...Why you would run Windows on top of Linux, given not only the stability history but also since now there are now FOSS alternatives for almost anything Windows can provide, without taking a huge hit to the "total cost of ownership".
What's funny is, as I was concentrating on reading the last paragraph of your post, I was focusing on each word as I read it. Something seemed strange as I read, so I read it again, this time pausing for several seconds before moving to the next word.
Having already read the paragraph, I knew what it said. There was no sense of urgency in my mind, nothing to influence whatever part of my brain causes saccades to refresh my field of view so I could read the next word.
I could see each word very clearly when I first focused on it. By the time I moved my focus the the next word, I saw mostly gray.
Try it. Read this post a couple times, comprehend it, then focus on each word, individually, for several seconds.
Funny, for an instant I thought your post had some actual content, but for some reason all I can see now is the word "fnord" repeated over and over.
Early experiments were performed using a grain-of-wheat bulb literally glued to the eyeball.
I first saw this in a Life Magazine article published in the late 1940s or early 1950s. That experiment used a mirror glued to a contact lens, not to the eyeball.
The mirror shifted an image on a screen to negate the retinal image's movement caused by microsaccades. The mirror was better for detecting the eye's angular movement than a light bulb would have been.
Well, the experiment I read did indeed have a small lamp assembly glued to an eyeball. It's been a long time, but as I recall the experiment wasn't about monitoring eye motion, but to determine what happens when the retina is exposed to an unchanging image. The article mentioned the fact that rabbits are pretty much unable to see anything unless it's moving (something about a lot of the visual preprocessing being done in the rabbit's eye, not in the brain.)
I remember reading about this back in the 90s...so what is new here?
Nothing that I can tell. I was working as a software developer back in 1982 or so for a group of neuroscientists at a local university. One of the projects I worked on used a pair of glasses with infrared motion sensors on them to continuously track pupil movements. The idea was to monitor saccades for diagnostic purposes (they become exaggerated in, for example, people who habitually work in near-darkness... like miners.) It was explained to me that it had been known since the sixties (if not earlier) that saccades were, at least in part, needed to avoid retinal fatigue. Early experiments were performed using a grain-of-wheat bulb literally glued to the eyeball. It was shown that when the image didn't move relative to the retina, it quickly became invisible.
It sounds like what these guys are doing is relating these involuntary eye movements to brain activity. That's interesting if not particularly novel: some of the people I worked for were doing this twenty-five years ago using EEGs. What's more interesting to me is that we're generally completely unaware of these eye movements, just as we're generally unaware of our blind spots. It's an impressive bit of (ahem) abstraction layering that the brain does for us.
Seriously though... this might be the impetus to develop force shields a la Star Trek. It makes sense, when enough space junk builds up, deflector shields will be the only way to safely escape Earth orbit.
Well, there will have to be some major breakthroughs in physics for that to happen. Electromagnetics won't help much, because a lot of that junk is non-ferrous.
existing TVs only display incoming pictures, they don't return information . ..
unless you use a cable box.
Or have AT&T U-Verse. Log into their Web site, and there's all your DVR program recording choices. Yeah, it's cool that you can edit them online, but I don't exactly like the idea that my DVR is transmitting that data (and what else I'm not sure) to AT&T. I'd be surprised if they weren't monetizing that information in some way (targeted advertising, etc.)
Not millions, billions, some two hundred of them (albeit in tax breaks, not cash) and I'm still waiting to see the results from that before I want any more tax money going to those bloodsuckers.
When you give someone a tax break, you become less of a bloodsucker, than you were before, when you were taxing them higher... Or did you call telcos "bloodsuckers" over something else?
Not sure exactly how you got modded +5 Insightful on this one, but what seems to have escaped both you and the moderators is one important point. Congress gave the incumbent telephone companies those breaks for the express purpose building out a next-generation nationwide fiber network. They then proceeded to pocket the money and deliver squat for it.
Sorry, but in my book that makes them bloodsucking leeches, not to mention amoral, immoral and outright criminal.
Nah, too political and the political process takes too long.
No, what you have to do is the following:
1. Shoot all Windows admins. I know, it sounds brutal but trust me, it'll be better for everyone on the long run. It's no more than what they deserve after all. I mean, they freely chose to support the Evil Empire.
2. Send all the brainwashed Windows users to the appropriate re-education camp to have them deprogrammed. Now, some might say that this is no better than what Microsoft has done all these years, and I'd agree, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
3. Send in the LPTs (Linux Proselytization Teams) to spread the Word amongst all those who didn't get the message the first time around. After all, there are always some for whom the deprogramming process doesn't work perfectly, or who managed to escape the initial roundup. It's necessary to root them out so they can be given proper guidance. Really, it's for their own good.
This may be hard for some of you stomach, I understand, but just think how free we'll all feel when Microsoft is gone forever.
Frankly, the telco's were given million of dollars to expand broadband years ago and essentially pissed the money away.
Not millions, billions, some two hundred of them (albeit in tax breaks, not cash) and I'm still waiting to see the results from that before I want any more tax money going to those bloodsuckers.
The right idea for places like China, North Korea and the US of A.
Love how you stick the U.S. in with China. There's no Great Firewall here yet, so we're really not in China's league. Domestic surveillance is an issue, of course, but at least here it is an issue. In the other places you mention it's not even on The People's radar.
Of course, the bulk of people in the U.S. go through the major ISPs, which means the likes of Comcast and AT&T. Both companies have already proven to be very (ahem) "law enforcement friendly", shall we say. Using an alternate DNS service (whether it be OpenDNS or otherwise) would, if anything, improve your privacy with regards to what sites you visit. Not that ISPs can't log all that information anyway, without needing access to your DNS requests.
Just Google for "free DNS", but I use 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3 myself. I think they're from Level 3. There's tons of others though. I used to have Comcast, and I switched my DNS because theirs were slow and unreliable. I mean, if I went to a complex site (take MSNBC.COM, for example) it would take several seconds to load on a 16 mbit/sec line, just because of all the domain requests. I just switched to AT&T for my ISP now, and I haven't changed my DNS settings yet because the response is really, really crisp.
Well, only if you can use it to test new appliance BEFORE you buy them.
Which may very well prove nothing. If the device only wakes up every few hours to download new information, you might not even detect the extra power drain when running your test in the store.
This is why I have all of my electronics go through a wall switch. TVs, amps, cable boxes, game systems, etc... all continue to draw power even when off. Flip the wall switch on your way out and you have a low-tech way to fight this problem.
The only downside is that the digital cable box takes a few minutes to start. Actually, come to think of it, it's more of an upside since I get tired of waiting and go do something more productive instead of watching TV.
That's great so long as those devices are capable of preserving their configuration when disconnected from the line. If your cable box, say, only has a supercap for memory backup, it may lose its setup after a few hours.
I don't here wankers like you moaning about Pioneer doing the same thing across their entire range.
We will be if it's true, now that you've mentioned it. But as the GP points out, Sony has some additional evil elements that tend to really piss us off, all the more so because Sony used to be our hero. After all, they were the outfit that won the court decision that affirmed the legality of the VCR, home taping, and time shifting.
Sad thing is, there's probably a good chunk of Sony's current management that regrets having done that.
They could require devices to generate energy while on standby (by vapourizing invisible pink unicorns), and manufacturers could keep self-certifying their devices as compliant.
Which is all the more reason the government shouldn't meddle with corporations.
Well, that's been tried: it was called laissez-faire. It didn't work. Really, by simply regulating corporate behavior to the degree that is currently done (which happened in response to the abuses of the unregulated environment we once had) you could say the government is meddling. That's a legitimate function, though: like it or not, in this case we need the institution of government. Mainly because the private sector (and private interests) has, proven time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with the common good.
Ultimately, you need a private sector governed by sensible regulation that allows both corporations and individuals to flourish. Having reasonably ethical business leaders that are willing live under the law as written, and don't spend millions buying new Federal regulation to suit themselves helps too.
So, the real problem is not that our government shouldn't "meddle", but that that meddling has become too heavily influenced by business. In a word, corpratism, and that means that big business is doing very well at the expense of everyone and everything else. The reason that is happening is because big government has largely failed to provide proper regulation, which is a good part of what we pay it for.
Nobody is forcing you, the self-importance filled "American Citizen", to move abroad, work abroad, or take any job less than what You the Great want to make. IBM is moving the position overseas; you have the option to follow it, not the requirement. It's hard to fault IBM; the cost of employing people in the US is egregiously high compared to other countries, and the international business laws offer no strong disincentive for doing so. Regardless, though, nobody will be forcing You to take a job paying less than you want; there may just not be many jobs up to Your standards soon, though.
Huh? If IBM wants to avail itself of cheap Indian labor, or pay its American workers Indian rates, then it should uproot itself and move to India. Otherwise, it should stop using the reliable electric power, roads, railway system, communications system, and other useful infrastructure paid for by the American taxpayer. The picture is not so simple as you make it out: IBM (like many large corporations) wants to have its cake and eat it too. They're being disingenuous at best and I call bullshit on this.
Slashdot Mirror
...Why you would run Windows on top of Linux, given not only the stability history but also since now there are now FOSS alternatives for almost anything Windows can provide, without taking a huge hit to the "total cost of ownership".
Two words: Microsoft Exchange.
Two more: legacy applications.
Regarding your sig: Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I have another one:
Share your fire with a man, he'll be warm for a night. Set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
another step forward for Open Source and a sign that Microsoft can adapt.
Maybe. But I have three words for Red Hat: watch your six.
What's funny is, as I was concentrating on reading the last paragraph of your post, I was focusing on each word as I read it. Something seemed strange as I read, so I read it again, this time pausing for several seconds before moving to the next word.
Having already read the paragraph, I knew what it said. There was no sense of urgency in my mind, nothing to influence whatever part of my brain causes saccades to refresh my field of view so I could read the next word.
I could see each word very clearly when I first focused on it. By the time I moved my focus the the next word, I saw mostly gray.
Try it. Read this post a couple times, comprehend it, then focus on each word, individually, for several seconds.
Funny, for an instant I thought your post had some actual content, but for some reason all I can see now is the word "fnord" repeated over and over.
Early experiments were performed using a grain-of-wheat bulb literally glued to the eyeball.
I first saw this in a Life Magazine article published in the late 1940s or early 1950s. That experiment used a mirror glued to a contact lens, not to the eyeball.
The mirror shifted an image on a screen to negate the retinal image's movement caused by microsaccades. The mirror was better for detecting the eye's angular movement than a light bulb would have been.
Well, the experiment I read did indeed have a small lamp assembly glued to an eyeball. It's been a long time, but as I recall the experiment wasn't about monitoring eye motion, but to determine what happens when the retina is exposed to an unchanging image. The article mentioned the fact that rabbits are pretty much unable to see anything unless it's moving (something about a lot of the visual preprocessing being done in the rabbit's eye, not in the brain.)
Some people reading this now were not actually functionally living in the '90s
Well, if they were not functioning when they were alive in the 90's, what decade were they functioning in, then?
... no wait UID too low... what is your excuse ;)
hmm captcha = speech how ironic
No kidding ... I wonder what happens if your UID goes negative. Do you simply cease to exist?
I remember reading about this back in the 90s...so what is new here?
Nothing that I can tell. I was working as a software developer back in 1982 or so for a group of neuroscientists at a local university. One of the projects I worked on used a pair of glasses with infrared motion sensors on them to continuously track pupil movements. The idea was to monitor saccades for diagnostic purposes (they become exaggerated in, for example, people who habitually work in near-darkness ... like miners.) It was explained to me that it had been known since the sixties (if not earlier) that saccades were, at least in part, needed to avoid retinal fatigue. Early experiments were performed using a grain-of-wheat bulb literally glued to the eyeball. It was shown that when the image didn't move relative to the retina, it quickly became invisible.
It sounds like what these guys are doing is relating these involuntary eye movements to brain activity. That's interesting if not particularly novel: some of the people I worked for were doing this twenty-five years ago using EEGs. What's more interesting to me is that we're generally completely unaware of these eye movements, just as we're generally unaware of our blind spots. It's an impressive bit of (ahem) abstraction layering that the brain does for us.
Seriously though ... this might be the impetus to develop force shields a la Star Trek. It makes sense, when enough space junk builds up, deflector shields will be the only way to safely escape Earth orbit.
Well, there will have to be some major breakthroughs in physics for that to happen. Electromagnetics won't help much, because a lot of that junk is non-ferrous.
That's why you fire two shots from the ion cannon first to clear a lane!
"Gentlemen, let's plow the road!"
unless you use a cable box.
Or have AT&T U-Verse. Log into their Web site, and there's all your DVR program recording choices. Yeah, it's cool that you can edit them online, but I don't exactly like the idea that my DVR is transmitting that data (and what else I'm not sure) to AT&T. I'd be surprised if they weren't monetizing that information in some way (targeted advertising, etc.)
When you give someone a tax break, you become less of a bloodsucker, than you were before, when you were taxing them higher... Or did you call telcos "bloodsuckers" over something else?
Not sure exactly how you got modded +5 Insightful on this one, but what seems to have escaped both you and the moderators is one important point. Congress gave the incumbent telephone companies those breaks for the express purpose building out a next-generation nationwide fiber network. They then proceeded to pocket the money and deliver squat for it.
Sorry, but in my book that makes them bloodsucking leeches, not to mention amoral, immoral and outright criminal.
Bes
http://osor.eu/case_studies/declaration-of-independence-the-limux-project-in-munich
Nah, too political and the political process takes too long.
No, what you have to do is the following:
1. Shoot all Windows admins. I know, it sounds brutal but trust me, it'll be better for everyone on the long run. It's no more than what they deserve after all. I mean, they freely chose to support the Evil Empire.
2. Send all the brainwashed Windows users to the appropriate re-education camp to have them deprogrammed. Now, some might say that this is no better than what Microsoft has done all these years, and I'd agree, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
3. Send in the LPTs (Linux Proselytization Teams) to spread the Word amongst all those who didn't get the message the first time around. After all, there are always some for whom the deprogramming process doesn't work perfectly, or who managed to escape the initial roundup. It's necessary to root them out so they can be given proper guidance. Really, it's for their own good.
This may be hard for some of you stomach, I understand, but just think how free we'll all feel when Microsoft is gone forever.
I believe we are seeing change all right...of the short variety.
For those who were sucked into the reality distortion field, this should serve as a dose of reality. Washington will change when hell freezes over.
Well, it was Steve Jobs who invented the reality distortion field, and since Obama is all about creating jobs, I guess that makes sense.
Frankly, the telco's were given million of dollars to expand broadband years ago and essentially pissed the money away.
Not millions, billions, some two hundred of them (albeit in tax breaks, not cash) and I'm still waiting to see the results from that before I want any more tax money going to those bloodsuckers.
The right idea for places like China, North Korea and the US of A.
Love how you stick the U.S. in with China. There's no Great Firewall here yet, so we're really not in China's league. Domestic surveillance is an issue, of course, but at least here it is an issue. In the other places you mention it's not even on The People's radar.
Of course, the bulk of people in the U.S. go through the major ISPs, which means the likes of Comcast and AT&T. Both companies have already proven to be very (ahem) "law enforcement friendly", shall we say. Using an alternate DNS service (whether it be OpenDNS or otherwise) would, if anything, improve your privacy with regards to what sites you visit. Not that ISPs can't log all that information anyway, without needing access to your DNS requests.
Just Google for "free DNS", but I use 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3 myself. I think they're from Level 3. There's tons of others though. I used to have Comcast, and I switched my DNS because theirs were slow and unreliable. I mean, if I went to a complex site (take MSNBC.COM, for example) it would take several seconds to load on a 16 mbit/sec line, just because of all the domain requests. I just switched to AT&T for my ISP now, and I haven't changed my DNS settings yet because the response is really, really crisp.
Well, only if you can use it to test new appliance BEFORE you buy them.
Which may very well prove nothing. If the device only wakes up every few hours to download new information, you might not even detect the extra power drain when running your test in the store.
This is why I have all of my electronics go through a wall switch. TVs, amps, cable boxes, game systems, etc... all continue to draw power even when off. Flip the wall switch on your way out and you have a low-tech way to fight this problem.
The only downside is that the digital cable box takes a few minutes to start. Actually, come to think of it, it's more of an upside since I get tired of waiting and go do something more productive instead of watching TV.
That's great so long as those devices are capable of preserving their configuration when disconnected from the line. If your cable box, say, only has a supercap for memory backup, it may lose its setup after a few hours.
I don't here wankers like you moaning about Pioneer doing the same thing across their entire range.
We will be if it's true, now that you've mentioned it. But as the GP points out, Sony has some additional evil elements that tend to really piss us off, all the more so because Sony used to be our hero. After all, they were the outfit that won the court decision that affirmed the legality of the VCR, home taping, and time shifting.
Sad thing is, there's probably a good chunk of Sony's current management that regrets having done that.
Sony, frankly, sucks.
They could require devices to generate energy while on standby (by vapourizing invisible pink unicorns), and manufacturers could keep self-certifying their devices as compliant.
That, or use magic pixie dust.
This idea that there's ever been *any* unaltered recorded music out there is rubbish.
I remember (a long time ago) my father made the point that an equalizer modifies sound in ways that the artist may not have intended.
anthropomorphic climate change.
Anthropomorphic climate change? What's that, at the center of the earth there's a guy turning the thermostat all the way up?
No, actually some people think of the planet Earth as their giant pet rock.
Which is all the more reason the government shouldn't meddle with corporations.
Well, that's been tried: it was called laissez-faire. It didn't work. Really, by simply regulating corporate behavior to the degree that is currently done (which happened in response to the abuses of the unregulated environment we once had) you could say the government is meddling. That's a legitimate function, though: like it or not, in this case we need the institution of government. Mainly because the private sector (and private interests) has, proven time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with the common good.
Ultimately, you need a private sector governed by sensible regulation that allows both corporations and individuals to flourish. Having reasonably ethical business leaders that are willing live under the law as written, and don't spend millions buying new Federal regulation to suit themselves helps too.
So, the real problem is not that our government shouldn't "meddle", but that that meddling has become too heavily influenced by business. In a word, corpratism, and that means that big business is doing very well at the expense of everyone and everything else. The reason that is happening is because big government has largely failed to provide proper regulation, which is a good part of what we pay it for.
Nobody is forcing you, the self-importance filled "American Citizen", to move abroad, work abroad, or take any job less than what You the Great want to make. IBM is moving the position overseas; you have the option to follow it, not the requirement. It's hard to fault IBM; the cost of employing people in the US is egregiously high compared to other countries, and the international business laws offer no strong disincentive for doing so. Regardless, though, nobody will be forcing You to take a job paying less than you want; there may just not be many jobs up to Your standards soon, though.
Huh? If IBM wants to avail itself of cheap Indian labor, or pay its American workers Indian rates, then it should uproot itself and move to India. Otherwise, it should stop using the reliable electric power, roads, railway system, communications system, and other useful infrastructure paid for by the American taxpayer. The picture is not so simple as you make it out: IBM (like many large corporations) wants to have its cake and eat it too. They're being disingenuous at best and I call bullshit on this.