If it's just registering pixel changes, then I presume a few flashing disco lights or even a sad disco mirror ball would count as motion or "dancing". Too bad he didn't describe any in-situ testing; I'm guessing it doesn't really work at all except under the most controlled circumstances.
Still, you've got to applaud the changer itself, which is a nice bit of lego robotics.
Event One: The Server Press
on
IT Olympics
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· Score: 5
Tougher than it sounds, if this site's performance after being/.ed is anything to go on.
Write a good post, then post it again with the HTML tags done properly. Get moderated up on both! I intend to double-post all my thoughts in the future, the first time with malformed HTML, the second, fixed. Thanks for the tip!
Given how cheap DVD drives are, does this matter?
on
Copying A DVD To A CD?
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· Score: 4
In a year's time, most if not all new PCs will be shipping with DVD drives. And most of those who have not upgraded will not be target customers for the pirate CDs this will presumably produce. Likewise, anyone who uses this technology for their own copying obviously already has a DVD drive.
Sigh. Look, I'll make it easy. This post describes an example of what I'm talking about. Same company, same state, different prices "for research". Happens all the time.
That's not what I said. Given the analogy you raised, this would be like Kroger charging me, in a New York store, $5.49, and you, in a CA store, $6.99 at the same time. Which is exactly what they do. The only reason you notice it in Amazon it that's easy to compare.
As it happens, they also do it in the *same* store, exactly following the analogy you described. It's called "coupons" and they, too, are a form of price-elasticity research. This is absolutely standard retail practice.
Bricks and mortar stores do this all the time, from store to store, week to week or region to region. The only reason you notice is on Amazon is that it's easy to compare, what with price-finding bots and discussion boards. It's not unethical, or even unusual. Indeed, it's optimal, because it finds the pricing sweet-spot that both encourages consumer purchasing and keeps Amazon in business. This is called efficient capitalism, and that's what e-commerce was supposed to be all about.
I think you're taking the free agent concept too far. In fact, it's not about contracters and temps, but simply people who know they have options and move until they find a job they find rewarding. You can be a free agent and stay with a single company for years, if it's the right one (just like the sports analogy of the word).
There's also free agentry *within* a company; mobility works in all sorts of ways.
Think of free agentry as simply being where you are because that's what you want, and not because you find it too difficult to move, and I suspect you won't find it as worrysome.
True, but there are structural changes that encourage free-agentry and are not going away in the next recession. For instance:
--The late80s/early90s corporate restructurings that broke the long-standing social compact between companies and employees. This brought the end of seniority loyalty (last in first out), lifetime employment (to the extent that it still existed) and the implicit promise of corporate responsibility to its employees.
--The fading away of the unions
--The portability of benifits, such as 401Ks. You may not remember, but pensions used to vest like stock options. If you left early, you lost them. Now, they're contribution-based, and you carry them with you.
--Meritocratic business cultures, where skills and performance are valued more highly than loyalty and years of service. Those that thrive in such cultures will have portable talents, regardless of the economy.
This book seems to look at the individual vs the state, but the same arguments apply to the individual vs the corporation. Technology liberates employees from dependence on any single company, creating a nation of "free agents".
Technological skills are portable, the fast pace of technological change favors the flexible (which tend to be individuals, not companies), and technology reaches everywhere, freeing those who would otherwise be tied to the local corporate giant.
It's really more a travelogue and portrait of the strange Dr Harvey than what I had been expecting, which was sort of America as Einstein would see it, through a lens of relativity and the mind-expanding concepts of quantum physics. (Initial reviews had suggested that Paterniti, thanks to having the brain in the trunk, had found himself almost channelling Einstein throughout the trip, which sounded fun).
That said, there are a few moments when he does engage in some quantum flights of fancy, and we do get lots of interesting tidbits from Einstein lore.
It's amusing to see what a muddle the scientific community made of the brain. First Harvey messed up the preservation, so all the DNA denatured. Then, after it became clear that there was nothing very special about the brain from a macro perpsective (which is pretty much what you would expect) rather than say, "okay, that's that", he perpetuated this cult of perpetual study, where fascinating findings were always around the corner. Sad, but a telling insight into human nature. In the end, Einstein's brain became a totem, attracting the sort of people who needed one.
Actually, the whole concept of a peer-to-peer local area wireless network raises a host of issues. As I understand it, by default any Bluetooth device can "see" any other Bluetooth device in its vicinity. The point of this is that your cellphone/PDA can connect to everything from a wireless ISP server in your local Starbucks to the printer in your office, or simply trade info with another cellphone/PDA.
Obviously you will be able to set allowed access rules on the individual device, but can you hide the fact that you're carrying a Bluetooth device altogether?
To be useful for local-area communications (messaging across a classroom, for instance) the device would have to be as openly addressable as a telephone number. The difference being that, unlike a cellphone, the device itself automatically broadcasts that addressability (its phone number, as it were), which makes unwanted communications more of a risk. For instance: you're driving down the highway and some jerk cuts you off. You check your PDA and sure enough he's got a Bluetooth device in range. So you flame him! Far better than shaking your fist, huh?
Does anyone know what's being done to balance the privacy issue with the comminucations need for open accessibility?
Both AOL and TW do business in Europe and own subsidiaries there (such as AOL UK and TW's cable properties on the continent). It doesn't take much to give the EU competition authorities jurisdiction. AOL and TW would have to cease doing business in the EU to avoid this, which is obviously too high a price to pay
I don't really see the big win here. Surely any open source project big enough to file for an "antipatent" is big enough to show up on even the the most cursory prior art search. These typically aren't the problem; they tend to sort themselves out.
It's the obscure or super-obvious ones (such as international e-commerce and other business methods) that tend to slip through the prior art cracks. But they're also the ones that don't have a natural constituency to file an "antipatent". Catch 22
The cease and desist letter says they're protecting:Cue's "intellectual property". I fail to see how writing an independent program that simply makes use of the output of the:Cue scanner in any way infringes on the company's intellectual property.
Reverse engineering of file formats are the closest example and my understanding is that courts have rules that this is fine.
I don't see how they have a leg to stand on. Hack on...
Dunno where that quote came from but it's either meaningless or wrong, and probably both. Obviously embedded (which presumably means Tivo etc) and handheld (PocketPC) are two totally different markets.
Linux has essentially zero market share on handhelds (I don't think any of the few announced machines have actually shipped). In contrast, there are 3-4 million Windows CE handhelds.
In the consumer embedded space, I suppose you mostly have the Dreamcast (which ships with WindowsCE as an OS, even though most games actually use a native OS) on the Windows side vs Tivo with Linux. Needless to say that's millions vs tens of thousands.
At the risk of getting modded as flamebait, I just don't see how the Linux game market is going to reach the critical mass to make it attractive for developers. Mac gaming, despite Jobs' strenuous efforts, remains an ill-served niche. PC gaming, while a sucessful *market* (albeit far smaller than console gaming) is still an extraordinarily tough place for developers to make money due to everything from hardware complexity and diversity to the hard-to-penetrate and expensive retail channel.
Linux seems to have both the Mac and the PC's problems multiplied: niche market, hardware uncertainty, complexity and (let's be honest) consumer unfriendliness, and poor access to the retail channel.
A Linux console might bridge some of the technical and consumer hurdles, but as anyone who knows the history of consoles knows, it takes incredible financial backing, industry clout and marketing prowess to succeed. If even Sega's Dreamcast's future is in doubt, what chance does Indrema, coming from a company that is not a global consumer gaming giant, have?
Uh, you know what? If you FF through *any* film it looks like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." Why don't you actually watch the thing, you know, listening to the dialog and all. You might just be able to "bare" it better.
As it happens, it's actually a pretty funny short. Dunno if's a masterpiece or even if the fact that it was done with the Quake II engine makes it particularily memorable, but it's definitely a reasonable way to pass ten minutes.
And they're *not* viewed in a web browser. Indeed, it's a good way to get an "opened" receipt when you send email (even if they choose not to acknowledge the usual "reciept requested" flag): embed a graphic from your own site and their client will automatically fetch it when they open the message. Cookies, too.
Clever, but not new. Why the big MSFT-is-evil hype about this?
Slashdot Mirror
Hee! Exactly. On my list of very irritating computer things, those tiny ads were pretty low. Is Justin just trying to prove that he wasn't a sell-out?
If it's just registering pixel changes, then I presume a few flashing disco lights or even a sad disco mirror ball would count as motion or "dancing". Too bad he didn't describe any in-situ testing; I'm guessing it doesn't really work at all except under the most controlled circumstances.
Still, you've got to applaud the changer itself, which is a nice bit of lego robotics.
Tougher than it sounds, if this site's performance after being /.ed is anything to go on.
What was Hemos supposed to do? Never mention that they were up? Wait a few days? Mention it but beg people not to click on the link?
/. is by definition /.ed ever day and holds up (mostly) fine.
If Kuro5hin can't handle the traffic, they shouldn't be in the business. After all
Cut em a break.
Write a good post, then post it again with the HTML tags done properly. Get moderated up on both! I intend to double-post all my thoughts in the future, the first time with malformed HTML, the second, fixed. Thanks for the tip!
In a year's time, most if not all new PCs will be shipping with DVD drives. And most of those who have not upgraded will not be target customers for the pirate CDs this will presumably produce. Likewise, anyone who uses this technology for their own copying obviously already has a DVD drive.
So who would really use this?
Yeah, its MSFT, but they're much better than previous WinCE versions. Compaq's iPAQ is a lot cheaper than a Visor+MP3 module, and does a lot more.
That price is nuts. Especially for a PDA that's marketed as a low-cost alternative to Palm.
Sigh. Look, I'll make it easy. This post describes an example of what I'm talking about. Same company, same state, different prices "for research". Happens all the time.
That's not what I said. Given the analogy you raised, this would be like Kroger charging me, in a New York store, $5.49, and you, in a CA store, $6.99 at the same time. Which is exactly what they do. The only reason you notice it in Amazon it that's easy to compare.
As it happens, they also do it in the *same* store, exactly following the analogy you described. It's called "coupons" and they, too, are a form of price-elasticity research. This is absolutely standard retail practice.
Bricks and mortar stores do this all the time, from store to store, week to week or region to region. The only reason you notice is on Amazon is that it's easy to compare, what with price-finding bots and discussion boards. It's not unethical, or even unusual. Indeed, it's optimal, because it finds the pricing sweet-spot that both encourages consumer purchasing and keeps Amazon in business. This is called efficient capitalism, and that's what e-commerce was supposed to be all about.
I think you're taking the free agent concept too far. In fact, it's not about contracters and temps, but simply people who know they have options and move until they find a job they find rewarding. You can be a free agent and stay with a single company for years, if it's the right one (just like the sports analogy of the word).
There's also free agentry *within* a company; mobility works in all sorts of ways.
Think of free agentry as simply being where you are because that's what you want, and not because you find it too difficult to move, and I suspect you won't find it as worrysome.
True, but there are structural changes that encourage free-agentry and are not going away in the next recession. For instance:
--The late80s/early90s corporate restructurings that broke the long-standing social compact between companies and employees. This brought the end of seniority loyalty (last in first out), lifetime employment (to the extent that it still existed) and the implicit promise of corporate responsibility to its employees.
--The fading away of the unions
--The portability of benifits, such as 401Ks. You may not remember, but pensions used to vest like stock options. If you left early, you lost them. Now, they're contribution-based, and you carry them with you.
--Meritocratic business cultures, where skills and performance are valued more highly than loyalty and years of service. Those that thrive in such cultures will have portable talents, regardless of the economy.
This book seems to look at the individual vs the state, but the same arguments apply to the individual vs the corporation. Technology liberates employees from dependence on any single company, creating a nation of "free agents".
Technological skills are portable, the fast pace of technological change favors the flexible (which tend to be individuals, not companies), and technology reaches everywhere, freeing those who would otherwise be tied to the local corporate giant.
This is, needless to say, a Good Thing.
"Good for ISPs" Amazon helpfully adds....
I'm sure there are other differences, but that one sort of jumps out at ya...
It's really more a travelogue and portrait of the strange Dr Harvey than what I had been expecting, which was sort of America as Einstein would see it, through a lens of relativity and the mind-expanding concepts of quantum physics. (Initial reviews had suggested that Paterniti, thanks to having the brain in the trunk, had found himself almost channelling Einstein throughout the trip, which sounded fun).
That said, there are a few moments when he does engage in some quantum flights of fancy, and we do get lots of interesting tidbits from Einstein lore.
It's amusing to see what a muddle the scientific community made of the brain. First Harvey messed up the preservation, so all the DNA denatured. Then, after it became clear that there was nothing very special about the brain from a macro perpsective (which is pretty much what you would expect) rather than say, "okay, that's that", he perpetuated this cult of perpetual study, where fascinating findings were always around the corner. Sad, but a telling insight into human nature. In the end, Einstein's brain became a totem, attracting the sort of people who needed one.
Actually, the whole concept of a peer-to-peer local area wireless network raises a host of issues. As I understand it, by default any Bluetooth device can "see" any other Bluetooth device in its vicinity. The point of this is that your cellphone/PDA can connect to everything from a wireless ISP server in your local Starbucks to the printer in your office, or simply trade info with another cellphone/PDA.
Obviously you will be able to set allowed access rules on the individual device, but can you hide the fact that you're carrying a Bluetooth device altogether?
To be useful for local-area communications (messaging across a classroom, for instance) the device would have to be as openly addressable as a telephone number. The difference being that, unlike a cellphone, the device itself automatically broadcasts that addressability (its phone number, as it were), which makes unwanted communications more of a risk. For instance: you're driving down the highway and some jerk cuts you off. You check your PDA and sure enough he's got a Bluetooth device in range. So you flame him! Far better than shaking your fist, huh?
Does anyone know what's being done to balance the privacy issue with the comminucations need for open accessibility?
Both AOL and TW do business in Europe and own subsidiaries there (such as AOL UK and TW's cable properties on the continent). It doesn't take much to give the EU competition authorities jurisdiction. AOL and TW would have to cease doing business in the EU to avoid this, which is obviously too high a price to pay
I don't really see the big win here. Surely any open source project big enough to file for an "antipatent" is big enough to show up on even the the most cursory prior art search. These typically aren't the problem; they tend to sort themselves out.
It's the obscure or super-obvious ones (such as international e-commerce and other business methods) that tend to slip through the prior art cracks. But they're also the ones that don't have a natural constituency to file an "antipatent". Catch 22
The cease and desist letter says they're protecting :Cue's "intellectual property". I fail to see how writing an independent program that simply makes use of the output of the :Cue scanner in any way infringes on the company's intellectual property.
Reverse engineering of file formats are the closest example and my understanding is that courts have rules that this is fine.
I don't see how they have a leg to stand on. Hack on...
Dunno where that quote came from but it's either meaningless or wrong, and probably both. Obviously embedded (which presumably means Tivo etc) and handheld (PocketPC) are two totally different markets.
Linux has essentially zero market share on handhelds (I don't think any of the few announced machines have actually shipped). In contrast, there are 3-4 million Windows CE handhelds.
In the consumer embedded space, I suppose you mostly have the Dreamcast (which ships with WindowsCE as an OS, even though most games actually use a native OS) on the Windows side vs Tivo with Linux. Needless to say that's millions vs tens of thousands.
At the risk of getting modded as flamebait, I just don't see how the Linux game market is going to reach the critical mass to make it attractive for developers. Mac gaming, despite Jobs' strenuous efforts, remains an ill-served niche. PC gaming, while a sucessful *market* (albeit far smaller than console gaming) is still an extraordinarily tough place for developers to make money due to everything from hardware complexity and diversity to the hard-to-penetrate and expensive retail channel.
Linux seems to have both the Mac and the PC's problems multiplied: niche market, hardware uncertainty, complexity and (let's be honest) consumer unfriendliness, and poor access to the retail channel.
A Linux console might bridge some of the technical and consumer hurdles, but as anyone who knows the history of consoles knows, it takes incredible financial backing, industry clout and marketing prowess to succeed. If even Sega's Dreamcast's future is in doubt, what chance does Indrema, coming from a company that is not a global consumer gaming giant, have?
Uh, you know what? If you FF through *any* film it looks like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." Why don't you actually watch the thing, you know, listening to the dialog and all. You might just be able to "bare" it better.
As it happens, it's actually a pretty funny short. Dunno if's a masterpiece or even if the fact that it was done with the Quake II engine makes it particularily memorable, but it's definitely a reasonable way to pass ten minutes.
And they're *not* viewed in a web browser. Indeed, it's a good way to get an "opened" receipt when you send email (even if they choose not to acknowledge the usual "reciept requested" flag): embed a graphic from your own site and their client will automatically fetch it when they open the message. Cookies, too.
Clever, but not new. Why the big MSFT-is-evil hype about this?