go a little farther into the BBC website to hear/read the recorded interviews where Douglas Adams made predictions about how all these formats and
playback technologies where going to mold the
economy and user experience of consuming media. This page was also the entry point for a contest
seeking new material you might create for submission
to the HHGG. [like I wasn't already wasting enough time reading/. !-)]
Indeed, calling CTSS a DIRECT ancestor is a bit of a stretch. Dennis Ritchie is about as authoritative as you are going to get on the history of Unix and
Unix is the direct ancestor of Linux. Read his
article on the history of Unix. There you will find his quote in section 1.3 on just where CTSS comes into the genisis of Unix....it is a distant
ancestor. The Wikipedia article on history of OS'es is strangely lame on this topic.
I agree but the problem is that a scientific
development leads its political consequences by
years, sometimes decades. Politicians and most
businesses don't operate in that sort of timeframe.
So even though most of the jobs we do and the
way we fight wars involve technology that was hot
science 10 or 20 years ago, few of us are voting
like science mattered, let alone being led by leaders
who think that way. A
poll at scienceblog.com shows that its readers
strongly consider Bush harmful to scientific progress.
Eventually, a Linux-brained robot. Or maybe some open sourced flavor of VxWorks. Eventually
its got a gas engine and 2 or 3 horse power driving
hydraulic actuators. Strong enough to be lightly armored and do serious damage with its weight alone. It'll have a published standard sensor bus that enables dozens of open
source daemons giving it such capabilities as a better sense of balance
and maybe a RFID-based or face recognition software
to give it a sense of friend/foe. I could program it to walk down to the gas station and use my
credit card when it was hungry. It will be
strong enough that I can program it to stack my
fire wood and threaten the neighbors stupid dog.
For that much utility, I would pay the ten or fifty thousand dollars
that it might cost.
Etc Etc. The question is, when does it cease to be a toy...
AT WHAT POINT DO I NEED A LICENSE TO
OPERATE A ROBOT? When its capable of misuse?
When its capable of harming other people?
[Note Linux brain: I DO NOT need a license to
turn it on or to program it... ever!]
regarding " Exactly how many products do you see that only work with windows XP SP2?". One would
be too many. Just the rumors that SP2 will or might
break some older applications has scared hundreds
of companies and SysAdmins from applying that "patch".
The way to interpret that reluctance is "score a point for MS alternatives" [which now include their own legacy OS products]. The only way they are going to solidfy their eroding
market share is having a solution to security problems that is not itself yet another problem. And it is increasingly the case that that solution would have to be technichally better than Linux
or OS X can provide. The market has become too
sophisticated for for MS to torpedo competition by sneaking in self-serving "standards".
Just a million? Pfft! I went down the tubes with
one S.R. startup back in '92 that ate far more
of some VC's money than that. Now NSF is not
in it to get rich and I hope I am right in
assuming that a successful chip design, if a
mere $1000000 gets that far, would then be
available at no fee to any foundry, or at least
US foundry. OK, any foundry that wants to sell
S.R. chips to the DOD:(
This lines up pretty well with IBM's
recent give-away of its S.R. code: it is an
admission that Speech Recognition is a commodity
and nobody knows how to make any money with it
so govt must fund further development.
BTW, automated recognition of music [as in "what
is this tune I keep
humming?"] has been on the drawing board at
Philips over in the Netherlands for over a year. Philips isn't saying much. But it
appears you have to have a pretty accurate sample
to get recognition since they want to arrest your piracy based on this recognition...no S.R. software worth its
$1000000 is that fussy about sound quality.
You don't have to be too old to remember departmental computers and minicomputers with timesharing that enabled 10 people, 2 of whom actually knew how to get net work done on a computer, to use one $50000 system. When did we hit bottom? This is not progress. I think these guys are re-inventing the flat tire. Wouldn't they be miles ahead to start with an OS that was multi-usr from the get-go and available with a LIceNse for Users at no eXpense?
Well, one thing is clear: OSRM have provided us their implicit judgement on the probability of successful patent litigation against Linux. The news.com article mentioned 150k$ buys you 5000k$ worth of protection. If all the start-ups I have joined had VC's demanding such good chances of success, I'd be rich or at least employed!
I'd like to echo Finkployd's sentiments and go a
step farther: If a person/company built a crawler
that was emulating the incautious [read MSIE-using]
web surfers, documentation of the infections and
infectiousness of sundry compromized or fraudulent
websites could be amassed. That record, obtained
and stored without the biases or sloth of a human,
would make any body who wanted to sue because the
wistle had been blown on their dirty website think
twice...they would just be exacerbating their
negative exposure. As a wary web surfer, I'd like
to go to the report-emitting website fed by this
crawler and see who was contaminated, with what
and when so I could steer clear. I bet you could
make a buck with such a tool/service/website if
your only revenue came from ads for firewall,
antivirus and spyware detecting products but
even more could come from the operators of the
toxic websites who SHOULD be grateful to get an
early if public notice that they were contaminated.
Needless to say, this hypothetical crawler had
better be double hulled and bombproof. Would be a
fun piece of systems programming that is part
Alta Vista and part maggot: looking for sick
websites, pushing all their buttons to see
if pirates board you or poisoned cookies are
dropped on you. Maybe you start with Apache
and Mozilla code and... Oh, I wish I had time
to write such a thing:(
I have one severe bowl of Sanani or Harrar, brewed up Turkish style first thing in the
morning...years ago I quit having having second or
further cups later in the day as I would
get no sleep. I asked Starbucks via the e-mail
customer response on their website [they actually
do answer the e-mail!] so I know I am getting
around 500mcg... its just sublethal according
to my doctors but I don't even get arhythmia.
I REALLY enjoy that cup and aside from a
tendency to focus on the exits if a morning
meeting goes over an hour, I'm able to sail
through the day and still sleep well by
midnight...but I am acclimated to the cycle
of having the caffeine run out once a day so
if I dont get my fix in the morning, I can
skip that day and not die...my code just looks
funny. And I have gotten so picky about the
coffee that the typical burnt brown bilge festering
in the pots of most offices and overhyped
doughnut shops is utterly disgusting
to me, making it easy to stick to my coffee diet.
Yup, been there, done that. In 1980, working in DEC's mill buildings in Maynard, MA, I lived in a cube adjacent to a room full of LA120's being wear tested to the point of failure...that point being seldom reached, the noise was a steady 55dB. I lined the walls with and pitched a roof of styrofoam panels sandwiched to egg-crate foam...it was quieter and looked sort of Greek revival as far as style is concerned. Fire marshall would have s..t a brick if he ever saw it.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried to mod the stuff posted to the New Voters Project?
go a little farther into the BBC website to hear/read the recorded interviews where Douglas Adams made predictions about how all these formats and playback technologies where going to mold the economy and user experience of consuming media. This page was also the entry point for a contest seeking new material you might create for submission to the HHGG. [like I wasn't already wasting enough time reading /. !-)]
Indeed, calling CTSS a DIRECT ancestor is a bit of a stretch. Dennis Ritchie is about as authoritative as you are going to get on the history of Unix and Unix is the direct ancestor of Linux. Read his article on the history of Unix. There you will find his quote in section 1.3 on just where CTSS comes into the genisis of Unix....it is a distant ancestor. The Wikipedia article on history of OS'es is strangely lame on this topic.
that this 40 year old code has fewer buffer overrun vulnerabilities than XP, even with SuperPatch2?
I agree but the problem is that a scientific development leads its political consequences by years, sometimes decades. Politicians and most businesses don't operate in that sort of timeframe. So even though most of the jobs we do and the way we fight wars involve technology that was hot science 10 or 20 years ago, few of us are voting like science mattered, let alone being led by leaders who think that way. A poll at scienceblog.com shows that its readers strongly consider Bush harmful to scientific progress.
Eventually, a Linux-brained robot. Or maybe some open sourced flavor of VxWorks. Eventually its got a gas engine and 2 or 3 horse power driving hydraulic actuators. Strong enough to be lightly armored and do serious damage with its weight alone. It'll have a published standard sensor bus that enables dozens of open source daemons giving it such capabilities as a better sense of balance and maybe a RFID-based or face recognition software to give it a sense of friend/foe. I could program it to walk down to the gas station and use my credit card when it was hungry. It will be strong enough that I can program it to stack my fire wood and threaten the neighbors stupid dog. For that much utility, I would pay the ten or fifty thousand dollars that it might cost. Etc Etc. The question is, when does it cease to be a toy... ... ever!]
AT WHAT POINT DO I NEED A LICENSE TO OPERATE A ROBOT? When its capable of misuse? When its capable of harming other people? [Note Linux brain : I DO NOT need a license to turn it on or to program it
regarding " Exactly how many products do you see that only work with windows XP SP2?". One would be too many. Just the rumors that SP2 will or might break some older applications has scared hundreds of companies and SysAdmins from applying that "patch". The way to interpret that reluctance is "score a point for MS alternatives" [which now include their own legacy OS products]. The only way they are going to solidfy their eroding market share is having a solution to security problems that is not itself yet another problem. And it is increasingly the case that that solution would have to be technichally better than Linux or OS X can provide. The market has become too sophisticated for for MS to torpedo competition by sneaking in self-serving "standards".
Just a million? Pfft! I went down the tubes with one S.R. startup back in '92 that ate far more of some VC's money than that. Now NSF is not in it to get rich and I hope I am right in assuming that a successful chip design, if a mere $1000000 gets that far, would then be available at no fee to any foundry, or at least US foundry. OK, any foundry that wants to sell S.R. chips to the DOD:( This lines up pretty well with IBM's recent give-away of its S.R. code: it is an admission that Speech Recognition is a commodity and nobody knows how to make any money with it so govt must fund further development. BTW, automated recognition of music [as in "what is this tune I keep humming?"] has been on the drawing board at Philips over in the Netherlands for over a year. Philips isn't saying much. But it appears you have to have a pretty accurate sample to get recognition since they want to arrest your piracy based on this recognition...no S.R. software worth its $1000000 is that fussy about sound quality.
You don't have to be too old to remember departmental computers and minicomputers with timesharing that enabled 10 people, 2 of whom actually knew how to get net work done on a computer, to use one $50000 system. When did we hit bottom? This is not progress. I think these guys are re-inventing the flat tire. Wouldn't they be miles ahead to start with an OS that was multi-usr from the get-go and available with a LIceNse for Users at no eXpense?
Well, one thing is clear: OSRM have provided us
their implicit judgement on the probability of
successful patent litigation against Linux. The
news.com article mentioned 150k$ buys you 5000k$
worth of protection. If all the start-ups I have
joined had VC's demanding such good chances of
success, I'd be rich or at least employed!
Guess what the senator says about holding gun companies liable for murders committed with their products?
I'd like to echo Finkployd's sentiments and go a step farther: If a person/company built a crawler that was emulating the incautious [read MSIE-using] web surfers, documentation of the infections and infectiousness of sundry compromized or fraudulent websites could be amassed. That record, obtained and stored without the biases or sloth of a human, would make any body who wanted to sue because the wistle had been blown on their dirty website think twice...they would just be exacerbating their negative exposure. As a wary web surfer, I'd like to go to the report-emitting website fed by this crawler and see who was contaminated, with what and when so I could steer clear. I bet you could make a buck with such a tool/service/website if your only revenue came from ads for firewall, antivirus and spyware detecting products but even more could come from the operators of the toxic websites who SHOULD be grateful to get an early if public notice that they were contaminated. Needless to say, this hypothetical crawler had better be double hulled and bombproof. Would be a fun piece of systems programming that is part Alta Vista and part maggot: looking for sick websites, pushing all their buttons to see if pirates board you or poisoned cookies are dropped on you. Maybe you start with Apache and Mozilla code and ... Oh, I wish I had time
to write such a thing:(
I have one severe bowl of Sanani or Harrar, brewed up Turkish style first thing in the morning...years ago I quit having having second or further cups later in the day as I would get no sleep. I asked Starbucks via the e-mail customer response on their website [they actually do answer the e-mail!] so I know I am getting around 500mcg ... its just sublethal according
to my doctors but I don't even get arhythmia.
I REALLY enjoy that cup and aside from a
tendency to focus on the exits if a morning
meeting goes over an hour, I'm able to sail
through the day and still sleep well by
midnight...but I am acclimated to the cycle
of having the caffeine run out once a day so
if I dont get my fix in the morning, I can
skip that day and not die...my code just looks
funny. And I have gotten so picky about the
coffee that the typical burnt brown bilge festering
in the pots of most offices and overhyped
doughnut shops is utterly disgusting
to me, making it easy to stick to my coffee diet.
Yup, been there, done that.
In 1980, working in DEC's mill buildings in
Maynard, MA, I lived in a cube adjacent to a
room full of LA120's being wear tested to the
point of failure...that point being seldom
reached, the noise was a steady 55dB. I lined
the walls with and pitched a roof of styrofoam
panels sandwiched to egg-crate foam...it was
quieter and looked sort of Greek revival
as far as style is concerned. Fire marshall
would have s..t a brick if he ever saw it.