There was an article on Economist a while back about how a material with negative refractive index may make a perfect lens, one which the diffraction limit is overcome, etc.
...so it would actually be in some companies' best interest to keep a controlled list of security holes so that they have the flexibility of having patches that may change compatibility and licensing agreements? Perhaps that's why Microsoft software is as "buggy", because they need to have license "upgrade path"?:)
More likely, though, the Secret Service is concerned about e-gold, not GoldAge. As for the question of legitimacy, someone else already addressed that better than I could. However, it did say that the company was run by the couple from their home - meaning, they were trying to save cost anyway.
Besides, I think that in a sense, this is better - it's more honest. You could see that it's a small-time operation and not some professional corporation. Some people deceive by having really cool looking websites fronting a company that is run by one or two people only. Which one is more legitimate? Which one would you feel safer with? What about when you know about the truth behind the image?
The article was recounting the differentiation between getting the articles to the alternative media in one shot or broken down into articles.
Basically, the argument is whether the articles are being used in a new work, and therefore should required additional permission from the original author to publish. Putting newspaper on microfiche is certainly different, but it is merely a copy of the original newspaper. If articles are being put into a searchable database, that's quite different - newspapers aren't searchable. Neither are microfiche(s?). In that sense, newspapers and their microfiche representations are similar, whereas putting the work in electronic/digital format is quite different. That doesn't answer the question about the copyright infringement, though.
4 years ago, Slashdot started becoming a major contributor to the English language going to hell in a handbasket (what the hell does that mean anyway?).
Why did you have to make sense? Why couldn't you show blind devotion to MySQL and all things Open Source/Free Software/Linux/BSD/UNIX? Why couldn't you just trash Microsoft products as the most of the Slashdot groupies are wont to do?
Why couldn't you let this guy dig his own hole and try to use MySQL with Access as a frontend and find out for himself what you so plainly and clearly stated for him?
MS-SQL Server (I think version 4.52 or something like that) was built in a joint effort with Sybase a long time ago, because Microsoft didn't have the expertise to develop a DBMS. Then at some point, they concluded the partnership and split the code. So the original Microsoft SQL Server was based on Sybase's DBMS. But really, starting from MS SQL Server 6.5 on, it's been mostly Microsoft's own merits (take that whichever way you like).
So if you say it's a rip-off, then yeah, I guess you could say that, though it was consented (though I'll bet Sybase regretted it), if that makes sense.
Agreed. I see a lot of people are saying that various things that Allchin said implies that Microsoft wants to outlaw open source. But since nowhere does it say that in the article, I think this may constitute as libel on Slashdot's part - something Slashdot should not want.
They should just use the existing drives they have the way they are, and do some kind of redundancy.
I know it doesn't make too much sense to do this, because a single point of failure on the HDD hardware or some other thing like that will make it useless anyway...
But, if instead of using only one side of the HDD, why not use both sides, as mirrored sets? So instead of 30GB on both sides of the platter, you'd have 15GB on both sides of the platter, possibly with better throughput and some more reliability, if the hardware is done properly. A mirrored set within a drive! The only thing is, it won't be better performance, because the HDDs are already reading and writing with both heads simultaneously now.
Or, if you have 3 platters and 6 sides, you could just do a raid 5 with 4 platters, one parity, and one spare. So instead of 90GB, you'd have 60GB capacity, and you'd have better reliability in terms of the heads and the sides...the performance still won't be much better than if it was just a regular 6 head HDD...
But then, how often do you have a HDD failure simply because one of the drive heads or one of the sides of the platter was bad? Do you even know? I guess this, plus the drives are getting cheaper, and that performance won't necessarily be better, makes my scheme kind of worthless. Damn! I though I was onto something with that Raid5-in-an-HDD thing.
And yet this is why W3C has a validation service that web page authors can use to check their own pages to make sure that they adhere to HTML 3.2 or 4.01 or whatever.
Some people write pages that stick to the HTML standards, though for the most part they are simpler in design because that's the easiest way to stick to the standard. But quite frankly, it's also usually (not always) less interesting.
The browsers will still render the same page differently because that's what the standard allowed them to do - it didn't dictate the exact appearance and left it to the browser implementors.
Besides, they create the Amaya browser, which is supposed to render correctly, and you will see it looks pretty different from everyone else's browser. Maybe we should all just use Amaya?
I don't know enough about the patent system and how people do patent searches and how the PTO grants patents.
That said, it seems to me that the number of patent applications would be increasing. It also seems to me that the number of prior patents that must be searched by patent attorneys and PTO clerks is also constantly increasing. As patents expire, of course, that number decreases as well, but nonetheless, it just seems to me that the system is going to be more and more difficult to work with and more and more inefficient.
Of course, it the patents are categorized hierarchichically and cross-categorized, then the amount of searches required can by much more efficient and smaller...but again, I don't know how it works. Does anybody have any idea of how this works?
For Sony, "broadband applications" means being able to present moving pictures well, which requires a screen that responds quickly enough, for example, to faithfully recreate the flash of a fireworks display.
Yeah, so it's a buzzword...but all it really means is video. It's better for video than LCDs because it (supposedly) doesn't leave ghost images like LCDs do because of the speed.
it don't matter if it is good for a deathmatch, though it would help. Enough people have Q3A and the performance will certainly be good. Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?
Are you that used to technology moving quickly that you don't realize that technology takes time to apply? Even as it is, it will take them time to make the printed transistors faster, smaller, cheaper, and more efficient. Will it be useful? Of course. If you don't see our lives changing because you look and don't see. LCD screens make cell phones more expensive? Sure, but aren't they (arguably) more useful? Won't they be even more useful in the future when even more high-res versions or HUD versions make them as useful as PC browser screens?
Is this technology necessary? Is ANY technology REALLY necessary? The printed transistor technology is not so much necessary as it is revolutionary in the progress of making ubiquitous computing possible.
The one piece of crap comment that bothers me is, what does any of this have anything to do with worthiness of this story/technology on Slashdot? I suppose if Slashdot continues to have short-sighted people who pretend to be knowledgeable and forward-thinking but instead are only elitist, then methinks that Slashdot is not worthy of the story.
I bought and read the book a couple of years ago when it first came out and liked it very much.
There's an illustrated version of the book which I wish they would've put out in the first place. The illustrated version, I believe, came out around the same the TV version featured on Nova, a pretty good little cross-marketing effort.
Does it cost that much to run and maintain that people would rather spend money to make sure that it doesn't cause unwarranted fears than to use it for something? Could it not be converted for something? How about using the phone for some global humanitarian causes where all the phones produced originally are donated for the cause?
Granted, I don't understand the underlying costs for such an operation, but surely all the brilliant minds in the world can come up with something?
I can see where you are coming from. Yes, the list is first language/primary language only. But if you did that, Mandarin would be a lot higher too, as most people who speak one of the other Chinese dialects also speak Mandarin, though not as primary or first language - in essence, no, English would NOT overtake Mandarin.
If you just counted Chinese (disregarding dialect differences) the number of speakers will be well over 1 billion.
And now...if you counted people who speak poor/broken English worldwide because of all the American/English speaking tourists...maybe you'd reach the 1 billion mark with English.:)
Hey, so what if Spanish proper disapears? If the people decide not to speak Spanish, that somehow it is in their best interest to speak English, because it is perhaps the language of choice of the most technologically affluent in the world, so be it. It reflects the dynamic nature of human societies.
In some ways, I do resent that somehow people who speak Spanish feel it is necessary to get Spanish spoken everywhere, that somehow Spanish is the only language that matters. Here in NYC, if you tell me that you are in fear of Spanish disappearing, I'd wack you in the head! About half (I exaggerate a little, but it sure seems that way) of the signs are in Spanish! If Spanish is disappearing, it must all be coming to New York!
Here's a link: The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World that gives you an idea of where things are. It doesn't show, of course, the language spoken by income or by technological level, but with Spanish being the number two language in the world, ahead of English, it is hardly in danger of disappearing. Methinks they are being a little alarmist. Personally, I think they should go to China and demand that half of the signs be in Spanish.
I think you've hit on the right problem: the word "support". They won't support it in the helpdesk sense, even if they support (moral support sense, perhaps, or officially recognize the benefit of open source) open source software in general.
They don't have to support an operating system if they don't want to - it's up the customer demand, really, for them to justify expending resources to support an operating system. If they don't want to spend money on supporting it, it's a decision that they make, but it doesn't reflect their understanding of open source nor does it mean that they are not for open source.
After all, why should they support an operating system just because it is open source, even if they "get" open source and support the philosophy of open source?
Re:Moderate this up! (was -- Re:Netfuture issue #1
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 2
Hey, at least you read the article.
Yes, it is all speculative, what the article says about the problem with the Golden Rice. But then, so too, are the benefits of the Golden Rice. Just because it has beta carotene now doesn't mean that it IS good for those who are Vitamin A deficient - it is speculative to think that adding beta carotene will definitely do them good.
It is also speculative that the Golden Rice won't do any harm to anybody or to the environment.
You see, being speculative is two-edged.
As far as trying it out, I agree that it's worth a shot - you could try it out if you want, and the doctor could certainly try it out if he wants. I think that it's unreasonable for people targeted by the Golden Rice to try it out though - I refuse to think that people have to be guinea pigs first just to see if something might help them and might not have any harmful side-effect.
The wholistic approach is not saying sit back and not try things. The wholistic approach is saying, there are ways to help these people out without resorting to drastic "silver bullet" solutions that don't consider the whole picture of the possible effects of the Golden Rice. The approaches are simpler and better for the people in the long run. In a way, what I am saying is that giving them the Golden Rice is like giving them the fish, whereas teaching them and enabling them to farm more diverse foods and help them build distribution infrastructure for the foods that they already have would be to teach them how to fish.
Give them one Golden Rice, and they will have other problems that need fixing - what's next? Vitamin B deficiency? Vitamin C? Do we go down the entire alphabet?
It's really too bad that people don't eat brown rice and instead insists on white rice - it would do them a world of good.
By no means do I think we shouldn't try something just because it's new and scary sounding. No. But if the solution to the problem is already there, then why not use it?
The bigger picture, if you choose to see it, is that many of these places are suffering because of the global economy. Think about it, we in the western world that have abundant capital and resources can always get whatever we need, and therefore our diet can be balanced and sufficient (though it is not balanced and is overabundant, but I digress). Those in the developing countries grow cash crops to be exported out because it is more valuable to use their land to grow such crops (whether the crops are destined for food or other things is pretty important too) because they get more money out of it. But they still get relatively little money and they remain poor, and with poor distribution infrastructure, even it they have the money they couldn't get the foods they need very easily.
What they don't realize is that growing a variety of plants for food, they will be more wealthy, nutritionally, while being poor in cash. They need to be educated on such things.
And the western world is also to blame for such problems because of the way it exploits the developing countries to grow these crops relatively cheaply, just so that it can import it all to people who end up throwing it all away because they can't eat all of it!
So the wholistic approach is to teach people how to survive and subsist on their own effort without requiring western aid. And the funny thing is, while the western world is trying to help on the one hand, it is enslaving and exploiting these people capitalistically on the other.
Slashdot Mirror
See my post for a link to an article as to how a material with negative refractive index may lead to making a "perfect lens"
There was an article on Economist a while back about how a material with negative refractive index may make a perfect lens, one which the diffraction limit is overcome, etc.
...so it would actually be in some companies' best interest to keep a controlled list of security holes so that they have the flexibility of having patches that may change compatibility and licensing agreements? Perhaps that's why Microsoft software is as "buggy", because they need to have license "upgrade path"? :)
Besides, I think that in a sense, this is better - it's more honest. You could see that it's a small-time operation and not some professional corporation. Some people deceive by having really cool looking websites fronting a company that is run by one or two people only. Which one is more legitimate? Which one would you feel safer with? What about when you know about the truth behind the image?
Basically, the argument is whether the articles are being used in a new work, and therefore should required additional permission from the original author to publish. Putting newspaper on microfiche is certainly different, but it is merely a copy of the original newspaper. If articles are being put into a searchable database, that's quite different - newspapers aren't searchable. Neither are microfiche(s?). In that sense, newspapers and their microfiche representations are similar, whereas putting the work in electronic/digital format is quite different. That doesn't answer the question about the copyright infringement, though.
Slashdot needs a real editor.
Why couldn't you let this guy dig his own hole and try to use MySQL with Access as a frontend and find out for himself what you so plainly and clearly stated for him?
So if you say it's a rip-off, then yeah, I guess you could say that, though it was consented (though I'll bet Sybase regretted it), if that makes sense.
Agreed. I see a lot of people are saying that various things that Allchin said implies that Microsoft wants to outlaw open source. But since nowhere does it say that in the article, I think this may constitute as libel on Slashdot's part - something Slashdot should not want.
I know it doesn't make too much sense to do this, because a single point of failure on the HDD hardware or some other thing like that will make it useless anyway...
But, if instead of using only one side of the HDD, why not use both sides, as mirrored sets? So instead of 30GB on both sides of the platter, you'd have 15GB on both sides of the platter, possibly with better throughput and some more reliability, if the hardware is done properly. A mirrored set within a drive! The only thing is, it won't be better performance, because the HDDs are already reading and writing with both heads simultaneously now.
Or, if you have 3 platters and 6 sides, you could just do a raid 5 with 4 platters, one parity, and one spare. So instead of 90GB, you'd have 60GB capacity, and you'd have better reliability in terms of the heads and the sides...the performance still won't be much better than if it was just a regular 6 head HDD...
But then, how often do you have a HDD failure simply because one of the drive heads or one of the sides of the platter was bad? Do you even know? I guess this, plus the drives are getting cheaper, and that performance won't necessarily be better, makes my scheme kind of worthless. Damn! I though I was onto something with that Raid5-in-an-HDD thing.
Some people write pages that stick to the HTML standards, though for the most part they are simpler in design because that's the easiest way to stick to the standard. But quite frankly, it's also usually (not always) less interesting.
The browsers will still render the same page differently because that's what the standard allowed them to do - it didn't dictate the exact appearance and left it to the browser implementors.
Besides, they create the Amaya browser, which is supposed to render correctly, and you will see it looks pretty different from everyone else's browser. Maybe we should all just use Amaya?
That said, it seems to me that the number of patent applications would be increasing. It also seems to me that the number of prior patents that must be searched by patent attorneys and PTO clerks is also constantly increasing. As patents expire, of course, that number decreases as well, but nonetheless, it just seems to me that the system is going to be more and more difficult to work with and more and more inefficient.
Of course, it the patents are categorized hierarchichically and cross-categorized, then the amount of searches required can by much more efficient and smaller...but again, I don't know how it works. Does anybody have any idea of how this works?
I'm probably wrong, but doesn't windows support Basque? Come to think of it, what kind of special needs are there for an OS to support Basque?
it don't matter if it is good for a deathmatch, though it would help. Enough people have Q3A and the performance will certainly be good. Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?
Is this technology necessary? Is ANY technology REALLY necessary? The printed transistor technology is not so much necessary as it is revolutionary in the progress of making ubiquitous computing possible.
The one piece of crap comment that bothers me is, what does any of this have anything to do with worthiness of this story/technology on Slashdot? I suppose if Slashdot continues to have short-sighted people who pretend to be knowledgeable and forward-thinking but instead are only elitist, then methinks that Slashdot is not worthy of the story.
There's an illustrated version of the book which I wish they would've put out in the first place. The illustrated version, I believe, came out around the same the TV version featured on Nova, a pretty good little cross-marketing effort.
It's good. I highly recommend it.
Granted, I don't understand the underlying costs for such an operation, but surely all the brilliant minds in the world can come up with something?
If you just counted Chinese (disregarding dialect differences) the number of speakers will be well over 1 billion.
And now...if you counted people who speak poor/broken English worldwide because of all the American/English speaking tourists...maybe you'd reach the 1 billion mark with English. :)
In some ways, I do resent that somehow people who speak Spanish feel it is necessary to get Spanish spoken everywhere, that somehow Spanish is the only language that matters. Here in NYC, if you tell me that you are in fear of Spanish disappearing, I'd wack you in the head! About half (I exaggerate a little, but it sure seems that way) of the signs are in Spanish! If Spanish is disappearing, it must all be coming to New York!
Here's a link: The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World that gives you an idea of where things are. It doesn't show, of course, the language spoken by income or by technological level, but with Spanish being the number two language in the world, ahead of English, it is hardly in danger of disappearing. Methinks they are being a little alarmist. Personally, I think they should go to China and demand that half of the signs be in Spanish.
umm...that's controlled, market-driven, half-ass backward-compatibility, forward-API-breaking-so-you-can-get-an-edge-on-you r-vendors-to-eventually-grab-their-business fragmentation to you.
I think you've hit on the right problem: the word "support". They won't support it in the helpdesk sense, even if they support (moral support sense, perhaps, or officially recognize the benefit of open source) open source software in general.
...or does it seem strange for someone who seems to understand the Open Source idea to post this article and ask that question?
After all, why should they support an operating system just because it is open source, even if they "get" open source and support the philosophy of open source?
Yes, it is all speculative, what the article says about the problem with the Golden Rice. But then, so too, are the benefits of the Golden Rice. Just because it has beta carotene now doesn't mean that it IS good for those who are Vitamin A deficient - it is speculative to think that adding beta carotene will definitely do them good.
It is also speculative that the Golden Rice won't do any harm to anybody or to the environment.
You see, being speculative is two-edged.
As far as trying it out, I agree that it's worth a shot - you could try it out if you want, and the doctor could certainly try it out if he wants. I think that it's unreasonable for people targeted by the Golden Rice to try it out though - I refuse to think that people have to be guinea pigs first just to see if something might help them and might not have any harmful side-effect.
The wholistic approach is not saying sit back and not try things. The wholistic approach is saying, there are ways to help these people out without resorting to drastic "silver bullet" solutions that don't consider the whole picture of the possible effects of the Golden Rice. The approaches are simpler and better for the people in the long run. In a way, what I am saying is that giving them the Golden Rice is like giving them the fish, whereas teaching them and enabling them to farm more diverse foods and help them build distribution infrastructure for the foods that they already have would be to teach them how to fish.
Give them one Golden Rice, and they will have other problems that need fixing - what's next? Vitamin B deficiency? Vitamin C? Do we go down the entire alphabet?
It's really too bad that people don't eat brown rice and instead insists on white rice - it would do them a world of good.
By no means do I think we shouldn't try something just because it's new and scary sounding. No. But if the solution to the problem is already there, then why not use it?
The bigger picture, if you choose to see it, is that many of these places are suffering because of the global economy. Think about it, we in the western world that have abundant capital and resources can always get whatever we need, and therefore our diet can be balanced and sufficient (though it is not balanced and is overabundant, but I digress). Those in the developing countries grow cash crops to be exported out because it is more valuable to use their land to grow such crops (whether the crops are destined for food or other things is pretty important too) because they get more money out of it. But they still get relatively little money and they remain poor, and with poor distribution infrastructure, even it they have the money they couldn't get the foods they need very easily.
What they don't realize is that growing a variety of plants for food, they will be more wealthy, nutritionally, while being poor in cash. They need to be educated on such things.
And the western world is also to blame for such problems because of the way it exploits the developing countries to grow these crops relatively cheaply, just so that it can import it all to people who end up throwing it all away because they can't eat all of it!
So the wholistic approach is to teach people how to survive and subsist on their own effort without requiring western aid. And the funny thing is, while the western world is trying to help on the one hand, it is enslaving and exploiting these people capitalistically on the other.