The guy who made the first blue LED won a 1.3 million dollar prize. I'm assuming the reason BU is able to collect royalties is that their method is the one that's being used commercially. Look at the description in wikipedia: Does p-doping Indium Galium Nitride seem like a trivial process?
Making the LEDs blue is actually a non-trivial bit of engineering. The patent isn't about LEDs being blue, it's the engineering behind making them blue. This is a totally valid thing to patent, just like the hybrid engine patents Toyota has.
This is the way the patent system is supposed to work. The university creates a useful product based on a real technology advance, patents the idea, and then when it becomes ubiquitous the university is able to calculate the worth of the technology and gets large firms to license appropriately.
This is completely different from software patents where it's mostly "I did it first, haha."
There's a RFC about one group's experience with using IPv6 and NAT64 exclusively (not dual stack):
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6586
It looks like the biggest stumbling blocks are chat clients and games.
The result is not too surprising, because most P2P networking arrangements involve some kind of passing of IP addresses around, and it's doubtful that most programmers would have put in IPv6 support already.
Hmm... well, the main advantage of LAMP is that the various pieces Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP work really really well with each other. On the development tools side, there isn't anything free that matches Visual Studio in sheer development speed (I use vim myself), but I've heard good things about PHP Eclipse. On the database side, PHPMyAdmin beats everything else I've ever used, open source and commercial. If you're really interested in rapid development and programming ease, I'd suggest looking into Ruby on Rails.
However, the real wealth of tools come in the form of the applications that are built on top of the LAMP stack, including blogging tools and Content Management Systems which make creating and maintaining a website infinitely easier.
Granted... I have limited experience with LAMP, when I set out to build my lil beg site back in January I tried doing it with LAMP for a time because of the cost savings that I'd have from hosting on Linux... unfortunately there were plenty of behind the scenes things that I just couldn't figure out and didn't have the time or desire to spend to make it work... so I backed off and did it under a pure Microsoft side and things came together quite smoothly.
Wow, what a coincidence. I just started a similar site, but it's done in LAMP (in fact, up to yesterday, it had almost the same tagline yours does). I find the enormity of open source tools (and programs) written for and on LAMP far outweighs the benefits of ASP.NET. Let me know if you'd like any help.
If you actually take a look at the link, it says explicitly GPL version 2, which means that no, it cannot be distributed under any version of the GPL, but rather the one explicitly mentioned (v. 2)
The real issue here is money. Why is Sony suing Lik-Sang? It's because Japanese PSPs are much cheaper than American or European PSPs (if they've even come out in Europe) while being practically the exact same product.
Sony sells the Japanese PSP for 20790 Yen after tax in Japan which is equivalent to 186.11 dollars (source Google). Sony sells the US PSP for 249.99 before tax. This means that Lik-Sang makes 63.88 dollars on each PSP they sell minus shipping if they bought these PSPs at retail.
Obviously, this means that Sony is only getting 186.11 dollars (subtract some for wholesale) instead of 249.99 dollars (subtract some for wholesale) for each PSP. No wonder Sony is unhappy, but really its their own fault for pricing the PSP so differently in two different markets.
Sure, AMD performs better than Intel at these price points you talk about, but that's not what most computer buyers (including me) care about.
The main problem is that AMD has no dual core answer at the lower price point. Right now, when I do my hardware refresh in a few months, it'll be a really tough decision between a Pentium D dual core or an Athlon 64 single core, depending on whether I value gaming performance or system responsiveness more. I don't want to make that choice. I've always been an AMD fan; their chips are better. I don't understand why they can't come out with a 1.8 Ghz or even 1.6 Ghz Dual Core chip at around 200 dollars, and simply trounce all the competition. Right now, what they're doing is "Oh Look! Here's some shiny new chips. Shame you can't afford them."
Problem is, no one can oppose this bill. It'd be like the trouble Kerry got into x100. The only thing they can do is offer amendments. The senate version of the bill didn't even have the Real ID language, but the joint meeting added most of it back.
The parent has the point right on. The survey is not meant to be indicative of the Linux community as a whole. In fact, they openly say that they only want their viewers to participate, and the survey's about finding more information about their readership.
Given that though, it still provides a look at some interesting trends, for example the strong showing of Mozilla.org products.
Our interest is in accurately representing the Desktop Linux OSes used by DesktopLinux.com readers. In the future, we will include a request similar to the following at the top of each survey, and in the surveys' announcements: "Please do not promote or advertise this survey to mailing lists, nor encourage your friends or co-workers to participate. The survey is meant to help us learn about our readership, not to help you advance your organization or open source software cause."
We can understand the disappointment Yoper users may feel at not being proclaimed the #1 Desktop Linux distribution, but we really do want to get a balanced profile of our readership. Please do not take this as a lack of interest in Yoper by DesktopLinux.com -- that is definitely not the case, and we are eager to cover Yoper news and have Yoper be an important member of our Desktop Linux community.
My interpretation: So basically YOPER didn't really do anything wrong, but the reason they were omitted was because the Desktop Linux people were more interested about how many of their viewers were using a distribution. Now, this is probably because desktoplinux.com is a relatively small community. If slashdot for example had a similar poll, it probably wouldn't be skewed as much by such action simply because of the volume of visitors.
That's the problem with any "feature" like this. The problem with Mozilla's whitelist is that it only checks the site that links to the XPI not the site that actually holds the XPI. Even if it did check though, it's still means that if any of the default sites are compromised, then the user is SOL. Browsers should not be able to download and execute executables. The user should have to download the XPI, then install it manually. Otherwise, this sort of security hole is not going to go away. The design is flawed.
I am not a hacker, but it looks like the whole point of this exploit is to pretend the binary is from one of the allowed sites (that are on by default), because Mozilla Firefox only checks the site that links to the binary, not the site where the binary actually resides.
Now, does anyone but me think that this might be a bad thing? If your device is designed to handle a 1.5 volt power source, and instead it gets a 1.7 volt power source, couldn't that damage the device? Of course, a lightbulb wouldn't be hurt by such a thing, but something with complex electronic chips in it?
Why would you trust volunteers to produce tax software? If the software miscalcuates something or the programmers misinterpret some arcane IRS ruling, you end up being liable for the mistake -- which could cost you thousands of dollars.
Similar arguments could be made for not trusting open source software to produce mission critical operating systems (Linux and BSD), customer relations management systems (Compiere), and server applications (Apache, JBoss). The potential for damage is no less in those areas, and yet many businesses trust them on a day to day basis.
The real problem with open source tax software is that it hasn't reached a critical mass, partly because of mentalities like yours. Tax software, like any other type of software has much to gain from open source development (shallower bugs, code sharing, better community, faster development, no product activation BS).
You know, you're exactly correct. That's why I'm still running Windows Me, a time tested reliable (only crashes twice a day), secure (no more bugs than outlook), cheap (I got my copy for only $20 from some loser who made the jump to "XP") OS that does everything any other OS does and more.
Hmm.... That's 3.6 at -95 degrees celsius, or 178 degrees Kelvin for those of you so inclined with a chip that's been hand picked for performance by the overclockers out of a group that's already been picked for performance (FX 53s). This combined with the fact that this part is only going to last maybe a month (I'm being generous) means that this is not a good judge of the chip's headroom.
If we look at normal (air cooled) Athlon 64 overclocks, we see that the maximum is usually around 2.6 Ghz. Now, with some hardware tweaks and a better manufacturing process, it is reasonable to expect that AMD will produce 2.6-2.8 Hammers (maybe 3 if they're lucky), but no where near 3.6. Also, if we look at the current chips, we see that the fastest are still 130nms which probably means that AMD either has trouble getting 90nm chips fast enough, or more likely, has a hard time getting them in decent yields.
Here's to hoping we get 3.0 ghz amd chips before Dual Core.
Yeah, just wait until Microsoft gets a new round of FUD out of this:
"We must stop open source because it gives high tech operating system technology to rogue nations who will use it in their plans of global nuclear proliferation."
Actually, this is exactly what I was looking for, because it looks like if this is combined with a Thinkpad T series extended battery, it can last all day. The only thing I'm worried about is the ergonomics of the thing, which you said was a bit klunky?
Sounds like Software Update Services would work out great for you - if you really have that many machines on your network that need patching. They don't actually need to be in the same windows domain or anything (although they can, and it makes it alot easier to configure clients when they are). You can just add a few registry entries and the machines will automatically connect to the SUS server. Great software which makes patching alot easier for Windows.
Yup, use that too. The CD's for before they get on the internet, and then we use remote software to patch their machines if they're on contract with us. However, we still need the CDs because some worms are too fast (ie blaster) and will infect them 20 seconds after they get on the internet, and for those machines that aren't under contract.
Slashdot Mirror
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#The_blue_and_white_LED
The guy who made the first blue LED won a 1.3 million dollar prize. I'm assuming the reason BU is able to collect royalties is that their method is the one that's being used commercially. Look at the description in wikipedia: Does p-doping Indium Galium Nitride seem like a trivial process?
Making the LEDs blue is actually a non-trivial bit of engineering. The patent isn't about LEDs being blue, it's the engineering behind making them blue. This is a totally valid thing to patent, just like the hybrid engine patents Toyota has.
This is the way the patent system is supposed to work. The university creates a useful product based on a real technology advance, patents the idea, and then when it becomes ubiquitous the university is able to calculate the worth of the technology and gets large firms to license appropriately. This is completely different from software patents where it's mostly "I did it first, haha."
There's a RFC about one group's experience with using IPv6 and NAT64 exclusively (not dual stack): https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6586 It looks like the biggest stumbling blocks are chat clients and games. The result is not too surprising, because most P2P networking arrangements involve some kind of passing of IP addresses around, and it's doubtful that most programmers would have put in IPv6 support already.
Check out their E3 video. It's a nice condense introduction to the game.
Hmm... well, the main advantage of LAMP is that the various pieces Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP work really really well with each other. On the development tools side, there isn't anything free that matches Visual Studio in sheer development speed (I use vim myself), but I've heard good things about PHP Eclipse. On the database side, PHPMyAdmin beats everything else I've ever used, open source and commercial. If you're really interested in rapid development and programming ease, I'd suggest looking into Ruby on Rails.
However, the real wealth of tools come in the form of the applications that are built on top of the LAMP stack, including blogging tools and Content Management Systems which make creating and maintaining a website infinitely easier.
Granted... I have limited experience with LAMP, when I set out to build my lil beg site back in January I tried doing it with LAMP for a time because of the cost savings that I'd have from hosting on Linux... unfortunately there were plenty of behind the scenes things that I just couldn't figure out and didn't have the time or desire to spend to make it work... so I backed off and did it under a pure Microsoft side and things came together quite smoothly.
Wow, what a coincidence. I just started a similar site, but it's done in LAMP (in fact, up to yesterday, it had almost the same tagline yours does). I find the enormity of open source tools (and programs) written for and on LAMP far outweighs the benefits of ASP.NET. Let me know if you'd like any help.
If you actually take a look at the link, it says explicitly GPL version 2, which means that no, it cannot be distributed under any version of the GPL, but rather the one explicitly mentioned (v. 2)
I couldn't find a single mention on the Google website of where the access points actually are in the Bay Area. Anybody care to post a link or list?
The real issue here is money. Why is Sony suing Lik-Sang? It's because Japanese PSPs are much cheaper than American or European PSPs (if they've even come out in Europe) while being practically the exact same product.
Sony sells the Japanese PSP for 20790 Yen after tax in Japan which is equivalent to 186.11 dollars (source Google). Sony sells the US PSP for 249.99 before tax. This means that Lik-Sang makes 63.88 dollars on each PSP they sell minus shipping if they bought these PSPs at retail.
Obviously, this means that Sony is only getting 186.11 dollars (subtract some for wholesale) instead of 249.99 dollars (subtract some for wholesale) for each PSP. No wonder Sony is unhappy, but really its their own fault for pricing the PSP so differently in two different markets.
Sure, AMD performs better than Intel at these price points you talk about, but that's not what most computer buyers (including me) care about.
The main problem is that AMD has no dual core answer at the lower price point. Right now, when I do my hardware refresh in a few months, it'll be a really tough decision between a Pentium D dual core or an Athlon 64 single core, depending on whether I value gaming performance or system responsiveness more. I don't want to make that choice. I've always been an AMD fan; their chips are better. I don't understand why they can't come out with a 1.8 Ghz or even 1.6 Ghz Dual Core chip at around 200 dollars, and simply trounce all the competition. Right now, what they're doing is "Oh Look! Here's some shiny new chips. Shame you can't afford them."
Sounds like a great offering, but seriously LxMSuite? Come on guys, how do you expect to market a name like that?
Problem is, no one can oppose this bill. It'd be like the trouble Kerry got into x100. The only thing they can do is offer amendments. The senate version of the bill didn't even have the Real ID language, but the joint meeting added most of it back.
The parent has the point right on. The survey is not meant to be indicative of the Linux community as a whole. In fact, they openly say that they only want their viewers to participate, and the survey's about finding more information about their readership.
Given that though, it still provides a look at some interesting trends, for example the strong showing of Mozilla.org products.
Here's a post regarding this:
Our interest is in accurately representing the Desktop Linux OSes used by DesktopLinux.com readers. In the future, we will include a request similar to the following at the top of each survey, and in the surveys' announcements: "Please do not promote or advertise this survey to mailing lists, nor encourage your friends or co-workers to participate. The survey is meant to help us learn about our readership, not to help you advance your organization or open source software cause."
We can understand the disappointment Yoper users may feel at not being proclaimed the #1 Desktop Linux distribution, but we really do want to get a balanced profile of our readership. Please do not take this as a lack of interest in Yoper by DesktopLinux.com -- that is definitely not the case, and we are eager to cover Yoper news and have Yoper be an important member of our Desktop Linux community.
My interpretation: So basically YOPER didn't really do anything wrong, but the reason they were omitted was because the Desktop Linux people were more interested about how many of their viewers were using a distribution. Now, this is probably because desktoplinux.com is a relatively small community. If slashdot for example had a similar poll, it probably wouldn't be skewed as much by such action simply because of the volume of visitors.
That's the problem with any "feature" like this. The problem with Mozilla's whitelist is that it only checks the site that links to the XPI not the site that actually holds the XPI. Even if it did check though, it's still means that if any of the default sites are compromised, then the user is SOL. Browsers should not be able to download and execute executables. The user should have to download the XPI, then install it manually. Otherwise, this sort of security hole is not going to go away. The design is flawed.
I am not a hacker, but it looks like the whole point of this exploit is to pretend the binary is from one of the allowed sites (that are on by default), because Mozilla Firefox only checks the site that links to the binary, not the site where the binary actually resides.
Now, does anyone but me think that this might be a bad thing? If your device is designed to handle a 1.5 volt power source, and instead it gets a 1.7 volt power source, couldn't that damage the device? Of course, a lightbulb wouldn't be hurt by such a thing, but something with complex electronic chips in it?
Why would you trust volunteers to produce tax software? If the software miscalcuates something or the programmers misinterpret some arcane IRS ruling, you end up being liable for the mistake -- which could cost you thousands of dollars.
Similar arguments could be made for not trusting open source software to produce mission critical operating systems (Linux and BSD), customer relations management systems (Compiere), and server applications (Apache, JBoss). The potential for damage is no less in those areas, and yet many businesses trust them on a day to day basis.
The real problem with open source tax software is that it hasn't reached a critical mass, partly because of mentalities like yours. Tax software, like any other type of software has much to gain from open source development (shallower bugs, code sharing, better community, faster development, no product activation BS).
You know, you're exactly correct. That's why I'm still running Windows Me, a time tested reliable (only crashes twice a day), secure (no more bugs than outlook), cheap (I got my copy for only $20 from some loser who made the jump to "XP") OS that does everything any other OS does and more.
Hmm.... That's 3.6 at -95 degrees celsius, or 178 degrees Kelvin for those of you so inclined with a chip that's been hand picked for performance by the overclockers out of a group that's already been picked for performance (FX 53s). This combined with the fact that this part is only going to last maybe a month (I'm being generous) means that this is not a good judge of the chip's headroom.
If we look at normal (air cooled) Athlon 64 overclocks, we see that the maximum is usually around 2.6 Ghz. Now, with some hardware tweaks and a better manufacturing process, it is reasonable to expect that AMD will produce 2.6-2.8 Hammers (maybe 3 if they're lucky), but no where near 3.6. Also, if we look at the current chips, we see that the fastest are still 130nms which probably means that AMD either has trouble getting 90nm chips fast enough, or more likely, has a hard time getting them in decent yields.
Here's to hoping we get 3.0 ghz amd chips before Dual Core.
Yeah, just wait until Microsoft gets a new round of FUD out of this:
"We must stop open source because it gives high tech operating system technology to rogue nations who will use it in their plans of global nuclear proliferation."
Actually, this is exactly what I was looking for, because it looks like if this is combined with a Thinkpad T series extended battery, it can last all day. The only thing I'm worried about is the ergonomics of the thing, which you said was a bit klunky?
Just what Linux needs... Yet Another Distro
Please, keep these garage basement projects out of the news... we already have enough distros. Thanks.
Yep, that's right, the distrobution that was out before kernel 1.0 is now considered Yet Another Distro. Oh how the times have changed.
Sounds like Software Update Services would work out great for you - if you really have that many machines on your network that need patching. They don't actually need to be in the same windows domain or anything (although they can, and it makes it alot easier to configure clients when they are). You can just add a few registry entries and the machines will automatically connect to the SUS server. Great software which makes patching alot easier for Windows.
Yup, use that too. The CD's for before they get on the internet, and then we use remote software to patch their machines if they're on contract with us. However, we still need the CDs because some worms are too fast (ie blaster) and will infect them 20 seconds after they get on the internet, and for those machines that aren't under contract.