One aspect of Freenet is that the content reflects what the community puts out there. If you want to see stuff other than porn, put in up on the network. In fact, it will help to put even more stuff as long as it is of value to other people.
"If you make it, they will come" is all to important with Freenet.
Another point to make: If you view the porn and try to download it, you are also spreading this content to other nodes. If you don't want it on the network, don't view it or use it. Indeed, Freenet is very democratic in this sense, and you "vote" on each key each time you use it. These votes are actually used to determine if data is kept or discarded once the data store if filled, and old seldom used data is dumped routinely.
Oh? The person recieving the parking ticket doesn't want them, but you had better believe that the people who own the buildings where you have parked and got the ticket is glad they are issued. In areas where there is a high demand for parking, it is usually the building owners who go to the local city council meeting and ask for a street zoning change to put in a such-and-such parking restriction, whether that is in the form of downtown parking suggestions from the local chamber of commerce to an apartment building near the local football stadium (choose your definition of football as well... when in Rome....) that doesn't like people taking stalls from their residents during a game. There are usually very good reasons for parking tickets.
That said, I think that politicians are beginning to realize that there is a silent backlash against some of the current copyright legislation. When the RIAA decides to go after a nephew or daughter of a US congressman (which with the current number of filings, I doubt they are worried about checking the relations throughally of all of the defendants), maybe somebody will start paying attention. Especially when what is copied is some J.S. Bach played by a local High School Orchestra.
My wife just served as an election judge in the past election (mid-term congressional offices last year).
Yeah, they kept a ballot ID number to verify an audit trail to verify who voted and for the ballot count. If there ended up ballots that were used but not accounted for in the registration books, it could land the election judge in jail.
The information about the ballot ID was detached from the actual votes cast, and at the end of the day the total number of ballots had to match exactly the number of ballot IDs.
The actual vote counting was done by a total seperate group of people, and the ID wasn't anywhere available to link the ballot to the voter.
The purpose of this is to keep various groups (read this employers, union reps, la nuestro mafiosa, etc.) from taking adverse actions if they found out how you voted.
This is a total valid concern, and I don't know how you would detach this information electronically except after the results have been tablated, and even then it would have to be kept for an electronic audit in some kind of archive. The potential for fraud here is incredible.
The point is that many of us would prefer an XML version. The argument against this was that ASCII is a longer-lasting archive format. My counter-argument was that an ASCII version can trivially be produced from the XML both for archival purposes and for those who would prefer such a version.
I would have to agree that XML does offer some resonable options that make it much superior to plain ASCII test (or Latin-1 as has been discussed in this thread).
A point I want to make is that:
XML versions are being generated anyway. Try it out, it is there right now. And if you don't like how the XML conversion has occured, change it. This is open source/public domain and I'm sure the project could use some of your help. Add to this effort if you know XML. There is a big backlog of older Project Gutenberg texts that could use this work.
XML is just a recent idea. This is even new compared to other formats and system on the internet. As I said in my original post, I believe that XML is going to have the staying power necessary to outlast the next range of operating systems over the next 20-50 years and this isn't a classic EBDIC vs. ASCII issue. That said, Project Gutenberg was started well before XML (or SGML/HTML, etc.) and when a project gets to this sort of age it becomes necessary to look at changes in computing technology with a certain amount of jaundice.
I've been involved with the computer industry long enough myself that I feel the caution that Michael Hart has towards this issue is totally legitimate. Let's let XML prove itself and survive the next couple of rounds of new fads for data formatting, and if it makes it more than a decade (XML isn't that old), it might just make it longer.
While I actually took the time to sit down and learn how to read punchcards from just their hole patterns (which isn't too difficult compared to reading data files directly from a hex editor if you have to dig into why a program isn't reading a certain file correctly).
I have seen some punchcard machines come into the local thrift store a couple of years ago, I think it would be hard to find one now.
The nice advantage that punch cards have over just about every other data storage medium is that as long as the cards are preserved in archival conditions, bit rot is almost impossible. And the archival conditions are no different from perserving old books, which has a long tradition and history.
The only problem is that punch cards is that it takes so much room, especially compared to the amount of data actually stored.
Michael Hart has repeatedly made mention that he does not want to get caught up into the fad of the moment with text formatting issues, and that plain old ASCII is one constant that hasn't needed changing. Indeed, you can open up the original Declaration of Independence document with your standard web browser, and you can still read it just fine. I dare you to try and find any other data format that was commonly used 32 years ago that you can still read with current equipment.
With that said, I believe that XML is perhaps going to have the staying power that ASCII text has had for the past many years. And there are many volunteer projects that you can get involved with that do this including:
The HTML Writers Guild - Originally they were trying to convert all of the gutenberg texts to HTML, which has been admittedly a resonable standard for a good number of years. Currently they are now going to a version of XML with some standard headings for titles, copyright info (or lack thereof), chapter headings and so forth. More is on this website.
Project Gutenberg XMLThis is a group more dedicated to the XML, but has a very similar purpose.
The point here is that once the data is put into ASCII text format, projects like this can and are being done. If you really feel that you want to help with the effort, please join one of these. Also, at any time you can also take the Project Gutenberg files yourself and do this, but at least this gives you a forum to share your work once you are done.
So you are concurring with me that the GPL simply doesn't even cover this software interface issue. If you are using MySQL as a database engine (through an ODBC interface), this is indeed a murky issue.
On the positive side, I don't think that in this case the MySQL programmers mind you using it as the back-end data base engine for a propritary license software project (which is the only case which really matters anyway). Indeed, they actually encourage it, but I would strongly recommend (as I suggested in my previous post) that you get something written from the MySQL developers before actually deploying a propritary project (or better yet, before even starting). This may even be covered on their FAQ page. I'm not going to bother looking this up, but the principle holds for all other GPL'd projects.
This has nothing over what the GPL states, but it a legitimate reason to make a new version of the GPL (which has been talked about by various members of the Free Software Society). Because of the widespread use of the GPL now, making a change to this license is going to be a big deal. There is a versioning clause that allows you to upgrade to later versions of the license, so if this is spelled out by RMS & Co. then it will become clarified in a better way.
Consider the following. A programmer works for a company. The programmer creates a piece of software. Who owns the software? Is it the programmer or is it the company? The GPL and the German law on owner of the code conflicts here.
First of all, the question is not due to the GPL, who owns the software, but rather who owns the software regardless of license and contract agreements. As a software developer myself, there is (unfortunately) a body of software that I've written that can never be GPL'd due to the fact that I did it as a work for hire. I've also participated in GPL'd projects, but I try to keep a clear barrier between the two side and work real hard to keep cross-contamination to a minimum.
The GPL does NOT specify that software rights are given up when you contribute to a project. A well managed open source project (using licenses besides the GPL as well) will try to get a formal statment, with a handwritten signature sent by snail mail (prefered), copyright assignment for all code that is submitted to the project. This assignment is made to a collective project organization, or if no formal legal corporate body exists then it would be assigned directly to the project leader. BTW, I said well managed open source project here, but this applies to any software project, even with draconian licenses like the MS-EULA. Usually this is spelled out in the employment contract, however.
This assignment can also take the form (with the GPL) of the author simply giving a formal license to the project leader under the GPL. As has been pointed out before on numerous occasions, the GPL is merely one of many licenses that software can be released under. Indeed, many open source project are released under multiple licenses.
Getting back to the question: If the ownership of the software is in doubt, I think the GPL part of the question is moot. Even the GPL itself (in the informative, not legal section) suggests that if you do software development for hire where the ownership may be in dispute, please get a formally written disclaimer to any software that is written. Existing copyright laws should govern who actually owns a piece of software.
I'd list to respond to this next point too:
Also the GPL viral nature has limits. For example it is postulated that if you develop a larger piece of work and incorporate a GPL piece of work that maybe you do not need to GPL your work. The test is whether or not your application depends on that piece of software.
On a simple level, if you incorporate ANY GPL'd software in another piece of software (especialy as source code), you have two choices, and only two choices:
Release the new project/software/updated changes as GPL'd software.
Remove the GPL'd software from your project.
Because of this restriction, the LGPL was written to allow you to link to software written under the LGPL as a library. Only changes to the library itself need to be released under the LGPL.
I'll admit that the area gets murky when you deal with distributed run-time linked software modules (drivers, COM/DCOM, CORBA, dotNet, etc.), and even RMS doesn't really know where he stands on how GPL'd versions of these software modules (in a rare show of a lack of opinion on a software licensing issue). The problem here is that the GPL simply doesn't cover this issue at all in the license, and if you have a project like this it would be wise to make an addemdum to the licensing agreement spelling out exactly what you want and don't want from the software, or get that information from the authors of the software (if you are using GPL'd software in this fashion).
From a practical viewpoint, if a software package is seperately maintained, has a seperate distribution system, and is only linked at run-time by the application, you are probabally safe.
From my understanding of what happened, Hans Reiser has had some legal problems trying to prove ownership of a particular group of source code that he was involved with. Keep in mind that he is having to deal with intellectual property issues in both Russia and America. Not an easy task as they are two very different legal climates.
I wish I had a couple of moderator points right now, because this is a really interesting question that has a much bigger answer than a simple egotistical reply. It is a story that needs to be told in its own right, and Hans also wants programmers to be noted for the work they've done like published authors (like Shakespear, Tolkein, Heinlein, or Asmiov) rather than the current anonymous programing that most software currently has (with a small credit on page 3... usually only on games or software where the manager actually cares.)
Growing up "in the good 'ol days of computers", source code was more the normal way of distributing software. The thought that you couldn't tweak for local use any software was unheard of back then.
The legacy of this was when the IBM-PC was first released, there was still a BASIC compiler that was distributed with MS-DOS 1.0 (or PC-DOS as it was also called). The thought that you would EVER sell a computer without a compiler or interpreter was completely unheard of. Source code was provides for at least some software (even if it wasn't the entire OS).
Contrast that to now where if you go to WalMart (or your favorite discount general merchandise store) for a $500 PC, you can get all kinds of software, more games than you can shake a stick at (several isles). I dare you to find a compiler being sold in one of these stores (with the notable exception of GCC, being sold with Linux distros). Specialty computer stores are much more likely to have compilers for sale, but even these are dusty back shelf items. You'ld be lucky to find a current version. University bookstores are a little more likely to find one for sale, especially if the school has a strong CS program.
I guess what I'm saying is that with commercial software distributions doing binary only releases, it is almost impossible to get source code to even read.
Some of the best algorithms I found on my own reading other people's software and picked up some really good programming habits that I still have today. Some of the best gems I saw were in assembly (which is a dying art today unfortunately).
Current experience with working with source code would be some intern that is given 100,000 lines of code to debug because some programmer left a really buggy bunch of software that still doesn't do what the customer wanted. The original developer left (died, was fired, found greener pastures) and now you (as this fresh intern) have to figure out what is wrong and try to fix the bugs.
Unfortunately this is the worst possible experience for a young programmer to have to deal with because:
The programmer was very sloppy in the first place (probabally) and this is a bunch of kludgy code anyway.
There are few, if any comments saying what different parts of the software did
The reason this is being dumped on the intern is because the full-time programmers really have much better things to do than try to fix the ugly mess that every knows this software really is anyway.
If the software were clean and well-documented, it would be easy to fix and the intern would never see it.
Unfortunately, this way the intern learns how to write ugly code (because that is all they have been exposed to) and they are striken with perpetuating this same problem.
Fortunately, with the open source movement this is something that can be fixed for the industry in general. There is now a huge body of software that certainly can be used in educational settings, and it would be wise for a compiler class to dissect the internals of a GPL'd compiler, for example. This is the corpus of software needed to do this job right.
I'd also say that 90% to 99% of all software development is maintaining an existing software base. You may be allowed a "fresh clean sheet" to reimplement existing software in a new platform on rare occasions, but mostly it is tweaking existing software, usually to add a new feature or finish a promised feature that was stubbed in earlier.
You had the same machine configuration (not so important, but can affect compilation, including memory size and other drivers on your system)
You have exactly the same version of compiler, including service packs.
You have and know exactly what version each and every source file was used for the released version of software distributed.
Keep in mind that there are probabally some custom built software packages in this case just for this particular election. We are not talking about version 2.3.5 of The Sims, but rather a custom package for a specific client. I have quite a bit of experience doing things like this, and often time pressures to "get something out the door" are so huge that sometimes I have, in the past, compiled something, thrown it over to Q/A for a quick review, and gone right back to modifying the software to implement a new feature or work on a minor bug that (I hope) isn't going to be noticed by the customer.
If, and this is a big if, you have solid policy of archiving with a version control system (that is followed... as a disciplined developer I'm assuming that you are if you follow this) that totally ensures that every software module is checked in with source code, including all resource files and miscellaneous items that sometimes get missed when checked in (these sometimes get missed even in well documented projects).
I have had problems with problems like this all of the time even with open source projects where very active mailing lists are around. It is common for a developer to check something in with CVS only to have somebody else in the project to yell on the list "I have a broken file! Where is module XXXX.YYY that is found on the include path"
We are also talking some lawyers that are totally computer illeterate and don't care at all if two programs are completely identical in functionality. We are talking about somebody who is trying to convince a jury of ordinary people (not computer geeks) that two files are not completely identical. Unless you can get every checksum and byte count in the binary files to come out identical from the "release" file to the file that is compiled in the courtroom, there is no way that you can show that they are the same file.
Even something simple like a date stamp that gets put on the file internally by the compiler can even cause something like this to change.
In other words, I don't see how you can get this to be legally hold water unless you release the source code as well, which is much easier to prove hasn't been changed (or easier to show what has been changed to an uneducated jury). That is the whole point on why source code must be sent under circumstances like the election machines we are talking about.
I can tell you that if I were told that I had to provide source code for a product to compare against a compiled version for legal reasons (such as this case, where election results can be compared) in an after-the-fact case where binaries were produced by a compiler compared to the original...
I'd have to quit my job immediately (probabally not tell my employer that I'm quitting either, just not show up to work), grab my family, max my credit cards/home equity loans, donate my household furnishings to charity (like Salvation Army), and move to a non-extraditable country in a real hurry.
Really. I can't even imagine the legal BS you'd have to go under if something like this came up after an election was contested by powerful interests. If something like this had happened in Florida during the last U.S. Presidential election, people would have gone to jail, even if they had been completely honest and just "doing their job".
The best possible outcome in something like this is that the developer would be made the sacrificial lamb in the following witch hunt, given a felony criminal record, and serving a year or two in jail.
Well, the best outcome would be that the government would admit that it screwed up, and the company that made the elecion equipment would back the software developer throughout the whole legal mess that would still mean a couple of years of being a legal assistant rather than a software developer.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I think with some of the past employers that I've had I would have been dumped immediately and the blame fixed straight on me. I've had to deal with lawyers as it is because of contract disputs, and I can't even imagine what it would be like in a public firestorm where this would really be an issue.
Private members are design feature
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I'll have to put in my $0.02 here and totally agree with the parent message here.
When I design a class that I intend to be inherited from other classes, even when the other classes are being written by myself, I love to put in private members and methods simply to keep myself from overwriting critical memory locations or introducing new bugs that the base class didn't anticipate. On the whole it makes for a much cleaner final product.
On some very rare occasions I have gone back and "promoted" a method or member accessor (property... depends on the language you are talking about) for a specific implementation. (I.E. changing it from a private to a protected method, or even public if it is needed) When I've done this I've also reviewed the methods that I'm promoting and make a double check to see that inheriting classes aren't going to have any problems with the promotion.
If you are developing open source software this is just as critical and you should be just as cautious in doing this kind of promotion, with a full battery of software tests to verify the resulting changed base class as per your software testing requirements where you work.
The one problem with Microsoft is that there is some real harsh internal competition between various divisions, where developers deliberatly try to hide details even from other Microsoft developers (not to mention ordinary MS operating system users).
Many times there are problems where you very quickly hit the "end of the road" with Windows development when you are trying to tweak performance using the standard API calls. In some ways if you follow the official documentation you have to do so much pointer and handle calesthetics (I don't know a better word here) with a dozen or more different API calls that you really aren't even sure what you just accomplished. For example, write some code to identify the version information for any given application, as compiled into the application as a version information resource. Now try to get that from the current running process.
Often is it much easier to get data like this from an "undocumented" API call, or you can access resources that are otherwise unavailable simply because the current API library just won't give you the access you need. I'm not talking about security restrictions here, but deliberate obfuscation to keep you from accessing the hardware that you have access to on the PC in front of you that you have full administration privileges to. Sometimes calling these undocumented APIs is the only way to get the job done.
I think in this case with the Microsoft dotNet classes this is just more of the same.
Personally, if you want to get access to that kind of level, switch your development to Mono. That way you have direct access to the source code, you can distribute the DLLs that you've had to modify, and maybe give a little back to the software community.
For me, this is a clear example of ignorance from people who havn't had to work with archival of information. This topic (not connected with language preservation) of data rot has seemingly been done to death on Slashdot in the past, but it still is an important message. For those who are really geninuely researching this topic, please dig into the Slashdot archives for some wonderful gems of posts with some really good examples too.
I was working with a archivist at Utah State University and he was one of the lucky people who got to open a time capsule that was buried in 1950 to be opened for Y2K (there were several of these). One particularly interesting item was a recording that was done with a wire tape recorder. For those not familiar with the system, this is litterally a spool of wire wound around a wheel that looks like a bunch of soldering wire if you didn't know any better. In this case the archivist even was familiar with the equipment, because he was old enough to have used it back in the 1950's. His shock was trying to find some playback equipment for this media. Dispite the fact that hundreds of thousands of these machines were made, very few are left. Even in museums or other places that even had wire recording archives. In a couple of places who claimed to have the equipment, it ended up that the machines were broken and (of course) they couldn't find any spare parts. Sure, they could hire an electrical engineer to make replacement circuits for the vacuum tubes that were broken, but do you honestly think this is possible on a typical archive budget?
The happy story here was that a playback machine was found, and the recording transfered to CD-ROM Redbook audio.
As mentioned in this thread, how long is this medium going to last? Don't count on it for 50 years and I mean it.
I've also written software that has been stored in just about every format that you can think of. Some of the first programs that I wrote were stored on the old Hollerath punch cards, and I (still) have a few 5 1/4" floppy discs formatted for an Apple ][. In this case I have an old Apple ][ that I rescued from a local thrift store for $10, but I am still amazed how many generations of equipment computer hardware has gone through.
Floppy disc drives on most computers currently in use are a joke compared to what was made even ten years ago, partly because the manufacturer is no longer worried about data retrival quality, and the profit margins are so slim that they really can't keep any engineers to tweak and improve performance. This is even discounting discs that accidentally get too close to a strong magnetic field, rough temperature changes (from getting stored in a box in the car garage), or other hazards to archived data.
Frankly, I'm surprised that any of the data has survived. I got a couple of CD-R discs now that are more than five years old, and I'm also seeing a significant bit rot with those archives. Many of these newer CD-ROM drives just won't even read some of the files, or I have to take it from one machine to another just to find one that will read a couple of critical files I've had to pull off. And there is some data that I produced personally that I know I will never be able to retreive, even though I still have the physical media.
Of course, I bet some Hollywood lawyer probabally thought that Richard Hatch was the same guy as that guy on the TV Survivor show, thought to settle some of the problems with him, and smoothing stuff out.
This is beginning to be a bit off topic, so I won't spend too much time here.
I can't speak for all of the anti-Greenhouse Effect folks, but the biggest problem that I have with it is that the whole debate is too politically charged, with scientists doing research with pre-conceived results, questionable sponsors, and a focusing too narrowly one just one or two root causes to the problem. Don't blast me here, because I've spent too much time with real researchers fighting for grants, tenure, publication, conference presentations, and all of the other acedemic BS that almost makes a mockery of science. Despite all of that, there are people who are genuine in their desire to do scientific research, but a real question has to be asked if they are getting lost in the background noise of simple charlitains who are trying to find a way to get a quick buck...by faking science or simply being lazy because they don't care.
I also say that Mars is a good example of what is going to be required to prove the "Greenhouse Effect" on a planetary scale, because it will prove on a planetary scale what kinds of activity is going to be required in order to actually affect the environment. If it is going to be so difficult, then it will be hard on the Earth. The opposite is also going to be true.
In other words, terraforming Mars would be the real final proof that massive industrial activity really has an effect on the whole planet. And if we succeed at warming up Mars by 10-20 degrees, it will be a useful alternative to Earth if we really are screwing it up permanently.
This has been rehashed several times in Slashdot alone, so skip on a couple of paragraphs where I draw conclusions.
One of the problems with modern electronic devices is that the scaling dimensions are getting down to the quantum effect ranges (where atomic force and effects of quantum mechanics become much more important than a comparible simple circuit made for wiring up your home with 20 guage copper.)
At these scales you need to seriously start worrying about the effects of cosmic rays, and other high-energy particles. These are very common in environments found in space, but not usually common to find when in your little cubicle at work. The general environment that space craft need to work in (including manned spacecraft) is extreamly harsh to say the least. Even simple devices such as DRAM chips don't work nearly so well, and it is still common to be using core memory modules, simply because they work.
Because some of these much more robust electronic circuits were commonly built even for consumer electronics back in the 1970's, the computers for spacecraft still follow some of the manufacturing standards that were common back then. It is a different environment, and has different requirements.
There are electronic manufacturing lines that release equipment according to "MilSpec" requirements, or expanded requirements for harsher environments. Just for example, consumer electronic specifications will typically require that the components are operated between 10C to 40C, with the "MilSpec" requirements more like -20C to 60C. Individual equipment requirements will vary, but the essential thing to remember here is that the requirements are much tougher for these devices. To send things into space requires even tougher requirements than this.
***Conclusions***
In many ways, I think it may eventually be necessary for NASA or the various private groups that are building space vehicles to start running their own fab lines, or find some specialty electronics manufacturing company that is willing to run component lines for these tougher requirements. Of course, this is going to make $100,000 CPUs and $50,000 memory modules typical, because these are going to need to be special runs.
Only when commercial space travel is common will prices on electronic manufacturing for these requirements start to gain economies of scale to drop their prices. If the current space shuttles get rebuilt with new electronics (as BTW the Columbia was the most modern shuttle of the entire fleet with a completely redesigned piloting console compared to what Truly and Engle first flew in STS-1).
I'll have to agree with your assessment that it is amazing just how little it seemed that NASA even cared about the astronauts. They only wanted not to repeat the Challenger disaster, and sure enough, they didn't repeat the Challenger disaster...they just got some other new problem.
At least they aren't trying to rescue a doomed crew from the other side of the moon like they did wtih Apollo 13.
I would dare say that the time is {SHOUT}_NOW_{/SHOUT} rather than some time in the future to be engaged in human spaceflight.
First of all, we've already done it. With the Chinese and Indians getting into the game with their own indiginous spacecraft, and a resonalble assumption that the Europeans could do it (technically) if they didn't find it easier simply to use American or Russian technology, the simple capabilities for doing human spaceflight are spreading to other countries, and eventually _SOMEBODY_ will finally get out in space and discover just how rich the resources are for those willing to get out there and do it.
Second, I can't imagine any other human endeavor that has been studied to death. Well, possibly military armaments, but in terms of pure scientific research as to what it takes to get to Mars and the rest of the Solar System, the propulsion systems, the shielding, the habitats, life support systems, and more either are already being done or have been done.
I mean if a nuclear submarine can stay underwater for 3-6 months without even surfacing, and we can maintain a year-round research base on the South Pole, this is really no different than living on the Moon or Mars. Yes, there are going to be some differences, and some new technolgies that will have to be developed, but it won't be developed until people are actually out there and creating the need for these technologies to be developed.
Also, there is a famous statement that Low-earth orbit is half-way to the rest of the Solar System. I would have to agree with this statement, which is why in particular the Low-Earth orbit needs to be fully developed and manned. I believe that a major push should happen to get orbiting hotels, playgrounds, real space stations (not the ISS), factories, and other things that we now know how to do, and get people up there doing stuff we already know how to do. By having this kind of infrastructure, including orbiting research labs where probes are built in orbit, it will have a much bigger payoff in the future.
I would have to say though, that I am not quite sure that NASA activity towards manned spaceflight should continue. To continue to use existing shuttles may have to continue due to international agreements, but I think a gradual phasing out of the current shuttle system should be done... and sooner rather than later. Not only is the shuttle a 40 year old technology (its origin was in the 1960s), but there are numerous examples why it is sucking the lifeblood out of NASA. I think having NASA be a research agency instead of a (tax subsidized) trash hauling company would be tax dollars well spent. Scientific research and coming up with wild and crazy ideas are some of the things that NASA has done very well with in the past.
What should replace NASA's manned spaceflight program? There are a number of different options, including letting private industry take over, including the launching of all unmanned rockets to Low-Earth Orbit. There isn't really new technologies that need to be done there, or if there are, there needs to be financial incentives to get them developed rather than relying on a government monopoly to get them done. NASA certainly won't pay for the development of a $100 per pound to Low-Earth Orbit launch system.
I think a proposal by Jerry Pournell is a fantastic way of getting into space that doesn't compromise scientific research. Indeed, it will make robotic space probes much cheaper to prep and launch, and allow ordinary science professors at state univeristies that don't have huge budgets the opportunity to get their projects into space. I'd rather have a hundred space probes go to Mars and study the geology or possibility of life than one huge expensive mission like we are currently doing. And getting lots of people into Low-earth orbit is going to get that done.
The attitude of people who make this argument is so totally absurd that I don't even know where to begin. This is such an elitist short sighted viewpoint that I'm willing to throwaway karma here to get into a flame war over this whole concept.
Why is it short sighted to do only robotic exploration?
I'll try to list some reasons below:
Space is BIG - I can't do a better job of it than Douglas Adams, but I'll try to paraphrase in my own words in a pathetic attempt to say what that grand master said. Space is so huge that if the entire solar system could be compared to a grain of sand, the milky way galaxy alone could be compared to the entire Pacific Ocean. It is huge. And the only way we will really appreciate what is happening it to get out there and explore it for ourselves.
Robots don't vote - By this I mean that astronauts have built-in constituancy just by being there. A robot doesn't. Yeah, the people around the Jet Propulsion Lab might get a little upset if Congress would cut funding for robotic missions, but not much else. However, when an astronaut goes up, people who don't otherwise have any connection to NASA can identify with the person who "went up there". One of the smartest moves by NASA was to send up Senator Jake Garn, who together with John Glenn showed that becoming a United States Senator is one of the easiest ways to become an astronaut. And that is one vote that really counts where it is needed...the appropriations comittee.
Earth is doomed - There are a number of ways to put this, but in general staying around on this little rock is a sure way to make sure that mankind is going to be destroyed eventually. Cataclysmic events to happen, and one of the problems right now is that a small number of people can litterally destroy all advanced forms of life on this world of ours. This is putting all of our eggs in one basket. Not to mention that keeping people on this planet will only add to the pollution of this world, and stunt any future progress, no matter what way you describe progress.
Limited Fontiers - To restrict to only machines to explore space is to forever limit what frontiers we are actually going to visit. We will only be able to get information back as can communicate from the great distances that our probes can send it.
Limited Imagination - This goes together with the previous point, that robots lack imagination. On the Apollo 17 flight, Harrison Schmidt was walking around and had something catch his eye at the last moment when he was farthest from the Lunar lander. He picked it up and threw it into a bag because he didn't have enough time to really study it. That rock turned out to be one of the best geological (or should I say lunilogical) finds ever done by all of the Apollo missions. Experiments such as "How far does a golf ball fly on the moon?" or "How does a feather fall when next to a hammer?" would never be proposed in a serious robotic mission. We need to send people there who can get the feel of the environment and respond to it with human feeling, imagination, and mistakes. Yes mistakes.
New Ideas from a Fresh Perspective - just as America has introduced many new ideas into Eurpoe simply by having people live in America and sharing them with the rest of the world, I believe that having people living on the Moon and Mars will introduce many wonderful ideas simply by having to live in a different environment and face different challenges. Having all of the ideas for space exploration to come from the JPL is eventually going to run out of steam.
There is so much more, but I think this is a good start to a whole bunch of arguments that need to be made regarding a robotic-only push.
Don't get me wrong, I think that robotic missions are useful, and to use robots as scouts for eventual human exploration are going to a permanent part of space exploration, and have been from the beginning with Sputnik.
However, I want to be able to give my children and (future) grandchildren the opportunity to live and work in space, and I genuinely want to see some of my posterity to even be born somewhere that does not have an address on this Earth. When children are born on the moon and refuse to go back to the Earth (you mean that disgusting polluted place where you feel so heavy), I will feel that the dream of having people spread out among the start will be fulfilled. I'll take that frontier with my kids and spread out, and you can keep the Earth. Just don't go crying to me or my kids if the Earth gets destroyed.
The "American Dream" is that you can do any damn thing that you want to do, and it doesn't matter if you are from the most impoverished areas of America or are a member of one of the "American Nobility" families like the Kennedy, DuPont, Rockefeller families.
America was founded on the principle that you got a new start when you came here, and all the "nobility", "royalty", or "high born" bullshit that was found throughout Europe simply didn't apply in America. Instead, whatever it was that you wanted to do, as long as you put the effort into it and had some brains to get it to work, you can succeed.
I can count numerous examples. And for the most part Steve Jobs is able to do any damn thing that he cares to do.... and as I'm pointing out that this college dropout grabed a couple of friends and succeeded in doing something they loved to do, and got paid as well. This is the American Dream. I'll also admit that a certain amount of luck is required, but not nearly so much as winning the lottery, even the $100 pull lotto.
I know plenty of people who are completely free to do anything they want and live anywhere they want. Most of these people are not wealthy in the Ross Perot/Wm. Gates sense, but they have kids that they love and don't want anything else in their lives. I dare you to point out too many other places besides America where this was possible prior to 1776. And I would also challenge anybody to show that it was any other country besides America that pushed this ideology elsewhere in the world.
A big wad of cash is not a prerequisit to become President, but it certainly helps. It helps even more to know people who can give you additional cash to achieve this or any goal.
I saw this several months ago, and it was rather interesting some of the problems they encountered as well as some of the more interesting conclusions that they came up with. They tried to keep it a closed system and ran into many problems including problems with the coral reef and unhealthy CO2 levels.
Some of the scientific research done there litterally can't be done anywhere else (unless you built a similar facility). It is too bad that more money isn't being spent on pure science research like this.
I don't know the administration side of things for this project, however, and sometimes project like this tend to chew up lots of money on overhead/administrative costs, especially if they are managed by somebody who is not a particularly good adinistrator (as in a scientist promoted through the Peter Principle) or some MBA type who doesn't know anything about the research they are doing.
Government grants toward pure research are also drying up.... which is why something like the Mars mission would be particularly interesting.
Look, I'll admit that I still might not vote for the guy if he were to run, but his qualifications are much, much better than Hulk Hoagan (or even Jessie Ventura... who did hold elective office)
Here are the qualifications:
1) Name recognition. OK, ok, The Hulkster has this same qualification in this category. So does Timothy McVeigh for that matter. I won't go further.
2) Entreprenurial Maverick. He litterally followed the "American Dream" of grabbing a couple of friends and made his own wildly successful company. Of course, this is why he is famous, but this is the kind of result that even conservative Republicans appreciate.
3) Turned around a dying company and restored it to good health. I know there are a lot of factors that have kept Apple from disappearing like almost all of the computer companies that were around when Apple first started (including DEC, Wang, Control Data, Commodore, Atari, and others). But the fact that Apple is still around and indeed very relevant force that is still influencing the computer industry (with an independent OS to boot!) Steve Job's role in the restoration of Apple is nothing short of a miracle.
4) Plugged into the entertainment industry. Particularly with his involvement in Pixar. The Hollywood entertainment industry has become increasingly active politically across the spectrum, from Charleton Heston and Ronald Reagan to Martin Sheen and Barbra Streisand. Like it or not, they are a major force with the anti-war effort to stop Bush from going into Iraq. They are also a source for the lifeblood of politics:
$$$$Money$$$$
Yes, Steve Jobs has some considerable wealth, but not enough to do a Ross Perot style election campaign... nor the drive to spend that much of his own money for his personal ego.
5) Politically Independent. This really is a big deal, because so many politicians need to follow "the party line" that they can't really go off on their own. Steve Jobs would be able to follow his own heart, and has demonstrated in the past that he doesn't really care what other people think.
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Honestly, I think it would be better for him to run for governor of California (Imagine a contest between Steve Jobs and Arnold Schwarzenager.... now that would be a real election. BTW, Arnie is thinking of running as a Republican candidate in the next gubinatorial election there)
If Jobs could turn around the California economy after Grey has trashed the state, he would be an instant candidate for President.
There is a vocal minority on/. that is very defensive about the fact that Gore did not win the 2000 US Presidential election. More to the point, Bush knew the rules and was a very observant politician knowing that it wasn't popular votes but rather electorial votes that got him elected. He decided to go along with that strategy and won.
The whole thing in Florida wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been able to get so many other electorial votes from other states (think Mondale in 1984).
In regards to the electorial college being disbanded, I think there are some very good reasons to keep it around:
1) Just in case of a serious accident. If the president-elect were to die somehow before being sworn into office, there is no constitutional provision to deal with who should take his place. The electorial college would then have a free-for-all in deciding a new president (although I would guess that it would probabally be from the same political party as the president-elect in this case).
2) The electoral college gives smaller states a larger voice in the presidential elections. A voter in Wyoming, for instance, has three times as much voting power (or more it could be argued) than a voter in California or Texas. That is the way it was set up when the constitution was written, because states like Deleware and Connecticut felt they were going to be left out whenever a federal election was going to occur.
BTW, I know this is getting off the topic of the ElcomSoft trial, but I want to make a point here.
There are a number of things to consider with having many people owning handguns for defense in their homes:
1) There are many people who successfully use handguns to stop "home invasion" crimes. One problem with this is that the number is not really kept in the same group of statistics that are kept for felony crimes (murder, robbery, rape, etc.) This makes the comparison between the number of people stopped vs. the number of people who die from accidental firearm discharge a very hard number to come up with.
2) The deterent effect of handguns. To be honest here, you need to keep in mind that potential home burglers are not going to even want to take a chance of getting shot at if they can help it. If they know that, for example, New York State bans handguns and for that matter all firearms, and New Jersey let's all their citizens use whatever guns they want, there will also be a direct correlation with the amount of crime done in both states.
So please define what you mean by "most people end up getting shot by their own handguns". That implies more than 50% of all handgun owners are going to end up shooting themselves with them. I just don't see that happening.
Slashdot Mirror
One aspect of Freenet is that the content reflects what the community puts out there. If you want to see stuff other than porn, put in up on the network. In fact, it will help to put even more stuff as long as it is of value to other people.
"If you make it, they will come" is all to important with Freenet.
Another point to make: If you view the porn and try to download it, you are also spreading this content to other nodes. If you don't want it on the network, don't view it or use it. Indeed, Freenet is very democratic in this sense, and you "vote" on each key each time you use it. These votes are actually used to determine if data is kept or discarded once the data store if filled, and old seldom used data is dumped routinely.
Oh? The person recieving the parking ticket doesn't want them, but you had better believe that the people who own the buildings where you have parked and got the ticket is glad they are issued. In areas where there is a high demand for parking, it is usually the building owners who go to the local city council meeting and ask for a street zoning change to put in a such-and-such parking restriction, whether that is in the form of downtown parking suggestions from the local chamber of commerce to an apartment building near the local football stadium (choose your definition of football as well... when in Rome....) that doesn't like people taking stalls from their residents during a game. There are usually very good reasons for parking tickets.
That said, I think that politicians are beginning to realize that there is a silent backlash against some of the current copyright legislation. When the RIAA decides to go after a nephew or daughter of a US congressman (which with the current number of filings, I doubt they are worried about checking the relations throughally of all of the defendants), maybe somebody will start paying attention. Especially when what is copied is some J.S. Bach played by a local High School Orchestra.
My wife just served as an election judge in the past election (mid-term congressional offices last year).
Yeah, they kept a ballot ID number to verify an audit trail to verify who voted and for the ballot count. If there ended up ballots that were used but not accounted for in the registration books, it could land the election judge in jail.
The information about the ballot ID was detached from the actual votes cast, and at the end of the day the total number of ballots had to match exactly the number of ballot IDs.
The actual vote counting was done by a total seperate group of people, and the ID wasn't anywhere available to link the ballot to the voter.
The purpose of this is to keep various groups (read this employers, union reps, la nuestro mafiosa, etc.) from taking adverse actions if they found out how you voted.
This is a total valid concern, and I don't know how you would detach this information electronically except after the results have been tablated, and even then it would have to be kept for an electronic audit in some kind of archive. The potential for fraud here is incredible.
I would have to agree that XML does offer some resonable options that make it much superior to plain ASCII test (or Latin-1 as has been discussed in this thread).
A point I want to make is that:
I've been involved with the computer industry long enough myself that I feel the caution that Michael Hart has towards this issue is totally legitimate. Let's let XML prove itself and survive the next couple of rounds of new fads for data formatting, and if it makes it more than a decade (XML isn't that old), it might just make it longer.
While I actually took the time to sit down and learn how to read punchcards from just their hole patterns (which isn't too difficult compared to reading data files directly from a hex editor if you have to dig into why a program isn't reading a certain file correctly).
I have seen some punchcard machines come into the local thrift store a couple of years ago, I think it would be hard to find one now.
The nice advantage that punch cards have over just about every other data storage medium is that as long as the cards are preserved in archival conditions, bit rot is almost impossible. And the archival conditions are no different from perserving old books, which has a long tradition and history.
The only problem is that punch cards is that it takes so much room, especially compared to the amount of data actually stored.
Michael Hart has repeatedly made mention that he does not want to get caught up into the fad of the moment with text formatting issues, and that plain old ASCII is one constant that hasn't needed changing. Indeed, you can open up the original Declaration of Independence document with your standard web browser, and you can still read it just fine. I dare you to try and find any other data format that was commonly used 32 years ago that you can still read with current equipment.
With that said, I believe that XML is perhaps going to have the staying power that ASCII text has had for the past many years. And there are many volunteer projects that you can get involved with that do this including:
The HTML Writers Guild - Originally they were trying to convert all of the gutenberg texts to HTML, which has been admittedly a resonable standard for a good number of years. Currently they are now going to a version of XML with some standard headings for titles, copyright info (or lack thereof), chapter headings and so forth. More is on this website.
Project Gutenberg XMLThis is a group more dedicated to the XML, but has a very similar purpose.
The point here is that once the data is put into ASCII text format, projects like this can and are being done. If you really feel that you want to help with the effort, please join one of these. Also, at any time you can also take the Project Gutenberg files yourself and do this, but at least this gives you a forum to share your work once you are done.
So you are concurring with me that the GPL simply doesn't even cover this software interface issue. If you are using MySQL as a database engine (through an ODBC interface), this is indeed a murky issue.
On the positive side, I don't think that in this case the MySQL programmers mind you using it as the back-end data base engine for a propritary license software project (which is the only case which really matters anyway). Indeed, they actually encourage it, but I would strongly recommend (as I suggested in my previous post) that you get something written from the MySQL developers before actually deploying a propritary project (or better yet, before even starting). This may even be covered on their FAQ page. I'm not going to bother looking this up, but the principle holds for all other GPL'd projects.
This has nothing over what the GPL states, but it a legitimate reason to make a new version of the GPL (which has been talked about by various members of the Free Software Society). Because of the widespread use of the GPL now, making a change to this license is going to be a big deal. There is a versioning clause that allows you to upgrade to later versions of the license, so if this is spelled out by RMS & Co. then it will become clarified in a better way.
First of all, the question is not due to the GPL, who owns the software, but rather who owns the software regardless of license and contract agreements. As a software developer myself, there is (unfortunately) a body of software that I've written that can never be GPL'd due to the fact that I did it as a work for hire. I've also participated in GPL'd projects, but I try to keep a clear barrier between the two side and work real hard to keep cross-contamination to a minimum.
The GPL does NOT specify that software rights are given up when you contribute to a project. A well managed open source project (using licenses besides the GPL as well) will try to get a formal statment, with a handwritten signature sent by snail mail (prefered), copyright assignment for all code that is submitted to the project. This assignment is made to a collective project organization, or if no formal legal corporate body exists then it would be assigned directly to the project leader. BTW, I said well managed open source project here, but this applies to any software project, even with draconian licenses like the MS-EULA. Usually this is spelled out in the employment contract, however.
This assignment can also take the form (with the GPL) of the author simply giving a formal license to the project leader under the GPL. As has been pointed out before on numerous occasions, the GPL is merely one of many licenses that software can be released under. Indeed, many open source project are released under multiple licenses.
Getting back to the question: If the ownership of the software is in doubt, I think the GPL part of the question is moot. Even the GPL itself (in the informative, not legal section) suggests that if you do software development for hire where the ownership may be in dispute, please get a formally written disclaimer to any software that is written. Existing copyright laws should govern who actually owns a piece of software.
I'd list to respond to this next point too:
On a simple level, if you incorporate ANY GPL'd software in another piece of software (especialy as source code), you have two choices, and only two choices:
Because of this restriction, the LGPL was written to allow you to link to software written under the LGPL as a library. Only changes to the library itself need to be released under the LGPL.
I'll admit that the area gets murky when you deal with distributed run-time linked software modules (drivers, COM/DCOM, CORBA, dotNet, etc.), and even RMS doesn't really know where he stands on how GPL'd versions of these software modules (in a rare show of a lack of opinion on a software licensing issue). The problem here is that the GPL simply doesn't cover this issue at all in the license, and if you have a project like this it would be wise to make an addemdum to the licensing agreement spelling out exactly what you want and don't want from the software, or get that information from the authors of the software (if you are using GPL'd software in this fashion).
From a practical viewpoint, if a software package is seperately maintained, has a seperate distribution system, and is only linked at run-time by the application, you are probabally safe.
From my understanding of what happened, Hans Reiser has had some legal problems trying to prove ownership of a particular group of source code that he was involved with. Keep in mind that he is having to deal with intellectual property issues in both Russia and America. Not an easy task as they are two very different legal climates.
I wish I had a couple of moderator points right now, because this is a really interesting question that has a much bigger answer than a simple egotistical reply. It is a story that needs to be told in its own right, and Hans also wants programmers to be noted for the work they've done like published authors (like Shakespear, Tolkein, Heinlein, or Asmiov) rather than the current anonymous programing that most software currently has (with a small credit on page 3... usually only on games or software where the manager actually cares.)
The legacy of this was when the IBM-PC was first released, there was still a BASIC compiler that was distributed with MS-DOS 1.0 (or PC-DOS as it was also called). The thought that you would EVER sell a computer without a compiler or interpreter was completely unheard of. Source code was provides for at least some software (even if it wasn't the entire OS).
Contrast that to now where if you go to WalMart (or your favorite discount general merchandise store) for a $500 PC, you can get all kinds of software, more games than you can shake a stick at (several isles). I dare you to find a compiler being sold in one of these stores (with the notable exception of GCC, being sold with Linux distros). Specialty computer stores are much more likely to have compilers for sale, but even these are dusty back shelf items. You'ld be lucky to find a current version. University bookstores are a little more likely to find one for sale, especially if the school has a strong CS program.
I guess what I'm saying is that with commercial software distributions doing binary only releases, it is almost impossible to get source code to even read.
Some of the best algorithms I found on my own reading other people's software and picked up some really good programming habits that I still have today. Some of the best gems I saw were in assembly (which is a dying art today unfortunately).
Current experience with working with source code would be some intern that is given 100,000 lines of code to debug because some programmer left a really buggy bunch of software that still doesn't do what the customer wanted. The original developer left (died, was fired, found greener pastures) and now you (as this fresh intern) have to figure out what is wrong and try to fix the bugs.
Unfortunately this is the worst possible experience for a young programmer to have to deal with because:
If the software were clean and well-documented, it would be easy to fix and the intern would never see it.
Unfortunately, this way the intern learns how to write ugly code (because that is all they have been exposed to) and they are striken with perpetuating this same problem.
Fortunately, with the open source movement this is something that can be fixed for the industry in general. There is now a huge body of software that certainly can be used in educational settings, and it would be wise for a compiler class to dissect the internals of a GPL'd compiler, for example. This is the corpus of software needed to do this job right.
I'd also say that 90% to 99% of all software development is maintaining an existing software base. You may be allowed a "fresh clean sheet" to reimplement existing software in a new platform on rare occasions, but mostly it is tweaking existing software, usually to add a new feature or finish a promised feature that was stubbed in earlier.
You had the same machine configuration (not so important, but can affect compilation, including memory size and other drivers on your system)
You have exactly the same version of compiler, including service packs.
You have and know exactly what version each and every source file was used for the released version of software distributed.
Keep in mind that there are probabally some custom built software packages in this case just for this particular election. We are not talking about version 2.3.5 of The Sims, but rather a custom package for a specific client. I have quite a bit of experience doing things like this, and often time pressures to "get something out the door" are so huge that sometimes I have, in the past, compiled something, thrown it over to Q/A for a quick review, and gone right back to modifying the software to implement a new feature or work on a minor bug that (I hope) isn't going to be noticed by the customer.
If, and this is a big if, you have solid policy of archiving with a version control system (that is followed... as a disciplined developer I'm assuming that you are if you follow this) that totally ensures that every software module is checked in with source code, including all resource files and miscellaneous items that sometimes get missed when checked in (these sometimes get missed even in well documented projects).
I have had problems with problems like this all of the time even with open source projects where very active mailing lists are around. It is common for a developer to check something in with CVS only to have somebody else in the project to yell on the list "I have a broken file! Where is module XXXX.YYY that is found on the include path"
We are also talking some lawyers that are totally computer illeterate and don't care at all if two programs are completely identical in functionality. We are talking about somebody who is trying to convince a jury of ordinary people (not computer geeks) that two files are not completely identical. Unless you can get every checksum and byte count in the binary files to come out identical from the "release" file to the file that is compiled in the courtroom, there is no way that you can show that they are the same file.
Even something simple like a date stamp that gets put on the file internally by the compiler can even cause something like this to change.
In other words, I don't see how you can get this to be legally hold water unless you release the source code as well, which is much easier to prove hasn't been changed (or easier to show what has been changed to an uneducated jury). That is the whole point on why source code must be sent under circumstances like the election machines we are talking about.
I can tell you that if I were told that I had to provide source code for a product to compare against a compiled version for legal reasons (such as this case, where election results can be compared) in an after-the-fact case where binaries were produced by a compiler compared to the original...
I'd have to quit my job immediately (probabally not tell my employer that I'm quitting either, just not show up to work), grab my family, max my credit cards/home equity loans, donate my household furnishings to charity (like Salvation Army), and move to a non-extraditable country in a real hurry.
Really. I can't even imagine the legal BS you'd have to go under if something like this came up after an election was contested by powerful interests. If something like this had happened in Florida during the last U.S. Presidential election, people would have gone to jail, even if they had been completely honest and just "doing their job".
The best possible outcome in something like this is that the developer would be made the sacrificial lamb in the following witch hunt, given a felony criminal record, and serving a year or two in jail.
Well, the best outcome would be that the government would admit that it screwed up, and the company that made the elecion equipment would back the software developer throughout the whole legal mess that would still mean a couple of years of being a legal assistant rather than a software developer.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I think with some of the past employers that I've had I would have been dumped immediately and the blame fixed straight on me. I've had to deal with lawyers as it is because of contract disputs, and I can't even imagine what it would be like in a public firestorm where this would really be an issue.
I'll have to put in my $0.02 here and totally agree with the parent message here.
When I design a class that I intend to be inherited from other classes, even when the other classes are being written by myself, I love to put in private members and methods simply to keep myself from overwriting critical memory locations or introducing new bugs that the base class didn't anticipate. On the whole it makes for a much cleaner final product.
On some very rare occasions I have gone back and "promoted" a method or member accessor (property... depends on the language you are talking about) for a specific implementation. (I.E. changing it from a private to a protected method, or even public if it is needed) When I've done this I've also reviewed the methods that I'm promoting and make a double check to see that inheriting classes aren't going to have any problems with the promotion.
If you are developing open source software this is just as critical and you should be just as cautious in doing this kind of promotion, with a full battery of software tests to verify the resulting changed base class as per your software testing requirements where you work.
The one problem with Microsoft is that there is some real harsh internal competition between various divisions, where developers deliberatly try to hide details even from other Microsoft developers (not to mention ordinary MS operating system users).
Many times there are problems where you very quickly hit the "end of the road" with Windows development when you are trying to tweak performance using the standard API calls. In some ways if you follow the official documentation you have to do so much pointer and handle calesthetics (I don't know a better word here) with a dozen or more different API calls that you really aren't even sure what you just accomplished. For example, write some code to identify the version information for any given application, as compiled into the application as a version information resource. Now try to get that from the current running process.
Often is it much easier to get data like this from an "undocumented" API call, or you can access resources that are otherwise unavailable simply because the current API library just won't give you the access you need. I'm not talking about security restrictions here, but deliberate obfuscation to keep you from accessing the hardware that you have access to on the PC in front of you that you have full administration privileges to. Sometimes calling these undocumented APIs is the only way to get the job done.
I think in this case with the Microsoft dotNet classes this is just more of the same.
Personally, if you want to get access to that kind of level, switch your development to Mono. That way you have direct access to the source code, you can distribute the DLLs that you've had to modify, and maybe give a little back to the software community.
For me, this is a clear example of ignorance from people who havn't had to work with archival of information. This topic (not connected with language preservation) of data rot has seemingly been done to death on Slashdot in the past, but it still is an important message. For those who are really geninuely researching this topic, please dig into the Slashdot archives for some wonderful gems of posts with some really good examples too.
I was working with a archivist at Utah State University and he was one of the lucky people who got to open a time capsule that was buried in 1950 to be opened for Y2K (there were several of these). One particularly interesting item was a recording that was done with a wire tape recorder. For those not familiar with the system, this is litterally a spool of wire wound around a wheel that looks like a bunch of soldering wire if you didn't know any better. In this case the archivist even was familiar with the equipment, because he was old enough to have used it back in the 1950's. His shock was trying to find some playback equipment for this media. Dispite the fact that hundreds of thousands of these machines were made, very few are left. Even in museums or other places that even had wire recording archives. In a couple of places who claimed to have the equipment, it ended up that the machines were broken and (of course) they couldn't find any spare parts. Sure, they could hire an electrical engineer to make replacement circuits for the vacuum tubes that were broken, but do you honestly think this is possible on a typical archive budget?
The happy story here was that a playback machine was found, and the recording transfered to CD-ROM Redbook audio.
As mentioned in this thread, how long is this medium going to last? Don't count on it for 50 years and I mean it.
I've also written software that has been stored in just about every format that you can think of. Some of the first programs that I wrote were stored on the old Hollerath punch cards, and I (still) have a few 5 1/4" floppy discs formatted for an Apple ][. In this case I have an old Apple ][ that I rescued from a local thrift store for $10, but I am still amazed how many generations of equipment computer hardware has gone through.
Floppy disc drives on most computers currently in use are a joke compared to what was made even ten years ago, partly because the manufacturer is no longer worried about data retrival quality, and the profit margins are so slim that they really can't keep any engineers to tweak and improve performance. This is even discounting discs that accidentally get too close to a strong magnetic field, rough temperature changes (from getting stored in a box in the car garage), or other hazards to archived data.
Frankly, I'm surprised that any of the data has survived. I got a couple of CD-R discs now that are more than five years old, and I'm also seeing a significant bit rot with those archives. Many of these newer CD-ROM drives just won't even read some of the files, or I have to take it from one machine to another just to find one that will read a couple of critical files I've had to pull off. And there is some data that I produced personally that I know I will never be able to retreive, even though I still have the physical media.
This really is a big deal.
Of course, I bet some Hollywood lawyer probabally thought that Richard Hatch was the same guy as that guy on the TV Survivor show, thought to settle some of the problems with him, and smoothing stuff out.
This is beginning to be a bit off topic, so I won't spend too much time here.
I can't speak for all of the anti-Greenhouse Effect folks, but the biggest problem that I have with it is that the whole debate is too politically charged, with scientists doing research with pre-conceived results, questionable sponsors, and a focusing too narrowly one just one or two root causes to the problem. Don't blast me here, because I've spent too much time with real researchers fighting for grants, tenure, publication, conference presentations, and all of the other acedemic BS that almost makes a mockery of science. Despite all of that, there are people who are genuine in their desire to do scientific research, but a real question has to be asked if they are getting lost in the background noise of simple charlitains who are trying to find a way to get a quick buck...by faking science or simply being lazy because they don't care.
I also say that Mars is a good example of what is going to be required to prove the "Greenhouse Effect" on a planetary scale, because it will prove on a planetary scale what kinds of activity is going to be required in order to actually affect the environment. If it is going to be so difficult, then it will be hard on the Earth. The opposite is also going to be true.
In other words, terraforming Mars would be the real final proof that massive industrial activity really has an effect on the whole planet. And if we succeed at warming up Mars by 10-20 degrees, it will be a useful alternative to Earth if we really are screwing it up permanently.
This has been rehashed several times in Slashdot alone, so skip on a couple of paragraphs where I draw conclusions.
One of the problems with modern electronic devices is that the scaling dimensions are getting down to the quantum effect ranges (where atomic force and effects of quantum mechanics become much more important than a comparible simple circuit made for wiring up your home with 20 guage copper.)
At these scales you need to seriously start worrying about the effects of cosmic rays, and other high-energy particles. These are very common in environments found in space, but not usually common to find when in your little cubicle at work. The general environment that space craft need to work in (including manned spacecraft) is extreamly harsh to say the least. Even simple devices such as DRAM chips don't work nearly so well, and it is still common to be using core memory modules, simply because they work.
Because some of these much more robust electronic circuits were commonly built even for consumer electronics back in the 1970's, the computers for spacecraft still follow some of the manufacturing standards that were common back then. It is a different environment, and has different requirements.
There are electronic manufacturing lines that release equipment according to "MilSpec" requirements, or expanded requirements for harsher environments. Just for example, consumer electronic specifications will typically require that the components are operated between 10C to 40C, with the "MilSpec" requirements more like -20C to 60C. Individual equipment requirements will vary, but the essential thing to remember here is that the requirements are much tougher for these devices. To send things into space requires even tougher requirements than this.
***Conclusions***
In many ways, I think it may eventually be necessary for NASA or the various private groups that are building space vehicles to start running their own fab lines, or find some specialty electronics manufacturing company that is willing to run component lines for these tougher requirements. Of course, this is going to make $100,000 CPUs and $50,000 memory modules typical, because these are going to need to be special runs.
Only when commercial space travel is common will prices on electronic manufacturing for these requirements start to gain economies of scale to drop their prices. If the current space shuttles get rebuilt with new electronics (as BTW the Columbia was the most modern shuttle of the entire fleet with a completely redesigned piloting console compared to what Truly and Engle first flew in STS-1).
I'll have to agree with your assessment that it is amazing just how little it seemed that NASA even cared about the astronauts. They only wanted not to repeat the Challenger disaster, and sure enough, they didn't repeat the Challenger disaster...they just got some other new problem.
At least they aren't trying to rescue a doomed crew from the other side of the moon like they did wtih Apollo 13.
I would dare say that the time is {SHOUT}_NOW_{/SHOUT} rather than some time in the future to be engaged in human spaceflight.
First of all, we've already done it. With the Chinese and Indians getting into the game with their own indiginous spacecraft, and a resonalble assumption that the Europeans could do it (technically) if they didn't find it easier simply to use American or Russian technology, the simple capabilities for doing human spaceflight are spreading to other countries, and eventually _SOMEBODY_ will finally get out in space and discover just how rich the resources are for those willing to get out there and do it.
Second, I can't imagine any other human endeavor that has been studied to death. Well, possibly military armaments, but in terms of pure scientific research as to what it takes to get to Mars and the rest of the Solar System, the propulsion systems, the shielding, the habitats, life support systems, and more either are already being done or have been done.
I mean if a nuclear submarine can stay underwater for 3-6 months without even surfacing, and we can maintain a year-round research base on the South Pole, this is really no different than living on the Moon or Mars. Yes, there are going to be some differences, and some new technolgies that will have to be developed, but it won't be developed until people are actually out there and creating the need for these technologies to be developed.
Also, there is a famous statement that Low-earth orbit is half-way to the rest of the Solar System. I would have to agree with this statement, which is why in particular the Low-Earth orbit needs to be fully developed and manned. I believe that a major push should happen to get orbiting hotels, playgrounds, real space stations (not the ISS), factories, and other things that we now know how to do, and get people up there doing stuff we already know how to do. By having this kind of infrastructure, including orbiting research labs where probes are built in orbit, it will have a much bigger payoff in the future.
I would have to say though, that I am not quite sure that NASA activity towards manned spaceflight should continue. To continue to use existing shuttles may have to continue due to international agreements, but I think a gradual phasing out of the current shuttle system should be done... and sooner rather than later. Not only is the shuttle a 40 year old technology (its origin was in the 1960s), but there are numerous examples why it is sucking the lifeblood out of NASA. I think having NASA be a research agency instead of a (tax subsidized) trash hauling company would be tax dollars well spent. Scientific research and coming up with wild and crazy ideas are some of the things that NASA has done very well with in the past.
What should replace NASA's manned spaceflight program? There are a number of different options, including letting private industry take over, including the launching of all unmanned rockets to Low-Earth Orbit. There isn't really new technologies that need to be done there, or if there are, there needs to be financial incentives to get them developed rather than relying on a government monopoly to get them done. NASA certainly won't pay for the development of a $100 per pound to Low-Earth Orbit launch system.
I think a proposal by Jerry Pournell is a fantastic way of getting into space that doesn't compromise scientific research. Indeed, it will make robotic space probes much cheaper to prep and launch, and allow ordinary science professors at state univeristies that don't have huge budgets the opportunity to get their projects into space. I'd rather have a hundred space probes go to Mars and study the geology or possibility of life than one huge expensive mission like we are currently doing. And getting lots of people into Low-earth orbit is going to get that done.
Why is it short sighted to do only robotic exploration?
I'll try to list some reasons below:
There is so much more, but I think this is a good start to a whole bunch of arguments that need to be made regarding a robotic-only push.
Don't get me wrong, I think that robotic missions are useful, and to use robots as scouts for eventual human exploration are going to a permanent part of space exploration, and have been from the beginning with Sputnik.
However, I want to be able to give my children and (future) grandchildren the opportunity to live and work in space, and I genuinely want to see some of my posterity to even be born somewhere that does not have an address on this Earth. When children are born on the moon and refuse to go back to the Earth (you mean that disgusting polluted place where you feel so heavy), I will feel that the dream of having people spread out among the start will be fulfilled. I'll take that frontier with my kids and spread out, and you can keep the Earth. Just don't go crying to me or my kids if the Earth gets destroyed.
I totally agree. This storing is going to have some serious legs, and you will be hearing about it for the next month.
At least the planned daily press briefings are going to be interesting for the next little bit.
I just gotta reply here to this.
The "American Dream" is that you can do any damn thing that you want to do, and it doesn't matter if you are from the most impoverished areas of America or are a member of one of the "American Nobility" families like the Kennedy, DuPont, Rockefeller families.
America was founded on the principle that you got a new start when you came here, and all the "nobility", "royalty", or "high born" bullshit that was found throughout Europe simply didn't apply in America. Instead, whatever it was that you wanted to do, as long as you put the effort into it and had some brains to get it to work, you can succeed.
I can count numerous examples. And for the most part Steve Jobs is able to do any damn thing that he cares to do.... and as I'm pointing out that this college dropout grabed a couple of friends and succeeded in doing something they loved to do, and got paid as well. This is the American Dream. I'll also admit that a certain amount of luck is required, but not nearly so much as winning the lottery, even the $100 pull lotto.
I know plenty of people who are completely free to do anything they want and live anywhere they want. Most of these people are not wealthy in the Ross Perot/Wm. Gates sense, but they have kids that they love and don't want anything else in their lives. I dare you to point out too many other places besides America where this was possible prior to 1776. And I would also challenge anybody to show that it was any other country besides America that pushed this ideology elsewhere in the world.
A big wad of cash is not a prerequisit to become President, but it certainly helps. It helps even more to know people who can give you additional cash to achieve this or any goal.
If you want to see some interesting results from the original experiment, there is a PBS TV episode that covered it in detail.
e re /
Look at:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/intimatestrangers/biosph
for the program information.
I saw this several months ago, and it was rather interesting some of the problems they encountered as well as some of the more interesting conclusions that they came up with. They tried to keep it a closed system and ran into many problems including problems with the coral reef and unhealthy CO2 levels.
Some of the scientific research done there litterally can't be done anywhere else (unless you built a similar facility). It is too bad that more money isn't being spent on pure science research like this.
I don't know the administration side of things for this project, however, and sometimes project like this tend to chew up lots of money on overhead/administrative costs, especially if they are managed by somebody who is not a particularly good adinistrator (as in a scientist promoted through the Peter Principle) or some MBA type who doesn't know anything about the research they are doing.
Government grants toward pure research are also drying up.... which is why something like the Mars mission would be particularly interesting.
Look, I'll admit that I still might not vote for the guy if he were to run, but his qualifications are much, much better than Hulk Hoagan (or even Jessie Ventura... who did hold elective office)
Here are the qualifications:
1) Name recognition. OK, ok, The Hulkster has this same qualification in this category. So does Timothy McVeigh for that matter. I won't go further.
2) Entreprenurial Maverick. He litterally followed the "American Dream" of grabbing a couple of friends and made his own wildly successful company. Of course, this is why he is famous, but this is the kind of result that even conservative Republicans appreciate.
3) Turned around a dying company and restored it to good health. I know there are a lot of factors that have kept Apple from disappearing like almost all of the computer companies that were around when Apple first started (including DEC, Wang, Control Data, Commodore, Atari, and others). But the fact that Apple is still around and indeed very relevant force that is still influencing the computer industry (with an independent OS to boot!) Steve Job's role in the restoration of Apple is nothing short of a miracle.
4) Plugged into the entertainment industry. Particularly with his involvement in Pixar. The Hollywood entertainment industry has become increasingly active politically across the spectrum, from Charleton Heston and Ronald Reagan to Martin Sheen and Barbra Streisand. Like it or not, they are a major force with the anti-war effort to stop Bush from going into Iraq. They are also a source for the lifeblood of politics:
$$$$Money$$$$
Yes, Steve Jobs has some considerable wealth, but not enough to do a Ross Perot style election campaign... nor the drive to spend that much of his own money for his personal ego.
5) Politically Independent. This really is a big deal, because so many politicians need to follow "the party line" that they can't really go off on their own. Steve Jobs would be able to follow his own heart, and has demonstrated in the past that he doesn't really care what other people think.
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Honestly, I think it would be better for him to run for governor of California (Imagine a contest between Steve Jobs and Arnold Schwarzenager.... now that would be a real election. BTW, Arnie is thinking of running as a Republican candidate in the next gubinatorial election there)
If Jobs could turn around the California economy after Grey has trashed the state, he would be an instant candidate for President.
There is a vocal minority on /. that is very defensive about the fact that Gore did not win the 2000 US Presidential election. More to the point, Bush knew the rules and was a very observant politician knowing that it wasn't popular votes but rather electorial votes that got him elected. He decided to go along with that strategy and won.
The whole thing in Florida wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been able to get so many other electorial votes from other states (think Mondale in 1984).
In regards to the electorial college being disbanded, I think there are some very good reasons to keep it around:
1) Just in case of a serious accident. If the president-elect were to die somehow before being sworn into office, there is no constitutional provision to deal with who should take his place. The electorial college would then have a free-for-all in deciding a new president (although I would guess that it would probabally be from the same political party as the president-elect in this case).
2) The electoral college gives smaller states a larger voice in the presidential elections. A voter in Wyoming, for instance, has three times as much voting power (or more it could be argued) than a voter in California or Texas. That is the way it was set up when the constitution was written, because states like Deleware and Connecticut felt they were going to be left out whenever a federal election was going to occur.
BTW, I know this is getting off the topic of the ElcomSoft trial, but I want to make a point here.
There are a number of things to consider with having many people owning handguns for defense in their homes:
1) There are many people who successfully use handguns to stop "home invasion" crimes. One problem with this is that the number is not really kept in the same group of statistics that are kept for felony crimes (murder, robbery, rape, etc.) This makes the comparison between the number of people stopped vs. the number of people who die from accidental firearm discharge a very hard number to come up with.
2) The deterent effect of handguns. To be honest here, you need to keep in mind that potential home burglers are not going to even want to take a chance of getting shot at if they can help it. If they know that, for example, New York State bans handguns and for that matter all firearms, and New Jersey let's all their citizens use whatever guns they want, there will also be a direct correlation with the amount of crime done in both states.
So please define what you mean by "most people end up getting shot by their own handguns". That implies more than 50% of all handgun owners are going to end up shooting themselves with them. I just don't see that happening.