So, could the screwy definition that SCO has chosen for "UNIX-based" consititute an infringement of the intellectual property of the Open Group trademark for UNIX (TM)?
That would be an irony for you: "No, no, your code is fine, but your license itself violates our intellectual property; you must cease and desist using it immediately."
True: exactly what the new job will be will depend to a great extent on how convincing the person is when they say "I meant to do that!" when their boss's boss comes round to ask about it.
Deimos and Phobos, while closer (23459 and 9378 km) to Mars than Luna is to Earth (about 384400 km), also have much smaller masses (1.8e15 and1.08e16 kg) than Luna (7.35e22 kg). [source]
Tidal forces (being a function of gravitational differential) are an inverse-cube function on distance, and linear with mass, so that would be a tidal force about 1/99th that of which we're used to. (Disclaimer: I am not a Physicist, but I share a house with one.)
While this is Mars, the concern isn't completely insane. If the rover's in position to get a 1% response from the Martian equivalent of the Bay of Fundy, we'll be needing yet another Mars probe, and someone at NASA should be needing a new job for putting it there.
I have a five month gap in my employment. At my last interview, I was asked about it. I informed them (truthfully) that after leaving my last job, I spent one month finishing a class I was in at the local community college, and that I then took three months to relax and thoroughly play through Fallout:Tactics before resuming my job hunt.
The three interviewers just nodded-- even though this wasn't a gaming company. I got hired without any problems.
As long as muggers can take in more money than it costs them...
As long as they take in more money in the short term than it costs them to continue operating their "business" in the short term, and as long as they do not see an opportunity to do something else which has low entry cost and a higher profit, then they will continue.
Sorry, I was brainwashed by a rather anal economist while at college.
They ALL suck. I've had within 90 day failures for all of the big name ATA drives. It's an inevitable byproduct of the ever-increasing data densities and the ever-tighter profit margins. They all have decent customer service (so far) when it happens as far as replacing the drive, but that doesn't help for the data.
As a result, I now require all new desktop computers for the college department I work for to come with three hard drives; a RAID-1 mirrored pair for the OS, and an external hard drive (ATA to USB/FW box + OEM drive) for doing daily backups on. (Weeklies go to the server, which has a more complicated backup arrangement). It's added about 15% to the cost of the build to the local white-box outfit... but now I no longer fear hard drive crashes.
A nation wide network implies nation-wide network administrators. Someone's going to have to run the damn thing, not to mention provide techinical support to Aunt Tillie ("What do you mean I need an ethernet card to connect to this? I've got a modem.") and other less loveable types ("What, I need a computer too?").
Not to mention that most network administrators are more arrogant openly than the average government employee or politician is in their secret little hearts. You really want to give some of them power on a national stage?
The idea has merits, but there's some nasty devils in the details.
The "Administrators". "Users", and "Power Users" groups all exist on WinXP home&pro. Of course, you need to know to go into the MMC computer management snap in and change the users' groups manually.
Since no other entity than Microsoft is officially allowed to access the Windows code, every kernel patch should be sent to them as of today.
Not necessarily true-- which brings to what I want.
I recall hearing that Eric Raymond had modified a program which took input file(s), cut the file(s) into overlapping 5 line snippets, generated MD5 checksums on each of the snippets, and output a list of MD5 checksums along with the generating file posistion. So, if Group1 uses it on their source code, and Group2 uses it on their source code, they can compare for identical code without any risk of letting the other guy steal any.
What I would like is for some very careful person to:
-Gather a group of witnesses, probably including a lawyer
-Get an computer with an expendable hard drive
-Put a clean install of an OS and whatever package you need to download the M$ tainted source
-Download the M$ tainted source to this computer drive
-Unpack the tainted source
-Generate the MD5 checksum file -- with the witnesses making sure that the person at no point looks at the contents of any of these files
-Upload the MD5 checksum file to a safe place
-Remove and physically destroy the hard drive-- for safety's sake, send the pieces to Micro$oft afterwards
-Have each party present fill out an affidavit saying they witnessed these above events, and that no-one saw the actual code in question-- include a certified copy with the package for Microsoft.
- Distribute the MD5 checksum file far and wide.
This will allow for easier checking of anyone trying to include tainted code into GPL code, to help automate such checking. I want a copy of that checksum file, dammit!
Mr. Ludlow's banning corresponds very nicely to an execution by angry priests of the local deity. While you may not be happy with that aspect, any social model that doesn't include that possibility is incomplete.
Anyway, evidently that thing is a sun-shaped nipple ring, not a pasty. Furthermore, even if it is a pasty, it clearly does not cover all of the areola, which is likely to violate most local blue laws.
I agree, cyberguys rocks. I have two quibbles, though. (1) The brass $11.95/50pk thumbscrews are not LABELED as a #6/32 screw. Fortunately for me, I recognized them. (2) They don't carry a M3x0.5 thumbscrew (such as used by the Lian Li Cases). I'd really like a source for those that was cheaper than $0.75@.
That should be "EXE, SCR, BAT or PIF" if I recall. If you really want to be paranoid, add "APP"-- but only if you have a Mac user.
It would also might be a better contingency plan to get that quote custom printed on the Post-it note pads, and then require that these be used inside the company instead of any other post-it; the $50K quote could probably help justify the custom post-its and the policy to the CEO. Purchasing always has stupid requirements to make life difficult for IT, why not have them make a stupid requirement that might make life easier for IT.
What would it take for VT to be number one on the list?
More Money.
Anyone have any idea how many more G5s it would take at 2.0 ghz?
Currently with 1100 processors the Beast of Blacksburg has 10.28 TFlops; number one is the Earth Simulator, 35.86 TFlops. Assuming it scales linearly with processors, 3838 G5s total would be required to match it.
At 2.3 ghz (as another poster mentioned)?
Assuming it scales linearly with CPU clock speed, that would bring the total needed down to 3337 G5s.
The assumptions made may not be accurate. Still, if some rich alumnus handed them about fifty megabucks for the purpose, it could probably be done.
They also had the benefit of free labour (millions of Mac zealots)
Actually, my understanding from the initial announcements was that most of the work (coding, LAN wiring) was done by undergraduate Hokies, in exchange for pizza and caffine while working, and of course bragging rights afterwards. The cost of a few hundred large cheese pizzas and a few hundred two-liters of Dew/Pepsi/Coke is low, compared to normal pay scale-- probably cost less than minimum wage per man-hour for VaTech.
Which is exactly why you want [the thermal transfer compound] to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is.
Have you checked out Dan's Data on thermal greases? He does a very nice comparison between Artic Silver 3, Cooler Master PTK-001 and HTK-001, Nanotherm "Ice" and "Blue", and... Toothpaste and Vegimite. While Dan may be quite mad, even for an Aussie, there is definitely method to his madness. After measuring the effects on cooling with his usual methods... the difference amounts to diddly-squat. And yes, that includes the difference between Artic Silver 3 and Toothpaste. (Actually, toothpaste was marginally superior.)
So, yeah, there may not be much point to getting too upset if you've gotten thus screwed-- it probably won't make jack-all difference in your system.
On the other hand, it is definitely immoral and almost certainly illegal to claiming "99.9% silver content" when you mean "99.9% silver free". While it was probably a harmless scam (and probably saved this disreputable company some chump change in manufacturing their overpriced goop), whatever Three-Letter-Agency has jurisdiction should probably come down on these folk like a ton of old hard drives on the principle of the matter.
The problem wasn't precisely the "themed" sets, it was the "one-use only" pieces. Some of the *old* Space-themed sets were seriously cool-- my favorite being the #487 Space Cruiser that I got for Xmas in 1979. Almost all of its parts can easily be used to build other things, and most are not unique to this set. This has the two advantages of (a) encouraging the child's imagination and (b) requiring fewer injection molds-- and thus being cheaper to make! With the new stuff, it seems like half the mass is custom, one-use-only parts.
..when you truncate the curve, you lower the median. The median is the middle value in a distribution, above and below which lie an equal number of values. Take some of the values away at the top side and the median shifts down.
True, it shifts down. However, it will not shift down indefinitely, Xeno, if you base on distance relative to the median value (IE, "drop everyone who uses more than 100x the median user"), instead of absolute rank ("drop the highest 1% of users"), and if it is a typical homogenous statistical distribution (IE, tending to taper off at the extremes).
Suppose (pulling numbers out of my ass, as my engineering professor was wont to do) you have: 300 users who use under 0.1GB/day, 1000 users who use 0.1-1.0 GB/day, 100 who use 1-10 GB/Day, 10 who use 10-100 GB/day, and 1 who uses over 100 GB/day (due to a bad porn habit). 1411 users,
Your initial median is at user #706, who is still in the.1-1.0 range. Kill everyone more than 100 times that-- well, that might be all of 11 people. Recompute, and your median is now at about user #700... and your median value is STILL in the 0.1-1.0 range (essentially unchanged), and all remaining users are under the limit of 100x the median.
Throwing out those vastly far from the median will have a larger effect on the mean than the median.
I would not expect that at all. There are sizeable groups of people at each end of the curve. There are many customers who only use their broadband to check e-mail every other day. What's that use? Maybe a meg per month? At the other end, you will have lots of users who do filesharing, ISO downloads, Bittorrent, etc. I think that you would find that the usage curve would have significant up-ticks at each end.
Somewhat true. So there's three groups: people with more money than patience (and/or brains) at the low end, who delight the ISPs with a free ride; the "normal" users; and the ISO grade crowd, who cost the ISPs money. I'd bet each of those follows it's own Poisson curve, with a different average value. (As I recall from Statistics 101, Statistical distributions usually follow either a linear, Poisson, Gaussian, binomial, or occaisionally a chi-square curve; Poisson tends to be used when there is a lower limit, but no upper. A Binomial might be a better fit, but there's not much shape difference for first passes.) I also suspect that the low group is quite small compared to the middle (based on my experience at work, where most low-demand users I support at my job haven't sprung for home high-speed yet).
So, yeah, there's a bit of a lump at the top-- that's what the ISPs have noticed. And it's those people who the ISPs think should move to a premium level service, and who I'm throwing out from the normal set as "bad data". =)
Dropping those who use more than 100x the median usage will not result in losing either a fixed number or percentage. It will eventually truncate the curve, however. If you draw the curve on paper, and cut the area under the curve to the X and Y axis, they want a shape that has the middle of its weight more than 1% from the Y axis.
I suspect typical residential bandwidth usage patterns follow a Poisson distribution shaped curve-- and that's probably what the ISP is expecting. It has a few bumps up top from the filesharers and Linux ISO loaders, no doubt... who are using far more throughput than the ISPs expect from a typical user. On a poisson curve, the chances of being 100x out from the mean are something like 1 in 2e158.
Of course, as available bandwidth increases, more applications will arise, and more people will want high bandwidth-- which is good for those who sell it. On the other hand, the more applications, the more throughput the individual people using the bandwidth will want-- which is bad.
What the companies who are concerned about this should (IMHO) do before putting these "stop or die" letters out is first add some info on everyone's bills-- to wit, the throughput of the average user on your plan, and your (billing cycle)ly throughput. Then create modified plans-- you get up to Foo GB per (billing cycle) at high-speed, and past that you get throttled to 56K modem speeds. You want more than Foo? Well, you can get a 2 Foo limit plan for an extra $20 per month, 3 Foo for an extra $50... or whatever.
Yes, it's similar to a telco phone type plan. Just make it clear where the damn limits are, let people see measurement of what they are doing... and don't EVER require anyone to drop below 56kbps unlimited throughput if you want to keep your business.
The world has gotten a lot smaller since Nelly Bly's 1889-90 trip around the world. Goods and services travel around the globe readily; some are now all but universal. Various organizations act to strengthen "free trade" between countries. But the DVD region codes are a method for not only protecting copyright, but limiting who you can sell your initial copy to, unless they have a region-free DVD player.
With the routine shipping of items around the globe (I've ordered obscure computer hardware from Australian PC dealers a couple times), this attempt to control the release of movies at different times in different countries seems doomed in a not overlong timeframe.
The most influential 20th c. SF *writer* might be...
John W. Campbell. Who, as a writer and (more important) Editor for Analog Magazine from the late 30's to the start of the 70's, shaped SF like no-one else. Heinlein, Asimov, %^**ing Hubbard, Del Rey, Niven, Herbert, and countless others were shaped by his example, by the shift away from "gee-wiz" gizmos to actual stories (surrounded by gee-wiz gizmos) he helped pioneer, as well as his editorship.
That said, most of his stuff hasn't aged well at all (particularly the Arcot stuff). On the other hand, his short story "Twilight" still is amazing after almost 70 years.
Slashdot Mirror
So, could the screwy definition that SCO has chosen for "UNIX-based" consititute an infringement of the intellectual property of the Open Group trademark for UNIX (TM)?
That would be an irony for you: "No, no, your code is fine, but your license itself violates our intellectual property; you must cease and desist using it immediately."
True: exactly what the new job will be will depend to a great extent on how convincing the person is when they say "I meant to do that!" when their boss's boss comes round to ask about it.
Deimos and Phobos, while closer (23459 and 9378 km) to Mars than Luna is to Earth (about 384400 km), also have much smaller masses (1.8e15 and1.08e16 kg) than Luna (7.35e22 kg). [source]
Tidal forces (being a function of gravitational differential) are an inverse-cube function on distance, and linear with mass, so that would be a tidal force about 1/99th that of which we're used to. (Disclaimer: I am not a Physicist, but I share a house with one.)
While this is Mars, the concern isn't completely insane. If the rover's in position to get a 1% response from the Martian equivalent of the Bay of Fundy, we'll be needing yet another Mars probe, and someone at NASA should be needing a new job for putting it there.
I have a five month gap in my employment. At my last interview, I was asked about it. I informed them (truthfully) that after leaving my last job, I spent one month finishing a class I was in at the local community college, and that I then took three months to relax and thoroughly play through Fallout:Tactics before resuming my job hunt.
The three interviewers just nodded-- even though this wasn't a gaming company. I got hired without any problems.
As long as muggers can take in more money than it costs them...
As long as they take in more money in the short term than it costs them to continue operating their "business" in the short term, and as long as they do not see an opportunity to do something else which has low entry cost and a higher profit, then they will continue.
Sorry, I was brainwashed by a rather anal economist while at college.
Check This Earlier Discussion out. All the benefits and fewer drawbacks.
They ALL suck. I've had within 90 day failures for all of the big name ATA drives. It's an inevitable byproduct of the ever-increasing data densities and the ever-tighter profit margins. They all have decent customer service (so far) when it happens as far as replacing the drive, but that doesn't help for the data.
As a result, I now require all new desktop computers for the college department I work for to come with three hard drives; a RAID-1 mirrored pair for the OS, and an external hard drive (ATA to USB/FW box + OEM drive) for doing daily backups on. (Weeklies go to the server, which has a more complicated backup arrangement). It's added about 15% to the cost of the build to the local white-box outfit... but now I no longer fear hard drive crashes.
I fear hard drive thieves. =)
A nation wide network implies nation-wide network administrators. Someone's going to have to run the damn thing, not to mention provide techinical support to Aunt Tillie ("What do you mean I need an ethernet card to connect to this? I've got a modem.") and other less loveable types ("What, I need a computer too?").
Not to mention that most network administrators are more arrogant openly than the average government employee or politician is in their secret little hearts. You really want to give some of them power on a national stage?
The idea has merits, but there's some nasty devils in the details.
"Is there anybody that actually uses ActiveX on a webpage, and if not, why doesn't Microsoft completely eliminate ActiveX from Internet Explorer?"
To answer both of those questions: Microsoft Windows Update is DirectX based.
The "Administrators". "Users", and "Power Users" groups all exist on WinXP home&pro. Of course, you need to know to go into the MMC computer management snap in and change the users' groups manually.
Since no other entity than Microsoft is officially allowed to access the Windows code, every kernel patch should be sent to them as of today.
Not necessarily true-- which brings to what I want.
I recall hearing that Eric Raymond had modified a program which took input file(s), cut the file(s) into overlapping 5 line snippets, generated MD5 checksums on each of the snippets, and output a list of MD5 checksums along with the generating file posistion. So, if Group1 uses it on their source code, and Group2 uses it on their source code, they can compare for identical code without any risk of letting the other guy steal any.
What I would like is for some very careful person to:
-Gather a group of witnesses, probably including a lawyer
-Get an computer with an expendable hard drive
-Put a clean install of an OS and whatever package you need to download the M$ tainted source
-Download the M$ tainted source to this computer drive
-Unpack the tainted source
-Generate the MD5 checksum file -- with the witnesses making sure that the person at no point looks at the contents of any of these files
-Upload the MD5 checksum file to a safe place
-Remove and physically destroy the hard drive-- for safety's sake, send the pieces to Micro$oft afterwards
-Have each party present fill out an affidavit saying they witnessed these above events, and that no-one saw the actual code in question-- include a certified copy with the package for Microsoft.
- Distribute the MD5 checksum file far and wide.
This will allow for easier checking of anyone trying to include tainted code into GPL code, to help automate such checking. I want a copy of that checksum file, dammit!
Mr. Ludlow's banning corresponds very nicely to an execution by angry priests of the local deity. While you may not be happy with that aspect, any social model that doesn't include that possibility is incomplete.
How can he afford the trained monkies to write these things?
Obviously you haven't read many Geek T-Shirts lately.
Time to pander to the lowest common demonator....
There is an uncensored picture of the tit in question from more than one angle on the StupidNakedPeople.com site. For those people who weren't watching the half time show (or who blinked without a Tivo), they also have an uncensored 3 second clip with the halftime show "costume malfunction".
Anyway, evidently that thing is a sun-shaped nipple ring, not a pasty. Furthermore, even if it is a pasty, it clearly does not cover all of the areola, which is likely to violate most local blue laws.
I agree, cyberguys rocks. I have two quibbles, though. (1) The brass $11.95/50pk thumbscrews are not LABELED as a #6/32 screw. Fortunately for me, I recognized them. (2) They don't carry a M3x0.5 thumbscrew (such as used by the Lian Li Cases). I'd really like a source for those that was cheaper than $0.75@.
"DO NOT OPEN FILE IF EXE OR SCR!"
That should be "EXE, SCR, BAT or PIF" if I recall. If you really want to be paranoid, add "APP"-- but only if you have a Mac user.
It would also might be a better contingency plan to get that quote custom printed on the Post-it note pads, and then require that these be used inside the company instead of any other post-it; the $50K quote could probably help justify the custom post-its and the policy to the CEO. Purchasing always has stupid requirements to make life difficult for IT, why not have them make a stupid requirement that might make life easier for IT.
What would it take for VT to be number one on the list?
More Money.
Anyone have any idea how many more G5s it would take at 2.0 ghz?
Currently with 1100 processors the Beast of Blacksburg has 10.28 TFlops; number one is the Earth Simulator, 35.86 TFlops. Assuming it scales linearly with processors, 3838 G5s total would be required to match it.
At 2.3 ghz (as another poster mentioned)?
Assuming it scales linearly with CPU clock speed, that would bring the total needed down to 3337 G5s.
The assumptions made may not be accurate. Still, if some rich alumnus handed them about fifty megabucks for the purpose, it could probably be done.
They also had the benefit of free labour (millions of Mac zealots)
Actually, my understanding from the initial announcements was that most of the work (coding, LAN wiring) was done by undergraduate Hokies, in exchange for pizza and caffine while working, and of course bragging rights afterwards. The cost of a few hundred large cheese pizzas and a few hundred two-liters of Dew/Pepsi/Coke is low, compared to normal pay scale-- probably cost less than minimum wage per man-hour for VaTech.
Which is exactly why you want [the thermal transfer compound] to contain silver, silver is one of the best conducters of heat there is.
Have you checked out Dan's Data on thermal greases? He does a very nice comparison between Artic Silver 3, Cooler Master PTK-001 and HTK-001, Nanotherm "Ice" and "Blue", and... Toothpaste and Vegimite. While Dan may be quite mad, even for an Aussie, there is definitely method to his madness. After measuring the effects on cooling with his usual methods... the difference amounts to diddly-squat. And yes, that includes the difference between Artic Silver 3 and Toothpaste. (Actually, toothpaste was marginally superior.)
So, yeah, there may not be much point to getting too upset if you've gotten thus screwed-- it probably won't make jack-all difference in your system.
On the other hand, it is definitely immoral and almost certainly illegal to claiming "99.9% silver content" when you mean "99.9% silver free". While it was probably a harmless scam (and probably saved this disreputable company some chump change in manufacturing their overpriced goop), whatever Three-Letter-Agency has jurisdiction should probably come down on these folk like a ton of old hard drives on the principle of the matter.
The problem wasn't precisely the "themed" sets, it was the "one-use only" pieces. Some of the *old* Space-themed sets were seriously cool-- my favorite being the #487 Space Cruiser that I got for Xmas in 1979. Almost all of its parts can easily be used to build other things, and most are not unique to this set. This has the two advantages of (a) encouraging the child's imagination and (b) requiring fewer injection molds-- and thus being cheaper to make! With the new stuff, it seems like half the mass is custom, one-use-only parts.
He's just a martial lunatic.
..when you truncate the curve, you lower the median. The median is the middle value in a distribution, above and below which lie an equal number of values. Take some of the values away at the top side and the median shifts down.
.1-1.0 range. Kill everyone more than 100 times that-- well, that might be all of 11 people. Recompute, and your median is now at about user #700... and your median value is STILL in the 0.1-1.0 range (essentially unchanged), and all remaining users are under the limit of 100x the median.
True, it shifts down. However, it will not shift down indefinitely, Xeno, if you base on distance relative to the median value (IE, "drop everyone who uses more than 100x the median user"), instead of absolute rank ("drop the highest 1% of users"), and if it is a typical homogenous statistical distribution (IE, tending to taper off at the extremes).
Suppose (pulling numbers out of my ass, as my engineering professor was wont to do) you have:
300 users who use under 0.1GB/day,
1000 users who use 0.1-1.0 GB/day,
100 who use 1-10 GB/Day,
10 who use 10-100 GB/day, and
1 who uses over 100 GB/day (due to a bad porn habit).
1411 users, Your initial median is at user #706, who is still in the
Throwing out those vastly far from the median will have a larger effect on the mean than the median.
I would not expect that at all. There are sizeable groups of people at each end of the curve. There are many customers who only use their broadband to check e-mail every other day. What's that use? Maybe a meg per month? At the other end, you will have lots of users who do filesharing, ISO downloads, Bittorrent, etc. I think that you would find that the usage curve would have significant up-ticks at each end.
Somewhat true. So there's three groups: people with more money than patience (and/or brains) at the low end, who delight the ISPs with a free ride; the "normal" users; and the ISO grade crowd, who cost the ISPs money. I'd bet each of those follows it's own Poisson curve, with a different average value. (As I recall from Statistics 101, Statistical distributions usually follow either a linear, Poisson, Gaussian, binomial, or occaisionally a chi-square curve; Poisson tends to be used when there is a lower limit, but no upper. A Binomial might be a better fit, but there's not much shape difference for first passes.) I also suspect that the low group is quite small compared to the middle (based on my experience at work, where most low-demand users I support at my job haven't sprung for home high-speed yet).
So, yeah, there's a bit of a lump at the top-- that's what the ISPs have noticed. And it's those people who the ISPs think should move to a premium level service, and who I'm throwing out from the normal set as "bad data". =)
Dropping those who use more than 100x the median usage will not result in losing either a fixed number or percentage. It will eventually truncate the curve, however. If you draw the curve on paper, and cut the area under the curve to the X and Y axis, they want a shape that has the middle of its weight more than 1% from the Y axis.
I suspect typical residential bandwidth usage patterns follow a Poisson distribution shaped curve-- and that's probably what the ISP is expecting. It has a few bumps up top from the filesharers and Linux ISO loaders, no doubt... who are using far more throughput than the ISPs expect from a typical user. On a poisson curve, the chances of being 100x out from the mean are something like 1 in 2e158.
Of course, as available bandwidth increases, more applications will arise, and more people will want high bandwidth-- which is good for those who sell it. On the other hand, the more applications, the more throughput the individual people using the bandwidth will want-- which is bad.
What the companies who are concerned about this should (IMHO) do before putting these "stop or die" letters out is first add some info on everyone's bills-- to wit, the throughput of the average user on your plan, and your (billing cycle)ly throughput. Then create modified plans-- you get up to Foo GB per (billing cycle) at high-speed, and past that you get throttled to 56K modem speeds. You want more than Foo? Well, you can get a 2 Foo limit plan for an extra $20 per month, 3 Foo for an extra $50... or whatever.
Yes, it's similar to a telco phone type plan. Just make it clear where the damn limits are, let people see measurement of what they are doing... and don't EVER require anyone to drop below 56kbps unlimited throughput if you want to keep your business.
The world has gotten a lot smaller since Nelly Bly's 1889-90 trip around the world. Goods and services travel around the globe readily; some are now all but universal. Various organizations act to strengthen "free trade" between countries. But the DVD region codes are a method for not only protecting copyright, but limiting who you can sell your initial copy to, unless they have a region-free DVD player.
With the routine shipping of items around the globe (I've ordered obscure computer hardware from Australian PC dealers a couple times), this attempt to control the release of movies at different times in different countries seems doomed in a not overlong timeframe.
The most influential 20th c. SF *writer* might be...
John W. Campbell. Who, as a writer and (more important) Editor for Analog Magazine from the late 30's to the start of the 70's, shaped SF like no-one else. Heinlein, Asimov, %^**ing Hubbard, Del Rey, Niven, Herbert, and countless others were shaped by his example, by the shift away from "gee-wiz" gizmos to actual stories (surrounded by gee-wiz gizmos) he helped pioneer, as well as his editorship.
That said, most of his stuff hasn't aged well at all (particularly the Arcot stuff). On the other hand, his short story "Twilight" still is amazing after almost 70 years.