Less than 10 years ago it would have taken multiple trips to (several) libraries by a very persistant person to find this information. (The kind of person who would read an obscure mailing list about patent abuse).
Most likely a cursory review by a bored patent clerk (as he is working on the next E=MC^2) would have turned up nothing, and the patent would have passed.
Now any Slashdotter with a minute to spare can find the same information.
Its interesting to see how we are getting to grips with information overload.
How hard can it be to create a mandatory public repository of all climate research data points?
Think a website that contains all the data files used in published climate research, with a description of how it was applied in the particular research.
Millions of public funds world wide are going into researching these papers and establishing data points.
It would go a long way into re-creating trust in the science being done; and probably improve the overal quality of the research at the same time by making the raw tools available outside the current select group of climate researchers.
I do a lot of work next to the sales team -- mostly that is not a problem as I am fairly able to tune out their prattle.
But something I really NEED to concentrate on something. I find that listening to white noise (ocean waves or something) quickly filters out the conversations around me.
I am completely unable to work with music on -- my preferred working environment is one of pure silence.
Sorry to tell the investors this -- but since they are now all complicit in murder,piracy and being (registered) members of a criminal organization this more or less legally opens them up to off-shore shelling by naval warships.
"No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots."
How can you be so sure? Are you from the future?
That is because the company building terminator robots has already been established -- and they are in operation right now. So Cyberdyne can relax and care for the elderly instead.
Seriously, I am not looking for high brow entertainment. Budget special effects, plot holes are all part of it. -- (of course he needed to close the door manually and die -- same as with my iPhone, touch screen them pencils don't work either)
Stargate is on TV, and that is enough to satisfy my craving for galactic exploration.
I have been waiting for years for a decent online music / video service in my neck of the woods. What is going to kill it ? Same as what's holding me back just paying US$ x for the latest TV show I want to watch at home and don't mind paying for?
All those dusty old geographically limiting agreements between authors & publishers.
You will have noticed that most services say "sorry dude, but currently (as in the past XXX years) we do not serve outside of the USA". Or Britain, or...
Have credit, insanely fast Internet, willing to pay -- but nobody to take my money (legally).
In the space of less than 15 years we have more or less put online the combined sum of all human knowlegde ; made it accessible and searchable. And for good measure we added instant and nearly free communication (remember when long distance was expensive?) and wired to the Internet everyone with a monthly income over US$ 100. Personal networks are no longer limited to your church community or secret society -- a typical family keeps in daily contact with its members around the world.
You can moan about flying cars all you want, but creating those billions of webpages has kept busy all of Generation X&Y.
Still waiting for Generation Z to get bored with playing online games... common you slackers.
Even with GreenTech you might be late to the party... the Europeans have been spending quite a lot in this area.
But more worryingly; the Chinese have been buying up promising small companies for their technology.
"Dutch windmills now made in China" was one headline recently and the article bemoanded that the Dutch government invested heavily in research but did not give any support for the creation of a local industry.
Falling behind China on the environment... that got to hurt.
Plenty of cool applications to think off; the race is on to build the first Netscape of Augmented Reality, and then we can all quickly build a whole new World Wide Web.
When visiting a new town just Google for a suitable set of layers.
Tube stations, Tourist information (with guided tours), traffic, dating (heh! I'm available).... i'm sure that is just the beginning.
Coincidently I Just finished reading Halting State (Charles Cross) -- set in Edinburgh 2017 AR was already standard -- in fact the protagonist had difficulty imagining not being able to know where she was all the time.
Musuems have collected and preserved much of the worlds cultural heritage. But at the same time they severely limit the publics enjoyment of the art and artifacts they seek to preserve.
I enjoy visiting a museum on occasion, but entry prices are usually extremely high and in the time that I have available I can usually only browse the highlights (from a respectul distance that hurts my eyes and blurs any details). Quick browses of paintings that their authors have spend weeks, or months on. You can ofen buy (expensive) books with again the same highlights of the collection, but not on a 1:1 scale.
High res scans would make all of this available to a much wider audience; worldwide, 24-7. Let them store that fragile 400+ year old painting in a secure bunker. Its the painting I am interested in, not the canvas.
Of course this would also make the museum obsolete; and kill off some major tourist attractions -- so expect some resistance from the old guard.
I am sure that they will get plenty of free press out of this. Creative marketing applied.
Bit like Ryanair's CEO saying that passengers will need to stand for the duration of the flight (yeah right) or that they need to pay to use the toilet on board.
Looking at the URL she is going to be to pleased about this whole brooha as she is running her own blog as a potential business. Links from Slashdot are going to make her happy.
So basically the US college system is just screwed up. Students are just a resource to be drained out of funds.
Going to University in Europe cost me next to nothing.
I had pay for the books, but most of them were reasonably cheap or second hand. Not worth the trouble copying them. And my professors didn't care too much if the edition was out of date by a few versions.
Oh, and I had no debts at the end of it as I could easily pay the fees with my summer jobs.
Disclaimer: Just one statistically insignificant opinion, your millage may vary.
The Bait&Switch comment seems a little vague -- but a practical reason for free high quality codecs can be found on WikiMedia:
Why are free codecs important? Wikimedia (and anyone else that wants to switch to free formats) wonâ(TM)t have to pay millions of dollars to in licensing costs to use the h.264 codec and wonâ(TM)t have to sacrifice quality in the process. More importantly it means anyone can encode or decode these files without paying for a license to do so. This means both free and proprietary software can support this format. Where as previously only controlled free as in beer distributions like adobe flash could support video on the web. It enables free software projects like firefogg to package the encoder and give it away for free. It helps opens up the video communication platform for distributed two-way communication.
Facebook is just a blog? What the fuck are you talking about? Have you used the website?
I use it daily, its cool. But posting my thoughts in a way that my friends can read it doesn't have to be centralized. Facebook will need to go a subscription model to stay in business -- and just reading the posts, they'd lose 99% of their "customers". Is it still useful for the remaining 1% ?
How could Twitter be done in "P2P fashion"? Do we all put our tweets in text files and add them to a big torrent?
Skype works quite well ; twitters just need to be distributed among your friends / readers / followers and you need to be able to subscribe to them (sounds like a mailing list with some fancy interface) Again Twitter being centralized has huge benefits (ease) and drawbacks (huge bandwidth costs for Twitter, with no ROI). I am sure that with a napkin and some work you can come up with a distribution solution, just don't expect to turn a profit.
This is simply a realization that free won't pay for their massive bandwidth costs (and no doubt the royalties they need to pay).
A million websites have been launched, and died, after their operators realized that advertising could never cover their costs.
If you look around, banners for sites that have 2 million page views p/month go for as low as US$ 45 p/month. Even if you plaster a site with them you can't scrape a living out of this. Sure, some struck it lucky, but most will die.
Facebook, Twitter, cool toys, but dead men walking ; and they will be replaced after they die. Will you pay a monthly subscription fee to use either one of them?
Facebook is just a blog, a few hacks can string existing blogs together and create the same functionality. Twitter can be done in P2P fashion.
The good times were good, now the money men come calling.
Ext4 has an online defragmenter. Even with the various techniques used to avoid it, a long lived file system does tend to become fragmented over time. ext4 will have a tool which can defragment individual files or entire file systems.
Peter Norton is going to love this! Norton Defrag for Linux coming in 3,2,1...
So how long before the Chinese come up with a low cost (and then sell to Iran) , cut corners, just works but deadly effective anti-UAV aircraft?
Doesn't require a runway (so you can't take out its infrastructure) and has a basic AI that can find and take out or cripple multiple UAV's with a high speed gun? If an AI is too much work, just link it to a ground based portable and a teenage game junkie.
This just sounds like the beginning of another arms race. (you first need to clear the anti-UAV's with anti-anti-UAV's)
a logic programming language, and also theoretical constructs like finite automata.
Sounds like a great course -- however in most schools the professors will have long given in to the whining "this is not real world" crowd that sadly makes up most entry level computer classes.
Slashdot Mirror
"A few minutes googling"
Less than 10 years ago it would have taken multiple trips to (several) libraries by a very persistant person to find this information. (The kind of person who would read an obscure mailing list about patent abuse).
Most likely a cursory review by a bored patent clerk (as he is working on the next E=MC^2) would have turned up nothing, and the patent would have passed.
Now any Slashdotter with a minute to spare can find the same information.
Its interesting to see how we are getting to grips with information overload.
How hard can it be to create a mandatory public repository of all climate research data points?
Think a website that contains all the data files used in published climate research, with a description of how it was applied in the particular research.
Millions of public funds world wide are going into researching these papers and establishing data points.
It would go a long way into re-creating trust in the science being done; and probably improve the overal quality of the research at the same time by making the raw tools available outside the current select group of climate researchers.
As Michael Geist points out , these executives owe Canadian musicians 6 billion CA$.....
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/735096--geist-record-industry-faces-liability-over-infringement
No wonder that they need a little strategic "planning" at the white house.
I do a lot of work next to the sales team -- mostly that is not a problem as I am fairly able to tune out their prattle.
But something I really NEED to concentrate on something. I find that listening to white noise (ocean waves or something) quickly filters out the conversations around me.
I am completely unable to work with music on -- my preferred working environment is one of pure silence.
Sorry to tell the investors this -- but since they are now all complicit in murder,piracy and being (registered) members of a criminal organization this more or less legally opens them up to off-shore shelling by naval warships.
"No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots."
How can you be so sure? Are you from the future?
That is because the company building terminator robots has already been established -- and they are in operation right now. So Cyberdyne can relax and care for the elderly instead.
http://www.xkcd.com/652/
Seriously, I am not looking for high brow entertainment. Budget special effects, plot holes are all part of it. -- (of course he needed to close the door manually and die -- same as with my iPhone, touch screen them pencils don't work either)
Stargate is on TV, and that is enough to satisfy my craving for galactic exploration.
Not going to happen. Period.
I have been waiting for years for a decent online music / video service in my neck of the woods. What is going to kill it ? Same as what's holding me back just paying US$ x for the latest TV show I want to watch at home and don't mind paying for?
All those dusty old geographically limiting agreements between authors & publishers.
You will have noticed that most services say "sorry dude, but currently (as in the past XXX years) we do not serve outside of the USA". Or Britain, or ...
Have credit, insanely fast Internet, willing to pay -- but nobody to take my money (legally).
In the space of less than 15 years we have more or less put online the combined sum of all human knowlegde ; made it accessible and searchable. And for good measure we added instant and nearly free communication (remember when long distance was expensive?) and wired to the Internet everyone with a monthly income over US$ 100. Personal networks are no longer limited to your church community or secret society -- a typical family keeps in daily contact with its members around the world.
You can moan about flying cars all you want, but creating those billions of webpages has kept busy all of Generation X&Y.
Still waiting for Generation Z to get bored with playing online games... common you slackers.
Even with GreenTech you might be late to the party... the Europeans have been spending quite a lot in this area.
But more worryingly; the Chinese have been buying up promising small companies for their technology.
"Dutch windmills now made in China" was one headline recently and the article bemoanded that the Dutch government invested heavily in research but did not give any support for the creation of a local industry.
Falling behind China on the environment... that got to hurt.
Plenty of cool applications to think off; the race is on to build the first Netscape of Augmented Reality, and then we can all quickly build a whole new World Wide Web.
When visiting a new town just Google for a suitable set of layers.
Tube stations, Tourist information (with guided tours), traffic, dating (heh! I'm available).... i'm sure that is just the beginning.
Coincidently I Just finished reading Halting State (Charles Cross) -- set in Edinburgh 2017 AR was already standard -- in fact the protagonist had difficulty imagining not being able to know where she was all the time.
Musuems have collected and preserved much of the worlds cultural heritage. But at the same time they severely limit the publics enjoyment of the art and artifacts they seek to preserve.
I enjoy visiting a museum on occasion, but entry prices are usually extremely high and in the time that I have available I can usually only browse the highlights (from a respectul distance that hurts my eyes and blurs any details). Quick browses of paintings that their authors have spend weeks, or months on. You can ofen buy (expensive) books with again the same highlights of the collection, but not on a 1:1 scale.
High res scans would make all of this available to a much wider audience; worldwide, 24-7. Let them store that fragile 400+ year old painting in a secure bunker. Its the painting I am interested in, not the canvas.
Of course this would also make the museum obsolete; and kill off some major tourist attractions -- so expect some resistance from the old guard.
Actually they are doing their homework -- sueing Google is listed as step #62 for improving your sites ranking....
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
I am sure that they will get plenty of free press out of this. Creative marketing applied.
Bit like Ryanair's CEO saying that passengers will need to stand for the duration of the flight (yeah right) or that they need to pay to use the toilet on board.
Not necessary the high res shot was available on her blog:
http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_1053.jpg
Looking at the URL she is going to be to pleased about this whole brooha as she is running her own blog as a potential business. Links from Slashdot are going to make her happy.
So basically the US college system is just screwed up. Students are just a resource to be drained out of funds.
Going to University in Europe cost me next to nothing.
I had pay for the books, but most of them were reasonably cheap or second hand. Not worth the trouble copying them. And my professors didn't care too much if the edition was out of date by a few versions.
Oh, and I had no debts at the end of it as I could easily pay the fees with my summer jobs.
Disclaimer: Just one statistically insignificant opinion, your millage may vary.
The Bait&Switch comment seems a little vague -- but a practical reason for free high quality codecs can be found on WikiMedia:
Why are free codecs important? Wikimedia (and anyone else that wants to switch to free formats) wonâ(TM)t have to pay millions of dollars to in licensing costs to use the h.264 codec and wonâ(TM)t have to sacrifice quality in the process. More importantly it means anyone can encode or decode these files without paying for a license to do so. This means both free and proprietary software can support this format. Where as previously only controlled free as in beer distributions like adobe flash could support video on the web. It enables free software projects like firefogg to package the encoder and give it away for free. It helps opens up the video communication platform for distributed two-way communication.
Millions of predicatable comments on Pirates vs DRM and nobody comments on whether the game is any good.
Figures.
Facebook is just a blog? What the fuck are you talking about? Have you used the website?
I use it daily, its cool. But posting my thoughts in a way that my friends can read it doesn't have to be centralized. Facebook will need to go a subscription model to stay in business -- and just reading the posts, they'd lose 99% of their "customers". Is it still useful for the remaining 1% ?
How could Twitter be done in "P2P fashion"? Do we all put our tweets in text files and add them to a big torrent?
Skype works quite well ; twitters just need to be distributed among your friends / readers / followers and you need to be able to subscribe to them (sounds like a mailing list with some fancy interface) Again Twitter being centralized has huge benefits (ease) and drawbacks (huge bandwidth costs for Twitter, with no ROI). I am sure that with a napkin and some work you can come up with a distribution solution, just don't expect to turn a profit.
This is simply a realization that free won't pay for their massive bandwidth costs (and no doubt the royalties they need to pay).
A million websites have been launched, and died, after their operators realized that advertising could never cover their costs.
If you look around, banners for sites that have 2 million page views p/month go for as low as US$ 45 p/month. Even if you plaster a site with them you can't scrape a living out of this. Sure, some struck it lucky, but most will die.
Facebook, Twitter, cool toys, but dead men walking ; and they will be replaced after they die. Will you pay a monthly subscription fee to use either one of them?
Facebook is just a blog, a few hacks can string existing blogs together and create the same functionality. Twitter can be done in P2P fashion.
The good times were good, now the money men come calling.
We have now established that the total worth of all out-of-print, but in-copyright books in the USA is US$ 125 million.
Or as Tigger said of Santa "I always though he would be taller"
From the same wikipedia post:
Ext4 has an online defragmenter. Even with the various techniques used to avoid it, a long lived file system does tend to become fragmented over time. ext4 will have a tool which can defragment individual files or entire file systems.
Peter Norton is going to love this! Norton Defrag for Linux coming in 3,2,1...
So how long before the Chinese come up with a low cost (and then sell to Iran) , cut corners, just works but deadly effective anti-UAV aircraft?
Doesn't require a runway (so you can't take out its infrastructure) and has a basic AI that can find and take out or cripple multiple UAV's with a high speed gun? If an AI is too much work, just link it to a ground based portable and a teenage game junkie.
This just sounds like the beginning of another arms race. (you first need to clear the anti-UAV's with anti-anti-UAV's)
Seconded -- Wine is making amazing progress, just check the biweekly changelogs to see how much progress its making.
If this keeps up Linux becomes a solid games platform.
So your are willing to put your private personal data *online* in the hands of a company you already known is incompetent.
Intuit must think its customers are really dumb.
a logic programming language, and also theoretical constructs like finite automata.
Sounds like a great course -- however in most schools the professors will have long given in to the whining "this is not real world" crowd that sadly makes up most entry level computer classes.