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This link SF Chronicle: Workers Take In Stride has an image of several Bay Area Microsoft employees sitting round an ...

...Apple Macintosh Powerbook!

:-)

DoubleClick is evil, yeah, okay. But they have an opt out. Do any other ad services who use this method (read: CNet) have an opt out? If not, then why would CNet being able to sue DoubleClick be a good thing? Wouldn't we want DoubleClick, who we KNOW we can opt out of the invasive behaviour, to be in control, if someone has to be? Thoughts?

one of the best summations of myself I've seen lately

Another firm, Celestis has a plan to send a portion of your cremated remains to the moon. It will cost about $12,000 to have 7 ounces of ash (about 1/16 of normal human remains) sent up in a lipstick size urn.

Here are some press articles about the plan:
AP, BBC, Reuters SF Chronicle

You are completely right.

And Apple shines. The 450 MHz PowerPC G4 beats out both Intel's and AMD's 1 GHz offerings using a true test of processing power, Photoshop.

You can read about it here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2000/04/17/BU1016CH.DTL

That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.

I've heard of this before. Are you referring to the "vector processing unit" or Velocity Engine? For those of you who haven't seen the benchmarks, here is a link to an article with a few benchmarks.

The only thing I don't like about this is the fact that in order to beat the PIII's, a special Photoshop plugin is required to make use of the Velocity Engine.

What does this mean? Quite simply, an application must specifically be written (or re-written) to take advantage of the Velocity Engine. I'm not saying this is unfair, or lying or a half truth or anything like that since Intel has MMX, but I feel it's a somewhat skewed view of things.

Many video cards are like this as well. I remember reading an interview with one of the programmers at iD (Gremme I beleive) where he stated the largest problem with game performance is having to write code that works with all sorts of video cards. Many individual cards such as 3Dfx have propritary APIs such as Glide that gives a great performance boost, but obviously Glide apps will only run on 3Dfx cards (wrappers non-withstanding).

Thus, I have nothing against Macs (hey, progress is progress, and people everyone likes or hates things for his or her own reasons), however I don't think that just Photoshop benchmarks with a plugin which makes use of a Mac specific co-processor tell the whole story.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2000/04/17/BU1016CH.DTL "Power Mac Bests the Gigahertz PCs"
Of course this is Photoshop-specific; Microsoft Orifice will always run faster on Microsoft operating systems, because Microsoft wants it that way. I couldn't point you to a good thorough benchmark that's cross-platform, sorry.

There are a couple of quotes from my boss here at UCSF. And a bit of info on the computers used (to run the gene finding programs on the public databases): 9 million dollars worth of Sun workstations. Apparently Sun was upset about not being the . in .com anymore and at least wanted to beat Compaq and Dell (whose computers are used at Celera) at something.

JMC

Rumors of Alexey Pajitnov's death have been greatly over-stated.
(It wasn't him, it was a business associate.)

Pushed past the brink: Business pressures led Palo Alto exec to kill wife, son and self

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ex aminer/archive/1998/09/24/NEWS7742.dtl

WHILE HE WRESTLED with the financial difficulties of his San Francisco-based software company, Vladimir Pokhilko watched from the sidelines as business associates and friends readied the lucrative relaunch of Tetris, the world's most popular video game.

Apparently pushed to the edge, Pokhilko - president of AnimaTek, a San Francisco-based software design company - brutally murdered his 39-year-old wife, Elena Fedotova, and their 12-year-old son, Peter Pokhilko, before killing himself, police said Wednesday.

A business associate said Pokhilko had been wrestling with company problems brought on, in part, by the economic upheaval in Russia, where 70 of AnimaTek's 82 employees work.

Adding to those pressures, said Henk Rogers, who helped found AnimaTek in 1988, was a push to get more financing to create software that would yield "Hollywood-type" computer effects.

"We were in the middle of raising money," said Rogers. "It was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that we couldn't see past the end of."

But sometime Monday night, in the family's home on the 400 block of Ferne Avenue in southern Palo Alto, Pokhilko killed his family and then himself, police believe. Pokhilko hit Fedotova, a popular yoga instructor, and Peter, a seventh-grader, with a hammer, and repeatedly stabbed them with a hunting knife, apparently as they lay sleeping.

Then he stabbed himself once in the throat with the knife, police said.

"It's unfathomable that someone would do this to themselves and a child," said Palo Alto police spokeswoman Tami Gage.

A close family friend called police at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, after he arrived at the family home, having failed in repeated attempts to reach the family by phone.

The pajama-clad bodies of Fedotova and Peter were found in their beds by police. There was no sign of a struggle, indicating they may have been sleeping when they were attacked.

Pokhilko's body was found in Peter's room, with the hunting knife in his hand, police said.

Along with the knife, police recovered the hammer believed to have been used in the attacks, and they found a note. Investigators would not release its contents.

"Not a suicide note'

"It is not a suicide note," Gage said. "We don't even know who wrote the note or how significant it might be."

Wednesday, the community was reeling from the horrific incident.

Flags at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, where Peter was a student, flew at half-staff. And during the day, about 40 of his classmates placed a makeshift memorial of poster board in front of the family house. The poster board carried messages such as "In loving memory of Peter" and was covered with signatures of classmates and teachers.

Meanwhile, more was learned about Pokhilko, 43, whose firm, AnimaTek, emerged from a partnership formed in Moscow more than a decade ago with Rogers and Russian computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov, who invented the video game Tetris in 1985.

Pajitnov based Tetris, which entails lining up stacks of blocks as they drop to the bottom of a computer screen, on an ancient Roman puzzle called Pentamino.

Pokhilko, a Russian clinical psychologist and a longtime friend of Pajitnov's, had been experimenting with using puzzles as psychological tests when Pajitnov first showed him his invention, said Rogers.

Mass appeal of puzzle

Pokhilko immediately saw the mass appeal of the puzzle and convinced Pajitnov it would make a great computer game. But in 1986, before the game was published, Soviet authorities demanded that Pajitnov sign over all rights to the game.

Later, Pokhilko and Pajitnov teamed to create other digital diversions, including El-Fish, a virtual aquarium.

In a 1996 Examiner interview, Pajitnov said he had acquiesced to the Soviet demand to sign over the rights of Tetris because he feared reprisals.

"I would have been in prison for sure had I gone directly to Nintendo," Pajitnov said. "I would have had to be a dissident and possibly be cheated for everything anyway. So it wasn't worth it."

During the 10 years the Soviet government brokered deals with Nintendo, Atari and other video-game makers, Pajitnov lost an estimated $40million in royalties.

One of those who brokered the largest license agreement was Rogers, whose Japan-based Bullet Proof Software locked in the rights to sell Tetris to its largest market, the hand-held gaming-device industry.

"That was the biggest market for Tetris," Rogers said. "That's what made the game huge."

Rights revert to inventor

In 1996, the Soviet restrictions expired and Tetris rights reverted to inventor Pajitnov, who, at Roger's urging, had immigrated to the United States five years earlier with Pokhilko.

Rogers had helped the pair open AnimaTek International Inc., a software development company creating computer-generated terrains and characters for the gaming industry. Pokhilko became president of the company. Rogers was the chairman and largest stockholder.

But two years ago, when the Soviet rights to Tetris expired, Rogers said, he formed the Tetris Co., which bought the rights to the game from Pajitnov, leaving Pokhilko out of the loop.

Rogers also launched Blue Planet Software, which he said was to publish the next-generation Tetris computer games, including versions that would allow players to conduct Tetris matches over the Internet.

The new version is expected to be a big hit.

"There's a lot of anticipation around (the new Tetris)," said Cindy Blair, publisher of the San Francisco-based Game Developer magazine. "It's huge. It's one of the biggest games, ever."


Btw, you can download the original tetris.exe.

For more some background read The Tetris saga.

this morning on the front page of the business section was this article, detailing how Napster and GNUtella are outstripping the music and movie industries' abilities to stop people from sharing content. It also talks about diVX (not the defunct DVD player) which appears to encode a VCD from the contents of a DVD.

I got it here.

Perhaps my source is wrong? By the time I'd read this article, I'd forgotten the detail of the Slashdot source, so you're right, maybe I'm in the dark. It is odd to see the two articles contradicting each other though. Maybe he's just sueing everyone in sight.

yeah but there's a difference that the .marketing dweebs aren't just moving in, they're displacing those who were here by driving rents through the roof, doubling in the past two years and san francisco wasn't cheap to begin with. Every week it seems theres another story about some little non-profit going under or moving out of the city (if they can) as they can't afford their rent doubling. This week it's cartoon art museum (which was I think the only museum dedicated to cartooning) next week it's be somebody else.
Here is a nice story from sf on the dot.whatevers impact in SOMA.

I think you're missing the point. This is the first article, out of hundreds I've seen recently on the patent problem, that actually addresses the "real problem", which IS the PTO. You can't blame corporations for greed, or for taking advantage of whatever corruption they can find. One can even argue that they're required to do so by law - officers of publicly traded corporations must operate with the best interests of their stockholders in mind.

Try this thought experiment: if no law enforcement agency in the country arrested or prosecuted anyone for murder, would you say that "the real problem is all these murderers"?? Or would you say the real problem is that the government is not doing its job?? It would be the latter of course, and it's the same with patents.

It's ironic that the patent system has become so corrupted that it has exactly the opposite of its intended effect. Not only is the inventor no longer protected by the system, she has actually become a victim of it, by being forced to defend her true innovation from the feeding frenzy of IP lawyers and their spurious patents. Open source inventors are especially vulnerable, because participating in the patent process in any way will cost you six or seven figures, which open source developers rarely have. This is why Linux IPOs are a good thing - so companies like Red Hat and VA Linux can hire patent attorneys to defend open source when necessary. OTOH, they also present a target for patent sharks to attack. One of the best defenses against a patent lawsuit is not having any money!

Of course, the real inventors these days have all signed over their entire brains to the companies they work for... but once in a rare while, they are actually rewarded for their effort. Usually not though, especially in Silicon Valley, where the vulture capitalists and the lawyers have perfected the art of the screw. The SF Chronicle ran a pretty good series on that topic recently.

• Sprint says that they'll stop doing this.
  
• AT&T says that they give user's phone numbers out, too. They're not especially interested in changing this.
  
• Sprint claims that websites knowing your phone number "was 'a nonissue' in focus groups."
  

• Sprint says that they'll stop doing this.
  
• AT&T says that they give user's phone numbers out, too. They're not especially interested in changing this.
  
• Sprint claims that websites knowing your phone number "was 'a nonissue' in focus groups."
  

AT&T declined to say whether it automatically gives out customers' phone numbers to the Web sites they browse. Spokesman Ken Woo would only say that ``it's not an issue'' because the company hasn't received any complaints.

This is a small part of this article, which went up Tuesday March 7, 2000. It's not an issue because they haven't recieved any complaints.

Hmmm...Maybe the reason for this could be that the telephone owners don't know that its going on!! I doubt the phone flashes a little message that says, "I'm about to send your phone number to this web site. Do you wish to continue?". Also, this is relatively new news to most people.

There's a much longer article on this here.
-------------------

The San Fransisco Chronicle has an article, the paper itself is located at www.lngs.infn.it.

Here's a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle obit (near the bottom):

She was married and divorced six times -- to ... and lawyer Lewis W. Boies Jr

Could this lawyer be any relation to the Boies hired by the DoJ who did such a wonderful job against M$?

And moderators -- lighten up! laugh, it's funny!

:-) :-) :-)

--

Oh, sure, my submission about the passing of Ms. Lamarr gets rejected. Not that I'm bitter, mind you...

Anyway, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about her passing, inclding some nic e photos of her. They also had an overview of her spread spectrum invention.

Hedy was also honored by the EFF with a Pioneer Award in 1997 for her spread spectrum work.

Schwab

Oh, sure, my submission about the passing of Ms. Lamarr gets rejected. Not that I'm bitter, mind you...

Anyway, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about her passing, inclding some nic e photos of her. They also had an overview of her spread spectrum invention.

Hedy was also honored by the EFF with a Pioneer Award in 1997 for her spread spectrum work.

Schwab

Oh, sure, my submission about the passing of Ms. Lamarr gets rejected. Not that I'm bitter, mind you...

Anyway, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about her passing, inclding some nic e photos of her. They also had an overview of her spread spectrum invention.

Hedy was also honored by the EFF with a Pioneer Award in 1997 for her spread spectrum work.

Schwab

I think this article might sum things up better than Katz, without the political overtones.

Ironically, I found this article today that discusses Java from a, uhm, different perspective ;)

How about this one this one where santa is taken away by security guards - although I can't say I blame him - I think the mom was evil ....

I'm pretty sure that those fortunes come from Zippy the Pinhead.

#ifndef disclaimer
I'm not humor impaired, I realize that Signal 11 doesn't actually claim to write those fortunes, I'm just trying to make sure that everyone enjoys the wit and surrealism that is Zippy.
#endif

Try this

-----

Not much incentive here to obey the law, is there?

Check out this article on why MS almost certainly did break the law, and not the one everyone's arguing about.

A similar story about John Paul Stapp who died yesterday. He held the unofficial land speed record for a while. (How about decelerating so quickly your eyeballs almost pop out!)

The article also tells you the origin of Murphy's law. Pretty funny.
--

Your argument seems to be that Microsoft is so large, we dare not touch them with those pesky "laws" because who knows what might happen. And if their dominance subsides someday, then we should hand the reins of government over to AT&T, or Time-Warner, or Disney, because they also are so big that messing with them might destroy the economy.

I think it's a really bad idea to establish that companies over a certain size should be exempt from prosecution. With merger-mania still in full swing, particularly in telecom, there will be more of these above-the-law megacorps around. And they have more than just economic power - who do you think paid for the Telecommunications Reform Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

If the law can't be exercised for fear of upsetting the status quo, we're doomed.

By the way, Microsoft almost certainly did break the law, and not the one most people are talking about. While there is a lot of hand-wringing over whether MS abused monopoly power in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act, this article points out that meeting with Netscape to try to carve up the browser market is an extremely clear violation of section 1 of the act. Oops.

I can only see two wings.. Maybe the article is just wrong...

Picture 1 and Picture 2

Wouldn't be the first time reporters got confused..

Little sucker though isn't it?

Still, I have to wonder about specs? What is the weight of this thing? Any ideas on speed of the wings? Are we talking hummingbird here or what? Give us details...


---

I can only see two wings.. Maybe the article is just wrong...

Picture 1 and Picture 2

Wouldn't be the first time reporters got confused..

Little sucker though isn't it?

Still, I have to wonder about specs? What is the weight of this thing? Any ideas on speed of the wings? Are we talking hummingbird here or what? Give us details...


---

I suggest mating the Slugbot with the Flybot
--

First RoboFly and now SlugBot.

Ugh. If they are going to be this lazy, the least they can do is put out a call for name suggestions. I'm sure slashdotters could think up something better.

- JoeShmoe

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The WHO played at Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit concert over the weekend in Mountain View, CA. They rocked. Here's a review.

``I'm stricken if I buy a new computer. I suffer terrible consumer remorse. I can hear it obsolescing in the trunk of the car.''

My new Xeon obsolesced to an abacus in the drive home. ;)

I'd like to point out that the reporting on this story is very muddy. None of the science writers seem to know how to use the words force, velocity, impulse, or energy correctly in a sentence, nor which units go with which measurements.

I'd like to offer the following as evidence:

• SF Chronicle
  
  Their computers used the metric term newtons, or grams per second of force, to send final course and velocity commands to the Mars-bound spacecraft.
  
  A newton is not a gram per second!
• LA Times
  
  As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.
  
  Force is not measured in newton-seconds!
• Washing ton Post
  
  The navigators, in turn, performed their analysis of the spacecraft's position in space based on the assumption that the descriptions of these firings were in metric units of force per second (newtons). In fact, the numbers instead represented pounds (of force per second).
  
  A pound is not force per second!
• LA Times
  
  But, basically, Lockheed was providing the JetPropulsion Laboratory with data on the amount of energy imparted to the spacecraft by its thrusters that are fired periodically. This was measured in pound-seconds, Hinners said.
  
  Energy is not measured in pound-seconds! Perhaps an energy change was indicated by a reading in pound-seconds, but it's erroneous to write that energy is measured in those units.

It looks to me that either a Reuters, AP, or some press release initially confused impulses with force, and the error has propogated through every major news organization in the country. Either that, or quite a few science writers would seem to think that the general public has no real idea about what they're reading and couldn't care less if it's technically correct. Something should be written about the correct relationship between force, impulse, and energy using the words correctly in a sentence, along with the correct units of measurement so that some education of the American public comes of this.

Or it could be that I'm being too nit-picky. Sue me for being an engineer...

Robby

The San Francisco Chronicle has a much better article. More technical details are toward the end.

Interesting: in the print edition, this was the lead article, page one, above the fold, top right. Also, there was a decent graphic (which I can't find online) accompanying the article.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a much better article. More technical details are toward the end.

Interesting: in the print edition, this was the lead article, page one, above the fold, top right. Also, there was a decent graphic (which I can't find online) accompanying the article.

"Linux already has won the hearts of techies the world over, and lately, the free operating system has carved out a place on corporate servers. Could the typical office worker's desktop be the next stop?"

The above is a quote from today's (6/3/99) SF Chronicle... mainstream enough for me. :)

Unformatted (no CGI access) story here. Or track it thru www.sfgate.com, headline Wrestling with the Desktop, link OS Mania (this may all be gone by tomorrow... sigh)

Shandon

I agree, but it's just part of open-source development; everything's open, not just the code, not just the feature discussions, but the bickering on the kernel mailing lists, the open letters from three-letter acronyms, and so on. The only thing I'm afraid of is that the media (read clueless zdnet) will start to get a hold of things like this and distort them, or that MS will use them in their FUD campaign. Actually, it happened before, see
Apple's Linux foray prompts squabbles, Internal rift among Linux advocates, and any of a number of other articles that does a poor job of airing our dirty laundry. How should things like this be dealt with?