This is probably a good thing from a certain point of view. If they had tried to restrict political calls, then the whole regulation might have been tossed out on 1st Amendment grounds. It certainly would have clouded the issue, and would have very like have been challenged.
First of all the ZPC is not versatile; it can never be a good gaming machine and since there is no TV-out or DVI connector you're limited to a VGA display, so there's no video editing possibilities.
Obviously this guy doesn't know much about video editing. The firewire on this makes it very video-editing capable. Disk space is more likely to hamper serious video work, but an external firewire drive could be used to gain space.
Where o where is my ware to share? Care to share where is the fair ware, if you dare? This affair makes me beware of ware that is mostly air, but I sit and stare, in my chair in my lair, at my monitor's glare, and still I prepare a fare to pay for this wair, but I am starting to wear of the blare (the blare that this ware may really be brought to bear), and now I swear that were this ware that is their care to share be in my very lair (though that would be rare), even then, I would despair to declare that the ware is there, for I really know that the ware will ne'er be, whether by share, or even prayer, and that is most unfair to me, if I may dare to declare.
During a cabinet meeting, President Lincoln was listening to an argument over, quite possibly, USB 1.1 vs. USB 2:
Lincoln: "How many legs would a dog have if you called the tail a leg?"
Some Flack: "Well, Mr. President, it would be five."
Lincoln: "No, it would still be four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
And here's a text-ad at the top of my slashdot page right now:
2 Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA $24
Ultra Fast High Speed USB 2.0 Hot-Swappable Card Bus Adapter!
www.MyDigitalDiscount.com
What the hell is Ultra Fast High Speed? At least with a number, you can't really embellish it -- New Super Extra 2.0! It's twice the 2.0! No, 2.0 is 2.0, or at least it was at one time. Now 2.0 ain't even 2.0 anymore.
It seems to me that this is a clear violation of due process. Not only does the government not have the right to destroy your property without due process of law, it is even more egregious of an abuse for the govermnent to grant such a power to private parties -- to act independently of law enforcement to destroy other private persons' property. And by the sound of it, he is advocating copyright holders being able to do this without any kind of warrant or oversight at all. Hey, I think that's my stuff, so I kill your PC.
Vigilante justice is outlawed in every other form -- this is little more than authorizing digital lynch mobs.
Considering that there are no drivers needed for a router, and the SMC card came with drivers that installed fine on my laptop, your argument makes a nice bit of FUD, but doesn't work that way in real life. Nice try, though.
As far as I can tell from the Apple site, there are no feature differences between my equipment and Apple's, except that my router will also run a LAN over ethernet as well as a WLAN.
I paid $30 for a WLAN router and $20 for a wireless card a few weeks ago. Apple's Airport goes for $199 and the cards are $80-$100. Now, yes, the latest Airport goes to 802.11g, but, since you can't seem to get an 802.11b Airport anymore (at least directly from apple), so you're paying $199 whether you need 802.11g or not.
Apple has paid the price for making their users pay their prices.
But the original idea is still intact: Redesigning Linux for use by demanding business customers "is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (a) a high degree of design coordination, (b) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (c) access to Unix code and development methods; (d) Unix architectural experience; and (e) a very significant financial investment," the amended suit says.
Since when is "a high degree of design coordination" illegal? Does SCO have a patent on sound design and development practices? Or using expensive equipment? It sounds like SCO is complaining that IBM simply threw a lot of resources at Linux which ultimately makes Unix less competitive. Did SCO at some point buy a perpetual license to make money? Will GM sue Ford for using a wind tunnel to develop better cars?
You get sort of a self reinforcing cycle of wankage the more we increase the "relevance", "awareness" or "utility" of pageranking.
That reminds me of Asimov's pyschohistory and the Second Foundation. That the First Foundation had to be unaware of the influence of the Second Foundation for it to work. Maybe that makes Searchking the Mule?
It looks like what they are trying to do is frighten IBM's customers, which would lead to IBM settling with (i.e., buying out) SCO to protect those customers.
I think that this one will be quite ineffective. I seriously doubt that any of IBM's customers will worry in the least that they will not be protected from this. I would bet that all of those CTO/CIOs are sleeping just fine, because they have faith that big blue will take care of them. I guess it's possible that IBM and its customers could be harmed by this, but I wouldn't put much money on it.
Though, the people who might truly be worried are SCO's customers. It's a much more likely possibility that SCO destroys itself than it destroys IBM.
That when I go to rent a movie, it's usually on a spur of the moment thing.
You, my friend, do not have young children. "Hey, let's go get a movie" turns into a two-hour ordeal of car-seats, crying, dropped ice-cream, potty breaks and/or diaper changes, and so on...
The reality is that you give up a little spontaneity for a lot of convenience. You don't find hopping over to the video store for a movie all that troublesome, but there are plenty of people who do. Having a movie you want to see, right at hand, when you find yourself with a couple of hours of peace is a luxury to a lot of people.
I work with a guy whose family lives in Alaska. The one video store in town has a pitiful selection. Netflix provides something they simply can't get otherwise.
As far as movies go, there is a high psychological threshold that has to be reached in order to go rent a movie. Why? Because you have to go, pay on the spot, and are committed to going back within a few days to a week to return the movie. You are less likely to rent something wierd or experiement with different tastes because, well, because, that's just how most people are. But clicking on a movie on the site is low-threshold, and I find myself putting all sorts of odd movies on my netflix list that I would almost certainly never go through the effort to rent at Blockbuster.
I found a whitepaper which answers that question on the front page of Red Hat's site. But, here's their summary:
The Product Family Comparison table on the following pages detail the differences between the Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux product
families. The most important differences are as follows:
Product Focus: Red Hat Linux products are designed for the Open Source movement and home/personal user. These low-cost products feature the
latest technologies and provide a means for them to be exposed to the general public for extensive testing. Meanwhile Red Hat Enterprise Linux products provide fully matured and stable technologies that are specifically
targeted for commercial usage.
Product Release Cycle: Red Hat Linux products are released every 4-6 months. This is necessary to keep up to date with the latest Open Source code, but is too rapid for both commercial IT deployments and for our ISV and OEM parters to keep up with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are released on a 12-18 month schedule, giving time for customers to plan and execute upgrades and Red Hat's partners to certify and sell their products.
Product Support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are provided with a full year of support services, renewable for up to five years. This includes upgrades, unlimited-incident remedial support and access to errata/patches and updates. These support services are a vital requirement for any
commercial IT deployment. Meanwhile, the rapidly changing Red Hat Linux products are provided with 30-60 days of support, and a maximum of one year of errata/patch availability (from initial product release).
Product Certifications: As noted above, the 4-6 monthly release cycle of the Red Hat Linux products proved to be too rapid for Red Hat's ISV and OEM partners, so commercial customers were often unable to obtain certified solutions from vendors. The slower release cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products enables ISVs and OEMs to provide fully certified hardware and software solutions.
Benchmarks: Prior to the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products there were very few audited performance benchmarks available for Linux. The rapid release cycle of consumer-focused products makes benchmarking impractical. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products have multiple audited
benchmark results, including several world records.
I suppose that Michael is in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation here. If he watches the ad, he opens himself up to harassment for it (unclean! unclean!). If he doesn't watch the ad, he looks a little incompetent.
Not that I am saying that you shouldn't harass Michael...now that would just be silly.
I've been juggling since I was about 12. I'm not an expert, but I've been working on juggling 5 balls for the last few years, and can do it reasonably well. 5 is much harder than 3, and takes very good rythm, vision, and reflexes -- you're tracking all those balls and trying to keep them moving in a very precise pattern.
Because of this, my vision and reflexes are kind of sharp -- at least in a specific way. I've had many moments that remind me of the scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the older lady knocks over the cup to test the young girl's reflexes. She snatches the cup without thinking. I'm always catching things while they are being knocked over or grabbing things out of midair, just out of conditioning.
However, I suck at a lot of other physical things, most sports, and am a bit of a klutz at times. It's kind of like working on your bicep over and over, but neglecting other things. You've got this unnaturally strong bicep but the rest is much weaker. And I don't juggle, thinking of how this is going to pay off in all these other ways. I just like to juggle.
I'm pretty much just speculating, but I would suspect that playing a lot of video games gives you good visual skills that probably don't translate into a lot of other real-world stuff simply because the abilities that are developed are so narrow.
Compare to a football quarterback (you see, Marge, there are jocks, and nerds. Being a jock...oh, sorry, I digress). As a QB, you have to track several receivers, the pass rushers, keep an eye on the game clock, and keep your wits under the very real-world threat of being flattened by some steroid-raging linebacker. Plus all the physical skills, and the playbook knowledge (no, it ain't the same as programming C++, but you don't have 300-lb Bubba bearing down on you while you are coding either). There's a much wider range of skill development there, that encompasses both the physical and mental. Not to say that there are not other ways to develop those things, but let's just say that if you gain any skills out of playing Quake 12 hours a day, be thankful.
As a DBA in a pure-MS shop with dozens of servers and about 1000 desktops, I can say that we are probably typical of the corporate customer who lives by MS but also resents the cost and control they exert over our enterprise. It sometimes feels like being a colony ruled by the king. Life can be good, but taxes are high and you are pretty much under the thumb of the big guy. When he says pay up, it ain't cheap, and you don't get much say in the process; it's pay up, or else starve. I think in general, the natives are getting restless, and it will not be long before we see open revolt against microsoft and their expensive licensing model.
Microsoft seems to be getting the picture. While it looks like they are making just a couple of strategic concessions to try to maintain their stranglehold on the market. However, I don't think that they can stem the tide so easily. Eventually, they will have to make concessions to just about everyone -- i.e., they have to reduce their price pretty much across the board, because the market, having real competition, won't sustain their artificially high prices anymore (how do you think they got their $40 billion, not to mention Gates' 40?).
It's the same reason that the music industry is full of bland, artificial, manufactured "Party Posse" garbage.
It's the same reason that the same romantic comedy script has been being remade over and over for decades.
And don't even get me started on the me-too nature of TV. Can you say "let's beat reality TV until the horse is nothing but a squishy pile of bad ratings"?
Music, films, games are all industries. Creative output is a side effect of making money -- but only if it cannot be avoided. Creativity involves risk, so the risk-minimizing side of business tends to minimize creativity. To use a baseball analogy, it's the simple fact of doing something that hasn't been tried before may strike out miserably (or hit a grand slam), while rehashing some commercially sucessful crap will probably get you a base hit.
Look at the games industry in Japan. They've got all kinds of quirky, really abstract, sometimes incomprehensible games. Why? Do they value the art-form of games so much? More likely, just because that stuff will sell.
I think the games industry is more responsive to fans then the music industry, which is more geared toward trying to dictate tastes rather than respond to them (of course, that approach works quite effectively with stupid teenage girls). And I think that the game industry does not suffer the cartel-like control of the RIAA, so it is easier for the independent artists to get play.
The film industry recognizes the need for being innovative and creative, but I think it has the problem that movies are hellishly expensive to make, so it is difficult to movie executives to do too many fresh and creative things.
Maybe this would be big in Japan, but I don't see it as much more than a parlor trick here. Hey look, I can control the car with my cell phone! After seeing it once or twice, most people would find it pretty ho-hum. And the phone is not really suited to be a good R/C remote, so I don't see them selling cars sans remotes because people are using their cell phones.
What made me think though, is how much cooler it would be if some dude hacked his phone and/or car so that the phone could control the car. For whatever reason, the idea of hacking something to do some trick is far more interesting than the engineers implementing the same trick.
The paper is manufactured by Crane & Co. of Dalton, Massachusetts (I grew up in the neighboring town of Pittsfield, and it was a source of local pride that the money paper was made in our area). Though it does not appear that you can buy, say, blank sheets of $20 bill paper via their web site. Seems like that would be a moneymaker to me. As long as they got paid in real bills, of course.
I think that would make a great plot for a caper movie -- pulling off a big heist of real currency paper from Crane & Co.
Slashdot Mirror
PC Load Letter! What the fuck is that?!
Shocking!
This is probably a good thing from a certain point of view. If they had tried to restrict political calls, then the whole regulation might have been tossed out on 1st Amendment grounds. It certainly would have clouded the issue, and would have very like have been challenged.
Wait a second! MS Bob is not supported? Oh, man, I just got it stable! Well, does anyone know when Bob XP is coming out?
Obviously this guy doesn't know much about video editing. The firewire on this makes it very video-editing capable. Disk space is more likely to hamper serious video work, but an external firewire drive could be used to gain space.
sco.ftp file:
Step 3: run sco.bat and profit?Where o where is my ware to share?
Care to share where is the fair ware, if you dare?
This affair makes me beware of ware that is mostly air,
but I sit and stare, in my chair in my lair, at my monitor's glare,
and still I prepare a fare to pay for this wair,
but I am starting to wear of the blare
(the blare that this ware may really be brought to bear),
and now I swear that were this ware that is their care to share be in my very lair (though that would be rare),
even then, I would despair to declare that the ware is there,
for I really know that the ware will ne'er be, whether by share, or even prayer,
and that is most unfair to me, if I may dare to declare.
Lincoln: "How many legs would a dog have if you called the tail a leg?"
Some Flack: "Well, Mr. President, it would be five."
Lincoln: "No, it would still be four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
And here's a text-ad at the top of my slashdot page right now:
2 Port USB 2.0 PCMCIA $24
Ultra Fast High Speed USB 2.0 Hot-Swappable Card Bus Adapter!
www.MyDigitalDiscount.com
What the hell is Ultra Fast High Speed? At least with a number, you can't really embellish it -- New Super Extra 2.0! It's twice the 2.0! No, 2.0 is 2.0, or at least it was at one time. Now 2.0 ain't even 2.0 anymore.
it is
Vigilante justice is outlawed in every other form -- this is little more than authorizing digital lynch mobs.
As far as I can tell from the Apple site, there are no feature differences between my equipment and Apple's, except that my router will also run a LAN over ethernet as well as a WLAN.
Apple has paid the price for making their users pay their prices.
Since when is "a high degree of design coordination" illegal? Does SCO have a patent on sound design and development practices? Or using expensive equipment? It sounds like SCO is complaining that IBM simply threw a lot of resources at Linux which ultimately makes Unix less competitive. Did SCO at some point buy a perpetual license to make money? Will GM sue Ford for using a wind tunnel to develop better cars?
That reminds me of Asimov's pyschohistory and the Second Foundation. That the First Foundation had to be unaware of the influence of the Second Foundation for it to work. Maybe that makes Searchking the Mule?
I think that this one will be quite ineffective. I seriously doubt that any of IBM's customers will worry in the least that they will not be protected from this. I would bet that all of those CTO/CIOs are sleeping just fine, because they have faith that big blue will take care of them. I guess it's possible that IBM and its customers could be harmed by this, but I wouldn't put much money on it.
Though, the people who might truly be worried are SCO's customers. It's a much more likely possibility that SCO destroys itself than it destroys IBM.
You, my friend, do not have young children. "Hey, let's go get a movie" turns into a two-hour ordeal of car-seats, crying, dropped ice-cream, potty breaks and/or diaper changes, and so on...
The reality is that you give up a little spontaneity for a lot of convenience. You don't find hopping over to the video store for a movie all that troublesome, but there are plenty of people who do. Having a movie you want to see, right at hand, when you find yourself with a couple of hours of peace is a luxury to a lot of people.
I work with a guy whose family lives in Alaska. The one video store in town has a pitiful selection. Netflix provides something they simply can't get otherwise.
As far as movies go, there is a high psychological threshold that has to be reached in order to go rent a movie. Why? Because you have to go, pay on the spot, and are committed to going back within a few days to a week to return the movie. You are less likely to rent something wierd or experiement with different tastes because, well, because, that's just how most people are. But clicking on a movie on the site is low-threshold, and I find myself putting all sorts of odd movies on my netflix list that I would almost certainly never go through the effort to rent at Blockbuster.
The Product Family Comparison table on the following pages detail the differences between the Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux product families. The most important differences are as follows:
Product Focus: Red Hat Linux products are designed for the Open Source movement and home/personal user. These low-cost products feature the latest technologies and provide a means for them to be exposed to the general public for extensive testing. Meanwhile Red Hat Enterprise Linux products provide fully matured and stable technologies that are specifically targeted for commercial usage.
Product Release Cycle: Red Hat Linux products are released every 4-6 months. This is necessary to keep up to date with the latest Open Source code, but is too rapid for both commercial IT deployments and for our ISV and OEM parters to keep up with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are released on a 12-18 month schedule, giving time for customers to plan and execute upgrades and Red Hat's partners to certify and sell their products.
Product Support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are provided with a full year of support services, renewable for up to five years. This includes upgrades, unlimited-incident remedial support and access to errata/patches and updates. These support services are a vital requirement for any commercial IT deployment. Meanwhile, the rapidly changing Red Hat Linux products are provided with 30-60 days of support, and a maximum of one year of errata/patch availability (from initial product release).
Product Certifications: As noted above, the 4-6 monthly release cycle of the Red Hat Linux products proved to be too rapid for Red Hat's ISV and OEM partners, so commercial customers were often unable to obtain certified solutions from vendors. The slower release cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products enables ISVs and OEMs to provide fully certified hardware and software solutions.
Benchmarks: Prior to the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products there were very few audited performance benchmarks available for Linux. The rapid release cycle of consumer-focused products makes benchmarking impractical. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products have multiple audited benchmark results, including several world records.
...from John Deere
I suppose that Michael is in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation here. If he watches the ad, he opens himself up to harassment for it (unclean! unclean!). If he doesn't watch the ad, he looks a little incompetent.
Not that I am saying that you shouldn't harass Michael...now that would just be silly.
Then, by your logic, there are no more than 10,000 addresses in any zip code. That seems a bit low.
Naked Lunch
"I can think of at least two things wrong with that title" - Nelson MuntzBecause of this, my vision and reflexes are kind of sharp -- at least in a specific way. I've had many moments that remind me of the scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the older lady knocks over the cup to test the young girl's reflexes. She snatches the cup without thinking. I'm always catching things while they are being knocked over or grabbing things out of midair, just out of conditioning.
However, I suck at a lot of other physical things, most sports, and am a bit of a klutz at times. It's kind of like working on your bicep over and over, but neglecting other things. You've got this unnaturally strong bicep but the rest is much weaker. And I don't juggle, thinking of how this is going to pay off in all these other ways. I just like to juggle.
I'm pretty much just speculating, but I would suspect that playing a lot of video games gives you good visual skills that probably don't translate into a lot of other real-world stuff simply because the abilities that are developed are so narrow.
Compare to a football quarterback (you see, Marge, there are jocks, and nerds. Being a jock...oh, sorry, I digress). As a QB, you have to track several receivers, the pass rushers, keep an eye on the game clock, and keep your wits under the very real-world threat of being flattened by some steroid-raging linebacker. Plus all the physical skills, and the playbook knowledge (no, it ain't the same as programming C++, but you don't have 300-lb Bubba bearing down on you while you are coding either). There's a much wider range of skill development there, that encompasses both the physical and mental. Not to say that there are not other ways to develop those things, but let's just say that if you gain any skills out of playing Quake 12 hours a day, be thankful.
Microsoft seems to be getting the picture. While it looks like they are making just a couple of strategic concessions to try to maintain their stranglehold on the market. However, I don't think that they can stem the tide so easily. Eventually, they will have to make concessions to just about everyone -- i.e., they have to reduce their price pretty much across the board, because the market, having real competition, won't sustain their artificially high prices anymore (how do you think they got their $40 billion, not to mention Gates' 40?).
It's the same reason that the music industry is full of bland, artificial, manufactured "Party Posse" garbage.
It's the same reason that the same romantic comedy script has been being remade over and over for decades.
And don't even get me started on the me-too nature of TV. Can you say "let's beat reality TV until the horse is nothing but a squishy pile of bad ratings"?
Music, films, games are all industries. Creative output is a side effect of making money -- but only if it cannot be avoided. Creativity involves risk, so the risk-minimizing side of business tends to minimize creativity. To use a baseball analogy, it's the simple fact of doing something that hasn't been tried before may strike out miserably (or hit a grand slam), while rehashing some commercially sucessful crap will probably get you a base hit.
Look at the games industry in Japan. They've got all kinds of quirky, really abstract, sometimes incomprehensible games. Why? Do they value the art-form of games so much? More likely, just because that stuff will sell.
I think the games industry is more responsive to fans then the music industry, which is more geared toward trying to dictate tastes rather than respond to them (of course, that approach works quite effectively with stupid teenage girls). And I think that the game industry does not suffer the cartel-like control of the RIAA, so it is easier for the independent artists to get play.
The film industry recognizes the need for being innovative and creative, but I think it has the problem that movies are hellishly expensive to make, so it is difficult to movie executives to do too many fresh and creative things.
What made me think though, is how much cooler it would be if some dude hacked his phone and/or car so that the phone could control the car. For whatever reason, the idea of hacking something to do some trick is far more interesting than the engineers implementing the same trick.
I think that would make a great plot for a caper movie -- pulling off a big heist of real currency paper from Crane & Co.