According to an interview between the two parties on Belgian television (Canvas) yesterday evening: The funding is for a large part private, by BASF, which, as per agreement with the university, forces the university to sell any patents forthcoming out of this research "to the highest bidder".
So it seems no public usage will come forth out of this "publicly funded" research...
---
Belgian and proud about it. somehow. man... this is weird
This will make H.264 acceptable again for commercial use, infecting the web with patented video tech all over. Hold on to your Linux horses people, you can expect another round of "possibly illegal in your country" extensions to allow you to view the interweb's content. Just say NO to H.264!!
R&D departments produce a prototype proving something works. Engineering departments make an implementation of that prototype which is tested, contains documentation, nice icons and backgrounds and has good performance.
E.g. Xerox PARC invented the windowed GUI and the mouse. Windows is for a large part an implementation of that invention
So 60-90 million dollars to produce the gold master CD/DVD are mainly production costs, not research and development.
RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator)'s provide electricity, not thrust.
And a RTG delivers power by harnessing the heat generated by the decay of the plutonium. Typically such an RTG is able to produce usable amounts of energy for around 100 years, but the plutonium of the RTG, if released, say on impact or burning up in the stratosphere, would remain harmfull for around 300 years.
So even if "all used up" the plutonium is still present in the satellite and presents a serious environmental risk.
I just love the picture next to the article. Because it shows a monkey on a treadmill. And because it spells out "MONKEY" above the monkey. Just in case anyone got confused...
Seems like 2GB per (dual core) node is a little on the low side for practical usage. Not surprisingly though, RAM is the biggest cost of the system (992$ total) and switching to 2GB or 4GB modules will raise the system price considerably. Would still be cheap though.
Well, in any case, rail services are doing very well in the rest of Europe, so this at least proves privatization is not needed to get good rail service.
Btw, isn't the state of the electric grid in the USA not another example why you should not privatize public services?
There is an Old English word which was created by taking corn and adding the diminutive suffix -el. Cyrnel thus meant a "little grain" and persists in Modern English as kernel.
I don't know how sick you'll get from anti-rejection drugs, but as a type I diabetes, i can tell you that I'm not so much worried by the sickness fealing of eihter shooting insulin or rejection drugs. These are both temporarily and you get used to them...
What I'm interested in is how much "damage" do they do...
Being sick because of bad blood sugar levels does not only make you feal bad, it damages your body, and over time, your body weares out... Compare it with an engine running with not enough oil... it will run, but the question is how long...
I'd switch to anti-rejection drugs in a heartbeat if I'd know they would keep my body in good shape...
You really think so? I don't like it... Looks like the interface of one of those third party printer drivers where they coded their "own, better looking" interfaces... Pure waist of screen space...
Might be true. I work as a programmer at a company handling large data chunks (digital maps).
Most of the programmers there test their apps using a small example dataset. They all have nice machines, with 1GB ram and something like a 2.8 Ghz processor.
They have nasty habbits of "caching" things to disk e.g. for a sort, or using strings to store numbers (we program Delphi mainly and boy do we love TStringList...)
On a small dataset, performance is usually acceptable (e.g. 10 minutes for a run), but when released and run on a big dataset, those things can take hours!
I once got the chance of working on the performance of an application instead of on new functionality for a change.
Turned out that, by using a little smart algorithms and a little memory caching, I could tune it to run about 15 times as fast.
Bottom line: most programmers are lazy, and faster machines only makes them seem to write moron code.
I am wondering here, is there no point where all this FUD turns illegal? Can a company sponsor a dozen institutions to spread lies without running any risk of prosecution?
Com'on, i think any insurance company would pay to be able to cover this kind of rare damage... It is about the greatest publicity you can get, and almost for free.
I bet right now everybody knows them in New Zealand and their next ad will feature "Meteor trough the roof? No problem, just call XXXX".
I expect proving a "conjecture" does not have much real world implications... A conjecture means something like "in the real world we have always known this to be true, but we can't prove it (yet)".
The fact this is proven or not does not lessen the ability for any programmer to use it... Likewise, proving it does not open up great new possibilities as far as i can see... only maybe in the field of mathematical research...
What about the Qt licensing stuff? I don't read anything about that in the article...
Would the "new unified desktop" environment be based on stuff from Trolltech? Would it have the restrictions of KDE for commercial applications? Would commercial applications need to have a paid-for license to run on this new desktop?
I'm all for a unified desktop. But i think it should allow the user to run commercial apps without restriction to be successfull...
Slashdot Mirror
Are we to assume the employee was actually called "Five-hundred-a-five-one-five-hundred"?
That would be "Internal Server Error a Gateway Timeout" for you webdevs out there.
According to an interview between the two parties on Belgian television (Canvas) yesterday evening: The funding is for a large part private, by BASF, which, as per agreement with the university, forces the university to sell any patents forthcoming out of this research "to the highest bidder".
So it seems no public usage will come forth out of this "publicly funded" research...
---
Belgian and proud about it. somehow. man... this is weird
This will make H.264 acceptable again for commercial use, infecting the web with patented video tech all over. Hold on to your Linux horses people, you can expect another round of "possibly illegal in your country" extensions to allow you to view the interweb's content. Just say NO to H.264!!
Wasn't too clear from the site, but downloaded it and checked, oss and gpl 2, coolness!
ditto
Store your db files on an encrypted filesystem. Slow, but compliant.
Developing and R&D are not one and the same.
R&D departments produce a prototype proving something works. Engineering departments make an implementation of that prototype which is tested, contains documentation, nice icons and backgrounds and has good performance.
E.g. Xerox PARC invented the windowed GUI and the mouse. Windows is for a large part an implementation of that invention
So 60-90 million dollars to produce the gold master CD/DVD are mainly production costs, not research and development.
RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator)'s provide electricity, not thrust.
And a RTG delivers power by harnessing the heat generated by the decay of the plutonium. Typically such an RTG is able to produce usable amounts of energy for around 100 years, but the plutonium of the RTG, if released, say on impact or burning up in the stratosphere, would remain harmfull for around 300 years.
So even if "all used up" the plutonium is still present in the satellite and presents a serious environmental risk.
I just love the picture next to the article. Because it shows a monkey on a treadmill. And because it spells out "MONKEY" above the monkey. Just in case anyone got confused...
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/01/14/science/0115-sci-ROBOT_190.jpg
Did they just patented mod_rewrite??? Tue Aug 24 06:55:44 1999 UTC (8 years, 2 months ago) baby! http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/httpd/httpd/trunk/modules/mappers/mod_rewrite.c?revision=83751&view=markup&pathrev=573831
Yeah right, in the real world this does not hold up.
Driving with great risks gives a lot of seriously wounded, and a lot of material damages (if only the damage to the road/asphalt)...
...which the community in general ultimately pays for in raised ensurance fees.
Seems like 2GB per (dual core) node is a little on the low side for practical usage. Not surprisingly though, RAM is the biggest cost of the system (992$ total) and switching to 2GB or 4GB modules will raise the system price considerably. Would still be cheap though.
W00t! Disco Pigs!!
Well, in any case, rail services are doing very well in the rest of Europe, so this at least proves privatization is not needed to get good rail service.
Btw, isn't the state of the electric grid in the USA not another example why you should not privatize public services?
You'll know when you reached real AI once AI itself starts redefining its meaning ;-)
Don't know if it applies but found this on http://www.takeourword.com/Issue023.html:
There is an Old English word which was created by taking corn and adding the diminutive suffix -el. Cyrnel thus meant a "little grain" and persists in Modern English as kernel.
This is probably the oppurtunity of a life time for a lot of people to get out of their home country for a while and see the U.S. a little bit.
...using a pair of powerful binoculars...
I don't know how sick you'll get from anti-rejection drugs, but as a type I diabetes, i can tell you that I'm not so much worried by the sickness fealing of eihter shooting insulin or rejection drugs. These are both temporarily and you get used to them...
What I'm interested in is how much "damage" do they do...
Being sick because of bad blood sugar levels does not only make you feal bad, it damages your body, and over time, your body weares out... Compare it with an engine running with not enough oil... it will run, but the question is how long...
I'd switch to anti-rejection drugs in a heartbeat if I'd know they would keep my body in good shape...
You really think so? I don't like it... Looks like the interface of one of those third party printer drivers where they coded their "own, better looking" interfaces... Pure waist of screen space...
Might be true. I work as a programmer at a company handling large data chunks (digital maps).
Most of the programmers there test their apps using a small example dataset. They all have nice machines, with 1GB ram and something like a 2.8 Ghz processor.
They have nasty habbits of "caching" things to disk e.g. for a sort, or using strings to store numbers (we program Delphi mainly and boy do we love TStringList...)
On a small dataset, performance is usually acceptable (e.g. 10 minutes for a run), but when released and run on a big dataset, those things can take hours!
I once got the chance of working on the performance of an application instead of on new functionality for a change.
Turned out that, by using a little smart algorithms and a little memory caching, I could tune it to run about 15 times as fast.
Bottom line: most programmers are lazy, and faster machines only makes them seem to write moron code.
I am wondering here, is there no point where all this FUD turns illegal?
Can a company sponsor a dozen institutions to spread lies without running any risk of prosecution?
Com'on, i think any insurance company would pay to be able to cover this kind of rare damage... It is about the greatest publicity you can get, and almost for free.
I bet right now everybody knows them in New Zealand and their next ad will feature "Meteor trough the roof? No problem, just call XXXX".
I expect proving a "conjecture" does not have much real world implications... A conjecture means something like "in the real world we have always known this to be true, but we can't prove it (yet)".
The fact this is proven or not does not lessen the ability for any programmer to use it... Likewise, proving it does not open up great new possibilities as far as i can see... only maybe in the field of mathematical research...
Sounds to me you are not a real programmer.
Real programmers don't have friends, they don't travel places (unless for job reasons) and they don't work doors at bars. ever.
What about the Qt licensing stuff? I don't read anything about that in the article...
Would the "new unified desktop" environment be based on stuff from Trolltech? Would it have the restrictions of KDE for commercial applications? Would commercial applications need to have a paid-for license to run on this new desktop?
I'm all for a unified desktop. But i think it should allow the user to run commercial apps without restriction to be successfull...