This is far from news. Quite some time ago (1997, I believe) Nathan Myhrvold - at that time Microsoft's
"strategist" - claimed that Microsoft felt it wanted (was owed in some sense) a fee for
every internet transaction that involved any Microsoft tools. Ideally then, from
Microsoft's viewpoint, every transaction would involve Microsoft tools and they could
make a profit on every internet transaction. This may not be their official public stance these days,
but then again...
I disagree. I think virtualization is going to be an incredibly useful too - all the more so if microsoft would allow windows to be virtualized easily (perhaps on top of a nice fast exokernel). And I think it has the potential to hit home use big time. For example (there are lots of others) : if you have such a machine you could give everyone in your family a new virtual copy of windows (or linux or macos) to run on the same hardware, which might be a multi-core processor and use remoteing (and remoting with virtual machines opens up some fun possibilities) to make things happen on a very light screen/keyboard (or tablet or phone or...) on a wireless network. Encrypt (if you want) the images and now everyone has a secure machine. Dad can do his checkbook without worrying about anyone messing it up or the kids being able to see whats up, mom can do her checkbook, you could set up
restricted virtual machines for the kiddies. Games might run virtualized...
And you could share parts of the file system if the exokernel managed SMB shares (if you wanted), you could run a webserver with calendars and such for all to share, you could run asterix in a VM to handle your phone...
So will you be able to run Windows in a virtual machine running on windows?
The register piece makes it look like you'll only be able to run other OSs.
Being able to virtualize Windows could be a Good Thing.
Re:You say you want a revolution?
on
On Apple vs Apple
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Revolution" was written by John Lennon who, I seriously doubt, has had much to do with Apple Records for the last 25 or so years.
Indeed, I doubt that George Harrison had much to do with this decision.
Ringo or Paul, I don't know about, but I suspect the decision may have had more to do with protecting their trademark than anything else. Since
trademark is one of those things that you have to actively defend, its most probable that the lawyers for Apple Records made the decision and who knows if any of the original Beatles were consulted (even by Ouija Board).
I live withing walking distance of my office (and a short walk it is too), I can see the building from my front steps (more or less). But a traceroute shows that a packet from my home to my office goes through Vancouver (WA), Denver, Palo Alto, mlpsca01 (wherever that is), then runs around seattle a bit before finally reaching my office. Copying any kind of large files over the net to my office is so slow its almost not worthwhile. ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes.")
Lots of backbone usage of one sort or another here.
Though its better than it once was - a traceroute a while back was going through Palo Alto, then to Chicago, then back to San Francisco before coming up to Seattle again.
I suspect that they're associating Google with "piracy" because of the "theft of traditional knowledge" part of things. The question is, in how many of those cases did Google actually "steal" any of that knowledge? Isn't it more likely that Google is just making public knowledge that someone else has already "stolen"? In which case the award is not for Google having "stolen" the information, but rather for Google making public the results of the "theft" ? Would it really be better if the people who "stole" the information have exclusive and private use of that information??? (Yes, those are sneer quotes in that exact sense of the word.)
I don't remember the title, but I once had a copy of a book on doing graphics in MS Windows.
The cover had nicely ray-traced spheres and stuff, but the contents got about as far as
changing the color on a two dimensional triangle.
Worse yet, the book was structured with an extended example. The code for this example
was maybe 30 pages long the first time through. The second repetition had all the
first 30 pages repeated with another 20 pages or so of added material and a few minor modifications. The third
repetition repeated all of the second one with more added material and a few minor modifications. If I remember
correctly (and I may not) there were SIX repetitions of the code and the final one
was about 100 pages long and repeated most of the code from the fifth repetition with
some added material and a few minor modifications.
Out of about 750 pages, about half were the extended example. Which didn't do much even in
the final version. And with generally poor quality code.
But even at that it was better than many of the books available today.
For the person actually responsible for having actually set things up with
the default apache page on the web server.
With luck they will not be someone who reports to this fool, but
one way or another they'll probably feel the heat more than
necessary. There are few things more frightening in a workplace
than a fool who is shown up to be a fool. His retribution is
likely to be epic.
If there are any safeguards left, they're likely to become secret soon enough. Kind of a nice
"Catch 22" situation: You can only use a law if you know about it, but if you know about it
you've already broken the law.
Indeed. And for most things it would take less time to do and look better.
But there are so many forces working against it. Steep learning curve.
So many documents shipped out for modification already in MS Office format.
So many people that require you send them documents in MS Office format.
Do you really think the current court would find anything like censorship illegal or even distasteful?
Always remember that the Good Justice Scalia thinks that Americans already have too many rights. (Honest, look it up.)
Your comment about yahoo mirrors my thoughts about microsoft. Every search I've done on the microsoft search engine
has produced (in the first few pages) links that seem to have been paid for and advertising. I get a completely
different set of pages from Google - and the advertising is only on the side of the page.
Similarly, in the MS web maps interface, searching for an address (or even a city) gives lots of advertisements which
rather intrusively pop up on the map itself. Google just gives me the map.
How about the estimated half of the prisoners in Guantanamo who don't seem to have actually done anything?
How about the protesters arrested in NYC during the Republican convention - held in jail and mostly released with no charges?
I agree that from my (insular american) standpoint the Islamic fundamentalists seem pretty bad, but there are fundamentalists of other religions who are pretty nasty too. For example there is the well known Westboro Baptist Church, who are now said to be protesting funerals of American soldiers because those soldiers have been upholding a regime (the Bush Administration) that is soft on "fags" (one of their favorite words) and so on.
I'm just having such a fun time imagining trying to explain the details of zero knowledge proofs to a judge (and/or jury). I can just imagine the looks a witness would get for a seriously non-trivial discussion of graph isomorphisms. (Or elliptic curves if encryption came up.)
The conservatives are so firmly in control of the media that outcries tend not to be reported, and when they are reported they are quickly drowned out by the O'Reillys and similar commentators. NPR, the last bastion of moderate news reporting, is now routinely called "left-wing" and worse.
The Republicans see the cronyism, they see the complete abandonment of most conservative values, they see the wasted money and I just don't think they care. They're in power and want to use
that power and noble ideals fall quickly when the perqs of power are in reach.
"When I use a word [...] it means what I choose it to mean. Neither more nor less. The question is who is to be master?"
Humpty Dumpty (in "Through the Looking Glass").
In real use,
words (and phrases) mean what the speaker (writer) wants them to mean. They also mean what the listener (reader) hears them as meaning. (This is rather less the case in the context of formal documents of whatever sort - which is where your cited definition appears.) Definitions in dictionaries reflect that use (yup, I tend to the descriptive side of linguistics).
IANAL. I suspect that the government could hint that a company should do this and then have the company comply and voluntarily hand over anything of interest they might find.
Then, naturally, it would not count as a government wiretap request and would thus not require a warrant.
HTML and Web based courses provide much more flexibility than Flash. Flash would mostly be useful, as it is usually used on the web, to force students to sit through piles of crap, but
is otherwise probably overkill.
Why not markup multiple choice questions and tests in XML format? Last I looked there were several such to choose from (and using a database to save the questions and statistics provies for all kinds of nice features).
Take a few math courses, including one or two (more is better) in statistics before you
spout completely nonsense. And if you're going to spout nonsense, at least justify it
rather than randomly ranting - thus revealing yourself as not only an Anonymous Cowward, but
also as an Ignorant and Idiotic Anonymous Coward.
Money is little more than a counter. If I have two ten dollar bills and three one dollar bills it adds up to $23. And because everyone in the US knows what these pieces of paper are and what they mean and because we all agree on that fact, I can trade those bits of paper for other bits of paper that add up to the same thing, or for little round bits of metal, or for goods and services that both of us value at $23.
The only reason for all the fancy artwork is to make it hard to duplicate the bills - if everyone could print their own money, they would and eventually it wouldn't be worth anything.
So there's no disrespect in putting a stamp on a bill, nor is there any devaluing.
There are so many bad books. But as an occasional reviewer, I try to pick books that look
like they might be interesting and over time I've managed to get pretty good at that - so I don't review books all that frequently that are all that bad.
But they're out there. Take a look at the shelves in many bookstores. At least half those books are junk - aimed at the "gullible and confused consumer" market. Also, almost anything that is entitled something like "Foo for the Bar platform" tends to be mostly trash. The same is (sadly) true of the greater portion of textbooks aimed at the college freshman/sophomore. But many reviewers see these things and avoid them - why read yet another 500 page tome on Windows for Weirdos? The market for those things doesn't read slashdot, doesn't read the ACM computing reviews, and is hardly likely to find, let alone read a review written by anyone technical. The folks who are likely to read a review are not likely to find the book of interest.
Slashdot Mirror
This is far from news. Quite some time ago (1997, I believe) Nathan Myhrvold - at that time Microsoft's "strategist" - claimed that Microsoft felt it wanted (was owed in some sense) a fee for every internet transaction that involved any Microsoft tools. Ideally then, from Microsoft's viewpoint, every transaction would involve Microsoft tools and they could make a profit on every internet transaction. This may not be their official public stance these days, but then again...
And you could share parts of the file system if the exokernel managed SMB shares (if you wanted), you could run a webserver with calendars and such for all to share, you could run asterix in a VM to handle your phone...
The register piece makes it look like you'll only be able to run other OSs. Being able to virtualize Windows could be a Good Thing.
Indeed, I doubt that George Harrison had much to do with this decision.
Ringo or Paul, I don't know about, but I suspect the decision may have had more to do with protecting their trademark than anything else. Since trademark is one of those things that you have to actively defend, its most probable that the lawyers for Apple Records made the decision and who knows if any of the original Beatles were consulted (even by Ouija Board).
Lots of backbone usage of one sort or another here.
Though its better than it once was - a traceroute a while back was going through Palo Alto, then to Chicago, then back to San Francisco before coming up to Seattle again.
(I admit to not understanding the patent system at all - and for things like genes even less.)
I suspect that they're associating Google with "piracy" because of the "theft of traditional knowledge" part of things. The question is, in how many of those cases did Google actually "steal" any of that knowledge? Isn't it more likely that Google is just making public knowledge that someone else has already "stolen"? In which case the award is not for Google having "stolen" the information, but rather for Google making public the results of the "theft" ? Would it really be better if the people who "stole" the information have exclusive and private use of that information??? (Yes, those are sneer quotes in that exact sense of the word.)
Actually I think it is more like : If you use MS technologies you'll be protected against lawsuits by MS.
Worse yet, the book was structured with an extended example. The code for this example was maybe 30 pages long the first time through. The second repetition had all the first 30 pages repeated with another 20 pages or so of added material and a few minor modifications. The third repetition repeated all of the second one with more added material and a few minor modifications. If I remember correctly (and I may not) there were SIX repetitions of the code and the final one was about 100 pages long and repeated most of the code from the fifth repetition with some added material and a few minor modifications.
Out of about 750 pages, about half were the extended example. Which didn't do much even in the final version. And with generally poor quality code.
But even at that it was better than many of the books available today.
With luck they will not be someone who reports to this fool, but one way or another they'll probably feel the heat more than necessary. There are few things more frightening in a workplace than a fool who is shown up to be a fool. His retribution is likely to be epic.
If there are any safeguards left, they're likely to become secret soon enough. Kind of a nice "Catch 22" situation: You can only use a law if you know about it, but if you know about it you've already broken the law.
But there are so many forces working against it. Steep learning curve. So many documents shipped out for modification already in MS Office format. So many people that require you send them documents in MS Office format.
Ooops, wrong Supremes.
Do you really think the current court would find anything like censorship illegal or even distasteful? Always remember that the Good Justice Scalia thinks that Americans already have too many rights. (Honest, look it up.)
OK. I'm going to go hide now.
Similarly, in the MS web maps interface, searching for an address (or even a city) gives lots of advertisements which rather intrusively pop up on the map itself. Google just gives me the map.
How about the protesters arrested in NYC during the Republican convention - held in jail and mostly released with no charges?
I agree that from my (insular american) standpoint the Islamic fundamentalists seem pretty bad, but there are fundamentalists of other religions who are pretty nasty too. For example there is the well known Westboro Baptist Church, who are now said to be protesting funerals of American soldiers because those soldiers have been upholding a regime (the Bush Administration) that is soft on "fags" (one of their favorite words) and so on.
In that work, Borges posits an author who deliberately rewrites "Don Quixote" word for word. And it is said that the rewrite is "infinitely richer".
I'm just having such a fun time imagining trying to explain the details of zero knowledge proofs to a judge (and/or jury). I can just imagine the looks a witness would get for a seriously non-trivial discussion of graph isomorphisms. (Or elliptic curves if encryption came up.)
The Republicans see the cronyism, they see the complete abandonment of most conservative values, they see the wasted money and I just don't think they care. They're in power and want to use that power and noble ideals fall quickly when the perqs of power are in reach.
In real use, words (and phrases) mean what the speaker (writer) wants them to mean. They also mean what the listener (reader) hears them as meaning. (This is rather less the case in the context of formal documents of whatever sort - which is where your cited definition appears.) Definitions in dictionaries reflect that use (yup, I tend to the descriptive side of linguistics).
IANAL. I suspect that the government could hint that a company should do this and then have the company comply and voluntarily hand over anything of interest they might find. Then, naturally, it would not count as a government wiretap request and would thus not require a warrant.
HTML and Web based courses provide much more flexibility than Flash. Flash would mostly be useful, as it is usually used on the web, to force students to sit through piles of crap, but is otherwise probably overkill.
Why not markup multiple choice questions and tests in XML format? Last I looked there were several such to choose from (and using a database to save the questions and statistics provies for all kinds of nice features).
Take a few math courses, including one or two (more is better) in statistics before you spout completely nonsense. And if you're going to spout nonsense, at least justify it rather than randomly ranting - thus revealing yourself as not only an Anonymous Cowward, but also as an Ignorant and Idiotic Anonymous Coward.
Money is little more than a counter. If I have two ten dollar bills and three one dollar bills it adds up to $23. And because everyone in the US knows what these pieces of paper are and what they mean and because we all agree on that fact, I can trade those bits of paper for other bits of paper that add up to the same thing, or for little round bits of metal, or for goods and services that both of us value at $23.
The only reason for all the fancy artwork is to make it hard to duplicate the bills - if everyone could print their own money, they would and eventually it wouldn't be worth anything.
So there's no disrespect in putting a stamp on a bill, nor is there any devaluing.
There are so many bad books. But as an occasional reviewer, I try to pick books that look like they might be interesting and over time I've managed to get pretty good at that - so I don't review books all that frequently that are all that bad.
But they're out there. Take a look at the shelves in many bookstores. At least half those books are junk - aimed at the "gullible and confused consumer" market. Also, almost anything that is entitled something like "Foo for the Bar platform" tends to be mostly trash. The same is (sadly) true of the greater portion of textbooks aimed at the college freshman/sophomore. But many reviewers see these things and avoid them - why read yet another 500 page tome on Windows for Weirdos? The market for those things doesn't read slashdot, doesn't read the ACM computing reviews, and is hardly likely to find, let alone read a review written by anyone technical. The folks who are likely to read a review are not likely to find the book of interest.