OK, a couple of plusses & minuses no-one seems to be bringing up:
The area is a seismic nightmare - "Ring of Fire" mean anything to anyone?
The English side of the Chunnel was built through chalk, the French side was less amiable stuff but still relatively soft & consistent; the straits are anything but.
Yes, this would allow trains to cross from the Americas to Asia, Europe & Africa - that gives you a potential market of most of the world's population.
On the other hand that trip is several days to weeks journey time - is it really going to be cheaper then flying?
Just how much stuff & people *now* goes via train between N. America & S. America or between Eurasia & Africa? Sure it's doable but is this traffic really relevant to the economics?
Trains are excellent for distributing material to fixed points across a continent but ships are cheaper when coasts are involved. I can't imagine the economics of shipping stuff through Alaska & Siberia via a tunnel would be cheaper then bringing it to the nearest port and using conventional means. Remember the N. America & Europe have excellent inner-continental (as well as inter) ship transportation. For example in the US Chicago is a major port via the Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Seaway, St. Louis is too via the Mississippi. Europe has similar services, can trains compete against this?
Much of the valuable stuff now shipped around Alaska & Siberia is oil but this wouldn't be carried by train, particularly through a tunnel. Indeed aside from typical container-cargo (non Hazmat of course) all I can think of in bulk would be wheat.
All of this additional material shipped through the British Columbian, Alaskan, Siberian & Central Asian environments would be just asking for a problem to happen. The environment is incredibly harsh and although the Siberians, Russians & Canadians have developed very reliable hardware the tracks themselves would be a constant maintenance issue & any failures would be catastrophic. Furthermore there would be considerable air pollution from the fuels running these trains and that would have profound & lasting impact. It's hard to for folks south of 60 degrees to understand how different the evironment & machinery are north of 60 but trust me, this would be *big*.
Finally, this is more then the US & "The Russians" (has anyone told the US population they're not all Russians & there's now a bunch of country's where the USSR was?) On both sides there're feeder systems involved & on the N. America side it all goes through Canada. As a US'er living in Canada I can't see these folks being enthused about a busy set of rail-lines going through some very sensitive territory. With the Northern Passage opening up due to warming there's already fear of shipping using it, trains aren't going to be any more popular & the Canadians are not going to roll over & let the US do what it wants, nor do I see a better situation in Central Asia.
Frankly, after all of the points I can't see what the tunnel would be for. Planes move folks more efficiently (a detour through Alaska & Siberia is not going to be popular for most of the travelling population!) and specialized ships handle the various cargos, again more directly. While the tourist market might be considerable I can't see it justifying a US$60-billion expenditure on something as fragile as a tunnel through a seismically active area fed via high-maintenance tracks in ecologically fragile land against widespread public opposition & likely govermental non-support.
What's your take on MacOS X? As the main point-person on the biggest other Mac-based *nix I'm sure you've been keeping track of it. How do you consider what's coming out of Apple as an OS, specifically as a *nix implementation?
Next, has Apple's open-sourcing Darwin been of any advantage to Linux PPC? Has someone ever popped into their code & looked up how they handled an point or what their solution was to a Mac-specific issue?
Back to your own stuff, where do you see Linux PPC going as regards to the other linuxen? Any stuff you see as being unique strengths of Linux PPC (aside from it's hardware)?
Finally, what issues do you regularly run into being on a non-X86 platform? What could developers do to improve portability for you? What's your "I-wish-they'd" list look like?
Unfortunately unless one is watching for the eclipse it'll be unnoticable.
The popular perception of a solar eclipse is the skies & land growing dark as streetlights pop on & birds take cover for the night. While that does indeed happen for a full eclipse a partial one is much less impressive, particularly one as partial as this will be for most folks.
Taking a 'bite' out of a very bright light-source leaves - a very bright light-source. The effect for most folks will be no more noticable then an high-altitude cloud. The landscape will slowly (imperceptably) dim then later brighten very subtly.
That said the images of the sun will be very impressive. I'm going to assume a/.'ers know better then to look at the sun directly (sun = bright light in the 'big blue room'.) Even good sunglasses don't generally filter enough, particularly for the extended viewing like this. It *is* possible to permanently harm one's eyes this way and no, your reflexes won't save you if you override them.
One of the simplest (and thus kewlest) ways to view is to punch a hole in a piece of paper (or tinfoil or whatever else handy) and let the sun shine through. The hole should be ~.25mm and a second surface (prefereably white) ~20-50cm behind it (Your Milage May Vary) This will get you a view approximately the same as the fantastic photos you see but it'll be yours & real-time.
Good luck. Even for those of us in Northern parts of North America (Montreal) this will be an easy-to-miss event but if one takes the time & effort (& the weather cooperates) it can be an exciting one to catch.
Lots of places (esp. US DOD & auto-industry) faced this problem years ago and came up with a stable, reasonable solution:
SGML
It's open, cross-platform, flexible & has a long heritage. If you want to embed graphics call out to a Postscript fle.
Framemaker speaks it, WordPerfect speaks it, I dunno about MS Word, and of course it can be pumped out into lots of other formats (eg HTML, XML, etc.)
It's not a perfect solution but it's widely availiable and fairly future-proof. Your specs should be about content anyway, let the reader concern themselves with presentation.
BTW - to change the codec (vocoder) on many StarTACs:
Dial V-O-C-O-D-E and hit Fcn twice. Sto to change End to quit
Like I said, EVRC gives the best audio quality though there can be quirks with carriers that don't support it. Of course the tower can always over-ride your settings (think of them as 'requests'.)
I use EVRC locally and 13k roaming; my sweetheart use 13k exclusively and his can be 'choppy' to use during hand-offs and inside buildings.
Sweater bars (gay equivalent of fern bars) mebbe - leather bars generally not, dance bars "What??? I can't hear you..."
Actually when I post to/. I envision legions of overly bright just-out-of-highschool students, the ones who can't wait for the question to be asked before shooting up their hands and quivering with excitement 'cause they know the answer (of course 1/2 the time they're completely off base 'cause they didn't actually check to find out if the question asked is really the answer they couldn't wait to blurt^H^H^H^H^H post.)
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with sometimes encouraging the more clueless to refrain from posting. I mean, EVERY time a noun is used some dimwit has to post "What's a 'noun'" - it's the web fer cripes - LOOK IT UP!
Naw, gay bars are better behaved & there's a better chance of getting laid.
PLEASE - before asking 100 times the same questions regarding Ham sats remember you're on the web. Spend the 30 seconds BEFORE you post and see if you can find the answer yourself.
Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler, etc. are all more efficient then asking every time someone else to explain it for you.
Disclaimer: I'm just guessing here, I have no inside knowledge, no fly-on-the-wall stuff & if I did I sure as heck wouldn't be posting to/.!
Perhaps Linux over BSD et al 'cause they had it handy? Nothing more sinister, nothing more simple?
There's two sorts of projects: Those that start out with a committee, a budget, a goal & a process. Then there's a couple of hackers playing around with some tech that came in the door, making a tweak here, making a tweak there, realizing they might have something then writing it up & getting official approval to go ahead with whatever.
It may have been been by plan that Linux got used, or it may have been just what they were playing with the clouds parted in just the right day, things clicked & they got a go-ahead.
There's a lot of bright folks who "work in Maryland" (as in don't-ask-me-details) and their internal culture, while security-obsessed, is also supposed to be pretty free & open to new ideas. Since they've got lots of spare IQ points floating around, budgets aren't a terribly over-riding concern & their mandate is to know all about lots of things (especially stuff like OS's) it's hardly suprising they've been playing with Linux. Heck, it was likely a directive from some (not so) pointy-haired-boss.
The interesting thing is that they're releasing this to the outside world. That means that either the institution thinks doing so would improve the US's security in some way or there's a bunch of geeks in there who *really* want to contribute.
My sweetheart & I got matching StarTACs together, my keypad died the second day (top row wouldn't respond.) Took it in, got it replaced (no data transfer though) & both are working fine.
I looked at rhe Nokia's but for price/performance/frequencies the StarTAC came up better for me, YMMV.
I would recommend anyone buying a cellphone actually try a few calls on the two or three they come down to. We almost went with a Sanyo 3500 but after several tries from different locations turned it down - the sound quality just didn't compare to the StarTAC's.
Also look into which codec you're going to use. I drive through some spotty-coverage area's (I-89/I-93 through VT & NH) regularly and the EVRC codec has made a big difference in my marginal-quality. Instead of breaking up speech fades in & out, makes it much easier to follow what the speaker is saying.
WAP phones are passé. For the screen to be any use they have to be too big, for the phone to be any convenience it's got to be too small. Plus what kind of 'web experience' is it when you're just scrolling through lists?
Look, I'm sure there's a "killer app" for celphones but I haven't found it yet. Movie-times? Got an audio service that does that and aside from the Santa-on-speedballs quality of the announcer it works fine. Same for most of the other services - nothings uniquely useful, nothing pressingly important to me.
It's all the shopping-power of an inflight magazine with the information services of an 80's "press-1-for..." service. Oh - and for stocks - what percentage of the population really needs constant access to the stock listings?
I'm not being Grinch here, I've a WAP-enabled phone myself & played around with it. Yawn. Go find some friends/co-workers/other locals & ask them what they use their WAP phones for - most of them *don't*.
Buy a phone for size & weight, buy it for audio quality, but it for battery life, buy it for ringtones if you want, but don't make WAP an important criteria unless you're in the WAP business.
-- Michael
ps - Motorola StarTAC 7867W - small, rugged, great battery life, excellent audio quality (esp. with the EVRC codec turned on.) All of the bells & whistles plus WAP. CDMA 800/1900 & analog 800 MHz. My only complaint is that the Data Kit (cable & software) costs US$100.
I have a wonderful lover, a challenging job that pays remarkably well yet allows me to take off very longs periods of time, live in a great city with a vibrant nightlife & fantastic cuisine. I've marvellous friends who I value deeply & they seem to do the same in return, and parent's I've become good friends with.
Back to the original point (& before your own emotional projection) I've hacked & cracked systems. The difference was that I was clever about it & had permission.
Fer instance I used to contract then work for an well known publisher/financial services company. It was a great place but IS was a complete mess. Nobody stayed for more then a year, oftentimes it was only a few days, and the standard means of resignation was to leave one's keycard on the desk & simply never return.
This of course meant that we regularly had boxes on the network that nobody had any idea what they were. Since I was invariably the one they called ("It looks like one of your boxes & you run most of the boxes anyway") I soon became adept at getting permission to break in & find out what the damn thing was doing.
The clever part was I did my homework & got permission FIRST. I'd see if there was any traffic to the box, if so from where and what sort? Could I identify any of it's users and then what did they know about it? Heck, I'd even call Purchasing and see if anyone had bought one of these recently. This generally took only a few minutes and the assistance of folks whose job it was anyway. The result was I knew what I was going into before I did it, and no big screw ups.
In your world expecting this kind of professionalism may be the sign of a prick - in mine it's called someone you want on your team.
I'm glad you're happy with your expectations because I'm quite happy with mine & their results. It is a good life.
Again, rattling the doorknob is fine. I expect the night-watchman to wander through the building and make sure doors are closed and the appropriate ones are locked; This is reasonable for an IS staffer to do also.
However, this does not extend to trying to break into something.
If you suspect a problem go talk to the folks who would know about it, or tell security. Hell, my pager number is pasted on my office door flag me! DON'T go breaking into stuff blindly.
I've said this more thoroughly in another thread but yes, you're right, there is an acceptable level of "Huh? What're you doing here?" and then there's going beyond one's authority. If someone can't appreciate the difference between these two then they're judgement is so poor I don't want them no matter how tight the job market.
Marlo Thomas - Free To Be... You And Me (1972 Television Cast) "There's some kinds of help that are the kind of help we can all do without."
Let me get this straight... you dump a box onto some internal network; and then when an IS staffer says to him/herself "What the frick is that thing? It wasn't there yesterday..." and tries to figure out what your admittedly suspicious looking box is doing on the network they're responsible for...
Then you fire them?
Damn right - Bang! Gone.
Mis-clicks are fine, we all do them. Even rattling the door-knob is kewl. But the minute you try to break in you're outta there. I run big networks, stuff comes & goes all of the time and a certain degree of interest is expected (& welcomed.)
This does not extend to trying to trying to break into boxes that aren't yours.
I don't care if it's called "Hax0rs l00t" once you've determined the front door is closed then pass it onto the right folks & move on. Raise the alarm, stick your head into the Net Security Admin's office, ask them for follow-ups, bring it up at a Change Control meeting, whatever but breaking into something that isn't yours & you haven't the authority to access is grounds for (immediate) termination.
No apologies, no excuses.
Again, we have folks in charge of keeping the network organized, they should know about anything new or different on the network, ask or tell them. We have folks in charge of security, they should be notified about any concerns you have. Unless your job-description specifically includes it and you've got written permission from someone above you so empowered you do not go breaking into things - I don't care how justified you think you are or how suspicious (or innocuous) it looks. If you haven't the brains to do this then good riddance.
I've had boxes on my networks that did everything from SEC compliance monitoring to transferring billions of dollars of bonds daily to running high-power X-ray machines treating live humans in real-time. Your fucking around could harm any one of those - at that point not only would I fire your ass but I'd see that charges were pressed against you (in addition to those from next-of-kin of the person's whose radiation therapy you just screwed.)
I work in the real world where boxes are doing important things and no Lone Ranger can be expected to track everything themselves. We've got ways things are done & they're there precisely so things don't slip through the cracks, don't become security issues and some kid who can't keep his fingers out of things doesn't break something important.
To paraphrase (and reinterpret) your closing line:
Any decent IS staffer respects the environment they work in & works with their team. If they can't do that then they get what they deserve - a final paycheck & a walk to the
door.
In several companies I've consulted for we've put honeypots (decoys) on the corporate network. Generally they've been end-of-life boxes stuck in a closet & intentionally locked out of the rest of the network (sometimes down to the router level.)
Generally we give them names of interest to tech-types but nothing the general user community, sometimes just make 'em look like standard workstations, occasionally we called them things like "payroll" or other tempting titles. We then track all traffic to & from these boxes identifying the source & their intentions. Generally we'd get a few mistake-hits or just-clicking-around ones a week but often enough we'd find someone with some intent trying to get onto them.
Generally it was a semi-knowledgeable employee just poking around & seeing what they could get into. We'd usually then track their other activities closely in order to make sure they hadn't gotten into anyplace they ought not have. After we'd assured ourselves they weren't nefarious we'd usually call them in, put a scare to them with the records of their exploits & warn them to cut it out or loose their job. Occasionally where they were using tools or other more-then-casual attempts we'd just fire them on the spot.
A few times it was IS staffers. Then we'd follow the same drill, try to determine what they were doing & why, then when called in if they couldn't give a good accounting of themselves cut them loose, again on the spot. Actually we'd usually delay them with paperwork & other excuses while we ran a complete lock-out and performed fast reviews of any systems they could have compromised. In one case where the fellow wanted to storm out a fast-thinking HR staffer got someone to 'accidentally' block their car & wait a half hour while we found the 'bad-parker'.
IS folks with that poor judgement and too easy access were just asking for future trouble & they aren't worth it. Of the few that I've fired this way over the years at least two later came to bad ends, including one who diddled with another companies accounting system.
Needless to say none of this was ever advertised within the company, particularly with IS. It was all on a strictly need-to-know basis & only done in-person, nothing emailed or electronically documented (wow - a reason for interoffice mail!)
Oftentimes we'd hire a trusted outside firm to install the systems & track the activity (had one guy come in for years as a "special cleaner" specializing in electrical closets!)
Firewalls and elaborate outside security are great things but most serious damage comes from folks inside. Keeping a check with decoys and other measures is only prudent.
-- Michael
Then there's that contractor I discovered trying to crack my personal desktop box...
Well, on my box I read email, prepare presentations, run a spreadsheet, browse the web, do the occasionial web-page or play a game, code something small & useful once in a blue moon.
Along the way I need to get at files on a variety of servers (primarily AIX, NT, & Netware), interact in some constructive way with an Exchange server (IMAP & vCal are fine), print to a variety of network printers and be a good corporate network node. Synching with my Palm would also be nice.
My biggest criteria for an OS & applications is compatibility - I need to be able to exchange standard business file-formats (read: MS Office)
flawlessly
with others. I can't ask them to make special provisions for me - I need to be able to read & write in the lingua franca of the commerce world.
So - can you do those on your Be? I mean, this is all well & great if you're living in a box somewhere but for those of us who are working all day with others how does Be hold up? I'm not being rhetorical - I honestly don't know & am curious. A few years ago when co-workers had it they eventually dropped it but perhaps things have changed since then.
You know, since you said "North America" in your original post, I thought about putting something in my reply about how top/left is the convention, unless "those dirty Canucks do it differently". However, I decided to be nice and leave it out.
Now I wish I'd left it in..:-P
Muchos gracias. Pity you weren't aware Mexico is also part of North America.
Not only is the world bigger then you thought, you also turned out to know less about it then is generally expected.
I might also note that Jean-Louis Gasse was the Director of Marketing for Apple. He helped to make Apple the powerhouse it was in the early and mid-90's.
Yup - and he was head of Apple France before that. Unfortunately when he came to Cupertino there were, er, "cultural differences" (let's just say he doesn't get a lot of Holiday cards from his peers back then...)
Anyway, after that he jumped ship, took a bunch of Apple engineering talent with him & set out to pull a Steve Jobs (reinvent the Mac-but-it's-not-a-Mac-we-swear.) Unfortunately as we've seen big-time success has eluded him though he has managed to hang in there.
What direct effect he had on Apple Marketing I don't know but those were the days when Power Computing was blowing the pants off of Apple in marketing.
Actually Chernobyl was publicized when Sweden discovered elevated radiation levels in the course of their regular monitoring (it's a bit ominious that nobody closer picked it up before.)
It was trivial to figure out which way the winds were blowing & to contact researchers further upwind. It was fairly quickly realized that the source was in Eastern Europe & confirmed when a quick sat check of the nuke plant's thermal signature confirmed Chernobyl was running waaay hot.
However none of this required any high-resolution photography, nor was it even visible-wavelength. Instead a fairly coarse IR shot was taken and compared with a recent one. A hundred percent-plus jump in heat from the foot-ball sized containment structure told the story.
I dunno if the NATO folks were already aware but I suspect it wouldn't be hard to arrange automatic periodic monitoring of facilities with an flag raised when they suddenly change. While the obvious thing to watch would be armory's & such it wouldn't be terribly hard to add fuel-storage facilities, chemical plants, electricity generating stations, even reservoirs. Something changes temperature fast & you knew either a batallion of banks is rolling towards Germany or somewhere a dam has failed & there's now a large mudflat that was a lake yesterday...
-- Michael
ps Wonder if I could use the same tech to spot when a server goes down - some of the big-iron puts out a *lot* of heat...
Oh puh-lease! That old chestnut about Be being unable to run on G3 Macs 'cause Apple wouldn't give 'em the specs - bullshit.
A half-dozen other OS's managed the exact same feat before Apple started giving folks information: If they all could do it why not Be? Either Be's engineers aren't as hot as they profess or they're just trying to duck responsibility for their exiting that market. Of course that fact that Intel pumped in a big shot of funding about then and got a board seat wouldn't have had an influence, nooooo.
As to Apple killing PREP/CHRP/etc. - what about Motorola & IBM? It was a troika - even if Apple knifed it's own baby the rest had their own projects that Be could have gone to.
IBM was going to ship their hardware with OS/2 & AIX (and did ship - indeed at one point it was actually possible to get a beta MacOS release running on the IBM hardware.) To this day they're shipping nearly-CHRP motherboards one can buy, complete with PowerPC's. They're also using them in their own servers, every day.
Motorola was subsidizing MS's port of NT and planning a big line of Mac-compatibles that would have been just prime for Be. Indeed Motorola took a big hit when Apple dropped licensing. Had Be produced a reasonable business plan Motorola would have been happy to cut their losses (and get revenge on Apple.) Be didn't & missed another opportunity. Again, one can today buy nearly-CHRP motherboards from Motorola, complete with PowerPC's.
Be didn't cut it because they mis-predicted the market - over and over. Nobody wanted a "Media OS" that didn't have basics like a decent word-processor, nobody wanted something that was like nothing else. Be still suffers from not enough applications and no overwhelming sales features (a clever FS & lots-o-threads does not cut it!)
Linux & the BSDs had a strong heritage to build upon & a ready-built community of CompSci students familier with unix & the wonderful GNU tools.
NeXT had Steve Jobs, the VC money, and after about the same set of mis-steps Be made but ended up with a really stable OS that was very portable & a dream to develop on.
Apple dicked around for 10 years & finally got bought by Next for a few negative-million bucks. Be never really had a chance against Next; it was sexy but had nothing to offer Apple but more of the same - another unique OS with limited compatiblity & an even smaller set of applications.
Sorry - Jean-Loius may be a smart fellow and may have come up with a fine boutique-OS but he's no great success at running the company. There's been a series of opportunities that Be has missed & it's not showing any signs of getting savvier.
Even going into the embedded market is a big gamble. As you noted, Linux et al is heading into the same place and with a whole lot more mind-share. QNX and others are already there - don't think they're going to let their lunch get taken from them without a fight either.
Be is a neat OS but unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat they're down the tubes, fast or slow. OS-2 Warp was awesome also as it circled the drain.
ps Other folks have the respect to stand behind their own words - loose the "Anonymous Coward" and come out into the light.
Incandescent traffic lights get changed out ~every 5 years.
LED traffic lights last ~15 years.
LED traffic lights initially cost more but generally pay back in power-savings in 3-5 years.
LED traffic light manufacturers are corrently operating at capacity to supply the increasing demand for their product.
Incandescent & LED traffic lights are built to put out about the same amount of light although the LED ones appear brighter. This has to do with the numerous bright-points of a LED-lights vs. the single uniformly bright surface of an incandescent.
Studies have shown that having folks rely on light-positions is unsafe. It requires too much cognition while the training of ColorA=Stop/ColorB=Go is easy & effective for human brains.
Traffic signals aren't uniformly laid out in North America. While many are vertically arranged horizontal is popular too. Of the horizontal ones many use red lights on both ends.
Masking incandescent or shaping LED lights is also becoming popular. I can't recall the shapes but the some lights now use them to indicate the colors (I live a few blocks from a city that does this.)
On a related topic:
Color-blindness is much more common in men then women.
It is also much more common in European-stock folks then non-European
It's most common in Americans of Irish descent although there isn't a correpsonding percentage of color-blind folks in Ireland. It is theorized that perhaps color-blind folks were greater affected during the Potato Famine (unable to distinguish bad potatos) and so selectively left Ireland in greater numbers then interbred in the US.
Green LED lights use about the same percentage of blue as incandescent green lights.
Is BeOS really all that better a platform to develop on then say, Windows? I know this is heresy but Visual Basic, Delphi, etc. make it E-Z to code for, the tools & support for C, C++, etc. are all very well-developed & mature. Heck, Next had a fantastic development system but really couldn't get it out there 'till they took over Apple for -x million.
As to using, all of the folks who I know that have actually used Be for any length of time have raved about the OS but lamented that it wasn't really applicable to them 'cause it didn't do everything they needed. At least in the various *nix camps it's getting to the point where one can run in it most of the day & reboot into the other OS only occasionally; isn't it worse for the Be folks? (Be-en?, Be-ites? Be-exxians?)
Be was going to revolutionize the world: It didn't.
Be was going to sell the hottest boxes: They stopped.
Be was going to challenge Apple on their own hardware: They didn't.
Be was going to be THE "Multimedia OS": Disapeared from sight.
Be was going to take the x86 world by storm: Not even a breeze.
Be was going to break down the initial-investment barrier by releasing a no-price version: Nobody cared.
Be is going to become an important embedded OS: We'll see.
Fer goodness sakes - they can't give it away, why is making it Open Source gonna change things?
A couple of headlines, a two-day wonder, a surge in downloads then pretty much the same things that's been happening all along to Be - not much. First it'll get picked over for whatever goodies can be gleaned from it, a few more zealots will join the Be camp, a couple bug-reports will be sent in, several even with a pointer to the relevant code. Beyond that - snoozer.
There are lot's of kewl OS's out there ranging from LISP machines to Oberon to nano-kernels - nobody cares.
Be does offer more then the typical niche-OS but nothing so incredible it's a must-have. It doesn't scratch any itch that can't be scratched otherwise. It doesn't offer any dramatic price or performance benefits that can't be papered over with the standard quantities of green-stuff. It isn't a developer's-dream or a user's-delight or an administrator's-joy: It's nice enough at all of these but it's not so outstanding at any of them to make it an imperative.
Worse yet it's a horse in an increasingly crowded field. Aside from the MS stable of OS's (what - a dozen or so variations out now?) there's of course the Linuxen, various BSD's, Apple's dark-horse Darwin/MacOS X, QNX, and a couple of bajillion boutique & school-project OS's. Be is just one more small-OS trying to make the jump to the big-leagues.
More power to it but Open-Sourcing ain't gonna be the break that makes it all happen for them. A half-dozen commercial OS's have been Open Sourced in the past year or so & none of them have benefited greatly from it. Heck, Apple even packages their Darwin for x86, a platform they're not even on & the active outside developers on it can be counted on one hand - a maimed hand at that.
I honestly like Be - they've got some great stuff, but I just don't see them getting much out of Open Sourcing, certainly not enough to chance chance eroding their existing advantages. It may be A Good Thing in the big order of the universe but in the pay-the-bills world it wouldn't seem to be a prudent move for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, after all of the points I can't see what the tunnel would be for. Planes move folks more efficiently (a detour through Alaska & Siberia is not going to be popular for most of the travelling population!) and specialized ships handle the various cargos, again more directly. While the tourist market might be considerable I can't see it justifying a US$60-billion expenditure on something as fragile as a tunnel through a seismically active area fed via high-maintenance tracks in ecologically fragile land against widespread public opposition & likely govermental non-support.
What's your take on MacOS X? As the main point-person on the biggest other Mac-based *nix I'm sure you've been keeping track of it. How do you consider what's coming out of Apple as an OS, specifically as a *nix implementation?
Next, has Apple's open-sourcing Darwin been of any advantage to Linux PPC? Has someone ever popped into their code & looked up how they handled an point or what their solution was to a Mac-specific issue?
Back to your own stuff, where do you see Linux PPC going as regards to the other linuxen? Any stuff you see as being unique strengths of Linux PPC (aside from it's hardware)?
Finally, what issues do you regularly run into being on a non-X86 platform? What could developers do to improve portability for you? What's your "I-wish-they'd" list look like?
-- Michael
The popular perception of a solar eclipse is the skies & land growing dark as streetlights pop on & birds take cover for the night. While that does indeed happen for a full eclipse a partial one is much less impressive, particularly one as partial as this will be for most folks.
Taking a 'bite' out of a very bright light-source leaves - a very bright light-source. The effect for most folks will be no more noticable then an high-altitude cloud. The landscape will slowly (imperceptably) dim then later brighten very subtly.
That said the images of the sun will be very impressive. I'm going to assume a /.'ers know better then to look at the sun directly (sun = bright light in the 'big blue room'.) Even good sunglasses don't generally filter enough, particularly for the extended viewing like this. It *is* possible to permanently harm one's eyes this way and no, your reflexes won't save you if you override them.
One of the simplest (and thus kewlest) ways to view is to punch a hole in a piece of paper (or tinfoil or whatever else handy) and let the sun shine through. The hole should be ~.25mm and a second surface (prefereably white) ~20-50cm behind it (Your Milage May Vary) This will get you a view approximately the same as the fantastic photos you see but it'll be yours & real-time.
Good luck. Even for those of us in Northern parts of North America (Montreal) this will be an easy-to-miss event but if one takes the time & effort (& the weather cooperates) it can be an exciting one to catch.
Framemaker speaks it, WordPerfect speaks it, I dunno about MS Word, and of course it can be pumped out into lots of other formats (eg HTML, XML, etc.)
It's not a perfect solution but it's widely availiable and fairly future-proof. Your specs should be about content anyway, let the reader concern themselves with presentation.
Dial V-O-C-O-D-E and hit Fcn twice.
Sto to change
End to quit
Like I said, EVRC gives the best audio quality though there can be quirks with carriers that don't support it. Of course the tower can always over-ride your settings (think of them as 'requests'.)
I use EVRC locally and 13k roaming; my sweetheart use 13k exclusively and his can be 'choppy' to use during hand-offs and inside buildings.
Sweater bars (gay equivalent of fern bars) mebbe - leather bars generally not, dance bars "What??? I can't hear you..."
Actually when I post to /. I envision legions of overly bright just-out-of-highschool students, the ones who can't wait for the question to be asked before shooting up their hands and quivering with excitement 'cause they know the answer (of course 1/2 the time they're completely off base 'cause they didn't actually check to find out if the question asked is really the answer they couldn't wait to blurt^H^H^H^H^H post.)
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with sometimes encouraging the more clueless to refrain from posting. I mean, EVERY time a noun is used some dimwit has to post "What's a 'noun'" - it's the web fer cripes - LOOK IT UP!
Naw, gay bars are better behaved & there's a better chance of getting laid.
Wonder how many will now post "What's a noun"...
Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler, etc. are all more efficient then asking every time someone else to explain it for you.
ps Also check the links in the article itself.
Perhaps Linux over BSD et al 'cause they had it handy? Nothing more sinister, nothing more simple?
There's two sorts of projects: Those that start out with a committee, a budget, a goal & a process. Then there's a couple of hackers playing around with some tech that came in the door, making a tweak here, making a tweak there, realizing they might have something then writing it up & getting official approval to go ahead with whatever.
It may have been been by plan that Linux got used, or it may have been just what they were playing with the clouds parted in just the right day, things clicked & they got a go-ahead.
There's a lot of bright folks who "work in Maryland" (as in don't-ask-me-details) and their internal culture, while security-obsessed, is also supposed to be pretty free & open to new ideas. Since they've got lots of spare IQ points floating around, budgets aren't a terribly over-riding concern & their mandate is to know all about lots of things (especially stuff like OS's) it's hardly suprising they've been playing with Linux. Heck, it was likely a directive from some (not so) pointy-haired-boss.
The interesting thing is that they're releasing this to the outside world. That means that either the institution thinks doing so would improve the US's security in some way or there's a bunch of geeks in there who *really* want to contribute.
My sweetheart & I got matching StarTACs together, my keypad died the second day (top row wouldn't respond.) Took it in, got it replaced (no data transfer though) & both are working fine.
I looked at rhe Nokia's but for price/performance/frequencies the StarTAC came up better for me, YMMV.
I would recommend anyone buying a cellphone actually try a few calls on the two or three they come down to. We almost went with a Sanyo 3500 but after several tries from different locations turned it down - the sound quality just didn't compare to the StarTAC's.
Also look into which codec you're going to use. I drive through some spotty-coverage area's (I-89/I-93 through VT & NH) regularly and the EVRC codec has made a big difference in my marginal-quality. Instead of breaking up speech fades in & out, makes it much easier to follow what the speaker is saying.
Look, I'm sure there's a "killer app" for celphones but I haven't found it yet. Movie-times? Got an audio service that does that and aside from the Santa-on-speedballs quality of the announcer it works fine. Same for most of the other services - nothings uniquely useful, nothing pressingly important to me.
It's all the shopping-power of an inflight magazine with the information services of an 80's "press-1-for..." service. Oh - and for stocks - what percentage of the population really needs constant access to the stock listings?
I'm not being Grinch here, I've a WAP-enabled phone myself & played around with it. Yawn. Go find some friends/co-workers/other locals & ask them what they use their WAP phones for - most of them *don't*.
Buy a phone for size & weight, buy it for audio quality, but it for battery life, buy it for ringtones if you want, but don't make WAP an important criteria unless you're in the WAP business.
-- Michael
ps - Motorola StarTAC 7867W - small, rugged, great battery life, excellent audio quality (esp. with the EVRC codec turned on.) All of the bells & whistles plus WAP. CDMA 800/1900 & analog 800 MHz. My only complaint is that the Data Kit (cable & software) costs US$100.
I have a wonderful lover, a challenging job that pays remarkably well yet allows me to take off very longs periods of time, live in a great city with a vibrant nightlife & fantastic cuisine. I've marvellous friends who I value deeply & they seem to do the same in return, and parent's I've become good friends with.
Back to the original point (& before your own emotional projection) I've hacked & cracked systems. The difference was that I was clever about it & had permission.
Fer instance I used to contract then work for an well known publisher/financial services company. It was a great place but IS was a complete mess. Nobody stayed for more then a year, oftentimes it was only a few days, and the standard means of resignation was to leave one's keycard on the desk & simply never return.
This of course meant that we regularly had boxes on the network that nobody had any idea what they were. Since I was invariably the one they called ("It looks like one of your boxes & you run most of the boxes anyway") I soon became adept at getting permission to break in & find out what the damn thing was doing.
The clever part was I did my homework & got permission FIRST. I'd see if there was any traffic to the box, if so from where and what sort? Could I identify any of it's users and then what did they know about it? Heck, I'd even call Purchasing and see if anyone had bought one of these recently. This generally took only a few minutes and the assistance of folks whose job it was anyway. The result was I knew what I was going into before I did it, and no big screw ups.
In your world expecting this kind of professionalism may be the sign of a prick - in mine it's called someone you want on your team.
I'm glad you're happy with your expectations because I'm quite happy with mine & their results. It is a good life.
However, this does not extend to trying to break into something.
If you suspect a problem go talk to the folks who would know about it, or tell security. Hell, my pager number is pasted on my office door flag me! DON'T go breaking into stuff blindly.
I've said this more thoroughly in another thread but yes, you're right, there is an acceptable level of "Huh? What're you doing here?" and then there's going beyond one's authority. If someone can't appreciate the difference between these two then they're judgement is so poor I don't want them no matter how tight the job market.
Marlo Thomas - Free To Be ... You And Me (1972 Television Cast) "There's some kinds of help that are the kind of help we can all do without."
Damn right - Bang! Gone.
Mis-clicks are fine, we all do them. Even rattling the door-knob is kewl. But the minute you try to break in you're outta there. I run big networks, stuff comes & goes all of the time and a certain degree of interest is expected (& welcomed.)
This does not extend to trying to trying to break into boxes that aren't yours.
I don't care if it's called "Hax0rs l00t" once you've determined the front door is closed then pass it onto the right folks & move on. Raise the alarm, stick your head into the Net Security Admin's office, ask them for follow-ups, bring it up at a Change Control meeting, whatever but breaking into something that isn't yours & you haven't the authority to access is grounds for (immediate) termination.
No apologies, no excuses.
Again, we have folks in charge of keeping the network organized, they should know about anything new or different on the network, ask or tell them. We have folks in charge of security, they should be notified about any concerns you have. Unless your job-description specifically includes it and you've got written permission from someone above you so empowered you do not go breaking into things - I don't care how justified you think you are or how suspicious (or innocuous) it looks. If you haven't the brains to do this then good riddance.
I've had boxes on my networks that did everything from SEC compliance monitoring to transferring billions of dollars of bonds daily to running high-power X-ray machines treating live humans in real-time. Your fucking around could harm any one of those - at that point not only would I fire your ass but I'd see that charges were pressed against you (in addition to those from next-of-kin of the person's whose radiation therapy you just screwed.)
I work in the real world where boxes are doing important things and no Lone Ranger can be expected to track everything themselves. We've got ways things are done & they're there precisely so things don't slip through the cracks, don't become security issues and some kid who can't keep his fingers out of things doesn't break something important.
To paraphrase (and reinterpret) your closing line:
Any decent IS staffer respects the environment they work in & works with their team. If they can't do that then they get what they deserve - a final paycheck & a walk to the door.
Generally we give them names of interest to tech-types but nothing the general user community, sometimes just make 'em look like standard workstations, occasionally we called them things like "payroll" or other tempting titles. We then track all traffic to & from these boxes identifying the source & their intentions. Generally we'd get a few mistake-hits or just-clicking-around ones a week but often enough we'd find someone with some intent trying to get onto them.
Generally it was a semi-knowledgeable employee just poking around & seeing what they could get into. We'd usually then track their other activities closely in order to make sure they hadn't gotten into anyplace they ought not have. After we'd assured ourselves they weren't nefarious we'd usually call them in, put a scare to them with the records of their exploits & warn them to cut it out or loose their job. Occasionally where they were using tools or other more-then-casual attempts we'd just fire them on the spot.
A few times it was IS staffers. Then we'd follow the same drill, try to determine what they were doing & why, then when called in if they couldn't give a good accounting of themselves cut them loose, again on the spot. Actually we'd usually delay them with paperwork & other excuses while we ran a complete lock-out and performed fast reviews of any systems they could have compromised. In one case where the fellow wanted to storm out a fast-thinking HR staffer got someone to 'accidentally' block their car & wait a half hour while we found the 'bad-parker'.
IS folks with that poor judgement and too easy access were just asking for future trouble & they aren't worth it. Of the few that I've fired this way over the years at least two later came to bad ends, including one who diddled with another companies accounting system.
Needless to say none of this was ever advertised within the company, particularly with IS. It was all on a strictly need-to-know basis & only done in-person, nothing emailed or electronically documented (wow - a reason for interoffice mail!) Oftentimes we'd hire a trusted outside firm to install the systems & track the activity (had one guy come in for years as a "special cleaner" specializing in electrical closets!)
Firewalls and elaborate outside security are great things but most serious damage comes from folks inside. Keeping a check with decoys and other measures is only prudent.
-- Michael
Then there's that contractor I discovered trying to crack my personal desktop box...
Along the way I need to get at files on a variety of servers (primarily AIX, NT, & Netware), interact in some constructive way with an Exchange server (IMAP & vCal are fine), print to a variety of network printers and be a good corporate network node. Synching with my Palm would also be nice.
My biggest criteria for an OS & applications is compatibility - I need to be able to exchange standard business file-formats (read: MS Office)
- flawlessly
with others. I can't ask them to make special provisions for me - I need to be able to read & write in the lingua franca of the commerce world.So - can you do those on your Be? I mean, this is all well & great if you're living in a box somewhere but for those of us who are working all day with others how does Be hold up? I'm not being rhetorical - I honestly don't know & am curious. A few years ago when co-workers had it they eventually dropped it but perhaps things have changed since then.
Not only is the world bigger then you thought, you also turned out to know less about it then is generally expected.
Yup - and he was head of Apple France before that. Unfortunately when he came to Cupertino there were, er, "cultural differences" (let's just say he doesn't get a lot of Holiday cards from his peers back then...)
Anyway, after that he jumped ship, took a bunch of Apple engineering talent with him & set out to pull a Steve Jobs (reinvent the Mac-but-it's-not-a-Mac-we-swear.) Unfortunately as we've seen big-time success has eluded him though he has managed to hang in there.
What direct effect he had on Apple Marketing I don't know but those were the days when Power Computing was blowing the pants off of Apple in marketing.
See, you learned the world is bigger then you thought today.
It was trivial to figure out which way the winds were blowing & to contact researchers further upwind. It was fairly quickly realized that the source was in Eastern Europe & confirmed when a quick sat check of the nuke plant's thermal signature confirmed Chernobyl was running waaay hot.
However none of this required any high-resolution photography, nor was it even visible-wavelength. Instead a fairly coarse IR shot was taken and compared with a recent one. A hundred percent-plus jump in heat from the foot-ball sized containment structure told the story.
I dunno if the NATO folks were already aware but I suspect it wouldn't be hard to arrange automatic periodic monitoring of facilities with an flag raised when they suddenly change. While the obvious thing to watch would be armory's & such it wouldn't be terribly hard to add fuel-storage facilities, chemical plants, electricity generating stations, even reservoirs. Something changes temperature fast & you knew either a batallion of banks is rolling towards Germany or somewhere a dam has failed & there's now a large mudflat that was a lake yesterday...
-- Michael
ps Wonder if I could use the same tech to spot when a server goes down - some of the big-iron puts out a *lot* of heat...
So what do you do on your Be box? I mean, if you're a Be developer that's hardly a real-world example.
A half-dozen other OS's managed the exact same feat before Apple started giving folks information: If they all could do it why not Be? Either Be's engineers aren't as hot as they profess or they're just trying to duck responsibility for their exiting that market. Of course that fact that Intel pumped in a big shot of funding about then and got a board seat wouldn't have had an influence, nooooo.
As to Apple killing PREP/CHRP/etc. - what about Motorola & IBM? It was a troika - even if Apple knifed it's own baby the rest had their own projects that Be could have gone to.
IBM was going to ship their hardware with OS/2 & AIX (and did ship - indeed at one point it was actually possible to get a beta MacOS release running on the IBM hardware.) To this day they're shipping nearly-CHRP motherboards one can buy, complete with PowerPC's. They're also using them in their own servers, every day.
Motorola was subsidizing MS's port of NT and planning a big line of Mac-compatibles that would have been just prime for Be. Indeed Motorola took a big hit when Apple dropped licensing. Had Be produced a reasonable business plan Motorola would have been happy to cut their losses (and get revenge on Apple.) Be didn't & missed another opportunity. Again, one can today buy nearly-CHRP motherboards from Motorola, complete with PowerPC's.
Be didn't cut it because they mis-predicted the market - over and over. Nobody wanted a "Media OS" that didn't have basics like a decent word-processor, nobody wanted something that was like nothing else. Be still suffers from not enough applications and no overwhelming sales features (a clever FS & lots-o-threads does not cut it!)
Linux & the BSDs had a strong heritage to build upon & a ready-built community of CompSci students familier with unix & the wonderful GNU tools.
NeXT had Steve Jobs, the VC money, and after about the same set of mis-steps Be made but ended up with a really stable OS that was very portable & a dream to develop on.
Apple dicked around for 10 years & finally got bought by Next for a few negative-million bucks. Be never really had a chance against Next; it was sexy but had nothing to offer Apple but more of the same - another unique OS with limited compatiblity & an even smaller set of applications.
Sorry - Jean-Loius may be a smart fellow and may have come up with a fine boutique-OS but he's no great success at running the company. There's been a series of opportunities that Be has missed & it's not showing any signs of getting savvier.
Even going into the embedded market is a big gamble. As you noted, Linux et al is heading into the same place and with a whole lot more mind-share. QNX and others are already there - don't think they're going to let their lunch get taken from them without a fight either.
Be is a neat OS but unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat they're down the tubes, fast or slow. OS-2 Warp was awesome also as it circled the drain.
ps Other folks have the respect to stand behind their own words - loose the "Anonymous Coward" and come out into the light.
On a related topic:
As to using, all of the folks who I know that have actually used Be for any length of time have raved about the OS but lamented that it wasn't really applicable to them 'cause it didn't do everything they needed. At least in the various *nix camps it's getting to the point where one can run in it most of the day & reboot into the other OS only occasionally; isn't it worse for the Be folks? (Be-en?, Be-ites? Be-exxians?)
Be was going to revolutionize the world: It didn't.
Be was going to sell the hottest boxes: They stopped.
Be was going to challenge Apple on their own hardware: They didn't.
Be was going to be THE "Multimedia OS": Disapeared from sight.
Be was going to take the x86 world by storm: Not even a breeze.
Be was going to break down the initial-investment barrier by releasing a no-price version: Nobody cared.
Be is going to become an important embedded OS: We'll see.
Fer goodness sakes - they can't give it away, why is making it Open Source gonna change things?
A couple of headlines, a two-day wonder, a surge in downloads then pretty much the same things that's been happening all along to Be - not much. First it'll get picked over for whatever goodies can be gleaned from it, a few more zealots will join the Be camp, a couple bug-reports will be sent in, several even with a pointer to the relevant code. Beyond that - snoozer.
There are lot's of kewl OS's out there ranging from LISP machines to Oberon to nano-kernels - nobody cares .
Be does offer more then the typical niche-OS but nothing so incredible it's a must-have. It doesn't scratch any itch that can't be scratched otherwise. It doesn't offer any dramatic price or performance benefits that can't be papered over with the standard quantities of green-stuff. It isn't a developer's-dream or a user's-delight or an administrator's-joy: It's nice enough at all of these but it's not so outstanding at any of them to make it an imperative.
Worse yet it's a horse in an increasingly crowded field. Aside from the MS stable of OS's (what - a dozen or so variations out now?) there's of course the Linuxen, various BSD's, Apple's dark-horse Darwin/MacOS X, QNX, and a couple of bajillion boutique & school-project OS's. Be is just one more small-OS trying to make the jump to the big-leagues.
More power to it but Open-Sourcing ain't gonna be the break that makes it all happen for them. A half-dozen commercial OS's have been Open Sourced in the past year or so & none of them have benefited greatly from it. Heck, Apple even packages their Darwin for x86, a platform they're not even on & the active outside developers on it can be counted on one hand - a maimed hand at that.
I honestly like Be - they've got some great stuff, but I just don't see them getting much out of Open Sourcing, certainly not enough to chance chance eroding their existing advantages. It may be A Good Thing in the big order of the universe but in the pay-the-bills world it wouldn't seem to be a prudent move for them.
Loose the "Anonymous Coward" or be ignored.