First off, internet access is a priveledge, not a right. Your ISP probably has a clause in the agreement that states they are able to terminate your service for any or no reason.
Secondly, I suspect there is no actual legal work going on here, just the threat of legal work. The ISP doesn't want to get into some big costly legal battle over a small percentage of their customers.
The data available to the world on your hard drive can probably be used against you as evidence because it is publicly visible. IANAL, but I seem to remember this from someplace. No warrent is needed if you keep your cocaine at the edge of your driveway with a big sign saying "come and get it."
Kinda makes you wonder if, somewhere out there, there's a planet with nonexistant life not pondering the possibility that life may not have developed elsewhere in the universe...
The first invention is a method of compressing text stored in binary form... by comparing each
word with its predecessor and recording only the differences between words. This compresses
the data to an eighth of its normal size.
Something like word pairing frequency?
Like normal LZx compression, but with words instead of bytes?
Would that improve compression at all?
(my thought would be no, unless maybe you had a huge text with few words)
Yes, log base 2 of 26 is roughly 4.7. If each letter had an equal probability of occuring at every place in the text, you would need 4.7 bits per letter.
However, letters are not evenly distributed. the letter E is used much more frequently than the letter Z. For a start you can represent E with fewer bits and Z with more bits. (huffman encoding!)
Then you can also take into account letter pairing: the letter U follows Q more frequently than any other letter.
You can extend this to word and sentence length sequences and specialize your frequency data to the specific text you are compressing. The LZ.. family of algorithms do this.
With huffman encoding alone, you can get around 4 bits per letter (on average), even including capitalization and punctuation. (so you end up with ~60 symbols, which should take 5.9 bits each)
BTW, using adaptive algorithms, short sequences ("the cat") don't compress very well.
afaik, tristate electronics refers to the standard binary logic with a high impedence state to allow another part of the circuit to talk on the same line. this would not translate to another logic state. most logic inputs will tend to float to either of their expected binary inputs so you couldn't detect the third state.
I once wrote a perl script that would take a pdf file and spit out plain text. I think it would be grand if sites that like serving lots of pdfs had one of those.
Now I haven't read the article, and I don't intend to, but does this make them live longer because they motabolize less food into calories, or is that just a side effect?
Everyone here seems to be assuming that they live longer because they effectively eat less, but is that really what's going on?
Article in today's San Jose Mercury Times said they're also working with somebody to use organic LED's for the displays in a few years. I forget what the benefits of that were.
In fact, the situation is even worse than this. My stepdad told me a few weeks ago that if he went into his bank, and told them that he didn't place a charge on his credit card, they would take off the charge no questions asked . That's right, the first time, they just eat the loss without looking into it any further. Obviously, if you try to get away with this many times, they'll look into it, but I found it pretty amazing that they wouldn't even look into it...
Cool!! So does this mean I can finally get that tank I've always wanted?
Can you blame them? If you were Microsoft, would you want your software?
Re:Obvious Question: Who read the EULA?
on
EULA In Games
·
· Score: 4
I sometimes (well now ya know what I do Friday nights...) read through them, but I have a note here to anyone writing anything that needs to be read:
NEVER WRITE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS IN ALL CAPS. I WILL NOT READ IT. I DON'T CARE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS, LEARN TO USE BOLD OR DIFFERENT FONT SIZES. ALL CAPS PARAGRAPHS ARE EXTREMELY RUDE.
if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book.
Sounds like they want the OS to become the application and all the applications to become plugins.
Yeah, and another thing, how can you people remember Ctrl-C/V/X?? What connection does that have to cut, copy and paste? Shift/Ctrl Ins/Del make a lot more sense to me.
Shift Delete - Delete and remember it.
Shift Insert - Insert what you remembered.
Ctrl Insert - uh, um... Hey look, free beer!!
yeess... skins are nice. i like being able to change how things look, but they should be a function of the OS.
If I want to change the way programs look, I don't want to have to do it AGAIN and AGAIN for each app. I want to be able to do it ONCE for EVERYTHING.
'course you can't even do that with the system colors. Too many (well, a few) stupid programmers hard wired in colors that expect gray (#C0C0C0) as the background color. It's worse than AOL web sites.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, internet access is a priveledge, not a right. Your ISP probably has a clause in the agreement that states they are able to terminate your service for any or no reason.
Secondly, I suspect there is no actual legal work going on here, just the threat of legal work. The ISP doesn't want to get into some big costly legal battle over a small percentage of their customers.
The data available to the world on your hard drive can probably be used against you as evidence because it is publicly visible. IANAL, but I seem to remember this from someplace. No warrent is needed if you keep your cocaine at the edge of your driveway with a big sign saying "come and get it."
So the ultimate ad would be 1x1 pixel pornography which you would get paid $1 for viewing, except that it's filterred out?
Kinda makes you wonder if, somewhere out there, there's a planet with nonexistant life not pondering the possibility that life may not have developed elsewhere in the universe...
Does that include biological CPUs?
The first invention is a method of compressing text stored in binary form ... by comparing each
word with its predecessor and recording only the differences between words. This compresses
the data to an eighth of its normal size.
Something like word pairing frequency? Like normal LZx compression, but with words instead of bytes?
Would that improve compression at all? (my thought would be no, unless maybe you had a huge text with few words)
Yes, log base 2 of 26 is roughly 4.7. If each letter had an equal probability of occuring at every place in the text, you would need 4.7 bits per letter.
However, letters are not evenly distributed. the letter E is used much more frequently than the letter Z. For a start you can represent E with fewer bits and Z with more bits. (huffman encoding!)
Then you can also take into account letter pairing: the letter U follows Q more frequently than any other letter.
You can extend this to word and sentence length sequences and specialize your frequency data to the specific text you are compressing. The LZ.. family of algorithms do this.
With huffman encoding alone, you can get around 4 bits per letter (on average), even including capitalization and punctuation. (so you end up with ~60 symbols, which should take 5.9 bits each)
BTW, using adaptive algorithms, short sequences ("the cat") don't compress very well.
I thought blick holes can't exist.
-Want an iguana?
Is an iguana the only other option?
afaik, tristate electronics refers to the standard binary logic with a high impedence state to allow another part of the circuit to talk on the same line. this would not translate to another logic state. most logic inputs will tend to float to either of their expected binary inputs so you couldn't detect the third state.
I once wrote a perl script that would take a pdf file and spit out plain text. I think it would be grand if sites that like serving lots of pdfs had one of those.
It would have been cool to have three major competitors for a change, but I guess Transmeta was never up to that.
I think it's comparable to Photoshop 4, but since it's all free there's billions of filters and scripts that come with it.
Another issue that's pretty minor unless you use virtual desktops is that files open in separate windows rather than in children of a main window.
Oh come on, imagine the fun your kids could have with say, T2!
Now I haven't read the article, and I don't intend to, but does this make them live longer because they motabolize less food into calories, or is that just a side effect?
Everyone here seems to be assuming that they live longer because they effectively eat less, but is that really what's going on?
I would think it would be better to start with the small defenceless companies and work their way up, get some common law decisions behind them...
Article in today's San Jose Mercury Times said they're also working with somebody to use organic LED's for the displays in a few years. I forget what the benefits of that were.
In fact, the situation is even worse than this. My stepdad told me a few weeks ago that if he went into his bank, and told them that he didn't place a charge on his credit card, they would take off the charge no questions asked . That's right, the first time, they just eat the loss without looking into it any further. Obviously, if you try to get away with this many times, they'll look into it, but I found it pretty amazing that they wouldn't even look into it...
Cool!! So does this mean I can finally get that tank I've always wanted?
We rabid computer geeks wouldn't worry about Windows would we?
;)
And just who are you calling rabid??
Would that first patent cover huffman encoding a raw wave file in 512 byte chunks?
notice how many people *are* using png? not a lot...
"Wow, I live in a box!"
(Microsoft) won't take its software back.
Can you blame them? If you were Microsoft, would you want your software?
I sometimes (well now ya know what I do Friday nights...) read through them, but I have a note here to anyone writing anything that needs to be read:
NEVER WRITE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS IN ALL CAPS. I WILL NOT READ IT. I DON'T CARE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS, LEARN TO USE BOLD OR DIFFERENT FONT SIZES. ALL CAPS PARAGRAPHS ARE EXTREMELY RUDE.
if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book.
Sounds like they want the OS to become the application and all the applications to become plugins.
Yeah, and another thing, how can you people remember Ctrl-C/V/X?? What connection does that have to cut, copy and paste? Shift/Ctrl Ins/Del make a lot more sense to me.
Shift Delete - Delete and remember it.
Shift Insert - Insert what you remembered.
Ctrl Insert - uh, um... Hey look, free beer!!
yeess... skins are nice. i like being able to change how things look, but they should be a function of the OS.
If I want to change the way programs look, I don't want to have to do it AGAIN and AGAIN for each app. I want to be able to do it ONCE for EVERYTHING.
'course you can't even do that with the system colors. Too many (well, a few) stupid programmers hard wired in colors that expect gray (#C0C0C0) as the background color. It's worse than AOL web sites.