VIN numbers are subdivided, sorta like MAC addresses. This means that some people have huge allocations they aren't using while others are running out of space.
If VINs were just flat alphanumeric numbers (base-36 numbers) then we'd have way more than necessary.
Most of a credit card number is just that - a serial number, meaning there are plenty of them. (Only the first two and the last digit are "special" - the inbetween digits are the serial part).
Anyone who uses Vonage, has thought about using Vonage, or currently uses Vonage should think again. I only say this because people leaving comments have suggested abandoning POTS and going with Vonage:
Their terms of service are horrid and do not give you any of the rights and/or protections afforded to POTS users. Behold, the terms of service that read more like an EULA:
http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.php
"1.3.1 Prohibited Uses You agree to use the Service and Device only for lawful purposes. This means that you agree not to use them for transmitting or receiving any communication or material of any kind when in Vonage's sole judgment the transmission, receipt or possession of such communication or material (i) would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or (ii) encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law. Vonage reserves the right to terminate your service immediately and without advance notice if Vonage, in its sole discretion, believes that you have violated the above restrictions, leaving you responsible for the full month's charges to the end of the current term, including without limitation unbilled charges, plus a disconnect fee, all of which immediately become due and payable and may at Vonage's discretion be immediately charged to your credit card. You are liable for any and all use of the Service and/or Device by yourself and by any person making use of the Service or Device provided to you and agree to indemnify and hold harmless Vonage against any and all liability for any such use. If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.
Yes, that's right folks: They reserve the right to monitor your phone calls, make a judgement as to whether or not what you say on the phone is OK, then forward copies of your phone calls and your personal information to police/FBI/etc. There ain't no wiretapping order required here.
I don't use my phone service to do anything illegal, but I don't want the boys in the Vonage NOC listening in on my phone calls either, nor recording them (which the language implies that they do both.)
But it gets even better:
"3. CHANGES TO THIS AGREEMENT Vonage may change the terms and conditions of this Agreement from time to time. Notices will be considered given and effective on the date posted on to the "Service Announcements" section of Vonage's website (currently located at http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.php ). Such changes will become binding on Customer, on the date posted to the Vonage website and no further notice by Vonage is required. This Agreement as posted supersedes all previously agreed to electronic and written terms of service, including without limitation any terms included with the packaging of the Device and also supersedes any written terms provided to Retail Customers in connection with retail distribution, including without limitation any written terms enclosed within the packaging of the Device.. "
Ah, wonderful. They want the right to post copies of your phone calls on their website? All they need to do is mofify their "terms of service" and give themselves that right.
I don't put up with this kind of crap in EULAs for software, and I sure as hell won't put up with it from my phone company!
I wonder why these companies wholly switched their nameservers over? Why not have #1 and #2 be Akami, and #3 & #4 be your own nameservers? Preferably on different coasts or in different countries.
This would seem an obvious solution. You are allowed to have many nameservers you know...
Well it is Microsoft's fault for saying that IE and such are part of the OS, but Windows has had very few kernel exploits in the most recent few years; it is mostly IE holes and, prior to IIS 6, IIS holes.
This was made worse by the fact that many people run as admin and IIS used to run as LocalSystem on default installs.
However all software has bugs; this incident is neither proof positive or proof negative of any argument re: open source vs closed source.
The real story is why doesn't Linux have a clipboard standard with well-defined interop standards ala OLE/COM?
I can copy text from VS and paste it into Word, in which case it pastes as RTF with colors and formatting. If I paste it into notepad, I get plain text. This is because the clipboard understands high-level text (RTF) and casting that down into standard text. It also allows apps to provide multiple data formats; copying an image can put a JPG, Bitmap, and PNG on the clipboard and the consuming app can select the format it likes best.
Even better would be to support Office-style multiboard functionality where there are 10-12 "slots" on the clipboard and you can cut and paste from each slot at will.
(Ex: in VS, CTRL+SHIFT+V will cycle through each of the last X copied items for pasting, meaning you can go to one spot of code and copy, then another and copy, then open a different source file and copy a block, then paste all three together somewhere else very easily.)
It's not just cleaner, it isn't upsetting the balance of CO2.
Burning gasoline releases CO2 into the atmosphere because it is taking carbon that was kept underground and putting it in the air.
Recycling plant and animal matter doesn't because the carbon came from the air in the first place; energy production begins to participate in the carbon-cycle instead of upsetting it.
One man's "code bloat" is another man's BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY.
There are many Windows APIs that only exist to be backwards-compatible; they are depreciated and are marked in the docs as such. This means some wierd app you use to control industrial machinery that was written for Windows 95 most likely still works on Windows XP.
The key difference is that if you duplicate MS Access with VS, you are using ADO which contains the Microsoft JET engine (among other drivers); in effect, you are using the access engine to write a product that competes with access.
In the BK instance, you are NOT using BK as the basis to develop a competing source control product.
The BK license (at least regarding that provision) is not enforceable and has all the weight of feather to back it up.
C# and the CLR/CLS are documented open standards, certified by ECMA. In fact, for v2.0 Microsoft had to submit their planned changes to C# to be approved by ECMA.
Secondly, there is no such thing as a "compatibility" issue with the CLR. Old versions of classes/assemblies/interfaces continue to run side-by-side with the newer versions. If Microsoft makes a breaking change, it won't hurt existing implementations and applications.
Besides - everyone always overlooks that the CLR + Base Class Libraries (WinFX) are THE supported API for Longhorn. This means if Microsoft fiddles with anything, it hurts their own apps AND their 3rd party developers.
This isn't like the CIFS where only Microsoft deals with it; this is the API which everyone has to use. They are two totally different beasts. Microsoft never said CIFS was an open protocol and never promised it would stay stable. But they have delivered on the CLR+C# being a documented system and they do promise it will be stable.
There is absolutely positively no way to "harm" mono unless Microsoft shoots themselves and all their 3rd party developers in the foot (and those developers writing hordes of applications is what gives Windows its staying power - not something lightly abandoned).
As for the patent issue, we discussed this already. It is what is called a "defensive" patent portfolio. We've already seen Microsoft get submarined by little companies coming along and claiming patents on things like browser plugins. You think that won't bring Mozilla down too? Think again.
Microsoft is patenting anything/everything so no one can come along and try to shoot them down with insane obvious patents later. This is a result of a broken patent system and we all know that.
Instead of spouting FUD (as so many accuse Microsoft of doing), why don't we see what someone from Microsoft has to say?
Chris Pratley gives us a small bit of insight:
"One of the methods for protecting intellectual property is the patent system. Now, everybody hates the patent system. After all, it is pretty broken. The original idea of patents (I gather) was to promote the spread of ideas and inventions. With no protection for ideas, inventors resorted to secrecy. e.g. the exact method by which a chemical was made was kept secret and locked up in a factory vault, so that society could not benefit from the idea except to the extent that the inventor used it himself. The patent system offered what seemed a reasonable proposition. In return for explaining the idea in great detail so that others could understand and use it, the inventor was protected for a period of years where they had exclusive rights to use the idea, or to license it to others. If someone stole the idea, the inventor had legal recourse.
Well, fast forward to "now", and the patent system is used almost entirely differently. At Microsoft, we used to pay little attention to patents - we would just make new things, and that would be it. Then we started getting worried - other big competitors (much bigger than we were at the time) had been patenting their inventions for some years, and it made us vulnerable. One of these big companies could dig through their patent portfolio, find something close to what we had done, then sue us, and we would have to go through an elaborate defense and possibly lose. So Microsoft did what most big companies do, which is start to build what is called a "defensive" patent portfolio. So if a big company tried to sue us, we could find something in our portfolio they were afoul of, and counter-sue. In the cold war days, this strategy was called "mutual assured destruction", and since it was intolerable for all parties to engage, it resulted in a state called "détente", or "standoff". This is what you see today for the most part in lots of industries.
There are lots of other problems with the patent system. For example, Microsoft gets "submarined" quite often. A small company or individual has an idea, which they patent as quietly as possible. Then they sit back and wait (years if necessary), until some big company develops something (independently of course) that is sufficiently similar to their idea that they can surface and sue us. I have been involved in a couple of these, so I can speak from experience. The people involved often never had any intent of developing their idea, and they also make sure to wait until we have been shipping a product for several years before informing us they think they have a patent on something related, so that "damages" can be assessed as high as possible. This simply makes innovating the equivalent of walking into a minefield. This doesn't seem to be helping the process of moving humanity forward.
Another view is that big companies patent lots of things, and then by the implicit threat of suing the "small guy", prevent innovation from moving forward. In practice this is harder than it sounds, since the damage to the image of the company can be considerable if it tried to sue a small target - that's why you rarely see it happen. I think this works both ways of course as I described in the last paragraph. Basically whoever has the patent has the power.
Another complete perversion of the original patent system is that because there are triple damages if the plaintiff can show the infringer knowingly infringed on a patent, there is a huge disincentive to look at the patents on file at the patent office. If you do a "patent search" to see if what you want to do is patented already, and you find nothing, you are still liable for triple damages if someone sues you and can show that you looked at their patent. This matters because even if you think their idea is irrelevant, a court may not agree with you. So the only safe thing to do is not loo
What is the deal here? This is like a car maker shipping vehicles all over the country with brakes that don't work.
This is an easily spotted problem and a simple fix.
Sometimes I worry about all these "product engineers" working with what amounts to computer technology more and more. They often don't seem to understand what they are doing or how to work with the technology and end up doing a really bad job.
Think someone who did a whiz-bang job on a satellite receiver in the early 90s being put on a project to create the company's new DVR. Then you get all kinds of wonderful glitches, slow and erratic menus, missing features that should have been obvious, plus features that are useless.
Too often you feel like the person who designed this thing is better off behind a soldering iron than a line of code.
The bottom line: If your product has a microchip in it, you need software engineers that can write good code and hardware engineers that properly understand how to put together computer systems using available standards.
The correction algorithm used on CDs is quite sufficient and the chances of errors being non-correctable is fairly low, assuming you reburn every X years.
That said, you can always add your own error correction on top of the built-in system to make that chance even smaller.
I see what he is claiming: That he has setup opposing magnets and stators such that when the magnets are just past the center point, his device gives it a small boost (the small bit of electricity actually used by the device?) which causes the rotor to continue spinning.
So in theory (according to him), the energy being released is coming from the magnets.
If it does indeed work, then one would (I expect) see the permanent magnets inside one of his motors eventually lose their magnetism and then the device would stop working.
The proof is in the pudding, and we'd be fools to suppose that there is nothing new to be discovered.
Still, I'll endorse the idea when I can order one and try it for myself.
Let me share something about most country's copyright laws with you folks, since many seem to be mistaken.
1. I write a work, I own the copyright. It is my code, and no one else may use it under any circumstances without my express permission.
2. I decided to grant that permission by taking the text of the GPL and distributing my code under that license. But from the standpoint of the law, there is no such thing as "the" GPL. My code simply has a license that grants rights and places restrictions. That others choose to also use this or similar wording is of no consequence.
3. If a court found that the license text I chose was not enforceable, then ANY AND ALL rights granted by that license no longer exist. Hence, the person using the code is now a copyright violator! They are using MY code without MY permission.
Insofar as the GPL is unenforceable, all EULAs are unenforceable (because that's all the GPL is: a software license like any other). In such a case, all rights would most likely revert to the original creators. In situations where multiple people had a hand in creating something, things get trickier as do derivative works situations. But I think you get the point.
The truth of the matter is that the GPL will never be declared unenforceable; A creator has the right to license his or her works in any way he or she pleases, unless such a method is expressly forbidden in copyright law.
What everyone seems to be missing is that these discs are good for printing on - much easier, cheaper, and better looking than current "printable" DVDs/CDs.
You do realize that one of the benefits of going to digital cinema is the boost in framerate right?
Film at 24fps produces some odd effects if the camera pans too quickly or the action is too fast. Directors must constantly be aware of these restrictions and work around them.
Just so you know, metal does the same thing to microwaves that it does to other electromagnetic radiation: in the absence of a ground, the metal (such as aluminum foil or metal strips in bills) will simply reflect the microwave radation.
The issue is when there is not a sufficient quantity of water (food, glass of water, etc) to absorb the microwaves; they will collide, cause sparks, etc. The metal will resonate and eventually heat up.
Cover your food with aluminum foil and you get sparks. Leave a spoon lying on the plate next to a helping of food and you've got no problem. You just need a sufficient quantity of water inside the chamber to absorb the radiation.
In theory the problem was mostly the heads accumulating some of the platter lubricant on them from continuously moving back and forth in the same area, leading to an eventual head crash (click of death.)
Again, in theory, the firmware update fixed that problem.
Did this help in reality? I don't know. I haven't bought an IBM hard drive in a long time thanks to this mess.
I take that back - I predict 100% certainty for Intel. I couldn't even read the whole patent application. It was simply laughable. Anyone who knows anything about microprocessors should have recognized that what they had was done before AND not an idea that is patent-worthy.
They basically patented an improvement upon the microprocessor, whereby the clock speed is variable, the pin count is low, and the processor has on-board DRAM controls.
None of these things are new as of 1998, when the app was filed, and none are patent-worthy.
They filed the patent in 1998 and were just granted it. The original Pentium was already out by that time, so I don't see how its design could be impacted, unless they are trying to say the patent covers something newly introduced with the P3/P4.
I predict Intel will meet with grand success in their case.
I don't read too much into this; Microsoft already told Intel that they (Intel) will in fact stay compatible with AMD because they will not be releasing three separate 64-bit editions of their operating systems (Itanium, x86-64, ???).
In this case, I think the monopoly is working for us in preventing Intel from fracturing the market, which I am quite sure they would love to do.
So in this respect, I think Microsoft is just having the usual Microsoft delays. One of the biggest is supporting Read vs ReadExecute memory pages on the x86-64 chips. A Lot of code, including microsoft code (ATL anyone?), breaks the standards and is having to be cleaned up to work.
In addition, Itanium lacked WMP, DirectX, and many other features that customers will NOT do without on Athlon64 systems, meaning even more development time.
Slashdot Mirror
VIN numbers are subdivided, sorta like MAC addresses. This means that some people have huge allocations they aren't using while others are running out of space.
If VINs were just flat alphanumeric numbers (base-36 numbers) then we'd have way more than necessary.
Most of a credit card number is just that - a serial number, meaning there are plenty of them. (Only the first two and the last digit are "special" - the inbetween digits are the serial part).
Anyone who uses Vonage, has thought about using Vonage, or currently uses Vonage should think again. I only say this because people leaving comments have suggested abandoning POTS and going with Vonage:
p
Their terms of service are horrid and do not give you any of the rights and/or protections afforded to POTS users. Behold, the terms of service that read more like an EULA:
http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.ph
"1.3.1 Prohibited Uses
You agree to use the Service and Device only for lawful purposes. This means that you agree not to use them for transmitting or receiving any communication or material of any kind when in Vonage's sole judgment the transmission, receipt or possession of such communication or material (i) would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or (ii) encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to a civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law. Vonage reserves the right to terminate your service immediately and without advance notice if Vonage, in its sole discretion, believes that you have violated the above restrictions, leaving you responsible for the full month's charges to the end of the current term, including without limitation unbilled charges, plus a disconnect fee, all of which immediately become due and payable and may at Vonage's discretion be immediately charged to your credit card. You are liable for any and all use of the Service and/or Device by yourself and by any person making use of the Service or Device provided to you and agree to indemnify and hold harmless Vonage against any and all liability for any such use. If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.
Yes, that's right folks: They reserve the right to monitor your phone calls, make a judgement as to whether or not what you say on the phone is OK, then forward copies of your phone calls and your personal information to police/FBI/etc. There ain't no wiretapping order required here.
I don't use my phone service to do anything illegal, but I don't want the boys in the Vonage NOC listening in on my phone calls either, nor recording them (which the language implies that they do both.)
But it gets even better:
"3. CHANGES TO THIS AGREEMENT
Vonage may change the terms and conditions of this Agreement from time to time. Notices will be considered given and effective on the date posted on to the "Service Announcements" section of Vonage's website (currently located at http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.php ). Such changes will become binding on Customer, on the date posted to the Vonage website and no further notice by Vonage is required. This Agreement as posted supersedes all previously agreed to electronic and written terms of service, including without limitation any terms included with the packaging of the Device and also supersedes any written terms provided to Retail Customers in connection with retail distribution, including without limitation any written terms enclosed within the packaging of the Device.. "
Ah, wonderful. They want the right to post copies of your phone calls on their website? All they need to do is mofify their "terms of service" and give themselves that right.
I don't put up with this kind of crap in EULAs for software, and I sure as hell won't put up with it from my phone company!
I wonder why these companies wholly switched their nameservers over? Why not have #1 and #2 be Akami, and #3 & #4 be your own nameservers? Preferably on different coasts or in different countries.
This would seem an obvious solution. You are allowed to have many nameservers you know...
Well it is Microsoft's fault for saying that IE and such are part of the OS, but Windows has had very few kernel exploits in the most recent few years; it is mostly IE holes and, prior to IIS 6, IIS holes.
This was made worse by the fact that many people run as admin and IIS used to run as LocalSystem on default installs.
However all software has bugs; this incident is neither proof positive or proof negative of any argument re: open source vs closed source.
The real story is why doesn't Linux have a clipboard standard with well-defined interop standards ala OLE/COM?
I can copy text from VS and paste it into Word, in which case it pastes as RTF with colors and formatting. If I paste it into notepad, I get plain text. This is because the clipboard understands high-level text (RTF) and casting that down into standard text. It also allows apps to provide multiple data formats; copying an image can put a JPG, Bitmap, and PNG on the clipboard and the consuming app can select the format it likes best.
Even better would be to support Office-style multiboard functionality where there are 10-12 "slots" on the clipboard and you can cut and paste from each slot at will.
(Ex: in VS, CTRL+SHIFT+V will cycle through each of the last X copied items for pasting, meaning you can go to one spot of code and copy, then another and copy, then open a different source file and copy a block, then paste all three together somewhere else very easily.)
It's not just cleaner, it isn't upsetting the balance of CO2.
Burning gasoline releases CO2 into the atmosphere because it is taking carbon that was kept underground and putting it in the air.
Recycling plant and animal matter doesn't because the carbon came from the air in the first place; energy production begins to participate in the carbon-cycle instead of upsetting it.
One man's "code bloat" is another man's BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY.
There are many Windows APIs that only exist to be backwards-compatible; they are depreciated and are marked in the docs as such. This means some wierd app you use to control industrial machinery that was written for Windows 95 most likely still works on Windows XP.
This originated at the Somethingawful forums; we followed the thread day-by-day as the events unfolded.
d .php?s= &threadid=1016390
You can find the original thread here:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthrea
Thanks to MyNameIsJeff and the SA forum community for a good laugh.
The key difference is that if you duplicate MS Access with VS, you are using ADO which contains the Microsoft JET engine (among other drivers); in effect, you are using the access engine to write a product that competes with access.
In the BK instance, you are NOT using BK as the basis to develop a competing source control product.
The BK license (at least regarding that provision) is not enforceable and has all the weight of feather to back it up.
C# and the CLR/CLS are documented open standards, certified by ECMA. In fact, for v2.0 Microsoft had to submit their planned changes to C# to be approved by ECMA.
Secondly, there is no such thing as a "compatibility" issue with the CLR. Old versions of classes/assemblies/interfaces continue to run side-by-side with the newer versions. If Microsoft makes a breaking change, it won't hurt existing implementations and applications.
Besides - everyone always overlooks that the CLR + Base Class Libraries (WinFX) are THE supported API for Longhorn. This means if Microsoft fiddles with anything, it hurts their own apps AND their 3rd party developers.
This isn't like the CIFS where only Microsoft deals with it; this is the API which everyone has to use. They are two totally different beasts. Microsoft never said CIFS was an open protocol and never promised it would stay stable. But they have delivered on the CLR+C# being a documented system and they do promise it will be stable.
There is absolutely positively no way to "harm" mono unless Microsoft shoots themselves and all their 3rd party developers in the foot (and those developers writing hordes of applications is what gives Windows its staying power - not something lightly abandoned).
As for the patent issue, we discussed this already. It is what is called a "defensive" patent portfolio. We've already seen Microsoft get submarined by little companies coming along and claiming patents on things like browser plugins. You think that won't bring Mozilla down too? Think again.
Microsoft is patenting anything/everything so no one can come along and try to shoot them down with insane obvious patents later. This is a result of a broken patent system and we all know that.
Instead of spouting FUD (as so many accuse Microsoft of doing), why don't we see what someone from Microsoft has to say?
Chris Pratley gives us a small bit of insight:
"One of the methods for protecting intellectual property is the patent system. Now, everybody hates the patent system. After all, it is pretty broken. The original idea of patents (I gather) was to promote the spread of ideas and inventions. With no protection for ideas, inventors resorted to secrecy. e.g. the exact method by which a chemical was made was kept secret and locked up in a factory vault, so that society could not benefit from the idea except to the extent that the inventor used it himself. The patent system offered what seemed a reasonable proposition. In return for explaining the idea in great detail so that others could understand and use it, the inventor was protected for a period of years where they had exclusive rights to use the idea, or to license it to others. If someone stole the idea, the inventor had legal recourse.
Well, fast forward to "now", and the patent system is used almost entirely differently. At Microsoft, we used to pay little attention to patents - we would just make new things, and that would be it. Then we started getting worried - other big competitors (much bigger than we were at the time) had been patenting their inventions for some years, and it made us vulnerable. One of these big companies could dig through their patent portfolio, find something close to what we had done, then sue us, and we would have to go through an elaborate defense and possibly lose. So Microsoft did what most big companies do, which is start to build what is called a "defensive" patent portfolio. So if a big company tried to sue us, we could find something in our portfolio they were afoul of, and counter-sue. In the cold war days, this strategy was called "mutual assured destruction", and since it was intolerable for all parties to engage, it resulted in a state called "détente", or "standoff". This is what you see today for the most part in lots of industries.
There are lots of other problems with the patent system. For example, Microsoft gets "submarined" quite often. A small company or individual has an idea, which they patent as quietly as possible. Then they sit back and wait (years if necessary), until some big company develops something (independently of course) that is sufficiently similar to their idea that they can surface and sue us. I have been involved in a couple of these, so I can speak from experience. The people involved often never had any intent of developing their idea, and they also make sure to wait until we have been shipping a product for several years before informing us they think they have a patent on something related, so that "damages" can be assessed as high as possible. This simply makes innovating the equivalent of walking into a minefield. This doesn't seem to be helping the process of moving humanity forward.
Another view is that big companies patent lots of things, and then by the implicit threat of suing the "small guy", prevent innovation from moving forward. In practice this is harder than it sounds, since the damage to the image of the company can be considerable if it tried to sue a small target - that's why you rarely see it happen. I think this works both ways of course as I described in the last paragraph. Basically whoever has the patent has the power.
Another complete perversion of the original patent system is that because there are triple damages if the plaintiff can show the infringer knowingly infringed on a patent, there is a huge disincentive to look at the patents on file at the patent office. If you do a "patent search" to see if what you want to do is patented already, and you find nothing, you are still liable for triple damages if someone sues you and can show that you looked at their patent. This matters because even if you think their idea is irrelevant, a court may not agree with you. So the only safe thing to do is not loo
This is similar to one of the techniques the NT kernel uses for memory management.
The memory manager looks for pages that haven't been used recently and writes them out to disk. It then marks them as existing in the "backing store."
If there is a demand for free pages, those memory pages can be taken immediately.
If an app comes along and touches those pages again, then they are reclassified as in recent use.
This is a gross oversimplification, but it gets the point across.
It would appear that one needs a brokerage account with one of the underwriters in order to buy in the IPO.
If you are a basic/level-1 dotnet developer in the Dallas area, there are plenty of reasonable jobs around here (50-60k starting).
If you are an uber/level-3 dotnet developer in Silicon Valley you might still have trouble finding a job.
Replace dotnet with some other area and it changes again.
So look for newer technologies and look for better geographic areas.
What is the deal here? This is like a car maker shipping vehicles all over the country with brakes that don't work.
This is an easily spotted problem and a simple fix.
Sometimes I worry about all these "product engineers" working with what amounts to computer technology more and more. They often don't seem to understand what they are doing or how to work with the technology and end up doing a really bad job.
Think someone who did a whiz-bang job on a satellite receiver in the early 90s being put on a project to create the company's new DVR. Then you get all kinds of wonderful glitches, slow and erratic menus, missing features that should have been obvious, plus features that are useless.
Too often you feel like the person who designed this thing is better off behind a soldering iron than a line of code.
The bottom line: If your product has a microchip in it, you need software engineers that can write good code and hardware engineers that properly understand how to put together computer systems using available standards.
The correction algorithm used on CDs is quite sufficient and the chances of errors being non-correctable is fairly low, assuming you reburn every X years.
That said, you can always add your own error correction on top of the built-in system to make that chance even smaller.
I see what he is claiming: That he has setup opposing magnets and stators such that when the magnets are just past the center point, his device gives it a small boost (the small bit of electricity actually used by the device?) which causes the rotor to continue spinning.
So in theory (according to him), the energy being released is coming from the magnets.
If it does indeed work, then one would (I expect) see the permanent magnets inside one of his motors eventually lose their magnetism and then the device would stop working.
The proof is in the pudding, and we'd be fools to suppose that there is nothing new to be discovered.
Still, I'll endorse the idea when I can order one and try it for myself.
Let me share something about most country's copyright laws with you folks, since many seem to be mistaken.
1. I write a work, I own the copyright. It is my code, and no one else may use it under any circumstances without my express permission.
2. I decided to grant that permission by taking the text of the GPL and distributing my code under that license. But from the standpoint of the law, there is no such thing as "the" GPL. My code simply has a license that grants rights and places restrictions. That others choose to also use this or similar wording is of no consequence.
3. If a court found that the license text I chose was not enforceable, then ANY AND ALL rights granted by that license no longer exist. Hence, the person using the code is now a copyright violator! They are using MY code without MY permission.
Insofar as the GPL is unenforceable, all EULAs are unenforceable (because that's all the GPL is: a software license like any other). In such a case, all rights would most likely revert to the original creators. In situations where multiple people had a hand in creating something, things get trickier as do derivative works situations. But I think you get the point.
The truth of the matter is that the GPL will never be declared unenforceable; A creator has the right to license his or her works in any way he or she pleases, unless such a method is expressly forbidden in copyright law.
What everyone seems to be missing is that these discs are good for printing on - much easier, cheaper, and better looking than current "printable" DVDs/CDs.
That is the real benefit in my opinion.
You do realize that one of the benefits of going to digital cinema is the boost in framerate right?
Film at 24fps produces some odd effects if the camera pans too quickly or the action is too fast. Directors must constantly be aware of these restrictions and work around them.
So no, 24fps isn't good enough for movies either.
Just so you know, metal does the same thing to microwaves that it does to other electromagnetic radiation: in the absence of a ground, the metal (such as aluminum foil or metal strips in bills) will simply reflect the microwave radation.
The issue is when there is not a sufficient quantity of water (food, glass of water, etc) to absorb the microwaves; they will collide, cause sparks, etc. The metal will resonate and eventually heat up.
Cover your food with aluminum foil and you get sparks. Leave a spoon lying on the plate next to a helping of food and you've got no problem. You just need a sufficient quantity of water inside the chamber to absorb the radiation.
In theory the problem was mostly the heads accumulating some of the platter lubricant on them from continuously moving back and forth in the same area, leading to an eventual head crash (click of death.)
Again, in theory, the firmware update fixed that problem.
Did this help in reality? I don't know. I haven't bought an IBM hard drive in a long time thanks to this mess.
I take that back - I predict 100% certainty for Intel. I couldn't even read the whole patent application. It was simply laughable. Anyone who knows anything about microprocessors should have recognized that what they had was done before AND not an idea that is patent-worthy.
They basically patented an improvement upon the microprocessor, whereby the clock speed is variable, the pin count is low, and the processor has on-board DRAM controls.
None of these things are new as of 1998, when the app was filed, and none are patent-worthy.
They filed the patent in 1998 and were just granted it. The original Pentium was already out by that time, so I don't see how its design could be impacted, unless they are trying to say the patent covers something newly introduced with the P3/P4.
I predict Intel will meet with grand success in their case.
I don't read too much into this; Microsoft already told Intel that they (Intel) will in fact stay compatible with AMD because they will not be releasing three separate 64-bit editions of their operating systems (Itanium, x86-64, ???).
In this case, I think the monopoly is working for us in preventing Intel from fracturing the market, which I am quite sure they would love to do.
So in this respect, I think Microsoft is just having the usual Microsoft delays. One of the biggest is supporting Read vs ReadExecute memory pages on the x86-64 chips. A Lot of code, including microsoft code (ATL anyone?), breaks the standards and is having to be cleaned up to work.
In addition, Itanium lacked WMP, DirectX, and many other features that customers will NOT do without on Athlon64 systems, meaning even more development time.