Who wants to start listing prior art? I don't know offhand, what sort of messaging capabilities existed in XBand, The Sierra Network, AOL, countless BBSes and BBS doors, MUDs, the old UNIX mainframe games, etc.?
I've always wondered about exactly what constitutes "prior art" (in the legal sense).
For instance, their patent claims state that their invention is a system comprising of a web server and a video game console. Does something like AOL's instant messaging system constitute prior art for that, legally? I don't know of any way of using AIM on a video game console, but on the other hand, video game consoles are just special-purpose computers.
What about systems that appear to be somewhat novel, but are logical extensions, like "8. The system according to claim 1, wherein said web server computer is responsive to a user-supplied request for communicating to the user an identification of all buddy lists on which the user appears." and "9. The system according to claim 8, wherein said web server computer is further responsive to a user-supplied request for deleting the user's name from one or more other user's buddy lists."? I don't know of any instant messenger that allows you to delete yourself from other people's buddy lists, but it doesn't seem particular amazing.
SCO must be hoping that IBM will eventually prefer to settle in order to cap the losses, as shareholders won't tolerate IBM paying out forever over something that won't earn so much as a dime.
If so, I think they picked the wrong target. IBM is doing great in this, as every time one of these ridiculous things hits the newsstands, IBM gets more press about being the good guy, defending Linux against corporate attacks. Plus, it's Big Blue, I'm sure their legal budget can absorb this without batting an eye (and SCO is most likely going to get pegged with IBM's legal fees when the case finally finishes, right before they declare bankruptcy).
It's interesting how many people say this, then loads of people say "No, I preferred this one". I've only completed 7 & 8 myself, and I'm not sure which one I like more - though they both get a bit silly towards the end.
FFVII is actually my favorite RPG (calling it "the best" I think is a little much), so it's true for some people. Personally, I thought FFVIII was awful. The game itself was alright, but I hated Squall. I kept playing the game and going, "Why am I still playing, Squall is the one I want to lose."
I find Kefka far more evil than Sephiroth, who seemed more like a bad caricature of a villain. ANd except for the Aeris parts of the story, the FF7 story just seemed contrived. When you put everything together at the end, it still didn't really make sense.
You might want to take a look at the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega, which was a book published in Japan that explains the story. After reading that, especially seeing exactly how Jenova, Sephiroth, Cloud, and Zack all are connected, it makes a whole lot more sense.
Is this just a safety thing or are there other improvements? Surely there must be, since it was so long ago that the original shuttle was designed? Ligher? Stronger? Better colors?
Nope. Completely redesigning something like a shuttle fuel tank takes an incredibly long time, not to mention building new ones.
You've obviously never been to a freshmen orientation in the US-- a week of nonstop underage drinking,
Or, for those of us who didn't drink, a week of nonstop entertainment!
Re:Has the survey been credible in the past?
on
Apache down, IIS up
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The parent seems to discredit the survey by saying "It is fun to play with statistics." Obviously trying to cast doubt on the numbers by saying that they can be moved around to suite ones needs.
I don't think that's necessarily what it was saying, just that statistics only say what they say. The statistics are probably 100% accurate in what they're saying, the important thing is to make sure that you don't read too much into them (which people are known to do).
Sometimes OSSers have more in common with Christian Evangelicals and cheeseheads than geeks...
Well, I'd say it's often closer to the former rather than the latter, and for good reason. The difference for many OSSers between open and closed source is an issue of basic liberty, not just cheering for the "home team". More people using OSS means more people who know about OSS, better press for OSS, more people who will be willing to choose OSS, and generally a more OSS-oriented software industry. It's like monitoring human rights in other countries (though obviously not as vital).
You needn't expect any network outages above and beyond the standard switch, AP, and WLAN card failure rate.
Unless, of course, someone wants you to have outages. It's relatively easy to spit out enough garbage RF to disrupt a wireless network. I don't know if your company is the kind of company that might have that kind of problem, but wired solutions are a lot more difficult to disrupt.
Given the rapid pace of development of flash memory, how long until hard drives are gone altogether? It would seem the breakout of flash memory in the marketplace is bringing us one step closer to relaible instant-on systems, with none of the tedious waiting for drives to spin up.
I'd imagine that hard drives will go away only once they find something akin to flash that isn't limited in the number of writes. Having a limit of a million writes is completely reasonable for iPods, cameras, and other devices where you do infrequent large writes. Having/tmp, home directories, or so forth on flash memory could burn it out pretty fast, though.
Having a flash device for the OS and programs and a hard drive for general purpose storage, though, that I could see being feasible in not too long.
don't some flash memories have limited read/writes far below platter hard drives? something like in the range of a couple thousand I thought... does this mean your hard drive will die even quicker, or will they make these drives eventually have removable and replacable flash cards, such as SD or something?
It's unlimited reads, but limited writes, so assuming you're using it to store OS code, the limited writes probably won't be a major problem. The limitation is usually in the low millions as well.
I don't even bother putting the Linux servers on a UPS.
Heh, that reminds me of the time that a place I worked had only two periods of server downtime over a 6 month period, both due to (planned) power outages. We were entertained that our server uptime was being held back by our electricity uptime.
Right now, record companies make money hand over fist on reprints of old music, both on new formats, and on replacements. Digital copies have neither of these problems, and present a problem that they're not equipped to deal with: Not being able to resell the same old shit. Given time, say 10 or 20 years, eventually everyone will have all the old music they want -- and in a format that they never need to replace.
Actually, when it comes to back catalogs, it's often the opposite. The vast majority of music retailers don't have the shelf space to carry any real back catalog inventory to speak of. They carry things like the Beatles and Elvis, but nothing unusual. The vast majority of physical sales of back catalog material is through used stores, which don't generate any profit for the record labels. Places like iTMS are awesome for back catalogs, though, since unlike a physical retailer, they don't have any problem with carrying titles they'll sell once every two months.
So is it legal under Russian law at the moment, or isn't it? If it's legal, then it's the Russian gov't at fault, not the site at all. If AllofMp3 is legal now, and they changes their business practice by the time the law changes, then it seems like they're being unfairly characterized as criminals.
Considering that the Russian police have investigated them before and not filed any charges, it seems to imply that the Russian authorities feel that it's legal. Now, whether it's legal for people outside Russia to purchase music from there is something I haven't seen a lot of discussion about either way, but AllofMP3.com's business certainly appears to be legal to the extent that Russian law covers.
Once others verify these results, does it become Poincare Theorem or does Lau add his name to it?
Not that I will ever need to know, but how does the process of going from conjecture to theorem work?
It may or may not still be called the Poincare Conjecture. It basically depends on what it's cited as in future work. There isn't a standards body somewhere that decides on the names of mathematical concepts, they just pick up whatever name they pick up.
LaTex may be terminally cool for creating fancy-looking documents. But it doesn't solve any problems that this guy cares about. For his purposes, it's just another word processing format.
Actually, switching to LaTeX changes the scope of the problem from tracking changes to arbitrary files to tracking changes to text files. There are a lot more tools that are good for the latter problem than the former, so the available options get bigger. You're right that it doesn't suggest a good tool to go with, though.
The thesis that advertising becomes "more effective" is without evidence. Advertisers might hope it is more effective, but historically, it's only proven to be more annoying (both by being more plentiful, and by making hopelessly silly demographic conclusions). I'm guessing that this sort of targeted advertising will go over like Jalapeno-flavored toilet paper.
I think the argument for it being more effective is fairly straightforward.
First, let's split the commercial universe into a set of products for which a person might ever purchase, and a set which they will never purchase, whether because they're completely uninterested, or they're of the wrong gender (stupid feminine hygene products), or whatever. And let's assume that both sets have something in them.
With untargetted advertising, you're basically guaranteed that some portion of the time, you'll throw up an advertisement that is for a product in the uninterested group. That's a completely wasted advertisement. If you replace that ad with an ad in the possibly-interested group, at worst, the user still doesn't care and you're at a net change of zero. If they care even slightly, though, you're in better shape.
Now, for people reading Slashdot, most of us probably ignore ads completely (sssh, don't tell the/. advertisers), so the net effect is close to zero. For most of the world, though, I'd imagine that targetted advertising has a very noticable effect on advertising effectiveness.
Web is an invalid trademark since it's already in common currency, so how can you stick a version number on the end of it and suddenly make it trademarkable?
That's how lots of trademarks are made, actually, just take something that's common and mess with it a little: Target, General Motors, Chevron, Blu-Ray, Standard Oil, and so forth.
It'd be interesting to see economic indicators such as inflation, GDP, and CPI computed for a virtual economy like just to see what sort of things come up in this type of environment. Or to see market analysis techniques applied to the prices of in-game items:
There actually is a group dedicated to doing that in World of Warcraft, but their research isn't open to the public.
Slashdot Mirror
"OR" is not "XOR".
In common English usage, it is.
Who wants to start listing prior art? I don't know offhand, what sort of messaging capabilities existed in XBand, The Sierra Network, AOL, countless BBSes and BBS doors, MUDs, the old UNIX mainframe games, etc.?
I've always wondered about exactly what constitutes "prior art" (in the legal sense).
For instance, their patent claims state that their invention is a system comprising of a web server and a video game console. Does something like AOL's instant messaging system constitute prior art for that, legally? I don't know of any way of using AIM on a video game console, but on the other hand, video game consoles are just special-purpose computers.
What about systems that appear to be somewhat novel, but are logical extensions, like "8. The system according to claim 1, wherein said web server computer is responsive to a user-supplied request for communicating to the user an identification of all buddy lists on which the user appears." and "9. The system according to claim 8, wherein said web server computer is further responsive to a user-supplied request for deleting the user's name from one or more other user's buddy lists."? I don't know of any instant messenger that allows you to delete yourself from other people's buddy lists, but it doesn't seem particular amazing.
Does anyone have any experience with the subject?
SCO must be hoping that IBM will eventually prefer to settle in order to cap the losses, as shareholders won't tolerate IBM paying out forever over something that won't earn so much as a dime.
If so, I think they picked the wrong target. IBM is doing great in this, as every time one of these ridiculous things hits the newsstands, IBM gets more press about being the good guy, defending Linux against corporate attacks. Plus, it's Big Blue, I'm sure their legal budget can absorb this without batting an eye (and SCO is most likely going to get pegged with IBM's legal fees when the case finally finishes, right before they declare bankruptcy).
It's interesting how many people say this, then loads of people say "No, I preferred this one". I've only completed 7 & 8 myself, and I'm not sure which one I like more - though they both get a bit silly towards the end.
FFVII is actually my favorite RPG (calling it "the best" I think is a little much), so it's true for some people. Personally, I thought FFVIII was awful. The game itself was alright, but I hated Squall. I kept playing the game and going, "Why am I still playing, Squall is the one I want to lose."
I find Kefka far more evil than Sephiroth, who seemed more like a bad caricature of a villain. ANd except for the Aeris parts of the story, the FF7 story just seemed contrived. When you put everything together at the end, it still didn't really make sense.
You might want to take a look at the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega, which was a book published in Japan that explains the story. After reading that, especially seeing exactly how Jenova, Sephiroth, Cloud, and Zack all are connected, it makes a whole lot more sense.
Don't spread it around, but I've got $100 at 300-1 on Apple getting into the produce business. It'd be genius!
Even the writer doesn't appear to have any confidence in the idea.
Is this just a safety thing or are there other improvements? Surely there must be, since it was so long ago that the original shuttle was designed? Ligher? Stronger? Better colors?
Nope. Completely redesigning something like a shuttle fuel tank takes an incredibly long time, not to mention building new ones.
You've obviously never been to a freshmen orientation in the US-- a week of nonstop underage drinking,
Or, for those of us who didn't drink, a week of nonstop entertainment!
The parent seems to discredit the survey by saying "It is fun to play with statistics." Obviously trying to cast doubt on the numbers by saying that they can be moved around to suite ones needs.
I don't think that's necessarily what it was saying, just that statistics only say what they say. The statistics are probably 100% accurate in what they're saying, the important thing is to make sure that you don't read too much into them (which people are known to do).
Sometimes OSSers have more in common with Christian Evangelicals and cheeseheads than geeks...
Well, I'd say it's often closer to the former rather than the latter, and for good reason. The difference for many OSSers between open and closed source is an issue of basic liberty, not just cheering for the "home team". More people using OSS means more people who know about OSS, better press for OSS, more people who will be willing to choose OSS, and generally a more OSS-oriented software industry. It's like monitoring human rights in other countries (though obviously not as vital).
You needn't expect any network outages above and beyond the standard switch, AP, and WLAN card failure rate.
Unless, of course, someone wants you to have outages. It's relatively easy to spit out enough garbage RF to disrupt a wireless network. I don't know if your company is the kind of company that might have that kind of problem, but wired solutions are a lot more difficult to disrupt.
Given the rapid pace of development of flash memory, how long until hard drives are gone altogether? It would seem the breakout of flash memory in the marketplace is bringing us one step closer to relaible instant-on systems, with none of the tedious waiting for drives to spin up.
/tmp, home directories, or so forth on flash memory could burn it out pretty fast, though.
I'd imagine that hard drives will go away only once they find something akin to flash that isn't limited in the number of writes. Having a limit of a million writes is completely reasonable for iPods, cameras, and other devices where you do infrequent large writes. Having
Having a flash device for the OS and programs and a hard drive for general purpose storage, though, that I could see being feasible in not too long.
don't some flash memories have limited read/writes far below platter hard drives? something like in the range of a couple thousand I thought... does this mean your hard drive will die even quicker, or will they make these drives eventually have removable and replacable flash cards, such as SD or something?
It's unlimited reads, but limited writes, so assuming you're using it to store OS code, the limited writes probably won't be a major problem. The limitation is usually in the low millions as well.
I don't even bother putting the Linux servers on a UPS.
Heh, that reminds me of the time that a place I worked had only two periods of server downtime over a 6 month period, both due to (planned) power outages. We were entertained that our server uptime was being held back by our electricity uptime.
This sounds vaguely like another logical language along the lines of Lojban.
Right now, record companies make money hand over fist on reprints of old music, both on new formats, and on replacements. Digital copies have neither of these problems, and present a problem that they're not equipped to deal with: Not being able to resell the same old shit. Given time, say 10 or 20 years, eventually everyone will have all the old music they want -- and in a format that they never need to replace.
Actually, when it comes to back catalogs, it's often the opposite. The vast majority of music retailers don't have the shelf space to carry any real back catalog inventory to speak of. They carry things like the Beatles and Elvis, but nothing unusual. The vast majority of physical sales of back catalog material is through used stores, which don't generate any profit for the record labels. Places like iTMS are awesome for back catalogs, though, since unlike a physical retailer, they don't have any problem with carrying titles they'll sell once every two months.
So is it legal under Russian law at the moment, or isn't it? If it's legal, then it's the Russian gov't at fault, not the site at all. If AllofMp3 is legal now, and they changes their business practice by the time the law changes, then it seems like they're being unfairly characterized as criminals.
Considering that the Russian police have investigated them before and not filed any charges, it seems to imply that the Russian authorities feel that it's legal. Now, whether it's legal for people outside Russia to purchase music from there is something I haven't seen a lot of discussion about either way, but AllofMP3.com's business certainly appears to be legal to the extent that Russian law covers.
Once others verify these results, does it become Poincare Theorem or does Lau add his name to it?
Not that I will ever need to know, but how does the process of going from conjecture to theorem work?
It may or may not still be called the Poincare Conjecture. It basically depends on what it's cited as in future work. There isn't a standards body somewhere that decides on the names of mathematical concepts, they just pick up whatever name they pick up.
No. Who asks these questions anyways?
Well, considering the only guy quoted by both articles is a manager for a company that sells packet shaping systems...
LaTex may be terminally cool for creating fancy-looking documents. But it doesn't solve any problems that this guy cares about. For his purposes, it's just another word processing format.
Actually, switching to LaTeX changes the scope of the problem from tracking changes to arbitrary files to tracking changes to text files. There are a lot more tools that are good for the latter problem than the former, so the available options get bigger. You're right that it doesn't suggest a good tool to go with, though.
The thesis that advertising becomes "more effective" is without evidence. Advertisers might hope it is more effective, but historically, it's only proven to be more annoying (both by being more plentiful, and by making hopelessly silly demographic conclusions). I'm guessing that this sort of targeted advertising will go over like Jalapeno-flavored toilet paper.
/. advertisers), so the net effect is close to zero. For most of the world, though, I'd imagine that targetted advertising has a very noticable effect on advertising effectiveness.
I think the argument for it being more effective is fairly straightforward.
First, let's split the commercial universe into a set of products for which a person might ever purchase, and a set which they will never purchase, whether because they're completely uninterested, or they're of the wrong gender (stupid feminine hygene products), or whatever. And let's assume that both sets have something in them.
With untargetted advertising, you're basically guaranteed that some portion of the time, you'll throw up an advertisement that is for a product in the uninterested group. That's a completely wasted advertisement. If you replace that ad with an ad in the possibly-interested group, at worst, the user still doesn't care and you're at a net change of zero. If they care even slightly, though, you're in better shape.
Now, for people reading Slashdot, most of us probably ignore ads completely (sssh, don't tell the
This guy has gotta be some die-hard Windows Me enthusiast.
Are you saying he's part of the Me generation?
Web is an invalid trademark since it's already in common currency, so how can you stick a version number on the end of it and suddenly make it trademarkable?
That's how lots of trademarks are made, actually, just take something that's common and mess with it a little: Target, General Motors, Chevron, Blu-Ray, Standard Oil, and so forth.
It'd be interesting to see economic indicators such as inflation, GDP, and CPI computed for a virtual economy like just to see what sort of things come up in this type of environment. Or to see market analysis techniques applied to the prices of in-game items:
There actually is a group dedicated to doing that in World of Warcraft, but their research isn't open to the public.