No. Simple computer math error due to imprecise representation and rounding. See http://autarkaw.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/round-off-errors-and-the-patriot-missile/ and http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html for details. Interesting problem solved by rebooting the system periodically until a real correction was implemented.

http://youtu.be/eaScyfSHc-Y

I wonder if any mentors attending are interested in having a meetup that evening. A group of FOSS folks will already be in the same location. Might as well add to the party. :)

For those who care, the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) (http://rbsp.jhuapl.edu/spacecraft/instruments/instruments_emfisis.php) is running the free real-time OS RTEMS.

Although not always the case, ssh is usually interactive. Lag in typing or editing across a slowed ssh connection is horrible.

Are you saying that the technicians who used a left arrow as a backspace on the Therac-25 were not "honest, competent people"? Bad software and hardware design can kill. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

Easy integration with Skydrive sounds really cool until you think about this inside any organization which doesn't want its files stored on a public cloud. Can this be disabled across an enterprise install easily? Can it be switched to an organization's private cloud?

We don't know what the contract said. We also don't know if HP subsidized the port of Oracle products to their Itanium line in exchange for some commitment.

$4bn is probably more money than HP thought it was worth but you have to have room to negotiate.

We can be pretty sure that dropping Oracle support did not help keep people using HP Itanium computers.

If Oracle violated a signed contract, then they deserve this. Otherwise, it is no more of a waste of court time than anything Apple has done.

I don't know what HP's plans were BEFORE Oracle dumped Itanium support but according to the HP-UX support maxtrix from February 2012, they will support some Itanium systems until 2018. I don't know if they killed any products early due to lack of Oracle software support but without Oracle support, I would bet there is every reason for many of the Itanium users to (1) cancel any planned Itanium purchases and (2) drop the existing ones. With them being taken out of service, HP loses revenue. It's a lot of money but it likely forced them to kill a product line early and encouraged existing more or less happy users to bail earlier than HP planned.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf?jumpid=ex_R1533_us/en/large/eb/go/hpuxservermatrix

Iran is on the list of countries for which it is against the law for U.S. citizens or companies to do business with. Even the Google Summer of Code cannot accept students from these countries because it would involve commerce which is against export law. See http://www.bis.doc.gov/exportlicensingqanda.htm

From http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html: Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

robots.txt is not a "forbidden list." It is simply a polite request to avoid a robot crawling things that should not be indexed. It is often used to avoid a bot pulling an ftp site published via http or crawling dynamically generated content.

Nothing illegal, immoral or fattening about manually accessing a file listed in a robots.txt file. It is rather normal and you likely do it every day without realizing it.

Shades of Sean Gorman Batman! Anyone remember the uproar over his dissertation on critical infrastructure based on analysis of publicly available information. Almost 10 years ago.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/buzz/us-critical-infrastructure/3633190

It's from Sony.

As the SCO history has demonstrated, the Linux kernel is not based on a commercial operating system. It is a implementation of a POSIX style operating system with a clean source history. POSIX itself is an open standard. The user space is a mix of many packages some based on POSIX standards (e.g. shell, file utils) others based on common application needs. Many of those are indeed based upon open industry standards. Wikipedia material is not as well vetted IMHO and given the volume of material, there is a greater possibility of something being copied incorrectly. But much of the material we are discussing is basic scientific fact and could reasonably be based heavily on material available via sources like Project Gutenberg. Other material would be newer and likely could reference open sources. As for organization, the courses follow standard outlines so university programs can receive accreditation. And building up material from basic to advanced concepts in a framework that could only allow 8-16 chapters per semester doesn't allow that much variation.

Have you taken the time to report this to Google? They are generally responsive to fixing things. I have reported problems covering pronunciation issues, new roads, interchange rebuilds, and misplaced pins. They always get fixed within about a month.