Well I know quite a bit about.NET. I've been developing in C# since 2001. It does not surprise me at all that Microsoft's implementation of the Vista kernel and services do not run on.NET. I would actually be surprised if Vista shipped without a single app running on the framework, this is definitely not the case with beta's of Vista.
The purpose of.NET is to provide a sandboxed environment in which the services and resources of the hosting OS are exposed. When an application is run in the.NET framework, the context in which the application runs affects what api and resources that are available. When an application running in a reduced security context attempts to execute an priveleged api an exception occurs, protecting the operating system. For example if your ran a Microsoft Winform.NET application on your local machine from a server on the internet, unless you have granted that domain special privileges it will run in a reduced security context, if that application attempted to delete or modify files on your machine it would throw an exception.
Basically a service running on an OS is never going to run in a reduced security context, in.NET's sandboxed environment it's always going to run with full access, hence the only reason you would have for implementing it in.NET would be to reduce the cost of development, when your budget for R&D is $4 billion a year, this obviously wouldn't be a motivating factor, as the original post said, you wouldn't do it for performance reasons.
I think Microsoft's vision for.NET is not just a new highly productive development platform, its part of a larger strategy which aims to see a decline of a html based applications on the internet, in favour of Microsoft.NET applications, which is probably quite similiar to Sun's vision of client side Java, and Macromedia's vision of flash. I think it's only a few years away and you'll come across web sites which may at first glance look like like old school html with a bit of flash, but are in fact XAML... a windows application.
I can hear you all saying... but Java and Flash are cross platform. Like Java and Flash,.NET to some is going to increasingly become more cross platform, it's been designed that way from the outset. But at the end of the day you can bet it will always be more fully functioned on Windows than it will ever be on Linux or Mac or some other OS. For Microsoft I think they'll be hoping this will lead to a continuing dominance the desktop market.
At the end of the day it will all be about content, and what technology that content leverages.... So the developer will decide.
I was one of the pioneers in this arena, I was a member of a Quake team, our team played in and won the first Australia wide online team competition, with 13 teams, 4-8 players a side. I also played in Australia's first international Quake team against Japan.
So I think I can say with a little authority, what a pile of #$#&%.
Online gaming hasn't really changed all that much since Quakeworld, it's now a little prettier. There's a few more people playing, however you might not know it with all, the different mods, and flavours of what essentially really is just quake. To me what meaning it might of once had has been lost a little.
I think what the gaming industry has totally misunderstood, it's not the graphics that make a game realistic, it's the spirit and solidarity of the community behind it. If a game manufacturer out there just concentrated on making a competitive league, and not worried about unit sales I think they might actually acheive something worth writing about.
How else would you research security ?
How are you going to defend an OS against sophisticated attacks unless you know how to perform the attack in the first place ? How else you going to test the security of an OS without attacking it?
If I were running Microsoft I have a team dedicated to hacking the OS (at any level), and pitch them against the team dedicated to securing the OS.
Asking for money for developing software is extortion ?
What do you do... work in finance.... do you push a figure from A to B occasionally and then a month later from B back to A again ? I've worked 40-60hr weeks developing software, you think I didn't deserve to be paid for this ?
These people in india can do more than develop software, they can do pretty much anything you or I can, and eventually if they can find a way to do it, they will. Let's see your piety, when these same arguments get applied to whatever industry your in. What you want to be paid more than $1500 USD a year... my god that's extortion !! Perhaps you can move to cuba if you don't like that.
Or perhaps you're one of the millions of people out there that live life on a multi-million budget and get even richer every day without doing squat for it. Many of these people have been living like this all their lives, as have their parents, and their grandparents, and of course these families haven't earnt their fortune through software development. What gives these people the right to do this ? Nothing... they do it because they can.
The nature of capitalism is you either join this elite or you, you're children and/or you grandchildren will end up a slave to them, no matter what your profession, software development, financial advisor, builder, doctor, lawyer..... eventually a system will be implemented, alot of the time with software, and that system will be used to make your job worthless. The best way to increase profits in business is to reduce or eliminate your payroll expenses, and the best kind of business to own is one that runs itself without you. That's what every business owner out there strives for, and through the perfection of capitalism will one day reach.
Does the open source community really believe that making their IP free will really end capitalism ? To me it just reminds me of that scene in the life of brian when the "crack suicide squad" storms down the hill towards the romans.... pulls out their knives, stabs themselves, and then as their dying one of them says... "that showed them".
I can still earn good money in my profession, however I'm obviously not in it for the money, I develop software because I love it, and whilst I can continue to "EXTORT" money for making it, I'll do so and at the end of the day I'll sleep like a baby at night.
OK then as a software developer I guess I should head off to India and take my place in the slave class. This is total crap, you can apply that argument to just about anything these days, shoes, clothes, food, most things these days can be mass produced for nearly nothing.... as long as you have a nice little slave class to do the work in supplying it. I pay $200 for a pair of shoes it cost Nike 30c to make.... why shouldn't I charge $100 for a CD of software I have made ?
I said all the companies backing OpenDocument have a vested interest in that their Business models are incompatible with Microsoft's.... Oracle, Novell, Redhat, Opera, Corel.... they're all competitors to Microsoft.
How about a format with guaranteed backward-compatibility
Well what do you think you'll be doing when OpenDocument 2.0 is released ? Hmmm think there's a very good probability you'll be upgrading and don't say it won't happen, in my experience open formats
As far as that link on wikipedia... it's hardly an unbiased critique, this is just someones opinion, I've read Microsoft's license agreement, and I have another opinion, it's a very short, easy to read and understand and in my opinion it makes it very clear that there's nothing stopping anyone from using MS Office XML unless their intention is to extend it to create their own format. This only affects organisations that would seek to create COMPETING products to MS Office, which is basically exactly what wikipedia says. What it doesn't say is it doesn't stop StarOffice, OpenOffice or any other competitor to MS Office from being able to read and write MS Office XML or into their own format (not based on MS Office XML).
How does this affect government organisations ? Well unless they intend to create their own Office suite and use MS Office XML as it's basis (UNLIKELY), it don't matter squat. They can read, transform and write MS Office XML into any format or application they'd care to write. Does this warrant the expense of a costly migration that will result in their documents being generally less accessible to the general public ?
Well I haven't used OpenOffice, but in my view MS Office has been going backwards since Office 2000, its now bloated with numerous useless features and alot of very annoying bugs. Many tech writers I know actually use Office 2000 in preference to Office 2003 or XP, because it's less buggy, quicker and easier to work with.
So if MS Office is ten years ahead, that would make OpenOffice a whole two years better than MS Office already (assuming it hasn't already started to go backwards).
No I've read and I believe I understand the license pretty well. You're totally free to use Microsoft XML schemas in any software product, to read and save data in MS Office XML. What you can't do is extend Micrsoft's schemas. They're basically ensuring that no one creates documents based on Micrsoft's formats which can not be read in their entirety by MS Office. Where is the problem implementing this in a GPL'd application ? It's exactly the same as using a GPL library within a closed source application, which many people do.
OK you're right anti-corporate... and anti-microsoft. All these companies backing OpenDocument all have compaitble business models that are diametrically opposed to microsoft's. i.e. They're all predominently hardware vendors, and see software as just a feature of the hardware. (ie Flat earth thinking) They are pro-open source and freeware because they see it as the savior of their flawed business models.
The format of data is arbitrary and totally inconsequential, it's about who can access this data. You tell someone who is blind how lame an argument it is to choose MS Office over OpenOffice on this basis alone.
My point was that there are vested interests on both sides. Both sides have total control over their formats and will use litigation if necessary to maintain their control. Both sides will implement new features when there is demand for those features and when it is compatible with the business models of the controlling parties.
I have yet to see any argument that makes sense on moving from MS Office to OpenDocument other than from some childish good vs evil anti-microsoft crap, which I would be embaressed as a professional to use as the basis of a multi-million dollar business decision.
Microsoft's license basically prohibits anyone from coming along hijacking their format and using it as the basis for their own. You are just plain wrong, there's nothing to stop anyone from using these formats in a GPL project, the only reason why you wouldn't would be for competitive reasons so as to not allow people to move from a GPL product to Microsoft.
As I see it governments will have a choice of choosing between two formats both of which are in XML, both of which have a license attached to them, one format regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda, the other a dedicated commercial operation (ie microsoft). Ultimately they have no control of either format, if they wanted something changed in the format they'd have to bargain with Oasis in the same way they'd have to bargain with Microsoft.
The commercial reality of it is simply this, Microsoft has poorly supported its formats on other operating systems because of the same reasons why every other vendor of software, drivers etc etc has poorly supported Linux and Mac.... numbers.... the numbers are in Windows, if you're making a product for the desktop that's always going to be your target market, where you stand to make or lose the most money. If you have finite resources and time (which is always the case) you'll sacrafice support for other operating systems in favour of Windows every time. There's no conspiracy here, it's just reality.
If I was making a decision in a government body I'd choose the format with the broadest support, with the most amount features for the handicapped. Does anyone really believe that OpenDocument will ever beat MS Office on these two criteria.... seriously ?
They're probably the best because they build in protection into their Antivirus Software before they release their viruses.... giving viral marketing a whole new meaning.
Yes I think Symantec should be commended for freeing thousands from the pure futility that is irc. This might help save the planet from what may have seemed certain doom.
Well here are a couple of good technical descriptions here and here. Basically for Multicasting to work all that is needed is for the routers between yourself and the streaming server to support Multicasting. The key question is what percentage of the routers out there support Multicasting ?
The answer is not many. Many of the routers out there do support Multicasting however this feature is disabled ironically to reduce the work load on the router. All multicasting does is shift the work load from the server to the router, which does not scale for the exact same reasons unicast servers don't.
I do think multicasting is probably the way to go, but it's probably quite some time away. When optical fibre networks and optical routers start to pentrate into the home market, then these technologies will become more realistic on the internet, until then.... enjoy your Fox box.
The Democrats will do anything they can, including lying and distorting facts, to get enough people pissed off at the Republicans to get them to vote for the Democratic party. The amount of mud that will be slung this next time will be epic.
Mud slinging ? My GOD !! If it weren't epic that would be even more suspect. If there's any justice in this world Bush and his cohorts will one day be hauled before the hague for war crimes. It's a well established and undeniable fact that they have perpertrated a massive fraud to go into Iraq and plunder it through companies that they and their family members stand to directly profit from. Basically they're killing people for personal profit. If you want proof just go google "halliburton iraq fraud" you'll get over half a million hits, with that amount of smoke there's got to be one whopping fire. If anything the democrats are helping to turn a blind eye.
Why you ask would they turn a blind eye ? Well for one, as you did say all politicians are the same, they're all corrupt to some extent, the truth is a very dangerous commodity round capitol hill. Secondly I'd say if the full extent of corruption in the Bush administration were to ever be properly investigated, the tale would be such an unbareable international orgy of pride swallowing for the US that it would break what's left of its heart and soul not to mention economy... you'd all be stocking up on pesos tomorrow.
Basically I don't think this is mud. I think it's totally believeable that these guys would rig an election (or two). Why not ? Considering everything else they've done.
I have a Imate sp3 which takes minisd which should be compatible with micro sd. I wonder if this will work with my phone as well.
My Imate sp3 runs the Microsoft Smartphone OS, it too can play mp3and 3gp, plus mpeg, wmv movie files, with no DRM, I've watched movies on it on budget airlines with no onboard entertainment (with the phone in flight mode of course). The thing I love about the Imate sp3 is that its quite small... almost the same size as my nokia 6100.
I too currently have a 512Meg MiniSD, I've been searching for quite some time to find something larger than 512M... Getting 8Gig would blow me away.
Having spent much of the year in Dubai I thought I might give you some feedback on your list...
1) The World : A set of Artificial Islands being built off the coast of dubai, for the ultra rich.
2) The Palms : 3 of them actually These are artificial peninsula built in the shape of a palm tree.. Offering luxury houses with private beaches.
The marketing for these islands looks great however, whilst I admit they've still not finished them, they really don't look that great, from the ground it just looks like a pile of rocks they've dumped in the ocean. The cost involved in making these things has been the complete devestation of marine life in the area. They may look great from space, but from the ground....
3) The worlds Tallest building : The Burj Dubai.. The end height of the building is secret, but it is rumored to be 2500ft.
They're actually planning to build another building straight after this that will another order of magnitude taller than this tower.
4) The worlds most luxurious hotel : The Burj al Arab. Read up on it.. its quite a place to stay.:)
It's really not all that great the interior is really modern and glitzy, for some small period of time might have been considered very chic... but as happens with all fashions it's already a little dated, the taste of it's decor is somewhat questionable. I much prefer the Mina A' Salam which is right next to the Burj Al Arab it's is also extremely oppulent, but unlike the Burj Al it's style is alot more classic. It's part of a larger complex the Madinat Jumeriah. The whole complex is styled like an Arabian citadel.
6) The World's third largest mall : Mall of the Emirates. Smaller only to Dubai Mall, and Mall of America
It's pretty cool it includes an indoor ski field with 4 runs, the longest being 400m long. No mall in dubai is complete without some sort of amusement park of some kind.
It'll be interesting to see how much of this stuff actually comes to fruition. There's an old saying "It takes money to make money" but really what they're trying to do there is create an artificial economy out of nothing. If you see pictures of dubai as it stands today, it looks like a modern city, but only 30 years ago you would see nothing but scrubland. It's basically a planned economy, alot of planned economies have failed in the past, however they have about 10 trillion dollars of cash to spend on 50 square kilometers of land.
BTW, this country has no income tax. Gas costs about $1.80 a gallon. Labor is cheap.. you can get a house boy/house maid for about $250-$300 a month LEGALLY. I know.. I had one
This $250-$300 a month would be for someone with some language skills, the workers on the construction sites for these developments work for as little as $1500 USD a year, working 6 days a week on 18 hr shifts, under work place conditions that no western worker would ever tolerate. There's quite a high cost in human life to make these buildings, however seeing as these people come from the third world, these costs are generally ignored, and for every worker killed on a construction site, there's another 1000 more than eager to take his place. If you're a right wing anti-unionist, you only need to go to Dubai, to be converted to a left wing pro-unionist stance.
Then he realized that if he started making counter-intuitive predictions that would take two sides of a polarized debate in technology and make them go into a flame war about it, people would read his stuff.
There's two sides in this slashdot discussion !? I've only seen one side.... wait hang on....
Aaaah..... I guess I would have to read the 0 to -1 troll comments to read the other side
I can tell you this is really really old news, the CSIRO Australia's premier scientific research body has been focused on the control of foreign pests for many decades. Australia is a unique land, during the ice age (40,000 years ago) it was connected to asia since then it has been cut off from the rest of the world. It has many unique species of flora and fauna, most of which are almost completely defenceless to foreign species such as cane toads, foxes, pigs, rabbits, fire ants etc etc. It's the reason why we have such strict quarintine laws and customs inspections, and why many here go by the moto "If it's feral it's in peril".
Provoked perhaps deliberately. Here are the 12 cartoons that were actually published. However it might be much of this furor is over three cartoons that were never published.
"The dossier contained at least three cartoons that had never been published in Denmark. These were brutally offensive; indeed, they were incendiary. One shows Mohammed as a pedophiliac demon. Another shows Mohammed with a pig snout. The third shows a praying Muslim being raped by a dog."
"...three other pictures that had been sent to Muslim e-mails by anonymous people"
I think it's highly irresponsible and inflamitory to go on a tour protesting with 12 cartoons that were published in the popular press and sit them along side 3 that came via "anonymous email".
Well without being able to read the actual article, I can say it would have to be a load of bullocks as anyone with any understanding of the net would know we've said yes already. A lot of the most interesting content on the net is already delivered via embedded active-x controls embedded in the browser e.g flash, windows media player, real media player, etc etc.
It is true though that this is a security nightmare, which is why many organisations with exceptionally tight security but a need to access the net have banned these controls. Saying no isn't the only solution though...
Those who have been developing with Microsoft.NET for a few years would know all about Code Access Security which has been at the core of Microsoft's.NET Framework from beginning with the one aim in mind; to make it possible for applications to run with limited priveleges (controlled by an administrator) in a partially trusted environment such as being run from an app or control from a local intranet server or from a server on the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I know quite a bit about .NET. I've been developing in C# since 2001. It does not surprise me at all that Microsoft's implementation of the Vista kernel and services do not run on .NET. I would actually be surprised if Vista shipped without a single app running on the framework, this is definitely not the case with beta's of Vista.
.NET is to provide a sandboxed environment in which the services and resources of the hosting OS are exposed. When an application is run in the .NET framework, the context in which the application runs affects what api and resources that are available. When an application running in a reduced security context attempts to execute an priveleged api an exception occurs, protecting the operating system. For example if your ran a Microsoft Winform .NET application on your local machine from a server on the internet, unless you have granted that domain special privileges it will run in a reduced security context, if that application attempted to delete or modify files on your machine it would throw an exception.
.NET's sandboxed environment it's always going to run with full access, hence the only reason you would have for implementing it in .NET would be to reduce the cost of development, when your budget for R&D is $4 billion a year, this obviously wouldn't be a motivating factor, as the original post said, you wouldn't do it for performance reasons.
.NET is not just a new highly productive development platform, its part of a larger strategy which aims to see a decline of a html based applications on the internet, in favour of Microsoft .NET applications, which is probably quite similiar to Sun's vision of client side Java, and Macromedia's vision of flash. I think it's only a few years away and you'll come across web sites which may at first glance look like like old school html with a bit of flash, but are in fact XAML... a windows application.
.NET to some is going to increasingly become more cross platform, it's been designed that way from the outset. But at the end of the day you can bet it will always be more fully functioned on Windows than it will ever be on Linux or Mac or some other OS. For Microsoft I think they'll be hoping this will lead to a continuing dominance the desktop market.
The purpose of
Basically a service running on an OS is never going to run in a reduced security context, in
I think Microsoft's vision for
I can hear you all saying... but Java and Flash are cross platform. Like Java and Flash,
At the end of the day it will all be about content, and what technology that content leverages.... So the developer will decide.
I was one of the pioneers in this arena, I was a member of a Quake team, our team played in and won the first Australia wide online team competition, with 13 teams, 4-8 players a side. I also played in Australia's first international Quake team against Japan. So I think I can say with a little authority, what a pile of #$#&%. Online gaming hasn't really changed all that much since Quakeworld, it's now a little prettier. There's a few more people playing, however you might not know it with all, the different mods, and flavours of what essentially really is just quake. To me what meaning it might of once had has been lost a little. I think what the gaming industry has totally misunderstood, it's not the graphics that make a game realistic, it's the spirit and solidarity of the community behind it. If a game manufacturer out there just concentrated on making a competitive league, and not worried about unit sales I think they might actually acheive something worth writing about.
The sky is blue !!
How else would you research security ? How are you going to defend an OS against sophisticated attacks unless you know how to perform the attack in the first place ? How else you going to test the security of an OS without attacking it? If I were running Microsoft I have a team dedicated to hacking the OS (at any level), and pitch them against the team dedicated to securing the OS.
Asking for money for developing software is extortion ?
What do you do... work in finance.... do you push a figure from A to B occasionally and then a month later from B back to A again ? I've worked 40-60hr weeks developing software, you think I didn't deserve to be paid for this ?
These people in india can do more than develop software, they can do pretty much anything you or I can, and eventually if they can find a way to do it, they will. Let's see your piety, when these same arguments get applied to whatever industry your in. What you want to be paid more than $1500 USD a year... my god that's extortion !! Perhaps you can move to cuba if you don't like that.
Or perhaps you're one of the millions of people out there that live life on a multi-million budget and get even richer every day without doing squat for it. Many of these people have been living like this all their lives, as have their parents, and their grandparents, and of course these families haven't earnt their fortune through software development. What gives these people the right to do this ? Nothing... they do it because they can.
The nature of capitalism is you either join this elite or you, you're children and/or you grandchildren will end up a slave to them, no matter what your profession, software development, financial advisor, builder, doctor, lawyer..... eventually a system will be implemented, alot of the time with software, and that system will be used to make your job worthless. The best way to increase profits in business is to reduce or eliminate your payroll expenses, and the best kind of business to own is one that runs itself without you. That's what every business owner out there strives for, and through the perfection of capitalism will one day reach.
Does the open source community really believe that making their IP free will really end capitalism ? To me it just reminds me of that scene in the life of brian when the "crack suicide squad" storms down the hill towards the romans.... pulls out their knives, stabs themselves, and then as their dying one of them says... "that showed them".
I can still earn good money in my profession, however I'm obviously not in it for the money, I develop software because I love it, and whilst I can continue to "EXTORT" money for making it, I'll do so and at the end of the day I'll sleep like a baby at night.
OK then as a software developer I guess I should head off to India and take my place in the slave class. This is total crap, you can apply that argument to just about anything these days, shoes, clothes, food, most things these days can be mass produced for nearly nothing.... as long as you have a nice little slave class to do the work in supplying it. I pay $200 for a pair of shoes it cost Nike 30c to make.... why shouldn't I charge $100 for a CD of software I have made ?
I said all the companies backing OpenDocument have a vested interest in that their Business models are incompatible with Microsoft's.... Oracle, Novell, Redhat, Opera, Corel.... they're all competitors to Microsoft.
How about a format with guaranteed backward-compatibility
Well what do you think you'll be doing when OpenDocument 2.0 is released ? Hmmm think there's a very good probability you'll be upgrading and don't say it won't happen, in my experience open formats
As far as that link on wikipedia... it's hardly an unbiased critique, this is just someones opinion, I've read Microsoft's license agreement, and I have another opinion, it's a very short, easy to read and understand and in my opinion it makes it very clear that there's nothing stopping anyone from using MS Office XML unless their intention is to extend it to create their own format. This only affects organisations that would seek to create COMPETING products to MS Office, which is basically exactly what wikipedia says. What it doesn't say is it doesn't stop StarOffice, OpenOffice or any other competitor to MS Office from being able to read and write MS Office XML or into their own format (not based on MS Office XML).
How does this affect government organisations ? Well unless they intend to create their own Office suite and use MS Office XML as it's basis (UNLIKELY), it don't matter squat. They can read, transform and write MS Office XML into any format or application they'd care to write. Does this warrant the expense of a costly migration that will result in their documents being generally less accessible to the general public ?
Well I haven't used OpenOffice, but in my view MS Office has been going backwards since Office 2000, its now bloated with numerous useless features and alot of very annoying bugs. Many tech writers I know actually use Office 2000 in preference to Office 2003 or XP, because it's less buggy, quicker and easier to work with.
So if MS Office is ten years ahead, that would make OpenOffice a whole two years better than MS Office already (assuming it hasn't already started to go backwards).
No I've read and I believe I understand the license pretty well. You're totally free to use Microsoft XML schemas in any software product, to read and save data in MS Office XML. What you can't do is extend Micrsoft's schemas. They're basically ensuring that no one creates documents based on Micrsoft's formats which can not be read in their entirety by MS Office. Where is the problem implementing this in a GPL'd application ? It's exactly the same as using a GPL library within a closed source application, which many people do.
OK you're right anti-corporate... and anti-microsoft. All these companies backing OpenDocument all have compaitble business models that are diametrically opposed to microsoft's. i.e. They're all predominently hardware vendors, and see software as just a feature of the hardware. (ie Flat earth thinking) They are pro-open source and freeware because they see it as the savior of their flawed business models.
The format of data is arbitrary and totally inconsequential, it's about who can access this data. You tell someone who is blind how lame an argument it is to choose MS Office over OpenOffice on this basis alone.
My point was that there are vested interests on both sides. Both sides have total control over their formats and will use litigation if necessary to maintain their control. Both sides will implement new features when there is demand for those features and when it is compatible with the business models of the controlling parties.
I have yet to see any argument that makes sense on moving from MS Office to OpenDocument other than from some childish good vs evil anti-microsoft crap, which I would be embaressed as a professional to use as the basis of a multi-million dollar business decision.
Microsoft's license basically prohibits anyone from coming along hijacking their format and using it as the basis for their own. You are just plain wrong, there's nothing to stop anyone from using these formats in a GPL project, the only reason why you wouldn't would be for competitive reasons so as to not allow people to move from a GPL product to Microsoft.
Sorry but what a load of crap.
.... seriously ?
As I see it governments will have a choice of choosing between two formats both of which are in XML, both of which have a license attached to them, one format regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda, the other a dedicated commercial operation (ie microsoft). Ultimately they have no control of either format, if they wanted something changed in the format they'd have to bargain with Oasis in the same way they'd have to bargain with Microsoft.
The commercial reality of it is simply this, Microsoft has poorly supported its formats on other operating systems because of the same reasons why every other vendor of software, drivers etc etc has poorly supported Linux and Mac.... numbers.... the numbers are in Windows, if you're making a product for the desktop that's always going to be your target market, where you stand to make or lose the most money. If you have finite resources and time (which is always the case) you'll sacrafice support for other operating systems in favour of Windows every time. There's no conspiracy here, it's just reality.
If I was making a decision in a government body I'd choose the format with the broadest support, with the most amount features for the handicapped. Does anyone really believe that OpenDocument will ever beat MS Office on these two criteria
They're probably the best because they build in protection into their Antivirus Software before they release their viruses.... giving viral marketing a whole new meaning.
Yes I think Symantec should be commended for freeing thousands from the pure futility that is irc. This might help save the planet from what may have seemed certain doom.
Well here are a couple of good technical descriptions here and here. Basically for Multicasting to work all that is needed is for the routers between yourself and the streaming server to support Multicasting. The key question is what percentage of the routers out there support Multicasting ?
The answer is not many. Many of the routers out there do support Multicasting however this feature is disabled ironically to reduce the work load on the router. All multicasting does is shift the work load from the server to the router, which does not scale for the exact same reasons unicast servers don't.
I do think multicasting is probably the way to go, but it's probably quite some time away. When optical fibre networks and optical routers start to pentrate into the home market, then these technologies will become more realistic on the internet, until then.... enjoy your Fox box.
The Democrats will do anything they can, including lying and distorting facts, to get enough people pissed off at the Republicans to get them to vote for the Democratic party. The amount of mud that will be slung this next time will be epic.
Mud slinging ? My GOD !! If it weren't epic that would be even more suspect. If there's any justice in this world Bush and his cohorts will one day be hauled before the hague for war crimes. It's a well established and undeniable fact that they have perpertrated a massive fraud to go into Iraq and plunder it through companies that they and their family members stand to directly profit from. Basically they're killing people for personal profit. If you want proof just go google "halliburton iraq fraud" you'll get over half a million hits, with that amount of smoke there's got to be one whopping fire. If anything the democrats are helping to turn a blind eye.
Why you ask would they turn a blind eye ? Well for one, as you did say all politicians are the same, they're all corrupt to some extent, the truth is a very dangerous commodity round capitol hill. Secondly I'd say if the full extent of corruption in the Bush administration were to ever be properly investigated, the tale would be such an unbareable international orgy of pride swallowing for the US that it would break what's left of its heart and soul not to mention economy... you'd all be stocking up on pesos tomorrow.
Basically I don't think this is mud. I think it's totally believeable that these guys would rig an election (or two). Why not ? Considering everything else they've done.
I have a Imate sp3 which takes minisd which should be compatible with micro sd. I wonder if this will work with my phone as well.
My Imate sp3 runs the Microsoft Smartphone OS, it too can play mp3and 3gp, plus mpeg, wmv movie files, with no DRM, I've watched movies on it on budget airlines with no onboard entertainment (with the phone in flight mode of course). The thing I love about the Imate sp3 is that its quite small... almost the same size as my nokia 6100.
I too currently have a 512Meg MiniSD, I've been searching for quite some time to find something larger than 512M... Getting 8Gig would blow me away.
Seems like being a pedist get's you modded up on slashdot... I simply meant it's going to be alot taller than the burj tower ... ie by about %50
Having spent much of the year in Dubai I thought I might give you some feedback on your list...
:)
1) The World : A set of Artificial Islands being built off the coast of dubai, for the ultra rich. 2) The Palms : 3 of them actually These are artificial peninsula built in the shape of a palm tree.. Offering luxury houses with private beaches.
The marketing for these islands looks great however, whilst I admit they've still not finished them, they really don't look that great, from the ground it just looks like a pile of rocks they've dumped in the ocean. The cost involved in making these things has been the complete devestation of marine life in the area. They may look great from space, but from the ground....
3) The worlds Tallest building : The Burj Dubai.. The end height of the building is secret, but it is rumored to be 2500ft.
They're actually planning to build another building straight after this that will another order of magnitude taller than this tower.
4) The worlds most luxurious hotel : The Burj al Arab. Read up on it.. its quite a place to stay.
It's really not all that great the interior is really modern and glitzy, for some small period of time might have been considered very chic... but as happens with all fashions it's already a little dated, the taste of it's decor is somewhat questionable. I much prefer the Mina A' Salam which is right next to the Burj Al Arab it's is also extremely oppulent, but unlike the Burj Al it's style is alot more classic. It's part of a larger complex the Madinat Jumeriah. The whole complex is styled like an Arabian citadel.
6) The World's third largest mall : Mall of the Emirates. Smaller only to Dubai Mall, and Mall of America
It's pretty cool it includes an indoor ski field with 4 runs, the longest being 400m long. No mall in dubai is complete without some sort of amusement park of some kind.
It'll be interesting to see how much of this stuff actually comes to fruition. There's an old saying "It takes money to make money" but really what they're trying to do there is create an artificial economy out of nothing. If you see pictures of dubai as it stands today, it looks like a modern city, but only 30 years ago you would see nothing but scrubland. It's basically a planned economy, alot of planned economies have failed in the past, however they have about 10 trillion dollars of cash to spend on 50 square kilometers of land.
BTW, this country has no income tax. Gas costs about $1.80 a gallon. Labor is cheap.. you can get a house boy/house maid for about $250-$300 a month LEGALLY. I know.. I had one
This $250-$300 a month would be for someone with some language skills, the workers on the construction sites for these developments work for as little as $1500 USD a year, working 6 days a week on 18 hr shifts, under work place conditions that no western worker would ever tolerate. There's quite a high cost in human life to make these buildings, however seeing as these people come from the third world, these costs are generally ignored, and for every worker killed on a construction site, there's another 1000 more than eager to take his place. If you're a right wing anti-unionist, you only need to go to Dubai, to be converted to a left wing pro-unionist stance.
Then he realized that if he started making counter-intuitive predictions that would take two sides of a polarized debate in technology and make them go into a flame war about it, people would read his stuff.
.... wait hang on....
..... I guess I would have to read the 0 to -1 troll comments to read the other side
There's two sides in this slashdot discussion !? I've only seen one side
Aaaah
I can tell you this is really really old news, the CSIRO Australia's premier scientific research body has been focused on the control of foreign pests for many decades. Australia is a unique land, during the ice age (40,000 years ago) it was connected to asia since then it has been cut off from the rest of the world. It has many unique species of flora and fauna, most of which are almost completely defenceless to foreign species such as cane toads, foxes, pigs, rabbits, fire ants etc etc. It's the reason why we have such strict quarintine laws and customs inspections, and why many here go by the moto "If it's feral it's in peril".
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Do Americans really believe they live without censorship in their own lives ?
Do you really believe everything you see and hear on CNN is the absolute unbiased full and complete truth ?
Seriously before the US starts lecturing on censorship it should get it's own house in order.
1. the muslims were provoked: true
Provoked perhaps deliberately. Here are the 12 cartoons that were actually published. However it might be much of this furor is over three cartoons that were never published.
This is from the following article...
"The dossier contained at least three cartoons that had never been published in Denmark. These were brutally offensive; indeed, they were incendiary. One shows Mohammed as a pedophiliac demon. Another shows Mohammed with a pig snout. The third shows a praying Muslim being raped by a dog."
And confirmed here...
"...three other pictures that had been sent to Muslim e-mails by anonymous people"
I think it's highly irresponsible and inflamitory to go on a tour protesting with 12 cartoons that were published in the popular press and sit them along side 3 that came via "anonymous email".
This comment should be read with the Simpsons Comic Book Guy voice.
Well without being able to read the actual article, I can say it would have to be a load of bullocks as anyone with any understanding of the net would know we've said yes already. A lot of the most interesting content on the net is already delivered via embedded active-x controls embedded in the browser e.g flash, windows media player, real media player, etc etc.
.NET for a few years would know all about Code Access Security which has been at the core of Microsoft's .NET Framework from beginning with the one aim in mind; to make it possible for applications to run with limited priveleges (controlled by an administrator) in a partially trusted environment such as being run from an app or control from a local intranet server or from a server on the internet.
It is true though that this is a security nightmare, which is why many organisations with exceptionally tight security but a need to access the net have banned these controls. Saying no isn't the only solution though...
Those who have been developing with Microsoft