Actually as part of the anti-trust case (in the US) Microsoft isn't allowed to use undocumented Windows APIs in their products. If their anti-virus product uses it they have to document it on MSDN.
All this would do is make the banks remove the online banking options. The ones who still offer it will either charge extra for it or have a contract required that minimizes their liability somehow.
How is this different than the "Locate Me" option in Virtual Earth? Granted it only works with 802.11, but does having GSM and Bluetooth in the mix even help?
I don't see how the fact they sit on the board of standards organizations has anything to do with them not supporting a group at their own conference. They may have created.Net, but they are more interested in Windows as a platform for developers. MONO goes against that in the same way that GCC does.
Would Microsoft promoting Visual Studio (or.Net without MONO) at a Linux conference be completely acceptable? How is that suggestion different than promoting MONO (non-Windows development) at a conference about the Windows Platform?
Think about MS's core business areas: Windows and Office. It doesn't make sense for the company to embrace projects or groups that undermine those business areas. The company uses.Net as a way to enhance Windows, so while they are supportive of it, they're going to keep an eye on their core business first.
This isn't MS being monopolistic, it's just good business practice. Apple's core business areas are OS and hardware (and now music), which is why Jobs killed off the 3rd party hardware. IBM's core business is consulting and hardware, which is why you won't see them partnering with other hardware companies.
One of the placed I worked at did something like that, but they made it so you couldn't change your password more than once every 24 hours to combat the rotation.
From the article: "...but that still doesn't explain how the fire-spitting flowers came into being..."
Fire flowers are from a pun from the Japanese word for fireworks (hanabi), which is a combination of flower (hana) and fire (suffix of -hi, which changes to -bi). Fire flowers are the literal translation.
Japan actually has a lot of wilderness due to the mountainous terrain. It only has 12.19% arable land, compared to 19.13% in the US and 23.46% in the UK. Most of Japan's population is concentrated in the major metropolitan areas.
If you really want this to change, then why not call Dell (1-800-WWW-DELL) and try to order a computer with an AMD chip in it. If they can see that they are losing business because of their stance they'll reconsider their policy. By taking the "Dell doesn't sell AMD so I won't bother to call" stance when buying a new computer Dell won't realize that they lost a customer due to their Intel only policy.
Minneapolis is a bad idea from a cultural perspective. There is a very small Japanese community here, and that will make culture shock that much worse.
I would recommend someplace on the west coast, as that's where you'd most likely meet more Japanese and have some of the comforts (like Japanese bookstores) that you'll be missing. Seattle, WA and Los Angeles, CA are the places I've found with a large Japanese presence.
And I do know what I'm talking about. I lived in Japan, and moved back to Minneapolis. I've also known several Japanese who have moved here.
I've been in a similar situation as you (although I was only there for 8 months). I would recommend moving someplace with a sizable Japanese community. This would help ease the urges for Japanese books, food, and other media. Being prepared for a trip or two back (at least for her) would be a good idea too. You're going to want to make sure she knows as much English as possible before you go (including slang) - that'll help with the shock.
Culture shock is going to suck sometimes. The best way to deal with it is to be very supportive and make sure you have a good foundation in your relationship for problems. Be prepared for your wife to be angry or upset with you as a sympom of it. The first month won't be so bad, but the next 6 months to a year are going to be very trying on both of you.
Good luck.
A patch is out there to fix this, and I'm hoping it's included in the new release. For Gentoo, the patch is available here. You can probably just patch it yourself for other OSes. It is based around the patch given in the X.org bug entry.
The problem is because they've sold 600,000 units. The servers are having problems handling that many players, which is why they're crashing. Throwing hardware at it alone won't fix it, since the server code would need to be changed to be able to spread over multiple servers. They have been trying to fix the server code, which is why we had the extended downtime on Thursday. The problem is that the change was buggy, which is why it was down again this weekend. Unfortunately this is going to take some time for them to figure out, no matter how much money they're getting a day.
The only other way to fix it is to reduce the load on the servers. This could be done by moving people to other servers or forcing people to wait to login. Either solution would leave many people upset ("What do you mean that I was moved to this server while the rest of my guild is still on the old server?" or "I want to play, not wait 30 minutes to login. What they hell am I paying for?").
It is not strange. Beta was like a DSL webserver, launch was like that webserver being slashdotted. The system wasn't capable of handling as many users as they were getting, so that's why the servers started lagging and crashing. Blizzard is still trying to figure out how to scale the system up for as many users as they have, and that's not as easy as buying new hardware - they probably have top of the line machines already. What they have to do is change the server code to run on more computers or be more efficent. That takes time, which is why the service has been so poor lately.
Stephen Hawking said in one of his books (Universe in a Nutshell or Brief History of Time) that the pope had said that right after he did a lecture that essentially questioned the existence of god. He's not really taking directions from the pope, just meeting with him.
This reminds me of watching TV with my 8-year old cousin, who turned to me after they bleeped the word "fuck" and said "I know what they said". So what's the point of bleeping if an 8-year old can figure out what was said anyways?
If this is true, then it's likely that airlines or the FAA will ban the DS due to communication concerns. I just hope they don't use this as an excuse to ban all game systems. On the other hand they have been becoming more relaxed recently regarding electronics, so this might not even be an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually as part of the anti-trust case (in the US) Microsoft isn't allowed to use undocumented Windows APIs in their products. If their anti-virus product uses it they have to document it on MSDN.
All this would do is make the banks remove the online banking options. The ones who still offer it will either charge extra for it or have a contract required that minimizes their liability somehow.
How is this different than the "Locate Me" option in Virtual Earth? Granted it only works with 802.11, but does having GSM and Bluetooth in the mix even help?
You're thinking the 90's.
Hey, it's not like MS killed MONO.
I don't see how the fact they sit on the board of standards organizations has anything to do with them not supporting a group at their own conference. They may have created .Net, but they are more interested in Windows as a platform for developers. MONO goes against that in the same way that GCC does.
.Net without MONO) at a Linux conference be completely acceptable? How is that suggestion different than promoting MONO (non-Windows development) at a conference about the Windows Platform?
Would Microsoft promoting Visual Studio (or
Think about MS's core business areas: Windows and Office. It doesn't make sense for the company to embrace projects or groups that undermine those business areas. The company uses .Net as a way to enhance Windows, so while they are supportive of it, they're going to keep an eye on their core business first.
This isn't MS being monopolistic, it's just good business practice. Apple's core business areas are OS and hardware (and now music), which is why Jobs killed off the 3rd party hardware. IBM's core business is consulting and hardware, which is why you won't see them partnering with other hardware companies.
One of the placed I worked at did something like that, but they made it so you couldn't change your password more than once every 24 hours to combat the rotation.
If Microsoft is having zero or negative job growth in the US why did it just move to expand it's corporate campus in Redmond?
From the article: "...but that still doesn't explain how the fire-spitting flowers came into being..." Fire flowers are from a pun from the Japanese word for fireworks (hanabi), which is a combination of flower (hana) and fire (suffix of -hi, which changes to -bi). Fire flowers are the literal translation.
Japan actually has a lot of wilderness due to the mountainous terrain. It only has 12.19% arable land, compared to 19.13% in the US and 23.46% in the UK. Most of Japan's population is concentrated in the major metropolitan areas.
If you really want this to change, then why not call Dell (1-800-WWW-DELL) and try to order a computer with an AMD chip in it. If they can see that they are losing business because of their stance they'll reconsider their policy. By taking the "Dell doesn't sell AMD so I won't bother to call" stance when buying a new computer Dell won't realize that they lost a customer due to their Intel only policy.
Each display costs $3000 from Apple's website.
I took nature's most perfect killing machine and needlessly turned it into a robot.
Am I the only one who clicked on the link just to /. him?
Minneapolis is a bad idea from a cultural perspective. There is a very small Japanese community here, and that will make culture shock that much worse.
I would recommend someplace on the west coast, as that's where you'd most likely meet more Japanese and have some of the comforts (like Japanese bookstores) that you'll be missing. Seattle, WA and Los Angeles, CA are the places I've found with a large Japanese presence.
And I do know what I'm talking about. I lived in Japan, and moved back to Minneapolis. I've also known several Japanese who have moved here.
I've been in a similar situation as you (although I was only there for 8 months). I would recommend moving someplace with a sizable Japanese community. This would help ease the urges for Japanese books, food, and other media. Being prepared for a trip or two back (at least for her) would be a good idea too. You're going to want to make sure she knows as much English as possible before you go (including slang) - that'll help with the shock. Culture shock is going to suck sometimes. The best way to deal with it is to be very supportive and make sure you have a good foundation in your relationship for problems. Be prepared for your wife to be angry or upset with you as a sympom of it. The first month won't be so bad, but the next 6 months to a year are going to be very trying on both of you. Good luck.
A patch is out there to fix this, and I'm hoping it's included in the new release. For Gentoo, the patch is available here. You can probably just patch it yourself for other OSes. It is based around the patch given in the X.org bug entry.
The problem is because they've sold 600,000 units. The servers are having problems handling that many players, which is why they're crashing. Throwing hardware at it alone won't fix it, since the server code would need to be changed to be able to spread over multiple servers. They have been trying to fix the server code, which is why we had the extended downtime on Thursday. The problem is that the change was buggy, which is why it was down again this weekend. Unfortunately this is going to take some time for them to figure out, no matter how much money they're getting a day. The only other way to fix it is to reduce the load on the servers. This could be done by moving people to other servers or forcing people to wait to login. Either solution would leave many people upset ("What do you mean that I was moved to this server while the rest of my guild is still on the old server?" or "I want to play, not wait 30 minutes to login. What they hell am I paying for?").
DAoC didn't break the record for concurrently connected users either. I agree the downtime and problems suck, but it's because they grew so fast.
It is not strange. Beta was like a DSL webserver, launch was like that webserver being slashdotted. The system wasn't capable of handling as many users as they were getting, so that's why the servers started lagging and crashing. Blizzard is still trying to figure out how to scale the system up for as many users as they have, and that's not as easy as buying new hardware - they probably have top of the line machines already. What they have to do is change the server code to run on more computers or be more efficent. That takes time, which is why the service has been so poor lately.
Stephen Hawking said in one of his books (Universe in a Nutshell or Brief History of Time) that the pope had said that right after he did a lecture that essentially questioned the existence of god. He's not really taking directions from the pope, just meeting with him.
This reminds me of watching TV with my 8-year old cousin, who turned to me after they bleeped the word "fuck" and said "I know what they said". So what's the point of bleeping if an 8-year old can figure out what was said anyways?
If this is true, then it's likely that airlines or the FAA will ban the DS due to communication concerns. I just hope they don't use this as an excuse to ban all game systems. On the other hand they have been becoming more relaxed recently regarding electronics, so this might not even be an issue.
Here's Google's text only cache of the downed site.