You forget that if they do stuff like that they'll
break tons of other apps as well, and people will
be screaming in outrage about their payroll application which stopped working when they "upgraded" Windows.
You have a much simpler solution: If it's an X
app, run it on one of your Linux machines, and
install Exceed, or some other Windows X servers (there's plenty of them available) to display the
user interface on the Windows boxes.
Alternatively, you can run VNC on the Linux box together with the app, and let them use a VNC
client or even a webbrowser (with Java) to get
access to the application that way.
What do you mean "don't have open proceedings"?
The ICANN board meetings are open to the public.
The board meeting when they awarded the new TLDs
were even webcast. The transcripts are available
on the web. The contracts the new TLD operators
are being posted on the web for public comment
before they're being signed.
I'll have to tread carefully not to violate confidentiality (I'm one of the co-founders of the
company that ICANN awarded ".name" to), but at
least ".name" is intended as a namespace for persons. And our intent from the start has been that while we have to do some things to protect
trademark owners against blatant abuse of the system, our TLD is intended used for personal names only.
So except for ".info" and ".biz", which are completely general purpose, I expect that several
of the new TLDs will have rules in place to prevent trademark owners from controlling everything (at least beyond whatever the courts
may impose on them).
To see what the new TLDs will be doing, go to ICANNs website,
and look for the contract appendices that are being posted - ICANN have started posting the contract appendices for the suggested contracts with the new TLDs. Not everything is there yet, as
they are being added after ICANN feels the documents in question have reached an acceptable
state.
That's what ".name" is for. (Disclaimer: I'm one
of the co-founders of the company that was awarded.name). Take a look at www.theglobalname.org.
".name" is specifically intended for personal names (whether real, or for fictional characters
or nicknames).
No, it doesn't mean an additional testing phase,
unless you expect all Mozilla development to
stop once they reach 1.0, or are obsessed with
the version number. It means that the
testing phase that was previously meant to be
for 1.0 now is 0.9.1. You'll get your fixes
just as fast. It will just take one more step
before the version number is 1.0.
First you complain about Mozillas rendering engine, and then you suggest that Galeon will be
more popular?
Anyway, I happen to like the flexibility of Mozilla, and prefer it over Galeon any day
And for some reason you seem to believe that IE
doesn't apply stylesheets, or do any of the other
stuff that complicates Mozillas rendering. Why is
that? IE certainly tries to implement the same
standards as Mozilla. It's just that it fails
miserably in it.
And if they'd "just made a fast browser" they'd
be burning in hell once the Next-Big-Thing(tm)
comes along, and it takes ages to implement because they didn't have any solid abstractions
etc. to implement it on top of.
Anyway, on my machine Mozilla is noticeably faster
than Netscape 4.x, and the current build I'm running is more stable too. And for me IE is a non-issue - I refuse to resort to Windows.
The numbering changes doesn't affect you as a
user. It is only a signal to people that wish
to use Mozilla in some other product of the
status of the project. It's more a matter of
reducing the chance of having all the people
waiting to package Mozilla into distributions or
other software rushing off and distributing a
version that is buggier than needed.
Aimster software is run by individual users, so
it can't be blocked by blocking IP. Which means
that the only way for them to stop Aimster is to
detect that it's not an "official" implementation
of the AIM protocol. But what's to stop Aimster
from "hijacking" input and output to/from the
AIM client, and using it to send it's messages?
A hack? Yes. But will it still work? Likely.
AOL can try all they want, but if Aimsters developers are reasonably experienced then they
should always have away around it.
Re:Only Americans are stupid enough to use PHP.
on
Announcing PHP-GTK
·
· Score: 1
What a troll. It would help if you'd at least
spell Perl correctly. And I know of lots of PHP
users in Europe. In fact, I'd never ever consider
allowing anyone to use Perl for serious web development on projects I'm responsibility for,
but PHP would be another matter.
However choosing either language depends on what
experience you have available in your organization, and on personal preference much
more than on the languages themselves.
And the main reason it might be easier to get
Perl developers is because Perl is much older.
PHP, on the other hand, is catching up fast.
And to many C/C++ developers like me, PHP is a lot
more familiar and easy to learn, and a lot less
irritating, than Perl.
Latency isn't that critical for throughput. Latency may affect how long it is before you get a specific set of data, but not your ability to keep sending and receiving data at high speeds continously.
For applications that require frequent exchanges of data back and forth, achieving high throughput may not be feasible with that latency, but for applications that only care about pushing a high amount of data one way, and getting occasional confirmations of what arrived ok and what needs to be retransmitted, it should work fine.
Exactly why do you think they're trying to make
this a part of the new ATA standard? So that
harddisk manufacturers at one point won't be able
to not implement it and still claim their drives
complies to the standard.
Besides, what do you think will happen if this goes in there, and the movie and music industry starts
pushing software vendors into putting support for
this into important encoders and players (such as Windows Media Player), forcing the user to use a device with this functionality enabled, or not be able to store the data at all?
Sure, there will be encoders and players that couldn't care less, but if the average Windows
user insists on having it on their drive so they
can download the newest movie clips or songs, then
harddrive manufacturers will put it on their drives.
It may not end up on every single disk, but it can certainly become a nuisance enough if it is implemented on many enough drives.
It's not like missile tests and other launches aren't made all the time as it is. If they were
to get all excited over every missile taking off,
then we'd have had World War III a long time ago.
As someone else pointed out to me, they are actually launching from the Barents sea, north
of Murmansk. But that's likely because they are
launching to a near polar orbit. So you're right
that they're likely saving fuel, allthough not
from the rotational speed of the earth. But I
agree that for most customers, launching from equator is probably a major cost cutting factor
with using the submarine launcher.
Actually I bothered to reread the release, and
in this case the Barents Sea makes more sense
than Baikonur because it is further north, as they
are launching it to a near polar orbit. I guess
my argument for sea launches should have said that
it allows the use of a launch site that better fits
the mission, rather than specifically launches that
benefit from near-equator launches.
That still doesn't invalidate the general case for
sea launches though...
Re:Better technologies out there
on
Solar Sails
·
· Score: 2
You fail to see the point. Solar sails are slow
at accelerating, but the provide continous acceleration as long as you have a stream of photons behind you. And since space doesn't push
on your ship in any other direction, or rather you don't run into anything that causes friction, what
seems like an incredibly slow transport method can
boost the ship to incredible speeds over long distances.
As long as the alternative is to bring huge amounts
of fuel and burn it over a short period, you will
have a point where it for longer distances will be
significantly cheaper to build a solar sail powered ship with a sail large enough to get you to your target in the same amount of time.
And keep in mind that nothing prevents you from for instance using a two stage system, where you do a short, intense burn using a normal engine first, and then deploy the solar sails afterwards to continue acceleration for the remainder of the trip.
Launching from a sub does make sense for several
reasons:
First of all, the Russians do their land based launches from Baikonur, which is relatively far north. Normally, you'd prefer to do launches close to equator to get the maximal benefit of earth rotation. The Russians incur a lot of extra costs
because of the position of Baikonur. (and this is
also one of the reasons for the orbit MIR is in -
they need to get it far enough north to be able to
reach it cheaply from Baikonur). Launching from
sea means they'll be able to launch from international waters and be independent of having
their own land based launch areas near equator.
Second, there's strict international regulations
on such launches, to prevent interference with
aircraft. Which you should be happy about the next
time you're flying anywhere...:) Launching from
sea simplifies things, because most traffic is
clustered around or between big cities, and the
further out at sea you go, the less flights will
pass through the area. So it reduces the administrational issues of ensuring no passenger
flights or other aircrafts pass right overhead
during the launch.
Environmental effects and other hazards are always
an issue during rocket launches. The rocket can
misfire, or explode. Parts may be hurtled through
the area in the case of an accident. Dangerous materials or toxic gases may be released as a result of fire etc. Tons of things can go wrong.
While it won't be good at sea either, at least you
face less immediate threats to human life.
You also lessen the environmental impact of indigneous animals etc. (which has been a major
concern with ESAs Ariane launch site in Central America).
Re:This could be bad news for manned space travel.
on
Life On Mars: ALH84001
·
· Score: 1
Why should be care about preserving what's essentially barren rock, with perhaps a few microbes? I'd much rather see it made useful for
mankind by terraforming.
I believe the most important point is that if
responding, either they will have to admit that
certain versions aren't violating the DMCA, or they will have to claim that poems,
images and English textual descriptions (among
others) are violations of the DMCA - which will be
next to impossible to get a judge to accept, and may possibly lead the judge to see source code as
expressive and protected under the first amendment as well, since the leap is very short between many of the versions, and any line drawn would immediately.
First of all, the DOJ doesn't decide whats constitutional or not, thats up to the courts. A
brief from the DOJ tell only how the
administration likes to interpret the law.
If anything, a ton of law professors disagree with
them (see the amicus briefs submitted in support
of 2600), as do a multitude of media organisations,
dr's and other notabilities in the area of computer
science, and several well respected organisations
in support of free speech.
You may just dismiss their arguments out of hand - but there's no reason to view the DOJs arguments
as any more valid just because they're from the DOJ. If you have specific reasons to believe the
DOJs arguments more, why don't you state them, instead of pretending that it's obvious that Kaplan
was right because the DOJ said so.
And your argument about everything being available
elsewhere is blatantly wrong. I've several DVDs
with material that is not commercially available
in other forms. Including additional material
included on many DVDs where the movie itself is
available in other formats.
I believe the best response would be to refer to
the Larry Flynn case, and point out that the Supreme court has made exceedingly clear that however offensive someone find you or what you
do is irellevant when considering whether what
you have published in a specific instance under
judicial scrutiny is illegal or not.
It doesn't matter if 2600 publishes things the
DOJ or the judge doesn't like, or even if they publish stuff thats illegal, since the courts
mandate is only to decide whether the linking to
decss is legal or not.
Slashdot Mirror
No it wasn't. The only "method" employed was that they discussed them, and voted until they got a reasonable consensus.
You forget that if they do stuff like that they'll break tons of other apps as well, and people will be screaming in outrage about their payroll application which stopped working when they "upgraded" Windows.
Alternatively, you can run VNC on the Linux box together with the app, and let them use a VNC client or even a webbrowser (with Java) to get access to the application that way.
What more do you want from them?
So except for ".info" and ".biz", which are completely general purpose, I expect that several of the new TLDs will have rules in place to prevent trademark owners from controlling everything (at least beyond whatever the courts may impose on them).
To see what the new TLDs will be doing, go to ICANNs website, and look for the contract appendices that are being posted - ICANN have started posting the contract appendices for the suggested contracts with the new TLDs. Not everything is there yet, as they are being added after ICANN feels the documents in question have reached an acceptable state.
That's what ".name" is for. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders of the company that was awarded .name). Take a look at www.theglobalname.org.
".name" is specifically intended for personal names (whether real, or for fictional characters
or nicknames).
Won't work. They have to be specifically delegated from the root servers.
Ehmm., The entire purpose of the "embedded Mozilla" initiative is to reduce footprint...
Anyway, I happen to like the flexibility of Mozilla, and prefer it over Galeon any day
And for some reason you seem to believe that IE doesn't apply stylesheets, or do any of the other stuff that complicates Mozillas rendering. Why is that? IE certainly tries to implement the same standards as Mozilla. It's just that it fails miserably in it.
And if they'd "just made a fast browser" they'd be burning in hell once the Next-Big-Thing(tm) comes along, and it takes ages to implement because they didn't have any solid abstractions etc. to implement it on top of.
Anyway, on my machine Mozilla is noticeably faster than Netscape 4.x, and the current build I'm running is more stable too. And for me IE is a non-issue - I refuse to resort to Windows.
The numbering changes doesn't affect you as a user. It is only a signal to people that wish to use Mozilla in some other product of the status of the project. It's more a matter of reducing the chance of having all the people waiting to package Mozilla into distributions or other software rushing off and distributing a version that is buggier than needed.
AOL can try all they want, but if Aimsters developers are reasonably experienced then they should always have away around it.
However choosing either language depends on what experience you have available in your organization, and on personal preference much more than on the languages themselves.
And the main reason it might be easier to get Perl developers is because Perl is much older. PHP, on the other hand, is catching up fast.
And to many C/C++ developers like me, PHP is a lot more familiar and easy to learn, and a lot less irritating, than Perl.
For applications that require frequent exchanges of data back and forth, achieving high throughput may not be feasible with that latency, but for applications that only care about pushing a high amount of data one way, and getting occasional confirmations of what arrived ok and what needs to be retransmitted, it should work fine.
Besides, what do you think will happen if this goes in there, and the movie and music industry starts pushing software vendors into putting support for this into important encoders and players (such as Windows Media Player), forcing the user to use a device with this functionality enabled, or not be able to store the data at all?
Sure, there will be encoders and players that couldn't care less, but if the average Windows user insists on having it on their drive so they can download the newest movie clips or songs, then harddrive manufacturers will put it on their drives.
It may not end up on every single disk, but it can certainly become a nuisance enough if it is implemented on many enough drives.
It's not like missile tests and other launches aren't made all the time as it is. If they were to get all excited over every missile taking off, then we'd have had World War III a long time ago.
As someone else pointed out to me, they are actually launching from the Barents sea, north of Murmansk. But that's likely because they are launching to a near polar orbit. So you're right that they're likely saving fuel, allthough not from the rotational speed of the earth. But I agree that for most customers, launching from equator is probably a major cost cutting factor with using the submarine launcher.
Actually I bothered to reread the release, and in this case the Barents Sea makes more sense than Baikonur because it is further north, as they are launching it to a near polar orbit. I guess my argument for sea launches should have said that it allows the use of a launch site that better fits the mission, rather than specifically launches that benefit from near-equator launches.
That still doesn't invalidate the general case for sea launches though...
As long as the alternative is to bring huge amounts of fuel and burn it over a short period, you will have a point where it for longer distances will be significantly cheaper to build a solar sail powered ship with a sail large enough to get you to your target in the same amount of time.
And keep in mind that nothing prevents you from for instance using a two stage system, where you do a short, intense burn using a normal engine first, and then deploy the solar sails afterwards to continue acceleration for the remainder of the trip.
First of all, the Russians do their land based launches from Baikonur, which is relatively far north. Normally, you'd prefer to do launches close to equator to get the maximal benefit of earth rotation. The Russians incur a lot of extra costs because of the position of Baikonur. (and this is also one of the reasons for the orbit MIR is in - they need to get it far enough north to be able to reach it cheaply from Baikonur). Launching from sea means they'll be able to launch from international waters and be independent of having their own land based launch areas near equator.
Second, there's strict international regulations on such launches, to prevent interference with aircraft. Which you should be happy about the next time you're flying anywhere... :) Launching from
sea simplifies things, because most traffic is
clustered around or between big cities, and the
further out at sea you go, the less flights will
pass through the area. So it reduces the administrational issues of ensuring no passenger
flights or other aircrafts pass right overhead
during the launch.
Environmental effects and other hazards are always an issue during rocket launches. The rocket can misfire, or explode. Parts may be hurtled through the area in the case of an accident. Dangerous materials or toxic gases may be released as a result of fire etc. Tons of things can go wrong. While it won't be good at sea either, at least you face less immediate threats to human life.
You also lessen the environmental impact of indigneous animals etc. (which has been a major concern with ESAs Ariane launch site in Central America).
Why should be care about preserving what's essentially barren rock, with perhaps a few microbes? I'd much rather see it made useful for mankind by terraforming.
I believe the most important point is that if responding, either they will have to admit that certain versions aren't violating the DMCA, or they will have to claim that poems, images and English textual descriptions (among others) are violations of the DMCA - which will be next to impossible to get a judge to accept, and may possibly lead the judge to see source code as expressive and protected under the first amendment as well, since the leap is very short between many of the versions, and any line drawn would immediately.
If anything, a ton of law professors disagree with them (see the amicus briefs submitted in support of 2600), as do a multitude of media organisations, dr's and other notabilities in the area of computer science, and several well respected organisations in support of free speech.
You may just dismiss their arguments out of hand - but there's no reason to view the DOJs arguments as any more valid just because they're from the DOJ. If you have specific reasons to believe the DOJs arguments more, why don't you state them, instead of pretending that it's obvious that Kaplan was right because the DOJ said so.
And your argument about everything being available elsewhere is blatantly wrong. I've several DVDs with material that is not commercially available in other forms. Including additional material included on many DVDs where the movie itself is available in other formats.
It doesn't matter if 2600 publishes things the DOJ or the judge doesn't like, or even if they publish stuff thats illegal, since the courts mandate is only to decide whether the linking to decss is legal or not.