Yes. Thank you! The web is supposed to make things easier for the end user -- it's not supposed to be an exclusive playground for geeks. And you know, I used to be a 'real working web designer' -- had a Web site back in mid-1994 -- but when it got to be more difficult to interpret a page of HTML than 10,000 lines of FORTRAN I gave up. That was about the time animated GIFs appeared, which just about finished it off for me.
Hahahahahaah! You Andover folks are more 1337 than I thought. Not only do you have uber-hacker John Walker on your team, you're running the site on a Univac 1107 -- say, you have any of those old 2 1/4 ton 100MB hard disks?
I only read Dyson's paper once and I think it was a transcription (i.e. abstracted in a different volume), but I believe he mentioned that the sphere would take a really large amount of matter and that a ring might be easier at least to start. Dyson never populated his ideas with a great imagined world as Niven did, though. Again, takes nothing away from Niven.
... it makes my wife mad but whenever we watch Terminator 2 on vid I have to rewind and replay the 'LA Gets Nuked' scene again and again... that oughta take care of those pesky Dodgers once and for all...;)
I thought Inferno was a gas. Especially at the beginning when Asimov walks in the room and he falls out the window, nobody notices...
This is a bummer you can't find the Ringworld books. Actually (ahem, okay, this will date me) I did all my early science fiction reading in ye olde publicke library, but I bought the first two RW books when they came out. Anyway, check the libraries if the UB stores are no good.
DoH! Yep, Niven, for sure. Of course the Ringworld idea was not strictly Niven's, he got it from the works of Freeman Dyson. But that takes nothing away from him as a great source of ideas. And he should really sue Hollywood's ass off for all of those copycat asteroid movies.;) Remember that scene in Lucifer's Hammer with the surfer in Santa Monica Bay riding the tsunami, up until he smacked into the Barrington Towers apartments? My wife used to live right on that block. I got the willies thinking about it. Of course the thought of LA being wiped out by a tsunami is comforting, means there's hope...
...that the ESA has the cash to spend on this sort of effort. Makes me mad when NASA keeps taking it in the shorts from Congress all the way down to Slashdot -- all that sniping does is give arms to those who want to slash NASA's budget, keeping out any possibility of funding for loony - but - fun - and - possibly - fruitful ideas like this one (as well as more immediately useful ones!).
On the other hand, the first thing they should do is find out the skill of SF writers' forecasts. You need to weight Clarke's or Robinson's or Brin's (well maybe not Brin's but definitely Clarke's) ideas higher than, well, I won't name names. You get the idea.
Damn! You beat me to it! Damn! Damn! Damn! Well, I found it on an old system.
SON(2) System calls SON(2)
NAME
son - signalling macro for male child
SYNOPSIS
#include <family.h>
int son(void *betweenhead, char *msg);
DESCRIPTION
son() attempts to communicate with male child process structure pointed to by
betweenhead, sending message msg.
RETURN VALUE
On success, the number of bytes in
msg listened to by male child process is returned. On failure, -1 is returned and errno is set, which is almost all the time.
ERRORS
EPHONE The call was interrupted by a communication from female child process belonging to a different owner.
ETVON Child process was watch()ing a different medium and did not accept msg.
CONFORMING TO
Any latest style that the parent process considers ludicrous.
RESTRICTIONS
The parent process just doesn't understand, and is ruining the child process' life.
SEE ALSO
daughter(2), take_out_the_garbage(2) (C++ systems only), clean_up_your_room(3)
Yeah, I'm a smartass. It's just the weather, sorry. But the Royal Starship is clearly SR-71 inspired. Check these out http://www.starwars.com/vehicles/royal_starship/1_ bg.html http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/SR-71/Small /EC97-43902-1.jpg http://mercury.spaceports.com/~dstar/ships/queenst arship.jpg
Booker said...But LILO boots most linux computers every day.
Like hell. Every day!? Lessee, the last time I saw a LILO prompt was oh what the heck, 8 months ago? I had to bring the system down because of a hurricane.
Now if LILO loaded NT, well then everyone would see it just about every day... {cackle}
John Walker's Website contains information on the Salyut 3 (Almaz) station that apparently carried an automatic cannon (like on a MiG fighter). Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich (the ?4?th person to fly in space) claims he flew on the station with the weapon aboard but it was only fired once to test when no cosmonauts were on board. They had to hook the station's thrusters into the controls so they would fire simultaneously to offset the thrust of the gun. Wierd stuff eh? Strange but (apparently) true.
Golly! What an -- amazing -- thought! And you know what else, that SR-71 Blackbird jet looks a lot like queen amidala's ship, too! Do you suppose Kelly Johnson had access to early cuts of Episode 1 back in 1963 and borrowed the design?
The Internet is open because the
government developed TCP/IP to be content-agnostic, and forced open access laws on the telecommunications
network which currently "is" the Internet.
Yes! Thank you! Finally some acknowledgment that academic scientists funded by the United States government created the Internet. I'm opposed to mindless statism but I'm also opposed to mindless anti-statism. Without federal funding there never, ever, would have been anything like the Internet. Some Internet libertarians seem to want to say "okay, I'll take this thing you created for me but I won't give anything back and I'll do what ever I want with it and I'll fight you if you don't like it." Argh.
yyyyyeeeeahh, no, probably not. You are surely right as far as that goes. But I'm sure there does come a point where you do x amount of tweaking to a particular distro to make it work for you and an x+1 point where it's worth doing your own. I've installed RedHat on enuf boxen to know that it takes a bit of time to get it right on our net, so no that is not trivial when you take this bit and multiply it x50. Not for everyone.
Re:Those are not PC's, those are industrial SBC's
on
Quad G4 Boards
·
· Score: 2
Sorry: couldn't resist.;) I do however think that getting decent computers that you can run outside in less than decent conditions is going to be a Big Thing. Like where I live, relative humidity rarely dips below 90%, salt spray is ubiquitous, and electronic componentss in non-air-conditioned areas last about, oh, a year if you use'm every day to dry them out. I'd want a nitrogen-packed, o-ring sealed computer even if I didn't take it outside. Good luck with the car.
Re:Those are not PC's, those are industrial SBC's
on
Quad G4 Boards
·
· Score: 2
I can think of a gzillion. Custom network, X, shell, and software package configuration all pre-done, kernels set up for particular machines or combinations of peripherals, stuff you *don't* want to put in every desktop machine but is typically included in the other distros (like httpd, ftpd...). The advantage goes up and up the more times you have to do it. Makes sense for a site where you have to administer > 50 machines. You aren't missing anything at all, really, it's just a matter of reducing the number of steps needed to configure a box.
Yeah. That answers my question in spades. The DOS 3 user interface was partially lifted from UNIX and VMS -- what came before UNIX was a heck of a lot more esoteric, believe me. You can look it up. Had you tried to work on a circa 1974 time-sharing system (with a tty that was really a teletype and had actual paper and ink in it), you would have looked at UNIX' user interface and said "Hallelujah! Insanely great!" not "How esoteric."
BTW this is kind of a neat thread, even the low-karma posts. It's fun to get a snapshot of the/. age and perspective distribution... thanks
Hmmm. Well, compared to interfaces on other time-share systems I used back in the pre-Unix days, Unix was quite the opposite of esoteric: it was downright straightforward and easy to understand. Hmm. Allow me to test a hypothesis please. What was the first computer you ever used?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Thank you! The web is supposed to make things easier for the end user -- it's not supposed to be an exclusive playground for geeks. And you know, I used to be a 'real working web designer' -- had a Web site back in mid-1994 -- but when it got to be more difficult to interpret a page of HTML than 10,000 lines of FORTRAN I gave up. That was about the time animated GIFs appeared, which just about finished it off for me.
Hahahahahaah! You Andover folks are more 1337 than I thought. Not only do you have uber-hacker John Walker on your team, you're running the site on a Univac 1107 -- say, you have any of those old 2 1/4 ton 100MB hard disks?
This is a bummer you can't find the Ringworld books. Actually (ahem, okay, this will date me) I did all my early science fiction reading in ye olde publicke library, but I bought the first two RW books when they came out. Anyway, check the libraries if the UB stores are no good.
DoH! Yep, Niven, for sure. Of course the Ringworld idea was not strictly Niven's, he got it from the works of Freeman Dyson. But that takes nothing away from him as a great source of ideas. And he should really sue Hollywood's ass off for all of those copycat asteroid movies. ;) Remember that scene in Lucifer's Hammer with the surfer in Santa Monica Bay riding the tsunami, up until he smacked into the Barrington Towers apartments? My wife used to live right on that block. I got the willies thinking about it. Of course the thought of LA being wiped out by a tsunami is comforting, means there's hope...
On the other hand, the first thing they should do is find out the skill of SF writers' forecasts. You need to weight Clarke's or Robinson's or Brin's (well maybe not Brin's but definitely Clarke's) ideas higher than, well, I won't name names. You get the idea.
Actually, I'm thinking it's time to go back to Archie and ftp.
SON(2) System calls SON(2)
NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE ERRORS CONFORMING TO RESTRICTIONS SEE ALSO Linux July 12, 1997 1still 42?
Yeah, I'm a smartass. It's just the weather, sorry. But the Royal Starship is clearly SR-71 inspired. Check these out http://www.starwars.com/vehicles/royal_starship/1_ bg.html http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/SR-71/Small /EC97-43902-1.jpg http://mercury.spaceports.com/~dstar/ships/queenst arship.jpg
O'Course. Sorry. Couldn't resist the temptation. ;)
Like hell. Every day!? Lessee, the last time I saw a LILO prompt was oh what the heck, 8 months ago? I had to bring the system down because of a hurricane.
Now if LILO loaded NT, well then everyone would see it just about every day... {cackle}
John Walker's Website contains information on the Salyut 3 (Almaz) station that apparently carried an automatic cannon (like on a MiG fighter). Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich (the ?4?th person to fly in space) claims he flew on the station with the weapon aboard but it was only fired once to test when no cosmonauts were on board. They had to hook the station's thrusters into the controls so they would fire simultaneously to offset the thrust of the gun. Wierd stuff eh? Strange but (apparently) true.
Kids these days. Jesus Christ.
It was. The idea goes way back and I think the BIS (British Interplanetary Society) had some of the earliest ideas about this.
Yes! Thank you! Finally some acknowledgment that academic scientists funded by the United States government created the Internet. I'm opposed to mindless statism but I'm also opposed to mindless anti-statism. Without federal funding there never, ever, would have been anything like the Internet. Some Internet libertarians seem to want to say "okay, I'll take this thing you created for me but I won't give anything back and I'll do what ever I want with it and I'll fight you if you don't like it." Argh.
You haven't been paying attention. ESR Invented the Internet, back when he was Al Gore. ;)
Yeah: especially if they get smart like decide to completely eliminate NT and replace it, so they'd have to do it a bunch of times.
yyyyyeeeeahh, no, probably not. You are surely right as far as that goes. But I'm sure there does come a point where you do x amount of tweaking to a particular distro to make it work for you and an x+1 point where it's worth doing your own. I've installed RedHat on enuf boxen to know that it takes a bit of time to get it right on our net, so no that is not trivial when you take this bit and multiply it x50. Not for everyone.
Sorry: couldn't resist. ;) I do however think that getting decent computers that you can run outside in less than decent conditions is going to be a Big Thing. Like where I live, relative humidity rarely dips below 90%, salt spray is ubiquitous, and electronic componentss in non-air-conditioned areas last about, oh, a year if you use'm every day to dry them out. I'd want a nitrogen-packed, o-ring sealed computer even if I didn't take it outside. Good luck with the car.
heheheh, I got a feeling that's not your room.
I can think of a gzillion. Custom network, X, shell, and software package configuration all pre-done, kernels set up for particular machines or combinations of peripherals, stuff you *don't* want to put in every desktop machine but is typically included in the other distros (like httpd, ftpd ...). The advantage goes up and up the more times you have to do it. Makes sense for a site where you have to administer > 50 machines. You aren't missing anything at all, really, it's just a matter of reducing the number of steps needed to configure a box.
BTW this is kind of a neat thread, even the low-karma posts. It's fun to get a snapshot of the /. age and perspective distribution ... thanks
Hmmm. Well, compared to interfaces on other time-share systems I used back in the pre-Unix days, Unix was quite the opposite of esoteric: it was downright straightforward and easy to understand. Hmm. Allow me to test a hypothesis please. What was the first computer you ever used?
Just kidding.