Keep in mind that my opinion on this is based on pretty subjective observations. I'd be interested in seeing some proper test results to confirm those observations.
Cool -- thanks for that article. I'll have to play around a little more with ext3 and try some of that stuff. I didn't mean to disparage it, like I said -- its a great extension to ext2, I've just had more success with its alternatives.
I don't mean to contradict you -- and while ext3 is a big step ahead of ext2, I can't say that I'd recommend it for this setup.
Ext3 is great for systems that are either using an existing ext2 filesystem and require journaling, or systems like RedHat that have no way of installing with XFS or Reiser on the root partition. It's backwards compatibility and ability to upgrade an existing ext2 partition is excellent.
However, after running a sandbox with bad memory that would consistently crash (it took me a while to get around to diagnosing, and even longer to actually fix) I found that ext3's recovery was not as good as XFS or BSD's FFS with softdep turned on (FFS with softdeps is my favorite solution thus far -- although it is not a true JFS, it does asynchronously write your metadata, is faster than ext2, and has the same effect as any JFS...but I digress -- BSD is not Linux). After a hard crash and an unclean reboot with ext3, I would consistently lose data on open files, and at times, my journal was, at times,(seemingly) corrupt, and I would have to boot into single user mode and manually fsck the disk, which took forever.
I do not have sufficient experience with ReiserFS, but I hear that its excellent. If you're using Linux, and are starting from a clean slate, check out XFS from a freshly-patched kernel (ie, not stock RedHat). Again, I've heard great things about ReiserFS, but since I don't have experience with it, I can't recommend it.
Do you really believe that DOD has a vested interest in seeing Saudi Arabia block internet access to porn, religious information, humor, music, movies, homosexuality, and web translators? I don't know a ton about this, so I could be wrong -- but it would seem that DOD would want the opposite.
I'm curious -- from your post, you seem to believe that DOD is funding some portion of this? Which parts, and why would they want to do that?
Also -- how does the US government help censor anything in any country other than in the US? Are you talking about DMCA-type stuff? (I'm legitimately curious -- not being a Slashdot bastard).
Although it is ugly, this practice is hardly news...US companies have been helping countries censor their internet (and do other bad shit with our technology) for decades Cisco's Great Firewall of China is a perfect example...also, yahoo China is another great example of this type of censorship (I'm not gonna serach for the Cisco firewall link again -- but its out there in the Slashdot archives) .
Let's also not forget about IBM's assistance to Nazi Germany during WWII -- cataloging and tracking all of the people that the Nazi's wanted to do away with was a monumental task, and IBM was right there to assist.
Although assisting Nazi Germany does not necessarily equate to firewalling China, or censoring Saudi Arabia, what I'm saying is that US companies have always been willing to take on less-than-honorable causes in order to earn a buck...because if they don't do it, their competitor will. Didn't everyone already know this?
Frankly, I don't really care as much as you seem to about the cannonical platform argument -- after I was an Amiga freak (and saw all that money wasted), I tried to be a little bit more objective about what systems I used. In any case, there's no need to take a such a defensive stance on this...I have nothing to prove here.
Suck it up, buy a Mac and quit your bitching.
Hey I'm not complaining -- I'm insisting that Apple needs to further support cross-platform development in order to succeed in the video-streaming software/hardware industry...which, I might add, is extremely competitive, and difficult to stay in.
There is nothing that is closed about Mac hardware.
Then how come only Apple makes Apple (or Apple-compatible) computers? Oh right, they're not closed per se...but since Macintosh (or compatible) computers are not available anywhere other than from Apple it is the same as being propritary. Especially considering the fact that if you don't use their hardware, you will never get support. (Sun is open too, but I still consider their hardware propritary -- you have to buy it from Sun).
Look -- I'm not talking about buying a streaming server for myself. I'm talking about what corporate America is going to buy -- which is Apple's intended customer for the server-side of this. You've been telling me what I can do with this -- but what does Apple support? Corporate America will not buy software/OS'es that are not supported (this is why IBM, Dell, Oracle, and RedHat, etc have been busting their ass to get it properly supported). I'm afraid that I've assumed that everything in this this paragraph was implicit in the discussion.
In any case, I'm interested in reading your response...
You're totally right...its a tricky business to stay afloat in.
As far as the company's profitibility -- technically, you're right -- but technically, you're also wrong (disclaimer: I don't know how investors and banks evaluate this stuff, I can only relay the data here). In at the end of the last fiscal quarter, while they reported a $44 million operating profit, they reported a loss of $1.151 billion from investments -- out of that, only $79 mil was from new investments. (See their quote on yahoo).
One way or the other, (and FWIW, I guess) it doesn't translate directly to any real profit.
I am not aware of any open-source automated ICR for forms processing. I can, however, offer a few commercial alternatives.
I have used TELEform, by Cardiff and was somewhat impressed. It can take multiple different inputs (scanner, fax, email, web POST, etc), run ICR on them, and store the data in a number of different RDBMS. I believe that this is a Windows-only package.
Another piece of software that I cannot recommend as I do not have experience with is from 170 Systems called 170 MarkView, which basically does the same thing.
I have used TELEform in a medical/clinical setting, where doctors fill out prescriptions, fax them in, and character recgonition is run server-side where it is verified by my data staff. It works pretty well, but you need to keep in mind that handwriting recgonition is not infallible, and if you are interested in any level of accuracy, I would recommend that a human verify each comb-box where there is handwritten text. Most verifiers that I've seen are pretty good and you can glance at each each and just pound the tab-key to scream through the fields.
As far as statistics for accuracy with TELEform, the numbers that I reported are as follows (the numbers represent the percentage of fields with ICR errors of the specified type):
You can take the first three numbers with a grain of salt (the numbers based on what kind of ICR error occured are subjective and somewhat antecdotal) but the total is accurate -- expect to have approximately 9.9% of your fields come back with errors, and around 6% if you are really careful in desigining your forms and train your users on how to write on those forms. These numbers are consistent for all of the ICR systems I have used.
There are three players in this market: Apple, MS, and RealMedia...But Real(Whatever they're called) has a client out for just about every major server OS. This gives Real a leg up on MS and Apple. Apple needs to beat out (or at least match) Real before taking on MS in this game.
What I meant, was that Real has a server out for nearly every platform on the market...and they are generally supported by Real.
Let me ask you this: Does Apple need to emulate Microsoft to succeed, or find out where they can beat Microsoft and exploit that oppritunity?
You're right -- Micrsoft has a streamer that's Windows only. This doesn't justify Apple doing the same thing. By the logic you just used, does this mean that Apple should invest $100 million (or whatever MS invested in IE) to beat Netscape in a game that won't directly win them any money? No. Not only is that not smart (for Apple), but Apple can't afford that. Apple is not in the same position that Microsoft is in, and to use what Microsoft does as an example doesn't do the discussion any justice. Microsoft can afford to only support their system -- they own a vast majority of the desktop marketshare, and a big portion of the server market! Apple simply doesn't, and they don't (have any part of the server market) at all.
There are three players in this market: Apple, MS, and RealMedia. Yes, Microsoft has players/servers that are only for their systems...and so does Apple...and there are mpeg4 streamers out there for other platforms that are free. But Real(Whatever they're called) has a client out for just about every major server OS. This gives Real a leg up on MS and Apple. Apple needs to beat out (or at least match) Real before taking on MS in this game.
Like it or not, Apple needs every piece of revenue can get to survive. If they write/port some software and give it away so that some of their software can be sold -- that's what they need to do.
I have a pretty strong feeling that in the end, only one of the three companies in question will own streaming media. Technically speaking, they've got the right idea for the software...better than asf, better than rm. But if they don't get their act together and do what they need to do to sell the software that they intend to (and need to) sell -- quicktime will be a thing of the past, and Apple may be too.
Second, I need to correct myself. What I intended to say was:
If they give away the application server and the basic player...
What I meant, was...If they give away the application server and the basic player...for other operating systems...
I understand what mpeg4 is and how it works...thank you very much (this is where I didn't appreciate your tone, and BTW, what were you trying to prove by that, anyway?).
Where I stand corrected -- I was not under the impression that it was based on the.mov standard. I assumed that Quicktime waas similar to AVI -- which is also not a format...however, a wrapper that can make use of many different codecs (including mpeg2/4).
In any case, this is totally semantic, and I I don't really have time to argue semantic bullshit with you. It doesn't matter anyway. You can hardly prove that Apple has been successful trying to force people into buying their hardware to use their software. It just doesn't work. It never has for them...they did alright with the iMac for a while, but then they went right back to struggling to stay in business. Fact is, that Apple cannot continue to survive by making people buy their propritary hardware. Quicktime server is no exception -- Apple needs to swallow their pride.
I think that you are missing the idea that propritary video just doesn't sell.
First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft -- and maybe they'll actually be able to compete with RealNetworks. By not porting their server, they won't have a leg up, because Quicktime will only stream from one platform -- and that's a server platform that has yet to prove itself in any marketplace (yes, BSD has -- but the Mac server has decidedly not).
The question that you need to address here before you talk about revenues, is this: What is Apple selling with Quicktime?
Encoding software? Value-adds to their basic streaming media player? A server for streaming media?
I believe that the former two are being sold, and the latter, given away. If they give away the application server and the basic player, it will potentially expand their marketplace for what they do sell (encoding software, and add-ons for the player). Mind you, the two pieces where they are able to make money on Quicktime have been ported to both Linux and Windows.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that nobody is going to buy a Mac server just so they can stream QuickTime. Apple just does not have that kind of hold on the marketplace. Why would anyone do that when their existing infrastructure is already largely Windows or Unix (ie, non Apple-Unix) which can stream MS or Real media?
The answer: they won't -- Apple can't force that market segment to buy its hardware to run its streaming software -- Quicktime just isn't that good...Apple knows this, and the market knows it. If Apple completely owned the marketplace for streaming video (ie Quicktime was the standard for streaming video) then Apple would succeed in forcing people to buy their hardware...but let's be realistic here. This is why its not only a smart idea for Apple to port to other platforms -- its significantly more profitable than trying to force people to buy their hardware.
A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb.
Maybe if its a highly explosive mouse...or a mouse hurtling at supersonic speed toward its target -- then sure, it can be just as dangerous as a bullet of a bomb...but probably not otherwise.
The short of it is a description of 802.11-a. The main page contains tons of info to get you started working on your own drivers -- or there may be some gems in there too (I.e. identifying a 5 GHz card or driver that works with your system).
Its about time that 2600 won a court case...especially one involving linking (or, mybe more appropriately, redirecting). I only wish that they were this unilaterally successful in defending themselves in their DVDCCA case (or, for that matter, even partially successful).
I live in one of the NYC boroughs and on September 11th my phone service was gone, and cell service was practically gone as well (it was actually the first to go, and later in the day, I had to dial 20-40 times to get a call through)... Cell service was pretty bad for weeks afterwards.
SMS data packets are tiny, and can typically get through when there is little or no voice service. If it is available in your locale and with your provider, I'd suggest learning to use it (and making sure your loved ones know how to use it) -- in the event of a disaster, it may be the best form of communication with the people who are close to you.
There are a number of methods for using this...and SMS is included. You can send messages Upoc's Voice Message System, WAP/Wireless, e-mail, cell-phone email, SMS, etc...check this out.
But the point is -- in the US, most people's phones don't support SMS -- alot of companies use propritary messaging formats. These people have found a way to (sort of) integrate those (using whatever digital service that you may have)...and (maybe) make some money off of the ad revenue.
upoc.com offers a free service that links together all of the propritary cellular text messaging in the US via a web interface. It also offers stuff like public groups.
Its not necessarily an IM thing, but a text-messaging thing.
You can throw all of the NHTSA and IIHS stastics at me that you want. However, these are not and never will be impartial statistics.
These are the people who have been cramming the "speed kills" crap down our throats for years. I'll direct you to the Cato Institute for more accurate statistics. Specifically, NHTSA has not lived up to its airbag promises. See here too. Also, while I don't have any links, and am no longer a member, I'm sure that the National Motorists Association has information contrary to the NHTSA and IIHS data.
NHTSA is a Federal Government orginization and will never be impartial. Their entire existence depends on their never backing down on their ideals -- even if they're proven wrong. If they turn around and say that they over-regulated and its costing the American consumer more than its saving them -- the orginization goes away and everyone there loses their job. Sure -- when NHTSA started out, they may have had good intentions. But it got out of control -- and when most of their reports were discredited, they didn't not rebut the negative feedback...they responded with more data -- this time the data was statistically insigificant or misleading.
Take the national 55 MPH speed lmit. NHTSA (and IIHS) predicted anarchy on the road then the nationial 55 MPH speed limit was repealed in 1996. When they were wrong, their 1998 report to congress did not reflect that. Instead of showing the decreased deaths per million miles travelled, they showed a trend of increasing percentage of fatalities on interstate highways (1% of highway fatalities) vs a decrease in non-interstate (99% of fatalities). In any case, it is very similiar to the DEA and ONDCP. Do you remember how Barry McCaffrey (former drug Czar under Clinton) responded when asked if it would help our country to switch to a drug policy closer to the Netherlands'? He lied! He said that soft and hard drug abuse was higher than the US per capita across the board...in kids and adults. This is the exact opposite of thr truth. Government orginizations can/have/will skew facts and obscure data just to stay alive. NHTSA is a prefect example of this type of big-government thinking.
Outside of this argument -- do you actually believe that I am not mentally capable of deciding weather or not I should have an airbag in my car? What about seatbelts? Motorcycle helmets? Pot? Alcohol? Cigrettes? Prescription drugs? Pornography? Now tell me, where does it stop???
I have to agree with you (to an extent). Nader has a long history of pushing legislation through government to protect the public from itself.
A perfect example of this is the mandatory airbags in all cars sold in the US. On average, an airbag adds ~$800 the cost of a new car. The consumer doesn't get to choose if he/she wants this safety device -- and especially in this case, it isn't proven to save lives. Not only an example of a failed piece of legislature that won't ever go away, but another choice taken away from the consumer -- another opporitunity to market safety those with an extra $800 wasted. Now we all have to pay for the pyrotechnic devices to sit in front of our faces. Gee, thanks for pushing that legislature through, dick.
Now, to bring this back out to the greater political arena. Typically, Nader is anti-corporation and anti-capitalism. I find it hard to believe that a (generally) Libertarian community like Slashdot would sell-out free-thinking ideals for a little bit of Microsoft bashing from a guy like Nader who is not only anti-corporation, but anti-consumer-freedom (even though he claims to be a consumer advocate) -- and he is also pro-big-government taboot (which, by and large, Slashdot does not seem to be). This Microsoft-limiting is a similar tactic -- rather than let the courts handle Microsoft's antitrust problems -- he wants to administratively force the issue, bypassing our way of doing things...again contrary to Capitalist (and/or Libertarian) ideals.
Practically speaking, there are many ups and downs to having the US government's IT systems be completely heterogenous...and I'm not going into them, because my point is that no matter how much you like Nader and the Green Party that he represented -- there is no escaping his politics. He is for more government regulation than you can shake a stick at, the regulation spanning into everything we do -- no thanks Ralph.
Why can't people like Nader just look out for themselves, and leave me to take care of myself?
Turner's CEO has already alleged that anyone using a PVR is guilty of IP theft. According to term 2, section C (subsection c) of the agreement:
ReplayTV has the absolute right to immediately suspend or terminate your account, and terminate this Agreement, if you... infringe (or are alleged to infringe) upon the intellectual property rights of ReplayTV or any third party in your use in any way of the ReplayTV Service.
I guess SonicBlue will have (the absolute right) to cancel every subscription to its service.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of which...does Van Ick (or Van Eck, I don't remember) phreaking really work/exist? I'd love to see a Slashdot feature on that.
Ext3 is great for systems that are either using an existing ext2 filesystem and require journaling, or systems like RedHat that have no way of installing with XFS or Reiser on the root partition. It's backwards compatibility and ability to upgrade an existing ext2 partition is excellent.
However, after running a sandbox with bad memory that would consistently crash (it took me a while to get around to diagnosing, and even longer to actually fix) I found that ext3's recovery was not as good as XFS or BSD's FFS with softdep turned on (FFS with softdeps is my favorite solution thus far -- although it is not a true JFS, it does asynchronously write your metadata, is faster than ext2, and has the same effect as any JFS...but I digress -- BSD is not Linux). After a hard crash and an unclean reboot with ext3, I would consistently lose data on open files, and at times, my journal was, at times,(seemingly) corrupt, and I would have to boot into single user mode and manually fsck the disk, which took forever.
I do not have sufficient experience with ReiserFS, but I hear that its excellent. If you're using Linux, and are starting from a clean slate, check out XFS from a freshly-patched kernel (ie, not stock RedHat). Again, I've heard great things about ReiserFS, but since I don't have experience with it, I can't recommend it.
Do you really believe that DOD has a vested interest in seeing Saudi Arabia block internet access to porn, religious information, humor, music, movies, homosexuality, and web translators? I don't know a ton about this, so I could be wrong -- but it would seem that DOD would want the opposite.
I'm curious -- from your post, you seem to believe that DOD is funding some portion of this? Which parts, and why would they want to do that?
Also -- how does the US government help censor anything in any country other than in the US? Are you talking about DMCA-type stuff? (I'm legitimately curious -- not being a Slashdot bastard).
Thanks
-Turkey
OK...I did search on the Great Firewall of China article and found it here.
-Turkey
Although it is ugly, this practice is hardly news...US companies have been helping countries censor their internet (and do other bad shit with our technology) for decades Cisco's Great Firewall of China is a perfect example...also, yahoo China is another great example of this type of censorship (I'm not gonna serach for the Cisco firewall link again -- but its out there in the Slashdot archives) .
Let's also not forget about IBM's assistance to Nazi Germany during WWII -- cataloging and tracking all of the people that the Nazi's wanted to do away with was a monumental task, and IBM was right there to assist.
Although assisting Nazi Germany does not necessarily equate to firewalling China, or censoring Saudi Arabia, what I'm saying is that US companies have always been willing to take on less-than-honorable causes in order to earn a buck...because if they don't do it, their competitor will. Didn't everyone already know this?
-Turkey
Frankly, I don't really care as much as you seem to about the cannonical platform argument -- after I was an Amiga freak (and saw all that money wasted), I tried to be a little bit more objective about what systems I used. In any case, there's no need to take a such a defensive stance on this...I have nothing to prove here.
Hey I'm not complaining -- I'm insisting that Apple needs to further support cross-platform development in order to succeed in the video-streaming software/hardware industry...which, I might add, is extremely competitive, and difficult to stay in.
Then how come only Apple makes Apple (or Apple-compatible) computers? Oh right, they're not closed per se...but since Macintosh (or compatible) computers are not available anywhere other than from Apple it is the same as being propritary. Especially considering the fact that if you don't use their hardware, you will never get support. (Sun is open too, but I still consider their hardware propritary -- you have to buy it from Sun).
Look -- I'm not talking about buying a streaming server for myself. I'm talking about what corporate America is going to buy -- which is Apple's intended customer for the server-side of this. You've been telling me what I can do with this -- but what does Apple support? Corporate America will not buy software/OS'es that are not supported (this is why IBM, Dell, Oracle, and RedHat, etc have been busting their ass to get it properly supported). I'm afraid that I've assumed that everything in this this paragraph was implicit in the discussion.
In any case, I'm interested in reading your response...
--Turkey
You're totally right...its a tricky business to stay afloat in.
As far as the company's profitibility -- technically, you're right -- but technically, you're also wrong (disclaimer: I don't know how investors and banks evaluate this stuff, I can only relay the data here). In at the end of the last fiscal quarter, while they reported a $44 million operating profit, they reported a loss of $1.151 billion from investments -- out of that, only $79 mil was from new investments. (See their quote on yahoo).
One way or the other, (and FWIW, I guess) it doesn't translate directly to any real profit.
-Turkey
I am not aware of any open-source automated ICR for forms processing. I can, however, offer a few commercial alternatives.
I have used TELEform, by Cardiff and was somewhat impressed. It can take multiple different inputs (scanner, fax, email, web POST, etc), run ICR on them, and store the data in a number of different RDBMS. I believe that this is a Windows-only package.
Another piece of software that I cannot recommend as I do not have experience with is from 170 Systems called 170 MarkView, which basically does the same thing.
I have used TELEform in a medical/clinical setting, where doctors fill out prescriptions, fax them in, and character recgonition is run server-side where it is verified by my data staff. It works pretty well, but you need to keep in mind that handwriting recgonition is not infallible, and if you are interested in any level of accuracy, I would recommend that a human verify each comb-box where there is handwritten text. Most verifiers that I've seen are pretty good and you can glance at each each and just pound the tab-key to scream through the fields.
As far as statistics for accuracy with TELEform, the numbers that I reported are as follows (the numbers represent the percentage of fields with ICR errors of the specified type):
ICR Error type:
==========
Handwriting 3.7%
Combination Handwriting/OCR 3.2%
OCR 2.9%
Total 9.9%
You can take the first three numbers with a grain of salt (the numbers based on what kind of ICR error occured are subjective and somewhat antecdotal) but the total is accurate -- expect to have approximately 9.9% of your fields come back with errors, and around 6% if you are really careful in desigining your forms and train your users on how to write on those forms. These numbers are consistent for all of the ICR systems I have used.
I hope this helps...
-Turkey
-Turkey
Let me ask you this:
Does Apple need to emulate Microsoft to succeed, or find out where they can beat Microsoft and exploit that oppritunity?
You're right -- Micrsoft has a streamer that's Windows only. This doesn't justify Apple doing the same thing. By the logic you just used, does this mean that Apple should invest $100 million (or whatever MS invested in IE) to beat Netscape in a game that won't directly win them any money? No. Not only is that not smart (for Apple), but Apple can't afford that. Apple is not in the same position that Microsoft is in, and to use what Microsoft does as an example doesn't do the discussion any justice. Microsoft can afford to only support their system -- they own a vast majority of the desktop marketshare, and a big portion of the server market! Apple simply doesn't, and they don't (have any part of the server market) at all.
There are three players in this market: Apple, MS, and RealMedia. Yes, Microsoft has players/servers that are only for their systems...and so does Apple...and there are mpeg4 streamers out there for other platforms that are free. But Real(Whatever they're called) has a client out for just about every major server OS. This gives Real a leg up on MS and Apple. Apple needs to beat out (or at least match) Real before taking on MS in this game.
Like it or not, Apple needs every piece of revenue can get to survive. If they write/port some software and give it away so that some of their software can be sold -- that's what they need to do.
I have a pretty strong feeling that in the end, only one of the three companies in question will own streaming media. Technically speaking, they've got the right idea for the software...better than asf, better than rm. But if they don't get their act together and do what they need to do to sell the software that they intend to (and need to) sell -- quicktime will be a thing of the past, and Apple may be too.
-Turkey
Second, I need to correct myself. What I intended to say was: What I meant, was
I understand what mpeg4 is and how it works...thank you very much (this is where I didn't appreciate your tone, and BTW, what were you trying to prove by that, anyway?).
Where I stand corrected -- I was not under the impression that it was based on the
In any case, this is totally semantic, and I I don't really have time to argue semantic bullshit with you. It doesn't matter anyway. You can hardly prove that Apple has been successful trying to force people into buying their hardware to use their software. It just doesn't work. It never has for them...they did alright with the iMac for a while, but then they went right back to struggling to stay in business. Fact is, that Apple cannot continue to survive by making people buy their propritary hardware. Quicktime server is no exception -- Apple needs to swallow their pride.
-Turkey
I think that you are missing the idea that propritary video just doesn't sell.
First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft -- and maybe they'll actually be able to compete with RealNetworks. By not porting their server, they won't have a leg up, because Quicktime will only stream from one platform -- and that's a server platform that has yet to prove itself in any marketplace (yes, BSD has -- but the Mac server has decidedly not).
The question that you need to address here before you talk about revenues, is this: What is Apple selling with Quicktime?
Encoding software?
Value-adds to their basic streaming media player?
A server for streaming media?
I believe that the former two are being sold, and the latter, given away. If they give away the application server and the basic player, it will potentially expand their marketplace for what they do sell (encoding software, and add-ons for the player). Mind you, the two pieces where they are able to make money on Quicktime have been ported to both Linux and Windows.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that nobody is going to buy a Mac server just so they can stream QuickTime. Apple just does not have that kind of hold on the marketplace. Why would anyone do that when their existing infrastructure is already largely Windows or Unix (ie, non Apple-Unix) which can stream MS or Real media?
The answer: they won't -- Apple can't force that market segment to buy its hardware to run its streaming software -- Quicktime just isn't that good...Apple knows this, and the market knows it. If Apple completely owned the marketplace for streaming video (ie Quicktime was the standard for streaming video) then Apple would succeed in forcing people to buy their hardware...but let's be realistic here. This is why its not only a smart idea for Apple to port to other platforms -- its significantly more profitable than trying to force people to buy their hardware.
-Turkey
Since the S/390 is a pretty parallel architecture...does this mean that the FreeBSD kernel is getting better at SMP?
Does it run with more than 2 processors on the 390?
Is the 2 CPU limitation an X86-only thing that I'm ignorant of (quite possible)?
That's not to say that I don't love the BSD's, but they do have (or maybe they had) their limitations.
-Turkey
Check this out for some more info.
The short of it is a description of 802.11-a. The main page contains tons of info to get you started working on your own drivers -- or there may be some gems in there too (I.e. identifying a 5 GHz card or driver that works with your system).
-Turkey
Its about time that 2600 won a court case...especially one involving linking (or, mybe more appropriately, redirecting). I only wish that they were this unilaterally successful in defending themselves in their DVDCCA case (or, for that matter, even partially successful).
-Turkey
I live in one of the NYC boroughs and on September 11th my phone service was gone, and cell service was practically gone as well (it was actually the first to go, and later in the day, I had to dial 20-40 times to get a call through)... Cell service was pretty bad for weeks afterwards.
SMS data packets are tiny, and can typically get through when there is little or no voice service. If it is available in your locale and with your provider, I'd suggest learning to use it (and making sure your loved ones know how to use it) -- in the event of a disaster, it may be the best form of communication with the people who are close to you.
-Turkey
There are a number of methods for using this...and SMS is included. You can send messages Upoc's Voice Message System, WAP/Wireless, e-mail, cell-phone email, SMS, etc...check this out.
But the point is -- in the US, most people's phones don't support SMS -- alot of companies use propritary messaging formats. These people have found a way to (sort of) integrate those (using whatever digital service that you may have)...and (maybe) make some money off of the ad revenue.
-Turkey
upoc.com offers a free service that links together all of the propritary cellular text messaging in the US via a web interface. It also offers stuff like public groups.
Its not necessarily an IM thing, but a text-messaging thing.
-Turkey
You can throw all of the NHTSA and IIHS stastics at me that you want. However, these are not and never will be impartial statistics.
These are the people who have been cramming the "speed kills" crap down our throats for years. I'll direct you to the Cato Institute for more accurate statistics. Specifically, NHTSA has not lived up to its airbag promises. See here too. Also, while I don't have any links, and am no longer a member, I'm sure that the National Motorists Association has information contrary to the NHTSA and IIHS data.
NHTSA is a Federal Government orginization and will never be impartial. Their entire existence depends on their never backing down on their ideals -- even if they're proven wrong. If they turn around and say that they over-regulated and its costing the American consumer more than its saving them -- the orginization goes away and everyone there loses their job. Sure -- when NHTSA started out, they may have had good intentions. But it got out of control -- and when most of their reports were discredited, they didn't not rebut the negative feedback...they responded with more data -- this time the data was statistically insigificant or misleading. Take the national 55 MPH speed lmit. NHTSA (and IIHS) predicted anarchy on the road then the nationial 55 MPH speed limit was repealed in 1996. When they were wrong, their 1998 report to congress did not reflect that. Instead of showing the decreased deaths per million miles travelled, they showed a trend of increasing percentage of fatalities on interstate highways (1% of highway fatalities) vs a decrease in non-interstate (99% of fatalities). In any case, it is very similiar to the DEA and ONDCP. Do you remember how Barry McCaffrey (former drug Czar under Clinton) responded when asked if it would help our country to switch to a drug policy closer to the Netherlands'? He lied! He said that soft and hard drug abuse was higher than the US per capita across the board...in kids and adults. This is the exact opposite of thr truth. Government orginizations can/have/will skew facts and obscure data just to stay alive. NHTSA is a prefect example of this type of big-government thinking.
Outside of this argument -- do you actually believe that I am not mentally capable of deciding weather or not I should have an airbag in my car? What about seatbelts? Motorcycle helmets? Pot? Alcohol? Cigrettes? Prescription drugs? Pornography? Now tell me, where does it stop???
-Turkey
Thank you!
I'm glad that someone is making sense here. Why can't I just look after myself, and avoid having the government make judgements for me??
-Turkey
I have to agree with you (to an extent). Nader has a long history of pushing legislation through government to protect the public from itself.
A perfect example of this is the mandatory airbags in all cars sold in the US. On average, an airbag adds ~$800 the cost of a new car. The consumer doesn't get to choose if he/she wants this safety device -- and especially in this case, it isn't proven to save lives. Not only an example of a failed piece of legislature that won't ever go away, but another choice taken away from the consumer -- another opporitunity to market safety those with an extra $800 wasted. Now we all have to pay for the pyrotechnic devices to sit in front of our faces. Gee, thanks for pushing that legislature through, dick.
Now, to bring this back out to the greater political arena. Typically, Nader is anti-corporation and anti-capitalism. I find it hard to believe that a (generally) Libertarian community like Slashdot would sell-out free-thinking ideals for a little bit of Microsoft bashing from a guy like Nader who is not only anti-corporation, but anti-consumer-freedom (even though he claims to be a consumer advocate) -- and he is also pro-big-government taboot (which, by and large, Slashdot does not seem to be). This Microsoft-limiting is a similar tactic -- rather than let the courts handle Microsoft's antitrust problems -- he wants to administratively force the issue, bypassing our way of doing things...again contrary to Capitalist (and/or Libertarian) ideals.
Practically speaking, there are many ups and downs to having the US government's IT systems be completely heterogenous...and I'm not going into them, because my point is that no matter how much you like Nader and the Green Party that he represented -- there is no escaping his politics. He is for more government regulation than you can shake a stick at, the regulation spanning into everything we do -- no thanks Ralph.
Why can't people like Nader just look out for themselves, and leave me to take care of myself?
-Turkey
Turner's CEO has already alleged that anyone using a PVR is guilty of IP theft. According to term 2, section C (subsection c) of the agreement:
... infringe (or are alleged to infringe) upon the intellectual property rights of ReplayTV or any third party in your use in any way of the ReplayTV Service.
ReplayTV has the absolute right to immediately suspend or terminate your account, and terminate this Agreement, if you
I guess SonicBlue will have (the absolute right) to cancel every subscription to its service.
-Turkey