What people seem to forget is that Apple doesn't have a product called an iPhone, either.
Oh, really?
Where can I get one?
Thought so...
What I don't understand is why another company would be the "next in line" to use a trademark. I thought it was basically first come first serve. If Cisco had it registered, and now they are the first to actually ship an "iPhone", why does anyone else have a claim to it? I could understand it if Cisco let it lapse, then Apple beat them to releasing an iPhone, but that's not what happened here.
Not online, but my worst experience with this was my Counterforce alarm monitoring account. When my now-ex-wife kicked me out of the house, she removed my name from the "allowed to make changes to the account" list at Counterforce, and gave them my new address to keep sending the bills to. After 6 months of them refusing to cancel my account, (remember, I'm not allowed to make changes to the account) I finally stopped paying the bill. The threatening phone calls started. I kept explaining I wanted to cancel the account. They kept refusing. Finally, I got a threatening call that if I didn't pay up, they would cancel the account. I answered "please do! That's what I've been trying to get you to do for months." I still kept getting threatening phone calls trying to collect on the unpaid months. Finally, they sent it to collections. On the first call from the collections agency I explained the whole story, the guy was quite surprised, but seemed to understand my point of view. In a friendly sort of way, I left it at "if you want the money, you're going to have to take me to court." (of course, I think with my story I would have a good chance of winning.) I never got another phone call about the matter. I have no idea if it ended up on my credit report, but it doesn't seem to have affected my ability to get loans since.
The figures in this analysis are a bit dated, but it still demonstrates that wind power cannot replace nuclear or conventional power.
In addition to the sheer space required, the fact is, you need to have enough conventional/nuclear power available on standby due to fluctuations in the wind. Until we come up with a feasable way to store the power generated in peak wind times, wind power is simply pointless.
I did a project on wind-power a few years ago. I went into it with high expectations. Those expectations were shattered when I actually looked at the numbers.
Our bars here lost the fight a couple of years ago. I suspect the next fight will be the gvt trying to enforce the law on Indian Reservations, although that will be a _really_ touchy fight. Interestingly, one province over, the bars won. The courts ruled it was unfair that one set of rules applied on reserves, and another applied off-reserve. Apparently our law is written differently so that argument can't be made. (I think our law is written to apply to reserves, but on a reserve, federal law trumps provincial law, so they can do what they want. Something like that, anyways. Is there a Treaty 6 expert here that can correct me if I'm wrong?)
It's a slippery slope and the anti-tobacco crowd hasn't slowed down one bit. I suspect they won't stop until tobacco is completely outlawed.
BTW, I'm only a casual smoker myself... a pack a month or less. I'd probably quit if I wasn't so pissed off at the antis.
And don't forget smoking. At least around here. In my city, a restaurant can be fined for allowing someone to smoke on an outdoor patio. We used to have a provision for sealed, separately ventilated smoking rooms, but they were banned a couple years ago. (after some restaurants went to great expense to renovate.) Now they're starting to ban smoking within X meters of an entrance (because in winter smokers will huddle around the door). Pretty soon, I'm sure, they'll try to ban smoking in my own backyard. It seems the only place you can smoke indoors around here now is on an Indian Reserve. Of course, that pisses off the owners of bars near Indian-run Casinos.
(Please don't read this as racism. I'm not criticizing Natives here. It's the stupid white laws I take issue with.)
Yes. I know smoking is unhealthy, smelly, and so on. I think parents that smoke inside or in a vehicle with their children should be fined. But... outdoor patios? bars?
I remember, it was probably about 25 years ago now, that we would "xerox" something on the "xerox machine" if we wanted a copy. Around that time, Xerox started a large ad campaign on TV and in print in which they referred to "Xerox brand photocopiers." I can't speak for the rest of the world, but now the verb around here is "photocopy" and the machine is a "photocopier." So it can happen.
My understanding, and I would love an authoritative source on the matter, is that Ed Roberts was the first to use the term "Personal Computer" to describe the Altair. So "personal computer" predates the "IBM Personal Computer" by six years.
As the article states, there is plenty of debate over whether the Altair was the first personal computer, but most of that debate isn't arguing whether or not an earlier computer was called a "personal computer" but rather whether or not it took the role of a personal computer. (i.e. a computer used by a single person)
Your view of what is biased is of course dependent on what bias you already hold. Such is the nature of how we view truth.
Yes. I agree that plays a large part in what we view as biased. However... perhaps I overanalyze, but I'm always looking for the message behind the story. Some news stories simply report facts. Sure, bias can influence which facts they report, but the facts are sometimes simply presented. Other times, the facts are presented in a way that is obviously intended to promote an agenda or draw an emotional response from the viewer/reader/listener. That's the kind of bias that I hate the most. I could deal with CBC if they only presented the facts that promote their worldview. I could simply balance that with a right-leaning news source that also presented their own selected facts. From there I would have a more complete story from which to draw my own conclusions. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be an option with most of our media, particularly in such a politically sensitive area as the middle-east.
That you think the BBC is unbiased just tells me that you think their view of the world is the closest to yours.
As far as the news channels go, my worldview is probably closest to Fox, although I don't believe I've ever watched Fox news. Actually, my political tendencies would be best described as moderately Libertarian, although my personal moral worldview would be fairly conservative. I haven't watched BBC for a couple years now (it's extra $ in my cable package) so I can't remember what, exactly, made me think it was less biased. Maybe it was just a contrast to CBC Newsworld. If I'm passively watching a news channel, it's either CTV Newsnet or CNN. For more "active" news consumption I mostly read news online from both MSM and alternative sources such as blogs and aggregators. (Including, of course, stories linked from Slashdot and Digg!)
CBC is hard-left-leaning, anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-big-business, anti-conservative...
Regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, CBC is famous for reporting briefly both sides of the story, then doing a deeper story about the family of the palestinan suicide bomber, and the terrible poverty that drove him to do what he did. I have _never_ seen, on CBC, a deeper story about the family of the Israelites that were riding the bus to work, shopping at the mall, or partying at the disco. That's not biased?!?
And to think my tax dollars go to fund this crap.
Disclaimer: Although I seriously doubt it, my views _could_ be dated. I all but quit watching/listening to CBC about three years ago. The anti-Americanism increased significantly after US invaded Iraq. (Not just anti-war, although that is already biased, anti-anything-American.) In the early stages of that conflict, I actually found BBC World News to be probably the least biased.
I'm not sure about an Alpha port of SunOS, so you could be right. (Maybe I should stick to what I know!)
You're absolutely right about the BSDs. It completely slipped my mind. I suppose I should have simply said it was most likely DEC Unix/OSF. (Wasn't the "Tru64" name only after Compaq bought DEC?)
The port of Linux to Alpha was started in 1994. Before that, Linux was i386 only, and not designed to be portable. In June 1994, Jon "Maddog" Hall convinced Linus to port Linux to the Alpha and convinced Digital to fund the port. (They provided an Alpha workstation to Linus. I'm not sure if they actually paid for anything else.)
If it wasn't Linux, it would have been DEC Unix (aka OSF). Sun Unix/Solaris ran/runs on M68k (I believe, but don't quote me on that), Sparc, and x86. SCO has always primarily been x86, although Xenix also ran on PDP-11, Z8001 and M68k (Tandy 16B and 6000 and Apple Lisa) and they were involved in the Itanium port. (My first exposure to Unix was while working for Tandy.)
The Alpha had true 64 bit for a long time, but you had to be some level of a Unix user to use it,
Not true. Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0 were fully supported on Alpha. MS even shipped a beta of Win2k before cancelling it. Granted, the first thing I did with my first Alpha was blow off NT and install Linux.
and you never found a DEC alpha on the store shelves at big box stores. The same goes for the intel Itanic. It is a 64 bit chip, but ran x86 instructions poorly.
True. I bought mine at the campus computer store.
What AMD did is get an x86 chip out with 64bit extensions, that, at the time of its release were usless to the public at large. However, consumers thought "OMG! 64 is better than 32! ZOMG!!!" I know, because I was selling computers for a short period when the AMD 64 came out, and consumers were all about the 64bit. Even if they were planning on running XP 32 bit on the machine...
Yes. Marketing genius. Heck, the A64 I'm using right now is still running 32-bit Linux. 64-bit x86 extensions still aren't ready for the desktop in my opinion. (Until they can decide on a standard way to host both 32bit and 64bit libraries so I don't have to play all sorts of tricks to get Flash, etc. working.)
True, they didn't mass produce the 1Ghz until about 2003. Basically, though, it wasn't a matter of not having the technology. It was a matter of not having the corporate will. They announced their 1Ghz processor in 1999. They were ready to ramp up production for mid-2000.
The point (if there was one) of my post was that you can have the technology, but if you don't market it, it will fail. (Just having the technology first isn't "marketing")
My first Alpha came with Windows NT installed. It was the current Microsoft business OS at the time. Software could harness the 64 bit goodness and speed of Alpha, or you could run "regular" Wintel apps too. I don't believe it failed because it wasn't x86. It failed because DEC failed to market it. Microsoft supported it up to a beta of Win2k. If DEC had marketed the Alpha enough that there was an installed base, or any hope of one, MS would have shipped Win2k for Alpha. We might be living in a less processor-homogenous world today.
Remember -- there's another software/hardware company that has successfully changed their predominant processor twice already. It _can_ be done. (Granted, they own both the software and the hardware) If the will had been there, Alpha and/or Itanium could have been sucessful. (ignoring the technical failings of Itanium.)
BTW, AMD uses some Alpha technology in the Athlons, so, in a way, it lives on.
It is not a question of inital chipsales, it is more a question of marketing. Back when both companies were trying to hit the 1 Ghz mark, AMD got there first. (...) And since AMD had the 64 bit chip out first...
They might have got there before Intel, but they were hardly first. (1Ghz OR 64bit) ***cough***Alpha***cough*** (Where was the marketing at DEC?)
My dad has, on occasion, declined free gasoline. You see, he has a Schlumberger cap, (my brother-in-law works in the oil industry) and when filling up in the heart of oil country, the gas station attendants have sometimes assumed it will be on the company's account.
I have never got free coffee in my Haliburton travel mug, though.
The idea for Penguin LightsTM, was conceived while carpooling to an early morning sales meeting The routine was familiar: Each day fueled by Penguins Brett and I would get up, go to work, and dominate the mint industry.
Running extremely early one day, and already having completed a weeks worth of work by 8:00 am Tuesday, Brett, steely eyed and deep in concentration, mentioned how awesome it would be if he could relax when he wasn't being so productive.
Picking up a tin of Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints, he turned to me and said, "You know I'd probably have an easier time relaxing if we could somehow remove the caffeine from these birds"
The proverbial light bulb shone overhead, and we realized we had a new one. The concept of a decaffeinated mint would shake the foundations of modern society!
So without further ado we present Penguin Lights-The Original Decaffeinated PeppermintsTM. All the genuine Penguin flavor and 100% caffeine free.
a world where high quality software, in a simple package with smiling people on the cover
But what I really wanted was smiling _naked_ people on the cover. Can I get some naked people? or would that offend the corporate types who aren't using the software anyways?
Except that we've already sucked half of the available oil out of the ground. (Read: almost all the easy stuff) Now that the price is higher, we're going after the harder stuff like the oilsands in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
We're nowhere close to that when it comes to uranium. Using U238 in breeder reactor designs, estimates of our supply range from 10,000 years to 5,000,000,000 years. With any luck we'll have fusion figured out before then.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how they can keep saying they do no evil now that Pitr works there.
What people seem to forget is that Apple doesn't have a product called an iPhone, either.
Oh, really?
Where can I get one?
Thought so...
What I don't understand is why another company would be the "next in line" to use a trademark. I thought it was basically first come first serve. If Cisco had it registered, and now they are the first to actually ship an "iPhone", why does anyone else have a claim to it? I could understand it if Cisco let it lapse, then Apple beat them to releasing an iPhone, but that's not what happened here.
Not online, but my worst experience with this was my Counterforce alarm monitoring account. When my now-ex-wife kicked me out of the house, she removed my name from the "allowed to make changes to the account" list at Counterforce, and gave them my new address to keep sending the bills to. After 6 months of them refusing to cancel my account, (remember, I'm not allowed to make changes to the account) I finally stopped paying the bill. The threatening phone calls started. I kept explaining I wanted to cancel the account. They kept refusing. Finally, I got a threatening call that if I didn't pay up, they would cancel the account. I answered "please do! That's what I've been trying to get you to do for months." I still kept getting threatening phone calls trying to collect on the unpaid months. Finally, they sent it to collections. On the first call from the collections agency I explained the whole story, the guy was quite surprised, but seemed to understand my point of view. In a friendly sort of way, I left it at "if you want the money, you're going to have to take me to court." (of course, I think with my story I would have a good chance of winning.) I never got another phone call about the matter. I have no idea if it ended up on my credit report, but it doesn't seem to have affected my ability to get loans since.
http://www.cns-snc.ca/branches/Toronto/energy/wind _vs_nuclear.doc
The figures in this analysis are a bit dated, but it still demonstrates that wind power cannot replace nuclear or conventional power.
In addition to the sheer space required, the fact is, you need to have enough conventional/nuclear power available on standby due to fluctuations in the wind. Until we come up with a feasable way to store the power generated in peak wind times, wind power is simply pointless.
I did a project on wind-power a few years ago. I went into it with high expectations. Those expectations were shattered when I actually looked at the numbers.
Our bars here lost the fight a couple of years ago. I suspect the next fight will be the gvt trying to enforce the law on Indian Reservations, although that will be a _really_ touchy fight. Interestingly, one province over, the bars won. The courts ruled it was unfair that one set of rules applied on reserves, and another applied off-reserve. Apparently our law is written differently so that argument can't be made. (I think our law is written to apply to reserves, but on a reserve, federal law trumps provincial law, so they can do what they want. Something like that, anyways. Is there a Treaty 6 expert here that can correct me if I'm wrong?)
It's a slippery slope and the anti-tobacco crowd hasn't slowed down one bit. I suspect they won't stop until tobacco is completely outlawed.
BTW, I'm only a casual smoker myself... a pack a month or less. I'd probably quit if I wasn't so pissed off at the antis.
And don't forget smoking. At least around here. In my city, a restaurant can be fined for allowing someone to smoke on an outdoor patio. We used to have a provision for sealed, separately ventilated smoking rooms, but they were banned a couple years ago. (after some restaurants went to great expense to renovate.) Now they're starting to ban smoking within X meters of an entrance (because in winter smokers will huddle around the door). Pretty soon, I'm sure, they'll try to ban smoking in my own backyard. It seems the only place you can smoke indoors around here now is on an Indian Reserve. Of course, that pisses off the owners of bars near Indian-run Casinos.
(Please don't read this as racism. I'm not criticizing Natives here. It's the stupid white laws I take issue with.)
Yes. I know smoking is unhealthy, smelly, and so on. I think parents that smoke inside or in a vehicle with their children should be fined. But... outdoor patios? bars?
Hmmm... did you ever collect red ants and dump them on a black-ant-hill?
I remember, it was probably about 25 years ago now, that we would "xerox" something on the "xerox machine" if we wanted a copy. Around that time, Xerox started a large ad campaign on TV and in print in which they referred to "Xerox brand photocopiers." I can't speak for the rest of the world, but now the verb around here is "photocopy" and the machine is a "photocopier." So it can happen.
My understanding, and I would love an authoritative source on the matter, is that Ed Roberts was the first to use the term "Personal Computer" to describe the Altair. So "personal computer" predates the "IBM Personal Computer" by six years.
As the article states, there is plenty of debate over whether the Altair was the first personal computer, but most of that debate isn't arguing whether or not an earlier computer was called a "personal computer" but rather whether or not it took the role of a personal computer. (i.e. a computer used by a single person)
Yes. I agree that plays a large part in what we view as biased. However... perhaps I overanalyze, but I'm always looking for the message behind the story. Some news stories simply report facts. Sure, bias can influence which facts they report, but the facts are sometimes simply presented. Other times, the facts are presented in a way that is obviously intended to promote an agenda or draw an emotional response from the viewer/reader/listener. That's the kind of bias that I hate the most. I could deal with CBC if they only presented the facts that promote their worldview. I could simply balance that with a right-leaning news source that also presented their own selected facts. From there I would have a more complete story from which to draw my own conclusions. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be an option with most of our media, particularly in such a politically sensitive area as the middle-east.
As far as the news channels go, my worldview is probably closest to Fox, although I don't believe I've ever watched Fox news. Actually, my political tendencies would be best described as moderately Libertarian, although my personal moral worldview would be fairly conservative. I haven't watched BBC for a couple years now (it's extra $ in my cable package) so I can't remember what, exactly, made me think it was less biased. Maybe it was just a contrast to CBC Newsworld. If I'm passively watching a news channel, it's either CTV Newsnet or CNN. For more "active" news consumption I mostly read news online from both MSM and alternative sources such as blogs and aggregators. (Including, of course, stories linked from Slashdot and Digg!)
Quite simply: Bullshit.
CBC is hard-left-leaning, anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-big-business, anti-conservative...
Regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, CBC is famous for reporting briefly both sides of the story, then doing a deeper story about the family of the palestinan suicide bomber, and the terrible poverty that drove him to do what he did. I have _never_ seen, on CBC, a deeper story about the family of the Israelites that were riding the bus to work, shopping at the mall, or partying at the disco. That's not biased?!?
And to think my tax dollars go to fund this crap.
Disclaimer: Although I seriously doubt it, my views _could_ be dated. I all but quit watching/listening to CBC about three years ago. The anti-Americanism increased significantly after US invaded Iraq. (Not just anti-war, although that is already biased, anti-anything-American.) In the early stages of that conflict, I actually found BBC World News to be probably the least biased.
I'm not sure about an Alpha port of SunOS, so you could be right. (Maybe I should stick to what I know!)
You're absolutely right about the BSDs. It completely slipped my mind. I suppose I should have simply said it was most likely DEC Unix/OSF. (Wasn't the "Tru64" name only after Compaq bought DEC?)
The port of Linux to Alpha was started in 1994. Before that, Linux was i386 only, and not designed to be portable. In June 1994, Jon "Maddog" Hall convinced Linus to port Linux to the Alpha and convinced Digital to fund the port. (They provided an Alpha workstation to Linus. I'm not sure if they actually paid for anything else.)
If it wasn't Linux, it would have been DEC Unix (aka OSF). Sun Unix/Solaris ran/runs on M68k (I believe, but don't quote me on that), Sparc, and x86. SCO has always primarily been x86, although Xenix also ran on PDP-11, Z8001 and M68k (Tandy 16B and 6000 and Apple Lisa) and they were involved in the Itanium port. (My first exposure to Unix was while working for Tandy.)
Not true. Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0 were fully supported on Alpha. MS even shipped a beta of Win2k before cancelling it. Granted, the first thing I did with my first Alpha was blow off NT and install Linux.
True. I bought mine at the campus computer store.
Yes. Marketing genius. Heck, the A64 I'm using right now is still running 32-bit Linux. 64-bit x86 extensions still aren't ready for the desktop in my opinion. (Until they can decide on a standard way to host both 32bit and 64bit libraries so I don't have to play all sorts of tricks to get Flash, etc. working.)
True, they didn't mass produce the 1Ghz until about 2003. Basically, though, it wasn't a matter of not having the technology. It was a matter of not having the corporate will. They announced their 1Ghz processor in 1999. They were ready to ramp up production for mid-2000.
The point (if there was one) of my post was that you can have the technology, but if you don't market it, it will fail. (Just having the technology first isn't "marketing")
My first Alpha came with Windows NT installed. It was the current Microsoft business OS at the time. Software could harness the 64 bit goodness and speed of Alpha, or you could run "regular" Wintel apps too. I don't believe it failed because it wasn't x86. It failed because DEC failed to market it. Microsoft supported it up to a beta of Win2k. If DEC had marketed the Alpha enough that there was an installed base, or any hope of one, MS would have shipped Win2k for Alpha. We might be living in a less processor-homogenous world today.
Remember -- there's another software/hardware company that has successfully changed their predominant processor twice already. It _can_ be done. (Granted, they own both the software and the hardware) If the will had been there, Alpha and/or Itanium could have been sucessful. (ignoring the technical failings of Itanium.)
BTW, AMD uses some Alpha technology in the Athlons, so, in a way, it lives on.
They might have got there before Intel, but they were hardly first. (1Ghz OR 64bit) ***cough***Alpha***cough*** (Where was the marketing at DEC?)
Only slighty related, but...
My dad has, on occasion, declined free gasoline. You see, he has a Schlumberger cap, (my brother-in-law works in the oil industry) and when filling up in the heart of oil country, the gas station attendants have sometimes assumed it will be on the company's account.
I have never got free coffee in my Haliburton travel mug, though.
Here in Saskatchewan we even pay homage to the mosquito on our license plates:
"Land of Living Skies"
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I actually never owned a C=64. I loved my VIC-20 well beyond it's years. (s/n 2400)
SYS 64802
From: http://www.peppermints.com/penguinmints.asp
The idea for Penguin LightsTM, was conceived while carpooling to an early morning sales meeting The routine was familiar: Each day fueled by Penguins Brett and I would get up, go to work, and dominate the mint industry.
Running extremely early one day, and already having completed a weeks worth of work by 8:00 am Tuesday, Brett, steely eyed and deep in concentration, mentioned how awesome it would be if he could relax when he wasn't being so productive.
Picking up a tin of Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints, he turned to me and said, "You know I'd probably have an easier time relaxing if we could somehow remove the caffeine from these birds"
The proverbial light bulb shone overhead, and we realized we had a new one. The concept of a decaffeinated mint would shake the foundations of modern society!
So without further ado we present Penguin Lights-The Original Decaffeinated PeppermintsTM. All the genuine Penguin flavor and 100% caffeine free.
That's what I was thinking too. Except that Adam is simply Hebrew for "man," so maybe it's not really a name.
Either that, or it's some radical feminists trying to revise history again.
Excuse me? What, exactly, have we been talking about for the past 11 years then? See: http://cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127giflzw.html and http://burnallgifs.org/archives/ for some background. Also see: http://swpat.ffii.de/pikta/xrani/mpeg/index.en.ht
Hell, for a more generic discussion see: http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/history.htm
(Score: 3, interesting) my A$$. Should be (Score: -1, wrong)
But what I really wanted was smiling _naked_ people on the cover. Can I get some naked people? or would that offend the corporate types who aren't using the software anyways?
> The same can be said of oil and gas reserves...
Except that we've already sucked half of the available oil out of the ground. (Read: almost all the easy stuff) Now that the price is higher, we're going after the harder stuff like the oilsands in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
We're nowhere close to that when it comes to uranium. Using U238 in breeder reactor designs, estimates of our supply range from 10,000 years to 5,000,000,000 years. With any luck we'll have fusion figured out before then.
Does it really matter? Apparently, so far, we have mined about 0.000007% of the available uranium in the earth's crust.
Eventually, we will be able to use breeder reactors, so we can use the abundant U-238 (99.3%) instead of the much less abundant U-235. (0.7%)
I do believe the one propaganda piece I read indicated it was 50 years at the current rate of consumption if we replaced all our energy with nuclear.
Here is a short discussion of the issue: http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionG.htm#uranium
Wikipedia also contains a discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power