Not that I'm defending M$ security, but I wonder how many of their easter eggs are *really* slipped in by programmers without anyone else's knowledge...
I know someone who worked for several weeks on an "easter egg" at Intuit that was scheduled form the start and went through the full QA cycle - though she actually got in a fair bit of trouble for trying to sneak an easter egg in the easter egg...:)
My theory is that almost every situation I run across in life can be summarized with a Simpsons quote (can you imagine how annoying I must be to hang out with??)
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a Simpsons quote involving Beowulf! Please accept this Family Guy quote as a substitute.
Dennis Miller: "I don't want to go on a rant, here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate."
I have to say it's hard to argue against a levy for blank cassette tapes. You'd have to be saving a lot of answering machine messages (does anyone besides Linda Tripp still have an analog machine anyway?) or be the curator of a TRS-80 museum to have much to complain about.
Not if you sold 10M of something for over $100 less than you paid for it!
Still, I agree with your point - there's no reason a company has to be the market leader to be successful... though as we all know that's not how MS looks at things...
I agree - the original/. article was half making fun of the language, but somehow it feel like if she had written it in Russian it would have had almost a weird sci-fi Dostoevskian quality... (how's that for a bad Russian stereotype!)
As far as I can tell, iris recognition is not based on the COLOR of the iris but the PATTERN, which in fact is set from the eighth month of gestation. Go ahead and paint your fintertip blue, it won't affect your fingerprint...
I think the analogy goes beyond that - just understanding the meaning, pronunciation, and use of 'A' is way beyond "ones and zeroes" - the trite/. argument of "it's all ones and zeroes" is about as useful as "it's all electrical signals in your brain". Yeah, with thousands of years of cultural knowledge "programming" that brain...
Exactly - I have only lost signal once in the last year due to weather, and I think the wind gusts during the storm were up to 70mph... TV signal was not my first concern.
Plus, it's not like you don't occasionally lose cable signal during a storm - and when you do, it's not out 5 minutes like satellite, it's out 2 days while they go around putting all the poles back up:)
One of the "inventors" (term used VERY loosely) - Frank M. Weyer - is also an attorney specializing in intellectual property litigation. As if it weren't already pretty damn obvious the patent was never intended to be used for anything other than suing someone...
GStreamer was not a simple re-implementation of something which had been done before. I guess we did what Steve Balmer claims free software never does: we innovated. The basic design and basic idea came from a research project at Portland University, research work in which GStreamer project founder Erik Walthinsen participated. It was loosely modeled on DirectShow.
I think he was referring to this paragraph... saying that it was not implementing something done before, and then following that by saying the design and idea came from a research project, and was loosely modeled on DirectShow does seem a bit incongruous.
Still, I'm not knocking GStreamer... Linux REALLY needs a consistent, solid media playback library similar to DirectShow.
It was a Simpsons reference (I'm surprised it took so long for someone to say it...)
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Still, given Australia's reknowned "skill" with introducing new species to "solve" these problems, they would probably somehow manage to turn an endangered species into a national pest... (the bloody gorillas are EVERYWHERE! Put out some more banana traps!)
AMD isn't the problem, VIA is. VIA's chipsets are known to have problems with PCI busmastering on a lot more than just the Hauppauge cards. So if you have a VIA based board, you may have issues, but I have used the card under Linux EXTENSIVELY and it has worked great with nVidia and SiS based boards.
Once it's required in all TVs it won't be anywhere NEAR $400. For example, basic satellite set top boxes are available in the $100 range. Of that, the vast majority of the cost is the box, power, connectors, video encoder, DACs, etc that are not necessary (ie are already a part of any TV). Only the digital tuner and MPEG2 decoder would be necessary - probably less than $20 in parts TODAY. By 2007 it's going to be pretty insignificant.
I remember back in '95 or so when I had an ISDN router with autodial + autodisconnect and made the mistake of installing Real. I managed to find and turn off all but one of their annoying behind-the-back spyware features. Unfortunately that one I missed caused my ISDN router to establish a connection and then timeout and disconnect about every 5 minutes for a month, and I ended up with an extra $60 on my ISDN bill. Thanks Real!
> "My BIOS takes at least 10-20 times that, how can my OS speed that up..."
Hopefully we'll see this project combined with LinuxBIOS (which can load & boot the kernel in 500ms - from compactflash at least. With IDE, you have to wait a few seconds for the disk to spin up). 5 seconds (or 1 with CF) to get to init on an x86 box would be impressive. Now to get a parallel service startup into a major distribution...
> Keep the image that the kernel creates AFTER boot - simply load that into memory and restart.
The kernel also does a lot of hardware initialization, etc. This might work to some degree on a soft reset, but you still need to EXECUTE a lot of the kernel startup code when powering on.
I would be willing to pay $2-$4/gal for gas (oops, I live in CA, I already do!) if the increase was in the form of taxes - ideally taxes that allow increases in alternative fuel research, etc. But the difference in the $1.90/gal a month ago and $2.40/gal I just paid for gas is NOT going to taxes, it's going to oil companies. Why is it that the US govt seems unable to keep prices down due to this monopolistic profiteering, while they are also unwilling to tax gas to a level that will help us reduce reliance on this crappy industry?
Anyway, check with Shell, I'm sure they'll be happy to increase the price to $4.00/gal if you ask nicely:)
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I think I'm going to skip "Extreme Programming Refactored" and wait for the sequels:
"Extreme Programming: Reloaded"
and
"Extreme Programming: Revolutions"
Not that I'm defending M$ security, but I wonder how many of their easter eggs are *really* slipped in by programmers without anyone else's knowledge...
:)
I know someone who worked for several weeks on an "easter egg" at Intuit that was scheduled form the start and went through the full QA cycle - though she actually got in a fair bit of trouble for trying to sneak an easter egg in the easter egg...
My theory is that almost every situation I run across in life can be summarized with a Simpsons quote (can you imagine how annoying I must be to hang out with??)
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a Simpsons quote involving Beowulf! Please accept this Family Guy quote as a substitute.
Dennis Miller: "I don't want to go on a rant, here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate."
Peter: "What the Hell does rant mean?"
It was a joke, you tool.
I have to say it's hard to argue against a levy for blank cassette tapes. You'd have to be saving a lot of answering machine messages (does anyone besides Linda Tripp still have an analog machine anyway?) or be the curator of a TRS-80 museum to have much to complain about.
Why not? Apparently that's what the patent examiner did.
Not if you sold 10M of something for over $100 less than you paid for it!
Still, I agree with your point - there's no reason a company has to be the market leader to be successful... though as we all know that's not how MS looks at things...
Wow, so there is no board required? Do you just plug it right into your head?
I agree - the original /. article was half making fun of the language, but somehow it feel like if she had written it in Russian it would have had almost a weird sci-fi Dostoevskian quality... (how's that for a bad Russian stereotype!)
To clarify:
As far as I can tell, iris recognition is not based on the COLOR of the iris but the PATTERN, which in fact is set from the eighth month of gestation. Go ahead and paint your fintertip blue, it won't affect your fingerprint...
I think the analogy goes beyond that - just understanding the meaning, pronunciation, and use of 'A' is way beyond "ones and zeroes" - the trite /. argument of "it's all ones and zeroes" is about as useful as "it's all electrical signals in your brain". Yeah, with thousands of years of cultural knowledge "programming" that brain...
...apparently disagrees.
Proposed new marketing slogan:
"Downloading more than 100GB a month can give you cancer!"
Exactly - I have only lost signal once in the last year due to weather, and I think the wind gusts during the storm were up to 70mph... TV signal was not my first concern.
:)
Plus, it's not like you don't occasionally lose cable signal during a storm - and when you do, it's not out 5 minutes like satellite, it's out 2 days while they go around putting all the poles back up
It's all according to his plan... (back to an old favorite...)
l
http://www.theonion.com/onion3121/billgates.htm
I guess you could use SCSI vs. IDE as an analogy... sounds like some very similar tradeoffs.
One of the "inventors" (term used VERY loosely) - Frank M. Weyer - is also an attorney specializing in intellectual property litigation. As if it weren't already pretty damn obvious the patent was never intended to be used for anything other than suing someone...
Still, I'm not knocking GStreamer... Linux REALLY needs a consistent, solid media playback library similar to DirectShow.
AMD isn't the problem, VIA is. VIA's chipsets are known to have problems with PCI busmastering on a lot more than just the Hauppauge cards. So if you have a VIA based board, you may have issues, but I have used the card under Linux EXTENSIVELY and it has worked great with nVidia and SiS based boards.
The first picture is my favorite... the classic "ok guys, point at the computer and pretend you're saying something important!" pose.
Once it's required in all TVs it won't be anywhere NEAR $400. For example, basic satellite set top boxes are available in the $100 range. Of that, the vast majority of the cost is the box, power, connectors, video encoder, DACs, etc that are not necessary (ie are already a part of any TV). Only the digital tuner and MPEG2 decoder would be necessary - probably less than $20 in parts TODAY. By 2007 it's going to be pretty insignificant.
I remember back in '95 or so when I had an ISDN router with autodial + autodisconnect and made the mistake of installing Real. I managed to find and turn off all but one of their annoying behind-the-back spyware features. Unfortunately that one I missed caused my ISDN router to establish a connection and then timeout and disconnect about every 5 minutes for a month, and I ended up with an extra $60 on my ISDN bill. Thanks Real!
> "My BIOS takes at least 10-20 times that, how can my OS speed that up..."
Hopefully we'll see this project combined with LinuxBIOS (which can load & boot the kernel in 500ms - from compactflash at least. With IDE, you have to wait a few seconds for the disk to spin up). 5 seconds (or 1 with CF) to get to init on an x86 box would be impressive. Now to get a parallel service startup into a major distribution...
> Keep the image that the kernel creates AFTER boot - simply load that into memory and restart.
The kernel also does a lot of hardware initialization, etc. This might work to some degree on a soft reset, but you still need to EXECUTE a lot of the kernel startup code when powering on.
I would be willing to pay $2-$4/gal for gas (oops, I live in CA, I already do!) if the increase was in the form of taxes - ideally taxes that allow increases in alternative fuel research, etc. But the difference in the $1.90/gal a month ago and $2.40/gal I just paid for gas is NOT going to taxes, it's going to oil companies. Why is it that the US govt seems unable to keep prices down due to this monopolistic profiteering, while they are also unwilling to tax gas to a level that will help us reduce reliance on this crappy industry?
:)
Anyway, check with Shell, I'm sure they'll be happy to increase the price to $4.00/gal if you ask nicely