I remember my $6 million man action figure. It came with a V8 engine block that he would lift/curl with his mechanical right arm (you had to keep pressing the button on his back). They also sold snap-on right arms with more features as well as the usual GI Joe style outfits and weapons sets.
Funny thing -- I first saw the show while growing up in Mexico. Due to international exchange rates and such, I imagine that a dollar figure wouldn't sound so snappy in translation. So in Latin America the show was called...
"The Nuclear Man".
Makes you want to watch every week and buy the toys, right?
Personally I like the portable media shipment suggestions. But if your CIO/company requires enterprise software from a large vendor with good support, have a look at IBM's Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software:
Besides the usual software distribution, this package has a peer-to-peer function. It also senses bandwidth. If there's other traffic it slows down temporarily so it won't saturate the link. Once the other traffic is done (like during your off-hours or maintenance windows) it'll go as fast as it can to finish distributing files.
You mentioned a laptop and a cubicle. May I ask if your laptop can connect to your company's Intranet via Virtual Private Networking? My employer (a certain 3-letter acronym in the 2007 Fortune 15 range) assigned me a pretty powerful laptop and expenses to beef it up for my needs, including the cost of a home Internet connection. This includes the ability to run virtual machines for training and education purposes of customers and business partners (Windows and Linux) along with the requisite memory and disk space. Fast, reliable networking can be a luxury. But when it's fast and reliable it may be all you need to get your work done. For a while, anyway...
Too bad Arthur C. Clarke passed away on Tuesday (Wed. in Sri Lanka), he would have been very pleased to have his suspicions confirmed like this. Then again, maybe he's hanging with Dave Bowman and HAL. In that case his response might be whatever a stylish English gentleman says instead of "Duh!".
Rest in peace, Sir Arthur, and thanks for giving us "all these worlds."
-- a sad fan who's enjoyed your books for over 20 years
Because I was 13 years old, and like most kids at that age I was wide-eyed, idealistic and hopeful. There's also the small matter of how the US presents itself to the world in TV, movies, comic books, music, etc. How could I not be in awe of a country that put people on the Moon, gave us Levi's jeans and great films like Star Wars? Also at the time they were allegedly defending the world from the "evil empire", that nation formerly known as the U.S.S.R. (even though in history classes in Mexico we didn't get a very rosy picture of the US-Mexico war or the Alamo, of course)
Seriously, if a potential emigree to the USA doesn't realise that American public education--and pretty much all other tax-funded public services--basically suck because the dominant American ideology says that money is the only thing that really matters, then there's something seriously deficient in your education.
If when you were 13 you understood all that, then I'm impressed that you were wise beyond your years. But then I would also say I'm sorry that you developed that cynical view of the world while being so young.
Since you posted anonymously I guess you're only trolling, but I'll bite.
You're humorously confirming my point starting with your first sentence:
"I don't get it than if you say..."
I believe you meant to write,
"I don't get it then. If you say..."/Grammar Nazi
I apologize if I had any typos or grammatical errors in my post. After all, I only started learning English at 13-going-on-14. What's your excuse?:) (I'm only kidding, I just couldn't resist)
There are some things I didn't mention which should be obvious. There are good and bad schools, teachers and students everywhere. I never said every kid in my classes in Mexico got straight A's, I just described what we were taught and expected to master before 8th grade. Of course a few kids in each class got excellent grades, a bunch in the middle got passing to good grades, and a handful of lazy people didn't do their homework and flunked the tests. As the parent poster mentioned, the knowledge that we lived in a 3rd-world country made it clear to some of us that education was our best (only?) chance at a decent career and life when we grew up.
While in the US every child is entitled to 12 years of public education paid by local/state/federal taxes, in Mexico this only goes as far as 9th grade (the combination of elementary and junior high schools). The equivalent of High School in Mexico is 3 years. This "preparatoria" is similar to vocational or technical schools in the US while still maintaining a good dose of core academic courses. By this point students go into a more specialized area of study, though not quite as specific as a "major" in college (business, physical sciences, life sciences, technology, etc). Not everyone gets to this level because there aren't enough schools of this type for all the kids in the country, and as a result there's killer competition to get the available spots. The way to get in is to spend all summer in review classes to get you ready for the entrance exams. A certain percentage with the highest scores gets in. Do you think it's hard to get into college in the US? It's much harder in Mexico, not only because of the tuition costs but also because of this type of academic competition. Of course there's corruption, and families that can afford to "buy" a diploma for their kids sometimes do. Same as everywhere else in the world.
You mentioned your church mission and resort towns. Thank you for your work, it's very kind and generous of you to help so many people in need. You make a very good point that there are dramatic imbalances for wealth distribution in Mexico, probably even worse than in the US. The poor people you help have fewer options and opportunities for education. And of course their children often go straight to work when they're teenagers instead of continuing their education. This is very common in resort towns where they might just study something related to tourism and if they're lucky, complement it with a foreign language. The environment I described was based on my experiences living in mid-sized cities without the special cases of being close to resorts or factories, or being in rural areas where there are few schools and even fewer teachers.
The latter is considered Mexico's equivalent of MIT. These and other Mexican universities host international events every year that are attended by Nobel laureates and high-ranking government and corporate leaders from around the world.
And finally, Mexico's in no hurry to have its own space agency because it already has communications sa
In Mexico I went to 1st and 2nd grade in Veracruz. 3rd through 7th were in Tamaulipas. After that it was Texas. I don't know anyone from Coahuila or Chihuahua, but people I know who went to school in states like Nuevo Leon, Distrito Federal (Mexico City), San Luis Potosi, Jalisco and Tabasco seemed to have similar levels of education to what I went through.
I can confirm this from personal experience. I was born in Mexico and when I was 13 my family moved to the US. I was halfway through the equivalent of 7th grade (Jr. High in the US). At that point I had learned the following as part of my education (note - this was in public school, no advanced placement / gifted program or anything):
Math - Had basic geometry covered and was starting on algebra. I already knew some basic number theory, sets, square roots, and how to read numbers in the trillions and beyond. I could convert from decimals to fractions and back.
Science - I memorized the periodic table of elements and had to recite them all to the teacher as part of our test. We had been introduced to astronomy, physics, biology and of course chemistry as I mentioned.
Geography - Learned the name of every country in the world. For our tests the teacher put up a poster of each continent with national boundaries but no labels. As she pointed to each country we had to give its name and capital.
Literature - We had read and discussed excerpted versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, among other classics.
History - In addition to excruciatingly detailed Mexican history we learned about the history of the world starting with ancient civilizations like Sumeria and Egypt. We worked our way through Greece, Rome, Persia, China and the more recent empires (Renaissance nation-states, European colonial powers, etc.). We covered the world wars in great detail and even discussed world events from that time, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
So when I got to the U.S.A. I was looking forward to an amazing education in the world's richest, most technologically advanced country. What did I get? For math, they started with fractions. For history they covered the US war of independence in the most incredibly dumbed-down way and hardly mentioned any world history. For science, my biology textbook said that all information referring to evolution should be considered a theory and not a scientific fact... shall I go on?
Don't get me wrong. I love this country and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunities I've had (bachelor's degree in computer science, great career working for a fortune 100 technology company, etc.). It just disappointed me that the educational system was such a lazy affair, where many teachers appeared to be barely competent and most of them didn't take the time and effort to inspire and push the students to do better. Fortunately my family instilled in me the value of education so I made the extra effort to learn more than what the schools offered to teach me. I have heard similar stories from friends who immigrated from other countries, in particular India and other parts of Asia. I have hoped for years that things would improve but I'm not holding my breath anymore. And we dare to be surprised by the outsourcing situation?
My skydiving instructor, whose last name is Wolfe, has a sticker on his helmet that says "Airwolfe". He was amused that I got the reference (the show was on when I was in high school).
Good point, but it might depend on the module where the baby is born and the parents' nationalities. In most cases a child automatically receives either or both parents' citizenship. For example, children of US diplomats or military personnel born abroad.
I understand that when a child can claim more than one country, some nations allow dual citizenship while others require the person to choose one at age 18. And recently I read that Switzerland doesn't automatically grant Swiss citizenship to babies born there if their parents aren't citizens already. Could any of our friends from.ch confirm or correct this please?
"Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world than the pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled." (Rush - "Territories" from the album "Power Windows")
This reminds me of news reports about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's meant to replace the F-16 and also be available for export to allied nations starting with the UK. Unfortunately for the potential buyers, the US government wasn't offering to share all the technical details and source code that our allies would need to fully operate and maintain the aircraft. With a quick Google search I just found this article from last year saying the US and UK came to an agreement, don't know what's happened since then. I vaguely remember the Royal Air Force and Navy threatened to cancel their orders and just buy Eurofighter Typhoons instead.
A friend of mine who's a military history buff told me a story about Soviet fighter aircraft in the 70s and 80s. Seems they had very powerful look-down, shoot-down radars and pilots were instructed to turn them off during take off and landing. Apparently sometimes they forgot, and runway maintenance crews had to regularly pick up the carcasses of rabbits, birds and other unlucky critters that were in the area when those MiGs went on missions.
"Runs most x86 Linux applications except those that
* Directly access HW;
* Are hardware architecture specific;
* Provide unique kernel modules; or
* Use instructions added later than the Pentium II processor, e.g. SSE2."
"All application components and plug-ins must meet these qualifications. Support for x86 Linux applications requires an Red Hat 4 update 4 or Novell SLES 9 with Service Pack 3 of the Linux operating system."
What do they mean by proprietary platforms? Who knew RH was actively going after z/OS, OS/400, VMS, VxWorks, OSX.... what exactly consistutes a proprietary platform? One that only one vendor can create hardware for? Or one that there is only one vendor selling hardware/software/accessories for it?
I think by "proprietary" they mean mostly Unix systems from vendors like Sun, IBM and HP. But when it comes to IBM this goes both ways because Red Hat (and SuSE) run on most, if not all, IBM boxen:
I read somewhere that IBM and some other companies were working on a project to keep digital data accessible in the future. A quick Google search didn't bring it up and since I'm still at work I hope one of you kind readers has more details.
The idea was to create a virtual machine that runs in as many platforms as possible, and within it has viewers or players for all kinds of documents (text, graphics, sound, video, etc.). Development and maintenance of this VM is supposed to continue as time passes, porting it to new OS versions or hardware platforms as they appear, while essentially keeping the internals of the VM the same.
The catch is the need for maintenance. If it lapses and technology advances too far, the "link" breaks and we're back where we started. Should we start carving bits on stone tablets?
This story reminded me of a "Straight Dope" article I read years ago regarding something Armstrong allegedly mumbled right after his famous first words on the moon:
Slashdot Mirror
I thought this sounded familiar. I found a comment I wrote over 2 years ago for a similar story: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207582&cid=16922754
I remember my $6 million man action figure. It came with a V8 engine block that he would lift/curl with his mechanical right arm (you had to keep pressing the button on his back). They also sold snap-on right arms with more features as well as the usual GI Joe style outfits and weapons sets.
Funny thing -- I first saw the show while growing up in Mexico. Due to international exchange rates and such, I imagine that a dollar figure wouldn't sound so snappy in translation. So in Latin America the show was called... "The Nuclear Man".
Makes you want to watch every week and buy the toys, right?
Personally I like the portable media shipment suggestions. But if your CIO/company requires enterprise software from a large vendor with good support, have a look at IBM's Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/prov-mgrproductline/
Besides the usual software distribution, this package has a peer-to-peer function. It also senses bandwidth. If there's other traffic it slows down temporarily so it won't saturate the link. Once the other traffic is done (like during your off-hours or maintenance windows) it'll go as fast as it can to finish distributing files.
...the more they stay the same. Here's something I posted back in 2006 about this same issue: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207582&cid=16922754
You mentioned a laptop and a cubicle. May I ask if your laptop can connect to your company's Intranet via Virtual Private Networking? My employer (a certain 3-letter acronym in the 2007 Fortune 15 range) assigned me a pretty powerful laptop and expenses to beef it up for my needs, including the cost of a home Internet connection. This includes the ability to run virtual machines for training and education purposes of customers and business partners (Windows and Linux) along with the requisite memory and disk space. Fast, reliable networking can be a luxury. But when it's fast and reliable it may be all you need to get your work done. For a while, anyway...
Too bad Arthur C. Clarke passed away on Tuesday (Wed. in Sri Lanka), he would have been very pleased to have his suspicions confirmed like this. Then again, maybe he's hanging with Dave Bowman and HAL. In that case his response might be whatever a stylish English gentleman says instead of "Duh!".
Rest in peace, Sir Arthur, and thanks for giving us "all these worlds."
-- a sad fan who's enjoyed your books for over 20 yearsWhat, is it an android from Blade Runner?
I think you mean replicants. Androids, like Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek, have practically unlimited lifespans.
Why would you think that?
Because I was 13 years old, and like most kids at that age I was wide-eyed, idealistic and hopeful. There's also the small matter of how the US presents itself to the world in TV, movies, comic books, music, etc. How could I not be in awe of a country that put people on the Moon, gave us Levi's jeans and great films like Star Wars? Also at the time they were allegedly defending the world from the "evil empire", that nation formerly known as the U.S.S.R. (even though in history classes in Mexico we didn't get a very rosy picture of the US-Mexico war or the Alamo, of course)
Seriously, if a potential emigree to the USA doesn't realise that American public education--and pretty much all other tax-funded public services--basically suck because the dominant American ideology says that money is the only thing that really matters, then there's something seriously deficient in your education.
If when you were 13 you understood all that, then I'm impressed that you were wise beyond your years. But then I would also say I'm sorry that you developed that cynical view of the world while being so young.
Since you posted anonymously I guess you're only trolling, but I'll bite.
You're humorously confirming my point starting with your first sentence: "I don't get it than if you say..." I believe you meant to write, "I don't get it then. If you say..." /Grammar Nazi
I apologize if I had any typos or grammatical errors in my post. After all, I only started learning English at 13-going-on-14. What's your excuse? :) (I'm only kidding, I just couldn't resist)
There are some things I didn't mention which should be obvious. There are good and bad schools, teachers and students everywhere. I never said every kid in my classes in Mexico got straight A's, I just described what we were taught and expected to master before 8th grade. Of course a few kids in each class got excellent grades, a bunch in the middle got passing to good grades, and a handful of lazy people didn't do their homework and flunked the tests. As the parent poster mentioned, the knowledge that we lived in a 3rd-world country made it clear to some of us that education was our best (only?) chance at a decent career and life when we grew up.
While in the US every child is entitled to 12 years of public education paid by local/state/federal taxes, in Mexico this only goes as far as 9th grade (the combination of elementary and junior high schools). The equivalent of High School in Mexico is 3 years. This "preparatoria" is similar to vocational or technical schools in the US while still maintaining a good dose of core academic courses. By this point students go into a more specialized area of study, though not quite as specific as a "major" in college (business, physical sciences, life sciences, technology, etc). Not everyone gets to this level because there aren't enough schools of this type for all the kids in the country, and as a result there's killer competition to get the available spots. The way to get in is to spend all summer in review classes to get you ready for the entrance exams. A certain percentage with the highest scores gets in. Do you think it's hard to get into college in the US? It's much harder in Mexico, not only because of the tuition costs but also because of this type of academic competition. Of course there's corruption, and families that can afford to "buy" a diploma for their kids sometimes do. Same as everywhere else in the world.
You mentioned your church mission and resort towns. Thank you for your work, it's very kind and generous of you to help so many people in need. You make a very good point that there are dramatic imbalances for wealth distribution in Mexico, probably even worse than in the US. The poor people you help have fewer options and opportunities for education. And of course their children often go straight to work when they're teenagers instead of continuing their education. This is very common in resort towns where they might just study something related to tourism and if they're lucky, complement it with a foreign language. The environment I described was based on my experiences living in mid-sized cities without the special cases of being close to resorts or factories, or being in rural areas where there are few schools and even fewer teachers.
While there's no Ivy League equivalent in Mexico, there are some large and internationally recognized schools like UNAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Autonomous_University_of_Mexico/
and ITESM (better known as Tec de Monterrey) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITESM/
The latter is considered Mexico's equivalent of MIT. These and other Mexican universities host international events every year that are attended by Nobel laureates and high-ranking government and corporate leaders from around the world.
And finally, Mexico's in no hurry to have its own space agency because it already has communications sa
In Mexico I went to 1st and 2nd grade in Veracruz. 3rd through 7th were in Tamaulipas. After that it was Texas. I don't know anyone from Coahuila or Chihuahua, but people I know who went to school in states like Nuevo Leon, Distrito Federal (Mexico City), San Luis Potosi, Jalisco and Tabasco seemed to have similar levels of education to what I went through.
I can confirm this from personal experience. I was born in Mexico and when I was 13 my family moved to the US. I was halfway through the equivalent of 7th grade (Jr. High in the US). At that point I had learned the following as part of my education (note - this was in public school, no advanced placement / gifted program or anything):
Math - Had basic geometry covered and was starting on algebra. I already knew some basic number theory, sets, square roots, and how to read numbers in the trillions and beyond. I could convert from decimals to fractions and back.
Science - I memorized the periodic table of elements and had to recite them all to the teacher as part of our test. We had been introduced to astronomy, physics, biology and of course chemistry as I mentioned.
Geography - Learned the name of every country in the world. For our tests the teacher put up a poster of each continent with national boundaries but no labels. As she pointed to each country we had to give its name and capital.
Literature - We had read and discussed excerpted versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, among other classics.
History - In addition to excruciatingly detailed Mexican history we learned about the history of the world starting with ancient civilizations like Sumeria and Egypt. We worked our way through Greece, Rome, Persia, China and the more recent empires (Renaissance nation-states, European colonial powers, etc.). We covered the world wars in great detail and even discussed world events from that time, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
So when I got to the U.S.A. I was looking forward to an amazing education in the world's richest, most technologically advanced country. What did I get? For math, they started with fractions. For history they covered the US war of independence in the most incredibly dumbed-down way and hardly mentioned any world history. For science, my biology textbook said that all information referring to evolution should be considered a theory and not a scientific fact... shall I go on?
Don't get me wrong. I love this country and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunities I've had (bachelor's degree in computer science, great career working for a fortune 100 technology company, etc.). It just disappointed me that the educational system was such a lazy affair, where many teachers appeared to be barely competent and most of them didn't take the time and effort to inspire and push the students to do better. Fortunately my family instilled in me the value of education so I made the extra effort to learn more than what the schools offered to teach me. I have heard similar stories from friends who immigrated from other countries, in particular India and other parts of Asia. I have hoped for years that things would improve but I'm not holding my breath anymore. And we dare to be surprised by the outsourcing situation?
My skydiving instructor, whose last name is Wolfe, has a sticker on his helmet that says "Airwolfe". He was amused that I got the reference (the show was on when I was in high school).
Good point, but it might depend on the module where the baby is born and the parents' nationalities. In most cases a child automatically receives either or both parents' citizenship. For example, children of US diplomats or military personnel born abroad.
I understand that when a child can claim more than one country, some nations allow dual citizenship while others require the person to choose one at age 18. And recently I read that Switzerland doesn't automatically grant Swiss citizenship to babies born there if their parents aren't citizens already. Could any of our friends from .ch confirm or correct this please?
"Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world than the pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled." (Rush - "Territories" from the album "Power Windows")
This reminds me of news reports about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It's meant to replace the F-16 and also be available for export to allied nations starting with the UK. Unfortunately for the potential buyers, the US government wasn't offering to share all the technical details and source code that our allies would need to fully operate and maintain the aircraft. With a quick Google search I just found this article from last year saying the US and UK came to an agreement, don't know what's happened since then. I vaguely remember the Royal Air Force and Navy threatened to cancel their orders and just buy Eurofighter Typhoons instead.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f35-jsf-program-us-uk-reach-technology-transfer-agreement-02495/A friend of mine who's a military history buff told me a story about Soviet fighter aircraft in the 70s and 80s. Seems they had very powerful look-down, shoot-down radars and pilots were instructed to turn them off during take off and landing. Apparently sometimes they forgot, and runway maintenance crews had to regularly pick up the carcasses of rabbits, birds and other unlucky critters that were in the area when those MiGs went on missions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnUvw1rzziE
Zaphod, is that you?
- This message was brought to you by the Sirius Cybernetics CorporationAt the bottom are some good details:
"Runs most x86 Linux applications except those that * Directly access HW; * Are hardware architecture specific; * Provide unique kernel modules; or * Use instructions added later than the Pentium II processor, e.g. SSE2.""All application components and plug-ins must meet these qualifications. Support for x86 Linux applications requires an Red Hat 4 update 4 or Novell SLES 9 with Service Pack 3 of the Linux operating system."
Is this what Sir Arthur C. Clarke meant when he said that supernovae may be "industrial accidents"?
What do they mean by proprietary platforms? Who knew RH was actively going after z/OS, OS/400, VMS, VxWorks, OSX.... what exactly consistutes a proprietary platform? One that only one vendor can create hardware for? Or one that there is only one vendor selling hardware/software/accessories for it?
I think by "proprietary" they mean mostly Unix systems from vendors like Sun, IBM and HP. But when it comes to IBM this goes both ways because Red Hat (and SuSE) run on most, if not all, IBM boxen:
xSeries - Intel/AMDpSeries - POWER
iSeries - formerly known as AS400
zSeries - the big iron
I read somewhere that IBM and some other companies were working on a project to keep digital data accessible in the future. A quick Google search didn't bring it up and since I'm still at work I hope one of you kind readers has more details.
The idea was to create a virtual machine that runs in as many platforms as possible, and within it has viewers or players for all kinds of documents (text, graphics, sound, video, etc.). Development and maintenance of this VM is supposed to continue as time passes, porting it to new OS versions or hardware platforms as they appear, while essentially keeping the internals of the VM the same.
The catch is the need for maintenance. If it lapses and technology advances too far, the "link" breaks and we're back where we started. Should we start carving bits on stone tablets?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a951117.html
While searching for this in the web site's archives I also found an entry from 1990 discussing the "small step for a man" argument:http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_362.html
My parents tell me that I actually saw the moon landing, but since I was a baby at the time I really can't comment on what I heard him say.http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28315
So as you can see, Douglas Adams was right all along!When I see Big Brother-ish proposals like this I'm glad my employer is showing some decency and respect for privacy: http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2005/10/2005_10_11.h tml
This comic strip is a great illustration of the kind of people you mentioned:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.h