The problem is with ideas that are are easy to think up but hard to implement. Say, the passive thorium reactor mentioned in TFA. The idea of a thorium-based breeder reactor is not new, and the abstract on ScienceDirect reads more like marketing than like science. As in "lots of promises but little about HOW it is done".
If the rest of the "science" article has the quality of the abstract, that particular patent application is a classic example of patents that should be denied for lack of useful contribution.
To prevent this, I think patents should only be granted when an implementation is also described, with the possibility of overturning the patent if the implementation does not actually work.
True, I started with Windows, and I guess that makes it appear easier. But I still think it is easy enough at least for beginners' tasks. To stay with the CD Rom example, the average newbie will be happy with a nice GUI where he can drag and drop some files and hit the "burn" button. Most burn programs I've encountered over the years provide that.
On the other hand, the experience changes when you use Microsoft stuff seriously. Then you will start to notice all the little inconsistencies and old bugs that have been unfixed for years. But to get there, you need to pass the newbie stage first which many people never do.
So if Linux wants to compete in the mass market, it has to achieve at least equal ease of use for newcomers. I think distributions like Ubuntu are quite good at that:-)
That may appear insulting to an experienced Linux guru.
But for many years it used to be Microsoft's best selling point in comparison to Linux: Windows and Microsoft applications in general are easy to get started with. Only recently, Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu) have managed to catch up in that regard. If you want to sell to a wide audience, an "easy" interface is good.
Of course, it should also have an easily accessible terminal emulation so the gurus can hack on their config files;-)
So the Linux version has 8 GByte of flash disk more and costs $50 more? Even with today's hardware prices, the Linux version seems like the better deal to me.
If only the XP version is available at "mass-market retailers", that is a bit suspicious but understandable. Users with little experience may be better off if a salesperson explains the difference to them. Competent salespersons tend to be rare at supermarkets.
Overall, I don't see much evidence of shady deals here.
I might have bought Spore, now I will make sure to get up to date about the copy-protection before doing so (the link in TFA only confirms the "phone home" for Mass Effect).
If TFA is correct about Spore, the publisher just lost a customer.
I don't recommend this as your first book about electronics, but once you feel at home in the field it will become a very valuable guide to designing your circuitry. Overall, I recommend "Electronic Circuits" for ambitious hobbyists and most engineering practice. It is a bit too advanced for complete newbies, and for cutting edge development you might want something that covers the theory in more depth. But for everything in between it is great.
At some point, supporting the accumulated cruft will be just as painful as breaking things. I have read about how introducing Mac OS X gave Apple a hard time, but recently Microsoft had just as much difficulties in getting Vista to run.
In hindsight, I think Apple made the smarter decision and Microsoft should have done the same instead of Vista. Now they finally seem to plan a similar move for Windows 7, but it may give them a temporary suckage effect, Mac OS X style, on top of the years they lost with Vista.
In theory, one might expect that this works without much extra programming effort. In practice, it did not happen. So I suspect there are a few sordid hacks involved in making the WOW 32-16 bit layer work in XP, and Microsoft wanted to get rid of those in 64 bit Vista;-)
If even harmless hacks are illegal and may land you in jail, only serious criminals will take the risk (for serious potential money gains). I think that is why there are less reports about benevolent hackers pointing out security flaws these days, but lots of reports about botnets for spamming and DDOS activities.
He appears pretty agitated in the video and engages in some vandalism, but he is unarmed.
After watching the video, I'd agree that restraining him was probably necessary, but there were at least four security guards on the scene. They should have been able to handle him without a taser. Also watch the right guard at around 3:50 into the video. It looks like he hits the guy repeatedly with his club, at a time when he is clearly under control.
Overall, the security uses a completely unreasonable degree of force. If they did not have a taser, I can easily imagine them beating their victim to death.
I don't know how careful the NIST actually evaluates the items to be certified, but if it is anything like the ISO 9000 certification a previous employer of mine got there will be holes you can drive a truck through;-)
Microsoft's own encryption services/products could have a backdoor that is used by the COFEE. Which would of course be a good reason not to trust Microsoft products (what if bad guys got the COFEE software?).
If you use a third party tool and don't leave the password lying around on the computer, I agree that the USB stick would be worthless.
Or should his political opponents be able to sue him for political reasons, and automatically "win" (and what? get whatever they want?) because if Obama were to divulge secret info or methods as used in pursuit of his foreign policy or defense chores he'd be risking lives or breaking promises made to other governments?
Secret policies are unhealthy for a democracy anyway, because the citizens can only make good decisions (say, about who should be next president) if they are informed about what is going on.
A democracy is at an inherent disadvantage here compared to a dictatorship. But if you sacrifice your democracy over that, I guess you deserve an American version of Saddam Hussein;-)
BTW and slightly off topic: A state founded on the rule of law is also at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to fighting terrorists. Because it cannot simply imprison people without trial, and this means some bad guys on whom you have insufficient evidence will go free. In this regard, the USA don't quite qualify as a rule of law state anymore, and I'd rather not travel to the USA until things change.
So far, the courts have usually accepted the "state secrets doctrine" and squashed the lawsuits if the doctrine was invoked. Under this law, they might be less willing to do so and eventually the administration would have to choose between complying and openly ignoring court orders.
The major difference is that MS also had Windows 2000, which was overall a much better system. Except for marketing reasons ("professional" vs. "home" user) and support for some DOS based games, Windows 2000 would have been the perfect successor to Windows 98.
So when MS noticed that ME was not so popular, they had an alternative to build upon. One year later, XP showed up with a cheap "home" version and more eyecandy compared to Windows 2000. But technically, there was not so much difference.
Today, I don't see a similar, superior system MS could fall back on. "Windows 7" is supposed to come in 2009, but after the delay in Vista such promises seem questionable.
I guess Linux, because it competes everywhere from mobile phones to big servers. Desktop market share is still weak, but in other areas Linux is much stronger.
Mac OS X is a close second, because it already has taken a few percent out of the Windows desktop market. But it is limited in scope, so it is overall less dangerous than Linux. Note that Macintosh rates higher if you consider all their products: IPod vs. Zune and iPhone vs. Windows Mobile do not look so good for Microsoft.
Windows XP is more of a short term embarassment: As computers get replaced with faster ones and Vista goes from beta quality to release quality (cue flamewars about how many SPs are needed;-) most people will get over XP.
...around that time I worked for a company that used Novell GroupWise. Overall, I liked it better than the Outlook version I get to use on my current job. And it runs on Linux (too bad that Novell supports only its own SUSE Linux Enterprise for the server. For the client, they at least support RedHat in addition).
I have never tried Kontact, but there are certainly alternatives to Outlook:-)
It is not surprising that the fire-breathing liberal 9th circuit judicial activism court ruled against Microsoft. They usually find some reasoning by which to rule against a corporate entity. They also usually get overturned on appeal because of their often specious reasoning and circular logic.
In this case, I doubt they needed "specious reasoning and circular logic", because Microsoft's arguments look really weak to me. According to TFA, they argued on the basis that more discovery might damage their reputation. But
-As I understand the court system, it is not supposed to protect anyone's reputation at the expense of blocking discovery. There are exceptions, but usually your dirty laundry gets aired in discovery.
-Microsoft could ask the court to seal the evidence, so it would not become public. If the courts wanted to protect Microsoft from public mud-slinging, this would be a way to do it and still allow plaintiffs to get discovery. Compared to that, Microsoft's demand to deny class-action status seems unrelated and overreaching.
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The problem is with ideas that are are easy to think up but hard to implement. Say, the passive thorium reactor mentioned in TFA. The idea of a thorium-based breeder reactor is not new, and the abstract on ScienceDirect reads more like marketing than like science. As in "lots of promises but little about HOW it is done".
If the rest of the "science" article has the quality of the abstract, that particular patent application is a classic example of patents that should be denied for lack of useful contribution.
To prevent this, I think patents should only be granted when an implementation is also described, with the possibility of overturning the patent if the implementation does not actually work.
Germany: most popular news paper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild_Zeitung. Not quite as primitive as the Sun but close.
:-)
According to the Wikipedia article their sales are declining, however, so there is still hope for Germany
True, I started with Windows, and I guess that makes it appear easier. But I still think it is easy enough at least for beginners' tasks.
:-)
To stay with the CD Rom example, the average newbie will be happy with a nice GUI where he can drag and drop some files and hit the "burn" button. Most burn programs I've encountered over the years provide that.
On the other hand, the experience changes when you use Microsoft stuff seriously. Then you will start to notice all the little inconsistencies and old bugs that have been unfixed for years. But to get there, you need to pass the newbie stage first which many people never do.
So if Linux wants to compete in the mass market, it has to achieve at least equal ease of use for newcomers. I think distributions like Ubuntu are quite good at that
That may appear insulting to an experienced Linux guru.
;-)
But for many years it used to be Microsoft's best selling point in comparison to Linux:
Windows and Microsoft applications in general are easy to get started with. Only recently, Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu) have managed to catch up in that regard. If you want to sell to a wide audience, an "easy" interface is good.
Of course, it should also have an easily accessible terminal emulation so the gurus can hack on their config files
So the Linux version has 8 GByte of flash disk more and costs $50 more? Even with today's hardware prices, the Linux version seems like the better deal to me.
If only the XP version is available at "mass-market retailers", that is a bit suspicious but understandable. Users with little experience may be better off if a salesperson explains the difference to them. Competent salespersons tend to be rare at supermarkets.
Overall, I don't see much evidence of shady deals here.
A lawsuit, preferably of the class action variant
Personally, I prefer to avoid the hassle in the first place, so no buy from me...
A few pages into the forum, the bioware guy confirms that Spore will use the same system :-(
I might have bought Spore, now I will make sure to get up to date about the copy-protection before doing so (the link in TFA only confirms the "phone home" for Mass Effect).
If TFA is correct about Spore, the publisher just lost a customer.
Electronic Circuits --- Handbook for Design and Applications
Tietze, U., Schenk, Ch.
For an overview, see the official homepage at http://tietze-schenk.com/tsbook.htm.
I don't recommend this as your first book about electronics, but once you feel at home in the field it will become a very valuable guide to designing your circuitry.
Overall, I recommend "Electronic Circuits" for ambitious hobbyists and most engineering practice. It is a bit too advanced for complete newbies, and for cutting edge development you might want something that covers the theory in more depth. But for everything in between it is great.
At some point, supporting the accumulated cruft will be just as painful as breaking things. I have read about how introducing Mac OS X gave Apple a hard time, but recently Microsoft had just as much difficulties in getting Vista to run.
In hindsight, I think Apple made the smarter decision and Microsoft should have done the same instead of Vista. Now they finally seem to plan a similar move for Windows 7, but it may give them a temporary suckage effect, Mac OS X style, on top of the years they lost with Vista.
In theory, one might expect that this works without much extra programming effort. In practice, it did not happen. ;-)
So I suspect there are a few sordid hacks involved in making the WOW 32-16 bit layer work in XP, and Microsoft wanted to get rid of those in 64 bit Vista
Performance? So the chip would fall into a lower speed category but still be usable.
I define "real" defects as "does not work at all".
If even harmless hacks are illegal and may land you in jail, only serious criminals will take the risk (for serious potential money gains).
I think that is why there are less reports about benevolent hackers pointing out security flaws these days, but lots of reports about botnets for spamming and DDOS activities.
The described process seems to bring essentially correct structures into a more regular shape by melting them and letting surface tension do the rest.
I doubt it could fix a "real" defect, like two neighboring structures that were fused by accident during manufacturing.
The tasered man at the airport is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IJqdL40lvU.
He appears pretty agitated in the video and engages in some vandalism, but he is unarmed.
After watching the video, I'd agree that restraining him was probably necessary, but there were at least four security guards on the scene. They should have been able to handle him without a taser. Also watch the right guard at around 3:50 into the video. It looks like he hits the guy repeatedly with his club, at a time when he is clearly under control.
Overall, the security uses a completely unreasonable degree of force. If they did not have a taser, I can easily imagine them beating their victim to death.
I don't know how careful the NIST actually evaluates the items to be certified, but if it is anything like the ISO 9000 certification a previous employer of mine got there will be holes you can drive a truck through ;-)
Microsoft's own encryption services/products could have a backdoor that is used by the COFEE. Which would of course be a good reason not to trust Microsoft products (what if bad guys got the COFEE software?).
If you use a third party tool and don't leave the password lying around on the computer, I agree that the USB stick would be worthless.
Secret policies are unhealthy for a democracy anyway, because the citizens can only make good decisions (say, about who should be next president) if they are informed about what is going on.
A democracy is at an inherent disadvantage here compared to a dictatorship. But if you sacrifice your democracy over that, I guess you deserve an American version of Saddam Hussein
BTW and slightly off topic:
A state founded on the rule of law is also at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to fighting terrorists. Because it cannot simply imprison people without trial, and this means some bad guys on whom you have insufficient evidence will go free.
In this regard, the USA don't quite qualify as a rule of law state anymore, and I'd rather not travel to the USA until things change.
So far, the courts have usually accepted the "state secrets doctrine" and squashed the lawsuits if the doctrine was invoked. Under this law, they might be less willing to do so and eventually the administration would have to choose between complying and openly ignoring court orders.
The major difference is that MS also had Windows 2000, which was overall a much better system. Except for marketing reasons ("professional" vs. "home" user) and support for some DOS based games, Windows 2000 would have been the perfect successor to Windows 98.
So when MS noticed that ME was not so popular, they had an alternative to build upon. One year later, XP showed up with a cheap "home" version and more eyecandy compared to Windows 2000. But technically, there was not so much difference.
Today, I don't see a similar, superior system MS could fall back on. "Windows 7" is supposed to come in 2009, but after the delay in Vista such promises seem questionable.
I guess Linux, because it competes everywhere from mobile phones to big servers. Desktop market share is still weak, but in other areas Linux is much stronger.
;-) most people will get over XP.
Mac OS X is a close second, because it already has taken a few percent out of the Windows desktop market. But it is limited in scope, so it is overall less dangerous than Linux. Note that Macintosh rates higher if you consider all their products:
IPod vs. Zune and iPhone vs. Windows Mobile do not look so good for Microsoft.
Windows XP is more of a short term embarassment:
As computers get replaced with faster ones and Vista goes from beta quality to release quality (cue flamewars about how many SPs are needed
...around that time I worked for a company that used Novell GroupWise. Overall, I liked it better than the Outlook version I get to use on my current job. And it runs on Linux (too bad that Novell supports only its own SUSE Linux Enterprise for the server. For the client, they at least support RedHat in addition).
:-)
I have never tried Kontact, but there are certainly alternatives to Outlook
TFA describes an approach with nice potential, but it seems to need a lot of work before it becomes commercially viable.
Another is oil from algae: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Algae_as_an_energy_source
and it seems to be closer to commercial use.
In this case, I doubt they needed "specious reasoning and circular logic", because Microsoft's arguments look really weak to me. According to TFA, they argued on the basis that more discovery might damage their reputation. But
-As I understand the court system, it is not supposed to protect anyone's reputation at the expense of blocking discovery. There are exceptions, but usually your dirty laundry gets aired in discovery.
-Microsoft could ask the court to seal the evidence, so it would not become public. If the courts wanted to protect Microsoft from public mud-slinging, this would be a way to do it and still allow plaintiffs to get discovery. Compared to that, Microsoft's demand to deny class-action status seems unrelated and overreaching.
On top of that, a lot of emails that make Microsoft look bad have already been uncovered. No way Microsoft can let those disappear.
So if they delete the rest, they will end up antagonizing the court for little gain.