"The first major commercial service that traces people's locations using their mobile phones -- mapAmobile -- is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
Now, admittedly, I didn't even RTFA, but how is easing the minds of suspicious bosses and worried parents not spying? Just because it is your employees or family you are watching does not mean you are not spying on them.
The complaint filed by SCO. Fairly interesting in a legal sort of way. An interesting segment from the complaint...
Limitations of Linux Before IBM's Involvement
82. Linux started as a hobby project of a 19-year old student. Linux has evolved through bits and pieces of various contributions by numerous software developers using single processor computers. Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use.
83. As long as the Linux development process remained uncoordinated and random, it posed little or no threat to SCO, or to other UNIX vendors, for at least two major reasons: (a) Linux quality was inadequate since it was not developed and tested in coordination for enterprise use and (b) enterprise customer acceptance was non-existent because Linux was viewed by enterprise customers as a "fringe" software product.
84. Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment.
85. For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts.
86. It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.
I was just looking around, found this on the SCO website. Seems like kind of a strange document for them to put up, especially when you look at the second to last paragraph, where it says
"SCO has yet to provide Gartner with specific details of stolen or misappropriated intellectual property. In Gartner's opinion, SCO's claim that IBM misappropriated trade secrets from AIX will be difficult to prove, because an enterprise OS consists of many components, including high-availability features, diagnostics, security, kernel hardening, scheduling and queue management."
Though it does go on to say, "However, one thing is certain: The community process is fraught with risk to users. How well does the open-source community examine its code and weed out potentially misappropriated intellectual property?"
Re:Very useful right away, let alone in the future
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There are already a lot of implantable devices for which power is a big concern. From simple things like pacemakers and sensors to more complex and experimental devices like artificial hearts, everything needs juice. One of the big problems, for instance, with some early devices is that in order to add more juice you had two bad options:
1. Have some sort of actual device sticking out of the body. This is bad, because it breaches the skin, our natural defensive screen, and such things tend to become very easily infected.
Couldn't you just recharge through induction? I'm pretty sure this is how my electric toothbrush recharges - no metal to metal contact, just the charger inducing a current which charges the battery in the toothbrush. Works through a few millimeters of plastic anyway, though I suppose the conductivity of skin might pose a problem.
Now I will finally have somewhere to use my 7-channel headphones and my mobile, solar-powered subwoofer. Everyone thought I was a moron when I got those headphones, "You only have two ears, you dumbass!" they would say, but who's laughing now!?!?
I'd say this camea is targeted more at professional photogrphers than vacationers. Imagine having one of these at a sporting event - you set up your laptop with an ftp server, then just click away continuously with your camera. No stopping to change film or change memory cards (though you may have to stop and change the battery at some point). It would be great. Same with any other event where you are confined to a relatively small area - weddings, etc. It would probably be pretty useless tot he casual vacation photographer, or anyone else who doesn't want to haul their laptop around with them.
We are charged the "wholesale" rate of $39.99 per month per ADSL line. We are charged $125 per CPE (equipment shipped to customer). SBC charges its ADSL customers $25/month for service, with no equipment charges. How can we compete with that? Our "wholesale" rate is almost double what SBC customers are being charged! In order to break even we have to charge $60/month and have a two year service agreement to recover the cost of the CPE. There is no way this can be called "fair competition".
Actually, we are charged $49.99 for ADSL from SBC. $25 was the introductory rate for the first three months or something. You are right though, the modem was free (as long as we don't break the one year contract).
Anyways I remember with Yahoo was "partnered" with altavista and it became big enough to be it's own search, hell I remember there being a "search more..." that would link to hotbot and other search engines of the day. Then there was the "partnership" with google, who became big and started to innovate after yahoo promoted them.
Wasn't Hotbot based on Inktomi? I thought I remembered that being the case. I used Inktomi for a while (after Lycos started having way too much advertising way back when, must have been 95 or 96 or something), then switched to Hotbot for a long time because it was faster (I had been under the impression it was based on an updated version of Inktomi), then switched to Google when Lycos took over Hotbot because all of a sudden Hotbot became a bitch to use. And yeah, Google was way better anyway.
I agree, but this argument won't hold for much longer. Now that kids are growing up with the computers and learning about them in school, we'll soon be reaching a technicalogical (I know, but I like that better than "technological") equiilibrium of sorts. The "new users" will have the know-how ingrained into them and will feel confident enough to say, "Fuck the bloat, I'm installing Mozilla (or Opera, or Lynx, or...)." They'll grow up knowing about computers just like kids in the sixties knew about cars.
I disagree. While it is true that the current crop of kids are growing up with computers in school, they are generally getting Macintosh or Windows 98/2000/XP. I would argue that learning on systems like this severely limits the understanding people have of how computers work, as they are designed so that you don't need to know how it works to use it. This ignorance of the fundamentals of how computers and software work (I'm not talking about computer architecture or programming, just the basics of installing programs and moving files around) makes people uncomfortable about messing around with their computer. These people will know how to use the computer, and the certain programs they are familiar with, but they will not really understand what they are doing and will be more likely to stick with whatever software comes with the computer rather than going out and installing better programs that might be out there. This is not to say that there won't be kids growing up to be programmers etc., just that the everyday user will have less and less understanding of how the computer works and will therefore be less and less comfortable changing things from their default settings.
The best way around this problem, I think, would be to encourage the use of operating systems that allow you to more easily (or directly) interact with the computer without layers of dumbing down between the user and the basic filesystem, etc. I grew up first using a Commodore, then progressing (hmm, was that really a progression?) to DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac (but only in school), and a variety of other desktop OSes. I sincerely believe that if I had grown up with Windows 98 or XP, or even if I had started out on whatever Macintosh OS, I would know a hell of a lot less about computers because I wouldn't have any need to know.
I have a 600-bit processor in my computer. While I'm sure a $16 processor would be nice, I'm not sure that I'd be willing to trade in my 600-bit processor for it.
Well, you have to be especially careful with those text-based games. The rapid pace of typing can give the youngsters who participate in such outrages unbelievable manual dexterity, dexterity that translates directly into shooting people with astounding skill. Rumor has it that evil terrorist organizations regularly train on such murderous classics as "Zork" and "Ms. Marple's Manor".
People who say things like "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." may be right but having no guns makes it a hell of a lot harder for these would be killers to go on killing sprees.
I would be content with outlawing handguns. Rifles have legitimate uses in hunting, etc. Handguns have one purpose and one purpose only: killing people. Handguns aren't even particularly good for self defence (statistically, anyway) - you are far, far more likely to kill yourself or a loved one by accident with a handgun than to prevent a crime on your property.
And in places like I grew up in Alaska, where lterraly every 10-year old has a rifle and several knives, we had zero problems with violence, because we were taught to have respect for damage that weapons can do.
So you are saying that those multiple murderers do so because they don't realize their weapons are causing harm to others? Somehow I don't think so. It probably has more to do with the fact that there are very few people in Alaska, and you are not forced to deal with them the same way as in most of the crowded cities and states in the U.S.
Water chemistry, temperature, lane rope & gutter design, floor & wall shapes, starting block design - there's a lot that goes into a world class pool. It could be argued that, with the pool, swimmers may have the largest equipment of all;).
Ever look at how much goes into the turf, natural or artificial, for football/soccer/baseball/ name your favourite field sport? There is a lot of technology going into making the surface as smooth and even as possible (there is absolutely nothing in the world like playing soccer on a field with natural turf that hs not a single bump in it - passes go where they should, balls bounce as you expect, etc. I hate astroturf though). So yeah, a pool is a big piece of equipment, but a soccer field is much bigger:)
I think this is a case where technology has really benefitted sports, where it is not the personal equipment that is being improved but the entire playing experience. A smoother, better cared for soccer pitch means a better game of soccer, with fewer rolled ankles and more precise passing than you can ever hope to find on a poorly built field.
There is a system similar to what you describe at the Exploratorium in S.F. It puts up an image, and tracks where your eyes are looking, then replays what you were looking at. Pretty cool. I was there a year ago or so with my girlfriend, and purposely concentrated on every female in the images (she hit me).
Although I can't check exactly what it says in the article (since they both seem to be/.ed already), i'm guessing that the new machine actually applies a much higher pressure than a jackhammer, not necessarily using more force. The water stream probably applies its force over a very small area, even smaller than a jackhammer does. While this would create a very high pressure (high stress) when it first impacts the concrete (or whatever material it is being used on), it is probably not actually all that much force. Not being able to read the article I can't be sure about this, but that would be my guess.
Does it recycle the water? seems like alot of water to be wasting. But since its the City or State that would be using, its ok to waste water. Altho there will still be 15 people standing around to "supervise" the two people required to run this machine.
This reminds me of a couple of summers I worked doing dorm maintenance at a local university. Every so often we had to powerwash all the walkways; this basically involved taking hot water (heated by a mobile oil furnace) and blasting it at the walkways at high pressure. It took one person to move the burner/compressor unit, and one person to do the actual spraying. We had a group of about ten people, a "team" that would go around working on projects together. So, while two people were out powerwashing, the rest of us would be sitting in one of the (empty) dorm rooms with the air conditioning blasting.
In heavily-populated areas, it's common to have a dozen or more legacy 802.11b signals, which tend to hog the bandwidth that would otherwise be available for.11g. Add in microwave ovens (which interfere massively on the same band), and many people will be lucky to see even 20 Mbits/sec.
I currently have a D-link extremeG wireless router, which supposedly conforms to the 802.11g standard (though obviously it was released before the standard was finalized, so it may or may not be fully compliant - it makes no actual claims of compliance on the box or in the manual, but it is obviously meant to be). Anyway, using it I almost always have a connection of at least 24 Mbps, even when it says I have poor connection quality. Of course, I don't live in an area that has a lot of wireless noise (hell, my cell phone barely works at my house), but even with the microwave running it seems to work fine. So yes, in an area with multiple existing 802.11b networks up and running there might be some problems, but for most people it will probably work fine. When I got my wireless router, it was the same price as.11b models, so at worst people will likely be getting equal performance for the same price, with many people getting superior performance for the same price as 802.11b.
The most advanced civilization that ruled the earth you stupid ignorant son of a bitch, we built the great pyramids that survived for thousands of years that you cant even replicate today, we controlled gravity, and we were so advanced in medicine that we had a doctor for the left eye and a doctor for the right eye go figure that out you, we taught the world how to farm, we are the essence of civilization and a never ending legacy.
How did this not get modded as a troll? The egyptians controlled gravity? wtf? What did they do, go and forget how to do it? Not building great pyramids is not the same as not being able to build great pyramids (besides, the largest pyramid in the world is located in the U.S. - its a casino, of course, and not made of stone, but it IS in the desert!). I could have sworn I learned that farming began in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which now lies in Iraq. Egyptians had a doctor for the left eye and for the right? What, the doctors weren't smart enough to figure out that they are pretty much the same? So, basically, you would consider the U.S. more civilized if we boasted doctors that did nothing but study the right pinky toe?
Okay, this post is a bit of a troll, but then, so is the parent.
After having seen first-hand websites with vaguely anti-american, pro-terrorism sentiments be shut down under the PATRIOT act and associated "homeland defense" laws, I'm having an increasingly difficult time trusting the US government to "respect" the average citizen's right to free speech.
"Everything you described sounds fine to me. You should enjoy your John Denver 8 Track, and feel free to copy it to other media. The only issue would be if you decided you wanted to download somebody else's copy of John Denver's Greatest Hits (which was likely from a CD, and a much higher audio quality). "
Dumbass! The John Denver fan asked him if it was a "license" or just a physical copy, he indicated it was a license and then proceeded to contradict himself! He proved that the RIAA wants to have their cake and eat it too; i.e. the product is only a license, until your copy breaks or wears out in which case you'll just have to buy a new one at full price.
While I generally agree with your viewpoint on this, it does raise some interesting points. Many of the albums that were released on older media (i.e., anything before CDs) were extensively remastered and reengineered when transferred to the new media. It raises the question of whether a CD and an 8-track of the same thing really should share the same license. The CD copy is undoubtedly of superior quality, but it is ultimately from the same original source as the 8-track. The question is, how much reengineering or remastering does it take before something is deserving of its own license?
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Now, admittedly, I didn't even RTFA, but how is easing the minds of suspicious bosses and worried parents not spying? Just because it is your employees or family you are watching does not mean you are not spying on them.
Limitations of Linux Before IBM's Involvement
82. Linux started as a hobby project of a 19-year old student. Linux has evolved through bits and pieces of various contributions by numerous software developers using single processor computers. Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use.
83. As long as the Linux development process remained uncoordinated and random, it posed little or no threat to SCO, or to other UNIX vendors, for at least two major reasons: (a) Linux quality was inadequate since it was not developed and tested in coordination for enterprise use and (b) enterprise customer acceptance was non-existent because Linux was viewed by enterprise customers as a "fringe" software product.
84. Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment.
85. For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts.
86. It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.
For a single user desktop system, anyway. Not that that is really any better.
Information is here.
I was just looking around, found this on the SCO website. Seems like kind of a strange document for them to put up, especially when you look at the second to last paragraph, where it says
"SCO has yet to provide Gartner with specific details of stolen or misappropriated intellectual property. In Gartner's opinion, SCO's claim that IBM misappropriated trade secrets from AIX will be difficult to prove, because an enterprise OS consists of many components, including high-availability features, diagnostics, security, kernel hardening, scheduling and queue management."
Though it does go on to say, "However, one thing is certain: The community process is fraught with risk to users. How well does the open-source community examine its code and weed out potentially misappropriated intellectual property?"
1. Have some sort of actual device sticking out of the body. This is bad, because it breaches the skin, our natural defensive screen, and such things tend to become very easily infected.
Couldn't you just recharge through induction? I'm pretty sure this is how my electric toothbrush recharges - no metal to metal contact, just the charger inducing a current which charges the battery in the toothbrush. Works through a few millimeters of plastic anyway, though I suppose the conductivity of skin might pose a problem.
Now I will finally have somewhere to use my 7-channel headphones and my mobile, solar-powered subwoofer. Everyone thought I was a moron when I got those headphones, "You only have two ears, you dumbass!" they would say, but who's laughing now!?!?
I'd say this camea is targeted more at professional photogrphers than vacationers. Imagine having one of these at a sporting event - you set up your laptop with an ftp server, then just click away continuously with your camera. No stopping to change film or change memory cards (though you may have to stop and change the battery at some point). It would be great. Same with any other event where you are confined to a relatively small area - weddings, etc. It would probably be pretty useless tot he casual vacation photographer, or anyone else who doesn't want to haul their laptop around with them.
Actually, we are charged $49.99 for ADSL from SBC. $25 was the introductory rate for the first three months or something. You are right though, the modem was free (as long as we don't break the one year contract).
Wasn't Hotbot based on Inktomi? I thought I remembered that being the case. I used Inktomi for a while (after Lycos started having way too much advertising way back when, must have been 95 or 96 or something), then switched to Hotbot for a long time because it was faster (I had been under the impression it was based on an updated version of Inktomi), then switched to Google when Lycos took over Hotbot because all of a sudden Hotbot became a bitch to use. And yeah, Google was way better anyway.
I disagree. While it is true that the current crop of kids are growing up with computers in school, they are generally getting Macintosh or Windows 98/2000/XP. I would argue that learning on systems like this severely limits the understanding people have of how computers work, as they are designed so that you don't need to know how it works to use it. This ignorance of the fundamentals of how computers and software work (I'm not talking about computer architecture or programming, just the basics of installing programs and moving files around) makes people uncomfortable about messing around with their computer. These people will know how to use the computer, and the certain programs they are familiar with, but they will not really understand what they are doing and will be more likely to stick with whatever software comes with the computer rather than going out and installing better programs that might be out there. This is not to say that there won't be kids growing up to be programmers etc., just that the everyday user will have less and less understanding of how the computer works and will therefore be less and less comfortable changing things from their default settings.
The best way around this problem, I think, would be to encourage the use of operating systems that allow you to more easily (or directly) interact with the computer without layers of dumbing down between the user and the basic filesystem, etc. I grew up first using a Commodore, then progressing (hmm, was that really a progression?) to DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac (but only in school), and a variety of other desktop OSes. I sincerely believe that if I had grown up with Windows 98 or XP, or even if I had started out on whatever Macintosh OS, I would know a hell of a lot less about computers because I wouldn't have any need to know.
I have a 600-bit processor in my computer. While I'm sure a $16 processor would be nice, I'm not sure that I'd be willing to trade in my 600-bit processor for it.
Well, you have to be especially careful with those text-based games. The rapid pace of typing can give the youngsters who participate in such outrages unbelievable manual dexterity, dexterity that translates directly into shooting people with astounding skill. Rumor has it that evil terrorist organizations regularly train on such murderous classics as "Zork" and "Ms. Marple's Manor".
I would be content with outlawing handguns. Rifles have legitimate uses in hunting, etc. Handguns have one purpose and one purpose only: killing people. Handguns aren't even particularly good for self defence (statistically, anyway) - you are far, far more likely to kill yourself or a loved one by accident with a handgun than to prevent a crime on your property.
So you are saying that those multiple murderers do so because they don't realize their weapons are causing harm to others? Somehow I don't think so. It probably has more to do with the fact that there are very few people in Alaska, and you are not forced to deal with them the same way as in most of the crowded cities and states in the U.S.
Ever look at how much goes into the turf, natural or artificial, for football/soccer/baseball/ name your favourite field sport? There is a lot of technology going into making the surface as smooth and even as possible (there is absolutely nothing in the world like playing soccer on a field with natural turf that hs not a single bump in it - passes go where they should, balls bounce as you expect, etc. I hate astroturf though). So yeah, a pool is a big piece of equipment, but a soccer field is much bigger:)
I think this is a case where technology has really benefitted sports, where it is not the personal equipment that is being improved but the entire playing experience. A smoother, better cared for soccer pitch means a better game of soccer, with fewer rolled ankles and more precise passing than you can ever hope to find on a poorly built field.
My Nokia BFG should arrive any day now...
There is a system similar to what you describe at the Exploratorium in S.F. It puts up an image, and tracks where your eyes are looking, then replays what you were looking at. Pretty cool. I was there a year ago or so with my girlfriend, and purposely concentrated on every female in the images (she hit me).
Although I can't check exactly what it says in the article (since they both seem to be /.ed already), i'm guessing that the new machine actually applies a much higher pressure than a jackhammer, not necessarily using more force. The water stream probably applies its force over a very small area, even smaller than a jackhammer does. While this would create a very high pressure (high stress) when it first impacts the concrete (or whatever material it is being used on), it is probably not actually all that much force. Not being able to read the article I can't be sure about this, but that would be my guess.
Yeah. In Las Vegas, for example, you aren't allowed to recreate more than one ocean per casino. Any more would just be wasteful.
This reminds me of a couple of summers I worked doing dorm maintenance at a local university. Every so often we had to powerwash all the walkways; this basically involved taking hot water (heated by a mobile oil furnace) and blasting it at the walkways at high pressure. It took one person to move the burner/compressor unit, and one person to do the actual spraying. We had a group of about ten people, a "team" that would go around working on projects together. So, while two people were out powerwashing, the rest of us would be sitting in one of the (empty) dorm rooms with the air conditioning blasting.
In heavily-populated areas, it's common to have a dozen or more legacy 802.11b signals, which tend to hog the bandwidth that would otherwise be available for .11g. Add in microwave ovens (which interfere massively on the same band), and many people will be lucky to see even 20 Mbits/sec.
.11b models, so at worst people will likely be getting equal performance for the same price, with many people getting superior performance for the same price as 802.11b.
I currently have a D-link extremeG wireless router, which supposedly conforms to the 802.11g standard (though obviously it was released before the standard was finalized, so it may or may not be fully compliant - it makes no actual claims of compliance on the box or in the manual, but it is obviously meant to be). Anyway, using it I almost always have a connection of at least 24 Mbps, even when it says I have poor connection quality. Of course, I don't live in an area that has a lot of wireless noise (hell, my cell phone barely works at my house), but even with the microwave running it seems to work fine. So yes, in an area with multiple existing 802.11b networks up and running there might be some problems, but for most people it will probably work fine. When I got my wireless router, it was the same price as
How did this not get modded as a troll? The egyptians controlled gravity? wtf? What did they do, go and forget how to do it?
Not building great pyramids is not the same as not being able to build great pyramids (besides, the largest pyramid in the world is located in the U.S. - its a casino, of course, and not made of stone, but it IS in the desert!).
I could have sworn I learned that farming began in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which now lies in Iraq.
Egyptians had a doctor for the left eye and for the right? What, the doctors weren't smart enough to figure out that they are pretty much the same? So, basically, you would consider the U.S. more civilized if we boasted doctors that did nothing but study the right pinky toe?
Okay, this post is a bit of a troll, but then, so is the parent.
Care to trouble us with any examples?
Conversely, just because you can question something does not mean it is not true.
Dumbass! The John Denver fan asked him if it was a "license" or just a physical copy, he indicated it was a license and then proceeded to contradict himself! He proved that the RIAA wants to have their cake and eat it too; i.e. the product is only a license, until your copy breaks or wears out in which case you'll just have to buy a new one at full price.
While I generally agree with your viewpoint on this, it does raise some interesting points. Many of the albums that were released on older media (i.e., anything before CDs) were extensively remastered and reengineered when transferred to the new media. It raises the question of whether a CD and an 8-track of the same thing really should share the same license. The CD copy is undoubtedly of superior quality, but it is ultimately from the same original source as the 8-track. The question is, how much reengineering or remastering does it take before something is deserving of its own license?