A lot of people question the wisdom of continuing the oil economy, there just aren't a lot of clear cut answers. There are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of people are working hard to make those possibilities a reality, but at the moment nothing is really ready to take oil's (and for that matter coal's) place in our energy production on a large enough scale. The real issue is that US dollars are no longer backed by gold but by oil. Oil is priced, bought and sold with dollars. This is how the dollar gets its value and one reason other governments must hold dollars as a reserve currency. It also allows the US government to print a lot of dollars without any ill effects as they are taken out of the US economy and held/spent abroad. They then are repatriated by being spent on US Treasury bonds which pays for the dollars being printed backwards. The US is like the ticket booth at a fair. It prints and sell the tickets while the rest of the world spends it on the rides. To eliminate oil is to effectively eliminate the dollar and to eliminate the dollar and replace it with another currency such as the euro is to effectively eliminate US sovereignty as its economic policies will no longer be solely its own. It may also lead the US to abandon its debt obligations to the peril of banks, Social Security, pensions etc. One should not cut off one of the branches that the world economy is sitting on without seriously considering the implications.
The problem is, some people will start throwing away 2 packets instead of 1 so that they can get more "throughput" on more limited hardware. Someone else will compete by tossing 3, and the arms race for data degradation will begin. Our routers go to 11
It means that ANYONE who dares to write a successful piece of software will be SCREWED as long as patents are allowed to be filed with ambiguous language and meanings that are open to interpretation.
...and not having software patents means if you write a succesful piece of software you are screwed because a big company can have some sweatshop in India produce a cheap knockoff of it and then outmarket you.
I think Java is a good example of why more powerful processors are neeeded. When Java first came out, a lot of companies had 99Mhz Pentiums and AWT based GUIs were not responsive enough. As the processors speed up, programs could then be written in a more straightforward manner instead of a less intuitive manner that executes faster. Also, CPU intensive features such as garbage collection can further lighten the load of what need to be coded.
Re:The less one makes declarative statements...
on
Genome Surprise
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· Score: 1
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -Charles H. Duell
"640k should be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates
"40,000" genes should be enough for anybody." - God
What is new is that physical access is not needed to compromise the JVM. What is needed is a computer that is not 100% reliable. Unless you want to argue that all computers connected to the Internet are reliable, there exists a security hole in current JVMs that is widely exploitable regardless of whether the design and implementation of the JVM is "proved" correct and secure. In order to acomplish this, one writes an Applet that is designed to exploit the fact that once in a while a bit gets accidently flipped. When such a bit flip occurs in a region of vulnerablility, the Applet will then have free reign on the machine. After writing such an Applet, one offers it to the world via a web page and some of the downloading machines may be compromised. If the downloading machine is overclocked, inadaquately cooled, connected to a noisy power line, or badly designed/constructed the probability of compromise will be much higher. If the machine is using ECC memory it should be a lot lower. This is quite significant since Sun has been touting Java as secure and assuring everyone that Applets are 100% safe and you should have no fear about letting them run on your machine. This does not seam to be the case and Applets seem to be slightly less then 100% safe which should fine for most everyone except the victims of course.
So how long before Hollywood forces them to add digital rights management so you can't steal the movie you just watched? I can see it now, you are only allowed to remember the movie for 3 days and then you have to go to the theatre again.
It would also make automating speeding tickets a lot easier. Just calcualate the time and distance between sensors and automatically generate a speeding ticket.
Yeah it sure does. I have this and it is a great help to watch the news in advance and plan my week accordingly. Right now I am off to buy some shovels, concrete and gas masks before the big rush.
A better business model for Gateway and companies that have access to a large amount of PCs idling might be to donate the spare cycles to a charity and take a tax break. There is not much downside to this and there are lots of upsides such as it does not acutally have to work very well to get the writeoff versus trying to make it profitable as well as being able to advertise how they are trying to make a difference.
I don't care if my boss is making a lot more money then I am and in fact I wish I could help make him even more money. I just don't like working long hours and then having everything thrown away to change direction ad infinitum. What I propose is a union that demands decent process, requirements and making sure documentation, QA, and customer support are part of the process from day one. Forget the money, I think what most people want is just to get rid of the disfunctional elements that prevent us from doing our jobs.
It looks like the music industry is finally coming to its senses and is acknowleging that people want their music as files. I believe that EMI can succeed with this as they have the opportunity to provide quality files that can be downloaded reliably and quickly. As long as the consumer perceives these files to be reasonably priced this should work. Right now downloading music is a crap shoot and a lot of times all you end up with is crap. Instead of wasting my time downloading files where half never make it to completion and those that do are not labeled very well which wastes my time even further to clean them up, I am guaranteed to wind up with what I was expecting. They could make things even more attractive by providing a program to download, re-download, and organize the music files which would save a lot of people from having to buy shareware versions of these programs in the first place. Even better they could pay commisions to those that write their own superior programs and give them away. To further make themselves more attractive to people that are wary of paying for music, they could partner with other companies and redeem music for points obtained by buying other goods such as books, airline tickets, gas(petrol) etc.
This system would work as long as everyone stays creative and does not try to get too greedy or autocratic.
Maybe I can use one of your RF pipes to make my cell phone secure. I could just run one to the house and plug my cell phone into that and no one can listen to my calls.
When you download "See My Boobies One More Time", Britney and her record company are only being deprived of income if you would have bought the album without the P2P service. In fact, with P2P you might check out more of the album, like it, and wind up buying it when you wouldn't have done so if your only exposure was the two overplayed songs on the radio.
For some artists such as Britney, the record companies are paying a lot of money to promote them and because of this a lot of fans have opportunities to hear the music and decide if they like the song or album. If they then decide to obtain the song(s) through Kazaa rather then buying them they are definitely causing economic loss to the record companies and assuming the record company has bad accountants and the artist has good lawyers, the artist as well. But for the rest of the artists, I do not believe that the record companies are spending any money to promote them and pay the radio stations to play their songs which means that the file trading networks are in effect offering free and much needed marketing to the artists and their record companies. Of course if this does not lead to album sales there is economic loss for the labels and artists but hopefully this free marketing leads to greater album sales and is a win-win for everyone. Just consider how many people regularly have an opportunity to here Frank Sinatra. If they are interested in finding out if they like his music or not they can download the songs and if they do wind up liking the songs and want to continue listening to them they are ethically bound to purchase the music. Are the record labels promoting the older artists and most of the new artists in good faith or are they all dumping their marketing dollars on one or two artists to the detriment of the other artists and listeners? I believe that an argument can be made that banning music trading may in fact cause economic harm to the majority of artists for the reason stated above so we should not be so quick to act without seriously thinking this through and make sure that in the end that our laws will truly protect the majority of artists as well as enable the minority of artists to keep on making their well deserved money.
Slashdot Mirror
Statisticians also plot their bell curves on Euclidean planes instead of curved space time.
If Sun threatens to appeal Kodak can retaliate by asking for a cease and desist order against Java.
I would not worry too much about this since it is probably just some enhancements for national security purposes.
I think Java is a good example of why more powerful processors are neeeded. When Java first came out, a lot of companies had 99Mhz Pentiums and AWT based GUIs were not responsive enough. As the processors speed up, programs could then be written in a more straightforward manner instead of a less intuitive manner that executes faster. Also, CPU intensive features such as garbage collection can further lighten the load of what need to be coded.
What is new is that physical access is not needed to compromise the JVM. What is needed is a computer that is not 100% reliable. Unless you want to argue that all computers connected to the Internet are reliable, there exists a security hole in current JVMs that is widely exploitable regardless of whether the design and implementation of the JVM is "proved" correct and secure. In order to acomplish this, one writes an Applet that is designed to exploit the fact that once in a while a bit gets accidently flipped. When such a bit flip occurs in a region of vulnerablility, the Applet will then have free reign on the machine. After writing such an Applet, one offers it to the world via a web page and some of the downloading machines may be compromised. If the downloading machine is overclocked, inadaquately cooled, connected to a noisy power line, or badly designed/constructed the probability of compromise will be much higher. If the machine is using ECC memory it should be a lot lower.
This is quite significant since Sun has been touting Java as secure and assuring everyone that Applets are 100% safe and you should have no fear about letting them run on your machine. This does not seam to be the case and Applets seem to be slightly less then 100% safe which should fine for most everyone except the victims of course.
So how long before Hollywood forces them to add digital rights management so you can't steal the movie you just watched? I can see it now, you are only allowed to remember the movie for 3 days and then you have to go to the theatre again.
I've heard that most of the cost of the Coke is for ice.
One advantage of McDonalds over Starbucks is all you can drink Coke.
Loderunner on the Apple ][ is all you need.
It would also make automating speeding tickets a lot easier. Just calcualate the time and distance between sensors and automatically generate a speeding ticket.
Well if the weapons inspector's find some in Iraq we well certainly go to war and take it away from them.
Yeah it sure does. I have this and it is a great help to watch the news in advance and plan my week accordingly. Right now I am off to buy some shovels, concrete and gas masks before the big rush.
For national security sake, I hope they whisper when they hit the encryption source code.
A better business model for Gateway and companies that have access to a large amount of PCs idling might be to donate the spare cycles to a charity and take a tax break. There is not much downside to this and there are lots of upsides such as it does not acutally have to work very well to get the writeoff versus trying to make it profitable as well as being able to advertise how they are trying to make a difference.
Of course it will also "print" out a EULA as well.
I don't care if my boss is making a lot more money then I am and in fact I wish I could help make him even more money. I just don't like working long hours and then having everything thrown away to change direction ad infinitum. What I propose is a union that demands decent process, requirements and making sure documentation, QA, and customer support are part of the process from day one. Forget the money, I think what most people want is just to get rid of the disfunctional elements that prevent us from doing our jobs.
You are starting to sound like Gary Hart. I googled it and it says they are equivalent.
a hl /amdahl.html
Checkouthttp://www.cis.temple.edu/~shi/docs/amd
It looks like the music industry is finally coming to its senses and is acknowleging that people want their music as files. I believe that EMI can succeed with this as they have the opportunity to provide quality files that can be downloaded reliably and quickly. As long as the consumer perceives these files to be reasonably priced this should work. Right now downloading music is a crap shoot and a lot of times all you end up with is crap. Instead of wasting my time downloading files where half never make it to completion and those that do are not labeled very well which wastes my time even further to clean them up, I am guaranteed to wind up with what I was expecting. They could make things even more attractive by providing a program to download, re-download, and organize the music files which would save a lot of people from having to buy shareware versions of these programs in the first place. Even better they could pay commisions to those that write their own superior programs and give them away. To further make themselves more attractive to people that are wary of paying for music, they could partner with other companies and redeem music for points obtained by buying other goods such as books, airline tickets, gas(petrol) etc.
This system would work as long as everyone stays creative and does not try to get too greedy or autocratic.
Maybe I can use one of your RF pipes to make my cell phone secure. I could just run one to the house and plug my cell phone into that and no one can listen to my calls.
For some artists such as Britney, the record companies are paying a lot of money to promote them and because of this a lot of fans have opportunities to hear the music and decide if they like the song or album. If they then decide to obtain the song(s) through Kazaa rather then buying them they are definitely causing economic loss to the record companies and assuming the record company has bad accountants and the artist has good lawyers, the artist as well. But for the rest of the artists, I do not believe that the record companies are spending any money to promote them and pay the radio stations to play their songs which means that the file trading networks are in effect offering free and much needed marketing to the artists and their record companies. Of course if this does not lead to album sales there is economic loss for the labels and artists but hopefully this free marketing leads to greater album sales and is a win-win for everyone. Just consider how many people regularly have an opportunity to here Frank Sinatra. If they are interested in finding out if they like his music or not they can download the songs and if they do wind up liking the songs and want to continue listening to them they are ethically bound to purchase the music. Are the record labels promoting the older artists and most of the new artists in good faith or are they all dumping their marketing dollars on one or two artists to the detriment of the other artists and listeners? I believe that an argument can be made that banning music trading may in fact cause economic harm to the majority of artists for the reason stated above so we should not be so quick to act without seriously thinking this through and make sure that in the end that our laws will truly protect the majority of artists as well as enable the minority of artists to keep on making their well deserved money.
-Xarin
If you ban MP3s what is our well armed militia going to listen to?