He also wasn't serious, he was grandstanding for the hardliners back home who had the power to remove him in a very real and permanent way. Likewise, Ballmer is talking things up for the shareholders and Bill, but he is stupid enough to believe what he's saying.
Firefox is a dog on every machine I've tried it on. I do have a wide range of older hardware and on even the 1Ghz machines it's unusable. I am told that FF is fast enough by people who claim to be using 350MHz machines but on my 400MHz there is a pause of a second or more after picking a menu option before anything happens. After about ten minutes of that FF gets dumped.
I have no idea why FF is so slow, but until it's not, Opera remains the only non-open-source app on my machine. Actually, FF is pretty ugly too, so it would have to be a lot better than Opera before I'd switch.
Just because you have a patent doesn't mean that you are entitled to lots of cash.
That's not the issue. The issue is that when people who already have a lot of cash are given patents like this they can use them to threaten the competition regardless of the validity of the patent, because they can afford to take you to court and bankrupt you while you wait for the pathetic legal system to throw out their case. Which is not even a given since the judge will know squat about the issues or IT or basically anything else for that matter and will almost certainly decide the case on the basis of which lawyer s/he liked more.
MS don't apply for these sort of trivial patents in order to get money, they do it to prevent you from making money.
In short, if you don't think the patent system needs to be reformed, and drastically, then you don't understand the patent system (or you're one of the billionaires making money of the current mess).
It certainly would be wrong, on the other hand, to let O'Gara's trash go unanswered.
And this is the crux of the matter: O'Gara was a repeat offender and previous attempts to calmly point out that she is a fool and so forth had recieved the "oh, good, lots of people will read her column now because she's `controversial'" treatment. In other words, acting as you suggest had mearly encouraged her, indeed I suspect that's why she thought that she could get away with the load of tripe she did eventually get flamed over.
When unethical journalists like Maureen O'Gara post a smear job, the best thing we can do is soberly and succintly object to it in a polite way, since outrage doesn't do anything to help anyone's cause.
There are limits, particularly on an nth offense (where n>4). Anyone who read the article in question could not possibly think the response unfair, fanatical or unreasonable. If I walk up to you and say, "Did you know that that woman beside you is a crack-whore?" and her husband smacks me one, are you going to tell the husband that he should have tapped the guy on the shoulder and said "I say, old chap, that is rather stepping across the line a bit."?
bringing the number from 4 to 16, half the number PowerPC has always had
Actually, the 386 programming model only has one (1, count it, 1) general purpose register: EBX. All the other registers suffer from side-effects or are the only allowable target for certain (very common) instructions. This is one of the many reasons the Intel chips are so hot and slow: the compilers have to thrash data all over the shop to get things done which modern processors can just do in whatever registers are free. The difference this makes to code efficency is huge.
Anyone out there have any data on how common natural diamonds actually are? DeBeers and co control the supply but diamond fields are huge; is there any reality to the idea that these gems are rare?
Well, it's kind of a big subject. As for Wolfram's book -I have it here and it's a exercise in ego-boost rather than anything significant in the realm of science.
If you can ask that then there's nothing I can say; we obviously have vastly different views of human nature. I don't believe that the public "tolerates" copyright at all. The public believe in copyright and support it for the most part. It is an innate belief for most people that their work is their own. Even the pirates on IRC get worked up if someone copys an archive of stolen material they made. Cognative dissonance aside, this shows the rarity of people who mearly tolerate copyright.
Dale Hagberg, a 38-year-old quadriplegic who "worked a computer mouse with his mouth and tongue on Saturday, April 9, to shoot at an antelope on a game reserve near Boeme, Texas, while lying in bed in Ligonier, a town in northeastern Indiana."
I'd certainly be open to change on the 50 years bit, but not on the life part.
Would you not create that work if you had to put up with it?
Maybe not. I can't imagine that A.A. Milne would have been very enthusiastic if he'd known that Winnie the Pooh was going to be buggered for decades by the Disney Corp.
I personally am trying to sell a book to publishers at the moment. I would not bother if part of the deal involved Peter Jackson getting his hands on it and doing to it what he did to LotR. After I'm dead, well, I'm not so worried.
The odds of creating a work with economic value, much less value for more than a year or so, are tremendously low.
Open any newspaper every day of the week: it seems to be happening quite often. The fact that it's hard to get pubished overlooks the reality of the modern market for all sorts of creative work. There are literally millions of people around the world making money off copyright today. Not all of them deserve it, and not all who deserve to are.
Whatever way you cut it, I'm not going to agree that it would be right for an author to create a popular work which makes perhaps billions for some media corp. while his kids get nothing simply because he got run over the day after it was published.
Copyright is about reward and control, nothing else. If you give up control then you get reward in return; if you want reward then you must give up control. Creation has nothing to do with it, really, nor has the public interest; if they did then artists would simply release into the public domain as soon as a work was finished. And starve.
While I cetainly understand why one would want their children to be able to get money from their acheivements, my problem with it has always been that essentially it leads to a situation where, within a given family, someone only need to contribute to society once very X generations, when the cash from the original contribution starts to run dry.
I think the life/50 year thing is a reasonable compromise with this idea. Not many people would die with decades left to run on their copyright. Life + 50/70/90years is far too long.
Life or 50 years from publication, whichever is longer. I'm not keen to be told I have to let other people make crap versions of my work while I'm alive, and if I die just after publishing something I want my kids to have a chance to make some of the inheritance I didn't get a chance to build up for them.
Other than that, cut out this crap about the medium. I bought a song, and it's simply not relevant if I bought it on a CD or whatever - I can listen to it anywhere anyhow.
Censorship...pure and simple. Linux World just lost my business.
I'm not sure that sacking someone that writes lies, and badly written ones at that, is strictly censorship, is it? I mean, did you read that last article? It was the ravings of a loon.
The saddest thing I ever saw, was when their research labs were presenting a paper.
A somewhat sad thing I experienced was when they were running those ads with the people in the beanbags and saying they were more into serious work than silly fads. I had a meeting at BT HQ in London in connection with the floating-off of O2 and when we got there, surprise, surprise! we were all seated in beanbags. Dickheads.
On the way into the meeting we also passed large notices telling staff not to use their email until the current virus was delt with.
Then we could impale their heads on stakes outside their offices as a warning to other overpaid underperforming senior executives.
I used to have a good deal of respect for BT engineers but having watched them work over the last few years I've come to the conclusion that, like Microsoft, BT is no longer a company where people with pride in their work want to be. Consequently, those that do work there are very clearly second-rate.
Slashdot Mirror
TWW
He also wasn't serious, he was grandstanding for the hardliners back home who had the power to remove him in a very real and permanent way. Likewise, Ballmer is talking things up for the shareholders and Bill, but he is stupid enough to believe what he's saying.
TWW
I have no idea why FF is so slow, but until it's not, Opera remains the only non-open-source app on my machine. Actually, FF is pretty ugly too, so it would have to be a lot better than Opera before I'd switch.
TWW
That's not the issue. The issue is that when people who already have a lot of cash are given patents like this they can use them to threaten the competition regardless of the validity of the patent, because they can afford to take you to court and bankrupt you while you wait for the pathetic legal system to throw out their case. Which is not even a given since the judge will know squat about the issues or IT or basically anything else for that matter and will almost certainly decide the case on the basis of which lawyer s/he liked more.
MS don't apply for these sort of trivial patents in order to get money, they do it to prevent you from making money.
In short, if you don't think the patent system needs to be reformed, and drastically, then you don't understand the patent system (or you're one of the billionaires making money of the current mess).
TWW
And this is the crux of the matter: O'Gara was a repeat offender and previous attempts to calmly point out that she is a fool and so forth had recieved the "oh, good, lots of people will read her column now because she's `controversial'" treatment. In other words, acting as you suggest had mearly encouraged her, indeed I suspect that's why she thought that she could get away with the load of tripe she did eventually get flamed over.
TWW
There are limits, particularly on an nth offense (where n>4). Anyone who read the article in question could not possibly think the response unfair, fanatical or unreasonable. If I walk up to you and say, "Did you know that that woman beside you is a crack-whore?" and her husband smacks me one, are you going to tell the husband that he should have tapped the guy on the shoulder and said "I say, old chap, that is rather stepping across the line a bit."?
TWW
Of course, the advertising won't mention that it only supports three games and they crash every ten minutes, will it?
TWW
Actually, the 386 programming model only has one (1, count it, 1) general purpose register: EBX. All the other registers suffer from side-effects or are the only allowable target for certain (very common) instructions. This is one of the many reasons the Intel chips are so hot and slow: the compilers have to thrash data all over the shop to get things done which modern processors can just do in whatever registers are free. The difference this makes to code efficency is huge.
TWW
TWW
Except that Taco et al think that "correct English" is just slightly to the right of the Nazi-party manifesto.
TWW
Sorry, you're right. C4 asked for license fee funding in November and I thought they'd got it. Apparently no decision has been taken.
TWW
Actually, they do get a share of the TV licence.
Would be interesting to see outside of England though.
It's available in all parts of Britain, not just England.
TWW
Well, it's kind of a big subject. As for Wolfram's book -I have it here and it's a exercise in ego-boost rather than anything significant in the realm of science.
TWW
If you can ask that then there's nothing I can say; we obviously have vastly different views of human nature. I don't believe that the public "tolerates" copyright at all. The public believe in copyright and support it for the most part. It is an innate belief for most people that their work is their own. Even the pirates on IRC get worked up if someone copys an archive of stolen material they made. Cognative dissonance aside, this shows the rarity of people who mearly tolerate copyright.
TWW
Now that's what I call a pathetic bastard.
TWW
I'd certainly be open to change on the 50 years bit, but not on the life part.
Would you not create that work if you had to put up with it?
Maybe not. I can't imagine that A.A. Milne would have been very enthusiastic if he'd known that Winnie the Pooh was going to be buggered for decades by the Disney Corp.
I personally am trying to sell a book to publishers at the moment. I would not bother if part of the deal involved Peter Jackson getting his hands on it and doing to it what he did to LotR. After I'm dead, well, I'm not so worried.
The odds of creating a work with economic value, much less value for more than a year or so, are tremendously low.
Open any newspaper every day of the week: it seems to be happening quite often. The fact that it's hard to get pubished overlooks the reality of the modern market for all sorts of creative work. There are literally millions of people around the world making money off copyright today. Not all of them deserve it, and not all who deserve to are.
Whatever way you cut it, I'm not going to agree that it would be right for an author to create a popular work which makes perhaps billions for some media corp. while his kids get nothing simply because he got run over the day after it was published.
Copyright is about reward and control, nothing else. If you give up control then you get reward in return; if you want reward then you must give up control. Creation has nothing to do with it, really, nor has the public interest; if they did then artists would simply release into the public domain as soon as a work was finished. And starve.
TWW
I think the life/50 year thing is a reasonable compromise with this idea. Not many people would die with decades left to run on their copyright. Life + 50/70/90years is far too long.
TWW
Obviously a corporation does not possess life in the first place, therfore it would have 50 years max.
TWW
Other than that, cut out this crap about the medium. I bought a song, and it's simply not relevant if I bought it on a CD or whatever - I can listen to it anywhere anyhow.
TWW
I'm not sure that sacking someone that writes lies, and badly written ones at that, is strictly censorship, is it? I mean, did you read that last article? It was the ravings of a loon.
TWW
A somewhat sad thing I experienced was when they were running those ads with the people in the beanbags and saying they were more into serious work than silly fads. I had a meeting at BT HQ in London in connection with the floating-off of O2 and when we got there, surprise, surprise! we were all seated in beanbags. Dickheads.
On the way into the meeting we also passed large notices telling staff not to use their email until the current virus was delt with.
TWW
Oh, right. I forgot about them.
TWW
But then Titanic and LotR were praised to the roof by critics and they were both terrible. Critics? Who cares what they think?
TWW
I used to have a good deal of respect for BT engineers but having watched them work over the last few years I've come to the conclusion that, like Microsoft, BT is no longer a company where people with pride in their work want to be. Consequently, those that do work there are very clearly second-rate.
TWW
That's just peanuts to BT: they'd spend 2 months on it and then tell you that you can't have it.
TWW