If you read the patent, you will realise that is isn't patenting XML.
It's "Patenting a system for how to do" a certain thing in XML (actually SGML, but there's no different. That's why Office violates, and OpenOffice doesn't violate. It's the custom XML feature in Office, which isn't actually XML.
Certainly abandoning the original XBox as soon as they could and leaving the owners high and dry was a brilliant move on Microsoft's part, as they got a year's head start. Albeit with hardware that should have been tested for another six months.
I wonder if Sony will make that mistake again, or if they'll compromise on the PS4 to release it around the same time as the XBox 1080. They do have a viable upgrade option in the PowerXCell32... and all they need is the graphical horsepower to run 1080p/120 games (3D glasses x 60fps full HD).
The PS3 integrates the PSU, and isn't that large. Now it integrates the PSU and is smaller.
The 360 is an abomination in the world of consumer electronics, less reliable than Panaphonic and Matsashitty and Shoney knock-off brands.
But because it was a little cheaper, the fanboys will rush to covet it. Even as they rue their HD-DVD player purchase, the Plug-n-Charge kit, the Wireless dongle,... and then you get the RROD, which for my 360 owning friends, has occurred always just as they got the big game they had been looking forward to for ages.
Admittedly if the hardware didn't have such appalling reliability, there wouldn't be a problem, I think more people would own them than they do right now. It's taken three years for the PS3 to become reasonable in terms of price, firmware and game library, I'm impressed they sold over 20m of the expensive model. Still, it is a device that was engineered better, despite that weak GPU they stuck in quite late in the design cycle.
And the Wii, well, it doesn't get played much, but if there's more than one person around it's what is being played.
Or that he found an audio module and a translator module in the dump to use in the droid, but not a visual analysis module, and certainly not the interconnects to connect the visual analysis to the translator properly, and certainly he couldn't find decent limb assemblies beyond basic parts that were dumped.
I mean, it's like Scrapheap Challenge, and nothing on that works well.
I'd say the surprise was that C3P0 actually lasted so long instead of being retired, scrapped or enhanced-as-a-personal-project into something that wasn't shit.
I cancelled my Barclaycard 3 years ago, 2 years ago, and a year ago. Still getting a yearly statement, and it's on my credit report as active. I suspect that they actually haven't cancelled yours, or if they have you're very lucky.
I left Barclays in 2005 after being with them for ten years, after their appalling customer support pissed me off one last time.
That's odd about the debit cards, because they should be usable in any cashpoint machine - my Halifax debit card works in any machines. Sounds like it's time to move on again!
Well the banking rules allow for two hours for intra-bank transfers to occur. I've certainly noticed monies going from my bank to another one extremely quickly. Maybe your bank isn't so good (is it Barclays? Worst. Bank. Ever.)
The most complex part there is getting a valid, correct IBAN from your bank in a timely manner. In the UK it certainly seems that many bank staff aren't actually aware of what it is, my lodger had massive pains getting an IBAN for her account from Barclays, and it turned out to be incorrect!
Infinitely more expensive than doing a simple free bank to bank payment online. In the UK the fees are instantly transferred as well, if you wish, even between different banks.
Of course, anything less and we'd burn down the banks after their behaviour recently, and their other charges.
Both Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles for profit, and have been for a while, the 360 longer (although RROD fixes have probably eaten up a lot of this). Just recently there was a report saying that Sony have dropped the cost of PS3 production by 70% since launch - I don't know if that includes the Slim or not.
Well Leopard came out around two and a half years ago, and with the rise in increase of Mac sales, most Macs are running Leopard, and Tiger users that cared probably upgraded at the time or since.
In addition if you are running Tiger (like me) you're probably due for a computer upgrade, and that makes more sense than buying a full Snow Leopard. Indeed you may be running PowerPC (aside: have you noticed that the latest Flash plugin was compiled with the -hate-powerpc flag?) so the upgrade is not available anyway, and you'll be quite overdue for a new computer (or the old one is more than adequate as-is and you don't need the OS upgrade and probably won't even be aware that it exists).
And finally, a hard learned lesson for Mac OS users - don't use the.0 or.1 versions of a new Mac OS X. Wait for 10.6.2 at least, which will be a few months, and may push your computer into upgrade territory, age-wise anyway.
The Vista->Windows 7 upgrade isn't $29, yet in terms of upgrade and age, it's pretty similar to Leopard->Snow Leopard.
And desktop Mac OS X not being able to be run in a VM is ridiculous in this day and age, I hope that Apple reassess their policy here, it's not 2007 any more.
Same here. I'm sick of Windows XP, even though I use it rarely. Might be nice to have a full, personal copy of Windows 7, it will come in handy sometime.
I wouldn't pay more than £80 for it, but £65 is alright really. Especially to dump XP, which just grinds away with graphical redraw glitches that are really noticeable now that everything uses proper compositing for the desktop and thus never had "redraw pauses".
So it's £217 without VAT (assuming 15% here, and that Sony will swallow the increase back to 17.5% next year) which is $360. That's a $60 markup for the UK, or 20%. That's a bit rude really, but par for the course.
On the other hand, I got my PS3 for £240 over a year ago, so I'm not too bothered.
The internal design architecture of the new PS3 system, from the main semiconductors and power supply unit to the cooling mechanism, has been completely redesigned, achieving a much slimmer and lighter body. Compared to the very first PS3 model with 60GB HDD, the internal volume as well as its thickness and weight are trimmed down to approximately two-thirds. Furthermore, power consumption is also cut to two-thirds, helping to reduce fan noise.
So: Still has internal PSU (my major worry), but isn't as great a size reducation as say the shrink from the PS2 to the PS2 Slim. Sounds like more chips are 45nm than before. Obviously there was a circuit board redesign. One major fail is not having a USB port on the back for PlayTV.
Even quieter fan noise will be a nice feature for movie watchers, not that it is a major issue now.
And the price is very competitive with the 360. Price drop here coming soon I presume! Otherwise there's even less reason to get a 360 compared to the PS3, especially if you don't have wired ethernet near your media setup.
The new firmware looks like it has some nice features, for people who get excited by such things.
How long does the iPhone TomTom application take to find the satellites and all that lark?
Still, it's not like GPS is something you need on all the time, and you're unlikely to answer a phone call when coming up to a major intersection you need the GPS for because you've never been on it before...
So basically the summary and article are incorrect? The application doesn't quit, it's just waiting behind the phone call interface (how else can you take a phone call!), running happily.
"if you receive a call while you're driving then the app does cut out"
What? If you answer, or just because you receive a call?
The former - well, if you're not using handsfree, you shouldn't be answering. TomTom are releasing some hardware for the iPhone that incorporates handfree features however...
If the latter - Apple: sort this stuff out! This is basic functionality, keeping an application running whilst taking a call.
Well AMD have started using an ACP number now that is a bit closer to what Intel's TDP definition was.
At a platform level it appears that the AMD solution is still more than competitive on power consumption with Intel's similar offerings (according to the review at Tech Report anyway), so I wouldn't worry too much about the 140W figure. Especially if you're going to add a fast graphics card anyway, which will eat even more.
Merchant Accounts aren't hard to get (at least they weren't ten years ago), I had one in the UK with no prior accounting records, and that included the card processing machine (although these days I imagine most plumbers, etc, use ePDQ/payment gateways functionality online). The mobile phone functionality the other person mentioned must be a development of ePDQ (I presume it's just a J2ME/iPhone App front end). ePDQ was a higher cost per transaction I recall, but not cripplingly so as the transaction value went up.
And indeed, the cost of using Paypal or ePDQ or even a physical PDQ (around £25/m rent extra) is far lower than going to the bank twice a week to pay in cheques and cash, even if the bank process itself goes smoothly.
Plumbers/electricians generally finish up, give you the invoice and then stick you on the phone to their wife/daughter who is doing the ePDQ and you pay there and then. Not that I've noticed a reluctance in some cases for paying in cash... it's quick, efficient, gets you a paper trail for accounting purposes...
You have it wrong. They leave people that can't give them profits to die, or become destitute and bankrupt and with destroyed lives. And if you're not in the top 5% of people in the country, you don't get a choice in healthcare provider and you can't easily switch jobs just like that. You lose your job, you lose your insurance. You then have an accident, and you've lost your house, your life, everything. That's FREEDOM? 60% of personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. that's CHOICE? No, it's no choice, it's destroying lives for being unfortunate enough to be ill or have an accident.
The sooner the USA drags itself into the middle of the 20th century as a civilisation, the better it will be for the people of that country as a whole. It's not like private healthcare is being canned.
"government interference in healthcare: they can use your health to put you in a box. "
Better than the box the current system leaves many people in - those that can't afford healthcare insurance for whatever reason.
But there will be people falling hook line and sinker for the FUD that some parties are spewing in the US, to protect their interests and maintain the status quo.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the patent, you will realise that is isn't patenting XML.
It's "Patenting a system for how to do" a certain thing in XML (actually SGML, but there's no different. That's why Office violates, and OpenOffice doesn't violate. It's the custom XML feature in Office, which isn't actually XML.
Certainly abandoning the original XBox as soon as they could and leaving the owners high and dry was a brilliant move on Microsoft's part, as they got a year's head start. Albeit with hardware that should have been tested for another six months.
I wonder if Sony will make that mistake again, or if they'll compromise on the PS4 to release it around the same time as the XBox 1080. They do have a viable upgrade option in the PowerXCell32... and all they need is the graphical horsepower to run 1080p/120 games (3D glasses x 60fps full HD).
The PS3 integrates the PSU, and isn't that large. Now it integrates the PSU and is smaller.
The 360 is an abomination in the world of consumer electronics, less reliable than Panaphonic and Matsashitty and Shoney knock-off brands.
But because it was a little cheaper, the fanboys will rush to covet it. Even as they rue their HD-DVD player purchase, the Plug-n-Charge kit, the Wireless dongle, ... and then you get the RROD, which for my 360 owning friends, has occurred always just as they got the big game they had been looking forward to for ages.
Admittedly if the hardware didn't have such appalling reliability, there wouldn't be a problem, I think more people would own them than they do right now. It's taken three years for the PS3 to become reasonable in terms of price, firmware and game library, I'm impressed they sold over 20m of the expensive model. Still, it is a device that was engineered better, despite that weak GPU they stuck in quite late in the design cycle.
And the Wii, well, it doesn't get played much, but if there's more than one person around it's what is being played.
Or that he found an audio module and a translator module in the dump to use in the droid, but not a visual analysis module, and certainly not the interconnects to connect the visual analysis to the translator properly, and certainly he couldn't find decent limb assemblies beyond basic parts that were dumped.
I mean, it's like Scrapheap Challenge, and nothing on that works well.
I'd say the surprise was that C3P0 actually lasted so long instead of being retired, scrapped or enhanced-as-a-personal-project into something that wasn't shit.
I cancelled my Barclaycard 3 years ago, 2 years ago, and a year ago. Still getting a yearly statement, and it's on my credit report as active. I suspect that they actually haven't cancelled yours, or if they have you're very lucky.
I left Barclays in 2005 after being with them for ten years, after their appalling customer support pissed me off one last time.
That's odd about the debit cards, because they should be usable in any cashpoint machine - my Halifax debit card works in any machines. Sounds like it's time to move on again!
Well the banking rules allow for two hours for intra-bank transfers to occur. I've certainly noticed monies going from my bank to another one extremely quickly. Maybe your bank isn't so good (is it Barclays? Worst. Bank. Ever.)
The most complex part there is getting a valid, correct IBAN from your bank in a timely manner. In the UK it certainly seems that many bank staff aren't actually aware of what it is, my lodger had massive pains getting an IBAN for her account from Barclays, and it turned out to be incorrect!
Infinitely more expensive than doing a simple free bank to bank payment online. In the UK the fees are instantly transferred as well, if you wish, even between different banks.
Of course, anything less and we'd burn down the banks after their behaviour recently, and their other charges.
Both Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles for profit, and have been for a while, the 360 longer (although RROD fixes have probably eaten up a lot of this). Just recently there was a report saying that Sony have dropped the cost of PS3 production by 70% since launch - I don't know if that includes the Slim or not.
Well Leopard came out around two and a half years ago, and with the rise in increase of Mac sales, most Macs are running Leopard, and Tiger users that cared probably upgraded at the time or since.
In addition if you are running Tiger (like me) you're probably due for a computer upgrade, and that makes more sense than buying a full Snow Leopard. Indeed you may be running PowerPC (aside: have you noticed that the latest Flash plugin was compiled with the -hate-powerpc flag?) so the upgrade is not available anyway, and you'll be quite overdue for a new computer (or the old one is more than adequate as-is and you don't need the OS upgrade and probably won't even be aware that it exists).
And finally, a hard learned lesson for Mac OS users - don't use the .0 or .1 versions of a new Mac OS X. Wait for 10.6.2 at least, which will be a few months, and may push your computer into upgrade territory, age-wise anyway.
The Vista->Windows 7 upgrade isn't $29, yet in terms of upgrade and age, it's pretty similar to Leopard->Snow Leopard.
And desktop Mac OS X not being able to be run in a VM is ridiculous in this day and age, I hope that Apple reassess their policy here, it's not 2007 any more.
Same here. I'm sick of Windows XP, even though I use it rarely. Might be nice to have a full, personal copy of Windows 7, it will come in handy sometime.
I wouldn't pay more than £80 for it, but £65 is alright really. Especially to dump XP, which just grinds away with graphical redraw glitches that are really noticeable now that everything uses proper compositing for the desktop and thus never had "redraw pauses".
Oh yeah, our benevolent government doesn't want us to be able to have thrills and gadgets on the cheap in case we don't value them enough!
Still, we do get some consumer protection I guess ...
So it's £217 without VAT (assuming 15% here, and that Sony will swallow the increase back to 17.5% next year) which is $360. That's a $60 markup for the UK, or 20%. That's a bit rude really, but par for the course.
On the other hand, I got my PS3 for £240 over a year ago, so I'm not too bothered.
It's ironic that many people were bitching about the shiny black before, because it was a dust magnet.
Some things you can't win I guess. Stick it in your media centre and forget about it.
Or get the current model before it sells out.
The internal design architecture of the new PS3 system, from the main semiconductors and power supply unit to the cooling mechanism, has been completely redesigned, achieving a much slimmer and lighter body. Compared to the very first PS3 model with 60GB HDD, the internal volume as well as its thickness and weight are trimmed down to approximately two-thirds. Furthermore, power consumption is also cut to two-thirds, helping to reduce fan noise.
So: Still has internal PSU (my major worry), but isn't as great a size reducation as say the shrink from the PS2 to the PS2 Slim. Sounds like more chips are 45nm than before. Obviously there was a circuit board redesign. One major fail is not having a USB port on the back for PlayTV.
Even quieter fan noise will be a nice feature for movie watchers, not that it is a major issue now.
And the price is very competitive with the 360. Price drop here coming soon I presume! Otherwise there's even less reason to get a 360 compared to the PS3, especially if you don't have wired ethernet near your media setup.
The new firmware looks like it has some nice features, for people who get excited by such things.
How long does the iPhone TomTom application take to find the satellites and all that lark?
Still, it's not like GPS is something you need on all the time, and you're unlikely to answer a phone call when coming up to a major intersection you need the GPS for because you've never been on it before...
So basically the summary and article are incorrect? The application doesn't quit, it's just waiting behind the phone call interface (how else can you take a phone call!), running happily.
"if you receive a call while you're driving then the app does cut out"
What? If you answer, or just because you receive a call?
The former - well, if you're not using handsfree, you shouldn't be answering. TomTom are releasing some hardware for the iPhone that incorporates handfree features however...
If the latter - Apple: sort this stuff out! This is basic functionality, keeping an application running whilst taking a call.
Hmm, I'd trust the Tech Report figures more, which support the post that you replied to.
Of course individual chips differ, platforms tested upon differ, and in the end a few percent either way is neither here nor there.
Well AMD have started using an ACP number now that is a bit closer to what Intel's TDP definition was.
At a platform level it appears that the AMD solution is still more than competitive on power consumption with Intel's similar offerings (according to the review at Tech Report anyway), so I wouldn't worry too much about the 140W figure. Especially if you're going to add a fast graphics card anyway, which will eat even more.
Merchant Accounts aren't hard to get (at least they weren't ten years ago), I had one in the UK with no prior accounting records, and that included the card processing machine (although these days I imagine most plumbers, etc, use ePDQ/payment gateways functionality online). The mobile phone functionality the other person mentioned must be a development of ePDQ (I presume it's just a J2ME/iPhone App front end). ePDQ was a higher cost per transaction I recall, but not cripplingly so as the transaction value went up.
And indeed, the cost of using Paypal or ePDQ or even a physical PDQ (around £25/m rent extra) is far lower than going to the bank twice a week to pay in cheques and cash, even if the bank process itself goes smoothly.
Plumbers/electricians generally finish up, give you the invoice and then stick you on the phone to their wife/daughter who is doing the ePDQ and you pay there and then. Not that I've noticed a reluctance in some cases for paying in cash... it's quick, efficient, gets you a paper trail for accounting purposes ...
"trying to kill patients for profit"
You have it wrong. They leave people that can't give them profits to die, or become destitute and bankrupt and with destroyed lives. And if you're not in the top 5% of people in the country, you don't get a choice in healthcare provider and you can't easily switch jobs just like that. You lose your job, you lose your insurance. You then have an accident, and you've lost your house, your life, everything. That's FREEDOM? 60% of personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. that's CHOICE? No, it's no choice, it's destroying lives for being unfortunate enough to be ill or have an accident.
The sooner the USA drags itself into the middle of the 20th century as a civilisation, the better it will be for the people of that country as a whole. It's not like private healthcare is being canned.
"government interference in healthcare: they can use your health to put you in a box. "
Better than the box the current system leaves many people in - those that can't afford healthcare insurance for whatever reason.
But there will be people falling hook line and sinker for the FUD that some parties are spewing in the US, to protect their interests and maintain the status quo.
Most of these are more than happy to receive payment "cash in hand" ;-)
And secondly, you hand them to the person yourself, and if not, they're unlikely to change their address so they can't get paid.
The main point was with mailing payments, instead of direct debit or standing orders, or the US equivalent.
Only six? That's pretty low. I would expect a few dozen up to hundreds for more menial tasks.