Competition is important. Hans is exactly right when he says that no support contract should tie a customer to a specific piece of software. Free software is all about choice!
To play devils advocate, when a support contract is negotiated, it has to be costed by the company providing the support. Supporting a uniform system is much easier/cheaper than supporting a system which not uniform, and could have all sorts of unanticipated problems. Allowing the customer to mess around with the distro in whatever will almost certainly reduce the profit margins of the supporting company.
While this is very un-linuxy, it allows the big distro makers to thrive as commercial entities, and on the whole, they seem to contirbute a fair bit back to the open source community. It also has a side effect in opening up a market for small businesses/consultants who will support anything. Which is good.
Most of what we would call western culture originated in Greece. Apart from inventing culture in the first place, the main contribution of the mohammedans was protecting it from the rise of catholicism.
doesn't look like it has a ton of bells and whistles.
Yeah, but now it's been posted to slashdot, loads of people are bound to rush out and code/port bells, whistles, flashing lights, and all sorts of stuff to make it look 1337.
On a more serious note, it's a reinvention of unix with the benefit of hindsight by the original inventors AFAIK. Read the specs - it has loads of wacky and inventive features. It runs on a cluster of PCs instead of a single processor, for example.
as much as I've been enjoying this soap opera, I'm really getting sick of it now.
I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm still loving it. I especially liked the bit about exporting to axis of evil countries, and the weaponisation of linux. And doubling the claim just when things are getting hairy for them. It's like a failed poker player trying to pull off the biggest bluff in history, when everyone knows he's only got a pair. When this goes to court, it'll be hillarious. Go SCO!
first before spending money on the propriety route
I don't think cost is the main issue. The point of open source in government is that if using closed source/closed standards, a private company, possibly foreign, has control over all your data. This is sinister, and not the sort of position any democratic body should put itself in. This is the main point of all the various similar bills being considered/implemented around the world ATM. It's not about free(beer) versus commercial software - it's about control of data.
Even when a dictator stays in power there is a huge cost incured doing business in Military dictatorships as corruption costs (bribery) has to figured into every stage of a business deal.
Actually, this is more true of a democracy. A military dictator will do more or less what the US asks as long as they keep on supporting him. Environmental and labour laws are irrelevant, competition can be controlled. In a democracy, a comany has to either abide by the local laws, hence incurring elevated costs, or bribe a lot of people to get around them. Search google for "Production Sharing Agreements" and you'll get the drift.
1. Congratulate the editors on finally cutting down on the number of dupes posted - it's been ages since I've seen one.
How has this been acheived: via technology or a more human factor?
Apparently, subscribed users are mailing in dupe reports, so the dupes are quickly removed before the rest of us see them. In other words people who are paying to get a better slashdot experience than the rest of us are making our slashdot experience better than theirs. Which appeals to my sense of irony;-)
that works out to about $23 dollars per hour. Somehow I think they're going to need to collect more bounty before developers would "fall all over themselves" for the task
$23 dollars per hour is a lot to someone who is currently unemployed, or doesn't have the time to work because they are studying. Given that there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing without any optimism about financial reward, this probably will get quite a good response.
But testing something like this could be dangerous. Better to post it to slashdot - with so much publicity, someone is bound to copy the idea. Then just watch the media for the "Geek electrocuted by Xbox controller shocker" headlines. If nothing appears after about a month, move onto stage 2 and test it on grandad. If he survives, it's safe for anybody.
Actually, I believe Arthur C Clark himself copied the idea from an earlier author (who's name escapes me). If I remember correctly, it mentions this in the foreword to Childhoods End, but I could be wrong. It has since been reused in several films, because lets face it, it's the ultimate "Aliens make a grand entrance" image.
it took them 25 years to reach the billions, but they estimate that they will hit 2 billion by only 2007.
According to Moores law every quantity in the semiconductor industry doubles every 18 months, so they should reach 2 billion by the end of 2004. Are the laws of nature themselves being defied? What does this mean for the quest to find the universal field theory? Let's hope they've just done their sums wrong.
what would that mean to somebody who in act of terrorism wants to make strong em. impact on purpose
The compass will go a little wonky. Realistically, this is about small effects which are unlikely to cause a serious danger in themselves, but impare the performance of the avionics or the crew, which may result in a greater danger. Planes aren't designed to resist EMP bombs any more than they are designed to resist regular bombs, but try smuggling one onto a plane.
But the fact is, the disassembly of Slammer (aka Sapphire) has been available on the Net since late January -- just hours after the worm started to spread
That may be the case, but it's still a good way to obtain publicity, and thereby sell more copies. They've just managed to get a free advertisment on slashdot, after all.
Feed them iron pellets over a period of time, so they have gizzards full of iron. Then at harvest time, just pass a giant electromagnet over the flock, and carry them off to the cage.
Well, as you mentioned, the shuttle speed (in atmosphere) does matter
Yes, but simulating this would add nothing to the experiment, other than cost. What's important is the relative velocity of the foam and the wing, and the point of impact. Both of these can be more accurately reproduced from the video footage than by recreating the airflow, because the impact velocity will also be affected by the attitude of the foam within the airflow. How do you recreate that accurately?
The force due to wind resistance increases with the square of the velocity, as you would have guessed if you had ever ridden a motorcycle at 150mph;o). A foam block is very light, and not very aerodynamic. Hence, when we apply F=ma, we get a very large acceleration.
then dont forget to factor in the earth movement around the sun
And then there's the rotation of the galaxy. I hope all these people who claim to have set world speed records were travelling in the right direction at the right time of year.
It's not really force/acceleration that's important, it's kinetic energy and momentum:
How are kinetic energy and momentum more relevant than force? It all depends on how you do the analysis. The total kinetic energy is irrelevant - only the amount of energy transferred to the wing is important. Quoting e=0.5mv^2 looks good in the article because it highlights the importance of velocity, but saying that energy is important and force isn't is ridiculous, because in this scenario the two quantities are completely interrelated.
When the insulation piece fell off it was essentially encased in solid ice, which is a pretty hard material to start with.
How much ice exactly? There's no way of knowing. They do know how much foam fell off. If they test using just foam, they know the minimum amount of damage done for sure. If they add a guestimated amount of ice, they haven't proven anything.
At the time the insulation fell off, the space shuttle was travelling a couple thousand miles per hour already. That could (in theory) add to the impact force on the wing.
It's irrelevant how fast the shuttle was travelling. Only the speed of the foam relative to the wing matters (i.e. when bloan by a thousand mph wind). Presumably they measured this from the video they had.
...that they've only just performed this experiment. They claimed earlier that foam falling off the fuel tank not extraordinary, and hadn't been a problem in the past. You'd think with the risks involved it might be worth checking out - just in case. The whole point of engineering is that we don't rely on intuition.
So with all the activation technology they've introduced, amnesties and what not, all they could manage was a 1% reduction? Is it just me, or does this seem to suggest that their efforts are pointless, and are probably a huge waste of effort and money for both the developers and the end users?
Slashdot Mirror
To play devils advocate, when a support contract is negotiated, it has to be costed by the company providing the support. Supporting a uniform system is much easier/cheaper than supporting a system which not uniform, and could have all sorts of unanticipated problems. Allowing the customer to mess around with the distro in whatever will almost certainly reduce the profit margins of the supporting company.
While this is very un-linuxy, it allows the big distro makers to thrive as commercial entities, and on the whole, they seem to contirbute a fair bit back to the open source community. It also has a side effect in opening up a market for small businesses/consultants who will support anything. Which is good.
Most of what we would call western culture originated in Greece. Apart from inventing culture in the first place, the main contribution of the mohammedans was protecting it from the rise of catholicism.
Yeah, but now it's been posted to slashdot, loads of people are bound to rush out and code/port bells, whistles, flashing lights, and all sorts of stuff to make it look 1337.
On a more serious note, it's a reinvention of unix with the benefit of hindsight by the original inventors AFAIK. Read the specs - it has loads of wacky and inventive features. It runs on a cluster of PCs instead of a single processor, for example.
I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm still loving it. I especially liked the bit about exporting to axis of evil countries, and the weaponisation of linux. And doubling the claim just when things are getting hairy for them. It's like a failed poker player trying to pull off the biggest bluff in history, when everyone knows he's only got a pair. When this goes to court, it'll be hillarious. Go SCO!
I don't think cost is the main issue. The point of open source in government is that if using closed source/closed standards, a private company, possibly foreign, has control over all your data. This is sinister, and not the sort of position any democratic body should put itself in. This is the main point of all the various similar bills being considered/implemented around the world ATM. It's not about free(beer) versus commercial software - it's about control of data.
Actually, this is more true of a democracy. A military dictator will do more or less what the US asks as long as they keep on supporting him. Environmental and labour laws are irrelevant, competition can be controlled. In a democracy, a comany has to either abide by the local laws, hence incurring elevated costs, or bribe a lot of people to get around them. Search google for "Production Sharing Agreements" and you'll get the drift.
How has this been acheived: via technology or a more human factor?
Apparently, subscribed users are mailing in dupe reports, so the dupes are quickly removed before the rest of us see them. In other words people who are paying to get a better slashdot experience than the rest of us are making our slashdot experience better than theirs. Which appeals to my sense of irony ;-)
$23 dollars per hour is a lot to someone who is currently unemployed, or doesn't have the time to work because they are studying. Given that there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing without any optimism about financial reward, this probably will get quite a good response.
You mean something like this?
But testing something like this could be dangerous. Better to post it to slashdot - with so much publicity, someone is bound to copy the idea. Then just watch the media for the "Geek electrocuted by Xbox controller shocker" headlines. If nothing appears after about a month, move onto stage 2 and test it on grandad. If he survives, it's safe for anybody.
Actually, I believe Arthur C Clark himself copied the idea from an earlier author (who's name escapes me). If I remember correctly, it mentions this in the foreword to Childhoods End, but I could be wrong. It has since been reused in several films, because lets face it, it's the ultimate "Aliens make a grand entrance" image.
According to Moores law every quantity in the semiconductor industry doubles every 18 months, so they should reach 2 billion by the end of 2004. Are the laws of nature themselves being defied? What does this mean for the quest to find the universal field theory? Let's hope they've just done their sums wrong.
The compass will go a little wonky. Realistically, this is about small effects which are unlikely to cause a serious danger in themselves, but impare the performance of the avionics or the crew, which may result in a greater danger. Planes aren't designed to resist EMP bombs any more than they are designed to resist regular bombs, but try smuggling one onto a plane.
Next time, try the CIA World Factbook ;-)
That may be the case, but it's still a good way to obtain publicity, and thereby sell more copies. They've just managed to get a free advertisment on slashdot, after all.
Feed them iron pellets over a period of time, so they have gizzards full of iron. Then at harvest time, just pass a giant electromagnet over the flock, and carry them off to the cage.
It's probably a little white lie they tell visitors to put them off throwing bricks over the edge :o)
Yes, but simulating this would add nothing to the experiment, other than cost. What's important is the relative velocity of the foam and the wing, and the point of impact. Both of these can be more accurately reproduced from the video footage than by recreating the airflow, because the impact velocity will also be affected by the attitude of the foam within the airflow. How do you recreate that accurately?
The force due to wind resistance increases with the square of the velocity, as you would have guessed if you had ever ridden a motorcycle at 150mph ;o). A foam block is very light, and not very aerodynamic. Hence, when we apply F=ma, we get a very large acceleration.
And then there's the rotation of the galaxy. I hope all these people who claim to have set world speed records were travelling in the right direction at the right time of year.
How are kinetic energy and momentum more relevant than force? It all depends on how you do the analysis. The total kinetic energy is irrelevant - only the amount of energy transferred to the wing is important. Quoting e=0.5mv^2 looks good in the article because it highlights the importance of velocity, but saying that energy is important and force isn't is ridiculous, because in this scenario the two quantities are completely interrelated.
How much ice exactly? There's no way of knowing. They do know how much foam fell off. If they test using just foam, they know the minimum amount of damage done for sure. If they add a guestimated amount of ice, they haven't proven anything.
At the time the insulation fell off, the space shuttle was travelling a couple thousand miles per hour already. That could (in theory) add to the impact force on the wing.
It's irrelevant how fast the shuttle was travelling. Only the speed of the foam relative to the wing matters (i.e. when bloan by a thousand mph wind). Presumably they measured this from the video they had.
...that they've only just performed this experiment. They claimed earlier that foam falling off the fuel tank not extraordinary, and hadn't been a problem in the past. You'd think with the risks involved it might be worth checking out - just in case. The whole point of engineering is that we don't rely on intuition.
I believe you can buy wifi cf cards.
So with all the activation technology they've introduced, amnesties and what not, all they could manage was a 1% reduction? Is it just me, or does this seem to suggest that their efforts are pointless, and are probably a huge waste of effort and money for both the developers and the end users?