Patents are pointless they simply give a monopoly to one company, if they were withdrawn they would simply revert to using the copyright system, which is where most of this stuff should be....
Patents all give too broad a monopoly because they restrict you doing something no matter how you do it...the patent holder has no motivation to improve
At least with copyright if you find a better way you can use your better way to supplant the current copyright holder...
Stallman - Organised a team of people to write a complete free operating system, and failed
The Various BSD's - Organised teams of people to write a complete free operating system, and succeeded, but they were not very popular
Linus, Decided to write a kernel, used the GNU parts, got some people to help him, and spawned a community, that put together and maintained a complete free operating system that is popular...
HTML 5 not a standard yet.... Like HTML 4 was not a standard until 2000, but supported in every browser well before this, including IE (with IE only extensions)
And IE *still* does not fully support ISO HTML (HTML 4.01) Nine years later.....
Well besides the CCTV your government already spy on you as much, or more than ours..
Your internet traffic can be intercepted without your knowledge or a warrant..In the UK they need a warrant
Your mobile, if it has a GPS chip, can reveal your location without a warrant
In the UK they need a warrant
CCTV is not as pervasive as it is in the UK... but they are working on it...
I do not have and am not required to have GPS in my car, if you work for your government you are...
Both here and in the US they need a warrant to tap your phone.. Unless it is intercepted via ECHELON...
Your country wants to spy on everything you do as well, and they are further along, they are just managing to be quieter about it.. who does that benefit?
...It won't even stop you copying the original content... the analog hole as the last way of copying is a myth
You can currently copy via the analog hole - but most people do not bother there are easier ways and there always will be?
The problem is like all Copy protection they give you a locked box and the key and then try and stop you using the key except when they wan to... it *cannot* work
The only thing that has had any effect on copy protection is their lawsuits and these have not discouraged most people only made them a laughing stock....everything else has only hindered the casual non-technical copier, everyone else uses easily downloaded, frequently updated tools that bypass the copy protection....
Our American cousins should not gloat about this.... you already have your traffic monitored, and your ISP is not allowed to tell you if it is
A case is currently going very slowly through the courts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_v._NSA) on Warrantless surveillance conducted by the NSA where the ISP's were ordered not to reveal that they were assisting the NSA with monitoring or even that they had been ordered not reveal this....
They are thinking that it is a great way to advertise.... and since this is on/. it worked....
It's a gimmick and nothing else.... all these 3D system's are low resolution, eye strain inducing, and will put people off who don't have the glasses, or cannot use them
In a 3D cinema you expect to wear glasses and expect to sit through a movie length presentation... at home you channel surf and get on with other things while watching....try that with glasses...
When 3D at home is without glasses and can be viewed easily by most people then it will be more than a gimmick...
If you take in less calories than you expend you will a) reduce your metabolism b) burn fat If you exercise as well then you will increase your metabolism reducing (or reversing) option a) so option b) increases
If all you eat are fatty, easily digested foods then your body will store more as fat
So : Eat a balanced healthy diet and get enough exercise....and you will settle to your ideal weight
I know people who have done this... the results are small at first, then accelerate as the body adjusts to it's new metabolism, slowing as the weight comes off... many people see little results from diets simply because they do not try them for long enough, or cheat, or are already near their ideal weight and so cannot lose weight except by starvation diets... People often expect dramatic quick results or want to lose more weight than they should and so give up when this does not work quickly....
Most Linux system will support most graphics cards and monitors out of the box at the highest resolution
Windows often won't until you load a manufacturer supplied driver for the card or the monitor
what is missing in the Linux driver is the extra functions beyond basic - e.g. 3D acceleration
Since the Manufacturers supply these for Windows, you often have to update you driver if you have a new card, but for an older card it will be built in
For Linux their might be a binary driver, if you are lucky, but if not you are stuck with a working system but with no extras and your system working unaccelerated...
...this is exactly what Windows GDI does as well....it's just the GTK toolkit is awful...
The API Toolkits on top of the GDI simplify this for you but they are just toolkits on top of the actual API (just like GTK) the GDI can only render the standard window decorations (and their appearance are not under your control) all the standard buttons etc are either the standard dialogs drawn by the toolkit and not properly under your control or self drawn, in the same way as same as directly accessing the X API...
If you think the standard GTK+ control looks like "something from 1987" then you are running a copy of GTK from 1987! (which is a good trick since GTK was not around then) they "can" look good (many don't)
So it's really a bad design on Intel chips, that all operating system have to work around, except Windows which requires it to work like this......and on most Linux and BSD systems it will not work even if unpatched... and it has already been patched... and you need to be able to get a user on the local machine to run an app to exploit it (most users install from the Package Manager and so will never run a random downloaded app), and this does not appear to be a remote exploit?
Will Linux run out of the box on this hardware: probably yes
Will Linux run well and completely and fully utilise all the features of this hardware : probably no
An example is graphics cards, almost all are supported out of the box (more than Windows 7 supports), very few are supported with full 3D acceleration (The ones that do support 3D acceleration do so only with an extra binary driver)
All of which X11 copes with quite nicely thank you.......Most of the Speed or Clunkyness complaints about X11 are actually about QT or GTK , which are Toolkits for predefined windows and controls, these do leave a lot to be desired are slow and overcomplicated
No X11 can do Windows 7 and Vista and OSX expose features... and does so.....
The whole point is that X11 does not draw Windows it draws tiles... Window Managers draw windows... and they can draw 3d glass dancing Windows on X11 without X11 caring about it...
On Windows the layers are Driver - GDI - Application On X11 the layers are Driver - Kernel - X11 - Window Manager - Application (there may be more...)
The point is that you do not need to Expose the low level stuff to the application... just to the window manager, the application should not have to worry about redrawing itself, or resizing the window etc... it should let the window manager worry about that
The point is that while X is "an afterthought" and "badly designed" it has been fixed so well and so often by so many people (simply because there was nothing better) that it has already had all the major bottlenecks taken out of it...
It is an afterthought in that it is stacked on top of the rest of the system rather than integrated, and it has a client server model because originally the display was normally on a different machine than the server (this is often raised as a bad design), but this can actually help to isolate it from the rest of the system so it is not dependent on it, and because it was always (on very old hardware) considered very slow, it was optimised to be as fast as possible within the design limitations it had.... this means that it is now very fast on fast hardware....
Millions of Tonnes of Salt water.... would do very little
The region in question is in places very low in population simply because it is a volcanic arid wasteland.... other parts however are lush and full of life which would be wiped out by this new ocean...
Rapid change on this scale is always bad news in the short term... (short term measured in 1000's of years)
The first program ClearView runs on will no longer have any obvious bugs, but it will still have all it's subtle bugs, and it will have all the subtle bugs introduced by ClearView's fixes
Yes my car now has no rust spots and the windscreen has no chips in it but the steering wheel is now square, It changes from first gear to second via reverse, and the ignition does not work when I use my key....
...It's so small they we don't have anything that can even come close to measuring anything even close to this length, so anything said about conditions at this length is untested (and possibly untestable?), and what we have that explains what happens at these distances (mostly quantum gravity) are highly speculative and many of the hypotheses are contradictory...
This is an actual case of science being "only an hypothesis" that actually equates to the reporters "Only a theory"..But this experiment probably discounts at least a few of the flavours of quantum gravity that have been proposed
Slashdot Mirror
If I find a better and different way of determining the address,
1) Amazon will sue me anyway
2) They will probably win because they have been so vague in their patent that it can be argued that it covers my way as well
3) when they win they will adopt my way of doing it, without paying me, and will stop me using my idea
Even If they lose I will have no money left ...
All this means that I will probably not even bother trying ... another win for the Patent system
But also quite a good analogy .... ...which I wanted to highlight
Patents are pointless they simply give a monopoly to one company, if they were withdrawn they would simply revert to using the copyright system, which is where most of this stuff should be....
Patents all give too broad a monopoly because they restrict you doing something no matter how you do it ...the patent holder has no motivation to improve
At least with copyright if you find a better way you can use your better way to supplant the current copyright holder ...
Stallman - Organised a team of people to write a complete free operating system, and failed
The Various BSD's - Organised teams of people to write a complete free operating system, and succeeded, but they were not very popular
Linus, Decided to write a kernel, used the GNU parts, got some people to help him, and spawned a community, that put together and maintained a complete free operating system that is popular ...
The Linux community should get the prize ....?
That depends also on who you speak to ...
Hardware people use it as 1,000,000,000 Bytes
Software people generally use it as 1,073,741,824 bytes
Sushi also depends on who you speak to
To someone who speaks or knows Japanese, and in any Japanese restaurant it is a rice dish
To an average American (and some Europeans) it might be raw fish (which is really Sashimi)... or a rice dish.....
HTML 5 not a standard yet .... Like HTML 4 was not a standard until 2000, but supported in every browser well before this, including IE (with IE only extensions)
And IE *still* does not fully support ISO HTML (HTML 4.01) Nine years later .....
It's simple
Can I find what I want on Google - Usually yes
Can I find on on Bing .. sometimes ...
So I use Google
If Google stops working I might try a few others to see if they work better... but as long as Google works I am not going to even look very often
Well besides the CCTV your government already spy on you as much, or more than ours ..
Your internet traffic can be intercepted without your knowledge or a warrant ..In the UK they need a warrant
Your mobile, if it has a GPS chip, can reveal your location without a warrant
In the UK they need a warrant
CCTV is not as pervasive as it is in the UK ... but they are working on it ...
I do not have and am not required to have GPS in my car, if you work for your government you are ...
Both here and in the US they need a warrant to tap your phone .. Unless it is intercepted via ECHELON...
Your country wants to spy on everything you do as well, and they are further along, they are just managing to be quieter about it .. who does that benefit?
..Already Taken as well .... ..Perhaps Goog? (Google search says it doesn't exist)
...It won't even stop you copying the original content ... the analog hole as the last way of copying is a myth
You can currently copy via the analog hole - but most people do not bother there are easier ways and there always will be?
The problem is like all Copy protection they give you a locked box and the key and then try and stop you using the key except when they wan to... it *cannot* work
The only thing that has had any effect on copy protection is their lawsuits and these have not discouraged most people only made them a laughing stock ....everything else has only hindered the casual non-technical copier, everyone else uses easily downloaded, frequently updated tools that bypass the copy protection ....
Our American cousins should not gloat about this .... you already have your traffic monitored, and your ISP is not allowed to tell you if it is
A case is currently going very slowly through the courts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_v._NSA) on Warrantless surveillance conducted by the NSA where the ISP's were ordered not to reveal that they were assisting the NSA with monitoring or even that they had been ordered not reveal this ....
They are thinking that it is a great way to advertise.... and since this is on /. it worked ....
It's a gimmick and nothing else.... all these 3D system's are low resolution, eye strain inducing, and will put people off who don't have the glasses, or cannot use them
In a 3D cinema you expect to wear glasses and expect to sit through a movie length presentation ... at home you channel surf and get on with other things while watching ....try that with glasses ...
When 3D at home is without glasses and can be viewed easily by most people then it will be more than a gimmick ...
If you take in less calories than you expend you will a) reduce your metabolism b) burn fat
If you exercise as well then you will increase your metabolism reducing (or reversing) option a) so option b) increases
If all you eat are fatty, easily digested foods then your body will store more as fat
So : Eat a balanced healthy diet and get enough exercise ....and you will settle to your ideal weight
I know people who have done this ... the results are small at first, then accelerate as the body adjusts to it's new metabolism, slowing as the weight comes off ... many people see little results from diets simply because they do not try them for long enough, or cheat, or are already near their ideal weight and so cannot lose weight except by starvation diets ...
People often expect dramatic quick results or want to lose more weight than they should and so give up when this does not work quickly....
Most Linux system will support most graphics cards and monitors out of the box at the highest resolution
Windows often won't until you load a manufacturer supplied driver for the card or the monitor
what is missing in the Linux driver is the extra functions beyond basic - e.g. 3D acceleration
Since the Manufacturers supply these for Windows, you often have to update you driver if you have a new card, but for an older card it will be built in
For Linux their might be a binary driver, if you are lucky, but if not you are stuck with a working system but with no extras and your system working unaccelerated ...
IE8 is not available for Windows NT or Windows 2000....
Yes people are still running these (mostly on internal machines)
And there are many many intranets that rely on the bugs in IE6 to work ....
...this is exactly what Windows GDI does as well ....it's just the GTK toolkit is awful ...
The API Toolkits on top of the GDI simplify this for you but they are just toolkits on top of the actual API (just like GTK) the GDI can only render the standard window decorations (and their appearance are not under your control) all the standard buttons etc are either the standard dialogs drawn by the toolkit and not properly under your control or self drawn, in the same way as same as directly accessing the X API...
If you think the standard GTK+ control looks like "something from 1987" then you are running a copy of GTK from 1987! (which is a good trick since GTK was not around then) they "can" look good (many don't)
So it's really a bad design on Intel chips, that all operating system have to work around, except Windows which requires it to work like this... ...and on most Linux and BSD systems it will not work even if unpatched ... and it has already been patched ... and you need to be able to get a user on the local machine to run an app to exploit it (most users install from the Package Manager and so will never run a random downloaded app), and this does not appear to be a remote exploit?
The answer is simple
Will Linux run out of the box on this hardware: probably yes
Will Linux run well and completely and fully utilise all the features of this hardware : probably no
An example is graphics cards, almost all are supported out of the box (more than Windows 7 supports), very few are supported with full 3D acceleration (The ones that do support 3D acceleration do so only with an extra binary driver)
All of which X11 copes with quite nicely thank you .... ...Most of the Speed or Clunkyness complaints about X11 are actually about QT or GTK , which are Toolkits for predefined windows and controls, these do leave a lot to be desired are slow and overcomplicated
No X11 can do Windows 7 and Vista and OSX expose features ... and does so .....
The whole point is that X11 does not draw Windows it draws tiles ... Window Managers draw windows ... and they can draw 3d glass dancing Windows on X11 without X11 caring about it ...
On Windows the layers are Driver - GDI - Application ...)
On X11 the layers are Driver - Kernel - X11 - Window Manager - Application (there may be more
The point is that you do not need to Expose the low level stuff to the application. .. just to the window manager, the application should not have to worry about redrawing itself, or resizing the window etc... it should let the window manager worry about that
That's because VNC and RDP assume you have a fast network connection.... and X11 assumes you have a 96Kbaud dial up line ....
The point is that while X is "an afterthought" and "badly designed" it has been fixed so well and so often by so many people (simply because there was nothing better) that it has already had all the major bottlenecks taken out of it ...
It is an afterthought in that it is stacked on top of the rest of the system rather than integrated, and it has a client server model because originally the display was normally on a different machine than the server (this is often raised as a bad design), but this can actually help to isolate it from the rest of the system so it is not dependent on it, and because it was always (on very old hardware) considered very slow, it was optimised to be as fast as possible within the design limitations it had .... this means that it is now very fast on fast hardware ....
Millions of Tonnes of Salt water .... would do very little
The region in question is in places very low in population simply because it is a volcanic arid wasteland .... other parts however are lush and full of life which would be wiped out by this new ocean ...
Rapid change on this scale is always bad news in the short term ... (short term measured in 1000's of years)
The first program ClearView runs on will no longer have any obvious bugs, but it will still have all it's subtle bugs, and it will have all the subtle bugs introduced by ClearView's fixes
Yes my car now has no rust spots and the windscreen has no chips in it but the steering wheel is now square, It changes from first gear to second via reverse, and the ignition does not work when I use my key ....
...It's so small they we don't have anything that can even come close to measuring anything even close to this length, so anything said about conditions at this length is untested (and possibly untestable?), and what we have that explains what happens at these distances (mostly quantum gravity) are highly speculative and many of the hypotheses are contradictory ...
This is an actual case of science being "only an hypothesis" that actually equates to the reporters "Only a theory" ..But this experiment probably discounts at least a few of the flavours of quantum gravity that have been proposed