Interesting quote from Vince Zampella's profile on LinkedIn:
"...Rumor in the industry is that EA placed a million-dollar bounty for snapping up any IW studio lead, like Vince. Just the fact that the rumor is out there should speak volumes about how badly people want Vince working on their products"
Jesse Heinig, Production Coordinator, Infinity Ward reported to Vince at Infinity Ward
Yeah, it's a pretty dumb argument. I've been to East Africa a few times in the last couple of years (Kenya & Tanzania), and was quite surprised at how popular mobile phones are over there. In many areas they never got full wired infrastructure, so skipped a generation and went wireless. Anyway, the point is there's a large market for mobiles there, despite the fact that it costs a sizable chunk of their income. If mobiles can succeed, a sub-$100 notebook should find a market. The argument that the money could be better spent on relieving poverty could surely be applied to any country with a population under the poverty line.
Actually, if you bothered to read the Gates foundation web page, you would see that most of the money has been allocated to a minority scholarship program, followed by a vaccination fund that targets the 75 poorest nations in the world - ie not just African countries. There are no AIDS grants mentioned, except for research into an AIDS vaccine. What AIDS-in-Africa charity are you talking about?
And if you've been to an African country, you would see the immense good that NGO charities are doing efficiently with relatively small financial reserves. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your bigoted fantasy.
Generally used to indicate your company/business/idea is cool and ahead of the curve, yet you have no clue why anyone would use it, or how to differentiate it from the ten other Flicker-of's.
Examples:
We're the Flickr of video
We're in stealth mode now, but all I can say is, it's like Flickr but for video
He has only claimed to not use the bitkeeper client. There is no EULA governing his use of the publicly facing server. The argument has been that if he used the bitkeeper client to reverse engineer the protocol, he was breaking the terms of using the client. Clearly he wasn't.
Whether it is an abuse of Bitkeeper's servers to try and interact with them without permission is another debate altogether. Does putting a server on the internet with no access restriction mechanism qualify you for legal protection against access?
In fact, her position has often been more anti-Linux than pro-Microsoft. This is the same Laura Didio that signed the SCO NDA back in 2003 and came back to report:
"The courts are going to ultimately have to prove this, but based on what I'm seeing... I think there is a basis that SCO has a credible case," and "This is not a nuisance case."
Hardly known? Supermodified was (shortly after the time of release) Ninja Tune's bestselling album. Ninja Tune is one of the more "fashionable" electronic labels, with many people buying albums on the strength of their brand as opposed to the quality of the artist.
(Of course, they do release a lot of excellent stuff which is how they got their rep in the first place)
Re:forget the anti-evolution argument
on
Digital Darwin
·
· Score: 1
I think you've hit the nail on the head. A lot of people without a biology background get excited about the parallels between evolutionary algorithms and the process of evolution. Unfortunately it is rarely stated that evolutionary algorithms are just a model of how evolution works. A good comparison is the simplified perceptron model of the neuron used in neural networks. The actual mechanism by which genetic algorithms work is really close to a gradient descent search. And almost all evolutionary algorithms require some kind of manual design to initiate or further the progress of the computation.
There is no need for a "defensive patent" to keep something in the public domain. Patents must be useful, new & innovative and non-obvious. As soon as something is made public, it becomes non-patentable.
A defensive patent like this stops an unscrupulous company from filing future patents built upon this discovery. If this knowledge was just made available in the public domain, then a small variation/incremental improvement could legally be patented. Right now, this can't be done without licensing the information from the current patent holder, which seems unlikely given their political stance.
This is just as much about preventing future patents as making the current discovery freely available to other researchers.
Mindless trivia: The original user components of AmigaDOS were written in BCPL, by a British company (Metacomco) contracted by Commodore. Through various revisions, they were rewritten by Commodore in C.
Checkinstall automatically produces native packages (rpm, deb, slackware tgz) from a standard make install. I've found this gives the best of both worlds - easy, consistent package management coupled with flexible/optimized source configuration.
I would tell my 12 year old self to register for a slashdot ID as soon as possible, so when they switch on UID displays you could look really l33t. Yep.
I find the programs that interface with musicbrainz to be very useful. The organizational view used by Zinf is probably superior to any other I have used, including iTunes and MusicMatch jukebox. It is great that we have this large database of data that can be accessed from client programs using an open api.
The two pieces of music I definitely recognised were Primal Scream's "Come Together" in the second long segment, and of course the "Dueling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance. A short jazzy piece near the beginning sounded a lot like an Amon Tobin song but I can't place it. I'm guessing that the very first piece was probably composed for the clip since it slotted very closely with the video samples.
I like the nvidia drivers. I really do. And I'm not all uptight about them being closed source. But if you say "They've always supported Linux" you must have a short memory. I distinctly remember buying my TNT2 on the promise of imminent, decent quality (ie par with 3D/FX) drivers and waiting a year for them to arrive. Yeah, they got there in the end, but always is not the word you're looking for.
More on Syd Mead...
on
Tron 2.0 Game
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Syd Mead also was responsible for much of the design of Blade Runner, and did some work as an artist on Aliens. He has produced work for a couple of video games too...I think Beneath A Steel Sky and one of the Wing Commanders...
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting quote from Vince Zampella's profile on LinkedIn:
"...Rumor in the industry is that EA placed a million-dollar bounty for snapping up any IW studio lead, like Vince. Just the fact that the rumor is out there should speak volumes about how badly people want Vince working on their products"
Jesse Heinig, Production Coordinator, Infinity Ward
reported to Vince at Infinity Ward
Yeah, it's a pretty dumb argument. I've been to East Africa a few times in the last couple of years (Kenya & Tanzania), and was quite surprised at how popular mobile phones are over there. In many areas they never got full wired infrastructure, so skipped a generation and went wireless. Anyway, the point is there's a large market for mobiles there, despite the fact that it costs a sizable chunk of their income. If mobiles can succeed, a sub-$100 notebook should find a market. The argument that the money could be better spent on relieving poverty could surely be applied to any country with a population under the poverty line.
Actually, if you bothered to read the Gates foundation web page, you would see that most of the money has been allocated to a minority scholarship program, followed by a vaccination fund that targets the 75 poorest nations in the world - ie not just African countries. There are no AIDS grants mentioned, except for research into an AIDS vaccine. What AIDS-in-Africa charity are you talking about? And if you've been to an African country, you would see the immense good that NGO charities are doing efficiently with relatively small financial reserves. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your bigoted fantasy.
flickr of (adj)
Generally used to indicate your company/business/idea is cool and ahead of the curve, yet you have no clue why anyone would use it, or how to differentiate it from the ten other Flicker-of's.
Examples:
It also didn't pass:
5) Does it deify Google the company or Google the work environment?
But 3 out of 5 ain't bad.
Google Desktop called, it wants its media circus back.
He has only claimed to not use the bitkeeper client. There is no EULA governing his use of the publicly facing server. The argument has been that if he used the bitkeeper client to reverse engineer the protocol, he was breaking the terms of using the client. Clearly he wasn't.
Whether it is an abuse of Bitkeeper's servers to try and interact with them without permission is another debate altogether. Does putting a server on the internet with no access restriction mechanism qualify you for legal protection against access?
In fact, her position has often been more anti-Linux than pro-Microsoft. This is the same Laura Didio that signed the SCO NDA back in 2003 and came back to report:
"The courts are going to ultimately have to prove this, but based on what I'm seeing ... I think there is a basis that SCO has a credible case," and "This is not a nuisance case."
Hardly known? Supermodified was (shortly after the time of release) Ninja Tune's bestselling album. Ninja Tune is one of the more "fashionable" electronic labels, with many people buying albums on the strength of their brand as opposed to the quality of the artist.
(Of course, they do release a lot of excellent stuff which is how they got their rep in the first place)
I think you've hit the nail on the head. A lot of people without a biology background get excited about the parallels between evolutionary algorithms and the process of evolution. Unfortunately it is rarely stated that evolutionary algorithms are just a model of how evolution works. A good comparison is the simplified perceptron model of the neuron used in neural networks. The actual mechanism by which genetic algorithms work is really close to a gradient descent search. And almost all evolutionary algorithms require some kind of manual design to initiate or further the progress of the computation.
There is no need for a "defensive patent" to keep something in the public domain. Patents must be useful, new & innovative and non-obvious. As soon as something is made public, it becomes non-patentable.
A defensive patent like this stops an unscrupulous company from filing future patents built upon this discovery. If this knowledge was just made available in the public domain, then a small variation/incremental improvement could legally be patented. Right now, this can't be done without licensing the information from the current patent holder, which seems unlikely given their political stance.
This is just as much about preventing future patents as making the current discovery freely available to other researchers.
OSNews hosted Eugenia articles - a goatse.cx for the next generation of slashdotters.
Mindless trivia: The original user components of AmigaDOS were written in BCPL, by a British company (Metacomco) contracted by Commodore. Through various revisions, they were rewritten by Commodore in C.
Checkinstall automatically produces native packages (rpm, deb, slackware tgz) from a standard make install. I've found this gives the best of both worlds - easy, consistent package management coupled with flexible/optimized source configuration.
I would tell my 12 year old self to register for a slashdot ID as soon as possible, so when they switch on UID displays you could look really l33t. Yep.
He also wrote the graphic novel that the movie "From Hell" was based on.
I don't think the original Dragon's Lair actually had the visual cues, only the successive games. Which made the gameplay even more boring, IMHO.
I find the programs that interface with musicbrainz to be very useful. The organizational view used by Zinf is probably superior to any other I have used, including iTunes and MusicMatch jukebox. It is great that we have this large database of data that can be accessed from client programs using an open api.
...although weiner is an acceptable ethnic variation. :)
Thanks, I'll have to check it out. I'm sure I've heard it sampled or covered in a few recordings actually, the Amon Tobin is the one that stood out.
The two pieces of music I definitely recognised were Primal Scream's "Come Together" in the second long segment, and of course the "Dueling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance. A short jazzy piece near the beginning sounded a lot like an Amon Tobin song but I can't place it. I'm guessing that the very first piece was probably composed for the clip since it slotted very closely with the video samples.
They've always supported Linux
I like the nvidia drivers. I really do. And I'm not all uptight about them being closed source. But if you say "They've always supported Linux" you must have a short memory. I distinctly remember buying my TNT2 on the promise of imminent, decent quality (ie par with 3D/FX) drivers and waiting a year for them to arrive. Yeah, they got there in the end, but always is not the word you're looking for.
Syd Mead also was responsible for much of the design of Blade Runner, and did some work as an artist on Aliens. He has produced work for a couple of video games too...I think Beneath A Steel Sky and one of the Wing Commanders...
Dreamworks SKG is Spielberg, Katzenberg and G=David Geffen, as in Geffen Records.
Maybe you should consider getting a video card with accelerated X support. If you're even using X 4.0 at all.