Which approach they will take towards crafting this wire. It's almost a given they'll use carbon nanotubes because of the ballistic conduction property that will permit arbitrary-lengthed wires to pass electricity without resistance, but will they go with a singlewalled CNT or will they sacrifice perfect conductivity for stability and go with a multiwalled CNT?
These things could be the next revolution after fiber optics for network communication, so there is reason to be excited. I wonder if there would be too much interference to run these things in a twisted pair configuration.
I think the important lesson to take away from this is that in Open Source the tools you use to maintain your project should (as a general rule of thumb) be as free or freer than your project.
It was pretty clear early on, as the rules for use were constantly being redefined, that there was going to be some form of conflict down the road. It's fortunate that the positive aspects of BitKeeper have outweighed the negative of having now to seek a replacement, but I sure wouldn't have bet it would turn out this way based on the LKML correspondence over the years on this subject.
There is probably a great deal of convincing but private communication we (and RMS?) are not privy to. The split is being handled pretty well.
Anybody that tells you Linux is better than Windows or Windows is better than Linux is, at best, simply wrong.
The truth of the matter is that you should choose the operating system that suits your needs. If you want an inexpensive machine for Computer Science studies or to learn UNIX networking or even as a SOHO server for the advanced user, Linux is your game. Similarly, for gaming, business applications, enterprise servers or streaming media from your computer to your TV you won't go wrong with Windows.
But to get caught up in "OS 1 is better than OS 2" debates is pure silliness, especially when you can run both easily.
I've heard that the type of computer equipment they use in studio is also of interest to space hardware designers (or maybe vice versa) -- they work towards reducing interference with other studio equipment (mostly power spikes; use solid state storage instead of hard drives, shield everything, work towards smooth power transistions at startup/shutdown).
They need more performance than space equipment, and space equipment has power concerns that studio equipment does not, so the equation balances.
Get the cost down, and this would be an interesting way to integrate per-vehicle information (speed and congestion [via vehicle proximities/GPS]) with map information to get realtime data on the best route to work. Or figure out where the most interesting accidents are happening.
I've seen this sentiment on here before, but I think it's only part of the larger picture (I feel the same way when I see posts explaining that corporations' obligation to shareholder profit mandates a "scorched earth" approach towards consumers and employees.)
There is room for a small number of people or organizations to behave with little consideration to either long-term viability or their impact on others and by doing so gain (perhaps only temporary) advantage over their competition. Past a certain point the playing field is ruined for everyone involved.
Greed is perhaps the most primal motivator for capitalism, but I've noticed that companies in well-established industries don't rock the boat nearly as much as technology companies -- leading me to believe that a certain level of restraint (self- or legally-imposed) creates a more efficient operation over the long haul.
Greed is ruining the Internet (pop-ups, e-mail spam, blog spam, P2P, ungrounded cease-and-desists, spyware/adware, "phone-home" software) and it's about time to defend one of the last remaining quality services of the Internet: search engines.
Google got to the top of the game by providing an excellent service efficiently. But like anything else, people have no problems ruining it to make a little more money.
Just my opinion, but a document isn't a program, and when you distribute a document you are ipso fatso distributing the source (or everything you need to "compile and run" the document.)
While I would like to see clarification, this seems like an attack on the GPL...
If you look at all the stuff we were doing in space, including the heroics that successfully brought the Apollo 13 home, isn't it self-evident that was absolutely within our ability to land on the moon forty years ago?
Now we're looking at Mars, but there's only so much duct tape we can wrap around these shuttles. I wish some of the enthusiasm and can-do attitude towards space that we had in the early days would return so that this next trek could be adequately funded and researched.
I'll bet that if P2P becomes a viable commercial transport mechanism we will all see caps/pay-by-volume appear on our accounts. Most ISPs aren't going to take on the bandwidth of major servers (and BitTorrent protocol overhead) in addition to client traffic without infrastructure upgrades.
It'll make a good excuse to add sliding fees for upstream use. But maybe we'll get back to the point where we can download game demos and patches without "waiting in line" for an hour.
To see if spyware/virii infestations of Firefox has kept pace with its acceptance both as a way to see how much of Internet Explorer problems are nescient to the application as well as to get an idea of what the future holds for Linux security as the operating system gains traction on desktops (i.e., are these things attacked because they're vulnerable or because they're popular?)
I can see how a small developer can infringe inadvertently on an existing patent, whether by happening across the same method or forgetting that he observed the method in an existing product.
That said, if a company with the size, resources, and hipness to the patent system that Microsoft has still has problems with the patent minefield, clearly something's wrong and needs to be fixed. The patent system is there to protect innovators, not to pull the legs out from under existing and profitable companies -- the economic ramifications of permitting individuals to sink corporations over legal silliness are staggering.
I'm 90% in agreement with you. However, there are artists out there who for one reason or another are not part of the RIAA and are not contributing to the wave of lawsuits/cease-and-desists against college students and bootleg exchange websites. It is a little tougher to discover quality music among these artists because you have to locate them first, but I've found Magnatune and Legaltorrents to be decent places to start.
I would be hard pressed to find people who would be willing to give up music entirely. I think it's easier to get people to change what they buy, and if they can find a source of independent music that they find interesting it'd cut into their budget for RIAA goods.
Although it still looks a bit like it's playing catch-up with Linux (I'd swear they had a SACK implementation already) it's quite nice to have an alternative.
This is probably the best BSD out there performance-wise however, and I wouldn't be surprised if it begins to usurp OpenBSD server space in performance-critical installations soon.
Weren't they aware of this during implementation?
on
VLC & European Patents
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I recognize that there aren't a great deal of resources available to the average Free Software programmer, but surely after the deal with GIF a little more dilligence has been put into patent research?
Don't get me wrong; I'd rather we just do away with patents entirely, but it's a fact that Europe will buy into this system sooner or later. Maybe now's the time to clean up any potentially infringing code or move it to an even more legally-backwards locale?
Most of these problems are old ones, and the people you (may have) voted in last time have had ample time to make sure enough voting machines were out and triple check the felon lists.
The fact of the matter is that neither side really seems to care about fixing the system when they are in power. Perhaps they feel they have more important things to do than perserve voting integrity, but each side seems to gloat when it looks like the other is getting the short end of the stick.
It does not serve democracy to prop up this failed process; it doesn't even really serve the candidates. All it does is turn something that should represent the will of the electorate into an elaborate game of legal manipulation and shenanagans, and the only way to stop it is to have overwhelming and incontestible voting returns in 2006 for the Rastafarian candidates. Thank you.
I know you sound a little flamy, but it's the truth. Administrators who use MAPS are willingly allowing a third-party to choose for themselves and their users what they can and can't see.
You need to let the users know however you can (on your website?) that their administrators may be blocking their e-mail without their knowledge and let the users handle the rest. It's their problem.
In my case I got quite upset when my ISP chose to bounce e-mail about the Blaster worm from my Bugtraq subscription without letting me know or giving me a means to opt out of the filtering. It would be the same thing if I was waiting on an important e-mail that never arrived because they chose to drop it on the floor for me. The users aren't being given an option to choose, and that's the real problem.
People tend to notice its flaws (oh it's so slow!) because it's the first iteration of its technology, but it is still an excellent tool for getting the job done regardless of its platform.
Is it going to be replaced by C#? Perhaps, but it is possible to fully exploit it today, and with tools like Hibernate it's possible to rapidly deploy applications on a grand scheme. In today's business environment it is often a matter of getting it done fast rather than best, and if it's turning into a problem with performance it is always possible to turn to another language once you have something in place.
I've heard of more than one service in development for returning music titles against a song clip you play or hum into a phone or microphone.
Even though satellite/digital radio will reduce the market for this kind of thing, because each displays the artist name and track title, there are still plenty of opportunities to get a song stuck in your head that you don't recognize. A surprising number of people find out about music when it's used as the background tune in TV commercials, for example.
Think about it. How much does it cost to effectively prosecute a spammer? How many are in Ohio to begin with?
This is more feel-good legislation that will probably have no teeth because it takes too much work for too little result. Real change requires going back to holding ISPs responsible for spam -- cutting the worst off at the uplink when they don't put some minimal effort into keeping their users from spamming.
Maybe that'll mean certain countries are delinked until a scrupulous ISP shows up. It'll do a hell of a lot more than prosecuting a handful of spammers here.
In an office environment where the servers and workstations are Linux (as they are in increasing numbers throughout Europe) the secretaries might as well operate in parity. The cost efficiency of these machines and the number of 'low-end' systems that tend to be deployed in a business environment make these a good solution for places that desire something a little better/easier to implement than a dumb terminal.
I'm surprised Dell hasn't done this sooner. But then again, Linspire is of recent vintage and was the first to make desktop Linux feasible on the large scale. Now people can obtain an entirely-Linux solution from Dell -- from the server to the desktop -- and all I can say is it's about time.
For the most part, when you go into a new job you're maintaining or cleaning somebody else's work. A library of programming and style books is probably worth more than a code library.
Besides, the parts of a code library that are most likely to be reusable are also most likely to be publically known algorithms (B-Tree, MD5 hash, etc.) and therefore published in some form already. It's probably wrong to take something that you were specifically paid to produce for one company along with you to another, so don't do it.
Slashdot Mirror
These things could be the next revolution after fiber optics for network communication, so there is reason to be excited. I wonder if there would be too much interference to run these things in a twisted pair configuration.
It was pretty clear early on, as the rules for use were constantly being redefined, that there was going to be some form of conflict down the road. It's fortunate that the positive aspects of BitKeeper have outweighed the negative of having now to seek a replacement, but I sure wouldn't have bet it would turn out this way based on the LKML correspondence over the years on this subject.
There is probably a great deal of convincing but private communication we (and RMS?) are not privy to. The split is being handled pretty well.
The truth of the matter is that you should choose the operating system that suits your needs. If you want an inexpensive machine for Computer Science studies or to learn UNIX networking or even as a SOHO server for the advanced user, Linux is your game. Similarly, for gaming, business applications, enterprise servers or streaming media from your computer to your TV you won't go wrong with Windows.
But to get caught up in "OS 1 is better than OS 2" debates is pure silliness, especially when you can run both easily.
Microsoft could dump .JPG (and .GIF for that matter) in favor of .PNG and .MNG tomorrow without being the worse for it.
They need more performance than space equipment, and space equipment has power concerns that studio equipment does not, so the equation balances.
They have nothing to gain from adopting software patents.
Get the cost down, and this would be an interesting way to integrate per-vehicle information (speed and congestion [via vehicle proximities/GPS]) with map information to get realtime data on the best route to work. Or figure out where the most interesting accidents are happening.
There is room for a small number of people or organizations to behave with little consideration to either long-term viability or their impact on others and by doing so gain (perhaps only temporary) advantage over their competition. Past a certain point the playing field is ruined for everyone involved.
Greed is perhaps the most primal motivator for capitalism, but I've noticed that companies in well-established industries don't rock the boat nearly as much as technology companies -- leading me to believe that a certain level of restraint (self- or legally-imposed) creates a more efficient operation over the long haul.
Google got to the top of the game by providing an excellent service efficiently. But like anything else, people have no problems ruining it to make a little more money.
While I would like to see clarification, this seems like an attack on the GPL...
Now we're looking at Mars, but there's only so much duct tape we can wrap around these shuttles. I wish some of the enthusiasm and can-do attitude towards space that we had in the early days would return so that this next trek could be adequately funded and researched.
It'll make a good excuse to add sliding fees for upstream use. But maybe we'll get back to the point where we can download game demos and patches without "waiting in line" for an hour.
Paper has nothing on electronics for leaving a trail.
To see if spyware/virii infestations of Firefox has kept pace with its acceptance both as a way to see how much of Internet Explorer problems are nescient to the application as well as to get an idea of what the future holds for Linux security as the operating system gains traction on desktops (i.e., are these things attacked because they're vulnerable or because they're popular?)
That said, if a company with the size, resources, and hipness to the patent system that Microsoft has still has problems with the patent minefield, clearly something's wrong and needs to be fixed. The patent system is there to protect innovators, not to pull the legs out from under existing and profitable companies -- the economic ramifications of permitting individuals to sink corporations over legal silliness are staggering.
I would be hard pressed to find people who would be willing to give up music entirely. I think it's easier to get people to change what they buy, and if they can find a source of independent music that they find interesting it'd cut into their budget for RIAA goods.
This is probably the best BSD out there performance-wise however, and I wouldn't be surprised if it begins to usurp OpenBSD server space in performance-critical installations soon.
Don't get me wrong; I'd rather we just do away with patents entirely, but it's a fact that Europe will buy into this system sooner or later. Maybe now's the time to clean up any potentially infringing code or move it to an even more legally-backwards locale?
The fact of the matter is that neither side really seems to care about fixing the system when they are in power. Perhaps they feel they have more important things to do than perserve voting integrity, but each side seems to gloat when it looks like the other is getting the short end of the stick.
It does not serve democracy to prop up this failed process; it doesn't even really serve the candidates. All it does is turn something that should represent the will of the electorate into an elaborate game of legal manipulation and shenanagans, and the only way to stop it is to have overwhelming and incontestible voting returns in 2006 for the Rastafarian candidates. Thank you.
You need to let the users know however you can (on your website?) that their administrators may be blocking their e-mail without their knowledge and let the users handle the rest. It's their problem.
In my case I got quite upset when my ISP chose to bounce e-mail about the Blaster worm from my Bugtraq subscription without letting me know or giving me a means to opt out of the filtering. It would be the same thing if I was waiting on an important e-mail that never arrived because they chose to drop it on the floor for me. The users aren't being given an option to choose, and that's the real problem.
Is it going to be replaced by C#? Perhaps, but it is possible to fully exploit it today, and with tools like Hibernate it's possible to rapidly deploy applications on a grand scheme. In today's business environment it is often a matter of getting it done fast rather than best, and if it's turning into a problem with performance it is always possible to turn to another language once you have something in place.
Even though satellite/digital radio will reduce the market for this kind of thing, because each displays the artist name and track title, there are still plenty of opportunities to get a song stuck in your head that you don't recognize. A surprising number of people find out about music when it's used as the background tune in TV commercials, for example.
This is more feel-good legislation that will probably have no teeth because it takes too much work for too little result. Real change requires going back to holding ISPs responsible for spam -- cutting the worst off at the uplink when they don't put some minimal effort into keeping their users from spamming.
Maybe that'll mean certain countries are delinked until a scrupulous ISP shows up. It'll do a hell of a lot more than prosecuting a handful of spammers here.
I'm surprised Dell hasn't done this sooner. But then again, Linspire is of recent vintage and was the first to make desktop Linux feasible on the large scale. Now people can obtain an entirely-Linux solution from Dell -- from the server to the desktop -- and all I can say is it's about time.
Besides, the parts of a code library that are most likely to be reusable are also most likely to be publically known algorithms (B-Tree, MD5 hash, etc.) and therefore published in some form already. It's probably wrong to take something that you were specifically paid to produce for one company along with you to another, so don't do it.