What is the point in posting that you have no problems?
IBM admit that the failure rate was a maximum of 6.5% - so you are one of the 93.5%, big deal. If everyone of those 93.5% who read these comments respond like you did, then it's going to be a hell of a big pointless thread!
Why does the article only go back to 1996? Whilst I am not about to disagree that it was 3Dfx who really kickstarted the revolution with the Voodoo (although it may have been GLQuake creating a real market) the history of at least one current player started the year before. The NV1/SGT2000 accelerator whilst unsuccessful in the market, certainly signalled the impeding arrival of consumer 3D accelerators and it arrived in 1995.
Also missing were a few companies who chips are still evolving today, especially Matrox with the MGA-2064W and VideoLogics PowerVR PCX1. Finally to put 3Dfx into context, the casualties of 1996's seminal Voodoo should be mentioned too...
Rest in peace NumberNine Imagine128 Series2, Rendition Verite 1000L S3 ViRGE. All born in 1996 - you all tried to carry on with T2R, V2x00, ViRGE/VX/DX/GX2 but really you all were already dead in 1996...history is already forgetting you!
I am guessing that if I send a nice libelous email to someone using any email client other than Outlook 2003 (and Exchange 2003?), then these magical "cannot forward" and "delete in x days" features will not work...or is there a new RFC covering this enhanced email functionality?
Kind of depends on how rapidly you can respond to a problem with something being monitored - obviously every second or even every minute is too rapid. Every hour sounds better.
But some overworked patent officer decides what is a novel idea, what is a technical contribution to the state-of-the-art and what is not...surely someone who does not work on state-of-the-art novel ideas isn't really qualified to judge this.
That is the main problem for me with the whole software patenting idea.
Thank you for your correspondence concerning the draft directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted on the rapporteur's report on the directive and there will be continuing debate and further democratic scrutiny before the directive becomes law.
At this early stage of legislative process, it is nonetheless important to establish the facts about what the draft EU directive and what the Parliament's rapporteur are aiming to achieve in the amendments tabled to the Commission proposal.
It has been suggested that the Parliament's report will for the first time allow the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. This is simply not true. The patenting of computer-implemented inventions is not a new phenomenon. Patents involving the use of software have been applied for and granted since the earliest days of the European Patent Office (EPO). Out of over 110,000 applications received at the EPO in 2001, 16,000 will have dealt with inventions in computer-implemented technologies. Indeed, even without an EU directive, these patents will continue to be filed, not only to the EPO but also to national patent offices.
As you will be aware, in the US and increasingly in Japan, patents have been granted for what is essentially pure software. Some EPO and national court rulings indicate that Europe may be drifting towards extending the scope of patentability to inventions which would traditionally have not been patentable, as well as pure business methods. It is clear that Europe needs a uniform legal approach which draws a line between what can and cannot be patented, and prevents the drift towards the patentability of software per se.
The rapporteur's intention is clear in the amendments tabled and in a new Article 4 in the text, to preclude; the patentability of software as such; the patentability of business methods; algorithms; and mathematical methods. Article 4 clearly states that in order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible to industrial applications, be new, and involve an inventive step. Moreover the rapporteur has added a requirement for a technical contribution in order to ensure that the mere use of a computer does not lead to a patent being granted.
Furthermore, the amended directive contains new provisions on decompilation that will assist software developers. While it is not possible to comment on whether any patent application would be excluded from the directive, the directive, as amended, would not permit the patentability of Amazon's 'one-click' method. As far as software itself is concerned, it will not be possible to patent a software product. Software itself will continue to be able to be protected by copyright.
With an EU directive, legislators will have scrutiny over the EPO and national court's decisions. With, in addition, the possibility of having a definitive ruling from the European Court in Luxembourg, thus ensuring a restrictive interpretation of the EU directive and a greater degree of legal certainty in the field of patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
Some concerns have been raised that the directive may have an adverse effect on the development of open source software and small software developers. The rapporteur supports the development of open source software and welcome the fact that the major open source companies are recording a 50% growth in world-wide shipment of its products.
In the amended proposal, the rapporteur has imposed a requirement on the Commission to monitor the impact of the directive, in particular its effect on small and medium sized enterprises, and to look at any potential difficulties in respect of the relationship between patent protection of computer-implemented inventions and copyright protection.
Many small companies have given their support to this directive, which will give them more legal certainty as it offers the possibility of pro
I don't care if your PARENT IS FLAMBE there was no need to shout.
If you think I was really posting that as an honest opinion, with the "hint-of-sarcasm-ometer" set at 0, then you are sadly mistaken. Please keep the public shouting, it's like having a mental (but harmless) vagrant in the virtual neighbourhood.
The Department of Homeland Security can use any *nix they like (if SCO allows) safe in the knowledge that according to 100% of Microsoft competitors, anti-Microsoft zealots, Mac Zealots, survivalists, conspiracy theorists and many teenage elitist OSS users:
1) There has never, at any time, anywhere on the face of the planet been any security problems in any software produced by any company, other than Microsoft.
2) The only reason for the multitude of releases of all other software, is to add features and fix bugs (Nothing security related), even though it is well known that all software not produced by Microsoft is perfect at its very conception.
US government could come up with some tasty piece of legislation to handle this...how about a 100% tax on anyone asking for license fees on code they have previously shipped under the GPL? With a 100% tax break for the licensees everyones happy.
Perhaps SCO have been paid by some anonymous rich billionaire to make Microsoft the second most hated company amongst Linux geeks and/. readers.
It's been 11 years since the F-22 last crashed...
on
In-Flight Reboot?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
It was 25 April 1992 when the F-22 oscillated it's way into the ground - due to (ahem!) pilot induced oscillation.
<B>Lockheed Martin Knowledge Base Article - Q000001</B>
<B>INFO:</B> F-22 impacts with the surface of the earth.
The information in this article applies to:
- F-22 Raptor for USAF
<B>SYMPTOMS</B>
When you slowly fly above the runway with full fuel, hit the afterburners and wiggle the stick the plane will go up...then down...then up...then down until the non-earth area is exhausted.
<B>RESOLUTION</B>
A supportad fix is now available from Lockheed Martin, but is only intended to correct the problem described in this article. Apply it only to aircraft which are experiencing this specific problem.
Obviously selling individual songs for 99cents isn't the optimum position - a three minute pop song really shouldn't be worth the same as a seven minute masterpiece or a track from a two track concept album.
Whilst selling on quality is not possible due to everyone having a different set of standards, it seems easiest method would be to sell by quantity - 10cents/min seems like a good price point for me.
In 1987 Microsoft released Windows 2.0/386, which allowed you to run multiple MS-DOS applications simultaneously in extended memory, breaking the 640K limit.
I just hope AMD realises that the platform should belong to the owner and keep Opteron/Athlon64 free of TCPA. This together with a Palladium free Linux would be the major reason for me to leave the comfort of the Wintel platform.
But I fear if AMD state they are remaining TCPA free they've got no chance of seeing a Palladium enabled Windows 200x on Opteron/Athlon64 - goodbye mass(ive) market.
Depending on where along the cable a break occured, then instead of falling directly down, you could end up with a 30000km cable wrapping itself around the globe at great speed.
Just like the Mars space elevator in Kim Stanley Robinsons Reb/Blue/Green Mars - in that case, terrorists blew off the asteroid which was used as a counter weight in order to send the elevator crashing down.
I guess that like most technology led projects, delays are the order of the day.
So if 1984 comes 20 years late, then 2001 isn't due for another 18 years - give the current rate of space odessey-ing that may even be a little optimisitic!
From what I remember, most PCs around that time had neither sound nor a CD-ROM. Then Microsoft published the MPC (Multimedia PC) spec which called for sound and a CD. At that time however, CD-ROM manufacturers hadn't actually all settled on IDE or SCSI but provided their own proprietary interfaces (Sony, Panasonic & Mitsumi).
So instead of having to get a motherboard with all the different connectors, why not put them on an add-in card? This is what Creative Labs did with their Soundblaster, and at the time they shipped an MPC kit which consisted of a Soundblaster Pro and CD-ROM combo.
So at the time it wasn't such a crazy idea.
Re:The X-box of 1991 was the Amiga
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 1
1991 - those were the days of the A500 Plus and the end of the costly CDTV.
It was 1993 before the CD32 limped out of Commodore to die. It was also around this time, that the PC ate the Amigas dinner.
Re:Prices are out of whack for 1991
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
CD Drives weren't cheap either...
FORT WORTH, TEXAS, U.S.A., 1991 MAR 20 (NB) -- Radio Shack has
unveiled the CDR-1000, an internal CD ROM drive for $399.95.
So if pricing is corrected, it's a hugely expensive console, as opposed to very expense console it was previously. All this and a lie too!
Or if your motherboard supported it, you could use a Weitek 3167/4167 for your 386 or 486, which were suprisingly neither pin nor instruction compatible with the 80x87 series. But they were faster - remember reading that the 3167 was 3-5 times faster than a 387 on most precisions and processes, whilst the 4167 was twice as fast as the 486DX FPU.
Sadly the concept of co-processors disappeared from x86 land...but they came back later as 3D GPUs.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article then you would know that the failure rates are.
What is the point in posting that you have no problems?
IBM admit that the failure rate was a maximum of 6.5% - so you are one of the 93.5%, big deal. If everyone of those 93.5% who read these comments respond like you did, then it's going to be a hell of a big pointless thread!
Why does the article only go back to 1996? Whilst I am not about to disagree that it was 3Dfx who really kickstarted the revolution with the Voodoo (although it may have been GLQuake creating a real market) the history of at least one current player started the year before. The NV1/SGT2000 accelerator whilst unsuccessful in the market, certainly signalled the impeding arrival of consumer 3D accelerators and it arrived in 1995.
Also missing were a few companies who chips are still evolving today, especially Matrox with the MGA-2064W and VideoLogics PowerVR PCX1. Finally to put 3Dfx into context, the casualties of 1996's seminal Voodoo should be mentioned too...
Rest in peace NumberNine Imagine128 Series2, Rendition Verite 1000L
S3 ViRGE. All born in 1996 - you all tried to carry on with T2R, V2x00, ViRGE/VX/DX/GX2 but really you all were already dead in 1996...history is already forgetting you!
I am guessing that if I send a nice libelous email to someone using any email client other than Outlook 2003 (and Exchange 2003?), then these magical "cannot forward" and "delete in x days" features will not work...or is there a new RFC covering this enhanced email functionality?
When it exceeds the point of being far enought!
Kind of depends on how rapidly you can respond to a problem with something being monitored - obviously every second or even every minute is too rapid. Every hour sounds better.
But some overworked patent officer decides what is a novel idea, what is a technical contribution to the state-of-the-art and what is not...surely someone who does not work on state-of-the-art novel ideas isn't really qualified to judge this.
That is the main problem for me with the whole software patenting idea.
Dear Mr Ebbatson
Thank you for your correspondence concerning the draft directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted on the rapporteur's report on the directive and there will be continuing debate and further democratic scrutiny before the directive becomes law.
At this early stage of legislative process, it is nonetheless important to establish the facts about what the draft EU directive and what the Parliament's rapporteur are aiming to achieve in the amendments tabled to the Commission proposal.
It has been suggested that the Parliament's report will for the first time allow the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. This is simply not true. The patenting of computer-implemented inventions is not a new phenomenon. Patents involving the use of software have been applied for and granted since the earliest days of the European Patent Office (EPO). Out of over 110,000 applications received at the EPO in 2001, 16,000 will have dealt with inventions in computer-implemented technologies. Indeed, even without an EU directive, these patents will continue to be filed, not only to the EPO but also to national patent offices.
As you will be aware, in the US and increasingly in Japan, patents have been granted for what is essentially pure software. Some EPO and national court rulings indicate that Europe may be drifting towards extending the scope of patentability to inventions which would traditionally have not been patentable, as well as pure business methods. It is clear that Europe needs a uniform legal approach which draws a line between what can and cannot be patented, and prevents the drift towards the patentability of software per se.
The rapporteur's intention is clear in the amendments tabled and in a new Article 4 in the text, to preclude; the patentability of software as such; the patentability of business methods; algorithms; and mathematical methods. Article 4 clearly states that in order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible to industrial applications, be new, and involve an inventive step. Moreover the rapporteur has added a requirement for a technical contribution in order to ensure that the mere use of a computer does not lead to a patent being granted.
Furthermore, the amended directive contains new provisions on decompilation that will assist software developers. While it is not possible to comment on whether any patent application would be excluded from the directive, the directive, as amended, would not permit the patentability of Amazon's 'one-click' method. As far as software itself is concerned, it will not be possible to patent a software product. Software itself will continue to be able to be protected by copyright.
With an EU directive, legislators will have scrutiny over the EPO and national court's decisions. With, in addition, the possibility of having a definitive ruling from the European Court in Luxembourg, thus ensuring a restrictive interpretation of the EU directive and a greater degree of legal certainty in the field of patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
Some concerns have been raised that the directive may have an adverse effect on the development of open source software and small software developers. The rapporteur supports the development of open source software and welcome the fact that the major open source companies are recording a 50% growth in world-wide shipment of its products.
In the amended proposal, the rapporteur has imposed a requirement on the Commission to monitor the impact of the directive, in particular its effect on small and medium sized enterprises, and to look at any potential difficulties in respect of the relationship between patent protection of computer-implemented inventions and copyright protection.
Many small companies have given their support to this directive, which will give them more legal certainty as it offers the possibility of pro
I don't care if your PARENT IS FLAMBE there was no need to shout.
If you think I was really posting that as an honest opinion, with the "hint-of-sarcasm-ometer" set at 0, then you are sadly mistaken. Please keep the public shouting, it's like having a mental (but harmless) vagrant in the virtual neighbourhood.
The Department of Homeland Security can use any *nix they like (if SCO allows) safe in the knowledge that according to 100% of Microsoft competitors, anti-Microsoft zealots, Mac Zealots, survivalists, conspiracy theorists and many teenage elitist OSS users:
1) There has never, at any time, anywhere on the face of the planet been any security problems in any software produced by any company, other than Microsoft.
2) The only reason for the multitude of releases of all other software, is to add features and fix bugs (Nothing security related), even though it is well known that all software not produced by Microsoft is perfect at its very conception.
US government could come up with some tasty piece of legislation to handle this...how about a 100% tax on anyone asking for license fees on code they have previously shipped under the GPL? With a 100% tax break for the licensees everyones happy.
/. readers.
Perhaps SCO have been paid by some anonymous rich billionaire to make Microsoft the second most hated company amongst Linux geeks and
It was 25 April 1992 when the F-22 oscillated it's way into the ground - due to (ahem!) pilot induced oscillation.
_ F22_Raptor_EN.exe">http://www.lockheedmartin.com/d ownloads/Q000001_F22_Raptor_EN.exe</A>
<B>Lockheed Martin Knowledge Base Article - Q000001</B>
<B>INFO:</B> F-22 impacts with the surface of the earth.
The information in this article applies to:
- F-22 Raptor for USAF
<B>SYMPTOMS</B>
When you slowly fly above the runway with full fuel, hit the afterburners and wiggle the stick the plane will go up...then down...then up...then down until the non-earth area is exhausted.
<B>RESOLUTION</B>
A supportad fix is now available from Lockheed Martin, but is only intended to correct the problem described in this article. Apply it only to aircraft which are experiencing this specific problem.
<A HREF ="http://www.lockheedmartin.com/downloads/Q000001
<B>WORKAROUND</B>
Avoid taking off.
STATUS
Lockheed Martin has confirmed this is a problem with in the military hardware products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
Obviously selling individual songs for 99cents isn't the optimum position - a three minute pop song really shouldn't be worth the same as a seven minute masterpiece or a track from a two track concept album.
Whilst selling on quality is not possible due to everyone having a different set of standards, it seems easiest method would be to sell by quantity - 10cents/min seems like a good price point for me.
Or punctuation? He who casts the first stone and all that.
--
He's probably already thinking about a 5Mhz GPU with shaders...or at least 256 colors with sprites and raster effects.
Give poor old Romero something to code on...
--
This guy made a CPU, whereas Woz used a CPU - so it stands to reason that Woz is going to use less chips!
--
I think the poster may have got carried away - he made a card to connect it to a VGA monitor, at least I did see any ModeX on the emulator!
--
In 1987 Microsoft released Windows 2.0/386, which allowed you to run multiple MS-DOS applications simultaneously in extended memory, breaking the 640K limit.
I just hope AMD realises that the platform should belong to the owner and keep Opteron/Athlon64 free of TCPA. This together with a Palladium free Linux would be the major reason for me to leave the comfort of the Wintel platform.
But I fear if AMD state they are remaining TCPA free they've got no chance of seeing a Palladium enabled Windows 200x on Opteron/Athlon64 - goodbye mass(ive) market.
Please mod the parent down for simply being wrong. Microsoft never shipped DirectX 4 in any incarnation, let alone with NT4.
Microsoft say DirectX 4 never shipped
Adrenaline Vault agree with MS
Someone else won't deny it either!
Depending on where along the cable a break occured, then instead of falling directly down, you could end up with a 30000km cable wrapping itself around the globe at great speed.
Just like the Mars space elevator in Kim Stanley Robinsons Reb/Blue/Green Mars - in that case, terrorists blew off the asteroid which was used as a counter weight in order to send the elevator crashing down.
Just hope Osama & Co don't get any ideas.
I guess that like most technology led projects, delays are the order of the day.
So if 1984 comes 20 years late, then 2001 isn't due for another 18 years - give the current rate of space odessey-ing that may even be a little optimisitic!
From what I remember, most PCs around that time had neither sound nor a CD-ROM. Then Microsoft published the MPC (Multimedia PC) spec which called for sound and a CD. At that time however, CD-ROM manufacturers hadn't actually all settled on IDE or SCSI but provided their own proprietary interfaces (Sony, Panasonic & Mitsumi).
So instead of having to get a motherboard with all the different connectors, why not put them on an add-in card? This is what Creative Labs did with their Soundblaster, and at the time they shipped an MPC kit which consisted of a Soundblaster Pro and CD-ROM combo.
So at the time it wasn't such a crazy idea.
1991 - those were the days of the A500 Plus and the end of the costly CDTV.
It was 1993 before the CD32 limped out of Commodore to die. It was also around this time, that the PC ate the Amigas dinner.
So if pricing is corrected, it's a hugely expensive console, as opposed to very expense console it was previously. All this and a lie too!
Or if your motherboard supported it, you could use a Weitek 3167/4167 for your 386 or 486, which were suprisingly neither pin nor instruction compatible with the 80x87 series. But they were faster - remember reading that the 3167 was 3-5 times faster than a 387 on most precisions and processes, whilst the 4167 was twice as fast as the 486DX FPU.
Sadly the concept of co-processors disappeared from x86 land...but they came back later as 3D GPUs.