There had been a lot of talk about Google perhaps becoming like other ad laden portals, but as ever Google have come up trumps.
I particularly like the idea of seperating "Froogle", I hope in the long term this will bias commercial support away from the generic pages. When I want to know about Hawaii "per se" I am just not interest in tour operators and hotels!
In the "race to space" NASA put all it's efforts into putting a man on the moon, whilst the russians (with more modest resources) launched higher risk unmanned spacecraft and probably learnt more.
They did not get a man to the moon but they did get thier explorer there, learnt that there was nothing much to learn there, and left it to the US to go and play golf.
Now the US and ESA are into probes, learning more at low cost, but not able to send anybody into space.
Ironically the russians, whilst lagging behind NASA and ESA in probes, are now the only ones able to reliably transport people.
There is a lot more collaboration nowdays of course, but I still think a lot more is needed to get the right contrast between men and probes. Perhaps different agencies should take up different specialities.
We now have a constant shower of probes on mars.....but whenever they **may** have found something interesting we are told that only a **manned** mission can really confirm the facts.
Dare I say that perhaps the quickest and cheapest way to get a man to mars would be to pay the russians to do it?
Just think about the spin-offs in the legal sector.....who owns Mars......what laws apply.
Then, of course, there will be all those mars patents to file.
I'm allready getting ready to a couple. The first relates to the use of circular device mounted on a central pivot to ease the problem of transport over the martian surface, whilst the second one is all about the application of temperature elevated hydrogen hydoxide in space colonization.
We know the speed of the Sun and planets relative to us, and we know all of their masses. That's everything you need to do full relativistic calculations.
I believe you also need to know how to convert between imperial and metric units.
Re:What happens when life IS found
on
Methane on Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ever read Descartes......Ergo et sum.
Basiclly he hypothesis that god is the thing that is beyond that which we can comprehend around us.
Therefore (My extrapolation of Decartes reasoning) until we can understand and control the creation of the universe there will always be room for "God".
Is this the bit were we take all the politicians, lawayers, phone santizers and all other really essential people and bundle them in a spacecraft bound for the new planet.
The rest of us are following on behind.......real soon now!
Oooops, think you missed the point. Or more likely I stated it badly.
No denying the US rights of jurisdiction, and no denying that it may not have been the pilots fault.
But imeding an investigation, whilst legal, is not necessary, and if the facts are as they are you say it would have been better for everybody if the facts had been presented locally.
I think your comments about an Italian show trial are probably a result of your lack of knowledge of the Italian legal system, which gives extensive rights for the defendents to present thier claims......the Italian legal system is pretty crap but the problem is that it is too easy to get of the hook rather than get unfairly treated.
2) The US DOJ decided that he must therefore be extradited for prosecution in the US.
This does not exclude that if a US citizen/company feels they have been nobbled by an australian they can none the less pursue thier case in the Australian courts and seek damages. Obviously they canot seek criminal charges on the basis of US laws.
Do US citizens understand what Democracy actually means? As far as I can see many US citizens seem to think that Democracy means you agree with them.
could add a recent case in Italy. A US air crew cut the cable of a ski lift killing 30 tourists.
Both the civil *and* US military investigation found the pilot guilty of misconduct (should not have been doing low altitude manouvres in that area....it was a busy ski resort and it appears that he was just going for a joyride...showing off) but the pilot got off with a 1 year sospension, never came to court in Italy (which under Italian law he should do), and the families of the victims had to accept a blanket payoff.
At that time MS wanted to start it's own internet. I remember the first release of W95 being pre-configured to connect to MSN and very difficult to connect to internet (it even seemed to be designed to give headaches with the venerable Trumpet windsock, the Win3.1 saviour).
Just imagine if they had succeeded.....How much would the EU have fined them!
What a network server does is essentially simple and may be realised with well established non IP'able techniques.
Unfortunately Linux, and *nix in general, appears to have placed importance on an SMB network, the only alternatives such as NFS are still orientated around networking computers rather than users.
OSS should present and push a simple and credible alternative standard for user orientated networking, get it standardised, and evangelize to the user community the advantages of not having a networked locked into proprietry standards (as if those compelled to upgrade thier NT servers are not allready aware!). MS should be forced to comply by user demand.
BTW, interesting that one of the few viable alternatives to SMB (as far as integrating on windows is concerned) is Novells stuff, I wonder what thier approach to the problem will be?
And if the US has forgotton standard oil it's AOK for anyone to use monopolistic practices in that market.
In the EU European companies have been heavily penalised for anti-competitive behaviour, an EU company can be fined up to 10% of global sales. MS got of lightly with only 8% of EU sales and sanctions that only covered two aspects of thier business model.
wrt Stacker. In the EU there is no problem placing and enforcing a normal patent on an algorithm in the same way that the Stacker algorithm was succesfully protected in the US. It is also possible to enforce copyright on code. To us simpletons in the old country the concept of software patents appears to be a hybrid fuzzification of the concepts that goes way beyond our legal capability. But we like it that way. My reference to pirating code is because, IMMSMC, it transpired that Stacker had been reverse engineered which in my opinion (and as I am posting to a US site I suppose,even thougth I do not suffix my name with professional letters, I must add IANAL ) is piracy.
Hmm....Impressive. ( http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/ )In fact I like the idea of HP developing thier drivers in the sourceforge much more than the idea of putting them in the box.
Fortunately, due to the way I phrased my comment I do not need to eat my words, I need to take thier announcement seriously.
I know HP are better than many when it comes to Linux drivers, and I agree with your points about Linux users.
But, if you are promoting Linux for the desktop then I would at least expect you to provide CUPS drivers for all your desktop printers.
Having accross the board plug and play support for all types of hardware and laptops is the biggest hurdle Linux faces in obtaining growing desktop acceptance. HP are in a strong position to seriously redress this problem and become a one stop shop for Linux desktop solutions.
IMHO that would be worth 10 times more brownie points than any marketing campaign, or put more bluntly, the HP board should evaluate long term returns from allocating x$ to driver development budgets against the short term gains of allocating the same x$ to front-line marketing.
I have a copy of Hawkings on my bedside table, but the bookmark is one third in and it is underneath a thick copy of Bryson's Brief history of everything.
Bryson is very entertaining allthougth even I, ignorant as I am, can pick out massive holes in his arguments. Bryson is after all an english scholar and journalist, he reports interesting facts but interpolates them in a sensational rather than scientific manner.
What we need is people of the calibre of Bryson editing the works of people like Greene and Hawkings. I believe this is the type of approach that O'Reilly strive for.
The French subsidary of a US company operating in France is subject to the same laws as a French company operating in France.
The whole EU case against MS is against it's European operations, it applies only to EU operations, and the fine is a technically calculated one based on it's EU turnover.
In the past, succesful legal actions in the US against MS have not been reflected elswhere were not legally required, for example the code MS pirated from Stacker continued to be shipped in the EU.
You could argue that in a global economy a ruling in one country should apply to the global operations of a company. Alternatively, you could argue the right of individual nations to legislate and rule on thier own turf. But you cannot argue the right for a company to pick and choose, and nor can you argue the right of companies to be subject to domestic law when overseas when they are based in a country which always applies it's own rules in it's domestic markets (even when that goes against international accords).
Actually the predominant complaint in Europe has been that the EU only has teeth for EU companies whilst overseas companies (big US ones with big legal budgets in particular) get away with things that EU companies don't.
Allthougth it is the biggest fine imposed by the EU, it is only 8% of thier EU sales, other companies have been hit harder in real terms for monopolistic practices.
The fine means nothing really, it is the other conditions which hurt, but the US courts have on numerous occassions ruled against MS monopolistic practices. Had they achieved thier stated aim there would have been no case.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody has allready used it in space colonization projects?!
Anyway, since when did prior art stand in the way of patent claims ;-)
I particularly like the idea of seperating "Froogle", I hope in the long term this will bias commercial support away from the generic pages. When I want to know about Hawaii "per se" I am just not interest in tour operators and hotels!
They did not get a man to the moon but they did get thier explorer there, learnt that there was nothing much to learn there, and left it to the US to go and play golf.
Now the US and ESA are into probes, learning more at low cost, but not able to send anybody into space.
Ironically the russians, whilst lagging behind NASA and ESA in probes, are now the only ones able to reliably transport people.
There is a lot more collaboration nowdays of course, but I still think a lot more is needed to get the right contrast between men and probes. Perhaps different agencies should take up different specialities.
We now have a constant shower of probes on mars.....but whenever they **may** have found something interesting we are told that only a **manned** mission can really confirm the facts.
Dare I say that perhaps the quickest and cheapest way to get a man to mars would be to pay the russians to do it?
Exactly.
So, keep your balls and eat more pizza!
Then, of course, there will be all those mars patents to file.
I'm allready getting ready to a couple. The first relates to the use of circular device mounted on a central pivot to ease the problem of transport over the martian surface, whilst the second one is all about the application of temperature elevated hydrogen hydoxide in space colonization.
Show fuzzy satellite shots that indicate that the martians are developing WMD's and missiles that can fly more than 60 light years.
I believe you also need to know how to convert between imperial and metric units.
Basiclly he hypothesis that god is the thing that is beyond that which we can comprehend around us.
Therefore (My extrapolation of Decartes reasoning) until we can understand and control the creation of the universe there will always be room for "God".
Is this the bit were we take all the politicians, lawayers, phone santizers and all other really essential people and bundle them in a spacecraft bound for the new planet.
The rest of us are following on behind.......real soon now!
No denying the US rights of jurisdiction, and no denying that it may not have been the pilots fault.
But imeding an investigation, whilst legal, is not necessary, and if the facts are as they are you say it would have been better for everybody if the facts had been presented locally.
I think your comments about an Italian show trial are probably a result of your lack of knowledge of the Italian legal system, which gives extensive rights for the defendents to present thier claims......the Italian legal system is pretty crap but the problem is that it is too easy to get of the hook rather than get unfairly treated.
2) The US DOJ decided that he must therefore be extradited for prosecution in the US.
This does not exclude that if a US citizen/company feels they have been nobbled by an australian they can none the less pursue thier case in the Australian courts and seek damages. Obviously they canot seek criminal charges on the basis of US laws.
Do US citizens understand what Democracy actually means? As far as I can see many US citizens seem to think that Democracy means you agree with them.
Both the civil *and* US military investigation found the pilot guilty of misconduct (should not have been doing low altitude manouvres in that area....it was a busy ski resort and it appears that he was just going for a joyride...showing off) but the pilot got off with a 1 year sospension, never came to court in Italy (which under Italian law he should do), and the families of the victims had to accept a blanket payoff.
OTOH, this is an Aussie site, perhaps Bruce was just a few tubes of Fosters over his bating average.
Just imagine if they had succeeded.....How much would the EU have fined them!
BTW, they even did 3D TV around the same period.
Needless to say few people ever purchased Baird televisors, the picture quality was even worse than NTSC.
Unfortunately Linux, and *nix in general, appears to have placed importance on an SMB network, the only alternatives such as NFS are still orientated around networking computers rather than users.
OSS should present and push a simple and credible alternative standard for user orientated networking, get it standardised, and evangelize to the user community the advantages of not having a networked locked into proprietry standards (as if those compelled to upgrade thier NT servers are not allready aware!). MS should be forced to comply by user demand.
BTW, interesting that one of the few viable alternatives to SMB (as far as integrating on windows is concerned) is Novells stuff, I wonder what thier approach to the problem will be?
And if the US has forgotton standard oil it's AOK for anyone to use monopolistic practices in that market.
In the EU European companies have been heavily penalised for anti-competitive behaviour, an EU company can be fined up to 10% of global sales. MS got of lightly with only 8% of EU sales and sanctions that only covered two aspects of thier business model.
wrt Stacker. In the EU there is no problem placing and enforcing a normal patent on an algorithm in the same way that the Stacker algorithm was succesfully protected in the US. It is also possible to enforce copyright on code. To us simpletons in the old country the concept of software patents appears to be a hybrid fuzzification of the concepts that goes way beyond our legal capability. But we like it that way. My reference to pirating code is because, IMMSMC, it transpired that Stacker had been reverse engineered which in my opinion (and as I am posting to a US site I suppose,even thougth I do not suffix my name with professional letters, I must add IANAL ) is piracy.
Fortunately, due to the way I phrased my comment I do not need to eat my words, I need to take thier announcement seriously.
I appologize for my original post.
But, if you are promoting Linux for the desktop then I would at least expect you to provide CUPS drivers for all your desktop printers.
Having accross the board plug and play support for all types of hardware and laptops is the biggest hurdle Linux faces in obtaining growing desktop acceptance. HP are in a strong position to seriously redress this problem and become a one stop shop for Linux desktop solutions.
IMHO that would be worth 10 times more brownie points than any marketing campaign, or put more bluntly, the HP board should evaluate long term returns from allocating x$ to driver development budgets against the short term gains of allocating the same x$ to front-line marketing.
Bryson is very entertaining allthougth even I, ignorant as I am, can pick out massive holes in his arguments. Bryson is after all an english scholar and journalist, he reports interesting facts but interpolates them in a sensational rather than scientific manner.
What we need is people of the calibre of Bryson editing the works of people like Greene and Hawkings. I believe this is the type of approach that O'Reilly strive for.
The whole EU case against MS is against it's European operations, it applies only to EU operations, and the fine is a technically calculated one based on it's EU turnover.
In the past, succesful legal actions in the US against MS have not been reflected elswhere were not legally required, for example the code MS pirated from Stacker continued to be shipped in the EU.
You could argue that in a global economy a ruling in one country should apply to the global operations of a company. Alternatively, you could argue the right of individual nations to legislate and rule on thier own turf. But you cannot argue the right for a company to pick and choose, and nor can you argue the right of companies to be subject to domestic law when overseas when they are based in a country which always applies it's own rules in it's domestic markets (even when that goes against international accords).
Well, not unless you are Ghengis Khan of course.
When HP budget injets and scanners come with Linux support in the box then I will take this sort of news seriously.
In proportinal terms they have hit harder, and the EU has been under much critiscism for letting big US corps do things that EU companies cannot.
Allthougth it is the biggest fine imposed by the EU, it is only 8% of thier EU sales, other companies have been hit harder in real terms for monopolistic practices.
The fine means nothing really, it is the other conditions which hurt, but the US courts have on numerous occassions ruled against MS monopolistic practices. Had they achieved thier stated aim there would have been no case.