True, the carpenter is making a product for sale and can only sell it once, while programmers can sell it multiple times. However, pretend that the program and the cabinet are the same - when you buy it you get the bad workmanship, the usage, the maintanence, the ability to resell, and the ability to convert it into something else.
The price is equal to the costs (intermediate goods/services) and the added value from the carpenter/reseller. If a software company had to do the same, and we pretend that software cannot be copied, then to sell Office would require the purchaser to pay for all R&D costs, marketting, etc. to turn a profit. If the company spent $1 million total, then no one could buy this program and that's it. Now, you could claim that software could be open source and "free" as GNU say, but GNU and others never released office suites, operating systems, etc during those times. If software was forced to be free or purchased in the same manner as a cabinet, then development would have been extremely hampered.
Selling a program for $30-$60 to large audience makes up for the $1million or so in supposed costs, and hopefully creates significant profits to fund the next project. To distribute costs, software logically couldn't come with the source code or be legally distributed or else the company could only sell it once - everyone else would buy it cheaper from the first customer. Open source/free software should be available, but even those licenses try to ensure that the origional creator's rights are not hampered (GPL, BSDL's old advertising clause, etc).
No one can ever say with a straight face that simply because a program can be reproduced with almost no overhead after creation that the creator's rights should be denied for "the community." That's nothing more than deciding that one group is more deserving then another, where the inventor has to give it away to the people to be "moral". Someone has to decide what's moral, and its ludicrous. That's why GNU pushes the GPL, not public domain, simply because they've redefined what's "moral" and "free" to fit their beliefs/cause.
hehe, damn.. this was long...
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the public, and the post-cold war government has lost interest, they have lost funding
ICF fusion is still being heavily researched, and new generations are being designed and built. The projects are extremely expensive, and with the poor administration at government labs, lots of the money is diverted from the projects. The reason ICF fusion is being researched, such as they were on beamlet, Nova, and soon NIF, is because it allows us to develop our nuclear weapons technology. The projects being funded have two main goals:
1. Develop new (and safer) nuclear weapons. 2. Help the Stockpile Stewardship, which aims to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. A major goal is to allow all nuclear testing to be in-lab, and thus stop blasts for data gathering and ot reduce aging weapons.
The public wants cheap energy, but would hate any nuclear plants. Fusion is still not clean (low-level waste) and currect generations still spend more money producing the reaction than they get from the energy produced.
ohh! I forgot to tell you real uses for nuclear weapons, past war. A long time ago there were some models designed for construction purposes, in which the blasts cleared the land and left no residue. The area is safe and normal after 48 hours, and will not be detected. Lab employees must wear badges so the lab can check for any nuclear exposser, and those that have entered the pit were checked out as fine. There is an old picture of the pit, with a small shack in the bottom. I'm sure this was in an old issue of science, or some magazine when it was first done.
The nuclear simulations do help in the stockpile stewardship program, by stopping those large creators. Also, from what two lab officials working heavily on the NIF project (and worked on past projects) told me, much of the work allows scientists to keep the stockpile updated. Old bombs become dangerous, and the government ruitinely signs treaties requiring that new techniques must be created. The advancement in the research alone helps numerous industries, and building the machines of course fuels that technological research. So, its not all that horrible, but this research (in treaties) help stop other countries from conducting nuclear tests. Simulating them in the lab is far better than on bikini island.
First, money is going into Fusion, and not "simulating it." For the last decade work has been committed towards NIF, or National Ignition Facility. NIF will be the largest laser, replacing the recently removed Nova laser. The Nova laser could only get to the beginnings at fusion, at best, and did this at an extremely large energy loss. The Nova laser design has been copied around the world, as part of decreasing the nuclear tests (the mathametics is similar enough that we can test "in lab"). Actually, France had LLNL build their copy (easy to tell, as the paint is the livermore colors), due to cutbacks in their own departments (I forget the reason, to be honest). NIF is an ICF laser, and is currently being built at Livermore, and was origionally projected to be completed in 2001, but likely will be fully operational in 2003. ASCII and NIF should be able to work hand in hand for supplying nuclear research without nuclear weapon testing.
On early projects I saw, oil was thought to be nearly depleated by 2002, and that by 2010 the first fusion power plant would be operational. NIF creates low-level (and low amounts of) nuclear radiation, unlike fission. Both fission and fusion plants could be designed to be safe, though the current water method for fission is cheap so its heavily used. To build either in the U.S. would be impossible, due to lobbying and lack of licensing.
Now, for the nuclear-based space issues, that's ridiculous. Current fusion has only begun to obtain more energy than it took. More importantly, NASA almost didn't launch a probe 1.5yrs ago because it was feared that the nuclear material it was using (for power) could be caught in the atmosphere. If any space-bound vessle blew up and got caught in the atmosphere, the radiate would spread and cause severe global problems. Sending up the radioactive materials is highly risky, so it is rarely ever done.
If you wish to learn more about NIF and nuclear energy, I recommend you look at LLNL.gov, which for years has had an excellent set of pages explaining ICF, and other details for visitors.
From the people I've talked to who work at LLNL, the drives were in a vault, which is located behind a copying machine, and is in the secure area. They were in a black suite case, and not been noticed. Of course, they didn't know if the drives were in the correct vault, but they were always safe. Its not quite as news-worthy to state that administration went a bit bonkers and that the drives were safe all along in a vault, instead we must insinuate they fell behind a copy-machine because employees were to busy making photocopies of various body parts.
Lier. I found it in less then 30 seconds, and I didn't have to resort to doing a site search. I actually bothered to think.. heck, even less. I looked at the menu on the front page.
From the faq (http://www.openbsd.com/faq/faq3.html#3.1.2) 3.1.2 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image available for download?
You can't. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt, as an incentive for people to buy the CD set. Note that only the layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else to just grab OpenBSD and make their own CD.
So basically, you really did pester him because your to lazy to do anything. Why else do you think BSD people get bad reps for not being polite to newbies? Think.
I took it from the installation-howto from kernel.org (link on homepage). I figured it would be accurate. I am quite surprised that NetBSD didn't support MCA a long time ago, and I do wonder if it did once in the past.
The ISA, EISA, VESA Local Bus and PCI bus architectures are supported. The MCA bus architecture (found on IBM PS/2 machines) has been minimally supported since the 2.1.x kernels, but may not be ready for prime time yet.
NetBSD may have started a bit later, but that's not quite significant in this case.
But that only affects UCB code. Any other code not written by UCB put under the full BSDL is not affected by the change. You cannot violate their license merely because someone changed theirs. Does that mean that if Corel OpenSources WordPerfect, Word and Lotus WordPro must be too?
Rather, you should have noted whether Minix includes the advertising clause of the BSDL.
He simply said the design wasn't a good one to start a whole new OS upon. His points were for if Linux became mainstream, and Linus countered as saying that his OS is not meant as mainstream, as just something to toy with. He agreed that the design isn't the one to use for a modern OS, but was a logical choice since he expected it to go nowhere. The Hurd would come and everyone would be happy.
Instead, the Hurd hasn't, and Linux has been pushed and prodded to get past growing pains. Tannebaum's point was that these pains could be bypassed using a modern design.
Now, whether he was right or not doesn't matter. That was his point. The success of Linux doesn't make him wrong, as it might even show his point.
Well, if you weren't taking a spin on things in an effort to attack BSD as a whole, you might not have posted anonymously. In fact, as I recall from readign the archives, Theo did have some right to be angry. His temper is known quite well, and after the recent 'NetBSD blocking OpenBSD mail' junk a month or so ago, its pretty obvious he hasn't changed.
Now, Theo asked for months for core membership again, and waited after being told over and over again everything would be sorted out shortly. You also must remember he didn't apologize not only ut of being hubris, but because the person in question spammed him. This was unknown when he was removed from core, and came to light afterwards. Theo should have been allowed to continue on core, or at least should not have been left hanging. If you DID read the archive, then you'd see that (it seems) only one member had a grudge against Theo enough to screw around with him. His attitude was a problem, but no one denies Theo is a marvelous hacker.
NetBSD folks wanted him to stay, and wanted the political bullshit to end, and repeatedly chimmed in that while Theo needed to calm down, he's contributions were more than enouh to warrent tolerance. They wanted him back! And many wanted the code he developed over the 3 month leave, which Theo kept to himself. This was out of pride, and surely as an incentive to get things back together. When OpenBSD was released, this code was out for the NetBSD folks to grab and use. BSD allows pollination, and really this is a great benefit.
So, the guy Theo flamed was an ass, and by going under the BSDL Theo did not restrict his code. He forked because he cofounded NetBSD, and his passion/ego was great enough he had to be in the top ranks. And heck, his ego is deserved after all.
Theo has less control than Linux of his fork of NetBSD, because no one makes him some god. Now that is immature. And Linus has said the GNU model basically forces this (read OpenSources, appendix). His ego is from brats telling him how leet he is. Linus deserves a lot of what came about, but his hack of UNIX is a far cry from staying in form. Of course, he switches this as saying the other forms must have been arciech, which generally seems more of an excuse than anything else.
I wont even bother withthe VAX bit because that's just so dumb on your part...
The split happened due to Theo's relationship with a core member, due to his attitude. No one has ever said otherwise, and Theo has a well deserved reputation. Personally, I respect Theo and Jordon Hubbard, among other developers on their core team, far more than Linux developers. That's due to their design models, their skill, and their passion. I think people accept Linux's faults like they do Microsoft's, ie for the latter.. 'its ok to reboot at least once a day.' Of course, I think Microsoft gets to much flame for bs madeup by people who know jackshit.. but I'm sure Linux gets the same. Heck.. I may be one of them.
All in all, take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. And BSD isn't losing, or else no one would ever talk about it. Media is up. Who ever said we must live in a single OS (and OS design) world? Personally, the more ideas that come into the world, the better. The better usually bubblesort themselves to the top. The best doesn't always win, but one better than the old does.
Like I said, the old system. That system handled a maximum of 3000 users, I believe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the server. The new server is a single CPU 500mhz Xeon P3.
Whether Linux is superior or not probably wouldn't be an issue. FreeBSD right now has proven itself for the server, and as your saying Linux may soon catch up. Yet, when Linux finally does edge FreeBSD, and here I'm pretending in every form required for the system (as just having a superior stack is not the sole reason), then the system still would not be switched. Three reasons: Linux has not proven itself where FreeBSD obviously has, the code is in Linux may be fresh and untested, whereas the FreeBSD equivelent would have been proven and evolved to its state, and that the maintainers of the systems are also key developers. By knowing the system in and out, and what to improve if needed, then those issues would be quickly remedied. It would be illogical to switch when the maintainers know the code in and out, which is perhaps the largest benefit. Oh.. and why change when nothings broken?
According to Walnut Creek CDROM, it is not the servers that choke, but rather the pipes being clogged. The old system changed the same for years as the bandwith was increased, without problems. For a P6-200 and lots of ram/storage, not bad. The redundancy aproach (one that is more of a popular NT-point than UNIX point), is not as important if the hardware is redundant itself, and the OS is stable. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be redundant, but then as a free service that has hardware redundancy and the software designers maintaining it, its never been a big issue.
Come on. Hasn't anyone taken a philosophy class on this issue? The classic mind/body problem, now at AI level (remember functionalism?). AI isn't about how much computer power you have, but about being smart. Make a learning machine, one that can understand what its doing and can do it properly, and I'll start pondering whether to worry. So far they can't pass the Turing test (understanding/using grammer), so we're a ways off for sure.
Can they kill us? sure, but that wont be some super genius AI in the next 50 years. It will be some sicko behind the scene, doing it for one reason or another. That was one of Bill Joy's fear, that the advance and wide spread use would create all these guys tinkering fiendishly in their basements. That makes sense, but super-AI in a few years...ugh.. just pick something introductionary like Mind Design and maybe people will brighten up bout it.
Re:How should one go about his education then?
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The IT Labor Shortage
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I was righting this long thing.. and then figured, screw it. If you want to know about IIT, email me. I'm a freshman here, and so far I'm quite happy with my choice. I know how other colleges go at it (from friends/visits), etc. The only bad part I've found is in general for all CS, to many people go into it for $ (and rarely used a computer). The classes are damn good, but in ITP (intro to prof.) they asked for a lecture on how OS's work.. and I almost cried from disgust at how little people knew. They get weeded out first year, as they can't handle the simplist classes. And its far worse in other places, some like UCSC make you do psuedo code first semester, and basics of C second. In others I've seen/heard about, they're bent on getting you a good job, not the education. IIT's damn good.. so if you want to heard the whole rant...
Well, first off Microsoft doesn't need the government's help on obtaining some magical code that is hurting it. MS has enough of its own resources to either destroy the owners, buy it, or create a reproduction and try to capitalize the market through its extremely broad channels. Microsoft has only been hurt by fighting a ghost, an enemy it cannot see or hurt - a damn idea. Its happened in the past, and it doesn't have to be morally better then the existing structure, just has a good ring to it. The Pope recently asked for forgiveness due to massive crimes towards Jews, women, minorities, and human rights. Religion is a good example of this ideology, which governments cannot kill (many attacks on Jews, way before 20th century). Are these ideas the best? No, but they've got some good stuff in them, enough that its worth paying attention to. (personally, I think Open Source is a good idea, just not "free software")
The industrial espinauge is, as they claim, only for extreme cases where it is pretty vital. China finally made a more advanced rocket for missles, then for national security the US is damn well going out how. China and others have done so to the US. The US isn't known for being morally superior or horribly reched. Any relatively successful country will do this, legally or not. Its life.
Oh, and for the sick bit about the/. enemies.. ugh.. I hate this lemmings crap. Slashdot is pretty awful by itself, really, by pushing half-truths in such causes against "enemies." I consider Microsoft a competitor in any software field, the MPAA as being short sighted towards reality due to its member's goals, and John Johnson to be nothing of a hero. He's lied, twisted facts to make him look morally superior, and the only reason I see him gaining any support towards legal costs is because his father shouldn't be stuck with a bill. That's just my beliefs, just as I actually read the offending Corel license that/. screamed about, saw nothing illegal about it, and was told by people like Bruce Perens that they don't give a fuck whether Corel did anything wrong. Its about scaring the fuck out of anyone who may even think twice about fucking with you. RMS's recent reply to amazon seems pretty dumb considering Amazon did not fire the first shot, but was continuing a long give-and-take battle (Apple and MS did this).
Get your own fucking ideas. Linus isn't god, RMS isn't some old hack who wants credit for Linux, "free software" isn't morally better than proprietary software, ESR isn't some grand philosophy (but he's damn quiet once he gets paid off), Marx contributed vastly to society intellectually, AI machines will make mankind slaves by 2021 is riduculous, and because whatever the latest game looks kinda cool doesn't mean you've just gotta get into computer science. There's a fucking world out there with more important stuff and you don't need to believe this all of this propiganda dribble.
Go to a real college, take sociology and humanities classes, and don't do CS because your to lazy and think its easy money. You can learn something in life, or just be a damn wothless lemming.
I'd be surprised if Deep Blue just tried every possibility (or close) between movies. It would be impossible, as there are at least 10^18 possible (and this is a small estimate). To play chess effectively, heuristics are used. The more advanced, the better the computer plays. This is artificial inllegence, in its simplist form. Read A.M. Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intellegence" or better yet, just grab Mind Design II. Human players work by seeing patterns along with heuristics, and only old-fashined (GOFAI) AI believes in just dumping all the data into the computer and letting it sort through it. That failed, and newer AI designs are great at pattern recognition.
Computers are still at a disadvantage because of this "intuition" that people have. Its difficult to build a computer and just plug an adult brain into it. How can you write a program that passes the Turing test when your asked an extremely wide range of questions from political/historical/scientific, emotional, common knowledge, etc? Tests right now show grammer problems, and are to tough. Turing's answer was to make a computer like a new-born, and let it learn. That's when computers will get the intuition. Until we get so far, Deep Blue's AI capabilities are quite good. Its damn tough to design AI. The computing power really doesn't matter in the end.
hmm.. your right. I could have sworn I saw a Nasdaq link when checking out BSDI's page last week.. my bad.
What I meant, was that (now hypothetical) BSDI was already a public company than they couldn't IPO. The merger seems to be in the direction that WC Cdrom was bought by BSDI, in the fine print (I gather from the Wall Street Journal reference in the article). Even if they do internally see this as a pure merger with no buyer, and a new company created, that wouldn't stop BSDI from being a public company. Thus, BSDI would need to buy back its stock to go IPO bezerk. But of course, it seems they never did IPO. So this branch of logic can be trimmed.
umm.. BSDI is putting almost all of its code, except for kernel data which is licensed from 3rd parties, under the FreeBSD BSDL license. BSD/OS will eventually die, and customers will be migrated over to FreeBSD 5.0. FreeBSD cannot be locked, as if the core team did, another would form to take over the project anyways. Its free!
Question. BSDI is already on Nasdaq, and I believe it officially bought WC Cdrom. It can change its name, but that doesn't mean stock holders can be forgotten about and BSDI to say "all thse years with us selling stock was a test run, thanks for trying our system." At most, I would think BSDI could buy back its stock, and re-emerge, or somehow create a new company, IPO it, and convert the BSDI stocks over. Either way, there's no real way to create an IPO scam like all the Linux IPOs seem to be. (Personally, I don't see the point in buying stocks from a company that loses money, from a financial point of view. All 'open source/media hype' aside.)
Yeah, so the FreeBSD core team has to be loving this. I mean, they ar the ones assimilating the competing product. BSDI will just be throwing code, developers, money, advertising, and distribution support (ie, channels) at the roject. Plus, BSDI will obviously begin comercial support (thus boosting that offered by WC in the FreeBSD Mall). Oh, and all those BSD/OS boxes will convert over to FreeBSD eventually. So hey.. doesn't it look almost like FreeBSD, Inc. bought BSDI?:-)
Plus Slackware is getting better support through the merger, by splintering into a seperate independant company instead of WC Cdrom division.
Let us remember two things. In the years before GPL advocates tried to stir up fear that since FreeBSD is under the BSDL, the project could all of a sudden go closed and try to force its users to pay for it, etc. This was to move development over to GPL, and to hurt BSD when it was suffering after the lawsuit ended. Get em while their down, eh?
The problem with that is that its STILL UNDER THE BSD LISCENSE. There are ~200 committers, and the FreeBSD project does not pay anyone. JKH and a few others do work for WC Cdrom, but that was because they were offered jobs to work closer to full time on the project. WC was already a major supporter of FreeBSD before that. JKH and others didn't just jump out and make some firm and IPO BSD to death. They followed the code, not the $.
That said, BSDI does not own FreeBSD. What they own is WC Cdrom, who is the main distributor of FreeBSD. BSDI also employees top FreeBSD developers, but as they have no say in what FreeBSD itself does, the most they can force upon them is to merge the two codebases. If they don't feel like committing it, they can leave BSDI with their own splinter.
If BSDI did close FreeBSD with JKH's support, then the ~180 or so major developers on the project would splinter off and make it open again. The closed would die without developers. Actually, the closed would be considered a splinter from FreeBSD, and simply the developers that left.. There are FreeBSD derived OSes out there. With BSD, unless developerrs just get tired with the project, it can't die..
MathCad has Maple built in, so if you do things correctly, you should have equal power. The difference comes in speed and presentation. If I'm trying to solve one problem, or a few of them, I pop open mathcad and work it out. Its easier that typing various commands I half remember, looks nicer, etc. If I'm doing a lot of work, such as labs, then I have to use Maple. MathCad just doesn't cut it. That's what you get when going from a command string to a presntation layout.
I've been using MathCad since v2 for dos, including the Win3.1 versions, and maybe once used a UNIX (HPUX) version. MathCad is better or worse depending on the person and the job.
What I really love about Maple is that it keeps UNIX support so I can use display it from the server to my machine. Thus, when I run an infinite loop, I can screw everyone on an 8-way SGI rather then slow down my desktop. What fun.:-)
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True, the carpenter is making a product for sale and can only sell it once, while programmers can sell it multiple times. However, pretend that the program and the cabinet are the same - when you buy it you get the bad workmanship, the usage, the maintanence, the ability to resell, and the ability to convert it into something else.
The price is equal to the costs (intermediate goods/services) and the added value from the carpenter/reseller. If a software company had to do the same, and we pretend that software cannot be copied, then to sell Office would require the purchaser to pay for all R&D costs, marketting, etc. to turn a profit. If the company spent $1 million total, then no one could buy this program and that's it. Now, you could claim that software could be open source and "free" as GNU say, but GNU and others never released office suites, operating systems, etc during those times. If software was forced to be free or purchased in the same manner as a cabinet, then development would have been extremely hampered.
Selling a program for $30-$60 to large audience makes up for the $1million or so in supposed costs, and hopefully creates significant profits to fund the next project. To distribute costs, software logically couldn't come with the source code or be legally distributed or else the company could only sell it once - everyone else would buy it cheaper from the first customer. Open source/free software should be available, but even those licenses try to ensure that the origional creator's rights are not hampered (GPL, BSDL's old advertising clause, etc).
No one can ever say with a straight face that simply because a program can be reproduced with almost no overhead after creation that the creator's rights should be denied for "the community." That's nothing more than deciding that one group is more deserving then another, where the inventor has to give it away to the people to be "moral". Someone has to decide what's moral, and its ludicrous. That's why GNU pushes the GPL, not public domain, simply because they've redefined what's "moral" and "free" to fit their beliefs/cause.
hehe, damn.. this was long...
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the public, and the post-cold war government has lost interest, they have lost funding
ICF fusion is still being heavily researched, and new generations are being designed and built. The projects are extremely expensive, and with the poor administration at government labs, lots of the money is diverted from the projects. The reason ICF fusion is being researched, such as they were on beamlet, Nova, and soon NIF, is because it allows us to develop our nuclear weapons technology. The projects being funded have two main goals:
1. Develop new (and safer) nuclear weapons.
2. Help the Stockpile Stewardship, which aims to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. A major goal is to allow all nuclear testing to be in-lab, and thus stop blasts for data gathering and ot reduce aging weapons.
The public wants cheap energy, but would hate any nuclear plants. Fusion is still not clean (low-level waste) and currect generations still spend more money producing the reaction than they get from the energy produced.
lol, alrighty. I'll give you that. The early uncontrolled were triggered by fission reactions, and I don't know about current methods.
ohh! I forgot to tell you real uses for nuclear weapons, past war. A long time ago there were some models designed for construction purposes, in which the blasts cleared the land and left no residue. The area is safe and normal after 48 hours, and will not be detected. Lab employees must wear badges so the lab can check for any nuclear exposser, and those that have entered the pit were checked out as fine. There is an old picture of the pit, with a small shack in the bottom. I'm sure this was in an old issue of science, or some magazine when it was first done.
The nuclear simulations do help in the stockpile stewardship program, by stopping those large creators. Also, from what two lab officials working heavily on the NIF project (and worked on past projects) told me, much of the work allows scientists to keep the stockpile updated. Old bombs become dangerous, and the government ruitinely signs treaties requiring that new techniques must be created. The advancement in the research alone helps numerous industries, and building the machines of course fuels that technological research. So, its not all that horrible, but this research (in treaties) help stop other countries from conducting nuclear tests. Simulating them in the lab is far better than on bikini island.
First, money is going into Fusion, and not "simulating it." For the last decade work has been committed towards NIF, or National Ignition Facility. NIF will be the largest laser, replacing the recently removed Nova laser. The Nova laser could only get to the beginnings at fusion, at best, and did this at an extremely large energy loss. The Nova laser design has been copied around the world, as part of decreasing the nuclear tests (the mathametics is similar enough that we can test "in lab"). Actually, France had LLNL build their copy (easy to tell, as the paint is the livermore colors), due to cutbacks in their own departments (I forget the reason, to be honest). NIF is an ICF laser, and is currently being built at Livermore, and was origionally projected to be completed in 2001, but likely will be fully operational in 2003. ASCII and NIF should be able to work hand in hand for supplying nuclear research without nuclear weapon testing.
On early projects I saw, oil was thought to be nearly depleated by 2002, and that by 2010 the first fusion power plant would be operational. NIF creates low-level (and low amounts of) nuclear radiation, unlike fission. Both fission and fusion plants could be designed to be safe, though the current water method for fission is cheap so its heavily used. To build either in the U.S. would be impossible, due to lobbying and lack of licensing.
Now, for the nuclear-based space issues, that's ridiculous. Current fusion has only begun to obtain more energy than it took. More importantly, NASA almost didn't launch a probe 1.5yrs ago because it was feared that the nuclear material it was using (for power) could be caught in the atmosphere. If any space-bound vessle blew up and got caught in the atmosphere, the radiate would spread and cause severe global problems. Sending up the radioactive materials is highly risky, so it is rarely ever done.
If you wish to learn more about NIF and nuclear energy, I recommend you look at LLNL.gov, which for years has had an excellent set of pages explaining ICF, and other details for visitors.
From the people I've talked to who work at LLNL, the drives were in a vault, which is located behind a copying machine, and is in the secure area. They were in a black suite case, and not been noticed. Of course, they didn't know if the drives were in the correct vault, but they were always safe. Its not quite as news-worthy to state that administration went a bit bonkers and that the drives were safe all along in a vault, instead we must insinuate they fell behind a copy-machine because employees were to busy making photocopies of various body parts.
Lier. I found it in less then 30 seconds, and I didn't have to resort to doing a site search. I actually bothered to think.. heck, even less. I looked at the menu on the front page.
From the faq (http://www.openbsd.com/faq/faq3.html#3.1.2)
3.1.2 - Does OpenBSD provide an ISO image available for download?
You can't. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt, as an incentive for people to buy the CD set. Note that only the layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else to just grab OpenBSD and make their own CD.
So basically, you really did pester him because your to lazy to do anything. Why else do you think BSD people get bad reps for not being polite to newbies? Think.
I took it from the installation-howto from kernel.org (link on homepage). I figured it would be accurate. I am quite surprised that NetBSD didn't support MCA a long time ago, and I do wonder if it did once in the past.
uhh, no. From the installation-howto:
The ISA, EISA, VESA Local Bus and PCI bus architectures are supported. The MCA bus architecture (found on IBM PS/2 machines) has been minimally supported since the 2.1.x kernels, but may not be ready for prime time yet.
NetBSD may have started a bit later, but that's not quite significant in this case.
But that only affects UCB code. Any other code not written by UCB put under the full BSDL is not affected by the change. You cannot violate their license merely because someone changed theirs. Does that mean that if Corel OpenSources WordPerfect, Word and Lotus WordPro must be too?
Rather, you should have noted whether Minix includes the advertising clause of the BSDL.
He simply said the design wasn't a good one to start a whole new OS upon. His points were for if Linux became mainstream, and Linus countered as saying that his OS is not meant as mainstream, as just something to toy with. He agreed that the design isn't the one to use for a modern OS, but was a logical choice since he expected it to go nowhere. The Hurd would come and everyone would be happy.
Instead, the Hurd hasn't, and Linux has been pushed and prodded to get past growing pains. Tannebaum's point was that these pains could be bypassed using a modern design.
Now, whether he was right or not doesn't matter. That was his point. The success of Linux doesn't make him wrong, as it might even show his point.
Well, if you weren't taking a spin on things in an effort to attack BSD as a whole, you might not have posted anonymously. In fact, as I recall from readign the archives, Theo did have some right to be angry. His temper is known quite well, and after the recent 'NetBSD blocking OpenBSD mail' junk a month or so ago, its pretty obvious he hasn't changed.
Now, Theo asked for months for core membership again, and waited after being told over and over again everything would be sorted out shortly. You also must remember he didn't apologize not only ut of being hubris, but because the person in question spammed him. This was unknown when he was removed from core, and came to light afterwards. Theo should have been allowed to continue on core, or at least should not have been left hanging. If you DID read the archive, then you'd see that (it seems) only one member had a grudge against Theo enough to screw around with him. His attitude was a problem, but no one denies Theo is a marvelous hacker.
NetBSD folks wanted him to stay, and wanted the political bullshit to end, and repeatedly chimmed in that while Theo needed to calm down, he's contributions were more than enouh to warrent tolerance. They wanted him back! And many wanted the code he developed over the 3 month leave, which Theo kept to himself. This was out of pride, and surely as an incentive to get things back together. When OpenBSD was released, this code was out for the NetBSD folks to grab and use. BSD allows pollination, and really this is a great benefit.
So, the guy Theo flamed was an ass, and by going under the BSDL Theo did not restrict his code. He forked because he cofounded NetBSD, and his passion/ego was great enough he had to be in the top ranks. And heck, his ego is deserved after all.
Theo has less control than Linux of his fork of NetBSD, because no one makes him some god. Now that is immature. And Linus has said the GNU model basically forces this (read OpenSources, appendix). His ego is from brats telling him how leet he is. Linus deserves a lot of what came about, but his hack of UNIX is a far cry from staying in form. Of course, he switches this as saying the other forms must have been arciech, which generally seems more of an excuse than anything else.
I wont even bother withthe VAX bit because that's just so dumb on your part...
The split happened due to Theo's relationship with a core member, due to his attitude. No one has ever said otherwise, and Theo has a well deserved reputation. Personally, I respect Theo and Jordon Hubbard, among other developers on their core team, far more than Linux developers. That's due to their design models, their skill, and their passion. I think people accept Linux's faults like they do Microsoft's, ie for the latter.. 'its ok to reboot at least once a day.' Of course, I think Microsoft gets to much flame for bs madeup by people who know jackshit.. but I'm sure Linux gets the same. Heck.. I may be one of them.
All in all, take everything anyone says with a grain of salt. And BSD isn't losing, or else no one would ever talk about it. Media is up. Who ever said we must live in a single OS (and OS design) world? Personally, the more ideas that come into the world, the better. The better usually bubblesort themselves to the top. The best doesn't always win, but one better than the old does.
Like I said, the old system. That system handled a maximum of 3000 users, I believe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the server. The new server is a single CPU 500mhz Xeon P3.
Whether Linux is superior or not probably wouldn't be an issue. FreeBSD right now has proven itself for the server, and as your saying Linux may soon catch up. Yet, when Linux finally does edge FreeBSD, and here I'm pretending in every form required for the system (as just having a superior stack is not the sole reason), then the system still would not be switched. Three reasons: Linux has not proven itself where FreeBSD obviously has, the code is in Linux may be fresh and untested, whereas the FreeBSD equivelent would have been proven and evolved to its state, and that the maintainers of the systems are also key developers. By knowing the system in and out, and what to improve if needed, then those issues would be quickly remedied. It would be illogical to switch when the maintainers know the code in and out, which is perhaps the largest benefit. Oh.. and why change when nothings broken?
According to Walnut Creek CDROM, it is not the servers that choke, but rather the pipes being clogged. The old system changed the same for years as the bandwith was increased, without problems. For a P6-200 and lots of ram/storage, not bad. The redundancy aproach (one that is more of a popular NT-point than UNIX point), is not as important if the hardware is redundant itself, and the OS is stable. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be redundant, but then as a free service that has hardware redundancy and the software designers maintaining it, its never been a big issue.
Come on. Hasn't anyone taken a philosophy class on this issue? The classic mind/body problem, now at AI level (remember functionalism?). AI isn't about how much computer power you have, but about being smart. Make a learning machine, one that can understand what its doing and can do it properly, and I'll start pondering whether to worry. So far they can't pass the Turing test (understanding/using grammer), so we're a ways off for sure.
Can they kill us? sure, but that wont be some super genius AI in the next 50 years. It will be some sicko behind the scene, doing it for one reason or another. That was one of Bill Joy's fear, that the advance and wide spread use would create all these guys tinkering fiendishly in their basements. That makes sense, but super-AI in a few years...ugh.. just pick something introductionary like Mind Design and maybe people will brighten up bout it.
I was righting this long thing.. and then figured, screw it. If you want to know about IIT, email me. I'm a freshman here, and so far I'm quite happy with my choice. I know how other colleges go at it (from friends/visits), etc. The only bad part I've found is in general for all CS, to many people go into it for $ (and rarely used a computer). The classes are damn good, but in ITP (intro to prof.) they asked for a lecture on how OS's work.. and I almost cried from disgust at how little people knew. They get weeded out first year, as they can't handle the simplist classes. And its far worse in other places, some like UCSC make you do psuedo code first semester, and basics of C second. In others I've seen/heard about, they're bent on getting you a good job, not the education. IIT's damn good.. so if you want to heard the whole rant...
Well, first off Microsoft doesn't need the government's help on obtaining some magical code that is hurting it. MS has enough of its own resources to either destroy the owners, buy it, or create a reproduction and try to capitalize the market through its extremely broad channels. Microsoft has only been hurt by fighting a ghost, an enemy it cannot see or hurt - a damn idea. Its happened in the past, and it doesn't have to be morally better then the existing structure, just has a good ring to it. The Pope recently asked for forgiveness due to massive crimes towards Jews, women, minorities, and human rights. Religion is a good example of this ideology, which governments cannot kill (many attacks on Jews, way before 20th century). Are these ideas the best? No, but they've got some good stuff in them, enough that its worth paying attention to. (personally, I think Open Source is a good idea, just not "free software")
/. enemies.. ugh.. I hate this lemmings crap. Slashdot is pretty awful by itself, really, by pushing half-truths in such causes against "enemies." I consider Microsoft a competitor in any software field, the MPAA as being short sighted towards reality due to its member's goals, and John Johnson to be nothing of a hero. He's lied, twisted facts to make him look morally superior, and the only reason I see him gaining any support towards legal costs is because his father shouldn't be stuck with a bill. That's just my beliefs, just as I actually read the offending Corel license that /. screamed about, saw nothing illegal about it, and was told by people like Bruce Perens that they don't give a fuck whether Corel did anything wrong. Its about scaring the fuck out of anyone who may even think twice about fucking with you. RMS's recent reply to amazon seems pretty dumb considering Amazon did not fire the first shot, but was continuing a long give-and-take battle (Apple and MS did this).
The industrial espinauge is, as they claim, only for extreme cases where it is pretty vital. China finally made a more advanced rocket for missles, then for national security the US is damn well going out how. China and others have done so to the US. The US isn't known for being morally superior or horribly reched. Any relatively successful country will do this, legally or not. Its life.
Oh, and for the sick bit about the
Get your own fucking ideas. Linus isn't god, RMS isn't some old hack who wants credit for Linux, "free software" isn't morally better than proprietary software, ESR isn't some grand philosophy (but he's damn quiet once he gets paid off), Marx contributed vastly to society intellectually, AI machines will make mankind slaves by 2021 is riduculous, and because whatever the latest game looks kinda cool doesn't mean you've just gotta get into computer science. There's a fucking world out there with more important stuff and you don't need to believe this all of this propiganda dribble.
Go to a real college, take sociology and humanities classes, and don't do CS because your to lazy and think its easy money. You can learn something in life, or just be a damn wothless lemming.
I'd be surprised if Deep Blue just tried every possibility (or close) between movies. It would be impossible, as there are at least 10^18 possible (and this is a small estimate). To play chess effectively, heuristics are used. The more advanced, the better the computer plays. This is artificial inllegence, in its simplist form. Read A.M. Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intellegence" or better yet, just grab Mind Design II. Human players work by seeing patterns along with heuristics, and only old-fashined (GOFAI) AI believes in just dumping all the data into the computer and letting it sort through it. That failed, and newer AI designs are great at pattern recognition.
Computers are still at a disadvantage because of this "intuition" that people have. Its difficult to build a computer and just plug an adult brain into it. How can you write a program that passes the Turing test when your asked an extremely wide range of questions from political/historical/scientific, emotional, common knowledge, etc? Tests right now show grammer problems, and are to tough. Turing's answer was to make a computer like a new-born, and let it learn. That's when computers will get the intuition. Until we get so far, Deep Blue's AI capabilities are quite good. Its damn tough to design AI. The computing power really doesn't matter in the end.
hmm.. your right. I could have sworn I saw a Nasdaq link when checking out BSDI's page last week.. my bad.
What I meant, was that (now hypothetical) BSDI was already a public company than they couldn't IPO. The merger seems to be in the direction that WC Cdrom was bought by BSDI, in the fine print (I gather from the Wall Street Journal reference in the article). Even if they do internally see this as a pure merger with no buyer, and a new company created, that wouldn't stop BSDI from being a public company. Thus, BSDI would need to buy back its stock to go IPO bezerk. But of course, it seems they never did IPO. So this branch of logic can be trimmed.
umm.. BSDI is putting almost all of its code, except for kernel data which is licensed from 3rd parties, under the FreeBSD BSDL license. BSD/OS will eventually die, and customers will be migrated over to FreeBSD 5.0. FreeBSD cannot be locked, as if the core team did, another would form to take over the project anyways. Its free!
So, BSD/OS is being assimulated, as I said.
Question. BSDI is already on Nasdaq, and I believe it officially bought WC Cdrom. It can change its name, but that doesn't mean stock holders can be forgotten about and BSDI to say "all thse years with us selling stock was a test run, thanks for trying our system." At most, I would think BSDI could buy back its stock, and re-emerge, or somehow create a new company, IPO it, and convert the BSDI stocks over. Either way, there's no real way to create an IPO scam like all the Linux IPOs seem to be. (Personally, I don't see the point in buying stocks from a company that loses money, from a financial point of view. All 'open source/media hype' aside.)
Yeah, so the FreeBSD core team has to be loving this. I mean, they ar the ones assimilating the competing product. BSDI will just be throwing code, developers, money, advertising, and distribution support (ie, channels) at the roject. Plus, BSDI will obviously begin comercial support (thus boosting that offered by WC in the FreeBSD Mall). Oh, and all those BSD/OS boxes will convert over to FreeBSD eventually. So hey.. doesn't it look almost like FreeBSD, Inc. bought BSDI? :-)
Plus Slackware is getting better support through the merger, by splintering into a seperate independant company instead of WC Cdrom division.
Let us remember two things. In the years before GPL advocates tried to stir up fear that since FreeBSD is under the BSDL, the project could all of a sudden go closed and try to force its users to pay for it, etc. This was to move development over to GPL, and to hurt BSD when it was suffering after the lawsuit ended. Get em while their down, eh?
The problem with that is that its STILL UNDER THE BSD LISCENSE. There are ~200 committers, and the FreeBSD project does not pay anyone. JKH and a few others do work for WC Cdrom, but that was because they were offered jobs to work closer to full time on the project. WC was already a major supporter of FreeBSD before that. JKH and others didn't just jump out and make some firm and IPO BSD to death. They followed the code, not the $.
That said, BSDI does not own FreeBSD. What they own is WC Cdrom, who is the main distributor of FreeBSD. BSDI also employees top FreeBSD developers, but as they have no say in what FreeBSD itself does, the most they can force upon them is to merge the two codebases. If they don't feel like committing it, they can leave BSDI with their own splinter.
If BSDI did close FreeBSD with JKH's support, then the ~180 or so major developers on the project would splinter off and make it open again. The closed would die without developers. Actually, the closed would be considered a splinter from FreeBSD, and simply the developers that left.. There are FreeBSD derived OSes out there. With BSD, unless developerrs just get tired with the project, it can't die..
MathCad has Maple built in, so if you do things correctly, you should have equal power. The difference comes in speed and presentation. If I'm trying to solve one problem, or a few of them, I pop open mathcad and work it out. Its easier that typing various commands I half remember, looks nicer, etc. If I'm doing a lot of work, such as labs, then I have to use Maple. MathCad just doesn't cut it. That's what you get when going from a command string to a presntation layout.
:-)
I've been using MathCad since v2 for dos, including the Win3.1 versions, and maybe once used a UNIX (HPUX) version. MathCad is better or worse depending on the person and the job.
What I really love about Maple is that it keeps UNIX support so I can use display it from the server to my machine. Thus, when I run an infinite loop, I can screw everyone on an 8-way SGI rather then slow down my desktop. What fun.