do our vaunted intelligence agencies really know much of anything about what's going on around the world?
Well the CIA has been more geared toward handling foreign governments than insurgence groups, and decentralized radicals are a tough nut to crack. The only way in is through trust, and trust takes time. And groups built around religious fanaticism are even harder to get into just by the nature of things.
On top of that the US human intelligence services have been gutted over the past twenty years -- the signals/sat group has been getting all the funding, and they are the best in the world. But having a bird in the air that can listen to an encrypted cell phone conversation happening 20,000 miles away doesn't do you any good if attacks are coordinated purely by face-to-face meetings.
Clinton did a massive amount of damage to the human intelligence side of the CIA as well, by dictating that the CIA couldn't use operatives who "violated human rights". That pretty well eliminated 90% or more of the potential spys -- we're not talking about the nicest people in the world here. Most of the people who would be willing to be spys already have rather loose morals and ethics.
And, finally, we've simply never had good intelligence from the Middle East. If you want good intel there you have to go to the UK or (better) Israel. And even then I don't know how capable their people are against the hundreds of small splinter groups that are the major threats nowadays.
At that time, yeah, an invasion and occupation would probably have pissed off all the other Coalition members
As opposed to now? Let's be realistic -- Britain is the only significant coalition member still around from the first coalition.
It would have been the right thing to do
No it wouldn't have. If we had deposed Saddam in the early 90s then the most likely outcome was that Iran would take over control of Iraq -- giving the highly fundamentalist Iranian government control of 2/3rds of the land and population in the Middle East, roughly 1/3 of the oil, and every Muslim holy site except Mecca. BTW, for those keeping track, this is also the reason the US supported Saddam Hussein in the early and mid 80s -- because he was the lesser of two evils in the region.
At this point Iran's government has become somewhat destabalized -- they're in no position to be extending their influence right now. So circumstances have changed in this regard at least.
Funny that those who were so loathe to take Saddam to task for anything for so many years
What an utter load of bullshit. This is the kind of no-thought crap spouted by talk show hosts. Just because it's a bad idea to take out Saddam doesn't mean you think he's a good ruler or that he's not a despicable slimebag who isn't even worth turning into mulch. Hussein was taken to task for his crimes time and time again, but if you want to start stepping into the role of global police (a role which the right wing bashed Clinton for in Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere -- which we actually had a UN mandate for, unlike Iraq) then you'd better be willing to step up to the plate. Why the hell aren't we stopping countless dictators in Africa (like, oh say, Mugabe in Zimbabwe)? What about South/Central America? They've done as much, if not more, as Saddam Hussein ever did. Hell, while we're at it, let's dive into the Israel-Palestine mess, where both sides are guilty of horrific crimes.
The reality is that very little has changed in a decade. The only thing that did change was the stability of Iran. The other statements made -- about an unstable populace, the fallout of allies, the alteration of world political and military climate, and the need for the US to spend a long, long time peacekeeping in Iraq -- have not changed one iota.
Oh, and I say all of this as a moderate. I'm neither rightwing nor left. I was willing to go along with the invasion of Iraq because I believed that there was no way a president could engage in such a move without massive amounts of intelligence indicating a clear and present threat. Doing anything else would be abysmally stupid because the ultimate consequences would be setting not only the Middle East further against us, but also alienating our allies elsewhere in the world.
They have to REALLY work hard to win back my business. Apologizing and issuing a firmware patch ain't good enough by half.
Sigh. Folks, when you grow up and enter the real world, don't just bitch and whine about things and say "that's not good enough". Do that and you're of no use to anyone -- all you are is annoying. If it's not good enough, that's fine, but you have to say what is good enough. And it has to be reasonable.
I emailed Belkin and informed them I would no longer be purchasing any of their products because of this. That's the stick -- yeah, I may be just one person, but for every one person that actually takes the time to complain there's usually 10-100 more people that are equally pissed but won't bother taking the time. The carrot was that they could do damage control and win back my business -- apologize (done), release a patch (allegedly going to be done), and promise to never do any such thing again (not done).
So they met 2/3rds of the goals. They flubbed on the last, but it's not an entirely reasonable request (it's far too broad and open-ended). That said, I'm still not going to buy Belkin products if I can help it. Their spin control on this story is poor, and I don't think they're really sorry about the crap they pulled. Now if they ever did say "look, it was a really bad idea and we're never going to try anything like that again" then I'd be happy to buy their products in the future.
And, of course, it did change again (current as of this posting time). The big change is that they're actually apologizing now.
"In response to a recent Usenet group posting stating that Belkin spams its customers through its routers, Belkin Corporation apologizes for the concern this has caused and is taking action to address the issue. To allay customers' worries, Belkin will offer a firmware upgrade that will be available via download from its website (www.belkin.com) on November 17, 2003. This upgrade will rid the redirect completely so that no additional browser windows will appear during the router's installation process. Questions can be directed to our dedicated networking customer support line at 877-736-5771 or e-mailed to kannynmc@belkin.com."
It's not so much where the money should go as where it should come from. The point the article made was that it's too expensive to actually go see the game for a family of four -- and he's right. Such an outing with average to poor tickets now costs $100-150, if you include food and drink, which is absurd. Particularly when you consider that the stadium was probably built using municipal bonds and not by the team/owner.
I'd say he's being paid a bit too much with that track record.
So taking a company from two employees with their only product being a BASIC interpreter for a home-built computer (the Altair) to an industry dominating software company that provides software for 95% of all PCs in the world is "underperforming" by your standard?
I guess to get "average" he would have to enslave all of humanity and force them to build his pyramid for him. (And, of course, some of the more rabidly vapid/.ers will say he's already done this).
if the endgame is that Microsoft buys SCO, then selling SCO short would be a mistake
Yes, because clearly MS wants to purchase a company with outstanding patent violation suits against it.
It's much more likely that IBM, Novell, or some other Linux/GPL-friendly company would purchase it. IBM might drop the suit if MS purchased it, since even IBM can't afford to really piss off MS, but it's a huge liability for MS.
Odds are that unless someone Linux/GPL friendly purchases SCO it's just going to wait until the end of the lawsuit. And that end is increasingly looking like divying up the remaining assets after a Chapter 13 filing.
Bottom line, thanks to Slashdot I'm not buying my routers from Belkin (not that I'm a telecom person, but still I'd be careful if I ever had to).
This is their wireless router -- it's made for home use, not for telecomm use.
And don't just not buy routers from Belkin. Don't buy anything. No routers, no cables, no USB hubs, no keyboards, nothing. Belkin makes a great deal of stuff -- boycot all of it. There's not a single product they make that they don't have competition for.
And let them know about it too. Email them (look here for the appropriate regional sales address) and tell them that you will no longer purchase their products until they apologize for doing this, put out a patch to fix it, and promise to never do anything along these lines again. Yes, I've already sent my email.
I've got a decent number of Belkin products... they're decently made, and often available for a good price. But there's no way I'll purchase anything from them at this point if I can't actually rely on the product to do it's intended purpose. And that's what this boils down to -- you have a router that doesn't route properly.
the author's expectations for battery life versus product size exceed that of most major military technologies.
Yes, because the military has long been known as a bastion of efficiency.
It's really sad to see all the fanboys picking this article apart. There were some valid criticisms made and potential alternatives given. Every one of the alternatives has it's own issues of course, and the author states -- no less than three times -- that the iPod is the best player out there right now.
And what, exactly, would be the point of doing that?
Besides which your "economics" make no sense. You can get an 80G drive for around $50 now and that'll store over 100 CDs worth of MP3's (more like over 150 CDs since you won't get optimal storage on the vast majority of CDs). And that 80G drive takes up less space than the CD-RW, much less the CD-RW plus 100+ CDs. Not to mention that you now have all of your music available to you at once instead of having to shuffle through over a hundred different disks.
The whole point of transitioning to MP3s and the like is convienence. Sorting through 100+ CDs with handwritten labels is a hell of a lot less convienent than actually having the original CDs and vastly less convienent than having it all stored on a single server.
Has anyone actually checked the specs of the P4? Things like 15 cycle multiplies, 1.5 cycle ADC/SBB, etc
And yet it's still faster than virtually any other processor on the planet. Intel has come a long way from when it was being spanked by MIPS/Sun/etc. You can make an argument for Alpha, but that's about it.
a non-x86 core
The P3, P4, and Athlon cores aren't x86. They have a wrapper layer that translates x86 instructions into their own internal core instructions, but that's it. And, frankly, a more "efficient" core doesn't make a bit of difference if it doesn't actually have any use in the real world. The x86 ISA is here to stay for a long, long time. People have been predicting it's death since it came about, and yet it's managed to dominate every other ISA out there. Hell, it's being looked at for embedded use now of all things.
Why should the CPU do the work of a compiler at runtime?
Because the compiler doesn't know what the dataset is. You can make guesses, but that's all. If you really want to optimize then you have to actually run the program for a period of time using real world data and then re-compile with the profiling data you've gathered. Which is pretty damned expensive to do, and is invalidated if your data set changes (yeah, that never happens in the real world) or you want to sell the program to multiple companies (again, one of those rare edge cases). The fact of the matter is that it's far, far cheaper to upgrade the hardware than it is to spend a bunch of additional programmer time optimizing the software. You can whine and kvetch about this, but it won't change reality.
Back when I was in college and was taking EE/CompE courses I couldn't believe how crappy the x86 ISA was either. And it is crappy. So what? It's still faster than everything else out there, it's cheaper than the competition, and the world has boatloads of software that runs on it. Do you have any idea how much software is used on a daily basis that hasn't been touched in years? How much do you think it would cost to replace all that software?
Don't worry. One day you'll graduate too and after a couple years in the real world you'll discover that a crappy solution that fits the job is far, far better than a perfect solution that doesn't do anything.
People die from cancer because we don't die from other things. How many people do you know in their 20s or 30s that have cancer? Now exclude those that are HIV positive. The number is probably awfully close to zero.
Now realize that until the late 19th century the average life expectancy was in the early to mid 30s. People didn't die of cancer because something else got them first -- mostly disease, accidents, or (for women obviously) childbirth. As we started reducing those incidents we started seeing more people die of other conditions -- generally attributed to "old age", but most likely heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, and so forth. As we've slowly beaten back those diseases we're seeing cancer become more prevelant. And when we beat cancer we'll still have to deal with dementia, alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other central nervous system afflictions. And I'm willing to bet that when we tackle those we'll find other issues too. Eventually we may get to the point where one of the old killers becomes the most prevalent cause of death once again.
Yes, a company could patent the usage of this retrovirus for curing cancer. Sure, the virus has existed for some unknown amount of time, but the usage of it as a method to cure cancer would certainly fulfill the "new" and "non-obvious" requirements for patent law.
And, hey, maybe they'll make some money on doing so as long as they license it widely at some low cost. After all, they certainly spent some money in finding out that the retrovirus causes the anti-cancer effect, and paid for the trials, and whatnot to go forward. Shouldn't they receive some compensation for doing so?
And what will happen if they try to charge too much for it? Particularly if the retrovirus can be easily manufactured from existing natural sources?
They'll discover that countries will nationalize their patent and they'll get bupkis. It's happened before, both in and outside of the US, and it'll happen again. And even for similar causes. Numerous South American and African countries do not recognize the patents on various HIV medications. The drug companies have been told that they can either sell it for a fixed price (or, more likely, be paid a fixed amount by the government regardless of how much is administered) or the government will simply nationalize the patent and the drug companies will get nothing. Generally they go for the settlement.
Of course, it's not that simple. Every time this occurs it's a disincentive for the drug companies to actually produce miracle cures, or even to produce treatment drugs for maladies. Do you spend $100M on research for degenerative neural disorders like Alzheimer's and MS, knowing that if you succeed you might never see the money back, or do you spend it on a drug to reduce anxiety, depression, or other sociological problems -- which aren't likely to ever be nationalized? And while I agree that drugs are often overpriced, the flip side to that is it's hideously expensive to actually get a new drug approved by the FDA and its counterparts (mostly in Europe). It costs millions of dollars. And most of them fail to get through the process. You can look at streamlining the process, but then you run the risk of having drugs with very bad side effects slipping through.
Do you want to leave actually finding cures up to purely governmental/good will efforts? Especially when a lot of the best are going to go into private industry because the pay is better?
Sorry, the real world isn't as simple as your flippant "intellectual property" comment. It's far more complex, and there are no easy solutions.
I've seen the effects too -- my father died of cancer, my mother had breast cancer (caught it amazingly early fortunately), I worked on an oncology floor at a local hospital for three years, and one of my coworker's kids has leukemia (in the last stages of treatment, fortunately, and doing well).
The chemotherapy and radiotherapy is nasty, and this looks a lot better (at least, as long as it doesn't mutate as viruses are wont to do). But very few people actually die from the chemo/radiotherapy, at least not directly. A lot of people don't find out that they have cancer until the cancer is well formed. Once the cancer metastatizes and starts to spread there's very little that modern medicine can do for you (this may change that, as may the nanotech "bullets" I read about earlier today). All chemo and radiation can do at that point is attempt to minimize the suffering -- and I question that they do this for the most part.
Anyway, it's not the chemo/radiation that gets you. It's the side effects. By and large we use the same chemo drugs that we've used for decades, as well as the same radiotherapy methods. We've refined the dosages, but that's about it. Where the real breakthroughs have been is in the medicines to treat the side effects of the chemo -- nausea, dizziness, low white blood count, and so forth. And we've made strides on drugs to treat the side effects of those drugs. And so forth. Cancers that were fatal (as in 0% survival rate) twenty years ago now have an 80% survivability rate (my coworker's son is one such case). That's pretty amazing.
Even so, if there's a better solution out there, with fewer side effects, let's go for it. I hope the testing goes well. I'd also like to know what you need to do to be put on the human testing list. My sister's mother-in-law has been given less than 6 months to live, in part due to cancer that has metastatized and is pretty much everywhere now. It's likely that the cancer's done too much damage for her to recover though... and we don't have a magic bullet to cure that issue. Yet.
Unlikely. Most of those old rocket launchers don't have any electronics at all -- they're simply RPG's which are generally no more electronically advanced than their bazooka predecessors.
It would, however, destroy any "smart" projectiles, even those as simple as a Stinger missile -- which is valuable as well given just how prolific those things are.
Of course, if you wanted such a defense to be useful you'd want to be able to mount an emitter on potential targets (like, oh say, a commercial airliner) and have it produce a high power semi-directed impulse. I don't know if that's possible (IANAPhysicist). But you'd want to take out anything launched at you from a reasonable distance (>500') without screwing your own systems in the process (most modern commercial jets are fly-by-wire as well).
I cannot speculate as to whether or not they would agree to the request without court action.
I can. The FOIA, OPRA, or any other open records act is non-applicable. The source code is not produced by the government and is not a "record" of any form that would be applicable under the various laws. The voting machines and software are being produced by independant contractors -- not by a government agency. You could request the records related to the bidding process (although all but the winning bid may be sealed; I'm not sure though. IANAL.), the selection, and so forth, but that's about it.
Asking for the source code to the software or the blueprints for the hardware is akin to asking for the blueprints and software to the Ford F-150 because the city's transit department bought a bunch of them. You'd get laughed out of court.
Exactly where do you think the name "Easter" comes from?
Perhaps the pagan goddess "Eostre", goddess of fertility? BTW, easter eggs, bunnies, hot cross buns, and lilies all have ties to this or similar goddesses of fertility.
To be fair, it may also come from the german "ostern" meaning sunrise. There's a fairly decent page about it here. Surf around if you want more info on ties between Easter and pagan rituals.
The fact remains that Easter is celebrated at about the same time as other celebrations in a multitude of other religions -- Passover in Judaism and spring equinox in pagan religions (which, frankly, may also have influenced Passover). Certainly various customs, current rulers, and "heathen" religions influenced both the Old and New Testaments in a direct manner. Anyone who thinks "paganism" is recent is merely showing their lack of knowledge in ancient religions -- Judaism (from which both Christianity and Islam are derived) was a small and relatively new sect 3-4000 years ago and struggled for its existence against a backdrop of much older and more popular religions. A lot of the prohibitions in Judeo-Christianity can be tied directly to festivals and rites from the time; while later on as they became more prevalent they began to co-opt the local festivals and rituals into their belief system.
Small claims court isn't going to touch copyright issues. For one thing, copyright is a federal law, not a state one, much less county. A county small claims court has no jurisdiction, and there is no such thing as a federal small claims court.
If you actually want to sue SCO you have to do it the right way -- file a lawsuit in your local federal court.
Have fun. Enjoy going broke from lawyers fees. Expect to be fired from your job because you need to be in court so often (if you didn't hire a lawyer). Understand that whatever the ruling is, if it goes to appellate court you cannot represent yourself (at least in criminal cases; not sure about civil). Oh, and proving ownership of the code should be enough fun, since SCO's lawyers are likely to hound you over whether or not you actually wrote it, what sources (books, consultation on IRC, etc.) you used while composing it, and so forth.
For the love of GNU, stay out of this. Do not let SCO drag you or any other OSS advocates into court. Sadly, this may force FSF's hand and cause them to enter into a lawsuit with SCO as representation for all of the developers that contributed to anything SCO is relicensing. I really think this is what SCO wants, although I cannot fathom what they expect to gain from it. Are their lawyers really that certain that the GPL can be broken, and that the judge will rule that the code is actually public domain? (note - this would still allow them to sue over copyright violation, since you cannot place anything into the public domain that is not yours. Of course, this tenant of copyright law is one of the parts that strengthens the GPL, which they're now trying to break.)
Best headline I saw on these was on MSNBC Wednesday. My wife told me about it, but I went and confirmed myself:
Space Storm hits; Earth Survives
Which, of course, is amazing news and you certainly wouldn't have known if the alternative had occurred.
I'd provide a link, but like most of the online news outlets they readily change story headlines and content throughout the day. It's completely different now and talks about the current state and the upcoming flare output tomorrow (Friday).
Yes, and they admit this readily. That data is used only for the reliability statistics anyway, and they commonly disclaim the data. On the flip side, it's also why they implore their readership to fill out the surveys and send them in -- the larger the sample size, even if it is from a self-selected sample, the better the data.
What would happen if the patent did get revoked? Would MS get their money back?
What, you think that MS just wrote out a check for half a billion dollars as they walked out of the court room?
The ruling has been appealed. If the patent was revoked then the appellate court would simply reverse the ruling on the basis of the patent being invalid and MS wouldn't have to cough up a nickel (except to their lawyers).
for broadcast television, even the largest cities don't have enough stations to need VHF channels. In Chicago, for instance
Really? I think you need to look at a local channel listing again.
According to Yahoo! TV Chicago has 6 VHF and 16 UHF broadcast stations. That would be exceedingly difficult to fit into the 13 VHF channels you currently have, and that's ignoring bleed over problems (which were rampant in older equipment but much better now -- but still not so good that you want to have two VHF stations adjacent to one another). There are 3 duplicate channels, but that still doesn't reduce the number sufficiently.
At the time UHF was mandated it was absolutely necessary if you wanted more than 4 stations in any one region. The bleeding was simply too bad. To call it stupid 30 years afterwards is the worst kind of monday morning quarterbacking.
The FCC should mandate that all over-the-air broadcasters begin broadcasting blah-format by some date.
Uh, they did. The mandate to have all televisions have an ATSC tuner/decoder is just another step on that transition.
Oh, and you can receive any format you please -- the FCC is merely mandating that the CE manufacturers include this tuner. They are not mandating the removal of the NTSC tuner -- although that will happen as a natural consequence of the NTSC phase-out and ATSC phase-in.
The ATSC phase-in is well behind schedule anyway. Right now 2010 or 2015 is a much more reasonable guess at when NTSC will have the plug pulled -- which would've been a much more reasonable estimate in the first place. But if they didn't put down 2006 on paper then the end number would've been more like 2020 or 2030.
BTW, the transition is picking up steam now, at least in the major markets. More cable providers are starting to offer HDTV (including locals), both major sat providers are providing HDTV (no locals), there's a third HDTV-only sat provider now (Voom!), and DirecTV is in the process of lofting some additional satellites specifically for increasing HDTV broadcasting (and they just beat down Dish in Loran's bankruptcy proceedings over them).
Mandating device design is not odd. Government does it all the time for cars, power plants, and numerous consumer items. The FCC does it for anything relating to the broadcast spectrum. You do realize that the NTSC format is a mandated device design, right?
When do we learn the lesson of alcohol prohibition?
That's a double edged sword.
While I agree that our current drug policy isn't working, and is doomed to never work, you can't possibly say that our "regulated" drug policies are working either. Alcohol is the single most abused drug in the United States. Tobacco is pretty far behind -- probably further than a lot of "prescription" drugs (which are increasingly being abused as well). If we're going to legalize drugs, then we need to fix the system first. The DUI/DWI laws are jokes -- as far as I'm concerned your first DUI/DWI conviction should be a year in prison and permanent revokation of your license. Nationwide (have fun with the implications of that BTW). Homicide while under the influence should not be a lesser charge -- as it often is. Heck, we're going to clear out something like 60% of the prison population by ending the war on drugs, so we'll have plenty of space for incarcerating people who can't control their usage of mind altering substances.
Most of the money currently being used to fight the war on drugs isn't going to go back to the taxpayer -- it will have to go to rehabilitation projects instead.
I'm all for changing the way we treat drugs right now, but not unless we also fix the more glaring problems with the current legalized drugs at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
do our vaunted intelligence agencies really know much of anything about what's going on around the world?
Well the CIA has been more geared toward handling foreign governments than insurgence groups, and decentralized radicals are a tough nut to crack. The only way in is through trust, and trust takes time. And groups built around religious fanaticism are even harder to get into just by the nature of things.
On top of that the US human intelligence services have been gutted over the past twenty years -- the signals/sat group has been getting all the funding, and they are the best in the world. But having a bird in the air that can listen to an encrypted cell phone conversation happening 20,000 miles away doesn't do you any good if attacks are coordinated purely by face-to-face meetings.
Clinton did a massive amount of damage to the human intelligence side of the CIA as well, by dictating that the CIA couldn't use operatives who "violated human rights". That pretty well eliminated 90% or more of the potential spys -- we're not talking about the nicest people in the world here. Most of the people who would be willing to be spys already have rather loose morals and ethics.
And, finally, we've simply never had good intelligence from the Middle East. If you want good intel there you have to go to the UK or (better) Israel. And even then I don't know how capable their people are against the hundreds of small splinter groups that are the major threats nowadays.
At that time, yeah, an invasion and occupation would probably have pissed off all the other Coalition members
As opposed to now? Let's be realistic -- Britain is the only significant coalition member still around from the first coalition.
It would have been the right thing to do
No it wouldn't have. If we had deposed Saddam in the early 90s then the most likely outcome was that Iran would take over control of Iraq -- giving the highly fundamentalist Iranian government control of 2/3rds of the land and population in the Middle East, roughly 1/3 of the oil, and every Muslim holy site except Mecca. BTW, for those keeping track, this is also the reason the US supported Saddam Hussein in the early and mid 80s -- because he was the lesser of two evils in the region.
At this point Iran's government has become somewhat destabalized -- they're in no position to be extending their influence right now. So circumstances have changed in this regard at least.
Funny that those who were so loathe to take Saddam to task for anything for so many years
What an utter load of bullshit. This is the kind of no-thought crap spouted by talk show hosts. Just because it's a bad idea to take out Saddam doesn't mean you think he's a good ruler or that he's not a despicable slimebag who isn't even worth turning into mulch. Hussein was taken to task for his crimes time and time again, but if you want to start stepping into the role of global police (a role which the right wing bashed Clinton for in Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere -- which we actually had a UN mandate for, unlike Iraq) then you'd better be willing to step up to the plate. Why the hell aren't we stopping countless dictators in Africa (like, oh say, Mugabe in Zimbabwe)? What about South/Central America? They've done as much, if not more, as Saddam Hussein ever did. Hell, while we're at it, let's dive into the Israel-Palestine mess, where both sides are guilty of horrific crimes.
The reality is that very little has changed in a decade. The only thing that did change was the stability of Iran. The other statements made -- about an unstable populace, the fallout of allies, the alteration of world political and military climate, and the need for the US to spend a long, long time peacekeeping in Iraq -- have not changed one iota.
Oh, and I say all of this as a moderate. I'm neither rightwing nor left. I was willing to go along with the invasion of Iraq because I believed that there was no way a president could engage in such a move without massive amounts of intelligence indicating a clear and present threat. Doing anything else would be abysmally stupid because the ultimate consequences would be setting not only the Middle East further against us, but also alienating our allies elsewhere in the world.
Oops.
They have to REALLY work hard to win back my business. Apologizing and issuing a firmware patch ain't good enough by half.
Sigh. Folks, when you grow up and enter the real world, don't just bitch and whine about things and say "that's not good enough". Do that and you're of no use to anyone -- all you are is annoying. If it's not good enough, that's fine, but you have to say what is good enough. And it has to be reasonable.
I emailed Belkin and informed them I would no longer be purchasing any of their products because of this. That's the stick -- yeah, I may be just one person, but for every one person that actually takes the time to complain there's usually 10-100 more people that are equally pissed but won't bother taking the time. The carrot was that they could do damage control and win back my business -- apologize (done), release a patch (allegedly going to be done), and promise to never do any such thing again (not done).
So they met 2/3rds of the goals. They flubbed on the last, but it's not an entirely reasonable request (it's far too broad and open-ended). That said, I'm still not going to buy Belkin products if I can help it. Their spin control on this story is poor, and I don't think they're really sorry about the crap they pulled. Now if they ever did say "look, it was a really bad idea and we're never going to try anything like that again" then I'd be happy to buy their products in the future.
And, of course, it did change again (current as of this posting time). The big change is that they're actually apologizing now.
"In response to a recent Usenet group posting stating that Belkin spams its customers through its routers, Belkin Corporation apologizes for the concern this has caused and is taking action to address the issue. To allay customers' worries, Belkin will offer a firmware upgrade that will be available via download from its website (www.belkin.com) on November 17, 2003. This upgrade will rid the redirect completely so that no additional browser windows will appear during the router's installation process. Questions can be directed to our dedicated networking customer support line at 877-736-5771 or e-mailed to kannynmc@belkin.com."
Where do you expect the money to go?
It's not so much where the money should go as where it should come from. The point the article made was that it's too expensive to actually go see the game for a family of four -- and he's right. Such an outing with average to poor tickets now costs $100-150, if you include food and drink, which is absurd. Particularly when you consider that the stadium was probably built using municipal bonds and not by the team/owner.
I'd say he's being paid a bit too much with that track record.
/.ers will say he's already done this).
So taking a company from two employees with their only product being a BASIC interpreter for a home-built computer (the Altair) to an industry dominating software company that provides software for 95% of all PCs in the world is "underperforming" by your standard?
I guess to get "average" he would have to enslave all of humanity and force them to build his pyramid for him. (And, of course, some of the more rabidly vapid
if the endgame is that Microsoft buys SCO, then selling SCO short would be a mistake
Yes, because clearly MS wants to purchase a company with outstanding patent violation suits against it.
It's much more likely that IBM, Novell, or some other Linux/GPL-friendly company would purchase it. IBM might drop the suit if MS purchased it, since even IBM can't afford to really piss off MS, but it's a huge liability for MS.
Odds are that unless someone Linux/GPL friendly purchases SCO it's just going to wait until the end of the lawsuit. And that end is increasingly looking like divying up the remaining assets after a Chapter 13 filing.
Bottom line, thanks to Slashdot I'm not buying my routers from Belkin (not that I'm a telecom person, but still I'd be careful if I ever had to).
This is their wireless router -- it's made for home use, not for telecomm use.
And don't just not buy routers from Belkin. Don't buy anything. No routers, no cables, no USB hubs, no keyboards, nothing. Belkin makes a great deal of stuff -- boycot all of it. There's not a single product they make that they don't have competition for.
And let them know about it too. Email them (look here for the appropriate regional sales address) and tell them that you will no longer purchase their products until they apologize for doing this, put out a patch to fix it, and promise to never do anything along these lines again. Yes, I've already sent my email.
I've got a decent number of Belkin products... they're decently made, and often available for a good price. But there's no way I'll purchase anything from them at this point if I can't actually rely on the product to do it's intended purpose. And that's what this boils down to -- you have a router that doesn't route properly.
the author's expectations for battery life versus product size exceed that of most major military technologies.
Yes, because the military has long been known as a bastion of efficiency.
It's really sad to see all the fanboys picking this article apart. There were some valid criticisms made and potential alternatives given. Every one of the alternatives has it's own issues of course, and the author states -- no less than three times -- that the iPod is the best player out there right now.
Talk about thin skinned.
And what, exactly, would be the point of doing that?
Besides which your "economics" make no sense. You can get an 80G drive for around $50 now and that'll store over 100 CDs worth of MP3's (more like over 150 CDs since you won't get optimal storage on the vast majority of CDs). And that 80G drive takes up less space than the CD-RW, much less the CD-RW plus 100+ CDs. Not to mention that you now have all of your music available to you at once instead of having to shuffle through over a hundred different disks.
The whole point of transitioning to MP3s and the like is convienence. Sorting through 100+ CDs with handwritten labels is a hell of a lot less convienent than actually having the original CDs and vastly less convienent than having it all stored on a single server.
"Breakfast Meats Bi-Monthly" is leading with the in-depth feature "Bacon, Steak, or Sausage: The Candidates Decide,"
What about chicken you insensitive clod?
Brought to you by Chick-Fil-A. And their spokes-cows.
Moooooo.
Has anyone actually checked the specs of the P4? Things like 15 cycle multiplies, 1.5 cycle ADC/SBB, etc
And yet it's still faster than virtually any other processor on the planet. Intel has come a long way from when it was being spanked by MIPS/Sun/etc. You can make an argument for Alpha, but that's about it.
a non-x86 core
The P3, P4, and Athlon cores aren't x86. They have a wrapper layer that translates x86 instructions into their own internal core instructions, but that's it. And, frankly, a more "efficient" core doesn't make a bit of difference if it doesn't actually have any use in the real world. The x86 ISA is here to stay for a long, long time. People have been predicting it's death since it came about, and yet it's managed to dominate every other ISA out there. Hell, it's being looked at for embedded use now of all things.
Why should the CPU do the work of a compiler at runtime?
Because the compiler doesn't know what the dataset is. You can make guesses, but that's all. If you really want to optimize then you have to actually run the program for a period of time using real world data and then re-compile with the profiling data you've gathered. Which is pretty damned expensive to do, and is invalidated if your data set changes (yeah, that never happens in the real world) or you want to sell the program to multiple companies (again, one of those rare edge cases). The fact of the matter is that it's far, far cheaper to upgrade the hardware than it is to spend a bunch of additional programmer time optimizing the software. You can whine and kvetch about this, but it won't change reality.
Back when I was in college and was taking EE/CompE courses I couldn't believe how crappy the x86 ISA was either. And it is crappy. So what? It's still faster than everything else out there, it's cheaper than the competition, and the world has boatloads of software that runs on it. Do you have any idea how much software is used on a daily basis that hasn't been touched in years? How much do you think it would cost to replace all that software?
Don't worry. One day you'll graduate too and after a couple years in the real world you'll discover that a crappy solution that fits the job is far, far better than a perfect solution that doesn't do anything.
People die from cancer because we don't die from other things. How many people do you know in their 20s or 30s that have cancer? Now exclude those that are HIV positive. The number is probably awfully close to zero.
Now realize that until the late 19th century the average life expectancy was in the early to mid 30s. People didn't die of cancer because something else got them first -- mostly disease, accidents, or (for women obviously) childbirth. As we started reducing those incidents we started seeing more people die of other conditions -- generally attributed to "old age", but most likely heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, and so forth. As we've slowly beaten back those diseases we're seeing cancer become more prevelant. And when we beat cancer we'll still have to deal with dementia, alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other central nervous system afflictions. And I'm willing to bet that when we tackle those we'll find other issues too. Eventually we may get to the point where one of the old killers becomes the most prevalent cause of death once again.
Accident.
What a load of crap.
Yes, a company could patent the usage of this retrovirus for curing cancer. Sure, the virus has existed for some unknown amount of time, but the usage of it as a method to cure cancer would certainly fulfill the "new" and "non-obvious" requirements for patent law.
And, hey, maybe they'll make some money on doing so as long as they license it widely at some low cost. After all, they certainly spent some money in finding out that the retrovirus causes the anti-cancer effect, and paid for the trials, and whatnot to go forward. Shouldn't they receive some compensation for doing so?
And what will happen if they try to charge too much for it? Particularly if the retrovirus can be easily manufactured from existing natural sources?
They'll discover that countries will nationalize their patent and they'll get bupkis. It's happened before, both in and outside of the US, and it'll happen again. And even for similar causes. Numerous South American and African countries do not recognize the patents on various HIV medications. The drug companies have been told that they can either sell it for a fixed price (or, more likely, be paid a fixed amount by the government regardless of how much is administered) or the government will simply nationalize the patent and the drug companies will get nothing. Generally they go for the settlement.
Of course, it's not that simple. Every time this occurs it's a disincentive for the drug companies to actually produce miracle cures, or even to produce treatment drugs for maladies. Do you spend $100M on research for degenerative neural disorders like Alzheimer's and MS, knowing that if you succeed you might never see the money back, or do you spend it on a drug to reduce anxiety, depression, or other sociological problems -- which aren't likely to ever be nationalized? And while I agree that drugs are often overpriced, the flip side to that is it's hideously expensive to actually get a new drug approved by the FDA and its counterparts (mostly in Europe). It costs millions of dollars. And most of them fail to get through the process. You can look at streamlining the process, but then you run the risk of having drugs with very bad side effects slipping through.
Do you want to leave actually finding cures up to purely governmental/good will efforts? Especially when a lot of the best are going to go into private industry because the pay is better?
Sorry, the real world isn't as simple as your flippant "intellectual property" comment. It's far more complex, and there are no easy solutions.
I've seen the effects too -- my father died of cancer, my mother had breast cancer (caught it amazingly early fortunately), I worked on an oncology floor at a local hospital for three years, and one of my coworker's kids has leukemia (in the last stages of treatment, fortunately, and doing well).
The chemotherapy and radiotherapy is nasty, and this looks a lot better (at least, as long as it doesn't mutate as viruses are wont to do). But very few people actually die from the chemo/radiotherapy, at least not directly. A lot of people don't find out that they have cancer until the cancer is well formed. Once the cancer metastatizes and starts to spread there's very little that modern medicine can do for you (this may change that, as may the nanotech "bullets" I read about earlier today). All chemo and radiation can do at that point is attempt to minimize the suffering -- and I question that they do this for the most part.
Anyway, it's not the chemo/radiation that gets you. It's the side effects. By and large we use the same chemo drugs that we've used for decades, as well as the same radiotherapy methods. We've refined the dosages, but that's about it. Where the real breakthroughs have been is in the medicines to treat the side effects of the chemo -- nausea, dizziness, low white blood count, and so forth. And we've made strides on drugs to treat the side effects of those drugs. And so forth. Cancers that were fatal (as in 0% survival rate) twenty years ago now have an 80% survivability rate (my coworker's son is one such case). That's pretty amazing.
Even so, if there's a better solution out there, with fewer side effects, let's go for it. I hope the testing goes well. I'd also like to know what you need to do to be put on the human testing list. My sister's mother-in-law has been given less than 6 months to live, in part due to cancer that has metastatized and is pretty much everywhere now. It's likely that the cancer's done too much damage for her to recover though... and we don't have a magic bullet to cure that issue. Yet.
Unlikely. Most of those old rocket launchers don't have any electronics at all -- they're simply RPG's which are generally no more electronically advanced than their bazooka predecessors.
It would, however, destroy any "smart" projectiles, even those as simple as a Stinger missile -- which is valuable as well given just how prolific those things are.
Of course, if you wanted such a defense to be useful you'd want to be able to mount an emitter on potential targets (like, oh say, a commercial airliner) and have it produce a high power semi-directed impulse. I don't know if that's possible (IANAPhysicist). But you'd want to take out anything launched at you from a reasonable distance (>500') without screwing your own systems in the process (most modern commercial jets are fly-by-wire as well).
I cannot speculate as to whether or not they would agree to the request without court action.
I can. The FOIA, OPRA, or any other open records act is non-applicable. The source code is not produced by the government and is not a "record" of any form that would be applicable under the various laws. The voting machines and software are being produced by independant contractors -- not by a government agency. You could request the records related to the bidding process (although all but the winning bid may be sealed; I'm not sure though. IANAL.), the selection, and so forth, but that's about it.
Asking for the source code to the software or the blueprints for the hardware is akin to asking for the blueprints and software to the Ford F-150 because the city's transit department bought a bunch of them. You'd get laughed out of court.
Exactly where do you think the name "Easter" comes from?
Perhaps the pagan goddess "Eostre", goddess of fertility? BTW, easter eggs, bunnies, hot cross buns, and lilies all have ties to this or similar goddesses of fertility.
To be fair, it may also come from the german "ostern" meaning sunrise. There's a fairly decent page about it here. Surf around if you want more info on ties between Easter and pagan rituals.
The fact remains that Easter is celebrated at about the same time as other celebrations in a multitude of other religions -- Passover in Judaism and spring equinox in pagan religions (which, frankly, may also have influenced Passover). Certainly various customs, current rulers, and "heathen" religions influenced both the Old and New Testaments in a direct manner. Anyone who thinks "paganism" is recent is merely showing their lack of knowledge in ancient religions -- Judaism (from which both Christianity and Islam are derived) was a small and relatively new sect 3-4000 years ago and struggled for its existence against a backdrop of much older and more popular religions. A lot of the prohibitions in Judeo-Christianity can be tied directly to festivals and rites from the time; while later on as they became more prevalent they began to co-opt the local festivals and rituals into their belief system.
Small claims court isn't going to touch copyright issues. For one thing, copyright is a federal law, not a state one, much less county. A county small claims court has no jurisdiction, and there is no such thing as a federal small claims court.
If you actually want to sue SCO you have to do it the right way -- file a lawsuit in your local federal court.
Have fun. Enjoy going broke from lawyers fees. Expect to be fired from your job because you need to be in court so often (if you didn't hire a lawyer). Understand that whatever the ruling is, if it goes to appellate court you cannot represent yourself (at least in criminal cases; not sure about civil). Oh, and proving ownership of the code should be enough fun, since SCO's lawyers are likely to hound you over whether or not you actually wrote it, what sources (books, consultation on IRC, etc.) you used while composing it, and so forth.
For the love of GNU, stay out of this. Do not let SCO drag you or any other OSS advocates into court. Sadly, this may force FSF's hand and cause them to enter into a lawsuit with SCO as representation for all of the developers that contributed to anything SCO is relicensing. I really think this is what SCO wants, although I cannot fathom what they expect to gain from it. Are their lawyers really that certain that the GPL can be broken, and that the judge will rule that the code is actually public domain? (note - this would still allow them to sue over copyright violation, since you cannot place anything into the public domain that is not yours. Of course, this tenant of copyright law is one of the parts that strengthens the GPL, which they're now trying to break.)
Best headline I saw on these was on MSNBC Wednesday. My wife told me about it, but I went and confirmed myself:
Space Storm hits; Earth Survives
Which, of course, is amazing news and you certainly wouldn't have known if the alternative had occurred.
I'd provide a link, but like most of the online news outlets they readily change story headlines and content throughout the day. It's completely different now and talks about the current state and the upcoming flare output tomorrow (Friday).
Yes, and they admit this readily. That data is used only for the reliability statistics anyway, and they commonly disclaim the data. On the flip side, it's also why they implore their readership to fill out the surveys and send them in -- the larger the sample size, even if it is from a self-selected sample, the better the data.
What would happen if the patent did get revoked? Would MS get their money back?
What, you think that MS just wrote out a check for half a billion dollars as they walked out of the court room?
The ruling has been appealed. If the patent was revoked then the appellate court would simply reverse the ruling on the basis of the patent being invalid and MS wouldn't have to cough up a nickel (except to their lawyers).
for broadcast television, even the largest cities don't have enough stations to need VHF channels. In Chicago, for instance
Really? I think you need to look at a local channel listing again.
According to Yahoo! TV Chicago has 6 VHF and 16 UHF broadcast stations. That would be exceedingly difficult to fit into the 13 VHF channels you currently have, and that's ignoring bleed over problems (which were rampant in older equipment but much better now -- but still not so good that you want to have two VHF stations adjacent to one another). There are 3 duplicate channels, but that still doesn't reduce the number sufficiently.
At the time UHF was mandated it was absolutely necessary if you wanted more than 4 stations in any one region. The bleeding was simply too bad. To call it stupid 30 years afterwards is the worst kind of monday morning quarterbacking.
The FCC should mandate that all over-the-air broadcasters begin broadcasting blah-format by some date.
Uh, they did. The mandate to have all televisions have an ATSC tuner/decoder is just another step on that transition.
Oh, and you can receive any format you please -- the FCC is merely mandating that the CE manufacturers include this tuner. They are not mandating the removal of the NTSC tuner -- although that will happen as a natural consequence of the NTSC phase-out and ATSC phase-in.
The ATSC phase-in is well behind schedule anyway. Right now 2010 or 2015 is a much more reasonable guess at when NTSC will have the plug pulled -- which would've been a much more reasonable estimate in the first place. But if they didn't put down 2006 on paper then the end number would've been more like 2020 or 2030.
BTW, the transition is picking up steam now, at least in the major markets. More cable providers are starting to offer HDTV (including locals), both major sat providers are providing HDTV (no locals), there's a third HDTV-only sat provider now (Voom!), and DirecTV is in the process of lofting some additional satellites specifically for increasing HDTV broadcasting (and they just beat down Dish in Loran's bankruptcy proceedings over them).
Mandating device design is not odd. Government does it all the time for cars, power plants, and numerous consumer items. The FCC does it for anything relating to the broadcast spectrum. You do realize that the NTSC format is a mandated device design, right?
When do we learn the lesson of alcohol prohibition?
That's a double edged sword.
While I agree that our current drug policy isn't working, and is doomed to never work, you can't possibly say that our "regulated" drug policies are working either. Alcohol is the single most abused drug in the United States. Tobacco is pretty far behind -- probably further than a lot of "prescription" drugs (which are increasingly being abused as well). If we're going to legalize drugs, then we need to fix the system first. The DUI/DWI laws are jokes -- as far as I'm concerned your first DUI/DWI conviction should be a year in prison and permanent revokation of your license. Nationwide (have fun with the implications of that BTW). Homicide while under the influence should not be a lesser charge -- as it often is. Heck, we're going to clear out something like 60% of the prison population by ending the war on drugs, so we'll have plenty of space for incarcerating people who can't control their usage of mind altering substances.
Most of the money currently being used to fight the war on drugs isn't going to go back to the taxpayer -- it will have to go to rehabilitation projects instead.
I'm all for changing the way we treat drugs right now, but not unless we also fix the more glaring problems with the current legalized drugs at the same time.