Legs aren't necessarily a great form of transport. The are slow and use lots of energy. Evolution never came up with the wheel, or tracks (like a tank) or rotating blades (like a helicopter). Why should a robotic "dog" be better than a tracked vehicle, for instance?
Perhaps the real plan is to give them glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths, to scare the opposition. Now that would we worth doing...
Someone needs to set up an alternative site which counters this one, like was done with the Unisys/Microsoft www.wehavethewayout.com web site. Something that demolishes their points, one by one, in a professional manner.
Actually, a good humorous spoof site might be even better. Don't try to demolish their facts, just point out the ridiculous nature of a company trying to say prove it is better than the competition with paid for studies. There is a lot of potential humour there. If someone wants to do this I don't mind contributing ideas and some text.
Absolutely. I deal with marketing people a lot and they generally say that baseing a campaign on trashing your competitors products is a big no-no. It can backfire badly. The fact that they are doing this demonstrates that they feel they don't have any other effective marketing weapons against Linux - i.e. promoting their products on their own merits isn't working so well these days.
Seriously, it would be interesting to see average income in both areas because it would shed a lot of light.
I understand an experienced software engineer would get about one third of the salary he would expect to receive in the USA, so $40k a year rather than $120, for instance.
A couple of years ago on a train journey to Mumbai I had a long conversation with an Indian software engineer. Once he'd got his University degree he got a job in Silicon Valley, but only stayed a couple of years because he realised that although salaries are lower in India he would actually be a lot better off in India because your dollar goes a lot further there. In India he could actually afford servants - a maid, cook etc. as well as a big house with a swimming pool and car. So if you read this type of story and think of hundreds of poorly paid Indians in sweatshops hacking out code, think again.
Absolutely. One thing that iPods have that this thing doesn't (at least the one in the photo) is style. That matters a lot to many Apple customers.
Secondly, what advantage does the MS operating system give to the manufacturers? How difficult will it be for the really big electronics manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic...) to make something like this that doesn't use an MS OS? Not very difficult, I should imagine, they already have products that can do all this product can, just not all bolted together into one.
Ok, flame me if you wish, here's my dumb question:
If I got a computer with a 64 bit processor, what difference would I notice compared to a non-64 bit resaonbly high-end PC? I mean, would it just be a bit faster? Or a hell of a lot faster? Or just faster at certain things? Or would it not make much difference at all for normal everyday office tasks and playing games etc.?
One thing that I'd like to know is why does nobody create any 2D games anymore? 2D is a great format for many types of games - scrolling shooters, platform games, shoot 'em-ups. Why does nobody make these any more?
3D is fine for many types of games, but personally I'm a bit bored of 1000 variations of the DOOM format, and long for some 2D games. It's a good format for the screen, and it's a good format for games - afterall, most of the classic games of all time (Go, Chess, playing cards) are essentially 2D games in a 3D environment, which suggests to me that there is something intrinsically right about 2D for game formats.
With the capabilities of modern consoles some fantastic 2D games should be possible, but I've looked everywhere for good 2D games for the Playstation 2 and can't find any. Very frustrating.
I am a Brit living in Spain, and I can tell you, more trains run on time in Spain than do in the UK. So Renfe might be bad, but it's not necessarily the worst. In my experience that accolade goes to the UK rail system.
You have to go to the attacker's website first for this to work.
Spam email:
We exploit a loop hole in the international market to bring you thousands of top chart CDs at a fraction of the normal price! Buy 50 top chart CDs for just $75!
[Link to apparently legitimate web site]
Apparently legitimate web site links to "Paypal"...
i don't think its going to make much difference to people. for most users, how far into the url to they read?
The point is, they can click on a link that says "Paypal" and see http://www.paypal.com/ in their address bar. There is no way to spot that anything is wrong. As someone in IT support, how can I advise, say, 10,000 employees in a large company (that all have to use IE due to requirements of the intranet) what to look out for? I can't.
On three occasions, with two different users, I have observed that Netscape/Mozilla profiles have disappeared following Microsoft update. Just a concidence? Perhaps, but after the third occurrence I have become suspicious.
One time I played with the application that let's you set your default browser and email package - the thing that Microsoft had to do because of the DOJ ruling. It completely screwed up Mozilla - it actually renamed files in the Mozilla directory, I kid you not. I couldn't believe it. I had to reinstall. I bet some ass at MS put some code in like this:
if ( mozillaInstalled and ((random (100) ==1) )
screwUpMozilla();
Personally I think this is one of the worst security holes I've seen in ages. Why? - very easy to do and very useful if you're trying to do something fraudulent. I don't understand why they rated this "moderately critical" - personally I think it should be rated "super critical with mayo and large fries and a banana shake (with chocolate sprinklings)"
But in the land of computers... Is speciation possible?
If two projects diverge to the extent that it would be such a pain in the ass to try and merge them that nobody wants to do it, that is effectively "speciation" in my book - specialization to the extent that "breeding" (intermingling of code/DNA) can no longer occur.
Still, I doubt there's a point of no return where the difference between two branches are too vast to bridge, the changes impossible to port.
Impossible is one thing, pain in the ass is another.
Saying forking is a bad thing for open source is equivalent to saying random mutations are a bad thing for evolution..
I would prefer this to be worded:
Saying forking is a bad thing for open source is equivalent to saying speciation is a bad thing for evolution.
Speciation occurs when two different groups of organisms evolve in response to different environmental pressures to the point that they can no longer interbreed. If speciation couldn't occur, life on earth would probably still be at the "grey blob" stage - a generic organism that can cope in a wide range of environments but is not really effective in any of them. Speciation - like forking - creates diversity and specialisation, which are good things.
Like having Syria chair the Human Rights Council... Brilliant.
Yes, that is something the UN bashers like to repeat. Should I dismiss the whole of the USA just from one fact? The USA has committed bad act X therefor the USA is bad. This kind of simplistic thinking is rife these days.
It's a real shame that it has become so popular to bash the UN in the USA these days. The UN is a force for good in the world. Yes, it's got it's faults, and it is always going to be less efficient than acting unilaterally, but overall it is a very good thing.
The frightening thing for me is to see how easily and quickly the thoughts and opinions of many in the public in the USA can be changed and manipulated so quickly and easily these days. It wasn't so long ago that the UN was seen as a good thing by most people in the USA. Now the administration has decided it doesn't like it and has started to bash it, and we see all this vindicive criticism of the UN in the USA media. And suddenly man in the street thinks the UN is evil. Shame.
Re:That's how discovery works in litigation
on
SCOrched Earth
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
But isn't there a problem with this?
Say I am a fizzy drinks manufacturer. I want to know what Coca-cola's secret formula is. I start a case against them saying that they've copied my formula, and that they have to give me their formula so I can prove it.
I would imagine source code is esentially a trade secret. A competitor has asked IBM to hand over their trade secrets, because they may have copied theirs. Doesn't seem right to me. If SCO cannot provide some other proof that copying has occurred - for instance, evidence from an IBM employee - then I don't think they should be allowed to see IBMs trade secrets.
Yes, I know about the stuff you are talking about.
it's generally acknowledged that the quality of modern works has surpassed that of Infocom.
That's the problem... The modern games have only just surpassed games that were created for machines of 12 years ago.
It's not about the disk space and processor speed, it's about the inherent trickiness.
Not today, but it was an extremely limiting factor when you are trying to get a whole game into 32Kb of memory.
Yes, it is a tricky problem. But the problem isn't being addressed - that's my point. Nearly all of the 'modern' interactive fiction I've seen uses engines that haven't changed much in a decade.
I always loved the text adventure games by Infocom. They were way ahead of their time, and I have been truly amazed on several occasions by the software's ability to 'understand' what I was asking it to do. Of course I'm sure this is leaps and bounds beyond what was available back then, but it's truly amazing how far ahead of their time they actually were.
Yes. I can't be the only one that is disappointed that text adventure development essentially died. The great limiting factors always used to be memory (with no disc drives, the whole game had to be stored in a very limited amount of memory) and processing speed. Now that we have both of these in abundance it should be possible to write a real "interactive novel", but I guess that will never happen. Shame, it's a great format for cell phones and pdas.
I'm sure the EU Transport Commissioner would disagree! You're posting suggests your knowledge about the EU is five or ten years out of date.
There is a Europe wide transport policy, and it is having a dramatic effect. Over the last five years or so, there has been a huge rise in the number of internal flights taken within the EU, for instance, due to new airlines like Ryanair, Easyjet etc. These new airlines exist because of changes to rules about airline operators and airports within the EU.
And there is a policy to create an EU-wide high speed rail system. It's just that with so many countries uniteing all the systems takes time. But the whole of the EU rail network will be deregulated by 2008, and there are the high-speed lines are currently being linked up. Within five years you should be able to travel from Lisbon to Brussels by high-speed rail, and I expect within a fifteen years you'll be able to go Lisbon - St Petersburgh.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw it for the first and last time yesterday.
Watch a few episodes before you give up. It gets much funnier as you get to understand the characters.
Legs aren't necessarily a great form of transport. The are slow and use lots of energy. Evolution never came up with the wheel, or tracks (like a tank) or rotating blades (like a helicopter). Why should a robotic "dog" be better than a tracked vehicle, for instance?
Perhaps the real plan is to give them glowing red eyes and smoke coming out of their mouths, to scare the opposition. Now that would we worth doing...
Someone needs to set up an alternative site which counters this one, like was done with the Unisys/Microsoft www.wehavethewayout.com web site. Something that demolishes their points, one by one, in a professional manner.
Actually, a good humorous spoof site might be even better. Don't try to demolish their facts, just point out the ridiculous nature of a company trying to say prove it is better than the competition with paid for studies. There is a lot of potential humour there. If someone wants to do this I don't mind contributing ideas and some text.
Absolutely. I deal with marketing people a lot and they generally say that baseing a campaign on trashing your competitors products is a big no-no. It can backfire badly. The fact that they are doing this demonstrates that they feel they don't have any other effective marketing weapons against Linux - i.e. promoting their products on their own merits isn't working so well these days.
Shoot, you sure you're not talkin' bout 1999?
Actually, yes, I was in India in 1999. Well spotted.
Seriously, it would be interesting to see average income in both areas because it would shed a lot of light.
I understand an experienced software engineer would get about one third of the salary he would expect to receive in the USA, so $40k a year rather than $120, for instance.
A couple of years ago on a train journey to Mumbai I had a long conversation with an Indian software engineer. Once he'd got his University degree he got a job in Silicon Valley, but only stayed a couple of years because he realised that although salaries are lower in India he would actually be a lot better off in India because your dollar goes a lot further there. In India he could actually afford servants - a maid, cook etc. as well as a big house with a swimming pool and car. So if you read this type of story and think of hundreds of poorly paid Indians in sweatshops hacking out code, think again.
These things aren't going to be iPod killers.
Absolutely. One thing that iPods have that this thing doesn't (at least the one in the photo) is style. That matters a lot to many Apple customers.
Secondly, what advantage does the MS operating system give to the manufacturers? How difficult will it be for the really big electronics manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic...) to make something like this that doesn't use an MS OS? Not very difficult, I should imagine, they already have products that can do all this product can, just not all bolted together into one.
Ok, flame me if you wish, here's my dumb question:
If I got a computer with a 64 bit processor, what difference would I notice compared to a non-64 bit resaonbly high-end PC? I mean, would it just be a bit faster? Or a hell of a lot faster? Or just faster at certain things? Or would it not make much difference at all for normal everyday office tasks and playing games etc.?
Graduis V looks like it is going to totally rock. Coming to the UK in March apparently. I've put my order in...
One thing that I'd like to know is why does nobody create any 2D games anymore? 2D is a great format for many types of games - scrolling shooters, platform games, shoot 'em-ups. Why does nobody make these any more?
3D is fine for many types of games, but personally I'm a bit bored of 1000 variations of the DOOM format, and long for some 2D games. It's a good format for the screen, and it's a good format for games - afterall, most of the classic games of all time (Go, Chess, playing cards) are essentially 2D games in a 3D environment, which suggests to me that there is something intrinsically right about 2D for game formats.
With the capabilities of modern consoles some fantastic 2D games should be possible, but I've looked everywhere for good 2D games for the Playstation 2 and can't find any. Very frustrating.
I am a Brit living in Spain, and I can tell you, more trains run on time in Spain than do in the UK. So Renfe might be bad, but it's not necessarily the worst. In my experience that accolade goes to the UK rail system.
Spam email:
Apparently legitimate web site links to "Paypal"...
i don't think its going to make much difference to people. for most users, how far into the url to they read?
The point is, they can click on a link that says "Paypal" and see http://www.paypal.com/ in their address bar. There is no way to spot that anything is wrong. As someone in IT support, how can I advise, say, 10,000 employees in a large company (that all have to use IE due to requirements of the intranet) what to look out for? I can't.
On three occasions, with two different users, I have observed that Netscape/Mozilla profiles have disappeared following Microsoft update. Just a concidence? Perhaps, but after the third occurrence I have become suspicious.
One time I played with the application that let's you set your default browser and email package - the thing that Microsoft had to do because of the DOJ ruling. It completely screwed up Mozilla - it actually renamed files in the Mozilla directory, I kid you not. I couldn't believe it. I had to reinstall. I bet some ass at MS put some code in like this:
if ( mozillaInstalled and ((random (100) ==1) )
screwUpMozilla();
Personally I think this is one of the worst security holes I've seen in ages. Why? - very easy to do and very useful if you're trying to do something fraudulent. I don't understand why they rated this "moderately critical" - personally I think it should be rated "super critical with mayo and large fries and a banana shake (with chocolate sprinklings)"
But in the land of computers... Is speciation possible?
If two projects diverge to the extent that it would be such a pain in the ass to try and merge them that nobody wants to do it, that is effectively "speciation" in my book - specialization to the extent that "breeding" (intermingling of code/DNA) can no longer occur.
Still, I doubt there's a point of no return where the difference between two branches are too vast to bridge, the changes impossible to port.
Impossible is one thing, pain in the ass is another.
Saying forking is a bad thing for open source is equivalent to saying random mutations are a bad thing for evolution..
I would prefer this to be worded:
Saying forking is a bad thing for open source is equivalent to saying speciation is a bad thing for evolution.
Speciation occurs when two different groups of organisms evolve in response to different environmental pressures to the point that they can no longer interbreed. If speciation couldn't occur, life on earth would probably still be at the "grey blob" stage - a generic organism that can cope in a wide range of environments but is not really effective in any of them. Speciation - like forking - creates diversity and specialisation, which are good things.
Like having Syria chair the Human Rights Council... Brilliant.
Yes, that is something the UN bashers like to repeat. Should I dismiss the whole of the USA just from one fact? The USA has committed bad act X therefor the USA is bad. This kind of simplistic thinking is rife these days.
It's a real shame that it has become so popular to bash the UN in the USA these days. The UN is a force for good in the world. Yes, it's got it's faults, and it is always going to be less efficient than acting unilaterally, but overall it is a very good thing.
The frightening thing for me is to see how easily and quickly the thoughts and opinions of many in the public in the USA can be changed and manipulated so quickly and easily these days. It wasn't so long ago that the UN was seen as a good thing by most people in the USA. Now the administration has decided it doesn't like it and has started to bash it, and we see all this vindicive criticism of the UN in the USA media. And suddenly man in the street thinks the UN is evil. Shame.
But isn't there a problem with this?
Say I am a fizzy drinks manufacturer. I want to know what Coca-cola's secret formula is. I start a case against them saying that they've copied my formula, and that they have to give me their formula so I can prove it.
I would imagine source code is esentially a trade secret. A competitor has asked IBM to hand over their trade secrets, because they may have copied theirs. Doesn't seem right to me. If SCO cannot provide some other proof that copying has occurred - for instance, evidence from an IBM employee - then I don't think they should be allowed to see IBMs trade secrets.
Interactive fiction hasn't died
Yes, I know about the stuff you are talking about.
it's generally acknowledged that the quality of modern works has surpassed that of Infocom.
That's the problem... The modern games have only just surpassed games that were created for machines of 12 years ago.
It's not about the disk space and processor speed, it's about the inherent trickiness.
Not today, but it was an extremely limiting factor when you are trying to get a whole game into 32Kb of memory.
Yes, it is a tricky problem. But the problem isn't being addressed - that's my point. Nearly all of the 'modern' interactive fiction I've seen uses engines that haven't changed much in a decade.
I always loved the text adventure games by Infocom. They were way ahead of their time, and I have been truly amazed on several occasions by the software's ability to 'understand' what I was asking it to do. Of course I'm sure this is leaps and bounds beyond what was available back then, but it's truly amazing how far ahead of their time they actually were.
Yes. I can't be the only one that is disappointed that text adventure development essentially died. The great limiting factors always used to be memory (with no disc drives, the whole game had to be stored in a very limited amount of memory) and processing speed. Now that we have both of these in abundance it should be possible to write a real "interactive novel", but I guess that will never happen. Shame, it's a great format for cell phones and pdas.
And Spain is getting there, so before long you'll be able to travel, for instance, Seville-Berlin on high-speed train.
I have read that AirFrance and Lufthansa are having to close some internal routes because they can't compete with the high-speed trains.
but there's no real European transport policy.
I'm sure the EU Transport Commissioner would disagree! You're posting suggests your knowledge about the EU is five or ten years out of date.
There is a Europe wide transport policy, and it is having a dramatic effect. Over the last five years or so, there has been a huge rise in the number of internal flights taken within the EU, for instance, due to new airlines like Ryanair, Easyjet etc. These new airlines exist because of changes to rules about airline operators and airports within the EU.
And there is a policy to create an EU-wide high speed rail system. It's just that with so many countries uniteing all the systems takes time. But the whole of the EU rail network will be deregulated by 2008, and there are the high-speed lines are currently being linked up. Within five years you should be able to travel from Lisbon to Brussels by high-speed rail, and I expect within a fifteen years you'll be able to go Lisbon - St Petersburgh.