If IBM receives the patent, then it can disallow others from participating in the practice. This patent alone could be a jury-rigged bit of patent reform, for this particular abuse. (Assuming IBM doesn't go crazy and utilize the patent itself.)
I'd tend to think this is more their purpose, than to become the master bully.
While I certainly appreciate the fact that Apple keeps their OS X versions under control, it's a bit ironic that he takes a jab at Microsoft with the "everyone gets the ultimate eversion," when the second announcement on Apple's home page is "Apple Announces Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard."
What? Two versions?
In any case, there's a lot more sanity with Apple that MS, and I've been a solid convert to OS X (not for fanboi reasons, but because it lets me get my work done with silliness, dammit!). I'm very much looking forward to Leopard; my main concerns are related to application compatibility, especially low level utilities and apps (like Insomnia, device drivers, Parallels, and such). Hopefully we won't need new versions of those to transition smoothly to Leopard; I'll probably run it off an external USB drive at first, to make sure. This will be the first operating system I've ever purchased personally (and I will do so enthusiastically).
For Simon Pegg fans, there's an entertaining clip of him from Derren Brown's show, where Derren messses with his mind a bit. (A great demonstration of hypnosis, suggestion, NLP, and such techniques.)
It really got me into Derren Brown; very classy and entertaining fellow; I'm surprised he's not known in North America at all (or am I...)
These pictures are fairly low quality, probably from an engineering camera rather than a scientific one.
Indeed, the fact the antenna is right in the middle, and the linked web site refers to a "on board camera for monitoring the high gain antenna", I would say this is pretty much confirmed. I look forward to the high def shots.
Better article with a photo of the impact site. Quite an impressive hole. One hopes it's just some underground gas, and not the realization of Andromeda Strain...
Besides the security aspect, 802.11 will never replace ethernet until it actually consistently lives up to its specifications and promises.
I consistently get far worse than the promised speeds, and there's multiple nodes doing any kind of traffic, performance drops dramatically further. Half the time, some of the adapters I use won't even be able to join my network, period (probably windows drivers issues? who knows?) And the range is *terrible*. From my living room to my back yard 10 meters away, I can't get a signal unless I put my router almost at the ceiling.
I was experimenting with Torrent speeds the other day (ummm, downloading Linux distrubutions and such, I suppose), and was capping out at a certain level, figured it was my provider. Just by chance, I did a torrent from a machine wired on 100mbps ethernet, and the performance was signifcantly better. I'm tempted to run wires to the bedrooms and office now, whereas I just assumed wireless was giving me something at least in the same class as wired. I don't think it is.
If it can provide at least 1/2 or 1/3 the performance of wired, and not fight with cordless phones, microwaves, and other routers in the neighborhood (I'm in a small, poor town, and I see a half dozen networks), then *maybe* it'll start to replace wired. But it just doesn't seem to live up to the specs nor handle content anywhere near as well as wired. Possibly flawed implementations, possibly impractical promises, I don't know.
I'm tempted to call bullshit on this. Fedora outlasts Vista by 3 hours on a laptop battery? How many hours total are you getting on your battery with Fedora? Four? Five? Is that possible with today's Lithium ION technologies on any modern laptop? And if anything, it's been my experience that Linux is weaker on the power management than laptops that were specifically designed with Windows power management in mind. Details, please?
I agree wholeheartedly. Programmers and tech types often see a cool technology, and try to figure out "how can I use this?" While there are cases where this works (R&D labs, etc.), in the case where you have a specific problem/job (teaching), then figure out how to teach best, using tools where appropriate.
"If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
But an interface to the slower serial connection *could* be built/bought/hacked-up somehow for most modern PC's. And the emulation of the old system, on a modern desktop computer, would likely be far more than fast enough.
I wonder what the cost (even in electricity alone) would be for the computers supporting this system, and if a single desktop PC, with enough work done on porting/emulating would be a far more cost effective solution.
Of course, a *very* strong argument against such a transition, is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Especially when one half of your equation is many billions of miles away. There's little room for error in such a port, although it would be an interesting question of cost effectiveness comparisons...
Homer Simpson put it best, as Moe was shoving a crayon in his brain to make him stupid: "Extended warranty? How can I lose????" (I believe Moe's response was, "Nah, that's too stupid," and he backed off the crayon a bit.) Classic. I had to explain that line to a few people, who thought extended warranties were a good thing. Sigh...
It shocks and saddens me to see how these big box retailers take advantage of the unknowing consumers. Up here in Canada, we don't have Circuit City and Fry's and stuff (at least not in Nova Scotia), but we do have Future Shop, which is similar, I believe (and I think owned by Circuit City now).
One of the worst trends lately is the non-inclusion of USB cables in printers, which I'm sure was due to pressure, or to entice retailers to sell that brand, due to the add-on of selling a USB cable. A USB cable should be a throwaway dirt cheap part, but they want to charge you $20-$40 extra for a freakin' cable! I stopped one elderly gentleman from being talked into this a few months ago, letting him know you can get a gold plate GE brand USB 2.0 cable at the dollar store! (That's where I get most of my cables now, and I've never had a problem.)
Stores that make a policy of gouging consumers with USB cables, extended warrantees, and other extras, really sicken me. Why can't there be a big box retailer that doesn't do this, yet still has the selection? As much as Future Shop bugs me, it is often the only place to get certain items, with a great selection, and *usually* the best prices on the core items. Sigh...
An obliquely related story; I bought a security webcam, wasn't happy with it, thought I did a factory reset, but I guess I didn't. When it was purchased, suddenly I was bombarded with emailed images from a strangers house:S The only ones who could track it down was the ISP Eastlink, who ignored my pleading for months.
Then CTV ran a story on it, and they magically found the customer, informed them, and the problem was solved. Amazing (and sad) how a bit of media attention will get the job done.
Ironically, while CTV blurred out the new owner's images for their privacy, they clearly showed my email address on national TV. D'oh. My previously clean account has been getting a load of spam since then. (Who harvests email addresses for spam from TV segments??!?!?!?)
I too, used to laugh at Apple Fanboys. I got fed up with XP, thought I'd try OS X, with the ability to fall back to XP on the same hardware, if I wasn't happy with OS X. Well, there was no looking back! (And Parallels lets me run any old legacy thing I need, which turns out only to be MSN webcam, and little else.)
So crash free, virus free, and great performance, it's a dream come true for me. External displays work as expected. Everything just works, in general. (A few gotchas, but *very* few as compared to XP.)
The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a Fanboy. But when I talk about the Mac, I get excited about how well it works, and people accuse me of it! Well dammit, I *am* excited about how well it works for me! And want to share it with others. At the end of the day, I don't care if people convert, as long as it's there for me.:) (But the more market share they get, the stronger they'll be, and the longer they'll be around for me:). The only reason I want people to convert, is I know it would be for *their* own good, not for validation of myself as a Fanboy.
I've found this to be oddly true, as well. I've done some work in two different industrial parks, which are just recently getting broadband. (One of them, housed a government business incubator, but didn't have broadband until a couple of years ago. Shudder.)
I do consider it winning. Getting out of a relationship that isn't working is a win. There are people in many situations that can not buy their liberty at any price (and this is coming from a guy that lost it all, and faces financial ruin from a divorce...)
No, your approach is wrong. Why? Because semantically, it's not a table, it's a heading! If you hack up your document using a table instead you might still get the same visual effect, but the structure of it will still be very, very Wrong.
And God only knows, *none* of us in the Internet/HTML world, would *ever* dream of using something structural like a *table* to achieve *formatting*!
(I do agree with you, and wish Word, early-HTML, etc., *did* have better logical structures and formatting, so such hacks were never necessary.)
Mom and Joe consumer, who probably buy most of Linksys' stuff, know linksys as a familiar brand, always on the shelves at Office Depot, etc.
They're not going to read the business section or Slashdot to find out that Cisco is bringing it under their brand name. They'll just see a new, unfamiliar brand on the shelves.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. You build up so much brand name equity in a consumer product, and toss it out the window, to try and boost your enterprise name.
No average consumer even tries to keep track of who makes Palm Pilot's any more:) (Not does anyone seem to be buying them.)
Details are very scarce, but apparently this was a cold-flow test -- they weren't intending to light the motor, just flow nitrous through it. Tank ruptured, and a big fireball. Evidence visible from pictures etc suggests nothing detonated.
I did well in high school physics, but there is one thing I think I read/learned awhile back, and wonder if someone can confirm it, and its relevance to this event (if the parent poster quoted above is correct).
The thing is this: that things can explode simply through rapid expansion, which generates heat and a shock wave and all the other nasties one would associate with a detonation, but without there being something detonating.
I seem to recall that nitroglycerine doesn't ignite when it's jostled, but it just so rapidly expands to a ridiculous amount of its original volume, that it wreaks havok. Just like the ruptured tank in this case released expanding material so quickly that it caused a lot of damange (and sadly, deaths and injuries).
Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but some people may want to know the distinction in this case, if the parent post is indeed correct.
I would love to see a thorough analysis of the memory footprint of firefox. Favorites and history lists? How the hell can those small features take much space? Opera does it all that and more, and better browsing overall (except for a few incompatible sites), in a fraction of the space. What's going on???
Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.
Jeeeesh, thanks, Captain Bringdown. You must be a lot of fun at parties.
(Okay, that was actually one of the more interesting and informative posts, despite not being terribly cheery.)
Why can't air bags be used? If the balloon bags that the last probes bounced around and landed with, were okay for all the sensitive equipment aboard, would they not be okay for humans? Or did those landers still take one hell of a beating, and were just tough enough to stand it? Anyone know the impact forces the gear sustained?
I know a lot of people hate Wal-Mart. I personally don't, I guess I haven't watched the right documentaries yet, to tell me what to think, or something.
And yeah, Wal-Mart probably isn't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, nor to boost open source, nor to satisfy the few Linux people. Their motivation is undoubtedly to make money, and they usually do that by giving consumers what they want (a cheap item, that does the job).
Well, we should be proud that OpenOffice is seen as a viable enough too in their delivery of such a product, especially one aimed at students. It really is a big step in the right direction, and validates Open Source to a very large degree.
The pro-marijuana, open-source hippies, are just upset that they forgot to show up for the ballot for some reason, once again, so they hacked the system...
Slashdot Mirror
If IBM receives the patent, then it can disallow others from participating in the practice. This patent alone could be a jury-rigged bit of patent reform, for this particular abuse. (Assuming IBM doesn't go crazy and utilize the patent itself.)
I'd tend to think this is more their purpose, than to become the master bully.
The patent (upon a very brief read by unprofessional eyes) seems to broadly be about packet-based voice over IP (well, isn't that all Voice of IP?)
So AT&T completely owns VOIP? That seems pretty damn broad to me, or am I missing that the patent is somehow more narrow than that?
While I certainly appreciate the fact that Apple keeps their OS X versions under control, it's a bit ironic that he takes a jab at Microsoft with the "everyone gets the ultimate eversion," when the second announcement on Apple's home page is "Apple Announces Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard."
What? Two versions?
In any case, there's a lot more sanity with Apple that MS, and I've been a solid convert to OS X (not for fanboi reasons, but because it lets me get my work done with silliness, dammit!). I'm very much looking forward to Leopard; my main concerns are related to application compatibility, especially low level utilities and apps (like Insomnia, device drivers, Parallels, and such). Hopefully we won't need new versions of those to transition smoothly to Leopard; I'll probably run it off an external USB drive at first, to make sure. This will be the first operating system I've ever purchased personally (and I will do so enthusiastically).
-dale
For Simon Pegg fans, there's an entertaining clip of him from Derren Brown's show, where Derren messses with his mind a bit. (A great demonstration of hypnosis, suggestion, NLP, and such techniques.)
It really got me into Derren Brown; very classy and entertaining fellow; I'm surprised he's not known in North America at all (or am I...)
Indeed, the fact the antenna is right in the middle, and the linked web site refers to a "on board camera for monitoring the high gain antenna", I would say this is pretty much confirmed. I look forward to the high def shots.
Better article with a photo of the impact site. Quite an impressive hole. One hopes it's just some underground gas, and not the realization of Andromeda Strain...
Besides the security aspect, 802.11 will never replace ethernet until it actually consistently lives up to its specifications and promises.
I consistently get far worse than the promised speeds, and there's multiple nodes doing any kind of traffic, performance drops dramatically further. Half the time, some of the adapters I use won't even be able to join my network, period (probably windows drivers issues? who knows?) And the range is *terrible*. From my living room to my back yard 10 meters away, I can't get a signal unless I put my router almost at the ceiling.
I was experimenting with Torrent speeds the other day (ummm, downloading Linux distrubutions and such, I suppose), and was capping out at a certain level, figured it was my provider. Just by chance, I did a torrent from a machine wired on 100mbps ethernet, and the performance was signifcantly better. I'm tempted to run wires to the bedrooms and office now, whereas I just assumed wireless was giving me something at least in the same class as wired. I don't think it is.
If it can provide at least 1/2 or 1/3 the performance of wired, and not fight with cordless phones, microwaves, and other routers in the neighborhood (I'm in a small, poor town, and I see a half dozen networks), then *maybe* it'll start to replace wired. But it just doesn't seem to live up to the specs nor handle content anywhere near as well as wired. Possibly flawed implementations, possibly impractical promises, I don't know.
I'm tempted to call bullshit on this. Fedora outlasts Vista by 3 hours on a laptop battery? How many hours total are you getting on your battery with Fedora? Four? Five? Is that possible with today's Lithium ION technologies on any modern laptop? And if anything, it's been my experience that Linux is weaker on the power management than laptops that were specifically designed with Windows power management in mind. Details, please?
I agree wholeheartedly. Programmers and tech types often see a cool technology, and try to figure out "how can I use this?" While there are cases where this works (R&D labs, etc.), in the case where you have a specific problem/job (teaching), then figure out how to teach best, using tools where appropriate.
"If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
But an interface to the slower serial connection *could* be built/bought/hacked-up somehow for most modern PC's. And the emulation of the old system, on a modern desktop computer, would likely be far more than fast enough.
I wonder what the cost (even in electricity alone) would be for the computers supporting this system, and if a single desktop PC, with enough work done on porting/emulating would be a far more cost effective solution.
Of course, a *very* strong argument against such a transition, is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Especially when one half of your equation is many billions of miles away. There's little room for error in such a port, although it would be an interesting question of cost effectiveness comparisons...
Homer Simpson put it best, as Moe was shoving a crayon in his brain to make him stupid: "Extended warranty? How can I lose????" (I believe Moe's response was, "Nah, that's too stupid," and he backed off the crayon a bit.) Classic. I had to explain that line to a few people, who thought extended warranties were a good thing. Sigh...
It shocks and saddens me to see how these big box retailers take advantage of the unknowing consumers. Up here in Canada, we don't have Circuit City and Fry's and stuff (at least not in Nova Scotia), but we do have Future Shop, which is similar, I believe (and I think owned by Circuit City now).
One of the worst trends lately is the non-inclusion of USB cables in printers, which I'm sure was due to pressure, or to entice retailers to sell that brand, due to the add-on of selling a USB cable. A USB cable should be a throwaway dirt cheap part, but they want to charge you $20-$40 extra for a freakin' cable! I stopped one elderly gentleman from being talked into this a few months ago, letting him know you can get a gold plate GE brand USB 2.0 cable at the dollar store! (That's where I get most of my cables now, and I've never had a problem.)
Stores that make a policy of gouging consumers with USB cables, extended warrantees, and other extras, really sicken me. Why can't there be a big box retailer that doesn't do this, yet still has the selection? As much as Future Shop bugs me, it is often the only place to get certain items, with a great selection, and *usually* the best prices on the core items. Sigh...
-dale
An obliquely related story; I bought a security webcam, wasn't happy with it, thought I did a factory reset, but I guess I didn't. When it was purchased, suddenly I was bombarded with emailed images from a strangers house :S The only ones who could track it down was the ISP Eastlink, who ignored my pleading for months.
Then CTV ran a story on it, and they magically found the customer, informed them, and the problem was solved. Amazing (and sad) how a bit of media attention will get the job done.
Link here with video.
Ironically, while CTV blurred out the new owner's images for their privacy, they clearly showed my email address on national TV. D'oh. My previously clean account has been getting a load of spam since then. (Who harvests email addresses for spam from TV segments??!?!?!?)
I too, used to laugh at Apple Fanboys. I got fed up with XP, thought I'd try OS X, with the ability to fall back to XP on the same hardware, if I wasn't happy with OS X. Well, there was no looking back! (And Parallels lets me run any old legacy thing I need, which turns out only to be MSN webcam, and little else.)
:) (But the more market share they get, the stronger they'll be, and the longer they'll be around for me :). The only reason I want people to convert, is I know it would be for *their* own good, not for validation of myself as a Fanboy.
So crash free, virus free, and great performance, it's a dream come true for me. External displays work as expected. Everything just works, in general. (A few gotchas, but *very* few as compared to XP.)
The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a Fanboy. But when I talk about the Mac, I get excited about how well it works, and people accuse me of it! Well dammit, I *am* excited about how well it works for me! And want to share it with others. At the end of the day, I don't care if people convert, as long as it's there for me.
I've found this to be oddly true, as well. I've done some work in two different industrial parks, which are just recently getting broadband. (One of them, housed a government business incubator, but didn't have broadband until a couple of years ago. Shudder.)
I do consider it winning. Getting out of a relationship that isn't working is a win. There are people in many situations that can not buy their liberty at any price (and this is coming from a guy that lost it all, and faces financial ruin from a divorce...)
No, your approach is wrong. Why? Because semantically, it's not a table, it's a heading! If you hack up your document using a table instead you might still get the same visual effect, but the structure of it will still be very, very Wrong.
And God only knows, *none* of us in the Internet/HTML world, would *ever* dream of using something structural like a *table* to achieve *formatting*!
(I do agree with you, and wish Word, early-HTML, etc., *did* have better logical structures and formatting, so such hacks were never necessary.)
Mom and Joe consumer, who probably buy most of Linksys' stuff, know linksys as a familiar brand, always on the shelves at Office Depot, etc.
:) (Not does anyone seem to be buying them.)
They're not going to read the business section or Slashdot to find out that Cisco is bringing it under their brand name. They'll just see a new, unfamiliar brand on the shelves.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. You build up so much brand name equity in a consumer product, and toss it out the window, to try and boost your enterprise name.
No average consumer even tries to keep track of who makes Palm Pilot's any more
Details are very scarce, but apparently this was a cold-flow test -- they weren't intending to light the motor, just flow nitrous through it. Tank ruptured, and a big fireball. Evidence visible from pictures etc suggests nothing detonated.
I did well in high school physics, but there is one thing I think I read/learned awhile back, and wonder if someone can confirm it, and its relevance to this event (if the parent poster quoted above is correct).
The thing is this: that things can explode simply through rapid expansion, which generates heat and a shock wave and all the other nasties one would associate with a detonation, but without there being something detonating.
I seem to recall that nitroglycerine doesn't ignite when it's jostled, but it just so rapidly expands to a ridiculous amount of its original volume, that it wreaks havok. Just like the ruptured tank in this case released expanding material so quickly that it caused a lot of damange (and sadly, deaths and injuries).
Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but some people may want to know the distinction in this case, if the parent post is indeed correct.
I would love to see a thorough analysis of the memory footprint of firefox. Favorites and history lists? How the hell can those small features take much space? Opera does it all that and more, and better browsing overall (except for a few incompatible sites), in a fraction of the space. What's going on???
Jeeeesh, thanks, Captain Bringdown. You must be a lot of fun at parties.
(Okay, that was actually one of the more interesting and informative posts, despite not being terribly cheery.)
Why can't air bags be used? If the balloon bags that the last probes bounced around and landed with, were okay for all the sensitive equipment aboard, would they not be okay for humans? Or did those landers still take one hell of a beating, and were just tough enough to stand it? Anyone know the impact forces the gear sustained?
Come on editors, this is grade 3 stuff.
loose = adjective; "It is loose, like sleeve of wizard"
lose = verb; opposite of win/gain. "My sister wished she didn't lose her virginity to Bilo"
I know a lot of people hate Wal-Mart. I personally don't, I guess I haven't watched the right documentaries yet, to tell me what to think, or something.
And yeah, Wal-Mart probably isn't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, nor to boost open source, nor to satisfy the few Linux people. Their motivation is undoubtedly to make money, and they usually do that by giving consumers what they want (a cheap item, that does the job).
Well, we should be proud that OpenOffice is seen as a viable enough too in their delivery of such a product, especially one aimed at students. It really is a big step in the right direction, and validates Open Source to a very large degree.
-dale
The pro-marijuana, open-source hippies, are just upset that they forgot to show up for the ballot for some reason, once again, so they hacked the system...