A robotic probe sent to explore beyond a mysterious stone seal inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, has unlocked one mystery only to reveal another.
On Tuesday evening, the Pyramid Rover crawled 64 metres along a 20 cm2 tunnel in the centre of the pyramid. On reaching the end, it drilled through a mysterious stone obstruction resembling a type of door often used to guard a burial chamber.
But after passing a camera through drilled hole, the probe found only a second door blocking its way.
...
But the obstruction at the end of the passage poses a mystery. It is made of limestone, which is normally only used to seal individual chambers, and has two brass handles attached.
I'm not sure how other Linux distros implement it, but in SuSE you open Yast, then select 'Install and remove software'. Nice & simple.
Problems:
Yast isn't exactly an obvious name in the way Windows' "Control Center" is.
Yast only knows about the applications in the suse distribution. Third party packages have to be installed via a different route. Yes, I know you can edit the package list, but we're talking non technical end users.
For other packages, if you have an RPM opened with Konqueror. there's a button to install the rpm with Yast. Once you've added it that way Yast recognises the package in its software list & it can be removed through there.
It's a lot better than SuSE 6.1 was, but still could be a little easier for beginners.
"The other issue with bringing back more than seven would be adequate seating to prevent the inevitable injuries which could occur during re-entry for an un-restrained person."
Couldn't this be solved by create a sealed pod with additional seating that could be placed in the cargo hold of the Shuttle?
This could also be designed to remove the balance problem.
NASA employees have been flying first class for far too long. It's about time some of them got to try steerage.
As already noted in other comments, the movie and the book of "2001, A Space Oddessy" were developed together.
Arthur C. Clark wrote about the process in his 1972 book "The Lost Worlds of 2001". Unfortunately the book seems to be out of print, but if you liked the book or movie of 2001, it makes an interesting read.
As well as the story of the collaboration between Clark & Kubrik, there are several draft chapters or shorter passages, effectively aalternate versions of episodes from the book.
... Never press "Sumbit" When you mean "Preview"...
Google have a large number of computers, and have hired an expert on writing distributed operating systems. I feel it's likely that they want him to improve the operating environment of their servers, or possibly of the Google appliances they sell.
It doesn't take much thought to realise that Google would be well served by a stripped down operating system that supports the work they do highly efficiently, and supports non-core activities relatively poorly, or even not at all.
OK, let's assume that they are writing an OS for their own internal use. An OS that makes their servers carry out the core business of their company more efficiently. Why should they either sell or give away that operating system?
Spidering, organising, searching, and delivering information is what Google does. Why should they let their competition have access to the tool that lets their 10,000-158,000 computers do their core business better?
Not many facts to back it up in any depth, but my best guess is that whatever it is that Rob Pike does for Google won't be released for a long time, if ever.
They might want Rob Pike for other reasons, several have been suggested elsewhere in this discussion.
On the other hand, they may actually want him to develop an operating system. That is one of the things he's done before, and one of the things he's well known for.
Why on earth should Google want to develop a new (or highly modified) operating system? What strengths would Dr Pike bring to that project?
Google have a very large number of servers. They won't reveal how many they have, but admit to more than 10,000 servers, another another estimate suggests between 31 and 158 thousand servers. That's a lot of computing power. Presumably the people at Google are highly interested in getting as much work out of this hardware as they possibly can.
Enter Dr Pike. He's well known for Plan 9"The Plan 9 system is based on the concept of distributed computing in a networked, client-server environment. The set of resources available to applications is transparently made accessible everywhere in the distributed system, so that it is irrelevant where the applications are actually running."
I have seen passing references that Plan 9 is strong on clustering and load balancing. Unfortunately I can't get google to give me a good citation, so this may be a myth.
I regularily place parts of animals in me. OK, the parts are dead, cooked, and go into my digestive tract, but those animals were raised as food, slaughtered, and prepared for me. It's very seldom that I even thing about the "cute fluffy critters" I devour.
Once a year, or so, I have a 'flu vaccination. Last I checked, I was told this vaccine is made in chicken eggs. I'm not exactly in the high risk of death from 'flu category, but if killing a chicken fetus protects me from a week of misery, it's the chicken every time.
I understand that rabies vaccine is made in rabbits (I'm remembering this from over 30 years ago, so this may not be current). If I was bitten by a mammal in a country with rabies, I wouldn't worry about rabbit bits & pieces, or even about the life of that rabbit. If it's a choice between the bunny & me, the bunny gets it every time.
Now I hear that spare parts for my body could be grown in an animal.
If the safety issues can be resolved, I see very little ethical difference between making an animal live just so it can be killed for my food, making an animal live to make medicine for me and making an animal live so it can be killed to extend my life.
"The fact that it's voluntary makes me a bit nervous"
It's a draft. They're suggesting that everyone starts conforming now, instead of waiting until it's approved and made mandatory. Surely this is a good thing.
I agree with you that it's scary that this has come so late though.
My offsite backups are removable disk packs stored at my sister's house. They contain unencrypted ResiserFS partitions with the files simply copied using rsync.
I suppose that in theory she could read them.
Fortunately for my data security, she's a computer journalist, so she doesn't believe that any disk formats except NTFS and the various FAT variations exist.
'At these times of special celebration a choir of over two million robots sing the company song "Share and Enjoy". Unfortunately - again - another of the computing errors for which the company is justly famous means that the robot's voices are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune and the result sounds something like this, only slightly worse.'
I wish the people that bandy around terms like communist would stop and consider what these terms mean.
I am a worker (In my case an intellectual worker, but that doesn't matter) under both capitalism & communism I would be creating a product.
Under capitalism I create something, and I can sell it or give it away as I wish. It doesn't matter if that something is a wooden table or a computer program. It's my choice what I do with it.
The person I sell/gift it to can do with it as he or she wishes.
In other words, my product is covered by a BSD licence.
Under communism everything (including the fruits of my labours) belongs to "the people", in other words "the state". I make something, the state pays me a wage and it determies how and by whom the product is used.
Under capitalism (as described by Marx) competitive pressure forces the price of commodity goods down towards the cost of production. The producers can only make a profit by reducing their cost of production, including wages, to a minimum.
What's the true commodity cost of software? The cost of downloading and perhaps the cost of burning it to a CD.
Under communism, the state restricts competition, and interferes in the market, thus keeping the price of commodities high enough to ensure a decent wage for the workers.
The exact mechanism for how it restricts competition isn't that relevant. It could be "5 year plans" stating exactly how many will be produced, it could be limiting the number of people permitted to make the product, or it could be changing the patent rules to permit patenting the product rather than the old "patenting the process" model.
Under communism you have the state creating or enforcing monopolies on the production of commodity items. It doesn't matter if those items are cornflakes or software, the prices are kept artificially high to permit "the workers" to keep more of the wealth.
Looking to the USSR experiment, "the workers" that retained the wealth weren't so much the ones on the factory floor as the managers & the communist functionaries that replaced the former owners, but no-one can argue that the upper echelons of the society of the USSR were wealthy.
The Herald is a reputable broadsheet, and the country's largest circulation Newspaper.
They could have been scammed, but are unlikely to be making this up.
This, of course, leaves unanswered the question of why you Northern Hemisphere types needed to find a Southern Hemisphere newspaper article discussing one of your local issues.
I was on a Y2K team & when we talked to suppliers about Y2K a lot of them refused to accept that 2000 was a leap year.
I ended up getting machine readable copies of Pope Gregory's bull Inter Gravissimus (in Latin) and the 1751 English act of Parliment An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use which adopted it for England. The New Zealand Parliment never having repealed it, it is still law. I'd email these to suppliers, pointing out that they both explicitly said the year 'MM' is a leap year.
Usually they folded at this point. The one really worrying reaction I got back was the supplier of the automated access control system we used on some unattended sites "Well... it didn't recognise 1996 as a leap year, so I doubt it will recognise 2000"
Slashdot Mirror
by Will Knight
12:50 17 September 02
A robotic probe sent to explore beyond a mysterious stone seal inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, has unlocked one mystery only to reveal another.
On Tuesday evening, the Pyramid Rover crawled 64 metres along a 20 cm2 tunnel in the centre of the pyramid. On reaching the end, it drilled through a mysterious stone obstruction resembling a type of door often used to guard a burial chamber.
But after passing a camera through drilled hole, the probe found only a second door blocking its way.
...
But the obstruction at the end of the passage poses a mystery. It is made of limestone, which is normally only used to seal individual chambers, and has two brass handles attached.
...
http://objective.jesussave.us.nyud.net:8090/propag anda.html
Unlike the penguin, it flies.
And, it eats penguin chicks and other carrion.
A long time ago I used to work someone whose CICS password was seven spaces, "7Spaces".
A few years back I seriously considered making "I'm sorry, I can't remember" the pass phrase for my PGP key ring.
But wouldn't the authorities be suspicious if somebody actually started reading research papers?
This is a greenhouse environment.
- amavisd-new (email server - checker interface)
- antivir virus scanner software package of H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH (evaluation copy)
- AvMailGate email server scanner
- clamav av toolkit
- Samba-vscan (another interface)
Maybe not "inbuilt", but available on the distribution media.So, not only doesn't Linux currently need a virus checker but, at least in its SuSE form, it comes with two checkers and two interface packages.
Makes me wonder at the quality of the review.
Problems:
Yes, I know you can edit the package list, but we're talking non technical end users.
For other packages, if you have an RPM opened with Konqueror. there's a button to install the rpm with Yast. Once you've added it that way Yast recognises the package in its software list & it can be removed through there.
It's a lot better than SuSE 6.1 was, but still could be a little easier for beginners.
Couldn't this be solved by create a sealed pod with additional seating that could be placed in the cargo hold of the Shuttle?
This could also be designed to remove the balance problem.
NASA employees have been flying first class for far too long. It's about time some of them got to try steerage.
Arthur C. Clark wrote about the process in his 1972 book "The Lost Worlds of 2001". Unfortunately the book seems to be out of print, but if you liked the book or movie of 2001, it makes an interesting read.
As well as the story of the collaboration between Clark & Kubrik, there are several draft chapters or shorter passages, effectively aalternate versions of episodes from the book.
Google have a large number of computers, and have hired an expert on writing distributed operating systems. I feel it's likely that they want him to improve the operating environment of their servers, or possibly of the Google appliances they sell.
It doesn't take much thought to realise that Google would be well served by a stripped down operating system that supports the work they do highly efficiently, and supports non-core activities relatively poorly, or even not at all.
OK, let's assume that they are writing an OS for their own internal use. An OS that makes their servers carry out the core business of their company more efficiently. Why should they either sell or give away that operating system?
Spidering, organising, searching, and delivering information is what Google does. Why should they let their competition have access to the tool that lets their 10,000-158,000 computers do their core business better?
Not many facts to back it up in any depth, but my best guess is that whatever it is that Rob Pike does for Google won't be released for a long time, if ever.
On the other hand, they may actually want him to develop an operating system. That is one of the things he's done before, and one of the things he's well known for.
Why on earth should Google want to develop a new (or highly modified) operating system? What strengths would Dr Pike bring to that project?
Google have a very large number of servers. They won't reveal how many they have, but admit to more than 10,000 servers, another another estimate suggests between 31 and 158 thousand servers. That's a lot of computing power. Presumably the people at Google are highly interested in getting as much work out of this hardware as they possibly can.
Enter Dr Pike. He's well known for Plan 9 "The Plan 9 system is based on the concept of distributed computing in a networked, client-server environment. The set of resources available to applications is transparently made accessible everywhere in the distributed system, so that it is irrelevant where the applications are actually running."
I have seen passing references that Plan 9 is strong on clustering and load balancing. Unfortunately I can't get google to give me a good citation, so this may be a myth.
Yes, of course. When I was a child, my parents kept a few hens for eggs.
I also read on the web things that made me think that the vaccine is made from eggs that do contain a fetus. For example, "beginning with the supply of embryonated eggs, in which the flu viruses are cultivated".
Once a year, or so, I have a 'flu vaccination. Last I checked, I was told this vaccine is made in chicken eggs. I'm not exactly in the high risk of death from 'flu category, but if killing a chicken fetus protects me from a week of misery, it's the chicken every time.
I understand that rabies vaccine is made in rabbits (I'm remembering this from over 30 years ago, so this may not be current). If I was bitten by a mammal in a country with rabies, I wouldn't worry about rabbit bits & pieces, or even about the life of that rabbit. If it's a choice between the bunny & me, the bunny gets it every time.
Now I hear that spare parts for my body could be grown in an animal.
If the safety issues can be resolved, I see very little ethical difference between making an animal live just so it can be killed for my food, making an animal live to make medicine for me and making an animal live so it can be killed to extend my life.
It's a draft. They're suggesting that everyone starts conforming now, instead of waiting until it's approved and made mandatory. Surely this is a good thing.
I agree with you that it's scary that this has come so late though.
What's the population of Chernobyl these days?
Especially as an unscrupulous person could do this: http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/i mg_display.php?pic=h_astronaut_djn_02.jpg&cap=The+ glove+is+sensititive+enough+to+permit+kinky+sexual +activities.+Once+completed+the+soiled+glove+can+b e+easily+removed+for+hygenic+disposal.+Artwork%3A+ Cam+Brensiger
What is 386 Darwin like? Does it have many advantages over the *BSD it was forked from?
Yes, I agree with you.
Before posting the query I felt that I would probably be trying more than one of the different BSD OSes.
What I was hoping for, and seem to have got, was reasoned explanations as to why I should try a particular version first.
Cheers
Bruce
My offsite backups are removable disk packs stored at my sister's house. They contain unencrypted ResiserFS partitions with the files simply copied using rsync.
I suppose that in theory she could read them.
Fortunately for my data security, she's a computer journalist, so she doesn't believe that any disk formats except NTFS and the various FAT variations exist.
'At these times of special celebration a choir of over two million robots sing the company song "Share and Enjoy". Unfortunately - again - another of the computing errors for which the company is justly famous means that the robot's voices are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune and the result sounds something like this, only slightly worse.'
A guy that prefers women to beer.
I wish the people that bandy around terms like communist would stop and consider what these terms mean.
I am a worker (In my case an intellectual worker, but that doesn't matter) under both capitalism & communism I would be creating a product.
Under capitalism I create something, and I can sell it or give it away as I wish. It doesn't matter if that something is a wooden table or a computer program. It's my choice what I do with it.
The person I sell/gift it to can do with it as he or she wishes.
In other words, my product is covered by a BSD licence.
Under communism everything (including the fruits of my labours) belongs to "the people", in other words "the state". I make something, the state pays me a wage and it determies how and by whom the product is used.
Under capitalism (as described by Marx) competitive pressure forces the price of commodity goods down towards the cost of production. The producers can only make a profit by reducing their cost of production, including wages, to a minimum.
What's the true commodity cost of software? The cost of downloading and perhaps the cost of burning it to a CD.
Under communism, the state restricts competition, and interferes in the market, thus keeping the price of commodities high enough to ensure a decent wage for the workers.
The exact mechanism for how it restricts competition isn't that relevant. It could be "5 year plans" stating exactly how many will be produced, it could be limiting the number of people permitted to make the product, or it could be changing the patent rules to permit patenting the product rather than the old "patenting the process" model.
Under communism you have the state creating or enforcing monopolies on the production of commodity items. It doesn't matter if those items are cornflakes or software, the prices are kept artificially high to permit "the workers" to keep more of the wealth.
Looking to the USSR experiment, "the workers" that retained the wealth weren't so much the ones on the factory floor as the managers & the communist functionaries that replaced the former owners, but no-one can argue that the upper echelons of the society of the USSR were wealthy.
50% of marriages end in death!
They could have been scammed, but are unlikely to be making this up.
This, of course, leaves unanswered the question of why you Northern Hemisphere types needed to find a Southern Hemisphere newspaper article discussing one of your local issues.
I was on a Y2K team & when we talked to suppliers about Y2K a lot of them refused to accept that 2000 was a leap year.
I ended up getting machine readable copies of Pope Gregory's bull Inter Gravissimus (in Latin) and the 1751 English act of Parliment An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use which adopted it for England. The New Zealand Parliment never having repealed it, it is still law. I'd email these to suppliers, pointing out that they both explicitly said the year 'MM' is a leap year.
Usually they folded at this point. The one really worrying reaction I got back was the supplier of the automated access control system we used on some unattended sites "Well ... it didn't recognise 1996 as a leap year, so I doubt it will recognise 2000"
Yikes!