to clarify, the Lagrange points offering the greatest orbital stability are equidistant from Earth and Luna - in the same orbit as Luna, only leading or trailing by sixty degrees. There are other less "desireable" Lagrange points. but the ones on the Lunar backside sure wouldn't give much of a view of Earth. Since they were making noises about pictures like the Apollo 8 shot, you may perhaps understand why I assumed they would want something at the same distance from Earth as Luna.
And if they meant Earth/Sun Lagrange points, why not say so? The major Earth/Sun points are also about 93 million miles away. I can't speak to the minor ones, but if they are too close to the Earth/Luna system, (such as a mere million miles) wouldn't they would tend to be destabilized by the separate gravitational fields of the Earth and Luna?
The article says they were going to put Triana about a million miles out, but it also says they were going to put it at L5, which is equidistant from both Earth and Luna (more like a quarter million miles away)
They have spent 125 megabux on the poor little Triana already. If they don't launch it,that money will go to waste. What does a shuttle launch cost? About a thousand megabux (8 times what they have already spent on Triana).
Rather than storing it, they should sell it as surplus. Those of you who think it should be launched can buy it and then find your own damn launch vehicle. I'll be willing to pay ten bucks a year for a subscription to the video feed once it is in place.
Of course I think the best thing that those incredibly wise and intelligent Cogresscritters could do would be to cut NASA's budget to zero effective 12/31/2001. They could use the savings to buy everybody the latest Brittany Spears album. And without NASA in the way, we'd soon have those aforementioned launch vehicles available. cheap.
Network suitmonkeys will completely misconstrue the meaning of people not knowing what channel they are watching. Since channel ID is important to them, we will see even more "clutter" (those damn icons) and it will become even more obnoxious. We may even begin to have audible clutter" - once per minute we will have additional audio injected into the signal. So while you are listening for the punchline to the joke, you will also hear "You are watching the FUKU network".
And from there, it won't be a long step at all till we have subliminal audio tracks to make sure we know what channel we are watching.
But as the networks become progresively less important we may begin to see true subscription based programming. How much are you personally willing to pay for new episode of Seinfeld? How much for a full new season? If Jerry is not your cup of tea, maybe David Hasselhoff's newest venture "Baywatch: Scores" - a touching drama (with lots of slo-mo) about the adventures of a group of exotic dancers who daylight as lifeguards?
I'm all for using software to help fill out a ballot, but when the voter decides they are done, the reult should be printed and reviewed by the voter who can then put their ballot in the box, or tear it up and ask for a new one. (the later option for those who realize that they made a mistake.
Of course, the printed ballot should be easily machine readable so that it will be easy to tally, but there will be that permanent paper record in case a recount is needed.
If you were a voter and the ballot you filled out and then printed looked like this
(scancode) President: Pat Robertson
And you meant to vote for Gore, your error would be pretty damn obvious. In addition, it woul dbe easy to let the computer tell you what races you didn't vote on, and ask if that was deliberate. It might be interesting to see how many city councilmen would "lose" if "deliberate abstentions" could be accurately counted.
You have definitely saved me some bux. If a game says it is sci-fi, I expect to damn well pick up and leave the stinking planet, not go on a squirrel hunting expedition. I suppose I could live with the leveling bit, though to my mind, Chaosium's 2nd edition Runequest was the ultimate RPG - and it didn't need no steenking levels.
When this story was first reported. Just the German IP equivalent of American Ambualnce Chasers.
Maybe someone who knows can tell us whether or not the law enabling this sort of abuse is a leftover Nazi law? They (Nazis) weren't much more than legally elected gangsters and extortionists -and this is sure penny ante freelance legal extortion
Read the mail. It was a lawyer "representing" Adobe, and demanding payment in euros. This sounds a lot like a German lawyer using the "free money for german lawyers" portion of German IP law that basically alllows them to go hunting for IP infringements and then demanding money from the infringers. My understanding (limited to what I read on/. a while back) is that these "IP bounty hunters" don't have to have any connection with the owner of the IP that they determine is being violated.
The immediate demand for payment of a specific amount of money is pretty much a giveaway as to the nature of the problem.
No it wouldn't. It used these things called vacuum tubes (or valves if you're a Brit). Once you turned on the power you would have to wait for the filaments in the tubes to heat up. This can take several minutes.
I have an antique radio. I always get a kick when someone asks me if it works. I tell them sure, just plug it in - then after about thirty seconds they are asking me if I'm sure. Somewhere after the 90 second point is when sounds are actually heard coming from the speaker.
a shared source implementation of the C# programming language and common language infrastructure (CLI)specifications
that it submitted to ECMA in October 2000.
this implementation will run on FreeBSD
and Microsoft® Windows®
Designed to be used for academic, research, debugging and learning purposes
So they are developing something according to the standard they released to ECMA (a good thing - if Sun had let go of Java we might have never seen dotNET), but they are going to limit it to non-commercial use.
How does this benefit anyone other than Microsoft? I've seen enough "hardball" business decisions from Redmond to be a little cynical about this.
REDMOND, Wash., June 27/PRNewswire/ -- Following its announcement last month of the shared source philosophy, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today announced it will work with Corel Corp. to build a shared source implementation of the C# programming language and common language infrastructure (CLI) specifications that it submitted to ECMA in October 2000.
Designed to be used for academic, research, debugging and learning purposes, this implementation will run on FreeBSD and Microsoft® Windows® and will be published as source code under Microsoft's Shared Source licensing framework.
Boldfaced emphasis is mine, but they sure don't want anyone doing commercial development with those "open" tools now do they?
No, the time will be in 2026 when the patent that TIVO has on the core functionality (not how, but what) of recording the incoming video stream while playing "another stream" (which is how they can "pause" live TV).
And before you get all huffy about geek power, remember that even giving the tech away would set you up to be nailed/jailed under the No Electronic Theft Act (I may have the name wrong, but its the wonderful law that was passed to protect copyright holders from having their work stolen by people who would distribute it for free).
My company bills my time at 250.00 an hour (for customizing our apps). I do not make anywhere near that much. Of course I'm pretty busy with non-billable (ie reading Slashdot, learning new tricks, developing new product) activities which is handled in a different manner. I have worked in an engineering firm where the billable hour was God Almighty. It was interesting
Wonder what happened between the author's definitive speculation and the reality that did not occur?
International law happened. With no possibility of profit (seabeds are common property of mankind as regulated by the UN) what incentive was there to develop mining techniques? Simple gee wiz altruism seems to not be cutting it. Aquaculture is now mostly doing things in ponds rather than in the ocean proper - and it is causing its own special environmental problems.
After the ruckus he raised at that Time Warner sharholders meeting by reading the lyrics to Cop Killer I think he'd really like to address the shareholders meeting of a company that pushes a first person shooter where the majority of the targets are cops.
Oops, I should have made it clear I was referring to the future direction of LCD / OLED monitors that will be using digital signals (undoubtably an encrypted signal to enforce all manner of copy restrictions masquerading as copyright protection) I consider analog video signals to be a tried and tested technology. And that its present position is roghly analogous to the 5.25" 1.2Meg floppy in 1987. - massive market penetration, but about to become massively obsolete. I also predicted it would be PHBs who were about to have "learning experiences". Buy the "blades" now, then replace the CRTs with LCDs next year and find that analog LCDs are a marginalized niche (with the appropriate price premium).
Sure it will help save spave to get the boxes off the desktop/out of the cubicles, but that is also the reason for replacing CRTs with LCD monitors. But LCD monitors don't use analog video signals. I predict some PHBs are about to enjoy one of those expensive learning experiences that get them the big raises:-)
I just loved that phrase. The article mentioned that the studios might be looking to make "examples" of some of the worst offenders.
Of course someone probably will - there are just too many copyright holders for all of them to be smart enough to resist the temptation to "spank" some "evil pirate" with a tire iron (of the legalistic, not mundane variety).
Just for grins, since the DMCA requires that those demands to ISPs be accurate upon pain of perjury, just who has been hurt and how much by perjury in any such case so far? or since corporate entities make such poor cellmates, how the heck can they make any such demands under the DMCA
Only a lawyer would quote Al Capone as a role model and then be upset when someone suggests he is in the extrotion business..
The company's counsel of choice, a tough-talking trial attorney named Ray Niro, insists that he prefers not to sue, but that sometimes companies leave him with no alternative. "It's unfortunate that you have to litigate," he says. "But as Al Capone said, 'You go a long way in this world with a bouquet of roses. You go farther with a bouquet of roses and a gun.' "
(Meanwhile, TechSearch is suing Intel for libel and slander because an Intel spokesman remarked to the Wall Street Journal that "[TechSearch] exists solely for the purpose of purchasing patents and extorting funds from another company.")
This is just the hype from the folks holding the patents. Sure there web site is full of pretty graphics of "products" that will use the new disks. But
Who in the hell is going to pony up the 5$ to $12 US per disk the wankers are quoting as their prices for the media. Yeah I'm sure the member studios in the RIAA are going to increase ther cost per disk by an order of magnitude - why the price for the new Brittney Aguilera album would be like $180.00 once everyone in the distribution chain passed the cost increase along. Sorry, those little disks look jus as cute as a button and are about the same size, but I have better uses for my money.
That should really say it all, but the folks at Macrovision are 'forward looking'. So, lets look forward to:
Macrovision 'protected' CDs going south faster and with less reason than unprotected ones.
A 15% (average) increase in the retail price of music CDs to cover the royalties going to Macrovsion for their 'protection'.
If you doubt the price increase, reread the bit about how Macrovision will control when and how the 'technology' will be 'upgraded'.In short, they are fishing for a constant revenue stream from the music distributors.
or something for parodies. Now (donning asbestos jockstrap), I think VA Linux should bid on and get control of registration for such a domain (or EFF would work too - my religion doesn't require me to expose myself to e-napalm).
But LNUX or RHAT would be my prime choices. Once they have a monopoly on the domain of parody, they can open registration up to corporations and trademark holders exclusively for the first six weeks. But wait.. there's more They can charge 3 million per name (or some reasonable percentage of the value of the trademark - according to what the corporate shysters and beancounters have been claiming in publicly available documents. Let the humour impaired pay for their disability After six weeks they can open the domain up to everyone on a first come first served basis for 20 bucks a pop - or just award em to the goat guy. (link not included on purpose) If one of the Liinux companies gets it, they have a nice bit of extra income and might just stop the trolls for the folks obsessed with their current share prices.
Slashdot Mirror
And if they meant Earth/Sun Lagrange points, why not say so? The major Earth/Sun points are also about 93 million miles away. I can't speak to the minor ones, but if they are too close to the Earth/Luna system, (such as a mere million miles) wouldn't they would tend to be destabilized by the separate gravitational fields of the Earth and Luna?
The article says they were going to put Triana about a million miles out, but it also says they were going to put it at L5, which is equidistant from both Earth and Luna (more like a quarter million miles away)
They have spent 125 megabux on the poor little Triana already. If they don't launch it,that money will go to waste. What does a shuttle launch cost? About a thousand megabux (8 times what they have already spent on Triana).
Rather than storing it, they should sell it as surplus. Those of you who think it should be launched can buy it and then find your own damn launch vehicle. I'll be willing to pay ten bucks a year for a subscription to the video feed once it is in place.
Of course I think the best thing that those incredibly wise and intelligent Cogresscritters could do would be to cut NASA's budget to zero effective 12/31/2001. They could use the savings to buy everybody the latest Brittany Spears album. And without NASA in the way, we'd soon have those aforementioned launch vehicles available. cheap.
Don't be silly, everyone knows Bush the Younger has gone on public record as refusing to use email.
And from there, it won't be a long step at all till we have subliminal audio tracks to make sure we know what channel we are watching.
But as the networks become progresively less important we may begin to see true subscription based programming. How much are you personally willing to pay for new episode of Seinfeld? How much for a full new season? If Jerry is not your cup of tea, maybe David Hasselhoff's newest venture "Baywatch: Scores" - a touching drama (with lots of slo-mo) about the adventures of a group of exotic dancers who daylight as lifeguards?
Of course, the printed ballot should be easily machine readable so that it will be easy to tally, but there will be that permanent paper record in case a recount is needed.
If you were a voter and the ballot you filled out and then printed looked like this
(scancode) President: Pat Robertson
And you meant to vote for Gore, your error would be pretty damn obvious. In addition, it woul dbe easy to let the computer tell you what races you didn't vote on, and ask if that was deliberate. It might be interesting to see how many city councilmen would "lose" if "deliberate abstentions" could be accurately counted.
- Leave the cities
- venture out to the countryside
- hunt. HUNT?!
- level?
You have definitely saved me some bux. If a game says it is sci-fi, I expect to damn well pick up and leave the stinking planet, not go on a squirrel hunting expedition. I suppose I could live with the leveling bit, though to my mind, Chaosium's 2nd edition Runequest was the ultimate RPG - and it didn't need no steenking levels.Maybe someone who knows can tell us whether or not the law enabling this sort of abuse is a leftover Nazi law? They (Nazis) weren't much more than legally elected gangsters and extortionists -and this is sure penny ante freelance legal extortion
sorry, couldn't resist
And now a subject which could honestly answer.
But the test won't allow a correct answer. This has "Catch-22" written all over it...The immediate demand for payment of a specific amount of money is pretty much a giveaway as to the nature of the problem.
I have an antique radio. I always get a kick when someone asks me if it works. I tell them sure, just plug it in - then after about thirty seconds they are asking me if I'm sure. Somewhere after the 90 second point is when sounds are actually heard coming from the speaker.
- a shared source implementation of the C# programming language and common language infrastructure (CLI)specifications
- that it submitted to ECMA in October 2000.
- this implementation will run on FreeBSD
- and Microsoft® Windows®
- Designed to be used for academic, research, debugging and learning purposes
So they are developing something according to the standard they released to ECMA (a good thing - if Sun had let go of Java we might have never seen dotNET), but they are going to limit it to non-commercial use.How does this benefit anyone other than Microsoft? I've seen enough "hardball" business decisions from Redmond to be a little cynical about this.
And before you get all huffy about geek power, remember that even giving the tech away would set you up to be nailed/jailed under the No Electronic Theft Act (I may have the name wrong, but its the wonderful law that was passed to protect copyright holders from having their work stolen by people who would distribute it for free).
Consider yourself slapped!
Now where's my money bitch?
My company bills my time at 250.00 an hour (for customizing our apps). I do not make anywhere near that much. Of course I'm pretty busy with non-billable (ie reading Slashdot, learning new tricks, developing new product) activities which is handled in a different manner. I have worked in an engineering firm where the billable hour was God Almighty. It was interesting
International law happened. With no possibility of profit (seabeds are common property of mankind as regulated by the UN) what incentive was there to develop mining techniques? Simple gee wiz altruism seems to not be cutting it. Aquaculture is now mostly doing things in ponds rather than in the ocean proper - and it is causing its own special environmental problems.
After the ruckus he raised at that Time Warner sharholders meeting by reading the lyrics to Cop Killer I think he'd really like to address the shareholders meeting of a company that pushes a first person shooter where the majority of the targets are cops.
Oops, I should have made it clear I was referring to the future direction of LCD / OLED monitors that will be using digital signals (undoubtably an encrypted signal to enforce all manner of copy restrictions masquerading as copyright protection)
I consider analog video signals to be a tried and tested technology. And that its present position is roghly analogous to the 5.25" 1.2Meg floppy in 1987. - massive market penetration, but about to become massively obsolete.
I also predicted it would be PHBs who were about to have "learning experiences". Buy the "blades" now, then replace the CRTs with LCDs next year and find that analog LCDs are a marginalized niche (with the appropriate price premium).
Sure it will help save spave to get the boxes off the desktop/out of the cubicles, but that is also the reason for replacing CRTs with LCD monitors. But LCD monitors don't use analog video signals. I predict some PHBs are about to enjoy one of those expensive learning experiences that get them the big raises :-)
Of course someone probably will - there are just too many copyright holders for all of them to be smart enough to resist the temptation to "spank" some "evil pirate" with a tire iron (of the legalistic, not mundane variety).
Just for grins, since the DMCA requires that those demands to ISPs be accurate upon pain of perjury, just who has been hurt and how much by perjury in any such case so far?
or since corporate entities make such poor cellmates, how the heck can they make any such demands under the DMCA
Only a lawyer would quote Al Capone as a role model and then be upset when someone suggests he is in the extrotion business..
The company's counsel of choice, a tough-talking trial attorney named Ray Niro, insists that he prefers not to sue, but that sometimes companies leave him with no alternative. "It's unfortunate that you have to litigate," he says. "But as Al Capone said, 'You go a long way in this world with a bouquet of roses. You go farther with a bouquet of roses and a gun.' "
(Meanwhile, TechSearch is suing Intel for libel and slander because an Intel spokesman remarked to the Wall Street Journal that "[TechSearch] exists solely for the purpose of purchasing patents and extorting funds from another company.")
>/i>
This is just the hype from the folks holding the patents. Sure there web site is full of pretty graphics of "products" that will use the new disks. But
Who in the hell is going to pony up the 5$ to $12 US per disk the wankers are quoting as their prices for the media.
Yeah I'm sure the member studios in the RIAA are going to increase ther cost per disk by an order of magnitude - why the price for the new Brittney Aguilera album would be like $180.00 once everyone in the distribution chain passed the cost increase along.
Sorry, those little disks look jus as cute as a button and are about the same size, but I have better uses for my money.
That should really say it all, but the folks at Macrovision are 'forward looking'. So, lets look forward to:
Macrovision 'protected' CDs going south faster and with less reason than unprotected ones.
A 15% (average) increase in the retail price of music CDs to cover the royalties going to Macrovsion for their 'protection'.
If you doubt the price increase, reread the bit about how Macrovision will control when and how the 'technology' will be 'upgraded'.In short, they are fishing for a constant revenue stream from the music distributors.
or something for parodies. Now (donning asbestos jockstrap), I think VA Linux should bid on and get control of registration for such a domain (or EFF would work too - my religion doesn't require me to expose myself to e-napalm).
But LNUX or RHAT would be my prime choices. Once they have a monopoly on the domain of parody, they can open registration up to corporations and trademark holders exclusively for the first six weeks.
But wait.. there's more
They can charge 3 million per name (or some reasonable percentage of the value of the trademark - according to what the corporate shysters and beancounters have been claiming in publicly available documents. Let the humour impaired pay for their disability
After six weeks they can open the domain up to everyone on a first come first served basis for 20 bucks a pop - or just award em to the goat guy. (link not included on purpose) If one of the Liinux companies gets it, they have a nice bit of extra income and might just stop the trolls for the folks obsessed with their current share prices.