I can only assume, due to your 4-digit ID, that you are like me, and have a 2-digit Age whose first digit is "3" or higher. We're just getting old, that's all. Top-40 radio is not aimed at us. We'll just stick to the "Best of 60's, 70's, and 80's" stations and wonder why the new acts can't all sound like Lionel Richie or Billy Ocean.
The RIAA has never liked the fact that audio CD's could be used in PC's, because PC's are used to convert the audio CD tracks to MP3. This whole Rootkit thing was a way to make it harder for people to use their CD's on a PC, while not affecting their use in CD players, which is where God (working through the RIAA) intended for them to be played in the first place.
Don't you think they're celebrating now that using audio CD's in PC's is a security risk? I'm suprised they haven't done this sooner. Pretty soon, we'll be asking for Trusted Computing because because it will protect us from oursel^h^h^h^h^h^h the security risks inherent in unsafe CD playing....
It probably doesn't count the cost to build the fab, either. The last time I checked, building a sub-micron fab cost roughly eleventy billion dollars....
Am I the only one who read this as a "Doping Bug" at first, and figured that someone managed to create some in-game steroids which they were passing out to all the elite players?
Exactly. If all they wanted was a biometric way to authenticate that the proper people were using the passes, it seems a picture would be much less invasive. I mean, they already hire people to take your picture and sell it back to you as you enter the park whether or not you want your picture taken, taking your picture when you enter the park is not that much of a stretch. And facial recognition technology must be just as accurate as hand geometry, and there's the added benefit that if there's a questionable match, a ticket taker can compare the person's face with a prior picture easier than they can compare hand geometries.
As to why Disney would want to take everyone's fingerprints at some point in the future, I have no idea. What practical use would a fingerprint collection of everyone who went to Disney have? It seems like an awfully large endeavor to just reduce the number of people sharing season passes....
One of my gripes with the new vs the old is with the treatment of the Jedi.
In the original trilogy, the Jedi didn't really do much fighting. Yoda even tells Luke in Empire "the force is to be used for knowledge and defence, never for attack." When the Falcon gets pulled into the Death Star, Obiwan doesn't come out swinging, he sneaks around to free the ship. The part that gets me most is when Luke is fighting Vader in Jedi. When does Luke declare himself to be a Jedi? When he throws his weapon away. He STOPS FIGHTING. That was when he claimed is rightful status... While watching the new movies, it was like a stone in my shoe that kept bothering me. I kept thinking "but a Jedi wouldn't act that way."
Maybe that's why in order to set things right and "restore balance to the force", all the jedi but 2 had to be killed and the entire known universe had to enter a dark age, to get the Jedi order back to its less pugilistic and political roots. I think we're supposed to see something a little wrong with the old Jedi order, and that the new one has different priorities.
Please patent every video-game related thing in sight, right now, for the next 20 years!
Maybe then when my seven-month old daughter is old enough for those game-addict genes she got from her dad to kick in, the video games will be so lame that she'll read a book instead.
They test chips for a reason, folks. All 10 million of those transistors need to be working properly in order for the chip to work. Otherwise, it would be like a car that had two of its wires crossed: sure it might be in a nonessential system, but then again, what if it isn't?
And all manufacturing processes fail from time to time, microchip manufacturing is no exception. In a lot of 1000 chips, you might get 1 or 2 where the silicon wafer wasn't right to begin with, or one of the layers was a millionth of an inch too thick, and that causes a problem where the chip should have twiddled a '1' when it really twiddled a '0'. These are big problems, and could mean the difference between your heart monitor working or not working. The goal of testing is to find these problems early and get rid of them before it reaches a customer, not to sell defective shit to them anyway just to make another buck.
How can I use my hardware token from work to authenticate to my bank? There are only two ways I know of. Either my bank and my employer both know the secret key for my fob, in which case either one can spoof me to the other one. Or my bank has my employer perform the authentication.
There's a third way, of course -- get a trusted third party to do the authenticating. Like, say, a particular software company that we all know that has months and months of experience in Trusted Computing....
vis-a-vis Jon Stewart not being a serious journalist. The Daily Show has an International Edition that actually plays on CNN on weekends (if you live in asia). Which at last look was accepted as a serious news channel.
Political satire has always been just as, or indeed more effective in changing opinion on policies and governments than the regular news media.
I think what you're really saying is that Americans are bad at spotting satire, and we need the guy to be on a Funny Channel to realize he's not a Serious Journalist... while the rest of the world doesn't just assume that a guy with a suit on a News Channel is automatically correct....
I'll bet that most of the actual hardware for this project would actually be rather easy to design, just using some reference diagrams of the interfaces involved (AGP and DVI). Using that big-ass FPGA in there makes all the difference -- now, most of the complexity of the design looks more like software than hardware. Open-Source Hardware doesn't make sense without a part like an FPGA, which blurs the line between software and hardware. Except instead of C++ or java, you're programming in God's Own Language, VHDL. (except for the fallen who use Verilog...)
I think the company would make a ton of money just making these as a reference platform and selling them to University students looking for a way to program their own GPU on the cheap for research purposes. Heck, Xilinx should do it themselves, and give all these students exposure to Xilinx parts (and their crappy design software) before they even find out who Altera is.
This project looks interesting. I'd sign on to help out, but this gets dangerously close to what my Day Job is, and I don't think my management would smile on my participation...
The question we should ask Darl is, if someone wants to give away their work for free, who is he to stop them? His position is a lot like saying that Habitat for Humanity is taking food off the tables of building contractors...
Ken's winning streak has been fantastic for Jeopardy's ratings (up 35% from the same time last season, last I heard). This could be just another ploy to try and drive the ratings up even further.
That 75th episode where we all think Ken will lose wouldn't happen to bo during sweeps week, would it? just a thought...
The EFF should monitor the trademark applications for "katie.com". If Penguin has registered it already, they should challenge it. If they haven't registered it, they should try to register it on behalf of Katie J, or else just monitor the applications and challenge it the instant it gets filed. Let's face it, lawyers for big companies only understand it when other lawyers do something that can threaten them -- every month that nothing gets done is a victory for the Penguin and their domain hijacking...
Even if Katie J only wins the trademark for katie.com in the UK - where she lives and her business is probably based - it will still be a moral victory, and proof that IP laws don't just exist for the benefit of big companies.
If Katie J doesn't want any money to fight this, I'll respect that, but I'll give (more) money to the EFF if they can help...
From TFA:
Ever since the book was published - four years after she had first been bought it - Katie Jones has received masses of email and heavy traffic to her site but wants none of it. She has had to pull her own content off visible pages on the site, and has posted instead a protest blog about how the book's publishers - Penguin - have effectively made it impossible for her to use her own property.
On top of this, Katie runs a chatroom business in the UK, and had used the site as a homepage to, among other things, post pictures of her baby. Considering the context, it was impossible for her to mention either on her homepage.
What is especially upsetting to new mum Katie is the content of the thousands of emails sent to her email address. Many tell tales of sexual abuse, many ask for advice, but many more contain sick and offensive comments from those who find paedophilia amusing or exciting....
As Katie herself explains: "Katie.com belongs to me, it's associated with my professional and personal reputation and if they can hijack it like this then what kind of precedent is that setting for other companies or people to do the same to other peoples domain names?" She neatly sumises: "It's akin to publishing a book with my home phone number as the title, or my home address." If Penguin doesn't behave more responsibly, it may quickly find public opinion turns against it.
The Register article seemed informative but can this really be all there is to this? Is Penguin really so dumb as to steamroller over someone's domain name and not offer even a token sum to fix it? I wonder. If Katie T. and Penguin really are this mean-spirited and greedy then I do hope that someone steps forward and helps Katie J. fund a legal challenge.
No, you pretty much have it right. This story has been around for a while and very little has changed. You can google for older stories if you like.
Katie J. is in a no-win situation. If she offers to sell the domain or sue for damages, she'll be accused of trying to profit off of Penguin's book, and would likely lose the domain in a trademark dispute to WIPO.
But Penguin's use of katie.com is directly causing her harm, because she effectively can't use it for its intended purpose because of all the traffic it is getting. And even if she got Penguin to change future editions, the damage is already done -- katie.com is effectively useless for anything that is not associated with the book. The only way to remedy this is to sue for damaged caused by Penguin's behavior -- which, as we already discussed, she can't really do.
This is why I'm not a lawyer. It seems like they're all schmucks.
I remember when i was a poor jr. high school student and i *ahem* "found" a copy of the original Civilization. I was able to figure out the entire game just from the Civlopedia.
I was introduced to Civ in the exact same manner. When I think about all the Civ games I've bought since, I think Sid forgives me for "finding" my first copy.
My high school was down the road from a big Barnes and Noble, and I remember camping out there for ten to twenty minutes at a time after school, reading the "Rome on 640k a day" strategy guide cover to cover before I finally bought it. Those were the days...
Bill Gates directly owns 1.12 billion shares (that's 1.12e9), and indirectly owns 428K shares, so his cash dividend will be somewhere between $3.36 and 4.64 billion
Why do I have the sudden urge to play Railroad Tycoon?
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I can only assume, due to your 4-digit ID, that you are like me, and have a 2-digit Age whose first digit is "3" or higher. We're just getting old, that's all. Top-40 radio is not aimed at us. We'll just stick to the "Best of 60's, 70's, and 80's" stations and wonder why the new acts can't all sound like Lionel Richie or Billy Ocean.
Maybe it's April in Australia right now?
you forgot:
:)
5) My local newspaper is behind the curve because they refused to take my idea for a mispelled, dupe-filled Tech column.
Don't you think they're celebrating now that using audio CD's in PC's is a security risk? I'm suprised they haven't done this sooner. Pretty soon, we'll be asking for Trusted Computing because because it will protect us from oursel^h^h^h^h^h^h the security risks inherent in unsafe CD playing....
Some countries (like Japan) require all foreign visitors to carry their passport on their person at all times.
It probably doesn't count the cost to build the fab, either. The last time I checked, building a sub-micron fab cost roughly eleventy billion dollars....
Calling Mr. Dvorak a dork is an insult to all of us Dorks....
Am I the only one who read this as a "Doping Bug" at first, and figured that someone managed to create some in-game steroids which they were passing out to all the elite players?
Exactly. If all they wanted was a biometric way to authenticate that the proper people were using the passes, it seems a picture would be much less invasive. I mean, they already hire people to take your picture and sell it back to you as you enter the park whether or not you want your picture taken, taking your picture when you enter the park is not that much of a stretch. And facial recognition technology must be just as accurate as hand geometry, and there's the added benefit that if there's a questionable match, a ticket taker can compare the person's face with a prior picture easier than they can compare hand geometries. As to why Disney would want to take everyone's fingerprints at some point in the future, I have no idea. What practical use would a fingerprint collection of everyone who went to Disney have? It seems like an awfully large endeavor to just reduce the number of people sharing season passes....
Maybe that's why in order to set things right and "restore balance to the force", all the jedi but 2 had to be killed and the entire known universe had to enter a dark age, to get the Jedi order back to its less pugilistic and political roots. I think we're supposed to see something a little wrong with the old Jedi order, and that the new one has different priorities.
He inVaded the Jedi temple and killed everyone. I'd say that's not too much of a stretch.
Maybe then when my seven-month old daughter is old enough for those game-addict genes she got from her dad to kick in, the video games will be so lame that she'll read a book instead.
And all manufacturing processes fail from time to time, microchip manufacturing is no exception. In a lot of 1000 chips, you might get 1 or 2 where the silicon wafer wasn't right to begin with, or one of the layers was a millionth of an inch too thick, and that causes a problem where the chip should have twiddled a '1' when it really twiddled a '0'. These are big problems, and could mean the difference between your heart monitor working or not working. The goal of testing is to find these problems early and get rid of them before it reaches a customer, not to sell defective shit to them anyway just to make another buck.
There's a third way, of course -- get a trusted third party to do the authenticating. Like, say, a particular software company that we all know that has months and months of experience in Trusted Computing....
What do you think Apple is doing with all of those old, obsolete G4 cube cases?
Yup, that's right -- they're partnering with Kleenex for a new line of high-tech tissue boxes.
So, who wants to bet that Apple already owns "iSnot", and this is really MS's attempt to copy them again?
Political satire has always been just as, or indeed more effective in changing opinion on policies and governments than the regular news media.
I think what you're really saying is that Americans are bad at spotting satire, and we need the guy to be on a Funny Channel to realize he's not a Serious Journalist... while the rest of the world doesn't just assume that a guy with a suit on a News Channel is automatically correct....
I think the company would make a ton of money just making these as a reference platform and selling them to University students looking for a way to program their own GPU on the cheap for research purposes. Heck, Xilinx should do it themselves, and give all these students exposure to Xilinx parts (and their crappy design software) before they even find out who Altera is.
This project looks interesting. I'd sign on to help out, but this gets dangerously close to what my Day Job is, and I don't think my management would smile on my participation...
The question we should ask Darl is, if someone wants to give away their work for free, who is he to stop them? His position is a lot like saying that Habitat for Humanity is taking food off the tables of building contractors...
That 75th episode where we all think Ken will lose wouldn't happen to bo during sweeps week, would it? just a thought...
Newest pointless Slashbot catchphrase goes here, right between "In Soviet Russia..." and "you must be new here".
Even if Katie J only wins the trademark for katie.com in the UK - where she lives and her business is probably based - it will still be a moral victory, and proof that IP laws don't just exist for the benefit of big companies.
If Katie J doesn't want any money to fight this, I'll respect that, but I'll give (more) money to the EFF if they can help...
From TFA: Ever since the book was published - four years after she had first been bought it - Katie Jones has received masses of email and heavy traffic to her site but wants none of it. She has had to pull her own content off visible pages on the site, and has posted instead a protest blog about how the book's publishers - Penguin - have effectively made it impossible for her to use her own property. On top of this, Katie runs a chatroom business in the UK, and had used the site as a homepage to, among other things, post pictures of her baby. Considering the context, it was impossible for her to mention either on her homepage. What is especially upsetting to new mum Katie is the content of the thousands of emails sent to her email address. Many tell tales of sexual abuse, many ask for advice, but many more contain sick and offensive comments from those who find paedophilia amusing or exciting. ...
As Katie herself explains: "Katie.com belongs to me, it's associated with my professional and personal reputation and if they can hijack it like this then what kind of precedent is that setting for other companies or people to do the same to other peoples domain names?" She neatly sumises: "It's akin to publishing a book with my home phone number as the title, or my home address." If Penguin doesn't behave more responsibly, it may quickly find public opinion turns against it.
No, you pretty much have it right. This story has been around for a while and very little has changed. You can google for older stories if you like.
Katie J. is in a no-win situation. If she offers to sell the domain or sue for damages, she'll be accused of trying to profit off of Penguin's book, and would likely lose the domain in a trademark dispute to WIPO.
But Penguin's use of katie.com is directly causing her harm, because she effectively can't use it for its intended purpose because of all the traffic it is getting. And even if she got Penguin to change future editions, the damage is already done -- katie.com is effectively useless for anything that is not associated with the book. The only way to remedy this is to sue for damaged caused by Penguin's behavior -- which, as we already discussed, she can't really do.
This is why I'm not a lawyer. It seems like they're all schmucks.
I was introduced to Civ in the exact same manner. When I think about all the Civ games I've bought since, I think Sid forgives me for "finding" my first copy.
My high school was down the road from a big Barnes and Noble, and I remember camping out there for ten to twenty minutes at a time after school, reading the "Rome on 640k a day" strategy guide cover to cover before I finally bought it. Those were the days...
Why do I have the sudden urge to play Railroad Tycoon?