> "Why would we phase out fissile energy? We should be using that for everything. Nuclear power is the best thing we have."
Because of the health and security problems inherent to radioactive waste.
A much better "nuclear" alternative would be deuterium fusion. The waste products of a deuterium fusion reaction are helium (which we need anyway, because it's in short supply planet-side) and heat.
The biggest problem with induced nuclear fusion, as it stands today, is that it's not sustainable. Even though fusion facilities are inching toward the "break even" point, scientists haven't really figured out a way to punch a hole through the magnetic containment field that will let them pump in enough fuel to keep the reaction going.
Until we convert to completely non-combustive and non-fissile energy production, all vehicles will continue to use a certain amount of nuclear, petroleum and/or carbon-based fuels as a source of power.
All that these so-called electric and fuel-cell vehicles do is shift the point source of the pollution and fuel consumption away from the vehicle and onto the electrical grid (and by extension to coal, nuclear, and natural gas generating stations), because charging vehicle batteries and capacitors (or splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, so the hydrogen can be used as a fuel) takes electricity.
Besides, the vehicles will still probably depend on petroleum-based products for lubricants.
>"Most hospitals are organized as NPFs - How do you assume >they do not have any money; or have less motivation to >violate licensing? I would argue that they have more >incentive since cost-control is paramount at most NPFs >I have been associated with."
Because most hospitals (that really are hospitals, and not HMOs or some-such) are not in the software authoring and distribution business.
They may take the software and use it, and they may even donate the results of their time and effort to other hospitals. But I doubt very much that a true hospital would want to spend money on the legal ramifications of software development. Their lawyers have more important things to attend to.
Besides, here in the US, with all of the HIPAA regulations, hospitals would be more likely to pay for proprietary software, if only to have someone with cash to go after if the software breaks down and kills someone (as in a patient medication database bug, for example)...
This still isn't going to fix the fact that (X)HTML pages are transported and managed by what is still fundamentally a stateless protocol, XMLHttpRequest and AJAX notwithstanding.
Every time you click a button that triggers a server-side transaction, the page needs to explicitly transmit info - a cookie, GET/POST variables, something - back to the server to "remind" it of its current state.
To me, this would seem to be where most of our time is wasted...
Not to mention this (article single brackets, license double brackets):
>"Companies are also required by the new GPL to license to others all >patents they own or control related to open source software, even those >not related to code they add to open source software..."
Wrong. The license mandates that *if* you distribute a work under GPLv3 that is covered by patents that you own, then you must license to everyone the use of the method covered by the patent, on a royalty-free basis (excerpted from the v3 license):
>>When you distribute a covered work, you grant a patent license to the >>recipient, and to anyone that receives any version of the work, >>permitting, for any and all versions of the covered work, all activities >>allowed or contemplated by this License, such as installing, running and >>distributing versions of the work, and using their output....
>"... and even if they did not own the patents at the time they >distributed the open source software."
Wrong again. The v3 license clearly specifies that the company must only license patents that it owns. If I distribute code under GPLv3 which is already covered by someone else's patent, then I have no authority to release the code in the first place. From the v3 license:
>>... This patent license is nonexclusive, royalty-free and >>worldwide, and covers all patent claims you control or have >>the right to sublicense, at the time you distribute the covered >>work or in the future, that would be infringed or violated by >>the covered work or any reasonably contemplated use of the >>covered work.
The remotely-controlled drone that Ballard used to search for the Thresher, Scorpion, and Titanic is an excellent example of a piece of dual-use equipment.
More recent exploration of the Titanic's wreckage with remote drones and two-man submarines indicates that the edge of the iceberg that the Titanic hit may have been somewhat "crowbar" shaped, with a vertically-oriented escarpment below the surface puncturing the ship from underneath, in addition to gashing it open from the side. This may help explain why the Titanic sank so rapidly, since the side-hull tears didn't seem to be large enough to account for the volume of water pouring into the ship.
The object of Moonlight is to essentially be a "feature-complete" implementation of Silverlight, minus those pesky, patented, DRM-laced multimedia codecs.
The question is, then: "Does your Silverlight-based business application really need to use these pesky, patented, DRM-laced multimedia codecs?"
Which, in the vast majority of cases, is "probably not." Much of this kind of functionality can be had via calls to external (and FOSS) libraries.
The upshot is that you should also be able to run IronRuby on the Mono Common Language Runtime, presuming that Microsoft's implementation adheres to it's own ECMA-"approved" CLR standards...
"The IronRuby project in general has featured processes that make it easier for Microsoft to develop open-source projects, said Lam.
"What we learn from building IronRuby will be applied in other product groups to help us become more open and transparent than we have been in the past," Lam said."
How does an company like Microsoft "learn" to become more "transparent"?
I did RTFA. I wasn't making a comment about the USAF's goals, I was making a comment about the language used in the title of the article: "any and all computers" does, mathematically (read: set theory), include computers owned/operated by other US government agencies.
... includes computers owned and operated by the Army, Navy, NSA, CIA, FBI, etc....
(I remember this as being a minor plot point in the movie "Sneakers" w/ Robert Redford; the "chip" was going to be used by one US agency to spy on *other* US agencies.)
Quote:... had serious problems finding and removing active rootkits, such as Microsoft Windows Live OneCare...
Whadd'ya talkin 'bout? Isn't everything on Windows a potential rootkit?
(This is *not* meant as flame bait; this is just a comparison between "events" reported in an ancient document and "events" reported today.)
If the events depicted in the opening lines of the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible happened "today," it would very likely be described as a "UFO encounter"; people have been reporting events like this since the beginning of Antiquity:
Ezikel 1:13-27 [** Especially verses 15-19 **]
13) In the middle of* the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; the fire was bright, and lightning issued from the fire. 14) The living creatures darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning.
15) As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them.* 16) As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl; and the four had the same form, their construction being something like a wheel within a wheel. 17) When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved. 18) Their rims were tall and awesome, for the rims of all four were full of eyes all round. 19) When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. 20) Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21) When they moved, the others moved; when they stopped, the others stopped; and when they rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
22) Over the heads of the living creatures there was something like a dome, shining like crystal,* spread out above their heads. 23) Under the dome their wings were stretched out straight, one towards another; and each of the creatures had two wings covering its body. 24) When they moved, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of mighty waters, like the thunder of the Almighty,* a sound of tumult like the sound of an army; when they stopped, they let down their wings. 25) And there came a voice from above the dome over their heads; when they stopped, they let down their wings.
26) And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire;* and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. 27) Upwards from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all round; and downwards from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendour all round.
Quoted from [http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ezekiel]
They're calculating the cost of the *human-readable* data that's actually being used by a person.
Jo Average doesn't care how much header, routing, or other packet overhead is transmitted along with his/her message. They only care about what they can actually type and read on screen...
If it costs US $0.05 (US 5 cents) per message, then he/she is still paying US $0.0003125 (US 0.03125 cents) per human-readable character, when using all 160 characters.
In late 1998 my dad got called out to help upgrade a very old IBM Model 1401 mid-range computer, manufactured circa 1964, so the data could be migrated, via a series of hops, to a more modern IBM mid-range platform: an AS/400.
First, his team acquired an abused IBM Model 729 Tape Storage Unit, rebuilt it from the ground-up, and attached it to the 1401. They then read the software and data, still residing on punch cards, with a newly-renovated Model 1402 Punch Card Reader, and saved the data to 7-track reel-to-reel tape.
Then, the 7-track tape reels were mounted on a refurbished IBM 2400-series Tape Storage Unit (with the rare 7-track compatibility option), so the software and data could be copied to a hard disk that was mounted on a System/360.
From there, the software and data were transferred to a System/38, and then - finally - to a good used AS/400.
In order to perform the migration, his team had to cobble together spare equipment acquired from parts brokers around the country, and hope the equipment would last long enough to complete the migration.
It did. And after a little over 12 weeks, they had the data up-and-running on the AS/400, ready for Y2K "scrubbing" by developers.
I suspect very little of the business logic/application software itself actually made the transfer all the way from the 1401 to the AS/400 in operable form, but the fact that a manufacturer was still running on a Model 1401 after 34 years stands as a testament to the stability and durability of mainframes.
Most of our vaunted PC-style x86-based servers don't make it past four years, and fewer still get past eight...
Some people can throw too much emphasis on Carly's involvement with the "Investi-Gate" scandal (where she authorized the investigations to pinpoint who was leaking privileged information to the outside). She may have authorized the investigations, but in a bit of turnabout, she herself became a subject of her own boardroom's paranoia; the actual (mis)handling of the investigation fell largely to Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who was indicted as a result. (At best, she ended up being a scapegoat.)
From a leadership perspective, I compare Ms. Fiorina with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: untried, uninspiring, and unimaginative. Her guidance of HP during Investi-Gate at the corporate political level can be compared with Carter's decision-making during the Iran hostage crisis at the government political level. She essentially authorized the board to "do something," and then failed to keep control of the situation and take decisive action when necessary.
Fox News is based on fast-paced, hard-hitting, "damn-the-torpedoes"-style reporting, where journalists try to wrap a riveting story around a collection of often incomplete or unverified facts (and so are most other 24/7 news channels).
Given her otherwise okay but hardly noteworthy performance in leading HP, I'm not sure she's the one for the job...
... but when someone has the option of just turning on IIS on an underutilized box, or finding/buying a box to install linux and Apache on, the idea of price is a non-issue. Umm... What about Apache for Windows?
Slashdot Mirror
> "Why would we phase out fissile energy? We should be using that for everything. Nuclear power is the best thing we have."
Because of the health and security problems inherent to radioactive waste.
A much better "nuclear" alternative would be deuterium fusion. The waste products of a deuterium fusion reaction are helium (which we need anyway, because it's in short supply planet-side) and heat.
The biggest problem with induced nuclear fusion, as it stands today, is that it's not sustainable. Even though fusion facilities are inching toward the "break even" point, scientists haven't really figured out a way to punch a hole through the magnetic containment field that will let them pump in enough fuel to keep the reaction going.
But long-term, we need fusion.
Until we convert to completely non-combustive and non-fissile energy production, all vehicles will continue to use a certain amount of nuclear, petroleum and/or carbon-based fuels as a source of power.
All that these so-called electric and fuel-cell vehicles do is shift the point source of the pollution and fuel consumption away from the vehicle and onto the electrical grid (and by extension to coal, nuclear, and natural gas generating stations), because charging vehicle batteries and capacitors (or splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, so the hydrogen can be used as a fuel) takes electricity.
Besides, the vehicles will still probably depend on petroleum-based products for lubricants.
>"Most hospitals are organized as NPFs - How do you assume
>they do not have any money; or have less motivation to
>violate licensing? I would argue that they have more
>incentive since cost-control is paramount at most NPFs
>I have been associated with."
Because most hospitals (that really are hospitals, and not HMOs or some-such) are not in the software authoring and distribution business.
They may take the software and use it, and they may even donate the results of their time and effort to other hospitals. But I doubt very much that a true hospital would want to spend money on the legal ramifications of software development. Their lawyers have more important things to attend to.
Besides, here in the US, with all of the HIPAA regulations, hospitals would be more likely to pay for proprietary software, if only to have someone with cash to go after if the software breaks down and kills someone (as in a patient medication database bug, for example)...
It called "shifting the liability."
This still isn't going to fix the fact that (X)HTML pages are transported and managed by what is still fundamentally a stateless protocol, XMLHttpRequest and AJAX notwithstanding.
Every time you click a button that triggers a server-side transaction, the page needs to explicitly transmit info - a cookie, GET/POST variables, something - back to the server to "remind" it of its current state.
To me, this would seem to be where most of our time is wasted...
Not to mention this (article single brackets, license double brackets):
...
>"Companies are also required by the new GPL to license to others all
>patents they own or control related to open source software, even those
>not related to code they add to open source software..."
Wrong. The license mandates that *if* you distribute a work under GPLv3 that is covered by patents that you own, then you must license to everyone the use of the method covered by the patent, on a royalty-free basis (excerpted from the v3 license):
>>When you distribute a covered work, you grant a patent license to the
>>recipient, and to anyone that receives any version of the work,
>>permitting, for any and all versions of the covered work, all activities
>>allowed or contemplated by this License, such as installing, running and
>>distributing versions of the work, and using their output.
>"... and even if they did not own the patents at the time they
>distributed the open source software."
Wrong again. The v3 license clearly specifies that the company must only license patents that it owns. If I distribute code under GPLv3 which is already covered by someone else's patent, then I have no authority to release the code in the first place. From the v3 license:
>>... This patent license is nonexclusive, royalty-free and
>>worldwide, and covers all patent claims you control or have
>>the right to sublicense, at the time you distribute the covered
>>work or in the future, that would be infringed or violated by
>>the covered work or any reasonably contemplated use of the
>>covered work.
The remotely-controlled drone that Ballard used to search for the Thresher, Scorpion, and Titanic is an excellent example of a piece of dual-use equipment.
More recent exploration of the Titanic's wreckage with remote drones and two-man submarines indicates that the edge of the iceberg that the Titanic hit may have been somewhat "crowbar" shaped, with a vertically-oriented escarpment below the surface puncturing the ship from underneath, in addition to gashing it open from the side. This may help explain why the Titanic sank so rapidly, since the side-hull tears didn't seem to be large enough to account for the volume of water pouring into the ship.
Either way... :-)
Except in the EU, a "Health Inspector" is liable to come-a-visiting and take a peek into that closet and look under your rug:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080221-eu-to-ms-well-believe-it-when-we-see-it.html
I disagree...
The object of Moonlight is to essentially be a "feature-complete" implementation of Silverlight, minus those pesky, patented, DRM-laced multimedia codecs.
The question is, then: "Does your Silverlight-based business application really need to use these pesky, patented, DRM-laced multimedia codecs?"
Which, in the vast majority of cases, is "probably not." Much of this kind of functionality can be had via calls to external (and FOSS) libraries.
The upshot is that you should also be able to run IronRuby on the Mono Common Language Runtime, presuming that Microsoft's implementation adheres to it's own ECMA-"approved" CLR standards...
Um... Actually it is:
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
Microsoft is assisting in Moonlight's development:
http://lwn.net/Articles/248198/
From the article:
"The IronRuby project in general has featured processes that make it easier for Microsoft to develop open-source projects, said Lam.
"What we learn from building IronRuby will be applied in other product groups to help us become more open and transparent than we have been in the past," Lam said."
How does an company like Microsoft "learn" to become more "transparent"?
AutoPilot: DIY Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/
I did RTFA. I wasn't making a comment about the USAF's goals, I was making a comment about the language used in the title of the article: "any and all computers" does, mathematically (read: set theory), include computers owned/operated by other US government agencies.
... includes computers owned and operated by the Army, Navy, NSA, CIA, FBI, etc....
(I remember this as being a minor plot point in the movie "Sneakers" w/ Robert Redford; the "chip" was going to be used by one US agency to spy on *other* US agencies.)
Quote: ... had serious problems finding and removing active rootkits, such as Microsoft Windows Live OneCare ...
Whadd'ya talkin 'bout? Isn't everything on Windows a potential rootkit?
(This is *not* meant as flame bait; this is just a comparison between "events" reported in an ancient document and "events" reported today.)
If the events depicted in the opening lines of the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible happened "today," it would very likely be described as a "UFO encounter"; people have been reporting events like this since the beginning of Antiquity:
Ezikel 1:13-27 [** Especially verses 15-19 **]
13) In the middle of* the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; the fire was bright, and lightning issued from the fire. 14) The living creatures darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning.
15) As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them.* 16) As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl; and the four had the same form, their construction being something like a wheel within a wheel. 17) When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved. 18) Their rims were tall and awesome, for the rims of all four were full of eyes all round. 19) When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. 20) Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21) When they moved, the others moved; when they stopped, the others stopped; and when they rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
22) Over the heads of the living creatures there was something like a dome, shining like crystal,* spread out above their heads. 23) Under the dome their wings were stretched out straight, one towards another; and each of the creatures had two wings covering its body. 24) When they moved, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of mighty waters, like the thunder of the Almighty,* a sound of tumult like the sound of an army; when they stopped, they let down their wings. 25) And there came a voice from above the dome over their heads; when they stopped, they let down their wings.
26) And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire;* and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. 27) Upwards from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all round; and downwards from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendour all round.
Quoted from [http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ezekiel]
They're calculating the cost of the *human-readable* data that's actually being used by a person.
Jo Average doesn't care how much header, routing, or other packet overhead is transmitted along with his/her message. They only care about what they can actually type and read on screen...
If it costs US $0.05 (US 5 cents) per message, then he/she is still paying US $0.0003125 (US 0.03125 cents) per human-readable character, when using all 160 characters.
In late 1998 my dad got called out to help upgrade a very old IBM Model 1401 mid-range computer, manufactured circa 1964, so the data could be migrated, via a series of hops, to a more modern IBM mid-range platform: an AS/400.
First, his team acquired an abused IBM Model 729 Tape Storage Unit, rebuilt it from the ground-up, and attached it to the 1401. They then read the software and data, still residing on punch cards, with a newly-renovated Model 1402 Punch Card Reader, and saved the data to 7-track reel-to-reel tape.
Then, the 7-track tape reels were mounted on a refurbished IBM 2400-series Tape Storage Unit (with the rare 7-track compatibility option), so the software and data could be copied to a hard disk that was mounted on a System/360.
From there, the software and data were transferred to a System/38, and then - finally - to a good used AS/400.
In order to perform the migration, his team had to cobble together spare equipment acquired from parts brokers around the country, and hope the equipment would last long enough to complete the migration.
It did. And after a little over 12 weeks, they had the data up-and-running on the AS/400, ready for Y2K "scrubbing" by developers.
I suspect very little of the business logic/application software itself actually made the transfer all the way from the 1401 to the AS/400 in operable form, but the fact that a manufacturer was still running on a Model 1401 after 34 years stands as a testament to the stability and durability of mainframes.
Most of our vaunted PC-style x86-based servers don't make it past four years, and fewer still get past eight...
'cause it's share price rose $1.86 (about 7%) over the news:
--- http://finance.google.com/finance?q=yhoo
Can't have pissed off too many shareholders...
Oops, sorry, wrong movie (*ducks*)!
... for consulting and testing...
Places like HavenCo are looking better all the time...
Some people can throw too much emphasis on Carly's involvement with the "Investi-Gate" scandal (where she authorized the investigations to pinpoint who was leaking privileged information to the outside). She may have authorized the investigations, but in a bit of turnabout, she herself became a subject of her own boardroom's paranoia; the actual (mis)handling of the investigation fell largely to Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, who was indicted as a result. (At best, she ended up being a scapegoat.)
From a leadership perspective, I compare Ms. Fiorina with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: untried, uninspiring, and unimaginative. Her guidance of HP during Investi-Gate at the corporate political level can be compared with Carter's decision-making during the Iran hostage crisis at the government political level. She essentially authorized the board to "do something," and then failed to keep control of the situation and take decisive action when necessary.
Fox News is based on fast-paced, hard-hitting, "damn-the-torpedoes"-style reporting, where journalists try to wrap a riveting story around a collection of often incomplete or unverified facts (and so are most other 24/7 news channels).
Given her otherwise okay but hardly noteworthy performance in leading HP, I'm not sure she's the one for the job...
The Apache.org download page.
-- and --
The Win32 binary download mirror.
Just as "free" as Apache for Linux/UNIX...