It's a design limitation of the network. It only works *because* mobiles have a short range and are seen by only a few sites at most. To "fix" the "problem", you'd have to throw it out and start over.
...using your cellphone on board an aircraft is a Bad Idea. Even if you disregard the safety issues, there's another issue: the cellphone system depends on each phone being seen by a small number of cell sites. This works fine on the ground, but at 37,000 feet, one cellphone can activate literally hundreds of sites. The cellular network cannot deal well with this situation.
The cell network can, however, detect this condition, and report the number of a phone that's on use in the air (by the sheer number of sites it talks to). The FCC has issued fines before to people who have used their cellphones inflight. Want a fine? Then turn yours on.
Blame that on me. You see, I took the time to note several terms that are in common use on news.admin.net-abuse.email, figure out good definitions for them, write them down, and then email them to him.
There's nothing secret about any of that. Think there's jargon that needs to be added? Write it up and send it in!
Well said. It's worth pointing out that ESR does have ideals that he will stick to; he's just not as rabid as RMS about them.
Case in point: I keep trying to convince ESR to give Mac OS X a spin. His reply is that he doesn't want to become dependent on software that is out of his control. He doesn't see Apple as the enemy, or anything like that, and he doesn't give me a hard time about using it. He simply won't use it himself.
If you have ever layed eyes on the man, you know that he is the last person you would ever want to be accepting sex tips from.
More than a few of those tips came from his wife. If you've ever laid eyes on her, you know that you'd do well to accept sex tips from her. (And much else. Cathy is the kind of person that, if you're lucky enough to have them as the other person in your life, leaves you wondering just how you managed to rate such a wonderful companion. She's intelligent, witty, and more than a little cute.)
Only if you define "mainframer" to be exactly equal to "PDP-10 hacker". The original file was explicitly not inclusive of the IBM mainframe hacker community (yes, there was and is one).
ESR is the drunkard and gun advocate that coined the term Open Source.
While he is indeed a gun advocate, and did indeed coin the term Open Source, he is NOT a drunkard. He's never even consumed alcohol in my presence, and has had several opportunities to do so.
(Aside: Why is being a gun advocate such a bad thing to anyone whose opinions I should care about?)
I wouldn't scoff too loudly. He DOES hold a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
(We discussed this a little at Penguicon. Tae Kwon Do has a lot of kicking in it. You'd think this would be a disadvantage for him, right? He turned his disability into an advantage. TKD artists develop a comfort range of between 4 and 8 feet from their opponent. ESR would simply get inside that and then beat the crap out of them.)
He wasn't absurdly rich for long enough to collect any of that money. A director of a corporation cannot sell any of his shares for 6 months after an IPO; by then, LNUX had dropped well below its opening-day high.
According to CBS Marketwatch, the current price for LNUX is $2.49 a share. Assuming ESR still owns his 150,000 shares, that makes his stake worth $373,500. Still think he's absurdly rich? He doesn't.
It should go without saying, but IBM OSes have been very expensive since the dawn of time (well, the start of the computer industry).
Actually, IBM didn't charge for its programs of any flavor until 1969, and for its operating systems until 1979 - and then the SP (system product) versions of the OSes were optional, and provided side-by-side with the public domain versions. The non-SP versions were in the public domain, and you can legally get copies today for use with Hercules. In fact, you could even order the last public domain version of MVS from IBM until March 2001! They'd send it to you on 38 tapes if you ordered everything.
Practically speaking, nobody ran the public domain OSes after about 1985 or so, but they were still floating around.
I thought OS/390 didn't need sysgenning any more, since the advent of HCD. Then again, I bailed out of MVS for a living at MVS/ESA 4, so what do I know?
The alternatives to mainframe operation are simply too attractive from a TCO standpoint for it to be any other way.
Actually, this has been proven false several times. Google for "The Dinosaur Myth" for one well-known study...and no, it wasn't paid for by anyone invovled with selling mainframe stuff. The TCO of mainframes is as much lower than that of Unix systems as their cost is lower than that of Windows systems.
Damn. The 9672-RB5 is a 2-CPU generation 4 CMOS box. The latter is significant because you need a generation 5 or 6 to run Linux well (the G5 was the one that introduced IEEE floating point). You can run Linux on a G4, but don't tell IBM about it.
$5K is probably overpriced for that box, as shops are madly getting rid of their G4 and earlier systems as quickly as they can.
As others have noted, the biggest hurdle is that there's no good way for an interested geek to learn firsthand about mainframe systems and OSes. While Hercules takes care of the hardware, at least enough for people to run something to learn on, the same isn't true for the operating system. Modern IBM OSes are hideously expensive, for an individual (unless you're Bill the Gates), and there's been some persistent comments that they won't license them on Hercules anyway (although I have no direct knowledge of this, either way).
I've been advocating a hobbyist license for IBM OSes for use by individuals with Hercules for some time now. There's a white paper at http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html. Aside from a few curmudgeons, and aside from the folks at IBM who make the decisions, the reaction I've gotten to this paper has been uniformly positive. I believe that it would help slow the slide, at least.
In the meantime, the interested can get a running copy of the last public-domain version of MVS from the CBT Tape web page, which is a great resource for the mainframe community in general.
The people this stuff is aimed at are ones who aren't computer geeks. They want to use the stuff to make video, not hack around with computers.
You can get a Mac and the software, plug it in, install the programs, and be making video in two hours. Try that with OSS.
Intelligent minds aren't opposed to spending money if the result is making them more productive. If the goal is to be a computer geek, use Linux and open source software. If the goal is to make serious video, then even $10K for a set of tools tou can plug in and run right away with no hacking needed is well worth it.
I guess I don't need FCP, then, since none of the new stuff affects me either.
OTOH, it does look like DVD Studio Pro 2 is a major advance; building DVDs in 1.5 is a tedious job, especially in menu editing, and it looks like that's where the improvements are. I just hope that I can use FCP 3 to produce input to DVDSP 2; if not, that will drive up the upgrade price.
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It's a design limitation of the network. It only works *because* mobiles have a short range and are seen by only a few sites at most. To "fix" the "problem", you'd have to throw it out and start over.
I am wondering: how realistic is a test which assumes that the phone will be 30cm from the equipment?
The equipment or its wiring harness, Got a window seat? You're within 30cm of a lot of wiring.
...using your cellphone on board an aircraft is a Bad Idea. Even if you disregard the safety issues, there's another issue: the cellphone system depends on each phone being seen by a small number of cell sites. This works fine on the ground, but at 37,000 feet, one cellphone can activate literally hundreds of sites. The cellular network cannot deal well with this situation.
The cell network can, however, detect this condition, and report the number of a phone that's on use in the air (by the sheer number of sites it talks to). The FCC has issued fines before to people who have used their cellphones inflight. Want a fine? Then turn yours on.
Well, now we know this isn't ESR. He's a partisan of the .45 ACP. Cathy shoots .40 S&W (and well, too!).
Blame that on me. You see, I took the time to note several terms that are in common use on news.admin.net-abuse.email, figure out good definitions for them, write them down, and then email them to him.
There's nothing secret about any of that. Think there's jargon that needs to be added? Write it up and send it in!
Oh, that explains the funny-shaped bush in his front yard.
Well said. It's worth pointing out that ESR does have ideals that he will stick to; he's just not as rabid as RMS about them.
Case in point: I keep trying to convince ESR to give Mac OS X a spin. His reply is that he doesn't want to become dependent on software that is out of his control. He doesn't see Apple as the enemy, or anything like that, and he doesn't give me a hard time about using it. He simply won't use it himself.
If you have ever layed eyes on the man, you know that he is the last person you would ever want to be accepting sex tips from.
More than a few of those tips came from his wife. If you've ever laid eyes on her, you know that you'd do well to accept sex tips from her. (And much else. Cathy is the kind of person that, if you're lucky enough to have them as the other person in your life, leaves you wondering just how you managed to rate such a wonderful companion. She's intelligent, witty, and more than a little cute.)
the original jargon file was done by mainframers
Only if you define "mainframer" to be exactly equal to "PDP-10 hacker". The original file was explicitly not inclusive of the IBM mainframe hacker community (yes, there was and is one).
ESR is the drunkard and gun advocate that coined the term Open Source.
While he is indeed a gun advocate, and did indeed coin the term Open Source, he is NOT a drunkard. He's never even consumed alcohol in my presence, and has had several opportunities to do so.
(Aside: Why is being a gun advocate such a bad thing to anyone whose opinions I should care about?)
Or make it a collaborative project.
It is a collaborative project? Know a piece of jargon that's not in there? Submit a defintion! He'll he happy to include it.
ESR demonstrates the proper technique in another picture.
I wouldn't scoff too loudly. He DOES hold a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
(We discussed this a little at Penguicon. Tae Kwon Do has a lot of kicking in it. You'd think this would be a disadvantage for him, right? He turned his disability into an advantage. TKD artists develop a comfort range of between 4 and 8 feet from their opponent. ESR would simply get inside that and then beat the crap out of them.)
No, but it should be outside the trigger guard.
The best place for it is extended along the slide. That way, there's no question.
He wasn't absurdly rich for long enough to collect any of that money. A director of a corporation cannot sell any of his shares for 6 months after an IPO; by then, LNUX had dropped well below its opening-day high.
According to CBS Marketwatch, the current price for LNUX is $2.49 a share. Assuming ESR still owns his 150,000 shares, that makes his stake worth $373,500. Still think he's absurdly rich? He doesn't.
Actually, IBM didn't charge for its programs of any flavor until 1969, and for its operating systems until 1979 - and then the SP (system product) versions of the OSes were optional, and provided side-by-side with the public domain versions. The non-SP versions were in the public domain, and you can legally get copies today for use with Hercules. In fact, you could even order the last public domain version of MVS from IBM until March 2001! They'd send it to you on 38 tapes if you ordered everything.
Practically speaking, nobody ran the public domain OSes after about 1985 or so, but they were still floating around.
Holy, holy, holy shit.
That's one serious box.
Have you ever done a sysgen of os/390?
I thought OS/390 didn't need sysgenning any more, since the advent of HCD. Then again, I bailed out of MVS for a living at MVS/ESA 4, so what do I know?
MVS = IBM Mainframe OS don't know what it stands for
Multiple Virtual Storage. There's a conceptual overview from the Unix geek viewpoint in ESR's upcoming book, The Art of Unix Programming .
The alternatives to mainframe operation are simply too attractive from a TCO standpoint for it to be any other way.
Actually, this has been proven false several times. Google for "The Dinosaur Myth" for one well-known study...and no, it wasn't paid for by anyone invovled with selling mainframe stuff. The TCO of mainframes is as much lower than that of Unix systems as their cost is lower than that of Windows systems.
//SLASHDOT JOB (5161A011,1A11),'SLASHDOT COMMENT',CLASS=R,MSGCLASS=X,
// MSGLEVEL=(1,1),NOTIFY=MYNRJR
//COMMENT EXEC PGM=IEBGENER
//SYSIN DD DUMMY
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSUT2 DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSUT1 DD DATA,DLM=$$
//
Baloney! I wrote this from scratch, sitting at my terminal...er...
web browser. It's not hard, just inflexible and unforgiving.
$$
Damn. The 9672-RB5 is a 2-CPU generation 4 CMOS box. The latter is significant because you need a generation 5 or 6 to run Linux well (the G5 was the one that introduced IEEE floating point). You can run Linux on a G4, but don't tell IBM about it.
$5K is probably overpriced for that box, as shops are madly getting rid of their G4 and earlier systems as quickly as they can.
As others have noted, the biggest hurdle is that there's no good way for an interested geek to learn firsthand about mainframe systems and OSes. While Hercules takes care of the hardware, at least enough for people to run something to learn on, the same isn't true for the operating system. Modern IBM OSes are hideously expensive, for an individual (unless you're Bill the Gates), and there's been some persistent comments that they won't license them on Hercules anyway (although I have no direct knowledge of this, either way).
I've been advocating a hobbyist license for IBM OSes for use by individuals with Hercules for some time now. There's a white paper at http://www.conmicro.cx/ibmhobbyistlic.html. Aside from a few curmudgeons, and aside from the folks at IBM who make the decisions, the reaction I've gotten to this paper has been uniformly positive. I believe that it would help slow the slide, at least.
In the meantime, the interested can get a running copy of the last public-domain version of MVS from the CBT Tape web page, which is a great resource for the mainframe community in general.
The people this stuff is aimed at are ones who aren't computer geeks. They want to use the stuff to make video, not hack around with computers.
You can get a Mac and the software, plug it in, install the programs, and be making video in two hours. Try that with OSS.
Intelligent minds aren't opposed to spending money if the result is making them more productive. If the goal is to be a computer geek, use Linux and open source software. If the goal is to make serious video, then even $10K for a set of tools tou can plug in and run right away with no hacking needed is well worth it.
I guess I don't need FCP, then, since none of the new stuff affects me either.
OTOH, it does look like DVD Studio Pro 2 is a major advance; building DVDs in 1.5 is a tedious job, especially in menu editing, and it looks like that's where the improvements are. I just hope that I can use FCP 3 to produce input to DVDSP 2; if not, that will drive up the upgrade price.