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"OS-independent remote display (e.g. show a GUI on a Windows machine or a Mac from your *NIX netbook)."

remote x need high bandwidth and low latency networking. Especially round trip issues. So it works OK on LAN but suck on the internet.
Most users use vnc and or nx anyway. Anything is faster than remote x on internet. If X did it right the first time there is no reason anyone would ever need nx.
(NX is basically a roundabout way to get around X's problems/bugs/limitations to make it works in real live situation. It's written by people really use X and know all the low-level problems. Amount other thing X protocol is very verbose, often send redundant and repetitive parameters over the net. NX try to cache/compress/delete those parameters to save bandwidth)
BTW, Google just release Neatx, an Open Source NX Server
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/07/releasing-neatx-open-source-nx-servier.html

remote X's #1 problem is round trip delay. To solve that problem, browser use client-side javascript. So X need some sort of server-side scripting. I'm sure Google Chrome solve that problem already!

"The only serious improvement I've seen suggested over the X model is to provide a vector scene-graph API so that you can store the entire sequence of drawing commands in things like OpenGL vertex arrays in the GPU's memory. While this is a nice idea, it would require a radical redesign of all existing GUI toolkits and applications to be used to its full capability."

Bingo. OSX did it.
overall X's #1 problem is toolkit. Anyone still use Xt? On X everyone write their own toolkits. "radical redesign of all existing GUI toolkits" is easy to do if there is only one standard toolkit.
Similarly X have multiple window manager, so any real improvement require radical redesign of all existing window managers.

pH

Here's a crazy idea: how about nuclear power? Oh, that's right, the word "nuclear" is too super-scary for the science-based environmentalists. Never mind that they actually are better for the environment than anything else.

I would agree with you if, by "actually," you really mean "not actually." Many opponents of nuclear power, myself included, are not so much bothered by radioactive waste disposal issues. We are much more concerned about the high cost of system failures.

Everyone here is familiar with how difficult it is to keep defect rates in the 5 sigma region, let alone the 6 sigma region. Even with a spectacular 6 sigma failure rate, that means some failures _will_still_happen_. The longer a plant operates, the more likely a problem with occur. The more plants the operate, the greater the number of towns and cities that will be contaminated.

No control system is fool-proof, as students of the nuclear power industry know. What is most dangerous to safe reactor operation is the idea that a system, or one (or more) engineer(s), is fool-proof. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island should cure anyone of that attitude. The reality is, reactor contamination "events" are much more common that industry advocates would like you to believe (see below).

Remember, nuclear power in some places is a for-profit industry. Nuclear power industry CEO's have the same short-term incentives to minimize labor costs, keeping reactors online, and minimizing maintenance costs that AIG, Comcast, AOL, Best Buy, McDonalds, and every other for-profit company has. In other places, it's run by the incumbent utility company. With threats of budget reductions due to economic trends, political decisions (tax cuts anyone?), etc., event public and quasi-public utilities experience many of these pressures.

So, before portraying opponents of the nuclear power industry as milksops (or whatever you were insinuating), educate yourself a bit.

I prefer no to have a few hundred MBA's riding shotgun on doomsday machines. It's bad enough as it is already.

See also:

• http://news.google.com/news?q=nuclear%20reactor%20leak (way too many results show up)
• http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/national/17nuke.html
• http://www.miamiherald.com/982/story/1035992.html
• http://www.physorg.com/news162708897.html
• http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/18446
• https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/The_Monju_nuclear_reactor_leak
• http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/nucene/nucacc.html

You get the point. You don't want one of these in your backyard. Nobody does. So let's not build any more of 'em.

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser...

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies.

When they say "new windowing system" it sounds suspiciously like "this aint X buddy". Which means alot of linux software (for the desktop) wouldn't run on it anyways.

on the plus side, it probably means that google will push hardware makers down in to the "create some kernel modules" route (even if its a route similar to the one nvidia have adopted).

Interestingly, i blogged about an OS I thought would be perfect for google (also linux based) http://pjrlost.blogspot.com/2009/07/desktop-os-that-google-could-do.html that was more along the lines of "consistent user experience" and a fully fledged OS.

The other thing that worries me is that google say things like "... need open source community ..." and then bring us something like wave - "... need open source community help ..." and i have yet to meet someone who is a FOSS dev who has access to the sandbox. So far its only been people at google or people sleeping with people at google. That was such a huge disappointment for someone who's a keen dev and was really impressed with a video... reminds me of the lovely vapourware concepts of not-so-long-ago

This appears to have little to do with Linux other than the fact it uses the Linux kernel & drivers.

From the Google announcement it uses a "new windowing system" (sounds rather like Android, although they it's something different).

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

There's no mention of it being based on X (I'd assume it's not), Qt, or GTK, so there's no reason to assume that it'll support existing GUI based Linux apps, or Linux apps at all for that matter.

They may support some form of "native" apps as opposed to web-based ones using standard web-based standards that will also work in other browsers, but I'll bet that it's only in some highly restricted constrained environment given the new windowing system and security claims. Maybe you can write native apps using Java and some new Google GUI/etc APIs (or maybe they just ported whatever Java uses for GUI nowadays to sit on top of their own API). Given that they are targetting ARM as well as x86 I doubt there's any native code support.

What's the betting there'll be an app store for it too.

I don't think this is Google-branded Linux for the masses - it's sounds more like Android. Probably a managed code environment using a brand new (or Android?) windowing system, that happens to run on the Linux kernel. Heck, it may be JUST for web/browser-based apps, although I doubt it.

So what are you suggesting?

a) That Chrome OS will be built around a web&SQL server, just so Google's apps which are built for online use could run, while Win, OSX and other -Nixes will require either to be connected online or to install a significant amount of bloatware just so the user could use their word processor?
b) Apps will be offline for Chrome OS only, while the rest will have to go online to use them?
c) Some combination of the above.

Either one of those seems kinda like jamming a problem on the already existing solution.
Solution being - screw the web. Have apps run just fine without it, not making them NEED the web to run or having huge chunks of virtual servers and whatnots running in the background.

Just because they are a web company, they don't have to force web into every aspect of their business.

 
Then again, from the original blog post you could only glean that they plan to run apps through the browser - not how they plan to do it.

"I for one am happy on one hand that GNU/Linux will be getting a little bit of mainstream exposure, but I think it is really dumb to do it like this, ie, making everything so damned proprietary

'Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code'

They are going to open source it. (second paragraph): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Chrome OS focusing on speed, simplicity and security does not imply Windows cannot deliver in these areas. It's just a still non existent operating system, and has yet to show anything other than a blog post about its future. The summary sound rather, well, dumb.

It 100% does use a linux kernel - read from the horses mouth

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

"Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple â" Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."

This is what the world has been waiting for....

I don't see anything saying this is Linux or uses any Linux-derived kernal.

From the Official Google Blog posting:

The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

From the horse's mouth:

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple -- Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

Many typical RPGs and like games, such as Crossfire, have a level system. This system frequently has levels that can go as high as in the 100's or as low as ten (but frequently this number is scaled up and up in order for the developers to create more content without doing any real work). When a character gains a level, she also gains stats. She might gain in strength, dexterity, intellect, or whatever other attributes are put into the game. The problem is she has 100 levels, so say she starts with 20 strength, and then gains a point in strength every level, now at level 100 she has 120 strength. The newbie character logs in with his 20 strength newbie. The problem is she is going to really be 6 times more powerful, so then, what happens if she decides now that she has maxed out her character, her new mission in life is to grief newbies. The newbies don't really have much of a chance against her.

But the real issue is that instead of 100 levels, there might be thousands of levels. By the time you get a maxed leveled character, that is several years of work. No lifers play day in and day out to get max level, and some games don't even really have a cap on levels, so the no lifer has this character that is several times more powerful than that of the casual player. The no lifer then dominates everyone, and everyone else realizes they will never get that powerful, so they quit. This is bad for the game, because eventually the no-lifer realizes that he is the only one left playing it, and he would rather rank up on a chart where he has some real competition, not just who had no life for so many years.

Ultima Online did it well. Swing a sword, gain points in dexterity and strength, cast a spell, gain a point in intellect, up to a reasonable cap for your total stats. I think it was something like 255 total, with a max of 150 in any given stat, and up to 25 more points with stat scrolls. But this way there were no uber l33t character with thousands more hit points than the newbie. Sure, maxed our characters were more powerful than the newbies, but anyone could easily get a maxed out character with just a little bit of time and effort, so most people had maxed out characters. The games focus was not on character development, beyond tweaking your template for a given game play change. The focus was on actually playing the game, going to dungeons, finding loot, crafting, and finding resources, socializing, and trading. People did not think of it as a grind game where the primary focus was character development. How you played your character mattered far more, as did customizing your template and equipment for your play style.

I've also reposted this in my blog http://wogralddev.blogspot.com/ , along with a lot of other game development and design posts.

Do we really need so many status updates on the day-to-day goings-on in all the RIAA trials and scandals. Isn't this why NYCL has a blog? The posting of this minutae is actually making me care less about fighting the RIAA. Considering how much I dislike them, that's a pity.

I don't blame NYCL (and others) for submitting them (hey, most people are pretty narrowly focused on their own hobbies), but surely the editors can find something else in the pile of submissions that would be even slightly more interesting.

This is not true. From the Google official blog:

We've heard some questions about why the link to Google Apps Standard Edition disappeared from the Enterprise Apps home page, so we wanted to share the answer. As we explored a few design changes to the page, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped, although the free version of Apps was, as always, available here. We've put the link back where it belongs so that it's easy to find.

We have no intention of eliminating Standard Edition, and we apologize for any confusion.

I was under the impression that "distributing to MediaSentry" qualifies as distribution (as decided by the court), and therefore the RIAA did show evidence of distribution.

Not according to 17 USC 106(3).

Had the trial been properly handled, the judge would have instructed the jury as to required elements to prove "distribution" (or he would have taken the issue away from the jury, there being no evidence of any of those elements).

'It has no mention of a resurrection.'

I see this is currently modded as 'Troll', since the Codex obviously has many such references. However, the other possibility is that Philip is unwittingly viewing the manuscript using an Evil Tool of the Devil.

Here is something to think about:
Q: Does this CP apply to all versions of the specification, including future revisions?
A: The Community Promise applies to all existing versions of the specifications designated on the public list posted at /interop/cp/, unless otherwise noted with respect to a particular specification.
Does Microsoft conspicuously fail to answer its own question?

They've give you the option to put your own version of Gmail back into beta, you know, if you're into that sort of thing:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gmail-leaves-beta-launches-back-to-beta.html

Bob, This was first presented at the 2007 AAO Meeting. Please see my writeup: http://irvaronsjournal.blogspot.com/2007/11/ellex-2rt-retina-regeneration-therapy.html Irv Arons

If you had RTFA'd you might have gone to http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-case-of-quant-trading-industrial.html and read the affidavit - http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/Complaint_--_Aleynikov.pdf, you would see that (a) they have proof that the file was transfered (b) they know *exactly* which server the files were uploaded to and (c) Sergey Aleynikov has already confessed to copying the files.

Should be interesting to see how the police "generate" and prove the evidence on this one.

It's all there in the affidavit.

"A server in Germany" is hardly and exact location...

endorsing prison rape of children? Because that is what it looks like. There is a better way to fight software piracy.

Anyone interested in learning more about John Marshall's retinal regeneration process can read my article about the technology, written in November 2007. The title of my online Journal entry was: Ellex 2RT Retina Regeneration Therapy: A First Report and the link is: http://irvaronsjournal.blogspot.com/2007/11/ellex-2rt-retina-regeneration-therapy.html Irv Arons

What I don't get -- if the laser isn't actually being used for thermal properties -- is how the light actually "fixes" the problem. If it's just the light that's "stimulating" the cells to "clean up their mess", why not dump 532nm light from an LED? They're just as monochromatic and oughta be bright enough to shine through the relevant tissues.

Obviously, that doesn't work if a high power density is required for some reason other than localized heating, but I'm failing to see why (since the article goes into repeated detail about how little thermal damage is done to photoreceptors) the laser's required.

The only thing that makes sense would be that the amount of waste heat/light dumped into the eyeball by a suitably-bright LED would damage cells in the rest of the retina (i.e. the 99% of the retina that has nothing to do with the macula), and that the laser's only used because it's the only thing that can deposit the required power in the region of the macula without dumping gazillions of green photons everywhere else? (that is, staring into a low-power green LED wouldn't do anything, and staring into a high-power one would be just as damaging as staring into the sun.)

They may kick our asses in productivity, but if this is how they obtain such status then they can have it!

here's a link to Omron site regarding their Face Recognition software. if anyone can navigate the Japanese site could glean us more information.

i'm wondering if the scanner is using some type of microexpression recognition to determine genuine smiles. I think this would be the state-of-the-art for facial scanners.

While its an interesting premise, and underscores the average americans need to learn the basics ( reading, writing, and arithmatic) well beyond what Henry Ford envisioned for them when he helped pen the public school system -- sadly, this whole survey seems as contrived as the classic problem of Hot Days, Ice Cream, and Violent crime

If you had RTFA'd you might have gone to http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-case-of-quant-trading-industrial.html and read the affidavit - http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/Complaint_--_Aleynikov.pdf, you would see that (a) they have proof that the file was transfered (b) they know *exactly* which server the files were uploaded to and (c) Sergey Aleynikov has already confessed to copying the files.

Should be interesting to see how the police "generate" and prove the evidence on this one.

It's all there in the affidavit.

'This week's NYSE Program Trading report was very odd .. what was shocking was the disappearance of the #1 mainstay of complete trading domination (i.e., Goldman Sachs) from not just the aforementioned #1 spot, but the entire complete list. In other words: Goldman went from 1st to N/A in one week'

US v Sergey Aleynikov, Violations of 18 U.S.C $$ 1832(a) (2), 2314, & 2

"ALEYNIKOV claimed, however, that he only intended to collect "open source" files on which he had worked, but later realized he had obtained more files than he intended. ALEYNIKOV aslo admitted that he has uploaded files from his work desktop from home. ALEYNIKOV claimed he did not distribute any of the proprietary software that he obtained from the Financial Institution, and further claimed that he has abided by an agreement he entered into with his new employer not to use any unlicensed software"

There are two sets of costs: non-recurring and recurring. The non-recurring costs include all of the engineering effort, R&D, putting together the production facility, etc. The recurring costs are those that you incur for each unit produced.

I find it highly unlikely that the recurring costs are more than $2.1M for the car, unless it was made of solid iridium or something. (Annual production of iridium is something like 3 tons.) I wouldn't find it surprising at all, though, if Bugatti had sunk quite a bit of R&D money into developing the tech in the Veyron, and perhaps a bit of dough on the production facility.

Wikicars says this:

After the release of the car, it has been reported that while each Veyron is being sold for £840,000, the production costs of the car are approximately £5 million per vehicle. This is not the price to produce one vehicle, but rather the cost of the entire Veyron project divided by the number of vehicles produced at that time. As Bugatti, and therefore Volkswagen, are making such a loss, it has been likened by automotive journalist Jeremy Clarkson to Concorde; in that they are test-beds for advancements in technology and developed as exercises in engineering.

So far, the oldest article I've seen claiming these numbers is this one from early 2007. By the end of 2006, fewer than 50 had been produced. If we assume this number applies to the first 50, then that means the total cost to that point was a cool £250million. Yow!

Since then, though, another 150 have been produced. I highly doubt that it cost another £750million. In fact, this article points to most of the costs having been R&D costs with this quote:

The seven-speed semi-automatic gearbox took 50 engineers five years to complete while with all the research and development involved,

That's 250 man-years. If you assume each engineer costs $250K/year for labor, benefits and overhead, that's $62.5M in labor costs developing the transmission alone. Throw in all the machine work and parts and everything else, and I'm sure you easily get up to $100M development costs on the transmission alone.

People keep throwing that £5 million per car number out there, but I seriously believe it's way out of date.

I'm enjoying the discussion of pyrotechnics. The significance of Independence Day, especially in this day and age, is just too depressing to think about. Besides, I already blogged about the other stuff and it's killed my celebratory mood. Let's enjoy some big colorful lights and loud noises.

One commenter made a comparison to the Exxon Valdez case and other punitive damages cases where the damages award was reduced to be more proportionate to the actual harm. Unlike those cases, there is a statutory damages regime here, and long standing Supreme Court precedent establishes that courts must be very deferential to awards within the statutory framework. In particular, statutory damages are reviewed under a standard even more deferential than the already deferential abuse of discretion standard: whether the award is "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable." St. Louis, I.M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Williams, 251 U.S. 63, 66-67 (1919). Also see, Douglas v. Cunningham, 294 U.S. 207, 210 (1935) (Congress's purpose in enacting the statutory-damage provision of the 1909 Copyright Act and its delineation of specified limits for statutory damages "take[] the matter out of the ordinary rule with respect to abuse of discretion") (via). Appellate courts are also somewhat loathe to disturb jury verdicts. The standard in the Eighth Circuit, where the Thomas case was decided, is whether 'no rational jury' could have found as the jury did. Dace v. ACF Indus., 722 F.2d 374, 376 (8th Cir. 1983).

You might say, well, the ratio of damages to actual harm here is roughly a factor of 80,000, so surely that is sufficient even under that high standard. The RIAA is likely to argue that only the increased damages due to willful infringement are punitive and that the the underlying statutory damages are not inherently punitive. Should it prevail on that theory, then the resulting substantially lower ratio is likely to be seen as constitutionally permissible. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has upheld ratios as high as 113:1, for example, and the ratio alone is not sufficient to overturn the award. Phillip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007).

Another commenter made reference to the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment does not apply to civil cases (not even the "excessive fines" clause). See, Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977).

But the real crux of the issue is that the Copyright Act simply does not make an exception for individual non-commercial infringers. Assuming the facts of the case are accurate--and appellate courts do not like to disturb jury fact finding--then by the plain language of the statute Ms. Thomas is liable for a minimum of several thousand dollars in statutory damages. In my opinion the most likely outcome is that the appellate courts will let the verdict stand but strongly suggest that the legislature revise the Act to exempt individual non-commercial infringers from the statutory damages regime.

Hey who modded this as funny it should be insightful.

Police often exaggerate in court.

http://oklahomacriminaldefense.blogspot.com/2008/08/police-lying-or-testilying-and.html

Wish I had mod points ..................

let's speculate wildly in all directions

I wrote something related to this topic back in February, more from the point of view of a solution framework rather than the cultural root of problem (which I agree with). I think prevailing attitudes are stagnating any movement forward to a digital economy... from a developer point of view I abhor the idea of any else touching my code, but I publicly acknowledge the necessity of it :) http://langhornewollamshram.blogspot.com/2009/02/information-age-bottleneck-part-ii.html

Yep, the RIAA and Google has hounded me about http://chewbone.blogspot.com./ I don't have any links to music, all I give is a Google Custom Search engine tuned for mp3 blogs. This is a widget provided by Google itself! One can get any link that my custom search engine directly in Google Blog search, although mine is much more targeted so one doesn't have to wade through pages of so-so links. Why I am violating copywrite laws by using Google technology is beyond me. Almost all of the mp3 blogs that have infringing content are hosted by Google with their blogspot blogging service. The RIAA should go after Google, not the bloggers.

http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-know-where-youve-been.html

Of course there is no reason this is still not fixed (by being able to disable a:visited style).

As a long-time user of Linux who is currently using Microsoft Windows XP, the whole vfat (FAT with Win95 long file names) patent and how Microsoft has handled this patent makes me feel that maybe Microsoft is engaging in the same kind of monopolistic behavior that they engaged in when they destroyed Netscape in the 1990s.

I'm sure people know about Microsoft's patent violation lawsuit against TomTom; if you don't the Wikipedia is your friend. What a lot of people don't know is that Microsoft made some changes to Vista so that you can no longer easily use an unpatented filesystem like ext2 (Linux's 1990s file system which nicely enough is supported in Windows with a couple of different 3rd party drivers).

For me, it seems very suspicious that Microsoft made some changes to Vista that make it very difficult to use filesystems not patented by Microsoft around the same time they used licenses for their filesystems as a revenue source.

I posted a blog about this back in March and to quote that blog entry:

it can be shown, with Vista, that Microsoft removed compatibility for non-patented filesystems, forcing people to license Microsoft's patents, not because the patents are novel, but because the patented filesystems must be used for interoperability purposes

there was NO period in which the CO2 has increased without an increase of global temperature. In other words, every time there was an increase of CO2, there was also an increase of global temperatures, but the inverse is not true.

Here's the research proving my point (oh and I was wrong, CO2 change lags temperature change by 1000 years, not 200,000):

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1143791

As for your assertion that CO2 has never increased without an increase in global temperature, firstly as I mentioned before you have the causal relationship backwards: it's been shown that temperature increases first, then CO2 increases 1000 years later (same for decreases of both).

Also, how about this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0oNRupXJ4-A/SANF6KvP1sI/AAAAAAAAATQ/FP8y3DPkssY/s1600-h/image277.gif

I see CO2 changes without corresponding temperature changes happening many times there.

I am using the packages from Debian KDE4 project and Debian eee-pc project . Check my blog post on EEEPC with KDE4 on debian lenny

It's been 7 months I dont have any complaints on the speed but I am irritated with the resolution . Most desktop apps dont render properly in the small screens .

Hence I am waiting for Moblin to be usable

...and thus might end up being as cheap as nuclear energy if you count in the nukes' externalities like reprocessing, security, radioactive waste that are mostly dealt with by the government

In the US at least, nuclear power plant operators are required to pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund for just this purpose. "As of March 31, 2005, the total revenue paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund amounted to $24.9 billion. Of that amount, only $8.9 billion has been spent on program costs, leaving a balance of $16.02 billion that has been collected, but not applied to the used nuclear fuel disposal program." So there is a big (and growing) pile of money for whatever long-term solution we eventually settle on.

I am not sure of the degree to which security costs are externalized. I think they pay their own dedicated protective forces, or pay the NRC a security fee. But after 911, the National Guard also got involved, which sounds like an externality, though I don't know whether that was permanent.

The Department of Homeland Security only gives the kiss of death to public works projects. Here's what's going to happen; A bunch of committees will be called, and they're going to make a whole bunch of suggestions about what it "should" do. Each organization will want to have at least one feature included, a vote, etc. Tens (possibly hundreds) of millions will be lost doing this. It'll be filed under "R&D costs". At least a third of those suggestions will be crap or impossible/unfeasible to implement. It'll be recycled a few times on the General Schedule before some hapless corporation wins the contract. Then all hell breaks loose as delays in the project force reductions in scope, and the process of defining "core features" begins. By this point, everyone will be pointing fingers, and it'll be half-implemented and broken in many places. The project's surviving assets will be quietly transferred after a GAO inquiry regarding cost overruns and lack of deliverables -- just ahead of a congressional committee being called on the matter. Two years later, someone gets the idea that the US should have a multi-band radio project...

I only say this, because they've tried it with different scopes over and over and over and over again. Their technology department is understaffed due to high turnover and leadership problems.

Fundamentally, these things never leave the pilot phase, or if they do, they face deployment problems because the requirements are so obtuse and ambitious that existing technology can't adapt. Even if it can, bureaucratic problems usually end a project before it sees wide-scale deployment due to reluctance to adopt new technology and failures in leadership -- namely, not communicating with people in the field before trying to put something there.

I posted a blog about this yesterday. I tried Firefox 3.5 in a Windows XP VMware Virtual machine yesterday and quickly web back to Firefox 3.0.

The problem is that FF 3.5 freezes while loading a background tab. In Firefox 3.0, I have no problem clicking on some link that looks interesting, loading the link in a new tab, and continue reading the article I'm reading or what not.

This doesn't work in 3.5. When I load a page in a background tab, the entire Firefox client freezes up when it's processing Javascript, HTML, or whatever in the background tab. I can't scroll up or down in the foreground, write a posting or email (typing in text freezes and the letters I'm typing in aren't buffered), or do anything else with Firefox as it parses the page in the other tab.

Because of this issue, I quickly moved back to Firefox 3.0. I hope the Mozilla developers address this issue in the next six months, because if this issue isn't resolved in Firefox before they EOL security updates with Firefox 3.0, I will probably have to move to another browser.

Any modern browers besides Firefox with a "always use this font for text" option? Neither Opera, Safari, nor Chrome had this option last time I tried those browsers. (Don't get me started on IE8, which forces me to use anti-aliased text)

Like this guy?

January 31st, 2005, was the last day that Michael Sims, Nazi editor of Slashdot, ever posted a story or indeed was ever heard from again. But what happened that day to Michael Sims? Did his embroilment in the Censorware.org conspiracy finally catch up with him? Or was he involved in a violent, and ultimately fatal, lovers' spat with his partner Jamie McCarthy? The truth, as we'll see, is much more perverse than fiction.

On New Year's Eve of 2004, the entire Slashdot staff was throwing a party to celebrate another year of Linux propaganda, homosexual recruitment, and the profits that their Microsoft ad banners had raked in for them. Eric Raymond, Emad, Roblimo, Hemos, Taco, Jamie, and Alan Cox all planned to rape Richard Stallman later in the night. Michael had shown up late, however, and was let in on the plans after they were made.

As it turned out, Jamie was to be leading the charge against the Free Software Foundation's founder and would be the first to penetrate Stallman's hairy unwashed ass. Michael, however, was jealous of this and made secret plans to thwart their nefarious venture of homosexual rape. The event was planned for zero hours, right as the ball dropped. But Michael had other ideas.

Michael suggested they all toast their plan with JÃgermeister, Eric Raymond's drink of choice that was in heavy supply that night, and the rest of the partygoers followed. While everyone downed their first shot, Michael slipped into the VA Software office's break-room, grabbing the syringe Raymond used to inject Rob Malda's semen with on the way. Michael leered at the case of JÃgermeister, needle in hand.

Minutes later, Michael reappeared in the conference room with more JÃger, ready for more shots. Over the next couple of hours they indulged in several drinking and party games, spurred on by Michael, as they drank bottle after bottle of the dark brown herbal liquor. If one were to pay special attention to Michael, however, they would note that Michael drank much less than anyone else and only from his own bottle.

Emad and Roblimo were involved in a powerful sixty-nine cheered on by Hemos and Alan whose bent geek penises throbbed near Emad's head and Roblimo's bloated ass, waiting for an opportunity. Moaning, Emad diverted his wet mouth from Roblimo's butthole and took down Hemos and Alan's cocks in quick succession. Hearing the wet, sloppy commotion behind him, Roblimo lost control and glunked all over Emad's chest.

Across the room near the podium, Eric Raymond was man-handling Rob, jamming a handgun down the back of his pants and asking him if he remembered their special night in Holland. Rob was giggling like a school girl and squirmed with all his might against the cold steel. Eric rained a shower of JÃger over Rob's head which Rob greedily tongued up even as Eric's skinny red penis entered his ass cheeks, probing for the brown prize.

The conference room was awash in gay cum and chaos, Michael noted happily as he surveyed the carnage around him. Emad had now teamed up with Alan and Hemos to rape Roblimo's ass as Rob was being pistol-whipped to orgasm by Eric, all oblivious to the massive amounts of Rohypnol they were ingesting as they drank the JÃgermeister Michael had given them. It wouldn't be much longer before the drug took effect.

Another half-hour into the night, Eric paused from raping Taco's mouth and sodomizing his anus with his Glock, short of breath. His head swam and he looked at his bottle of JÃgermeister. I can usually down six of these babies, thought Eric, wondering why he was now farting uncontrollably. Rob's nose wrinkled as Eric's rectum expelled another gallon of aerosolized feces into the air. Stooping, Eric held on to the podium for support.

Across the way, Emad pulled his tiny Iranian dick out from between Alan and Hemos's in Roblimo'

January 31st, 2005, was the last day that Michael Sims, Nazi editor of Slashdot, ever posted a story or indeed was ever heard from again. But what happened that day to Michael Sims? Did his embroilment in the Censorware.org conspiracy finally catch up with him? Or was he involved in a violent, and ultimately fatal, lovers' spat with his partner Jamie McCarthy? The truth, as we'll see, is much more perverse than fiction.

On New Year's Eve of 2004, the entire Slashdot staff was throwing a party to celebrate another year of Linux propaganda, homosexual recruitment, and the profits that their Microsoft ad banners had raked in for them. Eric Raymond, Emad, Roblimo, Hemos, Taco, Jamie, and Alan Cox all planned to rape Richard Stallman later in the night. Michael had shown up late, however, and was let in on the plans after they were made.

As it turned out, Jamie was to be leading the charge against the Free Software Foundation's founder and would be the first to penetrate Stallman's hairy unwashed ass. Michael, however, was jealous of this and made secret plans to thwart their nefarious venture of homosexual rape. The event was planned for zero hours, right as the ball dropped. But Michael had other ideas.

Michael suggested they all toast their plan with JÃgermeister, Eric Raymond's drink of choice that was in heavy supply that night, and the rest of the partygoers followed. While everyone downed their first shot, Michael slipped into the VA Software office's break-room, grabbing the syringe Raymond used to inject Rob Malda's semen with on the way. Michael leered at the case of JÃgermeister, needle in hand.

Minutes later, Michael reappeared in the conference room with more JÃger, ready for more shots. Over the next couple of hours they indulged in several drinking and party games, spurred on by Michael, as they drank bottle after bottle of the dark brown herbal liquor. If one were to pay special attention to Michael, however, they would note that Michael drank much less than anyone else and only from his own bottle.

Emad and Roblimo were involved in a powerful sixty-nine cheered on by Hemos and Alan whose bent geek penises throbbed near Emad's head and Roblimo's bloated ass, waiting for an opportunity. Moaning, Emad diverted his wet mouth from Roblimo's butthole and took down Hemos and Alan's cocks in quick succession. Hearing the wet, sloppy commotion behind him, Roblimo lost control and glunked all over Emad's chest.

Across the room near the podium, Eric Raymond was man-handling Rob, jamming a handgun down the back of his pants and asking him if he remembered their special night in Holland. Rob was giggling like a school girl and squirmed with all his might against the cold steel. Eric rained a shower of JÃger over Rob's head which Rob greedily tongued up even as Eric's skinny red penis entered his ass cheeks, probing for the brown prize.

The conference room was awash in gay cum and chaos, Michael noted happily as he surveyed the carnage around him. Emad had now teamed up with Alan and Hemos to rape Roblimo's ass as Rob was being pistol-whipped to orgasm by Eric, all oblivious to the massive amounts of Rohypnol they were ingesting as they drank the JÃgermeister Michael had given them. It wouldn't be much longer before the drug took effect.

Another half-hour into the night, Eric paused from raping Taco's mouth and sodomizing his anus with his Glock, short of breath. His head swam and he looked at his bottle of JÃgermeister. I can usually down six of these babies, thought Eric, wondering why he was now farting uncontrollably. Rob's nose wrinkled as Eric's rectum expelled another gallon of aerosolized feces into the air. Stooping, Eric held on to the podium for support.

Across the way, Emad pulled his tiny Iranian dick out from between Alan and Hemos's in Roblimo'

I call BS on you calling the original post BP.

83% of beef is packaged and (mostly) owned by four corporations running massive feedlots:

        * Tyson, processing 36,000 head a day
        * Cargill, processing 28,000 head a day
        * Swift, now owned by JBS SA, at 16,700 a day
        * National Beef Packers, at 13,000 a day

The company JSB, SA, which purchased Swift in 2007 has a feed lot in Colorado that has up to 800,000 cattle on feed at a time.
http://northernbeacon.blogspot.com/2009/02/northern-beef-packers-big-hat-no-cattle.html

Your Utopian description of the environment in which the vast majority of animals live mis-informs fellow slashdotters into funding these corporations through increased consumption, and furthers the falsehood that animal welfare is better than abolition.

Good old Glyn. No doubt a favorite of Kdawson and many Slashdot folk. This is the same guy that idolized Stallman by using an analogy of a man who passes out a never ending supply of bread and then claimed ignorance when I showed this was a rip off of Jesus Feeding the multitude. A real class act to be sure.

I asserted, as I do here, that zealots like Glyn who treat Foss as if it were a religion are a problem that is not discussed often enough, and is the reason articles like this should be viewed with a skeptical eye that is careful to notice the true motivations of the author.

I'm actually suprised how little press attention has been paid to this court ruling. This could be a very very big thing if applied to other digital content. http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/cloudification-of-your-content.html

Me too. I was even surprised at how little attention Slashdot paid to it. Half the people on Slashdot complain all the time about the MAI decision; here was a decision limiting the MAI decision's scope. (I wish the Court had simply rejected the MAI court's reasoning, but maybe it will do that one of these days in another case).