My hat goes off to Red Hat for coming up with a truely innovatave solution that could (if played out right) hugely benefit schools and the open source community alike.
Students might begin to learn concepts, such as identifying and solving problems, and choose what tool is best for the task at hand rather than learning how to use one tool one way. I know too many people who can "use Word", but if the "save" button is shifted slightly on the toolbar, or a particular shortcut key is remapped, they are totally lost. All because they haven't learned how to do word processing at all. They've just learned how to use MSWord.
I see this as a brilliant counter-move against Microsofts proposed joke of a settlement, which is really just another marketing campaign, aimed at tightening its monopoly. If MSFT had its way and 'gave' the software to these schools, what would happen once the licensing term was up? The school would have to *purchase* license updates, or find themselves in violation of the all-important EULA.
These days schools, or any other institution should not have to still recognise microsoft as a viable entity, now that they've been finally judged an illegal monopoly.
It is good to note that the Red Hat offer will still be available to schools, regardless of what Microsoft chooses to do.
A good point, but we must remember that IBM can still turn around anytime and say:
"well well, look at these programs you naughty open source people have developed. Why, it uses our patented technology. Cease and desist. All Your Base Are Belong To Us"
Don't think for a minute that this isn't possible, (okay, except for that shameless AYB bit) they have no legal obligations to the open source community. I most certainly do applaud them for their recent support of OS, but they are not bound whatsoever to continue.
What we need is some kind of open patent, an "anti-patent" as it were: a legally binding document, which describes the invention, methods, possible applications, AND a declaration that the invention may be used and further developed by anyone restriction-free. Therefore nobody else can patent it, and everybody can use it!
I'm not talking about just another GNU-style license here, we need documents that the PATENT OFFICE will maintain and recognise. This will ensure that people who do invent new methodologies will be protected not from other prople using their ideas, but corporations trying to steal/patent their own work.
Perhaps such a system is already in place and it's just not very highly recognised, I don't know enough about patent law in the Americas.
PS: I thought patents expired after 5-6 years anyway, or is that just for medical patents?
"SMP on linux is plain awesome, and anyone that tries it will refuse to downgrade back to Uniprocessor systems ever again. (anyone make a SMP laptop??)"
Are these companies honestly trying to force people to bypass the CD store and steal their music online?
In the closed-plan office where I work (no cubicles, just lots of small rooms), people can play whatever music they like, and most have a stack of legitimately bought CDs next to their computer. Or if they don't want to shuffle CDs all day, rip ten of them to one ogg/mp3 CD, constituting fair use.
If this kind of scheme becomes mainstream (no big loss yet, with Michael Jackson or Lip-Sync) it suddenly becomes impossible to play/dub new music in CD ROMS, forcing people to either lug in their "defect -friendly" CD players from home or download their music online from people who have taken the time to rip the music directly from the analog or digital line out of a stereo. The latter seems much more likely.
As a consequence, CD shops will become empty ghost stores, and those big music companies will have a *real* problem on their hands.
This copy protection really solves nothing - the determined people who *really* want to rip the music will always circumvent copy protection. The only ones that are inconvenienced are us legitimate listeners.
Perhaps it really is time for upcoming musicians to forget record companies and set up studios on their home hi-fi computers. Forget CDs, just ogg the music and put it on the web under a subscription license. I think most people would happily pay the amount that an artist actually makes out of a CD sale (not much) to purchase rights to download the album.
In it's normal state, an LCD cell is transparent, letting (close to) 100% of the light from the backlight or reflector to pass through, producing white.
Placing a voltage across an LCD cell makes it opaque, thus blocking out the backlight, making it appear black.
In this state the LCD is producing power to BLOCK the backlight. Therefore the most efficient use of power is when the LCD is off, ie a white screen:)
Look at your calculator screen sometime.
A neat trick on an LCD calculator is to rotate one of the polarizing filters about the horizontal axis, so the calculator screen is now white-on-black:)
"...but the current OpenGL standard is extensible enough for the time being. More important would be a complete OpenAPI setup with input, sound, network, and graphics options all combined and available on all platforms. "
That's why we have SDL. Input, audio and graphics are provided, and you can still render into openGl contexts.
What's the use of a music player that only supports the proprietary mp3 format?
Perhaps there would have been plugins to make it would support open formats (ogg etc), who knows?
Time to hack up my p100 and cram it into a car stereo socket.
I agree with you that children don't come with a money-back guarantee!
No one (I hope) is saying that it is unreasonable to want your child to be as happy and healthy as possible.
The issue (using your analogy) is if the child, having swallowed poison and sustaining brain damage, is now worth less than they were before. Should preventative action have been taken before the event? yes.
Should everything be done after the event to help the child regain some sense of normality? IMHO yes
Should action be taken after the event to determine the worth of the child? hmmm
Now going back to the child in the womb topic; It is of course desirable for a baby to develop without abnormalities, but what happens if, despite the mother eating all the right foods, staying away from paint fumes, and laying off the thalidimyde, the child is still born with Downs or similar?
I constantly wish I could do things that 'normal' people can do and take for granted, and would take an opportunity to do so, but I do not feel deficient or less significant as a result.
I do see your point, but along that line how can we judge retrospectively the value of someone's life based on their capabilities?
We could take the evolutionist approach, and say that a less-than-perfect person in the womb should be culled to assist human evolution on the whole.
Taking the subjective approach one might consider our own imperfections and be thankful that our parents didn't make any "tough decisions" when we were in the womb.
I am not convinced that the life of a handicapped person is worth less than those more fortunate.
Those two cases aren't even in the same ball park.
Is the statement that you wouldn't want to live if you sustained a brain injury a justification for killing a child before they have the opportunity to make that choice?
A woman who suffers from tuberculosis is pregnant. Her husband has syphilis. There are three children in the family. One is blind, another deaf, and the other suffers from tuberculosis. Yet another child died in infancy. Under the circumstances, what would you recommend? An abortion?
Congratulations, you?ve just killed Beethoven.
Euthanasia is one issue; infanticide is something else entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
My hat goes off to Red Hat for coming up with a truely innovatave solution that could (if played out right) hugely benefit schools and the open source community alike.
Students might begin to learn concepts, such as identifying and solving problems, and choose what tool is best for the task at hand rather than learning how to use one tool one way. I know too many people who can "use Word", but if the "save" button is shifted slightly on the toolbar, or a particular shortcut key is remapped, they are totally lost. All because they haven't learned how to do word processing at all. They've just learned how to use MSWord.
I see this as a brilliant counter-move against Microsofts proposed joke of a settlement, which is really just another marketing campaign, aimed at tightening its monopoly. If MSFT had its way and 'gave' the software to these schools, what would happen once the licensing term was up? The school would have to *purchase* license updates, or find themselves in violation of the all-important EULA.
These days schools, or any other institution should not have to still recognise microsoft as a viable entity, now that they've been finally judged an illegal monopoly.
It is good to note that the Red Hat offer will still be available to schools, regardless of what Microsoft chooses to do.
Then their sites just won't get the hits anymore.
No big loss, we'll just point our standards-compliant browsers somewhere else.
Does anyone know where you can download the trailer in a decent format (ie mpg, DivX etc)?
Shame on Lucasfilm for choosing quicktime again.
Do they really plan on accelerating this system at 40g's?
That's a fine achievement, but a lot more than I think most portable ogg/MP3 players will be subjected to under normal conditions.
Hang on, perhaps it's a drive that only weighs 40 grams? Now that would be very useful, as weight is your enemy when designing portable equipment.
Oh, did you mean a 40 GigaByte drive? Surely not, since that would have been written "40GB".
Will this affect my application for an apparatus to safely transport up to 10 litres of dihydrous monoxide?
Oh no, I can see it now:
"Mr Jones in Rm 318 has bluescreened again.
Code Blue! Code Blue!"
I thought it was in honour of the real mastermind behind the Linux Kernel, Mr Edward Nigma.
"Mr Babbage, your analytical machine does not work!"
"Oh? What version are you using?"
A good point, but we must remember that IBM can still turn around anytime and say:
"well well, look at these programs you naughty open source people have developed. Why, it uses our patented technology. Cease and desist. All Your Base Are Belong To Us"
Don't think for a minute that this isn't possible, (okay, except for that shameless AYB bit) they have no legal obligations to the open source community. I most certainly do applaud them for their recent support of OS, but they are not bound whatsoever to continue.
What we need is some kind of open patent, an "anti-patent" as it were: a legally binding document, which describes the invention, methods, possible applications, AND a declaration that the invention may be used and further developed by anyone restriction-free. Therefore nobody else can patent it, and everybody can use it!
I'm not talking about just another GNU-style license here, we need documents that the PATENT OFFICE will maintain and recognise. This will ensure that people who do invent new methodologies will be protected not from other prople using their ideas, but corporations trying to steal/patent their own work.
Perhaps such a system is already in place and it's just not very highly recognised, I don't know enough about patent law in the Americas.
PS: I thought patents expired after 5-6 years anyway, or is that just for medical patents?
Don't tell us, tell the Patent Office!
Somebody's got to do something about this, and have this silly patent overturned.
Can adults not type with both hands?
Are you implying adults like to keep one hand on the mouse when typing?
Oh, or perhaps a reference to the sad sacks who can't help masturbating?
"And doesnt "This is not a joke." make it an even more obvious joke?"
No, the phrase "This is not a joke" makes me think it is not a joke.
PERSON1: "There's a guy somewhere round here with a gun shooting stuff up. This is not a joke"
PERSON2: "Oh, I get it! hahahahah-"
**BLAM!**
PERSON1: "Stupid *&^%&@"
BTW, for just one os many sites that sells ASCII controllers, Try here
I don't know where people got the idea that a picture of clocks and a badly rendered lens flare is 'in the wild'.
It is clear that a person, with the help of some computing device, conjured up this image and doesn't deserve to be called in the wild.
Do you mean outside of some elite (see, you *can* spell it without numbers!) little club of developers?
Now, finding God's message to His creation encoded in the stripes of a zebra would have been a real example.
Someone needs to rethink their terminology.
"SMP on linux is plain awesome, and anyone that tries it will refuse to downgrade back to Uniprocessor systems ever again. (anyone make a SMP laptop??)"
hear! hear!
It's time Von Neuman was shown to the exit.
Are these companies honestly trying to force people to bypass the CD store and steal their music online?
In the closed-plan office where I work (no cubicles, just lots of small rooms), people can play whatever music they like, and most have a stack of legitimately bought CDs next to their computer. Or if they don't want to shuffle CDs all day, rip ten of them to one ogg/mp3 CD, constituting fair use.
If this kind of scheme becomes mainstream (no big loss yet, with Michael Jackson or Lip-Sync) it suddenly becomes impossible to play/dub new music in CD ROMS, forcing people to either lug in their "defect -friendly" CD players from home or download their music online from people who have taken the time to rip the music directly from the analog or digital line out of a stereo. The latter seems much more likely.
As a consequence, CD shops will become empty ghost stores, and those big music companies will have a *real* problem on their hands.
This copy protection really solves nothing - the determined people who *really* want to rip the music will always circumvent copy protection. The only ones that are inconvenienced are us legitimate listeners.
Perhaps it really is time for upcoming musicians to forget record companies and set up studios on their home hi-fi computers. Forget CDs, just ogg the music and put it on the web under a subscription license. I think most people would happily pay the amount that an artist actually makes out of a CD sale (not much) to purchase rights to download the album.
Just my 2cents
"It's a ceramic, so would it be feasible to create bricks which could be used to line or even build smokestacks."
... and shower floors, drainage pipes, and any other place in a building where heat is lost.
These cells could be a major step in energy efficiency.
Now how many BTU's of body heat does a person generate again, Morpheus?
In it's normal state, an LCD cell is transparent, letting (close to) 100% of the light from the backlight or reflector to pass through, producing white. :)
:)
Placing a voltage across an LCD cell makes it opaque, thus blocking out the backlight, making it appear black.
In this state the LCD is producing power to BLOCK the backlight. Therefore the most efficient use of power is when the LCD is off, ie a white screen
Look at your calculator screen sometime.
A neat trick on an LCD calculator is to rotate one of the polarizing filters about the horizontal axis, so the calculator screen is now white-on-black
" ...but the current OpenGL standard is extensible enough for the time being. More important would be a complete OpenAPI setup with input, sound, network, and graphics options all combined and available on all platforms. "
That's why we have SDL. Input, audio and graphics are provided, and you can still render into openGl contexts.
What's the use of a music player that only supports the proprietary mp3 format?
Perhaps there would have been plugins to make it would support open formats (ogg etc), who knows?
Time to hack up my p100 and cram it into a car stereo socket.
chmod a+x /bin/laden
...and after these words were spoken it came to pass that Bloatware was born. The efficiency beast was banished from the land, never to return.
I agree with you that children don't come with a money-back guarantee!
No one (I hope) is saying that it is unreasonable to want your child to be as happy and healthy as possible.
The issue (using your analogy) is if the child, having swallowed poison and sustaining brain damage, is now worth less than they were before. Should preventative action have been taken before the event? yes.
Should everything be done after the event to help the child regain some sense of normality? IMHO yes
Should action be taken after the event to determine the worth of the child? hmmm
Now going back to the child in the womb topic; It is of course desirable for a baby to develop without abnormalities, but what happens if, despite the mother eating all the right foods, staying away from paint fumes, and laying off the thalidimyde, the child is still born with Downs or similar?
I constantly wish I could do things that 'normal' people can do and take for granted, and would take an opportunity to do so, but I do not feel deficient or less significant as a result.
I do see your point, but along that line how can we judge retrospectively the value of someone's life based on their capabilities?
We could take the evolutionist approach, and say that a less-than-perfect person in the womb should be culled to assist human evolution on the whole.
Taking the subjective approach one might consider our own imperfections and be thankful that our parents didn't make any "tough decisions" when we were in the womb.
I am not convinced that the life of a handicapped person is worth less than those more fortunate.
Those two cases aren't even in the same ball park.
Is the statement that you wouldn't want to live if you sustained a brain injury a justification for killing a child before they have the opportunity to make that choice?
A woman who suffers from tuberculosis is pregnant. Her husband has syphilis. There are three children in the family. One is blind, another deaf, and the other suffers from tuberculosis. Yet another child died in infancy. Under the circumstances, what would you recommend? An abortion?
Congratulations, you?ve just killed Beethoven.
Euthanasia is one issue; infanticide is something else entirely.