months ago (when I was forced to get a Windows workstation to our workplace, but that's another story.). Two successes so far.
When my wife got a new laptop for her birthday, I installed Linux and asked her to try it. She used to have an ancient 386DX with Win 3.1 and Word 6.0. (The main use is stadard text editing, so 386 was perfectly good for that.). After a few weeks, I asked if it's OK to remove Windows, as she had not used it. And now it's gone.
A political association I'm active in decided to get a part-time employee. We have an old Pentium, and it has so far been used mainly for updating our webpages (Win95 + Frontpage, the people are used to that.). Now, we needed Office suite so that the employee could actually. I asked whether we could try OpenOffice first, as it's free. If it would suck, we could buy Office later anyway. And people seem to be happy with it. Propagating this to the OS side seems to be perfectly possible, and also forwarding it to our sister associations.
Starting form the grassroots, and just asking 'couldn't you try the free one 1st and buy something only if you really need' seems to work. I'm just asking the question when people are forced to upgrade or buy something new. This may not work for large corporations, but you have to start somewhere.