Yes, that's why I said that Virginia Tech bought them. The point was that they were cheapest because Apple gave them a huge price break, presumably for the promotion it gave them (i.e. "Holy shit! Our computers are so fast and awesome that they're using them in supercomputer clusters!").
You'll notice that no large clusters have built out of G5s since, and it's because nobody else is going to get price breaks significant enough to make it the cheapest solution.
Can anyone point out any significant advantage of the Itanium that justifies the fact that it costs ridiculously more than its competition (i.e. AMD Opteron)? The only reason I can think of to explain why NASA would go with an Itanium cluster over something else would be Intel giving them a great price break on them. In which case I'd like to assert that Intel is just doing it for the free promotion a la Apple (remember the G5 cluster Virginia Tech bought?).
X-patents, eh? Sounds like the patent office is trying to jazz up their image to attract more young patent holders. Makes sense though, I heard they haven't been doing so well marketing to 18-25 year olds.
All this time looking for a solution to the problems with the U.S. patent office and the solution was right in front of my face the whole time. Arson! How could I have missed that one?
Yeah, it needs some animated GIFs and flash intros to each listing. Maybe a javascript cursor or two and MIDI background music? Stars and Stripes Forever would work well, don't you think?
You all complained about Internet Explorer not being able to display PNGs correctly, but who's laughing now! Obviously they broke PNG support intentionally for security reasons. Once again, Microsoft comes through on the cutting edge.
Is anyone surpised that hardware gets cheaper over time? This has been going on as long as people have been selling computer equipment. I was looking through a filing cabinet the other day and found the original invoices for my first computer (Apple IIe) and the hard drive for my first PC (540MB, at the time it was huuuuge amount of storage). Their respective prices IIRC were about $3,000 and $500.
With $3,000 I could buy at least 4 of my current systems, each of which would be well over 1,000 times faster.
About two years ago I spent 2 months as a counselor at a summer camp, most of which time I had no internet access, and when I did have access it was minimal. I know this is a little pathetic, but I really felt like I was being deprived. I mean, I wasn't sick over it or anything, but it was something I genuinely missed and I was really bothered that I couldn't use it the way I was used to. That said, I don't really think that this is a legitimate sickness worthy of being discharged because of, it's really quite managable. The main way I dealt with it was reading a lot. Generally I don't read that often, but that summer I went through a few tens of books.
I don't really think laptops are as much trouble with linux as people make out. At one point they were a big hassle, but in my experience (admittedly, not particularly extensive) the difficulty of installing linux on a laptop over installing it on a regular PC nowadays is negligible. Sure, laptops still tend to come with weirder hardware, but really, most distros have gotten quite good at supporting most of it right out of the box.
I don't know if Syllable will be the ones to take advantage of it (or if anyone will), but I think that in the next few years there is a real opportunity for somebody to take over the PC operating system market. Microsoft has delayed Longhorn numerous times already, and it looks like the difference between WinXP and Longhorn will be as vast as the difference between Windows 3.11 and Win95. That added to the fact that many Windows users are already unsatisfied enough to be looking for something new.
Apple will not be the ones to usurp windows because their hardware is too expensive for most people. Linux or other BSDs won't be the ones to take over because they're too difficult for most people. Even the most user-friendly distros like Mandrake and Redhat, despite their continuing progress and great efforts, have some problems. Most fundamentally I think it's the fact that despite all of the friendly aspects, it's very difficult for a user of Linux to avoid ever using the command-line. I think the way OSX uses the command-line is much more appropriate -- if you want to use it and learn it, it's there and you can use all of its power, but realistically, no normal user will ever be FORCED to learn how to use it.
If Syllable manages to get some momentum, they might be able to do it. We'll see.
Apple could become a contender if they decided to take the leap towards porting OSX to the PC, or working to make their hardware cheaper. Neither of those look very likely though, but they're certainly possibilities, and things I would love to see happen.
Most ICs are surprisingly resilient. I remember hearing about somebody testing an atari cartridge to see what it would take to break one. He was trying to see if the arguement for the legality of ROM dumping as a way to backup your games in case they become corrupt really had any merit. IIRC he through it a couple stories onto the sidewalk, rolled over one with his car, hit it with a sledgehammer, dumped soda in it, etc. The case cracked earlier on, but I think the cartridge didn't actually stop working until the actually IC broke after a couple hits with the sledgehammer, although it did continue to work after the circuit board was broken.
I'll attempt to do an executive summary though. The video will probably not be considered a parody because it does not make fun of the song itself, it just uses the song in its parodying of George Bush and John Kerry.
I think this case is a prime example of how copyright terms have grown out of control. Woody Guthrie wrote the song almost 3/4 of a century ago and has been dead for over 35 years. The fact that this song is still covered by a copyright is absolutely ridiculous. And the kicker is, it's owned by a company that has nothing to do with Woody Guthrie or any of his descendants!
By the letter of the law, Jib Jab's use of the song is probably not parody. That said though, I feel that really, their use of the song should probably be allowed. So hopefully, this will come out favorably for Jib Jab and establish some nice legal precedent. I think that this is probably why the EFF has chosen to take this case in particular.
Another thing though, I feel less inclined to protect the rights of the owner of a song or other work when the owner is not the person who actually wrote the song. In this case, it is not Woody Guthrie's family suing, it's a company.
I'm not sure I understand why the movie studios would have a problem with this. Since it's kind of roving movie theater, almost all the people that are going to be there are going to be invited. This means that you're probably not going to have any more people watching the movie than you might invite to your house to watch a movie some night.
Of course, if you remember your history you might know that when the idea of home video was first proposed it was rejected by most studios (despite the fact that it only allowed you to watch a movie once) because they wouldn't be able to control how many people would watch it.
I'd be curious about how many of these intersections lie inside of buildings or other private property. Has anyone found an intersection yet that could be unvisitable? You know, something like an intersection in the middle of a military complex or something?
I don't mean to be overly-critical of this, but while I think this is a very interesting idea for a project, but I'm not sure the result is half as interesting as the idea. I think it would be a more interesting read if it were just one person or a small group of people visting all of these intersections.
Actually, that's a lot to read, I think somebody should do the same type of thing, but with intersections of lines that are multiples of ten. I mean, you would still get a reasonably complete view of the world and all of the places in it.
Another idea to make the product of this more interesting would be 360 degree panorama shots at each intersection. Again, this would be somehting more easily accomplished if it were just one person or a small group of people doing this.
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Yes, that's why I said that Virginia Tech bought them. The point was that they were cheapest because Apple gave them a huge price break, presumably for the promotion it gave them (i.e. "Holy shit! Our computers are so fast and awesome that they're using them in supercomputer clusters!").
You'll notice that no large clusters have built out of G5s since, and it's because nobody else is going to get price breaks significant enough to make it the cheapest solution.
Can anyone point out any significant advantage of the Itanium that justifies the fact that it costs ridiculously more than its competition (i.e. AMD Opteron)? The only reason I can think of to explain why NASA would go with an Itanium cluster over something else would be Intel giving them a great price break on them. In which case I'd like to assert that Intel is just doing it for the free promotion a la Apple (remember the G5 cluster Virginia Tech bought?).
Sounds like something ESPN's marketing team would make up to say that Tony Hawk has on the 900 or Rodney Mullen has on the Dark Slide.
X-patents, eh? Sounds like the patent office is trying to jazz up their image to attract more young patent holders. Makes sense though, I heard they haven't been doing so well marketing to 18-25 year olds.
All this time looking for a solution to the problems with the U.S. patent office and the solution was right in front of my face the whole time. Arson! How could I have missed that one?
Yeah, it needs some animated GIFs and flash intros to each listing. Maybe a javascript cursor or two and MIDI background music? Stars and Stripes Forever would work well, don't you think?
Are you blind? The article is about PNG, not PHP.
...if you are in fact blind, I apologize. Perhaps you should try a better screen reader or something though?
You all complained about Internet Explorer not being able to display PNGs correctly, but who's laughing now! Obviously they broke PNG support intentionally for security reasons. Once again, Microsoft comes through on the cutting edge.
Is anyone surpised that hardware gets cheaper over time? This has been going on as long as people have been selling computer equipment. I was looking through a filing cabinet the other day and found the original invoices for my first computer (Apple IIe) and the hard drive for my first PC (540MB, at the time it was huuuuge amount of storage). Their respective prices IIRC were about $3,000 and $500.
With $3,000 I could buy at least 4 of my current systems, each of which would be well over 1,000 times faster.
About two years ago I spent 2 months as a counselor at a summer camp, most of which time I had no internet access, and when I did have access it was minimal. I know this is a little pathetic, but I really felt like I was being deprived. I mean, I wasn't sick over it or anything, but it was something I genuinely missed and I was really bothered that I couldn't use it the way I was used to. That said, I don't really think that this is a legitimate sickness worthy of being discharged because of, it's really quite managable. The main way I dealt with it was reading a lot. Generally I don't read that often, but that summer I went through a few tens of books.
I don't really think laptops are as much trouble with linux as people make out. At one point they were a big hassle, but in my experience (admittedly, not particularly extensive) the difficulty of installing linux on a laptop over installing it on a regular PC nowadays is negligible. Sure, laptops still tend to come with weirder hardware, but really, most distros have gotten quite good at supporting most of it right out of the box.
I don't know if Syllable will be the ones to take advantage of it (or if anyone will), but I think that in the next few years there is a real opportunity for somebody to take over the PC operating system market. Microsoft has delayed Longhorn numerous times already, and it looks like the difference between WinXP and Longhorn will be as vast as the difference between Windows 3.11 and Win95. That added to the fact that many Windows users are already unsatisfied enough to be looking for something new.
Apple will not be the ones to usurp windows because their hardware is too expensive for most people. Linux or other BSDs won't be the ones to take over because they're too difficult for most people. Even the most user-friendly distros like Mandrake and Redhat, despite their continuing progress and great efforts, have some problems. Most fundamentally I think it's the fact that despite all of the friendly aspects, it's very difficult for a user of Linux to avoid ever using the command-line. I think the way OSX uses the command-line is much more appropriate -- if you want to use it and learn it, it's there and you can use all of its power, but realistically, no normal user will ever be FORCED to learn how to use it.
If Syllable manages to get some momentum, they might be able to do it. We'll see.
Apple could become a contender if they decided to take the leap towards porting OSX to the PC, or working to make their hardware cheaper. Neither of those look very likely though, but they're certainly possibilities, and things I would love to see happen.
If an apple a day truly kept the doctor away then this never would have happened. I knew that saying was just marketing hype.
^D? What are you doing, logging out? ^D is EOF, not backspace.
Cyberathlete, eh? Are there any Swedish Universities giving out Cyberathletics scholarships?
Most ICs are surprisingly resilient. I remember hearing about somebody testing an atari cartridge to see what it would take to break one. He was trying to see if the arguement for the legality of ROM dumping as a way to backup your games in case they become corrupt really had any merit. IIRC he through it a couple stories onto the sidewalk, rolled over one with his car, hit it with a sledgehammer, dumped soda in it, etc. The case cracked earlier on, but I think the cartridge didn't actually stop working until the actually IC broke after a couple hits with the sledgehammer, although it did continue to work after the circuit board was broken.
Yeah, they've got them, but they're not so good at numbers.
I'd like to know what Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie's son, would have to say about this case.
Lawrence Lessig explains it well (and with examples) on his blog entry about it.
I'll attempt to do an executive summary though. The video will probably not be considered a parody because it does not make fun of the song itself, it just uses the song in its parodying of George Bush and John Kerry.
I think this case is a prime example of how copyright terms have grown out of control. Woody Guthrie wrote the song almost 3/4 of a century ago and has been dead for over 35 years. The fact that this song is still covered by a copyright is absolutely ridiculous. And the kicker is, it's owned by a company that has nothing to do with Woody Guthrie or any of his descendants!
By the letter of the law, Jib Jab's use of the song is probably not parody. That said though, I feel that really, their use of the song should probably be allowed. So hopefully, this will come out favorably for Jib Jab and establish some nice legal precedent. I think that this is probably why the EFF has chosen to take this case in particular.
Another thing though, I feel less inclined to protect the rights of the owner of a song or other work when the owner is not the person who actually wrote the song. In this case, it is not Woody Guthrie's family suing, it's a company.
I'm not sure I understand why the movie studios would have a problem with this. Since it's kind of roving movie theater, almost all the people that are going to be there are going to be invited. This means that you're probably not going to have any more people watching the movie than you might invite to your house to watch a movie some night.
Of course, if you remember your history you might know that when the idea of home video was first proposed it was rejected by most studios (despite the fact that it only allowed you to watch a movie once) because they wouldn't be able to control how many people would watch it.
I'd be curious about how many of these intersections lie inside of buildings or other private property. Has anyone found an intersection yet that could be unvisitable? You know, something like an intersection in the middle of a military complex or something?
I don't mean to be overly-critical of this, but while I think this is a very interesting idea for a project, but I'm not sure the result is half as interesting as the idea. I think it would be a more interesting read if it were just one person or a small group of people visting all of these intersections.
Actually, that's a lot to read, I think somebody should do the same type of thing, but with intersections of lines that are multiples of ten. I mean, you would still get a reasonably complete view of the world and all of the places in it.
Another idea to make the product of this more interesting would be 360 degree panorama shots at each intersection. Again, this would be somehting more easily accomplished if it were just one person or a small group of people doing this.
A bug that causes old users to pay to upgrade? Doesn't sound like a bug at all, sounds more like a business strategy.