My 27" picked-up-off-the-curb-and-fixed-a-bad-solder-join t TV has served me well for a decade now; when the vertical hold finally goes out, I'll swap it for a "new"(er) off-the-curb TV provided by one of those gotta-have-HDTV folks in the neighborhood. Repairing to the component level is FUN! (Besides, who really needs HD for the crap that passes for television programming? A decent analog set does fine, works with cable and my cheap DVD player, and will continue to do so for a long time.)
I'll buy an HDTV when there's something SO worth watching on a frequent basis that it exceeds the value of the books I read and the time I spend with my family. (Try reading aloud to your spouse while s/he does the dishes, or vice versa -- now, THAT'S entertainment!)
Which is why I agree with the parent post that these media formats are in serious trouble...
Or bare-die op amps and a microcontroller. The cost of die-bonding bare dice to a small PC board and epoxy-potting them is waaay lower than any kind of custom chip, and is very compact, with low up-front cost compared to custom chips.
The previous poster's suggestion is, of course, even better IF you can find a stock chip that has the requisite analog capabilities. You can do a lot with small-outline surface-mount packages for op amps and microcontrollers; there are many inexpensive, powerful options there. The cost of rolling your own chip is SO high that it justifies expending great effort in trying to do the job with off-the-shelf parts instead. (And you'll want to prototype the device for testing anyway prior to committing to wafer fab, so you'll likely do this step anyway.)
PIC processors are great, and the Atmel AVR series microcontrollers (which I use for projects written in C) are amazingly powerful, quite cheap, have on-board EEPROM and flash, and have some have built-in ADC and DACs, and a lovely small-footprint RTOS, AVRX, plus an excellent development board. You might also want to check out SDCC, the Small Device C Compiler, which supporrts lotsa different controllers. Write what you can in C, optimize the critical parts in assembler.
Don't underestimate the power of digital signal processing, even using standard microcontrollers, as an alternative to a large cluster of analog parts. And best of luck. The technical end is the easiest part; marketing your wonder widget will be much harder, as it deals with human irrationality and whim instead of clean, logical electronic design (you can see why I'm an engineer instead of a salesman...)
Yes, I know, the end users pay up the snoot. The networks themselves, however, are NOT as expensive as all that; note Google buying up (cheap!) dark fiber that nobody bothers to operate 'cause there's no money in it. Also recall all those Skype users geting VERY cheap long distance with VOIP and threatening the telco business models 'cause bandwidth over IP is so much cheaper than bandwidth over telco phone networks.
These circumstances suggest to me that bits over the wire are not intrinsically all that expensive, IF a market exists that isn't an effective monopoly. (Which is NOT the case in many places; so perhaps "networks are expensive" is less the problem than "monopolized markets are overpriced.")
Blimey, I *thought* that new construction on campus looked a bit familiar -- it was clearly designed by the famous architect Bergholt Stutley Johnson, (aka "Bloody Stupid Johnson")! I'll have to have a word with the Bursar...
There is a great deal of suspicion among software professionals that the recently-patched WMF vulnerability was a deliberate backdoor, whether with or without official sanction. Now, this may or may not actually be true, but the possibility that it IS, coupled with the (frankly, seriously limited) credibility of any Microsoft statement on the matter, surely damages Microsoft's reputation. As things stand, we'll NEVER KNOW for sure; this is not good for your credibility among technical early-adopters.
Given this state of affairs, would you be willing to show the before-and-after versions of the affected Windows source code to one or more well-regarded independent security experts for their analysis and public comment, under publicly-disclosed terms that both protect your IP and ensure credible and independent reporting and analysis? (I.e., provide enough of the code and tools to compile it and verify that it's the real thing, place an NDA on the code itself with permission to disclose relevant code excerpts under reasonable conditions, with no prior restraint on publishing the results of the audit, and with the full terms of the arrangement to be made public.)
I believe that agreeing to such an arrangement would go far to allay the damaging rumors of a deliberate back door, and would help to improve Microsoft's reputation as an honest software provider. Whatdo you think?
Instead of "Punch the monkey" banner ads, we might see something like "chase your moving Escape key around the keyboard" or "every damn key suddenly maps to "OK"...
Seriously, it does seem promising, but like most improved keyboard designs, we'll probably never see it adopted. It's a problem of human inertia.
Or, in terms applicable to Slashdot, many submitters OUGHT to make it likely that most GOOD stories will be submitted. Isn't that one of the principles of community development? Try looking at those "good" stories from frequent-filers and see how many were ALSO submitted by others. (Probably quite a few.) Are those who post the most submissions also posting the most unique-but-valuable submissions? If not, maybe you needn't worry about losing anything by capping submissions or acceptances or attributions or by anonymizing submissions entirely.
Seems to me you need to think carefully about what the problem is you are trying to solve. Then you can begin to address it. Poor problem formulations lead to poor solutions.
for basically the reasons you describe. I like Slashdot; it frequently has interesting, sometimes useful, information, and the noise level, while annoying, is almost low enough to be tolerable. (That's not a dig at Slashdot, it's a feature of any sizeable community...)
Problem is, there's no point in submitting stories to Slashdot. There's a VERY high probability that you'll never have a story accepted, even when the same story is later accepted from someone else. Twice in the same day. There are so many submitters, and the selection process is so bizarre in its outcome, that ever getting a story accepted nearly REQUIRES having no other life. That sort of thing is just not worth my time.
Cmdr. Taco: If you think I'm full of beans, let's see a histogram of # of users vs # of accepted stories (AND of rejected stories!); while the "0" and "1" bins will dominate, the plots will surely be interesting, and maybe even useful.
Nofollowing the submitter links makes excellent sense, given the built-in incentive to story-spam.
It doesn't take too many functional brain cells to conclude that a program named "SpyMon" that apparently describes itself or is described by others as "remote control software" is, in all probability, spyware. In fact, I think it would take a serious shortage of neurons to NOT draw that conclusion.
Next up: An EULA clause stating "The use of normal caution and/or logical thought proicesses is expressly prohibited in regard to the subject Software."
An ERP package is replaceable in ways a hardware device isn't; for a given hardware device, you NEED the driver or the device is just a paperweight, often an expensive paperweight that deprives you of functionality you may depend on. You can always obtain or write another ERP system (yes, it may be prohibitively difficult). If an OS update breaks the closed-source ERP program, you'd better hope the vendor still cares, but the rest of your system will still run. If an OS update breaks an open-source driver (which will be somewhat infrequent), chances of getting it back up are good even if the vendor's gone.
I take no position on whether the kernel driver policy is a good or bad idea, as I see arguments for both positions. What I *will* take a position on is the proposition that the present policy appears to work reasonably well, and is working better as time goes on. Hardware compatibility seems to be improving rather than getting worse.
Circumvention is only a crime if one circumvents a technological measure that effectively protects copyrighted content. Show of hands, folks: Anyone think this brain-dead scheme is "effective?"...... Thought not. RIAA, you can put your hand down now, nobody else has theirs up.
A scheme that's foiled by simply not using autorun is hardly effective, and it would be difficult even to convince a jury of 12 typical cheeseheads that it is.
Unfortunately, it's rather tough to fix, as we're being made into an "ownership society," and 95% of us fall into the category of "property" instead of the category of "owners."
Wanna know what it was like to live in Germany in the 1930's? If you've lived in the US for the past 4 years and have been paying ANY attention, then you already know...
You might be unaware that the studio is NOT the only one cutting films that are distributed. Movie houses, TV stations, private exhibitors, or anyone who gets their mitts on a physical print of a film may go snip-snip at it, generally without authorization, often to make it fit a predetermined time slot or to accommodate the prudery and prejudices of a target market (to say nothing of the sawbones surgery done to fit TV broadcast time slots; I suspect the networks do that). There is also the case where the film breaks and must be spliced, but that causes much less of a gap.
This phenomenon is probably less common now with digitally-distributed films, but it's definitely not uncommon to find that some goon who was previously showing the print you get when you rent a film for public performance has "edited" it, especially in the case of lesser-known or older films.
Remember the hoopla aboout restoring classic films where the master no longer exists? Much of that work consists of comparing various prints (that have been cut by various fools) to assemble a single complete print that's not missing anything, and selecting the least-damaged print to serve as the new master for each scene.
I, for one, would say that Spirited Away stands up well to comparison with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I see nothing to object to in the plotting and dialogue. Ultimately, it's all subjective. Of course, as Nessus said, sanity is defined by majority opinion; if that means I'm insane, I don't suffer from insanity, I REVEL in it.;-)
how would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document?
No, the question is, why would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document? The purpose of a word-processing document (text of, e.g., laws and regulations) is entirely different from the purpose of a video or audio record. No need to mix 'em in a single document that citizens need open access to. You can't print video, so keep it separate from things in printed form. It's much easier to access the pieces separately (video players and text processors don't fundamentally need to read one another's formats, and are available separately in platform-agnostic forms.)
Simplicity and ease of public access are best served by uncluttered document formats; all this every-dang-media-format-conceivable-in-a-single-do cument approach is poor design to begin with, but is VERY poor design for public documents.
Swami predicts: Microsoft will change its mind (either very quietly, or by claiming that this was always their intention) when the cost of stubbornly snubbing the open format becomes insupportable, as other governmental users start mandating open formats.
BTW, PJ on GrokLaw has an interesting piece on this issue.
As I understand the matter, Linus gets the massive sum of $0 from Linux. From this enormous war chest, he has to spend money on lawyers and C&D letters defending the use of the registered trade name; if he doesn't defend it, the trademark is lost, and anyone can use the name for any purpose they like, good or bad (as, for example, a hypothetical Microsoft Linux that had nothing to do with real Linux and just served to fragment the community).
Clearly, there is good reason for SOMEONE to protect the use of the Linux name, and this takes money. The numbers I've seen for the fees being charged to license the name for trade use do not appear unreasonable (and if you're using a Linux product someone else produced, you don't pay anything, plus there are the aforementioned fair-use exceptions), the folks the money goes to are an independent foundation that only manages the trade mark (nobody is being enriched by it), and there doesn't seem to be any other viable alternative if the trademark is to be protected from misuse.
With this in mind, I don't find Linus' actions the least bit disturbing or unreasonable.
Since BPL is, to put it mildly, not a good idea, how about encouraging the power companies to use their power-line rights-of-way to string coax or fiber for their long-haul datacom, and use either wired tie-ins or newer-generation WiFi (e.g., WiMAX) for end-user connections? The power companies get reliable comms (better than BPL, without the interference!) for their grid management systems, the ability to remotely read meters, and broadband capacity to sell to end users. Sure, it costs money to string wire, but the power companies are in the best position of anyone to do THAT...
I use Solaris and Linux on opposite ends of a data collection system. The Solaris end (on Ultra 5s with Solaris 7 and a desktop Solaris 9 system) is full of funny little bugs (like, Solaris 9 has lousy floppy disk handling and flaky CD-ROM handling, and a few other minor idiosyncracies.) The Linux end (and the desktop Linux systems I use have their own issues, but by and large they have fewer nits to pick and are easier to manage. I vote Linux here on the merits.
I agree that a space plane faces a problem of operating in two very different environments, but there are ways...
A two-part launch system is a good candidate for a practical, reusable "space plane" system. Scaled Composites' White Knight/SpaceShip One concept is a good example of this; use a plane for the first 30,000 feet and 300 MPH, and a rocket for the out-of-atmosphere leg, leaving the plane in the air where it belongs.
(Recall that the Shuttle uses most of its fuel load, representing a significant fraction of total vehicle mass, to get a few hundred feet of altitude and a few dozen MPH velocity. Eliminate that fraction of the fuel load, and the vehicle becomes MUCH lighter and smaller.)
Another example of this approach is Orbital Systems' small-satellite launcher, Pegasus; this system is a small rocket launched from under the wing of a B-52 at altitude. They've had several launch failures (space flight is HARD, I know, I'm a rocket scientist), but the concept is very, very sound.
Consider the Sony Minidisc player/recorders; the media are quite good (magneto-optic discs), and the ATRAC codec is good at best-quality, though not strictly lossless. Form factor is pocket-calculator-sized.
BIG caveat: Until Sony's recent change of heart, there was NO way to get digital data out of the MD player for idiot DRM reasons, though the capability exists from a technical standpoint. (Makes it annoying to use it as a recorder, you have to play back the audio to another capture device at 1X speed...) I'd suggest checking out whether Sony has decrippled the system before buying.
That's the only practical way to accomplish the task. Hacking a display card into it it NOT practical. Of course, then you need a remote PC to host the remote display, so hmmm...
It comes down to this: Don't expect the NSLU2 to function standalone; you need a remote console over Telnet or SSH or serial port, or use the Web interface in UnSlung, to operate the unit. (BTW, the "serial-port hack" is nothing overly extreme, a competent solderer can assemble it in short order.)
Given that Intel and AMD are basically the only major players in the x86 CPU market, there seems to be no significant difference between detecting Intel vs non-Intel and detecting Intel vs AMD.
But a MUCH more basic question is why Intel's compiler designers should give a soaring adlunar coition what chip the compiler is running on. If the compiler runs well on a real Intel chip, the job's done. THERE IS NO NEED to detect non-intel chips for ANY legitimate reason. If the third-party chip is *really* Intel-compatible, the compiler will run on it; if it doesn't run, too bad for that other chip, it loses fair and square. Why spend resources to work around the competition's mistakes when you can legitimately ignore them and make the competition pay to solve their problem?
"Hey, Intel compiler support guy, your compiler craps on a MyCompatibleCPU." "Sorry, sir, it runs on all Intel chips. Not our problem, talk to MyCompatibleCPUVendor or use a real Intel chip for guaranteed compatibility."
With this context in mind, it could be persuasively argued that ANY affirmative detection of non-Intel vs Intel CPUs is a sign of a probable anticompetitive act. If the "for Intel CPU" code runs as well or better on a non-Intel chip as the "for non-Intel CPU" code, then a smoking gun is present; prepare to see a painful and embarrassing (for Intel) discovery process.
Oddly enough, I solved that "set up the little tripod turrets and try not to get overrun" in a different way, that shows some interesting details.
In that scene, you trigger the Combine attack by jumping down off a balcony. I did 2 things very different from the designers' expectations: 1) I laboriously dragged the first two tame tripods I got with me through many rooms, all the way to that balcony (there are some FUN things you can do with the tripods, even before Alex hacks them, such as pointing one at the king ant-lion in the big shower room and letting the tripod take him out, or hiding safely behind a crate while the tripod I'm holding shoots the attacking mob of Combine toughs). 2) I then set up a tripod-crossfire trap at the top of the stairs leading up to the balcony with my "extra" tripods, remotely built the stack of boxes-to-climb using the gravity gun (before jumping off the balcony), and finally threw a tripod up onto the balcony as the attack started and climbed up after it (with no invisible barrier - different balcony than the one you were trying for, I think.)
The *really weird* thing was that, now being in a hallway with *one* very defensible entrance (especially with two extra tripods for crossfire), Combine soldiers kept spawning out of thin air in a dead-end dark corner behind me. (Stand a tripod in that corner and they're hosed, as they can no longer knock it down before it whacks them). Spawning baddies outta thin air in a cul-de-sac kinda breaks the illusion, methinks, so I was clearly supposed to be downstairs getting hammered.
Further proof that I was not supposed to solve the scene like this came when I whacked the last Combine soldier -- the Alex NPC appeared out of thin air in the upstairs hall I was in, right before my eyes, and failed to "see" me until I jumped down and away onto the first floor, at which time the scripted sequence continued.
Overall, I noticed several places throughout the game where I outwitted the scripting and went "behind the scenes", as evidenced by walkways with no top textures, round tanks with no back sides, and Combine soldiers I could see and shoot (at) but could not damage until I passed a certain point and they activated.
I found these interesting rather than annoying for the most part, and unlike some posters, I think I definitely got my money's worth out of the game.
BPL *also* interferes with public emergency service radios. So when there's an emergency, ALL the emergency responders can potentially be interfered with. What a great idea, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
My 27" picked-up-off-the-curb-and-fixed-a-bad-solder-join t TV has served me well for a decade now; when the vertical hold finally goes out, I'll swap it for a "new"(er) off-the-curb TV provided by one of those gotta-have-HDTV folks in the neighborhood. Repairing to the component level is FUN! (Besides, who really needs HD for the crap that passes for television programming? A decent analog set does fine, works with cable and my cheap DVD player, and will continue to do so for a long time.)
I'll buy an HDTV when there's something SO worth watching on a frequent basis that it exceeds the value of the books I read and the time I spend with my family. (Try reading aloud to your spouse while s/he does the dishes, or vice versa -- now, THAT'S entertainment!)
Which is why I agree with the parent post that these media formats are in serious trouble...
Or bare-die op amps and a microcontroller. The cost of die-bonding bare dice to a small PC board and epoxy-potting them is waaay lower than any kind of custom chip, and is very compact, with low up-front cost compared to custom chips.
The previous poster's suggestion is, of course, even better IF you can find a stock chip that has the requisite analog capabilities. You can do a lot with small-outline surface-mount packages for op amps and microcontrollers; there are many inexpensive, powerful options there. The cost of rolling your own chip is SO high that it justifies expending great effort in trying to do the job with off-the-shelf parts instead. (And you'll want to prototype the device for testing anyway prior to committing to wafer fab, so you'll likely do this step anyway.)
PIC processors are great, and the Atmel AVR series microcontrollers (which I use for projects written in C) are amazingly powerful, quite cheap, have on-board EEPROM and flash, and have some have built-in ADC and DACs, and a lovely small-footprint RTOS, AVRX, plus an excellent development board. You might also want to check out SDCC, the Small Device C Compiler, which supporrts lotsa different controllers. Write what you can in C, optimize the critical parts in assembler.
Don't underestimate the power of digital signal processing, even using standard microcontrollers, as an alternative to a large cluster of analog parts. And best of luck. The technical end is the easiest part; marketing your wonder widget will be much harder, as it deals with human irrationality and whim instead of clean, logical electronic design (you can see why I'm an engineer instead of a salesman...)
Yes, I know, the end users pay up the snoot. The networks themselves, however, are NOT as expensive as all that; note Google buying up (cheap!) dark fiber that nobody bothers to operate 'cause there's no money in it. Also recall all those Skype users geting VERY cheap long distance with VOIP and threatening the telco business models 'cause bandwidth over IP is so much cheaper than bandwidth over telco phone networks.
These circumstances suggest to me that bits over the wire are not intrinsically all that expensive, IF a market exists that isn't an effective monopoly. (Which is NOT the case in many places; so perhaps "networks are expensive" is less the problem than "monopolized markets are overpriced.")
Blimey, I *thought* that new construction on campus looked a bit familiar -- it was clearly designed by the famous architect Bergholt Stutley Johnson, (aka "Bloody Stupid Johnson")! I'll have to have a word with the Bursar...
There is a great deal of suspicion among software professionals that the recently-patched WMF vulnerability was a deliberate backdoor, whether with or without official sanction. Now, this may or may not actually be true, but the possibility that it IS, coupled with the (frankly, seriously limited) credibility of any Microsoft statement on the matter, surely damages Microsoft's reputation. As things stand, we'll NEVER KNOW for sure; this is not good for your credibility among technical early-adopters.
Given this state of affairs, would you be willing to show the before-and-after versions of the affected Windows source code to one or more well-regarded independent security experts for their analysis and public comment, under publicly-disclosed terms that both protect your IP and ensure credible and independent reporting and analysis? (I.e., provide enough of the code and tools to compile it and verify that it's the real thing, place an NDA on the code itself with permission to disclose relevant code excerpts under reasonable conditions, with no prior restraint on publishing the results of the audit, and with the full terms of the arrangement to be made public.)
I believe that agreeing to such an arrangement would go far to allay the damaging rumors of a deliberate back door, and would help to improve Microsoft's reputation as an honest software provider. Whatdo you think?
Instead of "Punch the monkey" banner ads, we might see something like "chase your moving Escape key around the keyboard" or "every damn key suddenly maps to "OK"...
Seriously, it does seem promising, but like most improved keyboard designs, we'll probably never see it adopted. It's a problem of human inertia.
Or, in terms applicable to Slashdot, many submitters OUGHT to make it likely that most GOOD stories will be submitted. Isn't that one of the principles of community development? Try looking at those "good" stories from frequent-filers and see how many were ALSO submitted by others. (Probably quite a few.) Are those who post the most submissions also posting the most unique-but-valuable submissions? If not, maybe you needn't worry about losing anything by capping submissions or acceptances or attributions or by anonymizing submissions entirely.
Seems to me you need to think carefully about what the problem is you are trying to solve. Then you can begin to address it. Poor problem formulations lead to poor solutions.
for basically the reasons you describe. I like Slashdot; it frequently has interesting, sometimes useful, information, and the noise level, while annoying, is almost low enough to be tolerable. (That's not a dig at Slashdot, it's a feature of any sizeable community...)
Problem is, there's no point in submitting stories to Slashdot. There's a VERY high probability that you'll never have a story accepted, even when the same story is later accepted from someone else. Twice in the same day. There are so many submitters, and the selection process is so bizarre in its outcome, that ever getting a story accepted nearly REQUIRES having no other life. That sort of thing is just not worth my time.
Cmdr. Taco: If you think I'm full of beans, let's see a histogram of # of users vs # of accepted stories (AND of rejected stories!); while the "0" and "1" bins will dominate, the plots will surely be interesting, and maybe even useful.
Nofollowing the submitter links makes excellent sense, given the built-in incentive to story-spam.
It doesn't take too many functional brain cells to conclude that a program named "SpyMon" that apparently describes itself or is described by others as "remote control software" is, in all probability, spyware. In fact, I think it would take a serious shortage of neurons to NOT draw that conclusion.
Next up: An EULA clause stating "The use of normal caution and/or logical thought proicesses is expressly prohibited in regard to the subject Software."
An ERP package is replaceable in ways a hardware device isn't; for a given hardware device, you NEED the driver or the device is just a paperweight, often an expensive paperweight that deprives you of functionality you may depend on. You can always obtain or write another ERP system (yes, it may be prohibitively difficult). If an OS update breaks the closed-source ERP program, you'd better hope the vendor still cares, but the rest of your system will still run. If an OS update breaks an open-source driver (which will be somewhat infrequent), chances of getting it back up are good even if the vendor's gone.
I take no position on whether the kernel driver policy is a good or bad idea, as I see arguments for both positions. What I *will* take a position on is the proposition that the present policy appears to work reasonably well, and is working better as time goes on. Hardware compatibility seems to be improving rather than getting worse.
Circumvention is only a crime if one circumvents a technological measure that effectively protects copyrighted content. Show of hands, folks: Anyone think this brain-dead scheme is "effective?" ... ... Thought not. RIAA, you can put your hand down now, nobody else has theirs up.
A scheme that's foiled by simply not using autorun is hardly effective, and it would be difficult even to convince a jury of 12 typical cheeseheads that it is.
Unfortunately, it's rather tough to fix, as we're being made into an "ownership society," and 95% of us fall into the category of "property" instead of the category of "owners."
Wanna know what it was like to live in Germany in the 1930's? If you've lived in the US for the past 4 years and have been paying ANY attention, then you already know...
You might be unaware that the studio is NOT the only one cutting films that are distributed. Movie houses, TV stations, private exhibitors, or anyone who gets their mitts on a physical print of a film may go snip-snip at it, generally without authorization, often to make it fit a predetermined time slot or to accommodate the prudery and prejudices of a target market (to say nothing of the sawbones surgery done to fit TV broadcast time slots; I suspect the networks do that). There is also the case where the film breaks and must be spliced, but that causes much less of a gap.
This phenomenon is probably less common now with digitally-distributed films, but it's definitely not uncommon to find that some goon who was previously showing the print you get when you rent a film for public performance has "edited" it, especially in the case of lesser-known or older films.
Remember the hoopla aboout restoring classic films where the master no longer exists? Much of that work consists of comparing various prints (that have been cut by various fools) to assemble a single complete print that's not missing anything, and selecting the least-damaged print to serve as the new master for each scene.
I, for one, would say that Spirited Away stands up well to comparison with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I see nothing to object to in the plotting and dialogue. Ultimately, it's all subjective. Of course, as Nessus said, sanity is defined by majority opinion; if that means I'm insane, I don't suffer from insanity, I REVEL in it. ;-)
how would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document?
o cument approach is poor design to begin with, but is VERY poor design for public documents.
No, the question is, why would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document? The purpose of a word-processing document (text of, e.g., laws and regulations) is entirely different from the purpose of a video or audio record. No need to mix 'em in a single document that citizens need open access to. You can't print video, so keep it separate from things in printed form. It's much easier to access the pieces separately (video players and text processors don't fundamentally need to read one another's formats, and are available separately in platform-agnostic forms.)
Simplicity and ease of public access are best served by uncluttered document formats; all this every-dang-media-format-conceivable-in-a-single-d
Swami predicts: Microsoft will change its mind (either very quietly, or by claiming that this was always their intention) when the cost of stubbornly snubbing the open format becomes insupportable, as other governmental users start mandating open formats.
The Register's BOFH column has useful guidelines for this situation, cunningly disguised as satirical fiction...
BTW, PJ on GrokLaw has an interesting piece on this issue.
As I understand the matter, Linus gets the massive sum of $0 from Linux. From this enormous war chest, he has to spend money on lawyers and C&D letters defending the use of the registered trade name; if he doesn't defend it, the trademark is lost, and anyone can use the name for any purpose they like, good or bad (as, for example, a hypothetical Microsoft Linux that had nothing to do with real Linux and just served to fragment the community).
Clearly, there is good reason for SOMEONE to protect the use of the Linux name, and this takes money. The numbers I've seen for the fees being charged to license the name for trade use do not appear unreasonable (and if you're using a Linux product someone else produced, you don't pay anything, plus there are the aforementioned fair-use exceptions), the folks the money goes to are an independent foundation that only manages the trade mark (nobody is being enriched by it), and there doesn't seem to be any other viable alternative if the trademark is to be protected from misuse.
With this in mind, I don't find Linus' actions the least bit disturbing or unreasonable.
Since BPL is, to put it mildly, not a good idea, how about encouraging the power companies to use their power-line rights-of-way to string coax or fiber for their long-haul datacom, and use either wired tie-ins or newer-generation WiFi (e.g., WiMAX) for end-user connections? The power companies get reliable comms (better than BPL, without the interference!) for their grid management systems, the ability to remotely read meters, and broadband capacity to sell to end users. Sure, it costs money to string wire, but the power companies are in the best position of anyone to do THAT...
I use Solaris and Linux on opposite ends of a data collection system. The Solaris end (on Ultra 5s with Solaris 7 and a desktop Solaris 9 system) is full of funny little bugs (like, Solaris 9 has lousy floppy disk handling and flaky CD-ROM handling, and a few other minor idiosyncracies.) The Linux end (and the desktop Linux systems I use have their own issues, but by and large they have fewer nits to pick and are easier to manage. I vote Linux here on the merits.
I agree that a space plane faces a problem of operating in two very different environments, but there are ways...
A two-part launch system is a good candidate for a practical, reusable "space plane" system. Scaled Composites' White Knight/SpaceShip One concept is a good example of this; use a plane for the first 30,000 feet and 300 MPH, and a rocket for the out-of-atmosphere leg, leaving the plane in the air where it belongs.
(Recall that the Shuttle uses most of its fuel load, representing a significant fraction of total vehicle mass, to get a few hundred feet of altitude and a few dozen MPH velocity. Eliminate that fraction of the fuel load, and the vehicle becomes MUCH lighter and smaller.)
Another example of this approach is Orbital Systems' small-satellite launcher, Pegasus; this system is a small rocket launched from under the wing of a B-52 at altitude. They've had several launch failures (space flight is HARD, I know, I'm a rocket scientist), but the concept is very, very sound.
Consider the Sony Minidisc player/recorders; the media are quite good (magneto-optic discs), and the ATRAC codec is good at best-quality, though not strictly lossless. Form factor is pocket-calculator-sized.
BIG caveat: Until Sony's recent change of heart, there was NO way to get digital data out of the MD player for idiot DRM reasons, though the capability exists from a technical standpoint. (Makes it annoying to use it as a recorder, you have to play back the audio to another capture device at 1X speed...) I'd suggest checking out whether Sony has decrippled the system before buying.
That's the only practical way to accomplish the task. Hacking a display card into it it NOT practical. Of course, then you need a remote PC to host the remote display, so hmmm...
It comes down to this: Don't expect the NSLU2 to function standalone; you need a remote console over Telnet or SSH or serial port, or use the Web interface in UnSlung, to operate the unit. (BTW, the "serial-port hack" is nothing overly extreme, a competent solderer can assemble it in short order.)
Given that Intel and AMD are basically the only major players in the x86 CPU market, there seems to be no significant difference between detecting Intel vs non-Intel and detecting Intel vs AMD.
But a MUCH more basic question is why Intel's compiler designers should give a soaring adlunar coition what chip the compiler is running on. If the compiler runs well on a real Intel chip, the job's done. THERE IS NO NEED to detect non-intel chips for ANY legitimate reason. If the third-party chip is *really* Intel-compatible, the compiler will run on it; if it doesn't run, too bad for that other chip, it loses fair and square. Why spend resources to work around the competition's mistakes when you can legitimately ignore them and make the competition pay to solve their problem?
"Hey, Intel compiler support guy, your compiler craps on a MyCompatibleCPU." "Sorry, sir, it runs on all Intel chips. Not our problem, talk to MyCompatibleCPUVendor or use a real Intel chip for guaranteed compatibility."
With this context in mind, it could be persuasively argued that ANY affirmative detection of non-Intel vs Intel CPUs is a sign of a probable anticompetitive act. If the "for Intel CPU" code runs as well or better on a non-Intel chip as the "for non-Intel CPU" code, then a smoking gun is present; prepare to see a painful and embarrassing (for Intel) discovery process.
Oddly enough, I solved that "set up the little tripod turrets and try not to get overrun" in a different way, that shows some interesting details.
In that scene, you trigger the Combine attack by jumping down off a balcony. I did 2 things very different from the designers' expectations: 1) I laboriously dragged the first two tame tripods I got with me through many rooms, all the way to that balcony (there are some FUN things you can do with the tripods, even before Alex hacks them, such as pointing one at the king ant-lion in the big shower room and letting the tripod take him out, or hiding safely behind a crate while the tripod I'm holding shoots the attacking mob of Combine toughs). 2) I then set up a tripod-crossfire trap at the top of the stairs leading up to the balcony with my "extra" tripods, remotely built the stack of boxes-to-climb using the gravity gun (before jumping off the balcony), and finally threw a tripod up onto the balcony as the attack started and climbed up after it (with no invisible barrier - different balcony than the one you were trying for, I think.)
The *really weird* thing was that, now being in a hallway with *one* very defensible entrance (especially with two extra tripods for crossfire), Combine soldiers kept spawning out of thin air in a dead-end dark corner behind me. (Stand a tripod in that corner and they're hosed, as they can no longer knock it down before it whacks them). Spawning baddies outta thin air in a cul-de-sac kinda breaks the illusion, methinks, so I was clearly supposed to be downstairs getting hammered.
Further proof that I was not supposed to solve the scene like this came when I whacked the last Combine soldier -- the Alex NPC appeared out of thin air in the upstairs hall I was in, right before my eyes, and failed to "see" me until I jumped down and away onto the first floor, at which time the scripted sequence continued.
Overall, I noticed several places throughout the game where I outwitted the scripting and went "behind the scenes", as evidenced by walkways with no top textures, round tanks with no back sides, and Combine soldiers I could see and shoot (at) but could not damage until I passed a certain point and they activated.
I found these interesting rather than annoying for the most part, and unlike some posters, I think I definitely got my money's worth out of the game.
BPL *also* interferes with public emergency service radios. So when there's an emergency, ALL the emergency responders can potentially be interfered with. What a great idea, eh?