A) do those who do well at the game have good grades?
B) Do those who do well at the game have poor grades?
C) Does doing poorly at the game indiacte a lack of interest in the game versus the course?
D) Do those who do well in class do poorly at the game?
E) Does the game become so addicting that the students stop going to class and justifiy it as 'research time' (gaming time) consequently trashing thier grades altogether?
I am not sure what this guy is really asking. I think mixing games into class is a double edged sword. The games themselves may have pertinent value to the syllabus of the course but it is not hard to get really addicted to one of these games and end up consequently destroying a full schedule of classes.
some raised charatcters on the key caps? I really want to know. A keyboard alternative like this brings up a few ideas like a curved forward keyboard ala the m$ one but with more curvature forward and vertically. Not to the extreme we see here where its perpendicular to the workspace. I think more in the range of 60 degrees up and 40 degrees forward (adjustable would be nice so while I'm dreaming...). The tactile sensation of the finger tip could easily recognize the shapes after a few uses. I worked on a CAD system for a few weeks in '86 (i cannot remember the name possibly microcadam) that used a breakout keybord to input commands that lit up when they commands were active and had recognizable shapes on the keycaps. It made using the system very easy to learn.Why don't these newfangled keyboard designers use the raised symbol/character idea and build us a real keyboard that everyone could learn to touch type with?
Callous actually. Say something like that when a good portion of everything computing related at the engineering level has been touched by HP tools, scopes & calcs. The fact/. posted the story and the remark shouldn't be veiled by the fact they did it for one reason: the ensuing banner dollars that will troll in./. can say whatever they want. Sometimes a little tact wouldn't hurt. I for one am very disappointed as that type of comment in a headline story is juvenile. If it had been Linus Trovalds/. would be all respectful, yet, by comparison, William Hewlett historically will have been more relevant. He will be remembered for a great many things in the electronics fields, research, computing, education, engineering world and for creating what is widely viewed as the most effective business/employee management model. William Hewlett was a great man who never lost his personal touch with the people that worked with/for him./. : lead by example, follow by choice. If you don't want the geek community stereotype to perpetuate as a bunch of callous, narcissistic, elitist, egotistical snobs then apply a bit of discretion/tact and govern yourselves accordingly.
np. Sad to see this story did not make the front page as Shenzhou is really an interesting conversation bit.I don't want to come off as sounding callous about the loss of life in the Russian program or ours for that matter. The men and women involved (the astronauts and cosmonauts) were all willing to take the risk for the honor and privelege of advancing mankind. The cause imho is much more important than the few heroic lives sacraficed to make it happen. They all know the risks well before being strapped to a huge chemical firecracker and have plenty of opportunities to flunk out if they don't want to take the risk.To the best of my knowledge the Russian program and the US program have both lost almost the same number of lives to reach the point where we are at today. What makes the Russian program 'look' worse for the numbers is the fact that they usually lose cosmonauts one, two or three per incident vs the US program losing a minimum of three per incident. Of course the Challenger incident throws a nice high number into the figures bringing our average loss per incident much higher than the comprable Russian average(even though they have had a much higher incident count). Considering how many more manned flights the Russians have had than the US I don't think they are doing so bad.The Russians do indeed have an edge over us as far as cost per kilo of payload. The US program runs about $22,000 per kilo for launch vs the Russian $1000 per kilo.
Linux Marketing Project...hrm now there is a GREAT idea.I'd be game to work on that... provided that somehow the model could put a little food on the table though it would probably be an easy pitch to get funding from the Linux players you mentioned. Here's an article I found on Google abbout the Linux Advocacy Project and even a How-To.
..the crew is way too damned busy to worry about what us Earthbound types are thinking... Yep. I figure that the pressure of making it into the program would be much higher than the pressure of everyone reading thier logs too. In retro, I should have been more clear as my thinking of crew tends to be inclusive of Terran based support staff. The logs being up daily may put undue pressure on the ground crew (who have to face the press when they go home and see the latest 'disaster/glitch' on the news). Your point still stands: they(individually) probably don't care per se. I just think some sort of buffer between the 'public' and the data should exist to avoid the hysteria factor. I think a week or two would be ideal to prevent the 'oh my God they are running out of Oxygen!' crowd from creating a public panic/negative press situation and still provide us all with the ability to read the logs without them being censored or hidden.
Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run. I totally agree. The major challenge here is to the companies using Linux based servers and workstations to produce reports as to how much money they are saving by NOT using M$ applications/OS's. Hopefully, some of them will produce docs saying so and give real figures. Third party data is usually much better than first person (or company) propoganda if done correctly. The downside of third party 'testimonial' data is that there is no incentive for a corporation to produce it. M$, who has a huge marketing department (and a huge piggy bank) to produce and distribute thier spiel is counting on complacency on the behalf of these companies.There probably won't be much data in managers hands supporting Linux compared to all the nice, expensive, colorful, glossy booklets M$ sends them.
after reading both your post and the post that inspired it I have to agree with both of you and then disagree too.
Maybe the log files shouldn't be public on the day they are posted. I think the ideal solution would be some kind of delay, say a few days or weeks, this will diminish the pressure cooker effect that the daily posting may have on the crew. There has to be some kind of solution there that doesn't start the conspiracy theorists (CT's)off on a tangent as to why we can't see them today etc. I think we should be able to see them uncensored though as blacking out sections are just fuel for the CT's. This is very Disneyesque of NASA and reminds me of the Challenger reports that we still cannot read. Kind of like 'no one gets hurt or robbed in Disney world, ever'. The logs contain info that clearly details the problems / challenges of the ISS and the technology. Why hide them? It's just a reality check as the sheeples may not know that these guys aren't being beemed in and out on a Galaxy class ship. Space is afterall a very dangerous place and we are new to the environment. The better we all understand that can only benefit all of us as a spacefaring civ.Using the FOIA for hiding information just doesn't make sense. Of all the dumb excuses they could have thought up this one is just not plausable. It's insulting to our cumulative intelligence and belongs in the circular file with the feet/meters excuse for losing craft.
It can carry two to three, perhaps four people, Clark said. "The Chinese are starting with what are 'second generation spacecraft' compared with the Soviets and the United States," he said. You gotta give them credit. Whether or not they benefited from existing technology (the US and Russian Space agencies) or developed this *cough* all on thier own this is a great acheivement for China. China is certainly not aiming low by building a craft for 3-4 people. This design is very workable and will save them the steps of building up to a craft this size vs. the way the us did Mercury and Gemini to build upto Apollo. The article was sparce on details so here are a few links for those interested:
Shenzhou Shenzhou Gallery An older article on SpaceDaily.com Shenzhou: A Model Program China launches second unmanned space test flight
Lucky for them the Russian Space program is not as picky about design 'borrowing' as say Apple is because the design is strikingly similar to Soyuz in many ways. It wouldn't surprise me if China becomes a major player in the space game. China has the money and infrastructure to make things happen and is not dependent on the rest of the world. (Personally, I think that is the real message they are sending by building this program.) They are geared towards building thier own space station which indicates some real sense of vision and they have a very cheap labor force (err forced labor?). If they get the program fully up and running it wouldn't be inconceiveable for them to build mass produced versions of thier craft. This design and the launch technology they are using may give them an edge similar to the Russian program: launching at a much lower average cost per kilo of payload than the US.
From the article:Why the secrecy? Kamen fears, as he states in a letter to Kemper that is included in the proposal, that "huge corporations" might catch wind of the invention and "use their massive resources to erect obstacles against us or, worse, simply appropriate the technology by assigning hundreds of engineers to catch up to us, and thousands of employees to produce it in their plants." What really strikes me strange about this quote from the article is his advisory board. Anyone recall 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' (or something like that) a historical fiction based upon all the IP thievery that was going on in the early days? Jobs stealing from Xerox, Gates from Jobs and Bezos from all of us, etc. If all those guys have a reputation as IP cronies, scavengers, jackyls and thieves would you trust them on your advisory board?Come on. Something is truly strange afoot here. The inclusion of Bezos and Jobs is akin to the wolves watching the chicken coop. The whole quote implies that Kamen is aware of this as a potential problem yet still he makes the assumption that these guys won't rob him blind the very second they have a chance. I dunno. Seems to me like the most brilliant minds often lack the common sense required to make it in the real world. I hope this doesn't bite him on the ass.
for a taste of a good oleschool style slashdot relentless slashunt for the truth. I got a kick out of reading the ensuing posts and refreshing the browser only to see the next post / flame whatever.National Enquireresque? Yeah, but taloid fodder like that is hard to pass up when you see it happening before your eyes and occaisionally it makes for a few good banner impressions to boot.
Now hold on a sec. The lead attorney on the case was on FOX News lastnight (Neil Cavotto's show) and guess what? Besides haveing already done this successfully to CocoCola, GM, and a few other companies the firm kicks out over 25% of thier fees to minority charities and the like. The attorney seemed to be cogent as to the real issues at hand and guess what? He is Black and he made his way to the top the hard way. He worked in the cane fields in south florida to pay for his education. I have seen cane workers doing thier job and imho it is one of the most labor intensive back breaking jobs a person could do.I don't particularly agree with the basis of the suit and the $5 bil they are asking for. The other companies that this firm has done this to have all knuckled under and settled out of court. I think this is tantamount to legalized extortion because mostly these companies settle to avoid having thier names in the media with the word 'RACIST' attached to it. Trial by media is what is really at stake here for them. The damage to thier brand is name very high and even if they win they still lose. For once I am on M$ side: they have the money and power to really take this case on. Worst case scenario for them is to lose out on some sales in the US as globaly no other country will likely even hear about this case never mind care as they all know our letigious society is sue happy. One potential benefit people should realize here though is that fighting this will hurt the M$ name and potentially send more folks to the linux world. As long as there is a requirement or quota in place (like affirmative action) there will never be an incentive for minorities of any kind to really try to excel in the work place for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, its easier for a company to fire a non-minority and not fear repercussions (short of former employees going postal, i digress...) via legal action. Second, the quota system hurts them by promoting employees who don't deserve the promotion over those who do because a particular group is not represented in promoted positions. When a person is promoted for the wrong reasons (not skills or performance) this has a negative effect on the company as a whole and eventually will snowball.
I am getting tired of seeing this crap happen. If this patent goes through many sneaky lawyers will manage to propogate a new wave of suits against this site or that for having a shopping cart or catalog system that has an image and some information about a product etc. The thing that really sucks about this wave of PatentMania is not just the obvious first round of suits but the second round: the design firms and designers/programmers who build sites that unknowingly violate the plethora of patents being awarded or applied for daily. How the hell are we supposed to keep up on the ever expanding list of stupid patents that we have to be wary of? Is there a central repository or some type of advocacy site (yeah i know there are i'm just spouting ?'s hear me out) that should be mentioned whenever the latest greatest dumb patent application goes in? Can we find some inexpensive form of recourse to stop patents like this from going through? Should we be writing our Congresmen or Representatives enmasse about this just this time or every time this occurs?
How come with all this discussion we never really cover this aspect of the dumb patent thing and what to do about it? Who should we write at the USPTO when we disagree with one of these applications?
Timothy (or anyone on team/. for that matter) could you please pull together some links for this stuff and put them up on slashdot so that we may easily get to them everytime this kind of idiocy happens(link them to the articles)? I realize that its a bit of extra work (only the first time you set it up) but I really think we as an online community could benefit from an easy way to contact the right people. Letter writing works and I am pretty sure there is enough outrage to get people involved and doing things on thier own if its easy for them to do. Maybe a list of do's and dont's on effective letter writing so that we don't come off as hysterical zealots etc.It just seems to me that an article like this gets posted and after that the ball gets dropped (for the most part) with the exception of a follow up or update to revisit the topic. I'm not saying slashdot should go patent crazy and do this for every patent nor should you guys be obligated to but if it is enough to merit posting as a story on the main page then linking up a pertinent 'to do list' or faq would be a positive way for us to proceed.
<AnnoyingVoiceOver>Order "George Foremans' lean mean fat grillin numba krunchin machine" in the next sixty seconds and we'll throw in a free copy of linux 2.4 at no additional charge! That's right, todays state of the art operating system AND George Foremans' lean mean fat grillin numba krunchin machine shipped direct to your door all for 36 easy payments. But only if you act now! Here's the best part: Mention opensource or/. during your call and well throw in an an extra special karma capped slashbot user account (normally a $35.00 value on ebay) as our way of saying thanks! </AnnoyingVoiceOver>
Hey if they want to charge for linking to thier content let them. In the end the only ones they will hurt are themselves. Search engines and indexes won't list them if they have to pay for including them in searches. Eventually the sites that charge for the link will cause thier own extinction. If anything, they should pay those who link to them for generating the additional traffic, page views, banner exposures etc.
uh... There are lots of people out there and lots of companies big and small who have made substantial investments in pci video hardware. Some of the boards (like targa's) may be a few years old but are still worth putting in your shiny new p4 boxen. Lay out several thousand dollars for these boards you will want to be able to continue to use them too.The term 'Legacy Hardware' is really kind of a misnomer considering that what you buy today is bound to be out of date within a few weeks. Many boards that drive additional video information like tuners, dvd decoders or dual display(heck even multidisplay) may be affected by this bug. Considering the popularity of these as add in boards I think this may affect many people. Sales of the 'latest' heavy duty proc's are really dependent(initially) on highend workstation/server dependent businesses(who have the power to buy or to not buy in huge numbers), not the at home gaming crowd(which usually buys after the first round of price drops).It is kind of sad to see Intel's Itanic place them in a similar situation to Netscape. (Great potential product continuosly plagued by setbacks that shouldn't happen)
Man, that is the exact thinking that will prevent Linux from becoming mainstream and its wrong to advocate it. Yes, newbies can be annoying but they are critical to this whole OS revolution. The sad trend I have seen in the IRC channels (and yes even the occaisional/. post) is that newbies are shunned or tortured by people like you. How many times can the 'Guru' crowd say to newbies "That's an easy fix just rm -rf this directory" which is tantamount to "deltree windows" before the snobbery kills off Linux? Instead, how about giving a newbie good advice or not hanging out in the channels where they will flock if their existense bothers you so much. Not all of us are as perfect and all knowing as you. Am I to assume you never had a linux question? Whatever you do please don't chastise the ignorant or uneducated as in the end you will regret it. In the real world you only have two choices: 1) watch and help the user base grow (supply good info and encourage the progress) or 2) watch and help the user base shrink(supply bad info and purposefully seal Linux's fate). To me it seems by your post you are advocating that the numbers slide along laterally which would eventually spell out the death of linux which is not what we all want. If no one is using it then no one will develop for it and no corporations will sink any money into it etc. We still have a very long way to go before the number of linux users hits the critical popularity mass you are afraid of.
Actually, I think it keeled over during the Reagan/Bush era. NASA has been floundering since then with a death of a thousand beurocRats. NASA has great people and ideas that deserve a good chunk of our tax dollars and we as tax payers deserve for them to be able to do things correctly. Without proper vision at the Governmental levels the funding just won't be there to do things the right way like building two of each project incase the first fails.
Well I hate to tell ya this but the republican party is famous for hating the space program. The have managed to cut the budget of NASA every time they take control of office. Thier 'already massive budget' is considerably less than what the republican party likes to spend on the 'war on drugs'. The first 12 years of the war on drugs (starting with Reagan and ending with Bush the first) saw well over 3 trillion dollars spent. That is rougly 1,000 dollars a year for every man, woman and child inside the US borders during those years. I would rather have seen the money spent on NASA but the war on Drugs (no matter how much of a farce) is much better election/re-election fodder for the sheeples. Look for Dubya to continue the trend.
Ya know I was thinking the same thing. Bill had run with the promise of increasing the budget for his first term and even tried the Kennedyesque mission to mars push but he never got either one through. Sadly for Clinton it doesn't matter in the least what he says or does (and has been that way since the 98 elections) as his voice is muted by the door that is about to close on him the result of being a lame duck president and his party not manageing to hold on to the oval office at the end of his second term. I wasn't a big fan of Clinton when he originally made it into office but as the republican lead witch hunt intensified my feelings about him surely changed: the whole political process becoming unnecesarily hostile, dirty and ugly in the last decade totally reinforced by the 98 elections with the GOP taking over congress/house. My guess is that Clinton really has nothing to lose by saying these things. I only hope someone on Dubya's cabinet manages to listen and agree that this is not a bad idea. If the huge leap we have taken technology wise is the end result of the many innovations our space program has brought about since the manned space program began we really need more investment in the area just to keep the ball rolling.I fear that with the Village Idiot now headed into office we are doomed to see more cuts against NASA than increases. GWB seems totally clueless about the need for innovation in the space field outside of a military scope.
What if this was available when Microsoft had forgotten to renew the hotmail domain? I mean could someone just have snagged it instead of renewing it (out of frustration for not getting thier own email) and stopped the millions of spams that hit our email boxen?Not sure if this is a good thing or not. The potential for abuse could be kind of high considering how many people are way too busy to moniter the status of expirations and the amount of expirations that occur daily at over 10,000 or so. It has been my experience that NSI holds on to domain names just to prevent this type of 'legitamate' domain hijacking.
Slashdot Mirror
on or abouts 2001-03-14 09:17:00 splash down for Mir Pizza.... Just my entry don't bother to mod :)
A) do those who do well at the game have good grades?
B) Do those who do well at the game have poor grades?
C) Does doing poorly at the game indiacte a lack of interest in the game versus the course?
D) Do those who do well in class do poorly at the game?
E) Does the game become so addicting that the students stop going to class and justifiy it as 'research time' (gaming time) consequently trashing thier grades altogether?
I am not sure what this guy is really asking. I think mixing games into class is a double edged sword. The games themselves may have pertinent value to the syllabus of the course but it is not hard to get really addicted to one of these games and end up consequently destroying a full schedule of classes.
some raised charatcters on the key caps? I really want to know. A keyboard alternative like this brings up a few ideas like a curved forward keyboard ala the m$ one but with more curvature forward and vertically. Not to the extreme we see here where its perpendicular to the workspace. I think more in the range of 60 degrees up and 40 degrees forward (adjustable would be nice so while I'm dreaming...). The tactile sensation of the finger tip could easily recognize the shapes after a few uses. I worked on a CAD system for a few weeks in '86 (i cannot remember the name possibly microcadam) that used a breakout keybord to input commands that lit up when they commands were active and had recognizable shapes on the keycaps. It made using the system very easy to learn.Why don't these newfangled keyboard designers use the raised symbol/character idea and build us a real keyboard that everyone could learn to touch type with?
Callous actually. Say something like that when a good portion of everything computing related at the engineering level has been touched by HP tools, scopes & calcs. The fact /. posted the story and the remark shouldn't be veiled by the fact they did it for one reason: the ensuing banner dollars that will troll in./. can say whatever they want. Sometimes a little tact wouldn't hurt. I for one am very disappointed as that type of comment in a headline story is juvenile. If it had been Linus Trovalds /. would be all respectful, yet, by comparison, William Hewlett historically will have been more relevant. He will be remembered for a great many things in the electronics fields, research, computing, education, engineering world and for creating what is widely viewed as the most effective business/employee management model. William Hewlett was a great man who never lost his personal touch with the people that worked with/for him./. : lead by example, follow by choice. If you don't want the geek community stereotype to perpetuate as a bunch of callous, narcissistic, elitist, egotistical snobs then apply a bit of discretion/tact and govern yourselves accordingly.
np. Sad to see this story did not make the front page as Shenzhou is really an interesting conversation bit.I don't want to come off as sounding callous about the loss of life in the Russian program or ours for that matter. The men and women involved (the astronauts and cosmonauts) were all willing to take the risk for the honor and privelege of advancing mankind. The cause imho is much more important than the few heroic lives sacraficed to make it happen. They all know the risks well before being strapped to a huge chemical firecracker and have plenty of opportunities to flunk out if they don't want to take the risk.To the best of my knowledge the Russian program and the US program have both lost almost the same number of lives to reach the point where we are at today. What makes the Russian program 'look' worse for the numbers is the fact that they usually lose cosmonauts one, two or three per incident vs the US program losing a minimum of three per incident. Of course the Challenger incident throws a nice high number into the figures bringing our average loss per incident much higher than the comprable Russian average(even though they have had a much higher incident count). Considering how many more manned flights the Russians have had than the US I don't think they are doing so bad.The Russians do indeed have an edge over us as far as cost per kilo of payload. The US program runs about $22,000 per kilo for launch vs the Russian $1000 per kilo.
Linux Marketing Project...hrm now there is a GREAT idea.I'd be game to work on that... provided that somehow the model could put a little food on the table though it would probably be an easy pitch to get funding from the Linux players you mentioned. Here's an article I found on Google abbout the Linux Advocacy Project and even a How-To.
..the crew is way too damned busy to worry about what us Earthbound types are thinking... Yep. I figure that the pressure of making it into the program would be much higher than the pressure of everyone reading thier logs too. In retro, I should have been more clear as my thinking of crew tends to be inclusive of Terran based support staff. The logs being up daily may put undue pressure on the ground crew (who have to face the press when they go home and see the latest 'disaster/glitch' on the news). Your point still stands: they(individually) probably don't care per se. I just think some sort of buffer between the 'public' and the data should exist to avoid the hysteria factor. I think a week or two would be ideal to prevent the 'oh my God they are running out of Oxygen!' crowd from creating a public panic/negative press situation and still provide us all with the ability to read the logs without them being censored or hidden.
Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run. I totally agree. The major challenge here is to the companies using Linux based servers and workstations to produce reports as to how much money they are saving by NOT using M$ applications/OS's. Hopefully, some of them will produce docs saying so and give real figures. Third party data is usually much better than first person (or company) propoganda if done correctly. The downside of third party 'testimonial' data is that there is no incentive for a corporation to produce it. M$, who has a huge marketing department (and a huge piggy bank) to produce and distribute thier spiel is counting on complacency on the behalf of these companies.There probably won't be much data in managers hands supporting Linux compared to all the nice, expensive, colorful, glossy booklets M$ sends them.
after reading both your post and the post that inspired it I have to agree with both of you and then disagree too. Maybe the log files shouldn't be public on the day they are posted. I think the ideal solution would be some kind of delay, say a few days or weeks, this will diminish the pressure cooker effect that the daily posting may have on the crew. There has to be some kind of solution there that doesn't start the conspiracy theorists (CT's)off on a tangent as to why we can't see them today etc. I think we should be able to see them uncensored though as blacking out sections are just fuel for the CT's. This is very Disneyesque of NASA and reminds me of the Challenger reports that we still cannot read. Kind of like 'no one gets hurt or robbed in Disney world, ever'. The logs contain info that clearly details the problems / challenges of the ISS and the technology. Why hide them? It's just a reality check as the sheeples may not know that these guys aren't being beemed in and out on a Galaxy class ship. Space is afterall a very dangerous place and we are new to the environment. The better we all understand that can only benefit all of us as a spacefaring civ.Using the FOIA for hiding information just doesn't make sense. Of all the dumb excuses they could have thought up this one is just not plausable. It's insulting to our cumulative intelligence and belongs in the circular file with the feet/meters excuse for losing craft.
It can carry two to three, perhaps four people, Clark said. "The Chinese are starting with what are 'second generation spacecraft' compared with the Soviets and the United States," he said. You gotta give them credit. Whether or not they benefited from existing technology (the US and Russian Space agencies) or developed this *cough* all on thier own this is a great acheivement for China. China is certainly not aiming low by building a craft for 3-4 people. This design is very workable and will save them the steps of building up to a craft this size vs. the way the us did Mercury and Gemini to build upto Apollo. The article was sparce on details so here are a few links for those interested: Shenzhou
Shenzhou Gallery
An older article on SpaceDaily.com
Shenzhou: A Model Program
China launches second unmanned space test flight Lucky for them the Russian Space program is not as picky about design 'borrowing' as say Apple is because the design is strikingly similar to Soyuz in many ways. It wouldn't surprise me if China becomes a major player in the space game. China has the money and infrastructure to make things happen and is not dependent on the rest of the world. (Personally, I think that is the real message they are sending by building this program.) They are geared towards building thier own space station which indicates some real sense of vision and they have a very cheap labor force (err forced labor?). If they get the program fully up and running it wouldn't be inconceiveable for them to build mass produced versions of thier craft. This design and the launch technology they are using may give them an edge similar to the Russian program: launching at a much lower average cost per kilo of payload than the US.
From the article:Why the secrecy? Kamen fears, as he states in a letter to Kemper that is included in the proposal, that "huge corporations" might catch wind of the invention and "use their massive resources to erect obstacles against us or, worse, simply appropriate the technology by assigning hundreds of engineers to catch up to us, and thousands of employees to produce it in their plants." What really strikes me strange about this quote from the article is his advisory board. Anyone recall 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' (or something like that) a historical fiction based upon all the IP thievery that was going on in the early days? Jobs stealing from Xerox, Gates from Jobs and Bezos from all of us, etc. If all those guys have a reputation as IP cronies, scavengers, jackyls and thieves would you trust them on your advisory board?Come on. Something is truly strange afoot here. The inclusion of Bezos and Jobs is akin to the wolves watching the chicken coop. The whole quote implies that Kamen is aware of this as a potential problem yet still he makes the assumption that these guys won't rob him blind the very second they have a chance. I dunno. Seems to me like the most brilliant minds often lack the common sense required to make it in the real world. I hope this doesn't bite him on the ass.
for a taste of a good oleschool style slashdot relentless slashunt for the truth. I got a kick out of reading the ensuing posts and refreshing the browser only to see the next post / flame whatever.National Enquireresque? Yeah, but taloid fodder like that is hard to pass up when you see it happening before your eyes and occaisionally it makes for a few good banner impressions to boot.
Now hold on a sec. The lead attorney on the case was on FOX News lastnight (Neil Cavotto's show) and guess what? Besides haveing already done this successfully to CocoCola, GM, and a few other companies the firm kicks out over 25% of thier fees to minority charities and the like. The attorney seemed to be cogent as to the real issues at hand and guess what? He is Black and he made his way to the top the hard way. He worked in the cane fields in south florida to pay for his education. I have seen cane workers doing thier job and imho it is one of the most labor intensive back breaking jobs a person could do.I don't particularly agree with the basis of the suit and the $5 bil they are asking for. The other companies that this firm has done this to have all knuckled under and settled out of court. I think this is tantamount to legalized extortion because mostly these companies settle to avoid having thier names in the media with the word 'RACIST' attached to it. Trial by media is what is really at stake here for them. The damage to thier brand is name very high and even if they win they still lose. For once I am on M$ side: they have the money and power to really take this case on. Worst case scenario for them is to lose out on some sales in the US as globaly no other country will likely even hear about this case never mind care as they all know our letigious society is sue happy. One potential benefit people should realize here though is that fighting this will hurt the M$ name and potentially send more folks to the linux world. As long as there is a requirement or quota in place (like affirmative action) there will never be an incentive for minorities of any kind to really try to excel in the work place for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, its easier for a company to fire a non-minority and not fear repercussions (short of former employees going postal, i digress...) via legal action. Second, the quota system hurts them by promoting employees who don't deserve the promotion over those who do because a particular group is not represented in promoted positions. When a person is promoted for the wrong reasons (not skills or performance) this has a negative effect on the company as a whole and eventually will snowball.
Bill the Cat... hrm combined with your post I would have to say you are referring to your stint at chernobyl...
Mod that up! I read that a few weeks ago and couldn't remember where. Thanks for posting the link :)
I am getting tired of seeing this crap happen. If this patent goes through many sneaky lawyers will manage to propogate a new wave of suits against this site or that for having a shopping cart or catalog system that has an image and some information about a product etc. The thing that really sucks about this wave of PatentMania is not just the obvious first round of suits but the second round: the design firms and designers/programmers who build sites that unknowingly violate the plethora of patents being awarded or applied for daily. How the hell are we supposed to keep up on the ever expanding list of stupid patents that we have to be wary of? Is there a central repository or some type of advocacy site (yeah i know there are i'm just spouting ?'s hear me out) that should be mentioned whenever the latest greatest dumb patent application goes in? Can we find some inexpensive form of recourse to stop patents like this from going through? Should we be writing our Congresmen or Representatives enmasse about this just this time or every time this occurs? How come with all this discussion we never really cover this aspect of the dumb patent thing and what to do about it? Who should we write at the USPTO when we disagree with one of these applications? Timothy (or anyone on team /. for that matter) could you please pull together some links for this stuff and put them up on slashdot so that we may easily get to them everytime this kind of idiocy happens(link them to the articles)? I realize that its a bit of extra work (only the first time you set it up) but I really think we as an online community could benefit from an easy way to contact the right people. Letter writing works and I am pretty sure there is enough outrage to get people involved and doing things on thier own if its easy for them to do. Maybe a list of do's and dont's on effective letter writing so that we don't come off as hysterical zealots etc.It just seems to me that an article like this gets posted and after that the ball gets dropped (for the most part) with the exception of a follow up or update to revisit the topic. I'm not saying slashdot should go patent crazy and do this for every patent nor should you guys be obligated to but if it is enough to merit posting as a story on the main page then linking up a pertinent 'to do list' or faq would be a positive way for us to proceed.
<AnnoyingVoiceOver>Order "George Foremans' lean mean fat grillin numba krunchin machine" in the next sixty seconds and we'll throw in a free copy of linux 2.4 at no additional charge! That's right, todays state of the art operating system AND George Foremans' lean mean fat grillin numba krunchin machine shipped direct to your door all for 36 easy payments. But only if you act now! Here's the best part: Mention opensource or /. during your call and well throw in an an extra special karma capped slashbot user account (normally a $35.00 value on ebay) as our way of saying thanks! </AnnoyingVoiceOver>
sorry couldn't resist...i feel so dirty;)
Hey if they want to charge for linking to thier content let them. In the end the only ones they will hurt are themselves. Search engines and indexes won't list them if they have to pay for including them in searches. Eventually the sites that charge for the link will cause thier own extinction. If anything, they should pay those who link to them for generating the additional traffic, page views, banner exposures etc.
uh... There are lots of people out there and lots of companies big and small who have made substantial investments in pci video hardware. Some of the boards (like targa's) may be a few years old but are still worth putting in your shiny new p4 boxen. Lay out several thousand dollars for these boards you will want to be able to continue to use them too.The term 'Legacy Hardware' is really kind of a misnomer considering that what you buy today is bound to be out of date within a few weeks. Many boards that drive additional video information like tuners, dvd decoders or dual display(heck even multidisplay) may be affected by this bug. Considering the popularity of these as add in boards I think this may affect many people. Sales of the 'latest' heavy duty proc's are really dependent(initially) on highend workstation/server dependent businesses(who have the power to buy or to not buy in huge numbers), not the at home gaming crowd(which usually buys after the first round of price drops).It is kind of sad to see Intel's Itanic place them in a similar situation to Netscape. (Great potential product continuosly plagued by setbacks that shouldn't happen)
Man, that is the exact thinking that will prevent Linux from becoming mainstream and its wrong to advocate it. Yes, newbies can be annoying but they are critical to this whole OS revolution. The sad trend I have seen in the IRC channels (and yes even the occaisional /. post) is that newbies are shunned or tortured by people like you. How many times can the 'Guru' crowd say to newbies "That's an easy fix just rm -rf this directory" which is tantamount to "deltree windows" before the snobbery kills off Linux? Instead, how about giving a newbie good advice or not hanging out in the channels where they will flock if their existense bothers you so much. Not all of us are as perfect and all knowing as you. Am I to assume you never had a linux question? Whatever you do please don't chastise the ignorant or uneducated as in the end you will regret it. In the real world you only have two choices: 1) watch and help the user base grow (supply good info and encourage the progress) or 2) watch and help the user base shrink(supply bad info and purposefully seal Linux's fate). To me it seems by your post you are advocating that the numbers slide along laterally which would eventually spell out the death of linux which is not what we all want. If no one is using it then no one will develop for it and no corporations will sink any money into it etc. We still have a very long way to go before the number of linux users hits the critical popularity mass you are afraid of.
Actually, I think it keeled over during the Reagan/Bush era. NASA has been floundering since then with a death of a thousand beurocRats. NASA has great people and ideas that deserve a good chunk of our tax dollars and we as tax payers deserve for them to be able to do things correctly. Without proper vision at the Governmental levels the funding just won't be there to do things the right way like building two of each project incase the first fails.
Well I hate to tell ya this but the republican party is famous for hating the space program. The have managed to cut the budget of NASA every time they take control of office. Thier 'already massive budget' is considerably less than what the republican party likes to spend on the 'war on drugs'. The first 12 years of the war on drugs (starting with Reagan and ending with Bush the first) saw well over 3 trillion dollars spent. That is rougly 1,000 dollars a year for every man, woman and child inside the US borders during those years. I would rather have seen the money spent on NASA but the war on Drugs (no matter how much of a farce) is much better election/re-election fodder for the sheeples. Look for Dubya to continue the trend.
Ya know I was thinking the same thing. Bill had run with the promise of increasing the budget for his first term and even tried the Kennedyesque mission to mars push but he never got either one through. Sadly for Clinton it doesn't matter in the least what he says or does (and has been that way since the 98 elections) as his voice is muted by the door that is about to close on him the result of being a lame duck president and his party not manageing to hold on to the oval office at the end of his second term. I wasn't a big fan of Clinton when he originally made it into office but as the republican lead witch hunt intensified my feelings about him surely changed: the whole political process becoming unnecesarily hostile, dirty and ugly in the last decade totally reinforced by the 98 elections with the GOP taking over congress/house. My guess is that Clinton really has nothing to lose by saying these things. I only hope someone on Dubya's cabinet manages to listen and agree that this is not a bad idea. If the huge leap we have taken technology wise is the end result of the many innovations our space program has brought about since the manned space program began we really need more investment in the area just to keep the ball rolling.I fear that with the Village Idiot now headed into office we are doomed to see more cuts against NASA than increases. GWB seems totally clueless about the need for innovation in the space field outside of a military scope.
What if this was available when Microsoft had forgotten to renew the hotmail domain? I mean could someone just have snagged it instead of renewing it (out of frustration for not getting thier own email) and stopped the millions of spams that hit our email boxen?Not sure if this is a good thing or not. The potential for abuse could be kind of high considering how many people are way too busy to moniter the status of expirations and the amount of expirations that occur daily at over 10,000 or so. It has been my experience that NSI holds on to domain names just to prevent this type of 'legitamate' domain hijacking.