At this rate this patent wont even be an issue when it IS rejected (for the absolute final time). The internet will be a colaborative thought process like the Borg collective so we wont be using "browsers" to read anything on it.
I forsee new websites being launched. Like "Where Not to Move" detailing the laws of diffrent states so people know where they can move to where their propery really is theirs and not subject to having the rug pulled out from under them (literally) by commercial developers.
I think a lot of this hinges on whether AOL adopts sender ID or not. AOL users like to throw fits over not being able to send email to people. In fact, having worked at an ISP that was blacklisted by AOL a few times, many internet users see the ability to send email to everyone else as some sort of right. Like ISP's have a legal responsability to accept and deliver each other's email or something.
AOL might adopt Sender-ID to appease all their customer's who want to communicate with Hotmail users (read as: all of them). The AOLer's don't care about "standards", just that their mail works. Microsoft will paint this into AOL not wanting to adopt "technology" to combat spam, and AOL may just bend to end the standoff.
I'm sure AOL can afford to implement a spam control hardly anyone wants to use for the sake of having their bases covered and being able to say "Join AOL, becausee you can send email to Hotmail users when you're with us" (ignoring the logic one could just get a free Hotmail account themselves for the purpose of communicating with other Hotmail users, rather than changing ISP's).
If the L.A. time would like to claim Slashdot as the cause for all their wiki-miseries, perhaps they haven't been reading Slashdot very much.
Compare the types of comment posts and the general support for Wiki-based projects on Slashdot verses the average post on Yahoo's news message boards. That should make it pretty clear who was responsible for ranpant vugarity on their pages.
It seems the problem here was the L.A. Times wasn't expecting the kind of content you get from a news page open and attractive to the general public.
Why should we bother talking to our congressmen? It's a rider. This is the same trap the Real ID bill was in. They can't vote against the appropriation bill to stop the rider (because the group of people who would take their "nay" vote out of context far exceeds those who would appreciate their effort to stop the rider). And it seems to be beyond a congressman's brain power to consider revising the damn bill so there is no rider.
This will be approved and we'll have to get it repealed through the courts vs. expensive MPAA lawyers. It's a role reversal, first it was the entertainment industry fighting to roll back consumer rights, now it will become us fighting uphill to get them back.
If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated.
Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is "complementary" to the present.
Does anyone else read "researchers speculating" and see "researchers couldn't find a solution to the problem, so they guessed it must not be a problem at all in practice".
...if you went back in time you could, theoretically, do something to change the present; and that possibility messes up the whole theory of time travel.
Wouldn't that only be true if you did something that effected you personally or people responsible for your ability to travel through time. If I went back in time and killed some nobody everyday citizen, I think it is very IMprobable it would effect me if they had no connections to me.
It would change the future possibly, but only as far as the people that person would have interacted with had the fellow not been killed.
Clearly, the present never is changed by mischievous time-travellers: people don't suddenly fade into the ether because a rerun of events has prevented their births - that much is obvious.
That's a HUGE assumption, and incredibly illogical! If those indiviuals births had been prevented, they would not be here for past events and hence, we would have no memory of them ever existing. So how would we ever notice if they had been erased?
According to Einstein, space-time can curve back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to double back and meet younger versions of themselves.
I'm going to plead ignorance on this one, but isn't it impossible for two differnet bodies of matter to exist in the same precise location at exactly the same time. To be able to go back and meet yourself you have to be able to exist simultaneously as whatever may have been occupying that same spot in the past. Or am I missing something?
The researchers say these constraints exist because of the weird laws of quantum mechanics even though...
I don't think researchers in quantum mechanics would use adjectives like "weird" to describe the laws of their field of science, that term is more generally used by people who have little knowledge of a topic, like members of the mass press.
-Home Theater: Beer. Theater: soda, for which you pay more than alcohol
That's the theater's choice. The local independant/non-national chain theatre in my town sells alcohol (then again that might be because they also carry beers brewed by the brewery next door).
according to a poll reported on by CNN most Americans want the government to be heavily involved in securing the internet.
If anything, that only proves most Americans don't realize the internet is not under the government's to secure.
If they don't like what's on the internet, nobody is forcing them to use it. You can still pay your bills by check, write letters, and shop in brick-and-mortar stores.
Because locking things up requires manpower. Stores would rather not pay for it if they can avoid it. In all marketing and retail decisions, "additional packaging" as a solution seems to trump just about everything else.
Actually locking up the product would deter theft more than extra packaging. Yeah, extra packaging will make stuffing the card in your pocket require more time/work, but with many many retail chains skimping on the manpower (as you pointed out) finding a quiet corner to slice your way to the memory card is easier than you'd think.
Are you forgetting that Retail Shelf Space costs money too?
There really is no reason for a consumer to handle memory cards to start with, a card looks like another, and looking at them will rarely give you any clue to the quality, much like inkject cartridges (I notice they are quite expensive and don't come in boxes eight inches large on each side). I also notice many retailers don't put them out, instead substituting a tear-off pad with the cartridge bar code for the customer to take to the check out.
Remember when laundry detergent came in those suitcase-sized boxes? Remember the great "innovation" of concentrated detergent which is now the norm? All they did was simply not put in so much filler.
Uh, that had nothing to with stealability, which I was talking about, it was pure marketing ploy. It gave the impression the customer was buying more product for their money, when in fact they ran out just as quickly since they used more per load.
When was the last time you opened a box of food, say a Rice-a-roni type product only to see the box is almost half empty. With the case of "yellow rice", which my family loves, I found you can buy the boxes, but for much cheaper you can buy the little foil packets that contain the same amount of product. Isn't that amazing?
1) The product settles in shipping, and unfortunatly a rigid box can't squish and change to reflect that.
2) Boxes are easier to stock on store shelves with their fronts facing out. Doing that with bags would require peg hooks.
3) Boxes are more visible on store shelves, which influences sales. There's a reason General Mills puts their cereals into boxes and Malt-O-Meal doesn't.
The rest of your post is a rant.
Enjoy spending $1.00 for 3oz of CheezIt in a small factory sealed bag when I just bought a 16oz box for $2.00, and it stays plenty fresh during the weeks I eat it (devided into small sandwich bags I take to work).
Memory cards are just another consumer electronics item being packaged in a bulky, flashy blister-pack when a small box would do nicely.
They could make a *single* oversize display box, and keep the cards themselves in smaller boxes in a locked cabinet. You would get your card when you make your purchase, kinda like how cigarettes are kept behind the counter at convienence stores.
The box is really just for advertising's sake anyway. It's not like the card has much of anything to do with the images used on the product packaging.
'Look... Obi-Wan is pretending he doesn't know R2-D2,'
I recenetly rewatched Episode 4 and was struck with the same thought. I guessed that Obi Wan was just pretending he didn't know R2D2 since he's supposed to be keeping a low profile and Luke obviously knew nothing of Ben's role as a Jedi knight in the Clone Wars.
R2D2 could have had his memory erased, could be reprogrammed as an Imperial spy, ect. So until he saw the message from Leia and knew it was not a trap of some sort, he had to maintain his cover.
Screw it, I'm going to Starbucks to have a triple-latte and complain about the deforestation. That's where they like...chop down trees for no reason...right?
Well, they have to make those little paper cuffs that go around your triple-latte so you dont burn your fingers when you get it to-go!
I'm well aware there will be cheaper converter boxes available for the owners of old analog sets. But many people, me included, are turned off (pun not intended) by having to deal with a separate tuner and would rather have a set that can recieve such programming natively. This is one thing that stops some people from using digital cable service as it exists today on their analog sets (I think some of these people have bad memories of analog converters for their non-cable ready TV's in the 80's).
The FCC mandated changeover to all digital broadcasting and the inclusion of digital tuners in all TV's (along with the inevitable price adjustments to HDTV sets I believe will come) is what keeps me from replacing my current 4:3 analog set. Even though I'd like to have component inputs right now for my DVD player (all I have on my current set is a single coax input).
I think this will only help make digital (and HDTV's) cheaper. Right now electronics manufactures can feel justified in charging $600 and up for a decent screen sized TV because the digital/HDTV experience is considered a "premium" viewing experience.
Once a digital tuner becomes standard and manditory, they wont be able to do this. Most people cannot justify (or even afford in most cases) these prices for TV sets. The NBC/Universals and Viacoms of the world will be leaning hard on TV makers to lower prices closer to what people are traditionally paying for analog sets now. They don't lose viewers and revenue from the equipment being priced out of Joe Wage-Worker's reach.
"Microsoft is being realistic. They can't force developing countries like us to solely use legal software since we can't afford it. They want us to gradually reduce our use of it."
So under the agreement they are paying a dollar now and will buy legally in the future.
Why do I have trouble believing a country that is paying a dollar per copy of 2000/XP is going to be able to afford the real price for their next upgrade when they just stated they can't afford legal software?
Will it happen with the 68k emulator itself being emulated.
None of it will work. The "Classic Mac" is truly dead when the IntelMac comes out.
Transmetta's software emulates a G3 processor. Programs that *require* a G4 or G5 specific feature will not run. Software that requires MacOS 8 or 9 will not run.
(sorry, wish I could give you a link for this, but I'm sure someone has posted on in this article)
Since it now turns out that Dvorak was apparently not smoking crack when he predicted the Apple move, could he be right on this one too?"
If I predict a volcano is going to erupt for fifty years and at the end of that fifty, it does erupt, does that mean I predicted it would happen? Or does it simply mean I kept making the same statement over and over again, despite the actual conditions in said volcano; and the volcano happened to develop internally to a point where, by coincidence, what I'd been saying did in fact become true.
I haven't even transitioned to OSX yet. The last machine I bought was a 2Ghz P4 running WinXP. I'd like to try Linux on it but the fact I'm a dialup user and I have a Winmodem has put that plan on hold. The PC purchase was supposed to be a temprary measure because my Mac was too slow for my needs and I couldn't afford a new one at the time.
I don't want DRMed hardware, but I little other choice. I don't know if there's any reason to get a new (IBM powered) Mac now if I'm going to be transitioning to Linux in the end anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it as a chance for "do-over" the comment you thought you'd score high mod points earlier...
Well, but now all comments will be redundant since we posted them already!
The power company cut a cable while digging a hole. How is that outside their control?
They could have subcontracted that work out to an independant construction firm very easily.
SBC browses YOU!
At this rate this patent wont even be an issue when it IS rejected (for the absolute final time). The internet will be a colaborative thought process like the Borg collective so we wont be using "browsers" to read anything on it.
I forsee new websites being launched. Like "Where Not to Move" detailing the laws of diffrent states so people know where they can move to where their propery really is theirs and not subject to having the rug pulled out from under them (literally) by commercial developers.
I think a lot of this hinges on whether AOL adopts sender ID or not. AOL users like to throw fits over not being able to send email to people. In fact, having worked at an ISP that was blacklisted by AOL a few times, many internet users see the ability to send email to everyone else as some sort of right. Like ISP's have a legal responsability to accept and deliver each other's email or something.
AOL might adopt Sender-ID to appease all their customer's who want to communicate with Hotmail users (read as: all of them). The AOLer's don't care about "standards", just that their mail works. Microsoft will paint this into AOL not wanting to adopt "technology" to combat spam, and AOL may just bend to end the standoff.
I'm sure AOL can afford to implement a spam control hardly anyone wants to use for the sake of having their bases covered and being able to say "Join AOL, becausee you can send email to Hotmail users when you're with us" (ignoring the logic one could just get a free Hotmail account themselves for the purpose of communicating with other Hotmail users, rather than changing ISP's).
An Indian researcher has cracked the much-touted "impenetrable" Windows Genuine Advantage of Microsoft.
:-D
How can he crack an advantage that doesn't actually exist?
Come now... you knew that name would be used as a joked at some point...
If the L.A. time would like to claim Slashdot as the cause for all their wiki-miseries, perhaps they haven't been reading Slashdot very much.
Compare the types of comment posts and the general support for Wiki-based projects on Slashdot verses the average post on Yahoo's news message boards. That should make it pretty clear who was responsible for ranpant vugarity on their pages.
It seems the problem here was the L.A. Times wasn't expecting the kind of content you get from a news page open and attractive to the general public.
Why should we bother talking to our congressmen? It's a rider. This is the same trap the Real ID bill was in. They can't vote against the appropriation bill to stop the rider (because the group of people who would take their "nay" vote out of context far exceeds those who would appreciate their effort to stop the rider). And it seems to be beyond a congressman's brain power to consider revising the damn bill so there is no rider.
This will be approved and we'll have to get it repealed through the courts vs. expensive MPAA lawyers. It's a role reversal, first it was the entertainment industry fighting to roll back consumer rights, now it will become us fighting uphill to get them back.
I have mod points but there doesn't seem to be a "foolish" option.
Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is "complementary" to the present.
Does anyone else read "researchers speculating" and see "researchers couldn't find a solution to the problem, so they guessed it must not be a problem at all in practice".
Wouldn't that only be true if you did something that effected you personally or people responsible for your ability to travel through time. If I went back in time and killed some nobody everyday citizen, I think it is very IMprobable it would effect me if they had no connections to me.
It would change the future possibly, but only as far as the people that person would have interacted with had the fellow not been killed.
Clearly, the present never is changed by mischievous time-travellers: people don't suddenly fade into the ether because a rerun of events has prevented their births - that much is obvious.
That's a HUGE assumption, and incredibly illogical! If those indiviuals births had been prevented, they would not be here for past events and hence, we would have no memory of them ever existing. So how would we ever notice if they had been erased?
According to Einstein, space-time can curve back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to double back and meet younger versions of themselves.
I'm going to plead ignorance on this one, but isn't it impossible for two differnet bodies of matter to exist in the same precise location at exactly the same time. To be able to go back and meet yourself you have to be able to exist simultaneously as whatever may have been occupying that same spot in the past. Or am I missing something?
The researchers say these constraints exist because of the weird laws of quantum mechanics even though...
I don't think researchers in quantum mechanics would use adjectives like "weird" to describe the laws of their field of science, that term is more generally used by people who have little knowledge of a topic, like members of the mass press.
-Home Theater: Beer.
Theater: soda, for which you pay more than alcohol
That's the theater's choice. The local independant/non-national chain theatre in my town sells alcohol (then again that might be because they also carry beers brewed by the brewery next door).
according to a poll reported on by CNN most Americans want the government to be heavily involved in securing the internet.
If anything, that only proves most Americans don't realize the internet is not under the government's to secure.
If they don't like what's on the internet, nobody is forcing them to use it. You can still pay your bills by check, write letters, and shop in brick-and-mortar stores.
Because locking things up requires manpower. Stores would rather not pay for it if they can avoid it. In all marketing and retail decisions, "additional packaging" as a solution seems to trump just about everything else.
Actually locking up the product would deter theft more than extra packaging. Yeah, extra packaging will make stuffing the card in your pocket require more time/work, but with many many retail chains skimping on the manpower (as you pointed out) finding a quiet corner to slice your way to the memory card is easier than you'd think.
Are you forgetting that Retail Shelf Space costs money too?
There really is no reason for a consumer to handle memory cards to start with, a card looks like another, and looking at them will rarely give you any clue to the quality, much like inkject cartridges (I notice they are quite expensive and don't come in boxes eight inches large on each side). I also notice many retailers don't put them out, instead substituting a tear-off pad with the cartridge bar code for the customer to take to the check out.
Remember when laundry detergent came in those suitcase-sized boxes? Remember the great "innovation" of concentrated detergent which is now the norm? All they did was simply not put in so much filler.
Uh, that had nothing to with stealability, which I was talking about, it was pure marketing ploy. It gave the impression the customer was buying more product for their money, when in fact they ran out just as quickly since they used more per load.
When was the last time you opened a box of food, say a Rice-a-roni type product only to see the box is almost half empty. With the case of "yellow rice", which my family loves, I found you can buy the boxes, but for much cheaper you can buy the little foil packets that contain the same amount of product. Isn't that amazing?
1) The product settles in shipping, and unfortunatly a rigid box can't squish and change to reflect that.
2) Boxes are easier to stock on store shelves with their fronts facing out. Doing that with bags would require peg hooks.
3) Boxes are more visible on store shelves, which influences sales. There's a reason General Mills puts their cereals into boxes and Malt-O-Meal doesn't.
The rest of your post is a rant.
Enjoy spending $1.00 for 3oz of CheezIt in a small factory sealed bag when I just bought a 16oz box for $2.00, and it stays plenty fresh during the weeks I eat it (devided into small sandwich bags I take to work).
Memory cards are just another consumer electronics item being packaged in a bulky, flashy blister-pack when a small box would do nicely.
They could make a *single* oversize display box, and keep the cards themselves in smaller boxes in a locked cabinet. You would get your card when you make your purchase, kinda like how cigarettes are kept behind the counter at convienence stores.
The box is really just for advertising's sake anyway. It's not like the card has much of anything to do with the images used on the product packaging.
After the jpg incident, wouldn't you tend to look at the code handling other image formats for similar problems?
Nah, that sounds like some sort of proactive security initative.
'Look... Obi-Wan is pretending he doesn't know R2-D2,'
I recenetly rewatched Episode 4 and was struck with the same thought. I guessed that Obi Wan was just pretending he didn't know R2D2 since he's supposed to be keeping a low profile and Luke obviously knew nothing of Ben's role as a Jedi knight in the Clone Wars.
R2D2 could have had his memory erased, could be reprogrammed as an Imperial spy, ect. So until he saw the message from Leia and knew it was not a trap of some sort, he had to maintain his cover.
Maybe MS could just make it easier by letting us know what actually *will* make it into Longhorn...
Or, they could wait till after they ship products to announce them.
But then we probably wouldn't hear from Microsoft for another three years.
Screw it, I'm going to Starbucks to have a triple-latte and complain about the deforestation. That's where they like...chop down trees for no reason...right?
Well, they have to make those little paper cuffs that go around your triple-latte so you dont burn your fingers when you get it to-go!
Yeah, I know I shouldn't reply to myself.
I'm well aware there will be cheaper converter boxes available for the owners of old analog sets. But many people, me included, are turned off (pun not intended) by having to deal with a separate tuner and would rather have a set that can recieve such programming natively. This is one thing that stops some people from using digital cable service as it exists today on their analog sets (I think some of these people have bad memories of analog converters for their non-cable ready TV's in the 80's).
The FCC mandated changeover to all digital broadcasting and the inclusion of digital tuners in all TV's (along with the inevitable price adjustments to HDTV sets I believe will come) is what keeps me from replacing my current 4:3 analog set. Even though I'd like to have component inputs right now for my DVD player (all I have on my current set is a single coax input).
I think this will only help make digital (and HDTV's) cheaper. Right now electronics manufactures can feel justified in charging $600 and up for a decent screen sized TV because the digital/HDTV experience is considered a "premium" viewing experience.
Once a digital tuner becomes standard and manditory, they wont be able to do this. Most people cannot justify (or even afford in most cases) these prices for TV sets. The NBC/Universals and Viacoms of the world will be leaning hard on TV makers to lower prices closer to what people are traditionally paying for analog sets now. They don't lose viewers and revenue from the equipment being priced out of Joe Wage-Worker's reach.
"Microsoft is being realistic. They can't force developing countries like us to solely use legal software since we can't afford it. They want us to gradually reduce our use of it."
So under the agreement they are paying a dollar now and will buy legally in the future.
Why do I have trouble believing a country that is paying a dollar per copy of 2000/XP is going to be able to afford the real price for their next upgrade when they just stated they can't afford legal software?
Will old 68k code still run?
Will it happen with the 68k emulator itself being emulated.
None of it will work. The "Classic Mac" is truly dead when the IntelMac comes out.
Transmetta's software emulates a G3 processor. Programs that *require* a G4 or G5 specific feature will not run. Software that requires MacOS 8 or 9 will not run.
(sorry, wish I could give you a link for this, but I'm sure someone has posted on in this article)
Since it now turns out that Dvorak was apparently not smoking crack when he predicted the Apple move, could he be right on this one too?"
If I predict a volcano is going to erupt for fifty years and at the end of that fifty, it does erupt, does that mean I predicted it would happen? Or does it simply mean I kept making the same statement over and over again, despite the actual conditions in said volcano; and the volcano happened to develop internally to a point where, by coincidence, what I'd been saying did in fact become true.
I haven't even transitioned to OSX yet. The last machine I bought was a 2Ghz P4 running WinXP. I'd like to try Linux on it but the fact I'm a dialup user and I have a Winmodem has put that plan on hold. The PC purchase was supposed to be a temprary measure because my Mac was too slow for my needs and I couldn't afford a new one at the time.
I don't want DRMed hardware, but I little other choice. I don't know if there's any reason to get a new (IBM powered) Mac now if I'm going to be transitioning to Linux in the end anyway.