So now we can track via one website all the connections made between early hackers. There are probably a few aliases that shouldn't be reconnected to some of us.
Let this sleeping dog lie. One can always drum up old BBS mates another way.
Drop a pebble in a pool of water, a pond, a lake, or a smooth ocean.
Observe. The packet of waves created by the pebble radiate out and as they do - they disperse. Dispersion means that they spread out and make a larger packet over time. This is because the phase velocity and the group velocity aren't the same. If you look closely at the wave packet, you'll notice that the crests of the waves move faster than the whole packet of waves.
This whole thing is a very well understood and old phenomenom. Its easy to get the phase speed to move at a different speed than the group speed. And how fast it is doesn't really mean much - its just an illusion of motion.
I think the same thing happens in microwave guides.
I built a few computers that would operate in or near water - some submerged - some just above the water.
The hardest part of the specifications given is the "watch DVDs". That would probably require changing the DVDs - ie. opening up the drive bay.
Everything else could be done with a sealed machine.
I recommend - strongly - to make a compelely sealed computer and put the DVD reader outside the box - if the DVD player breaks - so be it.
In order to make a completely sealed computer - put the whole thing in a box and make sure there's a way to get the heat out of the box.
Then throw some dessicant (color indicating is nice) bags in the box and seal it all up. You'll need to make feedthrough's for the power cables - keyboard - and mouse. Put some external connectors on the box so you can replace the keyboard and mouse.
A previous poster mentioned this - but when there are open computers on ships (NOAA, America's cup... they're in a sealed Air Conditioned room)
The ocean is a rough place - its fun to put computers in it!
If this is a critical computer - backup the hardware
I was hoping that what might come out of the space station would be more experience with space.
There are a lot of unknowns about people in space as well as how to build things in space. If we tried to launch long range manned missions now we'd spend a lot of money and very likely kill a few astronauts.
I just hope humans keep trying to get into space... Maybe 300 years from now we could send a ship to a distant solar system with a planet that might have life. We need to start now.
Maybe there'll be a moon base by the time I'm old. That'd be so cool.
Well atleast some are US citizens. But that's not the point. Justice doesn't know what your citizenship is or what color you have. That's not a liberal value - that's American.
So our government locks people up without trial, without charge, and in secret and 'coerces' them to give information.
Meanwhile 'the pledge of allegiance' is illegal.
Everything I learn in 3rd grade about how great this country is crumbles before my eyes.
I've tried writing to my Senators and Reps... What else is there to do?
remember when Windows was the underdog?
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 1
A long time ago (way back in the 80's) Windows was terrible - it was based on MSDOS - which was terrible and everybody thought it could never, would never supplant DEC, SUN, IBM proprietary software and hardware...
Now here comes Linux. I never thought it would get this far. Its written by a bunch of *dread* hackers.... I think the writing is on the wall.
There will always be proprietary stuff - but people like cheap- cheap- cheap. Now if someone could only pay me to run a piece of software.
For 3D vision - or stereo vision doesn't the left eye have to see a different image than the right? Since the eyes only differ by a small position, the LCD can only differ the image by the angle of the viewing eye. So this doesn't seem like it would work if.
you turned your head sideways
you moved your head to far to the right or left
you were to far or too near the display
Man, ergonomically nasty. But atleast these people are using the annoying tendency of LCD display to get real dim at a moderate to steep angle to their advantage. You know... Like those evil LCD movie screens on airplanes.
I was burned during this whole thing. But by the CDC. If anyone should know, they should. And well they didn't. They reported that the first cases were accidental. Its not the media's fault for this kind of mis-information. Its not the internet's fault. Simply too many people jumping to too many conclusions and then the other side lying so as to calm the public. Almost everyone I know (except my boss) seems to have a level head.
I don't think Jon Katz's critique of the instant media is valid. Most people know not to jump to conclusions. Most people know not to trust the government's words. Most people know that the real fears are Small Pox, the Plague, nuclear weapons... And while Anthrax does liquify the few it gets, its not a serious threat to US national security. I do feel sorry for the letter carriers though. Jeez, who'd a thought that ultra-fine powder could get out of a letter. I'm not very impressed with the government health officials in this depressing story.
One lingering fear I have is this. If we have a representational democracy, and my representatives don't open their letters to read my view, and they don't read email because... well... they just don't, exactly how are they supposed to do what we want. I think the hijackers hijacked some planes and our government has been hijacked by fear.
I understand the need for some amount of prepackaged goodies that Matlab comes with, but doesn't Octave allow for you to build all the functionality of Simulink and such into it without too much pain.
Octave is a good package, I used it on the DEC alphas back in the day when I couldn't get a version of Matlab. We were running Linux on the Alphas to save money. I know its ridiculous to buy a $5k machine and then save money on the OS, but hey that's academia. The plotting was a little clunky but GNUplot is a fine program.
Come on! You're a university, right? Make the kids write some numerical simulation code. Its *good* for them. I know I hated doing it when I was in college, but it is good knowing that you don't need to be reliant on powerful proprietary software to be a good engineer. That software does tend to make things go faster ofcourse.
Actually I'm not convinced that this is OK. I read it as saying that I couldn't use their object code libraries to develop a piece of software which was free. This is different that anything before. I'm starting to think Stallman might be right. *shiver*
I always used supplied libraries to develop my applications. That was the whole point of an SDK. Now I guess I can't, unless I charge for the software. This puts MS at an advantage, since they often put out software at cheap or free prices to undercut their competitors.
Glad the league for programming freedom is out there somewhere fighting the good fight.
"(c) Open Source. Recipient's license rights to the Software are conditioned upon Recipient (i)
not distributing such Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with Potentially Viral Software (as
defined below); and (ii) not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient
software which includes the Software, in whole or in part." -- in part? does that include the library routines?
The unamed university I attended received a *lot* of external funding. Some public, some private, while it is possible for research to be corrupted by commercial interests, its been corrupt for all time. Scientists may be idealistic, but science is not. The best thing about science is its open review process. But the things that science concentrates on have always been at the command of industry and government.
The use of public money to fund private patents is a good debate. But there are many examples of good companies taking the patents and taking the research much further with private money to actually get the job done. Just look at http://www.eink.com as a good example of what can be done with a patent that started out at a University.
Personally I'd like to see less military oriented public funds research and more commercial interests. It always seemed strange to invent technology where the whole purpose was for it to never actually get used (the idea of defense).
--my opinion, which is subject to change if I learn more
My CS class (thru Scheme) taught me not just how object oriented programming is structured, but the converse (data directed) works. We spent the
first week learning the language and the rest of the course actually learning computer science. Most languages require all this extra time learning their syntax and weird libraries and stuff that has no place in a class room.
This class would've been extremely clunky and nasty in C or Java. Those languages are good if you're interested in writing applications, but if you want to learn how to *program*, then use a language that lets you learn computer science.
Computer Science? Its not really about computers and its definately not a science.
This is exactly what I was wondering. All the filtering equipment (read supercomputers) would have to be in the water. Assuming there's a wire to the surface, they could then beam a relatively tiny beam up to a satellite. But the wire to the surface idea is pretty problematic. Basically, they can tap the line, and listen. But you can't get the information back to a useful place.
They should stick to old fashioned spying with bond girls, social engineering, tapping the dome of silence, shoe phones.... Max! Max! Agent 99!
Trying to eavedrop on the whole world's communications... Who do they think they are? God?
I think you may have a point here. I kinda
would like to draft up something. I'm not
a member of the IEEE or anything, but perhaps
we could even send in something to them
Peroxide as a monofuel is pretty cool in some
ways (only makes water and oxygen as exhaust),
but its horribly dangerous. It instantly ignites
on contact with organic material.
There was a cool project to use H202 as a fuel
see: http://www.discover.com/mar_01/feattech.html
I know a relative of said eccentric American
engineer and saw a videotape of the machine a
few years ago. I guess one test pilot died
during the development of the minicoptor. I
think it was the H202 that got on him and burned
him to death.
ofcourse dongle is far more useful of
a word 'cause it can be a derogatory
word for anything that plugs-in, such
as an evil copy-protection dongle;
those pesky devices which stick off
of parallel ports and let expensive
applications run.
I will however admit that in this case
wall-wart is a wonderful word and I
should've remembered it.
And they should make those things illegal.
However, people love peripherals and
peripheral makers hate UL/CSA/FM listing
120VAC devices.
I can't say I want anymore power supply
devices lying around my desk. So please
don't suggest that they make another.
Its wonderful and unusual that they make
proper UL listed power supplies for computers.
Most cheap things don't want to plug into
the wall.
Currently, I have
One AC-DC for the scanner
One AC-DC for the external zip drive
One AC-AC for the DSL modem
One AC-DC for the PIC16F873 board
These dongles either take up cumbersome
space or they take up way too much space on
the powerstips.
Happily the printer, monitor, and computer
all plug in normally.
On the other hand... If they could link
all of these peripherals up to the same
power supply, that'd be pretty cool.
I wouldn't mind having just one external
power supply if we could plug all the devices
into that. Unfortunately daisy chaining is
frowned upon in DC power supply situations.
So that means a spidery nest of power cables
no matter what we do.
Is there anyway out of this? How about
a tesla-coil right above the computer;)
I'd give mega frankenstein points to anyone
who made a working computer system using
a tesla-coil.
Two words
Gypsy moths
They destroyed millions of acres of forest in
New England when I was a kid. Us prebubescent
boys killed so many I felt a kind of sickness
even at that early age.
They were accidentally introduced by Trouvelot
interested in silk production.
Tampering with ecological systems can result in
a lot of damage. If it ain't broke, don't fix
it.
see http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/morgantown/4557/gmoth/
for more info.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey... I just checked freshmeat and is shows MySQL as a GPL'ed application. What gives? Can we get a reference for a discussion on this subject?
Let this sleeping dog lie. One can always drum up old BBS mates another way.
Drop a pebble in a pool of water, a pond, a lake, or a smooth ocean.
Observe. The packet of waves created by the pebble radiate out and as they do - they disperse. Dispersion means that they spread out and make a larger packet over time. This is because the phase velocity and the group velocity aren't the same. If you look closely at the wave packet, you'll notice that the crests of the waves move faster than the whole packet of waves.
This whole thing is a very well understood and old phenomenom. Its easy to get the phase speed to move at a different speed than the group speed. And how fast it is doesn't really mean much - its just an illusion of motion.
I think the same thing happens in microwave guides.
water.
The hardest part of the specifications given is the "watch DVDs". That would probably require changing the DVDs - ie. opening up the drive bay.
Everything else could be done with a sealed machine.
I recommend - strongly - to make a compelely sealed computer and put the DVD reader outside the box - if the DVD player breaks - so be it.
In order to make a completely sealed computer - put the whole thing in a box and make sure there's a way to get the heat out of the box.
Then throw some dessicant (color indicating is nice) bags in the box and seal it all up. You'll need to make feedthrough's for the power cables - keyboard - and mouse. Put some external connectors on the box so you can replace the keyboard and mouse.
A previous poster mentioned this - but when there are open computers on ships (NOAA, America's cup... they're in a sealed Air Conditioned room)
The ocean is a rough place - its fun to put computers in it!
If this is a critical computer - backup the hardware
I was hoping that what might come out of the space station would be more experience with space.
There are a lot of unknowns about people in space as well as how to build things in space. If we tried to launch long range manned missions now we'd spend a lot of money and very likely kill a few astronauts.
I just hope humans keep trying to get into space... Maybe 300 years from now we could send a ship to a distant solar system with a planet that might have life. We need to start now.
Maybe there'll be a moon base by the time I'm old. That'd be so cool.
Little baby steps.
Don't rag on NASA - they rock!Well atleast some are US citizens. But that's not the point. Justice doesn't know what your citizenship is or what color you have. That's not a liberal value - that's American.
So our government locks people up without trial, without charge, and in secret and 'coerces' them to give information.
Meanwhile 'the pledge of allegiance' is illegal.
Everything I learn in 3rd grade about how great this country is crumbles before my eyes.
I've tried writing to my Senators and Reps... What else is there to do?
A long time ago (way back in the 80's) Windows was terrible - it was based on MSDOS - which was terrible and everybody thought it could never, would never supplant DEC, SUN, IBM proprietary software and hardware...
Now here comes Linux. I never thought it would get this far. Its written by a bunch of *dread* hackers.... I think the writing is on the wall.
There will always be proprietary stuff - but people like cheap- cheap- cheap. Now if someone could only pay me to run a piece of software.
you turned your head sideways
you moved your head to far to the right or left
you were to far or too near the display
Man, ergonomically nasty. But atleast these people are using the annoying tendency of LCD display to get real dim at a moderate to steep angle to their advantage. You know... Like those evil LCD movie screens on airplanes.
I was burned during this whole thing. But by the CDC. If anyone should know, they should. And well they didn't. They reported that the first cases were accidental. Its not the media's fault for this kind of mis-information. Its not the internet's fault. Simply too many people jumping to too many conclusions and then the other side lying so as to calm the public. Almost everyone I know (except my boss) seems to have a level head.
I don't think Jon Katz's critique of the instant media is valid. Most people know not to jump to conclusions. Most people know not to trust the government's words. Most people know that the real fears are Small Pox, the Plague, nuclear weapons... And while Anthrax does liquify the few it gets, its not a serious threat to US national security. I do feel sorry for the letter carriers though. Jeez, who'd a thought that ultra-fine powder could get out of a letter. I'm not very impressed with the government health officials in this depressing story.
One lingering fear I have is this. If we have a representational democracy, and my representatives don't open their letters to read my view, and they don't read email because... well... they just don't, exactly how are they supposed to do what we want. I think the hijackers hijacked some planes and our government has been hijacked by fear.
I understand the need for some amount of prepackaged goodies that Matlab comes with, but doesn't Octave allow for you to build all the functionality of Simulink and such into it without too much pain.
Octave is a good package, I used it on the DEC alphas back in the day when I couldn't get a version of Matlab. We were running Linux on the Alphas to save money. I know its ridiculous to buy a $5k machine and then save money on the OS, but hey that's academia. The plotting was a little clunky but GNUplot is a fine program.
Come on! You're a university, right? Make the kids write some numerical simulation code. Its *good* for them. I know I hated doing it when I was in college, but it is good knowing that you don't need to be reliant on powerful proprietary software to be a good engineer. That software does tend to make things go faster ofcourse.
Actually I'm not convinced that this is OK. I read it as saying that I couldn't use their object code libraries to develop a piece of software which was free. This is different that anything before. I'm starting to think Stallman might be right. *shiver*
I always used supplied libraries to develop my applications. That was the whole point of an SDK. Now I guess I can't, unless I charge for the software. This puts MS at an advantage, since they often put out software at cheap or free prices to undercut their competitors.
Glad the league for programming freedom is out there somewhere fighting the good fight.
"(c) Open Source. Recipient's license rights to the Software are conditioned upon Recipient (i)
not distributing such Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with Potentially Viral Software (as
defined below); and (ii) not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient
software which includes the Software, in whole or in part." -- in part? does that include the library routines?
The unamed university I attended received a *lot* of external funding. Some public, some private, while it is possible for research to be corrupted by commercial interests, its been corrupt for all time. Scientists may be idealistic, but science is not. The best thing about science is its open review process. But the things that science concentrates on have always been at the command of industry and government.
The use of public money to fund private patents is a good debate. But there are many examples of good companies taking the patents and taking the research much further with private money to actually get the job done. Just look at http://www.eink.com as a good example of what can be done with a patent that started out at a University.
Personally I'd like to see less military oriented public funds research and more commercial interests. It always seemed strange to invent technology where the whole purpose was for it to never actually get used (the idea of defense).
--my opinion, which is subject to change if I learn more
My CS class (thru Scheme) taught me not just how object oriented programming is structured, but the converse (data directed) works. We spent the
first week learning the language and the rest of the course actually learning computer science. Most languages require all this extra time learning their syntax and weird libraries and stuff that has no place in a class room.
This class would've been extremely clunky and nasty in C or Java. Those languages are good if you're interested in writing applications, but if you want to learn how to *program*, then use a language that lets you learn computer science.
Computer Science? Its not really about computers and its definately not a science.
This is exactly what I was wondering. All the filtering equipment (read supercomputers) would have to be in the water. Assuming there's a wire to the surface, they could then beam a relatively tiny beam up to a satellite. But the wire to the surface idea is pretty problematic. Basically, they can tap the line, and listen. But you can't get the information back to a useful place.
They should stick to old fashioned spying with bond girls, social engineering, tapping the dome of silence, shoe phones.... Max! Max! Agent 99!
Trying to eavedrop on the whole world's communications... Who do they think they are? God?
I think you may have a point here. I kinda
would like to draft up something. I'm not
a member of the IEEE or anything, but perhaps
we could even send in something to them
Peroxide as a monofuel is pretty cool in some
ways (only makes water and oxygen as exhaust),
but its horribly dangerous. It instantly ignites
on contact with organic material.
There was a cool project to use H202 as a fuel
see: http://www.discover.com/mar_01/feattech.html
I know a relative of said eccentric American
engineer and saw a videotape of the machine a
few years ago. I guess one test pilot died
during the development of the minicoptor. I
think it was the H202 that got on him and burned
him to death.
You gotta' be careful with that stuff!
Wall wart = dongle in my old lab
ofcourse dongle is far more useful of
a word 'cause it can be a derogatory
word for anything that plugs-in, such
as an evil copy-protection dongle;
those pesky devices which stick off
of parallel ports and let expensive
applications run.
I will however admit that in this case
wall-wart is a wonderful word and I
should've remembered it.
And they should make those things illegal.
However, people love peripherals and
peripheral makers hate UL/CSA/FM listing
120VAC devices.
I can't say I want anymore power supply devices lying around my desk. So please don't suggest that they make another. Its wonderful and unusual that they make proper UL listed power supplies for computers. Most cheap things don't want to plug into the wall. Currently, I have One AC-DC for the scanner One AC-DC for the external zip drive One AC-AC for the DSL modem One AC-DC for the PIC16F873 board These dongles either take up cumbersome space or they take up way too much space on the powerstips. Happily the printer, monitor, and computer all plug in normally. On the other hand... If they could link all of these peripherals up to the same power supply, that'd be pretty cool. I wouldn't mind having just one external power supply if we could plug all the devices into that. Unfortunately daisy chaining is frowned upon in DC power supply situations. So that means a spidery nest of power cables no matter what we do. Is there anyway out of this? How about a tesla-coil right above the computer ;)
I'd give mega frankenstein points to anyone
who made a working computer system using
a tesla-coil.
Two words Gypsy moths They destroyed millions of acres of forest in New England when I was a kid. Us prebubescent boys killed so many I felt a kind of sickness even at that early age. They were accidentally introduced by Trouvelot interested in silk production. Tampering with ecological systems can result in a lot of damage. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. see http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/morgantown/4557/gmoth/ for more info.