I really don't think Al Gore or anybody in the federal government was all that crucial in "producing" or "building" the Internet after 1993 (start of the Clinton/Gore administration). The Internet was alive and thriving and widespread (in the U.S. anyway) back in the late 80's -- I used it all the time for email via my CompuServe account in 1990, for example. And Linus made his first postings about Linux to a comp.os.minix newsgroup in 1991. What DID grow during the Clinton/Gore administration was the World Wide Web, which admittedly is the "killer application" of Internet technologies. However, I don't know how much the federal government really had to do with the growth of the web. And I don't know how many federal dollars went into upgrading the web infrastructure. I think most of the buildup during the 90's was commercial, pure and simple.
It probably is true that Gore was an important -- but hardly crucial -- player during his years as a senator. I think Vint Cerf has said as much. However, I don't really think that the Clinton/Gore administration can be given a whole lot of credit for building the Internet. You might be able to make a case for the World Wide Web. At least they didn't get in the way, which is often what happens when politicians get interested in something.
Actually, Michelson was long gone from the Naval Academy when he performed the experiment with Morley. The Michelson-Morley experiment was done with an interferometer of Michelson's design floated in a pool of mercury to isolate it from outside vibrations.
The experiment he performed along the old seawall at the Academy was one of his early measurements of the speed of light. I was a physics major at the Academy when the Michelson/Chauvenet complex was built. I watched them rise from level ground during my first two years as a midshipman. Being a math major as well, I attended many classes in both buildings during their first two years of use (1968-1970).
Well, I wasn't suggesting anything outlandish. I think ssh/scp or something similar are pretty much required these days because of all the jerks out there with high speed access to the Internet. I acknowledge your point about lack of anonymity, although couldn't you create a special "anonymous" user ID that required no password? OTOH, an anonymous ftp server that allows uploads is bound to bring you the grief you mention.
However, I don't buy the "science, not IT, runs the institution crap." I realize that's a political reality for you, but I'm old enough to have seen the transition from slide rules to calculators, not to mention computers, so I'm not exactly a neophyte. I also realize that many of my colleagues don't take such changes well, so I know exactly where you're coming from. However, somebody has to bite the bullet and accept the inevitability of change. I'll bet their lab instrumentation has kept up with the times.
One thing you say that I won't accept is that blocking telnet makes you a "fuckless IT asshole." There are zillions of acceptable ssh clients covering pretty much every OS, especially any OS that has a telnet client. And using ssh is virtually identical to using telnet, so there's no retraining required.
In general, I think the best approach is to team with the folks who understand the value of better technology and enlist their assistance in bringing around their colleagues. I also recognize that such techniques take time. A couple decades back I was a mathematician teaching physics in the physics department at a U.S. service academy. I developed some really useful data analysis software that I shared with my more adventurous physics colleagues. After a while, even the "curmudgeons" were interested in using my software, seeing the vastly more efficient data analysis being performed by the ones using my software. By now, everybody sees the value of computers, but then again, the really old ones have retired and the new guys have grown up with the stuff. I wish you luck!
Right. Red Hat is so evil. That's why Mandrake can base their whole distribution on it -- i.e., clone the Red Hat distribution and then enhance it for their own purposes.
So who gets to do the same thing with a product from Microsoft?
According to this and this, Gutenberg's second book was the Psalter, a collection of the Psalms of the Old Testament, printed by themselves. So I think you're correct to question the assertion that Gutenberg's second book was a collection of erotica. Besides, it just doesn't make sense when you consider the time and place.
running on Linux for all our clients. We build and deploy customized web apps for our growing client list. We have been running Tomcat for more than a year, and its performance has been superb. Of course, our clients don't have high volume web sites. And we're not a large company.
I doubt Australia has any really good places from which to observe (no high mountains). The U.S. and European telescopes in the Chilean Andes would be better suited to the task, don't you think?
I think you may want to reconsider calling 10 km the threshold to outer space. By that definition, anybody who has ever flown across the country is an astronaut. 10 km is roughly 33,000 feet after all. Hell, folks who have climbed to the top of Mount Everest would nearly qualify by that yardstick.
Although it would help if there were some more or less standard file format for documents, the central problem is that the various word processor software writers have implemented vastly different document models. The file formats reflect this model. Even if Microsoft and WordPerfect and Sun and whoever else agreed upon a standard file format, it would still be nearly impossible to accurately import complex documents from one word processor to another, because for some features in one document model, it's virtually impossible to represent that feature correctly in another's document model. That's the biggest hurdle, and that is not going to change any time soon.
The portion of the license quoted in the article leads me to believe that it may be necessary to purchase a separate license for each of these "devices." These MS guys are even sneakier than I thought!
OK. Maybe there's something in the context of this quote that says it applies to "remote" devices. I don't run XP, so I don't have a copy of the license handy.
....one should ally him- or herself with a company that the majority of liberals in this country believe is both an ecological destroyer and a monopoly on a much worse scale?....
I had no idea liberals believe this. I'm going to immediately alter my purchasing habits from now on and try to purchase everything through Wal-Mart.
If you program in C# you're limiting yourself to an untested, almost unportable language and to the Microsoft platform. I would think that if you were serious enough to waste all of Slashdot's time with this question, you would be serious enough to choose a real programming language, not some Microsoft marketing scheme.
I don't think this is particularly true. For one thing, Ximian/Mono are developing their own C# compiler. They're also developing their own runtime.
Another point is that Microsoft's operating systems own 90%+ (probably more than 95%) of the home computer game market, so it hardly seems to be a limiting choice, even if the Mono project fails. And no matter how much you dislike Microsoft, I think you have to admit that their notion of a "common language runtime," which makes it rather trivial to integrate components from all the supported programming languages, is a brilliant concept. It may take Microsoft to a whole new level of domination, but that hardly makes the idea some sort of evil.
For the record, before you label me as some sort of Microsoft shill, I'd like to point out that I'm composing this response using Galeon running under Mandrake 8.1, and my company bases all its software development and web hosting on Linux, Apache, Tomcat, and Java. I'm one who believes that the main reason that Microsoft is where they are today is because they actually respond to their customers and most of their competitors behave like morons. Ever try to use Solaris without installing all the GNU versions of the standard utilities? The Sun versions are generally inferior and an outright PITA to use. Microsoft doesn't force that on Sun -- hell, they could just use the GNU versions.
....I bet if we put up a/. poll, we'd get 10-1 the other way, and it'd be just as scientific....
You're right about the the result, but you're wrong about the scientific merit. A/. poll of this would be much more scientific, because the "10-1 the other way" would be right.:-)
That's true only if you consider their rest mass. All photons have mass, which can be computed by dividing their energy by the square of the speed of light.
....if photons had mass, it would have to be infinite since they travel at c.
Sorry, but you're wrong. What your argument demonstrates is that photons have zero REST mass, which -- amazingly enough -- is what I stated.
....And the "m" in Einsteins equation is for mass, not "matter". What would the units of "matter" be, I wonder?
No kidding! Again, exactly what I stated. Einstein's equation relates the energy equivalent of some matter in terms of its mass. And the mass of a photon can be computed exactly by dividing its energy by the square of the speed of light. You should go study some physics. I think you'd find it interesting. And enlightening.
They most certainly have mass. That's why their paths are altered by gravitational fields. The correct statement is that they have zero REST mass. It turns out that all particles increase their mass as their speeds increase, relative to whatever reference frame in which you happen to be measuring the mass. The E=mc^2 formula of special relativity gives the correspondence between a particle's mass and its energy. As the particle's speed increases, so does its mass. BTW -- the transformation is between "matter" and energy, not "mass" and energy.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure the physics books will back me up.
Well, let's see now. The right to bear arms is guaranteed in our constitution -- and the constitution spells out clearly how we can change it. So the way to remove our right to bear arms is clear -- just pass a constitutional amendment. Is that somehow unsatisfactory?
Oh -- and before you point out the "well regulated militia" part, you might want to brush up on just exactly what the militia comprises. Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that the drafters of the constitution were rightly concerned about controlling the power of the government. Most posters overlook the fact that personal ownership of firearms is also proscribed in such wondrous places to live as Cuba, the former U.S.S.R., the People's Republic of China, North Korea -- you know, the kinds of places where the government bends over backwards to treat its citizens with utmost respect. And if governance by the U.K. is so wonderful, I wonder why we felt it so necessary to throw the bastards out a couple hundred years back.
Perhaps you could provide a reference to our "right" to privacy. I don't find any reference to such in the constitution, although our courts have manufactured such a "right" under certain circumstances. And I'm pretty sure this manufactured right is a shield against the prying eyes of the government only.
Oh, and I must commend you for your well reasoned analysis. I think the highlight is your use of the term "loonies." Such cogent arguments demonstrate the superiority of your reasoning.
You are so right. Not only is it NOT a standard -- just a proprietary file spec -- it's an UNDOCUMENTED file spec. So nobody but Microsoft knows how to read and write the damn files in the first place. Besides, given a Word document file, it's trivial to generate the HTML, PDF, and RTF versions. So the folks complaining about the government releasing only the proprietary version are justifiably irritated.
Actually, I'm NOT kidding. You raise a valid point about the ability of many college graduates to write critically -- or even acceptably. However, in my experience working with recent college graduates, many of those with humanities degrees have problems writing basic correspondence as well. I think that too often, the "critical thinking" part of the college education is the part that gets skipped.
BTW -- your point about "its" and "it's" is quite valid. Have you read a newspaper or magazine recently? I don't think they're edited by scientists and engineers, however. I fear that we're witnessing another one of those evolutionary corruptions of the English language. Also, read a while and tell me what percentage of the uses of the word, "comprise," are correct. Oh well. Some things cannot be helped.
My point was not about what exceptional people do, but rather what the college/university requirements are. Large numbers of humanities grads have the minimal experience with math, science, and engineering that I described. I commend you and your university for having the intelligence to update the curriculum, and I hope that the rest of the academic world follows suit.
Although I agree with you completely, just check around among all your associates with the humanities/liberal arts degress, and find out just how much science/math/engineering they have taken. What gets me with the current state of the academic world is that it's unconscionable to allow a scientist or engineer to graduate without an appropriate number of humanities courses to "balance" his or her education, but it's perfectly OK to let a humanities major graduate with essentially no math or science or engineering courses whatever. In fact, they're lucky if they have taken a high-school-level algebra or "pre" calculus course for the entire math requirement and/or an astronomy-for-poets course as their science requirement. These same people then complain that their degrees have not prepared them for life in the technology-heavy modern business world. It's a joke.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't think Al Gore or anybody in the federal government was all that crucial in "producing" or "building" the Internet after 1993 (start of the Clinton/Gore administration). The Internet was alive and thriving and widespread (in the U.S. anyway) back in the late 80's -- I used it all the time for email via my CompuServe account in 1990, for example. And Linus made his first postings about Linux to a comp.os.minix newsgroup in 1991. What DID grow during the Clinton/Gore administration was the World Wide Web, which admittedly is the "killer application" of Internet technologies. However, I don't know how much the federal government really had to do with the growth of the web. And I don't know how many federal dollars went into upgrading the web infrastructure. I think most of the buildup during the 90's was commercial, pure and simple.
It probably is true that Gore was an important -- but hardly crucial -- player during his years as a senator. I think Vint Cerf has said as much. However, I don't really think that the Clinton/Gore administration can be given a whole lot of credit for building the Internet. You might be able to make a case for the World Wide Web. At least they didn't get in the way, which is often what happens when politicians get interested in something.
Actually, Michelson was long gone from the Naval Academy when he performed the experiment with Morley. The Michelson-Morley experiment was done with an interferometer of Michelson's design floated in a pool of mercury to isolate it from outside vibrations.
The experiment he performed along the old seawall at the Academy was one of his early measurements of the speed of light. I was a physics major at the Academy when the Michelson/Chauvenet complex was built. I watched them rise from level ground during my first two years as a midshipman. Being a math major as well, I attended many classes in both buildings during their first two years of use (1968-1970).
I realize this is /., but couldn't we agree to spell this amazing scientist's name correctly?
And I agree that this experiment should be on the list. However, it is a damn good list.
Well, I wasn't suggesting anything outlandish. I think ssh/scp or something similar are pretty much required these days because of all the jerks out there with high speed access to the Internet. I acknowledge your point about lack of anonymity, although couldn't you create a special "anonymous" user ID that required no password? OTOH, an anonymous ftp server that allows uploads is bound to bring you the grief you mention.
However, I don't buy the "science, not IT, runs the institution crap." I realize that's a political reality for you, but I'm old enough to have seen the transition from slide rules to calculators, not to mention computers, so I'm not exactly a neophyte. I also realize that many of my colleagues don't take such changes well, so I know exactly where you're coming from. However, somebody has to bite the bullet and accept the inevitability of change. I'll bet their lab instrumentation has kept up with the times.
One thing you say that I won't accept is that blocking telnet makes you a "fuckless IT asshole." There are zillions of acceptable ssh clients covering pretty much every OS, especially any OS that has a telnet client. And using ssh is virtually identical to using telnet, so there's no retraining required.
In general, I think the best approach is to team with the folks who understand the value of better technology and enlist their assistance in bringing around their colleagues. I also recognize that such techniques take time. A couple decades back I was a mathematician teaching physics in the physics department at a U.S. service academy. I developed some really useful data analysis software that I shared with my more adventurous physics colleagues. After a while, even the "curmudgeons" were interested in using my software, seeing the vastly more efficient data analysis being performed by the ones using my software. By now, everybody sees the value of computers, but then again, the really old ones have retired and the new guys have grown up with the stuff. I wish you luck!
FTP? Don't you think it's time to look at scp? And ssh? Don't tell me they're still using telnet!
Transonic/supersonic airflow is one place where it's good to not comment if you really don't know what you're talking about!
Ever wonder why the supersonic jet exhaust nozzles DIVERGE (open up)?
Right. Red Hat is so evil. That's why Mandrake can base their whole distribution on it -- i.e., clone the Red Hat distribution and then enhance it for their own purposes.
So who gets to do the same thing with a product from Microsoft?
Here's a corrected URL (there's a space in the original posting):
CVO Menu - Three Sisters Vicinity - West Uplift
According to this and this, Gutenberg's second book was the Psalter, a collection of the Psalms of the Old Testament, printed by themselves. So I think you're correct to question the assertion that Gutenberg's second book was a collection of erotica. Besides, it just doesn't make sense when you consider the time and place.
running on Linux for all our clients. We build and deploy customized web apps for our growing client list. We have been running Tomcat for more than a year, and its performance has been superb. Of course, our clients don't have high volume web sites. And we're not a large company.
I doubt Australia has any really good places from which to observe (no high mountains). The U.S. and European telescopes in the Chilean Andes would be better suited to the task, don't you think?
I think you may want to reconsider calling 10 km the threshold to outer space. By that definition, anybody who has ever flown across the country is an astronaut. 10 km is roughly 33,000 feet after all. Hell, folks who have climbed to the top of Mount Everest would nearly qualify by that yardstick.
Although it would help if there were some more or less standard file format for documents, the central problem is that the various word processor software writers have implemented vastly different document models. The file formats reflect this model. Even if Microsoft and WordPerfect and Sun and whoever else agreed upon a standard file format, it would still be nearly impossible to accurately import complex documents from one word processor to another, because for some features in one document model, it's virtually impossible to represent that feature correctly in another's document model. That's the biggest hurdle, and that is not going to change any time soon.
The portion of the license quoted in the article leads me to believe that it may be necessary to purchase a separate license for each of these "devices." These MS guys are even sneakier than I thought!
OK. Maybe there's something in the context of this quote that says it applies to "remote" devices. I don't run XP, so I don't have a copy of the license handy.
Just a thought. :-)
I had no idea liberals believe this. I'm going to immediately alter my purchasing habits from now on and try to purchase everything through Wal-Mart.
If you program in C# you're limiting yourself to an untested, almost unportable language and to the Microsoft platform. I would think that if you were serious enough to waste all of Slashdot's time with this question, you would be serious enough to choose a real programming language, not some Microsoft marketing scheme.
I don't think this is particularly true. For one thing, Ximian/Mono are developing their own C# compiler. They're also developing their own runtime.
Another point is that Microsoft's operating systems own 90%+ (probably more than 95%) of the home computer game market, so it hardly seems to be a limiting choice, even if the Mono project fails. And no matter how much you dislike Microsoft, I think you have to admit that their notion of a "common language runtime," which makes it rather trivial to integrate components from all the supported programming languages, is a brilliant concept. It may take Microsoft to a whole new level of domination, but that hardly makes the idea some sort of evil.
For the record, before you label me as some sort of Microsoft shill, I'd like to point out that I'm composing this response using Galeon running under Mandrake 8.1, and my company bases all its software development and web hosting on Linux, Apache, Tomcat, and Java. I'm one who believes that the main reason that Microsoft is where they are today is because they actually respond to their customers and most of their competitors behave like morons. Ever try to use Solaris without installing all the GNU versions of the standard utilities? The Sun versions are generally inferior and an outright PITA to use. Microsoft doesn't force that on Sun -- hell, they could just use the GNU versions.
You're right about the the result, but you're wrong about the scientific merit. A /. poll of this would be much more scientific, because the "10-1 the other way" would be right. :-)
That's true only if you consider their rest mass. All photons have mass, which can be computed by dividing their energy by the square of the speed of light.
Sorry, but you're wrong. What your argument demonstrates is that photons have zero REST mass, which -- amazingly enough -- is what I stated.
No kidding! Again, exactly what I stated. Einstein's equation relates the energy equivalent of some matter in terms of its mass. And the mass of a photon can be computed exactly by dividing its energy by the square of the speed of light. You should go study some physics. I think you'd find it interesting. And enlightening.
They most certainly have mass. That's why their paths are altered by gravitational fields. The correct statement is that they have zero REST mass. It turns out that all particles increase their mass as their speeds increase, relative to whatever reference frame in which you happen to be measuring the mass. The E=mc^2 formula of special relativity gives the correspondence between a particle's mass and its energy. As the particle's speed increases, so does its mass. BTW -- the transformation is between "matter" and energy, not "mass" and energy.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure the physics books will back me up.
Well, let's see now. The right to bear arms is guaranteed in our constitution -- and the constitution spells out clearly how we can change it. So the way to remove our right to bear arms is clear -- just pass a constitutional amendment. Is that somehow unsatisfactory?
Oh -- and before you point out the "well regulated militia" part, you might want to brush up on just exactly what the militia comprises. Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that the drafters of the constitution were rightly concerned about controlling the power of the government. Most posters overlook the fact that personal ownership of firearms is also proscribed in such wondrous places to live as Cuba, the former U.S.S.R., the People's Republic of China, North Korea -- you know, the kinds of places where the government bends over backwards to treat its citizens with utmost respect. And if governance by the U.K. is so wonderful, I wonder why we felt it so necessary to throw the bastards out a couple hundred years back.
Perhaps you could provide a reference to our "right" to privacy. I don't find any reference to such in the constitution, although our courts have manufactured such a "right" under certain circumstances. And I'm pretty sure this manufactured right is a shield against the prying eyes of the government only.
Oh, and I must commend you for your well reasoned analysis. I think the highlight is your use of the term "loonies." Such cogent arguments demonstrate the superiority of your reasoning.
Of course, I could be wrong about all this stuff.
You are so right. Not only is it NOT a standard -- just a proprietary file spec -- it's an UNDOCUMENTED file spec. So nobody but Microsoft knows how to read and write the damn files in the first place. Besides, given a Word document file, it's trivial to generate the HTML, PDF, and RTF versions. So the folks complaining about the government releasing only the proprietary version are justifiably irritated.
Actually, I'm NOT kidding. You raise a valid point about the ability of many college graduates to write critically -- or even acceptably. However, in my experience working with recent college graduates, many of those with humanities degrees have problems writing basic correspondence as well. I think that too often, the "critical thinking" part of the college education is the part that gets skipped.
BTW -- your point about "its" and "it's" is quite valid. Have you read a newspaper or magazine recently? I don't think they're edited by scientists and engineers, however. I fear that we're witnessing another one of those evolutionary corruptions of the English language. Also, read a while and tell me what percentage of the uses of the word, "comprise," are correct. Oh well. Some things cannot be helped.
My point was not about what exceptional people do, but rather what the college/university requirements are. Large numbers of humanities grads have the minimal experience with math, science, and engineering that I described. I commend you and your university for having the intelligence to update the curriculum, and I hope that the rest of the academic world follows suit.
Although I agree with you completely, just check around among all your associates with the humanities/liberal arts degress, and find out just how much science/math/engineering they have taken. What gets me with the current state of the academic world is that it's unconscionable to allow a scientist or engineer to graduate without an appropriate number of humanities courses to "balance" his or her education, but it's perfectly OK to let a humanities major graduate with essentially no math or science or engineering courses whatever. In fact, they're lucky if they have taken a high-school-level algebra or "pre" calculus course for the entire math requirement and/or an astronomy-for-poets course as their science requirement. These same people then complain that their degrees have not prepared them for life in the technology-heavy modern business world. It's a joke.