I can point to the National Academies Press who offer the complete text to over 3000 of their books online for free.
To quote from an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, reprinted in Prime Palaver #10, Michael Jensen (their director of publishing technologies) said:
Our site is very busy -- from January through mid-August [ed note: 2001] of this year, more than 3.2 million people had viewed more than 28 million Web pages, including 15 million book pages. While those are great numbers in terms of wide dissemination, the more remarkable thing is that, over the same period, we have sold more than 40,000 books through the same site -- something approximating 25 percent of our overall book sales, and already surpassing the number we sold during all of last year. Moreover, our other sales -- via bookstores, an 800 number, fax, and mail -- have apparently not been cannibalized, staying pretty much in line with industry sales.
Orbital Sciences Corp would get 2 billion dollars just for strapping a heat shield to one of their Pegasus rockets instead of a payload - congrats we just wasted 1/3 of a CEV's development cost to accomplish nothing.
Jerry is well known to be a long-time advocate of manned, reusable spacecraft. Anyone who is familiar with his writings would assume "manned, reusable" to be part of point 1.
If I could edit the grand-parent post, I'd add "[manned, reusable]" to clarify the point.
Number 3 would never be done without subsidy.
Maybe. In that case, what's the harm.
You'll notice that the prizes are "exempt from all US taxes", which effectively roughly doubles them. Did you take that into consideration?
I'll note that Jerry's suggestions for prizes are a few years old, perhaps the amounts should be updated.
Number 4 makes no sense - why offer a prize for a *specific* clean power technology?
As tsotha pointed out, the object is to build infrastructure.
At a launch price of 7,000$/kg (cheap), that's 233 billion dollars.
Did you notice how the prizes build on each other? Nobody in their right mind is just going to go after number 4. Clearly they'd need reusable spacecraft to bring down launch costs to a reasonable level. Bingo, any three operational [manned, reusable] spacecraft would qualify for prize number 1.
Clearly there have to be people on-site (as it were) to build a solar power satellite and it will probably take at least 5 people and more than three years just to build it. Bingo, they qualify for prize number 2.
That also applies to number 3. Building and supplying a lunar would clearly benefit from [manned, reusable] spacecraft, and probably benefit from a real space station where material and supplies can be trans-shipped from a earth-going spacecraft to a lunar-going spacecraft (one design to go straight from the earth to the moon and back probably won't do either very well). Bingo, they qualify for prizes 1 and 2.
Nothing sarcastic at all. I know that, whatever his politics may REALLY have been, Gingrich was painted as the fucking anti-Christ in the media, and no idea that he ever touched will ever happen, because by virtue of the fact that they crossed his lips they're the work of the Deveel.
I think Moofie is being sarcastic. When he was first elected, Gingrich was a standard, conservative Republican (not like Bush who's a country-club "Republican") and Pournelle was one of his informal advisors so he had an "in" with him.
I remember reading Pournelle about how Gingrich started to succumb to the Beltway Unreality Field, which makes Washington politicians start believing in their own importance. Pournelle lost his "in" with him about then. Gingrich self-destructed after that and he'll always be remembered for being a self-centered SOB.
That should be followed up by the Z-prize, which either colonizes the moon continuously for a minimum period of time, or the first manned commercial Mars landing.
"I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.
"Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:
"The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:
"1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.
"2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.
"3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.
"4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.
"5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.
"That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.
"Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.
Re:It occurs to me...
on
IRC On The PSP
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Yeah, good idea- PSP P2P!
What's next? A webserver- PSP PHP?
Well, if you could write a P2P client in PHP, then you would have PSP PHP P2P.
It occurs to me...
on
IRC On The PSP
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
How long will it be before Bittorrent (or one of the other file sharing/downloading programs) is ported to the PSP. Sony will be so pleased.
But this judge is making the same mistake that Jackson did in the Microsoft trial.
The problem was that Judge Jackson made his comments to a reporter in an interview outside his duties as a judge.
Judge Kimball is making his comments as part of his rationale of why he is denying SCO's motion. This is more of an objective observation than subjective comment.
Unfortunately these reactors will still produce quite a bit of waste,
"Quite a bit" is a relative term. "Quite a bit" is a few tons (after a few years of operation) for a nuclear power station, much of which can be recycled; compared with tens-of-thousands of tons of toxic (and mildly radioactive and non-recyclable) ash from a coal-fired power station.
Any kind of backup solution is preferable to a single point of failure.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the parent post takes it far enough.
If your livelihood depends on your data, back it up in multiple locations. A USB key is convenient for moving your data around, but it's not designed for backup. First, backup your working directory daily to one or two backup directories on the same drive; this is convenient if you accidently munge your working directory.
Second, backup your working directory to CD-ROM every day or two. Ideally alternate two CD-ROMs for redundancy. Even better, have two sets of two CD-ROMs, keep the second set off-site and rotate them once a week.
Third, if you have a second computer in your household, that could be convenient for network backups.
Fourth, someone mentioned iBackup (and there are others), but you could also email backups to yourself at gMail or <insert favorite webmail service here>. And although many people dump on Yahoo!, My Yahoo! offers a free 30MB storage area.
I know you're interested in autonomous mowers, but I found these links to radio-controlled mowers which may be useful for ideas for the mechanical bits.
If it's this simple why has no-one done this earlier??
Chill dude. Timing is everything. After a year and two court ordered motions to compel, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain (that leaves out Robert Enderle and Laura DiDio) that SCOG's shooting blanks.
A year ago, SCOG's duplicity hadn't even begun to sink into the consciousness of the "mainstream" analysts and publications. Now, almost every article you read raises questions about SCOG's evidence and integrity. Now, is the time to strike. If IBM had tried this a year ago, the "mainstream" publications would be questioning IBM's integrity, not SCOG's.
If you're going to award monetary prizes, why not get serious.
Jerry Pournelle was suggested the following:
I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.
Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:
The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:
1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.
2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.
3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.
4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.
5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.
That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.
Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.
Don't forget ICC. If GCC could even begin to compete somewhat with the Intel compilers, the scientific community would probably take notice.
Then you say.
From the experiences of the programmers and students at our department, Intel stuff is really buggy and wastes a lot of time with things like 'Internal Compiler Errors' and examples in the documentation that either don't work or don't compile.
Are you suggesting that GCC should be buggier so it can compete with ICC?
And how would you like to be Darl, looking for your next job when this is all over, with the most prominent entry on your resume being something like "Embarked on frivolous and ill-fated lawsuit against IBM, sent my then-employer into bankruptcy as a result, seeking challenging position at tech company."
He'll just condense it down to, "Experienced CEO seeking challenging position at tech company."
Why does it seem the bigger the screwup, the more it counts as experience?
Alternately, find a friend who can get broadband and set up a WIFI link.
Or, alternatively, just have them install the cable connection at the bottom of your driveway and setup a WiFi link to your house (though you probably need to power it with solarcells and a battery).
Or, have them install the cable connection at the bottom of your driveway and run ethernet or fiber along the driveway to your house. You can probably get a contractor bury a ethernet or fiber digital cable for a lot less than $10000 (though more than setting up a WiFi link).
I would imagine Boston would be one of the most-expensive-possible places to do that sort of thing, with it's massively built-up government and public/private infrastructure.
Much of what seems to be solid land in Boston is really unstable landfill, built up over centuries since the 1600's. Trying to build a tunnel through that; over, under, and around subways, railways, and other highway tunnels, without disrupting any of them, is a very impressive engineering feat.
What about all those people who have already signed their soul over to the devil? I'm sure if it were as simple as "switching" from one record label to another, many bands would.
One step at a time. First there has to be a better record label to switch over to.
Slashdot Mirror
Notepad.org
Ha, thought you were being funny, didn't ja.
To quote from an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, reprinted in Prime Palaver #10, Michael Jensen (their director of publishing technologies) said:
Orbital Sciences Corp would get 2 billion dollars just for strapping a heat shield to one of their Pegasus rockets instead of a payload - congrats we just wasted 1/3 of a CEV's development cost to accomplish nothing.
Jerry is well known to be a long-time advocate of manned, reusable spacecraft. Anyone who is familiar with his writings would assume "manned, reusable" to be part of point 1.
If I could edit the grand-parent post, I'd add "[manned, reusable]" to clarify the point.
Number 3 would never be done without subsidy.
Maybe. In that case, what's the harm.
You'll notice that the prizes are "exempt from all US taxes", which effectively roughly doubles them. Did you take that into consideration?
I'll note that Jerry's suggestions for prizes are a few years old, perhaps the amounts should be updated.
Number 4 makes no sense - why offer a prize for a *specific* clean power technology?
As tsotha pointed out, the object is to build infrastructure.
At a launch price of 7,000$/kg (cheap), that's 233 billion dollars.
Did you notice how the prizes build on each other? Nobody in their right mind is just going to go after number 4. Clearly they'd need reusable spacecraft to bring down launch costs to a reasonable level. Bingo, any three operational [manned, reusable] spacecraft would qualify for prize number 1.
Clearly there have to be people on-site (as it were) to build a solar power satellite and it will probably take at least 5 people and more than three years just to build it. Bingo, they qualify for prize number 2.
That also applies to number 3. Building and supplying a lunar would clearly benefit from [manned, reusable] spacecraft, and probably benefit from a real space station where material and supplies can be trans-shipped from a earth-going spacecraft to a lunar-going spacecraft (one design to go straight from the earth to the moon and back probably won't do either very well). Bingo, they qualify for prizes 1 and 2.
And we all know how accurate the media is.
I remember reading Pournelle about how Gingrich started to succumb to the Beltway Unreality Field, which makes Washington politicians start believing in their own importance. Pournelle lost his "in" with him about then. Gingrich self-destructed after that and he'll always be remembered for being a self-centered SOB.
Jerry Pournelle is way ahead of you.
What's next? A webserver- PSP PHP?
Well, if you could write a P2P client in PHP, then you would have PSP PHP P2P.
Anyone want to start a pool?
The problem was that Judge Jackson made his comments to a reporter in an interview outside his duties as a judge.
Judge Kimball is making his comments as part of his rationale of why he is denying SCO's motion. This is more of an objective observation than subjective comment.
"Quite a bit" is a relative term. "Quite a bit" is a few tons (after a few years of operation) for a nuclear power station, much of which can be recycled; compared with tens-of-thousands of tons of toxic (and mildly radioactive and non-recyclable) ash from a coal-fired power station.
This is a very good point, but I don't think the parent post takes it far enough.
If your livelihood depends on your data, back it up in multiple locations. A USB key is convenient for moving your data around, but it's not designed for backup. First, backup your working directory daily to one or two backup directories on the same drive; this is convenient if you accidently munge your working directory.
Second, backup your working directory to CD-ROM every day or two. Ideally alternate two CD-ROMs for redundancy. Even better, have two sets of two CD-ROMs, keep the second set off-site and rotate them once a week.
Third, if you have a second computer in your household, that could be convenient for network backups.
Fourth, someone mentioned iBackup (and there are others), but you could also email backups to yourself at gMail or <insert favorite webmail service here>. And although many people dump on Yahoo!, My Yahoo! offers a free 30MB storage area.
Don't forget Kudzu.
Windows only, deal with it.
The freedb.org database is available for download.
Do It Yourself CD Changer
Homemade Radio-Controlled Lawn Mowers
Hybrid Remote Control Lawn Mower
Radio Control Lawnmower
Robo-Mower
Chill dude. Timing is everything. After a year and two court ordered motions to compel, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain (that leaves out Robert Enderle and Laura DiDio) that SCOG's shooting blanks.
A year ago, SCOG's duplicity hadn't even begun to sink into the consciousness of the "mainstream" analysts and publications. Now, almost every article you read raises questions about SCOG's evidence and integrity. Now, is the time to strike. If IBM had tried this a year ago, the "mainstream" publications would be questioning IBM's integrity, not SCOG's.
Jerry Pournelle was suggested the following:
Then you say.
Are you suggesting that GCC should be buggier so it can compete with ICC?
He'll just condense it down to, "Experienced CEO seeking challenging position at tech company."
Why does it seem the bigger the screwup, the more it counts as experience?
Marketing, actually.
Alternately, find a friend who can get broadband and set up a WIFI link.
Or, alternatively, just have them install the cable connection at the bottom of your driveway and setup a WiFi link to your house (though you probably need to power it with solarcells and a battery).
Or, have them install the cable connection at the bottom of your driveway and run ethernet or fiber along the driveway to your house. You can probably get a contractor bury a ethernet or fiber digital cable for a lot less than $10000 (though more than setting up a WiFi link).
I would imagine Boston would be one of the most-expensive-possible places to do that sort of thing, with it's massively built-up government and public/private infrastructure.
Much of what seems to be solid land in Boston is really unstable landfill, built up over centuries since the 1600's. Trying to build a tunnel through that; over, under, and around subways, railways, and other highway tunnels, without disrupting any of them, is a very impressive engineering feat.
And Linux has stated that he doesn't care about patents and will ignore them. Expect SCO to ask him questions about that.
Except SCO doesn't own any Unix patents, so the question would be only of academic interest.
What about all those people who have already signed their soul over to the devil? I'm sure if it were as simple as "switching" from one record label to another, many bands would.
One step at a time. First there has to be a better record label to switch over to.