Hey everyone - glad you're excited about the new beta, we're pretty excited to release it. We actually haven't finished the QA on the download page, the update snippets, etc, yet. What you're seeing here is that last night we started sending out the final bits to our mirror network. So yes, you could go get it directly off the FTP servers, but that can overload mirrors and make it hard for other people to download it.
We'd prefer if you waited a few hours until about 2pm PDT when we'll be ready to update:
Don't mince words, Taco. Tell us how you really feel.
Seriously, though. While I'm not a fan of DRM by any means, I'm a little unhappy with the fact that a lot of anti-DRM advocates use strongly charged statements like this one in their arguments. I think the argument that once I've paid for content I should be able to device-shift it at will is solid enough without regressing into hyperbole and strawman attacks.
Once Internet Explorer is installed, you can go to the Windows Update site by typing http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com into the address bar of Internet Explorer.
If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.
There are actually a few new features from the PR release, most notably a new Options section (Options > Advanced) for tabbed browsing, which seems to have come from including the TabBrowser Preferences extension into the base.
Oh, and of course, that means the TabBrowser Preferences doesn't work anymore:)
Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but "The Matrix" has been seen by more people and I was looking for a way to let people know what to expect. I didn't mean to imply that such conversations were a ripoff.
I had the pleasure of seeing Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence at a midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival along with about 1200 other people who all fit nicely into the "anime geek" demographic. The director wasn't there for a Q&A, which was sad, because after seeing the film I definitely had some Qs for which the As would have been interesting.
The movie takes place some intederminate amount of time after Ghost in the Shell, and the Major's partner, Batou, has become something of a loner within Section 9. He feels that no new partner could ever equal the Major, and you really get the sense of the deep bond that had connected the two, and that he has lost. Of course, the fact that the Major's "ghost" simply disappeared without a trace is always itching at him, as well.
The movie opens with Batou showing up at a crime scene where a "Gynoid" has slaughtered her owner and two cops. A fight ensues, and before it ends, Batou hears the "Gynoid" ask for help in the voice of a little girl.
Section 9 decides to investigate, and Batou is assigned a new partner. The movie follows their investigation in pretty standard 3-act style, but the universe that the characters are moving through makes things a little more complicated. Everyone has an "e-brain" which is constantly connected to the global information net. Our characters spout obscure biblical and literal references, and more disturbingly, can have their heads hacked into if they're not paying attention closely. This frequently spurrs "Matrix"-like discussions and situations where characters are trying to determine what is real and what isn't. Batou's investigations take him to the modern Yakuza, an old border town, and eventually to the source of the plea for help he hears at the start of the movie.
But that's the plot, which adds to the enjoyment of anime, but isn't neccessarily all that requisite, right? Let's talk about the other stuff that matters: the animation, and the imaginary future society.
It rocks. There's an effective combination of computer animation and classic anime that causes some breathtaking moments (watch the alley scene at the beginning). The fights are fantastic, although I felt a little too few and far between. The futuristic world is well thought out, with a visual design being of a modern technological world that has gone 1920s-retro when it comes to industrial design and architecture.
It's definitely worth seeing if you like anime.
Re:Quick summary of the original story
on
A Sound of Thunder
·
· Score: 1
You're mixing up your Ray Bradbury with your Harlan Ellison, my friend. In Ellison's Star Trek episode, Kirk saves a girl from being run down in the street, she is able to organize a protest that delays the US entry into WWII, and the Nazis win, the Federation ceases to exist, and Kirk & Co are stuck at the "City at the Edge of Forever".
In Bradbury's story, english spelling and the outcome of the presidential election (and who knows what else) are affected.
Why? So that someone who's always wanted to learn more about Linux (like me) but who hasn't wanted to shell out VMWare (like me) nor clutter his already cluttered condo with another computer (like me).
Slashdot is a bit of a biased audience, of course, but I assure you that there are people like me out there: smart, computer-oriented, tech-savvy folks, who were brought up with WinTel and haven't explored Linux because it's been impractical for them to set up dual-boot or a dedicated hacking machine. Being able to run Linux as an application in Windows will allow me to teach myself how to use the OS without overtaking the computer that I need to use for daily work use (which, of course, requires Windows.)
That's a really good question. Here in Canada, VIA Rail was testing some Bombardier Jet Trains for use on the Quebec-Windsor corridor, but that was a bit more than a year ago now, and there's been no news.
I wonder if the costs of upgrading the infrastructure proved to be too much of a barrier, as compared to the cost of buying some discount Air Canada MD-80s and setting up shuttle service.
I'm a huge Firefly fan, and was pretty eager to see what this project would be like. Sadly, if the "What is Firefly" multimedia project that's available on the website is any indication, the project is going to be little more than a revisiting of a fan's favourite clips along with a voiceover filled with harsh invective and "woe is the world for the cancellation of Firefly!" mopings.
The show was, IMHO, very unique. It took me a while to get around the mix of high and low tech, and I think it took the writers a while to work it through, too, but by the end of its run, it had done an admirable job of building a believable future society where frontiersmen had to do what was "right" without benefit of the law's judgement. I wish that the voiceover focused more on how the show espoused classic Libretarian ideals in an easily consumable medium instead of simply whining about how it was "the best show on television" and "too ahead of its time for FOX executives." The latter gripes are subjective and weaken any analysis of what actually made the show worth watching in the first place.
A friend of mine is starting into what looks like a promising career in scriptwriting. He's been paying his dues writing kiddie movies, and now he's doing his first sci-fi horror flick.
Having spent a lot of time hanging around engineers when he was at university (he wrote for their humour rag) he decided to put a good deal of thought into the script. Not only did he consult people to find out what they liked/disliked about the sci-fi horror genre, but he also did a bit of research to ensure that the "sci" part didn't take too far a backseat to the "fi" part. Within reason, of course, but he did make an effort.
For his troubles? The producers congratulated him on bringing them a thoughtful, edgy, well researched script, and then immidiately asked him to have more stuff (like inert barrels) blow up real good so that the movie would be more "explosive." This would mean cutting out some of the neccessary "sci" background.
It seems that most audiences don't mind checking their brains at the door, and producers want to sell tickets, not educations. Go figure.
Oops.. I meant to point here for Mike Shaver's initial reaction to the ZDNet article, which was to echo the comments of Christopher Blizzard, another Mozilla developer who took issue with the article.
It should be noted that Mike Shaver's (formerly of Netscape, still of Mozilla) comments were, as he points out, taken horribly out of context in the ZDNet article.
Business 2.0 had a feature on RFID tags just under a year ago. The feature talks about how companies are planning on using the tags primarily as a means of better inventory tracking internally, and how other devices like laundry machines will be able to make use of the tags in order to determine, for instance, what types of fabric are being inserted. Most of the tags planned for use in commodity items are "passive tags" which don't broadcast their identity.
A sidebar talks about how Walmart plans on being an early adopter.
Privacy concerns? Pish. Do you REALLY think that people out there care enough about whether or not your clothes are a dacron/polyester blend to go around scanning you? I'm totally for the idea of allowing products to answer a "What are you?" question from devices like store checkouts, laundry machines, etc. Saves me the time from "asking" and "answering" the question myself.
They're not buying the accounting division. That's worth more than $3.5 billion. Almost all large accounting firms are spinning off their consulting arms in order to avoid further accusations of conflict of interest... such as, say, fudging your client's annual report in return for a consulting contract or ten.
Consulting made up ~25% of IBM's 18 Billion in revenue last year.
IBM's Investor Relations Website shows that IBM Global Services (IGS) made up $35 billion (41%) of IBM's $85 billion in revenues for 2001. According to the annual report, IGS operated at a 27.5% gross profit margin ($9.6B). This is almost directly comparable to the hardware division, which pulled in $33.3 billion (39% of IBM total revenue) at a gross profit margin of 27.7%($9.2B).
Your point is quite valid, however. IBM wouldn't have survived the early 90s if not for the fact that it diversified and became an IT solutions provider. Its strategy, not a secret, is to be the "one stop shop" for your IT needs: IGS drafts a plan (with pricing options for IBM and non-IBM vendors), and can set you up with the solution you need, be it IBM or non-IBM parts. Of course, you'll probably get a touch of a discount for shopping IBM - call it a bulk deal.
PwC's IT consultancy was looking for a buyer, and IBM wanted to swallow a bit more market share in that area. Plus, at $3.5 billion for a division that brought in $4.6 billion last year, the price was right -- certainly much "more right" than the $18 billion price tag that Hewlett-Packard turned its nose up at last year.
Also, don't forget that IGS will not only sell you IBM hardware, but also IBM software, which is far and away the most profitable division of IBM. While software pulled in only $12.9 billion in revenue, but made $10.6 billion in profit at a gross margin of 82.5%.
I wonder how much it would have cost before the whole accounting meltdown
Last year PwC was in the midst of a deal with Hewlett-Packard when it blew up because of disputes over PwC's price tag... then a much larger $18 billion. In comparison, IBM got the consultancy arm on somewhat of a "fire sale".
If a DLP projector had a stuck pixel, you'd need to repair it. There's details on www.dlp.com, but basically the mechanism works using two small magnets and an array of really small mirrors. To turn a pixel "on", one of the magnets is powered, thus turning that pixel's mirror towards the light source, thus reflecting the light, thus projecting a pixel.
So for a pixel to be "stuck", the magnet/mirror assembly would be broken, and require a service call or a REALLY small screwdriver, as these things are on the order of micometers.:)
Most likely because the R&D isn't for sale, just the HDD production business. IBM guards intellectual property very closely, and I have serious doubts that sale (or merging) of the HD business would include all related patents and research.
I'm fairly sure that IBM will continue to research HDD technology, and then sell that research to firms who want to go and push it out to market.
Right. It's easy to prepare for a Slashdotting, because the moderators are soooo predictable in which submissions they post.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call it a wise business decision to prepare for a 12 hour long 100-fold increase in web traffic on the off-chance that one of your pages might get posted to/. during prime-time.
That said, they really should have been able to react more quickly, so that the downtime was minimized.
There's a large difference between knowing how something works, and knowing how to use something.
For example: I know how to use the automatic transmission in my car, but I certainly don't how it works. I know how to use money, but I haven't the foggiest understanding of the macroeconomics upon which the value of that money is determined.
Surveys of this nature are frequently unclear on whether they're testing understanding of inner workings or understanding of usage points. I would argue that your average Joe Citizen needs to know as much about the technology he uses in the day to day as he needs to know about his car. That is to say that he only needs to know how to turn it on, how to use it to accomplish his task, and how to maintain it properly.
The real issue is one of the user experience. If Joe Citizen can't figure out how to get his car to change gears (because it's an "Option...") then there's a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
No decision has been made. Not quite sure what you're talking about.
We released early - go get it.
Hey everyone - glad you're excited about the new beta, we're pretty excited to release it. We actually haven't finished the QA on the download page, the update snippets, etc, yet. What you're seeing here is that last night we started sending out the final bits to our mirror network. So yes, you could go get it directly off the FTP servers, but that can overload mirrors and make it hard for other people to download it.
We'd prefer if you waited a few hours until about 2pm PDT when we'll be ready to update:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-beta.html
which uses our mirror-rotation script to ease the load of downloads.
Mike Beltzner
Director of Firefox Development
Yup, Weave is going to be taking off soon. You can find out a lot more about it here:
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/06/weave-status-update/
And I talked with Sean Michael Kerner about it for a while, and he posted the video of that chat here:
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/06/mozilla-weave-gears-up-for-new.html
Please use the mirror infrastructure, not the direct link to the FTP site. You can get your builds easily at:
h tml
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/all-beta.
as soon as they are officially relased (which should be in a few minutes!)
To those who cherish freedom...
Don't mince words, Taco. Tell us how you really feel.
Seriously, though. While I'm not a fan of DRM by any means, I'm a little unhappy with the fact that a lot of anti-DRM advocates use strongly charged statements like this one in their arguments. I think the argument that once I've paid for content I should be able to device-shift it at will is solid enough without regressing into hyperbole and strawman attacks.
Thank you for your interest in Windows Update
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You need to be running a version of Internet Explorer 5 or higher in order to use Windows Update.
Download the latest version of Internet Explorer
Once Internet Explorer is installed, you can go to the Windows Update site by typing http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com into the address bar of Internet Explorer.
If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.
There are actually a few new features from the PR release, most notably a new Options section (Options > Advanced) for tabbed browsing, which seems to have come from including the TabBrowser Preferences extension into the base. Oh, and of course, that means the TabBrowser Preferences doesn't work anymore :)
Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but "The Matrix" has been seen by more people and I was looking for a way to let people know what to expect. I didn't mean to imply that such conversations were a ripoff.
I had the pleasure of seeing Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence at a midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival along with about 1200 other people who all fit nicely into the "anime geek" demographic. The director wasn't there for a Q&A, which was sad, because after seeing the film I definitely had some Qs for which the As would have been interesting.
The movie takes place some intederminate amount of time after Ghost in the Shell, and the Major's partner, Batou, has become something of a loner within Section 9. He feels that no new partner could ever equal the Major, and you really get the sense of the deep bond that had connected the two, and that he has lost. Of course, the fact that the Major's "ghost" simply disappeared without a trace is always itching at him, as well.
The movie opens with Batou showing up at a crime scene where a "Gynoid" has slaughtered her owner and two cops. A fight ensues, and before it ends, Batou hears the "Gynoid" ask for help in the voice of a little girl.
Section 9 decides to investigate, and Batou is assigned a new partner. The movie follows their investigation in pretty standard 3-act style, but the universe that the characters are moving through makes things a little more complicated. Everyone has an "e-brain" which is constantly connected to the global information net. Our characters spout obscure biblical and literal references, and more disturbingly, can have their heads hacked into if they're not paying attention closely. This frequently spurrs "Matrix"-like discussions and situations where characters are trying to determine what is real and what isn't. Batou's investigations take him to the modern Yakuza, an old border town, and eventually to the source of the plea for help he hears at the start of the movie.
But that's the plot, which adds to the enjoyment of anime, but isn't neccessarily all that requisite, right? Let's talk about the other stuff that matters: the animation, and the imaginary future society.
It rocks. There's an effective combination of computer animation and classic anime that causes some breathtaking moments (watch the alley scene at the beginning). The fights are fantastic, although I felt a little too few and far between. The futuristic world is well thought out, with a visual design being of a modern technological world that has gone 1920s-retro when it comes to industrial design and architecture.
It's definitely worth seeing if you like anime.
You're mixing up your Ray Bradbury with your Harlan Ellison, my friend. In Ellison's Star Trek episode, Kirk saves a girl from being run down in the street, she is able to organize a protest that delays the US entry into WWII, and the Nazis win, the Federation ceases to exist, and Kirk & Co are stuck at the "City at the Edge of Forever".
In Bradbury's story, english spelling and the outcome of the presidential election (and who knows what else) are affected.
Why? So that someone who's always wanted to learn more about Linux (like me) but who hasn't wanted to shell out VMWare (like me) nor clutter his already cluttered condo with another computer (like me).
Slashdot is a bit of a biased audience, of course, but I assure you that there are people like me out there: smart, computer-oriented, tech-savvy folks, who were brought up with WinTel and haven't explored Linux because it's been impractical for them to set up dual-boot or a dedicated hacking machine. Being able to run Linux as an application in Windows will allow me to teach myself how to use the OS without overtaking the computer that I need to use for daily work use (which, of course, requires Windows.)
That's a really good question. Here in Canada, VIA Rail was testing some Bombardier Jet Trains for use on the Quebec-Windsor corridor, but that was a bit more than a year ago now, and there's been no news.
I wonder if the costs of upgrading the infrastructure proved to be too much of a barrier, as compared to the cost of buying some discount Air Canada MD-80s and setting up shuttle service.
I'm a huge Firefly fan, and was pretty eager to see what this project would be like. Sadly, if the "What is Firefly" multimedia project that's available on the website is any indication, the project is going to be little more than a revisiting of a fan's favourite clips along with a voiceover filled with harsh invective and "woe is the world for the cancellation of Firefly!" mopings.
The show was, IMHO, very unique. It took me a while to get around the mix of high and low tech, and I think it took the writers a while to work it through, too, but by the end of its run, it had done an admirable job of building a believable future society where frontiersmen had to do what was "right" without benefit of the law's judgement. I wish that the voiceover focused more on how the show espoused classic Libretarian ideals in an easily consumable medium instead of simply whining about how it was "the best show on television" and "too ahead of its time for FOX executives." The latter gripes are subjective and weaken any analysis of what actually made the show worth watching in the first place.
A friend of mine is starting into what looks like a promising career in scriptwriting. He's been paying his dues writing kiddie movies, and now he's doing his first sci-fi horror flick. Having spent a lot of time hanging around engineers when he was at university (he wrote for their humour rag) he decided to put a good deal of thought into the script. Not only did he consult people to find out what they liked/disliked about the sci-fi horror genre, but he also did a bit of research to ensure that the "sci" part didn't take too far a backseat to the "fi" part. Within reason, of course, but he did make an effort. For his troubles? The producers congratulated him on bringing them a thoughtful, edgy, well researched script, and then immidiately asked him to have more stuff (like inert barrels) blow up real good so that the movie would be more "explosive." This would mean cutting out some of the neccessary "sci" background. It seems that most audiences don't mind checking their brains at the door, and producers want to sell tickets, not educations. Go figure.
Oops .. I meant to point here for Mike Shaver's initial reaction to the ZDNet article, which was to echo the comments of Christopher Blizzard, another Mozilla developer who took issue with the article.
Clear? Good.
It should be noted that Mike Shaver's (formerly of Netscape, still of Mozilla) comments were, as he points out, taken horribly out of context in the ZDNet article.
Business 2.0 had a feature on RFID tags just under a year ago. The feature talks about how companies are planning on using the tags primarily as a means of better inventory tracking internally, and how other devices like laundry machines will be able to make use of the tags in order to determine, for instance, what types of fabric are being inserted. Most of the tags planned for use in commodity items are "passive tags" which don't broadcast their identity.
A sidebar talks about how Walmart plans on being an early adopter.
Privacy concerns? Pish. Do you REALLY think that people out there care enough about whether or not your clothes are a dacron/polyester blend to go around scanning you? I'm totally for the idea of allowing products to answer a "What are you?" question from devices like store checkouts, laundry machines, etc. Saves me the time from "asking" and "answering" the question myself.
They're not buying the accounting division. That's worth more than $3.5 billion. Almost all large accounting firms are spinning off their consulting arms in order to avoid further accusations of conflict of interest ... such as, say, fudging your client's annual report in return for a consulting contract or ten.
Consulting made up ~25% of IBM's 18 Billion in revenue last year.
IBM's Investor Relations Website shows that IBM Global Services (IGS) made up $35 billion (41%) of IBM's $85 billion in revenues for 2001. According to the annual report, IGS operated at a 27.5% gross profit margin ($9.6B). This is almost directly comparable to the hardware division, which pulled in $33.3 billion (39% of IBM total revenue) at a gross profit margin of 27.7%($9.2B).
Your point is quite valid, however. IBM wouldn't have survived the early 90s if not for the fact that it diversified and became an IT solutions provider. Its strategy, not a secret, is to be the "one stop shop" for your IT needs: IGS drafts a plan (with pricing options for IBM and non-IBM vendors), and can set you up with the solution you need, be it IBM or non-IBM parts. Of course, you'll probably get a touch of a discount for shopping IBM - call it a bulk deal.
PwC's IT consultancy was looking for a buyer, and IBM wanted to swallow a bit more market share in that area. Plus, at $3.5 billion for a division that brought in $4.6 billion last year, the price was right -- certainly much "more right" than the $18 billion price tag that Hewlett-Packard turned its nose up at last year.
Also, don't forget that IGS will not only sell you IBM hardware, but also IBM software, which is far and away the most profitable division of IBM. While software pulled in only $12.9 billion in revenue, but made $10.6 billion in profit at a gross margin of 82.5%.
I wonder how much it would have cost before the whole accounting meltdown
... then a much larger $18 billion. In comparison, IBM got the consultancy arm on somewhat of a "fire sale".
Last year PwC was in the midst of a deal with Hewlett-Packard when it blew up because of disputes over PwC's price tag
If a DLP projector had a stuck pixel, you'd need to repair it. There's details on www.dlp.com, but basically the mechanism works using two small magnets and an array of really small mirrors. To turn a pixel "on", one of the magnets is powered, thus turning that pixel's mirror towards the light source, thus reflecting the light, thus projecting a pixel.
:)
So for a pixel to be "stuck", the magnet/mirror assembly would be broken, and require a service call or a REALLY small screwdriver, as these things are on the order of micometers.
Most likely because the R&D isn't for sale, just the HDD production business. IBM guards intellectual property very closely, and I have serious doubts that sale (or merging) of the HD business would include all related patents and research.
I'm fairly sure that IBM will continue to research HDD technology, and then sell that research to firms who want to go and push it out to market.
Right. It's easy to prepare for a Slashdotting, because the moderators are soooo predictable in which submissions they post.
/. during prime-time.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call it a wise business decision to prepare for a 12 hour long 100-fold increase in web traffic on the off-chance that one of your pages might get posted to
That said, they really should have been able to react more quickly, so that the downtime was minimized.
(Well - I think I sat nicely on the fence there.)
There's a large difference between knowing how something works, and knowing how to use something.
For example: I know how to use the automatic transmission in my car, but I certainly don't how it works. I know how to use money, but I haven't the foggiest understanding of the macroeconomics upon which the value of that money is determined.
Surveys of this nature are frequently unclear on whether they're testing understanding of inner workings or understanding of usage points. I would argue that your average Joe Citizen needs to know as much about the technology he uses in the day to day as he needs to know about his car. That is to say that he only needs to know how to turn it on, how to use it to accomplish his task, and how to maintain it properly.
The real issue is one of the user experience. If Joe Citizen can't figure out how to get his car to change gears (because it's an "Option...") then there's a problem.