Politicians: If their lips are moving, they must be lying.
Television: If it flickers at 50/60Hz, it must be faked.
Audience: If you believe politicians or TV, you must be naive.
Indentured servitude (IS) is getting a bad rap. It is not slavery, though slavery can be disguised as such. IS made this country great, and many of my ancestors got a break by using it. In a broader sense, most of our population are IS if you consider the nation's private debt load. The 13th Amendment does not prevent us from spending ourselves to the point of looking like indentured servants and feeling as such. I suspect debt motivates more people to work in more unsavory jobs than anything else. Proof point: try motivating a rich person to clean your toilets (without a gun;^).
Insurance is a bet that something bad is going to happen to you. Unlike most games of chance, the odds are, unfortunately, in your favor. Insurance companies knew this from the beginning and have been resetting the odds ever since. Insurance companies make more money than casinos, and they don't offer comps. Anyone who grew up in a small town remembers that the insurance agent drove the same kind of cars and lived in the same kind of houses as the doctors and lawyers. If you look at inflation since then, you will see that medical, legal and insurance costs have risen faster than anything, including oil.
Actually, the code displayed in the original Terminator movie was IBM 370 assembler language. Mainframe Arnold wouldn't settle for being a micro anything.
Not sure where the 240M comes from in this tread, but before the days of megabytes, 'M' stood for 1,000 (actually the roman numeral). It is still used that way in publishing (CPM means cost per thousand, not million).
It amazes me that people can assume incredible things then leave the context to make their vision so ridiculous. It is like Plato conceived of jet planes that can't land because he couldn't conceive of runways.
If anything can manage to survive space and travel fast distances, why would they not be able to conceal themselves from us? They could be in our presence and, perhaps, even in our minds without our awareness of them. Is that such a stretch? Why would they be so advanced, so technically sophisticated, and yet be no more capable of spying than a predator drone or a button camera?
We genetically engineer life forms, build robots the size of dragon flies, send machines to Pluto, and write about aliens that are far far far more advanced. Then, we assume they are going to reveal themselves either through error or naive intent. Something is wrong with that kind of myopic thinking.
It may just be that people cannot live with the idea that we are being observed and have no way of detecting it. Perhaps, being that naked and ignorant is too disturbing to talk about.
If the Earth's core were a permanent magnet using, say, neodymium, then its magnetic field would be as strong as that dead star's. Stick that trillion teraton magnet on your refrigerator!
Not true for photo editing, and Adobe is not the first (though they may be the first big shop). I've used photo-stiching Panorama Factory (http://www.panoramafactory.com/, from Smokey City Design) for years, and they addresssed the memory/performance problem by going to the larger memory model. I've stitched together images that became over three gigabytes (uncompressed) that could only be done in a 32-bit address space with a crude swap-file workaround that would have taken 100 times longer than running everything in RAM (i.e., two weeks). The same problem with VR games will become evident as bandwidth increases and rendering improves.
Shortly after humans invented 'language', somebody said that "man will never fly." Within the context of that reference, it is true to this day. That primitive was thinking of a man flapping his arms and soaring through the skies. In the same regard, you are right; animals never speak English and conjugate verbs. However, looking outside the box, man does fly in aircraft and animals may have an abstract audio communication system as sophisticated as human language that we simple have not yet deciphered.
I think the odds of free licenses are just about the same as a televised Toshiba press conference with all their executives mooning the audience. That said, the simpler design specs would be really conducive to a true commodity product. The Chinese might even opt for it over their standard, CH-DVD, a HD-DVD derivative. If China does HD-DVD, you can say sayonara to Blurry, because the 'CH' stands for CHEAP!
DRM was a waste of talent. Rather than trying to use right management to protect a fossil, it should have been applied to making the content more dynamic and better suited to its venue. It is ironic that the industry has done so much to refine the sound -- tweaking Britney's voice to be on key, acoustically adjusting accompaniments dynamically in live performances - making it sound right wherever it was performed, and now they sit there and let the opportunity to customize every song fade to silence.
The future of music is making every performance unique. Do that, and you don't need to protect against copying anymore than groceries worry about selling old bread.
And why should a movie play out the same way every time? Not just a different ending, but different perspectives and varying dialog. In the 20th Century, that was damn near impossible to do with film and mag tape. Now it is just more work, but not really any harder than writing this DRM shit. Eventually someone will break new ground by doing this, and a new business model will emerge.
Clearly more dangerous than abortion, global warming or gay marriage, these posts seem to be written by similarly affected individuals. Be sure not to go to outer space! There is more of it out there than even the most paranoid Star Trek fan could imagine.
You might want to looks at Silva, also based on ZOPE. Not only is the name not silly, it also has great version control for content and uses XML for content metadata.
Let me preface this by saying that I do not work for Microsoft and never have nor ever will. Nor do I have any Microsoft friends, acquaintances, or professional relationships. In fact, I doubt if I would know anything Microsoft if it ran up and slapped me in the face. As a matter of fact, I doubt that I would recognize the guy who runs it, Steve Jobs, if he tried to french kiss me on the subway. Frankly, I never heard of whats-his-name until I saw this post. Now, let me tell you my two bits about why this guy got fired -- politics. Obviously, he likes Hillary, perhaps a bit too much (if you get my drift) and Bill found out about it. Any idiot would know this, and I am a living proof.
Like the dinosaurs, M$ is getting too big and thinking too small. A better patent for them would be a PC that runs on blood, sucking it right out of you while you stare at it. Call it Windows IV.
Just the first step, next is DNA sampling with retinal scans and RFIDs embedded at birth. I'm sure they will be the first with Borg-like implants too. Can you say "hive mind"?
Privacy has been going bye-bye for 5,000 years. This is just another step. On the other side, getting the dossier on every person in China will be reduced to one database dump by a CIA cracker/agent. Efficient espionage, ya gotta love technology!
There are 270,000 words in the English language. Most speakers know only a fraction and use an even smaller fraction. When they need to express themselves, they reuse the closest word that easily comes to mind or they make up 'slang'. Why? It may be a complexity issue related to the capacity of human memory, or it might be an emotional issue, or it is most likely is something that I don't even understand.
Coding is like that, but to a greater degree. Determining the 'code fit' may be harder than finding the right word, even if you have the library in your lap. It may take a machine to fix the coding problem, just like it took a book to catalogue all the words. Someday, if we can find the right words to describe the code we need, a machine will probably find it for us.
Slashdot Mirror
This may require a corollary for the axiom "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."
Politicians: If their lips are moving, they must be lying.
Television: If it flickers at 50/60Hz, it must be faked.
Audience: If you believe politicians or TV, you must be naive.
. . . lawyers wind-up supporting them.
It is like asking how many tax returns did the IRS "sell" last year.
Indentured servitude (IS) is getting a bad rap. It is not slavery, though slavery can be disguised as such. IS made this country great, and many of my ancestors got a break by using it. In a broader sense, most of our population are IS if you consider the nation's private debt load. The 13th Amendment does not prevent us from spending ourselves to the point of looking like indentured servants and feeling as such. I suspect debt motivates more people to work in more unsavory jobs than anything else. Proof point: try motivating a rich person to clean your toilets (without a gun ;^).
Insurance is a bet that something bad is going to happen to you. Unlike most games of chance, the odds are, unfortunately, in your favor. Insurance companies knew this from the beginning and have been resetting the odds ever since. Insurance companies make more money than casinos, and they don't offer comps. Anyone who grew up in a small town remembers that the insurance agent drove the same kind of cars and lived in the same kind of houses as the doctors and lawyers. If you look at inflation since then, you will see that medical, legal and insurance costs have risen faster than anything, including oil.
Actually, the code displayed in the original Terminator movie was IBM 370 assembler language. Mainframe Arnold wouldn't settle for being a micro anything.
Not sure where the 240M comes from in this tread, but before the days of megabytes, 'M' stood for 1,000 (actually the roman numeral). It is still used that way in publishing (CPM means cost per thousand, not million).
No? Then it must not be that damning.
It amazes me that people can assume incredible things then leave the context to make their vision so ridiculous. It is like Plato conceived of jet planes that can't land because he couldn't conceive of runways.
If anything can manage to survive space and travel fast distances, why would they not be able to conceal themselves from us? They could be in our presence and, perhaps, even in our minds without our awareness of them. Is that such a stretch? Why would they be so advanced, so technically sophisticated, and yet be no more capable of spying than a predator drone or a button camera?
We genetically engineer life forms, build robots the size of dragon flies, send machines to Pluto, and write about aliens that are far far far more advanced. Then, we assume they are going to reveal themselves either through error or naive intent. Something is wrong with that kind of myopic thinking.
It may just be that people cannot live with the idea that we are being observed and have no way of detecting it. Perhaps, being that naked and ignorant is too disturbing to talk about.
If the Earth's core were a permanent magnet using, say, neodymium, then its magnetic field would be as strong as that dead star's. Stick that trillion teraton magnet on your refrigerator!
Not true for photo editing, and Adobe is not the first (though they may be the first big shop). I've used photo-stiching Panorama Factory (http://www.panoramafactory.com/, from Smokey City Design) for years, and they addresssed the memory/performance problem by going to the larger memory model. I've stitched together images that became over three gigabytes (uncompressed) that could only be done in a 32-bit address space with a crude swap-file workaround that would have taken 100 times longer than running everything in RAM (i.e., two weeks). The same problem with VR games will become evident as bandwidth increases and rendering improves.
Shortly after humans invented 'language', somebody said that "man will never fly." Within the context of that reference, it is true to this day. That primitive was thinking of a man flapping his arms and soaring through the skies. In the same regard, you are right; animals never speak English and conjugate verbs. However, looking outside the box, man does fly in aircraft and animals may have an abstract audio communication system as sophisticated as human language that we simple have not yet deciphered.
I think the odds of free licenses are just about the same as a televised Toshiba press conference with all their executives mooning the audience. That said, the simpler design specs would be really conducive to a true commodity product. The Chinese might even opt for it over their standard, CH-DVD, a HD-DVD derivative. If China does HD-DVD, you can say sayonara to Blurry, because the 'CH' stands for CHEAP!
DRM was a waste of talent. Rather than trying to use right management to protect a fossil, it should have been applied to making the content more dynamic and better suited to its venue. It is ironic that the industry has done so much to refine the sound -- tweaking Britney's voice to be on key, acoustically adjusting accompaniments dynamically in live performances - making it sound right wherever it was performed, and now they sit there and let the opportunity to customize every song fade to silence. The future of music is making every performance unique. Do that, and you don't need to protect against copying anymore than groceries worry about selling old bread. And why should a movie play out the same way every time? Not just a different ending, but different perspectives and varying dialog. In the 20th Century, that was damn near impossible to do with film and mag tape. Now it is just more work, but not really any harder than writing this DRM shit. Eventually someone will break new ground by doing this, and a new business model will emerge.
Just like Iraq, Bush looked to a higher source of info for his spacey idea. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_Me_to_the_Moon for GWB's G2.
of text!?! I can finally publish my thesis!
This scam is so 19th Century! Read chapter eleven of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
More legislation designed to lose jobs to overseas. It won't stop them; they'll just outsouce these positions.
Clearly more dangerous than abortion, global warming or gay marriage, these posts seem to be written by similarly affected individuals. Be sure not to go to outer space! There is more of it out there than even the most paranoid Star Trek fan could imagine.
You might want to looks at Silva, also based on ZOPE. Not only is the name not silly, it also has great version control for content and uses XML for content metadata.
Let me preface this by saying that I do not work for Microsoft and never have nor ever will. Nor do I have any Microsoft friends, acquaintances, or professional relationships. In fact, I doubt if I would know anything Microsoft if it ran up and slapped me in the face. As a matter of fact, I doubt that I would recognize the guy who runs it, Steve Jobs, if he tried to french kiss me on the subway. Frankly, I never heard of whats-his-name until I saw this post. Now, let me tell you my two bits about why this guy got fired -- politics. Obviously, he likes Hillary, perhaps a bit too much (if you get my drift) and Bill found out about it. Any idiot would know this, and I am a living proof.
Like the dinosaurs, M$ is getting too big and thinking too small. A better patent for them would be a PC that runs on blood, sucking it right out of you while you stare at it. Call it Windows IV.
Just the first step, next is DNA sampling with retinal scans and RFIDs embedded at birth. I'm sure they will be the first with Borg-like implants too. Can you say "hive mind"?
Privacy has been going bye-bye for 5,000 years. This is just another step. On the other side, getting the dossier on every person in China will be reduced to one database dump by a CIA cracker/agent. Efficient espionage, ya gotta love technology!
There are 270,000 words in the English language. Most speakers know only a fraction and use an even smaller fraction. When they need to express themselves, they reuse the closest word that easily comes to mind or they make up 'slang'. Why? It may be a complexity issue related to the capacity of human memory, or it might be an emotional issue, or it is most likely is something that I don't even understand.
Coding is like that, but to a greater degree. Determining the 'code fit' may be harder than finding the right word, even if you have the library in your lap. It may take a machine to fix the coding problem, just like it took a book to catalogue all the words. Someday, if we can find the right words to describe the code we need, a machine will probably find it for us.