it sounds more like what MS did was pull lots of companies into the fold, in order to foster the growth of its image as a gaming company. Now that they've established their beachhead, they can let those companies go sink or swim on their own merits.
And how is this demonstrative of good behavior?
Seriously, what you are describing is essentially the use of other companies' mojo, name, ability, image, etc. until said attribute was ascribed to MS, then let the used up company go "sink or swim" after taking their positive attributes for themselves. A "partner" relationship does not eliminate any risk of the studio/partner putting out poor product.
From what I've heard, this has been a long time coming, and both "sides" knew that.
Personally, I expect MS to somewhat alter their course on the XBox to more of a MS owned media PC type appliance. I don't think they really want to keep it as a games platform per se. Oh they still will, but I predict they will shift more toward non-game media with games as the "high point".
To an extent we may see this from all three players, but none as much as MS, with Sony second. Nintendo, to my knowledge doesn't make TVs, video players, audio receivers, etc.. MS clearly wants to run the home media space, and I believe the XBox group was essentially created as a long term plan to get there, with PC based media center stuff filling in the gap and "working out the main kinks".
If this is true, the regurgitation of gaming studios could represent a shift in the media direction, perhaps presaging more of an emphasis on the media center part of it.
The only thing interesting about your post is how wrong it is.
No one is saying we are the ONLY factor. But we are a big part of it, and we can control our actions, compared to trying to control other natural factors.
How so dead wrong. Any human emission of GHG is factually minor. Less than five percent on average, IIRC. Five percent is not a "big part". Even Methane's 11% is a minority compared to nature's remaining 89%.
"shouldn't we do so just in case?"
A burglar might be at might door right now. Maybe I should shoot through it, just in case? You might be planning a bombing on a school. Maybe we should arrest you, just in case? The country next to you might someday invade yours, maybe you should invade it now, just in case.
I always notice that in my local paper, when they publish articles from global warming skeptics... these individuals are often the heads of various organizations and groups, professors, history buffs, basically anything but actual climatologists or environmental scientists. Not always, but often. I find that interesting.
Do you find it equally interesting that the same is true of the proponents? Al Gore is not a climatologist, and neither are the vast majority of the people on the IPCC. Do you not find that interesting? I find it interesting that gynecologists, architects, and hotel managers are included in the "consensus" that mankind is setting up the world for the ecological bomb.
And while we are at it, no biologists don't count either. Last I knew neither is Michael Le Page (the author of the piece you linked to) a climatologist.
As far as a majority, you can back that claim up, right? You know there are only about 80 PhD level climatologists in the US. Surely you could call them up and take a poll for such a small group. What, you can't back that up? You have not bit into the "consensus" lie, haven't you? Perhaps you could cite the papers where they explicitly claim what you say they do?
I find it interesting that statisticians are conspicuously absent from the disasterbator side.
What PROOF do you see with your own eyes that the warming we see today is human caused, that it is more than any in the past, that it will wreak untold devastation by making cold areas colder and hot areas hotter, wet areas more wet, dry areas more dry, earthquakes, etc.??
Do you understand that weather is not climate? Your lifespan is not even a pixel in the graph of climatological change scales. How much PROOF can your eyes see? None.
Do you find it interesting that the "proxies" we use for telling us how warm/cold (relative terms, btw) it used to be stopped being taken in the 1980s? Why is that interesting? We went from estimating to measuring and are being told that the proxies are accurate. But they don't prove it. If the proxies are so accurate, surely continuing to take the samples (tree rings, ice cores, etc.) is the most sure way to prove it, right? I find it interesting that despite the US spending billions of dollars a year trying to prove what is supposedly a unanimous or near unanimous position, the small cost of updating less than 30 US proxy sites is too much to bear.
I find it interesting that the GW disasterbators declared that 2006 would have worse hurricanes, and more of them, than 2005. And were dead wrong. I also find it interesting that when it gets hot all the believers say it proves GW, but when it gets cold, they say that climate is not weather so you can't make the connection that colder means GW is false.
I find it interesting that about the time it supposedly got a lot warmer, a large number of weather stations in cold areas of the world were shut down. No, I don't think it was an intentional shutdown. If I have three thermometers in my kitchen, and one of them is in the freezer and it stops working I don't say my kitchen is getting warmer.
Related to the above, I find it interesting that the existing monitoring stations have not been audited for siting complianc
There are not Nobel Prizes for legislation, but the Peace prize is as close as it gets.
HOWEVER, there are Nobel prizes in SCIENCE. Note that neither the panel, nor Mr. Gore got one of them. There is a very good reason for that. Neither of them do science.
Then again, neither of them do Peace work either. But at least we still expect quantifiable results in the Peace prize scientific category. IIRC the Peace prize is the sole non-quantifiable, non-objective one.
It could be argued that the attempts by the politicians on the UN IPCC to create a world government, to control the economies of other countries and to generally lower the availability of energy, health care, and increasing standards of living amount to furthering the cause of war.
After all, the more well off a country, the less likely it is to go to war. When your country has no jobs because it doesn't have the energy to run an economy, and people are rioting or starving, peace accords are often among the first to go. When people flee natural disasters en-masse because they are not equipped to handle them because the governments have mandated the ability to do so away in the name of AGWH, and those people flee to neighboring countries, hostilities are likely to ensue.
The NPP has not been about people working for actual peace for a long time. It's become a "we want to prop someone up but can't give them a science based prize", or perhaps as you intimate to poke at someone else.
The NPP has been a political pop gun for a very long time. I've not considered it a true honor for over two decades.
Actually, "the US" DID sign it, Bill Clinton did as POTUS. Which means that Bill Clinton PREVENTED Bush from signing it even if he wanted to. Clinton already popped that cherry.
However, for those who are ignorant of how the US government works, "that aint enough".
A treaty has to be ratified by the Senate. The Senate had already told the Pres that they would not agree to any treaty that allowed other countries to be exempt, or that showed demonstrable harm to the US economy. This was not a "Republican Party" thing as it was approved 95-0. Thus, after ol' B.C. made a big deal about signing it, he spent the next 800+ days never submitting it to the Senate for ratification. Neither did Gore attempt to get it ratified.
Now, the astute student of US government will point out that there is no require that a treaty be "submitted" to the Senate. Very true. Which also means the whining Democrats wanting to blame Bush are also "at fault" or "in credit" for not pursuing it on their own when they had/have control of the Senate. I'd give them the credit if they;d take it and not be dumbasses about it and "blame" it on Bush.
Europe has been proving for several years now that The Kyoto Accords are damaging to an economy. Their (EU-15) rate of GHG increase is higher than the US, and is on a course that shows that they are NOT meeting their Kyoto targets, despite the significant advantages they got in the treaty. Meanwhile their economy has been in the crapper - due in no small part to the 3-6X increase in energy costs as a result of the Kyoto attempts. That's why they keep shipping manufacturing out of their countries and into non-signatory or exempt signatory countries.
Which of course doesn't meet the stated goal of Kyoto anyway. For those of you who think Kyoto is about CO2 emissions, or even GHG emissions, no you are wrong. It specifically states it is about regulating concentration levels of various GHG in the atmosphere as well as regulating the temperature.
The patent system is not about getting paid for inventing something.
You and I without even knowing about the other or the other's work both "invent" the same thing. We both put hours, days, months or even years working on it, and a lot of money, too. We both leave go to patent it. But I get there first. I win. I get the patent. Now, I can prevent you from reaping any benefit or rewards from your own work.
THAT is what the patent system has become, and was destined to do so. The fatal and fundamental flaw is that it precludes independent work as opposed to working against those who "copy", though that options is arguably detrimental as well.
Independent discovery, invention, or work is found throughout history. The patent system is based on the woefully wrong idea that it never happens, or that if it does "too bad so sad".
So don't give me any sob story about how someone deserves to profit from their work, when the system is specifically designed to prevent others from profiting from their work
"Without patents large companies could steal the technology".
As if. News flash: they do anyway. And what is "stolen"? A "right" to prevent others from profiting from their work? No, can't accept that. The notion that inventors big or small can ONLY make money with a patent system is faulty on two significant counts. The patent system, officially, is not about making money, but advancing science. Second, inventors made money before patents, just as writers and artists of other mediums mad money (or a living) prior to copyright invention.
I've tried for nearly two decades, after my first bend-over experience from the patent system to find a compromise between what we have and no patents. All of them suffer the same eventual fate - what we have today or where what we have is headed.
Ideas are not property. Ideas are only "yours" so long as they stay in your head. Patents have demonstrably retarded whole industries, and our entire scientific and technological process. Some could argue they helped, but the arguments are non-falsifiable in that they rely on "well we've done well so far". We did well before them, too. And that destroys the argument they are needed.
And finally, if these two make metric butt-loads of money of this patent, they are most likely to NOT invent anything more. People continue work because they enjoy it or it makes them the money they need to survive. If these people are in the first category, they would continue to invent w/o the patent system. if they are in the second group, well they would not need to work any more, would they?
The key thing in the GP is "certified". I think you missed it.
If MS "certified" it, then the fault is MS for having a poor certification process. If MS let the developers "certify" it, then MS is at fault for having such an poor process that they'll simply take their word for it and slap their label on it.
I've done Windows Hardware Certification, a while ago (2k and a touch of what became XP). In that case it was the latter.
It is one thing to say your stuff runs on [opsys]. It is another for the vendor of [opsys] to "certify" it. In the former case, you are at fault for it not working as advertised. In the latter, you both are.
Part of the problem in this case has been around for decades. It's the "we'll get them on something" mentality. As in, cop pulls you over because he suspects you as drunk. Tests show you are clean, not a drop of the stuff in your system. So he then proceeds to look your car over for anything else he can nail you for. THAT was around before 9/11 and is unfortunately increasing.
This is one of the major reasons why the government should not have cameras on the people in the streets for ANY reason. Eventually they'll feel the need to justify the expense. So they'll add more things for them to get from them. They'll get you for SOMETHING.
I love slashdot. Where pointing out a fact that saying something is "almost a certainty" is not the same thing as "confirmed" gets labeled a troll. It's one of the reasons I hang out here, funny stuff like that. What did I step on a few fanboi's toes? That'd be funny as hell given I own and applaud my PS3, have zero interest in Xbox or 360. I'm no fan boy but the PS2 and PS3 are the consoles used in this house.
Still, it is a fact that "almost a certainty" is not the same thing as confirmed. Confirmed would be, for example, Sony making an official statement saying "yes we are going to make one", not "we are considering various options" or similar.
It's not insightful, but it isn't a troll either, it is a statement of fact.
I bet if someone said MS has confirmed Linux is superior, but then said it was "almost a certainty" that they would do that, I'd not get modded troll for saying what I said here.
You can't pay for entertainment this good, people.
On second thought perhaps I should have added something like "a rumble controller still wouldn't save Lair". Then the "insightful"s would come a knockin down my door.;)
And if you take this post as anything less then humorous sarcasm (except the fact stated in the original), well then my friend you might want to consider your own biases and sense of humor.;)
It is Apple's job to work against people "breaking in" to their stuff for the same reason it's Microsoft's job to stop people from "breaking in" to their stuff, IBM's job to.... you get the picture.
So you wanted to give off a rant on "consumerism". Fine. But at least do it on an article that is about consumerism. Of course, the only difference between a consumer and a customer in a business sense is.... well how it is spelled. Jobs spoke of customers and you go off on a rant about consumers. Kinda undermines your credibility in such an argument/discussion.
Essentially your post distills down to "People who 'knew' assumed that the great unwashed masses were essentially stupid and lazy. It is not called "dumbing down" without reason. Note that the assumptions I am about to talk about are not ascribed to you, but we the industry as a whole.
People are too stupid to understand SSL so we dumb it down to a padlock. People are too stupid to understand public and private key encryption so we don't use it. People are too stupid to understand how to write in plain text, so we need HTML mail to put pretty colors and backgrounds on it. People are too stupid to understand how or are too lazy to copy and paste URLs from email so we need to make emails convert URLs to clickable links. Same thing for attaching content. People are too stupid to know what filenames are so we dumb it down to not show extensions. People are too stupid or lazy to save an attachment and then execute so we make it automatically happen.
All these assumptions and more are fundamentally flawed as well as largely responsible for the so-called internet security problem described above. How many problems are do to the "honor virus" (do this and this and this, delete this)? How many emails go out from admins saying "this is infected, don't open the attachment" followed by a flood of that attachment telling the admin who did in fact open it? Far too many. Why is it?
It is because of the assumption that users are dumb/lazy, and that they should bear no responsibility for learning things. Part of it is a side-effect of government school structure - it creates an atmosphere that learning is a school thing, not an everyday thing. Part of it is elitism, mixed with a part of "let's take pity on people and not make them learn things". An odd and dangerous combination.
Symantec and it's ilk are essentially a form of police force. Allegedly there for your protection, but ultimately when the mugger sticks a knife or gun in your face, it is you who is responsible for defending or protecting yourself. A "whitelist" or "list of applications we approve of or were paid to allow" is essentially throwing in the towel.
If this were applied elsewhere, what would the implications and effects be?
Instead of a no-fly list we'd have a "can fly" list.
Somehow that doesn't seem right. Neither does an "approved to run" list. Before someone compares this to port "default deny" or login "default deny", consider this analogy.
You determine who you allow in your house. This is like blocking ports. Now imagine someone else telling you you can allow in or not. This is "Symantec et al. moves to a whitelist". Well what i you can add people? Ok, but if you are not smart enough to decide on your own who to allow in, how the hell can you be trusted to add people to the list they provide?
To bring that back, can the user add applications to the Symantec approved list? If so, how long before the email telling people "do this then this then this" comes out where the first steps are to add their app to the whitelist? How long before that becomes scriptable?
Ultimately the problem lies in poor assumptions. Assumptions based on the end user being a lesser being, and assumptions that "things will be ok" or that others will step in and protect bad code.
Technology is increasingly becoming more complex. If society does not adapt and learn with it, we are doomed to be felled by it in some fashion. The rampant abuse of the above assumptions and the resulting damage is almost a hidden result. We don't want to have to train users, so we dumb down software to make it "easy". The result? Instead we spend that money on billions and billions of dollars on software to make up for the problems of dumbing things down, and making them "so easy".
And we still spend billions of dollars a year on training for that allegedly easy to use, intuitive, and simple software that causes so much additional work, insecurity, and damage.
I'm not going to link to groklaw, here, because their servers are SOOO snowed under by all this sudden attention
So instead of providing us a direct link we can click once, you'll be nice and make us enter their domain name, load the main page, then click the link to the article we need (assuming it's on the front page) and thus at minimum double the number of hits each of us generates on the groklaw servers?
It wasn't Linux that ended SCO, it was inability to provide a service and/or product to customers willing to pay what they (SCO) wanted to get. It's that simple.
To say it was Linux is to say that Linux is a sure moneymaker. It isn't. Indeed, what Linux and FOSS does is to raise the bar on making large amounts of money, whilst lowering the bar for making more modst amounts. In this regad it is very similar to the Internet. Despite our perpetual jokes of 1. Put up website 2. ??? 3. Profit!!
And similar, the reality is that it takes work of some kind. You have to provide something people want at prices people are willing to pay to keep you afloat. The Internet does not eliminate step two, and neither does Linux. SCO did not have a monopoly, and neither does Linux. As a result it takes effort to make money in that industry.
Linux is a major salvo in the move to service over product. SCO became convinced that they were entitled to OPM from something they bought. They got there by failing to be competitive. There was no technical reason why SCO could not have "gone Linux" and thus been a part of that market instead of wanting to drain that market to their coffers by strongarm tactics.
But they did not take the route that *could* have made them money, but involved real effort.
That, and only that, is the real reason SCO went belly up. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. That is the important lesson here, so damned right we should be making that point known!
Real biofuel folk know that Algae is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Ahh as in mythical, unobtainable, pipe dream?
Hey you used the phrase. Maybe that phrase does not mean what you think it means.
we're talking constant production, no expensive equipment to harvest.
Yeah because we all know equipment to constantly skim just a fraction of a algae growth pond is so cheap that doing it on hectare scales is a paltry amount of money.
I'll accept it. First however, you need to produce the ethanol gallons/acre capability of Kudzu. Simply saying it does not make it true. And comparing it to corn is not saying much, corn is toward the bottom of the scale. Kudzu while being an avid grower produces a smaller amount of usable mass. So I'm confident we can easily best it.
So can you substantiate (back up) your assertion? Let's have a go at real numbers. Startign with the fact that Kudzu per acre biomass yields are in the 2-4 ton range for dry yield. That's really low. Switchgrass, by comparison is in the 12-15 ton range, and Miscanthus in the 12-30 ton range.
Cellulosic technology makes Miscanthus and Switchgrass the two most prolific ethanol yield plants for the US, not Kudzu, and not hemp. Oh and contrary to your claim cellulosic conversion is not cheap - yet. It will be in time, but not today.
While we're at it, harvesting of kudzu has it's own problems, such as it slow water shedding properties introducing difficulties in baling and storage of it.
Just goes to show, that when someone starts with "we've been shouting...insertsomethinghere.. assholes" you know they are likely to be full of something themselves. Rational people with valid data generally don't start discussions like that.
The problem you speak of may well have nothing to do with drivers or OS,and everything to do with failing hardware. From a flaky drive to flaky controller or motherboard. Perhaps you should try other hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
it sounds more like what MS did was pull lots of companies into the fold, in order to foster the growth of its image as a gaming company. Now that they've established their beachhead, they can let those companies go sink or swim on their own merits.
And how is this demonstrative of good behavior?
Seriously, what you are describing is essentially the use of other companies' mojo, name, ability, image, etc. until said attribute was ascribed to MS, then let the used up company go "sink or swim" after taking their positive attributes for themselves. A "partner" relationship does not eliminate any risk of the studio/partner putting out poor product.
From what I've heard, this has been a long time coming, and both "sides" knew that.
Personally, I expect MS to somewhat alter their course on the XBox to more of a MS owned media PC type appliance. I don't think they really want to keep it as a games platform per se. Oh they still will, but I predict they will shift more toward non-game media with games as the "high point".
To an extent we may see this from all three players, but none as much as MS, with Sony second. Nintendo, to my knowledge doesn't make TVs, video players, audio receivers, etc.. MS clearly wants to run the home media space, and I believe the XBox group was essentially created as a long term plan to get there, with PC based media center stuff filling in the gap and "working out the main kinks".
If this is true, the regurgitation of gaming studios could represent a shift in the media direction, perhaps presaging more of an emphasis on the media center part of it.
The only thing interesting about your post is how wrong it is.
No one is saying we are the ONLY factor. But we are a big part of it, and we can control our actions, compared to trying to control other natural factors.
How so dead wrong. Any human emission of GHG is factually minor. Less than five percent on average, IIRC. Five percent is not a "big part". Even Methane's 11% is a minority compared to nature's remaining 89%.
"shouldn't we do so just in case?"
A burglar might be at might door right now. Maybe I should shoot through it, just in case? You might be planning a bombing on a school. Maybe we should arrest you, just in case? The country next to you might someday invade yours, maybe you should invade it now, just in case.
I always notice that in my local paper, when they publish articles from global warming skeptics... these individuals are often the heads of various organizations and groups, professors, history buffs, basically anything but actual climatologists or environmental scientists. Not always, but often. I find that interesting.
Do you find it equally interesting that the same is true of the proponents? Al Gore is not a climatologist, and neither are the vast majority of the people on the IPCC. Do you not find that interesting? I find it interesting that gynecologists, architects, and hotel managers are included in the "consensus" that mankind is setting up the world for the ecological bomb.
And while we are at it, no biologists don't count either. Last I knew neither is Michael Le Page (the author of the piece you linked to) a climatologist.
As far as a majority, you can back that claim up, right? You know there are only about 80 PhD level climatologists in the US. Surely you could call them up and take a poll for such a small group. What, you can't back that up? You have not bit into the "consensus" lie, haven't you? Perhaps you could cite the papers where they explicitly claim what you say they do?
I find it interesting that statisticians are conspicuously absent from the disasterbator side.
What PROOF do you see with your own eyes that the warming we see today is human caused, that it is more than any in the past, that it will wreak untold devastation by making cold areas colder and hot areas hotter, wet areas more wet, dry areas more dry, earthquakes, etc.??
Do you understand that weather is not climate? Your lifespan is not even a pixel in the graph of climatological change scales. How much PROOF can your eyes see? None.
Do you find it interesting that the "proxies" we use for telling us how warm/cold (relative terms, btw) it used to be stopped being taken in the 1980s? Why is that interesting? We went from estimating to measuring and are being told that the proxies are accurate. But they don't prove it. If the proxies are so accurate, surely continuing to take the samples (tree rings, ice cores, etc.) is the most sure way to prove it, right? I find it interesting that despite the US spending billions of dollars a year trying to prove what is supposedly a unanimous or near unanimous position, the small cost of updating less than 30 US proxy sites is too much to bear.
I find it interesting that the GW disasterbators declared that 2006 would have worse hurricanes, and more of them, than 2005. And were dead wrong. I also find it interesting that when it gets hot all the believers say it proves GW, but when it gets cold, they say that climate is not weather so you can't make the connection that colder means GW is false.
I find it interesting that about the time it supposedly got a lot warmer, a large number of weather stations in cold areas of the world were shut down. No, I don't think it was an intentional shutdown. If I have three thermometers in my kitchen, and one of them is in the freezer and it stops working I don't say my kitchen is getting warmer.
Related to the above, I find it interesting that the existing monitoring stations have not been audited for siting complianc
There are not Nobel Prizes for legislation, but the Peace prize is as close as it gets.
HOWEVER, there are Nobel prizes in SCIENCE. Note that neither the panel, nor Mr. Gore got one of them. There is a very good reason for that. Neither of them do science.
Then again, neither of them do Peace work either. But at least we still expect quantifiable results in the Peace prize scientific category. IIRC the Peace prize is the sole non-quantifiable, non-objective one.
It could be argued that the attempts by the politicians on the UN IPCC to create a world government, to control the economies of other countries and to generally lower the availability of energy, health care, and increasing standards of living amount to furthering the cause of war.
After all, the more well off a country, the less likely it is to go to war. When your country has no jobs because it doesn't have the energy to run an economy, and people are rioting or starving, peace accords are often among the first to go. When people flee natural disasters en-masse because they are not equipped to handle them because the governments have mandated the ability to do so away in the name of AGWH, and those people flee to neighboring countries, hostilities are likely to ensue.
The NPP has not been about people working for actual peace for a long time. It's become a "we want to prop someone up but can't give them a science based prize", or perhaps as you intimate to poke at someone else.
The NPP has been a political pop gun for a very long time. I've not considered it a true honor for over two decades.
Actually, "the US" DID sign it, Bill Clinton did as POTUS. Which means that Bill Clinton PREVENTED Bush from signing it even if he wanted to. Clinton already popped that cherry.
However, for those who are ignorant of how the US government works, "that aint enough".
A treaty has to be ratified by the Senate. The Senate had already told the Pres that they would not agree to any treaty that allowed other countries to be exempt, or that showed demonstrable harm to the US economy. This was not a "Republican Party" thing as it was approved 95-0. Thus, after ol' B.C. made a big deal about signing it, he spent the next 800+ days never submitting it to the Senate for ratification. Neither did Gore attempt to get it ratified.
Now, the astute student of US government will point out that there is no require that a treaty be "submitted" to the Senate. Very true. Which also means the whining Democrats wanting to blame Bush are also "at fault" or "in credit" for not pursuing it on their own when they had/have control of the Senate. I'd give them the credit if they;d take it and not be dumbasses about it and "blame" it on Bush.
Europe has been proving for several years now that The Kyoto Accords are damaging to an economy. Their (EU-15) rate of GHG increase is higher than the US, and is on a course that shows that they are NOT meeting their Kyoto targets, despite the significant advantages they got in the treaty. Meanwhile their economy has been in the crapper - due in no small part to the 3-6X increase in energy costs as a result of the Kyoto attempts. That's why they keep shipping manufacturing out of their countries and into non-signatory or exempt signatory countries.
Which of course doesn't meet the stated goal of Kyoto anyway. For those of you who think Kyoto is about CO2 emissions, or even GHG emissions, no you are wrong. It specifically states it is about regulating concentration levels of various GHG in the atmosphere as well as regulating the temperature.
"...to determine the subjects that Internet users are to find most interesting that week."
The patent system is not about getting paid for inventing something.
You and I without even knowing about the other or the other's work both "invent" the same thing. We both put hours, days, months or even years working on it, and a lot of money, too. We both leave go to patent it. But I get there first. I win. I get the patent. Now, I can prevent you from reaping any benefit or rewards from your own work.
THAT is what the patent system has become, and was destined to do so. The fatal and fundamental flaw is that it precludes independent work as opposed to working against those who "copy", though that options is arguably detrimental as well.
Independent discovery, invention, or work is found throughout history. The patent system is based on the woefully wrong idea that it never happens, or that if it does "too bad so sad".
So don't give me any sob story about how someone deserves to profit from their work, when the system is specifically designed to prevent others from profiting from their work
"Without patents large companies could steal the technology".
As if. News flash: they do anyway. And what is "stolen"? A "right" to prevent others from profiting from their work? No, can't accept that. The notion that inventors big or small can ONLY make money with a patent system is faulty on two significant counts. The patent system, officially, is not about making money, but advancing science. Second, inventors made money before patents, just as writers and artists of other mediums mad money (or a living) prior to copyright invention.
I've tried for nearly two decades, after my first bend-over experience from the patent system to find a compromise between what we have and no patents. All of them suffer the same eventual fate - what we have today or where what we have is headed.
Ideas are not property. Ideas are only "yours" so long as they stay in your head. Patents have demonstrably retarded whole industries, and our entire scientific and technological process. Some could argue they helped, but the arguments are non-falsifiable in that they rely on "well we've done well so far". We did well before them, too. And that destroys the argument they are needed.
And finally, if these two make metric butt-loads of money of this patent, they are most likely to NOT invent anything more. People continue work because they enjoy it or it makes them the money they need to survive. If these people are in the first category, they would continue to invent w/o the patent system. if they are in the second group, well they would not need to work any more, would they?
you may a point, but I'm not entirely sure.
"We have had better security, we have had fewer vulnerabilities, fewer issues with Windows Vista in its first six months than any OS that preceded it.
Except for those non-MS OSes of course.
Letting your dog poop in the flower beds certainly can be a slippery slope to somewhere. Depends on where you step and where your flower beds are.
So what "science" specifically have our robotic missions of the last decade done?
And no, gathering data is not doing science.
"People who develop Windows should not throw stones ... or chairs."
The key thing in the GP is "certified". I think you missed it.
If MS "certified" it, then the fault is MS for having a poor certification process.
If MS let the developers "certify" it, then MS is at fault for having such an poor process that they'll simply take their word for it and slap their label on it.
I've done Windows Hardware Certification, a while ago (2k and a touch of what became XP). In that case it was the latter.
It is one thing to say your stuff runs on [opsys]. It is another for the vendor of [opsys] to "certify" it. In the former case, you are at fault for it not working as advertised. In the latter, you both are.
"Some of this may be a joke, and some of it may be the truth."
And some of it is both.
Part of the problem in this case has been around for decades. It's the "we'll get them on something" mentality. As in, cop pulls you over because he suspects you as drunk. Tests show you are clean, not a drop of the stuff in your system. So he then proceeds to look your car over for anything else he can nail you for. THAT was around before 9/11 and is unfortunately increasing.
This is one of the major reasons why the government should not have cameras on the people in the streets for ANY reason. Eventually they'll feel the need to justify the expense. So they'll add more things for them to get from them. They'll get you for SOMETHING.
I love slashdot. Where pointing out a fact that saying something is "almost a certainty" is not the same thing as "confirmed" gets labeled a troll. It's one of the reasons I hang out here, funny stuff like that. What did I step on a few fanboi's toes? That'd be funny as hell given I own and applaud my PS3, have zero interest in Xbox or 360. I'm no fan boy but the PS2 and PS3 are the consoles used in this house.
;)
;)
Still, it is a fact that "almost a certainty" is not the same thing as confirmed. Confirmed would be, for example, Sony making an official statement saying "yes we are going to make one", not "we are considering various options" or similar.
It's not insightful, but it isn't a troll either, it is a statement of fact.
I bet if someone said MS has confirmed Linux is superior, but then said it was "almost a certainty" that they would do that, I'd not get modded troll for saying what I said here.
You can't pay for entertainment this good, people.
On second thought perhaps I should have added something like "a rumble controller still wouldn't save Lair". Then the "insightful"s would come a knockin down my door.
And if you take this post as anything less then humorous sarcasm (except the fact stated in the original), well then my friend you might want to consider your own biases and sense of humor.
It is Apple's job to work against people "breaking in" to their stuff for the same reason it's Microsoft's job to stop people from "breaking in" to their stuff, IBM's job to .... you get the picture.
.... well how it is spelled. Jobs spoke of customers and you go off on a rant about consumers. Kinda undermines your credibility in such an argument/discussion.
So you wanted to give off a rant on "consumerism". Fine. But at least do it on an article that is about consumerism. Of course, the only difference between a consumer and a customer in a business sense is
Subject says it all.
Essentially your post distills down to "People who 'knew' assumed that the great unwashed masses were essentially stupid and lazy. It is not called "dumbing down" without reason. Note that the assumptions I am about to talk about are not ascribed to you, but we the industry as a whole.
People are too stupid to understand SSL so we dumb it down to a padlock.
People are too stupid to understand public and private key encryption so we don't use it.
People are too stupid to understand how to write in plain text, so we need HTML mail to put pretty colors and backgrounds on it.
People are too stupid to understand how or are too lazy to copy and paste URLs from email so we need to make emails convert URLs to clickable links. Same thing for attaching content.
People are too stupid to know what filenames are so we dumb it down to not show extensions.
People are too stupid or lazy to save an attachment and then execute so we make it automatically happen.
All these assumptions and more are fundamentally flawed as well as largely responsible for the so-called internet security problem described above. How many problems are do to the "honor virus" (do this and this and this, delete this)? How many emails go out from admins saying "this is infected, don't open the attachment" followed by a flood of that attachment telling the admin who did in fact open it? Far too many. Why is it?
It is because of the assumption that users are dumb/lazy, and that they should bear no responsibility for learning things. Part of it is a side-effect of government school structure - it creates an atmosphere that learning is a school thing, not an everyday thing. Part of it is elitism, mixed with a part of "let's take pity on people and not make them learn things". An odd and dangerous combination.
Symantec and it's ilk are essentially a form of police force. Allegedly there for your protection, but ultimately when the mugger sticks a knife or gun in your face, it is you who is responsible for defending or protecting yourself. A "whitelist" or "list of applications we approve of or were paid to allow" is essentially throwing in the towel.
If this were applied elsewhere, what would the implications and effects be?
Instead of a no-fly list we'd have a "can fly" list.
Somehow that doesn't seem right. Neither does an "approved to run" list. Before someone compares this to port "default deny" or login "default deny", consider this analogy.
You determine who you allow in your house. This is like blocking ports.
Now imagine someone else telling you you can allow in or not. This is "Symantec et al. moves to a whitelist". Well what i you can add people? Ok, but if you are not smart enough to decide on your own who to allow in, how the hell can you be trusted to add people to the list they provide?
To bring that back, can the user add applications to the Symantec approved list? If so, how long before the email telling people "do this then this then this" comes out where the first steps are to add their app to the whitelist? How long before that becomes scriptable?
Ultimately the problem lies in poor assumptions. Assumptions based on the end user being a lesser being, and assumptions that "things will be ok" or that others will step in and protect bad code.
Technology is increasingly becoming more complex. If society does not adapt and learn with it, we are doomed to be felled by it in some fashion. The rampant abuse of the above assumptions and the resulting damage is almost a hidden result. We don't want to have to train users, so we dumb down software to make it "easy". The result? Instead we spend that money on billions and billions of dollars on software to make up for the problems of dumbing things down, and making them "so easy".
And we still spend billions of dollars a year on training for that allegedly easy to use, intuitive, and simple software that causes so much additional work, insecurity, and damage.
IMO we need to understand that the only intuit
I'm not going to link to groklaw, here, because their servers are SOOO snowed under by all this sudden attention
So instead of providing us a direct link we can click once, you'll be nice and make us enter their domain name, load the main page, then click the link to the article we need (assuming it's on the front page) and thus at minimum double the number of hits each of us generates on the groklaw servers?
It wasn't Linux that ended SCO, it was inability to provide a service and/or product to customers willing to pay what they (SCO) wanted to get. It's that simple.
To say it was Linux is to say that Linux is a sure moneymaker. It isn't. Indeed, what Linux and FOSS does is to raise the bar on making large amounts of money, whilst lowering the bar for making more modst amounts. In this regad it is very similar to the Internet. Despite our perpetual jokes of
1. Put up website
2. ???
3. Profit!!
And similar, the reality is that it takes work of some kind. You have to provide something people want at prices people are willing to pay to keep you afloat. The Internet does not eliminate step two, and neither does Linux. SCO did not have a monopoly, and neither does Linux. As a result it takes effort to make money in that industry.
Linux is a major salvo in the move to service over product. SCO became convinced that they were entitled to OPM from something they bought. They got there by failing to be competitive. There was no technical reason why SCO could not have "gone Linux" and thus been a part of that market instead of wanting to drain that market to their coffers by strongarm tactics.
But they did not take the route that *could* have made them money, but involved real effort.
That, and only that, is the real reason SCO went belly up. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. That is the important lesson here, so damned right we should be making that point known!
has secret satellites.
Seriously people. There are still Soviet Era spysats up there.
And of course the Grays still have some stuff in orbit last I heard. Not that I've heard anything substantial recently.
Real biofuel folk know that Algae is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Ahh as in mythical, unobtainable, pipe dream?
Hey you used the phrase. Maybe that phrase does not mean what you think it means.
we're talking constant production, no expensive equipment to harvest.
Yeah because we all know equipment to constantly skim just a fraction of a algae growth pond is so cheap that doing it on hectare scales is a paltry amount of money.
I'll accept it. First however, you need to produce the ethanol gallons/acre capability of Kudzu. Simply saying it does not make it true. And comparing it to corn is not saying much, corn is toward the bottom of the scale. Kudzu while being an avid grower produces a smaller amount of usable mass. So I'm confident we can easily best it.
...insertsomethinghere.. assholes" you know they are likely to be full of something themselves. Rational people with valid data generally don't start discussions like that.
So can you substantiate (back up) your assertion? Let's have a go at real numbers. Startign with the fact that Kudzu per acre biomass yields are in the 2-4 ton range for dry yield. That's really low. Switchgrass, by comparison is in the 12-15 ton range, and Miscanthus in the 12-30 ton range.
Cellulosic technology makes Miscanthus and Switchgrass the two most prolific ethanol yield plants for the US, not Kudzu, and not hemp. Oh and contrary to your claim cellulosic conversion is not cheap - yet. It will be in time, but not today.
While we're at it, harvesting of kudzu has it's own problems, such as it slow water shedding properties introducing difficulties in baling and storage of it.
Just goes to show, that when someone starts with "we've been shouting
The problem you speak of may well have nothing to do with drivers or OS,and everything to do with failing hardware. From a flaky drive to flaky controller or motherboard. Perhaps you should try other hardware.