Would it be possible for them to patent something so simple and obvious as a two-headed disk drive? It's not as if they could stop anyone making them unofficially.
August 1991:
"Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."
July 2002:
The distribution of Linux has been taken on by a good few professional companies, all competing against each other and Microsoft. Linux is bigger and better than ever before, and available for a large number of machines. It's not just the hobby of a few closet geeks, but is used by the vast majority of servers on the Internet...
Since this is going to be pretty expensive for what is effectively a survey, why not just ask students to fill out a proper survey saying what they'd use the bandwidth for? Just add in some of the methods for privacy discussed here and you'll have an idea of what students use bandwidth for without the expense of installing it. It wouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars to carry it out, way cheaper than putting in fiber connections and Ethernet.
Wouldn't this cause dust on the disk to become an even bigger problem? In a square inch, you have 1,000,000 data points. Even if a speck of dust only takes up 1/100,000th of that square inch, then you immediately lose 10 data points. The problem would be worse than with current CDs due to the higher data density.
I wouldn't even notice this if it were some bit of software to get around WWW filtering, since I believe that access to the WWW should be unfiltered (except for blatantly disgusting sites like Rotten and Goatse) since there are so many benefits it provides, such as (as noted earlier) Google caching, Internet archives, Google Usenet archives, conversion programs, and the like. The problem with P2P access is that almost all of the time it is used to download large(r) files, which are protected under copyright. That's why I think P2P actually has more potential than the WWW for trouble:
WWW 1. Only porn (most warez and such sites are just mazes of banner links) 2. Porn can only be downloaded so quickly - you try downloading 6Mb of it all in one go.
P2P 1. Porn, warez, MP3s, and much else 2. Concurrent downloads allow you to gobble up as much bandwidth as you like!
"*10.1% of 12-17-year-olds who actively download music from the Internet did not purchase a single CD or cassette in the last 12 months."
That seems fishy to me. If the study really is supposed to show that file sharing really is on the increase, then why say that only one age group is doing a significant amount of file sharing? Why do they not point out to us any other age groups doing excessive amounts of piracy? This suggests to me that it's just teenagers that are doing some file sharing whereas oldies are still spending lots of $$$ on proper CDs.
We already know that the music industry is hyping up the whole p2p business, and is just using it as a scapegoat to bash the consumer. We know that music sales are down because the music they pump out is old rehashes, but they are looking for scapegoats. This survey just shows that they are wrong.
These surveys have curious seven-digit numbers in the corner. Do WWW surveys have curious seven-digit numbers in the corner that they can identify you with? No, they don't. They can't slip an all-knowing seven-digit number into the page without your knowing. All they can do is get your IP address, but with that all they can do is try to send you email (or DoS you, but what are the odds of that?). This isn't problem if you tick the little "No mail, please" box at the bottom.
I'd like to see what the quality of the voice recognition is before I purchase this. If it's not too good, then I probably wouldn't buy it:
"Call Barry at work." brr-brr...brr-brr... "Yes, who is this?" "Oh, hi, Barry, it's me, Drew." "Um, I'm not Barry. And I'm not at work, either. I think you have a wrong number." "Who is this?" "This is Garry. I was busy playing Solitare."
And also, does it integrate with my 3rd party emailer (Turnpike)? And three hundred dollars for something that automates dialling a number? I know this is aimed at business, but $300 is still a bit steep when all I have to do anyway is look up John's name in my little black book, dial his number and talk.
"It seems that what the IBM folks are doing is a staightforward extension of this idea to a larger response domain (numerical ages as opposed to boolean questions) and to a more automated system in which the website flips the coin for the subject and amends his answer accordingly."
Since most people probably won't trust the automaton to randomize their data, then you should convince the user to do it at their end. The problem with this approach is that there is not a great deal of person-independent random data within a large enough and set range which is readily accessible to the user. Sure, you could ask them to flip a coin 20 times and add on the number of times they get heads, but what are the odds of that?
Good idea, but the respondant would have to make sure that their clock wasn't set to the correct time. Otherwise, since the surveyor will have their clock set correctly, the second hands on the clocks will be approximately synchronised and the surveyor will know whether or not the respondant was actually answering the question:
"Hey! It's 48 seconds past, so I'm going to answer 'yes'!" "Hey! We got a response at 48 seconds past! Assuming that the respondant's clock is correctly set (which it probably is) then 'yes' is their proper answer!"
This could even be used across different time zones, since these only affect the hour but not the second.
In addition to what ngtni said, there's also the fact that Slashdot polls are optional, and that they are a joke, not to be taken seriously. The more important a survey is, the more likely people will come and try to screw it up for a laugh. And if you're *forced* to fill out a survey, then you're more likely to deliberately falsify your results out of spite.
That could be pretty interesting; having a standardised track format for most/all future racing games. It could be pretty difficult, considering how different some racing games are from each other, but I'm sure the problem could be overcome without having to homogenise them all. Or you could just mix and match tracks from different games. That could have very funny results.
"Consider whether you would hack a DVD of the film Gladiator so that Russell Crowe was relocated from Rome to, say, a Wal-Mart parking lot in Missoula, Montana."
Hmmm...maybe this modding business DOES have some potential after all...
Though graphics in general have improved a whole hell of a lot more, they still aren't perfect. One interesting area of research is that of how the reflections and light absorption of one object affects the lighting of another/all others in a certain area. Processing power at the moment hasn't yet been sufficient to simulate the global effects caused by local objects. After all, if I have a shiny red ball next to a shiny green ball, then depending on where I put the light source, the red might partly affect the shade of the green, or vice versa. Multiply this by a factor of 10, and you can see why you might need a lot of processing power to simulate this.
Of course, this is assuming that the article really isn't just tossing buzzwords around.
Actually, there would only be 2 such points in 2 dimensions. In 3 dimensions, there would actually be an infinite number of points, forming a ring in between the two bodies.
"CNN has an article about a new idea from NASA springing from chaos theory called the interplanetary superhighway."
Uh, just back up a minute there. Chaos theory also punches a massive hole in the idea which none of the articles seem to address. To be able to utilise this idea, you need to know in advance exactly where the planets will move to. Chaos theory states that this isn't possible, since you would need a tremendous amount of precision (down to inches) to be able to predict how and when all of these planets will be just right such that you are in a zero-gravity path. If you're wrong, you have to burn fuel to get onto the path, assuming you aren't too far off in the first place. After all, predicting where planets move requires a "complex iterative model", and if your starting data is even slightly out, then it will drift far away from the correct answer over time.
Each planet and moon has five locations in space called Lagrange points, where one body's gravity balances another's.
Right. So what you're saying is if I have the Earth and the Moon, there will be five points where the gravitational forces from the both of them cancel out. Uh, wouldn't there be *TWO* such points? Think about it.
2) Videos anybody? You need broadband for that. Whether or not you use an RIAA service or not, the majority of people will still need to upgrade to cable modems to get reasonable quality. Not likely.
3) Making songs easy to find. Hmmm...WinMX search for "jethro tull aqualung" gives 271 results and counting. If none of them work (0 out of 271? Please.) then I can just switch to KaZaA.
4) Helping you find music you like In WinMX, right-click on the file you're downloaded. Click "Find Similar". If that fails, try searching on Amazon and then look at the section titled, "People who bought this record also bought..."
6) Online interviews with artists See questions 1 and 5.
Look, the features you're requesting our already present on the Internet. Bringing them all together in one bit of software isn't worth being charged $x and having my freedom restricted.
Has no one realised yet? The reason why Linux on the desktop is dead is because IT IS NEVER PRE-INSTALLED ON NEW COMPUTERS.
There, I said it. It is obvious. Why do you think Windows is actually used by Joe Public? Maybe because it is already installed on his PC when he buys it? Maybe because he's too much of a technophobe to even bother trying to upgrade or change the OS? Look, if Linux came preinstalled with every single PC that anyone purchased, what do you think they would be using? Linux! It's that simple! They would use it because they would be "stuck with it", too ignorant or lazy to switch to Windows. They'd even get used to X, for pete's sake. Had Linux come bundled with all PCs for the last decade, then the situation would be reversed:
"Ack! I'm a Windows user..."
"LOL! WHINER! LOL! WINDOWS WEENIE! LOL!!!1211!1"
"...and I can't find all the latest games for it, like Max Payne..."
"LOL! STFU, WHINER! SWITCH TO LUNIX! LUNIX 4EVAR!"
CASE STUDY: A few years ago, Netscape was gaining popularity amongst the Internet community. Then Microsoft found out that it COULD get away with bundling it preinstalled on Windows PCs. Since virtually all PCs come preinstalled with Windows, all PCs would be ready-to-run with Internet Explorer, with no trace of anything else.
Today Internet Explorer has a 92% share of the browser market.
He probably merely suffered from a case of write-ahead - he was thinking of the next word he was going tow rite beforeh eac tually finishedt he previous word. You really don't need to make such a big deal about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a fair trade to me!
Would it be possible for them to patent something so simple and obvious as a two-headed disk drive? It's not as if they could stop anyone making them unofficially.
July 2002: The distribution of Linux has been taken on by a good few professional companies, all competing against each other and Microsoft. Linux is bigger and better than ever before, and available for a large number of machines. It's not just the hobby of a few closet geeks, but is used by the vast majority of servers on the Internet...
Since this is going to be pretty expensive for what is effectively a survey, why not just ask students to fill out a proper survey saying what they'd use the bandwidth for? Just add in some of the methods for privacy discussed here and you'll have an idea of what students use bandwidth for without the expense of installing it. It wouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars to carry it out, way cheaper than putting in fiber connections and Ethernet.
Hope your principal wasn't as excessively sensitive as your teacher.
Wouldn't this cause dust on the disk to become an even bigger problem? In a square inch, you have 1,000,000 data points. Even if a speck of dust only takes up 1/100,000th of that square inch, then you immediately lose 10 data points. The problem would be worse than with current CDs due to the higher data density.
WWW
1. Only porn (most warez and such sites are just mazes of banner links)
2. Porn can only be downloaded so quickly - you try downloading 6Mb of it all in one go.
P2P
1. Porn, warez, MP3s, and much else
2. Concurrent downloads allow you to gobble up as much bandwidth as you like!
That seems fishy to me. If the study really is supposed to show that file sharing really is on the increase, then why say that only one age group is doing a significant amount of file sharing? Why do they not point out to us any other age groups doing excessive amounts of piracy? This suggests to me that it's just teenagers that are doing some file sharing whereas oldies are still spending lots of $$$ on proper CDs.
OH...and...FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
These surveys have curious seven-digit numbers in the corner. Do WWW surveys have curious seven-digit numbers in the corner that they can identify you with? No, they don't. They can't slip an all-knowing seven-digit number into the page without your knowing. All they can do is get your IP address, but with that all they can do is try to send you email (or DoS you, but what are the odds of that?). This isn't problem if you tick the little "No mail, please" box at the bottom.
(2) Make an engine which can search all of them
(3) Put this engine on a website
(4) Add a "Jobs" section to this website
(5) Et voila!
"Is it that difficult to push the buttons?"
"I'd like to see you do it, mister!"
"Call Barry at work."
brr-brr...brr-brr...
"Yes, who is this?"
"Oh, hi, Barry, it's me, Drew."
"Um, I'm not Barry. And I'm not at work, either. I think you have a wrong number."
"Who is this?"
"This is Garry. I was busy playing Solitare."
And also, does it integrate with my 3rd party emailer (Turnpike)? And three hundred dollars for something that automates dialling a number? I know this is aimed at business, but $300 is still a bit steep when all I have to do anyway is look up John's name in my little black book, dial his number and talk.
Since most people probably won't trust the automaton to randomize their data, then you should convince the user to do it at their end. The problem with this approach is that there is not a great deal of person-independent random data within a large enough and set range which is readily accessible to the user. Sure, you could ask them to flip a coin 20 times and add on the number of times they get heads, but what are the odds of that?
Internet forms are not necessarily all multiple choice. Some ask you stuff like your address which drop-down forms can't take into account.
"Hey! It's 48 seconds past, so I'm going to answer 'yes'!"
"Hey! We got a response at 48 seconds past! Assuming that the respondant's clock is correctly set (which it probably is) then 'yes' is their proper answer!"
This could even be used across different time zones, since these only affect the hour but not the second.
In addition to what ngtni said, there's also the fact that Slashdot polls are optional, and that they are a joke, not to be taken seriously. The more important a survey is, the more likely people will come and try to screw it up for a laugh. And if you're *forced* to fill out a survey, then you're more likely to deliberately falsify your results out of spite.
That could be pretty interesting; having a standardised track format for most/all future racing games. It could be pretty difficult, considering how different some racing games are from each other, but I'm sure the problem could be overcome without having to homogenise them all. Or you could just mix and match tracks from different games. That could have very funny results.
Hmmm...maybe this modding business DOES have some potential after all...
Seriously, I'm not kidding.
Though graphics in general have improved a whole hell of a lot more, they still aren't perfect. One interesting area of research is that of how the reflections and light absorption of one object affects the lighting of another/all others in a certain area. Processing power at the moment hasn't yet been sufficient to simulate the global effects caused by local objects. After all, if I have a shiny red ball next to a shiny green ball, then depending on where I put the light source, the red might partly affect the shade of the green, or vice versa. Multiply this by a factor of 10, and you can see why you might need a lot of processing power to simulate this.
Of course, this is assuming that the article really isn't just tossing buzzwords around.
Actually, there would only be 2 such points in 2 dimensions. In 3 dimensions, there would actually be an infinite number of points, forming a ring in between the two bodies.
Uh, just back up a minute there. Chaos theory also punches a massive hole in the idea which none of the articles seem to address. To be able to utilise this idea, you need to know in advance exactly where the planets will move to. Chaos theory states that this isn't possible, since you would need a tremendous amount of precision (down to inches) to be able to predict how and when all of these planets will be just right such that you are in a zero-gravity path. If you're wrong, you have to burn fuel to get onto the path, assuming you aren't too far off in the first place. After all, predicting where planets move requires a "complex iterative model", and if your starting data is even slightly out, then it will drift far away from the correct answer over time.
Each planet and moon has five locations in space called Lagrange points, where one body's gravity balances another's.
Right. So what you're saying is if I have the Earth and the Moon, there will be five points where the gravitational forces from the both of them cancel out. Uh, wouldn't there be *TWO* such points? Think about it.
1) What about lyrics distributed along with the song?
Google search with 1,760 results
2) Videos anybody?
You need broadband for that. Whether or not you use an RIAA service or not, the majority of people will still need to upgrade to cable modems to get reasonable quality. Not likely.
3) Making songs easy to find.
Hmmm...WinMX search for "jethro tull aqualung" gives 271 results and counting. If none of them work (0 out of 271? Please.) then I can just switch to KaZaA.
4) Helping you find music you like
In WinMX, right-click on the file you're downloaded. Click "Find Similar". If that fails, try searching on Amazon and then look at the section titled, "People who bought this record also bought..."
5) Histories and stories of the songs and the people who made them.
Official Jethro Tull website
6) Online interviews with artists
See questions 1 and 5.
Look, the features you're requesting our already present on the Internet. Bringing them all together in one bit of software isn't worth being charged $x and having my freedom restricted.
There, I said it. It is obvious. Why do you think Windows is actually used by Joe Public? Maybe because it is already installed on his PC when he buys it? Maybe because he's too much of a technophobe to even bother trying to upgrade or change the OS? Look, if Linux came preinstalled with every single PC that anyone purchased, what do you think they would be using? Linux! It's that simple! They would use it because they would be "stuck with it", too ignorant or lazy to switch to Windows. They'd even get used to X, for pete's sake. Had Linux come bundled with all PCs for the last decade, then the situation would be reversed:
"Ack! I'm a Windows user..." "LOL! WHINER! LOL! WINDOWS WEENIE! LOL!!!1211!1" "...and I can't find all the latest games for it, like Max Payne..." "LOL! STFU, WHINER! SWITCH TO LUNIX! LUNIX 4EVAR!"
CASE STUDY:
A few years ago, Netscape was gaining popularity amongst the Internet community. Then Microsoft found out that it COULD get away with bundling it preinstalled on Windows PCs. Since virtually all PCs come preinstalled with Windows, all PCs would be ready-to-run with Internet Explorer, with no trace of anything else.
Today Internet Explorer has a 92% share of the browser market.
Get the idea?
Today Linux has a 2% share of the OS market.
He probably merely suffered from a case of write-ahead - he was thinking of the next word he was going tow rite beforeh eac tually finishedt he previous word. You really don't need to make such a big deal about it.