They're building an operating system for a 5-6 year lifespan.
They are? I would like to know from where did you that information, since Microsoft has never ever done something like that. As far as I know, they are still operating on a 2-year upgrade cycle. It's just that "Vista" has been awfully late, just like Windows 2000.
Your theory might hold some weight if there wasn't a huge market for counterfeit hardware, and other consumer goods.
It appears you don't have an idea of what you are talking about. There may be a market for counterfeit goods, but it exists only for expensive brands of consumer goods, such as Louis Vuitton, something that's low tech but expensive. High tech items are extremely hard to counterfeit. Face it, local gangs just don't have the production capability and technical know-how to make AMD Opteron or nVidia 7800. The worst thing that could happen there is probably remarked CPUs (CPUs of lower speeds with modified markings to look like CPUs of higher speeds).
In fact, I read the same thing years ago, shortly after 911. Supposedly all sorts of fantastic new weapons would be available Real Soon back then. Things like tanks with large laser cannons alongside with airborne ABM mega lasers.
I wonder if we will hear about all sorts of fantastic weapons in the near future.
Buy them. If you have a company with a small number of owners (Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986), you don't want to have 36% of the voting rights suddenly go to someone that knows nothing about the company (or technology in general) -- they could wreck the place. It's pretty common for companies to have rules spelled out for handling such situations (e.g. terms for other owners to buy out) when a key person leaves/dies. Cringely seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill (and I'm not a MS fanboy).
While TFA does not spell out details of the Gates-Ballmer discussion, from the tones of it, it appears that they weren't discussing something along these lines.
One time pads are completely secure because the key is different each time. Dice work well to generate the random numbers. The only trouble with one time pads is the pad, i.e. the recording medium where you have the list of random numbers. This must be communicated to the receiving party through a secure channel beforehand.
"All the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-exploit, DRM, IM clients, mail clients, multimedia "helper" apps, browser "helper" apps, little system tray goodies, etc., etc., and so on, it can start to add up. A lot of home and small business users are running a lot more background and simultaneous stuff than they may realize."
Most people in a normal office environment don't need any of that. In fact, a large number of background processes in Windows XP can be turned off without affecting normal operations. One of the problems with most users is they have too many unnecessary programs and processes running so the computer is bogged down.
Viruses can and often filtered at the gateway. ISPs now even offer this service for individual subscribers, often at no additional charge. Spyware is defeated by not using MSIE and a suitable IT policy. Nobody needs DRM, get that out from my system. Flash is generally evil (about 5% of Flash usage on the Web can be justified, the other 95% can't). 9 out of 10 "goodies" in the system tray are entirely unnecessary. Maybe even 95 out of 100.
Besides, the more you have running on a computer, particularly under Windows, the more ways it can go wrong.
There are three kinds of radiation: alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha radiation is helium nucleii. Beta is electron and gamma is an extremely energetic form of electromagnetic radiation. I know of no iron nucleii radiation. That probably means iron ions travelling at some speed. Though that's more damaging to cells than gamma rays according to TFA, remember that alpha radiation can be blocked by a piece of paper. It seems that Iron ions probably don't have better penetration.
IIRC, in the US, it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to be a monopoly and to leverage that position in entering other markets and stuff. I think predatory pricing is also illegal.
Re:The Economist... only 20 years behind the times
on
Unusual Open Source
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· Score: 1
But...
Isn't the market just "mob rule?" You see, there are no rules (except ones to ensure fair play), nobody at the top imposing structures and rules. Only a bunch of people doing things. Sounds like FOSS to me.
Parent is right. An RPG campaign is a story. The player characters play a central role in unfolding the story. An RPG campaign should have no winners or losers, because everybody is a part of a story. So the bad guys get defeated in the end, but that's just only part of it.
Now you can do it with P&P (pencil and paper) sessions really well, because an experienced DM/GM/referee/storyteller/etc. can improvise things on the spot when the PCs want to do something totally unexpected. CRPGs are less than ideal, at least in this aspect, because the choices of actions are always limited. However some development teams really tried and they came up with pretty decent games, games such as The Elder Scolls series.
Now the shortcoming of a story, if you can call it that, is it involves change. Things happen, the PCs grow up, cities are founded and destroyed, armies clash, etc. All these events leave a permanent mark in the "universe" where the story takes place. And once the story is finished, it is finished. A story involves one and only one PC party and all the events they help weave together. You can't do the same thing again, even if you were able to undo everything and start from scratch.
In other words stories are fine for RPG games that is played by a person on a PC, such as the traditional CRPG. This does not scale up to MMORPGs. You can't re-enact the same story again without isolating a party, so other players can't mess it up. Doing so, however, runs counter to one of the underlying ideads of MMORPG.
So no, the so called MMORPGs are just glorifed versions of nethack, moria, or angband. There are no stories. Only quests to complete, monsters to kill, and items to collect.
There's so much a MMORPG can offer, that wanting it limited by a set of tabletop rules is dumb. It's like wanting a word processor to be limited to the concept of a pencil.
Don't diss the pencil! You can do far more with it than with any word processor you can name.
So my question to you all is, why would you own Google or Yahoo stock for more than five minutes, to ride up the next big push? It seems like there's virtually no long term value in any website's technology. Surely someone else will take the idea and improve on it at some point -- it's already happened several times over in the last 10 years.
The point is not in the technology. New tech and standards are everywhere. Heck, just look at IPv6. It's been out like 10 years and hardly anybody uses it. The big thing is not something but the people using that something. IOW the user base. That's why Google is big, Yahoo! is big but not other search engines. Google knows this, Yahoo! knows this. That's why they are offering additional services to retain existing users and to attract new ones.
During installation the root account is not activated. Instead, it gives your account sudo access. However anybody in the right mind will immediately activate the root account right after installation and remove your own account from the sudo list.
After years and years of advancements in computing we still haven't been able to create a replacement for paper. Paper is still the best choice for taking notes, jotting down ideas, drawing things, etc., etc.
The reason is simple - you can put anything down (that you can with a writing implement) anywhere on a piece of paper. For example, you can start with drawing a sketch in the middle. Then putting down some annotating text and connecting them with arrows to the sketch. Perhaps you could make a detailed diagram of an especially complicated part at a corner. On the back of the sheet you can make some quick back of envelope calculations. After you are done, you can put the whole thing safely in your wallet.
Do we care about typefaces, point sizes, and that sort of thing? No. All those have nothing to do with the formation, recording, and refining of ideas. However a lot of time was spent on these features that should really belong on an end node down near the very bottom of the creative process.
In the US, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired. This is called a business decision. In the PRC, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired, the action is slammed as censorship.
It just seems that too many people get their panties in a twist when it comes to China. Somehow it gets painted as a nasty evil regime by mainstream US media. Then again, the US has always needed a bogeyman. Anyway, a journalist getting fired for disobeying probably won't even make the news if it happens in the US.
*shrug*
And what does this have anything to do with "Your Rights Online" anyway?
Tell your upper management that, if Linux is good enough for Google, which is one website that needs the ultimate in network security, it is good enough for your company.
It wasn't that long ago - probably a year or two - that some researchers were claiming that c (speed of light) decreased since the Bang. I was quite skeptical at the time, because changing c is going to change the among of energy and matter in our universe.
Up till today I haven't seen another team confirming this.
This is not the first time somebody claims to have made some major scientific breakthrough, leading to almost limitless energy. As usual, nothing ever came out of these claims.
I suggest everbody heads straight to James Randi's website http://www.randi.org/ to look at some of these claims. I am also not surprised that if some of these scientists looked at this particular claim were fooled by chalatans. It's not the first time this happened, either. You need a magician to see through these tricks.
Slashdot Mirror
They're building an operating system for a 5-6 year lifespan.
They are? I would like to know from where did you that information, since Microsoft has never ever done something like that. As far as I know, they are still operating on a 2-year upgrade cycle. It's just that "Vista" has been awfully late, just like Windows 2000.
Your theory might hold some weight if there wasn't a huge market for counterfeit hardware, and other consumer goods.
It appears you don't have an idea of what you are talking about. There may be a market for counterfeit goods, but it exists only for expensive brands of consumer goods, such as Louis Vuitton, something that's low tech but expensive. High tech items are extremely hard to counterfeit. Face it, local gangs just don't have the production capability and technical know-how to make AMD Opteron or nVidia 7800. The worst thing that could happen there is probably remarked CPUs (CPUs of lower speeds with modified markings to look like CPUs of higher speeds).
Buying a fleet of jetliners is actually useful. Buying Windows isn't.
In fact, I read the same thing years ago, shortly after 911. Supposedly all sorts of fantastic new weapons would be available Real Soon back then. Things like tanks with large laser cannons alongside with airborne ABM mega lasers.
I wonder if we will hear about all sorts of fantastic weapons in the near future.
Buy them. If you have a company with a small number of owners (Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986), you don't want to have 36% of the voting rights suddenly go to someone that knows nothing about the company (or technology in general) -- they could wreck the place. It's pretty common for companies to have rules spelled out for handling such situations (e.g. terms for other owners to buy out) when a key person leaves/dies. Cringely seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill (and I'm not a MS fanboy).
While TFA does not spell out details of the Gates-Ballmer discussion, from the tones of it, it appears that they weren't discussing something along these lines.
One time pads are completely secure because the key is different each time. Dice work well to generate the random numbers. The only trouble with one time pads is the pad, i.e. the recording medium where you have the list of random numbers. This must be communicated to the receiving party through a secure channel beforehand.
"All the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-exploit, DRM, IM clients, mail clients, multimedia "helper" apps, browser "helper" apps, little system tray goodies, etc., etc., and so on, it can start to add up. A lot of home and small business users are running a lot more background and simultaneous stuff than they may realize."
Most people in a normal office environment don't need any of that. In fact, a large number of background processes in Windows XP can be turned off without affecting normal operations. One of the problems with most users is they have too many unnecessary programs and processes running so the computer is bogged down.
Viruses can and often filtered at the gateway. ISPs now even offer this service for individual subscribers, often at no additional charge. Spyware is defeated by not using MSIE and a suitable IT policy. Nobody needs DRM, get that out from my system. Flash is generally evil (about 5% of Flash usage on the Web can be justified, the other 95% can't). 9 out of 10 "goodies" in the system tray are entirely unnecessary. Maybe even 95 out of 100.
Besides, the more you have running on a computer, particularly under Windows, the more ways it can go wrong.
When you boss points out this time you can say, "Google uses Linux, not Windows."
I don't think 10,000 outfits such as GoDaddy are going to have a pull anywhere near Google collectively.
What on earth is that iron nucleii radiation?
There are three kinds of radiation: alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha radiation is helium nucleii. Beta is electron and gamma is an extremely energetic form of electromagnetic radiation. I know of no iron nucleii radiation. That probably means iron ions travelling at some speed. Though that's more damaging to cells than gamma rays according to TFA, remember that alpha radiation can be blocked by a piece of paper. It seems that Iron ions probably don't have better penetration.
I can see them "completely" transparent ICs.
Gotta check my eyes. Seeing things I shouldn't have.
IIRC, in the US, it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to be a monopoly and to leverage that position in entering other markets and stuff. I think predatory pricing is also illegal.
But...
Isn't the market just "mob rule?" You see, there are no rules (except ones to ensure fair play), nobody at the top imposing structures and rules. Only a bunch of people doing things. Sounds like FOSS to me.
Something's missing in The Economist's logic...
Parent is right. An RPG campaign is a story. The player characters play a central role in unfolding the story. An RPG campaign should have no winners or losers, because everybody is a part of a story. So the bad guys get defeated in the end, but that's just only part of it.
Now you can do it with P&P (pencil and paper) sessions really well, because an experienced DM/GM/referee/storyteller/etc. can improvise things on the spot when the PCs want to do something totally unexpected. CRPGs are less than ideal, at least in this aspect, because the choices of actions are always limited. However some development teams really tried and they came up with pretty decent games, games such as The Elder Scolls series.
Now the shortcoming of a story, if you can call it that, is it involves change. Things happen, the PCs grow up, cities are founded and destroyed, armies clash, etc. All these events leave a permanent mark in the "universe" where the story takes place. And once the story is finished, it is finished. A story involves one and only one PC party and all the events they help weave together. You can't do the same thing again, even if you were able to undo everything and start from scratch.
In other words stories are fine for RPG games that is played by a person on a PC, such as the traditional CRPG. This does not scale up to MMORPGs. You can't re-enact the same story again without isolating a party, so other players can't mess it up. Doing so, however, runs counter to one of the underlying ideads of MMORPG.
So no, the so called MMORPGs are just glorifed versions of nethack, moria, or angband. There are no stories. Only quests to complete, monsters to kill, and items to collect.
There's so much a MMORPG can offer, that wanting it limited by a set of tabletop rules is dumb. It's like wanting a word processor to be limited to the concept of a pencil.
Don't diss the pencil! You can do far more with it than with any word processor you can name.
Care to post your benchmark, testing environment and procedure so we can attempt to duplicate your results?
So my question to you all is, why would you own Google or Yahoo stock for more than five minutes, to ride up the next big push? It seems like there's virtually no long term value in any website's technology. Surely someone else will take the idea and improve on it at some point -- it's already happened several times over in the last 10 years.
The point is not in the technology. New tech and standards are everywhere. Heck, just look at IPv6. It's been out like 10 years and hardly anybody uses it. The big thing is not something but the people using that something. IOW the user base. That's why Google is big, Yahoo! is big but not other search engines. Google knows this, Yahoo! knows this. That's why they are offering additional services to retain existing users and to attract new ones.
Big user base = big advertising income
During installation the root account is not activated. Instead, it gives your account sudo access. However anybody in the right mind will immediately activate the root account right after installation and remove your own account from the sudo list.
You are not going to have a gas at that temperature
After years and years of advancements in computing we still haven't been able to create a replacement for paper. Paper is still the best choice for taking notes, jotting down ideas, drawing things, etc., etc.
The reason is simple - you can put anything down (that you can with a writing implement) anywhere on a piece of paper. For example, you can start with drawing a sketch in the middle. Then putting down some annotating text and connecting them with arrows to the sketch. Perhaps you could make a detailed diagram of an especially complicated part at a corner. On the back of the sheet you can make some quick back of envelope calculations. After you are done, you can put the whole thing safely in your wallet.
Do we care about typefaces, point sizes, and that sort of thing? No. All those have nothing to do with the formation, recording, and refining of ideas. However a lot of time was spent on these features that should really belong on an end node down near the very bottom of the creative process.
In the US, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired. This is called a business decision. In the PRC, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired, the action is slammed as censorship.
It just seems that too many people get their panties in a twist when it comes to China. Somehow it gets painted as a nasty evil regime by mainstream US media. Then again, the US has always needed a bogeyman. Anyway, a journalist getting fired for disobeying probably won't even make the news if it happens in the US.
*shrug*
And what does this have anything to do with "Your Rights Online" anyway?
That word is Google.
Tell your upper management that, if Linux is good enough for Google, which is one website that needs the ultimate in network security, it is good enough for your company.
There is certainly no evidence that subminimal messages, which seem to based on something similar, work.
/.'ed I have no idea what is quoted there.
I like to see the research report first hand myself. Seeing the linked site seems to be
It wasn't that long ago - probably a year or two - that some researchers were claiming that c (speed of light) decreased since the Bang. I was quite skeptical at the time, because changing c is going to change the among of energy and matter in our universe.
Up till today I haven't seen another team confirming this.
I went to Concurrent's website and couldn't find any free Linux distro to download.
Aren't they violating the GPL?
This is not the first time somebody claims to have made some major scientific breakthrough, leading to almost limitless energy. As usual, nothing ever came out of these claims.
I suggest everbody heads straight to James Randi's website http://www.randi.org/ to look at some of these claims. I am also not surprised that if some of these scientists looked at this particular claim were fooled by chalatans. It's not the first time this happened, either. You need a magician to see through these tricks.