If I were bezos' legal counsel, I might suggest funding the defense of one of these guys.
There is plenty of room for multiple patent trolls. Bezos probably won't go after these guys do to professional courtesy. That's probably why Amazon is absent from the list too.
Oh, and get this. They don't even use the same font. They both use the same font family (sans serif), but that's only a fallback. If you have the necessary fonts installed, then Facebook will use "lucida grande", while the German site will use tahoma. Granted, if you don't have lucida grande, then they will both fallback to the same list, tahoma, verdana, arial, and then sans serif.
So, if you have "lucida grande" installed, then you will see two different, although quite similar, fonts on the two pages.
Seriously? I just checked both sites, and they look kind of similar, but not much. They're not even the same color, or the same language. I seriously doubt anybody would confuse the two.
That second one is often called the gnu style. Here are some reasons it is not used:
1) It is cumbersome to write all extra those tabs. 2) It uses a lot of horizontal space. Every indent is 2 tabs over. Nested ifs and fors and such will quickly approach the edge of the screen. 3) It takes just as much vertical spcace as the Allman style, but the braces don't line up with anything at all.
I find it odd that you refer to this as the most readable, most obvious way to write the code. Most people retch at the sight of it. To each his own.
Btw, I haven't voted yet. I used to prefer the Allman style (largely because the first C++ book I ever read used it), but few projects use it, and several that I have worked with used the Kernighan-Ritchie style, and now I prefer it.
Yes. I meant that American schools, in their current state, are not good for kids, and that if they were happy with how things are, then that would be a bad sign. It looks like you understood that, but I wasn't really clear with my statement.
I wonder every time when people complain here about the student/teacher ratio - I came from a place where we had 120+ students in almost all my grades and still over 60% of the students managed to graduate with excellent grades.
There are two problems with that statement. 1) You never said what the student/teacher ratio is for your school. Only that you went to a small school. 2) Low standards for grades are part of the problem. Just because a student gets good grades, doesn't mean that school did them any good.
Having undergone a brief and unpleasant stint attempting to educate American students, IMO you're dead on - the problem with the American educational system is primarily the lousy uninterested Americans that pass through it, more interested in sports, drugs, sex, and popularity (which is largely a function of the first three items) than in actually learning anything. No amount of money will make these degenerates any more interested in learning, and that's the fundamental problem. To put it plainly, nothing about our educational system will improve unless our culture shifts so that the nerd is socially more respected than the jock.
Kids being disinterested in school is not a problem. It is a good thing. Anyone who believes that school is good for kids is delusional.
[Apple has] the exclusive right to distribute [their] OS. As they should... Now some small fry entrepreneur is... selling PCs with OS X loaded on them. Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs...
You seem to be confusing Psystar's behavior with piracy. They pay for their copies of OS X. Apple doesn't have a discount distribution center for their OS (for obvious reasons), so Psystar pays full retail price for each copy of OS X that they sell, and they use their right-of-first-sale rights to then resell that copy to their customers.
Yesterday Slashdot had a story about how it was judged that loading software in RAM is equivalent to distributing software. Psystar is loading it onto the HDD, so this ruling might be different. Of course, you could argue that Psystar is then distributing the HDD, but as mentioned before, right-of-first-sale gives them this right without the need for a license.
It's been a while, but I really hope for a sane copyright-related ruling this time. I'm not holding my breath.
That's not quite how the ruling worked. Making a copy of something to RAM in and of itself is not considered copyright infringement. Doing so without agreeing to the terms of the End User License Agreement is.
Simple. Just don't have a EULA. People will assume that they have the right to play the game, even though they don't without a EULA.
In order for your plan to work, you would have to create an EULA that stated that making any sort of copy of the program is illegal, including copies in RAM.
Nope. This court ruling (and another that precedes it, I hear) already states that making copies in RAM constitutes a copy by copyright law. You seem to be thinking that you are allowed to make copies of a program unless a EULA states otherwise. This ruling states that making a copy in RAM is the same as distributing a program; you are not allowed to do it unless given special permission.
However, since by default YOUR program is the one doing the copying, even something like that wouldn't work. You have to rely on users making their own copy in RAM using their own tools, and the average user would not know how to do so.
That's an interesting take. Unfortunately, Blizzard's software also does the copying itself. I guess the judge thinks that the user is actually the one copying the software, which, by itself, is not as assinine as the rest of the ruling.
Sorry, but your 'worst case scenario' predatory loophole is pretty short sighted.
Seeing the worst case scenario does not require foresight. It is already here. Copyright holders can dictate what you can and can not do with stuff that you paid for. How much worse is it going to get?
The last thing we need is an OS that cries itself to sleep.
But on a more serious note, most of your suggestions seem a fantasy that would be more appropriate for movie computers.
limit the use of "pre-load" application resources for items rarely used (I don't need itunes and acrobat pre loading crap if I only look at a PDF occasionally, and don't typically play music while working).
Microsoft can not control what Adobe or Apple does.
It should recomend TO the user to add more RAM, and be able to communicate the number of minutes or seconds it would save the user to perform the upgrade. If the user commonly runs a lot of programs, and it commonly caches stuff that would otherwise be in RAM, TELL THE USER TO GET MORE RAM, don't assume they know. If HDD performance is causing real-time applications to stutter, or games to have frame skip, tell the user it's too slow.
So, would this be a background task? That takes up RAM and CPU cycles? Windows doesn't need more background tasks monitoring what I do. There are already benchmark utilities that identify bottlenecks and recommend upgrades. I see no reason for anything more, but I suppose it would be nice if Microsoft included one with their system utilities.
Microsoft should also list system requirements, as should EVERYONE else, based on an average system configuration, not on a clean install.
Even if Microsoft employed genuine psychics, it would cost a lot of money to print the different boxes for everyone. Since they don't have psychics, this would be impossible, because Microsoft has no way of knowing what a person is going to use the system for. What I don't understand is why an OS even needs such high minimum system requirements. There is no reason a Pentium II should be unable to run any modern OS. Sure, it won't handle the latest games, but why would an OS need anything more than that?
Yes, this is certainly a sensible decision... let's hope similar precedents are set everywhere, or we're not going to have much free wi-fi around.
This might not increase the free wi-fi. According to the summary, "if other users use your open WiFi network without your consent and download copyrighted material...". This ruling seems to only apply to people who have left their routers in a default state, and don't even know what an open access point is.
On the other hand, anyone providing wi-fi can just claim that they weren't actually giving consent, as long as they don't name their access point something like, "FreeWiFi", and don't give people a welcome page with rules and such.
When I read the summary, I thought, "Surely Tom's Hardware is doing something wrong. It is Tom's Hardware, after all." But I wasn't sure what. Thanks for pointing it out, so I don't have to RTFA.
The value of proprietary firmware, assuming that the open source version can do everything the proprietary can do, is 0. If their open source offerings were the same price as the proprietary offerings, would you really choose the proprietary over the open source?
That being said, in a possible future where router manufacturers no longer decide to maintain their own firmwares, routers might be cheaper.
An open source router appeals to people because it is more customizable. They can add QOS, servers, etc. Any router should work fine with Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD, or any other OS that uses BSD-style networking (any modern OS).
Your problem comes from a crappy router. Perhaps a Netgear? They make a lot of crappy routers. About half of router crappiness is from software, and half is from hardware. If a crappy router is open source, you can fix the software part. But you still can't fix the hardware part.
I would recommend you plop $60 on a nice open source router. Perhaps a Linksys WRT54GL. Stay away from Netgear. I've heard good things about Buffalo, but have never actually used them. With the WRT54GL, you probably won't even need to mess with the default firmware, but it's an option. Linksys is pretty good quality.
Just about any cable channel can survive... even if nobody is watching.
No. They can't. If a show doesn't get ratings, it gets canceled. Sometimes even if it does get ratings.
To clarify for those who don't know: Fox News is cable-only. It's not a broadcast channel, nor could it survive as one.
I only get a few channels, because I don't have cable, and don't watch much TV. But Fox is one of the stronger broadcast signals. Perhaps you were thinking of CNN? Fox is broadcast.
First, I am not sure that email is really by Gates -- from reading his writing or listening to him in the past, it really does not sound like his style.
I think you're right. This "article" screams fake! Notice this part: "I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there." Gates wouldn't have said "they", he would have said "we". And the subject says "flame". It is indeed a rant. Most executives would never write such a thing in a permanent medium. In the end, nobody can ever prove or disprove a "leaked" memo, unless the appropriate party fesses up, but this looks fake.
if you can't do anything about this crap, then stop releasing it on time...
That's not an error. That's to prevent singling out any real I.P. address. Similar to how phone numbers are in the xxx-555-xxxx range. Most TV shows and movies use I.P addresses where the first octet is beyond 255. Sometimes they use 10., 172.(16-31), or 192.168. And sometimes (but very rarely) they will use their I.P address.
There are plenty of errors in Hollywood. This is not one of them.
You must be a real hit at marketing parties. However, as someone who appreciates math not being raped, I prefer the "hull losses / departure" metric, as opposed to a completely new, complicated metric that serves no purpose other than to be able to use a lower number.
The three letter acronyms are lowering security in many ways. What you mention, which I call "intentionally aggravating customers" is one. Another is that they are neglecting to research actual security measures.
A related problem is that they are driving people away from flying, who will then resort to driving, which is much more dangerous. This costs lives every day.
Slashdot Mirror
The "one-click patent" is not value.
If I were bezos' legal counsel, I might suggest funding the defense of one of these guys.
There is plenty of room for multiple patent trolls. Bezos probably won't go after these guys do to professional courtesy. That's probably why Amazon is absent from the list too.
Oh, and get this. They don't even use the same font. They both use the same font family (sans serif), but that's only a fallback. If you have the necessary fonts installed, then Facebook will use "lucida grande", while the German site will use tahoma. Granted, if you don't have lucida grande, then they will both fallback to the same list, tahoma, verdana, arial, and then sans serif.
So, if you have "lucida grande" installed, then you will see two different, although quite similar, fonts on the two pages.
Seriously? I just checked both sites, and they look kind of similar, but not much. They're not even the same color, or the same language. I seriously doubt anybody would confuse the two.
http://www.studivz.net/
http://www.facebook.com/
That second one is often called the gnu style. Here are some reasons it is not used:
1) It is cumbersome to write all extra those tabs.
2) It uses a lot of horizontal space. Every indent is 2 tabs over. Nested ifs and fors and such will quickly approach the edge of the screen.
3) It takes just as much vertical spcace as the Allman style, but the braces don't line up with anything at all.
I find it odd that you refer to this as the most readable, most obvious way to write the code. Most people retch at the sight of it. To each his own.
Btw, I haven't voted yet. I used to prefer the Allman style (largely because the first C++ book I ever read used it), but few projects use it, and several that I have worked with used the Kernighan-Ritchie style, and now I prefer it.
Yes. I meant that American schools, in their current state, are not good for kids, and that if they were happy with how things are, then that would be a bad sign. It looks like you understood that, but I wasn't really clear with my statement.
I wonder every time when people complain here about the student/teacher ratio - I came from a place where we had 120+ students in almost all my grades and still over 60% of the students managed to graduate with excellent grades.
There are two problems with that statement. 1) You never said what the student/teacher ratio is for your school. Only that you went to a small school. 2) Low standards for grades are part of the problem. Just because a student gets good grades, doesn't mean that school did them any good.
Having undergone a brief and unpleasant stint attempting to educate American students, IMO you're dead on - the problem with the American educational system is primarily the lousy uninterested Americans that pass through it, more interested in sports, drugs, sex, and popularity (which is largely a function of the first three items) than in actually learning anything. No amount of money will make these degenerates any more interested in learning, and that's the fundamental problem. To put it plainly, nothing about our educational system will improve unless our culture shifts so that the nerd is socially more respected than the jock.
Kids being disinterested in school is not a problem. It is a good thing. Anyone who believes that school is good for kids is delusional.
It's following Asimov's laws in reverse. It won't kill anybody except to protect itself, or if somebody tells it too.
Compared to SCO, this guy's lawsuit actually has a chance of succeeding.
[Apple has] the exclusive right to distribute [their] OS. As they should ... Now some small fry entrepreneur is ... selling PCs with OS X loaded on them. Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs...
You seem to be confusing Psystar's behavior with piracy. They pay for their copies of OS X. Apple doesn't have a discount distribution center for their OS (for obvious reasons), so Psystar pays full retail price for each copy of OS X that they sell, and they use their right-of-first-sale rights to then resell that copy to their customers.
Yesterday Slashdot had a story about how it was judged that loading software in RAM is equivalent to distributing software. Psystar is loading it onto the HDD, so this ruling might be different. Of course, you could argue that Psystar is then distributing the HDD, but as mentioned before, right-of-first-sale gives them this right without the need for a license.
It's been a while, but I really hope for a sane copyright-related ruling this time. I'm not holding my breath.
That's not quite how the ruling worked. Making a copy of something to RAM in and of itself is not considered copyright infringement. Doing so without agreeing to the terms of the End User License Agreement is.
Simple. Just don't have a EULA. People will assume that they have the right to play the game, even though they don't without a EULA.
In order for your plan to work, you would have to create an EULA that stated that making any sort of copy of the program is illegal, including copies in RAM.
Nope. This court ruling (and another that precedes it, I hear) already states that making copies in RAM constitutes a copy by copyright law. You seem to be thinking that you are allowed to make copies of a program unless a EULA states otherwise. This ruling states that making a copy in RAM is the same as distributing a program; you are not allowed to do it unless given special permission.
However, since by default YOUR program is the one doing the copying, even something like that wouldn't work. You have to rely on users making their own copy in RAM using their own tools, and the average user would not know how to do so.
That's an interesting take. Unfortunately, Blizzard's software also does the copying itself. I guess the judge thinks that the user is actually the one copying the software, which, by itself, is not as assinine as the rest of the ruling.
Sorry, but your 'worst case scenario' predatory loophole is pretty short sighted.
Seeing the worst case scenario does not require foresight. It is already here. Copyright holders can dictate what you can and can not do with stuff that you paid for. How much worse is it going to get?
Allow the OS to be aware of it's own limitations
The last thing we need is an OS that cries itself to sleep.
But on a more serious note, most of your suggestions seem a fantasy that would be more appropriate for movie computers.
limit the use of "pre-load" application resources for items rarely used (I don't need itunes and acrobat pre loading crap if I only look at a PDF occasionally, and don't typically play music while working).
Microsoft can not control what Adobe or Apple does.
It should recomend TO the user to add more RAM, and be able to communicate the number of minutes or seconds it would save the user to perform the upgrade. If the user commonly runs a lot of programs, and it commonly caches stuff that would otherwise be in RAM, TELL THE USER TO GET MORE RAM, don't assume they know. If HDD performance is causing real-time applications to stutter, or games to have frame skip, tell the user it's too slow.
So, would this be a background task? That takes up RAM and CPU cycles? Windows doesn't need more background tasks monitoring what I do. There are already benchmark utilities that identify bottlenecks and recommend upgrades. I see no reason for anything more, but I suppose it would be nice if Microsoft included one with their system utilities.
Microsoft should also list system requirements, as should EVERYONE else, based on an average system configuration, not on a clean install.
Even if Microsoft employed genuine psychics, it would cost a lot of money to print the different boxes for everyone. Since they don't have psychics, this would be impossible, because Microsoft has no way of knowing what a person is going to use the system for. What I don't understand is why an OS even needs such high minimum system requirements. There is no reason a Pentium II should be unable to run any modern OS. Sure, it won't handle the latest games, but why would an OS need anything more than that?
Yes, this is certainly a sensible decision... let's hope similar precedents are set everywhere, or we're not going to have much free wi-fi around.
This might not increase the free wi-fi. According to the summary, "if other users use your open WiFi network without your consent and download copyrighted material ...". This ruling seems to only apply to people who have left their routers in a default state, and don't even know what an open access point is.
On the other hand, anyone providing wi-fi can just claim that they weren't actually giving consent, as long as they don't name their access point something like, "FreeWiFi", and don't give people a welcome page with rules and such.
When I read the summary, I thought, "Surely Tom's Hardware is doing something wrong. It is Tom's Hardware, after all." But I wasn't sure what. Thanks for pointing it out, so I don't have to RTFA.
I'm a North Pole Elf you insensitive clod!
The value of proprietary firmware, assuming that the open source version can do everything the proprietary can do, is 0. If their open source offerings were the same price as the proprietary offerings, would you really choose the proprietary over the open source?
That being said, in a possible future where router manufacturers no longer decide to maintain their own firmwares, routers might be cheaper.
An open source router appeals to people because it is more customizable. They can add QOS, servers, etc. Any router should work fine with Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD, or any other OS that uses BSD-style networking (any modern OS).
Your problem comes from a crappy router. Perhaps a Netgear? They make a lot of crappy routers. About half of router crappiness is from software, and half is from hardware. If a crappy router is open source, you can fix the software part. But you still can't fix the hardware part.
I would recommend you plop $60 on a nice open source router. Perhaps a Linksys WRT54GL. Stay away from Netgear. I've heard good things about Buffalo, but have never actually used them. With the WRT54GL, you probably won't even need to mess with the default firmware, but it's an option. Linksys is pretty good quality.
No, but they'll happily give your governments our private citizen data. You'll have to pay more for it, though, since there's more of us.
Just about any cable channel can survive ... even if nobody is watching.
No. They can't. If a show doesn't get ratings, it gets canceled. Sometimes even if it does get ratings.
To clarify for those who don't know: Fox News is cable-only. It's not a broadcast channel, nor could it survive as one.
I only get a few channels, because I don't have cable, and don't watch much TV. But Fox is one of the stronger broadcast signals. Perhaps you were thinking of CNN? Fox is broadcast.
I think you're right. This "article" screams fake! Notice this part: "I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there." Gates wouldn't have said "they", he would have said "we". And the subject says "flame". It is indeed a rant. Most executives would never write such a thing in a permanent medium. In the end, nobody can ever prove or disprove a "leaked" memo, unless the appropriate party fesses up, but this looks fake.
if you can't do anything about this crap, then stop releasing it on time...Way ahead of you!
That's not an error. That's to prevent singling out any real I.P. address. Similar to how phone numbers are in the xxx-555-xxxx range. Most TV shows and movies use I.P addresses where the first octet is beyond 255. Sometimes they use 10., 172.(16-31), or 192.168. And sometimes (but very rarely) they will use their I.P address.
There are plenty of errors in Hollywood. This is not one of them.
You must be a real hit at marketing parties. However, as someone who appreciates math not being raped, I prefer the "hull losses / departure" metric, as opposed to a completely new, complicated metric that serves no purpose other than to be able to use a lower number.
The three letter acronyms are lowering security in many ways. What you mention, which I call "intentionally aggravating customers" is one. Another is that they are neglecting to research actual security measures.
A related problem is that they are driving people away from flying, who will then resort to driving, which is much more dangerous. This costs lives every day.
Unless you checked to make sure the batteries were not Sony, you shouldn't be resting a laptop on your lap anyway.
True. But "better off" in this case just means electing a president better than Bush. That's a pretty low bar.