Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.
I think it would be cheaper (and better in the long run) in a rack-mount environment to buy quiet, high-quality fans rather than trying to build a device to counter the noise (not that the high-frequency noises caused by most fans would be easy to cancel anyway).
That doesn't excuse the submitter from plagiarizing the non-quoted part of the boingboing article (and he was quoted almost verbatim - the first two sentences are identical). Regardless of how easy it might be to write copy, it's still someone's work and should at least have been attributed to its author.
Yeah, Fark had this 3 days before slashdot (as usual), and the headline was funnier too:
Neil Armstrong says a manned mission to Mars will be easier than his mission to the moon, which in his day was uphill both ways, through six feet of snow, barefoot.
When I was in high school, one of my teachers placed a small keypad/LCD on every desktop in the class (the seats were arranged as long booths, so wires weren't an issue). The LCD just prompted: "Answer to Question #X" and you typed in A, B, C, or D.
You could navigate back and forward, review your answers, and confirm completion. When you were done, the grade was instantly recorded and displayed to the student.
That was over 10 years ago! I see no reason why this shouldn't be possible (and inexpensive) in 2005. Furthermore, you could extend the idea to publish the grades for online viewing, e-mail the grade to students with a detailed answer key explaining why the selected answer was wrong, etc..
Hmm, if you were to have bought the stock on reading that article, you would have already lost 6.2% of your investment, since Take Two just lowered forecasts again for this year.
The stock is not just trading lower due to the "hot coffee" mod. The company was also under federal investigation for accounting fraud. There is obviously a fear in the market that these guys are going to keep doing sketchy things that could hurt them in the long run if they're caught. There's also the fear that the FCC is going to become more strict when rating video games, so that AO rating might hit the next version of GTA, regardless of whether or not it has a "hot coffee" mod hidden inside. I don't personally believe it, but I bet that the concern is part of the reason the stock is low.
They wouldn't have a choice. That's the beauty of *fair* competition. Their customers would either demand lower prices, or leave and go with a colocation provider who has them.
The reason people don't do this right now is because "colocation" really has no standards - it could be some guy's basement or a deluxe, cardkey controlled secure building. It takes so much effort to find out if the provider you found is a good one, that it's usually cheaper to stick to who you have and not waste your time.
But if you could call up a provider and ask "Are you class A data center according to the TIA standard?" you could easily and quickly weed out the ones you don't feel meet the standard of quality. And if *everyone* can do this as well, colo prices would be more competitive.
Yep, I think the problem with colocation is that there are so many different things to worry about at once, and that's how you can be taken advantage of - perhaps a data center standard would consolidate 50% of those factors into a single rating so that I can focus on the things that *won't* be part of it, like pricing, hours, availability, etc.
This is great news for people who host servers in colocation facilities.
If you've ever tried to find a place to host your server in the past, you've probably found that not only does the price wildly fluctuate between hosts for no apparent reason, but also it's very difficult to determine exactly what you're getting, even if you take the time and effort to actually visit the site.
I think that the disorganized fashion of colo services allows people to charge ridiculous prices and get away with things that they wouldn't be able to do in a more stable competitive environment (like charging ridiculous amounts for bandwidth overage and support).
With some sort of standard in place, vendors will be forced to compete on more even ground, prices will be more reasonable, and users won't be afraid to leave their current colo provider because the next one could potentially be even worse.. Not that it will be perfect, of course - just somewhat better.
DFI has a micro-atx desktop motherboard (855GME-MGF) with support for Pentium M chips. The P4 mobile chips are fast, run cool, and use very little power.
ASUS makes an adaptor that allows the use of P4-M CPUs in standard motherboards, but from what I've seen it uses significantly more power than the DFI option (about 25% more)
So, is anyone from slashdot going to correct this story?
This was pure spam, published to sway public opinion in the Atom vs RSS debate, and despite the fact that they've been called out in the comments, their plan is going to work unless slashdot removes the story or substantially edits it to point out the fraud. It will appear in countless syndicated news feeds (in RSS or Atom, ha), in blogs referencing the post (by people who didn't read the comments and were therefore fooled). Google searches about Atom will bring up this story, etc.
I've seen countless fake stories posted to Slashdot, and they get the same (non-)treatment. Slashdot should really do a better job of filtering this stuff out *before* it's published, because - whether they realize it or not - it actually causes a lot of damage to the public's knowledge and understanding of technology. And it *is* partly Slashdot's fault, because it would take no longer than five minutes per story to verify that it is fundamentally valid (and maybe an extra five minutes to spell-check and remove sensationalistic text).
ok, so they used an ipod as an external usb hard drive and booted knoppix with it. we pay researchers to do stuff like this??? there is absolutely nothing amazing/revolutionary/interesting about that...
Well, maybe it's not revolutionary, but it's nice that someone took the time to actually figure out all the random issues related to having a roaming workstation (not just a roaming profile) and making sure that it not only works on any x86 configuration, but that files, settings, and preferences are written back to the device, apps work properly, and everything is encrypted so that your data isn't compromised if your device is stolen..
It's more of a complete solution, versus a bunch of ideas that "anyone could have put together" but no one did.
Well, you could simply explain that client-side scripting has matured in modern browsers over the last five years or so, and therefore it's much easier to develop an application that works consistently with modern browsers. Point them to articles about AJAX (such as this one) and explain that it's becoming the rule, rather than the exception. You could point out that most modern web apps (such as almost everything Google develops) use the technologies mentioned above and work well with almost any modern, standards-compliant browser.
which Microsoft thought was between them and Google.
Where did this come from? It certainly wasn't part of the article. With BAIDU's IPO, and Yahoo expanding its index count to 20B pages (almost 4x Google's count), I seriously doubt that anyone in the search engine business thinks they can predict who will dominate in a few years - it's possible that the next "pagerank killer" is written by some CS grad students or by a search engine company that hardly anyone has heard of (yet).
What really shows that the story is sensationalist is the fact that in the end, the guy asks the company to write a check to him using his real name. So all that FBI, tracking him down, etc. was a complete waste of everyone's time - All they had to do was ask "ok, who should we write the check to?"
Although I love the part where the hacker threatens to open the web bug in a hex editor! Oooohh! And the NYT tries to explain what that means, defining a hex editor as "software that allows users to preview the contents of incoming files.."
Why would I go there when there are numerous other coffee shops that require nothing of the sort?
Less than a mile from my home is a Dunn Brothers Coffee shop and another mile from that is a Panera. Neither require a purchase to use their network but it's fairly rare to see anyone not at least having a coffee while they're there.
Open it up for all those that enter or suffer the consequences of those that can and do offer it free.
Coffee shops are just as much about ambience as they are about coffee. The shop mentioned in the parent post (Victrola) is one in which the owners want a warm, social atmosphere. They experimented with wi-fi, and in their specific case, they found that it destroys the atmosphere that they've enjoyed for the past five years. So they're taking a step back and trying to figure out how to offer wi-fi as "freely" as possible without turning the shop into every other nameless coffee shop with free wi-fi.
The social aspect might not interest you personally, but it is certainly important to others, so the market exists. And if the success of a coffee shop depended on its assimilation into some standard internet cafe, I'd bet that the owners would rather shut the place down and start a new type of business.
The first company who can give me a single, flat monthly bill for local, long-distance and international calls (be it landline, VOIP, or mobile) gets my business
The problem is that the communications companies themselves have to pay varying rates.
Even the wholesale rate to dial certain mobile networks can exceed $1/minute. That's about $43,000 per month. Do you expect them to offer this at $100/month and hope that no one will abuse it?
Of course, you can add restrictions or additional billing for certain networks, but then the communications network no longer meets your requirements.
The parent to my post claimed that the Christian Science Monitor is generating stupid publicity (my words) to sell ads on their site.
I simply said that *if* someone is doing so, the only entity you could really blame it on is Duke. Which kind of ties in with the article - Duke chose to provide the flashiest, most popular digital music player to students, despite the fact that it lacks almost any features that would be useful to them (like voice recording without a separate $25 attachment, easy loading/sharing of files, etc..) It seems that the entire program might have to do with the fact that iPods are "cool" and Duke wanted to do something "cool" to get attention. The fact that they initiated the program with no actual plan for using the devices seems to reinforce that idea (although that doesn't mean it's true).
I'm not spreading FUD. If you can't browse your iPod with iTunes and drag a song onto the music library (or onto another connected iPod) then "Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod." Exactly what I said.
Regarding the directory structure - iTunes prompts you to move your voice memos to the music library as soon as you connect it - which, if you select the default action, puts them into a hidden directory, and then into one of 15+ hash directories. It's a total pain to find them - hence the meaning of the word "difficult."
Did you read the article? Because it's not about "iPod against the machine" and it's not written controversially at all. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor - despite the name - is a very reputable, non-biased news source. The article is also fairly thorough - especially for a non-tech news source.
The actual FA discusses why Duke thought it was a good idea to give iPods to students at all. The first question - why choose the iPod instead of a player with more function? The iPod requires additional accessories and hackery to do all the things that students want to use them for. Casual iPod users would find it difficult to share downloaded lectures, for example, because Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod - protected or not.
And secondly, is it really a good idea to give them away without really coming up with good uses for them? "Let's give everyone an iPod first, and figure out how to integrate it into our curricula later!" That's certainly what seems to have happened - and that's how students feel as well.
If anyone's generating stupid publicity, it's Duke University. The article just tries to figure out what effect (if any) it has had on students and their learning and interaction methods.
FFS, *somebody* buy the slashdot editors a copy of StyleWriter.
Ha, I know this is off-topic, but I find it hilarious that their site has an example image of a document that's been "fixed" by StyleWriter. One of the sentences has been corrected to "I assume you'll dealing this soon..."
Are you sure the slashdot editors don't already have a copy?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there are some reasons you shouldn't just use Creative Commons for software. From the FAQ:
Can I use a creative commons license for software?
Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.
I think it would be cheaper (and better in the long run) in a rack-mount environment to buy quiet, high-quality fans rather than trying to build a device to counter the noise (not that the high-frequency noises caused by most fans would be easy to cancel anyway).
That doesn't excuse the submitter from plagiarizing the non-quoted part of the boingboing article (and he was quoted almost verbatim - the first two sentences are identical). Regardless of how easy it might be to write copy, it's still someone's work and should at least have been attributed to its author.
Yeah, Fark had this 3 days before slashdot (as usual), and the headline was funnier too:
Neil Armstrong says a manned mission to Mars will be easier than his mission to the moon, which in his day was uphill both ways, through six feet of snow, barefoot.
When I was in high school, one of my teachers placed a small keypad/LCD on every desktop in the class (the seats were arranged as long booths, so wires weren't an issue). The LCD just prompted: "Answer to Question #X" and you typed in A, B, C, or D.
You could navigate back and forward, review your answers, and confirm completion. When you were done, the grade was instantly recorded and displayed to the student.
That was over 10 years ago! I see no reason why this shouldn't be possible (and inexpensive) in 2005. Furthermore, you could extend the idea to publish the grades for online viewing, e-mail the grade to students with a detailed answer key explaining why the selected answer was wrong, etc..
sorry, ESRB not FCC.
Hmm, if you were to have bought the stock on reading that article, you would have already lost 6.2% of your investment, since Take Two just lowered forecasts again for this year.
The stock is not just trading lower due to the "hot coffee" mod. The company was also under federal investigation for accounting fraud. There is obviously a fear in the market that these guys are going to keep doing sketchy things that could hurt them in the long run if they're caught. There's also the fear that the FCC is going to become more strict when rating video games, so that AO rating might hit the next version of GTA, regardless of whether or not it has a "hot coffee" mod hidden inside. I don't personally believe it, but I bet that the concern is part of the reason the stock is low.
They wouldn't have a choice. That's the beauty of *fair* competition. Their customers would either demand lower prices, or leave and go with a colocation provider who has them. The reason people don't do this right now is because "colocation" really has no standards - it could be some guy's basement or a deluxe, cardkey controlled secure building. It takes so much effort to find out if the provider you found is a good one, that it's usually cheaper to stick to who you have and not waste your time. But if you could call up a provider and ask "Are you class A data center according to the TIA standard?" you could easily and quickly weed out the ones you don't feel meet the standard of quality. And if *everyone* can do this as well, colo prices would be more competitive.
Yep, I think the problem with colocation is that there are so many different things to worry about at once, and that's how you can be taken advantage of - perhaps a data center standard would consolidate 50% of those factors into a single rating so that I can focus on the things that *won't* be part of it, like pricing, hours, availability, etc.
This is great news for people who host servers in colocation facilities.
If you've ever tried to find a place to host your server in the past, you've probably found that not only does the price wildly fluctuate between hosts for no apparent reason, but also it's very difficult to determine exactly what you're getting, even if you take the time and effort to actually visit the site.
I think that the disorganized fashion of colo services allows people to charge ridiculous prices
and get away with things that they wouldn't be able to do in a more stable competitive environment (like charging ridiculous amounts for bandwidth overage and support).
With some sort of standard in place, vendors will be forced to compete on more even ground, prices will be more reasonable, and users won't be afraid to leave their current colo provider because the next one could potentially be even worse.. Not that it will be perfect, of course - just somewhat better.
DFI has a micro-atx desktop motherboard (855GME-MGF) with support for Pentium M chips. The P4 mobile chips are fast, run cool, and use very little power.
Link to Motherboard
ASUS makes an adaptor that allows the use of P4-M CPUs in standard motherboards, but from what I've seen it uses significantly more power than the DFI option (about 25% more)
So, is anyone from slashdot going to correct this story?
This was pure spam, published to sway public opinion in the Atom vs RSS debate, and despite the fact that they've been called out in the comments, their plan is going to work unless slashdot removes the story or substantially edits it to point out the fraud. It will appear in countless syndicated news feeds (in RSS or Atom, ha), in blogs referencing the post (by people who didn't read the comments and were therefore fooled). Google searches about Atom will bring up this story, etc.
I've seen countless fake stories posted to Slashdot, and they get the same (non-)treatment. Slashdot should really do a better job of filtering this stuff out *before* it's published, because - whether they realize it or not - it actually causes a lot of damage to the public's knowledge and understanding of technology. And it *is* partly Slashdot's fault, because it would take no longer than five minutes per story to verify that it is fundamentally valid (and maybe an extra five minutes to spell-check and remove sensationalistic text).
ok, so they used an ipod as an external usb hard drive and booted knoppix with it. we pay researchers to do stuff like this??? there is absolutely nothing amazing/revolutionary/interesting about that...
Well, maybe it's not revolutionary, but it's nice that someone took the time to actually figure out all the random issues related to having a roaming workstation (not just a roaming profile) and making sure that it not only works on any x86 configuration, but that files, settings, and preferences are written back to the device, apps work properly, and everything is encrypted so that your data isn't compromised if your device is stolen..
It's more of a complete solution, versus a bunch of ideas that "anyone could have put together" but no one did.
Well, you could simply explain that client-side scripting has matured in modern browsers over the last five years or so, and therefore it's much easier to develop an application that works consistently with modern browsers. Point them to articles about AJAX (such as this one) and explain that it's becoming the rule, rather than the exception. You could point out that most modern web apps (such as almost everything Google develops) use the technologies mentioned above and work well with almost any modern, standards-compliant browser.
I'd buy it, just to get a piece of the class-action suit.
..so that you can get that $10 coupon towards the purchase of a new one?
which Microsoft thought was between them and Google.
Where did this come from? It certainly wasn't part of the article. With BAIDU's IPO, and Yahoo expanding its index count to 20B pages (almost 4x Google's count), I seriously doubt that anyone in the search engine business thinks they can predict who will dominate in a few years - it's possible that the next "pagerank killer" is written by some CS grad students or by a search engine company that hardly anyone has heard of (yet).
What really shows that the story is sensationalist is the fact that in the end, the guy asks the company to write a check to him using his real name. So all that FBI, tracking him down, etc. was a complete waste of everyone's time - All they had to do was ask "ok, who should we write the check to?"
Although I love the part where the hacker threatens to open the web bug in a hex editor! Oooohh! And the NYT tries to explain what that means, defining a hex editor as "software that allows users to preview the contents of incoming files.."
Why would I go there when there are numerous other coffee shops that require nothing of the sort?
Less than a mile from my home is a Dunn Brothers Coffee shop and another mile from that is a Panera. Neither require a purchase to use their network but it's fairly rare to see anyone not at least having a coffee while they're there.
Open it up for all those that enter or suffer the consequences of those that can and do offer it free.
Coffee shops are just as much about ambience as they are about coffee. The shop mentioned in the parent post (Victrola) is one in which the owners want a warm, social atmosphere. They experimented with wi-fi, and in their specific case, they found that it destroys the atmosphere that they've enjoyed for the past five years. So they're taking a step back and trying to figure out how to offer wi-fi as "freely" as possible without turning the shop into every other nameless coffee shop with free wi-fi.
The social aspect might not interest you personally, but it is certainly important to others, so the market exists. And if the success of a coffee shop depended on its assimilation into some standard internet cafe, I'd bet that the owners would rather shut the place down and start a new type of business.
The first company who can give me a single, flat monthly bill for local, long-distance and international calls (be it landline, VOIP, or mobile) gets my business
The problem is that the communications companies themselves have to pay varying rates.
Even the wholesale rate to dial certain mobile networks can exceed $1/minute. That's about $43,000 per month. Do you expect them to offer this at $100/month and hope that no one will abuse it?
Of course, you can add restrictions or additional billing for certain networks, but then the communications network no longer meets your requirements.
Article is here:
4 22.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/18/news_6125
ahh sorry, that went over my head :)
Did I say Duke sucks?
The parent to my post claimed that the Christian Science Monitor is generating stupid publicity (my words) to sell ads on their site.
I simply said that *if* someone is doing so, the only entity you could really blame it on is Duke. Which kind of ties in with the article - Duke chose to provide the flashiest, most popular digital music player to students, despite the fact that it lacks almost any features that would be useful to them (like voice recording without a separate $25 attachment, easy loading/sharing of files, etc..) It seems that the entire program might have to do with the fact that iPods are "cool" and Duke wanted to do something "cool" to get attention. The fact that they initiated the program with no actual plan for using the devices seems to reinforce that idea (although that doesn't mean it's true).
I'm not spreading FUD. If you can't browse your iPod with iTunes and drag a song onto the music library (or onto another connected iPod) then "Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod." Exactly what I said.
Regarding the directory structure - iTunes prompts you to move your voice memos to the music library as soon as you connect it - which, if you select the default action, puts them into a hidden directory, and then into one of 15+ hash directories. It's a total pain to find them - hence the meaning of the word "difficult."
Did you read the article? Because it's not about "iPod against the machine" and it's not written controversially at all. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor - despite the name - is a very reputable, non-biased news source. The article is also fairly thorough - especially for a non-tech news source.
The actual FA discusses why Duke thought it was a good idea to give iPods to students at all. The first question - why choose the iPod instead of a player with more function? The iPod requires additional accessories and hackery to do all the things that students want to use them for. Casual iPod users would find it difficult to share downloaded lectures, for example, because Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod - protected or not.
And secondly, is it really a good idea to give them away without really coming up with good uses for them? "Let's give everyone an iPod first, and figure out how to integrate it into our curricula later!" That's certainly what seems to have happened - and that's how students feel as well.
If anyone's generating stupid publicity, it's Duke University. The article just tries to figure out what effect (if any) it has had on students and their learning and interaction methods.
FFS, *somebody* buy the slashdot editors a copy of StyleWriter.
:)
Ha, I know this is off-topic, but I find it hilarious that their site has an example image of a document that's been "fixed" by StyleWriter. One of the sentences has been corrected to "I assume you'll dealing this soon..." Are you sure the slashdot editors don't already have a copy?