As long as it's legal and helps Microsoft, I highly doubt that Microsoft would be concerned about the ethics of doing such a thing. The author is probably right.
Most of the voting software used during the 2004 Presidential elections were proprietary code by private corporations that have political interests on which
candidate winning. It is unimaginable how these votes can be considered as legitimate when there is no method to trace accuracy.
Open source voting software such as this one should be replacing proprietary code from private
corporations.
As far as file formats go I don't anticipate any problems as long as you stay with mainstream formats of your time.
No doubt that in a century from now no photos, videos, or music will ever be stored in any kind of lossy format. However I believe there will always be backwards compatibility or a means to convert things like JPG, MPG, and MP3 even though they are from "ancient" times.
As for the actual physical storage medium, that might be a problem if nobody is there to update it every decade.
I'm pretty sure that if you talked to someone from the 1860's, and tried to explain to them that there was an industry that was based on people paying for a music recording they would laugh at you.
I'm pretty sure that if you talked to someone from the 2060's, and tried to explain to them that there was an industry that was based on people paying for a music recording they would laugh at you.
With practically no distribution costs and impossible enforcement of piracy, I think the future of music will be done by musicians who do it for the genuine love of creating music.
Kerry appears to have made a very strong comeback in just the last few days according to the data from electoral-vote.com. It certainly does look like the Redskins Indicator, which has been accurate since 1936, just might prevail for yet another four years!
Piracy was an intended business strategy
on
How Cheap Can A PC Be?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In the Ballmer article it states: > But lower prices have become part of Microsoft's strategy for gaining market share in developing nations.
For over a decade, in the early years of Microsoft, they have been making piracy of their OS and Office software easy. This was a vital and intended strategy for them in order to firmly establish a marketshare dominance.
When the average user gets accustomed to (pirated) Microsoft products, this encourages businesses to use Microsoft products since most employees already have the skills in using Microsoft products. Microsoft then proceeds to enforce BUSINESSES to have legal copies of their software while still encouraging private users to pirate their products.
As you can see, their strategy worked. They are basically doing the same thing now with developing nations. And they will be successful unless the respective governments intervene.
Re:Trying to answer the question that was asked...
on
How Cheap Can A PC Be?
·
· Score: 1
> Hardware is getting cheaper because manufacturing processes have improved dramatically, in efficiency and design.
While that may be true, I think it is predominantly due to "economies of scale". The demand has increased dramatically over time, thus, leading to far lower costs per manufactured unit.
Re:Doesn't work. Sorry, do not collect $200.
on
Replacing TCP?
·
· Score: 1
The reason that most of you don't think this protocol is necessary is because most of you are living in the U.S. where residential broadband speeds are relatively slower and you mostly transfer with people within the same continent.
Although most of you don't "see a problem" at this point in time, eventually the problem with current TCP will become noticeable as your broadband speeds increase even with transfers within the U.S.
In Hong Kong, where I live, 10mbps Symmetric (both downlink and uplink) VDSL lines are the current standard for "residential broadband". I mostly do transfers with the U.S. where the round trip latency is around 200ms with the west coast and 250ms with the east coast and with current TCP protocol, the speed throttling effect per thread is pretty extreme. Technology will never reduce latency with overseas transfers by any meaningful amount because currently the latency achieved is nearing the speed of light barrier.
Current TCP protocol is highly inefficent for high bandwidth transfers overseas. I live in Hong Kong and I have a Symmetric 10mbps residential VDSL line. When transferring with ONE THREAD with someone near my region I can max my bandwidth (about 1 MegaByte per second). When I transfer with overseas it can go as low as 30K per second.
Sometimes using multiple threads with the same IP isn't an option because with things like BT, a lot of BT clients ban peers who try to have multiple connections. Streaming media presents a problem as well. I have already tweaked the "receive window size" and other variables. It is my sincere belief that the world needs a new protocol to handle the ever increasing bandwidth pipes with global connection latencies in mind very soon. Not 50 years from now.
The gallery has hundreds of other multiple-monitor setups of other people as well.
For me, I use the 6 monitors to "Remote Desktop" several physical PCs. The nice feature with Remote Desktop (built into WinXPPro) is that it doesn't POLL the remote screen (unlike VNC and PCAnywhere). The drawing of the windows are done client-side. This way you don't feel any lag whatsoever.
Another nice feature with Remote Desktop is your Copy and Paste works across your local and multiple Remote Desktops!
> Hey, that's what they call themselves!
You are correct in that it is still part of the name for the political party that is currently in control. However this is just a name and nothing more.
> Who are you to tell them they are not?
They are not. It is a fact that most everyone knows, whether you like it or not.
> In any case it is a brutal dictatorship that oppresses its people. Is that what you want?
You are incorrect. Dictatorship implies one person in complete control. The Chinese government is perhaps authoritarian but it is not a dictatorship. And no, it is not "what I want".
Do you have some strange mental quirk that makes you admire and love dictators?
No.
Do you even read the news?
Yes I do. You obviously don't since you are still living with news that are over two decades old.
> Did you flunk history?
No.
> Are you fucking crazy?
No.
> Do you still want to defend such shit?
I don't believe I am defending anything. I am just correcting misinformed people such as yourself.
> Communism...and, hey, guess what type of country China is?
Capitalist country perhaps? Because China is certainly not communist by definition of the word.
Communism as defined by dictionary.reference.com:
"A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members."
China's economic system is clearly not what is described in the above definition, at least not for the last 20 years.
I really don't see how anyone would be interested in how a computer case is built. There is nothing complex or interesting about computer cases. What am I missing?
Light reflecting off of clean air seems technically impossible to me. The fogscreen machine from Finland reflects light off water vapors but this one appears to require nothing?
The internet is like a never ending open source project and code for life and everything man has ever learned. This will exponentially speed up advances in technology for humankind at a rate never seen before in history. I think this is a good thing unless it somehow hastens armageddon and the end to mankind.
It does not have to be LCD. Technologies evolve and LCD may be replaced by superior display systems.
I believe it is entirely possible that a computer display could be both 3D and allow an acceptable range of viewing angles. If this has not already been achieved by this Sharp laptop I think it will be achieved within the next ten years.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as it's legal and helps Microsoft, I highly doubt that Microsoft would be concerned about the ethics of doing such a thing. The author is probably right.
Most of the voting software used during the 2004 Presidential elections were proprietary code by private corporations that have political interests on which candidate winning. It is unimaginable how these votes can be considered as legitimate when there is no method to trace accuracy.
Open source voting software such as this one should be replacing proprietary code from private corporations.
This page shows photos of the "PirateEye in Action".
Can anyone figure out what's the deal with the "cyborg eye" man on the right?
I have a networked computer in my living room with these things plugged into it:
:P
1) TV
2) Stereo
3) Wireless Keyboard / Mouse
It works. I'm really not sure what the issue is here.
As far as file formats go I don't anticipate any problems as long as you stay with mainstream formats of your time.
No doubt that in a century from now no photos, videos, or music will ever be stored in any kind of lossy format. However I believe there will always be backwards compatibility or a means to convert things like JPG, MPG, and MP3 even though they are from "ancient" times.
As for the actual physical storage medium, that might be a problem if nobody is there to update it every decade.
Personally, I think Firefox redefines the websurfing experience. I have Firefox as default browser on all my machines.
However, what is to stop MSIE from copying all the features that made Firefox so good? Are simple features like "tabbed browsing" patented/patentable?
Put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
I'm pretty sure that if you talked to someone from the 1860's, and tried to explain to them that there was an industry that was based on people paying for a music recording they would laugh at you.
I'm pretty sure that if you talked to someone from the 2060's, and tried to explain to them that there was an industry that was based on people paying for a music recording they would laugh at you. With practically no distribution costs and impossible enforcement of piracy, I think the future of music will be done by musicians who do it for the genuine love of creating music.
Kerry appears to have made a very strong comeback in just the last few days according to the data from electoral-vote.com. It certainly does look like the Redskins Indicator, which has been accurate since 1936, just might prevail for yet another four years!
Same here in Hong Kong with DSL. We get symmetrical 10mbps/10mbps for about $20USD/month.
http://www.hgc.com.hk/eng/res_net_bb_hgcbb.html
(1 USD = 7.8 HKD)
In the Ballmer article it states:
> But lower prices have become part of Microsoft's strategy for gaining market share in developing nations.
For over a decade, in the early years of Microsoft, they have been making piracy of their OS and Office software easy. This was a vital and intended strategy for them in order to firmly establish a marketshare dominance.
When the average user gets accustomed to (pirated) Microsoft products, this encourages businesses to use Microsoft products since most employees already have the skills in using Microsoft products. Microsoft then proceeds to enforce BUSINESSES to have legal copies of their software while still encouraging private users to pirate their products.
As you can see, their strategy worked. They are basically doing the same thing now with developing nations. And they will be successful unless the respective governments intervene.
> Hardware is getting cheaper because manufacturing processes have improved dramatically, in efficiency and design.
While that may be true, I think it is predominantly due to "economies of scale". The demand has increased dramatically over time, thus, leading to far lower costs per manufactured unit.
The reason that most of you don't think this protocol is necessary is because most of you are living in the U.S. where residential broadband speeds are relatively slower and you mostly transfer with people within the same continent.
Although most of you don't "see a problem" at this point in time, eventually the problem with current TCP will become noticeable as your broadband speeds increase even with transfers within the U.S.
In Hong Kong, where I live, 10mbps Symmetric (both downlink and uplink) VDSL lines are the current standard for "residential broadband". I mostly do transfers with the U.S. where the round trip latency is around 200ms with the west coast and 250ms with the east coast and with current TCP protocol, the speed throttling effect per thread is pretty extreme. Technology will never reduce latency with overseas transfers by any meaningful amount because currently the latency achieved is nearing the speed of light barrier.
Current TCP protocol is highly inefficent for high bandwidth transfers overseas. I live in Hong Kong and I have a Symmetric 10mbps residential VDSL line. When transferring with ONE THREAD with someone near my region I can max my bandwidth (about 1 MegaByte per second). When I transfer with overseas it can go as low as 30K per second.
Sometimes using multiple threads with the same IP isn't an option because with things like BT, a lot of BT clients ban peers who try to have multiple connections. Streaming media presents a problem as well. I have already tweaked the "receive window size" and other variables. It is my sincere belief that the world needs a new protocol to handle the ever increasing bandwidth pipes with global connection latencies in mind very soon. Not 50 years from now.
Aww, why stop your list at 4 monitors? I need to know what category I'm in with 6! :)
Photo of my setup:
6 monitors
The gallery has hundreds of other multiple-monitor setups of other people as well.
For me, I use the 6 monitors to "Remote Desktop" several physical PCs. The nice feature with Remote Desktop (built into WinXPPro) is that it doesn't POLL the remote screen (unlike VNC and PCAnywhere). The drawing of the windows are done client-side. This way you don't feel any lag whatsoever.
Another nice feature with Remote Desktop is your Copy and Paste works across your local and multiple Remote Desktops!
> Hey, that's what they call themselves!
You are correct in that it is still part of the name for the political party that is currently in control. However this is just a name and nothing more.
> Who are you to tell them they are not?
They are not. It is a fact that most everyone knows, whether you like it or not.
> In any case it is a brutal dictatorship that oppresses its people. Is that what you want?
You are incorrect. Dictatorship implies one person in complete control. The Chinese government is perhaps authoritarian but it is not a dictatorship. And no, it is not "what I want".
Do you have some strange mental quirk that makes you admire and love dictators?
No.
Do you even read the news?
Yes I do. You obviously don't since you are still living with news that are over two decades old.
> Did you flunk history?
No.
> Are you fucking crazy?
No.
> Do you still want to defend such shit?
I don't believe I am defending anything. I am just correcting misinformed people such as yourself.
> Communism ...and, hey, guess what type of country China is?
Capitalist country perhaps? Because China is certainly not communist by definition of the word.
Communism as defined by dictionary.reference.com:
"A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members."
China's economic system is clearly not what is described in the above definition, at least not for the last 20 years.
I really don't see how anyone would be interested in how a computer case is built. There is nothing complex or interesting about computer cases. What am I missing?
Light reflecting off of clean air seems technically impossible to me. The fogscreen machine from Finland reflects light off water vapors but this one appears to require nothing?
The internet is like a never ending open source project and code for life and everything man has ever learned. This will exponentially speed up advances in technology for humankind at a rate never seen before in history. I think this is a good thing unless it somehow hastens armageddon and the end to mankind.
It does not have to be LCD. Technologies evolve and LCD may be replaced by superior display systems.
I believe it is entirely possible that a computer display could be both 3D and allow an acceptable range of viewing angles. If this has not already been achieved by this Sharp laptop I think it will be achieved within the next ten years.
Holograms send a different image to each eye but still have a wide range of viewing angles. I don't see why a computer display cannot do the same.