Could be, could be. I remember seeing a plot over time of exceptional weather conditions vs. solar activity, and they showed a strong relationship. A weaker magnetic field would increase this influence even further.
I have a Logitech optical/wireless mouse which works on just about any surface, such as:
- My flat, smooth, featureless desktop;
- The crap that usually sits on that desktop: plain printed paper, smooth & shiny take out pizza menu's etc.
- My trousers, in case the desktop is too full to move a mouse over.
- My cats! One is extremely black and short-haired, the other a multicolor longhaired one. The mouse works reasonably well on either of them, when one of them lies down on the only clear spot on my desk.
- Wood grain of any description.
Get a decent brand optical mouse, it is worth the higher price.
"no-one is smart enough to want to look at them all at the same time."
A while back I set up dual monitors on my computers. There are tons of things that I do on that setup, that are not possible, or at least not as convenient by far on multiple virtual desktops. A few examples:
- The most important one: when writing documents, one often uses reference material. What people tend to do on a single monitor machine, even with multiple desktops, is print out the reference material and keep it next to their computer. I bring up all reference material on the second monitor... yes! I have done away with paper.
- I play games one one screen, and have a browser, Southpark episode or helper program running in the second monitor (for example: Ultima Online on the 1st screen and UO Automap on the second). None of this is very convenient on a multi-desktop configuration, since you need to hide the desktop with game on it to see the other application. While you are looking at the second desktop, something in the game comes along and creams you.
- When doing web design and web scripting, I like having the editing software on one screen and the browser pointed to the scripts under development in the other. I daresay the productivity increase is notable, and again I seriously doubt that a multi-desktop setup with a single monitor will achieve the same convenience.
- Video editing is wonderful on dual head. Video output on one screen, script and controls on the other. Multiple desktops? Forget it.
No... I do not need dual head. But I'll be damned if I ever give it up.
With all due respect: nonsense! What you said may have been true 1,5 years ago, but it certainly isn't true anymore.
There are plenty of dual head cards that meet the needs of most users, including good 2d or 3d performance, or both. Gainward made a very decent one based on the Geforce 2 400; I had one and it worked perfectly. When it blew up (don't ask...) I replaced it with a Radeon 8500 dual head card, which is what I am using now. Good performance all round.
I am looking to build a new box and I'll probably end up using one of the many dual-head Geforce 4 cards. Check them out: you may like what you see. It seems that many of these cards that are built for top performance on a single monitor, will support a second one as well. They are reasonably priced as well.
There are quite a few GForce4 cards out there that support Dual Head... Check Tom's hardware, and don't trust the people in the computer stores. Clerks in most stores know dick about such technical details.
Less friendly? Last time I looked, the EC was set to propose legislation on this subject that was almost a 1 to 1 copy (har) of the US regulations.
Our government has never been particularly worried about consumer rights in relation to copy protection schemes... else they'd have banned Macrovision which prevents making backups for fair-use purposes, and prevents playback on older TV's and most PAL monitors. It was the exact same issue, except that Macrovision did not violate any standard as such.
Of course this doesn't mean that we should not encourage Philips to forbid labelling crippled CD's as "Compact Discs (tm)", and perhaps bring the subject up with our respective governments again. My view on "fair use" rights is not only that we the consumers hold the right to make copies of media that we own, if we can. It also means that publishers should be forbidden to actively prevent us from making such copies, ie. "fair use" rights should not be infringed by copy protection schemes.
Interestingly, that is how Dutch law works. If a document is not secured, it is considered to be public. Security through obscurity does not count; to be held accountable for cracking, you have to steal a password or actively circumvent security measures or use an exploit to gain access, meaning that you are aware that you are breaking into a secured system you are not meant to enter.
"Started out with EDS, which in those days you couldn't get much stricter in dress code.. the poor sales guys were even told WHERE to buy their clothes.."
Makes perfect sense... People with the dress sense of the average programmer or even sales guy should not be allowed to go buy a suit on their own. Send those people to go buy a dress and they show up in a green one, or a really cheap one with a horrible fit. And for gods sake give some thought to the shirt and tie to go with it. No Bugs Bunny or other "novelty" ties. No tie clips. Double breasted is only for older folks, people. As for colors, only dark blue or dark gray is acceptable. Go easy on the pinstripe.
I wish people would either wear a suit properly or just don't bother and go casual. In case suits are a requirement, I am all for sending the employees off to a haberdasher that will turn them out decently.
Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.
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Suit Up Or Ship Out?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"Which group of programmers would you hire, a room full of suit wearing 9-5r's or a room full of cheesy-poof eating coffee drinking work around the clock for 3 days straight types (wearing god knows what). Sure you wouldn't want to show the second group to investers..."
Why on earth not? That's just as stupid as the manager demanding everyone clean up their desks and looks sharp because the CEO is visiting the department. Execs and stockholders are not incredible neat freaks who will have a stroke at the sight of an untidy workplace with casually-dressed employees in it.
No. It is spam, or unsollicited mass mailing, we want to address here; other falsified business communication should be covered by other laws. In case "falsified" means bogus bills or similar things; there are already laws to deal with that
If you make the laws overly broad, you run a risk of unintentionally encroaching upon people's rights in other areas. The example given by another poster, of making it illegal to falsify unsollicited e-mail headers, would mean that I could be sued for sending someone (just 1 person) an email without him asking me, if I change the "from" field to something else than the box I send it from.
That reminds me of the first anti-hacking legislation in our country: it was overly broad to the point where you could serve 5 years in jail for changing the time on someone's electronic alarm clock.
It's just like the old SGML module for Word they used to have about 6 years ago. My guess is that there will be some significant drawback to saving documents in XML, such as loss of some formatting information. That would convince users not to save in the XML format... but that isn't the important thing to Microsoft.
More significantly, there might be small incompatibilities, or ways that Word-created XML documents divert slightly from what is normal and proper in XML. Perhaps Word will make some (intentional) mistakes when reading back XML files generated in other applications, just like Word's old SGML module would choke on many proper SGML documents.
Make no mistake: the fact that almost everybody is using Office and the associated file formats makes it very hard for a new contender to enter the office suite market. Microsoft must be aware of the power they have over the market with their Office file formats. Think of it: when you exchange files with other businesses, you have two realistic choices of file formats: Office or plaintext. And now Microsoft is introducing compatibility with an open and well-defined markup langauge, in favour of their proprietary language? I'll believe it when I see it.
"I'm getting more and more convinced that we can't make good technology leglislation without infringing freedoms and that we're all doomed."
Almost any legislation limits our freedoms in one way or another. I am convinced we can make good technology legislation, without infringing on any freedoms that are outside the intended scope of the proposed law, if lawmakers just stop and think for a bit.
In my opinion, anti-spam laws should be written in such a way that they specifically apply to spam only (which requires a loophole-free yet narrow legal definition of "spam"). I think a good set of requirements for spammers might be:
- an obligation to clearly identify the spamming company, i.e. provide valid contact information in the form of an address or preferably a phone number.
- an obligation to clearly label the mail as being spam, by putting the label "BULK MAILING" in the subject and MIME header. Failing an opt-in law, this would allow ISP's and e-mail users to simply filter out any unsolicited mail. We have a similar system for snailmail here: placing a sticker on your mailbox will "block" unsollicited mailings and/or free newsletters.
- a strong law against any measures taken to defeat anti-spam filters, such as that random bit of letters that all the recent spam seems to have in the subject field.
- a strong mandate for ISPs to deal with spammers breaking the aformentioned rules. ISPs clamping down on spammers should not have to fear lawsuits, provided they keep within their mandate.
Of course the spammers will whine that this would "break their business model" or some such. I have no doubt that it will.
We in Europe enjoy considerable freedom of press, and perhaps indeed even more so than the USA. But you're right about the press being biased.
The press here in the Netherlands is politically correct beyond belief, especially when it comes to sensitive issues or politics in general, for which they adhere to a strict set of unwritten rules. Certain questions are not to be asked, and into certain matters one is not to probe too deeply. They are also very biased towards the Labour party, most newspapers and especially national television are. A few choice examples from the recent political events over here:
- When presenting results for local elections, the TV newsreader who read out the result stated that "LN (a right wing party)thankfully did not become the largest party in Amsterdam"
- The entire press condemned mr. Fortuyn (a right wing policician) when he stated that Muslim religion is "retarded". Yet, when a Labour politician stated the same thing in exactly the same words, and was purportedly threatened for that statement, the press collectively hailed her as a brave martyr. She is a muslim herself, so for her it is fine to make such statements apparently.
- When asking the "man in the street" for opinions, they carefully select the interviewees to coincide with the stereotype they wish to perpetuate. People selected for interviews typically are:
* For a right wing voter: either a brainless disgruntled taxidriver who wants more highways, or a well-dressed woman with a pearl necklace, representing the oppressing rich
* For a voter for a populist party: preferably a person who looks like a football hooligan, and is happy to state that he is proud to never vote, only he will this time because he hates immigrants.
* For Labour voters: a very well spoken, articulate and socially engaged person, the perfect example of a concerned citizen, yet still very much a common man/woman and not an elitist intellectual.
With a press like this, freedom of press is meaningless. The USA may know less press freedom but at least the press over there is trying.
He does suggest to limit this to certain bands, such as the current 2,4GHz band, or to do this in existing bands using extremely low power. Neither should affect existing analog technology such as model airplane transmitters.
The idea that spectrum is a limitless resource is a myth, however. The author does say as much somewhere, but mostly he talks as if the spectrum will bear an unlimited number of users, which is bollocks. Having lots of spread-spectrum devices in the same area and frequency band will affect the performance of these devices. If that was not the case, why the hell would we even need to follow the author's suggestion to open up more spectrum for such use beyod the current 2,4 GHz band?
With that said, current analog transmission technology does not make a good use of the spectrum, and assigning a whole band over a large area to one transmitter is terribly wasteful. While I disagree with the picture the author paints in his article, I endorse his plea to make more use of spread spectrum and to assign more bands to unlicenced use.
Discussions such as this one are the result of the different views people have on the reasons we have patents. What is it the patent system actually tries to accomplish?
Stimulate research by allowing individuals and companies to reap the full benefits from their research, knowing that the competition will not be able to run off with the things they have laboured to invent. Patenting drugs is an example, they take considerable research and testing to develop, and their formulas should therefor be protected. However patenting gene sequences also fall under this category. Many people say that they should not be patentable, but it can be argued that they should, due to the large amount of effort involved in finding and exploiting interesting gene sequences.
Protect ideas, basically saying that if you think of something first, you have full rights to the idea. Something like the telephone, for which the technology already existed but no one had thought of this particular application yet, before Bell. Single-click buying and XOR cursor patents fall under this category as well though, patented by people who are simply the first to be faced with a trivial problem, and patent the obvious solution to that problem.
Foster innovation and competition in the marketplace, by giving startups the rights over their ideas and designs, they have the opportunity to develop their business without the competition taking their idea and crushing them. Individuals thinking up novelty items such as the "waving hand on a spring" would like their ideas protected, so that they can market and produce these items without large-scale Hong Kong and Chinese manufacturers taking their idea and flooding the market with 10 million units produced overnight. But Intel can use this as well, patenting the design for a CPU socket to lock out competition in a market they already dominate.
Which ever of these three reasons for patents you believe in (or any other reason for that matter), one can come up with both good and bad examples of patents that meet the criteria, ("Good" and "bad" being designations that most people would agree with in these cases).
In my opinion, the best solution might be to shorten patent life. If the purpose of patents is to encourage ideas to be published and used, yet allow the inventors to reap the benefits of their ideas and their work, then a shorter lifespan of patents would work well... how long does it generally take for a company to recoup monies invested in research anyway? If I have a good idea but I lack the means to develop it in the near future, is the public not better off if another company is allowed to use my idea after the patent lapses after a few years, instead of allowing me to sit on it for ages, perhaps hoping some company will discover the same idea and then spring my patent on them? I would suggest a patent lifespan of no more than a few years... but perhaps others can come up with reasons longer lifespans would be a necessity.
Kids, this is what happens when you have a society that lets people become so self-centered that the thought of actually being a responsible productive resident is considered a joke. And here I thought only the US was so encumbered. Apparently we're contagious.
I prefer a society where people have the right to mess up their own lives, as opposed to a society that babysits its members. I should have the right to be an irresponsible unproductive member of society, as long as it is me bearing the consequences. The alternative is a society that forces us to be productive and responsible, which may sound nice but places far-reaching limits on ones personal freedom. Besides, being self-centered has nothing to do with being either productive or a slothful no-good.
I saw some movie once about that experiment with the limbic system being done on people, as some secret military project. Can't remember the title of the movie though, anyone help me out here?
Wasnt there an earlier article on/. about this? Some guys did some research, and came to the conclusion that the price, while daunting, is not *that* high compared to other space travel endeavours, and will pay for itself in a relatively short time. If anything, they might built more once the first one is up... using the first to erect a second one would be quite feasible.
Also... this thing would be rather easy to defend. The cable doesn't break just like that, and while it is very long, most of it will be at an altitude quite beyond most tin pot terrorists and most conventional weaponry.
Heh... he is aptly named. His page finally loaded. At the top, before the cell phone article, was an article about US/German relations, mr. Schroeders remark, and NATO. I read that piece as well.
Gah, does this guy have a grudge against Europe or what? Our politicians suck, our commitment to NATO sucks, and now our next-gen cellphones are going to suck as well. Might all be true, but this guy offers no new insights, or any insights for that matter. -1 Clueless.
Two, an interface being "intuitive" is an incredibly cheap, short term win. Wow! You can drag and drop, congratulations. Now move a thousand bitmaps... hmmm bet you wish you'd spent the twenty extra minutes it'd take to learn "cp *.bmp" and the other console commands. The above sounds like an elitist comment but is it elitist to want your average person to learn to read? To drive? The average user spends hundreds if not thousands of times more effort and time learning those skills.
Learning to use something as complex as a computer presents a huge steep learning curve to non-technical people. If the system has both an intuitive and a commandline interface, the new user will have a lot less hurdles to overcome to even begin using the system, as it makes the system a lot less daunting. Explaining drag and drop to my grandmother takes 5 minutes and she understands the concept perfectly. The Copy command and the command line have a lot more scope for errors, so I leave that until she actually has a need to move 1000 files.
True, it's not like he took a hacksaw to the case and put a few windows in *shudders* Still, pretty ballsy... imagine how you might have gone about it
- You go up to your boss and ask: "Can I stick some of these lights in those new servers?". Boss replies by smacking your head with a 2x4.
- You stick the lights in and your boss catches you doing it. "What the #*%^$ are you doing to these!?!?". Again, the 2x4 is utilised
- The boss walks in after you finished and sees a green glow coming from a previously dark cabinet, and calls Sun support in a panic. For making him look the fool, he'll take his 2x4 and make use of it in creative ways that you will not enjoy.
Plenty of scope here for trouble. And if you have a clueless boss, and God forbid something goes wrong with the machines, he and Sun both will blame your blinkenlights...
Stealing credit card numbers? I'd be surprised if this is not a crime under Russian law as well.
If an American thief, stealing credit card numbers from Russian computers, was hacked by the Russian police and subsequently arrested in Russia, what would the outcry be? Perhaps people would decide he got what he had coming to him.
You say you want to have a solid design before starting to code? In that case you don't need to look at source code just yet. But by all means steal ideas during the design phase: scripting languages, ideas for the user interface.
Get the things you are trying to build down on a conceptual level first... start from the basics: what is an object, a path, how will I represent them, how will I describe them, manipulate them, etc. Looking at the work of others will give you ideas for this, but try to think the basics up yourself first. Having a solid foundation of the concepts will make or break the expandability and flexibility of your program later. You will have changes of mind and new ideas during the detailed design and implementation phases, but if you thought your concepts through well enough, the ideas that govern the structure of your design and code will not change, not by much. The difference between good and bad design on conceptual level is like having a framework for your house made of steel girders, strong yet open to changes, or having it made out of ground chicken poo, doing the job at a glance but the slightest shock could send it crashing.
Do not look at code until you are wrapping up design, and perhaps not even then. Working bottom-up on this scale will be the kiss of death for your project
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You got it wrong; that's the Chewbacca defense!
Could be, could be. I remember seeing a plot over time of exceptional weather conditions vs. solar activity, and they showed a strong relationship. A weaker magnetic field would increase this influence even further.
I have a Logitech optical/wireless mouse which works on just about any surface, such as:
- My flat, smooth, featureless desktop;
- The crap that usually sits on that desktop: plain printed paper, smooth & shiny take out pizza menu's etc.
- My trousers, in case the desktop is too full to move a mouse over.
- My cats! One is extremely black and short-haired, the other a multicolor longhaired one. The mouse works reasonably well on either of them, when one of them lies down on the only clear spot on my desk.
- Wood grain of any description.
Get a decent brand optical mouse, it is worth the higher price.
"no-one is smart enough to want to look at them all at the same time."
A while back I set up dual monitors on my computers. There are tons of things that I do on that setup, that are not possible, or at least not as convenient by far on multiple virtual desktops. A few examples:
- The most important one: when writing documents, one often uses reference material. What people tend to do on a single monitor machine, even with multiple desktops, is print out the reference material and keep it next to their computer. I bring up all reference material on the second monitor... yes! I have done away with paper.
- I play games one one screen, and have a browser, Southpark episode or helper program running in the second monitor (for example: Ultima Online on the 1st screen and UO Automap on the second). None of this is very convenient on a multi-desktop configuration, since you need to hide the desktop with game on it to see the other application. While you are looking at the second desktop, something in the game comes along and creams you.
- When doing web design and web scripting, I like having the editing software on one screen and the browser pointed to the scripts under development in the other. I daresay the productivity increase is notable, and again I seriously doubt that a multi-desktop setup with a single monitor will achieve the same convenience.
- Video editing is wonderful on dual head. Video output on one screen, script and controls on the other. Multiple desktops? Forget it.
No... I do not need dual head. But I'll be damned if I ever give it up.
With all due respect: nonsense! What you said may have been true 1,5 years ago, but it certainly isn't true anymore.
There are plenty of dual head cards that meet the needs of most users, including good 2d or 3d performance, or both. Gainward made a very decent one based on the Geforce 2 400; I had one and it worked perfectly. When it blew up (don't ask...) I replaced it with a Radeon 8500 dual head card, which is what I am using now. Good performance all round.
I am looking to build a new box and I'll probably end up using one of the many dual-head Geforce 4 cards. Check them out: you may like what you see. It seems that many of these cards that are built for top performance on a single monitor, will support a second one as well. They are reasonably priced as well.
There are quite a few GForce4 cards out there that support Dual Head... Check Tom's hardware, and don't trust the people in the computer stores. Clerks in most stores know dick about such technical details.
I know that cable companies try to screw you, but I didn't know they were so open about it. This is a quote from one of showtime's spokesmen.
"It's our hope that our affiliates would use whatever tactics are available to increase their premium penetration."
Hmmm! I don't care much for their choice of words there, when they tell us how they plan to screw us. *shudders*
Less friendly? Last time I looked, the EC was set to propose legislation on this subject that was almost a 1 to 1 copy (har) of the US regulations.
Our government has never been particularly worried about consumer rights in relation to copy protection schemes... else they'd have banned Macrovision which prevents making backups for fair-use purposes, and prevents playback on older TV's and most PAL monitors. It was the exact same issue, except that Macrovision did not violate any standard as such.
Of course this doesn't mean that we should not encourage Philips to forbid labelling crippled CD's as "Compact Discs (tm)", and perhaps bring the subject up with our respective governments again. My view on "fair use" rights is not only that we the consumers hold the right to make copies of media that we own, if we can. It also means that publishers should be forbidden to actively prevent us from making such copies, ie. "fair use" rights should not be infringed by copy protection schemes.
Interestingly, that is how Dutch law works. If a document is not secured, it is considered to be public. Security through obscurity does not count; to be held accountable for cracking, you have to steal a password or actively circumvent security measures or use an exploit to gain access, meaning that you are aware that you are breaking into a secured system you are not meant to enter.
"Started out with EDS, which in those days you couldn't get much stricter in dress code.. the poor sales guys were even told WHERE to buy their clothes.."
Makes perfect sense... People with the dress sense of the average programmer or even sales guy should not be allowed to go buy a suit on their own. Send those people to go buy a dress and they show up in a green one, or a really cheap one with a horrible fit. And for gods sake give some thought to the shirt and tie to go with it. No Bugs Bunny or other "novelty" ties. No tie clips. Double breasted is only for older folks, people. As for colors, only dark blue or dark gray is acceptable. Go easy on the pinstripe.
I wish people would either wear a suit properly or just don't bother and go casual. In case suits are a requirement, I am all for sending the employees off to a haberdasher that will turn them out decently.
"Which group of programmers would you hire, a room full of suit wearing 9-5r's or a room full of cheesy-poof eating coffee drinking work around the clock for 3 days straight types (wearing god knows what). Sure you wouldn't want to show the second group to investers..."
Why on earth not? That's just as stupid as the manager demanding everyone clean up their desks and looks sharp because the CEO is visiting the department. Execs and stockholders are not incredible neat freaks who will have a stroke at the sight of an untidy workplace with casually-dressed employees in it.
No. It is spam, or unsollicited mass mailing, we want to address here; other falsified business communication should be covered by other laws. In case "falsified" means bogus bills or similar things; there are already laws to deal with that
If you make the laws overly broad, you run a risk of unintentionally encroaching upon people's rights in other areas. The example given by another poster, of making it illegal to falsify unsollicited e-mail headers, would mean that I could be sued for sending someone (just 1 person) an email without him asking me, if I change the "from" field to something else than the box I send it from.
That reminds me of the first anti-hacking legislation in our country: it was overly broad to the point where you could serve 5 years in jail for changing the time on someone's electronic alarm clock.
It's just like the old SGML module for Word they used to have about 6 years ago. My guess is that there will be some significant drawback to saving documents in XML, such as loss of some formatting information. That would convince users not to save in the XML format... but that isn't the important thing to Microsoft.
More significantly, there might be small incompatibilities, or ways that Word-created XML documents divert slightly from what is normal and proper in XML. Perhaps Word will make some (intentional) mistakes when reading back XML files generated in other applications, just like Word's old SGML module would choke on many proper SGML documents.
Make no mistake: the fact that almost everybody is using Office and the associated file formats makes it very hard for a new contender to enter the office suite market. Microsoft must be aware of the power they have over the market with their Office file formats. Think of it: when you exchange files with other businesses, you have two realistic choices of file formats: Office or plaintext. And now Microsoft is introducing compatibility with an open and well-defined markup langauge, in favour of their proprietary language? I'll believe it when I see it.
"I'm getting more and more convinced that we can't make good technology leglislation without infringing freedoms and that we're all doomed."
Almost any legislation limits our freedoms in one way or another. I am convinced we can make good technology legislation, without infringing on any freedoms that are outside the intended scope of the proposed law, if lawmakers just stop and think for a bit.
In my opinion, anti-spam laws should be written in such a way that they specifically apply to spam only (which requires a loophole-free yet narrow legal definition of "spam"). I think a good set of requirements for spammers might be:
- an obligation to clearly identify the spamming company, i.e. provide valid contact information in the form of an address or preferably a phone number.
- an obligation to clearly label the mail as being spam, by putting the label "BULK MAILING" in the subject and MIME header. Failing an opt-in law, this would allow ISP's and e-mail users to simply filter out any unsolicited mail. We have a similar system for snailmail here: placing a sticker on your mailbox will "block" unsollicited mailings and/or free newsletters.
- a strong law against any measures taken to defeat anti-spam filters, such as that random bit of letters that all the recent spam seems to have in the subject field.
- a strong mandate for ISPs to deal with spammers breaking the aformentioned rules. ISPs clamping down on spammers should not have to fear lawsuits, provided they keep within their mandate.
Of course the spammers will whine that this would "break their business model" or some such. I have no doubt that it will.
We in Europe enjoy considerable freedom of press, and perhaps indeed even more so than the USA. But you're right about the press being biased.
The press here in the Netherlands is politically correct beyond belief, especially when it comes to sensitive issues or politics in general, for which they adhere to a strict set of unwritten rules. Certain questions are not to be asked, and into certain matters one is not to probe too deeply. They are also very biased towards the Labour party, most newspapers and especially national television are. A few choice examples from the recent political events over here:
- When presenting results for local elections, the TV newsreader who read out the result stated that "LN (a right wing party)thankfully did not become the largest party in Amsterdam"
- The entire press condemned mr. Fortuyn (a right wing policician) when he stated that Muslim religion is "retarded". Yet, when a Labour politician stated the same thing in exactly the same words, and was purportedly threatened for that statement, the press collectively hailed her as a brave martyr. She is a muslim herself, so for her it is fine to make such statements apparently.
- When asking the "man in the street" for opinions, they carefully select the interviewees to coincide with the stereotype they wish to perpetuate. People selected for interviews typically are:
* For a right wing voter: either a brainless disgruntled taxidriver who wants more highways, or a well-dressed woman with a pearl necklace, representing the oppressing rich
* For a voter for a populist party: preferably a person who looks like a football hooligan, and is happy to state that he is proud to never vote, only he will this time because he hates immigrants.
* For Labour voters: a very well spoken, articulate and socially engaged person, the perfect example of a concerned citizen, yet still very much a common man/woman and not an elitist intellectual.
With a press like this, freedom of press is meaningless. The USA may know less press freedom but at least the press over there is trying.
Who? Al Gore of course, after all he invented the damn thing!
He does suggest to limit this to certain bands, such as the current 2,4GHz band, or to do this in existing bands using extremely low power. Neither should affect existing analog technology such as model airplane transmitters.
The idea that spectrum is a limitless resource is a myth, however. The author does say as much somewhere, but mostly he talks as if the spectrum will bear an unlimited number of users, which is bollocks. Having lots of spread-spectrum devices in the same area and frequency band will affect the performance of these devices. If that was not the case, why the hell would we even need to follow the author's suggestion to open up more spectrum for such use beyod the current 2,4 GHz band?
With that said, current analog transmission technology does not make a good use of the spectrum, and assigning a whole band over a large area to one transmitter is terribly wasteful. While I disagree with the picture the author paints in his article, I endorse his plea to make more use of spread spectrum and to assign more bands to unlicenced use.
Discussions such as this one are the result of the different views people have on the reasons we have patents. What is it the patent system actually tries to accomplish?
Stimulate research by allowing individuals and companies to reap the full benefits from their research, knowing that the competition will not be able to run off with the things they have laboured to invent. Patenting drugs is an example, they take considerable research and testing to develop, and their formulas should therefor be protected. However patenting gene sequences also fall under this category. Many people say that they should not be patentable, but it can be argued that they should, due to the large amount of effort involved in finding and exploiting interesting gene sequences.
Protect ideas, basically saying that if you think of something first, you have full rights to the idea. Something like the telephone, for which the technology already existed but no one had thought of this particular application yet, before Bell. Single-click buying and XOR cursor patents fall under this category as well though, patented by people who are simply the first to be faced with a trivial problem, and patent the obvious solution to that problem.
Foster innovation and competition in the marketplace, by giving startups the rights over their ideas and designs, they have the opportunity to develop their business without the competition taking their idea and crushing them. Individuals thinking up novelty items such as the "waving hand on a spring" would like their ideas protected, so that they can market and produce these items without large-scale Hong Kong and Chinese manufacturers taking their idea and flooding the market with 10 million units produced overnight. But Intel can use this as well, patenting the design for a CPU socket to lock out competition in a market they already dominate.
Which ever of these three reasons for patents you believe in (or any other reason for that matter), one can come up with both good and bad examples of patents that meet the criteria, ("Good" and "bad" being designations that most people would agree with in these cases).
In my opinion, the best solution might be to shorten patent life. If the purpose of patents is to encourage ideas to be published and used, yet allow the inventors to reap the benefits of their ideas and their work, then a shorter lifespan of patents would work well... how long does it generally take for a company to recoup monies invested in research anyway? If I have a good idea but I lack the means to develop it in the near future, is the public not better off if another company is allowed to use my idea after the patent lapses after a few years, instead of allowing me to sit on it for ages, perhaps hoping some company will discover the same idea and then spring my patent on them? I would suggest a patent lifespan of no more than a few years... but perhaps others can come up with reasons longer lifespans would be a necessity.
I saw some movie once about that experiment with the limbic system being done on people, as some secret military project. Can't remember the title of the movie though, anyone help me out here?
Wasnt there an earlier article on /. about this? Some guys did some research, and came to the conclusion that the price, while daunting, is not *that* high compared to other space travel endeavours, and will pay for itself in a relatively short time. If anything, they might built more once the first one is up... using the first to erect a second one would be quite feasible.
Also... this thing would be rather easy to defend. The cable doesn't break just like that, and while it is very long, most of it will be at an altitude quite beyond most tin pot terrorists and most conventional weaponry.
Heh... he is aptly named. His page finally loaded. At the top, before the cell phone article, was an article about US/German relations, mr. Schroeders remark, and NATO. I read that piece as well.
Gah, does this guy have a grudge against Europe or what? Our politicians suck, our commitment to NATO sucks, and now our next-gen cellphones are going to suck as well. Might all be true, but this guy offers no new insights, or any insights for that matter. -1 Clueless.
Learning to use something as complex as a computer presents a huge steep learning curve to non-technical people. If the system has both an intuitive and a commandline interface, the new user will have a lot less hurdles to overcome to even begin using the system, as it makes the system a lot less daunting. Explaining drag and drop to my grandmother takes 5 minutes and she understands the concept perfectly. The Copy command and the command line have a lot more scope for errors, so I leave that until she actually has a need to move 1000 files.
True, it's not like he took a hacksaw to the case and put a few windows in *shudders* Still, pretty ballsy... imagine how you might have gone about it
- You go up to your boss and ask: "Can I stick some of these lights in those new servers?". Boss replies by smacking your head with a 2x4.
- You stick the lights in and your boss catches you doing it. "What the #*%^$ are you doing to these!?!?". Again, the 2x4 is utilised
- The boss walks in after you finished and sees a green glow coming from a previously dark cabinet, and calls Sun support in a panic. For making him look the fool, he'll take his 2x4 and make use of it in creative ways that you will not enjoy.
Plenty of scope here for trouble. And if you have a clueless boss, and God forbid something goes wrong with the machines, he and Sun both will blame your blinkenlights...
Stealing credit card numbers? I'd be surprised if this is not a crime under Russian law as well.
If an American thief, stealing credit card numbers from Russian computers, was hacked by the Russian police and subsequently arrested in Russia, what would the outcry be? Perhaps people would decide he got what he had coming to him.
You say you want to have a solid design before starting to code? In that case you don't need to look at source code just yet. But by all means steal ideas during the design phase: scripting languages, ideas for the user interface.
Get the things you are trying to build down on a conceptual level first... start from the basics: what is an object, a path, how will I represent them, how will I describe them, manipulate them, etc. Looking at the work of others will give you ideas for this, but try to think the basics up yourself first. Having a solid foundation of the concepts will make or break the expandability and flexibility of your program later. You will have changes of mind and new ideas during the detailed design and implementation phases, but if you thought your concepts through well enough, the ideas that govern the structure of your design and code will not change, not by much. The difference between good and bad design on conceptual level is like having a framework for your house made of steel girders, strong yet open to changes, or having it made out of ground chicken poo, doing the job at a glance but the slightest shock could send it crashing.
Do not look at code until you are wrapping up design, and perhaps not even then. Working bottom-up on this scale will be the kiss of death for your project