I've been reading run-of-the-mill myths and legends.
The unicorn horns were used for both detecting and neutralizing poisons. To neutralize the poison, you would probably like to find out whether there is a poison in the first place.
As for the obscure sci-fi-reference, I think it's "The Warlock in Spite of Himself" by Cristopher Stasheff, where the reluctant hero uses a toxin diagnostic device which he claims -- knowing it to be false -- to be the horn of a unicorn.
He also doesn't mention the HIGHLY obnoxious "best guess" rendering - Opera STARTS to render a page as soon as it has any data at all, then re-renders as more data comes in. Net result? You can play tag with the page elements as they move around your screen. In my experience, Firefox starts to render pages a tick or two after Opera, but tends to finish rendering a tick or two before Opera.
Firefox has this annoying behaviour, too. The problem is especially noticeable with long tables. Firefox starts loading the table top to bottom, and rearranges the width of the table columns depending on what the next row looks like.
Try clicking on a link, button or selecting some text, and you'll end up clicking something that was above, to the left, below, to the right, or wherever in relation to what you really intended doing.
> No, it's not even close to testing for drugs, being that this plagarism detector is at the collegiate level.
This statement, alongwith another one with a lower score (well, at least currently), are brilliant examples of how lightly people take drug use in sports.
Sure, plagiarism in college is a problem, but as opposed to drug use in sports, it doesn't make the person a better performer of his or her skill. It doesn't include a health risk, either.
Compare that to how many jumbo jets have gone down and it points out something, if its flashy, and it goes wrong, then its doomed. If its nearly a commodity people just shrug their shoulders and move on.
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
A couple of key considerations:
Pan Am does not exist anymore
Airbus has been winning an awful lot of contracts the past 10 years
Re:Compliments not Competes with 802.11
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
·
· Score: 1
Your cordless phone doesn't try to do as much as 64 Kbps. 802.11x tries to do 1-54 Mbps. Of course your cordless phone beats it.
Next you'll be writing about how little gas your bicycle uses compared to a Ford Focus.
Re:IRDA is dead, long live Bluetooth(aka DIE CABLE
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
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· Score: 1
Yes, you could be wrong, but you could also be right.
This depends on the manufacturers.
I mean, who would have thought that you'd have to answer "Yes to All" seventyfive times in a row when recursively deleting a directory from the Windows Explorer? Doesn't "All" mean all?
The same goes for phone and phone accessory designers. Some of them are just plain stupid when it comes to usability.
On the other hand, what you're describing seems like a one-time operation, intended to make sure that you're connecting your handsfree set, and not that of the scary bad guy sitting in the room next door. (I won't get into the merits of that train of thought.)
You probably won't have to do it again, unless you're buying a new bluetooth phone or a new bluetooth handsfree. From the same manufacturer.
Other handsfree sets that I've seen have been a bit simpler. They don't require any pointing, at least, but you still have to approve the bluetooth device on the phone.
Of course, the easiest for you as a user would be that it Just Worked. But it would also be the easiest way to guarantee that it Doesn't Work the Way You Want.
Also, I would truly hope that the database user you are using with your web app does NOT have access to drop databases, I just give the user the minimum access required to make the app run, and nothing more (don't know too many apps that need DROP DATABASE)
Fine. Replace "drop database" with "UPDATE user SET password = 'lala'", then. Still unlikely?
I'd recommend learning how to use bind variables, among other things.
And that's the difference. There are software programs in existence that don't have a click-through EULA during installation that the BSA could still bust you for. Just because they don't have a click-through, doesn't mean there isn't a EULA.
Hold on a second; are you saying that I can legally bind you to a contract just by putting the contract text somewhere in something that you have legally gotten from me?
If that is the case, then US contract law is significantly different from law in most of the world, where a contract requires two parties in knowledge and agreement of the existence of the contract.
But with software, you agree to the license. They are saying, explicitely, that you do not own a copy merely are issued a limited license in what you can do with it. If you own a copy of something, than the person who sold it to you has certain obligations.
I have this piece of software here, from a company called Microsoft. It's called Windows, and this copy was bought from Microsoft. Microsoft does not (at the time of purchase) inform me, as the buyer, that I don't own the copy of the product.
In the case of the "Upgrade" version of Windows XP, the buyer is respectfully informed that she is buying an upgrade to an existing product, and that she needs to be a "licensed user" of one of the former Windows versions.
This practise is, as far as I have been able to determine, commonplace with end user software.
If "They are saying, explicitely, that you do not own a copy merely are issued a limited license in what you can do with it", then I must ask you:
In the context of individual buyers, who are these "they", and what are the products?
To a limited extent, I agree that some individuals would receive such a license from Oracle, for instance.
I must then ask you to consider the cases where you get a product package, where the software is a part of the product, yet where there is no such agreement to be signed, or otherwise contractually agreed to, before acquiring the product:
Cell phones
PDAs
Printers
Network Adapters
Telephones
Radios
CD/DVD players/recorders
Inkjet cartridges
Cameras
Cars
...
As the former poster implied, you do not agree to the terms of use of the software before buying these products. You are not given the chance.
(In all fairness, it must be said that some computer stores have accepted returns of opened software packages in the cases where the customer could not agree to the license within.)
What is the difference between using a software program and copying it? Each bit is being processed by the computer in both cases, right?
That depends on how you define processing. If you define processing as "incurring any activity in the CPU or related hardware", then you are correct.
For meaningful definitions of the word "processing" in the context given, you are wrong. "Processing" implies that something is being done to the data; that there is (at least) an algorithm being applied to it (and in the case of "use", as a result of user input), and that the algorithm changes the data.
This does not happen in copying, and quite clearly not in bit-for-bit copying.
There may be programs that claim to copy or transfer data (which includes a technical copying of the data), yet which still perform simple transformations. FTP programs, for instance, will do implicit transformations between Unix and DOS/Windows text line formats when "ASCII" mode is specified in the transfer. It is still impossible (or at least close to impossible) to make a valid argument for that the software copied was "used" in the process.
Then I could cleverly argue that by use, I am copying, and hence don't have to worry about GPL compliancy.
Choose one:
1) No, because if copying is a subset of usage, that subset is still covered by the GPL, regardless of it stating that it doesn't cover general usage.
2) No, because the argument lacks validity; using is more than copying.
3) No, do you think you are copying Slash every time you post here?
But is it, really? We don't know yet. These were, as others have explained, unauthorized tests made on a pre-pre-release system.
That does not mean that the release system, running at 1600 MHz is faster than a 3200 MHz Pentium 4.
It might just as well mean that it is slower, and 3 GHz-ish is what the Pentium 4 will be at around release time for Opteron.
It's still going to be a race.
On a more historical (heh) note, there have been processors before running at lower clock frequencies outperforming others at double or higher frequency. MIPS R10K and descendants, for instance.
Also, it is completely out in the blue whether Opteron will be any good in multi-CPU configurations, compared to offers from Intel and other chip makers.
Well, the point is, I guess, that this ISN'T an additional standard, it replaces the confusion we had with the differences between the Linux variants that are now implementing "United Linux".
Get over it.
Fewer differences means LESS complexity and variety, not more.
But there is no such lie; the article does not show that Microsoft places GPL/LGPL in that category, it simply states that:
1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that [...]
Hence, GPL/LGPL are "IPR Impairing Licenses", since there is absolutely no specification of what the GPL/LGPL should be about. If a newer version of the GPL said that you weren't allowed to distribute the code freely, it would still be an "IPR Impairing License".
550 astronomical units is
really far out there, several orders of magnitude further then any other space mission to date
This is not correct. Pioneer 10 and Voyager 1 have both passed more than 75 AU (which you would have known, if you read the following paragraphs in the article), and that does not make 550 AU "several orders of magnitude further".
So, even if 550 AU isn't really that far away, considering that this is the inner boundary of the solar foci, this is indeed a technical challenge.
It doesn't seem to be an unsurmountable challenge as such, except for the political issues with the nuclear powered engine.
Why should the United States have exclusive rights to determine what should and what should not be patented.
Because it's their nation. Patents issued by the USPTO aren't world patents, so the Swede you mention later could have patented his mouse in the rest of the world, where similar and different patent rules apply.
You're basically making the same mistake as many Americans are accused of: Assuming that the USA means the world.
If you're spending $500 on this, you probably can also spend the bucks on a machine to use just for that software with a supported distro, if you don't want to move your main machine to that distro.
That may be true for a very small office. However, if you're a Debian shop and have to convert, the cost per computer will rise, depending on how competent your IT staff is. Just because the shop runs Debian doesn't mean that they're competent enough to do a quick-and-easy move to Red Hat. Maybe it isn't even possible, because of Debian-specific "enhancements" to already existing software installations.
If they have to run two different software setups on 10-50 computers, either through dual boot (not a good solution for automated maintenance, mind you!) or shiny new computers with Red Hat installed, the extra costs per year will probably be greater (for a "small office") than any USD 500/licence worth of software.
So, no, you probably can't spend the bucks on another machine. Too high expenses are too high expenses.
Fine, IBM doesn't support Debian. That probably means very few who depend on Debian will make the effort of buying their software, and go for something else instead.
Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96.
I don't remember the first time I used a search engine, but I suspect it was in the autumn of 1993.
IIRC, the search engine I used, was either the WWW Worm or WebCrawler (most likely the former at first, see below), and AltaVista came a while later as a "revolutionizing" new thing from DEC, partially to promote their Alpha 21164 processors (launched in 1995).
Search Engine Watch seems to agree with some of what I remember; AltaVista opening in December 1995 and WebCrawler in April 1994.
That's about where you get when it comes to prior art; the WWW wasn't much before 1993, and DEC most certainly wasn't the first player in the open. Proving prior art to most of the claims should be relatively easy, unless the patents are so specific that they only cover the things that AltaVista did and nobody else had done before (I don't quite see how that happened, the clue about AltaVista was that it was fast).
Slashdot Mirror
I've been reading run-of-the-mill myths and legends.
The unicorn horns were used for both detecting and neutralizing poisons. To neutralize the poison, you would probably like to find out whether there is a poison in the first place.
http://www.unicornlady.net/treasures.html
As for the obscure sci-fi-reference, I think it's "The Warlock in Spite of Himself" by Cristopher Stasheff, where the reluctant hero uses a toxin diagnostic device which he claims -- knowing it to be false -- to be the horn of a unicorn.
This is eerily similar to what the horn of the unicorn is supposed to do in the presence of poisons.
...
Life imitates art and art imitates life, but which is it this time
Firefox has this annoying behaviour, too. The problem is especially noticeable with long tables. Firefox starts loading the table top to bottom, and rearranges the width of the table columns depending on what the next row looks like.
Try clicking on a link, button or selecting some text, and you'll end up clicking something that was above, to the left, below, to the right, or wherever in relation to what you really intended doing.
What Firefox has that Opera doesn't, is that restoring from full-screen mode annoyingly results in Firefox disappearing completely (Debian sarge or Slackware 9, standard XFree86 installation, reproducible every time, any Firefox version). The process is still running, but there is no window anymore.
This is particularly annoying, considering that F11 is very close to backspace, which I tend to use often when filling out forms.
No, the G3 has (as most other digital cameras) a CCD that is mounted as close to the horizontal plane as possible.
If that was the case here, BTW, the image you se would have had to been a crop of the original.
My Firefox bugs, and opens the URL in both the current tab and the new tab.
The behavior of opening the page also works if you hold Ctrl and middle click on the tab.
To disable the keyword feature, go to the same config page, and set: to Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent Firefox from attempting to load www.smile.com if you paste smile into it.
> No, it's not even close to testing for drugs, being that this plagarism detector is at the collegiate level.
This statement, alongwith another one with a lower score (well, at least currently), are brilliant examples of how lightly people take drug use in sports.
Sure, plagiarism in college is a problem, but as opposed to drug use in sports, it doesn't make the person a better performer of his or her skill. It doesn't include a health risk, either.
As the former poster noted, "inexpensive" doesn't mean "cheap for you as a consumer".
Consider two extremes:
One is what NASA considers a cheap mission to Mars.
The other is what you consider cheap.
The "inexpensive" in RAID is inbetween.
People may also want to check out article 10 of the Berne Convention, entitled "Fair Use".
Do you recall an airline company called "Pan Am", the biggest one of their time?
They were the victim of this little incident above and in Lockerbie. You may want to check out the results for Pan Am shortly afterwards, to see how well this turned out.
A couple of key considerations:
Your cordless phone doesn't try to do as much as 64 Kbps. 802.11x tries to do 1-54 Mbps. Of course your cordless phone beats it.
Next you'll be writing about how little gas your bicycle uses compared to a Ford Focus.
Yes, you could be wrong, but you could also be right.
This depends on the manufacturers.
I mean, who would have thought that you'd have to answer "Yes to All" seventyfive times in a row when recursively deleting a directory from the Windows Explorer? Doesn't "All" mean all?
The same goes for phone and phone accessory designers. Some of them are just plain stupid when it comes to usability.
On the other hand, what you're describing seems like a one-time operation, intended to make sure that you're connecting your handsfree set, and not that of the scary bad guy sitting in the room next door. (I won't get into the merits of that train of thought.)
You probably won't have to do it again, unless you're buying a new bluetooth phone or a new bluetooth handsfree. From the same manufacturer.
Other handsfree sets that I've seen have been a bit simpler. They don't require any pointing, at least, but you still have to approve the bluetooth device on the phone.
Of course, the easiest for you as a user would be that it Just Worked. But it would also be the easiest way to guarantee that it Doesn't Work the Way You Want.
Fine. Replace "drop database" with "UPDATE user SET password = 'lala'", then. Still unlikely?
I'd recommend learning how to use bind variables, among other things.
Shameless (but relevant) book plug for a friend:
Innocent Code: A Security Wake-Up Call for Web Programmers
Hold on a second; are you saying that I can legally bind you to a contract just by putting the contract text somewhere in something that you have legally gotten from me?
If that is the case, then US contract law is significantly different from law in most of the world, where a contract requires two parties in knowledge and agreement of the existence of the contract.
I have this piece of software here, from a company called Microsoft. It's called Windows, and this copy was bought from Microsoft. Microsoft does not (at the time of purchase) inform me, as the buyer, that I don't own the copy of the product.
In the case of the "Upgrade" version of Windows XP, the buyer is respectfully informed that she is buying an upgrade to an existing product, and that she needs to be a "licensed user" of one of the former Windows versions.
This practise is, as far as I have been able to determine, commonplace with end user software.
If "They are saying, explicitely, that you do not own a copy merely are issued a limited license in what you can do with it", then I must ask you:
In the context of individual buyers, who are these "they", and what are the products?
To a limited extent, I agree that some individuals would receive such a license from Oracle, for instance.
I must then ask you to consider the cases where you get a product package, where the software is a part of the product, yet where there is no such agreement to be signed, or otherwise contractually agreed to, before acquiring the product:
As the former poster implied, you do not agree to the terms of use of the software before buying these products. You are not given the chance.
(In all fairness, it must be said that some computer stores have accepted returns of opened software packages in the cases where the customer could not agree to the license within.)
That depends on how you define processing. If you define processing as "incurring any activity in the CPU or related hardware", then you are correct.
For meaningful definitions of the word "processing" in the context given, you are wrong. "Processing" implies that something is being done to the data; that there is (at least) an algorithm being applied to it (and in the case of "use", as a result of user input), and that the algorithm changes the data.
This does not happen in copying, and quite clearly not in bit-for-bit copying.
There may be programs that claim to copy or transfer data (which includes a technical copying of the data), yet which still perform simple transformations. FTP programs, for instance, will do implicit transformations between Unix and DOS/Windows text line formats when "ASCII" mode is specified in the transfer. It is still impossible (or at least close to impossible) to make a valid argument for that the software copied was "used" in the process.
Choose one:
1) No, because if copying is a subset of usage, that subset is still covered by the GPL, regardless of it stating that it doesn't cover general usage.
2) No, because the argument lacks validity; using is more than copying.
3) No, do you think you are copying Slash every time you post here?
But is it, really? We don't know yet. These were, as others have explained, unauthorized tests made on a pre-pre-release system.
That does not mean that the release system, running at 1600 MHz is faster than a 3200 MHz Pentium 4.
It might just as well mean that it is slower, and 3 GHz-ish is what the Pentium 4 will be at around release time for Opteron.
It's still going to be a race.
On a more historical (heh) note, there have been processors before running at lower clock frequencies outperforming others at double or higher frequency. MIPS R10K and descendants, for instance.
Also, it is completely out in the blue whether Opteron will be any good in multi-CPU configurations, compared to offers from Intel and other chip makers.
Well, the point is, I guess, that this ISN'T an additional standard, it replaces the confusion we had with the differences between the Linux variants that are now implementing "United Linux".
Get over it.
Fewer differences means LESS complexity and variety, not more.
Hence, GPL/LGPL are "IPR Impairing Licenses", since there is absolutely no specification of what the GPL/LGPL should be about. If a newer version of the GPL said that you weren't allowed to distribute the code freely, it would still be an "IPR Impairing License".
This is not correct. Pioneer 10 and Voyager 1 have both passed more than 75 AU (which you would have known, if you read the following paragraphs in the article), and that does not make 550 AU "several orders of magnitude further".
So, even if 550 AU isn't really that far away, considering that this is the inner boundary of the solar foci, this is indeed a technical challenge.
It doesn't seem to be an unsurmountable challenge as such, except for the political issues with the nuclear powered engine.
Because it's their nation. Patents issued by the USPTO aren't world patents, so the Swede you mention later could have patented his mouse in the rest of the world, where similar and different patent rules apply.
You're basically making the same mistake as many Americans are accused of: Assuming that the USA means the world.
That may be true for a very small office. However, if you're a Debian shop and have to convert, the cost per computer will rise, depending on how competent your IT staff is. Just because the shop runs Debian doesn't mean that they're competent enough to do a quick-and-easy move to Red Hat. Maybe it isn't even possible, because of Debian-specific "enhancements" to already existing software installations.
If they have to run two different software setups on 10-50 computers, either through dual boot (not a good solution for automated maintenance, mind you!) or shiny new computers with Red Hat installed, the extra costs per year will probably be greater (for a "small office") than any USD 500/licence worth of software.
So, no, you probably can't spend the bucks on another machine. Too high expenses are too high expenses.
Fine, IBM doesn't support Debian. That probably means very few who depend on Debian will make the effort of buying their software, and go for something else instead.
The world doesn't end because of it, though.
And I haven't seen anyone complaining about ISPs deleting accounts for spamming and stuff like that.
I have friends working for largish ISPs, and they regularly get complaints about that, even threats about lawsuits (but no lawsuits yet, AFAIK).
Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96.
I don't remember the first time I used a search engine, but I suspect it was in the autumn of 1993.
IIRC, the search engine I used, was either the WWW Worm or WebCrawler (most likely the former at first, see below), and AltaVista came a while later as a "revolutionizing" new thing from DEC, partially to promote their Alpha 21164 processors (launched in 1995).
Search Engine Watch seems to agree with some of what I remember; AltaVista opening in December 1995 and WebCrawler in April 1994.
That's about where you get when it comes to prior art; the WWW wasn't much before 1993, and DEC most certainly wasn't the first player in the open. Proving prior art to most of the claims should be relatively easy, unless the patents are so specific that they only cover the things that AltaVista did and nobody else had done before (I don't quite see how that happened, the clue about AltaVista was that it was fast).
Who said that the government gets your e-mail address?
I've created an informational page on the legislation change, please have a look (it includes the entire registration procedure as well).