LOL! No, but they've managed to establish an extensive global empire by annexing large segments of metropolitan areas worldwide. Slashdotters joke about "our cockroach overlords" but that's much closer to the truth than people realize.
There are over 3,500 species of cockroach, of which Periplaneta americana, the American cockroach, and Blatella germanica, the German cockroach (the species to which TFA refers), are merely the most familiar to homeowners in North America. There are thousands of tropical species which inhabit rainforests, many of them much larger than the largest roaches you'll encounter in a dumpster. In fact the Madgascar Hissing Cockroach, which grows to about 3 inches in length, is a popular pet. And no, they aren't dirty, disease-ridden pests; they're quite fastidious about their grooming. Only roaches which inhabit garbage and sewers (American and German cockroaches typically) can be considered carriers of disease. Generally speaking, cockroaches are remarkably adaptive and hardy insects, and are of considerable interest to entomologists.
"People introduced the mongoose to control the rat population. Not only did they not take care of the rats (they forgot to take into account different nesting habits and day/night cycle), but they proceeded to infest the islands themselves."
We have first hand experience with the mongoose here in Jamaica as well. Three pairs were introduced a couple centuries ago to eradicate rats, but adaptable bastards that they are, the rats quickly found out that mongooses can't climb and took to the trees. The mongooses reverted to doing what they do very well, namely kill snakes and ground-nesting birds. The Jamaican Yellow Boa and Jamaican Green Boa are teetering on the edge of extinction thanks to the mongoose, and the Jamaican Iguana was thought to be extinct until a few years ago when a small breeding population was found on the coast near Kingston.
Island ecologies are particularly fragile, as Australia (rabbits), New Zealand (deer) and many others visited by Europeans have found out, but the most destructive of all introduced animals are the rat, cat, and pig. The National Geographic Society recently discovered the remains of a Jamaican monkey, the only species native to the island, that went extinct sometime after the arrival of the Spanish, probably due to hunting. Sad to say, the original native Jamaicans, the Taino, also went extinct after the arrival of the Spanish.
"why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations?
Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple?
why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany?
Why do humans always have to make everything about one person?
This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress."
Here's a news flash for you: the vast majority of the human race needs some sort of direction in any organizational enterprise. The guy ultimately responsible gets the credit for the organization's success, but he also gets the blame should things go wrong. The perfect example is the crew of a ship. Sure the crew all know their jobs, or should, but it's up to the captain to make sure that the jobs are being done to the benefit of the ship and crew. He's the one who has to decide where the ship is going; how best to get there; use the resources aboard, material and human etc. Sure, the other officers can give him the best advice, even the correct advice, but ultimately, somebody has to make the decision. And if you think you can operate a ship by committee, you're sadly mistaken.
It's not a matter of obsessively rewarding single people with the success of the enterprise, it's about having a focus of direction and responsibility. Your suggestion that progress can be made without such a focus is simplistic to say the least. In an anarchistic society who makes the decisions about garbage collection, public safety, environmental protection, legislation etc? And don't be so naive as to suggest that we'll all just group hug and sing "Kumbaya" and the good inherent in humanity will magically make these things sort themselves out. The average human is more than willing to pass the buck and let somebody else worry about this stuff.
In a well-wnitten opinion piece in the July/August 2004 Washington Monthly titled "My Beef With Big Media", Ted Turner argues for the break-up of media conglomerates. He makes the case that they not only stifle innovation, they are also frighteningly bad for democracy. To my mind, Turner's argument is the best so far against these conglomerates. He has also been perhaps the most strident critic of CNN's devolution into an infotainment channel over the past few years, and it's worth noting that he may have axes to grind due to his strenuous opposition to the acquisition of Time Warner by AOL, but his arguments are no less valid for all that.
"McMaster University recently announced the discovery of the remains of a gigantic ape, measuring over 3 meters tall and weighing up to 600kg, that supposedly co-existed alongside humans."
McMaster University did no such thing. They did not announce the discovery of Gigantopithecus blackii, which was described in 1935, 70 years ago. They announced that they had narrowed the time frame of its existence, which coincides with that of humans.
Title of TFA: "Giant ape lived alongside humans" [Emphasis mine]
In fact, many Bigfoot enthusiasts over the years have floated the theory that Sasquatch, Yeti et al are relic populations of G. blackii. I implore the editors to not accept such deliberately sensationalist ass-dribblings. Kinda lowers the intellectual tone around this fine upstanding fount of unbiased, objective knowledge. [/sarcasm] "Agent Provocateur" indeed.
Reminds me of J.D. Shapely, "The AIDS Saint", a character mentioned several times in passing in William Gibson's novel "Virtual Light". Shapely was a gay hustler who it was discovered was actually reducing the viral count of HIV-positive men who had sex with him. Investigation revealed that he was producing antibodies that destroyed the virus, and his blood products eventually gave rise to a vaccine. Shapely was murdered by ultra-far right Christians. When I first heard about this on BBC, I actually had goose pimples and an immediate flashback to Gibson's story.
...that's an RPG 7. National Talk Like A Pirate Day has never been more relevant. Arrrh me hearties! Anything to foster communications with the poor, misunderstand corsairs. Seriously, this is the first such incident I can recall hearing of in this region; usually it's the Phillipines and Indonesia.
"Is Dell a industry leader? Yes. Is he a visionary? No....He was just the first to figure out how to streamline hardware manufacture from a small capital into large capital and bring it to the masses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't his a visionary accomplishment? "Just" the first? Wow. Orville and Wilbur Wright were "just" the first as well, how come you're not dismissing their achievement? While I'm no fan of Michael Dell, nor of Jobs for that matter, have the guts to give him the credit he richly deserves. Dell haters like to scoff at them as a company that wouldn't recognize innovation if it got caught in the gears of the assembly lines, but Dell's true innovation wasn't technological, it was in manufacturing economics. All you folks reveling in the commoditization of the PC and the steady decline in the price of hardware should be saying masses of thanksgiving for Michael Dell. He's the one who started it, by providing cheap computers and pressuring other manufacturers to meet and beat, or get the hell out. Like him or hate him, he occupies an important place in computing history, as the single man most responsible for bringing personal computers to the masses, not Gates and not Jobs. Kind of turns my stomach to be defending the guy, but jeez, what's right is right, even if it is slightly nauseating.
"If they hadn't gotten a $150 million cash infusion from Microsoft in 1997? That kept the company afloat when it was about to go down for the third time."
It wasn't the money that kept Apple afloat. Jobs and Gates settled the old "look-and-feel" lawsuit brought against Microsoft by John Sculley, with an agreement that Microsoft would buy $150 million of non-voting stock (which they've long since sold for a tidy profit, so would all the "Microsoft bought Apple" theorists kindly go away), and much more importantly, Gates' promise to continue making Mac versions of Microsoft Office for a five year period. While the $150 million was nice, it wasn't what kept Apple afloat; Office for Macintosh did.
Incidentally, the five year agreement expired two years ago, but Office for Mac still exists for two reasons: Microsoft isn't stupid enough to cut off a source of revenue, and it provides a nice fig leaf to show the Department of Justice: "See! We play nice with others! What, us? Strangle a competitor? Perish the thought!"
My brothers and I operate a chain of grocery stores in Jamaica. Two months ago, one of the small stores was invaded by four gunmen who made the staff lie on the floor, shooting three of our employees in the process; fortunately their wounds were minor. While they attempted to open the safe in the manager's office, she surreptitiously placed a cell call to the police station, which is only about 100 meters away. When the police arrived, a 45-minute shootout ensued, during which the police shot and killed two of the assailants. The police eventually teargassed the building, and when the remaining two attempted to slip out by mingling with the staff as they left, they were attacked by a large, very angry, machete-carrying mob that had gathered on the scene, and hacked into mincemeat. I really have no sympathy for the bastards, but Jesus, they died horrible, horrible deaths. When I eventually reached the store after visiting the staff at the hospital, the police were still hosing away blood and fragments of flesh.
After seeing the three injured employees being treated, I arranged for the others, who were badly traumatized, to have a counseling session, and it was heartbreaking to hear them describe the ordeal of lying on the floor for 45 minutes while a firefight raged around them. The were showered with broken glass, lying in blood, having to look at the bodies of the two dead gunmen, one of whom had had his face shot away. They didn't believe that they were going to survive. While one of the group was recounting the events to the psychologist, he started sweating profusely, I mean veritable rivers running off his face and arms, and complained suddenly that he couldn't see. He didn't respond to hands being waved in front of his face, and the psychologist assured him that he'd seen this happen before as a result of extreme stress, and that his vision would return in a few minutes. I honestly don't know if he was just spinning a line of bullshit to calm down the guy, but sure enough, his vision returned in about five minutes. Clearly he hadn't suffered any physical injury apart from some cuts and bruises, but I can only surmise that the extreme psychological stress had screwed with his brain somehow. Can anyone shed any light as to the mechanism that could have caused this?
Didn't mean to be so snippy. I do take your point about single points of failure, and I agree, it's amazing that a frightfully expensive undertaking could be jeopardized by a single boneheaded mistake. Sorry about the troll comment.
"All data collected during the survey is entrusted to a single cube"
Which unfortunately is running Windows which BSODs upon hitting Earth's atmosphere, rendering the entire project worthless.
Running Windows? Where on the site does it say that? Also, where does it say that a 10cm cube is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere? According to the ANTS Enabling Technologies page, one of the enabling technologies for ANTS consists of
"Intelligent Systems areas requiring development include advanced autonomous systems, multi-agent systems, as well as high performance computing. We are currently involved in the ST-8 COTS high performance computing project, and using developments in that area to perform multi-agent system simulations for ANTS on a beowulf cluster." [Emphasis mine].
The ANTS project is under the purview of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which is "recognized as the home of the Beowulf Project". From what I could glean, simulations are being conducted on Beowulf clusters running Linux, and nowhere have I seen any indication that NASA would entrust mission-critical spaceflight to Windows. Never mind the fact that the earliest projected date for the ANTS project is 2010. Unless NASA knows something about the capabilities of Windows 5 years from now, there is no evidence that they're even considering using Windows. You sir, are a troll.
NASA's support for nanotech R and D is not surprising, given their concepts for the future of space exploration. A cornerstone of this new initiative depends completely on nanotechnology [or more properly molecular engineering] namely ANTS, the Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm. NASA's ANTS site has very nice overviews and movies of the concepts and potential missions, in particular PAM, the Prospecting Asteroid Mission.
Briefly, PAM envisions spacecraft in the shape of a cube with a 10 cm edge, each with a mass of 1 kg. Constructed mainly of carbon nanotubes in autonomous space-based factories, a thousand are assembled into a cube with a 1 m edge and launched from the Lagrange points on a 2 1/2 year journey to the asteroid belt. Each 1 m cube separates into its component sub-cubes, each of which deploys a solar sail. The 1,000-strong swarm separates into subswarms, each of which seeks out and surveys a single asteroid. All data collected during the survey is entrusted to a single cube, which then returns to earth for recovery, while the remaining members of the subswarm move on to another target and repeat the process. Fascinating QuickTime movies are available on the site.
and read the referenced work, Jerome K. Jerome's shriekingly funny "Three Men In A Boat". I read it at age 13 at the behest of my school's headmaster, an Englishman, and have been recommending it to friends and family for the intervening 32 years. For those who know nothing about the story, it recounts a boating trip on the river Thames through the English countryside by three friends and a satanic terrier named Montmorency. Highly recommended, and I guarantee healthy, hearty belly-laughs. The reference to the author's hypochondria comes at the very beginning of the first chapter, but I urge everyone to read the entire work. The Wikipedia article even has one of my favorite quotes from the story, and as it rightfully says, it is nothing less than amazing how fresh the story still seems after 116 years.
Publicity stunt? Are you seriously suggesting that the CEO of a major public corporation would bet the future of said corporation, spend unimaginable amounts of money and man-hours, and potentially alienate droves of loyal customers and developers for a publicity stunt? You've got to be kidding. I personally do not like Jobs, but you seem to be harboring some sort of deep-seated pathological hatred of the guy. As to your contention that he called the parents of the murdered teen just to get his name in the news, that's beyond ridiculous. It sounds like you need a hug.
Mac users against Mac bigots. If you can't take criticism of Apple, add me to your foe list because I hate you already.
I know this is off-topic, but I've got to thank you for that. As a Mac user and Mac lover, I heartily despise the blind frothing fanatics who give the Mac community a bad name. A long-time acquaintance recently asked me what I thought about Windows XP, and when I told him that I've only ever used a Mac so I couldn't comment about any Microsoft OS, he said, "So you're one of those Mac fanatics, eh?" I was livid. The only thing I'm remotely fanatical about is my family; nothing else, certainly no computer, even comes close.
It burns my ass that people automatically assume that I'm some sort of zealot because I use a Mac. I've been called a "traitor" and worse in Mac-related forums for daring to criticize Apple, and for making no bones about my dislike for Steve Jobs. Admire him as one of the greatest visionaries in the tech industry? Certainly. Respect him for his unswerving desire to produce great things? Absolutely. Like him? I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire. This entire Jobs-is-God-and-Apple-is-His-Kingdom shtick is just damned distasteful and immature. For the last time, Apple is a public company like any other, and their CEO needs a thorough psych evaluation. Period. A lot of Mac users need to seriously grow up and rethink their emotional investment in a computing platform, albeit a very good one. My PowerBook is one of my favorite material possessions, but I don't hug it or lick it. That's what my wife is for.
What was this thread about again? Oh yeah. "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Sorry, never seen it.
So when will people be able to get a manicure and have copies of their favorite books or periodicals, or even blogs, inscribed on their fingernails? Nail Salon.com, anyone? Although truth be told, some materials are more deserving of a place of honor on one's toenails, down among the grunge and fungus. Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh come to mind.
"If Microsoft really is trying to be more open in it's communiction protocols, I can't help but see that as a good thing. They are free to extend all they want as long as they do not use their dominant market position to force those extensions on their customers to unfairly place burdens on their competitors."
Yes, I agree. If Microsoft were to be more open their protocols and formats, it would be a very good thing. But the problem is that this is Microsoft we're talking about, and their history is not exactly a litany of beneficence. They have long since burned through any trust and goodwill that the public may have had for them. It would be prudent to view with suspicion anything that Microsoft announces "as a good thing."
Is it just me? Or does anyone else feel a frisson of apprehension whenever they hear the words "Microsoft" and "extend" in the same sentence? They'll extend RSS, all right. They'll extend it out of the reach of any operating system that isn't named Windows.
Funny remark, but just to be pedantic, the majority speak Hindi, although English is the common language of commerce and mass communication. Why? India boasts some 530-odd languages and dialects, and the colonial tongue became the lingua franca, so to speak. Makes life a lot easier in such a vast and culturally diverse country. It's much the same situation in Nigeria and some other countries.
Slashdot Mirror
..is what they tasted like. There's a Surf and Turf joke in there somewhere. Any takers?
LOL! No, but they've managed to establish an extensive global empire by annexing large segments of metropolitan areas worldwide. Slashdotters joke about "our cockroach overlords" but that's much closer to the truth than people realize.
There are over 3,500 species of cockroach, of which Periplaneta americana, the American cockroach, and Blatella germanica, the German cockroach (the species to which TFA refers), are merely the most familiar to homeowners in North America. There are thousands of tropical species which inhabit rainforests, many of them much larger than the largest roaches you'll encounter in a dumpster. In fact the Madgascar Hissing Cockroach, which grows to about 3 inches in length, is a popular pet. And no, they aren't dirty, disease-ridden pests; they're quite fastidious about their grooming. Only roaches which inhabit garbage and sewers (American and German cockroaches typically) can be considered carriers of disease. Generally speaking, cockroaches are remarkably adaptive and hardy insects, and are of considerable interest to entomologists.
"If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system."
We have first hand experience with the mongoose here in Jamaica as well. Three pairs were introduced a couple centuries ago to eradicate rats, but adaptable bastards that they are, the rats quickly found out that mongooses can't climb and took to the trees. The mongooses reverted to doing what they do very well, namely kill snakes and ground-nesting birds. The Jamaican Yellow Boa and Jamaican Green Boa are teetering on the edge of extinction thanks to the mongoose, and the Jamaican Iguana was thought to be extinct until a few years ago when a small breeding population was found on the coast near Kingston.
Island ecologies are particularly fragile, as Australia (rabbits), New Zealand (deer) and many others visited by Europeans have found out, but the most destructive of all introduced animals are the rat, cat, and pig. The National Geographic Society recently discovered the remains of a Jamaican monkey, the only species native to the island, that went extinct sometime after the arrival of the Spanish, probably due to hunting. Sad to say, the original native Jamaicans, the Taino, also went extinct after the arrival of the Spanish.
"why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations? Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple? why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany? Why do humans always have to make everything about one person? This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress."
Here's a news flash for you: the vast majority of the human race needs some sort of direction in any organizational enterprise. The guy ultimately responsible gets the credit for the organization's success, but he also gets the blame should things go wrong. The perfect example is the crew of a ship. Sure the crew all know their jobs, or should, but it's up to the captain to make sure that the jobs are being done to the benefit of the ship and crew. He's the one who has to decide where the ship is going; how best to get there; use the resources aboard, material and human etc. Sure, the other officers can give him the best advice, even the correct advice, but ultimately, somebody has to make the decision. And if you think you can operate a ship by committee, you're sadly mistaken.
It's not a matter of obsessively rewarding single people with the success of the enterprise, it's about having a focus of direction and responsibility. Your suggestion that progress can be made without such a focus is simplistic to say the least. In an anarchistic society who makes the decisions about garbage collection, public safety, environmental protection, legislation etc? And don't be so naive as to suggest that we'll all just group hug and sing "Kumbaya" and the good inherent in humanity will magically make these things sort themselves out. The average human is more than willing to pass the buck and let somebody else worry about this stuff.
In a well-wnitten opinion piece in the July/August 2004 Washington Monthly titled "My Beef With Big Media", Ted Turner argues for the break-up of media conglomerates. He makes the case that they not only stifle innovation, they are also frighteningly bad for democracy. To my mind, Turner's argument is the best so far against these conglomerates. He has also been perhaps the most strident critic of CNN's devolution into an infotainment channel over the past few years, and it's worth noting that he may have axes to grind due to his strenuous opposition to the acquisition of Time Warner by AOL, but his arguments are no less valid for all that.
"McMaster University recently announced the discovery of the remains of a gigantic ape, measuring over 3 meters tall and weighing up to 600kg, that supposedly co-existed alongside humans."
McMaster University did no such thing. They did not announce the discovery of Gigantopithecus blackii, which was described in 1935, 70 years ago. They announced that they had narrowed the time frame of its existence, which coincides with that of humans.
Title of TFA: "Giant ape lived alongside humans" [Emphasis mine]
In fact, many Bigfoot enthusiasts over the years have floated the theory that Sasquatch, Yeti et al are relic populations of G. blackii. I implore the editors to not accept such deliberately sensationalist ass-dribblings. Kinda lowers the intellectual tone around this fine upstanding fount of unbiased, objective knowledge. [/sarcasm] "Agent Provocateur" indeed.Reminds me of J.D. Shapely, "The AIDS Saint", a character mentioned several times in passing in William Gibson's novel "Virtual Light". Shapely was a gay hustler who it was discovered was actually reducing the viral count of HIV-positive men who had sex with him. Investigation revealed that he was producing antibodies that destroyed the virus, and his blood products eventually gave rise to a vaccine. Shapely was murdered by ultra-far right Christians. When I first heard about this on BBC, I actually had goose pimples and an immediate flashback to Gibson's story.
...that's an RPG 7. National Talk Like A Pirate Day has never been more relevant. Arrrh me hearties! Anything to foster communications with the poor, misunderstand corsairs. Seriously, this is the first such incident I can recall hearing of in this region; usually it's the Phillipines and Indonesia.
"Is Dell a industry leader? Yes. Is he a visionary? No....He was just the first to figure out how to streamline hardware manufacture from a small capital into large capital and bring it to the masses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't his a visionary accomplishment? "Just" the first? Wow. Orville and Wilbur Wright were "just" the first as well, how come you're not dismissing their achievement? While I'm no fan of Michael Dell, nor of Jobs for that matter, have the guts to give him the credit he richly deserves. Dell haters like to scoff at them as a company that wouldn't recognize innovation if it got caught in the gears of the assembly lines, but Dell's true innovation wasn't technological, it was in manufacturing economics. All you folks reveling in the commoditization of the PC and the steady decline in the price of hardware should be saying masses of thanksgiving for Michael Dell. He's the one who started it, by providing cheap computers and pressuring other manufacturers to meet and beat, or get the hell out. Like him or hate him, he occupies an important place in computing history, as the single man most responsible for bringing personal computers to the masses, not Gates and not Jobs. Kind of turns my stomach to be defending the guy, but jeez, what's right is right, even if it is slightly nauseating.
"If they hadn't gotten a $150 million cash infusion from Microsoft in 1997? That kept the company afloat when it was about to go down for the third time."
It wasn't the money that kept Apple afloat. Jobs and Gates settled the old "look-and-feel" lawsuit brought against Microsoft by John Sculley, with an agreement that Microsoft would buy $150 million of non-voting stock (which they've long since sold for a tidy profit, so would all the "Microsoft bought Apple" theorists kindly go away), and much more importantly, Gates' promise to continue making Mac versions of Microsoft Office for a five year period. While the $150 million was nice, it wasn't what kept Apple afloat; Office for Macintosh did.
Incidentally, the five year agreement expired two years ago, but Office for Mac still exists for two reasons: Microsoft isn't stupid enough to cut off a source of revenue, and it provides a nice fig leaf to show the Department of Justice: "See! We play nice with others! What, us? Strangle a competitor? Perish the thought!"
Now we know where they dump all the damaged or otherwise unsalable Viagra. Took awhile to leach into the groundwater, but there you have it.
My brothers and I operate a chain of grocery stores in Jamaica. Two months ago, one of the small stores was invaded by four gunmen who made the staff lie on the floor, shooting three of our employees in the process; fortunately their wounds were minor. While they attempted to open the safe in the manager's office, she surreptitiously placed a cell call to the police station, which is only about 100 meters away. When the police arrived, a 45-minute shootout ensued, during which the police shot and killed two of the assailants. The police eventually teargassed the building, and when the remaining two attempted to slip out by mingling with the staff as they left, they were attacked by a large, very angry, machete-carrying mob that had gathered on the scene, and hacked into mincemeat. I really have no sympathy for the bastards, but Jesus, they died horrible, horrible deaths. When I eventually reached the store after visiting the staff at the hospital, the police were still hosing away blood and fragments of flesh.
After seeing the three injured employees being treated, I arranged for the others, who were badly traumatized, to have a counseling session, and it was heartbreaking to hear them describe the ordeal of lying on the floor for 45 minutes while a firefight raged around them. The were showered with broken glass, lying in blood, having to look at the bodies of the two dead gunmen, one of whom had had his face shot away. They didn't believe that they were going to survive. While one of the group was recounting the events to the psychologist, he started sweating profusely, I mean veritable rivers running off his face and arms, and complained suddenly that he couldn't see. He didn't respond to hands being waved in front of his face, and the psychologist assured him that he'd seen this happen before as a result of extreme stress, and that his vision would return in a few minutes. I honestly don't know if he was just spinning a line of bullshit to calm down the guy, but sure enough, his vision returned in about five minutes. Clearly he hadn't suffered any physical injury apart from some cuts and bruises, but I can only surmise that the extreme psychological stress had screwed with his brain somehow. Can anyone shed any light as to the mechanism that could have caused this?
Didn't mean to be so snippy. I do take your point about single points of failure, and I agree, it's amazing that a frightfully expensive undertaking could be jeopardized by a single boneheaded mistake. Sorry about the troll comment.
Running Windows? Where on the site does it say that? Also, where does it say that a 10cm cube is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere? According to the ANTS Enabling Technologies page, one of the enabling technologies for ANTS consists of
"Intelligent Systems areas requiring development include advanced autonomous systems, multi-agent systems, as well as high performance computing. We are currently involved in the ST-8 COTS high performance computing project, and using developments in that area to perform multi-agent system simulations for ANTS on a beowulf cluster." [Emphasis mine].
The ANTS project is under the purview of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which is "recognized as the home of the Beowulf Project". From what I could glean, simulations are being conducted on Beowulf clusters running Linux, and nowhere have I seen any indication that NASA would entrust mission-critical spaceflight to Windows. Never mind the fact that the earliest projected date for the ANTS project is 2010. Unless NASA knows something about the capabilities of Windows 5 years from now, there is no evidence that they're even considering using Windows. You sir, are a troll.
NASA's support for nanotech R and D is not surprising, given their concepts for the future of space exploration. A cornerstone of this new initiative depends completely on nanotechnology [or more properly molecular engineering] namely ANTS, the Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm. NASA's ANTS site has very nice overviews and movies of the concepts and potential missions, in particular PAM, the Prospecting Asteroid Mission.
Briefly, PAM envisions spacecraft in the shape of a cube with a 10 cm edge, each with a mass of 1 kg. Constructed mainly of carbon nanotubes in autonomous space-based factories, a thousand are assembled into a cube with a 1 m edge and launched from the Lagrange points on a 2 1/2 year journey to the asteroid belt. Each 1 m cube separates into its component sub-cubes, each of which deploys a solar sail. The 1,000-strong swarm separates into subswarms, each of which seeks out and surveys a single asteroid. All data collected during the survey is entrusted to a single cube, which then returns to earth for recovery, while the remaining members of the subswarm move on to another target and repeat the process. Fascinating QuickTime movies are available on the site.
and read the referenced work, Jerome K. Jerome's shriekingly funny "Three Men In A Boat". I read it at age 13 at the behest of my school's headmaster, an Englishman, and have been recommending it to friends and family for the intervening 32 years. For those who know nothing about the story, it recounts a boating trip on the river Thames through the English countryside by three friends and a satanic terrier named Montmorency. Highly recommended, and I guarantee healthy, hearty belly-laughs. The reference to the author's hypochondria comes at the very beginning of the first chapter, but I urge everyone to read the entire work. The Wikipedia article even has one of my favorite quotes from the story, and as it rightfully says, it is nothing less than amazing how fresh the story still seems after 116 years.
Publicity stunt? Are you seriously suggesting that the CEO of a major public corporation would bet the future of said corporation, spend unimaginable amounts of money and man-hours, and potentially alienate droves of loyal customers and developers for a publicity stunt? You've got to be kidding. I personally do not like Jobs, but you seem to be harboring some sort of deep-seated pathological hatred of the guy. As to your contention that he called the parents of the murdered teen just to get his name in the news, that's beyond ridiculous. It sounds like you need a hug.
I know this is off-topic, but I've got to thank you for that. As a Mac user and Mac lover, I heartily despise the blind frothing fanatics who give the Mac community a bad name. A long-time acquaintance recently asked me what I thought about Windows XP, and when I told him that I've only ever used a Mac so I couldn't comment about any Microsoft OS, he said, "So you're one of those Mac fanatics, eh?" I was livid. The only thing I'm remotely fanatical about is my family; nothing else, certainly no computer, even comes close.
It burns my ass that people automatically assume that I'm some sort of zealot because I use a Mac. I've been called a "traitor" and worse in Mac-related forums for daring to criticize Apple, and for making no bones about my dislike for Steve Jobs. Admire him as one of the greatest visionaries in the tech industry? Certainly. Respect him for his unswerving desire to produce great things? Absolutely. Like him? I wouldn't piss in his mouth if his teeth were on fire. This entire Jobs-is-God-and-Apple-is-His-Kingdom shtick is just damned distasteful and immature. For the last time, Apple is a public company like any other, and their CEO needs a thorough psych evaluation. Period. A lot of Mac users need to seriously grow up and rethink their emotional investment in a computing platform, albeit a very good one. My PowerBook is one of my favorite material possessions, but I don't hug it or lick it. That's what my wife is for.
What was this thread about again? Oh yeah. "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Sorry, never seen it.
So when will people be able to get a manicure and have copies of their favorite books or periodicals, or even blogs, inscribed on their fingernails? Nail Salon.com, anyone? Although truth be told, some materials are more deserving of a place of honor on one's toenails, down among the grunge and fungus. Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh come to mind.
A juvenile grizzly bear, maybe. They can grow to more than 1,500 pounds, more than twice the weight of this unfortunate catfish.
Yes, I agree. If Microsoft were to be more open their protocols and formats, it would be a very good thing. But the problem is that this is Microsoft we're talking about, and their history is not exactly a litany of beneficence. They have long since burned through any trust and goodwill that the public may have had for them. It would be prudent to view with suspicion anything that Microsoft announces "as a good thing."
Is it just me? Or does anyone else feel a frisson of apprehension whenever they hear the words "Microsoft" and "extend" in the same sentence? They'll extend RSS, all right. They'll extend it out of the reach of any operating system that isn't named Windows.
Funny remark, but just to be pedantic, the majority speak Hindi, although English is the common language of commerce and mass communication. Why? India boasts some 530-odd languages and dialects, and the colonial tongue became the lingua franca, so to speak. Makes life a lot easier in such a vast and culturally diverse country. It's much the same situation in Nigeria and some other countries.