So what can the average hacker do with the UltraSPARC T1 design? It's not like you can go to Radio Trash to pick up a pocket chip fab (heck, I can't even buy a barrel connector at Radio Trash any more, I had to buy one of their crap power supplies to gut it for the cable and connector. Feh!)
The value he provides is:
- I do not have to worry about yardwork
- when the refrigerator died, it was replaced before I got home from the office that evening
- I do not have to maintain the furnace, plumbing, etc.
Now, I have an unusually responsive and responsible landlord, but there is definitely a lot of value he supplies when I pay him rent. I can spend my time worrying about business instead of worrying about the house.
I have. One of my friend's dad had a Simplicity lawn tractor that looked like it was made in the '50s (he remarked his dad owned it when he was a kid) and it ran fine and he still used it to haul stuff around the lawn, plow the driveway, and mow the lawn. If they still maintain that level of quality workmanship, it's definitely a brand I'd want to buy.
I'd presume that the Sprawl*Mart model uses IC amps and the upscale models use discrete components in a dual mono configuration, just like cheap Pioneer amps vs. higher end Pioneer and the Pioneer Elite line. Did you check the spec sheets and other literature to see what Yamaha has to say about the receivers?
At one point Wal*Mart was where one shopped if one wished to buy only American-made products. The "Made in America" product selection at Wal*Mart died when Sam Walton died.
Computers are over-used. Why the hell do we need computer-operated toasters (yes, the good ol' simple toaster is often microprocessor-assisted)? Computers are overkill for deciding how light or dark your toast should be.
Likewise, computers are probably the wrong tool for voting. Accountability is removed, we've now put elections at risk of hardware crashes, software hacks, network mishaps, and so forth. Not only that, if the system IS hacked, how does one find that vote I cast against Hillary in the 2008 election? Are votes in hacked disgregarded in districts where the system has been tampered with (bad), or is the final result delayed until another election can be scheduled on a brand-new system (not quite as bad, but still bad?), or on paper (which takes us back to where we were in 2004)?
Computers are great tools (I wouldn't be on/, if I didn't think so) but I think we over-use them. Modern society treats the computer as the one-size-fits-all BFH. Computers are possibly the worst solution for elections because:
- If networked, can be tampered with remotely, so no amount of police officers guarding over the machines can prevent against crackers
- If wireless, can be interfered with very easily
- Unless hardened, a highly-directional antenna with a moderate-power transmitter can interfere with the box's operation
- Where is the paper trail in the event of the above?
- Paper ballots can be counted under the supervision of both major parties and independents. Not possible with electronically-cast votes.
- If an exploit at the voting console is discovered, what can prevent ballot stuffing? With paper ballots, it's easy; if you drop more than one ballot in, at minimum you will be disallowed from dropping it in the box. Best scanario, you get arrested and charged with a federal crime for being such a dumbass.
In a republic where the representatives are elected democratically, abandoning the paper ballot is folly. Even with the pain of Florida elections arising because a handful of idiots cannot follow very clear arrows and directions, the paper ballot is the very best tool for electing officials. The election is documented with physical evidence, very easily supervised, and tampering is very easily discovered immediately and the idiots responsible being held responsible with very little investigation required.
Leave electronic voting technology up to surveys, unofficial NON-BINDING referenda (e.g., a referendum put forth for representatives to gather official majority public opinion), and the private sector.
Heck, even in IT, computers are not always the best solution for tracking all data or accomplishing all tasks.
- Web front end
- VPN client (GOOD VPN routers are relatively cheap now, check out the Cyberguard SG line, or your favorite Linux or BSD distribution)
- authenticated SMTP
- SSH and elm, pine, or other console email client of choice
Why on Earth would you need to use your coffee shop|cafe|bakery|print shop|hotel|etc.)'s SMTP server, given a multitude of very practical options, some configurations being less user-friendly, some being standard configurations which are very easy to use?
I think you're referring to spam as the consequence?
Well, the reason mail is the way it became is that a few universities, defense contractors, and government organizations needed to communicate, and given the reliability of network equipment of the time, open relays were a necessity to ensure that email got through. The reason that something along the lines of SPF didn't come into play from the beginning is multifold; DNS wasn't around (hosts were maintained in host files at each site), every organization on ARPANET was 100% trusted, and there was no incentive to forge emails nor to do what we now call "spamming" - in fact the few early advertisements which went out in targeted emails were heavily criticized.
When ARPANET became the Internet and DNS came into being due to the volume of hosts going online, open relays were still the standard, not due to network reliability (which had significantly improved) but due to legacy support. To maintain backwards compatibility SMTP stayed pretty much as-is from day one, and with the harsh criticisms that followed early email advertisemtns from trusted organizations, no one really anticipated a number of things:
- Internet access becoming a commodity (Quantum Link and Compuserve were just coming into their own then, and dial-up to proprietary online services was the wave of the future beyond private BBSes)
- Everyone having multiple, multiple email addresses
- Commercial entities abusing the network
In hindsight it was quite obvious that things like SPF would be required but given the Internet's early history (and computer networking in general) it's clear why they didn't think of security and sender verification when first implementing an email solution.
What AOL, Hotmail, and others SHOULD do is not use that GoodMail crap (it's not good sense to do that!) but to make SPF required rather than optional. If you want to send email to AOL recipients, on your authoritative servers, you must list which hosts are actually allowed to send emails from your domain via an SPF record, and all emails from your host not meeting the SPF rules will be regarded as spam and not even make it to the receiver's inbox.
This puts the onus totally on the senders. Want your mailing lists to make it through to the receiver? Make sure your listserver is listed in your SPF rules.
This is why SPF was proposed in the first place; to overcome issues arising from legacy support, to work around open relay-originating spam without having to block legitimate email from open relays, and to avoid the need for whitelisting.
RTFA yourself, Blizzard is mis-applying the DMCA and sending cease-and-desist notices to the strategy guide author. Blizzard is firing first. Are you a Blizzard rep trying to put spin on the issue? What normally follows cease-and-desist letters (even unjustified ones) when such so-called "infringement" issues are alleged when the author continues? That's right, a civil suit.
Will Microsoft sue for various reference books for the upcoming versions of Vista and Office?
Will Apple start suing publishers for distributing OS/X documentation?
Hey, maybe they'll even take the next leap and start suing third-party developers, since obviously referencing the OS by calling the API is copyright infringement!
Anyone from Blizzard here? Don't those leaps I'm proposing in the above scenarios look idiotic? Well, your suit against someone who developed a strategy guide (a VERY common type of publication in the gaming community, FYI) looks equally idiotic - more so, actually, because such guides help to sell the very game you purport to be protecting.
ISO certification or not, true open standards are the wave of the future. Too many companies and people have gotten burned by vendor lock too many times, to the point where the movement toward open standards and open source here in Taxachusetts has attracted mainstream press, not just technical journalists. Perhaps ODF won't gain steam quite as quickly if it became an ISO-certified standard immediately, but with states' and commonwealths' accepting ODF as the document exchange and archival solution, it will quickly filter down to education, state vendors (who want to keep their contracts) and law offices, and from there trickle down to everyone else. Small companies will quickly learn "Oh, I DON'T have to plunk down $450 for Microsoft Office any more? Where do I get this OpenOffice?"
1. Consistency, a working out-of-the-box configuration? Check out asterisk@home
2. No GUI by default? Are you saying that traditional PBX systems DO?
3. Ease of use: It's easier to parse a couple of.conf files (or install AMP and use that) than to memorize and navigate voice or beep menu prompts
4. Who can maintain it? Anyone who can RTFM, read English, and navigate vi, pico, or nano -- or a web browser if AMP is installed
5. re: The consequences of this are that that no two Asterisk installations will likely be anything alike,
This is NOT a weakness. I don't have an Avaya, Nortel, Panasonic, or (other proprietary PBX) 8-line or 4-line or 24-line system that needs to be thrown away and replaced by a new system when the need for more lines arises. Just add another FXO card or two, or at worst, another asterisk box and link them together.
Need more voicemail? Run an ambulance service and need to record all calls, and ran out of storage? No need to throw away a perfectly good voicemail module and replace it with a more expensive one - just add another hard drive.
No two configurations being exactly alike is NOT a weakness when it comes to PBX. The whole POINT of asterisk is its (theoretically) unlimited flexibility and expandability.
I was originally going to ask how this improves over tar and dar (I've been using dar up to this point) but after looking over the site I realize I need to try Amanda out. I have a question though: if a backup archive gets damaged, can the non-damaged parts of the file still be restored (like dar) or are you utterly screwed (like tar)?
This looks like a great solution because like commercial backup programs for Windows, I can centralize our backups. What I have set up right now is scripts to create dar archives of the data we care about (/data,/srv,/var,/root,/etc, and/home) which get mmoved to a central server and then redundant copies are moved over to a workstation on a weekly basis (or in the case of MySQL databases, daily), and backups are archived to optical media weekly. The advantage to this strategy is obviously the speed of recovery. Disadvantage? We're not doing FULL backups so a system reinstall is required in the event of a catastrophic failure (I don't view this as a drawback, BTW, considering that a Linux install minus GUI takes under a half hour including package selection).
I was severely confused. I had thought for some reason that Apple Computer was the Beatles label. No fucking wonder I couldn't find the Beatles albums at Worst Buy!
(Pardon me, but there IS no trademark confusion, dilution, etc.)
I've stated this several times in threads, but I'll say it again:
If there is ANY validity to the FTL/warp engine, they ought to put all of NASA's research and development dollars into that kind of system (not to mention shielding against radiation, etc.) . I'd love to see Saturn and Jupiter up close. I'd love to see interstellar exploration happen in my lifetime. If FTL is possible, I'm sure that if we throw enough resources at it a practical working engine could be developed fairly quickly.
A moon base? This has been a dream for decades, but what's the point? I'm sure it could be argued that you could have a really high resolution observatory on the moon, but on that same token we could also have a far more mobile solution, like the Hubble, but only better.
Or, it could be argued that it would be a fun vacation spot? Sure, but relax FAA restrictions and leave the rest up to private industry. Make space flight attainable for anyone with the technical means to accomplish it. In the meantime public funds, if spent on space at all, should be more ambitious. We've been to the Moon already. We have a few worthless basalt rocks as a result. Now let's get some rocks from Mars, Jupiter's moons, or even Titan. If FTL is practical at all, then a trip to Mars would only be a few weeks, with the vast majority of trip time (all but a few hours) spent exploring the planet.
And in response to TFA: "Will working in one-sixth of Earth's gravity for a year cause crippling health problems?"
Haven't the soviets put men up in space for over one year with little to no ill effects? One-sixth of the gravity will surely be better than near-zero gravity, and what's more, all you need is a bowflex or other workout machine to stay in shape regardless of lack of significant gravitational pull. The explorers simply need to be displined enough to work out. I'd be far more concerned about radiation (mentined in TFA) and lack of entertainment (I'd guess the primary psychological problem would be boredom).
Why is Dubya so bent on going back to the Moon? Is it because China is pledging to send a mission to the moon? Whoop de shit. Landing a non-reusable spacecraft on the moon, bouncing a round a bit and getting a modest rock collection and bringing it back is so 1960s.;)
The worst part of it all is we're going right back to 1960s technology to do the whole thing over again. The Shuttle was a great intermediate learning tool - let's take the best of the Apollo missions (the Saturn V rocket - forget the POS fire-and-lose-control Shuttle booster, take the Saturn V design and modify it to be reusable and to use hydrogen or maybe peroxides and catalysts instead of Kerosene) and the best of the Shuttle or Spaceship One (Honest-to-goodness reusable gliders) and throw away the worst of both technologies.
Aside from reentry problems the Shuttle exhibits, I'd say the very worst part of the Shuttle program is the solid rocket booster technology: it uses a material which is very bad for the environment when burned, once you light it there is NO changing your mind until you're in the lower reaches of space, and there is little to no control over the flight path. This IMHO was a huge leap backward from the Saturn V, which being liquid-fueled, you can turn off, adjust the thrust, or even control the vector of the thrust if new nozzles are designed. Sure, they are more complex (very reliable high-volume pumps are required) but pump technology is hundreds of years old now, and seals and materials for extreme temperatures have improved vastly even since the days of the Apollo missions.
re: Is the movie industry finally listening? And how will they define 'own?'"
My guess what they define as own is, in practice:
- movie will be tied to a proprietary spyware-infested media player on one machine
- Converting file to place on your iPod, PocketPC/Smartphone, Palm, or VideoCD for your rackmount DVD player etc. is DoublePlusUnGood.
- First right of sale? What's that? Sure, you can resell the movie you purchased when you no longer want it; just resell your entire computer.
- Backups? If your hard drive shits the bed, don't worry, you will have to repurchase the movies because the registration incorporated the HDD serial number into the hash, so restoring your backup won't work.
. . . and it's absolutely true, and it will often result in significant delays. Advising customers of delays (even if it's a year's delay) well in advance is a hell of a lot easier than to deal with firefighting when you release a product which is barely alpha quality. I'd say that with Microsoft's track record, announcing a year's delay for a 60% rewrite would be good PR and boost customer confidence, as opposed to rushing the rewrite and ending up with a buggy operating system.
The other thing they need to do is this: Knock the product offering back down to four offerings (Home, Pro, Media Center, and embedded) instead of expanding it to 6 to 8 product offerings and creating customer confusion. This would also cut their required test matrix by 50%, helping to ensure that whatever (reasonable) target date they set can be met. A 60% rewrite by November is, Hmm, shall we say silly? It is just so absurd that there is no adequate term to describe the concept.
re: The day that MS releases a Service Pack full of bug/compatability fixes and not security patches, is the day that they've shown they were finally serious about security.
Have you ever seen security patches for Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS/X, and applications like MySQL and Apache? Yes, of course you have. Microsoft is not alone in this regard; it's their handling of the issue which sucks. When an uber-critical exploit is discovered, they might wait weeks or months before delivering a fix or workaround. OS/X is slightly better in this regard, but most unix systems will see a patch in a matter of hours or days, and the patches are often backported as well.
It's not possible to think of all the possible permutations you can take with an OS, especially one with an extensive API. I love to slam Microsoft where they deserve it, but the implication you left hanging there is that they're the only one who cannot fully test an operating system, which is obviously untrue.
Actually if they are rewriting 60% of Windows, it's a Good Thing(tm) and Windows Vista may just turn out to be significantly better than Windows XP. Now if only they relax on the DRM, change Activation so it's more similar to Adobe's schene (allowing for deactivation and transfer of licenses, etc.), and make it easy to replace the desktop and skin, I just might go back to Windows for personal machines.
Slashdot Mirror
So what can the average hacker do with the UltraSPARC T1 design? It's not like you can go to Radio Trash to pick up a pocket chip fab (heck, I can't even buy a barrel connector at Radio Trash any more, I had to buy one of their crap power supplies to gut it for the cable and connector. Feh!)
What? Speak up, I can't hear you! :D
I rent. I have a great landlord.
The value he provides is:
- I do not have to worry about yardwork
- when the refrigerator died, it was replaced before I got home from the office that evening
- I do not have to maintain the furnace, plumbing, etc.
Now, I have an unusually responsive and responsible landlord, but there is definitely a lot of value he supplies when I pay him rent. I can spend my time worrying about business instead of worrying about the house.
I have. One of my friend's dad had a Simplicity lawn tractor that looked like it was made in the '50s (he remarked his dad owned it when he was a kid) and it ran fine and he still used it to haul stuff around the lawn, plow the driveway, and mow the lawn. If they still maintain that level of quality workmanship, it's definitely a brand I'd want to buy.
I'd presume that the Sprawl*Mart model uses IC amps and the upscale models use discrete components in a dual mono configuration, just like cheap Pioneer amps vs. higher end Pioneer and the Pioneer Elite line. Did you check the spec sheets and other literature to see what Yamaha has to say about the receivers?
At one point Wal*Mart was where one shopped if one wished to buy only American-made products. The "Made in America" product selection at Wal*Mart died when Sam Walton died.
Computers are over-used. Why the hell do we need computer-operated toasters (yes, the good ol' simple toaster is often microprocessor-assisted)? Computers are overkill for deciding how light or dark your toast should be.
/, if I didn't think so) but I think we over-use them. Modern society treats the computer as the one-size-fits-all BFH. Computers are possibly the worst solution for elections because:
Likewise, computers are probably the wrong tool for voting. Accountability is removed, we've now put elections at risk of hardware crashes, software hacks, network mishaps, and so forth. Not only that, if the system IS hacked, how does one find that vote I cast against Hillary in the 2008 election? Are votes in hacked disgregarded in districts where the system has been tampered with (bad), or is the final result delayed until another election can be scheduled on a brand-new system (not quite as bad, but still bad?), or on paper (which takes us back to where we were in 2004)?
Computers are great tools (I wouldn't be on
- If networked, can be tampered with remotely, so no amount of police officers guarding over the machines can prevent against crackers
- If wireless, can be interfered with very easily
- Unless hardened, a highly-directional antenna with a moderate-power transmitter can interfere with the box's operation
- Where is the paper trail in the event of the above?
- Paper ballots can be counted under the supervision of both major parties and independents. Not possible with electronically-cast votes.
- If an exploit at the voting console is discovered, what can prevent ballot stuffing? With paper ballots, it's easy; if you drop more than one ballot in, at minimum you will be disallowed from dropping it in the box. Best scanario, you get arrested and charged with a federal crime for being such a dumbass.
In a republic where the representatives are elected democratically, abandoning the paper ballot is folly. Even with the pain of Florida elections arising because a handful of idiots cannot follow very clear arrows and directions, the paper ballot is the very best tool for electing officials. The election is documented with physical evidence, very easily supervised, and tampering is very easily discovered immediately and the idiots responsible being held responsible with very little investigation required.
Leave electronic voting technology up to surveys, unofficial NON-BINDING referenda (e.g., a referendum put forth for representatives to gather official majority public opinion), and the private sector.
Heck, even in IT, computers are not always the best solution for tracking all data or accomplishing all tasks.
Options:
- Web front end
- VPN client (GOOD VPN routers are relatively cheap now, check out the Cyberguard SG line, or your favorite Linux or BSD distribution)
- authenticated SMTP
- SSH and elm, pine, or other console email client of choice
Why on Earth would you need to use your coffee shop|cafe|bakery|print shop|hotel|etc.)'s SMTP server, given a multitude of very practical options, some configurations being less user-friendly, some being standard configurations which are very easy to use?
I think you're referring to spam as the consequence?
:-/
Well, the reason mail is the way it became is that a few universities, defense contractors, and government organizations needed to communicate, and given the reliability of network equipment of the time, open relays were a necessity to ensure that email got through. The reason that something along the lines of SPF didn't come into play from the beginning is multifold; DNS wasn't around (hosts were maintained in host files at each site), every organization on ARPANET was 100% trusted, and there was no incentive to forge emails nor to do what we now call "spamming" - in fact the few early advertisements which went out in targeted emails were heavily criticized.
When ARPANET became the Internet and DNS came into being due to the volume of hosts going online, open relays were still the standard, not due to network reliability (which had significantly improved) but due to legacy support. To maintain backwards compatibility SMTP stayed pretty much as-is from day one, and with the harsh criticisms that followed early email advertisemtns from trusted organizations, no one really anticipated a number of things:
- Internet access becoming a commodity (Quantum Link and Compuserve were just coming into their own then, and dial-up to proprietary online services was the wave of the future beyond private BBSes)
- Everyone having multiple, multiple email addresses
- Commercial entities abusing the network
In hindsight it was quite obvious that things like SPF would be required but given the Internet's early history (and computer networking in general) it's clear why they didn't think of security and sender verification when first implementing an email solution.
What AOL, Hotmail, and others SHOULD do is not use that GoodMail crap (it's not good sense to do that!) but to make SPF required rather than optional. If you want to send email to AOL recipients, on your authoritative servers, you must list which hosts are actually allowed to send emails from your domain via an SPF record, and all emails from your host not meeting the SPF rules will be regarded as spam and not even make it to the receiver's inbox.
This puts the onus totally on the senders. Want your mailing lists to make it through to the receiver? Make sure your listserver is listed in your SPF rules.
This is why SPF was proposed in the first place; to overcome issues arising from legacy support, to work around open relay-originating spam without having to block legitimate email from open relays, and to avoid the need for whitelisting.
Want to learn more about SPF? Check out http://www.openspf.org/
Posting this reminds me: I need to update our SPF records. Oops!
RTFA yourself, Blizzard is mis-applying the DMCA and sending cease-and-desist notices to the strategy guide author. Blizzard is firing first. Are you a Blizzard rep trying to put spin on the issue? What normally follows cease-and-desist letters (even unjustified ones) when such so-called "infringement" issues are alleged when the author continues? That's right, a civil suit.
Blizzard is in the wrong here. Obviously.
Will Microsoft sue for various reference books for the upcoming versions of Vista and Office?
Will Apple start suing publishers for distributing OS/X documentation?
Hey, maybe they'll even take the next leap and start suing third-party developers, since obviously referencing the OS by calling the API is copyright infringement!
Anyone from Blizzard here? Don't those leaps I'm proposing in the above scenarios look idiotic? Well, your suit against someone who developed a strategy guide (a VERY common type of publication in the gaming community, FYI) looks equally idiotic - more so, actually, because such guides help to sell the very game you purport to be protecting.
ISO certification or not, true open standards are the wave of the future. Too many companies and people have gotten burned by vendor lock too many times, to the point where the movement toward open standards and open source here in Taxachusetts has attracted mainstream press, not just technical journalists. Perhaps ODF won't gain steam quite as quickly if it became an ISO-certified standard immediately, but with states' and commonwealths' accepting ODF as the document exchange and archival solution, it will quickly filter down to education, state vendors (who want to keep their contracts) and law offices, and from there trickle down to everyone else. Small companies will quickly learn "Oh, I DON'T have to plunk down $450 for Microsoft Office any more? Where do I get this OpenOffice?"
No mod points today. :(
This AC should be modded informative.
1. Consistency, a working out-of-the-box configuration? Check out asterisk@home
.conf files (or install AMP and use that) than to memorize and navigate voice or beep menu prompts
2. No GUI by default? Are you saying that traditional PBX systems DO?
3. Ease of use: It's easier to parse a couple of
4. Who can maintain it? Anyone who can RTFM, read English, and navigate vi, pico, or nano -- or a web browser if AMP is installed
5. re: The consequences of this are that that no two Asterisk installations will likely be anything alike,
This is NOT a weakness. I don't have an Avaya, Nortel, Panasonic, or (other proprietary PBX) 8-line or 4-line or 24-line system that needs to be thrown away and replaced by a new system when the need for more lines arises. Just add another FXO card or two, or at worst, another asterisk box and link them together.
Need more voicemail? Run an ambulance service and need to record all calls, and ran out of storage? No need to throw away a perfectly good voicemail module and replace it with a more expensive one - just add another hard drive.
No two configurations being exactly alike is NOT a weakness when it comes to PBX. The whole POINT of asterisk is its (theoretically) unlimited flexibility and expandability.
Uh, how exactly is that a troll?
Hint: if you have no sense of humor, you should never mod ANY posts down, n00b. Period.
I was originally going to ask how this improves over tar and dar (I've been using dar up to this point) but after looking over the site I realize I need to try Amanda out. I have a question though: if a backup archive gets damaged, can the non-damaged parts of the file still be restored (like dar) or are you utterly screwed (like tar)?
/srv, /var, /root, /etc, and /home) which get mmoved to a central server and then redundant copies are moved over to a workstation on a weekly basis (or in the case of MySQL databases, daily), and backups are archived to optical media weekly. The advantage to this strategy is obviously the speed of recovery. Disadvantage? We're not doing FULL backups so a system reinstall is required in the event of a catastrophic failure (I don't view this as a drawback, BTW, considering that a Linux install minus GUI takes under a half hour including package selection).
This looks like a great solution because like commercial backup programs for Windows, I can centralize our backups. What I have set up right now is scripts to create dar archives of the data we care about (/data,
I was severely confused. I had thought for some reason that Apple Computer was the Beatles label. No fucking wonder I couldn't find the Beatles albums at Worst Buy!
(Pardon me, but there IS no trademark confusion, dilution, etc.)
I've stated this several times in threads, but I'll say it again:
;)
If there is ANY validity to the FTL/warp engine, they ought to put all of NASA's research and development dollars into that kind of system (not to mention shielding against radiation, etc.) . I'd love to see Saturn and Jupiter up close. I'd love to see interstellar exploration happen in my lifetime. If FTL is possible, I'm sure that if we throw enough resources at it a practical working engine could be developed fairly quickly.
A moon base? This has been a dream for decades, but what's the point? I'm sure it could be argued that you could have a really high resolution observatory on the moon, but on that same token we could also have a far more mobile solution, like the Hubble, but only better.
Or, it could be argued that it would be a fun vacation spot? Sure, but relax FAA restrictions and leave the rest up to private industry. Make space flight attainable for anyone with the technical means to accomplish it. In the meantime public funds, if spent on space at all, should be more ambitious. We've been to the Moon already. We have a few worthless basalt rocks as a result. Now let's get some rocks from Mars, Jupiter's moons, or even Titan. If FTL is practical at all, then a trip to Mars would only be a few weeks, with the vast majority of trip time (all but a few hours) spent exploring the planet.
And in response to TFA: "Will working in one-sixth of Earth's gravity for a year cause crippling health problems?"
Haven't the soviets put men up in space for over one year with little to no ill effects? One-sixth of the gravity will surely be better than near-zero gravity, and what's more, all you need is a bowflex or other workout machine to stay in shape regardless of lack of significant gravitational pull. The explorers simply need to be displined enough to work out. I'd be far more concerned about radiation (mentined in TFA) and lack of entertainment (I'd guess the primary psychological problem would be boredom).
Why is Dubya so bent on going back to the Moon? Is it because China is pledging to send a mission to the moon? Whoop de shit. Landing a non-reusable spacecraft on the moon, bouncing a round a bit and getting a modest rock collection and bringing it back is so 1960s.
The worst part of it all is we're going right back to 1960s technology to do the whole thing over again. The Shuttle was a great intermediate learning tool - let's take the best of the Apollo missions (the Saturn V rocket - forget the POS fire-and-lose-control Shuttle booster, take the Saturn V design and modify it to be reusable and to use hydrogen or maybe peroxides and catalysts instead of Kerosene) and the best of the Shuttle or Spaceship One (Honest-to-goodness reusable gliders) and throw away the worst of both technologies.
Aside from reentry problems the Shuttle exhibits, I'd say the very worst part of the Shuttle program is the solid rocket booster technology: it uses a material which is very bad for the environment when burned, once you light it there is NO changing your mind until you're in the lower reaches of space, and there is little to no control over the flight path. This IMHO was a huge leap backward from the Saturn V, which being liquid-fueled, you can turn off, adjust the thrust, or even control the vector of the thrust if new nozzles are designed. Sure, they are more complex (very reliable high-volume pumps are required) but pump technology is hundreds of years old now, and seals and materials for extreme temperatures have improved vastly even since the days of the Apollo missions.
Oh, really? Installing gplflash allows you to run Shockwave applets?
This is disconcerting.
Are we talking a $4.88 DVD from the Sprawl*Mart bargain bin, or a Futurama or Star Trek box set?
Either way, it's nice to know we're not worth shit! Thanks, Germany!
re: Is the movie industry finally listening? And how will they define 'own?'"
My guess what they define as own is, in practice:
- movie will be tied to a proprietary spyware-infested media player on one machine
- Converting file to place on your iPod, PocketPC/Smartphone, Palm, or VideoCD for your rackmount DVD player etc. is DoublePlusUnGood.
- First right of sale? What's that? Sure, you can resell the movie you purchased when you no longer want it; just resell your entire computer.
- Backups? If your hard drive shits the bed, don't worry, you will have to repurchase the movies because the registration incorporated the HDD serial number into the hash, so restoring your backup won't work.
I don't know whether your post should be modded insightful or funny.
. . . and it's absolutely true, and it will often result in significant delays. Advising customers of delays (even if it's a year's delay) well in advance is a hell of a lot easier than to deal with firefighting when you release a product which is barely alpha quality. I'd say that with Microsoft's track record, announcing a year's delay for a 60% rewrite would be good PR and boost customer confidence, as opposed to rushing the rewrite and ending up with a buggy operating system.
The other thing they need to do is this: Knock the product offering back down to four offerings (Home, Pro, Media Center, and embedded) instead of expanding it to 6 to 8 product offerings and creating customer confusion. This would also cut their required test matrix by 50%, helping to ensure that whatever (reasonable) target date they set can be met. A 60% rewrite by November is, Hmm, shall we say silly? It is just so absurd that there is no adequate term to describe the concept.
re: The day that MS releases a Service Pack full of bug/compatability fixes and not security patches, is the day that they've shown they were finally serious about security.
Have you ever seen security patches for Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS/X, and applications like MySQL and Apache? Yes, of course you have. Microsoft is not alone in this regard; it's their handling of the issue which sucks. When an uber-critical exploit is discovered, they might wait weeks or months before delivering a fix or workaround. OS/X is slightly better in this regard, but most unix systems will see a patch in a matter of hours or days, and the patches are often backported as well.
It's not possible to think of all the possible permutations you can take with an OS, especially one with an extensive API. I love to slam Microsoft where they deserve it, but the implication you left hanging there is that they're the only one who cannot fully test an operating system, which is obviously untrue.
re: http://www.dslreports.com/stest?loc=1
Actually if they are rewriting 60% of Windows, it's a Good Thing(tm) and Windows Vista may just turn out to be significantly better than Windows XP. Now if only they relax on the DRM, change Activation so it's more similar to Adobe's schene (allowing for deactivation and transfer of licenses, etc.), and make it easy to replace the desktop and skin, I just might go back to Windows for personal machines.