IAAEE, and the claims look more than suspicious. let's look at them point for point:
Absorb the electromagnetic waves generated from the battery. A battery does not generate waves. It might create a small magnetic field when current is drawn from the battery (like any cable does when it carries an electrical current). Anyway, why is that field harmful and needs to be absorbed? Pure FUD, apart from the point that I sincerely doubt some "ceramic nanomaterial" is suitable for absorbing magnetic fields.
Generate a flow of negative ions. Even if we ignore for a moment that generation ions takes energy (where is the power supply?), what is this good for?
Interact with the battery's internal electrolyte and ions. Unlikely, batteries have air-and watertight cases. How would the thingy act through that barrier? No explanation is given.
Bottom line: This is most likely a case of fraud. And Cowboy Neal INAEE (Is not an electrical engineer) either, otherwise he would not have posted this story in the first place.
Basically, M$ are only in it for the money; a statement that explains their entire track record Indeed. If there is a company that could afford good developers, it is Microsoft. So most of their shortcomings are probably the result of either -hiring cheap but inexperienced people anyway -rushing release dates and intentionally letting the customer beta-test -or political maneuvring. Considering the latter, I strongly suspect that making IE hard to uninstall was not a design error, but an intentional move for the antitrust suit. Windows XP Embedded shows they can make modular systems if they desire.
Of course, doing the above for a couple of years may lead to an accumulation of crap code that is hard to clear up. This might explain why Microsoft's attempts at improving security don't yield fast results.
I'd like to add that in practice, "serious" forks are not happening that frequently. Most of the time, simple inertia plus desire for compatibility will keep the user base on the mainstream product. Only if people are really unhappy with the original code or developer team, you might see a small revolution. That seems to happen with XFree86 vs. X.org at the moment.
they could slap us down one way or another if we decide to take the wrong side. Like saying they won't hold anymore of our debt, which could lead to our dollar spiraling downward and worth less than a peso. They might do that anyway if they don't trust in the ability of the US to repay the debt any more. And it would not even take a violation of contracts or international right: Declining to invest more money in the US is all it takes. Actually, blocking the Lenovo deal is a step in that direction taken by the USA.
If 85 degrees Celsius are the maximum allowed case temperature, this actually hints at lower power consumption than current PC CPUs.
If we have a given maximum junction temperature TMaxJ for the transistors, a total heat dissipation P and a given thermal resistance TRes between the processor die and the surface of the heat spreader, the maximum case temperature TMaxC is
TMaxC = TMaxJ - P * TRes.
If we assume the Cell's TMaxJ and TRes are similar to that of a PC CPU, a higher TMaxC suggests a lower P. PC CPUs have a TMaxC around 70 degrees Celsius these days, less for the high end models with greater heat dissipation. Of course, this is highly speculative, and when actual specs are released, we will know more.
Re:An EULA is no real contract in Germany
on
The Basics of EULAs
·
· Score: 1
Correct. This is a second reason why EULAs are usually unenforcable in germany, and I overlooked it in my post.
Re:An EULA is no real contract in Germany
on
The Basics of EULAs
·
· Score: 1
In an article in the C't magazine, a lawyer came to the same conclusion, but his main point was slightly different: He argued that EULAs are covered by the german law about "general terms and conditions" (AGB Gesetz), which seems reasonable considering their similar character. That law says, among other things, that the customer must have the opportunity to check the "general terms and conditions" before the deal is closed. Otherwise said terms are unenforceable. Now if you buy some shrink-wrapped software, the deal is closed when you pay at the cash desk. Any EULA that is not visible by looking at the outside of the box before paying is thus unenforceable. Note that this reasoning will not work when you buy something online and are presented with the EULA before the deal is closed.
Good point. I'd like to add that you will probably have both kinds of packets in a MMORPG: -Those you'd rather replace with the newest status than resend. Think current positions of other players. -Those that will really hurt if they are missing, but can tolerate some more lag. Think transaction data when using an in-game trade dialog. Overall, it seems reasonable to use UDP and implement a TCP-style retransmission scheme on top of it for the latter type of packet. Maybe even grab actual TCP code from a BSD-licensed Open Source OS;-)
Frankly, bloated as the legal system is, having the rules laid out is a damn sight better than anarchy. Imagine if spammers could use the same techniques as organized crime: this guy would have fewer functioning limbs by now if it weren't for the legal system. Think about it. Interesting line of thought. Right now, this guy is collecting money for a legal defense. Without a legal system, that money might be spent to hire an assassin for the spammer's CEO...
is: Loser pays, but there are regulations (BRAGO) on how much the laywers can charge. The fees depend on the amount of money that is at stake in the suit. Overall, the system seems to work better for the small guy than the US system, because even if you lose, the court and lawyer fees are capped. So you won't end up paying for an army of lawyers. It also helps against the assholes who sue for millions of dollars because they spilled some hot coffee over their lap: the lawyer fees would be too much for them. There is, however, at least one loophole: In trademark related suits, the plaintiffs tend to set the monetary value of the lawsuit extremely high and get away with it. As a result, the lawyer fees are extremely high too, and even if you are fairly certain to win, the risk may be too high.
Therefore, I would like to see some more leeway for the judges to award lawyer fees, with the BRAGO as a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule (Maybe that leeway exists and is just not used, IANAL).
I do. Partly because of the energy bill, but the main reason is that the high power CPUs tend to need high-RPM fans that are awfully loud. Unless you go for water cooling, which is expensive and does not fit in every case.
I believe this would be a lesser evil than spammers flooding discussion forums with thousands of fake comments. Only a few prominent websites would be important enough to justify negotiating payment for their links. Slashdot, for instance, would qualify. Joe Schmoe the Blogger with 50 user comments per week would not.
Plus, some open source developers might be dissatisfied enough to fork the code and try to improve things. This has (for slightly different reasons) happened to XFree86 a while ago. By now, a lot of distributions have switched.
Worse they seem to take the same approach to code quality as well. Most online games I have played have suffered from some horridly simple bugs that would be caught with a real Q&A process...
And in some cases, the company does not bother to fix the bug when it becomes obvious and the customers complain. Example: Neocron, which is otherwise a really cool game, but the continuing lack of QA really hurts.
Thanks for the describing the situation to those of us who are not familiar with it. Most of those hacks should be possible to catch with rather simple server-side plausibility checks. As in "someone who fires 10 rounds/ second from his grenade launcher must be a cheater". It seems that the developers simply did not do their homework.
The "standard set of aim-bots no fog hacks, etc." is more forgivable, because these things are not quite as easy to spot or prevent on the server side. But I still think that some general improvements could be made in that area (for other games as well, Steam sucks too).
Firefox hasn't affected my use of Mozilla at all. I guess that most/many Mozilla users had been using it for a while before Firefox came out and see no reason to change.
Similar here: I might prefer Firebird/Thunderbird on a new installation, but my computer at home is still running fine with the big Mozilla suite and i'm simply too lazy to change. "My" computer in the office, however, runs Firefox.
-Cheaper RAM for the socket 939. The socket 940 CPUs need registered RAM. -So far, Cool&Quiet only works with Socket 939. Again, the registered RAM is a problem. -Cheaper boards, because socket 939 only needs a 4 layer PCB. Socket 940 needs a 6 layer PCB.
There are *some* royalties on DVD-players too (for using the CSS algorithm), but so far, the savings from using EVD seem not sufficient to compensate for the lack of DVD compatibility. Personally, I might buy a good quality EVD drive (with burning capability) for data backup.
Actually, bone will attach itself to titanium if the joining surfaces are NOT stressed for a few months. This makes it somewhat impractical for hip replacements, where you don't want to put the patient into bed for half a year. But it is routinely used for tooth replacement: In the first stage of the treatment, you will get a titanium "foundation" implanted in your jaw but not an tooth prosthesis on top of it. That "foundation" is left alone for some months, and you have to get along with the gap in your teeth. After the bone has solidly attached itself to the titanium implant, you see your dentist again and you will get an artificial tooth mounted onto the titanium part.
If FF wants to be a real player, it has to play by the established rules many organizations follow.
I know of quite a few firms, financial institutions, and state government offices which do not allow employees to use anything other than IE; much of the reasoning coencides with what this article is saying. They all use intrusion prevention services and just have the helpdesk clean up the occasional mess caused by a sneaky spyware install or virus infested laptop trying to vpn in.
Said organizations probably have an IT department that is capable of checking something like an MD5 checksum. So they will be able make sure that the browser in question is actually the official version, and make it available for internal download. At this point, compromised downloads become very unlikely and it is a question of trusting Microsoft to make a secure browser or trusting the Mozilla Foundation to do so. Personally, I have more trust in the Mozilla guys. And "just have the helpdesk clean up the occasional mess" DOES cost money. If Firefox can cut down on this, it has a real advantage in TCO.
Visual Studio is widely renowned as the singular best programming environment there is, and is a large reason LOTS of programmers stick to Windows I beg to differ. While VS is not exactly bad, I found Delphi to be more clearly laid out and understandable. Especially the online help is WAY easier to navigate than MSDN. Which is important to me, because I'm not that good at remembering every little syntax detail.
There is nothing close to a backlash against corporations in the united states. People are far to busy hating the government to notice the government is only doing what corporations pay it to do.
So far, that is not obvious. I was thinking of what happens if the state IS bankrupt and big corporations offer to help out at a price. That price being a lot more control over the country.
I disagree that any anti-corporate party is necessarily communist.
Not necessarily. But it is the one anti-corporate model that already has some mindshare, however flawed it is. So it seems the most likely candidate if the people are suddenly and desparately looking for something else than capitalism.
I've always wanted an MMO cyberpunk game, where you can chill in dark bars illuminated by bright purple neon lights, and of course be reminded not to 'off' possible enemies, by the presence of well-armed hired security guys complete with artificially enhanced strength and so on. You know, straight out of Neuromancer..;)
There is Neocron, which has a really nice cyberpunk concept with FPS elements, but also a significant number of bugs and inconsistencies. If those things don't bother you too much, try it out. I'm playing it myself, but I'm slightly annoyed about the general quality level. If I stay in the game will depend on the future level of quality assurance...
Slashdot Mirror
It WILL show them if most users switch to your version. Which currently seems to happen with X.org vs. XFree86
IAAEE, and the claims look more than suspicious. let's look at them point for point:
Absorb the electromagnetic waves generated from the battery.
A battery does not generate waves. It might create a small magnetic field when current is drawn from the battery (like any cable does when it carries an electrical current).
Anyway, why is that field harmful and needs to be absorbed? Pure FUD, apart from the point that I sincerely doubt some "ceramic nanomaterial" is suitable for absorbing magnetic fields.
Generate a flow of negative ions.
Even if we ignore for a moment that generation ions takes energy (where is the power supply?), what is this good for?
Interact with the battery's internal electrolyte and ions.
Unlikely, batteries have air-and watertight cases. How would the thingy act through that barrier? No explanation is given.
Bottom line:
This is most likely a case of fraud. And Cowboy Neal INAEE (Is not an electrical engineer) either, otherwise he would not have posted this story in the first place.
Basically, M$ are only in it for the money; a statement that explains their entire track record
Indeed. If there is a company that could afford good developers, it is Microsoft. So most of their shortcomings are probably the result of either
-hiring cheap but inexperienced people anyway
-rushing release dates and intentionally letting the customer beta-test
-or political maneuvring.
Considering the latter, I strongly suspect that making IE hard to uninstall was not a design error, but an intentional move for the antitrust suit. Windows XP Embedded shows they can make modular systems if they desire.
Of course, doing the above for a couple of years may lead to an accumulation of crap code that is hard to clear up. This might explain why Microsoft's attempts at improving security don't yield fast results.
I'd like to add that in practice, "serious" forks are not happening that frequently. Most of the time, simple inertia plus desire for compatibility will keep the user base on the mainstream product.
Only if people are really unhappy with the original code or developer team, you might see a small revolution. That seems to happen with XFree86 vs. X.org at the moment.
they could slap us down one way or another if we decide to take the wrong side. Like saying they won't hold anymore of our debt, which could lead to our dollar spiraling downward and worth less than a peso.
They might do that anyway if they don't trust in the ability of the US to repay the debt any more. And it would not even take a violation of contracts or international right:
Declining to invest more money in the US is all it takes. Actually, blocking the Lenovo deal is a step in that direction taken by the USA.
If 85 degrees Celsius are the maximum allowed case temperature, this actually hints at lower power consumption than current PC CPUs.
If we have a given maximum junction temperature TMaxJ for the transistors, a total heat dissipation P and a given thermal resistance TRes between the processor die and the surface of the heat spreader, the maximum case temperature TMaxC is
TMaxC = TMaxJ - P * TRes.
If we assume the Cell's TMaxJ and TRes are similar to that of a PC CPU, a higher TMaxC suggests a lower P. PC CPUs have a TMaxC around 70 degrees Celsius these days, less for the high end models with greater heat dissipation.
Of course, this is highly speculative, and when actual specs are released, we will know more.
Correct. This is a second reason why EULAs are usually unenforcable in germany, and I overlooked it in my post.
In an article in the C't magazine, a lawyer came to the same conclusion, but his main point was slightly different:
He argued that EULAs are covered by the german law about "general terms and conditions" (AGB Gesetz), which seems reasonable considering their similar character.
That law says, among other things, that the customer must have the opportunity to check the "general terms and conditions" before the deal is closed. Otherwise said terms are unenforceable.
Now if you buy some shrink-wrapped software, the deal is closed when you pay at the cash desk. Any EULA that is not visible by looking at the outside of the box before paying is thus unenforceable. Note that this reasoning will not work when you buy something online and are presented with the EULA before the deal is closed.
Good point. I'd like to add that you will probably have both kinds of packets in a MMORPG: ;-)
-Those you'd rather replace with the newest status than resend. Think current positions of other players.
-Those that will really hurt if they are missing, but can tolerate some more lag. Think transaction data when using an in-game trade dialog.
Overall, it seems reasonable to use UDP and implement a TCP-style retransmission scheme on top of it for the latter type of packet. Maybe even grab actual TCP code from a BSD-licensed Open Source OS
Frankly, bloated as the legal system is, having the rules laid out is a damn sight better than anarchy. Imagine if spammers could use the same techniques as organized crime: this guy would have fewer functioning limbs by now if it weren't for the legal system. Think about it.
Interesting line of thought. Right now, this guy is collecting money for a legal defense. Without a legal system, that money might be spent to hire an assassin for the spammer's CEO...
is:
Loser pays, but there are regulations (BRAGO) on how much the laywers can charge. The fees depend on the amount of money that is at stake in the suit. Overall, the system seems to work better for the small guy than the US system, because even if you lose, the court and lawyer fees are capped. So you won't end up paying for an army of lawyers.
It also helps against the assholes who sue for millions of dollars because they spilled some hot coffee over their lap: the lawyer fees would be too much for them.
There is, however, at least one loophole:
In trademark related suits, the plaintiffs tend to set the monetary value of the lawsuit extremely high and get away with it. As a result, the lawyer fees are extremely high too, and even if you are fairly certain to win, the risk may be too high.
Therefore, I would like to see some more leeway for the judges to award lawyer fees, with the BRAGO as a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule (Maybe that leeway exists and is just not used, IANAL).
I do. Partly because of the energy bill, but the main reason is that the high power CPUs tend to need high-RPM fans that are awfully loud.
Unless you go for water cooling, which is expensive and does not fit in every case.
I believe this would be a lesser evil than spammers flooding discussion forums with thousands of fake comments.
Only a few prominent websites would be important enough to justify negotiating payment for their links. Slashdot, for instance, would qualify. Joe Schmoe the Blogger with 50 user comments per week would not.
Plus, some open source developers might be dissatisfied enough to fork the code and try to improve things. This has (for slightly different reasons) happened to XFree86 a while ago. By now, a lot of distributions have switched.
Worse they seem to take the same approach to code quality as well. Most online games I have played have suffered from some horridly simple bugs that would be caught with a real Q&A process...
And in some cases, the company does not bother to fix the bug when it becomes obvious and the customers complain.
Example: Neocron, which is otherwise a really cool game, but the continuing lack of QA really hurts.
Thanks for the describing the situation to those of us who are not familiar with it.
Most of those hacks should be possible to catch with rather simple server-side plausibility checks. As in "someone who fires 10 rounds/ second from his grenade launcher must be a cheater". It seems that the developers simply did not do their homework.
The "standard set of aim-bots no fog hacks, etc." is more forgivable, because these things are not quite as easy to spot or prevent on the server side.
But I still think that some general improvements could be made in that area (for other games as well, Steam sucks too).
Firefox hasn't affected my use of Mozilla at all. I guess that most/many Mozilla users had been using it for a while before Firefox came out and see no reason to change.
Similar here:
I might prefer Firebird/Thunderbird on a new installation, but my computer at home is still running fine with the big Mozilla suite and i'm simply too lazy to change.
"My" computer in the office, however, runs Firefox.
-Cheaper RAM for the socket 939. The socket 940 CPUs need registered RAM.
-So far, Cool&Quiet only works with Socket 939. Again, the registered RAM is a problem.
-Cheaper boards, because socket 939 only needs a 4 layer PCB. Socket 940 needs a 6 layer PCB.
A dual or even quad Dothan core. I have no idea how close they are to having one, but at 20 W/core, the power usage would be not a problem.
There are *some* royalties on DVD-players too (for using the CSS algorithm), but so far, the savings from using EVD seem not sufficient to compensate for the lack of DVD compatibility.
Personally, I might buy a good quality EVD drive (with burning capability) for data backup.
Actually, bone will attach itself to titanium if the joining surfaces are NOT stressed for a few months. This makes it somewhat impractical for hip replacements, where you don't want to put the patient into bed for half a year.
But it is routinely used for tooth replacement:
In the first stage of the treatment, you will get a titanium "foundation" implanted in your jaw but not an tooth prosthesis on top of it.
That "foundation" is left alone for some months, and you have to get along with the gap in your teeth.
After the bone has solidly attached itself to the titanium implant, you see your dentist again and you will get an artificial tooth mounted onto the titanium part.
If FF wants to be a real player, it has to play by the established rules many organizations follow.
I know of quite a few firms, financial institutions, and state government offices which do not allow employees to use anything other than IE; much of the reasoning coencides with what this article is saying. They all use intrusion prevention services and just have the helpdesk clean up the occasional mess caused by a sneaky spyware install or virus infested laptop trying to vpn in.
Said organizations probably have an IT department that is capable of checking something like an MD5 checksum. So they will be able make sure that the browser in question is actually the official version, and make it available for internal download.
At this point, compromised downloads become very unlikely and it is a question of trusting Microsoft to make a secure browser or trusting the Mozilla Foundation to do so. Personally, I have more trust in the Mozilla guys.
And "just have the helpdesk clean up the occasional mess" DOES cost money. If Firefox can cut down on this, it has a real advantage in TCO.
Visual Studio is widely renowned as the singular best programming environment there is, and is a large reason LOTS of programmers stick to Windows
I beg to differ. While VS is not exactly bad, I found Delphi to be more clearly laid out and understandable. Especially the online help is WAY easier to navigate than MSDN. Which is important to me, because I'm not that good at remembering every little syntax detail.
There is nothing close to a backlash against corporations in the united states. People are far to busy hating the government to notice the government is only doing what corporations pay it to do.
So far, that is not obvious. I was thinking of what happens if the state IS bankrupt and big corporations offer to help out at a price. That price being a lot more control over the country.
I disagree that any anti-corporate party is necessarily communist.
Not necessarily. But it is the one anti-corporate model that already has some mindshare, however flawed it is. So it seems the most likely candidate if the people are suddenly and desparately looking for something else than capitalism.
I've always wanted an MMO cyberpunk game, where you can chill in dark bars illuminated by bright purple neon lights, and of course be reminded not to 'off' possible enemies, by the presence of well-armed hired security guys complete with artificially enhanced strength and so on. You know, straight out of Neuromancer.. ;)
There is Neocron, which has a really nice cyberpunk concept with FPS elements, but also a significant number of bugs and inconsistencies.
If those things don't bother you too much, try it out. I'm playing it myself, but I'm slightly annoyed about the general quality level.
If I stay in the game will depend on the future level of quality assurance...