Slashdot Mirror

Generation upload is what a group of corporations is trying to brand the youth generation of today. It's a take on the user-generated content of Web 2.0. Link. It's a kid phone. Just look at the Kin 1. Does it look like a grown-up's phone?

This was confirmed by a Washington State Patrol trooper in the Seattle PI: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/151729.asp

Seattle's red light cameras actually capture two images: one before you enter the intersection while the light is red, and one after you enter the intersection. To do this, the camera systems have to predict whether you will run the light or not. If you might, it will take a picture before you enter the intersection. This leads to many complaints about the cameras misfiring, but in fact, they are working just fine.

You are probably right that this isn't a patent troll case. An interesting thing not mentioned in the article is that it seems that Datel sued Microsoft first. I guess this is Microsoft's way of saying "don't sue us; we're bigger than you; due process will not apply here".

If you read statements she has made (in The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Stranger, Crosscut, etc.), Sen. Prentice comes across as a moron (IQ below 69).

I was in the U.S., but I don't remember any backlash against Arab-Americans.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/139077_911sikh11.html

Just because the media you watch or read didn't report on it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Tea party protests where 2,000 people show up get more attention than an anti-war rally in 2003 where 200,000 people showed up.

It seems a lot of people had that idea. The quarter ended this January, Microsoft dropped 4% (19.7% to 15.7%). This closely matches the 4.3% (from 2.7% to 7.1%) that Google gained with Android. Three more quarters of this trend before the W7 launch and they'll be entering a green field with nowhere to go but up. If progress is delayed at all (when have we ever seen that from the WiMo team?) they'll have the advantage of a whole world market where nobody remembers how much their mobile products suck. Maybe this is part of their evil plan to reboot their mobile brand.

"Is how we Linux hippies can somehow twist this story in a way that allows us to bash Microsoft. It doesn't matter how delusional the idea, how disconnected from reality, how devoid of fact or reason, WE MUST BASH MICROSOFT"

What's delusional about MS lying about the specs. The last time they lied to Intel regarding the Vista Capable campaign. I figure the 'Linux hippies' you refer to consists of no one but yourself. Now back to the sixties, dude ;)

Naah.. in- con- ceivable.

As someone else also mentioned, air travel requires fuels with high energy - currently only oil-based fuels meet the requirement.

Currently, yes, but the writing is on the wall and airliner producers are working on hydrogen-fueled jets. Hydrogen is, of course, just an energy storage medium, where source of said energy may be renewable as well.
"Airbus project envisions hydrogen-fueled jet"

Microsoft is based in Seattle. We tend to be quite liberal and supportive of civil rights out here. Hell, I had two jobs with two lesbian managers in a row -- in IT! How often does that happen?

Microsoft learned about this the hard way in 2005: Originally opposed to a gay rights bill in Washington state, they quickly changed position.

Said Balmer at the time:

"After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Ballmer wrote. Ballmer said he did not want to "rehash the events" that led to the company taking a position of neutrality. But he did say the company was implementing changes to make sure the mistakes were not repeated.

I read that as "our employees [probably smart, talented, and many quite senior in the company] threw a fucking fit over our ignorance."

True to their word, in 2009 Microsoft donated $100k to support partnership rights in Washington.

I agree with other commenters that this is a civil rights issue, and seriously doubt Microsoft will screw the pooch on gay rights ever again.

What the hell are you blatering on about, junior? Were you even in computing "back in the day"?!

It's widely known that Microsoft was notoriously slow on recognizing the importance of the internet.

Except the land is purposefully being allowed to be fallow to slow the erosion of top soil. Top soil is eroding 10 times faster than it's being replaced in the US right now, it replenishes very slowly, and when it's gone the land becomes desert. Modern agricultural practices are already depleting the land at rate that will leave the earth with massive famine and be massively inhospitable.

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/348200_dirt22.html?source=mypi

I lollled when I thought of Microsoft's having started offshoring back in 2004; the thought of Indian programmers writing code for their old colonial master's warships is...amusing.

Of course, I also find the thought of having blind faith in the golden handcuffs of capitalism to be amusing.

There's no doubt in my mind that an alt.space company could one day be as big/professional as Boeing et. al., maybe one that exists now, maybe one not even founded yet... All I'm saying is that they aren't now and if they want to go to MIT, let them pay their own way.

Ok, that sounds good. Let's keep in mind though that currently, the US government is something like half the global space market. That means some access to US government contracts sooner or later unless the commercial side of the market expands a lot.

If you happen to look at the history of those efforts, you'll see a lot of unprofessional and even incompetent behavior among the contractors (not just NASA and Congress). My view is that some of these players (particularly ATK Aerospace and Boeing) would have serious trouble competing for real space contracts.

Except that ATK and Boeing have been competing for and winning real space contracts for decades. That a contract failed to pan out doesn't make it 'not real'. You cannot legislate a program into success - we tried that with the Shuttle and look where it got us.

My point to bringing these two up was that they have notable failures and scandals in recent years. The Ares I failure is due in large part to the considerable limitations of ATK's solid rocket motor. As far as I can tell, the Ares program was designed to steer a lot of business to ATK which they desperately needed.

Boeing has screwed up Delta IV (to the point that they gamed a merger with Lockheed's Atlas V to form the United Launch Alliance), they got caught bribing US government officials to get a huge air tanker contract (and are now advertising to protest losing that contract), and they were way behind on the 787 (and losing considerable business in a market where they have a single competitor).

As I see it, these companies show signs of extraordinary weakness even though they're in oligopolies with comfortable profit margins. If they had to beat real competition, I don't think some of these companies would survive.

It seems like every time we come out with a revolutionary new design for military equipment, either Russia or China copies it. For examples, see the American X-29 and the Russian Su-47. Also, http://www.seattlepi.com/national/spy301.shtml is relevant to this concept.

If you spent 5 seconds googling rather than asking for a citation you would know that the individual was talking about this case: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/411845_rape04.html.

I didn't mod it funny.

Well considering the fact that MSFT spends over 5 billion a year on R&D, with very little to show for it in the way of actual products hitting shelves, it would be nice if they actually had something to show for all that cash spent.

I mean I can understand completely why MSFT shareholders aren't too happy with them right now. All that cash blown and the stock has pretty much been flatline for the better part of a decade while Apple and Google exploded. The last thing I remember coming out of MSFT R&D was that PC table (surface I believe its called) and I know it reminds me of something...hmmm....where did I see an idea like that? Oh yeah a Disney movie from 26 years ago.

Seriously, with 5 billion in cash a year, that's the best they can do? A PC table and a way to control your OnStar by flexing your wrists? At least if it has a medical use they can get something for it, but I doubt it will even make back 1/100th of what they've blown in R&D this year alone.

I've also found this to be a fascinating debate, full of lack of information and misinformation. It's been surprisingly hard to find a "satisfying level of truth". Most reports of the case seem to imply that the issue is simply Word's use of XML as a whole and that i4i is claiming to own the XML format. So, I actually read TFA. Then the actual TFA in the TFA. Then the actual Complaint in the TFA. Which includes the actual patent.

Now, after reading that, I felt I couldn't possibly be fully informed still, since the patent seems to be for the storing and processing of structure seperate from its content. A map of the structure points to the locations of the content. XML certainly doesn't work that way. There were hints about the little-used feature affected referred to as custom XML. I knew that couldn't truly be a generic sense of custom XML. All XML is custom. That's the whole point of XML.

So the feature in question is the attaching of XML Schema to a document. Now, to me that sounds suspiciously like XSLT, but I have to assume it's different in implementation. I assume the issue i4i has is with the implementation of the mapping of the "custom" XML schema elements to the content elements in the document.

Which I have to admit, might almost be valid. This does feel like a fairly broad patent to me, but IANAPL. I also wonder if there is truly prior art on this. While an obvious concept in retrospect, how many document format did seperate their formatting from their structure? The issue seems to clearly not be a simple matter of editing XML or other formats.

Patents will be the death of innovation if the system continues in this way, particularly if the US judgements are assessed at insane levels of cost. If Microsoft had known about this patent when starting the development they'd have bought the company for less than this judgement.

Uh, they did know: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/178682.asp

Back in 2001, two companies now locked in a nasty legal battle were working together to develop software for the U.S. government. Microsoft Corp. needed a third-party developer, i4i Inc., to incorporate custom XML functionality into Word.

Yes, but BLING! is now a household name for people too anally retentive to think of any product not Microsoft oriented. It is therefore, a name to be prized, and previous actions like this or this should tell you that Microsoft will go to great lengths to respect other people's intellectual property.

Which climate skeptics are on the payroll of "big oil"

You do realize that the American Petroleum Institute not only funds the AGW thinktanks, but Exxon-Mobil actually outright offered a prize for anyone who could get a paper published that defended their positions, right? If you want a specific example, Soon and Baluinas, 2003. Here's some of their background. Half the board of Climate Research resigned in protest after Soon and Baliunas's publication, by the way. So when you see hacked emails showing scientists dissing people like them, or McIntyre, or any of that ilk, realize that the scientists *really do* think that these people are putting out garbage and have vested agendas. It's just that when speaking publicly, they usually have more tact.

54.2% chance you will have to send it in for repair anyways.

Do you know why people are moving away from traditional media? Because it acts like it's better than we are. Blogging has become popular because it's there in plain english, the way we look at things -- and it's accessible and free. I can share it with my friends instantly -- unlike a newspaper which is physical and takes time.

Mostly true, but not entirely. The Times here is still a makeshift umbrella, but the PI went all online at least a year ago and it reaches a sufficient level of geekdom. Connects to Facebook, Twitter, various Blogs, etc. And has a fairly friendly and accessible layout - not to mention FREE.

Here, take a look

But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for black ink on my fingers leaving, have to fold it up at least 3 different ways a half dozen times reading, and it's now all over the sidewalk because the winds blowing - have it in my hands newspaper. Mostly because, you know, it rains a lot here in the NW and they make great disposable umbrellas! ;^)

Well looks like they are getting funding from some serious players:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/techchron/archives/180603.asp
http://blog.onlive.com/2009/09/29/onlive-closes-major-investment/
AT&T Media Holdings, Inc., Lauder Partners, Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital.

Um what, indeed.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/103213_taxstudy08.shtml

Sales taxes are regressive because there is a minimum amount of consumption everyone must do to live, and it affects a higher percentage of a poor person's income than a rich person's.

Consider: a person making $1000 a month who pays $100 in sales tax on groceries, clothes, and other living necessities versus a person making $8000 a month buying the same groceries and clothes.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/22433_chicago10.shtml Lots of reasons for the move, but tax breaks was a major consideration for Boeing deciding to move. Sure they still build planes in Seattle, but their corporation is now located in Chicago. No reason at all that Microsoft could not do the same. This article is trying to make something illegal that is clearly not.

> it does look like a whole lot like a Barrett .50 sniper rifle

Maybe if you look at it upside down with an astigmatism. But it is similar to the French GIAT FAMAS rifle or the canceled H&K XM8.

The Seattle area was also somewhat sensitized by a guy closed down I-5 last week after firing shots from "an AK-47-style rifle." I find it interesting that the normally anti evil assault weapons Seattle Times made the distinction that it was not an actual (i.e. full automatic capable) AK-47.

Of course, Seattle is not exactly 2nd Amendment friendly under the best of circumstances.

I think you'll find, if you read more than some trolling blog posts, that Microsoft intends for you to add stuff to Office documents, and also has a whole Office developer section for people to "use way more of their code", its perfectly ok if its offered to you as a feature of the product they want you to use.

Anyway, i4i had a separate product that, in this case, was taken by MS and included into Word documents. This article gives a better description of why everyone thinks MS is the thief.

Try... http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/176685.asp

"...water based car's..."

Like this?

Microsoft has put its Azure customers on notice that 'all applications and storage accounts in the 'USA - Northwest' region will need to move to another region in the next few months, or they will be deleted'. So much for not diverting you from your core duties). BTW, Microsoft seems to think it's entitled to a 100% sales tax exemption.

Well, after 2008, the year of the Windows.NET stock exchange, I think 2009 is already the year of the Linux stock exchange. At least it's clear now that people do get fired for buying Microsoft.

A lot of police departments want these new toys, and there are a lot of companies making these things. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are already used for border patrol. One of these border patrol UAVs (a Predator B) crashed in 2006. Safety concerns + excessive surveillance concerns = fun for the whole family.

I've been looking into this stuff because my hometown is trying to get permission for this too. The one my hometown is testing out is a helicopter equipped with a regular camera and an infrared camera. They can't fly it over populated areas yet.

Regulatory thing: The FAA's current view of UAVs is that they can't be used over populated areas. Period. BUT, you guys in Houston and Miami should probably look up and wave every now and then, because the Houston and Miami area police departments got clearance from the FAA to fly their UAVs over these urban areas. The FAA isn't planning on revising their policy on UAV use in civilian airspace until at least 2010, but Houston and Miami are basically test areas to help them figure out what sort of regulations would be needed. You guys feel safer yet?

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_fisher_plaza_fire.html?source=mypi

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009415646_webfisherplaza04.html

http://www.campaignmoney.com/microsoft.asp
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000115
http://blog.seattlepi.com/print.asp?entryID=136352 (this one only shows employee contributions, but it compares )

Microsoft contributes more to the Democrats than they do to the Republicans. Last year, it was nearly 3:1. OpenSecrets does show there was a time when Microsoft donated more to the Republicans, but there was never a time when Microsoft was both a top Republican contributor and gave very little money to the Democrats.

When I see this argument, I presume the mindset that produces it must be something along the lines of:

A. Microsoft is evil
B. Republicans are evil
_______________________________
C. Therefore, Microsoft is Republican

I'm pretty sure it's common to feed animal products (beef, chicken, pigs, etc) to other herbivores/omnivores (beef, chicken, pigs, etc). It can be a common ingredient in commercial feed. It's hypothesized to be one of the reasons for the increased incidence of salmonella, mad cow, e. coli, etc.

After a little Googling, the articles I can find are a few years old, and discuss pending legislation. That practice may have been outlawed by now. I'm pretty sure it was still in practice last year when the second season of This American Life was filmed. Here are some links: Seattle PI, Union of Concerned Scientists, some lobbying group, possibly for Islamic issues.

My solution was to move to an native American fishing village on tribal land and lease my land from the tribes. This is not your normal Indian reservation. We have our own broadband, water & sewer system, telco (360-716-NNNN), data services w/fiber at the curb (VZN also offers 3.5Mb/s DSL at my home), police, fire and clinics. We also have a 110 unit premium outlet mall, a WalMart, Home Depot and various chain eateries. For your gaming and relaxation enjoyment we have a 4-star resort and casino with the best food in the county (and rivals anything that Seattle has.)

It does help that the tribes have a nice bit of land on I-5 between Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA with 3 exits, and have made the most of it.

The laws here are interesting. We don't have to follow county or state law (although most of the traffic laws are equivalent.) US Federal laws apply but require the intervention of the BIA, FBI, and etc, and they have to go through the Tribal Police first.

And we can blow shit up when we want.

Now granted, if you are going to do something that costs the community, you'll get busted (don't do shit in a casino for fucks sake, they watch everyone all the time.) But if you live on a rez, there is a community communication system that beats anything that twit or myface called knowing your neighbors.

If you want security then live in a small village and get to know everyone, help your community and be a neighbor. That's the hardest thing for Big Bro to bust. Treat your IP access like you're doing it over ham radio, your phone like it's a CB, your mail like it's a pin-up board at your local market.

What the hell do you have to worry about your communications for anyway? Are you trying to overthrow your government or just BTing some US network show. This "I own it because it's part of my culture" shit is crap. They play it on the radio and TV so you'll hear the ads and buy shit. That's crap that someone you don't know made and some marketing dweeb broadcast over and over guessing that you'll take it to heart and make it your own. Just like an football club trying to fill the stands. You don't know these fucks, bugger them! Find REAL people in your community that have talent and support them.

Granted there is some music and shows that I like but I've found a service that provides it with time shifting (and commercial free or commerical skipping) for a price I'm willing to pay, and it keeps my bird happy.

Or, if you want a very recent game, look at The Sims 3 for the iPhone: http://blog.seattlepi.com/digitaljoystick/archives/171340.asp?from=blog_last3

Airbus has showed of the ability for the computers to override the pilot and count that as a plus.

there may be ways to override the regular autopilot but from my understanding, you can't override the computer's feedback systems. This means that if a sensor that caused the autopilot to malfunction is causing the computer systems to malfunction, only in one instance can you correct for it if the correction means the flight computers think your out of flight specs.

That's because they just took a MacBook and slapped a "Pro" sticker on it. It "only" costs $1200 because that's about how much it cost previously.

They did more than just that. There are now two 13" model lines. The regular one is the same as the old but it's price was dropped to $1000. The new 13" MacBook Pro line has a backlit keyboard and Firewire 800. And there are two different ones, one is 2.26GHz, 2GB RAM, 9400M graphics, 160GB hard drive, for $1,119; and the other is 2.53GHz, 4GB, 250GB hard drive model for $1,499.

Both lines were upgraded but the Pro line had more added.

And by "latest beefed up hardware", you mean a somewhat above-average PC

Yea, just like all those PCs that were billed as "Vista Ready" when they weren't, unless you wanted no access to some features. A number of lawsuits were filed over that and at least one gained class action status.

Leopard ran fine on old Macs though, it will run on a PowerPC G4.

With a definition of "run" like that, you have no authority whatsoever to be crticising Vista's performance.

Apple was not slapped with a class action lawsuit, so who has the authority to be criticizing, I certainly wouldn't say it's you.

Falcon

Why the fuck should I have to do the work when experts in the field such as Bruce Schneier has done it for me? of course I guess that Forbes magazine and Bruce Schneier are "less than half a chromosome closer to a chimpanzee" because they don't want a bloated piece of spying pig shit like Vista. Want some more Mr Troll? How about Shane O'Neil of CIO.com writing on PCWorld for the perspective of enterprise companies in all this. His answer: XP works and Vista don't.

I could go on all day troll. I could wallpaper this page with link after link after link, by heads of corporations, by security experts, and of course by the users that have been burnt. Vista is a POS. Accept it and quit sucking the Ballmer cock. If you want an Apple so bad buy one. Ballmer is just as shitty a CEO as the Pepsi guy was for Apple Inc, he just has more money he can piss down a rat hole before they fire his monkey ass. Hell even their own executives got burnt on the whole Vista capable fiasco. Vista is DOA and I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 is just as big a can of fail.

Maybe after the next one bombs we can get Steve Ballmer fired and bring in someone who actually will give the customers what they want instead of wanting to be a ripoff of Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. But enjoy your big can of Vista failure troll, suck it down baby! As soon as Win7 comes out they will abandon you just like they did the WinME users a decade ago. Meanwhile I'm making the cash by cranking out new XP builds as fast as I can get the parts. I guess all those customers who are handing me money hand over fist just can't see the Vista "advantage" of protected media either, huh?

Hate to tell you chief, but reproduction will be regulated. Not by us, but by physical laws.

We'll hit the wall on food before we have to start worrying about electricity: topsoil is a non-renewable resource, and we're squandering it .

(Some people worry about fresh water, but I don't: we can build as many desalination plants as we can power.)

Bing! from the company that brought squirting to the masses.

MS is swimming in money

That's relative. Their stock value, currently around $20, never again reached their peak of $60 after 2000.

Their cash reserves aren't what they used to be, they spent two thirds of it trying to shore up the stock price, without result.

Their revenues are dropping through the floor.

It's a huge company that won't disappear so soon, but if you pay $40 billion in dividends and still have so much problem to get the stock price back to 30% of the peak...

http://blog.seattlepi.com/energy/archives/113584.asp
That's 25000 Hp. and I think it only has 48 wheels. So your calculations must be wrong.

$25 billion seems like a lot, but it used to be more than that.

The important thing to note here is the trend, not the current value.

It's been difficult to really calculate such, especially compared to alternatives such as *direct* funding of technology research.

Direct funding of directionless research has a pretty terrible record by any metric you can think of. NASA spent about $25B total on the Apollo project, which yielded numerous useful spinoff technologies and companies, inspired countless numbers of engineering and science students, and put men on the moon. Microsoft spends roughly $6-$7B per year on their in-house research budget, which has yielded, well, let's see, Microsoft Bob(tm) and Songsmith.

Admittedly I'm comparing 1960s dollars with current dollars, but still... Bill, just give the money to NASA, for Chrissake.

Even when you're talking about pie-in-the-sky "pure research," people don't tend to appreciate the amount of tangible technology that comes out of those efforts. If you need to do some leading-edge photonic RF work, the papers you read are from NRAO. If you're working on next-gen MRI machines, you're probably interested in superconducting magnet tech developed for accelerators. There are any number of other cases where things you use every day came from applications you wouldn't have cared about at the time.

Isn't it amazing how some people act like water falls free from the sky.

Yeah--it's 'free' throughout most of the United States--but for some strange reason Washington State says it's illegal for you to collect rainwater falling from the sky.

Yeah, because there's no reason to worry about vegetables causing illnesses.