but how long does it really take to turn a profit on a great idea? 5? 10 years?
Let's see....
It's already been discussed elsewhere in this thread that the MP3 patents expire in 2010. Assuming a 25-year patent life (I don't know Italian law), that means they were issued around 1985.
How many MP3 players do you know of that existed in 1985? For that matter, how many people had computers on their desk which could encode an audio CD in a reasonable time?
Obviously I don't know how SanDisk make their business decisions, but I'd imagine that they'd far rather pay a licensing fee, use MP3 and produce an audio player which may have a target market slightly greater than about 1% of the population, than pay no licensing fee and reduce their target market to a few nerds on slashdot.
IIRC, the MP3 algorithm sets various parameters based on each individual track - so playing a track gapless will usually result in a noticeable audio artefact.
Why you couldn't just encode an entire CD as one big MP3 and then split it up, however, I don't know.
Second, if you are going to use LDAP like this, make sure the bind is being conducted over SSL
You've missed something. If you're using LDAP as the backend authentication mechanism for anything, you also need to ensure that the services that are using LDAP as their authentication mechanism communicate on a secure connection as well, or you're back to square one.
and somewhat pointless if you already have Kerberos setup
What does Kerberos get you over and above LDAP+SASL?
OpenLDAP is great except that its support for a number of (admittedly optional) plugins is lousy, like most LDAP implementations the ASN.1 used for the schema definitions is subtly different to everyone elses, it doesn't support multi-master replication, it has this awkward tendency to leave the most appallingly unintelligible logs, its single-master replication support isn't exactly stellar and its mailing lists can be downright hostile to the uninitiated.
(Disclaimer: I use OpenLDAP myself. But it is so far behind almost every other directory server out there in terms of polish that it would be a downright lie to describe it as "great". The main points in its favour are it's free and most other free software which supports LDAP supplies schemas suitable for, and is tested against OpenLDAP.)
The main reason for that is that nothing really tries to explain what LDAP is.
Which is a shame really, because once you know it's quite easy to understand.
It's a tree-based database which may store objects as well as just text.
Because it's tree based, you don't generally search it like you do with an SQL database (SELECT record FROM table WHERE condition). Instead, you already know at least roughly where what you're interested will be, so you say "starting from this point in the tree, find me this type of record with this value".
TBH, it's easier to explain in person with a whiteboard than it is to write - which is probably why so much of the documentation is so lousy;) However, if you can stomach it, this seems to be as good an introduction as any - though it's still pretty hairy:
Karma Whoring is a traditional/. method of increasing your slashdor karma by taking advantage of being early to spot the article and posting something informative about it, generally lifted straight from Wikipedia, in the hope of being modded Informative.
Municipal services (such as domestic rubbish collection, street lights, road maintenance, planning permission) and social housing are all handled by departments within the council. Funding comes from a number of sources, but ultimately it's 90% tax in some form. (You do have to pay rent on council housing)
The purpose of the tags is probably not to investigate buying habits. More likely, it will be combined with weighing equipment on the lorries which take the rubbish away to find out who's throwing out how much. Ostensibly this is to ensure that everyone is using the various recycling schemes properly, though I wouldn't be surprised if it culminates with being charged by weight for the amount of waste produced.
Parents with young children (how exactly do you recycle a nappy/diaper?), those without transport (not all councils take all recyclable material; some won't even take glass) will probably be the most affected by this - and, as you say, most people who fall into both brackets are poorer and so will be screwed harder.
What they've done there is a variation on an old design idea - that the UI should have a number of "modes", ranging from "Just give me the most common options" (for newbies) to "Give me the whole unvarnished lot" (for the more experienced).
Windows XP Control Panel already does this. I'd expect Vista to do something similar - maybe it's just hidden somewhere?
I don't know about US sets, but here in Europe they've redesigned all the beams that formed the major part of most technic sets so they don't have any studs on them - so they can't be used in conjunction with "traditional" lego pieces.
Not terribly fashionable (if fashion can be said to apply to household appliances), and insanely expensive next to anything you will see on the mass market, but my mother is on her second in 22 years. The first she bought new in 1984 and traded it in for a newer model in 1996. It was still going strong, but she was offered more in trade-in value than she originally paid for it. I recently bought a reconditioned unit from circa 1998 for about 10% of the new price and it looks and works like new.
The only problem is you have to be careful, or those Tom & Jerry cartoons where Jerry sucks Tom up into the vacuum cleaner from halfway across the room may actually happen - my cat still hasn't forgiven me.
You need to be prepared to shut the system down before you do the swap, because even if the drives are hot swappable you may still have open files or databases which won't have a clean copy on the mirror.
The thing you're missing is that disk space starts to look rather expensive amd not very reliable when you have to keep full (not incremental) backups of a large database for any length of time. "Any length of time" in this case being 10 or 20 years.
I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a sick fiend then viewing this material can push him over that line
Right. Because someone who's prepared to go to the extreme of committing murder wouldn't dare download illegal porn, would they?
And my point was, in this case it's in the prosecution's interest for things to go "missing" because it means a default judgement - always assuming that the defendant does a lousy job of making things go missing, which in 98% of computer-related "destroy the evidence" cases could be fairly safely assumed to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
but how long does it really take to turn a profit on a great idea? 5? 10 years?
Let's see....
It's already been discussed elsewhere in this thread that the MP3 patents expire in 2010. Assuming a 25-year patent life (I don't know Italian law), that means they were issued around 1985.
How many MP3 players do you know of that existed in 1985? For that matter, how many people had computers on their desk which could encode an audio CD in a reasonable time?
Obviously I don't know how SanDisk make their business decisions, but I'd imagine that they'd far rather pay a licensing fee, use MP3 and produce an audio player which may have a target market slightly greater than about 1% of the population, than pay no licensing fee and reduce their target market to a few nerds on slashdot.
ICBW, IANAPD. (I am not a product designer)
IIRC, the MP3 algorithm sets various parameters based on each individual track - so playing a track gapless will usually result in a noticeable audio artefact.
Why you couldn't just encode an entire CD as one big MP3 and then split it up, however, I don't know.
You've missed something. If you're using LDAP as the backend authentication mechanism for anything, you also need to ensure that the services that are using LDAP as their authentication mechanism communicate on a secure connection as well, or you're back to square one.
What does Kerberos get you over and above LDAP+SASL?
One thing I still don't understand is what does LDAP+Kerberos give me that LDAP+SSL or LDAP+SASL doesn't already offer?
OpenLDAP is great except that its support for a number of (admittedly optional) plugins is lousy, like most LDAP implementations the ASN.1 used for the schema definitions is subtly different to everyone elses, it doesn't support multi-master replication, it has this awkward tendency to leave the most appallingly unintelligible logs, its single-master replication support isn't exactly stellar and its mailing lists can be downright hostile to the uninitiated.
(Disclaimer: I use OpenLDAP myself. But it is so far behind almost every other directory server out there in terms of polish that it would be a downright lie to describe it as "great". The main points in its favour are it's free and most other free software which supports LDAP supplies schemas suitable for, and is tested against OpenLDAP.)
The main reason for that is that nothing really tries to explain what LDAP is.
;) However, if you can stomach it, this seems to be as good an introduction as any - though it's still pretty hairy:
Which is a shame really, because once you know it's quite easy to understand.
It's a tree-based database which may store objects as well as just text.
Because it's tree based, you don't generally search it like you do with an SQL database (SELECT record FROM table WHERE condition). Instead, you already know at least roughly where what you're interested will be, so you say "starting from this point in the tree, find me this type of record with this value".
TBH, it's easier to explain in person with a whiteboard than it is to write - which is probably why so much of the documentation is so lousy
http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap/ch2/
This is the Daily Mail we're talking about.
Basically, the Weekly World News with longer words and fewer pictures.
Wouldn't it have been simpler to distribute un-linked object code which the compiler could link in when needed?
Either that or hire the Russians as your security advisors.
Karma Whoring is a traditional /. method of increasing your slashdor karma by taking advantage of being early to spot the article and posting something informative about it, generally lifted straight from Wikipedia, in the hope of being modded Informative.
Telephone companies routinely oversell their own networks. I've had busy signals before I've even finished dialling the number.
Though unlike ISPs, in the UK telcos are fairly tightly regulated so it's not nearly such a problem.
Until they start charging everyone according to how much their rubbish weighs, with no corresponding drop in council tax.
Both.
Municipal services (such as domestic rubbish collection, street lights, road maintenance, planning permission) and social housing are all handled by departments within the council. Funding comes from a number of sources, but ultimately it's 90% tax in some form. (You do have to pay rent on council housing)
The purpose of the tags is probably not to investigate buying habits. More likely, it will be combined with weighing equipment on the lorries which take the rubbish away to find out who's throwing out how much. Ostensibly this is to ensure that everyone is using the various recycling schemes properly, though I wouldn't be surprised if it culminates with being charged by weight for the amount of waste produced.
Parents with young children (how exactly do you recycle a nappy/diaper?), those without transport (not all councils take all recyclable material; some won't even take glass) will probably be the most affected by this - and, as you say, most people who fall into both brackets are poorer and so will be screwed harder.
Yes, but there aren't any studs on the top and there are no holes for the studs to press into on the bottom.
What they've done there is a variation on an old design idea - that the UI should have a number of "modes", ranging from "Just give me the most common options" (for newbies) to "Give me the whole unvarnished lot" (for the more experienced).
Windows XP Control Panel already does this. I'd expect Vista to do something similar - maybe it's just hidden somewhere?
I don't know about US sets, but here in Europe they've redesigned all the beams that formed the major part of most technic sets so they don't have any studs on them - so they can't be used in conjunction with "traditional" lego pieces.
I honestly have yet to find a vacumn cleaner these days that work beyond a few years.
If you will say something like that....
http://www.kirby.com/
Not terribly fashionable (if fashion can be said to apply to household appliances), and insanely expensive next to anything you will see on the mass market, but my mother is on her second in 22 years. The first she bought new in 1984 and traded it in for a newer model in 1996. It was still going strong, but she was offered more in trade-in value than she originally paid for it. I recently bought a reconditioned unit from circa 1998 for about 10% of the new price and it looks and works like new.
The only problem is you have to be careful, or those Tom & Jerry cartoons where Jerry sucks Tom up into the vacuum cleaner from halfway across the room may actually happen - my cat still hasn't forgiven me.
Be reasonable. This is /. When was the last time anyone here had a woman ask something like that?
Alternatively you could send it to all managers and watch productivity shoot through the roof.
You need to be prepared to shut the system down before you do the swap, because even if the drives are hot swappable you may still have open files or databases which won't have a clean copy on the mirror.
Probably not a problem for a home user, though.
The thing you're missing is that disk space starts to look rather expensive amd not very reliable when you have to keep full (not incremental) backups of a large database for any length of time. "Any length of time" in this case being 10 or 20 years.
I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a sick fiend then viewing this material can push him over that line
Right. Because someone who's prepared to go to the extreme of committing murder wouldn't dare download illegal porn, would they?
like dressing up a nightclub bouncer in a pixie costume.
This actually sounds like quite a good idea to me.
And my point was, in this case it's in the prosecution's interest for things to go "missing" because it means a default judgement - always assuming that the defendant does a lousy job of making things go missing, which in 98% of computer-related "destroy the evidence" cases could be fairly safely assumed to happen.