There are good arguments as to why the market cannot be (or has not effectively been) reduced to mathematics, so how about this then...
A distributed neural net (as already done), with Google news hooked in. Stocks and stock relationships can be tracked over time (as already done) but also correlated to real world events, categorized by keywords (some keywords could indicated severity). This could potentially be monitored and revised in realtime, in order to catch those political and more abstract issues that affect the markets. I figure this would be more effective than pure number crunching and inter-stock pattern matching.
That's almost not silly, if the infrastructure is up to the task. Brazil has crazy import taxes, so isn't so popular as a selling destination. It seems like there's a degree of anti-US sentiment there, so the people are less likely to accept caving to political pressure over imported software that nobody can afford. And of course, the women are HOT!
My other thought was Ghana, because I know they're keen on the IT thing. But yeah, Brasil sounds like the way to go.:)
What bugs me is that I'm likely to vote for a National-ish goverment based on other non-software issues, despite knowing they'll sell out to the US on exactly these kinds of issues. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Labour-ish parties did as well, except they'd try to do it more quietly.
I really hate politics, it's always about which party's policies (and politicians) you dislike the least.
Are there any countries with NO patent or copyright laws in place, and minimal trade with the US?
If the American companies want to lock down their major trading partners (their competitors, IOW) maybe us geeks should bugger off to some third world country and get creative. We'd need to work on infrastructure, but a small goverment might be open to that if it heralds an IT revolution for their country. Living would (presumably) be cheap, and it makes me wonder what we'd be capable of with a much freer flow of inspiration around the industry.
Speaking of outsourcing, do the popular outsourcing countries such as India and China have similar restrictions? Or has a loophole been created to allow multinationals to "infringe" with impunity?
Will New Zealand also jump on this particular bandwagon? Seems our largest trading partners are into it, so are we next? Or have our politicians already done it?
I've got a sneaking feeling that cdrecord can handle the RW part, but there's little in the way of "legal" encrypted DVD playback software. I guess that's what it's about, but a keen person doesn't have to look too hard to find Xine and friends.
Maybe I misinterpreted your post, but I'd argue that's not quite what's going on. In my view, there's two things being protected here. The copyright protects the software implementation, while the patent protects the process behind the implmentation. Kinda like patenting the painting of a bowl of fruit on a table. You have a copyright on the resulting artwork, but you also have a patent on the process involved to stop others painting something similar.
It seems like a helluva good way to kill the industry to me.
That's not really true, it's just that most of the changes are more subtle than the flamboyant extravaganza that was Concorde. The newer planes are doing much the same job they did back in '99, but much more efficiently and safely. There's little "Gee Whiz" factor, but technology is sure marching on.
There's more than just technology involved too. I remember an article on Beyond 2000 about BMW's Hydrogen powered 7 series. The technology has been around for decades, but we don't have this stuff on the road due to politics and infrastructure. When the need arises (when the cost/benefit ratio is right) it'll happen. Hopefully all the world saving technology will hit the mainstream before it's too late for the planet.
Disclaimer: Saw Micheal Moore's "The Corporation" the other day...;)
Ignoring the sound/video confusion, there have been efforts to produce full immersion 3D sound from 2 channel headphones. The idea being to simulate sound environments for audio design and noise management. This was as far back as the mid 90s on SGI machines. Seems to work well enough too, but probably patented up the wazoo.
Maybe id could stick it to them in an unsubtle manner. Sell an "Audio Special" with (say) an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 included. Add specific features to the game that aren't supported by the Creative version. Make it audibly better.
As another poster posted, there are better soundcard companies out there, so why not support them? Let the weekend geeks know about the better alternatives and maybe we'll see Creative get their ass into gear and produce better products with less drama.
I think the next step is better understanding of our brain IO interfaces. Before doing that kind of transfer we should be very very sure about how to get data in and out of the brain data structure. I really don't want to be immortally deaf, dumb, blind, and in pain.
Secondly, if MS wants the PR move from Hell, they should dump their billions into a manned Mars program. Either the "Mars Direct" thing (estimated to be 10s of billions) or another JV with NASA/ESA.
There sure are a lot of ACs posting this line. So far you've all missed the point. I'm not saying Windows is crap! I'm saying it's a very good business desktop but 2K and XP are not a bulletproof solution for all users.
Firstly, I have not mentioned Linux at all, so your insecurities are shining rather brightly.
Secondly, you're all talking about business environments with support and systems management available. I'm talking about single systems and small networks without full time "professional" management. I think Win2K is pretty good and generally quite stable, but people who trump Windows 2K or XP as being the shiznit for clueless users are wrong. Yesterday I fixed 3 machines that clueless users has managed to render inoperable in their daily usage. Two suffered significant filesystem corruption, all three suffered from application and registry problems. That is not the hallmark of a rock-solid OS.
Yep, the office PCs here are Win2K too. Everything "just works" 95% of the time. But you manage them. The machines I dealt to yesterday were looked after by one peoeple who didn't "manage" them, just used them. What I'm saying is that Windows machines - without help from professionals - aren't as user-proof as they are made out to be.
I used to agree with you. But yesterday I had to fix 2 Win2K systems which completely shat themselves. Neither would boot, both with bluescreens. Different reasons in both cases, but same error messages. Also dealt with a WinXP laptop which was a complete mess.
Win2K is great on business desktops which see limited functionality used - a couple of apps, some flitered email and intarweb, but otherwise left alone by the end user. I've yet to see a Windows system that can withstand clueless users abusing them day in and day out. I've noticed that those that tout Windows as being "all that" seem to recommend a clean reinstall as an acceptable way of fixing them too...
Linux users don't have to do anything buddy. "Our" work is not a product so it *can* be different things to different people. Some like it free, some like it embedded, some like it just like Windows, some don't like it at all.
Personally, my focus is not market share - the only people talking about market share are Gartner, and the wording itself makes me wonder if they even considered the plethora of free downloads and copies going on in the Linux scene.
As others have pointed out, the NX thing is a red herring (patch is available already, we also have GRSecurity, PaX, etc, and *XP* SP2 hasn't even shipped yet), the statistics are questionable ("shipping" Linux represents usage???), and it doesn't come close to reflecting the diversity and source sharing (under open source license, if I need to specify that) of the Linux and general open source scene.
i wanted to run openbsd on mine - even bought a boxed set (which shipped late and also had a broken jewel case) - but the via network driver in the 3.5 branch is screwed. you can't use both ethernet ports on those boards. my firewall is now running smoothwall .
Yeah, it seems bass-ackwards. If a crappy copy gets onto P2P, why rush? The leechers won't buy the real one anyway, so why not take your time and make something special to reward those who do buy it?
If it's as good as all that, it'll be unavailable for as long as they can keep it off the free market. I'd like to think you can't ban progress but this will be classified as munitions or something. Can't have the terrorists winning eh?
Other reasons include HR not knowing any better and hiring "qualified" people - that's an MSCE to you and me. MS drones then do what they do best and make recommendations for MS solutions based on what they've been taught. Nodody jknows any different and expectations are set. It's pretty hard to break out of it after that that.
Personally I'd like to see a hetrogenous network. Macs, Linux, Windows, Aros, Solaris, OpenBeOS, Palm, etc. Students shouldn't "learn Windows" they should learn how computers and OSs work and be able to adapt to different systems.
The tools are there. Touchscreen support has been available for years now, and IBM had Chinese handwriting recognition software available back in 2001. There's nothing really exotic here, all it needs is vendor support to help it gel in a user friendly way. Yes it can (and probably will) happen without support, but it'll happen faster and better with it.
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There are good arguments as to why the market cannot be (or has not effectively been) reduced to mathematics, so how about this then...
A distributed neural net (as already done), with Google news hooked in. Stocks and stock relationships can be tracked over time (as already done) but also correlated to real world events, categorized by keywords (some keywords could indicated severity). This could potentially be monitored and revised in realtime, in order to catch those political and more abstract issues that affect the markets. I figure this would be more effective than pure number crunching and inter-stock pattern matching.
Seems obvious enough, so what am I missing?
That's almost not silly, if the infrastructure is up to the task. Brazil has crazy import taxes, so isn't so popular as a selling destination. It seems like there's a degree of anti-US sentiment there, so the people are less likely to accept caving to political pressure over imported software that nobody can afford. And of course, the women are HOT!
:)
My other thought was Ghana, because I know they're keen on the IT thing. But yeah, Brasil sounds like the way to go.
Yeah, I have to agree with you.
What bugs me is that I'm likely to vote for a National-ish goverment based on other non-software issues, despite knowing they'll sell out to the US on exactly these kinds of issues. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Labour-ish parties did as well, except they'd try to do it more quietly.
I really hate politics, it's always about which party's policies (and politicians) you dislike the least.
Here's a question then...
Are there any countries with NO patent or copyright laws in place, and minimal trade with the US?
If the American companies want to lock down their major trading partners (their competitors, IOW) maybe us geeks should bugger off to some third world country and get creative. We'd need to work on infrastructure, but a small goverment might be open to that if it heralds an IT revolution for their country. Living would (presumably) be cheap, and it makes me wonder what we'd be capable of with a much freer flow of inspiration around the industry.
Speaking of outsourcing, do the popular outsourcing countries such as India and China have similar restrictions? Or has a loophole been created to allow multinationals to "infringe" with impunity?
Many thoughts, but also a question...
Will New Zealand also jump on this particular bandwagon? Seems our largest trading partners are into it, so are we next? Or have our politicians already done it?
I've got a sneaking feeling that cdrecord can handle the RW part, but there's little in the way of "legal" encrypted DVD playback software. I guess that's what it's about, but a keen person doesn't have to look too hard to find Xine and friends.
Maybe I misinterpreted your post, but I'd argue that's not quite what's going on. In my view, there's two things being protected here. The copyright protects the software implementation, while the patent protects the process behind the implmentation. Kinda like patenting the painting of a bowl of fruit on a table. You have a copyright on the resulting artwork, but you also have a patent on the process involved to stop others painting something similar.
It seems like a helluva good way to kill the industry to me.
That's not really true, it's just that most of the changes are more subtle than the flamboyant extravaganza that was Concorde. The newer planes are doing much the same job they did back in '99, but much more efficiently and safely. There's little "Gee Whiz" factor, but technology is sure marching on.
There's more than just technology involved too. I remember an article on Beyond 2000 about BMW's Hydrogen powered 7 series. The technology has been around for decades, but we don't have this stuff on the road due to politics and infrastructure. When the need arises (when the cost/benefit ratio is right) it'll happen. Hopefully all the world saving technology will hit the mainstream before it's too late for the planet.
Disclaimer: Saw Micheal Moore's "The Corporation" the other day... ;)
Gosh. I'm impressed. I hope M-Audio supports this sometime soon...
Ignoring the sound/video confusion, there have been efforts to produce full immersion 3D sound from 2 channel headphones. The idea being to simulate sound environments for audio design and noise management. This was as far back as the mid 90s on SGI machines. Seems to work well enough too, but probably patented up the wazoo.
Maybe id could stick it to them in an unsubtle manner. Sell an "Audio Special" with (say) an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 included. Add specific features to the game that aren't supported by the Creative version. Make it audibly better.
As another poster posted, there are better soundcard companies out there, so why not support them? Let the weekend geeks know about the better alternatives and maybe we'll see Creative get their ass into gear and produce better products with less drama.
I think the next step is better understanding of our brain IO interfaces. Before doing that kind of transfer we should be very very sure about how to get data in and out of the brain data structure. I really don't want to be immortally deaf, dumb, blind, and in pain.
Firstly, I agree (mostly).
Secondly, if MS wants the PR move from Hell, they should dump their billions into a manned Mars program. Either the "Mars Direct" thing (estimated to be 10s of billions) or another JV with NASA/ESA.
There sure are a lot of ACs posting this line. So far you've all missed the point. I'm not saying Windows is crap! I'm saying it's a very good business desktop but 2K and XP are not a bulletproof solution for all users.
Firstly, I have not mentioned Linux at all, so your insecurities are shining rather brightly.
Secondly, you're all talking about business environments with support and systems management available. I'm talking about single systems and small networks without full time "professional" management. I think Win2K is pretty good and generally quite stable, but people who trump Windows 2K or XP as being the shiznit for clueless users are wrong. Yesterday I fixed 3 machines that clueless users has managed to render inoperable in their daily usage. Two suffered significant filesystem corruption, all three suffered from application and registry problems. That is not the hallmark of a rock-solid OS.
I never even mentioned Linux in my post. Another AC posting tripe again.
Yep, the office PCs here are Win2K too. Everything "just works" 95% of the time. But you manage them. The machines I dealt to yesterday were looked after by one peoeple who didn't "manage" them, just used them. What I'm saying is that Windows machines - without help from professionals - aren't as user-proof as they are made out to be.
I used to agree with you. But yesterday I had to fix 2 Win2K systems which completely shat themselves. Neither would boot, both with bluescreens. Different reasons in both cases, but same error messages. Also dealt with a WinXP laptop which was a complete mess.
Win2K is great on business desktops which see limited functionality used - a couple of apps, some flitered email and intarweb, but otherwise left alone by the end user. I've yet to see a Windows system that can withstand clueless users abusing them day in and day out. I've noticed that those that tout Windows as being "all that" seem to recommend a clean reinstall as an acceptable way of fixing them too...
Linux users don't have to do anything buddy. "Our" work is not a product so it *can* be different things to different people. Some like it free, some like it embedded, some like it just like Windows, some don't like it at all.
Personally, my focus is not market share - the only people talking about market share are Gartner, and the wording itself makes me wonder if they even considered the plethora of free downloads and copies going on in the Linux scene.
As others have pointed out, the NX thing is a red herring (patch is available already, we also have GRSecurity, PaX, etc, and *XP* SP2 hasn't even shipped yet), the statistics are questionable ("shipping" Linux represents usage???), and it doesn't come close to reflecting the diversity and source sharing (under open source license, if I need to specify that) of the Linux and general open source scene.
I have to wonder, who sponsored this report?
i wanted to run openbsd on mine - even bought a boxed set (which shipped late and also had a broken jewel case) - but the via network driver in the 3.5 branch is screwed. you can't use both ethernet ports on those boards. my firewall is now running smoothwall .
Yeah, it seems bass-ackwards. If a crappy copy gets onto P2P, why rush? The leechers won't buy the real one anyway, so why not take your time and make something special to reward those who do buy it?
If it's as good as all that, it'll be unavailable for as long as they can keep it off the free market. I'd like to think you can't ban progress but this will be classified as munitions or something. Can't have the terrorists winning eh?
Yup. Don't get chilled, get even. Any asswipe that threatens anyone's kids deserves to be hunted down by a posse.
Other reasons include HR not knowing any better and hiring "qualified" people - that's an MSCE to you and me. MS drones then do what they do best and make recommendations for MS solutions based on what they've been taught. Nodody jknows any different and expectations are set. It's pretty hard to break out of it after that that.
Personally I'd like to see a hetrogenous network. Macs, Linux, Windows, Aros, Solaris, OpenBeOS, Palm, etc. Students shouldn't "learn Windows" they should learn how computers and OSs work and be able to adapt to different systems.
The tools are there. Touchscreen support has been available for years now, and IBM had Chinese handwriting recognition software available back in 2001. There's nothing really exotic here, all it needs is vendor support to help it gel in a user friendly way. Yes it can (and probably will) happen without support, but it'll happen faster and better with it.