First, I make sure all the check boxes are checked or unchecked so that the email is not supposed to get any "special offers", etc.
Then I fill in abuse@[the site I'm registering at]. So for real.com, I use abuse@real.com.
They aren't supposed to be sending email to the address I give them, and I don't have time to complain to their abuse department when they do, so I let them notify themselves that they are ignoring my preferences.
What the RIAA is doing is having a chilling effect on online music trading, like it or not. I don't think the MPAA will have any recourse but to pursue the same tactics, but with much larger penalties.
It would be nice to see the full stats, though, to see if music has plateaued (as would be expected) while movies climb as broadband proliferates. br.
-Adam
This is ideal for people living in Silicon Valley.
You might think so, but heat grates are renting for $24/sqft/mo, and even sidewalk and alley are as much as $20/sqft/mo so it isn't quite as cost effective as you might think.
The fridge box might be $25, but the sidewalk is $180/mo. Hope you've got a good job!
I doubt they have a patent covering the basic RFID technology. Chances are good that what they have are dozens of patents on how to use the technology - manufacturing techniques, various uses, perhaps some algorithms on more esoteric reader/tag interactions, etc.
Chances are good it'll have a chilling effect, but it won't hinder the industry at all. All that will happen is about $0.001 will go to this company for each tag, perhaps a few dollars for each reader, and the consumers will be left holding the bag.
The only real issue is all the lawyering that's going to have to go on to get the deals made - this is what's going to take time. If Walmart wants quick adoption, they'll either find a way around most of the patents, or they'll pay up. They won't try to discredit the patents - it'll be tied up for years, and the cost savings is still greater than the outlay.
Since I don't email illiterate people, I'd like my mail program run spell check and grammer check on incoming mail. If it isn't at high school level then it's automatically binned.
They also have some major hurdles to overcome. Complete hardware abstraction is one. Differences in hardware capabilities, etc. are not trivial problems. (Go from 1280x1024 w/5.1 surround to a 800x600 screen w/o speakers and see how it handles it.)
I hope this forces them to implement a robust vector based display abstraction. It'd have to have a raster compatible mode.
In the end an OS should only need to know three thingsd about my display:
Size (height, width, depth) in inches or meters
Pixels per inch/meter
Perhaps refresh, color, etc
Then it can use my preferences to display icons at the correct size (not resolution), etc. Fonts, icons, widgets would all have to be redefined in terms of vector graphics.
Similar abstractions could be made for sound, printer (PS, PDF), keyboard, mouse, etc.
With 3D and 2D acceleration we shouldn't be making the OS do more than say, "This is a button - put one there" Should be easy to do vector stuff in 3D accelerated mode.
And I want my 300dpi 20" 16x9 viewable displays too.
Boss: "Why did nearly half our service go down Friday?"
CTO: "Actually, sir, the real question is why did we lose less than half of our service. The answer is that I've, uh, been strategically using different systems and components throughout the enterprise on purpose to prevent drastic losses. No one else could have even kept 10% of their machines up under that DDOS."
Boss: "I knew I could count on you for the right PR spin job. Go back and think up some other good excuses."
First you need to get yourself promoted to a position where you specify software for the enterprise. That's the easy part. Second is you find out every website someone in the company might possibly visit, and you either
1. Get the website to fix their websites to look good in your choice of browser
2. Install a proxy to fix sites as they flow through. Plan in maintenance so the rules are updated as sites change.
3. Convince the company to use a different resource that is complaint
Then switch everyone over to firefox.
Of course, even the firefox developers concede that Firefox isn't production ready (1.0, anyone?). Also you'll be upgrading the software several times a year (with associated problems each upgrade causes) at least until 1.0.
The simple fact is that unless you are in a position to specify then all you can do is write a business proposal that covers all the aspects of the change and give it to everyone you have access to. If you don't know how to write a business proposal, and aren't ready to do all the work in a changeover yourself in addition to your regular duties then you are obviously not in a position to even suggest this change.
You are in a beauracracy full of twisty passages, all alike. You are likely to be eaten by a downsizing.
I imagine it has 3 on each end so it can determine its orientation as well as position. The triple redundancy is nothing new, and 3 cheap consumer grade GPS units are cheaper than 1 "bulletproof" unit which still may fail.
Read the outputs of all three, throw out one if it disagrees with the other 2.
In the special features I recall a segment where Peter explains that he was simply hoping to get a studio to let him do two films at the same time, and the person he talked to said, "Wouldn't it be better as a trilogy?" and that's how he got the trilogy, and picked the studio.
I haven't heard about any deal making with the extended editions. I expect he gave them the song and dance about making exceptional amounts of money by releasing two DVD sets a year and they bought it. Knowing that it'll be extended before you start editing the first cut probably makes it cheaper (you can take notes and the secondary editing process takes very little time comparitively).
As far as the length, I heard (don't recall where, this could be a myth) that they set the limit to 3 hours. The first two movies they let him go over a bit. The last movie he showed in the screening room and simply turned it off at exactly 3 hours (well before everything was resolved). They wanted to see the remainder and afterwards when he asked them what should be cut they said nothing and allowed it to go to print.
I love this kind of gossip, however untrue it may be.
-Adam
Re:They are NOT Blimps!
on
Broadband Blimps
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The sarcastic wicked side of me wants to ask, "Do you also have trouble distinguishing cows from automobiles?".
Only when then cow's primary means of transport is four wheels connected to its frame that roll on the ground.
According to the web site the blimp's primary means of staying aloft is the fact that it's lighter than air. It requires (and is defined by) its bouyant gas.
I shouldn't have to remind you that previous commercial blimps all had/have a rigid airframe.
The fact that it has a shape which provides lift means nothing when that lift is additional to the bouyancy and the craft does not depend in any part on that lift. It can take off, operate, and land on a windless day without using the engines to do more than keep a particular position.
An airship is either a Blimp or Dirigible. The only other lighter than air aircraft type is a Balloon which is defined as free-floating (non directed).
So they can claim it's an airship, but when they say it's not a blimp it's an opinion - blimps and dirigibles are airships, airships are blimps and dirigibles.
AFAICT, they're simply applying PR spin to prevent people from associating their products with blimp disasters of old. The reality is that most people now consider blimps to be as reliable as goodyear blimps.
This technology is probably going to fail anyway. It has too many complex parts. One of the (good) reasons to keep cell towers on the ground is that each tower can handle only so much aggregate bandwidth. That's 5 fast users or 30 voice users, etc. A balloon trying to service more than 100 users is going to have some serious problems. If they build their own radio technology it'll invariably be worse than Wi-Fi and more costly. If they attempt to use Wi-Fi they will still have to give customers custom high power hardware and they'll be messing everyone else's signals to boot.
Instead of refitting these balloons twice a year they won't be able to keep them up for more than a month at a time, if that long.
The movies theaters are for showing the "film as it was meant to be shown to the masses" not the "film as intended by the director".
Movie theaters exist because home theaters are very expensive and it's more cost effective to see the movie in the theater than to invest in a good home setup.
Just as the movie industry had to change with the introduction of videotapes, they will again have to change when home theaters are less costly and more common.
But the upshot is that a movie theater is set up to have a fixed ticket price per movie. Some movies will never go longer than 1.5 hours, and others will require 3 hours or more. Theaters are not set up for graduated pricing, and they make significantly less money showing a longer film than showing a shorter one unless it also runs for several weeks longer and attracts a steady audience.
Theaters will not show long films that are not guranteed to draw huge audiences. Producers know this and force directors to cut films to a reasonable length. Directors, knowing that they will "always have the DVD", do so reluctantly and then polish the film for the extended DVD release. Did you notice how LoTR 1 played in theaters for weeks longer than LoTR 3? There's a cost/benefit ratio here. If you want to see the movie as the director intended (given the budget they had) then you buy the extended edition. Consumers are happy, fans are happy, studios make millions, and the smurfs escape from gargomel once again.
So don't feel cheated. You're paying $9 for a $9 experience. This is the edition the director expected you to spend $9 for. Remember that the directors and the theaters are at the mercy of the movie studios/producers. If you don't like it, then spend time writing letters and faxes to the studios - both when they do good and when they do bad. But don't blame the theater owners when they start raising prices across the board to accomodate the one or two movies a year that are 4 hours long.
Remember that we American Consumers like our flat rates.
Dear Microsoft,
I am writing concerning downloading the most recent Windows Updates. I am unable to obtain them as your site requires IE, and the government recently suggested that users cease use of IE.
" Why is it called Ject?" he interjected
"Is the virus writer," he conjectured," or the AV firm some kind of closet Final Fantasy X fan?"
"Seriously?" he objected
"Why Ject?" he said dejectedly.
Probably because you weren't projecting your rejection at the time. But more likely due to the fact that it feels uncommon in the English language, but practically falls off the tongue and so is easy to remember. (sorry, I couldn't easily inject abject)
I'm glad you agree that there are compounds and diseases we don't want to expose children to. If you think polio is a bad example because we have a vaccine then I submit that HIV/AIDS is a disease/virus which we do not want children to be exposed to.
So I fail to see exactly what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that there are no emotional or mental equivilants to drugs and diseases that are obviously physically detrimental?
Perhaps you are making the point that even adults shouldn't be exposed to or using these substances/diseases. However, children and teenagers are notorious for making bad decisions without fully understanding the long term consequences. Shouldn't we limit the ability to make exceptionally life altering decisions until they reach a level a maturity where they are able to comprehend the consequences of their actions?
A serial number should be exactly that - a number which denotes no more information than the sequential number of the item that came off the production line.
A VIN is sort of a zombie half dead half alive number. It contains information about the item it is attached to, as well as the serial number.
The real problem is not that it's limited - it had a life span, it's lived that span of time - it's that people developing systems and processes to deal with cars made the assumption that the VIN is not limited in its life span.
The VIN is useful, no doubt, but the reality is that each car should have a VIN that doesn't contain the serial number and a seperate serial number. If you want to keep both in one number then you can form it yourself by putting the VIN before the serial number.
They should have designed it to scale 30 years ago.
But the reality now is that we're due for an upgrade. Now the VIN will be expanded and stored on an RFID chip (or barcoded at minimum).
Slashdot Mirror
Do not mod me up. This has been a test of the emergency bookmarking system. This is only a test.
-Adam
First, I make sure all the check boxes are checked or unchecked so that the email is not supposed to get any "special offers", etc.
Then I fill in abuse@[the site I'm registering at]. So for real.com, I use abuse@real.com.
They aren't supposed to be sending email to the address I give them, and I don't have time to complain to their abuse department when they do, so I let them notify themselves that they are ignoring my preferences.
-Adam
What the RIAA is doing is having a chilling effect on online music trading, like it or not. I don't think the MPAA will have any recourse but to pursue the same tactics, but with much larger penalties.
It would be nice to see the full stats, though, to see if music has plateaued (as would be expected) while movies climb as broadband proliferates.
br. -Adam
This is ideal for people living in Silicon Valley.
You might think so, but heat grates are renting for $24/sqft/mo, and even sidewalk and alley are as much as $20/sqft/mo so it isn't quite as cost effective as you might think.
The fridge box might be $25, but the sidewalk is $180/mo. Hope you've got a good job!
-Adam
Remember this is in the UK.
Good idea
Getting an advert for your product posted to Slashdot.
Bad idea
Hosting the site on DSL in your mum's basement.
-Adam
I doubt they have a patent covering the basic RFID technology. Chances are good that what they have are dozens of patents on how to use the technology - manufacturing techniques, various uses, perhaps some algorithms on more esoteric reader/tag interactions, etc.
Chances are good it'll have a chilling effect, but it won't hinder the industry at all. All that will happen is about $0.001 will go to this company for each tag, perhaps a few dollars for each reader, and the consumers will be left holding the bag.
The only real issue is all the lawyering that's going to have to go on to get the deals made - this is what's going to take time. If Walmart wants quick adoption, they'll either find a way around most of the patents, or they'll pay up. They won't try to discredit the patents - it'll be tied up for years, and the cost savings is still greater than the outlay.
-Adam
Nextel and FCC Swap Bandwidth
FCC has reportedly denied having mono, and sources claim that HIV test results should be available soon.
-Adam
Since I don't email illiterate people, I'd like my mail program run spell check and grammer check on incoming mail. If it isn't at high school level then it's automatically binned.
-Adam
They also have some major hurdles to overcome. Complete hardware abstraction is one. Differences in hardware capabilities, etc. are not trivial problems. (Go from 1280x1024 w/5.1 surround to a 800x600 screen w/o speakers and see how it handles it.)
I hope this forces them to implement a robust vector based display abstraction. It'd have to have a raster compatible mode.
In the end an OS should only need to know three thingsd about my display:
Size (height, width, depth) in inches or meters
Pixels per inch/meter
Perhaps refresh, color, etc
Then it can use my preferences to display icons at the correct size (not resolution), etc. Fonts, icons, widgets would all have to be redefined in terms of vector graphics.
Similar abstractions could be made for sound, printer (PS, PDF), keyboard, mouse, etc.
With 3D and 2D acceleration we shouldn't be making the OS do more than say, "This is a button - put one there" Should be easy to do vector stuff in 3D accelerated mode.
And I want my 300dpi 20" 16x9 viewable displays too.
-Adam
'The main purpose of my inventing is not to earn money,'
Then he's definitely not like Thomas Edison.
-Adam
Boss: "Why did nearly half our service go down Friday?"
CTO: "Actually, sir, the real question is why did we lose less than half of our service. The answer is that I've, uh, been strategically using different systems and components throughout the enterprise on purpose to prevent drastic losses. No one else could have even kept 10% of their machines up under that DDOS."
Boss: "I knew I could count on you for the right PR spin job. Go back and think up some other good excuses."
-Adam
First you need to get yourself promoted to a position where you specify software for the enterprise. That's the easy part. Second is you find out every website someone in the company might possibly visit, and you either
1. Get the website to fix their websites to look good in your choice of browser
2. Install a proxy to fix sites as they flow through. Plan in maintenance so the rules are updated as sites change.
3. Convince the company to use a different resource that is complaint
Then switch everyone over to firefox.
Of course, even the firefox developers concede that Firefox isn't production ready (1.0, anyone?). Also you'll be upgrading the software several times a year (with associated problems each upgrade causes) at least until 1.0.
The simple fact is that unless you are in a position to specify then all you can do is write a business proposal that covers all the aspects of the change and give it to everyone you have access to. If you don't know how to write a business proposal, and aren't ready to do all the work in a changeover yourself in addition to your regular duties then you are obviously not in a position to even suggest this change.
You are in a beauracracy full of twisty passages, all alike. You are likely to be eaten by a downsizing.
-Adam
I imagine it has 3 on each end so it can determine its orientation as well as position. The triple redundancy is nothing new, and 3 cheap consumer grade GPS units are cheaper than 1 "bulletproof" unit which still may fail.
Read the outputs of all three, throw out one if it disagrees with the other 2.
-Adam
In the special features I recall a segment where Peter explains that he was simply hoping to get a studio to let him do two films at the same time, and the person he talked to said, "Wouldn't it be better as a trilogy?" and that's how he got the trilogy, and picked the studio.
I haven't heard about any deal making with the extended editions. I expect he gave them the song and dance about making exceptional amounts of money by releasing two DVD sets a year and they bought it. Knowing that it'll be extended before you start editing the first cut probably makes it cheaper (you can take notes and the secondary editing process takes very little time comparitively).
As far as the length, I heard (don't recall where, this could be a myth) that they set the limit to 3 hours. The first two movies they let him go over a bit. The last movie he showed in the screening room and simply turned it off at exactly 3 hours (well before everything was resolved). They wanted to see the remainder and afterwards when he asked them what should be cut they said nothing and allowed it to go to print.
I love this kind of gossip, however untrue it may be.
-Adam
The sarcastic wicked side of me wants to ask, "Do you also have trouble distinguishing cows from automobiles?".
Only when then cow's primary means of transport is four wheels connected to its frame that roll on the ground.
According to the web site the blimp's primary means of staying aloft is the fact that it's lighter than air. It requires (and is defined by) its bouyant gas.
I shouldn't have to remind you that previous commercial blimps all had/have a rigid airframe.
The fact that it has a shape which provides lift means nothing when that lift is additional to the bouyancy and the craft does not depend in any part on that lift. It can take off, operate, and land on a windless day without using the engines to do more than keep a particular position.
An airship is either a Blimp or Dirigible. The only other lighter than air aircraft type is a Balloon which is defined as free-floating (non directed).
So they can claim it's an airship, but when they say it's not a blimp it's an opinion - blimps and dirigibles are airships, airships are blimps and dirigibles.
AFAICT, they're simply applying PR spin to prevent people from associating their products with blimp disasters of old. The reality is that most people now consider blimps to be as reliable as goodyear blimps.
This technology is probably going to fail anyway. It has too many complex parts. One of the (good) reasons to keep cell towers on the ground is that each tower can handle only so much aggregate bandwidth. That's 5 fast users or 30 voice users, etc. A balloon trying to service more than 100 users is going to have some serious problems. If they build their own radio technology it'll invariably be worse than Wi-Fi and more costly. If they attempt to use Wi-Fi they will still have to give customers custom high power hardware and they'll be messing everyone else's signals to boot.
Instead of refitting these balloons twice a year they won't be able to keep them up for more than a month at a time, if that long.
-Adam
You've got it all wrong.
The movies theaters are for showing the "film as it was meant to be shown to the masses" not the "film as intended by the director".
Movie theaters exist because home theaters are very expensive and it's more cost effective to see the movie in the theater than to invest in a good home setup.
Just as the movie industry had to change with the introduction of videotapes, they will again have to change when home theaters are less costly and more common.
But the upshot is that a movie theater is set up to have a fixed ticket price per movie. Some movies will never go longer than 1.5 hours, and others will require 3 hours or more. Theaters are not set up for graduated pricing, and they make significantly less money showing a longer film than showing a shorter one unless it also runs for several weeks longer and attracts a steady audience.
Theaters will not show long films that are not guranteed to draw huge audiences. Producers know this and force directors to cut films to a reasonable length. Directors, knowing that they will "always have the DVD", do so reluctantly and then polish the film for the extended DVD release. Did you notice how LoTR 1 played in theaters for weeks longer than LoTR 3? There's a cost/benefit ratio here. If you want to see the movie as the director intended (given the budget they had) then you buy the extended edition. Consumers are happy, fans are happy, studios make millions, and the smurfs escape from gargomel once again.
So don't feel cheated. You're paying $9 for a $9 experience. This is the edition the director expected you to spend $9 for. Remember that the directors and the theaters are at the mercy of the movie studios/producers. If you don't like it, then spend time writing letters and faxes to the studios - both when they do good and when they do bad. But don't blame the theater owners when they start raising prices across the board to accomodate the one or two movies a year that are 4 hours long.
Remember that we American Consumers like our flat rates.
-Adam
Does it come in a wooden box?
Suitable for burial. Unmarked gravestone not included.
-Adam
There is no region.
Actually the technicality here is that they never mentioned how pure the tritium was.
In this case they only needed 0.001% pure tritium, so the size of the ball was entirely plausable.
-Adam
Dear Microsoft,
I am writing concerning downloading the most recent Windows Updates. I am unable to obtain them as your site requires IE, and the government recently suggested that users cease use of IE.
Please help!
-Adam
" Why is it called Ject?" he interjected
"Is the virus writer," he conjectured," or the AV firm some kind of closet Final Fantasy X fan?"
"Seriously?" he objected
"Why Ject?" he said dejectedly.
Probably because you weren't projecting your rejection at the time. But more likely due to the fact that it feels uncommon in the English language, but practically falls off the tongue and so is easy to remember. (sorry, I couldn't easily inject abject)
-Adam
How do they know?
Such problems are always timed to coincide with 3 day weekends.
Always.
-Adam
I'm glad you agree that there are compounds and diseases we don't want to expose children to. If you think polio is a bad example because we have a vaccine then I submit that HIV/AIDS is a disease/virus which we do not want children to be exposed to.
So I fail to see exactly what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that there are no emotional or mental equivilants to drugs and diseases that are obviously physically detrimental?
Perhaps you are making the point that even adults shouldn't be exposed to or using these substances/diseases. However, children and teenagers are notorious for making bad decisions without fully understanding the long term consequences. Shouldn't we limit the ability to make exceptionally life altering decisions until they reach a level a maturity where they are able to comprehend the consequences of their actions?
-Adam
A serial number should be exactly that - a number which denotes no more information than the sequential number of the item that came off the production line.
A VIN is sort of a zombie half dead half alive number. It contains information about the item it is attached to, as well as the serial number.
The real problem is not that it's limited - it had a life span, it's lived that span of time - it's that people developing systems and processes to deal with cars made the assumption that the VIN is not limited in its life span.
The VIN is useful, no doubt, but the reality is that each car should have a VIN that doesn't contain the serial number and a seperate serial number. If you want to keep both in one number then you can form it yourself by putting the VIN before the serial number.
They should have designed it to scale 30 years ago.
But the reality now is that we're due for an upgrade. Now the VIN will be expanded and stored on an RFID chip (or barcoded at minimum).
-Adam
and tossed in some light discipline to make it stick.
"Allright buster, just for that I'm not allowing you to recompile your kernel for 2 months!"
"Aw, Mom! I think I got the NVidia OpenGL thing worked out! Can't I have one little compile?"
-Adam