Actually, United States patent law includes language to the effect that to "make, use, or sell" an invention under a subsisting patent without permission of the patent owner is patent infringement. (Read More at USPTO.gov.)
s/GIF/PNG/ because PNG is better documented and supports 24-bit color and alpha transparency. You partially address this with
TIFF
but s/TIFF/PNG/ because even without TIFF's LZW codec, TIFF is much larger than PNG and not as well standardized.
Text/ASCII
Non-European language advocates would complain.
Text/Unicode
Better. Thank you. This solves the script issue, but in what natural language would information be stored? How is it a valid assumption that future generations can read format specs written in US English of A.D. 2001 or in UK English of A.D. 2001?
HTML version whatever
Make sure it's run through W3C's HTML Validator if you want to archive it. MSHTML is a Bad Thing.
and perhaps even Java for interpretation of abirtrary [sic] file formats.
The Java(TM) langauge does not have the wealth of alternative implementations that the C language has. Both are nearly Turing complete (full Turing completeness requires unbounded storage) and equally fast when compiled to a native instruction set.
The bigger question isn't media, but sof[t]ware. I already have a bunch of WordStar and old MacWrite/MacPaint files I can't open... will [we] actually be able to interpret and make use of it?
For older formats, you can always emulate the computer for which the viewer software was designed, or write a new viewer from the format documentation. For example, QuickTime 4 can open MacPaint files, and so can a short C program I wrote. Remember, if you want to archive something, make sure you have the format documentation (or the viewer software and the architecture documentation) so that future generations will be able to create a usable viewer. (IEEE and ISO standards are Good Things[0].)
About five years ago I still had an old floppy controller with an odd WD chip on it that could talk to it using OS-9.
So install Mac OS X (the successor to Mac OS 9) on your machine and read that floppy.
Oh, you were talking about that OS 9.
[0] GOOD THING is U.S. Trademark No. 75,516,347 registered to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia LLC. (Look it up at TESS.)
You just don't want to accept random binary data that you would have to retain a reader for as well.
If binary is the problem, uuencode is the solution.
If proprietary formats are the problem, then documented, unencumbered formats such as PNG, JPEG, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis are the solution. Just make sure to archive documents (such as ISO and IEEE standards) that can be used to create a reader.
No, the trick is that a picture is worth 1000 words. Since graphics usually compress worse than text (limited dictionary)
The latest wavelet compression techniques can compress a good-sized color image to 8 kilobytes, or the size of a thousand English words plus light markup.
If you remove the parts with copyright and trademark restrictions (i.e. remove any Apple and Mac logos and make the pills look slightly different), you get the newer crop of aqua-like themes. But while you're waiting for them to show up, you can play Vitamins, a Dr. Mario clone that makes fun of Aqua.
Man is it just me or these people made thier site design for 320x 240 pixel 10 inch screens?
Or perhaps for 320x240 pixel 4-inch screens of palmtop devices with MP3 support. (Actually, the page looks optimized for 640x480.)
But you don't have to surf with your Mozilla/Galeon/K-Meleon/IE browser window maximized. For example, I normally have four 720x540-pixel browser windows open on my 1024x768-pixel 17" monitor; keeping multiple windows open lets me read one page while loading another, making browsing on dial-up more efficient.
To my knowledge each apache process can only serve one client
I think you're right (unless Apache uses nonblocking I/O), but is one process per client such a bad thing, especially when multiple Apache processes/threads can share resources and when some kernels' schedulers are extremely fast?
Patents are public knowledge, etc. Patent applications are probably not, until the patent is granted.
Actually, Europe and (since recently) the US publish patent applications eighteen months after filing, giving potential infringers ample time to back out of the market.
wouldn't just going out and killing all the lawyers, destroying their offices, their computers, their servers, and their homes get Rambus out of trouble?
Lawyers don't sue people; plaintiffs sue people. <IANAL>If all the attorneys died, plaintiffs would probably just read the law and represent themselves.</IANAL>
Where is the 'Kernel' topic? I find it very strange that there is no place to put the Linux kernel, or MACH for that matter.
The "Operating System Kernels" category in the directory is right HERE, waiting for OpenBSD's audited kernel and a Linux kernel stripped of experimental features to be added.
Perhaps that's why Slashdot seems to have horrendous response times
I don't think so. Many consider the `unstable' branch of Debian GNU/Linux to be more stable than a certain popular commercial Linux OS. The `testing' branch is where the truly less-than-stable software resides.
he is wrong about AMD making "clone" processors of Intel. That hasn't happened since the 486
Intel holds patents on key components of the x86 architecture such as MMX and SSE. AMD has to license these patents (and the corresponding trademarks) to be able to create fully x86-compatible processors.
Compact Disc Recordable. Just break your data up into 700 MB chunks and shove it onto CDs using those new 16x burners at under $1/GB for media. Need more than 16x? Use more burners. Any problems with this?
At this point I won't be converting. In order to access a Name.Space server, you have to download an app to use it.
Not necessarily. If you're running Linux, you can always add their root server to resolv.conf. There are also ways of doing this in BSD, BeOS, and pretty much any other OS that can access DNS.
But as long as name.city.state.us is enforced as the only legit use of the.us domain, it's probably remain that way.
If somehow Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, and Alaska would give up the "city" requirement, you would get.co.us,.ne.us,.or.us, and.ak.us as alternatives to.com,.net,.org, and.edu (patterned after.ac.uk).
a friend had a folder with every single installer for every version of every program that he's ever downloaded, I thought that it was a great idea. The folder is archived to CD every six months or so
I do this too; I have at least two CDs of this stuff (mixed in with a bit of w4r3z), but sometimes it fails:
Some programs' primary functionality is to access content on the Internet (e.g. RealPlayer). This software may contact a central server and automatically download and install updates.
Some programs' primary functionality is to access content on a specific server on the Internet, which may block older clients <cough>AIM</cough>.
Some software expires based on a date pulled from either your system clock or the atomic clocks on the Internet, forcing you to download and install updates.
Slashdot Mirror
I think at this stage of the game, the mass appeal of new PCs are because of "OS-independent" applications, such as ... ICQ/AIM
Whose terms of service and client connection protocols rule out connection from Free clients to their servers. s/AIM/Jabber/g and you'll be fine.
Actually, I believe (and please correct me if I'm wrong) writing your own software would be OK under US patent law, provided you don't sell it.
Actually, United States patent law includes language to the effect that to "make, use, or sell" an invention under a subsisting patent without permission of the patent owner is patent infringement. (Read More at USPTO.gov.)
LTSS 1.0 could support WAV, MP3
s/MP3/Ogg Vorbis/
GIF
s/GIF/PNG/ because PNG is better documented and supports 24-bit color and alpha transparency. You partially address this with
TIFF
but s/TIFF/PNG/ because even without TIFF's LZW codec, TIFF is much larger than PNG and not as well standardized.
Text/ASCII
Non-European language advocates would complain.
Text/Unicode
Better. Thank you. This solves the script issue, but in what natural language would information be stored? How is it a valid assumption that future generations can read format specs written in US English of A.D. 2001 or in UK English of A.D. 2001?
HTML version whatever
Make sure it's run through W3C's HTML Validator if you want to archive it. MSHTML is a Bad Thing.
and perhaps even Java for interpretation of abirtrary [sic] file formats.
The Java(TM) langauge does not have the wealth of alternative implementations that the C language has. Both are nearly Turing complete (full Turing completeness requires unbounded storage) and equally fast when compiled to a native instruction set.
The bigger question isn't media, but sof[t]ware. I already have a bunch of WordStar and old MacWrite/MacPaint files I can't open... will [we] actually be able to interpret and make use of it?
For older formats, you can always emulate the computer for which the viewer software was designed, or write a new viewer from the format documentation. For example, QuickTime 4 can open MacPaint files, and so can a short C program I wrote. Remember, if you want to archive something, make sure you have the format documentation (or the viewer software and the architecture documentation) so that future generations will be able to create a usable viewer. (IEEE and ISO standards are Good Things[0].)
About five years ago I still had an old floppy controller with an odd WD chip on it that could talk to it using OS-9.
So install Mac OS X (the successor to Mac OS 9) on your machine and read that floppy.
Oh, you were talking about that OS 9.
[0] GOOD THING is U.S. Trademark No. 75,516,347 registered to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia LLC. (Look it up at TESS.)
You just don't want to accept random binary data that you would have to retain a reader for as well.
If binary is the problem, uuencode is the solution.
If proprietary formats are the problem, then documented, unencumbered formats such as PNG, JPEG, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis are the solution. Just make sure to archive documents (such as ISO and IEEE standards) that can be used to create a reader.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. Here is a picture, in an open, documented graphics format
And the format is called ASCII art. Just use this simple program to convert your 1-bit .bmp format images to images made of standard ASCII characters.
No, the trick is that a picture is worth 1000 words. Since graphics usually compress worse than text (limited dictionary)
The latest wavelet compression techniques can compress a good-sized color image to 8 kilobytes, or the size of a thousand English words plus light markup.
So, where can I get those OSX themes
If you remove the parts with copyright and trademark restrictions (i.e. remove any Apple and Mac logos and make the pills look slightly different), you get the newer crop of aqua-like themes. But while you're waiting for them to show up, you can play Vitamins, a Dr. Mario clone that makes fun of Aqua.
Man is it just me or these people made thier site design for 320x 240 pixel 10 inch screens?
Or perhaps for 320x240 pixel 4-inch screens of palmtop devices with MP3 support. (Actually, the page looks optimized for 640x480.)
But you don't have to surf with your Mozilla/Galeon/K-Meleon/IE browser window maximized. For example, I normally have four 720x540-pixel browser windows open on my 1024x768-pixel 17" monitor; keeping multiple windows open lets me read one page while loading another, making browsing on dial-up more efficient.
To my knowledge each apache process can only serve one client
I think you're right (unless Apache uses nonblocking I/O), but is one process per client such a bad thing, especially when multiple Apache processes/threads can share resources and when some kernels' schedulers are extremely fast?
Any idea if this will be ported to WinApache?
Patents are public knowledge, etc. Patent applications are probably not, until the patent is granted.
Actually, Europe and (since recently) the US publish patent applications eighteen months after filing, giving potential infringers ample time to back out of the market.
wouldn't just going out and killing all the lawyers, destroying their offices, their computers, their servers, and their homes get Rambus out of trouble?
Lawyers don't sue people; plaintiffs sue people. <IANAL>If all the attorneys died, plaintiffs would probably just read the law and represent themselves.</IANAL>
Where is the 'Kernel' topic? I find it very strange that there is no place to put the Linux kernel, or MACH for that matter.
The "Operating System Kernels" category in the directory is right HERE, waiting for OpenBSD's audited kernel and a Linux kernel stripped of experimental features to be added.
isn't dmoz.org's software open? I know its content is.
dmoz's content is NOT free documentation because its license restricts your freedom to redistribute an older snapshot of the directory.
Why the needless Windows bashing? Is it that impossible to think that people can develop open source programs for Windows???
Except there's a section on that directory dedicated to apps that run on MS-DOS and/or Microsoft Windows.
THIS STORY IS NOW OFFICIALY CLOSED
Who do you think you are? Dem Bones of E2 trying to close a "getting to know you" node?
Perhaps that's why Slashdot seems to have horrendous response times
I don't think so. Many consider the `unstable' branch of Debian GNU/Linux to be more stable than a certain popular commercial Linux OS. The `testing' branch is where the truly less-than-stable software resides.
But how open is open? - they don't seem to say what definition they are using!
Or do they? I looked in the site dics and found that OSD's definition of open source is any software under a license approved by the Open Source Initiative, from free GPL2, BSD2, X11, and Clarified Artistic to flawed QPL, BSD1, and Python 1.6 to too-vague-to-be-free Original Artistic. (Sources: free | open)
he is wrong about AMD making "clone" processors of Intel. That hasn't happened since the 486
Intel holds patents on key components of the x86 architecture such as MMX and SSE. AMD has to license these patents (and the corresponding trademarks) to be able to create fully x86-compatible processors.
You manage 1000's of CD's. Then recommend this one again.
There are CD jukeboxes sold in the consumer market that hold 200 discs. It wouldn't be too difficult to scale up the concept to thousands.
Compact Disc Recordable. Just break your data up into 700 MB chunks and shove it onto CDs using those new 16x burners at under $1/GB for media. Need more than 16x? Use more burners. Any problems with this?
At this point I won't be converting. In order to access a Name.Space server, you have to download an app to use it.
Not necessarily. If you're running Linux, you can always add their root server to resolv.conf. There are also ways of doing this in BSD, BeOS, and pretty much any other OS that can access DNS.
They own the patent for that stupid GIF image format
No, that's Unisys. Verisign owns a monopoly (not court-enforced but MS-enforced) on trusted SSL and Authenticode certificates (having bought Thawte), even though VeriSign isn't doing a good job of checking its facts.
But as long as name.city.state.us is enforced as the only legit use of the .us domain, it's probably remain that way.
If somehow Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, and Alaska would give up the "city" requirement, you would get .co.us, .ne.us, .or.us, and .ak.us as alternatives to .com, .net, .org, and .edu (patterned after .ac.uk).
a friend had a folder with every single installer for every version of every program that he's ever downloaded, I thought that it was a great idea. The folder is archived to CD every six months or so
I do this too; I have at least two CDs of this stuff (mixed in with a bit of w4r3z), but sometimes it fails: