So, where's that Free Software Intel wireless chipset driver, then? (Just sayin'...)
Also, although I agree with you about old ATI's shitty attitude, it seems a little premature to condemn AMD for it. They haven't been the same company for that long yet, you know, and it remains to be seen whether AMD's leadership might change things.
(Note: I'm not an AMD fanboy; in fact I'm posting this from a Core Duo laptop.)
This is ridiculous. All this patent covers is bridging between the Internet and POTS networks. It shouldn't need "prior art" to be struck down, it should be struck down merely because it's fucking obvious! I mean, it'd be one thing if it were a patent on one particular clever method of connecting the two networks, but the idea in general should not have been patentable in the first place.
On the other hand, it's funny to see how the media/journalists/periodists/self-called-whatever shriek when any of their "targets" does not disclose information; but they themselves are so adept at withholding whatever they want.
WTF? That's how it's supposed to work! Information must flow from the government to the people, not the other way around; otherwise it perpetuates tyranny.
Three (or any number) of cables wouldn't be enough to stabilize it, because it would still be unconstrained in the vertical direction. Three cables work for towers only because the tower itself is rigid.
On the ground have a spotlight that lights the cable. Of course the
cable will not be as straight as the beam, so the illuminated spot
would have to traverse. The cable itself could have some reflectors
to make this easier, such as like a mirror disco ball -- sometimes
the observer gets lucky to see a really bright light. Using
holographic material, the reflectors could be flush which
would be needed for winching the balloon/kite back down.
Or just, you know, put lights on the cable like they do with tall antennas.
When you think about it, modern society is moving more and more to the production of "intellectual property" (i.e. an idea as something you can own) rather than the production of physical goods.
You know, in Star Trek this lead to everything becoming "free," ushering in a utopia where the only "work" people did was stuff they enjoyed doing. Too bad that, instead, we'll just enact a bunch of draconian laws to artificially induce scarcity again...
Now, let me get this straight - simply taking a companies' intellectual property with next-to-no compensation is being argued on "free market" grounds? Mind-boggling.
Mind-boggling? No, what's really mind-boggling is that we're in such a Bizarro would that people somehow think it isn't "free market!"
Here's a newsflash: so-called "intellectual property" is a government-granted monopoly. It is an artificial construct of law. It is the opposite of a "free market!"
In a truly free market, so-called "intellectual property" would not exist. Everyone would be free to make whatever widgets they wanted, without having to worry about whether some whiny ass claimed to think of the idea first. That's a "free market!"
Many cars can easily beat a Prius hybrid on fuel economy
That's it. It's a statement of fact that someone disputed, and I was offering proof of its truthfulness. The statement that "many cars can easily beat a Prius hybrid on fuel economy" is a true statement, period, and talk of the size of the cars is irrelevant to that fact!
Besides, some of the cars, like the diesel VW Golf, are comparable to the Prius in fuel economy and size.
Yes, I know they used desktops rather than Xserves.
Somehow I don't think the new guts would be a drop-and-go install into an XServe shell, tho
Well, obviously. But since Apple's designing the cases anyway, I don't see any reason why it couldn't design a rack-mountable version of the Mac Pro with the same size (i.e., not 1U, like the Xserve) for about the same cost.
That said, I think that there's a similarity between teachers defending the term paper by searching Google and TurnItIn.com, and the movie and music industries trying to defend old business models by DRM. There are probably a number of other ways to accomplish the same ends, or ways to tweak the term paper thing to discourage cheating. Some that come to mind:
After each term paper, set up a 10-minute interview for each student. Ask the student about the paper, the argument, and the sources. Students who did a cut-and-paste job without learning anything will show up clearly enough.
Randomly group students into groups of four, and have them read and discuss each others' term papers. (Still haven't thought this one through, entirely)
OTOH, in my own 8th-grade days I was assigned to do a paper on "the history of mapmaking". I worked my nerdy little adolescent ass off on it, and the teacher downgraded me because "Your paragraph headings are all wrong." When I complained, she pointed out a page in the World Book Encyclopedia and said "See here? Those are the right headings."
10th grade world history. The teacher assigned a standard 5-paragraph essay on some particular topic, and told us to highlight the thesis, topic sentences, and conclusion. I wrote a good essay, but forgot to highlight, and the bitch teacher failed me on the assignment. Another student wrote an essay about freakin' dinosaurs, but highlighted, and got an A.
Apparently, the important thing in that class was learning to "follow directions" (never mind that it was a high school gifted-level class, not kindergarten!) rather than, you know, actual history. I sincerely hope that bitch is no longer teaching.
Sure, there are probably students good enough to take diverse sources and make a decent paper out of it with proper transitions, etc.; but if they've done that much work, they were probably better off writing their own paper!
If they cited those diverse sources, they did write their own paper.
I would have complained right back that it's rude to read from the book when he's supposed to be teaching! And then I would have gone to the dean of students or the registrar or whoever and demanded a refund of my tuition.
If not, then the video card deficiencies are still very much a big deal -- I know that if I could afford one of these, I'd sure as heck want to stuff dual 8800s into it!
Slashdot Mirror
So, where's that Free Software Intel wireless chipset driver, then? (Just sayin'...)
Also, although I agree with you about old ATI's shitty attitude, it seems a little premature to condemn AMD for it. They haven't been the same company for that long yet, you know, and it remains to be seen whether AMD's leadership might change things.
(Note: I'm not an AMD fanboy; in fact I'm posting this from a Core Duo laptop.)
This is ridiculous. All this patent covers is bridging between the Internet and POTS networks. It shouldn't need "prior art" to be struck down, it should be struck down merely because it's fucking obvious! I mean, it'd be one thing if it were a patent on one particular clever method of connecting the two networks, but the idea in general should not have been patentable in the first place.
Then what don't you understand about the fact that there were apparently also other political activists (who did not attack the cop) in the video?
WTF? That's how it's supposed to work! Information must flow from the government to the people, not the other way around; otherwise it perpetuates tyranny.
And the games mentioned in the summary have done that. Q3F should to so too (or at least use Tremulous's CC-licensed data).
The trouble is that Q3F is still distributed as a mod to Quake 3, and it isn't necessarily obvious how to get it to work with the GPL version.
The difference is that with physical property, said "whiny ass" can physically prevent the taking.
And then we use that electricity, and it becomes heat... which goes straight back into the atmosphere.
Three (or any number) of cables wouldn't be enough to stabilize it, because it would still be unconstrained in the vertical direction. Three cables work for towers only because the tower itself is rigid.
Or just, you know, put lights on the cable like they do with tall antennas.
You know, in Star Trek this lead to everything becoming "free," ushering in a utopia where the only "work" people did was stuff they enjoyed doing. Too bad that, instead, we'll just enact a bunch of draconian laws to artificially induce scarcity again...
No argument here.
Enforcing artificial monopolies is intervention.
Mind-boggling? No, what's really mind-boggling is that we're in such a Bizarro would that people somehow think it isn't "free market!"
Here's a newsflash: so-called "intellectual property" is a government-granted monopoly. It is an artificial construct of law. It is the opposite of a "free market!"
In a truly free market, so-called "intellectual property" would not exist. Everyone would be free to make whatever widgets they wanted, without having to worry about whether some whiny ass claimed to think of the idea first. That's a "free market!"
Sure, as long as everybody else was even worse.
In my experience, they tend to "actually teach" at Georgia Tech.
Also, no -- Futurama is not obscure.
Look, this is what we're arguing about:
That's it. It's a statement of fact that someone disputed, and I was offering proof of its truthfulness. The statement that "many cars can easily beat a Prius hybrid on fuel economy" is a true statement, period, and talk of the size of the cars is irrelevant to that fact!
Besides, some of the cars, like the diesel VW Golf, are comparable to the Prius in fuel economy and size.
Yes, I know they used desktops rather than Xserves.
Well, obviously. But since Apple's designing the cases anyway, I don't see any reason why it couldn't design a rack-mountable version of the Mac Pro with the same size (i.e., not 1U, like the Xserve) for about the same cost.
Why do I feel like I've read this before?
Your wife is a yacc grammar?
10th grade world history. The teacher assigned a standard 5-paragraph essay on some particular topic, and told us to highlight the thesis, topic sentences, and conclusion. I wrote a good essay, but forgot to highlight, and the bitch teacher failed me on the assignment. Another student wrote an essay about freakin' dinosaurs, but highlighted, and got an A.
Apparently, the important thing in that class was learning to "follow directions" (never mind that it was a high school gifted-level class, not kindergarten!) rather than, you know, actual history. I sincerely hope that bitch is no longer teaching.
If they cited those diverse sources, they did write their own paper.
I would have complained right back that it's rude to read from the book when he's supposed to be teaching! And then I would have gone to the dean of students or the registrar or whoever and demanded a refund of my tuition.
If not, then the video card deficiencies are still very much a big deal -- I know that if I could afford one of these, I'd sure as heck want to stuff dual 8800s into it!
Yeah, but for grid computing wouldn't it make more sense to put the same hardware in a (4U) Xserve instead?