The patent system (including all prior patents) should be abolished - no matter what the framers said. For two reasons:
State-granted monopolies are morally repugnant (yes, I am a Libertarian).
Even if there was some historical justification for patents in a earlier time when inventions (and inventors) were fewer, this no longer holds. In a world were there are many smart people around; simply knowing that something is possible is half-way there. Trade secrets are not the threat they used to be.
The many problems with patents are just easier to see when they are software patents - but they apply across the board. --
Reminds me of all the memory models for real-mode x86 programming. Typical for Intel - backwards compatibility at any cost.
It's like the history of the architecture of the 8086 chip. Intel designed the chip to contain a superset of the 8080 architecture to allow the use of a binary translator on 8080 CP/M programs so that the output could run in the tiny model on CP/M 86. This was so the chip could get a head start on applications. (Not that it always worked - the translator caused expansion in the output code, and some programs became too large (>64K) to run.)
For the sake of this temporary (<6mo) advantage, the x86 architecture has been crippled ever since - inflicting untold pain on developers and users. "Memory models", 16-byte segments, pointer size confusion; absurd, nonstandard C keywords like 'near', 'far', and 'huge'. Bah!
This is an example of bad, nonstandard programming for X. Programs should have compiled-in fallback resources such that if the defaults file is deleted or renamed, then app will have a usable, if vanilla, interface. If the app requires an external resources file to function then the developer was just lazy (and yes, I have come across such - it's very annoying). --
I tried this out and it worked fine with several generic X apps (xcalc, xterm, xmessage).
Granted, it doesn't work with every app, only with those that follow the prescribed X usages and protocols, in this case in terms of resources - but that was the guy's point, anyway. --
Let me see, how many older machines are floating around my house and what am I doing with them...
Very old Toshiba 286 luggable: Gathering dust in the closet. The orange Gas Discharge display has some dark lines in it, and it can only run DOS anyway, so forget it.
Old 386 laptop: I installed Slackware on it; I have used it for text editing on trips but it has power-on problems, currently sitting in the trunk of my car.
Old 386 desktop: Cannibalized for parts (I am using it's 3.5" floppy on my current main machine).
Another old 386 desktop: Given to my 7 yr. old son to play games on in it's retirement.
A rebuilt Cirix 6x86: This used to be my main machine. I had upgraded it's original 486 motherboard to the Cirix one. Though it is currently gathering dust (and despite it's whiny hard disk drive) I will probably rework it into a network services machine (printer, modem, internal testbed web server that's guaranteed to be up even when I'm in Windows playing some game.:))
All that plus the 3 main machines in use in the house: my current Debian 2.1 Linux machine, my wife's WinBlows box and a more modern laptop for mobile web access. How many is that in all? 8! Geez, I had no idea that they were so many. And except for a couple of really old ones, they either have actual or planned uses.
OK, that's enough blathering, gotta get back to work!
Maybe the problems are related to the record ~1300 commments for the Kansas - education - Bible-thumper - evolution - creation - everybody's pet hot button - jaw-dropping incredible - coming out of the woodwork story? --
All you need be in the hip minority is to regularly use the command line. After all, how many diatribes have we heard recently about how Linux must have a seamless GUI front-end so that the unwashed masses of Windows users will accept it? Command line use is a sign that you are a member of the special, literary elite.
This is an X extension that is supposed to speed up the protocol for slower links. It works by running a remote proxy daemon (lbxproxy) and then having all the remote X programs on that machine connect to the proxy (by changing DISPLAY). Has anyone tried it?
The reason I am asking as I proposed this as a possible bypass to a complex remote Citrix setup at work, but it doesn't seem to be available on the target Sun machine(s) (where the X applications live) - and so I never had a chance to try it out... --
I hold the Universal web designers responsible for this problem... Deep linking is the norm, and web sites should be designed to with deep linking in mind. That is what Wired is doing - any page you can link to has all the ad content. So if Universal wants to prevent direct links to the streaming content, and force users to view a page with their logo and ads first, then they should design things that way (no fixed server/URLs, must go the html page first, etc.).
Of course, since the content itself is trailers (i.e. movie ads) this whole difficulty seems a little strange in the first place. --
As I pointed out in an earlier post, the NASA budget is a drop in the ocean compared to entitlement and other transfer payments. So sure, NASA (or it's function) should be privatized (and the regulatory burdens that help prevent investment removed), but do it after the economy has been freed from the crushing burden of the transfer payments. First things first. --
The entire NASA budget is a drop in the ocean compared to the entitlement programs and other transfer payments. So you get upset about a tiny sliver of your tax dollar being used for research, development and exploration with an unknown but potentially huge payoff; vs. most of your tax dollar going to undeserving freeloaders so that they can eat, fuck and make more babies to do the same at your expense.
I have been working in the New York area my entire professonal life (I am 40) and have never seen any indication of a lack of interest in my skills, which I keep sharp and up-to-date. I have worked for a variety of medium-to-large companies, only one start-up. I have never had any interest in mgmt. work, and I have always made that clear. My bosses don't expect me to work overtime - I do it sometimes because I want to. Maybe this is a west coast thing, in that hyper-start-up environment? --
TRON bombed in the box office, and except for the special effects (which were pretty cool for the time), was a pretty dumb movie with a very tired (Disney-standard) plot. As others have pointed out, it is unlikely that such a loss will be remade, nor a prequel or sequel. ZDNet is just filling padding thier site with blown smoke. --
There is no direct (unbuffered) device access in Linux (yet), unlike older Unixen - even though you can create a "character" device with the a name like/dev/rhda1, it will still transfer data through kernel buffers, instead of directly to the userspace buffer referenced by the read() or write() call. It has been an issue of some contention among the kernal maintainers, I understand, and is evidently not as easy to fix as it sounds (note: I know little of Linux internals - I'm just repeating what I've heard). Remember, Linux has a from-scratch code base, and raw disk access is a trick normally used only by high-end databases, like Oracle, and file-system maintenance tools like the original fsck. Up until now, it just hasn't been needed, I guess. --
Many of the problems discussed on this page (especially the public transportation issues) could have been anticipated with a couple of runs with Sim City...:) --
Zoning laws (and similar contstraints on developers) create artificial scarcity. No matter how expensive the land, it would be possible to build affordable housing on it (probably by building up).
So clearly the local zoning boards are happy with the current situation - high prices and all (more fools they). Although if firemen, cops, and teachers can't live there, then the quality of essential services will decline, putting a damper on property values in a most unplesant way (the market will not be denied).
Disclaimer: I don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley - I live in NJ. (But some things are the same all over.) --
Slashdot Mirror
I have been using BladeEnc because it is the only free encoder I could find...
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As a follow up, the list of available filter tags is too small.
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I like this idea. And it could be done both ways: an exclude filter and an include filter.
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"None of the above" should be required by law on all election ballots. That way it would never be a waste of time to go to the ballot box.
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- State-granted monopolies are morally repugnant (yes, I am a Libertarian).
- Even if there was some historical justification for patents in a earlier time when inventions (and inventors) were fewer, this no longer holds. In a world were there are many smart people around; simply knowing that something is possible is half-way there. Trade secrets are not the threat they used to be.
The many problems with patents are just easier to see when they are software patents - but they apply across the board.--
It's like the history of the architecture of the 8086 chip. Intel designed the chip to contain a superset of the 8080 architecture to allow the use of a binary translator on 8080 CP/M programs so that the output could run in the tiny model on CP/M 86. This was so the chip could get a head start on applications. (Not that it always worked - the translator caused expansion in the output code, and some programs became too large (>64K) to run.)
For the sake of this temporary (<6mo) advantage, the x86 architecture has been crippled ever since - inflicting untold pain on developers and users. "Memory models", 16-byte segments, pointer size confusion; absurd, nonstandard C keywords like 'near', 'far', and 'huge'. Bah!
And now, Intel seems to be doing it again...
--
This is an example of bad, nonstandard programming for X. Programs should have compiled-in fallback resources such that if the defaults file is deleted or renamed, then app will have a usable, if vanilla, interface. If the app requires an external resources file to function then the developer was just lazy (and yes, I have come across such - it's very annoying).
--
I tried this out and it worked fine with several generic X apps (xcalc, xterm, xmessage).
Granted, it doesn't work with every app, only with those that follow the prescribed X usages and protocols, in this case in terms of resources - but that was the guy's point, anyway.
--
Gathering dust in the closet. The orange Gas Discharge display has some dark lines in it, and it can only run DOS anyway, so forget it.
I installed Slackware on it; I have used it for text editing on trips but it has power-on problems, currently sitting in the trunk of my car.
Cannibalized for parts (I am using it's 3.5" floppy on my current main machine).
Given to my 7 yr. old son to play games on in it's retirement.
This used to be my main machine. I had upgraded it's original 486 motherboard to the Cirix one. Though it is currently gathering dust (and despite it's whiny hard disk drive) I will probably rework it into a network services machine (printer, modem, internal testbed web server that's guaranteed to be up even when I'm in Windows playing some game.
All that plus the 3 main machines in use in the house: my current Debian 2.1 Linux machine, my wife's WinBlows box and a more modern laptop for mobile web access. How many is that in all? 8! Geez, I had no idea that they were so many. And except for a couple of really old ones, they either have actual or planned uses.
OK, that's enough blathering, gotta get back to work!
--
Maybe the problems are related to the record ~1300 commments for the Kansas - education - Bible-thumper - evolution - creation - everybody's pet hot button - jaw-dropping incredible - coming out of the woodwork story?
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Yes, a really tightly coded byte-by-byte state machine implementation, maybe...
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(Tongue only partway in cheek.)
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The reason I am asking as I proposed this as a possible bypass to a complex remote Citrix setup at work, but it doesn't seem to be available on the target Sun machine(s) (where the X applications live) - and so I never had a chance to try it out...
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Of course, since the content itself is trailers (i.e. movie ads) this whole difficulty seems a little strange in the first place.
--
As I pointed out in an earlier post, the NASA budget is a drop in the ocean compared to entitlement and other transfer payments. So sure, NASA (or it's function) should be privatized (and the regulatory burdens that help prevent investment removed), but do it after the economy has been freed from the crushing burden of the transfer payments. First things first.
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Fool.
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I have been working in the New York area my entire professonal life (I am 40) and have never seen any indication of a lack of interest in my skills, which I keep sharp and up-to-date. I have worked for a variety of medium-to-large companies, only one start-up. I have never had any interest in mgmt. work, and I have always made that clear. My bosses don't expect me to work overtime - I do it sometimes because I want to. Maybe this is a west coast thing, in that hyper-start-up environment?
--
TRON bombed in the box office, and except for the special effects (which were pretty cool for the time), was a pretty dumb movie with a very tired (Disney-standard) plot. As others have pointed out, it is unlikely that such a loss will be remade, nor a prequel or sequel. ZDNet is just filling padding thier site with blown smoke.
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Iv'e heard of this, sounds painful.
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There is no direct (unbuffered) device access in Linux (yet), unlike older Unixen - even though you can create a "character" device with the a name like /dev/rhda1, it will still transfer data through kernel buffers, instead of directly to the userspace buffer referenced by the read() or write() call.
It has been an issue of some contention among the kernal maintainers, I understand, and is evidently not as easy to fix as it sounds (note: I know little of Linux internals - I'm just repeating what I've heard).
Remember, Linux has a from-scratch code base, and raw disk access is a trick normally used only by high-end databases, like Oracle, and file-system maintenance tools like the original fsck. Up until now, it just hasn't been needed, I guess.
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Obviously you have never had children. Babies are wierd like that.
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Many of the problems discussed on this page (especially the public transportation issues) could have been anticipated with a couple of runs with Sim City... :)
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So clearly the local zoning boards are happy with the current situation - high prices and all (more fools they). Although if firemen, cops, and teachers can't live there, then the quality of essential services will decline, putting a damper on property values in a most unplesant way (the market will not be denied).
Disclaimer: I don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley - I live in NJ. (But some things are the same all over.)
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One more round in the endless battle - time to beef up the mental/social immune systems once again - sigh.
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Or do it for Perl too...
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