In 1968, my father brought home the user manual for TINT, the Timeshared INTerpreter for JTS, JOVIAL for Time Sharing. The rule of the house was that I could read anything except the books on abnormal psychology (and I didn't want to read those, they were yucky). I read the TINT manual, and said, "I can do that." A few months later, my father brought me in for a few hours to where he worked, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, CA. I demonstrated sufficient proficiency on the AN-FSQ/32 timesharing system to have passed the programming class, had I taken it. In 1970, I spent some of the summer working at UCLA, translating statistical programs from JOVIAL to FORTRAN (F40 on the DEC PDP-10). In 1971, I was old enough to be paid as a programmer, working on statistics programs, novel user interfaces, and operating system modifications. I never did learn how to flip burgers or serve ice cream, like my high school friends did.
JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language) was an ALGOL-class language created to program US Air Force systems, such as SAGE (the Strategic Air Ground Environment), starting in 1958. System Development Corporation (SDC) was the world's first software company. DEC built the most fun computers in the 1960's and 1970's. UCLA is the home of the Bruins.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star. Only elements as heavy as carbon or lighter can be formed in the early universe (and, for that matter, the amounts of Li, Be, B and C formed in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are very very small); for heavier elements, and for larger amounts of carbon etc., you need a star. Now, if you didn't already know this, stop and think about it for a second. A huge chunk of you, perhaps all of you, was inside a star at one time. It appears that you and I are star debris. And it gets even better. The way that large amounts of these elements, forged within a star, can get out of the star is if the star supernovas -- dies at the end of its lifetime with a big boom. That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away. There's uranium, and other similar very heavy elements, on our planet. Do you see what I'm getting at? Much of the atoms that make all of us up, that make this planet up, were at one time inside a star (or stars) that lived its life, supernovaed, and spewed out debris. Eventually, maybe a few hundred million years later, that stuff is part of our planet, part of our atmosphere, our water, part of you and me. We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money.
You might not be able to figure out how to make money, but Moby appears to have done well with it.
There are certain viruses that contain DNA, such as the ones that cause herpes. Although some of these replicate via a DNA-RNA-DNA path, others, I believe, replicate their DNA directly. Thus, these viruses would not be affected by the new treatment.
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 16:59:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> To: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org> Subject: Linux 2.6.27 Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0810091651220.3210@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
The difference is... the French (and Germans, see the SPACE.com article referenced in the original Slashdot posting) used a radar system, not an optical one, to detect the publicly uncatalogued satellites. Presumably it can detect satellites that aren't visible (except for occultations) to the average optical system ("black ops", in a very literal sense).
The French are serious about space operations, both commercially and militarily. Arianespace, a French company (in essence) launching from French territory in South America, is the world's leading provider of geostationary transfer orbit launch services. Presumably, they feel as concerned as any other major space operator about the space junk problem, as exacerbated by the Chinese anti-satellite demonstration last January, and are investing in a program to ensure that they can track space junk independently of the USA. Or, they may simply be interested in keeping track of all in-orbit assets as part of their defense posture.
Russia also operates optical and radar-based satellite-tracking systems. One can speculate that they already know about secret U.S. satellites, but are unlikely to reveal such knowledge in a public forum. China is also believed to have optical and radar satellite tracking systems in place (per a recent US Defense Dept. report).
The Web site above is very good, but omits one crucial consideration: optical interferometry. Let's consider the Keck Interferometer on Mauna Kea, HI. It has an effective resolution of about 5 miliarcseconds at its most sensitive. Since a Linar Rover is, at best, about 2.4 milliarcseconds wide as seen from the surface of the Earth, and since the Keck isn't really set up for direct interferometric imaging anyway, we're once again frustrated in our desire to image the Lunar Rover from Earth. But, if you are content to use earth rotation interferometric imaging, you might be able to use the Keck Interferometer to image a linear profile of the shadow of a Lunar Rover. Do that multiple times (OK, many, many times), and in theory you can image a Lunar Rover's shadow. Of course, you have the problem that the Earth/Moon/Sun angles are going to be changing as you take your many, many measurements, but hey, we can munch the data with computers and correct for that, right?
There's another, even more intriguing case. Suppose that you have a Lunar Rover that is crossed by shadows, say from a crater rim or a boulder (I don't know if any are, so this is speculation, OK?). In theory, you might (and I'm enphasizing *might*, because there are several numbers that must be considered before one can say whether this is really feasible) be able to use that shadow to scan and image the Lunar Rover from Earth.
Can Apple take over Cisco? Reuters says that Apple has a market cap of $82B, while Cisco has a market cap of $174B, but Steve Jobs has done stranger things before...
Not too long ago I read an article about bipedal robots that walk like humans. See, we put the shoes on the robot, and so long as the robot keeps walking, we get to watch the TV...
In Roman times, one theory was that comets were (or contained) the souls of dead people, rising to heaven. Not just any old dead person, of course, but important people, such as Roman emperors, on their way to become gods. Or, perhaps a comet might carry a soul *from* heaven to earth: consider the star of Bethlehem, now believed to be a comet, in one prominent religion.
Another theory, related to that same religion, is that a comet is what an angel looks like from a distance.
In Greek times, comets were thought to be a phenomenon of gases in the atmosphere, much like meteors (the word "meteor" derives from "high in the air").
The word "comet" derives from "coma", meaning hair: a hairy star. (The modern English usage for "coma" came about because the continuing growth of hair was observed to be one of the few obvious changes in a person in a coma.) Early observers might not have known what the hair came from, but it (a comet's tail) was clearly hair of some form.
He could offer Linux pre-installed on all their systems.:-)
At the very least, he could have someone fix Gateway's ordering pages. If you try to order, say, a Gateway 310B, it comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition by default, the Web page for it shows a message that says "Gateway recommends Microsoft Windows XP Professional." If you select customize, though, you're stuck with XP Home Edition -- there's no XP Professional option!
Section 7, Networking, includes the statement, "In fact, networking is one of the things that Linux does best." I expected Tigger to leap out of the page at me!
OK, suppose there were a genetic patentleft, a PPL. I suppose this means that you could ship PPL'ed food items on the same delivery truck (tar file) as non-PPL'ed food items, but you are prohibited from making a stew that combines them?
What if you use a genetic patentleft that works like a BSD license? Would that mean that every carrot has to come with a splash page that lists all the people who contributed to its genotype?
The case number is "D00-0001". I suspect that the "00" is the last two digits of the year, and "0001" is a sequence number in the year. If so:
1) Why build a Y2.1K bug? These early decisions are, well, historic. They may very well outlast us.
2) I'm cynical enough to think that 9999 decisions per year might not be enough.
Re:That's funny... it looks like an old terminal..
on
iMac Clone Gets Sued
·
· Score: 1
The iMac resembles the Lear Siegler ADM3A, other than the colors. The ADM3A was a distinctive (pretty or horrifying, depending upon your preference) blue shade.
When I first saw an iMac billboard, I assumed it was some sort of "retro-computing" marketing campaign, a return to the computing of the 1970's.
New Features are nice but (begin whining mode) "Older Stuff" has been broken for a week or so (as I view it with Netscape 4.51 on Linux). The links to yesterdays articles (by name, e.g. "Sunday", or at the bottom as "yesterdays articles") are off by one (Saturday, instead of Sunday). COuld this be fixed, too?
Slashdot Mirror
In 1968, my father brought home the user manual for TINT, the Timeshared INTerpreter for JTS, JOVIAL for Time Sharing. The rule of the house was that I could read anything except the books on abnormal psychology (and I didn't want to read those, they were yucky). I read the TINT manual, and said, "I can do that." A few months later, my father brought me in for a few hours to where he worked, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, CA. I demonstrated sufficient proficiency on the AN-FSQ/32 timesharing system to have passed the programming class, had I taken it. In 1970, I spent some of the summer working at UCLA, translating statistical programs from JOVIAL to FORTRAN (F40 on the DEC PDP-10). In 1971, I was old enough to be paid as a programmer, working on statistics programs, novel user interfaces, and operating system modifications. I never did learn how to flip burgers or serve ice cream, like my high school friends did.
JOVIAL (Jules Own Version of the International Algorithmic Language) was an ALGOL-class language created to program US Air Force systems, such as SAGE (the Strategic Air Ground Environment), starting in 1958. System Development Corporation (SDC) was the world's first software company. DEC built the most fun computers in the 1960's and 1970's. UCLA is the home of the Bruins.
We parse poetry.
Things went fast, caught fire, and exploded, over and over again. My basic needs were well met by this film. I plan to see it again.
Why not buy cars as in-app purchases through Grand Theft Auto?
Can we take it on a test drive on a Kindle?
But, will it be as interesting to look at as the prefab housing built in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, for Expo 67?
http://www.dwell.com/essay/article/prefab-decade
Arcology also appears as part of the backstory in "The Digital Effect", by Steve Perry. Improper building materials lead to an arcology's collapse.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star. Only elements as heavy as carbon or lighter can be formed in the early universe (and, for that matter, the amounts of Li, Be, B and C formed in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are very very small); for heavier elements, and for larger amounts of carbon etc., you need a star. Now, if you didn't already know this, stop and think about it for a second. A huge chunk of you, perhaps all of you, was inside a star at one time. It appears that you and I are star debris. And it gets even better. The way that large amounts of these elements, forged within a star, can get out of the star is if the star supernovas -- dies at the end of its lifetime with a big boom. That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away. There's uranium, and other similar very heavy elements, on our planet. Do you see what I'm getting at? Much of the atoms that make all of us up, that make this planet up, were at one time inside a star (or stars) that lived its life, supernovaed, and spewed out debris. Eventually, maybe a few hundred million years later, that stuff is part of our planet, part of our atmosphere, our water, part of you and me. We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money.
You might not be able to figure out how to make money, but Moby appears to have done well with it.
There are certain viruses that contain DNA, such as the ones that cause herpes. Although some of these replicate via a DNA-RNA-DNA path, others, I believe, replicate their DNA directly. Thus, these viruses would not be affected by the new treatment.
All these data centers failed at roughly the same time as the sunspots returned, but that's just a coincidence, right?
Linux kernel 2.6.27 was released this afternoon.
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 16:59:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Linux 2.6.27
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0810091651220.3210@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
The difference is... the French (and Germans, see the SPACE.com article referenced in the original Slashdot posting) used a radar system, not an optical one, to detect the publicly uncatalogued satellites. Presumably it can detect satellites that aren't visible (except for occultations) to the average optical system ("black ops", in a very literal sense).
The French are serious about space operations, both commercially and militarily. Arianespace, a French company (in essence) launching from French territory in South America, is the world's leading provider of geostationary transfer orbit launch services. Presumably, they feel as concerned as any other major space operator about the space junk problem, as exacerbated by the Chinese anti-satellite demonstration last January, and are investing in a program to ensure that they can track space junk independently of the USA.
Or, they may simply be interested in keeping track of all in-orbit assets as part of their defense posture.
Russia also operates optical and radar-based satellite-tracking systems. One can speculate that they already know about secret U.S. satellites, but are unlikely to reveal such knowledge in a public forum. China is also believed to have optical and radar satellite tracking systems in place (per a recent US Defense Dept. report).
The Web site above is very good, but omits one crucial consideration: optical interferometry. Let's consider the Keck Interferometer on Mauna Kea, HI. It has an effective resolution of about 5 miliarcseconds at its most sensitive. Since a Linar Rover is, at best, about 2.4 milliarcseconds wide as seen from the surface of the Earth, and since the Keck isn't really set up for direct interferometric imaging anyway, we're once again frustrated in our desire to image the Lunar Rover from Earth. But, if you are content to use earth rotation interferometric imaging, you might be able to use the Keck Interferometer to image a linear profile of the shadow of a Lunar Rover. Do that multiple times (OK, many, many times), and in theory you can image a Lunar Rover's shadow. Of course, you have the problem that the Earth/Moon/Sun angles are going to be changing as you take your many, many measurements, but hey, we can munch the data with computers and correct for that, right?
There's another, even more intriguing case. Suppose that you have a Lunar Rover that is crossed by shadows, say from a crater rim or a boulder (I don't know if any are, so this is speculation, OK?). In theory, you might (and I'm enphasizing *might*, because there are several numbers that must be considered before one can say whether this is really feasible) be able to use that shadow to scan and image the Lunar Rover from Earth.
Can Apple take over Cisco? Reuters says that Apple has a market cap of $82B, while Cisco has a market cap of $174B, but Steve Jobs has done stranger things before...
Actually, the ol' HCF opcode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire
Not too long ago I read an article about bipedal robots that walk like humans. See, we put the shoes on the robot, and so long as the robot keeps walking, we get to watch the TV...
1 35949.htm
http:www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223
Of course, this reminds me of the robot in David Brin's novel, "The Practice Effect".
Yup, same Whipple. He also co-invented anti-radar chaff (or, at least, the means of producing it) in World War II.
8 0/728
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/54
In Roman times, one theory was that comets were (or contained) the souls of dead people, rising to heaven. Not just any old dead person, of course, but important people, such as Roman emperors, on their way to become gods. Or, perhaps a comet might carry a soul *from* heaven to earth: consider the star of Bethlehem, now believed to be a comet, in one prominent religion.
/ comet-history-1.html
Another theory, related to that same religion, is that a comet is what an angel looks like from a distance.
In Greek times, comets were thought to be a phenomenon of gases in the atmosphere, much like meteors (the word "meteor" derives from "high in the air").
The word "comet" derives from "coma", meaning hair: a hairy star. (The modern English usage for "coma" came about because the continuing growth of hair was observed to be one of the few obvious changes in a person in a coma.) Early observers might not have known what the hair came from, but it (a comet's tail) was clearly hair of some form.
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/comets.html
http://www.eso.org/outreach/info-events/hale-bopp
He could offer Linux pre-installed on all their systems. :-)
At the very least, he could have someone fix Gateway's ordering pages. If you try to order, say, a Gateway 310B, it comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition by default, the Web page for it shows a message that says "Gateway recommends Microsoft Windows XP Professional." If you select customize, though, you're stuck with XP Home Edition -- there's no XP Professional option!
Section 7, Networking, includes the statement, "In fact, networking is one of the things that Linux does best." I expected Tigger to leap out of the page at me!
OK, suppose there were a genetic patentleft, a PPL. I suppose this means that you could ship PPL'ed food items on the same delivery truck (tar file) as non-PPL'ed food items, but you are prohibited from making a stew that combines them?
What if you use a genetic patentleft that works like a BSD license? Would that mean that every carrot has to come with a splash page that lists all the people who contributed to its genotype?
The case number is "D00-0001". I suspect that the "00" is the last two digits of the year, and "0001" is a sequence number in the year. If so:
1) Why build a Y2.1K bug? These early decisions are, well, historic. They may very well outlast us.
2) I'm cynical enough to think that 9999 decisions per year might not be enough.
The iMac resembles the Lear Siegler ADM3A, other
than the colors. The ADM3A was a distinctive
(pretty or horrifying, depending upon your
preference) blue shade.
When I first saw an iMac billboard, I assumed it
was some sort of "retro-computing" marketing
campaign, a return to the computing of the 1970's.
New Features are nice but (begin whining mode) "Older Stuff" has been broken for a week or so (as I view it with Netscape 4.51 on Linux). The links to yesterdays articles (by name, e.g. "Sunday", or at the bottom as "yesterdays articles") are off by one (Saturday, instead of Sunday). COuld this be fixed, too?
Only one license per app? Perl already comes with
two licenses!