Going to the Moon would be my first priority. Call me paranoid, but if China sets up a military base on the Moon without our having a presence there, we will be at a major military disadvantage.
Second, the spinoffs should be beneficial. AFAIK the NASA mission to the moon is the only government program that put more into the economy than it took out. However, I wouldn't trust the government of any single nation (or consortium, for that matter) to derive the most benefits from such a program.
After we establish ourselves on the moon, the development of some type of constant acceleration system for interplanetary exploration should be cheaper and open the way to practical missions within the solar system.
Think about it: Travel time to Mars would be about 50 days under a constant acceleration of only 1/100 x G when Mars is within the 60,000,000 mile proximity. This is a practical time period for even human exploration of Mars. It took about 2.5 months to travel by ship from Europe to the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries, and trade with Asia from the East Coast took a couple of years. Let's go for it!
Actually, RBM was a big supporter of the patent idea, and dang near everything he did is covered by TM, RM, Copyright or patent. He was very zealous of protecting his intellectual property, and the Buckminster Fuller Foundation has very rigid rules about using his ideas or patents. Much of today's rigidity comes from people ripping off his ideas and trying to profit from them without acknowledging the source or paying for the privilege.
Aha! I found a site called www.bustpatents.com. I'd like to see the patent The Brain applied for busted also. Hehehe...Activists, UNITE!
(Uh, that's not too '60's is it?)
Mike
Interesting post. We are beginning to see more of "Intellectual-Property-as-a-dynamic-system." The game is to put obstacle in your competitor's way to maintain an advantage for yourself. The Asian countries play the game differently from the Western countries, and it's worth reading a book like, "The Asian Mind Game" by Chin-Ning Chu to see the difference.
IMO, companies and individuals should be compensated for their intellectual achievements and research, but there ought to be a penalty for applying for a frivolous patent. (Interestingly enough, in Japan it's customary for a company suing another company to post a bond that will compensate the defendant if the lawsuit doesn't prevail. It is sometime done in the US, but the argument against it is that it is an unfair obstacle for those seeking justice through the courts.)
The US derives an enormous benefit from patents. Billions of dollars are entering the US through channels not tracked by the "Balance of trade" figures as a result of licensing agreements with other nations. Japan licensed millions of dollars worth of technology and improved on it, and is still paying enormous amounts of money in license fees.
Remember penicillin? The knowledge was put in the public domain and languished for 40 years because no companies felt they could afford to tool up to produce it since they would never have any competitive advantage. If it wasn't for WWII, penicillin production might not have gotten started.
I don't resent the ease with which a company can apply and file a patent, but I resent the hell out of the high costs of challenging or defending a patent.
Mike
Even more important in my mind is that O'Reilly (back when it was Hi-Lo) is one of AutoZone's biggest competitors and used to be both an AIX and SCO user.
If this is still true, SCO is boosting one of their own customers by making trouble for AutoZone.
Robert (and his brother Roy and the Network guy, Randy) built the company from a garage-size endeavor into a $50 million + company. The prices are low and many people are successfully running their webhosting companies on his servers.
It does not make sense for EV1 to fight SCO. SCO has more in their war chest than EV1 profits in a year. I want to see someone stand up to SCO, but it has to be some one with more resources, such as IBM. Now if some of the warmongers in this thread would contribute the necessary funds for EV1's defense I'd be impressed, but I don't see that happening.
He may not be quite and idiot, but he has other problems. I mostly enjoyed the people I worked with at EV1, but the pay SUCKS, the equipment is marginal, the chairs are broken pieces of crap, corporate concern for the customer is questionable, they can't keep their forums straight, and service in the Data Center is degraded because he won't pay enough to get real talent, so the few talented people he has are grossly overworked. Despite this, EV1 has the largest pool of underpaid and overworked smart guys I've seen since I left the Army. I saw employees who were grossly overweight, handicapped, required meds and other people who couldn't get jobs in other places who were treated as trusted employees at EV1. The benefits were better than average, and if I could have made a living wage I'd still be there, 'cause I'd be too lazy to find another job until I was personally insulted.
I personally know people who are supporting their families and numerous employees on their webhosting businesses running at EV1, and I'm sure none of them would appreciate a useless show of defiance that would ruin their livelihood.
So, business-wise and customer-wise, I think Robert's decison to bend over and bare his ass for SCO was justified.
I used to do cryptology on an IBM 1401 with 8k of memory. I signed up on a list of techs available for help on IBM systems. I got a call one night from a local business service bureau, saying that their 1440 was simply shutting down. When I arrived, they showed me how they would run the bootstrap and load decks, then the patches and then data decks, but after running for a couple of minutes the system would simply stop working and all the console lights would go off even though the system still had power.
I found the problem in the first step, where I tried to understand what was going on. Autocoder (the IBM assembly language) was supposed to clear a value to a "word mark" located at a specific place in memory, but the data clerk had mis-typed the card in a patch and the word mark wasn't in the correct place, so it kept clearing memory until it went full circle and killed the system. I found it by accident, not logic, but I still got paid almost 5 times my monthly salary as a PFC for about 45 minute's worth of work.
Looking at the steps, I see how the rules would have made it easier for me to hunt down the problem, but it probably would have taken longer.
I'm a firm believer in a troubleshooting/debugging system. I learned my best troubleshooting techniques from a programmed instruction course by Phillips Electronics in Viet Nam in 1967. I have loads of troubleshooting and problem-solving books on my shelf, including some great books on debugging. I have a great book by James Martin on "provably correct" code, but I've never gotten the hang of it. (I need a book on provably correct typing) These days, I'm usually troubleshooting bigger processes, and I've never found a better troubleshooting system than the Kepner-Tregoe process ("The Rational Manager"), although the Goldratt Institute ("It's Not Luck", by Eli Goldratt) has a good one. Since most people don't want to study the process of problem-solving to any great depth, I recommend "The Complete Problem Solver" by Hayes. (There is a book with a similar title by Arnold, but they are on slightly different levels.)
This seems like a nice product. I've been using Inspiration for years, but the authors have no intention of porting it to UNIX or updating the Windows version (which was made for W3.1, but runs fine on my XP. I founda another great little program called B-Liner. It's worth gong to their site http://varatek.com/ and downloading the trial just to see the demos. I like how I can make templates that others can still use.
Sovereign immunity...The Feds can make as many stupidities as they want and are usually immune from the consequences. For instance: Who is the largest pulluter in the US? The US Government.
I believe continuous exposure of Federal stupidity is the best tool we have at present for change.
Slashdot Mirror
Going to the Moon would be my first priority. Call me paranoid, but if China sets up a military base on the Moon without our having a presence there, we will be at a major military disadvantage.
Second, the spinoffs should be beneficial. AFAIK the NASA mission to the moon is the only government program that put more into the economy than it took out. However, I wouldn't trust the government of any single nation (or consortium, for that matter) to derive the most benefits from such a program.
After we establish ourselves on the moon, the development of some type of constant acceleration system for interplanetary exploration should be cheaper and open the way to practical missions within the solar system.
Think about it: Travel time to Mars would be about 50 days under a constant acceleration of only 1/100 x G when Mars is within the 60,000,000 mile proximity. This is a practical time period for even human exploration of Mars. It took about 2.5 months to travel by ship from Europe to the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries, and trade with Asia from the East Coast took a couple of years. Let's go for it!
A while back Robert Marsh was buying up web hosting industry magazines and websites. Is the site for this article independent of EV1?
Mike
Actually, RBM was a big supporter of the patent idea, and dang near everything he did is covered by TM, RM, Copyright or patent. He was very zealous of protecting his intellectual property, and the Buckminster Fuller Foundation has very rigid rules about using his ideas or patents. Much of today's rigidity comes from people ripping off his ideas and trying to profit from them without acknowledging the source or paying for the privilege.
A right not exercised or defended is worthless.
Mike
Aha! I found a site called www.bustpatents.com. I'd like to see the patent The Brain applied for busted also. Hehehe...Activists, UNITE! (Uh, that's not too '60's is it?) Mike
Interesting post. We are beginning to see more of "Intellectual-Property-as-a-dynamic-system." The game is to put obstacle in your competitor's way to maintain an advantage for yourself. The Asian countries play the game differently from the Western countries, and it's worth reading a book like, "The Asian Mind Game" by Chin-Ning Chu to see the difference. IMO, companies and individuals should be compensated for their intellectual achievements and research, but there ought to be a penalty for applying for a frivolous patent. (Interestingly enough, in Japan it's customary for a company suing another company to post a bond that will compensate the defendant if the lawsuit doesn't prevail. It is sometime done in the US, but the argument against it is that it is an unfair obstacle for those seeking justice through the courts.) The US derives an enormous benefit from patents. Billions of dollars are entering the US through channels not tracked by the "Balance of trade" figures as a result of licensing agreements with other nations. Japan licensed millions of dollars worth of technology and improved on it, and is still paying enormous amounts of money in license fees. Remember penicillin? The knowledge was put in the public domain and languished for 40 years because no companies felt they could afford to tool up to produce it since they would never have any competitive advantage. If it wasn't for WWII, penicillin production might not have gotten started. I don't resent the ease with which a company can apply and file a patent, but I resent the hell out of the high costs of challenging or defending a patent. Mike
Even more important in my mind is that O'Reilly (back when it was Hi-Lo) is one of AutoZone's biggest competitors and used to be both an AIX and SCO user.
If this is still true, SCO is boosting one of their own customers by making trouble for AutoZone.
Mike
Robert (and his brother Roy and the Network guy, Randy) built the company from a garage-size endeavor into a $50 million + company. The prices are low and many people are successfully running their webhosting companies on his servers.
It does not make sense for EV1 to fight SCO. SCO has more in their war chest than EV1 profits in a year. I want to see someone stand up to SCO, but it has to be some one with more resources, such as IBM. Now if some of the warmongers in this thread would contribute the necessary funds for EV1's defense I'd be impressed, but I don't see that happening.
He may not be quite and idiot, but he has other problems. I mostly enjoyed the people I worked with at EV1, but the pay SUCKS, the equipment is marginal, the chairs are broken pieces of crap, corporate concern for the customer is questionable, they can't keep their forums straight, and service in the Data Center is degraded because he won't pay enough to get real talent, so the few talented people he has are grossly overworked. Despite this, EV1 has the largest pool of underpaid and overworked smart guys I've seen since I left the Army. I saw employees who were grossly overweight, handicapped, required meds and other people who couldn't get jobs in other places who were treated as trusted employees at EV1. The benefits were better than average, and if I could have made a living wage I'd still be there, 'cause I'd be too lazy to find another job until I was personally insulted.
I personally know people who are supporting their families and numerous employees on their webhosting businesses running at EV1, and I'm sure none of them would appreciate a useless show of defiance that would ruin their livelihood.
So, business-wise and customer-wise, I think Robert's decison to bend over and bare his ass for SCO was justified.
Mike
Ahh, those old systems.
I used to do cryptology on an IBM 1401 with 8k of memory. I signed up on a list of techs available for help on IBM systems. I got a call one night from a local business service bureau, saying that their 1440 was simply shutting down. When I arrived, they showed me how they would run the bootstrap and load decks, then the patches and then data decks, but after running for a couple of minutes the system would simply stop working and all the console lights would go off even though the system still had power.
I found the problem in the first step, where I tried to understand what was going on. Autocoder (the IBM assembly language) was supposed to clear a value to a "word mark" located at a specific place in memory, but the data clerk had mis-typed the card in a patch and the word mark wasn't in the correct place, so it kept clearing memory until it went full circle and killed the system. I found it by accident, not logic, but I still got paid almost 5 times my monthly salary as a PFC for about 45 minute's worth of work.
Looking at the steps, I see how the rules would have made it easier for me to hunt down the problem, but it probably would have taken longer.
I'm a firm believer in a troubleshooting/debugging system. I learned my best troubleshooting techniques from a programmed instruction course by Phillips Electronics in Viet Nam in 1967. I have loads of troubleshooting and problem-solving books on my shelf, including some great books on debugging. I have a great book by James Martin on "provably correct" code, but I've never gotten the hang of it. (I need a book on provably correct typing) These days, I'm usually troubleshooting bigger processes, and I've never found a better troubleshooting system than the Kepner-Tregoe process ("The Rational Manager"), although the Goldratt Institute ("It's Not Luck", by Eli Goldratt) has a good one. Since most people don't want to study the process of problem-solving to any great depth, I recommend "The Complete Problem Solver" by Hayes. (There is a book with a similar title by Arnold, but they are on slightly different levels.)
Mike
This seems like a nice product. I've been using Inspiration for years, but the authors have no intention of porting it to UNIX or updating the Windows version (which was made for W3.1, but runs fine on my XP. I founda another great little program called B-Liner. It's worth gong to their site http://varatek.com/ and downloading the trial just to see the demos. I like how I can make templates that others can still use.
Yeah! You could call it a Fleshlight! OOoops! been done.... see www.pussyinacan.com.
Sovereign immunity...The Feds can make as many stupidities as they want and are usually immune from the consequences. For instance: Who is the largest pulluter in the US? The US Government.
I believe continuous exposure of Federal stupidity is the best tool we have at present for change.