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by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(A letter to Andy Patrizio of TechWeb, www.techweb.com, Cc: to cypherpunks(a)toad.com, malda(a)slashdot.org and gnu(a)gnu.org. May I remind the audience to use the technique which will benefit your goals rather than harm them: politeness.) Sir, I beg to differ regarding your assertion in "http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980126S0015" that open source code has little value. While your article makes the very good point that a higher level of abstraction (the API level) is a better platform for most "interoperation" or "extension" uses, you omit several important considerations. I will attempt to describe three of those considerations here. The first consideraton is that open source code is of unparalleled value in ensuring security and stability of a complex system. Witness the fact that when the Pentium "F00F" bug was discovered last year, the Linux operating system had a fix distributed within 7 calendar days, while Microsoft took more than twice as long to issue a fix. This is doubly important for mission-critical systems and triply so for security-critical systems which may be subject to hostile attack. Indeed, many computer security professionals of my acquaintance say that they _will_ _not_ use a system to protect valuable data unless they and their peers are able to examine the source code. The second consideration is that an open software development model can (sometimes) generate a surprising amount of quality code at high speed. The pre-eminent example of this phenomenon is the Linux operating system, which in many ways has outstripped comparable proprietary operating systems in performance, features, stability, _and_ in time-to-market. The third value in open source code is more controversial-- it gives your users more control over the product. An all-too- common business tactic in the software industry is, as Scott McNealy calls it, "proprietary lock-in", in which a company deliberately makes their product incompatible with competing products in order to ensure that the customer can't use that product in conjunction with a competitor's product. With the current trend towards a convergence of interoperating software products, this tactic is becoming increasingly oppressive to customers. This tactic is not possible with open source code, because competitors, customers, or free-lance hackers can use the open source in order to make the two products interoperable. Needless to say, not all in the business community would consider this last feature to be a benefit. (Although I think that all in the business community would consider the first two features to be a benefit.) I hope that this letter has been of interest to you. I have been a software developer, industry-watcher, and open-source- code enthusiast for years, and I was grieved to think that your article might deter open-minded readers from considering the full implications of an open source code strategy. The idea of open source code has been a "fringe" concept for decades (see seminal open-source advocate and hacker Richard Stallman, www.fsf.org) and I'm delighted to think that with Netscape's move, and with the rumored possibility that Sun will open some of its Java source, that this idea could finally get a fair hearing before the business community. Regards, Zooko, Journeyman Hacker P.S. Among software professionals that I know, the only ones who make USD 100K/year or more are the ones who consider themselves to be "hackers". :-)

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Re: State of the Union Address
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Does anyone happen to know how to figure the energy requirements or yields >for a reaction? Just to make sure I'm not misinterpreted, I mean how much energy is required or is liberated by a given reaction. I don't mean "...figure the energy, requirements, or yields," or "figure the energy requirements or products it yields."

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can you believe the Bulgarians?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- can you believe it? a site dedicated to declaring they believe Bubba is innocent! --and have a petition. you can join Jack The Ripper, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Bundy, JFK, and a host of others in support of free oral sex in the Whitehouse. just type your nym and vote early and vote often. 1300+ hits and less than 100 marks. Monica was quoted as saying she was "going to Washington to get her presidental knee pads." enjoy... http://faith.digsys.bg/prj/clinton/clinton.html attila out again... in disbelief that "the Creep" is still President! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQBVAwUBNM9leLR8UA6T6u61AQHYMwH/Sge0rVd2cYoE6gJyPCXBxf8kpNdvogB8 bsYdhV5/zwQJIdSVX+fGRLl6fdi+Qugdiii6dMP/2Y2jFDFIpYzHIg== =/k4R -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Response to ticket 012398-6918-403
by kozmo killah 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Interesting Chemical Reaction
by ichudov＠Algebra.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An interesting experiment is to mix the ordinary ammonium nitrate (a fertilizer) with room temp. water. Try to put in as much ammonium nitrate as it is possible to dissolve. You will see the temperature of the mixture DROP to below the freezing point (for pure water that is). Wow. I did that 12 years ago and was amazed. A really easy way to get cold water if no freezer is available. - Igor.

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Re: State of the Union Address
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I guess those high school students aren't the only ones with no clear >idea of the way the world works. While salt water does not ordinarily >explode, in this case salt water is the ultimate product -- but massive >heat released when acids and bases join and recombine to produce salts >(in this case table salt) and water. Interesting thread. While we're on the topic of chemistry and heat: Does anyone happen to know how to figure the energy requirements or yields for a reaction? My college chemistry book doesn't say a whole lot about it. In fact it doesn't say enough to actually be useful at all; it gives energies for four or five different bonds in a table and then launches into a really bad explanation of how to calculate this. If I have to use a table of bond energies is there one available online? Or is there a simpler way to just calculate the bloody things? I really ought to take more chemistry courses before I get my diploma. Or at the very least audit them.

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Re: State of the Union Address
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another Anonymous writes: >>Does anyone happen to know how to figure the energy requirements or yields >>for a reaction? > >Just to make sure I'm not misinterpreted, I mean how much energy is required >or is liberated by a given reaction. I don't mean "...figure the energy, >requirements, or yields," or "figure the energy requirements or products it >yields." It has been fifteen years since I even opened a chemistry book, but I think what you're looking for is called the "heat of enthalpy." You could find this in most any intro-level chem book, and there's probably a whole shitload of reactions listed in the _CRC Handbook Of Chemistry & Physics_. Since HCl+NaOH is an acid-base reaction, you could also use something called the "heat of neutralization." IIRC, that's something like 57 KJ/mol for strong acids. But don't take my word for it; I'm Not A Chemist Any More. P-Chem gave me a great appreciation for math and computers.

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Re: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Eric Cordian <emc(a)wire.insync.net> > Subject: Re: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 (fwd) > Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 22:58:28 -0600 (CST) > > Of course one needn't stop there. If entangled states could be stored > > for several years, instantaneous communication with neighbooring stars > > is a real possibility. > > And in whose local Lorentz frame would such communication be > "instantaneous"? Actualy, if we are talking about instantanious events the event itself is not frame relevant, thought exactly when and where the event occurred may be. Consider an electron when it changes orbitals does so in zero time. So the question that the photon was emitted is not at issue, now where that photon came from and at what clock tick may in fact be. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Steve, Can I forward your questions to another technology list I support as well as the local high performance rocketry group I'm involved in? I believe they would be intriqued by your questions. Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 19:56:33 -0800 > From: Steve Schear <schear(a)lvdi.net> > Subject: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 (fwd) > > >ANOTHER VERSION OF QUANTUM TELEPORTATION is [text deleted] > I wonder how far off use of this technique for interplanetary rovers might > be (10 years, 20 years)? Remote (Earth) rover manipulation is tedious at > best due to several minutes (or an hour or more to the outer planets) of > propagation delay. As I understand the process you don't get around the speed-of-light issue because the control channel still needs to be sent via radio or laser or whatever. This was discussed in the in the original teleportation announcement. However, I don't see anything that would keep you from syncing two atomic clocks and then using them to make the changes in sync, this should allow the imposition of the speed of light only on initiation and occassion syncronization. I'll have to beg ignorance on specifics as I haven't had the time to really dig into specifics. I haven't even read the primary references to date. > Autonomous rovers need enough smarts built-in to handle > unexpected situations, a non-trivial problem. An alternative is to > establish a link using entangled photons. If a simple approach to saving > these entangled states during signal transit, in both directions, were > found instantaneous communication and simplified remote control would be a > reality. Agreed. It would also solve many terrestrial problems as well. > Of course one needn't stop there. If entangled states could be stored for > several years, instantaneous communication with neighbooring stars is a > real possibility. Coupled with advances in mind-machine science it might > someday be possible to explore, first-hand, our local portion of the galaxy > without leaving earth, or upload/download one's consciouness to vessels in > remote locations. True, but it would be boring compared to being there first person. I do support robot exploration as a precursor to manned exploration. > Speaking of which, do the current SETI programs check for signal modulation > using polarization. >From what little I have delved into this, most signals coming in from 'out there' as well as from satellites are circularly polarized. This is the reason that the antennas have those curly-ques on them (look like a cork-screw sorta). The last time I even messed with extra-terrestrial signals was the SL-9 impacts. I worked with several amateur groups using plane (flat rectangular) loop antennas to measure the increase in the background noise in various bands (we used a HP spectrum analyzer at my site) during the impacts. What we saw was a 'jump' across the band of several db's just at the time-of-flight times we expected. The assumption being this was caused by the impacts. We monitored 1MHz to 10MHz. I found it pretty impressive. We got, if memory serves, around 6 of the large impacts. > If we've discovered this trick, sure so have other > intelligent life forms. Most natural sources of radiation tend to > unpolarized, so a rapidly flucuating polar modularion might easily appear > to be noise. I'll have to disagree, all forms of E-M radiation that I am aware of are polarized to some frame of reference. The E-M fields after all are orthogonal. The question is which field you want to pick as a reference and the relationship of source to sensor. Circularly polarized (ie the fields rotate around the axis of transmission at some rate) are about the only sort that would appear essentialy the same irrespective of reference frame. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: sat survailience
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:06 PM 1/27/98 -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote: > > >--- begin forwarded text > > >Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:55:09 -0500 >From: Somebody >Subject: sat survailience >To: rah <rah(a)shipwright.com> >MIME-version: 1.0 > >Bob - something else to be paranoid about! ><somebody's .sig> ><snip> > >When Is a Satellite Photo An Unreasonable Search? > >By <some reporter> IMPORTANT INFORMATION RESTORED AFTER INEXPLICABLE DELETION: >Staff Reporter of WALL STREET JOURNAL> ... ETC ...

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