Any mid-size and large business will jump at the opportunity. They will be idiots not to.
Then after productivity grinds to a crawl, and employees complain about having to take and print document images from their cellphone cameras to get their work done, they'll quietly remove the restrictions and everything will be back as it is today.
Of course they are going to promote that in every way they can.
And they are entitled to do that, within the law. However, if they happen to have a monopoly in another area, the law says they can't take advantage of the unique power of their monopoly to force their way into new markets. Likewise, the law says they can't murder the executives of their competitors to force their way into new markets.
So abusing their monopoly is *not* one of the ways that they can promote their codec, any more than knocking off their rivals would be.
Neither cable TV nor any other service with tens of millions of customers is currently "protected against re-distribution through the P2P nets". So your assertion that the annoying restrictions that would be introduced if such protection were effectively implemented won't be a problem for consumers is based on pure speculation.
...And judging from the Mercator projection map that I had on my wall as a kid, it's LOTS of real estate. It looks like more than the entire continental USA, maybe more than all of South America. Probably it's even much bigger than that, but it's hard to tell because they cut the top off Greenland at the edge of the map. It looks like probably goes on and on as you go farther north, though. This global warming thing could be a huge boon to land developers!
Why use something that doesn't work well if you can afford to use something better, or can't afford to use something that doesn't work well?
Because in the computer industry, backward compatibility with existing hardware and software is the paramount consideration. That's why something like 99% of desktop machines on the market today are using a processor that is assembler-level source compatible with the world's first 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8008. There's nothing intrinsically superior about the x86 architecture other than its compatibility with itself.
Likewise, there is almost nothing of special value about any of Microsoft's software other than compatibility with itself. It's easy for Microsoft to perpetuate this situation indefinitely by keeping the details of compatibility secret and piling on more secrets every few years so that no competitors are able to catch up on interoperability. Without that, the market is never going to give a serious chance to any competitor, either free or for a price.
not every new tool that it's handed is a stepping stone to a dystopia.
Yeah, but this one is.
Seriously: disembodied voices on poles barking orders at you in the street. That's the kind of cliche they put in movies when they want to establish a dystopian setting.
Nobody is going to invest in such an effort because as soon as the results show promise of making significant money or threatening Microsoft's market share, Microsoft will hit them with a broadside of patent lawsuits. Microsoft undoubtedly has thousands of patents covering modern versions of the Windows APIs. Just the relatively obsolete VFAT patent alone, which they've already enforced, would sink the "100% compatibility" goal.
Microsoft doesn't currently bother with Wine because it is a financially insignificant product, and going after it right now would generate too much ill will to make the effort worthwhile. That balance would change in an instant if someone actually started making money on a viable Windows clone.
"In the definition current in the United States, the proof number is twice the percentage of the alcohol content measured by volume at a temperature of 60 F (15.5 C)." What's the point?
Well, as the article pointed out, proof was originally defined by soaking gunpowder with the liquor. 100 proof was the weakest solution that still allowed the gunpowder to ignite. Nobody can deny that that's just a cool way to define a measurement.
The US standard is a more scientific simplification of that somewhat imprecise test, but still retains the spirit. Besides, "proof" is easier to say than "Percent Alcohol by Volume". And it's superior to a percentage value according to the Spinal Tap marketing theory: "These go to 200."
I didn't see them mention the amount of ethanol per drink in the article, but 10g does match the Italian definition of a standard drink, which is also about the amount in a 1-oz shot of 80-proof liquor. Most people in the USA, however, probably think of a single drink as more like the US standard, which is 14g. This corresponds to a 12-oz non-light beer or 5 oz of most wines. So Americans should probably interpret the limit as *3* drinks per day for men.
What makes Softmaker think there is room in the market for their product ?
Word processing software is a multibillion dollar market. Most multibillion dollar markets have dozens or hundreds of competitors. Why would you think that the limit on the number of vendors for this market is just two?
By all means someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a dimmer doesn't actually save on power use, because the "dimming" mechanism is merely a (forgive the lack of electronics terms) a device that increases resistance.
Most light dimmers actually use a transistor that chops off parts of the AC waveform. Since the transistor is always full-on or full-off, no significant power is lost in the dimmer switch (which would get very hot otherwise). The chopped-up waveform is also the reason you're not supposed to hook fluorescent lights, motors, etc. to light dimmers.
However, dimmed incandescent lights are even more dismally inefficient than normally running incandescent lights, so a dimmer is really more for setting a mood than saving power.
I've always been curious why more people don't use gas.
A lot of houses aren't built with gas connections to the range and/or dryer even if they have a gas furnace. My guess is that it's because it's cheaper for the contractor to build in electric connections than gas fittings, and it's cheaper for them to install an electric range than gas. Never mind that it could save the occupants a lot of money over the long run. That's my current problem. I have gas heat, and I'd like to use a gas range and dryer, but retrofitting gas connections through the walls would probably cost $thousands.
This is just the next natural refinement of the scientific method:
Science + Truthiness = Scienciness
Scienciness gives us more consistent and reassuring results than that old-fashioned science. The old stuff is for pessimists and gloom-and-doomers. The optimists in this country will not let such negative attitudes hold back progress and growth.
2. Relating to chemical compounds containing carbon, especially hydrocarbons.
3. Using or produced with fertilizers or pesticides that are strictly of animal or vegetable origin.
These two distinct definitions do NOT mean the same thing, although I'm sure you'll come back and arbitrarily redefine a few more words in attempt to make them the same.
Your obsessive and arbitrary application of a single meaning of "natural" which is not appropriate to the topic being discussed is equally invalid. The simple act of pointing out your fallacious logic does not make one a "hippie" or a "slashbot".
Unnatural refers specifically to things outside of the natural world, i.e. the super natural.
There's a word for that: supernatural. If natural == supernatural, then at least one of those words is useless. The people who write dictionaries know more about language than you do, however, and they define a big distinction between the two terms.
Here's a tip for you: a single word can have multiple definitions that apply in different contexts. The meaning of "organic" as used in chemistry is not the same as in agriculture. I know that may be s stretch for you overly literal mind, but maybe one day you'll learn to grasp the concept.
Ok then... by your definition, it looks like there is not a single thing in this universe that is *not* natural. Haven't you therefore made the word completely meaningless?
In the USA and most other countries, color TV signals are backwards compatible with the older black and white standards. Old B&W sets worked just fine on color broadcasts. That's one reason why analog color still looks so crappy to this day: the way color signal was shoehorned into the original standard creates a lot of visual artifacts.
It may not be done in modern displays, but about 25 years ago I had a quick-on TV where I could definitely see the orange glow of the tube filaments through the rear vents even when it was turned "off".
I worked at a McDonald's a few decades ago. As far as I could tell, they threw out little if any frying oil. Instead, they had a dangerous gizmo that would suck the oil out of the hot fryer, filter it through some kind of white powder, and then pump the refreshed oil back in. I never got certified to do that job, but it seemed to me that they mostly just added new fat to compensate for what got shipped out in the fries. (And back then they used blocks of healthy 100% beef tallow, not this unhealthy trans-fat they were hounded into using.)
We did drag out a couple of gallons of hamburger grease from the grill traps each day, but that was mixed up with grill cleaning chemicals, and it seems doubtful that that would be very good for an engine.
Slashdot Mirror
Then after productivity grinds to a crawl, and employees complain about having to take and print document images from their cellphone cameras to get their work done, they'll quietly remove the restrictions and everything will be back as it is today.
And they are entitled to do that, within the law. However, if they happen to have a monopoly in another area, the law says they can't take advantage of the unique power of their monopoly to force their way into new markets. Likewise, the law says they can't murder the executives of their competitors to force their way into new markets.
So abusing their monopoly is *not* one of the ways that they can promote their codec, any more than knocking off their rivals would be.
Neither cable TV nor any other service with tens of millions of customers is currently "protected against re-distribution through the P2P nets". So your assertion that the annoying restrictions that would be introduced if such protection were effectively implemented won't be a problem for consumers is based on pure speculation.
You sound like you must be one of the half dozen people who ran down to Circuit City and bought a DIVX box.
Bingo.
Like cows who inherited genes that make them store energy in the form of saturated fat?
...And judging from the Mercator projection map that I had on my wall as a kid, it's LOTS of real estate. It looks like more than the entire continental USA, maybe more than all of South America. Probably it's even much bigger than that, but it's hard to tell because they cut the top off Greenland at the edge of the map. It looks like probably goes on and on as you go farther north, though. This global warming thing could be a huge boon to land developers!
Because in the computer industry, backward compatibility with existing hardware and software is the paramount consideration. That's why something like 99% of desktop machines on the market today are using a processor that is assembler-level source compatible with the world's first 8-bit microprocessor, the Intel 8008. There's nothing intrinsically superior about the x86 architecture other than its compatibility with itself.
Likewise, there is almost nothing of special value about any of Microsoft's software other than compatibility with itself. It's easy for Microsoft to perpetuate this situation indefinitely by keeping the details of compatibility secret and piling on more secrets every few years so that no competitors are able to catch up on interoperability. Without that, the market is never going to give a serious chance to any competitor, either free or for a price.
...I'll bookmark the article so I can read up on it later.
Yeah, but this one is.
Seriously: disembodied voices on poles barking orders at you in the street. That's the kind of cliche they put in movies when they want to establish a dystopian setting.
Who has N. Korea actually nuked? Actual cases and not the 'OMG they might nuke us' screeching please.
Microsoft doesn't currently bother with Wine because it is a financially insignificant product, and going after it right now would generate too much ill will to make the effort worthwhile. That balance would change in an instant if someone actually started making money on a viable Windows clone.
Well, as the article pointed out, proof was originally defined by soaking gunpowder with the liquor. 100 proof was the weakest solution that still allowed the gunpowder to ignite. Nobody can deny that that's just a cool way to define a measurement.
The US standard is a more scientific simplification of that somewhat imprecise test, but still retains the spirit. Besides, "proof" is easier to say than "Percent Alcohol by Volume". And it's superior to a percentage value according to the Spinal Tap marketing theory: "These go to 200."
I didn't see them mention the amount of ethanol per drink in the article, but 10g does match the Italian definition of a standard drink, which is also about the amount in a 1-oz shot of 80-proof liquor. Most people in the USA, however, probably think of a single drink as more like the US standard, which is 14g. This corresponds to a 12-oz non-light beer or 5 oz of most wines. So Americans should probably interpret the limit as *3* drinks per day for men.
Word processing software is a multibillion dollar market. Most multibillion dollar markets have dozens or hundreds of competitors. Why would you think that the limit on the number of vendors for this market is just two?
Most light dimmers actually use a transistor that chops off parts of the AC waveform. Since the transistor is always full-on or full-off, no significant power is lost in the dimmer switch (which would get very hot otherwise). The chopped-up waveform is also the reason you're not supposed to hook fluorescent lights, motors, etc. to light dimmers.
However, dimmed incandescent lights are even more dismally inefficient than normally running incandescent lights, so a dimmer is really more for setting a mood than saving power.
A lot of houses aren't built with gas connections to the range and/or dryer even if they have a gas furnace. My guess is that it's because it's cheaper for the contractor to build in electric connections than gas fittings, and it's cheaper for them to install an electric range than gas. Never mind that it could save the occupants a lot of money over the long run. That's my current problem. I have gas heat, and I'd like to use a gas range and dryer, but retrofitting gas connections through the walls would probably cost $thousands.
That may explain why this French consumer group is suing HP instead of Newegg.
Science + Truthiness = Scienciness
Scienciness gives us more consistent and reassuring results than that old-fashioned science. The old stuff is for pessimists and gloom-and-doomers. The optimists in this country will not let such negative attitudes hold back progress and growth.
These two distinct definitions do NOT mean the same thing, although I'm sure you'll come back and arbitrarily redefine a few more words in attempt to make them the same.
Your obsessive and arbitrary application of a single meaning of "natural" which is not appropriate to the topic being discussed is equally invalid. The simple act of pointing out your fallacious logic does not make one a "hippie" or a "slashbot".
There's a word for that: supernatural. If natural == supernatural, then at least one of those words is useless. The people who write dictionaries know more about language than you do, however, and they define a big distinction between the two terms.
Here's a tip for you: a single word can have multiple definitions that apply in different contexts. The meaning of "organic" as used in chemistry is not the same as in agriculture. I know that may be s stretch for you overly literal mind, but maybe one day you'll learn to grasp the concept.
Ok then... by your definition, it looks like there is not a single thing in this universe that is *not* natural. Haven't you therefore made the word completely meaningless?
In the USA and most other countries, color TV signals are backwards compatible with the older black and white standards. Old B&W sets worked just fine on color broadcasts. That's one reason why analog color still looks so crappy to this day: the way color signal was shoehorned into the original standard creates a lot of visual artifacts.
It may not be done in modern displays, but about 25 years ago I had a quick-on TV where I could definitely see the orange glow of the tube filaments through the rear vents even when it was turned "off".
We did drag out a couple of gallons of hamburger grease from the grill traps each day, but that was mixed up with grill cleaning chemicals, and it seems doubtful that that would be very good for an engine.