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DOSBox + Master of Orion II + either quakenet #moo2 or RL friends. Aaahh heaven.

Well, if only moo2 was slow real-time, or if I could punch people through internet.

http://dosbox.com/
http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2006/05/dosbox-guide.html

Check out what the wonderful protesters in MN are up to now: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/bus-attack-in-st-paul-anarchists-attack.html Just wonderful. The peaceful innocents throw bags of cement from overpasses on buses taking people to the convention. It is so bad for the cops to try to interfere with them in their endeavors. These protesters are such wonderful role models for the yoot of today. And just look at all the supporters they have here.

For those who are interested... Google is streaming a live feed of their Chrome beta release conference here: http://google.client.shareholder.com/Visitors/event/build2/MediaPresentation.cfm?MediaID=33101&Player=2# Also a tech reporter named Rafe (forget which site he came from) is live-blogging from the conference and you can see what he's typing or ask him to ask a question on the chat applet here; http://www.coveritlive.com/index.php?option=com_altcaster&task=siteviewaltcast&altcast_code=d9687919a4 So far they say they're releasing it at 12 noon Pacific time. From what I understand it should be available from http://google.com/chrome -- they also said they'd post a link on the googleblog ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ )

Indeed, it even wants IE to perform well with Gmail and the rest. It's just that it has very limited control over this. That's why Google's been frustrated and it is launching this Chrome browser.

Did I call it, or what? ;-)

For those of you who are interested, Chrome is supposed to be launching later today. Apparently around 11 AM PDT to coincide with the press conference. (Any moment now...) For those of you who can't wait, PCWorld seems to have figured out how to finagle screenshots out of Google's 404 page.

For those of you who didn't get to see it, the comic book is now available for viewing.

bash

rc

or python, or perl or awk or anything really.

If you want to learn, write your own, http isn't that hard unless you plan to get fancy

There are so many of these Linux, freeware, GNU, Opensource, ... losers who want to be somebody that all I can do is laugh! Everybody who has this ugly garbage claims to be a significant something or another! SHEESH! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

So, in the age of multicore computers, you want HP to dump one dinosaur that somehow escaped from a 20th century museum of ancient technology for another that escaped from the same museum? LOL! What are you, an OSontologist from hell?

There is indeed a crisis of innovation in Silicon Valley. It's a deep malaise caused by the aging baby boomers who drove computer innovation during the last half of the 20th century but lately have run of ideas simply because they are too old and set in their ways. Those old computer geeks are still in charge at the various universities/labs and their idols and gods (e.g., Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, Lady Ada Lovelace, Frederic Brooks, etc.) are still worshipped by the computer academic community. Their antiquated and obsolete perspective on computing is being taught to the younger generation as I write. (Mod me down and see if I care)

IMO, what the computer world needs is not more of the same crap but a seismic paradigm shift and there is only one way to do it. The old computer nerds must be forced into retirement and new leadership must be brought in. The new mandate should be to reevaluate the computing models and paradigms of the last century and reassess their continued adequacy to the nasty problems that the industry is currently facing, such as the parallel programming and software reliability crises. If they are found to be inadequate (no doubt about it in my opinion), they should be replaced. Ask yourself this simple question: How is the Turing Machine relevant to parallel computing and how is it helping to solve the crisis? Answer: It is neither relevant nor helping. Telling it like I see it, as always.

Rebel Science News

Is tomorrow soon enough for you?

at least, according to the Official Google Blog. The beta will be released in 100 countries (i suppose that that means 100 languages, counting different things like English-US and English-UK), and, unfortunately, initially only for Windows (Mac/Linux version will be released later).

The second question is: will Google Chrome run natively under GNU/Linux, and if so, using which GUI toolkit? Well, I doubt it very much it will at all,

Google has an official announcement now where they say:

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

They are also open sourcing the browser, so even if they don't build it for Linux someone will:

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

There's a big struggle to put the proposition on the ballot, and lots of information in this partisan blog. All I have to say is that, as a Spaniard, I'm amazed at how easily high speed trains are being developed in the country with the highest unemployment rates in the whole EU, compared to the richest state in the most powerful country in the world. Come on, get your act together, California!

Official Google announcement also.

I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."

[snip]/quote>

I think you are clearly wrong on this.
IE is still the most frequently browser today.

pretty much sucks:

It cannot even remove cyclic references and it makes IE slower the more memory is used, because it uses a simple heuristics to decide when to start the GC (see the comments sections of link above)

Furthermore , until recently javascript implementations where much slower than other comparable languages, just check http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/.
There has been some really good progress recently for Firefox (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080822-firefox-to-get-massive-javascript-performance-boost.html), but there's still work to be done (similiar GC problems).

Having to use a language in 2008 that has no notion of threads or processes also pretty much sucks.

Regards,
Markus ( Java performance blog )

It's simply called Google Browser (and it was released on April, 1st, 2006)

When did it become illegal to own guns, knives, bows and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots or rocks. Also, your article contains a typo, it was 'bucket' of urine (from an apartment without a working toilet), and the other buckets were identified as unknown liquids and described as gray water for greener flushing by tenants.

I own many of these items. I've also used a bucket of water to flush my toilet. Likewise, I've known myself to urinate in various containers when a bathroom or appropriately concealed tree was unavailable.

Good luck with that. The MN police had just such a situation not too long ago. They just brought even more guns. And then they gave medals to the cops who got shot.

The right was granted in the Constitution, and while the Constitution allows it to be temporarily suspended, it has not been lost.

It's not been lost? Tell it to those in Guantanamo Bay, or those held without legal consul, notification to their families, or admissions of their presence in this and similar facilities. Since their names are secret, and even admitting that you know the names can get you thrown in jail as a security risk, that's about as serious a violation of habeas corpus as you can commit. It's also a major violation of the Geneva Convention.

For those that still refuse to believe the US government disrespects human rights nowadays, the best evidence you can provide are reports from reliable sources such as Amnesty International, other human rights organisations, and even the UK government.

They took along *anything* and *everything* that might be related to possible riots. When they raided a home that wasn't actually the correct home, they still detained people for over and hour while they obtained the correct warrant. When I read that I posted that I was concerned that when I arrived at home that I too would find cops on my doorstep because after all, that was the point of all of this horseshit.

When you finally hear from the other side you learn that the "buckets of urine" was actually gray water used to flush the toilet (my father developed a tank system in the 1980s that used shower/tub water to flush the toilet which saved us so much money that the water company came out 3 or 4 different times to replace the meter because they thought it was defective).

I have been ashamed to be an American for a long ass time but between the Ramsey County Sheriff's response to this event, the confiscation of camera equipment in the name of Homeland Security for the RNC, and using Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans in preparation for Gustav I am not quite sure I am actually living in the United States of America anymore.

I am disgusted to be a Minnesota and United States resident. This is fucking shameful and horrifying. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of free speech violation. This is a stupid political rally, not a fucking war on our soil. Personally I'd love to join the protests but I seriously fear for my freedom and my life. I am not against the RNC but I am definitely against the manner in which protesting is being handled.

FUCK YOU AMERICA.

For live footage of raids and other First Amendment violations, check out The UpTake on Qik.com.

she IS in bed with oil companies and even she doesnt deny it, entire alaska is a playground for oil.

http://madvilletimes.blogspot.com/2008/08/palin-in-bed-with-transcanada.html

Who precisely do you think actually builds, services and maintains these craft? Thats right, the OEMs and not NASA. The Shuttle was built by Rockwell, now maintained by Boeing. Orion will be built by private sector companies (Lockheed as prime contractor, with a whole bunch of others as subcontractors), Ares will be built by private sector companies (Alliant and Boeing as prime contractors) - so what do you propose to do differently?

A couple things:

* don't use cost-plus contracts, which reward waste

* Instead of specifying a single design and essentially giving one company a monopoly over manned spaceflight, do things like the rest of the transportation market and commercial satellite launches -- just purchase individual rides or payload deliveries. SpaceX , Orbital, and Lockheed Martin are all currently working on orbital manned spaceflight systems. As it is now, it looks like they're going to have to end up competing against NASA's Ares I. Instead of competing against them, NASA should ditch Ares I and just offer transportation contracts to give these companies the financial incentive to speed development of their vehicles.

NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems program is a huge step in the right direction -- it's only getting a fraction of the budget (total is less than a single shuttle flight) that Ares I is getting, but is already showing much more progress and promise.

Our tools are used almost exclusively for these task! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

That makes me feel better! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

...and that's besides the fact that the food is pumped full of growth hormones to such extents that young girls eating it develop breasts at very young ages.

That's a myth. Correlation doesn't equal causation. The early-puberty trend was observed *before* rBST was used in dairy cows, and on top of that, there is no known mechanism by which the hormones could have such an effect.

http://mygreenage.blogspot.com/2007/07/please-dont-fear-milk.html

Caution is good. Exposing health threats is good. Fearmongering is not good!

The spam problem has a technical solution. The keyword is innovation. The programs that recognize CAPTCHAs could be defeated for example by using evolutionary CAPTCHA described here http://network-security-research.blogspot.com/2008/08/around-captcha.html Malicious human CAPTCHAs recognitions could be defeated as well. And perhaps such approaches will appear in a short period of time ;-)

The story is Johnny Lingo's 8 cow wife. It has a lot of variations, but one of them can be found here.

... and that since it's not rigourous enough we should be using other languages like Scala. If Java's type system IS enough (but incomplete) then the argument goes why should dynamically typed languages be singled out for not being robust enough on bigger code bases? I'm paraphrasing from the Static Typing's Paper Tigers section of Steve Yegge's Rhino's and Tigers blog post though.

I doubt that dynamic languages slowness would be solved (today without new research) if they switched to static typing though... Surely dynamic languages could target VMs like the JVM or CLR and that may ultimately lead them to running just as fast as Java or C#? If that were the case the speed problem would not be down to their dynamic nature but perhaps something like the lack of extensive JITing...

This problem is exactly the reason there are alternatives like the Eclipse Public License. Google has recently announced that they are adding the EPL as a license option for Google Code.

Open source is really about users taken responsibility and control for mission critical applications. Government is just a big user, like a big bank, an insurance company, or film production company. They have internal needs. All organizations need to look at their internal needs and skills and contribute effectively, where it is of direct benefit to them. When the benefit is big enough, they pay someone to work on a project directly, if not, they don't. Sometimes it is only part time, and the level of expertise is only for QA, patches, and the like. That's fine!

The major Apache contributors at the outset were all firms whose survival depended on having an effective web server. The business case for working on apache was compelling for all involved. Other contributions should be similarly compelling.

The flip side of yesterday's story on Quebec sole sourcing (avoiding all responsibility of any kind, and just following 'the market'), is national funding of software distributions (taking total responsibility to the point of re-inventing the wheel) Neither approach is going to work best in the long run. Large organizations funding what they need, is just the corporate analogy of individuals scratching their itch.
blog post about that: http://csptrn.blogspot.com/2007/03/national-use-of-open-source.html

Logiciel Libre is Big in France.

In France, that's what they do, on a massive scale. Example: the French Fisc (like the US. Internal Revenue Service) replaced their almost all Oracle all the time solutions by making an RFP (Request for Proposal) with specific performance tests for a J2EE platform. All the biggies were invited (Oracle, IBM, BEA, etc...) but the fastest implementation was by a small local firm using open source tools.

reference:
http://www.cllap.qc.ca/2006/modules/wfdownloads/singlefile.php?lid=48 duh... it's in French...
They don't care if you can't read it, their in it for their own good.

The fisc saved a ton of money by doing a competitive procurement. The winning company is local, and developing expertise among people who pay taxes, and drive the economy.

Another useful initiative in France with OSS is
http://adullact.org/ where people from a bunch of different local governments work together and fund and adopt common integrations of OSS technologies for specific vertical uses. Each local government reduces their costs by partially funding the common solution. Each gets a say in requirements and functionality delivered. None is stuck shouldering the whole burden.

It is not about creating new software projects. There are thousands of those, and almost all needs can be met by integration/consultation of existing software, because, frankly, not a lot of government needs are that complicated. People just have to have a mind set that they are responsible for the technological choices they make, and get educated about long term implications.

On a given government procurement, the traditional decision is 'buy vs. build' that is an obsolete decision, it is more like 'buy vs. assemble' or 'buy vs. contribute' or 'buy vs. cultivate (local talent)' today. The costs are looked at on over the duration of a procurement, not on a life cycle basis.

For example, if you take open office, and you say it will cost 4 years to make the transition, that's true. the requirement for the functionality is not going away, so in five years, assuming the transition was taken care of, when you have to renew your MS license, ooo is going to cost close to zilch. That's when they pay back starts.

Government needs to look at things rationally over the long term. the only thing on the side of the traditional vendors is perceived level of risk and market share. As the number of adopters increases, both of those aspects are declining.

You know, yours started out as a seemingly somewhat insightful comment. Then you come in with lines like, "The Associated (with terrorists) Press" and you unmask yourself as totally off your rocker. It also doesn't help that almost all of your links point to what is clearly essentially a political propaganda site.

OK. I realize I probably won't change your mind, but I do want you to know I didn't throw that term out without reason. Here's why I said what I said:

AP Admits relationship with terrorists
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/009026.php

another angle to that same story: AP photographer Rahmatullah Naikzad was a witness to a Taliban murder.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/associated-with.html

AP and Reuters photographer Bilal Hussein colludes with insurgents
http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.com/2005/10/ap-and-reuters-photographer-bilal.html

Gunmen take up position behind a garbage bin **as they engage British troops** in central Basra, Iraq: http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/1005-Embedded-with-the-Enemy.html

http://caosblog.com/5367

"A group of smugglers recently gave an Associated Press photographer rare permission to accompany them as they dug one tunnel..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081400721.html
More on Kevin Frayer's hang time with the tunnel-digging, weapons-smuggling thugs of Gaza:
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/1068-Embedded-with-the-Enemy.html
which resulted in some beautiful propaganda shots. Who needs a media relations department when you can get it for free courtesy of AP?
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0h2FcWH0gtbCn
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0eRMfTXdBvcpc/Palestinian_tunnel_diggers

I love the way it's written. It's so non-judgemental.

Gazans are finding an antidote to their growing isolation: digging tunnels under their border with Egypt to smuggle everything from weapons to cigarettes to people.
Gee, when I feel isolated, I go hang with friends. I don't dig tunnels and smuggle weapons like guns, bombs and rockets to be fired indiscriminately into civilian areas. But remember, there's no bias at AP.

one final case:
http://rising.blackstar.com/embedded-with-the-enemy.html

No problem, homer_s.

I fully agree with you that the courts need to watch out for those cases where one side has all the money in the world to burn on litigating, and the other side doesn't have any. I was just saying to eldavojohn that Viacom v. YouTube isn't one of them. Google has all the money it needs to defend itself. And Viacom is going to get..... buried.

where the party litigating with the content-maniacs is a corporation which has the resources to get good lawyering

That, precisely, is the problem many see with the legal system.

I agree wholeheartedly that that is one of the major problems with the legal system. And many judges agree with that, too. Which is why the Judicial Section of the American Bar Association published an issue of its quarterly magazine devoted solely to the problem of providing "equal access to justice", why they invited me to write an article on the problem with "unequal" access to justice in the RIAA litigations, and why I spent many many hours writing that article.

That is why You may not agree that that is a problem

I can't for the life of me see how you could accuse me of that

but then, I see you as part of the system.

Well obviously I am part of the system, albeit a powerless part. I don't know why you want to disparage me over it. I do the best I can.

..the judges are starting to wake up to the fraud that has been perpetrated on them.

Anyone with a little bit of technical knowledge knew what these cases were full of BS when they started.

Agreed.

Yet, it took the legal system how many months to understand that?

Years. Not months. Years.

And how many lives were ruined because the judiciary did not make sure that the judges had some subject knowledge before they were assigned these cases?

Many, many lives were ruined. And when, in May 2006, I stood up to a judge who had no understanding whatsoever of anything that was in issue, and told him that 'lives are being ruined' by these cases, he said that because I had said that, he wouldn't believe anything else I could say.

where the party litigating with the content-maniacs is a corporation which has the resources to get good lawyering

That, precisely, is the problem many see with the legal system.

I agree wholeheartedly that that is one of the major problems with the legal system. And many judges agree with that, too. Which is why the Judicial Section of the American Bar Association published an issue of its quarterly magazine devoted solely to the problem of providing "equal access to justice", why they invited me to write an article on the problem with "unequal" access to justice in the RIAA litigations, and why I spent many many hours writing that article.

That is why You may not agree that that is a problem

I can't for the life of me see how you could accuse me of that

but then, I see you as part of the system.

Well obviously I am part of the system, albeit a powerless part. I don't know why you want to disparage me over it. I do the best I can.

..the judges are starting to wake up to the fraud that has been perpetrated on them.

Anyone with a little bit of technical knowledge knew what these cases were full of BS when they started.

Agreed.

Yet, it took the legal system how many months to understand that?

Years. Not months. Years.

And how many lives were ruined because the judiciary did not make sure that the judges had some subject knowledge before they were assigned these cases?

Many, many lives were ruined. And when, in May 2006, I stood up to a judge who had no understanding whatsoever of anything that was in issue, and told him that 'lives are being ruined' by these cases, he said that because I had said that, he wouldn't believe anything else I could say.

I'm not attacking you here. I'm not attacking YouTube here. Hell, I'm not even really attacking Viacom. I'm criticizing our Justice Department in several regards. Don't take this personally!

I didn't. And I know you didn't take my disagreement with you personally either. I'm a big fan of yours. I just love a good argument.

I don't mean to say our justice system is perfect. Far from it, I've recently been quite critical of the way the RIAA cases are being handled, and made 15 specific suggestions on how the federal judiciary could improve its track record and provide a more level playing field. But I will tell you that in the big cases -- where the party litigating with the content-maniacs is a corporation which has the resources to get good lawyering -- the results have not been so terrible. And even in the RIAA cases, where the defendants are invariably overmatched, the judges are starting to wake up to the fraud that has been perpetrated on them.

By the way, if you think Io v. Veoh didn't worry Viacom, why do you think they requested permission to submit an amicus curiae brief in support of Io? The judge denied their request (PDF), but no doubt read the brief and heard everything Viacom, and its lawyers, had to say. I don't think he was impressed.

Viacom can say whatever it wants to say in its press releases. But I don't think Judge Stanton will be even remotely impressed. He will want to know why they tied up his docket, when they had nothing.

Hah, you have a point; I was thinking of PCs.

I just stored something on a few USB flash drives to keep around for the next 10 years.

Don't do that if it's important. Flash drives will lose data over time -- and not even a long time. My experience is that you might get a few years out of them; others claim as long as 10 years. See Flash drives are NOT for long term storage and Records, 8-tracks, and other reasons to update your storage media. You'd probably do better with archival quality DVDs but my suggestion is to roll data forward every 5 years or so on external hard drives.

I know the DMCA is a attack to free speech. It has been abused many times to take down parodies or something someone did not personally like.

I respectfully disagree. It is not the DMCA that is an attack on free speech, it is abuse of the DMCA that is an attack on free speech, and this is something that needs to be stopped.

I know the DMCA is a attack to free speech. It has been abused many times to take down parodies or something someone did not personally like.

I respectfully disagree. It is not the DMCA that is an attack on free speech, it is abuse of the DMCA that is an attack on free speech, and this is something that needs to be stopped.

I read this in Wired and found this quote from YouTube:

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

eldavojohn, with all due respect..... do you seriously think that just because they put out conflicting press releases that somehow nullifies the power of this decision as a judicial precedent? Do you really think the judge in Viacom v. Youtube cares about the press releases?

If so, I beg to differ. Not all the press releases in the world can deflect the clear and faultless reasoning exhibited by Judge Lloyd. We are having a sudden outbreak of sanity and respect for the plain meaning of statutes. This is so important. It is another nail in the coffin of the MPAA's frivolous suit against YouTube.

IMHO.

I read this in Wired and found this quote from YouTube:

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

eldavojohn, with all due respect..... do you seriously think that just because they put out conflicting press releases that somehow nullifies the power of this decision as a judicial precedent? Do you really think the judge in Viacom v. Youtube cares about the press releases?

If so, I beg to differ. Not all the press releases in the world can deflect the clear and faultless reasoning exhibited by Judge Lloyd. We are having a sudden outbreak of sanity and respect for the plain meaning of statutes. This is so important. It is another nail in the coffin of the MPAA's frivolous suit against YouTube.

IMHO.

I read this in Wired and found this quote from YouTube:

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

eldavojohn, with all due respect..... do you seriously think that just because they put out conflicting press releases that somehow nullifies the power of this decision as a judicial precedent? Do you really think the judge in Viacom v. Youtube cares about the press releases?

If so, I beg to differ. Not all the press releases in the world can deflect the clear and faultless reasoning exhibited by Judge Lloyd. We are having a sudden outbreak of sanity and respect for the plain meaning of statutes. This is so important. It is another nail in the coffin of the MPAA's frivolous suit against YouTube.

IMHO.

I read this in Wired and found this quote from YouTube:

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

eldavojohn, with all due respect..... do you seriously think that just because they put out conflicting press releases that somehow nullifies the power of this decision as a judicial precedent? Do you really think the judge in Viacom v. Youtube cares about the press releases?

If so, I beg to differ. Not all the press releases in the world can deflect the clear and faultless reasoning exhibited by Judge Lloyd. We are having a sudden outbreak of sanity and respect for the plain meaning of statutes. This is so important. It is another nail in the coffin of the MPAA's frivolous suit against YouTube.

IMHO.

I read this in Wired and found this quote from YouTube:

"It is great to see the Court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights," YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine said in a statement. "YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online."

And this quote from Viacom:

"Even if the Veoh decision were to be considered by other courts, that case does nothing to change the fact that YouTube is a business built on infringement that has failed to take reasonable measures to respect the rights of creators and content owners. Google and YouTube have engaged in massive copyright infringement â" conduct that is not protected by any law, including the DMCA."

Probably not far from what one would expect either to say but I'm afraid this isn't going to do much for YouTube.

eldavojohn, with all due respect..... do you seriously think that just because they put out conflicting press releases that somehow nullifies the power of this decision as a judicial precedent? Do you really think the judge in Viacom v. Youtube cares about the press releases?

If so, I beg to differ. Not all the press releases in the world can deflect the clear and faultless reasoning exhibited by Judge Lloyd. We are having a sudden outbreak of sanity and respect for the plain meaning of statutes. This is so important. It is another nail in the coffin of the MPAA's frivolous suit against YouTube.

IMHO.

Sounds to me like you are incompetent, Rakishi.

I've run a linux lab in a high school for years, with very, very few problems, while the constantly down, crashing MS windows machines, (by the thousands), in Toronto, are the real disaster. You need to do some research on how other countries education systems are far, far surpassing us, using linux systems.
But hell, even here in Canada, School District 73 in B.C. is easily the leader in the country.
Check out: http://www.sd73.bc.ca/district-operations.php/page/linux-in-education/

Puts all the MS junk in Canadian schools to shame, and costing us millions to boot, just to enrich Billy, courtesy of the taxpayer.
And promoting ignorance of computer technology and open source as well. No wonder the world is passing us by in terms of computer ed/technology, etc.

Want a REAL education? Visit (and spend some time reading): http://cdneducation.blogspot.com/

... except they don't have games! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

nVidia are building a CPU, a Cortex A9 derivative with a GPU on-die and a load of other nice features

A CPU is a sequential processor and, as such, it has no business being in a parallel processor. Heterogeneous processors are hideous beasts that will be a pain in the ass to program. What the world needs is a pure MIMD vector processor in which every instruction is an indenpendent vector that can be processed in parallel. There is no reason to have a CPU for general purpose programs and a GPU for graphics and data-parallel appliations. One fast homogeneous vector processor should do it all. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, read Transforming the TILE64 into a Kick-Ass Parallel Machine.

The writing is on the wall. The days of the CPU are numbered. This is the dawning of the age of the VPU, the vector processing unit.

First Sgt. Hatley and the Beauchamp TNR Affair

Updated below
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A U.S. Army sergeant outed as a murderer in today's NYT seems to be the same one that led the unit involved in last years New Republic / Beauchamp controversy. Then he denied atrocities Beauchamp reported on.

In July 2007 a U.S. soldier under the pseudonym Scott Thomas wrote about the war in Iraq at the The New Republic's Shock Troops blog. Scott Thomas described some disgusting behavior by his fellow soldiers. Such included running over dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles and playing with a child's scull found in a mass grave.

The rightwing media, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and many others, went nuts over these reports. The blogger's name was disclosed as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and after some heavy push and pull and an army investigation, The New Republic said it "cannot stand by these stories."

At the time of that controversy, a mil-blogger in the U.S. wrote to Beauchamp's company senior non-commissioned officer, identified as First Sgt. John E. Hatley, and got this response:

My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. [...] Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I'm currently serving with the best America has to offer. [...]

Sincerely,

1SG Hatley

Today the NYT reports about willful killing of Iraqis who were taken prisoners by the U.S. troops.

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.
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After the killings, the first sergeant -- the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company -- told the other two to remove the men's bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times.
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The soldiers, all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, have not been charged with a crime.
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The accounts of and confessions to the killings, by Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sgt. Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D's senior medic and an acting squad leader, were made in January in signed statements to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany.

In their statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy each described killing at least one of the Iraqi detainees on instructions from First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads.
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Last month, four other soldiers from Sergeant Hatley's unit were charged with murder conspiracy for agreeing to go along with the plan to kill the four prisoners, in violation of military laws that forbid harming enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody.

Is the First Sgt. John E. Hatley who l

Hire Microsoft and we will solve this problem! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

That won't work nearly as well unless you know the location and intensity of the ambient lighting sources for the non-flash image. In theory, you could make a fairly simple system that has two strobes (one on either side of the lens) that are powerful enough to overcome ambient, and use that slight difference to map out the texture (though for maximum effect, you'd really want them offset from the lens by 45 or so). The advantage to that approach is that you could fire off two shots in such quick succession that you could get something fairly accurate without use of a tripod, whereas a flash/no flash shot requires the latter to burn in the ambient to a point where you'll have a usable image, which will fail miserably indoors without a tripod.

It's a price you pay for simplicity versus effectiveness. As a photography lighting geek, I've got the equipment to rig things up quite easily with two strobes at known locations and get a quite effective texture map. I could do it relying on ambient for one of the shots (and losing most of the texture with an on-camera strobe for the other) with any random gear I could pick up, but by nature it can't be as effective nor as accurate. Like anything else, you can half-ass it with existing equipment or spend a little to do a much better job. I'm talking < $100 worth of gear to set up any old camera with a hotshoe to have a cheap off-camera flash that will do a job that's probably an order of magnitude better. Even if you're not in the business of doing this kind of thing professionally, it's not a whole lot of money to spend; it's very multipurpose gear too so it can help out well beyond the reaches of this niche. Ask David for an example or two - it's not specific to this, but there are plenty of examples of how directional lighting can reveal textures on anything.

While I don't have anything against Buckley personally, I think his comic was best summed up in this snide and nasty review.

Unfunny, copy/pasted, bad art, Mary Sueism, derivative, etc.

I often find comics I like in Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad's hit list, but his review of Buckley seemed spot on.

Can the iPhone access the whole Internet? Well, can it ping every valid IPv4 and IPv6 address, I ask? Can it or not?

Apparently not.

Good point. Here's another tough case: Microsoft's literature claims that their "Sync" feature in Ford cars "supports podcasts." But then you go to the manual, and the only related command is "Play podcasts", which takes you to a random podcast. It doesn't respond to "play podcast learning japanese", and even then you can't call out individual tracks within them, as you can with everything else.

(If you're psychic, you can find out that you can call out a specific series by saying "Play artist [nonintuitive artist name]", but that's not listed in the podcast section.)

Do does that count as podcast support?