It means the user gets a choice. In web browser, in email client, in multimedia player in wether they *want* all that stuff at all.
With the current situation Internet Explorer for example is forced upon the user - not even the OEM's get a choice about it, sure they can put Moz on the pc but they can't get rid of IE.
Competitors don't even get a look in with that, how can they - IE comes "in the box" it does what the general public want, why would they change - but if hey are given a choice, "do you want IE, Mozilla, Opera.... or No Web Browser" then the competitors actually get a chance.
It's not about breaking windows, it's about making the components of windows seperate products in order to allow other companies to offer thier version of a web browser, or email client etc.. without having to get over that hurdle of "it comes with one, why should I go to the trouble to change?".
For people to actively remove something and replace it with a competing product requires that the competing product be immensely better than the one they remove - even then most people won't bother. But if they are given a choice to begin with... "you can have this one... it does x and y, or this one... it does x, y and z" users will make the informed decision because it doesn't require extra effort.
Nobody is saying that people SHOULD choose the competing products, it may be the case that the M/Soft products are better than the competitors. But people should be ABLE to choose the competing products if they desire it.
And they *are* doing them for bundling MSN Messenger - it's not about one product, it's about the microsoft policy of "bundle it in - thereby shutting out the competitors, in any market we can".
If the states try this, I would expect Microsoft to show that a lot of third-party software will not work properly with so much of the Windows API ripped out. That would include Quicken and my own script-based software, just to mention a couple dear to my heart.
Ok, so if they remove "stuff" then other "stuff" like yoiur script-based software doesn't work. Big whoop - all that means is that in the documentation for your software, in the requirements section, you add "Internet Explorer 6" and bingo the users download IE 6, the IE "stuff" gets put into windows - as a choice, not forced upon them - and they happily run your software.
Or, your installer checks the system for the components required by the software being installed, if they don't exist it says "This software requires , would you like to install this component now or abort the installation?"
This is a misnomer. The russian shuttle program actually partially built several shuttles, Buran is the name of the first of them.
One shuttle was completed, but never actively used - it performed an unmanned orbit and return, admirably.
There is a flight test prototype currently on display in Sydney I believe (that's where it was when I last looked anyway), but was never space capable.
There is at one other almost complete space capable shuttle in storage (named Ptichka (Little Bird)) along with the one that orbited - Buran. Three more (unnamed) were under construction when the program finished.
They were obviously externally designed in the same way as the american shuttles with one major difference. They don't have engines. Instead to launch they are strapped to the back of one VERY powerful rocket system - an Engergia.
Anyway, this site is the best place for all your Buran needs.
It shouldn't be a problem to do that though, capture cards with tuners all come with remotes, and lirc can be set up to make your remote do just about anything.
All it needs is some decent software really, and of course the ability to stick the video output on the TV - but cheap cards are available to do that now.
Hmm, all that's got me thinking now... to the python !
I'm pretty sure that very shortly after Music City released the "preview edition" of the new Morpheus after being reamed by Kazaa they made the source code available for it (as I remember, a face lifted gnucleus).
So how did they steal source for a month ? You don't have to release source until you release the binary. And if you don't release the binary you never have to release the source.
I bought a Lennox Sound feeder to hook my NAPA MP3 CD player up to the stereo on a thousand KM trip a few weeks ago. I would have just bought a cassette adapter - but the stereo in the MU doesn't have a cassette player.
Anyway, it took me all of 30seconds to setup, and I only had to adjust it 3 or 4 times (which takes about 5 seconds of "fine tuning" with the dial, one handed in the dark while still driving) through the trip. This is mostly due to driving into range of a radio station directly on top of the transmitted signal (if it's strong it'll interfere, if it's not so strong the soundfeeder pretty much overrode it).
Sound was great, and it was very nice to have my collection of quality MP3 programming in the car.
My only complaint with it is that the DC out on it didn't have a voltage to match the NAPA MP3 player so I had to keep the ol' batteries charged.
The NAPA is very nice also by the way, although rough single roads tend to out-do it's buffer a little:-)
(you just won't get the nifty SafeDisk workarounds/InstallShield proprietary stuff).
Without having read the article, so feel free to lambast me, doesn't this sound like a bit of DMCA violation - circumventing the SafeDisc copy protection thingee (SafeDisk is the copy protection stuff right ?) ?
Never mind that ASP sucks (I'm a Coldfusion on Apache developer and that rocks),
I.e I AM a Cold Fusion developer, for years now, and love it, better than ASP or Perl or PHP or any of yer languages that have been munged into a role they are not really suited for (driving a web site). So read the comment before you reply next time.
And BTW, I am a BSC Comp Sci, I do run Linux, and I STILL use CF !
Never mind that ASP sucks (I'm a Coldfusion on Apache developer and that rocks), but I would guesstimate that 95% of all ASP is written in vbscript not Perl. Realistically ASP is synonymous with "vbscript on the server".
Sadly this means that until Apache can offer the ASP weenies vbscript capability that it won't be of interest to them.
Coldfusion on the other hand works brilliantly with Apache, and if I could get rid of all the ASP coders using our shared hosting environment I would have no qualms about replacing IIS with Apache there.
I really really like Farscape. And I have sometimes asked myself why. What it boils down to for me is *consequences*.
Take your standard scifi show, say Star Trek (any series), in the majority of cases each episode starts fresh - the universe is more or less "reset" at the start of each episode and the things that happen in the episode very seldom have consequences flowing through the future episodes. Jump in anywhere in any season and pretty much you'll have no problem watching an episode and understanding why something is happening.
Farscape is different in this respect, in farscape when something happens in an episode - you can be sure that it will have consequences in future episodes.
For example, way back in series 1 John gets the gift of the worm hole technology from the ancients (appearing as John's father), and *this* triggers the whole John-Scorpius thing, if it wasn't for this one episode, this one happening, Scorpius would have no interest in John.
Now imagine this happening in say ST Voyager, I'd give it one or two episodes max before they get the technology out of his head and get rid of Scorpy, and the universe resets for the next story. Let alone that, when scorpy put's harvey in John's head - hell that would never stay in star trek, it'd be outa his head in a flash.
Farscape's character bvuilding is also much much better than almost anything, you really do see the characters develop over time, they grow up, they get depressed, they get angry, fall in love, fall out of love, hell they even go insane from time to time.
I guess it is a bit like a soap opera, but that's what makes the characters "real" to me. And it's the only scifi/fantasy show now or any time previous that has done that.
If we could all (or even some of us) leave this planet and go to another we would be simply giving the planet the time and space it needs to recuperate as it were.
Kind of like standing for a while to give your butt a rest, then sitting for a while to give your legs a rest.
There is a big difference, going from a 256 colour GIF (big (file) and ugly) to a millions of colours jpeg (small (file) and purdy) is a very big improvement.
Going from mp3 to ogg for most people is of no advantage.
>>wording on the back of the CD (warning you not ot play onthe PC or MAC)
So all the die hard Amiga guys shoudl buy this CD, use it to "crash" thier Amiga (presuming it has the same effect) and promptly sue Sony for the dame caused to thier machine or something.
I don't think that's fair. Peter Jackson, aside from being a completely down-to-earth and nice guy who's not in this for money or fame, is the director of the films.
New line is who are putting out the DVDs and they are who call the shots on how they are released.
Perhaps the 4 hour cut was Peter's idea, but only because New Line wouldn't have wanted to place a higher rating (or make it that long) on the cinema release, Peter probably said OK, but I want to do it as a DVD.
All of the posters saying how this can't be done, because of Java this and Java that are arguing a purely academic argument.
Why ?
Because no matter if SUN can make Java into a good game environment or not, the fact stands that the console manufacturers would never allow it.
Think about it - if a PS2 could run the exact same stuff as an XBox and vice-versa what distinguishes the two. It would only be a matter of time before SONY and Microsoft write a clause into their developer contracts...
x.y.z No Java Clause: You may not write your game in the Java language. Because it will eat into our marketability too much.
Consoles are a closed box system, the manufacturer of the console has complete control over what they will and will not allow with respect to what runs on thier console.
I had a cat that opened fridges once (his name was Tink because we couldn't tink of another name, but that's beside the point). It was all very well, we'd have to keep something infront of the fridge all the time to stop him.
However one day, he came home with an unopened packet of bacon that he'd obviosuly filched from somebody elses fridge:-)
Our current 10 cats though are all to lazy to actually open fridges to get thier food, they are much more content to have it handed to them:-)
Yes, you are being paid for your time by the company. But it is the companies job to make sure that you are happy, unstressed and relaxed while giving your time - otherwise they are a slave driver, tying you to your desk for every last bit of that 8+ hours. And if they are a slave driver, the slaves are unlikely to be productive, produce good work, or hang around long.
For employees to be productive, they must be happy, to make employees happy they must be relaxed, to relax tech employees you have to give them some leeway in what they do online.
The golden rule is - as long as the job gets done, in the time you said you would do it, then the employer shouldn't care when exactly in that time period you did it.
The first step to ridding the world of landmines is to stop using them of course that would be so much easier if the USA would stop using them rather than thinking of increasing thier use.
I wish, in NZ we can only get a capped cable connection (by capped, I mean after 5g of traffic in a month start paying 20c a meg (yes, MEG)).
I have found that the FastTrack network (Morpheus, Kazaa...) is now much more effective than queuing on IRC - just wish Kazaa would bring back the linux client.
Why should this be PayPal's responsibility ?
They have fulfilled thier end of the bargain - they took your money and gave it to the person you told them to give it to.
Not thier fault the guy is a crim. It's not thier job to be your own private police force. If you have a dispute with somebody go to the cops - that's thier job.
If we say that if you distribute something that - as a whole - can be used without help from other applications then it is software.
If you distribute something that needs a pre-existing package installed it is data.
By that logic - your spreadsheet, provided you don't package it with Excel itself, is data because the customer must supply the spreadsheet as data to the pre existing excel to get anything from it.
Same goes for interpreted languages, perl itself is software because you install perl and can use it - but a perl program distributed on it's own is data because it requires to be fed as data to the pre existing perl.
I see primarily two reasons why you won't see (current) tv quality programming available via the net.
A) Video is bandwidth hungry - broadband is a necessity and the numbers of people with broadband at home is not all that high. Not to mention the fact that the internet just couldn't *cope* with vast quanitities of people viewing broadband at once.
B) Piracy. If a show is available in a digital form the networks might as well be handing it to pirates. Of course, people can just cap from TV now anyway, but it's not -readily- available. Now, it's *possible* that this could be fixed, perhaps some sort of asymettric encryption with each user getting thier own private key based on CPU ID or something - tricky though.
I would like to click to pay a couple bucks to see the episode of Farscape I want to see when I want to see it as much as the next guy - but it ain't happening any time soon.
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It means the user gets a choice. In web browser, in email client, in multimedia player in wether they *want* all that stuff at all.
... "you can have this one... it does x and y, or this one... it does x, y and z" users will make the informed decision because it doesn't require extra effort.
With the current situation Internet Explorer for example is forced upon the user - not even the OEM's get a choice about it, sure they can put Moz on the pc but they can't get rid of IE.
Competitors don't even get a look in with that, how can they - IE comes "in the box" it does what the general public want, why would they change - but if hey are given a choice, "do you want IE, Mozilla, Opera.... or No Web Browser" then the competitors actually get a chance.
It's not about breaking windows, it's about making the components of windows seperate products in order to allow other companies to offer thier version of a web browser, or email client etc.. without having to get over that hurdle of "it comes with one, why should I go to the trouble to change?".
For people to actively remove something and replace it with a competing product requires that the competing product be immensely better than the one they remove - even then most people won't bother. But if they are given a choice to begin with
Nobody is saying that people SHOULD choose the competing products, it may be the case that the M/Soft products are better than the competitors. But people should be ABLE to choose the competing products if they desire it.
And they *are* doing them for bundling MSN Messenger - it's not about one product, it's about the microsoft policy of "bundle it in - thereby shutting out the competitors, in any market we can".
Ok, so if they remove "stuff" then other "stuff" like yoiur script-based software doesn't work. Big whoop - all that means is that in the documentation for your software, in the requirements section, you add "Internet Explorer 6" and bingo the users download IE 6, the IE "stuff" gets put into windows - as a choice, not forced upon them - and they happily run your software.
Or, your installer checks the system for the components required by the software being installed, if they don't exist it says "This software requires , would you like to install this component now or abort the installation?"
One shuttle was completed, but never actively used - it performed an unmanned orbit and return, admirably.
There is a flight test prototype currently on display in Sydney I believe (that's where it was when I last looked anyway), but was never space capable.
There is at one other almost complete space capable shuttle in storage (named Ptichka (Little Bird)) along with the one that orbited - Buran. Three more (unnamed) were under construction when the program finished.
They were obviously externally designed in the same way as the american shuttles with one major difference. They don't have engines. Instead to launch they are strapped to the back of one VERY powerful rocket system - an Engergia.
Anyway, this site is the best place for all your Buran needs.
Damn ! How are they for tech jobs over there, specifically an experienced Cold Fusion developer :-)
It shouldn't be a problem to do that though, capture cards with tuners all come with remotes, and lirc can be set up to make your remote do just about anything.
All it needs is some decent software really, and of course the ability to stick the video output on the TV - but cheap cards are available to do that now.
Hmm, all that's got me thinking now... to the python !
I'm pretty sure that very shortly after Music City released the "preview edition" of the new Morpheus after being reamed by Kazaa they made the source code available for it (as I remember, a face lifted gnucleus). So how did they steal source for a month ? You don't have to release source until you release the binary. And if you don't release the binary you never have to release the source.
I bought a Lennox Sound feeder to hook my NAPA MP3 CD player up to the stereo on a thousand KM trip a few weeks ago. I would have just bought a cassette adapter - but the stereo in the MU doesn't have a cassette player.
:-)
Anyway, it took me all of 30seconds to setup, and I only had to adjust it 3 or 4 times (which takes about 5 seconds of "fine tuning" with the dial, one handed in the dark while still driving) through the trip. This is mostly due to driving into range of a radio station directly on top of the transmitted signal (if it's strong it'll interfere, if it's not so strong the soundfeeder pretty much overrode it).
Sound was great, and it was very nice to have my collection of quality MP3 programming in the car.
My only complaint with it is that the DC out on it didn't have a voltage to match the NAPA MP3 player so I had to keep the ol' batteries charged.
The NAPA is very nice also by the way, although rough single roads tend to out-do it's buffer a little
And that Season 4 of Farscape is just around the corner.
Without having read the article, so feel free to lambast me, doesn't this sound like a bit of DMCA violation - circumventing the SafeDisc copy protection thingee (SafeDisk is the copy protection stuff right ?) ?
I.e I AM a Cold Fusion developer, for years now, and love it, better than ASP or Perl or PHP or any of yer languages that have been munged into a role they are not really suited for (driving a web site). So read the comment before you reply next time.
And BTW, I am a BSC Comp Sci, I do run Linux, and I STILL use CF !
PPS: gven half a chance I would run Amazon on CF.
Sheesh.
And also "over the web" configuration managers ( configure Apache, using Apache :-) )- eg WebMin (screen shot of apache module).
Never mind that ASP sucks (I'm a Coldfusion on Apache developer and that rocks), but I would guesstimate that 95% of all ASP is written in vbscript not Perl. Realistically ASP is synonymous with "vbscript on the server". Sadly this means that until Apache can offer the ASP weenies vbscript capability that it won't be of interest to them. Coldfusion on the other hand works brilliantly with Apache, and if I could get rid of all the ASP coders using our shared hosting environment I would have no qualms about replacing IIS with Apache there.
I really really like Farscape. And I have sometimes asked myself why. What it boils down to for me is *consequences*.
Take your standard scifi show, say Star Trek (any series), in the majority of cases each episode starts fresh - the universe is more or less "reset" at the start of each episode and the things that happen in the episode very seldom have consequences flowing through the future episodes. Jump in anywhere in any season and pretty much you'll have no problem watching an episode and understanding why something is happening.
Farscape is different in this respect, in farscape when something happens in an episode - you can be sure that it will have consequences in future episodes.
For example, way back in series 1 John gets the gift of the worm hole technology from the ancients (appearing as John's father), and *this* triggers the whole John-Scorpius thing, if it wasn't for this one episode, this one happening, Scorpius would have no interest in John.
Now imagine this happening in say ST Voyager, I'd give it one or two episodes max before they get the technology out of his head and get rid of Scorpy, and the universe resets for the next story. Let alone that, when scorpy put's harvey in John's head - hell that would never stay in star trek, it'd be outa his head in a flash.
Farscape's character bvuilding is also much much better than almost anything, you really do see the characters develop over time, they grow up, they get depressed, they get angry, fall in love, fall out of love, hell they even go insane from time to time.
I guess it is a bit like a soap opera, but that's what makes the characters "real" to me. And it's the only scifi/fantasy show now or any time previous that has done that.
Why be against it.
If we could all (or even some of us) leave this planet and go to another we would be simply giving the planet the time and space it needs to recuperate as it were.
Kind of like standing for a while to give your butt a rest, then sitting for a while to give your legs a rest.
There is a big difference, going from a 256 colour GIF (big (file) and ugly) to a millions of colours jpeg (small (file) and purdy) is a very big improvement.
Going from mp3 to ogg for most people is of no advantage.
>>wording on the back of the CD (warning you not ot play onthe PC or MAC)
So all the die hard Amiga guys shoudl buy this CD, use it to "crash" thier Amiga (presuming it has the same effect) and promptly sue Sony for the dame caused to thier machine or something.
I don't think that's fair. Peter Jackson, aside from being a completely down-to-earth and nice guy who's not in this for money or fame, is the director of the films.
New line is who are putting out the DVDs and they are who call the shots on how they are released.
Perhaps the 4 hour cut was Peter's idea, but only because New Line wouldn't have wanted to place a higher rating (or make it that long) on the cinema release, Peter probably said OK, but I want to do it as a DVD.
All of the posters saying how this can't be done, because of Java this and Java that are arguing a purely academic argument.
:
Why ?
Because no matter if SUN can make Java into a good game environment or not, the fact stands that the console manufacturers would never allow it.
Think about it - if a PS2 could run the exact same stuff as an XBox and vice-versa what distinguishes the two. It would only be a matter of time before SONY and Microsoft write a clause into their developer contracts...
x.y.z No Java Clause
You may not write your game in the Java language. Because it will eat into our marketability too much.
Consoles are a closed box system, the manufacturer of the console has complete control over what they will and will not allow with respect to what runs on thier console.
I had a cat that opened fridges once (his name was Tink because we couldn't tink of another name, but that's beside the point). It was all very well, we'd have to keep something infront of the fridge all the time to stop him.
:-)
:-)
However one day, he came home with an unopened packet of bacon that he'd obviosuly filched from somebody elses fridge
Our current 10 cats though are all to lazy to actually open fridges to get thier food, they are much more content to have it handed to them
Bollocks.
Yes, you are being paid for your time by the company. But it is the companies job to make sure that you are happy, unstressed and relaxed while giving your time - otherwise they are a slave driver, tying you to your desk for every last bit of that 8+ hours. And if they are a slave driver, the slaves are unlikely to be productive, produce good work, or hang around long.
For employees to be productive, they must be happy, to make employees happy they must be relaxed, to relax tech employees you have to give them some leeway in what they do online.
The golden rule is - as long as the job gets done, in the time you said you would do it, then the employer shouldn't care when exactly in that time period you did it.
The first step to ridding the world of landmines is to stop using them of course that would be so much easier if the USA would stop using them rather than thinking of increasing thier use.
I wish, in NZ we can only get a capped cable connection (by capped, I mean after 5g of traffic in a month start paying 20c a meg (yes, MEG)).
I have found that the FastTrack network (Morpheus, Kazaa...) is now much more effective than queuing on IRC - just wish Kazaa would bring back the linux client.
Why should this be PayPal's responsibility ? They have fulfilled thier end of the bargain - they took your money and gave it to the person you told them to give it to. Not thier fault the guy is a crim. It's not thier job to be your own private police force. If you have a dispute with somebody go to the cops - that's thier job.
If we say that if you distribute something that - as a whole - can be used without help from other applications then it is software.
If you distribute something that needs a pre-existing package installed it is data.
By that logic - your spreadsheet, provided you don't package it with Excel itself, is data because the customer must supply the spreadsheet as data to the pre existing excel to get anything from it.
Same goes for interpreted languages, perl itself is software because you install perl and can use it - but a perl program distributed on it's own is data because it requires to be fed as data to the pre existing perl.
Well, it's a thought.
I see primarily two reasons why you won't see (current) tv quality programming available via the net. A) Video is bandwidth hungry - broadband is a necessity and the numbers of people with broadband at home is not all that high. Not to mention the fact that the internet just couldn't *cope* with vast quanitities of people viewing broadband at once. B) Piracy. If a show is available in a digital form the networks might as well be handing it to pirates. Of course, people can just cap from TV now anyway, but it's not -readily- available. Now, it's *possible* that this could be fixed, perhaps some sort of asymettric encryption with each user getting thier own private key based on CPU ID or something - tricky though. I would like to click to pay a couple bucks to see the episode of Farscape I want to see when I want to see it as much as the next guy - but it ain't happening any time soon.