I prefer my references to be electronic and my reading-for-enjoyment material to be paper.
I am not entirely sure why I prefer paper for enjoyment reading, but the reference material should be obvious (Ctrl+F).
I've tried reading eBooks for enjoyment, but while I can sit and read an 800 page book in one sitting I often find that I can't read an eBook for anywhere near as long. One of the reasons, of course, being that unless I want a workout I can't lie on my back on my bed and read an eBook, my monitor is too heavy:P Another being the distraction level on a computer is a lot higher, email coming, games at my fingertips, etc. And then there is the brightness factor, maybe it is just psychological, but I find that trying to sit down and read an eBook after already staring at a screen for 14 hours not only makes my head hurt, but it doesn't de-stress me nearly as well because I am still sitting in front of the computer...
Ignoring the people that clearly didn't RTFA (MS is not trying to patent XML), whether or not MS gets this patent I think I like the idea that they are looking at. Hadn't seen anyone else wander around with it yet, so I will.
Here's what I see happening. You will have an XML file that will have 4 scripts in it that do the same thing, each ina differant language. At this point whatever actually is configured to run these files will look at a setting to decide which scripting language you prefer these things to run with, then it will perform the task at hand based on that language. I can definately see MS's interest in this, it is along the lines of their.Net components that operate client-side or server-side based on the capabilities of the client browser. I think this would take that farther by allowing for multiple scripting engines and the same type of functionality with applications rather than just web components.
If nothing else it would be nifty, especially if implemented on *nix and other OS's as well. You could write a single script file to make an executable that would run any one of several internal scripts depending on which language was supported.
Anyways, could be way off with my guess, but I still think it could have some nifty uses...
Heh, what you didn't notice was the guy in the back of the room who was hastily cutting together canned film that they had shot the week before from the robot;)
I have yet to see a peer-to-peer framework that solves one problem, though:
Spam bad. What happens when the spammers stop selling email and start selling hits to websites? ie, they set up hundreds of computers which report DNS entries back incorrectly, so that maybe www.linux.org goes to www.someotherplace.com. Then there is the issue of all of the zombie viruses, instead of opening relays they could instead edit DNS listings on computers they infected that were responding to peer-to-peer requests.
The current system works, unfortunatly a major company is taking advantage of their system to change how it works. Maybe we should give management of those TLDs back to Network Solutions...
Actually, I think I do know a couple thinks about trademark infringement, at least in the US, even though IANAL.
From what I remember about US trademark infringment laws you have to show: 1) Similarity of two marks, either in sound, appearance, or underlying meaning
- Lindows, Windows - I see phonetic similarities, they appear similar. No underlying meaning because Lindows doesn't mean anything, but 2 out of 3 is still one more than necessary
2) Strength of plaintifs mark
- How big is name recognition on "Windows"?
3) Similarity between goods and services:
- while a car and a software suite are incredibly dissimilar, the same is not true about two OS packages, or desktop environments, which ever you want to classify these as
4) Intent:
- Did Lindows intend for their product name to be similar to Windows...? This one seems fairly obvious
5) Confusion: has there been any confusion by the customers over these two products:
- this is the only one I can't verify as I haven't looked to deeply into the proceedings. But then, there are customers that buy their computers with the Internet inside, i wouldn't be surprised if some bought Lindows machines either thinking that Windows was mispelled or not thinking at all
A couple things that are optionally included are things like relative distance on shelves of said products, the degree of care excerised by the consumer, and the likelihood of expansion of the product lines.
Now, as far as whether Windows could be considered a trademark or not, I originally thought that this was the only weakness in the issue, but after a little research i found some interesting stuff: A word that is merely descriptive is not a mark and therefore cannot be Trademarked. However, if a descriptive word becomes distinctive it can attain a secondary meaning. meaning that although the mark is descriptive, it has customer recognition value for a single product/etc. The way a descriptive word gains this second level of meaning is tyhrough advertising and long use.
So in order to remove the argument that "Windows" cannot be considered a trademark, all MS should have to do is prove that it has name recognition in the general public. Once that is proven then the mark is distinctive rather than just descriptive, which falls into the realm of what is allowed to be trademarked.
On a side note, the same is true for using names. Until a name has the distinctive second meaning it cannot be trademarked. Thus if Ford were to have started making cars yesterday, there name would not be able to be Trademarked until they had received an adequate amount of name recognition from customers, at which point it gains that second level of meaning and could then be considered to be distinctive and trademarked.
Note: There are some grammatically imprecise sentances in there because I was trying not to use my new word "Trademarkability":P
I have yet to see anything that changes my mind on this one.
Lindows was named Lindows purely to generate sales from the popularity/notoriety of Windows. Yes, the word windows can be considered an everyday word, but why does that matter? It is obvious that the product in question chose to mimic another products name, not a popular GUI format or home decoration. If that were the case they would have named it something like Toolbar or Chimney.
If Lindows actually wins infringement lawsuits then maybe it will be time for MS to fire their lawyers. So far the only positive arguments I have seen are along the lines of: "Well, we prefer the term coup de grace to murder, and as such we can't really be tried on murder charges"
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po
on
Hackers Hall of Fame
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Got my vote. Then again I don't really follow what they're listing.
I mean if we were listing hackers, there's a bunch of names that don't belong on there. If we were listing crackers, well, then the page has the wrong name (and has for some time).
And for those of you that think the fact that Gates is a business man now, and that MSN should disqualify him, I have only this to say: Should we now start removing people from places like the baseball hall of fame after they retire?
The fact is that they did something at some point to be honored in the hall of fame, it doesn't matter if they proceeded to never get on base again in the rest of their career.
I see a lot of that also, in fact just reading through the responses above to some of the other posts I see a lot of that. Although I'll add that some of it was in response to illegitimate claims, calling somone stupid for being ignorant doesn't do a lot to help them get past that ignorance.
This reminds me of the old highschool "I'm cool cuz I listen to bands you haven't heard of" thing.
A lot of people use Linux primarily because it's "cool". I wouldn't hazard a guess at percentages, and it is probably quite low, but these people are also required to be extremely vocal "I use Linux, I'm cool!!!" and to put down the people they are trying to be cooler than: "Your to stupid to use Linux, I'm cool!!!"
Unfortunatly this happens in pretty much every major area of human existence, I mentioned music above, you could probably find a few million other examples.
For most of us we use products because they benefit us (err, duh). I think in most cases we are willing to provide explanations to people who are using what we believe to be inferior products and that this is a Good Thing(tm). Unfortunatly, the "look how cool I am" people are loud, obnoxious, and probably alienating almost as many people as we are informing. Maybe we should spread a rumor that Windows is cooler so they will stop shooting the rest of us in the foot...
I wish we could convince our sales team to spend less time calling meetings and sending internal memos to sell us on our own software and spend a litle more time, errr, selling things to customers. I mean they could double their customer selling time and they'd still be at less than 20%...but at least that way I would be a little closer to creating the latest impossibility they have thought up.
This requirement is probably for a piece of client software to track usage or something like that. When I first signed up with RoadRunner (I haven't checked lately so it may have changed) one of the requirements was Windows 95/98/etc/etc, they didn't offically support anything else. What I later realized was that the only reason they required windows was so they could try and force you to install their little software app that would call home on a regular basis and was a real pain in the butt to kill (you could quit but it would still pop up messages when "updates" were available).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nextel had some sort of mini-app they expect their trial people to install as part of the trial, probably to track bandwidth usage, ping times, etc.
My apologies, I believe I read that after a negative comment made earlier by someone else so I guess that colored what I was reading in your post a well. Sorry again, -T
Almost missed something, anyone know where that $100 billion came from in the article? I got all my numbers from NASA and various other documents I found from google (like one of the 1993 reports) as well as some heavily research timelines...if the US price tag really is $100 billion, when did it quadruple, what happened to the congress price cap, and why does this number disagree with every other number I have found?
The design for the original US space station underwent 7 redesigns in a period of 9 years. From inception in 1984 to 1993 the planned costs of the space station increased. The initial estimate from NASA was $8 billion. The second revision (1987) was caused by changes mandated by congress. By 1990 the cost estimate had grown to $38 billion (including launches). In 1991 congress mandated another redesign, the new redesign by NASA now has a cost estimate of $30 billion (including launches). Late 1992, due to cost growth of the program the white house (for the first time) orders a redesign. In June of 1993 the white house again asked NASA for redesign options that would significantly shrink the cost (by lowering size and capabilities). NASA presented 3 options (named Option A, B, C). At this point a panel concluded that the new plans would cost less, would require management restructuring at NASA, and would benefit from international participation (ie, spread the costs and make people like us). The final design of 'American SS Freedom' was still more costly then the Clinton administration was willing to spend. The agreement between the US and Moscow was made in Sept of 1993 between Moscow and NASA negotiators. At this time the US station was a 4-person station design (same design Clinton had just turned down as "too expensive") while the Russian 'Mir-2' was a 6-person design. NASA forced Clinton to decide between the US or Russian design, and thus we have the current conglomerate. The redesign in 1991 called for a price of $30 billion while the newly revised conglomerate would cost $17.4 billion after figuring in contributions from Russia. It's worth noting that 9 years of redesigns cost over $11 billion... In 1997 NASA admits, after three years, that it can't build it for $17.4 billion after all. In 1998 the Chabrow report gave NASA a 70-30 chance that the space station would be built for $26 billion and be up to three years late. Due to cost overruns and shortages from Russia, money is requested in 1998 and 1999, bringing the US price tag to $19.4 billion (having already spent about $13.4 I believe). In June of 2000 Congress sets a new spending cap at $26 billion.
Jan 2001: $17.9 spent to date, and NASA finds out there is a $4 billion cost overrun (oops) Feb 2001: George W Bush officially reveals the cost overrun and minor redesign is necessary in order to keep costs to the previously declared levels.
I have seen figures estimating a cost of $26.1 billion for completion of the space station.
Perhaps I missed something here, but it seems the biggest changes to the stations capabilities(granted, for the cause of saving money) were committed in 1993, with a few billion dollars of blunder added in which necessitated removing additional features down the road. I find the dates for the $4 billion overrun to be interesting, but I guess that somone could have just wasted that money (about 20-25% of original budget) AFTER Clinton left office but before it was noticed in Jan 2001.
Anyways, as far as I can see, the only way we could have not had a minor redesign in Feb of 2001 is if either: a) Bush decided to spend about $4-$5 extra billion to cover for the current set of cost overruns - and I would love to see what people would have said about that b) Bush asks for minor redesign to try and keep project inside the most recent budget - which by this point was already almost impossible unless we consider the $26 billion spending cap from congress as the budget, although many analysts think this will all get spent anyway c) At some point during the prior term someone had paid attention to growing costs and the fact that several billion already had to be requested due in part to cost overruns.
sidenote- Very little to do with the post, but how do you accidentally spend $4 billion???? I mean maybe if your budget was in 100's of billions could I see a slip like that, but when your proposed costs are $19.4 billion (after 98/99 additions) how do you accidentally spend 20% extra? What was this, the NASA/Boeing beer tab for the last decade?
While you're shipping everybody who disagrees with the actions of the government out of America, why not burn the constitution too?
Heh...is this my other personality posting under a differant name, or a moment of drunken forgetfulness while I was posting? Why no, it's someone putting words in my mouth...
Before I knew about Google I was using Altavista. In the beginning they had a simple search interface, similar to how google is setup now. Basically it got the job done. After a while they started to get more widely known and started adding ad's to the front page and basically changing their mode of operation. People switched to google. I see the same possibility occurring. If google goes down the same trampled path that Altavista went, then a lot of people will be moving on to find another search engine with a clean interface that simply does the job.
Google: Thats what we want. When we go to a search engine we want to search. We don't want links to buy garden tools when we are searching for benchmarks, or links to tech consultants when we are searching for a definition for an error message. Just a search. It's not broken the way it is.
Unlike some people who have complained about loss of life, terrorism, etc I actually read the article.
I think at best the story is plausible. Look at in terms of two companies in the same field trying to get the better product out: Both companies are working hard to make their products better, but company A is pulling ahead (noticeably). So someone at Company B decides a little corporate espionage is in order and starts trying to get information and copies of Company A's product to backwards engineer and copy. Company B finds out and, rather than try and crack down (which would just force Company B to find another method of doing the same thing), Company A decides to deliberately make misinformation available. Company B takes said misinformation and unwittingly keeps up their own programs of spying and reverse engineerting, until a blatent error occurs that shows them they have been wasting time and money heading down the wrong trail and will need to go back to where they were several years before and start again from the beginning. Company A, on the other hand, doesn't have the 3 year loss and continues on ahead, widening the distance.
This seems like a good solution to me. If someone is leaching information about your research, deliberately mislead them, it's a lot cheaper than trying to crack down on security even further. If you know who the spies are, use that knowledge.
Now the part where software was mangled in order to cause problems with the pipeline, this also looks plausible and, considering the tensions at the time, a lot safer. Look at it this way: two countries facing off, both creating a larger and larger number of nuclear warheads and other forms of destruction. Instead of a massive killoff, a piece of software is altered to damage a pipeline (loss of money) and throw their last few years of research into question (costing more money and probably quite a few lost jobs).
The people who are crying about the damages of the exploding pipeline should sit down and seriously examine the tradeoffs between that and continued mounting pressures and growing numbers of weapons.
Now while the story sounds good, and it's the kind of thing we (well, some of us) want to hear (hostilities being resolved without bombs or deaths), I don't see enough proof in one article to fully believe it. The fact that this did come from a closed file makes it a little more believeable (those of you that thought this was just a story told to him from the guy down the hall need to RTFA) in that it should be possile to check the story against those files.
I think the story is plausible, but with only one source, and that being someone about to publish a book, I'm wary about believing it without a little more proof. I would like to believe it, but I'll hold off until I either see more articles about it (not connected to this author) or someone publishes the actual files.
--- Sidenote --- For those of you who will continue to whine that this was an act of terrorism, please go look up the word terrorism and note that the target is to inflict terror. I thought that was pretty clear but obviously the point has missed a few of you who think that blowing something up is terrorism, or even leading someone else to blow up their own thing. The act of blowing something up is not automatically an act of terrorism.
Oh, and if you hate the US so much that you will take any tiny hint of wrongdoing and blow it all out of proportion, move.
Honestly I generally ignore these posts, as I am sure many others do as well, but I feel I need to comment.
The thing that bothers me about all of these conversations (media bias) is that anyone can pick apart one of these channels and say it's balanced, leftist, rightist, whatever. Frankly I am tired of listening to arguments that consist of "small fact here means grand assumption here". I think it is funny (is a sad, twisted way) to see self-titled liberals (or leftists) bash those that few that stand up for right-wing politics on here then turn around and complain about how the government and/or majority doesn't listen. The same with the OS wars: not everything MS has done is bad, yet I keep seeing it equated with the devil. It's difficult to actually have conversations with people when they get fanatical about any subject because logic generally has no effect, fanatics don't question their beliefs (fanaticism in a broad sense, not just a religious one).
Sorry for the rant, but too many posts written in close-minded manners by people supporting Open Source and claiming that all news is conservative and far right wing.
For the record, I am pro Open Source, I am moderate (having an equal number of opinions from both major political sides), and I am capable of changing my mind based on logical presentation of facts...
Ok, so they can build multi-purpose, multi-terrain robots that have to make life or death decisions with automatic weapons, but they can't make a couple to send up on an unmanned probe to fix the hubble? There's something wrong with the math here...
Despite all the issues with online voting and such, wouldn't it be great if we could do it.
Some design notes: 1) Show ballot 2) Detect OS 3) If OS = Windows Then check browser settings 4) if settings are all default then output in font size 42, red: Are you sure you want to cast your vote for $selPresCandidate 5) email the user and ask them to open an attachment to verify their vote (from address suitably screwy) 6) if they open the attachment, put the same message up again, make it flash, and add little text at the bottom explaining the dangers of their idiocy both in voting and opening unknown attachments
Tada, now that should cover about 49 of the states that don't have consistent voting issues...
I like the hubble and all, and I feel like they should save it, but here's a thought:
So they're planning on send a remote rocket and bring it down in a controlled crash (btw, you waon't catch me anywhere near Colorado that week;) ). Why not crash it into the moon instead?
I mean look at it this way. 1) Hope fully at some point we are going to have some manufacturing going on either in a space station or on the moon. 2) Lifting supplies costs lots and lots of money
Ok, so they could crash it into the moon, it's all broken and twisted on the landscape, no big deal, BUT there are at least some raw materials sitting there on thye moon that we won't have to pay a 3rd time to get up there
I mean we pay once to get the thing up there, pay to keep it up there, then pay to bring it down and junk it? That doesn't make sense, plant it up there and let it wait for us to reuse some of that stuff.
Course I could see a buch of people getting all up in arms about littering on the moon, no matter how many billions we save by leaving some resources up there till later...
I would think that somehting like this would be covered in the signed agreement, ie there would be some sort of qualifier, either a numeric cap or the word unlimited. I could be wrong, but this seems like just another case of large consumer companies writing agreements that the customers have to follow but that they can blow off any time they want.
Reminds me of the time I had to read the policy to a car insurance person once because they were attempting to go completely against the policy to charge me a higher percentage of repair costs...
Several posts have questioned the difference between a parody making profit and the site in question. Besides the obvious RTFA, there is a rather large gap between the movies/songs suggested and the site in question.
Parody's are allowed to make money, there is no problem with that. The distinction lies in whether the parody makes money (attention, whatever) due to it's own content or due to the content of it's predecessor. A successful parody uses it's predecessor as a starting point but, in order to be successful paradoy, must have it's own message, generally humor.
Example: Song x makes a few million dollars. As a form of art another artist creates song y based on the original song x. People hear song y on the radio (stream, etc) and decide to buy (download, etc) song y because they like it. Or in simplest terms, they purchase/download/acquire song y due to it's own merits, not necessarally due to the merits of the original.
In the case of the site in question, they have used the notoriety of the original to create business for themselves. They are not creating a commentary or derived work to be successful or not on it's own two feet. The goal of Booble is not to make a commentary/etc on Google, but to use the image of Google to sell their own product. The fact that it is Porn meens nothing, it would be no differant than if I started up a searchsite called Wooble, used a very similar front-end, etc. to search for Small Furry Animals.
I would submit that the closest I have seen to an actual google paradoy would probably be elgoog, though even that would be stretching the definition of parody as I see no real commentary in Elgoog, only nifty "See what I can do"-ity.
I once turned in a paper after spending all night with the Thesaurus, it was just as useless by the time I was done. DOn't get me wrong, I credit them for using the words correctly, but any time someone goes this far out of their way to make a study _sound_ scientific or acedemic I have to question the reality.
127 individuals may be enough for a somewhat statistical display, but at the same time (not that I don't believe the results) I wonder what the results would look like graphed geographically, or by hair length. And infinite prices? Infinite was defined as more than $100, and then given a randomly (riiiight) chosen weight between $100 and $2000.
This seems like nothing more than a group of people being able to say the time they spent down at the bar was worth it, that they have real need to be allowed through the firewall to online auctions during work hours, and that HP truly cares about privacy. As far as actual content it's next to useless as a real study.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer my references to be electronic and my reading-for-enjoyment material to be paper.
:P
I am not entirely sure why I prefer paper for enjoyment reading, but the reference material should be obvious (Ctrl+F).
I've tried reading eBooks for enjoyment, but while I can sit and read an 800 page book in one sitting I often find that I can't read an eBook for anywhere near as long.
One of the reasons, of course, being that unless I want a workout I can't lie on my back on my bed and read an eBook, my monitor is too heavy
Another being the distraction level on a computer is a lot higher, email coming, games at my fingertips, etc.
And then there is the brightness factor, maybe it is just psychological, but I find that trying to sit down and read an eBook after already staring at a screen for 14 hours not only makes my head hurt, but it doesn't de-stress me nearly as well because I am still sitting in front of the computer...
Ignoring the people that clearly didn't RTFA (MS is not trying to patent XML), whether or not MS gets this patent I think I like the idea that they are looking at. Hadn't seen anyone else wander around with it yet, so I will.
.Net components that operate client-side or server-side based on the capabilities of the client browser. I think this would take that farther by allowing for multiple scripting engines and the same type of functionality with applications rather than just web components.
Here's what I see happening. You will have an XML file that will have 4 scripts in it that do the same thing, each ina differant language. At this point whatever actually is configured to run these files will look at a setting to decide which scripting language you prefer these things to run with, then it will perform the task at hand based on that language.
I can definately see MS's interest in this, it is along the lines of their
If nothing else it would be nifty, especially if implemented on *nix and other OS's as well. You could write a single script file to make an executable that would run any one of several internal scripts depending on which language was supported.
Anyways, could be way off with my guess, but I still think it could have some nifty uses...
Heh, what you didn't notice was the guy in the back of the room who was hastily cutting together canned film that they had shot the week before from the robot ;)
I have yet to see a peer-to-peer framework that solves one problem, though:
Spam bad. What happens when the spammers stop selling email and start selling hits to websites? ie, they set up hundreds of computers which report DNS entries back incorrectly, so that maybe www.linux.org goes to www.someotherplace.com. Then there is the issue of all of the zombie viruses, instead of opening relays they could instead edit DNS listings on computers they infected that were responding to peer-to-peer requests.
The current system works, unfortunatly a major company is taking advantage of their system to change how it works. Maybe we should give management of those TLDs back to Network Solutions...
Actually, I think I do know a couple thinks about trademark infringement, at least in the US, even though IANAL.
:P
From what I remember about US trademark infringment laws you have to show:
1) Similarity of two marks, either in sound, appearance, or underlying meaning
- Lindows, Windows - I see phonetic similarities, they appear similar. No underlying meaning because Lindows doesn't mean anything, but 2 out of 3 is still one more than necessary
2) Strength of plaintifs mark
- How big is name recognition on "Windows"?
3) Similarity between goods and services:
- while a car and a software suite are incredibly dissimilar, the same is not true about two OS packages, or desktop environments, which ever you want to classify these as
4) Intent:
- Did Lindows intend for their product name to be similar to Windows...? This one seems fairly obvious
5) Confusion: has there been any confusion by the customers over these two products:
- this is the only one I can't verify as I haven't looked to deeply into the proceedings. But then, there are customers that buy their computers with the Internet inside, i wouldn't be surprised if some bought Lindows machines either thinking that Windows was mispelled or not thinking at all
A couple things that are optionally included are things like relative distance on shelves of said products, the degree of care excerised by the consumer, and the likelihood of expansion of the product lines.
Now, as far as whether Windows could be considered a trademark or not, I originally thought that this was the only weakness in the issue, but after a little research i found some interesting stuff:
A word that is merely descriptive is not a mark and therefore cannot be Trademarked. However, if a descriptive word becomes distinctive it can attain a secondary meaning. meaning that although the mark is descriptive, it has customer recognition value for a single product/etc. The way a descriptive word gains this second level of meaning is tyhrough advertising and long use.
So in order to remove the argument that "Windows" cannot be considered a trademark, all MS should have to do is prove that it has name recognition in the general public. Once that is proven then the mark is distinctive rather than just descriptive, which falls into the realm of what is allowed to be trademarked.
On a side note, the same is true for using names. Until a name has the distinctive second meaning it cannot be trademarked. Thus if Ford were to have started making cars yesterday, there name would not be able to be Trademarked until they had received an adequate amount of name recognition from customers, at which point it gains that second level of meaning and could then be considered to be distinctive and trademarked.
Note: There are some grammatically imprecise sentances in there because I was trying not to use my new word "Trademarkability"
I have yet to see anything that changes my mind on this one.
Lindows was named Lindows purely to generate sales from the popularity/notoriety of Windows. Yes, the word windows can be considered an everyday word, but why does that matter? It is obvious that the product in question chose to mimic another products name, not a popular GUI format or home decoration. If that were the case they would have named it something like Toolbar or Chimney.
If Lindows actually wins infringement lawsuits then maybe it will be time for MS to fire their lawyers. So far the only positive arguments I have seen are along the lines of:
"Well, we prefer the term coup de grace to murder, and as such we can't really be tried on murder charges"
Got my vote. Then again I don't really follow what they're listing.
I mean if we were listing hackers, there's a bunch of names that don't belong on there. If we were listing crackers, well, then the page has the wrong name (and has for some time).
And for those of you that think the fact that Gates is a business man now, and that MSN should disqualify him, I have only this to say:
Should we now start removing people from places like the baseball hall of fame after they retire?
The fact is that they did something at some point to be honored in the hall of fame, it doesn't matter if they proceeded to never get on base again in the rest of their career.
I see a lot of that also, in fact just reading through the responses above to some of the other posts I see a lot of that. Although I'll add that some of it was in response to illegitimate claims, calling somone stupid for being ignorant doesn't do a lot to help them get past that ignorance.
:P
This reminds me of the old highschool "I'm cool cuz I listen to bands you haven't heard of" thing.
A lot of people use Linux primarily because it's "cool". I wouldn't hazard a guess at percentages, and it is probably quite low, but these people are also required to be extremely vocal "I use Linux, I'm cool!!!" and to put down the people they are trying to be cooler than: "Your to stupid to use Linux, I'm cool!!!"
Unfortunatly this happens in pretty much every major area of human existence, I mentioned music above, you could probably find a few million other examples.
For most of us we use products because they benefit us (err, duh). I think in most cases we are willing to provide explanations to people who are using what we believe to be inferior products and that this is a Good Thing(tm). Unfortunatly, the "look how cool I am" people are loud, obnoxious, and probably alienating almost as many people as we are informing. Maybe we should spread a rumor that Windows is cooler so they will stop shooting the rest of us in the foot...
Oh yeah, and I use Linux and Windows, I'm cool
Amen,
I wish we could convince our sales team to spend less time calling meetings and sending internal memos to sell us on our own software and spend a litle more time, errr, selling things to customers. I mean they could double their customer selling time and they'd still be at less than 20%...but at least that way I would be a little closer to creating the latest impossibility they have thought up.
How about people that just bought a new work machine and have to deal with Real Media pre-installed?
This requirement is probably for a piece of client software to track usage or something like that. When I first signed up with RoadRunner (I haven't checked lately so it may have changed) one of the requirements was Windows 95/98/etc/etc, they didn't offically support anything else. What I later realized was that the only reason they required windows was so they could try and force you to install their little software app that would call home on a regular basis and was a real pain in the butt to kill (you could quit but it would still pop up messages when "updates" were available).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nextel had some sort of mini-app they expect their trial people to install as part of the trial, probably to track bandwidth usage, ping times, etc.
My apologies, I believe I read that after a negative comment made earlier by someone else so I guess that colored what I was reading in your post a well. Sorry again,
-T
Almost missed something, anyone know where that $100 billion came from in the article? I got all my numbers from NASA and various other documents I found from google (like one of the 1993 reports) as well as some heavily research timelines...if the US price tag really is $100 billion, when did it quadruple, what happened to the congress price cap, and why does this number disagree with every other number I have found?
Ah yes, blame Bush, common argument around here.
The design for the original US space station underwent 7 redesigns in a period of 9 years. From inception in 1984 to 1993 the planned costs of the space station increased. The initial estimate from NASA was $8 billion. The second revision (1987) was caused by changes mandated by congress. By 1990 the cost estimate had grown to $38 billion (including launches). In 1991 congress mandated another redesign, the new redesign by NASA now has a cost estimate of $30 billion (including launches). Late 1992, due to cost growth of the program the white house (for the first time) orders a redesign.
In June of 1993 the white house again asked NASA for redesign options that would significantly shrink the cost (by lowering size and capabilities). NASA presented 3 options (named Option A, B, C). At this point a panel concluded that the new plans would cost less, would require management restructuring at NASA, and would benefit from international participation (ie, spread the costs and make people like us).
The final design of 'American SS Freedom' was still more costly then the Clinton administration was willing to spend. The agreement between the US and Moscow was made in Sept of 1993 between Moscow and NASA negotiators. At this time the US station was a 4-person station design (same design Clinton had just turned down as "too expensive") while the Russian 'Mir-2' was a 6-person design. NASA forced Clinton to decide between the US or Russian design, and thus we have the current conglomerate. The redesign in 1991 called for a price of $30 billion while the newly revised conglomerate would cost $17.4 billion after figuring in contributions from Russia. It's worth noting that 9 years of redesigns cost over $11 billion...
In 1997 NASA admits, after three years, that it can't build it for $17.4 billion after all. In 1998 the Chabrow report gave NASA a 70-30 chance that the space station would be built for $26 billion and be up to three years late. Due to cost overruns and shortages from Russia, money is requested in 1998 and 1999, bringing the US price tag to $19.4 billion (having already spent about $13.4 I believe). In June of 2000 Congress sets a new spending cap at $26 billion.
Jan 2001: $17.9 spent to date, and NASA finds out there is a $4 billion cost overrun (oops)
Feb 2001: George W Bush officially reveals the cost overrun and minor redesign is necessary in order to keep costs to the previously declared levels.
I have seen figures estimating a cost of $26.1 billion for completion of the space station.
Perhaps I missed something here, but it seems the biggest changes to the stations capabilities(granted, for the cause of saving money) were committed in 1993, with a few billion dollars of blunder added in which necessitated removing additional features down the road. I find the dates for the $4 billion overrun to be interesting, but I guess that somone could have just wasted that money (about 20-25% of original budget) AFTER Clinton left office but before it was noticed in Jan 2001.
Anyways, as far as I can see, the only way we could have not had a minor redesign in Feb of 2001 is if either:
a) Bush decided to spend about $4-$5 extra billion to cover for the current set of cost overruns - and I would love to see what people would have said about that
b) Bush asks for minor redesign to try and keep project inside the most recent budget - which by this point was already almost impossible unless we consider the $26 billion spending cap from congress as the budget, although many analysts think this will all get spent anyway
c) At some point during the prior term someone had paid attention to growing costs and the fact that several billion already had to be requested due in part to cost overruns.
sidenote-
Very little to do with the post, but how do you accidentally spend $4 billion????
I mean maybe if your budget was in 100's of billions could I see a slip like that, but when your proposed costs are $19.4 billion (after 98/99 additions) how do you accidentally spend 20% extra? What was this, the NASA/Boeing beer tab for the last decade?
While you're shipping everybody who disagrees with the actions of the government out of America, why not burn the constitution too?
Heh...is this my other personality posting under a differant name, or a moment of drunken forgetfulness while I was posting? Why no, it's someone putting words in my mouth...
Before I knew about Google I was using Altavista. In the beginning they had a simple search interface, similar to how google is setup now. Basically it got the job done. After a while they started to get more widely known and started adding ad's to the front page and basically changing their mode of operation. People switched to google.
I see the same possibility occurring. If google goes down the same trampled path that Altavista went, then a lot of people will be moving on to find another search engine with a clean interface that simply does the job.
Google: Thats what we want. When we go to a search engine we want to search. We don't want links to buy garden tools when we are searching for benchmarks, or links to tech consultants when we are searching for a definition for an error message. Just a search. It's not broken the way it is.
Unlike some people who have complained about loss of life, terrorism, etc I actually read the article.
I think at best the story is plausible. Look at in terms of two companies in the same field trying to get the better product out: Both companies are working hard to make their products better, but company A is pulling ahead (noticeably). So someone at Company B decides a little corporate espionage is in order and starts trying to get information and copies of Company A's product to backwards engineer and copy. Company B finds out and, rather than try and crack down (which would just force Company B to find another method of doing the same thing), Company A decides to deliberately make misinformation available. Company B takes said misinformation and unwittingly keeps up their own programs of spying and reverse engineerting, until a blatent error occurs that shows them they have been wasting time and money heading down the wrong trail and will need to go back to where they were several years before and start again from the beginning. Company A, on the other hand, doesn't have the 3 year loss and continues on ahead, widening the distance.
This seems like a good solution to me. If someone is leaching information about your research, deliberately mislead them, it's a lot cheaper than trying to crack down on security even further. If you know who the spies are, use that knowledge.
Now the part where software was mangled in order to cause problems with the pipeline, this also looks plausible and, considering the tensions at the time, a lot safer. Look at it this way: two countries facing off, both creating a larger and larger number of nuclear warheads and other forms of destruction. Instead of a massive killoff, a piece of software is altered to damage a pipeline (loss of money) and throw their last few years of research into question (costing more money and probably quite a few lost jobs).
The people who are crying about the damages of the exploding pipeline should sit down and seriously examine the tradeoffs between that and continued mounting pressures and growing numbers of weapons.
Now while the story sounds good, and it's the kind of thing we (well, some of us) want to hear (hostilities being resolved without bombs or deaths), I don't see enough proof in one article to fully believe it. The fact that this did come from a closed file makes it a little more believeable (those of you that thought this was just a story told to him from the guy down the hall need to RTFA) in that it should be possile to check the story against those files.
I think the story is plausible, but with only one source, and that being someone about to publish a book, I'm wary about believing it without a little more proof. I would like to believe it, but I'll hold off until I either see more articles about it (not connected to this author) or someone publishes the actual files.
--- Sidenote ---
For those of you who will continue to whine that this was an act of terrorism, please go look up the word terrorism and note that the target is to inflict terror. I thought that was pretty clear but obviously the point has missed a few of you who think that blowing something up is terrorism, or even leading someone else to blow up their own thing. The act of blowing something up is not automatically an act of terrorism.
Oh, and if you hate the US so much that you will take any tiny hint of wrongdoing and blow it all out of proportion, move.
I'll probably get flamebaited for this, but...
Honestly I generally ignore these posts, as I am sure many others do as well, but I feel I need to comment.
The thing that bothers me about all of these conversations (media bias) is that anyone can pick apart one of these channels and say it's balanced, leftist, rightist, whatever. Frankly I am tired of listening to arguments that consist of "small fact here means grand assumption here". I think it is funny (is a sad, twisted way) to see self-titled liberals (or leftists) bash those that few that stand up for right-wing politics on here then turn around and complain about how the government and/or majority doesn't listen. The same with the OS wars: not everything MS has done is bad, yet I keep seeing it equated with the devil. It's difficult to actually have conversations with people when they get fanatical about any subject because logic generally has no effect, fanatics don't question their beliefs (fanaticism in a broad sense, not just a religious one).
Sorry for the rant, but too many posts written in close-minded manners by people supporting Open Source and claiming that all news is conservative and far right wing.
For the record, I am pro Open Source, I am moderate (having an equal number of opinions from both major political sides), and I am capable of changing my mind based on logical presentation of facts...
Ok, so they can build multi-purpose, multi-terrain robots that have to make life or death decisions with automatic weapons, but they can't make a couple to send up on an unmanned probe to fix the hubble? There's something wrong with the math here...
Despite all the issues with online voting and such, wouldn't it be great if we could do it.
Some design notes:
1) Show ballot
2) Detect OS
3) If OS = Windows Then check browser settings
4) if settings are all default then output in font size 42, red: Are you sure you want to cast your vote for $selPresCandidate
5) email the user and ask them to open an attachment to verify their vote (from address suitably screwy)
6) if they open the attachment, put the same message up again, make it flash, and add little text at the bottom explaining the dangers of their idiocy both in voting and opening unknown attachments
Tada, now that should cover about 49 of the states that don't have consistent voting issues...
I like the hubble and all, and I feel like they should save it, but here's a thought:
;) ). Why not crash it into the moon instead?
So they're planning on send a remote rocket and bring it down in a controlled crash (btw, you waon't catch me anywhere near Colorado that week
I mean look at it this way.
1) Hope fully at some point we are going to have some manufacturing going on either in a space station or on the moon.
2) Lifting supplies costs lots and lots of money
Ok, so they could crash it into the moon, it's all broken and twisted on the landscape, no big deal, BUT there are at least some raw materials sitting there on thye moon that we won't have to pay a 3rd time to get up there
I mean we pay once to get the thing up there, pay to keep it up there, then pay to bring it down and junk it? That doesn't make sense, plant it up there and let it wait for us to reuse some of that stuff.
Course I could see a buch of people getting all up in arms about littering on the moon, no matter how many billions we save by leaving some resources up there till later...
I would think that somehting like this would be covered in the signed agreement, ie there would be some sort of qualifier, either a numeric cap or the word unlimited. I could be wrong, but this seems like just another case of large consumer companies writing agreements that the customers have to follow but that they can blow off any time they want.
Reminds me of the time I had to read the policy to a car insurance person once because they were attempting to go completely against the policy to charge me a higher percentage of repair costs...
Several posts have questioned the difference between a parody making profit and the site in question. Besides the obvious RTFA, there is a rather large gap between the movies/songs suggested and the site in question.
Parody's are allowed to make money, there is no problem with that. The distinction lies in whether the parody makes money (attention, whatever) due to it's own content or due to the content of it's predecessor. A successful parody uses it's predecessor as a starting point but, in order to be successful paradoy, must have it's own message, generally humor.
Example: Song x makes a few million dollars. As a form of art another artist creates song y based on the original song x. People hear song y on the radio (stream, etc) and decide to buy (download, etc) song y because they like it. Or in simplest terms, they purchase/download/acquire song y due to it's own merits, not necessarally due to the merits of the original.
In the case of the site in question, they have used the notoriety of the original to create business for themselves. They are not creating a commentary or derived work to be successful or not on it's own two feet. The goal of Booble is not to make a commentary/etc on Google, but to use the image of Google to sell their own product. The fact that it is Porn meens nothing, it would be no differant than if I started up a searchsite called Wooble, used a very similar front-end, etc. to search for Small Furry Animals.
I would submit that the closest I have seen to an actual google paradoy would probably be elgoog, though even that would be stretching the definition of parody as I see no real commentary in Elgoog, only nifty "See what I can do"-ity.
I once turned in a paper after spending all night with the Thesaurus, it was just as useless by the time I was done.
DOn't get me wrong, I credit them for using the words correctly, but any time someone goes this far out of their way to make a study _sound_ scientific or acedemic I have to question the reality.
127 individuals may be enough for a somewhat statistical display, but at the same time (not that I don't believe the results) I wonder what the results would look like graphed geographically, or by hair length.
And infinite prices? Infinite was defined as more than $100, and then given a randomly (riiiight) chosen weight between $100 and $2000.
This seems like nothing more than a group of people being able to say the time they spent down at the bar was worth it, that they have real need to be allowed through the firewall to online auctions during work hours, and that HP truly cares about privacy. As far as actual content it's next to useless as a real study.
Ah ha found the company, if not the article:s _lcd.htm
http://www.prisma-techniek.nl/latestnew
Of course I would feel better about the company if they didn't have the MS sample picture as part of the front of their website...