The amount of sulfur content in the exhaust is entirely dependent on how much is fuel - it can removed during refinement, it just costs a little more. Europe has had strict requirements about sulfur content for quite some time, and the US and Canada both passed laws last year to do the same. As far as the other nasty stuff, catalytic converters and in-engine burn efficiency on diesels have improved to the point where that is really no longer a concern. The only downside that I know of is that some diesel vehicles still have problems getting started in very cold climates, and until the engine warms up may have higher particulate concentration? This might be a concern in canada - I haven't looked into it much myself as I live in the US SW.
Diesel is a great fuel for the economically minded as it is more energy efficient than gasoline, and can also supplemented with biodiesel to the extent it is available (which in turn is much much more efficient than ethanol).
The big question is whether this filtering is just for their DSL and F2P customers, or also for the huge chunk of the backbone that they own and operate. The articles that I have read seem to suggest the latter.
If Web2.0 and AJAX were the end-all be-all of application development then why aren't all the other apps on the iPhone written that way? Heck even Google Maps, which was born as AJAX, has is a dedicated app on iPhone because there are things you can do with native code that you will never be able to do with an online app.
The most important being that you have to be online to use them. So no third party applications when you are on an airplane. And unless there is a WiFi hotspot nearby you'll be racking up AT&T data charges like crazy. Secondly, there are many situations where I neither need nor want my sensitive data to be stored online, where it is more vulnerable. Anything that processes this data should not be a webapp. Third, even with all the Web2.0 AJAXy goodness, webapps are still not as interactive as real applications, and nowhere near as efficient.
I think that the streamlined webapp capabilities are nice There are several classes of application that IMHO are best done as webapps, in particular any that are front end to some online data base or other content. Things like yellow pages, YouTube, photo album sharing, lookup up movie times, etc. I am glad that they made it possible and easy for these types of applications to integrate nicely into the iPhone.
I can also understand if they aren't willing to release a full 3rd party SDK at this time - they are rolling out an ambitious new product which is sure to have some problems, and the more variable they can remove at launch time the better. It makes sense to wait until things have settled down before releasing an SDK, not to mention the fact that they have probably been too busy to write and test one.
But trying to play it off as "Web2.0 is all the SDK you need" is just plain insulting. It's like saying that Dashboard Widgets are the only SDK that OS X needs.
I don't know why all these people are complaining about the extra work forced on them by the government. Sure it took a few extra minutes to write an email purge script, but ever since then my work load has dropped dramatically. Every time I think that I have new work I just have to wait a few minutes and it goes away again. In fact my boss just came in to tell me that I don't need to come to work at all any more. Score!
The advantage of keyword searching, at least as implemented in firefox/mozilla, is that it is very easy to use multiple search engines. Want to search g search-terms -> google search gis search-terms -> google image search w search-terms -> wikipedia imdb search-terms -> internet movie data base search dict search-terms -> looks up a word in a dictionary stock search-terms -> yahoo stocks az search-terms -> amazon product search.
This is functionality that Safari doesn't have in any form, and is much more convenient than the search pulldown menu that most people use in Firefox.
It gives companies incentives to help out, where I think v3 makes the GPL less attractive to companies which will hurt it in the long run imho. I have never understood this argument. If you look at the corporate-created open-source licenses like the CDDL, MPL, CPL, and ASL, in every case one of the major reasons that they are incompatible with the GPLv2 is that they contain CYA protections against patents that the GPL didn't. Many of them are still incompatible with GPLv3 because they go even farther with their patent protections than the FSF was willing to go with the GPLv3.
The various companies that are contributing code under open source licenses are the ones pushing for greater patent protection in the first place so why would they be upset that the GPL now includes it? If anything it might encourage them to use the GPL rather than their own home-grown license which would be a very positive move.
A company can't put time and money into helping a project when a competitor can then just use those changes, or worse yet new companies arise because you just removed any barrier to entry that might have existed. Sure they can; plenty of companies do. More to the point, the GPLv3 doesn't change this one bit. I cannot think of a single company that releases currently software under the GPLv2 and then attempts to prevent its competitors from using that software by playing games with patents or DRM. There is nothing preventing a competing company from taking Tivo's code (the parts released under the GPLv2) and reusing it in their competing product. The people that are limited by these actions are the ones that can't afford to build their own hardware from scratch - ie the consumers.
Either it is, or it isn't. That's not true. There are many ways to write a license, and even if one we have now is legally binding, that does not mean that it is the best way to word it to be absolutely certain of it's outcome in court, or to minimize time in court.
But more to the point, GPLv2 was really only written with US copyright law in mind. The language of GPLv3 was deliberately and carefully chosen to be as precise and legally binding in as many countries as possible. One example is the use of the word convey rather than distribute, and the precise definition given for the word.
In addition, one particular piece of icing, is that it is actually compatible with more open source licenses, in particular the Apache License.
No, I haven't used it yet. Before I switched over to using the Mac, I was more of a Gnome guy, and it's only been the last couple years that I've started using more KDE apps. When I get my new linux box latter this month, I'm planning on making it my main desktop, and that will probably include giving Kmail a shot, as it looks like the best graphical email client for Linux right now. I really like evolution's interface, but every time I've used it, it has eventually corrupted my mailbox and that just isn't acceptable.
The things I like about Mail.App is how it handles multiple accounts, and that it has easy to use filtering rules. It could be better at handling large mail boxes though, and the spam filter could be better - if it weren't for my filtering rules based on server-generated (SA) header fields, I would end up with a mailbox full of image spam.
I have to agree with the author here. I've been using OS X as my primary desktop at home for the last 4 year and I like it, but I've found myself going back to my Linux box more and more lately and the reason is applications.
The OS X ports of open source desktop software, like the Gimp, Inkspace, Open Office, nearly always sucks. It isn't just that they look different than native OS X programs or the fact that you can't copy and paste or the fact that printing doesn't work from most X11 Apps. It is the fact that they are clunky and buggy compared to the Linux (and sometimes even Windows) version. You can run all these applications on OS X but you don't want to. In the end I prefer running these applications in Linux even if it means running them on my slow neglected 800Mhz Via Eden box rather than my much more powerful G5, and even if it means foregoing great OS X features like expose.
Which isn't to say that OS X is completely devoid of Free Software or freeware. Adium is a great chat client. VLC is my favorite media player on any platform. Textwrangler is a very competent text editor. The apps that ship with OS X are also nice. Mail.App is the best (graphical) email client I've ever used (mutt is still better:). But it doesn't have nearly as wide of a selection of free software as other platforms, and there are a few important categories where I haven't been able to find any freeware or reasonably priced shareware that I am happy with.
Office is one of these. On windows there is Open Office or Gobe Productive, on Linux there is Open Office or KOffice, but I haven't been able to find anything that I like for the Mac. Open Office sucks, and while NeoOffice is a huge improvement over that it is still a pain to use. Pages is nice, but I need better MS Office compatibility. I can't wait until the KOffice native port stabilizes. And I haven't liked any of the half dozen shareware spreadsheet applications that I've tried. Pixel graphics (Photoshop replacement) is another. On windows I'd use Paint.NET or Paintshop Pro, on Linux I'd use the Gimp or Krita. On the Mac, again I haven't found anything that I like.
On top of that I have been getting increasingly annoyed with several other continuing problems that Apple just doesn't seem to care to fix, like the Finder and crappy SMB support. I get to buy a new Linux box this summer and I can't wait to get it up and running with the Beryl expose clone and other features that my current machine can't handle, so I can get it up to par with my Mac (just in time for Tiger to up the ante:).
OS X definitely has more to offer than Linux in the way of professional applications, but for people like me, who neither need the features nor want to pay the high price of pro-grade software, Linux offers a wealth of good free mid-level software that IMHO the Mac microcosm just can't beat.
From what I got from TFA, the hardware would change dynamically based on feedback from the software. Based on their abstract in the link you post, it is the other way around - the hardware provides more information about the state of the processor than it normally would, and then the software uses this information to perform run-time optimizations taking these factors into account. Considering that we are already employing run-time optimization in languages such as Java and C#, providing more information to assist in these optimizations, and to allow them to optimize for things that they couldn't in the past (like power efficiency) doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. While any optimization can lead to heisenbugs (especially in the case of race conditions), I don't think that these optimizations would be any worse than what we already have to deal with.
And yeah the press release is horrible, as they always are.
All of the major labels have signed deals with YouTube allowing music videos to be shown - EMI was the last. They all understand that music videos are free advertising.
The reason that Novell can distribute GPLv3 software in spite of their Microsoft deal is simple - the patent restriction in question does not apply to agreements made before 28 March 2007 (see the end of section 11). The reason that the FSF decided to write the clause in that manner is because they felt that Novell could possibly turn this deal around to do good if they chose to do so, and therefore are giving them a pass this time.
To add to erroneus's nonerroneus post, the main thing that they get out of DRM and the DMCA is the ability to dictate exactly what every electronic media device in this country can and cannot do. DVD burners are becoming as common as CD burners, but burning DVDs for your friend is not as common as burning CDs as because you cannot legally purchase software to do so. At the same time it hurts customers (especially ones with young kids) who cannot legitimately backup their DVDs. You cannot copy videos from DVDs onto portable media players, because the companies that sell them are afraid of being sued. Only one company that I know of has prevailed in court over something like this, and they had were sued despite having copy-protection mechanisms built into their device. They want you to buy multiple copies of your videos because that makes them more money.
And it has been working. The number of people who practice wholesale piracy is and always has been fairly low - what scares them is that it might become more widespread if the general public were allowed access to technology which they might abuse. I don't think that is true, and I think it is fundamentally wrong to put restrictions on an entire country just because you fear that some might abuse their freedoms, but that is where they are coming from, and in their eyes DRM has been successful in achieving that goal.
But the real heart of the issue is that they want control for its own sake - not just because they have specific things they want to enforce, but because they have been in control for so long and letting go of any of that frightens them. They don't know what the future holds, and so their reflex is to tighten their grip as much as possible.
The article mentioned that the device uses a rear projector for the screen, so they could easily have the scattering surface (what the image is projected onto) be the topmost layer (or beneath a very thin protective layer), resting on top of the thick structural portion (transparent glass or plastic).
This is also much more like what an OLPC should be. Why? It is 4x the cost, has a shorter battery life, and at first glance doesn't appear to me to be as useful for a standalone machine compared to the OLPC machine.
I think OPLC got it wrong when they went x86 - which looks like it was done solely to support Windows. Why would they do that when the official OLPC doesn't run windows. All the rumors about it doing so are just about Quanta (the company hired to manufacture it) saying they might make an OLPC-like computer and sell it to the general masses. The OLPC project went with x86 because they got a good deal from AMD and because support for other architectures is shoddy in most Free Software once you get past the kernel and basic command-line tools.
While the definition is vague, and one could argue that programs like OpenOffice are no more clones of MS Office as any other office program out there, other programs like Mono, Moonlight, and WINE would absolutely be considered clones by any definition. So much for this deal promoting interoperability.
You are correct in saying that given a known fixed probability then the number of previous occurrences doesn't change likelihood of the event happening again. However, if you don't know the likelihood of something happening, then observing how often it happens can be used to determine it's probability. That is what GroeFaZ was getting at, although it could have been worded better.
So, the act of finding extinct civilizations does not change the probability of our own survival in any way - that is already fixed, as you pointed out. However, it does inform us of what that probability is. Right now we don't know - if we find more extinct life forms we will learn that it is easier than we thought for life to begin, but harder than we thought for life to survive. That does not bode well for us.
Of course the NSA doesn't release MS Word files - they know better. The guidelines are not for the NSA they are for all the other government agencies in the US, most of whose employees are not technical in nature, and certainly not computer security experts. The NSA knows that guidelines that no one will follow are worse than having no guidelines at all.
In the last 10 years, I have never seen a government document, sensitive or not, that wasn't generated in MS word. Given that they are using Word to generate their files, they need to know how to clean them up before distributing them - even internally.
Did you RTFA or just the summary? From the article:
But there are more practical reasons that sites like Alluc.org get away with what they're doing. One is that there are simply too many of them to keep track of. Media companies' lawyers rarely have time to police so many obscure sites, and even when they do, users can always upload the infringing files again. So the flow of copyrighted streaming video continues. These particular companies are centered in the US and Forbes stills argues that they will never be able to stomp them out entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of sulfur content in the exhaust is entirely dependent on how much is fuel - it can removed during refinement, it just costs a little more. Europe has had strict requirements about sulfur content for quite some time, and the US and Canada both passed laws last year to do the same. As far as the other nasty stuff, catalytic converters and in-engine burn efficiency on diesels have improved to the point where that is really no longer a concern. The only downside that I know of is that some diesel vehicles still have problems getting started in very cold climates, and until the engine warms up may have higher particulate concentration? This might be a concern in canada - I haven't looked into it much myself as I live in the US SW.
Diesel is a great fuel for the economically minded as it is more energy efficient than gasoline, and can also supplemented with biodiesel to the extent it is available (which in turn is much much more efficient than ethanol).
A storm's a-coming, I can feel it in ma bones.
Yeah yeah gramps, we all can. It's just the hourly SkyNet Subcutaneous Weather update.
Galdarn kids these days, no respect.
For the majority of slashdotters that don't have a Vista DVD and a magnifying glass sitting on their desk, the engadget article has pictures.
Here is a link to a story with a little more content and pictures of the new unfurled solar panels.
The big question is whether this filtering is just for their DSL and F2P customers, or also for the huge chunk of the backbone that they own and operate. The articles that I have read seem to suggest the latter.
If Web2.0 and AJAX were the end-all be-all of application development then why aren't all the other apps on the iPhone written that way? Heck even Google Maps, which was born as AJAX, has is a dedicated app on iPhone because there are things you can do with native code that you will never be able to do with an online app.
The most important being that you have to be online to use them. So no third party applications when you are on an airplane. And unless there is a WiFi hotspot nearby you'll be racking up AT&T data charges like crazy. Secondly, there are many situations where I neither need nor want my sensitive data to be stored online, where it is more vulnerable. Anything that processes this data should not be a webapp. Third, even with all the Web2.0 AJAXy goodness, webapps are still not as interactive as real applications, and nowhere near as efficient.
I think that the streamlined webapp capabilities are nice There are several classes of application that IMHO are best done as webapps, in particular any that are front end to some online data base or other content. Things like yellow pages, YouTube, photo album sharing, lookup up movie times, etc. I am glad that they made it possible and easy for these types of applications to integrate nicely into the iPhone.
I can also understand if they aren't willing to release a full 3rd party SDK at this time - they are rolling out an ambitious new product which is sure to have some problems, and the more variable they can remove at launch time the better. It makes sense to wait until things have settled down before releasing an SDK, not to mention the fact that they have probably been too busy to write and test one.
But trying to play it off as "Web2.0 is all the SDK you need" is just plain insulting. It's like saying that Dashboard Widgets are the only SDK that OS X needs.
I don't know why all these people are complaining about the extra work forced on them by the government. Sure it took a few extra minutes to write an email purge script, but ever since then my work load has dropped dramatically. Every time I think that I have new work I just have to wait a few minutes and it goes away again. In fact my boss just came in to tell me that I don't need to come to work at all any more. Score!
The advantage of keyword searching, at least as implemented in firefox/mozilla, is that it is very easy to use multiple search engines. Want to search
g search-terms -> google search
gis search-terms -> google image search
w search-terms -> wikipedia
imdb search-terms -> internet movie data base search
dict search-terms -> looks up a word in a dictionary
stock search-terms -> yahoo stocks
az search-terms -> amazon product search.
This is functionality that Safari doesn't have in any form, and is much more convenient than the search pulldown menu that most people use in Firefox.
The various companies that are contributing code under open source licenses are the ones pushing for greater patent protection in the first place so why would they be upset that the GPL now includes it? If anything it might encourage them to use the GPL rather than their own home-grown license which would be a very positive move. A company can't put time and money into helping a project when a competitor can then just use those changes, or worse yet new companies arise because you just removed any barrier to entry that might have existed. Sure they can; plenty of companies do. More to the point, the GPLv3 doesn't change this one bit. I cannot think of a single company that releases currently software under the GPLv2 and then attempts to prevent its competitors from using that software by playing games with patents or DRM. There is nothing preventing a competing company from taking Tivo's code (the parts released under the GPLv2) and reusing it in their competing product. The people that are limited by these actions are the ones that can't afford to build their own hardware from scratch - ie the consumers.
But more to the point, GPLv2 was really only written with US copyright law in mind. The language of GPLv3 was deliberately and carefully chosen to be as precise and legally binding in as many countries as possible. One example is the use of the word convey rather than distribute, and the precise definition given for the word.
In addition, one particular piece of icing, is that it is actually compatible with more open source licenses, in particular the Apache License.
No, I haven't used it yet. Before I switched over to using the Mac, I was more of a Gnome guy, and it's only been the last couple years that I've started using more KDE apps. When I get my new linux box latter this month, I'm planning on making it my main desktop, and that will probably include giving Kmail a shot, as it looks like the best graphical email client for Linux right now. I really like evolution's interface, but every time I've used it, it has eventually corrupted my mailbox and that just isn't acceptable.
The things I like about Mail.App is how it handles multiple accounts, and that it has easy to use filtering rules. It could be better at handling large mail boxes though, and the spam filter could be better - if it weren't for my filtering rules based on server-generated (SA) header fields, I would end up with a mailbox full of image spam.
I have to agree with the author here. I've been using OS X as my primary desktop at home for the last 4 year and I like it, but I've found myself going back to my Linux box more and more lately and the reason is applications.
:). But it doesn't have nearly as wide of a selection of free software as other platforms, and there are a few important categories where I haven't been able to find any freeware or reasonably priced shareware that I am happy with.
:).
The OS X ports of open source desktop software, like the Gimp, Inkspace, Open Office, nearly always sucks. It isn't just that they look different than native OS X programs or the fact that you can't copy and paste or the fact that printing doesn't work from most X11 Apps. It is the fact that they are clunky and buggy compared to the Linux (and sometimes even Windows) version. You can run all these applications on OS X but you don't want to. In the end I prefer running these applications in Linux even if it means running them on my slow neglected 800Mhz Via Eden box rather than my much more powerful G5, and even if it means foregoing great OS X features like expose.
Which isn't to say that OS X is completely devoid of Free Software or freeware. Adium is a great chat client. VLC is my favorite media player on any platform. Textwrangler is a very competent text editor. The apps that ship with OS X are also nice. Mail.App is the best (graphical) email client I've ever used (mutt is still better
Office is one of these. On windows there is Open Office or Gobe Productive, on Linux there is Open Office or KOffice, but I haven't been able to find anything that I like for the Mac. Open Office sucks, and while NeoOffice is a huge improvement over that it is still a pain to use. Pages is nice, but I need better MS Office compatibility. I can't wait until the KOffice native port stabilizes. And I haven't liked any of the half dozen shareware spreadsheet applications that I've tried. Pixel graphics (Photoshop replacement) is another. On windows I'd use Paint.NET or Paintshop Pro, on Linux I'd use the Gimp or Krita. On the Mac, again I haven't found anything that I like.
On top of that I have been getting increasingly annoyed with several other continuing problems that Apple just doesn't seem to care to fix, like the Finder and crappy SMB support. I get to buy a new Linux box this summer and I can't wait to get it up and running with the Beryl expose clone and other features that my current machine can't handle, so I can get it up to par with my Mac (just in time for Tiger to up the ante
OS X definitely has more to offer than Linux in the way of professional applications, but for people like me, who neither need the features nor want to pay the high price of pro-grade software, Linux offers a wealth of good free mid-level software that IMHO the Mac microcosm just can't beat.
And yeah the press release is horrible, as they always are.
All of the major labels have signed deals with YouTube allowing music videos to be shown - EMI was the last. They all understand that music videos are free advertising.
The reason that Novell can distribute GPLv3 software in spite of their Microsoft deal is simple - the patent restriction in question does not apply to agreements made before 28 March 2007 (see the end of section 11). The reason that the FSF decided to write the clause in that manner is because they felt that Novell could possibly turn this deal around to do good if they chose to do so, and therefore are giving them a pass this time.
To add to erroneus's nonerroneus post, the main thing that they get out of DRM and the DMCA is the ability to dictate exactly what every electronic media device in this country can and cannot do. DVD burners are becoming as common as CD burners, but burning DVDs for your friend is not as common as burning CDs as because you cannot legally purchase software to do so. At the same time it hurts customers (especially ones with young kids) who cannot legitimately backup their DVDs. You cannot copy videos from DVDs onto portable media players, because the companies that sell them are afraid of being sued. Only one company that I know of has prevailed in court over something like this, and they had were sued despite having copy-protection mechanisms built into their device. They want you to buy multiple copies of your videos because that makes them more money.
And it has been working. The number of people who practice wholesale piracy is and always has been fairly low - what scares them is that it might become more widespread if the general public were allowed access to technology which they might abuse. I don't think that is true, and I think it is fundamentally wrong to put restrictions on an entire country just because you fear that some might abuse their freedoms, but that is where they are coming from, and in their eyes DRM has been successful in achieving that goal.
But the real heart of the issue is that they want control for its own sake - not just because they have specific things they want to enforce, but because they have been in control for so long and letting go of any of that frightens them. They don't know what the future holds, and so their reflex is to tighten their grip as much as possible.
The article mentioned that the device uses a rear projector for the screen, so they could easily have the scattering surface (what the image is projected onto) be the topmost layer (or beneath a very thin protective layer), resting on top of the thick structural portion (transparent glass or plastic).
While the definition is vague, and one could argue that programs like OpenOffice are no more clones of MS Office as any other office program out there, other programs like Mono, Moonlight, and WINE would absolutely be considered clones by any definition. So much for this deal promoting interoperability.
Note, that they also listed the SCO lawsuit as a risk in the report, and we all know how likely that is.
but aren't we all :)
You are correct in saying that given a known fixed probability then the number of previous occurrences doesn't change likelihood of the event happening again. However, if you don't know the likelihood of something happening, then observing how often it happens can be used to determine it's probability. That is what GroeFaZ was getting at, although it could have been worded better.
So, the act of finding extinct civilizations does not change the probability of our own survival in any way - that is already fixed, as you pointed out. However, it does inform us of what that probability is. Right now we don't know - if we find more extinct life forms we will learn that it is easier than we thought for life to begin, but harder than we thought for life to survive. That does not bode well for us.
Just try putting water in a glass bottle.
Of course the NSA doesn't release MS Word files - they know better. The guidelines are not for the NSA they are for all the other government agencies in the US, most of whose employees are not technical in nature, and certainly not computer security experts. The NSA knows that guidelines that no one will follow are worse than having no guidelines at all.
In the last 10 years, I have never seen a government document, sensitive or not, that wasn't generated in MS word. Given that they are using Word to generate their files, they need to know how to clean them up before distributing them - even internally.