Bits and bytes are base 2 units and it common knowledge that each prefix is base 1024 instead of base 1000. The storage units bit and byte were invented by engineers/programmers that needed to work with base 2. Quite frankly bits and byte shouldn't be allowed units in the SI system. Then need need new storage units if they absolutely need base 1000 prefixes.
I really don't see why they couldn't submit it to a judge for rubber stamping. That is all the due process the constitution requires really. Basically convict the person of treason in absentia. And it really would be little more than rubber stamping but perfectly legal.
I do on the other hand have a little trouble with using a guided missile to target a low level PR defector that happens to be American. I in fact have trouble with targeting anyone that to a high degree of certainty has a direct hand in hostile actions. It's one thing to advocate and another to pull the trigger. But if I were in change and had some convincing intelligence someone was a direct participant I would have no problem signing a warrant for their death.
I also think that many such warrants should be public to give the person a chance to defend themselves and or turn themselves over.
I have no problem with assignation but there does need to be due process.
I'll say it again. They are in a completely new ball game.
Don't be surprised if they don't abandon the windows code altogether and adopt Linux or BSD code. I can even see they selling the windows base or spinning it off with it's own company and keeping a big portion of the stock.
All they need is make an API for a GUI for devices and hardware that can run on a kernel/platform. Then they focus on developing a device ecosystem and taking their 1/3 commission from developers selling in their app store. Basically adopt the Apple model and compete with them. You go all Apple, or Google, or Microsoft; kind of like investing in cordless power tools.
Imagine if Microsoft redirected legion of internal programmers to generating apps!
Alternative:
Microsoft is just abandoning Windows and starting over with a new OS or three from scratch. They then no longer need to worry about compatibility which is what bloats Windows. A Windows reboot if you will and maybe with a new name. 30 years of compatabilty is irelevent now with emulation now possible. Just reboot the code base every ten years.
If JJ Abrams were a chef then I say I hate his cooking. Not that he couldn't cook but his taste and mine are quite different.
He all but ruined Star Trek for me. The story was complete crap. Red matter? He skipped the story and went directly to action.
The actors, sets, and special effects were wonderful but the story was worse than reading the Cliff Notes of a great novel. And he took so many short cuts with the story that much of it just didn't make sense. And this is coming from a sci-fi fan that easily accepts unbelievable things. He decided on visual scenes he wanted to shoot and show and then the wrote a story full of holes around that.
Now he will ruin Star Wars just like he did Star Trek. The money people obviously don't care what they produce they only care about money. Money people love JJ because he produces spectacular train wrecks that people will pay to see.
My personal opinion of the person is that is he cracked in the head; homosexual or not. And while I do feel that he failed in his duty and honor I don't think he was in a fit state of mind. Those that put such a nut in such a position of responsibility should be held accountable for dereliction of duty. When I first herd his story I felt he was a dishonorable solider but a contentious american but now I realize believe he was a cracked nut to begin with and the military just added heat and made pop-corn.
But lets just assume he qualifies as being criminally rational at the time he did the things he did. When I think of spying or being a traitor I think of it being for the purpose of specifically benefiting another group or groups. One such group could of course be himself if he could expect some significant benefit such as money. But I don't see any of that here. He didn't pass along information in private that could benefit a foreign power. Some may even say that what he made public helped Islamist's in the middle east in their revolutions; those most opposed to his own political leanings.
I think some distinction much be made between a cracked contentious whistle blower that tarnishes his honor by not keeping his mouth shut and a true traitor that in his position could have done far more damage.
For $120 a pop you can get a cheap tablet today and they are only going to get cheaper. I predict $25 and $50 cheap versions to be as cheap as they will get. On this hardware you will be able to run android, windows 8, or anything else designed for a touch interface.
Software the equivalent of mathlab or autocad.
For tests you can give out tablets that will have permitted apps already installed and the device hardened to being modified. Same approved apps students use on their own personal devices. Simple to reset to a base configuration. For this purpose I expect apple to give away much hardware in order to compete (for heart and minds) with cheaper android commodity hardware.
Lastly schools need to update practices. The paper book library is obsolete. It really really is. It and maybe a few school rooms can be converted into study halls/test taking rooms. A little bit of money to remodel them and you can install a the equivalent of a faraday cage and prevent radio signals entering or leaving the room. Each room would have it's own wifi router and you can only connect to it. Simple desks could have optional integrated wireless chargers under the desk surface and or USB and network ports. Put that woodshop to use!
Basically 50-100 devices. Start with something like 25. If all the schools in the each or a bunch of states get together they could spec, prototype and bulk order directly from china. Don't see why you would need consumer devices except for apple which again they should more or less give you since it promotes the students using apple for their personal devices. You would also want to spec your own devices to make them a little more rugged. If students really want to they can purchase one of the school tablets at it's student store.
I don't use windows. What self respecting geek does? Windows is a joke and only good for games.
I use to buy $500 a year in games I hardly ever played (more of a collector). I have a box full of smashed down game boxes from back in the day just to illustrate my point. But I more or less quit cold turkey like 7 years ago. I just got tired of the 800 pound gorilla and it threatening DRM and security wise how buggy the platform was. Sure I use to warez games but I was still buying 10+ games a year for $50 a pop not counting other software. The major attack vector was and still is the web browser(not warez) so I jumped ship.
Then I bit the bullet and moved into the Unix world. I had a vary hard time with the GPL philosophically. There are programs that should be GPL but I'm mostly against it. Then I graduated to Freebsd/Openbsd. And my life was changed. I would switch to windows just to play games but I grew tired of 5 minute changeover for a quick game and eventually stopped cold turkey without realizing it.
Back to the point. I no longer need windows! Not for apps. Not for games. And ironically I'm totally for a locked down windows. The only time I use windows is helping other people with their computers. These are people that are looking for the Apple experience on cheaper commodity PC hardware. I'm all for Microsoft giving people what they really want: an appliance. I want a computer so I don't use windows or spend any money on it. But I'm at the upper end of the 2% of computer users that are enthusiasts; we are the people that push the purchasing decisions. I'm content with letting Windows be a dumb locked dump platform and purchasing it just for that purpose. I have my workstation!
It's obvious where your transit router is. They can monitor IP addresses, connection times and bandwidth to determine the load balancer. From the load balancer they can find the virtual machines which you use as muscle for the search engine and backend processing.
Any VM image can be accessed live. They can inject all the Trojans they want and track everything. But most importantly they can monitor where the admin commands come from. Have to assume they/you use tor or a botnet proxy. But everyone slips when it comes to security. Just takes one ping from a non anonymized computer to catch the scent. Then they can piece together all the admins one by one within three months.
Now of course there is more to your security than this. But let's not call your implementation here security.
What I would call it is robust and practical.
What I think would be more impressive is if you implemented your own voluntary cloud with all your willing users out there.
The lists may be 99% true but I know if I were in that business and I went down I would want to take others down. Specifically those in power be they in government, police or influential businessmen. 80% of those people probably are already customers so that would only be a few names would need to lie about.
It sends a message to those that publicly persecute prostitution that their names will be dragged through the mud as well.
Hyperlinks break. Better to just create a supplementary "book" with recent material and trends and listings for further reading. That way readers aren't frustrated clicking on broken links in the main textbook after the book is a couple years old.
I completely agree. Fresh water is the limiting factor. So much fresh water can produce only so food. While farms may be more efficient that means they are getting smaller because the amount of water is not changing that much.
A sealed hydroponic farm would only lose as much water as would be present in the food that actually left the facility.
I expect that now that Amazon is charging sales tax in California for them to start stocking massive warehouses just outside major cites and to start running their own fleet of delivery trucks.
They could have showrooms throughout the cities and less than 24 hour delivery service. Want to try a product? Then just arrange for it to be shipped to a nearby showroom. Free returns anyone? What about a try before you buy Netflix type product a week? Try a new laptop every week.
We have the right to record things in public. That means we can freely follow and track other people. Pretty soon everyone with be walking around with a camera on their person. The camera will tie into a computer and will be able to take clues from the environment as well as to record everything that happens within a two day period. Where did I leave my keys? Just rewind...
So are we going to take away the right to record in public? What happens when devices will be able to record directly from our brain activity? Is everyone going to have the equivalent of copyright to their own images? Is everyone going to be forced to forget everyone else and submit to memory wipe everyday as a result of a DMCA like forget notification?
When it comes to location and tracking on that point we have to surrender. There is no way to put that genie back in the bottle. And to me when anyone in the pubic can do it I see no reason the government couldn't do it as well. That cat is simply out of the bag.
I don't really see a distinction. Computer chips keep adding cores. It's all networked together at varying speeds be it bus or Ethernet signaling. It's all cloud one way or another.
I pay you enough money you will be motivated to get good at it. The question is how naturally will it come to you. The followup is how good you will get.
Those that it comes to naturally will need less money and will be better at it for that money. So your priced out of the market unless you have a natural interest and aptitude for it.
The vast majority of programmers start out as science types that have to learn programming out of necessity since can't afford to hire anyone else and they need their work done right. They are already procedure and process minded.
Sending people to mars is one thing. You schedule it to take the shortest route. But sending equipment and supplies is different. They should be sending supplies for 10 years prior to the mission.
The hard part is getting the stuff into orbit. Then you blast it on any convenient trajectory available. You don't have to go very fast at all. In fact you want it to have plenty of fuel when it gets there so that it can park itself in orbit and then be brought down anywhere on the planet using probably the bumper ball landing system. Any fuel left if the craft can be salvaged later.
The food will super freeze so it might be necessary to make a reverse fridge to insulate the food and keep heat inside the storage compartment. You can definitely send all the ice cream you want. And you probably don't need to sterilize it at all if the trip takes two years since the food will be exposed to cosmic rays all that time. The food you send should be as dehydrated as possible, sending frozen water separately. Lots of rice, beans, pasta, quinoa and spices. Dehydrated tomato paste. Lots of aging cheeses. Concentrated milk and cream.
For all we know about sub atomic particles and forces this was something not in the least predicted.
What if another reaction within the sun could cause massive decay all over the earth? Periods of mass extinction or mass mutation.
On the practical side it hints that decay rate can be controlled. Could be really important for subatomic particle researchers trying to produce and observe particles with ridiculously short life spans.
If the effect could be produced on demand within a localized area for long periods of time then it could possibly be used to semi neutralize rector waste or to make normally unusable radioactive elements practical fuels.
The readercon reversal thing I think I way overblown. A lifetime ban? I think a two year ban will suffice with then a probation thereafter provided he confesses and acknowledges his actions and how inappropriate they were.
I personally wouldn't be caught dead using it. It's basically a locked down windows "app store" version.
Microsoft and the rest of the DRM lawyer crowd is going to discover drastically that locked down products have a limited market. 80 percent of pirating is try before you buy or convincing someone else to use a product. The OS has to be reinstalled every 6 months so when people lose software and discover they need it that week they buy it. So while Microsoft lost on OS copies they more than make up for it with copes for office.
I can remember buying three copies of roxio dvd 5-6 even though I had a free copy at home simply because I didn't have a copy available where I was at the time.
If I were MS I simply would have spun it off as a separate product. Even giving it away for free because they will make money primarily from their app store. I might not have even used "Windows".
Apple needs to move on to it's next "it" device. That is what will keep customers loyal.
Apples success in the late decade with it's irevolution has been it's ability to bring market appeal to devices we all knew one way or another would take off. Other companies were always first if not trying for years to make something cool yet apple appears to make it work and be cool overnight.
Did it again with it's retro iMacs Transforming it into Trendy Fashionable Laptop MP3 players Smart phones with apps Tablets
While I don't trust estores with DRM because they can go belly up, the Apple store has been around long enough you can trust it to be around at least another decade. And whatever content you have you can be sure that it will work well across all your Apple devices. If they can hold onto %20 of each market with loyal fans and they keep innovating...
What could it do next time? Maybe a deluxe textbook ereader for schools? Multiple ereaders on your desk system? Self publish it's own line of textbooks with the best authors and take over high school and college textbooks? All with the catchy phrase "Going back to school.."
Of course Valve will create their own Linux distribution. It might even be just a live USB drive. Valve has enough clout to force hardware manufactures to provide drivers, open or closed. It can set it's own standard for DRM and everyone will follow.
You can see where Windows is going. It's going the app store model. Valve is it's own app store. Valve doesn't want to be subject to the Microsoft tax at the MS app store where all software will eventually have to come from. Valve is a publisher so it's not looking split it's margin with Microsoft.
Valve provides it's own evolving DRM and QA for game development companies. It's provides the support. It only makes sense, they could do even more for Linux than they have done with Windows. With TPM modules on every motherboard it means they could use it just like Microsoft. They will compile and sign their own packages for their own Ubuntu like distribution. If you want to use another Linux distribution you can dual boot it or run it in a VM. With the Valve Linux kernel being TPM'd you might even be able to boot a TMP'd Windows 8 in a virtual machine eventually.
With VT-d and AMD IOMMU which makes hardware PCI passthrough possible as Valve I might even create a dedicated micro distribution for a hypervisor or two. Something that could boot in a second that could then boot anything else in a VM. They could then make this hypervisor really efficient with PCI passthrough then their Linux distribution would always run in a VM. Modern machines could then run Windows 8 and Linux efficiently side by side. Want to play a game of quake real quick, switch to the valve VM. Want to run any other closed Linux app, run it from the valve VM. Want to run open source Linux apps, switch to the Ubuntu or BSD VM. The valve VM becomes it's own environment and platform separate from Microsoft. Closed source games and open Linux apps running side by side.
Sounds like a coup against Microsoft to me. It won't be perfect overnight and likely it will evolve for a couple generations. But it will give them clout over Microsoft should MS try to strongarm them. Lets not forget how much money is involved. Computer games pull in more money than the movie industry.
If you have the skillset it is easy. It does take work though even if you do have that skillset. The number one motivation to do work is necessity, the second being interest.
I write software myself. But the web browser is too much like an operating system. I use it too much. It should do what it does and do it well. I felt like I was drowning in version numbers. What broke the camels back is when they defaulted to a chrome style UI. Too much change in the primary interface. I don't remember there being a choice on the installation screen or there being a couple year transition. It actually motivated me to use chrome since it seemed to change less. I already had it installed, I just felt more motivated to move on.
The problem with Mozilla is that they are focusing on one product "Firefox" for web browsing too much. I liked it when they started gutting Firefox and putting things into extensions and addons. But that was mostly behind the scenes. When it came to changing the UI they should have forked the product.
My opinion is the Mozilla foundation should be developing multiple backends and multiple frontends and half a dozen browsers. They should have competing visions. It's open source and there is no one right answer for everyone. Some people like lots of change and a faster pace and others just want it to work and to get work done. It shouldn't be one product. The reality is they can do both and people can install both. And let me be specific, I don't want "stable" releases, I want actual different products. I don't want versions, I want vision, direction, and philosophy. And then I want to choose what works for me.
Window 8 is about turning windows into an embedded platform like an iphone. Both securing the systems and letting them like a cut of all software through their software store. You'll be installing windows 8 with a smile on your grandmothers and parents computers. Of course you wouldn't be caught dead using it. All enthusiasts have all long jumped ship on windows except for gaming.
With windows 8 and Microsoft taking a cut I expect it to motivate a PC games dedicated Linux distribution and more development on hypervisors to run multiple Linux versions without a performance hit. Valve in particular will probably lead the effort.
Slashdot Mirror
Bits and bytes are base 2 units and it common knowledge that each prefix is base 1024 instead of base 1000. The storage units bit and byte were invented by engineers/programmers that needed to work with base 2. Quite frankly bits and byte shouldn't be allowed units in the SI system. Then need need new storage units if they absolutely need base 1000 prefixes.
I really don't see why they couldn't submit it to a judge for rubber stamping. That is all the due process the constitution requires really. Basically convict the person of treason in absentia. And it really would be little more than rubber stamping but perfectly legal.
I do on the other hand have a little trouble with using a guided missile to target a low level PR defector that happens to be American. I in fact have trouble with targeting anyone that to a high degree of certainty has a direct hand in hostile actions. It's one thing to advocate and another to pull the trigger. But if I were in change and had some convincing intelligence someone was a direct participant I would have no problem signing a warrant for their death.
I also think that many such warrants should be public to give the person a chance to defend themselves and or turn themselves over.
I have no problem with assignation but there does need to be due process.
I'll say it again. They are in a completely new ball game.
Don't be surprised if they don't abandon the windows code altogether and adopt Linux or BSD code. I can even see they selling the windows base or spinning it off with it's own company and keeping a big portion of the stock.
All they need is make an API for a GUI for devices and hardware that can run on a kernel/platform. Then they focus on developing a device ecosystem and taking their 1/3 commission from developers selling in their app store. Basically adopt the Apple model and compete with them. You go all Apple, or Google, or Microsoft; kind of like investing in cordless power tools.
Imagine if Microsoft redirected legion of internal programmers to generating apps!
Alternative:
Microsoft is just abandoning Windows and starting over with a new OS or three from scratch. They then no longer need to worry about compatibility which is what bloats Windows. A Windows reboot if you will and maybe with a new name. 30 years of compatabilty is irelevent now with emulation now possible. Just reboot the code base every ten years.
If JJ Abrams were a chef then I say I hate his cooking. Not that he couldn't cook but his taste and mine are quite different.
He all but ruined Star Trek for me. The story was complete crap. Red matter? He skipped the story and went directly to action.
The actors, sets, and special effects were wonderful but the story was worse than reading the Cliff Notes of a great novel. And he took so many short cuts with the story that much of it just didn't make sense. And this is coming from a sci-fi fan that easily accepts unbelievable things. He decided on visual scenes he wanted to shoot and show and then the wrote a story full of holes around that.
Now he will ruin Star Wars just like he did Star Trek. The money people obviously don't care what they produce they only care about money. Money people love JJ because he produces spectacular train wrecks that people will pay to see.
My personal opinion of the person is that is he cracked in the head; homosexual or not. And while I do feel that he failed in his duty and honor I don't think he was in a fit state of mind. Those that put such a nut in such a position of responsibility should be held accountable for dereliction of duty. When I first herd his story I felt he was a dishonorable solider but a contentious american but now I realize believe he was a cracked nut to begin with and the military just added heat and made pop-corn.
But lets just assume he qualifies as being criminally rational at the time he did the things he did. When I think of spying or being a traitor I think of it being for the purpose of specifically benefiting another group or groups. One such group could of course be himself if he could expect some significant benefit such as money. But I don't see any of that here. He didn't pass along information in private that could benefit a foreign power. Some may even say that what he made public helped Islamist's in the middle east in their revolutions; those most opposed to his own political leanings.
I think some distinction much be made between a cracked contentious whistle blower that tarnishes his honor by not keeping his mouth shut and a true traitor that in his position could have done far more damage.
For $120 a pop you can get a cheap tablet today and they are only going to get cheaper. I predict $25 and $50 cheap versions to be as cheap as they will get. On this hardware you will be able to run android, windows 8, or anything else designed for a touch interface.
Software the equivalent of mathlab or autocad.
For tests you can give out tablets that will have permitted apps already installed and the device hardened to being modified. Same approved apps students use on their own personal devices. Simple to reset to a base configuration. For this purpose I expect apple to give away much hardware in order to compete (for heart and minds) with cheaper android commodity hardware.
Lastly schools need to update practices. The paper book library is obsolete. It really really is. It and maybe a few school rooms can be converted into study halls/test taking rooms. A little bit of money to remodel them and you can install a the equivalent of a faraday cage and prevent radio signals entering or leaving the room. Each room would have it's own wifi router and you can only connect to it. Simple desks could have optional integrated wireless chargers under the desk surface and or USB and network ports. Put that woodshop to use!
Basically 50-100 devices. Start with something like 25. If all the schools in the each or a bunch of states get together they could spec, prototype and bulk order directly from china. Don't see why you would need consumer devices except for apple which again they should more or less give you since it promotes the students using apple for their personal devices. You would also want to spec your own devices to make them a little more rugged. If students really want to they can purchase one of the school tablets at it's student store.
I don't use windows. What self respecting geek does? Windows is a joke and only good for games.
I use to buy $500 a year in games I hardly ever played (more of a collector). I have a box full of smashed down game boxes from back in the day just to illustrate my point. But I more or less quit cold turkey like 7 years ago. I just got tired of the 800 pound gorilla and it threatening DRM and security wise how buggy the platform was. Sure I use to warez games but I was still buying 10+ games a year for $50 a pop not counting other software. The major attack vector was and still is the web browser(not warez) so I jumped ship.
Then I bit the bullet and moved into the Unix world. I had a vary hard time with the GPL philosophically. There are programs that should be GPL but I'm mostly against it. Then I graduated to Freebsd/Openbsd. And my life was changed. I would switch to windows just to play games but I grew tired of 5 minute changeover for a quick game and eventually stopped cold turkey without realizing it.
Back to the point. I no longer need windows! Not for apps. Not for games. And ironically I'm totally for a locked down windows. The only time I use windows is helping other people with their computers. These are people that are looking for the Apple experience on cheaper commodity PC hardware. I'm all for Microsoft giving people what they really want: an appliance. I want a computer so I don't use windows or spend any money on it. But I'm at the upper end of the 2% of computer users that are enthusiasts; we are the people that push the purchasing decisions. I'm content with letting Windows be a dumb locked dump platform and purchasing it just for that purpose. I have my workstation!
It's obvious where your transit router is. They can monitor IP addresses, connection times and bandwidth to determine the load balancer. From the load balancer they can find the virtual machines which you use as muscle for the search engine and backend processing.
Any VM image can be accessed live. They can inject all the Trojans they want and track everything. But most importantly they can monitor where the admin commands come from. Have to assume they/you use tor or a botnet proxy. But everyone slips when it comes to security. Just takes one ping from a non anonymized computer to catch the scent. Then they can piece together all the admins one by one within three months.
Now of course there is more to your security than this. But let's not call your implementation here security.
What I would call it is robust and practical.
What I think would be more impressive is if you implemented your own voluntary cloud with all your willing users out there.
The lists may be 99% true but I know if I were in that business and I went down I would want to take others down. Specifically those in power be they in government, police or influential businessmen. 80% of those people probably are already customers so that would only be a few names would need to lie about.
It sends a message to those that publicly persecute prostitution that their names will be dragged through the mud as well.
Hyperlinks break. Better to just create a supplementary "book" with recent material and trends and listings for further reading. That way readers aren't frustrated clicking on broken links in the main textbook after the book is a couple years old.
I completely agree. Fresh water is the limiting factor. So much fresh water can produce only so food. While farms may be more efficient that means they are getting smaller because the amount of water is not changing that much.
A sealed hydroponic farm would only lose as much water as would be present in the food that actually left the facility.
(I absolutely hate the short title requirements)
I expect that now that Amazon is charging sales tax in California for them to start stocking massive warehouses just outside major cites and to start running their own fleet of delivery trucks.
They could have showrooms throughout the cities and less than 24 hour delivery service. Want to try a product? Then just arrange for it to be shipped to a nearby showroom. Free returns anyone? What about a try before you buy Netflix type product a week? Try a new laptop every week.
We have the right to record things in public. That means we can freely follow and track other people. Pretty soon everyone with be walking around with a camera on their person. The camera will tie into a computer and will be able to take clues from the environment as well as to record everything that happens within a two day period. Where did I leave my keys? Just rewind...
So are we going to take away the right to record in public? What happens when devices will be able to record directly from our brain activity? Is everyone going to have the equivalent of copyright to their own images? Is everyone going to be forced to forget everyone else and submit to memory wipe everyday as a result of a DMCA like forget notification?
When it comes to location and tracking on that point we have to surrender. There is no way to put that genie back in the bottle. And to me when anyone in the pubic can do it I see no reason the government couldn't do it as well. That cat is simply out of the bag.
I don't really see a distinction. Computer chips keep adding cores. It's all networked together at varying speeds be it bus or Ethernet signaling. It's all cloud one way or another.
I pay you enough money you will be motivated to get good at it. The question is how naturally will it come to you. The followup is how good you will get.
Those that it comes to naturally will need less money and will be better at it for that money. So your priced out of the market unless you have a natural interest and aptitude for it.
The vast majority of programmers start out as science types that have to learn programming out of necessity since can't afford to hire anyone else and they need their work done right. They are already procedure and process minded.
Sending people to mars is one thing. You schedule it to take the shortest route. But sending equipment and supplies is different. They should be sending supplies for 10 years prior to the mission.
The hard part is getting the stuff into orbit. Then you blast it on any convenient trajectory available. You don't have to go very fast at all. In fact you want it to have plenty of fuel when it gets there so that it can park itself in orbit and then be brought down anywhere on the planet using probably the bumper ball landing system. Any fuel left if the craft can be salvaged later.
The food will super freeze so it might be necessary to make a reverse fridge to insulate the food and keep heat inside the storage compartment. You can definitely send all the ice cream you want. And you probably don't need to sterilize it at all if the trip takes two years since the food will be exposed to cosmic rays all that time. The food you send should be as dehydrated as possible, sending frozen water separately. Lots of rice, beans, pasta, quinoa and spices. Dehydrated tomato paste. Lots of aging cheeses. Concentrated milk and cream.
For all we know about sub atomic particles and forces this was something not in the least predicted.
What if another reaction within the sun could cause massive decay all over the earth? Periods of mass extinction or mass mutation.
On the practical side it hints that decay rate can be controlled. Could be really important for subatomic particle researchers trying to produce and observe particles with ridiculously short life spans.
If the effect could be produced on demand within a localized area for long periods of time then it could possibly be used to semi neutralize rector waste or to make normally unusable radioactive elements practical fuels.
The readercon reversal thing I think I way overblown. A lifetime ban? I think a two year ban will suffice with then a probation thereafter provided he confesses and acknowledges his actions and how inappropriate they were.
Chances are he wouldn't agree to the last.
I personally wouldn't be caught dead using it. It's basically a locked down windows "app store" version.
Microsoft and the rest of the DRM lawyer crowd is going to discover drastically that locked down products have a limited market. 80 percent of pirating is try before you buy or convincing someone else to use a product. The OS has to be reinstalled every 6 months so when people lose software and discover they need it that week they buy it. So while Microsoft lost on OS copies they more than make up for it with copes for office.
I can remember buying three copies of roxio dvd 5-6 even though I had a free copy at home simply because I didn't have a copy available where I was at the time.
If I were MS I simply would have spun it off as a separate product. Even giving it away for free because they will make money primarily from their app store. I might not have even used "Windows".
Apple needs to move on to it's next "it" device. That is what will keep customers loyal.
Apples success in the late decade with it's irevolution has been it's ability to bring market appeal to devices we all knew one way or another would take off. Other companies were always first if not trying for years to make something cool yet apple appears to make it work and be cool overnight.
Did it again with it's retro iMacs
Transforming it into Trendy Fashionable Laptop
MP3 players
Smart phones with apps
Tablets
While I don't trust estores with DRM because they can go belly up, the Apple store has been around long enough you can trust it to be around at least another decade. And whatever content you have you can be sure that it will work well across all your Apple devices. If they can hold onto %20 of each market with loyal fans and they keep innovating...
What could it do next time? Maybe a deluxe textbook ereader for schools? Multiple ereaders on your desk system? Self publish it's own line of textbooks with the best authors and take over high school and college textbooks? All with the catchy phrase "Going back to school.."
Or torpedo if in the water.
Of course Valve will create their own Linux distribution. It might even be just a live USB drive. Valve has enough clout to force hardware manufactures to provide drivers, open or closed. It can set it's own standard for DRM and everyone will follow.
You can see where Windows is going. It's going the app store model. Valve is it's own app store. Valve doesn't want to be subject to the Microsoft tax at the MS app store where all software will eventually have to come from. Valve is a publisher so it's not looking split it's margin with Microsoft.
Valve provides it's own evolving DRM and QA for game development companies. It's provides the support. It only makes sense, they could do even more for Linux than they have done with Windows. With TPM modules on every motherboard it means they could use it just like Microsoft. They will compile and sign their own packages for their own Ubuntu like distribution. If you want to use another Linux distribution you can dual boot it or run it in a VM. With the Valve Linux kernel being TPM'd you might even be able to boot a TMP'd Windows 8 in a virtual machine eventually.
With VT-d and AMD IOMMU which makes hardware PCI passthrough possible as Valve I might even create a dedicated micro distribution for a hypervisor or two. Something that could boot in a second that could then boot anything else in a VM. They could then make this hypervisor really efficient with PCI passthrough then their Linux distribution would always run in a VM. Modern machines could then run Windows 8 and Linux efficiently side by side. Want to play a game of quake real quick, switch to the valve VM. Want to run any other closed Linux app, run it from the valve VM. Want to run open source Linux apps, switch to the Ubuntu or BSD VM. The valve VM becomes it's own environment and platform separate from Microsoft. Closed source games and open Linux apps running side by side.
Sounds like a coup against Microsoft to me. It won't be perfect overnight and likely it will evolve for a couple generations. But it will give them clout over Microsoft should MS try to strongarm them. Lets not forget how much money is involved. Computer games pull in more money than the movie industry.
If you have the skillset it is easy. It does take work though even if you do have that skillset. The number one motivation to do work is necessity, the second being interest.
I write software myself. But the web browser is too much like an operating system. I use it too much. It should do what it does and do it well. I felt like I was drowning in version numbers. What broke the camels back is when they defaulted to a chrome style UI. Too much change in the primary interface. I don't remember there being a choice on the installation screen or there being a couple year transition. It actually motivated me to use chrome since it seemed to change less. I already had it installed, I just felt more motivated to move on.
The problem with Mozilla is that they are focusing on one product "Firefox" for web browsing too much. I liked it when they started gutting Firefox and putting things into extensions and addons. But that was mostly behind the scenes. When it came to changing the UI they should have forked the product.
My opinion is the Mozilla foundation should be developing multiple backends and multiple frontends and half a dozen browsers. They should have competing visions. It's open source and there is no one right answer for everyone. Some people like lots of change and a faster pace and others just want it to work and to get work done. It shouldn't be one product. The reality is they can do both and people can install both. And let me be specific, I don't want "stable" releases, I want actual different products. I don't want versions, I want vision, direction, and philosophy. And then I want to choose what works for me.
Window 8 is about turning windows into an embedded platform like an iphone. Both securing the systems and letting them like a cut of all software through their software store. You'll be installing windows 8 with a smile on your grandmothers and parents computers. Of course you wouldn't be caught dead using it. All enthusiasts have all long jumped ship on windows except for gaming.
With windows 8 and Microsoft taking a cut I expect it to motivate a PC games dedicated Linux distribution and more development on hypervisors to run multiple Linux versions without a performance hit. Valve in particular will probably lead the effort.