at the very least i hope they will get rid of the "rpm hell" that people go thru when you go to upgrade major components.
Ahhh, RPM hell, how I've missed you since I switched to...
...RedHat? Apt-get and its Synaptic GUI both run on RedHat and Matthias Saou of FreshRPMs maintains a giant archive of currently 1655 packages specifically for RedHat.
Since I went back to RedHat last November after years with Mandrake and Libranet, I have yet to install an RPM. Every week I just do an apt-get update apt-get upgrade and get all of the patches for security holes posted here on/.
RedHat should really toss some coin or at least help at FreshRPMs as they make RedHat the perfect compromise for people like me who love Linux (haven't used any Microshaft product in 9 months, with the exception of using Windows to play BF1942 for 3 hours/week), but "just want it work". My flat-mate is a complete Gentoo fan and seems to actually enjoy tweeking his kernel every week or so. Well, actually, he has to keep tweeking his kernal because there always seems to be a problem with USB or Raid or some other problem. So what does he do? He comes over to my RedHat box to download photos from his camera. For me at least (a medium-grade Linux user -- I write a lot of bash scripts...) the RedHat/apt-get combo is the ideal combination of ease-of-use, prettiness, and power.
In addition, I've found that a pretty KDE setup is one of the best ways to generate Linux converts, especially when you show the the 35seconds it takes to install DVD software (Ogle) or upgrade all the software on your system, all through the VERY pretty and simple Synaptic GUI.
While "grammar nazis" seem like a PITA, their presence does help make the comments on/. better spelled. While my "grammar" might not always be the best, I at least paste into OpenOffice and spell-check so as not to look like some completely ignorant fool.
Yes, "grammar nazis" can be annoying, but they do serve a purpose.
Each time you expose the ball point head it creates a new file, and when you retract it, it closes it.
That sounds awsome, except for those of us who nerviously click their pens 50-70 times per minute. Thousands of tiny files! I'd fill up all 256MB in about one boring meeting.
On second thought, maybe that would train us to stop clicking, bringing about new light to those annoyed by us nervious clickers.
I think that the main issue here is motivation. If they are doing this just to get people to buy twice, then that sucks. However (as PJ and the Weta people have said in many interviews), the reason for the dual release is two-fold:
Normal release -
a) People want it now.
b) People want to have what they saw in the theator.
Special Edition -
a) Many fans want a release that has more depth [length] than the theator market can support; hence a second release - a different movie.
b) To make this longer release takes time and a lot of work; hence the delay.
In many cases, such as the Star Wars special editions, they just seem like marketing tricks. The LOTR Special Editions however contain much more than extras; they are genuinely different films that deserve to be released separately. Anyway, if you wanted the version that showed in the theators to also come with the Special Editions, they'd have to be something like 6 DVDs. I for one just want the SE version that had more time/love put into it. Screw the short theator one, its for those who can't sit still.
Dishonest people will download the MP3s with/from their favourite p2p service and never buy the album. Honest people will either download the MP3s and buy the CD, or just buy the CD outright.
This isn't entirely true. I consider myself to generally be a very honest person -- I don't ever even eat the nuts from the barrel in the grocery store before eating them. However, at least untill now (I haven't tried or looked at the EMI thing) there wasn't a way for me to leagally get music without being raped by the music industry. If CDs cost $8 or less ($1 for production, $2 for retailer, $2 for artist, $2 for label, $1 for distributer) I'd buy hundreds of them. At twice that price or more though, I feel used for over-paying. As I really don't like the feeling of being used, especially be supporters of such anti-first-amendment legislation as the DMCA, I download mp3s and burn friends CDs.
Maybe this EMI thing will include reasonable prices like $0.25-30 per song (for a 12 track album that's several dollars of profit with little overhead). Then I can honestly pay without feeling cheated.
Maybe not Mozilla2.0, as that could be confusing for those looking to upgrade their version of Mozilla -- the possiblity of Mozilla1.6 having new fixes that 2.1 doesn't. However, a name based on Mozilla would allow the community to leverage Mozilla's growing name recognition. Something like MozillaLite, MozillaBO (Browser Only), or MozillaB (Browser) to go allong with MozillaM (Mail) would work.
Maybe I got the wrong idea from the Mozilla Developement Roadmap, but it sounded like "main trunk" Mozilla wasn't going to be developed after 1.6 or so. If that is the case, then some browser name based on Mozilla has the benifit of continuing the recognition of Mozilla.
I have a 19inch NEC MultiSyc 95. It was a great deal at $300 about 2 years ago. Unfortunately, this week it started getting really nasty gauss lines that won't go away with any of the de-gaussing options in the monitor dialogue. Its really a pain in the ass, that makes me desire an LCD. Yum. 19 inch LCD...
One thing that I didn't take into account when buying this monitor is the menu buttons. They suck. They are hard to press (stick a lot) and the monitor has just a linear list of options that takes a while to click through. When booting into Micro$h!t for gaming I need to re-adjust the monitor, and doing it with the MultiSync's controls is a royal PITA.
Starship Trooper is a [great] parody of war movies, but that doesn't make the line-delivery/acting any better. Virtually all of Monty Python's work is parody, yet their on-screen perfomances are almost all superior to those of Denise Richards and company.
Starship Troopers has got to be the highest budget "B" movie ever. My freshman year roommate watched it every time he got drunk and I must say that I grew to appreciate the movie. Its the sort of thing that I would make were I given several million $$$ and someone has already done Tolkein. For '96 or whenever it came out, Troopers has some great special efects (and obligatory show scene), but the acting/line delivery is just so terrible that I can't help but laugh when watching it.
Come to think of it, Starship Troopers is quite simmilar to the news reports of the Bugger War in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Hmm, probably just a coincidence.
I would whole heartedly urge getting at least a bachelor's degree in anything technical. I finished a bachelor's in physics from a small liberal arts college and found that it was the best possible course I could have taken (I currently work as an Open Source programmer and will head into alternative energy power systems engineering next year). Though liberal arts colleges have less course offerings, they do have many great opportunities. In a small (less than 3000 students) institution, there are an incredible amount of hands-on learning opportunities in research based "pure science" departments. For instance, my senior physics thesis involved designing and building the mechanical and electrical systems, then programming the computer interface to run the He3 cryostat and associated electronics I and others used to do quantum dot research. This is the kind of learning experience (along with the rest of the social thing) that is really hard to get if you don't go to college (at least for a little while). If you are one of those people (like the Willie Norris hypersound guy from a few articles back) who is just destined for bigger things, then get to them. For the rest of us however college/university is definitely a good thing if you can swing it.
As for your questions: 1. How much will a graduate/undergraduate degree affect my eventual wages as a programmer?
I can't say from experience as I have chosen to work for peanuts doing open source development for a university, (the pay isn't great, but the quality of life is through the roof!), but it definitely will help at least a little.
2. If I got an electrical engineering degree instead of a computer science degree, would I be able to make more as an embedded technology developer? In the automotive industry?
Like someone said above, "if your in it for the money, you shouldn't be here". That said, an EE, applied physics, physics, or some other well-rounded science/technical degree that involves computer work as well as knowledge of physical systems will make you much more employable (if not better paid) than a degree in computer science.
3. Is college much better than highschool course-wise? In my experience, incredibly so. Granted, I went to an absolutely shitty high school, but in college I was able to take courses in everything from data structures to optoelectronics to "radio, microwave and coherent transmission techniques" and add in some "Modern African History" on the side.
4. Will running various website such as this [frob.us], that [mathaddicts.org], and the other one [osnippets.org] help me with admissions? With scholarships? Probably with admissions. It could show that you have a drive to apply yourself to something that you think is important, always a good thing with admissions people. If not, it doesn't hurt. As for scholarships, no clue.
5. Definitely would redo college. The career can wait. Actually the career is on at least semi-permenant hold until I get a bit of life under my belt.
6. Know of any good tech scholarships? Nope, but I do have many friends that were able to attend my ridiculously-priced college for free because their families didn't make much money. Granted, the cutoff is crappily low (my parents paid more in tuition than their income the year my brother and I were both in school), but if you really are poor, there is need-based aid available.
Content is separated from form, so that all sites made with Segue can be easily themed and customized by the owner/professor, eliminating that bland cookie-cutter look of so many CMSs.
Also, we have implemented a completely granular permissions structure that allows creators of sites (students can create sites too) to precisely define who (anyone, authenticated users, students in the class, or individual users) can view, add, edit, or delete content from their sites. This has led to a lot of use of the web for group writing projects as it allows groups of students to easily publish, then edit each other's work.
Segue approches Course Management from the "Course Website" paradigm as oposed to "course folders" paradigm of BlackBoard and WebCT. We feel that websites as they are, are a superior way of displaying information than the idea of posting documents for download. Our goals were to make a system that is platform independent and will allow even the most technically timmid professors to quickly and easily get their course information and discussions online. On both fronts we've had much success; professors find the system easy to use (even the foreign language departments) and all functionality is availible from any platform with the exception of WYSIWYG text formatting. We are looking for a browser-independent XML WYSIWYG editor to replace our ActiveX one for PCIE. Any recomendations on this front would be welcome.
Segue is written in PHP and currently runs on a mySQL database. As of May however, we will be using ADODB to support virtually all databases. In April our development team will be heading to MIT to work out OKI interoperability.
Assuming this passes the Supremes, regarding the 'first amendment - free speech' test...
I forget where I read it, probably here somewhere, but commercial speech is not protected in the same way that personal speech is. Therefor, companies will at least have a harder time pursuing any argument based on free speech than a non-profit/political group would.
If anyone happens to know where in law this is located, I'd be interested to find out.
Simply wonderful. Up until now, I hadn't realized what I was missing reading slashdot so much: good, humourous writing. Even though we are [pretty much] all techno-geeks, some good writing about something other than router specs. There are quite a few funny blips out there, but they are usually just one-liners and not nearly as engrossing.
Well, most of the Linux package/RPM managers allow you to accomplish the same sort of updates without sending out all of your system information. They also seem to work quite well (although I have only used aptget/synaptic and RedCarpet). Just tell the client everything availible. Hell, then we could even CHOOSE what we wanted to update, or just click "everything" to get all new updates.
"Is this because the OSS programmers suck? Not at all. It is because OSS programmers need to eat. Consequently, they devote their best time and energy to the things that put food on the table."
As a programmer employed developing OSS, I must say that this is not true. While many OSS projects are developed in programmers spare time, many (if not most of the large projects) are devoloped by people paid to do so. My employer (a university) needs software to do a particular function. Often either no commercial software exists to do this function or said software is too expensive/no customizable enough. So, they employ me to write said software. Now, they could market what I make, but the time and resouces involved in setting up a sales division would not be worth it. Instead, we release it open-source and thereby get both many thanks from other institutions with the same problems and help improving the software to make it better for us to use.
All in all its a win-win situation (and I get to make money to eat too).
Well, they are listed as a non-profit, so the costs of developing an international database of hot spots and ensuring that locations that are certified are up to snuff is going to have to come from the licences.
Also, $100 per year isn't all that much if you are a for-profit business that is using Wi-Fi as a means of attracting customers to your location. The article says that libraries, colleges, and governments don't need to pay. I'd imagine that other non-profits with community spirit driving their installation of WiFi would be able to get reductions in $$ too.
I would like to second the idea that there is more to life than work. One of the above posters mentioned having more time to spend with his family. When you look back on your life 30 years from now are you going to fondly remember that night that went back to work to fix the server, or are you going to remember the time you and your little girl baked cookies.
I feel saddened that our American (primarily, though it happens elseware too) culture pushes us towards thinking that work is the most important thing out there. Work (unless it is your passion) should support life, not replace it.
Yes, some do. I work for a university language technology lab and we are constantly digitizing language instructional videos and streaming them with Real.
Up untill today we have been searching for a non-proprietary/future-proof format, but this release of code might just make Real worth keeping, if only because of the future-proofing aspect of the encoder now being open-sourced.
Actually, glass/evaporated metal (the shiny bit on the back of the glass) mirrors are vary good at reflecting almost all of the light incident on them. Therefor, while little burn-spots will be all over the place, only non-reflective parts of the disco ball are in danger of intense heating and melt-down.
Or, the enemy could just send out a big signal changing the paint on all of our tanks from cammo to bright red and white targets. Same thing could happen if WindowsTK* crashes.
* TanK version to be developed for the military after heavy lobbying of congress. Remember, stablity is never an issue when designing OSes. DRM is.
Slashdot Mirror
I opened up Synaptic. At the bottom of the screen it says:
1655 packages listed, 608 installed, 0 broken, 0 to install/upgrade, 0 to remove; 0MB will be used
I am just assuming that the first number is the number of supported packages...
Servers Shmervers. I'd like to see a Fujitsu laptop with RedHat pre-installed, with Fujitsu maintaining the drivers for it. That would be great.
at the very least i hope they will get rid of the "rpm hell" that people go thru when you go to upgrade major components.
/.
Ahhh, RPM hell, how I've missed you since I switched to...
...RedHat? Apt-get and its Synaptic GUI both run on RedHat and Matthias Saou of FreshRPMs maintains a giant archive of currently 1655 packages specifically for RedHat.
Since I went back to RedHat last November after years with Mandrake and Libranet, I have yet to install an RPM. Every week I just do an
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
and get all of the patches for security holes posted here on
RedHat should really toss some coin or at least help at FreshRPMs as they make RedHat the perfect compromise for people like me who love Linux (haven't used any Microshaft product in 9 months, with the exception of using Windows to play BF1942 for 3 hours/week), but "just want it work". My flat-mate is a complete Gentoo fan and seems to actually enjoy tweeking his kernel every week or so. Well, actually, he has to keep tweeking his kernal because there always seems to be a problem with USB or Raid or some other problem. So what does he do? He comes over to my RedHat box to download photos from his camera. For me at least (a medium-grade Linux user -- I write a lot of bash scripts...) the RedHat/apt-get combo is the ideal combination of ease-of-use, prettiness, and power.
In addition, I've found that a pretty KDE setup is one of the best ways to generate Linux converts, especially when you show the the 35seconds it takes to install DVD software (Ogle) or upgrade all the software on your system, all through the VERY pretty and simple Synaptic GUI.
While "grammar nazis" seem like a PITA, their presence does help make the comments on /. better spelled. While my "grammar" might not always be the best, I at least paste into OpenOffice and spell-check so as not to look like some completely ignorant fool.
Yes, "grammar nazis" can be annoying, but they do serve a purpose.
Each time you expose the ball point head it creates a new file, and when you retract it, it closes it.
That sounds awsome, except for those of us who nerviously click their pens 50-70 times per minute. Thousands of tiny files! I'd fill up all 256MB in about one boring meeting.
On second thought, maybe that would train us to stop clicking, bringing about new light to those annoyed by us nervious clickers.
I think that the main issue here is motivation. If they are doing this just to get people to buy twice, then that sucks. However (as PJ and the Weta people have said in many interviews), the reason for the dual release is two-fold:
Normal release -
a) People want it now.
b) People want to have what they saw in the theator.
Special Edition -
a) Many fans want a release that has more depth [length] than the theator market can support; hence a second release - a different movie.
b) To make this longer release takes time and a lot of work; hence the delay.
In many cases, such as the Star Wars special editions, they just seem like marketing tricks. The LOTR Special Editions however contain much more than extras; they are genuinely different films that deserve to be released separately. Anyway, if you wanted the version that showed in the theators to also come with the Special Editions, they'd have to be something like 6 DVDs. I for one just want the SE version that had more time/love put into it. Screw the short theator one, its for those who can't sit still.
Dishonest people will download the MP3s with/from their favourite p2p service and never buy the album. Honest people will either download the MP3s and buy the CD, or just buy the CD outright.
This isn't entirely true. I consider myself to generally be a very honest person -- I don't ever even eat the nuts from the barrel in the grocery store before eating them. However, at least untill now (I haven't tried or looked at the EMI thing) there wasn't a way for me to leagally get music without being raped by the music industry. If CDs cost $8 or less ($1 for production, $2 for retailer, $2 for artist, $2 for label, $1 for distributer) I'd buy hundreds of them. At twice that price or more though, I feel used for over-paying. As I really don't like the feeling of being used, especially be supporters of such anti-first-amendment legislation as the DMCA, I download mp3s and burn friends CDs.
Maybe this EMI thing will include reasonable prices like $0.25-30 per song (for a 12 track album that's several dollars of profit with little overhead). Then I can honestly pay without feeling cheated.
Maybe not Mozilla2.0, as that could be confusing for those looking to upgrade their version of Mozilla -- the possiblity of Mozilla1.6 having new fixes that 2.1 doesn't. However, a name based on Mozilla would allow the community to leverage Mozilla's growing name recognition. Something like MozillaLite, MozillaBO (Browser Only), or MozillaB (Browser) to go allong with MozillaM (Mail) would work.
Maybe I got the wrong idea from the Mozilla Developement Roadmap, but it sounded like "main trunk" Mozilla wasn't going to be developed after 1.6 or so. If that is the case, then some browser name based on Mozilla has the benifit of continuing the recognition of Mozilla.
I have a 19inch NEC MultiSyc 95. It was a great deal at $300 about 2 years ago. Unfortunately, this week it started getting really nasty gauss lines that won't go away with any of the de-gaussing options in the monitor dialogue. Its really a pain in the ass, that makes me desire an LCD. Yum. 19 inch LCD...
One thing that I didn't take into account when buying this monitor is the menu buttons. They suck. They are hard to press (stick a lot) and the monitor has just a linear list of options that takes a while to click through. When booting into Micro$h!t for gaming I need to re-adjust the monitor, and doing it with the MultiSync's controls is a royal PITA.
Starship Trooper is a [great] parody of war movies, but that doesn't make the line-delivery/acting any better. Virtually all of Monty Python's work is parody, yet their on-screen perfomances are almost all superior to those of Denise Richards and company.
Starship Troopers has got to be the highest budget "B" movie ever. My freshman year roommate watched it every time he got drunk and I must say that I grew to appreciate the movie. Its the sort of thing that I would make were I given several million $$$ and someone has already done Tolkein. For '96 or whenever it came out, Troopers has some great special efects (and obligatory show scene), but the acting/line delivery is just so terrible that I can't help but laugh when watching it.
Come to think of it, Starship Troopers is quite simmilar to the news reports of the Bugger War in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Hmm, probably just a coincidence.
I would whole heartedly urge getting at least a bachelor's degree in anything technical. I finished a bachelor's in physics from a small liberal arts college and found that it was the best possible course I could have taken (I currently work as an Open Source programmer and will head into alternative energy power systems engineering next year). Though liberal arts colleges have less course offerings, they do have many great opportunities. In a small (less than 3000 students) institution, there are an incredible amount of hands-on learning opportunities in research based "pure science" departments. For instance, my senior physics thesis involved designing and building the mechanical and electrical systems, then programming the computer interface to run the He3 cryostat and associated electronics I and others used to do quantum dot research. This is the kind of learning experience (along with the rest of the social thing) that is really hard to get if you don't go to college (at least for a little while). If you are one of those people (like the Willie Norris hypersound guy from a few articles back) who is just destined for bigger things, then get to them. For the rest of us however college/university is definitely a good thing if you can swing it.
As for your questions:
1. How much will a graduate/undergraduate degree affect my eventual wages as a programmer?
I can't say from experience as I have chosen to work for peanuts doing open source development for a university, (the pay isn't great, but the quality of life is through the roof!), but it definitely will help at least a little.
2. If I got an electrical engineering degree instead of a computer science degree, would I be able to make more as an embedded technology developer? In the automotive industry?
Like someone said above, "if your in it for the money, you shouldn't be here". That said, an EE, applied physics, physics, or some other well-rounded science/technical degree that involves computer work as well as knowledge of physical systems will make you much more employable (if not better paid) than a degree in computer science.
3. Is college much better than highschool course-wise?
In my experience, incredibly so. Granted, I went to an absolutely shitty high school, but in college I was able to take courses in everything from data structures to optoelectronics to "radio, microwave and coherent transmission techniques" and add in some "Modern African History" on the side.
4. Will running various website such as this [frob.us], that [mathaddicts.org], and the other one [osnippets.org] help me with admissions? With scholarships?
Probably with admissions. It could show that you have a drive to apply yourself to something that you think is important, always a good thing with admissions people. If not, it doesn't hurt. As for scholarships, no clue.
5. Definitely would redo college. The career can wait. Actually the career is on at least semi-permenant hold until I get a bit of life under my belt.
6. Know of any good tech scholarships?
Nope, but I do have many friends that were able to attend my ridiculously-priced college for free because their families didn't make much money. Granted, the cutoff is crappily low (my parents paid more in tuition than their income the year my brother and I were both in school), but if you really are poor, there is need-based aid available.
Oh yes, and I forgot to mention:
Content is separated from form, so that all sites made with Segue can be easily themed and customized by the owner/professor, eliminating that bland cookie-cutter look of so many CMSs.
Also, we have implemented a completely granular permissions structure that allows creators of sites (students can create sites too) to precisely define who (anyone, authenticated users, students in the class, or individual users) can view, add, edit, or delete content from their sites. This has led to a lot of use of the web for group writing projects as it allows groups of students to easily publish, then edit each other's work.
I am currently working at Middlebury College developing a GPL course management system called Segue.
segue.middlebury.edu - our current version, in use by over 100 courses (double the total number of course websites from last year).
The Segue Project Page
Segue approches Course Management from the "Course Website" paradigm as oposed to "course folders" paradigm of BlackBoard and WebCT. We feel that websites as they are, are a superior way of displaying information than the idea of posting documents for download. Our goals were to make a system that is platform independent and will allow even the most technically timmid professors to quickly and easily get their course information and discussions online. On both fronts we've had much success; professors find the system easy to use (even the foreign language departments) and all functionality is availible from any platform with the exception of WYSIWYG text formatting. We are looking for a browser-independent XML WYSIWYG editor to replace our ActiveX one for PCIE. Any recomendations on this front would be welcome.
Segue is written in PHP and currently runs on a mySQL database. As of May however, we will be using ADODB to support virtually all databases. In April our development team will be heading to MIT to work out OKI interoperability.
Our code is all GPL so check it out!
Assuming this passes the Supremes, regarding the 'first amendment - free speech' test...
I forget where I read it, probably here somewhere, but commercial speech is not protected in the same way that personal speech is. Therefor, companies will at least have a harder time pursuing any argument based on free speech than a non-profit/political group would.
If anyone happens to know where in law this is located, I'd be interested to find out.
Simply wonderful. Up until now, I hadn't realized what I was missing reading slashdot so much: good, humourous writing. Even though we are [pretty much] all techno-geeks, some good writing about something other than router specs. There are quite a few funny blips out there, but they are usually just one-liners and not nearly as engrossing.
Well, most of the Linux package/RPM managers allow you to accomplish the same sort of updates without sending out all of your system information. They also seem to work quite well (although I have only used aptget/synaptic and RedCarpet). Just tell the client everything availible. Hell, then we could even CHOOSE what we wanted to update, or just click "everything" to get all new updates.
"Is this because the OSS programmers suck? Not at all. It is because OSS programmers need to eat. Consequently, they devote their best time and energy to the things that put food on the table."
As a programmer employed developing OSS, I must say that this is not true. While many OSS projects are developed in programmers spare time, many (if not most of the large projects) are devoloped by people paid to do so. My employer (a university) needs software to do a particular function. Often either no commercial software exists to do this function or said software is too expensive/no customizable enough. So, they employ me to write said software. Now, they could market what I make, but the time and resouces involved in setting up a sales division would not be worth it. Instead, we release it open-source and thereby get both many thanks from other institutions with the same problems and help improving the software to make it better for us to use.
All in all its a win-win situation (and I get to make money to eat too).
I always got that feeling when going into the Westport. All that brushed aluminium/steel decore and upperclass lads looking very debonare.
Well, they are listed as a non-profit, so the costs of developing an international database of hot spots and ensuring that locations that are certified are up to snuff is going to have to come from the licences.
Also, $100 per year isn't all that much if you are a for-profit business that is using Wi-Fi as a means of attracting customers to your location. The article says that libraries, colleges, and governments don't need to pay. I'd imagine that other non-profits with community spirit driving their installation of WiFi would be able to get reductions in $$ too.
I would like to second the idea that there is more to life than work. One of the above posters mentioned having more time to spend with his family. When you look back on your life 30 years from now are you going to fondly remember that night that went back to work to fix the server, or are you going to remember the time you and your little girl baked cookies.
I feel saddened that our American (primarily, though it happens elseware too) culture pushes us towards thinking that work is the most important thing out there. Work (unless it is your passion) should support life, not replace it.
Yes, some do. I work for a university language technology lab and we are constantly digitizing language instructional videos and streaming them with Real.
Up untill today we have been searching for a non-proprietary/future-proof format, but this release of code might just make Real worth keeping, if only because of the future-proofing aspect of the encoder now being open-sourced.
Actually, glass/evaporated metal (the shiny bit on the back of the glass) mirrors are vary good at reflecting almost all of the light incident on them. Therefor, while little burn-spots will be all over the place, only non-reflective parts of the disco ball are in danger of intense heating and melt-down.
Long live the disco ball!
Here a similar article from the November 2000 issue of Discover Magazine. An excellent read if you find this topic interesting.
n .html
"May The Best Man Loose"
http://www.discover.com/nov_00/featbestma
Or, the enemy could just send out a big signal changing the paint on all of our tanks from cammo to bright red and white targets. Same thing could happen if WindowsTK* crashes.
* TanK version to be developed for the military after heavy lobbying of congress. Remember, stablity is never an issue when designing OSes. DRM is.