Pfft. Allow me to help you feel young: I remember buying a 5k RAM expansion cartrige which plugged into the RS-232 port of my Commodore Vic20, bringing my system up to a whopping 8k!
My young paduan... It was the expansion port, you plugged the 5k expansion into, not the RS232 port back then commonly known as the "user port" among fellow Commodorians.
I didn't say that the ZX81 (which came with plentiful 1kB by default and for which I bought those whopping 32kB in 1983) was my first machine... Well, it was my first own machine. My first "shared" ones -- thanks Dad -- were Rockwell AIM65 and Sharp MZ80K.
If "the old days" for you included the existance of hard drives, you're just a kid yet.
Hard drives were something for wet dreams. And yes. they already existed in the late 70s and early 80s. Unaffordable, though. So I stored my first programs to punch tape using a homebrew RTTY converter and an ASR-33 ASCII teletyper; soon to be replaced by some tape interface to record on 1/2" tape, later ordinary cassettes.
True. But how much of those $5 do you think will reach the artists?
Those TV-show casted Xgroups get paid monthly like any ordinary employee. The composer, who did the songs for them, got paid per job. If they got a good contract, they may also get revenues like 10 cents per sold CD.
In the end, from those $5 only the meta-collector and the big labels will benefit -- no matter, if I dowload their crap or not.
I get the creeps when I hear another "star" or "idol" torturing an 80s song to death. I'm after the original. Those, in term, you hardly get anymore because only the big sellers from back then are still in production. And those are the ones I search for on P2P networks.
So with the proposed scheme I pay the music industry for not bringing old stuff back to market and making me search for that stuff on P2P networks where private people spent time and work to convert their old LPs and tapes?
It was the other way round. Asimov coined the term "Violence is the last refuse of the incompetent". They appeared in the Foundation trilogy and were IIRC spoken by the character Hari Seldon.
The sentence "any sufficiently advanced..." can be found in "A day in the 21st century" by Athur C Clarke.
Moderators, please do not wildly mod up stuff only because the first moderator made a mistake...
I have to appreciate his civic enthusiasm, but it seems unlikely that his blood chemestry is even remotely similar to ours. He's probably going to give the lab guys fits when they try to determine his blood type.
Now that you name it...
How's C++ for Superman's blood type and Rhesus factor?:-)
It's hard enough to get Novel - Mac's - PC's - Windows Servers - And SGI computers all playing nicely in a true heterogeneous environment. I couldn't imagine the nightmare if I had another 2-3 other OS's to integrate.
Now you make me curios. What is your definition of playing nicely together?
As long as basic services are needed, I don't see any problem at all. Use NFS, use SAMBA, use CUPS -- use your protocol of choice where you get clients for all platforms. So far no problem.
We're running Macs, Windows, Linux, BSD, different incarnations of Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, yet even some embedded stuff like vxWorks. No problem to share drives or print to shared printers. No problem to send and receive emails, surf the web.
Actually, the only Superman comic book I ever read, accidentally covered this topic. It looks like Superman is susceptible to magic. In that very book he used the help of some witch named Zatanna (or something like that) who speaks their spells backwards to be able to give blood as Clark Kent.
Would you risk your life to fix the Hubble knowing that (a) your mission may not succeed, (b) you might blow up at any time, (c) a replacement will be ready around 2007, and (d) that if you die during mission, it may be the end of manned space flight for generations to come?
You never know whether space missions succeed or if you're gonna blow up. Nobody expected the shuttle explosions in 1986 and 2003. With your arguments (b) and (d), you better do not risk any manned trip to space ever.
The replacement in 2007 might be ready or not. The German toll collect system was announced to be fully operating in Q3/2003. Now they tell something about maybe a small-scale version end of 2004 and the full thing a year later.
The replacement might even be ready in 2007 and then the carrier rocket blows up or needs to be destructed. The replacement might even make it up into space and then they'll find out that someone again fucked up the mirrors. Or a solar panel won't open. Or just some piece of junk shreds the whole thing.
Or, the whole project gets canned because the money is rerouted into other projects.
So why again do you think the replacement will be ready around 2007?
Concerning (d): Other nations are also possible to send people into space and even bring them back. And, be sure, they will happily fill the gap, if the US decide to "end manned space flights for generations".
ust maybe Hubble is getting old, and it's time to put up a new telescope for replacement (hopefully or eventually)?
Well, then how about putting up the new telescope and then discarding Hubble? Otherwise you easily end up in a situation like Germany with the current truck toll nonsense, i.e. with nothing but trouble.
Besides: Just because things get old doesn't necessarily mean they get useless. Always remember: Any Saturn V beats the crap out of any modern rocket in terms of thrust (maybe the Energija plays in the same league). The Voyager probes still do a fantastic job although over 25 years old. If a technology works, don't change and/or discard it until you have something better up and running.
Unfortunately, (1) often enough gets reduced to "review status" which means that everyone is sitting there and trying to find a good sounding explanation why nothing was done. This was e.g. common practice at my first university job and practiced to an extent that the new head of group told the crowd during his first meeting "fer gods sake, if you didn't do anything, just stand to it. I don't wanna hear any more about this 'student coaching' excuse."
Regarding your other examples: Interestingly, a lot of management-level people are not willing to use email. They have to meet to read news alout which you already received as the weekly company newsletter. By the same email, of course, which announced the meeting.
Then how come those US submarines are capable of beaching and killing a few hundred wales everytime they try out their new sonar system?
Because the US submarine sonar system you refer to, works
in water, not air.
at a much higher output level, over 200dB IIRC -- not 120dB which is about the noise which your local discotheque will happily torture you with.
works infrasonic
In other words: How many whales have been killed so far by the sound of starting/landing airplanes? Or beach discotheques?
Same goes for the pidgeon question, btw. They'll have a harder time finding themselves getting sucked into jet engines rather than feeling the effect of some distant 120dB sound.
Yep, and it's absolutely terrible that a government would ban the use of a product that has known ill effects. I'm pleased that my plumber will enjoy a reduced occupational exposure to lead, and will be less likely to suffer crippling neurological disorders. I'm willing to tolerate a slightly increased risk of a leaky pipe now and again to protect both workers and the environment.
Are you also willing to take a look at the facts instead of citing propaganda? Your plumber's least problem during welding is the lead. Instead, it's rather the flux which causes the problems. Same with soldering in electronic industry.
Lead is not toxic when touched. You need to get this stuff inside the body to cause harm.
Plus, I was not talking about leaking pipes. Cut in threads, use teflon or hemp, and voila. No need for welding. I clearly referred to electronic devices and that the lead-free solder used there will cause a higher rate of failures, thus resulting in more waste.
So that is why my families old fridge lasted 20+ (likely near 40-50) years and the new one is shitting out dangerously after 7-10
I wouldn't blame the CFC replacement for that, rather than "time to market".
Back in the goold old times [tm] they built stuff to last. A recognition for long-lasting products was truly wanted.
Then, some suit pulled his tie knot too tight and came to the conclusion that if those products last that long, people don't come back buying new stuff that often. So they started to make stuff cheesier. To attract people, they sold that stuff cheaper (which people appreciated) who in term weren't that concerned if that product died earlier ("it was cheap anyway").
In addition, modern stuff is way more complex. Take washing machines for example. That old beast which gulps away an entire lake for one load is virtually indesctructible. New machines only sip like 5 gallons, but are controlled by on-board computers.
Well, the same thing was said about chlorofluorocarbons. And now all new fridges etc. are CFC free, and work well (or even better than before).
True, but CFCs are fundamentally different: they are a gas. You open the can, and up they fly. Can't say that from IC packages or solder. There you need some serious washing-out going on, which doesn't happen if people return their electronics for proper recycling or at least professional waste disposal instead of throwing them into the backyard letting them rot. (In addition, CFCs were just put into anything where gas pressure was needed, like e.g. hairspray.)
They got rid of CFCs, which is undoubtedly a good thing. Interestingly, the #1 ozone layer killer now is entirely natural: farts. A cow produces around a gallon of methane per day, no idea how much the average human farts during 24 hours.
Protecting the environment is always a good thing, however, people should see the entire picture first before starting nonsensical actions. If the attempt to preserve nature turns out to cause even more harm to it, then this attempt should honestly be marked as a failure -- instead of proceeding with it for political reasons.
For the SciFi readers, I (again) recommend "Fallen Angels" by Larry Niven et al.
So they changed the material due to environmental reasons, but as it turns out, this new material produces a lot of unnecessary electronic waste that's pretty hard to recycle. That sucks.
And more of this will come. Whether environmentalists like it or not, there are some matierials which are better suited than others for certain tasks. They might be poisonous, hard to recycle, but the stuff works without shortening the product's lifetime. What good is it, replacing those materials with lesser poisonous ones, which in term might be not so easy to recycle, cost more money to fabricate, and turn the product into a piece of dump within noticeable time.
I'm just waiting for the new lead-free solder which will be mandatory in the EU from 2005 on... It's already known to cause cold solder spots more likely to happen.
That said though, you still aren't "calling for it" by leaving your door unlocked. Its still entirely the fault of the thief. I have no legal or moral obligation to secure every aspect of my life against providing opportunities for the morally bankrupt to act immorally.
See, that's the difference between us. I always count on the fact that such things will be exploited by the "morally bankrupt" as you put it.
And where you might succeed in leaving house and car open without getting robbed, you will face huge problems if you act similarly on company networks. Especially on "interesting" networks.
So you are honestly comparing computer crime to violence against children, rape, and sexual harrassment?
Aside from this: I picked the car example for a reason. Everybody knows that if you leave your car open and have a decent car hifi, then the car hifi will be gone. Leaving the car open, doesn't make this theft a lesser crime, but you were definitely calling for it.
So now you run the network of a well-known facility, potentially very interesting to attackers, snoopers, or just wannabe-hackers playing around. So you better be always one step ahead of those. If one of these attackers/snoopers/hackers enter your network and abuse it for whatever they feel like, it is your very fault. In this case, there was no malicious attempt to steal, alter, or erase data, so there's also no cause for calling for draconic sentences, therefore the green-light comment of that security expert was completely off.
If I were the judge I wouldn't have stopped after sentencing that hacker dude to 200 hrs of public service, but turn over to the plaintiff asking how it could happen that this security hole wasn't fixed. Because otherwise companies could see it as a green light (to pick up the article's terminology) for leaving their networks wide open and then demanding draconic sentences against intruders.
It's all OLD people. There aren't any 25 year old perfect-sighted guys in upper management in the government.
So what's the difference... In terms of eyesight it's just the size of the glasses. And if you're too vain, just use reading glasses or (if possible) contacts.
(I'm still unsure whether that enthusiasm for frameless glasses among those 25 year old guys in upper management really comes from the fact that they really need glasses or if they just find them fashionable. Admittedly, they are more fashionable than those glass face masks worn by the elder guys...)
Where I prefer monospaced fonts for programming, they are rather cumbersome to read.
But what I really don't get is size 14. If you have problems reading size 12, you better make an appointment with your eye doctor. (Preferrably use a cab or public transportation to go there...)
...for the sysop who let open an obviously well-known security hole?
I'm not defending that little hacker guy (erm, what kind of hacker is he anyway exploiting a known weakness to gain bandwidth and storage for MP3 and DivX files... I'd rather make him manually punch one of these files into punch tape instead of those 200 hours civil service which he might find even interesting), but if you run a high-security network infrastructure, then you better be up-to-date with the latest patches and countermeasures. It's not done with applying the latest IE "security update" every Tuesday...
Now calling for a more drastic punishment and considering the current (IMO fair) one as a green light, just shows what's wrong with some people: If hijacking company computers and networks for bandwidth and storage abuse becomes an increasingly common practice in the online world than those "security experts" should probably do their homework and fix the systems instead of calling the cops.
If you leave your car open and someone steals your car hifi, it's entirely your fault. (Go ask your insurance...) Whose car it is shouldn't play a role when sentencing the thief.
If the other restaurants are interested by any means, they already bought a couple of Centrino devices and crack-opened them. One of the most exciting jobs within bigger companies is the reverse engineering department. (Of course, the legal claim for that dept is not to do industrial espionage but to detect copyright frauds of the evil competitor...)
Trying to obscure hardware by only handing out binary-only drivers and hiding the API from the average programmer does not help at all against professional counterfeiting / industrial espionage. But it's quite amusing to see a company like Intel play the security-by-obscurity song.
Concerts are things which mainly cost. You need an army of roadies (and all those people want to be fed, too), it is hell of a work to put up and remove the stage with light, sound and pyrotechnics. They have to pay big for the arena, insurances, etc. pp. Plus, the concert has to be promoted which costs again.
Concerts are more of a "karma" thingy but nothing to earn big bucks. At least, after you left the school band league.
Perhaps it's time companies stopped chasing after the music DRM market, let it go, and simply learned their lessons for the still [largely] unfought movie market?
Big difference. When was the last time you went to a theater for the initial presentation of a music CD?
For movies you still go to the cinema first. You do so mainly because of the big screen and the sound system which no mere mortal like us will be able to install into their homes. If you get the movie via P2P first and are willing to spoil and peek, you most likely would still go to the cinema -- assuming the movie is good. (If it's as bad as the last two Matrix episodes or Timeline -- Crichton, how could you let this happen! -- you would rather save the money, though.)
But with plain music it doesn't really matter. Especially not with the contemporary "pop" music which was already killed by overly analog compression (not to talk about the weak musical quality anyway). You can't do much harm to that material when you MP3/OGG/AAC it; besides it also doesn't matter if you listen to it through a state-of-the-art audio system or just the vanilla home hifi box.
So the movie market still has the chance to sell their stuff through box office. And here they must succeed, otherwise noone will buy the DVD later. And it's only that "second wave" market which is impaired by P2P.
I still don't see any reason why a ATM machine must run a bloated operating system. That thing needs:
(1) A display driver; any text console is sufficient, but if the banks prefer to show logos and useless graphics, fine, make it a simple framebuffer device.
(2) A rudimentary keyboard controller; any 4x4 matrix will easily do the job. Make it 8x8 and you have more keys you'll ever need.
(3) Some additional hardware controls to perform currency selection and output, and receipt printing.
(4) A network driver to hook the ATM machine into the banking network plus the relevant service applications including mandatory security services. Shouldn't be much different from setting up credit card terminals, BTDT.
So why does anyone need anything like a striped down consumer OS, no matter if it is Windows Embedded or some embedded Linux for that?
But if I decide to use it, then I better hurry and apply any goddamn bugfix meant to close wide-open security holes. Plus, I keep my networks strictly separated and eventual gateway points heavily firewalled. How could Nachi enter the money transfer network anyway?
Somebody obviously did not make their homework, both on ATM and network infrastructure design.
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I didn't say that the ZX81 (which came with plentiful 1kB by default and for which I bought those whopping 32kB in 1983) was my first machine... Well, it was my first own machine. My first "shared" ones -- thanks Dad -- were Rockwell AIM65 and Sharp MZ80K.
Hard drives were something for wet dreams. And yes. they already existed in the late 70s and early 80s. Unaffordable, though. So I stored my first programs to punch tape using a homebrew RTTY converter and an ASR-33 ASCII teletyper; soon to be replaced by some tape interface to record on 1/2" tape, later ordinary cassettes.I paid $175 for a 32kB memory expansion... (And yes, that was before the invention of eBay.)
Not to speak of even higher prices for 5MB harddrives.
Those TV-show casted Xgroups get paid monthly like any ordinary employee. The composer, who did the songs for them, got paid per job. If they got a good contract, they may also get revenues like 10 cents per sold CD.
In the end, from those $5 only the meta-collector and the big labels will benefit -- no matter, if I dowload their crap or not.
I get the creeps when I hear another "star" or "idol" torturing an 80s song to death. I'm after the original. Those, in term, you hardly get anymore because only the big sellers from back then are still in production. And those are the ones I search for on P2P networks.
So with the proposed scheme I pay the music industry for not bringing old stuff back to market and making me search for that stuff on P2P networks where private people spent time and work to convert their old LPs and tapes?
Weird concept.
Moderators, please do not wildly mod up stuff only because the first moderator made a mistake...
How's C++ for Superman's blood type and Rhesus factor? :-)
As long as basic services are needed, I don't see any problem at all. Use NFS, use SAMBA, use CUPS -- use your protocol of choice where you get clients for all platforms. So far no problem.
We're running Macs, Windows, Linux, BSD, different incarnations of Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, yet even some embedded stuff like vxWorks. No problem to share drives or print to shared printers. No problem to send and receive emails, surf the web.
And all without nightmares.
Or, the whole project gets canned because the money is rerouted into other projects.
So why again do you think the replacement will be ready around 2007?
Concerning (d): Other nations are also possible to send people into space and even bring them back. And, be sure, they will happily fill the gap, if the US decide to "end manned space flights for generations".
Besides: Just because things get old doesn't necessarily mean they get useless. Always remember: Any Saturn V beats the crap out of any modern rocket in terms of thrust (maybe the Energija plays in the same league). The Voyager probes still do a fantastic job although over 25 years old. If a technology works, don't change and/or discard it until you have something better up and running.
Regarding your other examples: Interestingly, a lot of management-level people are not willing to use email. They have to meet to read news alout which you already received as the weekly company newsletter. By the same email, of course, which announced the meeting.
- in water, not air.
- at a much higher output level, over 200dB IIRC -- not 120dB which is about the noise which your local discotheque will happily torture you with.
- works infrasonic
In other words: How many whales have been killed so far by the sound of starting/landing airplanes? Or beach discotheques?Same goes for the pidgeon question, btw. They'll have a harder time finding themselves getting sucked into jet engines rather than feeling the effect of some distant 120dB sound.
Lead is not toxic when touched. You need to get this stuff inside the body to cause harm.
Plus, I was not talking about leaking pipes. Cut in threads, use teflon or hemp, and voila. No need for welding. I clearly referred to electronic devices and that the lead-free solder used there will cause a higher rate of failures, thus resulting in more waste.
I wouldn't blame the CFC replacement for that, rather than "time to market".
Back in the goold old times [tm] they built stuff to last. A recognition for long-lasting products was truly wanted.
Then, some suit pulled his tie knot too tight and came to the conclusion that if those products last that long, people don't come back buying new stuff that often. So they started to make stuff cheesier. To attract people, they sold that stuff cheaper (which people appreciated) who in term weren't that concerned if that product died earlier ("it was cheap anyway").
In addition, modern stuff is way more complex. Take washing machines for example. That old beast which gulps away an entire lake for one load is virtually indesctructible. New machines only sip like 5 gallons, but are controlled by on-board computers.
They got rid of CFCs, which is undoubtedly a good thing. Interestingly, the #1 ozone layer killer now is entirely natural: farts. A cow produces around a gallon of methane per day, no idea how much the average human farts during 24 hours.
Protecting the environment is always a good thing, however, people should see the entire picture first before starting nonsensical actions. If the attempt to preserve nature turns out to cause even more harm to it, then this attempt should honestly be marked as a failure -- instead of proceeding with it for political reasons.
For the SciFi readers, I (again) recommend "Fallen Angels" by Larry Niven et al.
Whether RIAA or GEMA (the German counterpart) doesn't really matter. It's just different names for the same illness.
I'm just waiting for the new lead-free solder which will be mandatory in the EU from 2005 on... It's already known to cause cold solder spots more likely to happen.
And where you might succeed in leaving house and car open without getting robbed, you will face huge problems if you act similarly on company networks. Especially on "interesting" networks.
Aside from this: I picked the car example for a reason. Everybody knows that if you leave your car open and have a decent car hifi, then the car hifi will be gone. Leaving the car open, doesn't make this theft a lesser crime, but you were definitely calling for it.
So now you run the network of a well-known facility, potentially very interesting to attackers, snoopers, or just wannabe-hackers playing around. So you better be always one step ahead of those. If one of these attackers/snoopers/hackers enter your network and abuse it for whatever they feel like, it is your very fault. In this case, there was no malicious attempt to steal, alter, or erase data, so there's also no cause for calling for draconic sentences, therefore the green-light comment of that security expert was completely off.
If I were the judge I wouldn't have stopped after sentencing that hacker dude to 200 hrs of public service, but turn over to the plaintiff asking how it could happen that this security hole wasn't fixed. Because otherwise companies could see it as a green light (to pick up the article's terminology) for leaving their networks wide open and then demanding draconic sentences against intruders.
(I'm still unsure whether that enthusiasm for frameless glasses among those 25 year old guys in upper management really comes from the fact that they really need glasses or if they just find them fashionable. Admittedly, they are more fashionable than those glass face masks worn by the elder guys...)
But what I really don't get is size 14. If you have problems reading size 12, you better make an appointment with your eye doctor. (Preferrably use a cab or public transportation to go there...)
I'm not defending that little hacker guy (erm, what kind of hacker is he anyway exploiting a known weakness to gain bandwidth and storage for MP3 and DivX files... I'd rather make him manually punch one of these files into punch tape instead of those 200 hours civil service which he might find even interesting), but if you run a high-security network infrastructure, then you better be up-to-date with the latest patches and countermeasures. It's not done with applying the latest IE "security update" every Tuesday...
Now calling for a more drastic punishment and considering the current (IMO fair) one as a green light, just shows what's wrong with some people: If hijacking company computers and networks for bandwidth and storage abuse becomes an increasingly common practice in the online world than those "security experts" should probably do their homework and fix the systems instead of calling the cops.
If you leave your car open and someone steals your car hifi, it's entirely your fault. (Go ask your insurance...) Whose car it is shouldn't play a role when sentencing the thief.
Trying to obscure hardware by only handing out binary-only drivers and hiding the API from the average programmer does not help at all against professional counterfeiting / industrial espionage. But it's quite amusing to see a company like Intel play the security-by-obscurity song.
They should know better.
Concerts are more of a "karma" thingy but nothing to earn big bucks. At least, after you left the school band league.
Big difference. When was the last time you went to a theater for the initial presentation of a music CD?
For movies you still go to the cinema first. You do so mainly because of the big screen and the sound system which no mere mortal like us will be able to install into their homes. If you get the movie via P2P first and are willing to spoil and peek, you most likely would still go to the cinema -- assuming the movie is good. (If it's as bad as the last two Matrix episodes or Timeline -- Crichton, how could you let this happen! -- you would rather save the money, though.)
But with plain music it doesn't really matter. Especially not with the contemporary "pop" music which was already killed by overly analog compression (not to talk about the weak musical quality anyway). You can't do much harm to that material when you MP3/OGG/AAC it; besides it also doesn't matter if you listen to it through a state-of-the-art audio system or just the vanilla home hifi box.
So the movie market still has the chance to sell their stuff through box office. And here they must succeed, otherwise noone will buy the DVD later. And it's only that "second wave" market which is impaired by P2P.
(1) A display driver; any text console is sufficient, but if the banks prefer to show logos and useless graphics, fine, make it a simple framebuffer device.
(2) A rudimentary keyboard controller; any 4x4 matrix will easily do the job. Make it 8x8 and you have more keys you'll ever need.
(3) Some additional hardware controls to perform currency selection and output, and receipt printing.
(4) A network driver to hook the ATM machine into the banking network plus the relevant service applications including mandatory security services. Shouldn't be much different from setting up credit card terminals, BTDT.
So why does anyone need anything like a striped down consumer OS, no matter if it is Windows Embedded or some embedded Linux for that?
But if I decide to use it, then I better hurry and apply any goddamn bugfix meant to close wide-open security holes. Plus, I keep my networks strictly separated and eventual gateway points heavily firewalled. How could Nachi enter the money transfer network anyway?
Somebody obviously did not make their homework, both on ATM and network infrastructure design.