Well, according to Bezos, the suit against B&N was just in retaliation
for B&N suing them for calling themselves "The worlds biggest book
store" (Since they wern't a 'real' store. the suit was for false
advertizing)
Bezos used this patent *offensively*, not in retailiation to
any patent claim by Barnes and Noble. He's playing word
games with you.
Bezos has prettymuch said that they would only use patents in a
defensive manner, although I'm sure they're happy to license it out to
people.
Defensive against what? Any serious competition?
And you think he's promising *not* to enforce it, and yet
he's going to collect cash for not enforcing it also?
No one who knows what they're doing uses gifs
anymore either, because of the software patent
problems.
Macromedia is talking about using flash as
a substitute for HTML, but there's no RFC out for the format. You get it? They want
to take over the web. Try imagining how you
would feel if Microsoft made that announcment.
Oh and do you actually know what an RFC is?!!? Are you
sure that you don't mean a DTD? But even then, what would
be the relevance of building either in Flash? You
honestly have no idea what the purpose of Flash is!
Cluelessness of this magnitude deserves a reply.
RFC stands for "Request for Comments", a bland sounding
phrase that actually means a tremendous amount in the world
of open standards. It means that the people designing the
technology actually took the trouble to write down the specs
for all the interfaces they were planning to implement,
and they asked the community to comment on them. RFCs are
the mutually agreed upon standards that all software is
expected to try and live up to in order to interoperate
with each other.
A published RFC for a given technology means that you expect
and encourage other teams of programmers to produce
competing implementations if your own implementation is
perceived as lacking in any way. It means that you're giving
up on the idea of playing the lock-in game beloved by
peddlers of proprietary solutions, and hated by any customer
with any sense.
The existance of a w3c RFC for a web data format is the bare
minimum if you're going to claim that it's an open standard.
The absense of a Flash RFC gives all of us a pretty good
clue as to what the purpose of Flash really is.
Then you need to define 'bulk'. Is it 1 million? 500 thousand? 10
thousand? 100? 3?
Whatever. Pick one. If you're asking me, I'd put the limit
low at around a few dozen. If I were a lawyer arguing a
case in court, I might look at the Post Office for their
definition of "Bulk" (precedent and all that you know?).
If I were writing an anti-spam law, I might pick a number
like 100, because it sounds fairly reasonable. Or I might
not include a number at all, and leave it up to the courts
to clarify it, if need be (it's a hard concept to get
across to computer geeks, but you may not need a precise
definition... "It's spam if it seems like spam" would not be
the worst approach).
Keep in mind that as soon as you define 'bulk',
spammers will mail just under the limit (or will claim to be). So if
you say 1000 is considered bulk, spammers will send 999.
Splitting up a mailing of 10,000 into 1000 chunks of 10 is
not going to dodge anyone's notion of what spam is.
Also, if you drop "Bulk" from the definition of spam, then
*anyone* you send email to could transform you into a
spammer just by complaining that they hadn't "solicited" the
email from you.
Every time I send mail to some usenet nitwit that replies
above the quote, am I a spammer?
You guys remind me of the hardcore feminists that were
trying to make it easier to prosecute people for rape by
defining everything as rape.
> > You can't buy LUNCH for $5.
> The thing is, I just did, because I don't live in the
> USA. USD 5 is a lot of money, and fits lunch nicely.
Now that you mention it, I just bought lunch for less than
$5, because I live in San Francisco, and despite the scare
story on the main page today lots of things are actually
fairly cheap around here. $5 will get you a hell of a
burrito.
(Aren't you glad there are users like me around
to contribute amazing content like this? My
karma's still up at the ceiling of 50, too.
Amazing.)
No, the proper definition is "Unsolicited Bulk Email".
Just UE by itself is ridiculously broad.
If someone at work sends me a note out of the
blue inviting me to a party, that's unsolicited mail,
but it's not spam.
Now it can be told.
(Because yesterday's slashdot isn't even good to
line the catbox).
The site I was referring to
is: Cosma's Homepage.
BUT: he's dropped the "pessimized for IE" schtick,
possibly because MS fixed their defaults, or
maybe he just got bored with it. There's a
reference to it in his "What's New" changelog
from 1995, but that's all now. Hope that's not
too much of a let down.
Anyway, I like this guy's site much. He's got
a physics background, but also has a wide range
of intellectual interests, and when the web was
new he started putting his notebooks on-line,
for anyone to browse. Kind of like a wikipedia
written by one guy. You might want to give
his stuff a glance some time before you go back to working
on your Transformers fan-fic site.
I'll cry no tears for the RIAA (that wasn't me
you heard cackling with glee. Really).
But really, be honest and take a look a couple of
years down the road. Okay, right now, easy
availability of mediocre-sounding MP3 files that
are a hassle to deal with can help spur CD sales.
Maybe that was happening, maybe it wasn't...
(certainly I've bought CDs after first listening
to MP3s downloaded from Emusic [1]).
But what happens after we've all got government
subsidized broad-band up the wazzoo? What
happens after the next generation of rio/burner/whatever
technology makes MP3s easier to deal with than
CDs? And the encoding tech gets better so they
really do have "CD-quality" sound? What do you
say to the labels that suddenly aren't selling
any CDs any more, and the artists that aren't
getting any royalties? "Better get out there and
sell some T-shirts guys! Oops, everyone's
downloading pirated iron-ons off of the web now...
Well, there's always busking."
It's entirely understandable why some folks
regarded Napster as a problem... I would not
claim that these guys have really got a good
solution, but you know, when you don't have a
good one you try a bad one.
[1]
The author of this post does not speak for
Emusic, which
is still a pretty cool company even if they have been bought
by some idiots at Universal-Vivendi. Unlimited
download access to a large collection of independant music,
where the artist gets paid royalties. Real MP3s,
no idiotic copy protection.
If you want to know about web design you should
read some Jakob Nielsen. His on-line column is archived over here:
www.useit.com.
And if you want to hire a web designer, ask them
what they think of Jakob Nielsen, and don't touch them if they make a face. "Designers" hate him because he wants them to put their toys away and do their job.
WaSP got a lot of flack for the "To Hell With Bad Browsers
[alistapart.com]" article, but people simply misunderstood it. The
whole point was that Netscape isn't a modern browser, has an unusable
DOM, doesnt support CSS, and is generally fucking awful. So it should
be treated as a v3-era browser, or a text reader/Lynx.
I think the tone of "To Hell With Bad
Browsers" is kind of off-putting, but if you
actually think about what it's saying it makes
a fair amount of sense. Rather than stating it
as a "screw people who won't upgrade" argument,
I think you should make the point that someone
running an older browser either (a) has a slow
net connection and doesn't want to download an upgrade or
(b) couldn't care less about new whizzy features.
In other words, you're doing these people a
*favor* if you code your site so that they get
a plain, simple version of the content.
(Whoa, site layout that *looks different* on
different browsers... is the world ready for
this concept?)
Hint: stop using Internet Explorer, and your
websites will shut-up. Non-standard extension,
you know?
One of my favorite web-sites (which shall go
link-less, for obvious reasons) states:
"This page has been pessimized for Internet
Explorer, as those of you listening to William
Shatner singing Mr. Tambourine Man have realized."
Have you thought about just using empirically
determined lookup tables? I was messing around
with some things like this and I found it was
just a total pain to try and programmatically
determine even very simple things concerning
perception of color (just as an example: I
figured I would be able to write a simple
function that would determine whether a color
would look "blueish". You just see if the
B term looks large compared to the R and G terms,
given the appropriate weighting factors, right?
But this just doesn't work).
Anyway, my solution was to resort to empirical
testing, and stash the result in lookup tables.
Since I was only interested in the "web safe"
color pallette, the number of colors I had to
deal with was easily manageable.
I wouldn't be suprised if this is the right way
of doing it even with a larger color space
(you could record data for a coarse mesh and
then try and interpolate the results for the
colors inbetween your test cases...)
Finally, after long dark times, and a very tough re-structuring
effort, it seems that SGI is back on the field they lead by far: Big
and powerful Unix systems, with the best graphics you can find in the
industry. After the strategic zig-zag due to Mr. Belluzio 3-4 years
ago("Now we're gonna be an NT vendor!"), it's good to see some big
company other than Sun which sticks to the good old, reliable and
scalable UNIX systems.
Much as I enjoy Belluzo bashing, I believe the
NT-madness actually preceeded his reign.
If you want to argue that he encouraged it,
made it a priority, and so on, I'd be willing
to listen.
By the way, kids: Mhz is not the measure of a
machine. Floating point benchmarks are not the
measure of a machine either. The world
is a complicated place, and computers are no
escape from that problem.
what I'd like to know is why their aren't
any jokes here about Linus in the Pumpkin Patch?
Slash kids just aren't up on the classics.
Anyway: Larry Wall isn't stupid. There are
reasons they use a pumpking in the perl world.
Note: the pumpking is indeed expected to burn
out, that's why they rotate the responsibility.
The subtext of the dispute between Linus and
Landley seems to be that Landley thinks Linus's
job can be neatly split into a creative and
a routine function, and Linus seems to think
that this isn't so easy.
Or maybe he likes doing the "routine" stuff
too, and doesn't want to off load it.
I've been reading slashdot using lynx for a
few years now... have I been screening ads
"dishonestly"?
I think there's a slight whiff of hypocrisy
here.
Anyway, I'd like to say that I'd be willing to donate
money to keep slash afloat, but I'm afraid I'm
probably not. I've been losing interest in
slash for some time, and I'm already a parasite
in a lot of ways (I cruise with a +3 cutoff,
but refuse to moderate).
Here's some suggestions for y'all though... got
bandwidth problems? (a) Switch to a peer-to-peer
system or (b) switch from http to nntp. Details left as an exercise.
Ad supported media is a broken concept.
Making the ads bigger will just make it more
broken.
Doesn't changing the fs count as a new feature?
on
Red Hat 7.2 Released
·
· Score: 2
Doesn't changing the default file-system count
as adding a new feature? Aren't *.2 releases
supposed to be defined by the absence of new
features? What's the reasoning behind doing
this, exactly?
My guess would be that the idea is that when you
upgrade a system, you don't get ext3, that only
happens on a new install. So the theory would
be that the damage it can do to an existing box
is automatically contained.
The reason I bring this up, is that if there's one
real problem with RedHat, it's that they feel the
need to rush new features out without a lot of
testing. That's why a lot of us stay away from
the *.0 releases (and after 6.1, I resolved to
stay away from *.1s). I can easily believe
that ext3 is a cool file system, and I can also
easily believe that they checked this one out
throughly before risking the reputation of their
*.2 releases, but as a general principle, this
one makes me nervous.
If I get burned by a *.2 release, I'm not going
to wait for them to invent the *.3...
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like their server is having a little
trouble. If need be you can get it out of
Google's cache:
ARTS & FARCES internet : When elephants dance
And you think he's promising *not* to enforce it, and yet he's going to collect cash for not enforcing it also?
Bezos should run for office.
Macromedia is talking about using flash as a substitute for HTML, but there's no RFC out for the format. You get it? They want to take over the web. Try imagining how you would feel if Microsoft made that announcment.
Chronology of Personal Computers (1972-1974)
The answer is:
- 1972
- March 2
- + The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched, powered by Intel 4004
computing power. [900]
Which is funny, because I'd heard that they'd used the RCA 1802... but according to this timeline, the 1802 wasn't released until 1974.RFC stands for "Request for Comments", a bland sounding phrase that actually means a tremendous amount in the world of open standards. It means that the people designing the technology actually took the trouble to write down the specs for all the interfaces they were planning to implement, and they asked the community to comment on them. RFCs are the mutually agreed upon standards that all software is expected to try and live up to in order to interoperate with each other.
A published RFC for a given technology means that you expect and encourage other teams of programmers to produce competing implementations if your own implementation is perceived as lacking in any way. It means that you're giving up on the idea of playing the lock-in game beloved by peddlers of proprietary solutions, and hated by any customer with any sense.
The existance of a w3c RFC for a web data format is the bare minimum if you're going to claim that it's an open standard.
The absense of a Flash RFC gives all of us a pretty good clue as to what the purpose of Flash really is.
Also, if you drop "Bulk" from the definition of spam, then *anyone* you send email to could transform you into a spammer just by complaining that they hadn't "solicited" the email from you.
Every time I send mail to some usenet nitwit that replies above the quote, am I a spammer?
You guys remind me of the hardcore feminists that were trying to make it easier to prosecute people for rape by defining everything as rape.
> > You can't buy LUNCH for $5. > The thing is, I just did, because I don't live in the > USA. USD 5 is a lot of money, and fits lunch nicely. Now that you mention it, I just bought lunch for less than $5, because I live in San Francisco, and despite the scare story on the main page today lots of things are actually fairly cheap around here. $5 will get you a hell of a burrito. (Aren't you glad there are users like me around to contribute amazing content like this? My karma's still up at the ceiling of 50, too. Amazing.)
No, the proper definition is "Unsolicited Bulk Email". Just UE by itself is ridiculously broad. If someone at work sends me a note out of the blue inviting me to a party, that's unsolicited mail, but it's not spam.
The site I was referring to is: Cosma's Homepage. BUT: he's dropped the "pessimized for IE" schtick, possibly because MS fixed their defaults, or maybe he just got bored with it. There's a reference to it in his "What's New" changelog from 1995, but that's all now. Hope that's not too much of a let down.
Anyway, I like this guy's site much. He's got a physics background, but also has a wide range of intellectual interests, and when the web was new he started putting his notebooks on-line, for anyone to browse. Kind of like a wikipedia written by one guy. You might want to give his stuff a glance some time before you go back to working on your Transformers fan-fic site.
But what happens after we've all got government subsidized broad-band up the wazzoo? What happens after the next generation of rio/burner/whatever technology makes MP3s easier to deal with than CDs? And the encoding tech gets better so they really do have "CD-quality" sound? What do you say to the labels that suddenly aren't selling any CDs any more, and the artists that aren't getting any royalties? "Better get out there and sell some T-shirts guys! Oops, everyone's downloading pirated iron-ons off of the web now... Well, there's always busking."
It's entirely understandable why some folks regarded Napster as a problem... I would not claim that these guys have really got a good solution, but you know, when you don't have a good one you try a bad one.
[1] The author of this post does not speak for Emusic, which is still a pretty cool company even if they have been bought by some idiots at Universal-Vivendi. Unlimited download access to a large collection of independant music, where the artist gets paid royalties. Real MP3s, no idiotic copy protection.
And if you want to hire a web designer, ask them what they think of Jakob Nielsen, and don't touch them if they make a face. "Designers" hate him because he wants them to put their toys away and do their job.
He's got a new book out that's pretty good: Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed. As is his previous book: Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
Jakob Nielsen's schtick is that his opinions are actually based on useability studies. Everyone else is just guessing, Jakob Nielsen knows.
(Whoa, site layout that *looks different* on different browsers... is the world ready for this concept?)
In principle, there's no reason to prefer a Macromedia dominated web to a Microsoft dominated web.
w3c recs. w3c recs. w3c recs.
And if you use a *really* good browser, like say lynx, you can bookmark a link without following it, and get it out of your bookmarks later.
Pop-up windows are almost always bad UI. If I want a new window open, I'll open it myself.
One of my favorite web-sites (which shall go link-less, for obvious reasons) states: "This page has been pessimized for Internet Explorer, as those of you listening to William Shatner singing Mr. Tambourine Man have realized."
Anyway, my solution was to resort to empirical testing, and stash the result in lookup tables. Since I was only interested in the "web safe" color pallette, the number of colors I had to deal with was easily manageable. I wouldn't be suprised if this is the right way of doing it even with a larger color space (you could record data for a coarse mesh and then try and interpolate the results for the colors inbetween your test cases...)
Don't you get it? "...and so forth".
Forth, you know?
On second thought, if you haven't heard of
Bill Joy before...
If you want to argue that he encouraged it, made it a priority, and so on, I'd be willing to listen.
By the way, kids: Mhz is not the measure of a machine. Floating point benchmarks are not the measure of a machine either. The world is a complicated place, and computers are no escape from that problem.
Slash kids just aren't up on the classics.
Anyway: Larry Wall isn't stupid. There are reasons they use a pumpking in the perl world. Note: the pumpking is indeed expected to burn out, that's why they rotate the responsibility. The subtext of the dispute between Linus and Landley seems to be that Landley thinks Linus's job can be neatly split into a creative and a routine function, and Linus seems to think that this isn't so easy.
Or maybe he likes doing the "routine" stuff too, and doesn't want to off load it.
Yeah, I think "blowhole". It'll make the
limericks easier.
By the way: "everyone's favorite database"?
Don't you feel embarassed by shameless trolling
like that?
I'm fully in support of the concept that I
should never see an ad for a product I'm not
interested in.
My method of achieving this is much simpler than
using profiling technology, though.
O'Reilly also keeps Larry Wall on staff, and just let
him do whatever he wants.
Lack of support for the perl community is not
one of O'Reilly's problems.
That's how the original Netscape programmers got to be millionaires.
Or to take another example, how about the history of unix development?
And without rigorous software development methodology, we wouldn't even have slashdot to discuss this subject.
I think there's a slight whiff of hypocrisy here.
Anyway, I'd like to say that I'd be willing to donate money to keep slash afloat, but I'm afraid I'm probably not. I've been losing interest in slash for some time, and I'm already a parasite in a lot of ways (I cruise with a +3 cutoff, but refuse to moderate).
Here's some suggestions for y'all though... got bandwidth problems? (a) Switch to a peer-to-peer system or (b) switch from http to nntp. Details left as an exercise.
Ad supported media is a broken concept. Making the ads bigger will just make it more broken.
My guess would be that the idea is that when you upgrade a system, you don't get ext3, that only happens on a new install. So the theory would be that the damage it can do to an existing box is automatically contained.
The reason I bring this up, is that if there's one real problem with RedHat, it's that they feel the need to rush new features out without a lot of testing. That's why a lot of us stay away from the *.0 releases (and after 6.1, I resolved to stay away from *.1s). I can easily believe that ext3 is a cool file system, and I can also easily believe that they checked this one out throughly before risking the reputation of their *.2 releases, but as a general principle, this one makes me nervous.
If I get burned by a *.2 release, I'm not going to wait for them to invent the *.3...