The summary implies that the people who built this robot don't understand how a cockroach works, however they managed to build a roboroach and by studying the roboroach they will gain an understanding of how real roaches work.
Now surely the geniuses behind this would have had to understand the workings of a cockroach to build a reasonable model of one that gives them a reasonable simulation. In this case, they already understand the roach mechanics well and studying the roboroach won't tell them an awful lot.
If one starts from the premise that they know very little about the roach (and will hence learn a lot), then likely their robo simulation is not very good and they will learn bullshit (eg. "we found that the roach works by moving its muscle here", but the roach does not have a muscle there).
I'm getting all tied up writing this but surely other folks see this as a circular argument.
The few people I know in wheelchairs have withered legs but very strong arms from all that extra arm exercise. They can crush cans with their finger tips like most folks can crush paper cups.
What's going to happen to a nouse user? All that extra activity is going to make very strong neck muscles. Wouldn't want to piss the bloke off and get head-butted.
All OS vendors provide services like this (ie assistance getting your apps going on their offering). MS, IBM, HP,... all do. DEC and all it's long-dead cronies did too. So do middle-ware vendors like Oracle.
This is particularly important for companies like Novell who are targeting corporate customers, most of whom run tailored software for their business purposes (as well as the office stuff for their admin, and other general purpose software).
On many 32 bit devices, accesing 16 bits is more expensive than 32 bits. Thinking ahead to 64-bit CPUs, it makes sense to go for a multiple of 64 (ie.128) rather than 1.5x64.
Still, this does sound like a tick-in-a-box comparison thing for FUDing people about scalability. "So you're thinking about buying OS xxx. I hope you know it only has a 64bit FS. Think of the future. Buy ours with a shiny 128bit FS".
C'mon for a multi-billionare (fsck the spelling) paying someone $20M to carve your name on a building in a world famous campus is a cheap ego boost.
If it was a real donation it would be more discretely done (eg. name it after a famous person other than Gates and perhaps put up a small plaque saying it was funded by Gate foundation).
So if you get together with the other RAM vendors to stabilise the market to keep it sustainable (like OPEC and many others do) then that's illegal price fixing.
If you sell at too low a prices then you're "dumping" and that's illegal too.
One law is there to protect the consumer and the other is there to protect other suppliers.
Unless companies can sustainably make profit from their silicon sales we're doomed to boom and bust cycles where we oscillate between RAM surpluses and RAM shortages. In the long run, we all lose if these companies cant stabilise and make reasonable profits.
It seems that basic Lego stuff like bricks, technics and the robotic stuff (ie. the real creative/educational stuff) is suffering a turndown due to a shift in consumer spending.
It used to be that Lego was about the most interactive toy/game available. Build and break stuff and make it work.
These days there are far more stimulating interactive alternatives (computer games etc). Given the choice between an XBox and a Mindstorms set, most kids will choose the XBox. Lego's core biz is suffering in this competition for toy/entertainment dollars. Perhaps this is a reason for them shifting towards the theme toys (harry potter etc).
All property rights are there to restrict the use and enjoyment of property to the owner. IP rights are the same. They control the use of the IP so that the owner can chhose how the IP is used.
To say a patent isn't granted if there is prior art is equivalent to saying that a land claim is not granted if there is already a prior claim on the same land (indeed in the old days those land claims were called patents).
People often argue that IP can't be "used up" and therefore is different to other property which has physical limits. This misses the fact that the IP rights are there to control the use of the IP, not the IP itself. The thing of value in IP is the potential to use it to make money or whatever. If someone else takes my IP and makes gizzmos and sells them to everyone then they have taken away from me the rights to a market.
Software that provides user-visible features is easy to identify and nominate, but there's a slew of very important and useful OS-level stuff that is invisible and "just works". This kind of software only becomes visible when it breaks.
As an example, one area that I have been involved with is flash file system storage. Flash file systems underpin a slew of embedded and mobile applications (PDAs, phones, television sets,....). A reliable flash file system is a very valuable chunk of code that is invisible to most people using it.
The whole SCO fiasco has been a pump and dump. The purpose of the IP filings was to have something to wave around at press conferences to boulster stock prices. These do not need to be legally sound to achieve this.
They're not trying to build a sustainable business so they don't need development staff and managers etc either.
True investors look carefully at their investments and do "due diligence". Those that bought up SCO stock were just greedy scavengers that smelt IBM etc blood and jumped in. At best they were gamblers, not investors.
As the old adage goes:"You can't cheat an honest man". Anyone "SCO investor" that wants someone to blame should go look in the mirror.
It makes a mockery of "Green PCs" though. In the last 18 years that I have had various PCs the power usage has gone up from ~100W to ~350W for the box. CRT monitor power has gone up too and only switching to an LCD has improved things.
A machine built with 8x ARM cores would have as much grunt as a P4, but cost less and would use only a fraction of the power.
It used to be that eye candy was just cute stuff that did no harm (beyond eating some extra CPU and RAM). Now we see that eye candy can be used to do bad things too.
While the finger currently points at WinAmp skins, I guess all eye candy with XML etc could potentially be used to do the same thing.
Growing the crystals in a multi-step process sounds like a very expensive process. Probably useful for somehot chips though.
So why the hell do we need hot chips anyway? ARM and MIPS devices run cool. Why does x86 have to be hot? Indeed why the hell are we still wedded to these power hungry devices?
This was not an attempt at funny. Some companies refuse to hire ex-SCOites.
Now you suggest that the SCOite should hide the fact that he worked with SCO. If you'd suggested that people hade that they are gay, black, jewish,..... then you'd have been called racist or some other "ist". Surely discrimination in any form is discrimination.
... so long as they are benevolent. For widespread rollout of utilities, a monopoly works very well if they are not so profit oriented. It takes a lot of money and long-term thinking to roll out copper, especially to out-lying areas etc. A hard-assed quarter-by-quarter driven company would continue to look for the best profit which does not necessarily mean taking the technology to the people.
Of course there comes a time when the monopoly no longer makes and it will fade out. Most customers will benefit but soome (eg. less profitable customers in outlying areas) will lose out.
This is no different from US "equal opportunity emplyment". When a company says that it is an equal opportunity employer it means that it does not discriminate against people based on race, gender, sexual orientation etc. But is does not mean that they do not discriminate. For example they can legally refuse to hire someone because they are an ex-SCO employee, while still calling themselves an equal opportunity employer.
I guess if neo-Nazis had as many pressure groups etc as the Jewish people then neo-Nazis could get protection under anti-hate law, but I expect that currently it is OK (legally) to hate neo-Nazis or any Nazi artifacts.
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Now surely the geniuses behind this would have had to understand the workings of a cockroach to build a reasonable model of one that gives them a reasonable simulation. In this case, they already understand the roach mechanics well and studying the roboroach won't tell them an awful lot.
If one starts from the premise that they know very little about the roach (and will hence learn a lot), then likely their robo simulation is not very good and they will learn bullshit (eg. "we found that the roach works by moving its muscle here", but the roach does not have a muscle there).
I'm getting all tied up writing this but surely other folks see this as a circular argument.
What's going to happen to a nouse user? All that extra activity is going to make very strong neck muscles. Wouldn't want to piss the bloke off and get head-butted.
This is particularly important for companies like Novell who are targeting corporate customers, most of whom run tailored software for their business purposes (as well as the office stuff for their admin, and other general purpose software).
Still, this does sound like a tick-in-a-box comparison thing for FUDing people about scalability. "So you're thinking about buying OS xxx. I hope you know it only has a 64bit FS. Think of the future. Buy ours with a shiny 128bit FS".
The old sayings still hold true in the digital age.
If it was a real donation it would be more discretely done (eg. name it after a famous person other than Gates and perhaps put up a small plaque saying it was funded by Gate foundation).
If you sell at too low a prices then you're "dumping" and that's illegal too.
One law is there to protect the consumer and the other is there to protect other suppliers.
Unless companies can sustainably make profit from their silicon sales we're doomed to boom and bust cycles where we oscillate between RAM surpluses and RAM shortages. In the long run, we all lose if these companies cant stabilise and make reasonable profits.
It used to be that Lego was about the most interactive toy/game available. Build and break stuff and make it work.
These days there are far more stimulating interactive alternatives (computer games etc). Given the choice between an XBox and a Mindstorms set, most kids will choose the XBox. Lego's core biz is suffering in this competition for toy/entertainment dollars. Perhaps this is a reason for them shifting towards the theme toys (harry potter etc).
Is this a sad predictor of the fate of geekdom?
Quite. There's so much junk lying in so many rings around Saturn that finding another is hardly big news.
All property rights are there to restrict the use and enjoyment of property to the owner. IP rights are the same. They control the use of the IP so that the owner can chhose how the IP is used.
To say a patent isn't granted if there is prior art is equivalent to saying that a land claim is not granted if there is already a prior claim on the same land (indeed in the old days those land claims were called patents).
People often argue that IP can't be "used up" and therefore is different to other property which has physical limits. This misses the fact that the IP rights are there to control the use of the IP, not the IP itself. The thing of value in IP is the potential to use it to make money or whatever. If someone else takes my IP and makes gizzmos and sells them to everyone then they have taken away from me the rights to a market.
As they say "you can't cheat an honest man". You pay your 3k, get nothing, then who are you going to complain to?
and you'll be able to power it with /. hate mail.
As an example, one area that I have been involved with is flash file system storage. Flash file systems underpin a slew of embedded and mobile applications (PDAs, phones, television sets,....). A reliable flash file system is a very valuable chunk of code that is invisible to most people using it.
C'mon many people are visionaries and "get it", just most don't have the bucks and arrogance to fill the media with their views.
They're not trying to build a sustainable business so they don't need development staff and managers etc either.
As the old adage goes:"You can't cheat an honest man". Anyone "SCO investor" that wants someone to blame should go look in the mirror.
...in the usiverse and we're sorted!
A machine built with 8x ARM cores would have as much grunt as a P4, but cost less and would use only a fraction of the power.
While the finger currently points at WinAmp skins, I guess all eye candy with XML etc could potentially be used to do the same thing.
So why the hell do we need hot chips anyway? ARM and MIPS devices run cool. Why does x86 have to be hot? Indeed why the hell are we still wedded to these power hungry devices?
Now you suggest that the SCOite should hide the fact that he worked with SCO. If you'd suggested that people hade that they are gay, black, jewish,..... then you'd have been called racist or some other "ist". Surely discrimination in any form is discrimination.
Of course there comes a time when the monopoly no longer makes and it will fade out. Most customers will benefit but soome (eg. less profitable customers in outlying areas) will lose out.
If you think the government is intent on serving you then please contact me. I have a nice bridge to sell you.
I guess if neo-Nazis had as many pressure groups etc as the Jewish people then neo-Nazis could get protection under anti-hate law, but I expect that currently it is OK (legally) to hate neo-Nazis or any Nazi artifacts.