It has come to our attention that you have incorporated the "GOD" portion of our client's GODZILLA marks in the name of your "Church of God" church name, and that you have included an unstoppable all-powerful being, which you refer to as "GOD", on your publications. Please be advised that your use of the "GOD" formative along with imagery associated with GODZILLA is likely to cause the users of your site to believe that the "Church of God" website is either associated with, authorized by, or sponsored by our client, and demonstrates an attempt by you to trade on the goodwill built up by our client.
...especially if the advantages can't be reduced to a simple dollars-and-cents figure?
That is, for good or ill, exactly what you
need to do -- reduce it to a simple dollars and cents figure.
If users each spend 5 hours a week less time trying to find the otption to do whatever in the manual, or on the phone to the helpdesk, because your software is better, thats a savings of 5 * [avg. hourly wage] a week, in dollars.
If new software can handle the Chrismas rush and get the estimated 5000 orders you think you lost last year, thats 5000 * [avg. Xmas order] dollars.
In short find a way to put a dollar figure on it, even if it's only estimated. That's how to convince a guy in a suit.
I'm expecting to see in the next couple of years
a film starring, say, Marilyn Monroe opposite
Ben Afleck. Who would you like to see together in a movie, and what kind of movie?
I think you should put a
Cappuccino mini-PC inside of a nice small
refridgerator that runs on 12v, and
drill a hole through the side and run the cables
through, and then seal the opening with some expanding foam or something.
You would want to use some sort of external CD-Rom/DVD
drive rather than the internal one, though, that you could replace when the salt water eats it.
And of course seal your keyboard in a plastic
bag or something to keep the salt water out.
I think we simply need to make TLD's a higher meta-level. So for example, if you have a trademark for name DrugCo, you would be "drugco.drug.tm" which says that the drugco part is a drug releated trademark. If you're the City of Nowheresville Illinois, USA, you could have
a domain name of nowheresville.il.us.map 'cause it is a place on the map.
Of course, what you need to do to make it feasible
is be able to create and destroy the little
black hole at will.
Then you create it, let it fall an eigth of an
inch or so, destroy it, create it again, etc.
Now picture a clock face. You could conceivably (if you knew how)
pump a lot of energy into a point at 12:00, and generate a really dense stream of protons going clockwise, and antiprotons going counter-clockwise, and
have them meet back up at a point at 6:00, where they
would annhialate and generate most of your energy
back out.
If you can get a high enough flow rate, you get mini-black-hole densities of matter in the intervening space, and if you can convey the
energy somehow from the 6:00 point back up to the 12:00 point, you would "only" need to add the energy it takes to get the particle streams moving round back towards each other.
No, the nasty part is the extreme wobble the
Earth's rotation picks up as you add a big chunk of mass on one side of the planet as your basement proceeds around the globe:-)...
This is the idea behind
Wpoison
Which I've had a version of installed for a long time.
Now however, I have changed the URL I use to link to it to be: /cgi-bin/spambot_trap/guestbook/journal/mess age
so that all the spambots he mentions will follow it:-).
A good tack in my mind is to explain that this legislation punishes the wrong thing. It penalizes people who make simple, straightforward, general purpose computing equipment in order to restrict
the actions of other people.
The collary here is that it covers a lot more equipment than they think it does. I quote:
(3) DIGITAL MEDIA DEVICE. -- The term "digital media device" means any hardware or software that --
(A) reproduces copyrighted works in digital form;
(B) converts copyrighted works in digital form into a form whereby the images and sounds are visible or audible; or
(C) retrieves or accesses copyrighted works in digital form and transfers or makes available for transfer such works to hardware or software described in subparagraph (B).
By this definition,
any desktop computer currently in manufacture qualifies as a digital media device, as do
all the software utilities on the system which
can be tricked into copying and/or modifying a file.
It means it would be illegal to:
sell any computer designed before the standard was avaliable, as any of them can copy and/or strip copyright notices from such digital files.
distribute any current computer programming environment, as they allow you to write programs which would let you strip a copyright notice from a computer file.
Taken to the limit of what it says, it outlaws any tool used today to do computer programming of any sort -- "(B) converts copyrighted works in digital form into a form whereby the images and sounds are visible or audible" easily refers to a system which takes a (copyrighted) computer program, and compiles it into an executable program which displays on the screen, or a web browser.
So in short, have them ask the legal department at any computer company in their state, whether they want to be able to buy and/or sell a programming language compiler/interpreter.
It looks to me like disabling hinting does look much better at low resolutions (8-10pt) but worse at higher resolutions.
Maybe he should turn the
hinting code on or off depending on the resolution?
AOL has over 33 Million subscribers; MSN has over 7
(really! see:
here
)
Until they do it, no e-business site out there is going to want to have a non-IPv4 address, or risk not getting online business from all those customers who obviously are willing to pay way too much money (for an ISP, at least).
Once again, rather than do something constructive like setup their own sites, where someone could download past show episodes (possibly with commercials) from an industry site, the industry sues people who are providing a service they don't bother providing.
It would seem to me they would want to encourage people to become fans of their shows, and make it easier for them to get past episodes, and get really involved with the show.
Wouldn't it be nice if, for once, the industry responded to something like this by putting up their own sites, letting you download past episodes, order CD-ROM's with a whole season of shows, etc., in other words, do a better job than the so-called "pirate" sites.
.
Yes! Star Wars Episode 3 should have become public domain 10 years ago.
That doesn't mean that people couldn't still show it in a theater, or that Lucasfilm couldn't make new prints and rent them out. It just means they would no longer be able to prevent other people from doing so.
So tell me, did you ever read Aesop's Fables as a child? Mother Goose? Grimm's Fairy Tales? Did the publisher make money on the book? Guess when the copyright on those expired?
Once again, the Grand Cycle of Reincarnation has come around, and folks suddenly think this is a New, Hard Problem.
In actuality, old systems like the
CDC6600s used to have very similar constraints, where reordering instructions could give you signifigant performance improvements.
Quoting from here
The 6600 CP had an 8-word instruction stack which functioned rather like an instruction cache, but without the
flexibility of a modern cache. Program optimization consisted of allocating heavily used variables to registers, loading
operands from memory a few instructions before they were needed, writing operands to memory a few instructions
before their registers were needed to hold new operands, keeping several functional units busy simultaneously, and
trying to get inner loops to fit into the instruction stack. The divide instruction was notorious, because it took about
thirty clock cycles and its functional unit was not pipelined. The peak CP instruction rate was one instruction every
100 nanosecond clock cycle.
Rather than build that smarts into their compilers, they put most of it into the assembler, and all the compilers got it for free.
Of course, you can theoretically do better by doing it in the compiler than you can in the assembler, but you can easily get the first 80%.
Actually, here at
Fermilab, where I work, we have recently switched our
Fermitools program over to a BSD-style license, and have released 26 different packages so far.
So there is at least one example of your tax dollars providing Free Software.
This is
due in part to Mark Edel's work on
getting nedit
(originally developed here at Fermilab) released under the GPL, but also to the patient efforts of folks in the Computing Division here like Ruth Pordes and Betsy Schermerhorn.
I believe several other of the National Labs have similar programs.
So far this sounds like the most constructive
suggestion. You might add a projection tube
and a pull-down screen for a presenter station
at the back of the bus, and put the seats in
backwards...
If you're in an area with relatively
good line
of sight to some central
landmark, you could possibly set up
some seriously fun packet radio or
point-to-point 802.11 network feeds.
There are some past articles like
this one that mention point to point
solutions, and places like
this and this
that have antenna designs for 802.11
that go a pretty good distance...
No person or entity conducting business in this state shall facsimile (fax) or cause to be faxed, or electronically mail (e-mail) or cause to be e-mailed,
(emphasis mine). Not just companies registered in California, nor does the email have to originate or be transferred through, or delivered in Calfiornia -- if the company does any business at all in California, it applies.
Go to college for a BS or MS Computer Science, get
a job as a terminal room (oops, showing my age)...
er, PC Lab site person. Get to know the systems
folks at the school, then get a job with them.
Just figure out what actually goes wrong with the
systems in your lab, and give them good problem
reports, saying "I would just change blah to
fix it, but I don't have the password." If you're
right most of the time, next thing you know, you
have a job as an admin...
Studying computer science while doing systems programming/systems admin work really gives you
a much better understanding of both the theory
and practice. It also gives you accounts on lots
of computers so you can get your classwork done
quicker:-)
Well, you can get the numbers you want with
10
LTO
tapedrives writing in parallel.
Thats about 100G/cartridge uncompressed, at
$150/cartridge, and you'd want an extra hot
spare drive or two.
Then there's the issue of loading the drives.
With small tape changers, you could load them
up with a days worth at a time, or you can pay
someone to physically change tapes every couple
hours.
Of course, I work at a place where we used to
run 32 Exabyte tapedrives in parallel to take
data for experiments. But we had Graduate Students (read Slave Labor) to change tapes
every two hours on shift...
Of course, as Raymond points out, unhappy newcomers are free to fork the project if they don't like what the leaders are doing. However, this only proves the project is no longer self-organizing--it is now two projects.
I think Mr. Connel misses a critical point here -- just because an open source project has forked, doesn't mean that the two forks are now compeletely separate. What has happened is that the release control structure has split. There are people who contribute to both forks, and both forks take code back and forth from each other.
A classic case here would be the various BSD distributions -- lots of develpment effort is still shared between them, but folks actively participate in the release hierarchy that they like better.
Another good example would be the gcc/egcs history, where the release structure split
repeatedly (386gcc, g77,djgpp,etc.), and later merged again (in a fork! -- egcs-1.0
which a few releases later became the main branch).
If you
examine the overlapping hierarchies of release management of that project over the last 13 years, you will see that any concept of a single flat hierarchy completely misses the actual dynamics involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Mr. Minister:
It has come to our attention that you have incorporated the "GOD" portion of our client's GODZILLA marks in the name of your "Church of God" church name, and that you have included an unstoppable all-powerful being, which you refer to as "GOD", on your publications. Please be advised that your use of the "GOD" formative along with imagery associated with GODZILLA is likely to cause the users of your site to believe that the "Church of God" website is either associated with, authorized by, or sponsored by our client, and demonstrates an attempt by you to trade on the goodwill built up by our client.
You can still spend a small fortune on the ring, but it will be more personal than a diamond.
If users each spend 5 hours a week less time trying to find the otption to do whatever in the manual, or on the phone to the helpdesk, because your software is better, thats a savings of 5 * [avg. hourly wage] a week, in dollars.
If new software can handle the Chrismas rush and get the estimated 5000 orders you think you lost last year, thats 5000 * [avg. Xmas order] dollars.
In short find a way to put a dollar figure on it, even if it's only estimated. That's how to convince a guy in a suit.
I'm expecting to see in the next couple of years a film starring, say, Marilyn Monroe opposite Ben Afleck. Who would you like to see together in a movie, and what kind of movie?
I think you should put a Cappuccino mini-PC inside of a nice small refridgerator that runs on 12v, and drill a hole through the side and run the cables through, and then seal the opening with some expanding foam or something.
You would want to use some sort of external CD-Rom/DVD drive rather than the internal one, though, that you could replace when the salt water eats it. And of course seal your keyboard in a plastic bag or something to keep the salt water out.
I think we simply need to make TLD's a higher meta-level. So for example, if you have a trademark for name DrugCo, you would be "drugco.drug.tm" which says that the drugco part is a drug releated trademark. If you're the City of Nowheresville Illinois, USA, you could have a domain name of nowheresville.il.us.map 'cause it is a place on the map.
Then you create it, let it fall an eigth of an inch or so, destroy it, create it again, etc.
Now picture a clock face. You could conceivably (if you knew how) pump a lot of energy into a point at 12:00, and generate a really dense stream of protons going clockwise, and antiprotons going counter-clockwise, and have them meet back up at a point at 6:00, where they would annhialate and generate most of your energy back out. If you can get a high enough flow rate, you get mini-black-hole densities of matter in the intervening space, and if you can convey the energy somehow from the 6:00 point back up to the 12:00 point, you would "only" need to add the energy it takes to get the particle streams moving round back towards each other.
No, the nasty part is the extreme wobble the Earth's rotation picks up as you add a big chunk of mass on one side of the planet as your basement proceeds around the globe :-)...
What they're doing is just lying^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing.
But when the neighbor kid throws a paper airplane through your window, then you complain to the window manufacturer.
Now however, I have changed the URL I use to link to it to be:
/cgi-bin/spambot_trap/guestbook/journal/mess age :-).
so that all the spambots he mentions will follow it
The collary here is that it covers a lot more equipment than they think it does. I quote:
By this definition, any desktop computer currently in manufacture qualifies as a digital media device, as do all the software utilities on the system which can be tricked into copying and/or modifying a file. It means it would be illegal to:- sell any computer designed before the standard was avaliable, as any of them can copy and/or strip copyright notices from such digital files.
- distribute any current computer programming environment, as they allow you to write programs which would let you strip a copyright notice from a computer file.
Taken to the limit of what it says, it outlaws any tool used today to do computer programming of any sort -- "(B) converts copyrighted works in digital form into a form whereby the images and sounds are visible or audible" easily refers to a system which takes a (copyrighted) computer program, and compiles it into an executable program which displays on the screen, or a web browser.So in short, have them ask the legal department at any computer company in their state, whether they want to be able to buy and/or sell a programming language compiler/interpreter.
It looks to me like disabling hinting does look much better at low resolutions (8-10pt) but worse at higher resolutions. Maybe he should turn the hinting code on or off depending on the resolution?
AOL has over 33 Million subscribers; MSN has over 7 (really! see: here ) Until they do it, no e-business site out there is going to want to have a non-IPv4 address, or risk not getting online business from all those customers who obviously are willing to pay way too much money (for an ISP, at least).
It would seem to me they would want to encourage people to become fans of their shows, and make it easier for them to get past episodes, and get really involved with the show.
Wouldn't it be nice if, for once, the industry responded to something like this by putting up their own sites, letting you download past episodes, order CD-ROM's with a whole season of shows, etc., in other words, do a better job than the so-called "pirate" sites. .
I wonder if we'll start seeing ISPs advertising rates to shut down customers:
- Turn off a Normal Account $2000
- Turn off a Priority Account $4000
- Turn off High Bandwith Account $50000
You will be informed in 10 days whether the account has outbid you to re-enable service...Sounds kind of like something out of a Gibson novel.
That doesn't mean that people couldn't still show it in a theater, or that Lucasfilm couldn't make new prints and rent them out. It just means they would no longer be able to prevent other people from doing so.
So tell me, did you ever read Aesop's Fables as a child? Mother Goose? Grimm's Fairy Tales? Did the publisher make money on the book? Guess when the copyright on those expired?
In actuality, old systems like the CDC6600s used to have very similar constraints, where reordering instructions could give you signifigant performance improvements. Quoting from here
Rather than build that smarts into their compilers, they put most of it into the assembler, and all the compilers got it for free.Of course, you can theoretically do better by doing it in the compiler than you can in the assembler, but you can easily get the first 80%.
This is due in part to Mark Edel's work on getting nedit (originally developed here at Fermilab) released under the GPL, but also to the patient efforts of folks in the Computing Division here like Ruth Pordes and Betsy Schermerhorn. I believe several other of the National Labs have similar programs.
So far this sounds like the most constructive
suggestion. You might add a projection tube
and a pull-down screen for a presenter station
at the back of the bus, and put the seats in
backwards...
If you're in an area with relatively
good line
of sight to some central
landmark, you could possibly set up
some seriously fun packet radio or
point-to-point 802.11 network feeds.
There are some past articles like
this one that mention point to point
solutions, and places like
this and
this
that have antenna designs for 802.11
that go a pretty good distance...
Note that it also says, right up front
(emphasis mine). Not just companies registered in California, nor does the email have to originate or be transferred through, or delivered in Calfiornia -- if the company does any business at all in California, it applies.
I like it!
Studying computer science while doing systems programming/systems admin work really gives you a much better understanding of both the theory and practice. It also gives you accounts on lots of computers so you can get your classwork done quicker :-)
Then there's the issue of loading the drives. With small tape changers, you could load them up with a days worth at a time, or you can pay someone to physically change tapes every couple hours.
Of course, I work at a place where we used to run 32 Exabyte tapedrives in parallel to take data for experiments. But we had Graduate Students (read Slave Labor) to change tapes every two hours on shift...
... but a capitalist one. After all, the goal is profit.
Another good example would be the gcc/egcs history, where the release structure split repeatedly (386gcc, g77,djgpp,etc.), and later merged again (in a fork! -- egcs-1.0 which a few releases later became the main branch). If you examine the overlapping hierarchies of release management of that project over the last 13 years, you will see that any concept of a single flat hierarchy completely misses the actual dynamics involved.