Heh that reminds me of when i worked for them here in Belgium a few years ago.
Outsourcing was the big new trends in IT with reports of huge cost savings being made.
So a new team was made to join the juicy business. After 3-4 months they hadn't really achieved anything, yet around that time i saw an interview of a Unisys manager saying the new section had been making great advances and was providing loads of opportunities, pure spinning...
Without algorithms, there can be no computing but there's nothing really special about any one in particular. Algorithms are just instructions, and there are many ways of achieving the same result. There are indeed many ways of achieving the same results. However some algorithms are much more efficient than others and when a large program is made up of many of those optimised algorithms there will be a huge speed improvement over other implementations.
This is especially important in resource-hungry applications, scientific calculation or on systems with constrained resources such as embedded systems.
Saying there's nothing special about any algorithm is simply dumb.
err no... in Belgium we already have levies on CDs, DVDs, hard disks & some others. They are collected for artist copyrights association which redistributes them essentially in function of artists sales. I think those taxes only go to music artist for the moment but that will probably change someday as software companies and computer games providers should get their share as well.
As far as i know not one case of p2p copyright infringement from users has been brought to the court as copies for personal use are still respected around here. The only big issue has been Razorback, the world's biggest eMule network server, that has been brought down around a year ago.
With the exception of France which has adopted harsh laws against p2p filesharing last year (which hasn't changed anything btw), most European countries are still on the right track.
Come Canada keep the pressure & remove these stupid new laws about copying movies at the cinema!
Fact is the Artists organisations that collect rights for the artists already make more money from other sources than just royalties on sold media. Those other sources include; royalties on concerts, on broadcasting either on the air or locally, on blank media (cd's, dvd's, hard drives, usb drives, etc...)
What i suggest is to extent the royalties to internet connections & provide free downloads for the public. This wouldn't in any way screw the majority of the artists as their revenue would still be guaranteed by all these taxes & if downloads and other broadcasts would be recorded every artist would get his fair share according to his popularity & number of live shows he participated in.
As is already in consideration now less known or young artists could get a bit bigger share as compared to hugely popular ones in order to support them better in their goal.
There's no question that copyright needs to be adapted too if not removed completely, there's no way to enforce it anyways as technology provides easy means to copy most artistic works & you can't control the whole planet to check if people are respecting the copyright.
Artists should keep their rights in the sense of being retributed for their creations, but trying to prevent or even limit copying has no sense nowadays
When will it stop? Everyday we get more examples of how outdated current copyright laws are and how they're spawning negative effects in multiple ways, be it by outlawing many people who are naturally using the capabilities of current technology, possibly ruining their lives by legal action, limiting creativity and access to knowledge created by humans for humans. This knowledge should benefit all humans equally considering that all human knowledge is the product of society as a whole, present and past.
It is time to free the music in the same way as opensource software frees software from being detained by ever more avid companies trying to lock down knowledge.
A GPL-like license for musical creations would be a good step forward, making music free for personal use, while still permitting fees to be collected for the commercial use of the creations.
Artists could also be credited a part of ISP's revenues in function of how many downloads there would be of their creations, be it in the form of songs, partitions, etc...
Also the organisms the are supposed to redistribute the money they are collecting for artists should be reformed to be better retribute the artists.
I'm thinking of this example i read yesterday concerning the Sabam (artist revenue collecting association in Belgium). The owner of a little restaurant/concert hall/bar reported that in order to play music he had to pay money to the Sabam, as much as other much bigger places. Also he noted that the small bands that performed there never received any money from the Sabam, eventhough he had to pay artist rights to the Sabam every time there was a concert.
So to distribute the money they collect from many sources, the main criterium used by this organism are records sales & so well known artists get almost all the money & little known ones get close to nothing in many cases if they even have the chance of seeing any money at all.
Apparently doing their job correctly which would mean considering what artists are actually played or perform in these places is not an option. I think it should be and current technology allows to collect this information pretty easily.
For a more scientifically sound reason about why 44.1 kHz was chosen look here : http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/44.1.html
The CD sampling rate has to be larger than about 40 kHz to fulfill the Nyquist criterion that requires sampling at twice the maximum analog frequency, which is about 20 kHz for audio. The sampling frequency is chosen somewhat higher than the Nyquist rate since practical filters neede to prevent aliasing have a finite slope. Digital audio tapes (DATs) use a sampling rate of 48 kHz. It has been claimed that thier sampling rate differs from that of CDs to make digital copying from one to the other more difficult. 48 kHz is, in principle, a better rate since it is a multiple of the other standard sampling rates, namely 8 and 16 kHz for telephone-quality audio. Sampling rate conversion is simplified if rates are integer multiples of each other.
As far as i can remember, in my physics or chemistry classes at school, 1Kg was always defined as a number of carbon-12 atoms... 1/12*1000*Na*atoms of C12.
Looking it up on the net it seems to be project Avogrado.
By the way first time i was given that definition at school was in the late 80's.
Strange thing we have so much trouble preventing paper & color degrading over time when centuries ago the problem has already been solved. Just look at all those books written on hemp that are still in great shape & with bright colours that give us insight over the knowledge of past human civilization.
It's a shame we're in an era now where mindless consumerism and capitalism are so powerful that products we buy don't have to perform anymore as they did in the past and still cost more... examples of this are everywhere, tasteless fruit & vegetables, electronic devices that barely make it past the warranty date, products that cost more because they're better eventhough the new process to produce them costs less, new products that are pushed on the market in order to maintain royalties while not adding anything usefull or even being of lower quality or environmentally more dangerous, etc...
Still there's no need for a blacklist for you to use NoScript the way you want.
Noticed the little Noscript icon down there in the middle of the status bar? It changes depending if all scripts are allowed/ not allowed or if only some scripts are allowed... Notification is only useful to someone who has never used Noscript and doesn't know about that icon & the functionality it provides.
I can't get easier than this :
Bad site --> do nothing...
Good site --> allow the needed scripts to run (2 clicks per script...wow)
Testing site --> temporarily allow the scripts you think are useful
Is there an anti-NoScript mod alliance here at work or what? The only guys who isn't modded down happens to be the one delivering nonsense about that extension...
Why don't you disable notification and stop whining about Noscript... seriously if you choose to set it to global allow, then you might as well stop using it. I can't even imagine why one would want Noscript to support blacklisting as then it wouldn't prevent malicious scripts from running when you'd visit new or updated websites, so it'd be just as useless as allowing all scripts to run.
In fact this method has already been used in energy efficient house projects sponsored by the EU. What amazed me when i read the paper was that that was the measure which had produced the biggest energy output.
The ad infested new Yahoo Mail is patchwork of ideas halfway implemented and glaring usability problems."
What ads;p
Thank you Adblock & Adblock G.Filterset updater...
Funny how this "news" just shows up when another news talks about yahoo mail opening up their registration process, if i remember correctly it's already been several months since yahoo mail provided a beta as alternative.
Who cares, just don't contribute to their rippoff if you're a selfrespecting consumer who doesn't want to pay more for less quality, as is the case in this issue & with their crippled mp3 platform...
I'm no fan of Novell, but their "first crack at it" was a technology preview of Xen, which by its own admission only supported OSes that have been ported to the Xen hypervisor. It's not like the Xen folks could get the Windows XP source and release a version ported to Xen, now, could they? They were not claiming it would work with other OSes without VT.
In fact when Xen was first released the author said it ran Windows XP if a (or some) files were replaced... he didn't release the modified files only to avoid lawsuits from M$.
Second fact the latest cpu's from intel & amd support virtualization so that Xen could be able to run Windows or any other unmodified OS....
Of course they still need to photoshop the thousands of images to remove the green creatures & their buildings... double the resolution, 4x more work, add to that Nasa's funding that's far from what it once was...
Apparently he does handle typos quite well, i would have liked his understanding to be nearly as good, but it turned out not to be the case... this was only an excerpt of a longer conversation i tried to have with the bot, but in almost 3/4 of the cases it's answers were completely irrelevant... i would have thought an award winning A.I. would be more mature than that.
I also noticed sometimes George made allusions to subjects i tried to bring up a few lines before... for example to or three answers beyond what i posted, he told me he'd play a Bach tune & i'd have to guess what it was, though just before that he didn't seem to know what music was. This was his answer to me proposing him to play a game where i'd give him a word & he would give me that word in a reverse order. So either George doesn't get most of what people throw at him or he has a very developped & peculiar sense of humor, or maybe he's just a rebel after all & doesn't like to do what he's told to...
Maybe you meant which of these sites focus on legal downloads... it seems the author simply wasn't focusing on that type of torrent sites which are also quite popular.
Up to know i was only aware of legal torrent downloads, primarily opensource software & operating systems, some from free music providers too... these often contain copyrighted material, though downloading them is perfectly legal..
Slashdot Mirror
Considering the vault should be kept at -20 to -30C moist shouldn't be an issue.
Heh that reminds me of when i worked for them here in Belgium a few years ago. Outsourcing was the big new trends in IT with reports of huge cost savings being made. So a new team was made to join the juicy business. After 3-4 months they hadn't really achieved anything, yet around that time i saw an interview of a Unisys manager saying the new section had been making great advances and was providing loads of opportunities, pure spinning...
This is especially important in resource-hungry applications, scientific calculation or on systems with constrained resources such as embedded systems.
Saying there's nothing special about any algorithm is simply dumb.
piracy is OK, privacy NOT
err no... in Belgium we already have levies on CDs, DVDs, hard disks & some others. They are collected for artist copyrights association which redistributes them essentially in function of artists sales. I think those taxes only go to music artist for the moment but that will probably change someday as software companies and computer games providers should get their share as well. As far as i know not one case of p2p copyright infringement from users has been brought to the court as copies for personal use are still respected around here. The only big issue has been Razorback, the world's biggest eMule network server, that has been brought down around a year ago. With the exception of France which has adopted harsh laws against p2p filesharing last year (which hasn't changed anything btw), most European countries are still on the right track. Come Canada keep the pressure & remove these stupid new laws about copying movies at the cinema!
Fact is the Artists organisations that collect rights for the artists already make more money from other sources than just royalties on sold media. Those other sources include; royalties on concerts, on broadcasting either on the air or locally, on blank media (cd's, dvd's, hard drives, usb drives, etc...) What i suggest is to extent the royalties to internet connections & provide free downloads for the public. This wouldn't in any way screw the majority of the artists as their revenue would still be guaranteed by all these taxes & if downloads and other broadcasts would be recorded every artist would get his fair share according to his popularity & number of live shows he participated in. As is already in consideration now less known or young artists could get a bit bigger share as compared to hugely popular ones in order to support them better in their goal. There's no question that copyright needs to be adapted too if not removed completely, there's no way to enforce it anyways as technology provides easy means to copy most artistic works & you can't control the whole planet to check if people are respecting the copyright. Artists should keep their rights in the sense of being retributed for their creations, but trying to prevent or even limit copying has no sense nowadays
When will it stop?
Everyday we get more examples of how outdated current copyright laws are and how they're spawning negative effects in multiple ways, be it by outlawing many people who are naturally using the capabilities of current technology, possibly ruining their lives by legal action, limiting creativity and access to knowledge created by humans for humans. This knowledge should benefit all humans equally considering that all human knowledge is the product of society as a whole, present and past.
It is time to free the music in the same way as opensource software frees software from being detained by ever more avid companies trying to lock down knowledge.
A GPL-like license for musical creations would be a good step forward, making music free for personal use, while still permitting fees to be collected for the commercial use of the creations. Artists could also be credited a part of ISP's revenues in function of how many downloads there would be of their creations, be it in the form of songs, partitions, etc...
Also the organisms the are supposed to redistribute the money they are collecting for artists should be reformed to be better retribute the artists.
I'm thinking of this example i read yesterday concerning the Sabam (artist revenue collecting association in Belgium). The owner of a little restaurant/concert hall/bar reported that in order to play music he had to pay money to the Sabam, as much as other much bigger places. Also he noted that the small bands that performed there never received any money from the Sabam, eventhough he had to pay artist rights to the Sabam every time there was a concert.
So to distribute the money they collect from many sources, the main criterium used by this organism are records sales & so well known artists get almost all the money & little known ones get close to nothing in many cases if they even have the chance of seeing any money at all.
Apparently doing their job correctly which would mean considering what artists are actually played or perform in these places is not an option. I think it should be and current technology allows to collect this information pretty easily.
As far as i can remember, in my physics or chemistry classes at school, 1Kg was always defined as a number of carbon-12 atoms... 1/12*1000*Na*atoms of C12. Looking it up on the net it seems to be project Avogrado. By the way first time i was given that definition at school was in the late 80's.
Strange thing we have so much trouble preventing paper & color degrading over time when centuries ago the problem has already been solved. Just look at all those books written on hemp that are still in great shape & with bright colours that give us insight over the knowledge of past human civilization. It's a shame we're in an era now where mindless consumerism and capitalism are so powerful that products we buy don't have to perform anymore as they did in the past and still cost more... examples of this are everywhere, tasteless fruit & vegetables, electronic devices that barely make it past the warranty date, products that cost more because they're better eventhough the new process to produce them costs less, new products that are pushed on the market in order to maintain royalties while not adding anything usefull or even being of lower quality or environmentally more dangerous, etc...
Still there's no need for a blacklist for you to use NoScript the way you want. Noticed the little Noscript icon down there in the middle of the status bar? It changes depending if all scripts are allowed/ not allowed or if only some scripts are allowed... Notification is only useful to someone who has never used Noscript and doesn't know about that icon & the functionality it provides. I can't get easier than this : Bad site --> do nothing... Good site --> allow the needed scripts to run (2 clicks per script...wow) Testing site --> temporarily allow the scripts you think are useful
Very strange, that last reply was modded down as soon as i hit the Submit button... looks like there is some Slashdot mod robot at work or something.
Is there an anti-NoScript mod alliance here at work or what? The only guys who isn't modded down happens to be the one delivering nonsense about that extension...
Why don't you disable notification and stop whining about Noscript... seriously if you choose to set it to global allow, then you might as well stop using it. I can't even imagine why one would want Noscript to support blacklisting as then it wouldn't prevent malicious scripts from running when you'd visit new or updated websites, so it'd be just as useless as allowing all scripts to run.
In fact this method has already been used in energy efficient house projects sponsored by the EU. What amazed me when i read the paper was that that was the measure which had produced the biggest energy output.
Thank you Adblock & Adblock G.Filterset updater...
Funny how this "news" just shows up when another news talks about yahoo mail opening up their registration process, if i remember correctly it's already been several months since yahoo mail provided a beta as alternative.
What are you waiting for, there are already several linux distros that can install on your powerbook ;-)
I would say it is similar to paying the price of a CD for an audio tape of a record you already had on CD.
Who cares, just don't contribute to their rippoff if you're a selfrespecting consumer who doesn't want to pay more for less quality, as is the case in this issue & with their crippled mp3 platform...
Maybe you should watch this before being so confident the US government can be trusted to do the right thing : Terror Storm
Of course they still need to photoshop the thousands of images to remove the green creatures & their buildings... double the resolution, 4x more work, add to that Nasa's funding that's far from what it once was...
Apparently he does handle typos quite well, i would have liked his understanding to be nearly as good, but it turned out not to be the case... this was only an excerpt of a longer conversation i tried to have with the bot, but in almost 3/4 of the cases it's answers were completely irrelevant... i would have thought an award winning A.I. would be more mature than that. I also noticed sometimes George made allusions to subjects i tried to bring up a few lines before... for example to or three answers beyond what i posted, he told me he'd play a Bach tune & i'd have to guess what it was, though just before that he didn't seem to know what music was. This was his answer to me proposing him to play a game where i'd give him a word & he would give me that word in a reverse order. So either George doesn't get most of what people throw at him or he has a very developped & peculiar sense of humor, or maybe he's just a rebel after all & doesn't like to do what he's told to...
Maybe you meant which of these sites focus on legal downloads... it seems the author simply wasn't focusing on that type of torrent sites which are also quite popular. Up to know i was only aware of legal torrent downloads, primarily opensource software & operating systems, some from free music providers too... these often contain copyrighted material, though downloading them is perfectly legal..