I think that is Microsoft's lawyers finding language to say that because they used GPL code in those drivers, they had to release them under the GPL as per the GPL. By instead using the mantra of "community standards" they refrain from any legal interpretation of the GPL or its validity.
But that is one issue with some of the FOSS mentalities out there. Source is only half of a software product. A quality build is the second half. If you don't spend as much effort on your build/test workflow as your dev workflow, then what is the point? There is no such thing as "correct source". The product you ship is either working or not, and software runs in binary form.
Many vapor and physical deposition processes in semiconductor manufacture take place in a high vacuum. Making OLEDs probably already requires a vacuum at one stage for such deposition. I would say the efficiency issues with this process hinge on cost, not energy, and even that seems quite manageable.
iTunes sucks, but many people are using it and have used it for years. Being able to sync with iTunes makes the Pre or any device a drop-in replacement for the iPhone/iPods, and that is what Apple is scared of. They want the same type of lock-in damned if you do, damned if you don't control that Microsoft had for oh-so-long in this industry. Think Different, as long as its the Same.
The problem with DC Power is that it cannot be stepped up/down in voltage as easily as AC by the use of transformers. The key to efficient transmission over the line is to use a fairly high voltage, much higher than the 120VAC you get to your house. So AC back in the day was the only practical option for being able to transmit in the kV range but deliver at a low voltage to the neighborhood. But power electronics technology have advanced quite a bit over the last 100 years or so and high power DC-DC converters are quite the reality, if still very expensive compared to the average transformer. But it is a solution worth putting in the bucket now.
That's not entirely true. Modern medicine is one of the few clear ways very high intelligence and work ethic are well rewarded in the modern world. And one could imagine in a highly selective event, say a war, population groups who had a good knowledge of modern medicine, i.e. were well educated, would have a greater chance of survival and future prosperity than others. Natural Selection tends to be the type of process that is hard to beat, even when you think you are beating it, because it is infinitely patient in waiting for just the right selective event.
While I sympathize and hear these stories a lot, I find they are usually due to a lack of professional development. There are kids out of school or self taught that can do almost any entry level IT position in a given role whether that role is service tech, admin, engineer, researcher, or even crazy turtleneck sporting visionary. And kids out of school are DELIGHTED to make salaries middle aged folk raising kids couldn't live off of. On top of this, the days of the IT gold rush are long over, and frankly anyone who expected that too be a long term prospect was just misguided.
IT is an industry where to even keep your job you have to have a certain level of professional development, but without significant development efforts you will probably eventually not be able to make the type of stable living you need eventually. This is just part of being in IT, just like teachers have to put up with bratty kids all day.
That's true to an extent, but I think the real fear is non-Apple, and more importantly iPhone specific runtimes being able to exist for iPhone apps. Apple wants to make iPhone apps iPhone exclusive, as their app library is one of the strengths of their platform. I assure you anything resembling a general purpose way to get non-specifically coded apps to run on the iPhone will be shot down ASAP.
I agree with your concerns, but thats really my point. We are deciding to change our power systems. Therefore the onus of proof is on the new system to show it is better than what we have and the alternatives. And its only when that onus of proof has been met that we should start to move to the new system.
The problem is that "dirty power" can be cleaner than "green power" overall in some circumstances. These terms mostly have to do with image and local impact. Building massive numbers of turbines isn't a CO2 free process, and they have far from a zero environmental impact. They are not ideal, no technology is. This is about weighing the pros vs. the cons, and waiting until we have a really good, well understood solution to phase out "dirty power" before moving over to a new system. After all, its not like we can change whatever energy generation system we have at will, its a long term decision, as we have already learned all too well.
But if it's clear that civilians have the ability to engineer their own craft given time anyway, that would also mean they could develop ICBMs too. So really, in the end, this is only a delay tactic, and as I see it the con's outweigh the pro's.
I think the big factor everyone is missing in terms of quality of these codecs are the tools. Theora encoders are far behind those for x264 in terms of performance and just about everything else, and other associated tools are similar. Even if theora was clearly better than x264 it would still be unappealing to web services doing encoding because of this. Also, good luck finding "hardware theora decoding" in low end computers ever while right now you can get a netbook with hardware h.264 decode. Without efficient decoding, there really would be little reason to leave the status quo of flash, after all.
The last time I checked, portable consoles were the most popular in the marketplace, so that might be a reason to care. Also, name me a mobile game that can satisfy someone with an interest in most genres people in portable demographics care about. Good tRPGs on a phone? Sure.
Yeah, I didn't get that point at all. The real world has billions of concurrent users and the general effect is the importance of any one unit is reduced. Also, they would have to likewise upscale infrastructure so think of in game cities paralleling the size and scale of real cities, where even locations become less significant.
What they should instead do is try to have their cake and eat it too. Share servers for economy, etc, but reduce the number of players one can interact with those a statistically generated representative set. That way you could still have "cities" the size of small towns and less then a thousand people on the screen at a time, but still give the player access to everything an everyone.
I think the problem in this case is more of an objection to Apple censoring everyone's phone until they implement the parental controls being a valid stopgap measure.
They wouldn't even have to make money directly off Twitter. Apple has been drowning in their attempts to launch web services. Twitter could be the killer app and ecosystem they need to make MobileMe or future efforts less weak.
It's flawed reasoning to think companies need to make money directly off all their properties. Blue chip companies hold properties like racing teams that are fiscal black holes used for the marketing and prestige they bring the company.
It might not be entirely good, the market crash might trickle down to legitimate archeology in an era where technology is making the possibility of historical preservation and investigation better than ever. In this era of a transition to a global culture, its important to try to preserve as much as possible while we still can.
A growing issue in involuntary participation in social networking. Even if you'd like to stay off "the facebook" seeing it as nothing but trouble, your friends/colleagues can still post tagged pictures of you, notes about your participation in social activities, and whatever else they feel like doing.
At this point it might be a good idea to get in if only to monitor your status and let your side of the story be known, lest your activist HR department decides to judge your entire value system based on a picture at a political event you just went to for the grub.
Certain games will always need lots of polys for practical purposes. Think thousands of RTS units moving in real time as you pan the camera around in 3d in a fluid motion. And don't even get into doing realtime simulation of designs with hundreds of components or such. Sure if you think first person perspective FPS are all that exist, things have been mostly fine for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
$8.99/mo is a pretty good deal to bypass Hulu ads. Not to mention the Watch Instantly content library. Oh, and there's something about DVDs too.
I think that is Microsoft's lawyers finding language to say that because they used GPL code in those drivers, they had to release them under the GPL as per the GPL. By instead using the mantra of "community standards" they refrain from any legal interpretation of the GPL or its validity.
But that is one issue with some of the FOSS mentalities out there. Source is only half of a software product. A quality build is the second half. If you don't spend as much effort on your build/test workflow as your dev workflow, then what is the point? There is no such thing as "correct source". The product you ship is either working or not, and software runs in binary form.
Many vapor and physical deposition processes in semiconductor manufacture take place in a high vacuum. Making OLEDs probably already requires a vacuum at one stage for such deposition. I would say the efficiency issues with this process hinge on cost, not energy, and even that seems quite manageable.
iTunes sucks, but many people are using it and have used it for years. Being able to sync with iTunes makes the Pre or any device a drop-in replacement for the iPhone/iPods, and that is what Apple is scared of. They want the same type of lock-in damned if you do, damned if you don't control that Microsoft had for oh-so-long in this industry. Think Different, as long as its the Same.
Well, it's possible their kernel is hacked in a way that breaks virtualization packages, and therefore they can't run Linux on their Linux servers.
The problem with DC Power is that it cannot be stepped up/down in voltage as easily as AC by the use of transformers. The key to efficient transmission over the line is to use a fairly high voltage, much higher than the 120VAC you get to your house. So AC back in the day was the only practical option for being able to transmit in the kV range but deliver at a low voltage to the neighborhood. But power electronics technology have advanced quite a bit over the last 100 years or so and high power DC-DC converters are quite the reality, if still very expensive compared to the average transformer. But it is a solution worth putting in the bucket now.
That's not entirely true. Modern medicine is one of the few clear ways very high intelligence and work ethic are well rewarded in the modern world. And one could imagine in a highly selective event, say a war, population groups who had a good knowledge of modern medicine, i.e. were well educated, would have a greater chance of survival and future prosperity than others. Natural Selection tends to be the type of process that is hard to beat, even when you think you are beating it, because it is infinitely patient in waiting for just the right selective event.
Yes, this reads like "Guy with huge ego upset that engineers can't use magic to conjure up ideal device at his command." to me.
While I sympathize and hear these stories a lot, I find they are usually due to a lack of professional development. There are kids out of school or self taught that can do almost any entry level IT position in a given role whether that role is service tech, admin, engineer, researcher, or even crazy turtleneck sporting visionary. And kids out of school are DELIGHTED to make salaries middle aged folk raising kids couldn't live off of. On top of this, the days of the IT gold rush are long over, and frankly anyone who expected that too be a long term prospect was just misguided. IT is an industry where to even keep your job you have to have a certain level of professional development, but without significant development efforts you will probably eventually not be able to make the type of stable living you need eventually. This is just part of being in IT, just like teachers have to put up with bratty kids all day.
That's true to an extent, but I think the real fear is non-Apple, and more importantly iPhone specific runtimes being able to exist for iPhone apps. Apple wants to make iPhone apps iPhone exclusive, as their app library is one of the strengths of their platform. I assure you anything resembling a general purpose way to get non-specifically coded apps to run on the iPhone will be shot down ASAP.
I agree with your concerns, but thats really my point. We are deciding to change our power systems. Therefore the onus of proof is on the new system to show it is better than what we have and the alternatives. And its only when that onus of proof has been met that we should start to move to the new system.
The problem is that "dirty power" can be cleaner than "green power" overall in some circumstances. These terms mostly have to do with image and local impact. Building massive numbers of turbines isn't a CO2 free process, and they have far from a zero environmental impact. They are not ideal, no technology is. This is about weighing the pros vs. the cons, and waiting until we have a really good, well understood solution to phase out "dirty power" before moving over to a new system. After all, its not like we can change whatever energy generation system we have at will, its a long term decision, as we have already learned all too well.
But if it's clear that civilians have the ability to engineer their own craft given time anyway, that would also mean they could develop ICBMs too. So really, in the end, this is only a delay tactic, and as I see it the con's outweigh the pro's.
I think the big factor everyone is missing in terms of quality of these codecs are the tools. Theora encoders are far behind those for x264 in terms of performance and just about everything else, and other associated tools are similar. Even if theora was clearly better than x264 it would still be unappealing to web services doing encoding because of this. Also, good luck finding "hardware theora decoding" in low end computers ever while right now you can get a netbook with hardware h.264 decode. Without efficient decoding, there really would be little reason to leave the status quo of flash, after all.
The last time I checked, portable consoles were the most popular in the marketplace, so that might be a reason to care. Also, name me a mobile game that can satisfy someone with an interest in most genres people in portable demographics care about. Good tRPGs on a phone? Sure.
Converting text encoding from a closed set to another is trivial.
Yeah, I didn't get that point at all. The real world has billions of concurrent users and the general effect is the importance of any one unit is reduced. Also, they would have to likewise upscale infrastructure so think of in game cities paralleling the size and scale of real cities, where even locations become less significant. What they should instead do is try to have their cake and eat it too. Share servers for economy, etc, but reduce the number of players one can interact with those a statistically generated representative set. That way you could still have "cities" the size of small towns and less then a thousand people on the screen at a time, but still give the player access to everything an everyone.
The Gates foundation tends to give results-driven grants, so they will probably get more if they come up with something promising.
I think the problem in this case is more of an objection to Apple censoring everyone's phone until they implement the parental controls being a valid stopgap measure.
They wouldn't even have to make money directly off Twitter. Apple has been drowning in their attempts to launch web services. Twitter could be the killer app and ecosystem they need to make MobileMe or future efforts less weak. It's flawed reasoning to think companies need to make money directly off all their properties. Blue chip companies hold properties like racing teams that are fiscal black holes used for the marketing and prestige they bring the company.
It might not be entirely good, the market crash might trickle down to legitimate archeology in an era where technology is making the possibility of historical preservation and investigation better than ever. In this era of a transition to a global culture, its important to try to preserve as much as possible while we still can.
Heck, It would be prudent for everyone to keep a copy around just in case...
A growing issue in involuntary participation in social networking. Even if you'd like to stay off "the facebook" seeing it as nothing but trouble, your friends/colleagues can still post tagged pictures of you, notes about your participation in social activities, and whatever else they feel like doing. At this point it might be a good idea to get in if only to monitor your status and let your side of the story be known, lest your activist HR department decides to judge your entire value system based on a picture at a political event you just went to for the grub.
Certain games will always need lots of polys for practical purposes. Think thousands of RTS units moving in real time as you pan the camera around in 3d in a fluid motion. And don't even get into doing realtime simulation of designs with hundreds of components or such. Sure if you think first person perspective FPS are all that exist, things have been mostly fine for a while.