If you don't want to watch the in flight movie, (its where entertainment comes to die, hopefully not taking you down with it,) you have a way out without having to blow the rear door off. (That decompression is worse than an MP4.:-)
And its a democratic idea. The production values are shit (now) but the content doesn't have to be music.
Educational videos (like one I had to watch on IDMS DB) can be downloaded to a ViPod and delivered that way, instead of a bunch of us having to sit and squirm through it, missing parts of it when we had to go to the bathroom or on a smoke or a snack break (or just to leave the room and scream.)
And I like the idea that Woodie Allen wouldn't have had to spend all that money making some of his movies, wasting his time and mine with such banalities. Its not that they weren't worth watching but they weren't worth watching on a big screen.
The 'pitch' wouldn't have to the money men in the same way. There are a lot of stories that are interesting but they aren't interesting enough to warrant the budgets, and so they don't get made.
The ViPod is a GOOD idea. (And it would really fuck with the MPAA, like PodCasts are screwing with the RIAA by making anyone a member...)
(and proud of it,) and, since my box just died, I'm thinking of replacing it all and changing the guts to an Athlon64 (or maybe dual Athlons?).
Does it make sense. Can slackware handle it? (I think it should, but, like I said, I'm still a Linux newb.)
I know it'll mean a new MoBo, 2GB RAM, 2x15GB & 2x120GB HDs (I LIKE redundancy,) a new power supply, new fanage, probably a new video card, new ethernet card(s? should I make it my firewall and phase out my use of a LinkSys router as a firewall?) a new DVD-RW drive, and using NFS and Samba (I think?) to use the box as a storage server for my Macs(2) and my wife's Win2K box.
Backups would be incremental on DVD-RWs, (with one set per day, complete and off site once a week.)
The USPS if facing a real problem with phones, teletypes, email and IM. Now that people are option for web payment methods, the volume of mail is dropping. Direct deposits and direct payment/debit cards are further cutting into their revenue stream.
They can't ass-u-me that they get at least five pieces of mail going in both directions.
If digital forms of communications can't be cracked except by 'social engineering', they are going to further disappear. (Of course I still get 'snail' mail spam.)
But how dependant are we now on the USPS for any communications? I'd bet very little.
Oracle is in the database business
on
Oracle To Buy Siebel
·
· Score: 3, Informative
These acquisitions insure that their database business doesn't suffer by suddenly NOT being offered (unlikely but always a possibility [and if I was selling DB/2, I'd worry,]) or that some NEW database engine gets a foot hold in the marketplace (more likely.)
We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.
They'd have to be really partnered with whoever really made the RAZR and pitch it to them so that they'd actualy make some dough on the hardware.
Yes, Apple is now in the process of bigness. The iPod and iTunes and the music store, makes them big money. They aren't interested in innovation anymore. They can't afford it.
Look forward to their advancing into the video distribution business.
That's where they keep them while they slave over the next version of Explorer. (A possible explanation for the quality of the code.)
They grumble so loudly that they can't let up into the light. They all look like mole people now. (A possible explanation for the lack of code reviews. They eat the reviewers.)
is the phrase I usually use to describe how people make the best speech they'll ever regret. (Made quite a few of those in my time.)
Now if Steve Balmer get a massive coronary, (with all that jumping around, sweating and spewing gibberish,) and Bill Gates suddenly deveops a conscience (Nah, never happen...) he might have been the person to show Microsoft the path to the light.
The media are barking up the wrong tree as well. It gives Steve Jobs a lot of leeway for success. Heknows they're barking up the wrong tree, looking where he isn't and he's free to pursue the really BIG markets, like tying to get into the automotive playing space (selling car radios and other electronics MADE Motorola!)
As long as the media has its head up its ass, it isn't watching what he's actually doing.
Bill Gates is trying to do something with Microsoft but he made his bed with corporate culture and that is just killing him. Microsoft could never come up with anything like the iPod because they have always played catch up and it not in a market that they have any presence nor any possibility of having any. (The band width requirememts for the human factors are all wrong for the big clunky, clumsy, ugly Microsoft brand.) Bill Gates CAN'T imitate this one because it straying too far and his existing customer base won't let him.
Yeah, Apple sell the iMac and the iBook and the Power Mac and the Power Book (and the XServe stuff) but they were never in it to sell computers.
They are selling 'information appliances.' They always have. People used them as computers because they could, but Apple showed that that was the way onto their face from a standing position. (Remember Sculley's successor, Amelio?)
The iPod products, a home electronics franchise, are a much more viable and longer term product line.
They might be able to buy something if they weren't paying for the stuff they have lost through attrition and explosion.
The space shuttle has got to go. Its a huge drain but it has to be replaced with the right combination of unmanned and manned launch capability.
And then we're almost able to create the composites required for Arthur C Clark's 'space elevator'. (That man has done more for the space program than Werner von Braun. The comunication sattelite, the space elevator and Rama (as a concept exploration vehicle.)
Use Linux, OS X and Windows. (I have four machines.)
When I develop for the web I test for each environment.
The problem is that Microsoft's development tools generate a lot of crap (like the 'gotta have IE 6' preamble) as well as being absolute wastrels for tables definition.
Of course, if you're NOT a web developer, or even a programmer, and depending on a Wizard to build your web pages, like these surely were, you're going to use every default.
This page was probably put together by some well-meaning secretary under pressure to get something, anything out there. (Who's the AUTHOR="" of the page?)
The IE Dev tools are TERRIBLE! They cobble pages together mechanically and they are full of cruff. Coding with almost any other tool would out together something better.
If you'll cast your minds back, about 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub crater, (that's the one that was left from the impact that wiped out all the dinosaurs,) was a mere 145 to 180 km in diameter (70 to 80 miles for the metrically challenged.)
Imagine that you want to be the BIG ASS BOSS of everybody and everything, no lip from anybody, period. And they can even make lots of bucks doing it.
You know what damage a 145 to 180 km kinetic weapon can cause. Extinction! Bad for business. Now think small. Real small.
What would a missile a few kilos of mass do if it was nudged from orbit, dropped down and hit the ground at terminal velocity. Were talking about a geosynchronously guided killer dead weight here.
And it requires very little energy to launch 'em, toss 'em and park 'em in LEO, from Mars, where there's lots of dirt waiting to be wrapped in plastic with a couple of little guidance rockets to give 'em a li'l shove.
The first one who gets off this dirt ball doesn't have to go far to get some REAL leverage. It doesn't even have to be thay complicated, or expensive, or long term or difficult.
If I can think this way, so can anybody else. (I bet Balls-mer would just love to have something like this right now. It would make it so much easier to dict..., uh, negotiate with the EU.)
In 2001, downtown New York got smacked by some ignurnt towel head who's pissed off about something that happened about a thousand years ago, (it's Mohammed's fault,) then an 80 year old insult to Islam by Kamaal Attaturk, then one by Russia then America, then Spain, then France (foiled) then England (that towel head's got a real hard-on for the West.)
'Shrub' wins a war but can't keep the peace, in Afghanistan.
Then in Iraq.
Then his boys are so focused on keeping out these dang fornurz out that they suck all the funds outta there but drop the big ball with maintaining the levees in N'Orleens.
What's next?
Locust? Plague? Peasant's (previously known as the middle class before we got told to pay for all the messes listed above) revolt?
That ignurnt towel head doesn't have to do a damn thing. All he has to do is wait. Sittin' out there in his li'l foreign cave.
This must be some school prank. Apart from the claim made (TB chips? Yeah, right!)
To do it in the facilities they claim to be doing it in (with that 'air shower') is impossible. And the image of them 'working' in the 'clean suits' at a vertical marker easel has to be a joke...
(btw. Where's the XP Window everybody's talking about? I haven't seen hide nor hair or it on the site.)
Unless you can run prorietary copyrighted (but not patented) software.
Otherwise Stallman has just committed "sepuku".
While I admire open-source software, and I agree that patents on "business methods" are "a patent of an idea" and loathsome, the things that have kept me from publishing some things are "proprietary data."
IF YOU LOSE, you have to defer the cost of the search and pay punitive damages.
I'd make searches free too so that you don't have fivolous lawsuits. I'd also ask for a specific description of the device for whish this patent applies.
Slashdot Mirror
"Slashdot is brimming with people who fawn over everything Apple does"
But its not Linux...
If you don't want to watch the in flight movie, (its where entertainment comes to die, hopefully not taking you down with it,) you have a way out without having to blow the rear door off. (That decompression is worse than an MP4. :-)
And its a democratic idea. The production values are shit (now) but the content doesn't have to be music.
Educational videos (like one I had to watch on IDMS DB) can be downloaded to a ViPod and delivered that way, instead of a bunch of us having to sit and squirm through it, missing parts of it when we had to go to the bathroom or on a smoke or a snack break (or just to leave the room and scream.)
And I like the idea that Woodie Allen wouldn't have had to spend all that money making some of his movies, wasting his time and mine with such banalities. Its not that they weren't worth watching but they weren't worth watching on a big screen.
The 'pitch' wouldn't have to the money men in the same way. There are a lot of stories that are interesting but they aren't interesting enough to warrant the budgets, and so they don't get made.
The ViPod is a GOOD idea. (And it would really fuck with the MPAA, like PodCasts are screwing with the RIAA by making anyone a member...)
(and proud of it,) and, since my box just died, I'm thinking of replacing it all and changing the guts to an Athlon64 (or maybe dual Athlons?).
Does it make sense. Can slackware handle it? (I think it should, but, like I said, I'm still a Linux newb.)
I know it'll mean a new MoBo, 2GB RAM, 2x15GB & 2x120GB HDs (I LIKE redundancy,) a new power supply, new fanage, probably a new video card, new ethernet card(s? should I make it my firewall and phase out my use of a LinkSys router as a firewall?) a new DVD-RW drive, and using NFS and Samba (I think?) to use the box as a storage server for my Macs(2) and my wife's Win2K box.
Backups would be incremental on DVD-RWs, (with one set per day, complete and off site once a week.)
The USPS if facing a real problem with phones, teletypes, email and IM. Now that people are option for web payment methods, the volume of mail is dropping. Direct deposits and direct payment/debit cards are further cutting into their revenue stream.
They can't ass-u-me that they get at least five pieces of mail going in both directions.
If digital forms of communications can't be cracked except by 'social engineering', they are going to further disappear. (Of course I still get 'snail' mail spam.)
But how dependant are we now on the USPS for any communications? I'd bet very little.
These acquisitions insure that their database business doesn't suffer by suddenly NOT being offered (unlikely but always a possibility [and if I was selling DB/2, I'd worry,]) or that some NEW database engine gets a foot hold in the marketplace (more likely.)
We're seeing the death of competition in the database market.
They'd have to be really partnered with whoever really made the RAZR and pitch it to them so that they'd actualy make some dough on the hardware.
Yes, Apple is now in the process of bigness. The iPod and iTunes and the music store, makes them big money. They aren't interested in innovation anymore. They can't afford it.
Look forward to their advancing into the video distribution business.
That's where they keep them while they slave over the next version of Explorer. (A possible explanation for the quality of the code.)
They grumble so loudly that they can't let up into the light. They all look like mole people now. (A possible explanation for the lack of code reviews. They eat the reviewers.)
is the phrase I usually use to describe how people make the best speech they'll ever regret. (Made quite a few of those in my time.)
Now if Steve Balmer get a massive coronary, (with all that jumping around, sweating and spewing gibberish,) and Bill Gates suddenly deveops a conscience (Nah, never happen...) he might have been the person to show Microsoft the path to the light.
Won't happen now...
And if you have other users they won't be affected.
I'd worry if it was vulnerable to root acess but I don't even have a root account on any of my machines and the OS warns me everytime.
Security is Unix-y and a lot better than you think.
It was a benign one a that but it was the first.
And they've been very careful since then.
Music is merely the least unpleasant noise.
collection seems to dwarf yours.
800+ CDS, (all ripped) 450+ vynil records (ripping in progress.) But I seriously don't want to carry my entire collection with me.
I find the shuffle is good enough to play the lists of what I really want to have on it for a coupld of days and the podcasts that I listen to.
If they made it clear and you could get any color you want?
I suspect that the reason the don't though is because of scratch resistance.
computer company.
The media are barking up the wrong tree as well. It gives Steve Jobs a lot of leeway for success. Heknows they're barking up the wrong tree, looking where he isn't and he's free to pursue the really BIG markets, like tying to get into the automotive playing space (selling car radios and other electronics MADE Motorola!)
As long as the media has its head up its ass, it isn't watching what he's actually doing.
Bill Gates is trying to do something with Microsoft but he made his bed with corporate culture and that is just killing him. Microsoft could never come up with anything like the iPod because they have always played catch up and it not in a market that they have any presence nor any possibility of having any. (The band width requirememts for the human factors are all wrong for the big clunky, clumsy, ugly Microsoft brand.) Bill Gates CAN'T imitate this one because it straying too far and his existing customer base won't let him.
Yeah, Apple sell the iMac and the iBook and the Power Mac and the Power Book (and the XServe stuff) but they were never in it to sell computers.
They are selling 'information appliances.' They always have. People used them as computers because they could, but Apple showed that that was the way onto their face from a standing position. (Remember Sculley's successor, Amelio?)
The iPod products, a home electronics franchise, are a much more viable and longer term product line.
They might be able to buy something if they weren't paying for the stuff they have lost through attrition and explosion.
The space shuttle has got to go. Its a huge drain but it has to be replaced with the right combination of unmanned and manned launch capability.
And then we're almost able to create the composites required for Arthur C Clark's 'space elevator'. (That man has done more for the space program than Werner von Braun. The comunication sattelite, the space elevator and Rama (as a concept exploration vehicle.)
twirling of waxed mustache tips reference.
Use Linux, OS X and Windows. (I have four machines.)
When I develop for the web I test for each environment.
The problem is that Microsoft's development tools generate a lot of crap (like the 'gotta have IE 6' preamble) as well as being absolute wastrels for tables definition.
Of course, if you're NOT a web developer, or even a programmer, and depending on a Wizard to build your web pages, like these surely were, you're going to use every default.
This page was probably put together by some well-meaning secretary under pressure to get something, anything out there. (Who's the AUTHOR="" of the page?)
The IE Dev tools are TERRIBLE! They cobble pages together mechanically and they are full of cruff. Coding with almost any other tool would out together something better.
If you'll cast your minds back, about 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub crater, (that's the one that was left from the impact that wiped out all the dinosaurs,) was a mere 145 to 180 km in diameter (70 to 80 miles for the metrically challenged.)
Imagine that you want to be the BIG ASS BOSS of everybody and everything, no lip from anybody, period. And they can even make lots of bucks doing it.
You know what damage a 145 to 180 km kinetic weapon can cause. Extinction! Bad for business. Now think small. Real small.
What would a missile a few kilos of mass do if it was nudged from orbit, dropped down and hit the ground at terminal velocity. Were talking about a geosynchronously guided killer dead weight here.
And it requires very little energy to launch 'em, toss 'em and park 'em in LEO, from Mars, where there's lots of dirt waiting to be wrapped in plastic with a couple of little guidance rockets to give 'em a li'l shove.
The first one who gets off this dirt ball doesn't have to go far to get some REAL leverage. It doesn't even have to be thay complicated, or expensive, or long term or difficult.
If I can think this way, so can anybody else. (I bet Balls-mer would just love to have something like this right now. It would make it so much easier to dict..., uh, negotiate with the EU.)
GWB is really having a hard time of it, ain't he?
In 2001, downtown New York got smacked by some ignurnt towel head who's pissed off about something that happened about a thousand years ago, (it's Mohammed's fault,) then an 80 year old insult to Islam by Kamaal Attaturk, then one by Russia then America, then Spain, then France (foiled) then England (that towel head's got a real hard-on for the West.)
'Shrub' wins a war but can't keep the peace, in Afghanistan.
Then in Iraq.
Then his boys are so focused on keeping out these dang fornurz out that they suck all the funds outta there but drop the big ball with maintaining the levees in N'Orleens.
What's next?
Locust? Plague? Peasant's (previously known as the middle class before we got told to pay for all the messes listed above) revolt?
That ignurnt towel head doesn't have to do a damn thing. All he has to do is wait. Sittin' out there in his li'l foreign cave.
It is a better fake than I usually see. But really. Windows would know about terabytes?
This must be some school prank. Apart from the claim made (TB chips? Yeah, right!)
To do it in the facilities they claim to be doing it in (with that 'air shower') is impossible. And the image of them 'working' in the 'clean suits' at a vertical marker easel has to be a joke...
(btw. Where's the XP Window everybody's talking about? I haven't seen hide nor hair or it on the site.)
in a plane controlled by Windows.
I wouldn't have to worry about them, ever again...
Unless you can run prorietary copyrighted (but not patented) software.
Otherwise Stallman has just committed "sepuku".
While I admire open-source software, and I agree that patents on "business methods" are "a patent of an idea" and loathsome, the things that have kept me from publishing some things are "proprietary data."
In many respects, both are onerous.
They don't need their documents becoming 'unsuppoprted' every two ot five years.
For fun try opening an old version of a document.
In WordPerfect, no problem. In Word, you're fucked, and considering that they're dealing with legal documents... It night be by some really mean guy.
IF YOU LOSE, you have to defer the cost of the search and pay punitive damages.
I'd make searches free too so that you don't have fivolous lawsuits. I'd also ask for a specific description of the device for whish this patent applies.
Patenting 'business methods' is a buch of hokum.