I found the decision to more or less put UltimateTV on life support and discontinue active work on it interesting - that leaves TiVo and ReplayTV as the main standing competitors.
It appears to me rather that Microsoft is focusing on the product that they think will make money and more quickly give them an advantage for competing with TiVo. XBox has the components it needs to compete with TiVo: good graphics, hard drive, video in/out, and a remote interface to control it.
How much do you think we "paid" for the laws that protect against cybersquatting? I guess Congress could have been passing really useful laws at that time, so the opportunity cost is there, but it's just as likely that they would have been passing laws limiting free speech instead of the anti-cybersquatting laws---oh, wait.;-)
As I hear it, there's plenty of fighting over ideas and direction within Microsoft as well. The open software environment just allows the discussions to be public. Microsoft can try to use this as "fuel for their propaganda machine," but I doubt they'd get very far.
Rarely does one person have a monopoly on good ideas, so it's inevitable that finding the right solution will come from competition between more than one good idea. So long as progress continues, as it has, this is healthy. Both Mr. Torvalds and Mr. van Riel recognize that they are "stubborn," and both seem to deal with the heat fairly well.
Fifteen years ago, any school that wanted to buy new computers would think only of buying Apple products. This means that many schools bought a lot of Macintosh classics and other Macintosh computers versus PCs. Assuming that they are poor, they probably haven't upgraded their machines recently, and only in the last ten to fifteen years have schools shifted away from Macintoshes. My wife has seven computers in her classroom. There are four old machines and three new machines. The old machines run MacOS. The new machines run Windows. Microsoft would like to accelerate the shift to Windows by giving new PCs with Windows to these schools that have old (i.e. Apple) computers.
Delay is better than letting Microsoft make their strategic investment, er, I mean penalty of installing their software a many new machines, likely displacing a lot of their competitors installations. The poor school districts could likely still have lots of old Macs in use.
But if we're not supposed to think that way, why did our government instill respect for Abraham Lincoln? We should demand a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." I think Slashdotters have a good grasp on what our government is supposed to be, which is not necessarily what it is in all cases. Fortunately, we have the rights to do something about it, and at least to discuss it here.
Their press release states that they still need to work out some issues:
Although currently demonstrating its technology on very small bit strings, ZeoSync expects to overcome the existing temporal restraints of its technology and optimize its algorithms to lead to significant changes in how data is stored and transmitted.
From the general lack of information, I'm guessing that "very small bit strings" have at least about one hundred bits, unless they compress to sub-bits.;-) And we can only infer that the "temporal" problems indicate that compressing larger strings takes an inordinate amount of time. I suppose that sounds logical enough to get some investors to hand them some money, but I disagree with them that all they have to do us simply optimize their algorithms. It sounds like they have a long, long way to go to be practical, which could very well use up any money given to them with no return.
Not only is it needlessly in Flash, it changes my browser window to be the size of my desktop, which is extremely annoying. Nothing says "Go away," like a 1280x1024 window with a dimwitted message about needing Flash.
Next was the movie companies with trying to copy protect video tapes. Very quickly there were companies making devices to circumvent that as well. Even magazines like Radio Electronics were publishing articles on how to build them.
Then most gave up as well. Again too costly to keep trying.
However Macrovision is still developing copy protection schemes. I'm sure most of the commercial VHS tapes are protected by Macrovision, which has matured (gone rotten, spoiled, or whatever) through the years. It's not going to go away. In fact, there's special cicuitry in every DVD player that turns on some level of Macrovision if the disc requests it. Macrovision even licenses different types of protection for various prices.
I would be very interested in finding a way to get around this annoying feature, but unfortunately it's illegal to do so now due to the DMCA.
The barriers to creating digital copies of music are lower now than in 1992, so it seems that if the recording industry did not move to copy protection, they would deem themselves entitled to greater compensation per DAT or CDR sold. How many people had CD burners in their own machines in 1992? How many people had broadband connections at home in 1992?
I was in school at the time, and our University had maybe a couple CD burners for student use, and that was actually later than 1992. Broadband was available only at work and in the computer labs. Our dorms didn't start getting ethernet until a year later.
So in 1992, when the RIAA managed to get the law passed compensating them for piracy, there was a whole lot less digital piracy occurring simply because most people didn't have access to equipment to make digital copies. It seems we now have the choice between allowing copy protection or increasing the compensation to the RIAA if we assume that the 1992 law was just.:-(
Nevertheless, piracy will continue. If I buy CDs that force me to use a special player, you can bet that I'll decide to rip them to mp3s just so I can use XMMS. The RIAA could argue that piracy will continue, and they should be compensated accordingly, though now they can claim that hard drives, memory sticks, compact flash, and smart media storage also contribute to their allegedly lost sales and that these should also be taxed.
It *is* too much to ask to have the submissions edited in a meaningful way, apparently. Maybe making submissions that start with a provocative sentence is the best way to make the editors feel the need to scoop the story, whether or not the lead resembles the truth in any way.:-\ Or maybe Hemos just wanted to make FortKnox appear foolish.
I agree. I think that different types of video games would be considered art by various people. RPGs and some of the progression-scenario RTS games (e.g. Warcraft, Age Of Empires, and Rogue Spear) are similar to more traditional types of storytelling such as novels and movies.
Other types of computer games, such as platform and first-person shooters might be considered art by a different group of people. I don't see quite as much of what I consider art in Quake III as I do in Baldur's Gate.
Do we consider Magic (the card game) to be art? The cards certainly have as much artwork as many computer games. Do we consider baseball art? Why would a computer simulation of baseball be considered different from real-life baseball? Both are entertainment for sure, but are hitting and pitching Art any more than The Art of Computer Programming?
Shoemaking is an art, though it's aesthetic is not the same as Impressionist painting, and thus I wouldn't put some Johnston & Murphy wingtips on display in the same place as a painting by Monet.
I think the SFMoMA should consider them art since computer games do require some artistic aesthetic in order to be more appealing than their competitors in much the same way movies, paintings, novels, and sculptures do.
you: Long ago and far away, I thought that I was going to be a Great Geek.
doctor: Is it because you were going to be a great geek that you came to me?
youI could hardly wait to throw myself into an intense, highly technical curriculum and shine.
doctor: Why do you say you could hardly wait?
you:I drag myself to classes and through projects, and it all seems really pointless--I'm just implementing what's written in the book, and eradicating the countless off-by-one bugs is nothing short of mind-numbing.
doctor: Earlier you said you were going to be a great geek?
you:What do you do when it isn't fun any more, but you'd like it to be?
doctor: Maybe your plans have something to do with this.
I agree that Firewire is cool for this gadget. Though some people may think Firewire relegates the iPod to Mac-only status, I do not think this to be the case. Most people I know with new Sony video cameras do not use Macs, and yet they are able to connect the camera's firewire port to their machines, which happen to be PCs with a firewire adapter. Usually the firewire on the PC is just a PCI card.
I think it's great that there is a new mp3 player that will take advantage of firewire. Complaining that the device is firewire only is like complaining that some fancy 166MB/sec hard disk is SCSI-only. There are plent of alternatives, and just that one's system cannot use a particular device does not make the device lame.
Re:Tooltips are good, but...
on
GNU Emacs 21
·
· Score: 2
What the heck are you using the mouse to do? It's EMACS for crying out loud, not Mac Write!
Seriously, won't use it if it makes me use my mouse to type code. The pretty widgets can stay in XEmacs for people who like that sort of thing.
Re:There already IS gtk Emacs....
on
GNU Emacs 21
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The *last* thing I want is my EMACS mixed up with GNOME/Gtk. One thing I love about EMACS is its portability. It's running right now on my Windows box at home and on my Linux box at work. Making standard EMACS depend on the GNOME/Gtk libraries would just make this lovable behemoth an ungodly piece of work that would only run on GNOME.
Thank goodness that someone did it to XEmacs, which is a better place for adding silly GNOME widgets. EMACS doesn't need widgets. All it needs is text. That's part of its beauty.
I have no particular aversion to using GNOME except that it's nowhere near as mature as EMACS, and I would hate updating all of my graphics libraries so I could use my favorite *text* editor.
Blah, blah. What doofus moderated the above post as "Interesting?" It might be classified as "Funny," "Flamebait," or "Troll" correctly, but certainly not "Interesting." BAH! A post having no content does not sound "Interesting" to me!
For future posts replace foo, bar, and baz to ridcicule your group of choice:
"If you've run across half the foo I have in my carreer, you'd see that bar of them are complete baz."
What are the added moving parts to which you are referring? Fuel cells do not use moving parts. Searching on Google took me about 15 seconds to find this page: http://216.51.18.233/whatis.html It shows a simple diagram of a fuel cell. It has the same number of moving parts as a conventional battery.
Can someone please change the headline so it doesn't say "gasoline-powered?"
I regret that the intentionally inflamatory remarks in the submitted story got me upset, but for those who want to know what Texas A&M thinks of Dr. John Bockris, here is a link with some more information. I know that my professors were not proud to be associated with him after the debacles mentioned. Interestingly, his project for turning mercury (Hg), not Lead (Pb), into Gold (Au) received criticism not [entirely] because of its scientific merits, but because of the allegedly unscrupulous person(s) providing funding for the research.
The AmigaOS did this, too. Any file could have an associated.info file that could specify file metadata such as an application to open the file, the file's icon, etc. The Workbench GUI would then display all files (with OS2.0 and above) except for the.info files, which could still easily be accessed from the command line, or modified using the GUI to view and edit the.info file.
It worked pretty well, IMO. Something similar could be done for Linux and would not need to be limited to providing metadata for the GUI. Applications would have to individually start supporting this and avoid trampling each other's metadata.
Microsoft's officers are "betting the fate of the company on.Net" so what else should we expect them to do than downplay and disable anything that is not.Net? When everything is as Microsoft currently thinks it wants it to be, then everything will be a downloadable service using.Net as plugins.
This move is just one of many to strengthen Microsoft's.Net strategy, and it lets Microsoft stop supporting another API, which would also cut some development costs.
This would be true if anybody ever wanted to use the Java VM that Microsoft provides in other versions of Windows. However, since Microsoft's Java support was effectively dropped about two years ago (at version 1.1.4), getting rid of the outdated, uncompliant Microsoft Java VM support in their OS is a good thing for most people. Developers wrote-off the Microsoft VM two years ago. Only web page applets should be much affected. Other uses of Java should benefit from this "spring cleaning."
Anyone wishing to run applets might have to download a JRE just as I have done so often for Real or Macromedia.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears to me rather that Microsoft is focusing on the product that they think will make money and more quickly give them an advantage for competing with TiVo. XBox has the components it needs to compete with TiVo: good graphics, hard drive, video in/out, and a remote interface to control it.
How much do you think we "paid" for the laws that protect against cybersquatting? I guess Congress could have been passing really useful laws at that time, so the opportunity cost is there, but it's just as likely that they would have been passing laws limiting free speech instead of the anti-cybersquatting laws---oh, wait. ;-)
Rarely does one person have a monopoly on good ideas, so it's inevitable that finding the right solution will come from competition between more than one good idea. So long as progress continues, as it has, this is healthy. Both Mr. Torvalds and Mr. van Riel recognize that they are "stubborn," and both seem to deal with the heat fairly well.
Fifteen years ago, any school that wanted to buy new computers would think only of buying Apple products. This means that many schools bought a lot of Macintosh classics and other Macintosh computers versus PCs. Assuming that they are poor, they probably haven't upgraded their machines recently, and only in the last ten to fifteen years have schools shifted away from Macintoshes. My wife has seven computers in her classroom. There are four old machines and three new machines. The old machines run MacOS. The new machines run Windows. Microsoft would like to accelerate the shift to Windows by giving new PCs with Windows to these schools that have old (i.e. Apple) computers.
Delay is better than letting Microsoft make their strategic investment, er, I mean penalty of installing their software a many new machines, likely displacing a lot of their competitors installations. The poor school districts could likely still have lots of old Macs in use.
But if we're not supposed to think that way, why did our government instill respect for Abraham Lincoln? We should demand a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." I think Slashdotters have a good grasp on what our government is supposed to be, which is not necessarily what it is in all cases. Fortunately, we have the rights to do something about it, and at least to discuss it here.
From the general lack of information, I'm guessing that "very small bit strings" have at least about one hundred bits, unless they compress to sub-bits.
Not only is it needlessly in Flash, it changes my browser window to be the size of my desktop, which is extremely annoying. Nothing says "Go away," like a 1280x1024 window with a dimwitted message about needing Flash.
I would be very interested in finding a way to get around this annoying feature, but unfortunately it's illegal to do so now due to the DMCA.
Duh, it's the Least Significant Bit.
;-)
I was in school at the time, and our University had maybe a couple CD burners for student use, and that was actually later than 1992. Broadband was available only at work and in the computer labs. Our dorms didn't start getting ethernet until a year later.
So in 1992, when the RIAA managed to get the law passed compensating them for piracy, there was a whole lot less digital piracy occurring simply because most people didn't have access to equipment to make digital copies. It seems we now have the choice between allowing copy protection or increasing the compensation to the RIAA if we assume that the 1992 law was just. :-(
Nevertheless, piracy will continue. If I buy CDs that force me to use a special player, you can bet that I'll decide to rip them to mp3s just so I can use XMMS. The RIAA could argue that piracy will continue, and they should be compensated accordingly, though now they can claim that hard drives, memory sticks, compact flash, and smart media storage also contribute to their allegedly lost sales and that these should also be taxed.
It *is* too much to ask to have the submissions edited in a meaningful way, apparently. Maybe making submissions that start with a provocative sentence is the best way to make the editors feel the need to scoop the story, whether or not the lead resembles the truth in any way. :-\ Or maybe Hemos just wanted to make FortKnox appear foolish.
Other types of computer games, such as platform and first-person shooters might be considered art by a different group of people. I don't see quite as much of what I consider art in Quake III as I do in Baldur's Gate.
Do we consider Magic (the card game) to be art? The cards certainly have as much artwork as many computer games. Do we consider baseball art? Why would a computer simulation of baseball be considered different from real-life baseball? Both are entertainment for sure, but are hitting and pitching Art any more than The Art of Computer Programming?
Shoemaking is an art, though it's aesthetic is not the same as Impressionist painting, and thus I wouldn't put some Johnston & Murphy wingtips on display in the same place as a painting by Monet.
I think the SFMoMA should consider them art since computer games do require some artistic aesthetic in order to be more appealing than their competitors in much the same way movies, paintings, novels, and sculptures do.
doctor: Is it because you were going to be a great geek that you came to me?
you I could hardly wait to throw myself into an intense, highly technical curriculum and shine.
doctor: Why do you say you could hardly wait?
you: I drag myself to classes and through projects, and it all seems really pointless--I'm just implementing what's written in the book, and eradicating the countless off-by-one bugs is nothing short of mind-numbing.
doctor: Earlier you said you were going to be a great geek?
you: What do you do when it isn't fun any more, but you'd like it to be?
doctor: Maybe your plans have something to do with this.
you: Goodbye.
doctor: My secretary will send you a bill.
I agree that Firewire is cool for this gadget. Though some people may think Firewire relegates the iPod to Mac-only status, I do not think this to be the case. Most people I know with new Sony video cameras do not use Macs, and yet they are able to connect the camera's firewire port to their machines, which happen to be PCs with a firewire adapter. Usually the firewire on the PC is just a PCI card.
I think it's great that there is a new mp3 player that will take advantage of firewire. Complaining that the device is firewire only is like complaining that some fancy 166MB/sec hard disk is SCSI-only. There are plent of alternatives, and just that one's system cannot use a particular device does not make the device lame.
What the heck are you using the mouse to do? It's EMACS for crying out loud, not Mac Write!
Seriously, won't use it if it makes me use my mouse to type code. The pretty widgets can stay in XEmacs for people who like that sort of thing.
The *last* thing I want is my EMACS mixed up with GNOME/Gtk. One thing I love about EMACS is its portability. It's running right now on my Windows box at home and on my Linux box at work. Making standard EMACS depend on the GNOME/Gtk libraries would just make this lovable behemoth an ungodly piece of work that would only run on GNOME.
Thank goodness that someone did it to XEmacs, which is a better place for adding silly GNOME widgets. EMACS doesn't need widgets. All it needs is text. That's part of its beauty.
I have no particular aversion to using GNOME except that it's nowhere near as mature as EMACS, and I would hate updating all of my graphics libraries so I could use my favorite *text* editor.
For future posts replace foo, bar, and baz to ridcicule your group of choice:
"If you've run across half the foo I have in my carreer, you'd see that bar of them are complete baz."
For those needing help. This post is "Flamebait."
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What are the added moving parts to which you are referring? Fuel cells do not use moving parts. Searching on Google took me about 15 seconds to find this page:
http://216.51.18.233/whatis.html
It shows a simple diagram of a fuel cell. It has the same number of moving parts as a conventional battery.
Can someone please change the headline so it doesn't say "gasoline-powered?"
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http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/tre1-1.html#Cranks
Fly (Aggie '94)
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It worked pretty well, IMO. Something similar could be done for Linux and would not need to be limited to providing metadata for the GUI. Applications would have to individually start supporting this and avoid trampling each other's metadata.
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This move is just one of many to strengthen Microsoft's .Net strategy, and it lets Microsoft stop supporting another API, which would also cut some development costs.
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Anyone wishing to run applets might have to download a JRE just as I have done so often for Real or Macromedia.
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