This is also a problem with Replay TV units. If a show goes over the 30/60 minute mark, then you can't record some other show that begins even 1 second earlier. Though it is evil on the part of the networks to do such a thing on purpose, the fault for the problem lies with the developer of the Replay TV/Tivo software.
The Replay TV unit's conflict resolution facility is nonexistent. It's totally pathetic. If you try to schedule a show that conflicts with another, it simply asks "do you really want to do this?" and that's it. That's fine if the shows completely overlap, but it's really lame for it to behave this way if the shows only overlap by one minute. There is no good reason it can't skip the first minute of a 60 minute show and simply record the remaining 59 minutes!
What's worse is that the unit may not detect scheduling conflicts at the moment you create the recording schedule, because sometimes shows change timeslots. If you tell it to do so, it will record your show at any time, but if it ends up conflicting with another show you have scheduled to record, then it is undefined which one will win the conflict. I can't count the number of times I've missed recording something important because it unexpectedly conflicted with my kid's Elmo recording or somesuch. You should be able to prioritize shows, so that the ones you really, really want don't get preempted by some other crappy show.
My VCR, which I finally decommissioned this week after a year of non-use, lame though it may be, does not suffer from these problems. It actually has reasonable behavior when two shows collide. It lets you schedule them both, and records whichever happens to 1) start first, or 2) be at the top of the recording list. So this ancient dinosaur of a device has solved the problem perfectly and simply, and my top of the line technology doesn't even have the most basic ability to deal with scheduling problems. What will it take to get these guys to implement such an obvious solution?
I wouldn't use that word to describe Firefly. I thought it was mediocre, and somewhat forced. The space western aspect was a little over the top, clearly the result of some TV exec saying, "I know, let's mix genres and we'll have something new and fresh!" It was better than any sci-fi on TV at that time, except farscape, but that doesn't make it "superb".
A friend of mine at Valve tells me that they will be releasing a HalfLife2 update to add in the missing deathmatch functionality! I didn't buy HL2, because that's the part of the original HL that I really loved.
For those of you who are wondering what this is about, the new HL2 doesn't have deathmatch ability. The only multiplayer support currently is team-mode Counterstrike. This is a pretty fundamental thing to leave out, and is pretty much the only real criticism of the game I've read so far. Once deathmatch arrives, I'll be buying HL2 immediately.
Sorry this is slightly offtopic, but I thought it might be of interest to those of you reading this article thread. I was given no timeframe, except for the word "soon". That can mean anything, but at least it's on the way.
Wrong on all three counts. A close relative of mine knows Rumsfeld and has worked closely with the Secretary of Defense's office directly. My best friend was offered (and declined) a job answering to Rumsfeld, but still spends time in the Pentagon. I think I have a little insight. To say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz or any of the PNAC a-holes actually control Bush is silly. They have his ear, certainly, but it's hard to say just how much Bushie really subscribes to their doctrine. He probably hasn't even read PNAC all the way through.:)
Rumsfeld may be one of the most layoff-proof members of the cabinet, but even he has his limits of failure. Don't be surprised if he buys it if the Iraq situation doesn't improve.
I think you're being a little unfair on Rumsfeld here.
Am I *really*? Rumsfeld is the one who was given the latitude to take Iraq however he felt best. That's his job. He overrode the skilled, experienced military planners/commanders in the Pentagon regularly over things like troop counts, he had no plan for occupying, no plan for exiting, and so on. These are his albatross, circling his head of his own accord.
Such conspiracy theories are bullshit. PNAC does not tell George Bush what to do. I hate him greatly, but I'm not so blinded as to believe that kind of hogwash about him. That's not to say that he doesn't like PNAC or agree with it - I have no idea - but to say they're pulling the strings is garbage. Bush did what he wanted to do, and gave Rummy the power to do his job in the process. Rummy fucked it up, plain and simple, and needs to go.
You may be right about Powell, but it's still a load of crap. Rumsfeld should be the very first to go, even before Asscroft. He's a bumbling idiot, too naive and careless to be filling his seat. How many soldiers have died because he didn't listen when the military told him they need more troops than he was sending? Or because he stupidly believed that the Iraqis would welcome the US with open arms and occupying the country would be easy? And so on, and so on. He can't even open his mouth in a press conference any more without putting his foot in his mouth. It's time to retire him, the same way we retire an old nag of a horse with a lame leg.
Yesterday David Boies (SCO's lead attorney) was on the Ronn Owens show on KGO-AM, taking calls from listeners. The topic was supposed to be his new book, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear his justification for his horrible work with SCO. So I called and asked him.
He seemed a little daunted by my opening, in which I told him I had lost all respect for him. When faced with the question of "Why!?", he predictably said "everyone's entitled to a defense". Never mind that SCO's on the *offense*... His justification basically boiled down to the simple, "the courts will decide if SCO's claims are legitimate". In other words, he doesn't give a shit. He just wants the money, win or lose.
I have worked with attorneys before, more than once, and the ones I worked with didn't want a case unless it seemed somewhat meaningful, and definitely very winnable. The money was important, but reputation was moreso. Bad reputation translates to less money for the shortsighted, quite often.
I guess this simply shows he's a whore, moreso than most attorneys.
This is a weak argument by Google. Saying that this tool is only for single-user systems is just a cover for laziness. Why in hell would an operating system implement a system of file permissions if security weren't an issue? Since the tool functions the same whether or not the system is single-user, Google is implicitly admitting they're lazy and don't care if their software can be used to spy on others. I don't see a problem with a tool that indexes all users' files, but I do have a problem if it doesn't restrict file listings when used by non-administrators. How hard could that be to implement?!
You're not playing devil's advocate, your point is just irrelevant. The original poster's point is that there are plenty of security holes that have nothing to do with downloading third party software. You can get compromised by reading your email, visiting websites (there are dozens of known vulnerabilities) or even having your computer sitting idle on the Internet, all of which have nothing to do with downloading third party software. A firewall is moot for the first two, and irrelevant for the third, because as soon as you take away the firewall the machine's toast w/o downloading a thing. Putting a NAT router in front of Windows doesn't fix it, it just masks the problem Bill Gates says isn't there.
but the only real issues with the old OS were the use of co-operative rather than pre-emptive multitasking (and that was only a problem with programs that didn't multitask at all), and the lack of protected memory
An OS is a toy without real multitasking and virtual memory. Not to say hokey OSes can't have good apps, but that doesn't change the fact that they're primitive. These two features of any modern OS are what makes a *real* OS. It's not just for computer science, it's for: apps that can't kill each other with bad pointers, or just simply seriously corrupt each other's memory space; demand paging, so your app doesn't have to fit entirely into memory with all the others, and so it runs with decent speed; scheduling, so two things can happen at once; etc. Unix was the only way to go for serious computing until Windows and Mac supported these fundamental minimum requirements of a decent OS. And Unix has been doing these basic things since before the Mac or Windows even existed.
Of course, an OS can suck even with these features, which is why Windows is, even now, totally unacceptable as far as I'm concerned.
The zoom feature isn't too helpful for me, but saving the terms to a.term is an excellent idea. In fact, I put that into my startup. Many thanks for that one. That solves the problem for console sessions, at least, but not necessarily other apps. No biggee, seems I'm whittling away at most of the minor issues I have with the Mac GUI.
Not that fond of expose, though. Helpful for finding lost windows, but I still love Desktop Manager too much.
especially when (by design) windows open up with the previous shape and position you closed them at, not some nebulous 'best fit' locale.
Actually, they don't. If they did, I'd be happy. I use 3 terminals simultaneously, side by side, and they must be placed precisely or they don't fit. And they do not go to their previous placement, by any stretch. I have 6 virtual desktops (using Desktop Manager), each with its own use. It's kind of sorry that Mac OS doesn't even support a notion of virtual desktops, and that they leave it up to third parties to fix.
how do powermacs and xserves address 8 gigs of ram without 64-bit addressing?
The Apple marketing materials sneakily make it seem like the OS truly supports 64 bit addressing, when in fact it doesn't. You can put in 8 gigs of RAM, but no single process can actually use it all. The OS uses it for caching, and multiple processes can share it, but that's as far as it goes. Individual processes can only address 32 bits of that 64 bit space, so no one process can actually address all the RAM in the machine. So if you have some serious computing to do that requires more than a few gigs of RAM, you're pretty much stuck using Linux on AMD Opteron. Apple is testing 10.4, which I believe actually allows true 64 bit addressing by applications.
That's pretty funny. I had dinner and drank with him too. The topic of the dinner was supposed to be particular subjects, and all he could talk about was food and wine while he ate rather lavishly on someone else's dime. Every time the subject was gently moved to the topic supposedly at hand, he moved it back to food and wine. He was clearly just there for a freebie.
Linux kernel doesn't have all the stuff the Darwin kernel has. I think it's ridiculous that you are suggesting that they would switch a nice kernel that they have complete control over to a third party kernel they don't have control over which doesn't even have the same features.
You make it sound like Mac OS is more "advanced" than Linux. While Linux has its share of problems, it also supports plenty of things that Mac OS does not. And given Steve Jobs' bullheadedness, Mac OS may never support some things that Linux does.
Take, for example, the most obvious of things - 64 bit addressing. Linux has supported it for a while, but it's still a gleam in Mac OSes eye. Actually, I think they're in alpha test right now. How long has the Mac had a 64 bit processors? Years. And they still don't support them for real. I love Mac OS, but let's not think that Mac OS is truly as far along as Linux. It's quite frankly not as mature as Linux, given how long it's been running in its current form.
Each OS supports things the other doesn't, so you can't really say which is best, or most advanced. But, I can tell you that the Mac OS GUI is downright primitive compared to, say, KDE or Gnome. More polished, perhaps, but it's got a long way to go in the features department. For example, when you open a window in Mac OS, it doesn't look for open space on your desktop, it just plops the window on top of others, forcing you to move it. KDE/Gnome find the best placement for new windows. Obvious. Mac OS doesn't support snap, which means that if you want to place two windows right next to each other, you have to move them a pixel at a time until it's just right. A real hassle. KDE/Gnome use snap, which causes windows to automatically stick to each other when they get within a few pixels. Again, an obvious improvement. One that's been out there forever, and Mac OS *should* support, but doesn't. I can go on for a long time with this stuff, but you get the point.
And don't think I'm Apple-bashing here. I'm not. In fact, I'm typing this very message on a PowerBook. But they do have a long way to go to beat out the Linux/X combination.
That "wizard" over at PCMag, John Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at where that prediction has gone.
I met Dvorak recently, and I have to say, he's very difficult to talk to. He's one of those guys who has no ability to just listen. A poor quality in a journalist. I found it very frustrating. His opinions aren't total crap, though. I think he's wrong WRT Mac OS, but he would have been right if Apple hadn't finally gotten a real OS by now. Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows. Now it's for real, and it's serious. Microsoft has a long way to go if they hope to rival it.
Gee Bill, what about Mac OS? Considering how good that OS is these days, not to mention the Mac hardware, you probably shouldn't turn your back on it in a dark alley. I think it'll be here 10 years from now.
Lucas is quoted as saying that he never intends to re-release the original 3 movies in the first CNN link.
Guess we'll have to do it for him. Well, not me personally, but I'm sure someone else will do so/has done so.
When I was a kid, somehow one of my friends got a copy of Star Wars on VHS (in the '78 timeframe). It was obviously illicit, and very low quality. But we watched it 14 times in a row at his overnight birthday party, and it was a blast. No forgery of the original, no matter how high-quality, even if Lucas himself has made it, will ever be the same as the original.
Do the right thing, George. Put the original on DVD or the nerds will do it for you. Do you want to control it, establish the quality, and collect the proceeds, or do you want someone else to? Not even an army of jackbooted thugs wielding walkie-talkies can stop it!
But someone can take it, add something to it ("on the internet", "with a computer" or "wireless") and patent the whole thing.
Didn't I say "consider all the ways that thing can be used"? If we follow your reasoning, no patent would ever hold water because someone else could just "add something" to it and suddenly it's novel.
In any case, you can't just add something new and patent the whole thing and expect it to go anywhere. You have to add something substantial, or the patent is narrow and not of much use; i.e. only those claims with novel concepts are of use. Claims containing previously known concepts merely fill in the bigger picture, but are not in-and-of-themselves enforcible intellectual property.
You can't patent something that's already been conceived by someone else. You simply need to invent an idea and describe it in extreme detail. Consider all the ways that thing can be used. Just describing the widget isn't enough; describe the widget's potential uses. Commit this to paper, note the inventors and dates, preferably notarized, and publish it to the web in a very public way for all to see. Voila, that thing can never be patented.
If enough people did this, especially in a centralized place like a devoted website, we'd have a lot less stupid business method/software patents. Head them all off at the pass, starting now!
I don't see any value in this for military uses. Using biomass for generating power, by itself, does have military and civilian uses galore, especially if it uses stuff that's generally put to waste. But doing so on a very small scale to power a silly robot seems goofy, to say the least. We already have a solution for powering devices over long periods on a relatively small scale. It's called solar power. I can't imagine that rotting flies would provide any more power than solar, especially when you work in the power-to-weight/size ratio of the hardware. Solar does have the drawback of not producing power during darkness, bad weather, etc., but so does fly power. Flies don't fly at night, and they're generally unavailable during storms too. The robot could store them for later, but solar essentially does the same using batteries. A fly powered robot will also need batteries or a fuel cell of some sort to ensure constant power.
But Rick Berman should be permanently retired with a bullet to the head. He's the source of most of the problems, IMHO. He has no clue what Star Trek is and should be. There are millions of talented, creative fans out there, many of which could do a superior job running the creative side of the franchise. Berman's lack of ability would be irrelevant if they could just harness some fan power to replace him and others who have lost, or never had, the right stuff.
This gives all new meaning to the term...
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 3, Funny
...China syndrome. At least this way, the sizzling ball of radioactivity won't have to burn all the way through the earth's core to get there.
Slashdot Mirror
This is also a problem with Replay TV units. If a show goes over the 30/60 minute mark, then you can't record some other show that begins even 1 second earlier. Though it is evil on the part of the networks to do such a thing on purpose, the fault for the problem lies with the developer of the Replay TV/Tivo software.
The Replay TV unit's conflict resolution facility is nonexistent. It's totally pathetic. If you try to schedule a show that conflicts with another, it simply asks "do you really want to do this?" and that's it. That's fine if the shows completely overlap, but it's really lame for it to behave this way if the shows only overlap by one minute. There is no good reason it can't skip the first minute of a 60 minute show and simply record the remaining 59 minutes!
What's worse is that the unit may not detect scheduling conflicts at the moment you create the recording schedule, because sometimes shows change timeslots. If you tell it to do so, it will record your show at any time, but if it ends up conflicting with another show you have scheduled to record, then it is undefined which one will win the conflict. I can't count the number of times I've missed recording something important because it unexpectedly conflicted with my kid's Elmo recording or somesuch. You should be able to prioritize shows, so that the ones you really, really want don't get preempted by some other crappy show.
My VCR, which I finally decommissioned this week after a year of non-use, lame though it may be, does not suffer from these problems. It actually has reasonable behavior when two shows collide. It lets you schedule them both, and records whichever happens to 1) start first, or 2) be at the top of the recording list. So this ancient dinosaur of a device has solved the problem perfectly and simply, and my top of the line technology doesn't even have the most basic ability to deal with scheduling problems. What will it take to get these guys to implement such an obvious solution?
The US doesn't own mars.
I guess they're hard up for programming in South Africa.
I wouldn't use that word to describe Firefly. I thought it was mediocre, and somewhat forced. The space western aspect was a little over the top, clearly the result of some TV exec saying, "I know, let's mix genres and we'll have something new and fresh!" It was better than any sci-fi on TV at that time, except farscape, but that doesn't make it "superb".
A friend of mine at Valve tells me that they will be releasing a HalfLife2 update to add in the missing deathmatch functionality! I didn't buy HL2, because that's the part of the original HL that I really loved.
For those of you who are wondering what this is about, the new HL2 doesn't have deathmatch ability. The only multiplayer support currently is team-mode Counterstrike. This is a pretty fundamental thing to leave out, and is pretty much the only real criticism of the game I've read so far. Once deathmatch arrives, I'll be buying HL2 immediately.
Sorry this is slightly offtopic, but I thought it might be of interest to those of you reading this article thread. I was given no timeframe, except for the word "soon". That can mean anything, but at least it's on the way.
Wrong on all three counts. A close relative of mine knows Rumsfeld and has worked closely with the Secretary of Defense's office directly. My best friend was offered (and declined) a job answering to Rumsfeld, but still spends time in the Pentagon. I think I have a little insight. To say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz or any of the PNAC a-holes actually control Bush is silly. They have his ear, certainly, but it's hard to say just how much Bushie really subscribes to their doctrine. He probably hasn't even read PNAC all the way through. :)
Rumsfeld may be one of the most layoff-proof members of the cabinet, but even he has his limits of failure. Don't be surprised if he buys it if the Iraq situation doesn't improve.
I think you're being a little unfair on Rumsfeld here.
Am I *really*? Rumsfeld is the one who was given the latitude to take Iraq however he felt best. That's his job. He overrode the skilled, experienced military planners/commanders in the Pentagon regularly over things like troop counts, he had no plan for occupying, no plan for exiting, and so on. These are his albatross, circling his head of his own accord.
Such conspiracy theories are bullshit. PNAC does not tell George Bush what to do. I hate him greatly, but I'm not so blinded as to believe that kind of hogwash about him. That's not to say that he doesn't like PNAC or agree with it - I have no idea - but to say they're pulling the strings is garbage. Bush did what he wanted to do, and gave Rummy the power to do his job in the process. Rummy fucked it up, plain and simple, and needs to go.
You may be right about Powell, but it's still a load of crap. Rumsfeld should be the very first to go, even before Asscroft. He's a bumbling idiot, too naive and careless to be filling his seat. How many soldiers have died because he didn't listen when the military told him they need more troops than he was sending? Or because he stupidly believed that the Iraqis would welcome the US with open arms and occupying the country would be easy? And so on, and so on. He can't even open his mouth in a press conference any more without putting his foot in his mouth. It's time to retire him, the same way we retire an old nag of a horse with a lame leg.
Yesterday David Boies (SCO's lead attorney) was on the Ronn Owens show on KGO-AM, taking calls from listeners. The topic was supposed to be his new book, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear his justification for his horrible work with SCO. So I called and asked him.
He seemed a little daunted by my opening, in which I told him I had lost all respect for him. When faced with the question of "Why!?", he predictably said "everyone's entitled to a defense". Never mind that SCO's on the *offense*... His justification basically boiled down to the simple, "the courts will decide if SCO's claims are legitimate". In other words, he doesn't give a shit. He just wants the money, win or lose.
I have worked with attorneys before, more than once, and the ones I worked with didn't want a case unless it seemed somewhat meaningful, and definitely very winnable. The money was important, but reputation was moreso. Bad reputation translates to less money for the shortsighted, quite often.
I guess this simply shows he's a whore, moreso than most attorneys.
This is a weak argument by Google. Saying that this tool is only for single-user systems is just a cover for laziness. Why in hell would an operating system implement a system of file permissions if security weren't an issue? Since the tool functions the same whether or not the system is single-user, Google is implicitly admitting they're lazy and don't care if their software can be used to spy on others. I don't see a problem with a tool that indexes all users' files, but I do have a problem if it doesn't restrict file listings when used by non-administrators. How hard could that be to implement?!
You're not playing devil's advocate, your point is just irrelevant. The original poster's point is that there are plenty of security holes that have nothing to do with downloading third party software. You can get compromised by reading your email, visiting websites (there are dozens of known vulnerabilities) or even having your computer sitting idle on the Internet, all of which have nothing to do with downloading third party software. A firewall is moot for the first two, and irrelevant for the third, because as soon as you take away the firewall the machine's toast w/o downloading a thing. Putting a NAT router in front of Windows doesn't fix it, it just masks the problem Bill Gates says isn't there.
You hit the nail on the head:
but the only real issues with the old OS were the use of co-operative rather than pre-emptive multitasking (and that was only a problem with programs that didn't multitask at all), and the lack of protected memory
An OS is a toy without real multitasking and virtual memory. Not to say hokey OSes can't have good apps, but that doesn't change the fact that they're primitive. These two features of any modern OS are what makes a *real* OS. It's not just for computer science, it's for: apps that can't kill each other with bad pointers, or just simply seriously corrupt each other's memory space; demand paging, so your app doesn't have to fit entirely into memory with all the others, and so it runs with decent speed; scheduling, so two things can happen at once; etc. Unix was the only way to go for serious computing until Windows and Mac supported these fundamental minimum requirements of a decent OS. And Unix has been doing these basic things since before the Mac or Windows even existed.
Of course, an OS can suck even with these features, which is why Windows is, even now, totally unacceptable as far as I'm concerned.
The zoom feature isn't too helpful for me, but saving the terms to a .term is an excellent idea. In fact, I put that into my startup. Many thanks for that one. That solves the problem for console sessions, at least, but not necessarily other apps. No biggee, seems I'm whittling away at most of the minor issues I have with the Mac GUI.
Not that fond of expose, though. Helpful for finding lost windows, but I still love Desktop Manager too much.
especially when (by design) windows open up with the previous shape and position you closed them at, not some nebulous 'best fit' locale.
Actually, they don't. If they did, I'd be happy. I use 3 terminals simultaneously, side by side, and they must be placed precisely or they don't fit. And they do not go to their previous placement, by any stretch. I have 6 virtual desktops (using Desktop Manager), each with its own use. It's kind of sorry that Mac OS doesn't even support a notion of virtual desktops, and that they leave it up to third parties to fix.
how do powermacs and xserves address 8 gigs of ram without 64-bit addressing?
The Apple marketing materials sneakily make it seem like the OS truly supports 64 bit addressing, when in fact it doesn't. You can put in 8 gigs of RAM, but no single process can actually use it all. The OS uses it for caching, and multiple processes can share it, but that's as far as it goes. Individual processes can only address 32 bits of that 64 bit space, so no one process can actually address all the RAM in the machine. So if you have some serious computing to do that requires more than a few gigs of RAM, you're pretty much stuck using Linux on AMD Opteron. Apple is testing 10.4, which I believe actually allows true 64 bit addressing by applications.
That's pretty funny. I had dinner and drank with him too. The topic of the dinner was supposed to be particular subjects, and all he could talk about was food and wine while he ate rather lavishly on someone else's dime. Every time the subject was gently moved to the topic supposedly at hand, he moved it back to food and wine. He was clearly just there for a freebie.
Linux kernel doesn't have all the stuff the Darwin kernel has. I think it's ridiculous that you are suggesting that they would switch a nice kernel that they have complete control over to a third party kernel they don't have control over which doesn't even have the same features.
You make it sound like Mac OS is more "advanced" than Linux. While Linux has its share of problems, it also supports plenty of things that Mac OS does not. And given Steve Jobs' bullheadedness, Mac OS may never support some things that Linux does.
Take, for example, the most obvious of things - 64 bit addressing. Linux has supported it for a while, but it's still a gleam in Mac OSes eye. Actually, I think they're in alpha test right now. How long has the Mac had a 64 bit processors? Years. And they still don't support them for real. I love Mac OS, but let's not think that Mac OS is truly as far along as Linux. It's quite frankly not as mature as Linux, given how long it's been running in its current form.
Each OS supports things the other doesn't, so you can't really say which is best, or most advanced. But, I can tell you that the Mac OS GUI is downright primitive compared to, say, KDE or Gnome. More polished, perhaps, but it's got a long way to go in the features department. For example, when you open a window in Mac OS, it doesn't look for open space on your desktop, it just plops the window on top of others, forcing you to move it. KDE/Gnome find the best placement for new windows. Obvious. Mac OS doesn't support snap, which means that if you want to place two windows right next to each other, you have to move them a pixel at a time until it's just right. A real hassle. KDE/Gnome use snap, which causes windows to automatically stick to each other when they get within a few pixels. Again, an obvious improvement. One that's been out there forever, and Mac OS *should* support, but doesn't. I can go on for a long time with this stuff, but you get the point.
And don't think I'm Apple-bashing here. I'm not. In fact, I'm typing this very message on a PowerBook. But they do have a long way to go to beat out the Linux/X combination.
That "wizard" over at PCMag, John Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at where that prediction has gone.
I met Dvorak recently, and I have to say, he's very difficult to talk to. He's one of those guys who has no ability to just listen. A poor quality in a journalist. I found it very frustrating. His opinions aren't total crap, though. I think he's wrong WRT Mac OS, but he would have been right if Apple hadn't finally gotten a real OS by now. Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows. Now it's for real, and it's serious. Microsoft has a long way to go if they hope to rival it.
Gee Bill, what about Mac OS? Considering how good that OS is these days, not to mention the Mac hardware, you probably shouldn't turn your back on it in a dark alley. I think it'll be here 10 years from now.
Lucas is quoted as saying that he never intends to re-release the original 3 movies in the first CNN link.
Guess we'll have to do it for him. Well, not me personally, but I'm sure someone else will do so/has done so.
When I was a kid, somehow one of my friends got a copy of Star Wars on VHS (in the '78 timeframe). It was obviously illicit, and very low quality. But we watched it 14 times in a row at his overnight birthday party, and it was a blast. No forgery of the original, no matter how high-quality, even if Lucas himself has made it, will ever be the same as the original.
Do the right thing, George. Put the original on DVD or the nerds will do it for you. Do you want to control it, establish the quality, and collect the proceeds, or do you want someone else to? Not even an army of jackbooted thugs wielding walkie-talkies can stop it!
But someone can take it, add something to it ("on the internet", "with a computer" or "wireless") and patent the whole thing.
Didn't I say "consider all the ways that thing can be used"? If we follow your reasoning, no patent would ever hold water because someone else could just "add something" to it and suddenly it's novel.
In any case, you can't just add something new and patent the whole thing and expect it to go anywhere. You have to add something substantial, or the patent is narrow and not of much use; i.e. only those claims with novel concepts are of use. Claims containing previously known concepts merely fill in the bigger picture, but are not in-and-of-themselves enforcible intellectual property.
You can't patent something that's already been conceived by someone else. You simply need to invent an idea and describe it in extreme detail. Consider all the ways that thing can be used. Just describing the widget isn't enough; describe the widget's potential uses. Commit this to paper, note the inventors and dates, preferably notarized, and publish it to the web in a very public way for all to see. Voila, that thing can never be patented.
If enough people did this, especially in a centralized place like a devoted website, we'd have a lot less stupid business method/software patents. Head them all off at the pass, starting now!
I don't see any value in this for military uses. Using biomass for generating power, by itself, does have military and civilian uses galore, especially if it uses stuff that's generally put to waste. But doing so on a very small scale to power a silly robot seems goofy, to say the least. We already have a solution for powering devices over long periods on a relatively small scale. It's called solar power. I can't imagine that rotting flies would provide any more power than solar, especially when you work in the power-to-weight/size ratio of the hardware. Solar does have the drawback of not producing power during darkness, bad weather, etc., but so does fly power. Flies don't fly at night, and they're generally unavailable during storms too. The robot could store them for later, but solar essentially does the same using batteries. A fly powered robot will also need batteries or a fuel cell of some sort to ensure constant power.
So where's the win here?
But Rick Berman should be permanently retired with a bullet to the head. He's the source of most of the problems, IMHO. He has no clue what Star Trek is and should be. There are millions of talented, creative fans out there, many of which could do a superior job running the creative side of the franchise. Berman's lack of ability would be irrelevant if they could just harness some fan power to replace him and others who have lost, or never had, the right stuff.
...China syndrome. At least this way, the sizzling ball of radioactivity won't have to burn all the way through the earth's core to get there.
...or he's going to end up needing that wheelchair for himself. If he lives.