This was related to me recently, and now I really am starting to believe it. Turns out the only actual purpose of Comdex & related shows is to get companies to releas their products on time. After all, you've got to have _something_ to demo... Too bad it also causes many companies to release prematurely.
Or perhaps that's good: release early and often, right?
I think the possibilities for a Theory of Everything within our lifetime is pretty exciting. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the subject (instead of just spouting anti-theory crud) should check out a book I'm reading now called The Elegant Universe. It's all about recent attempts to solve the major problem with modern theoretical physics, namely, the incompatibility of point-particle quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity.
I can't pretend to understand all of it, but I think it's by far the clearest explanation of string theory and its consequences I have ever seen.
Today's fascinating insight: according to string theory, our universe has as many as 9 spatial dimensions. Furthermore, the universe cannot keep contracting forever - it has a theoretical minimum size. Cool, eh?
As also stated earlier, this means that either way the results come in, we will have made history. It will just be a matter of how much history.
Perhaps the history of pages that were so stupid they managed to make it onto/. out of... mercy? or is it just that same emotion that makes people stop on the side of the road to watch car crashes?
right, but most closed-source software in mission-critical situations is pretty solid because it was written with liability in mind from day one. It's not a question of MS getting sued if NT crashes (who could be so stupid as to let their life depend on that!?!) it's a question of some small random proprietary company getting sued. And I think these small companies are able to do what they do pretty well. A huge open-source "general" medical OS I think might not be such a great idea, unless it was written with accountability in mind from the start.
Will it be legal to export Diablo ][? I'm pretty sure it should be classified as a munition - the first one stopped all work in my entire building for at least a month:)
Wonder if the NSA will allow exports of this new "strong programming" version of the daemon. I mean, if American Nationalist Loyalists can't just hack into any system they want, this seems to me like a Bad Thing. Certainly a security threat:)
This is an especially difficult problem for students, who generally have no idea what they are worth or what their options are. This was one of the primary motivating factors that contributed to my leaving school (temporarily) to start work on a company called Catalyst Recruiting. I won't give the official blurb here, but I'd like to invite anybody who's interested to come take a look. We specialize in finding alternative opportunities for students - abroad, in hi-tech startups, hedgefunds, etc.
our model is quite different from someone like Monster.com - we use a profile database (incidentally built with 100% Linux-based free and open-source software) to let companies come to candidates and not the other way around.
Ok, that's enough of a plug. Thanks for listening...
Upon seeing the headline for this story, I was kind of disappointed. C'mon, everybody and their mother knows about Enigma (the overhype on Cryptonomiconomicanotoriffic should have been enough to take care of that) - but who knows anything about the German code-breaking (or code-making) effort.
From what I've heard, what's remarkable about what the Allies did is that they broke a supposedly unbreakable code. Who wrote that code? Why was it so good? Anybody know about this side of the story?
I have all along maintained that this case is very dangerous, primarily because of its precedent-setting nature. If the case goes to the Supreme Court along a fast track, the danger is magnified. I don't like MS's practices any more than you do, but I don't really want the whole Internet/technology sector subject to a legal ruling that is driven by a lot of anti-MS public sentiment. I'd much rather have a series of incremental FoFs from federal judges than an all-or-nothing ruling from the SC.
Does this mean that MS might get off a littl easier? Yup. But that's a price I'm willing to pay in order to protect the industry's long-term innovative rights.
Would any of our foreign friends be willing to host a mirror? Perhaps it's time to move the CSS part of the DVD project outside the US. It would still be legal to write code for viewing DVDs that just had a big hole for a "black-box" CSS decryption part, right?
And besides, what does the NSA care about CSS? If it's just the "entertainment industry" & pals, then there's no real danger.
Funny how normally there is a huge uproar when a University acts against student freedoms for the sake of a corporation. I happen to think this is a really disgusting example. Why should CMU buckled under to pressure from the RIAA? What power does the RIAA have? They going to threaten to stop selling CDs to CMU students? Give me a break. RIAA just wants to protect their collusion-supported "monopoly" - go have the FTC bust them up.
Of "innovative" - it's not clear to me why we on/. are so high and mighty that we get to make thsi normative decision, namely what constitutes innovation. Surprise, surprise, all we're interested in is engineering excellence.
Perhaps true innovation is the ability to market engineered products to non-engineers. Oops, I think that might count as flamebait...
I hope someone who is more knowledgeable about this will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a GUID just a part of MS's Common Object Model. My understanding was that each component in a COM system is assigned a GUID. In order to access other components on the system, you need to ask the system for them by GUID instead of by name (as in a smart system like Java). Seems like this could just be a some software engineer out there trying to make RealPlayer DCOM compatible or some such. Anyone know anything about that possibility?
I agree, except for one important point. It's equally important that the rules be set ahead of time so that all players will have an equal chance to decide whether or not their actions fall within the rules or not. In this case, I think the US anti-trust laws are so incredibly vague that there was no way MS could have known whether or not this case would be resolved. If, in fact, we are going to as a society outlaw MS-style innovation, we should pass a new law about it - and then only prosecute companies that violate the law in the future. The existing law is too vague.
Which seems to me to be what is at the heart of this issue. The previous post, which you'd do well to re-read, makes just this point. MS should be free to innovate, as should all companies.
It's not really important, but do you really think that if and when some non-MS operating system achieves the kind of market share that Windows enjoys currently that the government won't feel obligated to "watch out for consumers" by regulating what it can do?
In any event, I think the appeals process will be far more lengthy than anyone seems to want to admit. Oh well...
This judge has a serious history of anti-Microsoft sentiment, and so it is no surprise to anyone (least of all MS) that he would "find facts" in this way. Microsoft has been gearing up for this for some time, and IMHO is waiting for the appeal process to really win the case.
Besides, government regulation will be every bit as stifling to innovation as MS ever was. Just wait till Linux is on 99% of desktops...
This is 100% correct. MP3 is still thriving, and not (in my opinion anyway) harming the music industry. Priacy only occurs in cases where collusion or some other force damages a free market environment (close-source software is another good example).
MP3.com ran a terrific article on this a while ago, called "Why drug dealers don't sell aspirin" - here's the URL:
I can see it now: Corel CEO thinks about loading up his email and telling their tech guys to work on a new open source product. 2500 people wrote in to/. to tell us they intercepted this thought process using their transmolecularsuperjorgenatronix device they built in 3rd period metal shop.
Slashdot Mirror
This was related to me recently, and now I really am starting to believe it. Turns out the only actual purpose of Comdex & related shows is to get companies to releas their products on time. After all, you've got to have _something_ to demo... Too bad it also causes many companies to release prematurely.
Or perhaps that's good: release early and often, right?
I think the possibilities for a Theory of Everything within our lifetime is pretty exciting. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the subject (instead of just spouting anti-theory crud) should check out a book I'm reading now called The Elegant Universe. It's all about recent attempts to solve the major problem with modern theoretical physics, namely, the incompatibility of point-particle quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity.
I can't pretend to understand all of it, but I think it's by far the clearest explanation of string theory and its consequences I have ever seen.
Today's fascinating insight: according to string theory, our universe has as many as 9 spatial dimensions. Furthermore, the universe cannot keep contracting forever - it has a theoretical minimum size. Cool, eh?
As also stated earlier,
/. out of ... mercy? or is it just that same emotion that makes people stop on the side of the road to watch car crashes?
this means that either way the results come in, we will have made history. It will just
be a matter of how much history.
Perhaps the history of pages that were so stupid they managed to make it onto
Here's the URL:
m l
http://www.zdnet.com/swlib/hotfiles/password.ht
If I remember correctly, ZDNet offers a free piece of software for solving just this problem. I'll go see if I can dig up the URL...
right, but most closed-source software in mission-critical situations is pretty solid because it was written with liability in mind from day one. It's not a question of MS getting sued if NT crashes (who could be so stupid as to let their life depend on that!?!) it's a question of some small random proprietary company getting sued. And I think these small companies are able to do what they do pretty well. A huge open-source "general" medical OS I think might not be such a great idea, unless it was written with accountability in mind from the start.
Will it be legal to export Diablo ][? I'm pretty sure it should be classified as a munition - the first one stopped all work in my entire building for at least a month :)
Wonder if the NSA will allow exports of this new "strong programming" version of the daemon. I mean, if American Nationalist Loyalists can't just hack into any system they want, this seems to me like a Bad Thing. Certainly a security threat :)
This is an especially difficult problem for students, who generally have no idea what they are worth or what their options are. This was one of the primary motivating factors that contributed to my leaving school (temporarily) to start work on a company called Catalyst Recruiting. I won't give the official blurb here, but I'd like to invite anybody who's interested to come take a look. We specialize in finding alternative opportunities for students - abroad, in hi-tech startups, hedgefunds, etc.
our model is quite different from someone like Monster.com - we use a profile database (incidentally built with 100% Linux-based free and open-source software) to let companies come to candidates and not the other way around.
Ok, that's enough of a plug. Thanks for listening...
Eric Ries
CIO
Catalyst Recruiting
Upon seeing the headline for this story, I was kind of disappointed. C'mon, everybody and their mother knows about Enigma (the overhype on Cryptonomiconomicanotoriffic should have been enough to take care of that) - but who knows anything about the German code-breaking (or code-making) effort.
From what I've heard, what's remarkable about what the Allies did is that they broke a supposedly unbreakable code. Who wrote that code? Why was it so good? Anybody know about this side of the story?
Can I play my favorite arcade games on it yet? I heard that after the Kodak camera this was now a standard required feature for all hi-tech toys :)
I have all along maintained that this case is very dangerous, primarily because of its precedent-setting nature. If the case goes to the Supreme Court along a fast track, the danger is magnified. I don't like MS's practices any more than you do, but I don't really want the whole Internet/technology sector subject to a legal ruling that is driven by a lot of anti-MS public sentiment. I'd much rather have a series of incremental FoFs from federal judges than an all-or-nothing ruling from the SC.
Does this mean that MS might get off a littl easier? Yup. But that's a price I'm willing to pay in order to protect the industry's long-term innovative rights.
Would any of our foreign friends be willing to host a mirror? Perhaps it's time to move the CSS part of the DVD project outside the US. It would still be legal to write code for viewing DVDs that just had a big hole for a "black-box" CSS decryption part, right?
And besides, what does the NSA care about CSS? If it's just the "entertainment industry" & pals, then there's no real danger.
Funny how normally there is a huge uproar when a University acts against student freedoms for the sake of a corporation. I happen to think this is a really disgusting example. Why should CMU buckled under to pressure from the RIAA? What power does the RIAA have? They going to threaten to stop selling CDs to CMU students? Give me a break. RIAA just wants to protect their collusion-supported "monopoly" - go have the FTC bust them up.
Is it time for someone to write a ESR letter-generating bot? Maybe you could even do it like mad-libs...
Of "innovative" - it's not clear to me why we on /. are so high and mighty that we get to make thsi normative decision, namely what constitutes innovation. Surprise, surprise, all we're interested in is engineering excellence.
Perhaps true innovation is the ability to market engineered products to non-engineers. Oops, I think that might count as flamebait...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/331815.asp?cp1=1
See, we're not biased for MS at all. Seriously. Really. FoReal (tm)
I hope someone who is more knowledgeable about this will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a GUID just a part of MS's Common Object Model. My understanding was that each component in a COM system is assigned a GUID. In order to access other components on the system, you need to ask the system for them by GUID instead of by name (as in a smart system like Java). Seems like this could just be a some software engineer out there trying to make RealPlayer DCOM compatible or some such. Anyone know anything about that possibility?
I agree, except for one important point. It's equally important that the rules be set ahead of time so that all players will have an equal chance to decide whether or not their actions fall within the rules or not. In this case, I think the US anti-trust laws are so incredibly vague that there was no way MS could have known whether or not this case would be resolved. If, in fact, we are going to as a society outlaw MS-style innovation, we should pass a new law about it - and then only prosecute companies that violate the law in the future. The existing law is too vague.
Which seems to me to be what is at the heart of this issue. The previous post, which you'd do well to re-read, makes just this point. MS should be free to innovate, as should all companies.
Very classy argumentative style. But I digress...
It's not really important, but do you really think that if and when some non-MS operating system achieves the kind of market share that Windows enjoys currently that the government won't feel obligated to "watch out for consumers" by regulating what it can do?
In any event, I think the appeals process will be far more lengthy than anyone seems to want to admit. Oh well...
This judge has a serious history of anti-Microsoft sentiment, and so it is no surprise to anyone (least of all MS) that he would "find facts" in this way. Microsoft has been gearing up for this for some time, and IMHO is waiting for the appeal process to really win the case.
Besides, government regulation will be every bit as stifling to innovation as MS ever was. Just wait till Linux is on 99% of desktops...
This is 100% correct. MP3 is still thriving, and not (in my opinion anyway) harming the music industry. Priacy only occurs in cases where collusion or some other force damages a free market environment (close-source software is another good example).
MP3.com ran a terrific article on this a while ago, called "Why drug dealers don't sell aspirin" - here's the URL:
http://bboard.mp3.com/mp3/ubb/F orum8/HTML/000015.html
What happens when the LKCDA crashes during a system crash? Who recovers from that??
I can see it now: Corel CEO thinks about loading up his email and telling their tech guys to work on a new open source product. 2500 people wrote in to /. to tell us they intercepted this thought process using their transmolecularsuperjorgenatronix device they built in 3rd period metal shop.
News at 5.