The only problem with the intro is that instead of being funny, it was misleading. Why? Because something like that would not surprise many of us. Well, not much more than the disney channel airing cartoons aimed at kids to explain why trading music is illegal. In fact, I'm kind of curious why they haven't done it. It seems like the perfect ploy, using their influence on the movies to bend everyone to their will. Oh wait, they're allready doing that...
Seriously though, look for something like this in the makings. Except that the file swappers and reverse engineerers will, of course, be the 50 year old villains who much be stopped by a group of pre-teen children.
Don't allow patents on life. Instead, allow them on the processes that lead to that life. Patent a certain cloning process or method for creating a bacteria. If you patent a process, not individually, but the idea for a process to create something (ie. any and all processes to create this oil eating bacteria) it would prevent others from creating it, but would not involve a patent on the object itself. Its kludgy, but it'd work.
But in countless states, including my state of Virginia, it is still illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk. I've had a problem for years with this, but now they're letting this MOTOR-POWERED vehicle on the sidewalks. Hey, House of Burgesses, get your god damn shit together. Its a shame to see the oldest democratic body in the nation still outlaws bikes on the sidewalks, especially of busy areas where us riders can't quite match the 45 (+5 over) that the drivers tend to do on the streets. Shizzy!
The part that gets me is the library book thing. Not because I'm reading about explosives and poinson, but because I'm getting a shitload of computer books along with things like Masters of Deception, the Hacker Ethic, Takedown, and so forth. I do not break into computers and generally avoid things that are illegal, but wouldn't a library record like that draw some attention? How about the fact that I later went up to the central county library to have a look at a non-circulating utility map of the county?
Yes, these things may be suspicious, but I was sure I had the right to the privacy to do such things until recently. No, I wouldn't have checked out these books if I thought the government might be monitoring who checks out certain books, and its a shame that in the future I will feel hesitant to check out some of those books. I really don't know how to feel about it. Should I avoid checking out 'hacking' books, should I avoid computer books from the library entirely, or should I just go on as I always have? Will the government really go through and find everyone who has checked out Masters of Deception and run through the rest of their library record to look for patterns, or am I just being paranoid?
Ok, let's paint a picture. Every ISP owns equipment to pass packets around. Routers, Repeaters and so forth. If I'm on Cox Cable, and I want to send something to AOL (directly) that means that the two companies must have some sort of agreement by which they carry each others packets. They may make a deal whereby AOL will take 10 packets if Cox takes 15 (small numbers, yes) and on top of that the other company must pay a certain price, with Cox paying an initial 300k a year. Now, if I'm cruising to Slashdot to read up on today's news, I may go through Cox, then AOL, then Verizon, then 4 other companies before I get to Slashdot's provider. Because of this there are webs of deals on how traffic is passed around.
Now, obviously, every company wants to get the best deals they can. That means using their leverage to negotiate better trade offs. Now, if you're in Africa you need to access American sites much more than Americans need to access African sites. This gives the Bells and American ISPs an advantage. They can negotiate bitching deals because they have all the leverage. Yes, this isn't nice, but its business, and if it weren't worth it to the African companies, they simply wouldn't pay it. If they go out of business otherwise, then damn right they're willing to pay alot. So, American ISPs and such get good deals because they have superior wares; much more to offer. African ISPs get sucky deals because they don't. Its called business, good and fair. And $500m IS NOT that much in the long run for all of Africa (of the Africans who use the internet that is).
But, if there was no previous patent, no matter how widely used they were, he could have filed and won. Thats the problem. Most things should not be patentable, and patents generally need to be more limited.
This is bad because these shitty patents can be used to fuck people over in court. Ordinary people with new ideas may no be able to implement them because of these shitty patents (does your swing actually prevent sideways swinging?) are too much for most people to fight in the courts. One shitty patent holder can sue quite a few people into submission, and it costs way too much to fight these things. There needs to be some sort of patent reform.
And I'd say about 50-50 I have some home video of me on the swings at about 5. No Tarzan yell, but I generally through in some sideways action. Especially fun when you hit other kids. Not so fun when you hit the bars.
Or, you have one media group sueing hte other right as their movie is coming out, and forcing them to accept their agreement, or that movie will not be coming out as Goldmember. The choice was settle with something reasonable, delay the movie, or go in and change a shitload of good material. Yes, its good that they can come to an understanding, no, its bad that MGM used timing to FORCE them into an agreement.
Just use the trial version. I haven't read through the licensing, but I don't think there will be any problems you can't get around. You may want to take turns registering it if you go past 30 days.
The truth is, Macromedia would make more money if they sold Flash for less. The problem is, then everyday people would have it and they'd make crappy flash sites. By keeping it to the elite, they ensure that sites using Flash are fairly good quality (not may people would spend $500 and make a shitty site). This keeps the reputation of their project up. It also protects their trademark by keeping Flash less common, and keeping it from going the way of escalator(tm).
1. There is no copyright on an image of Times Square, or any other part of New York (as far as I know.
2. If there was, there's something called 'Parody', which Spider-Man frequently is.
All known matter is made up of atoms in one of their four stages (solid, liquid, gas, and plasme). Each atom contains 3 known subparticles, neutrons, protons, and electrons. In turn neutrons and protons are each belevied to be made up of 3 quarks. There are no subparticles of electrons yet known.
It is safe to say that all known stars contain quarks, though they are part of stable atoms. But, what would happen if there were no electrons and whatever ethreal particles they're made of? There is reason to beleive that without electrons quarks would have no reason to form into the protons and nuetrons (though its quite controversial). Now, imagine you had entire stars that had no, or more likely, not enough electrons. It is possible that the rest of the matter, quarks not formed into protons/neutrons, may comprise the vast majority of such stars.
What impacts and/or uses this discovery have are not yet known, but it gives an insight into subatomic structure and how our universe may have formed. It also has some antimatter implications I won't get into. The most likely use comes from the fact that the bonds between quarks may be much stronger than the bonds between their big brothers.
Oh, and I'm a high school student with way too much spare time. I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I do know a bit. Their may be some misleading things in what I've stated above, and some of it may just be wrong or unlikely. Just a little disclaimer, for I'm no resource on the subject. If you're that interested, go learn more about it.
It seems that the biggest problem Loki has was mismanagement. No good manager would be paying themselves $125k a year when noone else is getting paid. It should have been his responsibility to go with as little pay as possible to please employees, and hopefully get themselves out of the hole. Large salaries could come later. It seems to me he had no idea what he was doing or what he was getting into, and the fault lies largely in him.
The next largest problem is probably the confusion between open source and free software. It seems that a large number of Linux users do not know the difference. That, and why would you pay extra for a port of a game you allready owned? If that were the case, most people would install the linux version for free just because they had allready paid the original price. A better plan would have been to sell the ports to the companies, and let them sell, resell, or distribute them to existing costumers for a small fee. How about letting all the customers that 'register' their games know that if they want to use their product on linux, $5 is all it would cost them? Much better plan then trying to sell the games independantly.
A better business plan, and better management would have almost surely led this idea to success.
Ah, but a timely lawsuit will make bnetd cower in fear. They wouldn't dare start supporting the warcraft3 beta now, and they probably won't support warcraft 3 if they are still in the legal process.
Maybe this is just what blizzard wanted in the frist place. Use a timely lawsuit to preent the prolification of the beta. Or maybe they think they can actually win, but even I don't think they are that naive.
What if they've allready won?
Re:you just dont get it
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
You can go to the future and come back. Just if you go to the future again it will be different.
For those of us who don't want to register with the Times, it would be nice if someone could copy the text in here. And no, I'm not being stubborn, I'm being indignant.
The easiest way would be if you have everything translate to one 'central' language, and from there have a reverse. That way you wouldn't need 1 two-way for every language each language had to contact (ie, 50 per language), but rather one two-way for each language. I think something would be lost, but this makes the project infinately easier to do, and to expand on (not having to write 50 programs to put in 1 more language).
In my opinion, the best approach (NOT best result), and the most likely to succeed.
We're close? You can't just ignore the fact that earth like planets are 10000 times harder to find, simply because they're 10000 times smaller than the gas giants. The truth is that our telelscopes just aren't there yet. The only proof they'll find will be inferrable from what they can see. For example, if large planet's movement is regularly affected in such a way as to suggest a smaller planet's interferance. At this point and time we do not have either the tools or the technizques that we'll need to identify distant planets, all we can hope for is that a few shots in the dark will pay off.
It doesn't seem as though his 'brain damage' was exactly what we think of. The first thing that pops into my head is ratardation and the lack of ability to think. It seems, however, that the abilities were more related to his brain being able to control his body. For example, if you damaged part of your brain you would no longer be able to see, or move your arm, or feel your pinky toe. It appears that the brain damage was more realted to his ability to interact with his devices, most specifically the vision items, then his ability to formulate thought.
Either way, AirCanada really fucked this guy over. What they did was simply wrong, and they deserve what they get, and then some. This is some fucked up shit, and though the part about the knives is fairly irrelevant, it does throw their safety procedure excuse out the window.
I'm sorry, I have to apologize for the short-sitedness off my previous post. Instead of 'paying', I should have used the phrase 'throwing money away'. I apologize.
It seems the scientists didn't really stop light, but rather imprinted it onto atoms, and them by shining another laser through they could repricate the original light. Now, this is quite useful but not the same thing as stopping light alltogether. For example, this couldn't be done in a vacuum such as space just because there are no (or very few) atoms to imprint upon.
As for quantum computing this is a big step. They have basically discovered how to imprint something onto atoms, each of which could be a bit (or trit or more, depending on how they implement it) so basically you have an immense ammount of storage in a very small space. Between this and the speed of light that signals would be sent with, you would have a very fast computer with enormous ammounts of memory.
Oh, and as for portable storage, a floppy disk will be able to hold terrabytes of information.
Soon, my friend, internet and TV will be one and the same. Quite a few companies are allready working on the infamous all-in-one entertainment centers, and there isn't any reason that a cable line running into my house can offer TV from the cable company and not from other stations (well, there are a few, such as the company limited my internet speed, different methods of transmission, lower levels of reliability, but I digress) so I'm just wondering, 'How Long?'.
Of course, the new media spawned by this will tell about the evils of increased internet usage and how the number of obese people has reason another 10%, discluding the fact that the guidelines for obesity have been raised by the health nuts in charge and their ego trips. But maybe we'll have some real compitition from private stations, and maybe we'll have some really kick ass new shows and realiable news, who knows.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with the intro is that instead of being funny, it was misleading. Why? Because something like that would not surprise many of us. Well, not much more than the disney channel airing cartoons aimed at kids to explain why trading music is illegal. In fact, I'm kind of curious why they haven't done it. It seems like the perfect ploy, using their influence on the movies to bend everyone to their will. Oh wait, they're allready doing that...
Seriously though, look for something like this in the makings. Except that the file swappers and reverse engineerers will, of course, be the 50 year old villains who much be stopped by a group of pre-teen children.
Don't allow patents on life. Instead, allow them on the processes that lead to that life. Patent a certain cloning process or method for creating a bacteria. If you patent a process, not individually, but the idea for a process to create something (ie. any and all processes to create this oil eating bacteria) it would prevent others from creating it, but would not involve a patent on the object itself. Its kludgy, but it'd work.
But in countless states, including my state of Virginia, it is still illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk. I've had a problem for years with this, but now they're letting this MOTOR-POWERED vehicle on the sidewalks. Hey, House of Burgesses, get your god damn shit together. Its a shame to see the oldest democratic body in the nation still outlaws bikes on the sidewalks, especially of busy areas where us riders can't quite match the 45 (+5 over) that the drivers tend to do on the streets. Shizzy!
The part that gets me is the library book thing. Not because I'm reading about explosives and poinson, but because I'm getting a shitload of computer books along with things like Masters of Deception, the Hacker Ethic, Takedown, and so forth. I do not break into computers and generally avoid things that are illegal, but wouldn't a library record like that draw some attention? How about the fact that I later went up to the central county library to have a look at a non-circulating utility map of the county?
Yes, these things may be suspicious, but I was sure I had the right to the privacy to do such things until recently. No, I wouldn't have checked out these books if I thought the government might be monitoring who checks out certain books, and its a shame that in the future I will feel hesitant to check out some of those books. I really don't know how to feel about it. Should I avoid checking out 'hacking' books, should I avoid computer books from the library entirely, or should I just go on as I always have? Will the government really go through and find everyone who has checked out Masters of Deception and run through the rest of their library record to look for patterns, or am I just being paranoid?
I guess I'll have to check to make sure the next car I still isn't emitting any oddball signals. This will be about as effective as the club.
Ok, let's paint a picture. Every ISP owns equipment to pass packets around. Routers, Repeaters and so forth. If I'm on Cox Cable, and I want to send something to AOL (directly) that means that the two companies must have some sort of agreement by which they carry each others packets. They may make a deal whereby AOL will take 10 packets if Cox takes 15 (small numbers, yes) and on top of that the other company must pay a certain price, with Cox paying an initial 300k a year. Now, if I'm cruising to Slashdot to read up on today's news, I may go through Cox, then AOL, then Verizon, then 4 other companies before I get to Slashdot's provider. Because of this there are webs of deals on how traffic is passed around.
Now, obviously, every company wants to get the best deals they can. That means using their leverage to negotiate better trade offs. Now, if you're in Africa you need to access American sites much more than Americans need to access African sites. This gives the Bells and American ISPs an advantage. They can negotiate bitching deals because they have all the leverage. Yes, this isn't nice, but its business, and if it weren't worth it to the African companies, they simply wouldn't pay it. If they go out of business otherwise, then damn right they're willing to pay alot. So, American ISPs and such get good deals because they have superior wares; much more to offer. African ISPs get sucky deals because they don't. Its called business, good and fair. And $500m IS NOT that much in the long run for all of Africa (of the Africans who use the internet that is).
But, if there was no previous patent, no matter how widely used they were, he could have filed and won. Thats the problem. Most things should not be patentable, and patents generally need to be more limited.
This is bad because these shitty patents can be used to fuck people over in court. Ordinary people with new ideas may no be able to implement them because of these shitty patents (does your swing actually prevent sideways swinging?) are too much for most people to fight in the courts. One shitty patent holder can sue quite a few people into submission, and it costs way too much to fight these things. There needs to be some sort of patent reform.
And I'd say about 50-50 I have some home video of me on the swings at about 5. No Tarzan yell, but I generally through in some sideways action. Especially fun when you hit other kids. Not so fun when you hit the bars.
Or, you have one media group sueing hte other right as their movie is coming out, and forcing them to accept their agreement, or that movie will not be coming out as Goldmember. The choice was settle with something reasonable, delay the movie, or go in and change a shitload of good material. Yes, its good that they can come to an understanding, no, its bad that MGM used timing to FORCE them into an agreement.
Just use the trial version. I haven't read through the licensing, but I don't think there will be any problems you can't get around. You may want to take turns registering it if you go past 30 days.
The truth is, Macromedia would make more money if they sold Flash for less. The problem is, then everyday people would have it and they'd make crappy flash sites. By keeping it to the elite, they ensure that sites using Flash are fairly good quality (not may people would spend $500 and make a shitty site). This keeps the reputation of their project up. It also protects their trademark by keeping Flash less common, and keeping it from going the way of escalator(tm).
1. There is no copyright on an image of Times Square, or any other part of New York (as far as I know. 2. If there was, there's something called 'Parody', which Spider-Man frequently is.
Yet...
All known matter is made up of atoms in one of their four stages (solid, liquid, gas, and plasme). Each atom contains 3 known subparticles, neutrons, protons, and electrons. In turn neutrons and protons are each belevied to be made up of 3 quarks. There are no subparticles of electrons yet known.
It is safe to say that all known stars contain quarks, though they are part of stable atoms. But, what would happen if there were no electrons and whatever ethreal particles they're made of? There is reason to beleive that without electrons quarks would have no reason to form into the protons and nuetrons (though its quite controversial). Now, imagine you had entire stars that had no, or more likely, not enough electrons. It is possible that the rest of the matter, quarks not formed into protons/neutrons, may comprise the vast majority of such stars.
What impacts and/or uses this discovery have are not yet known, but it gives an insight into subatomic structure and how our universe may have formed. It also has some antimatter implications I won't get into. The most likely use comes from the fact that the bonds between quarks may be much stronger than the bonds between their big brothers.
Oh, and I'm a high school student with way too much spare time. I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I do know a bit. Their may be some misleading things in what I've stated above, and some of it may just be wrong or unlikely. Just a little disclaimer, for I'm no resource on the subject. If you're that interested, go learn more about it.
It seems that the biggest problem Loki has was mismanagement. No good manager would be paying themselves $125k a year when noone else is getting paid. It should have been his responsibility to go with as little pay as possible to please employees, and hopefully get themselves out of the hole. Large salaries could come later. It seems to me he had no idea what he was doing or what he was getting into, and the fault lies largely in him.
The next largest problem is probably the confusion between open source and free software. It seems that a large number of Linux users do not know the difference. That, and why would you pay extra for a port of a game you allready owned? If that were the case, most people would install the linux version for free just because they had allready paid the original price. A better plan would have been to sell the ports to the companies, and let them sell, resell, or distribute them to existing costumers for a small fee. How about letting all the customers that 'register' their games know that if they want to use their product on linux, $5 is all it would cost them? Much better plan then trying to sell the games independantly.
A better business plan, and better management would have almost surely led this idea to success.
Ah, but a timely lawsuit will make bnetd cower in fear. They wouldn't dare start supporting the warcraft3 beta now, and they probably won't support warcraft 3 if they are still in the legal process.
Maybe this is just what blizzard wanted in the frist place. Use a timely lawsuit to preent the prolification of the beta. Or maybe they think they can actually win, but even I don't think they are that naive.
What if they've allready won?
You can go to the future and come back. Just if you go to the future again it will be different.
For those of us who don't want to register with the Times, it would be nice if someone could copy the text in here. And no, I'm not being stubborn, I'm being indignant.
The easiest way would be if you have everything translate to one 'central' language, and from there have a reverse. That way you wouldn't need 1 two-way for every language each language had to contact (ie, 50 per language), but rather one two-way for each language. I think something would be lost, but this makes the project infinately easier to do, and to expand on (not having to write 50 programs to put in 1 more language).
In my opinion, the best approach (NOT best result), and the most likely to succeed.
We're close? You can't just ignore the fact that earth like planets are 10000 times harder to find, simply because they're 10000 times smaller than the gas giants. The truth is that our telelscopes just aren't there yet. The only proof they'll find will be inferrable from what they can see. For example, if large planet's movement is regularly affected in such a way as to suggest a smaller planet's interferance. At this point and time we do not have either the tools or the technizques that we'll need to identify distant planets, all we can hope for is that a few shots in the dark will pay off.
It doesn't seem as though his 'brain damage' was exactly what we think of. The first thing that pops into my head is ratardation and the lack of ability to think. It seems, however, that the abilities were more related to his brain being able to control his body. For example, if you damaged part of your brain you would no longer be able to see, or move your arm, or feel your pinky toe. It appears that the brain damage was more realted to his ability to interact with his devices, most specifically the vision items, then his ability to formulate thought.
Either way, AirCanada really fucked this guy over. What they did was simply wrong, and they deserve what they get, and then some. This is some fucked up shit, and though the part about the knives is fairly irrelevant, it does throw their safety procedure excuse out the window.
No, his mommy can't make him, unless he quit work and she's supporting his lazy... oh.
I'm sorry, I have to apologize for the short-sitedness off my previous post. Instead of 'paying', I should have used the phrase 'throwing money away'. I apologize.
I'm just glad I'm not one of the poor subscribers who is PAYING for every time they view slashdot today.
It seems the scientists didn't really stop light, but rather imprinted it onto atoms, and them by shining another laser through they could repricate the original light. Now, this is quite useful but not the same thing as stopping light alltogether. For example, this couldn't be done in a vacuum such as space just because there are no (or very few) atoms to imprint upon.
As for quantum computing this is a big step. They have basically discovered how to imprint something onto atoms, each of which could be a bit (or trit or more, depending on how they implement it) so basically you have an immense ammount of storage in a very small space. Between this and the speed of light that signals would be sent with, you would have a very fast computer with enormous ammounts of memory.
Oh, and as for portable storage, a floppy disk will be able to hold terrabytes of information.
The two elephants are the entertainment industry and the technology industry. Both Philips and Microsoft are part of the second elephant.
Soon, my friend, internet and TV will be one and the same. Quite a few companies are allready working on the infamous all-in-one entertainment centers, and there isn't any reason that a cable line running into my house can offer TV from the cable company and not from other stations (well, there are a few, such as the company limited my internet speed, different methods of transmission, lower levels of reliability, but I digress) so I'm just wondering, 'How Long?'.
Of course, the new media spawned by this will tell about the evils of increased internet usage and how the number of obese people has reason another 10%, discluding the fact that the guidelines for obesity have been raised by the health nuts in charge and their ego trips. But maybe we'll have some real compitition from private stations, and maybe we'll have some really kick ass new shows and realiable news, who knows.