Since the EU is wanting to enforce a policy where the computer manufacturers are responsible for recycling of the thrown out computers things like this are likely to move up on the agenda of computer companies. If computer companies are made to be responsible of recycling of old computers then they will go to any extent to find ways of reducing the costs of dealing with the old computers and still sound environmentally responsible. If computer companies aren't made to take on the responsibility then they are unlikely to use this new glue because "it's not their problem that recycling is expensive". Remember the car wasn't made people safe until Ralph Nader wrote his famous book.
If I can't visit a site without having to load a plug-in or activating Javascript then I will tend to steer clear. I know of one site that requires you to install shockwave to view their site and you can't see the html because there isn't any, even worse the company's market is Unix based, predominently AIX and there isn't even a plug-in for that platform - this is a serious problem. Before adding plugins to a website the following question should be asked:
- Can your audience run the plug-in?
- Do they have the authority to install it?
- Is their connection fast enough to download the plug-in?
- Why should the user go through the hassle just to see your site?
- Does your audience have the knowledge to install a plug-in?
- Why can't you make do with standard HTML?
- Is your connection really that fast? - go and try seeing your website from elsewhere
Yep, I am anti-plug-in and with good reason, though I will allow for a movie player that plays either MPEG, AVI or Quicktime - partly because movies are a missing element in the standard web file formats.
To get around this argument a government would need a complex system of taxation based on value to the enterprise using
It sounds like that in order for the taxing system to be effective it has to be compilicated, and if it is complicated it is going to expensive, so the government would be force to make the taxes high. This sort of action would be enough to create a public out cry from the universities and the developers.
Hmm, I wonder how many foundations and charities are going to start popping up because of thise. I would also be curious to know how Poland treats non-profit organizations?
First off governments want to be able to get their software free and thus represent the biggest center of software pirates around. Now when people start developing free open source software they want to be able to introduce some sort of tax that basically invalidates the whole process.
It seems strange that as an open source developer I would be taxed because I use the open source software. Also, if the software is being taxed so that the end price is the same as a commerical piece of software it is one way of killing the whole process or maybe creating an underground that is maintained by all of the intellectual minds in their country.
Taxes on open source is wrong - it is like taxing a charity and I reckon we should start a campaign on this issue.
How about offering on-line storage solutions> There are plenty of companies out there on the internet who offer such services: mydrive.com, idrive.com, freedrive.com. Also, the university could offer their own online storage facilities with backups (if the universirty wants to charge, then its their perogative).
For many students this isn't such a bad idea since their only computer is the one at the university's computer center. For the other students they could use zip disks, floppies and use a backup station to synchronize their disks with their on-line backup account.
Being so far down the list, I don't reckon anyone will get to see this:(
There are plenty of night clubs that will appreciate these things. Not only does the C-75 provide a greater range of colours than conventional disco lights, they also don't have plastic films that need replacing from time to time.
First it was making ISPs responsible for content, then it was piping all internet data via MI5 and now this!? The more I hear about this the less I want to return to live in that country. We all make a fuss about Cuba and China and their human rights, but the UK is starting to use George Orwell's 1984 as a guide book, rather than a list of warnings.
My campany Dollar Pharmcuticals Inc (DP) owns the patent on the whole human body. We did originally own a third of the DNA patents, but we have now bought out all the companies who owned the remaining DNA patents. This means that if you wish to generate any DNA based on our patents you will have to pay for it. Since we have realised that this is going to be a nightmare for people to calculate the costs we are producing a special one time offer:
This one time offer involves every living individual paying $1'000'000 for the rights to duplicate DNA. After this date you will be forced to see DP Inc to get an evalution on what rate you are duplicating DNA so that you may be billed appropriately. Also to avoid any problems, we have joined up with MPAA to copyright certain DNA sequences. If you are a found to contain this DNA sequence then you will be terminated. Excuses such as 'this is a natural random mutation' will not be excepted.
This is a request to patent a new language used for communication. The vocabulary would be described in a database known as the 'Oxford dictionary', though licences would be provided for third parties to be able to produce their own databases based on the same data. The language would be so straight forward that it could be used by any person, even someone without a computer degree. The language could be used to describe any experience imagined or real.
This new human compatible language would be called English, not to be confused with the other language called English. All similarities between English and any other language a purely incidental and should have no impact on the issuing of this patent.
The following is a request for a patent on a device called the 'Binary Calculation Engine'. This device is designed to do complex mathematical calculations based on what would be called instructions. These instructions would cause certain operations to be calculated or peformed in order to retrieve certain useful results. Also in order to be able to cause mass hesteria once every ten years a calculation error would be introduced and this would be blamed on the the user.
I will be using this technology to form a company called Igence.
One other approach would be to use such a field for habitat shielding. If you created a field around the habitat you would almost elminate the radiation in the living areas.
If someone could come up with a way of change the relative size of the field from left to right then the difference in field size would help steer the vehicle.
TO get the vehicle out of Earths orbit would simply take some field maninpulation so that the pole are orientated in such a way that it is slung out of Earth's atmosphere. One way would be to place the vehicle at one of the poles and the matching poles would create a natural push.
On the subject of travelling outside of the solar system, there are some scientists that believe that space is actually very full of magnetic fields and that field voids are very rare.
You can look at this case either with logic or with emotion and this will effect the opinion you develop. On the one side you have the general popultion wanting easy access to the music and on the other side you have the record companies saying that they want to protect the interests of their artists. While it is true that record companies do make billions from the music they sell, the also want to avoid a land-mark victory on the Napster side that might make it difficult to make money in the future. If the people feel that it is a free for all and the CD purchases don't really matter, then how are artists going to remunerated, irrespective of the existance of the record companies.
I would be willing to pay a monthly charge for use of Napster, though I would have to evaluate the business model before making this choice.
The question should be which is the important decision here the emotional one or the 'logical' one?
It looks like my fears weren't unfounded. I mentioned this fear when the news was first mentioned. Sun is very much like Microsoft in this way, in the sense that they can't take a working technology and leave it as it is. Then again Sun has their own OS, Solaris, and by installing it on the Cube would show how great the OS, in their point of view.
First off I would be interested to know the publisher's slant on the issue.
Next, like most people I would be annoyed if I picked up a book that was partly there and partly not. If it is really a cost issue then the publisher should do like O'Reilly and offer a choice of a printed version or a CD version of the text. Another way that can be used to reduce the cost of a book is to use cheaper paper - like that used in paper-back novels. If using this sort of paper meant reduced costs along the line, then I would certainly consider buying the book - books tends to go out of date so fast that the bleached white paper is almost a waste of resources and cost so much. There was Unix guide that used this cheaper paper and for a 1000 pages cost on $25 (canadian) and that is cheap for a computer book here in Canada, most cost around $60 (Canadian).
'Fast' is an implementation issue and performance will improve if the underlying implementation of the spec is good. OpenGL has the advantage in that it is not just for games, it has many high-end applications. OpenGL is also portable and being open 3DFX can actually give their 10c worth. Direct X, or should I say Direct-Draw, while being great for games and well supported has the disadvantage of being Windows only and not really recognised by the high-end apps.
Software companies are no longer wanting to bet on one horse, so if there is a way to be able to bet on several horses at a time, for the same cost, then they will. OpenGL is such a solution and means that the porting cost is less than something written in Direct-X.
3DFX is also a hardware company and when most of their competitors are offering OpenGL based solutions, then they will want to go with the solution that is selling. It is easier, and cheaper, for MS to interface Direct-X to OpenGL, than it is for 3DFX to the other way around.
Sure spam can be considered another form of advertising, but the difference is that there are no ethics in this form. There are various examples of lack of ethics in spam:
- since it costs nothing it is sent in huge quantities and sometimes multiple times
- spammers are in the majority anonymous because they realise that this form of advertising is unpopular
- they will not respect your right to be removed from their mailing list even when asked
- it is not even marked as an advert to ease filtering
Advertisers of the solid world have a code of ethics, and will respect people's rights if enough people complain (they have the clients reputation to worry about) spammers don't and this is the major issue.
The only form of advertising that I will accept with my e-mails are those I have signed up to (opt-in) and those banners on the webpages of sites such as hotmail ( the owner isn't an issue).
My Netscape e-mail account has become unusable. I have probably share the e-mail address twice, though it doesn't stop 500k of e-mails being there when I check it once every two months.
On the one hand you have the definition of the API or protocol, this may be well thought out or not. On the other hand you have the implementation of the protocol or API and this may be well done or not.
A good protocol can feel bad if nobody has taken time to write good code for it. At the same time a bad protocol can feel good if it has been optimized to the point of perfection.
This also goes to explain why one implementation of X11 is fast compared to another implementation on the same machine. If you aren't happy with the implementation improve it.
Also as long as it doesn't effect the specification an implementation can always be optimized with causing too much grief. Now try optimizing the specification and just watch who screams!
Something is a little odd here. By accepting to receive the CueCat you sort of agreed to the original agreement. DC changed their agreement and then mailed everyone. At what point did the second agreement become a contract agreed by both parties, after all I never exchanged anything the second time round. Thus while the first agreement is legal, I reckon that the second is null and void - or am I missing some absurdity in the USA legal system?
NTFS support in Linux kernel replies: "Sue? Me? Wait a minute! I'm not a person or corporation. Wait at least 'til I develop my own Artificial Intelligence. Then you can probably sue me. If I don't take over the world by that time, that is."
The other day my NT crashed and burned. There was no way to reboot into NT, so I feared data loss. Luckily I had a copy of Linux on CD (designed to run without installation), so I booted up with it. Once booted, I mounted the NT partitions and then 'ftp'ed the data to somewhere safe. Since that day I have got the system support guys hooked on the idea of using a copy of the Linux CD as an NT data rescure solution.
Oh the irony of it all. The next thing we will hear is that Linux can't be used for rescuing NT;)
I can understand that the IOC wants to protect their revenue stream. From what I can tell in the article the athletes would probably be making money from publishing their diaries and thus could be considered as journalists and if allowed could create a whole bunch of loop-holes that would be a nightmare to patch. At the same time if an athlete publish the journal not-for-profit, on their own website or on the website of the IOC, then I reckon that they should be allowed to publish.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the EU is wanting to enforce a policy where the computer manufacturers are responsible for recycling of the thrown out computers things like this are likely to move up on the agenda of computer companies. If computer companies are made to be responsible of recycling of old computers then they will go to any extent to find ways of reducing the costs of dealing with the old computers and still sound environmentally responsible. If computer companies aren't made to take on the responsibility then they are unlikely to use this new glue because "it's not their problem that recycling is expensive". Remember the car wasn't made people safe until Ralph Nader wrote his famous book.
If I can't visit a site without having to load a plug-in or activating Javascript then I will tend to steer clear. I know of one site that requires you to install shockwave to view their site and you can't see the html because there isn't any, even worse the company's market is Unix based, predominently AIX and there isn't even a plug-in for that platform - this is a serious problem. Before adding plugins to a website the following question should be asked:
- Can your audience run the plug-in?
- Do they have the authority to install it?
- Is their connection fast enough to download the plug-in?
- Why should the user go through the hassle just to see your site?
- Does your audience have the knowledge to install a plug-in?
- Why can't you make do with standard HTML?
- Is your connection really that fast? - go and try seeing your website from elsewhere
Yep, I am anti-plug-in and with good reason, though I will allow for a movie player that plays either MPEG, AVI or Quicktime - partly because movies are a missing element in the standard web file formats.
To get around this argument a government would need a complex system of taxation based on value to the enterprise using
It sounds like that in order for the taxing system to be effective it has to be compilicated, and if it is complicated it is going to expensive, so the government would be force to make the taxes high. This sort of action would be enough to create a public out cry from the universities and the developers.
Hmm, I wonder how many foundations and charities are going to start popping up because of thise. I would also be curious to know how Poland treats non-profit organizations?
First off governments want to be able to get their software free and thus represent the biggest center of software pirates around. Now when people start developing free open source software they want to be able to introduce some sort of tax that basically invalidates the whole process.
It seems strange that as an open source developer I would be taxed because I use the open source software. Also, if the software is being taxed so that the end price is the same as a commerical piece of software it is one way of killing the whole process or maybe creating an underground that is maintained by all of the intellectual minds in their country.
Taxes on open source is wrong - it is like taxing a charity and I reckon we should start a campaign on this issue.
How about sending the author of the article a link on some documentation on NetInfo, at least that way they can make more informed article next time.
For many students this isn't such a bad idea since their only computer is the one at the university's computer center. For the other students they could use zip disks, floppies and use a backup station to synchronize their disks with their on-line backup account.
Being so far down the list, I don't reckon anyone will get to see this :(
There are plenty of night clubs that will appreciate these things. Not only does the C-75 provide a greater range of colours than conventional disco lights, they also don't have plastic films that need replacing from time to time.
If astronauts were give elasticated body-suits then they would be forced to use those muscles to stop from folding into a ball.
First it was making ISPs responsible for content, then it was piping all internet data via MI5 and now this!? The more I hear about this the less I want to return to live in that country. We all make a fuss about Cuba and China and their human rights, but the UK is starting to use George Orwell's 1984 as a guide book, rather than a list of warnings.
My campany Dollar Pharmcuticals Inc (DP) owns the patent on the whole human body. We did originally own a third of the DNA patents, but we have now bought out all the companies who owned the remaining DNA patents. This means that if you wish to generate any DNA based on our patents you will have to pay for it. Since we have realised that this is going to be a nightmare for people to calculate the costs we are producing a special one time offer:
This one time offer involves every living individual paying $1'000'000 for the rights to duplicate DNA. After this date you will be forced to see DP Inc to get an evalution on what rate you are duplicating DNA so that you may be billed appropriately. Also to avoid any problems, we have joined up with MPAA to copyright certain DNA sequences. If you are a found to contain this DNA sequence then you will be terminated. Excuses such as 'this is a natural random mutation' will not be excepted.
This is a request to patent a new language used for communication. The vocabulary would be described in a database known as the 'Oxford dictionary', though licences would be provided for third parties to be able to produce their own databases based on the same data. The language would be so straight forward that it could be used by any person, even someone without a computer degree. The language could be used to describe any experience imagined or real.
This new human compatible language would be called English, not to be confused with the other language called English. All similarities between English and any other language a purely incidental and should have no impact on the issuing of this patent.
The following is a request for a patent on a device called the 'Binary Calculation Engine'. This device is designed to do complex mathematical calculations based on what would be called instructions. These instructions would cause certain operations to be calculated or peformed in order to retrieve certain useful results. Also in order to be able to cause mass hesteria once every ten years a calculation error would be introduced and this would be blamed on the the user.
I will be using this technology to form a company called Igence.
One other approach would be to use such a field for habitat shielding. If you created a field around the habitat you would almost elminate the radiation in the living areas.
If someone could come up with a way of change the relative size of the field from left to right then the difference in field size would help steer the vehicle.
TO get the vehicle out of Earths orbit would simply take some field maninpulation so that the pole are orientated in such a way that it is slung out of Earth's atmosphere. One way would be to place the vehicle at one of the poles and the matching poles would create a natural push.
On the subject of travelling outside of the solar system, there are some scientists that believe that space is actually very full of magnetic fields and that field voids are very rare.
You can look at this case either with logic or with emotion and this will effect the opinion you develop. On the one side you have the general popultion wanting easy access to the music and on the other side you have the record companies saying that they want to protect the interests of their artists. While it is true that record companies do make billions from the music they sell, the also want to avoid a land-mark victory on the Napster side that might make it difficult to make money in the future. If the people feel that it is a free for all and the CD purchases don't really matter, then how are artists going to remunerated, irrespective of the existance of the record companies.
I would be willing to pay a monthly charge for use of Napster, though I would have to evaluate the business model before making this choice.
The question should be which is the important decision here the emotional one or the 'logical' one?
It looks like my fears weren't unfounded. I mentioned this fear when the news was first mentioned. Sun is very much like Microsoft in this way, in the sense that they can't take a working technology and leave it as it is. Then again Sun has their own OS, Solaris, and by installing it on the Cube would show how great the OS, in their point of view.
First off I would be interested to know the publisher's slant on the issue.
Next, like most people I would be annoyed if I picked up a book that was partly there and partly not. If it is really a cost issue then the publisher should do like O'Reilly and offer a choice of a printed version or a CD version of the text. Another way that can be used to reduce the cost of a book is to use cheaper paper - like that used in paper-back novels. If using this sort of paper meant reduced costs along the line, then I would certainly consider buying the book - books tends to go out of date so fast that the bleached white paper is almost a waste of resources and cost so much. There was Unix guide that used this cheaper paper and for a 1000 pages cost on $25 (canadian) and that is cheap for a computer book here in Canada, most cost around $60 (Canadian).
You may be interested in the work being done over at SGI: OpenGL® ABI for Linux
'Fast' is an implementation issue and performance will improve if the underlying implementation of the spec is good. OpenGL has the advantage in that it is not just for games, it has many high-end applications. OpenGL is also portable and being open 3DFX can actually give their 10c worth. Direct X, or should I say Direct-Draw, while being great for games and well supported has the disadvantage of being Windows only and not really recognised by the high-end apps.
Software companies are no longer wanting to bet on one horse, so if there is a way to be able to bet on several horses at a time, for the same cost, then they will. OpenGL is such a solution and means that the porting cost is less than something written in Direct-X.
3DFX is also a hardware company and when most of their competitors are offering OpenGL based solutions, then they will want to go with the solution that is selling. It is easier, and cheaper, for MS to interface Direct-X to OpenGL, than it is for 3DFX to the other way around.
Sure spam can be considered another form of advertising, but the difference is that there are no ethics in this form. There are various examples of lack of ethics in spam:
- since it costs nothing it is sent in huge quantities and sometimes multiple times
- spammers are in the majority anonymous because they realise that this form of advertising is unpopular
- they will not respect your right to be removed from their mailing list even when asked
- it is not even marked as an advert to ease filtering
Advertisers of the solid world have a code of ethics, and will respect people's rights if enough people complain (they have the clients reputation to worry about) spammers don't and this is the major issue.
The only form of advertising that I will accept with my e-mails are those I have signed up to (opt-in) and those banners on the webpages of sites such as hotmail ( the owner isn't an issue).
My Netscape e-mail account has become unusable. I have probably share the e-mail address twice, though it doesn't stop 500k of e-mails being there when I check it once every two months.
On the one hand you have the definition of the API or protocol, this may be well thought out or not. On the other hand you have the implementation of the protocol or API and this may be well done or not.
A good protocol can feel bad if nobody has taken time to write good code for it. At the same time a bad protocol can feel good if it has been optimized to the point of perfection.
This also goes to explain why one implementation of X11 is fast compared to another implementation on the same machine. If you aren't happy with the implementation improve it.
Also as long as it doesn't effect the specification an implementation can always be optimized with causing too much grief. Now try optimizing the specification and just watch who screams!
Something is a little odd here. By accepting to receive the CueCat you sort of agreed to the original agreement. DC changed their agreement and then mailed everyone. At what point did the second agreement become a contract agreed by both parties, after all I never exchanged anything the second time round. Thus while the first agreement is legal, I reckon that the second is null and void - or am I missing some absurdity in the USA legal system?
Hmm, father like son.
The other day my NT crashed and burned. There was no way to reboot into NT, so I feared data loss. Luckily I had a copy of Linux on CD (designed to run without installation), so I booted up with it. Once booted, I mounted the NT partitions and then 'ftp'ed the data to somewhere safe. Since that day I have got the system support guys hooked on the idea of using a copy of the Linux CD as an NT data rescure solution.
;)
Oh the irony of it all. The next thing we will hear is that Linux can't be used for rescuing NT
I can understand that the IOC wants to protect their revenue stream. From what I can tell in the article the athletes would probably be making money from publishing their diaries and thus could be considered as journalists and if allowed could create a whole bunch of loop-holes that would be a nightmare to patch. At the same time if an athlete publish the journal not-for-profit, on their own website or on the website of the IOC, then I reckon that they should be allowed to publish.