But DRM technology has not stood on its own. As technologies like dvdcss kicks DRM's ass it is protected only by law, the DMCA. I still can't how the copying of digital data is any different from the old analog mix tape or VCR recorded TV show. Hasn't this all been trashed out before? What about "fair use" rights? I'll tell you one thing, I have and will continue to NOT buy very little if any DRM protected music and video unitl I get the right to store any way I please for my personal use.
P2P and USENET or warez site type file sharing could become an issue with high bandwith services. These may be legimate places for regulation. My archival or creation of portable collections for personal use of media I have purchased should not be.
The key to this is to crack down on the priates that profit from the sales of ripped media. No, wait we don't want to piss off China do we, they might just stop buying treasury bonds.
Matthew
Thanks for the information about the differences between Reiser4 and ext3 file systems. I had not investigated Reiser4 in detail before and did not realized there was this level of difference between it and ext3. I have choosen ext3 usually, except for a recent evaluation install of Suse10 where I choose Reiser4 just for the heck of it. I will read up more on Reiser4.
I sure like the fast recovery time of a meta-journaled file system like ext3, I would hate to give that up. And then theres the simply security blanket thing. I have been using ext3 for several years now, with not a single non recoverable loss of anything outside of/tmp files. Of course ext2 was always pretty reliable as well but the fsck was rather tedious compared to ext3. I have had horrible luck with all the FAT derivatives, and far less that prefect luck with NTFS or HPFS. A safer file system is a large part of why I switched from OS/2 to Linux. well that and better new hardware, especially USB2.0, support on the cheap. I miss a few OS/2 apps but Linux is working out fine.
As several posters have pointed out you can use XCOPY/H/O/T/S/E/R/V <bootdriveletter>: <newdiskdriveletter>: to copy the install, roughly anyway. You can also use sysintx to set the disk as bootable if necessary. However if you make use of OS/2's PMShell/WPS you will have problems, you will lose your desktop for one. A patch for this is to add a "DESKTOP=<BOOTDRIVELETTER>:" line to the config.sys file just above where the PMShell is loaded.
However simply relating the desktop location will not restore its WPSID in the system or user.ini files so you will still have some problems with apps that need to know it. There are several apps like Object Desktop, Deskman/2 and several REXX scripts that will restore the WPSID but you may still lose some other WPS objects, that may not restore from the builtin "desktop archive/restore" utility. To defeat all these problems you can zip the entire drive, to the new disk, then unzip it on the new disk. There are several utilitys availiable for this, a neat little utility I have used for this is:
DreckBak Backup utility for OS/2
http://weismer.virtualave.net/DreckBak.html
This way you can restore all the WPS objects.
Better yet use DFSee or Graham to create a sector by sector clone of the drive. Note I have found that it is best to use OS/2 FDISK program to create the partitions on the disk if you expect OS/2 to see them properly, though DFSee did ok for me in this regard for at least once. Also the OS/2 FORMAT utility should be prefered for either EFAT or HPFS formatting work. Once you get your new disk booted you should apply the latest fixpak for your version. I believe is is at 43 for Warp3 and at 15 for Warp4.
Fixpaks and other OS/2 free and shareware software can be found here.
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/
OR comerical offerings, includung fixpaks on CD, and shareware
DFSee disktool, fdisk, filesystems and data recovery Homepage of the famous multiplatform disk tool DFSee, for disk related problems,... tools as found with DOS, OS/2, Win9x, Windows-NT/2000/XP and Linux....
http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee.htm
OR
The Graham Utilities for OS/2 - Version 2 Index DiskEdit - Disk Editor · DiskImg - Disk Imaging Tool · DS - Dir Sort... Floppy Disk Tests · FRANCE CUSTOMER SERVICE · FromUNIX - UNIX to OS/2 text...
You are indeed correct, light always travels, well in a perfect vacuum anyway, at C, +/- a possible minute change due to extreme circumstance as I believe a MIT grad student proved a while back. My choice of light to prove my conjecture was probably a poor one anyways. I was simply trying to convince the original poster that the absolute velocity of any object is not determined by its relative velocity to any other point in spacetime that in itself is not static. Simply put absolute velocitys cannot be determined by the summation of two relative velocitys.
Lets use good old trains, train A leaves the station due east reaching a max velocity of 75mph. Train B leaves the same station at the same time heading due west also reaching a max velocity of 75mph. The 75mph will be relative the station or any other to any point along the way at any instant after it has been accelerated to. Both train A and train B achieve a max velocity of 75mph, not 150mph. Along the same line, just because a truck is traveling due east at 85mph does not make train A's absolute velocity degrade to -10mph.
Light just happens to be the fastest thing was have observed so far due to it's being all energy without any mass. I read Einstein's theorm as "anything with a mass greater than a photon(0) cannot go any faster than said photon".
Relative to it's fixed point of ORIGIN a photon travels at C, this does NOT mean that a photon leaving the same point of ORIGIN but traveling in the opposite direction causes both photons to travel at twice C. It DOES mean that the SPATIAL distance relative to each other is increased over TIME at a rate of twice C. But not the velocity of either photon, which is of course still C. The same logic applys roughly to any other object at any other velocity. Space and time are the relative factors in the equation not the velocity. This how I understand things anyhow.
I would love it if some nut in a basement could find a way around these things. But I expect to wait until I die to explore the far reaches of the universe, and thats not exactly a sure thing either, again in my view anyway.
Matthew
Why does my firewall report port scans by slashdot.org @ ports 6588 and 3382 when I first select to preview this post?
"Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it."
Ahh Grasshopper! You miss the base point of the anthropic principle. While it could be that the difference would be so great that we would not exist, it could also be of a lesser difference that we would exist but in a different way, and would thus only see the universe differently. A simpler and more observant statement would be:
We see things the way we see them because that is the way things are.
A more factual statement would be:
We see things the way we see them because this is how they appear to be from our perspective.
The sad part is most of us usually see things as per the idiotic principle. That being:
From a incalculably limited perspective we see things as either as how we wish them to be or as how we fear they are.
Hi D, I have to call you the issue of IBM releasing the code as I am sure you do not know the legal restrictions they probably face. Also I somewhat understand the reluctance of IBM exec's to push OS/2 too hard considering the legal trouncing they had just taken over monopolistic practices. But then they got less than they deserved there as well. The legal trickery and patent manipulations employed by IBM management, and complient judgicial interests, out of greed and fear of competition have greatly restricted development and set some horrible precedents.
However I do agree that generally IBM is not to be trusted. The way they misled both OS/2 users and developers was as bad as anything Microsoft has been charged with. They should be required to reinburse many customers and developers with the settlement they got from Microsoft over the OS/2 debacle.
Heck at this point I would get plum silly over access to USB 2.0 drivers for the cost of Microsofts latest OS "upgrade". I hate it but I do believe IBM has finally delivered a fatal blow to OS/2. Heck these days even the legendary OS/2 USENET groups are mostly flame wars over eCS. That is why this is being posted from a Fedora Core 4 install. I just hope they don't find a way to muck up the Linux world too.
Please note this is not intended to disparage the gifted folks who developed OS/2 and other IBM technologys or many wonderful IBM managers and staffers that tried to do the right and what I think would have been the smart thing. However overall I for one will never put any serious percentage of my eggs in one of IBM's baskets again. This is a shame because they do have, or in some cases had, some of they best developers and engineers in the world. Piss poor top level management, mostly clueless marketing execs, an ethically challanged legal staff but great engineering and science, shame, shame, shame.
Off topic? Hell no, your dead on the mark, the topic is equipment suppliers you can trust in a maintenance emergency, not just I hope an IT maintenance emergency. As for McMaster Carr, well a broad ranging selection overnite on more quality stuff than you can shake a stick at(420,000+), nearly all regularly in stock. Excellent sales staff, shipping and internal support services website and cross referenced catalog. If I get an order in by 2:00PM I usually get by 9:30AM next day, and have gotten same day orders. My only gripe is that it is often not possible to replace an item exactly by say manufacturer, though sometimes you can. However I have never gotten a lower quality item than I expected or required. Not often the cheapest, but not unreasonable and then emergencys are often not a time to quibble around anyway. They kick even Graingers ass consistently on range of product types and delivery times, often on price if not on specific item type selection choices or OEM replacement requirements, and Graingers not bad themselves. I guess McMaster Carr is not a publicly traded company since I see no reference to such on the site, shame, cause if the PER is decent I would say they would be a great investment.
For alarm/control system specific stuff including PC's, networking items and alarm/controls software/hardware, emergency technical service and general supplies the Louisville, Ky office of Johnson Controls is simply awesome. I have had these guys out at all kinds of ungodly hours on tough trobleshooting and hardware replacement problems, they stay until it's done needless to say the work is always finished and always first rate. Very expensive help but well worth it.
"for a potato cannon that we were building"
I hope you don't get a visit from the boys in black:). Some buddy's and I had a lot of fun at one time with handheld schedule 80 propane fired tennis ball bazookas. Also have had a blast in the past with plastic soda bottle launchers with various firing fuels/methods. My Mom had a hair salon when I was just 10 -12 or so, we had a lot of fun then with "empty" hair spray cans. Heck this was the late 60's and I remember buying many 5lb boxes of Potassium Nitrate, Flowers of Sulpher, Rosin and Charcoal from the local alcoholic pharmacist. And some of the other stuff we did in the 70's as teens I won't even mention. Its a wonder we lived through it all. Nearly "died" one rainy day when I was drying homebrew model rocket engines in my Moms new oven, pilot light only, when the baby sitter decided to make brownies while I was away grinding&binding the next batch, oops.
I work as a controls systems technician in a hospital engineering/ops dept, we have a pneumatic transport system delivering meds, med records, etc that runs under OS/2 Warp3, well actually the equipments DOS app runs under OS/2. The physicians voice dictation system, some financial services servers, like you said some radiological hardware, and emergency nurse call systems all have ran OS/2 at one time, I don't know what the current status is on these other systems, but the pneumatic tube system plugs along 365/24 solid as a rock, and reboots are very, very rare.
Several pieces our Picker MRI/CT/PET equipment boots with Linux Redhat credits on at least a couple boxes, though these systems have several related cpu boxes each so there may be some other OS there as well. I have also seen Solaris logo's on some imaging and cancer treatment equipment screens. Medical life support level systems are usually ran on PLC's with custom built low level embedded firmware/software though I have seen references on some mid sized equipment to QNX and to HPUnix, AIX or VMS on some more complex equipment.
Of course Windows is everywhere on the office PC's and our Trane and Johnson Controls plant operations equipment. BTW Win2000 has issues with some of these plant operations type systems (Chillers, HVAC/R, etc). Our Trane WIN2000 system is much less stable on a 2ghz PC than WIN98 is on the 350mhz Johnson Controls Metasys PC. Several manufacturers will not fully support WIN2000 and some have not adopted XP. There is still a lot of NT4 and 98 out there running this type of equipment.
"In fact, virtually all the famous names of science are famous because they uncovered an error in our understanding....... It's in trying to determine what's going on with a discovered mistake that science moves forward."
"Huh,thats odd" probably shortly precedes far more substantial discoverys from experiments than "yep, see thats exactly what I thought would happen".
Hogwash, I can't believe this was deemed "insightful" by you folks. All in all the argument is severely atrophic in nature. The fact that fear and greed drive most technology does not mean it is the only method. It simply means it is the predominate one you know. The reason this has happened is because the Republic has become infested with rats (Republic-rats). Some of the fattest rats in the pack are those involved in the feeding frenzy at the military pork barrel. The US spends more than the rest of the top ten spenders combined. There have been many times these rats were caught in their obscene milking of the taxpayer, I have no doubt most instances are never discovered. Enough is enough and too much is too much!
The poster makes the point that many if not most technology advances are driven by war. I do not doubt this. I do however take issue with the assumption that it is the only way technologys advance or that it is the most efficant method. The fact that it is done in a very exclusive and closed manner with far less chance for the efficiencys and synergies that are found in more inclusive open environments greatly reduces its efficacy. Take for comparison the difference between closed and open source programming environments. The motivation of open source programmers has not been not destroyed because their efforts were not directed entirely by fear or money lust. Now apply these models to science and technology in general. I believe you would find that the model transfers well. This because many people pursue these efforts for internal satisfaction, many for the respect of peers, many for the fame, a place in history.
There are motivators other than fear and greed. They are more apt to be approached logically, thus apt to be more efficant than fear, and they are more honorable thus vastly more trustable than greed. After you get finished rattling off your favorite Rush Limbaugh and FOX "news" talking points, sit back and read what you just wrote objectively to see is it really holds water before you post it to the world. The same applies to those who mod such up manure as "insightful", think for yourselves dag-gone-it.
"When did corporations get more freedoms than individuals?"
It's been a gradual thing that started long ago in 1886(118 U.S. 394). But the short answer as far as recent history is concerned is: when Americans started voting in mass for the Republic-rats. Major events in the process 1968(elected a very smart and crooked leader of the fascist powers), 1972(damn they did it again), 1980(elected a likeable folksy puppet of fascist powers), 1984(damn they did it again), 1988(elected a key player in the ranks of the fascist powers), 1992(elected a self enfacing Republic-rat dressed as a Democrat), 1994(elected even more Republic-rats to sign the Contract on America), 1996(damn they did it again), 2000(quietly allowed an election to be stolen by yet another dingy bible thumping puppet of the fascist powers), 2004(damn they did again)....
Will they ever learn? Probably not, it seems that a few too many in America today wish to live in a theologically supported police state. Too many more are simply too apathetic or too dingy to know the difference. The 10-20% or so who see the direction of our future have been marginalized as malcontented nut cases. This is because the logic of their arguments ignored, they often break into bitter rants like this or simply emit a low growl and gnashing of teeth as they listen to the programmed "talking points" babble from others. I am sorry that you seem to be one of them, I can tell you from experience it is not a nice way to live.
Whatever standard Sony picks, I always bet on one of the other leading contenders. Sony may develop great technology but they have a poor record when it comes to being able to pick the standard that will dominate the market.
Matthew
Heck with the science for just a few minutes. Let's talk SciFi. The way I understand the "Warp Drive" as proposed in most SciFi, notably in StarTrek from where I think the title "Warp Drive" first appeared, C is not physically exceeded. A "Warp Drive" is also not the same as a "Hyperspacial" or "Extraspacial" drive, as the local spacial dimensional properties are distorted rather than escaped from. My understanding of this idea is as follows.
Multiple gravity wells of sufficient strength to distort space in compressive rotating wavefroms are continuiously created and collapsed at the optimum non-destructive proximite points as related to the craft and in the direction of intended travel. One then is pulled toward the gravity wells and/or uses auxiliary propulsion methods to push the craft in the same direction. Through balancing and counter balancing of the multiple gravity wells one is able to "surf' only the crests of the primary or convergent folded compressed space "waves" thus not really exceeding but still "cheating" the speed limit of C. I'll bet wipeouts would really suck. Beware of the Under Toad!!!
The coordinated efforts of law enforcement in 10 nations were rewarded with the arrest of over 60,000 last night. Over 30% of these potential terrorists were discovered on and tracked as they posted to Slashdot.org a website that one law enforcement official described as "an obviously dangerous breeding ground for dangerous malcontents and terrorists".
I like black hole demonic, reptilian slited alien or how about red terminator eyes, heck one could probably start a pretty serious cult conspiracy. Could one could morph the face or entire body even the background in any way one had the processing power and bandwith to support? Damn this could even be another good reason to up my wireless skills (translated: buy more wireless stuff). Plus this is a great excuse for more play time play with http://blender.org/ .
Amendment IX (1791). Declares that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not imply that the people do not retain all other rights.
Amendment X (1791). Reserves to the states powers that the Constitution does not give to the federal government or prohibit to the states.
The problem is that far too many are willing to allow the rights of others, whose life style or world view they happen to disagree with, to be abused, not realizing that by their inaction their own rights are dimished as well. Whenever these rights are not respected and the people are willing to allow such, the words are well.... just words.
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." Thomas Jefferson
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin
Don't most EULA's in commercial software inform you that "you DO NOT own" the software. How can you be responsible for a property tax on something you do not own? Of course they could always write stuff into this or another bit of attached legislation that addresses this by taxing your "rights to use" software with such EULAs as a "service". Does this legislation address this with service or usage defined taxes? I did not see in reference to such in the article. If they are not addressing this EULA issue, then this could be seen as preferentially supporting software as a service.
If you use in house customized free open source software are you going to be assessed for at a "equal commercial value" for the result? Are you going to be re-taxed on the in house development costs of the product? Or can you just get by paying taxes on the "copying fees" for these free open source resources? I am sure this is just scratching the surface of possible legal issues.
I realize that there are going to be indirect cost increases for me caused by such taxes. I guess it could be worse, it looks like they could tax my business software, a $5.00 distro of Fedora Core 4, without too much direct damage to my bottom line.;)
Disallowing other forms of life because they do not have a water compatible chemistry is a bit of an anthropic argument. I do not have a lot of chemistry knowledge so I am hesitant to rattle on too much about details of intermolecular forces, polar, dipolar properties and such. I can see where the solubility of water in respect to other polar compounds, especially the alcohols, and being insoluble in nonpolar compounds would be of a benefit in our environment. The bonds between nonpolar molecules are weaker than those in polar molecules, the heat of vaporization is less, they precipitate out of solution easier, all problems in our environment. However in biospheres at extremely cooled temperatures where biochemical reactions are slowed down tremendously, they may be a benefit. On the same line compounds like hydrocarbons that are not stable in an oxidizing environment like ours be work well in the reducing environments that may exist on the giant planets or in gas clouds.
I did not mean to imply that our organic chemistry would directly transfer to a hydrocarbon based one. I also did not mean to imply that methane was the only possibility there are plenty of other abundant hydrocarbon compounds like ammonia, ethane or even elemental hydrogen itself. I am sure much would need to be different. I simply meant that such may be possible. Isaac Asimov suggested that poly-lipids could form a substitute for proteins in a non polar solvent such as methane or even liquid hydrogen.
I was looking at this from the perspective that there seem to be more low temperature thus low energy areas like planetary bodies or gas clouds than high ones like our own. Thus I was looking largely outside the range that water can exist as a vapor or liquid. I agree that in temperature, pressure and available external energy environment we enjoy that water is much more suitable, if indeed not the only possible, base for our specific organic chemistry. But for the largest part where I was looking liquid water based organic chemistry would not even be in the food chain, much less the top. The key argument is that there are more places like these than there sre those like our own.
Slashdot Mirror
But DRM technology has not stood on its own. As technologies like dvdcss kicks DRM's ass it is protected only by law, the DMCA. I still can't how the copying of digital data is any different from the old analog mix tape or VCR recorded TV show. Hasn't this all been trashed out before? What about "fair use" rights? I'll tell you one thing, I have and will continue to NOT buy very little if any DRM protected music and video unitl I get the right to store any way I please for my personal use. P2P and USENET or warez site type file sharing could become an issue with high bandwith services. These may be legimate places for regulation. My archival or creation of portable collections for personal use of media I have purchased should not be. The key to this is to crack down on the priates that profit from the sales of ripped media. No, wait we don't want to piss off China do we, they might just stop buying treasury bonds. Matthew
Thanks for the information about the differences between Reiser4 and ext3 file systems. I had not investigated Reiser4 in detail before and did not realized there was this level of difference between it and ext3. I have choosen ext3 usually, except for a recent evaluation install of Suse10 where I choose Reiser4 just for the heck of it. I will read up more on Reiser4.
/tmp files. Of course ext2 was always pretty reliable as well but the fsck was rather tedious compared to ext3. I have had horrible luck with all the FAT derivatives, and far less that prefect luck with NTFS or HPFS. A safer file system is a large part of why I switched from OS/2 to Linux. well that and better new hardware, especially USB2.0, support on the cheap. I miss a few OS/2 apps but Linux is working out fine.
I sure like the fast recovery time of a meta-journaled file system like ext3, I would hate to give that up. And then theres the simply security blanket thing. I have been using ext3 for several years now, with not a single non recoverable loss of anything outside of
Matthew
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Benjamin Disraeli .
r aeli
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Benjamin_Dis
"Figures may or may not lie, but liars always figure." me
Matthew
As several posters have pointed out you can use XCOPY /H/O/T/S/E/R/V <bootdriveletter>: <newdiskdriveletter>: to copy the install, roughly anyway. You can also use sysintx to set the disk as bootable if necessary. However if you make use of OS/2's PMShell/WPS you will have problems, you will lose your desktop for one. A patch for this is to add a "DESKTOP=<BOOTDRIVELETTER>:" line to the config.sys file just above where the PMShell is loaded.
.ini files so you will still have some problems with apps that need to know it. There are several apps like Object Desktop, Deskman/2 and several REXX scripts that will restore the WPSID but you may still lose some other WPS objects, that may not restore from the builtin "desktop archive/restore" utility. To defeat all these problems you can zip the entire drive, to the new disk, then unzip it on the new disk. There are several utilitys availiable for this, a neat little utility I have used for this is:
e OS2.html
However simply relating the desktop location will not restore its WPSID in the system or user
DreckBak Backup utility for OS/2
http://weismer.virtualave.net/DreckBak.html
This way you can restore all the WPS objects.
Better yet use DFSee or Graham to create a sector by sector clone of the drive.
Note I have found that it is best to use OS/2 FDISK program to create the partitions on the disk if you expect OS/2 to see them properly, though DFSee did ok for me in this regard for at least once. Also the OS/2 FORMAT utility should be prefered for either EFAT or HPFS formatting work. Once you get your new disk booted you should apply the latest fixpak for your version. I believe is is at 43 for Warp3 and at 15 for Warp4.
Fixpaks and other OS/2 free and shareware software can be found here.
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/
OR comerical offerings, includung fixpaks on CD, and shareware
http://www.bmtmicro.com/BMTCatalog/BMTCat_Softwar
Matthew
Try:
... tools as found with DOS, OS/2, Win9x, Windows-NT/2000/XP and Linux. ...
... Floppy Disk Tests · FRANCE CUSTOMER SERVICE · FromUNIX - UNIX to OS/2 text ...
l /ind.htm
DFSee disktool, fdisk, filesystems and data recovery
Homepage of the famous multiplatform disk tool DFSee, for disk related problems,
http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee.htm
OR
The Graham Utilities for OS/2 - Version 2 Index
DiskEdit - Disk Editor · DiskImg - Disk Imaging Tool · DS - Dir Sort
http://www.warpspeed.com.au/Products/OS2/GU/Manua
Matthew
You are indeed correct, light always travels, well in a perfect vacuum anyway, at C, +/- a possible minute change due to extreme circumstance as I believe a MIT grad student proved a while back. My choice of light to prove my conjecture was probably a poor one anyways. I was simply trying to convince the original poster that the absolute velocity of any object is not determined by its relative velocity to any other point in spacetime that in itself is not static. Simply put absolute velocitys cannot be determined by the summation of two relative velocitys.
Lets use good old trains, train A leaves the station due east reaching a max velocity of 75mph. Train B leaves the same station at the same time heading due west also reaching a max velocity of 75mph. The 75mph will be relative the station or any other to any point along the way at any instant after it has been accelerated to. Both train A and train B achieve a max velocity of 75mph, not 150mph. Along the same line, just because a truck is traveling due east at 85mph does not make train A's absolute velocity degrade to -10mph.
Light just happens to be the fastest thing was have observed so far due to it's being all energy without any mass. I read Einstein's theorm as "anything with a mass greater than a photon(0) cannot go any faster than said photon".
Matthew
Relative to it's fixed point of ORIGIN a photon travels at C, this does NOT mean that a photon leaving the same point of ORIGIN but traveling in the opposite direction causes both photons to travel at twice C. It DOES mean that the SPATIAL distance relative to each other is increased over TIME at a rate of twice C. But not the velocity of either photon, which is of course still C. The same logic applys roughly to any other object at any other velocity. Space and time are the relative factors in the equation not the velocity. This how I understand things anyhow.
I would love it if some nut in a basement could find a way around these things. But I expect to wait until I die to explore the far reaches of the universe, and thats not exactly a sure thing either, again in my view anyway.
Matthew
Why does my firewall report port scans by slashdot.org @ ports 6588 and 3382 when I first select to preview this post?
In my nutty world my computer uses me.
"Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it."
Ahh Grasshopper! You miss the base point of the anthropic principle. While it could be that the difference would be so great that we would not exist, it could also be of a lesser difference that we would exist but in a different way, and would thus only see the universe differently. A simpler and more observant statement would be:
We see things the way we see them because that is the way things are.
A more factual statement would be:
We see things the way we see them because this is how they appear to be from our perspective.
The sad part is most of us usually see things as per the idiotic principle. That being:
From a incalculably limited perspective we see things as either as how we wish them to be or as how we fear they are.
Matthew
Hi D, I have to call you the issue of IBM releasing the code as I am sure you do not know the legal restrictions they probably face. Also I somewhat understand the reluctance of IBM exec's to push OS/2 too hard considering the legal trouncing they had just taken over monopolistic practices. But then they got less than they deserved there as well. The legal trickery and patent manipulations employed by IBM management, and complient judgicial interests, out of greed and fear of competition have greatly restricted development and set some horrible precedents.
However I do agree that generally IBM is not to be trusted. The way they misled both OS/2 users and developers was as bad as anything Microsoft has been charged with. They should be required to reinburse many customers and developers with the settlement they got from Microsoft over the OS/2 debacle.
Heck at this point I would get plum silly over access to USB 2.0 drivers for the cost of Microsofts latest OS "upgrade". I hate it but I do believe IBM has finally delivered a fatal blow to OS/2. Heck these days even the legendary OS/2 USENET groups are mostly flame wars over eCS. That is why this is being posted from a Fedora Core 4 install. I just hope they don't find a way to muck up the Linux world too.
Please note this is not intended to disparage the gifted folks who developed OS/2 and other IBM technologys or many wonderful IBM managers and staffers that tried to do the right and what I think would have been the smart thing. However overall I for one will never put any serious percentage of my eggs in one of IBM's baskets again. This is a shame because they do have, or in some cases had, some of they best developers and engineers in the world. Piss poor top level management, mostly clueless marketing execs, an ethically challanged legal staff but great engineering and science, shame, shame, shame.
Matthew
Off topic? Hell no, your dead on the mark, the topic is equipment suppliers you can trust in a maintenance emergency, not just I hope an IT maintenance emergency. As for McMaster Carr, well a broad ranging selection overnite on more quality stuff than you can shake a stick at(420,000+), nearly all regularly in stock. Excellent sales staff, shipping and internal support services website and cross referenced catalog. If I get an order in by 2:00PM I usually get by 9:30AM next day, and have gotten same day orders. My only gripe is that it is often not possible to replace an item exactly by say manufacturer, though sometimes you can. However I have never gotten a lower quality item than I expected or required. Not often the cheapest, but not unreasonable and then emergencys are often not a time to quibble around anyway. They kick even Graingers ass consistently on range of product types and delivery times, often on price if not on specific item type selection choices or OEM replacement requirements, and Graingers not bad themselves. I guess McMaster Carr is not a publicly traded company since I see no reference to such on the site, shame, cause if the PER is decent I would say they would be a great investment.
For alarm/control system specific stuff including PC's, networking items and alarm/controls software/hardware, emergency technical service and general supplies the Louisville, Ky office of Johnson Controls is simply awesome. I have had these guys out at all kinds of ungodly hours on tough trobleshooting and hardware replacement problems, they stay until it's done needless to say the work is always finished and always first rate. Very expensive help but well worth it.
"for a potato cannon that we were building"
I hope you don't get a visit from the boys in black:). Some buddy's and I had a lot of fun at one time with handheld schedule 80 propane fired tennis ball bazookas. Also have had a blast in the past with plastic soda bottle launchers with various firing fuels/methods. My Mom had a hair salon when I was just 10 -12 or so, we had a lot of fun then with "empty" hair spray cans. Heck this was the late 60's and I remember buying many 5lb boxes of Potassium Nitrate, Flowers of Sulpher, Rosin and Charcoal from the local alcoholic pharmacist. And some of the other stuff we did in the 70's as teens I won't even mention. Its a wonder we lived through it all. Nearly "died" one rainy day when I was drying homebrew model rocket engines in my Moms new oven, pilot light only, when the baby sitter decided to make brownies while I was away grinding&binding the next batch, oops.
Matthew
I work as a controls systems technician in a hospital engineering/ops dept, we have a pneumatic transport system delivering meds, med records, etc that runs under OS/2 Warp3, well actually the equipments DOS app runs under OS/2. The physicians voice dictation system, some financial services servers, like you said some radiological hardware, and emergency nurse call systems all have ran OS/2 at one time, I don't know what the current status is on these other systems, but the pneumatic tube system plugs along 365/24 solid as a rock, and reboots are very, very rare.
Several pieces our Picker MRI/CT/PET equipment boots with Linux Redhat credits on at least a couple boxes, though these systems have several related cpu boxes each so there may be some other OS there as well. I have also seen Solaris logo's on some imaging and cancer treatment equipment screens. Medical life support level systems are usually ran on PLC's with custom built low level embedded firmware/software though I have seen references on some mid sized equipment to QNX and to HPUnix, AIX or VMS on some more complex equipment.
Of course Windows is everywhere on the office PC's and our Trane and Johnson Controls plant operations equipment. BTW Win2000 has issues with some of these plant operations type systems (Chillers, HVAC/R, etc). Our Trane WIN2000 system is much less stable on a 2ghz PC than WIN98 is on the 350mhz Johnson Controls Metasys PC. Several manufacturers will not fully support WIN2000 and some have not adopted XP. There is still a lot of NT4 and 98 out there running this type of equipment.
Matthew
"In fact, virtually all the famous names of science are famous because they uncovered an error in our understanding. ...... It's in trying to determine what's going on with a discovered mistake that science moves forward."
"Huh,thats odd" probably shortly precedes far more substantial discoverys from experiments than "yep, see thats exactly what I thought would happen".
Matthew
Hogwash, I can't believe this was deemed "insightful" by you folks. All in all the argument is severely atrophic in nature. The fact that fear and greed drive most technology does not mean it is the only method. It simply means it is the predominate one you know. The reason this has happened is because the Republic has become infested with rats (Republic-rats). Some of the fattest rats in the pack are those involved in the feeding frenzy at the military pork barrel. The US spends more than the rest of the top ten spenders combined. There have been many times these rats were caught in their obscene milking of the taxpayer, I have no doubt most instances are never discovered. Enough is enough and too much is too much!
The poster makes the point that many if not most technology advances are driven by war. I do not doubt this. I do however take issue with the assumption that it is the only way technologys advance or that it is the most efficant method. The fact that it is done in a very exclusive and closed manner with far less chance for the efficiencys and synergies that are found in more inclusive open environments greatly reduces its efficacy. Take for comparison the difference between closed and open source programming environments. The motivation of open source programmers has not been not destroyed because their efforts were not directed entirely by fear or money lust. Now apply these models to science and technology in general. I believe you would find that the model transfers well. This because many people pursue these efforts for internal satisfaction, many for the respect of peers, many for the fame, a place in history.
There are motivators other than fear and greed. They are more apt to be approached logically, thus apt to be more efficant than fear, and they are more honorable thus vastly more trustable than greed. After you get finished rattling off your favorite Rush Limbaugh and FOX "news" talking points, sit back and read what you just wrote objectively to see is it really holds water before you post it to the world. The same applies to those who mod such up manure as "insightful", think for yourselves dag-gone-it.
Matthew
"When did corporations get more freedoms than individuals?"
It's been a gradual thing that started long ago in 1886(118 U.S. 394). But the short answer as far as recent history is concerned is: when Americans started voting in mass for the Republic-rats. Major events in the process 1968(elected a very smart and crooked leader of the fascist powers), 1972(damn they did it again), 1980(elected a likeable folksy puppet of fascist powers), 1984(damn they did it again), 1988(elected a key player in the ranks of the fascist powers), 1992(elected a self enfacing Republic-rat dressed as a Democrat), 1994(elected even more Republic-rats to sign the Contract on America), 1996(damn they did it again), 2000(quietly allowed an election to be stolen by yet another dingy bible thumping puppet of the fascist powers), 2004(damn they did again)....
Will they ever learn? Probably not, it seems that a few too many in America today wish to live in a theologically supported police state. Too many more are simply too apathetic or too dingy to know the difference. The 10-20% or so who see the direction of our future have been marginalized as malcontented nut cases.
This is because the logic of their arguments ignored, they often break into bitter rants like this or simply emit a low growl and gnashing of teeth as they listen to the programmed "talking points" babble from others. I am sorry that you seem to be one of them, I can tell you from experience it is not a nice way to live.
Matthew
Whatever standard Sony picks, I always bet on one of the other leading contenders. Sony may develop great technology but they have a poor record when it comes to being able to pick the standard that will dominate the market. Matthew
Heck with the science for just a few minutes. Let's talk SciFi. The way I understand the "Warp Drive" as proposed in most SciFi, notably in StarTrek from where I think the title "Warp Drive" first appeared, C is not physically exceeded. A "Warp Drive" is also not the same as a "Hyperspacial" or "Extraspacial" drive, as the local spacial dimensional properties are distorted rather than escaped from. My understanding of this idea is as follows.
Multiple gravity wells of sufficient strength to distort space in compressive rotating wavefroms are continuiously created and collapsed at the optimum non-destructive proximite points as related to the craft and in the direction of intended travel. One then is pulled toward the gravity wells and/or uses auxiliary propulsion methods to push the craft in the same direction. Through balancing and counter balancing of the multiple gravity wells one is able to "surf' only the crests of the primary or convergent folded compressed space "waves" thus not really exceeding but still "cheating" the speed limit of C. I'll bet wipeouts would really suck. Beware of the Under Toad!!!
Matthew
think of the bugs!!! Seriously where would most of us geek types be without the bugs. What would you blame the missed deadline on then, huh?
The coordinated efforts of law enforcement in 10 nations were rewarded with the arrest of over 60,000 last night. Over 30% of these potential terrorists were discovered on and tracked as they posted to Slashdot.org a website that one law enforcement official described as "an obviously dangerous breeding ground for dangerous malcontents and terrorists".
MatthewWould not they then be called OPENCircuitTV? :)
Matthew
I like black hole demonic, reptilian slited alien or how about red terminator eyes, heck one could probably start a pretty serious cult conspiracy. Could one could morph the face or entire body even the background in any way one had the processing power and bandwith to support? Damn this could even be another good reason to up my wireless skills (translated: buy more wireless stuff). Plus this is a great excuse for more play time play with http://blender.org/ .
MatthewYou mean:
.... just words.
Amendment IX (1791). Declares that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not imply that the people do not retain all other rights.
Amendment X (1791). Reserves to the states powers that the Constitution does not give to the federal government or prohibit to the states.
The problem is that far too many are willing to allow the rights of others, whose life style or world view they happen to disagree with, to be abused, not realizing that by their inaction their own rights are dimished as well. Whenever these rights are not respected and the people are willing to allow such, the words are well
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own." Thomas Jefferson
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin
Matthew
Don't most EULA's in commercial software inform you that "you DO NOT own" the software. How can you be responsible for a property tax on something you do not own? Of course they could always write stuff into this or another bit of attached legislation that addresses this by taxing your "rights to use" software with such EULAs as a "service". Does this legislation address this with service or usage defined taxes? I did not see in reference to such in the article. If they are not addressing this EULA issue, then this could be seen as preferentially supporting software as a service.
;)
If you use in house customized free open source software are you going to be assessed for at a "equal commercial value" for the result? Are you going to be re-taxed on the in house development costs of the product? Or can you just get by paying taxes on the "copying fees" for these free open source resources? I am sure this is just scratching the surface of possible legal issues.
I realize that there are going to be indirect cost increases for me caused by such taxes. I guess it could be worse, it looks like they could tax my business software, a $5.00 distro of Fedora Core 4, without too much direct damage to my bottom line.
Matthew
Disallowing other forms of life because they do not have a water compatible chemistry is a bit of an anthropic argument. I do not have a lot of chemistry knowledge so I am hesitant to rattle on too much about details of intermolecular forces, polar, dipolar properties and such. I can see where the solubility of water in respect to other polar compounds, especially the alcohols, and being insoluble in nonpolar compounds would be of a benefit in our environment. The bonds between nonpolar molecules are weaker than those in polar molecules, the heat of vaporization is less, they precipitate out of solution easier, all problems in our environment. However in biospheres at extremely cooled temperatures where biochemical reactions are slowed down tremendously, they may be a benefit. On the same line compounds like hydrocarbons that are not stable in an oxidizing environment like ours be work well in the reducing environments that may exist on the giant planets or in gas clouds.
I did not mean to imply that our organic chemistry would directly transfer to a hydrocarbon based one. I also did not mean to imply that methane was the only possibility there are plenty of other abundant hydrocarbon compounds like ammonia, ethane or even elemental hydrogen itself. I am sure much would need to be different. I simply meant that such may be possible. Isaac Asimov suggested that poly-lipids could form a substitute for proteins in a non polar solvent such as methane or even liquid hydrogen.
I was looking at this from the perspective that there seem to be more low temperature thus low energy areas like planetary bodies or gas clouds than high ones like our own. Thus I was looking largely outside the range that water can exist as a vapor or liquid. I agree that in temperature, pressure and available external energy environment we enjoy that water is much more suitable, if indeed not the only possible, base for our specific organic chemistry. But for the largest part where I was looking liquid water based organic chemistry would not even be in the food chain, much less the top. The key argument is that there are more places like these than there sre those like our own.
Matthew
Sounds more like fruitcake than pie.