my Mom gets telemarketing calls on hers almost daily. Yay AT&T.
I've been an AT&T Mobile customer (and prior to that Cellular One, which was bought out by At&T) for 12 years now. I don't recall ever getting a telemarketing call on my cell phone. I doubt it's AT&T's fault.
...this all just turns out to be some sort of snipe hunt masterminded by a closet Linux advocate.
Think about it - bunch of hugely greedy execs that are tech-challenged.
Techie sees opportunity and drops a hint that they're getting screwed by the Linux folks and could probably make a ton of money off of it.
Greedy tech-challenged execs manage to convince themselves that techie is right; charge forward with their Swiss-cheese case and make complete fools of themselves -- while techie laughs his friggin' a$$ off.
...this all just turns out to be some sort of snipe hunt masterminded by a closet Linux advocate.
Think about it - bunch of hugely greedy execs that are tech-challenged. Techie sees opportunity and drops a hint that they're getting screwed by the Linux folks and could probably make a ton of money off of it. Greedy tech-challenged execs manage to convince themselves that techie is right; charge forward with their Swiss-cheese case -- while techie laughs his friggin' head off.
Put some thought into this: Just how many times are you willing to pay for broadband infrastructure? You think this stuff is going to be cheap? You think they just plug a router in at the 'ole power plant in New York and you plug a modem into the wall in California? Get informed.
This would not be a trivial undertaking. They'll need to add equipment at the powerplants, add equipment in the neighborhoods, modify or replace existing equipment (like transformers) to make things compatible, etc, etc.
Who's going to pay for all that? YOU, stupid. Even if you don't get their service -- because you DO pay a power bill, don't you?
Do you also pay a cable bill or satellite TV bill? You're paying for broadband there, too.
How 'bout a phone bill? Got one of those? Guess what? You're paying for broadband there, too.
And if you *do* actually pay for broadband (to really get it, I mean) -- you're only going to pay one of these providers, right? So the other two or three will whine that they're not getting enough demand. This type of thing is already happening with the telcos and cable companies -- they're spending big bucks to build the infrastructure and not getting the ROI.
So we're going to add yet another utility to the mix? How is that going to help? More competition, lower prices? Bah -- infrastructure ain't free. These companies are already bleeding all over the place with the current level of competition. *That's* why broadband isn't as readily available now as it should be.
I just happened to check, and the domain scopool.com is available. I thought it'd be kewl to put together a "SCO Pool" but, sigh, I honestly don't have enough time available in the near future to give it justice.
If you're going to snag it, PLEASE make sure you have the time/resources to do the project justice. (and don't bother doing it it you don't have the skills, hardware and bandwidth too).
What would the g-forces be like on the end of this thing going around so fast at that distance? Wouldn't it be like one of those machines they stress test pilots on?
The g-forces would be negated by the earth's gravity if it were implemented properly. A pilot training centrifuge or a ball swinging overhead are not very good anologies because they lack the gravity element.
Consider a geo-stationary satellite. Is it travelling fast? Heck yeah. Now imagine lowering a long-a$$ rope out of it (ignoring or correcting for effects that the rope may have on its geo-stationary status).
When the rope lowers to the point that it's a foot off the ground, are you thinking "ball swinging over head"? Nope. Satellite is still holding its orbit, and the rope has nothing to do with the orbit. Lower the rope another couple of feet and tie it off -- does that make any difference?
Amazon reported that it had finally turned a profit, something most of us thought we'd never see
Jon, I usually blow off your comments with a grain of salt because everyone's entitled to an opinion -- but tacking on a comment like this is pretty silly. Who is "us"? Certainly not people who have a clue about Amazon's business plans and how they're executing them.
If you want to say "something I never thought I'd see," fine -- but leave the rest of us out of your opinions.
Therefore, by measuring the distance to an accuracy of a millemeter, we might be able to gain some insight about: earth's gravity, the sun's gravity, and Jupiter's gravity. The point of this experiment is not to know how far it is to the moon. The point is to better understand the moon's orbit, and the various influences which affect it.
That's a good first volley, and it's obviously easy for someone to agree with your point. I had already considered your position and dismissed it prior to my original post, though. I'm afraid I oversimplified my point in a "too short" message. I apologize.
We may indeed gain more information about the moon's orbit -- but there are too many variables to go much beyond that unless we can get an equally accurate measurement of everything else in the picture.
When this guy gets to the point that he can record instantaneous snapshots of the precise position (to the mm) of every influencing body in the solar system, along with the strength and direction of the solar winds (as measured at the moon) and everything else that may enter the picture (including atmospheric and gravitational effects on the laser beam itself), he'll be able to approach a reasonable look at the true influence of gravity. Until then, improving his accuracy on one variable isn't going to improve the precision of the overall picture very much.
As "cool" as it may be, a high school discussion on experimental precision shows it to be an exercise in burning cash, IMHO.
How refreshing to know our tax dollars are going to be spent to fund this project for five years.
This is like trying to measure Bill Gates' wealth to the penny.
The moon's orbit varies by far more than 1 millimeter all the time. There are all sorts of influences, including the earth's gravity, the sun's gravity, Jupiter's gravity -- as well as factors that will introduce error into the measurements, such as refraction of the laser in the earth's atmosphere.
Besides, I've already measured the distance with my trusty golf rangefinder.:o)
It's unfortunate that so many people think that college is just about getting a piece of paper.
I'll expand on your thought to include people on both sides of the coin: people without and *with* degrees.
I can easily think of a dozen people within my daily sphere of influence that have degrees and have serious shortcomings in obvious areas like the 3 R's. One of the folks I'm thinking of has a PhD. This is really sad.
I can similarly come up with a list of a dozen people lacking degrees that present themselves in a much more professional manner than the previous group.
You wonder why this debate exists? Partly because today's universities let junk like the first group hit the streets. Partly because people have proven over and over again that you *can* succeed without a degree.
A degree *is* a piece of paper. While I'm not going to say a college education is a waste of time, I will point out that the piece of paper often carries more clout than it deserves, IMHO.
College is *not* the only way to gain a well-balanced background or achieve success. Equally, a college degree does *not* guarantee the existence of such balance or the potential of success.
When all is said and done, it really boils down to the person, not the degree. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Stephen Jobs, Steve Woz, the Wright brothers, Harry Truman, Larry Ellison, Craig McCaw and others all fully understand (and demonstrate) this concept.
Libraries, for example, are often used by the poor to access "free" email, but if that email isn't encrypted it's not private. So helping to install PGP on library computers would be an example of helping those below the poverty line access private communication.
Okay, this makes more sense now. Thanks for straightening us out.
Unfortunately, it's a tough situation. I don't see how installing PGP/GPG on library computers would be a solution. Can you ever really be assured of privacy on a public computer? The private key would be handled by the computer as would be the pass phrase. Easy targets.
Of course, we're not even talking about how/where the private key is stored between uses. On a floppy, I suppose -- but that doesn't strike me as a reliable solution.
There is, however, one divide where people are lost from this equation. Currently private communication requires money. PGP is not available to the vast majority of those under the poverty line. What, if anything, are you doing to bridge this gap?
I must be missing something here. Isn't GPG and OpenPGP free? I don't remember paying anything for what I'm using anyway. Or is the "cost" you're talking about geared towards 'net access and so on?
I was impressed with how Slashdot held up for the most part -- good job to all involved.
Have the/. folks ever considered using Tux for the static content -- or at least played with it? Tux rocks. And if/. is dedicating machines to static content, it'd probably be worth looking into.
There's a general perception in the community that Microsoft is a master at spreading FUD about competing products and companies. Why should we consider your answers to these questions as credible, honest answers -- and not "more of the same"?
You guys could buy some CanDu nuclear reactors off us--they're quite safe. Worst case accident, the reactor overheats, the heavy water (which is the moderator) boils off, and the reaction stops because it's no longer moderated. No Chernobyls, no Three Mile Islands, no fuss, no muss.
Are you an expert on reactors, or just going by what others tell you?
I was a reactor operator for 10 years and while I'll agree nuke plants are a lot safer than most people think, I feel the need to point out that it's not quite as straightforward as you make it out to be.
Sure, when the water boils off you lose your moderator which stops the reaction -- but you also lose your cooling. And reactors (ALL fission reactors) continue to generate a significant amount of heat well after the reaction 'stops'. This is *exactly* what happened at TMI -- their reactor was fully shut down well before the damage occurred. The damage occurred because a steam bubble was formed in the reactor vessel, and steam doesn't cool as well as water.
As for Chernobyl -- stupid plant design, and stupid operators (they weren't following proper procedure during refueling and testing operations).
One thing I *specifically* remember about our review of the Chernobyl incident was a mention of the fact that some Canadian plants share certain design characteristics with the Chernobyl plant. Care to comment on that? I don't have any info handy on the design(s) of your plants, so I don't know which plants it would be (and I don't recall any of our info ever referring to a "CanDo" plant, so we must have called them something else).
Ohh, and earthquakes. Earthquakes are bad.
I'll agree that California does leech off the surrounding states and such though. How 'bout water? Heck, they snag water from the watershed of states as far away as Colorado.
Slashdot Mirror
What's up with that ugly-ass distracting shadow across the front of him in their shot?
- CP
P.S. Anybody here work at GettyOne (or where ever this image came from) -- I'm curious to know if SCO is properly licensed to use that image.
I've been an AT&T Mobile customer (and prior to that Cellular One, which was bought out by At&T) for 12 years now. I don't recall ever getting a telemarketing call on my cell phone. I doubt it's AT&T's fault.
- CP
Bill Gates is buying SCO stock?
I hear he's looking for a few write-offs...
-CP
...this all just turns out to be some sort of snipe hunt masterminded by a closet Linux advocate.
:-)
Think about it - bunch of hugely greedy execs that are tech-challenged.
Techie sees opportunity and drops a hint that they're getting screwed by the Linux folks and could probably make a ton of money off of it.
Greedy tech-challenged execs manage to convince themselves that techie is right; charge forward with their Swiss-cheese case and make complete fools of themselves -- while techie laughs his friggin' a$$ off.
What an evil idea.
Wish I had thought of it...
-- CP
...this all just turns out to be some sort of snipe hunt masterminded by a closet Linux advocate.
:-)
Think about it - bunch of hugely greedy execs that are tech-challenged. Techie sees opportunity and drops a hint that they're getting screwed by the Linux folks and could probably make a ton of money off of it. Greedy tech-challenged execs manage to convince themselves that techie is right; charge forward with their Swiss-cheese case -- while techie laughs his friggin' head off.
What an evil idea.
Wish I had thought of it...
-- CP
Yes, the sarcasmizer is engaged...
-- CP
- There are 10 types of people; those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Interesting info, but Omega Protein is not a Fortune 500 company.
-- CP
Microsoft!
But then, we already knew that.
It's old news, folks. Nothing new here, move along...
-- CP
Okay, so you don't care about ham radio, great.
Put some thought into this: Just how many times are you willing to pay for broadband infrastructure? You think this stuff is going to be cheap? You think they just plug a router in at the 'ole power plant in New York and you plug a modem into the wall in California? Get informed.
This would not be a trivial undertaking. They'll need to add equipment at the powerplants, add equipment in the neighborhoods, modify or replace existing equipment (like transformers) to make things compatible, etc, etc.
Who's going to pay for all that? YOU, stupid. Even if you don't get their service -- because you DO pay a power bill, don't you?
Do you also pay a cable bill or satellite TV bill? You're paying for broadband there, too.
How 'bout a phone bill? Got one of those? Guess what? You're paying for broadband there, too.
And if you *do* actually pay for broadband (to really get it, I mean) -- you're only going to pay one of these providers, right? So the other two or three will whine that they're not getting enough demand. This type of thing is already happening with the telcos and cable companies -- they're spending big bucks to build the infrastructure and not getting the ROI.
So we're going to add yet another utility to the mix? How is that going to help? More competition, lower prices? Bah -- infrastructure ain't free. These companies are already bleeding all over the place with the current level of competition. *That's* why broadband isn't as readily available now as it should be.
-- CP
I just happened to check, and the domain scopool.com is available. I thought it'd be kewl to put together a "SCO Pool" but, sigh, I honestly don't have enough time available in the near future to give it justice.
If you're going to snag it, PLEASE make sure you have the time/resources to do the project justice. (and don't bother doing it it you don't have the skills, hardware and bandwidth too).
-- CP
Indeed. And a fine Canadarm it is...
A wee bit touchy on the subject, though - take a chill pill, eh?
I, for one, am glad that every friggin' part on the shuttle isn't named after the country from which it came...
- CP
I wonder what kind of deodorant they use on that thing?
Unless the TurboPower components are dual licensed under a GPL-compatible license, they will not be of much use with Kylix Open Edition.
Excellent point.
Easy to handle at this stage of the game, though. We'll look into a dual license for the Kylix libraries.
-- CP [TP]
The g-forces would be negated by the earth's gravity if it were implemented properly. A pilot training centrifuge or a ball swinging overhead are not very good anologies because they lack the gravity element.
Consider a geo-stationary satellite. Is it travelling fast? Heck yeah. Now imagine lowering a long-a$$ rope out of it (ignoring or correcting for effects that the rope may have on its geo-stationary status).
When the rope lowers to the point that it's a foot off the ground, are you thinking "ball swinging over head"? Nope. Satellite is still holding its orbit, and the rope has nothing to do with the orbit. Lower the rope another couple of feet and tie it off -- does that make any difference?
--CP
Jon, I usually blow off your comments with a grain of salt because everyone's entitled to an opinion -- but tacking on a comment like this is pretty silly. Who is "us"? Certainly not people who have a clue about Amazon's business plans and how they're executing them.
If you want to say "something I never thought I'd see," fine -- but leave the rest of us out of your opinions.
--CP
That's a good first volley, and it's obviously easy for someone to agree with your point. I had already considered your position and dismissed it prior to my original post, though. I'm afraid I oversimplified my point in a "too short" message. I apologize.
We may indeed gain more information about the moon's orbit -- but there are too many variables to go much beyond that unless we can get an equally accurate measurement of everything else in the picture.
When this guy gets to the point that he can record instantaneous snapshots of the precise position (to the mm) of every influencing body in the solar system, along with the strength and direction of the solar winds (as measured at the moon) and everything else that may enter the picture (including atmospheric and gravitational effects on the laser beam itself), he'll be able to approach a reasonable look at the true influence of gravity. Until then, improving his accuracy on one variable isn't going to improve the precision of the overall picture very much.
As "cool" as it may be, a high school discussion on experimental precision shows it to be an exercise in burning cash, IMHO.
--CP
How refreshing to know our tax dollars are going to be spent to fund this project for five years.
:o)
This is like trying to measure Bill Gates' wealth to the penny.
The moon's orbit varies by far more than 1 millimeter all the time. There are all sorts of influences, including the earth's gravity, the sun's gravity, Jupiter's gravity -- as well as factors that will introduce error into the measurements, such as refraction of the laser in the earth's atmosphere.
Besides, I've already measured the distance with my trusty golf rangefinder.
-- CP
Yeah, it's a sucky clause -- but it ain't innovation. I've seen it before. And I've seen worse. The NDA you sign as a Palm Developer comes to mind.
-- CP
I'll expand on your thought to include people on both sides of the coin: people without and *with* degrees.
I can easily think of a dozen people within my daily sphere of influence that have degrees and have serious shortcomings in obvious areas like the 3 R's. One of the folks I'm thinking of has a PhD. This is really sad.
I can similarly come up with a list of a dozen people lacking degrees that present themselves in a much more professional manner than the previous group.
You wonder why this debate exists? Partly because today's universities let junk like the first group hit the streets. Partly because people have proven over and over again that you *can* succeed without a degree.
A degree *is* a piece of paper. While I'm not going to say a college education is a waste of time, I will point out that the piece of paper often carries more clout than it deserves, IMHO.
College is *not* the only way to gain a well-balanced background or achieve success. Equally, a college degree does *not* guarantee the existence of such balance or the potential of success.
When all is said and done, it really boils down to the person, not the degree. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Stephen Jobs, Steve Woz, the Wright brothers, Harry Truman, Larry Ellison, Craig McCaw and others all fully understand (and demonstrate) this concept.
--CP
You make it sound like it's a bad thing to put a bunch of servers on a separate 'net.
I, for one, won't miss 'em. It'll be interesting to see if that takes a noticible chunk out of the worm traffic.
--CP
Okay, this makes more sense now. Thanks for straightening us out.
Unfortunately, it's a tough situation. I don't see how installing PGP/GPG on library computers would be a solution. Can you ever really be assured of privacy on a public computer? The private key would be handled by the computer as would be the pass phrase. Easy targets.
Of course, we're not even talking about how/where the private key is stored between uses. On a floppy, I suppose -- but that doesn't strike me as a reliable solution.
--CP
I must be missing something here. Isn't GPG and OpenPGP free? I don't remember paying anything for what I'm using anyway. Or is the "cost" you're talking about geared towards 'net access and so on?
--CP
I was impressed with how Slashdot held up for the most part -- good job to all involved.
Have the /. folks ever considered using Tux for the static content -- or at least played with it? Tux rocks. And if /. is dedicating machines to static content, it'd probably be worth looking into.
- CP
Hmm... Tip O'Neil was the Speaker of the House during that entire time, so which is it:
(A) Tip O'Neil was a Republican
(B) The Republican majority voted a Democrat to be their Speaker
(C) You're lying to us, thinking no one will call you on it.
(D) You're a moron and don't know any better.
There's a general perception in the community that Microsoft is a master at spreading FUD about competing products and companies. Why should we consider your answers to these questions as credible, honest answers -- and not "more of the same"?
Are you an expert on reactors, or just going by what others tell you?
I was a reactor operator for 10 years and while I'll agree nuke plants are a lot safer than most people think, I feel the need to point out that it's not quite as straightforward as you make it out to be.
Sure, when the water boils off you lose your moderator which stops the reaction -- but you also lose your cooling. And reactors (ALL fission reactors) continue to generate a significant amount of heat well after the reaction 'stops'. This is *exactly* what happened at TMI -- their reactor was fully shut down well before the damage occurred. The damage occurred because a steam bubble was formed in the reactor vessel, and steam doesn't cool as well as water.
As for Chernobyl -- stupid plant design, and stupid operators (they weren't following proper procedure during refueling and testing operations).
One thing I *specifically* remember about our review of the Chernobyl incident was a mention of the fact that some Canadian plants share certain design characteristics with the Chernobyl plant. Care to comment on that? I don't have any info handy on the design(s) of your plants, so I don't know which plants it would be (and I don't recall any of our info ever referring to a "CanDo" plant, so we must have called them something else).
Ohh, and earthquakes. Earthquakes are bad.
I'll agree that California does leech off the surrounding states and such though. How 'bout water? Heck, they snag water from the watershed of states as far away as Colorado.
CA's golf courses are nice and green though.
--CP