I'm sure their techniques will cause google to make such tricks harder in the future. Many of you are familiar with people creating nonsense link pages to drive their own rating up and the various things google put in place to make this harder.
That can be a good thing - stop the spammers doing their thing, and forcing commercial junk that's only relevant to the owners/advertisers on a site into google. Let google evolve into something better, bit by bit.
Personally, I'm all for just creating damned good content, and people will come across it and link to it on their own. No effort other than Creating Good Content. No need to spam, flood forums with links, or otherwise make people link to you that otherwise wouldn't
Now they need a contest on how to get delisted, I still have a domain name that hasn't been used in 3 years that is in google.
heh. Yahoo still contains a page of mine that's 18 months gone as the main link to my page. Talk about out of date.
There is however one thing to keep in mind. Presently our GPU's may have the headroom to play with, but with Apple's Quartz, and Microsoft's Longhorn, let alone what's coming with X. That headroom may disappear, and our video cards will have to go back to being video cards.
On those operating systems that require them, that could very well be.
Still makes a nice thought that a linux box without even X installed, but a kickass graphics card, could crunch away doing something 4 times quicker than any windowed machine.
The whole point of graphic cards is that they have a dedicated purpose. Using the cards for anything that is general purpose is like using a motorcycle to tow a pop-up camper.
What's relevant is that to the processor on a graphics card, its dedicated purpose is simply a bunch of logic. There's no dedicated "this must be used for pixels only, all else is waste" logic inherent in the system. there are MANY purposes for which the same/similar logic that applies in generating 3D imagery can be used, and that seems the purpose of this paper. Run THOSE type operations on the GPU. Some things they won't be able to do well no doubt - but those they can, they can do extremely well.
I have to wonder at his comments, asking such things as "why is Firefox not taking advantage of avalon?" or "why not WinFS?" or "Why not XAML?"
They're marketing type questions coming from a clueless droid.
The obvious answer is the same as the answer to the questions "Why is Firefox not taking advantage of features of Mac OSX 10.6" or "Why is Firefox not taking advantage of features of the Linux Kernel 2.8"
OK I know there's going to be a million comments about how we should all patch vulnerabilities and there'd be no problems... and then the inevitable responses from admins who haven't done so because testing hasn't been complete and the patches are causing more problems after doing them...
But...
Why aren't MS patches single discrete objects? One patch for One vulnerability? That way IMHO clears the problem of a "patch" that comes up, is huge, and attempts to fix ten documented vulnerabilities (but knowing the code used in huge projects, it's possibly many dozen fixes at once).
This kind of fine grained control is what works WELL in debian for example. To update an error in ssh, download it's patch. to update an error in an x library, update that one library. Not bundled in with loads of extra crap
I suspect this is a marketing thing. MS can truthfully say they only had 4 patches in a year, when the patches in linux systems number "in the hundreds", when the reality is far different.
Even MacOS seems to be partway to the debian like approach, where there may be a dozen security updates in a year fixing a small number of vulnerabilities each. It's a consistent line of updates, instead of happening in large steps over which an admin has no control.
The world wanted to see him as evil... as nothing but a dumb cracker who had some skills to get into places he shouldn't be, no better than a hundred others out there who haven't been caught.
The education system in this country is a mess. Sure there's a few bright spots here and there, but for the most part it has fallen apart into arguments of political correctness, violence, and debates over evolution vs. creation. More school funding is given to non-science activities such as sports, instead of funding a new science lab.
And the whole culture of offshoring jobs. Anyone with any brights knows that to get tech work now, you have to go overseas. What's the point of the ones who DO get a good education, and succeed at what they do even trying to make a life in the US now, when so so many of the good jobs in their field are being sent off to other countries?
The only solution for them is to move to the countries where the offshoring is going (To india or asia for example) or move to a country that isn't so heavily into offshoring yet (UK, Australia, south africa).
Offshoring is one of those things that has follow-on effects that nobody much cares for when making the decision to do it. A company might offshore on the principal that if US-side workers want to compete they'll have to compete with the rest of the world.
All that happens is the US-side workers MOVE to the rest of the world. "If you can't beat them, join them" may never have been truer.
"Next generation super MP3 files will support four-channel audio tracks and contain what's dubbed Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM) code to track it's owner via p2p programs"
I think there's a large amount of unconscious thought & actions going on with computer use, which may end up being a large part of what's happening here. Not the least of which is WHERE a machine is. I like corners, so I used to sit in the corner and use the 3 machines around there, but thats just me. Other people liked edges.
Add to that the subtle signals we pick up when using a machine. Usually there will be little idiosyncrasies in a group situation, where a dozen computers might all sound a little different. whine differently. have their volume set just a little different compared to others, and the ones people are used to, or perhaps even NOTICE this about will be the ones they're drawn to.
I think the unconscious thought thing applies a great deal to Macs, PCs, Linux boxes. The first time I touched a Linux machine which was supposed to be stable, I locked it up. Why? I don't know. I can only guess that its user (a cousin) had his definition of "stable" defined by the routine of uses he went through every time he booted it, and never came across the particular odd combo I did. I found my Windows machine at the time stable as well (Win 98) but it'd guarantee to lockup within a few hours of use by someone who isn't me. non consciously, I think I'd learned to avoid the things to do that would crash it.
Bet it's similar with OSX boxes. put a windows or linux user who's never touched one before in front of it and it'll bluescreen, kernel panic or beachball soon after use, until they also built up the internal map of what not to do.
Seriously. Half these patent/IP battles with stuff from the 80s/early 90s is crap - companies have some IP they claim is theres, but looking back it's been so diluted over time, pieces sold off, transferred about, and nobody really keeps records of what belongs to who. SCO think they own "unix" but they at the most (barring the novell dispute) own PART of SOME of ONE branch of ONE of the unices. Some of the SysV code is so open and diluted and already released freely that it simply cannot apply, likewise by the look of these jpg patents it's only a MAYBE that forgent own SOME of the jpeg compression stuff.
Is there not a central registry on who owns what, instead of just an initial record of a patent being granted to company X, and finding out who owns it requires looking through the transitions of different companies as pieces of the IP are sold off over time.
If everything was kept up to date AS THE SALES HAPPENED it would all be so much easier, no disputes, a nice paper trail of just who owns what.
I bet some of these patent companies buy up IP in the hope they have something worthwhile, but will never know what they're truly entitled to without it being decided by a court... and since information can be absent there, that can get it wrong
What's the point of 170dpi? My Palm has perhaps 40dpi at the most and it has perfectly readable text.
I think this is a case of a company marketing a product for a niche that doesn't need anywhere near the complexity or cost of the product they're pushing.
When I was in the UK I saw plenty of Land Rovers with aluminum bodies. I thought that was more suitable. So so light, and there seemed to be enough places that knew how to fix panels made from it that damage wasn't a big problem.
By the exterior condition of many of them, fixing the damage wasn't an immediate priority anyway:).
Don't forget that stainless steel won't rust, but stains very easily just by touching it.
Like many things made for marketing I think. The name is a lot better than the reality. Titanium is COOL when it's on a blackbird (ok actually the stuff gets really hot) and the correct alloy is used for its purpose as an extreme exotic material. Use it on a Powerbook though and it's really just another metal, which dents easily and needs to be painted otherwise it too marks just by touch. But it still sounds cool.
Like the delorean. Stainless Steel is just COOL marketing wise, but it's a pain in the ass on a car.
By the looks of things, Lsongs is different to iTunes, and Lphoto is... quite similar. However looking at Picasa, it's a Windows 'version' of iPhoto.
I put 'version' in quotes there because they both have some very similar roots. There's cross seeding with a couple of the original coders, and neither app was completely coded/released before the other. They both seem to be coexisting quite well with no hint of legal action from either side.
If Linspire had given LPhoto a brushed metal interface and copied the icons one-for-one then I could see apple acting, but I honestly don't think these L-apps will do anything more than give Linspire some free publicity. I don't have any problem with that.
Wasn't there a compiler a few years ago that not only had an EULA which limited the type of code you could write, but also claimed some ownership of the code by the compiler vendor?
My memory is sketchy, so it may have been something else entirely, perhaps a code repository of some kind
MS seems to be doing a lot of this lately. It's nowhere near as open as F/OSS solutions, but it's freeing up access to what's possible with Windows far more than previously.
One of the reasons for the success of OSX is the general geek crowd's appreciation of it's *IX background, but without free dev tools that's nothing but another flavour of unix. Add the ability to dive into developing instantly and there's tens of thousands more developers working for the company.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure their techniques will cause google to make such tricks harder in the future. Many of you are familiar with people creating nonsense link pages to drive their own rating up and the various things google put in place to make this harder.
That can be a good thing - stop the spammers doing their thing, and forcing commercial junk that's only relevant to the owners/advertisers on a site into google. Let google evolve into something better, bit by bit.
Personally, I'm all for just creating damned good content, and people will come across it and link to it on their own. No effort other than Creating Good Content. No need to spam, flood forums with links, or otherwise make people link to you that otherwise wouldn't
Now they need a contest on how to get delisted, I still have a domain name that hasn't been used in 3 years that is in google.
heh. Yahoo still contains a page of mine that's 18 months gone as the main link to my page. Talk about out of date.
There is however one thing to keep in mind. Presently our GPU's may have the headroom to play with, but with Apple's Quartz, and Microsoft's Longhorn, let alone what's coming with X. That headroom may disappear, and our video cards will have to go back to being video cards.
On those operating systems that require them, that could very well be.
Still makes a nice thought that a linux box without even X installed, but a kickass graphics card, could crunch away doing something 4 times quicker than any windowed machine.
The whole point of graphic cards is that they have a dedicated purpose. Using the cards for anything that is general purpose is like using a motorcycle to tow a pop-up camper.
What's relevant is that to the processor on a graphics card, its dedicated purpose is simply a bunch of logic. There's no dedicated "this must be used for pixels only, all else is waste" logic inherent in the system. there are MANY purposes for which the same/similar logic that applies in generating 3D imagery can be used, and that seems the purpose of this paper. Run THOSE type operations on the GPU. Some things they won't be able to do well no doubt - but those they can, they can do extremely well.
I have to wonder at his comments, asking such things as "why is Firefox not taking advantage of avalon?" or "why not WinFS?" or "Why not XAML?"
They're marketing type questions coming from a clueless droid.
The obvious answer is the same as the answer to the questions "Why is Firefox not taking advantage of features of Mac OSX 10.6" or "Why is Firefox not taking advantage of features of the Linux Kernel 2.8"
COS THEY'RE NOT FUCKING HERE YET!
He's not asking questions. He's sowing seeds.
OK I know there's going to be a million comments about how we should all patch vulnerabilities and there'd be no problems... and then the inevitable responses from admins who haven't done so because testing hasn't been complete and the patches are causing more problems after doing them...
But...
Why aren't MS patches single discrete objects? One patch for One vulnerability? That way IMHO clears the problem of a "patch" that comes up, is huge, and attempts to fix ten documented vulnerabilities (but knowing the code used in huge projects, it's possibly many dozen fixes at once).
This kind of fine grained control is what works WELL in debian for example. To update an error in ssh, download it's patch. to update an error in an x library, update that one library. Not bundled in with loads of extra crap
I suspect this is a marketing thing. MS can truthfully say they only had 4 patches in a year, when the patches in linux systems number "in the hundreds", when the reality is far different.
Even MacOS seems to be partway to the debian like approach, where there may be a dozen security updates in a year fixing a small number of vulnerabilities each. It's a consistent line of updates, instead of happening in large steps over which an admin has no control.
The world wanted to see him as evil... as nothing but a dumb cracker who had some skills to get into places he shouldn't be, no better than a hundred others out there who haven't been caught.
This should make them eat crow.
The education system in this country is a mess. Sure there's a few bright spots here and there, but for the most part it has fallen apart into arguments of political correctness, violence, and debates over evolution vs. creation. More school funding is given to non-science activities such as sports, instead of funding a new science lab.
And the whole culture of offshoring jobs. Anyone with any brights knows that to get tech work now, you have to go overseas. What's the point of the ones who DO get a good education, and succeed at what they do even trying to make a life in the US now, when so so many of the good jobs in their field are being sent off to other countries?
The only solution for them is to move to the countries where the offshoring is going (To india or asia for example) or move to a country that isn't so heavily into offshoring yet (UK, Australia, south africa).
Offshoring is one of those things that has follow-on effects that nobody much cares for when making the decision to do it. A company might offshore on the principal that if US-side workers want to compete they'll have to compete with the rest of the world.
All that happens is the US-side workers MOVE to the rest of the world. "If you can't beat them, join them" may never have been truer.
"Next generation super MP3 files will support four-channel audio tracks and contain what's dubbed Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM) code to track it's owner via p2p programs"
...And nobody will use them. yawn. next.
I wonder given the litigious society we live in how long it will take until diebold attempt legal action over this.
A small cruddy company suing the CA state government over banning their machines? Couldn't happen...
could it.
Congratulations iTunes! May the fireworks hail more good times, and less powerbooks that have batteries that explode on their users.
snrk. but will it help fix these problems?
It's easy to criticize when all you're doing is following other's past actions. You've obviously used neither.
It's a layout/desktop publishing app, meant to be a replacement of Quark XPress.
Like Gimp over Photoshop, Scribus walks all over Quark.
I think there's a large amount of unconscious thought & actions going on with computer use, which may end up being a large part of what's happening here. Not the least of which is WHERE a machine is. I like corners, so I used to sit in the corner and use the 3 machines around there, but thats just me. Other people liked edges.
Add to that the subtle signals we pick up when using a machine. Usually there will be little idiosyncrasies in a group situation, where a dozen computers might all sound a little different. whine differently. have their volume set just a little different compared to others, and the ones people are used to, or perhaps even NOTICE this about will be the ones they're drawn to.
I think the unconscious thought thing applies a great deal to Macs, PCs, Linux boxes. The first time I touched a Linux machine which was supposed to be stable, I locked it up. Why? I don't know. I can only guess that its user (a cousin) had his definition of "stable" defined by the routine of uses he went through every time he booted it, and never came across the particular odd combo I did. I found my Windows machine at the time stable as well (Win 98) but it'd guarantee to lockup within a few hours of use by someone who isn't me. non consciously, I think I'd learned to avoid the things to do that would crash it.
Bet it's similar with OSX boxes. put a windows or linux user who's never touched one before in front of it and it'll bluescreen, kernel panic or beachball soon after use, until they also built up the internal map of what not to do.
Seriously. Half these patent/IP battles with stuff from the 80s/early 90s is crap - companies have some IP they claim is theres, but looking back it's been so diluted over time, pieces sold off, transferred about, and nobody really keeps records of what belongs to who. SCO think they own "unix" but they at the most (barring the novell dispute) own PART of SOME of ONE branch of ONE of the unices. Some of the SysV code is so open and diluted and already released freely that it simply cannot apply, likewise by the look of these jpg patents it's only a MAYBE that forgent own SOME of the jpeg compression stuff.
Is there not a central registry on who owns what, instead of just an initial record of a patent being granted to company X, and finding out who owns it requires looking through the transitions of different companies as pieces of the IP are sold off over time.
If everything was kept up to date AS THE SALES HAPPENED it would all be so much easier, no disputes, a nice paper trail of just who owns what.
I bet some of these patent companies buy up IP in the hope they have something worthwhile, but will never know what they're truly entitled to without it being decided by a court... and since information can be absent there, that can get it wrong
PNG, a LOSSLESS FORMAT, is NOT a reasonable substitute for LOSSY JPEG FORMAT.
.jpg.
.JPG on a website for example, you're just living in the past when there's newer tech availabvle
It is then, by your definition, a SUPERIOR replacement for
If you're using
What's the point of 170dpi? My Palm has perhaps 40dpi at the most and it has perfectly readable text.
I think this is a case of a company marketing a product for a niche that doesn't need anywhere near the complexity or cost of the product they're pushing.
New lead free motherboard*
*Supply your own solder.
When I was in the UK I saw plenty of Land Rovers with aluminum bodies. I thought that was more suitable. So so light, and there seemed to be enough places that knew how to fix panels made from it that damage wasn't a big problem.
:).
By the exterior condition of many of them, fixing the damage wasn't an immediate priority anyway
Don't forget that stainless steel won't rust, but stains very easily just by touching it.
Like many things made for marketing I think. The name is a lot better than the reality. Titanium is COOL when it's on a blackbird (ok actually the stuff gets really hot) and the correct alloy is used for its purpose as an extreme exotic material. Use it on a Powerbook though and it's really just another metal, which dents easily and needs to be painted otherwise it too marks just by touch. But it still sounds cool.
Like the delorean. Stainless Steel is just COOL marketing wise, but it's a pain in the ass on a car.
At least it isnt a ricer.
Are you kidding? with that amount of neon, this is the ORIGINAL ricer!. All others are fakes!
"the only way you can work on it is by hitting one character at a time..."
Unless you have a transcriber. or voice recognition software.
By the looks of things, Lsongs is different to iTunes, and Lphoto is... quite similar. However looking at Picasa, it's a Windows 'version' of iPhoto.
I put 'version' in quotes there because they both have some very similar roots. There's cross seeding with a couple of the original coders, and neither app was completely coded/released before the other. They both seem to be coexisting quite well with no hint of legal action from either side.
If Linspire had given LPhoto a brushed metal interface and copied the icons one-for-one then I could see apple acting, but I honestly don't think these L-apps will do anything more than give Linspire some free publicity. I don't have any problem with that.
Wasn't there a compiler a few years ago that not only had an EULA which limited the type of code you could write, but also claimed some ownership of the code by the compiler vendor?
My memory is sketchy, so it may have been something else entirely, perhaps a code repository of some kind
MS seems to be doing a lot of this lately. It's nowhere near as open as F/OSS solutions, but it's freeing up access to what's possible with Windows far more than previously.
One of the reasons for the success of OSX is the general geek crowd's appreciation of it's *IX background, but without free dev tools that's nothing but another flavour of unix. Add the ability to dive into developing instantly and there's tens of thousands more developers working for the company.