Luckily, unique bacteria trapped on Mars should have far different DNA that our earth-created bugs.
Ah, but that's if you assume that they evolved independently. One should never assume.
One of my major questions is "If there are bacteria on Mars, are they related to those on Earth?" By contaminating Mars, we make that question impossible to answer.
Imagine hundred of these rolling around Mars, for a year or so, continually transmitting usefull measurements...
This is the whole point. We have become pretty familiar with the Earth over the centuries. We have a good idea of what to expect in any given geographical area. If I say "Brazil" you think of Amazon rain forests. "North Africa" conjures up images of sand and deserts. We don't have that kind of information about Mars.
Sending out hundreds of cheap rovers will give us a quick and dirty overview of the whole planet - at least that part where the Martian winds blow. Maybe some weather balloon probes that are designed to leak and fall to the ground after a while would cover other areas where the surface wind doesn't blow.
The important thing is to find out where the interesting places are so we can send more advanced probes to those locations.
Re:Get one for your wife??!
on
Shocking Clothing
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· Score: 5, Funny
In the US, our money is "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America." They couldn't say that if they didn't have "faith" in the money. Every teensy-weensy bit of it, including the little RFID tag and the little mylar strip and the little mind-control dot in George's right pupil.
But... since we're talking about Euros here, YMMV.
If the Feds want to have a look-see at your computer to make sure you're not a terrorist, that last thing they want is for you to notice them and blab to someplace like Slashdot.
So they put the public on notice that monitoring your computer is illegal. Many people (well, not Slashdotters, I guess) will stop monitoring. Those that don't will be afraid to publicly announce that they caught the Feds snooping in their systems or to devulge how the Feds got in and what back doors or loggers they left behind.
The numbers I've heard for 802.11b actual usable bandwidth are 4-mbps unencrypted and 2-mbps encrypted. That still makes 11g a 5X or 10X improvement at 10- or 20-mbps encrypted.
To fly at 54mbs, you'd probably have to use all old products in the network. If one device is broadcasting its 11b warning, wouldn't that slow everything down?
The 802.11g standard includes built-in protection mechanisms to ensure that the devices don't interfere with older 802.11b devices. That means the 11g systems will need to transmit an electronic warning to 11b devices that a 11g device is operating, a warning that is enough to cause a cutback in actual throughput, Li said.
I'm thinking that a flashing red light and a Sonalert going beep-beep-beep should be sufficient.
While it's true that nowadays, lists of three or more items can have a final comma if it improves readability (my high school grammar teacher would roll over in her grave if she heard that!), this sentence is not a list:
"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content, and not the form of comments."
The "and" joins two clauses or phrases. If removing the comma makes that sentence seem awkward to you, try rephrasing it:
"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content and not on the form of comments." or
"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content of comments instead of their form."
Do you mean capitalization?
No, I meant commas and periods. I was referring to another poster's comment about putting the comma inside the quotes and how I often break that rule when it looks wrong or the result is confusing.
Re:hopefully this will be for more than just uni's
on
Computing's Lost Allure
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Oh, I don't know. To each his own, I guess, but I know an ace auto mechanic who works on his street rod for fun. My wife is a librarian and she reads incessantly. An engineer friend truly enjoyed designing and building an awesome multi-level back deck on his house.
I work on mainframes all day and would list "PCs" as my favorite hobby. I soldered my first three Z80 motherboards together myself, starting in '79, and I guess I haven't burned out yet.
While not a true indicator of someone's competency, there is some face validity in the idea that someone who is passionate about something will tend to be more proficient at it.
Yeah, I missed the HGttG reference even though I read it from cover to cover several years ago. My bad. Even so, my "Duh!" comment was supposed to be funny, not sarcastic.
The grammar bit is reflexive, I'm afraid. I used to frequent a Usenet group where that sort of thing was common and pointing out Grammar Nazis' errors was a required response.
To be helpful (and since you asked), your second attempt was much better. In order to make it perfect:
Drop the comma after "content". Generally there should not be a comma before "and" because the comma means "and".
Add a comma after "However". Without the comma, "however" means something different as in, "However you look at it, it's a mess!"
The "3" should be spelled out. Usually non-hyphenated one- or two-digit numbers are spelled unless they are mixed with non-spelled numbers or if there is math involved. In that case all the numbers should be numeric for ease of understanding. "What is the sound of fifteen hands clapping?" and "What is the sound of 101 hands clapping?" are both correct, as is, "You ordered 10 of those at $1.50 each."
The comma before "from" is correct, but a little awkward. Some day when you're a famous author your editor will probably rearrange it to:
I suggest you order Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's book, "1001 Tense Formations" from your...
Finally, putting the punctuation inside the quotes on a quoted word is technically correct I suppose, but as a programmer it really hurts my eyes. It's always correct for a quoted sentence or phrase, but for a single word it looks weird. Ditto if you're quoting something syntactically important and the punctuation would change the syntax. Follow your muse here, I guess. I do.
Now I'd like to ask you to return the favor. Using Slashdot's allowed HTML, how do you force a line break without adding a blank line?
I suggest you order the book "1001 Tense Formations"
Duh! Normal tenses don't apply when discussing fictional time manifestations.
Additionally, grammar flames are expected to be grammatically perfect. Yours contained four punctuation errors, one hyphenation error and one misspelling ("off").
Granted, I haven't installed Hercules, but I read through the step-by-step instructions. I also installed and maintained MVS 3.8 on a 3158 and a 3168-MP back in the day and those instructions brought back some not-too-pleasant memories. IBCDASDI - ughh. After twenty years of being a vendor SE and not being allowed to get my hands dirty, I am now a happy sysprog again. I found that although many things -had- changed, the basics had not.
For those that are used to a hierarchical file system, VTOCs and catalogs present a learning opportunity. And CKD (count-key-data) hardware can be pretty neat, especially when you're doing your own channel programs.
Hercules will teach you JCL. That's a non-optional requirement for any junior sysprog. It will also teach you S/370 assembler. Yeah, IEV90 is not HLASM, but it was good enough to assemble JES2, wasn't it?
HASP/JES2. Now there's a learning experience in itself! You young-uns who want to learn S/370 assembler - study the JES2 source code. Write some JES2 exits under Hercules and get them to run. That'll look good on your resume.
One of the most useful and blatantly obvious things that I wish the Windows crowd would learn is to use two- or four-byte tokens for system calls and return codes. "SetForegroundWindow" could be shortened to x'0010040C' e.g. and the savings from doing this for every function would cut out a lot of bloat, both in the space it takes and the cycles required to parse it. X'0010040C' is a couple of direct-offset table fetches and a branch.
And SMP - was it SMP/E yet in 3.8? Doesn't matter, the concept's the same.
Oh well, here's a list of things that you can learn from MVS 3.8 that would get you hired as a junior mainframe sysprog today:
JCL - batch job control language
S/370 assembler language
JES2 - how to set it up and tune it
SMP - for applying patches
IBM utility program usage
sysgen - how to configure control units and devices (it's a way different interface now, but you need to know the concepts
tapes - they're a lot more useful on a mainframe
PDS (partitioned data sets) usage and formats
catalog usage and utilities (IDCAMS)
TSO - install FSE (Full-Screen Editor) from CBT to make TSO useful
Now for the good part - all of the current IBM manuals are available for free here.
So go hang around at CBTtape.org, and above all, have fun!
For all those who complain that they can't learn IBM S/370 at home on their PCs, go here and look down the right-hand side for Hercules links.
Cbttape.org is the mainframe version of open-source, but without any GPL license nonsense. We share freely or not at all!
Note that the 1978 version of IBM's MVS 3.8 operating system is public domain. This is what's included with Hercules. Source code is also freely available. The difference between MVS 3.8 and today's OS/390 is about the same as the difference between Win95 and WinXP. I.E., Win95 would give you a pretty good understanding of Windows, and WinXP just builds on that.
There is a cookbook installation version with a step-by-step guide for neophytes - the MVS 3.8 Turnkey CD - follow the Voelker Bandke link.
Good luck, and when you're in Dinosaur Land - avoid the meat-eaters!
Okay, discerning between the front and back of a page (pg-1 and pg-2) would be hard, but what about where two pages are facing each other (pg-2 and pg-3)? The ink on pg-2 touches the ink on pg-3.
My wife, the librarian (who is not a lawyer), says that libraries are exempt from all that copyright stuff. There are laws that specifically give libraries permission to lend copyrighted works.
Interestingly, this also allows them to lend out software titles even though the EULAs specifically prohibit this. They do try to stay within the spirit of the law, however. You won't find a copy of WinXP Pro on the shelves, or game CDs (because they tend to "disappear"), but there are lots of kiddie titles ("Mortimer Moose Does Math" and "ABCs for Dummies").
They already lend books-on-tape cassettes, which are not copy-protected, so maybe digitized older books is a possibility. Current best-sellers would likely be a different issue, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but that's if you assume that they evolved independently. One should never assume.
One of my major questions is "If there are bacteria on Mars, are they related to those on Earth?" By contaminating Mars, we make that question impossible to answer.Yes, but puhleeze don't paint the bomblets the same color as the food packets
We don't want a hundred million Martians pissed off at us!This is the whole point. We have become pretty familiar with the Earth over the centuries. We have a good idea of what to expect in any given geographical area. If I say "Brazil" you think of Amazon rain forests. "North Africa" conjures up images of sand and deserts. We don't have that kind of information about Mars.
Sending out hundreds of cheap rovers will give us a quick and dirty overview of the whole planet - at least that part where the Martian winds blow. Maybe some weather balloon probes that are designed to leak and fall to the ground after a while would cover other areas where the surface wind doesn't blow.The important thing is to find out where the interesting places are so we can send more advanced probes to those locations.
It'll put the zing back in your marriage!
In the US, our money is "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America." They couldn't say that if they didn't have "faith" in the money. Every teensy-weensy bit of it, including the little RFID tag and the little mylar strip and the little mind-control dot in George's right pupil.
But... since we're talking about Euros here, YMMV.The RFID tag is part of the anti-counterfeiting measures. Bills without an RFID are counterfeit. Bills with a dead RFID are counterfeit.
Rather than nuking your money, just burn it. Burning accomplishes the same thing, plus there's fire."Huh-huh, Fire. Huh-huh."
Four, but Pestilence is still out of commission due to a nasty fall last month. His horse was OK, though.
If the Feds want to have a look-see at your computer to make sure you're not a terrorist, that last thing they want is for you to notice them and blab to someplace like Slashdot.
So they put the public on notice that monitoring your computer is illegal. Many people (well, not Slashdotters, I guess) will stop monitoring. Those that don't will be afraid to publicly announce that they caught the Feds snooping in their systems or to devulge how the Feds got in and what back doors or loggers they left behind.
[Turning tin-foil hat around the other way...]
Or maybe the RIAA put 'em up to it!This phenomenon is one of the signs of the apocalypse.
Are those numbers bogus?
To fly at 54mbs, you'd probably have to use all old products in the network. If one device is broadcasting its 11b warning, wouldn't that slow everything down?
I'm thinking that a flashing red light and a Sonalert going beep-beep-beep should be sufficient.
Hey! Where y'all goin' with my bandwidth?If it comes back as text-only, keep bouncing it anyway with the same message and if anyone complains, claim it was a technical glitch.
"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content, and not the form of comments."
The "and" joins two clauses or phrases. If removing the comma makes that sentence seem awkward to you, try rephrasing it:"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content and not on the form of comments."
or
"I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content of comments instead of their form."
Do you mean capitalization?
No, I meant commas and periods. I was referring to another poster's comment about putting the comma inside the quotes and how I often break that rule when it looks wrong or the result is confusing.
I work on mainframes all day and would list "PCs" as my favorite hobby. I soldered my first three Z80 motherboards together myself, starting in '79, and I guess I haven't burned out yet.
While not a true indicator of someone's competency, there is some face validity in the idea that someone who is passionate about something will tend to be more proficient at it.It works! (I'm obviously HTML-challenged.)
Thanks!
Yeah, I missed the HGttG reference even though I read it from cover to cover several years ago. My bad. Even so, my "Duh!" comment was supposed to be funny, not sarcastic.
The grammar bit is reflexive, I'm afraid. I used to frequent a Usenet group where that sort of thing was common and pointing out Grammar Nazis' errors was a required response.To be helpful (and since you asked), your second attempt was much better. In order to make it perfect:
Drop the comma after "content". Generally there should not be a comma before "and" because the comma means "and".Add a comma after "However". Without the comma, "however" means something different as in, "However you look at it, it's a mess!"
The "3" should be spelled out. Usually non-hyphenated one- or two-digit numbers are spelled unless they are mixed with non-spelled numbers or if there is math involved. In that case all the numbers should be numeric for ease of understanding. "What is the sound of fifteen hands clapping?" and "What is the sound of 101 hands clapping?" are both correct, as is, "You ordered 10 of those at $1.50 each."The comma before "from" is correct, but a little awkward. Some day when you're a famous author your editor will probably rearrange it to:
I suggest you order Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's book, "1001 Tense Formations" from your...Finally, putting the punctuation inside the quotes on a quoted word is technically correct I suppose, but as a programmer it really hurts my eyes. It's always correct for a quoted sentence or phrase, but for a single word it looks weird. Ditto if you're quoting something syntactically important and the punctuation would change the syntax. Follow your muse here, I guess. I do.
Now I'd like to ask you to return the favor. Using Slashdot's allowed HTML, how do you force a line break without adding a blank line?Duh! Normal tenses don't apply when discussing fictional time manifestations.
Additionally, grammar flames are expected to be grammatically perfect. Yours contained four punctuation errors, one hyphenation error and one misspelling ("off").Please try harder.
For those that are used to a hierarchical file system, VTOCs and catalogs present a learning opportunity. And CKD (count-key-data) hardware can be pretty neat, especially when you're doing your own channel programs.
Hercules will teach you JCL. That's a non-optional requirement for any junior sysprog. It will also teach you S/370 assembler. Yeah, IEV90 is not HLASM, but it was good enough to assemble JES2, wasn't it?HASP/JES2. Now there's a learning experience in itself! You young-uns who want to learn S/370 assembler - study the JES2 source code. Write some JES2 exits under Hercules and get them to run. That'll look good on your resume.
One of the most useful and blatantly obvious things that I wish the Windows crowd would learn is to use two- or four-byte tokens for system calls and return codes. "SetForegroundWindow" could be shortened to x'0010040C' e.g. and the savings from doing this for every function would cut out a lot of bloat, both in the space it takes and the cycles required to parse it. X'0010040C' is a couple of direct-offset table fetches and a branch.And SMP - was it SMP/E yet in 3.8? Doesn't matter, the concept's the same.
Oh well, here's a list of things that you can learn from MVS 3.8 that would get you hired as a junior mainframe sysprog today:JCL - batch job control language
S/370 assembler language
JES2 - how to set it up and tune it
SMP - for applying patches
IBM utility program usage
sysgen - how to configure control units and devices (it's a way different interface now, but you need to know the concepts
tapes - they're a lot more useful on a mainframe
PDS (partitioned data sets) usage and formats
catalog usage and utilities (IDCAMS)
TSO - install FSE (Full-Screen Editor) from CBT to make TSO useful
Now for the good part - all of the current IBM manuals are available for free here.
So go hang around at CBTtape.org, and above all, have fun!10) They view a PC/MAC as a dumb terminal "with this neat copy/paste thingie."
9) They know EBCDIC and are totally annoyed that numbers sort before letters in ASCII.
8) They are also annoyed that PC keyboards use the new-line key as ENTER.
7) "Fiber optic cable" means a 36-pair trunk. Anything less is just a device jumper.
6) They think that less than eight fiber paths to any device constitutes an I/O bottleneck.
5) They laugh at COBOL programmers. To their faces.
4) The largest program they ever wrote was 12K. The coolest was 160 bytes.
3) They know what the "National" character set is.
2) They wince at a 1.2-million line core dump, but they're glad they don't have to print it like they did in the old days.
1) They can read that core dump like it was source code.
Cbttape.org is the mainframe version of open-source, but without any GPL license nonsense. We share freely or not at all!
Note that the 1978 version of IBM's MVS 3.8 operating system is public domain. This is what's included with Hercules. Source code is also freely available. The difference between MVS 3.8 and today's OS/390 is about the same as the difference between Win95 and WinXP. I.E., Win95 would give you a pretty good understanding of Windows, and WinXP just builds on that.There is a cookbook installation version with a step-by-step guide for neophytes - the MVS 3.8 Turnkey CD - follow the Voelker Bandke link.
Good luck, and when you're in Dinosaur Land - avoid the meat-eaters!Call me a nay-sayer, but "Nay."
My wife, the librarian (who is not a lawyer), says that libraries are exempt from all that copyright stuff. There are laws that specifically give libraries permission to lend copyrighted works.
Interestingly, this also allows them to lend out software titles even though the EULAs specifically prohibit this. They do try to stay within the spirit of the law, however. You won't find a copy of WinXP Pro on the shelves, or game CDs (because they tend to "disappear"), but there are lots of kiddie titles ("Mortimer Moose Does Math" and "ABCs for Dummies").They already lend books-on-tape cassettes, which are not copy-protected, so maybe digitized older books is a possibility. Current best-sellers would likely be a different issue, though.
Maybe not, but I'll bet that getting a robot to lick its thumb and try again is a patentable idea!
Well, to whoever did: Thanks!
Warning: Look out!!