I've got some lineo products
on
Lineo near Death
·
· Score: 5, Informative
They sell, among other things, a full linux compatible embedded system that fits completely on a single simm chip (30 and 72 pin varieties). Along with 10mbps ethernet, there are several I/O lines available for interfacing with the outside world. The systems I have run at 33mhz and use extremely low power as well as a sleep mode that uses even less. Basically, it can easily function off of nothing more than a small solar cell. It only needs something like 70 mA at 3.3 volts, even less if ethernet isn't being used.
The big problem with its design is, I don't think it scratches a big itch. Its primary useful application is for prototyping. Any company that makes embedded products might want to develop their software using such a device for testing, but if they plan to produce anything remotely resembling significant quantities, they'll lay out their own embedded design to better fit the application at hand.
Also, except in the tiny portable computer market, extremely low power doesn't make much sense. If the product being developed has no power restrictions tied to it (it gets power from the outlet for instance), then the entire advantage of this device is thrown out the window. I've done an analysis of the chips on their board, and it could be built for 1/4 the price if more power hungry versions were used instead. Also, if this device will be primarily used for prototyping, and there IS a market for such devices, there's no reason to make them work off solar cells. As long as they remain compatible with low power models, they'll be just as effective, and a whole lot cheaper in the long run. And if they're less expensive people will purchase a LOT more of them. Even the hobby market could support them if only they were priced more reasonably.
But regardless of all of that, face the fact, Lineo is a legacy dot com company. They spend more money than they have, and it shows.
Instead of expiring, how about building into all network code the capability to check for upgrades based on security holes. On a daily, weekly, or so basis, the program itself could check an internet database to see if there are security upgrades available and if so, NOTIFY THE SYSADMIN, and continue to notify the sysadmin until the problem is fixed, or the warning disabled.
I always check on my programs to see if they're up to date, but I miss some every once in a while. Its a pain to constantly keep track of everything all the time. If the programs themselves did this work, it would be a little less hassle.
And if the programs are unable to access those databases due to a lack of internet access, then it doesn't really matter anyways.
I'm all for bugging the crap out of sysadmins who are running exploitable programs. In fact, I'd imagine most of them would upgrade to fix their problems if only they were aware of them. Some won't obviously, but at least this is a saner solution than to have perfectly working code suddenly stop working just because there MIGHT be a problem with it.
I never played Everquest, and for good reason, but I did play Ultima Online after it was released. A LOT. A bare minimum of 8 hours a day on weekdays and Upwards of 16 hours a day on weekends. I dropped out of classes one semester because I didnt' want to stop playing long enough to go to class.
And the funny thing about it was, I HATED that game. It was driving me insane. The server crashes/timewarps/cheating/looting/disrepectful players/etc etc made the game extremely undesireable, and yet I wanted to play it all the more because of it. Talk about an addiction if I ever heard of one.
But one day I decided to quit, and I quit cold turkey, and never looked back. I never missed it, I never thought about firing it up just for a little while. I was done, I put it behind me, and I discovered Linux. Which is a whole different sort of addiction, but I digress.
However, I doubt the game, UO or everquest is to blame for any of mine, or anyone else's problems. You choose to play it. And if you choose to play it for hours a day, then you deserve what you get. Its sad to see someone drivin to suicide, but as the article clearly states, he had serious problems beyond the world of Everquest. To say that it was Everquest that pushed him over the edge is the same as blaming the gun someone uses to kill themselves with.
And what WARNING will Everquest put on its box anyways?? "This game is so much fun, you might get addicted?" It would probably work to their advantage to do so. It would be like warnings on cigarrete packs. Everyone knows they're gonna kill you, but millions of smokers ignore it anyways.
The service I have with nationwide.net specifically ALLOWS (and says so in big letters) reselling of bandwidth. Of course, I'm not paying the $45 a month chump fee either. The service costs me $200 a month. I get 16 static ip addy's and can get more if necessary for a negligible cost.
The problem here is that most people are trying to use the dsl/cable services that simply aren't designed with the intent to be resold. they're charging you assuming you WON'T be reselling the bandwidth, whereas I'm sold the service assuming that I will be, and charged appropriately.
Get the service you want. I'm sure there's someone in your area that will sell it to you, but you'll quit having to look at the bottom level prices to find it.
The best option if this is a service people would actually desire, is to convince the majority of neighborhoods to wire themselves up with high speed ethernet, making each subdivision one high speed local area network, then feed a few T1 lines into the area for upstream (add more as needed) and split the costs over the entire neighborhood. Then have wireless access points scattered throughout. then simply exchange services with other neighborhoods. They're allowed to access yours if you're allowed to access theirs, and you could cover an entire city this way with wireless and it costs nobody anything extra, so long as the user has their home wired SOMEWHERE.
I have to admit though, the only thing more pathetic than someone faking an editor's name to draw hits to his website, are the hoardes of idiots who blindly believe who it is on name alone (the user # obviously isn't a bold enough hint)
Hmmm, let's see, yes, I can still get any drugs I want to as easily as I can go buy good tomatoes at the grocery store.
Perhaps, but if you're pulled over, I'd rather have 100 CDR's full of pirated mp3's on the seat next to me than any amount of illegal drugs. I'd imagine that I could tell the police officer that those cdr's are illegal rips of music downloaded off the internet and assuming he isn't confused by the notion, he'd probably strike up a conversation about it, including his own music sharing habits.
Quick narrative introduction. Lots of fighting. Blade meets the vampires and hooks up with the blood pack. Lots of fighting. Decend into the sewer. Lots of fighting and ultraviolet explosions. Betrayal Double Betrayal More fighting. Even more fighting. Collection of reaper fetus' get shot up. More fighting. All the bad guys die. Mildly (not) Touching end scene where the girl vaporizes in the morning light. Credits.
I'm sorry if I spoiled the plot for anyone. That's just about all of it.
The idea of downloading a single copy of the show to a large local network, then redistributing it internally significantly reduces the bandwidth needs of the provider, as well as the corporate internet pipe needs. Internal networks are cheap. It makes sense to utilize them as much as possible. This way you get high quality video at a lower cost, a double faced benefit.
Of course its POSSIBLE. The average person doesn't HAVE to take a side. But this is slashdot. They've chosen to be biased. And that's ok. They favor linux and despise microsoft in all cases. So they have no reason to not support or denounce Blizzard based on that company's practices.
But for crying out loud, if you choose to take a side, STICK WITH IT. If you complain about the actions that Blizzard takes against innocent programmers, then you need to stand up for your claims by not purchasing, not playing, and not supporting their products, even if, and ESPECIALLY if, you enjoy them. Anyone who plays this game, or any other Blizzard game, loses their ability to effectively denounce them in the future. You don't want to put money into the pockets of your enemy.
Blizzard is a business after all. They might be sensitive to the public's opinion, but ultimately the only thing that affects their decision is their revenue stream.
A spammer.. bought a product frequently offered in spam.. was upset when they discovered that the spam they bought into was misrepresented.. and sued... most likely.. another spammer.
Keep it up guys.. This takes care of the email listing spams... has someone's sex drive not grown by 581%?? You need to start suing!
Before you sign any contract, read it first, and make sure that you agree with the terms and conditions, including any terms and conditions that may affect you in the future.
Same as any other contract.
I'm sure there's an amazing twist to this story that is different since it relates to employee contracts rather than other types of contracts. But as far as I can tell, when push comes to shove, either party of a contract might possibly use (or exploit) the contract to serve their best interests, whatever that may be.
While you law enforcement types are busy searching for child porn websites, instead of adding it to the list, why don't you make a phone call or two and have the site shut down, the owner raided, and take care of the problem. Obviously pursuing child porn is not too much of a problem, if yesterday's worldwide operation is any indication. So shut them down as you find them, and you don't have to have anyone censor anything.
Unless of course, not everything getting censored is actually child porn. A picture of a naked baby would not hold up as child porn in almost any jurisdiction, but that wouldn't keep such a website as getting marked as child porn.
And besides, how naive is law enforcement anyways? I know that the clueless minions that walk the planet think that "the web" is equivalent to "the internet" but its just not the case. Its but a small subset of it. And to think that any significant amount of child porn gets traded over open, publically accessible websites is just moronic. There's usenet, peer to peer, ftp sites, irc. Is PA going to be responsible for censoring all of those mediums as well? How exactly are they going to do that?
And even if we ONLY look at websites, are they going to have to also censor anonymous proxies in other states or countries? Oh well. At least it SOUNDS like they're doing something. Even though they're probably creating more of a hassle than problems they'll solve.
I do like the comment about simply not offering ISP access in PA. Find out how long that law lasts if NOBODY can access the internet because of it.:)
Sony packed up and left. Sure, they were violating the rules, whatever those were. Since nobody other than a competitior ever complained about it probably indicated it was one of those rules that are on the books but we don't want to waste the time taking off, but we'll happily look the other way if its broken.
They could have chosen to simply abide by the rules for the rest of the show. However, packing up and leaving made a more effective statement. At first, it sounds like they're just a bad sport, but consider this fact. They are widely visible going through the process of packing up their equipment and hauling it away. The article even made mention of that fact. A good percentage of the show attendees will see this happening and ask why. And everyone will tell them "Microsoft made them leave". It won't necessarily be 100% accurate, but thats the rumor that's going to go around for the rest of the show. And for the remainder of that show, the mention of Microsoft will leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. And a lot of people will leave and go on with their professional lives. They may not think any higher of sony. But they will think less of Microsoft. And Microsoft has fingers in the proverbial commercial pie far beyond the world of console gaming systems.
Technically, a handshake can be considered a legally binding contract. The only problem is, when you get to court and one side says something differently from the other, and there's nothing in writing to back it up, its difficult to enforce.
I'm not opposed to using email as a contract medium, as long as both sides agree that its legitimate. The problem is, when you're signing a contract for a one year ISP dialup service, its less significant if one of the parties fails to hold up their end of the bargian. When you're buying, or selling a house, car, or anything that costs more than the average person makes in a year, you want to make sure that the contract is as binding and unbreakable as possible, which means that NEITHER side should rely on email, espcially unsigned email as a legally binding contract.
Simple rule of thumb. When you're about to enter a contractual agreement, consider what will happen if the opposite party regegs on the agreement. Are you going to sue? If so, then make sure that the contract will hold up in court beyond any reasonable doubt. If you wouldn't bother sueing, then don't worry about it. A handshake is good enough. Or an email.
We'd prefer to bring in more revenue. We'd hate to have to change our business model to waste less money.
Oh, its not waste? Then why are we not profitable?
Oh, its R&D? This will pay off later? Is the CEO and other officers taking a significant paycut to help through these rough times?
This is just a MONEY CRUNCH.... nothing more. just buy more of our games and we're SURE to recover..... oh wait... my bad.. this is Mandrake, not Loki.
-Restil
No no no... you don't understand!!!
on
To The Pain
·
· Score: 5, Funny
You can't sue us because you got carpal tunnel syndrome. Thats a FEATURE OF THIS KEYBOARD!!! Marketing information has clearly shown that people who work with computer equipment WANT to be in pain.
Google pioneered the use of links to deducepages' relevance. Its PageRank technology counts a link from site A to site B as a vote for B from A. But it does not take account of all the other sites to which A has links, as NEC's new technique does.
I won't pretend to know all the inner workings of google's search engine technology. But I believe that google DOES care about other links from site A. This falls into the hub and authority model, which is definined recursively. A hub is a site that links to a lot of authority sites. An authority site is a site that is linked to by a lot of hubs. Basically, authorities provide the content, and hubs provide links to the content. In this example, B is an authority site, and A is a hub.
The way the ranking works, is that if B is linked to by a large number of quality hub sites, then it has a respectively large quality rating. Likewise, if a hub links to a large quantity of high quality authority sites, then its quality will also be ranked highly as a result.
This also allows Google to provide links to sites even if the search terms don't match the content of that site. A hub that links to a lot of sites about cars will relate cars to ALL the links regardless if the word "car" is included on the site that is provided.
Of course, I'm not THAT familiar with google. Its possible I'm full of bunk. But I'm pretty sure it works this way to some extent and that google does pay attention to the hub based links.
That simple economics makes sense? If your prices are too high then the demand from those with less disposable cash will be lower. And if you lower your prices, more people might buy your product. If you make your product available to those who are in the education product, then they will be educated in the use of YOUR product, thereby making your product more valuable to those that might need to utilize your product later.
The student that buys Autocad (or whatever) isn't buying it to use it commercially. He's buying it so he can learn to use it. This means, later when companies are making CAD software purchases, and more of their potential employees know Autocad, what do you think makes more sense? Use the software everyone already knows how to use, or pay for training to use software that nobody is familiar with.
For every copy a student purchases, they're purchasing a lifetime of corporate upgrades for your product. TRY to see the big picture here. Even if they warez your software, the end result is the same. Despite what the BSA might be telling us, most corporations of significant size don't make company policy for widescale piracy. They're going to buy the needed software, and they'll be paying through the nose for it, all to the benifit of the software companies that provide it. But they won't be giving the money to YOU if everyone learns to use someone else's software.
If a service accuses you of plagiarism, it is up to an actual human being to then compare the student's work to the suspected document to be sure. To simply accuse someone without supporting evidence is asking for trouble.
There could very likely be false positives. There would probably have to be to some extent. It can't look for perfect matches, as simply changing the name would be enough to thwart that detection. And if it matches too closely, any common phrase of more than seven or eight words, while somewhat unlikely, is certainly not beyond the realm of reason. Any legitimate quoting could set this off easily.
It would also be difficult to detect the student who did a little bit of work and paraphrased the paper. While all the topics, references, and issues would be the same, the entire paper would be written with different words, and a simple grep would be practically useless. And you can't exactly do matches on topic, since likely that much WOULD be in common between the two papers.
Likely the service is in place to detect the obvious cheaters. And since it and other similar systems seem to be finding quite a few, its probably not unjustified. Even more so when hoardes of the accused don't come up screaming about it later.
I had a desktop computer 15 years ago. I can still read the media from it. Granted, 5 1/4 floppy drivess aren't exactly sold new in stores anymore, but I guarantee I can still find one if I need to. I worry more about the media itself being unreadable due to age rather than not having the required equipment to read it.
Is it really such a difficult project to simply upgrade your digital storage as time goes on? Even though people might see this as a waste of time, consider your savings in storage. Converting old media, especially old magnetic tapes (think nasa) to newer, longer lasting, and SMALLER media formats, just makes sense. Nasa isnt' going to suddenly quit collecting data, its going to continue. The savings in physical storage space alone would make it worth the effort. The fact that this information will then continue to be accessible for generations to come is just a benifitial side effect.:)
We need to get all the stars that have large planets identified as such, and hopefully all of the large planets in such solar systems. Then as our equipment gets better we'll be able to focus on even smaller changes, which will allow us to pick up earth sized planets or smaller.
Also of interest are planets in habitable zones, even large ones. Moons around larger planets could work as well as earth does in the right orbit. Of course, being in such close proximity to a massive planet could present other problems, as massive bodies are more likely to attract other significantly sized rocks, as well as a LOT of radiation if there is a significant magnetic field.
Slashdot Mirror
They sell, among other things, a full linux compatible embedded system that fits completely on a single simm chip (30 and 72 pin varieties). Along with 10mbps ethernet, there are several I/O lines available for interfacing with the outside world. The systems I have run at 33mhz and use extremely low power as well as a sleep mode that uses even less. Basically, it can easily function off of nothing more than a small solar cell. It only needs something like 70 mA at 3.3 volts, even less if ethernet isn't being used.
The big problem with its design is, I don't think it scratches a big itch. Its primary useful application is for prototyping. Any company that makes embedded products might want to develop their software using such a device for testing, but if they plan to produce anything remotely resembling significant quantities, they'll lay out their own embedded design to better fit the application at hand.
Also, except in the tiny portable computer market, extremely low power doesn't make much sense. If the product being developed has no power restrictions tied to it (it gets power from the outlet for instance), then the entire advantage of this device is thrown out the window. I've done an analysis of the chips on their board, and it could be built for 1/4 the price if more power hungry versions were used instead. Also, if this
device will be primarily used for prototyping, and there IS a market for such devices, there's no reason to make them work off solar cells. As long as they remain compatible with low power models, they'll be just as effective, and a whole lot cheaper in the long run. And if they're less expensive people will purchase a LOT more of them.
Even the hobby market could support them if only they were priced more reasonably.
But regardless of all of that, face the fact, Lineo is a legacy dot com company. They spend more money than they have, and it shows.
-Restil
Instead of expiring, how about building into all
network code the capability to check for upgrades based on security holes. On a daily, weekly, or so basis, the program itself could check an internet database to see if there are security upgrades available and if so, NOTIFY THE SYSADMIN, and continue to notify the sysadmin until the problem is fixed, or the warning disabled.
I always check on my programs to see if they're up to date, but I miss some every once in a while. Its a pain to constantly keep track of everything all the time. If the programs themselves did this work, it would be a little less hassle.
And if the programs are unable to access those databases due to a lack of internet access, then it doesn't really matter anyways.
I'm all for bugging the crap out of sysadmins who are running exploitable programs. In fact, I'd imagine most of them would upgrade to fix their problems if only they were aware of them. Some won't obviously, but at least this is a saner solution than to have perfectly working code suddenly stop working just because there MIGHT be a problem with it.
-Restil
I never played Everquest, and for good reason, but I did play Ultima Online after it was released. A LOT. A bare minimum of 8 hours a day on weekdays and Upwards of 16 hours a day on weekends. I dropped out of classes one semester because I didnt' want to stop playing long enough to go to class.
And the funny thing about it was, I HATED that game. It was driving me insane. The server crashes/timewarps/cheating/looting/disrepectful players/etc etc made the game extremely undesireable, and yet I wanted to play it all the more because of it. Talk about an addiction if I ever heard of one.
But one day I decided to quit, and I quit cold turkey, and never looked back. I never missed it, I never thought about firing it up just for a little while. I was done, I put it behind me, and I discovered Linux. Which is a whole different sort of addiction, but I digress.
However, I doubt the game, UO or everquest is to blame for any of mine, or anyone else's problems. You choose to play it. And if you choose to play it for hours a day, then you deserve what you get. Its sad to see someone drivin to suicide, but as the article clearly states, he had serious problems beyond the world of Everquest. To say that it was Everquest that pushed him over the edge is the same as blaming the gun someone uses to kill themselves with.
And what WARNING will Everquest put on its box anyways?? "This game is so much fun, you might get addicted?" It would probably work to their advantage to do so. It would be like warnings on cigarrete packs. Everyone knows they're gonna kill you, but millions of smokers ignore it anyways.
-Restil
This should have been marked as Funny. Its more appropriate that way.
-Restil
The service I have with nationwide.net specifically ALLOWS (and says so in big letters) reselling of bandwidth. Of course, I'm not paying the $45 a month chump fee either. The service costs me $200 a month. I get 16 static ip addy's and can get more if necessary for a negligible cost.
The problem here is that most people are trying to use the dsl/cable services that simply aren't designed with the intent to be resold. they're charging you assuming you WON'T be reselling the bandwidth, whereas I'm sold the service assuming that I will be, and charged appropriately.
Get the service you want. I'm sure there's someone in your area that will sell it to you, but you'll quit having to look at the bottom level prices to find it.
-Restil
The best option if this is a service people would actually desire, is to convince the majority of neighborhoods to wire themselves up with high speed ethernet, making each subdivision one high speed local area network, then feed a few T1 lines into the area for upstream (add more as needed) and split the costs over the entire neighborhood. Then have wireless access points scattered throughout. then simply exchange services with other neighborhoods. They're allowed to access yours if you're allowed to access theirs, and you could cover an entire city this way with wireless and it costs nobody anything extra, so long as the user has their home wired SOMEWHERE.
-Restil
Yay.. someone who noticed.
I have to admit though, the only thing more pathetic than someone faking an editor's name to draw hits to his website, are the hoardes of idiots who blindly believe who it is on name alone (the user # obviously isn't a bold enough hint)
*sigh*
-Restil
Hmmm, let's see, yes, I can still get any drugs I want to as easily as I can go buy good tomatoes at the grocery store.
Perhaps, but if you're pulled over, I'd rather have 100 CDR's full of pirated mp3's on the seat next to me than any amount of illegal drugs. I'd imagine that I could tell the police officer that those cdr's are illegal rips of music downloaded off the internet and assuming he isn't confused by the notion, he'd probably strike up a conversation about it, including his own music sharing habits.
-Restil
Quick narrative introduction.
Lots of fighting.
Blade meets the vampires and hooks up with the blood pack.
Lots of fighting.
Decend into the sewer.
Lots of fighting and ultraviolet explosions.
Betrayal
Double Betrayal
More fighting.
Even more fighting.
Collection of reaper fetus' get shot up.
More fighting.
All the bad guys die.
Mildly (not) Touching end scene where the girl vaporizes in the morning light.
Credits.
I'm sorry if I spoiled the plot for anyone. That's just about all of it.
-Restil
I got 50% of it before it slowed to a crawl and finally stopped alltogether. If only I got it all, I'd host a mirror.
*sigh*
-Restil
The idea of downloading a single copy of the show to a large local network, then redistributing it internally significantly reduces the bandwidth needs of the provider, as well as the corporate internet pipe needs. Internal networks are cheap. It makes sense to utilize them as much as possible. This way you get high quality video at a lower cost, a double faced benefit.
-Restil
Of course its POSSIBLE. The average person doesn't HAVE to take a side. But this is slashdot. They've chosen to be biased. And that's ok. They favor linux and despise microsoft in all cases. So they have no reason to not support or denounce Blizzard based on that company's practices.
But for crying out loud, if you choose to take a side, STICK WITH IT. If you complain about the actions that Blizzard takes against innocent programmers, then you need to stand up for your claims by not purchasing, not playing, and not supporting their products, even if, and ESPECIALLY if, you enjoy them. Anyone who plays this game, or any other Blizzard game, loses their ability to effectively denounce them in the future. You don't want to put money into the pockets of your enemy.
Blizzard is a business after all. They might be sensitive to the public's opinion, but ultimately the only thing that affects their decision is their revenue stream.
-Restil
A spammer.. bought a product frequently offered in spam.. was upset when they discovered that the spam they bought into was misrepresented.. and sued... most likely.. another spammer.
Keep it up guys.. This takes care of the email listing spams... has someone's sex drive not grown by 581%?? You need to start suing!
-Restil
Before you sign any contract, read it first, and make sure that you agree with the terms and conditions, including any terms and conditions that may affect you in the future.
Same as any other contract.
I'm sure there's an amazing twist to this story that is different since it relates to employee contracts rather than other types of contracts. But as far as I can tell, when push comes to shove, either party of a contract might possibly use (or exploit) the contract to serve their best interests, whatever that may be.
Read carefully. And know what you're signing.
-Restil
While you law enforcement types are busy searching for child porn websites, instead of adding it to the list, why don't you make a phone call or two and have the site shut down, the owner raided, and take care of the problem. Obviously pursuing child porn is not too much of a problem, if yesterday's worldwide operation is any indication.
:)
So shut them down as you find them, and you don't have to have anyone censor anything.
Unless of course, not everything getting censored is actually child porn. A picture of a naked baby would not hold up as child porn in almost any jurisdiction, but that wouldn't keep such a website as getting marked as child porn.
And besides, how naive is law enforcement anyways? I know that the clueless minions that walk the planet think that "the web" is equivalent to "the internet" but its just not the case. Its but a small subset of it. And to think that any significant amount of child porn gets traded over open, publically accessible websites is just moronic. There's usenet, peer to peer, ftp sites, irc. Is PA going to be responsible for censoring all of those mediums as well? How exactly are they going to do that?
And even if we ONLY look at websites, are they going to have to also censor anonymous proxies in other states or countries? Oh well. At least it SOUNDS like they're doing something. Even though they're probably creating more of a hassle than problems they'll solve.
I do like the comment about simply not offering ISP access in PA. Find out how long that law lasts if NOBODY can access the internet because of it.
-Restil
Sony packed up and left. Sure, they were violating the rules, whatever those were. Since nobody other than a competitior ever complained about it probably indicated it was one of those rules that are on the books but we don't want to waste the time taking off, but we'll happily look the other way if its broken.
They could have chosen to simply abide by the rules for the rest of the show. However, packing up and leaving made a more effective statement. At first, it sounds like they're just a bad sport, but consider this fact. They are widely visible going through the process of packing up their equipment and hauling it away. The article even made mention of that fact. A good percentage of the show attendees will see this happening and ask why. And everyone will tell them "Microsoft made them leave". It won't necessarily be 100% accurate, but thats the rumor that's going to go around for the rest of the show. And for the remainder of that show, the mention of Microsoft will leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. And a lot of people will leave and go on with their professional lives. They may not think any higher of sony. But they will think less of Microsoft. And Microsoft has fingers in the proverbial commercial pie far beyond the world of console gaming systems.
-Restil
Technically, a handshake can be considered a legally binding contract. The only problem is, when you get to court and one side says something differently from the other, and there's nothing in writing to back it up, its difficult to enforce.
I'm not opposed to using email as a contract medium, as long as both sides agree that its legitimate. The problem is, when you're signing a contract for a one year ISP dialup service, its less significant if one of the parties fails to hold up their end of the bargian. When you're buying, or selling a house, car, or anything that costs more than the average person makes in a year, you want to make sure that the contract is as binding and unbreakable as possible, which means that NEITHER side should rely on email, espcially unsigned email as a legally binding contract.
Simple rule of thumb. When you're about to enter a contractual agreement, consider what will happen if the opposite party regegs on the agreement. Are you going to sue? If so, then make sure that the contract will hold up in court beyond any reasonable doubt. If you wouldn't bother sueing, then don't worry about it. A handshake is good enough. Or an email.
-Restil
Very simple.
We'd prefer to bring in more revenue. We'd hate to have to change our business model to waste less money.
Oh, its not waste? Then why are we not profitable?
Oh, its R&D? This will pay off later? Is the CEO and other officers taking a significant paycut to help through these rough times?
This is just a MONEY CRUNCH.... nothing more. just buy more of our games and we're SURE to recover..... oh wait... my bad.. this is Mandrake, not Loki.
-Restil
You can't sue us because you got carpal tunnel syndrome. Thats a FEATURE OF THIS KEYBOARD!!! Marketing information has clearly shown that people who work with computer equipment WANT to be in pain.
-Restil
Google pioneered the use of links to deducepages' relevance. Its PageRank technology counts a link from site A to site B as a vote for B from A. But it does not take account of all the other sites to which A has links, as NEC's new technique does.
I won't pretend to know all the inner workings of google's search engine technology. But I believe that google DOES care about other links from site A. This falls into the hub and authority model, which is definined recursively. A hub is a site that links to a lot of authority sites. An authority site is a site that is linked to by a lot of hubs. Basically, authorities provide the content, and hubs provide links to the content. In this example, B is an authority site, and A is a hub.
The way the ranking works, is that if B is linked to by a large number of quality hub sites, then it has a respectively large quality rating. Likewise, if a hub links to a large quantity of high quality authority sites, then its quality will also be ranked highly as a result.
This also allows Google to provide links to sites even if the search terms don't match the content of that site. A hub that links to a lot of sites about cars will relate cars to ALL the links regardless if the word "car" is included on the site that is provided.
Of course, I'm not THAT familiar with google. Its possible I'm full of bunk. But I'm pretty sure it works this way to some extent and that google does pay attention to the hub based links.
-Restil
That simple economics makes sense? If your prices are too high then the demand from those with less disposable cash will be lower. And if you lower your prices, more people might buy your product. If you make your product available to those who are in the education product, then they will be educated in the use of YOUR product, thereby making your product more valuable to those that might need to utilize your product later.
The student that buys Autocad (or whatever) isn't buying it to use it commercially. He's buying it so he can learn to use it. This means, later when companies are making CAD software purchases, and more of their potential employees know Autocad, what do you think makes more sense? Use the software everyone already knows how to use, or pay for training to use software that nobody is familiar with.
For every copy a student purchases, they're purchasing a lifetime of corporate upgrades for your product. TRY to see the big picture here.
Even if they warez your software, the end result is the same. Despite what the BSA might be telling us, most corporations of significant size don't make company policy for widescale piracy. They're going to buy the needed software, and they'll be paying through the nose for it, all to the benifit of the software companies that provide it. But they won't be giving the money to YOU if everyone learns to use someone else's software.
-Restil
If a service accuses you of plagiarism, it is up to an actual human being to then compare the student's work to the suspected document to be sure. To simply accuse someone without supporting evidence is asking for trouble.
There could very likely be false positives. There would probably have to be to some extent. It can't look for perfect matches, as simply changing the name would be enough to thwart that detection. And if it matches too closely, any common phrase of more than seven or eight words, while somewhat unlikely, is certainly not beyond the realm of reason. Any legitimate quoting could set this off easily.
It would also be difficult to detect the student who did a little bit of work and paraphrased the paper. While all the topics, references, and issues would be the same, the entire paper would be written with different words, and a simple grep would be practically useless. And you can't exactly do matches on topic, since likely that much WOULD be in common between the two papers.
Likely the service is in place to detect the obvious cheaters. And since it and other similar systems seem to be finding quite a few, its probably not unjustified. Even more so when hoardes of the accused don't come up screaming about it later.
-Restil
To clean fix the page widening.
I had a desktop computer 15 years ago. I can still read the media from it. Granted, 5 1/4 floppy drivess aren't exactly sold new in stores anymore, but I guarantee I can still find one if I need to. I worry more about the media itself being unreadable due to age rather than not having the required equipment to read it.
:)
Is it really such a difficult project to simply upgrade your digital storage as time goes on? Even though people might see this as a waste of time, consider your savings in storage. Converting old media, especially old magnetic tapes (think nasa) to newer, longer lasting, and SMALLER media formats, just makes sense. Nasa isnt' going to suddenly quit collecting data, its going to continue. The savings in physical storage space alone would make it worth the effort. The fact that this information will then continue to be accessible for generations to come is just a benifitial side effect.
-Restil
We need to get all the stars that have large planets identified as such, and hopefully all of the large planets in such solar systems. Then as our equipment gets better we'll be able to focus on even smaller changes, which will allow us to pick up earth sized planets or smaller.
Also of interest are planets in habitable zones, even large ones. Moons around larger planets could work as well as earth does in the right orbit. Of course, being in such close proximity to a massive planet could present other problems, as massive bodies are more likely to attract other significantly sized rocks, as well as a LOT of radiation if there is a significant magnetic field.
-Restil