is it any wonder they thought this patent... er, copyright... er, trademark was still valid? look at the agency they would have needed to consult to verify the information. yes, none other than our own patent and trademark office.
When I first read that, I was thinking of Marvin the Martian's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I've always wanted one of those, but I keep getting outbid by some wasckaly wabbit.
Because when Microsoft makes the networking component available, millions (?) of clueless end users will hook it up to their cable modem connection, totally oblivious that there may even be the _slightest_ chance that there is a single open exploit ready to be taken advantage of for DDoS attacks. And what about the possibility of stored credit card information used for MMORPG -type games? Playing habits of owners? What if Microsoft released personal finance software for the Xbox? Are you saying that can't happen?
Did you stop to think and ask yourself those questions before you generalized this "security feature" of the Xbox console? Or are you one of the millions of lusers I just described? I use MY Win2K box for playing games and ONLY playing games. Does that make my PC simply a GAMING platform?
How would you feel if your Xbox was attacked and all you had to do was "reinstall a few games." The worst that can happen is NOT the point. The fact that it COULD POSSIBLY happen IS.
Excerpt from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)
The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols. He is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentlemen in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet at a half- penny theater.
With such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. To such properly trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an easy problem - food and clothing "for us," eating grass and daisies white by divine appointment for this predestined purpose, on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.
In the same pleasant plan, whales are storehouses of oil for us, to help out the stars in lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident destination for ships' rigging, wrapping packages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is another plain case of clothing. Iron was made for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets; all intended for us. And so of other small handfuls of insignificant things.
But if we should ask these profound expositors of God's intentions, How about those man-eating animals - lions, tigers, alligators - which smack their lips over raw man? Or about those myriads of noxious insects that destroy labor and drink his blood? Doubtless man was intended for food and drink for all these? Oh no! Not at all! These are unresolvable difficulties connected with Eden's apple and the Devil. Why does water drown its lord? Why do so many minerals poison him? Why are so many plants and fishes deadly enemies? Why is the lord of creation subjected to the same laws of life as his subjects? Oh, all these things are satanic, or in some way connected with the first garden.
Now, it never seems to occur to these far- seeing teachers that Nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch-work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair's breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.
This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.
Plants are credited with but dim and uncertain sensation, and minerals with positively none at all. But why may not even a mineral arrangement of matter be endowed with sensation of a kind that we in our blind exclusive perfection can have no manner of communication with?
But I have wandered from my subject. I stated a page or two back that man claimed the earth was made for him and I was going to say that venomous beasts, thorny plants, and deadly diseases of certain parts of the earth prove that the whole world was not made for him. When an animal from a tropical climate is taken to high latitudes, it may perish of cold, and we say that such an animal was never intended for so severe a climate. But when man betakes himself to sickly parts of the tropics and perishes, he cannot see that he was never intended for such deadly climates. No, he will rather accuse the first mother of the cause of the difficulty, though she may never have seen a fever district; or will consider it a providential chastisement for some self-invented form of sin.
Furthermore, all uneatable and uncivilized animals, and all plants which carry prickles, are deplorable evils which, according to closes researches of clergy, require the cleansing chemistry of universal planetary combustion. But more than aught else mankind requires burning, as being in great part wicked, and if that transmundane furnace can be so applied and regulated as to smelt and purify us into conformity with the rest of the terrestrial creation, then the tophetization of the erratic genius Homo were a consummation devoutly to be prayed for. But, glad to leave these ecclesiastical fires and blunders, I joyfully return to the immortal truth and immortal beauty of Nature.
I've seen a lot of comments discussing the value of digitizing the tables and which format will last longer - the digitized version or the tablet itself. Regardless of which actually lasts longer is the fact that by digitizing these tables, people like you and me have access to what would be an otherwise difficult subject to study.
Digitizing (and eventually being able to view online I hope) means that I can avoid having to drive to museums far away, wait for travelling displays, or become part of the overall problem and buy one of these tablets on eBay.
Imagine if we had the technology to digitize the contents of the library in Alexandria before it was destroyed, or scan texts before the European dark age and subsequent destruction of intellectual advances.
For a good example, consider the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. While I actually went there to see it (and you can only see about ten actual paes if I recall), you can see the entire folio by buying the CD from the College. I went because I wanted to be there, but for those not fortunate enough to make the trip, this is a more cost effective means.
In my experience, it's best to replace your servers with Linux, particularly because end-users tend to be more resistant to change concerning their day-to-day activities. If you're using Windows NT for file and print sharing, then you can easily replace those with Linux and Samba. The user's won't care what the server OS is so long as they have access to their files and printers. Most of your cash outflow can be stopped here. Of course, if you have specialized apps that require MS software (ASP scripts), then you'll need to maintain those, but for pure file and print sharing, you can easily go the Linux/Samba route.
For internet services, you're set. Linux can do everything Windows can and more. For SQL services, you can migrate data from MS SQL to any myriad of free SQL servers available from Linux. Just make sure that your SQL statements are ANSI compliant.
You'll just have to handle these on a case-by-case basis.
For the end users, consider OpenOffice as a replacement for MS Office. There are plenty of good browsers for Linux (Mozilla and Opera) that can replace IE. Eventually, you can get users used to using Linux with KDE/GNOME and still give them the functionality they need.
One caveat: in my experience, leave the accountants alone. They tend to be moody, set in their ways, and can become quite a strain on your happiness if you try to mess with their routines.
The only thing I can offer you advice on are your custom apps. For those you can either just live with the fact that you need MS for them, try to find Open Source alternatives, or if written in-house, consider porting.
Shoppers who enroll free of charge to use the finger image machine -- officially known as a biometric electronic financial transaction processing system...
The guy who thought this lovely system up and is trying to pass it off as secure must have had his finger in his colorectal biometric electronic scatological transaction processing system...
And it's companies like these that I support. Unfortunately it's killing me having to buy the entire line of Delta, Porter-Cable, and Stanley hand and power tools.
Among features the studios and networks object to are the ability to skip commercials and a broadband connection that allows users to exchange recorded programs with others.
PBS has been airing quality television programs for many years commercial-free by asking viewers to contribute their financial support. This and the ability to hit the mute/channel change button on my remote allow me to watch TV stations commercial-free.
So what's next, suing TV manufacturers to force them to start making TV remotes without mute buttons and channel changing capabilities? God forbid I excercise my own free will and look for an alternative.
Further, what's to prevent me from recording a show to VHS, taking it to a friend's house, and then watching it again? This is a method of sharing. It's just not as convenient for me to do so. Add to this the term "digital" or "broadband" and suddenly all the lawyers in the room come alive as programmed and start using acronyms like DMCA.
I think the truth is that companies like Disney realize that someone else beat them to the technology, they realized what an opportunity they missed (to make more money), and they're now trying to catch up by miring the industry in legal battles.
Regardless of what Disney and their ilk think, I decide whether or not they are successful... Unfortunately, I (and most/. readers) am in the minority of people who actually give a rat's ass and vote with their wallet.
Salt Lake City is BAD NEWS. Lineo. Novell. Corel. PowerQuest. All have either been laying off of "trimming the fat." Couple that with the certification mills working at 110% efficiency promising prospective students jobs in the $40-60K range upon "graduation", and you have the following scenario:
Experienced, high-paid programmers/sysadmins competing with inexperienced paper-bred geeks for the same non-existent positions. "Managers" tend to overlook experience for "pedigree" thinking that just because someone has a piece of paper on the wall means they know what they're doing.
I've been doing "this" for over eight years. I can run circles around these newcomers, I have a killer portfolio, and have the scars to prove it. But is there a job to be had here? And this jerkwad is looking to hire H1Bs?
To these companies I say "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your crotch."
The BNETD developers say that BNETD was made as an alternative to Battle.net's oftentimes slow and buggy service. It was also meant to enable friends to play Battle.net-enabled games with each other on a private network, without having to deal with abusive strangers on Battle.net.
Sounds to me like a strange little occurence that happened back in the 18th century. Seems a bunch of colonists got tired of being taxed without representation, dealing with pricks, and in general wanting a place of their own to live their lives as they saw fit. I think it was called the American Revolution.
Maybe England can sue the U.S. and ask for back taxes with interest collected in arrears...
I'm stuck on a Windows machine at work, and I've been using MSIE 6.0 to surf, and once I learned about Mozilla's ability to block pop-ups and the tabbed browsing feature, I switched, and I'm not looking back. It's about time someone added these features. I just wish I had learned about them sooner. I was actually beginning to dread getting online because of pop-ups, but now I can surf with impunity again.
If you are in the same situation I was, download and install Mozilla now. You'll thank yourself later.
IMO I think that ceramic-based cooling systems are going to be the way that things like this are cooled in the future. The cooling capacity of ceramics is much more economical than mechanical systems. Examine the space shuttle's cooling capacity vs. weight, complexity, and cost of other traditional systems.
Imagine your car being cooled by a ceramic plate that never rusts, never needs refilling, and won't kill your pets. Sure it might break, but the cost to replace a ceramic cooling system will be much less than the cost to build a radiator.
Slashdot Mirror
i return my hardware when it develops a conscience.
the last thing i want is my xbox wondering about anything but its own meagre existence.
is it any wonder they thought this patent... er, copyright... er, trademark was still valid? look at the agency they would have needed to consult to verify the information. yes, none other than our own patent and trademark office.
no wonder they're clueless.
Where can I read more about this DHS abuse of which you speak? google?
...X-Band Weather Radar Modulator...
When I first read that, I was thinking of Marvin the Martian's Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I've always wanted one of those, but I keep getting outbid by some wasckaly wabbit.
Maybe.
But thinking about lobby snacks marching in formation might have confused me.
Because when Microsoft makes the networking component available, millions (?) of clueless end users will hook it up to their cable modem connection, totally oblivious that there may even be the _slightest_ chance that there is a single open exploit ready to be taken advantage of for DDoS attacks. And what about the possibility of stored credit card information used for MMORPG -type games? Playing habits of owners? What if Microsoft released personal finance software for the Xbox? Are you saying that can't happen?
Did you stop to think and ask yourself those questions before you generalized this "security feature" of the Xbox console? Or are you one of the millions of lusers I just described? I use MY Win2K box for playing games and ONLY playing games. Does that make my PC simply a GAMING platform?
How would you feel if your Xbox was attacked and all you had to do was "reinstall a few games." The worst that can happen is NOT the point. The fact that it COULD POSSIBLY happen IS.
Bonehead.
While the rest of the world waits for the site to come available...
Let's all go to the lobby,
Let's all got to the lobby,
Let's all go to the lobby...
To get ourselves a drink!
Excerpt from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)
The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols. He is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentlemen in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet at a half- penny theater.
With such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. To such properly trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an easy problem - food and clothing "for us," eating grass and daisies white by divine appointment for this predestined purpose, on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.
In the same pleasant plan, whales are storehouses of oil for us, to help out the stars in lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident destination for ships' rigging, wrapping packages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is another plain case of clothing. Iron was made for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets; all intended for us. And so of other small handfuls of insignificant things.
But if we should ask these profound expositors of God's intentions, How about those man-eating animals - lions, tigers, alligators - which smack their lips over raw man? Or about those myriads of noxious insects that destroy labor and drink his blood? Doubtless man was intended for food and drink for all these? Oh no! Not at all! These are unresolvable difficulties connected with Eden's apple and the Devil. Why does water drown its lord? Why do so many minerals poison him? Why are so many plants and fishes deadly enemies? Why is the lord of creation subjected to the same laws of life as his subjects? Oh, all these things are satanic, or in some way connected with the first garden.
Now, it never seems to occur to these far- seeing teachers that Nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.
From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch-work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair's breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.
This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.
Plants are credited with but dim and uncertain sensation, and minerals with positively none at all. But why may not even a mineral arrangement of matter be endowed with sensation of a kind that we in our blind exclusive perfection can have no manner of communication with?
But I have wandered from my subject. I stated a page or two back that man claimed the earth was made for him and I was going to say that venomous beasts, thorny plants, and deadly diseases of certain parts of the earth prove that the whole world was not made for him. When an animal from a tropical climate is taken to high latitudes, it may perish of cold, and we say that such an animal was never intended for so severe a climate. But when man betakes himself to sickly parts of the tropics and perishes, he cannot see that he was never intended for such deadly climates. No, he will rather accuse the first mother of the cause of the difficulty, though she may never have seen a fever district; or will consider it a providential chastisement for some self-invented form of sin.
Furthermore, all uneatable and uncivilized animals, and all plants which carry prickles, are deplorable evils which, according to closes researches of clergy, require the cleansing chemistry of universal planetary combustion. But more than aught else mankind requires burning, as being in great part wicked, and if that transmundane furnace can be so applied and regulated as to smelt and purify us into conformity with the rest of the terrestrial creation, then the tophetization of the erratic genius Homo were a consummation devoutly to be prayed for. But, glad to leave these ecclesiastical fires and blunders, I joyfully return to the immortal truth and immortal beauty of Nature.
Digitizing (and eventually being able to view online I hope) means that I can avoid having to drive to museums far away, wait for travelling displays, or become part of the overall problem and buy one of these tablets on eBay.
Imagine if we had the technology to digitize the contents of the library in Alexandria before it was destroyed, or scan texts before the European dark age and subsequent destruction of intellectual advances.
For a good example, consider the Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. While I actually went there to see it (and you can only see about ten actual paes if I recall), you can see the entire folio by buying the CD from the College. I went because I wanted to be there, but for those not fortunate enough to make the trip, this is a more cost effective means.
You could always hire me to help. Right now I'm cheap, easy, and willing to relocate. :)
In my experience, it's best to replace your servers with Linux, particularly because end-users tend to be more resistant to change concerning their day-to-day activities. If you're using Windows NT for file and print sharing, then you can easily replace those with Linux and Samba. The user's won't care what the server OS is so long as they have access to their files and printers. Most of your cash outflow can be stopped here. Of course, if you have specialized apps that require MS software (ASP scripts), then you'll need to maintain those, but for pure file and print sharing, you can easily go the Linux/Samba route.
For internet services, you're set. Linux can do everything Windows can and more. For SQL services, you can migrate data from MS SQL to any myriad of free SQL servers available from Linux. Just make sure that your SQL statements are ANSI compliant.
You'll just have to handle these on a case-by-case basis.
For the end users, consider OpenOffice as a replacement for MS Office. There are plenty of good browsers for Linux (Mozilla and Opera) that can replace IE. Eventually, you can get users used to using Linux with KDE/GNOME and still give them the functionality they need.
One caveat: in my experience, leave the accountants alone. They tend to be moody, set in their ways, and can become quite a strain on your happiness if you try to mess with their routines.
The only thing I can offer you advice on are your custom apps. For those you can either just live with the fact that you need MS for them, try to find Open Source alternatives, or if written in-house, consider porting.
I hope this helps you a tiny bit. Best of luck!
I don't know about you, but I'm not looking at her mouth...
Shoppers who enroll free of charge to use the finger image machine -- officially known as a biometric electronic financial transaction processing system...
The guy who thought this lovely system up and is trying to pass it off as secure must have had his finger in his colorectal biometric electronic scatological transaction processing system...
Score: -1, Filthy
Exactly. Thanks for the follow up.
And it's companies like these that I support. Unfortunately it's killing me having to buy the entire line of Delta, Porter-Cable, and Stanley hand and power tools.
Among features the studios and networks object to are the ability to skip commercials and a broadband connection that allows users to exchange recorded programs with others.
PBS has been airing quality television programs for many years commercial-free by asking viewers to contribute their financial support. This and the ability to hit the mute/channel change button on my remote allow me to watch TV stations commercial-free.So what's next, suing TV manufacturers to force them to start making TV remotes without mute buttons and channel changing capabilities? God forbid I excercise my own free will and look for an alternative.
Further, what's to prevent me from recording a show to VHS, taking it to a friend's house, and then watching it again? This is a method of sharing. It's just not as convenient for me to do so. Add to this the term "digital" or "broadband" and suddenly all the lawyers in the room come alive as programmed and start using acronyms like DMCA.
I think the truth is that companies like Disney realize that someone else beat them to the technology, they realized what an opportunity they missed (to make more money), and they're now trying to catch up by miring the industry in legal battles.
Regardless of what Disney and their ilk think, I decide whether or not they are successful... Unfortunately, I (and most /. readers) am in the minority of people who actually give a rat's ass and vote with their wallet.
Yeah yeah, I know. Flamebait.
--
Salt Lake City is BAD NEWS. Lineo. Novell. Corel. PowerQuest. All have either been laying off of "trimming the fat." Couple that with the certification mills working at 110% efficiency promising prospective students jobs in the $40-60K range upon "graduation", and you have the following scenario:
Experienced, high-paid programmers/sysadmins competing with inexperienced paper-bred geeks for the same non-existent positions. "Managers" tend to overlook experience for "pedigree" thinking that just because someone has a piece of paper on the wall means they know what they're doing.
I've been doing "this" for over eight years. I can run circles around these newcomers, I have a killer portfolio, and have the scars to prove it. But is there a job to be had here? And this jerkwad is looking to hire H1Bs?
To these companies I say "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your crotch."
Karma is a bitch.
--
Ha-HA!
The BNETD developers say that BNETD was made as an alternative to Battle.net's oftentimes slow and buggy service. It was also meant to enable friends to play Battle.net-enabled games with each other on a private network, without having to deal with abusive strangers on Battle.net.
Sounds to me like a strange little occurence that happened back in the 18th century. Seems a bunch of colonists got tired of being taxed without representation, dealing with pricks, and in general wanting a place of their own to live their lives as they saw fit. I think it was called the American Revolution.
Maybe England can sue the U.S. and ask for back taxes with interest collected in arrears...
I already got mine from ACME University.
I'm stuck on a Windows machine at work, and I've been using MSIE 6.0 to surf, and once I learned about Mozilla's ability to block pop-ups and the tabbed browsing feature, I switched, and I'm not looking back. It's about time someone added these features. I just wish I had learned about them sooner. I was actually beginning to dread getting online because of pop-ups, but now I can surf with impunity again.
If you are in the same situation I was, download and install Mozilla now. You'll thank yourself later.
IMO I think that ceramic-based cooling systems are going to be the way that things like this are cooled in the future. The cooling capacity of ceramics is much more economical than mechanical systems. Examine the space shuttle's cooling capacity vs. weight, complexity, and cost of other traditional systems.
Imagine your car being cooled by a ceramic plate that never rusts, never needs refilling, and won't kill your pets. Sure it might break, but the cost to replace a ceramic cooling system will be much less than the cost to build a radiator.