forbid all improvisations, shortcuts and workarounds on tactical levels IT (reroute any such thing to "special circumstances" staff, who would be required to have elevated level of healthy paranoia)
You are in a war. There's that enemy airplane approaching you. You know that your armation will not survive the attack, so your only chance to survive is to shoot that plane. However, your weapons are defunct due to some computer problem. There's currently no "special circumstances" staff there. However there's someone there with the necessary knowledge to fix it, and he'd have a chance to fix it before the enemy plane arrives. But there's this damn directive that you are not allowed to improvise or workaround on tactical levels IT, and the IT department put every possible measure into the software to enforce this policy...
The last thing you'd want in a war is to forbid improvisation.
But if you don't install Google's software, Google doesn't get your eyeballs and therefore cannot sell them to the advertisers. Advertisers will certainly pay less for ads in programs less people use.
Well, at least on Slashdot, people do say about Microsoft "don't use their products" - which of course doesn't stop then from wailing about user rights.:-)
Well, just use the exponential of Fix-it. It contains not only Fix-it and Fix-it Fix-it, but also Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it, Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it and so on.
LOL, except common sense basic physics has taught all of us that if you put a shit ton of pressure on something, it's likely to break.
The question in this subthread isn't whether it has broken something, but whether the earthquake cause by breakage due to normal continental drift, which probably would have happened later anyway, would have caused a stronger or weaker earthquake.
Given that the longer the earthquake is delayed, the stronger the internal forces, it's quite plausible that causing the earthquake now might have caused it to be less strong then when it had naturally occured later. Note that the strength of the earthquake is basically determined by the internal forces in the earth; the force of the water by itself surely wouldn't have been strong enough to create an earthquake of that magnitude.
The BSD license gives freedom to the developer; the GNU license gives freedom to the code itself.
No. Code cannot be free. Only people can be free.
Actually, BSD and GPL give exactly the same rights to the developers who get the licensed code. However, the GPL restricts the rights of distributors (not all developers distribute the code they develop; as long as they don't, the restrictions of the GPL don't apply; OTOH the restrictions do apply even if you distribute the unmodified code).
The BSD is designed to maximize the freedom immediate receivers of the licensed code get, while the GPL is designed to maximize the freedom any receiver of the licensed code get, even if they get it indirectly and/or in modified form. In order to achieve the freedom for non-immediate receivers, it restricts the freedom of distributors by forcing them to pass on those freedoms to anyone they give the code.
Is it the theoretical maximum you could get from the installed generators (i.e. when the wind blows optimally, you get 25 GW)? Or is it the average power? The minimum power continuously produced under normal conditions (i.e. under non-exceptional circumstances, you won't expect the power generation fall beyond that value)? Or what?
That reminds me of an idea I've read on some forum some time ago: What if magic is just exploiting bugs in the implementation of the universe? After all, e.g. to someone only knowing the normal application protocol a buffer overflow attack would also just look meaningless. Only those who know details about the application will understand them.
Oh, and it would also explain why magic practices of the past usually don't work today: The security hole has been fixed in the mean time.
Well, actually the fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerated means that the horizon does not grow. That is, unless that acceleration stops at some time in the future, we will never ever experience anything outside the part of the universe we already can see (assuming we invent neither FTL transport nor time travel, of course).
AI is artificial in the same sense artificial flavour is artificial. Yes, substances have a flavour, and it's no we who give those substances a flavour. But we are those who sythesize those substances, and we do so because of their specific flavour. And that's the same with AI: We are those who produce the systems, and we do it because of their "intelligence".
And this is different from (for example) the GPL, how?
It's different from software licensing, because with software licensing you are only prohibited from taking the code and building upon that, while with patents, the idea is protected. Let's say no one before me had written a hello world program, and I were the first one to write one. Software licensing means you may not use my code without my permission, but it doesn't prevent you from writing your own hello world from scratch, even after having seen what my program does, and possibly improve on it (e.g. by adding localization). However if I had a patent on "hello world", you wouldn't be allowed to distribute a hello world program without my agreement even if you write all the code yourself! Basically I'd have the monopoly on everything saying "hello world".
It might mean that XP is already so close to the theoretical maximum performance that it's impossible to improve much.
It might mean that the basic architecture of the Windows operating system doesn't allow much improvement, i.e. you'd need a different OS design to get better.
It might mean that Microsoft just didn't work on improving game performance.
It might mean that in the tested configuration the bottleneck wasn't Windows.
That's the nice thing about Open Source: As long as you have the developers to continue development when necessary, you don't depend on the original vendor. And if you don't have the developers, you'll not be able to get a home-grown solution anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Are FF plugins (Acroread, Flash, Java etc.) counted as separate applications?
Where's the 'i' in 'Transmeta'? :-)
Well, maybe that's why they failed
You are in a war. There's that enemy airplane approaching you. You know that your armation will not survive the attack, so your only chance to survive is to shoot that plane. However, your weapons are defunct due to some computer problem. There's currently no "special circumstances" staff there. However there's someone there with the necessary knowledge to fix it, and he'd have a chance to fix it before the enemy plane arrives. But there's this damn directive that you are not allowed to improvise or workaround on tactical levels IT, and the IT department put every possible measure into the software to enforce this policy ...
The last thing you'd want in a war is to forbid improvisation.
The rest of the article is rather uniformative though..
(emphasize by me)
Well, it's about military, so uniforms shouldn't be a surprise ...
Since they are hackers, they probably get T-shirts with some text on it, like "All your base are belong to us!"
So fellow Slashdotters, has Google crossed the line?"
Yes. This proves it: google is officially evil.
Wanker.
Did netcraft confirm it?
But if you don't install Google's software, Google doesn't get your eyeballs and therefore cannot sell them to the advertisers. Advertisers will certainly pay less for ads in programs less people use.
Well, at least on Slashdot, people do say about Microsoft "don't use their products" - which of course doesn't stop then from wailing about user rights. :-)
He's complaining that the Chinese are not conducting their business in a legal fashion. That's an important difference.
Well, just use the exponential of Fix-it. It contains not only Fix-it and Fix-it Fix-it, but also Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it, Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it Fix-it and so on.
Possibly the damn dam caused damage!
The question in this subthread isn't whether it has broken something, but whether the earthquake cause by breakage due to normal continental drift, which probably would have happened later anyway, would have caused a stronger or weaker earthquake.
Given that the longer the earthquake is delayed, the stronger the internal forces, it's quite plausible that causing the earthquake now might have caused it to be less strong then when it had naturally occured later. Note that the strength of the earthquake is basically determined by the internal forces in the earth; the force of the water by itself surely wouldn't have been strong enough to create an earthquake of that magnitude.
No. Code cannot be free. Only people can be free.
Actually, BSD and GPL give exactly the same rights to the developers who get the licensed code. However, the GPL restricts the rights of distributors (not all developers distribute the code they develop; as long as they don't, the restrictions of the GPL don't apply; OTOH the restrictions do apply even if you distribute the unmodified code).
The BSD is designed to maximize the freedom immediate receivers of the licensed code get, while the GPL is designed to maximize the freedom any receiver of the licensed code get, even if they get it indirectly and/or in modified form. In order to achieve the freedom for non-immediate receivers, it restricts the freedom of distributors by forcing them to pass on those freedoms to anyone they give the code.
Is it the theoretical maximum you could get from the installed generators (i.e. when the wind blows optimally, you get 25 GW)? Or is it the average power? The minimum power continuously produced under normal conditions (i.e. under non-exceptional circumstances, you won't expect the power generation fall beyond that value)? Or what?
That reminds me of an idea I've read on some forum some time ago: What if magic is just exploiting bugs in the implementation of the universe? After all, e.g. to someone only knowing the normal application protocol a buffer overflow attack would also just look meaningless. Only those who know details about the application will understand them.
Oh, and it would also explain why magic practices of the past usually don't work today: The security hole has been fixed in the mean time.
Well, actually the fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerated means that the horizon does not grow. That is, unless that acceleration stops at some time in the future, we will never ever experience anything outside the part of the universe we already can see (assuming we invent neither FTL transport nor time travel, of course).
On your Sig:
You forgot Perl 6.
AI is artificial in the same sense artificial flavour is artificial. Yes, substances have a flavour, and it's no we who give those substances a flavour. But we are those who sythesize those substances, and we do so because of their specific flavour. And that's the same with AI: We are those who produce the systems, and we do it because of their "intelligence".
I wish Steve Jobs can see my middle finger gesture.. I hope he hasn't patented that already..
I guess that's patent number 7382916475901276021.
(Hint: convert to hex, and interpret the bytes as ASCII)
It's different from software licensing, because with software licensing you are only prohibited from taking the code and building upon that, while with patents, the idea is protected. Let's say no one before me had written a hello world program, and I were the first one to write one. Software licensing means you may not use my code without my permission, but it doesn't prevent you from writing your own hello world from scratch, even after having seen what my program does, and possibly improve on it (e.g. by adding localization). However if I had a patent on "hello world", you wouldn't be allowed to distribute a hello world program without my agreement even if you write all the code yourself! Basically I'd have the monopoly on everything saying "hello world".
It can mean a lot of things:
Maybe they bought a HD-DVD, put it into their DVD player (after all, it said "DVD", right?) and found it didn't work.
But they would need a C compiler for that! You can't just bundle a certain C compiler, as that would be anti-competitive!
Teach them machine language, and let them write their browser in hex!
That's why in C the equal operator returns int. This allows different levels of being equal.
That's the nice thing about Open Source: As long as you have the developers to continue development when necessary, you don't depend on the original vendor. And if you don't have the developers, you'll not be able to get a home-grown solution anyway.