Sounds like a massive commercialization of the (apparently now-defunct) Thirdvoice software that raised such a ruckus a couple years ago. Perhaps Thirdvoice has some patents on the idea which Microsoft is infringing.
Uh oh! If I'm anti-patent and anti-Microsoft, which of my principles do I set aside today?
Seems to me that unless your site had a specific message to the contrary, the rights to the posts belong to the authors. As for the rights to the material you wrote, unless you signed something (or clicked through an agreement) stating that all material you placed on the system became the property of the University, such a restriction cannot be retroactively imposed. Note that you could have previously agreed to this in any of a number of documents, starting as early as your application to enter the University.
Of course, if you signed an agreement like that and failed to inform posters of the loss of their rights, there may be cause for a class action suit:-)
I disagree. I don't see Unicode (or its alternatives) as a way to resolve language barriers. Rather, it defines a framework within which all programmers can use the same libraries and programming languages to develop applications using their own language.
To use a gardening analogy: it doesn't make us all plant the same things or help us understand the meaning of what someone else has planted; it just lets us all use the same tools for working in our gardens.
Ballmer:... Other than Silicon Valley, I think it's hard to point to any one place and say, "That's where it's all happening."
I would suppose that the reason you can't point to a place other than Silicon Valley where it's all happening is because Silicon Valley is where it's all happening!
The biggest potential problem I see with this design is that it seems to take away most of the good connector real estate. Since the back end gets folded up under the display, its not reasonable to use the back for plugging anything into the machine. Similarly, since the half the machine is off the desk in each design, that part of the side cannot be used either. This just leaves only half of each side and the front (which is not normally used for cables because it can interfere with typing) for not only every single connector (power, USB, firewire, parallel, serial, ethernet, modem, etc.), but also the CD-ROM and floppy drives (if it has any).
You can see evidence of the use of "bad" connector real estate in the Design 1 and Design 2 images: headphone/microphone plugs are in the front, possibly compromising the laptop format ergonomics.
They could always leave off the CD-ROM/floppy or some of those unreasonably wide connections, but then, it wouldn't be much of a desktop if I couldn't hook up my printer, now would it?
I haven't read the book, of course, but interface designers almost always have to take advantage of modality. Even in the "simple" case of driving an automobile, the accelerator has a "modal" effect on the behavior of the vehicle, depending on which gear is selected. In computer interface design, the most fundamentally modal input device is the keyboard. In a windowing system, it has dramatically different effects depending on which window is selected.
The important item to keep in mind is the number of modalities and the complexity of their interactions. Keeping modalities obvious and intuitive will keep most users out of trouble. (e.g. a tiny little "Ovwrt" isn't always an obvious indicator that you've left Insert mode). Then all you have to do is figure out what's "intuitive" for your users:-)
In August 1999, Scientific American covered a similar technology being developed at MIT, but in this case, the reconfigurable computation was targeted at a handheld device dubbed the "Handy 21" which could act as a cell phone or PDA or FM radio by changing its circuitry.
The www.lockheedmartinsucks.com site doesn't have much to say about how Lockheed Martin sucks... the only relevant comment I could find in the generic www.sucks.com site was this:
I love this company. The products they creat keep the U.S. of A. Ahead of those mongrel nations in firepwoer. They conceal their topsecret flight tests under the guise of UFO's, that is CLASSIC! And people all over the world buy into it. I for one am glad that they are on our side.
Not that I necessarily agree or disagree... just seems like a lot of trouble to go to over a single comment that was actually positive one.
I hate to trot out this cliche again, but it's possible that in 20 years a desktop MEMS construction set could perform low-production-rate personal manufacturing of custom chips from standard blanks.
The front page link doesn't work for me unless I paste it into a browser window URL field manually. They must have some weird REFERER checking. Anyway, if it's any easier to copy it from here, this is the destination URL:
Since the content on the tape is encrypted, it may not be possible to compress it effectively. Encrypted data is very resistant to compression because the purpose of encryption is to obscure patterns in the plaintext data. That's why security guides say to compress your data before encrypting.
A reimbursement system such as the one proposed has the potential to encourage stealing in the opposite direction from that which occurs today. Authors of copyrighted content could download their own content in order to increase its "agregate" value and increase their own share of the royalties pie. The cost of a high-bandwidth connection could likely be offset by the revenues generated from continuously downloading your personal content.
Worse, if the proposal is extended to permit content to be priced based on its value (Why should a copy of The Net cost the same as a Slashdot article? There should be some way for Slashdot troll authors to be more reasonably compensated.), then anyone could enter the fray and "offer" up expensive trivial content that only they themselves would "buy".
There still may be danger, even if you're running your netscape application as a dummy user. Since you have to grant that user access to your X display, there may be security faults/features in the X server itself to which you're now vulnerable.
X authentication exists for a reason... if you override it, be sure you understand the risks:-)
They forgot a boilerplate item I'm accustomed to seeing:
You will not use the Service in
hazardous environments requiring fail-safe controls, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or
communications systems, air traffic control, life support or weapons systems ("High Risk Activities").
You may laugh, but that's taken directly from the Terms of Service for AT&T Canada (section 5.e).
This is not much surprise to me, coming from the same company which forced Sun to rename its NFS companion technology from "Yellow Pages" to "NIS" because they own the international trademark for Yellow Pages.
I have converted my library of (legally purchased) CD music to MP3 format and share the data with computers in my house via a private network. I cannot legally compose a similar private library of DMCA-protected materials unless I find a way to stream the encrypted materials and purchase a licensed player for each network node.
One feature I appreciated in the Netscape Calendar application but which appears to be lacking in Outlook is retention of "declined" meetings. In Outlook, when I decline a meeting, it's gone for good (unless I dig through the trash). When I decline a meeting in nscal, I can still find it in my "Declined Meetings" folder (and change my mind). Nscal also permitted me to see declined meetings in the regular calendar view, so I could also see the things I'm not doing that day.
After having read the English translation of the Judge's decision, it's not clear to me why Yahoo! was selected as the perpetrator of these crimes, when there are so many entities involved:
The French "surfer"
The French telco
The French ISP
The backbone provider (MCI/Sprint/etc.)
Yahoo!
The seller who posted the material
Are they just the biggest, shiniest non-French target?
If a directory cannot point you to material which advocates currently illegal activities, then it cannot help you engage in reasonable discussions about how laws should be changed.
Ah well... another forum bites the dust. Guess we'll have to take Thomas Jefferson's advice and build another directory, just a little farther out west:-)
The article bemoans the fact that you mostly likely cannot aim accurately if there are explosions nearby because the mouse will shake too violently under some settings, I would submit that this actually improves the immersion experience.
Of course, your non-immersed opponents may have an unfair advantage, but you can be comforted by the knowledge that you'll be building up experience to apply when the time comes for each of us to pick up a blaster and destroy the alien invaders in the real world, where explosions actually affect your aim:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article has an unfortunate title:
One might interpret this as the 10 risks of PKI that Carl and Bruce aren't telling usSounds like a massive commercialization of the (apparently now-defunct) Thirdvoice software that raised such a ruckus a couple years ago. Perhaps Thirdvoice has some patents on the idea which Microsoft is infringing.
Uh oh! If I'm anti-patent and anti-Microsoft, which of my principles do I set aside today?
Seems to me that unless your site had a specific message to the contrary, the rights to the posts belong to the authors. As for the rights to the material you wrote, unless you signed something (or clicked through an agreement) stating that all material you placed on the system became the property of the University, such a restriction cannot be retroactively imposed. Note that you could have previously agreed to this in any of a number of documents, starting as early as your application to enter the University.
Of course, if you signed an agreement like that and failed to inform posters of the loss of their rights, there may be cause for a class action suit :-)
I disagree. I don't see Unicode (or its alternatives) as a way to resolve language barriers. Rather, it defines a framework within which all programmers can use the same libraries and programming languages to develop applications using their own language.
To use a gardening analogy: it doesn't make us all plant the same things or help us understand the meaning of what someone else has planted; it just lets us all use the same tools for working in our gardens.
I would suppose that the reason you can't point to a place other than Silicon Valley where it's all happening is because Silicon Valley is where it's all happening!
From the review:
Apparently he types faster than he can decide which adjective to use.The biggest potential problem I see with this design is that it seems to take away most of the good connector real estate. Since the back end gets folded up under the display, its not reasonable to use the back for plugging anything into the machine. Similarly, since the half the machine is off the desk in each design, that part of the side cannot be used either. This just leaves only half of each side and the front (which is not normally used for cables because it can interfere with typing) for not only every single connector (power, USB, firewire, parallel, serial, ethernet, modem, etc.), but also the CD-ROM and floppy drives (if it has any).
You can see evidence of the use of "bad" connector real estate in the Design 1 and Design 2 images: headphone/microphone plugs are in the front, possibly compromising the laptop format ergonomics.
They could always leave off the CD-ROM/floppy or some of those unreasonably wide connections, but then, it wouldn't be much of a desktop if I couldn't hook up my printer, now would it?
I haven't read the book, of course, but interface designers almost always have to take advantage of modality. Even in the "simple" case of driving an automobile, the accelerator has a "modal" effect on the behavior of the vehicle, depending on which gear is selected. In computer interface design, the most fundamentally modal input device is the keyboard. In a windowing system, it has dramatically different effects depending on which window is selected.
The important item to keep in mind is the number of modalities and the complexity of their interactions. Keeping modalities obvious and intuitive will keep most users out of trouble. (e.g. a tiny little "Ovwrt" isn't always an obvious indicator that you've left Insert mode). Then all you have to do is figure out what's "intuitive" for your users :-)
In August 1999, Scientific American covered a similar technology being developed at MIT, but in this case, the reconfigurable computation was targeted at a handheld device dubbed the "Handy 21" which could act as a cell phone or PDA or FM radio by changing its circuitry.
The www.lockheedmartinsucks.com site doesn't have much to say about how Lockheed Martin sucks... the only relevant comment I could find in the generic www.sucks.com site was this:
Not that I necessarily agree or disagree... just seems like a lot of trouble to go to over a single comment that was actually positive one.
I hate to trot out this cliche again, but it's possible that in 20 years a desktop MEMS construction set could perform low-production-rate personal manufacturing of custom chips from standard blanks.
The front page link doesn't work for me unless I paste it into a browser window URL field manually. They must have some weird REFERER checking. Anyway, if it's any easier to copy it from here, this is the destination URL:
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=A rticle&cid=FT3QCDYDDIC
A quick look at the first claim of the patent reveals:
Sounds like motorized pogo sticks to me. I just can't believe anyone could make $60 billion on motorized pogo sticks.
Since the content on the tape is encrypted, it may not be possible to compress it effectively. Encrypted data is very resistant to compression because the purpose of encryption is to obscure patterns in the plaintext data. That's why security guides say to compress your data before encrypting.
A reimbursement system such as the one proposed has the potential to encourage stealing in the opposite direction from that which occurs today. Authors of copyrighted content could download their own content in order to increase its "agregate" value and increase their own share of the royalties pie. The cost of a high-bandwidth connection could likely be offset by the revenues generated from continuously downloading your personal content.
Worse, if the proposal is extended to permit content to be priced based on its value (Why should a copy of The Net cost the same as a Slashdot article? There should be some way for Slashdot troll authors to be more reasonably compensated.), then anyone could enter the fray and "offer" up expensive trivial content that only they themselves would "buy".
There still may be danger, even if you're running your netscape application as a dummy user. Since you have to grant that user access to your X display, there may be security faults/features in the X server itself to which you're now vulnerable.
X authentication exists for a reason... if you override it, be sure you understand the risks :-)
They forgot a boilerplate item I'm accustomed to seeing:
You may laugh, but that's taken directly from the Terms of Service for AT&T Canada (section 5.e).
This is not much surprise to me, coming from the same company which forced Sun to rename its NFS companion technology from "Yellow Pages" to "NIS" because they own the international trademark for Yellow Pages.
"We expect that figure to grow incredulously over the next few months," Nacomms general manager Siobhan Dooley told ZDNet.
I, for one, am certainly incredulous about the growth prospects.
I have converted my library of (legally purchased) CD music to MP3 format and share the data with computers in my house via a private network. I cannot legally compose a similar private library of DMCA-protected materials unless I find a way to stream the encrypted materials and purchase a licensed player for each network node.
Maybe it's so late no one will read this, but...
One feature I appreciated in the Netscape Calendar application but which appears to be lacking in Outlook is retention of "declined" meetings. In Outlook, when I decline a meeting, it's gone for good (unless I dig through the trash). When I decline a meeting in nscal, I can still find it in my "Declined Meetings" folder (and change my mind). Nscal also permitted me to see declined meetings in the regular calendar view, so I could also see the things I'm not doing that day.
"How's the Outlook, Bob?" "Murky..."
After having read the English translation of the Judge's decision, it's not clear to me why Yahoo! was selected as the perpetrator of these crimes, when there are so many entities involved:
Are they just the biggest, shiniest non-French target?
Unicode for mathematical operators? Does that mean we can at last bring back APL?
If a directory cannot point you to material which advocates currently illegal activities, then it cannot help you engage in reasonable discussions about how laws should be changed.
Ah well... another forum bites the dust. Guess we'll have to take Thomas Jefferson's advice and build another directory, just a little farther out west :-)
The article bemoans the fact that you mostly likely cannot aim accurately if there are explosions nearby because the mouse will shake too violently under some settings, I would submit that this actually improves the immersion experience.
Of course, your non-immersed opponents may have an unfair advantage, but you can be comforted by the knowledge that you'll be building up experience to apply when the time comes for each of us to pick up a blaster and destroy the alien invaders in the real world, where explosions actually affect your aim :-)