Only what is said or done on-screen* is connon. This is pretty much the consenses, and IIRC this was Rodenbery's position durring his life**.
So if the website contradicts on-screen evidence, it's considered wrong.
The same holds true for games and novels and sutch things as the fasa rpg, and even the tech manual. They are non-cannon.
I you want a better explanation check out rec.arts.tech.startrek.tech on usenet and look for the FAQ on the meaning of cannon.
*-The animated series that apeared on cable (many of the voiced were done by James Dohan aka Scotty. A very talented man.)
**-Rodenberry is said to disaproved of most of one movie, somthing to the effect of 'Spock IS an only child!' was rummored to have been uttered. *&** are therefore quasi cannonical sources, I personally feel that anything post Rodenbery that disagrees with previous material should be considered non-cannonical.
That's O.K. I've met employees at compusa who've never heard of null modem cables, parallell ports, or the ISA. And the salespeople knew even less than the tech people.
Not picking on you, or even trying to tar ALL compusa people with the same brush, but they really are the mcdonalds of computers, and it shows.
I've overheard techies tell a customer to make shure his computer was ON when installing new ram to make shure it worked. A salesman say that Windows XP couldn't catch viruses anymore because of Security Proof 1("that's what sp1 means). And even try to sell a guy a 450 watt atx power suply for an old PII at system, so the computer would go faster.
Maybe it's just the two compusa's in my area that is that bad, and alot of the b.s. seems to translate to 'buy somthing expesisize for (insert gobledy gook here) and hey would like a service plan for that?'.
Odd, you completely reversed my list, honest I like TNG best followed TOS and DS9 in a tie for close second. And mostly like voyager, just so long as don't count shuttles exploded vs total mass of a small planet.
I've only seen one complete and two or three partial episode of enterprise so I'm not opinionated to much one way or the other about it.
Kirk's renown began by becoming the youngest captain in Starfleet to date at 34.
I assume you got both from the same website.
Which is doubly odd since I've "youngest at 29" and "under thirty" for how he got the job at a record lack of age. Which is niegther the 31 or 34 implied by your post.
Can't recal a cannonical source though. Anyone else recal it being mentioned on-screen TOS or TNG or intervening movies? I consider stuff before Gene R. died to take precedence over after, but any on-screen quote would be good.
StarTrek reflects more of the present world (when an episode was written) than the world of the future. Watching through the original series will tell you more about North American popular culture of the 1960s than what could potentially be around the corner for humanity in several centuries time. Presumably StarTrek TNG is something similar for the 1990s. You call this science fiction?
In a word, yes I do call it science fiction. Science fiction is not about portraying the future, and future cultures accurately. Or trying to be an oracle of what cool gadget you can expect 2022. Or at least not always and certainly not exclusively.
Science Fiction is fiction where the many a varied topics explored in fiction have, as a setting, or a tool to explote, Science and science like themes and props.
Somtimes, by placing todays issues in another framework, they can be exposed and examined in ways a more familiar setting might make to uncomfortable to otherwise delve into. Science fiction by it's nature fits this role well.
Take for example the episode (sorry I have NOT memorized all the titles/scripts/etc.) people who had one half of thier face white and the other half black are engaged in constant conflict based on WHICH half is which color.
The enterprise crew didn't even realize the distinction existed untill it was explained to them.
This episode was clearly a morality play on racism, and the pointlessness thereof. Had, say a cop show, tried to make the same point, it would never have aired in the late sixties do to the climate back then.
This isn't just a Startrek thing. Many Science Fiction shows, and even shows about the far past, have commented on modern society.
Science fiction isn't just about flying cars and green women and rayguns.
One tiny problem with your chain of reasoning. You are assuming aliens aren't, well, alien.
That is to say you posit that thier very simular to us in terms of being an individualist species with simular goals and ideals.
How about a hive like species where infighting isn't even possible.
Or a species that are perfectly fine dealing with just them selves, but freak out in a very violent agressive way when confronted with another species.
And there are probably many, many more ways an alien species can be just that, alien, than I can think of.
Sofar Humans are the only sentient, technological, species we know. We to little bassis to make more than the vaugest of guesses about what others might be like.
Finagles law (Niven IIRC): "The Universe is not only stranger than you imagine, but stranger than you can imagine"
Just curious, how is that 'flamebait'. Unless it wasn't clear I was using the 'royal' you. And suggesting that a system that permits a flagrant violation of the 5th amendment to have serious issues by pointing out how blatantly obvious a violation it is through pseudo-hyperboly.
And even that observation was made provisional as I had only a second hand account of the 'law' in question.
I generaly don't complain about how my posts are modderated (found one set of mods to one post amusing and said so, but that is it). I really don't understand this one unless the mod thought I was using you in the direct, personal, sense.
Flamebait
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Flamebait is a message posted to an Internet discussion group, such as a newsgroup or a mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame").
I suppose one could argue that I expeted others to be as displeased by the 'act' as I was uppon reading about it, and thus 'flame' it. But if that were a valid reason for calling a post Flaimbait then quite a few YRO and other articles pointing out very bad behaviour on the part of companies such as SCO and Microsoft, and organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA, would also be Flamebait.
Yeah, while that was happening to my dads email I just used telnet to issue the del command on the offending email. trying to d/l it always blew the connection no matter how I tried.
If you have the rfc in front of you it's fairly easy to do as the commands are all simple. just del 14 and # 14 would be marked deleted.
Of course if your pop3 server uses any kind of authentication other than user and pass your kinda forced to try and do it your way. wouldn't have worked on my dad's account though.
Your laughing now, but that is not to far from what really happend to me once.
While they weren't shaking the line, squirls HAD managed to get into a local wiring box for the lines (last time a tech did anything they didn't close it up properly) and proceeded to strip alot of insulation off the wires and everytime it rained we'd get 60hz buzz and other noise on the phone and it just kept getting worse untill about the third time we called someone out.
It took them three tries because everytime we reported the problem a guy wouldn't show for a day or two, and of course by then the lines had dried and he didn't hear anything wrong and say we must have an issue with the phone itself.
Finally we called it in and since it rained on and off for the next four days someone showed up while it was drizzling ouside and the noise was REALLY bad.
I would have made up an apropriate error message.
"hmm is says error: message not recieved and acknoledged by server."
Or somthing like that.
If thier depending on OE to tell them if thier e-mail server is working they're not likely to have enough clue to spot the bogus message.
Yes, but a) nothing in a grand jury investigation can be used as evidence in court.
and b) I have issues with grand juries as well. If I may be brought to trial because of a grand jury, and I am being forced to testify before them, then my testimony is being used against me in violation of the 5th IMNHO. and I should have the right to a lawyer.
The article states that originally anyone testifying, etc. under the statute pretty much had automatic immunity from prosecution, but that was largely removed later.
I've had to deal with a situation where my dads email would would stop downloading partway through a message, usually a bigger one with a pic (he's on a bunch of those online dating services).
Well I dig in a bit, and adjust OE's settings in case it's timing out, still happing.
So I dig out the aproriate rfc for pop3 mail and telnet into the server, and sure enough I can get any of the other e-mails fine with the right commands, but that e-mail just stops midway through, and a minute or so later the connection to the server just dies, no error message, nothing, just drops me.
So I call tech support to tell them whats going on so they can fix it at thier in.
First thing the guy tries to do is have me change OE's timeout settings, so I tell him I've already done this and about using telnet to acess the server.
His response "trust me sir, this will fix the problem"
So Explain again, I've done that, and it doese it when I use the raw commands and telnet.
"I'm not shure about the telnet mail reader program or who rfc is, but windows uses outlook to actually get your mail"
I very nearly said 'sorry I thought I'd called tech support'
Instead I explained that telnet lets me talk directly to the server in it's language, and wouldn't time out or use OE in any way. And could tell it was definately the server.
He tried to walk me through OE again. and said they didn't support a rfctelnet (yes one word is how he said it) mail reader, just Outlook and Netscape (4 or 5 iirc).
I then aksed him if he understood I'd verified through more than one machine that the problem was definately at the pop3 server end of the connection.
He said didn't have a pop3 involved in e-mail. it went straight from thier e-mail server to my machine. No he wasn't refering to imap eigther, he honestly didn't know what pop3 was. In fact thier site said specifically they only do pop3 and do not have imap available at all.
I finaly asked if there was a higher level support person I could talk to. There wasn't. (it was early am though)
So I wound up just manualy deleting the bad e-mail on that and a couple other occasions.
The isp in question is earthlink.
Frightening is right. The Martin act shure looks unconstitutional on the basis of that article. Still I'd have to read it for myself and think a bit to have a solid opinion. IANAL, but then I think if you need a lawyer to figure out wether someone can forced to secretly tesitfy against himself, without counsel, (as the article seems to indicate) then eigther your stupid, or the system is FUBAR.
I'm not betting on stupidity here. (wait did I really say that?!?)
It's mostly due the structure that dns relies on to work. The point behind dns is so that instead of remembering (or having a database on every machine) that foo.com is 123.234.231.222 and that bar.com is 222.123.231.123 and so on for the entire internet, all you have to know is One i.p. address (plus a backup addy), that using the dns protcal, you can send foo.com to and get back thier current ip address. and should the dns server you contact not have that number localy it in turn looks at the tld, and based on that asks the next apropriate server up the line and so on untill the request gets to the central server for that tld.
If you have www.foo.com, you'll get back the adress to foo.com so you can ask the dns of foo.com for the addy to www.foo.com.
This is all done behind the scenes, and does a really good job as the root servers only have to keep track of all *.tld adresses, and let thier owners track *.foo.com.
The downside of course is that this centralizes tld controll and requires some effort to add a new one.
The link you provided is about a project to decentralize dns, but this would require lots and lots of people to change thier setups to point to the new system instead of the old.
The problem here isn't so much technical. As Practical and Political. There may be technical issues, I haven't really the knowledge on the opendns system to comment.
Between inertia, getting people to change over. Potential problems if there are issues during the changeover timeframe (get back two answers for foo.com, which is right?). And the simple fact that those in charge of the current system make money off it and this would cost them big, so naturally thier against it.
Plus leagle issues, rember cybersquating and other issues when the web first started taking off?
In fact, I would suggest that an academically ambitious person with an IQ score of 95 is likely to learn a lot more in their lifetime than a lazy slug who belongs to MENSA but spends all his time playing D&D and chatting on Slashdot
Hey what did I ever do to you, quit picking on me. oh wait.......
Not unless you are using older equipment. Newer equipment can uplink to the satalite as well as downlink from it.
Bi-directional has been available for a few years now. Sheesh I get enough spam for it in my mailbox, some of it from my isp(earthlink) who also sends adds for dsl, which isn't available within my zip or and of the neighboring zips.
That's merely stupid -- if accessing your *new* wireless network is as simple as taking out of the box and your laptop starts using it without any configuration from you, why can't you understand it'll be that easy for anyone within radio range?
Oh people frequently can and are that stupid. Talk to anyone who's worked tech support (that are not that stupid themselves).
Also cosider some people get thier wireless network as a kit when they order dsl for the family or whatever. "They said it was only for the three computers we own, that means no other computers can use it, and they took my cc number, asked me what computer I have and all this other stuff so they must have set it for just our computers"
Just for example a friend of mine worked in the tech dept of fry's and tells this story of trying to fix an older ladies printer because she said it wouldn't print. Finally he had her bring EREVYTHING in after walking her through a bunch of stuff over the phone and even bringing in the printer itself. The power cord was still in it's sealed plastic baggy.
"I thought it got everything from the computer"
moral: "NEVER underestimate the power of human stupidity" ---???who said this? Heinlein?
Heh, I once crumbled two vivarin into a two litre of mountain dew, drank about half of it, and still fell asleep from boredom. I'd had almost 8 hours of sleep the day before.
Of course I was working a very boring job, 'security guard' in theory, in reality I was just there to call the maintence people should one the various things that must NOT shut down did so. Such as a steam boiler that keeps certain pipes hot. It was at a chemical plant, one of them chemicals sets up when cool and CAN'T be re-melted. a nasty mess to clear out of the lines. My dad is one of the maintenance men and told me all about it.
Fourtunately I only dozed for about 20 minutes and the alarms on equipment there are quite loud. They have to be loud because when the whole plant is up and running it's quite noisy there.
I learned to keep an alarm clock set to go off every half hour after that.
Of course I also have a fairly strong case of add and cafien actually has a stabilizing effect on me, not a hyped up effect.
That would be the 486sx units. They disabled the buit in 387. In some percentage they were 486dx chips with faulty math-co's, but in most they were not. Later on they produced 486sx's that never had a built math-co (IIRC).
Of course many boards with a 486sx in them could accept a 487 chip, that while lable a co-processor, was realy just a 486dx with a few pin-out that took over the whole job of the 486sx processor which now just sat there doing nothing.
More than a few people wanted to find an easy way to re-enable thier 486sx with the 487 in place and use both. Not really doable without having a custom mb made and some tricks pulled. cheaper just to buy one of the dual 486dx boards.
Hmm, haven't really thought about it on modern processors, but going back a ways there were some clever uses of NOP on the 6510.
The obvious use is of course timing loops on older processors where the timing of every opcod was fixed, and no cache or multitude of busses between the processor and the ram/rom.
There were also tricks with spacing your code for self editing code and such.
I wish I could remember more but I know there where a LOT of cool uses for many of the 6510 opcodes, especially the undocumented ones. I remmber the Geos Operating system played just about every game imaginable in its copy-protection scheme including self modifying code with undocumented opcodes and missaligned sectors on the disk.
The way I see it, having compatability with windows binaries is bassically a gamble. If it's used properly (with good marketing) it can help. If not it won't.
It WILL reduce any reason to code to Linux directly unless Linux achieves a significant majority in the market share, not likely to happen soon.
And therein lies the real key (IMHO of course). What's really need is to make PORTING of apps to linus as painless as possible. If with very little to no extra effort and cost a company can build thier app to run on BOTH platforms, and port over old apps with ease. Then the much smaller home market share of Linux no longer makes it to cost prohibitive to write linux software. It will still need some evangelizing/marketting/etc. But it becomes much easier.
Once this happens and Joe sixpack can buy his games/tax software/whatever, and see 'CD Rom for Windows/Liunux/Mac' on the box. Then you have a chance. If he should actually get curious as what this linux thing is, and finds out it's free (as in beer, Joe mostly worries about buying beer, Paying Joe jr. colledge tuition, etc. not supporting causes however noble) he might try it, especially when he can do so and not mess up his windows. If he's not utterly confused by the distro, has GOOD built in help, and isn't yelled at to "RTFM YOU ST00P!D LUSER' should he ask for help, then he'll see a powerfull, stable, and virus free os that has lots of really cool free(both ways) stuff.
Well at least that's (in part) how I see it. In the mean time Wine and such do have a valid place, but if a vendors options are a) just write for windows, it'll work on some linux's anyway, not that thier very significant. b)write for windows, then re-write almost from scratch for an o.s. that only covers 1-5% of our potential market.
What would you do. I'd rather like to add c) write for windows or linux, then spend just a few man hours at most and some compile time to generate a version for the other.
Slashdot Mirror
5 years? That's not that far off when you consider how long it takes to make a movie, considering how long Chernobyl was in the news and so on.
Mycroft
Only what is said or done on-screen* is connon.
This is pretty much the consenses, and IIRC this was Rodenbery's position durring his life**.
So if the website contradicts on-screen evidence, it's considered wrong.
The same holds true for games and novels and sutch things as the fasa rpg, and even the tech manual. They are non-cannon.
I you want a better explanation check out rec.arts.tech.startrek.tech on usenet and look for the FAQ on the meaning of cannon.
*-The animated series that apeared on cable (many of the voiced were done by James Dohan aka Scotty. A very talented man.)
**-Rodenberry is said to disaproved of most of one movie, somthing to the effect of 'Spock IS an only child!' was rummored to have been uttered.
*&** are therefore quasi cannonical sources, I personally feel that anything post Rodenbery that disagrees with previous material should be considered non-cannonical.
Mycroft
That's O.K. I've met employees at compusa who've never heard of null modem cables, parallell ports, or the ISA. And the salespeople knew even less than the tech people.
Not picking on you, or even trying to tar ALL compusa people with the same brush, but they really are the mcdonalds of computers, and it shows.
I've overheard techies tell a customer to make shure his computer was ON when installing new ram to make shure it worked. A salesman say that Windows XP couldn't catch viruses anymore because of Security Proof 1("that's what sp1 means). And even try to sell a guy a 450 watt atx power suply for an old PII at system, so the computer would go faster.
Maybe it's just the two compusa's in my area that is that bad, and alot of the b.s. seems to translate to 'buy somthing expesisize for (insert gobledy gook here) and hey would like a service plan for that?'.
Mycroft
Odd, you completely reversed my list, honest I like TNG best followed TOS and DS9 in a tie for close second. And mostly like voyager, just so long as don't count shuttles exploded vs total mass of a small planet.
I've only seen one complete and two or three partial episode of enterprise so I'm not opinionated to much one way or the other about it.
Mycroft
I assume you got both from the same website.
Which is doubly odd since I've "youngest at 29" and "under thirty" for how he got the job at a record lack of age. Which is niegther the 31 or 34 implied by your post.
Can't recal a cannonical source though. Anyone else recal it being mentioned on-screen TOS or TNG or intervening movies? I consider stuff before Gene R. died to take precedence over after, but any on-screen quote would be good.
Mycroft
...and a few years from now it'll be what anyone under 20 thinks of when the name William Shatner comes up.
Parents always want a better world for thier kids, but here I think you are just fooling yourself.
Seriously though, while Shatner wasn't the best actor in the cast, he wasn't that bad. He just had a bad habbit of overacting in some dramatic places.
Mycroft
In a word, yes I do call it science fiction.
Science fiction is not about portraying the future, and future cultures accurately. Or trying to be an oracle of what cool gadget you can expect 2022. Or at least not always and certainly not exclusively.
Science Fiction is fiction where the many a varied topics explored in fiction have, as a setting, or a tool to explote, Science and science like themes and props.
Somtimes, by placing todays issues in another framework, they can be exposed and examined in ways a more familiar setting might make to uncomfortable to otherwise delve into. Science fiction by it's nature fits this role well.
Take for example the episode (sorry I have NOT memorized all the titles/scripts/etc.) people who had one half of thier face white and the other half black are engaged in constant conflict based on WHICH half is which color.
The enterprise crew didn't even realize the distinction existed untill it was explained to them.
This episode was clearly a morality play on racism, and the pointlessness thereof. Had, say a cop show, tried to make the same point, it would never have aired in the late sixties do to the climate back then.
This isn't just a Startrek thing. Many Science Fiction shows, and even shows about the far past, have commented on modern society.
Science fiction isn't just about flying cars and green women and rayguns.
Mycroft
One tiny problem with your chain of reasoning. You are assuming aliens aren't, well, alien.
That is to say you posit that thier very simular to us in terms of being an individualist species with simular goals and ideals.
How about a hive like species where infighting isn't even possible.
Or a species that are perfectly fine dealing with just them selves, but freak out in a very violent agressive way when confronted with another species.
And there are probably many, many more ways an alien species can be just that, alien, than I can think of.
Sofar Humans are the only sentient, technological, species we know. We to little bassis to make more than the vaugest of guesses about what others might be like.
Finagles law (Niven IIRC):
"The Universe is not only stranger than you imagine, but stranger than you can imagine"
Mycroft
And even that observation was made provisional as I had only a second hand account of the 'law' in question.
I generaly don't complain about how my posts are modderated (found one set of mods to one post amusing and said so, but that is it). I really don't understand this one unless the mod thought I was using you in the direct, personal, sense.
I suppose one could argue that I expeted others to be as displeased by the 'act' as I was
uppon reading about it, and thus 'flame' it. But if that were a valid reason for calling a post Flaimbait then quite a few YRO and other articles pointing out very bad behaviour on the part of companies such as SCO and Microsoft, and organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA, would also be Flamebait.
Mycroft
Yeah, while that was happening to my dads email I just used telnet to issue the del command on the offending email. trying to d/l it always blew the connection no matter how I tried.
If you have the rfc in front of you it's fairly easy to do as the commands are all simple. just del 14 and # 14 would be marked deleted.
Of course if your pop3 server uses any kind of authentication other than user and pass your kinda forced to try and do it your way. wouldn't have worked on my dad's account though.
Mycroft
Your laughing now, but that is not to far from what really happend to me once.
While they weren't shaking the line, squirls HAD managed to get into a local wiring box for the lines (last time a tech did anything they didn't close it up properly) and proceeded to strip alot of insulation off the wires and everytime it rained we'd get 60hz buzz and other noise on the phone and it just kept getting worse untill about the third time we called someone out.
It took them three tries because everytime we reported the problem a guy wouldn't show for a day or two, and of course by then the lines had dried and he didn't hear anything wrong and say we must have an issue with the phone itself.
Finally we called it in and since it rained on and off for the next four days someone showed up while it was drizzling ouside and the noise was REALLY bad.
Mycroft
I would have made up an apropriate error message.
"hmm is says error: message not recieved and acknoledged by server."
Or somthing like that.
If thier depending on OE to tell them if thier e-mail server is working they're not likely to have enough clue to spot the bogus message.
Mycroft
Yes, but a) nothing in a grand jury investigation can be used as evidence in court.
and b) I have issues with grand juries as well. If I may be brought to trial because of a grand jury, and I am being forced to testify before them, then my testimony is being used against me in violation of the 5th IMNHO. and I should have the right to a lawyer.
The article states that originally anyone testifying, etc. under the statute pretty much had automatic immunity from prosecution, but that was largely removed later.
Mycroft
I've had to deal with a situation where my dads email would would stop downloading partway through a message, usually a bigger one with a pic (he's on a bunch of those online dating services).
Well I dig in a bit, and adjust OE's settings in case it's timing out, still happing.
So I dig out the aproriate rfc for pop3 mail and telnet into the server, and sure enough I can get any of the other e-mails fine with the right commands, but that e-mail just stops midway through, and a minute or so later the connection to the server just dies, no error message, nothing, just drops me.
So I call tech support to tell them whats going on so they can fix it at thier in.
First thing the guy tries to do is have me change OE's timeout settings, so I tell him I've already done this and about using telnet to acess the server.
His response "trust me sir, this will fix the problem"
So Explain again, I've done that, and it doese it when I use the raw commands and telnet.
"I'm not shure about the telnet mail reader program or who rfc is, but windows uses outlook to actually get your mail"
I very nearly said 'sorry I thought I'd called tech support'
Instead I explained that telnet lets me talk directly to the server in it's language, and wouldn't time out or use OE in any way. And could tell it was definately the server.
He tried to walk me through OE again. and said they didn't support a rfctelnet (yes one word is how he said it) mail reader, just Outlook and Netscape (4 or 5 iirc).
I then aksed him if he understood I'd verified through more than one machine that the problem was definately at the pop3 server end of the connection.
He said didn't have a pop3 involved in e-mail. it went straight from thier e-mail server to my machine. No he wasn't refering to imap eigther, he honestly didn't know what pop3 was. In fact thier site said specifically they only do pop3 and do not have imap available at all.
I finaly asked if there was a higher level support person I could talk to. There wasn't. (it was early am though)
So I wound up just manualy deleting the bad e-mail on that and a couple other occasions.
The isp in question is earthlink.
Mycroft
Frightening is right. The Martin act shure looks unconstitutional on the basis of that article. Still I'd have to read it for myself and think a bit to have a solid opinion. IANAL, but then I think if you need a lawyer to figure out wether someone can forced to secretly tesitfy against himself, without counsel, (as the article seems to indicate) then eigther your stupid, or the system is FUBAR.
I'm not betting on stupidity here. (wait did I really say that?!?)
Mycroft
It's mostly due the structure that dns relies on to work. The point behind dns is so that instead of remembering (or having a database on every machine) that foo.com is 123.234.231.222 and that bar.com is 222.123.231.123 and so on for the entire internet, all you have to know is One i.p. address (plus a backup addy), that using the dns protcal, you can send foo.com to and get back thier current ip address. and should the dns server you contact not have that number localy it in turn looks at the tld, and based on that asks the next apropriate server up the line and so on untill the request gets to the central server for that tld.
If you have www.foo.com, you'll get back the adress to foo.com so you can ask the dns of foo.com for the addy to www.foo.com.
This is all done behind the scenes, and does a really good job as the root servers only have to keep track of all *.tld adresses, and let thier owners track *.foo.com.
The downside of course is that this centralizes tld controll and requires some effort to add a new one.
The link you provided is about a project to decentralize dns, but this would require lots and lots of people to change thier setups to point to the new system instead of the old.
The problem here isn't so much technical. As Practical and Political. There may be technical issues, I haven't really the knowledge on the opendns system to comment.
Between inertia, getting people to change over. Potential problems if there are issues during the changeover timeframe (get back two answers for foo.com, which is right?). And the simple fact that those in charge of the current system make money off it and this would cost them big, so naturally thier against it.
Plus leagle issues, rember cybersquating and other issues when the web first started taking off?
Mycroft
In fact, I would suggest that an academically ambitious person with an IQ score of 95 is likely to learn a lot more in their lifetime than a lazy slug who belongs to MENSA but spends all his time playing D&D and chatting on Slashdot
Hey what did I ever do to you, quit picking on me. oh wait.......
Mycroft
Not unless you are using older equipment. Newer equipment can uplink to the satalite as well as downlink from it.
Bi-directional has been available for a few years now. Sheesh I get enough spam for it in my mailbox, some of it from my isp(earthlink) who also sends adds for dsl, which isn't available within my zip or and of the neighboring zips.
Mycroft
Oh people frequently can and are that stupid. Talk to anyone who's worked tech support (that are not that stupid themselves).
Also cosider some people get thier wireless network as a kit when they order dsl for the family or whatever. "They said it was only for the three computers we own, that means no other computers can use it, and they took my cc number, asked me what computer I have and all this other stuff so they must have set it for just our computers"
Just for example a friend of mine worked in the tech dept of fry's and tells this story of trying to fix an older ladies printer because she said it wouldn't print. Finally he had her bring EREVYTHING in after walking her through a bunch of stuff over the phone and even bringing in the printer itself. The power cord was still in it's sealed plastic baggy.
"I thought it got everything from the computer"
moral: "NEVER underestimate the power of human stupidity" ---???who said this? Heinlein?
Mycroft
Heh, I once crumbled two vivarin into a two litre of mountain dew, drank about half of it, and still fell asleep from boredom. I'd had almost 8 hours of sleep the day before.
Of course I was working a very boring job, 'security guard' in theory, in reality I was just there to call the maintence people should one the various things that must NOT shut down did so. Such as a steam boiler that keeps certain pipes hot. It was at a chemical plant, one of them chemicals sets up when cool and CAN'T be re-melted. a nasty mess to clear out of the lines. My dad is one of the maintenance men and told me all about it.
Fourtunately I only dozed for about 20 minutes and the alarms on equipment there are quite loud. They have to be loud because when the whole plant is up and running it's quite noisy there.
I learned to keep an alarm clock set to go off every half hour after that.
Of course I also have a fairly strong case of add and cafien actually has a stabilizing effect on me, not a hyped up effect.
Mycroft.
Another case of two countries seperated by one language.
Mycroft
Not exactly, IIRC the 386sx had fewer lines for one of it's busses(compared to the regular 386), memory or data, can't remember which.
Mycroft
That would be the 486sx units. They disabled the buit in 387. In some percentage they were 486dx chips with faulty math-co's, but in most they were not. Later on they produced 486sx's that never had a built math-co (IIRC).
Of course many boards with a 486sx in them could accept a 487 chip, that while lable a co-processor, was realy just a 486dx with a few pin-out that took over the whole job of the 486sx processor which now just sat there doing nothing.
More than a few people wanted to find an easy way to re-enable thier 486sx with the 487 in place and use both. Not really doable without having a custom mb made and some tricks pulled. cheaper just to buy one of the dual 486dx boards.
Mycroft
Hmm, haven't really thought about it on modern processors, but going back a ways there were some clever uses of NOP on the 6510.
The obvious use is of course timing loops on older processors where the timing of every opcod was fixed, and no cache or multitude of busses between the processor and the ram/rom.
There were also tricks with spacing your code for self editing code and such.
I wish I could remember more but I know there where a LOT of cool uses for many of the 6510 opcodes, especially the undocumented ones. I remmber the Geos Operating system played just about every game imaginable in its copy-protection scheme including self modifying code with undocumented opcodes and missaligned sectors on the disk.
Mycroft
Had to jump into this thread somewhere.
The way I see it, having compatability with windows binaries is bassically a gamble. If it's used properly (with good marketing) it can help. If not it won't.
It WILL reduce any reason to code to Linux directly unless Linux achieves a significant majority in the market share, not likely to happen soon.
And therein lies the real key (IMHO of course). What's really need is to make PORTING of apps to linus as painless as possible. If with very little to no extra effort and cost a company can build thier app to run on BOTH platforms, and port over old apps with ease. Then the much smaller home market share of Linux no longer makes it to cost prohibitive to write linux software. It will still need some evangelizing/marketting/etc. But it becomes much easier.
Once this happens and Joe sixpack can buy his games/tax software/whatever, and see 'CD Rom for Windows/Liunux/Mac' on the box. Then you have a chance. If he should actually get curious as what this linux thing is, and finds out it's free (as in beer, Joe mostly worries about buying beer, Paying Joe jr. colledge tuition, etc. not supporting causes however noble) he might try it, especially when he can do so and not mess up his windows. If he's not utterly confused by the distro, has GOOD built in help, and isn't yelled at to "RTFM YOU ST00P!D LUSER' should he ask for help, then he'll see a powerfull, stable, and virus free os that has lots of really cool free(both ways) stuff.
Well at least that's (in part) how I see it. In the mean time Wine and such do have a valid place, but if a vendors options are
a) just write for windows, it'll work on some linux's anyway, not that thier very significant.
b)write for windows, then re-write almost from scratch for an o.s. that only covers 1-5% of our potential market.
What would you do. I'd rather like to add c) write for windows or linux, then spend just a few man hours at most and some compile time to generate a version for the other.
Mycroft