Also, four times a year they run a special called the Technology Quarterly that covers new things in the tech world, which coincidentally was also in this week's issue. The topics this time around included cheaper solar cells, superconducting power transmission lines, nanomaterials, and quantum encryption.
The European Commission wants to avoid the American situation, in which case law drives authorities to issue computer-related patents all too easily, in particular for business methods and algorithms.
I hope they're right. If Europe really wants to become more independent from US influence, avoiding a US-style patent regime would be a wise choice.
The Economist is great. They frequently have articles about patents, SCO, and all of our favorite/. topics, and I haven't seen any bad information like you get so often in lesser publications. This article on patents is just another great example. Bill Gates once said he reads The Economist from cover to cover weekly, hmm...
Ok, now to actually answer the question posed here (as opposed to what a lot of other people here are doing, which is either come up with something witty or else attempt to codify a sweeping new all-inclusive whiz-bang OS change).
Guess what? Except for the Shuttle, (which is far from the only NASA launch program), NASA *is* a customer to private space industry. (Who do you think builds the Delta rockets?)
The "except for the Shuttle" part is what I'm saying NASA needs to change.
Of course, NASA isn't interested in the types of vehicles needed to take the layman into space. They don't fit it's missions. Why should NASA waste the taxpayers money to build something it doesn't need?
But NASA is interested in that type of vehicle. The same vehicle can be used for transporting astronauts and laypeople. One of the ways the shuttle is used currently is to ferry people between earth and the space station, yet the shuttle is very inefficient for that purpose. I would argue that NASA should indeed be funding the design of a ship that can provide cheap space travel for people, but not creating the actual design and ships. NASA is already wasting taxpayers' money on something it doesn't need, maintenance and operation of the shuttle program.
What makes think that if there was a buck to made in space the private enterprise would not be doing it already?
One problem is the high cost of getting into space in the first place. If NASA became a customer instead of a competitor to private space industry, they could provide the money necessary to jump start a space program that, once started, could fund itself by bringing laypeople with money into space. Few in private industry are willing at this point to risk such large amounts of money, but NASA could, and even if the program ended up failing, at least some new developments in space vehicle design could come out of it.
If simply travelling in circles was what they were doing, you'd have a point. But they aren't.
Well, as the Economist article says, going round and round in orbit--as the station does--does not explore any frontier. Indeed, because the station (and the shuttle) suck up most of NASA's budget, the agency has little cash to undertake science and exploration that would be truly path-breaking. The shuttle and the space station thus hold back scientific inquiry, rather than advancing it.
When I bought a ticket online from GrooveTickets, I had to sign this Flash applet, although I'm not sure how that alone is going to prevent theft because if someone was trying to use a stolen credit card, I'm sure they wouldn't have much trouble forging a signature on a Flash form with a reset button.
The leading article of this week's Economist (subscriber-only unfortunately) is a great summary of why the space shuttle needs to be retired. The shuttle is too expensive, unsafe, and unnecessary to justify dumping more money into the program. The vast amount of money that NASA spends on the shuttle and space station could be much better spent elsewhere. The space station exists because of the need to give the shuttle a purpose and the shuttle program only continues because of the space station. NASA should ditch the shuttle, encourage private enterprise in the space business, and concentrate on developing new methods of space travel that might actually result in new exploration instead of simply traveling around the earth in circles.
But to pigeonhole SVG as "just another way to do animations" is to miss the point.
I'm not; you're putting words in my mouth. You asked if I wanted animated GIFs taking up my bandwidth, and I said I don't. If SVG can do the same thing as an animated GIF with less bandwidth and if it can turn my lights on and off, great, I still don't necessarily want it. I fully realize that it's much more than animation.
So you'd rather have your bandwidth gobbled up by animated text gifs than to spare a couple of bytes for some actual text marked up with a few SVG tags + CSS?
Why, back in my day, all we had was text and images! We didn't have no fancy SVG, Flash, or JavaScript; we had to wait all day in the snow to download our browsers on our 14.4 modems, and we LIKED IT! Kids these days...
So maybe I'm just a web Luddite who wants plain old text and images, but if the Mozilla developers manage to put default SVG support in Firebird while keeping it small and fast it'll be a good thing, even if it's still a while before we see widespread use of SVG. As long as there's a runtime option to turn it off.;-)
Speed: I think it should be possible to implement SVG support in a way that the SVG code is only loaded when actually needed (think of an "internal" plug-in).
If they do put it in Firebird, I sure hope they do something like this. I hope we don't need another project to make a fast, non-bloated version of Mozilla, but probably not many people are going to argue that the old Mozilla is superior to Firebird.
So if it's by default in mozille (firebird), it might finally push SVG... and make it what it is supposed to be, a webstandard.
I think it's unlikely to become commonly used until it's in Internet Explorer, because, like it or not, the number of people using IE is still vastly greater than the number of people using Mozilla and variants. Until it's in IE, I think most web developers will just say, "Why not keep using Flash?" and do just that. It's a similar situation with PNG; even though PNG-32 has superior alpha channel support to GIF, you don't see many sites with variable transparency 32-bit PNGs because IE still doesn't support them.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Flash (and all proprietary web formats, etc.) disappear today and be replaced by SVG, but I just don't think that's likely to happen in the near future. Actually, I think I'd love to see Flash disappear today and not be replaced by anything, but maybe that's just me.;-)
Is this going to be made a part of Mozilla Firebird too? I hope not, because wasn't the whole point of Phoenix to avoid all of these extra "features" and just make a fast, no-frills browser? This is hardly a critical feature since as was noted above few, if any other than the demonstration type, websites are using it, I don't think I want to see it if anyone does use it, and since there's no problem with a Flash plugin being an optional download, I don't see what the problem is with having SVG an optional download as well. Yeah, SVG is technically a W3C standard, but it's hardly a standard in actual web development.
The letter then warns that if D.E. Technologies is forced to litigate and succeeds, it will be entitled to an injunction against the website in question, damages and costs...The last paragraph of the letter adds: "We trust commonsense will prevail and look forward to hearing from you within the above deadline."
Oh yeah, D.E. Technologies knows all about common sense.
Given that Microsoft is publically held, it's management will disclose information on competitive threats to the shareholders. Those filings are all public.
Unless you're Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia...;-)
Icepick_: A guy on a cellphone starts talking on a plane. Next thing you know the guy's taking up space on 40 cells, moving faster than the system can comprehend, and the whole thing just crashes and burns.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Icepick_: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which PCS company do you work for?
Icepick_: A major one.
Good point, but still, I remember an article on the front page of the business section of the USAToday about Linux a while back. Not exactly my favorite news publication, but obviously there were a huge number of non-geeks reading about Linux vs. Microsoft that day. You never know who's going to pick up the story.
Isn't Microsoft just making more and more people aware of Linux and how good of a Windows replacement it's becoming? Seems sort of counter-productive to give your #2 threat a lot of free publicity. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing a huge company would tell the public. But hey, I'm not complaining.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the job of the police to determine whether someone is guilty of a crime; that's what juries are for.
Also, four times a year they run a special called the Technology Quarterly that covers new things in the tech world, which coincidentally was also in this week's issue. The topics this time around included cheaper solar cells, superconducting power transmission lines, nanomaterials, and quantum encryption.
The European Commission wants to avoid the American situation, in which case law drives authorities to issue computer-related patents all too easily, in particular for business methods and algorithms.
I hope they're right. If Europe really wants to become more independent from US influence, avoiding a US-style patent regime would be a wise choice.
The Economist is great. They frequently have articles about patents, SCO, and all of our favorite /. topics, and I haven't seen any bad information like you get so often in lesser publications. This article on patents is just another great example. Bill Gates once said he reads The Economist from cover to cover weekly, hmm...
English
Norwegian
It's from Norway, it must be good.
Ok, now to actually answer the question posed here (as opposed to what a lot of other people here are doing, which is either come up with something witty or else attempt to codify a sweeping new all-inclusive whiz-bang OS change).
This is slashdot; what do you expect?
Guess what? Except for the Shuttle, (which is far from the only NASA launch program), NASA *is* a customer to private space industry. (Who do you think builds the Delta rockets?)
The "except for the Shuttle" part is what I'm saying NASA needs to change.
Of course, NASA isn't interested in the types of vehicles needed to take the layman into space. They don't fit it's missions. Why should NASA waste the taxpayers money to build something it doesn't need?
But NASA is interested in that type of vehicle. The same vehicle can be used for transporting astronauts and laypeople. One of the ways the shuttle is used currently is to ferry people between earth and the space station, yet the shuttle is very inefficient for that purpose. I would argue that NASA should indeed be funding the design of a ship that can provide cheap space travel for people, but not creating the actual design and ships. NASA is already wasting taxpayers' money on something it doesn't need, maintenance and operation of the shuttle program.
To do what?
What makes think that if there was a buck to made in space the private enterprise would not be doing it already?
One problem is the high cost of getting into space in the first place. If NASA became a customer instead of a competitor to private space industry, they could provide the money necessary to jump start a space program that, once started, could fund itself by bringing laypeople with money into space. Few in private industry are willing at this point to risk such large amounts of money, but NASA could, and even if the program ended up failing, at least some new developments in space vehicle design could come out of it.
If simply travelling in circles was what they were doing, you'd have a point. But they aren't.
Well, as the Economist article says,
going round and round in orbit--as the station does--does not explore any frontier. Indeed, because the station (and the shuttle) suck up most of NASA's budget, the agency has little cash to undertake science and exploration that would be truly path-breaking. The shuttle and the space station thus hold back scientific inquiry, rather than advancing it.
When I bought a ticket online from GrooveTickets, I had to sign this Flash applet, although I'm not sure how that alone is going to prevent theft because if someone was trying to use a stolen credit card, I'm sure they wouldn't have much trouble forging a signature on a Flash form with a reset button.
The leading article of this week's Economist (subscriber-only unfortunately) is a great summary of why the space shuttle needs to be retired. The shuttle is too expensive, unsafe, and unnecessary to justify dumping more money into the program. The vast amount of money that NASA spends on the shuttle and space station could be much better spent elsewhere. The space station exists because of the need to give the shuttle a purpose and the shuttle program only continues because of the space station. NASA should ditch the shuttle, encourage private enterprise in the space business, and concentrate on developing new methods of space travel that might actually result in new exploration instead of simply traveling around the earth in circles.
Tell them "No means no!"
Also doubles as a back massager
Not to mention its *ahem* extra use for the ladies I know all you Slashdot readers are going after.
You've convinced me. SVG for everyone!
But to pigeonhole SVG as "just another way to do animations" is to miss the point.
I'm not; you're putting words in my mouth. You asked if I wanted animated GIFs taking up my bandwidth, and I said I don't. If SVG can do the same thing as an animated GIF with less bandwidth and if it can turn my lights on and off, great, I still don't necessarily want it. I fully realize that it's much more than animation.
So you'd rather have your bandwidth gobbled up by animated text gifs than to spare a couple of bytes for some actual text marked up with a few SVG tags + CSS?
No, I don't want animated anything.
Why, back in my day, all we had was text and images! We didn't have no fancy SVG, Flash, or JavaScript; we had to wait all day in the snow to download our browsers on our 14.4 modems, and we LIKED IT! Kids these days...
So maybe I'm just a web Luddite who wants plain old text and images, but if the Mozilla developers manage to put default SVG support in Firebird while keeping it small and fast it'll be a good thing, even if it's still a while before we see widespread use of SVG. As long as there's a runtime option to turn it off. ;-)
Speed: I think it should be possible to implement SVG support in a way that the SVG code is only loaded when actually needed (think of an "internal" plug-in).
If they do put it in Firebird, I sure hope they do something like this. I hope we don't need another project to make a fast, non-bloated version of Mozilla, but probably not many people are going to argue that the old Mozilla is superior to Firebird.
So if it's by default in mozille (firebird), it might finally push SVG ... and make it what it is supposed to be, a webstandard.
;-)
I think it's unlikely to become commonly used until it's in Internet Explorer, because, like it or not, the number of people using IE is still vastly greater than the number of people using Mozilla and variants. Until it's in IE, I think most web developers will just say, "Why not keep using Flash?" and do just that. It's a similar situation with PNG; even though PNG-32 has superior alpha channel support to GIF, you don't see many sites with variable transparency 32-bit PNGs because IE still doesn't support them.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Flash (and all proprietary web formats, etc.) disappear today and be replaced by SVG, but I just don't think that's likely to happen in the near future. Actually, I think I'd love to see Flash disappear today and not be replaced by anything, but maybe that's just me.
Is this going to be made a part of Mozilla Firebird too? I hope not, because wasn't the whole point of Phoenix to avoid all of these extra "features" and just make a fast, no-frills browser? This is hardly a critical feature since as was noted above few, if any other than the demonstration type, websites are using it, I don't think I want to see it if anyone does use it, and since there's no problem with a Flash plugin being an optional download, I don't see what the problem is with having SVG an optional download as well. Yeah, SVG is technically a W3C standard, but it's hardly a standard in actual web development.
The letter then warns that if D.E. Technologies is forced to litigate and succeeds, it will be entitled to an injunction against the website in question, damages and costs...The last paragraph of the letter adds: "We trust commonsense will prevail and look forward to hearing from you within the above deadline."
Oh yeah, D.E. Technologies knows all about common sense.
Given that Microsoft is publically held, it's management will disclose information on competitive threats to the shareholders. Those filings are all public.
;-)
Unless you're Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia...
Except not as funny
Icepick_: A guy on a cellphone starts talking on a plane. Next thing you know the guy's taking up space on 40 cells, moving faster than the system can comprehend, and the whole thing just crashes and burns.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Icepick_: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which PCS company do you work for?
Icepick_: A major one.
Good point, but still, I remember an article on the front page of the business section of the USAToday about Linux a while back. Not exactly my favorite news publication, but obviously there were a huge number of non-geeks reading about Linux vs. Microsoft that day. You never know who's going to pick up the story.
Isn't Microsoft just making more and more people aware of Linux and how good of a Windows replacement it's becoming? Seems sort of counter-productive to give your #2 threat a lot of free publicity. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing a huge company would tell the public. But hey, I'm not complaining.