Agreed. This is the classiest thing that SCO has done since this all started.
(It's not classy, but it's funny and it's not really unclassy. Everything else they've done is very unclassy, so this is the most classy. Did that make sense?)
he just provided the guns, the get-away car, the combination to the vault, and the map of the exits.
Hardly.
This is a pretty lame analogy (as most are), but if you must use the bank robbery analogy, all he did was provide a list of banks that provided red suckers within 50 miles.
Where do you come up with guns, the get-away car, the vault combination and a map of the exits? His search engine was asked `where can I find this file?' and it responded.
Google itself is much more likely to provide a
combination,
a get-away car, Guns and an exit map. (All the links listed were given by google.)
Good point, but I'd be very surprised if that was the only thing he flew with that sim.
It's not. There's pictures of other planes (the cockpit view anyways) on the site. He seems to like the commercial jets -- probably because their cockpits are very excessive:)
It may be the one he flies the most, however. There's just something... elegant about a glider.
(personally, I like my R/C planes, and yes, several are gliders.)
Why did the FreeCraft people choose a *Craft name?
I don't know about you, but I don't find the name `FreeCraft' to be `confusingly similar' to `WarCraft' or `StarCraft'. And `confusingly similar' is the bar that must be exceeded when one pursues a trademark case like this.
Blizzard does *not* have a trademark on *Craft. (Or maybe they do -- I haven't checked. But they can't trademark all possible words with the word `Craft' after them.)
The real reason that FreeCraft folded is that they have no budget to fight back with -- it's the old `big company with lots of lawyers' go after those with none, because they feel that the need to protect their trademarks requires it. That, and people may be playing FreeCraft rather than buying Blizzard games -- that's just an added bonus.
I always thought Solaris was BSD derived, not SysV.
SunOS 4.x was BSD-ish. SunOS 5.x and later, which most people just call Solaris 2.x and later, are SysV based.
Sun had made a big bruja about how SunOS is the name of the OS and Solaris the entire package or something like that, but it doesn't really matter for our purposes.
In cold weather, diesel engines need to be kept warm, or they won't start again until spring.
Cute statement, but not quite accurate.
We lived in Anchorage, AK. We had a diesel Rabbit (similar to this one (ours had been in snow for starters!)) Yes, it had a plug to plug it in to keep it warm overnight, but even if you forgot it one night, it would still start, even if it was -20 degrees F outside (-20 degrees F is rare in Anchorage, but it does happen.) It would be hard to start, but it would start.
(You did not say `diesel truck engines'. You said `diesel engines', so my anectdotal evidence, even though it's not a `diesel truck engine', does apply.)
Note that diesel freezes when you get much below -20 F. The exact temperature varies, and usually when you buy diesel in a place that is is really cold, it's formulated (I think they add benzyne) to freeze at a colder temperature than what you'd buy in Texas. But eventually as things get colder and colder, you'll run into temperatures where your fuel will gel or freeze if you turn off your truck overnight. This is probably what you're thinking of -- but it's got to be REALLY cold.
(These trucks must have some sort of heating element to keep the fuel tank warm. I wouldn't think that merely keeping the engine warm somewhere near the tank would be enough.)
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press
(paraphrased from press critic A.J. Liebling's famous phrase: Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.")
Well, if what we're discussing actually becomes law, not in Europe anymore!
Re:No more car tinkering...
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
Of course, lots of people would call electricity flowing across your heart a 'short circuit'.
Then lots of people would be wrong.
short-circuit
\Short"-cir`cuit\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Short-circuited; p. pr. & vb. n. Short-circuiting.] (Elec.) To join, as the electrodes of a battery or dynamo or any two points of a circuit, by a conductor of low resistance.
Even when wet, human skin has signifigant resistance. The reason that people are easily killed by not a lot of electricity that it doesn't take much current.
A short circuit on a typical 12v car battery can easily create a current flow of 1000 amps or so -- about 10,000 times what it takes to kill somebody (if flowing through their chest.)
Re:No more car tinkering...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
[ To follow up on my own post ]
Your skin is a reasonably good insulator, so this requires a high voltage (NOT CURRENT!)... 50v isn't enough, and even 100 volts is rarely enough. Given enough voltage, this only requires a small fraction of an amp.
Note that you do still need a certain amperage to cause fibrillation, at least 75 mA or so. (This page tells a bit more.
A stun gun may produce 100,000 volts, but it only creates a few miliamps at most, so it will wake you up, but it doesn't stop your heart.
Read that page I mentioned. It's *very* interesting. (It also mentions that voltages as low as 49 volts have caused people to stop breathing. Note that 49 volts is higher than these new batteries provide, and I doubt it actually killed the person, only stopped their breathing for a bit. Of course, if the 49 volts continued to flow for many minutes, it could kill...)
Re:No more car tinkering...
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
The system runs at 36 Volts, The battery is the only thing that is 42 Volts.
No. The battery has a nominal (i.e. minimum) output of 36 volts, but when fully charged it'll be 43 volts or so. Even now, a 12v lead-acid battery is just about dead at 12v -- fully charged, it has about 14.5 volts.
The alternator keeps the battery charged, so the entire system will have approximately 42-43 volts at any given time, unless your battery is nearly dead and the engine is off, or something is broken.
yes, you have a 14 Volt battery in your car
Yes, fully charged it delivers about 14 volts. But people have chosen to call it a 12 volt battery, which is about the minumum it will ever deliver (before it croaks entirely.)
And the shorting is when you get hurt.
You are really confused.
Shorts can definately hurt you. They hurt you by burning you and causing batteries to explode (in extreme cases.) If you drop a wrench across the terminals of a car battery, it'll get so hot that it could melt. That will hurt if you're touching it.
However, that's not how most people are killed by electricity. What kills people is having a small current flow across their heart, causing it to fibrillate and then you die. Your skin is a reasonably good insulator, so this requires a high voltage (NOT CURRENT!)... 50v isn't enough, and even 100 volts is rarely enough. Given enough voltage, this only requires a small fraction of an amp.
(Now, if a 100,000 volt power line falls on you, you'll be killed by a variety of methods -- not only will your heart fibrillate, but many amps will be flowing through your body will cook you (literally) very quickly.)
Re:This is a good thing.
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
You'd also get less voltage drop when power consumption peaks, which is good news all around.
Only if they use the same wires and other components (switches, batteries, etc.) they use now. If the entire system used 1/3rd the thickness of wires that they use now (because they can), then the voltage drop (percentage) will be exactly the same.:)
Re:No more car tinkering...
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42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
As you apply higher voltage to your skin, its resistance will decrease very rapidly
Not rapidly enough. Jamming electrodes through your skin, into the muscle underneath might do it (bypassing the resistance of the skin and going right into the meat underneath) but if the skin is involved, 48 volts isn't going to be enough.
And yes, 48V can kill you.
Yes, it can. Take two metal nails, attach a wire to each one and connect to a 48 volt battery. Then jam each nail into your chest deep enough (several inches) so one is on either side of your heart. This will probably kill you.
Anything less will have a very hard time killing you. Can you give me a single verified incident where somebody was killed by an electrical shock of less than 50 volts? Cases where somebody drove electrodes into their flesh (bypassing the skin entirely) would be interesting, but they're not really what I'm looking for.
Google (and whatever else you want, but I don't think The Weekly World News is a very reliable source)
is at your disposal. I don't think you'll find a single, credible incident to back up your claim, but who knows?
(And before you start, I do know Ohms law, and I know that the resistance of the human body varies based on voltage.)
This is a good thing.
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 4, Interesting
36 volts rather than 12 volts would mean that your wires could be 1/3rd the size and still transmit the same power. This is the real reason they're doing this.
The new batteries shouldn't cost 3x as much either. Yes, it will have 3x as many cells, but the cells could be 1/3rd the size, which could give the battery the same capacity as one of today. Of course, they do expect higher electricity demands in the future, so batteries will probably get larger (and would have to do so even if we stayed with 12v) so the size and price of batteries will probably increase somewhat.
As far as providing 110V AC circuits, they can do this pretty easily and cheaply now, if they wish. 36V systems won't make this that much easier.
(It will make it easier to provide higher capacity 110v circuits, however. A hair dryer draws 1500 watts, which is 10 amps at 110 V or 125 amps at 12 volts. 10 amps is a lot, and 125 amps is massive. Assuming a 100% efficient inverter (which isn't possible), a 36v system could would only need 42 amps to power that hair dryer. Still a lot, but the wires needed to power the inverter would be a lot smaller.
(Of course, 42 amps is still a lot, and so it's unlikely that many cars will have an inverter capable of producing 1500 watts of power. But 500 seems likely.)
And no, I wouldn't expect this to affect the 1000+ watt stereos out there much. A 36v system would make wiring up one of these stereos simpler, because you could use smaller wires, but other than that it would be the same. The stereo could have some smaller wires internally as well, so in theory it might be a bit smaller and cheaper, but I'd expect that effect to be minimal.
Re:No more car tinkering...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 4, Informative
42 vols can kill you though - it can easily jump across wet skin.
As can 12 volts. Or one volt.
It's just that more current will flow with 42 volts than 12 volts -- 3.5 times as much.
Also, to kill you, the current needs to flow through your heart (unless it's a LOT more voltage, pushing enough current to start cooking your flesh.) This means that you'd have to touch each terminal with a hand.
I remember the 68 volt batteries that they used for old flourescent lights. Even getting your fingers wet you could barely feel the voltage with them, and not at all having each hand touch a terminal. (Yes, I was a curious kid.)
In short, I don't see how 42 volts is going to kill you. Even 110 volts has a hard time doing it.
I'd never even heard of Bhutan until recently ...
on
Cable TV Ruins Bhutan
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· Score: 1
A few weeks ago, I had a free video rental coupon. Nothing new, but old stuff was up for grabs. So I went to Hollywood video and looked through the sci-fi section. I'd seen most of what was there, so I grabbed Epoch... something I'd never heard of.
So I take it home, wait a day or two, and then find that it's on the Sci-Fi channel tonight. Nuts. Turns out it was a made-for-TV movie, which isn't a good sign. Oh well, I did get it for free, so...
I watch it. Most of the story happens in Bhutan, which I'd never ever heard of. I ask my wife if she'd heard of it, no she hasn't. It's near China, which I've heard of. I decided that they'd probably just made up some little country to serve as the location of the movie... and now I know differently!
See? Slashdot is educational!
(In case anybody asks, the movie was bad. Not the worst movie ever, but in the bottom 1/3rd.)
(And I'm very impressed with the CIA world factbook... interesting reading. I'll have to see how many other countries are out there that I've never heard of. Especially countries with big honking mountain-like things growing out of them overnight that attempt to terraform the entire planet!)
Note that I didn't replace the Apple ][ so that I could program in new languages (but it worked out well.) I did it solely so I could play this, which was the first Ultima not available on the Apple II. Curse you, Lord British. 48k not enough for you?
And I should have added this to the original post, but yes I do know that Applesoft and Qbasic are fairly similar, both being BASIC.
You know, flame all you want but we all know everyone started in this programming language.
Not me. I started with
Applesoft (and played with the Integer Basic a little), then 6502 assembly (Applesoft was slow), then USCD Pascal (while I dabbled with Gra-forth.) Then I replaced the Apple ][ with an Amstrad PC, and got Turbo Pascal and dabbled with Prolog.
Sometime later I got an account on the Suns at school, where I discovered some languages that I still use today...
Back in elementary school, they taught us to write in cursive. I did ok, but I never really cared for it.
I gave cursive writing a good try, but decided I didn't like it. So as soon as they stopped requiring it, I stopped. I print everything now that I have to write. (Which isn't much. The most complicated things I write more than once a month are checks and rebate forms.)
The only thing I write in cursive now is my signature.
So, what I'm saying is that cursive is already dead:)
What is neighborly fun for Conry is outright theft to needlepoint companies and the artists who create the patterns.
Apples and oranges.
THIS case refers to a guy who found a bunch of patterns in the dumpster and is selling them online. No duplication involved.
What YOU'RE referring to is people duplicating patterns that they've bought and sharing with their friends. They've been doing this for at least as long as the photocopier has been around, but now they're doing it online.
Sales at the South Carolina design shop Pegasus have dropped as much as $200,000 a year--or 40%--since 1997, in part because of such swapping, said founder Jim Hedgepath.
`in part'... it only takes one copy of a pattern to be made that prevents a sale for this incredibly vague statement to be true.
And of course, such swapping has been going on for decades.
I wonder if Jim has considered that perhaps people just don't want to make their own clothes anymore. I'll bet that's a much larger factor than any `piracy'.
Except that this isn't really income. It's a gift. Does Uncle Sam come and take his share of what's under the tree each Christmas?
(of course, if the value of stuff under that tree is really high, then yes he does.)
It's treated nearly the same as any other income.
Well, except that there's a large amount that's not taxed at all, and after that it's taxed at a different rate than other things, it's not part of your income tax (it's due 9 months after the date of death), and the taxation of it was started seperately from the income tax (1916 vs 1862 or some other dates)... <sarcasm>sure, other than those things, it's treated exactly the same as other taxes on income!</sarcasm>.
Is it wrong? Consider this -- your parents have a substantial business or a farm. Dad dies. The business is valuated at a few million dollars. Since it was procured during the marriage, it's deemed that half of it's already mom's. The rest was dad's, but he leaves it to mom. So now it's all hers, but she now owes approximately 25% of the total value to Uncle Sam. She can't afford to pay this out of her pocket, so she has to sell it. She's lost the business/farm.
It gets worse if the business was procured (by dad) before the marriage... in that case, she owns none of it before his death, and therefore she's now liable for about 50% of it's value to Uncle Sam.
Ultimately, it kills family owned businesses.
Why is it still around? Because it makes the government a lot of money.
People were fooled by the weasel words and/or by deluding themselves into thinking they were going to inherit a ton of money (that should rightly be taxed).
Why should it be taxed again? It was already taxed once (it was income for somebody before...) You declare that it `should rightly be taxed'... but there's a large number of people out there who don't agree with you.
Slashdot Mirror
(It's not classy, but it's funny and it's not really unclassy. Everything else they've done is very unclassy, so this is the most classy. Did that make sense?)
This is a pretty lame analogy (as most are), but if you must use the bank robbery analogy, all he did was provide a list of banks that provided red suckers within 50 miles.
Where do you come up with guns, the get-away car, the vault combination and a map of the exits? His search engine was asked `where can I find this file?' and it responded.
Google itself is much more likely to provide a combination, a get-away car, Guns and an exit map. (All the links listed were given by google.)
It may be the one he flies the most, however. There's just something ... elegant about a glider.
(personally, I like my R/C planes, and yes, several are gliders.)
However, in the picture given, this guy is simulating a glider. They're relatively quiet. :)
(He also says `My Ask21' ... so maybe he already owns a plane -- an Ask21 glider.)
Blizzard does *not* have a trademark on *Craft. (Or maybe they do -- I haven't checked. But they can't trademark all possible words with the word `Craft' after them.)
The real reason that FreeCraft folded is that they have no budget to fight back with -- it's the old `big company with lots of lawyers' go after those with none, because they feel that the need to protect their trademarks requires it. That, and people may be playing FreeCraft rather than buying Blizzard games -- that's just an added bonus.
Sun had made a big bruja about how SunOS is the name of the OS and Solaris the entire package or something like that, but it doesn't really matter for our purposes.
We lived in Anchorage, AK. We had a diesel Rabbit (similar to this one (ours had been in snow for starters!)) Yes, it had a plug to plug it in to keep it warm overnight, but even if you forgot it one night, it would still start, even if it was -20 degrees F outside (-20 degrees F is rare in Anchorage, but it does happen.) It would be hard to start, but it would start.
(You did not say `diesel truck engines'. You said `diesel engines', so my anectdotal evidence, even though it's not a `diesel truck engine', does apply.)
Note that diesel freezes when you get much below -20 F. The exact temperature varies, and usually when you buy diesel in a place that is is really cold, it's formulated (I think they add benzyne) to freeze at a colder temperature than what you'd buy in Texas. But eventually as things get colder and colder, you'll run into temperatures where your fuel will gel or freeze if you turn off your truck overnight. This is probably what you're thinking of -- but it's got to be REALLY cold.
(These trucks must have some sort of heating element to keep the fuel tank warm. I wouldn't think that merely keeping the engine warm somewhere near the tank would be enough.)
Well, if what we're discussing actually becomes law, not in Europe anymore!
A short circuit on a typical 12v car battery can easily create a current flow of 1000 amps or so -- about 10,000 times what it takes to kill somebody (if flowing through their chest.)
A stun gun may produce 100,000 volts, but it only creates a few miliamps at most, so it will wake you up, but it doesn't stop your heart.
Read that page I mentioned. It's *very* interesting. (It also mentions that voltages as low as 49 volts have caused people to stop breathing. Note that 49 volts is higher than these new batteries provide, and I doubt it actually killed the person, only stopped their breathing for a bit. Of course, if the 49 volts continued to flow for many minutes, it could kill ...)
The alternator keeps the battery charged, so the entire system will have approximately 42-43 volts at any given time, unless your battery is nearly dead and the engine is off, or something is broken.
Yes, fully charged it delivers about 14 volts. But people have chosen to call it a 12 volt battery, which is about the minumum it will ever deliver (before it croaks entirely.) You are really confused.Shorts can definately hurt you. They hurt you by burning you and causing batteries to explode (in extreme cases.) If you drop a wrench across the terminals of a car battery, it'll get so hot that it could melt. That will hurt if you're touching it.
However, that's not how most people are killed by electricity. What kills people is having a small current flow across their heart, causing it to fibrillate and then you die. Your skin is a reasonably good insulator, so this requires a high voltage (NOT CURRENT!) ... 50v isn't enough, and even 100 volts is rarely enough. Given enough voltage, this only requires a small fraction of an amp.
(Now, if a 100,000 volt power line falls on you, you'll be killed by a variety of methods -- not only will your heart fibrillate, but many amps will be flowing through your body will cook you (literally) very quickly.)
Anything less will have a very hard time killing you. Can you give me a single verified incident where somebody was killed by an electrical shock of less than 50 volts? Cases where somebody drove electrodes into their flesh (bypassing the skin entirely) would be interesting, but they're not really what I'm looking for.
Google (and whatever else you want, but I don't think The Weekly World News is a very reliable source) is at your disposal. I don't think you'll find a single, credible incident to back up your claim, but who knows?
(And before you start, I do know Ohms law, and I know that the resistance of the human body varies based on voltage.)
The new batteries shouldn't cost 3x as much either. Yes, it will have 3x as many cells, but the cells could be 1/3rd the size, which could give the battery the same capacity as one of today. Of course, they do expect higher electricity demands in the future, so batteries will probably get larger (and would have to do so even if we stayed with 12v) so the size and price of batteries will probably increase somewhat.
As far as providing 110V AC circuits, they can do this pretty easily and cheaply now, if they wish. 36V systems won't make this that much easier. (It will make it easier to provide higher capacity 110v circuits, however. A hair dryer draws 1500 watts, which is 10 amps at 110 V or 125 amps at 12 volts. 10 amps is a lot, and 125 amps is massive. Assuming a 100% efficient inverter (which isn't possible), a 36v system could would only need 42 amps to power that hair dryer. Still a lot, but the wires needed to power the inverter would be a lot smaller.
(Of course, 42 amps is still a lot, and so it's unlikely that many cars will have an inverter capable of producing 1500 watts of power. But 500 seems likely.)
And no, I wouldn't expect this to affect the 1000+ watt stereos out there much. A 36v system would make wiring up one of these stereos simpler, because you could use smaller wires, but other than that it would be the same. The stereo could have some smaller wires internally as well, so in theory it might be a bit smaller and cheaper, but I'd expect that effect to be minimal.
It's just that more current will flow with 42 volts than 12 volts -- 3.5 times as much.
Also, to kill you, the current needs to flow through your heart (unless it's a LOT more voltage, pushing enough current to start cooking your flesh.) This means that you'd have to touch each terminal with a hand.
I remember the 68 volt batteries that they used for old flourescent lights. Even getting your fingers wet you could barely feel the voltage with them, and not at all having each hand touch a terminal. (Yes, I was a curious kid.)
In short, I don't see how 42 volts is going to kill you. Even 110 volts has a hard time doing it.
So I take it home, wait a day or two, and then find that it's on the Sci-Fi channel tonight. Nuts. Turns out it was a made-for-TV movie, which isn't a good sign. Oh well, I did get it for free, so ...
I watch it. Most of the story happens in Bhutan, which I'd never ever heard of. I ask my wife if she'd heard of it, no she hasn't. It's near China, which I've heard of. I decided that they'd probably just made up some little country to serve as the location of the movie ... and now I know differently!
See? Slashdot is educational!
(In case anybody asks, the movie was bad. Not the worst movie ever, but in the bottom 1/3rd.)
(And I'm very impressed with the CIA world factbook ... interesting reading. I'll have to see how many other countries are out there that I've never heard of. Especially countries with big honking mountain-like things growing out of them overnight that attempt to terraform the entire planet!)
And I should have added this to the original post, but yes I do know that Applesoft and Qbasic are fairly similar, both being BASIC.
Sometime later I got an account on the Suns at school, where I discovered some languages that I still use today ...
I just don't write much anymore at all -- everything is typed. Like this.
I gave cursive writing a good try, but decided I didn't like it. So as soon as they stopped requiring it, I stopped. I print everything now that I have to write. (Which isn't much. The most complicated things I write more than once a month are checks and rebate forms.)
The only thing I write in cursive now is my signature.
So, what I'm saying is that cursive is already dead :)
(To answer my own question: probably.)
THIS case refers to a guy who found a bunch of patterns in the dumpster and is selling them online. No duplication involved.
What YOU'RE referring to is people duplicating patterns that they've bought and sharing with their friends. They've been doing this for at least as long as the photocopier has been around, but now they're doing it online.
`in part'And of course, such swapping has been going on for decades.
I wonder if Jim has considered that perhaps people just don't want to make their own clothes anymore. I'll bet that's a much larger factor than any `piracy'.
Is it wrong? Consider this -- your parents have a substantial business or a farm. Dad dies. The business is valuated at a few million dollars. Since it was procured during the marriage, it's deemed that half of it's already mom's. The rest was dad's, but he leaves it to mom. So now it's all hers, but she now owes approximately 25% of the total value to Uncle Sam. She can't afford to pay this out of her pocket, so she has to sell it. She's lost the business/farm.
It gets worse if the business was procured (by dad) before the marriage ... in that case, she owns none of it before his death, and therefore she's now liable for about 50% of it's value to Uncle Sam.
Ultimately, it kills family owned businesses.
Why is it still around? Because it makes the government a lot of money.