If this had been a story about how a company was redistributing a GPL'd program in binary form only, there would be countless posts from zealots crying bloody murder on the part of that evil entity. But an opinion about how taking software without permission is wrong yields retards who think they have some inherint right to whatever they lay their grubby hands on
Now, the question you have to ask yourself is whether the same people going ballistic over GPL violations are the same ones defending other forms of copyright violations. Considering how many versions of your post I've run across attached to articles about piracy, I would be very interested in finding out whether there is a significant percentage of posters who are IP hypocrites, or whether the two classes of article draw posts from two different groups.
If nothing else, it might demonstrate how much groupthink, if any, exists among posting users.
I think it's worth pointing out that Linux would also have drivers by now if they wouldn't keep up this religious crusade to get source only drivers.
How about a little less religion and a little more compsci + logistics management + good coding practices? Making a stupid piece of code your god/way of life tends to blind one to using the intelligence that God gave them.
OK... the closed-source drivers tend to be buggy... so it's the open-source programmers working on the rest of the kernel that need to worry about coding practices? It's not like the people producing binary-only modules need to worry about reverse-engineering the kernel source to write the damn driver in the first place. Conversely, it's pretty hard for kernel hackers dealing with binary module-generated bugs to use "the intelligence that God gave them" when they can't even legally see the source in order to figure out where the bugs are and the module writers are either inaccessible or NDA'd into silence.
If there is a religious issue, I don't think it's the one you imply exists, but I also think the problem is one of two different development models clashing.
That said, the only way in which Linux is going to gain significant ground on the desktop is if:
[snip three points]
Linux's big hurdle for the desktop is that for most people, Windows is Good Enough(TM).
And, Windows Is Already Preinstalled(TM).
One of the major PC manufacturers throwing their weight behind Linux preinstalls, and I mean seriously building and promoting Linux desktops, would probably go a long way toward counteracting the problem of the practically automatic Windows installed base. More people may be familiar with Windows than Linux, but how many people are even explicitly offered the choice of what to start with?
I've been installing kernels based on vanilla source since I started with Red Hat 6.0. From my experience, they work fine. In fact, the second thing I do after installing a new version of Red Hat/Fedora, after closing all the really obvious security holes (why the hell is sendmail running by default???!!!???), is build a kernel to my own specifications and needs.
It runs fine.
Having not tried Fedora Core yet, I don't know if that project did something to tie a successful bootup to the presence of certain modules or a certain kernel version (which would be mind-bendingly dumb). Maybe the Enterprise version freaks out if the default RAID configuration calls for a certain set of modules, I don't know. However, I don't think I've ever had a problem dropping a vanilla kernel into Red Hat.
The trouble is that XM and Sirius are still monthy fee services, while I can tune in to FM radio stations free over the airwaves.
You can tune in to local TV free over the airwaves as well, yet somehow, cable and satellite television thrive. You'd be amazed how many people will pay for a bit (or a lot) of additional service and options.
Aside from a lack of disposable income due to things like rent and food, my primary reason for a lack of CD purchases is the fear that I will have to jump through hoops to make a legal copy of the music on my hard drive. I don't have a standalone CD player, and while many CDs don't have copy prevention measures, I don't want to be surprised by one that does. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel like jumping through hoops to make legal use of a CD I purchase.
If anything, the fear of having to waste time on locating protection-defeating software is moving me to engage in more copyright-violating measures. I can think of about ten or fifteen CDs I would have purchased over the past year if I could be sure the discs would not be broken/"protected".
Why is overseas processing two days faster? Does e-Loan not have sufficient staff in the US? Are the computers faster in India? Is the company unwilling to pay for a 2nd and 3rd shift to facilitate domestic production around the clock?
Are the loans really being processed faster, or is eLoan simply giving that impression for some kind of testing purposes? Does any objective evidence exist that the loans supposedly processed in India are really being finished two days earlier? Is eLoan really sending data to be processed where the customer requests it, or simply making it seem that way to test customer behaviour? I would be very interested to find out the answers to these questions, as well as the parent's.
Thank God Stalin had no hi-tech at all. He was far worse than Hitler.
In pure body-count terms, sure, Stalin racked up a higher total than Adolph. I don't think you can really play scoreboard games with mass murderers, though.
SCO will get big mileage out of this in the public arena, claiming that Novell and IBM are conspiring to block its legal claims. SCO will also try a new legal attack against both companies, claiming they are conspiring against it to defuse SCO's legal arguments while economically benefitting from what SCO views as their contract- and IP-infringing activities.
So the problem is partly a company that trained users to live as all-powerful administrator, then wonders why people keep running as admin even when user accounts are introduced.
The other part of the problem is a company that trained programmers to assume the same thing, and write their programs accordingly. Now that the new versions of the company's primary OS implement some security, the programmers that were used to having complete power are running into justifiable roadblocks.
Nice security culture Microsoft created. The Unix folks learned the folly of getting lax on security long, long ago, thanks to stuff like the Morris worm. How many Morris worms will it take for the Windows world to do the necessary overhaul, on the OS (partly already done, from what I gather), programs, and attitudes of users along with programemrs?
I know you're a troll, but you have no idea how many:
a) people who still run Win98/ME, with their total lack of a permissions model, come into the store, and b) how many people give their XP accounts administrator-level powers just to "make things easier". Shit, the TRON 2.0 demo required administrator privileges to run! We (ie, me and the other employees) have no idea why, it was the most fucking crackheaded thing I've seen since Windows ME, but there it was. I can't imagine how many other programs require admin access to run. And geeks wonder why people have no concept of why it's dangerous to run as root/admin...
P.S: If, whilst their at it, they could make it so that you don't need the RPC to run the thing, it'd be swell too... But I suppose that I'm asking for too much there.
I hope the Fedora Core crew keeps this in mind and locks down everything that's not essential for just getting a system up and running. If a business has the need for particular services, this information should be gathered during install from the sysadmin, or a kickstart image should be used. I see no reason why sendmail and rpc/whatever need to be running by default on a machine intended for desktop use.
This may be a Windows trojan, but like all others, there are lessons in system security that all operating system producers need to keep in mind, whether that OS is supposedly "more secure" or not.
Checking out the vulnerabilities used by Phatbot, I'm guessing most, if not all, of these holes were patched long ago. Short of forcing regular patching and upgrades, I guess there's not much that can be done to get around this. I get a shocking number of people through the store who never, ever use Windows Update.
One part bad security model, one part careless users. Really, if there was an announced problem with your car that might lead to a thief getting in and driving off with it, wouldn't you get it fixed? Would you leave your door unlocked because it makes entering your car easier when you're in a rush?
Computers have been sold as appliances, when they should be sold as flexible tools that aren't difficult to use, but take a minor bit of effort to maintain. I bet I could make big bucks just going to people's homes and carrying out basic upgrading and patching activities. $50/hr for running Windows Update, Ad-Aware and AVG, here I come...
Within a few hours, I got complaints that the volume of email had at least tripled, and that *all* of the increase were viruses, being caught by McAffee! [...] Very sobering, to realize how bad viruses online have gotten.
I have to wonder how much bandwidth could be saved simply by ISPs disconnecting infected and vulnerable computers until the holes are fixed and the viruses are wiped out. Heck, the ISP could send a CD with the latest Windows Update patches and free virus-removal tools to get around the problem of patches and most tools being available only... online. If that much crap is getting through, it must add up to some serious costs for backbone providers and ISPs having to deal with eternally shrinking bandwidth available for standard use vs. worm and trojan propagation.
Just code it to kill the connection after, say, fifty successful infections.
You know what the real innovation would be, though? Writing an OS so that one process can't stomp on other processes it doesn't have permission to. It would also be nice to write something where worms couldn't just land on the system as executable files by default and scripts that do things like install other programs and do stuff without the user's knowledge can't be automatically run by a freaking e-mail program. Gee, too bad there's nothing around like that...
Since security is something programmers always need to be concerned about, maybe it's time a few kernel hackers devoted a few months to thorough vulnerability audits of at least the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels? I get the feeling everyone's been so busy adding hardware support, features, and backporting stuff to earlier stable kernels that security may have fallen to the wayside. The particular way that the kernel is developed doesn't seem to lend itself to a freeze and audit, but maybe this is something a few of the kernel gods could undertake before 2.7 is branched.
If nothing else, it would demonstrate that the Linux folk are as serious about clean, secure code as the BSD teams, and heck, it's an intrinsically Good Thing to do from time to time.
Can someone point out what was especially good about it? I'll grant without having seen more than half an episode that it was better than Enterprise or any other show in the genre on tv currently, but that's not saying much.
I'll take a shot at this one. I've been catching the episodes on Canada's SPACE channel, and to me the series definitely had a fairly solid setting and mood in its first season, which is rare for a sci-fi series.
The show fuses sci-fi space conventions with Wild West-era characters and environments. The whole "space Western" thing is not subtle, but that might actually be a good thing. I've found that when sci-fi producers try to be "subtle", their works ends up coming across as obvious and pretentious, like the ST:TNG episodes that tried to disguise the contemporary parallels, then beat you over the head with The Contemporary Moral Message. The Western aspects aren't taken so far as to be implausibly anachronistic; the six-shooters and shotguns seem to fire some kind of directed energy instead of projectiles, and there is still advanced technology. It just so happens the super-cool machines have some rust and loose screws, which only adds to the plausibility. I still have some trouble conceiving of just what volume of space the series takes place within, but then again, technobabble is kept at a minimum, which is a plus.
What little CGI I really took notice of looked pretty darn good, which isn't difficult to do nowadays--but then, compare Firefly to Babylon 5's first season and a half, and Starhunter. Also, there is no sound in space scenes. This threw me at first, but it's also accurate. For all the lack of adherence to anything resembling physics and scientific accuracy, I found this to be a nice touch.
Firefly worked really well in a contained-episode format, instead of the plot arcs that damn near everyone tries to shoehorn into shows now. Thing is, Whedon has shown a tendency to start with just such a pure episode format, then eventually move the series into multi-episode or even full-season arcs. This makes the short life of the series even rougher, because the creative team didn't even have a chance to really go places with the show.
Incidentally, J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade series died under similar conflicts with its network (demands for more sex and violence, episode juggling harming continuity), and it appeared to be developing in a similar fashion. JMS had the pressure of following up Babylon 5 with an expected second strong effort right from the start. When TNT demanded new episodes be shot and aired before the originally-shot episodes could see airtime, there was little chance the series' potential would be realized early on, or allowed to develop.
I wonder how amazing Firefly could have been in further seasons, given time to settle in. I say it again, the series felt quite well-realized for a first-season sci-fi program, and it got cut off at the knees by a network known more for trashy "reality" TV and amusing cartoons than fantasy and science fiction.
A lot of the statements attempting to portray PJ as an IBM shill could potentially be construed as slander, were she to eventually go the legal route. If so, McBride, Stowell, and the rest of the Verbal Diarrhea Brigade may want to be careful where they open their mouths, as slander is a criminal offence in Utah.
Of course, when I type "uncheck Caldera", I really mean "check Caldera". Just like when SCO says "the evidence is coming Real Soon Now," they mean "Get ready for our next exciting press release, and Goddess forbid the tech nerds ever see our so-called evidence!"
Gag Slashdot yourself -- uncheck "Caldera" under your Homepage settings.
I should fine you 10 000 Euros for having to tell you this after it has been mentioned in every fscking SCO story. Besides, I would think a story relating to a case that threatens Free and open source software would be considered "news" on a site full of FOSS fans.
Again, you're free to uncheck "Caldera" whenever you want. No more SCO. Enjoy.
Basically, the funding bill that supposedly "killed" TIA only banned funding for the program called "Terrorism Information Awareness." It's a gaping legal loophole that seems to have been written in a piss-poor attempt at reassuring Joe and Jane CNN Viewer that the good government really had no intention to spy on them for subversive activities, no-siree.
I'm not surprised the obvious result is taking place. I am surprised that someone in a newsroom somewhere thought to follow up on the fate of TIA-related research.
Remember: It's not paranoia if they're really watching you.
New safety rules say that the shuttle needs an external inspection before re-entry to avoud the problems last time. At ISS, that is is easy - look through the windows. And if a fault is found, you can wait at ISS while spares come up by rocket or another shuttle. At Hubble, you would have to do a dangerous EVA to check it.
That pretty much eliminates everything but ISS missions--which, from what I understand, is exactly what has happened.
The upshot is, I have no idea where NASA is going to find the money for:
1) Keeping the ISS crewed 2) Keeping the ISS useful 3) Getting the James Webb Telescope ready 4) Preparing facilities for a new space vehicle--for the moment, I assume the costs for R&D of the CEV will somehow come out of military or discretionary budgets, because I don't see any of the usual contractors doing this for free 5) Preparing for new Luna and Mars missions.
An extra $12 billion over the next decade somehow does not strike me as nearly enough to pull all of this off, and I also can't quite see the Bush administration following through if push comes to shove. IIRC, space did not rate a single word during the State of the Union address.
If only our species spent as much on exploration as we do on war...
The energy that went into making that oil was expended millions of years ago, and it all started as solar energy that was converted into plant and animal matter by the appropriate biological processes. [...] It's just that those hundreds of millions of years produced a large reserve of oil, so that the energy expended in finding it, drilling it, refining it, and transporting it is less than the amount of energy we get out of it -- but the total amount of energy that's gone into getting the oil into a usable form *is* still greater than the amount that's produced when it burns.
According to one fairly rough, recent estimate, each gallon of gas in your car required ninety-eight tons of prehistoric plants over millions of years to create. Talk about redefining "fuel efficiency," this is something that will eventually come into play should global oil reserves hit the downward slope of output that will inevitably come, unless we figure out a way to rush-fossilize a few hundred billion tons of plants per year into new fossil fuel reserves. Considering the total amount of plant biomass on Earth, suddenly that inefficient ethanol car or unreliable wind generator may be ultimately worth the drastic lifestyle change. Hell, it may be eventually necessary to maintain any kind of lifestyle involving advanced technology at all.
Put it this way--barring a freak discovery of nearly unlimited, accessible hydrocarbon reserves and a way to use them without causing more damage to the global environment, the end of the fossil-fuel civilization is an eventual certainty. What comes after it depends on what we do, or fail to do, to prepare for it. This is not fearmongering, it is realism of the most critical sort. After all, we still have to live here for the next few hundred years at least.
Slashdot Mirror
If this had been a story about how a company was redistributing a GPL'd program in binary form only, there would be countless posts from zealots crying bloody murder on the part of that evil entity. But an opinion about how taking software without permission is wrong yields retards who think they have some inherint right to whatever they lay their grubby hands on
Now, the question you have to ask yourself is whether the same people going ballistic over GPL violations are the same ones defending other forms of copyright violations. Considering how many versions of your post I've run across attached to articles about piracy, I would be very interested in finding out whether there is a significant percentage of posters who are IP hypocrites, or whether the two classes of article draw posts from two different groups.
If nothing else, it might demonstrate how much groupthink, if any, exists among posting users.
I think it's worth pointing out that Linux would also have drivers by now if they wouldn't keep up this religious crusade to get source only drivers.
How about a little less religion and a little more compsci + logistics management + good coding practices? Making a stupid piece of code your god/way of life tends to blind one to using the intelligence that God gave them.
OK... the closed-source drivers tend to be buggy... so it's the open-source programmers working on the rest of the kernel that need to worry about coding practices? It's not like the people producing binary-only modules need to worry about reverse-engineering the kernel source to write the damn driver in the first place. Conversely, it's pretty hard for kernel hackers dealing with binary module-generated bugs to use "the intelligence that God gave them" when they can't even legally see the source in order to figure out where the bugs are and the module writers are either inaccessible or NDA'd into silence.
If there is a religious issue, I don't think it's the one you imply exists, but I also think the problem is one of two different development models clashing.
That said, the only way in which Linux is going to gain significant ground on the desktop is if:
[snip three points]
Linux's big hurdle for the desktop is that for most people, Windows is Good Enough(TM).
And, Windows Is Already Preinstalled(TM).
One of the major PC manufacturers throwing their weight behind Linux preinstalls, and I mean seriously building and promoting Linux desktops, would probably go a long way toward counteracting the problem of the practically automatic Windows installed base. More people may be familiar with Windows than Linux, but how many people are even explicitly offered the choice of what to start with?
Wha?
I've been installing kernels based on vanilla source since I started with Red Hat 6.0. From my experience, they work fine. In fact, the second thing I do after installing a new version of Red Hat/Fedora, after closing all the really obvious security holes (why the hell is sendmail running by default???!!!???), is build a kernel to my own specifications and needs.
It runs fine.
Having not tried Fedora Core yet, I don't know if that project did something to tie a successful bootup to the presence of certain modules or a certain kernel version (which would be mind-bendingly dumb). Maybe the Enterprise version freaks out if the default RAID configuration calls for a certain set of modules, I don't know. However, I don't think I've ever had a problem dropping a vanilla kernel into Red Hat.
The trouble is that XM and Sirius are still monthy fee services, while I can tune in to FM radio stations free over the airwaves.
You can tune in to local TV free over the airwaves as well, yet somehow, cable and satellite television thrive. You'd be amazed how many people will pay for a bit (or a lot) of additional service and options.
Aside from a lack of disposable income due to things like rent and food, my primary reason for a lack of CD purchases is the fear that I will have to jump through hoops to make a legal copy of the music on my hard drive. I don't have a standalone CD player, and while many CDs don't have copy prevention measures, I don't want to be surprised by one that does. I'm sorry, but I just don't feel like jumping through hoops to make legal use of a CD I purchase.
If anything, the fear of having to waste time on locating protection-defeating software is moving me to engage in more copyright-violating measures. I can think of about ten or fifteen CDs I would have purchased over the past year if I could be sure the discs would not be broken/"protected".
Why is overseas processing two days faster? Does e-Loan not have sufficient staff in the US? Are the computers faster in India? Is the company unwilling to pay for a 2nd and 3rd shift to facilitate domestic production around the clock?
Are the loans really being processed faster, or is eLoan simply giving that impression for some kind of testing purposes? Does any objective evidence exist that the loans supposedly processed in India are really being finished two days earlier? Is eLoan really sending data to be processed where the customer requests it, or simply making it seem that way to test customer behaviour? I would be very interested to find out the answers to these questions, as well as the parent's.
Thank God Stalin had no hi-tech at all. He was far worse than Hitler.
In pure body-count terms, sure, Stalin racked up a higher total than Adolph. I don't think you can really play scoreboard games with mass murderers, though.
SCO will get big mileage out of this in the public arena, claiming that Novell and IBM are conspiring to block its legal claims. SCO will also try a new legal attack against both companies, claiming they are conspiring against it to defuse SCO's legal arguments while economically benefitting from what SCO views as their contract- and IP-infringing activities.
Thoughts?
- It's a P4 2GHz with 512mb of ram (wtf?! why on earth does it need that) ...
...
- It's running XP Embedded
Answered your own question there.
So the problem is partly a company that trained users to live as all-powerful administrator, then wonders why people keep running as admin even when user accounts are introduced.
The other part of the problem is a company that trained programmers to assume the same thing, and write their programs accordingly. Now that the new versions of the company's primary OS implement some security, the programmers that were used to having complete power are running into justifiable roadblocks.
Nice security culture Microsoft created. The Unix folks learned the folly of getting lax on security long, long ago, thanks to stuff like the Morris worm. How many Morris worms will it take for the Windows world to do the necessary overhaul, on the OS (partly already done, from what I gather), programs, and attitudes of users along with programemrs?
I know you're a troll, but you have no idea how many:
a) people who still run Win98/ME, with their total lack of a permissions model, come into the store, and
b) how many people give their XP accounts administrator-level powers just to "make things easier". Shit, the TRON 2.0 demo required administrator privileges to run! We (ie, me and the other employees) have no idea why, it was the most fucking crackheaded thing I've seen since Windows ME, but there it was. I can't imagine how many other programs require admin access to run. And geeks wonder why people have no concept of why it's dangerous to run as root/admin...
P.S: If, whilst their at it, they could make it so that you don't need the RPC to run the thing, it'd be swell too... But I suppose that I'm asking for too much there.
I hope the Fedora Core crew keeps this in mind and locks down everything that's not essential for just getting a system up and running. If a business has the need for particular services, this information should be gathered during install from the sysadmin, or a kickstart image should be used. I see no reason why sendmail and rpc/whatever need to be running by default on a machine intended for desktop use.
This may be a Windows trojan, but like all others, there are lessons in system security that all operating system producers need to keep in mind, whether that OS is supposedly "more secure" or not.
*nods*
Checking out the vulnerabilities used by Phatbot, I'm guessing most, if not all, of these holes were patched long ago. Short of forcing regular patching and upgrades, I guess there's not much that can be done to get around this. I get a shocking number of people through the store who never, ever use Windows Update.
One part bad security model, one part careless users. Really, if there was an announced problem with your car that might lead to a thief getting in and driving off with it, wouldn't you get it fixed? Would you leave your door unlocked because it makes entering your car easier when you're in a rush?
Computers have been sold as appliances, when they should be sold as flexible tools that aren't difficult to use, but take a minor bit of effort to maintain. I bet I could make big bucks just going to people's homes and carrying out basic upgrading and patching activities. $50/hr for running Windows Update, Ad-Aware and AVG, here I come...
Within a few hours, I got complaints that the volume of email had at least tripled, and that *all* of the increase were viruses, being caught by McAffee! [...] Very sobering, to realize how bad viruses online have gotten.
I have to wonder how much bandwidth could be saved simply by ISPs disconnecting infected and vulnerable computers until the holes are fixed and the viruses are wiped out. Heck, the ISP could send a CD with the latest Windows Update patches and free virus-removal tools to get around the problem of patches and most tools being available only... online. If that much crap is getting through, it must add up to some serious costs for backbone providers and ISPs having to deal with eternally shrinking bandwidth available for standard use vs. worm and trojan propagation.
Granted, I don't think it would spread very well.
Just code it to kill the connection after, say, fifty successful infections.
You know what the real innovation would be, though? Writing an OS so that one process can't stomp on other processes it doesn't have permission to. It would also be nice to write something where worms couldn't just land on the system as executable files by default and scripts that do things like install other programs and do stuff without the user's knowledge can't be automatically run by a freaking e-mail program. Gee, too bad there's nothing around like that...
Since security is something programmers always need to be concerned about, maybe it's time a few kernel hackers devoted a few months to thorough vulnerability audits of at least the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels? I get the feeling everyone's been so busy adding hardware support, features, and backporting stuff to earlier stable kernels that security may have fallen to the wayside. The particular way that the kernel is developed doesn't seem to lend itself to a freeze and audit, but maybe this is something a few of the kernel gods could undertake before 2.7 is branched.
If nothing else, it would demonstrate that the Linux folk are as serious about clean, secure code as the BSD teams, and heck, it's an intrinsically Good Thing to do from time to time.
The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors.
Oh, 5 colors! That explains it.
And the RPG geeks can have their chromatic and metallic dragons at the same time.
Something tells me you can't get these things in platinum, though.
Can someone point out what was especially good about it? I'll grant without having seen more than half an episode that it was better than Enterprise or any other show in the genre on tv currently, but that's not saying much.
I'll take a shot at this one. I've been catching the episodes on Canada's SPACE channel, and to me the series definitely had a fairly solid setting and mood in its first season, which is rare for a sci-fi series.
The show fuses sci-fi space conventions with Wild West-era characters and environments. The whole "space Western" thing is not subtle, but that might actually be a good thing. I've found that when sci-fi producers try to be "subtle", their works ends up coming across as obvious and pretentious, like the ST:TNG episodes that tried to disguise the contemporary parallels, then beat you over the head with The Contemporary Moral Message. The Western aspects aren't taken so far as to be implausibly anachronistic; the six-shooters and shotguns seem to fire some kind of directed energy instead of projectiles, and there is still advanced technology. It just so happens the super-cool machines have some rust and loose screws, which only adds to the plausibility. I still have some trouble conceiving of just what volume of space the series takes place within, but then again, technobabble is kept at a minimum, which is a plus.
What little CGI I really took notice of looked pretty darn good, which isn't difficult to do nowadays--but then, compare Firefly to Babylon 5's first season and a half, and Starhunter. Also, there is no sound in space scenes. This threw me at first, but it's also accurate. For all the lack of adherence to anything resembling physics and scientific accuracy, I found this to be a nice touch.
Firefly worked really well in a contained-episode format, instead of the plot arcs that damn near everyone tries to shoehorn into shows now. Thing is, Whedon has shown a tendency to start with just such a pure episode format, then eventually move the series into multi-episode or even full-season arcs. This makes the short life of the series even rougher, because the creative team didn't even have a chance to really go places with the show.
Incidentally, J. Michael Straczynski's Crusade series died under similar conflicts with its network (demands for more sex and violence, episode juggling harming continuity), and it appeared to be developing in a similar fashion. JMS had the pressure of following up Babylon 5 with an expected second strong effort right from the start. When TNT demanded new episodes be shot and aired before the originally-shot episodes could see airtime, there was little chance the series' potential would be realized early on, or allowed to develop.
I wonder how amazing Firefly could have been in further seasons, given time to settle in. I say it again, the series felt quite well-realized for a first-season sci-fi program, and it got cut off at the knees by a network known more for trashy "reality" TV and amusing cartoons than fantasy and science fiction.
Couldn't this be construed as slander???
A lot of the statements attempting to portray PJ as an IBM shill could potentially be construed as slander, were she to eventually go the legal route. If so, McBride, Stowell, and the rest of the Verbal Diarrhea Brigade may want to be careful where they open their mouths, as slander is a criminal offence in Utah.
I smell schadenfreude in the offing...
Of course, when I type "uncheck Caldera", I really mean "check Caldera". Just like when SCO says "the evidence is coming Real Soon Now," they mean "Get ready for our next exciting press release, and Goddess forbid the tech nerds ever see our so-called evidence!"
Gag Slashdot yourself -- uncheck "Caldera" under your Homepage settings.
I should fine you 10 000 Euros for having to tell you this after it has been mentioned in every fscking SCO story. Besides, I would think a story relating to a case that threatens Free and open source software would be considered "news" on a site full of FOSS fans.
Again, you're free to uncheck "Caldera" whenever you want. No more SCO. Enjoy.
In conclusion... speak for yourself.
I think everyone on Slashdot called this one last July.
Basically, the funding bill that supposedly "killed" TIA only banned funding for the program called "Terrorism Information Awareness." It's a gaping legal loophole that seems to have been written in a piss-poor attempt at reassuring Joe and Jane CNN Viewer that the good government really had no intention to spy on them for subversive activities, no-siree.
I'm not surprised the obvious result is taking place. I am surprised that someone in a newsroom somewhere thought to follow up on the fate of TIA-related research.
Remember: It's not paranoia if they're really watching you.
New safety rules say that the shuttle needs an external inspection before re-entry to avoud the problems last time. At ISS, that is is easy - look through the windows. And if a fault is found, you can wait at ISS while spares come up by rocket or another shuttle. At Hubble, you would have to do a dangerous EVA to check it.
That pretty much eliminates everything but ISS missions--which, from what I understand, is exactly what has happened.
The upshot is, I have no idea where NASA is going to find the money for:
1) Keeping the ISS crewed
2) Keeping the ISS useful
3) Getting the James Webb Telescope ready
4) Preparing facilities for a new space vehicle--for the moment, I assume the costs for R&D of the CEV will somehow come out of military or discretionary budgets, because I don't see any of the usual contractors doing this for free
5) Preparing for new Luna and Mars missions.
An extra $12 billion over the next decade somehow does not strike me as nearly enough to pull all of this off, and I also can't quite see the Bush administration following through if push comes to shove. IIRC, space did not rate a single word during the State of the Union address.
If only our species spent as much on exploration as we do on war...
The energy that went into making that oil was expended millions of years ago, and it all started as solar energy that was converted into plant and animal matter by the appropriate biological processes. [...] It's just that those hundreds of millions of years produced a large reserve of oil, so that the energy expended in finding it, drilling it, refining it, and transporting it is less than the amount of energy we get out of it -- but the total amount of energy that's gone into getting the oil into a usable form *is* still greater than the amount that's produced when it burns.
According to one fairly rough, recent estimate, each gallon of gas in your car required ninety-eight tons of prehistoric plants over millions of years to create. Talk about redefining "fuel efficiency," this is something that will eventually come into play should global oil reserves hit the downward slope of output that will inevitably come, unless we figure out a way to rush-fossilize a few hundred billion tons of plants per year into new fossil fuel reserves. Considering the total amount of plant biomass on Earth, suddenly that inefficient ethanol car or unreliable wind generator may be ultimately worth the drastic lifestyle change. Hell, it may be eventually necessary to maintain any kind of lifestyle involving advanced technology at all.
Put it this way--barring a freak discovery of nearly unlimited, accessible hydrocarbon reserves and a way to use them without causing more damage to the global environment, the end of the fossil-fuel civilization is an eventual certainty. What comes after it depends on what we do, or fail to do, to prepare for it. This is not fearmongering, it is realism of the most critical sort. After all, we still have to live here for the next few hundred years at least.