Do you really think these children can leave the school by their own decision in persuit of their freedom of speech? In theory, they could ignore the order to take down their blogs (to get back to TFA's topic), and dare the school to kick them out. The problem is that most children don't have the maturity and aplomb to go through with such an action. I would not have had it at that age. Today, at the age of 38, it might be different.
This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not). These days, the US part of the internet is only a, well, part of the net. And other nations don't want to have their activities on the net controlled by the US anymore. Unless the USA are willing to compromise, the rest of the world could set up its own root servers and apply its own policies for these. That would end US control of the World Wide Web without stealing anything from the USA.
That doesn't mean they have a right to profit, it's only to claim out of pocket expenses. In this case since it is virtual property that has already paid for it's own research, it has only cost the company potential profit. They should have sold the license for a reasonable amount but they refused, now they get nothing. The patent holder can still go to court and try to get "just compensation". And IMHO he should get a reasonable license fee (which may, however, be less than he expected;-). In the meantime, the drug can be produced and used, as opposed to waiting for long negotiations to reach a conclusion.
Okay; perhaps not, most people don't know enough about CPUs to *mistakenly* demand a Pentium because they think it's x86 compatible and refuse a "Bogium" or whatever because they think it's not (a la "Itanium"). Actually, the people who refused to buy Itaniums on that basis were well informed. The native instruction set if the Itanium is NOT x86 compatible. And while the Itanium could emulate the x86, its performance in that mode was inferior even to that of a (far cheaper) Pentium III.
Intel is not only planning to switch to a 65nm process, they also are working on a new line of products that are said to be based on the Pentium M. With that technology, they should get a much better grip on their heat problems. A problem that will remain, however, is their SMP design with only one memory bus, as opposed to AMD's where each processor has its own memory bus. In the tested configuration (see the GamePC article), the AMDs won bigtime on memory bandwith. In a 4-way or 8-way system, expect this to become even more pronounced. Bottom line: The next generation of Intel products will probably catch up on the desktop, but I don't see how they can keep up with the Opteron anytime soon.
I tried the single player demo, and it was the first game in a long time that got to me. The scare mechanism was a bit different from what TFA describes, however: In F.E.A.R., the enemies are not overly innovative, but you never know when you will run into the next batch of bad guys. Combined with a generally bleak and poorly lit environment, it creates the same kind of tension as Alien (the film).
You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.'"
That the MPAA will release its movies only with DRM seems obvious. But I see no reason why the use of the new format for other purposes is more restricted that the use of, say, CD-R. Is there a mandatory copy protection I have missed?
Theoretically technology makes the things you desire cheaper, so you don't need more money. The average American today lives more comfortably than kings of the past Good observation, but that mechanism works as only as long as the people are actually needed for making the stuff and can demand decent wages. In Germany (where I live) employees' wages were nicely rising along with the overall productivity until about 1990. Since the beginning of the 90s, however, raises in wages barely compensate the inflation. These days, the increase in GNP goes to companies' profits (and some of it is soaked up by increased bureaucracy - damned politicians). I think this is due to a vastly increased worker's productivity (because of technology) that allows companies to get along with less employees, thus reducing demand for labor and reducing its worth in the marketplace.
After all, the chips are supposed to be developed by now, and I don't expect them to change much over the lifetime of the console. Except maybe for some bugfixes that come with a firmware update. Thus, claiming that the "physics properties of the silicon" will lead to initial disappointment is not very credible.
That's the antenna. There should also be a little chip that holds the circuitry. AFAIK there is no alternative available for this yet. Note that the chip may be very small, an awl may be more appropriate than a mallet.
In Germany, there was a similar case a few years ago. A dealer unbundled PC hardware and Microsoft OEM licenses and sold them separately. Microsoft sued him and lost. At the Bundesgerichtshof to boot, which is the highest judical authority in non-constitutional cases. That makes the decision rather final.
IIRC, the court explicitly applied the german equivalent of the "First Sale" doctrine, the EULA mumbo-jumbo nonwithstanding.
...my mistake for not researching the details. But now, I wonder what Microsoft were thinking when they decided on an external hard drive. The case of the XBox 360 looks large enough to hold a 3 1/2" standard IDE drive. That would have been a far superior solution.
You can save a bit of money by reducing the platter stack to 1 platter. That will give you the minimum manucfacturing price, with whatever capacity the industry can put onto the platter at the current technology level.
So let's try shopping for cheap harddisks. The rules are: -Standard 3 1/2" IDE drive, so you have multiple vendors and can use something that is mass-produced anyway. -The smallest configuration that is available from multiple vendors (second source!) is taken. -Any discounter's website will do as a price reference. Microsoft should be able to get volume discounts that allow them to match the price.
And the results from newegg.com (first US discounter that comes to mind) are... -5 harddisks in the price range from $51.00 to $55.00, all of them 80GB/7200rpm models. -3 different vendors for above drives: Excelstor, Hitachi and Western Digital
So you can get a 80GB disk for $55. I would not be surprised if the XBox 360 had some extra precautions against do-it-yourself upgrades. As in incompatibe drive or file system, so you cannot easily transfer the partitions from a genuine MS hard drive to a generic one.
...both seem a bit overpriced. $50 for a 64MB memory card? Amazon.com (just as an example) has generic 512MB memory cards at the same price. $100 for a 20GB hard drive? I can easily find 120GB drives for that price elsewhere (assuming a 3 1/2" IDE drive is OK).
2. Managers are not really that stupid. While you may disagree with some of their decisions most of the managers I have met are actually fairly intelligent individuals. Especially if you realize that you are not the center of their management universe, they have other concerns then debating if you should make a SQL stored Procedure or just hard code it in the application.
If they allow you to make your own decisions on details, fine. Unfortunately, managers who make uninformed decisions about minor details DO exist. Micromanagement is annoying at the best of times. If the micro-manager is badly informed on top of that, he becomes a serious problem for both the company and the employees in his team. I call such managers stupid, and IMHO they should be fired at the next opportunity.
It still did lots of damage by spewing radioactive materials all over the country. Much like the "dirty bombs" that are frequently cited as possible terrorist threat. Only that the Chernobyl reactor had a lot more radioactive inventory than a terrorist group might be able to obtain.
I would have modded that insightful (yes I have points at the moment), but the following comment seems more important:
Even if some employees ignore the policy and save as.doc, having PDF support will give Massachusetts an easy way to convert these documents as needed. By enforcing support for open documents, Massachusetts can avoid vendor lock-in.
Of course, it would be wise to test the PDF support in MS Office before purchasing lots of licences. I would not put it beyond Microsoft to intentionally implement only half-assed PDF support.
Here in Europe we have situations like this quite frequently where someone will oppose a granted patent using as evidence their own (or other) internal documents (or even product brochures).
The prior art must be published in order to count for opposing a patent. So the brochures distributed to potential customers would be useful as prior art, but internal documents will not help. Exception in Germany: If you can show you used the patented invention before it was filed (but have not published it), you can keep using it. But that is not the same as getting the patent revoked.
In one case of "submarine patents", the court ruled them unenforcable. See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200509131 31027544 It was, however, a rather extreme case, so I am not sure if the same reasoning would work in Eolas vs. Microsoft
A contract that forces you to sell your shares when you're fired? That is an invitation to the other owners to fire you under some pretext, when it suits them to push you out. The same goes for stock options that are somehow cancelled if you leave the company early. In both cases, I would decline to invest or insist on cash instead.
The conservatives (CDU) already want to reduce or abolish these subventions. Personally, I think that a small reduction is OK, maybe to the level where you can sell your surplus you at the same price that you have to pay when you draw energy from he grid. But it would be stupid to kill the market for renewable energy now, when a further increase in fossil energy prices seems likely.
If plagues were a regular part of the game, the developers might have included an immune system. But since it was a bug, I would be very surprised if there is any mechanism for handling the plague.
"One tenth the risk of having your spacecraft blow up" is how I read this. And I think it is necessary in this case. If NASA cannot show a better safety record in the future, they might have problem finding enough volunteers for their space program. And those lost shuttles were expensive, too. If a future craft can reduce the risk to 1/10, a professional astronaut will have a much better chance to live and enjoy his pension. It will also reduce the cost for replacing crashed/exploded/whatever spacecraft.
Just like Neocron. Neocron is a MMORPG with a combat model that comes quite close to a shooter. Great concept, great atmosphere (despite the somewhat dated graphics), but it suffers from lag and bugs that have existed for ages.
I'm still playing, but I'm also looking for other games that will pick up the concept and do it better.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think these children can leave the school by their own decision in persuit of their freedom of speech?
In theory, they could ignore the order to take down their blogs (to get back to TFA's topic), and dare the school to kick them out. The problem is that most children don't have the maturity and aplomb to go through with such an action. I would not have had it at that age. Today, at the age of 38, it might be different.
This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).
These days, the US part of the internet is only a, well, part of the net. And other nations don't want to have their activities on the net controlled by the US anymore.
Unless the USA are willing to compromise, the rest of the world could set up its own root servers and apply its own policies for these. That would end US control of the World Wide Web without stealing anything from the USA.
That doesn't mean they have a right to profit, it's only to claim out of pocket expenses. In this case since it is virtual property that has already paid for it's own research, it has only cost the company potential profit. They should have sold the license for a reasonable amount but they refused, now they get nothing. ;-).
The patent holder can still go to court and try to get "just compensation". And IMHO he should get a reasonable license fee (which may, however, be less than he expected
In the meantime, the drug can be produced and used, as opposed to waiting for long negotiations to reach a conclusion.
Okay; perhaps not, most people don't know enough about CPUs to *mistakenly* demand a Pentium because they think it's x86 compatible and refuse a "Bogium" or whatever because they think it's not (a la "Itanium").
Actually, the people who refused to buy Itaniums on that basis were well informed. The native instruction set if the Itanium is NOT x86 compatible. And while the Itanium could emulate the x86, its performance in that mode was inferior even to that of a (far cheaper) Pentium III.
Intel is not only planning to switch to a 65nm process, they also are working on a new line of products that are said to be based on the Pentium M. With that technology, they should get a much better grip on their heat problems.
A problem that will remain, however, is their SMP design with only one memory bus, as opposed to AMD's where each processor has its own memory bus. In the tested configuration (see the GamePC article), the AMDs won bigtime on memory bandwith. In a 4-way or 8-way system, expect this to become even more pronounced.
Bottom line:
The next generation of Intel products will probably catch up on the desktop, but I don't see how they can keep up with the Opteron anytime soon.
I tried the single player demo, and it was the first game in a long time that got to me. The scare mechanism was a bit different from what TFA describes, however:
In F.E.A.R., the enemies are not overly innovative, but you never know when you will run into the next batch of bad guys. Combined with a generally bleak and poorly lit environment, it creates the same kind of tension as Alien (the film).
You won't be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way.'"
That the MPAA will release its movies only with DRM seems obvious. But I see no reason why the use of the new format for other purposes is more restricted that the use of, say, CD-R.
Is there a mandatory copy protection I have missed?
Theoretically technology makes the things you desire cheaper, so you don't need more money. The average American today lives more comfortably than kings of the past
Good observation, but that mechanism works as only as long as the people are actually needed for making the stuff and can demand decent wages.
In Germany (where I live) employees' wages were nicely rising along with the overall productivity until about 1990. Since the beginning of the 90s, however, raises in wages barely compensate the inflation. These days, the increase in GNP goes to companies' profits (and some of it is soaked up by increased bureaucracy - damned politicians).
I think this is due to a vastly increased worker's productivity (because of technology) that allows companies to get along with less employees, thus reducing demand for labor and reducing its worth in the marketplace.
After all, the chips are supposed to be developed by now, and I don't expect them to change much over the lifetime of the console. Except maybe for some bugfixes that come with a firmware update.
Thus, claiming that the "physics properties of the silicon" will lead to initial disappointment is not very credible.
That's the antenna. There should also be a little chip that holds the circuitry. AFAIK there is no alternative available for this yet. Note that the chip may be very small, an awl may be more appropriate than a mallet.
Find out what exactly the Big Name hardware store puts into the case. If you like the choices, buy it and fdisk the PC right away ;-)
In Germany, there was a similar case a few years ago. A dealer unbundled PC hardware and Microsoft OEM licenses and sold them separately. Microsoft sued him and lost. At the Bundesgerichtshof to boot, which is the highest judical authority in non-constitutional cases. That makes the decision rather final.
IIRC, the court explicitly applied the german equivalent of the "First Sale" doctrine, the EULA mumbo-jumbo nonwithstanding.
...my mistake for not researching the details.
But now, I wonder what Microsoft were thinking when they decided on an external hard drive. The case of the XBox 360 looks large enough to hold a 3 1/2" standard IDE drive. That would have been a far superior solution.
You can save a bit of money by reducing the platter stack to 1 platter. That will give you the minimum manucfacturing price, with whatever capacity the industry can put onto the platter at the current technology level.
So let's try shopping for cheap harddisks. The rules are:
-Standard 3 1/2" IDE drive, so you have multiple vendors and can use something that is mass-produced anyway.
-The smallest configuration that is available from multiple vendors (second source!) is taken.
-Any discounter's website will do as a price reference. Microsoft should be able to get volume discounts that allow them to match the price.
And the results from newegg.com (first US discounter that comes to mind) are...
-5 harddisks in the price range from $51.00 to $55.00, all of them 80GB/7200rpm models.
-3 different vendors for above drives: Excelstor, Hitachi and Western Digital
So you can get a 80GB disk for $55. I would not be surprised if the XBox 360 had some extra precautions against do-it-yourself upgrades. As in incompatibe drive or file system, so you cannot easily transfer the partitions from a genuine MS hard drive to a generic one.
...both seem a bit overpriced.
$50 for a 64MB memory card? Amazon.com (just as an example) has generic 512MB memory cards at the same price.
$100 for a 20GB hard drive? I can easily find 120GB drives for that price elsewhere (assuming a 3 1/2" IDE drive is OK).
2. Managers are not really that stupid. While you may disagree with some of their decisions most of the managers I have met are actually fairly intelligent individuals. Especially if you realize that you are not the center of their management universe, they have other concerns then debating if you should make a SQL stored Procedure or just hard code it in the application.
If they allow you to make your own decisions on details, fine. Unfortunately, managers who make uninformed decisions about minor details DO exist. Micromanagement is annoying at the best of times. If the micro-manager is badly informed on top of that, he becomes a serious problem for both the company and the employees in his team.
I call such managers stupid, and IMHO they should be fired at the next opportunity.
It still did lots of damage by spewing radioactive materials all over the country. Much like the "dirty bombs" that are frequently cited as possible terrorist threat. Only that the Chernobyl reactor had a lot more radioactive inventory than a terrorist group might be able to obtain.
I would have modded that insightful (yes I have points at the moment), but the following comment seems more important:
.doc, having PDF support will give Massachusetts an easy way to convert these documents as needed. By enforcing support for open documents, Massachusetts can avoid vendor lock-in.
Even if some employees ignore the policy and save as
Of course, it would be wise to test the PDF support in MS Office before purchasing lots of licences. I would not put it beyond Microsoft to intentionally implement only half-assed PDF support.
Here in Europe we have situations like this quite frequently where someone will oppose a granted patent using as evidence their own (or other) internal documents (or even product brochures).
The prior art must be published in order to count for opposing a patent. So the brochures distributed to potential customers would be useful as prior art, but internal documents will not help.
Exception in Germany: If you can show you used the patented invention before it was filed (but have not published it), you can keep using it. But that is not the same as getting the patent revoked.
In one case of "submarine patents", the court ruled them unenforcable. See1 31027544
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050913
It was, however, a rather extreme case, so I am not sure if the same reasoning would work in Eolas vs. Microsoft
A contract that forces you to sell your shares when you're fired? That is an invitation to the other owners to fire you under some pretext, when it suits them to push you out.
The same goes for stock options that are somehow cancelled if you leave the company early.
In both cases, I would decline to invest or insist on cash instead.
The conservatives (CDU) already want to reduce or abolish these subventions.
Personally, I think that a small reduction is OK, maybe to the level where you can sell your surplus you at the same price that you have to pay when you draw energy from he grid. But it would be stupid to kill the market for renewable energy now, when a further increase in fossil energy prices seems likely.
If plagues were a regular part of the game, the developers might have included an immune system. But since it was a bug, I would be very surprised if there is any mechanism for handling the plague.
"One tenth the risk of having your spacecraft blow up" is how I read this. And I think it is necessary in this case. If NASA cannot show a better safety record in the future, they might have problem finding enough volunteers for their space program. And those lost shuttles were expensive, too.
If a future craft can reduce the risk to 1/10, a professional astronaut will have a much better chance to live and enjoy his pension. It will also reduce the cost for replacing crashed/exploded/whatever spacecraft.
Just like Neocron. Neocron is a MMORPG with a combat model that comes quite close to a shooter. Great concept, great atmosphere (despite the somewhat dated graphics), but it suffers from lag and bugs that have existed for ages.
I'm still playing, but I'm also looking for other games that will pick up the concept and do it better.