It is not a concept which is going to revolutionise anything but neither the creator or the design committee claims that. It is much more of a niche item and something a fair few people would consider buying one of for the house as a design/fashion item (something most of us slashdotters probably doesn't understand). It is overall an innovative and interesting bit of industrial design which could well prove popular.
Is it worthy of a patent? Well, I'm always sceptical about patents in general, but the idea itself seem no worse than a lot of other patented designs.
"How is this any different than a clock powered by weights? It's nice, but hardly a new idea."
By your standards the cigarette lighter was not innovative in it's time because people could already create fire by using pieces of flint manually over a pile of grass. The cigarette lighter, however, was much more suitable an object to carry around in your pocket for lighting your cancer sticks.
In the same way, the method this lamp captures energy may be very different from a clock pendulum in ways which is far more suitable for creating a lamp.
When comparing Cuba's economy, please don't compare it with only the "shining beacons of capitalism". Compare it to it's neighbours and other countries with similar demographics and natural resources.
Why? There may be loads of reasons why Cuba does worse economically than USA, Europe and Japan that has nothing to do with Fidel Castro or communism.
I've seen crumbled buildings, antiquated cars, tourist warnings and flogging of prostitutes in many, many countries that could not be described as communist or socialist, so why is it suddenly the fault of Castro when Cuba looks like this?
It may very well be that Cuba does worse than most comparable nations, and they did receive loads of support from the Soviet Union for a while, but I don't find it particularly convincing an argument to compare their living standards to those in the west.
"By definition, people who are obscenely rich have lots and lots of money, which is a far more effective way to manipulate people than RFID tags."
This only helps controlling people that play by the rules.
There has always been a link between economic differences and crime. When the differences are very large, the super-rich are fantastically wealthy at the expense of more crime in society. For some, the solution is to make the economic differences smaller, while for others the solution is to spend more money on law enforcement, so that the economic differences can be very large without generating too much crime.
The latter has always been difficult because it is hard to make law enforcement efficient and putting more money into it doesn't necessarily make it much better. Thus, this option has been limited. Any technological breakthrough in law enforcement would thus be a massive boon to people that want to keep large economic differences. Don't think they wont do it if they have a chance and they think it would help control the masses.
The Firefox team decided to make Firefox appear as a native GNOME application on Linux. They could have chosen it to appear as a KDE application or an Enlightenment application, but they chose GNOME. Get over it. It is better to please somebody, than to please nobody.
"My understanding of "RFID" tags is that since they are powered by the energy broadcast by the reader, the tags themselves can't do very much in terms of computation."
There are different kinds of RFID tags. The passive ones require no battery power, but very little but respond with a simple serial number (although there have been some development around this). The active ones has battery included and can do all sorts of things but are more expensive and has a shorter lifespan.
I suggest looking this up on Wikipedia if you need more information.
The Linux theme fully honours the theme selection set by GTK+ now. The screenshots shown are with the Pango theme. If you don't like it, change theme in GTK+/GNOME.
"Since Ubuntu already runs on Cell, a cheap Windows killer could take the Cell architecture to the top of the CPU stakes in record time from release. It would be a much easier/cheaper/faster target for porting PS3 games than Intel PCs. Apple, which supposedly dropped PPC for Intel because of heat:performance limitations, would have to look seriously at a return to PPC, especially since 45nm Cell with only a few SPUs could be a perfect fit for an iPhone successor. If not from Apple, then from someone smart enough to use Cell in the biggest market of all."
It has been discussed many, many times now: the Cell processor is an in-order architecture which works well for certain specialised tasks, but is not very suitable for general purpose desktop use.
Essentially in a modern desktop processor, the instructions may not execute in the same order as they arrive. If the first instruction is waiting for data, while the second and third instruction is ready to go, the second and third may execute before the first instruction. This may sound simple at first, but then what happens if the second and third instruction depend on data from instruction 1?
Overall out of order execution adds a whole level of complexity to a processor that IBM did away with in the Cell, allowing them to use the space on the die to put in lots of neat things that make certain tasks go much, much faster. This is great, but it just isn't much good for general desktop use.
The cell may well have a strong niche in some non-gaming applications such as scientific computation and media encoding/decoding, however.
.. but when I see things like "professor and a postgrad have developed", I assume that the postgrad did all the work and the professor took most of the credit.
Since we are wired into starting to use tools as "part of our body" once we get used to them, it becomes even clearer what the difference between a good and a bad tool is (be it software or physical tool), even if both of them technically perform the same job to the same quality.
A good tool does things exactly the same way every time and does new things in a way which is exactly how you expect it to be. This way you learn how to operate it without thinking.
A bad tool does things slightly different every time and does new things in an unexpected way. This way you never manage to operate it without thinking, because you have to consciously think about how to operate it every time you use it.
This is why a poor GUI is much worse for productivity than a good text-mode tool (think DOS Word Perfect vs. first GUI Word processors) even if it may be easier to use the first time.
And it is also what so many applications still to wrong. I'd much rather have a small, feature anemic, but consistent tool than a large, inconsistent tool full of features (yes Vista, I am looking at you).
"The new version of the GDM may be several release versions away and ultimately be less functional than the current version. I don't necessarily call that an improvement."
That depends on whether the core functionality will be improved and whether the new code base allows for deeper integration between the login manager and the desktop sessions (ie. more sensible approach to fast user switching and desktop locking). AFAIK the rewrite is to allow for things that the current architecture simply can't do without horrible hacks.
"They make mobile phones, and they are pretty fucking good at it. If they get a good QT, they can release multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM). The more it is open, the better the quality will be."
One does not buy a toolkit company to build one application. Nokia could easily already "create multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM)". Qt is already plenty good enough to do this and there are even perfectly reasonable alternatives.
Nokia are buying Trolltech for Qtopia, the mobile phone platform, which happens to be their core business. Therefore it is completely reasonable to question their commitment to desktop Qt, which at the moment has little to do with their core business.
"Why is it on Slashdot that any thing that restricts any sort of digital rights is a massively bad thing and any research that breaks those elements (even if they are used for nefarious purposes) are good, physics and astronomy research is also always "good", meanwhile massive advances in bio-tech are always "think of the children" topics."
That is a bit simplistic. The story summary is pretty neutral, and the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is a humorous tag used for many stories. Actually, reading the list of stories is bound to give you some giggles.
"The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done."
What a bitter and twisted attitude to have. Some people like going into work because they enjoy the office socialising and feel isolated if they are to stay at home. To brand all people as "needy" and "politics-playing" is just bullshit.
I spent about 2 years of my PhD, mostly alone in my office and this made me feel isolated and mildly depressed. I now enjoy having co-workers around me, I enjoy the office banter and I enjoy having a chat with people over lunch.
""A": aptget install [package]. 10 minutes? 45 for full intragration? "
So the initial download of the P2P client is all the fiddling that is necessary? Aren't you forgetting a few steps, like searching for the content you want in the format you want,making sure it is genuine and decent quality, making sure the download speed is ok and unpack the resulting RAR-files.
"I think this format war belongs to the 35+ demographic. I was talking with a couple tech savy neighbourhood kids to get a feel for where they were at. Their response? "You buy that shit? Why don't you just download it, that's what we do." They're bypassing this entire nightmare."
More like: this belongs to the "has a job and a life" demographic. When you spend your entire day working for a living and actually earn money, it becomes less attractive to spend your time fiddling with bittorrent.
P2P downloading is only free if: a) Your time means nothing b) You pay nothing for bandwidth c) The chance of getting caught is 0% or the consequences of getting caught is 0%.
a) and b) may well be the case for "tech savy neighbourhood kids" living with their parents and c) is small enough not to matter for most people.
Since HD content requires insane amounts of bandwidth to download in a timely fashion even from high speed/high availability servers, Physical discs will be relevant until bandwidth becomes sufficiently cheap and HD-video downloads becomes sufficiently easy. To get both of these would probably take 5 years or more given the current (appalling) rate of bandwidth improvement.
"Yes and VHS was "good enough" for most people as well. Remember that a 25" TV was HUGE back then..."
Initial quality maybe, but VHS was a pain in the arse. I remember very vividly how annoying it was to have to rewind a movie you just rented because the last renter didn't bother or forgot.
I also remember clearly how bad the picture got as the tape got older, often making it impossible to watch. DVD removed a lot of these issues and made the film viewing a much more pleasurable experience. Thus the DVD brought not only better quality, but major practical improvements.
Bluray/HD-DVD is a simple quality improvement over something which is already pretty good. This doesn't mean I am uninterested in high definition. I would not say no to even higher quality picture, but I'm waiting until it is cheaper, has more content and one format has definitely won. I think this stance is pretty common.
I am a bit curious, and I'll probably end up buying a Bluray/HD-DVD player when they get cheaper and there is more content, but I am certainly not in a hurry.
No. They could easily let foreigners see only the BBC owned material. The reason they do not is that while the UK TV-viewer has paid for the content through TV-licensing, the foreign TV viewers have not. Instead the foreign TV-viewers may watch the programs on local channels that purchase content from the BBC.
"Governments shouldn't muscle in as parents. If you want to reduce the abuse of minors via the Internet educate parents to help them understand the risks, and educate teens to help them understand the risks and how to avoid them."
1. Sometimes no amount of education is going to stop people from being terrible abusive or uncaring parents. At what stage should the government intervene? At the stage where the parent(s) spend most of their days out of their skull on drugs?
2. Thailand suffers from enormous problems with child slavery in the sex industry. At what stage and to what extent should the government intervene? Or should they just let these children fend for themselves?
Laws that may be sufficient in the USA or Europe may not be sufficient in Thailand. The government in Thailand may well be an oppressive regime, but that doesn't mean everything they do is evil.
"falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for "personal gain," violating the Open Meetings Act and spying on employees,"
These are all very serious accusations of criminal behaviour from members of the school board. Unless Tetley has any proof of these accusations I can see why they could be considered libelous.
Whether or not it is good publicity to sue is another matter.
"Bottom line -- it doesn't matter why he did it, it only matters what he did."
Yes it does. The legal system is full of references to "intent".
"We don't go easier on defendants who murder someone because they were only trying to keep everyone from finding out about their secret extramarital love affair."
Very poor example. Murdering someone to keep a secret is not something you can consider mitigating circumstances at all. If you murder someone because they had just murdered your wife and children, the legal system WILL go easier on you. They will not let you off, but the legal system will find mitigating circumstances to lower your sentence.
"Complaining about the maximum sentence shows lack of experience with matters of law. There are many, many laws in various countries that carry a substantial maximum penalty for a crime because the crime _can_ be severe but it can also be ridiculously petty."
On the contrary. As some other people have pointed out, having a ludicrously high maximum sentence makes it much more likely that the accused will be scared into plea-bargaining. You may not be likely to get 20 years or even 10 years, but are many people going to take that risk compared to just accepting 1 year in prison even though you are innocent? Now imagine the same situation, but the maximum charge is 2 years. You will probably fight it out in court.
Also the plea-bargain offered by the prosecution may be higher if the maximum sentence is higher, because they have something to lose as well.
The maximum jail sentence should always fit the charge for this reason.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not a concept which is going to revolutionise anything but neither the creator or the design committee claims that. It is much more of a niche item and something a fair few people would consider buying one of for the house as a design/fashion item (something most of us slashdotters probably doesn't understand). It is overall an innovative and interesting bit of industrial design which could well prove popular.
Is it worthy of a patent? Well, I'm always sceptical about patents in general, but the idea itself seem no worse than a lot of other patented designs.
"How is this any different than a clock powered by weights? It's nice, but hardly a new idea."
By your standards the cigarette lighter was not innovative in it's time because people could already create fire by using pieces of flint manually over a pile of grass. The cigarette lighter, however, was much more suitable an object to carry around in your pocket for lighting your cancer sticks.
In the same way, the method this lamp captures energy may be very different from a clock pendulum in ways which is far more suitable for creating a lamp.
When comparing Cuba's economy, please don't compare it with only the "shining beacons of capitalism". Compare it to it's neighbours and other countries with similar demographics and natural resources.
Why? There may be loads of reasons why Cuba does worse economically than USA, Europe and Japan that has nothing to do with Fidel Castro or communism.
I've seen crumbled buildings, antiquated cars, tourist warnings and flogging of prostitutes in many, many countries that could not be described as communist or socialist, so why is it suddenly the fault of Castro when Cuba looks like this?
It may very well be that Cuba does worse than most comparable nations, and they did receive loads of support from the Soviet Union for a while, but I don't find it particularly convincing an argument to compare their living standards to those in the west.
"By definition, people who are obscenely rich have lots and lots of money, which is a far more effective way to manipulate people than RFID tags."
This only helps controlling people that play by the rules.
There has always been a link between economic differences and crime. When the differences are very large, the super-rich are fantastically wealthy at the expense of more crime in society. For some, the solution is to make the economic differences smaller, while for others the solution is to spend more money on law enforcement, so that the economic differences can be very large without generating too much crime.
The latter has always been difficult because it is hard to make law enforcement efficient and putting more money into it doesn't necessarily make it much better. Thus, this option has been limited. Any technological breakthrough in law enforcement would thus be a massive boon to people that want to keep large economic differences. Don't think they wont do it if they have a chance and they think it would help control the masses.
You can still set the GTK theme:
http://gtk-qt.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
The Firefox team decided to make Firefox appear as a native GNOME application on Linux. They could have chosen it to appear as a KDE application or an Enlightenment application, but they chose GNOME. Get over it. It is better to please somebody, than to please nobody.
"My understanding of "RFID" tags is that since they are powered by the energy broadcast by the reader, the tags themselves can't do very much in terms of computation."
There are different kinds of RFID tags. The passive ones require no battery power, but very little but respond with a simple serial number (although there have been some development around this). The active ones has battery included and can do all sorts of things but are more expensive and has a shorter lifespan.
I suggest looking this up on Wikipedia if you need more information.
"Really, who does that this days?"
Let me guess. You have never used a digital SLR camera?
SLR cameras in general does not have a preview of the picture on the LCD screen before you take the picture. See Wikipedia.
The Linux theme fully honours the theme selection set by GTK+ now. The screenshots shown are with the Pango theme. If you don't like it, change theme in GTK+/GNOME.
"Since Ubuntu already runs on Cell, a cheap Windows killer could take the Cell architecture to the top of the CPU stakes in record time from release. It would be a much easier/cheaper/faster target for porting PS3 games than Intel PCs. Apple, which supposedly dropped PPC for Intel because of heat:performance limitations, would have to look seriously at a return to PPC, especially since 45nm Cell with only a few SPUs could be a perfect fit for an iPhone successor. If not from Apple, then from someone smart enough to use Cell in the biggest market of all."
It has been discussed many, many times now: the Cell processor is an in-order architecture which works well for certain specialised tasks, but is not very suitable for general purpose desktop use.
Essentially in a modern desktop processor, the instructions may not execute in the same order as they arrive. If the first instruction is waiting for data, while the second and third instruction is ready to go, the second and third may execute before the first instruction. This may sound simple at first, but then what happens if the second and third instruction depend on data from instruction 1?
Overall out of order execution adds a whole level of complexity to a processor that IBM did away with in the Cell, allowing them to use the space on the die to put in lots of neat things that make certain tasks go much, much faster. This is great, but it just isn't much good for general desktop use.
The cell may well have a strong niche in some non-gaming applications such as scientific computation and media encoding/decoding, however.
.. but when I see things like "professor and a postgrad have developed", I assume that the postgrad did all the work and the professor took most of the credit.
... which is using a well known malware/phishing technique.
It is a client component (read adware/malware) that intercepts 404 messages, calls home to find out where to redirect the user, then redirects.
i.e. if you type in "slahdsot.org" it will search a database of misspellings and redirect you to "slashdot.org".
or.. in the case of malware.. if you type in "myinternetbank.com" it could redirect you to "myphishingsite.com".
I'd be surprised if there isn't prior art among the less ethical Internet inventions out there.
Since we are wired into starting to use tools as "part of our body" once we get used to them, it becomes even clearer what the difference between a good and a bad tool is (be it software or physical tool), even if both of them technically perform the same job to the same quality.
A good tool does things exactly the same way every time and does new things in a way which is exactly how you expect it to be. This way you learn how to operate it without thinking.
A bad tool does things slightly different every time and does new things in an unexpected way. This way you never manage to operate it without thinking, because you have to consciously think about how to operate it every time you use it.
This is why a poor GUI is much worse for productivity than a good text-mode tool (think DOS Word Perfect vs. first GUI Word processors) even if it may be easier to use the first time.
And it is also what so many applications still to wrong. I'd much rather have a small, feature anemic, but consistent tool than a large, inconsistent tool full of features (yes Vista, I am looking at you).
"The new version of the GDM may be several release versions away and ultimately be less functional than the current version. I don't necessarily call that an improvement."
That depends on whether the core functionality will be improved and whether the new code base allows for deeper integration between the login manager and the desktop sessions (ie. more sensible approach to fast user switching and desktop locking). AFAIK the rewrite is to allow for things that the current architecture simply can't do without horrible hacks.
"They make mobile phones, and they are pretty fucking good at it. If they get a good QT, they can release multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM). The more it is open, the better the quality will be."
One does not buy a toolkit company to build one application. Nokia could easily already "create multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM)". Qt is already plenty good enough to do this and there are even perfectly reasonable alternatives.
Nokia are buying Trolltech for Qtopia, the mobile phone platform, which happens to be their core business. Therefore it is completely reasonable to question their commitment to desktop Qt, which at the moment has little to do with their core business.
.. and the investments Nokia has made into GTK+?
And how will Nokia's competitors that currently use Qt for their mobile products take this?
"Why is it on Slashdot that any thing that restricts any sort of digital rights is a massively bad thing and any research that breaks those elements (even if they are used for nefarious purposes) are good, physics and astronomy research is also always "good", meanwhile massive advances in bio-tech are always "think of the children" topics."
That is a bit simplistic. The story summary is pretty neutral, and the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is a humorous tag used for many stories. Actually, reading the list of stories is bound to give you some giggles.
"The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done."
What a bitter and twisted attitude to have. Some people like going into work because they enjoy the office socialising and feel isolated if they are to stay at home. To brand all people as "needy" and "politics-playing" is just bullshit.
I spent about 2 years of my PhD, mostly alone in my office and this made me feel isolated and mildly depressed. I now enjoy having co-workers around me, I enjoy the office banter and I enjoy having a chat with people over lunch.
""A": aptget install [package]. 10 minutes? 45 for full intragration? "
So the initial download of the P2P client is all the fiddling that is necessary? Aren't you forgetting a few steps, like searching for the content you want in the format you want,making sure it is genuine and decent quality, making sure the download speed is ok and unpack the resulting RAR-files.
"I think this format war belongs to the 35+ demographic. I was talking with a couple tech savy neighbourhood kids to get a feel for where they were at. Their response? "You buy that shit? Why don't you just download it, that's what we do." They're bypassing this entire nightmare."
More like: this belongs to the "has a job and a life" demographic. When you spend your entire day working for a living and actually earn money, it becomes less attractive to spend your time fiddling with bittorrent.
P2P downloading is only free if:
a) Your time means nothing
b) You pay nothing for bandwidth
c) The chance of getting caught is 0% or the consequences of getting caught is 0%.
a) and b) may well be the case for "tech savy neighbourhood kids" living with their parents and c) is small enough not to matter for most people.
Since HD content requires insane amounts of bandwidth to download in a timely fashion even from high speed/high availability servers, Physical discs will be relevant until bandwidth becomes sufficiently cheap and HD-video downloads becomes sufficiently easy. To get both of these would probably take 5 years or more given the current (appalling) rate of bandwidth improvement.
"Yes and VHS was "good enough" for most people as well. Remember that a 25" TV was HUGE back then..."
Initial quality maybe, but VHS was a pain in the arse. I remember very vividly how annoying it was to have to rewind a movie you just rented because the last renter didn't bother or forgot.
I also remember clearly how bad the picture got as the tape got older, often making it impossible to watch. DVD removed a lot of these issues and made the film viewing a much more pleasurable experience. Thus the DVD brought not only better quality, but major practical improvements.
Bluray/HD-DVD is a simple quality improvement over something which is already pretty good. This doesn't mean I am uninterested in high definition. I would not say no to even higher quality picture, but I'm waiting until it is cheaper, has more content and one format has definitely won. I think this stance is pretty common.
I am a bit curious, and I'll probably end up buying a Bluray/HD-DVD player when they get cheaper and there is more content, but I am certainly not in a hurry.
No. They could easily let foreigners see only the BBC owned material. The reason they do not is that while the UK TV-viewer has paid for the content through TV-licensing, the foreign TV viewers have not. Instead the foreign TV-viewers may watch the programs on local channels that purchase content from the BBC.
"Governments shouldn't muscle in as parents. If you want to reduce the abuse of minors via the Internet educate parents to help them understand the risks, and educate teens to help them understand the risks and how to avoid them."
1. Sometimes no amount of education is going to stop people from being terrible abusive or uncaring parents. At what stage should the government intervene? At the stage where the parent(s) spend most of their days out of their skull on drugs?
2. Thailand suffers from enormous problems with child slavery in the sex industry. At what stage and to what extent should the government intervene? Or should they just let these children fend for themselves?
Laws that may be sufficient in the USA or Europe may not be sufficient in Thailand. The government in Thailand may well be an oppressive regime, but that doesn't mean everything they do is evil.
"falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for "personal gain," violating the Open Meetings Act and spying on employees,"
These are all very serious accusations of criminal behaviour from members of the school board. Unless Tetley has any proof of these accusations I can see why they could be considered libelous.
Whether or not it is good publicity to sue is another matter.
"Bottom line -- it doesn't matter why he did it, it only matters what he did."
Yes it does. The legal system is full of references to "intent".
"We don't go easier on defendants who murder someone because they were only trying to keep everyone from finding out about their secret extramarital love affair."
Very poor example. Murdering someone to keep a secret is not something you can consider mitigating circumstances at all. If you murder someone because they had just murdered your wife and children, the legal system WILL go easier on you. They will not let you off, but the legal system will find mitigating circumstances to lower your sentence.
"Complaining about the maximum sentence shows lack of experience with matters of law. There are many, many laws in various countries that carry a substantial maximum penalty for a crime because the crime _can_ be severe but it can also be ridiculously petty."
On the contrary. As some other people have pointed out, having a ludicrously high maximum sentence makes it much more likely that the accused will be scared into plea-bargaining. You may not be likely to get 20 years or even 10 years, but are many people going to take that risk compared to just accepting 1 year in prison even though you are innocent? Now imagine the same situation, but the maximum charge is 2 years. You will probably fight it out in court.
Also the plea-bargain offered by the prosecution may be higher if the maximum sentence is higher, because they have something to lose as well.
The maximum jail sentence should always fit the charge for this reason.