Same here - yet to find an article addressing the lifespan of these solid state drives.
I've got LOADS of working hard drives which won't boot, because its boot sector has wore off. They're fine when plugged into the computer as slave drives, but that still means that I gotta buy a new hard drive just to boot the ocmputer from.
It would be REALLY annoying to see that happens on these SSDs.
...for most many cases, is to setup an edge server / reverse proxy. It will stop the load BEFORE it even reaches lighty / apache / whatever.
It's very easy to do, take very little time, reliable & proven (which is not always the case with php accelerators), and will easily drop a double-digit server load to a single one.
It constantly amazes me how people will do the hardest stuff which gave the minimum return first. Such is life I guess:-)
If you want more proof, read this guy's article. He sell a "turbo charged" Wordpress, got digged and overloaded, optimized his website and still overloaded. Finally his server managed to go through it after he implemented squid's reverse proxy.
In summary - sort out your priorities guys. Biggest back for the buck first, and then go down from there.
The only constant is change. Apparently, some still doesn't know this.
The old media who fail to adapt will be driven to extinction. The traffic driver now is Google, in the future it may be something else, and so on.
There's a good example here of a new mass media company in Indonesia. They provide the news for free, with RSS feeds and so on. But instead of just that, as many old media company trying to move into Internet --- they also have a web store, ad-service via SMS, resell their incoming traffic, sell web-development & consultancy services, sell exclusive contents paid by simple premium SMS, successfully built an online community AND capitalize on it to make their Web 2.0 websites successful, and many other creative inventions.
The old media on Internet have very high "hit-and-run" traffic. People came, read the news, and went away. The new media company I mentioned above, however, is able to capitalize on their incoming traffic; people will linger on for longer, actually do transactions with them; bottom line, more revenue streams.
Again, this is not the fault of Google. The fault is at those who fail to adapt.
What do YOU know about Bali, punk ? I don't like these extremists as much as you do, but Bali bombing stinks of conspiracy like somebody farting just in front of your nose after he gulped 5 cans of baked beans.
Not only that, several police officers reported detection of C4 traces in the scene. They were silenced after. Then even after the police failed to find conclusive proof, they still jailed Abu Bakar Ba'asyir anyway.
Yes, there are a LOT that YOUR media did NOT report.
And you're wondering why people from so many countries hate America, huh ?
If your western government keep on bullying others like these, it's YOU, the people, that will suffer the retaliation. Bush? Howard? They'll have Secret Service covering and licking their asses 24x7.
Disclaimer: It's mine. Here there are a lot of companies wishing to move from their current IT infrastructure to a more open one, but they're scared. A lot of them said if there are others who have done so, it'll make the case easier to be presented in the board of director meetings. So I created it. Hope it does help some people out there.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really have a happy ending - originally I installed VMware (and the virtual servers) on Linux. However, turned out our FM [1] (Facility Management provider) doesn't support Linux.
So I had to reinstall the OS and VMware and run the whole bunch on Windows [2] instead:(
[1] FM provider is kinda like a co-lo company - you give your servers to them, and they'll take care of them for you. Except that they're much more expensive...
[2] From my experience, it seems that VMware 4.x workstation is more stable on Linux than on Windows. I've experienced several quirks when running VMware on Windows, so I try to avoid Windows for this whenever possible.
A side note: Contrary to some believe/comments, VMware 4.x workstation is quite powerful. I've heard people saying that it won't run on more than 1 GB of RAM / multiple processors - well, one of our server is a dual-Xeon and have 3 GB of RAM, and VMware 4.x is running happily on it.
I don't see a need for hyper threading one dual core chips. It's redundant.
Well, a few weeks ago I had to install 3 test servers - but turned out we have only 1 available server.
I almost freaked out - but then I realised that it's a dual-Xeon box ---> 4 CPUs (to the OS). Using an obscure switch in VMware config file, I manage to assign each CPU to a (virtual) Server. The fourth CPU is assigned to the host OS.
Everyone was very happy with the result, and looking forward to utilise more of this feature (and this kind of CPU) in the future.
What kind of organization do you have in mind? Doing something worthwhile would be *great*, but most NGOs don't even pay as much as I get now (which is not very much anyway) and working for less simply is no option because, as I wrote, the family wants to eat. What should I look for IYO? (I'm seriously interested, so please share your ideas.)
At the moment I'm working for local government (ok, stop gasping:)
I'm happy because we serve the people. We make things better for them. Even more true because we have started to use open-source technology heavily since a few years ago, and I happen to be one of the "expert" (according to them), and have contributed some assistance on that topic to various projects. I'm happy everytime my advice is implemented and saving the taxpayers' money - while proving more reliable and scaleable than many commercial alternatives. I'm happy to help my employer to break free from vendor lock-in. Etc.
The pay is indeed less from the private companies, but you get job security (quite some of my friends actually envy me) and a very family-friendly job. I'm used to live frugally anyway so it's not too painful to me.
It doesn't have to be a civil servant job - if a private company is doing something you believe to be good, then go for it. Before I was working in a startup insurance company that's doing it unlike what you've known - it's actually spreading wealth to people instead of accumulating it all for itself.
Other alternatives are running your own business (I didn't realize that corner shops can generate so much money), etc - I guess what I'm trying to say is: be creative, keep on looking, and good luck.
This statement does not come from the PC Magazine. It is the original statement which you can also find in the press release from AMD...
I know... but any publications taking it so literally like that, even though it's very silly (a processor optimized for sending pictures??), should be punished.
Erm.. whoops, it seems that I've just lost my self-control, have you seen him around ?
Basic computing is no longer just about e-mail, Web browsing or word processing. Today, it's also about downloading and playing music, as well as sending pictures to family and friends
Yes !! Finally, they've created a processor optimized to downloading music. With Sempron, you can download MP3s 10x faster than using Celeron!
Intel, eat my pants.
Now I remember why I cancelled my subscription to PC Magazine years ago....
And there's something else. I personally don't need a job, I only need *money*. Working is a pointless waste of time if you look at it objectively.
Well, you can work for an institution that's doing something good.
Then it's no longer a waste of time, because you're helping people, and you can start looking forward to work every day - instead of dreading it every single day.
A good software company rely on real innovations to survive/succeed. (there are a lot of examples for this)
A bad software company rely on patents to survive/succeed.
Only big companies can afford patents and defend / attack others using it in court. No way small fish like us can afford that; and that's injustice, which is bad.
OK, McAfee is officially in my "bad company" list now.
What are they thinking exactly by patenting Bayes rules, etc ? So take the best from open-source community, and then patent them under your own name, eh ?
I'll share some info about McAfee now:
For a better antivirus, use NOD32 instead (they never missed a single virus in 6 consecutive years).
For better anti-spam software, use POPfile instead (and it's free)
For anti-spyware, use Spybot instead (and it's free)
For firewall, use ZoneAlarm instead (and it can be free)
Do I miss anything ?
I think we should distance ourselves to nasty companies like this. Let's speak with our money.
The stories are simply top notch, you just have to read it for yourselves. To give you some idea; rarely a novel is intense enough to make me bolted to the chair (hint: I don't like novels generally), but these three managed to did it - every one of them.
The story are very interesting and original (I think Borg has been exploited way too much for now, etc). And the actions are not lacking either. I'm very impressed. If you're going to buy Star Trek novels, I can recommend these.
Actually I'd like to see the first one as well, which is happening on TOS (Kirk era), but I think the casts are way too old now to make it:(
Here's hoping that Paramount will read this comment (ha!:-)
They get zero bullshit, instant-response support, day or night, because that's what they pay for. I solve technical issues, sure, and I take great pride in my work. But I develop relationships with my problem clients, and work hard to make them happy. I communicate with them in a way that lets them know that it is a personal affront to me that their product is not performing exactly as they expect, and they know that they have an advocate within the company that fights through bureaucracy for their needs long after the sale has been made and their account manager has moved on to chasing the next dollar. Our development team works very closely with us and if we identify an issue as being a top customer support, it's fixed in the next release. If that's not soon enough, we'll get the engineering schedule re-arranged to produce a patch for our customer. Our shortest-time support rep has been with the company for four years, and at this stage, perhaps only the director of engineering has an equal understanding of the product. We cost a lot, but we're worth it.
I'm quite sure you're not working for our vendor.
We paid silly amount of money, and their web-app server is still slow, and it's slowing down our web-based apps as well. It's bloated, tend to crash, can't be easily restarted - and the price keeps on going up !
The last problem we had with it is that it spews loads of unnecessary SQL queries for simple operations. And we were wondering why our (VERY expensive) web-based app runs slower with 10 million users.
Support is indeed costing us a LOAD of money, and with this kind of result a lot of people are looking to jump into the open-source alternatives.
I can't believe this, a company as big as Nokia making mistake as stupid as this ?
I thought most people would have learned something on the WiFi fiasco by now, especially Nokia (who also make security products such as firewalls by the way)
Now let's see if they're dedicated enough to their customers to fix this problem quickly. In the meantime, it's good idea to keep this on the headlines of the media.
On another note, I'd be interested about other bluetooth-enabled devices - handsfree headset ? iPAQs? Palm? Sony Clies?
Here's an anecdote which, for me, sums up all of the differences between Christianity and Islam: I'm sure you're aware of the story from the haddith of the adulterous woman who was brought before Mohammed. She was pregnant with another man's child, so he ordered her to brought back after the child was born. So it was done. Then, he ordered her to be brought back after the child had been weaned. Again, it was done as he ordered. The third time she appeared before him, he ordered her stoned to death. Sure enough, she was executed for having slept with a man not her husband.
Again, another story not presented in whole.
First, it's the woman that came to Muhammad and asked him to have the law applied to her. So Muhammad asked that it's only to be done after she gave birth to the baby, and he told her family to treat her kindly. Second, he led the funeral prayer himself, which is considered to be a great honor. The companions were confused (seeing that she committed one of the greatest sin in Islam, but yet it's the Prophet himself that led the funeral for her), and one of them asked him about it. Muhammad replied that she repented in such away that if her repentance were to be spread over seventy people of Medina it would have sufficed them all. There cannot be a better or higher degree of repentance than this; she chose to speak the truth at the cost of her life.
She could just told lies and saved her live (like what many hypocrites do at that time), but she didn't.
The reference to this can be found for example [ here ]
I could describe all your other points, but seeing that this is the one that sums up all of the differences between Christianity and Islam, I'll let you reflect on this for now.
You're not the only one that got Islam wrong, and there are many that got it worse than you. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
I used to spend my time doing dialogues with some atheists, and I've encountered some points that are raised by the author of that book as well. (sadly I barely have any spare time nowadays so unable to do it again now)
I noticed that many of their conclusions are based on incomplete data. For example, translations alone most of the time is not enough to be used to fully understand a certain passage in the Quran, you'll also need to understand the asbabunNuzul (context of the passage, when and what occasion triggered its revelation) and check the tafseer (explanation) of it from the companions of the Prophet, people who'd understand it the most.
Some of the passages who speak about waging war against infidels are actually talking about the Arab infidels of the time of the Prophet - which already tortured and killed members of the muslim community in many ways.
So now I can understand why those atheists are enraged and misunderstood us, because I've seen muslims as well who took those passages out of context and wages war against just about everyone else.
It's just one reason though, and it's the innocent one. Sadly the atheist community, just like any other communities, has its own share of zealots and liars, and they're not helping to make the current situation better.
I can safely say that many muslims are not familiar anymore with what Islam is all about - even me, I'm still learning. The texts and the knowledge is still intact, thank to various rigorous methods of knowledge preservations (the science of hadith, the customofmemorising the whole quran, etc) - but somehow the soul of Islam has become alienated to many muslims. No surprise then if non-muslims/outsiders are getting an even worse picture about it.
I just wish there's something that I can do about it.
Oh yeah, they're also too Microsoft-centric for now, for example the certificate (from Chambersign or Equifax) currently doesn't work on Macintosh. No word about how it is on Linux.
Does that means that basically the UK government is telling its citizen to use Microsoft products ? A company already judged as a monopoly in USA ?
I wonder how it is with the USPS' implementation ?
In UK, the move to digital signature was pioneered by Inland Revenue (IRS for Americans). The Government's Gateway provides the digital certificate, which then can be used to digitally sign online forms.
However there were concerns that the implementation is too proprietary, risking dependence to few vendors. Considering what the Gateway's doing, I think these concerns are valid.
There were also little silliness along the way, such as the 50 poundsterling discount by Inland revenue (IRS for Americans) if you submit your tax online and sign it with your certificate BUT the certificate itself cost 50 poundsterling as well, etc.
But I haven't followed it for quite a while now, hopefully things are better now.
Let's hope the winner of X-prize and other participants won't patent their work like mad, to the point of disabling others to build similar machine.
If ship was patented to death for example, I don't think there would be that many ships on the ocean now.
I have high hopes for the future of humanity with X-prize and its participants, but then again I've yet to see the limit of human's ability to shoot itself on the foot.
For example, Windows' accessibility features has saved me many times when the mouse just doesn't want to work for various reason. It enable me to use the numpad to simulate the mouse, and troubleshoot the problem - instead of reinstalling it.
I welcome this addition to KDE even more for that reason.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here - yet to find an article addressing the lifespan of these solid state drives.
I've got LOADS of working hard drives which won't boot, because its boot sector has wore off.
They're fine when plugged into the computer as slave drives, but that still means that I gotta buy a new hard drive just to boot the ocmputer from.
It would be REALLY annoying to see that happens on these SSDs.
...for most many cases, is to setup an edge server / reverse proxy. It will stop the load BEFORE it even reaches lighty / apache / whatever.
:-)
It's very easy to do, take very little time, reliable & proven (which is not always the case with php accelerators), and will easily drop a double-digit server load to a single one.
It constantly amazes me how people will do the hardest stuff which gave the minimum return first.
Such is life I guess
If you want more proof, read this guy's article. He sell a "turbo charged" Wordpress, got digged and overloaded, optimized his website and still overloaded. Finally his server managed to go through it after he implemented squid's reverse proxy.
In summary - sort out your priorities guys.
Biggest back for the buck first, and then go down from there.
The only constant is change. Apparently, some still doesn't know this.
The old media who fail to adapt will be driven to extinction. The traffic driver now is Google, in the future it may be something else, and so on.
There's a good example here of a new mass media company in Indonesia. They provide the news for free, with RSS feeds and so on. But instead of just that, as many old media company trying to move into Internet --- they also have a web store, ad-service via SMS, resell their incoming traffic, sell web-development & consultancy services,
sell exclusive contents paid by simple premium SMS, successfully built an online community AND capitalize on it to make their Web 2.0 websites successful, and many other creative inventions.
The old media on Internet have very high "hit-and-run" traffic. People came, read the news, and went away.
The new media company I mentioned above, however, is able to capitalize on their incoming traffic; people will linger on for longer, actually do transactions with them; bottom line, more revenue streams.
Again, this is not the fault of Google. The fault is at those who fail to adapt.
What do YOU know about Bali, punk ? I don't like these extremists as much as you do, but Bali bombing stinks of conspiracy like somebody farting just in front of your nose after he gulped 5 cans of baked beans.
In indonesian media, just after the bombing, there were a LOT of news about how strange the police is handling it, and how the Australian and other foreign officials are tampering with the investigation.
We may not be a Dutch colony anymore, but instead the Australian officials can easily kidnap a key witness, and then returned her dead - already cremated too.
Not only that, several police officers reported detection of C4 traces in the scene. They were silenced after.
Then even after the police failed to find conclusive proof, they still jailed Abu Bakar Ba'asyir anyway.
Yes, there are a LOT that YOUR media did NOT report.
And you're wondering why people from so many countries hate America, huh ?
If your western government keep on bullying others like these, it's YOU, the people, that will suffer the retaliation. Bush? Howard? They'll have Secret Service covering and licking their asses 24x7.
Here's one : http://oss-corporate.usefulz.com
Disclaimer: It's mine. Here there are a lot of companies wishing to move from their current IT infrastructure to a more open one, but they're scared. A lot of them said if there are others who have done so, it'll make the case easier to be presented in the board of director meetings. So I created it. Hope it does help some people out there.
I've been looking for a while now for something that will function as laptop / PDA / MP3 player / digital camera / mobile phone for me.
I wonder if HP's 6315 is the One.
Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait until the site recover from the Slashdotting I guess...
...if you want to be able to browse safely on the Internet.
w ww.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/
:(
That's the advice I give to my friends after I saw this page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030603192725/http://
(too bad that page now no longer host that information
There are more holes in IE than a piece of Swiss cheese, and Microsoft doesn't seem to be concerned if that will cause you to be accused of collecting child porn.
Full details of securing a WIndows workstation can be read here. HTH.
Damn, missed this post (we're still sleeping in UK when this was posted) - anyway, I wonder if anyone knows any good console pop3/imap email client ?
I've looked around, and quite surprised to find that most console email apps requires some sort of MTA installed.
Heh, thanks; very interesting mod tag :)
:(
Unfortunately, it doesn't really have a happy ending - originally I installed VMware (and the virtual servers) on Linux. However, turned out our FM [1] (Facility Management provider) doesn't support Linux.
So I had to reinstall the OS and VMware and run the whole bunch on Windows [2] instead
[1] FM provider is kinda like a co-lo company - you give your servers to them, and they'll take care of them for you. Except that they're much more expensive...
[2] From my experience, it seems that VMware 4.x workstation is more stable on Linux than on Windows. I've experienced several quirks when running VMware on Windows, so I try to avoid Windows for this whenever possible.
A side note: Contrary to some believe/comments, VMware 4.x workstation is quite powerful.
I've heard people saying that it won't run on more than 1 GB of RAM / multiple processors - well, one of our server is a dual-Xeon and have 3 GB of RAM, and VMware 4.x is running happily on it.
Well, a few weeks ago I had to install 3 test servers - but turned out we have only 1 available server.
I almost freaked out - but then I realised that it's a dual-Xeon box ---> 4 CPUs (to the OS). Using an obscure switch in VMware config file, I manage to assign each CPU to a (virtual) Server. The fourth CPU is assigned to the host OS.
Everyone was very happy with the result, and looking forward to utilise more of this feature (and this kind of CPU) in the future.
At the moment I'm working for local government (ok, stop gasping
I'm happy because we serve the people. We make things better for them. Even more true because we have started to use open-source technology heavily since a few years ago, and I happen to be one of the "expert" (according to them), and have contributed some assistance on that topic to various projects. I'm happy everytime my advice is implemented and saving the taxpayers' money - while proving more reliable and scaleable than many commercial alternatives. I'm happy to help my employer to break free from vendor lock-in. Etc.
The pay is indeed less from the private companies, but you get job security (quite some of my friends actually envy me) and a very family-friendly job.
I'm used to live frugally anyway so it's not too painful to me.
It doesn't have to be a civil servant job - if a private company is doing something you believe to be good, then go for it.
Before I was working in a startup insurance company that's doing it unlike what you've known - it's actually spreading wealth to people instead of accumulating it all for itself.
Other alternatives are running your own business (I didn't realize that corner shops can generate so much money), etc - I guess what I'm trying to say is: be creative, keep on looking, and good luck.
I know... but any publications taking it so literally like that, even though it's very silly (a processor optimized for sending pictures??), should be punished.
Erm.. whoops, it seems that I've just lost my self-control, have you seen him around ?
From PC Magazine's article
Yes !! Finally, they've created a processor optimized to downloading music. With Sempron, you can download MP3s 10x faster than using Celeron!
Intel, eat my pants.
Now I remember why I cancelled my subscription to PC Magazine years ago....
Well, you can work for an institution that's doing something good.
Then it's no longer a waste of time, because you're helping people, and you can start looking forward to work every day - instead of dreading it every single day.
A good software company rely on real innovations to survive/succeed.
(there are a lot of examples for this)
A bad software company rely on patents to survive/succeed.
Only big companies can afford patents and defend / attack others using it in court.
No way small fish like us can afford that; and that's injustice, which is bad.
My 2 pence.
What are they thinking exactly by patenting Bayes rules, etc ? So take the best from open-source community, and then patent them under your own name, eh ?
I'll share some info about McAfee now:
Do I miss anything ?
I think we should distance ourselves to nasty companies like this. Let's speak with our money.
It seems that the late "trilogy" movies (Matrix, LOTR, etc) has been very successful, so how about a Star Trek trilogy ?
:(
:-)
For the story, I can heartily recommend the Fury Trilogy:
TNG: The Soldiers of Fear
DS9: Time's Enemy
VOY: The Final Fury
The stories are simply top notch, you just have to read it for yourselves.
To give you some idea; rarely a novel is intense enough to make me bolted to the chair (hint: I don't like novels generally), but these three managed to did it - every one of them.
The story are very interesting and original (I think Borg has been exploited way too much for now, etc). And the actions are not lacking either.
I'm very impressed. If you're going to buy Star Trek novels, I can recommend these.
Actually I'd like to see the first one as well, which is happening on TOS (Kirk era), but I think the casts are way too old now to make it
Here's hoping that Paramount will read this comment (ha!
I'm quite sure you're not working for our vendor.
We paid silly amount of money, and their web-app server is still slow, and it's slowing down our web-based apps as well. It's bloated, tend to crash, can't be easily restarted - and the price keeps on going up !
The last problem we had with it is that it spews loads of unnecessary SQL queries for simple operations. And we were wondering why our (VERY expensive) web-based app runs slower with 10 million users.
Support is indeed costing us a LOAD of money, and with this kind of result a lot of people are looking to jump into the open-source alternatives.
I can't believe this, a company as big as Nokia making mistake as stupid as this ?
I thought most people would have learned something on the WiFi fiasco by now, especially Nokia (who also make security products such as firewalls by the way)
Now let's see if they're dedicated enough to their customers to fix this problem quickly.
In the meantime, it's good idea to keep this on the headlines of the media.
On another note, I'd be interested about other bluetooth-enabled devices - handsfree headset ? iPAQs? Palm? Sony Clies?
Again, another story not presented in whole.
First, it's the woman that came to Muhammad and asked him to have the law applied to her.
So Muhammad asked that it's only to be done after she gave birth to the baby, and he told her family to treat her kindly.
Second, he led the funeral prayer himself, which is considered to be a great honor. The companions were confused (seeing that she committed one of the greatest sin in Islam, but yet it's the Prophet himself that led the funeral for her), and one of them asked him about it. Muhammad replied that she repented in such away that if her repentance were to be spread over seventy people of Medina it would have sufficed them all.
There cannot be a better or higher degree of repentance than this; she chose to speak the truth at the cost of her life.
She could just told lies and saved her live (like what many hypocrites do at that time), but she didn't.
The reference to this can be found for example [ here ]
I could describe all your other points, but seeing that this is the one that sums up all of the differences between Christianity and Islam, I'll let you reflect on this for now.
You're not the only one that got Islam wrong, and there are many that got it worse than you. Feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
I used to spend my time doing dialogues with some atheists, and I've encountered some points that are raised by the author of that book as well. (sadly I barely have any spare time nowadays so unable to do it again now)
I noticed that many of their conclusions are based on incomplete data. For example, translations alone most of the time is not enough to be used to fully understand a certain passage in the Quran, you'll also need to understand the asbabunNuzul (context of the passage, when and what occasion triggered its revelation) and check the tafseer (explanation) of it from the companions of the Prophet, people who'd understand it the most.
Some of the passages who speak about waging war against infidels are actually talking about the Arab infidels of the time of the Prophet - which already tortured and killed members of the muslim community in many ways.
So now I can understand why those atheists are enraged and misunderstood us, because I've seen muslims as well who took those passages out of context and wages war against just about everyone else.
It's just one reason though, and it's the innocent one. Sadly the atheist community, just like any other communities, has its own share of zealots and liars, and they're not helping to make the current situation better.
I can safely say that many muslims are not familiar anymore with what Islam is all about - even me, I'm still learning. The texts and the knowledge is still intact, thank to various rigorous methods of knowledge preservations (the science of hadith, the customofmemorising the whole quran, etc) - but somehow the soul of Islam has become alienated to many muslims.
No surprise then if non-muslims/outsiders are getting an even worse picture about it.
I just wish there's something that I can do about it.
Oh yeah, they're also too Microsoft-centric for now, for example the certificate (from Chambersign or Equifax) currently doesn't work on Macintosh. No word about how it is on Linux.
Does that means that basically the UK government is telling its citizen to use Microsoft products ? A company already judged as a monopoly in USA ?
I wonder how it is with the USPS' implementation ?
In UK, the move to digital signature was pioneered by Inland Revenue (IRS for Americans). The Government's Gateway provides the digital certificate, which then can be used to digitally sign online forms.
However there were concerns that the implementation is too proprietary, risking dependence to few vendors. Considering what the Gateway's doing, I think these concerns are valid.
There were also little silliness along the way, such as the 50 poundsterling discount by Inland revenue (IRS for Americans) if you submit your tax online and sign it with your certificate BUT the certificate itself cost 50 poundsterling as well, etc.
But I haven't followed it for quite a while now, hopefully things are better now.
Let's hope the winner of X-prize and other participants won't patent their work like mad, to the point of disabling others to build similar machine.
If ship was patented to death for example, I don't think there would be that many ships on the ocean now.
I have high hopes for the future of humanity with X-prize and its participants, but then again I've yet to see the limit of human's ability to shoot itself on the foot.
For example, Windows' accessibility features has saved me many times when the mouse just doesn't want to work for various reason. It enable me to use the numpad to simulate the mouse, and troubleshoot the problem - instead of reinstalling it.
I welcome this addition to KDE even more for that reason.