There was a bug in the Acid3 test suite. That bug prevented WebKit from getting a 100/100 score. Now, that the bug is fixed, WebKit is scoring 100/100. How Opera could have scored 100/100 before the test was fixed is beyond me.
What's more, since WebKit is released nightly, WebKit is the first publicly released browser to score 100/100 on the Acid 3 tests.
BTW, as both teams will point out, scoring 100/100 on the Acid3 test doesn't mean the browser "passed" the Acid3 test. It has to match the reference page pixel for pixel and its rendering has to be smooth. Opera is off by a couple of pixels in its rendering. WebKit is pixel-perfect, but Test 26 takes too long to complete.
And, Opera could still be the first officially released non-beta browser to score 100/100 on the Acid3 test.
I'm very happy to see both Safari and Opera take the Acid3 test so seriously. However, despite Safari's 98/100 score, I still have problems with Midas/DocumentMode issues. This affects the basic installation of TinyMCE, an extremely popular editor for blogging software. It is used in Confluence, Joomla, Mambo, and many other software projects.
I also know there are places where Safari simply renders pages illegibly. I've seen this on Joomla forums where Safari cannot render the boxes on top of a forum post correctly (see for an example. Here "home", "threaded views", "home", and "help" are not rendered correctly in Safari.
I know most of this has to do with non-standard behavior first instituted by Microsoft (who else), but IE represents about 80% of the browser market, so when Microsoft creates a standard like Midas/DocumentMode, it becomes an important part of the Web. FireFox and Opera have no problems with this. Unfortunately, Safari, the browser that hews so closely to WC3 standards simply cannot be used on many websites.
The patent is not about the iPod or iTunes. It is about distributing "media" via a "network", tracking permissions who can or cannot use that "media", and being able to use the "media" on various players. The iPod came out in 2000, and the iTunes software came out in 1998, but this isn't talking about the integration between the iPod and iTunes because there is no centralized distribution database.
In 2003, Apple came out with the iTunes store, and this is where the patent infringement is claimed. There's a centralized database of media (music files, video, etc.), and that is distributed to local media players. There is something that verifies that the player has permission to play that media.
Notice there is nothing in the patent that says downloading! If I had a streaming service, and you connected to the streaming service via WiFi or some other mechanism, if you selected some media to play, and the server verifies you have permission to play that, and then it streams the media to your local player, that would be covered under the patent.
To me, the patent is overly broad. There is no method specified, only the results (local player plays media from a central server it has permission to play). In fact, because it is so overly broad, it is easily possible to find local prior art. For example, cable TV might qualify (central database of TV shows, and these are played via a local player (called a TV set), but only by the people who have permission).
What happened was that a member of our development team had inserted coding used for testing G-Archiver in the debug version and forgot to delete it in the final release version.
I love that "a member of our development team" as if it took 10 to 20 people to design, test, and produce this code.
There was a line in Dilbert once:
Dogbert: Do you know how they say if you have an infinite amount of monkeys given an infinite amount of time, you could reproduce the works of Shakespeare?
Dibert: Yes?
Dogbert: I'd give this three monkeys and 20 minutes.
That sounds about right.
The real sad thing about this software is that the company charges you $30 for this dinky little.NET application! I could reproduce the entire functionality of this product in less than an hour with a little Perl, and I'm no hotshot programmer.
Nothing in either article (the one linked to or the original student article) said anything about answers actually being posted. I assume that there was some discussion about answers, but it certainly doesn't sound like this Facebook group was just a place to post answers for others to copy.
Instead, it seems this Facebook group is a place to discuss the homework and ask others for help. Considering that 90% of the class grade is from in class tests, I can't see how this Facebook group was cheating. If the Facebook group was just a place where answers were posted, and you merely copied down the answers and not do the homework, you'd flunk the tests. If you did the homework and used the Facebook site for peer-to-peer help, you'd do well on the tests.
Heck, I don't even understand why the teacher even bothers with grading homework. When I went to college, no one graded homework. As one professor told us, our homework grade is reflected in our test grades. (Homework was assigned and discussed in class, but never graded). If we do our homework, we get good test grades, if we didn't we'd flunk the tests. As the professor said, why do the extra work? Otherwise, we wouldn't have time to go to all those faculty wine and cheese parties we give each other.
The Acer Ferrari 1100 would be more attractive if its price ($1,860) wasn't higher than that of the more aesthetically pleasing Apple MacBook Air ($1,799)
Isn't Windows licensed on almost every PC sold before I even get it out of the factory door? I was under the impression that most OEMs have a licensing agreement with Microsoft that pretty much puts a Windows license on every computer sold -- whether or not it actually has Windows on it.
So, why all the hoopla about WGA? Is Microsoft so worried about a few people who are upgrading from XP to Vista? In a few years, these people will be buying a new computer and will end up with a new Vista license anyway. This was the same company a decade ago worried about Windows penetration into the Chinese market because not enough people were pirating their software in China!
It sounds like for the few pennies that Microsoft might be losing to unlicensed copies of Windows Vista, they're busy making legitimate user lives miserable.
Nope, doesn't sound right. Google is not coming out with a gPhone jointly developed with Dell. Otherwise, they'd be competing against their own customers.
What might be happening is that Dell is designing a phone based upon Android (like many other hardware vendors will be doing). Google may be giving them some technical assistance since --if the reports are true-- Dell would be one of the first vendors actually building a phone based upon Android.
It's like saying my company and Microsoft are jointly developing a new project because I'm using VisualStudio, and I have a support contract with Microsoft.
Now, whether the new Dell phone will fly is another question since all hardware manufacturers still need to have tie-ins with some cellphone service provider. If Dell is creating such a phone, we can count Verizon out as a possible cellphone service provider since they refuse to have anything to do with Android.
This suppose to allow for one hand typing. If you need a letter that's on the other side of the keyboard, hold down the space key and press the corresponding finger placement. For example/Space-Q/ for "P" and/Space-G/ for "H".
Did anyone read the article? All the ballots were paper. There are no ATM style voting machines in New Hampshire.
The question is whether the ballots were counted by hand or by optical scanner. The larger towns counted votes by optical scanner while the smaller towns counted them by hand. Since all ballots are paper, it would be very easy to recount the scanned ballots by hand and see if there was any voter fraud.
Why the vote difference between "hand counted" vote percentages vs. "machine counted" percentages? Larger towns vs. smaller towns. It wouldn't be unusual for one candidate to be favored in the larger towns while another candidate was favored in smaller towns.
It could be that Clinton concentrated her GOTV effort in larger towns while Obama made a statewide effort. Or, maybe blue collar women -- a demographic that heavily favors Clinton -- tend to live in larger towns. Meanwhile, younger, richer voters -- the demographic that favor Obama -- live in more suburban communities.
Knowing plenty of authors and private musicians, I think I would be horrified about that. You mean after five years, someone can simply photocopy my work and sell it, make money off it, and I don't get paid for my work? Think of syndication rights for movies and TV shows. That's when the real money is to be made, and these authors would miss out.
At the turn of the 20th century, copyrights were lifetime + a few extra years in length. For a private author, once they died, no one was left to care if someone "pirated" their work. You want to write a book about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Go right ahead, anyone who would be concerned has long since past away.
Now, imagine if Walt Disney as an individual produced the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Once he was gone, no one (except for a few heirs) would be interested in the remaining value of that movie. After Uncle Walt dies (plus a few years), it could easily go into public domain.
Now, here's the problem: The copyright was not owned by the mortal Walt Disney but by the immortal Walt Disney *COMPANY*, and this company is still around, and the asset called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is still a very valuable asset for this company. Even if the Walt Disney Company does "die" one day, the creditors would be interested in Disney's valuable copyright assets.
So, the copyright laws were originally written with the idea of individuals owning a copyright, and after that individual dies, the value of that asset is no longer owned by anyone. Now, copyrights are owned by corporations that do not disappear after 70 years. For them, the value of the copyright lives forever.
There are several problems: One is the balance of the public interest with private interest: There is broad agreement that this is really out of whack. Prince suing someone who posted a picture of their baby dancing because the music in the background is Prince's music. "Eyes on the Prize" couldn't be shown for 30 years because of copyright concerns. Documentary producers being sued because a scene they shot had "The Simpsons" playing on a TV in the background. Independent producers can't shoot in New York without clearing the copyright for all posters, clothes, background noise, and even buildings. Destroying copyrights won't fix the balance issue.
The other problem is how do we handle corporate copyrights? Corporations never die, thus they really want to hold onto their copyrights forever. Maybe a sliding copyright extension fee could be used in this case: After ten years, a corporation would have to pay...say... $50,000 per year to keep that copyright. After 10 years, the fee would be $75,000. After 50 years, $200,000 per year.
This would allow the copyright for 90% of the assets to expire while companies could keep their most valued possessions safe. Disney may throw "Frankenwienie" out to the public domain (or let it revert back to the original author, Tim Burton, but still keep the very valuable Snow White franchise.
The comments on Walmart's site were rather interesting. Many people gave this a five star rating, but those people also mentioned that they knew Linux, were upgrading the hardware on this computer, and seemed to be very tech savvy.
Then there were the one star raters. These people talked about how cheap the PC was, and couldn't understand why it couldn't run their other software. They found the desktop confusing and the programs it came with overly complex.
It appears that this was a thrown together piece of cheap hardware. However, those who were tech savvy viewed this as a bargain of computer parts. A little tweaking -- better keyboard, more memory, more diskspace, etc., and you had a fairly cheap Linux machine. The rest were typical computer customers who bought it because it was only $200. They found it sloppily put together, cheap and unusable components, and a confusing OS. These people didn't have the time, energy, nor technical skills to tweak this computer to make it usable.
This computer was an interesting experiment, and we'll see many more in the years to come. There's no way companies can sell $200 computers while buying a Windows license. Something is going have to give. You're going to see a lot more Linux computers for the masses before the end of next year. Someone is going to get it right.
There has been a browser war going on for a while. It isn't the IE vs. Firefox war everyone talks about. It's about the rendering engine to use.
Apple's WebKit has succeeded beyond Apple's wildest dreams. It is officially being used at Google for its applications, it has been adopted by KDE, and the Gnome team is also about to adopt it. It is also the official rendering engine for Android. That puts WebKit on each Linux distribution and on what will soon become a major portable Internet device platform.
Adobe has been pushing Flash as the web rendering engine to rule the world, but it hasn't been doing so well. The big war for the browser isn't the desktop, but all the little devices that we will all carry around: PDAs, Phones, cameras, music players, game machines, etc. Flash needs a consumer client in order to work, and the fact that all of these devices will depend upon Adobe creating a client for each and every platform and operating system just doesn't cut it. Manufacturers don't want Adobe to rule whether their device is worthy of a Flash client.
In order for Adobe to be truly competitive in this fight, they must open up the Flash file specifications. That way, each device maker can design their own Flash player much the same way they build their own web browser according to HTTP/HTML specs.
The only question I have is how "open" is the spec? What happens if Adobe wants a new version of Flash with more features? Will it open up the new specs? Will Adobe allow me to create a program that will write to the Flash file format, or is that still closed to me? This isn't entirely unheard of. Microsoft has "open specs" for NTFS. I can give my operating system the ability to read NTFS, but not the ability to write it without first getting a license from Microsoft.
Nope, that's pretty much true. Steve Jobs had Microsoft pump money into Apple to help keep it afloat.
Would Apple have gone under if it didn't get the money? That's a bit hard to tell. However, the money did help Apple with development costs that it desperately needed in order to revamp Rhapsody into Mac OS X.
Maybe more important than the money was Microsoft's commitment to Apple to keep MS Office for the Mac up to date. Plus, the money did give investors the confidence that Apple was still relevant.
If Apple really had "Billions" in the bank, Sun would have easily snapped them up for 2 billion and liquidated everything in order to make a quick profit. Instead, Sun decided to walk away from the mess.
It is extremely important for Microsoft to be able to maintain absolute dominance in the PC market, and Microsoft will drop the price of Windows to pennies if it keeps them relevant in the PC market. That's the real purpose of Vista Home Basic. You'll see the price of Vista Home Basic drop to $1 in the near future if it keeps PC companies from going over to Linux.
Microsoft needs Windows on all PCs because it keeps licensing issues simple for them. Very few people steal a Windows license because it is already on their PC. Besides, what happens in the consumer market will affect the corporate market. If Linux can establish a hold on the consumer end, it'll start creeping into the corporate market. Microsoft will use every penny in its coffers to prevent that from happening.
I'm not anti or pro Microsoft. I just know that Microsoft will do everything to protect its Windows market. It's not just the operating system. It's also the Windows office market. Linux PCs don't run Microsoft Office, therefore home users might not be comfortable with Microsoft Office at work, and they'll insist on OpenOffice or whatever application most of these Linux PCs will come with.
or balance the budget. We New Jerseyites...I mean New Jersians,,, Augh!...residents of New Jersey are up to our neck in state debt. Our taxes our out of this world, and it costs an arm and a leg living here. We are in serious financial trouble and need to cut our state debt in half, but that's not fun. It means charging more taxes for less services and our governor won't let us do some cheap accounting trick this time around. No matter what you do, someone is going to get pissed.
Better off hyping legislation that is entirely useless, costs the state nothing, and makes the public this the government is "doing something". It's like the school uniform fad that every place went through about a decade ago. You make the parents buy school uniforms, the school districts don't spend a dime, and at the same time, they can claim they're doing something about education.
Compare the XOPC to the AlphaSmart Dana. Even at $200, the XO is cheaper, more durable, and more flexible. The AlphaSmart is advertised to kids in the U.S. and Europe as a way to take notes in school. The XO will blow it away. And how about all us business people who want a very lightweight PC that won't break when dropped or otherwise mishandled by airport security personnel and can work for more than two hours without being plugged in. I don't care if it's Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. I just need something that can read my email, write up a proposal, and take notes at a meeting. Instead of spending $1000 on a laptop that is powerful enough to use as a desktop system, and yet is light enough to actually be portable, maybe I'll spend $800 for a real desktop system and use the other $200 on an XOPC.
The point is that Negroponte has a great market for his XOPC right here in America and Europe. Sure, it's not what he originally was after. But, imagine if the XOPC was sold freely in the first world. With enough units being sold, the cost of the XOPC would drop towards its original $100 goal. Meanwhile, developers in America and Europe will write new applications for the XOPC, third party products will be made for the XOPC, and the computer will lose its stigma as being a third world toy computer for people who can't afford a real PC.
So, with in a year or two, Negroponte will now have an XOPC that costs only $100, has better support, more software, and maybe the panache of the iPod. With a cheaper, cooler, better supported computer, countries like India and Libya will be clamoring for the XOPC.
Keep UTC with the leap second. Civilian time can use that.
For UT1, eliminate the concept of hours, days, etc. Time will be told by the second only. Maybe even call it something else like a "chron". You can talk about hectochrons, millichrons, kilochrons, etc. In fact, start the counting of "chrons" at January 1, 1970.
Now, if you use chrons, there is no more link between days or years, and no more leap seconds. Computer systems like GPS or space travel which get thrown off by leap seconds, but don't really depend upon the concept of "day" or "year", can use chrons. People who depend upon the astronomical time can use seconds and live with leap seconds. To each, their own. And, converting between the two units is quite really simple.
The real silliness of the whole proposal is that these scientists actually think their decision will eliminate the leap second. Astronomers will simply ignore the whole thing and go back to GMT. So will all the governments which means all the atomic clocks will still use leap seconds. UTC will simply disappear, and we're back to square one.
The Electoral College was created because we simply didn't know how to elect a president. The original Virginia articles (which our Constitution was based upon) had the Senate (which was elected by the House) elect the President. Almost all of the delegates protested this because it was completely against the idea of separation of powers. Pennsylvania proposed election by popular vote, but Virginia objected because they had more people than Pennsylvania, but had fewer voters (since they had such strict voting requirements).
The whole thing was sent off to committee to decide universal voting qualifications for president. This completely failed because Pennsylvania had almost universal suffrage while Virginia wanted ownership of a certain amount of land. New York wanted a certain payment of taxes, Massachusetts wanted ownership of a certain value of real estate, and you get the idea. No one could agree on a Constitutional provision of who could vote for President. Even worse, a few states insisted that the state legislatures should have a say in who is running the country.
In the end, a compromise was reached: Each state got a certain amount of votes, and it was up to the individual states to decide who and how these votes would be cast. Thus, the Electoral College.
The Electoral College was a complete failure from almost the very beginning. George Washington was an easy choice, Adams was his vice president, so he was chosen in the third election. The fourth presidential election was the very first truly contested presidential election and the Electoral College almost completely tore the country apart. Thomas Jefferson won the Electoral College over Adams, but he tied with his veep due to the way the Electors were chosen. Back then, every elector got two votes and the second place finisher was the Veep. Jefferson tied the electoral vote with his veep candidate Aaron Burr. However, Adams supporters convinced Burr to actually claim the Presidency. It took over a dozen votes in Congress before Jefferson actually won. Many states threatened revolt if Jefferson or Burr was elected. It was Hamilton who finally cleared the way for Jefferson's election. Hamilton got the Federalists to support Jefferson in order to keep the country together.
The result ended up being the Hamilton Burr dual and extremely strained relations between Jefferson and Burr (who Jefferson later had tried for Treason). The twelfth amendment changed the way the Electoral College worked in order to prevent this from happening again.
The Electoral College encouraged states to keep suffrage low since the states aren't punished due to limited suffrage. The South knew that if Blacks were kept from the polls, they still had just as much say in Congress and the Presidential elections.
The Electoral College encourages limited Presidential campaigns since each state votes in a large block. The Presidential campaign skips over California and Texas, the two largest states since the outcome is known in those states, and the campaign hits only a half dozen or so smaller states. For example, Al Gore won more votes in Texas than in New Jersey in 2000, but it was New Jersey's 17 electoral votes that mattered and not the millions of votes Gore received in Texas.
And for the same reason, the Electoral College keeps voting participation low. Why bother voting for the Democratic candidate in Texas or the Republican candidate in California since it really doesn't matter. Our voting participation rate for President averages just over 50%. However, battleground states usually have a voter turnout above 80% while most other states have voter turnout around 40% to 50%. Why bother to go to the polls in Texas? You know the Republican candidate is going to win. If you're a Democrat, it's just a waste of time. If you're a Republican, it still isn't worth it. Texas's 34 electoral votes will still go to the Republican candidate whether or not you vote. With the Electoral College, your vote doesn't matter i
So, that whole thing in Ireland was just a little misunderstanding?
It doesn't matter if you're Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist. What matters is how you treat your fellow human being, and how do you look at yourself. If you think you're perfect, all those "imperfect" beings around you are in trouble. If you think you're 100% right, all those "incorrect" beings around you are in trouble.
Christian fundamentalism is a 19th century phenomenon, so it wasn't around back in the 1600's. Yes, there were religious Christians, but they weren't following Christian fundamentalist philosophy.
Like all other groups religious Christians have been both on the side of good and evil. It was the Quakers back in the 18th century who first spoke against slavery for religious reasons. At that time, all 12 colonies had slavery (Delaware was part of Pennsylvania, and didn't split off from Pennsylvania until 1770s). The Unitarians (Adams were Unitarians) later forced the Northern colonies and states to ban slavery. The Baptists (the first true fundamentalist group) spoke against slavery causing the Southern Baptists to break off. In the 20th century, Catholics and Jews spoke against the treatment of Blacks in the South.
Then again, slavery in the South became a prime Christian doctrine. Many Southern preachers were leaders in lynchings and the Klan. Supremest Christian doctrine in the mid-20th century supported the Nazis in Germany and were involved in the America First movement. In the 19th century, the protestant Know Nothings went on anti-Catholic rampages.
Then there were the anti-Mormon wars in Missouri lead by various religious leaders -- many from Christian fundamentalist churches -- in the mid-1830s. Of course, there was also the Mormon lead 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre.
It isn't Christian vs. Muslim. It is intolerance vs. everybody else. The fact that you so proudly wave the Christian banner and so readily denounce those who you don't agree with your religious views shows which side of the divide you're on.
I got Leopard just a week ago, and Time Machine has already saved my butt. Before Leopard, I had created a cronjob to to a compressed tar of my entire system, and put it on a secondary hard drive. I backed up three times per week with a rotating backup. Restoring was pretty much untaring that one file I needed. I could do it, but my wife certainly can't.
I've seen software on a NetApps that is "similar" to Time Machine. In your $HOME directory, there is a ".snapshot" directory that contains 24 directories (one for each of the past 24 hours) and a month's worth of days. If I needed a file I deleted 2 weeks ago, I could go to the correct "day" directory, and see what my $HOME directory looked like at that time. I could search the.snapshot directories using the standard Unix tools too, so if I don't remember the version of a file I needed, I could do a find and a grep to find the correct file. However, this still wasn't Time Machine.
If I was looking for a missing file on my.snapshot directory, the "find" command would take forever because I was combing through all of those directories one file at a time. You type in a missing file name in Time Machine, and in seconds, that file is found. Plus, Time Machine doesn't have to work on a "file" level. As someone pointed out, I can search through my address book for a particular set of records, and only restore those records.
Plus, I am sure that the technicians who setup the NetApps took a lot of time and effort to configure the ".snapshot" directory. Time Machine took me about 30 seconds to setup. (Step #1: Select backup drive. Step #2: Click the "On" switch. Step #3... There is no Step #3).
Time Machine is and isn't a marvelous technical breakthrough. There's nothing about Time Machine that is earth shattering technologically. However, the way it is put together is amazing.
I am sure that we will see many copycats in the next few weeks. I am sure that Microsoft will come up with something very similar in a few months. After all, the backend of Time Machine is quite simple. It's the front end that's absolutely amazing.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a bug in the Acid3 test suite. That bug prevented WebKit from getting a 100/100 score. Now, that the bug is fixed, WebKit is scoring 100/100. How Opera could have scored 100/100 before the test was fixed is beyond me.
What's more, since WebKit is released nightly, WebKit is the first publicly released browser to score 100/100 on the Acid 3 tests.
BTW, as both teams will point out, scoring 100/100 on the Acid3 test doesn't mean the browser "passed" the Acid3 test. It has to match the reference page pixel for pixel and its rendering has to be smooth. Opera is off by a couple of pixels in its rendering. WebKit is pixel-perfect, but Test 26 takes too long to complete.
And, Opera could still be the first officially released non-beta browser to score 100/100 on the Acid3 test.
I'm very happy to see both Safari and Opera take the Acid3 test so seriously. However, despite Safari's 98/100 score, I still have problems with Midas/DocumentMode issues. This affects the basic installation of TinyMCE, an extremely popular editor for blogging software. It is used in Confluence, Joomla, Mambo, and many other software projects.
I also know there are places where Safari simply renders pages illegibly. I've seen this on Joomla forums where Safari cannot render the boxes on top of a forum post correctly (see for an example. Here "home", "threaded views", "home", and "help" are not rendered correctly in Safari.
I know most of this has to do with non-standard behavior first instituted by Microsoft (who else), but IE represents about 80% of the browser market, so when Microsoft creates a standard like Midas/DocumentMode, it becomes an important part of the Web. FireFox and Opera have no problems with this. Unfortunately, Safari, the browser that hews so closely to WC3 standards simply cannot be used on many websites.
The patent is not about the iPod or iTunes. It is about distributing "media" via a "network", tracking permissions who can or cannot use that "media", and being able to use the "media" on various players. The iPod came out in 2000, and the iTunes software came out in 1998, but this isn't talking about the integration between the iPod and iTunes because there is no centralized distribution database.
In 2003, Apple came out with the iTunes store, and this is where the patent infringement is claimed. There's a centralized database of media (music files, video, etc.), and that is distributed to local media players. There is something that verifies that the player has permission to play that media.
Notice there is nothing in the patent that says downloading! If I had a streaming service, and you connected to the streaming service via WiFi or some other mechanism, if you selected some media to play, and the server verifies you have permission to play that, and then it streams the media to your local player, that would be covered under the patent.
To me, the patent is overly broad. There is no method specified, only the results (local player plays media from a central server it has permission to play). In fact, because it is so overly broad, it is easily possible to find local prior art. For example, cable TV might qualify (central database of TV shows, and these are played via a local player (called a TV set), but only by the people who have permission).
I love that "a member of our development team" as if it took 10 to 20 people to design, test, and produce this code.
There was a line in Dilbert once:
Dogbert: Do you know how they say if you have an infinite amount of monkeys given an infinite amount of time, you could reproduce the works of Shakespeare?
Dibert: Yes?
Dogbert: I'd give this three monkeys and 20 minutes.
That sounds about right.
The real sad thing about this software is that the company charges you $30 for this dinky little
Nothing in either article (the one linked to or the original student article) said anything about answers actually being posted. I assume that there was some discussion about answers, but it certainly doesn't sound like this Facebook group was just a place to post answers for others to copy.
Instead, it seems this Facebook group is a place to discuss the homework and ask others for help. Considering that 90% of the class grade is from in class tests, I can't see how this Facebook group was cheating. If the Facebook group was just a place where answers were posted, and you merely copied down the answers and not do the homework, you'd flunk the tests. If you did the homework and used the Facebook site for peer-to-peer help, you'd do well on the tests.
Heck, I don't even understand why the teacher even bothers with grading homework. When I went to college, no one graded homework. As one professor told us, our homework grade is reflected in our test grades. (Homework was assigned and discussed in class, but never graded). If we do our homework, we get good test grades, if we didn't we'd flunk the tests. As the professor said, why do the extra work? Otherwise, we wouldn't have time to go to all those faculty wine and cheese parties we give each other.
Boy, that PC magazine is such a Mac fanboy site.
I found the comments on the last two on the bottom of the page rather interesting -- how their "parents" lack creativity.
Hey, Microsoft said it. I didn't.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/sfbio/#msdnwebcastguy
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/sfbio/#visualstudioguy
Isn't Windows licensed on almost every PC sold before I even get it out of the factory door? I was under the impression that most OEMs have a licensing agreement with Microsoft that pretty much puts a Windows license on every computer sold -- whether or not it actually has Windows on it.
So, why all the hoopla about WGA? Is Microsoft so worried about a few people who are upgrading from XP to Vista? In a few years, these people will be buying a new computer and will end up with a new Vista license anyway. This was the same company a decade ago worried about Windows penetration into the Chinese market because not enough people were pirating their software in China!
It sounds like for the few pennies that Microsoft might be losing to unlicensed copies of Windows Vista, they're busy making legitimate user lives miserable.
Nope, doesn't sound right. Google is not coming out with a gPhone jointly developed with Dell. Otherwise, they'd be competing against their own customers.
What might be happening is that Dell is designing a phone based upon Android (like many other hardware vendors will be doing). Google may be giving them some technical assistance since --if the reports are true-- Dell would be one of the first vendors actually building a phone based upon Android.
It's like saying my company and Microsoft are jointly developing a new project because I'm using VisualStudio, and I have a support contract with Microsoft.
Now, whether the new Dell phone will fly is another question since all hardware manufacturers still need to have tie-ins with some cellphone service provider. If Dell is creating such a phone, we can count Verizon out as a possible cellphone service provider since they refuse to have anything to do with Android.
Wonder how the 700Mhz auctions are going...
http://www.matias.ca/halfkeyboard/
/Space-Q/ for "P" and /Space-G/ for "H".
This suppose to allow for one hand typing. If you need a letter that's on the other side of the keyboard, hold down the space key and press the corresponding finger placement. For example
Did anyone read the article? All the ballots were paper. There are no ATM style voting machines in New Hampshire.
The question is whether the ballots were counted by hand or by optical scanner. The larger towns counted votes by optical scanner while the smaller towns counted them by hand. Since all ballots are paper, it would be very easy to recount the scanned ballots by hand and see if there was any voter fraud.
Why the vote difference between "hand counted" vote percentages vs. "machine counted" percentages? Larger towns vs. smaller towns. It wouldn't be unusual for one candidate to be favored in the larger towns while another candidate was favored in smaller towns.
It could be that Clinton concentrated her GOTV effort in larger towns while Obama made a statewide effort. Or, maybe blue collar women -- a demographic that heavily favors Clinton -- tend to live in larger towns. Meanwhile, younger, richer voters -- the demographic that favor Obama -- live in more suburban communities.
So, Java is bad because it is such a safe language to write in?
If we want our young to experience pain, maybe we should teach them Perl.
Knowing plenty of authors and private musicians, I think I would be horrified about that. You mean after five years, someone can simply photocopy my work and sell it, make money off it, and I don't get paid for my work? Think of syndication rights for movies and TV shows. That's when the real money is to be made, and these authors would miss out.
...say... $50,000 per year to keep that copyright. After 10 years, the fee would be $75,000. After 50 years, $200,000 per year.
At the turn of the 20th century, copyrights were lifetime + a few extra years in length. For a private author, once they died, no one was left to care if someone "pirated" their work. You want to write a book about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Go right ahead, anyone who would be concerned has long since past away.
Now, imagine if Walt Disney as an individual produced the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Once he was gone, no one (except for a few heirs) would be interested in the remaining value of that movie. After Uncle Walt dies (plus a few years), it could easily go into public domain.
Now, here's the problem: The copyright was not owned by the mortal Walt Disney but by the immortal Walt Disney *COMPANY*, and this company is still around, and the asset called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is still a very valuable asset for this company. Even if the Walt Disney Company does "die" one day, the creditors would be interested in Disney's valuable copyright assets.
So, the copyright laws were originally written with the idea of individuals owning a copyright, and after that individual dies, the value of that asset is no longer owned by anyone. Now, copyrights are owned by corporations that do not disappear after 70 years. For them, the value of the copyright lives forever.
There are several problems: One is the balance of the public interest with private interest: There is broad agreement that this is really out of whack. Prince suing someone who posted a picture of their baby dancing because the music in the background is Prince's music. "Eyes on the Prize" couldn't be shown for 30 years because of copyright concerns. Documentary producers being sued because a scene they shot had "The Simpsons" playing on a TV in the background. Independent producers can't shoot in New York without clearing the copyright for all posters, clothes, background noise, and even buildings. Destroying copyrights won't fix the balance issue.
The other problem is how do we handle corporate copyrights? Corporations never die, thus they really want to hold onto their copyrights forever. Maybe a sliding copyright extension fee could be used in this case: After ten years, a corporation would have to pay
This would allow the copyright for 90% of the assets to expire while companies could keep their most valued possessions safe. Disney may throw "Frankenwienie" out to the public domain (or let it revert back to the original author, Tim Burton, but still keep the very valuable Snow White franchise.
The comments on Walmart's site were rather interesting. Many people gave this a five star rating, but those people also mentioned that they knew Linux, were upgrading the hardware on this computer, and seemed to be very tech savvy.
Then there were the one star raters. These people talked about how cheap the PC was, and couldn't understand why it couldn't run their other software. They found the desktop confusing and the programs it came with overly complex.
It appears that this was a thrown together piece of cheap hardware. However, those who were tech savvy viewed this as a bargain of computer parts. A little tweaking -- better keyboard, more memory, more diskspace, etc., and you had a fairly cheap Linux machine. The rest were typical computer customers who bought it because it was only $200. They found it sloppily put together, cheap and unusable components, and a confusing OS. These people didn't have the time, energy, nor technical skills to tweak this computer to make it usable.
This computer was an interesting experiment, and we'll see many more in the years to come. There's no way companies can sell $200 computers while buying a Windows license. Something is going have to give. You're going to see a lot more Linux computers for the masses before the end of next year. Someone is going to get it right.
No new iPhone for you!
There has been a browser war going on for a while. It isn't the IE vs. Firefox war everyone talks about. It's about the rendering engine to use.
Apple's WebKit has succeeded beyond Apple's wildest dreams. It is officially being used at Google for its applications, it has been adopted by KDE, and the Gnome team is also about to adopt it. It is also the official rendering engine for Android. That puts WebKit on each Linux distribution and on what will soon become a major portable Internet device platform.
Adobe has been pushing Flash as the web rendering engine to rule the world, but it hasn't been doing so well. The big war for the browser isn't the desktop, but all the little devices that we will all carry around: PDAs, Phones, cameras, music players, game machines, etc. Flash needs a consumer client in order to work, and the fact that all of these devices will depend upon Adobe creating a client for each and every platform and operating system just doesn't cut it. Manufacturers don't want Adobe to rule whether their device is worthy of a Flash client.
In order for Adobe to be truly competitive in this fight, they must open up the Flash file specifications. That way, each device maker can design their own Flash player much the same way they build their own web browser according to HTTP/HTML specs.
The only question I have is how "open" is the spec? What happens if Adobe wants a new version of Flash with more features? Will it open up the new specs? Will Adobe allow me to create a program that will write to the Flash file format, or is that still closed to me? This isn't entirely unheard of. Microsoft has "open specs" for NTFS. I can give my operating system the ability to read NTFS, but not the ability to write it without first getting a license from Microsoft.
Nope, that's pretty much true. Steve Jobs had Microsoft pump money into Apple to help keep it afloat.
Would Apple have gone under if it didn't get the money? That's a bit hard to tell. However, the money did help Apple with development costs that it desperately needed in order to revamp Rhapsody into Mac OS X.
Maybe more important than the money was Microsoft's commitment to Apple to keep MS Office for the Mac up to date. Plus, the money did give investors the confidence that Apple was still relevant.
If Apple really had "Billions" in the bank, Sun would have easily snapped them up for 2 billion and liquidated everything in order to make a quick profit. Instead, Sun decided to walk away from the mess.
It is extremely important for Microsoft to be able to maintain absolute dominance in the PC market, and Microsoft will drop the price of Windows to pennies if it keeps them relevant in the PC market. That's the real purpose of Vista Home Basic. You'll see the price of Vista Home Basic drop to $1 in the near future if it keeps PC companies from going over to Linux.
Microsoft needs Windows on all PCs because it keeps licensing issues simple for them. Very few people steal a Windows license because it is already on their PC. Besides, what happens in the consumer market will affect the corporate market. If Linux can establish a hold on the consumer end, it'll start creeping into the corporate market. Microsoft will use every penny in its coffers to prevent that from happening.
I'm not anti or pro Microsoft. I just know that Microsoft will do everything to protect its Windows market. It's not just the operating system. It's also the Windows office market. Linux PCs don't run Microsoft Office, therefore home users might not be comfortable with Microsoft Office at work, and they'll insist on OpenOffice or whatever application most of these Linux PCs will come with.
Microsoft isn't going down without a fight.
or balance the budget. We New Jerseyites ...I mean New Jersians,,, Augh! ...residents of New Jersey are up to our neck in state debt. Our taxes our out of this world, and it costs an arm and a leg living here. We are in serious financial trouble and need to cut our state debt in half, but that's not fun. It means charging more taxes for less services and our governor won't let us do some cheap accounting trick this time around. No matter what you do, someone is going to get pissed.
Better off hyping legislation that is entirely useless, costs the state nothing, and makes the public this the government is "doing something". It's like the school uniform fad that every place went through about a decade ago. You make the parents buy school uniforms, the school districts don't spend a dime, and at the same time, they can claim they're doing something about education.
Compare the XOPC to the AlphaSmart Dana. Even at $200, the XO is cheaper, more durable, and more flexible. The AlphaSmart is advertised to kids in the U.S. and Europe as a way to take notes in school. The XO will blow it away. And how about all us business people who want a very lightweight PC that won't break when dropped or otherwise mishandled by airport security personnel and can work for more than two hours without being plugged in. I don't care if it's Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. I just need something that can read my email, write up a proposal, and take notes at a meeting. Instead of spending $1000 on a laptop that is powerful enough to use as a desktop system, and yet is light enough to actually be portable, maybe I'll spend $800 for a real desktop system and use the other $200 on an XOPC.
The point is that Negroponte has a great market for his XOPC right here in America and Europe. Sure, it's not what he originally was after. But, imagine if the XOPC was sold freely in the first world. With enough units being sold, the cost of the XOPC would drop towards its original $100 goal. Meanwhile, developers in America and Europe will write new applications for the XOPC, third party products will be made for the XOPC, and the computer will lose its stigma as being a third world toy computer for people who can't afford a real PC.
So, with in a year or two, Negroponte will now have an XOPC that costs only $100, has better support, more software, and maybe the panache of the iPod. With a cheaper, cooler, better supported computer, countries like India and Libya will be clamoring for the XOPC.
Keep UTC with the leap second. Civilian time can use that.
For UT1, eliminate the concept of hours, days, etc. Time will be told by the second only. Maybe even call it something else like a "chron". You can talk about hectochrons, millichrons, kilochrons, etc. In fact, start the counting of "chrons" at January 1, 1970.
Now, if you use chrons, there is no more link between days or years, and no more leap seconds. Computer systems like GPS or space travel which get thrown off by leap seconds, but don't really depend upon the concept of "day" or "year", can use chrons. People who depend upon the astronomical time can use seconds and live with leap seconds. To each, their own. And, converting between the two units is quite really simple.
The real silliness of the whole proposal is that these scientists actually think their decision will eliminate the leap second. Astronomers will simply ignore the whole thing and go back to GMT. So will all the governments which means all the atomic clocks will still use leap seconds. UTC will simply disappear, and we're back to square one.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
The Electoral College was created because we simply didn't know how to elect a president. The original Virginia articles (which our Constitution was based upon) had the Senate (which was elected by the House) elect the President. Almost all of the delegates protested this because it was completely against the idea of separation of powers. Pennsylvania proposed election by popular vote, but Virginia objected because they had more people than Pennsylvania, but had fewer voters (since they had such strict voting requirements).
The whole thing was sent off to committee to decide universal voting qualifications for president. This completely failed because Pennsylvania had almost universal suffrage while Virginia wanted ownership of a certain amount of land. New York wanted a certain payment of taxes, Massachusetts wanted ownership of a certain value of real estate, and you get the idea. No one could agree on a Constitutional provision of who could vote for President. Even worse, a few states insisted that the state legislatures should have a say in who is running the country.
In the end, a compromise was reached: Each state got a certain amount of votes, and it was up to the individual states to decide who and how these votes would be cast. Thus, the Electoral College.
The Electoral College was a complete failure from almost the very beginning. George Washington was an easy choice, Adams was his vice president, so he was chosen in the third election. The fourth presidential election was the very first truly contested presidential election and the Electoral College almost completely tore the country apart. Thomas Jefferson won the Electoral College over Adams, but he tied with his veep due to the way the Electors were chosen. Back then, every elector got two votes and the second place finisher was the Veep. Jefferson tied the electoral vote with his veep candidate Aaron Burr. However, Adams supporters convinced Burr to actually claim the Presidency. It took over a dozen votes in Congress before Jefferson actually won. Many states threatened revolt if Jefferson or Burr was elected. It was Hamilton who finally cleared the way for Jefferson's election. Hamilton got the Federalists to support Jefferson in order to keep the country together.
The result ended up being the Hamilton Burr dual and extremely strained relations between Jefferson and Burr (who Jefferson later had tried for Treason). The twelfth amendment changed the way the Electoral College worked in order to prevent this from happening again.
The Electoral College encouraged states to keep suffrage low since the states aren't punished due to limited suffrage. The South knew that if Blacks were kept from the polls, they still had just as much say in Congress and the Presidential elections.
The Electoral College encourages limited Presidential campaigns since each state votes in a large block. The Presidential campaign skips over California and Texas, the two largest states since the outcome is known in those states, and the campaign hits only a half dozen or so smaller states. For example, Al Gore won more votes in Texas than in New Jersey in 2000, but it was New Jersey's 17 electoral votes that mattered and not the millions of votes Gore received in Texas.
And for the same reason, the Electoral College keeps voting participation low. Why bother voting for the Democratic candidate in Texas or the Republican candidate in California since it really doesn't matter. Our voting participation rate for President averages just over 50%. However, battleground states usually have a voter turnout above 80% while most other states have voter turnout around 40% to 50%. Why bother to go to the polls in Texas? You know the Republican candidate is going to win. If you're a Democrat, it's just a waste of time. If you're a Republican, it still isn't worth it. Texas's 34 electoral votes will still go to the Republican candidate whether or not you vote. With the Electoral College, your vote doesn't matter i
So, that whole thing in Ireland was just a little misunderstanding?
It doesn't matter if you're Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist. What matters is how you treat your fellow human being, and how do you look at yourself. If you think you're perfect, all those "imperfect" beings around you are in trouble. If you think you're 100% right, all those "incorrect" beings around you are in trouble.
Christian fundamentalism is a 19th century phenomenon, so it wasn't around back in the 1600's. Yes, there were religious Christians, but they weren't following Christian fundamentalist philosophy.
Like all other groups religious Christians have been both on the side of good and evil. It was the Quakers back in the 18th century who first spoke against slavery for religious reasons. At that time, all 12 colonies had slavery (Delaware was part of Pennsylvania, and didn't split off from Pennsylvania until 1770s). The Unitarians (Adams were Unitarians) later forced the Northern colonies and states to ban slavery. The Baptists (the first true fundamentalist group) spoke against slavery causing the Southern Baptists to break off. In the 20th century, Catholics and Jews spoke against the treatment of Blacks in the South.
Then again, slavery in the South became a prime Christian doctrine. Many Southern preachers were leaders in lynchings and the Klan. Supremest Christian doctrine in the mid-20th century supported the Nazis in Germany and were involved in the America First movement. In the 19th century, the protestant Know Nothings went on anti-Catholic rampages.
Then there were the anti-Mormon wars in Missouri lead by various religious leaders -- many from Christian fundamentalist churches -- in the mid-1830s. Of course, there was also the Mormon lead 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre.
It isn't Christian vs. Muslim. It is intolerance vs. everybody else. The fact that you so proudly wave the Christian banner and so readily denounce those who you don't agree with your religious views shows which side of the divide you're on.
Write down this guy's name! Write down this guy's name!
First they came after people who ate falafel, but I said nothing because I didn't eat falafel.
Then, they came after people who listened to public radio, but I said nothing because I didn't listen to public radio.
Then, they came after people who wore sandals, but I said nothing because I didn't wear sandals.
Then, they came after me, and there was nobody to speak up for me.
I got Leopard just a week ago, and Time Machine has already saved my butt. Before Leopard, I had created a cronjob to to a compressed tar of my entire system, and put it on a secondary hard drive. I backed up three times per week with a rotating backup. Restoring was pretty much untaring that one file I needed. I could do it, but my wife certainly can't.
.snapshot directories using the standard Unix tools too, so if I don't remember the version of a file I needed, I could do a find and a grep to find the correct file. However, this still wasn't Time Machine.
.snapshot directory, the "find" command would take forever because I was combing through all of those directories one file at a time. You type in a missing file name in Time Machine, and in seconds, that file is found. Plus, Time Machine doesn't have to work on a "file" level. As someone pointed out, I can search through my address book for a particular set of records, and only restore those records.
I've seen software on a NetApps that is "similar" to Time Machine. In your $HOME directory, there is a ".snapshot" directory that contains 24 directories (one for each of the past 24 hours) and a month's worth of days. If I needed a file I deleted 2 weeks ago, I could go to the correct "day" directory, and see what my $HOME directory looked like at that time. I could search the
If I was looking for a missing file on my
Plus, I am sure that the technicians who setup the NetApps took a lot of time and effort to configure the ".snapshot" directory. Time Machine took me about 30 seconds to setup. (Step #1: Select backup drive. Step #2: Click the "On" switch. Step #3... There is no Step #3).
Time Machine is and isn't a marvelous technical breakthrough. There's nothing about Time Machine that is earth shattering technologically. However, the way it is put together is amazing.
I am sure that we will see many copycats in the next few weeks. I am sure that Microsoft will come up with something very similar in a few months. After all, the backend of Time Machine is quite simple. It's the front end that's absolutely amazing.