Someone set up something similar in South Station in Boston. It's described as a WiFi Bubble, and supplies information about South Station, vendors in the station, and gives you the opportunity to win a magic fortune fish!
Any requests to web pages outside the bubble only result in being served the bubble index page. It's a nice demonstration of what you can do with an old iMac and an Airport. The administrator gives some information on how it was set up, but the page is only available inside the bubble.
Nonetheless, it can be done! And if you're lucky, maybe you'll get a magic fortune fish! (Ooo! Curls up on both ends- I'm passionate! Woo! Hoo!)
I would like to let V. Tech know that I am more than willing to accept some of those poor, forgotten G5's into my loving home.
There, they can spend the day happily puttering away in my new (soon-to-be) G5 cluster, working merrily at finding ways to improve the human condition, advancing understanding of the universal truths, and produce superior pr0n...
A program that's not for gaming and runs almost constantly on my machine: iTunes.
And when you need to make about two hours go by real fast, just turn on the visualizer mode. Oh, yeah: and keep a towel handy to soak up the drool while you sit there all strung out on "visual valium."
Well, as anyone can tell you, the movies always show the good guys using Macs, and the bad guys using Windoze.
So if government types start using Macs, that'll mean that the good guys are taking over! Woo! Hoo! (I love how the sun always shines in my own little reality...)
"...but it does possess messaging components via iChat..."
Actually, this is a little inaccurate. Rendezvous does not have messaging components. Nor does Rendezvous use iChat for messaging.
Rather, it is iChat that uses Rendezvous services to discover who is on the network, and then lists those people accordingly. In a very basic summation, all Rendezvous does is check out a network and see what is available for networking, and then makes that information available for other programs to use.
If Rendezvous does have user-to-user messaging capabilities built into it, then I would agree that Tibco has a case. Nonetheless, even if Tibco didn't want to, they would still be required to sue Apple based on current copyright/trademark laws. They must defend their trademark and demonstrate efforts of having done so. Not doing so invalidates their trademark and makes it available for everyone to use. (This is why you see McDonald's suing some small restaurant now and then over the "McDonald's name. They aren't trying to be mean, they have to do this or they lose their trademark.) Let's face it, if you're going to sue, you might as well ask for money. At the very least, it covers your legal fees if you win.
It will probably go to court, unless Tibco is doing this to get free money. Should it go to court, the finding will most likely be that Tibco's product is a messaging system like iChat, and not a network discovery service like Apple's product, and therefore there is no market overlap between the two products. Thereby, there is no trademark infringement.
At the very least, this is free press for Tibco -- this is the first time I ever heard of them.
As far as I know, Visio will not be ported to the Mac.
I've used both Omnigraffle and Visio. Visio is a very good program and very comprehensive. The problem is, it's not very easy to use. It's fairly difficult to make it do what you want it to do. Make a mistake or need to resize your chart, you are in for hours of editting.
Omnigraffle is much easier to use! Very intuitive interface, easy to adjust things -- and yes, it does come with an office layout pallette. You can even import your own graphic elements, if you choose. The new version 3 does even more cool stuff!
If the folks at Omnigroup ever decide to take on Excel (my favorite M$ product), I've got some money I'd like to throw at them...
One of the key points in the article was that they were running a customized kernal. The original was probably based on Linux. As a result of this, it's probably simpler and cheaper to go with a YDL setup rather than try and reoptimize for BSD.
If they went with Apple's XServe OS X, there is a lot of other stuff in there they would have to contend with that could probably break what they are doing. So rather than spend time working out the differences, they chose the route of, "Go with what you know."
I would agree with an earlier poster, that they are probably leveraging the Altivec Engine to do what they need done.
Re:ADHD=Bored Person Syndrome. WRONG!
on
Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 1
I disagree with you. I know three people who truly have ADHD, and they definitely have a condition. It is not laziness! One is a very talented and accomplished musician. Another works for UPS in the morning as a pre-loader, and from there goes to work his own business as a landscaper (minimum of 15 hours a day!). The third is in a network manager for a well-known IT service.
The first and the third take Ritalin. The second does not, he gets by through using his energy working very physically demanding jobs. All three are very intelligent, very hard working, and in no way lazy! ADHD is not laziness, it is quite the opposite. It is the inability to focus, and with that there is an inability to slow down long enough to focus.
I knew the musician all his life. When he was a kid, he would go at full throttle all day long to the point where he would be so exhausted that the moment he sat down in the evening, he fall into a deep sleep in seconds. When he started taking ritalin, it made an enormous difference in his life. You don't become that talented musically by playing video games all the time and thinking about playing an instrument.
Nor do you run a successful business with 25 employees in a highly competitive market by being lazy. I assume most/.-ers know what it takes to be a good network manager/engineer (with Cisco cert.'s and all) in charge of a team of three engineers.
Someone with ADHD is like a clock without a pendulum to regulate their activity. The hands spin around and around out of control. Add the pendulum to slow things down and regulate what they're doing, suddenly you can make sense of what's going on. You can tell when the meds have worn off, because you can see through their behavior that their minds are racing and unable to get a grip on the subject. Hm- maybe a car spinning its tires is a better analogy. There's a lot of energy going on, but the car is going nowhere until the driver slows down the engine enough to allow the tires to get a grip.
Yes, ADHD is probably over diagnosed and there are a lot of people that use it as an excuse. But ADHD has a clear diagnostic pathology, one that includes an MRI or PET scan to reveal particular neurological traits in order to confirm the condition. Depression does plague people with ADHD, because they can get stressed out fairly easily. That could account for those you comment on that sit around doing nothing all day. If they haven't taken control of the condition, it tends to take control of them. With depression, you end up with someone who appears "lazy" because they "sit around all day."
There are two kinds of hype about ADHD: one, that someone with ADHD is totally out of control and can't get work done, the second is that ADHD doesn't exist; that it's a made up condition so we can drug kids into proper behavior.
Thanks! I stand corrected -- I did overgeneralize my statement about the GPL.
Re:What's with this obsession with public litigati
on
Red Hat License Challenged
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's more a focus on how to make money without making any effort. Essentially, people patenting concepts and ideas without any intention of actually trying to develop these things. Instead, they are waiting for someone else to put the money, resources and hard work into developing something, and then they come out of nowhere with a massive lawsuit to steal the profit from the company that truly developed the technology.
To me, this is a lot like cyber-squatting: buy up a whole bunch of likely-sounding domain names, and just wait until someone wants to register it and then charge them an arm and a leg for the name. In the meantime, the domain name sits totally useless and unused. (Of course, we all know what happened to that business model!)
There are other companies who try to figure out what their competition is doing, and then file frivolous patents to block their competitor's development projects from seeing the light of day. Of course, we all lose when this happens. And then there are the true leaches, those who have no knowledge or resources to develop a given technology, but purchase the IP and then sue the s**t out of everyone for using it, even though the original patent holders allowed that use. Yet they still have no intention of putting those resources into furthering the technology for the future.
All this anti-patent work does nothing more than stifle innovation and development. And we all know the wonderful things that environment does for the economy and jobs. Putting these legal battles into the press essentially allows the leach to put the "fear of God" into the little people so it makes it easier to cause them to cave in when presented with an "infringement" lawsuit.
Of course, there could be a benefit to all this. If SCO should lose this case, it could create a devastatingly powerful legal precedent showing that just buying IP doesn't necessarily give you free license to bully others with it. But in case the opposite should happen, the only way we're going to change things back to the way they should be is to band together and get our respective legislatures to change the laws.
I just read Ioldanach's comment which posted ahead of my own posting, and I think my own comment is incorrect. I hadn't thought of the one-license-per-machine licensing. I was thinking along the lines of changing what was in my system. So I think I'm a bit off the mark here.
Well, assuming I read his letter correctly, Red Hat states that the set up of their system, which is based on Linux, is copywrited. Sort of like the difference between a Ford pickup truck and a Dodge pickup truck. We all know what a pickup truck is, so the styling between the two is apparently what is covered. Perhaps this is the concept Red Hat is drawing on.
But I guess the question is, when adding a second server to the system, does this count as violation of the license? When I buy a pickup truck, I can modify it in any way I feel like -- but I will void the warranty on the truck. This means that I can't get free work done should something fail, because that failure could be caused by one of the modifications I made.
The GPL pretty well allows users to modify whatever they want, so long as they share what they did with the public. But if you created an application that can be run in a GPLed environment, but is not actually part of it, I would assume that this application is to be considered your intellectual property and therefore you can place your own licensing on it.
So- Does Red Hat have any proprietary code in there? I guess in such an event, they could demand that you purchase more licenses for the extra servers you want to add. But if not, then I guess all they could do is claim you voided the warranty, and declare you inelligable for any tech support or warrantied upgrades.
But, that's just my opinion. I think I'll leave this for the legally-experienced to hack out.
Interesting. I switched to an HP printer from using Epson products because it was a lot easier to change the printer cartridges and to reuse them. With an Epson, if you don't use it constantly, the heads dry and clog. Since with the new models, you can't get the cartridge to eject until it's empty. And seeing as they can't empty because they're clogged, the printer becomes a useless piece of $100 junk.
With the HP's, I can pull the cartridge, clean the head and put it back in again.
Well, now if the HP cartridge is going to expire long before I use it enough to empty it, that means that the HP printers will be relegated to the same closet as my Epson printers.
That means I'll be buying Lexmark, I guess.
Though, shouldn't we be applauding HP for making such an inroad to pushing American businesses towards the paperless office?
You really should remember that before you push the call button, that you have your Hitchhiker's Guide with you! And keep in mind that you can't find Babelfish just anywhere...
Shortwave Radio Hobbiests do this all the time. In fact, I believe there is a satellite that is open for use by the shortwave enthusiasts, put into orbit via donations and some private capital.
Samus is correct, most commercial and military communications will be encrypted. I would also add that there are enough stories to show that trying to decrypt this stuff without showing some discretion has gotten some people into hot water with the government.
A decent program for monitoring satellites is Starry Night Pro. It can be purchased via Space.com. Even without the satellite stuff, it's a fun program. It's nice when you look up into the sky and wonder, "What the hell is that?," you have a resource to use and find out.
You're missing one key point. To use VOD (aka pay-per-view w/o the time constraint -- in theory), you have to pay each time you want to watch it. At least with my DVD's, I can watch them any time and as often as I wish. If I want to pay once to view something, I'll go to the movies where I can enjoy it with more people than can fit into my living room.
Oh, wait! What am I thinking? It costs as much to go see a movie as it does to buy the DVD and hold a cookout for all my friends and then sit down and watch the DVD.
Problem is, the market won't support it. MP3 players are a fine example of this. There's already growing resistance to RIAA trying to control all channels of what people can view. When people pay to own something, they expect that they will have material possession of that item, to use wherever and whenever they choose.
VOD is more akin to video rental.
If you want to find out about what will replace DVDs, you should look at the budding technologies coming out of data storage. Holographic cards the size of a credit card that can hold multiple terabytes of random access storage at high throughput data speeds.
Don't forget about quantum computing approaches. I know of at least three major computer manufacturers that are in a quiet race to develop quantum-level computing for the consumer market. It will be a while before we see a functional CPU, but the storage capabilities may show up sooner. Rather than have bits that can only have two values, 0 or 1, a quantum bit can have many more values. How about 0 through 9 -- a true decimal computer. I'll leave it to the math gurus to figure out the storage density of decimal over binary. My guess would be multiple terabytes in something the size of a grain of salt, and all data accessible instantly (forget about discussing xHz).
In the end, VOD is only about control of distribution. If people have to pay every time they want to view something, or pay on a regular basis, it will get old real fast. Look at pay-per-view. It's exactly the same thing as VOD, just using a different moniker. Only, I can't use VOD/pay-per-view when I'm sitting on a plane with my computer. Or, if I'm on the road. Or visiting relatives who don't have cable/broadband/satellite/some-form-of-modern-comm unications/two-tin-cans-with-a-string....
Young women should avoid setting this bit to evil if they are using an Apple computer!
One young teenager apparently set this bit and immediately fell into a coma. Her family's only warning that this had happened was when seven dwarves burst into the house and carried her off in a glass coffin.
Her parents were visibly upset.
"They seemed quite chipper while they carried our daughter off," cried the teen's mother. "They were whistling quite enthusiastically while they worked."
Police are investigating the incident. Representatives from Disney have already contacted the family for the movie rights.
What people need to realize is the sheer opportunity presented by the evil bit! Particularly when used in conjunction with the new Whitespace Programming Language! Sending an html-based email to your boss laced with WPL and the evil bit set will cause his computer to download all your pr0n for you, as well as send the memo to the finance office to process your raise with haste.
However, the only problem I've come across with setting the evil bit deals with products from a certain Redmond, Washington software development company. Apparently, when the evil bit is set, it negates all the security holes inherent in the OS from this company, and it becomes rock solid secure.
It's easier to get things done, the machine does things the way I want to do them. The integration feels better between applications and the operating system.
The keyword is Intuitive. After having spent years stuck on Windoze systems, working with a Mac is a breath of fresh air! Yeah, the Mac I'm using is old (in computer years), but it's still a lot better to use than the PC. I get more done faster using the Mac because it works the way I want it to work -- not the way Bill wants me to work.
Actually, total cost of ownership will be higher using a PC vs. a Mac, due to the amount of time spent maintaining the system. Loss productive time due to you running patches and updates on Windows, redoing lost work due to the system hanging -- it adds up!
I have to admit that when using Photoshop or Illustrator my one-year-old 1.4 gHz Dell is faster than my four-year-old 400 mHz G3 (now a 500 mHz G4). But things just run better on the Mac -- admittedly this is a touchy-feely thing, but given the choice to do work on the Mac or the Pentium, I choose the Mac. Yet I will generally pass the rendering over to the Pentium when I'm done, to minimize the time.
Nonetheless, I sure hope that Apple takes this as a wake-up call. The G4 has pretty much been a problem architecture as a CPU -- just look at how poorly they've done with speed bumps on it compared to the Intel chips. (Of course, the brain drain from Moto to Intel could have a lot to do with that.) I think the sooner they can dump the G4 for the G5, the better. And I mean the real G5s, not the reworked G4 architecture to be used as an interim.
My current Mac is starting to show its age, as more complex projects are bringing it to the wall of its performance. But I figure I can hold out a while longer until Apple decides its time to get serious and put out something with some real horsepower behind it.
Their new 1.42 DP is certainly a step in the right direction, but it still isn't quite enough. Now, if it was an MPx4 (at the least) I'd probably have my credit card out and making my order rather than writing this comment...
Slashdot Mirror
Someone set up something similar in South Station in Boston. It's described as a WiFi Bubble, and supplies information about South Station, vendors in the station, and gives you the opportunity to win a magic fortune fish!
Any requests to web pages outside the bubble only result in being served the bubble index page. It's a nice demonstration of what you can do with an old iMac and an Airport. The administrator gives some information on how it was set up, but the page is only available inside the bubble.
Nonetheless, it can be done! And if you're lucky, maybe you'll get a magic fortune fish! (Ooo! Curls up on both ends- I'm passionate! Woo! Hoo!)
From the depths of someone's truly twisted imagination. What would be more relaxing than a hand charged version of the Hello Kitty Vibrator?
I would like to let V. Tech know that I am more than willing to accept some of those poor, forgotten G5's into my loving home.
There, they can spend the day happily puttering away in my new (soon-to-be) G5 cluster, working merrily at finding ways to improve the human condition, advancing understanding of the universal truths, and produce superior pr0n...
A program that's not for gaming and runs almost constantly on my machine: iTunes. And when you need to make about two hours go by real fast, just turn on the visualizer mode. Oh, yeah: and keep a towel handy to soak up the drool while you sit there all strung out on "visual valium."
I msut amdit taht tihs is rlleay anndisotug! If Tmitohy hdan't trohwn in that elxmpae, I don't tnihk I wloud have bveeelid this srtoy!
How many posters do you think will post in scramble?
Well, as anyone can tell you, the movies always show the good guys using Macs, and the bad guys using Windoze.
So if government types start using Macs, that'll mean that the good guys are taking over! Woo! Hoo! (I love how the sun always shines in my own little reality...)
Hm- Very good point. I must admit I didn't consider it from that particular angle. It certainly pokes a hole in my arguement. :)
Either way, in the end it will be decided in the courts. It will be interesting to see what the outcome is.
"...but it does possess messaging components via iChat..."
Actually, this is a little inaccurate. Rendezvous does not have messaging components. Nor does Rendezvous use iChat for messaging.
Rather, it is iChat that uses Rendezvous services to discover who is on the network, and then lists those people accordingly. In a very basic summation, all Rendezvous does is check out a network and see what is available for networking, and then makes that information available for other programs to use.
If Rendezvous does have user-to-user messaging capabilities built into it, then I would agree that Tibco has a case. Nonetheless, even if Tibco didn't want to, they would still be required to sue Apple based on current copyright/trademark laws. They must defend their trademark and demonstrate efforts of having done so. Not doing so invalidates their trademark and makes it available for everyone to use. (This is why you see McDonald's suing some small restaurant now and then over the "McDonald's name. They aren't trying to be mean, they have to do this or they lose their trademark.) Let's face it, if you're going to sue, you might as well ask for money. At the very least, it covers your legal fees if you win.
It will probably go to court, unless Tibco is doing this to get free money. Should it go to court, the finding will most likely be that Tibco's product is a messaging system like iChat, and not a network discovery service like Apple's product, and therefore there is no market overlap between the two products. Thereby, there is no trademark infringement.
At the very least, this is free press for Tibco -- this is the first time I ever heard of them.
As far as I know, Visio will not be ported to the Mac.
I've used both Omnigraffle and Visio. Visio is a very good program and very comprehensive. The problem is, it's not very easy to use. It's fairly difficult to make it do what you want it to do. Make a mistake or need to resize your chart, you are in for hours of editting.
Omnigraffle is much easier to use! Very intuitive interface, easy to adjust things -- and yes, it does come with an office layout pallette. You can even import your own graphic elements, if you choose. The new version 3 does even more cool stuff!
If the folks at Omnigroup ever decide to take on Excel (my favorite M$ product), I've got some money I'd like to throw at them...
One of the key points in the article was that they were running a customized kernal. The original was probably based on Linux. As a result of this, it's probably simpler and cheaper to go with a YDL setup rather than try and reoptimize for BSD.
If they went with Apple's XServe OS X, there is a lot of other stuff in there they would have to contend with that could probably break what they are doing. So rather than spend time working out the differences, they chose the route of, "Go with what you know."
I would agree with an earlier poster, that they are probably leveraging the Altivec Engine to do what they need done.
I disagree with you. I know three people who truly have ADHD, and they definitely have a condition. It is not laziness! One is a very talented and accomplished musician. Another works for UPS in the morning as a pre-loader, and from there goes to work his own business as a landscaper (minimum of 15 hours a day!). The third is in a network manager for a well-known IT service.
/.-ers know what it takes to be a good network manager/engineer (with Cisco cert.'s and all) in charge of a team of three engineers.
The first and the third take Ritalin. The second does not, he gets by through using his energy working very physically demanding jobs. All three are very intelligent, very hard working, and in no way lazy! ADHD is not laziness, it is quite the opposite. It is the inability to focus, and with that there is an inability to slow down long enough to focus.
I knew the musician all his life. When he was a kid, he would go at full throttle all day long to the point where he would be so exhausted that the moment he sat down in the evening, he fall into a deep sleep in seconds. When he started taking ritalin, it made an enormous difference in his life. You don't become that talented musically by playing video games all the time and thinking about playing an instrument. Nor do you run a successful business with 25 employees in a highly competitive market by being lazy. I assume most
Someone with ADHD is like a clock without a pendulum to regulate their activity. The hands spin around and around out of control. Add the pendulum to slow things down and regulate what they're doing, suddenly you can make sense of what's going on. You can tell when the meds have worn off, because you can see through their behavior that their minds are racing and unable to get a grip on the subject. Hm- maybe a car spinning its tires is a better analogy. There's a lot of energy going on, but the car is going nowhere until the driver slows down the engine enough to allow the tires to get a grip.
Yes, ADHD is probably over diagnosed and there are a lot of people that use it as an excuse. But ADHD has a clear diagnostic pathology, one that includes an MRI or PET scan to reveal particular neurological traits in order to confirm the condition. Depression does plague people with ADHD, because they can get stressed out fairly easily. That could account for those you comment on that sit around doing nothing all day. If they haven't taken control of the condition, it tends to take control of them. With depression, you end up with someone who appears "lazy" because they "sit around all day."
There are two kinds of hype about ADHD: one, that someone with ADHD is totally out of control and can't get work done, the second is that ADHD doesn't exist; that it's a made up condition so we can drug kids into proper behavior.
Thanks! I stand corrected -- I did overgeneralize my statement about the GPL.
It's more a focus on how to make money without making any effort. Essentially, people patenting concepts and ideas without any intention of actually trying to develop these things. Instead, they are waiting for someone else to put the money, resources and hard work into developing something, and then they come out of nowhere with a massive lawsuit to steal the profit from the company that truly developed the technology.
To me, this is a lot like cyber-squatting: buy up a whole bunch of likely-sounding domain names, and just wait until someone wants to register it and then charge them an arm and a leg for the name. In the meantime, the domain name sits totally useless and unused. (Of course, we all know what happened to that business model!)
There are other companies who try to figure out what their competition is doing, and then file frivolous patents to block their competitor's development projects from seeing the light of day. Of course, we all lose when this happens. And then there are the true leaches, those who have no knowledge or resources to develop a given technology, but purchase the IP and then sue the s**t out of everyone for using it, even though the original patent holders allowed that use. Yet they still have no intention of putting those resources into furthering the technology for the future.
All this anti-patent work does nothing more than stifle innovation and development. And we all know the wonderful things that environment does for the economy and jobs. Putting these legal battles into the press essentially allows the leach to put the "fear of God" into the little people so it makes it easier to cause them to cave in when presented with an "infringement" lawsuit.
Of course, there could be a benefit to all this. If SCO should lose this case, it could create a devastatingly powerful legal precedent showing that just buying IP doesn't necessarily give you free license to bully others with it. But in case the opposite should happen, the only way we're going to change things back to the way they should be is to band together and get our respective legislatures to change the laws.
I just read Ioldanach's comment which posted ahead of my own posting, and I think my own comment is incorrect. I hadn't thought of the one-license-per-machine licensing. I was thinking along the lines of changing what was in my system. So I think I'm a bit off the mark here.
Well, assuming I read his letter correctly, Red Hat states that the set up of their system, which is based on Linux, is copywrited. Sort of like the difference between a Ford pickup truck and a Dodge pickup truck. We all know what a pickup truck is, so the styling between the two is apparently what is covered. Perhaps this is the concept Red Hat is drawing on.
But I guess the question is, when adding a second server to the system, does this count as violation of the license? When I buy a pickup truck, I can modify it in any way I feel like -- but I will void the warranty on the truck. This means that I can't get free work done should something fail, because that failure could be caused by one of the modifications I made.
The GPL pretty well allows users to modify whatever they want, so long as they share what they did with the public. But if you created an application that can be run in a GPLed environment, but is not actually part of it, I would assume that this application is to be considered your intellectual property and therefore you can place your own licensing on it.
So- Does Red Hat have any proprietary code in there? I guess in such an event, they could demand that you purchase more licenses for the extra servers you want to add. But if not, then I guess all they could do is claim you voided the warranty, and declare you inelligable for any tech support or warrantied upgrades.
But, that's just my opinion. I think I'll leave this for the legally-experienced to hack out.
So- you have 7 18-cent coins, Susie gives you 13, and you give Bobbie 3. How many nickels must Daddy give you for your 18-cent coins...?
Then, you get on a train in Boston traveling east at 300 MPH. In 30 minutes, will you really care about how many 18-cent coins you're carrying?
Thanks, Andy!
:)
Not being a ham myself, I couldn't have come up with all the proper details. You delivered much better information than I could have dug up.
Interesting. I switched to an HP printer from using Epson products because it was a lot easier to change the printer cartridges and to reuse them. With an Epson, if you don't use it constantly, the heads dry and clog. Since with the new models, you can't get the cartridge to eject until it's empty. And seeing as they can't empty because they're clogged, the printer becomes a useless piece of $100 junk.
With the HP's, I can pull the cartridge, clean the head and put it back in again.
Well, now if the HP cartridge is going to expire long before I use it enough to empty it, that means that the HP printers will be relegated to the same closet as my Epson printers.
That means I'll be buying Lexmark, I guess.
Though, shouldn't we be applauding HP for making such an inroad to pushing American businesses towards the paperless office?
You really should remember that before you push the call button, that you have your Hitchhiker's Guide with you! And keep in mind that you can't find Babelfish just anywhere...
Shortwave Radio Hobbiests do this all the time. In fact, I believe there is a satellite that is open for use by the shortwave enthusiasts, put into orbit via donations and some private capital.
Samus is correct, most commercial and military communications will be encrypted. I would also add that there are enough stories to show that trying to decrypt this stuff without showing some discretion has gotten some people into hot water with the government.
A decent program for monitoring satellites is Starry Night Pro. It can be purchased via Space.com. Even without the satellite stuff, it's a fun program. It's nice when you look up into the sky and wonder, "What the hell is that?," you have a resource to use and find out.
You're missing one key point. To use VOD (aka pay-per-view w/o the time constraint -- in theory), you have to pay each time you want to watch it. At least with my DVD's, I can watch them any time and as often as I wish. If I want to pay once to view something, I'll go to the movies where I can enjoy it with more people than can fit into my living room.
m unications/two-tin-cans-with-a-string....
Oh, wait! What am I thinking? It costs as much to go see a movie as it does to buy the DVD and hold a cookout for all my friends and then sit down and watch the DVD.
Problem is, the market won't support it. MP3 players are a fine example of this. There's already growing resistance to RIAA trying to control all channels of what people can view. When people pay to own something, they expect that they will have material possession of that item, to use wherever and whenever they choose.
VOD is more akin to video rental.
If you want to find out about what will replace DVDs, you should look at the budding technologies coming out of data storage. Holographic cards the size of a credit card that can hold multiple terabytes of random access storage at high throughput data speeds.
Don't forget about quantum computing approaches. I know of at least three major computer manufacturers that are in a quiet race to develop quantum-level computing for the consumer market. It will be a while before we see a functional CPU, but the storage capabilities may show up sooner. Rather than have bits that can only have two values, 0 or 1, a quantum bit can have many more values. How about 0 through 9 -- a true decimal computer. I'll leave it to the math gurus to figure out the storage density of decimal over binary. My guess would be multiple terabytes in something the size of a grain of salt, and all data accessible instantly (forget about discussing xHz).
In the end, VOD is only about control of distribution. If people have to pay every time they want to view something, or pay on a regular basis, it will get old real fast. Look at pay-per-view. It's exactly the same thing as VOD, just using a different moniker. Only, I can't use VOD/pay-per-view when I'm sitting on a plane with my computer. Or, if I'm on the road. Or visiting relatives who don't have cable/broadband/satellite/some-form-of-modern-com
Young women should avoid setting this bit to evil if they are using an Apple computer!
One young teenager apparently set this bit and immediately fell into a coma. Her family's only warning that this had happened was when seven dwarves burst into the house and carried her off in a glass coffin.
Her parents were visibly upset.
"They seemed quite chipper while they carried our daughter off," cried the teen's mother. "They were whistling quite enthusiastically while they worked."
Police are investigating the incident. Representatives from Disney have already contacted the family for the movie rights.
What people need to realize is the sheer opportunity presented by the evil bit! Particularly when used in conjunction with the new Whitespace Programming Language ! Sending an html-based email to your boss laced with WPL and the evil bit set will cause his computer to download all your pr0n for you, as well as send the memo to the finance office to process your raise with haste.
However, the only problem I've come across with setting the evil bit deals with products from a certain Redmond, Washington software development company. Apparently, when the evil bit is set, it negates all the security holes inherent in the OS from this company, and it becomes rock solid secure.
Go figure...
I didn't say "things just feel faster on a Mac."
I said, "They run better."
It's easier to get things done, the machine does things the way I want to do them. The integration feels better between applications and the operating system.
The keyword is Intuitive. After having spent years stuck on Windoze systems, working with a Mac is a breath of fresh air! Yeah, the Mac I'm using is old (in computer years), but it's still a lot better to use than the PC. I get more done faster using the Mac because it works the way I want it to work -- not the way Bill wants me to work.
Actually, total cost of ownership will be higher using a PC vs. a Mac, due to the amount of time spent maintaining the system. Loss productive time due to you running patches and updates on Windows, redoing lost work due to the system hanging -- it adds up!
I have to admit that when using Photoshop or Illustrator my one-year-old 1.4 gHz Dell is faster than my four-year-old 400 mHz G3 (now a 500 mHz G4). But things just run better on the Mac -- admittedly this is a touchy-feely thing, but given the choice to do work on the Mac or the Pentium, I choose the Mac. Yet I will generally pass the rendering over to the Pentium when I'm done, to minimize the time.
Nonetheless, I sure hope that Apple takes this as a wake-up call. The G4 has pretty much been a problem architecture as a CPU -- just look at how poorly they've done with speed bumps on it compared to the Intel chips. (Of course, the brain drain from Moto to Intel could have a lot to do with that.) I think the sooner they can dump the G4 for the G5, the better. And I mean the real G5s, not the reworked G4 architecture to be used as an interim.
My current Mac is starting to show its age, as more complex projects are bringing it to the wall of its performance. But I figure I can hold out a while longer until Apple decides its time to get serious and put out something with some real horsepower behind it.
Their new 1.42 DP is certainly a step in the right direction, but it still isn't quite enough. Now, if it was an MPx4 (at the least) I'd probably have my credit card out and making my order rather than writing this comment...