The MS response would be to IMPORT OpenOffice.org documents but not export. This way users can just click on the document and have it open in Word and when they save it, it will end up in.doc format. All without any effort on the part of the user. This follows the traditional MS way of interoperation - we'll read your stuff but not write it. This causes documents to naturally migrate to MS formats.
I think it already happened - that's why the heavy stuff is in the middle. I question weather it's still happening, and weather the rotation rate difference observed could be leftover from this happening in the past.
On a completely different note: It explains the observed rotation difference, so it must be happening. In fact you can use the observed rotation rates and caculate exactly how much this is happening. Hey - if the dark matter folks can use logic like this, so can I;-)
And it still works just fine. When the computer is replaced (it's a 700MHz Athlon running Win98), we'll either reinstall Word 97 (if that's allowed and works) or install OOo. Why would a home user buy MS office stuff anymore?
Every time a heavy chunk of crust breaks free and sinks into the liquid, it's like the skater pulling their arms in - it spins faster. Momentum is conserved, but at the shorter radius this translates into higher angular velocity. All the heavy stuff is in the center, and it must have spun up when that first happened. Is the difference still there, or is the process still happening a little bit?
"Scaled in return keeps on asking "why is NASA wasting so much money?"
Scaled is hoping to get to orbit in a few years. They think they can get there a lot cheaper and safer than NASA. Until they prove it, you're right - Burt Rutan is being very cocky with his contempt for NASA. I think he does that partly because he believes it and partly to get funding.
"Yes, What Rutan/Scaled Composites did is great, no denying that. But comparing their budget to NASA's is ludicrous."
Not really. I heard Burt and Mike speek at Airventure in 2004. Burt breifly mentioned one of their prototype aircraft built for NASA. It was a very high altitude plane, and required a pressure suit for the pilot. The NASA team to support the "spacesuit" was larger than the Scaled team who designed, built, and supported the aircraft.
And while others here are bashing Scaled for simply repeating what NASA did back in the 60's I have a few words to say:
1) I don't see anyone else making real progress getting the public into space. NASA won't take you suborbital for 200K. Sure, only the rich can afford it now, but it is progress, and it is supposed to get cheaper.
2) Rutan does innovate: Carefree Reentry was never done before - in fact, the X-15 crashed because it reentered with improper attitude.
3) Scaled is making significant progress in a short time. Yes, they are on the shoulders of giants, but did you expect them to start with a moon shot or what?
4) If I ever get to space in my lifetime, even briefly, it's more likely to be in a vehicle designed by Scaled Composites than NASA. NASA can't afford it the way they operate.
5) When did NASA ever express any intention of taking ordinary people into space for fun? Oh right, never.
I still respect the research that NASA does, but someone has to put that to practical use and that's where they fall down.
"I doubt they'd tolerate a system that scanned all their archived email in order to produce a graphical model, even if it was semi-anonymous."
What makes you think Google doesn't do this already? Go study the history of
Xerox and think about their newer software for tracking document relationships, and OCR, and internet connected copiers. Read up on
Echelon. Then come back and tell us how Google couldn't possibly have been approached by three letter agencies. Oh, I suppose you think that if they were approched they'd say "no" because of the whole "don't be evil" philosophy? Evil is a relative thing - using such stuff to stop terrorists is generally a good thing. Using it to gather intelligence on your adversaries is also considered a "good" thing. Google is famous for finding patterns of relevance in mountains of data. If you think for a second that they don't do this on gmail you need a serious reality check. The good news is they don't appear to be doing evil with it.
As a programmer, I know what it is. The Yahoo article makes the same mistake so many do: it assumes the reader know what the heck "source" or "source code" is. Lay people do not know what source code is. They might be interested is "Open Source" if they knew what it is. Saying that it's when programmers share "source code" is still meaningless unless you know that source code is the actual instructions people type in to create a program. The public needs this little tidbit of information to comprehend OSS. Perhaps with the extra mention that a program (compiler) then munches this and spits out an executable (er exe file). Free Software? They get "free beer", but the freedom aspect makes no sense without understanding what source code is.
I may be underestimating the public, but I honestly don't think the masses know what you're talking about when you write an article and assume the reader knows what "source code" is.
If the pilot is still capable of making rational decisions and doing things, he'll turn off the autopilot or override the auto-descend and set an appropriate heading that won't crash into a mountain. If he's out cold, you're screwed when the autopilot does nothing. Besides, most the traffic around airports is lower than 10K feet and is controled - so someone will divert other traffic away from the unresponsive plane. Most mountains are also below 10K feet. I'm not sure, but I think you can go unpressurized up to 15K feet. Descending to that level over several minutes (maybe 15 minutes) should happen automatically in the event of depresurization. No question about it.
You're reaction to that proposal is typical, and does not reach the safest conclusion.
"I believe the drop in development seems to be curiously related to the drop in the use of slide-rulers and the subsequent usage of electronic calculators."
Could that be because all the inventors started focusing on making faster calculators? And software?
Read the WHOLE fine article. This is an experiment to test aerodynamics. If successful, they intend to test something with a jet engine. This one is by no means the intended passenger carrying configuration.
"It's the same reason why golf balls are dimples, why putting a little sand in the top coat of paint on your racing yacht will make it go faster"
So why do they make airplane wings smooth? What's wrong with trying to make a sharkskin wing surface? Does fabric work better than fiberglass in this respect? Would the increased stall resistance increase drag?
"and is better to work on creating something done right, or to object to it on moral grounds?"
To me, if it's done right, I still have complete control over my system. Can anything be done to "protect content" in that environment? It doesn't really seem so. I just don't want someone else to control my stuff - if you think thats somehow a moral issue, you're quite misguided.
**AA just need to make their own special players that they trust and keep their hands off broadcast television and my computer. It's as simple as that. Any other solution involves me/us giving up something to help them, which is not in the public interest.
The headline I've been waiting for is "IBM to buy AMD". Then AMD wouldn't have to worry about joint development deals any more, and IBM would suddenly have a world class x86 chip to sell - and their size, reputation, and chip capacity would probably get the AMD64 some serious market share. Now IBM has someone they trust over at AMD who has the background to evaluate the sensibility of such a deal. All they'd need to do is have lunch six months down the road, and ask the magic question - a simple yes or no could decide it.
"NOW we get into an arena of virtual ethics. Yes, this guy could comit a crime in-game based on the rules (features?) of the game, but what he did is still ethically wrong."
Is it wrong to take items from other players in the game? No - if so, they would require both parties to OK the item transfer if it wasn't. Is it wrong to sell the items online? People do that all the time - it is not illegal, but it may violate the companies terms of service or something. I don't see any reason he should be arrested in the real world.
Perhaps it's the bot. Using a bot against a providers terms of service might somehow be pinned under some hacking law. The article didn't specify the charges, but they had better be a real-world charge. Personally, I think what he did is kinda funny - especially would have been if he hadn't used a bot to do it.
"Now, it is up to the government to decide if an in-game crime is a real crime or not..."
That's just flame bait. There are no real in-game crimes. All game rules are enforced by the software. Is mugging in GTA a real crime? No, it's part of the game. And you can never argue about the game designers "intent" because the games are complex enough for unexpected emergent behavior - by design.
Terms of service may have been violated, but that's just reason to kick him out - i.e. it's not a crime either. Hacking the server would be a viable reason to arrest him even without the mugging.
"IMO, it is vital to make homework not feel like homework in order to get children interested"
Sure, but rather than have them PLAY video games, have the MAKE video games. Yes, you can start that in elementary school - I did, and so did every other kid lucky enough to have a computer prior to 1980 - the masses were getting ATARI though. Besides, you don't need to pay EA to make games: Python and PyGame - now get started.
"It actually works by shooting a mist into the air"
So I need to upgrade my desk to something not made of wood? What about the drywall? That doesn't sound like something you'd want to leave on all the time unless it's winter or you live in the desert. Oh, that's why it's for advertising...
"...legally forced anyone w/ a porn site to move to an xxx domain"
And therein lies the problem. You'll need to legally define "porn" in order to mandate the shift. How do you define that? I'm sure the word "decency" would come up, and we've seen how the FCC gets all bent out of shape over minor stuff and isn't even consistent. Without a mandate it won't be really effective, and a mandate is just a nightmare.
IMHO the best way to transistion is to allow existing.com owners the option of changing to.xxx for a year or two. I haven't followed it, so perhaps that's what they're doing. It still won't ensure that all the porn moves over - these domains will cost more than others.
"In the near-term, we have to be able to sort CNTs by chirality and diameter much more accurately and cheaply than we can now"
I doubt bulk production and sorting of nanotubes is going to be of much value. Suppose there IS a particular type that's really great for making circuits. How then do you deposite them and connect them into a circuit? And that will need to be done with individual tubes, not bulk - this article mentions the tubes are about 1/10 the size of present transistors, so if you lay down a bundle of tubes it's no benefit. ITRS - the semiconductor roadmap - goes down to 22nm. Unless you can physically assemble a trillion individual nano-tubes into a circuit sorting will be irrelevant to the electronics industry. Growing tubes and these Y-thingies *in place* will likely be the only way they ever get used to build computers.
That's not to say bulk production and sorting doesn't apply to other things. Some applications want bulk quantities of the same kind of tube. I think the space elevator folks would like that for their ribbon. IIRC there was some talk of super conductors too.
"The vast bulk of spam currently comes from spam bots, the spammer does not care if it uses a significant portion of the zombie systems cpu."
But the owner of the zombie computer does care. If their machine becomes useless, they'll turn it off. If it slows down significantly, they'll learn more about anti-virus software and anti-spyware and such. As I said, this will reduce the number of zombie machines and hence spam. It also limits how fast the existing zombies can send spam.
Anything that helps without handing control over to a central authority sounds good to me. Your grey-listing sounds OK. It sounds like that would work today, and could benefit someone even if nobody else was using it. Yes? OTOH it would delay mail (or just the first time).
I like the port 25 blocking idea too, but ultimately I'd like everyone to have a build-in mail server in their router/cable modem/whatever with a fixed IPv6 address, and skip the ISP altogether. That means everyone has a MTA. Yes I'm dreaming a bit;-)
"Amazingly enough, at $12.99 per CD, record companies typically net significantly less than 20% at the end of the year."
And the "artists" make even less than that - that's tragic. Remember, the RIAA serves the purposes of replication, marketing, and distribution. With the internet, distribution cost is essentially zero. They should not expect to make ANY money on this service any more. Reproduction (burning a CD) could be pushed to the consumer, or the record store. Replication is really low anyway these days. That leaves marketing. There is value in marketing - look at the big stars that wouldn't be anywhere if not for marketing. I don't know how you make money marketing something that has zero distribution and replication cost. Should that even be possible? The future looks to me like this: Performers make money by performing, while freely redistributed recordings serve as free advertisement for their shows.
This means marketing isn't really viable as a business either. It also means synthetic superstars are a nonstarter. If you can't perform live (or go on tour lip-syncing as they do now) you don't get any money. People will not build an empire by spending a couple weeks in a studio and selling copies of their heavily edited stuff forever. That's not what copyright law was supposed to be about anyway.
I haven't purchased more than a few CDs in years, and I don't download either. I think this whole thing is amusing and at it's root is the joke that the RIAA and their "stars" have become - and are trying to remain.
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The MS response would be to IMPORT OpenOffice.org documents but not export. This way users can just click on the document and have it open in Word and when they save it, it will end up in .doc format. All without any effort on the part of the user. This follows the traditional MS way of interoperation - we'll read your stuff but not write it. This causes documents to naturally migrate to MS formats.
I think it already happened - that's why the heavy stuff is in the middle. I question weather it's still happening, and weather the rotation rate difference observed could be leftover from this happening in the past.
On a completely different note: It explains the observed rotation difference, so it must be happening. In fact you can use the observed rotation rates and caculate exactly how much this is happening. Hey - if the dark matter folks can use logic like this, so can I ;-)
And it still works just fine. When the computer is replaced (it's a 700MHz Athlon running Win98), we'll either reinstall Word 97 (if that's allowed and works) or install OOo. Why would a home user buy MS office stuff anymore?
Every time a heavy chunk of crust breaks free and sinks into the liquid, it's like the skater pulling their arms in - it spins faster. Momentum is conserved, but at the shorter radius this translates into higher angular velocity. All the heavy stuff is in the center, and it must have spun up when that first happened. Is the difference still there, or is the process still happening a little bit?
Scaled is hoping to get to orbit in a few years. They think they can get there a lot cheaper and safer than NASA. Until they prove it, you're right - Burt Rutan is being very cocky with his contempt for NASA. I think he does that partly because he believes it and partly to get funding.
Not really. I heard Burt and Mike speek at Airventure in 2004. Burt breifly mentioned one of their prototype aircraft built for NASA. It was a very high altitude plane, and required a pressure suit for the pilot. The NASA team to support the "spacesuit" was larger than the Scaled team who designed, built, and supported the aircraft.
And while others here are bashing Scaled for simply repeating what NASA did back in the 60's I have a few words to say:
1) I don't see anyone else making real progress getting the public into space. NASA won't take you suborbital for 200K. Sure, only the rich can afford it now, but it is progress, and it is supposed to get cheaper.
2) Rutan does innovate: Carefree Reentry was never done before - in fact, the X-15 crashed because it reentered with improper attitude.
3) Scaled is making significant progress in a short time. Yes, they are on the shoulders of giants, but did you expect them to start with a moon shot or what?
4) If I ever get to space in my lifetime, even briefly, it's more likely to be in a vehicle designed by Scaled Composites than NASA. NASA can't afford it the way they operate.
5) When did NASA ever express any intention of taking ordinary people into space for fun? Oh right, never.
I still respect the research that NASA does, but someone has to put that to practical use and that's where they fall down.
When gnome-meeting is free?
What makes you think Google doesn't do this already? Go study the history of Xerox and think about their newer software for tracking document relationships, and OCR, and internet connected copiers. Read up on Echelon. Then come back and tell us how Google couldn't possibly have been approached by three letter agencies. Oh, I suppose you think that if they were approched they'd say "no" because of the whole "don't be evil" philosophy? Evil is a relative thing - using such stuff to stop terrorists is generally a good thing. Using it to gather intelligence on your adversaries is also considered a "good" thing. Google is famous for finding patterns of relevance in mountains of data. If you think for a second that they don't do this on gmail you need a serious reality check. The good news is they don't appear to be doing evil with it.
I may be underestimating the public, but I honestly don't think the masses know what you're talking about when you write an article and assume the reader knows what "source code" is.
You're reaction to that proposal is typical, and does not reach the safest conclusion.
Could that be because all the inventors started focusing on making faster calculators? And software?
Read the WHOLE fine article. This is an experiment to test aerodynamics. If successful, they intend to test something with a jet engine. This one is by no means the intended passenger carrying configuration.
Why do we need to alert /. every time another news source runs across this story?
So why do they make airplane wings smooth? What's wrong with trying to make a sharkskin wing surface? Does fabric work better than fiberglass in this respect? Would the increased stall resistance increase drag?
To me, if it's done right, I still have complete control over my system. Can anything be done to "protect content" in that environment? It doesn't really seem so. I just don't want someone else to control my stuff - if you think thats somehow a moral issue, you're quite misguided.
**AA just need to make their own special players that they trust and keep their hands off broadcast television and my computer. It's as simple as that. Any other solution involves me/us giving up something to help them, which is not in the public interest.
So you are probably supposed to add the little circle-R when you say your stuff runs on Linux. You're right though, no need to pay anything ;-)
The headline I've been waiting for is "IBM to buy AMD". Then AMD wouldn't have to worry about joint development deals any more, and IBM would suddenly have a world class x86 chip to sell - and their size, reputation, and chip capacity would probably get the AMD64 some serious market share. Now IBM has someone they trust over at AMD who has the background to evaluate the sensibility of such a deal. All they'd need to do is have lunch six months down the road, and ask the magic question - a simple yes or no could decide it.
Is it wrong to take items from other players in the game? No - if so, they would require both parties to OK the item transfer if it wasn't. Is it wrong to sell the items online? People do that all the time - it is not illegal, but it may violate the companies terms of service or something. I don't see any reason he should be arrested in the real world.
Perhaps it's the bot. Using a bot against a providers terms of service might somehow be pinned under some hacking law. The article didn't specify the charges, but they had better be a real-world charge. Personally, I think what he did is kinda funny - especially would have been if he hadn't used a bot to do it.
"Now, it is up to the government to decide if an in-game crime is a real crime or not..."
That's just flame bait. There are no real in-game crimes. All game rules are enforced by the software. Is mugging in GTA a real crime? No, it's part of the game. And you can never argue about the game designers "intent" because the games are complex enough for unexpected emergent behavior - by design.
Terms of service may have been violated, but that's just reason to kick him out - i.e. it's not a crime either. Hacking the server would be a viable reason to arrest him even without the mugging.
Sure, but rather than have them PLAY video games, have the MAKE video games. Yes, you can start that in elementary school - I did, and so did every other kid lucky enough to have a computer prior to 1980 - the masses were getting ATARI though. Besides, you don't need to pay EA to make games: Python and PyGame - now get started.
So I need to upgrade my desk to something not made of wood? What about the drywall? That doesn't sound like something you'd want to leave on all the time unless it's winter or you live in the desert. Oh, that's why it's for advertising...
Those women passing you on the street don't want you to take their picture anyway.
And therein lies the problem. You'll need to legally define "porn" in order to mandate the shift. How do you define that? I'm sure the word "decency" would come up, and we've seen how the FCC gets all bent out of shape over minor stuff and isn't even consistent. Without a mandate it won't be really effective, and a mandate is just a nightmare.
IMHO the best way to transistion is to allow existing .com owners the option of changing to .xxx for a year or two. I haven't followed it, so perhaps that's what they're doing. It still won't ensure that all the porn moves over - these domains will cost more than others.
I doubt bulk production and sorting of nanotubes is going to be of much value. Suppose there IS a particular type that's really great for making circuits. How then do you deposite them and connect them into a circuit? And that will need to be done with individual tubes, not bulk - this article mentions the tubes are about 1/10 the size of present transistors, so if you lay down a bundle of tubes it's no benefit. ITRS - the semiconductor roadmap - goes down to 22nm. Unless you can physically assemble a trillion individual nano-tubes into a circuit sorting will be irrelevant to the electronics industry. Growing tubes and these Y-thingies *in place* will likely be the only way they ever get used to build computers.
That's not to say bulk production and sorting doesn't apply to other things. Some applications want bulk quantities of the same kind of tube. I think the space elevator folks would like that for their ribbon. IIRC there was some talk of super conductors too.
But the owner of the zombie computer does care. If their machine becomes useless, they'll turn it off. If it slows down significantly, they'll learn more about anti-virus software and anti-spyware and such. As I said, this will reduce the number of zombie machines and hence spam. It also limits how fast the existing zombies can send spam.
Anything that helps without handing control over to a central authority sounds good to me. Your grey-listing sounds OK. It sounds like that would work today, and could benefit someone even if nobody else was using it. Yes? OTOH it would delay mail (or just the first time).
I like the port 25 blocking idea too, but ultimately I'd like everyone to have a build-in mail server in their router/cable modem/whatever with a fixed IPv6 address, and skip the ISP altogether. That means everyone has a MTA. Yes I'm dreaming a bit ;-)
And the "artists" make even less than that - that's tragic. Remember, the RIAA serves the purposes of replication, marketing, and distribution. With the internet, distribution cost is essentially zero. They should not expect to make ANY money on this service any more. Reproduction (burning a CD) could be pushed to the consumer, or the record store. Replication is really low anyway these days. That leaves marketing. There is value in marketing - look at the big stars that wouldn't be anywhere if not for marketing. I don't know how you make money marketing something that has zero distribution and replication cost. Should that even be possible? The future looks to me like this: Performers make money by performing, while freely redistributed recordings serve as free advertisement for their shows.
This means marketing isn't really viable as a business either. It also means synthetic superstars are a nonstarter. If you can't perform live (or go on tour lip-syncing as they do now) you don't get any money. People will not build an empire by spending a couple weeks in a studio and selling copies of their heavily edited stuff forever. That's not what copyright law was supposed to be about anyway.
I haven't purchased more than a few CDs in years, and I don't download either. I think this whole thing is amusing and at it's root is the joke that the RIAA and their "stars" have become - and are trying to remain.