Considering Redmond's slim odds of conquering developing nations
Don't count on it. Monsanto... uh I mean Microsoft... can muster lots of support for such a campaign.
The United States forbids poor countries from making generic versions of antiretroviral drugs for AIDS treatment. Given the limited financial resources involved, this will certainly cost lives.
Monsanto Company is suing farmers for re-using seed where patented genes have been found, whether said farmers wanted them or not.
How will software be any different? Countries developed enough to need office suites will be signing trade agreements with the United States. Undoubtedly there will be intellectual property conditions.
My father's family, Republican since the Pleistocene era, had an anti-suffrage button which supposedly dates from the 19th amendment's state ratification period. It said (uhm, the first sentence I don't exactly remember) "... why should women have to suffer?".
It may have been distributed by the Daughters of the American Revolution -- there were DAR members in my family -- who at the time served as a civilian women's mouthpiece for the Department of War, as it was then called. (The military were highly opposed to women voting.)
It never occurred to me before reading the grandparent post that the button might have been intended to confuse people who didn't understand the word.
However, I feel like Safari is what's been keeping websites standards-compliant for the past year or so -- the KHTML engine is stricter than Gecko in that it doesn't support the badly formed pages IE likes.
When IE was considered adequate for Mac & PC, insisting on a standards-compliant website was a hard sell one's PHB. Not supporting the lowly Linux geek is one thing, but Mac users are perceived as important consumers.
And with a de facto IE web standard, M$ would continue to extend & proprietize (word?), and Moz/Thunder/Fire/Netscape/fox/bird would forever be playing ketchup.
Incidentally, last week I called support for my credit card's online payment site, which wasn't supporting Firebird. The tech I ended up talking to said Safari & Mozilla were giving them problems. The Safari factor was pretty reassuring to me as I felt they would fix the site for Mac users.
I just tried this in Mozilla and it seems to work okay. My last Moz update was v1.6a nightly 20031014, two months old now -- enjoying Firebird nightlies these days -- so YMMV.
I feel that in lieu a plug-in control -- as described in the Bugzilla report to which you link -- the ability to disable Flash belongs to either the Flash plug-in itself (not that Macromedia will add this feature), or a browser extension (as linked above), not in the browser itself.
Also, the controls spec-ed out in the Bugzilla report might be too hard for the average (i.e. dumb or lazy) user.
while these "predictions" are bunk, if I were to believe them and follow their advice, would probably be better off because of it.
I was really moved reading mine, which tho delphic are still pretty apropos. This is neat cos for the first time I actually get what it's like for people who sincerely read horoscopes.
I've known personally three people who offered to do my chart. I asked each to guess my sign. They offer 5 or 6 guesses and give up. Then I tell 'em and they're all "I was gonna say Sag".
For the record, Sagittarius (which I spelled "Saggitarius" in first draft) is the stupidest sign of the zodiac, but some of us are good at sports.
For consumer batteries in conventional form factors (AA, AAA, C, D & whatever a 9-volt is called), you basicly have Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd). Neither last as long as disposables, but NiMH last substantially longer, and are more environmentally friendly (i.e. they don't contain lead or mercury). Downside: NiMH costs more.
Lithium ion batteries... uhm, exist but I know nothing about them. They have advantages over NiMH but don't come in the common form factors I mentioned above, and are more expensive.
I find that encoding FLAC to highest compression is pretty slow, but a medium setting is comparable to Vorbis, speedwise -- I've not run a stopwatch on the two.
http://flac.sourceforge.net has a comparison page.
When your company is about to tank, fire off lawsuits in every direction, hurting uninvolved or innocent parties without hesitation -- what else can you say about suing someone who in good faith posts a complaint on a weblog, or someone who installs Linux on a personal computer?
And it's becoming a sufficiently workable practice (c.f. SCO) that it's easy to imagine stockholders demanding it. Short of tort reform, is there a way to discourage this destructive pattern?
Buying SCO's Unix IP and going after Linux with that would most likely result in more antitrust attention at Microsoft.
Microsoft is currently almost immune from antitrust law. They may just be deferring the abovementioned purchase until the 2004 election results come in.
This might be ridiculous conspiracy theory if we were talking about another company.
Vorbis not in all current Winamp versions
on
Ogg Now An RFC
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· Score: 1
Note that the Vorbis codec is included on the Full install (2.9, 3.0) of Winamp, but not the "Standard" or "Lite" installs. This inconsistency will probably cause the sort of frustration that drives users away from Vorbis.
Users who have Winamp because it came bundled with other software usually do not have the Full install. The Netscape 7 package comes with (I believe) Standard.
Winamp.com's own comparisons do not mention which package includes Vorbis.
Outdoor pay phones are all broken where I live, mostly vandalized. It's said that street urchins sabotage public pay phones to make calling police difficult.
I'd blame cell phones as the reason pay phones never get fixed, but actually the problem's been around since the mid-80s, before cellular became ubiquitous. <troll style="bait: shrill-right-wingers;">So I blame Reagan</troll>.
Windows Media player support
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 2, Informative
This plug-in enables Windows MediaPlayer to play Ogg Vorbis files. Unfortunately it doesn't support CD burning from Ogg, which (in XP, maybe other versions) is enabled for MP3.
It's an easy install which the average Windows user would perform if so directed.
It's a big plug-in cos it also enables support for Monkeys, ASI and MJPEG. Enjoy.
Note that the Vorbis coded is included on the Full install (2.9, 3.0) of Winamp, but not the "Standard" or "Lite" installs.
Users who have Winamp because it came bundled with other software usually do not have the Full install. The Netscape 7 package comes with (I believe) Standard.
Winamp.com's own comparisons do not mention which package includes Vorbis.
Wandering from the point cos I have no car, but I'd buy an Ogg-only portable, especially one firmware-upgradable when the MP3 license comes in. I'm one of those guys. I figure one can sell 10-20 such units to us Ogg snobs while raising $$ to pay Fraunhofer.
This window of opportunity closes when the first useful, cheap mass-market Ogg player -- comparable to Muvo, say -- hits the market.
I encode Ogg & FLAC exclusively, but don't spit on other people's MP3s (unless they're low-bitrate).
APE is a non-lossy format, like FLAC. Generally you're lucky to average better than 50% compression with any non-lossy format.
Ogg Vorbis at q=(-0.5) would record around the proposed 58~62kbps rate, not with audiophile quality. It would be adequate for the sort of listener that always recorded cassette tapes with Dolby NR turned off, but I'm betting that most consumers hold "digital" sound to a higher standard, and would lose interest in the product when it got out that the sound was audibly degraded.
I think the Pluto/Charon system is considered a binary because both objects move around a point that is contained by neither, whereas the center of the Earth/Moon system is inside the earth, making our Moon clearly a moon, albeit with planet-like properties.
Still haven't seen a post here siding with Gibor Basri's proposal. As strange as it feels to have 12 planets, I think gravity-induced roundness+solar orbit within the plane of the solar system seems like a logical standard for planet status. How much else does Mercury have in common with Jupiter that it doesn't have in common with Ceres?
The (current) arbitrary 2300 kilometer size limit seems a bit elitist.
What if we had to include Ceres but downgrade Pluto (because of its orbit)? Man is that weird.
this isn't free yet, AFAIK
on
An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I submitted (via email) a missing book and author, but really the site could use a form for this. Populating this database by reader submission seems pretty wrong overall -- it'll always be highly incomplete and fulla errors. I imagine it would be easy enough to get permission from publishers to parse in electronic copies of their catalogues.
So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by
hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by)
Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).
No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my/. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.
Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.
If you know exactly where any product is in your store, you can see what products sell better in what location -- in real time, across the country.
Bingo. I'm confident some data mining type is already feverishly developing (or implementing) this system. It would be a vast improvement over camera-based studies.
Eventually there will be daily on-site metrics for how fast the average customer shopped, and perhaps times spent contemplating each purchase. Product positioning and pricing can be adjusted per store for differing behaviors in the populations served by different branches.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't count on it. Monsanto ... uh I mean Microsoft ... can muster lots of support for such a campaign.
The United States forbids poor countries from making generic versions of antiretroviral drugs for AIDS treatment. Given the limited financial resources involved, this will certainly cost lives.
Monsanto Company is suing farmers for re-using seed where patented genes have been found, whether said farmers wanted them or not.
How will software be any different? Countries developed enough to need office suites will be signing trade agreements with the United States. Undoubtedly there will be intellectual property conditions.
Seems like an excellent use for Slashdot. There should be a "Hammer my server" Topic.
It may have been distributed by the Daughters of the American Revolution -- there were DAR members in my family -- who at the time served as a civilian women's mouthpiece for the Department of War, as it was then called. (The military were highly opposed to women voting.)
It never occurred to me before reading the grandparent post that the button might have been intended to confuse people who didn't understand the word.
However, I feel like Safari is what's been keeping websites standards-compliant for the past year or so -- the KHTML engine is stricter than Gecko in that it doesn't support the badly formed pages IE likes.
When IE was considered adequate for Mac & PC, insisting on a standards-compliant website was a hard sell one's PHB. Not supporting the lowly Linux geek is one thing, but Mac users are perceived as important consumers.
And with a de facto IE web standard, M$ would continue to extend & proprietize (word?), and Moz/Thunder/Fire/Netscape/fox/bird would forever be playing ketchup.
Incidentally, last week I called support for my credit card's online payment site, which wasn't supporting Firebird. The tech I ended up talking to said Safari & Mozilla were giving them problems. The Safari factor was pretty reassuring to me as I felt they would fix the site for Mac users.
This feature already exists as a Firebird plugin:
http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/#flashcl ick
I just tried this in Mozilla and it seems to work okay. My last Moz update was v1.6a nightly 20031014, two months old now -- enjoying Firebird nightlies these days -- so YMMV.
I feel that in lieu a plug-in control -- as described in the Bugzilla report to which you link -- the ability to disable Flash belongs to either the Flash plug-in itself (not that Macromedia will add this feature), or a browser extension (as linked above), not in the browser itself.
Also, the controls spec-ed out in the Bugzilla report might be too hard for the average (i.e. dumb or lazy) user.
shutdown -s -t 120 -c "user initiated" might impress the boss more.
-f (close applications without warning) should probably be avoided on a user control.
More here.
I was really moved reading mine, which tho delphic are still pretty apropos. This is neat cos for the first time I actually get what it's like for people who sincerely read horoscopes.
For the record, Sagittarius (which I spelled "Saggitarius" in first draft) is the stupidest sign of the zodiac, but some of us are good at sports.
RadioShack sells both kinds.
Lithium ion batteries ... uhm, exist but I know nothing about them. They have advantages over NiMH but don't come in the common form factors I mentioned above, and are more expensive.
You might mean the CueHack, a program for those free :CueCats we bummed off RadioShack. CueJack was previously reported on Slashdot a coupla years ago.
http://flac.sourceforge.net has a comparison page.
And it's becoming a sufficiently workable practice (c.f. SCO) that it's easy to imagine stockholders demanding it. Short of tort reform, is there a way to discourage this destructive pattern?
This might be ridiculous conspiracy theory if we were talking about another company.
Users who have Winamp because it came bundled with other software usually do not have the Full install. The Netscape 7 package comes with (I believe) Standard.
Winamp.com's own comparisons do not mention which package includes Vorbis.
I'd blame cell phones as the reason pay phones never get fixed, but actually the problem's been around since the mid-80s, before cellular became ubiquitous. <troll style="bait: shrill-right-wingers;">So I blame Reagan</troll>.
I agree with you.
It's an easy install which the average Windows user would perform if so directed.
It's a big plug-in cos it also enables support for Monkeys, ASI and MJPEG. Enjoy.
Users who have Winamp because it came bundled with other software usually do not have the Full install. The Netscape 7 package comes with (I believe) Standard.
Winamp.com's own comparisons do not mention which package includes Vorbis.
This window of opportunity closes when the first useful, cheap mass-market Ogg player -- comparable to Muvo, say -- hits the market.
Release Candidate 2 is being served from most of these servers.
APE is a non-lossy format, like FLAC. Generally you're lucky to average better than 50% compression with any non-lossy format.
Ogg Vorbis at q=( -0.5 ) would record around the proposed 58~62kbps rate, not with audiophile quality. It would be adequate for the sort of listener that always recorded cassette tapes with Dolby NR turned off, but I'm betting that most consumers hold "digital" sound to a higher standard, and would lose interest in the product when it got out that the sound was audibly degraded.
(Thanks for the Obligatory Ogg Post opportunity.)
I second Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft.
Still haven't seen a post here siding with Gibor Basri's proposal. As strange as it feels to have 12 planets, I think gravity-induced roundness + solar orbit within the plane of the solar system seems like a logical standard for planet status. How much else does Mercury have in common with Jupiter that it doesn't have in common with Ceres?
The (current) arbitrary 2300 kilometer size limit seems a bit elitist.
What if we had to include Ceres but downgrade Pluto (because of its orbit)? Man is that weird.
So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by) Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).
No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my /. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.
Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.
Eventually there will be daily on-site metrics for how fast the average customer shopped, and perhaps times spent contemplating each purchase. Product positioning and pricing can be adjusted per store for differing behaviors in the populations served by different branches.