"a leak melting the ice"?
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Dear Idiot,
How big is the nuclear power supply? I believe the standard units are on the order of a few kilos. How much of, say, all the ice in Antarctica could you melt with that?
mark "Space is big. Space is really, reall,
I mean, REALLY BIG...."
Um, sorry, maybe he did the Website, but somewhere around here I've got a flyer I picked up (at a Real SF con) from maybe 20 years ago about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. It wasn't the first - I mean, Make Money Fast had been around for years, but that was the first to spam all Usenet.
Back then, that was dangerous. Within 24 hrs, as I recall, there were posts of the real estate records of the house they owned and lived in, and the one or two that they owned and rented out...and shortly after, the text of his disbarrment for failure to file motions in time, and on, and on.
If anyone wants to hire me in the geographic area I live in, of if they're planning to change jobs and they'll let me know so I can put in an app for sysadmin or developer, I'll be there with bells on, to change my job from 'no longer in the workforce" to "employed".
Hell, if they want to hire my SO and me to go to the Moon or Mars, we're *there*.
In the report, Rubin mentions his real fear: the predesignated zero machine.
I *have* downloaded the code from NZ, a year ago, and skimmed through it. I posted this then, and I'll reiterate: within two hours, I found a function, commented, that *appeared* to be going into the *production* code, not just test, that *says* its purpose is to "install total files" from another system.
This is a far simpler, and more dangerous attack, than fake smartcards.
mark "yes, I can find the function again,
on request"
Back before the seventies, manufacturing ran away to the South with its "right to work" states - meaning that they could keep out unions for a while. When unions started to come in, they started sending manufacturing over the border, first, then overseas.
In the meantime, there was *much* talk in all the media about the upcoming "information economy", and how that would absorb all those lost jobs with new, good-paying jobs.
THERE IS NO "UPCOMING ECONOMY" TO REPLACE THE TECH JOBS. "There will be new jobs", they cry...yet can point to *NOTHING*. That is about as realistic as the Administration's claim, last year, that there would be 1.6 million new jobs created in 2003. It is no different than their claim that 2.7M new jobs will be created this year.
Where? Nurses' aides, pizza delivery, and telemarketing, no doubt. Large numbers of jobs that pay a living wage? Show me where.
I recommend y'all read "A Black Day for Capitalists", esp. you libertarians (who I *know* are *ecstatic* that the jobs are folowing the market).
Who, reading this, makes a significant portion of their income, right now, from stocks? I doubt that anyone who does so is reading slashdot.
Offshoring is good for jobs...right. And as Mr. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
I don't know where *you* live, but neither in Chicago, nor down here on the Space Coast of Florida, if there's one or two jobs in the Sunday paper, it's a good weekend. Tech jobs simply *aren't* posted, other than online.
All the cancelled *good* series, like Firefly, and they have to remake one of the worst skiffy series ever made?
I have *no* intention of watching. I still remember incedulosity at the pilot of the original series (22 planets straffed to death by fighters, not bombers...), and then nearly barfing over...I think it was called "Fire in the Ship", where the Cattlecar is apparently made of plywood, since so much of it burns, and blast/emergency doors don't shut, and a landing bay that appears to be open to space that allows a fire to keep burning, and having to use the magnets on explosives to walk across the outside of the ship, since they had no other way to do it, and they couldn't simply depressurize....
mark "*I* passed all my science courses,
the turkeys who made the turkey
never took any"
Where does he give credit, or urge Congress to pass, HR 3057, The Space Exploration Act of 2003, which has *exactly* the same timetable and goals?
Oh, I'm sorry, that was brought in by Democrats (Lampsan, TX-Johnson Space Ctr).
And in the meantime, we're hiring foreign engineers and scientists, because we don't have young men and women going into the sciences. More offshoring....
mark, who's old enough to remember when the
US had *the* highest tech in the world
About how many jobs will be created in the US - US Republican gov't economic reports. The same reports that claimed we would create 1.7M new jobs *last* year, and is claiming 2.6M this year.
More importantly, back in the seventies, as manufacturing started offshoring, there was a *lot* of talk about the "information economy", and how it would be were the new jobs were.
There is NO, ZERO, ZIP talk of any new field or industry to provide the new jobs. There is nothing to point to.
When Newt and the Reptilians said they wanted to take us back to the days of the Robber Barons, they *meant* it. As the headline I read last year put it, they want to roll back the 20th century...and everything that our grandparents and parents fought for and won - from a social safety net to decent pay and benefits, they want to toss out the window (how many of you have paid any attention to the fight over overtime pay rules?).
There's no new industry up and coming here in the US, other than flipping burgers, telemarketing, and nurses' aides in nursing homes.
mark "why, yes, I *am* out of work"
--.sig... Libertarian IT workers who watch their jobs go overseas should derive joy from geographic shifts in employment. Their "dog eat dog" creed requires them to be happy whenever the marketplace finds a way to pay workers less and increase business owners' profits. - Roblimo Miller, NewsForge.com
Give me a break. I can name one textbook that I doubt there's one person reading this who hasn't at least looked at, if they don't own one or more copies. It's got to have sold well over a million copies...and it has no pictures, and was typeset by the authors, *not* the publisher.
Trade paperback novels cost between $12 and $20 these days...yet K&R's The C Programming Language has consistantly been twice that.
From very personal experience: the Chevy Chevette (pronounced "shove-it").
I had a 1980, purchased used in 1981. In the five years we had it, it had
1 broken spring
1 (or was it 2) dead starters
1 dead alternator, and
2 (TWO) transmission rebuilds, one of which was paid for by a class-action lawsuit.
Designed cheap (not inexpensive), built cheap, disposable.
mark "will *NEVER* buy another GM product
without a *free* 10 year warranty
on *everything*"
Added to Bush & co's crimes is plagerism. The Democrats ought to go after Bush for IP (that's intellectual property) violation...
I suggest y'all look up HR 3057, the Space Exploration Act of 2003,submitted in September by DEMOCRAT Rep. Lampson (D-TX), in September of 2003. It's been in committee.
Even the timetable's the same. Do the Dems get any credit? No. Pure theft: the Bush modus operandi. And he'll treat it like his father did: Every Space Program Left Behind, and we won't be able to even *talk* about really getting back into space for another dozen years.
Bush's grandstanding on space is pure plagiarism of the Space Exploration Act of 2003, (HR3057) by Rep. Lampson (D-TX), in September of 2003, and is still in committee.
This bill calls for returning to lunar orbit within 8 years; to return to the Moon to stay within 15 years, and to Mars within 20 years. In addition, it would create an Office of Exploration in NASA to plan and manage future exploration for the long term.
Bush's discovery of space comes from Rove's discovery of the tech vote, and will, like No Child Left Behind, will leave behind funding and commitment, once the election is passed.
I'm unbelievably mad about this, becase he really doesn't *care* about space, while some of us have been waiting our whole lives for the promises of the sixties to be met. He's stealing The Dream for his goddamn political games.
Cringely wrote: "I was wrong in my mysterious prediction of a new electronic way to foment social change. I just never got around to doing it myself (that was the plan), so I'll have to accept that I was wrong."
I don't see his email, or I'd email him directly...but he *did* get that one right: consider Howard Dean and Meetup.
This is obviously *NOT* I, Robot, since there *is* *no* major single male protagonist in the collection. And who plays the middle-aged or older major protagonist, Susan Calvin?
Oh, sorry, that won't play well with the 16-30 age group.
IF THEY WANT TO WRITE THEIR OWN FSCKIN' MOVIE, DO IT, BUT DON'T CLAIM IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S, nor mangle and mutilate someone else's, better work.
mark "and I keep meaning to send a threat
of physical violence to Peter Jackson"*
* And after the Two Towers, if Faramir were a real person, he would have filed a libel suit against Jackson.
Well, the pdf's been slashdotted, but I remember an article in what I *think* was Mother Jones about this. The high-schooler had gotten nothing but declassified information. The article in MJ(?) had the whole procedure, though the really hard part was the centerfuging to seperate the heavier isotopes. Spinning a bucket at arm's length around in your living room for half an hour...and if it slipped, what a *mess* it'd make of your wall....
I read it, a long time ago. One trouble with the series, if you aren't totally *into* it, is Lewis' usual problem, that of the ham-handedness of the convert/True Believer. (Do *not* get me started on That Hideous Trilogy).
But the real problem with the series is the ending. [spoiler alert]
He *cheats*. "Oh, well, actually you think you've gone through all this, but actually you were in a railroad accident, and you're all dead."
I've thought the ratings were skewed, anyway (I won't even mention how ideology overrides ratings). I mean, there have been some *really* utterly stupid shows that claimed to have top ratings.
The ratings *also* don't take into account that lovely button on the remote labelled "mute".
But finally, the broadcasters seem to miss one little point: the anger of the audience.
Over what?
1) the airwaves are OWNED BY THE PEOPLE.
Broadcasters are allowed to buy leases
only as long as they broadcast in the
public's interest.
2) cable, when it first came out, was sold
on the basis of "tv with no commercials
or editing". That's *ALL* cable stations.
I gave up on USA, for example, when the
editing was so extreme that whether it
was t&a or serious drama, you couldn't
keep track of the plot.
3) when I was growing up, in the sixties,
the *law* was, I believe, *five* minutes
of commercials per half hour. We're now
up to one-hour shows having 22 min. of
commercials.
So, whose "fault" is it that we don't want to watch commercials? If I want all commercials, all the time, I can watch one of the shopping channels. In the meantime, I will *NEVER* buy some products, like Bowflex (6-8 commercials/hr, often two in the same break), etc.
Maybe Yahoo Serious had the right idea, and there needs to be a hostile takeover of a national station....
mark "can I have my public media, and
equal time, back?"
I really haven't followed this closely, other than the occasional story...BUT, after reading this article, one thing immediately leapt to mind: they seem to have *only* WinDoze in mind.
Leaving aside the issues of "maybe I don't want to be online when I'm in single user mode and upgrading my OS, let's cut to the Big Picture: how will *other* OS's operate with this non-BIOS bios?
Even nastier, *if* this is primarily created w/ M$ in mind, then will Linux have to reverse engineer how to interact...and will M$ then pull a SCO, claiming trade secret, copyright, and patent protection?
*THAT* looks like what's inside this trojan horse.
How 'bout taxing or suing the *source* of spam: the folks that the spam is trying to *sell*? Well over half of them are in the US, and have physical locations. They are, therefore, engaged in interstate commerce, and subject to *those* laws.
Or one of these days, I may just decide to read a spam, preferably one that I've had more than one spam about, and sue *them*, if I can find the junk fax law for it.
Let's be real: spam is 90% advertising (leaving out 419s). Therefore, the company being advertised is the liable party. They *pay* the spammers for all sales. Let's go after *them*.
A lot of the classic papers aren't being read because there are fads in this field, as there are in any other...and, well, those classic papers are *so* outdated and old-fashioned, everything they have to say has been overtaken by newer technology..."
Just as RDBMS was the answer to *everything*, and *no* *one* uses heirarchical systems (they just changed the terminology), or OO is *so* different (ditto).
Someone mentioned IEEE Computer. I used to be a member. Then I changed jobs, and it was Dr. Dobb's *or* IEEE Computer...and one of the reasons that it wasn't even a choice was one of Computer's covers (around Jan '94, I believe), where they were *literally* offering OO as The Silver Bullet to all programming woes.
I suggest that among the great papers is F. Brooks. No silver bullet: Essence and accidents of software engineering. Computer, 20(4):10-19, April 1987.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Idiot,
How big is the nuclear power supply? I believe the standard units are on the order of a few kilos. How much of, say, all the ice in Antarctica could you melt with that?
mark "Space is big. Space is really, reall,
I mean, REALLY BIG...."
Um, sorry, maybe he did the Website, but somewhere around here I've got a flyer I picked up (at a Real SF con) from maybe 20 years ago about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.
mark "jeez, inhale enough and it'll kill you!"
Ah, yes, I remember it well. It wasn't the first - I mean, Make Money Fast had been around for years, but that was the first to spam all Usenet.
Back then, that was dangerous. Within 24 hrs, as I recall, there were posts of the real estate records of the house they owned and lived in, and the one or two that they owned and rented out...and shortly after, the text of his disbarrment for failure to file motions in time, and on, and on.
Last I heard, they were divorced.
mark
If anyone wants to hire me in the geographic area I live in, of if they're planning to change jobs and they'll let me know so I can put in an app for sysadmin or developer, I'll be there with bells on, to change my job from 'no longer in the workforce" to "employed".
Hell, if they want to hire my SO and me to go to the Moon or Mars, we're *there*.
mark
In the report, Rubin mentions his real fear: the predesignated zero machine.
I *have* downloaded the code from NZ, a year ago, and skimmed through it. I posted this then, and I'll reiterate: within two hours, I found a function, commented, that *appeared* to be going into the *production* code, not just test, that *says* its purpose is to "install total files" from another system.
This is a far simpler, and more dangerous attack, than fake smartcards.
mark "yes, I can find the function again,
on request"
Back before the seventies, manufacturing ran away to the South with its "right to work" states - meaning that they could keep out unions for a while. When unions started to come in, they started sending manufacturing over the border, first, then overseas.
In the meantime, there was *much* talk in all the media about the upcoming "information economy", and how that would absorb all those lost jobs with new, good-paying jobs.
THERE IS NO "UPCOMING ECONOMY" TO REPLACE THE TECH JOBS. "There will be new jobs", they cry...yet can point to *NOTHING*. That is about as realistic as the Administration's claim, last year, that there would be 1.6 million new jobs created in 2003. It is no different than their claim that 2.7M new jobs will be created this year.
Where? Nurses' aides, pizza delivery, and telemarketing, no doubt. Large numbers of jobs that pay a living wage? Show me where.
I recommend y'all read "A Black Day for Capitalists", esp. you libertarians (who I *know* are *ecstatic* that the jobs are folowing the market).
Who, reading this, makes a significant portion of their income, right now, from stocks? I doubt that anyone who does so is reading slashdot.
Offshoring is good for jobs...right. And as Mr. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
mark, still looking for a job
I don't know where *you* live, but neither in Chicago, nor down here on the Space Coast of Florida, if there's one or two jobs in the Sunday paper, it's a good weekend. Tech jobs simply *aren't* posted, other than online.
mark "2.5 years and still looking"
All the cancelled *good* series, like Firefly, and they have to remake one of the worst skiffy series ever made?
I have *no* intention of watching. I still remember incedulosity at the pilot of the original series (22 planets straffed to death by fighters, not bombers...), and then nearly barfing over...I think it was called "Fire in the Ship", where the Cattlecar is apparently made of plywood, since so much of it burns, and blast/emergency doors don't shut, and a landing bay that appears to be open to space that allows a fire to keep burning, and having to use the magnets on explosives to walk across the outside of the ship, since they had no other way to do it, and they couldn't simply depressurize....
mark "*I* passed all my science courses,
the turkeys who made the turkey
never took any"
Where does he give credit, or urge Congress to pass, HR 3057, The Space Exploration Act of 2003, which has *exactly* the same timetable and goals?
Oh, I'm sorry, that was brought in by Democrats (Lampsan, TX-Johnson Space Ctr).
And in the meantime, we're hiring foreign engineers and scientists, because we don't have young men and women going into the sciences. More offshoring....
mark, who's old enough to remember when the
US had *the* highest tech in the world
The question here is are we talking straight weight, the ratio of brain weight to body weight...or brain surface area (which depends on convolutions)?
mark
About how many jobs will be created in the US - US Republican gov't economic reports. The same reports that claimed we would create 1.7M new jobs *last* year, and is claiming 2.6M this year.
.sig ...
More importantly, back in the seventies, as manufacturing started offshoring, there was a *lot* of talk about the "information economy", and how it would be were the new jobs were.
There is NO, ZERO, ZIP talk of any new field or industry to provide the new jobs. There is nothing to point to.
When Newt and the Reptilians said they wanted to take us back to the days of the Robber Barons, they *meant* it. As the headline I read last year put it, they want to roll back the 20th century...and everything that our grandparents and parents fought for and won - from a social safety net to decent pay and benefits, they want to toss out the window (how many of you have paid any attention to the fight over overtime pay rules?).
There's no new industry up and coming here in the US, other than flipping burgers, telemarketing, and nurses' aides in nursing homes.
mark "why, yes, I *am* out of work"
--
Libertarian IT workers who watch their jobs go overseas should derive joy from geographic shifts in employment. Their "dog eat dog" creed requires them to be happy whenever the marketplace finds a way to pay workers less and increase business owners' profits. - Roblimo Miller, NewsForge.com
Give me a break. I can name one textbook that I doubt there's one person reading this who hasn't at least looked at, if they don't own one or more copies. It's got to have sold well over a million copies...and it has no pictures, and was typeset by the authors, *not* the publisher.
Trade paperback novels cost between $12 and $20 these days...yet K&R's The C Programming Language has consistantly been twice that.
mark "the phrase 'profit center' comes to mind"
From very personal experience: the Chevy Chevette (pronounced "shove-it").
I had a 1980, purchased used in 1981. In the five years we had it, it had
1 broken spring
1 (or was it 2) dead starters
1 dead alternator, and
2 (TWO) transmission rebuilds, one of which was paid for by a class-action lawsuit.
Designed cheap (not inexpensive), built cheap, disposable.
mark "will *NEVER* buy another GM product
without a *free* 10 year warranty
on *everything*"
Added to Bush & co's crimes is plagerism. The Democrats ought to go after Bush for IP (that's intellectual property) violation...
I suggest y'all look up HR 3057, the Space Exploration Act of 2003,submitted in September by DEMOCRAT Rep. Lampson (D-TX), in September of 2003. It's been in committee.
Even the timetable's the same. Do the Dems get any credit? No. Pure theft: the Bush modus operandi.
And he'll treat it like his father did: Every Space Program Left Behind, and we won't be able to even *talk* about really getting back into space for another dozen years.
mark
Yes. Where do I get in line, and any chance that I can beat, claw and rend my way to the head of the line?
And no Bush in space, unless it's for a one-way trip to the Sun. No toxic waste on Mars!
mark
Bush's grandstanding on space is pure plagiarism of the Space Exploration Act of 2003, (HR3057) by Rep. Lampson (D-TX), in September of 2003, and is
still in committee.
This bill calls for returning to lunar orbit within 8 years; to return to the Moon to stay within 15 years, and to Mars within 20 years. In addition, it would create an Office of Exploration in NASA to plan and manage future exploration for the long term.
Bush's discovery of space comes from Rove's discovery of the tech vote, and will, like No Child Left Behind, will leave behind funding and
commitment, once the election is passed.
I'm unbelievably mad about this, becase he really doesn't *care* about space, while some of us have been waiting our whole lives for the
promises of the sixties to be met. He's stealing The Dream for his goddamn political games.
mark
and, IMO, a cross between the engineer's view and PostModCrit is (ta-da!) MSTing someone.
If that's not deconstruction, nothing is.
mark "In objects that are obsolescent,
or instances instantiated,
I am the very model of a modern
program paradigm"
Cringely wrote:
"I was wrong in my mysterious prediction of a new electronic way to foment social change. I just never got around to doing it myself (that was the plan), so I'll have to accept that I was wrong."
I don't see his email, or I'd email him directly...but he *did* get that one right: consider Howard Dean and Meetup.
mark "did I mention ?"
This is obviously *NOT* I, Robot, since there *is* *no* major single male protagonist in the collection. And who plays the middle-aged or older major protagonist, Susan Calvin?
Oh, sorry, that won't play well with the 16-30 age group.
IF THEY WANT TO WRITE THEIR OWN FSCKIN' MOVIE, DO IT, BUT DON'T CLAIM IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S, nor mangle and mutilate someone else's, better work.
mark "and I keep meaning to send a threat
of physical violence to Peter Jackson"*
* And after the Two Towers, if Faramir were a real person, he would have filed a libel suit against Jackson.
Well, the pdf's been slashdotted, but I remember an article in what I *think* was Mother Jones about this. The high-schooler had gotten nothing but declassified information. The article in MJ(?) had the whole procedure, though the really hard part was the centerfuging to seperate the heavier isotopes. Spinning a bucket at arm's length around in your living room for half an hour...and if it slipped, what a *mess* it'd make of your wall....
mark
I read it, a long time ago. One trouble with the series, if you aren't totally *into* it, is Lewis' usual problem, that of the ham-handedness of the convert/True Believer. (Do *not* get me started on That Hideous Trilogy).
But the real problem with the series is the ending.
[spoiler alert]
He *cheats*. "Oh, well, actually you think you've gone through all this, but actually you were in a railroad accident, and you're all dead."
Deus ex pancake.
Give me Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising, anyday.
mark
I've thought the ratings were skewed, anyway (I won't even mention how ideology overrides ratings). I mean, there have been some *really* utterly stupid shows that claimed to have top ratings.
The ratings *also* don't take into account that lovely button on the remote labelled "mute".
But finally, the broadcasters seem to miss one little point: the anger of the audience.
Over what?
1) the airwaves are OWNED BY THE PEOPLE.
Broadcasters are allowed to buy leases
only as long as they broadcast in the
public's interest.
2) cable, when it first came out, was sold
on the basis of "tv with no commercials
or editing". That's *ALL* cable stations.
I gave up on USA, for example, when the
editing was so extreme that whether it
was t&a or serious drama, you couldn't
keep track of the plot.
3) when I was growing up, in the sixties,
the *law* was, I believe, *five* minutes
of commercials per half hour. We're now
up to one-hour shows having 22 min. of
commercials.
So, whose "fault" is it that we don't want to watch commercials? If I want all commercials, all the time, I can watch one of the shopping channels. In the meantime, I will *NEVER* buy some products, like Bowflex (6-8 commercials/hr, often two in the same break), etc.
Maybe Yahoo Serious had the right idea, and there needs to be a hostile takeover of a national station....
mark "can I have my public media, and
equal time, back?"
I really haven't followed this closely, other than the occasional story...BUT, after reading this article, one thing immediately leapt to mind: they seem to have *only* WinDoze in mind.
Leaving aside the issues of "maybe I don't want to be online when I'm in single user mode and upgrading my OS, let's cut to the Big Picture: how will *other* OS's operate with this non-BIOS bios?
Even nastier, *if* this is primarily created w/ M$ in mind, then will Linux have to reverse engineer how to interact...and will M$ then pull a SCO, claiming trade secret, copyright, and patent protection?
*THAT* looks like what's inside this trojan horse.
mark
How 'bout taxing or suing the *source* of spam: the folks that the spam is trying to *sell*? Well over half of them are in the US, and have physical locations. They are, therefore, engaged in interstate commerce, and subject to *those* laws.
Or one of these days, I may just decide to read a spam, preferably one that I've had more than one spam about, and sue *them*, if I can find the junk fax law for it.
Let's be real: spam is 90% advertising (leaving out 419s). Therefore, the company being advertised is the liable party. They *pay* the spammers for all sales. Let's go after *them*.
mark
A lot of the classic papers aren't being read because there are fads in this field, as there are in any other...and, well, those classic papers are *so* outdated and old-fashioned, everything they have to say has been overtaken by newer technology..."
Just as RDBMS was the answer to *everything*, and *no* *one* uses heirarchical systems (they just changed the terminology), or OO is *so* different (ditto).
Someone mentioned IEEE Computer. I used to be a member. Then I changed jobs, and it was Dr. Dobb's *or* IEEE Computer...and one of the reasons that it wasn't even a choice was one of Computer's covers (around Jan '94, I believe), where they were *literally* offering OO as The Silver Bullet to all programming woes.
I suggest that among the great papers is F. Brooks. No silver bullet: Essence and accidents of software engineering. Computer, 20(4):10-19, April 1987.
mark