What is most remarkable is that the medium is TAPE. With all the improvements in storage technology, it's amazing that tape is still (apparently) the most effective means of reliably storing and recovering data in catastrophic situations.
Of course, Galileo's tape system survived numerous passes through radiation fields that would have fried many systems, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
From the article:
"They could be the birth cry of black holes formed from the ruins of a supernova or the result of colliding black holes or neutron stars."
Those are hardly new theories. The article doesn't say how the observers happened to catch the burst as it happened, what observers were able to see in the "weeks" (which is a long time for a gamma ray burst) that followed, or what the artist's conception of a Wolf-Rayet star has to do with any of this.
On the whole, a very disappointing article.
This story, published last October 8 by NASA is much more informative.
"I contracted for a very large chemical company's R&D function for a while. They were in to patenting everything they discovered."
This is hardly unusual and probably was not a strategy created by IBM. Manufacturing companies routinely patent everything in sight, partly as protection, partly to keep competitors from marketing the idea. It's only in recent years that litigating patents has become such big news.
Once a company starts down the litigation trail, EVERYONE looks to see if that outfit could be a target for infringement claims. You had better believe that, not only IBM, but HP is looking at SCO now, if only to pre-empt SCO trying to find a line of code in HP-UX that they can claim is theirs.
"Ahhh, don't we have something like that already known as a social security number?"
Technically, no, because you don't have to have a social security number. However, since you need one to work, to get a driver's license, even to be claimed as a dependent on your parent's tax return, for all practical purposes, we certainly do.
But, it's better to have one ID than have to keep track of several. The issue is one of whether the system becomes abused.
And, any system can be abused, whether it's one ID number or twenty.
The scientists who worked on this project were interviewed on NPR yesterday. While they have accomplished a great deal, they are far from "done". According to one of the researchers, 10% of the work is complete and the balance may not be finished in the foreseeable future.
On the positive side, he was quick to point out an "engineering rule" (as he called it) that says that 90% of the benefit comes from the first 10% of the work. While this is an intriguing restatement of the old 80/20 or "gold in the mine" postulates, it doesn't ordinarily apply directly to new discoveries.
I suspect, though, that due to the nature of genetic research, there will be some quick benefits. As another researcher pointed out, with the information they have ( and the knowledge they'll be gaining ), the time to develop a new strain will be reduced because rather than having to wait for the entire growth cycle to take place, the DNA of seeds can be analyzed to see if the desired property is present.
Another interesting aspect was that emphasis was placed on conventional breeding techniques, not genetic engineering. In other words, if you know what property is controlled by what gene, you can more efficiently cross-breed for it. I presume that this emphasis is given to allay fears (whether real or imagined) of "Frankenplants" mutating away out there in some lab.
One fascinating fact they revealed is that rice (and other plants) have more genes than humans. Apparently, this is because the rice genes are simpler so it takes more of them to provide the "instruction set" for being a rice plant.
I dunno...sounds like the Triffids are among us...
my top two gripes are resource management and DLL hell.
Once closed, programs should give back the resources they used. And if you must use a custom version of a standard DLL, put it in the program directory rather than screw up every other program that uses, say, mfc40.dll.
I can think of a couple of reasons for this. Assuming EB uses the same methods for computing "top selling" games as Billboard Magazine did for computing the top recordings back when I followed that mag, they could well rate something very high that's not released or just released.
First, they may be counting pre-orders. N2002 has been available for pre-order for at least a month. Second, they may factor in opinion data from retailers. A retailer gets a lot of people coming in asking if they have N2002, so he gives it a high rating even though he hasn't sold copy one.
I can remember records being listed as million-sellers the day they were released, all based on retailer pre-orders.
Of course, the fact that I remember "records" as an example proves that (a) there's nothing new under the sun, and (b) I've been around since just after the sun was formed...
I note that the award is the 2001 version, after which it speaks of recognizing "recent" accomplishments.
Now, I admire Bob Metcalfe as much as anyone, but the creation of Ethernet is hardly recent. The recognition of Torvalds, Gordon Moore, and Michael Dell (a finalist) likewise begs the question: Hasn't anyone done anything in technology lately?
I would suppose that this award is like the Nobel, in that it is given once time has proved that the nominee's accomplishments are not a flash-in-the-pan.
"How do you make an installer that can remove the old version of a program, and yet have zero chance that it never removes the wrong thing? "
You could take the approach Acrobat Reader 4.x did. If it detects something that looks like an older version of Acrobat Reader (pre-4.x), it pops up a box telling the user to uninstall it.
Years ago, I used to love to fish (No, this isn't going to turn into something about catching Cthulu on a hula popper). I'm out late one night gathering the universal best bait, nightcrawlers. My wife is in the bedroom reading something by H.P. Lovecraft. It's a warm night, so the window is open. I come to the window, and say, "Hi." Since she's already spooked by the story, my quiet voice scares the bejeebers out of her, and she falls out of bed, while I cackle evilly.
She waited months for her revenge.
One afternoon, she asks me to reach something that's rolled under the bed. I get down on the floor, and lift the bed covers, only to see two gleaming eyeballs staring at me! Instantly, I'm thinking a giant bug is under there, so I let out a yelp, bang my head on the bead frame, and scramble up---to see my wife's idiot Pekinese come waddling out from under the bed.
To this day, she swears she didn't know the dog was under there.
"I would like to know that when cable companies started up if they did not have a similar history and set of problems. Does anybody know?"
My recollection is that cable companies started out as local monopolies, signing contracts with a community to provide cable service. Because they faced no local competition, they were able to work out the bugs and build their infrastructure without worrying so much about keeping costs under control. Their rates were regulated like utility rates.
Interestingly, I haven't read about telco DSL services going down the tubes. In our area, BellSouth seems to be doing just fine, thank you.
I certainly don't like the idea of someone hacking a news site and altering stories, but on the subject of "trusted news sites"...
There is no such thing. The news media (whether electronic or print) has, for all of its existence, stooped to reporting innuendo and rumor as fact to one-up the competition or to push an agenda.
The Cleveland Press in the mid-1950's became legendary for its incendiary reporting of the Sam Sheppard case (which led directly to his conviction being overturned).
CBS did a story on school demonstrations over the firing of an African-American principal in Selma, AL in the early 90's. I was working there, so I was amused to see a story open up showing first a fine old antebellum home, which was supposed to typical of white residences, followed by some sharecropper shacks, supposedly where African-Americans lived. Well, no one lived in those shacks, and some of the lovliest antebellum homes in Selma are owned by African-Americans.
And they got most of the rest of the facts wrong, too.
The Hearst chain's push for the Spanish-American war comes to mind.
For a recent example, consider the on-the-spot reporter from Kabul on CNN who could hear Cruise missles flying over the city during what turned out to be a helicopter attack by the political opposition of the Taliban. Several times during the report, the CNN anchor kept talking about CNN's exclusive technology that enabled us to get this breaking story. The only thing that was "broken" was the need to separate fact from speculation.
Fortunately, someone usually gets the story right (if only to discredit a competitor), so it pays to check several sources before jumping to any conclusion about any individual story, hacked or not.
After getting over my knee-jerk reaction of Those-Microsoft-scumbags-have-done-it-again, I got to thinking of the many times over the years that I've listened to Presidential Press Secretaries talk about "telegrams" pouring in to the White House in strong support of whatever unpopular decision the sitting President just had to announce.
This sort of thing is as old as politics. Business and politics have been intertwined since there have been business and politics. Read William Manchester's book "The Arms of Krupp" to see what real lobbying is all about.
I suspect that what is making the Attornys-General really unhappy is that they see the Microsoft anti-trust case slipping away. While MS will certainly be penalized (since the findings of fact have been upheld), their delaying tactics will, in the long run, probably force Justice to negotiate another agreement that MS can start ignoring five minutes after it's signed.
Re:still the windows metaphor
on
Windows in 2020
·
· Score: 1
Microsoft already tried this. Remember "Bob"? That even had "outside".
Let's see... if Bob had succeeded, we could have gone "outside" and run Linux.
"There are already several easy technical fixes to prevent source spoofing, and if Gibson and Cringely's phantasy comes true, they will all be deployed in various Internet routers in a matter of weeks. Some of them already are implemented in Cisco routers, but are not enabled by default. Long before things can come to sufficient head to justify Microsoft's appearance as an off-white knight to ostensibly save the day. "
True enough, but the magic words are "not enabled by default". Too many people put devices in and never configure past default levels. Or apply patches, for that matter. Consider that the patch to correct the condition that Code Red exploits had been out for over a month.
The point I think that Gibson and others like him are trying to make is that opening holes like this in an interconnected world can cause havoc that will impact even those who are protected, because there are so many more who are unprotected.
Unless something has radically changed with MS products, to install an upgrade, all you had to do was have the CD (or floppies) of the previous product. When the upgrade starts, it asks for the location of the executable (if it's not in the default location) or for the user to insert the previous copy's CD.
In fact, to install my first (upgrade) copy of Win95, all I had to do was insert disk 1 of my Windows 3.11 set into the floppy drive.
Ordinarily I get a little tired of "the Internet was meant to be free!!!" philosophies (reminds me too much of the hippies I went to school with), but this message hits the nail on the head.
The best sites over the years have been either:
1) Knowledgebase sites provided by companies that earned their money selling something real, then supporting it on the web (via gopher in the olden days).
2) Special interest stuff that someone is really interesting in sharing with everyone.
I don't have a thing in the world against a.com making a buck, but do it by providing some value. Either sell me something I need or want(fatbrain.com) or provide a presence when I'm on the computer and not able to use the regular source (The Weather Channel, CNN). In either case, don't wear me out with endless ads from other people that take forever to load (or lock the system because doubleclick's server is down).
The web is a mess because of this endless and essentially useless advertising. I took a hint from the article and downloaded Adsubtract (free for home use). It seems to work nicely so far (although, in some cases, the additional browser opens; it's blank, however). Load speed on The Weather Channel and Intellicast really improved. And the pages looked sooooo much better without all those banners stuck all over the place.
Yeah, I could live with the web the way it was.
Got to find my copy now
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 1
I still have my Sci-Fi book club edition of this book. I recall reading it the first time and being thoroughly mystified about what was going on; the further I read the more confused I got. Zelaney's writing was so good, though, I still enjoyed the book. I reread it a few years later, and, having broadened my horizons a little, I realized what an excellent story this was.
It's like an onion with layer after layer; every reading reveals a little more. In fact, I'm going to have to look for that thing now and give it another read.
But, please, no Phil Dick. After half a dozen readings, I never did figure out The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldritch. And I refuse to drop acid to get it to make sense!
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
(In the Nova presentation of raising an obelisk, an engineer came up with this arcane concept that took math that hadn't been invented in Egyptian times to create. And even then, it didn't work.}
Slashdot Mirror
What is most remarkable is that the medium is TAPE. With all the improvements in storage technology, it's amazing that tape is still (apparently) the most effective means of reliably storing and recovering data in catastrophic situations. Of course, Galileo's tape system survived numerous passes through radiation fields that would have fried many systems, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
From the article: "They could be the birth cry of black holes formed from the ruins of a supernova or the result of colliding black holes or neutron stars." Those are hardly new theories. The article doesn't say how the observers happened to catch the burst as it happened, what observers were able to see in the "weeks" (which is a long time for a gamma ray burst) that followed, or what the artist's conception of a Wolf-Rayet star has to do with any of this. On the whole, a very disappointing article. This story, published last October 8 by NASA is much more informative.
"I contracted for a very large chemical company's R&D function for a while. They were in to patenting everything they discovered."
This is hardly unusual and probably was not a strategy created by IBM. Manufacturing companies routinely patent everything in sight, partly as protection, partly to keep competitors from marketing the idea. It's only in recent years that litigating patents has become such big news.
Once a company starts down the litigation trail, EVERYONE looks to see if that outfit could be a target for infringement claims. You had better believe that, not only IBM, but HP is looking at SCO now, if only to pre-empt SCO trying to find a line of code in HP-UX that they can claim is theirs.
John and Lionel Barrymore, in 1932, starred in Arsene Lupin (with John as Lupin and Lionel as the plodding detective).
Obviously, this version was based directly on the original French work. Not a samurai in sight.
"Ahhh, don't we have something like that already known as a social security number?"
Technically, no, because you don't have to have a social security number. However, since you need one to work, to get a driver's license, even to be claimed as a dependent on your parent's tax return, for all practical purposes, we certainly do.
But, it's better to have one ID than have to keep track of several. The issue is one of whether the system becomes abused.
And, any system can be abused, whether it's one ID number or twenty.
The scientists who worked on this project were interviewed on NPR yesterday. While they have accomplished a great deal, they are far from "done". According to one of the researchers, 10% of the work is complete and the balance may not be finished in the foreseeable future.
On the positive side, he was quick to point out an "engineering rule" (as he called it) that says that 90% of the benefit comes from the first 10% of the work. While this is an intriguing restatement of the old 80/20 or "gold in the mine" postulates, it doesn't ordinarily apply directly to new discoveries.
I suspect, though, that due to the nature of genetic research, there will be some quick benefits. As another researcher pointed out, with the information they have ( and the knowledge they'll be gaining ), the time to develop a new strain will be reduced because rather than having to wait for the entire growth cycle to take place, the DNA of seeds can be analyzed to see if the desired property is present.
Another interesting aspect was that emphasis was placed on conventional breeding techniques, not genetic engineering. In other words, if you know what property is controlled by what gene, you can more efficiently cross-breed for it. I presume that this emphasis is given to allay fears (whether real or imagined) of "Frankenplants" mutating away out there in some lab.
One fascinating fact they revealed is that rice (and other plants) have more genes than humans. Apparently, this is because the rice genes are simpler so it takes more of them to provide the "instruction set" for being a rice plant.
I dunno...sounds like the Triffids are among us...
A more concise and to the point article is available at:
h ol es/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/01/21/black.
This is sour grapes, but, geez louise, I submitted this item in January and had it rejected.
my top two gripes are resource management and DLL hell.
Once closed, programs should give back the resources they used. And if you must use a custom version of a standard DLL, put it in the program directory rather than screw up every other program that uses, say, mfc40.dll.
I can think of a couple of reasons for this. Assuming EB uses the same methods for computing "top selling" games as Billboard Magazine did for computing the top recordings back when I followed that mag, they could well rate something very high that's not released or just released.
First, they may be counting pre-orders. N2002 has been available for pre-order for at least a month. Second, they may factor in opinion data from retailers. A retailer gets a lot of people coming in asking if they have N2002, so he gives it a high rating even though he hasn't sold copy one.
I can remember records being listed as million-sellers the day they were released, all based on retailer pre-orders.
Of course, the fact that I remember "records" as an example proves that (a) there's nothing new under the sun, and (b) I've been around since just after the sun was formed...
In the article I read on this in the morning paper, it said the ads were replayed more than plays from the game.
Now there's a commentary on why people watch the Super Bowl...
I note that the award is the 2001 version, after which it speaks of recognizing "recent" accomplishments.
Now, I admire Bob Metcalfe as much as anyone, but the creation of Ethernet is hardly recent. The recognition of Torvalds, Gordon Moore, and Michael Dell (a finalist) likewise begs the question: Hasn't anyone done anything in technology lately?
I would suppose that this award is like the Nobel, in that it is given once time has proved that the nominee's accomplishments are not a flash-in-the-pan.
"How do you make an installer that can remove the old version of a program, and yet have zero chance that it never removes the wrong thing? "
You could take the approach Acrobat Reader 4.x did. If it detects something that looks like an older version of Acrobat Reader (pre-4.x), it pops up a box telling the user to uninstall it.
True story.
Years ago, I used to love to fish (No, this isn't going to turn into something about catching Cthulu on a hula popper). I'm out late one night gathering the universal best bait, nightcrawlers. My wife is in the bedroom reading something by H.P. Lovecraft. It's a warm night, so the window is open. I come to the window, and say, "Hi." Since she's already spooked by the story, my quiet voice scares the bejeebers out of her, and she falls out of bed, while I cackle evilly.
She waited months for her revenge.
One afternoon, she asks me to reach something that's rolled under the bed. I get down on the floor, and lift the bed covers, only to see two gleaming eyeballs staring at me! Instantly, I'm thinking a giant bug is under there, so I let out a yelp, bang my head on the bead frame, and scramble up---to see my wife's idiot Pekinese come waddling out from under the bed.
To this day, she swears she didn't know the dog was under there.
"I would like to know that when cable companies started up if they did not have a similar history and set of problems. Does anybody know?"
My recollection is that cable companies started out as local monopolies, signing contracts with a community to provide cable service. Because they faced no local competition, they were able to work out the bugs and build their infrastructure without worrying so much about keeping costs under control. Their rates were regulated like utility rates.
Interestingly, I haven't read about telco DSL services going down the tubes. In our area, BellSouth seems to be doing just fine, thank you.
I certainly don't like the idea of someone hacking a news site and altering stories, but on the subject of "trusted news sites"...
There is no such thing. The news media (whether electronic or print) has, for all of its existence, stooped to reporting innuendo and rumor as fact to one-up the competition or to push an agenda.
The Cleveland Press in the mid-1950's became legendary for its incendiary reporting of the Sam Sheppard case (which led directly to his conviction being overturned).
CBS did a story on school demonstrations over the firing of an African-American principal in Selma, AL in the early 90's. I was working there, so I was amused to see a story open up showing first a fine old antebellum home, which was supposed to typical of white residences, followed by some sharecropper shacks, supposedly where African-Americans lived. Well, no one lived in those shacks, and some of the lovliest antebellum homes in Selma are owned by African-Americans.
And they got most of the rest of the facts wrong, too.
The Hearst chain's push for the Spanish-American war comes to mind.
For a recent example, consider the on-the-spot reporter from Kabul on CNN who could hear Cruise missles flying over the city during what turned out to be a helicopter attack by the political opposition of the Taliban. Several times during the report, the CNN anchor kept talking about CNN's exclusive technology that enabled us to get this breaking story. The only thing that was "broken" was the need to separate fact from speculation.
Fortunately, someone usually gets the story right (if only to discredit a competitor), so it pays to check several sources before jumping to any conclusion about any individual story, hacked or not.
After getting over my knee-jerk reaction of Those-Microsoft-scumbags-have-done-it-again, I got to thinking of the many times over the years that I've listened to Presidential Press Secretaries talk about "telegrams" pouring in to the White House in strong support of whatever unpopular decision the sitting President just had to announce.
This sort of thing is as old as politics. Business and politics have been intertwined since there have been business and politics. Read William Manchester's book "The Arms of Krupp" to see what real lobbying is all about.
I suspect that what is making the Attornys-General really unhappy is that they see the Microsoft anti-trust case slipping away. While MS will certainly be penalized (since the findings of fact have been upheld), their delaying tactics will, in the long run, probably force Justice to negotiate another agreement that MS can start ignoring five minutes after it's signed.
Microsoft already tried this. Remember "Bob"? That even had "outside".
... if Bob had succeeded, we could have gone "outside" and run Linux.
Let's see
grease ----> squeaky wheel
"There are already several easy technical fixes to prevent source spoofing, and if Gibson and Cringely's phantasy comes true, they will all be deployed in various Internet routers in a matter of weeks. Some of them already are implemented in Cisco routers, but are not enabled by default. Long before things can come to sufficient head to justify Microsoft's appearance as an off-white knight to ostensibly save the day. "
True enough, but the magic words are "not enabled by default". Too many people put devices in and never configure past default levels. Or apply patches, for that matter. Consider that the patch to correct the condition that Code Red exploits had been out for over a month.
The point I think that Gibson and others like him are trying to make is that opening holes like this in an interconnected world can cause havoc that will impact even those who are protected, because there are so many more who are unprotected.
Unless something has radically changed with MS products, to install an upgrade, all you had to do was have the CD (or floppies) of the previous product. When the upgrade starts, it asks for the location of the executable (if it's not in the default location) or for the user to insert the previous copy's CD.
In fact, to install my first (upgrade) copy of Win95, all I had to do was insert disk 1 of my Windows 3.11 set into the floppy drive.
"Apparently the author thinks these are otherwise unsolveable mathematical mysteries... I sincerely hope he's not representative of the average man."
Of course he's not representative. The average modern American thinks a "square root" is some genetically engineered tuber.
Ordinarily I get a little tired of "the Internet was meant to be free!!!" philosophies (reminds me too much of the hippies I went to school with), but this message hits the nail on the head.
.com making a buck, but do it by providing some value. Either sell me something I need or want(fatbrain.com) or provide a presence when I'm on the computer and not able to use the regular source (The Weather Channel, CNN). In either case, don't wear me out with endless ads from other people that take forever to load (or lock the system because doubleclick's server is down).
The best sites over the years have been either:
1) Knowledgebase sites provided by companies that earned their money selling something real, then supporting it on the web (via gopher in the olden days).
2) Special interest stuff that someone is really interesting in sharing with everyone.
I don't have a thing in the world against a
The web is a mess because of this endless and essentially useless advertising. I took a hint from the article and downloaded Adsubtract (free for home use). It seems to work nicely so far (although, in some cases, the additional browser opens; it's blank, however). Load speed on The Weather Channel and Intellicast really improved. And the pages looked sooooo much better without all those banners stuck all over the place.
Yeah, I could live with the web the way it was.
I still have my Sci-Fi book club edition of this book. I recall reading it the first time and being thoroughly mystified about what was going on; the further I read the more confused I got. Zelaney's writing was so good, though, I still enjoyed the book. I reread it a few years later, and, having broadened my horizons a little, I realized what an excellent story this was.
It's like an onion with layer after layer; every reading reveals a little more. In fact, I'm going to have to look for that thing now and give it another read.
But, please, no Phil Dick. After half a dozen readings, I never did figure out The Three Stigmata of Palmer Aldritch. And I refuse to drop acid to get it to make sense!
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
(In the Nova presentation of raising an obelisk, an engineer came up with this arcane concept that took math that hadn't been invented in Egyptian times to create. And even then, it didn't work.}
"It was like watching a Star Wars movie and hearing Yoda say, 'Luke! You'll have to learn the ways of the force before THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK!' "
Actually, Yoda would have said, "Luke! The ways of the force you must learn before STRIKES BACK THE EMPIRE DOES!"
Which would have made a lousy title for the movie.