The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States.
Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents.
So, Mr. Stallings, what is IBM doing? I remember the infamous IBM progress bar patent. This claim is not any better than Acacia's claims, or Forgent claims.
If you want to complain about the absurd patent system, you're welcome. But for it to be *credible*, better get rid of some trivial patents. IBM should have tons of these.
Two names: Acacia and Forgent Networks.
They have INCREDIBLY TRIVIAL patents. And they slaughter good, innovative projects just to suck money out of them.
These companies do not produce or innovate ANYTHING. They only beat the money out of other companies with their patent portfolio.
The very fact that such companies can exist prove that the USPTO is incompetent when it comes to software patents.
Exactly, and this is why I think that a fundamental breakthrough would fit in perfectly. Today, it is so easy to fall back into a... dull life, with no changes, no variations etc. Living as a consuming machine. This is not exactly healthy for any person, neither physically nor psychically.
But see, somehow I'm glad we don't have flying cars yet. Actually, the 20th century introduced huge changes in an exceptionally short amount of time. I think people need to catch up. Throw in some wacky stuff like artifical gravity, and you have a totally destabilized society, where there are people living 200 years in the past, and some living in the future.
Right now I'm trying to get this to work, but it is not really easy. However, once it works, how is the legal situation? If I have WEP on, and some neighbour hacks into it, I can sue him. Without WEP, I couldn't. But, what if he hacks in a VPN-enabled system? Can I still sue him? Note that WEP would be disabled in this scenario, because it would not be needed.
In the last 20 years a HELL of a lot of research has been made. Actually, there was more successfull research than in the entire 20th century before.
BUT: few breakthroughs were visible to the average joe. The thing is, that most research went into improvement, and not into fundamental stuff.
For example, a "Star Wars"-like city actually isn't all that different from ours. Really there is only one major difference: artificial gravity. If we managed to succeed with this one, A LOT would change, the impact would be enormous.
So, we are "stuck" with myriads of small advancements.
Come to think of it, now would be a very good time for a fundamental breakthrough, like artifical gravity. Today there seems to be a lack of visions, as if they died out, and all thats left is consumption. I think I've read some rants about the cyclic nature of inventions and breakthroughs long ago.
I always about one thing: how is this theory supposed to explain the observations made by thousands of amateur astronoms with their telescopes at home?
My hope is on these theories:
1) Thomas Gold, abiotic oil
2) Global Scaling
3) Transmutation (aka cold fusion - yes, call me crazy, but unlike most free energy stuff, there hasn't been a clear proof that it either possible or impossible)
If cheap oil really ends, it may be forever, or, if 1) is correct, temporary. Either way, it will make alternative energies/theories look much more attractive. 2) is far too young to be judged, 3)... well... if this one turns out to be true, it will end the age of oil, for very good reasons:)
No, they ARE enforcable. In the past, EADS has sued several people and companies for infringing sw patents, for example. And in most cases, they won. The trick is not to make it look like an sw patent.
Bad thing is, this ugly behaviour will not change with the new directive. This directive could have been the chance to stomp out these tricks. Instead, we have a directive that changes nothing.
I tend to agree. There are several theories that look quite... um, far-fetched. But they are the best thing we have right now for describing the universe.
However, experimental and theoretical physics really seem to be a mess. For instance, to explain the structure in the universe, one introduces an inflation in the early eras of the universe. Why this happened is totally unclear. It almost looks like a desperate try to introduce something just to make the results look right. One can rightly claim that the theory could be wrong. Feel free to do so. But then you have to introduce a *new* theory, and it has to pass Occam's Razor.
But, considering the extremely bizarre nature of current "serious" theories, I wonder how one can laugh at stuff like cold fusion etc. It seems a little bit ignorant to me, especially since the very topic of cold fusion hasn't been either proven or disproven yet, just like string theory, quantum gravity etc. etc.
They created something that behaves like a black hole. If the theory about dark energy stars is right, it could have been a ball of dark energy instead.
Is dark energy "negative" energy?
If so, if one could find a way how to get dark energy, the alcubierre drive could become a reality in the far future?
I know that it need heaps of negative energy, but afaik someone corrected the calculations, resulting in much less energy consumption.
One thing I never understood:
assuming these free energy claims are true, and no respected magazine is willing to tap this issue (which is quite understandable, since it does attack the law of conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics), then why not release all their experiments to the public?
It would be very simple. You know exactly how to get energy from space itself? You can reproduce it? You can even build batteries capable of this, like this Hutchinson guy did?
Then RELASE SOME SCHEMATICS! Together with a guide how to build this thing. This would be the ultimate proof - if anyone can hack together a ZPF energy extractor in-house with some stuff from the junkyard and the nearest radio shack, no one will be able to deny it anymore.
But what are these guys doing? They keep having some obscure conferences, live in strange houses with submarine decors, release only vague claims and explanations etc. etc. This is quite frustrating, to say the least, and explains why most scientists simply laugh at free energy claims.
Well, personally I do like eyecandy (not on the laptop because of the heat emitted when the system has to calculate more because of the effects though).
But most eye-candy window managers are flawed from a usability point of view.
Take Enlightenment for example. I really like the looks. But it messes up ALSA (i can't find a way how to disable esd), menu generation crashes at startup etc. etc.
KDE and Gnome, well, I don't like the looks of them so much. Gnome is OK, but it is buggy (when switching desktops amule vanishes, for example).
That's why I am watching at e17 (if it ever gets ready) and cairo/opengl-based window managers like waimea.
Better. The effects are very similar to Longhorn eyecandy, but the costs are much lower. Note that he does all that stuff on an old Intel graphics chip. Longhorn requires much more GPU power.
he should create a video showing this wobbling effect used decently, rather than exaggerated. I'm inclined to believe him when he says that this movement is pleasant to the eye (actually, the sudden appearance of menus and windows seems to irritate new users whose brain is not used to this).
The translucency is done very very well. As mentioned before, this is the first video showing how translucency can be useful.
One might argue that this is an utter waste of resources. Well, in this is not true. Since most PCs sold after 2003 do have some sort of 3d accelerator included (hell, even the intel graphics chipsets have acceleration!), basic 3D acceleration is very cheap. Of course, there are people exaggerating the usage of 3d acceleration for the desktop. For example, there are rumors saying that Longhorn requires pixel shader support. But the consumer-level technology for basic T&L (hell, even the CPU can do this, since we aren't talking about >50k vertices) and some basic texturing without lighting or any nifty multitexturing has been around for almost a DECADE.
As I mentioned before, this scenario applies in the foreseeable future. I don't believe we will be able to terraform mars or live somewhere else than on earth that soon. It will take centuries for us to get to the point of these scenarios being feasible.
But you CANNOT foresee what we will be able to do in 500-600 years, let alone more than 1000 years. Thats my point. Maybe we will never go to the stars, maybe we will colonize mars, maybe somebody succeeds in building a FTL drive (although this one is hard to imagine).
Unfortunately, I won't live enough to see what will happen. I really need some immortality treatment from that De Grey guy:)
Apple does it with Mahogany,
MS does it with Balsa wood.
Then, Service Pack 3 promises Windows Teak Edition. Unfortunately, it is filled with termites.
Slashdot Mirror
The company is one of the largest patent-holders in the United States.
Stallings also called on the industry to stop what he calls "bad behaviour" by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents.
So, Mr. Stallings, what is IBM doing? I remember the infamous IBM progress bar patent. This claim is not any better than Acacia's claims, or Forgent claims.
If you want to complain about the absurd patent system, you're welcome. But for it to be *credible*, better get rid of some trivial patents. IBM should have tons of these.
Two names: Acacia and Forgent Networks. They have INCREDIBLY TRIVIAL patents. And they slaughter good, innovative projects just to suck money out of them. These companies do not produce or innovate ANYTHING. They only beat the money out of other companies with their patent portfolio. The very fact that such companies can exist prove that the USPTO is incompetent when it comes to software patents.
Exactly, and this is why I think that a fundamental breakthrough would fit in perfectly. Today, it is so easy to fall back into a ... dull life, with no changes, no variations etc. Living as a consuming machine. This is not exactly healthy for any person, neither physically nor psychically.
But see, somehow I'm glad we don't have flying cars yet. Actually, the 20th century introduced huge changes in an exceptionally short amount of time. I think people need to catch up. Throw in some wacky stuff like artifical gravity, and you have a totally destabilized society, where there are people living 200 years in the past, and some living in the future.
In Soviet Russia, hens guard the foxhouse.
This move is probably a result of the many reviews of their product that set out to prove it was bogus.
1. Say Windows XP/Longhorn is bogus
2. Wait for them to release it as Open Source
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Right now I'm trying to get this to work, but it is not really easy. However, once it works, how is the legal situation? If I have WEP on, and some neighbour hacks into it, I can sue him. Without WEP, I couldn't. But, what if he hacks in a VPN-enabled system? Can I still sue him? Note that WEP would be disabled in this scenario, because it would not be needed.
Hey, what about http://www.nuclearspace.com/ ?
Where is the problem with their plan?
In the last 20 years a HELL of a lot of research has been made. Actually, there was more successfull research than in the entire 20th century before.
BUT: few breakthroughs were visible to the average joe. The thing is, that most research went into improvement, and not into fundamental stuff.
For example, a "Star Wars"-like city actually isn't all that different from ours. Really there is only one major difference: artificial gravity. If we managed to succeed with this one, A LOT would change, the impact would be enormous.
So, we are "stuck" with myriads of small advancements.
Come to think of it, now would be a very good time for a fundamental breakthrough, like artifical gravity. Today there seems to be a lack of visions, as if they died out, and all thats left is consumption. I think I've read some rants about the cyclic nature of inventions and breakthroughs long ago.
You mean the moon landing fake theory?
I always about one thing: how is this theory supposed to explain the observations made by thousands of amateur astronoms with their telescopes at home?
My hope is on these theories: 1) Thomas Gold, abiotic oil 2) Global Scaling 3) Transmutation (aka cold fusion - yes, call me crazy, but unlike most free energy stuff, there hasn't been a clear proof that it either possible or impossible) If cheap oil really ends, it may be forever, or, if 1) is correct, temporary. Either way, it will make alternative energies/theories look much more attractive. 2) is far too young to be judged, 3) ... well... if this one turns out to be true, it will end the age of oil, for very good reasons :)
No, they ARE enforcable. In the past, EADS has sued several people and companies for infringing sw patents, for example. And in most cases, they won. The trick is not to make it look like an sw patent. Bad thing is, this ugly behaviour will not change with the new directive. This directive could have been the chance to stomp out these tricks. Instead, we have a directive that changes nothing.
I tend to agree. There are several theories that look quite... um, far-fetched. But they are the best thing we have right now for describing the universe. However, experimental and theoretical physics really seem to be a mess. For instance, to explain the structure in the universe, one introduces an inflation in the early eras of the universe. Why this happened is totally unclear. It almost looks like a desperate try to introduce something just to make the results look right. One can rightly claim that the theory could be wrong. Feel free to do so. But then you have to introduce a *new* theory, and it has to pass Occam's Razor. But, considering the extremely bizarre nature of current "serious" theories, I wonder how one can laugh at stuff like cold fusion etc. It seems a little bit ignorant to me, especially since the very topic of cold fusion hasn't been either proven or disproven yet, just like string theory, quantum gravity etc. etc.
They created something that behaves like a black hole. If the theory about dark energy stars is right, it could have been a ball of dark energy instead.
Is dark energy "negative" energy? If so, if one could find a way how to get dark energy, the alcubierre drive could become a reality in the far future? I know that it need heaps of negative energy, but afaik someone corrected the calculations, resulting in much less energy consumption.
I wonder when content-based search for media will be possible. Content-based image retrieval for example.
Yes! It is skynet! Prepare for Armageddon, folks... And beware the T-800 with the strange austrian accent. Must be an error in the firmware.
As mentioned before, there are lots of grass types using extremely low amount of water.
One thing I never understood: assuming these free energy claims are true, and no respected magazine is willing to tap this issue (which is quite understandable, since it does attack the law of conservation of energy and the second law of thermodynamics), then why not release all their experiments to the public? It would be very simple. You know exactly how to get energy from space itself? You can reproduce it? You can even build batteries capable of this, like this Hutchinson guy did? Then RELASE SOME SCHEMATICS! Together with a guide how to build this thing. This would be the ultimate proof - if anyone can hack together a ZPF energy extractor in-house with some stuff from the junkyard and the nearest radio shack, no one will be able to deny it anymore. But what are these guys doing? They keep having some obscure conferences, live in strange houses with submarine decors, release only vague claims and explanations etc. etc. This is quite frustrating, to say the least, and explains why most scientists simply laugh at free energy claims.
Well, personally I do like eyecandy (not on the laptop because of the heat emitted when the system has to calculate more because of the effects though).
But most eye-candy window managers are flawed from a usability point of view.
Take Enlightenment for example. I really like the looks. But it messes up ALSA (i can't find a way how to disable esd), menu generation crashes at startup etc. etc.
KDE and Gnome, well, I don't like the looks of them so much. Gnome is OK, but it is buggy (when switching desktops amule vanishes, for example).
That's why I am watching at e17 (if it ever gets ready) and cairo/opengl-based window managers like waimea.
Better. The effects are very similar to Longhorn eyecandy, but the costs are much lower. Note that he does all that stuff on an old Intel graphics chip. Longhorn requires much more GPU power.
he should create a video showing this wobbling effect used decently, rather than exaggerated. I'm inclined to believe him when he says that this movement is pleasant to the eye (actually, the sudden appearance of menus and windows seems to irritate new users whose brain is not used to this).
The translucency is done very very well. As mentioned before, this is the first video showing how translucency can be useful.
One might argue that this is an utter waste of resources. Well, in this is not true. Since most PCs sold after 2003 do have some sort of 3d accelerator included (hell, even the intel graphics chipsets have acceleration!), basic 3D acceleration is very cheap. Of course, there are people exaggerating the usage of 3d acceleration for the desktop. For example, there are rumors saying that Longhorn requires pixel shader support. But the consumer-level technology for basic T&L (hell, even the CPU can do this, since we aren't talking about >50k vertices) and some basic texturing without lighting or any nifty multitexturing has been around for almost a DECADE.
As I mentioned before, this scenario applies in the foreseeable future. I don't believe we will be able to terraform mars or live somewhere else than on earth that soon. It will take centuries for us to get to the point of these scenarios being feasible. But you CANNOT foresee what we will be able to do in 500-600 years, let alone more than 1000 years. Thats my point. Maybe we will never go to the stars, maybe we will colonize mars, maybe somebody succeeds in building a FTL drive (although this one is hard to imagine). Unfortunately, I won't live enough to see what will happen. I really need some immortality treatment from that De Grey guy :)
Yes, everyone is staying here - in the foreseeable future.
Which isn't much, though.
Apple does it with Mahogany, MS does it with Balsa wood. Then, Service Pack 3 promises Windows Teak Edition. Unfortunately, it is filled with termites.
If they can understand Perl, they can understand just about any human language.