Sooner or later, every farmer is dependent on Monsanto. That is not a good thing, imho.
That's the real reason to oppose that crap. It's like crack for farmers. It's sad when there is a good reason to oppose something, but the hippies go after nebulous fears of a mouse somehow being born with an ear of corn coming out of its ass.
Now if someone could arrange to get a couple tons of manure delivered to his front lawn, that would be funny.
Well, last month I ate two pounds of cheese a day, and didn't crap at all. This month, I've been eating nothing but fiber, greasy food, and hot chicken wings. I still haven't dumped for another two weeks, and I think things are ready to go.
So if someone could just drive me to his house, I think I can manage the job for you.
But $98 TRILLION??? [choke] That's just stupidly extortionate.
Yeah, I don't know exactly what they're thinking. Are they going to continue to go after students? OK, ultimately they'll get the cash value of a futon and an old stereo....$15...and the student declares bankruptcy. Are they attempting a deterrent (they are, I believe)? If so, good luck - college students know they don't have anything to fear, being poor, and probably don't care anyway. Are they going to go after the colleges, eventually? Don't like their chances - first, I can't imagine a worse public relations move, and besides, they've never gone after an ISP.
Seems as if the RIAA still doesn't have anything that looks like a real plan.
So, we should all leave our front doors unlocked, and the keys in our car's ignitions just to prevent the crook from having to WORK HARDER to violate our space?
No, his point is that, at best, spam can be solved only for the technologically aware elite who know how to use mail filters and such better than others. His point is that if everyone else learns how to use our tools, spammers will find better tools, forcing us to find yet better ones.
In other words, it's like the old joke about two guys that are attacked by a tiger. One guy puts on his running shoes, and the other guy says "You think you're going to outrun a tiger?!?" The first guy says, "No...I only have to outrun YOU." Point is, the only reason we don't get so much spam in our inbox is that spammers are perfectly fine feeding off of people who don't have our abilities, and I'm not OK with that. As you say, it doesn't mean I'll take off my mail filters, but I don't think anyone was suggesting that.
Ultimately, I agree with him - I think finding a solution that works not only for me but for less capable compter users is a good thing.
And, as he says, eventually the bandwidth problem will be so severe that spam will increase the cost of internet access for everyone, and that, I think we can agree, is bad, and makes spam a problem that is worth solving - ask any operator of an ISP how much of their traffic is spam-related.
Yes, it smacks of self-promotion--but we should consider that it may not be entirely the fault of the researchers
Fair distinction - I will amend what I originally wrote. There are two groups working on this, one from Huntsville, AB, and one from Planck/Italy. Here are two quotes from these guys, the first one from Planck, the second from UAH:
"You don't see a universe that is blurred," he said. "If you take any Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field image you see sharp images, which is enough to tell us that the light has not been distorted or perturbed by fluctuations in space-time from the source to the observer." (Roberto Ragazzoni, Planck)
"If time doesn't become 'fuzzy' beneath a Planck interval, this discovery will present problems to several astrophysical and cosmological models, including the Big Bang model of the universe," (Richard Lieu, UAH).
Now, I have no problem with Ragazzoni's statement, but Lieu's is ridiculous - having the audacity that this result will cause problems to the big bang model? I think it's a bit early to even think of saying that.
This Lieu guy has given multiple interviews, and they all have similarly "grand" conclusions. The Planck guy, who is established, speaks cautiously, while the Associate Professor at UAH (read: still doesn't have an endowed position) plugs himself as much as possible. I don't have any problem with being optimstic that you do something amazing, but this guy doesn't seem to have that degree of cautiousness and suspicion about one's results that scientists HAVE to have. Lacking that, embarassment will result. It's something we all learn...most of us.
Additionally, this isn't the first time he's done this. Back in 99, he made a moderately interesting discovery regarding some phantom radiation from what seemed like empty space. He then insinuated that he had found a major source of dark matter - a big stretch given what he actually did. I'm just saying, this guy has a pattern of drumming up PR and overstating claims.
Basically, I think the space.com interview might be best done AFTER publication, and it might be best to let others decide how good your work is. And as for blaming this on an overzealous PR department - I don't know where his university's PR flunkies would have gotten this info if not from him, and for this to happen twice - I dunno about that. I don't want to sound too critical, but I've seen this stuff too often at conferences and such, and it always gets disproven/retracted/downplayed.
For what it's worth, I still think it was a really cool, and even important experiment. I think it stood on its own without the suspicious and grandiose claims...but that's what it needed to get in MSNBC. Hope his tenure committee considered MSNBC to be a publication.
I'm curious just exactly what you think Linux was incapable of doing without stealing from you?
They think it is impossible for linux to be scaled to "enterprise-level" stuff, like multiple processors and stuff. Yeah, it's bullshit, but let's ask them questions for which we might get original bullshit answers.
If not, then someone else probably made a similar search (thus upping the page ranks). Also, just because something is tough to find in the context of your search (maybe only a few keywords match), that doesn't mean that the site doesn't happen to get a lot of traffic and links for the whole of its content. And ultimately, if you make your search restrictive enough, you WILL find what you want.
Basically, google CAN function like an old-school boolean search engine if you want - additionally, it can do a whole lot more.
I think the only kind of site that is more of a problem with google is something that has low traffic, nothing linking to it, and deals with mundane, redundant information that pulls up a jillion links.
For what it's worth, I search for some wierd shit sometimes, and almost never fail to find what I'm looking for. You just need to know how to massage google.
"if they are going to pirate software it might as well be our stuff"
No, they understand, they are just trying to turn the corner and collect the payoff of this pro-piracy investment. The pressure is on because the stock price is flat.
Cool, somehow I missed that gem of a Gates-ism. I guess I should amend my comment to indicate M$'s overconfidence and complacency. I don't blame them for huffing and puffing about piracy like they used to, it kept their corporate customers buying (ie, the moneytree). But now with forced reg of WinXPhome, customers will not buy that 2nd copy for any of a hundred reasons - forcing them to go to win98 for the second computer. And ultimately, having a lot of people running legacy OS's for longer than the natural product lifecycle is going to be bad for their security, since (let's face it) most windows installs go unpatched.
I think that the war for dominance they won could be un-won, and I think their efforts on piracy is the only chance they have to lose their hold on the desktop market.
Oh, and as for their share price, they will ultimately have to learn that they are no longer a growth company. Notice they finally paid a dividend? That's the hallmark of an old-economy company, and with Microsoft getting crushed (financially) outside their core markets, they better get used to it. They've simply reached saturation with Office and Windows, their only divisions making a profit. My point there is that, even if they get every customer to pay for their copy of windows, it isn't enough to stall their decline in growth more than a quarter or so. They've wrung as much growth out of that sector as is humanly possible, but that period is over.
If Microsoft wants to ensure their long term future they need to improve the server OS's and innovate in client software, not worry about being everything to everyone.
Viewing Google as a competitor from the consumer viewpoint is a mistake.
Except M$ got where it is by not caring about security, ripping off others' innovations then killing their company, dabbling in all markets, and only viewing competitors from the consumer viewpoint.
Seriously, when has quality even been part of M$'s strategy (and strange as this may sound, I don't mean that as a flame). If you have an ineffective DOJ, why not just keep utilizing your marketing and monopolistic strength to kill off competitors? Why is there any need to improve?
And sadly, this extends to a large degree to enterprise software as well. How smart is the typical CIO? Even more important, how much does the CEO know about software? Not much, which is why MS software is the safe choice for CIO's. Like the saying goes, buying MS doesn't get people fired (not *quite* true, but you get the idea).
A combination of FUD, astroturfing, buying shill journalists, buying out companies, market-killing monopoly extending has always been a good way for MS to win. Why would they stop now?
Quite frankly, I wouldn't do anything different from how they're doing it, except for their deranged obsession with piracy. If they ever figure out that widespread piracy does for them what they couldn't even LEGALLY DO (ie, dumping and undercutting to achieve market saturation), most of their OSS problems would disappear. Their arrogance in this area is one of the few things that could ever bring them down.
If the poster really wants his own personal rollercoaster ride, I suggest an easier alternative would be to try getting a job in the IT industry right now.
Nah, see, a rollercoaster, at least you stop at the same height you start. IT's more like that death drop ride, where you work forever to climb to the top (ie, college), and then you drop all the way to where you were (ie, high-school-grad type jobs).
In other words, this isn't going to affect non-relativistic quantum mechanics or even QED, except insofar as those theories are already incomplete or incorrect.
No kidding. My first reservation was reading about how the article "will be published." One of the things to always be leery of is research that is released to the media before published. And they've talked to massive numbers of pseudo-scientific journalists and websites. Second, it's being published in a "letters" journal. Not the highest standards, because they're not publishing a full article. Third, these claims are being put out by groups from places like the University of Alabama at Huntsville. I'm not saying great research CAN'T be done at such places...but combined with the way they've gone about publishing, it smacks of someone trying to drum up their own PR.
Now, as for the actual claims in the article, they're talking about how blurred these pictures should be, with reference to the Planck time, and invoked a quantum gravity argument. The existence of a quantum gravity has never been proven rigorously, and has been a bane to the efforts of unifying the four major forces for years. So, if anything, they've managed to poke holes in a theory that everyone admits is thoroughly "under construction."
The next problem is that the entire fundamental point of their study assumes that uncertainties in time propogate over distance, and that the uncertainty in wavelength can be interpreted as a superposition of waves of complete certainty. This is a sketchy and controversial means of implementing this. Had they stopped before they got here, and said that their results imply that maybe this big assumption is dead wrong, they would have made a significant contribution.
However, they don't stop there. They then go on to discuss potential implications including an infinitely dense universe at the time of the big bang, which assumes that both their results as well as the flawed theories they invoke are correct, but that the collected works on theoretical physics are wrong. It's happened before, but not usually. It's a massive reach, but they include it because doing so is likely to get them more exposure than their more legitimate claims. And have no doubt, this will gather much more attention in the "Scientific American" crowd of science-groupies than it will in academia.
My problem with this isn't that they didn't do a cool experiment - they did. The problem is that they extended its impact far too wide. When confronted with their evidence that invalidates one of two theories, they choose to interpret it as invalidating the more established theory, as that gets them more press. Their research was fine on its own, but it seems they are more interested in publicity. Reminds me of a group in Utah about 15 years ago...
Tell Your Congresscritter
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BSA IDC FUD
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· Score: 1
Could you please forward that post to whoever claims to represent you in Congress? Remember to remove all those tricky big words though.
You'll find a *strong* correlation between PC use and life expectancy.
Also, if you do send this to DC, I expect that free PC's will become part of Medicare...;)
Just go with another apple variety. Call it the Granny Smith or something. It's completely wacky, and perfectly gives the intended impression of being a knock-off apple, not the real thing.
For what it's worth, when will Apple realize that
a) now that they have an awesome OS, they have a huge untapped market of new customers who aren't used to paying $1200 for a low-end computer,
b) there is money to be made on the low end,
c) There are people who want a mac but can't/won't pay those prices.
d) Getting more market share (from low-end customers) will help get more product support for the mac.
It's frustrating to see apple refuse to go after a large segment of the population (like me!), and I really think they could introduce a cheaper mac without poaching their others if they're careful.
Your competition kills price fixing assumes the following:
A large number of manufacturers
A low barrier to market entry
Vendors who won't undercut new entrants to the market.
In this case, I don't think you have any of these. There aren't that many manufacturers of flat screens (I mean actual manufacturers, not resellers like Dell that slap their name on someone else's stuff), so coordinating a price-fix ain't that hard. Also, this is a fairly expensive industry - we're not talking graphics cards where no board-maker can charge a large margin, since making a reference GeForce board is easy. So, just anyone isn't going to enter the market. Also, any companies that MIGHT enter the market aren't likely to create waves - if, say, Phillips starts making LCD's and undercutting Sony, Sony is likely to get revenge in another market they both share. That's the problem with the electronics industry, it's so damned incestuous. And if anyone without a big name tried undercutting, the bog boys would just undercut *them* until they went under, at which point prices go back up.
Your argument, if it worked, would prevent price fixing from EVER happening. However, markets don't work like it's taught in Econ 101. Markets aren't perfect machines, and corporations don't want them to be.
I'm not saying there's evidence of fixing here, but there could be. And if you contend that there's not, then you need an argument that is unique to the situation, rather than proving that price fixing in general does not exist, as it certainly does. Show why it doesn't exist in THIS case.
digital rights management is less of a problem here because of the limited amount of time they'd be able to store the streams.
Right, but to me that sounds like the most efficient DRM of all time. Not only do consumers only get what AOL wants, but they don't even get to keep it long without resorting to VHS (and if I wanted to hassle with that in the first place...). So basically we don't have to worry about DRM here because we have no rights left for them *to* manage.
Ah well, with PC technology continually progressing, it should only be another year or two before PC hardware to handle everything a PVR can do and more will be available, easy to use, and infinately extendible.
Yeah - that's the best hope I think. If AOL takes on TiVo with the intent to kill them (and there is sufficient motive there), then TiVo is damn near a dead duck. Then, hopefully, the 95% of the population that is braindead will sign up for Mystro, while the rest of us go for a PC-based solution that flies beneath AOL's radar.
I tell you what would *really* rock. There's only one major cable service provider that isn't owned by a media conglomerate - DirecTV. They have no motive (other than fear of coersion) to bow to the MPAA et al, and they're already selling a more expensive version of their box with TiVo-like features. It would be cool if they would start having maybe a USB connection on their boxes that would feed programming info to a computer as well as take channel-change info from the computer. Seems like it would be cheaper for them than building their own TiVo, and it would be potentially customizable.
Regardless of how they do it, I think DirecTV is the best alternative if TiVo gets canned.
Seriously, other than the waste of bandwidth, how is this better than a Tivo?
This wasn't designed with your rights in mind. Remember, AOL=Time Warner=Warner Brothers=MPAA and RIAA. Here we have a service provider who is also a content creator, so guess what their service will be like? Crippled, pretty much. They don't want you recording that? Then you can't. They don't want you deleting commercials? Then you can't. They want to promo a show? It's recorded without your consent (anybody smell a more modern payola here?).
Bottom line is they're hoping that they can undercut TiVo and use their broader media power to plug Mystro. I'm guessing they won't even attempt to break even at first, as long as they kill TiVo. Then they can do whatever they want, including more draconian rules for what you can/can't record. And ultimately, because THEY store the content, they can also change their minds. Remember, storing all that will be a pain in the ass - and they're not going to do it unless it benefits them in an extremely tangiable way. Obviously, that will be content control OR profit from selling their control of the content to fellow content creators. Like, say, addition of noise or some sort of nag feature to movies, maybe?
So you ask how this is better....it's a whole lot better for them! But it sucks for you. People, don't let AOL kill TiVo, one of the truly cool gadgets that we have despite the MPAA and cronies.
Too much competition exists on the Linux side of things to make enough money, with Dell, IBM, HP, and others fighting it out.
See, that's the thing though, they're not,as it states in the beginning of the article...
"our customers told us they didn't want a standard distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will be."
So basically, they're going to stop doing the only thing that IBM wasn't doing: namely, releasing their own distro...such as it was anyway. If anything, this brings them more into competition with IBM. That should be fun for them.
I'm with some of the other responders in this thread. I want to see some of these patent examples where they tried to patent open source work. Preferably ones that weren't a bureaucratic oversight that was reversed.
I love the smell of astroturf in the morning....especially mixed with burning napalm.
Nah, actually, I think the guy is gin-u-wine...unless M$ has finally realized that a little self-deprecation (microsoft does lack the vibrant communinty projects) would help the credibility of their 'turfers. Like that's actually going to happen tho.
Let's not let the 'turfers win. If we assume that anyone with an opposing viewpoint is 'turfing, we lose the ability to actually discuss, and M$ wins anyway.
Wow, since I base my entire self image on your opinion of me and your absolute determinations regarding people you've not even met, I will now be forced to commit Selbstmord. I suppose you can go find your tourist's German dictionary and find out what that actually means.
If you ever GO to Germany you'll see they don't try to bury their past.
I studied German and Germany quite intensively (not just a fucking vacation) and yes, they do. It is actually illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia in Germany. I recall a German schoolkid who did a tasteful project on Nazism got expelled. So yes, the Germans have spent the last 50 years expunging the previous 50 from their collective history.
Except that your comments in conjunction with your shitty sort-of German are simply bigoted and insulting.
I actually speak German. Fairly well. And I actually enjoy the German culture. But it doesn't mean they do everything right...and anyone who can't laugh at themselves as well as everyone else takes things a bit too seriously.
Oh, and sign your posts if you're going to flame, you fucking coward.
Gerhard Schroder, Chancellor of Deutschland, visits a local school with a group of Americans...
Gerhard Schroder: See guys? We can master the art of mindless idealism and nauseating political correctness and forget about our past of fascism and genocide. Now all of our pretty children smile and love each other because they play healthy video games.
Assistant:Sir, von of ze children iz not schmiling...I think he has been playing das "Grand Theft Auto."
Schroder: Vat! Ze children must schmile! YOU VILL SCHMILE!
Child cries...
Schroder: I see. You vant to be deeeficult. Herr Assistant, bring zu me mein tools...
Schroder (grinning): Now you vill schmile...
Child: Aaaahhhh! Das schmertzt! Bitte tot mich nicht!
They probably have a transcoder which translates between JPEG and whatever their proprietary format is, with as little degradation as possible.
I kind of doubt it - that would be a bit processor-intensive on their servers. I think they-re just re-compressing whatever comes along without regard to what it is. This at least eliminates any image decoding step, and and file-extension issues. As I recall, better compression (at a constant detail loss, of course) = more processor overhead too.
Surprisingly, not everyone follows the open source mantra. There are legitimate reasons for not wanting to provide constant releases. One is confusion among a less educated (some might also say intelligent) user base - people getting what is effectively a beta and don't know it end up bitching at Apple. This makes them look incompetent, and can cause problems for their image.
Apple has good reasons for wanting to keep their stuff under wraps until they ship. This doesn't make them wrong, unenlightened, or the enemy.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the real reason to oppose that crap. It's like crack for farmers. It's sad when there is a good reason to oppose something, but the hippies go after nebulous fears of a mouse somehow being born with an ear of corn coming out of its ass.
Well, last month I ate two pounds of cheese a day, and didn't crap at all. This month, I've been eating nothing but fiber, greasy food, and hot chicken wings. I still haven't dumped for another two weeks, and I think things are ready to go.
So if someone could just drive me to his house, I think I can manage the job for you.
Yeah, I don't know exactly what they're thinking. Are they going to continue to go after students? OK, ultimately they'll get the cash value of a futon and an old stereo....$15...and the student declares bankruptcy. Are they attempting a deterrent (they are, I believe)? If so, good luck - college students know they don't have anything to fear, being poor, and probably don't care anyway. Are they going to go after the colleges, eventually? Don't like their chances - first, I can't imagine a worse public relations move, and besides, they've never gone after an ISP.
Seems as if the RIAA still doesn't have anything that looks like a real plan.
No, his point is that, at best, spam can be solved only for the technologically aware elite who know how to use mail filters and such better than others. His point is that if everyone else learns how to use our tools, spammers will find better tools, forcing us to find yet better ones.
In other words, it's like the old joke about two guys that are attacked by a tiger. One guy puts on his running shoes, and the other guy says "You think you're going to outrun a tiger?!?" The first guy says, "No...I only have to outrun YOU." Point is, the only reason we don't get so much spam in our inbox is that spammers are perfectly fine feeding off of people who don't have our abilities, and I'm not OK with that. As you say, it doesn't mean I'll take off my mail filters, but I don't think anyone was suggesting that.
Ultimately, I agree with him - I think finding a solution that works not only for me but for less capable compter users is a good thing.
And, as he says, eventually the bandwidth problem will be so severe that spam will increase the cost of internet access for everyone, and that, I think we can agree, is bad, and makes spam a problem that is worth solving - ask any operator of an ISP how much of their traffic is spam-related.
Fair distinction - I will amend what I originally wrote. There are two groups working on this, one from Huntsville, AB, and one from Planck/Italy. Here are two quotes from these guys, the first one from Planck, the second from UAH:
"You don't see a universe that is blurred," he said. "If you take any Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field image you see sharp images, which is enough to tell us that the light has not been distorted or perturbed by fluctuations in space-time from the source to the observer." (Roberto Ragazzoni, Planck)
"If time doesn't become 'fuzzy' beneath a Planck interval, this discovery will present problems to several astrophysical and cosmological models, including the Big Bang model of the universe," (Richard Lieu, UAH).
Now, I have no problem with Ragazzoni's statement, but Lieu's is ridiculous - having the audacity that this result will cause problems to the big bang model? I think it's a bit early to even think of saying that.
This Lieu guy has given multiple interviews, and they all have similarly "grand" conclusions. The Planck guy, who is established, speaks cautiously, while the Associate Professor at UAH (read: still doesn't have an endowed position) plugs himself as much as possible. I don't have any problem with being optimstic that you do something amazing, but this guy doesn't seem to have that degree of cautiousness and suspicion about one's results that scientists HAVE to have. Lacking that, embarassment will result. It's something we all learn...most of us.
Additionally, this isn't the first time he's done this. Back in 99, he made a moderately interesting discovery regarding some phantom radiation from what seemed like empty space. He then insinuated that he had found a major source of dark matter - a big stretch given what he actually did. I'm just saying, this guy has a pattern of drumming up PR and overstating claims.
Basically, I think the space.com interview might be best done AFTER publication, and it might be best to let others decide how good your work is. And as for blaming this on an overzealous PR department - I don't know where his university's PR flunkies would have gotten this info if not from him, and for this to happen twice - I dunno about that. I don't want to sound too critical, but I've seen this stuff too often at conferences and such, and it always gets disproven/retracted/downplayed.
For what it's worth, I still think it was a really cool, and even important experiment. I think it stood on its own without the suspicious and grandiose claims...but that's what it needed to get in MSNBC. Hope his tenure committee considered MSNBC to be a publication.
They think it is impossible for linux to be scaled to "enterprise-level" stuff, like multiple processors and stuff. Yeah, it's bullshit, but let's ask them questions for which we might get original bullshit answers.
Basically, google CAN function like an old-school boolean search engine if you want - additionally, it can do a whole lot more.
I think the only kind of site that is more of a problem with google is something that has low traffic, nothing linking to it, and deals with mundane, redundant information that pulls up a jillion links.
For what it's worth, I search for some wierd shit sometimes, and almost never fail to find what I'm looking for. You just need to know how to massage google.
You'd think some slashdotters would actually be able to spot trolls by now. Boggles the mind.
No, they understand, they are just trying to turn the corner and collect the payoff of this pro-piracy investment. The pressure is on because the stock price is flat.
Cool, somehow I missed that gem of a Gates-ism. I guess I should amend my comment to indicate M$'s overconfidence and complacency. I don't blame them for huffing and puffing about piracy like they used to, it kept their corporate customers buying (ie, the moneytree). But now with forced reg of WinXPhome, customers will not buy that 2nd copy for any of a hundred reasons - forcing them to go to win98 for the second computer. And ultimately, having a lot of people running legacy OS's for longer than the natural product lifecycle is going to be bad for their security, since (let's face it) most windows installs go unpatched.
I think that the war for dominance they won could be un-won, and I think their efforts on piracy is the only chance they have to lose their hold on the desktop market.
Oh, and as for their share price, they will ultimately have to learn that they are no longer a growth company. Notice they finally paid a dividend? That's the hallmark of an old-economy company, and with Microsoft getting crushed (financially) outside their core markets, they better get used to it. They've simply reached saturation with Office and Windows, their only divisions making a profit. My point there is that, even if they get every customer to pay for their copy of windows, it isn't enough to stall their decline in growth more than a quarter or so. They've wrung as much growth out of that sector as is humanly possible, but that period is over.
Viewing Google as a competitor from the consumer viewpoint is a mistake.
Except M$ got where it is by not caring about security, ripping off others' innovations then killing their company, dabbling in all markets, and only viewing competitors from the consumer viewpoint.
Seriously, when has quality even been part of M$'s strategy (and strange as this may sound, I don't mean that as a flame). If you have an ineffective DOJ, why not just keep utilizing your marketing and monopolistic strength to kill off competitors? Why is there any need to improve?
And sadly, this extends to a large degree to enterprise software as well. How smart is the typical CIO? Even more important, how much does the CEO know about software? Not much, which is why MS software is the safe choice for CIO's. Like the saying goes, buying MS doesn't get people fired (not *quite* true, but you get the idea).
A combination of FUD, astroturfing, buying shill journalists, buying out companies, market-killing monopoly extending has always been a good way for MS to win. Why would they stop now?
Quite frankly, I wouldn't do anything different from how they're doing it, except for their deranged obsession with piracy. If they ever figure out that widespread piracy does for them what they couldn't even LEGALLY DO (ie, dumping and undercutting to achieve market saturation), most of their OSS problems would disappear. Their arrogance in this area is one of the few things that could ever bring them down.
Nah, see, a rollercoaster, at least you stop at the same height you start. IT's more like that death drop ride, where you work forever to climb to the top (ie, college), and then you drop all the way to where you were (ie, high-school-grad type jobs).
No kidding. My first reservation was reading about how the article "will be published." One of the things to always be leery of is research that is released to the media before published. And they've talked to massive numbers of pseudo-scientific journalists and websites. Second, it's being published in a "letters" journal. Not the highest standards, because they're not publishing a full article. Third, these claims are being put out by groups from places like the University of Alabama at Huntsville. I'm not saying great research CAN'T be done at such places...but combined with the way they've gone about publishing, it smacks of someone trying to drum up their own PR.
Now, as for the actual claims in the article, they're talking about how blurred these pictures should be, with reference to the Planck time, and invoked a quantum gravity argument. The existence of a quantum gravity has never been proven rigorously, and has been a bane to the efforts of unifying the four major forces for years. So, if anything, they've managed to poke holes in a theory that everyone admits is thoroughly "under construction."
The next problem is that the entire fundamental point of their study assumes that uncertainties in time propogate over distance, and that the uncertainty in wavelength can be interpreted as a superposition of waves of complete certainty. This is a sketchy and controversial means of implementing this. Had they stopped before they got here, and said that their results imply that maybe this big assumption is dead wrong, they would have made a significant contribution.
However, they don't stop there. They then go on to discuss potential implications including an infinitely dense universe at the time of the big bang, which assumes that both their results as well as the flawed theories they invoke are correct, but that the collected works on theoretical physics are wrong. It's happened before, but not usually. It's a massive reach, but they include it because doing so is likely to get them more exposure than their more legitimate claims. And have no doubt, this will gather much more attention in the "Scientific American" crowd of science-groupies than it will in academia.
My problem with this isn't that they didn't do a cool experiment - they did. The problem is that they extended its impact far too wide. When confronted with their evidence that invalidates one of two theories, they choose to interpret it as invalidating the more established theory, as that gets them more press. Their research was fine on its own, but it seems they are more interested in publicity. Reminds me of a group in Utah about 15 years ago...
You'll find a *strong* correlation between PC use and life expectancy.
Also, if you do send this to DC, I expect that free PC's will become part of Medicare...;)
For what it's worth, when will Apple realize that
a) now that they have an awesome OS, they have a huge untapped market of new customers who aren't used to paying $1200 for a low-end computer,
b) there is money to be made on the low end,
c) There are people who want a mac but can't/won't pay those prices.
d) Getting more market share (from low-end customers) will help get more product support for the mac.
It's frustrating to see apple refuse to go after a large segment of the population (like me!), and I really think they could introduce a cheaper mac without poaching their others if they're careful.
A large number of manufacturers
A low barrier to market entry
Vendors who won't undercut new entrants to the market.
In this case, I don't think you have any of these. There aren't that many manufacturers of flat screens (I mean actual manufacturers, not resellers like Dell that slap their name on someone else's stuff), so coordinating a price-fix ain't that hard. Also, this is a fairly expensive industry - we're not talking graphics cards where no board-maker can charge a large margin, since making a reference GeForce board is easy. So, just anyone isn't going to enter the market. Also, any companies that MIGHT enter the market aren't likely to create waves - if, say, Phillips starts making LCD's and undercutting Sony, Sony is likely to get revenge in another market they both share. That's the problem with the electronics industry, it's so damned incestuous. And if anyone without a big name tried undercutting, the bog boys would just undercut *them* until they went under, at which point prices go back up.
Your argument, if it worked, would prevent price fixing from EVER happening. However, markets don't work like it's taught in Econ 101. Markets aren't perfect machines, and corporations don't want them to be.
I'm not saying there's evidence of fixing here, but there could be. And if you contend that there's not, then you need an argument that is unique to the situation, rather than proving that price fixing in general does not exist, as it certainly does. Show why it doesn't exist in THIS case.
Hey, at least they can laugh at themselves, more than you can say for a lot in the linux community
Right, but to me that sounds like the most efficient DRM of all time. Not only do consumers only get what AOL wants, but they don't even get to keep it long without resorting to VHS (and if I wanted to hassle with that in the first place...). So basically we don't have to worry about DRM here because we have no rights left for them *to* manage.
Ah well, with PC technology continually progressing, it should only be another year or two before PC hardware to handle everything a PVR can do and more will be available, easy to use, and infinately extendible.
Yeah - that's the best hope I think. If AOL takes on TiVo with the intent to kill them (and there is sufficient motive there), then TiVo is damn near a dead duck. Then, hopefully, the 95% of the population that is braindead will sign up for Mystro, while the rest of us go for a PC-based solution that flies beneath AOL's radar.
I tell you what would *really* rock. There's only one major cable service provider that isn't owned by a media conglomerate - DirecTV. They have no motive (other than fear of coersion) to bow to the MPAA et al, and they're already selling a more expensive version of their box with TiVo-like features. It would be cool if they would start having maybe a USB connection on their boxes that would feed programming info to a computer as well as take channel-change info from the computer. Seems like it would be cheaper for them than building their own TiVo, and it would be potentially customizable.
Regardless of how they do it, I think DirecTV is the best alternative if TiVo gets canned.
This wasn't designed with your rights in mind. Remember, AOL=Time Warner=Warner Brothers=MPAA and RIAA. Here we have a service provider who is also a content creator, so guess what their service will be like? Crippled, pretty much. They don't want you recording that? Then you can't. They don't want you deleting commercials? Then you can't. They want to promo a show? It's recorded without your consent (anybody smell a more modern payola here?).
Bottom line is they're hoping that they can undercut TiVo and use their broader media power to plug Mystro. I'm guessing they won't even attempt to break even at first, as long as they kill TiVo. Then they can do whatever they want, including more draconian rules for what you can/can't record. And ultimately, because THEY store the content, they can also change their minds. Remember, storing all that will be a pain in the ass - and they're not going to do it unless it benefits them in an extremely tangiable way. Obviously, that will be content control OR profit from selling their control of the content to fellow content creators. Like, say, addition of noise or some sort of nag feature to movies, maybe?
So you ask how this is better....it's a whole lot better for them! But it sucks for you. People, don't let AOL kill TiVo, one of the truly cool gadgets that we have despite the MPAA and cronies.
See, that's the thing though, they're not,as it states in the beginning of the article...
"our customers told us they didn't want a standard distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will be."
So basically, they're going to stop doing the only thing that IBM wasn't doing: namely, releasing their own distro...such as it was anyway. If anything, this brings them more into competition with IBM. That should be fun for them.
I'm with some of the other responders in this thread. I want to see some of these patent examples where they tried to patent open source work. Preferably ones that weren't a bureaucratic oversight that was reversed.
Nah, actually, I think the guy is gin-u-wine...unless M$ has finally realized that a little self-deprecation (microsoft does lack the vibrant communinty projects) would help the credibility of their 'turfers. Like that's actually going to happen tho.
Let's not let the 'turfers win. If we assume that anyone with an opposing viewpoint is 'turfing, we lose the ability to actually discuss, and M$ wins anyway.
Wow, since I base my entire self image on your opinion of me and your absolute determinations regarding people you've not even met, I will now be forced to commit Selbstmord. I suppose you can go find your tourist's German dictionary and find out what that actually means.
If you ever GO to Germany you'll see they don't try to bury their past.
I studied German and Germany quite intensively (not just a fucking vacation) and yes, they do. It is actually illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia in Germany. I recall a German schoolkid who did a tasteful project on Nazism got expelled. So yes, the Germans have spent the last 50 years expunging the previous 50 from their collective history.
Except that your comments in conjunction with your shitty sort-of German are simply bigoted and insulting.
I actually speak German. Fairly well. And I actually enjoy the German culture. But it doesn't mean they do everything right...and anyone who can't laugh at themselves as well as everyone else takes things a bit too seriously.
Oh, and sign your posts if you're going to flame, you fucking coward.
Gerhard Schroder: See guys? We can master the art of mindless idealism and nauseating political correctness and forget about our past of fascism and genocide. Now all of our pretty children smile and love each other because they play healthy video games.
Assistant:Sir, von of ze children iz not schmiling...I think he has been playing das "Grand Theft Auto."
Schroder: Vat! Ze children must schmile! YOU VILL SCHMILE!
Child cries...
Schroder: I see. You vant to be deeeficult. Herr Assistant, bring zu me mein tools...
Schroder (grinning): Now you vill schmile...
Child: Aaaahhhh! Das schmertzt! Bitte tot mich nicht!
I kind of doubt it - that would be a bit processor-intensive on their servers. I think they-re just re-compressing whatever comes along without regard to what it is. This at least eliminates any image decoding step, and and file-extension issues. As I recall, better compression (at a constant detail loss, of course) = more processor overhead too.
I could be wrong tho.
Surprisingly, not everyone follows the open source mantra. There are legitimate reasons for not wanting to provide constant releases. One is confusion among a less educated (some might also say intelligent) user base - people getting what is effectively a beta and don't know it end up bitching at Apple. This makes them look incompetent, and can cause problems for their image.
Apple has good reasons for wanting to keep their stuff under wraps until they ship. This doesn't make them wrong, unenlightened, or the enemy.