Isn't the automotive industry heavily regulated regarding foreign content? Isn't that the case for precisely the reason that Wired is blithering on about?
Also in the past fourty years haven't we seen the demise of the single-income family? Hasn't the price of goods, services, taxes etc all outpaced the increase in income? Don't Americans have the least time off and the worst hours in the industrialized world?
I don't see how the automotive industry is an example of how outsourcing overseas is a win/win scenario.
When I cannibalize an older computer I always screw the case back on.
That's an important detail, You don't need to make life harder for the trash guys either. The odd time I've done it, I've taken them home, gutted them and stuck them back together with tape so that they can be thrown away in one good toss without slicing any wrists or splaying metal bits all over the road.
Getting anyone to recycle this stuff is very difficult, may as well reuse what you can.
They put the headphone jack on the back again, along with the USB ports.
RCA-style audio connectors would be nice, but I guess any audio out from a computer is going to be full of noise, so there's no point... get a digital out and separate decoder.
I'd like one or two front-mounted slots, it would save on needing things like dongles for video inputs.
Putting the power supply fan in the front is begging for more noise... It would also be nice to have the fan outside the metal box of the PSU.
When are they going to get rid of those ancient power supply connectors? The 120/240 VAC ones? Yeah they're common and convenient, but I've found it fascinating how a $30k, 99.9999% uptime server would have hot-swappable power supplies, hot swappable CPUs, etc, but they would not let you screw down the power cord so that it doesn't get accidentally pulled.
Real killed Real. (Although technically they're not really dead.) Real started with a non-intrusive little player which could stream audio over a 28.8kbps modem with a good 386 computer, that was a pretty neat trick. They even supported Linux very early in the game.
A few versions later and their software is so annoying that people have made a concious effort to avoid it, or to seek out "Real Alternative" just to be able to view/listen to their silly files.
Whether or not MS supports WMA out of the box is only incidental. Yeah, it would have definately hurt Real a bit, but IMHO not as much as they've hurt themselves.
Sadly, Microsoft now has one of the least annoying Windows players out there... aside from "Media player classic"
Microsoft will have a hard time competing with Google because Google already has the mindshare and it is tough to make a better search engine. I don't think MS will be able to win this fight without some genuine innovation. Anyone savy enough to type a URL into a location bar will not accept Microsoft's default search engine... and integrating a search engine into anything other than a web browser will just waste screen real-estate.
How can they cave when they're just pointing out incompatabilities in the licenses?
QT was a connundrum, it might be what you were thinking of, but there were a lot of license changes, eventually they became compatible.
(Re: Homer and Krusty. Matt Groening mentions it in the commentary track on one of the Simpson's DVD's... I think the second season. He said something along the lines that originally Homer was going to be Krusty, to work the angle of "a kid's hero turns out to be his father", but he dumped that idea... I watched that a long time ago, so I may be misquoting, but it is in there somewhere.)
"The other reason is anti-trust. If Microsoft tried that type of thing they would probably be ordered to license."
Unless they license utterly freely, the GPL will not work favourably.
IMHO, your first point is absolutely right. The IBM factor is the only thing which has prevented some Microsoft-lacky from attacking Linux on patent grounds.
But if some Eolas-like company comes out of the woodwork... a one-patent no product company and attacks Linux for doing something like displaying text on a screen... that would be bad. It's not a zero-sum game if you can hide all your assets behind a limited liability wall.
To do this you would need: Some really good lawyers, a few million dollars to pay them, a really sharp patent, very small corporation with a very short history, one asset (the patent), and a sick mind.
Another way to look at it is: if SCO never produced any software, they wouldn't be targetable by IBM's patents.
Same applies in Canada. If you don't have your CS degree, forget about getting that entry level programming job... on that note... if you don't rack up experience and show remarkable aptitude, forget about that entry level programming job.
BTW, if I were an MD and I had the time and money to go back to school, I might look towards Physics and EE with a smattering of CS, and then concentrate on medical imaging technologies. That stuff is cool and rumour has it that weird professional combinations like MD + Physics/CS/EE hacker can get you into strange fields.
Throwing out your MD to persue a new field is weird... unless you're wealthy, then it's eccentric.
Yeah, the end result is that in theory, you can't do the console-nabbing trick of putting up a login screen from your account and waiting for people to login.
People used to do this all the time with terminals in shared environments... like.. oh... university labs:-)
"Welcome to blah VMS blah blah, ^MUsername: ^MPassword: ^M^M Sorry, our administrator disabled silly 'su'ing, so it's too tough to spoof the login environment from my terminal account. Because of this decision, logins are not available. Please go away and try a different terminal so I can harvest more passwords."
Yes, it's silly. A hardware hack would blow the security just as easily. I think MS does the SAK thing only because it is part of that government security requirement, but for stuff like university labs, it really does add a layer of security in that if somebody wants to harvest passwords, they have to really break the rules.
Yep, and to emphasize a point, the corporations must outsource overseas because if they don't, they'll be outcompeted by those who do. The only thing which can stop them are tarrifs.
Shmuck: "Hey look, this guy's got a clever domain"
Schmuck's manager: "This guy's ripping us off"
Schmuck's manager's manager: "This could ruin us, rake him over the coals, call legal"
Legal: "Hmmm... let's ask him to stop and see if he demands money"
Mike Rowe: "$10? Are you nuts? That's not worth the hassle, not for something like $10k would I do it"
Legal: "Congratulations, you're a cybersquatter, cease and desist or die."
Mike Rowe: "Wow, these guys suck, I'm going to the press."
Press: "Clippy slices 17-year old's jugular"
Microsoft PR: "Holy shit!, get Bill's lackey, get Legal!"
Bill's Lackey: "Geeze man, Legal, back off. PR, give the kid what any reasonable 17 year old would want for the hard work he's put into his domain. And throw in some extra stuff... not so much to make it profitable though."
There are kids out there who were 12 when it was 1998, they saw the heyday of MP3s and the dot com boom in junior high school, they've almost graduated now and the RIAA is trying to tell them that what they've been doing on their computers for as long as they remember is illegal.
They're going to have a very hard time convincing these kids that CDs are worth money. You might as well be selling 8-tracks.
Naw, I think it is highly localized. If you've ever kept your hands in a freezer too long, your your hands go numb and weak without a (significant) change in your core temperature.
That and if you put your hands in your pockets, they go back to normal, regardless of whether or not you're shivering.
The gloves are self defeating because yes, they would cool your core temperature, but you'd probably get irritated at the big cold things sucking your heat out to your finger tips before you'd pass out.
Something for the toes would be better, you can't put your toes in your pockets... that is until it is too late.
Who holds the patents on these technologies? The University of Pennsylvania had a direct hydrocarbon burning fuel cell back in 2001. Theirs seems to require non-room-temperature reaction, but with a tank of fuel around, it doesn't seem impractical to burn a little fuel to get up to reaction temperatures.
In Northern Ontario there are people who get out on their snowmobiles in snowstorms specifically to find stranded vehicles and help them. They get all excited about it, it's like some kind of twisted way to get out and socialize.
I bet the same thing happens anywhere in the rural/near rural U.S.
The media has definately freaked everyone out, and maybe even given a few nuts some ideas.
I think MS will win this one, and they'll be justified. OF COURSE the kid knows that his name is phonetically the same as Microsoft. It's very clear that it is a play on words to use the name of Microsoft as an advertising tool.
If "soft" was actually a word which meant something about software, then maybe he could argue that yes, it's just his name, with just as much merit as "MikeRoweSoftware", but "soft" is not really a word in this context.
The only chance I think he has is if the judge thinks that 'soft' is a common enough suffix on a name to indicate a software company that it really is so unavoidable that the confusion is simply because the kid's name is Mike Rowe (Although if his legal name is "Michael", it may get even harder for him).
Just think about it, why isn't the domain name "RoweSoft" or "MichaelRoweSoft"... it's an obvious play directly on Microsoft's Trademark.
IIRC, my university's policy was to put a blotch on your academic transcripts (goodbye graduate school), and if you're caught again, you're expelled for academic dishonesty. Most Canadian universities have similar policies, so I don't doubt McGill is the same.
From a blurb they have on the policy http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity/strategies/student/, it seems they also have a problem my university had... professors who like to keep the incident behind closed doors.
I recall once there was an outrageous attempt by a group of people I was living with to plagarise. Six people, living on the same floor in the same residence all took the same paper, and handed it in. Stunning really. Only one of them took the time to reword it, but the others just handed it in. The situation was so completely over the top, that although it was reported to the dean, the dean decided not to put it on their transcripts... they were all forced to repeat the assignment to keep it off their records, the professor's full late penalties applied (mark was cut in half). They got off very light in my opinion, but the professor was widely perceived to be a bit of a joke, and oddly enough, knowing them better than the dean or the professor, I can honestly say that they normally weren't plagarists... I think the group-mentality just set in and they all did something very stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't the automotive industry heavily regulated regarding foreign content? Isn't that the case for precisely the reason that Wired is blithering on about?
Also in the past fourty years haven't we seen the demise of the single-income family? Hasn't the price of goods, services, taxes etc all outpaced the increase in income? Don't Americans have the least time off and the worst hours in the industrialized world?
I don't see how the automotive industry is an example of how outsourcing overseas is a win/win scenario.
Am I missing something?
When I cannibalize an older computer I always screw the case back on.
That's an important detail, You don't need to make life harder for the trash guys either. The odd time I've done it, I've taken them home, gutted them and stuck them back together with tape so that they can be thrown away in one good toss without slicing any wrists or splaying metal bits all over the road.
Getting anyone to recycle this stuff is very difficult, may as well reuse what you can.
They put the headphone jack on the back again, along with the USB ports.
RCA-style audio connectors would be nice, but I guess any audio out from a computer is going to be full of noise, so there's no point... get a digital out and separate decoder.
I'd like one or two front-mounted slots, it would save on needing things like dongles for video inputs.
Putting the power supply fan in the front is begging for more noise... It would also be nice to have the fan outside the metal box of the PSU.
When are they going to get rid of those ancient power supply connectors? The 120/240 VAC ones? Yeah they're common and convenient, but I've found it fascinating how a $30k, 99.9999% uptime server would have hot-swappable power supplies, hot swappable CPUs, etc, but they would not let you screw down the power cord so that it doesn't get accidentally pulled.
Most hardware stores don't sell metric screws. They have crude galvinized imperial stove bolts and other awful things.
The absolute best place to find spare screws for computers?
Old computers...
Next time you see that XT sitting on the side of the road, pick it up, take out every screw and you'll have enough screws to last you a while.
Real killed Real. (Although technically they're not really dead.) Real started with a non-intrusive little player which could stream audio over a 28.8kbps modem with a good 386 computer, that was a pretty neat trick. They even supported Linux very early in the game.
A few versions later and their software is so annoying that people have made a concious effort to avoid it, or to seek out "Real Alternative" just to be able to view/listen to their silly files.
Whether or not MS supports WMA out of the box is only incidental. Yeah, it would have definately hurt Real a bit, but IMHO not as much as they've hurt themselves.
Sadly, Microsoft now has one of the least annoying Windows players out there... aside from "Media player classic"
Microsoft will have a hard time competing with Google because Google already has the mindshare and it is tough to make a better search engine. I don't think MS will be able to win this fight without some genuine innovation. Anyone savy enough to type a URL into a location bar will not accept Microsoft's default search engine... and integrating a search engine into anything other than a web browser will just waste screen real-estate.
We'd all be running Macs and Amigas?
How can they cave when they're just pointing out incompatabilities in the licenses?
QT was a connundrum, it might be what you were thinking of, but there were a lot of license changes, eventually they became compatible.
(Re: Homer and Krusty. Matt Groening mentions it in the commentary track on one of the Simpson's DVD's... I think the second season. He said something along the lines that originally Homer was going to be Krusty, to work the angle of "a kid's hero turns out to be his father", but he dumped that idea... I watched that a long time ago, so I may be misquoting, but it is in there somewhere.)
"The other reason is anti-trust. If Microsoft tried that type of thing they would probably be ordered to license."
Unless they license utterly freely, the GPL will not work favourably.
IMHO, your first point is absolutely right. The IBM factor is the only thing which has prevented some Microsoft-lacky from attacking Linux on patent grounds.
But if some Eolas-like company comes out of the woodwork... a one-patent no product company and attacks Linux for doing something like displaying text on a screen... that would be bad. It's not a zero-sum game if you can hide all your assets behind a limited liability wall.
To do this you would need: Some really good lawyers, a few million dollars to pay them, a really sharp patent, very small corporation with a very short history, one asset (the patent), and a sick mind.
Another way to look at it is: if SCO never produced any software, they wouldn't be targetable by IBM's patents.
Defenestrate your office with DefenestrOS!
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?Dict=&d efine=defenestrate&search.x=0&search.y=0&search=Se arch
"Gates OS" would be far more upsetting.
Same applies in Canada. If you don't have your CS degree, forget about getting that entry level programming job... on that note... if you don't rack up experience and show remarkable aptitude, forget about that entry level programming job.
BTW, if I were an MD and I had the time and money to go back to school, I might look towards Physics and EE with a smattering of CS, and then concentrate on medical imaging technologies. That stuff is cool and rumour has it that weird professional combinations like MD + Physics/CS/EE hacker can get you into strange fields.
Throwing out your MD to persue a new field is weird... unless you're wealthy, then it's eccentric.
Yeah, the end result is that in theory, you can't do the console-nabbing trick of putting up a login screen from your account and waiting for people to login.
People used to do this all the time with terminals in shared environments... like.. oh... university labs :-)
"Welcome to blah VMS blah blah, ^MUsername: ^MPassword: ^M^M Sorry, our administrator disabled silly 'su'ing, so it's too tough to spoof the login environment from my terminal account. Because of this decision, logins are not available. Please go away and try a different terminal so I can harvest more passwords."
Yes, it's silly. A hardware hack would blow the security just as easily. I think MS does the SAK thing only because it is part of that government security requirement, but for stuff like university labs, it really does add a layer of security in that if somebody wants to harvest passwords, they have to really break the rules.
Yep, and to emphasize a point, the corporations must outsource overseas because if they don't, they'll be outcompeted by those who do. The only thing which can stop them are tarrifs.
Shmuck: "Hey look, this guy's got a clever domain"
Schmuck's manager: "This guy's ripping us off"
Schmuck's manager's manager: "This could ruin us, rake him over the coals, call legal"
Legal: "Hmmm... let's ask him to stop and see if he demands money"
Mike Rowe: "$10? Are you nuts? That's not worth the hassle, not for something like $10k would I do it"
Legal: "Congratulations, you're a cybersquatter, cease and desist or die."
Mike Rowe: "Wow, these guys suck, I'm going to the press."
Press: "Clippy slices 17-year old's jugular"
Microsoft PR: "Holy shit!, get Bill's lackey, get Legal!"
Bill's Lackey: "Geeze man, Legal, back off. PR, give the kid what any reasonable 17 year old would want for the hard work he's put into his domain. And throw in some extra stuff... not so much to make it profitable though."
Marketing: "and get some brands into the press"
Unless you're having sex with parrots.
There are kids out there who were 12 when it was 1998, they saw the heyday of MP3s and the dot com boom in junior high school, they've almost graduated now and the RIAA is trying to tell them that what they've been doing on their computers for as long as they remember is illegal.
They're going to have a very hard time convincing these kids that CDs are worth money. You might as well be selling 8-tracks.
Naw, I think it is highly localized. If you've ever kept your hands in a freezer too long, your your hands go numb and weak without a (significant) change in your core temperature.
That and if you put your hands in your pockets, they go back to normal, regardless of whether or not you're shivering.
The gloves are self defeating because yes, they would cool your core temperature, but you'd probably get irritated at the big cold things sucking your heat out to your finger tips before you'd pass out.
Something for the toes would be better, you can't put your toes in your pockets... that is until it is too late.
Who holds the patents on these technologies? The University of Pennsylvania had a direct hydrocarbon burning fuel cell back in 2001. Theirs seems to require non-room-temperature reaction, but with a tank of fuel around, it doesn't seem impractical to burn a little fuel to get up to reaction temperatures.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/09/01090 5072008.htm
Warning.... Check the rec.outdoors faq before you start pouring any chemicals in any tanks:
http://www.amelunxen.onlinehome.de/drofaq/kocher.h tml#ih3
( I can't find the english one anymore )
Improbable, I think the people in the photos are just really small.
In Northern Ontario there are people who get out on their snowmobiles in snowstorms specifically to find stranded vehicles and help them. They get all excited about it, it's like some kind of twisted way to get out and socialize.
I bet the same thing happens anywhere in the rural/near rural U.S.
The media has definately freaked everyone out, and maybe even given a few nuts some ideas.
Of course I wouldn't mistake it, but read the URL aloud and the joke is immediately apparent.
As for the U.S., 2600.com made the Federal Trademark Dilution Act well known with the fordsucks.com case.
I think MS will win this one, and they'll be justified. OF COURSE the kid knows that his name is phonetically the same as Microsoft. It's very clear that it is a play on words to use the name of Microsoft as an advertising tool.
If "soft" was actually a word which meant something about software, then maybe he could argue that yes, it's just his name, with just as much merit as "MikeRoweSoftware", but "soft" is not really a word in this context.
The only chance I think he has is if the judge thinks that 'soft' is a common enough suffix on a name to indicate a software company that it really is so unavoidable that the confusion is simply because the kid's name is Mike Rowe (Although if his legal name is "Michael", it may get even harder for him).
Just think about it, why isn't the domain name "RoweSoft" or "MichaelRoweSoft"... it's an obvious play directly on Microsoft's Trademark.
If only "strange" were a verb, then it would all make sense :-)
IIRC, my university's policy was to put a blotch on your academic transcripts (goodbye graduate school), and if you're caught again, you're expelled for academic dishonesty. Most Canadian universities have similar policies, so I don't doubt McGill is the same.
From a blurb they have on the policy http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity/strategies/student/ , it seems they also have a problem my university had... professors who like to keep the incident behind closed doors.
I recall once there was an outrageous attempt by a group of people I was living with to plagarise. Six people, living on the same floor in the same residence all took the same paper, and handed it in. Stunning really. Only one of them took the time to reword it, but the others just handed it in. The situation was so completely over the top, that although it was reported to the dean, the dean decided not to put it on their transcripts... they were all forced to repeat the assignment to keep it off their records, the professor's full late penalties applied (mark was cut in half). They got off very light in my opinion, but the professor was widely perceived to be a bit of a joke, and oddly enough, knowing them better than the dean or the professor, I can honestly say that they normally weren't plagarists... I think the group-mentality just set in and they all did something very stupid.