I think we've got a case of crackberrys spamming the media and skewing the terms of the debate into "Evil Patent Trolls vs. The Good Tech Blackberry." Perhaps its more the case that a couple of dot com kiddies are trying ride the actual technological advances made half a decade earlier.
Of course I also know that the KA9Q crowd was doing all of this in the mid-80's which is pry the prior art the NPT patents will be thrown out on -- and you'd think the/. community would know about this, you guys being such big swinging technical dorks and all. But...guess not.
Smaller operations in the US use Linux -- and nearly all of the schools in NZ outside of U. Auckland use MS almost exclusively. And Auckland
primarily only uses it for servers and in EE/CS. Then NZ government runs its day-to-day operations almost exclusively on MS, and even putting
through a white paper saying "maybe open source should be considered" nearly got one minister let go.
Having lived and worked in NZ for 7 years, I can say for a fact that there are three or four issues contributing to the lack of uptake of Linux in New Zealand.
Brain drain. They started charging like a wounded bull for university education, and charging 8% interest on
student loans, with the interest accruing immediately. Very easy credit terms otherwise -- you just have to be in
school, you don't have to prove that your parents are poor. However, all those parents had planned their financial
lives around the premise of a free University education for their children, so they typically have nothing saved
up, and the kids can get loans and loans and loans and more loans to go to school so they do. So the first thing people do when
they graduate (particularly with professional degrees) is go overseas (3 pounds sterling to the "NZ rupee", nearly two US dollars
to the "NZ rubel"), preferably to the UK where they can live for a
couple years (before age 28) without having to hassle with immigration -- it's a commonwealth thing. So they work for
a couple years overseas, to pay off their debts, and then, having established a professional life in the UK (and with
the lure of being able to work anywhere in the EU upon getting a Brit spouse or work permit) are in a perfect position to now handle their immigration issues.
They rarely return. Net result -- stupid kiwis. They love it when Microsoft tells them what to do, because
there's nobody left in the country able to exercise their own critical faculties -- all those people left the country
years ago. You think the dregs remaining can figure out how to run Linux? Nada. Nada chance. A few do -- and eventually also
give up on the small-minded priggish twits they have to deal with day-to-day there, and leave the country.
Small country With only 4 mil people (ish) its much easier for MS to invade all of the professional networks and actively
harm anyone who advocates Linux use at any level--and because the NZ dollar is (traditionally) so low, people are pretty
easy to buy off with freebies. Think of how easy it would be for MS to suppress Linux in, say, Rhode Island -- if they
knew they were going to get to claim a whole country. Using whispering campaigns, character assassination -- someone
actually told me that "Linux is Illegal, you know."
Tall Poppy Syndrome This is a far more subtle, but possibly the overriding factor. With the
brain drain going on, you've got mostly short stubby little dandelions at best in NZ, and even being an average
poppy, you're going to stand out. Wrong move. The last thing you want to be is different or -- goddess forbid -- more
highly qualified -- than anybody else. Using Linux = Being a Smartarse, end of story. Why can't you be like everybody else.
Corruption . NZ has a reputation of being one of the least corrupt countries in the world. That's
because they don't call them bribes and kickbacks. They're "backhanders." How much does it cost to buy off a
small-time manager? A small discount on their MS licenses. A boozy lunch. A couple tee-shirts. Anything to justify MS
and to avoid having the support of a tall poppy linux geek.
All I can say is, beautiful country -- shame about the people.
Nah, they'll just use their existing litigate-o-matic bot spam the arbitrate-o-matic bot, with so many claims
that it DOS's any response. Same business model, automated, in other words.
While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't. I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments.
Lilypond is really nice for typesetting the universal language of jazz, rock and pop: chord sequences. You read and write those don't you? Also, it's good for keeping the words together with the part of the music it belongs with, putting out tablature and drum patterns -- and the most important part: keeping it all together, and alternatively, printing out the parts for individuals. Granted, it's easier to just scrawl chords out on a piece of paper with a purple crayon -- but if you're putting together a repertoire for a larger group of people, say, for your horn section or backup singers...
The point is, lilypond is more than just black dots for classical musicians.
This may come as a shock but not everyone on here is american and so knows about obscure american
savings plans. Why not tell us all about a TESSA then? What , you've not heard of it? Well maybe
thats because its British.
I'll tell you what. I won't browbeat you with the various superannuation schemes we have here in NEW ZEALAND either. Nor will I tell you how I handled retirement contributions during my professional residencies in the UK, Germany and France throughout the early 90's.
The fact remains that you can't turn on the BBC world service for half a minute these days without hearing about Enron's employees' 401(k) retirement schemes going up in smoke. It's been all over the news for weeks now, including detailed explanations of how they work (and occasionally don't!) in the NZ Herald, the Times of London, and Paris Match.
And, Oi. The bleating f-wit took it upon himself to comment, so he should have done his farking homework.
Scientist Says: Disease, famine, and malnutrition require more complicated solutions, all of which have a technological component.
Which obviously involves the development of artificial wombs. Yeah, right. The issue isn't science vs. anti-science, the issue is the focus of the scientific effort. Developing artificial wombs to "treat the childless" when there are so many starving children in the world already is just plain stupid. and it smacks of eugenics.
The reason we don't get Cholera, dysentery, giardia, tapeworms and so forth in New Zealand is basic sanitation, not fancy drugs. The reason we export food rather than import it is because first off we don't breed like bloody rabbits (thanks to the education and long-standing suffrage for women here) and second of all, the scientific effort is heavily weighted toward agricultural and fisheries research--not developing artificial wombs to treat the childless. The solution to the problems associated with overpopulation are very low-tech (like, uh, using a condom? DUH!)-- to devote resources to developing artificial wombs to "treat the childless" is just an insult to a starving and suffering world. My alma mater Cornell should really be ashamed of itself.
...prosecuting the corrupt government officials that divert foreign aid into their own pockets when it was intended to feed starving women and children.
Haven't been listening to the BBC lately have we? The latest fad in NGOs, including the IMF and the World Bank believe it or not, is to withhold aid and debt relief from countries that can't demonstrate transparency. When funds are diverted, corrupt third world officials are being hauled into court and thrown behind bars, just like any other thieves would be.
So, it's already happening -- Wasn't my idea--if you don't like it, go complain to the NGOs that are already doing it.
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
The Pharmaceuticals Researcher Says
Because to solve those problems you need scientists, and the simple fact is that a baby born in to a upper middle class/rich first world country has one heck of a higher chance of being a scientist than one born to a poor third world farmer.
So...the fact that University science faculty are racist and classist means we should pay out enormous amounts of money to develop the technology to breed more of them? Logical!
I can just see the headlines now...
Heroic White Suburban Scientist-Men Save the Planet By Breeding More Like Selves! (sound of Die Valkyrie in the background...) O, Superman!
That sounds like a much better idea than digging wells, digging latrines downhill from them, developing graywater systems for irrigation, educating women (known to bring down the birth rate in developing nations) and prosecuting the corrupt government officials that divert foreign aid into their own pockets when it was intended to feed starving women and children.
No, what we need is Big Science!!! Keeping the price of patented pharmaceuticals well above what any third world nation can afford! Developing Lifestyle Drugs that Only The Rich Need! Botox! IVF Drugs! Xenical! Viagra! That'll save the world!
As if a billion starving ones in developing countries wasn't enough, here's a way to make more!!!
Treating the childless?
Oh they mean childless rich white women who can afford IVF and MORE!
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
Why not? I'll tell you why not. Because it doesn't get them cushy specialist jobs "treating" childless rich white couples to the latest in shiny new status-symbols-- a baby -- that's why not.
Gee honey, shall we put it next to the home theatre center, or shall we leave it out in the garage with the SUV?
...says a person who's obviously never written software.
Take a look at Cygwin's update --you go in when you want, and make the updates you *choose*. The diffs between the client state and update state are done on the client, so the client state never has to be communicated to the server. Furthermore, if you know you need an older or alternative version of something to keep running something else (very common when people are developing new code ) you can choose not to update that particular component.
Very clever, eh? Kind of like being able to go into a grocer's and buy your vegetables fresh and by the pound so you can make your own interesting meals -- rather than having your cart auto-loaded with 10 tons of microso^h^hwaveable TV dinners, all of them exactly alike.
Cross-language programming is nothing new, and M$ is pulling the same stupid trick of re-inventing yet another wheel with.NET.
I was writing mixed-language C and Fortran programmes as early as 1985, since you had a common object format for fortran and C on most unix systems.
On the Mac, people were writing mixed language C, Pascal and Fortran programs around the same time with the MPW. And no performance hit from a VM either, since it was all linked at the object level. Today I write cross-platform programmes, Python and C with SWIG wrappers, and Python/C++ with Boost.Python. So who gives a flying toss about M$ reinventing mixed-language programming? Same crap, different bucket.
And the fact that they're getting it with a VM is even more laughable.
The point of having a VM and bytecode is cross-PLATFORM compatibility (which dates back WAY before Java -- take a look at UCSD Pascal), so comparing JVM to.Net is completely missing the point
You mean you like the Talking Dog more than the mechanical love-struck duck? What about the magnetic bathtub?
The the bit about the founding fathers smoking hemp is a rip^h^h^hreference to an old Firesign Theatre routine, but just as funny.
Dava Sobel's Longitude you'll recognize the chronometer and the rivalry between the astronomers and the watch-makers to take the longitude prize. There's numerous references to it in Mason & Dixon, including their own precarious political situation in the context of that struggle. It was a very real academic political struggle of the day (another theme Stephenson treats light-heartedly but rather heavy-handedly in The Big U). The true story of Longitude is replete with power-plays by the powerful (and, as we find out in Mason & Dixon well-connected and married to money) academic astronomer Maskelyne (masculine?), the struggling "lone genius" engineer/inventor/watch-maker and one very big government grant in the balance. There is nothing new under the sun, is there?
The interesting comparison for me: is Cryptonomicon to Gravity's Rainbow as Quicksilver will be to Mason & Dixon -- we can find out as soon as we can get our hands on a Quicksilver .
My copy of Cryptonomicon has a blurb that briefly compares it to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow , though in truth I think that the flow of the story line makes it a little bit more like V , since both follow several different dramas unfolding at different times in history, all related to the same mystery--one story-line being placed during the war, the other in modern times (which at the time, was the early 60's).
In anticipation of Quicksilver , however, I've finally gotten around to reading Pynchon's Mason & Dixon . Why? Because it, too, is a potboiler of an historical novel "set about 300 years ago" Mason & Dixon's focus, like Gravity's Rainbow is science, instrumentation, and man's relationship with his tools and mechanical creations--similar themes to Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon, except rather than the focus being on mechanical creations, the focus is on digital creations.
The number and variety of historical, scientific, engineering and philosophical references is one aspect that make Pynchon's V , Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon so fascinating--as well as Stephenson's Snow Crash ,
The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon , and from it's description alone, I would surmise Quicksilver . The characters in these books are intimately involved with the pursuit of understanding some scientific or technological challenge, and their discoveries of different parts of
the puzzle challenge their personal philosophies and relationships, as well as having some pivotal but largely underrecognized impact on the historical events unfolding around them.
What I love about these books is that they're not about "A Great Man Of Science" or "The Mad Scientist That Saves The Day". All of them place scientists and engineers where we normally sit -- in our own little world of fascinating details and connections -- and rather than the scientific process being depicted as "The Big Breakthrough"--it's rather depicted more like it really is: a lot of false leads, mistakes, insights, going over the same ground again, tangled up with personal crises both major and minor which are related to which ideas and lines of reasoning are pursued -- and tangled up with
each character's family history. Eventually a few of the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together, which tend to make the pieces that don't fit look curiouser and curiouser.
Pynchon originally studied mechanical engineering, "dropped out" into liberal arts and went on to write technical documentation (aAARGH!) for Boeing prior to publishing his first novel. Likewise, Stephenson did quite a lot of programming before, and during, his literary pursuits.
Their backgrounds play no small part in their characterizations of the concerns and daily lives of scientists, engineers and programmers -- in academic and military research contexts as well as in amateur pursuits. Far more realistic than the breathlessly admiring "Great Man Of Science" characterizations of Scientists by science journalists and popularizers.
If you like Stephenson, you might want to give Pynchon a whirl, particularly V , Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon .
A yogurt shake + wheat germ & bran flakes, wash it down with 1 large cup of hot black coffee. We used to call this combo The Pile-Driver . Try it, you'll find out why!
The main problem in universities is where computer support sits in their status hierarchy: At The Bottom. Definitely below the departmental secretaries, possibly above the janitors. In some departments, computer support was in fact done by certain janitors that volunteered to change the backup tapes, got root, and took over from there.
CS teaching and research is considered a cash cow, but their contribution is actually not taken seriously as part of "the life of the mind." The administration will gladly take half or more of the money they bring in, and would rather spend it on the campus landscraping than on the network infrastructure. The students and faculty demand better computers and better support, so what does the administration do? Levy another student fee to pay for it!
But where did that 50-60% in "administrative overhead" on grants and contracts that supposedly goes to pay for the infrastructure, including the, uh, network? Oh, into some pet project of some kiss-ass assistant dean of liberal somethingorother, as usual. Painting the Roses Red.
So now you have a shiny new pot of money
to spend on computers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
It will become yet another bone of contention for yet another round of stupid power games, and the person that gets stuck with making what's little left at the end of it all work--you know, the guy or gal at the bottom of their hierarchy of prestige and power--will get all the blame for all the delay caused by their power struggle and indecision, and will be caught in the middle of their stupid games.
The students, who have paid for it all, will get nothing, if anything, out of this as usual.
Except for those lovely expensive full-color glossy printed brochures put out by the the Wife Of Dean So-And-So working in the University of PR office describing, in extremely vague marketing terms, all of the benefits of the their selling out to Microsoft and accepting tons of M$ educational licenses for half price, the wonderful deal that she oh so sucksessfully negotiated -- when they could have gotten linux for free.
You can come up with all the creative ideas you want, but the above is what will actually happen.
If I were back in grad school again, I would focus exclusively on developing commercially viable or militarily useful things, and avoid publishing the details. Because:
the only person the publications benefit are the faculty member who will take credit for your research, not you, the grad student or postdoc that actually did the research.
the only people conference proceedings benefit are your competitors--theft is simplyrampant.
if what you share is a fact that's at variance with prior or in-press publications of powerful faculty academics, your work will get stomped on for political reasons, no matter how valid the facts you report are (remember what David Baltimore did to Margot O'Toole when her research discredited his?)
99% of what goes on in universities is just a bunch of political games, and has nothing to do with discovering or establishing anything resembling the truth. So why bother?
Looks like the faculty members are tired of watching their students do this, and are trying it on themselves -- after being content with merely raping their students' ideas and research for so many decades, they've suddenly realized that there are bigger fish to fry than fat government grants (that the administration takes more than half of anyway).
"Big, Big Science. Every man, every man for himself." -- Laurie Anderson
Early or...late 20th century. I was given a job as a temp box loader at a plant in 1975, when I was in High School -- but when I got to the plant, the enginerds insisted that because I was female, I must work on the assembly line with the other gals for a buck three-eighty less per hour! I just asked them to get the job req out of their files, since I'd been specifically assigned to box loading after they verified that I could lift 60 lbs. Easy! So they put me on box loading. And the following semester, after all that lifting, I was a league champion discus thrower in track -- the first year that our school HAD a girls track team (Title IX and all that)
It's also what convinced me to go to engineering school, instead of getting a degree in Reading Easy American Books Of the 19th Century
But even late 20th century working conditions make workers rights movements of all sorts, including equal rights (not just socialist movements)...all to understandable.
Now our government has managed to sell 1/2 of something we already own back to us it's time they hung onto what's left and split the services and infrastructure components in two.
And if it breaks...do you get to keep both halves?
It seems to me that the only thing you left out is the fact that Time/Warner have that MS don't is-- choice content. e.g. LOTR.
Even if AOL "Eats" RedHat -- um, I switched from RedHat to SuSE a few years ago, and it's pretty clear that SuSE is waiting in the wings if RedHat goes the way of the NetScape. SuSE is not that different from RedHat. I domiss ifup ,
and the SuSE.config stuff is a little bit easier to do by hand, but...that's the worst of it.
First used VM (yes, with JCL--you use the blue cards for that) in 1976-77. So it's at least 25 years old. VM/CMS...on a TTY...what an improvement over submitting card decks.
Slashdot Mirror
Neither yet have any articles been cited that mention the circumstances under which NPT acquired these patents (the inventor died of liver cancer in 2004) or the name of the inventor himself -- Tom Campana whose own business making wireless email devices was driven into the ground by the fact that he invented it in the late 80's and early 90's, before email had caught on.
I think we've got a case of crackberrys spamming the media and skewing the terms of the debate into "Evil Patent Trolls vs. The Good Tech Blackberry." Perhaps its more the case that a couple of dot com kiddies are trying ride the actual technological advances made half a decade earlier.
Of course I also know that the KA9Q crowd was doing all of this in the mid-80's which is pry the prior art the NPT patents will be thrown out on -- and you'd think the /. community would know about this, you guys being such big swinging technical dorks and all. But...guess not.
Having lived and worked in NZ for 7 years, I can say for a fact that there are three or four issues contributing to the lack of uptake of Linux in New Zealand.
All I can say is, beautiful country -- shame about the people.
...because women live longer, and are more sensible, among other things .
Nah, they'll just use their existing litigate-o-matic bot spam the arbitrate-o-matic bot, with so many claims that it DOS's any response. Same business model, automated, in other words.
While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't. I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments.
Lilypond is really nice for typesetting the universal language of jazz, rock and pop: chord sequences. You read and write those don't you? Also, it's good for keeping the words together with the part of the music it belongs with, putting out tablature and drum patterns -- and the most important part: keeping it all together, and alternatively, printing out the parts for individuals. Granted, it's easier to just scrawl chords out on a piece of paper with a purple crayon -- but if you're putting together a repertoire for a larger group of people, say, for your horn section or backup singers...
The point is, lilypond is more than just black dots for classical musicians.
Yes. That was a loooong time ago. Guess how they got so interested in security. One part of their management process is "Lessons Learned."
This may come as a shock but not everyone on here is american and so knows about obscure american savings plans. Why not tell us all about a TESSA then? What , you've not heard of it? Well maybe thats because its British.
I'll tell you what. I won't browbeat you with the various superannuation schemes we have here in NEW ZEALAND either. Nor will I tell you how I handled retirement contributions during my professional residencies in the UK, Germany and France throughout the early 90's.
The fact remains that you can't turn on the BBC world service for half a minute these days without hearing about Enron's employees' 401(k) retirement schemes going up in smoke. It's been all over the news for weeks now, including detailed explanations of how they work (and occasionally don't!) in the NZ Herald, the Times of London, and Paris Match.
And, Oi. The bleating f-wit took it upon himself to comment, so he should have done his farking homework.
401(k) is a designation for a type of savings account intended for funding your retirement, not the amount of money in it. Sheesh!
Scientist Says: Disease, famine, and malnutrition require more complicated solutions, all of which have a technological component.
Which obviously involves the development of artificial wombs. Yeah, right. The issue isn't science vs. anti-science, the issue is the focus of the scientific effort. Developing artificial wombs to "treat the childless" when there are so many starving children in the world already is just plain stupid. and it smacks of eugenics.
The reason we don't get Cholera, dysentery, giardia, tapeworms and so forth in New Zealand is basic sanitation, not fancy drugs. The reason we export food rather than import it is because first off we don't breed like bloody rabbits (thanks to the education and long-standing suffrage for women here) and second of all, the scientific effort is heavily weighted toward agricultural and fisheries research--not developing artificial wombs to treat the childless. The solution to the problems associated with overpopulation are very low-tech (like, uh, using a condom? DUH!)-- to devote resources to developing artificial wombs to "treat the childless" is just an insult to a starving and suffering world. My alma mater Cornell should really be ashamed of itself.
Scientist Says: Who do you want to prosecute them?
Haven't been listening to the BBC lately have we? The latest fad in NGOs, including the IMF and the World Bank believe it or not, is to withhold aid and debt relief from countries that can't demonstrate transparency. When funds are diverted, corrupt third world officials are being hauled into court and thrown behind bars, just like any other thieves would be.
So, it's already happening -- Wasn't my idea--if you don't like it, go complain to the NGOs that are already doing it.
Drought and famine are a result of overbreeding.
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
The Pharmaceuticals Researcher Says Because to solve those problems you need scientists, and the simple fact is that a baby born in to a upper middle class/rich first world country has one heck of a higher chance of being a scientist than one born to a poor third world farmer.
So...the fact that University science faculty are racist and classist means we should pay out enormous amounts of money to develop the technology to breed more of them? Logical!
I can just see the headlines now...
Heroic White Suburban Scientist-Men Save the Planet By Breeding More Like Selves! (sound of Die Valkyrie in the background...) O, Superman!
That sounds like a much better idea than digging wells, digging latrines downhill from them, developing graywater systems for irrigation, educating women (known to bring down the birth rate in developing nations) and prosecuting the corrupt government officials that divert foreign aid into their own pockets when it was intended to feed starving women and children.
No, what we need is Big Science!!! Keeping the price of patented pharmaceuticals well above what any third world nation can afford! Developing Lifestyle Drugs that Only The Rich Need! Botox! IVF Drugs! Xenical! Viagra! That'll save the world!
yeh, suremore children
As if a billion starving ones in developing countries wasn't enough, here's a way to make more!!!
Treating the childless?
Oh they mean childless rich white women who can afford IVF and MORE!
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
Why not? I'll tell you why not. Because it doesn't get them cushy specialist jobs "treating" childless rich white couples to the latest in shiny new status-symbols-- a baby -- that's why not.
Gee honey, shall we put it next to the home theatre center, or shall we leave it out in the garage with the SUV?
...says a person who's obviously never written software.
Take a look at Cygwin's update --you go in when you want, and make the updates you *choose*. The diffs between the client state and update state are done on the client, so the client state never has to be communicated to the server. Furthermore, if you know you need an older or alternative version of something to keep running something else (very common when people are developing new code ) you can choose not to update that particular component.
Very clever, eh? Kind of like being able to go into a grocer's and buy your vegetables fresh and by the pound so you can make your own interesting meals -- rather than having your cart auto-loaded with 10 tons of microso^h^hwaveable TV dinners, all of them exactly alike.
Cross-language programming is nothing new, and M$ is pulling the same stupid trick of re-inventing yet another wheel with .NET.
I was writing mixed-language C and Fortran programmes as early as 1985, since you had a common object format for fortran and C on most unix systems.
On the Mac, people were writing mixed language C, Pascal and Fortran programs around the same time with the MPW. And no performance hit from a VM either, since it was all linked at the object level. Today I write cross-platform programmes, Python and C with SWIG wrappers, and Python/C++ with Boost.Python. So who gives a flying toss about M$ reinventing mixed-language programming? Same crap, different bucket.
And the fact that they're getting it with a VM is even more laughable.
The point of having a VM and bytecode is cross-PLATFORM compatibility (which dates back WAY before Java -- take a look at UCSD Pascal), so comparing JVM to .Net is completely missing the point
you know, the language he wrote the code for the C shell and vi in, whilst a grad student at Berzerkley on a grant from...Big Blue.
You mean you like the Talking Dog more than the mechanical love-struck duck? What about the magnetic bathtub?
The the bit about the founding fathers smoking hemp is a rip^h^h^hreference to an old Firesign Theatre routine, but just as funny.
Dava Sobel's Longitude you'll recognize the chronometer and the rivalry between the astronomers and the watch-makers to take the longitude prize. There's numerous references to it in Mason & Dixon, including their own precarious political situation in the context of that struggle. It was a very real academic political struggle of the day (another theme Stephenson treats light-heartedly but rather heavy-handedly in The Big U). The true story of Longitude is replete with power-plays by the powerful (and, as we find out in Mason & Dixon well-connected and married to money) academic astronomer Maskelyne (masculine?), the struggling "lone genius" engineer/inventor/watch-maker and one very big government grant in the balance. There is nothing new under the sun, is there?
The interesting comparison for me: is Cryptonomicon to Gravity's Rainbow as Quicksilver will be to Mason & Dixon -- we can find out as soon as we can get our hands on a Quicksilver .
My copy of Cryptonomicon has a blurb that briefly compares it to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow , though in truth I think that the flow of the story line makes it a little bit more like V , since both follow several different dramas unfolding at different times in history, all related to the same mystery--one story-line being placed during the war, the other in modern times (which at the time, was the early 60's).
In anticipation of Quicksilver , however, I've finally gotten around to reading Pynchon's Mason & Dixon . Why? Because it, too, is a potboiler of an historical novel "set about 300 years ago" Mason & Dixon's focus, like Gravity's Rainbow is science, instrumentation, and man's relationship with his tools and mechanical creations--similar themes to Quicksilver and Cryptonomicon, except rather than the focus being on mechanical creations, the focus is on digital creations.
The number and variety of historical, scientific, engineering and philosophical references is one aspect that make Pynchon's V , Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon so fascinating--as well as Stephenson's Snow Crash , The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon , and from it's description alone, I would surmise Quicksilver . The characters in these books are intimately involved with the pursuit of understanding some scientific or technological challenge, and their discoveries of different parts of the puzzle challenge their personal philosophies and relationships, as well as having some pivotal but largely underrecognized impact on the historical events unfolding around them.
What I love about these books is that they're not about "A Great Man Of Science" or "The Mad Scientist That Saves The Day". All of them place scientists and engineers where we normally sit -- in our own little world of fascinating details and connections -- and rather than the scientific process being depicted as "The Big Breakthrough"--it's rather depicted more like it really is: a lot of false leads, mistakes, insights, going over the same ground again, tangled up with personal crises both major and minor which are related to which ideas and lines of reasoning are pursued -- and tangled up with each character's family history. Eventually a few of the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together, which tend to make the pieces that don't fit look curiouser and curiouser.
Pynchon originally studied mechanical engineering, "dropped out" into liberal arts and went on to write technical documentation (aAARGH!) for Boeing prior to publishing his first novel. Likewise, Stephenson did quite a lot of programming before, and during, his literary pursuits. Their backgrounds play no small part in their characterizations of the concerns and daily lives of scientists, engineers and programmers -- in academic and military research contexts as well as in amateur pursuits. Far more realistic than the breathlessly admiring "Great Man Of Science" characterizations of Scientists by science journalists and popularizers.
If you like Stephenson, you might want to give Pynchon a whirl, particularly V , Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon .
A yogurt shake + wheat germ & bran flakes, wash it down with 1 large cup of hot black coffee. We used to call this combo The Pile-Driver . Try it, you'll find out why!
The main problem in universities is where computer support sits in their status hierarchy: At The Bottom. Definitely below the departmental secretaries, possibly above the janitors. In some departments, computer support was in fact done by certain janitors that volunteered to change the backup tapes, got root, and took over from there.
CS teaching and research is considered a cash cow, but their contribution is actually not taken seriously as part of "the life of the mind." The administration will gladly take half or more of the money they bring in, and would rather spend it on the campus landscraping than on the network infrastructure. The students and faculty demand better computers and better support, so what does the administration do? Levy another student fee to pay for it!
But where did that 50-60% in "administrative overhead" on grants and contracts that supposedly goes to pay for the infrastructure, including the, uh, network? Oh, into some pet project of some kiss-ass assistant dean of liberal somethingorother, as usual. Painting the Roses Red.
So now you have a shiny new pot of money to spend on computers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It will become yet another bone of contention for yet another round of stupid power games, and the person that gets stuck with making what's little left at the end of it all work--you know, the guy or gal at the bottom of their hierarchy of prestige and power--will get all the blame for all the delay caused by their power struggle and indecision, and will be caught in the middle of their stupid games.
The students, who have paid for it all, will get nothing, if anything, out of this as usual.
Except for those lovely expensive full-color glossy printed brochures put out by the the Wife Of Dean So-And-So working in the University of PR office describing, in extremely vague marketing terms, all of the benefits of the their selling out to Microsoft and accepting tons of M$ educational licenses for half price, the wonderful deal that she oh so sucksessfully negotiated -- when they could have gotten linux for free.
You can come up with all the creative ideas you want, but the above is what will actually happen.
If I were back in grad school again, I would focus exclusively on developing commercially viable or militarily useful things, and avoid publishing the details. Because:
- the only person the publications benefit are the faculty member who will take credit for your research, not you, the grad student or postdoc that actually did the research.
- the only people conference proceedings benefit are your competitors--theft is simplyrampant.
- if what you share is a fact that's at variance with prior or in-press publications of powerful faculty academics, your work will get stomped on for political reasons, no matter how valid the facts you report are (remember what David Baltimore did to Margot O'Toole when her research discredited his?)
99% of what goes on in universities is just a bunch of political games, and has nothing to do with discovering or establishing anything resembling the truth. So why bother?Looks like the faculty members are tired of watching their students do this, and are trying it on themselves -- after being content with merely raping their students' ideas and research for so many decades, they've suddenly realized that there are bigger fish to fry than fat government grants (that the administration takes more than half of anyway).
"Big, Big Science. Every man, every man for himself." -- Laurie Anderson
Early or ...late 20th century. I was given a job as a temp box loader at a plant in 1975, when I was in High School -- but when I got to the plant, the enginerds insisted that because I was female, I must work on the assembly line with the other gals for a buck three-eighty less per hour! I just asked them to get the job req out of their files, since I'd been specifically assigned to box loading after they verified that I could lift 60 lbs. Easy! So they put me on box loading. And the following semester, after all that lifting, I was a league champion discus thrower in track -- the first year that our school HAD a girls track team (Title IX and all that)
It's also what convinced me to go to engineering school, instead of getting a degree in Reading Easy American Books Of the 19th Century
But even late 20th century working conditions make workers rights movements of all sorts, including equal rights (not just socialist movements)...all to understandable.
Now our government has managed to sell 1/2 of something we already own back to us it's time they hung onto what's left and split the services and infrastructure components in two.
And if it breaks...do you get to keep both halves?Mod yourself up to 11, man, that's GOOD!
It seems to me that the only thing you left out is the fact that Time/Warner have that MS don't is-- choice content. e.g. LOTR.
Even if AOL "Eats" RedHat -- um, I switched from RedHat to SuSE a few years ago, and it's pretty clear that SuSE is waiting in the wings if RedHat goes the way of the NetScape. SuSE is not that different from RedHat. I domiss ifup , and the SuSE.config stuff is a little bit easier to do by hand, but...that's the worst of it.
First used VM (yes, with JCL--you use the blue cards for that) in 1976-77. So it's at least 25 years old. VM/CMS...on a TTY...what an improvement over submitting card decks.