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Due to conservation of intelligence, every 18 months, people will lose an amount equal to doubling the clock speed of the CPUs.

Hmmm, surprised that was not part of the original law as it seems to be a truism.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

What a concept. That means that .net should be given to network admin consortiums and .gov should be given to the government. Oh .gov already is. So it's only the 'little guy' that is still under the control of corporations? Figures.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

The person committing the crime, by all means get the warrant and look into the computer, drives, etc. But the companies? I know the feds can intercept mail if there is reason to believe the crime IS BEING committed, but has there ever been a search warrant for the post office for AFTERWORDS? I doubt it. Some things really need to be directly taken from the physical world to cyberspace in terms of rights and leave alones.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

But some of the prototypes that are overhyped, the makers of the item find a fatal flaw just before the maden use of the item and 'accidentally' damage it, delaying the use of it. Then they get the time to fix it with the update or patch that it requires.

Saves them from the embarassment of launching something that will not work. On the other hand it does end up with a correct item that works as expected so everyone is happy.

Again, just something to think about.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Putting all your chickens in one basket of an unproven, brand new technology type just because it's the fad of the moment. The smart ones used that as yet another diversification technique and not the entire portfolio.

Snake oil salesmen use some of the same techniques to seperate people from their money. Yes, some actually had a good idea but the SNR was rather on the noise side then too.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

There was Lt. Yuri Gagarin, the original space case.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

MS finds a good thing that is cross platform and decides they cannot make a buck from it because people might actually use software NOT made by MS. So, what do they do? They change it so the only thing their systems will play well is a MS only based program.

Extend, embrace, destroy. Yet again.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

If you thought that the cold war with atomic weapons would leave the Earth cold and desolate, try sending an asteroid of any size to impact. According to the people they don't let out too often, a water hit is worse than a land hit as well.

Just something to think about before people get too happy about this as a defensive/offensive device.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Has Taco Bell paid for advertising on the side of this one so they can get it coming and going?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

and what did the guy behind the counter say? Did he try to talk you into keeping it?

"Helloooo, Polly.." (whap, whap, whap)

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Total ReKall has already been filmed, you should be hearing from their lawyers soon if they use the same ones as MasterCard.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

If that company goes out of business and your contract is renewable, you cannot renegotiate with an entity that does not exist, therefore you cannot renegotiate. Your contract does NOT state that both parties will be there at the end of the term, I'd bet.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Yeah, so? It's something that sells and they are a commercial firm. The problem with this is...??

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

I'm a firm believer that US laws were intentionally started only to bring punishment to those who unnecessarily harm another person. Active, not 'state of being' law origins. Decrypting messages is not, in and of itself, harmful to others, what you do with the decrypted information is another ballgame alltogether. Decompiling software is not harmful either, but if you use that information only to copy the code and sell 'your own' version, again, that's a different story.

I do not believe there should be laws against harming yourself, that's your choice and you should have to also bear the consequences of the actions rather than have a governmental body tell you what you must do (seatbelt laws come to mind here along with motorcycle helmets.)

It is interesting that the most closed societies are starting to open and the most open ones are closing down, China excepted. I wonder if our grandchildren will recognize the societies as they stand now.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

USB is nice, but it's a relative newcomer. Firewire has been out longer and I've not heard anything but good things about it. Standards for hardware equipment and add-ons is a good thing for the consumer as we've seen with PC clones. Prices fall, more companies in the business etc. As opposed to differing standards, like microchannel expansion bus vs PCI vs ISA vs VLB, it got difficult to figure out which add-on goes on what computer.

I like it.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Does anyone have a picture of the stupid thing? It would be really, REALLY nice to have a picture of either the specific model in question or a "Some may be slightly different" with a picture of one that's CLOSE to it.

Or comments on markings, or such. Mine is not from this company but I was curious what type/model was affected by the notice and found that there are no "With Alcatel name and model numbers xxx and xxx" I mean is it ALL their models? Is it one specific? Even the warning page doesn't give specifics.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

We've had Solaris servers that people use daily come to require hardware upgrades or something and no one can remember where the stupid thing is. Everyone is so used to remotely logging onto the machine and performing software upgrades that no one has had to sit at the console for two/three years at a time and pretty soon, unless you keep good notes, no one who works there has ever been to the console at all, just remotely done whatever's necessary. Some of the Linux servers are starting to get into that camp as well lately. Primary router for our company is a RedHat box with a bunch of NICs and it's just been chugging along for two years now and no one's even had to remotely log into it for that time, so even the SysAdmins have quit doing it. The daily scripts run, send the mail saying everything's alright and everybody's happy.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Considering my wife is the librarian for an elementary school and my sister is a patent examiner at the Patent and Trademark Office, this happens to be literally a dinner topic conversation around my house.

If a teacher has reason to use copyrighted work for a class, not as a regular part of the classroom work but to show a single class a topic, that teacher can copy the whole document, one per student, without violating copyright law.

If it becomes a regular topic or there is time to contact the copyright holder, the area becomes much grayer, but if one day a student brings up a topic and the next day the teacher wants to have a discussion on that topic and there is a document directly pertaining to that topic, the teacher is well within the law to copy the document and hand those copies to the kids. Educational use.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

User friendly and twisted humor.com are two places that have used this for a basis of a joke. I'm sure there are others.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

You are confusing the legal aspects with legitimate research and paper writing. You are not breaking the copyright law by photocopying or by plagerizing, you are breaking the rules for research and paper writing.

I was not talking about the institution copying, I was talking about the individual. How much do you pay for a book you checked out of the library and used as part of your paper with references?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

If Mastercard wants to start bringing suit about this, they need to really dig and if they win, every person on the Earth would end up in jail. Satire, discussion, educational uses, comedy, are all legitimate uses of anything copyrighted.

What next, they're going to sue David Letterman?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Don't take it skiing.

Oh, wrong Bono.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Oh yeah, Black is white, up is down, slavery is freedom. That's right George Orwell already wrote about this.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

To achieve this without 1) the plane running out of gas before it hits mach 5 OR 2) the pilot passing out and/or dying due to the number of Gs pulled getting there.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

With Raptor, the NSA, and other intelligence gathering organizations.

The trick will be recalling the data from those organizations.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

My ex-wife has not evolved, can I get one installed into her?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

This is going to be a long, drawn out legal battle with the telecos. People who do not have teleco connectivity on the 'net are going to start seeing the telecos fighting back on 'infringement of the telecos business.'

It doesn't really matter how long it takes or who eventually wins these cases. The telecos have more money than most of the ISPs and have lobbiests already pushing for a 'net tax for the voice over IP. Next we are probably going to find that you cannot connect VoIP to someone who uses a teleco as an ISP.

Should make for interesting case law if nothing else.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

As I said when the original review (which also said that there are real stability problems etc.) I will wait for version 2 or 3 before buying one.

Still, I'm glad to see SOMETHING in the handheld in Linux, even if it wasn't ready for production. Now, when Debian comes out with one, I'll think about it.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Remote reboot for networks? WOOHOO, hey, that would be wonderful for a server that becomes unresponsive. Now, where was that soldering iron?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

This is what I've been fearing since the first time I've heard of a government attempting to take a site off the air that it disagrees with. This, if left unchecked, will mean the absolute end of the internet as a way to get all sides of the issues, all means of research and all ability to have honest and open discussion of any topic.

A government may have to limited right to decide what can/will be distributed within it's borders, but that does NOT mean it has the right to cross political boundries and attempt to tell the rest of the world what it can and cannot have out on it's pages.

The US is horrible with this and that is not helped by other countries who run hollering for the US to 'do something' about purely internal matters within a country.

Just because you do not like the message does not mean you have the right to silence the messenger. I wish all governments would understand that and allow honest discourse about all subjects.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Information is as marketable as any currency on the market today. Trading information you want (data) for the information the company wants (personal, marketable data) is a logical extension of the old horse-trader ideal.

If people really wanted this to stop, all they would have to do is not divulge any personal information at all. That will not happen though, as people will think, this site wants my address, that site wants my age, the other site wants my gender, but it will not occur to the typical surfer that those sites are all on the same database and will compile an entire background, shopping history and link through-click and target them for what the companies believe they will want.

People, do not give out personal information on the 'net, in person, or anywhere else if you do not want it to become public information by default.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

From what little I've heard about actual facts in this case, it sounds like the whole RAMBUS fiasco is a pile of dung that is coming home to roost. It's a darn shame that those with the gold make the rules and can hire the lawyers who can show the rules do not apply to them.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Why don't we use freq hopping technology to transmit quite a bit? With Sincgars freqhopping a couple hundred times a second, the people on any of the fixed channels it's using have no idea the hoppers are using that freq. With a nearly unlimited number of frequencies to start on, using 100 freqs to hop for one channel and an almost unlimited salt, it would be a very, VERY long time before we ran out of possibilities before we ran out of broadcasters who wanted to put anything out there for the public.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

.jpg files with hundreds of byte text messages within them. Top Secret documents over the open internet tunnelled within normal connections over the 'net. I'm not sure this is so new or newsworthy as to warrant the title of news.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Did the aliens have the technology patented in the US? On Earth? Is the USAF using the technology on the planet of the aliens?

If the twain never meet, there is no juridiction for any court to find unlawful use. So there.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Let's just stick with George Carlin's 7 dirty words. I'm tired of "I cannot define pornography but I know it when I see it" from the Supreme Court's decision.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Between the military and NASA you also get things like velcro, the internet, microwaves, ever decreasing size/capacity ratios for storage, and a hundred other things that you probably use every day.

The military also does minor things like maintain your right to the freedom of speech to badmouth the military.

I'm not saying you should alter your speech, just that you might consider giving the whole picture instead of just inflammatory comments about the same people who fight for your right to utter inflammatory comments.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Whoops, how about civilian avionics (radios) that weigh about 5 lbs....

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Almost everything in the U.S. military is shielded. That's why avionics that civilian aircraft that weigh about 5 lbs tend to go somewhere near 20 lbs in a military aircraft. It's also why it costs a zillion times more.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

We've been using SimNet for years. Flying an OH-58D from Ft Bragg, inside a flight of six, none of whom are on the same installation. Airforce assets, ground units, etc all there and if you look around in your unit, you see them accurately and in position where they are supposed to be (if they are where they are supposed to be.)

I'm glad that they are actually allowing civilians to see some of this stuff. It's neat as all hell. You think that streaming media eats bandwidth? Try SimNet with a whole division.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

This may be expensive as hell, but all it does is proof of concept. Others will follow and when that happens it will become more 'normal' and more readily available to the common man and the common corporation.

Wonderful start, I wish they would look up the word teleportation, though.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

That is the responsible party. If you do not have root, you cannot institute most of the security measures and it shows that the ISP does not trust you enough to be responsible for your own box. If they do not give you root, there's not a darn thing you can do to patch anything without requesting their help to begin with.

On the other token, if YOU have root, you don't need to be a security professional to keep up with the patches and updates given out by the makers of the software. You just need to keep on top of the forums that are there for people to keep up with the security patches.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

But they are not looking for life currently, they are looking for historical signs. Heard something about if there's free hydrogen in the atmosphere or some compounds in the soil, that would lead to the assumption of water on the planet at one time.

I think that after it lands, that will be the more newsworthy day.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

We spend time here and on other forums like this with others that think exactly like us. That doesn't work and creates an attitude of 'see, they only care about their own solutions, not those of the company' etc.

Maybe more should get into mainstream commercials and advertising. SGI, IBM, and RedHat are the only ones I've seen in the mainstream.

Spend less time trying to convince those who are already here and more on showing the non-geeks the benefits.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Thank you. Got my FLA (four letter acronyms) mixed up there.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Let's see, Linus has a strong opinion of another kernel for an operating system, this is news? Or is this another "Slow news day so let's create something that can get the people riled enough to create news" type posting?

Are we going to see the counter point by Apple?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Does the DCMA negate this or does this override the DCMA?

I thought that it was part of that law to protect the corporation from harm such as law suits and protect EULAs even if the end user cannot read it before (s)he is bound by it.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

a small hovercraft...

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

How many Republicans who decry violence in video games will apply because it's a cool game.

Same idea, different group. How many Democrats who applauded Lieberman will sign up?

This is not flamebait, this is an honest question about the hypocracy in the US's political system.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

You got me all excited about an SR-71 "Blackbird" that was new and more improved (if that's possible) than the ones they retired a couple years ago.

Oh, it's just another computer :)

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page