Actually, a few weeks ago, a story got out about just this. Some organisation (either the name wasn't given or my memory fails me) had people in place who would make this possible. They asked CIA for funds to go ahead with this and the CIA apparently turned them down. There was some speculation on why the CIA did this, the general consensus being that a leader was needed in Serbia to negotiate with, someone who would have the power to stop whatever the Serbs were doing. Killing Milosevic would destabilize Serbia and that would make negotiating an agreement and enforcing it very difficult.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Re:am I the only one who isn't seeing /. icons/log
on
IBM's "Deep Computing"
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Same trouble here, this has been going on for a while too (= cpl of weeks). Specifically, the left part of the green seperators won't load here. The browser keeps trying to load stuff from flotsam.slashdot.org port 81 and isn't getting a reply. Strangely enough, it doesn't time out either.
Message on our company Intranet: "You have a sticker in your private area"
Having watched this thread for a number of posts i decided that some more info might be useful.
First of all, MP3 isn't owned by anyone. The fact that it is says "MPEG" means that it is a standard and thus available to everyone.
"Fine" you ask, "So where do Fraunhoser and Apple come in ?" Well, Fraunhofer wrote a piece of software to encode en decode MP3. All the stories of Fraunhofer taking legal steps against ppl over MP3 encoders came into existence because ppl were too lame to write their own encoding software and decided to include Fraunhofers software in their own encoders. Fraunhofer, making a profit by selling its encoding software, acted on this to protect their interests.
"Okay" you reply, "But what about Apple ?" Apple simply decided to pay Fraunhofer for a license to incorporate this codec in QT4.
Somehow, installed userbase doesn't seem to be an issue here. My idea is that whoever will get the most interesting content (music, video's, whatever) out there in their own, preferably usefriendly, format will win this battle. People can't be bothered about whose technologies they are using. They will get whatever they need to see what they want to see or to hear what they want to hear. One great example of this is the huge impact the new Star Wars trailer had on Apple Quicktime downloads.
Working in a corporate environment I have to disagree with you. While a lot of manufacturers state in their licenses and other paperwork that they cannot be held accountable for all kinds of nasty things, the reality is different. First of all a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo in licenses and agreements simply doesn't hold up in court. Second, and more important, manufacturers simply are afraid to lose their larger clients and will go to great lenghts to keep their customers happy. So I know that in the corporate world accountability IS important enough to be a deciding factor in choosing OS's or any kind of product for that matter. Fortunately, larger IT companies are beginning to see this and have started implementing linux solutions for their clients. This also means that they can be held accountable for the quality of the OS Software, and that's what they earn their money with. This is the only way that corporate clients will ever use OS Software.
This is only about one thing: 3dfx lost their leading position on the hardware side. Before TNT 3dfx had one very distinct advantage over its competitors: speed. Now that the future in this respect doesn't look very pretty for 3dfx (Voodoo 3 is dissappointing, TNT2 is above expectation) 3dfx has only one thing left that separates it from its competitors: a proprietary API. This is an advantage if software companies keep developing titles that are 3dfx-only. Ergo, there are two things that threaten their position: 1 Software developers not supporting 3dfx (Which is not very likely in the near future, as mentioned above, some developers seem to prefer this API and there are quite a lot of 3dfx boards out there) 2 Non 3dfx chipsets working with Glide, because this would lose them their only present advantage over the competition
Or you might try it the other way around: Read all the job descriptions and post dramatic comments on/. on how awful the jobs are, how 19th century England the compensation is and how the evil corporate world is making you suffer.
I have a hard time touching some ppl's keyboards now, do we have to encourage them ? On the other hand... I might finally be able to consume beverages and not ruin everything in a 2 meter radius
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, a few weeks ago, a story got out about just this. Some organisation (either the name wasn't given or my memory fails me) had people in place who would make this possible. They asked CIA for funds to go ahead with this and the CIA apparently turned them down. There was some speculation on why the CIA did this, the general consensus being that a leader was needed in Serbia to negotiate with, someone who would have the power to stop whatever the Serbs were doing. Killing Milosevic would destabilize Serbia and that would make negotiating an agreement and enforcing it very difficult.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Same trouble here, this has been going on for a while too (= cpl of weeks). Specifically, the left part of the green seperators won't load here. The browser keeps trying to load stuff from flotsam.slashdot.org port 81 and isn't getting a reply. Strangely enough, it doesn't time out either.
Message on our company Intranet:
"You have a sticker in your private area"
Having watched this thread for a number of posts i decided that some more info might be useful.
First of all, MP3 isn't owned by anyone. The fact that it is says "MPEG" means that it is a standard and thus available to everyone.
"Fine" you ask, "So where do Fraunhoser and Apple come in ?" Well, Fraunhofer wrote a piece of software to encode en decode MP3. All the stories of Fraunhofer taking legal steps against ppl over MP3 encoders came into existence because ppl were too lame to write their own encoding software and decided to include Fraunhofers software in their own encoders. Fraunhofer, making a profit by selling its encoding software, acted on this to protect their interests.
"Okay" you reply, "But what about Apple ?"
Apple simply decided to pay Fraunhofer for a license to incorporate this codec in QT4.
What's the big deal ?
Somehow, installed userbase doesn't seem to be an issue here. My idea is that whoever will get the most interesting content (music, video's, whatever) out there in their own, preferably usefriendly, format will win this battle. People can't be bothered about whose technologies they are using. They will get whatever they need to see what they want to see or to hear what they want to hear. One great example of this is the huge impact the new Star Wars trailer had on Apple Quicktime downloads.
Working in a corporate environment I have to disagree with you. While a lot of manufacturers state in their licenses and other paperwork that they cannot be held accountable for all kinds of nasty things, the reality is different.
First of all a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo in licenses and agreements simply doesn't hold up in court.
Second, and more important, manufacturers simply are afraid to lose their larger clients and will go to great lenghts to keep their customers happy.
So I know that in the corporate world accountability IS important enough to be a deciding factor in choosing OS's or any kind of product for that matter.
Fortunately, larger IT companies are beginning to see this and have started implementing linux solutions for their clients. This also means that they can be held accountable for the quality of the OS Software, and that's what they earn their money with. This is the only way that corporate clients will ever use OS Software.
Just a "suit's" perspective on things
This is only about one thing: 3dfx lost their leading position on the hardware side. Before TNT 3dfx had one very distinct advantage over its competitors: speed. Now that the future in this respect doesn't look very pretty for 3dfx (Voodoo 3 is dissappointing, TNT2 is above expectation) 3dfx has only one thing left that separates it from its competitors: a proprietary API. This is an advantage if software companies keep developing titles that are 3dfx-only. Ergo, there are two things that threaten their position:
1 Software developers not supporting 3dfx (Which is not very likely in the near future, as mentioned above, some developers seem to prefer this API and there are quite a lot of 3dfx boards out there)
2 Non 3dfx chipsets working with Glide, because this would lose them their only present advantage over the competition
Or you might try it the other way around: Read all the job descriptions and post dramatic comments on /. on how awful the jobs are, how 19th century England the compensation is and how the evil corporate world is making you suffer.
Strange coincidence that all off this has been leading up to april 1 ?
I have a hard time touching some ppl's keyboards now, do we have to encourage them ? On the other hand... I might finally be able to consume beverages and not ruin everything in a 2 meter radius