For a while O'Reilly was the premier book publisher for computer related topics. However if there latest offerings (going back at least 2 years) have been any indication, they have had mucho trouble attracting top writing talent.
Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.
Also, it is important to note how fragile O'Reilly books are. The construction techniques leave much to be desired as pages frequently just fall out of the binding. This is a small minus, however, compared to the lack of quality content on those pages.
This is not to say that there aren't any good O'Reilly books, though. Most of their stuff published before 1999 was pretty good and their Perl coverage is second to none. However most other topics are pretty shabbily approached and the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better.
The shit residue on my toilet bowl is better than his "best work".
I wish it were true that he were a better writer, but if you take a look at his other stuff, especially Idoru, he couldn't come up with an original plot to save his life.
At least the cyberpunk fanboys keep his bills paid.
If there's even a smidgen of GPL code in QT, Apple'd better get their lawyers ready. Using a GPL'd component in a project is equivalent to "basing" the project on that component.
I'd love as much as anyone else to see what's under that QuickTime hood, though!
At some point you've got to make the tradeoff between living free and suffering and living a tiny less free and being comfortable.
Hell, every time you choose to use cash instead of bartering you are making yourself traceable.
Instead of complaining about this kind of thing which anyone who had two synapses to rub together already realized was possible, you ought to be living in the tundra of Alaska where no one gives a damn where you are.
in this just-published patent applicaton, Amazon earlier told the USPTO it's able to use product viewing histories to determine the similarity or relatedness between products for which little or no purchase history data exists.
So which claim should you believe?
It doesn't take a 100% sample to predict the direction a population will take.
It's certainly commendable that China goes about building its own chips for security reasons, but one has to wonder about the IP upon which they are basing the chip.
If it is x86 compatible and they are not paying to license the x86 instruction set, then the Chinese are in violation of Intel's IP rights. Now, they could probably get away with selling them as unmarked chips that just happen to be compatible with Pentiums.
This kind of IP thievery has always been a hallmark of east Asian technology. At least the Japanese improved on the tech they took. The Chinese can't seem to even beat an 8 year old tech.
Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Everyone has access to Nature. It is just waiting for someone to find out all its secrets.
But for those that do, it is important that they receive some sort of carrot to keep them motivated. If this means charging for academic journals, then perhaps that's the way to go about it.
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system.
Hale Bopp vs. others
on
A Comet To Watch
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
IANAAP, so I'm unqualified to offer unqualified blanket statements, but the likes of Hale Bopp will not be seen again during our lifetimes.
That thing was not only visible with the naked eye, it was spectacular. The tail was clearly visible as a long spray of light, even without telescopes or binoculars.
It was what a comet ought to be. Large against the sky, with streaming tail and glowing nucleus, and big enough that all these details can be made out with the naked eye.
I saw Halley's comet last time it came through and I was very disappointed. It was too small, too far away, and too dim to make it out even with binoculars.
If this next comet can rival Hale Bopp in its show, it will certainly be a treat.
But I can yell whatever I like into your window, which is the correct analogy in this case.
You pay for the property you live in, but you have no control over what kind of sounds may enter from the outside except the physical barriers (akin to spam filters) that you establish yourself.
You, like the judge, can't see the forest for the trees.
In your zeal to blast spammers with this theives of service label, you don't realize that you already receive a lot of unwanted speech that you had to pay for whether directly or indirectly.
There really isn't any justification for the double standard.
Every time you "strike a blow" against spam, you are striking a blow at the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Maybe that's fine if you live in countries like Canada where no right is guaranteed (in fact, they can be revoked at any time), but here in the U.S our founders fought to free us from such tyranny of the monarchy.
Now, with the fight against spam, the masses threaten to turn the tyranny of the monarchy into the tyranny of the masses.
Shame on this judge for ruling this way. No doubt the ruling will be overturned in the future.
Anyone with content on the web has three choices when it comes to people stealing their copywritten materials.
1) Say nothing and absorb the losses 2) Become aforementioned "attack dog" 3) Take the materials down
Pirates would like nothing more than for content providers to do choice 1. However, that's an unlikely scenario to last for a long time and eventually the content provider will have to resort to either attacking pirates (ala RIAA) or simply take their ball and go home.
At least with #2 the stuff stays online and is accessible to legitimate users of the material. No one wins if the material goes offline.
This is not to say that I think AMD doesn't have some good technology. Their FPU is second to none, and they have certainly advanced chip cooling to new levels.
But the fact remains that DDR is a stopgap chip technology. Anything built on top of it will be hampered by its lack of scalability. This includes Intel chipsets based on DDR as well.
With RDRAM and DDR equivalent in price, there isn't any reason to stick with DDR.
DDR is a dead end, folks. Unless AMD hops aboard the RDRAM train, they're going to be left behind.
With all the heat problems that AMD suffers from, it's no wonder they won't pump the Athlon speed much higher. Add to that the natural bottleneck that DDR supplies and you've got yourself a hot, slow machine.
Maybe hot and slow works for sex, but it doesn't work for computers.
Disney's main strength has never been the quality of its movies. Marketing the hell out of those movies using media blitz, "collectible videos", and all manner of plush dolls has been their main strength.
So what do you do when your company can't afford to develop its product in-house? You contract out to the specialists. Sometimes you get beautiful results (Fantasia 2000). Sometimes you get mediocre results (Spirited Away).
It's always a crapshoot when you contract your work out, but it's almost always cheaper. It allows you to focus on your core competencies and let's someone else focus on theirs.
Holy cow. You know not of what you speak. Disney is the prime offender of our rights. Yes, even stealing music and movies from online P2P networks is a right, and it's being infringed by the likes of Disney, Bertelsman, Tomy, Sony, and MGM. When they buy off a senator like Hollings (D: is for Disney), they are buying their agenda.
If you support Disney, you support slavery. Music and movies are intangible things. Do you think you should be restricted from singing in the shower?
Get with it, dumbfuck. Disney isn't interested in anything but making a buck (or stealing a yen, in this case). Perhaps you'd support dumping chemical waste into your neighborhood's watershed?
We have a problem. It is pollution of our local environment by decomposing (!) computer parts. The solution is to get rid of those parts so that our own environment is not hurt.
Easiest solution: ship it somewhere else.
The countries that we ship these things to are HAPPY to take them. It makes them money and it gives them spare computer parts.
If you think that taking away another country's means of existence is the right thing to do, perhaps it's time to sign up at your local anarchist hovel for the spring trip to the WTO meeting.
Trade that is welcomed by both parties is not bad. Just because third party interlopers feel the need to stamp and huff about it, it doesn't mean that it should be done away with.
Tablet PCs are too new to come to any conclusion about the market's uptake of it. They still aren't available in stores, so it's probably better to hold off on any pronouncements like that.
Slashdot Mirror
I had lunch with merlyn a couple years back in Seattle. You couldn't meet a nicer guy than Randal or a more raucous troupe than the Stonehenge folks.
Truly an American icon. He will be missed.
For a while O'Reilly was the premier book publisher for computer related topics. However if there latest offerings (going back at least 2 years) have been any indication, they have had mucho trouble attracting top writing talent.
Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.
Also, it is important to note how fragile O'Reilly books are. The construction techniques leave much to be desired as pages frequently just fall out of the binding. This is a small minus, however, compared to the lack of quality content on those pages.
This is not to say that there aren't any good O'Reilly books, though. Most of their stuff published before 1999 was pretty good and their Perl coverage is second to none. However most other topics are pretty shabbily approached and the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better.
The shit residue on my toilet bowl is better than his "best work".
I wish it were true that he were a better writer, but if you take a look at his other stuff, especially Idoru, he couldn't come up with an original plot to save his life.
At least the cyberpunk fanboys keep his bills paid.
If there's even a smidgen of GPL code in QT, Apple'd better get their lawyers ready. Using a GPL'd component in a project is equivalent to "basing" the project on that component.
I'd love as much as anyone else to see what's under that QuickTime hood, though!
At some point you've got to make the tradeoff between living free and suffering and living a tiny less free and being comfortable.
Hell, every time you choose to use cash instead of bartering you are making yourself traceable.
Instead of complaining about this kind of thing which anyone who had two synapses to rub together already realized was possible, you ought to be living in the tundra of Alaska where no one gives a damn where you are.
Fucking luddites. On Slashdot, no less.
in this just-published patent applicaton, Amazon earlier told the USPTO it's able to use product viewing histories to determine the similarity or relatedness between products for which little or no purchase history data exists.
So which claim should you believe?
It doesn't take a 100% sample to predict the direction a population will take.
It seems to be an x86-based chip that implemented with a RISC core. Kind of like all modern x86 chips.
It's certainly commendable that China goes about building its own chips for security reasons, but one has to wonder about the IP upon which they are basing the chip.
If it is x86 compatible and they are not paying to license the x86 instruction set, then the Chinese are in violation of Intel's IP rights. Now, they could probably get away with selling them as unmarked chips that just happen to be compatible with Pentiums.
This kind of IP thievery has always been a hallmark of east Asian technology. At least the Japanese improved on the tech they took. The Chinese can't seem to even beat an 8 year old tech.
Everyone has access to Nature. It is just waiting for someone to find out all its secrets.
But for those that do, it is important that they receive some sort of carrot to keep them motivated. If this means charging for academic journals, then perhaps that's the way to go about it.
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system.
IANAAP, so I'm unqualified to offer unqualified blanket statements, but the likes of Hale Bopp will not be seen again during our lifetimes.
That thing was not only visible with the naked eye, it was spectacular. The tail was clearly visible as a long spray of light, even without telescopes or binoculars.
It was what a comet ought to be. Large against the sky, with streaming tail and glowing nucleus, and big enough that all these details can be made out with the naked eye.
I saw Halley's comet last time it came through and I was very disappointed. It was too small, too far away, and too dim to make it out even with binoculars.
If this next comet can rival Hale Bopp in its show, it will certainly be a treat.
You can complain about them adding ", eh?" and ", ya hoser" to the end of each sentence.
I thought that was pretty annoying.
But I can yell whatever I like into your window, which is the correct analogy in this case.
You pay for the property you live in, but you have no control over what kind of sounds may enter from the outside except the physical barriers (akin to spam filters) that you establish yourself.
You, like the judge, can't see the forest for the trees.
In your zeal to blast spammers with this theives of service label, you don't realize that you already receive a lot of unwanted speech that you had to pay for whether directly or indirectly.
There really isn't any justification for the double standard.
Advertising is Free Speech.
Every time you "strike a blow" against spam, you are striking a blow at the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Maybe that's fine if you live in countries like Canada where no right is guaranteed (in fact, they can be revoked at any time), but here in the U.S our founders fought to free us from such tyranny of the monarchy.
Now, with the fight against spam, the masses threaten to turn the tyranny of the monarchy into the tyranny of the masses.
Shame on this judge for ruling this way. No doubt the ruling will be overturned in the future.
Shouldn't they say megagrams?
Anyone with content on the web has three choices when it comes to people stealing their copywritten materials.
1) Say nothing and absorb the losses
2) Become aforementioned "attack dog"
3) Take the materials down
Pirates would like nothing more than for content providers to do choice 1. However, that's an unlikely scenario to last for a long time and eventually the content provider will have to resort to either attacking pirates (ala RIAA) or simply take their ball and go home.
At least with #2 the stuff stays online and is accessible to legitimate users of the material. No one wins if the material goes offline.
This is not to say that I think AMD doesn't have some good technology. Their FPU is second to none, and they have certainly advanced chip cooling to new levels.
But the fact remains that DDR is a stopgap chip technology. Anything built on top of it will be hampered by its lack of scalability. This includes Intel chipsets based on DDR as well.
With RDRAM and DDR equivalent in price, there isn't any reason to stick with DDR.
DDR is a dead end, folks. Unless AMD hops aboard the RDRAM train, they're going to be left behind.
With all the heat problems that AMD suffers from, it's no wonder they won't pump the Athlon speed much higher. Add to that the natural bottleneck that DDR supplies and you've got yourself a hot, slow machine.
Maybe hot and slow works for sex, but it doesn't work for computers.
I believe Adobe Acrobat can import Word documents and save them as PDF.
So the Americans finally imitate the Japanese!
In other news today, Microsoft was continuing development of Longhorn, its upgrade to the wildly successful Windows XP operating system.
For a company that people love to hate, they sure have a lot of demand for their product!
Disney's main strength has never been the quality of its movies. Marketing the hell out of those movies using media blitz, "collectible videos", and all manner of plush dolls has been their main strength.
So what do you do when your company can't afford to develop its product in-house? You contract out to the specialists. Sometimes you get beautiful results (Fantasia 2000). Sometimes you get mediocre results (Spirited Away).
It's always a crapshoot when you contract your work out, but it's almost always cheaper. It allows you to focus on your core competencies and let's someone else focus on theirs.
Holy cow. You know not of what you speak. Disney is the prime offender of our rights. Yes, even stealing music and movies from online P2P networks is a right, and it's being infringed by the likes of Disney, Bertelsman, Tomy, Sony, and MGM. When they buy off a senator like Hollings (D: is for Disney), they are buying their agenda.
If you support Disney, you support slavery. Music and movies are intangible things. Do you think you should be restricted from singing in the shower?
Get with it, dumbfuck. Disney isn't interested in anything but making a buck (or stealing a yen, in this case). Perhaps you'd support dumping chemical waste into your neighborhood's watershed?
We have a problem. It is pollution of our local environment by decomposing (!) computer parts. The solution is to get rid of those parts so that our own environment is not hurt.
Easiest solution: ship it somewhere else.
The countries that we ship these things to are HAPPY to take them. It makes them money and it gives them spare computer parts.
If you think that taking away another country's means of existence is the right thing to do, perhaps it's time to sign up at your local anarchist hovel for the spring trip to the WTO meeting.
Trade that is welcomed by both parties is not bad. Just because third party interlopers feel the need to stamp and huff about it, it doesn't mean that it should be done away with.
Tablet PCs are too new to come to any conclusion about the market's uptake of it. They still aren't available in stores, so it's probably better to hold off on any pronouncements like that.
And besides, most Tablet PCs run Intel inside.