I recently flew from home to Detroit and back. The leg from Minneapolis to Detroit was cancelled due to mechanical problems. "Good" I think to myself, better to be cancelled than to encounter potentially life threatening problems while in the air. Well, most of the mob didn't feel that way. Obviously there was a huge line of people at the gate wanting to rebook their flight. As I walked past the mob I heard comments such as "I wish I had a grenade, I'd pull the pin and chuck it at the attendants". First of all, the attendants had no involvement. They just were relaying bad news. Second, it was a freaking mechanical problem. I'd hate to see the riot that would have errupted if any of these lunatics were armed.
Me? I walked past the lines, up to the main ticket gate and calmly explained that my flight was cancelled. They booked me on the next available flight, gave me a book of coupons (air miles, discounts etc) and sent me on my way.
That would probably be a bit scary for LEGO. Once you license your name out then the reputation of that project affects your reputation and brand recognition. Around here the reputation of the software is apparently good, but what about outside of this small group of people? Right now its probably mostly unknown, but once its licensed it becomes more visible.
Not everybody would feel the same way, especially if some well intentioned but misguided people decide that the path to salvation is through unchaining people from the official LEGO (though the unofficial would now be official too!) software.
I wish I could find the link, but I found an utterly clueless rant the other day as I was looking for video4linux information. He was chastising the video4linux developers because they didn't support his hardware and that it only supported a few high priced boards and older technology. He had absolutely no concept that this was a) a volunteer effort, b) required reverse engineering in most cases since most companies don't release specifications.
Anyway, I see the same thing happening here, only much worse: "I installed the LEGO software on my kids LEGO set and can't make it do anything. I want my damned money back."
Sure, the response should be "Oh, use the software on the CD, its a nice graphical language" but from past experiences that response won't work.
I suspect the developer might be wanting to concentrate on producing his Cinelerra product for commercial sale. No good selling one
application and giving away another. I can't quite see the author not using any of his GPL'd Broadcast 2000 code, but that'll be
something interesting for the future.
How is this interesting? He's the owner of the code, so according to the GPL he's allowed to use it in a closed source project. If I were to grab Broadcast 2000's code and release it as a closed source application then it'd still be boring: We already know that thats illegal (though I don't think its been tested in court)
First of all, insurance payouts aren't free. The insurance companies will on average get their money back. They do this by increasing your rates. I've never had an accident, but from what I understand they normally get back more than they gave out. Nothing wrong here, people should pay for their mistakes.
Second of all, there is huge money involved with people who are ticketed and fined. Get a ticket and your insurance rate goes up. There's no payout involved so this is pure profit for the insurance company.
Third, the town itself does collect the money, or more accurately the "billing department" for the town does the collection. The money then gets circulated around, a little bit for the town, a little bit for the cops and (usually) zero for public safety. In your version of the world I suppose that the town wouldn't even see any of the money, just the deparment in charge of accounts receivable, after all you don't write seperate checks for the police force, local government etc.
Some vehicles have complex circulation systems, but not everybody uses them. They're also not so complex that the air in the "non-drinking" portion of the car will be necessarily be free from alcohol vapours.
Take a drive in your car with its complex ventillation system. Give your buddies all the bean burritos they can eat, see how isolated your environment is from theirs when they've released a few sneaky but deadlies.
Yeah, it would, but neither police departments or insurance would like this. Both of them make staggering profits from actually pulling people over who've broken the law. If people are prevented from breaking the law then they lose that source of income. What's a few lost lives compared to the tragic loss of money for cops and insurance companies?
Just because it's GPLed doesn't mean you can't also release it commercially. I'd also have to wonder what would happen if eBookCrack was released under the GPL and was included in a mainstream distribution. Would, for instance, Red Hat, be liable? Probably.
No, Adobe should still be penalized. They've done the equivalent of washing their hands of the mess they started, just like a certain quasi-historical figure by the name of Pontious Pilate. A boycott really won't effect them though, the number of people who a) care and b) use Adobe software but have other vialble options is a pretty small group (and don't even mention GIMP).
If people really want to make an impact decrypt and flood gnutella (or whatever passes as peer-to-peer file sharing now) with formerly encrypted documents. Spend a few bucks and pack CD's full of decrypted ebooks, accidently leave them in a mall, or in a library etc.
Better yet, set yourself up as an example of how wrong the law is. Write the software, release it under the GPL and get your ass thrown in jail, bonus points if you're an American citizens with one wife and multiple kids, a good job and no arrest record.
Interesting. So does this mean that if you loaded a watch battery (milliAh = up to 500) into a 38 shell and shot someone (in the right
place I guess) they'd have a heart attack? If so why do tasers have wires?
Electricity follows the path of least resistance, which is why tasers don't (usually) kill people. The electrodes are jabbed into you but are some small distance apart. The path current takes is between those two points. Your heart is far away from the path of least resistance.
This is why you're told to keep one hand in your back pocket when working on electrical circuits. If you introduce current between both hands your heart is smack dab in the middle of the path of least resistance.
Well, government contributions are by definition fungible. To develop a drug research into the disease has to be done. Even if government gives money for "research on disease X", and its only used on "research on disease X" its money that the drug companies then don't have to spend. So more drug company dollars can go towards making a cure (or alarmingly, marketing).
There's nothing wrong with this, the important thing is that the research is done and eventually a cure comes about. It does muddy the statement that "only private money was made to find the vaccine" though.
So, public funds are used to develop vaccines through the redirection of corporate funds that would have been spent.
Is Brazil's actions wrong? I'm not so sure. Ethical standpoints on patents or the value of human life aside, patents are in place to allow public disclosure at the cost of providing an artificial monopoly for some period of time. You're allowed to make use of the patents for non-commercial purposes, which I think Brazil's case qualifies for. If Brazil suddenly started selling their drugs then (again, ignoring ethical statements) they would be in the wrong.
but it applies equally to the RIAA and non-electronic music distributions. I purchase Britney Spears latest and greatest from Sam Goody's. I rip it onto MP3 and distribute it via LimeWire. Sam Goody's is equally guilty of viral copyright infringement. If you accept this argument (which I don't), you can also trace it back to the RIAA or even through some convuluted logic, the artists themselves.
So, I suppose the next step is for the independent artists to sue themselves for creating music which can be pirated.
You could build an operating system around Linux that uses only BSD derived utilities though too. The argument that it should be GNU/Linux because its built around GNU tools as essentials and BSD/other licenses as optionals is very weak. It's Linux, you can insist that its called GNU/Linux all you want but its been named already. I sympathize with you, I really do, and just as soon as nanotechnology can build a small enough violing I'll play it for you.
Most games are made without any real desire to be portable. Most games are released on Windows. There's a much better chance that DirectX is installed on a Windows box than OpenGL.
Wow, this is so new - Evil Microsoft
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Wow, nobody ever has done this before. I mean Nintendo didn't do that with the Gameboy Advance, Sony didn't do it with the PlayStation 2 and Sega didn't do it with the Dreamcast.
Except that they all did it. It was extremely difficult to find any of these devices that didn't require purchasing a couple other products with it.
Mix steganography with good encryption and/or coding and it seems impossible unless you know before hand what the unadulturated image is on a bit per bit basis.
For instance two diffent jpeg encoders, both at the same quality level will result in subtly different encodings of the same source image. If you take these two images, calculate the difference at each decoded pixel, and amplify the diffence (so that you can easily detect minue intensity differences) you'll see the signature of the differences between the encoding engines.
Now if I encode a message in the image (a 1 megapixel image, small by todays standards, can encode a 1 megabit steganographic message assuming only a 1 bit change in colour). If you could get the source image and do the above described difference calculation you would see the pattern representing the message.
If you pick the wrong source image (it LOOKS identical but was compressed slightly differently), you'll only reveal a combination of the signature and message.
Do whatever statistical examination of this noisy signature you want, I don't see how you can determine that the image concealed data. Well, unless you do an impressively poor job of concealing the data in the message. Encoding your message in a pure white gif, jpg or png would be a bad idea for instance.
I love the way there's a reserved word "imaginary" heh...
This would be for defining imaginary numbers. An imaginary number is some multiple of the square root of -1. They are used very frequently in science and engineering.
But we know who Reagan and Jean Kirkpatrick are. Younger people either won't know who they are, or possibly in the case of Reagan will only know the republican revisionist version of him.
It's not necesarily true, an infinitely long irrational number does not necessarily include every other possible number sequence.
Go here for more info.
It sounds like beta-blockers would fit the bill, but I'm not a pharmacist. I used to get terribly nervous speaking in front of people, part of my EE degree was giving a report on my final year project in front of a rather large audience. A portion of this audience was hostile (some of the professors were out for blood, not for technical reasons but merely because they could)
A friends girlfriend, a pharmacist to be, offered to give me beta blockers. I didn't accept, but she insisted that they'd make it hard for me to be nervous.
Where this mystical configuration procedure which seemed to tax you so was: start.
Sorry, you're a troll. I agree that some things can be simpler, but even if I had to install it I can find a prepacked RPM or Debian package.
rpm -ivh freeciv.rpm, or something close.
I did a bit more exploring on freeciv, it is extremely configurable, which real civilization isn't (they wouldn't make things really configurable since they can make boatloads more money on seperate scenarios). But still, typing "start" will at least get you playing.
Most Open Source software is developed to the point where its no longer fun to develop it. This means that the final bit of scripting to ease installation is left by the developers.
But, as a point of reference I noticed that FreeCiv was one of the installed packages on my system. I've never played it, I've never even looked at it. I started up the server, typed "start". It responded that more players were needed, so I started up the client. Again I typed "start" in the server window. Bingo, I'm playing.
I'm not entirely sure where the hours of set up are involved. Perhaps people on the short bus type really really slowly.
It's not necessarily the motherboard manufacturers fault. In order for hot plug busses, such as USB or Firewire to work there are certain electrical specifications that need to be met. Plugging a device in generates small currents. It's these small currents that travelling through the relatively resistive substrate generate large voltages (V=IR - so a big R means a big V even with a small I).
The circuitry for the active side of the bus is designed to disappate current up to a certain level safely. The device is supposed to meet certain specifications to ensure that it doesn't exceed the tolerances of the active bus when its plugged in. Either side could be at fault, or it could just be a shitty specification too.
Computer manufacturers rarely design their own ASICs though, so chances are there is some mass produced ASIC that is the USB bus. It would be common across many motherboards and computers. If this device were designed poorly (or, as companies would declare it: cost effectively) then statistically you would notice a problem. Companies who use company X's usb core often end up with damaged motherboards. Company X would soon see themselves designed out of motherboard manufacturers products.
I haven't seen a Palm cradle, but if it was designed poorly - say as a huge capacitor on a cord that conveniently plugs into your motherboard's USB slot - they could conceivably be at fault. The palm cradle is supposed to be designed as a conduit for charge to flow, but only within certain specifications. I can't hook an arc welder up to my USB port and blame the motherboard manufacturer when the board is reduced to a charred mass of plastic and silicon. I can blame Palm if the design of their device is such that in as prescribed usage it exceeds design specifications.
Things don't accidently brush against ports usually, especially USB (or Firewire) ports, the electrical contacts are recessed from the exposed surface and have a rather small clearance around them.
Re:G4 is by far the nicest consumer case I've ever
on
Case Tweaking
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· Score: 1
Check out the sgi linux boxes, such as the 230. The cases are fairly nice, they swing down on a hinge and only have thumbscrews to retain the case. It's no Apple design, but its better than other PC cases I've seen.
Slashdot Mirror
Me? I walked past the lines, up to the main ticket gate and calmly explained that my flight was cancelled. They booked me on the next available flight, gave me a book of coupons (air miles, discounts etc) and sent me on my way.
Not everybody would feel the same way, especially if some well intentioned but misguided people decide that the path to salvation is through unchaining people from the official LEGO (though the unofficial would now be official too!) software.
I wish I could find the link, but I found an utterly clueless rant the other day as I was looking for video4linux information. He was chastising the video4linux developers because they didn't support his hardware and that it only supported a few high priced boards and older technology. He had absolutely no concept that this was a) a volunteer effort, b) required reverse engineering in most cases since most companies don't release specifications.
Anyway, I see the same thing happening here, only much worse: "I installed the LEGO software on my kids LEGO set and can't make it do anything. I want my damned money back."
Sure, the response should be "Oh, use the software on the CD, its a nice graphical language" but from past experiences that response won't work.
Agreed, it was actually pretty entertaining. It did go downhill at the end though, especially with the made for TV movie which introduced mysticism.
How is this interesting? He's the owner of the code, so according to the GPL he's allowed to use it in a closed source project. If I were to grab Broadcast 2000's code and release it as a closed source application then it'd still be boring: We already know that thats illegal (though I don't think its been tested in court)
Second of all, there is huge money involved with people who are ticketed and fined. Get a ticket and your insurance rate goes up. There's no payout involved so this is pure profit for the insurance company.
Third, the town itself does collect the money, or more accurately the "billing department" for the town does the collection. The money then gets circulated around, a little bit for the town, a little bit for the cops and (usually) zero for public safety. In your version of the world I suppose that the town wouldn't even see any of the money, just the deparment in charge of accounts receivable, after all you don't write seperate checks for the police force, local government etc.
Take a drive in your car with its complex ventillation system. Give your buddies all the bean burritos they can eat, see how isolated your environment is from theirs when they've released a few sneaky but deadlies.
Yeah, it would, but neither police departments or insurance would like this. Both of them make staggering profits from actually pulling people over who've broken the law. If people are prevented from breaking the law then they lose that source of income. What's a few lost lives compared to the tragic loss of money for cops and insurance companies?
Just because it's GPLed doesn't mean you can't also release it commercially. I'd also have to wonder what would happen if eBookCrack was released under the GPL and was included in a mainstream distribution. Would, for instance, Red Hat, be liable? Probably.
If people really want to make an impact decrypt and flood gnutella (or whatever passes as peer-to-peer file sharing now) with formerly encrypted documents. Spend a few bucks and pack CD's full of decrypted ebooks, accidently leave them in a mall, or in a library etc.
Better yet, set yourself up as an example of how wrong the law is. Write the software, release it under the GPL and get your ass thrown in jail, bonus points if you're an American citizens with one wife and multiple kids, a good job and no arrest record.
Electricity follows the path of least resistance, which is why tasers don't (usually) kill people. The electrodes are jabbed into you but are some small distance apart. The path current takes is between those two points. Your heart is far away from the path of least resistance.
This is why you're told to keep one hand in your back pocket when working on electrical circuits. If you introduce current between both hands your heart is smack dab in the middle of the path of least resistance.
There's nothing wrong with this, the important thing is that the research is done and eventually a cure comes about. It does muddy the statement that "only private money was made to find the vaccine" though.
So, public funds are used to develop vaccines through the redirection of corporate funds that would have been spent.
Is Brazil's actions wrong? I'm not so sure. Ethical standpoints on patents or the value of human life aside, patents are in place to allow public disclosure at the cost of providing an artificial monopoly for some period of time. You're allowed to make use of the patents for non-commercial purposes, which I think Brazil's case qualifies for. If Brazil suddenly started selling their drugs then (again, ignoring ethical statements) they would be in the wrong.
but it applies equally to the RIAA and non-electronic music distributions. I purchase Britney Spears latest and greatest from Sam Goody's. I rip it onto MP3 and distribute it via LimeWire. Sam Goody's is equally guilty of viral copyright infringement. If you accept this argument (which I don't), you can also trace it back to the RIAA or even through some convuluted logic, the artists themselves.
So, I suppose the next step is for the independent artists to sue themselves for creating music which can be pirated.
You could build an operating system around Linux that uses only BSD derived utilities though too. The argument that it should be GNU/Linux because its built around GNU tools as essentials and BSD/other licenses as optionals is very weak. It's Linux, you can insist that its called GNU/Linux all you want but its been named already. I sympathize with you, I really do, and just as soon as nanotechnology can build a small enough violing I'll play it for you.
Most games are made without any real desire to be portable. Most games are released on Windows. There's a much better chance that DirectX is installed on a Windows box than OpenGL.
Except that they all did it. It was extremely difficult to find any of these devices that didn't require purchasing a couple other products with it.
For instance two diffent jpeg encoders, both at the same quality level will result in subtly different encodings of the same source image. If you take these two images, calculate the difference at each decoded pixel, and amplify the diffence (so that you can easily detect minue intensity differences) you'll see the signature of the differences between the encoding engines.
Now if I encode a message in the image (a 1 megapixel image, small by todays standards, can encode a 1 megabit steganographic message assuming only a 1 bit change in colour). If you could get the source image and do the above described difference calculation you would see the pattern representing the message.
If you pick the wrong source image (it LOOKS identical but was compressed slightly differently), you'll only reveal a combination of the signature and message.
Do whatever statistical examination of this noisy signature you want, I don't see how you can determine that the image concealed data. Well, unless you do an impressively poor job of concealing the data in the message. Encoding your message in a pure white gif, jpg or png would be a bad idea for instance.
But we know who Reagan and Jean Kirkpatrick are. Younger people either won't know who they are, or possibly in the case of Reagan will only know the republican revisionist version of him.
It's not necesarily true, an infinitely long irrational number does not necessarily include every other possible number sequence. Go here for more info.
A friends girlfriend, a pharmacist to be, offered to give me beta blockers. I didn't accept, but she insisted that they'd make it hard for me to be nervous.
Sorry, you're a troll. I agree that some things can be simpler, but even if I had to install it I can find a prepacked RPM or Debian package.
rpm -ivh freeciv.rpm, or something close.
I did a bit more exploring on freeciv, it is extremely configurable, which real civilization isn't (they wouldn't make things really configurable since they can make boatloads more money on seperate scenarios). But still, typing "start" will at least get you playing.
But, as a point of reference I noticed that FreeCiv was one of the installed packages on my system. I've never played it, I've never even looked at it. I started up the server, typed "start". It responded that more players were needed, so I started up the client. Again I typed "start" in the server window. Bingo, I'm playing.
I'm not entirely sure where the hours of set up are involved. Perhaps people on the short bus type really really slowly.
I haven't seen a Palm cradle, but if it was designed poorly - say as a huge capacitor on a cord that conveniently plugs into your motherboard's USB slot - they could conceivably be at fault. The palm cradle is supposed to be designed as a conduit for charge to flow, but only within certain specifications. I can't hook an arc welder up to my USB port and blame the motherboard manufacturer when the board is reduced to a charred mass of plastic and silicon. I can blame Palm if the design of their device is such that in as prescribed usage it exceeds design specifications.
Things don't accidently brush against ports usually, especially USB (or Firewire) ports, the electrical contacts are recessed from the exposed surface and have a rather small clearance around them.
Check out the sgi linux boxes, such as the 230. The cases are fairly nice, they swing down on a hinge and only have thumbscrews to retain the case. It's no Apple design, but its better than other PC cases I've seen.
That's not a chair, its a pen for programmers. All that's missing is a machine that fires a bolt into your forehead when the companies done with you.