Quoth the editor: "Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
You should expect the price of the software to reflect what is actually being offered. The contract between Intuit and the users regarding the operation of the software should (part of the "Software License Agreement", which I cannot find on-line) should say for how long Quicken will support the operation of the software. That factor was included in the price of the software.
Before this can be resolved we need to look at the contract. Then there are two possibilities:
The users failed to read the contract before accepting it -- their loss
The company is reneging on an express contract
The contact did not spell this out. Then there would be an argument as to what is the implied expectation -- what do you think?
Can someone post the relevant terms from the agreement?
Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?
Indeed hopefully this one will be better than "The Thirteenth Warrior". That movie is based on a Michael Crichton book, "Eaters of the Dead", which is a rather amusing literary exercize.
\begin{rant} Statistical figures (or any "scientific" figures, for that matter) are mostly meaningless without an error estimate (a.k.a. "confidence interval"). In fact, the lack of such estimates has been found to be a strong indication of bad research in 57.3% of all cases.
TFA claims IE market share to be "92.7%". As parent succintly explains, that claim is clearly bogus: there are two separate percentages:
What they actually measured: entries to 5 specific websites over a 2-day period.
What they wanted to measure: IE market share.
Now there are two problems with the analysis: the first is that there is random noise in the measurement of (1). The second is that you cannot simply equate (1) with (2) without some justification. Normally you would combine the measurement errors coming from the noise and from the non-prefect correlation between (1) and (2) to give a confidence interval.
Somehow I doubt that you will find the claimed figures to even be accurate to within %1. Hence the observed rise could be entirely due to random fluctuations or other errors and is likely completely insignificant. \end{rant}
Does anyone know the actual patents that are supposedly being infringed?
Re:Statistical Lies...
on
Newsy Numbers
·
· Score: 1
"However, being that something like 3 cases of smallpox can be considered an epidemic... Lets say that we have a "bad" epidemic of smallpox with 8 or so cases..."
I'd say that one case of smallpox should be considered enough for global alarm and great concern. This disease is believed to have been eradicated, and only exist in the vaults of two bio-weapon labs (one in the US, one remaining from the USSR), so that any new cases should originate from these labs. Even if not an epidemic, I'd call one case a disaster.
"What surprised me was what looked like river deltas. I thought Titan was way too far out for there to be water, unless its rivers of liquid gas?"
The general belief is that hydrocarbons (ethane and methane) comprise most of the atmosphere and possibly exist in liquid phase. This image and others (rounded ice "rocks" seem to imply erosion) seem to confirm the hope of liquids running on the surface.
"If Linus is the only person that can change a specific part of the kernel, what good does notifying the world instead of just him do?"
Linus may be the only one who commits patches to the official kernel, but he's not the only one who writes patches.
More importantly, people in a production environment should be running a vendor-provided installation (RHEL, SuSe etc). The company that sold them the operating system and the support should also provide kernel updates, including their own patches if they think the offical ones are not coming through in time.
In other words, having a free (as in beer) GNU/Linux installation means you assume total responsibility for the OS. That includes using the freedom of the software to patch the sources and fix any security issues that arise.
The previous crew "had permission to [eat the food] but did not record how much they had eaten".
Used to be NASA was the most anal-retentive organization in the world. Their safety record and results were nothing short of amazing. Then they made the (right, IMHO) decision to do things more cheaply with the understanding that things won't always work out.
However, is this a good way to run manned missions?
"however mathematicians remain hopeful that the proof can be corrected."
Actually, nearly all number theorists don't believe there's any hope of correcting this proof. It's highly unlikely that clever manipulation of the exponential sums would suffice.
The problem is that we don't know how to distinguish two primes from three. In the 60s Chen showed that there exist infinitely many pairs p,p+2 such that p+2 is a product of 2 primes (and similarly that every even number is a sum of a prime and a product of two primes).
The preprint does not claim any new idea. It doesn't even refer to this essential obstruction (the 'parity problem') everyone else encounters, while supposedly circumventing it.
This number has the surprising property of being within 10^-12 of an integer. It is known as "Ramanujan's number", after the Indian mathematician who made the observation.
For a well-presented (warning: technical) proof of this fact, read Ben Green'saccount.
They seem to be patenting the "cookie" system. Were cookies first introduced by MS back when? If so, they may have the "originality" claim. I'd even concede that this solution isn't "obvious".
Still, is this an "invention"? is this patentable? How many people here think Leibnitz should have patented integration by parts?
Ctrl-Alt-Del is the only key combination on your computer that has its own hardware interrupt... this was to prevent interception in real mode
Not quite. Interrupt processing by the hardware is the same for real and protected modes (which are internal to the processor).
All key press/release events generate the same hardware interrupt (normally the keyboard is wired to the IRQ1 line of the interrupt controller). Standard BIOS setup configures the 8859 to generate Int 0x9 for this IRQ. The keyboard interrupt handler is then charged with identifying the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination and acting on it.
The default BIOS action is to triger a software interrupt (Int 0x17 IIRC). The motivation for this was not to prevent interceptions. Rather, this conforms to the policy of having BIOS entrypoints go through software interrupts (in this case allowing any program to generate a soft-boot).
Not only that, but game theory is not John Nash's invention. He did make fundamental contributions, but that was after things have started.
The definition of game theory (i.e. the principle of min/max analysis) based on saddle points of convex functions is due to John von Neumann. Nash showed that in cetain cases when a von Neumann equillibrium do not exist, there might still exist (non-unique) weaker equillibria. This does not make game theory Nash's.
Even though Kolmogorov's contributions to probability theory, say, are much greater than Nash's to game theory, you wouldn't see references to "Kolmogorov's theory of probability" anywhere.
This happens often: after a scientists gets (meritorious) headlines, everyone seems to assume he's either the the founder or current leader of the field, just because they haven't heard of the real founders and leaders.
There are a lot of comments about the pros and cons of being limited to the wind-blown parts. To me, one important thing we could learn is the wind patterns on Mars. Both weather and climate are interesting, hard problems.
In the same vein, a solar-powered glider would also be interesting (use fuel cell for power at night). However, the Martian atmosphere is so light that this would probably require a ridiculous wingspan.
There are two reasons why this kind of patch would require recompilation.
One (implied in the linux-kernel post) is that it would be nice to fix the ELF format and remove the assumption that the stack can contains executable code. Also, changing the way the program is laid out in memory affects security (see the "ASCII Armour" bit). A priori you might think that recompilation (producing a new binary) would be required for that.
The second is self-modifying code. Some application (the post mentions XFree86) want to have parts of the binary decided upon at runtime (mostly for optimization purposes). For that to work you need to know which parts of the memory are accessible both for writing (as data) and execution (as code). If the rules for that change (which is the point of patches like this one), you'll have to do even more than recompile -- such software will have to be fixed!
Getting X to work without recompilation (in fact, without patching) was a real issue -- read the explanation of the "X-workaround" hack.
Slashdot Mirror
Quoth the editor: "Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
You should expect the price of the software to reflect what is actually being offered. The contract between Intuit and the users regarding the operation of the software should (part of the "Software License Agreement", which I cannot find on-line) should say for how long Quicken will support the operation of the software. That factor was included in the price of the software.
Before this can be resolved we need to look at the contract. Then there are two possibilities:
Can someone post the relevant terms from the agreement?
Quoth Patrick Sauriol, News Editor: "The original Beowolf poem was written at least a thousand years old ..."
Admittedly I'm not the authority Henry Higgins was, but still shouldn't this read "a thousand years ago"?
Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?
Indeed hopefully this one will be better than "The Thirteenth Warrior". That movie is based on a Michael Crichton book, "Eaters of the Dead", which is a rather amusing literary exercize.
Mod parent up!
\begin{rant}
Statistical figures (or any "scientific" figures, for that matter) are mostly meaningless without an error estimate (a.k.a. "confidence interval"). In fact, the lack of such estimates has been found to be a strong indication of bad research in 57.3% of all cases.
TFA claims IE market share to be "92.7%". As parent succintly explains, that claim is clearly bogus: there are two separate percentages:
- What they actually measured: entries to 5 specific websites over a 2-day period.
- What they wanted to measure: IE market share.
Now there are two problems with the analysis: the first is that there is random noise in the measurement of (1). The second is that you cannot simply equate (1) with (2) without some justification. Normally you would combine the measurement errors coming from the noise and from the non-prefect correlation between (1) and (2) to give a confidence interval.Somehow I doubt that you will find the claimed figures to even be accurate to within %1. Hence the observed rise could be entirely due to random fluctuations or other errors and is likely completely insignificant.
\end{rant}
Does anyone know the actual patents that are supposedly being infringed?
"However, being that something like 3 cases of smallpox can be considered an epidemic ... Lets say that we have a "bad" epidemic of smallpox with 8 or so cases..."
I'd say that one case of smallpox should be considered enough for global alarm and great concern. This disease is believed to have been eradicated, and only exist in the vaults of two bio-weapon labs (one in the US, one remaining from the USSR), so that any new cases should originate from these labs. Even if not an epidemic, I'd call one case a disaster.
Not everything liquid is water!
"What surprised me was what looked like river deltas. I thought Titan was way too far out for there to be water, unless its rivers of liquid gas?"
The general belief is that hydrocarbons (ethane and methane) comprise most of the atmosphere and possibly exist in liquid phase. This image and others (rounded ice "rocks" seem to imply erosion) seem to confirm the hope of liquids running on the surface.
To see the pictures go to:
1. The ESA.
2. NASA.
"If Linus is the only person that can change a specific part of the kernel, what good does notifying the world instead of just him do?"
Linus may be the only one who commits patches to the official kernel, but he's not the only one who writes patches.
More importantly, people in a production environment should be running a vendor-provided installation (RHEL, SuSe etc). The company that sold them the operating system and the support should also provide kernel updates, including their own patches if they think the offical ones are not coming through in time.
In other words, having a free (as in beer) GNU/Linux installation means you assume total responsibility for the OS. That includes using the freedom of the software to patch the sources and fix any security issues that arise.
It's actually worse than that: the agent had secret data on his T-Mobile PDA while investigating a T-Mobile break-in. That's plain silly.
The previous crew "had permission to [eat the food] but did not record how much they had eaten".
Used to be NASA was the most anal-retentive organization in the world. Their safety record and results were nothing short of amazing. Then they made the (right, IMHO) decision to do things more cheaply with the understanding that things won't always work out.
However, is this a good way to run manned missions?Can someone find the test questions and post them? I haven't been able to locate them on the OECD PISA website.
"however mathematicians remain hopeful that the proof can be corrected."
Actually, nearly all number theorists don't believe there's any hope of correcting this proof. It's highly unlikely that clever manipulation of the exponential sums would suffice.
The problem is that we don't know how to distinguish two primes from three. In the 60s Chen showed that there exist infinitely many pairs p,p+2 such that p+2 is a product of 2 primes (and similarly that every even number is a sum of a prime and a product of two primes).
The preprint does not claim any new idea. It doesn't even refer to this essential obstruction (the 'parity problem') everyone else encounters, while supposedly circumventing it.
Follow the link to the legal documents. They are dated "October 14, 2004"!
Really, that should be a 1728 in your username, not 2718.
Well, I decided to truncate 2.718281828450945...
What does this all mean?
This number has the surprising property of being within 10^-12 of an integer. It is known as "Ramanujan's number", after the Indian mathematician who made the observation. For a well-presented (warning: technical) proof of this fact, read Ben Green's account.
So far this was between IBM and SCO. However, now the major copyright holders for the GNU/Linux system can assert themselves.
In particular, should the FSF (GNU project) sue SCO for license violation?
Ha'aretz (the best Israeli newpaper) carried this story yesterday:
"Treasury suspends Microsoft renewal".
They seem to be patenting the "cookie" system. Were cookies first introduced by MS back when? If so, they may have the "originality" claim. I'd even concede that this solution isn't "obvious".
Still, is this an "invention"? is this patentable? How many people here think Leibnitz should have patented integration by parts?
Not quite. Interrupt processing by the hardware is the same for real and protected modes (which are internal to the processor).
All key press/release events generate the same hardware interrupt (normally the keyboard is wired to the IRQ1 line of the interrupt controller). Standard BIOS setup configures the 8859 to generate Int 0x9 for this IRQ. The keyboard interrupt handler is then charged with identifying the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination and acting on it.
The default BIOS action is to triger a software interrupt (Int 0x17 IIRC). The motivation for this was not to prevent interceptions. Rather, this conforms to the policy of having BIOS entrypoints go through software interrupts (in this case allowing any program to generate a soft-boot).
Not only that, but game theory is not John Nash's invention. He did make fundamental contributions, but that was after things have started.
The definition of game theory (i.e. the principle of min/max analysis) based on saddle points of convex functions is due to John von Neumann. Nash showed that in cetain cases when a von Neumann equillibrium do not exist, there might still exist (non-unique) weaker equillibria. This does not make game theory Nash's.
Even though Kolmogorov's contributions to probability theory, say, are much greater than Nash's to game theory, you wouldn't see references to "Kolmogorov's theory of probability" anywhere.
This happens often: after a scientists gets (meritorious) headlines, everyone seems to assume he's either the the founder or current leader of the field, just because they haven't heard of the real founders and leaders.
Fitting all six books into a reasonably long show will be hilarious. Think "Reduced Shakespeare Company". I'm all for it.
Lior
This can go in one of two ways:
If things work out well, we'll have lively competition in the one-song-download business, leading to better, cheaper service.
If things work out badly, M$ will bundle this into the next version of their OS, undercut the competition, and eventually kill the business.
We'll have to wait and see.
There are a lot of comments about the pros and cons of being limited to the wind-blown parts. To me, one important thing we could learn is the wind patterns on Mars. Both weather and climate are interesting, hard problems.
In the same vein, a solar-powered glider would also be interesting (use fuel cell for power at night). However, the Martian atmosphere is so light that this would probably require a ridiculous wingspan.
There are two reasons why this kind of patch would require recompilation.
One (implied in the linux-kernel post) is that it would be nice to fix the ELF format and remove the assumption that the stack can contains executable code. Also, changing the way the program is laid out in memory affects security (see the "ASCII Armour" bit). A priori you might think that recompilation (producing a new binary) would be required for that.
The second is self-modifying code. Some application (the post mentions XFree86) want to have parts of the binary decided upon at runtime (mostly for optimization purposes). For that to work you need to know which parts of the memory are accessible both for writing (as data) and execution (as code). If the rules for that change (which is the point of patches like this one), you'll have to do even more than recompile -- such software will have to be fixed!
Getting X to work without recompilation (in fact, without patching) was a real issue -- read the explanation of the "X-workaround" hack.
hope this helps,
Lior