Do you know any NASA employees? Have you actually spoken to them about their work,
Yes. Some NASA employees are even more cynical about the outlook than I am. Others are more optimistic. As everywhere, opinions vary.
And by the same token, isn't it a bit naive to expect that NASA should be magically free of PHBs and bureaucracy
It would be. It also would be naive to expect that NASA should have any less PHBs and bureaucracy than any other government agency.
The primary function of government is to absorb tax dollars. NASA is just as good at that as any other part of the government. Of course, the primary function of commercial enterprise is also to pull in money, but there are feedback mechanisms that usually make sure that the money is better spent, at least over the long term.
And as soon as profits become a priority, I can't help thinking that safety, training, etc is going to go down the drain.
I'd like to think that a company far-sighted enough to be willing to fund a commercial space venture would be far-sighted enough to realize that if they skimped on safety, they might well be wasting their entire investment.
But even if I'm wrong, I still think commercialization is the right thing. NASA is never going to do anything with space but use it as a taxpayer funded playground to conduct a small number of experiments. They have no motivation to do anything that would actually make space useful, and probably couldn't get enough funding to do such things anyhow.
However, I doubt that we'll see a commercial equivalent to the ISS, because a low-orbit space station just really isn't very useful. Commercial ventures would invest their money where there's some hope of return, like perhaps mining asteroids, and a low orbit space station doesn't really help with that.
On the other hand, a space station at one of the
Lagrange points might actually be useful. We'd need a way to get there and back, and the Space Shuttle wouldn't do it. We'd need either non-reusable Big Dumb Boosters, or something like the Delta Clipper. (NASA chose to fund a poorly conceived and untried Boeing design instead of the proven DCX design, and look what happened: they discovered that they can't actually make the Boeing thing because they don't have enough unobtanium to make the fuel tanks.)
But given that there's little chance of that happening any time soon (either commercially or by NASA), we may just have to wait for the Space Elevator before we go much further.
It would be an interesting experiment, but I'm not so sure that it would work well. Except for geeks like us, I think an individual begging will get more sympathy than the government (NASA) would. After all, most US residents already pay to support the ISS.
Courts have recognized political speech as the innermost circle of free speech protection, and groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation believe spam laws that interfere with it may be not just unwise but unconstitutional.
That seems like an extraordinarily bad position for them to take. It's fine to insist that political speech is free speech and protected by the First Amendment, but there's no basis for claiming that it is "more free" than commercial speech. The First Amendment does not make such a distinction, and it would set a very bad precedent if the courts decided that commercial speech was less protected.
What would be next? Deciding that personal speech is less protected than commercial speech? Distinguishing between different kinds of commercial speech, with some more protected than others? I shudder to think of where this could lead.
Any spam law that covers political speech is just as constitutional (or unconstitutional) as it would be if it only covers commercial speech. The right to free speech does NOT include a "right to an audience", nor a "right to be published". You are allowed to speak, but you can't force me to listen. You can mail me a leaflet, but you can't force me to pay the postage. You're not allowed to enter my home to speak to me without my permission; similarly an anti-spam law (if it is properly written) doesn't prevent you from speaking, but only prevents you from making me pay for it.
QEMM could try to make TSR's run above 1024k (and I couldn't), but that didn't usually work for me.
There was a product from Helix called Multimedia Cloaking that contained special versions of the Microsoft Mouse driver, MSCDEX, and other common TSRs modified to live above 1M. That worked quite well with QEMM. With that I was *finally* able to cram in all the TSRs I used without taking up any conventional memory (below 640K).
They say that you have to assign unique MAC addresses, which is obviously true, and that they force the high order byte to be zero. But they really ought to mention that you are supposed to set the next-to-the-LSB bit (0x02 hex) in the first byte of the address, in order to designate it as a locally administrated address. The IEEE 802 specs require that you do this if you want to assign your own addresses rather than using an officially assigned block.
It used to be that the IEEE would only complete OUI blocks (16M addresses). They charge $1650 for that, but now you can buy an "Individual Address Block" of 256 addresses for $550. For locally administrated addresses you don't have to pay anything, but of course you're not guaranteed that they are unique.
There's also a rule that you aren't allowed to use a new OUI until you've used up 90% of your existing allocation. But it's obviously not enforced, since
Cisco has over 190 assigned OUIs (not including those of companies they've acquired), and I very much doubt that they've shipped 2.85 billion Ethernet ports.
There's some GPL'd code I wrote in MAME; I've been unhappy about the licensing for a while now. But it's a pretty small amount of code, and I thought the MAME license wasn't *too* awful, so I didn't pursue it.
I will be quite happy if MAME goes GPL, as it will solve this problem.
I have seen people argue [...] that the x86 port of Darwin was simply to keep some leverage with MS on this one issue.
How does that work? Why does MS care whether Darwin runs on the x86? Even in some hypothetical alternate universe in which Apple releases a complete OS X for x86, MS doesn't have anything to worry about from Apple.
If BMG's copy protection truly results in a disc that is "according to the Red Book Standard" as they claim, in what way is it protected?
Any copy protection means that would have any hope of being even slightly effective would have to use discs that violate the standard in at least some minor way. Otherwise, they are very easy to copy.
Philips wants five thousand dollars for the
Red Book, and requires that you sign an NDA. But if you want to learn the details you can buy the actual international standard, IEC standard 60908, for CHF 226 (about $156).
Other good sources of technical detail about the CD Audio format are:
Both of these books provide fairly detailed explanations of the data format, but for the actual physical specifications you have to refer to the standard.
Since Mandrake is so adamant about playing version numbering one-upmanship, despite the lack of any actual technical improvements to justify bumping the major number, I'm surprised that they don't simply start each new major version number with a ".1" for the minor version number. Anyone who is actually fooled by their version number inflation should fall for that as well.
they're so reliable and cheap, you won't need a warranty anyway
If that was true, obviously there would be little for the manufacturer to gain by reducing the term of the warranty.
I'm not sure of the numbers for hard drives, but for many products the MTTF is cut in half for each 8 degrees C of increased temperature. Most PC's provide basically no cooling for the hard drive. Often the drives run quite hot.
For the last 15 years, I've put multiple fans on all my drives. For some of them, this resulted in a temperature reduction of about 20 degrees C. I've had no failures since I started doing this; previously I had two drive failures. Not a very scientific study, but the way I look at it, it can't hurt and the cost is minimal.
Note that the cost of a drive failing is NOT just the cost of the drive; it's the cost of the drive plus the cost of the lost data. If you have a good backup system, the cost of lost data can be minimized. If you have a RAID, it can be all but elminated.
For example, the Noval 760, a Z-80 system with monitor, tape drive, and printer, built into a desk. The peripherals are in a hinged portion so they can be kept out of the way when you're not computing. The Noval was reviewed in Byte magazine in 1977.
The ACLU doesn't have representatives on TV every week telling us what they think.
They would if they could get the press coverage for free. But they can't afford to buy TV time routinely.
Whereas anyone can post an essay on the internet, and if they're famous or if the topic is of sufficiently general interest, it will get noticed.
I respect him greatly for having principles and sticking to them, yes.
But it's getting damn near the point where I'm starting to respect him in the same way you'd respect Jerry Falwell. He's a bigoted, racist, loudmouthed prick, but he's got his principles.
What exactly is he doing that offends you so much? He posts an essay once in a while, and gets interviewed now and again. It's not like he's beating on your door or calling you on the phone. I don't understand how you can credibly claim that he's anywhere near as annoying as Falwell, who is in the news *much* more often than RMS.
..., if the Supreme Court acts against form and declares the Bono Act unconstitutional. Today's music would revert to the public domain when your grandchildren are in college, rather than your great grandchildren.
If the Supreme court rules against Eldred, it's worse than that. Even your great grandchildren's great grandchildren won't have any public domain music from any time after the early 20th century. There's every likelyhood that nothing (including music) that is currently copyrighted or created in the future will never become public domain, because the RIAA, MPAA, Disney, etc. will continue getting extensions to the copyright term. It's their objective to make sure that their copyrights never expire. Due to this annoying thing called the Constitution, they can't get that directly legislated, but unless the Supreme Court acts now, there will be nothing to stop Congress from extending the term every time they are asked to do so. This makes it effectively unlimited, even though at any given time there is a limit.
and in that time the RIAA has waged war on the Internet rather than try and use the technology for the benefit of their artists
"Benefit of their artists"??? Are you smoking crack or what? Why would you think that the RIAA gives half a rat's ass for artists? Their concern is for the recording industry, to which artists are only viewed as a necessary evil.
Sadly, the only way the artists are going to get any halfway-reasonable cut of royalties from distribution on the internet is if they strike out on their own (and perhaps form their own recording companies), or if they convince Congress to pass some legislation benefitting them. Otherwise the RIAA and its members will continue to have not the slightest bit of concern for the artists.
This might be the technology that drives the stake in analog projection.
I can't read the CNet article due to the firewall at work, but how does blocking camcorders have anything whatsoever to do with the projection technology being analog or digital?
C is used because it allows you to access system resources directly.
However, it is entirely possible to have a language that is both type-safe AND allows direct access to system resources. Modula 3 and Ada come to mind, but there are others.
If more software were written in type-safe languages, we wouldn't have so damn many buffer overrun security holes popping up all the time. It's possible to write secure software in C, but the language doesn't help you do it. C isn't a high-level language, it's a portable assembler. Writing large pieces of software in C is madness.
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Oops. My apologies to Boeing/McDonnell!
The primary function of government is to absorb tax dollars. NASA is just as good at that as any other part of the government. Of course, the primary function of commercial enterprise is also to pull in money, but there are feedback mechanisms that usually make sure that the money is better spent, at least over the long term.
I'm all for commercialization, and perhaps it will happen, but there have been a lot of false starts, and the future is quite uncertain.
But even if I'm wrong, I still think commercialization is the right thing. NASA is never going to do anything with space but use it as a taxpayer funded playground to conduct a small number of experiments. They have no motivation to do anything that would actually make space useful, and probably couldn't get enough funding to do such things anyhow.
However, I doubt that we'll see a commercial equivalent to the ISS, because a low-orbit space station just really isn't very useful. Commercial ventures would invest their money where there's some hope of return, like perhaps mining asteroids, and a low orbit space station doesn't really help with that.
On the other hand, a space station at one of the Lagrange points might actually be useful. We'd need a way to get there and back, and the Space Shuttle wouldn't do it. We'd need either non-reusable Big Dumb Boosters, or something like the Delta Clipper. (NASA chose to fund a poorly conceived and untried Boeing design instead of the proven DCX design, and look what happened: they discovered that they can't actually make the Boeing thing because they don't have enough unobtanium to make the fuel tanks.)
But given that there's little chance of that happening any time soon (either commercially or by NASA), we may just have to wait for the Space Elevator before we go much further.
It would be an interesting experiment, but I'm not so sure that it would work well. Except for geeks like us, I think an individual begging will get more sympathy than the government (NASA) would. After all, most US residents already pay to support the ISS.
True. There must be some little-known Fourteen-and-a-halfth Amendmendment guaranteeing politicians the right to free postage.
What would be next? Deciding that personal speech is less protected than commercial speech? Distinguishing between different kinds of commercial speech, with some more protected than others? I shudder to think of where this could lead.
Any spam law that covers political speech is just as constitutional (or unconstitutional) as it would be if it only covers commercial speech. The right to free speech does NOT include a "right to an audience", nor a "right to be published". You are allowed to speak, but you can't force me to listen. You can mail me a leaflet, but you can't force me to pay the postage. You're not allowed to enter my home to speak to me without my permission; similarly an anti-spam law (if it is properly written) doesn't prevent you from speaking, but only prevents you from making me pay for it.
I think what you're trying to say is that useless ads don't create any value, so they don't expand the economy.
But I'm not particularly nostalgic about it.
It used to be that the IEEE would only complete OUI blocks (16M addresses). They charge $1650 for that, but now you can buy an "Individual Address Block" of 256 addresses for $550. For locally administrated addresses you don't have to pay anything, but of course you're not guaranteed that they are unique.
For more info, see the IEEE registration authority pages.
There's also a rule that you aren't allowed to use a new OUI until you've used up 90% of your existing allocation. But it's obviously not enforced, since Cisco has over 190 assigned OUIs (not including those of companies they've acquired), and I very much doubt that they've shipped 2.85 billion Ethernet ports.
I will be quite happy if MAME goes GPL, as it will solve this problem.
Philips wants five thousand dollars for the Red Book, and requires that you sign an NDA. But if you want to learn the details you can buy the actual international standard, IEC standard 60908, for CHF 226 (about $156).
Other good sources of technical detail about the CD Audio format are:
- The Art of Digital Audio by John Watkinson
- Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann
Both of these books provide fairly detailed explanations of the data format, but for the actual physical specifications you have to refer to the standard.Since Mandrake is so adamant about playing version numbering one-upmanship, despite the lack of any actual technical improvements to justify bumping the major number, I'm surprised that they don't simply start each new major version number with a ".1" for the minor version number. Anyone who is actually fooled by their version number inflation should fall for that as well.
I'm not sure of the numbers for hard drives, but for many products the MTTF is cut in half for each 8 degrees C of increased temperature. Most PC's provide basically no cooling for the hard drive. Often the drives run quite hot.
For the last 15 years, I've put multiple fans on all my drives. For some of them, this resulted in a temperature reduction of about 20 degrees C. I've had no failures since I started doing this; previously I had two drive failures. Not a very scientific study, but the way I look at it, it can't hurt and the cost is minimal.
Note that the cost of a drive failing is NOT just the cost of the drive; it's the cost of the drive plus the cost of the lost data. If you have a good backup system, the cost of lost data can be minimized. If you have a RAID, it can be all but elminated.
For example, the Noval 760, a Z-80 system with monitor, tape drive, and printer, built into a desk. The peripherals are in a hinged portion so they can be kept out of the way when you're not computing. The Noval was reviewed in Byte magazine in 1977.
Whereas anyone can post an essay on the internet, and if they're famous or if the topic is of sufficiently general interest, it will get noticed.
What exactly is he doing that offends you so much? He posts an essay once in a while, and gets interviewed now and again. It's not like he's beating on your door or calling you on the phone. I don't understand how you can credibly claim that he's anywhere near as annoying as Falwell, who is in the news *much* more often than RMS.Sadly, the only way the artists are going to get any halfway-reasonable cut of royalties from distribution on the internet is if they strike out on their own (and perhaps form their own recording companies), or if they convince Congress to pass some legislation benefitting them. Otherwise the RIAA and its members will continue to have not the slightest bit of concern for the artists.
Spy satellites are generally not in geosynchronous orbits, for obvious reasons.
If more software were written in type-safe languages, we wouldn't have so damn many buffer overrun security holes popping up all the time. It's possible to write secure software in C, but the language doesn't help you do it. C isn't a high-level language, it's a portable assembler. Writing large pieces of software in C is madness.