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It was all covered on Nova years ago.

To prove that you can take a look at http ://www.pbs.org/whatson/stations/calendar.html?date =2038-01-19&station=KHET which works right and shows the calendar for January 2038. Now compare it with the next day at http ://www.pbs.org/whatson/stations/calendar.html?date =2038-01-20&station=KHET which as expected shows December 1901!

But I do not care, in 2038 I will sure wear my wooden suit :-)

To prove that you can take a look at http ://www.pbs.org/whatson/stations/calendar.html?date =2038-01-19&station=KHET which works right and shows the calendar for January 2038. Now compare it with the next day at http ://www.pbs.org/whatson/stations/calendar.html?date =2038-01-20&station=KHET which as expected shows December 1901!

But I do not care, in 2038 I will sure wear my wooden suit :-)

PBS is doing a 25-hour live broadcast showing things in each time zone. Throughout the day that's what we'll be watching to see not only what happens, but what different events people have going on to celebrate.

PBS' website has information on their home page. Lots of neat things, sure looks more interesting that broadcast tv.

They're already in hour 7, so far, no Y2K glitches. I think we're fine.

I'm a longtime user of StreamBox/2Bsys products, and a beta tester for the newest version of StreamVCR.

StreamBox VCR, formerly called X-FileGet, downloads Real content using the proprietary PNM and PNM/G2 protocols, as well as the publicly-available RTSP and Windows Media protocols. It uses no Real code. StreamBox is not the only company to do this. Windows Media Player handles RealAudio streams and files, and Oracle is apparently reverse-engineering Real protocols and formats so they can take advantage of Real's installed base for THEIR media server.

StreamBox Ripper, formerly RA2Wav, uses Real DLLs to read RealAudio files, just like a couple WinAmp plugins and (I believe) Windows Media Player. It allows you to write the output to WAV, WMA or MP3, just as if you were using TotalRecorder or Virtual Audio Cable with RealPlayer.

It's not clear what legal ground Real has to stand on. The legality of "space-shifting" and "time-shifting" licensed content has been defended in court and AFAIK, the programmer didn't disassemble any Real code.

However, it looks like Real is approaching this as a format-control issue, arguing that somehow, software that converts their format to another is illegal. It looks like a questionable lawsuit against a company that can't afford lawyers, meant to set a precedent before Real goes up against Microsoft or Oracle.

To summarize:

1929: theory that early atmosphere had no oxygen
1952: theory refined to postulate components of early earth (stellar byproducts, mostly)
1953: Stanley Miller reproduced those initial conditions in a container, threw in some boiling water and zapped it with a million volts. After a one weeks, he had a bunch of different amino acids.

what Louis Rukeyser is going to say about this, he's usually pretty OPTIMISTIC.

A lot of monied people have tried M$ and found it wanting - they probably know there's GOT to be something better - and Linux CAN fill that order.

Chuck

1. It leaves Microsoft with an instant lead in products - MS can develop their own products against a new and different API, then release the API simultaniously with the product - everyone else is left to play catch-up (yes, this favours OSS over commercial software, as patches could be out in days, but many of MS's commercial competitors would take weeks or months to modify their product to handle the new APIs and file formats, and would probably want recompense for the effort.
2. It makes MS an instant "industry standard" and reduces everything else to "MS compatable". I don't *want* MS to set the standards for how everything works, I want them to suit the job and the world, not a marketing plan. If we are going to go the Open API route, it should be a standards group designing that API, not MS.

Hello:

I remember watching an episode of NOVA about time travel on PBS a bit ago. Stephen Hawking said on that program that time travel isn't really probable. He also said if it were possible: "how come there haven't been any time traveling vacationers from the future?" An interesting hyposthesis!


Rajiv Varma

Let me first make a summary of some of the facts known to me...

The Chernobyl plant (or Chornobyl as the Oekrainian people call it now), consisted out of 5 RBMK reactors..
The 1st reactor was brought back on line Oktober 1995 and the 4th this year, if I recall it right..

The Chernobyl plant is unique, because it was designed for two purposes:
1) Supplying power
2) Producing nucleair weapons.. This is also one of the main reasons, it lacks a containment structure.

During the construction of the plant, some engineers came to the believe, that the plant had structural design flaws in the cooling system and pleeded to halt the construction, these engineers where taken of the project and Russia made sure that the carrier ended as well..

The #4 reactor of the Chernobyl plant, exploded after series of human errors, when conducting a 'safety test'.

Before running the safety test, all three safety systems where disabled.

The test was performed to see, how long the reactor could hold out, when shutting it down and not generating power, without external power to the water cooling pumps & controls and without the backup power generators online.. Also, the emergency core cooling system was taken off-line..
The reactor was deliberaty put below a power output of 700MW, the strict minimum limit to garanty safe operations of all support systems and the reactor it self.. After a series of major human ignorance and errors that followed, mainly the work of Deputy chief engineer Dyatlov, who also lead the test, the reactor #4 finally exploded.
In the immidiate vicinity, there where about 135000 people, who where only evacuated days after the incident happend... It took around 8000-10000 lives of worksman, mostly soldiers (liquidators), to put out the fire and to seal of the reactor, by building 'the Sarcophagus'. (Almost) all people, who did the footage on the accident, by helicopter, died.
The radiation level in the surrounding environment, was much faster reduced, than scienctist would have expected, helped by a natural process called 'chitin'.
Envision how in the western world, these rescue workers would be dressed like and than look at the liquidators

Since 1996, a lot of modifications are done to the Chornobyl reactors, but the basic design, with it's flaws, wasn't changed, nor is the situation surrounding these reactors...
In 1997 Russia agreed to build more reactors, based on the RBMK models in Chornobyl..
In 1986, Russia could find 10.000 souls, who were send into their dead, to end the disaster..
In 1999, Ukrainian people know a lot more about radiation... Today, the area around Chernobyl is still inhabitat by Oekrainian people, who feel they are left alone by the government..
Unemployment is sky high, as you would expect, so no source of income and medical threatment is done under very bad conditions, by idealistic people who don't care about their own lives...

What if it would happend again now?
What if they decide to run Y2K 'tests'?

Check for more info these links: this and this
"The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety systems." Vitaly Sklyarov, Minister of Power for the Ukrainian SSR., February 1986

Anyway, here's a bunch of links within there:

Friedmann Universes: The three basic models of the universe that start off just after the big bang singularity.

No-Boundary Universe: Stephen Hawking's pet theory until at least '96. I don't know where he stands on it now.

An explanation of Space-Time: What this NYT article is saying is flat. Hmm... it's not that good.

Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose debated on the nature of Space-Time in '95.

Does that help?

Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

Anyway, here's a bunch of links within there:

Friedmann Universes: The three basic models of the universe that start off just after the big bang singularity.

No-Boundary Universe: Stephen Hawking's pet theory until at least '96. I don't know where he stands on it now.

An explanation of Space-Time: What this NYT article is saying is flat. Hmm... it's not that good.

Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose debated on the nature of Space-Time in '95.

Does that help?

Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

Anyway, here's a bunch of links within there:

Friedmann Universes: The three basic models of the universe that start off just after the big bang singularity.

No-Boundary Universe: Stephen Hawking's pet theory until at least '96. I don't know where he stands on it now.

An explanation of Space-Time: What this NYT article is saying is flat. Hmm... it's not that good.

Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose debated on the nature of Space-Time in '95.

Does that help?

Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

Anyway, here's a bunch of links within there:

Friedmann Universes: The three basic models of the universe that start off just after the big bang singularity.

No-Boundary Universe: Stephen Hawking's pet theory until at least '96. I don't know where he stands on it now.

An explanation of Space-Time: What this NYT article is saying is flat. Hmm... it's not that good.

Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose debated on the nature of Space-Time in '95.

Does that help?

Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

Forgot to add in a link.

Find some info on wormholes here.

Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

I have been told by an applied math geek friend of mine that STW is another one of those "it's all connected, maaaan..."-type theories along the line of "e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0", although a good deal messier. I've also been informed that STW was used heavily in Wiles' proof, not unlike a load-bearing block in Jenga.

(Never mind "First Post!" I hereby start the new tradition of "Most Links!" After all, it's more productive, and more importantly, it's all connected, maaaaaan....)

As was noted in The Economist (August 07th issue), and elsewhere, Microsoft has a great deal of undisclosed financial liability, including US$60 billion (yes, with a "B") worth of options debt to their employees that is coming due in the next few years. Were it not for the penchant of humans to live in denial for extended periods of time, the stock would be valued significantly lower, not higher.

Breaking up M$ might make them more valuable than they already are, by diluting the pryamid and allowing them to benefit from the "Baby Bell" phenominon, but it is unlikely that such benefits will come anywhere close to equalling the liability Microsoft has already taken on. In addition, such a breakup will not shield their "offspring" companies from lawsuits (both pending and yet to be filed), many of which, given the Findings of Fact, stand a good chance of going against Microsoft (or its predicessors).

Additional references here, here, and here.

I suppose it might work -- the real issue isn't "Prior Art" that we gripe about most (though this one seems reflective of it), its the issues of "Obvious", "Innovative", and the biggest issue of "Far Reaching".

Obviousness is one that is a hard call. Some individuals can call things "obvious" willingly, like Ted Nelson and Xanadu who "discovered" (not invented, and he'll stick to that) Hypertext. He definitely feels its an "obvious" thing, once you have screens and words.

Many things are "Obvious" in hindsight after they've been used for 3 years (before we found out somebody had filed a patent on them). "Plug-ins" and the patent that Bob Cringely wrote about are those kind. We'd been using plug ins that interpret languages for years before somebody got a patent on them.

Innovative is always an opinion, particular in its context. MS's use of "innovations" certainly isn't Slashdots...

Far Reaching is the other factor. Just because your technique solves a problem doesn't mean you have the patent on ALL techniques to solve a problem. This is the big issue the PTO needs to be redressed for. The chap who has the "Patent" on "on line shopping", the chap who has the "Patent" on "web-based shopping carts". That's the kind of general garbage that needs to be done away with.

Usually "Far Reaching" is just extending two "Obvious" things together to reach an "obvious" thing, then using legalize to make it sound "non-obvious". The shopping cart metafore is a big one. It takes "tracking a user" and "storing user data", both things done in EVERY web application, and adds a piece of vocabulary to make it sound "innovative and original", then extends that to cover ALL uses of things that match that vocabulary. Definitely the finest example of a piece of crap patent I've ever seen.

but of course, that's just my opinion, and it might not even be my intellectual property...

This, along with a story about a patent on Y2K 'windowing' I heard last night on NPR (which was also reported earlier here on Slashdot) has got me completely disgusted.

It's about time we get together as an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, and knock over and burn that damn patent office. Why hasn't there been any congressional lobbying or attention on this yet? (Because companies like being able to fence off almost brainlessly obvious solutions and hold other companies hostage? Hello Amazon? Hello Yahoo? Hello-- oh hell, just search for 'patent' on Slashdot!)

I'd rather see no patents whatsoever on anything than this garbage!

For those interested in millenialism and the millenium controversy, PBS had an interesting NewsHour interview with Stephen Jay Gould about two years ago. The interview discusses topics from his then-recent book, Questioning the Millennium, which has just been reissued. Here are links to it at Amazon and f atbrain.

Robert X Cringely says Why the Internet Exemption From Taxes is Not Entirely a Good Thing.

He warns that it will lead to include an "Internet transaction" in your supermarket buy.


--

Hmm.. the site on www.pbs.org that was posted says the show is playing at 9 pm ET, but my local station says 8 pm PT.

I guess that means everyone should check their local stations.

Hmm.. the site on www.pbs.org that was posted says the show is playing at 9 pm ET, but my local station says 8 pm PT.

I guess that means everyone should check their local stations.

Hmm.. the site on www.pbs.org that was posted says the show is playing at 9 pm ET, but my local station says 8 pm PT.

I guess that means everyone should check their local stations.

http://www.pbs.org/whatson/locallisting s.html

Very good points. You probably saw the piece written by Robert Cringley a little over a year ago titled Microsoft and Me: How Microsoft Has Already Been Crippled by the Department of Justice. It's an interesting foreshadowing of things to come and gives a little more insight into how that organization views the outside world. Even more interesting is the case he makes on how the outside world now perceives Microsoft as a result of the DoJ case: lots of bark, but not much bite. I'm sure people are going to make some hay of the comparison Cringley makes between Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and Bill Gates, none-the-less its an insightful analogy. The point is that whatever remedies Thomas Penfield Jackson decides to pursue he must somehow address the Microsoft culture itself which seems to have a personality and operating methodology of it's own beyond the persona of Bill Gates.

"Cyber-warfare" is hype run amok, a solution in search of a problem. There is absolutely no way in which this new buzzword redefines military operations. I'd be amazed if you can even get two "cyber-warfare experts" who can agree on what it means, much less what its alleged ramifications are.

Let's start with the least ridiculous definition: "cyber-warfare" as hacking into essential systems to pilfer critical data. How dumb do you have to be to connect systems with critical/classified data to the public Internet? The best defense is not encryption -- it's taking the box off the worldwide network! That's why US Dept. of Defense policy is to disconnect all classified systems from the Internet -- any gains you get from connectivity are more than outweighed by risks. Now, this isn't to say that you won't get lucky and find an important system that's connected externally (in fact, it looks like DoD may have been just this stupid), but counting on your enemy to be completely stupid does not a strategy make.

The next level of "cyber-warfare" is supposedly hacking to disable critical commercial systems, like computers controlling nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams. These may be less secure than government systems, but the irony is that the countries we're most likely to fight -- Iraq, North Korea, etc. -- are also the least likely to have sophisticated computers controlling these systems. They're much more analog than that. Sure, there are countries have these kinds of systems, but those countries -- England, France, Germany, Japan -- are the ones we're least likely to fight!

There's some history here that I think is pertinent. In the 1930s, the US was one of the few countries in the world that was developing a strategic bombing plan for the event of war with Germany. The Army Air Corps did extensive economic and sociological research and decided that the bombing plan should be centered around knocking out the German electric grid. The reason? Because the American electric grid was highly centralized and therefore vulnerable to air attack! It turned out, when war came, that the German system was nothing like ours; it was more decentralized and thus less vulnerable. But the point is that the planners had made the mistake of being trapped in their own experiences rather than looking hard at the enemy -- they were planning to war against themselves. That's behind the fallacy of cyber-warfare too: "cyber-warfare" is most useful against a highly networked, information-age economy -- in other words, against the U.S. In the wars we're likely to fight, though, cyber-warfare will be about as useful as lobbing spitballs. I just hope that nobody has to get killed before DoD figures that out.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz

All companies do this sort of thing. Every fourth quarter, the RBOC I contract at has a great number of annual charges come due, because in their effort to keep "shareholder value" high throughout the year, they put the charges off until 4Q. So every fourth quarter, they go through a panicky round of early retirements, project suspensions, raise postponements, and contractor layoffs. This last is part of the reason VBCs love contractors--they can drop them at a whim without calling it a layoff. MS's financial games are nothing new, to them or to business at large. A little while ago, they started counting their software products as an asset (which they had never done before), which meant that the bottom line on their financial report was higher than ever, and that's the only line the bozos at CNBC ever read on the air anyway. MS still has plenty of things they can do to keep looking insanely rich on the books. The problem, though, is that even dealing from the bottom of the deck, sooner or later you're going to run out of cards. Robert Cringely wrote in interesting article about this sort of thing. He quotes former MS CFO Frank Gaudette: "Watch for any changes in our accounting," said Gaudette. "If I need to, I can start depreciating the software and maintain earnings growth for years on flat revenue. Watch for the accounting changes, wait for the next uptick in the stock price, and then sell." Gaudette's advice is good about any company, but it's tricky to apply to tech companies, which have been cooking their books one way or another since their IPOs. Who knew that accounting held so many opportunities for creativity? And this "Investment Advisor"'s allegations are nothing new, either. Most likely, he's a shill for someone drumming up support for a class-action lawsuit. Back in the mid-1990s, Intel put up with this crap all the time--every quarter, this one particular lawyer would file a class-action lawsuit against Intel on behalf of its shareholders, alleging investor fraud, on the grounds that Intel only made seven and a half billion in profits that quarter instead of the projected seven and three-quarters billion. The whole tech-stock phenomenon is quite perverse--Amazon still sells fewer books than Barnes and Noble, and they're hemorrhaging money at a rate that would make Xerox go tits-up, yet they are worth more than the rest of the U.S. publishing industry combined. I have a nagging feeling that within two years this bubble is going to burst spectacularly, and Clinton's successor will be left holding the bag.

--

Sure, it's a Maxwell House ad, but I didn't use it in the the context of an advertisement for something. It was an incidental comment made by someone, and it happened to get captured as a very small part of a larger work.

Now, let's continue and suppose that the documentary is aired by PBS, and some lawyer from Kraft Foods saw it and considered taking action against PBS, or perhaps myself, as the producer of the work.

Now one might argue that this is very different, because it was aired on PBS one time and now it's over. OK, let's take it one step further and suppose that PBS liked this documentary so much that they decided to sell the video. There they go, blatantly using Maxwell House's slogan to sell their video, erroding the brand recognition that in which they have invested so much.

Is this the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Me too, and I see no difference between the two.

Along the same lines, if somebody out there is looking for a delicious and nutricious project, I'm sure you could find a slogan or something in CNN's transcript archives, which would be pretty much the EXACT same thing as we're talking about in this story.

BTW, I suppose my using the actual slogan in this posting is just as serious an infraction, so I'm sure Kraft will be jumping on Rob and the Boys real soon.

That's my take,
RP

Sure, it's a Maxwell House ad, but I didn't use it in the the context of an advertisement for something. It was an incidental comment made by someone, and it happened to get captured as a very small part of a larger work.

Now, let's continue and suppose that the documentary is aired by PBS, and some lawyer from Kraft Foods saw it and considered taking action against PBS, or perhaps myself, as the producer of the work.

Now one might argue that this is very different, because it was aired on PBS one time and now it's over. OK, let's take it one step further and suppose that PBS liked this documentary so much that they decided to sell the video. There they go, blatantly using Maxwell House's slogan to sell their video, erroding the brand recognition that in which they have invested so much.

Is this the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Me too, and I see no difference between the two.

Along the same lines, if somebody out there is looking for a delicious and nutricious project, I'm sure you could find a slogan or something in CNN's transcript archives, which would be pretty much the EXACT same thing as we're talking about in this story.

BTW, I suppose my using the actual slogan in this posting is just as serious an infraction, so I'm sure Kraft will be jumping on Rob and the Boys real soon.

That's my take,
RP

Sure, it's a Maxwell House ad, but I didn't use it in the the context of an advertisement for something. It was an incidental comment made by someone, and it happened to get captured as a very small part of a larger work.

Now, let's continue and suppose that the documentary is aired by PBS, and some lawyer from Kraft Foods saw it and considered taking action against PBS, or perhaps myself, as the producer of the work.

Now one might argue that this is very different, because it was aired on PBS one time and now it's over. OK, let's take it one step further and suppose that PBS liked this documentary so much that they decided to sell the video. There they go, blatantly using Maxwell House's slogan to sell their video, erroding the brand recognition that in which they have invested so much.

Is this the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Me too, and I see no difference between the two.

Along the same lines, if somebody out there is looking for a delicious and nutricious project, I'm sure you could find a slogan or something in CNN's transcript archives, which would be pretty much the EXACT same thing as we're talking about in this story.

BTW, I suppose my using the actual slogan in this posting is just as serious an infraction, so I'm sure Kraft will be jumping on Rob and the Boys real soon.

That's my take,
RP

Sure, it's a Maxwell House ad, but I didn't use it in the the context of an advertisement for something. It was an incidental comment made by someone, and it happened to get captured as a very small part of a larger work.

Now, let's continue and suppose that the documentary is aired by PBS, and some lawyer from Kraft Foods saw it and considered taking action against PBS, or perhaps myself, as the producer of the work.

Now one might argue that this is very different, because it was aired on PBS one time and now it's over. OK, let's take it one step further and suppose that PBS liked this documentary so much that they decided to sell the video. There they go, blatantly using Maxwell House's slogan to sell their video, erroding the brand recognition that in which they have invested so much.

Is this the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Me too, and I see no difference between the two.

Along the same lines, if somebody out there is looking for a delicious and nutricious project, I'm sure you could find a slogan or something in CNN's transcript archives, which would be pretty much the EXACT same thing as we're talking about in this story.

BTW, I suppose my using the actual slogan in this posting is just as serious an infraction, so I'm sure Kraft will be jumping on Rob and the Boys real soon.

That's my take,
RP

This sounds like an idea that Robert X. Cringely talked about in his January 1999 column. He later admitted that the idea was inspired by the awesome rendering power of the Sony Playstation 2, which he got a sneak preview of.

This sounds like an idea that Robert X. Cringely talked about in his January 1999 column. He later admitted that the idea was inspired by the awesome rendering power of the Sony Playstation 2, which he got a sneak preview of.

Other species of birds found on the islands exhibit great changes among their populations over periods as short as a few years. I wish I could find a reference to research done on this (I first heard of it from this month's Scientific American Frontiers). The short of it that variances in food supplies (seeds) over just a few years directly affects the overall appearance (physical size) of future generations of the birds. Smaller birds have less body to fuel, require fewer seeds to feed themselves, and possess beaks more adapted to cracking open their small food. Larger birds, when all available food is small seeds, can't eat enough to stay alive. The larger of the species die out, the smaller reproduce, and the physical properties of the smaller population are passed on to the following generation. Over periods of just 3 or 4 years, the populations of this island physically change to adapt to changes in their environment. The average bird becomes smaller. In food surplus (when larger, more varied foods are available), the opposite happens.

If you're up for a good laugh, visit Creation Research Society, a bunch of "scientists" out to prove that Creation is right. They have an scanning electron microscope, so I guess it's just a matter of time before they re-publish the Bible and prove science wrong, right?

--

Looks like Cringely was wrong again. It seems that the popular business model coming from the valley is (frighteningly) starting to model that one company from up the coast. If you can't beat them, buy them. If you can't buy them, merge and rake in the dough, at the expense of your customers.

Let's just hope it's a trend that doesn't continue.

Just a clarification. It was not so much the look and feel of the OS, as it was the technologies behind that look and feel. If you look at the Macintosh Toolbox API and the Windows API, there are a lot of similarities, including the idea of Regions (invented by Jeff Raskin for the original Mac OS) that allow windows to be updated incrementally.

If you saw Pirates of Silicon Valley, the general story was pretty much represented the way it actually happened, although Robert X. Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds has a much better account of what happened. Also check out the Nerds Q&A section for some more info., including a commnet by Jeff Raskin himself.

Click here for the September 9th Cringley article

... at http://pbs.org/cringely

Even if they can't claim the computer that way, they can certainly claim the two years of $20/month "owed" them as accounts receivable, which are an asset which can be borrowed against. And if you cancel your ISP contract early, they can count the remaining months' payments (and the remaining depreciation on the PC, if they can) as a loss!

The accounting can get incredibly more complex. See Cringley's Cooking the Books article for an example. In another article, he explains how even without the creative acounting, this can be a sweet deal: "magazine and newspaper publishers are generally willing to spend up to the entire cost of the subscription to get or retain a good subscriber. If the subscription costs $20 per year, the publisher is probably willing to spend that whole $20 on ads and nagging letters. With this in mind, $400 for $720 in Internet subscription revenue isn't a bad deal at all." If they're left with $320, all they have to do to stay ahead of the game is spend less than $8.89 per month per subscriber, which they can do simply by

• assigning their equipment costs to a balloon payment due in three years, interest free because Cisco really wants to have the sale of all those routers show up on this year's report, and
• replacing your support desk with a recorded message that says, "Dude, we're like, busy? So can you like, hold?"

Accounting is a bogglingly complex shell game designed to let you keep the pea in your coat pocket while the IRS keeps pointing at the board and saying, "it's under that one!"

--

Even if they can't claim the computer that way, they can certainly claim the two years of $20/month "owed" them as accounts receivable, which are an asset which can be borrowed against. And if you cancel your ISP contract early, they can count the remaining months' payments (and the remaining depreciation on the PC, if they can) as a loss!

The accounting can get incredibly more complex. See Cringley's Cooking the Books article for an example. In another article, he explains how even without the creative acounting, this can be a sweet deal: "magazine and newspaper publishers are generally willing to spend up to the entire cost of the subscription to get or retain a good subscriber. If the subscription costs $20 per year, the publisher is probably willing to spend that whole $20 on ads and nagging letters. With this in mind, $400 for $720 in Internet subscription revenue isn't a bad deal at all." If they're left with $320, all they have to do to stay ahead of the game is spend less than $8.89 per month per subscriber, which they can do simply by

• assigning their equipment costs to a balloon payment due in three years, interest free because Cisco really wants to have the sale of all those routers show up on this year's report, and
• replacing your support desk with a recorded message that says, "Dude, we're like, busy? So can you like, hold?"

Accounting is a bogglingly complex shell game designed to let you keep the pea in your coat pocket while the IRS keeps pointing at the board and saying, "it's under that one!"

--

The other cool think I learned is that BSE isn't a virus, it's a funky self-replicating protien. Yes, self replication without DNA. Totally unlike any other communicable disease...

Here's the link. It's worth your time

Click me

moo.

- Digger

People: marijuana kills you.

Please back this statement up with facts. Cigarette smoking kills about half a million people annually, while according to this PBS "FrontLine" report there were "...too few deaths to meaningfully study the other main hypothesis, that marijuana use would be associated with increased respiratory disease mortality." and "...relatively few adverse clinical health effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans."[references available at PBS site] In fact, Marijuana has no known LD 50, that is lethal dose in 50% of cases, not because data on health affects is lacking, but because no report has ever been filed of a death from Marijuana overdose. In fact, the only animal safety studies on Marijuana use ever completed killed vervet monkeys by asphyxiation from carbon dioxide poisoning, not from a drug overdose; showing that THC, while showing high efficacy, is one of the safest drugs known to man. It's safer than aspirin, buddy.

At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.

The psychological and brain physiological effects of Marijuana use simply aren't well known in the United States because the FDA has repeatedly refused to allow human studies. They won't even allow studies which purport to give marijuana to test subjects, when they are really only giving a placebo. However, anecdotal evidence from the lack of emergency room visits due to marijuana intoxication, compared to alcohol, cocaine, and heroin overdoses are telling. As the second most popular recreational drug in America, it causes fewer emergency room visits than all other drugs combined. Stick that in your pipe and smoke.

Marijuana use is at least as old as alcohol consumption, going back many thousands of years. And it's noted that today a large segment of society smokes pot without anywhere near the same level of ill health affects as alcohol. This is not to say that smoking pot is good for you in general, just that in comparison to alcohol, it's far safer.

I've seen people die because of marijuana. Either indirectly, because they were dumb enough to operate heavy machinery (namely cars and motorcycles) under the influence.

No doubt, anyone operating heavy machinery under the influence of any drug (even many prescribed medications) run risks associated with cognitive impairment. No one should drive a car while taking oxycodone, alcohol, or marijuana. Period.

Or directly, because they had really low blood preassure, and the first joint they tried made their blood preassure drop really low. There were a few people there, all of which, except for me, were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they all start giggling. "She fell asleep!". Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt.

This anecdote doesn't back your statement up. Sorry.

I don't see many folks bringing up hemp as an industrial resource, nor do I see many folks pointing to it's use as a medicine for the terminally ill. I've seen Marijuana work wonders for people dying of AIDS and know one person who swears it's what got him through Chemo-therapy alive. Yet our government continues it's war on citizens as though we can't manage our own bodies and personal lives without government interference. I have no problem with obeying traffic laws which state I must drive sober, but when our government puts good people away for long prison sentences simply because they were trying to live through a terminal illness, we have a serious problem with a political institution way out of touch with it's citizenry.

I support legalizing drugs, and believe that it ought to be up to the individual how he/she decides to live his/her life. Laws and the police should protect citizens from violent crime and fraud, not self abuse and self destruction; that's a job for psychiatrists and clergy.

People: marijuana kills you.

Please back this statement up with facts. Cigarette smoking kills about half a million people annually, while according to this PBS "FrontLine" report there were "...too few deaths to meaningfully study the other main hypothesis, that marijuana use would be associated with increased respiratory disease mortality." and "...relatively few adverse clinical health effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans."[references available at PBS site] In fact, Marijuana has no known LD 50, that is lethal dose in 50% of cases, not because data on health affects is lacking, but because no report has ever been filed of a death from Marijuana overdose. In fact, the only animal safety studies on Marijuana use ever completed killed vervet monkeys by asphyxiation from carbon dioxide poisoning, not from a drug overdose; showing that THC, while showing high efficacy, is one of the safest drugs known to man. It's safer than aspirin, buddy.

At best, you're slowly turning your brain into mush.

The psychological and brain physiological effects of Marijuana use simply aren't well known in the United States because the FDA has repeatedly refused to allow human studies. They won't even allow studies which purport to give marijuana to test subjects, when they are really only giving a placebo. However, anecdotal evidence from the lack of emergency room visits due to marijuana intoxication, compared to alcohol, cocaine, and heroin overdoses are telling. As the second most popular recreational drug in America, it causes fewer emergency room visits than all other drugs combined. Stick that in your pipe and smoke.

Marijuana use is at least as old as alcohol consumption, going back many thousands of years. And it's noted that today a large segment of society smokes pot without anywhere near the same level of ill health affects as alcohol. This is not to say that smoking pot is good for you in general, just that in comparison to alcohol, it's far safer.

I've seen people die because of marijuana. Either indirectly, because they were dumb enough to operate heavy machinery (namely cars and motorcycles) under the influence.

No doubt, anyone operating heavy machinery under the influence of any drug (even many prescribed medications) run risks associated with cognitive impairment. No one should drive a car while taking oxycodone, alcohol, or marijuana. Period.

Or directly, because they had really low blood preassure, and the first joint they tried made their blood preassure drop really low. There were a few people there, all of which, except for me, were stoned. I go "Hey, where's Tracy?" and they all start giggling. "She fell asleep!". Well, she didn't, she fainted and would have died if I haden't made her eat a whole bunch of cofee and salt.

This anecdote doesn't back your statement up. Sorry.

I don't see many folks bringing up hemp as an industrial resource, nor do I see many folks pointing to it's use as a medicine for the terminally ill. I've seen Marijuana work wonders for people dying of AIDS and know one person who swears it's what got him through Chemo-therapy alive. Yet our government continues it's war on citizens as though we can't manage our own bodies and personal lives without government interference. I have no problem with obeying traffic laws which state I must drive sober, but when our government puts good people away for long prison sentences simply because they were trying to live through a terminal illness, we have a serious problem with a political institution way out of touch with it's citizenry.

I support legalizing drugs, and believe that it ought to be up to the individual how he/she decides to live his/her life. Laws and the police should protect citizens from violent crime and fraud, not self abuse and self destruction; that's a job for psychiatrists and clergy.

Last April 1 Cringely had some interesting remarks about this thing's future.

Yes, exactly. According to "Triumph of the Nerds", Compaq did RE the BIOS.



pbs transcript


"In Compaq's case, it took l5 senior programmers several months and cost $1 million to do the reverse engineering. In November 1982, Rod Canion unveiled the result."

Rob, your moderators are out of control. You better rein them in before Slashdot becomes a meeting place for Barney and Tinky Winky.

Daniel

Too many X-Files watchers. Why do people assume conspiracy when stupidity fits the bill (or should I say Bill :) just as well.

From (the real) Robert X. Cringely, 8Apr99:

In years past, the way to get people to buy new versions was by adding features . . . But in time, this strategy failed because new features became harder to think of and, more importantly, because magazines and consumers both began to complain about bloated software. Enter a new and improved strategy -- file format changes. An associate sends you an e-mail message with an attached word processor file. But your copy of Microsoft Word won't open the file. This is because your associate is using Word 2000 and you are using Word 98. It takes awhile to figure this out, of course, but eventually you learn that there are two solutions to this problem: 1) your associate can send you a new version of the file saved in Word 98 format, and; 2) you can buy an upgrade to Word 2000. Eventually, you'll be forced to buy the upgrade, just because the problem will crop up again and again, and sometimes it won't seem proper to go back to the sender and ask for a new version. So you upgrade, spend time and money to gain a few new features you don't explore and never use. One question that lies unanswered, of course, is why Microsoft felt the need to change file formats at all? Why to get you to buy the damned upgrade, of course! And most of the revenue Microsoft gains from those otherwise unnecessary upgrades can be counted as a cost to consumers. Pay attention, Department of Justice.

Can anyone point me to a document signed by Chairman Bill that says "Note to self: Break Office 95 file format."? . . .

No, you would have to subpoena MS to get that. But look at this article about MS's recent earnings. They make a ton of money off of Office. Do you think they want this revenue stream to dry up?

Is it such a stretch that some PHB in Redmond told the Office95 team to do X, and he or she was out playing golf when the team decided to fix it in Office97?

Yes

Of course not. It has to be a global conspiracy that involves those at the highest levels, working to enslave us all.

Not a conspiracy. Just business in a monopoly market. If MS cared about protecting its customer's investment in software, it would attempt to keep file formats in at least some of its office programs the same. But they changed the file format for every single program! And, they did not create office97 to office95 converters until they got massive complaints. Again, if they cared, they would have created these from the start.