However, your claim leaves out the zero. So to not accept is not the same as to reject.
As others have pointed out, (if zero is the pending state) it could pend indefinitely - even forever.
While the net result may seem the same to the consumer, I'm pressed to imagine Google wanting to move forward with the legal complaint: "Apple's decision is pending in an unfair fashion."
I worry that a loud noise and lights may make drivers panic and make poor decisions in response.
Absofreakinglutely correct.
TFA discusses blind spots - good point. How about a simple set of CCDs and an in-dash display for the blind spots?
But the real problem here is Ford and the insurance gang. From TFA:
"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US put out a report last year saying if every vehicle in the US were equipped with this forward collision warning system, we'd save about 7,000 lives a year," Mr Kozak told BBC News.
Wow. Geez - and just how did they arrive at that fact? By comparison to other similarly equipped vehicles? No, I don't think so.
The problem here is sociological as well as financial. They're trying to "help" us. Just as other draconian measures in society are trying to help us.
Want to save more than 7k lives/yr on the road? Penalize for cell-phoning instead of driving. Penalize for putting on make-up while driving. Do NOT ever have a statistic or a newspaper report explaining how someone has gotten their third time in jail for a DWI - by targeting the real problems.
But do NOT give already lazy drivers comfort in their laziness and tell them that tech makes laziness OK - and that's exactly what this does.
Next step with be our financial penalty - if the insurance kiddies think they have a study that this saves lives, one of them will start offering a discount if your vehicle has it. Give it 2 or 3 years and then it will become a surcharge for any vehicle that does not have it. Oh - and add in the costs for the new studies, the new data tracking and the accountancy.
Insurance companies do give discounts on anything - they do not manufacture a hard product. Instead, as a soft product supplier, they simply shift costs (prices) between various consuming groups. And there won't be a reduction of any sort, given that this increases their cost to provide their product (insurance coverage).
I guess I'll close with this bit of mock-humor: we want stealth technology on our roads? Really?
I've found that - for me - most comments (when available) on most linked articles are of low quality (I'm not referring to/. comments, but the ones at any given article site itself). However, the ones addressing TFA at the physorg site are pretty cogent and informative, IMO.
Every time the bastards get slapped with an as ginormous as ridiculous patent infringement judgement as this, I hope they see the light and start opposing software patents. Hey, a boy can dream.
My dream is that the ginormous penalties might somehow result in their ethical behavior.
Expensive though. I think LCD would be the wrong approach. I'm guessing a mask of the alternating polarization pattern laid *precisely* over the pixels of a light-emissive tech (plasma, SED) might work. (Before anyone asks - bad idea to polarize a polarizer.)
Samsung was advertising some 3D-ready tech for their DLP line on their web - for the few days before they discontinued the line and that part of their website.
We studied holograms in a general studies physics course I took back in the late '70s, and thats REAL 3D.
The holograms or the late '70s physics course?/ducks
I don't see why you couldn't have an LCD screen with every other pixel polarized in the opposite direction.
Odd idea. An LCD element - subpixel - is light-permissive, meaning a polarizing action takes place to lower the (normally) constant backlight through the aperature.
How would you propose changing a chemical polarizer and what manufacturing process would you suggest to built such a beast? (No ad hominem intended or implied - just throwing a rock at the idea in case you know something I don't.)
Of course in those days doing punch cards was so tedious men didn't want the jobs. It would be interesting to compare the ratios of female:male programmers and correlate it with the improvement in tech over time.
You bring up an interesting point.
Moving forward in time from that point, we also had an era where women topped IT departments because the preponderance of males in business at the time understanding business machines were from accounting and considered IT beneath them for purposes of advancement - but it allowed levels up for women blocked by the glass ceiling (source: Datamation magazine from before 1984 per when my subscription ran out).
After that, women were advancing in the military and were just as likely to be assigned to computer-related stuff (research as well as admin) - let's put that somewhere in late 80s (source: my life).
After that, in the mid 90s, women were found to lead major software initiatives for government projects with practical applications for the DOE and DoD (source: my life - for several years, three full layers of supervision above me were all-female).
After that - the big boom and the.dot com craze, where I experienced in life a sudden drop in women candidates for programming and IT jobs I've offered.
Spin forward to the 2ks, (i.e., today) and now all I hear from women is that I'm an old dinosaur who has no idea of the barriers women face in marketplace and that I'm an obvious chauvinist because I choose to work in a male-dominated field (oh yes - we manly men of data analysis in the '70s, the scourge of college bullies everywhere! (And the possible beginning of the idea that a good paycheck buys many guns and martial arts lessons. OK, that part didn't work that way for me. I think I'm being funny/insightful on that last bit. Hey. I admitted it.)).
So, personally, I've not seen tech changes that I can personally correlate to the female presence. What I did see with skirts in *some* work environments was a welcome reduction in immature language use (by the non-programmers, per usual) and at other work environments an unwelcome touchy-feely set of communication rules (no raising your voice when someone fucks up a program (programmer being male or female) because the women would tremble (weak women, there, specifically).
So, women's participation in the biz has waxed and waned over time. So has tech, but in any way I can correlate.
I can say this: in times with a commonality of women in our workplace, I've enjoyed being the guy that was smart, handsome, sensitive, witty and getting lots of work-related tail by accepting women as equals (I do).
In times without that commonality, I'm the backwards geek, the older version of the guy living in his parent's basement who will never grow up and understand that women are equals.
So - there you have it. Women programmers and IT types improve tech. No fucking question about it.
I thought he was a good lawyer because he presents incisive overviews of legal mistakes made by both sides, with citations, and has demonstrated a consistent ability to explain the situation and follow-on questions in very simple terms.
In addition, if there's any truth to the idea that having that grasp on the law, as well as possessing a passion for the morality of the situation, sums up to a not-only-knowledgeable but also motivated individual, then that too seems like qualifying information.
I only pray, as a total non-pirate, that I'm one day given the chance to give a guy like that the opportunity to exonerate me and then represent me in my countersuit against the RIAA and their deep coffers.
Seriously. Wow.
Ray - now that I think about it, this had best never happen. I apologize for the slight, and I don't subscribe to the cheap shots taken at your profession, but I guess I have to admit that I'm closet-guilty as hell: you'd have drop me as a client because there is no way I would resist trying to strap friggin' lasers to your head. RIAA coffers? Retirement in Hawaii? Yep. Lasers.
Sounds like a great step forward - and I want to be on record saying that I'm pulling for them.
However - I'm confused, per usual. As Oracle now owns Sun, what's to say that the camel won't stick his nose into the tent, seeing a database opportunity (read: marketing opportunity) and try to pressure, cajole, coerce, or otherwise influence them to drop a working PostgreSQL in favor of an all-Oracle (Sun) solution? I'm not saying that one is better than the other - I'm just concerned that a political motive on the supplier's part can have ripple effects to the tech guys making it happen.
I freely admit my confusion, so this may be a big non-issue. I just don't know.
The suddenoutbreakofcommonsense is very interesting, but I'm not sure which way:
1. The handset sweetheart deals are creating haves and have nots and should stop.
2. Without the handset manufacturers having to bend over backwards to please the carriers, there might have been fewer, lower-cost, higher-quality handsets available.
When the handset makers can tell the carriers to take it or leave it, and when those handsets have features dictated by the consumers instead of the carriers (abysmal here in the US), and market competition irrespective of long-term contracts hits the handset pricing, then not only would that tag truly apply, but so would whatabreathoffreshairfinally.
I recently went to watch a movie on Hulu that was there before, isn't now. I searched Hulu for it, and the search Window told me that it was now available on crackle.com - and that welcomed me to the Sony Entertainment Group. Crackle doesn't buffer as Hulu does (in fact, if you pause long enough hoping to build a buffer - you'll just have to reload the page), but it does offer some form of hi-def - and their FAQ is worthless. While the hi-def was good, I couldn't get past a few minutes without hangs.
Now - today's subject is all about Hulu and Boxee. But also.... Hulu on Safari lately has been telling me that I'm blocking ads - when I'm doing no such thing, nor have upgraded Safari to cause this trouble, nor have I changed my settings.
All in all, it's just starting to feel like Hulu is starting to go the way of bad Hollywood management, instead of the encompassing, embracing way that we all hoped for.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, here's a bit of detail on the artists complaining, from TFA -
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i27945265e8c954255246318766e97f46
But - you're not getting it.
This isn't a take-down notice. This is way past that.
This is intended criminal prosecution against the execs of YouTube and Google in Germany, as TFS and TFA state.
Big difference.
First off, there's no legitimate reason iTunes has to use QuickTime for MP3/AAC decoding.
You do know that iTunes is nothing more than an xml browser / front-end for the QuickTime engine, yes?
There are plenty of other options.
Only beginning with completely re-architecting iTunes, but, golly, after that, sure, it would just be a breeze.
http://www.astroboy-themovie.com/
Or for those of us who are Amphoteric Nazis, that happens to hydrogen hydroxide, thank you very much.
From TFS:
The challenges must require basic and applied research, technology development or prototype demonstrations.
Translation:
The challenges must include things that require additional funding requests and expansion of administrative functions.
The opposite of accept is reject.
The opposite of positive is negative.
However, your claim leaves out the zero. So to not accept is not the same as to reject.
As others have pointed out, (if zero is the pending state) it could pend indefinitely - even forever.
While the net result may seem the same to the consumer, I'm pressed to imagine Google wanting to move forward with the legal complaint: "Apple's decision is pending in an unfair fashion."
I worry that a loud noise and lights may make drivers panic and make poor decisions in response.
Absofreakinglutely correct.
TFA discusses blind spots - good point. How about a simple set of CCDs and an in-dash display for the blind spots?
But the real problem here is Ford and the insurance gang. From TFA:
"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US put out a report last year saying if every vehicle in the US were equipped with this forward collision warning system, we'd save about 7,000 lives a year," Mr Kozak told BBC News.
Wow. Geez - and just how did they arrive at that fact? By comparison to other similarly equipped vehicles? No, I don't think so.
The problem here is sociological as well as financial. They're trying to "help" us. Just as other draconian measures in society are trying to help us.
Want to save more than 7k lives/yr on the road? Penalize for cell-phoning instead of driving. Penalize for putting on make-up while driving. Do NOT ever have a statistic or a newspaper report explaining how someone has gotten their third time in jail for a DWI - by targeting the real problems.
But do NOT give already lazy drivers comfort in their laziness and tell them that tech makes laziness OK - and that's exactly what this does.
Next step with be our financial penalty - if the insurance kiddies think they have a study that this saves lives, one of them will start offering a discount if your vehicle has it. Give it 2 or 3 years and then it will become a surcharge for any vehicle that does not have it. Oh - and add in the costs for the new studies, the new data tracking and the accountancy.
Insurance companies do give discounts on anything - they do not manufacture a hard product. Instead, as a soft product supplier, they simply shift costs (prices) between various consuming groups. And there won't be a reduction of any sort, given that this increases their cost to provide their product (insurance coverage).
I guess I'll close with this bit of mock-humor: we want stealth technology on our roads? Really?
I've found that - for me - most comments (when available) on most linked articles are of low quality (I'm not referring to /. comments, but the ones at any given article site itself). However, the ones addressing TFA at the physorg site are pretty cogent and informative, IMO.
Every time the bastards get slapped with an as ginormous as ridiculous patent infringement judgement as this, I hope they see the light and start opposing software patents.
Hey, a boy can dream.
My dream is that the ginormous penalties might somehow result in their ethical behavior.
Yep, I replied. You're sharp. Missed the point, huh - like the mods who call the expression /. 3D offtopic?
I stand corrected - evidently, the display tech is not an issue:
http://hdguru.com/ces-2009-3d-hdtv-flat-panels-are-coming/345/
Wow. You're replying about content and expecting a reply to a reply whose content was saying to ignore ACs?
Seriously. Wow.
It's like ... like ... /. 3D - rilly.
But it seems not to be impossible.
Expensive though. I think LCD would be the wrong approach. I'm guessing a mask of the alternating polarization pattern laid *precisely* over the pixels of a light-emissive tech (plasma, SED) might work. (Before anyone asks - bad idea to polarize a polarizer.)
Samsung was advertising some 3D-ready tech for their DLP line on their web - for the few days before they discontinued the line and that part of their website.
We studied holograms in a general studies physics course I took back in the late '70s, and thats REAL 3D.
The holograms or the late '70s physics course? /ducks
I don't see why you couldn't have an LCD screen with every other pixel polarized in the opposite direction.
Odd idea. An LCD element - subpixel - is light-permissive, meaning a polarizing action takes place to lower the (normally) constant backlight through the aperature.
How would you propose changing a chemical polarizer and what manufacturing process would you suggest to built such a beast? (No ad hominem intended or implied - just throwing a rock at the idea in case you know something I don't.)
Sadly I recall just that movement afoot for emoticons some time back.
I don't understand why it's so popular, am I just getting old?
As obnoxiousness and laziness increases in popularity, so too does its codec, Twitter.
Of course in those days doing punch cards was so tedious men didn't want the jobs. It would be interesting to compare the ratios of female:male programmers and correlate it with the improvement in tech over time.
You bring up an interesting point.
Moving forward in time from that point, we also had an era where women topped IT departments because the preponderance of males in business at the time understanding business machines were from accounting and considered IT beneath them for purposes of advancement - but it allowed levels up for women blocked by the glass ceiling (source: Datamation magazine from before 1984 per when my subscription ran out).
After that, women were advancing in the military and were just as likely to be assigned to computer-related stuff (research as well as admin) - let's put that somewhere in late 80s (source: my life).
After that, in the mid 90s, women were found to lead major software initiatives for government projects with practical applications for the DOE and DoD (source: my life - for several years, three full layers of supervision above me were all-female).
After that - the big boom and the .dot com craze, where I experienced in life a sudden drop in women candidates for programming and IT jobs I've offered.
Spin forward to the 2ks, (i.e., today) and now all I hear from women is that I'm an old dinosaur who has no idea of the barriers women face in marketplace and that I'm an obvious chauvinist because I choose to work in a male-dominated field (oh yes - we manly men of data analysis in the '70s, the scourge of college bullies everywhere! (And the possible beginning of the idea that a good paycheck buys many guns and martial arts lessons. OK, that part didn't work that way for me. I think I'm being funny/insightful on that last bit. Hey. I admitted it.)).
So, personally, I've not seen tech changes that I can personally correlate to the female presence. What I did see with skirts in *some* work environments was a welcome reduction in immature language use (by the non-programmers, per usual) and at other work environments an unwelcome touchy-feely set of communication rules (no raising your voice when someone fucks up a program (programmer being male or female) because the women would tremble (weak women, there, specifically).
So, women's participation in the biz has waxed and waned over time. So has tech, but in any way I can correlate.
I can say this: in times with a commonality of women in our workplace, I've enjoyed being the guy that was smart, handsome, sensitive, witty and getting lots of work-related tail by accepting women as equals (I do).
In times without that commonality, I'm the backwards geek, the older version of the guy living in his parent's basement who will never grow up and understand that women are equals.
So - there you have it. Women programmers and IT types improve tech. No fucking question about it.
DirecTV offers 1080p on-demand for some PPV via an internet download - true 1080p at usually around $6 a pop.
I thought he was a good lawyer because he presents incisive overviews of legal mistakes made by both sides, with citations, and has demonstrated a consistent ability to explain the situation and follow-on questions in very simple terms.
In addition, if there's any truth to the idea that having that grasp on the law, as well as possessing a passion for the morality of the situation, sums up to a not-only-knowledgeable but also motivated individual, then that too seems like qualifying information.
I only pray, as a total non-pirate, that I'm one day given the chance to give a guy like that the opportunity to exonerate me and then represent me in my countersuit against the RIAA and their deep coffers.
Seriously. Wow.
Ray - now that I think about it, this had best never happen. I apologize for the slight, and I don't subscribe to the cheap shots taken at your profession, but I guess I have to admit that I'm closet-guilty as hell: you'd have drop me as a client because there is no way I would resist trying to strap friggin' lasers to your head. RIAA coffers? Retirement in Hawaii? Yep. Lasers.
I'll settle for Kongbucks.
Sounds like a great step forward - and I want to be on record saying that I'm pulling for them.
However - I'm confused, per usual. As Oracle now owns Sun, what's to say that the camel won't stick his nose into the tent, seeing a database opportunity (read: marketing opportunity) and try to pressure, cajole, coerce, or otherwise influence them to drop a working PostgreSQL in favor of an all-Oracle (Sun) solution? I'm not saying that one is better than the other - I'm just concerned that a political motive on the supplier's part can have ripple effects to the tech guys making it happen.
I freely admit my confusion, so this may be a big non-issue. I just don't know.
The suddenoutbreakofcommonsense is very interesting, but I'm not sure which way:
1. The handset sweetheart deals are creating haves and have nots and should stop.
2. Without the handset manufacturers having to bend over backwards to please the carriers, there might have been fewer, lower-cost, higher-quality handsets available.
When the handset makers can tell the carriers to take it or leave it, and when those handsets have features dictated by the consumers instead of the carriers (abysmal here in the US), and market competition irrespective of long-term contracts hits the handset pricing, then not only would that tag truly apply, but so would whatabreathoffreshairfinally.
I recently went to watch a movie on Hulu that was there before, isn't now. I searched Hulu for it, and the search Window told me that it was now available on crackle.com - and that welcomed me to the Sony Entertainment Group. Crackle doesn't buffer as Hulu does (in fact, if you pause long enough hoping to build a buffer - you'll just have to reload the page), but it does offer some form of hi-def - and their FAQ is worthless. While the hi-def was good, I couldn't get past a few minutes without hangs.
Now - today's subject is all about Hulu and Boxee. But also.... Hulu on Safari lately has been telling me that I'm blocking ads - when I'm doing no such thing, nor have upgraded Safari to cause this trouble, nor have I changed my settings.
All in all, it's just starting to feel like Hulu is starting to go the way of bad Hollywood management, instead of the encompassing, embracing way that we all hoped for.
I hope I'm wrong, but that's my two cents.
No prob - we're cool. My rantishness was driven by a lot of other posters, too. Hey - thanks on the sig thing.
So, yeah, I agree, it's a failure of management. My point was - self-management, middle-management, upper-management?