My recollection is that Microsoft settled before it went to trial. Yes, I believe that really damning evidence that would have been useful in this case was dug up in the preparation of that case. But the private, pre-trial settlement makes
the bulk of that evidence unavailable.
Interestingly some commentators pointed out that Gates stepped down and Ballmer took over within days of the DR-DOS settlement. They suggested that his resignation was one of the clauses of this settlement.
Where do you put the washrooms? Do you make the
non-smokers walk through the smoking section to get to the washrooms? That doesn't work for me.
Or, do you put the washrooms in the non-smoking section? And if so, how do you make sure the smokers kill their smokes before they walk through?
There is a social cost to smoking that is not born by the smoker. For instance, smoking raises the cost of everyone's health insurance.
I found the DOJ lawyer disappointingly weak too. He does not seem to understand key underlying issues.
I find the Microsoft lawyer's speaking style very annoying. Anyone else suspect that his very slow, deliberate speaking style is intended to waste time? The more he stretches out his replies, the fewer actual issues the court will be able to address?
I have been listening to the internet broadcast of the Microsoft appeal. During the lunch break and coffee break C-Span has invited comments from telephone callers.
A number of them have said. "I have been using computers for N years. I know what I like. I tried Netscape. It doesn't support all the web-pages I go too. I went back to Internet Explorer by choice. Therefore
Microsoft hasn't done anything wrong."
They seem unaware that Microsoft's browser and
its web-page generation tools support the same
non-standard extensions. These callers seem unaware that their support of Microsoft reinforces the DOJ's argument that Microsoft used predatory tactics to suppress fair competition.
Re:Does anyone else find it odd
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 1
Well, so long as we are being pedantic,
since a watt is a kilogram meter squared per
second cubed, I think it qualifies as a metric
or S.I. unit.
Amazon is (was?) the darling of those who wanted
to invest in "e-business". To attract those
investors does Amazon need to be well run at the
technical level? Or is it just the outer surface
the only thing that counts. You can find a lot
of articles critical of Amazon at
www.seatleweekly.com.
Let me share a reason. I worked for a publishing
company a year and a half ago. I contacted
Amazon to arrange to upload our backlist into
their system. I found their system for
constructing the package ambiguous, poorly
documented and poorly thought out.
But wait. It got worse. When I contacted them
to get a userid to upload to their server,
they gave out a very obvious userid, and a very
obvious password. This is the killer. Every
publisher shared the same userid and password!
See also: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.20.html#subj10.1
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.81.html#subj13.1
I can give some, hopefully interesting,
historical info.
About fifteen years ago I had some contact with
a pair of industrial VTRs in a workshop where
they were used for frame-by-frame animation in
the making of television commercials. Those
VTRs had something called a SMPTE port. SMPTE
is short for "Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers". SMPTE's web-site is
www.smpte.org. The workshop had an adapter
that converted the SMPTE port of these VTRs to
something that plugged into an IBMPC. I can't
remember whether it was converted to serial or
parallel. This was a plain old XT, so there
was no MIDI port. These VTRs used one-inch tape,
and SMPTE timing codes were striped into the
vertical blanking interval.
What was I supposed to be working on with these devices? Mastering a videodisc cost $100,000
in those days. I was told by my boss that
this guy wanted to demonstrate branching video
to investors in order to raise that $100,000.
My job was to write a program that could
direct the video out of one VTR to the TV
monitor, while fast-forwarding
the other VTR to the next decision point on the tape.
I assumed that this was some kind of
educational application. Wrong. About two
weeks into this project I learned it was
intended for some
kind of soft-core pornography! So I quit. None
of the women I knew would have ever talked with
me again if they knew I was working in the pornographic film industry.
In the psychology lab where I worked ten years
ago we ended up buying a VCR that cost over two
grand, that came with software to control it via
a serial cable. The microprocessor inside the
VCR was able to report back to the controlling
computer at 1200 bps.
I never had the time to play with this device.
Goldarnit.
My recollection from reading the manual was that
the microcomputer inside the VCR had several
dozen commands in its command language. But I
don't recall that any of them provided access to
the VCR's list of programs to tape.
I think if you read the article a little more closely you will see that they searched for these bacteria in hot-springs and geysers, where the ambient temperature was over 130 degrees. They
needed to search for them in these unusual environments because they don't survive under
more normal conditions.
I find the idea of putting bacteria capable of
digesting the CO2 from industrial stacks
interesting. But can one do with a sludge of dead,
carbon-rich,
cyanobacteria? Animal feed? Fertilizer? Bury
it in old coal mines?
I have the same question about carbon-banking
in general. You plant a forest, and you lock
up some carbon for a couple of dozen years. But
then those trees mature, and are harvested, or
get burnt down in a forest fire, or fall over
and simply rot away. Eventually all that carbon
is just released.
There was an article in Wired magazine a couple
of months ago, about fertilizing anomalously
dead areas of the world's oceans. IIRC the
world's oceans have areas full of oxygen, and
short of nutrients, and then there are deeper,
colder layers full of nutrients and short of
oxygen. Where the deep cold currents are forced
to upwell, like at the Grand Banks, you get
areas full of life.
The hero of the Wired story
had found some areas of the ocean that _should_
have had more biological activity. He wondered
whether those parts of the ocean lacked some
essential mineral. If so, he figured that we
could lock up carbon on a much more long-lasting
basis. IIRC he had an experimental project to
fertilize these dead patches with Iron. If the
project was successful then microscopic marine
life would lock up calcium carbonate in their
little exoskeletons, die, then fall the bottom
of the ocean.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly some commentators pointed out that Gates stepped down and Ballmer took over within days of the DR-DOS settlement. They suggested that his resignation was one of the clauses of this settlement.
The settlement was about thirteen months ago.
Where do you put the washrooms? Do you make the non-smokers walk through the smoking section to get to the washrooms? That doesn't work for me. Or, do you put the washrooms in the non-smoking section? And if so, how do you make sure the smokers kill their smokes before they walk through?
There is a social cost to smoking that is not born by the smoker. For instance, smoking raises the cost of everyone's health insurance.
I find the Microsoft lawyer's speaking style very annoying. Anyone else suspect that his very slow, deliberate speaking style is intended to waste time? The more he stretches out his replies, the fewer actual issues the court will be able to address?
A number of them have said. "I have been using computers for N years. I know what I like. I tried Netscape. It doesn't support all the web-pages I go too. I went back to Internet Explorer by choice. Therefore Microsoft hasn't done anything wrong."
They seem unaware that Microsoft's browser and its web-page generation tools support the same non-standard extensions. These callers seem unaware that their support of Microsoft reinforces the DOJ's argument that Microsoft used predatory tactics to suppress fair competition.
Well, so long as we are being pedantic, since a watt is a kilogram meter squared per second cubed, I think it qualifies as a metric or S.I. unit.
Let me share a reason. I worked for a publishing company a year and a half ago. I contacted Amazon to arrange to upload our backlist into their system. I found their system for constructing the package ambiguous, poorly documented and poorly thought out.
But wait. It got worse. When I contacted them to get a userid to upload to their server, they gave out a very obvious userid, and a very obvious password. This is the killer. Every publisher shared the same userid and password!
See also: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.20.html#subj10.1
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.81.html#subj13.1
I can give some, hopefully interesting, historical info.
About fifteen years ago I had some contact with a pair of industrial VTRs in a workshop where they were used for frame-by-frame animation in the making of television commercials. Those VTRs had something called a SMPTE port. SMPTE is short for "Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers". SMPTE's web-site is www.smpte.org. The workshop had an adapter that converted the SMPTE port of these VTRs to something that plugged into an IBMPC. I can't remember whether it was converted to serial or parallel. This was a plain old XT, so there was no MIDI port. These VTRs used one-inch tape, and SMPTE timing codes were striped into the vertical blanking interval.
What was I supposed to be working on with these devices? Mastering a videodisc cost $100,000 in those days. I was told by my boss that this guy wanted to demonstrate branching video to investors in order to raise that $100,000. My job was to write a program that could direct the video out of one VTR to the TV monitor, while fast-forwarding the other VTR to the next decision point on the tape.
I assumed that this was some kind of educational application. Wrong. About two weeks into this project I learned it was intended for some kind of soft-core pornography! So I quit. None of the women I knew would have ever talked with me again if they knew I was working in the pornographic film industry.
In the psychology lab where I worked ten years ago we ended up buying a VCR that cost over two grand, that came with software to control it via a serial cable. The microprocessor inside the VCR was able to report back to the controlling computer at 1200 bps.
I never had the time to play with this device. Goldarnit.
My recollection from reading the manual was that the microcomputer inside the VCR had several dozen commands in its command language. But I don't recall that any of them provided access to the VCR's list of programs to tape.
I think if you read the article a little more closely you will see that they searched for these bacteria in hot-springs and geysers, where the ambient temperature was over 130 degrees. They needed to search for them in these unusual environments because they don't survive under more normal conditions.
I have the same question about carbon-banking in general. You plant a forest, and you lock up some carbon for a couple of dozen years. But then those trees mature, and are harvested, or get burnt down in a forest fire, or fall over and simply rot away. Eventually all that carbon is just released.
There was an article in Wired magazine a couple of months ago, about fertilizing anomalously dead areas of the world's oceans. IIRC the world's oceans have areas full of oxygen, and short of nutrients, and then there are deeper, colder layers full of nutrients and short of oxygen. Where the deep cold currents are forced to upwell, like at the Grand Banks, you get areas full of life.
The hero of the Wired story had found some areas of the ocean that _should_ have had more biological activity. He wondered whether those parts of the ocean lacked some essential mineral. If so, he figured that we could lock up carbon on a much more long-lasting basis. IIRC he had an experimental project to fertilize these dead patches with Iron. If the project was successful then microscopic marine life would lock up calcium carbonate in their little exoskeletons, die, then fall the bottom of the ocean.