The thing is, the constitution is clear on this. The states don't have a right to charge taxes on stuff shipped across state lines. Why are we even having this discussion?
Because Congress (both state and federal) likes to keep the Supreme Court on its toes? It certainly seems like it sometimes.:-/
I stand corrected. Still, a single throwaway line about email taxes doesn't seem like it should be eclipsing the real taxation issues. Those issues are the possibly taxation of goods sold across state lines as well as the taxation of internet connections themselves. Internet access is expensive enough already without the government trying to skim off the top, and shipping fees already wipe out any savings realized by a lack of taxes and "brick & mortar" overhead on goods.
I can't see how allowing internet taxes would do any good other than to have states fight over who should collect the taxes on an item shipped over state lines.
They don't have to. TFAs are actually about taxing sales made over the internet, plus possible taxes on internet connections themselves. The whole email thing appears to be either a submitter or an editor invention.
Dude, 1991 was the release date of GNU/Linux. Development of NT started in 1988, culminating in the first release in 1993. It couldn't have started any earlier than that, because Dave Cutler was working on the PRISM project at DEC from 1986-1988.
Execution isn't innovation, anymore than marketing is
See, I have to disagree. Take the Nintendo Wii as an example. Motion sensors exist in the PS3. They exist in Gameboy games. They exist in PC Joy[sticks|pads]. So why is the Wii so innovative?
The answer lies in its execution. It's a balls-to-the-wall embracing of an immature technology because someone, somewhere had the idea that the market was ready for it. Once the initial concept was sketched out, you can bet that dozens of ideas were tossed around to come up with the Wii Remote we see today. Some of it was driven by necessity (e.g. "We need to support classic games, so what if we made it an NES controller when turned sideways?") and some of it was probably driven by thoughts about how to utilize the ideas already developed. (e.g. "We added the IR to deal with the dead reckoning drift, but what if we also used it as a mouse cursor?") The resulting package is highly innovative, even if the individual ideas are not. (Or at least, "mildly" innovative.)
The operating system was completed in 1991 when the Linux kernel was augmented with system utilities and libraries from the GNU Project. This led to the coining of the name GNU/Linux.
Dude, I don't know how else to tell you this: I'm not talking about market share. I never addressed the issue of market share, and I don't want to address the issue of market share. My post was a correction to your assertion that Linux is a young OS in comparison to Windows, and that is ALL that it was.
The execution of an invention might be done in the group, but the innovation is ALWAYS A SINGLE IDEA IN A SINGLE PERSON
Yes and no. Innovative ideas tend to happen inside environments that are conductive to them. i.e. I may come up with a brilliant idea, but that's only after having bounced 50 related ideas off my coworkers. For some types of innovation, you may even need access to equipment and tools before you can develop the idea in the first place.
As for execution, is an idea really innovative if you can't execute it? The best someone can do in that situation is write a paper and hope someone else spends the resources. To effectively execute an idea, you pretty much always need infrastructure to support its development. The "lone innovator" tends to lack that infrastructure, and is thus usually unsuccessful in his attempts to execute.
Ok, so you're not very skilled at transitioning from one subject to another.
Survey says? No.
I replied specifically to your assertion that Linux was still a young OS. I did not contest your market share arguments. Trying to disprove a factual correction with an unrelated argument about market share is a strawman at best and the Chewbacca Defense at worst.
NT is "based on" VMS to the extent that the team developing NT was the same team that was developing VAX. The NT code is original despite its similarities to the VMS system.
An urban legend is that Windows NT got its name because WNT is one letter rotated from VMS. As amusing as the supposition is, it's just as much of a coincidence as the HAL = IBM - 1 legend.
Games are distractions. Viewed from a clinical perspective, they are all chores. Why should I blow up the bad guy's superweapon again? Or take out that legion of storm troopers trying to kill me? Why should I bother solving some random number puzzle to access this door?
Most gamers would reply, "that's different!" But is it really? If you're not all that interested in video games, living out a fantasy like that might not be interesting. In fact, it may very well feel like a chore. (
(As a side note, this is why I stopped playing first person shooters save for those that take place in fictional universes that interest me. e.g. Elite Forces. FPS games were becoming a repetitive task of "avoid the zombie attacks, shoot the bad guys, avoid the zombie attacks, shoot the bad guys." Online gameplay was marginally more interesting with, "shoot other guy, get shot by someone else, shoot the other guy, get shot by someone else." But I digress.)
Generally speaking, when you view or interact with entertainment you are looking to invoke an emotional connection of some sort. A highly developed sense for a particular form of entertainment allows one to appreciate complex forms of it more readily than others. Meanwhile, some just want forms that evoke a simple reaction to a simple form of that entertainment.
To use music as an example, Beethoven can evoke a lot of emotion in those who have developed an ear for classical music and enjoy such music. Others prefer a more direct approach of a shouted out emotional state as found in Death Metal Rock. Still others are looking for a quick attack/release cycle of emotions as found in pop and techno music. (Ever notice the 90's techno always dropped the background music for a few seconds at the height of the song? It's a cheap trick, but it has serious emotional and cognitive impact on the listener.)
Taking this back to video games, it's not the chores themselves that make Brain Age interesting. It's being placed in a situation where you have to react and think quickly. Simple math and puzzles are used as the vehicle for such tests. For some players, the pressure being placed on them to get a better score is reward in of itself. This is similar to the reward one gets by blasting through a shoot-em'up while avoiding the gazillion+1 enemies that are hogging the screen space. Pressure is put on you to perform, and a certain reward is felt when you achieve a good performance level. One can even be proud of their achievement by sharing their score with others. In the old days, this meant entering your initials into the arcade machine. For Brain Age, this means having a normalized and easily relatable score to brag to your friends about.
My end point is that these games aren't "boring" at all. They are just as interactive as other forms of gaming. The only difference is in the audience they appeal to. Just as country music appeals to some while death metal rock appeals to others. It takes all kinds.
No it doesn't. That's just a backronym that Microsoft used in marketing. It actually doesn't stand for anything other than the fact that a Microsoft employee liked the juxtaposition of those two letters. Same story with XP.
Not so! X was developed in 1984 at MIT. The current X11 version was released in 1987. Windows 1.01 was released in 1985.
As for the constant cycling of Desktop Environments, it's not Microsoft's fault that they've kept their system stabilized on a single DE since 1995 while the Linux community cycles through WMs and DEs like FVWM, Afterstep, Enlightenment, KDE, GNOME, and XFCE.
NT GUI would be being based on a design that is 22 years old
You're not serious, are you? The NT GUI is nowhere near 22 years old. You can say that the Windows platform had graphics for 22 years, but the actual GUI has changed several times. Windows 1.x had a horrendous tiled-window interface that (thankfully) went the way of the Dodos. Windows 2.0 finally included overlapping windows, but the design was still pretty cruddy. Microsoft gave it one more shot with Windows 3.0 and a new Progman before giving up on the original GUI altogether.
In Windows 95, Microsoft used research from the Cairo project to produce a brand new GUI that had almost nothing in common with the previous Windows GUIs. This GUI has been the underpinning of the Windows platform since then, making the Windows GUI about 12 years old. The oldest Linux desktop environment still in common use is KDE, which is about 2 years younger than the Windows GUI. So not a whole lot of difference there.
Your reply has nothing to do with the relative maturity of the Linux operating system. Nor did I make any statements about Linux's market share. Besides, a brand name being 26 years old doesn't accomplish much when any fly by night company can displace your brand importance on a whim.
aligned with the fact that Linux is still quite a bit younger than windows
That argument doesn't hold water anymore. Linux is approximately 16 years old and is based on a design that is ~40 years old. The original Windows codebase would be 22 years old this year if it weren't dead and buried. Windows NT technology replaced the original Windows line in the 90's, making the current Windows platform only 14 years old. So in actuality, it's Windows that is the young'un.
Energy payback of biomass ethanol [cornell.edu] is negative meaning more energy from fossil fuels are consumed in the production of biomass ethanol than energy provided by the ethanol.
Cornell, Cornell. That sounds familiar. Oh yeah! Isn't that where Pimentel works? i.e. The same guy who's been trying to discredit ethanol for the past 30 years?
Studies that have been done independent of Pimentel's research have shown the exact opposite to be true:
* "Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol" - "We show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24."
* "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update" - "For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain."
* "How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?" - "Using the best farming and production methods, the amount of energy contained in a gallon of ethanol is more than twice the energy used to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol."
* "New study confronts old thinking on ethanol's net energy value" - "Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce, according to a recent study by Argonne National Laboratory conducted by Michael Wang."
Why is it that every study that shows ethanol as net negative has Pimentel's name on it somewhere, while independent studies are quickly showing the exact opposite to be true?
Pimentel's numbers were probably correct in the 1970s. It's not the 1970s anymore, and that guy is becoming a serious pain in the posterior.
You're partially correct. Much greater fuel-alcohol production can be realized from Cane Sugar and Sugar Beets than from corn. The only reason why the ethanol crowd is so focused on corn is because America has a lot of it. Hawaii produces a great deal of cane sugar, but it pales in comparison to corn production. And sugar beet production is entirely focused on sugar. Still, both plants are useful for creating butanol, an alcohol with properties and energy densities much closer to gasoline than ethanol.
A study released in May from Iowa State University shows increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American -- an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006.
If I'm not mistaken, that means $47 per year. Which really isn't that bad when you notice the price of gasoline lately.
The move is based in part on wide-spread belief that ethanol-blended fuel produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline.
Ethanol is not really chosen for its environmental friendliness. The environmental models I know of are based on the fact that the increased crop production produces a greater number of carbon sinks. Increases in carbon sinks won't show up in the EPA testing.
The real reason for choosing ethanol is its availability. It's easy to come by and is currently cheaper than gasoline. The US also has a great deal of surplus farming capacity from which to draw greater yields. (Though folks generally argue about how much surplus capacity there is, and how much can be brought online before food production is seriously impacted.)
Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol -- whether from corn, beets, wheat or other crops -- takes more energy than is derived from the product.
Actually, that comes from the US Government's ethanol studies done in the 1970s. Dr. David Pimentel headed up those original studies. Since then, technology has improved and the US Government's studies have shown it to be energy positive. However, Dr. Pimentel has continued to rely on the outdated figures in attempts to discredit the newer findings. So the ethanol community is in a bit of a flux, with Pimentel rallying his forces against the idea that ethanol is a sustainable energy source.
Re:Why Does Encryption Need to "Scramble" Informat
on
A Mighty Number Falls
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· Score: 1
Alice has transferred information to Bob and Jesus is confused. It seems that no amount of analysis could decipher what Alice and Bob are talking about.
That's effectively what a code is. In order to decipher the information, you need to find the codebook that explains the meaning. The problem with this scheme is two-fold:
1. Keeping the codebook secure. In electronic communications it is difficult to ensure that the codebook doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Imagine that Bob and Alice had their previous conversations in a crowded shopping mall rather than in the privacy of their home, and that they both had to shout to properly understand one another. All Jesus would have to do is either lay in wait while they have the conversation, or ask enough people who were present until he finds someone who remembers what their conversation was about.
2. Given enough samples of communication, Bob and Alice's code will eventually succumb to analysis. They'll keep talking about this person interacting with that person, which resulted in this event. If Jesus knows of the subjects (and come on, he's Jesus!) he'll eventually get the gist of who the subjects are. Thus the code fails in the same way an OTP fails when used more than once. (Thus why it's a one time pad.)
Slashdot Mirror
SLOW DOWN AHEAD! 35Kbps through the toll!
Because Congress (both state and federal) likes to keep the Supreme Court on its toes? It certainly seems like it sometimes.
I stand corrected. Still, a single throwaway line about email taxes doesn't seem like it should be eclipsing the real taxation issues. Those issues are the possibly taxation of goods sold across state lines as well as the taxation of internet connections themselves. Internet access is expensive enough already without the government trying to skim off the top, and shipping fees already wipe out any savings realized by a lack of taxes and "brick & mortar" overhead on goods.
I can't see how allowing internet taxes would do any good other than to have states fight over who should collect the taxes on an item shipped over state lines.
They don't have to. TFAs are actually about taxing sales made over the internet, plus possible taxes on internet connections themselves. The whole email thing appears to be either a submitter or an editor invention.
Dude, 1991 was the release date of GNU/Linux. Development of NT started in 1988, culminating in the first release in 1993. It couldn't have started any earlier than that, because Dave Cutler was working on the PRISM project at DEC from 1986-1988.
See, I have to disagree. Take the Nintendo Wii as an example. Motion sensors exist in the PS3. They exist in Gameboy games. They exist in PC Joy[sticks|pads]. So why is the Wii so innovative?
The answer lies in its execution. It's a balls-to-the-wall embracing of an immature technology because someone, somewhere had the idea that the market was ready for it. Once the initial concept was sketched out, you can bet that dozens of ideas were tossed around to come up with the Wii Remote we see today. Some of it was driven by necessity (e.g. "We need to support classic games, so what if we made it an NES controller when turned sideways?") and some of it was probably driven by thoughts about how to utilize the ideas already developed. (e.g. "We added the IR to deal with the dead reckoning drift, but what if we also used it as a mouse cursor?") The resulting package is highly innovative, even if the individual ideas are not. (Or at least, "mildly" innovative.)
Innovation simply doesn't develop in a vacuum.
Dude, I don't know how else to tell you this: I'm not talking about market share. I never addressed the issue of market share, and I don't want to address the issue of market share. My post was a correction to your assertion that Linux is a young OS in comparison to Windows, and that is ALL that it was.
Linux is NOT a young OS compared to Windows.
Period. End of story. Nothing more to discuss.
Yes and no. Innovative ideas tend to happen inside environments that are conductive to them. i.e. I may come up with a brilliant idea, but that's only after having bounced 50 related ideas off my coworkers. For some types of innovation, you may even need access to equipment and tools before you can develop the idea in the first place.
As for execution, is an idea really innovative if you can't execute it? The best someone can do in that situation is write a paper and hope someone else spends the resources. To effectively execute an idea, you pretty much always need infrastructure to support its development. The "lone innovator" tends to lack that infrastructure, and is thus usually unsuccessful in his attempts to execute.
They make vests to protect against Zylons? How come no one told me this before!?! It would have made things a lot easier!
COMPUTER! HYPERSPACE!
Survey says? No.
I replied specifically to your assertion that Linux was still a young OS. I did not contest your market share arguments. Trying to disprove a factual correction with an unrelated argument about market share is a strawman at best and the Chewbacca Defense at worst.
VAX = Hardware
VMS = OS
NT is "based on" VMS to the extent that the team developing NT was the same team that was developing VAX. The NT code is original despite its similarities to the VMS system.
An urban legend is that Windows NT got its name because WNT is one letter rotated from VMS. As amusing as the supposition is, it's just as much of a coincidence as the HAL = IBM - 1 legend.
Games are distractions. Viewed from a clinical perspective, they are all chores. Why should I blow up the bad guy's superweapon again? Or take out that legion of storm troopers trying to kill me? Why should I bother solving some random number puzzle to access this door?
Most gamers would reply, "that's different!" But is it really? If you're not all that interested in video games, living out a fantasy like that might not be interesting. In fact, it may very well feel like a chore. (
(As a side note, this is why I stopped playing first person shooters save for those that take place in fictional universes that interest me. e.g. Elite Forces. FPS games were becoming a repetitive task of "avoid the zombie attacks, shoot the bad guys, avoid the zombie attacks, shoot the bad guys." Online gameplay was marginally more interesting with, "shoot other guy, get shot by someone else, shoot the other guy, get shot by someone else." But I digress.)
Generally speaking, when you view or interact with entertainment you are looking to invoke an emotional connection of some sort. A highly developed sense for a particular form of entertainment allows one to appreciate complex forms of it more readily than others. Meanwhile, some just want forms that evoke a simple reaction to a simple form of that entertainment.
To use music as an example, Beethoven can evoke a lot of emotion in those who have developed an ear for classical music and enjoy such music. Others prefer a more direct approach of a shouted out emotional state as found in Death Metal Rock. Still others are looking for a quick attack/release cycle of emotions as found in pop and techno music. (Ever notice the 90's techno always dropped the background music for a few seconds at the height of the song? It's a cheap trick, but it has serious emotional and cognitive impact on the listener.)
Taking this back to video games, it's not the chores themselves that make Brain Age interesting. It's being placed in a situation where you have to react and think quickly. Simple math and puzzles are used as the vehicle for such tests. For some players, the pressure being placed on them to get a better score is reward in of itself. This is similar to the reward one gets by blasting through a shoot-em'up while avoiding the gazillion+1 enemies that are hogging the screen space. Pressure is put on you to perform, and a certain reward is felt when you achieve a good performance level. One can even be proud of their achievement by sharing their score with others. In the old days, this meant entering your initials into the arcade machine. For Brain Age, this means having a normalized and easily relatable score to brag to your friends about.
My end point is that these games aren't "boring" at all. They are just as interactive as other forms of gaming. The only difference is in the audience they appeal to. Just as country music appeals to some while death metal rock appeals to others. It takes all kinds.
No it doesn't. That's just a backronym that Microsoft used in marketing. It actually doesn't stand for anything other than the fact that a Microsoft employee liked the juxtaposition of those two letters. Same story with XP.
Oh, you do not want to go there.
So what you're saying is, 2009 will be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Not so! X was developed in 1984 at MIT. The current X11 version was released in 1987. Windows 1.01 was released in 1985.
As for the constant cycling of Desktop Environments, it's not Microsoft's fault that they've kept their system stabilized on a single DE since 1995 while the Linux community cycles through WMs and DEs like FVWM, Afterstep, Enlightenment, KDE, GNOME, and XFCE.
You're not serious, are you? The NT GUI is nowhere near 22 years old. You can say that the Windows platform had graphics for 22 years, but the actual GUI has changed several times. Windows 1.x had a horrendous tiled-window interface that (thankfully) went the way of the Dodos. Windows 2.0 finally included overlapping windows, but the design was still pretty cruddy. Microsoft gave it one more shot with Windows 3.0 and a new Progman before giving up on the original GUI altogether.
In Windows 95, Microsoft used research from the Cairo project to produce a brand new GUI that had almost nothing in common with the previous Windows GUIs. This GUI has been the underpinning of the Windows platform since then, making the Windows GUI about 12 years old. The oldest Linux desktop environment still in common use is KDE, which is about 2 years younger than the Windows GUI. So not a whole lot of difference there.
Your reply has nothing to do with the relative maturity of the Linux operating system. Nor did I make any statements about Linux's market share. Besides, a brand name being 26 years old doesn't accomplish much when any fly by night company can displace your brand importance on a whim.
I'm out and out boycotting Sony. How about you?
(And yes, that means I haven't seen Spiderman 3 either legally or illegally. Nor do I intend to.)
That argument doesn't hold water anymore. Linux is approximately 16 years old and is based on a design that is ~40 years old. The original Windows codebase would be 22 years old this year if it weren't dead and buried. Windows NT technology replaced the original Windows line in the 90's, making the current Windows platform only 14 years old. So in actuality, it's Windows that is the young'un.
http://news.google.com/news?um=1&tab=wn&client=moz illa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unoff icial&q=e85+price+per+gallon
I win.
Cornell, Cornell. That sounds familiar. Oh yeah! Isn't that where Pimentel works? i.e. The same guy who's been trying to discredit ethanol for the past 30 years?
Studies that have been done independent of Pimentel's research have shown the exact opposite to be true:
List of studies
* "Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol" - "We show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24."
* "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update" - "For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain."
* "How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?" - "Using the best farming and production methods, the amount of energy contained in a gallon of ethanol is more than twice the energy used to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol."
* "New study confronts old thinking on ethanol's net energy value" - "Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce, according to a recent study by Argonne National Laboratory conducted by Michael Wang."
Why is it that every study that shows ethanol as net negative has Pimentel's name on it somewhere, while independent studies are quickly showing the exact opposite to be true?
Pimentel's numbers were probably correct in the 1970s. It's not the 1970s anymore, and that guy is becoming a serious pain in the posterior.
You're partially correct. Much greater fuel-alcohol production can be realized from Cane Sugar and Sugar Beets than from corn. The only reason why the ethanol crowd is so focused on corn is because America has a lot of it. Hawaii produces a great deal of cane sugar, but it pales in comparison to corn production. And sugar beet production is entirely focused on sugar. Still, both plants are useful for creating butanol, an alcohol with properties and energy densities much closer to gasoline than ethanol.
If I'm not mistaken, that means $47 per year. Which really isn't that bad when you notice the price of gasoline lately.
Ethanol is not really chosen for its environmental friendliness. The environmental models I know of are based on the fact that the increased crop production produces a greater number of carbon sinks. Increases in carbon sinks won't show up in the EPA testing.
The real reason for choosing ethanol is its availability. It's easy to come by and is currently cheaper than gasoline. The US also has a great deal of surplus farming capacity from which to draw greater yields. (Though folks generally argue about how much surplus capacity there is, and how much can be brought online before food production is seriously impacted.)
Actually, that comes from the US Government's ethanol studies done in the 1970s. Dr. David Pimentel headed up those original studies. Since then, technology has improved and the US Government's studies have shown it to be energy positive. However, Dr. Pimentel has continued to rely on the outdated figures in attempts to discredit the newer findings. So the ethanol community is in a bit of a flux, with Pimentel rallying his forces against the idea that ethanol is a sustainable energy source.
That's effectively what a code is. In order to decipher the information, you need to find the codebook that explains the meaning. The problem with this scheme is two-fold:
1. Keeping the codebook secure. In electronic communications it is difficult to ensure that the codebook doesn't fall into the wrong hands. Imagine that Bob and Alice had their previous conversations in a crowded shopping mall rather than in the privacy of their home, and that they both had to shout to properly understand one another. All Jesus would have to do is either lay in wait while they have the conversation, or ask enough people who were present until he finds someone who remembers what their conversation was about.
2. Given enough samples of communication, Bob and Alice's code will eventually succumb to analysis. They'll keep talking about this person interacting with that person, which resulted in this event. If Jesus knows of the subjects (and come on, he's Jesus!) he'll eventually get the gist of who the subjects are. Thus the code fails in the same way an OTP fails when used more than once. (Thus why it's a one time pad.)