There's a nice PDF link which gives some excellent background on the Stardust mission.
Some points of interest for/.ers:
1) They use Aerogel to collect the dust for return 2) The Dust Analyzer was based on a design used for the ESA's Giotto probe 3) The navigation camera used was left-over from the Voyager mission of 1977, combined with a left-over sensor head from the Gallileo mission launched in 1989 4) The CPU is a hardened version of the Macintosh PowerPC chip, known as the RAD6000, which runs at between 5 and 20 MHz. It has 128 Mb of RAM, and 3 Mb of PROM. 5) The operating system uses only 20% of its RAM for its own use -- the rest is dedicated to experiments, including 75 Mb for images from the navigation camera 6) The radio transponder is a relict of the Cassini mission to Saturn
Follow the first link for lots more nice tech details.
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the Nazgul scream. Peter Jackson wanted an effect that was chilling, eerie and entirely unhuman. They tried many variations of stock screams, animal noises, etc. Finally, however, they found the perfect scream for the witch king -- it was produced "live" by Peter's partner, Fran. History does not record what was happening to her at the time of the scream, or why she is such a great screamer.
Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?
Because of the scam among lenders to loan massive amounts of money to borrowers who can't afford the repayments, because the mortgage is overgeared, and by encouraging mortgage applicants to lie about their income. This has been extremely well-documented in the past months, and has certainly contributed to a feverish (unhealthily so) property market in the UK.
Yeah, mod the parent up. "All You Zombies" is just about the ultimate deconstruction of the time travel story. It's a short story, but it's an absolute gem, elegantly crafted and symmetrical. It's almost a precursor for Spider Robinson's "Callahans Cross-time Saloon", if you think about it.
While I'm on the soapbox---yes, some of his other short stories are definitely worth checking out, "...Hoag" being the most memorable.
As for preachy -- unfortunately, there are some popular writers whose characters just love to lecture their readers, for pages and pages. I guess the most egregious example must be Richard Rahl. 'Nuff said.
I've been reading Heinlein since 1972. I have to admit liking Time Enough For Love, but my real favorites are The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (avoid the sequel) and The Door into Summer. The latter is particularly fine, and even more so if you like cats (as I assume Heinlein did.)
Also, I suspect Heinlein might have been the first person to name a cat "Pixel.":-)
1. Register the in DNS beaver-overload.com 2. Wonder why there is no email 3. Correct registration to beaver-overlord.com 4. Read strange emails from hundreds of Kernel compilers voting on the above issues 5. ??????? 6. Sell beaver-overload.com to a Sex site 7. Profit!!!!
Ass men? No, I think you've missed the real meaning here. There are both "top" and "bottom" quarks, or in the current lingo, "dom" and "sub."
I can only imagine that experiemental physicists must really be into the whole bondage S&M scene, given their very tough science--looking for something that might not exist, and even if you find it, you'll never be able to see it anyway.
Are you sure that the first CD released was Billy Joel? I seem to remember when I worked for Philips that the first CD they released (and they invented the format) was a Dire Straits album.
>> "as well as the Microsoft private IP space" > > Huh?
Google for "APIPA." The space is 169.254/16, which used to belong to a company that was bought by Microsoft, and has been reserved for Private use with Windows systems that fail to obtain a DHCP lease.
For more information, see: http://www.winnetmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm? Articl eID=7464
> Basically, there's nothing you can do (in a technological fashion) about it. Only thing that you can do is hunt them down and sue them; which is not that simple in a global environment.
Bzzzt! Wrong. I grant that there is nothing you can do as the victim of a DDOS, except to design networks with good peering, your own AS and multiple providers with good upstream filtering, however there is a simple, technical solution, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread -- all ISPs should filter their outgoing packets to prevent spoofing.
It's true this won't entirely eliminate DDOS -- but it will make the tracking of the origin (the zombie) much easier, and therefore ease the challenge of upstream filtering.
> We should force ISP's to block Spoofed source packets.
> There is no legitmate reason for them to exist in the first place.
Since some/. readers may not realize the validity of the above comments, so let me explain.
I know of no technique to differentiate between incoming spoofed packets, based on the limitations of the current protocols (IPv4.) It may be possible to enforce anti-spoofing with IPv6, but i'm not an expert in this area.
The poster is referring to egress checking for ISP's, so that they filter all OUTgoing traffic, and simply drop packets which appear not to originate in their own, known networks. Simple really, and I wish more providers would do this -- including dropping all 10/8, 172.16/12 and 192.168/16 nets, as well as the Microsoft private IP space -- plus let's get rid of all port 135 traffic too while we're at it.
Disclaimer: I used to own an ISP, but haven't been in that business for 10 years.
It was the last, great hope for Hum^H^H^HLinux. As Linus and RMS are led away in chains, who is left to fight for the rights of Linux users everywhere. Alan Cox is in exile in far-off England, while the lawyers of IBM are "in a meeting." Who will save us now?
First, a disclaimer. I'm a "suit" -- because I started three companies in the past 25 years, and am running a small security and software development company. I'm also an MBA, so I have at least a basic understanding of business.
I have two formal IT certifications, which I considered worth investing time in acquiring.
1) RHCE
Since I have worked with UNIX for more than 20 years, I didn't take the training course, so can't comment on it, but I did take the exam. It was extremely comprehensive. I can't give details, but it was definitely of the "someone broke it, now fix it" variety. In my view, RHCE is an excellent measure of how good someone's Linux skills are.
2) CISSP
This is based on a purely multiple choice test, with around 250 questions. These are very tough questions, and while it *may* be possible for someone to memorize the contents of several books, in my view this is a real test of the 10 domains of security knowledge.
I value both certifications, and have approved spending shareholder money on certifying some of my team with the above certs. I would certainly recommend both of them to other companies.
One final note. For many years, I spurned certification, believing that it was enough to have experience. No longer. The market is different, and if you're serious about working long term in the industry, then you should use the certification track to validate what you know. Yes, there are some bad certifications, but at least with CISSP and RHCE, I *know* that anyone who can pass those is someone I want to hire.
Somewhat OT, but the DOS pipe was a fake pipe -- it didn't connect the STDOUT of one process to the STDIN of another. Instead, it simply write everything into a file in a temporary directory, then allowed the second process to read from the first. This is quite different from the UNIX pipe, which doesn't use the file system to store the intermediate information.
I have had this argument many times, and am still very skeptical about GPS transponders.
GPS (if that's being used, which is likely) is a one-way system, which means a passive device receives timing signals from a constellation of visible satellites, and uses the timing differences to estimate location and speed of the receiver.
The critical question is what happens next to that data. It can't be transmitted back to the GPS satellites, since they are only able to receive control signals from their operator (Loral?). In fact, it's unlikely to be any satellite-based system, due to the power requirements to punch a signal up to above the atmosphere (such as a satellite phone or VSAT terminal.) Such requirements mean a big heavy battery, and a very carefully aligned directional aerial (in most cases.)
So, what's the back channel? One example of a GPS transponder uses GSM to send the coordinates to a local cell network, probably via SMS. A European system (Galileo) being developed for tracking vehicles on roads throughout Europe, using UMTS or similar technologies.
Note that all of these devices so far require a package that is somewhat large than that which can be hidden inside a can of Cola!
Worried? Not at all. There's a great community support for it, and if something breaks, it's usually the hard disk, which is easy to replace. It's a great piece of engineering -- and it's sitting on my desk now, playing a track by Mint Royale, "Sexiest Man in Jamaica..."
Unfortunately, in the race to produce more and more idiot-proof designs, versus the proclivity of the universe to produce more idiots, the latter is winning.
To paraphrase Strider, "Are you paranoiac? You're not nearly paranoiac enough." It's clear to me that the simple taxation aspect is a trojan horse. What's really happening here is that there will be individual identifying information for tracking vehicles, and therefore individuals, anywhere in Europe. I'm guessing that the uplink (i.e., the part that sends from the car to the tax authorities) will be a real-time UMTS, which means you'll have a continuously updated real time fix on people.
There will be scope creep to include people location, plus speed limit enforcement -- "You exceeded 130 km/h for 15 seconds, here's your ticket, we already deducted the money from your account!".
It may even be used to create "no go" areas (such as those enforced by car rental companies) and for forensic analysis in traffic accidents (you were going too fast, therefore your insurance is invalid.)
Here's an Open Source tool which uses MySQL to store documents (any file), emails and other project-related information, in a secure environment which can restrict access based on participation in projects.
There's a new approach being introduced here in Austria. On the A22 in Vienna, which is a three-lane highway, there is a speed restriction of 80 km/h (50 mph) within the city limits. This is enforced using cameras at various locations, which take images on the number plates of the cars, then compare the time taken to traverse a specific distance. If your average speed over that period exceeds 85 km/h, you get a ticket.
I'm thinking that trying just to lose weight is a very negative goal. Instead, you should be trying to convert fat to muscle, and build fitness and energy levels. Best option for doing this I've seen is this approach: Body For Life.
Check out some of the "before" and "after" pictures on that website. Those are ordinary people, who found that a simple commitment to fitness and exercise can really change your life.
Forget it. Making money on writing Open Source...
on
Funding Open Source?
·
· Score: 1
... is like winning a lottery. There's no easy way to do this.
My company has released on Sourceforge a very nice piece of software for managing projects called Outreach Project Tool, which is used by hundreds of companies around the world. Not one of them has even sent a postcard we requested to acknowledge their use, let alone any money.
Today, we also released another great tool for documenting IT infrastructure called DMO, and we don't expect to earn a single Euro in revenue from it, despite spending thousands of Euros on its development.
Why are we doing this? Because we make money out of selling solutions and consulting based around open source, and we want to give back to the community. If you're a developer, and want to write and release open source software, go ahead, but don't expect it to pay for lunch.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a nice PDF link which gives some excellent background on the Stardust mission.
/.ers:
Some points of interest for
1) They use Aerogel to collect the dust for return
2) The Dust Analyzer was based on a design used for the ESA's Giotto probe
3) The navigation camera used was left-over from the Voyager mission of 1977, combined with a left-over sensor head from the Gallileo mission launched in 1989
4) The CPU is a hardened version of the Macintosh PowerPC chip, known as the RAD6000, which runs at between 5 and 20 MHz. It has 128 Mb of RAM, and 3 Mb of PROM.
5) The operating system uses only 20% of its RAM for its own use -- the rest is dedicated to experiments, including 75 Mb for images from the navigation camera
6) The radio transponder is a relict of the Cassini mission to Saturn
Follow the first link for lots more nice tech details.
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the Nazgul scream. Peter Jackson wanted an effect that was chilling, eerie and entirely unhuman. They tried many variations of stock screams, animal noises, etc. Finally, however, they found the perfect scream for the witch king -- it was produced "live" by Peter's partner, Fran. History does not record what was happening to her at the time of the scream, or why she is such a great screamer.
Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?
Because of the scam among lenders to loan massive amounts of money to borrowers who can't afford the repayments, because the mortgage is overgeared, and by encouraging mortgage applicants to lie about their income. This has been extremely well-documented in the past months, and has certainly contributed to a feverish (unhealthily so) property market in the UK.
Yeah, mod the parent up. "All You Zombies" is just about the ultimate deconstruction of the time travel story. It's a short story, but it's an absolute gem, elegantly crafted and symmetrical. It's almost a precursor for Spider Robinson's "Callahans Cross-time Saloon", if you think about it.
While I'm on the soapbox---yes, some of his other short stories are definitely worth checking out, "...Hoag" being the most memorable.
As for preachy -- unfortunately, there are some popular writers whose characters just love to lecture their readers, for pages and pages. I guess the most egregious example must be Richard Rahl. 'Nuff said.
I've been reading Heinlein since 1972. I have to admit liking Time Enough For Love, but my real favorites are The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (avoid the sequel) and The Door into Summer. The latter is particularly fine, and even more so if you like cats (as I assume Heinlein did.)
:-)
Also, I suspect Heinlein might have been the first person to name a cat "Pixel."
1. Register the in DNS beaver-overload.com
2. Wonder why there is no email
3. Correct registration to beaver-overlord.com
4. Read strange emails from hundreds of Kernel compilers voting on the above issues
5. ???????
6. Sell beaver-overload.com to a Sex site
7. Profit!!!!
Ass men? No, I think you've missed the real meaning here. There are both "top" and "bottom" quarks, or in the current lingo, "dom" and "sub."
I can only imagine that experiemental physicists must really be into the whole bondage S&M scene, given their very tough science--looking for something that might not exist, and even if you find it, you'll never be able to see it anyway.
Are you sure that the first CD released was Billy Joel? I seem to remember when I worked for Philips that the first CD they released (and they invented the format) was a Dire Straits album.
>> "as well as the Microsoft private IP space"
? Articl eID=7464
>
> Huh?
Google for "APIPA." The space is 169.254/16, which used to belong to a company that was bought by Microsoft, and has been reserved for Private use with Windows systems that fail to obtain a DHCP lease.
For more information, see:
http://www.winnetmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm
> Basically, there's nothing you can do (in a technological fashion) about it. Only thing that you can do is hunt them down and sue them; which is not that simple in a global environment.
Bzzzt! Wrong. I grant that there is nothing you can do as the victim of a DDOS, except to design networks with good peering, your own AS and multiple providers with good upstream filtering, however there is a simple, technical solution, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread -- all ISPs should filter their outgoing packets to prevent spoofing.
It's true this won't entirely eliminate DDOS -- but it will make the tracking of the origin (the zombie) much easier, and therefore ease the challenge of upstream filtering.
> We should force ISP's to block Spoofed source packets.
/. readers may not realize the validity of the above comments, so let me explain.
> There is no legitmate reason for them to exist in the first place.
Since some
I know of no technique to differentiate between incoming spoofed packets, based on the limitations of the current protocols (IPv4.) It may be possible to enforce anti-spoofing with IPv6, but i'm not an expert in this area.
The poster is referring to egress checking for ISP's, so that they filter all OUTgoing traffic, and simply drop packets which appear not to originate in their own, known networks. Simple really, and I wish more providers would do this -- including dropping all 10/8, 172.16/12 and 192.168/16 nets, as well as the Microsoft private IP space -- plus let's get rid of all port 135 traffic too while we're at it.
Disclaimer: I used to own an ISP, but haven't been in that business for 10 years.
It was the last, great hope for Hum^H^H^HLinux. As Linus and RMS are led away in chains, who is left to fight for the rights of Linux users everywhere. Alan Cox is in exile in far-off England, while the lawyers of IBM are "in a meeting." Who will save us now?
OK, here's a different viewpoint.
First, a disclaimer. I'm a "suit" -- because I started three companies in the past 25 years, and am running a small security and software development company. I'm also an MBA, so I have at least a basic understanding of business.
I have two formal IT certifications, which I considered worth investing time in acquiring.
1) RHCE
Since I have worked with UNIX for more than 20 years, I didn't take the training course, so can't comment on it, but I did take the exam. It was extremely comprehensive. I can't give details, but it was definitely of the "someone broke it, now fix it" variety. In my view, RHCE is an excellent measure of how good someone's Linux skills are.
2) CISSP
This is based on a purely multiple choice test, with around 250 questions. These are very tough questions, and while it *may* be possible for someone to memorize the contents of several books, in my view this is a real test of the 10 domains of security knowledge.
I value both certifications, and have approved spending shareholder money on certifying some of my team with the above certs. I would certainly recommend both of them to other companies.
One final note. For many years, I spurned certification, believing that it was enough to have experience. No longer. The market is different, and if you're serious about working long term in the industry, then you should use the certification track to validate what you know. Yes, there are some bad certifications, but at least with CISSP and RHCE, I *know* that anyone who can pass those is someone I want to hire.
cheers
Paul
Somewhat OT, but the DOS pipe was a fake pipe -- it didn't connect the STDOUT of one process to the STDIN of another. Instead, it simply write everything into a file in a temporary directory, then allowed the second process to read from the first. This is quite different from the UNIX pipe, which doesn't use the file system to store the intermediate information.
I have had this argument many times, and am still very skeptical about GPS transponders.
GPS (if that's being used, which is likely) is a one-way system, which means a passive device receives timing signals from a constellation of visible satellites, and uses the timing differences to estimate location and speed of the receiver.
The critical question is what happens next to that data. It can't be transmitted back to the GPS satellites, since they are only able to receive control signals from their operator (Loral?). In fact, it's unlikely to be any satellite-based system, due to the power requirements to punch a signal up to above the atmosphere (such as a satellite phone or VSAT terminal.) Such requirements mean a big heavy battery, and a very carefully aligned directional aerial (in most cases.)
So, what's the back channel? One example of a GPS transponder uses GSM to send the coordinates to a local cell network, probably via SMS. A European system (Galileo) being developed for tracking vehicles on roads throughout Europe, using UMTS or similar technologies.
Note that all of these devices so far require a package that is somewhat large than that which can be hidden inside a can of Cola!
Worried? Not at all. There's a great community support for it, and if something breaks, it's usually the hard disk, which is easy to replace. It's a great piece of engineering -- and it's sitting on my desk now, playing a track by Mint Royale, "Sexiest Man in Jamaica..."
Nothing to see here folks. As of the recent Alpha Release v3.0 my 60 Gb Empeg Car Player now supports Ogg Vorbis format.
Unfortunately, in the race to produce more and more idiot-proof designs, versus the proclivity of the universe to produce more idiots, the latter is winning.
The University at which I teach has many campuses on US Military bases.
I know of hundreds of officers and enlisted men who have improved their career prospects through further graduate level education.
As a CISSP I heard from one of the instructors that they do a lot of military and spook work with the NSA.
To paraphrase Strider, "Are you paranoiac? You're not nearly paranoiac enough." It's clear to me that the simple taxation aspect is a trojan horse. What's really happening here is that there will be individual identifying information for tracking vehicles, and therefore individuals, anywhere in Europe. I'm guessing that the uplink (i.e., the part that sends from the car to the tax authorities) will be a real-time UMTS, which means you'll have a continuously updated real time fix on people.
There will be scope creep to include people location, plus speed limit enforcement -- "You exceeded 130 km/h for 15 seconds, here's your ticket, we already deducted the money from your account!".
It may even be used to create "no go" areas (such as those enforced by car rental companies) and for forensic analysis in traffic accidents (you were going too fast, therefore your insurance is invalid.)
It's called Outreach Project Tool, you can download it from here. It uses LAMP.
For a nice example of excellent quality US comics, try the Rising Stars series, written by JMS of Babylon 5 fame, published by Top Cow.
There's a new approach being introduced here in Austria. On the A22 in Vienna, which is a three-lane highway, there is a speed restriction of 80 km/h (50 mph) within the city limits. This is enforced using cameras at various locations, which take images on the number plates of the cars, then compare the time taken to traverse a specific distance. If your average speed over that period exceeds 85 km/h, you get a ticket.
I'm thinking that trying just to lose weight is a very negative goal. Instead, you should be trying to convert fat to muscle, and build fitness and energy levels. Best option for doing this I've seen is this approach: Body For Life.
Check out some of the "before" and "after" pictures on that website. Those are ordinary people, who found that a simple commitment to fitness and exercise can really change your life.
... is like winning a lottery. There's no easy way to do this.
My company has released on Sourceforge a very nice piece of software for managing projects called Outreach Project Tool, which is used by hundreds of companies around the world. Not one of them has even sent a postcard we requested to acknowledge their use, let alone any money.
Today, we also released another great tool for documenting IT infrastructure called DMO, and we don't expect to earn a single Euro in revenue from it, despite spending thousands of Euros on its development.
Why are we doing this? Because we make money out of selling solutions and consulting based around open source, and we want to give back to the community. If you're a developer, and want to write and release open source software, go ahead, but don't expect it to pay for lunch.