8 bit consoles aren't really 8 bit, just 256 color. The Atari 2600 could access far more than 256 bytes of memory directly, so it wasn't really 8 bit either.
You're confusing the address bus with the data bus. When people say "8-bit", "16-bit", etc., they're referring to the data bus. The address bus usually has more pins. The original 8086 had a 20-pin address bus, which is why it could access 1 MiB of memory. In the case of "256-color", that's referring to a video mode, which (usually) has nothing to do with the CPU.
Software patents are a complicated dance, optimized and perverted (from the original purpose of patents) to increase the barriers to entry for competing software developers. The notion that patents can be countered by prior art is flawed in the world of software for several reasons, not the least of which is a dedicated corporate legal team finding other existing patents to pin on you. The pressure to cross-license with a huge corporation reinforces this barrier, and few individuals have the time and money to squabble with corporations in court over a concept as nebulous as a patent on math. Software patents shoud be abolished; nothing less can fix the problems inherent in their design.
New Mexico, like much of the sun belt (especially Texas) needs water badly. We can only hope for the seasonal rains to kick in, but precipitation has been pretty crazy in the United States recently. If only there was a way to siphon water out of the Midwest flood plains... As for fireworks, I can only hope that the people buying them are merely stocking up for a more opportune time. I certainly hope people think twice before burning our state down.
Do you butcher your own meat? You seem to have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Natural predators strive for a clean, efficient kill, so your "lions and gazelles" analogy doesn't hold water. Animal cruelty encompasses disease and feed quality, among other things; it ends up in the food we eat. It's sad that it has to be put in such practical terms for you -- being tortured to death is something no being should have to endure.
Oh, pardon me for tarnishing the good name of an abstract, unproven theory! If it's your philosophy, that's fine with me, but don't expect people on the internet to stop "slandering" it.
No they aren't, they're a monopoly mandated by the government
I don't think you fully grasped the GP's quote:
Its a free market and once they are free to get big enough they are free to rape you while financially supporting your elected officials to elsablish laws that support corporate rape of you.
The conflation of two aspects of the NIMBY crowd, "No new nuclear reactors," and "Nothing capable of refining weapons-grade material (i.e. it's a bomb omg!)," have made the cost of operating old, inefficient reactor designs prohibitively expensive. Breeder reactors that don't melt down and process nearly all the input material several times (resulting in a much smaller amount of waste that, while highly radioactive, is naturally radioactive for a far shorter period of time, in the span of decades) are not being built. The current state of nuclear power, what should be a far cleaner and more economical way of generating energy, is perverted into a NIMBY self-fulfilling prophecy: "It's dangerous, so we won't allow any newer designs and we will watch all the old, experimental reactors go up in flames, just to prove our point." Oddly enough, most of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are doing just fine despite several decades of use, which is more than you can say for fossil-fuel refineries.
I know I'm paraphrasing this analogy badly, but here goes: Leaking secrets is like breaking somebody's basement window. Nobody's life is directly threatened by the act, but it may expose the fact that there is a slave in the basement; the owner deserves every bit of embarrassment and punishment that is to follow.
There is nothing in the public sphere that should be kept secret. If officials are running shady international operations, it's only their fault when it blows up in their face.
Ahh, the eternal "is this really news for nerds?" troll. This is a philosophical debate in society; nerds are welcome. What you seem to want is "news for consumers".
As an eternal optimist, I think we (the U.S. public) aren't being loud enough. We need to take this disorganized grumbling about higher gas prices and start asking for efficient, interstate mass transport, like maglev (or the theoretical vactrain). It can be done, but Congress won't authorize it unless we don't let them weasel out of the problem. Maybe all it will take is a single letter from every constituent to their representative, flooding their offices.
Profits. Introducing DRM into component swapping is intended to eliminate third-party replacement parts, thus allowing the manufacturer to completely control the product cycle, and allowing them to charge any price for replacement parts.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's throw the whole Library of Congress in a landfill and find out!
We'll miss Linus.
But we can visit him anytime in the local mental hospital.
8 bit consoles aren't really 8 bit, just 256 color. The Atari 2600 could access far more than 256 bytes of memory directly, so it wasn't really 8 bit either.
You're confusing the address bus with the data bus. When people say "8-bit", "16-bit", etc., they're referring to the data bus. The address bus usually has more pins. The original 8086 had a 20-pin address bus, which is why it could access 1 MiB of memory. In the case of "256-color", that's referring to a video mode, which (usually) has nothing to do with the CPU.
Cyberterrorist hackers are pilfering "a latte or two"...wait...that doesn't sound scary enough.
Wikipedia says it's the French name for China. The Grammar Nazi in me was saddened to hear that.
The slots at the call centers are limited and highly sought; the training is intense, and the infrastructure is poor.
You know you're disillusioned when that assessment sounds equal to or better than most job openings in the United States.
Software patents are a complicated dance, optimized and perverted (from the original purpose of patents) to increase the barriers to entry for competing software developers. The notion that patents can be countered by prior art is flawed in the world of software for several reasons, not the least of which is a dedicated corporate legal team finding other existing patents to pin on you. The pressure to cross-license with a huge corporation reinforces this barrier, and few individuals have the time and money to squabble with corporations in court over a concept as nebulous as a patent on math. Software patents shoud be abolished; nothing less can fix the problems inherent in their design.
Doesn't graphite do the same thing, more or less?
The people responsible for that database error have been sacked...
They cleaned out the only people who knew how to run the server? Kinda makes the "custom 404 page" issue moot.
Another NMer.
New Mexico, like much of the sun belt (especially Texas) needs water badly. We can only hope for the seasonal rains to kick in, but precipitation has been pretty crazy in the United States recently. If only there was a way to siphon water out of the Midwest flood plains...
As for fireworks, I can only hope that the people buying them are merely stocking up for a more opportune time. I certainly hope people think twice before burning our state down.
incompetent business management
held to account for security breeches
Incompetent business solution #1: Issue a pair of security breeches to every employee.
So... if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear?
Exactly. Corporations are not entitled to privacy. Rather, they know the regulations; they should damn well obey them.
Do you butcher your own meat? You seem to have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Natural predators strive for a clean, efficient kill, so your "lions and gazelles" analogy doesn't hold water. Animal cruelty encompasses disease and feed quality, among other things; it ends up in the food we eat. It's sad that it has to be put in such practical terms for you -- being tortured to death is something no being should have to endure.
Does Chrome have a flexible JavaScript blocker like NoScript yet?
Oh, pardon me for tarnishing the good name of an abstract, unproven theory! If it's your philosophy, that's fine with me, but don't expect people on the internet to stop "slandering" it.
No they aren't, they're a monopoly mandated by the government
I don't think you fully grasped the GP's quote:
Its a free market and once they are free to get big enough they are free to rape you while financially supporting your elected officials to elsablish laws that support corporate rape of you.
Funny, I seem to be able to download the open source compiler for Flash directly from Adobe.
It doesn't really matter how "open-source" the compiler is when the platform in question (Flash Player) is a black box.
you just have to know what they want, do what you need to get it, and translate it back to what they expect.
At that point, you don't really need customer service, do you?
(Unless it's one of those spawn-of-DRM activation routines...grumble grumble)
The conflation of two aspects of the NIMBY crowd, "No new nuclear reactors," and "Nothing capable of refining weapons-grade material (i.e. it's a bomb omg!)," have made the cost of operating old, inefficient reactor designs prohibitively expensive. Breeder reactors that don't melt down and process nearly all the input material several times (resulting in a much smaller amount of waste that, while highly radioactive, is naturally radioactive for a far shorter period of time, in the span of decades) are not being built. The current state of nuclear power, what should be a far cleaner and more economical way of generating energy, is perverted into a NIMBY self-fulfilling prophecy: "It's dangerous, so we won't allow any newer designs and we will watch all the old, experimental reactors go up in flames, just to prove our point." Oddly enough, most of the nuclear reactors in the U.S. are doing just fine despite several decades of use, which is more than you can say for fossil-fuel refineries.
I know I'm paraphrasing this analogy badly, but here goes:
Leaking secrets is like breaking somebody's basement window. Nobody's life is directly threatened by the act, but it may expose the fact that there is a slave in the basement; the owner deserves every bit of embarrassment and punishment that is to follow.
There is nothing in the public sphere that should be kept secret. If officials are running shady international operations, it's only their fault when it blows up in their face.
Ahh, the eternal "is this really news for nerds?" troll.
This is a philosophical debate in society; nerds are welcome. What you seem to want is "news for consumers".
Well, Congress may actually have to raise our taxes (gasp) and not contract the lowest bidder, but progress isn't free.
As an eternal optimist, I think we (the U.S. public) aren't being loud enough. We need to take this disorganized grumbling about higher gas prices and start asking for efficient, interstate mass transport, like maglev (or the theoretical vactrain). It can be done, but Congress won't authorize it unless we don't let them weasel out of the problem. Maybe all it will take is a single letter from every constituent to their representative, flooding their offices.
Earthquake prediction can be a faulty science
I see what you did there...
Profits.
Introducing DRM into component swapping is intended to eliminate third-party replacement parts, thus allowing the manufacturer to completely control the product cycle, and allowing them to charge any price for replacement parts.