Obviously this doesn't work if the hardware is broken, but if it's just "old", donate it to local schools! There are still plenty of public schools with drastically underfunded computer budgets, and they could definitely use whatever they can get. Hey, if you were feeling extra generous, you could even pre-install linux for them!
I always wondered if this "charge while you walk" thing would be such a blessing. The whole Law of Conservation of Stuff says that you can't create energy, you need to borrow it from somewhere. In this case, every bit of energy you used to charge your electronics would be energy that WASN'T spent moving your body along. I imagine that walking like this would feel difficult and strenuous, sort of like walking in sand. Has anyone actually tried chargers like this?
Ah, I understand the issue now. So here's my next idea: Place two (or more) sensors on each pixel. Have one sensor respond to the "typical" light ranges with a certain precision. Have the other one respond only to low light variations (it would wash out completely for higher light values, but its output could be disregarded at higher light levels). Assuming it had the same level of granularity as the other sensor, but it was operating over a smaller range, you'd effectively get finer sensitivity in low light conditions.
An example might express this better. Suppose your current technology allowed you to make a sensor that could distinguish among 10 different light levels. Suppose the normal light levels in the world have values 0 -> 100 (imaginary units). With one sensor for each pixel, tuned to respond to the normal light levels, you'd get outputs like 10, 20, 50, 90, etc. However, if you added a second sensor, and made it respond only to light levels less than 10, it could detect values like 1, 2, 5, 9, etc. With BOTH sensors and a few software tricks, you could effectively sense 10x as well in the lowest 10% of light levels, and just as well as before in the rest of the light levels.
If it's possible to add several such sensors, you could even approach some scale that approximated logarithmic sensitivity. Plus, with some clever data compression, it wouldn't even require that many more bits.
IANAP[hotographer], but this sounds like something that could be solved in software. If you know beforehand that your sensor has a linear sensitivity to light, but you're shooting for a logarithmic scale, then just apply a transformation to your data after you receive it from the sensor hardware. Is that a solution, or is the problem more complicated than that?
Ah, but then there'd be no reason for everyone to go out and buy $400 video cards every few years! It's the same reason Microsoft keeps adding "features" to Windows instead of making it more efficient. If adding more performance to your video card was as easy as dropping in a $50 processor, Nvidia executives wouldn't be able to afford NEARLY as many fancy cars!
Progress and business are often mutually exclusive.
He's not being punished because of his views or because of the strong ideas on his website (at least he'd better not be... never can tell what the real motive is). He's being punished because he cracked several corporate and government web sites.
Yes, it is "the Right of the People to alter or abolish [the government]", but it is not "the Right of Each Individual Person" to do it. And even if it were, hacking into corporate and government web sites is not an appropriate or effective way of trying to alter the government... it's akin to trying to alter the government by breaking into a senator's house and smashing his fine china.
Had this guy not used such destructive methods, it would have been outrageous for the government to try to arrest him based solely on the views expressed on his web page. However, since he decided to deface web pages, they've got legitimate beef with him.
... CrazyBrett Industries announced today that it will be creating an "Untrusted Spammer" designation, which will aid ISPs and users in filtering out unwanted mail from clueless companies. Topping the list is TRUSTe Corporation.
Well, technically you do pay through more indirect routes (taxes, increased stamp prices, etc). If the postal workers didn't have to spend so much time delivering junk mail, maybe the whole postal service would cost less to maintain and operate. But yes, I see your point.
So they're introducing an all-in-one device that will allow you to:
1. Play games
2. Play DVDs
3. Watch TV
4. Surf the web
5. Write email
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my computer!
So why do they bother? First and foremost, because this is their opportunity to control the one thing they've been unable to get so far: the hardware. Now they will finally be able to implement their digital rights infringement, etc, without fear of pushing the user away (after all, who in their right mind would give up using a piece of hardware after they paid $1000+ for it).
There's more to this scheme, however. Take a closer look at the list of activities shown above. Notice the absence of any kind of development, programming, hacking, etc. The long term goal of this strategy is to "phase out" these kinds of activities, because they are dangerous to the Microsoft monopoly. Eventually, they want everyone's recreational activities to be limited to the 5 items listed above (give or take a few).
Impossible, you say? Not with a little careful manipulation of the market. I'd estimate that 90% of the PC market these days are our beloved Joe Sixpacks, who simply want to do items 1-5, nothing more. Instead of trying to sell general purpose hardware and then customize it with the software (OS), they will start selling customized hardware, which will have only 10% less market share than PCs. With a "good" marketing campaign (which we know MS is capable of), they can strike a huge blow to the general purpose PC business, which will either drive it out of existence, or drive prices way up. Either of these outcomes will make PCs virtually inaccessible to consumers. Over the long term, consumers will lose interest in hacking/development. It might take an entire generation, but it will happen.
It is absolutely correct that the knowledge of software is embodied in the software itself; in the exact same way, the knowledge of Fusion Reactors would be embodied in a working model of a Fusion Reactor. (With enough time and a big enough magnifying glass, you could figure out exactly how it works). However, in many cases you can disseminate that knowledge without actually releasing a working model, whether that model is a physical "thing" or a bunch of bits.
Consider a hypothetical research team that discovered an unbreakable public key encryption scheme. Their final product was a GUI-based Windows program that performed the encryption algorithm. In this case, the most important thing for them to publish is the algorithm (knowledge) they developed. True, the team could release the source code (which would also effectively publish the algorithm), but even as a public contributor I would have no problem with the code remaining closed, as long as the ideas were released freely (such that I could write my own implementation of the algo).
I think the distinction really comes down to what kind of team you're dealing with. "Research" efforts are geared towards ideas, while "contracting" teams are expected to produce goods.
How about a different angle on the same idea: Suppose you gave public funding for research on Fusion Reactors, and a breakthrough resulted in a working design. Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
Demanding the knowledge (designs, algorithms, theories) gained from the research is a different story, because generating knowledge is the main purpose for doing research. Contributing funding for research is an investment, not in tangible goods, but in knowledge. Not sharing this with the contributors would be cheating, but refusing to hand over source code is no more wrong than refusing to hand over a Fusion Reactor.
It's interesting to see just how many companies MS hasn't sued yet. I just made the following submissions to the list on the Lindows site...
WinDos: a graphical file system browser for DOS
Findows 98+: a graphing/organizer program for the TI-85 calculator
Lindos Electronics: a British company whose name is pronounced exactly the same as Lindows
WinDose: a piece of pharmacy software that runs under Windows
Guess they better get cracking... they've got a lot of people to sue! After all, this IS about name infringement, right?;)
First of all, the parent post said "crashes repeatedly", not "crashes once". This implies that the original poster has had few problems with the application (fault of the developer, most likely), and if someone else has many problems, it is likely due to some external configuration, which IS the concern of the user.
Regardless, I can think of several instances where an application crash is the user's fault (not all apply to Word, specifically):
1. Opening up task manager and killing random threads in the application.
2. Using unstable beta/experimental drivers or libraries.
3. Installing cracked or unsupported plugins/codecs.
4. Undocumented registry hacks.
The application can only be blamed for errors in the code itself, not for external conditions.
But there is no code that can be completely closed without some loss of benefit to the industry and customer.
Hmm... let me see if I can refute this. While the "open source is always better" philosophy works well at the application layer, it seems to break down as you get lower and lower in the system.
The omnipresent consequence of open source is multiple incarnations of the same basic functionality. Indeed, this is touted as one of the benefits of open source; you can change the code to add new features or fix bugs. But it becomes a penalty whenever someone has to interoperate with that piece of code. This is why we have elaborate configure scripts, even for portability to the same OS. Now imagine if everyone wrote their own video drivers! Remember the days when games had to include drivers for every device they intended to support? This would be an undertaking of the same magnitude, as applications would need to include special code to interface with every driver they wanted to support.
At such a low level, I'd argue that open source practices might cause more harm than good. Common interfaces are generally a very good thing.
Windows HAS an OS, but it packaged with a window manager, a browser, and about a million other software tools that other people/could/ be writing better versions of for a living.
Ah, but the validity of that argument depends entirely on your perspective. I could just as easily say "Linux HAS an OS, but it is packaged with network stacks, file systems, and lots of other software that could be modularized and rewritten."
It all depends on what your exact definition of OS is. Including the window manager in the OS is not more or less "correct" in an absolute sense than including the network stack, for example. Can you tell I'm from the microkernel camp?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously this doesn't work if the hardware is broken, but if it's just "old", donate it to local schools! There are still plenty of public schools with drastically underfunded computer budgets, and they could definitely use whatever they can get. Hey, if you were feeling extra generous, you could even pre-install linux for them!
I always wondered if this "charge while you walk" thing would be such a blessing. The whole Law of Conservation of Stuff says that you can't create energy, you need to borrow it from somewhere. In this case, every bit of energy you used to charge your electronics would be energy that WASN'T spent moving your body along. I imagine that walking like this would feel difficult and strenuous, sort of like walking in sand. Has anyone actually tried chargers like this?
Ah, I understand the issue now. So here's my next idea: Place two (or more) sensors on each pixel. Have one sensor respond to the "typical" light ranges with a certain precision. Have the other one respond only to low light variations (it would wash out completely for higher light values, but its output could be disregarded at higher light levels). Assuming it had the same level of granularity as the other sensor, but it was operating over a smaller range, you'd effectively get finer sensitivity in low light conditions.
An example might express this better. Suppose your current technology allowed you to make a sensor that could distinguish among 10 different light levels. Suppose the normal light levels in the world have values 0 -> 100 (imaginary units). With one sensor for each pixel, tuned to respond to the normal light levels, you'd get outputs like 10, 20, 50, 90, etc. However, if you added a second sensor, and made it respond only to light levels less than 10, it could detect values like 1, 2, 5, 9, etc. With BOTH sensors and a few software tricks, you could effectively sense 10x as well in the lowest 10% of light levels, and just as well as before in the rest of the light levels.
If it's possible to add several such sensors, you could even approach some scale that approximated logarithmic sensitivity. Plus, with some clever data compression, it wouldn't even require that many more bits.
IANAP[hotographer], but this sounds like something that could be solved in software. If you know beforehand that your sensor has a linear sensitivity to light, but you're shooting for a logarithmic scale, then just apply a transformation to your data after you receive it from the sensor hardware. Is that a solution, or is the problem more complicated than that?
Ah, but then there'd be no reason for everyone to go out and buy $400 video cards every few years! It's the same reason Microsoft keeps adding "features" to Windows instead of making it more efficient. If adding more performance to your video card was as easy as dropping in a $50 processor, Nvidia executives wouldn't be able to afford NEARLY as many fancy cars!
Progress and business are often mutually exclusive.
The thing to remember is that NASA has no real authority over space -- It's just space, it doesn't belong to anyone.
I remember when we used to say that about the internet too.
Give it time.
Does this mean that banner ads will now start urging us to "Think Here!!!!"
He's not being punished because of his views or because of the strong ideas on his website (at least he'd better not be... never can tell what the real motive is). He's being punished because he cracked several corporate and government web sites.
Yes, it is "the Right of the People to alter or abolish [the government]", but it is not "the Right of Each Individual Person" to do it. And even if it were, hacking into corporate and government web sites is not an appropriate or effective way of trying to alter the government... it's akin to trying to alter the government by breaking into a senator's house and smashing his fine china.
Had this guy not used such destructive methods, it would have been outrageous for the government to try to arrest him based solely on the views expressed on his web page. However, since he decided to deface web pages, they've got legitimate beef with him.
... CrazyBrett Industries announced today that it will be creating an "Untrusted Spammer" designation, which will aid ISPs and users in filtering out unwanted mail from clueless companies. Topping the list is TRUSTe Corporation.
Imagine that.
Well, technically you do pay through more indirect routes (taxes, increased stamp prices, etc). If the postal workers didn't have to spend so much time delivering junk mail, maybe the whole postal service would cost less to maintain and operate. But yes, I see your point.
Dang, you beat me to it :)
Nice job!
... do you still think stem cell research is a bad thing?
Yeeeaaah, with nobody else,
You know when I browse alone,
I prefer to be by myself"
Why the heck is this a controversy? It seems to me that anything that makes good technology accessible to more people is a good thing.
I'd like to hear good arguments in the other camp, though.
AMD had better come out with a new "Athlon XXXP 3500+" to stay competitive! :)
So they're introducing an all-in-one device that will allow you to:
1. Play games
2. Play DVDs
3. Watch TV
4. Surf the web
5. Write email
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my computer!
So why do they bother? First and foremost, because this is their opportunity to control the one thing they've been unable to get so far: the hardware. Now they will finally be able to implement their digital rights infringement, etc, without fear of pushing the user away (after all, who in their right mind would give up using a piece of hardware after they paid $1000+ for it).
There's more to this scheme, however. Take a closer look at the list of activities shown above. Notice the absence of any kind of development, programming, hacking, etc. The long term goal of this strategy is to "phase out" these kinds of activities, because they are dangerous to the Microsoft monopoly. Eventually, they want everyone's recreational activities to be limited to the 5 items listed above (give or take a few).
Impossible, you say? Not with a little careful manipulation of the market. I'd estimate that 90% of the PC market these days are our beloved Joe Sixpacks, who simply want to do items 1-5, nothing more. Instead of trying to sell general purpose hardware and then customize it with the software (OS), they will start selling customized hardware, which will have only 10% less market share than PCs. With a "good" marketing campaign (which we know MS is capable of), they can strike a huge blow to the general purpose PC business, which will either drive it out of existence, or drive prices way up. Either of these outcomes will make PCs virtually inaccessible to consumers. Over the long term, consumers will lose interest in hacking/development. It might take an entire generation, but it will happen.
Thanks for tuning in.
It is absolutely correct that the knowledge of software is embodied in the software itself; in the exact same way, the knowledge of Fusion Reactors would be embodied in a working model of a Fusion Reactor. (With enough time and a big enough magnifying glass, you could figure out exactly how it works). However, in many cases you can disseminate that knowledge without actually releasing a working model, whether that model is a physical "thing" or a bunch of bits.
Consider a hypothetical research team that discovered an unbreakable public key encryption scheme. Their final product was a GUI-based Windows program that performed the encryption algorithm. In this case, the most important thing for them to publish is the algorithm (knowledge) they developed. True, the team could release the source code (which would also effectively publish the algorithm), but even as a public contributor I would have no problem with the code remaining closed, as long as the ideas were released freely (such that I could write my own implementation of the algo).
I think the distinction really comes down to what kind of team you're dealing with. "Research" efforts are geared towards ideas, while "contracting" teams are expected to produce goods.
How about a different angle on the same idea: Suppose you gave public funding for research on Fusion Reactors, and a breakthrough resulted in a working design. Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
Demanding the knowledge (designs, algorithms, theories) gained from the research is a different story, because generating knowledge is the main purpose for doing research. Contributing funding for research is an investment, not in tangible goods, but in knowledge. Not sharing this with the contributors would be cheating, but refusing to hand over source code is no more wrong than refusing to hand over a Fusion Reactor.
It's interesting to see just how many companies MS hasn't sued yet. I just made the following submissions to the list on the Lindows site...
;)
WinDos: a graphical file system browser for DOS
Findows 98+: a graphing/organizer program for the TI-85 calculator
Lindos Electronics: a British company whose name is pronounced exactly the same as Lindows
WinDose: a piece of pharmacy software that runs under Windows
Guess they better get cracking... they've got a lot of people to sue! After all, this IS about name infringement, right?
Do tell: According to the law, how many letters must you change before it ceases to be an infringement?
Is Landows ok?
How about Lindowd?
VV1ND0VV5?
Eh, don't be so quick to conclude that...
First of all, the parent post said "crashes repeatedly", not "crashes once". This implies that the original poster has had few problems with the application (fault of the developer, most likely), and if someone else has many problems, it is likely due to some external configuration, which IS the concern of the user.
Regardless, I can think of several instances where an application crash is the user's fault (not all apply to Word, specifically):
1. Opening up task manager and killing random threads in the application.
2. Using unstable beta/experimental drivers or libraries.
3. Installing cracked or unsupported plugins/codecs.
4. Undocumented registry hacks.
The application can only be blamed for errors in the code itself, not for external conditions.
DAMN that's funny! :D
No mod points... pity.
So maybe THIS is why my connection has been down since last night...?
-- Brett
Hmm... let me see if I can refute this. While the "open source is always better" philosophy works well at the application layer, it seems to break down as you get lower and lower in the system.
The omnipresent consequence of open source is multiple incarnations of the same basic functionality. Indeed, this is touted as one of the benefits of open source; you can change the code to add new features or fix bugs. But it becomes a penalty whenever someone has to interoperate with that piece of code. This is why we have elaborate configure scripts, even for portability to the same OS. Now imagine if everyone wrote their own video drivers! Remember the days when games had to include drivers for every device they intended to support? This would be an undertaking of the same magnitude, as applications would need to include special code to interface with every driver they wanted to support.
At such a low level, I'd argue that open source practices might cause more harm than good. Common interfaces are generally a very good thing.
-- Brett
Ah, but the validity of that argument depends entirely on your perspective. I could just as easily say "Linux HAS an OS, but it is packaged with network stacks, file systems, and lots of other software that could be modularized and rewritten."
It all depends on what your exact definition of OS is. Including the window manager in the OS is not more or less "correct" in an absolute sense than including the network stack, for example. Can you tell I'm from the microkernel camp?