Cripes, how much crap are they going to shoehorn in there at the mostly-unused hardware configuration level? Will it come with a calculator app and Minesweeper too?
Fifty 11x16x6 stackable plastic tubs by Rubbermaid, with shelving in the closets to hold it all. Cheap, sturdy, waterproof, and they're all stamped with the semi-naughty sounding word "RubberMaid".
Perhaps even more interestingly, it doesn't always really matter if you've done great, repeatable research in the "soft science" fields or outright humanities. You don't have to be a literature expect to have a good insight on "Bartleby the Scrivener". A grad student's blog, as an example, might contain excellent contributions to the conversation.
True, but if faced with the task of drawing rigorously attributed quotations from a blog, well, I'd prefer not to (sorry; couldn't resist). I suspect that most instances of "spontaneous deep insight" from amateurs with ephemeral web pages are uncomplicated enough to be restated without direct reference. If an amateur has constructed a large, complicated analysis that's worthy of reference, however, I'd say mirroring it is practically doing him a favor.
It is estimated that 60 billion feet of cable have been abandoned in the plenum spaces that allow air circulation through a building, creating a fire hazard. Older cable could be particularly toxic in a fire.
I like how the article pushes the "fire hazard" angle, but doesnt' bother to look at which cabling, specifically, is the problem. It portrays it as a problem caused by companies installing network/phone wire recently, when the real problem wire is much older. Most new wire installed by knowledgeable installers is plenum rated-- which means it's self-extinguishing and not nearly as toxic when burned. The nastiest-burning wire you'll find in ceilings is the old pink-beige jacketed 25-200 pair phone cabling that was installed forty years ago by Ma Bell! What's more, much of this nasty multipair wire can't be pulled out because it's still being used. On top of it all, the toxic-fire hazard posed by wiring in the plenum space is miniscule compared to the nasty plastic crap that's in an office itself-- if there's a fire, that cheap desk chair burning is gonna put out nastier smoke than a bundle of cabling. Also, plenum air doesn't generally get pumped into anyone's office. Plenum spaces are used as return-air systems, so any smoke in there is going primarily into the building's air shaft, where it will set off a smoke detector that sends the air out a roof vent rather than back into the building.
Don't get me wrong, as a network cabling installer I'm all for the removal of old cable. I've seen cable trays so packed with old crap that I couldn't get another run through. But the need of some people to pose every problem as a dire safety hazard drives me up a tree. I'm willing to bet that there are very few buildings where the communications wiring is even one of the top five fire-safety hazards.
Actually, requiring the removal of old cabling when you leave a space could be disastrous. Sure, you'll get all the cat5 you ran, as well as the cabling supporting the security and climate control system, and about 100 feet of twinax that does something impossibly important for the grumpy men on the 13th floor.
I had a client whose neighbor in the next suite hired some crazy Bulgarian network installers who offered to pull the old 10base2 coax out of the ceiling while they were putting in the new Cat5. But they got greedy and decided to cut out a huge length of really old 200-pair cabling. Unfortunately, it carried the phone lines for the entire north half of the building.
The landlord should bear the burden of cable management in the plenum spaces. They should install basic cabling, and a tenant should be allowed to install better, on the condition that they leave it in place (sans punch down blocks and racks) for possible re-use by the next tenant. The only people who should be running around in the ceiling pulling wires out are those responsible for ALL the wires.
Absolutely. Plenum spaces are the responsibility of the building. Making tenants pull out old cabling is asking for a nightmare.
No, that is not true. Weather is a dynamical phenomenon that is "chaotic" in the sense that the variables are exponentially dependent on initial conditions. Climate is the set of variables that describe the statistical behaviour of the weather.
Your understanding of the difference between climate and weather are in error. Climate is no less chaotic than weather because it is nothing more than aggregate (usually seasonal) weather data collected over a period of years. Climate is made out of weather.
There is a big difference: we may not be able to predict the eaxct arrival time of a storm, but we CAN predict the mean temperature in LA over the next six months.
Sure, you can predict the mean temperature, but it's no more astoundingly accurate a climate prediction to say "it'll likely be cold in the winter" than it is an amazingly accurate weather prediction to say "it'll likely be cold tonight after the sun goes down".
Let me put it a different way: climate is not totally unpredictable, because you know perfectly well that the mean global temperature isn't ever going to be 1000 deg C
Saying the temp won't be 1000C isn't prediction; it's being rational about the range of possibility. Saying it might be 1000C next year is as unlikely a prediction as a weather prediction saying it'll go from 19C at 2:30pm to 500C at 2:45pm. Knowing the range is a prerequisite for prediction, not a prediction itself (of course, catastrophic variables like the sun going supernova are discarded at this stage, being 7-sigma events).
Stated yet a different way, while the exact path in phase space in a chaotic system takes (the weather) is unpredictable, the volume in which the system can move (the climate) is finite, and hence predictable.
You've got to be kidding. You're saying just knowing (say) what the highest and lowest possible temperatures are from a given initial condition after a given period of time is a valid prediction of temperature? Knowing where the temperature won't be is not the same as accurately predicting where it will be; reason being, as the model advances, the "realm of possibility" expands rapidly. This is where accuracy of the model and its initial starting condition becomes critical. One minor error, over-simplification, or misrepresentation in the model will eventually send it off into the weeds, meaning whatever "prediction" it comes up with essentially worthless. The worst part is, there's no way to "take into account" the unknown values that eventually threw the whole thing out of whack. Chaos always wins.
So, what does all this mean? It means that when scientists predict global warming, they can do it with much more certainty than with which they forecast the weather next week.
Hogwash. A non-linear system (climate) that's an aggregate of smaller non-linear systems (weather) cannot be more predictable than those smaller systems. It's a quaint notion of 19th-century Newtonian Determinism that the little errors cancel each other out when you move up to larger scales, but that's not how it works. A slower moving system like climate will take longer than a faster one like weather to deviate from reality in a simulation, but that does not mean it's more predictable-- it's just scaling. here is a simple, concise article on the subject of climate vs. weather prediction. I can find something with more deep science, if you like, but it's a good starting point.
Until very recently every plane that flew above Mach 1 had to do it while on afterburners, but I believe the new F-22 Raptor can fly at "super cruise" which is some method of breaking the sound barrier without afterburners, which saves a huge amount of fuel. Last I checked the technology behind that was still secret.
Actually, the Concorde only required afterburners to get up to supersonic. When cruising at Mach 1+ it ran without them. The F-22's super-cruise capability is only new for fighter jets.
When you start using someone else's Internet connection w/o asking, compensating, or warning them it opens up a whole 'nother can of worms because basically you are using their computer equipment and bandwidth w/o authorization.
Still, I stand by my original analogy. If you don't want people using your drinking fountain, either lock it up or put it somewhere not accessable from the sidewalk.
People like you are the reason I would never consider using wireless. I suppose if I left my car door unlocked you would reach in and "borrow" my portable MP3 player as well, by hooking up your own headphones and draining my battery.
No, because the inside of your car is YOUR PROPERTY, whereas the sidewalk is NOT. If you left your car radio on and your windows rolled down, would it bother you if I stood on the sidewalk next to your car listening to your radio?
I HATE working in a room with 4 other people. You tend to get nothing done.
I've noticed that, with shared workspace, one Chatty Cathy or Loudmouth Larry can easily prevent the other 4 people from getting anything done. Then, instead of just losing the productivity of whoever's cube the TalkBot's gravitated towards, you lose everyone's. What do you do then? Fire all 5 because of the one boat anchor employee? Getting rid of folks who do good work, but have trouble telling annoying socializers to leave them alone seems like a waste.
Unless you consider broadcasting such an open invitation to everyone as an offer to use that service, then no, you don't have any rights to use someone else's property.
But there's another side to this too, that there are a lot of places where such signal is made available, by local businesses, people in the neighborhood, etc., for that specific purpose of sharing connection. In that case, and quite often when there's no visible posted sign, does such signal constitute an offer for that service?
I think the best analogy is that of a person who installs a drinking fountain on his property next to the sidewalk. Sure, the water has to be paid for, and sure, it's clearly on his property, but the fact that it's not locked up and that it's accessable from the sidewalk is a equivalent to permission. If someone with such a drinking fountain called the cops to have joggers arrested for using their water, I suspect they'd get no response (other than laughter, maybe). Internet access costs less than water, plus it's easier to secure. I'd say an open WiFi signal should be considered de facto permission for public use!
We can't predict the WEATHER, as in the day to day flow of air, all that well, but we are pretty good at predicting the CLIMATE, as in the general pattern of temperature and moisture.
Actually, we are no better at predicting climate than weather. What looks like "greater accuracy" in predictions is simply the effect of scale. Weather and climate are, essentially, the same things on different scales. "Weather" happens in smaller areas over shorter periods of time. Predicting that the climate on a scale of months is about as accurate as predicting weather on a scale of hours. Both weather and climate are chaotic systems that become totally unpredictable beyond a certain number of iterations in any model. Climate change isn't more predictable, it just happens slower.
Heck, how do we know that all life on earth didn't start by a passing visitor from Alphi Centauri landing, taking a whizz on some rock, declare the place uninhabitable and take off?
Well, as urine is sterile (assuming similar Alph Cent physiology) life probably started from the half eaten "bif yi-ro" he tossed on the ground.
Re:Modern mail needed fast transportation.
on
Snail Mail Tech
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· Score: 3, Funny
An interesting tidbit about mail: in the old days, it took so long to send a piece of mail that it was often just as fast going there yourself
Unless it's sent by a super-parabolic trans-atmospheric US Mail Cannon, physical mail has and will always take at least as long to get there as it would for you to go yourself. Mail can only travel as fast as the conveyances they put it on, and most of those conveyances are used to move people as well.
By 1986, ARPANET was just a subset of the Internet as a whole. TCP/IP was declared the standard protocol suite for the network as a whole in 1982*. The adoption of the official Internet Protocol in '82 was the point where it became "the Internet".
This was not generally available to the public and looked nothing like the internet does today.
The Internet hasn't changed at all, man. It still uses TCP/IP and the addressing is IPv4. You're confusing applications that run over the network (web browsing, IM, etc.) with the network itself. Besides, the "lay person's" Internet didn't even begin to form until 1991 when the National Science Foundation lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the Internet.
Furthermore, the "Internet creating" legislation touted by Gore did no such thing-- it merely created the National Research and Education Network (as proposed by Gordon Bell to Gore in 1987), and it didn't actually get signed into law and funded until 1991! Gore tried to position himself as a "technology politician" and failed miserably because he didn't know what he was talking about. No amount of hemming and hawing over colloquialisms and semantics will change the fact that he said the Internet was created in 1986, when it dates back to 1969 in form, and at the very least back to 1982 in name! Arguing that most people think the Internet is looking at porn over a web browser doesn't make Gore's statement right, it merely makes them as ignorant as he was.
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*DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET.
This leads to one of the first definitions of an "internet" as a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP, and "Internet" as connected TCP/IP internets.
why a company named American Micro Devices is locating their plant in Germany and not here in America?
Fool. AMD is "Advanced Micro Devices". You're probably confusing them with the BIOS maker AMI, which is "American Megatrends Inc" (stupidest name I've ever seen).
This patent should have failed the "obvious to one skilled in the art" test. From my reading, it appears to be a patent on managing a money transaction over a communications system using some undefined data processing equipment. Having a middleman broker an exchange is nothing new. The only "innovation" here is using an electronic system in the middle. Essentially, this is a patent on "escrow services....on a computer!"
Come on, this is just how language is used. Like when someone says "I built a house". Chances are, they mean they paid for someone to build it - but you never hear it spoken that way.
I think the semantics are secondary here. Even claiming that one pushed for increased funding to "create the internet" is a foolish misstatement, as the internet was already there in 1986. His exact words of "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" are a bizarre deviation from reality, when all he really did was successfully get a bill signed into law that funded expansion of the existing network. No one would've cut him any slack if he got a highway funding bill passed and then said "I took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System" either. I can't say whether he believed he created the internet, but I will say he was a dope for not being either informed enough or on the ball enough to know how to discuss the subject without sticking his foot in his mouth.
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Is it? Last time I checked, they still used the cyrillic alphabet in Ukraine. Yes, "Ch" is the dominant convention in the English speaking world, but that doesnt mean its the only one.
The problem is that the cyrillic letter "chah" (looks like a backwards '4' or an upside down 'h') is repeatedly mispronounced when represented by "ch", particularly when it appears at the beginning of a word. If I had a nickel for every TV newsreader I heard say "share-noble", I'd have a lot of nickels. The "tch" arose as a means of making people say it right. I can understand their consternation. If it started with "sh", they'd have SPELLED it that way. But I guess that's what you get when you "translate" to a different alphabet using oversimplified phonetics and then give it to a newsmonkey with fabulous hair but no brain. I have visions of them reading "Chernobyl" and thinking "That word starts with 'Cher', so it must be pronounced the same as the name of the singer, 'Cher'." Argh....
Darl seems to be of the same mindset as lawyers who defend mass murderers.
Not the same at *all*. A lawyer who defends a mass murderer is almost always appointed by the court. This lawyer is there to ensure that the legal rights of the defendant are secured. It's a basic and fundamental part of how our legal system works.
With this in mind, it's easy to be vigorous in defending the legal rights of somebody you detest. It's not self-interest, it's moral duty. On the other hand, McBride is in a different ballpark altogether. Here's somebody who's clearly seeking personal gain at other's expense.
We're talking about something worse than a scum-sucking lawyer... the PR man!
You make a good point. I have met many public defenders and frequent pro-bono lawyers who absolutely believed in the system and were quite moral and ethical. Their trick is to tell the client first thing "I don't care if you did it or not. Don't even tell me, because it's not important." But then there's the other kind of defense attorney-- the kind like my cousin Archie-- who use dirty tricks* and courtroom shenanigans to win cases. My cousin is an evil bastard lawyer who is incapable and/or unwilling to see the difference between right and wrong, insofar as it applies in the courtroom. A lot of corporate executives are cut from the same cloth, it seems. I think Darl McBride doesn't even know and probably doesn't care if his techs can come up with proof of IP infringement; he's going let them deal with that issue if it goes to court. He is, as you say, the worst kind of scum: a PR man.
*ask a hostile witness a string of questions that have been gone over before, all of them with "yes" answers. After 20 boring minutes of that, slip in the question "is it possible the gun you saw in my client's hand could have been a toy gun?" and when the unsuspecting witness says "yes....i mean NO" because he was expecting another "yes" question, pounce upon this engineered incident as evidence of "witness uncertainity" and get your scumbag armed robber client a lesser sentence. eeeeeeeeevil......
"EVDs are higher resolution and may be cheaper, but is that enough to be adopted? Boy do I doubt it."
a great many people said that when DVDs first came out when comparing them to LaserDisk
True, but Laserdisc had a bunch of disadvantages people were glad to see the end of. Size is the obvious one, but then there's the even worse problem of having to choose between CAV and CLV formats. Your could have random access to the movie in the form of selectable "tracks" (CAV), or you could have a movie that didn't need to have the disc flipped over halfway through it (CLV); but not both. It'll be interesting to see if region coding is enough of an annoyance to get folks to switch to EVD in significant numbers. They'll almost certainly switch in China, at least.
He may have written it on his own time but I bet you he wrote it using knowledge and tools he wouldn't have had if he wasn't an employee of apple.
So you're saying that the only way to learn how to program apps for the Mac, the only way to get GCC for the Mac, and/or the only way to get the Mac hardware is to work at Apple? I seriously doubt it. Besides, even if he did learn the basics of (say) OS X application programming at Apple, that doesn't give Apple automatic ownership of anything he might create for OS X. If for his Netflix app he used knowledge, tools, and/or hardware that was only available to Apple employees, then yes, your argument is valid; but the mere fact of his employment by Apple doesn't prove any of that.
1. It was created in relation to the business of the employer (Apple; providing music online from the iTunes music store).
I don't see how 'Netflix Fanatic', an app for managing one's DVD rental account, has any relation whatsoever to iTunes, which sells music. Music sales != DVD rental.
2. It does result from the work performed for the employer. Without knowledge of the system, the employee wouldn't have been able to craft the application.
Hogwash. It's not a terribly complex app. Are you saying that it takes the insider knowledge of an Apple employee to craft a Mac compatible application? The workings of Mac OS isn't kept secret like that. Even a cursory examination of amazon.com shows a plethora of books on how to write software for the Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
If they put in the capability of BIOS flashing over TCP/IP, we may see our first OS-agnostic x86 virus. Would that be nasty, or what.
Cripes, how much crap are they going to shoehorn in there at the mostly-unused hardware configuration level? Will it come with a calculator app and Minesweeper too?
Fifty 11x16x6 stackable plastic tubs by Rubbermaid, with shelving in the closets to hold it all. Cheap, sturdy, waterproof, and they're all stamped with the semi-naughty sounding word "RubberMaid".
True, but if faced with the task of drawing rigorously attributed quotations from a blog, well, I'd prefer not to (sorry; couldn't resist). I suspect that most instances of "spontaneous deep insight" from amateurs with ephemeral web pages are uncomplicated enough to be restated without direct reference. If an amateur has constructed a large, complicated analysis that's worthy of reference, however, I'd say mirroring it is practically doing him a favor.
I like how the article pushes the "fire hazard" angle, but doesnt' bother to look at which cabling, specifically, is the problem. It portrays it as a problem caused by companies installing network/phone wire recently, when the real problem wire is much older. Most new wire installed by knowledgeable installers is plenum rated-- which means it's self-extinguishing and not nearly as toxic when burned. The nastiest-burning wire you'll find in ceilings is the old pink-beige jacketed 25-200 pair phone cabling that was installed forty years ago by Ma Bell! What's more, much of this nasty multipair wire can't be pulled out because it's still being used. On top of it all, the toxic-fire hazard posed by wiring in the plenum space is miniscule compared to the nasty plastic crap that's in an office itself-- if there's a fire, that cheap desk chair burning is gonna put out nastier smoke than a bundle of cabling. Also, plenum air doesn't generally get pumped into anyone's office. Plenum spaces are used as return-air systems, so any smoke in there is going primarily into the building's air shaft, where it will set off a smoke detector that sends the air out a roof vent rather than back into the building.
Don't get me wrong, as a network cabling installer I'm all for the removal of old cable. I've seen cable trays so packed with old crap that I couldn't get another run through. But the need of some people to pose every problem as a dire safety hazard drives me up a tree. I'm willing to bet that there are very few buildings where the communications wiring is even one of the top five fire-safety hazards.
I had a client whose neighbor in the next suite hired some crazy Bulgarian network installers who offered to pull the old 10base2 coax out of the ceiling while they were putting in the new Cat5. But they got greedy and decided to cut out a huge length of really old 200-pair cabling. Unfortunately, it carried the phone lines for the entire north half of the building.
The landlord should bear the burden of cable management in the plenum spaces. They should install basic cabling, and a tenant should be allowed to install better, on the condition that they leave it in place (sans punch down blocks and racks) for possible re-use by the next tenant. The only people who should be running around in the ceiling pulling wires out are those responsible for ALL the wires.
Absolutely. Plenum spaces are the responsibility of the building. Making tenants pull out old cabling is asking for a nightmare.
Your understanding of the difference between climate and weather are in error. Climate is no less chaotic than weather because it is nothing more than aggregate (usually seasonal) weather data collected over a period of years. Climate is made out of weather.
There is a big difference: we may not be able to predict the eaxct arrival time of a storm, but we CAN predict the mean temperature in LA over the next six months.
Sure, you can predict the mean temperature, but it's no more astoundingly accurate a climate prediction to say "it'll likely be cold in the winter" than it is an amazingly accurate weather prediction to say "it'll likely be cold tonight after the sun goes down".
Let me put it a different way: climate is not totally unpredictable, because you know perfectly well that the mean global temperature isn't ever going to be 1000 deg C
Saying the temp won't be 1000C isn't prediction; it's being rational about the range of possibility. Saying it might be 1000C next year is as unlikely a prediction as a weather prediction saying it'll go from 19C at 2:30pm to 500C at 2:45pm. Knowing the range is a prerequisite for prediction, not a prediction itself (of course, catastrophic variables like the sun going supernova are discarded at this stage, being 7-sigma events).
Stated yet a different way, while the exact path in phase space in a chaotic system takes (the weather) is unpredictable, the volume in which the system can move (the climate) is finite, and hence predictable.
You've got to be kidding. You're saying just knowing (say) what the highest and lowest possible temperatures are from a given initial condition after a given period of time is a valid prediction of temperature? Knowing where the temperature won't be is not the same as accurately predicting where it will be; reason being, as the model advances, the "realm of possibility" expands rapidly. This is where accuracy of the model and its initial starting condition becomes critical. One minor error, over-simplification, or misrepresentation in the model will eventually send it off into the weeds, meaning whatever "prediction" it comes up with essentially worthless. The worst part is, there's no way to "take into account" the unknown values that eventually threw the whole thing out of whack. Chaos always wins.
So, what does all this mean? It means that when scientists predict global warming, they can do it with much more certainty than with which they forecast the weather next week.
Hogwash. A non-linear system (climate) that's an aggregate of smaller non-linear systems (weather) cannot be more predictable than those smaller systems. It's a quaint notion of 19th-century Newtonian Determinism that the little errors cancel each other out when you move up to larger scales, but that's not how it works. A slower moving system like climate will take longer than a faster one like weather to deviate from reality in a simulation, but that does not mean it's more predictable-- it's just scaling. here is a simple, concise article on the subject of climate vs. weather prediction. I can find something with more deep science, if you like, but it's a good starting point.
Actually, the Concorde only required afterburners to get up to supersonic. When cruising at Mach 1+ it ran without them. The F-22's super-cruise capability is only new for fighter jets.
When you start using someone else's Internet connection w/o asking, compensating, or warning them it opens up a whole 'nother can of worms because basically you are using their computer equipment and bandwidth w/o authorization.
Still, I stand by my original analogy. If you don't want people using your drinking fountain, either lock it up or put it somewhere not accessable from the sidewalk.
No, because the inside of your car is YOUR PROPERTY, whereas the sidewalk is NOT. If you left your car radio on and your windows rolled down, would it bother you if I stood on the sidewalk next to your car listening to your radio?
I've noticed that, with shared workspace, one Chatty Cathy or Loudmouth Larry can easily prevent the other 4 people from getting anything done. Then, instead of just losing the productivity of whoever's cube the TalkBot's gravitated towards, you lose everyone's. What do you do then? Fire all 5 because of the one boat anchor employee? Getting rid of folks who do good work, but have trouble telling annoying socializers to leave them alone seems like a waste.
I think the best analogy is that of a person who installs a drinking fountain on his property next to the sidewalk. Sure, the water has to be paid for, and sure, it's clearly on his property, but the fact that it's not locked up and that it's accessable from the sidewalk is a equivalent to permission. If someone with such a drinking fountain called the cops to have joggers arrested for using their water, I suspect they'd get no response (other than laughter, maybe). Internet access costs less than water, plus it's easier to secure. I'd say an open WiFi signal should be considered de facto permission for public use!
Actually, we are no better at predicting climate than weather. What looks like "greater accuracy" in predictions is simply the effect of scale. Weather and climate are, essentially, the same things on different scales. "Weather" happens in smaller areas over shorter periods of time. Predicting that the climate on a scale of months is about as accurate as predicting weather on a scale of hours. Both weather and climate are chaotic systems that become totally unpredictable beyond a certain number of iterations in any model. Climate change isn't more predictable, it just happens slower.
Well, as urine is sterile (assuming similar Alph Cent physiology) life probably started from the half eaten "bif yi-ro" he tossed on the ground.
Unless it's sent by a super-parabolic trans-atmospheric US Mail Cannon, physical mail has and will always take at least as long to get there as it would for you to go yourself. Mail can only travel as fast as the conveyances they put it on, and most of those conveyances are used to move people as well.
By 1986, ARPANET was just a subset of the Internet as a whole. TCP/IP was declared the standard protocol suite for the network as a whole in 1982*. The adoption of the official Internet Protocol in '82 was the point where it became "the Internet".
This was not generally available to the public and looked nothing like the internet does today.
The Internet hasn't changed at all, man. It still uses TCP/IP and the addressing is IPv4. You're confusing applications that run over the network (web browsing, IM, etc.) with the network itself. Besides, the "lay person's" Internet didn't even begin to form until 1991 when the National Science Foundation lifted the restrictions on commercial use of the Internet.
Furthermore, the "Internet creating" legislation touted by Gore did no such thing-- it merely created the National Research and Education Network (as proposed by Gordon Bell to Gore in 1987), and it didn't actually get signed into law and funded until 1991! Gore tried to position himself as a "technology politician" and failed miserably because he didn't know what he was talking about. No amount of hemming and hawing over colloquialisms and semantics will change the fact that he said the Internet was created in 1986, when it dates back to 1969 in form, and at the very least back to 1982 in name! Arguing that most people think the Internet is looking at porn over a web browser doesn't make Gore's statement right, it merely makes them as ignorant as he was.
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*DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET. This leads to one of the first definitions of an "internet" as a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP, and "Internet" as connected TCP/IP internets.
Fool. AMD is "Advanced Micro Devices". You're probably confusing them with the BIOS maker AMI, which is "American Megatrends Inc" (stupidest name I've ever seen).
This patent should have failed the "obvious to one skilled in the art" test. From my reading, it appears to be a patent on managing a money transaction over a communications system using some undefined data processing equipment. Having a middleman broker an exchange is nothing new. The only "innovation" here is using an electronic system in the middle. Essentially, this is a patent on "escrow services....on a computer!"
I think the semantics are secondary here. Even claiming that one pushed for increased funding to "create the internet" is a foolish misstatement, as the internet was already there in 1986. His exact words of "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" are a bizarre deviation from reality, when all he really did was successfully get a bill signed into law that funded expansion of the existing network. No one would've cut him any slack if he got a highway funding bill passed and then said "I took the initiative in creating the Interstate Highway System" either. I can't say whether he believed he created the internet, but I will say he was a dope for not being either informed enough or on the ball enough to know how to discuss the subject without sticking his foot in his mouth.
. Is it? Last time I checked, they still used the cyrillic alphabet in Ukraine. Yes, "Ch" is the dominant convention in the English speaking world, but that doesnt mean its the only one.
The problem is that the cyrillic letter "chah" (looks like a backwards '4' or an upside down 'h') is repeatedly mispronounced when represented by "ch", particularly when it appears at the beginning of a word. If I had a nickel for every TV newsreader I heard say "share-noble", I'd have a lot of nickels. The "tch" arose as a means of making people say it right. I can understand their consternation. If it started with "sh", they'd have SPELLED it that way. But I guess that's what you get when you "translate" to a different alphabet using oversimplified phonetics and then give it to a newsmonkey with fabulous hair but no brain. I have visions of them reading "Chernobyl" and thinking "That word starts with 'Cher', so it must be pronounced the same as the name of the singer, 'Cher'." Argh....
Not the same at *all*. A lawyer who defends a mass murderer is almost always appointed by the court. This lawyer is there to ensure that the legal rights of the defendant are secured. It's a basic and fundamental part of how our legal system works. With this in mind, it's easy to be vigorous in defending the legal rights of somebody you detest. It's not self-interest, it's moral duty. On the other hand, McBride is in a different ballpark altogether. Here's somebody who's clearly seeking personal gain at other's expense. We're talking about something worse than a scum-sucking lawyer... the PR man!
You make a good point. I have met many public defenders and frequent pro-bono lawyers who absolutely believed in the system and were quite moral and ethical. Their trick is to tell the client first thing "I don't care if you did it or not. Don't even tell me, because it's not important." But then there's the other kind of defense attorney-- the kind like my cousin Archie-- who use dirty tricks* and courtroom shenanigans to win cases. My cousin is an evil bastard lawyer who is incapable and/or unwilling to see the difference between right and wrong, insofar as it applies in the courtroom. A lot of corporate executives are cut from the same cloth, it seems. I think Darl McBride doesn't even know and probably doesn't care if his techs can come up with proof of IP infringement; he's going let them deal with that issue if it goes to court. He is, as you say, the worst kind of scum: a PR man.
*ask a hostile witness a string of questions that have been gone over before, all of them with "yes" answers. After 20 boring minutes of that, slip in the question "is it possible the gun you saw in my client's hand could have been a toy gun?" and when the unsuspecting witness says "yes....i mean NO" because he was expecting another "yes" question, pounce upon this engineered incident as evidence of "witness uncertainity" and get your scumbag armed robber client a lesser sentence. eeeeeeeeevil......
a great many people said that when DVDs first came out when comparing them to LaserDisk
True, but Laserdisc had a bunch of disadvantages people were glad to see the end of. Size is the obvious one, but then there's the even worse problem of having to choose between CAV and CLV formats. Your could have random access to the movie in the form of selectable "tracks" (CAV), or you could have a movie that didn't need to have the disc flipped over halfway through it (CLV); but not both. It'll be interesting to see if region coding is enough of an annoyance to get folks to switch to EVD in significant numbers. They'll almost certainly switch in China, at least.
So you're saying that the only way to learn how to program apps for the Mac, the only way to get GCC for the Mac, and/or the only way to get the Mac hardware is to work at Apple? I seriously doubt it. Besides, even if he did learn the basics of (say) OS X application programming at Apple, that doesn't give Apple automatic ownership of anything he might create for OS X. If for his Netflix app he used knowledge, tools, and/or hardware that was only available to Apple employees, then yes, your argument is valid; but the mere fact of his employment by Apple doesn't prove any of that.
Only if Mac OS X was distributed solely to Apple employees.
I don't see how 'Netflix Fanatic', an app for managing one's DVD rental account, has any relation whatsoever to iTunes, which sells music. Music sales != DVD rental.
2. It does result from the work performed for the employer. Without knowledge of the system, the employee wouldn't have been able to craft the application.
Hogwash. It's not a terribly complex app. Are you saying that it takes the insider knowledge of an Apple employee to craft a Mac compatible application? The workings of Mac OS isn't kept secret like that. Even a cursory examination of amazon.com shows a plethora of books on how to write software for the Mac.