Hmm...wonder if the cars will be somewhat slower and less responsive with each new revision of Microsoft ECU unless you do a total engine upgrade at the same time...
Keep in mind we're not talking about something as complex (or rather said, HUGE, not just complex) as Windows, so basically you could assume they're going to be able to do a much better job
True, an ECU is undoubtedly a much simpler system than a Windows PC so chances are there is less risk of failure. I fully expect it WILL be a better outcome than Windows. But the BEST outcome? It seems to me that the choice of Microsoft really defies logic. They have such a small track record in automotive applications and NO track record at all in engine mamagement. Anyone remember Microsoft's last high-profile foray into the automotive market? That would be iDrive...or rather iCantDrive. It was absolutely embarassing! iDrive controlled the accessories on some BMWs. iDrive v1.0 was full of bugs--it futzed with radio settings and opened your trunk when it suited its mood.
iDrive had an interface designed by Microsoft, so you can guess how (in)elegant it was to use. It's like they started with the Windows 95 paradigm and adapted it to a car: "Let's see--we have this idea where you press the start button where you can have a thousand functions/apps reside in menus 8 levels deep. That's so cool we should do that in a car!" so they did--it has what I'd call a "Start knob" that you fiddle with to navigate a heap of menus to do things like change the radio station or adjust the temperature. Yes it gets rid of the giant array of tiny buttons notorious in some German luxury models in the past, but now it's all TOO hidden. Firstly it takes some time to figure out where everything is in the menus. That's not TOO bad but you can NEVER get good enough to safely use it while driving because you have to peer at a screen to see what you are doing. The whole idea of iDrive was fundamentally flawed!
Guess what? iDrive was much simpler than a Windows desktop but they STILL screwed it up. Even when it was all fixed and wokrd it was STILL bad because it was a bad design. If the lame interface was Bosch's idea, it was evident that Microsoft didn't have the nerve or UI expertise to point out how flawed the design was.
Now MS is going to take on racing engine management. They could pull it off but it could also turn into a total gong show--they have no proven track record. The best thing they could do is license some other company's technology or buy someone who already knows what they are doing. It still begs the question though of WHY MICROSOFT? Were companies like Bosch or Siemens-VDO ever considered? I mean--what do you think MS would do anyways? Probably tack on a Windows-CE-pocketPC type of thing onto the electronics from one of those other companies anyways. It'll work but be less than elegant and an inefficient design. So...why not go with an established player right off the bat?
First, so what even if I am an uninformed public shareholder? Does that suddenly mean I really don't need to know, should not be informed of, or have a way to find out the internal workings of how the compnay I own a piece of is operated?
Dude--it's not like you couldn't do that BEFORE S.Ox came into being. In order to be a publically traded company the SEC still had a fairly long list of reporting requirements and accounting practices. Yes, there were too many places where you could still cook the books and fabricate public earnings statements but this Sarbanes Oxley business is sometimes akin to using 100 tonnes of concrete to plug a thumb-sized leak in the dam.
Even if I can't tell a balance sheet from a chart of accounts or a budget, the structure and contents of the reports have to be understandable, so the underlying management philosophy can be understandable, so the intent of the managers and Board and prospects for the company can be inferred.
If you cannot tell the difference between basic financial documents then you shouldn't be investing. Period. I mean it--don't even get into mutual funds if you can't tell the difference between its prospectus and a bus schedule and don't trust your broker. That is the case even with S.Ox now in place. Learn the basics of finance and do your reearch before putting money you count on into such investments. If your broker will not give you inofrmation you ask for then fire his arse. *INFORMED* investors lost minimal amounts in the Enron crash becasue the corporate fundamentals were sideways and heading south. People who lost money were those who depended on and trusted not only the word of morally bankrupt executives, but that of fund managers/brokers/"experts" who said "trust me--this is a cyclical thing and it'll turn around so you should stay in for the long haul to recover your losses". Easy enough for them to say--it is not their own money they're playing with.
BTW there ARE initiatives that are/were being considered outside S.Ox that would be much less onerous for corporate accountants. Firstly, there are standard reporting formats that are being more aggressively implemented. In Canada businesses have things like the General Index of Financial Information, which defines a set of standard accounts/codes that corporations must adhere to when filing taxes. In the US, public companies must have insider trading information available online. All over the world, they are looking at mandating things like financial statements being available online, on-demand in XBRL format. This way every corporation has information structured in the same way, whenever you want it, in the same way we can with RSS feeds from our favourite blogs.
Second, If SEC enforcement had been doing its job, then maybe we wouldn't need more law.
IF the SEC was not enforcing existing rules well enough, how could you expect them to adequately enfore even MORE rules?
It costs nothing to just put it out there and let people see what's up. But that wasn't happening.
Holy CRAP is that a ridiculous statement. It costs a LOT to "just put it out there". I work in the industrial automation field and *I've* had requests to modify/upgrade plant-floor systems because they do not meet the demands of Sarbanes Oxley. Operators and maintenance people have to be given logins. Companies have to know details down to the stupidest level sometimes--stuff that wouldn't be remotely important to investors. Yes, there is definitely a use for some of the data but what does Joe Schmoe Investor care about how many hours Employee 3422 spent reprogramming a controller so every tenth of a cent of operations & maintenance expenses can be backed by detailed records? Yes, you need to know the 5000-foot-picture as an investor, but you don't need to see each blade of grass on the ground below.
You don't get to decide what is the best way for me to do that. You don't get to play with my money and tell me to shut up and be happy
...there was that well known case of Terry Shiavo (sp?), the young woman who was, like this gentleman, in what many people called a "persistent vegetative state".
Is it simply because he was not FULLY DEAD that they did not pull the plug?
Well, that COULD be a reason, though in both cases there was technically no plug to pull. They weren't on life support, so if there was a plug to pull it was on their feeding machines. Anyways, how "dead" you are is only one factor. The other is consent. If you have not made up a "living will"--some kind of legal document instructing doctors on how much effort to put into keeping you alive--then it is up to your next of kin as to how to care for you if you are unable to speak for yourself. Shiavo was kept alive for a very long time as her husband and her parents fueded over what they thought was the right thing to do. If she was not married, or her husband deferred the decision to her parents, then she'd still be lying in bed, minimally conscious and on a feeding tube.
It certainly seems like a horrible existence to me, and if the thought of living that way yourself is intolerable then you really should make up a living will document of some kind--I think it is the only easy way you can give a doctor the option to cease treatment on you from an ethical standpoint. I think the only thing more pathetic than having to live in a "permanently vegetative state" is seeing lawyers making a living off the situation as next of kin prolong their own pain. If only for that reason I'm thinking of a living will option.
That said, I personally know a couple people that have been seriously maimed or declared terminal and survived because of agressive, prolonged treatment my doctors that some people might object to. Now there is this case of a man who was declared by experts to be in a permanent minimally-conscious state waking up after 19 years. Makes me wonder if letting treatment continue wouldn't be such a bad idea. What if you got a second chance to live? I'm sure the implications of this case on brain injury research will be astounding. Does someone in a "minimally concious" or "permanently vegetative" state actually feel pain or discomfort? Are they even aware enough of their situation to know they are suffering? Would there ever be a chance Shiavo could've recovered like this man did? What physiological mechanism triggered the brain to completely re-wire itself when so many others never recover?
Perhaps that is an option for people to think of in a "living will"--if you find yourself in a minimally-conscious or vegetative state you could instruct that you be kept alive in the interests of scientific research into brain injury recovery. You could even instruct that some of your estate be given to fund such research at the same time. Sounds somewhat gruesome but many people still think the same thing of donating yhour body to be a cadaver in a junior anatomy class, or even having your organs harvested. If you get past such thoughts you could really be helping out others in the future.
Red Hat should pursue the judgde to conduct a simple test of obviousness of the patent:
Given the nature of so many software-oriented patents these days, it seems that an idea has to be EXTREMELY obvious before a patent application is rejected. Prior art may be a better way to go. The patent in question was filed in 1998, and the folks who developed PostgreSQL (originally Postgres, an "Object Relational" database) might protest at the idea of ORM being a novel idea. I'm sure the original UC Berkley project did a lot of research/study around the concept.
I remember hearing a quote from back around 1900 (maybe earlier?) to the effect that "I don't expect many more patents to be issued because everything that can ever be invented probably already has been". I guess the US Patent office doesn't seem to agree anymore--if the rate of invention slows we'll just re-define "invention"...
We welcome you to the country where home doors are opened, police officers are polite, and we don't need cameras to check our private parking spot.
Please try to resist being smug. As much as I find a lot of what the US gov't does disagreeable it really irritates me when fellow Canadians brag about how much better our lot in life is in comparison with our southern neighbours. I thought we were supposed to be humble folk, but it seems some of us have developed a superiority complex. Historically Canadians have had trouble "blowing their own horn" so we should be sure to note our accomplishments. However, if you must brag, please be realistic. Canada has its share of challenges too:
* A recent behavioural study of major international cities on "politeness" placed Toronto fairly high on the list (Montreal, the other Canadian city did not do as well but did alright). Guess which city beat both? NEW YORK CITY. That's right. Most notably, New Yorkers were significantly more likely to open a door for a stranger in a public place. I guess that means "doors are opened" in NYC;-)
* There are places in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal where I most certainly would NOT leave my doors unlocked. OTOH, I don't think people ever use their locks in most of Montana, North and South Dakota, Maine, etc. I know this isn't apples-to-apples comparison but most Canadians live in a major city as is the case in the US (I grew up in rural Canada and yes doors are still open there too). The point is that Canada isn't THAT much different in this regard
* I've witnessed RCMP officers and city police be somewhat less than polite in dealing with people too. Some of it has been widely publicised (Anyone remember the pepper-sprayed protester in Vancouver? And Prime Minister Cretien's cavalier response with the joke that he prefers his pepper on his dinner plate?). When the Hells Angels held a patch-over ceremony in Alberta a number of years ago, anyone who rode a Harley and was dressed the wrong way was badly harassed by the cops.
* Years ago when a Quebec separatist group kidnapped and later killed a politician our "beloved" Prime Minister invoked the "War Measures Act", which allowed for police to detain anyone without charges and suspended many other civil liberties. This was in effect nation-wide, even though the FLQ Crisis only presented a direct threat to savety in Quebec. RCMP in places far away from Quebec took advantage of the situation and we had "troublemakers" in small town Alberta held in custody for days without charges.
* Speaking of Quebec, this is a province that has "language police" that will fine you in your shop doesn't have French on it, or if some non-French language on your signage is too prominent.
* West of Ontario, it is illegal for farmers to sell most crops to anyone but the Canadian Wheat Board. Farmers who protested this by pubically deciding to sell their grain directly to someone else rather than through the wheat board had their doors kicked in and were dragged to jail--and had their trucks and grain seized. Sone farmer in Ontario does the EXACT SAME THING? Sure, that's OK--the act applies only to BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I could live with a government imposed monopoly, distasteful as it is, if it applied equally to all Canadians. As it is now this situation is a travesty.
* Well, I still live in Canada and I know that a lot of private parking spots are equipped with cameras here. In the past year or two there has been a dramatic increase in vandalism (mostly grafitti and car prowlings) and as a result more outdoor surveillance cameras are going up, and developers are putting out a lot more security guards in under-construction subdivisions as theft and vandalism increased there too.
OTOH Canada has a lot to be proud of too:
* Big, expensive and ineffective gun registry notwithstanding, there is WAY less gun violence in Canada than in the US
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X
That would be hilarious because it would mean that hell had forzen over. That will never happen. However, I *do* think that MS will realise that they'll die if they try to re-invent the wheel from scratch.
OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now.
Did you know that MS had a Windows build that ran on Alpha and Power CPUs before OS X was ever released? This is why Amelio tried to float that lead balloon about using the NT kernel (and perhaps more of NT) for MacOS--it wouldn't have taken much effort to make it run on contemporary PowerMacs. Though NT was (still is) ugly, MacOS was really straining and the NT kernel was markedly more stable. Apple would've taken care of the "beautiful" part itself. In this case things are different--back then it was the pipsqueak looking for some sort of protection from the behemouth. Now the behemouth needs help and it has the resources to pick whatever pipsqueak it wants. MS wants to keep Apple at bay not help it grow.
I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people.
I'm really doubting they CAN do it themselves. I think there is such a thing as TOO big to be useful from an organisational standpoint. And as for the "good ol' days", yes MS made solid apps but as to whether they were "good"--that's debatable. Perhaps they didn't eat gobs of memory and CPU cycles, or lock up and crash, but they were far from elegant or innovative from a usability standpoint. Multiplan was a poor cousin to Lotus 123 and VisiCalc was the innovative one. Jobs is known to have hated Microsoft's offerings--they were unoriginal ("The thing about Microsoft is that they have no taste" and "they just don't get it" are well know Jobs quotes) and did not properly showcase the MacOS GUI. Those who follow Mac history know that there was an amazing BASIC in development for MacOS (I think initially started in-house but then developed under contract--but not involving Microsoft at all). Microsoft used its weight (it held near monopoly on the BASIC programming language) and influence (being that MS gave Apple license and assistance in releasing Applesoft BASIC) to block the original MacBASIC (Apple II line was still popular and MS could've terminated its cooperation and left that line without a BASIC language to inclued with the system). The Microsoft-developed BASIC originally released for the Mac is widely regarded as a big pile of crap--it had no extensions (or even the meand through PEEKS and POKES to exploit the power of the windowing environment. It wasn't a precursor to VB, it was GWBASIC trapped in a single little window.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
This is why I think they wouldn't ever license MacOS X. Though they need help they don't need THAT much help. They need a new foundation but are still capable of building the house. Given that, and past behaviour, I think MS will instead opt to copy Apple's strategy and make thorough use of BSD-licensed code: I think Post-Vista Windows could be built around a hybrid MACH/BSD kernel but with their own mods rather than Apple's. They'll then follow the UNIX philosophy in building on top of that foundation, but with a Microsoft spin: No more registry--they'll go back to text config files, but not stored in/etc or a user's home directory--they'll be the XML-based.config files you can emply in VS2005 now and will be stored in some verbosely-named directory (%system%\Global Application Settings or whatever). There'll be a powerful shell but it won't be based on bash or perl, it'll be Monad. Under the hood it'll be a BSD-derivative but the view it presents to the world will be made by Microsoft.
No Apple involvement, but same pattern of behaviour: Ballmer-monkey see, Ballmer-monkey do.
Copland was a technology failure -- the old MacOS just couldn't be "modernized"
Well, it looks like Microsoft has had a great deal of difficulty modernising "old Windows NT" as well. It isn't optimised for multi-core processors as TFA mentions. It is the evolution of Windows NT 3.1 (Windows Server 2003R2 is just a marketing name for WinNT 5.2.3790, and Vista is simply NT 6.0.x). While the very basic underpinnings of the system are inspired by a solid foundation (VMS), development started in the late 1980s and internet connectivity really wasn't on the MS radar even by the time of its release in 1993 (yes, it could do TCP/IP, but MS was really focusing on knocking out Netware--smaller UNIX servers were a secondary target). UNIX-style OSes were quite ahead of the curve on that front, so while MS was still maturing as a REAL network OS they could focus on security.
Windows is suffering technological shortcomings now just like Classic MacOS did with Copeland--unlike UNIX-like architectures, the OS is monolithic, growing in size and complexity at a geometric pace and is nearly impossible to adapt to changing demands. In fact MS is in a far deeper hole with Windows than Apple was with MacOS--it's just that Apple had a much smaller organisation to manage their house of cards.
Vista is a management failure. Rather than shorter release cycles with incremental improvments, MS put it on themselves to do it all in one big release.
Copeland was just as much of a "management failure" as Vista has been (if not more so). Different parts of the development team were working towards conflicting goals. There was no coherent vision for what the end product was going to be, and like Vista it was going to be "one big release". Apple was touting all sorts of whiz-bang things like GUI "skins", multimedia goodies, etc and what users really wanted were things like multitasking that worked like Amiga and memory management that didn't fragment RAM like MSDOS fragmented hard drives. Thing is ALL of it was being promised, and really Apple should've focused on the underpinnings to make MacOS run smoother. When it became apparent that between the problems with the software and the lack of resources made it impossible to deliver (and with the return of Jobs to give everyone focus) they pushed reset and built an OS based on proven, already-developed code from Mach, BSD, NeXT...
If there was an XP2004 and an XP2006 released, you wouldn't see the bitching. XP's biggest problem at this point is just that it's old and clunky.
Actually I'd say there would be a LOT of bitching. There certainly was when Microsoft pushed out too many releases of DOS. That bit them in the butt more than once--people were not impressed when DOS 4.0 came out and it had so little to offer over 3.3 in comparison to the lack of stability that most people stayed with 3.3 until 5.0 came out. A few years later users were losing patience when Microsoft pushed out so many versions of MSDOS 7.x/8.0 (AKA Windows 95/95B/98/98SE/Me...) that contained so little useful innovations (and sometimes so many bugs). A LOT of people thought that by releasing what were basically the same old OS with service packs integrated into them as something new Microsoft was blatantly trying to screw people out of more money.
No, if MS released XP, XP/sp1 and XP/sp2 with a bit of eye candy tacked on as "new versions" as they did with their MSDOS line I think Gates and Ballmer would've been lynched.
So, different problems, different solutions.
I think that they have the SAME problems and Microsoft could benefit from the SAME solution if they wated to. The differences basically lie in the scale of the problems (Microsoft has to deal with a much bigger pile of crap than Apple did) and the corporate culture (Apple wants to change the world, Microsoft wants to take it over). It is those differences that will have an impact on the details of how MS proceeds.
Canada is a great place to research tooth replacement, considering that Maine is so close by!
This research was done in EDMONTON...in ALBERTA. Los Angeles is closer to Edmonton than any place in Maine. Incidentally the University of Alberta (my alma mater) has arguably the best schools of dentistry in Canada--of course there aren't many to choose from but it's pretty world-class. The U of A is actually recognised internationally for its research in many areas of life sciences (it has contributed to major innovations in the treatment of cancer, diabetes and heart disease).
Perhaps you were confusing Edmonton, Alberta with Edmundston, New Brunswick. The latter is just across the river from Madawaska, Maine and has no school of dentistry at all--in fact the people of western New Brunswick probably share the same dental challenges as the good citizens of northern Maine. I've visited NB and ME though and the people there are very nice...great place for people who like to snowmobile or cross-coutry ski...
I think it shouldn't be to hard to design those tunnels in a way where you can use robots like in the sewage systems.
Robots...? You spend too much time watching sci-fi channel or something. For some maintenance tasks remote controlled machinery can be sent down manholes, but actual robots? Never heard of that. Besides, actual people go down there to do repairs, and if it anything more than minor the city digs a big hole to replace a section of line. We all know how disruptive that can be...now double that to include power transmission lines.
Anything i don't see?
Lots...like almost everything:
* Transmission lines are very long--we are talking inter-city distances here, not a few blocks. Designing a tunnel that could accomodate "maintenance robots" would be an enormous expense.
* Robots to do maintenance? Those would be very expensive robots...especially if they were designed to work on live lines
* Transmission lines carry hundres of thousands of volts at a pretty high current. If there is a fault way up high in a tower it is out of reach of people--the only time it presents a danger is if a huge storm brings a line down to the ground. Underground lines are IN the ground, so it is possible for someone to be standing RIGHT ON TOP of a fault. If whatever insulating protection is compromised and there is a ground fault in a line surrounded by damp soil for example, the high voltage line could create an electric potential gradient in the soil--where the line charges up the surrounding ground to create a voltage that decreases with distance from the point the line contacts the earth. I'm not sure exactly what would happen in an underground line but on the rare occasion where a high-tension wire comes down it has been known to cause a voltage gradient of several hundred volts between the left and right feet of nearby victims--they could be electrocuted to death merely standing too close to the line much less touching it.
In any case, knowing how dangerous/sensitive transmission lines are I'd really not like to have one buried beneath my feet--unless it was buried as deep as those big towers are high...and that would be VERY expensive indeed.
...NOT Distribution lines. There is a HUGE difference.
Part of the thing *not* discussed here is that there are huge amounts of the power distro system in DC which *is* underground
That is because the *distribution* systems are not even part of this discussion. Transmission lines present a whole different set of challenges. Firstly, they are longer, second they are MUCH higher voltage--hundreds of kV, and third a transmission line serves a much larger area than distribution lines.
In most scenarios, they actually wait for the equipment to fail (eg. ignite and/or blow up) before they can do anything because the alternative is that they take down multiple city blocks for hours...
Thus these problems are magnified orders of magnitude for transmission lines. Working with live transmission lines requires very specialised safety equipment--expensive and bulky. With lower voltage distribution lines it is merely cumbersome to open a manhole and crawl into a confined space--with transmission lines the practical constraints as well as the increased danger make it basically impossible to repair or upgrade without digging out a big pit. In any case not much could be done live so they'd have to disconnect the line...and when you suddenly disconnect a transmission line you don't take down city blocks...you yould take out *cities*.
I think there are a few people with experience in transmission that appreciate what is involved in the installation and maintenance of high-tension lines, however I don't think the general public really has a grasp of it--they aren't the same as telephone or the power lines coming into your house. Very high power, high current electricity behaves very strangely sometimes.
Georgetown's power outages happen not because the lines are underground, but because the lines that were put underground in decades past are now overloaded...
Burying cables makes them harder and more expensive to upgrade, so it brings a risk of inadequate capacity planning.
Exactly, so indirectly the parent to your post is in fact correct. If Georgetown did not bury its transmission lines they could've afforded to upgrade them as peak demand increased. Now, these people face the prospect of digging a very large trench and causing a very long, very intrusive disruption to the area where the cable is buried...or they could just build another (overhead) transmission line.
I think it should cost as much as the consumer is willing to pay - at least that is how it works when you have a properly working capitalist system.
I think it should cost just enough that the company can cover the costs of providing the service, maintaining and enchancing their equipment any fairly paying their employees. Any more than that is gouging, even if consumers are willing to pay for it. Incidentally, things costing what consumers are willing to pay is NOT how a "properly working capitalist system" works--it suggests that supply is abnormally short of demand and there is a lack of competition (either a naturally-occurring or legislated monopoly/cartel/etc). That is why gas prices jump all over the place on the slightest of whims--the market for oil is driven by a cartel of sheiks, ther is little product differentiation amonst a limited number of competitors (who undoubtedly practice collusion) and all--and last but not least there are a lot of taxes on fuel in most countries. Gas prices are what they are because *it is what the consumer is willing to pay*, not because some crackpot sheiks in the middle east bickering suddenly makes it harder to dig the oil out of the ground and process in a refinery. I don't think many people would agree that that particular industry is "poroperly working capitalism".
In that same vein, I feel that their next step is to start trying to sand-box their corner of the Internet. That way they control the content too.
Well, in the absence of healthy competition that is certain to happen. However, right now "the sandbox" isn't well established. With healthy competition, the first player to put up fences becomes isolated, and that isolation will anger their customers, who will migrate towards providers of more open service
When is the last time you saw a new DSL provider *other* than the phone company?
Well, *my* DSL connection is not provided by my phone company--the phone company basically provides the copper on which my ISP's signal travells.
When my VOIP provider is choppy, and high latency who do I blame? Most customers are not smart enough and blame the VOIP provider.
Well, then the provider must explain that they are not providing the internet connection that their service uses and the customer is then educated. If the problem is bad enough they may switch to another ISP and discover that the VOIP company was right, or they'll switch VOIP providers and find out the problem remains--or they'll buy VOIP from their ISP and it'll work great--but there will be little tolerance for price gouging when compared to competition. The more free the industry gets, the less likely "sandboxes" will be built. That sort of proctice is largely due to telecom historically being OVER-REGULATED--it has never been a proper capitalist market.
Yeah, actually this has been understood from the very beginning.
The beginning of what? When I was a youngster in school I remember watching a 16mm film in science class that proclaimed something to the effect of "recent research using sophisticated computer models have predicted that pollution from factories and smog from cars would reduce the amount of energy from the sun that reaches the earths surface, leading to a cooling trend and perhaps the early onset of another ice age".
We all know that is CRAP, and not only has it not been understood since the beginning, we are still trying to understand it now.
The annual mean temp rise steadily? Not steadily, no. But it looks like the mean delta over time is going to stay positive for a while.
The thing is, we do not have accurate data for long enough time to make any positive assertions about the global, annual mean temperature because we have only had the means to measure it properly for a couple/few decades--we don't have weather sattelite data from the 19th century and earlier to see what was happening during pre-industrial society so we can compare it to industrial (and post-industrial) society. In terms of climate change, "a while" is a lifetime or more, and we cannot take 30 years of data and confidently say that in another 100 years things will look a certain way, whether it be hotter or cooler, steady or erratic. You cannot look at old pre-WW2 terrestrial weather station data, tree rings and layers of glacial ice and *accurately* determine the average global temperature that can be compared with data collected with modern technology.
Everything you just mentioned is driven by stored heat in the atmosphere and oceans. Change can't just happen, it has to be driven by something.
Storage and transfer of heat doesn't just drive global climate--it is BASICALLY THE DEFINITION OF CLIMATE in terms of global weather. All the heat in and on the earth ultimately originated from energy captured from our sun, and there are countless factors determining how much (and what type of) energy is captured, stored and released by the planet. CO2 in the atmosphere is one single factor--other GHGs like methane are another. Particulates yet another--and that is just atmosphere. What about large geothermal events (volcanoes and such) that release long-trapped energy and gases in huge amounts, in very short times? Mt St Helens, Mt Pinatubo and such released heat, particulates and "air pollution" within weeks that humans produce in years, so such events have impacts just as much as human activity.
There are a ton of open-ended questions but you can build models based on the available data and produce approximations--think of the flywheel machine [...] Luckily the system under study is enormous so even very imprecise results can indicate trends.
The earth is not a flywheel machine--it is even more complex than a million flywheels of all sizes and shapes, on axles loaded with springs attached to gears driving other flywheels, and forces putting the brakes on one while forcing others to spin, and we are producing approximations based on 10 percent of them. They might be quite accureatem but then again they might be wrong too (when we did approximations on one percent we thought we were heading ito an ice age--remember?). Also, you can indicate trends on as little as two points of data, but how accurate are they? We have many more points to work with but they're still pretty scattered and the accuracy of older data is sometimes questionable.
Also, you need to understand the physics of the reactions involved. It's not enough to say that CO2 is related to climate change, we need a cause and effect relationship. And there is one--a strong one actually--the "greenhouse effect."
Sure but the greenhouse effect is only one effect on heat transfer/storage/movement. There are other effects that counteract this. What about changes in vegitation brought about by higher CO2 levels and changin
As a KDE developer, I can tell you bluntly that GNOME should seriously cut down on the crack-smoking monkeys
As someone who spends much of his time developing for Windows, it seems that Microsoft has the corner on the crack-smoking-monkeys market--it seems they even picked a crack-smoking monkey to be its CEO (the best one they could find--it can even dance and throw around furniture!).
Therefore, if the goal is to put a dent in Microsoft's dominance in the PC software market then GNOME has the right idea--so get out there and build up your arsenal of crack-smoking monkeys and kick some arse!
...NOT a problem of a user's hygiene or poor lifestyle choices.
Nicotine will stain white appliances.
The stains do sport the hue of nicotine, but to blame this problem on nicotine, or sweaty palms, or body chemistry. That is total BS and a really lame excuse for a design or manufacturing oversight, or just plain shoddy workmanship. It happens with Apple from time to time--they seem to alternate between exceptional quality and crap. I guess this time they hired the same people to do their MacBook cases as Chrysler did to paint their Spirit, Shadow and Neon cars in the 1990s as they seem to have comparably (less than) durable finishes.
These macbooks have only been out for a few weeks, and there are ALREADY countless reports of white macbooks with yellow spots. There is even a report of finish flaking off a macbook that hasn't even left the store! Yes, white will show dirt more, but these spots don't seem to be dirt--they apparently do not simply rub out. Furthermore, though white plastic will discolour with age it is totally unacceptable that it should happen within weeks. I have an ergonomic keyboard made FIVE YEARS AGO that is white--it sees 40 to 60 hours of use a week, 40 to 50 weeks a year. It is starting to look a little grimy and some letters are wearing off a bit, but THERE ARE NO YELLOW STAINS ON THE PALM REST AT ALL. It has also been used by several people and nobody has had an "incompatible body chemistry".
Apple makes fantastic products and has enjoyed an extended renaissance. Their customers have to keep them on track--if hardcore apple fans get all apologetic and start blaming users for the shortcomings of a product then they risk infecting Apple with the same mindset, and they'll start to slide back into the dark days they had in the 1990s. I know these defects are the kind of thing that would make Jobs go thermonuclear, however I also know he is prone to the effects of the "reality distortion field"--and it's those unabashed Apple Evangelist users out there who often generate and amplify reality distortion fields.
warmer = more evaporation = more water vapor in the air = more heat trapped and so on
It means nothing of the sort my friend. In fact as scientists analyse global climate, they seem to be slowly, subtlely distancing themselves from the theory/term of "Global Warming". Have you noticed that authorities on the subject--even the most ardent supporters of things like the Kyoto initiative--now almost NEVER use the term anymore? The correct term is "Global CLIMATE CHANGE" because EVERYONE agrees that the earth is not universally warming up (some areas are, and others are getting cooler), and they aren't even convinced anymore that the AVERAGE gloabl temperature will continue to steadily rise. What they DO agree upon is that the climate is CHANGING--they point to evidence of changing weather patterns and more "extreme weather"--we'll get more Katrina's in the Gulf of Mexico and huge, freezing blizzards in maritime Canada and expanding deserts in Africa. The general consensus is still that CO2 from human activity exacerbates the problem--it's just that scientists now cover their butts with more general terms like "climate change" because truthfully, NOBODY has a handle on what exactly is going to happen.
The situation might go as you state, but there are a number or drastically different predictions as well:
warmer -> more evapouration -> more cloud formation -> sunlight blocked -> cooler
or......... -> more cloud formation -> wetter weather -> more vegitation in once barren areas -> more CO2 uptake from vegitation -> less GHG and more O2
or
warmer -> melting polar ice -> lower ocean temperatures -> shifting weather patterns -> more "even" climate (warmer & wetter towards poles, cooler in the equatorial region)
NOBODY knows what will REALLY happen--it is all guesswork (albeit really educated guesswork). Although those who say human activity/CO2 emissions have no notable effect on the planet are generally dismissed as crackpots (and rightly so), the scientific community is finally acknowleging--at least a bit--that they don't know the ultimate effect, which is significant becasue high-profile research organisations really hate to admit they don't know something (almost as much as they hate admitting they're wrong). And here is one to cheer you up--there is a growing contingent of scientists that say "yes, human activity has altered our climate, but the can is open and the worms have long since escaped--we are past the point of fixing things".
MySQL is a fine product when used in a manner that fits its original purpose, but it is a poor choice for an enterprise-class database (with 200 employees and multiple sites, the article poster is moving beyond "departmental" and into the realm of "enterprise"). As another poster commented, MySQL's heritage is "ISAM on 'roids". It is easy to set up and use, has a small footprint and is fast at retrieving data. That's what makes it great to set up blogs ore/.-like sites or addressbooks (non-critical data that is not heavily updated).
Those benefits come at a cost. Sompared to PostgreSQL (arguably the #2 Free database) it has historically lacked a lot of standard SQL support (especially in terms of enforcing referential integrity, stored procedures, transactional support...) and MySQL also takes shortcuts with data validation that make DB admins cringe (MySQL has been notorious for silently failing on things like overflowed numbers and invalid dates--writing records with garbled data instead of rolling back and throwing an exception. Furthermore, its data store is prone to total corruption should you unexpectedly lose power to the server or otherwise terminate MySQL abnormally (it was almost guaranteed if the data was on a non-journalling filesystem like EXT2).
To be fair, those shortcomings are the reason for MySQL's strengths, and there has been a lot of work done to improve MySQL's robustness (if you have even the slightest concern for your MySQL data you'll use InnoDB for example, and there is transactional support now and so on), however PostgreSQL is the most mature and robust enterprise database at the moment (Firefird is apparently a good choice too, though it has a much shorter history as a Free DBMS than PgSQL and hasn't got the same momentum either--at least not yet).
In any case, Microsoft Access is certainly the absolute WORST choice for a database application--especially for a backend, and MySQL is orders of magnitude better in stability and performance (it is apallingly easy to corrupt an.mdb file full of tables). I think that even Microsoft themselves (at least a lot of them), given the choice, would kill the scourge that is MS Access. Given the backlash they took over their treatment of VB6 however, I think that MS fears they'd be the victim of a severe lynching by "professional MS Office developers".
There are tons of Free PostgreSQL and MySQL-based solutions out there that can be used to wean an organisation off of Access--everything from PGAdmin and OpenOffice and GNOME Office desktop interface tools to Ruby on Rails to a multitude of LAMP-based CMS options. Also, if the article's author really must stay with a Microsoft solution but requires a cost-sensitive option I'd suggest looking at the free (though not Free) "Express editions" of Visual Studio and MSSQL 2005. Of they tried Sharepoint then they have a server they can deploy this on anyways. I think MSSQL Express even has some Reporting Services capability though it probably doesn't come with the nice Report Builder. It almost seems Microsoft is deliberatly crafting a solution that directly competes with MS Access and does everything better. And from reports I see out of TechEd they are doing a lot to make MS Access, as a distinct product, obsolete.
Anyways, those are much more robust ways to get binary data storage, web-enabled interface/intranet access and security that isn't a complete joke.
Even though a poster here suggested Access apps can be used over the interanet, store binary/images using OLE and have user security, it is like using a high-heeled shoe as a hammer and a butterknife as a screwdriver. It's largely a metter of using the proper tools for the job.
When the author says "doesn't require embedment" it means that the "host image" is not altered in any way. Since there is no information provided to potential hackers through discovery of an invisible watermark it is far more robust than traditiona stenographic techniques.
I gather the way it works is that the "hidden image" is like the "secret key" you use when you generate SSL certificate requests--it is kept secure/inaccessible to the public. Through transforms and other mathematical wizardry they calculate optical/phase keys--essentially parameters you'd feed into the transform functions. This is the "public key" as you'd use in SSL and is expressed as a "PIN".
The way the security would work, the user being authenticated would have to provide the "host image" and the "public key/PIN" to prove they are the right person. If you feed the parameters from the PIN into the transform functions and run that function over the host image, the result would match the "hiddem image" (secret key). If either the wrong image or wrong PIN are supplied, the calculated image would look distorted and authentication would fail. Essentially you are creating a mathematical function that would (in the article's example) warp the picture of the pagota into the picture of a cute chick, and the PIN provides the missing variables in the function.
So...can someone out there confirm that this is the idea? That's the gist I got from it anyways...
Also there are very few titles availabe for HD DVD. Maybe they do this on purpose because people cannot see yet that there are a lot of other 'big releases' missing, not all studios signed up for hd dvd.
"A few" is more than ZERO releases of BD movies, which I guess doesn't matter since there are ZERO BD players available to consumers for another couple of weeks anyways. Even with all the studios signed up for BD the loss of "first-mover" advantage presents a great challenge, and despite the number of studios jumping on the BD wagon, they didn't EXCLUSIVELY jump on that wagon so it means little to nothing.
I think that sony is waiting to have more titles available, so they can make a big release.
And what will motivate those releases, when the captain of the team is late for the game? Perhaps there will be double the releases when the player finally comes out than there was for HD-DVD but two dozen vs. one dozen is still pathetic...and the longer it takes for BD players to filter into the market, the larger the library of HD-DVD releases gets, and once the reace really begins they'll be about equal.
Does the Playstation 3 record BD's? No, so stop comparing it to 1000 dollar players, you noobs
My understanding was that the $1000 standalone unit won't record either (that will cost even more), and I think that early-adopters would be more inclined to use a PVR to record so it would not be a killer feature. Furthermore, Sony could have a bit of a problem with the PS3, not only because it would undercut most of the 1st-gen standalone BD players, but also becasue Sony will lose money on the PS3--it is cheaper not because it costs less to make, but rather becasue Sony has amputated the profit margin because its computer entertainment division (like Microsoft's) sells consoles as a loss leader and tries to make money on the content.
Unfortunately this has the hallmarks of becoming "Beta: The Sequel"--a technically superior technology being out-priced and out-marketed by the more "primitive" yet still adequate and practical competition.
I wrote Visual Basic code for years, and I took Adderall twice a day. I (or rather my employment status) probably couldn't have survived without it.
Unless you took Adderall under the advice of a physician, with a prescription and after a thorough examination by that physician then I would've strongly encourage you to seek councilling. It is not normal to require drugs of any kind to cope with daily life like that, and really only a professional can help you determine if you really need the assistence of psychoactive drugs or some other form of therapy (or a combination fo both). Personally, if I felt so overwhelmed by the volume and/or menial nature of my work I'd look for another job. The economy is still pretty bouyant and skilled workers can afford to be selective.
There's a common misunderstanding about stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. They don't make you smarter or faster. They make you able to focus, and they make typically miserable tasks interesting.
The REAL intention of these drugs is to help people who cannot focus on ANYTHING able to focus on tasks of everyday life. When taken by normally-functioning people these drugs narrow focus so tightly that they can rob the mind of creativity and critical thinking. Improper use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall by people who do not need them can potentially damage academic and professional careers. I've seen first hand how Ritalin has turned some bright lights into dim bulbs (and I'm not even talking about what the side effects did--that's even another story). Sure, whe you're drugged up you are a well-bechaved student that can ace a multiple-choice exam, but what is the point if you turn into a bland, stick-in-the-mud, shadow of the person you once were?
This is anecdotal, but I know a lot of people who took unprescribed Adderall in college. Most of them have never touched any other illicit drugs, but they find the substance useful, and it doesn't seem to cause any harm.
I've seen what happens when Ritalin and Addreall are abused--in this case, by teachers who, either due to laziness or being overworked, used them for behaviour control purposes with hard-to-manage children. When I was young, such students would be called "attention seekers" or simply hyperactive, and were dealt with through everything from discipline to changing diets. Nowadays, a figity kid is labelled with ADHD and some teachers ask (no--TELL) the parents they need some kind of pill. And guess what? Behaviour improves, overall grades go up a little bit--and they smile less, draw less colourful pictures, write less-inspiring stories, are quieter and less sociable.
Someone close to me was mis-diagnosed with ADHD and labelled "learning disabled" largely becasue she was a "difficult student". Ritalin was the newest "wonder drug" and thus she spent some time taking what would now be considered a higher-than-normal dose. She didn't become a better student--the impact on her grades was positive but marginal. She became a well-behaved but lethargic, depressed young lady. She lost weight, had skin and hair reactions (hives/eczema/hair loss), started having headaches, etc. Thankfully Ritalin is not habit forming, however it seems that a few of the physical side effects were permanent.
Years later, other "experts" have told her she NEVER had ADHD and that she exhibited characteristics of dyslexia--her behaviour was due to frustration over not being able to learn well visually. Due to this diagnosis she slid through school and barely graduated, and not she faces the prospect of upgrading her education in her 30s. So don't tell me that since it isn't an illicit recreational drug and it isn't addictive that causes no harm. Improperly used, these drugs cause every bit as much harm as heroin or cocaine.
It's not so much a question of buy-off as it is an offering of free services in exchange for mindshare.
That is the fine line Microsoft historically walks, and has done so with great success in the past. That is why IE is dominant--they took the hit offering it for free to cut the legs out from under Netscape and other competitors. As an aside, they also did it for another reason--IE started life as a Microsoft-branded version of Spyglass Mosaic. BillG absolutely abhors paying royalties based on sales and prefers licensing with a flat-fee. Spyglass insisted on a royalty and becasue MS needed to get a browser out there quickly they "caved" and offered a percentage of revenue. It wasn't long after IE debuted on the Plus! pack that MS released Win95A with IE included for free...and we all know what any percentage of zero dollars is...
The original poster contended MS could pay big companies to switch to them in exchange for positive publicity, which would actually be illegal becasue it goes beond giveaways and deep discounts and ventured into collusion territory. Although there isn't a very solid case against MS for "being generous" there are other things they do that present a strong case that they are abusing their monopoly:
* extensions to standards that only work with their OS (ActiveX, Active Directory...) - such a strategy only works if you have big enough market share to establish de-facto standards
* "tight coupling" using closed/proprietary (and usually obsfucated) methods to make less established products (such as its server products like its "Microsoft Dynamics" line) interoperate with its dominant products (MS Office). This creates firm vendor lock-in for enterprise customers. A more loosely-coupled, standards-based approach would allow 3rd party competitors to interoperate with MS products (like OpenOffice with Sharepoint, or using PostgreSQL as a backend for Reporting Services). Vendor lock-in is not illegal itself, but when it's done to leverage a monopoly product it is arguably abuse of a monopoly position.
I'm not sure how well it'll work against Apache, since it is a more established, mature system than IIS and Apache is already free (and Free) whereas Netscape relied on revenue from its browser and server products. Ultimately, I think that it'll result in a dramatic lowering of MS' server product licensing fees with a much larger MS market share (closer to 50/50 with Apache), or they'll hit a wall and no amount of price deals will help. It all depends on how well Apache development continues against IIS and how well IIS holds up under heavier use.
Those pictures and that password are stored in the phone or on the SIM card in the phone she lost.
Well, on my phone there is the option of storing information in three places and IIRC you can set the default location as well. Those three places are:
I think another poster here (and I think the author of the "revenge page") explained as much. The wireless service provider has central storage servers for its subscribers (given they pay the approriate fee or sign up on certain plans). On the upside, you can access the data from your "online album" from your PC's web browser, there is more capacity than available on the device and SIM card, and your data is not lost if you lose your phone. OTOH, you lose all your privacy...if a phone company will turn over phone records to busybody G-Men without a warrant you can bet they'll turn over address books, pics, videos, etc. at the drop of a hat as well.
Re:Money doesn't always get you everything
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Apache down, IIS up
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This is buying off the whole company, which if Microsoft wants to do it, is perfectly legal.
If you take out the word "off" then you are correct. If you leave it in, it is probably an even more serious offence than trying to buy off an employee--it is a form of collusion rather frowned upon by antitrust types.
Rumour has it that the physical design came about because they were originally considering Windows XP as the OS platform and thought it would be best if the hardware and software were "visually integrated";-)
Going into a business and offering to help convert to IIS isn't abusing its OS monopoly. They don't have anywhere near a monopoly on server OSs anyway.
The whole POINT is that MS doesn't have a server OS monopoly, though in the web server market (and server market as a whole) MS is still a significant player. Microsoft is abusing its WORKSTATION OS and PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATION monopolies in an attempt to reduce or eliminate competition in the server markets. Microsoft likes to call this "leveraging". There are literally only two consistently profitable business units within Microsoft--Operating Systems and Productivity Applications (ie. MS Office). This happens to be where MS enjoys monopoly status, and that revenue is used to absorb losses on things like selling XBox at a loss to compete with Sony and Nintendo--and to give massive discounts on server implementations to big institutional customers.
Also, this abuse (sorry...leveraging) extends beyond financial subsidies between business units: There is the issue of lock-in (sorry..."interoperability"). MS deliberatly chooses a "tightly coupled" approach: Tie in IIS with Windows Server 2003 (a product of OS monopoly), then release SQL Server 2005 with integrated Reporting Services (which works only with IIS as the browser), SharePoint (same IIS dependency), Team Foundation Server and Content Management Server (rely on SharePoint, which relies on IIS, and SQL Server...) and then build functionality into MS Office (the other monopoly product) that is closely coupled with the aforementioned server products. "Seamless integration" is desireable, but at the same time it should be as "loosely coupled" as possible--but MS doesn't like that because they don't want Office wo work with Apache and PostgreSQL and SVN and such as nicely as their own products--they want such interation to be annoying even if it doesn't have to be.
Bush intentionally sabotaged the case against Microsoft.
Seems your damned either way you vote in the US--vote for the pachyderms and you get politicians in the pockets of big oil and Microsoft. Vote for the asses and you get politicians in the pockets of MPAA, RIAA and the Hollywood machine. It's quite unfortunate really...
In any case the USA is not the world, and the EU and Asia still exert a lot of influence. MS is (and should be) still under close scrutiny. Innovation and healthy competition is fine, and I'm quite adverse to governments propping up unviable companies to create artificial competition. However, when monopoly becomes too established and starts acting immorally it is potentially dangerous to society.
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Hmm...wonder if the cars will be somewhat slower and less responsive with each new revision of Microsoft ECU unless you do a total engine upgrade at the same time...
Keep in mind we're not talking about something as complex (or rather said, HUGE, not just complex) as Windows, so basically you could assume they're going to be able to do a much better job
True, an ECU is undoubtedly a much simpler system than a Windows PC so chances are there is less risk of failure. I fully expect it WILL be a better outcome than Windows. But the BEST outcome? It seems to me that the choice of Microsoft really defies logic. They have such a small track record in automotive applications and NO track record at all in engine mamagement. Anyone remember Microsoft's last high-profile foray into the automotive market? That would be iDrive...or rather iCantDrive. It was absolutely embarassing! iDrive controlled the accessories on some BMWs. iDrive v1.0 was full of bugs--it futzed with radio settings and opened your trunk when it suited its mood.
iDrive had an interface designed by Microsoft, so you can guess how (in)elegant it was to use. It's like they started with the Windows 95 paradigm and adapted it to a car: "Let's see--we have this idea where you press the start button where you can have a thousand functions/apps reside in menus 8 levels deep. That's so cool we should do that in a car!" so they did--it has what I'd call a "Start knob" that you fiddle with to navigate a heap of menus to do things like change the radio station or adjust the temperature. Yes it gets rid of the giant array of tiny buttons notorious in some German luxury models in the past, but now it's all TOO hidden. Firstly it takes some time to figure out where everything is in the menus. That's not TOO bad but you can NEVER get good enough to safely use it while driving because you have to peer at a screen to see what you are doing. The whole idea of iDrive was fundamentally flawed!
Guess what? iDrive was much simpler than a Windows desktop but they STILL screwed it up. Even when it was all fixed and wokrd it was STILL bad because it was a bad design. If the lame interface was Bosch's idea, it was evident that Microsoft didn't have the nerve or UI expertise to point out how flawed the design was.
Now MS is going to take on racing engine management. They could pull it off but it could also turn into a total gong show--they have no proven track record. The best thing they could do is license some other company's technology or buy someone who already knows what they are doing. It still begs the question though of WHY MICROSOFT? Were companies like Bosch or Siemens-VDO ever considered? I mean--what do you think MS would do anyways? Probably tack on a Windows-CE-pocketPC type of thing onto the electronics from one of those other companies anyways. It'll work but be less than elegant and an inefficient design. So...why not go with an established player right off the bat?
First, so what even if I am an uninformed public shareholder? Does that suddenly mean I really don't need to know, should not be informed of, or have a way to find out the internal workings of how the compnay I own a piece of is operated?
Dude--it's not like you couldn't do that BEFORE S.Ox came into being. In order to be a publically traded company the SEC still had a fairly long list of reporting requirements and accounting practices. Yes, there were too many places where you could still cook the books and fabricate public earnings statements but this Sarbanes Oxley business is sometimes akin to using 100 tonnes of concrete to plug a thumb-sized leak in the dam.
Even if I can't tell a balance sheet from a chart of accounts or a budget, the structure and contents of the reports have to be understandable, so the underlying management philosophy can be understandable, so the intent of the managers and Board and prospects for the company can be inferred.
If you cannot tell the difference between basic financial documents then you shouldn't be investing. Period. I mean it--don't even get into mutual funds if you can't tell the difference between its prospectus and a bus schedule and don't trust your broker. That is the case even with S.Ox now in place. Learn the basics of finance and do your reearch before putting money you count on into such investments. If your broker will not give you inofrmation you ask for then fire his arse. *INFORMED* investors lost minimal amounts in the Enron crash becasue the corporate fundamentals were sideways and heading south. People who lost money were those who depended on and trusted not only the word of morally bankrupt executives, but that of fund managers/brokers/"experts" who said "trust me--this is a cyclical thing and it'll turn around so you should stay in for the long haul to recover your losses". Easy enough for them to say--it is not their own money they're playing with.
BTW there ARE initiatives that are/were being considered outside S.Ox that would be much less onerous for corporate accountants. Firstly, there are standard reporting formats that are being more aggressively implemented. In Canada businesses have things like the General Index of Financial Information, which defines a set of standard accounts/codes that corporations must adhere to when filing taxes. In the US, public companies must have insider trading information available online. All over the world, they are looking at mandating things like financial statements being available online, on-demand in XBRL format. This way every corporation has information structured in the same way, whenever you want it, in the same way we can with RSS feeds from our favourite blogs.
Second, If SEC enforcement had been doing its job, then maybe we wouldn't need more law.
IF the SEC was not enforcing existing rules well enough, how could you expect them to adequately enfore even MORE rules?
It costs nothing to just put it out there and let people see what's up. But that wasn't happening.
Holy CRAP is that a ridiculous statement. It costs a LOT to "just put it out there". I work in the industrial automation field and *I've* had requests to modify/upgrade plant-floor systems because they do not meet the demands of Sarbanes Oxley. Operators and maintenance people have to be given logins. Companies have to know details down to the stupidest level sometimes--stuff that wouldn't be remotely important to investors. Yes, there is definitely a use for some of the data but what does Joe Schmoe Investor care about how many hours Employee 3422 spent reprogramming a controller so every tenth of a cent of operations & maintenance expenses can be backed by detailed records? Yes, you need to know the 5000-foot-picture as an investor, but you don't need to see each blade of grass on the ground below.
You don't get to decide what is the best way for me to do that. You don't get to play with my money and tell me to shut up and be happy
...there was that well known case of Terry Shiavo (sp?), the young woman who was, like this gentleman, in what many people called a "persistent vegetative state".
Is it simply because he was not FULLY DEAD that they did not pull the plug?
Well, that COULD be a reason, though in both cases there was technically no plug to pull. They weren't on life support, so if there was a plug to pull it was on their feeding machines. Anyways, how "dead" you are is only one factor. The other is consent. If you have not made up a "living will"--some kind of legal document instructing doctors on how much effort to put into keeping you alive--then it is up to your next of kin as to how to care for you if you are unable to speak for yourself. Shiavo was kept alive for a very long time as her husband and her parents fueded over what they thought was the right thing to do. If she was not married, or her husband deferred the decision to her parents, then she'd still be lying in bed, minimally conscious and on a feeding tube.
It certainly seems like a horrible existence to me, and if the thought of living that way yourself is intolerable then you really should make up a living will document of some kind--I think it is the only easy way you can give a doctor the option to cease treatment on you from an ethical standpoint. I think the only thing more pathetic than having to live in a "permanently vegetative state" is seeing lawyers making a living off the situation as next of kin prolong their own pain. If only for that reason I'm thinking of a living will option.
That said, I personally know a couple people that have been seriously maimed or declared terminal and survived because of agressive, prolonged treatment my doctors that some people might object to. Now there is this case of a man who was declared by experts to be in a permanent minimally-conscious state waking up after 19 years. Makes me wonder if letting treatment continue wouldn't be such a bad idea. What if you got a second chance to live? I'm sure the implications of this case on brain injury research will be astounding. Does someone in a "minimally concious" or "permanently vegetative" state actually feel pain or discomfort? Are they even aware enough of their situation to know they are suffering? Would there ever be a chance Shiavo could've recovered like this man did? What physiological mechanism triggered the brain to completely re-wire itself when so many others never recover?
Perhaps that is an option for people to think of in a "living will"--if you find yourself in a minimally-conscious or vegetative state you could instruct that you be kept alive in the interests of scientific research into brain injury recovery. You could even instruct that some of your estate be given to fund such research at the same time. Sounds somewhat gruesome but many people still think the same thing of donating yhour body to be a cadaver in a junior anatomy class, or even having your organs harvested. If you get past such thoughts you could really be helping out others in the future.
Red Hat should pursue the judgde to conduct a simple test of obviousness of the patent:
Given the nature of so many software-oriented patents these days, it seems that an idea has to be EXTREMELY obvious before a patent application is rejected. Prior art may be a better way to go. The patent in question was filed in 1998, and the folks who developed PostgreSQL (originally Postgres, an "Object Relational" database) might protest at the idea of ORM being a novel idea. I'm sure the original UC Berkley project did a lot of research/study around the concept.
I remember hearing a quote from back around 1900 (maybe earlier?) to the effect that "I don't expect many more patents to be issued because everything that can ever be invented probably already has been". I guess the US Patent office doesn't seem to agree anymore--if the rate of invention slows we'll just re-define "invention"...
We welcome you to the country where home doors are opened, police officers are polite, and we don't need cameras to check our private parking spot.
;-)
Please try to resist being smug. As much as I find a lot of what the US gov't does disagreeable it really irritates me when fellow Canadians brag about how much better our lot in life is in comparison with our southern neighbours. I thought we were supposed to be humble folk, but it seems some of us have developed a superiority complex. Historically Canadians have had trouble "blowing their own horn" so we should be sure to note our accomplishments. However, if you must brag, please be realistic. Canada has its share of challenges too:
* A recent behavioural study of major international cities on "politeness" placed Toronto fairly high on the list (Montreal, the other Canadian city did not do as well but did alright). Guess which city beat both? NEW YORK CITY. That's right. Most notably, New Yorkers were significantly more likely to open a door for a stranger in a public place. I guess that means "doors are opened" in NYC
* There are places in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal where I most certainly would NOT leave my doors unlocked. OTOH, I don't think people ever use their locks in most of Montana, North and South Dakota, Maine, etc. I know this isn't apples-to-apples comparison but most Canadians live in a major city as is the case in the US (I grew up in rural Canada and yes doors are still open there too). The point is that Canada isn't THAT much different in this regard
* I've witnessed RCMP officers and city police be somewhat less than polite in dealing with people too. Some of it has been widely publicised (Anyone remember the pepper-sprayed protester in Vancouver? And Prime Minister Cretien's cavalier response with the joke that he prefers his pepper on his dinner plate?). When the Hells Angels held a patch-over ceremony in Alberta a number of years ago, anyone who rode a Harley and was dressed the wrong way was badly harassed by the cops.
* Years ago when a Quebec separatist group kidnapped and later killed a politician our "beloved" Prime Minister invoked the "War Measures Act", which allowed for police to detain anyone without charges and suspended many other civil liberties. This was in effect nation-wide, even though the FLQ Crisis only presented a direct threat to savety in Quebec. RCMP in places far away from Quebec took advantage of the situation and we had "troublemakers" in small town Alberta held in custody for days without charges.
* Speaking of Quebec, this is a province that has "language police" that will fine you in your shop doesn't have French on it, or if some non-French language on your signage is too prominent.
* West of Ontario, it is illegal for farmers to sell most crops to anyone but the Canadian Wheat Board. Farmers who protested this by pubically deciding to sell their grain directly to someone else rather than through the wheat board had their doors kicked in and were dragged to jail--and had their trucks and grain seized. Sone farmer in Ontario does the EXACT SAME THING? Sure, that's OK--the act applies only to BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I could live with a government imposed monopoly, distasteful as it is, if it applied equally to all Canadians. As it is now this situation is a travesty.
* Well, I still live in Canada and I know that a lot of private parking spots are equipped with cameras here. In the past year or two there has been a dramatic increase in vandalism (mostly grafitti and car prowlings) and as a result more outdoor surveillance cameras are going up, and developers are putting out a lot more security guards in under-construction subdivisions as theft and vandalism increased there too.
OTOH Canada has a lot to be proud of too:
* Big, expensive and ineffective gun registry notwithstanding, there is WAY less gun violence in Canada than in the US
* Canadians ar
Yeah, you know what would be *funny*? If Microsoft licensed OS X
/etc or a user's home directory--they'll be the XML-based .config files you can emply in VS2005 now and will be stored in some verbosely-named directory (%system%\Global Application Settings or whatever). There'll be a powerful shell but it won't be based on bash or perl, it'll be Monad. Under the hood it'll be a BSD-derivative but the view it presents to the world will be made by Microsoft.
That would be hilarious because it would mean that hell had forzen over. That will never happen. However, I *do* think that MS will realise that they'll die if they try to re-invent the wheel from scratch.
OS X runs on Intel now, and Apple is working hard on compatibility layers for multiple OSs and it is the slickest, most stable, most beautiful mainstream OS out there right now.
Did you know that MS had a Windows build that ran on Alpha and Power CPUs before OS X was ever released? This is why Amelio tried to float that lead balloon about using the NT kernel (and perhaps more of NT) for MacOS--it wouldn't have taken much effort to make it run on contemporary PowerMacs. Though NT was (still is) ugly, MacOS was really straining and the NT kernel was markedly more stable. Apple would've taken care of the "beautiful" part itself. In this case things are different--back then it was the pipsqueak looking for some sort of protection from the behemouth. Now the behemouth needs help and it has the resources to pick whatever pipsqueak it wants. MS wants to keep Apple at bay not help it grow.
I am not saying that Microsoft can't do it themselves, I'd just like to see a return to the good 'ol days when Microsoft made good, solid applications and were not trying to be all things to all people.
I'm really doubting they CAN do it themselves. I think there is such a thing as TOO big to be useful from an organisational standpoint. And as for the "good ol' days", yes MS made solid apps but as to whether they were "good"--that's debatable. Perhaps they didn't eat gobs of memory and CPU cycles, or lock up and crash, but they were far from elegant or innovative from a usability standpoint. Multiplan was a poor cousin to Lotus 123 and VisiCalc was the innovative one. Jobs is known to have hated Microsoft's offerings--they were unoriginal ("The thing about Microsoft is that they have no taste" and "they just don't get it" are well know Jobs quotes) and did not properly showcase the MacOS GUI. Those who follow Mac history know that there was an amazing BASIC in development for MacOS (I think initially started in-house but then developed under contract--but not involving Microsoft at all). Microsoft used its weight (it held near monopoly on the BASIC programming language) and influence (being that MS gave Apple license and assistance in releasing Applesoft BASIC) to block the original MacBASIC (Apple II line was still popular and MS could've terminated its cooperation and left that line without a BASIC language to inclued with the system). The Microsoft-developed BASIC originally released for the Mac is widely regarded as a big pile of crap--it had no extensions (or even the meand through PEEKS and POKES to exploit the power of the windowing environment. It wasn't a precursor to VB, it was GWBASIC trapped in a single little window.
Although one has to wonder what is going on when Microsoft's programmer team for Windows is in the several-thousands and Apple's development team for OS X is around 300.
This is why I think they wouldn't ever license MacOS X. Though they need help they don't need THAT much help. They need a new foundation but are still capable of building the house. Given that, and past behaviour, I think MS will instead opt to copy Apple's strategy and make thorough use of BSD-licensed code: I think Post-Vista Windows could be built around a hybrid MACH/BSD kernel but with their own mods rather than Apple's. They'll then follow the UNIX philosophy in building on top of that foundation, but with a Microsoft spin: No more registry--they'll go back to text config files, but not stored in
No Apple involvement, but same pattern of behaviour: Ballmer-monkey see, Ballmer-monkey do.
Copland was a technology failure -- the old MacOS just couldn't be "modernized"
Well, it looks like Microsoft has had a great deal of difficulty modernising "old Windows NT" as well. It isn't optimised for multi-core processors as TFA mentions. It is the evolution of Windows NT 3.1 (Windows Server 2003R2 is just a marketing name for WinNT 5.2.3790, and Vista is simply NT 6.0.x). While the very basic underpinnings of the system are inspired by a solid foundation (VMS), development started in the late 1980s and internet connectivity really wasn't on the MS radar even by the time of its release in 1993 (yes, it could do TCP/IP, but MS was really focusing on knocking out Netware--smaller UNIX servers were a secondary target). UNIX-style OSes were quite ahead of the curve on that front, so while MS was still maturing as a REAL network OS they could focus on security.
Windows is suffering technological shortcomings now just like Classic MacOS did with Copeland--unlike UNIX-like architectures, the OS is monolithic, growing in size and complexity at a geometric pace and is nearly impossible to adapt to changing demands. In fact MS is in a far deeper hole with Windows than Apple was with MacOS--it's just that Apple had a much smaller organisation to manage their house of cards.
Vista is a management failure. Rather than shorter release cycles with incremental improvments, MS put it on themselves to do it all in one big release.
Copeland was just as much of a "management failure" as Vista has been (if not more so). Different parts of the development team were working towards conflicting goals. There was no coherent vision for what the end product was going to be, and like Vista it was going to be "one big release". Apple was touting all sorts of whiz-bang things like GUI "skins", multimedia goodies, etc and what users really wanted were things like multitasking that worked like Amiga and memory management that didn't fragment RAM like MSDOS fragmented hard drives. Thing is ALL of it was being promised, and really Apple should've focused on the underpinnings to make MacOS run smoother. When it became apparent that between the problems with the software and the lack of resources made it impossible to deliver (and with the return of Jobs to give everyone focus) they pushed reset and built an OS based on proven, already-developed code from Mach, BSD, NeXT...
If there was an XP2004 and an XP2006 released, you wouldn't see the bitching. XP's biggest problem at this point is just that it's old and clunky.
Actually I'd say there would be a LOT of bitching. There certainly was when Microsoft pushed out too many releases of DOS. That bit them in the butt more than once--people were not impressed when DOS 4.0 came out and it had so little to offer over 3.3 in comparison to the lack of stability that most people stayed with 3.3 until 5.0 came out. A few years later users were losing patience when Microsoft pushed out so many versions of MSDOS 7.x/8.0 (AKA Windows 95/95B/98/98SE/Me...) that contained so little useful innovations (and sometimes so many bugs). A LOT of people thought that by releasing what were basically the same old OS with service packs integrated into them as something new Microsoft was blatantly trying to screw people out of more money.
No, if MS released XP, XP/sp1 and XP/sp2 with a bit of eye candy tacked on as "new versions" as they did with their MSDOS line I think Gates and Ballmer would've been lynched.
So, different problems, different solutions.
I think that they have the SAME problems and Microsoft could benefit from the SAME solution if they wated to. The differences basically lie in the scale of the problems (Microsoft has to deal with a much bigger pile of crap than Apple did) and the corporate culture (Apple wants to change the world, Microsoft wants to take it over). It is those differences that will have an impact on the details of how MS proceeds.
Canada is a great place to research tooth replacement, considering that Maine is so close by!
This research was done in EDMONTON...in ALBERTA. Los Angeles is closer to Edmonton than any place in Maine. Incidentally the University of Alberta (my alma mater) has arguably the best schools of dentistry in Canada--of course there aren't many to choose from but it's pretty world-class. The U of A is actually recognised internationally for its research in many areas of life sciences (it has contributed to major innovations in the treatment of cancer, diabetes and heart disease).
Perhaps you were confusing Edmonton, Alberta with Edmundston, New Brunswick. The latter is just across the river from Madawaska, Maine and has no school of dentistry at all--in fact the people of western New Brunswick probably share the same dental challenges as the good citizens of northern Maine. I've visited NB and ME though and the people there are very nice...great place for people who like to snowmobile or cross-coutry ski...
I think it shouldn't be to hard to design those tunnels in a way where you can use robots like in the sewage systems.
Robots...? You spend too much time watching sci-fi channel or something. For some maintenance tasks remote controlled machinery can be sent down manholes, but actual robots? Never heard of that. Besides, actual people go down there to do repairs, and if it anything more than minor the city digs a big hole to replace a section of line. We all know how disruptive that can be...now double that to include power transmission lines.
Anything i don't see?
Lots...like almost everything:
* Transmission lines are very long--we are talking inter-city distances here, not a few blocks. Designing a tunnel that could accomodate "maintenance robots" would be an enormous expense.
* Robots to do maintenance? Those would be very expensive robots...especially if they were designed to work on live lines
* Transmission lines carry hundres of thousands of volts at a pretty high current. If there is a fault way up high in a tower it is out of reach of people--the only time it presents a danger is if a huge storm brings a line down to the ground. Underground lines are IN the ground, so it is possible for someone to be standing RIGHT ON TOP of a fault. If whatever insulating protection is compromised and there is a ground fault in a line surrounded by damp soil for example, the high voltage line could create an electric potential gradient in the soil--where the line charges up the surrounding ground to create a voltage that decreases with distance from the point the line contacts the earth. I'm not sure exactly what would happen in an underground line but on the rare occasion where a high-tension wire comes down it has been known to cause a voltage gradient of several hundred volts between the left and right feet of nearby victims--they could be electrocuted to death merely standing too close to the line much less touching it.
In any case, knowing how dangerous/sensitive transmission lines are I'd really not like to have one buried beneath my feet--unless it was buried as deep as those big towers are high...and that would be VERY expensive indeed.
...NOT Distribution lines. There is a HUGE difference.
Part of the thing *not* discussed here is that there are huge amounts of the power distro system in DC which *is* underground
That is because the *distribution* systems are not even part of this discussion. Transmission lines present a whole different set of challenges. Firstly, they are longer, second they are MUCH higher voltage--hundreds of kV, and third a transmission line serves a much larger area than distribution lines.
In most scenarios, they actually wait for the equipment to fail (eg. ignite and/or blow up) before they can do anything because the alternative is that they take down multiple city blocks for hours...
Thus these problems are magnified orders of magnitude for transmission lines. Working with live transmission lines requires very specialised safety equipment--expensive and bulky. With lower voltage distribution lines it is merely cumbersome to open a manhole and crawl into a confined space--with transmission lines the practical constraints as well as the increased danger make it basically impossible to repair or upgrade without digging out a big pit. In any case not much could be done live so they'd have to disconnect the line...and when you suddenly disconnect a transmission line you don't take down city blocks...you yould take out *cities*.
I think there are a few people with experience in transmission that appreciate what is involved in the installation and maintenance of high-tension lines, however I don't think the general public really has a grasp of it--they aren't the same as telephone or the power lines coming into your house. Very high power, high current electricity behaves very strangely sometimes.
Georgetown's power outages happen not because the lines are underground, but because the lines that were put underground in decades past are now overloaded ...
Burying cables makes them harder and more expensive to upgrade, so it brings a risk of inadequate capacity planning.
Exactly, so indirectly the parent to your post is in fact correct. If Georgetown did not bury its transmission lines they could've afforded to upgrade them as peak demand increased. Now, these people face the prospect of digging a very large trench and causing a very long, very intrusive disruption to the area where the cable is buried...or they could just build another (overhead) transmission line.
I think it should cost as much as the consumer is willing to pay - at least that is how it works when you have a properly working capitalist system.
I think it should cost just enough that the company can cover the costs of providing the service, maintaining and enchancing their equipment any fairly paying their employees. Any more than that is gouging, even if consumers are willing to pay for it. Incidentally, things costing what consumers are willing to pay is NOT how a "properly working capitalist system" works--it suggests that supply is abnormally short of demand and there is a lack of competition (either a naturally-occurring or legislated monopoly/cartel/etc). That is why gas prices jump all over the place on the slightest of whims--the market for oil is driven by a cartel of sheiks, ther is little product differentiation amonst a limited number of competitors (who undoubtedly practice collusion) and all--and last but not least there are a lot of taxes on fuel in most countries. Gas prices are what they are because *it is what the consumer is willing to pay*, not because some crackpot sheiks in the middle east bickering suddenly makes it harder to dig the oil out of the ground and process in a refinery. I don't think many people would agree that that particular industry is "poroperly working capitalism".
In that same vein, I feel that their next step is to start trying to sand-box their corner of the Internet. That way they control the content too.
Well, in the absence of healthy competition that is certain to happen. However, right now "the sandbox" isn't well established. With healthy competition, the first player to put up fences becomes isolated, and that isolation will anger their customers, who will migrate towards providers of more open service
When is the last time you saw a new DSL provider *other* than the phone company?
Well, *my* DSL connection is not provided by my phone company--the phone company basically provides the copper on which my ISP's signal travells.
When my VOIP provider is choppy, and high latency who do I blame? Most customers are not smart enough and blame the VOIP provider.
Well, then the provider must explain that they are not providing the internet connection that their service uses and the customer is then educated. If the problem is bad enough they may switch to another ISP and discover that the VOIP company was right, or they'll switch VOIP providers and find out the problem remains--or they'll buy VOIP from their ISP and it'll work great--but there will be little tolerance for price gouging when compared to competition. The more free the industry gets, the less likely "sandboxes" will be built. That sort of proctice is largely due to telecom historically being OVER-REGULATED--it has never been a proper capitalist market.
Yeah, actually this has been understood from the very beginning.
The beginning of what? When I was a youngster in school I remember watching a 16mm film in science class that proclaimed something to the effect of "recent research using sophisticated computer models have predicted that pollution from factories and smog from cars would reduce the amount of energy from the sun that reaches the earths surface, leading to a cooling trend and perhaps the early onset of another ice age".
We all know that is CRAP, and not only has it not been understood since the beginning, we are still trying to understand it now.
The annual mean temp rise steadily? Not steadily, no. But it looks like the mean delta over time is going to stay positive for a while.
The thing is, we do not have accurate data for long enough time to make any positive assertions about the global, annual mean temperature because we have only had the means to measure it properly for a couple/few decades--we don't have weather sattelite data from the 19th century and earlier to see what was happening during pre-industrial society so we can compare it to industrial (and post-industrial) society. In terms of climate change, "a while" is a lifetime or more, and we cannot take 30 years of data and confidently say that in another 100 years things will look a certain way, whether it be hotter or cooler, steady or erratic. You cannot look at old pre-WW2 terrestrial weather station data, tree rings and layers of glacial ice and *accurately* determine the average global temperature that can be compared with data collected with modern technology.
Everything you just mentioned is driven by stored heat in the atmosphere and oceans. Change can't just happen, it has to be driven by something.
Storage and transfer of heat doesn't just drive global climate--it is BASICALLY THE DEFINITION OF CLIMATE in terms of global weather. All the heat in and on the earth ultimately originated from energy captured from our sun, and there are countless factors determining how much (and what type of) energy is captured, stored and released by the planet. CO2 in the atmosphere is one single factor--other GHGs like methane are another. Particulates yet another--and that is just atmosphere. What about large geothermal events (volcanoes and such) that release long-trapped energy and gases in huge amounts, in very short times? Mt St Helens, Mt Pinatubo and such released heat, particulates and "air pollution" within weeks that humans produce in years, so such events have impacts just as much as human activity.
There are a ton of open-ended questions but you can build models based on the available data and produce approximations--think of the flywheel machine [...] Luckily the system under study is enormous so even very imprecise results can indicate trends.
The earth is not a flywheel machine--it is even more complex than a million flywheels of all sizes and shapes, on axles loaded with springs attached to gears driving other flywheels, and forces putting the brakes on one while forcing others to spin, and we are producing approximations based on 10 percent of them. They might be quite accureatem but then again they might be wrong too (when we did approximations on one percent we thought we were heading ito an ice age--remember?). Also, you can indicate trends on as little as two points of data, but how accurate are they? We have many more points to work with but they're still pretty scattered and the accuracy of older data is sometimes questionable.
Also, you need to understand the physics of the reactions involved. It's not enough to say that CO2 is related to climate change, we need a cause and effect relationship. And there is one--a strong one actually--the "greenhouse effect."
Sure but the greenhouse effect is only one effect on heat transfer/storage/movement. There are other effects that counteract this. What about changes in vegitation brought about by higher CO2 levels and changin
As a KDE developer, I can tell you bluntly that GNOME should seriously cut down on the crack-smoking monkeys
As someone who spends much of his time developing for Windows, it seems that Microsoft has the corner on the crack-smoking-monkeys market--it seems they even picked a crack-smoking monkey to be its CEO (the best one they could find--it can even dance and throw around furniture!).
Therefore, if the goal is to put a dent in Microsoft's dominance in the PC software market then GNOME has the right idea--so get out there and build up your arsenal of crack-smoking monkeys and kick some arse!
...NOT a problem of a user's hygiene or poor lifestyle choices.
Nicotine will stain white appliances.
The stains do sport the hue of nicotine, but to blame this problem on nicotine, or sweaty palms, or body chemistry. That is total BS and a really lame excuse for a design or manufacturing oversight, or just plain shoddy workmanship. It happens with Apple from time to time--they seem to alternate between exceptional quality and crap. I guess this time they hired the same people to do their MacBook cases as Chrysler did to paint their Spirit, Shadow and Neon cars in the 1990s as they seem to have comparably (less than) durable finishes.
These macbooks have only been out for a few weeks, and there are ALREADY countless reports of white macbooks with yellow spots. There is even a report of finish flaking off a macbook that hasn't even left the store! Yes, white will show dirt more, but these spots don't seem to be dirt--they apparently do not simply rub out. Furthermore, though white plastic will discolour with age it is totally unacceptable that it should happen within weeks. I have an ergonomic keyboard made FIVE YEARS AGO that is white--it sees 40 to 60 hours of use a week, 40 to 50 weeks a year. It is starting to look a little grimy and some letters are wearing off a bit, but THERE ARE NO YELLOW STAINS ON THE PALM REST AT ALL. It has also been used by several people and nobody has had an "incompatible body chemistry".
Apple makes fantastic products and has enjoyed an extended renaissance. Their customers have to keep them on track--if hardcore apple fans get all apologetic and start blaming users for the shortcomings of a product then they risk infecting Apple with the same mindset, and they'll start to slide back into the dark days they had in the 1990s. I know these defects are the kind of thing that would make Jobs go thermonuclear, however I also know he is prone to the effects of the "reality distortion field"--and it's those unabashed Apple Evangelist users out there who often generate and amplify reality distortion fields.
warmer = more evaporation = more water vapor in the air = more heat trapped and so on
... ... ... -> more cloud formation -> wetter weather -> more vegitation in once barren areas -> more CO2 uptake from vegitation -> less GHG and more O2
It means nothing of the sort my friend. In fact as scientists analyse global climate, they seem to be slowly, subtlely distancing themselves from the theory/term of "Global Warming". Have you noticed that authorities on the subject--even the most ardent supporters of things like the Kyoto initiative--now almost NEVER use the term anymore? The correct term is "Global CLIMATE CHANGE" because EVERYONE agrees that the earth is not universally warming up (some areas are, and others are getting cooler), and they aren't even convinced anymore that the AVERAGE gloabl temperature will continue to steadily rise. What they DO agree upon is that the climate is CHANGING--they point to evidence of changing weather patterns and more "extreme weather"--we'll get more Katrina's in the Gulf of Mexico and huge, freezing blizzards in maritime Canada and expanding deserts in Africa. The general consensus is still that CO2 from human activity exacerbates the problem--it's just that scientists now cover their butts with more general terms like "climate change" because truthfully, NOBODY has a handle on what exactly is going to happen.
The situation might go as you state, but there are a number or drastically different predictions as well:
warmer -> more evapouration -> more cloud formation -> sunlight blocked -> cooler
or
or
warmer -> melting polar ice -> lower ocean temperatures -> shifting weather patterns -> more "even" climate (warmer & wetter towards poles, cooler in the equatorial region)
NOBODY knows what will REALLY happen--it is all guesswork (albeit really educated guesswork). Although those who say human activity/CO2 emissions have no notable effect on the planet are generally dismissed as crackpots (and rightly so), the scientific community is finally acknowleging--at least a bit--that they don't know the ultimate effect, which is significant becasue high-profile research organisations really hate to admit they don't know something (almost as much as they hate admitting they're wrong). And here is one to cheer you up--there is a growing contingent of scientists that say "yes, human activity has altered our climate, but the can is open and the worms have long since escaped--we are past the point of fixing things".
An aside -- but whats your problem with mysql?
/.-like sites or addressbooks (non-critical data that is not heavily updated).
.mdb file full of tables). I think that even Microsoft themselves (at least a lot of them), given the choice, would kill the scourge that is MS Access. Given the backlash they took over their treatment of VB6 however, I think that MS fears they'd be the victim of a severe lynching by "professional MS Office developers".
MySQL is a fine product when used in a manner that fits its original purpose, but it is a poor choice for an enterprise-class database (with 200 employees and multiple sites, the article poster is moving beyond "departmental" and into the realm of "enterprise"). As another poster commented, MySQL's heritage is "ISAM on 'roids". It is easy to set up and use, has a small footprint and is fast at retrieving data. That's what makes it great to set up blogs ore
Those benefits come at a cost. Sompared to PostgreSQL (arguably the #2 Free database) it has historically lacked a lot of standard SQL support (especially in terms of enforcing referential integrity, stored procedures, transactional support...) and MySQL also takes shortcuts with data validation that make DB admins cringe (MySQL has been notorious for silently failing on things like overflowed numbers and invalid dates--writing records with garbled data instead of rolling back and throwing an exception. Furthermore, its data store is prone to total corruption should you unexpectedly lose power to the server or otherwise terminate MySQL abnormally (it was almost guaranteed if the data was on a non-journalling filesystem like EXT2).
To be fair, those shortcomings are the reason for MySQL's strengths, and there has been a lot of work done to improve MySQL's robustness (if you have even the slightest concern for your MySQL data you'll use InnoDB for example, and there is transactional support now and so on), however PostgreSQL is the most mature and robust enterprise database at the moment (Firefird is apparently a good choice too, though it has a much shorter history as a Free DBMS than PgSQL and hasn't got the same momentum either--at least not yet).
In any case, Microsoft Access is certainly the absolute WORST choice for a database application--especially for a backend, and MySQL is orders of magnitude better in stability and performance (it is apallingly easy to corrupt an
There are tons of Free PostgreSQL and MySQL-based solutions out there that can be used to wean an organisation off of Access--everything from PGAdmin and OpenOffice and GNOME Office desktop interface tools to Ruby on Rails to a multitude of LAMP-based CMS options. Also, if the article's author really must stay with a Microsoft solution but requires a cost-sensitive option I'd suggest looking at the free (though not Free) "Express editions" of Visual Studio and MSSQL 2005. Of they tried Sharepoint then they have a server they can deploy this on anyways. I think MSSQL Express even has some Reporting Services capability though it probably doesn't come with the nice Report Builder. It almost seems Microsoft is deliberatly crafting a solution that directly competes with MS Access and does everything better. And from reports I see out of TechEd they are doing a lot to make MS Access, as a distinct product, obsolete.
Anyways, those are much more robust ways to get binary data storage, web-enabled interface/intranet access and security that isn't a complete joke.
Even though a poster here suggested Access apps can be used over the interanet, store binary/images using OLE and have user security, it is like using a high-heeled shoe as a hammer and a butterknife as a screwdriver. It's largely a metter of using the proper tools for the job.
When the author says "doesn't require embedment" it means that the "host image" is not altered in any way. Since there is no information provided to potential hackers through discovery of an invisible watermark it is far more robust than traditiona stenographic techniques.
I gather the way it works is that the "hidden image" is like the "secret key" you use when you generate SSL certificate requests--it is kept secure/inaccessible to the public. Through transforms and other mathematical wizardry they calculate optical/phase keys--essentially parameters you'd feed into the transform functions. This is the "public key" as you'd use in SSL and is expressed as a "PIN".
The way the security would work, the user being authenticated would have to provide the "host image" and the "public key/PIN" to prove they are the right person. If you feed the parameters from the PIN into the transform functions and run that function over the host image, the result would match the "hiddem image" (secret key). If either the wrong image or wrong PIN are supplied, the calculated image would look distorted and authentication would fail. Essentially you are creating a mathematical function that would (in the article's example) warp the picture of the pagota into the picture of a cute chick, and the PIN provides the missing variables in the function.
So...can someone out there confirm that this is the idea? That's the gist I got from it anyways...
Also there are very few titles availabe for HD DVD. Maybe they do this on purpose because people cannot see yet that there are a lot of other 'big releases' missing, not all studios signed up for hd dvd.
"A few" is more than ZERO releases of BD movies, which I guess doesn't matter since there are ZERO BD players available to consumers for another couple of weeks anyways. Even with all the studios signed up for BD the loss of "first-mover" advantage presents a great challenge, and despite the number of studios jumping on the BD wagon, they didn't EXCLUSIVELY jump on that wagon so it means little to nothing.
I think that sony is waiting to have more titles available, so they can make a big release.
And what will motivate those releases, when the captain of the team is late for the game? Perhaps there will be double the releases when the player finally comes out than there was for HD-DVD but two dozen vs. one dozen is still pathetic...and the longer it takes for BD players to filter into the market, the larger the library of HD-DVD releases gets, and once the reace really begins they'll be about equal.
Does the Playstation 3 record BD's? No, so stop comparing it to 1000 dollar players, you noobs
My understanding was that the $1000 standalone unit won't record either (that will cost even more), and I think that early-adopters would be more inclined to use a PVR to record so it would not be a killer feature. Furthermore, Sony could have a bit of a problem with the PS3, not only because it would undercut most of the 1st-gen standalone BD players, but also becasue Sony will lose money on the PS3--it is cheaper not because it costs less to make, but rather becasue Sony has amputated the profit margin because its computer entertainment division (like Microsoft's) sells consoles as a loss leader and tries to make money on the content.
Unfortunately this has the hallmarks of becoming "Beta: The Sequel"--a technically superior technology being out-priced and out-marketed by the more "primitive" yet still adequate and practical competition.
I wrote Visual Basic code for years, and I took Adderall twice a day. I (or rather my employment status) probably couldn't have survived without it.
Unless you took Adderall under the advice of a physician, with a prescription and after a thorough examination by that physician then I would've strongly encourage you to seek councilling. It is not normal to require drugs of any kind to cope with daily life like that, and really only a professional can help you determine if you really need the assistence of psychoactive drugs or some other form of therapy (or a combination fo both). Personally, if I felt so overwhelmed by the volume and/or menial nature of my work I'd look for another job. The economy is still pretty bouyant and skilled workers can afford to be selective.
There's a common misunderstanding about stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. They don't make you smarter or faster. They make you able to focus, and they make typically miserable tasks interesting.
The REAL intention of these drugs is to help people who cannot focus on ANYTHING able to focus on tasks of everyday life. When taken by normally-functioning people these drugs narrow focus so tightly that they can rob the mind of creativity and critical thinking. Improper use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall by people who do not need them can potentially damage academic and professional careers. I've seen first hand how Ritalin has turned some bright lights into dim bulbs (and I'm not even talking about what the side effects did--that's even another story). Sure, whe you're drugged up you are a well-bechaved student that can ace a multiple-choice exam, but what is the point if you turn into a bland, stick-in-the-mud, shadow of the person you once were?
This is anecdotal, but I know a lot of people who took unprescribed Adderall in college. Most of them have never touched any other illicit drugs, but they find the substance useful, and it doesn't seem to cause any harm.
I've seen what happens when Ritalin and Addreall are abused--in this case, by teachers who, either due to laziness or being overworked, used them for behaviour control purposes with hard-to-manage children. When I was young, such students would be called "attention seekers" or simply hyperactive, and were dealt with through everything from discipline to changing diets. Nowadays, a figity kid is labelled with ADHD and some teachers ask (no--TELL) the parents they need some kind of pill. And guess what? Behaviour improves, overall grades go up a little bit--and they smile less, draw less colourful pictures, write less-inspiring stories, are quieter and less sociable.
Someone close to me was mis-diagnosed with ADHD and labelled "learning disabled" largely becasue she was a "difficult student". Ritalin was the newest "wonder drug" and thus she spent some time taking what would now be considered a higher-than-normal dose. She didn't become a better student--the impact on her grades was positive but marginal. She became a well-behaved but lethargic, depressed young lady. She lost weight, had skin and hair reactions (hives/eczema/hair loss), started having headaches, etc. Thankfully Ritalin is not habit forming, however it seems that a few of the physical side effects were permanent.
Years later, other "experts" have told her she NEVER had ADHD and that she exhibited characteristics of dyslexia--her behaviour was due to frustration over not being able to learn well visually. Due to this diagnosis she slid through school and barely graduated, and not she faces the prospect of upgrading her education in her 30s. So don't tell me that since it isn't an illicit recreational drug and it isn't addictive that causes no harm. Improperly used, these drugs cause every bit as much harm as heroin or cocaine.
It's not so much a question of buy-off as it is an offering of free services in exchange for mindshare.
That is the fine line Microsoft historically walks, and has done so with great success in the past. That is why IE is dominant--they took the hit offering it for free to cut the legs out from under Netscape and other competitors. As an aside, they also did it for another reason--IE started life as a Microsoft-branded version of Spyglass Mosaic. BillG absolutely abhors paying royalties based on sales and prefers licensing with a flat-fee. Spyglass insisted on a royalty and becasue MS needed to get a browser out there quickly they "caved" and offered a percentage of revenue. It wasn't long after IE debuted on the Plus! pack that MS released Win95A with IE included for free...and we all know what any percentage of zero dollars is...
The original poster contended MS could pay big companies to switch to them in exchange for positive publicity, which would actually be illegal becasue it goes beond giveaways and deep discounts and ventured into collusion territory. Although there isn't a very solid case against MS for "being generous" there are other things they do that present a strong case that they are abusing their monopoly:
* extensions to standards that only work with their OS (ActiveX, Active Directory...) - such a strategy only works if you have big enough market share to establish de-facto standards
* "tight coupling" using closed/proprietary (and usually obsfucated) methods to make less established products (such as its server products like its "Microsoft Dynamics" line) interoperate with its dominant products (MS Office). This creates firm vendor lock-in for enterprise customers. A more loosely-coupled, standards-based approach would allow 3rd party competitors to interoperate with MS products (like OpenOffice with Sharepoint, or using PostgreSQL as a backend for Reporting Services). Vendor lock-in is not illegal itself, but when it's done to leverage a monopoly product it is arguably abuse of a monopoly position.
I'm not sure how well it'll work against Apache, since it is a more established, mature system than IIS and Apache is already free (and Free) whereas Netscape relied on revenue from its browser and server products. Ultimately, I think that it'll result in a dramatic lowering of MS' server product licensing fees with a much larger MS market share (closer to 50/50 with Apache), or they'll hit a wall and no amount of price deals will help. It all depends on how well Apache development continues against IIS and how well IIS holds up under heavier use.
Those pictures and that password are stored in the phone or on the SIM card in the phone she lost.
Well, on my phone there is the option of storing information in three places and IIRC you can set the default location as well. Those three places are:
1) Phone's internal memory
2) SIM Card
3) "My Online Album"
I think another poster here (and I think the author of the "revenge page") explained as much. The wireless service provider has central storage servers for its subscribers (given they pay the approriate fee or sign up on certain plans). On the upside, you can access the data from your "online album" from your PC's web browser, there is more capacity than available on the device and SIM card, and your data is not lost if you lose your phone. OTOH, you lose all your privacy...if a phone company will turn over phone records to busybody G-Men without a warrant you can bet they'll turn over address books, pics, videos, etc. at the drop of a hat as well.
This is buying off the whole company, which if Microsoft wants to do it, is perfectly legal.
If you take out the word "off" then you are correct. If you leave it in, it is probably an even more serious offence than trying to buy off an employee--it is a form of collusion rather frowned upon by antitrust types.
damn that thing screams Fisher-Price ugliness!
;-)
Rumour has it that the physical design came about because they were originally considering Windows XP as the OS platform and thought it would be best if the hardware and software were "visually integrated"
Going into a business and offering to help convert to IIS isn't abusing its OS monopoly. They don't have anywhere near a monopoly on server OSs anyway.
The whole POINT is that MS doesn't have a server OS monopoly, though in the web server market (and server market as a whole) MS is still a significant player. Microsoft is abusing its WORKSTATION OS and PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATION monopolies in an attempt to reduce or eliminate competition in the server markets. Microsoft likes to call this "leveraging". There are literally only two consistently profitable business units within Microsoft--Operating Systems and Productivity Applications (ie. MS Office). This happens to be where MS enjoys monopoly status, and that revenue is used to absorb losses on things like selling XBox at a loss to compete with Sony and Nintendo--and to give massive discounts on server implementations to big institutional customers.
Also, this abuse (sorry...leveraging) extends beyond financial subsidies between business units: There is the issue of lock-in (sorry..."interoperability"). MS deliberatly chooses a "tightly coupled" approach: Tie in IIS with Windows Server 2003 (a product of OS monopoly), then release SQL Server 2005 with integrated Reporting Services (which works only with IIS as the browser), SharePoint (same IIS dependency), Team Foundation Server and Content Management Server (rely on SharePoint, which relies on IIS, and SQL Server...) and then build functionality into MS Office (the other monopoly product) that is closely coupled with the aforementioned server products. "Seamless integration" is desireable, but at the same time it should be as "loosely coupled" as possible--but MS doesn't like that because they don't want Office wo work with Apache and PostgreSQL and SVN and such as nicely as their own products--they want such interation to be annoying even if it doesn't have to be.
Bush intentionally sabotaged the case against Microsoft.
Seems your damned either way you vote in the US--vote for the pachyderms and you get politicians in the pockets of big oil and Microsoft. Vote for the asses and you get politicians in the pockets of MPAA, RIAA and the Hollywood machine. It's quite unfortunate really...
In any case the USA is not the world, and the EU and Asia still exert a lot of influence. MS is (and should be) still under close scrutiny. Innovation and healthy competition is fine, and I'm quite adverse to governments propping up unviable companies to create artificial competition. However, when monopoly becomes too established and starts acting immorally it is potentially dangerous to society.