This seems like a godsend for web-based applications, if there are keyboards and mice widely available for it. Simply compile the embedded version of Konqueror (which does *not* require KDE and runs in very little memory), then with a little DHCP and a few CDs, you've got yourself an easy deployment of a web-based application suite.
This sounds a lot like the technology that Duke Phillips (from Jon Lovitz's "The Critic") wanted to use to advertise his products. Except they went a step further, and altered what the characters were saying, etc.
(It was a cross between this technology and "The Running Man.")
> Wow, how sloppy can you get? If you want to win an argument with someone, the first thing you have
> to do is convince them of your point of view. If they have committed
> logical or factual errors in arriving at their conclusion, it is your responsibility to point
> them out, and in addition provide reasons why they should accept your conclusion
> instead of theirs. But if all you're going to do is name a popular fallacy and say "ha! I got you,"
> you're as likely to convince them to grow wings and fly to the moon. And, you
> will lose the argument. Since you aren't even positing an argument of your own, all your
> "invocation" contributes is noise.
And if the best comparison that he can make is to the Nazis, what point has he made?
Almost every discussion on slashdot has at least one person crying "Nazi". I was simply pointing out the humor in his description of lawyers as part of a group who viciously slaughtered several million human beings.
I'll be the last person to defend lawyers, but isn't that a little unrealistic, even for a person as logical as you claim to be?
My logic isn't sloppy; I simply pointed out a falacy in the poster's assumption that lawyers are Nazis, which they aren't. They are no more Nazis than vegitarians are Nazis (through the term "Vegi-Nazi", which we have all heard).
I'm sure that there are other people who could be accused of unethical behavior before the Nazis. Godwin pointed out that to use the Nazis as an example in *anything* was tantamount to an admission of defeat, because it meant that one party had run out of ideas.
Slashdot too often cries "wolf!" (or "Nazi!" in this case).
> This is a brilliant (dumbshit) move on Gracenote's part. Why, with all the attention
> they've paid to fairness and equitable behavior in the past (screwing CDDB users), you
> can be sure that this is a case of Gracenote spending time trying to uphold a piece of
> legislation that is necessary and supports freedom, equality, and ethical behavior (for
> Nazis).
Honestly, I'm not sure which is crazier: the idea of making life difficult for many to pacify a few, or the absurdity of the legal system.
Every time some kid does something stupid, every other kid that could possibly have any kind of similarity to them is immediately suspect. In World War II, we placed people of Japanese origin in "internment camps," merely for the crime of being from a certain place. I'm well aware that the measures being taken now against children to protect them against themselves are nowhere near as drastic as the Japanese internment camps, but the concept is the same.
Not a day goes by that you can open a paper and miss an article about some person or corporation suing another person or corporation. This case (either the court battle against the accused or the accuser) seems like it could have been resolved with a little thought and effort, and without expensive court battles.
We probably don't bother to give attention to things that are *actually* problems most of the time, in a vain hope that a "zero-tolerance" policy (read: zero-effort policy) will allow administrators and parents to avoid the difficult chance of having to clear away the amazing amount of ambiguity that is present in interpersonal relationships.
When a kid shoots another kid over a dispute, whose fault is it? Is it the owner of the gun's fault for not restricting access to the gun, or would the kid have found another way to obtain one? Is it the parents' or peers' fault for not imbuing the virtue of understanding or restraint, or is that up to the kid to learn? Is it the administrator's fault for allowing the situation to escalate or was it beyond their control? With no tolerance for anything, blame is not cast on some of the parties (i.e. administrators, parents) who would rather not be involved in such problems, even though they have more to do with it that they would ever want to admit.
With a little more thought, and perhaps some planning and attention, these problems would not be as big as people make them out to be.
As a side note, I wonder how many times things like this have happened in large cities, for us not to find out because the people involved aren't white-bread "average" americans that we can relate to and worry "will this happen to me?"
I was waiting for someone to make that comparison. MOSIX shares memory and CPU cycles over machines in a network, but as far as I know, Mosix is quite platform dependant (it is a Linux kernel patch right now). I'm also not sure if they have released a 2.4.x kernel patch yet, since I haven't seen any announcements on freshmeat or Linux Today about it.
Does anyone know how cross-platform this is, or if the Linux and Solaris boxes aren't able to talk to each other? The main advantage over MOSIX that this seems to have is the cross-platform thing. Other than that, they (at least to the casual observer) seem to be in the same arena.
(As an aside, I've been watching MOSIX to see if any major distributions are going to capitalize on it. Definately a killer feature, but I hope it is eventually brought into the kernel proper....)
Why would you need a USB or serial connection to do firmware updates? Surely there would be a way of making a "special" CD-ROM with some sort of volume label or data pattern that would trigger a firmware update right from the CD.
Pretty good idea -- so long as the original version of the firmware comes on a CD, so that any strange upgrades that you didn't really want don't end up turning your brand new piece of equipment into a large hunk of metal.
Most flash-upgradable setups allow for storing the old version before flashing it, so SDMI trojans are a pretty moot point.
I'd like to think that out of all the companies on earth that will produce these, at least one will have the common sense not to use some asinine copy-protection scheme. And that will be the company that gets my business.
I'd be interested to know if they are open to other standards... like whether RealMedia can get into the action, or something like Ogg Vorbis could be used.
I understand where they might get into some issues with RealMedia, since it is a proprietary format (as is WMA, come to think of it), but Ogg Vorbis is a perfectly open standard, to which there aren't any licensing drawbacks or problems.
Perhaps some flash-upgradable hardware is the way to go. Throw a USB or serial connection on it and provide firmware updates for it; that's definately something that would convince *me* to buy any product.
The whole idea of there being haves and have-nots has been around for a while, not just during the information age. It's just getting to be that people need information, not money, to be part of whatever elite the "haves" belong to.
The traditional money barriers still exist here to some point, since many services are unavailable at public terminals, so a computer is still a prerequisite for this particular "haves" group, as is an ISP, which also costs money.
So in a way, people are still limited by their geography; whether or not they live in an area privileged enough to take advantage of the technology that other areas can.
Saying that geography doesn't exist anymore is only true for those who have the means to take advantage of the "new way" of seeing it. And for those who *choose* to see it or take advantage of it. There are still an awful lot of technophobes out there who won't embrace the technology, probably (as was stated before) because they are afraid of it.
Of course companies and industries are going to accept this and change their business models accordingly, just as radio and television helped boost sales over magazine and newspaper ads. So the paradigm shifts. Without a clutch. Give some of these industries a few buzz-words and a little media hype and they'll be all over it whether they understand the full implications or not.
A friend of mine who is an Anthropology graduate student told me that there are several different types of people when concerning the internet. One kind views it as a large network/information retrieval tool. Another views it as a place, and yet a third category is a mix between the two. Whereas most people are of the third category, many people actually think of the internet as a place (which is where the whole geography thing comes in), and realists (and sysadmins) know that it is nothing but a large network of computers serving up content.
I guess the "new internet geography" depends on where you are (proximity to internet access) and what kind of person you are (is it a place at all?).
LizardTech's main attraction is the MrSid software (which, interestingly enough *does* have a penguin flavor available for it). This software holds interest for imaging professionals (like photographers) for archiving photos, since even JPEGs get pretty space hungry when coming from high grade digital cameras.
I'm really interested to know where JPEG 2000 support is for the GIMP and the rest of the free software world. Last I read, GIMP wasn't planning on supporting JPEG 2000 because of licensing issues, which would be a real shame, since wavelet compression is an awesome concept.
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
I work for the University of Connecticut, and I have been told that we have very strict policies on intellectual property.
In all my time writing GPL'd code, I have never once come across any problems with management (besides the initial "what do we benefit from this"). I think that a lot of the intellectual property issues that occur on university campuses deal more with the universities thinking that they are losing money on these ventures, when in reality, the pooled effort is most likely saving them money in the long run.
Besides, most colleges and universities are reaping the benefits of GPL'd products; we have at least one Beowulf cluster running on campus, and there are more Linux/BSD webservers popping up on campus every month, despite heavy Microsoft marketing here.
If it does become an issue, simply talk to your administrators about the benefits they have directly or indirectly received from the use of such software licensing.
Does anyone know of any resources for modifying existing vehicles to run on alternative fuels? I'm pretty sure at least some of the do-it-yourself-ers on slashdot would be interested in trying something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like a godsend for web-based applications, if there are keyboards and mice widely available for it. Simply compile the embedded version of Konqueror (which does *not* require KDE and runs in very little memory), then with a little DHCP and a few CDs, you've got yourself an easy deployment of a web-based application suite.
---
(It was a cross between this technology and "The Running Man.")
Life imitates art?
---
> it's Godwin's Law. And it was pretty darn funny, I thought. Dude, relax 'n' shit.
A voice of reason on Slashdot?
I'm amazed.
---
> Wow, how sloppy can you get? If you want to win an argument with someone, the first thing you have
> to do is convince them of your point of view. If they have committed
> logical or factual errors in arriving at their conclusion, it is your responsibility to point
> them out, and in addition provide reasons why they should accept your conclusion
> instead of theirs. But if all you're going to do is name a popular fallacy and say "ha! I got you,"
> you're as likely to convince them to grow wings and fly to the moon. And, you
> will lose the argument. Since you aren't even positing an argument of your own, all your
> "invocation" contributes is noise.
And if the best comparison that he can make is to the Nazis, what point has he made?
Almost every discussion on slashdot has at least one person crying "Nazi". I was simply pointing out the humor in his description of lawyers as part of a group who viciously slaughtered several million human beings.
I'll be the last person to defend lawyers, but isn't that a little unrealistic, even for a person as logical as you claim to be?
My logic isn't sloppy; I simply pointed out a falacy in the poster's assumption that lawyers are Nazis, which they aren't. They are no more Nazis than vegitarians are Nazis (through the term "Vegi-Nazi", which we have all heard).
I'm sure that there are other people who could be accused of unethical behavior before the Nazis. Godwin pointed out that to use the Nazis as an example in *anything* was tantamount to an admission of defeat, because it meant that one party had run out of ideas.
Slashdot too often cries "wolf!" (or "Nazi!" in this case).
---
> This is a brilliant (dumbshit) move on Gracenote's part. Why, with all the attention
> they've paid to fairness and equitable behavior in the past (screwing CDDB users), you
> can be sure that this is a case of Gracenote spending time trying to uphold a piece of
> legislation that is necessary and supports freedom, equality, and ethical behavior (for
> Nazis).
I invoke Godwin's law. You lose.
---
Every time some kid does something stupid, every other kid that could possibly have any kind of similarity to them is immediately suspect. In World War II, we placed people of Japanese origin in "internment camps," merely for the crime of being from a certain place. I'm well aware that the measures being taken now against children to protect them against themselves are nowhere near as drastic as the Japanese internment camps, but the concept is the same.
Not a day goes by that you can open a paper and miss an article about some person or corporation suing another person or corporation. This case (either the court battle against the accused or the accuser) seems like it could have been resolved with a little thought and effort, and without expensive court battles.
We probably don't bother to give attention to things that are *actually* problems most of the time, in a vain hope that a "zero-tolerance" policy (read: zero-effort policy) will allow administrators and parents to avoid the difficult chance of having to clear away the amazing amount of ambiguity that is present in interpersonal relationships.
When a kid shoots another kid over a dispute, whose fault is it? Is it the owner of the gun's fault for not restricting access to the gun, or would the kid have found another way to obtain one? Is it the parents' or peers' fault for not imbuing the virtue of understanding or restraint, or is that up to the kid to learn? Is it the administrator's fault for allowing the situation to escalate or was it beyond their control? With no tolerance for anything, blame is not cast on some of the parties (i.e. administrators, parents) who would rather not be involved in such problems, even though they have more to do with it that they would ever want to admit.
With a little more thought, and perhaps some planning and attention, these problems would not be as big as people make them out to be.
As a side note, I wonder how many times things like this have happened in large cities, for us not to find out because the people involved aren't white-bread "average" americans that we can relate to and worry "will this happen to me?"
---
Does anyone know how cross-platform this is, or if the Linux and Solaris boxes aren't able to talk to each other? The main advantage over MOSIX that this seems to have is the cross-platform thing. Other than that, they (at least to the casual observer) seem to be in the same arena.
(As an aside, I've been watching MOSIX to see if any major distributions are going to capitalize on it. Definately a killer feature, but I hope it is eventually brought into the kernel proper....)
---
It has most of the functionality of the Netscape Calendar server -- it just needs the SASL wrapper written for it, and it provides a client.
---
Pretty good idea -- so long as the original version of the firmware comes on a CD, so that any strange upgrades that you didn't really want don't end up turning your brand new piece of equipment into a large hunk of metal.
---
I'd like to think that out of all the companies on earth that will produce these, at least one will have the common sense not to use some asinine copy-protection scheme. And that will be the company that gets my business.
---
I understand where they might get into some issues with RealMedia, since it is a proprietary format (as is WMA, come to think of it), but Ogg Vorbis is a perfectly open standard, to which there aren't any licensing drawbacks or problems.
Perhaps some flash-upgradable hardware is the way to go. Throw a USB or serial connection on it and provide firmware updates for it; that's definately something that would convince *me* to buy any product.
---
The traditional money barriers still exist here to some point, since many services are unavailable at public terminals, so a computer is still a prerequisite for this particular "haves" group, as is an ISP, which also costs money.
So in a way, people are still limited by their geography; whether or not they live in an area privileged enough to take advantage of the technology that other areas can.
Saying that geography doesn't exist anymore is only true for those who have the means to take advantage of the "new way" of seeing it. And for those who *choose* to see it or take advantage of it. There are still an awful lot of technophobes out there who won't embrace the technology, probably (as was stated before) because they are afraid of it.
Of course companies and industries are going to accept this and change their business models accordingly, just as radio and television helped boost sales over magazine and newspaper ads. So the paradigm shifts. Without a clutch. Give some of these industries a few buzz-words and a little media hype and they'll be all over it whether they understand the full implications or not.
A friend of mine who is an Anthropology graduate student told me that there are several different types of people when concerning the internet. One kind views it as a large network/information retrieval tool. Another views it as a place, and yet a third category is a mix between the two. Whereas most people are of the third category, many people actually think of the internet as a place (which is where the whole geography thing comes in), and realists (and sysadmins) know that it is nothing but a large network of computers serving up content.
I guess the "new internet geography" depends on where you are (proximity to internet access) and what kind of person you are (is it a place at all?).
---
I'm really interested to know where JPEG 2000 support is for the GIMP and the rest of the free software world. Last I read, GIMP wasn't planning on supporting JPEG 2000 because of licensing issues, which would be a real shame, since wavelet compression is an awesome concept.
---
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
(as quoted from the Jargon Dictionary)
Does this mean that he lost the argument?
---
In all my time writing GPL'd code, I have never once come across any problems with management (besides the initial "what do we benefit from this"). I think that a lot of the intellectual property issues that occur on university campuses deal more with the universities thinking that they are losing money on these ventures, when in reality, the pooled effort is most likely saving them money in the long run.
Besides, most colleges and universities are reaping the benefits of GPL'd products; we have at least one Beowulf cluster running on campus, and there are more Linux/BSD webservers popping up on campus every month, despite heavy Microsoft marketing here.
If it does become an issue, simply talk to your administrators about the benefits they have directly or indirectly received from the use of such software licensing.
---
Could you provide some information on how you did this? I, for one, would be very interested in what modifications you had to make to the car.
I did find an interesting resource at http://web.bham.ac.uk/M.L.Wyszynski/people/publwys z.html for the feasability of such systems as hydrogen gas enriched fuel-based systems.
I'd personally love a car that ran on something other than gasoline, if only for the pure novelty of it.