Sure the DOJ's going to say Jackson isn't biased. That's their job. And MSFT's attorneys will say he was. That's their job, too. Big whoop.
I think this transcript of the Senate hearings on Microsoft & their potential anticompetitive practices would have been a more interesting topic for discussion, since Sen. Ashcroft asks Bill G. a number of pointed questions, and says at one point "I think we all agree here that Microsoft has a monopoly." Will the DOJ under Bush (and, presumably Ashcroft) be as friendly towards Microsoft as people predicted before the election?
Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP of New York, NY have a long and not so distinguished history of dropping the class action bomb on any and every company whose stock drops by more than a certain percentage in a (relatively) small amount of time. They particularly like going after internet/tech companies (mmmm . . . volatile stock prices . ... mmmmm). Just try a search for them at the Securities Class Acton Clearinghouse .
Mozilla (at least the version I pulled off CVS this weekend, built without debug & full optimization) is UNUSABLY SLOW on my G3/233 with 32 MB power mac under linux (2.2.12 kernel). I will not wait 30 seconds for bootup, or over a minute waiting for the "Save File As" dialog to appear. Running apps: X, minimal gnome (taskbar & window manager) - no Samba, Apache, backround compilations, remote users, nothing. If I boot into X running icewm & skip the gnome stuff, it's about 5% faster - but still unusably slow.
The same machine has no problems whatsoever running Konqueror (from 1.x series). I've heard 2.x is supposed to be even faster - can't wait to try it out. When I surf the web under linux - I try Mozilla just to see if it's gotten useable, find out it hasn't, and switch right back to KDE.
And, of course, Navigator 4.x runs just fine under MacOS 8.1 I'd like to try Mozilla under MacOS, but it requires OS 8.5+ to run. And for the record, IE 5 runs just fine on 8.1, and works (unsurprisingly) much better than Navigator - but I stick with Netscape b/c I won't support monopolists if possible.
Sure, my machine could use more memory. Sure, I could spring for an OS update. But why? Mozilla's not worth it.
This is true - Mac OS X Server (which began shipping months ago, and is basically warned over OpenStep) does not support multiple processors.
But it's really not.
Mac OS X, which will be Apple's next gen operating system, with all the goodies like Quartz, Aqua, and the Darwin open-source foundation layer, and is probably going to go into beta within the next month or so (with a promised final version delivery by Jan 01), WILL support multiple processors. Heck, check out the Darwin web site to see the kernel source itself.
Heck, Apple's high end machines are now all multiprocessor G4's, and even the classic Mac OS (8 and 9 at least) support a bastardized version of multiprocessor support - so surely the Mach microkerneled, BSD based Mac OS X can handle more than 1 processor.
No, he sure didn't miss it. He mentioned many many times throughout the rant that "Wow, Netscape is horrible - please don't judge Mozilla by this - go download a Mozilla nightly instead."
And you even bragged about how you didn't read the whole post. Way to go, nimrod.
It seems to me like I read an article somewhere that Caltech & PE Biosystems have some problems with the validity of their gene sequencer patents . . .
When I read this article, I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry. Lloyd Smith - one of the inventors, the guy with the black belt in taekwondo - spoke as a guest lecturer just last month in my "Scientific Ethics" course. The topic, of course, was on avoiding ethical pitfalls in collaborations between academia & industry, and his "case study" was the development of the DNA sequencer mentioned in this article. He casually mentioned at the end of the talk that some folks were "looking in" to some of the nuances of the work, but he didn't really know or wasn't particularly concerned about what would be found.
Whoops.
Lloyd Smith is a cool guy, and has a damn impressive list of accomplishments to his name. He's since gone on to found (and sell for $$$$) a biotech company of his own while a member of the UW-Madison faculty, and by all reports has managed and manages the for profit/for science divide in a squeaky-clean, forthright manner. I'm sure he'll emerge from this flap good name untainted.
But dang - I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the Perkins-Elmers boardroom when the dust from this finally settles.
Actually, MS Windows can add (for free) most of the "common functionality" you so sorely miss - focus follows mouse & window raise/lower are free downloads from MS (either kernel toys or power toys), and there are a gazillion bits of shareware which let you alter key bindings, icons, etc.
And don't give me any grief about "but I have to download it . . . it's not part of the standard install". The experienced user won't have a problem with this - and besides, what experienced user uses the standard install?
If your linux boxes are anything like mine - hardly anything on it came with the standard install. It's all taken piece by piece - so I get just what I want installed just where I want it.
Did anyone, before extolling the virtues of *IX, think to ask why a non-technically minded accountant for a major US corporation would be posting on (much less READING) Slashdot?
By the way - I really liked the line about "tuning the mbuf kernel inode for asynchronous IO". That was a hoot.
This is a great point. Once his code is released, any future patents on the idea could be shot down via prior art, AND all the messiness with HURD/*BSD could have been avoided. Not to mention the point that IBM's been doing this for 20 years, as mentioned in another posting, so this patent in itself is probably flawed.
He stated in his email that he a) wanted to avoid paying royalties to someone else to use his idea and b) has had to pay extensive legal fees for getting the patent.
It seems like he's traded the POSSIBILITY of paying a huge legal bill for the FACT of a huge legal bill.
If someone tried to patent it later on and collect royalties, he might have to pay an attorney to shoot down the claim then (via prior art), OR a big company using RTLinux in a product would have sic'd their legal department on the fradulent claiment - saving Victor the hassle & expense. Either way - there's a good chance he'd never pay a cent.
Well, you've got 2 out of 3 of your wishes right now - an open source video streaming format with an open source server. Yes, yes, it's from Apple, and it's ASPL not GPL, but the source is there for you to play with, modify, and redistribute (as I understand the ASPL).
Heck, they've even been decent enough to give you pre-built linux binaries (I'm assuming x86 linux, though), as well as FreeBSD & Solaris.
If you don't like this idea - or if you do - don't just sound off here. Tell someone that has the power to fix it - your Congressman/women or Senator. You can even do it via e-mail.
I'd just like to point out that Anakin is still a little boy in this movie. To most boys of that age - well, me at that age - girls were still icky creatures who could give you cooties. Additionally, I'm guessing the queen is in her late teens - and probably would have a crush on Obi-Wan before an 8 year old boy.
I will agree they could have built the friendship/surrogate mother relationship between the two more.
As another poster noted, a widely-held view originally proposed by Lynn Margules (sp?) is that mitochondria were originally bacteria capable of oxidizing pyruvate (which comes from oxidizing sugar) which formed a symboitic (not parasitic) relationship with the cells which eventually lead to plants, critters, and folks like you & me.
Speaking of pushing the crashed ship off the edge of the landing area . . . why the heck didn't they tractor-beam her into the ship bay? They used them to grab the escape pods - is there some unwritten rule in the future that you'll be rescued if you bail out, but come up short bringing your ship home & you become space carrion?
Slashdot Mirror
I think this transcript of the Senate hearings on Microsoft & their potential anticompetitive practices would have been a more interesting topic for discussion, since Sen. Ashcroft asks Bill G. a number of pointed questions, and says at one point "I think we all agree here that Microsoft has a monopoly." Will the DOJ under Bush (and, presumably Ashcroft) be as friendly towards Microsoft as people predicted before the election?
Just my 2c.
Darn here-one-minute, gone-the-next search page.
Bloody leaches.
Just to nitpick:
Nature's impact factor is 29.491. Please don't confuse it with those, ahem, "lesser" journals like the New England Journal of Medicine.
Considering IE 5.x runs well on such an old machine (under W95) . . . . it might be nice for Mozilla to do the same.
Not to be nitpicky, but you don't have to go through a menu under MacOS to switch apps or kill apps.
In MacOS >= 8.5, Open Apple-Tab lets you cycle through or quit all running applications, a la Windows.
For Mac OS 8.5, you can download the extension "Switch-It" to do the same thing.
OK - I'll bite.
Mozilla (at least the version I pulled off CVS this weekend, built without debug & full optimization) is UNUSABLY SLOW on my G3/233 with 32 MB power mac under linux (2.2.12 kernel). I will not wait 30 seconds for bootup, or over a minute waiting for the "Save File As" dialog to appear. Running apps: X, minimal gnome (taskbar & window manager) - no Samba, Apache, backround compilations, remote users, nothing. If I boot into X running icewm & skip the gnome stuff, it's about 5% faster - but still unusably slow.
The same machine has no problems whatsoever running Konqueror (from 1.x series). I've heard 2.x is supposed to be even faster - can't wait to try it out. When I surf the web under linux - I try Mozilla just to see if it's gotten useable, find out it hasn't, and switch right back to KDE.
And, of course, Navigator 4.x runs just fine under MacOS 8.1 I'd like to try Mozilla under MacOS, but it requires OS 8.5+ to run. And for the record, IE 5 runs just fine on 8.1, and works (unsurprisingly) much better than Navigator - but I stick with Netscape b/c I won't support monopolists if possible.
Sure, my machine could use more memory. Sure, I could spring for an OS update. But why? Mozilla's not worth it.
I personally like Congress.org's site, which lets you mail your Senators and Congressperson all at the same time.
Thanks. I've joined too. Now I feel all tingly.
But it's really not.
Mac OS X, which will be Apple's next gen operating system, with all the goodies like Quartz, Aqua, and the Darwin open-source foundation layer, and is probably going to go into beta within the next month or so (with a promised final version delivery by Jan 01), WILL support multiple processors. Heck, check out the Darwin web site to see the kernel source itself. Heck, Apple's high end machines are now all multiprocessor G4's, and even the classic Mac OS (8 and 9 at least) support a bastardized version of multiprocessor support - so surely the Mach microkerneled, BSD based Mac OS X can handle more than 1 processor.
No, he sure didn't miss it. He mentioned many many times throughout the rant that "Wow, Netscape is horrible - please don't judge Mozilla by this - go download a Mozilla nightly instead."
And you even bragged about how you didn't read the whole post. Way to go, nimrod.
I have a beige g3 all-in-one with working sound.
I started originally with LinuxPPC 1999 Q3, but it's been upgraded since.
E-mail if you'd like suggestions.
It seems to me like I read an article somewhere that Caltech & PE Biosystems have some problems with the validity of their gene sequencer patents . . .
When I read this article, I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry. Lloyd Smith - one of the inventors, the guy with the black belt in taekwondo - spoke as a guest lecturer just last month in my "Scientific Ethics" course. The topic, of course, was on avoiding ethical pitfalls in collaborations between academia & industry, and his "case study" was the development of the DNA sequencer mentioned in this article. He casually mentioned at the end of the talk that some folks were "looking in" to some of the nuances of the work, but he didn't really know or wasn't particularly concerned about what would be found.
Whoops.
Lloyd Smith is a cool guy, and has a damn impressive list of accomplishments to his name. He's since gone on to found (and sell for $$$$) a biotech company of his own while a member of the UW-Madison faculty, and by all reports has managed and manages the for profit/for science divide in a squeaky-clean, forthright manner. I'm sure he'll emerge from this flap good name untainted.
But dang - I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the Perkins-Elmers boardroom when the dust from this finally settles.
Actually, MS Windows can add (for free) most of the "common functionality" you so sorely miss - focus follows mouse & window raise/lower are free downloads from MS (either kernel toys or power toys), and there are a gazillion bits of shareware which let you alter key bindings, icons, etc.
And don't give me any grief about "but I have to download it . . . it's not part of the standard install". The experienced user won't have a problem with this - and besides, what experienced user uses the standard install?
If your linux boxes are anything like mine - hardly anything on it came with the standard install. It's all taken piece by piece - so I get just what I want installed just where I want it.
Did anyone, before extolling the virtues of *IX, think to ask why a non-technically minded accountant for a major US corporation would be posting on (much less READING) Slashdot?
By the way - I really liked the line about "tuning the mbuf kernel inode for asynchronous IO". That was a hoot.
This is a great point. Once his code is released, any future patents on the idea could be shot down via prior art, AND all the messiness with HURD/*BSD could have been avoided. Not to mention the point that IBM's been doing this for 20 years, as mentioned in another posting, so this patent in itself is probably flawed.
He stated in his email that he a) wanted to avoid paying royalties to someone else to use his idea and b) has had to pay extensive legal fees for getting the patent.
It seems like he's traded the POSSIBILITY of paying a huge legal bill for the FACT of a huge legal bill.
If someone tried to patent it later on and collect royalties, he might have to pay an attorney to shoot down the claim then (via prior art), OR a big company using RTLinux in a product would have sic'd their legal department on the fradulent claiment - saving Victor the hassle & expense. Either way - there's a good chance he'd never pay a cent.
Well, you've got 2 out of 3 of your wishes right now - an open source video streaming format with an open source server. Yes, yes, it's from Apple, and it's ASPL not GPL, but the source is there for you to play with, modify, and redistribute (as I understand the ASPL).
Heck, they've even been decent enough to give you pre-built linux binaries (I'm assuming x86 linux, though), as well as FreeBSD & Solaris.
Yes, Mozilla has an ActiveX wrapper, designed and maintained by Adam Lock. You can grab it here.
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html
or
http://www.senate.gov
BTW - is there a feminine form of Senator?
I'd just like to point out that Anakin is still a little boy in this movie. To most boys of that age - well, me at that age - girls were still icky creatures who could give you cooties. Additionally, I'm guessing the queen is in her late teens - and probably would have a crush on Obi-Wan before an 8 year old boy.
I will agree they could have built the friendship/surrogate mother relationship between the two more.
As another poster noted, a widely-held view originally proposed by Lynn Margules (sp?) is that mitochondria were originally bacteria capable of oxidizing pyruvate (which comes from oxidizing sugar) which formed a symboitic (not parasitic) relationship with the cells which eventually lead to plants, critters, and folks like you & me.
Speaking of pushing the crashed ship off the edge of the landing area . . . why the heck didn't they tractor-beam her into the ship bay? They used them to grab the escape pods - is there some unwritten rule in the future that you'll be rescued if you bail out, but come up short bringing your ship home & you become space carrion?