I can see the Marketing Droids Just trying to finesse this. It requires a conspiracy of sorts, or maybe a change in federal law.
Manufacturers make players with required features, and the ability to the new formats.
Manufacturers phase out making old style players
Media Makers phase in their products, lagging slightly the makings, but maybe using a few hits to push adoption of the new format.
Basically you finesse the adoption and push it in over time, ignoring the loud protests of the reasonably few who are in the know.
The best example of this is Microsoft with Windows, pushing it's product into market dominance despite obvious flaws, and technically superior competitors with inferior marketing.
Of course, this would require the cooperation of across and industry or two, which would be more difficult to do. But if enforced by fiat of law, etc. then this can be done. Witness the original founding histroy of the creation of the first networks and the very early Internet, where no body wanted to share resources on their comnputers, but were forced to if they wanted to work with the Military and the Pentagon.
Beyond the obvious symbolic context, I wouldn't might being part of an unruly mob with pitchforks and torches storming towards the Bill Gate's version of Frankenstein's castle.
Computer companies have tradionally veered away from from accepting liability for failures of their products. For an example, look towards Mordor/Redmond, etc.
So will this move the ball towards corporate responsibility in this area?
I am certain that a lot of companies will try to avoid it if at all possible. Of course, this would be controversial, especially re: open source, etc. but it is not the most common practice now.
I mean there are documents going back to the Roman Empire.
Could you imagine if it all was available online? And searchable? The man-hours to do it would be incredible.
I mean, there are rumors of intelligence reports from Pontius Pilate being archived there. Watch all the Bible geeks have a field day.
Plus I imagine, a copy of every forbidden book written since then. Kept around, just as evidence.
That said,when I saw "Bumper Cars" I thought that it was the bumper cars you see on the board walk at the beach, or at a the carnival that comes to towm.
But aside from sumo, no car can deliberately damage each other...
[sigh...]
cutting the nose to spite the face
on
Ebay vs. Musician
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I mean, take about throwing away goodwill.
I don't think that the best idea is to anger a group of people who are known to have an audience. I mean, these guys have fans.
but they must bow to the wicked witch of the west.
Based on anonymous sources I know who are currently working at AMSA, this could be hell. AMSA is currently a test bed for microsoft development, and they are involved in "upgrading" their system, eventually replacing a 4 or 5 person department running their tracking software on PIC on Unix or something like that, with a windows based system with several hundred employees. Given the morale there (see the link for esplanation), it is not hard to get some gossip
Part of the problem is that with PIC, they can get real time information, not possible currently under MS. And some of the functionality does not translate well when you migrate out of a multidimensional software enviroment.
If I recall correctly, PIC was first devolped by/for the government to provide a multitasking environment with natural language queries on machines as small and slow as an IBM XT. It was and is from the start a combination OS/Database. Which MS is only now starting to explore.
I imagine that there any number of these systems out there in the navy enviroment, among others.
Typically this is a case where the MS solution is in fact an inferior technology.
BTW, PIC was part of the technology acquired by IBM when IBM purchased Informix.
This is what I call the big problem. That design is utterly abominable. We live in a world where it's nothing to have 1 gigabyte of RAM in a computer. We have 80 GB hard drive platters now, allowing even greater-sized drives. And yet at the heart of every single one of your x86 computers out there, a mere 6 GP registers are doing nearly all of the processing. It's amazing. And it's something I've personally wrestled with every day of my assembly programming career.
This sort of reminds me of what happened with IRQs. Ultimately Intel "solved this" via the PCI bus, but performace has occasionally been problematic. Of course, that problem goes back to the original IBM design for original IBM PC. Intel is also very aware, I imagine, of what happened when IBM tried a total redesign woth the EISA bus, etc. It got rejected, I think, primarily because it was propriatary. In any case, enough companies have been nailed on backward compatibility issues that Intel may be nervous about making a total break.
The upside is being able to run old software on new hardware. You don't want to break too many things.
The deal came after an intense week of negotiations that was sparked by pressure from a key lawmaker who threatened legislation that would delay implementation of the payment.
The RIAA agreed to something because they still want "their" money
Although artists rights groups appear to have no problem with a deal that helps small webcasters, a union official expressed concern about language that could allow the record companies to avoid paying artists their share of the royalty directly. The language seems to allow the recording industry to deduct the top expenses that they incur for setting up and maintaining the royalty payment regime.
"Direct payment is crucial, and if the recording industry gets deductibility language, we need direct payment," said one artists rights advocate familiar with the negotiations.
Obviously they have gone back to their old reliable first choice of people to mess with, just to make sure they get their middle man piece of the pie.
I want to make life size voodoo dolls of these folks.
The key to the new system is a unique non-contacting coupler embedded in connections between 30-foot long sections of drill pipe. The coupler permits data to be sent across the connection and on through a high-speed cable attached to the inner pipe wall.
For more than 60 years, engineers have struggled with the problem of a drill pipe connection, or "tool joint," that would stand up to the wear and tear of increasingly hostile downhole drilling conditions, yet provide reliable electrical connections every 30 feet over thousands of feet of pipe penetrating deep into some of nature's harshest environments. [...]
But the excruciatingly slow pace of mud pulse telemetry - 3 to 10 bits per second - often meant that data resolution was so poor that the driller could not make crucial decisions in real time. Often, time-consuming operations would be required to retrieve the downhole data or drilling would have to stop while other procedures were employed to confirm the low-resolution data pulsed to the surface.
And there is this link, complete with pretty graphics, from the company that actually developed the technology
benchmarks are interesting, but it brings to mind other test tools.
Are there test rigs for hard drives, etc that allow for basic functionality testing?
I recently heard the sad tale of someone whose box was blown by lightning:( and of course they wondered if the drive was okay.
on plugging the drive into another motherboard, murphy's law kicked in, and he was the proud owner of another dead motherboard.
So are there test rigs that will allow for testing of drives at a basic level so that motherboards are not used as fuses? Probable uses include IT shops and repair shops.
The problem with people talking to computers is that it is not Star Trek.
I can remember when the first mac came out with the first voice recognition technology of any kind. at least one couple were heart broken that it wasn't "like Star Trek".
In other words a computer that you could speak to, that would answer your questions, tell you what it needed or what you needed, do all of the calculations, and also have the infinite patience that a machine would have in dealing with a human.
being able to say things correctly is important too.
I'm sorry George. The bank says that you do not have enough money in your bank account for that purchase
One thing I noticed is that with analog cable TV you can channel surf much faster. Typically you can skim over 2 or three channels in a second.
But with digital it takes 2 or three second to skim over each channel, because the redraw of the funky channel ID overlay. If I am looking for a soccer game, or a cooking show, the funky menu systems are actually much slower.
This is not an advantadge.
Point being, that digital cable has not really sold itself to me. But my high speed line has.
In the old days of the Olde American Wild West, a cowboy going home after getting drunk at the bar could depend on his horse to find the way home while he snoozed off, etc.
Now what would be really useful would be a car that would drive people home safely after a night of safely killing of excess and troublesome brain cells.
A smal system like this would be a good first start.
You could use a doom or quake game engine loaded with a map of the local streets as a nav aid for the car.
I tell you, this could work.
all 889,063,398,406 positions
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Well, another weekend project shot all to heck...
Dr. John W. Romein and Prof. dr. ir. Henri E. Bal solved the game by developing a program that computes the best move and eventual outcome for all 889,063,398,406 positions that can possibly occur in a game. The results are stored in a database that is 778 gigabyte large. The database was computed on a large computer cluster with 144 processors. A new and fast, parallel algorithm managed to compute the database in only 51 hours. Each processor accounted for part of the postitions, but the processors closely co-operated to determine the best moves. One complication was that the available main memory, 72 gigabyte, was by far not large enough to hold the entire database. Another problem was the heavy communication between the processors; a total of 1.0 petabit (= 10^{15} bits) was sent over the interconnection network.
Next thing I know, someone is going to try programming the database in perl.;-)
I recall this as similar to an old WWII camoflage technique, to make the apparent brightness of an object match the bacjground.
I believe in WWII some submarine hunter aircraft had spotlights on the front to make the apparent brightness of the dark aircraft match the sky. Killed more subs that way.
this technique worked really well for large objects if they were a good distance away, like for a tank of the horizon or an aircraft in the sky. awful for close up work.
I recall a good article on this someplace on the web, but to find it now on short notice.....
Slashdot Mirror
- Manufacturers make players with required features, and the ability to the new formats.
- Manufacturers phase out making old style players
- Media Makers phase in their products, lagging slightly the makings, but maybe using a few hits to push adoption of the new format.
Basically you finesse the adoption and push it in over time, ignoring the loud protests of the reasonably few who are in the know.The best example of this is Microsoft with Windows, pushing it's product into market dominance despite obvious flaws, and technically superior competitors with inferior marketing.
Of course, this would require the cooperation of across and industry or two, which would be more difficult to do. But if enforced by fiat of law, etc. then this can be done. Witness the original founding histroy of the creation of the first networks and the very early Internet, where no body wanted to share resources on their comnputers, but were forced to if they wanted to work with the Military and the Pentagon.
Beyond the obvious symbolic context, I wouldn't might being part of an unruly mob with pitchforks and torches storming towards the Bill Gate's version of Frankenstein's castle.
So will this move the ball towards corporate responsibility in this area?
I am certain that a lot of companies will try to avoid it if at all possible. Of course, this would be controversial, especially re: open source, etc. but it is not the most common practice now.
I mean there are documents going back to the Roman Empire. Could you imagine if it all was available online? And searchable? The man-hours to do it would be incredible.
I mean, there are rumors of intelligence reports from Pontius Pilate being archived there. Watch all the Bible geeks have a field day.
Plus I imagine, a copy of every forbidden book written since then. Kept around, just as evidence.
That said,when I saw "Bumper Cars" I thought that it was the bumper cars you see on the board walk at the beach, or at a the carnival that comes to towm.
But aside from sumo, no car can deliberately damage each other...
[sigh ...]
I don't think that the best idea is to anger a group of people who are known to have an audience. I mean, these guys have fans.
but they must bow to the wicked witch of the west.
time for the traditional raspberry to the RIAA
{bpphbzphbpbzhbphz!!!}
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicol or1.htm
What is interesting is that Technicolor went through various technology changes:
System 1 [1917 - 1922]
System 2 [1922 - 1927] and System 3 [1927 - 1933]
System 4 [1932 - 1955]
Also of interesting to color palette junkies is Cine Color
All part of the Old Color System pages of the Wide Screen Museum
Based on anonymous sources I know who are currently working at AMSA, this could be hell. AMSA is currently a test bed for microsoft development, and they are involved in "upgrading" their system, eventually replacing a 4 or 5 person department running their tracking software on PIC on Unix or something like that, with a windows based system with several hundred employees. Given the morale there (see the link for esplanation), it is not hard to get some gossip
Part of the problem is that with PIC, they can get real time information, not possible currently under MS. And some of the functionality does not translate well when you migrate out of a multidimensional software enviroment.
If I recall correctly, PIC was first devolped by/for the government to provide a multitasking environment with natural language queries on machines as small and slow as an IBM XT. It was and is from the start a combination OS/Database. Which MS is only now starting to explore.
I imagine that there any number of these systems out there in the navy enviroment, among others.
Typically this is a case where the MS solution is in fact an inferior technology.
BTW, PIC was part of the technology acquired by IBM when IBM purchased Informix.
caffeine deficiency syndrome in full bloom
This sort of reminds me of what happened with IRQs. Ultimately Intel "solved this" via the PCI bus, but performace has occasionally been problematic. Of course, that problem goes back to the original IBM design for original IBM PC. Intel is also very aware, I imagine, of what happened when IBM tried a total redesign woth the EISA bus, etc. It got rejected, I think, primarily because it was propriatary. In any case, enough companies have been nailed on backward compatibility issues that Intel may be nervous about making a total break.
The upside is being able to run old software on new hardware. You don't want to break too many things.
Which is why I said "believed touched by a virus", vs going with the headline and saying that they were actually currently infected.
Of course, the Slash editors went with the rueters headline instead. Which implied "Currently Infected"
Not that I should complain, much. ;-)
The RIAA agreed to something because they still want "their" money
Although artists rights groups appear to have no problem with a deal that helps small webcasters, a union official expressed concern about language that could allow the record companies to avoid paying artists their share of the royalty directly. The language seems to allow the recording industry to deduct the top expenses that they incur for setting up and maintaining the royalty payment regime.
"Direct payment is crucial, and if the recording industry gets deductibility language, we need direct payment," said one artists rights advocate familiar with the negotiations.
Obviously they have gone back to their old reliable first choice of people to mess with, just to make sure they get their middle man piece of the pie.
I want to make life size voodoo dolls of these folks.
For more than 60 years, engineers have struggled with the problem of a drill pipe connection, or "tool joint," that would stand up to the wear and tear of increasingly hostile downhole drilling conditions, yet provide reliable electrical connections every 30 feet over thousands of feet of pipe penetrating deep into some of nature's harshest environments. [...]
But the excruciatingly slow pace of mud pulse telemetry - 3 to 10 bits per second - often meant that data resolution was so poor that the driller could not make crucial decisions in real time. Often, time-consuming operations would be required to retrieve the downhole data or drilling would have to stop while other procedures were employed to confirm the low-resolution data pulsed to the surface.
And there is this link, complete with pretty graphics, from the company that actually developed the technology
http://www.grantprideco.com/gptechnologies/Intelli Pipe.asp
have fun
The idea is to have something so the you do not have to burn a ten dollar bill every time you do a test.
Looks like you got to drag your meat body around instead of using your virtual one to visit the lecture with your game avatar.
[shrug]
Are there test rigs for hard drives, etc that allow for basic functionality testing?
I recently heard the sad tale of someone whose box was blown by lightning :( and of course they wondered if the drive was okay.
on plugging the drive into another motherboard, murphy's law kicked in, and he was the proud owner of another dead motherboard.
So are there test rigs that will allow for testing of drives at a basic level so that motherboards are not used as fuses? Probable uses include IT shops and repair shops.
I can remember when the first mac came out with the first voice recognition technology of any kind. at least one couple were heart broken that it wasn't "like Star Trek".
In other words a computer that you could speak to, that would answer your questions, tell you what it needed or what you needed, do all of the calculations, and also have the infinite patience that a machine would have in dealing with a human.
being able to say things correctly is important too.
I'm sorry George. The bank says that you do not have enough money in your bank account for that purchase
is much better than
stupid, you do not have the money
But with digital it takes 2 or three second to skim over each channel, because the redraw of the funky channel ID overlay. If I am looking for a soccer game, or a cooking show, the funky menu systems are actually much slower.
This is not an advantadge.
Point being, that digital cable has not really sold itself to me. But my high speed line has.
There must be some appropriate gesture....
As seen in the Excel Spreadsheet
[I cam sure that others could cook up something like this, a poster or something, with far greater finesse than this quick effort]
Then You may qualify to Become a Minion for his Satanic Majesty today
Now what would be really useful would be a car that would drive people home safely after a night of safely killing of excess and troublesome brain cells.
A smal system like this would be a good first start.
You could use a doom or quake game engine loaded with a map of the local streets as a nav aid for the car.
I tell you, this could work.
Dr. John W. Romein and Prof. dr. ir. Henri E. Bal solved the game by developing a program that computes the best move and eventual outcome for all 889,063,398,406 positions that can possibly occur in a game. The results are stored in a database that is 778 gigabyte large. The database was computed on a large computer cluster with 144 processors. A new and fast, parallel algorithm managed to compute the database in only 51 hours. Each processor accounted for part of the postitions, but the processors closely co-operated to determine the best moves. One complication was that the available main memory, 72 gigabyte, was by far not large enough to hold the entire database. Another problem was the heavy communication between the processors; a total of 1.0 petabit (= 10^{15} bits) was sent over the interconnection network.
Next thing I know, someone is going to try programming the database in perl. ;-)
I believe in WWII some submarine hunter aircraft had spotlights on the front to make the apparent brightness of the dark aircraft match the sky. Killed more subs that way.
this technique worked really well for large objects if they were a good distance away, like for a tank of the horizon or an aircraft in the sky. awful for close up work.
I recall a good article on this someplace on the web, but to find it now on short notice .....
This public apology is featured on their news page. See the press release here
Just another example of how timely /. can be at times
;-)
heck even RFN has followed this
;-)