I wondered what alternative standards bodies could exist and I tried to find a web peer method that might work.
The best idea I came up with was a standard body for GPL standards based around something like sourceforge.
If people are familier with wide band delphi estimation then this next bit might sound familiar.
Everybody on sourgeforge has a rating determined by amount of code submitted, and any peer review ratings on their code - this then gives them a weighting value for voting. The more technical they are, the more code they submit the higher their rating is. Everybody can then vote on their amendments or proposals for standards and a moderation scheme would run to promote or demote comments based on their ratings. Changes can then be voted in or removed democratically and the best ideas would naturally float up.
The advantages are:-
1. very large audience peer review of any standard
2. best ideas automatically promoted (even if you are a newbie reviewer if you have a good idea then it should gather momemtum of its own and be promoted)
3. system automatically handles voting, promotion, weighting scale and is therefore impartial arbiter.
4. transparency accross the board, everybody can see how the system works
5. if anybody wants to become more influential then they have to donate more source code to be a prolific reviewer. Everybody benefits.
Ok that is an isolated example, and I chose sourceforge as a well known example.
For standards instead of source there would need to be some changes obviously.
But in this day and age, agreeing on a technical international standard seems an excellent candidate for a web based system. In reviewing this kind of thing I have always thought the more the merrier.
Anyhow, only an idea, a pipe dream really.
I now await the/. regulars to tell me what a tit I'm being and why it would never work:-(
(I also wondered on how the voting would of turned out if the current provess was peer reviewed - i.e. filmed and distributed for all to see on the standards websites.)
or in other words from TFA Win32 Firefox/IE prone to this technique, I'm assuming the code injection would only work on the target OS, no? I mean the CPU is specific, but also to work seamlessly you need to script it to to the target app. So it does not work on another processor (PPC etc) but also it would not work on any other application - so as the Linux binary is different then you are safe (until that one is attacked, but part of the security of Linux relies on the smaller audience is not so attractive a target). But what if it worked on a Win32 DLL that was being emulated under Linux such as some of the codecs? Any thoughts? correct me!
And, just out of curiosity, I'm kinda wondering how long it took Mark to work this one out.
lol! Look at all the little Ubuntunoobs modding this "Insightful".
tell you the truth I'm a little startled by that myself, bot don't you worry there, the/. regulars will be along shortly to crank me back down.:-) I miss early RH, I know Ubuntu makes things easy - even my gf uses it - but it removes the glamour of slaving away for hours to make you latest download distro work and be "just so", the exact way you like it.
When you can get a top notch install for just three clicks my sensible side likes it, but my inner geek mourns.
The article did not mention it, so I'll state it. Truth is that they are being spanked by Ubuntu and are forced to move to server in order to survive. As always, its hard to make a business in selling something people can get for free. Not to mention that as Linux get easier and more reliable paying for support seems less attractive.
Shame though, I used to use RH. before dallying with 'drake, 'diva, and 'dora on the way to (K)Ubuntu. Each to their own though.
Not from what I saw out there. They shamelessly ripped each other off with the same abandon as they did the western world.
There was 1 difference though - the west was a easier target because the margins were so much better. It is the normal to see us ripped off left, right and center but there is less economic incentive for them to rip each other off.
There is one point worth making though - they fully understand IP law (and find it hilarious), and they use it against the western world. They have created a vast swathe of (frequently ridiculous) patents and try to enforce them against the west as gleefully as they ignore them in the east. Its just another way to make a living off us crazy people.
Trying to persuade them that this is wrong is like trying to persuade them that it is wrong to eat dog - they will look at you like you are a madman - and to them you probably are viewed as a madman. Its about the same magnitude of cultural gap that exists between a marine and your average taleban - you try to explain that some soldiers will come and issue "warning fire", follow "rules of engagement", and try to imprison you to some "geneva convention" (with better food and water then they are used to) in some civilized manner, yet if all else fails drop 40 tonnes of high explosive on your head. What they are used to is creeping up on somebody and cutting their throat. The concept is so alien they will not understand.
what I want to know is... how does this effect the price?
I mean presumably there is a windows cost added on, and with Linux/Win being sold side by side this might finally get the consumers to see something that only us geeks have been that knowledgeable about: ie, the windows tax.
I've had mine since they came out, and I will not be dirtying it with windows...
look at the pics!
It is basically a very badly made switch designed to look like a MCB - in other words there is no over protection at all and it is dubious that even the switch component could handle the 32A rated. A fatality awaiting to happen.
Any firm subsidies the R&D spend by selling their current range at a competitive profit. Any one line only stays in the field for a limited length of time and by then a new product must be ready to roll or the company folds.
This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on. Every new fork in the technology will leave a few smaller companies on the graveyard because they either backed the wrong branch or will not have the capital to change.
So along comes a knock off firm who takes the whole IP without doing any R&D and pushes it out at a lower margin and steals profit from the designer. What happens? the original firm suffers and the balance is risked. A similar situation exists in patent car parts and 3rd party parts - when you buy original manufacturer parts you are helping design the next model of car. Without that income the whole system hangs in jeopardy.
Take a step back from your naive, narrow minded viewpoint and try and look at the market as whole. Apart from the legality of the issue Chinese knockoff invariably add nothing to quality, save little on price and carry far greater hidden risks then most people think.
The trick here is to mentally predict what will happen in another 15 years if this continues.
My opinion is based on experience and facts as I see them, and yes - I traveled to china 6 times a year for >5 years when working in the CE industry so I have some limited experience in this.
Even if they understand it is illegal, they see nothing wrong with it. In my trips to china I saw some crazy stuff - taking somebody else's ideas and doing it better/cheaper is a normal business practice there.
look, on the bright side - it probably will not be fatal. if you really want a shocking (bad pun) Chinese fake, look at this one:-
I'm not interested in a flame war about Hawking. Or interested in a "debate" about his contributions to fat man and Nagasaki. He clearly was a genius in many fields, who helped advance science, was widely regarded by his peers and his comments on his part in the development on nuclear warfare makes it very very clear his interest lied only in stopping the war quickly to save millions of lives.
A great man has died, RIP.
My condolences top his next of kin.
Then I envy you. I needed a password to set up a tool I use and it took me two days of begging, persuading and wheedling to get it at one place I worked. The IT "consultant" who was trusted with it - well, lets say that I would not of trusted him with a mop and bucket.
I have - in the past - booted off a Linux rescue CD, mounted NTFS read only and got files I needed from protected folders because some jumped up little officious twit has not known what he is talking about. And was about the image the drive because apparently there was "no way" to get at the data.
In managerial mode this kind of set up looks sensible and secure - and nobody will persuade them otherwise.
I'm too young to remember bubble memory, but don't worry Google is my friend and the (ever so) helpful/.r's will correct any errors in their normal polite, restrained and helpful fashion.
From what I understand you created a circular magnetic field and then loaded a pattern into in, moving it around the field and past the read area to determine the data value. The pattern density was very high and the loops were printed onto the surface of the device, a bit like the old 80s game donkey kong they were joined into one big loop. They peaked at around 1Mbit size in the 80s, before more conventional technology was developed to replace them.
By using a very very thin wire as the loop, IBM have further increased the data density, and modern high speed electronics allows faster access time. Key to the new idea is the technology to move the data around the wire - this is the novel part of the invention.
This offers low cost, high storage volatile storage devices to maybe replace existing RAM technology.
blam! the sound of eBay shooting itself in the foot.
as a buyer paypal has some good points - limited protection, traceability, etc.
but as a seller it sucks big time as just adds another set of fees to your sale.
eBay nicks nearly 5-10% of the sale price including paypal.
if they made paypal free and just part of the eBay service then there might not be so many arguments, but to enforce it and then make additional money is such a blatent money grab that this will backfire big time.
buyers may like it, but if there are no sellers then there will be no buyers. it will be interested to watch how the number of items for sale changes in ebay.au after this is enforced. anybody know how we can plot a graph of items for sale vs. date to track the impact?
I'm guessing that there will be such a negative impact in.au that they will not dare make the same change to.com.co.uk etc.
from eBays point of view they are being pressurized to add more traceability into their system by law enforcement worried about fraud and fencing - so they are really between a rock and a hard place here.
one thing is certain - behind every internet giant is a number if "would bes" who will seize every opportunity to steal business, so eBay will have to tread carefully here.
I applaud them for their principled stand, but I ridicule them for this decision. It was surely taken in the interests of staving off a good 'ole web flaming then any sensible grounds. There are so many of these applications of this style and format around that I find it hard buy their argument.
And I, for one, would find this kind of demo application extremely interesting. It always interesting to see how these things are done.
Bottom line - I think there is nothing intrinsically special with this kind of application, any of us with a modest amount of programming experience could of knocked it up. It is always interested to see a standard basic application in a new system as a common ground to allow ease of adoption. For that reason there is a bunch of "hello worlds", "simple graphs" and so forth. On a web development system you would expect by the same argument to see "tables", "blogs", "portals" and the "simple chat" as their demos. This is like MS trying to stop the notepad demo that comes with some windows compilers, or LiveJournal trying to stop the blog demo that came with GWT. Totally Daft.
the Fools! the Fools! what could possibly go wrong? Actually I'm not so worried about a mini supernova as I am a mini black hole, because I don't see a mini supervova as possibly self sustaining (might take out a few scientists though - there's always plenty more), whilst a mini black whole near a large mass might last long enough to eat us all. Still, a better way to go then the grey goo.
Nice to see another animal joining the tiger, rhino and elephant in helping mankind survive and prosper.
Still, I'm sure as a sensible and mature species we can do the right thing and coexist happy with our newfound antibiotic donors. It would be ironic if after they finally disappear from the wild (and they are one of those species that has been around for many many millions of years) they survive only in medicine farms.
A few people have requested a list of "good" ISPs so they can use them.
I also advocate a list of "bad" ISPs so we can **avoid** them. Name and shame I say, the nets good for that.
Its amazing how many business practices seem to be accepted or tolerated on the net that would be frowned upon or a cue for legal action in the real world. its as though virtual assets somehow seem less valuable then real ones, which is obviously not always true.
Slashdot Mirror
I wondered what alternative standards bodies could exist and I tried to find a web peer method that might work.
/. regulars to tell me what a tit I'm being and why it would never work :-(
The best idea I came up with was a standard body for GPL standards based around something like sourceforge.
If people are familier with wide band delphi estimation then this next bit might sound familiar.
Everybody on sourgeforge has a rating determined by amount of code submitted, and any peer review ratings on their code - this then gives them a weighting value for voting. The more technical they are, the more code they submit the higher their rating is. Everybody can then vote on their amendments or proposals for standards and a moderation scheme would run to promote or demote comments based on their ratings. Changes can then be voted in or removed democratically and the best ideas would naturally float up.
The advantages are:-
1. very large audience peer review of any standard
2. best ideas automatically promoted (even if you are a newbie reviewer if you have a good idea then it should gather momemtum of its own and be promoted)
3. system automatically handles voting, promotion, weighting scale and is therefore impartial arbiter.
4. transparency accross the board, everybody can see how the system works
5. if anybody wants to become more influential then they have to donate more source code to be a prolific reviewer. Everybody benefits.
Ok that is an isolated example, and I chose sourceforge as a well known example.
For standards instead of source there would need to be some changes obviously.
But in this day and age, agreeing on a technical international standard seems an excellent candidate for a web based system. In reviewing this kind of thing I have always thought the more the merrier.
Anyhow, only an idea, a pipe dream really.
I now await the
(I also wondered on how the voting would of turned out if the current provess was peer reviewed - i.e. filmed and distributed for all to see on the standards websites.)
So.. basically by implication he admits they released an unfinished project that they knew was bloatware?
:-)
Well we knew it, buts its nice of him to admit it. (Bet MS PR just loves him)
finally a decent opportunity to ask...
"does it run Linux?"
or in other words from TFA Win32 Firefox/IE prone to this technique, I'm assuming the code injection would only work on the target OS, no? I mean the CPU is specific, but also to work seamlessly you need to script it to to the target app. So it does not work on another processor (PPC etc) but also it would not work on any other application - so as the Linux binary is different then you are safe (until that one is attacked, but part of the security of Linux relies on the smaller audience is not so attractive a target). But what if it worked on a Win32 DLL that was being emulated under Linux such as some of the codecs? Any thoughts? correct me!
And, just out of curiosity, I'm kinda wondering how long it took Mark to work this one out.
tell you the truth I'm a little startled by that myself, bot don't you worry there, the
When you can get a top notch install for just three clicks my sensible side likes it, but my inner geek mourns.
The article did not mention it, so I'll state it. Truth is that they are being spanked by Ubuntu and are forced to move to server in order to survive. As always, its hard to make a business in selling something people can get for free. Not to mention that as Linux get easier and more reliable paying for support seems less attractive.
Shame though, I used to use RH. before dallying with 'drake, 'diva, and 'dora on the way to (K)Ubuntu. Each to their own though.
Any sign of a 200ft mutated iguana in TFA?
Cue the cut scenes of panicked citizens running away from the shoreline whilst an authoritative man barks orders into a microphone.
Golly. Talk about your basic police state.
I'm jolly glad that I live in the United Kingd.......
oh.
Not from what I saw out there. They shamelessly ripped each other off with the same abandon as they did the western world.
There was 1 difference though - the west was a easier target because the margins were so much better. It is the normal to see us ripped off left, right and center but there is less economic incentive for them to rip each other off.
There is one point worth making though - they fully understand IP law (and find it hilarious), and they use it against the western world. They have created a vast swathe of (frequently ridiculous) patents and try to enforce them against the west as gleefully as they ignore them in the east. Its just another way to make a living off us crazy people.
Trying to persuade them that this is wrong is like trying to persuade them that it is wrong to eat dog - they will look at you like you are a madman - and to them you probably are viewed as a madman. Its about the same magnitude of cultural gap that exists between a marine and your average taleban - you try to explain that some soldiers will come and issue "warning fire", follow "rules of engagement", and try to imprison you to some "geneva convention" (with better food and water then they are used to) in some civilized manner, yet if all else fails drop 40 tonnes of high explosive on your head. What they are used to is creeping up on somebody and cutting their throat. The concept is so alien they will not understand.
Sorry, drifting a bit in the last.
what I want to know is... how does this effect the price?
I mean presumably there is a windows cost added on, and with Linux/Win being sold side by side this might finally get the consumers to see something that only us geeks have been that knowledgeable about: ie, the windows tax.
I've had mine since they came out, and I will not be dirtying it with windows...
look at the pics! It is basically a very badly made switch designed to look like a MCB - in other words there is no over protection at all and it is dubious that even the switch component could handle the 32A rated. A fatality awaiting to happen.
Basically R&D.
Any firm subsidies the R&D spend by selling their current range at a competitive profit. Any one line only stays in the field for a limited length of time and by then a new product must be ready to roll or the company folds.
This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on. Every new fork in the technology will leave a few smaller companies on the graveyard because they either backed the wrong branch or will not have the capital to change.
So along comes a knock off firm who takes the whole IP without doing any R&D and pushes it out at a lower margin and steals profit from the designer. What happens? the original firm suffers and the balance is risked. A similar situation exists in patent car parts and 3rd party parts - when you buy original manufacturer parts you are helping design the next model of car. Without that income the whole system hangs in jeopardy.
Take a step back from your naive, narrow minded viewpoint and try and look at the market as whole. Apart from the legality of the issue Chinese knockoff invariably add nothing to quality, save little on price and carry far greater hidden risks then most people think.
The trick here is to mentally predict what will happen in another 15 years if this continues. My opinion is based on experience and facts as I see them, and yes - I traveled to china 6 times a year for >5 years when working in the CE industry so I have some limited experience in this.
Even if they understand it is illegal, they see nothing wrong with it. In my trips to china I saw some crazy stuff - taking somebody else's ideas and doing it better/cheaper is a normal business practice there.
look, on the bright side - it probably will not be fatal. if you really want a shocking (bad pun) Chinese fake, look at this one:-
http://www.schneider-electric.co.uk/internet/pws/pws.nsf/luAllByID/F2DAEE42760F06F3802573F3004D040C
I'm not interested in a flame war about Hawking. Or interested in a "debate" about his contributions to fat man and Nagasaki. He clearly was a genius in many fields, who helped advance science, was widely regarded by his peers and his comments on his part in the development on nuclear warfare makes it very very clear his interest lied only in stopping the war quickly to save millions of lives.
A great man has died, RIP.
My condolences top his next of kin.
Then I envy you. I needed a password to set up a tool I use and it took me two days of begging, persuading and wheedling to get it at one place I worked. The IT "consultant" who was trusted with it - well, lets say that I would not of trusted him with a mop and bucket.
I have - in the past - booted off a Linux rescue CD, mounted NTFS read only and got files I needed from protected folders because some jumped up little officious twit has not known what he is talking about. And was about the image the drive because apparently there was "no way" to get at the data.
In managerial mode this kind of set up looks sensible and secure - and nobody will persuade them otherwise.
hahaha, let the users have admin rights?
does the author have **any** experience of the commercial environment?
oh way to go. ruin a perfectly good conspiracy theory!
I'm too young to remember bubble memory, but don't worry Google is my friend and the (ever so) helpful /.r's will correct any errors in their normal polite, restrained and helpful fashion.
From what I understand you created a circular magnetic field and then loaded a pattern into in, moving it around the field and past the read area to determine the data value. The pattern density was very high and the loops were printed onto the surface of the device, a bit like the old 80s game donkey kong they were joined into one big loop. They peaked at around 1Mbit size in the 80s, before more conventional technology was developed to replace them.
By using a very very thin wire as the loop, IBM have further increased the data density, and modern high speed electronics allows faster access time. Key to the new idea is the technology to move the data around the wire - this is the novel part of the invention.
This offers low cost, high storage volatile storage devices to maybe replace existing RAM technology.
gah! mental bleach!
the last thing I want to do is watch peoples motions in real time, the last time my docto...
oh wait, sorry. wrong kind of motions there.
blam! the sound of eBay shooting itself in the foot.
.au that they will not dare make the same change to .com .co.uk etc.
as a buyer paypal has some good points - limited protection, traceability, etc.
but as a seller it sucks big time as just adds another set of fees to your sale.
eBay nicks nearly 5-10% of the sale price including paypal.
if they made paypal free and just part of the eBay service then there might not be so many arguments, but to enforce it and then make additional money is such a blatent money grab that this will backfire big time.
buyers may like it, but if there are no sellers then there will be no buyers. it will be interested to watch how the number of items for sale changes in ebay.au after this is enforced. anybody know how we can plot a graph of items for sale vs. date to track the impact?
I'm guessing that there will be such a negative impact in
from eBays point of view they are being pressurized to add more traceability into their system by law enforcement worried about fraud and fencing - so they are really between a rock and a hard place here.
one thing is certain - behind every internet giant is a number if "would bes" who will seize every opportunity to steal business, so eBay will have to tread carefully here.
I would guess the people who would be interested in this would be reeaally boring.
Ipso facto, their saved record/video/photos of their life would be reeally boring.
I seem to remember reading once that almost nobody ever used their web browsers history, so I'm guess this will never get off the ground.
Frankly I do not feel like I need my own black box, but I guess there will be some sound medical reasons why some people might want one (dementia?)
I applaud them for their principled stand, but I ridicule them for this decision. It was surely taken in the interests of staving off a good 'ole web flaming then any sensible grounds. There are so many of these applications of this style and format around that I find it hard buy their argument.
And I, for one, would find this kind of demo application extremely interesting. It always interesting to see how these things are done.
Bottom line - I think there is nothing intrinsically special with this kind of application, any of us with a modest amount of programming experience could of knocked it up. It is always interested to see a standard basic application in a new system as a common ground to allow ease of adoption. For that reason there is a bunch of "hello worlds", "simple graphs" and so forth. On a web development system you would expect by the same argument to see "tables", "blogs", "portals" and the "simple chat" as their demos. This is like MS trying to stop the notepad demo that comes with some windows compilers, or LiveJournal trying to stop the blog demo that came with GWT. Totally Daft.
Go on, reinstate it!
FTFA: "They will create mini-supernovas."
the Fools! the Fools! what could possibly go wrong? Actually I'm not so worried about a mini supernova as I am a mini black hole, because I don't see a mini supervova as possibly self sustaining (might take out a few scientists though - there's always plenty more), whilst a mini black whole near a large mass might last long enough to eat us all. Still, a better way to go then the grey goo.
Nice to see another animal joining the tiger, rhino and elephant in helping mankind survive and prosper.
Still, I'm sure as a sensible and mature species we can do the right thing and coexist happy with our newfound antibiotic donors. It would be ironic if after they finally disappear from the wild (and they are one of those species that has been around for many many millions of years) they survive only in medicine farms.
sigh.
sorry sony, I have a PS3 and I like it - but no BDs.
a up sampling DVD player and an HD TV are all I need for the time being.
in short - DVD is perfectly acceptable for my needs (and many other peoples from the looks of things).
A few people have requested a list of "good" ISPs so they can use them.
I also advocate a list of "bad" ISPs so we can **avoid** them. Name and shame I say, the nets good for that.
Its amazing how many business practices seem to be accepted or tolerated on the net that would be frowned upon or a cue for legal action in the real world. its as though virtual assets somehow seem less valuable then real ones, which is obviously not always true.