I don't have any references to back me up, but the sketchy reports I have read say that the long delays are because of horrible performance when executing legacy x86 code. Like Pentium II at 10 times the cost type of performance.
Very nice post. I agree with most of it. I just wanted to paste the line: You will have systems whose defense systems are so well developed that the valid users who wish to shut them down will have difficulty doing so--because, to be blunt, that's what these "intelligent systems" will have been designed to do--prevent unauthorized disabling of the system. Does that scare anyone else? The bottom line purpose of life is to continue life. If a beaver will gnaw off its own leg to survive, imagine what a supercomputer would resort to if it believed its existence was threatened. I hate to reference a Hollywood movie, but SkyNet comes to mind. I would hope that any entity with the resources to build a real AI would also have the sense and forsight to put a big red hard wired power switch somewhere. -B
Microsoft is not being punished for being a big company and trying to make as much money as possible. Antitrust laws were created to prevent large companies from using the fact that they're large companies to crush smaller competiters and prevent consumers from have options. The government did absolutely nothing in the 20 years that Microsoft spent racking up 90%+ of the desktop OS market. People had choices and for one reason or another a vast majority chose Microsoft products. When Microsoft used the fact that 90%+ of the world used their desktop OS to prevent other companies from competing against them in the browser market, the DOJ steped in. From what I understand, both the DOJ and Judge Penfield are playing this by the book. They know that MS has an army of lawyers warming up for the appeals process and they are not about to be overturned.
I say that they should have a second show called "X files: Syndicate" starring Mimi Rodgers (Agent Fowley) and Krycek. They would take orders from Smoking Man and try to rebuild the syndicate that got burnt up. I just think there should be more shows focusing on bad guys.
Jenny Mcarthy and Pamela (then Anderson) Lee certainly parlayed Playboy spreads into a few bucks. My friend's girlfriend was a Girl Of The Big Ten. She just did it for some attention and self esteem.
The problem with Wizard of OZ marketing is that Toto could pull back the curtain. If MS makes all of these security changes and two weeks later the "Open this attatchment and Old Navy will send you 6 dollars.vbs" worm does 10 times as much damage as ILV, they're screwed. Every middle manager in the country will say, "That MS rep promised us this new Outlook was secure, but it obviously isn't." Next time MS promises something, like all NEW Kerberos extensions, maybe nobody will trust them. We can always hope.
I know I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but I want to post it anyway:
Even thought Slashdot/Andover is obviously on the side of right here, you may well lose a long and protracted legal battle. Andover IPO money is great, but Microsoft has misplaced more cash than that. Lawyers cost money and good lawyers cost a LOT of money.
My suggestion- kick them in the PR department. MS has been hit with a tsunami of bad press lately with DOJ rulings, security holes, and general bastardness. Reporters would love to follow those stories up with "Microsoft subverts standards and strongarms little guys". What Roblimo and the crew need to do is run to every media outlet that will listen to them. Also, strike while the iron is hot. The top of the list needs to be The Wall Street Journal. If Monday's front page includes a story about this situation, it would be very damaging. If one mutual fund manager reads about this and says to himself "These are the actions of a company grasping at straws to keep themselves on top of an industry" and sells a ton of MSFT, it's going to put a dent into the net worth of every honcho in Redmond. Bottom line: Roblimo needs to make this into a battle that Microsoft has no interest in continuing.
I think "First Mapping" stories should be moderated down to "-1 Troll". The precedent was set by "First Post" and I don't see much difference.
Serious note: It appears that Doubletwist actually did a cool, much needed thing. I don't know if the fault lies with their marketing department or dumb media people for making the story appear to be something it absolutely isn't.
I saw a thing on the History Channel about the development of the F117 stealth fighter. Almost all of the actual development took place at Lockheed's facility in Burbank, California. If the DOD has the capability to develop a top secret aircaft a few miles from the movie studios, they probably wouldn't need to store alien corpses in the one "secret" base that every person in America knows about.
Not only that, but when Sinead O'Connor sings the line "Nothing compares to you", the player starts the song over. Chicks don't like guys that get stuck in recursive loops.
Other people have mentioned how the stereo creates sound and is also controlled by sound. I can say that my Samsung voice activated PCS phone (3500 something) does NOT do well if the car stereo is on at all. What you could have is a mute/command input button either on the unit or wired to the steering wheel. This would solve the background noise problem and the need for a command word prefix.
I have never "given" an mp3 file to anyone. When I search Napster for non-copyrighted songs (such as Home On The Range and other public domain classics) other users have the ability to TAKE files off my hard drive. It is legal for me to have those files on my hard drive because I own the CD, but may be illegal for someone else to have them. I don't know that SuP3rFr3ak doesn't own The Chronic when he downloads "Nothin but a G Thing" off my computer. Am I resposible for enforcing copyright laws? I hope not.
AirFiber technology information is currently restricted to business partners and current/potential customers.
All I wanted to know was what color laser they are using. If they use red, smoggy or foggy days would result in this very cool "Blade Runner" grid of lasers floating at rooftop level. Serious note: This technology is only meant for large cities with high population densities. Those cities would also have the most smog. As the smog levels of a city rise, wouldn't the connection get slower and slower? Something for the folks in LA to think about before they drop money on this kind of system.
That sounds great from a science point of view, but just not realistic from a business point of view. Let's say that a big chip company puts no money in.07 micron technology and dumps every last R&D dollar into truly next generation CPUs. What if the R&D doesn't produce a working chip until 2007? Do you think a spokesperson for AMD could take a podium in 2004 and say, "In response to Intel's announcement of 6.4 GHz CPUs, we would like to ask everyone to hold off for three years when we will deliver our 150 GHz chips...maybe." They might as well fire everyone and lock the doors. The trick for those companies is to split the funding between evolutionary and revolutionary R&D so that they can keep products coming down the pipeline right up until that huge leap can be made. I certainly don't envy the people drawing up that budget. If you want to give it a shot, try to predict the weather for June first, of next year, and "hot" won't cut it.
The roller coaster will only stop when large numbers of hard core fans tell George Lucas to go screw himself and take their money elsewhere. The only chance of this happening in the near future is if Episode 2 is as poor as TPM. I would certainly consider myself a Star Wars "Fan", and I hope that Episode 2 is the greatest film of all time, but after TPM, my money is staying in my pocket until he shows me a good movie. This "No DVD until the box set" thing is rediculous. Lucas obviously wants millions of his most loyal fans to purchase two copies of an identical movie, and nobody seems to be calling him on it. Just because he made some brilliant movies a while ago and wears flannel shirts, doesn't mean he isn't as greedy as the Armani suit wearing CEOs we all love to hate.
Don't play his game, don't give him more money until he stops screwing us around.
Do you think if Fox owned the rights to the movie on DVD that they would let Lucas sit on it that long? Hell no. They'd have a new edition come out ever other year and milk it for all it's worth.
It is cool that George Lucas exists somewhat outside the major "studio" system. But come on, just because he wears flannel doesn't mean he's any less greedy then the guys in Armani suits. The recent announcements were a calculated, deliberate move to push hard core fans into owning two identical copies of the same film. Lucas has already proven that fans will buy another copy of a film if he makes minimal changes to it, and he wants to see how far he can go. My prediction is that if Episode 2 is not better than Episode 1, Mr. Lucas's quater century of glory will be over and his legions of die hard fans will start defecting en mass. Matrix prequels anyone?
Just being picky: I would recommend image file names as button_name-language.gif. This would put NextPage-Eng.gif and NextPage-Ger.gif next to each other alphabetically.
Two words and a number: Gran Turismo 2000. The game looks amazing. I bought an N64 to play Zelda, I bought a Dreamcast to play Hydro Thunder, and I'm buying a PS2 to play GT2000.
No, you would just decrease the ammount of energy in that object. The rate of energy change (Delta E I think) would be negative, but that's it. If you were correct, a refrigerator would create negative energy inside of it. And considering that my fridge just causes chinese food to mold, not warp through space and time, I'm going to say no.
Disclaimer- I took physics three years ago and got a C, but I think I'm right on this.
Aluminum foil will shape itself to the contours of my head when I play "space man". My money says that Roswell was the crash of a Japanese baloon. The government would have been terrified to tell people that the Japanese were crash landing in the states. Also, some hilljacks catch a glimpse of a mangled Japanese body and say "Hey, ma, them people are from outer space."
The access time of RAM is about A MILLION times faster than any hard drive (that's 6 orders of magnitute, not a figure of speech). Any device based on moving parts is not going to see that kind of improvement, no matter how you trick it out.
The three-letter domains are not at all being used as they should.
At the movie theater last night I saw a poster for the film The Skulls. In the corner was the URL "www.theskulls.net". Theskulls.com is being squatted by some company that coincidentally also sells.to domains. Is it completely screwed up, but as they say, you can't put the crap back in the horse.
A few weeks ago I went to Circuit City and paid my $179. There weren't any units in the state, so they promised to order one and get it to me in "7 - 10 days". After a week, I looked on the web site which said "Out of Stock". Aparently they were putting huge ads in the newspaper even though there were vitually no units in stock in the country. Anyway, this is the description currently listed on www.circuitcity.com:
DVD: APEX AD600A We are aware from media reports that initial production of the Apex AD600A had secret menus which allowed some users to bypass copyright protections built in to all DVD players. These menus have now been deleted from this player in recent production and our present stock reflects this fact. We purchased the AD600A based on its full array of legitimate features, quality construction and a most attractive price. It remains an outstanding value today!
Oh well, I guess I can live without the hidden menu. As long as I can play MP3s in my living room.
I don't think you could just "change" a Y chromosome to an X chromosome. I believe they're entirely different. Think about it, Y chromosomes give you the ability to drive well, while X chromosomes just give you the sense not to wear the same socks two days in a row.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any references to back me up, but the sketchy reports I have read say that the long delays are because of horrible performance when executing legacy x86 code. Like Pentium II at 10 times the cost type of performance.
Sorry for the "I read somewhere" post.
-B
Very nice post. I agree with most of it. I just wanted to paste the line:
You will have systems whose defense systems are so well developed that the valid users who wish to shut them down will have difficulty doing so--because, to be blunt, that's what these "intelligent systems" will have been designed to do--prevent unauthorized disabling of the system.
Does that scare anyone else? The bottom line purpose of life is to continue life. If a beaver will gnaw off its own leg to survive, imagine what a supercomputer would resort to if it believed its existence was threatened. I hate to reference a Hollywood movie, but SkyNet comes to mind. I would hope that any entity with the resources to build a real AI would also have the sense and forsight to put a big red hard wired power switch somewhere.
-B
Microsoft is not being punished for being a big company and trying to make as much money as possible. Antitrust laws were created to prevent large companies from using the fact that they're large companies to crush smaller competiters and prevent consumers from have options.
The government did absolutely nothing in the 20 years that Microsoft spent racking up 90%+ of the desktop OS market. People had choices and for one reason or another a vast majority chose Microsoft products. When Microsoft used the fact that 90%+ of the world used their desktop OS to prevent other companies from competing against them in the browser market, the DOJ steped in. From what I understand, both the DOJ and Judge Penfield are playing this by the book. They know that MS has an army of lawyers warming up for the appeals process and they are not about to be overturned.
-B
I say that they should have a second show called "X files: Syndicate" starring Mimi Rodgers (Agent Fowley) and Krycek. They would take orders from Smoking Man and try to rebuild the syndicate that got burnt up. I just think there should be more shows focusing on bad guys.
-B
Jenny Mcarthy and Pamela (then Anderson) Lee certainly parlayed Playboy spreads into a few bucks. My friend's girlfriend was a Girl Of The Big Ten. She just did it for some attention and self esteem.
-B
The problem with Wizard of OZ marketing is that Toto could pull back the curtain. If MS makes all of these security changes and two weeks later the "Open this attatchment and Old Navy will send you 6 dollars.vbs" worm does 10 times as much damage as ILV, they're screwed. Every middle manager in the country will say, "That MS rep promised us this new Outlook was secure, but it obviously isn't." Next time MS promises something, like all NEW Kerberos extensions, maybe nobody will trust them. We can always hope.
-B
I know I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but I want to post it anyway:
Even thought Slashdot/Andover is obviously on the side of right here, you may well lose a long and protracted legal battle. Andover IPO money is great, but Microsoft has misplaced more cash than that. Lawyers cost money and good lawyers cost a LOT of money.
My suggestion- kick them in the PR department. MS has been hit with a tsunami of bad press lately with DOJ rulings, security holes, and general bastardness. Reporters would love to follow those stories up with "Microsoft subverts standards and strongarms little guys". What Roblimo and the crew need to do is run to every media outlet that will listen to them. Also, strike while the iron is hot. The top of the list needs to be The Wall Street Journal. If Monday's front page includes a story about this situation, it would be very damaging. If one mutual fund manager reads about this and says to himself "These are the actions of a company grasping at straws to keep themselves on top of an industry" and sells a ton of MSFT, it's going to put a dent into the net worth of every honcho in Redmond.
Bottom line: Roblimo needs to make this into a battle that Microsoft has no interest in continuing.
Keep fighting the good fight.
-B
I think "First Mapping" stories should be moderated down to "-1 Troll". The precedent was set by "First Post" and I don't see much difference.
Serious note: It appears that Doubletwist actually did a cool, much needed thing. I don't know if the fault lies with their marketing department or dumb media people for making the story appear to be something it absolutely isn't.
-B
I saw a thing on the History Channel about the development of the F117 stealth fighter. Almost all of the actual development took place at Lockheed's facility in Burbank, California. If the DOD has the capability to develop a top secret aircaft a few miles from the movie studios, they probably wouldn't need to store alien corpses in the one "secret" base that every person in America knows about.
-B
Not only that, but when Sinead O'Connor sings the line "Nothing compares to you", the player starts the song over. Chicks don't like guys that get stuck in recursive loops.
Other people have mentioned how the stereo creates sound and is also controlled by sound. I can say that my Samsung voice activated PCS phone (3500 something) does NOT do well if the car stereo is on at all. What you could have is a mute/command input button either on the unit or wired to the steering wheel. This would solve the background noise problem and the need for a command word prefix.
-B
I have never "given" an mp3 file to anyone. When I search Napster for non-copyrighted songs (such as Home On The Range and other public domain classics) other users have the ability to TAKE files off my hard drive. It is legal for me to have those files on my hard drive because I own the CD, but may be illegal for someone else to have them. I don't know that SuP3rFr3ak doesn't own The Chronic when he downloads "Nothin but a G Thing" off my computer. Am I resposible for enforcing copyright laws? I hope not.
-B
AirFiber technology information is currently restricted to business partners and current/potential customers.
All I wanted to know was what color laser they are using. If they use red, smoggy or foggy days would result in this very cool "Blade Runner" grid of lasers floating at rooftop level.
Serious note: This technology is only meant for large cities with high population densities. Those cities would also have the most smog. As the smog levels of a city rise, wouldn't the connection get slower and slower? Something for the folks in LA to think about before they drop money on this kind of system.
-B
French people are pretty much the same race as Americans. If your going to throw flames, at least throw applicable flames.
-B
That sounds great from a science point of view, but just not realistic from a business point of view. Let's say that a big chip company puts no money in .07 micron technology and dumps every last R&D dollar into truly next generation CPUs. What if the R&D doesn't produce a working chip until 2007? Do you think a spokesperson for AMD could take a podium in 2004 and say, "In response to Intel's announcement of 6.4 GHz CPUs, we would like to ask everyone to hold off for three years when we will deliver our 150 GHz chips...maybe." They might as well fire everyone and lock the doors. The trick for those companies is to split the funding between evolutionary and revolutionary R&D so that they can keep products coming down the pipeline right up until that huge leap can be made. I certainly don't envy the people drawing up that budget. If you want to give it a shot, try to predict the weather for June first, of next year, and "hot" won't cut it.
-B
The roller coaster will only stop when large numbers of hard core fans tell George Lucas to go screw himself and take their money elsewhere. The only chance of this happening in the near future is if Episode 2 is as poor as TPM. I would certainly consider myself a Star Wars "Fan", and I hope that Episode 2 is the greatest film of all time, but after TPM, my money is staying in my pocket until he shows me a good movie.
This "No DVD until the box set" thing is rediculous. Lucas obviously wants millions of his most loyal fans to purchase two copies of an identical movie, and nobody seems to be calling him on it. Just because he made some brilliant movies a while ago and wears flannel shirts, doesn't mean he isn't as greedy as the Armani suit wearing CEOs we all love to hate.
Don't play his game, don't give him more money until he stops screwing us around.
-B
Do you think if Fox owned the rights to the movie on DVD that they would let Lucas sit on it that long? Hell no. They'd have a new edition come out ever other year and milk it for all it's worth.
It is cool that George Lucas exists somewhat outside the major "studio" system. But come on, just because he wears flannel doesn't mean he's any less greedy then the guys in Armani suits. The recent announcements were a calculated, deliberate move to push hard core fans into owning two identical copies of the same film. Lucas has already proven that fans will buy another copy of a film if he makes minimal changes to it, and he wants to see how far he can go.
My prediction is that if Episode 2 is not better than Episode 1, Mr. Lucas's quater century of glory will be over and his legions of die hard fans will start defecting en mass. Matrix prequels anyone?
-B
Just being picky: I would recommend image file names as button_name-language.gif. This would put NextPage-Eng.gif and NextPage-Ger.gif next to each other alphabetically.
-B
Two words and a number: Gran Turismo 2000. The game looks amazing. I bought an N64 to play Zelda, I bought a Dreamcast to play Hydro Thunder, and I'm buying a PS2 to play GT2000.
-B
No, you would just decrease the ammount of energy in that object. The rate of energy change (Delta E I think) would be negative, but that's it. If you were correct, a refrigerator would create negative energy inside of it. And considering that my fridge just causes chinese food to mold, not warp through space and time, I'm going to say no.
Disclaimer- I took physics three years ago and got a C, but I think I'm right on this.
-B
Aluminum foil will shape itself to the contours of my head when I play "space man". My money says that Roswell was the crash of a Japanese baloon. The government would have been terrified to tell people that the Japanese were crash landing in the states. Also, some hilljacks catch a glimpse of a mangled Japanese body and say "Hey, ma, them people are from outer space."
-B
Ummm...no. Milli is 10^-3, Nano is 10^-9. The difference being 10^6, or ONE MILLION (pinky touching corner of mouth).
/ notes/Metric.html
Here's some random freshman physics class notes I found if you don't belive me:
http://feynman.physics.lsa.umich.edu/~myers/126
-B
The access time of RAM is about A MILLION times faster than any hard drive (that's 6 orders of magnitute, not a figure of speech). Any device based on moving parts is not going to see that kind of improvement, no matter how you trick it out.
-B
The three-letter domains are not at all being used as they should.
.to domains. Is it completely screwed up, but as they say, you can't put the crap back in the horse.
At the movie theater last night I saw a poster for the film The Skulls. In the corner was the URL "www.theskulls.net". Theskulls.com is being squatted by some company that coincidentally also sells
-B
A few weeks ago I went to Circuit City and paid my $179. There weren't any units in the state, so they promised to order one and get it to me in "7 - 10 days". After a week, I looked on the web site which said "Out of Stock". Aparently they were putting huge ads in the newspaper even though there were vitually no units in stock in the country. Anyway, this is the description currently listed on www.circuitcity.com:
DVD: APEX AD600A We are aware from media reports that initial production of the Apex AD600A had secret menus which allowed some users to bypass copyright protections built in to all DVD players. These menus have now been deleted from this player in recent production and our present stock reflects this fact. We purchased the AD600A based on its full array of legitimate features, quality construction and a most attractive price. It remains an outstanding value today!
Oh well, I guess I can live without the hidden menu. As long as I can play MP3s in my living room.
-B
I don't think you could just "change" a Y chromosome to an X chromosome. I believe they're entirely different. Think about it, Y chromosomes give you the ability to drive well, while X chromosomes just give you the sense not to wear the same socks two days in a row.
-B