Although in a completely open and free society we shouldn't need such draconian measures as DRM, in our current modern world they are a fact of life. At some point the slow wheels of democracy will catch up and the demands of the population for reasonable access to information will prevail. This, unfortunately, may take a generation or more. So while the populations of the world's democracies are slowly educated about what it means to have information held hostage by DRM, we will have to live with it (and probably live with it on some content indefinately). It is clearly better to support solutions that are implemented correctly than to allow corporations to not only hijack information, but the means to access said information. For the mega-corporations, this is a gold mine. Not only do they "own" (don't flame me, I know the difference between ownership and copyright) the content, they may also get to extract a tax via the proprietary and patent protected DRM solutions they are selling.
Smell doesn't seem nearly so difficult (there are already devices that will allow you to produce smells digitally), and not nearly as useful.
If the intention of the device is to immerse you in an experience such as a football game, smell is much more important than you might think. The brain's emotional and memory systems are intimately tied to the olfactory system and olfactory input. Just a fait smell of the stadium could do more for "putting you there" than higher resolution displays and even more sound channels.
What occurs to me is that if a system like this becomes commonplace, and the majority of humans never actually go to the ballpark, then the typical smell of a stadium or ballpark becomes arbitrary (the "tasty wheat" paradox).
.... and that the midwest is largely an undesirable place to live....
A pretty harsh statement for those of us who live in the plains states. It is very true that population trends are moving people to the coasts and the large cities, but I think the reasons are far more complicated that the entire center of the country being "undesirable."
Why would IBM want to do this? It would make business sense to kill OS/2 dead and start sales on its replacement.
I don't forsee a direct replacement for OS/2. Linux has filled that gap. I doubt we will see a proprietary offering from IBM for the type of machines that OS/2 runs on, as I don't think they will want to dilute their Linux focus.
Why does this get moded up? The best thing you can do to improve security of a system is to open it up. Security by obscurity has worked very well for Windows and Internet Explorer, that is for persons wanting to crack your system.
I had my home machine compromised this way. I have only 3 users on my home box, and choose all passwords myself to keep them strong. One night I was working on getting a backup system up and created an account backup with the excellent password "backup." I fully intended to change the password and disable remote logins for this account once I got it working. It was getting late, and I just didn't do it prior to hanging it up for the night. The next morning I had found the password had been changed to that account, and reviewing the bash log was able to trace what the intruder had done (ie root kit attempts, using my machine to run further automated attacks on other ip blocks). These weren't very sophisticated blokes, as their changing the password that was my tipoff that I had been cracked.
I take security seriously, but a momentary lapse of judgement, and my machine was compromised. If the idiots hadn't changed the password I might not have noticed for several days. Just an illustration of how vulnerable the internet is, even if you think you are careful and know what you are doing.
This is an Evaporative Cooler, AKA a Swamp Cooler.
No, an evaporative cooler uses transfer of heat necessary to evaporate water to cool the air. There is no evaporation in his design. He has just made a simple heat pump, transfering heat to water cooled with ice. I guess this is an airconditioner using his freezer as the primary coil and a two stage transfer (i.e. heat moving from air --> water --> freon in the frezzer--> air via the condensing coil of the freezer).
So, if you have a country where "the different value system" endorses stuff like cutting off a girl's clitoris and sewing her vagina shut to ensure her virginity at marriage, Microsoft won't have a problem with that, because, well, it's a "different value system" and Microsoft doesn't want to get involved, and it might cost them some money
Yes, they are a corporation. By definition a corporation's first obligation is to protect its shareholder's interests within the confines of OUR laws. Spending corporate monies to combat social injustice in our country or other countries is not the corporations role.
Corporation do often use their philanthropy to forward a social agendas their leadership agrees with, often by supporting a non-profit who promotes their social agenda.
Expecting a corporation to use its core assets and resources to promote social agenda (even a just and ethical agenda) is naive. You can exercise your personal choices to boycott corporations who invest in or do business with countries, other companies or individuals you find distasteful, but don't expect the corporation itself to push an ethical or social agenda. If you depend on corporations to forward progressive social agendas, you will always be disappointed, because at the end of the day the corporation answers to the financial concerns of its shareholders.
I agree with most of what you say, and would mod you up if I had points. However I would suggest your following statement is not quite true:
We've reached an era where superstition and fanatism have surpassed science and reason. To put it simply, fanatics can't accept science because that would mean their entire belief system is WRONG (cognitive dissonance anyone?).
I suspect the true fear that fundamentalists have isn't of any set of facts or theories that current science proposes, as any set of static facts can be incorporated into a belief system. I believe what really makes them afraid is that any set of facts and theories proposed by science are subject to change at any time. A fundamentalist's views of the world around them can not tolerate a change of the facts and theories that he uses to understand the world. It is the promise of uncertainty and change that is always present in a scientific view of the world that he fears, not science's current explanations of how the world works.
Ben
Yes, the ship would see your flashlight. He would also measure the speed of this light as c. The answer is from the theory of special theory of relativity which states that measurement of the speed of light is independant of the observers. The trick here is that the relative speed of the two observers is NOT 1.2c. This has to do with changes in time and distance that occur as the relative speed of two frames of reference approaches c. Distances contract and time dilates, thus the paradox.
If they are selling insurances againt it, then they won't believe it would be a problem. Otherwise, they would loose money. Simple as that.
No, they expect lawsuits to happen, they have calculated their premium rates to expect to collect more than they will spend defending or paying in settlements. All insurance works this way. They also have limits ($5 million) to avoid being bankrupted by an unanticipated award.
I think you miss the point of the article. This company is filling an important gap in the mind of business leaders who are thinking of migrating to Linux. It would be in the best interest of the insurer to have as wide spread adoption of open source software (Linux) as possible, to increase the potential number of customers. Read the article, and you'll see that if this was just a mob-style protection scheme or just another FUD ploy, they would have publicly released the entire list of patents that Linux potentially infringes on.
If we were to publish the patents, we've now put everyone on notice of those patents. For those who have tried to avoid them, we've forced them to know of them, so we've screwed the community," Ravicher said. "If someone really wants to know, they can do the search themselves.
I believe that in 20 years, we'll look back and say the same for W.
I really doubt that. I am no fan of Reagan, the properity of the 1990's wasn't a product of his policies. He did spend the Russians into bankruptcy with money from generations of American taxpayers to come. Are we safer? The power vaccum created has contiributed to the current situation that is breeding international terroist violence. I do think it is debateable whether or not we are safer now. Reagan did make many American's very rich with his tax cuts and economics of "trickle-down." This was paid for by an enormous increase in the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots." These economic policies are good for the few (I suspect good for many reading this) but over time a society is not stable when wealth continues to concentrate.
Bush (W) continues these economic policies and add in a foriegn policy that leaves our allies scratching their heads as their citizens hit the steets in protest. The idea that Bush and his hawkish advisors are right and everyone else in the world is wrong just smacks of arrogance. Bush will be remimbered IMHO for
creating an ustable state in Iraq requiring years if not decades of US and international involvement
squandering relationships with allies that will require untold years to repair
continuing the economics of elitism, further concentrating the wealth of our country which left unchecked could destabalize our democracy.
You know, I disagree. One of the things I think that personal computers need to do better is the organization of information. I know that is exactly what personal computers do best; sorting info into logical blocks and discrete quanta of information. However, that is not the way humans work. We pile things, hide things, tie strings around our fingers to remind of us things! Our minds remember differnet discrete facts not as individual pieces of data the way a computer does but as part of multiple ideas. One quanta of information may be an integral part of several differnet thought processes! Some of these thought may even be mutualy exclusive! Attempts at helping computers display information in a more "human" way are not lame. They may be primative at this point, but at the lowest level these ideas are not just about a pretty screen, they are about connecting people with the unbelievalble amount of data computers put at our fingertips. I applaud the effort. Eventually computers will present data to humans the way we use it! That is what the "user interface" is. Refining the interface is not silly or trivial. 3D spinning windows may not be the end all of information presentation, but dismissing it as "lame" shows a poor understanding of what computers are to most people.
Many cryptosystems are based off of doing complex math based off of very large random prime numbers.
No, cryptosystems are based off of simple math based on a pair of very large pre-selected (read not random) prime numbers that make up your public and private key.
I remember some Discovery piece about another giant meteor hitting around area of the Yucatan several hundred million years ago. I could swear that they were using that crator as evidence of the great die off too.
If I'm not mistaken that meteor is linked to another mass extinction event 65 million years ago (ie dead dinosaurs). The current article is about a larger mass extinction event 250 million years ago. All of this makes me a bit nervous;-)
Isn't this the same old double-slit experiment, just slightly modified? Perhaps this is new to some people, but anyone who's had the slightest interest in quantum mechanics or parallel universes should have heard of this by now.
This what I thought when reading this article. This experiment just demonstrates the odd property of photons that depending on how you look at them they act like particles (think pool ball) or like waves (think drop a rock in a pond). This gets even odder if you make observations at the holes (or slits in the case of the double-slit experiment). One would think that any individual photon has to go through one of the 2 (or 4) holes. However if you try to measure which hole the photon goes through you loose the interference pattern (ie shadows).
I would have assumed that whenever a binary was distributed to anyone, anywhere that whatever changes were made to the corresponding GPL'd source would likewise have to be distributed.
No, you may use modified GPL binaries internally to your heart's content, and as long as you don't distribute it outside your organization.
Next thing you know, some company will come out with a front "organization" to which you will agree to belong in order for them to distribute to you binaries that they derived from modified GPL code.
Interesting thought. I should patent it! Really though, I think that would push the definition a bit. By paying to join an umbrella organization to get access to binaries, you are making it hard to argue that these binaries aren't distributions that fall under the GPL and require source code release, etc.
SCO's latest craziness is just a ploy to get one of these "government" organizations to buy a license. They will offer a license for just about any price, because they can use the purchase as evidence in thier ongoing litigation that their insanity has some credibility.
SCO lawyer:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if the US government is convinced that we own UNIX and all derivities including Linux, and they are paying us for our IP, then it stands to reason that we do!!
As a good example my uncle was in having surgery to relieve the pain from a herniated disk in his lower back, due to the complete malpractice of the doctor he is now a parapaligic [sic] almost a quadrapaligic [sic], in my state his damages would have been capped at a couple hundred thousand, not even enough to pay for his follow-on medical treatment, let alone all the new infrastructure his life requires like chair lifts, ramps in his house, nursing care, and then we get into lost wages, suffering, mental anguish for him and his family.
This just isn't the case! NO state has caps on direct economic damages. The trial lawyer associations run commercials that suggest that persons injured by true medical malpractice will not be awarded adequate compensation. All limits I am aware of, and the only limits up for consideration at the federal level, limit non-economic damages only. This includes damages for things such as pain and suffering, and in most cases punitive damages (which are rarely awarded in malpractice cases anyway). The most likely cause of your uncle's poor recovery is incompetent or greedy legal representation. If his attorney did not ask for certain direct economic damages such as your examples of future medical needs, or underestimated such needs, then he can not go back later and ask for more after a judgment or settlement. If his attorney pushed him into a settlement telling him that his recovery of direct economic damages was limited to $200,000, he was misinformed (I would of course be happy to be educated if your state has laws that I am unaware of).
I have had patients who have been talked out of settlement offers by their attorneys that included future medical expenses not expressly limited by the settlement. Their attorneys pushed them into cash settlements instead. I am convinced that this is because it is easy to calculate and take 30-50% of cash settlements, but undefined future medical care doesn't line the attorneys' pockets the same immediate way.
To reiterate: Direct economic damages (ie future medical care, lost wages, cost of necessary equipment) are NOT limited by liability caps, but may be limited by a poor plaintiff's attorney who underestimates those costs by incompetence or in an attempt to get a quick settlement of which he/she immediately takes 30-50%. Medial tort reform now under consideration at the federal level limits the non-economic damages only (ie pain, suffering, mental anguish, and punitive damages).
Flame shields up!
Ben
Re:Scooby Snacks: Think of the butter
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I think a better analogy is that IBM bought the butter and flour from SCO (actually their predecessor) and baked a cake with it. Then they designed icing for the cake without any of the butter or flour from SCO (of course who would put flour in icing). Now IBM has given the icing to put on the Linix cake. SCO says that since the icing was designed for the cake with SCO butter and flour, that it can't be used on any other cake. Or.... "all your icing are belong to us."
I'm not sure I understand what is meant by a "dark landscape." The landing site is near the equator, so incident light should not be less, perhaps it is in a crator, but unless steep walls are involved (which are not seen on the panoramic images) the landing site would not be darker (shadowed?). I would suspect that the makeup of the soil reflects less of the incident light, hence the "dark" landscape.
I know its not required, but I have just read the article;-) I found this statement interesting:
The EFI specification is essentially a preboot environment that allows a PC to conduct activities such as scanning for viruses or running diagnostics.
They seemed to have left out the part about checking the digital signature of kernel to be loaded to make sure that it is authorized by the Department of Homeland Security, the MPAA, RIAA, and George W's pet dog. If you try to load commie software like linux Mr. Ashcroft will be at your door and you will find yourself in Guantanamo !
Just a random thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Although in a completely open and free society we shouldn't need such draconian measures as DRM, in our current modern world they are a fact of life. At some point the slow wheels of democracy will catch up and the demands of the population for reasonable access to information will prevail. This, unfortunately, may take a generation or more. So while the populations of the world's democracies are slowly educated about what it means to have information held hostage by DRM, we will have to live with it (and probably live with it on some content indefinately). It is clearly better to support solutions that are implemented correctly than to allow corporations to not only hijack information, but the means to access said information. For the mega-corporations, this is a gold mine. Not only do they "own" (don't flame me, I know the difference between ownership and copyright) the content, they may also get to extract a tax via the proprietary and patent protected DRM solutions they are selling.
my 0.02
cheers, ben
What occurs to me is that if a system like this becomes commonplace, and the majority of humans never actually go to the ballpark, then the typical smell of a stadium or ballpark becomes arbitrary (the "tasty wheat" paradox).
cheers, ben
cheers, ben
I think you mean unladen swallow.
My 0.02, Ben
Why does this get moded up? The best thing you can do to improve security of a system is to open it up. Security by obscurity has worked very well for Windows and Internet Explorer, that is for persons wanting to crack your system.
Cheers, Ben
I had my home machine compromised this way. I have only 3 users on my home box, and choose all passwords myself to keep them strong. One night I was working on getting a backup system up and created an account backup with the excellent password "backup." I fully intended to change the password and disable remote logins for this account once I got it working. It was getting late, and I just didn't do it prior to hanging it up for the night. The next morning I had found the password had been changed to that account, and reviewing the bash log was able to trace what the intruder had done (ie root kit attempts, using my machine to run further automated attacks on other ip blocks). These weren't very sophisticated blokes, as their changing the password that was my tipoff that I had been cracked.
I take security seriously, but a momentary lapse of judgement, and my machine was compromised. If the idiots hadn't changed the password I might not have noticed for several days. Just an illustration of how vulnerable the internet is, even if you think you are careful and know what you are doing.
Ben
(i.e. heat moving from air --> water --> freon in the frezzer--> air via the condensing coil of the freezer).
Cheers, ben
Yes, they are a corporation. By definition a corporation's first obligation is to protect its shareholder's interests within the confines of OUR laws. Spending corporate monies to combat social injustice in our country or other countries is not the corporations role.
Corporation do often use their philanthropy to forward a social agendas their leadership agrees with, often by supporting a non-profit who promotes their social agenda.
Expecting a corporation to use its core assets and resources to promote social agenda (even a just and ethical agenda) is naive. You can exercise your personal choices to boycott corporations who invest in or do business with countries, other companies or individuals you find distasteful, but don't expect the corporation itself to push an ethical or social agenda. If you depend on corporations to forward progressive social agendas, you will always be disappointed, because at the end of the day the corporation answers to the financial concerns of its shareholders.
Ben
I suspect the true fear that fundamentalists have isn't of any set of facts or theories that current science proposes, as any set of static facts can be incorporated into a belief system. I believe what really makes them afraid is that any set of facts and theories proposed by science are subject to change at any time. A fundamentalist's views of the world around them can not tolerate a change of the facts and theories that he uses to understand the world. It is the promise of uncertainty and change that is always present in a scientific view of the world that he fears, not science's current explanations of how the world works.
Ben
Cheers, ben
No, they expect lawsuits to happen, they have calculated their premium rates to expect to collect more than they will spend defending or paying in settlements. All insurance works this way. They also have limits ($5 million) to avoid being bankrupted by an unanticipated award.
Ben
Bush (W) continues these economic policies and add in a foriegn policy that leaves our allies scratching their heads as their citizens hit the steets in protest. The idea that Bush and his hawkish advisors are right and everyone else in the world is wrong just smacks of arrogance. Bush will be remimbered IMHO for
creating an ustable state in Iraq requiring years if not decades of US and international involvement
squandering relationships with allies that will require untold years to repair
continuing the economics of elitism, further concentrating the wealth of our country which left unchecked could destabalize our democracy.
My 0.02,
Ben
Cheers,
Ben
No, cryptosystems are based off of simple math based on a pair of very large pre-selected (read not random) prime numbers that make up your public and private key.
Cheers, Ben
Ben
This what I thought when reading this article. This experiment just demonstrates the odd property of photons that depending on how you look at them they act like particles (think pool ball) or like waves (think drop a rock in a pond). This gets even odder if you make observations at the holes (or slits in the case of the double-slit experiment). One would think that any individual photon has to go through one of the 2 (or 4) holes. However if you try to measure which hole the photon goes through you loose the interference pattern (ie shadows).
Ben
No, you may use modified GPL binaries internally to your heart's content, and as long as you don't distribute it outside your organization.
Next thing you know, some company will come out with a front "organization" to which you will agree to belong in order for them to distribute to you binaries that they derived from modified GPL code.
Interesting thought. I should patent it! Really though, I think that would push the definition a bit. By paying to join an umbrella organization to get access to binaries, you are making it hard to argue that these binaries aren't distributions that fall under the GPL and require source code release, etc.
Bring in the lawyers!
Ben
Ben
So is the fat lady warming up?
This just isn't the case! NO state has caps on direct economic damages. The trial lawyer associations run commercials that suggest that persons injured by true medical malpractice will not be awarded adequate compensation. All limits I am aware of, and the only limits up for consideration at the federal level, limit non-economic damages only. This includes damages for things such as pain and suffering, and in most cases punitive damages (which are rarely awarded in malpractice cases anyway). The most likely cause of your uncle's poor recovery is incompetent or greedy legal representation. If his attorney did not ask for certain direct economic damages such as your examples of future medical needs, or underestimated such needs, then he can not go back later and ask for more after a judgment or settlement. If his attorney pushed him into a settlement telling him that his recovery of direct economic damages was limited to $200,000, he was misinformed (I would of course be happy to be educated if your state has laws that I am unaware of).
I have had patients who have been talked out of settlement offers by their attorneys that included future medical expenses not expressly limited by the settlement. Their attorneys pushed them into cash settlements instead. I am convinced that this is because it is easy to calculate and take 30-50% of cash settlements, but undefined future medical care doesn't line the attorneys' pockets the same immediate way.
To reiterate: Direct economic damages (ie future medical care, lost wages, cost of necessary equipment) are NOT limited by liability caps, but may be limited by a poor plaintiff's attorney who underestimates those costs by incompetence or in an attempt to get a quick settlement of which he/she immediately takes 30-50%. Medial tort reform now under consideration at the federal level limits the non-economic damages only (ie pain, suffering, mental anguish, and punitive damages).
Flame shields up!
Ben
I think a better analogy is that IBM bought the butter and flour from SCO (actually their predecessor) and baked a cake with it. Then they designed icing for the cake without any of the butter or flour from SCO (of course who would put flour in icing). Now IBM has given the icing to put on the Linix cake. SCO says that since the icing was designed for the cake with SCO butter and flour, that it can't be used on any other cake. Or.... "all your icing are belong to us."
ben
Just some thoughts.
Ben