Blind Man's Bluff (a book about submarine exploits) has an excellent account of how this was done. If I recall correctly, it was in the North Sea, and we tapped a phone line between one of their naval bases and headquarters. A huge risk on our part, because it was basically illegal (not in international waters). Very difficult in the super cold waters up there.
So yes, it was not optical back then, but the mission was basically the same. They had to go back every so often and collect the old tapes / put new ones in, and that was the biggest downside. But that does not seem like it would work, since you would need a huge tape to record all that info. They would have needed some way to relay the data more or less in real time. The article never really says that this happened, and I do not believe it did. How would you relay real time data from a fiber optic cable out in the middle of the ocean? These are not a few phone conversations, these are constant, high bandwidth streams.
The problem with signing this new contract is this:
You had a contract with them where they were going to pay you $x.
They say "Look, we've hit some turbulence, if you sign this new contract where you forfeit your rights to $x we will pay you $y (y x)."
Most of the responses here are saying "cut your losses, take $y, move on." The problem here is that there is no guarantee that you will get $y.
Let us say that you sign that contract, taking $y in exchange for not sueing them. As soon as you sign it, whats to stop them from saying, "Ok, last time this is going to happen, but you know the NASDAQ these days, if you promise not to sue us for $y, we will pay your right now $z (z y x).
So you could do one of three things:
1. Sue them right now. Upfront legal fees, no guarantee of ROI (if they go bankrupt before you settle, you paid the legal fees for nothing.)
2. Class action law suit. No legal fees, no guarantees on your money except that you know it wont be close to what you were originally owed.
3. Sign their new contract. Looks like the best option, but there is no guarantee that they will be able to uphold their end.
(whatever you do, do not go for the option involving their executives, a desert eagle.50, and inevitably, the NYPD).
Here is the solution. How about Microsoft provides it's competitors with the hooks and documentation they need to do the same integration Microsoft does?
I take it you have never used MSDN? Its all pretty much right there if you have the time and patience to look.
The problem with it is, when they are developing the hooks etc. they know which hooks to put in to suit there needs. AOL may not like the hooks that MS puts in, because they probably have competing agenda's.
The main difference I see in a document versioning system as opposed to a code centric-versioning system is in tracking changes / merging. Much harder to merge doc's of different versions than code, I would think.
MSOffice has some features like that, but I do not think they are primetime. Different contributions / changes get colored differently, until you have what looks like a technicolor taco platter on your screen where once there was a document.
I think you just want a tree that does source control / check out / check in stuff. Sort of like clearcase with out merges. That would be really useful, I am sure it has to be written out there somewhere.
This much I know: Tracking documents is time consuming. Tracking changes is difficult as well, though if there is a skilled staff, hopefully this is less important. I have used the MSOffice functions that do this, they are a kludge.
If you have one nuke, or a limited number, you really want bang for your (insert your preferred currency).
The effect is lessened greatly as explained above.
Zulu Time means about the same as GMT.
Z in civil aviation is Zulu, and I guess because it the last letter of the alphabet they use it to refer to the time at the prime meridean. (Greenwich, England is at the prime meridean.)
Well, I guess what it comes down to, is I think I could put an XML to Flash language to good use. I do not like mice, and prefer writing text to manipulating a UI (for many things). Its kind of like playing Moria vs. Simcity. You still have to scan in some images, and tunes are not easy. But from there you could store all the different scenes / strips in your MySQL database, and then render them to Flash, that would be sick.
What does it accomplish? Create / Edit animation, maybe even personalize it or distribute it.
Its all about pictures, integrate a smoothe story line. How hard is that?
I would like to make a DTD that handles animation, not just panels. Dope Dragon. Is a great flash site, and it would be really sweet if you could write out an XML file, take some graphics files, and convert them into animation. Anyone know of anything that might help that process along?
I would write the DTD to define backgrounds or layers of images and then plot their movement. If you could define songs or sounds for elements, and then define the timing of the element, you could put animations together in a format that could be easier to write than, say a POVRay file, with pretty cool and consistent content in less time.
Its a bit like scripting a scene rather than drawing it, but it makes me think more of Sandman comic than a Piranha Club.
Hey, I'm not dissing the British, but these born and bred leaders must be too busy waging war in the name of the queen to remember the little things, like laptops.
Same with Hitler - the Americans were to scared, and thought he was no threat. But Britain nobly stood alone.
No doubt I'm asking for trouble here, but for every Churchill there's a Chamberlain.
Anyways, if you want to know more about the British elite's, read Rainbox Six by Tom Clancy. Clancy adores the Brits. Rainbow is a fiction based on the very laptop losers (believe me, they are quite impressive, really). Excellent insight into intelligence ops, and concurs with what 've read about Delta Force (the American counterpart to the British Special Air Services) from Charlie Beckwith.
That leave their laptop in a bar after getting drunk.
Thieves have been blamed for some of the laptop losses, but the majority of the missing machines were simply mislaid by tipsy or distracted agents.
Kind of makes you wonder just how hard it is to get a job as an international spy. Maybe the really good spys are the ones who go to the bar, get some agent a few drinks, maybe with some GHB alongside, and then the next morning:
Wha'appened? Why are you even taking the laptop with the bomb plans to the bar? Do they have weapons grade drink recipes on the same hard drive?
Art taken from around the turn of the century, such as Sinclair's the Jungle (different medium). Or, if your locale used to be an industrial area, take a look at what that was like back in the day. All of a sudden, the whole dot-bomb/gone thing is a little bit overexposed. At least the people who got laid off had been making living wages, had a little more control of their destiney. I don't want to sound like a troll, I feel for the people who lost their jobs. Take a look at the art, empathize with the people on the bottom, and be glad for what you have.
One of the best anectdotes I've heard for this situation:
Mafioso guy has very strong encryption of his files, with a key on a 5.25 floppy disk (this would work with a cd-r, too). Has an industrial strength waffle iron hot and ready at all times. If the heat is uppon him, put the key in the waffle iron. It would probably help to have a backup somewhere safe, if there is such a thing as a safe place.
The key to the article is they propose doing it in 2023 with a ten ton satellite. Its not like, this is happening tomorrow so you better watch out.
It would be funny if these assholes missed a couple of calculations and hit something other than their proposed target (an actual town). This is complete BS, if they wanted to do it, they would be going for a spot in the ocean, not in a highly populated world power.
Not gonna happen
Woaahh... And then we could bounce signals off the moon to them, and they could respond in kind! It would be the biggest, widest, most fantasmariphic peer to peer network ever!
What if you had a compression scheme that removed all the 1's from the data? Then, it would compress very well with conventional methods. After that, you already know that its 1's are removed so you put 1's back in? Hey anyone wanted to give me some VC to start it up?
The idea behind an Hbomb anti-aircraft missile is kind of simple. If a bomber is flying too fast or high or both for conventional weapons, use a nuke. If the plane isn't torn apart by the blast (and planes that fly that high and fast are usually made light, not sturdy), then the EMP will probably make it real hard to fly. As for fallout, its so high that its as likely to hit them as it is us (assuming it actually leaves the atmosphere). And do we really care about a little fallout if it is a necessary byproduct in taking down an enemy bomber that is carrying a nuclear payload?
I'm not sure if this was what took out Francis Gary Power's U2, but the Russian SA-5's did carry nuclear weapons. The SA-5 was a big momma jamma surface to air missile that was a major concern for those U2 missions over Russia.
but even still, if the goverment did go to OSS, it would result in much more efficiency at a much lower price...
i'd be very willing to bet that if the gov't petitioned the OSS community to help write a system (assuming nonintrusive like the Carnivore) there would be MANY willing contributors, who would possibly also write it for free (similar to the Mozilla project)
Let's see, currently government software is written by paid professionals and audited professionals. (at least where it counts, ala FAA).
If the process were open source, they would still have to pay people to write it and pay people to check it. You think that volunteers are going to audit air traffic control systems, or that I would trust them to?
This is sort of like an intellectual property type thing. If you have only one client (eg, the FAA), you need some sort of control over the future of your specific contract. Otherwise, you get ready to release v2.0 and your competitor has stolen your code and stolen your contract. The competitor essentially can take the capital that I spent on the first version and use it to develop a 2.0.
This is a case where the government agrees to issue a monopoly over a specific market (ie, development of a contract). Companies want to be profitable, and locking down a few years for a government agency is a good start. Without the monopolies, the cost would have to be higher to entice anyone to undertake the project.
This is completely untrue. MP3's over a stereo sound fine, provided when you buy the mini-headphone to rca (y cable) you get the one from radio shack that costs $9 instead of the $4 one. And thats just if your computer is more than 6 feet from the stereo. Under six feet, get the cheap cord. I've got a cheap sound card in my p2, connected to a 100w kenwood reciever and bose speakers. At about 160kbps and higher, you can't hear a difference between mp3 and a cd. Next step is to buy a p100 with a nic, big hard drive and a sound card to run as an mp3 appliance. Anyone know how big a hard drive you can put in a p100? Mike
From all the people who bought OS's? My theory -- Most people decide what apps they need to use, then which OS will run them all (usually leaving one left), then which hardware to buy with the OS already installed because who wants to install an OS for fun (no need for a show of hands, I know a lot of people here do, but lets think outside of Slashdot). OSs are overhyped and generally not as good as the apps they run (due to their complexity). Maybe I'm just tired of Windows.
Well guess what. I'm a developer -and- a user. The only thing I want from my computer is for it to do what I want. If I can change something, I probably will, and then I might change it back. Why does everybody assume people just want to sit there and let the computer do everything for them. I'll bet 90% of the people who use one OS use it for the applications available. If I didn't need to use MS Office and VisInterdev, I wouldn't use Windows. Would I use Linux or Macosx? No. I'd probably use whatever was available in a public library. If I was in graphics, I'd probably get a Mac, because you need a high end machine, and apparently most graphics people use Macs, and there is a reason for this. I'm not a graphics head, I don't know. And if I was running a server, well, I wouldn't be running Windows NT or a mac. People put way too much stock in the OS, its the applications that are already there that drive the selection process. And with that, I'm going outside. Mike
maybe they will have it sooner than I think, and maybe I was off by two orders of magnitude. Two of my thoughts on the subject: a) It is possible in twenty thousand years, maybe less, but 20000 seemed like a pretty safe figure to throw out. b) I'm not getting it until all the bugs are out. 20000 or 100 years, both seem to be after my lifetime.
radius I'm guessing is of some Latin root. We take a lot of words from Latin, and often the pluralization is wordus to wordi, radius to radii. It just happens that radius has an i before us in the singular form. Virus goes to viri. Don't ask me what the roots are, I think vir has something to do with being very small.
Slashdot Mirror
Blind Man's Bluff (a book about submarine exploits) has an excellent account of how this was done. If I recall correctly, it was in the North Sea, and we tapped a phone line between one of their naval bases and headquarters. A huge risk on our part, because it was basically illegal (not in international waters). Very difficult in the super cold waters up there.
So yes, it was not optical back then, but the mission was basically the same. They had to go back every so often and collect the old tapes / put new ones in, and that was the biggest downside. But that does not seem like it would work, since you would need a huge tape to record all that info. They would have needed some way to relay the data more or less in real time. The article never really says that this happened, and I do not believe it did. How would you relay real time data from a fiber optic cable out in the middle of the ocean? These are not a few phone conversations, these are constant, high bandwidth streams.
The problem with signing this new contract is this:
.50, and inevitably, the NYPD).
You had a contract with them where they were going to pay you $x.
They say "Look, we've hit some turbulence, if you sign this new contract where you forfeit your rights to $x we will pay you $y (y x)."
Most of the responses here are saying "cut your losses, take $y, move on." The problem here is that there is no guarantee that you will get $y.
Let us say that you sign that contract, taking $y in exchange for not sueing them. As soon as you sign it, whats to stop them from saying, "Ok, last time this is going to happen, but you know the NASDAQ these days, if you promise not to sue us for $y, we will pay your right now $z (z y x).
So you could do one of three things:
1. Sue them right now. Upfront legal fees, no guarantee of ROI (if they go bankrupt before you settle, you paid the legal fees for nothing.)
2. Class action law suit. No legal fees, no guarantees on your money except that you know it wont be close to what you were originally owed.
3. Sign their new contract. Looks like the best option, but there is no guarantee that they will be able to uphold their end.
(whatever you do, do not go for the option involving their executives, a desert eagle
This is a democracy, and you did in fact cast your vote when you bought that latest Destiny's Child cd...
I take it you have never used MSDN? Its all pretty much right there if you have the time and patience to look.
The problem with it is, when they are developing the hooks etc. they know which hooks to put in to suit there needs. AOL may not like the hooks that MS puts in, because they probably have competing agenda's.
The main difference I see in a document versioning system as opposed to a code centric-versioning system is in tracking changes / merging. Much harder to merge doc's of different versions than code, I would think.
MSOffice has some features like that, but I do not think they are primetime. Different contributions / changes get colored differently, until you have what looks like a technicolor taco platter on your screen where once there was a document.
I think you just want a tree that does source control / check out / check in stuff. Sort of like clearcase with out merges. That would be really useful, I am sure it has to be written out there somewhere.
This much I know: Tracking documents is time consuming. Tracking changes is difficult as well, though if there is a skilled staff, hopefully this is less important. I have used the MSOffice functions that do this, they are a kludge.
If you have one nuke, or a limited number, you really want bang for your (insert your preferred currency).
The effect is lessened greatly as explained above.
Zulu Time means about the same as GMT.
Z in civil aviation is Zulu, and I guess because it the last letter of the alphabet they use it to refer to the time at the prime meridean. (Greenwich, England is at the prime meridean.)
Well, I guess what it comes down to, is I think I could put an XML to Flash language to good use. I do not like mice, and prefer writing text to manipulating a UI (for many things). Its kind of like playing Moria vs. Simcity. You still have to scan in some images, and tunes are not easy. But from there you could store all the different scenes / strips in your MySQL database, and then render them to Flash, that would be sick.
What does it accomplish? Create / Edit animation, maybe even personalize it or distribute it.
Its all about pictures, integrate a smoothe story line. How hard is that?
I would like to make a DTD that handles animation, not just panels. Dope Dragon. Is a great flash site, and it would be really sweet if you could write out an XML file, take some graphics files, and convert them into animation. Anyone know of anything that might help that process along?
I would write the DTD to define backgrounds or layers of images and then plot their movement. If you could define songs or sounds for elements, and then define the timing of the element, you could put animations together in a format that could be easier to write than, say a POVRay file, with pretty cool and consistent content in less time.
Its a bit like scripting a scene rather than drawing it, but it makes me think more of Sandman comic than a Piranha Club.
Actually, I wrote korn shell code for a few air traffic control systems. So no, not bash, but korn. Feel better?
Hey, I'm not dissing the British, but these born and bred leaders must be too busy waging war in the name of the queen to remember the little things, like laptops.
Same with Hitler - the Americans were to scared, and thought he was no threat. But Britain nobly stood alone.
No doubt I'm asking for trouble here, but for every Churchill there's a Chamberlain.
Anyways, if you want to know more about the British elite's, read Rainbox Six by Tom Clancy. Clancy adores the Brits. Rainbow is a fiction based on the very laptop losers (believe me, they are quite impressive, really). Excellent insight into intelligence ops, and concurs with what 've read about Delta Force (the American counterpart to the British Special Air Services) from Charlie Beckwith.
That leave their laptop in a bar after getting drunk.
Thieves have been blamed for some of the laptop losses, but the majority of the missing machines were simply mislaid by tipsy or distracted agents.
Kind of makes you wonder just how hard it is to get a job as an international spy. Maybe the really good spys are the ones who go to the bar, get some agent a few drinks, maybe with some GHB alongside, and then the next morning:
Wha'appened?
Why are you even taking the laptop with the bomb plans to the bar? Do they have weapons grade drink recipes on the same hard drive?
Art taken from around the turn of the century, such as Sinclair's the Jungle (different medium). Or, if your locale used to be an industrial area, take a look at what that was like back in the day. All of a sudden, the whole dot-bomb/gone thing is a little bit overexposed. At least the people who got laid off had been making living wages, had a little more control of their destiney. I don't want to sound like a troll, I feel for the people who lost their jobs. Take a look at the art, empathize with the people on the bottom, and be glad for what you have.
One of the best anectdotes I've heard for this situation:
Mafioso guy has very strong encryption of his files, with a key on a 5.25 floppy disk (this would work with a cd-r, too). Has an industrial strength waffle iron hot and ready at all times. If the heat is uppon him, put the key in the waffle iron. It would probably help to have a backup somewhere safe, if there is such a thing as a safe place.
The key to the article is they propose doing it in 2023 with a ten ton satellite. Its not like, this is happening tomorrow so you better watch out.
It would be funny if these assholes missed a couple of calculations and hit something other than their proposed target (an actual town). This is complete BS, if they wanted to do it, they would be going for a spot in the ocean, not in a highly populated world power.
Not gonna happen
Woaahh... And then we could bounce signals off the moon to them, and they could respond in kind! It would be the biggest, widest, most fantasmariphic peer to peer network ever!
What if you had a compression scheme that removed all the 1's from the data? Then, it would compress very well with conventional methods. After that, you already know that its 1's are removed so you put 1's back in? Hey anyone wanted to give me some VC to start it up?
The idea behind an Hbomb anti-aircraft missile is kind of simple. If a bomber is flying too fast or high or both for conventional weapons, use a nuke. If the plane isn't torn apart by the blast (and planes that fly that high and fast are usually made light, not sturdy), then the EMP will probably make it real hard to fly. As for fallout, its so high that its as likely to hit them as it is us (assuming it actually leaves the atmosphere). And do we really care about a little fallout if it is a necessary byproduct in taking down an enemy bomber that is carrying a nuclear payload?
I'm not sure if this was what took out Francis Gary Power's U2, but the Russian SA-5's did carry nuclear weapons. The SA-5 was a big momma jamma surface to air missile that was a major concern for those U2 missions over Russia.
Let's see, currently government software is written by paid professionals and audited professionals. (at least where it counts, ala FAA).
If the process were open source, they would still have to pay people to write it and pay people to check it. You think that volunteers are going to audit air traffic control systems, or that I would trust them to?
This is sort of like an intellectual property type thing. If you have only one client (eg, the FAA), you need some sort of control over the future of your specific contract. Otherwise, you get ready to release v2.0 and your competitor has stolen your code and stolen your contract. The competitor essentially can take the capital that I spent on the first version and use it to develop a 2.0.
This is a case where the government agrees to issue a monopoly over a specific market (ie, development of a contract). Companies want to be profitable, and locking down a few years for a government agency is a good start. Without the monopolies, the cost would have to be higher to entice anyone to undertake the project.
This is completely untrue.
MP3's over a stereo sound fine, provided when you buy the mini-headphone to rca (y cable) you get the one from radio shack that costs $9 instead of the $4 one. And thats just if your computer is more than 6 feet from the stereo. Under six feet, get the cheap cord.
I've got a cheap sound card in my p2, connected to a 100w kenwood reciever and bose speakers. At about 160kbps and higher, you can't hear a difference between mp3 and a cd. Next step is to buy a p100 with a nic, big hard drive and a sound card to run as an mp3 appliance. Anyone know how big a hard drive you can put in a p100?
Mike
From all the people who bought OS's?
My theory -- Most people decide what apps they need to use, then which OS will run them all (usually leaving one left), then which hardware to buy with the OS already installed because who wants to install an OS for fun (no need for a show of hands, I know a lot of people here do, but lets think outside of Slashdot).
OSs are overhyped and generally not as good as the apps they run (due to their complexity).
Maybe I'm just tired of Windows.
Well guess what. I'm a developer -and- a user. The only thing I want from my computer is for it to do what I want. If I can change something, I probably will, and then I might change it back. Why does everybody assume people just want to sit there and let the computer do everything for them.
I'll bet 90% of the people who use one OS use it for the applications available. If I didn't need to use MS Office and VisInterdev, I wouldn't use Windows. Would I use Linux or Macosx? No. I'd probably use whatever was available in a public library.
If I was in graphics, I'd probably get a Mac, because you need a high end machine, and apparently most graphics people use Macs, and there is a reason for this. I'm not a graphics head, I don't know.
And if I was running a server, well, I wouldn't be running Windows NT or a mac.
People put way too much stock in the OS, its the applications that are already there that drive the selection process.
And with that, I'm going outside.
Mike
maybe they will have it sooner than I think, and maybe I was off by two orders of magnitude.
Two of my thoughts on the subject:
a) It is possible in twenty thousand years, maybe less, but 20000 seemed like a pretty safe figure to throw out.
b) I'm not getting it until all the bugs are out.
20000 or 100 years, both seem to be after my lifetime.
Or maybe the mice are using us for grander purposes than we even know.
The answer is 42.
radius I'm guessing is of some Latin root.
We take a lot of words from Latin, and often the pluralization is wordus to wordi, radius to radii. It just happens that radius has an i before us in the singular form. Virus goes to viri.
Don't ask me what the roots are, I think vir has something to do with being very small.