We all know and love Microsoft's practices of stealing other companies technologies and incorporating it into the great MS empire. Yet for some reason the Slashdot community seems to rejoice in the fact that memory companies stole Rambus' designs.
I think that the general Slashdot population is glad to see Rambus go down because there is a sound argument that Rambus, both the company and the technology, is bad for the industry.
Lets first look at the technology itself. It turns out that RDRAM is a terrible technology for main memory. It only shows advantages on certain classes of problems, and those problems aren't the ones that most users have to solve on a daily basis. Also consider that RDRAM is much more expensive to produce than normal DRAM, and you really begin to see a total disaster for the consumer.
From a business standpoint, having a single company controlling DRAM technology can't be good. Look how bad it is with processors. We're still using an architecture that should have been thrown out years ago because of the monopoly that Intel has on the commodity processor market. Do we really want to see the same thing happen with memory?
It was only a patent application at the time, and they had no guarantee that it would be granted. (It would have been nice to disclose the application, though.)
IIRC, JEDEC rules require the disclosure of any patents, granted or pending, that relate to proposed technologies. Rambus was required to disclose any pending patents that might relate to SDRAM.
The goal stated in the article is to achieve 10W/cm^2. At that level of efficiency, the panels will be so much smaller that the higher density simply won't matter.
Of course, they're also talking about a temperature of 1000 C, so I don't expect to put something like that on my roof any time soon.
That's why I listen to kgnu. No commercials, the weirdest music programming you could want, and science programming (not often enough) where intelligent questions are asked of working scientists instead of publicity seeking popularizers (which I'm listening to right now over a streaming feed).
SGI's most recent quarter was a loss of $0.38. Their cash per share is $1.40. Unless something drastic happens, they will be out of business by this time next year. Given the current climate,
it may even be sooner.
I'm not sure why they have lawyers going after people with no money when their basic business position is so tenuous. It doesn't seem like good business sense, especially since they seem to be predominantly going after people whom they are trying to court with their open source and linux efforts.
On the other hand, SGI did have an image library called "IL" and an audio library called "AL" many years ago (early '90's). Since taking GL the open route, they could conceivably have a case for OpenAL and OpenIL as trademarks, although if they are going claim infringement, they should have thought of taking those API's "open" years ago.
Nasa and the rest of the ISS partners besides Russia do not appear to be against visitors to the station in principle. But they do object to visitors right now, because the station is under construction, and they don't yet know everything about running it. Having a visitor on board right now is going to increase risk. In a year or two, the station will be in better shape to receive visitors. But not right now.
The fridge project reminds me of one of my favorite SGI hacks, the Espressigo. Can't
seem to find a picture of one, and I neglected
to liberate one of the few existing examples when
I had the chance;-(.
Oh, and the SGI servers are "Challenged" because they don't have graphics.
Interesting points. The origin appears to be Bell Labs. The patent was originally filed, but according to the legal status link, it looks like the maintenance fees weren't paid, and the patent was allowed to lapse. Apparently AT&T didn't think that it was worth keeping. And then something funny happened. A year and a half later, TechSearch found the patent, paid the deliquent fees and started enforcing it.
The real juice in the story wasn't the headline, it was the allowance of the possibility of fraud charges against prominent Rambusteers. If a fraud prosecution were to take place Rambus would completely collapse.
The bubble burst in Japan a decade ago, and they still haven't really recovered. The similarities, especially in real estate over-valuation, are kind of
scary.
The Nikkei bubble burst largely because the valuations of companies were increasingly based on the value of their Tokyo real estate holdings, many of which were sold back and forth at ever increasing value. Loans were made against these increasingly silly values and when the bubble burst the entire financial sector of Japan was ruined.
The funniest thing I find about it, is that it causes me to always flush twice!! That is, I use more water with the new 'water efficient'
models than I did with the old 'use enough water to make sure it all goes down' types. Mark this down to the laws of unintended
conseqences
Even flushing twice you are using less water than flushing once with the old toilets, 3.2 gallons vs. 5+ gallons.
Reproduced without permission, but hey, it came home in my son's backpack... All typos are mine.
Dear Parents:
You will be aware that a decision I made regarding the withdrawal of a science fair project is receiving some media attention. I am therefore writing to give you information about why that decision was made.
The science project was withdrawn from our science fair because the teachers were concerned about the effect it would have on their students. The withdrawn prjoect surveyed adults and children to find which Barbie, black or white, they thought was the prettier. Teachers felt the project was racially insensitive and could cause offense to their students, particularly those of color.
Of most concern was part of the concluding statement, which read: I discovered that.. kids mostly liked the white Barbie. Only six kids liked the black Barbie.
Teachers at Mesa understand race is an issue that must be discussed in elementary schools. The school supports programs that teach students teh value of diversity. We believe that the science fair is not an appropriate forum for such a complex issue.
One of the Boulder Valley School District's priorities is to, value diversity and promote understanding. In addition, the district's Nondiscrimination Policy recognizes that, discrimination or harassment complaints by students or adults may arise from actual or perceived situations and circumstances of discrimination. It is a violation of this policy to, display visual or written material with the... effect of demeaning the race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or religion of any individual or group.
I believe the school's actions are consistent with district priorities and policies, and were taken in the best interests of all the students of Mesa Elementary. I believe we at Mesa understand our responsibilities well. We place a high priority on providing a safe, welcoming and open environment for allv our students.
We also place a high priority on good teaching practice. We know that complex issues such as race are best dealt with in a supportive environment where disucussion and explanation can take place. This would not have been possible in the context of the science fair, wehre there was a real potential for emotional hurt and intellectual confusion.
I am disappointed that the science project had to be withdrawn. This action was taken only after investigating alternatives that would have allowed the student to exhibit her project and receive feedback.
Sincerely,
Greg Thompson
Principal
I think that more remorse could have been expressed. I doubt that this particular explanation will get a sympathetic hearing with the collective judge.
The great thing about slashdot is that there's enough of us here that there's sometimes even a person close to the story.
Take this case. The school in question is in my backyard. In 25 minutes, I'm walking down there to pick up my son from the class of the teacher who runs the science fair. Small world, ain't it?
A point not mentioned by Mr. Talbott that may have some bearing on the case is that the principal of the school is an exchange principal from Australia who has been here since early January. I think that standards are different there than here, and that may have been a factor in this case.
I didn't have a chance to talk to the organizer of the science fair today, as for once I didn't have to;-), but if anyone is interested they can drop me a line and I'll see what I can find out.
Regardless, the school doesn't look traumatized;-).
I have neighbors working on this project, and actually got to tour the offices where the probe is being designed.
The impactor is going simply going to be dropped in the path of the comet. It will have no propulsive force of its own. The main probe will watch from a safe distance, and record the impact.
Copper was chosen for the impactor because they don't believe that the emmissions from it will interfere with what they expect to see, and even if it did the interference will be minimal. (Copper is apparently not very common in comets).
I forgot to ask the mass of the impactor, but it can't be more than a few tens of kilos due to launch costs. Since the comet's velocity is about 20km/sec at the chosen impact point, the impactor doesn't have to be going very fast, and because of the "drop in place" method it also doesn't need much in the way of guidance systems of propulsion, just good ol' Newtonian mechanics.
The overall shape of the probe has changed a few times, but I think that the final form is settled now. And as a further bit of trivia, many of the engineers working on this project are women.
Yes, something is bogus, namely the moderators that marked the above post informative.
The hybrid air/combustion engine was mentioned as a possibility, current models are completely compressed air powered. The "plant" page refers to a "turnkey factory" that is licensed to local producers of the vehicles. A demonstration plant s/was under construction in Brignoles, France. Its unclear what the present tense of the web site is.
And it isn't a supercharger. It doesn't use the mechanical energy of the engine to drive the compressor. Nor is it a turbocharger, which uses exhaust pressue.
As for $8M a factory, yes that's low for a conventional automobile factory, but I have yet to seen anything conventional about this design.
I'm rather skeptical myself, but not for the reasons stated in the above post, because I at least bother to read all 1000 or so English words on their site. I have questions about the safety of the compressed air storage, and also the durability of the product, but the inventors appear to be both sane and sincere.
1.Estate tax: the only people who actually pay any estate taxes in this country are the not-quite-so-rich people
who can't afford to hire an army of lawyers and accountants to package their millions into the plnetiful loopholes
in our ludicrous tax scheme. The really-really-really-rich don't pay a dime as far as I can tell.
Where do we start. It doesn't require an army of lawyers to set up an estate plan that doubles your exemptions. And if you get to that level of resources, the people who can do that for you will find you. For that matter, everything you need can be obtained from Nolo Press.
Next, charitable foundations can be set up easily for those whose estates significantly exceed the limits. Trust funds can be set up so that heirs pay few taxes on what is getting inherited. Talk to your accountant about it. If you don't have an accountant, you probably don't have enough money to make estate taxes an issue.
And while we're on the subject, family farms and ranches are getting sold off because the kids just plain aren't interested in farming or ranching. Even a recent poster with a family farm admits as much.
Really, the only people with (relatively) small estates that pay significant taxes are those who do not avail themselves of the law.
In the interest of staying on topic, the rest of this post has been deleted.
True, but usually the splitting of hairs is towards the final aim of removing ambiguity, at least in the eyes of other lawyers. RMS seems to want to increase the ambiguity, which is over there, in a box.
There is a
FAQ on the new license. Excerpting (w/out permission, but I believe this to be fair use;-):
7.Is it compatible with the GNU Public License (GPL)?
Legal counsel for both CNRI and BeOpen.com believe that it is fully compatible with the
GPL. However, the Free Software Foundation attorney and Richard Stallman believe there
may be one incompatibility, i.e., the CNRI License specifies a legal venue to interpret its
License while the GPL is silent on the issue of jurisdiction. Resolution of this issue is being
pursued.
To me it seems that RMS is really splitting hairs. Most contracts that I've seen specify a jurisdiction under which the contract is to be interpreted.
If people would bother to read the white paper on vmware before they post their replies, they might see that trelos' idea of a virtual machine is very different from vmware.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the general Slashdot population is glad to see Rambus go down because there is a sound argument that Rambus, both the company and the technology, is bad for the industry.
Lets first look at the technology itself. It turns out that RDRAM is a terrible technology for main memory. It only shows advantages on certain classes of problems, and those problems aren't the ones that most users have to solve on a daily basis. Also consider that RDRAM is much more expensive to produce than normal DRAM, and you really begin to see a total disaster for the consumer.
From a business standpoint, having a single company controlling DRAM technology can't be good. Look how bad it is with processors. We're still using an architecture that should have been thrown out years ago because of the monopoly that Intel has on the commodity processor market. Do we really want to see the same thing happen with memory?
IIRC, JEDEC rules require the disclosure of any patents, granted or pending, that relate to proposed technologies. Rambus was required to disclose any pending patents that might relate to SDRAM.
Of course, they're also talking about a temperature of 1000 C, so I don't expect to put something like that on my roof any time soon.
That's why I listen to kgnu. No commercials, the weirdest music programming you could want, and science programming (not often enough) where intelligent questions are asked of working scientists instead of publicity seeking popularizers (which I'm listening to right now over a streaming feed).
I'm not sure why they have lawyers going after people with no money when their basic business position is so tenuous. It doesn't seem like good business sense, especially since they seem to be predominantly going after people whom they are trying to court with their open source and linux efforts.
On the other hand, SGI did have an image library called "IL" and an audio library called "AL" many years ago (early '90's). Since taking GL the open route, they could conceivably have a case for OpenAL and OpenIL as trademarks, although if they are going claim infringement, they should have thought of taking those API's "open" years ago.
Nasa and the rest of the ISS partners besides Russia do not appear to be against visitors to the station in principle. But they do object to visitors right now, because the station is under construction, and they don't yet know everything about running it. Having a visitor on board right now is going to increase risk. In a year or two, the station will be in better shape to receive visitors. But not right now.
Space is not ready for tourism. Yet.
Oh, and the SGI servers are "Challenged" because they don't have graphics.
Interesting points. The origin appears to be Bell Labs. The patent was originally filed, but according to the legal status link, it looks like the maintenance fees weren't paid, and the patent was allowed to lapse. Apparently AT&T didn't think that it was worth keeping. And then something funny happened. A year and a half later, TechSearch found the patent, paid the deliquent fees and started enforcing it.
Hmmm.....
The real juice in the story wasn't the headline, it was the allowance of the possibility of fraud charges against prominent Rambusteers. If a fraud prosecution were to take place Rambus would completely collapse.
You should. see this missive from Phil Greenspun. Scan down to the section that says "I want to know the age, sex and zip code..."
The Nikkei bubble burst largely because the valuations of companies were increasingly based on the value of their Tokyo real estate holdings, many of which were sold back and forth at ever increasing value. Loans were made against these increasingly silly values and when the bubble burst the entire financial sector of Japan was ruined.
Where is the similarity to the NASDAQ bubble?
Even flushing twice you are using less water than flushing once with the old toilets, 3.2 gallons vs. 5+ gallons.
Actually, they don't. The rapture is a fabrication of late 19th century American evangelicals.
I think that more remorse could have been expressed. I doubt that this particular explanation will get a sympathetic hearing with the collective judge.
That's because her Dad (a physicist) designed the experiment. 'struth.
The great thing about slashdot is that there's enough of us here that there's sometimes even a person close to the story.
Take this case. The school in question is in my backyard. In 25 minutes, I'm walking down there to pick up my son from the class of the teacher who runs the science fair. Small world, ain't it?
A point not mentioned by Mr. Talbott that may have some bearing on the case is that the principal of the school is an exchange principal from Australia who has been here since early January. I think that standards are different there than here, and that may have been a factor in this case.
I didn't have a chance to talk to the organizer of the science fair today, as for once I didn't have to ;-), but if anyone is interested they can drop me a line and I'll see what I can find out.
Regardless, the school doesn't look traumatized ;-).
The impactor is going simply going to be dropped in the path of the comet. It will have no propulsive force of its own. The main probe will watch from a safe distance, and record the impact.
Copper was chosen for the impactor because they don't believe that the emmissions from it will interfere with what they expect to see, and even if it did the interference will be minimal. (Copper is apparently not very common in comets).
I forgot to ask the mass of the impactor, but it can't be more than a few tens of kilos due to launch costs. Since the comet's velocity is about 20km/sec at the chosen impact point, the impactor doesn't have to be going very fast, and because of the "drop in place" method it also doesn't need much in the way of guidance systems of propulsion, just good ol' Newtonian mechanics.
The overall shape of the probe has changed a few times, but I think that the final form is settled now. And as a further bit of trivia, many of the engineers working on this project are women.
National Lampoon's Middle Earth Vacation, Starring Chevy Case.
Florida law actually does set standards for ballot layout. Those standards were ignored in Palm Beach county.
Yes, something is bogus, namely the moderators that marked the above post informative.
The hybrid air/combustion engine was mentioned as a possibility, current models are completely compressed air powered. The "plant" page refers to a "turnkey factory" that is licensed to local producers of the vehicles. A demonstration plant s/was under construction in Brignoles, France. Its unclear what the present tense of the web site is.
And it isn't a supercharger. It doesn't use the mechanical energy of the engine to drive the compressor. Nor is it a turbocharger, which uses exhaust pressue.
As for $8M a factory, yes that's low for a conventional automobile factory, but I have yet to seen anything conventional about this design.
I'm rather skeptical myself, but not for the reasons stated in the above post, because I at least bother to read all 1000 or so English words on their site. I have questions about the safety of the compressed air storage, and also the durability of the product, but the inventors appear to be both sane and sincere.
I'm definitely not saying Bush is being completely honest, but it has YET to be shown that Bush is lying as much as Gore is.
I see why you post anonymously. If told a whopper like that I wouldn't want to be held responsible for it, either.
Where do we start. It doesn't require an army of lawyers to set up an estate plan that doubles your exemptions. And if you get to that level of resources, the people who can do that for you will find you. For that matter, everything you need can be obtained from Nolo Press.
Next, charitable foundations can be set up easily for those whose estates significantly exceed the limits. Trust funds can be set up so that heirs pay few taxes on what is getting inherited. Talk to your accountant about it. If you don't have an accountant, you probably don't have enough money to make estate taxes an issue.
And while we're on the subject, family farms and ranches are getting sold off because the kids just plain aren't interested in farming or ranching. Even a recent poster with a family farm admits as much.
Really, the only people with (relatively) small estates that pay significant taxes are those who do not avail themselves of the law.
In the interest of staying on topic, the rest of this post has been deleted.
True, but usually the splitting of hairs is towards the final aim of removing ambiguity, at least in the eyes of other lawyers. RMS seems to want to increase the ambiguity, which is over there, in a box.
The two products are in no way comparable.