AI still is in the suckitude phase; even the best ones aren't much smarter than a cockroach.
Actually, cockroaches are pretty smart for an insect. They got good reflexes and evasion strategies plus super sensory equipment and the brainpower to evaluate it. Try catching one.
Yeah, it's illegal in the UK, but the case that sparked this off was in Germany (I think) - where, technically, cannibalism is legal, but you get prosecuted under murder, since it was assumed that it would not be possible to get someone to be willing to be eaten.
Not exactly legal, but there is no law against it because nobody remembered to pass one. It was the first case to be tried in a german court. The accusation in this case was manslaughter. The defense argued for assisted suicide.
When did patent holders forget that one cannot patent an "obvious or pre-existing" idea?
They didn`t. But they know the Patent Office forgets it all too often.
Or, to be precice. They know that the Patent Office has neither the manpower nor the machinepower to check all sources of prior art and therefor is liable to overlook the bleeding obvious.
needed sometime to remember. I saw that movie at least 3 times earlier this year.
Complety forgot about it. If I ever see the DVD in a shop I will probably not even remember it.
Way to go - thats how you gain customers. Make the movies available so late that everyone has forgotten about it. I suppose it works with LOTR, but Hero was not that good... and I dont read the book a couple of times a year.
that Microsoft wants to have a hand in the "standard DRM"
Yeah - Microsoft Style DRM, of course. As in: That computer you paid a lot of bucks for will now only do what we allow it to. rant
My boyfriend installed Mediaplayer 9 on his machine yesterday. After a lecture from me on DRM he uninstalled it and, hey presto, suddenly his CD-RW drive reported itself as a plain CD-R. Something fishy with the drivers, i think. Windows would then not allow me to install new CD-RW drivers. In the end I reinstalled Mediaplayer and that installed something called Roxio CD Burning (yes, he uses Roxio WinOnCd as a burning tool) and the CD-RW was there again.
On the sideline - anyone know a good linux cd burning howto (ATAPI!!!!) and a grapical roaster at least as simple as WinOnCD? He doesn`t play games on it anyways and I might as well give Windows the boot instead of reinstalling it.
Well, the trend today is to make someone else responsible for your doings, like in suing the makers of Grand Theft Auto when some nutty kids get hold of loaded guns and shoot at passing drivers.
Music has always been held responsible by certain parts of the society, which we will for simplicities sake call the establishment, for failings in the youth of today.
So, we can just blame P2P filesharing on today`s music and maybe get the RIAA to sue themselves. Problem solved with minimum inconvenience all round.
The finding and publishing of "For Us, the Living"
by Deb Houdek Rule
As of this writing, August 31, 2003, there are only about half a dozen people in the entire known universe who can accurately claim that they have read every novel Heinlein has written.
For those of us who thought there would never again be another new Heinlein novel, the impossible has become reality . "For Us, the Living," is a brand new, never before published novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is going into print now for the first time and will be in bookstores by the end of November, 2003.
"For Us, the Living" was written by Heinlein about 1938-9, before he wrote his first sf short, "Lifeline." The novel, "For Us, the Living," was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined for his later stories and novels. A fellow named Nehemiah Scudder even appears in "For Us, the Living." It's important to point out that according to those favored few who have thus far read this long lost Heinlein novel, it did not go unpublished because it was bad--they say it's quite good, though clearly a first novel by the author (it has a two and a half page footnote!). It was unpublished because the mores and culture of the time would not allow it.
"For Us, the Living," was put aside, and eventually lost. The Heinleins apparently destroyed all copies they had. And because at the time it was written Heinlein was not a member of the science fiction community, no other sf writers knew about it. He had let one or two friends read it, and it is by a long trail through one of them that this rarest of treasures was located.
Robert James, Ph.D., Heinlein Society member and Heinlein scholar, had been researching Heinlein and his life, focusing on Heinlein's second wife Leslyn, when he came across a vague mention of an early novel, a copy of which one-time Heinlein biographer Leon Stover was supposed to have. Robert James went searching, and after serious hunting, finally located a forgotten copy in a box in a garage that had changed hands at least once since Heinlein himself had given it to a friend to be read. This copy had annotations written in the margin by Heinlein himself, with some in a second hand that was probably then-wife Leslyn's.
Robert James presented the manuscript to the Heinlein Society's secretary, David Silver, who promptly contacted Arthur Dula, the representative of the Heinlein literary estate. As they told the tale, they only informed Art that they had a "surprise" for him. When they picked him up, and the three of them were alone in the car, they handed Art the manuscript of this never before seen "new" Heinlein novel. "...when I regained consciousness," Art Dula said, describing the moment, he knew at once this treasure needed to be published for the benefit of us, Heinlein's readers. Through Eleanor Wood, agent for the Heinlein estate, they arranged publication of "For Us, the Living," the first truly new Heinlein novel since "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," published shortly before his death. Heinlein's last novel is now his first.
Virtually no changes have been made to the manuscript from Heinlein's original draft. The book, Robert James said, was not a first draft but a polished final draft. Only a very few minor edits and spelling corrections were made. There will be a foreword by Spider Robinson and an afterword by Robert James.
There are two bonuses to this landmark event that bear mentioning. As most novels have dedications at the beginning, the dedication of "For Us, the Living" will be to us... to Heinlein's Children.
The other bonus is another gift to us. The money earned by this novel will be going to directly and substantially support Heinlein's dream, and the dream we, Heinlein's Children, share. Earnings will be going to the advancement of human exploration of space. When you purchase "For Us, the Living" you are also contributing, in a real and meaningful way, the furtherment of this dream. Yet again, Heinlein 'pays it forward.'
I did the Channel trip a couple of times and it is one of the most treacherous stretches of water in Europe. I doubt you will make it across in one piece. The salt water will make the car rust within months, too.
Though if they rigged this baby enough to survive in coastal waters I think I would start saving up for it, now.
The three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system.
Aka: They are going to take Linux or BSD Sources, change some strings and compile them into their own kernel.
So that would make small distros made by sysadmins and burned to CD to be installed on all systems of a company like the small breweries that only supply their own pub.
I come from the lower Rhine area where there are lots of such small scale breweries that make a dark beer called Alt (old) thats very popular around here.
I was in my local photo shop today, collecting some films. Some people wanted to have prints of their digital photos. "No problem" says the photo guy, we just burn those pics from the smartcard onto a CD and send that in to the Lab.
He fires up the burner - a standalone device with a reader for every digital cam storage medium and a built-in burner and... yes.. its a linux boot sequence and the touch-screen app ran on X.
This thing needs drivers for a lot of exotic stuff and was up within 15 seconds.
Quite impressive.
It is intended to protect consumers from widespread counterfeit copies of Symantec programs.
I don't believe it as a main cause.
Me neither, but protecting their own money is a valid issue, too.
If there are people stupid enough to _buy_ counterfeit software, they wouldn`t know about the activation, either.
As ong as there are enough free alternatives for personal use, who cares?
"If there were a pill that made your ass bigger, but made you way smarter, would you take it?"
Depends on which kind of women they asked. I am a techie woman - I do sports - I have a stable relationship...and if my ass got much bigger I wouldn't fit in my chair.
That`s genes, that is.
You sound sickeningly elitist.
Actually, I just fixed my b/f s computer after he had started Mozilla by clicking 8 times on the icon.
Several instances tried to start and blew the config files again.
When I told him he should click but once he yelled at me he did it only once. I proceeded to tell him that I had just seen him click 8 times.
This happens about once a month. I told him to click just once and have been trying to teach him the difference between a button and icon for two years now. Everytime he blows something it's the computer's fault. We even changed his machine to one of mine - which I know is working fine - and he is experiencing exactly the same problems as before and of course it is never his fault.
Thank god he does not start suspicious attachements and I have banned him from using outlook.
This is a luser - someone who his not willing to learn but keeps holding the machine or someone else responsible for his blowups.
I am currently working on a backup strategy for him. So I can restore an image whenever he has blown his system. Unfortunately he insists on very small details, like keeping the last dir into that he has saved, so he does not make mistakes and gets very cross if that changes. He would not notice if I switched OSses on his machine but gets livid if he has to check the Save-As dir before saving. Talk about priorities.
I know I cannot repair my car's engine but if one of the engineers is working on it I poke my head in if I have a chance to see how it works. Last time the oil was changed I spent most of the time under the car checking the pipes, brakes and floor for leaks and obvious damage. In the end, the mechanic started teaching me something about the engine because he saw I was interested.
Then we have the non-savy user, like i.e. my mom. She knows how to do her daily work and calls me or looks it up when she does not how to solve a problem. She screws up very rarely, mostly when she is dog tired and careless. (She got herself a rm -rf / virus the other day by carelessly opening an attachment. After kicking herself, she took the rescue CD and restored her system, _then_ called me to ask if the system was safe and how to restore her email settings.)
A restricted system would not be too bad for that kind of user, too.
I think most of us - at least those willing to help others - know more than enough lusers and non-savy users and might be glad of some help from the OS.
Slashdot Mirror
AI still is in the suckitude phase; even the best ones aren't much smarter than a cockroach.
Actually, cockroaches are pretty smart for an insect. They got good reflexes and evasion strategies plus super sensory equipment and the brainpower to evaluate it. Try catching one.
What do you think he paid law school with?
FTC to patent Application Process
at a glance?
So many news about trivial patents really gets to you
the RIAA auctions P2P users iPods?
Yeah, it's illegal in the UK, but the case that sparked this off was in Germany (I think) - where, technically, cannibalism is legal, but you get prosecuted under murder, since it was assumed that it would not be possible to get someone to be willing to be eaten.
Not exactly legal, but there is no law against it because nobody remembered to pass one. It was the first case to be tried in a german court. The accusation in this case was manslaughter. The defense argued for assisted suicide.
to generate elevator music.
Before M$ does.
When did patent holders forget that one cannot patent an "obvious or pre-existing" idea?
They didn`t. But they know the Patent Office forgets it all too often.
Or, to be precice. They know that the Patent Office has neither the manpower nor the machinepower to check all sources of prior art and therefor is liable to overlook the bleeding obvious.
needed sometime to remember. I saw that movie at least 3 times earlier this year.
Complety forgot about it. If I ever see the DVD in a shop I will probably not even remember it.
Way to go - thats how you gain customers. Make the movies available so late that everyone has forgotten about it. I suppose it works with LOTR, but Hero was not that good... and I dont read the book a couple of times a year.
that Microsoft wants to have a hand in the "standard DRM"
Yeah - Microsoft Style DRM, of course. As in: That computer you paid a lot of bucks for will now only do what we allow it to.
rant My boyfriend installed Mediaplayer 9 on his machine yesterday. After a lecture from me on DRM he uninstalled it and, hey presto, suddenly his CD-RW drive reported itself as a plain CD-R. Something fishy with the drivers, i think. Windows would then not allow me to install new CD-RW drivers. In the end I reinstalled Mediaplayer and that installed something called Roxio CD Burning (yes, he uses Roxio WinOnCd as a burning tool) and the CD-RW was there again.
On the sideline - anyone know a good linux cd burning howto (ATAPI!!!!) and a grapical roaster at least as simple as WinOnCD? He doesn`t play games on it anyways and I might as well give Windows the boot instead of reinstalling it.
>CTRL-C CTRL-V
Wihich probably means I'll now get sued for breaking a protection scheme like that guy who told everyone about the spacebar.
Micro$oft and choice in same statement.
1 Error, 0 Warnings
The trick is:
Space and time are attributes of this universe. So there is no other side.
Depends on what side you are looking at it.
Well, the trend today is to make someone else responsible for your doings, like in suing the makers of Grand Theft Auto when some nutty kids get hold of loaded guns and shoot at passing drivers.
Music has always been held responsible by certain parts of the society, which we will for simplicities sake call the establishment, for failings in the youth of today.
So, we can just blame P2P filesharing on today`s music and maybe get the RIAA to sue themselves. Problem solved with minimum inconvenience all round.
The finding and publishing of "For Us, the Living" by Deb Houdek Rule As of this writing, August 31, 2003, there are only about half a dozen people in the entire known universe who can accurately claim that they have read every novel Heinlein has written. For those of us who thought there would never again be another new Heinlein novel, the impossible has become reality . "For Us, the Living," is a brand new, never before published novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is going into print now for the first time and will be in bookstores by the end of November, 2003. "For Us, the Living" was written by Heinlein about 1938-9, before he wrote his first sf short, "Lifeline." The novel, "For Us, the Living," was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined for his later stories and novels. A fellow named Nehemiah Scudder even appears in "For Us, the Living." It's important to point out that according to those favored few who have thus far read this long lost Heinlein novel, it did not go unpublished because it was bad--they say it's quite good, though clearly a first novel by the author (it has a two and a half page footnote!). It was unpublished because the mores and culture of the time would not allow it. "For Us, the Living," was put aside, and eventually lost. The Heinleins apparently destroyed all copies they had. And because at the time it was written Heinlein was not a member of the science fiction community, no other sf writers knew about it. He had let one or two friends read it, and it is by a long trail through one of them that this rarest of treasures was located. Robert James, Ph.D., Heinlein Society member and Heinlein scholar, had been researching Heinlein and his life, focusing on Heinlein's second wife Leslyn, when he came across a vague mention of an early novel, a copy of which one-time Heinlein biographer Leon Stover was supposed to have. Robert James went searching, and after serious hunting, finally located a forgotten copy in a box in a garage that had changed hands at least once since Heinlein himself had given it to a friend to be read. This copy had annotations written in the margin by Heinlein himself, with some in a second hand that was probably then-wife Leslyn's. Robert James presented the manuscript to the Heinlein Society's secretary, David Silver, who promptly contacted Arthur Dula, the representative of the Heinlein literary estate. As they told the tale, they only informed Art that they had a "surprise" for him. When they picked him up, and the three of them were alone in the car, they handed Art the manuscript of this never before seen "new" Heinlein novel. "...when I regained consciousness," Art Dula said, describing the moment, he knew at once this treasure needed to be published for the benefit of us, Heinlein's readers. Through Eleanor Wood, agent for the Heinlein estate, they arranged publication of "For Us, the Living," the first truly new Heinlein novel since "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," published shortly before his death. Heinlein's last novel is now his first. Virtually no changes have been made to the manuscript from Heinlein's original draft. The book, Robert James said, was not a first draft but a polished final draft. Only a very few minor edits and spelling corrections were made. There will be a foreword by Spider Robinson and an afterword by Robert James. There are two bonuses to this landmark event that bear mentioning. As most novels have dedications at the beginning, the dedication of "For Us, the Living" will be to us... to Heinlein's Children. The other bonus is another gift to us. The money earned by this novel will be going to directly and substantially support Heinlein's dream, and the dream we, Heinlein's Children, share. Earnings will be going to the advancement of human exploration of space. When you purchase "For Us, the Living" you are also contributing, in a real and meaningful way, the furtherment of this dream. Yet again, Heinlein 'pays it forward.'
I did the Channel trip a couple of times and it is one of the most treacherous stretches of water in Europe. I doubt you will make it across in one piece. The salt water will make the car rust within months, too. Though if they rigged this baby enough to survive in coastal waters I think I would start saving up for it, now.
The three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system.
Aka: They are going to take Linux or BSD Sources, change some strings and compile them into their own kernel.
So that would make small distros made by sysadmins and burned to CD to be installed on all systems of a company like the small breweries that only supply their own pub.
I come from the lower Rhine area where there are lots of such small scale breweries that make a dark beer called Alt (old) thats very popular around here.
I was in my local photo shop today, collecting some films. Some people wanted to have prints of their digital photos. "No problem" says the photo guy, we just burn those pics from the smartcard onto a CD and send that in to the Lab.
He fires up the burner - a standalone device with a reader for every digital cam storage medium and a built-in burner and... yes.. its a linux boot sequence and the touch-screen app ran on X. This thing needs drivers for a lot of exotic stuff and was up within 15 seconds.
Quite impressive.
It is intended to protect consumers from widespread counterfeit copies of Symantec programs.
I don't believe it as a main cause.
Me neither, but protecting their own money is a valid issue, too.
If there are people stupid enough to _buy_ counterfeit software, they wouldn`t know about the activation, either.
As ong as there are enough free alternatives for personal use, who cares?
Stable relationship does not mean nightly threesomes with Ben & Jerry. Nope, it means carrying the same guy home from the pub each night.
they make oversize couches for women like you!
Yes, but not at the office. And if have to get in and out of the car.
"If there were a pill that made your ass bigger, but made you way smarter, would you take it?" ...and if my ass got much bigger I wouldn't fit in my chair.
That`s genes, that is.
Depends on which kind of women they asked. I am a techie woman - I do sports - I have a stable relationship
You sound sickeningly elitist.
Actually, I just fixed my b/f s computer after he had started Mozilla by clicking 8 times on the icon.
Several instances tried to start and blew the config files again.
When I told him he should click but once he yelled at me he did it only once. I proceeded to tell him that I had just seen him click 8 times.
This happens about once a month. I told him to click just once and have been trying to teach him the difference between a button and icon for two years now. Everytime he blows something it's the computer's fault. We even changed his machine to one of mine - which I know is working fine - and he is experiencing exactly the same problems as before and of course it is never his fault.
Thank god he does not start suspicious attachements and I have banned him from using outlook.
This is a luser - someone who his not willing to learn but keeps holding the machine or someone else responsible for his blowups.
I am currently working on a backup strategy for him. So I can restore an image whenever he has blown his system. Unfortunately he insists on very small details, like keeping the last dir into that he has saved, so he does not make mistakes and gets very cross if that changes. He would not notice if I switched OSses on his machine but gets livid if he has to check the Save-As dir before saving. Talk about priorities.
I know I cannot repair my car's engine but if one of the engineers is working on it I poke my head in if I have a chance to see how it works. Last time the oil was changed I spent most of the time under the car checking the pipes, brakes and floor for leaks and obvious damage. In the end, the mechanic started teaching me something about the engine because he saw I was interested.
Then we have the non-savy user, like i.e. my mom. She knows how to do her daily work and calls me or looks it up when she does not how to solve a problem. She screws up very rarely, mostly when she is dog tired and careless. (She got herself a rm -rf / virus the other day by carelessly opening an attachment. After kicking herself, she took the rescue CD and restored her system, _then_ called me to ask if the system was safe and how to restore her email settings.)
A restricted system would not be too bad for that kind of user, too.
I think most of us - at least those willing to help others - know more than enough lusers and non-savy users and might be glad of some help from the OS.