That requirement has been relaxed lately; they're pretty loose about it now, and auDA just require that it be 'related to your business operations'. Not quite the free-for-all that.com/.net/.org is...
They were mostly Saudi Arabian, and that is why you took over Iraq -- to ensure continuity of oil supply if the House of Saud goes tits up in the near-to-medium future, and OPEC freaks out. Cynical but effective.
Hopefully it'll stay that way after they start sending invoices out.
Maybe that should be *if* they start sending the invoices out. It wouldn't surprise me if they're only selling the licenses to people who first promise not to sue them, as what they are doing at the moment is probably only just on the legal side of the laws regarding extortion. This will only change when they provide incontravertible proof of their claims.
That is possible... but remember that Microsoft *may* have made the decision on commercial rather than technical grounds, and if they had wanted to structure DX9 to favour NVidia's strengths instead of ATI's, they would have. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but calling the resulting behaviour "competitive" and pretending that it is somehow equivalent to a free market is somewhat misguided, I think. (Assuming of course that anything untoward did happen -- the only evidence for this is past misbehaviour by MS, I don't know anything about this particular situation:)
Competition here being determined by choosing features to mesh best with whatever Microsoft specifies?
Yeah, right.
(Puts on tinfoil hat) My theory is that MS was annoyed with NVidia after the negotiations over XBox v2 broke down... so they communicated a little better with ATI than NVidia over DX9.
In my experience, standards-compliant HTML is *less* space-efficient than ad-hoc HTML. Compare font size="+1" vs. font size=+1 or the extra trailing slash on atomic tags, or/p tags (which you can pretty much omit entirely without confusing any browsers).
... or you can just use class="ABC" everywhere, and a stylesheet. Stylesheets properly used will be much more efficient than setting the same tags over and over again across an entire site.
I predict that at some point in the future it will become a crime, or at least very strongly looked-down upon, to send compressible (redundant) data over public networks in uncompressed form.
Hand me some of what you're smoking, dude.
I predict that at some point in the future the economy of scarcity in bandwidth will become less of a factor than it is today. At least I have historical trends on my side.
A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
I don't think you got the memo. Due to the fact that terrorists have been known to launder money and deal drugs, all money launderers and drug dealers have now been reclassified as terrorists.
The various iterations of the Championship Manager games (football / soccer) regularly top the charts in the UK. They've just recently graduated to a 2D, top-down highlights match view, where you don't actually control the action -- and most of the rest of the game is a set of pretty-looking spreadsheets.:)
This is being driven by a South Australian parliamentarian (can't remember his name).
I think it might be Ian Gilfillan; he might also be an ex-leader of the SA Democrats, but that's a pretty moveable feast given that they only ever have a few MPs per parliament.
I'm no fan of Telstra, but lets step back a bit here. Telstra don't break the law at every opportunity - they're not that stupid/evil. They do bend the rules whenever it suits them - legal law breaking!
They may obey the letter of the law, but they rape the spirit of it. Every chance they get, they overlook or fail to provide services to the other telcos, or claim that it's technically impossible -- after the ACCC spends a couple of years chasing them over one issue, they back off on that one and in the meantime four or five similar issues have arisen. Local loop access is as good an example as any, or mobile phone number portability.
False customer testimonials, using pictures of drowning Americans and pretending they are Australian flood pictures, lying to customers regarding ADSL availability (until they sign up for Big Pond ADSL, of course)... I could keep on going, but it's really not necessary to anyone in this country who keeps themself informed about their behaviour.
Interesting to see that the stock price is still pretty low, despite the huge profits and near-monopolistic position they have; partially due to their 'half-pregnant' status of course, but still shows that the gambling public has the correct amount of faith in Ziggy, the board, and Tricky Dicky Alston, i.e. none at all.
They're a pack of lying monopolistic bastards who break the law at every opportunity, employ deceptive advertising practices and screw every other telecom company in the country sideways. They're still half government owned, so we get the worst of both worlds in that respect.
Regarding their use of Linux, "even the Devil may cite Scripture for his purpose".
Well, any company that bases its business model on Microsoft's goodwill (the frog in slowly boiling water) probably deserves to die. Corporate Darwinism.
Slashdot Mirror
1a) Allowed for indefinite detention without charges being laid.
I know that's sort of implied, just wanted to make it more explicit. (Of course, the Americans seem to have introduced that ploicy too...)
Didn't Microsoft try to buy Intuit, only to be blocked for antitrust reasons?
Some advice for you -- don't move to Australia.
That requirement has been relaxed lately; they're pretty loose about it now, and auDA just require that it be 'related to your business operations'. Not quite the free-for-all that .com/.net/.org is...
Oops, Redundant -1.
3 - Acorn Archimedes, shipped in 1987, used the ARM (Acorn RISC Machine) chip. This beats the PowerPC 601 by about 5 years.
(I'm basing my dates on Wikipedia entries here).
Wasn't Commodore legally situated in the Bahamas? What's the legal drinking age there?
I was joking
:)
I know, but I was amused to see that the 'logic' worked either way... seems like something out of Catch-22
They were mostly Saudi Arabian, and that is why you took over Iraq -- to ensure continuity of oil supply if the House of Saud goes tits up in the near-to-medium future, and OPEC freaks out. Cynical but effective.
I took a one-way fight out of the country.
:)
Freudian slip ('fight')? Or, as the patriots would put it, "why do you hate America so much?"
The question is: is Verisign willing to escalate the matter or will they back off?
If they were willing to stuff things up like they already have, they won't mind treading on a few more toes.
Hopefully it'll stay that way after they start sending invoices out.
Maybe that should be *if* they start sending the invoices out. It wouldn't surprise me if they're only selling the licenses to people who first promise not to sue them, as what they are doing at the moment is probably only just on the legal side of the laws regarding extortion. This will only change when they provide incontravertible proof of their claims.
Do you think he'd be saying that if he had the patents? :/
That is possible... but remember that Microsoft *may* have made the decision on commercial rather than technical grounds, and if they had wanted to structure DX9 to favour NVidia's strengths instead of ATI's, they would have. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but calling the resulting behaviour "competitive" and pretending that it is somehow equivalent to a free market is somewhat misguided, I think. (Assuming of course that anything untoward did happen -- the only evidence for this is past misbehaviour by MS, I don't know anything about this particular situation :)
Competition here being determined by choosing features to mesh best with whatever Microsoft specifies?
Yeah, right.
(Puts on tinfoil hat) My theory is that MS was annoyed with NVidia after the negotiations over XBox v2 broke down... so they communicated a little better with ATI than NVidia over DX9.
In my experience, standards-compliant HTML is *less* space-efficient than ad-hoc HTML. Compare /p tags (which you can pretty much omit entirely without confusing any browsers).
... or you can just use class="ABC" everywhere, and a stylesheet. Stylesheets properly used will be much more efficient than setting the same tags over and over again across an entire site.
font size="+1"
vs.
font size=+1
or the extra trailing slash on atomic tags, or
I predict that at some point in the future it will become a crime, or at least very strongly looked-down upon, to send compressible (redundant) data over public networks in uncompressed form.
Hand me some of what you're smoking, dude.
I predict that at some point in the future the economy of scarcity in bandwidth will become less of a factor than it is today. At least I have historical trends on my side.
A couple of the old favorites, money launders and drug dealers, don't get so much press these days.
I don't think you got the memo. Due to the fact that terrorists have been known to launder money and deal drugs, all money launderers and drug dealers have now been reclassified as terrorists.
Ashcroft Logic (tm). It's easy when you know how!
Wasn't that _Mindkiller_? I've just finished it... an interesting read.
I love the game too... but I do recognise my addiction for what it is. Makes me feel like a bit of an anorak though :)
The various iterations of the Championship Manager games (football / soccer) regularly top the charts in the UK. They've just recently graduated to a 2D, top-down highlights match view, where you don't actually control the action -- and most of the rest of the game is a set of pretty-looking spreadsheets. :)
This is being driven by a South Australian parliamentarian (can't remember his name).
I think it might be Ian Gilfillan; he might also be an ex-leader of the SA Democrats, but that's a pretty moveable feast given that they only ever have a few MPs per parliament.
I'm no fan of Telstra, but lets step back a bit here. Telstra don't break the law at every opportunity - they're not that stupid/evil. They do bend the rules whenever it suits them - legal law breaking!
They may obey the letter of the law, but they rape the spirit of it. Every chance they get, they overlook or fail to provide services to the other telcos, or claim that it's technically impossible -- after the ACCC spends a couple of years chasing them over one issue, they back off on that one and in the meantime four or five similar issues have arisen. Local loop access is as good an example as any, or mobile phone number portability.
False customer testimonials, using pictures of drowning Americans and pretending they are Australian flood pictures, lying to customers regarding ADSL availability (until they sign up for Big Pond ADSL, of course)... I could keep on going, but it's really not necessary to anyone in this country who keeps themself informed about their behaviour.
Interesting to see that the stock price is still pretty low, despite the huge profits and near-monopolistic position they have; partially due to their 'half-pregnant' status of course, but still shows that the gambling public has the correct amount of faith in Ziggy, the board, and Tricky Dicky Alston, i.e. none at all.
They're a pack of lying monopolistic bastards who break the law at every opportunity, employ deceptive advertising practices and screw every other telecom company in the country sideways. They're still half government owned, so we get the worst of both worlds in that respect.
Regarding their use of Linux, "even the Devil may cite Scripture for his purpose".
On the other hand, doing science is the most rewarding experience I've ever had*.
:)
* Other than hot, steamy sex.
So, would you recommend work as a porn star instead?
Well, any company that bases its business model on Microsoft's goodwill (the frog in slowly boiling water) probably deserves to die. Corporate Darwinism.