Some additional things to consider and please know that these things are unique to MS but are tactics used by other companies. However, MS's monopolistic position make these business practices relatively more extreme.
Stock options. Most of us know that stock options are a normal ploy used to compensate employees instead of increasing their wages. Employee "pay" compensation for when stock options are exercised does not count against a company's net profit. Ballmer then tells the Microserfs that their stock options are now based on the value of MS stock value of a few weeks ago (around $67). If these stock options are exercise later (if the stock price goes up), then this payout is not factored into MS's revenue calculations.
Cookie Jar Accounting. In this method, profits and losses in a particular yearly quarter are manipulated. Make lots of money this quarter? Great. Don't make a lot of money the next quarter as you anticipate? Great. Just bugger the numbers so that you always show an slight increase every quarter by counting profits in one quarter to another quarter. This is good as it reduces dips in the stock market whenever one does not meet the quarterly expectations. The SEC is looking into this.
Kerberos, Netscape, DR-DOS, Real Network (work in progress), QuickTime, Java, Frontpage extensions, etc... But MS is now serious about computer security after ILoveYou. But as the Allman Brothers would say, Dear Mellissa.
Nice story in the Washington Post today that showed how much money MS is pumping into various groups. These include soft-money interests, and dubious "independent" organizations that represent the interest of the tech field. This is also a common practice in the environmental field.
OT: The FBI is now looking for the/. DDOS suspect. The prime suspect is a A. Coward that is either dressed as a Norwegian troll or a Californian Karma whore. Both are considered dangerous. Mr Coward was last seen in the statue section of the Metropolitan Art Museum. While not confirmed, it reported that steam was reported to be leaking from the front of his pants. An FBI spokesperson said that the source of the steam is not known, thank you.
Let me add to what you posted. Tim essentially said that networking was in chaos until MS formally incorporated a solution that was the cross-platform industry standard. Well, duh Tim! I wonder why that was a good solution? Now suppose if someone were to use a nice cross-platform de facto 3D graphical standard like, OpenGL?
Or what about a cross-platform security feature like Kerberos? No wait, I got to think more about this one.:-)
Wow, I just had a flashback. In the "old days", there were no cute widgets. If you wanted a button, you wrote code to display your own button. Or you stole your buddy's code. Back then, open source was not a buzz word, but was the only means of survival. IIRC, we used a lot of keyboard input to control things (e.g., j/k to move an object up/down).
This doesn't necessarily cover GUI's, but it is my personal history with graphic calls. Well, to really begin, there was Calcomp plotting calls; we had no display CRT's, just paper. Then on to Tektronix plotting on the good old 4010 green screen of death. The Tek4010 was great. Just sit there in a dark room while hitting the clear/refresh button; poof, poof, poof. Apollo DomainOS with either gpr(?) or core graphics was fun. Direct memory access on a NumberNine graphics board to manipulate the pixel values. NeWS and GL on a SGI (IRIX 3.0, IIRC). Then onto SunView which was pretty easy to learn. But once I learned SunView, OpenLook came out.
Then back to GL and the use of a new widget set called Forms written by Mark Overmars; this eventually became xforms. I think I still have the Forms source code. Then, drumroll please, X11 and, *gasp* Motif with IRIX 4.0. Did I mention steep learning curve. I'm now dabbling around with openGL and Gtk (BTW, Gtk looks pretty good).
Never got to play with PHIGS, nor wrote code for the MacOS.
Sorry for rambling, but I guess what I'm saying is that it was a real mess back then. Definitely roll your own. The concept of a uniform cross-platform GUI is a relatively "new" development.
This is so far down in the chain that ppl will probably not see this. But what the hell. And BTW, someone once said that it is better to live one year as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.
The main issue is kerberos, or more succinctly, the EU pending investigation of MS the tying in of the server (W2K) and client market; among other issues, kerberos (client/server) software is one instance of tying in the client/server. I find it difficult to believe that MS would shine a bigger spotlight on this issue. OTOH, the MS legal team has been a few cents short of a nickle; for instance, why did they absolutely destroy the credibility of Allchin(sp?) in their video testimony during the anti-trust case.
By claiming trade secrets for something that is suspose to be an industry standard, MS has also indicated their intention for embrace and extend. The EU should look into this. Additionally, industry standards (IIRC, I saw this in a MS ad with regard to kerberos) usually does not mean trade secrets. Misleading ads?
But the main thing is inter-operatability. EU look into this. Trade secrets hide the interconnection between client and server. Trade secrets mean the European software developers will be hampered.
I saw the dead tree edition of the Washington Post article. It had a nice picture of Taco and Hemos looking intently on what appeared to be a small table top. Then I realized that it was an old(?) video game. There was also a picture of Taco with his guitar. Only problem was that CT had shaved, changed his hair color, and looked suspiciously liked Hemos. IANAL, but I would sue the WashPost big time:-). At least, I would love to see a correction posted in the next edition.
But here is the progression. I first read a Rolling Stone article about/. then a Washington Post article. I can't wait to eventually read the Wall Street Journals story. OOG THE CAVEMAN SAYS SELL NOW! GREENSPAN WEARS BOXER SHORTS.
Widgets my friend, lots of widgets like in XtVaCreateManagedWidget. Additionally, and unfortunately, big/little endian cause I/O problems. I now try to use XDR to get around this problem. I've rewritten much of my code so that it is cross-platform with SGI's, HP's, Sun's, x86 Linux, and PPC Linux. This transition was not really non-trivial.
I hear what you are saying and I look forward to playing around with MacOS X. Hopefully, _POSIX_C_SOURCE works under MacOS X for all aspects of POSIX. But I still believe that I will have problems with widgets. Legacy code dating back 10 years can sometimes be difficult to maintain.
Some of us write code that runs under Linux, but does not run under MacOS X. While not totally complete, I will run my Mac programs using MacOnLinux under LinuxPPC. But the main point is this: if my code doesn't run in some OS, then why run this OS?
A universal set of widgets would make my life suck less.
Jobs, RI, and ground water
on
Silicon Hell
·
· Score: 1
I have several ppl that I know that work in the environmental hazard assessment field. Some have told me that the job opportunities in the Silicon Valley area are increasing. You can draw whatever conclusion you want from this. Here's a thought. In the DC area where I live, there are usually only one or two (sometimes, none) of these types of jobs advertised in the Sunday Washington Post employment section. I wonder how many jobs openings are posted in the local San Francisco papers? Note that is a relatively small field so there won't be hundred of job posted.
BTW, I used to live up in Rhode Island where they used to have a sizeable jewelry industry. This also involved the use of some nasty solvents and heavy metals. Needless to say, RI has/had a serious problem with ground contamination. I had friends that would put on the old environmental bunny suit and then walk into technicolor sludge in order to take samples for testing. Hopefully, this will not be the future of Silicon Valley.
Finally, one consideration is ground water contamination in a particular area. The contaminants slowly migrate away from their dump site. The affect of this slow diffusion may take many years to become noticeable or a threat, but the process is difficult to reverse. IOW, this can represent a slowly ticking time-bomb.
This is OT but somewhat related to this. A long time ago,/. posed a/. poll that asked something to the order of, "Would you be taller at the north pole?" This then led to a very spirited discussion. Physics was butchered, snide remarks remained, and WTF'swere asked. Why is this somewhat relevant? Think gravity and the forces imposed when one spins around on different latitudes of a sphere.
This was a great discussion related to a/. poll before the "need" for moderation. I have said it once and and must say it again. Ask the freaking question again: toliet paper, under or over? This was a great question as eventually the cat ppl came out in force.
I know that this is *absolute* not relative. But as the old joke says, gravity sucks. I guess it sucks less.
There is something called the Free Air Anomaly (FAA). This is the change is relative gravity if one moves in the vertical direction while neglecting the affect of "local" gravitational masses. You may want to review Gauss's Law. The FAA is about 0.31 milligals per meter (most students could measure to at least 1 mgal precision). We used to do a lab experiment that required one to measure the height of the tallest building on campus by measuring relative gravity. Neglect (which is to the 1st order isokay) the mass of the building. The measurements turned out to be relatively very good. One such measurement was performed on a structure that recently housed a relatively large Tetris game.
Old relative gravity measurements were made using submarines and pendulums. Remember 1st year physic classes/labs. This cyclic motion (period) of a pendulum is not based on the mass, but is a function of the length of the pendulum and gravity (sqrt(length/g). The subs provided a stable platform.
Nice perspective on recent history. I think that you agree with me as to what a good pair of "eyeglasses" can do with respect to Hubble. The other discoveries that you mentioned took place despite the bumbling of NASA. A/. cynic would say, if NASA was competent, we would have made even more discoveries. Failure is more sexy than success.
But this is/. so I must nitpick and disagree.;) You are so right in terms of the "decline" of high energy physiscs. That is soooo 20th century research. Much of this is political, while the additional component is economical. The higher energy levels needed to reach the next level are very expensive. Ane why couldn't there be more quarks to find? Top, bottom, and middle quarks. Up, bottom, and sideways quarks, Strange, charm, and nerd quarks. Woops, Strange and nerd are the same quarks. But ultimately, the decline of high energy physics is due to the success of the 20th century. A scientific resolution provides the impetus for much research. When a better understanding is obtained, then the advances become incremental and not major events.
But, I disgress. Happy birthday Hubble.
Re:Another government screw up!!!
on
Hubble Turns 10
·
· Score: 2
You have it partially correct, IMHO. Top grads may perhaps go into private industry, including IPO hungry companies. However, NASA is much more of a contracting agency (versus in-house engineers), than it was back 30 years ago; this is also true for DoD. NASA then contracts out much of the work, and in many cases, this work goes out to companies that employ the best and the brightest. The key thing to remember is that this problem was not created overnight but is a process that start many, many years ago.
However, the problem is one of oversight. Without the in-house expertise to properly review the work that is being performed by the contractor, then there is the potential for problems. Additionally, governmental cutbacks in personnel (in-house expertise) make matters worse.
But I'll like to say that this lack of in-house technical expertise at the upper/middle management level is one that is not unique to NASA or other government agencies. This also affects the high-tech industries when MBA have more power than engineers and computer scientists.
Also remember that the Internet biz is relatively new. The smart grads that you allude to are therefore recent grads. I do not believe that they would have that much impact (i.e., managerial decision making) in so short of a time.
I believe that DARPA has in the past funded research into high-tech display screens. While it is nice that the space shuttle is upgrading their displays, it also note-worthy to consider what may implemented in the future. One such technology is head-mounted displays (HMD).
News for Nerds, right? So if like high-tech, go check out what DARPA is currently funding. Remember, high risk, but the potential for high paybacks. For HMD resolutions check out this project.
Hmmm, just had an interesting thought. DARPA played a major role in the development of the internet. DARPA obviously also funds other seriously high-tech projects. Why isn't there more DARPA stories posted here? Perhaps it is time to change to the more politically correct name, ARPA? Note to some ppl, DARPA and ARPA are the same, only the name has been changed to appease the political gods of funding.
Side note, I don't know why the DARPA web site wants to give me cookies some of the time.
A fundamental problem is that most ppl are reading and believing the technical issues in an article written by a technology clueless person. Even worse, ppl are believing the rather pathetic direct usage of this technology like this already exists. Think! The applications are hypothetical, but also possible. The better question would be, What would be required to implement the processor into another dual-use application? How much effort is required to do this dual-use transformation?
All this crap has already been covered here when the specs of the PSII was first revealed. All of this was covered during discussion about Wassenaar (limits on theoretical operations per second).
What always pisses me off is that this is News for Nerds, but this doesn't mean a good technical discussion by nerds. This should be News for Nerds Provided by some English Major, and Discussion by People That Believe This.
Cute, *President* of Canada. I'll bite, it's that guy that draw Doonesbury, Trudeau. But if I'm wrong then don't worry. Our next American President George W. Bush knows all the names of the leaders of all of them third world countries.
Nobody is going to see this, but there is no "right" or "wrong". The history of humanity has clearly show this. Those that strive for the absoluteness of one's conviction dooms humanity. Most ppl here have neve hear of Jacob Bronowski and his "Accent of Man".
BTW, in this PBS series that appeared about 25 years ago, Bronowski used the pulpit to show the falacy of humanity seeking absolute (true versus false) knowledge. Hiltler sought absolute truth. In the final film sequence, Bronoswki was at a certain "camp" in Poland.
Nice post, one worth considering. Civil disobidience is not trivial. Ppl that participated in the civil rights movement during the 60's or in the anti-Vietnam war movement could give some pointers to the average/.er. The weird thing is that in some cases, all one would have to do is to ask their parents about this.
Think about this. The late 50's, 60's and early 70's were some of the most "revolutionary" period in the U.S. and elsewhere. This was a time of major social change. There is a good chance that your parents experienced this amazing time period (or was an active participant). Of course, if your parents were products of the disco generation (e.g., do you have any polyester clothing in your house), then forget what I said.:-)
BTW, if Signail1 doesn't look out, he/she will soon be called a karma whore.:) All Signa's must die.
This not a troll or a flamebait. IOW, I want to learn more. I have read numerous Federal Circuit Court rulings, several Federal District Court of Appeals rulings, but am not aware of any specific Supreme Court rulings on this matter. The subject matter is regard to computer related technology; e.g., encryption, DeCSS, reverse engineering (wrt to software), etc... Has the Supreme Court ruled on a case directly related to high tech computer stuff involving software issues? But the main point, are there any web links that you know of that you can point me to?
IANAL, but have have a lot of friends who are real lawyers. Some of them have studied and practiced IP law, some have been in relatively high positions in government agencies that oversee high-tech (e.g., FCC), some have been congressional staff members, ad nauseum... Guess where I live?
IMHO, Signal11 comments and his IANAL disclaimer are appropriate in this case; I also thought that his comments were relatively insightful/interesting. However, your points are very, very good. We the denizens of/. talk about legal issues while we are usually not trained or really proficient in the legal aspects of what we talk about.
However, why is this a one way street? I don't see the lawyers and judges that have oversight capabilities over technology issues saying, IANAG or IANAN. Guess what G or N stand for. I have talked to my friends about some the technology issues and their general response is that they don't matter at this time. At first I was somewhat PO until they explained that much of law is based on legal precedent. IMHO and IANAL, in high tech, there has not been enough pertinent cases to establish the rule of law. Furthermore, there has not been enough earlier landmark cases that can then be taught to young law students.
You make some really good points. As soon as a pattern is established and filtering is in place to counter this pattern, changes will be made. Then the battle resumes.
However, all the university has to do is block all packets that their routers can't decipher. Kind of extreme, but this may be something that may happen in the future. Of course, the routers will have to be able to handle this. Universities will not like the increase cost of upgrading their routers.
The short-term solution is to enact draconian measures. Another thing would be to just ban Napster, Gnutella, etc... from the campus internet connection. Get the student to sign an decipherable legal document that says yada yada yada, NO! The network admins monitor network traffic. They know what is going on. However, the school admins usually don't want to rock the boat unless some bigger fish (like RIAA) jumps into the boat.
Maybe help is on the way. The battle between good and evil (I'll let the reader pick the side they are on) with regard to the internet will be a continuing struggle. When ppl talk about peer-to-peer connections, one forgets that in general, these TCP/IP packets are generally passing through routers. Advancement in technology will allow future routers to better filter (block) packets that pass thru them. The key questions are cost and protocols. Cost is obvious; improved filtering (and tracking) requires faster processors which means increased costs.
The "white hats" are well aware of this bandwidth problem and are looking at the signature of gnutella.
One thing that will happen is that the increase in network traffic from "weird" external sites will cause some consernation for network admins.
Not to mention that microsoft has over 100 pending class action suits against them that will be greatly enhanced once Jackson conclusion of facts become fact. While the appeal can go on and on, so can the class action suits. Win the battle (anti-trust suit), lose the war (class action suits).
FWIW, there may be some new info about JN-25 coming out (the Naval code is not to be confused with the diplomatic code). This is based on a recently published article that appeared in Proceedings of the US Naval Institute. JN-25 was based on substituting a word with a five digit number based on some code book. For instance, Yankee=35493, scumbag=12345, hacker=31335. The operator then sequentially "added" a random number that was looked up in another additive code book. It was not a true addition as the number were not carried over (6+9=5, not 15). Each code book consisted of about 30K entries.
The code was broken because of two main reasons. First the coders tended to use the similar portions of the available additive numbers. Additionally, several words were repeated; for instance, numbers. Given enough intercept message traffic, patterns would then appear. For instance, hey look, the same number.
Eventually, some repeating key words (actually five digit numbers) were identified, as well as some of the additive sequence numbers. These numbers were relative values. For instance, all the code words could start at zero, while all the additive numbers started at 1000. Or all the code words started at 1000, while all the additive numbers started at zero.
The major breakthrough came when someone remembered that the Japanese had used an old four digit code that represented numbers in a know sequence. For instance, 0=0000, 1=0102, 2=0204 etc... Someone then realized that one deciphered code word was 13343, another was 13445, 13547, etc... Woops. As the article states, within a day, all numbers from 0-999 was known. Given this info, it made it easier to decipher the additive code.
The second important item that you may have noticed is that the coded numbers are all divisible by three. Checksum error. After that, all applicable additive sequence had to yield a series of code words (5 digit numbers) that were divisible by three. BTW, the author of this article also found out (from the recently release classified docs) that JN-25 was not broken on Dec 7, 1941. Not even close. There was some indication that 10-15% of JN-25 transmissions were decoded. The problem was that this meant:
xx dude xx xx xx xx xx xx first xx xx xx xx xx xx xx post xx xx xx petrified xx xx xx xx xx xx Hemos.
Of course, the non-numerical coded number still had to be converted to their equivalent Japanese words.
I have read many of the comments here and haven't seen some the major implications mentioned. I'm sorry if you have stated these points.
A breakup of MS would be entering uncharted waters. In the past, a breakup of a company (via antitrust or corporate takeover), raises the question of assets. When Standard Oil was broken up, they still had the assets that were undervalued as the anti-trust was an extremely long process. Additionally, the breakup of Standard Oil was based on kerosene. By the time the breakup occurred, another source of revenue for their assets (gasoline) was being established. IOW, Standard Oil had substantial physical assets.
AT&T had a global communication network. This was a physical network of communication links.
MS has what? Intellectual property (including personnel), licencing contracts, patents, equity in other companies, etc... MS has a lot of assets. However, Bill Gates and Paul Allen own 20% of the company. Toss in Balmer and others higher smucks, and you realize that the insiders probably own between 25-30% of the company. Do you know why nobody will ever try to make a hostile takeover of MS? The company doesn't have the assets to sell off.
Additionally, one thing that must be considered is that Jackson *will* issue his ruling very shortly. This will be followed by class action suits against MS. These suits will based their action on the ruling of Jackson.
MS sowed this course of action during the last Federal case against them. Besides, MS has another virus to contend with. This one is bad, very bad.
A few years ago, Taco Bell took out a full page ad in the Washington Post. In this ad they announced that they had just bought the rights to the Liberty Bell on display in Philadelphia. For the non-US ppl reading this, the Liberty Bell is a relatively important cultural icon of America. The response was typical. A bunch of clueless Americans bemoaning the buying out of America.
There should be an international contest to determine which country has the most clueless bunch of ppl. Sorry, but I can't help myself: USA! USA! USA! Ahh, sir do you know what you are cheering for? Answer: Yeah! USA is number one! (Note: I'm an American).
Your user info indicates an Aussie. I would have to think that any hoax there would be a takeover of one of your sacred icons by either us Yanks or by the Brits. BTW, do you have any available Olympic tickets for sale? I'm rich and a corporate leader in your country. (Sorry for this troll:-)). Thank god you won the America's Cup. Once again, I couldn't resist.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Stock options. Most of us know that stock options are a normal ploy used to compensate employees instead of increasing their wages. Employee "pay" compensation for when stock options are exercised does not count against a company's net profit. Ballmer then tells the Microserfs that their stock options are now based on the value of MS stock value of a few weeks ago (around $67). If these stock options are exercise later (if the stock price goes up), then this payout is not factored into MS's revenue calculations.
Cookie Jar Accounting. In this method, profits and losses in a particular yearly quarter are manipulated. Make lots of money this quarter? Great. Don't make a lot of money the next quarter as you anticipate? Great. Just bugger the numbers so that you always show an slight increase every quarter by counting profits in one quarter to another quarter. This is good as it reduces dips in the stock market whenever one does not meet the quarterly expectations. The SEC is looking into this.
Kerberos, Netscape, DR-DOS, Real Network (work in progress), QuickTime, Java, Frontpage extensions, etc... But MS is now serious about computer security after ILoveYou. But as the Allman Brothers would say, Dear Mellissa.
Nice story in the Washington Post today that showed how much money MS is pumping into various groups. These include soft-money interests, and dubious "independent" organizations that represent the interest of the tech field. This is also a common practice in the environmental field.
OT: The FBI is now looking for the /. DDOS suspect. The prime suspect is a A. Coward that is either dressed as a Norwegian troll or a Californian Karma whore. Both are considered dangerous. Mr Coward was last seen in the statue section of the Metropolitan Art Museum. While not confirmed, it reported that steam was reported to be leaking from the front of his pants. An FBI spokesperson said that the source of the steam is not known, thank you.
Or what about a cross-platform security feature like Kerberos? No wait, I got to think more about this one.:-)
This doesn't necessarily cover GUI's, but it is my personal history with graphic calls. Well, to really begin, there was Calcomp plotting calls; we had no display CRT's, just paper. Then on to Tektronix plotting on the good old 4010 green screen of death. The Tek4010 was great. Just sit there in a dark room while hitting the clear/refresh button; poof, poof, poof. Apollo DomainOS with either gpr(?) or core graphics was fun. Direct memory access on a NumberNine graphics board to manipulate the pixel values. NeWS and GL on a SGI (IRIX 3.0, IIRC). Then onto SunView which was pretty easy to learn. But once I learned SunView, OpenLook came out.
Then back to GL and the use of a new widget set called Forms written by Mark Overmars; this eventually became xforms. I think I still have the Forms source code. Then, drumroll please, X11 and, *gasp* Motif with IRIX 4.0. Did I mention steep learning curve. I'm now dabbling around with openGL and Gtk (BTW, Gtk looks pretty good).
Never got to play with PHIGS, nor wrote code for the MacOS.
Sorry for rambling, but I guess what I'm saying is that it was a real mess back then. Definitely roll your own. The concept of a uniform cross-platform GUI is a relatively "new" development.
The main issue is kerberos, or more succinctly, the EU pending investigation of MS the tying in of the server (W2K) and client market; among other issues, kerberos (client/server) software is one instance of tying in the client/server. I find it difficult to believe that MS would shine a bigger spotlight on this issue. OTOH, the MS legal team has been a few cents short of a nickle; for instance, why did they absolutely destroy the credibility of Allchin(sp?) in their video testimony during the anti-trust case.
By claiming trade secrets for something that is suspose to be an industry standard, MS has also indicated their intention for embrace and extend. The EU should look into this. Additionally, industry standards (IIRC, I saw this in a MS ad with regard to kerberos) usually does not mean trade secrets. Misleading ads?
But the main thing is inter-operatability. EU look into this. Trade secrets hide the interconnection between client and server. Trade secrets mean the European software developers will be hampered.
Sorry for any typos, too late to preview.
But here is the progression. I first read a Rolling Stone article about /. then a Washington Post article. I can't wait to eventually read the Wall Street Journals story. OOG THE CAVEMAN SAYS SELL NOW! GREENSPAN WEARS BOXER SHORTS.
I hear what you are saying and I look forward to playing around with MacOS X. Hopefully, _POSIX_C_SOURCE works under MacOS X for all aspects of POSIX. But I still believe that I will have problems with widgets. Legacy code dating back 10 years can sometimes be difficult to maintain.
A universal set of widgets would make my life suck less.
BTW, I used to live up in Rhode Island where they used to have a sizeable jewelry industry. This also involved the use of some nasty solvents and heavy metals. Needless to say, RI has/had a serious problem with ground contamination. I had friends that would put on the old environmental bunny suit and then walk into technicolor sludge in order to take samples for testing. Hopefully, this will not be the future of Silicon Valley.
Finally, one consideration is ground water contamination in a particular area. The contaminants slowly migrate away from their dump site. The affect of this slow diffusion may take many years to become noticeable or a threat, but the process is difficult to reverse. IOW, this can represent a slowly ticking time-bomb.
This was a great discussion related to a /. poll before the "need" for moderation. I have said it once and and must say it again. Ask the freaking question again: toliet paper, under or over? This was a great question as eventually the cat ppl came out in force.
There is something called the Free Air Anomaly (FAA). This is the change is relative gravity if one moves in the vertical direction while neglecting the affect of "local" gravitational masses. You may want to review Gauss's Law. The FAA is about 0.31 milligals per meter (most students could measure to at least 1 mgal precision). We used to do a lab experiment that required one to measure the height of the tallest building on campus by measuring relative gravity. Neglect (which is to the 1st order isokay) the mass of the building. The measurements turned out to be relatively very good. One such measurement was performed on a structure that recently housed a relatively large Tetris game.
Old relative gravity measurements were made using submarines and pendulums. Remember 1st year physic classes/labs. This cyclic motion (period) of a pendulum is not based on the mass, but is a function of the length of the pendulum and gravity (sqrt(length/g). The subs provided a stable platform.
But this is /. so I must nitpick and disagree.;) You are so right in terms of the "decline" of high energy physiscs. That is soooo 20th century research. Much of this is political, while the additional component is economical. The higher energy levels needed to reach the next level are very expensive. Ane why couldn't there be more quarks to find? Top, bottom, and middle quarks. Up, bottom, and sideways quarks, Strange, charm, and nerd quarks. Woops, Strange and nerd are the same quarks. But ultimately, the decline of high energy physics is due to the success of the 20th century. A scientific resolution provides the impetus for much research. When a better understanding is obtained, then the advances become incremental and not major events.
But, I disgress. Happy birthday Hubble.
However, the problem is one of oversight. Without the in-house expertise to properly review the work that is being performed by the contractor, then there is the potential for problems. Additionally, governmental cutbacks in personnel (in-house expertise) make matters worse.
But I'll like to say that this lack of in-house technical expertise at the upper/middle management level is one that is not unique to NASA or other government agencies. This also affects the high-tech industries when MBA have more power than engineers and computer scientists.
Also remember that the Internet biz is relatively new. The smart grads that you allude to are therefore recent grads. I do not believe that they would have that much impact (i.e., managerial decision making) in so short of a time.
News for Nerds, right? So if like high-tech, go check out what DARPA is currently funding. Remember, high risk, but the potential for high paybacks. For HMD resolutions check out this project.
Hmmm, just had an interesting thought. DARPA played a major role in the development of the internet. DARPA obviously also funds other seriously high-tech projects. Why isn't there more DARPA stories posted here? Perhaps it is time to change to the more politically correct name, ARPA? Note to some ppl, DARPA and ARPA are the same, only the name has been changed to appease the political gods of funding.
Side note, I don't know why the DARPA web site wants to give me cookies some of the time.
All this crap has already been covered here when the specs of the PSII was first revealed. All of this was covered during discussion about Wassenaar (limits on theoretical operations per second).
What always pisses me off is that this is News for Nerds, but this doesn't mean a good technical discussion by nerds. This should be News for Nerds Provided by some English Major, and Discussion by People That Believe This.
I'm going to bed.
Cute, *President* of Canada. I'll bite, it's that guy that draw Doonesbury, Trudeau. But if I'm wrong then don't worry. Our next American President George W. Bush knows all the names of the leaders of all of them third world countries.
BTW, in this PBS series that appeared about 25 years ago, Bronowski used the pulpit to show the falacy of humanity seeking absolute (true versus false) knowledge. Hiltler sought absolute truth. In the final film sequence, Bronoswki was at a certain "camp" in Poland.
Think about this. The late 50's, 60's and early 70's were some of the most "revolutionary" period in the U.S. and elsewhere. This was a time of major social change. There is a good chance that your parents experienced this amazing time period (or was an active participant). Of course, if your parents were products of the disco generation (e.g., do you have any polyester clothing in your house), then forget what I said.:-)
BTW, if Signail1 doesn't look out, he/she will soon be called a karma whore.:) All Signa's must die.
I have an interest in these things.
IMHO, Signal11 comments and his IANAL disclaimer are appropriate in this case; I also thought that his comments were relatively insightful/interesting. However, your points are very, very good. We the denizens of /. talk about legal issues while we are usually not trained or really proficient in the legal aspects of what we talk about.
However, why is this a one way street? I don't see the lawyers and judges that have oversight capabilities over technology issues saying, IANAG or IANAN. Guess what G or N stand for. I have talked to my friends about some the technology issues and their general response is that they don't matter at this time. At first I was somewhat PO until they explained that much of law is based on legal precedent.
IMHO and IANAL, in high tech, there has not been enough pertinent cases to establish the rule of law. Furthermore, there has not been enough earlier landmark cases that can then be taught to young law students.
However, all the university has to do is block all packets that their routers can't decipher. Kind of extreme, but this may be something that may happen in the future. Of course, the routers will have to be able to handle this. Universities will not like the increase cost of upgrading their routers.
The short-term solution is to enact draconian measures. Another thing would be to just ban Napster, Gnutella, etc... from the campus internet connection. Get the student to sign an decipherable legal document that says yada yada yada, NO! The network admins monitor network traffic. They know what is going on. However, the school admins usually don't want to rock the boat unless some bigger fish (like RIAA) jumps into the boat.
The "white hats" are well aware of this bandwidth problem and are looking at the signature of gnutella.
One thing that will happen is that the increase in network traffic from "weird" external sites will cause some consernation for network admins.
Not to mention that microsoft has over 100 pending class action suits against them that will be greatly enhanced once Jackson conclusion of facts become fact. While the appeal can go on and on, so can the class action suits. Win the battle (anti-trust suit), lose the war (class action suits).
The code was broken because of two main reasons. First the coders tended to use the similar portions of the available additive numbers. Additionally, several words were repeated; for instance, numbers. Given enough intercept message traffic, patterns would then appear. For instance, hey look, the same number.
Eventually, some repeating key words (actually five digit numbers) were identified, as well as some of the additive sequence numbers. These numbers were relative values. For instance, all the code words could start at zero, while all the additive numbers started at 1000. Or all the code words started at 1000, while all the additive numbers started at zero.
The major breakthrough came when someone remembered that the Japanese had used an old four digit code that represented numbers in a know sequence. For instance, 0=0000, 1=0102, 2=0204 etc... Someone then realized that one deciphered code word was 13343, another was 13445, 13547, etc... Woops. As the article states, within a day, all numbers from 0-999 was known. Given this info, it made it easier to decipher the additive code.
The second important item that you may have noticed is that the coded numbers are all divisible by three. Checksum error. After that, all applicable additive sequence had to yield a series of code words (5 digit numbers) that were divisible by three.
BTW, the author of this article also found out (from the recently release classified docs) that JN-25 was not broken on Dec 7, 1941. Not even close. There was some indication that 10-15% of JN-25 transmissions were decoded. The problem was that this meant:
xx dude xx xx xx xx xx xx first xx xx xx xx xx xx xx post xx xx xx petrified xx xx xx xx xx xx Hemos.
Of course, the non-numerical coded number still had to be converted to their equivalent Japanese words.
A breakup of MS would be entering uncharted waters. In the past, a breakup of a company (via antitrust or corporate takeover), raises the question of assets. When Standard Oil was broken up, they still had the assets that were undervalued as the anti-trust was an extremely long process. Additionally, the breakup of Standard Oil was based on kerosene. By the time the breakup occurred, another source of revenue for their assets (gasoline) was being established. IOW, Standard Oil had substantial physical assets.
AT&T had a global communication network. This was a physical network of communication links.
MS has what? Intellectual property (including personnel), licencing contracts, patents, equity in other companies, etc... MS has a lot of assets. However, Bill Gates and Paul Allen own 20% of the company. Toss in Balmer and others higher smucks, and you realize that the insiders probably own between 25-30% of the company. Do you know why nobody will ever try to make a hostile takeover of MS? The company doesn't have the assets to sell off.
Additionally, one thing that must be considered is that Jackson *will* issue his ruling very shortly. This will be followed by class action suits against MS. These suits will based their action on the ruling of Jackson.
MS sowed this course of action during the last Federal case against them. Besides, MS has another virus to contend with. This one is bad, very bad.
There should be an international contest to determine which country has the most clueless bunch of ppl. Sorry, but I can't help myself: USA! USA! USA! Ahh, sir do you know what you are cheering for? Answer: Yeah! USA is number one! (Note: I'm an American).
Your user info indicates an Aussie. I would have to think that any hoax there would be a takeover of one of your sacred icons by either us Yanks or by the Brits. BTW, do you have any available Olympic tickets for sale? I'm rich and a corporate leader in your country. (Sorry for this troll :-)). Thank god you won the America's Cup. Once again, I couldn't resist.:-)