I have personally answered these questions through the use of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software which I use on the computer at my home when composing text.
Wow. Nice product placement.
Dragon Naturally Speaking - The Choice of Congressman Boucher! --
That's really all it comes down to. You just need to learn what method of searching gets the best results. Personally, I use google and almost always find relevant pages on the first listing of results. After the second page, however, they get off-topic (what do you expect when you get 2,560,009 results?)
It helps if you just search for an exact phrase (i.e. "amount of trolling on slashdot in relation to the vernal equinox"). But then again, I didn't need to tell you that. --
That would make it much more realistic. Same goes for the hiccups, coughing, sneezing, etc. When you are in a dangerous situation, any of these could get you killed.
But it still wouldn't be an equal playing ground, because most people would still be using the keyboard/mouse combo. And really, are you going to choose "realism" over winning? --
There are other and better ways to learn about the world if your afraid some poor child will miss some important documentary about the Holocaust or something, it's called a book.
That's true, but see, most kids today only read Harry Potter-type books. While there's nothing wrong with this, kids just aren't going to take a few days (weeks) to read a history book when they can just vegitate in front of a TV for an hour. --
"Dependability and prerelease software are two concepts that don't belong in the same sentence"
Dependability and MICROSOFT are two words that don't belong in the sentence, save the occasion when the obligitory "lack thereof" is used.
When the article starts talking about the things that are really important, like stability and speed, the results of their findings are instantly dismissed because it's beta software. Well, um, beta should have a few bugs, granted, but it's not alpha software, where the entire thing crashes at every turn! It should have atleast _some_ stability.
"You need, essentially, a new or extremely recent computer, 128MB of RAM (at least; our test laptop was decked out with 320MB), 2GB of free disk space, and, if you're upgrading, you must have Windows 98 or above."
Two gigs?!?!? TWO GIGS!?!??! As if the RAM requirement wasn't horrendous enough. Two gigs is a lot for an OS to take up, even the most bloated. Even though most hard drives are atleast 30-40 GB these days, 2 GB is just insane. They go on to say:
"In fact, Microsoft says you'll have the best experience only if you buy a brand-new system with XP preinstalled."
If this isn't "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours" politics I don't know what is. Seriously, the tight relationship between Microsoft and hardware vendors could not be any more clear, and it really is a shame that the vendors would allow _any_ third party to have a big say in their chip design.
All in all, the only real diffrence I have seen since Win95 is more and more sounds and eye candy when you click on widgets and animated paperclips.
My point is, everyone SHOULD use linux or other Free Software products, because it's morally wrong to use proprietary software.
GNU
Isn't it also "morally wrong" to force your opinions on others? Or does your set of "morals" contain a double-standard that allows for loopholes when an issue is favorable to you?
Sorry, but the wet dream of a world where everyone types away on Star Office and browses the web with Lynx will _never_ be realized. Commercial software will never go away. --
If there's anyone the RIAA would go after, it's the people who make the clients. They (RIAA) could claim that the individual programmers involved in the making of Gnutella clients are acting as a vehical for piracy. The MPAA can jump on board too, because it also allows you to trade movies.
Individual users may be protected with the webserver loophole, but as Gnutella gains popularity along with ease of use (anyone ever use LimeWire?), the lawsuits will pop up. --
Firstly, as someone else stated, Microsoft just makes the software, not the device iteself.
Secondly, isn't Palm the biggest manufacturer (certainly the most recognized and popular, just look at the icon for this/. catagory) of PDA's? There really isn't many "bigger fish". Sure there's Compaq and others who make PDA's as well, but that's only a small part of their market.
Lastly, I don't think there's anything to worry about; what are the odds of this case actually winning? Somewhere between zero and nil.
Umm because they make money off the selling of the games, they don't make any money from selling the consoles themselves, actually they are sold for a loss.
This is true, but they also recieve royalties for each game that is released on their systems (publishing/licence fees). Sony's 1st party game sales totals pale in comparison to these licence fees.
Well, for a price-conciencious envornment, you can still pick up some old 2nd geration cards (such as the Voodoo 2's and 3's) for $20-80. They still run Quake (even Q2 with some tweaking) just fine, and for general computing they put out a good resolution at a good refresh rate. I picked up an old PCI V3 2000 for $40 at a computer show (which is more than i needed for a little server), and you can probably still get them at that price (if not lower) in quantity (even though 3dfx is out of buisness, there is no shortage of them).
The market for consumer electronics has come into the PC market because they saw opportuniny for profit. While there's nothing wrong with this, it creates a trend of making all these useless devices which end up sitting on store shelves contributing to the technology overflow.
Specificly, there is the trend of putting a microproccessor in every appliance in your house so your refrigerator can talk to your stove who can talk to your toaster who can talk to your washing machine. It doesn't have to be something as extreme as this; for example there's a banner on top of this very page for a digital camera is also an mp3 player. Why would I want to stick headphones in a camera? Why would I want to carry around a camera if I just wanted to listen to music? Besides the sheer novelty of the device, it's practicality is limited (especially when you consider the price). It'll sell, but not enough to keep a company afloat. While it may not matter to a big company who's already established in another market, it would matter to a smaller company trying to enter the market, because they would lose their investment in R&D and manufacturing.
In the eternal search for the next Big Thing, there's bound to be a lot of useless toys along the way.
...if you don't want government intervention, then why do you think it's better for the government to protect business method "patents"...
Wow, you missed the point.
Your logic is throwing me for a loop... sounds like you're saying by not doing anything, the gov't is "protecting" patents. Wait, so, what's the only other option? Eliminating the patents? And by doing that they would be serving... whom?
The government, by not intervening, would not be "protecting" buisness patents; they would be neutral on the issue. Neutrality does not equal protection of any specific group or entity! Neutrality is a good thing because it allows the flurishing of a marketplace which, as painfull as this may be, is neccisary.
Clearly, to me, there is a case for allowing business methods to be patented.
This is true. However, it's seems to only be favorable on a case-by-case basis. There should be a delineation between using the already existing and widely used free standards in a proprietary way (such as Amazon's One-Click shopping and Partners program), and something completely unique.
IMHO, if it's the latter case, then a company should have the rights to patent their business practice. However, if it's the former, than the patent should be denied.
The problem with this, is that who makes the call between what's completely unique and what's just a rehash of an old standard? Idealistically, this would be a committee of public-apointed representatives. Realistically, this could never happen, because just like any other elected official, they could be influenced by the big buisnesses.
So where do we draw the line (and it is a fine one at that)? Well, like I said, realistically it must be one of the two extremes; there really isn't any middle ground. In which case, I'd choose no government intervention. Granted, it may allow for such ridiculous patents as the Amazon ones, but it's better than a company not being able to protect their IP at all.
As for software patents, these are absolutely necessary in a competitive market. If you come up with the next killer app, why should you be disallowed from protecting what is rightfully yours?
It's issues like these that make me an
objectivist.
It may be a bit to early to ask this, but does anyone know what the chances of backwards compatability are? It would be nice if it could run your old PS2 games like the PS2 does now for PS1. Even better would be the 3-level backwards compatability all the way down to PS1. Just imagine playing Final Fantasy VII at 1024 res with all new fancy effects. The load times would probably be improved over that of the PS2 as well.
Who cares if Yahoo! or ebay go down because a few idiots manage to get in?
Well, a few important people care. The first of which being the companies themselves. The next day, the company reports an earning loss because of the downtime, which halted all incoming orders and pageviews (which gets them revenue from banners). Now this earnings loss could make the stock holders very upset, even if the stock only loses a point or two, when you have millions of shares in that company, you just lost millions of dollars so some pubescent kid in Bumblefuck, Utah could prove his 1337-ness.
Regardless of the stock price fluxuation, the story still gets on the news. Remember when ebay was taken down for a day or so? It was all over the news for the first few days after the fact, and then when they stopped running that story, they started to do those stupid "investigative reports" into how easy it is, and that "something should be done" to stop it. When Joe Sixpack sees how easy it is for someone to gain control of his Windows box, then Mr. Sixpack is going to then form the opinion that litigation is the way to solve the problem (although it may be suggested in the "report" a few times). This seems to be the biggest problem. The public can be swayed easily when they see how many holes there are in the systems they use every day.
Script-kiddes should also learn to run with scissors, point up and filed 'till its razor sharp, across a mine field.
I'm sure you've seen commercials for American Express' "Blue" card with the smart chip and boasting of enhanced security features. I recieved mine a few months ago and this is my experience with it:
A heavy package arrived on my doorstep, containing a suspicious item wrapped in lead. After peeling back the lead, I realized it was the new Blue Amex card! I figured that I may as well test out theses enhanced security features, so I went to a porn site to sign up for a trial memberhip using a disposable card number.
You may be wondering how you get the card number, and I wondered this myself, until I ran my thumb over the smart chip, and magicly it sprung to life! It scaned my thumbprint, and then out came a holographic image of a terminal, displaying the creation of the random credit card number! Apparently, it checks the position of the moon in it's orbit to form a 32-bit variable. After determining the variable, it checks the temperature of the room, distance above sea level, and speed of sound in the current atmosphere, and calculates a string that is multiplied by the old variable. The resulting number is then plotted according to y=sin(x), and numbers are chosen from 16 points on the graph. The sines are then inverted and strung together to finally form the elusive random credit card number!
But these systems are relient on external physical sources (i.e., a Lava Lamp), not an isolated bunch of code and transistors. It is impossible to have such true randomness in a software level because the software must have predefined definitions on what is random and what algorithms to use to generate "randomness". In order for it to be truly random there would have to be _no_ algorithm.
Boycotting the MPAA is really too far fetched to be done. Think about it, when was the last time you actually got excited over the premise of a movie? The Matrix? Episode One? Personally, I've got to the movies maybe once in the past year. Once. And the movie I did see wasn't even that good. But my point is, is that most people who care about DeCSS (and I'm steriotyping here) are like myself in that they don't take intrest in the crap that the movie companies are putting out today. Not morally but artisticly. For someone who goes to the movies once a year, that one ticket will not make any diffrence to anyone. There will still be millions of people pouring into the theaters to see "Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #4031", "Romantic Drama #9283" and "Teen Horror Flick #5591". Those people are the ones who would have to boycott in order to make a diffrence, but sadly, those people are generally apathetic to the whole idea, and you find this out if you've ever handed out those "Stop the MPAA" flyers outside of a movie theater. Most people just can't be bothered.
Slashdot Mirror
I have personally answered these questions through the use of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software which I use on the computer at my home when composing text.
Wow. Nice product placement.
Dragon Naturally Speaking - The Choice of Congressman Boucher!
--
That's really all it comes down to. You just need to learn what method of searching gets the best results. Personally, I use google and almost always find relevant pages on the first listing of results. After the second page, however, they get off-topic (what do you expect when you get 2,560,009 results?)
It helps if you just search for an exact phrase (i.e. "amount of trolling on slashdot in relation to the vernal equinox"). But then again, I didn't need to tell you that.
--
That would make it much more realistic. Same goes for the hiccups, coughing, sneezing, etc. When you are in a dangerous situation, any of these could get you killed.
But it still wouldn't be an equal playing ground, because most people would still be using the keyboard/mouse combo. And really, are you going to choose "realism" over winning?
--
Freenet seems to be more or less immune to this sort of monitoring at the present time, due to the distributing the files throughout the network.
Good, so now the ten people who use Freenet can sleep easy.
--
There are other and better ways to learn about the world if your afraid some poor child will miss some important documentary about the Holocaust or something, it's called a book.
That's true, but see, most kids today only read Harry Potter-type books. While there's nothing wrong with this, kids just aren't going to take a few days (weeks) to read a history book when they can just vegitate in front of a TV for an hour.
--
"Dependability and prerelease software are two concepts that don't belong in the same sentence"
Dependability and MICROSOFT are two words that don't belong in the sentence, save the occasion when the obligitory "lack thereof" is used.
When the article starts talking about the things that are really important, like stability and speed, the results of their findings are instantly dismissed because it's beta software. Well, um, beta should have a few bugs, granted, but it's not alpha software, where the entire thing crashes at every turn! It should have atleast _some_ stability.
"You need, essentially, a new or extremely recent computer, 128MB of RAM (at least; our test laptop was decked out with 320MB), 2GB of free disk space, and, if you're upgrading, you must have Windows 98 or above."
Two gigs?!?!? TWO GIGS!?!??! As if the RAM requirement wasn't horrendous enough. Two gigs is a lot for an OS to take up, even the most bloated. Even though most hard drives are atleast 30-40 GB these days, 2 GB is just insane. They go on to say:
"In fact, Microsoft says you'll have the best experience only if you buy a brand-new system with XP preinstalled."
If this isn't "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours" politics I don't know what is. Seriously, the tight relationship between Microsoft and hardware vendors could not be any more clear, and it really is a shame that the vendors would allow _any_ third party to have a big say in their chip design.
All in all, the only real diffrence I have seen since Win95 is more and more sounds and eye candy when you click on widgets and animated paperclips.
New and improved, eh?
--
My point is, everyone SHOULD use linux or other Free Software products, because it's morally wrong to use proprietary software.
GNU
Isn't it also "morally wrong" to force your opinions on others? Or does your set of "morals" contain a double-standard that allows for loopholes when an issue is favorable to you?
Sorry, but the wet dream of a world where everyone types away on Star Office and browses the web with Lynx will _never_ be realized. Commercial software will never go away.
--
Mr. Hanna was gone, deceased, dead, an ex animator, holding his breath forever, taking the long blink, taking the dirt nap, etc. three days ago.
Huh huh, I guess you could say he's "in-animate".
I'm going to hell for that.
--
isn't $26 million in ten days pretty darn good?
Well, when you consider the amount of money that goes into special effects and the actor's payrolls, it's not much at all.
$26 million will probably allow them to break even with production costs and not much else.
--
Yes, now if it crashes over a city, we have drunken cosmonauts to blame.
Oops.
--
If there's anyone the RIAA would go after, it's the people who make the clients. They (RIAA) could claim that the individual programmers involved in the making of Gnutella clients are acting as a vehical for piracy. The MPAA can jump on board too, because it also allows you to trade movies.
Individual users may be protected with the webserver loophole, but as Gnutella gains popularity along with ease of use (anyone ever use LimeWire?), the lawsuits will pop up.
--
--
Firstly, as someone else stated, Microsoft just makes the software, not the device iteself.
/. catagory) of PDA's? There really isn't many "bigger fish". Sure there's Compaq and others who make PDA's as well, but that's only a small part of their market.
Secondly, isn't Palm the biggest manufacturer (certainly the most recognized and popular, just look at the icon for this
Lastly, I don't think there's anything to worry about; what are the odds of this case actually winning? Somewhere between zero and nil.
--
Umm because they make money off the selling of the games, they don't make any money from selling the consoles themselves, actually they are sold for a loss.
This is true, but they also recieve royalties for each game that is released on their systems (publishing/licence fees). Sony's 1st party game sales totals pale in comparison to these licence fees.
--
Well, for a price-conciencious envornment, you can still pick up some old 2nd geration cards (such as the Voodoo 2's and 3's) for $20-80. They still run Quake (even Q2 with some tweaking) just fine, and for general computing they put out a good resolution at a good refresh rate. I picked up an old PCI V3 2000 for $40 at a computer show (which is more than i needed for a little server), and you can probably still get them at that price (if not lower) in quantity (even though 3dfx is out of buisness, there is no shortage of them).
--
The market for consumer electronics has come into the PC market because they saw opportuniny for profit. While there's nothing wrong with this, it creates a trend of making all these useless devices which end up sitting on store shelves contributing to the technology overflow.
Specificly, there is the trend of putting a microproccessor in every appliance in your house so your refrigerator can talk to your stove who can talk to your toaster who can talk to your washing machine. It doesn't have to be something as extreme as this; for example there's a banner on top of this very page for a digital camera is also an mp3 player. Why would I want to stick headphones in a camera? Why would I want to carry around a camera if I just wanted to listen to music? Besides the sheer novelty of the device, it's practicality is limited (especially when you consider the price). It'll sell, but not enough to keep a company afloat. While it may not matter to a big company who's already established in another market, it would matter to a smaller company trying to enter the market, because they would lose their investment in R&D and manufacturing.
In the eternal search for the next Big Thing, there's bound to be a lot of useless toys along the way.
--
Take your binary, make it into some work of creative art, a painting, an icon, a sculputure; something _physical_. Patent that. There you go.
I'd actually like to see this happen. If nothing else all concerned would get a good laugh.
--
...if you don't want government intervention, then why do you think it's better for the government to protect business method "patents"...
Wow, you missed the point.
Your logic is throwing me for a loop... sounds like you're saying by not doing anything, the gov't is "protecting" patents. Wait, so, what's the only other option? Eliminating the patents? And by doing that they would be serving... whom? The government, by not intervening, would not be "protecting" buisness patents; they would be neutral on the issue. Neutrality does not equal protection of any specific group or entity! Neutrality is a good thing because it allows the flurishing of a marketplace which, as painfull as this may be, is neccisary.
Simply put, smaller government = better.
--
Clearly, to me, there is a case for allowing business methods to be patented.
This is true. However, it's seems to only be favorable on a case-by-case basis. There should be a delineation between using the already existing and widely used free standards in a proprietary way (such as Amazon's One-Click shopping and Partners program), and something completely unique.
IMHO, if it's the latter case, then a company should have the rights to patent their business practice. However, if it's the former, than the patent should be denied.
The problem with this, is that who makes the call between what's completely unique and what's just a rehash of an old standard? Idealistically, this would be a committee of public-apointed representatives. Realistically, this could never happen, because just like any other elected official, they could be influenced by the big buisnesses.
So where do we draw the line (and it is a fine one at that)? Well, like I said, realistically it must be one of the two extremes; there really isn't any middle ground. In which case, I'd choose no government intervention. Granted, it may allow for such ridiculous patents as the Amazon ones, but it's better than a company not being able to protect their IP at all.
As for software patents, these are absolutely necessary in a competitive market. If you come up with the next killer app, why should you be disallowed from protecting what is rightfully yours?
It's issues like these that make me an objectivist.
--
It may be a bit to early to ask this, but does anyone know what the chances of backwards compatability are? It would be nice if it could run your old PS2 games like the PS2 does now for PS1. Even better would be the 3-level backwards compatability all the way down to PS1. Just imagine playing Final Fantasy VII at 1024 res with all new fancy effects. The load times would probably be improved over that of the PS2 as well.
--
Duh, you can't sell a linux box at Babbages. It's a completely diffrent market.
Although they could use the PS3 to develop the chip and _then_ port it into something usable in a home computer.
One more thing, the chip ("Cell") is probably not x86 compatable, and it wouldn't gain much following without binaries to run on it.
--
Who cares if Yahoo! or ebay go down because a few idiots manage to get in?
Well, a few important people care. The first of which being the companies themselves. The next day, the company reports an earning loss because of the downtime, which halted all incoming orders and pageviews (which gets them revenue from banners). Now this earnings loss could make the stock holders very upset, even if the stock only loses a point or two, when you have millions of shares in that company, you just lost millions of dollars so some pubescent kid in Bumblefuck, Utah could prove his 1337-ness.
Regardless of the stock price fluxuation, the story still gets on the news. Remember when ebay was taken down for a day or so? It was all over the news for the first few days after the fact, and then when they stopped running that story, they started to do those stupid "investigative reports" into how easy it is, and that "something should be done" to stop it. When Joe Sixpack sees how easy it is for someone to gain control of his Windows box, then Mr. Sixpack is going to then form the opinion that litigation is the way to solve the problem (although it may be suggested in the "report" a few times). This seems to be the biggest problem. The public can be swayed easily when they see how many holes there are in the systems they use every day.
Script-kiddes should also learn to run with scissors, point up and filed 'till its razor sharp, across a mine field.
--
I'm sure you've seen commercials for American Express' "Blue" card with the smart chip and boasting of enhanced security features. I recieved mine a few months ago and this is my experience with it:
A heavy package arrived on my doorstep, containing a suspicious item wrapped in lead. After peeling back the lead, I realized it was the new Blue Amex card! I figured that I may as well test out theses enhanced security features, so I went to a porn site to sign up for a trial memberhip using a disposable card number.
You may be wondering how you get the card number, and I wondered this myself, until I ran my thumb over the smart chip, and magicly it sprung to life! It scaned my thumbprint, and then out came a holographic image of a terminal, displaying the creation of the random credit card number! Apparently, it checks the position of the moon in it's orbit to form a 32-bit variable. After determining the variable, it checks the temperature of the room, distance above sea level, and speed of sound in the current atmosphere, and calculates a string that is multiplied by the old variable. The resulting number is then plotted according to y=sin(x), and numbers are chosen from 16 points on the graph. The sines are then inverted and strung together to finally form the elusive random credit card number!
Or something like that.
--
But these systems are relient on external physical sources (i.e., a Lava Lamp), not an isolated bunch of code and transistors. It is impossible to have such true randomness in a software level because the software must have predefined definitions on what is random and what algorithms to use to generate "randomness". In order for it to be truly random there would have to be _no_ algorithm.
--
Boycotting the MPAA is really too far fetched to be done. Think about it, when was the last time you actually got excited over the premise of a movie? The Matrix? Episode One? Personally, I've got to the movies maybe once in the past year. Once. And the movie I did see wasn't even that good. But my point is, is that most people who care about DeCSS (and I'm steriotyping here) are like myself in that they don't take intrest in the crap that the movie companies are putting out today. Not morally but artisticly. For someone who goes to the movies once a year, that one ticket will not make any diffrence to anyone. There will still be millions of people pouring into the theaters to see "Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #4031", "Romantic Drama #9283" and "Teen Horror Flick #5591". Those people are the ones who would have to boycott in order to make a diffrence, but sadly, those people are generally apathetic to the whole idea, and you find this out if you've ever handed out those "Stop the MPAA" flyers outside of a movie theater. Most people just can't be bothered.
--