The main problem I have with mp3s (in fact, the only thing stopping me mp3ing my entire album collection) is that the annoying gaps you get between tracks which makes it sound awful if you happen to be listening to a concept album where there isn't necessarily a break of music between songs. Of course, you could turn the album into one BIG mp3 but then you can't choose which track you want from it (ie, mpeg files need a TOC!). Does anyone know if there's any plans to fix this in mp4?
Compared to the quantity of mp3's, funny movies, half-uninstalled software (got I hate RPMS - time to switch to debian), quake maps, KDE bloat, etc..etc.., I'm not *that* worried about 128x128 icons. In fact, if they're going to be scaled I'd rather they were bigger than that. They've also FINALLY got anti-aliased fonts right (RISC-OS users, shush:-)) which means it may be the first resolution-independant desktop:)
Much as I hate Microsoft as much as the next corporation, some of the features in Office (particularly Excell) are gobsmacking. (Win32, on the other hand, is bollocks, but credit is due for Office). This is why they have a monopoly.
Microsoft have even been spotted posting RFC's and drafts for open standards recently. They've finally started behaving themselves (thank God).
Apple have no right to tell us what we can and cannot put on our desktop. If they can't sell products on merit of being better products then they clearly can't keep up with technology. Why doesn't MacOS have themes yet?
I actually see Apple being a great deal more of a threat to open-standards than M$ (remember the Indeo codec?).
Getting credit for their hard work (salary * hours invested, perhaps even a commendation) is fine. Claiming to be the only one out of 6 billion possible inventors to have had the idea is wrong.
I for one have seen one of MY (and probably many other people's) ideas patented by Shinysoft, simply because they were obnoxious enough to patent it. Now I can't implement my own work in the United States. Patents are wrong and unfit for the 21st century.
"Intellectual property" is a contradiction in terms my friend.
We have these things called universities where people earn quite respectable salaries innovating for a living. There's your compensation (that and the fame of being the inventor).
The thing is, if fractal compression hadn't been invented, we would never have known about it and perhaps someone else would eventually have had the same idea. Instead, the system HAS been invented and has now become standard, rather, a REQUIREMENT for viewing most websites. If patent law allowed a company to monopolize on this it's nothing short of taxation.
Here's an idea - the patent office should estimate a value for patents as they are registered, based on the innovation and work involved (NOT its success), such that 3rd parties can then cooperate to "free" the patent by paying for it.
ok, so it's a bit pie in the sky in this day and age, but I'm all for the idea of saving a few lives and perhaps even stopping the odd boy-racer asshole in a pink escort from driving into your rear end at 110mph.
There have been occasions, RARE occasions when UF has been very funny. There are also regular occasions where UF is completely unfunny. Sometimes embarassingly bad, "I can't believe I've actually gone to this site to read this drivel" bad. It would probably help matters if Illiad could draw, or at least develop a style not associable with children.
On the other hand, I've never failed to laugh at Dilbert, because they have always had a continuous flow of good ideas.
Actually, you have a point here. Why is everyone here so worked up about who "Time Magazine" votes as person of the year, when noone here READS (or cares to read) it! I've certainly never popped into the newsagent with the intention of buying that glossy drivel to partake in its literary masturbation.
It's a "fashionable" magazine for people with no identity, where the significance of "Man of the year" stretches about as far as its glossy back cover which is soon to be a crumpled up in a few peoples dustbins. There's 6 billion "person of the year"'s on this planet, and one rich billionaire (yes, that's why Time like him) does not constitute any more of a person than the next guy.
I know that there's a howto on getting linux to work with NT(FS) - you have to take an image of the lilo bootsector and turn it into a file which the NT bootloader can use. I'm not sure if W2K has the same functionality as a bootloader.
An intelligent (and bastard-like) Microsoft would make the loader such you need the professional edition to do this so Linux users all have to go spend 600-odd bucks just to dual boot.
Just because Amazon were the first to implement something doesn't mean that noone else had thought of it, and more importantly, that someone else wouldn't have the same idea. It's a quick, neat idea with about a day of development time, not years of slaving and investment in a garden shed.
There are *millions* of programmers on this planet who have good ideas every day and their ability to innovate should not be restricted by companies who can AFFORD to patent something in the first place. I for one have programmed LOTS of things that haven't been done before, but I have no right to stop others from doing the same.
Patents were designed to protect innovation and their inventors - not shareholders and investors. This scenario is a clear example of a faliure of the patent system.
Thank god you can't patent a procedure in the UK (although legislation is being pushed that way:(
It takes a split second flash of inspiration to conceive an "invention". It takes hours/years of hard work by a large number of people to implement it. The mere conception of an idea shouldn't be enough to pay your existance for a lifetime. People who are naturally inventive and enjoy development will not require money for their constructive daydreaming.
As for the complexity of the patent, it is no less than a credit-card lookup.
cookies : Server assigns a client identifier to client in order to store information about the client and retrieve such information on receipt of that identifier.
amazon : Server assigns a client identifier to client in order to store credit info about the client and retrieve such information on receipt of that identifier.
This patent by Amazon has made e-commerce illegal in the US.
Does anyone know of an organized effort to educate the American patent office? Better still, to lobby a review on the patent system itself. This blatent abuse of peoples rights to be productive means that the patents are flawed.
Since anyone under the age of 18 cannot be bound by a contract, they're just asking that a guardian take responsibility for the act of *downloading* the software from *their* sites. It doesn't say anything about using using the software.
Otherwise corel could be in court for distributing the words "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" to children on a mass scale. Presumably, once you have downloaded the software yourself, YOU can redistribute it to whoever you like (but now YOU are responsible for who gets it!).
Whether this is violation of the GPL or not I don't know, but does anybody have a better suggestion? (apart from "stop being so anal, cos it'll never go to court anyway":-))
as a result of one individual who was brought up in that country. It's a bit harsh for some casual grafitti.
I imagine the $40,000 accounts for a massive investigation into finding the culprit so they could save face. They probably went on to prepare their legal case on the subject before even contacting the culprit.
Rather than do what most ISPs who suffer a cracked site would do, which is to just patch the hole, get the original site from backups, send a complaint to the upstream provider it came from, possibly block that provider out for a while and compensate the owner of the site if they get arsey about it. That's 2 hours work by one techie (eg $50). These things happen and there's not much you can do about it.
But no, whitehouse.gov is petrified of the teenagers they failed to educate (where $40000 would be more useful). unwise and stupid.
until someone breaks in and gets off with the password file.
Until an employ resigns and remembers everyones passwords.
You can't change the passwords of 20000 users. You could patch the hole they a cracker got in through, but that would be too late - the file is out there on their lame IRC channels. You could expect users to have VERY secure passwords.. why can't I just type my username backwards? you're being over the top!
No. you would at least need some other information to authenticate.
Perhaps you could use cookies that are granted on account generation.
The fact that McDonnell-Douglas are prepared to testify that the fix is "nonobvious" suggests that none of McDonnell-Douglas' employees have basic common sense. And these guys make aeroplanes..
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The main problem I have with mp3s (in fact, the only thing stopping me mp3ing my entire album collection) is that the annoying gaps you get between tracks which makes it sound awful if you happen to be listening to a concept album where there isn't necessarily a break of music between songs. Of course, you could turn the album into one BIG mp3 but then you can't choose which track you want from it (ie, mpeg files need a TOC!). Does anyone know if there's any plans to fix this in mp4?
What use is a secret message when you could just crack their web server instead? :-)
Much as I've always been against the monopoly, now Microsoft aren't in so much power am I the only one who's slightly saddened to see Bill step down?
At least up until now M$ has been run by a true (although misguided) geek. Balmer scares me.
So long and thanks for all the fish Bill.
Compared to the quantity of mp3's, funny movies, half-uninstalled software (got I hate RPMS - time to switch to debian), quake maps, KDE bloat, etc..etc.., I'm not *that* worried about 128x128 icons. In fact, if they're going to be scaled I'd rather they were bigger than that. They've also FINALLY got anti-aliased fonts right (RISC-OS users, shush :-)) which means it may be the first resolution-independant desktop :)
Plug and Play?
The taskbar?
DirectX?
Um, Office?
Much as I hate Microsoft as much as the next corporation, some of the features in Office (particularly Excell) are gobsmacking. (Win32, on the other hand, is bollocks, but credit is due for Office). This is why they have a monopoly.
Microsoft have even been spotted posting RFC's and drafts for open standards recently. They've finally started behaving themselves (thank God).
Apple have no right to tell us what we can and cannot put on our desktop. If they can't sell products on merit of being better products then they clearly can't keep up with technology. Why doesn't MacOS have themes yet?
I actually see Apple being a great deal more of a threat to open-standards than M$ (remember the Indeo codec?).
"inspired" is a better word.
Getting credit for their hard work (salary * hours invested, perhaps even a commendation) is fine. Claiming to be the only one out of 6 billion possible inventors to have had the idea is wrong.
I for one have seen one of MY (and probably many other people's) ideas patented by Shinysoft, simply because they were obnoxious enough to patent it. Now I can't implement my own work in the United States. Patents are wrong and unfit for the 21st century.
"Intellectual property" is a contradiction in terms my friend.
We have these things called universities where people earn quite respectable salaries innovating for a living. There's your compensation (that and the fame of being the inventor).
The thing is, if fractal compression hadn't been invented, we would never have known about it and perhaps someone else would eventually have had the same idea. Instead, the system HAS been invented and has now become standard, rather, a REQUIREMENT for viewing most websites. If patent law allowed a company to monopolize on this it's nothing short of taxation.
Here's an idea - the patent office should estimate a value for patents as they are registered, based on the innovation and work involved (NOT its success), such that 3rd parties can then cooperate to "free" the patent by paying for it.
ok, so it's a bit pie in the sky in this day and age, but I'm all for the idea of saving a few lives and perhaps even stopping the odd boy-racer asshole in a pink escort from driving into your rear end at 110mph.
There have been occasions, RARE occasions when UF has been very funny. There are also regular occasions where UF is completely unfunny. Sometimes embarassingly bad, "I can't believe I've actually gone to this site to read this drivel" bad. It would probably help matters if Illiad could draw, or at least develop a style not associable with children.
On the other hand, I've never failed to laugh at Dilbert, because they have always had a continuous flow of good ideas.
Just not for newbies :)
Actually, you have a point here. Why is everyone here so worked up about who "Time Magazine" votes as person of the year, when noone here READS (or cares to read) it! I've certainly never popped into the newsagent with the intention of buying that glossy drivel to partake in its literary masturbation.
It's a "fashionable" magazine for people with no identity, where the significance of "Man of the year" stretches about as far as its glossy back cover which is soon to be a crumpled up in a few peoples dustbins. There's 6 billion "person of the year"'s on this planet, and one rich billionaire (yes, that's why Time like him) does not constitute any more of a person than the next guy.
Nominate yourselves. You all deserve it.
I know that there's a howto on getting linux to work with NT(FS) - you have to take an image of the lilo bootsector and turn it into a file which the NT bootloader can use. I'm not sure if W2K has the same functionality as a bootloader.
An intelligent (and bastard-like) Microsoft would make the loader such you need the professional edition to do this so Linux users all have to go spend 600-odd bucks just to dual boot.
Just because Amazon were the first to implement something doesn't mean that noone else had thought of it, and more importantly, that someone else wouldn't have the same idea. It's a quick, neat idea with about a day of development time, not years of slaving and investment in a garden shed.
:(
There are *millions* of programmers on this planet who have good ideas every day and their ability to innovate should not be restricted by companies who can AFFORD to patent something in the first place. I for one have programmed LOTS of things that haven't been done before, but I have no right to stop others from doing the same.
Patents were designed to protect innovation and their inventors - not shareholders and investors. This scenario is a clear example of a faliure of the patent system.
Thank god you can't patent a procedure in the UK (although legislation is being pushed that way
tongue-in-cheek, like. It might generate a good reaction :-)
It takes a split second flash of inspiration to conceive an "invention". It takes hours/years of hard work by a large number of people to implement it. The mere conception of an idea shouldn't be enough to pay your existance for a lifetime. People who are naturally inventive and enjoy development will not require money for their constructive daydreaming.
As for the complexity of the patent, it is no less than a credit-card lookup.
cookies : Server assigns a client identifier to client in order to store information about the client and retrieve such information on receipt of that identifier.
amazon : Server assigns a client identifier to client in order to store credit info about the client and retrieve such information on receipt of that identifier.
This patent by Amazon has made e-commerce illegal in the US.
Does anyone know of an organized effort to educate the American patent office? Better still, to lobby a review on the patent system itself. This blatent abuse of peoples rights to be productive means that the patents are flawed.
It should be possible to revoke bogus patents.
I'd like to see a court case involving someone trying to prove he was the first person to have the idea of going for a dump :-)
Since anyone under the age of 18 cannot be bound by a contract, they're just asking that a guardian take responsibility for the act of *downloading* the software from *their* sites. It doesn't say anything about using using the software.
:-))
Otherwise corel could be in court for distributing the words "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" to children on a mass scale. Presumably, once you have downloaded the software yourself, YOU can redistribute it to whoever you like (but now YOU are responsible for who gets it!).
Whether this is violation of the GPL or not I don't know, but does anybody have a better suggestion? (apart from "stop being so anal, cos it'll never go to court anyway"
am I the only person who's getting this page in BROWN??
> The whole country looks stupid
as a result of one individual who was brought up in that country. It's a bit harsh for some casual grafitti.
I imagine the $40,000 accounts for a massive investigation into finding the culprit so they could save face. They probably went on to prepare their legal case on the subject before even contacting the culprit.
Rather than do what most ISPs who suffer a cracked site would do, which is to just patch the hole, get the original site from backups, send a complaint to the upstream provider it came from, possibly block that provider out for a while and compensate the owner of the site if they get arsey about it. That's 2 hours work by one techie (eg $50). These things happen and there's not much you can do about it.
But no, whitehouse.gov is petrified of the teenagers they failed to educate (where $40000 would be more useful). unwise and stupid.
just a bit of pedanticism..
:-(
:-)
Glide significantly out-performs Open-GL (open-gl is just too complicated, but I thought everyone knows this).
As for the licensing.. I know
roll out crystal space..
until someone breaks in and gets off with the password file.
Until an employ resigns and remembers everyones passwords.
You can't change the passwords of 20000 users. You could patch the hole they a cracker got in through, but that would be too late - the file is out there on their lame IRC channels. You could expect users to have VERY secure passwords.. why can't I just type my username backwards? you're being over the top!
No. you would at least need some other information to authenticate.
Perhaps you could use cookies that are granted on account generation.
"So, Mr Tompkins.. do you want the GOOD news, or the BAD news?" :-)
The fact that McDonnell-Douglas are prepared to testify that the fix is "nonobvious" suggests that none of McDonnell-Douglas' employees have basic common sense. And these guys make aeroplanes..