Sony was quite reserved on saying how much units will be at launch. IIRC, Sony has said last year that at launch will be about 10mln units. Over the year, the figure shrunk to 2mln.
Before launch, Sony was quite silent, but industry watchers have estimated that Sony production lines can pull 200k units every month and during 3 month in production befiore launch, Sony could have had max 600k units at launch.
No matter what the encoding, you're still going to need it. So this is a scam, plain and simple.
You forgot the one important component which embedded in the name of the RTFA's method: colors. The method uses colors and thus called "Rainbow format". Also it specifically used geometrical shapes - which introduce another angle to data representations. It's not about dots anymore - it's about shapes and colors.
Besides, somehow encodings used to reach megabyte wireless speeds are not surprising to you. (Note, w/o frying its user.)
Math of past mid century - applied algebra - allows one to customize encoding to errors particular to an application.
Read on about the modulations(*) and how they can deal with different kind of errors. Or more precisely, the modulations are capable of detecting errors immediately with high probability of correction. This is further development of the same theory which covers Hamming codes. Often the modulations are used together with error correcting codes - they complement each other - to further improve line characteristics. (Hamming works on bit sequences (e.g. bytes), while modulations work directly on bits, converting sequences of numbers as seen on line into sequence of bits.)
(*) If I'm not mistaken, the "modulation" isn't original "modulation" as used by modems, but has to do with modulo operations, which is heavily used by the methods e.g. in CDMA (Code Division is in fact modulo, not normal division) and also as I heard in Wi-Fi.
Well, there were two fines already: one for antitrust violations and another for failure to comply. Second one was also deadline. IOW, the article should be titled "Microsoft Meets Second EU Antitrust Deadline."
And I suspect that is not last dead line M$ is going to push up to its limit. Because, as of now, if there is something wrong with submitted documents, M$ wouldn't have time to correct raised issues and would breach the deadline.
In other words, the EU is against monopolies and large companies locking customers in their line of products and services. Is that so hard to understand?
Great. When are they going to do something about DeBeers, then?
The problem is, anti-trust commission is part of legislative branch. It cannot start case from ground zero - it needs a complain from customers or competitors.
I'm sure if somebody would complain, EC would investigate. But again, monopoly of DeBeers prevents others from even thinking entering the market - so no competitors exists and nobody can complain from the side. On other - customers' side - few would risk alienating DeBeers first and second even fewer can provide quotes from rare DeBeers competitors.
Diamond market urgently needs disgruntled customer like Torwalds with its Linux or would-be competitor Novell with its DR-DOS and WordPerfect;-)
P.S. Yeah, post is wrong. It should be "497M and 280M". Let me repeat: "497M and 280M"... A-ah. Sweet. M$ was forced to pay... Cooool. Let me repeat again: "497M and 280M". M$ has to fork out "497M and 280M"... Good. Very good.;-)
Well, every reviewer condemned the UI changes M$ did for the new office suite.
And now developers would be somehow obliged to license something what isn't protected by any law: patent, trademark nor copyright.
What I'm missing here? Can M$ force somebody into that license? Wouldn't be the same as with SCO Linux license (direct parallel): you gain nothing (but SCO's promise not to sue) and lose freedom to modify/redistribute Linux by yourself. Wouldn't developers end up in that situation?
Taking a picture/video to report to the proper authorities, like this student, is probably the best course of action.
You can hardly report anything if you have your brain splashed all over the floor.
First they would assault you, then to prove themselves they would call you communist/terrorist/whatever anathema-of-a-day you have over there in U.S. And then it would already impossible to argue against the law enforcement: he is Iranian, amongst his friends most likely there people who might be condemned for working for radical Iranian gov't. And so on and so forth. Check up the list of books he was reading: Math? Chemistry? Physics? - "he was making a bomb", Literature? Philosophy? - "we was brainwashing his friends". That what the law enforcement would say.
Similar things happen all the time in Russia. Bush moves U.S. steadily in the direction. In one aspect the U.S. and Russia are similar: they have abolished slavery in mid-19th century, only one and half centuries ago. Value of human life isn't really yet caught up over there.
In the end, witch hunts are never changing, really. Who plays the role of scapegoats are changed many times - communists, jews, terrorists - but importance of the entertainment for mob remains.
Phil Harrison is already saying the PlayStation 4 won't use discs.
In a way, when modern game consoles would support full fledged game downloads (iow games 100% downloaded from net a-la D2D used for PC games Halflife and NWN2) that would mean death of discs. Of course, Wii would have problems with that: it supports only SD cards which are max 2GB. Xbox360/PS3 with many gigabyte hard drives should have less problems.
Also, I think many publishers prefer disks, since that way they have more assurances against warez copies. (I personally prefer to have disk - as proof of purchase. Though applying "No CD" cracks now is part of normal game play (-: ) And, in the end, for retail presence games also need disks.
If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated...
I wonder how much M$ paid him. And how much pie-charts and presentation they have fed to him. Because you know, the only company which makes money out of OS and development software - is Microsoft. Everybody else are just trying to survive, barely.
No big software houses have emerged in last decade - because investors afraid to put money anywhere close to Microsoft.
Of course, previous sentence make sense only if you excluded F/LOSS from the modern industry image.
... useless and full of bugs...
Well, that's why F/LOSS isn't yet completely "gratis". For all kind of medium/bigger projects you better have a couple of seniors on board.
But again, that's the same for adoption of any new technology to build your IT infrastructure.
From my reading of the site, it is strongly American. IOW, why do you care what happens on some not-so-distant island?
Cuba has one of the top health systems in the world. They have low crime level. Well, they do not have democracy. But, you know, many people would exchange the populism of democracy to sane and stable dictatorship.
One of the top promises of democracy (and advantage over monarchy/feudalism) is that government is rotated, thus minimizing probability of crazy reaching (and holding for too long) power. But let be realistic. Dictatorship Cuba has prospering social system and doesn't initiate and doesn't intervene in international conflicts. But all the populism and democracy didn't stopped US from becoming empire and top world aggressor.
To me as foreigner Cuba looks more peaceful and friendly place, than business crazy, litigious, war-minded USA.
I am honestly curious what your skeptical about w/Java.
My question needed to be stated more narrowly - "Open Source Java". You server-side people never much cared about single payments for better JVM and better libraries. Least cared about the license. After all it is one time payment.
Thats like saying you skeptical about roads or cars...
I use roads and cars every day. I see them every day. But for all my years in software development, it seems that Java had confined itself into the "server niche" - so that me Linux/embedded developer barely seen Java in last five years. As of now, I know more companies adopting Linux, QT & GCC than companies using Java. But I know no company which plans to adopt Java.
As of now then,.NET seems to have better prospects. At least it is not confined by M$ into server side only. And I hearing from all my friends Windows developers that.NET is a way to develop new desktop application for Windows.
Java lost desktop long time ago. And Sun never tried again to make any inroads into desktop market. Most of the aforementioned desktop software is (I used it personally) is also more of exceptions rather then rule of good Java applications, where functionality outweighs performance concerns.
OpenSource Java might have been good for desktop apps - but as of now, the "Desktop Java" is more or less extinct word combination.
Server-side Java now seems more and more like embedded software or firmware. Licenses/etc are irrelevant. Closed-source license - is Okay. Un-reverse-engineer-able code - even better. We as customers never see it and never touch it - directly. Producers and developers are Ok with that. Probably my skepticism is of same sort as of Java zealots claiming that other programming languages and platforms are dead.
... working JRE sitting in the main repositories for Debian and Ubuntu. Sweet.
On practical note, can you share what kind of application you use Java for?
I've removed last traces of Java from my WinXP office PC (and never had it on Linux at home) and nothing had ever complained about the absence. (I'm rather curious what had installed it in first place.)
I am long term Java skeptic. Yet would appreciate any hints on why people would want Java - especially under Linux.
I've never, ever, seen a perl programmer making a huge amount of money
Than look at me. Or any other *nix professional.
It's not that my customers get the applications written in Perl, but all the internal automation done by me is done in Perl (others use here Python a lot). Management doesn't like it - but has little/nothing to say against job being done and done well. Build system, QA system, additional source code preprocessing, source code generation, etc - there is no better alternative to Perl, when it comes to crunching lots of textual stuff (XML included).
Okay, of course I always tout my C/C++ skills first. Managers rarely understand something in work flow automation and can't appreciate role Perl (and other scripting languages) play in work of developer.
I would recommend (non-pragmatically) to go with Perl job, because Perl allows you to do job the way you like. Consequently, Perl allows you to grow as programmer. With monstrosities like.NET and JavaEE you rarely have any choice. And experience with such systems comes down to "dos and don'ts" - something rarely applicable in other fields/with other companies. And learning dotNET/Java after you have learned Perl already is normally no-brainer.
Pragmatically - that's of course.NET - especially if you are capable problem solver. Abundance of "cheap" programmers (produced by 3 month courses) result in heaps of unreadable/unmaintainable code somebody needs to clean up and bring to life..NET (like all M$ creations) is surely make ripples in software world with lots of applications made (on M$ promise) by lumping rough pieces of code from 2nd parties together.
In the end, if you have any brain, you would need to expect that Perl job would pose a challenge for your programmer's capabilities and skills..NET job would of course challenge your human skills: dealing with incompetent ex-Visual-Basic users (calling themselves "programmers") all day isn't easy task.;)
That's why it is called F.U.D. It's not about piracy and damages - it's about threatening existing users into being afraid doing anything with their computers and buying new ones as solution to any problem.
balanced and fair
When last time have you seen a PR campaign fitting the criteria? I have seen none.
Hm. So what BSD then uses for compiling??? Isn't it GNU Compiler Collection licensed under GPL?
If you are licensing zealot - FSF/GNU would welcome you any time. They are full of it. BSD folks au contraire are pragmatical - and use whatever fits best their needs. (And that's actually why they use BSD license: it fits their needs and it is extremely pragmatical.)
Including BT client into disto make sense just to pilot it and see would people use it at all. And if there would be interest (and normally there is interest on both sides: users and mirror admins) BT can be reimplemented under BSD license - in whatever language you like/under any license you like.
It's also not stable, bittorrent is still changing.
Base protocol is stable thru last 4 years or so.
It is advanced features which are changing: UDP support, traffic encryption, DHT decentralized network, various accelerations and improvements.
But simple client doesn't have to (and doesn't) support all that.
As Linux distros have showed over time, BitTorrent is one of the simplest ways to manage mirrors. Or to put it plainly: BT replaces mirroring and removes need for management. Throw RSS into the mix - and everyone would notice fresh files even faster.
However, I don't expect to see anything like ZFS [sun.com] coming from them anytime soon.
DTrace [opensolaris.org], though, hmmmm, maybe...
Sun is in situation whne it does some things because it cannot do anything else. They have lost focus many years ago - and have bumpy road ahead of them trying to regain it.
On other side, OpenBSD is moved by need. The development is advanced by people with specific set of needs and goals. They do not lose focus - loss of focus would mean absence of developers willing enough to solve problems.
Personally me, Unix addict, hardly see any benefit of dtrace or zfs. DTrace is nice, but in real life and real work I really really seldom needed tool like that. In fact, OSS does need it even less: it is proprietary binary software which requires heavy hacking to understand problems occurring. (With OSS you can jump on mail list and ask others - probability of good answer is higher than that from proprietary tech support). On file system front, I think, if OpenBSD people would want something - they would adopt e.g. ext2/3/4 - and they would be much better with it in long term. Native Linux file system is open, feature-complete and since ext2 well documented.
After all, let's not forget that out of all *BSDs, OpenBSD is least politicized and most pragmatical.
I installed the filters and it does indeed now load up jpeg's. It's kinda lame for it to ask me what filter to apply when loading the jpg. Shouldn't it just know the file type?
KDE is modular. And so Krita is. Krita uses KDE for all the low level file handling: import/export/save/load included. KOffice people said that many times: they have managed to bring up so powerful application suit so quickly only because of great KDE framework. It allows them to concentrate on the job instead of low level stuff, though does not bar them from low level stuff;-)
As was stated in sibling thread, if you like to experience KDE, do not use RedHat/Fedora - they have screwed KDE packages to make it look and behave like GNOME. IOW, KDE in RH/Fedora is unusable. Better grab Kubuntu, Knoppix, Slackware or Debian - they do much better.
But doesn't even the most open, verified system still suffer from having the "Vote for Bob" patch installed at the last minute by an official-looking guy with glasses and a clipboard? I know, this shouldn't be allowed, but it seems to happen all the flippin' time!
Believe me, on formalities you can trust bureaucrats more than Windows developers. That's for sure.
It all boils down to responsibilities. The machine needs (and is) to be tamper proof. Nobody of bureaucrat want to risk their jobs - nobody would try to circumvent anything, since that would be found immediately and the election results would be nullified. And elections would be repeated.
That's possible - if original vendor tried to achieve such goals. Or the goals were put into requirements. It is very ironical that rest of the world uses NSAsafety guidelines, while US itself for sake of its own elections cannot enforce the guidelines on vendors.
If I were an American, I'd be very frightened about voting using an electronic machine, given all the horror stories I've been reading. And as a Canadian, I'm quite happy with our paper ballot system, and I'll resist any attempt to replace it!
Paper ballot system is also Okay - when paper ballots are made machine readable. And they are easily made so. And I believe such tallying machines are already used on most of the modern elections. Probably Canadian elections too. Anyway, many people cannot come to election offices - and vote using alternative means, mostly paper ballots. One cannot dismiss paper ballots overnight.
My friend uses Kopete and says it integrates with KDE better than GAIM with GNOME. He uses ICQ, AOL and GTalk networks w/o any problems.
I personally (historically) use Linux and (long ago fixed pre-utf8) poor support for internationalization as an excuses to not run IMs under Linux. Leaves more time for work.;-)
IOW, the tether would manage to: (1) be very light, (2) be strong enough to sustain centrifugal energy of counter weight, (3) be even more stronger to carry useful load.
Just how this more feasible that ribbon is a fraction of mm thick and from some mm to maybe one meter wide would manage that?
A tower, on another hand, would be much more massive, not to mention impossible to build with any known, or foreseeable, material.
Your post suggest that material for tether/ribbon is already known. So why we held that competition then?;-)
The materials are not known. And it is kind of gamble to know which material would be invented first: one to make the tether or one to make a tower.
Tower doesn't have to be all that tall. It must be high enough to fraction Earth gravity force by e.g. ten - requiring ten times less of fuel to launch elevated rocket. That would already be achievement. With "space elevator" - no such gradual progress seems to be possible.
A tower would be much more massive and would have to support its full weight.
Precisely my question. So you are saying that tether might be possible to be made so light and strong - but no way simple tower construct would achieve the same???
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
What makes super-super-strong tether in your mind possible and super-hard and super-light tower impossible?
... an orbiting counterweight.
But how heavy it would have to have? I shiver to even think that thing might alter (or even de-orbit) Earth. The wikipedia page doesn't answer that question.
Can anyone enlighten me how that thing supposed to work?
We fasten one end on ground and second end is fastened... where???
And what about Earth rotation?
[sarcasm] Which TV show the people pursuing that idea watched too much? [/sarcasm] I cannot recall a show which had advertised that idea. I still think that normal elevator - a-la tower - is much saner idea and can be achieved easier, since it doesn't depend on another end. I think it is more feasible idea compared to super strong tether. Though I was already flamed twice on/. for such opinions. Apparently the TV show was too good.
I think many people - especially Warner investors - must be interested why investments into merger did not pay off.
Thou it is apparent, that both AOL and Warner have problem innovating and adjusting business to changing reality. They might have being killer combination, but as of yet, Apple's iTMS does now what they have promised many years ago but never delivered.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony was quite reserved on saying how much units will be at launch. IIRC, Sony has said last year that at launch will be about 10mln units. Over the year, the figure shrunk to 2mln.
Before launch, Sony was quite silent, but industry watchers have estimated that Sony production lines can pull 200k units every month and during 3 month in production befiore launch, Sony could have had max 600k units at launch.
P.S. Figure of 800k units was also rumored.
You forgot the one important component which embedded in the name of the RTFA's method: colors. The method uses colors and thus called "Rainbow format". Also it specifically used geometrical shapes - which introduce another angle to data representations. It's not about dots anymore - it's about shapes and colors.
Besides, somehow encodings used to reach megabyte wireless speeds are not surprising to you. (Note, w/o frying its user.)
Math of past mid century - applied algebra - allows one to customize encoding to errors particular to an application.
Read on about the modulations(*) and how they can deal with different kind of errors. Or more precisely, the modulations are capable of detecting errors immediately with high probability of correction. This is further development of the same theory which covers Hamming codes. Often the modulations are used together with error correcting codes - they complement each other - to further improve line characteristics. (Hamming works on bit sequences (e.g. bytes), while modulations work directly on bits, converting sequences of numbers as seen on line into sequence of bits.)
(*) If I'm not mistaken, the "modulation" isn't original "modulation" as used by modems, but has to do with modulo operations, which is heavily used by the methods e.g. in CDMA (Code Division is in fact modulo, not normal division) and also as I heard in Wi-Fi.
Well, there were two fines already: one for antitrust violations and another for failure to comply. Second one was also deadline. IOW, the article should be titled "Microsoft Meets Second EU Antitrust Deadline."
And I suspect that is not last dead line M$ is going to push up to its limit. Because, as of now, if there is something wrong with submitted documents, M$ wouldn't have time to correct raised issues and would breach the deadline.
The problem is, anti-trust commission is part of legislative branch. It cannot start case from ground zero - it needs a complain from customers or competitors.
I'm sure if somebody would complain, EC would investigate. But again, monopoly of DeBeers prevents others from even thinking entering the market - so no competitors exists and nobody can complain from the side. On other - customers' side - few would risk alienating DeBeers first and second even fewer can provide quotes from rare DeBeers competitors.
Diamond market urgently needs disgruntled customer like Torwalds with its Linux or would-be competitor Novell with its DR-DOS and WordPerfect ;-)
P.S. Yeah, post is wrong. It should be "497M and 280M". Let me repeat: "497M and 280M"... A-ah. Sweet. M$ was forced to pay... Cooool. Let me repeat again: "497M and 280M". M$ has to fork out "497M and 280M"... Good. Very good. ;-)
Well, every reviewer condemned the UI changes M$ did for the new office suite.
And now developers would be somehow obliged to license something what isn't protected by any law: patent, trademark nor copyright.
What I'm missing here? Can M$ force somebody into that license? Wouldn't be the same as with SCO Linux license (direct parallel): you gain nothing (but SCO's promise not to sue) and lose freedom to modify/redistribute Linux by yourself. Wouldn't developers end up in that situation?
You can hardly report anything if you have your brain splashed all over the floor.
First they would assault you, then to prove themselves they would call you communist/terrorist/whatever anathema-of-a-day you have over there in U.S. And then it would already impossible to argue against the law enforcement: he is Iranian, amongst his friends most likely there people who might be condemned for working for radical Iranian gov't. And so on and so forth. Check up the list of books he was reading: Math? Chemistry? Physics? - "he was making a bomb", Literature? Philosophy? - "we was brainwashing his friends". That what the law enforcement would say.
Similar things happen all the time in Russia. Bush moves U.S. steadily in the direction. In one aspect the U.S. and Russia are similar: they have abolished slavery in mid-19th century, only one and half centuries ago. Value of human life isn't really yet caught up over there.
In the end, witch hunts are never changing, really. Who plays the role of scapegoats are changed many times - communists, jews, terrorists - but importance of the entertainment for mob remains.
From RTFA:
From all I read he is more into engineering, iow applied science, not the science itself which is theoretical.
In a way, when modern game consoles would support full fledged game downloads (iow games 100% downloaded from net a-la D2D used for PC games Halflife and NWN2) that would mean death of discs. Of course, Wii would have problems with that: it supports only SD cards which are max 2GB. Xbox360/PS3 with many gigabyte hard drives should have less problems.
Also, I think many publishers prefer disks, since that way they have more assurances against warez copies. (I personally prefer to have disk - as proof of purchase. Though applying "No CD" cracks now is part of normal game play (-: ) And, in the end, for retail presence games also need disks.
I wonder how much M$ paid him. And how much pie-charts and presentation they have fed to him. Because you know, the only company which makes money out of OS and development software - is Microsoft. Everybody else are just trying to survive, barely.
No big software houses have emerged in last decade - because investors afraid to put money anywhere close to Microsoft.
Of course, previous sentence make sense only if you excluded F/LOSS from the modern industry image.
Well, that's why F/LOSS isn't yet completely "gratis". For all kind of medium/bigger projects you better have a couple of seniors on board.
But again, that's the same for adoption of any new technology to build your IT infrastructure.
From my reading of the site, it is strongly American. IOW, why do you care what happens on some not-so-distant island?
Cuba has one of the top health systems in the world. They have low crime level. Well, they do not have democracy. But, you know, many people would exchange the populism of democracy to sane and stable dictatorship.
One of the top promises of democracy (and advantage over monarchy/feudalism) is that government is rotated, thus minimizing probability of crazy reaching (and holding for too long) power. But let be realistic. Dictatorship Cuba has prospering social system and doesn't initiate and doesn't intervene in international conflicts. But all the populism and democracy didn't stopped US from becoming empire and top world aggressor.
To me as foreigner Cuba looks more peaceful and friendly place, than business crazy, litigious, war-minded USA.
My question needed to be stated more narrowly - "Open Source Java". You server-side people never much cared about single payments for better JVM and better libraries. Least cared about the license. After all it is one time payment.
I use roads and cars every day. I see them every day. But for all my years in software development, it seems that Java had confined itself into the "server niche" - so that me Linux/embedded developer barely seen Java in last five years. As of now, I know more companies adopting Linux, QT & GCC than companies using Java. But I know no company which plans to adopt Java.
As of now then, .NET seems to have better prospects. At least it is not confined by M$ into server side only. And I hearing from all my friends Windows developers that .NET is a way to develop new desktop application for Windows.
Java lost desktop long time ago. And Sun never tried again to make any inroads into desktop market. Most of the aforementioned desktop software is (I used it personally) is also more of exceptions rather then rule of good Java applications, where functionality outweighs performance concerns.
OpenSource Java might have been good for desktop apps - but as of now, the "Desktop Java" is more or less extinct word combination.
Server-side Java now seems more and more like embedded software or firmware. Licenses/etc are irrelevant. Closed-source license - is Okay. Un-reverse-engineer-able code - even better. We as customers never see it and never touch it - directly. Producers and developers are Ok with that. Probably my skepticism is of same sort as of Java zealots claiming that other programming languages and platforms are dead.
On practical note, can you share what kind of application you use Java for?
I've removed last traces of Java from my WinXP office PC (and never had it on Linux at home) and nothing had ever complained about the absence. (I'm rather curious what had installed it in first place.)
I am long term Java skeptic. Yet would appreciate any hints on why people would want Java - especially under Linux.
Than look at me. Or any other *nix professional.
It's not that my customers get the applications written in Perl, but all the internal automation done by me is done in Perl (others use here Python a lot). Management doesn't like it - but has little/nothing to say against job being done and done well. Build system, QA system, additional source code preprocessing, source code generation, etc - there is no better alternative to Perl, when it comes to crunching lots of textual stuff (XML included).
Okay, of course I always tout my C/C++ skills first. Managers rarely understand something in work flow automation and can't appreciate role Perl (and other scripting languages) play in work of developer.
I would recommend (non-pragmatically) to go with Perl job, because Perl allows you to do job the way you like. Consequently, Perl allows you to grow as programmer. With monstrosities like .NET and JavaEE you rarely have any choice. And experience with such systems comes down to "dos and don'ts" - something rarely applicable in other fields/with other companies. And learning dotNET/Java after you have learned Perl already is normally no-brainer.
Pragmatically - that's of course .NET - especially if you are capable problem solver. Abundance of "cheap" programmers (produced by 3 month courses) result in heaps of unreadable/unmaintainable code somebody needs to clean up and bring to life. .NET (like all M$ creations) is surely make ripples in software world with lots of applications made (on M$ promise) by lumping rough pieces of code from 2nd parties together.
In the end, if you have any brain, you would need to expect that Perl job would pose a challenge for your programmer's capabilities and skills. .NET job would of course challenge your human skills: dealing with incompetent ex-Visual-Basic users (calling themselves "programmers") all day isn't easy task. ;)
That's why it is called F.U.D. It's not about piracy and damages - it's about threatening existing users into being afraid doing anything with their computers and buying new ones as solution to any problem.
When last time have you seen a PR campaign fitting the criteria? I have seen none.
Hm. So what BSD then uses for compiling??? Isn't it GNU Compiler Collection licensed under GPL?
If you are licensing zealot - FSF/GNU would welcome you any time. They are full of it. BSD folks au contraire are pragmatical - and use whatever fits best their needs. (And that's actually why they use BSD license: it fits their needs and it is extremely pragmatical.)
Including BT client into disto make sense just to pilot it and see would people use it at all. And if there would be interest (and normally there is interest on both sides: users and mirror admins) BT can be reimplemented under BSD license - in whatever language you like/under any license you like.
Get a life man. protocol != implementation.
There are BT protocol implementations in C, C++ and Java.
Base protocol is stable thru last 4 years or so.
It is advanced features which are changing: UDP support, traffic encryption, DHT decentralized network, various accelerations and improvements.
But simple client doesn't have to (and doesn't) support all that.
As Linux distros have showed over time, BitTorrent is one of the simplest ways to manage mirrors. Or to put it plainly: BT replaces mirroring and removes need for management. Throw RSS into the mix - and everyone would notice fresh files even faster.
Sun is in situation whne it does some things because it cannot do anything else. They have lost focus many years ago - and have bumpy road ahead of them trying to regain it.
On other side, OpenBSD is moved by need. The development is advanced by people with specific set of needs and goals. They do not lose focus - loss of focus would mean absence of developers willing enough to solve problems.
Personally me, Unix addict, hardly see any benefit of dtrace or zfs. DTrace is nice, but in real life and real work I really really seldom needed tool like that. In fact, OSS does need it even less: it is proprietary binary software which requires heavy hacking to understand problems occurring. (With OSS you can jump on mail list and ask others - probability of good answer is higher than that from proprietary tech support). On file system front, I think, if OpenBSD people would want something - they would adopt e.g. ext2/3/4 - and they would be much better with it in long term. Native Linux file system is open, feature-complete and since ext2 well documented.
After all, let's not forget that out of all *BSDs, OpenBSD is least politicized and most pragmatical.
KDE is modular. And so Krita is. Krita uses KDE for all the low level file handling: import/export/save/load included. KOffice people said that many times: they have managed to bring up so powerful application suit so quickly only because of great KDE framework. It allows them to concentrate on the job instead of low level stuff, though does not bar them from low level stuff ;-)
As was stated in sibling thread, if you like to experience KDE, do not use RedHat/Fedora - they have screwed KDE packages to make it look and behave like GNOME. IOW, KDE in RH/Fedora is unusable. Better grab Kubuntu, Knoppix, Slackware or Debian - they do much better.
Believe me, on formalities you can trust bureaucrats more than Windows developers. That's for sure.
It all boils down to responsibilities. The machine needs (and is) to be tamper proof. Nobody of bureaucrat want to risk their jobs - nobody would try to circumvent anything, since that would be found immediately and the election results would be nullified. And elections would be repeated.
That's possible - if original vendor tried to achieve such goals. Or the goals were put into requirements. It is very ironical that rest of the world uses NSA safety guidelines, while US itself for sake of its own elections cannot enforce the guidelines on vendors.
Paper ballot system is also Okay - when paper ballots are made machine readable. And they are easily made so. And I believe such tallying machines are already used on most of the modern elections. Probably Canadian elections too. Anyway, many people cannot come to election offices - and vote using alternative means, mostly paper ballots. One cannot dismiss paper ballots overnight.
My friend uses Kopete and says it integrates with KDE better than GAIM with GNOME. He uses ICQ, AOL and GTalk networks w/o any problems.
I personally (historically) use Linux and (long ago fixed pre-utf8) poor support for internationalization as an excuses to not run IMs under Linux. Leaves more time for work. ;-)
IOW, the tether would manage to: (1) be very light, (2) be strong enough to sustain centrifugal energy of counter weight, (3) be even more stronger to carry useful load.
Just how this more feasible that ribbon is a fraction of mm thick and from some mm to maybe one meter wide would manage that?
Your post suggest that material for tether/ribbon is already known. So why we held that competition then? ;-)
The materials are not known. And it is kind of gamble to know which material would be invented first: one to make the tether or one to make a tower.
Tower doesn't have to be all that tall. It must be high enough to fraction Earth gravity force by e.g. ten - requiring ten times less of fuel to launch elevated rocket. That would already be achievement. With "space elevator" - no such gradual progress seems to be possible.
Precisely my question. So you are saying that tether might be possible to be made so light and strong - but no way simple tower construct would achieve the same???
If you can make tether that strong and light, you can use N of them to make tower stand. Materials for such tower also can be very very light and very very hard. But probably to not such greater extent tether has to be strong.
What makes super-super-strong tether in your mind possible and super-hard and super-light tower impossible?
But how heavy it would have to have? I shiver to even think that thing might alter (or even de-orbit) Earth. The wikipedia page doesn't answer that question.
It kind'a reminds me of other problem, since again we forget about balance.
Can anyone enlighten me how that thing supposed to work?
We fasten one end on ground and second end is fastened... where???
And what about Earth rotation?
[sarcasm] Which TV show the people pursuing that idea watched too much? [/sarcasm] I cannot recall a show which had advertised that idea. I still think that normal elevator - a-la tower - is much saner idea and can be achieved easier, since it doesn't depend on another end. I think it is more feasible idea compared to super strong tether. Though I was already flamed twice on /. for such opinions. Apparently the TV show was too good.
I think many people - especially Warner investors - must be interested why investments into merger did not pay off.
Thou it is apparent, that both AOL and Warner have problem innovating and adjusting business to changing reality. They might have being killer combination, but as of yet, Apple's iTMS does now what they have promised many years ago but never delivered.