The shuttle is not just expensive for launching stuff in low earth orbit (LEO). It is not just very expensive. It is not just extraordinarily expensive.
The shuttle is obscenely expensive to operate.
Way back when the shuttle was supposed to lower launch costs. But now it is the most expensive means to launch anything, by a large, large margin. It requires a tremendous amount of effort to refurbish between flights.
All this is because they had many conflicting goals when it started out. The STS is the most complex launch system ever designed, and it shows.
Unfortunately, even though this paper is somewhat old, many of the operating systems mentioned in it are still running and connected to the Internet.
Besides, if the engineers at some company (SGI, MS, IBM) didn't previous think ISN prediction was a problem a couple years ago, they it is not likely they think it is a problem today.
Ya know, the more big media (and big biz in general) talk about DRM (essentially copy prevention), the less interested I become.
Occasionally, big media has come out with some real gems (like LotR:FotR), but frankly, most of it is crap. I used to listen to the radio for music, but I'm not too impressed by most of that either. Now all I listen to is NPR and an independent dance music station.
They can go and use all the technological means to protect their product (as opposed to art). As long as a few of us can still communicate together, I can keep using free software. As long as people still know how to sing and play, I'll still have music to listen to.
Maybe I'll still go to a movie in a theater once in a while, but I'm just about finished with big media. The more effort they spend to protect their products, the less significant it becomes as art.
You defeat your own point here. Anyone can set up a radio station to play niche music, and they do.
Maybe you live in Nowhere Montana, and the airwaves are relatively un-occupied there.
However, in major markets, like Chicago, the airwaves are packed. The only way you're going to run a radio station is to buy out an existing one. I somehow doubt that companies like ClearChannel are selling.
The existing frequency allocations do represent a government-mandated monopoly (of sorts), and thus the companies that use them are (or should be) subject to regulation.
I thought this was one of the more interesting paragraphs in the article:
Allen said the industry's target audience has changed in recent years from college students trying to build inexpensive record collections to mostly male music fans between the ages of 18 and 34 looking for out-of-print and hard-to-find copies.
You'd think in this day and age, it would be easy enough to keep in print (even with just a small stock) every CD ever made. But it doesn't seem to be working out that way, huh?
The situation is just as bad with books. You'd think some print-to-order system would be a great service for rare and less popular books. Of course, they would be more expensive than the mass-produced versions. But I'd rather spend a few more bucks, and be able to order a copy easily, than hunt through various used-book stores.
We have all this information technology, but we're not putting it to its best use.
I love the quote on backdoors and viruses.
Windows systems don't have their source code publically available, and yet that doesn't seem to stop the creation of backdoor programs and viruses.
I like how they insinuate that people would just download some code from the Internet, and then immediately put that into a production air traffic control system. Talk about a straw man argument.
Someone needs to explain to this think-tank (or senseless-opinion-tank) that people can do these things called code reviews. Ya see, if I download a new version of this mail client (for example), I can look at the differences between the current source and the last version I checked. Not only could I spot back doors, but I'd likely find some bugs too.
These guys that develop safety-critical systems (like air traffic control) are real sticklers for inspections, documentation, etc. I bet most of them would be glad for more independant reviews of the code they depend on, rather than just hoping Windows doesn't have bugs in it.
As for me, my requirements aren't as critical. When I downloaded OpenOffice from some mirror in Timbuktoo, all I did was check the MD5 sum. The five seconds that took assured me that at least no third-party inserted viruses or back doors in the program.
Spam used to get me really mad and/or annoyed. I thought about the scammers out there, I thought about my wasted time, I thought about wasted resources, etc.
Recently, I've installed Spamassassin, and I've been running it for a few months.
Nowdays, spam doesn't bother me too much. Spamassassin tags nearly all of it. Deleted without much trouble or effort on my part. I still report the ones that get through the filter. I haven't had much of a problem with false positives either.
These days I'm thinking that passing more laws to stop spam isn't the answer. I'd rather we use technological solutions for now. If/when we finally all start using authenticated, encrypted e-mail, spam will cease to be a problem at all. In the mean time, a good filter aleviates the need for legislative solutions, in my opinion.
Well, I don't know if I'd use old Apple ]['s, but it would be cool to have a hardware projects class in high school. Heck, at one point I (as a teenager) was trying to build a robotic arm out of instructions in a magazine (didn't finish it though).
You've got easy-to use microcontroller development kits like the BasicStamp. Or heck, have a Mindstorms class. Get 'em into NQC (Not Quite C) and bang on the hardware.
If you learn what computers fundamentally do, then you can set down in front of just about any program and figure it out. Schools should be there to provide a good foundation for knowledge and learning, not just teaching skills that businesses want.
How about we tax NASA at 1%, and use that money to fund serious low-cost alternatives for spaceflight?
Sensible use of 1950's technology could cut the cost of spaceflight by 10x to 100x. This sounds completely ridiculous, but it is true. NASA, in collusion with big government contractors and government regulators, keeps the cost of spaceflight artificially high.
This is fundamentally because the current mindset is to optimize the performance of launch vehicles and payloads. If commercial-grade (instead of military grade) systems were designed, they would be technically less efficient, but far, far more cost-effective to use.
As it stands now, NASA has more than enough money to pursue manned spaceflight as well as interplanetary scientific missions, if the technologies used were rationalized. Read Col. London's book "LEO on the Cheap", and hang out in the sci.space.tech newsgroup to see what I'm talking about.
I read "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber (also in the free library). I was immediately hooked, and ended up buying the rest of the series. That's 7 books purchased, when I got one for free.
I think Weber did pretty well by me, and now I keep an eye out for other books of his. This is an author I had never even heard of, before I ran across the Baen Free Library.
I'm slowly working through the rest of the free library. I haven't seen anything else that really grabbed yet, but no doubt I will end up spending some more cold, hard, cash.
I'll purchase the electronic versions where available, because they are cheaper and in a non-proprietary format. I have a Rocket e-book reader, but never purchased books for that because I didn't want to be locked into a single reader device.
crudeboy writes: (in regards to IE and Media Player) but... a more correct question might be: Why bother to remove it?
End user applications have no business existing on a dedicated server machine. As for why, see below:
cscx writes: Second of all, you don't install all the goodies in Windows 2000 server/advanced server. Why do you need IE? Well, it's handy as hell. You can locally install updates while at the box in the server room, run windows update, download hotfixes, etc. Plus, it's also useful for visiting tech documents / howtos to diagnose problems that the Novell and Linux servers in the same server room are having (yes, this has happened to me before;P)
So you're going to be surfing random sites on a critical server machine... while logged in as Administrator?????
I'm glad you don't work for me. That would be grounds for a reprimand, at the very least.
Back in the old days, surfing the web ran no risk to the client machine. Nowdays there are all kinds of risks because of mobile code (ActiveX, Javascript, etc.) and exploitable client programs (increasingly complex web browsers). Do either of you guys remember how those worms were spreading last year? Sooner or later, someone's going to figure out yet another exploit for IE.
Yes, yes, you can limit the risks with security settings, but that is no longer proof against attacks.
crudeboy writes: If you really think that you probably shouldn't work with security at all...
To say that things you do when implementing a software solution should be carried out first is just plain nonsense...
Well, if "limit your exposure" isn't supposed to be #1 on a security checklist, then it is #2 or #3.
Since you don't seem to understand the basics, then I suggest you read up on the subject before you start calling things "nonsense".
Think Microsoft is big? GE could buy them outright and not even notice -- instead they've partnered with them.
Check one of the stock websites. GE's market cap is only $60B greater than MSFT's. If you have a friend who has $150B laying around (to buy controlling interest in MSFT), let me know.
The GPL and LGPL have very strict copyrights on the text of the licenses themselves. You aren't allow to make modifications of them and distribute them. You may only distribute verbatim copies.
Gah! Why, oh why would you want to re-implement SMB for Windoze?!?!?!
M$ has already got the most compatable (in the bug-for-bug sense) implementation of SMB. If you're being bitten by the high cost of client access licenses, then just implement Samba.
And if you want a better and more secure distributed filesystem for Windoze, then why not just implement AFS?
Slashdot Mirror
If you're receiving a lot of unsolicited advertising faxes, you may want to check out http://www.junkfax.org/ to see how to fight back.
The shuttle is not just expensive for launching stuff in low earth orbit (LEO). It is not just very expensive. It is not just extraordinarily expensive.
The shuttle is obscenely expensive to operate.
Way back when the shuttle was supposed to lower launch costs. But now it is the most expensive means to launch anything, by a large, large margin. It requires a tremendous amount of effort to refurbish between flights.
All this is because they had many conflicting goals when it started out. The STS is the most complex launch system ever designed, and it shows.
Here you go:
Hot for Teacher
Unfortunately, even though this paper is somewhat old, many of the operating systems mentioned in it are still running and connected to the Internet.
Besides, if the engineers at some company (SGI, MS, IBM) didn't previous think ISN prediction was a problem a couple years ago, they it is not likely they think it is a problem today.
Ya know, the more big media (and big biz in general) talk about DRM (essentially copy prevention), the less interested I become.
Occasionally, big media has come out with some real gems (like LotR:FotR), but frankly, most of it is crap. I used to listen to the radio for music, but I'm not too impressed by most of that either. Now all I listen to is NPR and an independent dance music station.
They can go and use all the technological means to protect their product (as opposed to art). As long as a few of us can still communicate together, I can keep using free software. As long as people still know how to sing and play, I'll still have music to listen to.
Maybe I'll still go to a movie in a theater once in a while, but I'm just about finished with big media. The more effort they spend to protect their products, the less significant it becomes as art.
You defeat your own point here. Anyone can set up a radio station to play niche music, and they do.
Maybe you live in Nowhere Montana, and the airwaves are relatively un-occupied there.
However, in major markets, like Chicago, the airwaves are packed. The only way you're going to run a radio station is to buy out an existing one. I somehow doubt that companies like ClearChannel are selling.
The existing frequency allocations do represent a government-mandated monopoly (of sorts), and thus the companies that use them are (or should be) subject to regulation.
I thought this was one of the more interesting paragraphs in the article:
Allen said the industry's target audience has changed in recent years from college students trying to build inexpensive record collections to mostly male music fans between the ages of 18 and 34 looking for out-of-print and hard-to-find copies.
You'd think in this day and age, it would be easy enough to keep in print (even with just a small stock) every CD ever made. But it doesn't seem to be working out that way, huh?
The situation is just as bad with books. You'd think some print-to-order system would be a great service for rare and less popular books. Of course, they would be more expensive than the mass-produced versions. But I'd rather spend a few more bucks, and be able to order a copy easily, than hunt through various used-book stores.
We have all this information technology, but we're not putting it to its best use.
I love the quote on backdoors and viruses. Windows systems don't have their source code publically available, and yet that doesn't seem to stop the creation of backdoor programs and viruses.
I like how they insinuate that people would just download some code from the Internet, and then immediately put that into a production air traffic control system. Talk about a straw man argument.
Someone needs to explain to this think-tank (or senseless-opinion-tank) that people can do these things called code reviews. Ya see, if I download a new version of this mail client (for example), I can look at the differences between the current source and the last version I checked. Not only could I spot back doors, but I'd likely find some bugs too.
These guys that develop safety-critical systems (like air traffic control) are real sticklers for inspections, documentation, etc. I bet most of them would be glad for more independant reviews of the code they depend on, rather than just hoping Windows doesn't have bugs in it.
As for me, my requirements aren't as critical. When I downloaded OpenOffice from some mirror in Timbuktoo, all I did was check the MD5 sum. The five seconds that took assured me that at least no third-party inserted viruses or back doors in the program.
Aah, for the good old days when programmers were programmers and a complete game of Chess could be fitted into a 1k ZX81.
Or even a 4K ROM with 256 bytes of RAM. There were some uber-hackers working on that Atari 2600 chess program. Not that it played chess very well...
Spam used to get me really mad and/or annoyed. I thought about the scammers out there, I thought about my wasted time, I thought about wasted resources, etc.
Recently, I've installed Spamassassin, and I've been running it for a few months.
Nowdays, spam doesn't bother me too much. Spamassassin tags nearly all of it. Deleted without much trouble or effort on my part. I still report the ones that get through the filter. I haven't had much of a problem with false positives either.
These days I'm thinking that passing more laws to stop spam isn't the answer. I'd rather we use technological solutions for now. If/when we finally all start using authenticated, encrypted e-mail, spam will cease to be a problem at all. In the mean time, a good filter aleviates the need for legislative solutions, in my opinion.
Denning has also made statements to the effect that allowing the general population access to strong crypto would undermine national security.
She seems to be a believer that Big Brother should be allowed to watch over us all, and that he will take care of us because we can't/shouldn't.
I haven't liked her for a loooong time.
Well, I don't know if I'd use old Apple ]['s, but it would be cool to have a hardware projects class in high school. Heck, at one point I (as a teenager) was trying to build a robotic arm out of instructions in a magazine (didn't finish it though).
You've got easy-to use microcontroller development kits like the BasicStamp. Or heck, have a Mindstorms class. Get 'em into NQC (Not Quite C) and bang on the hardware.
If you learn what computers fundamentally do, then you can set down in front of just about any program and figure it out. Schools should be there to provide a good foundation for knowledge and learning, not just teaching skills that businesses want.
Reminds me of decision markets. Caught this link from a presentation by Vernor Vinge:
decisionmarkets.pdf
Eh, I prefer the much shorter 'SUX'.
I don't think their marketing people would like it however...
Analog interface? Feh. Maybe they have improved in the last 3 years, but after my first analog-interfaced LCD monitor, I said 'never again'.
All digital, all the time, baby. I purchased two SGI 1600SW's in 1999 and 2000, and have never looked back.
How about we tax NASA at 1%, and use that money to fund serious low-cost alternatives for spaceflight?
Sensible use of 1950's technology could cut the cost of spaceflight by 10x to 100x. This sounds completely ridiculous, but it is true. NASA, in collusion with big government contractors and government regulators, keeps the cost of spaceflight artificially high.
This is fundamentally because the current mindset is to optimize the performance of launch vehicles and payloads. If commercial-grade (instead of military grade) systems were designed, they would be technically less efficient, but far, far more cost-effective to use.
As it stands now, NASA has more than enough money to pursue manned spaceflight as well as interplanetary scientific missions, if the technologies used were rationalized. Read Col. London's book "LEO on the Cheap", and hang out in the sci.space.tech newsgroup to see what I'm talking about.
Well, it was more of an experiment. I downloaded some free stuff on it, here and there.
It is also possible to convert HTML pages to REB's, so sometimes I will use it for documentation.
I read "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber (also in the free library). I was immediately hooked, and ended up buying the rest of the series. That's 7 books purchased, when I got one for free.
I think Weber did pretty well by me, and now I keep an eye out for other books of his. This is an author I had never even heard of, before I ran across the Baen Free Library.
I'm slowly working through the rest of the free library. I haven't seen anything else that really grabbed yet, but no doubt I will end up spending some more cold, hard, cash.
I'll purchase the electronic versions where available, because they are cheaper and in a non-proprietary format. I have a Rocket e-book reader, but never purchased books for that because I didn't want to be locked into a single reader device.
Rock on Baen!
In response to you and cscx (below)...
crudeboy writes: (in regards to IE and Media Player) but... a more correct question might be: Why bother to remove it?
End user applications have no business existing on a dedicated server machine. As for why, see below:
cscx writes: Second of all, you don't install all the goodies in Windows 2000 server/advanced server. Why do you need IE? Well, it's handy as hell. You can locally install updates while at the box in the server room, run windows update, download hotfixes, etc. Plus, it's also useful for visiting tech documents / howtos to diagnose problems that the Novell and Linux servers in the same server room are having (yes, this has happened to me before ;P)
So you're going to be surfing random sites on a critical server machine... while logged in as Administrator?????
I'm glad you don't work for me. That would be grounds for a reprimand, at the very least.
Back in the old days, surfing the web ran no risk to the client machine. Nowdays there are all kinds of risks because of mobile code (ActiveX, Javascript, etc.) and exploitable client programs (increasingly complex web browsers). Do either of you guys remember how those worms were spreading last year? Sooner or later, someone's going to figure out yet another exploit for IE.
Yes, yes, you can limit the risks with security settings, but that is no longer proof against attacks.
crudeboy writes: If you really think that you probably shouldn't work with security at all... To say that things you do when implementing a software solution should be carried out first is just plain nonsense...
Well, if "limit your exposure" isn't supposed to be #1 on a security checklist, then it is #2 or #3.
Since you don't seem to understand the basics, then I suggest you read up on the subject before you start calling things "nonsense".
Yeah, exactly.
It's not enough to teach your programmers to write code that can't be exploited by buffer overflows.
You've got to back that up with management trainning, emphasizing security and documentation (a critical component of security) over features.
If you're sending your programmers to class for a day, you need to send your managers to classes for a week.
And why do I need IE and Media Player on a server that's only running a database?
Step #1 of security, remove and/or disable everything to don't need to get the job done.
MSFT has been ignoring that for years, but maybe they are finally starting to learn.
Think Microsoft is big? GE could buy them outright and not even notice -- instead they've partnered with them.
Check one of the stock websites. GE's market cap is only $60B greater than MSFT's. If you have a friend who has $150B laying around (to buy controlling interest in MSFT), let me know.
Um, yeah. Go to CA, AZ, NM or TX sometime and have a gander at the big fences between us and Mexico.
Then check out the INS web site for quotas.
Uh, sorry, you can't do that either.
The GPL and LGPL have very strict copyrights on the text of the licenses themselves. You aren't allow to make modifications of them and distribute them. You may only distribute verbatim copies.
Gah! Why, oh why would you want to re-implement SMB for Windoze?!?!?!
M$ has already got the most compatable (in the bug-for-bug sense) implementation of SMB. If you're being bitten by the high cost of client access licenses, then just implement Samba.
And if you want a better and more secure distributed filesystem for Windoze, then why not just implement AFS?