Or, if (well, since) it is the FIRST Japanese probe to land on the asteroid, then if/when it dies, it can be Kurose Ichi (Kuroshita Ichi-kun), the first to die there...
Well, if they NEED a front end to their databases, via a Linux desktop, then IBM should donate the code they own in Lotus Approach. Approach is a helluva lot EASIER for non-programmers and non-devs to use.
Granted, Approach has fewer bells and whistles (some of the stuff from FileMaker; no horizontal sliders and no tabbed interfaces ON a form (you can have forms presented with tabs, but if you have detail tables views or repeating panels on a form, you DON'T get sliders; your data will just be non-viewable on a crammed repeating panel...)
I wish the OO.o & Sun would tuck away the gauntlet and beg/cajole IBM into giving the CUBICLE dwellers the major app Linux needs: DESKTOP DATABASE FRONT END tools like APproach. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING in Linux land even TOUCHES Approach, unless you're a geek with time and drive to mimic Approach. And, so far as I see, NO one is trying to mimic Approach.
I guess IBM prefers to deprecate Approach and push Notes/Domino and other stuff, or watch determined USERS opt for WINE and Win4Lin and never have a resurrected SmartSuite codebase for LINUX.
Thanks a lot, IBM. Really, THANKS!
Re:What is the real Power? Wyatt you say?
on
HAARP Amping It Up
·
· Score: 1
Imagine if Dr. Wyatt ERP (Earp) had even a FRACTION of this power in his gun. Oklahoma wouldn't be OK. And anyone shot in the gut by this gun would be in a state of NB... nobellium... Better stop those DeLoreans and make sure Earp isn't given a ray gun... might change the tech timeline...
Re:This only works at night? The freaks come
on
HAARP Amping It Up
·
· Score: 1
out at night...
McCoy: My god.. Dear lord... What would happen if somebody uses this thing where life already EXISTS?
Spock: It would destroy such life in favor of its new MATRIX.
McCoy: It's new MATRIX???.......
Well I wonder...what would happen if... Say, are there "portable" version of these gizmos? I mean, imagine if these could be randomly dropped off in various places across different time zones. Then, if they were set off as each terminator/night time has been about 2-4 hours old...
I am wondering if these could be used in the "take the war to the enemy before they come to us..." strategem. If these could be dropped by commerical airliners as tubes (say, a CIA mission deployed from customized COMAIR craft), then launched to specific altitudes from remote or time delayed command, then these things could probably be triggered when certain launch profiles/parameters are sensed. Maybe they could be intended keep China's "just-launched" missiles from reaching high orbit and arming. Of course, where they fall, and whether they crash or dispers as dirty bombs probably isn't on God's, umm, George's list of concerns....
I imagine a new project will be a modified form of the filaments dropped over various nations'/targets' power grids before a softening-up bomb run knocked out remote radar posts...
Imagine a HARP playing at 4+GHz... Such "harping" frequencies in a concert would be... disconcerting... But, then Lord George's angels in heaven probably need help from down here the way Spock's brother acted as an emmisary to get "god" a starship...
Try splicing (or, in advance inserting) an UPS slaved to a stand-by Honda (or, pick your make of) generator. Then, when you have to move the server, just put your hot-standby/failover on the line. (Check with your friendly electrician or other certified (but not "certifiable") types who can keep phase and other issues to a minimum or zero event.)
Move your main system to its destination, using the UPS to keep it running or in suspend mode (if you want to suspend); then when power is low, run the generator until you reach your destination (keeping mindful of the gasoline... unless you have another set of dry cells or other non-flammable (or, hheheh, "inflammable") power source.
Then, when hooked up to the LAN/WAN/SAN and reconnected to the power grid, switch the clients back to the main server. Then, move the backup server to its new (if necessary) location.
Now, your uptime is as good as your hardware allows, not being dependent upon physical moves to other rooms or buildings.
What happened to the idea of the Open Patents or Open USPTO-like activity?
When are we going to systematically declare that MOST (but not all) of the content of a patent filing can be and must be copied and disseminated for public scrutiny. General descriptions, designs, contact information, and other attributes need to be publicised widely for there to be decent claims of or searches and cross references for "prior art".
What also needs to be made law with teeth is the tearing to shreds of ANY company that files (not just gets, but FILES for) some frivolous, patent-grabbing bullshit action just meant to ensnare and strike fear into innovators or copiers. When a company files for a thing such as this one, it ought to be READILY apparent that Amazon hasn't got something totally novel. I say this (without having read the actual article) because I fear that the growing capabilities of software which allow the average joe or jane to program might also land them in incalculable courts costs.
Speaking of which... I saw a commercial recently where Mark Hamill was on a panel. For a second I thought, "God, he looks like Gill Bates" and then realized he was Luke out of costume and a few decades forward in the time line...
I wonder if he'd play in a movie about Disturabance in the 5MG Force: The Man/Myth/Malevolent/Megalomaniac Geek? (Or, maybe it could be called "Disturbance: 5MG")
OTOH, R2D2 can probably do a Cartman and be bombed into thinking he's a streetwalker and wakes up with a sore posterior annular confinement port (or, is his/its an anterior access port?)
How about making those "tap dancing" storm troopers into "River Troops"? Yeh, River-Dancin' Stormtroopers with those tough boots of theirs they can probably tear up the dance floor something fierce.
A nice touch might be to put laser reflectors on their knees so that the light bounces all over the ceiling. Maybe the audience will need welders' googles or UV lenses or such to protect themselves from laser dazzling.... while Yoda yodles and Chewie chews...
Now, just mix Yoda with BlueMan. Wait, not, put Chewie with Blueman... When he's done eating them, they can be Capsicum Blue
JTK: And, M-5, what is the punishment for murder? M5: This... Unit... Must... Die... JTK: Scotty, GET down TO ENgiNEEEEring-- KWIKK! PULL the PLUGGGG Scotty...
~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile, in another timeline....
SON: Ensign Kim, would you like to copulate? EHK: Hey baby, assimilate ME! SON: Resistance is FYOO-TYLE! Bend Over Ensign Harry Kim while I plug you into the Borg Vinculum and neutralize your pain receptors...This is going to get hairy, Harry. EHK: But, Seven, what's with that Balun? SON: Relax, I must unbalance your annular confinement corridor in order to insert my Borg tubules... This will not hurt
~~~~~~~~~
Between pulling plugs and grafting code, how long will it take for tiger to tire out or panther to start panting? It becomes unbearable for the bear, fishy for the fish, a dog-day for the dog, for-the-birds for the birds.... and code-dead for the dead code...
Why not mirror windoze? Have "driver signing" or a widely-disseminated "HCL: Hardware Compatibility List" such as Linux Hardware's?
The "friendly" manufacturers who "play ball" should be rewarded as "vendor of preference" for those corporates still sitting on the fence.
Those corporates found to be or *seeming* to be injecting viscious or cunning "proprietary and hi-hijack-potential" code should be on the "Red List" of companies whose software or contributions are fraught with potential licensing or other issues.
I'm not all that much *against* proprietary drivers as long as they play ball are are not greedy bastards trying to undermine Linux, O/S, F/LOSS and so on.
If a flag can be put into Linux, one such as the broadcast flag/ad-insert flag" and so on, then the USER or ADMIN of the system in use can set a policy to allow some, all or NO proprietary flagged hardware or software to be used.
Someone would have to be a maintainer, but if the list is sanitized daily it might server as a prototype until a better, more dynamic and real-time policy manager can be implemented.
The Pirates (next month) then fire back with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give Youuuu Uhhhhpppp... Never gonna desert youuuuuu".
Then the target/victim will fire back with a deluge of Kenny G's Christmas Specials... By Valentine's day, one of them will be playing "Arrow Through My Heart"...
Eventually, one of them will be playing a library track from the opening of "Deep Rising", that catchy, military-like/adventuresome tune... (Which, I might add, was a weird juxtaposition I saw on NHK or one of the local stations around 1/05... It was played over and over as restaurant owners showed their sticky-tape anti-rat tactics. The hidden cameras caught and replayed the red of the rats' eyes as they struggled to rip themselves off the sticky tape, only bleeding to death as they left limbs on the tape..." Dah-thut duh.. Dah-thut duh.. Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut duh...Dah-thut duh...Dah-thut duh... Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut DUH.... DUH-THUH......" I think that newsclip went on for about 4 minutes from many angles, elevations, light levels and audio reverbs...
I beg to differ with you. Cell phone video does NOT suck, depending on the analog station which is pumping out the broadcast. I bought a Vodafone V-3 series (click my name and see the URLs I submitted today) phone in Tokyo in December. Some of the stations are sharp as hell. Here in SF, some stations, notably the English/"domestic" stations tended to SUCK because the broadcast manager was probably not pumping the db levels the Spanish and DW World from Germany (broadcasting in the bay area) on KTSF were.
In the "right places", the signal is VERY sharp and clear, and the "Silicon" screen made the images look as sharp as DVD/Hi-Def. I've shown people who'd prefer the ANALOG over that v-cast crap that some of us don't like. I personally prefer to hook my phone into AC and just watch TV on the desk at home. On buses and at boring locations, I use the battery (which lasted 1.2 to 1.5 hours depending on the brightness level I set and whether the audio is high or low.
Sadly, I got bum information about the 402-SH and other *02-sh models coming to the US. They'd have had GSM, and the tuner would have been adjusted to this hemisphere. I heard it was likely to cost some US$300 or higher. I got mine cheaper than that in Shinjuku. But, though it came out in June or so of 2004, by December it was "obsolete" to the Japanese market in only 6 months. Here, in the US, I taunted and teased Verizon, Cingular and mom&pop kiosks and stores, and one offered me up to $200 for the phone.
Apparently, considering the polite responses, it was NOT off-topic.
I'd like to MySQL a front end that feels like a client/server interface that is user-friendly. I'd like something like Lotus Approach, which connects to over 8 or 10 database types, but runs only on windoze, necessitating use of Win4Lin. Approach has forms, charts, crosstabs, worksheets, scripting, macros, and more. Unfortunately, it doesn't support nor have sliders to allow multiple columns of data to be shown on a detail panel on a form, although there is a slider for multiple rows. Nicely, Approach won't let you design a bad formula that doesn't evaluate to find, change or add data to the back-end table.
I **suppose** (sighing in despair) I'll take yet **another** look at ooo2.0, crossing my fingers that they don't tax my resources, don't demand I include umpteen megabytes of Java, and don't have difficult-to-edit elements.
GODDD, is this news? I wonder what they're doing for security.
Even before following TFA's link, I recalled hearing or reading about this when I was in Japan from Dec 04 to Feb 05. So, for this response, I "googled" it, and though I left on 24 Feb, and these links I'm supplying are dated 28 Feb, the news is sourced from material in the making long before that.
OMRON Announces 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor', World's First Face Recognition Biometric for Mobile Phones
"To use the unit, the user simply takes his or her own photo. The 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' will automatically detect the user and unlock the unit. The identification process takes less than a second from snapping the photograph. Further, their is no need to adjust the camera position when taking the photo. If the face is included in the photo, the sensor will detect the owner automatically."
However, it says nothing to ally to allay fears that a thief could place before the camera a picture of the owner of a stolen camera. It might be possible that the camera may someday have strobes or some thermal sensors that try to detect heat from a human body temp range, but that could be fooled with a transparent "Mission: Impossible" mask of the Gerry Anderson type (I purposely ignored the recent MI stuff since I loath money-grabbing remakes or remakes-in-title).
I suppose a good security feature set would include:
1. thumb or finger sensor with thumb print/fingerprint biometrics 2. retinal scan (with enhancements to determine live/dead eyeballs 3. breath, saliva or mucous tissue sample scan and later match/compare 4. electrolytic sample (to determine voltage of live/dead person)
If they can do that (put a mini-lab in the phone) then probably only CIA, NSA, MI6 and Japan's pending MI6, Mossad, and others would surely buy up these phones, or any other devices so equipped/secured.
Image word: entice, just as this "article" was "enticing"...
(First, I haven't read (at least not recently) the Title 17 and by no means am I a lawyer...)
It sounds/sounded like you are saying that the Title 17 says a purchaser of a copy can continue to make copies. Does this apply to paper AND digital products?
Suppose I sell blueprints of things I design (say notional/concept homes, or cars or ships or rockets). Now, some end-user (consumer) buys a copy from me or from a retail location. They may be the first-sale user, but I believe copyright law still prohibits them from making more copies and then selling them for profit. I realize that academic institutions can make copies for educational purposes, but even so, by their large-scale use in an academic setting is pretty tantamount to "commercial gain", since if they find it useful or tantalizing enough to put into their curricula, then they are likely doing it to improve the sign-up rate to that instructor's lineup. They're not going to add trivial or silly material for a course from they expect to recoup the instructors' and campus' operational costs.
Now, suppose the blueprints are useful in the digital gaming realm (say, something more detailed than a mere "level" or floorplan in some FPS/RPG), and an author of that material is the copyright holder, designer, and more, (but, for a twist, say the person cannot afford to obtain a patent immediately) and then from the outset offers "licensing" to use the material for certain purposes. In that case, should "first-sale doctrine" allow the first or second or any subsequent author to hijack that. I realize that in the real world, devious, shifty characters will do more than modify "10%"; they'll cobble together or shave off enough and amass their lawyers to bypass the poor inventor.
In my opinion, though, "first sale doctrine" is not worthy of respect if it allows second or subsequent parties (technology companies or consumer/users) to just stomp all over a property creator.
Please tell me if I rambled or duplicated material already here.
However, as far as a PC with windows goes, if they're cheap enough to buy in bulk and were I selling PCs without warranties, I'd buy up a boatload of the Dells and then just purge them of windoze and install whatever OS my business model was structured for and the market allows me to sell in business-sustaining quantity.
As far as ms putting their "authentic" whatever stickers on the sides of PCs, they have NO right to bind the OS to the hardware unless they outright hijack or buy up every single PC manufacturer on the planet and then somehow manage to get passed laws that allow them and ONLY them to own all past, existing and future patents and rights to build and ship PCs of any kind (naked or loaded with an OS). But, I don't think that will happen because I suppose ONLY some company of US origin will try to be that stupid, and once that happens, the rest of the world would gang up on the US. That's just one possible scenario.
No one company should be allowed to exist unscathed should it go to that extreme. So, since Linux, Apples, and other operating systems exist, then as long as they can keep up with the needs of users, their existence should be allowed and not outlawed. If that crimps ms, then TOUGH. Everything has a lifespan, and companies have an opportunity, not a RIGHT to "make" money/income. Unfortunately, again, in the "real world" politics and corrupted politicians in ANY government will pander to whomever puts down $1,000 a plate for a fundraiser.
Not quite a Eurythmic "DoublePlusGood", but it's funny when run through "Speak"... but would be funnier if the spacing or pauses were set up a bit better.
In Nam, the claimed average life expectancy for snipers was 38 seconds.
So, with this thing out there, things might be TriplePlusBad...
I wonder... would being sniped by the Anti-sniper vacuum machine "suck" or "blow"; would it SUCK you off the tree, or BLOW you away? Either way, one helluva hose/blow job...
Paradigm? Does that by necessity/definition have to be painful?
(Think along the lines of an Ambien commercial)...
Imagine a world where you press the button and your computer boots up and stays up, thanks to a BIOS replacement that makes the software you WANT to use independent of the OS you've been FORCED to use...
Imagine a world where you surf the internet, unsavaged by virii and worms and other maladies perpetuated by an obsequious, puerile, lumbering, megalomaniacal, manifest destinest corporation that will live without honor and pull every ingracious dirty trick in the book to keep you on the hook...
Imagine a world where it wouldn't matter whether you used Linux, or some variant of it, or Apple's Tiger, Panther, Cheeta, or Orangutan, or Panthgutan, or Cheerilla (created to survive by morphing into something mshaft could not destroy)...
Imagine a world where Disney FINALLY is so enamored with Open Source tools that they throw in the towel and apologize for foolishly and wastefully criminalizing individuals who would have paid $3.00 for a license rather than become outright code busters in the name of playing on WHATEVER hardware they wanted the CD or DVD they purchased...
Imagine a world in which Asian power turns out to be one sky-shot anvil that lands on mshaft's back, skull and crazy-straw-twisted loinal probiscus, and Europe the other sky-shot anvil that flies from the sound f speed and beyon light of speed straight up mshafts rear end, and doesn't stop until it arcs and sparks along their bitter, vertebrae, shorting it out as it increases speed on its journey into the mshaft skull, only to further increase speed, increasing its magnetic properties and scores, pits and gyrates the inner side of the mshaft skull...
Imagine a world overrun buy cheap to produce hardware, easy to embed software, and profitable to distribute products to loyal customers who finally wake up and use their brains and decide that business are indeed responsible for having morals...
Imagine the possibilities...
Linxien, a product that frees your mind to the possibilities...
They won't do that yet. It's not in the cards. The wealthy heads of commerce have not yet entered their yacht-based, offshore, missile-battery-protected conference in MeetingMaker yet.
Give it a little while. If/once they learn to see ms as a copy-catting, unctuous, obsequious has-been, they might then see some value in deprecating mcrosioft a little bit. (ms' name deprecation intentional/perpetual with me)
Hmmm.... word image was "epistles"... I wonder if ms will be damned according to the word in some epistle...
is there...
(What the HELL is this:
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.8).)"
What a lame lameness filter... for text?
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.0)." (must be the clarity/separation dashes...)
sheesh!!!
Let's see:
http://www.start.com/
just returns a blank, bannerless page, having the words "start" in white, each letter surrounded by a colord disk, followed by same-colored ellipsis
====
A rather telling indicator of what many employers think about ms office is:
"Please do NOT send your resume as an attachment; rather, please send as text, in the body of the message."
Some don't even want.pdf files. Why? In almost every instance (ok, in a number of them) where I've seen this request, they specifically say this measure is to avoid a virus attack. Some places even ask for fax or paper resumes. So much for anti-virus tools and ms office, particularly with ms word having vb and other useless junk turned on by default. It will be QUITE a while before all those previously endangered installs are cleaned up by IT departments, either due to serendipity or some major patch that ONLY turns off the dangerous features and which doesn't require a 550 MB download to do shit ms should have fixed before letting the malignant horse out the gate.
As for Open Source apps, yeh, I think we need something that showcases the BEST, not the half-baked stuff. One section for purely command line stuff, and one for GUI/Eye-Candy stuff. I think a blending of Linux.org and Sourceforge:
but with thumbnails of the stuff showing something other than a desktop and kicker. The activity stats need to be there, and it would be nice if many of these corporations that secretly crave cheaper software costs would actually openly and/or silently donate via PayPal or some mechanism they consider to be low-risk to them.
Actually, these corporations and donors should take the politics out of the process, remove the chance of ms infiltrating them, and make the donations easier and pain-free (relatively) by setting up a line item in their budget, sort of to help foster or steer the development of a given or favored project.
Many sites do ask for donations, but it's saddening that so many promising projects wither or languish and then die due to lack of interest or worse, a lack of resources. I don't propose that every bottom-feeding/leech-like weed of a project get funded. There needs to be merit, uniqueness, and viability and future sustainability in a supported project for it to receive funding.
Many Open Source and mixed/dual license apps, however, could signal the death knell for many proprietary, stodgy, intransigent companies which make nice, but astronomically (elitism?, cache? status?, exclusivity?, branding?) priced apps and suites that could be broken down into low-, medium- and upper-end pricing to gain a bigger footprint in the market. Maybe they could even do what some of the food and tire makers do: spin off or distribute excess lots or lesser-capable versions of a product through another entity or subdivision. Not every company can afford to divide this way, but the current and foreseeable economy will continue forcing companies and inventors to reinvent themselves or die at the hands of steadily improving free (cost or licensing) and proprietary (low-cost and costly) software.
Another way software can be exposed is simply if IBM and others finally pull the ms probiscus out of their rears. We need, DESPERATELY, some major companies with backbone who'll create or support an infrastructure through which low-cost laptops can be deployed for rent, lease, sale, or barter (social work, tutoring, community cleanup, use your imagination) and which have Open Source-friendly tools loaded on them. I'm not talking about 2 GHz, nor 400 MHz laptops. They could be highly-optimized 800 MHz-1 GHz laptops (how many hundreds of thousands of these things must be still in boxes, in inventory, or going to secondary markets, or returned and destroyed rather than kept floating on the market?) meant for kids to use at school, on the bus, and in other places. They're lugging some 15-25 pounds of books now, and the paper industry needs to be forced down or compelled to take their monkeys off the spines of grow
Slashdot Mirror
Or, if (well, since) it is the FIRST Japanese probe to land on the asteroid, then if/when it dies, it can be Kurose Ichi (Kuroshita Ichi-kun), the first to die there...
Well, if they NEED a front end to their databases, via a Linux desktop, then IBM should donate the code they own in Lotus Approach. Approach is a helluva lot EASIER for non-programmers and non-devs to use.
Granted, Approach has fewer bells and whistles (some of the stuff from FileMaker; no horizontal sliders and no tabbed interfaces ON a form (you can have forms presented with tabs, but if you have detail tables views or repeating panels on a form, you DON'T get sliders; your data will just be non-viewable on a crammed repeating panel...)
I wish the OO.o & Sun would tuck away the gauntlet and beg/cajole IBM into giving the CUBICLE dwellers the major app Linux needs: DESKTOP DATABASE FRONT END tools like APproach. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING in Linux land even TOUCHES Approach, unless you're a geek with time and drive to mimic Approach. And, so far as I see, NO one is trying to mimic Approach.
I guess IBM prefers to deprecate Approach and push Notes/Domino and other stuff, or watch determined USERS opt for WINE and Win4Lin and never have a resurrected SmartSuite codebase for LINUX.
Thanks a lot, IBM. Really, THANKS!
Imagine if Dr. Wyatt ERP (Earp) had even a FRACTION of this power in his gun. Oklahoma wouldn't be OK. And anyone shot in the gut by this gun would be in a state of NB... nobellium... Better stop those DeLoreans and make sure Earp isn't given a ray gun... might change the tech timeline...
out at night...
....
McCoy: My god.. Dear lord... What would happen if somebody uses this thing where life already EXISTS?
Spock: It would destroy such life in favor of its new MATRIX.
McCoy: It's new MATRIX???...
Well I wonder...what would happen if... Say, are there "portable" version of these gizmos? I mean, imagine if these could be randomly dropped off in various places across different time zones. Then, if they were set off as each terminator/night time has been about 2-4 hours old...
I am wondering if these could be used in the "take the war to the enemy before they come to us..." strategem. If these could be dropped by commerical airliners as tubes (say, a CIA mission deployed from customized COMAIR craft), then launched to specific altitudes from remote or time delayed command, then these things could probably be triggered when certain launch profiles/parameters are sensed. Maybe they could be intended keep China's "just-launched" missiles from reaching high orbit and arming. Of course, where they fall, and whether they crash or dispers as dirty bombs probably isn't on God's, umm, George's list of concerns....
I imagine a new project will be a modified form of the filaments dropped over various nations'/targets' power grids before a softening-up bomb run knocked out remote radar posts...
Well-funded program...
Imagine a HARP playing at 4+GHz... Such "harping" frequencies in a concert would be... disconcerting... But, then Lord George's angels in heaven probably need help from down here the way Spock's brother acted as an emmisary to get "god" a starship...
...
Try splicing (or, in advance inserting) an UPS slaved to a stand-by Honda (or, pick your make of) generator. Then, when you have to move the server, just put your hot-standby/failover on the line. (Check with your friendly electrician or other certified (but not "certifiable") types who can keep phase and other issues to a minimum or zero event.)
Move your main system to its destination, using the UPS to keep it running or in suspend mode (if you want to suspend); then when power is low, run the generator until you reach your destination (keeping mindful of the gasoline... unless you have another set of dry cells or other non-flammable (or, hheheh, "inflammable") power source.
Then, when hooked up to the LAN/WAN/SAN and reconnected to the power grid, switch the clients back to the main server. Then, move the backup server to its new (if necessary) location.
Now, your uptime is as good as your hardware allows, not being dependent upon physical moves to other rooms or buildings.
Of course, this is not at all a novel idea.
Others, feel free to prepend or append to this.
image word: trapped
What happened to the idea of the Open Patents or Open USPTO-like activity?
When are we going to systematically declare that MOST (but not all) of the content of a patent filing can be and must be copied and disseminated for public scrutiny. General descriptions, designs, contact information, and other attributes need to be publicised widely for there to be decent claims of or searches and cross references for "prior art".
What also needs to be made law with teeth is the tearing to shreds of ANY company that files (not just gets, but FILES for) some frivolous, patent-grabbing bullshit action just meant to ensnare and strike fear into innovators or copiers. When a company files for a thing such as this one, it ought to be READILY apparent that Amazon hasn't got something totally novel. I say this (without having read the actual article) because I fear that the growing capabilities of software which allow the average joe or jane to program might also land them in incalculable courts costs.
Seems to me that C3PO probably has a cloaked Gaydar... So did Kit from Knight Rider...
Now, if only they cross Twikky (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) and R2D2...
Speaking of which... I saw a commercial recently where Mark Hamill was on a panel. For a second I thought, "God, he looks like Gill Bates" and then realized he was Luke out of costume and a few decades forward in the time line...
I wonder if he'd play in a movie about Disturabance in the 5MG Force: The Man/Myth/Malevolent/Megalomaniac Geek? (Or, maybe it could be called "Disturbance: 5MG")
OTOH, R2D2 can probably do a Cartman and be bombed into thinking he's a streetwalker and wakes up with a sore posterior annular confinement port (or, is his/its an anterior access port?)
May the FARCE be WITH you...
How about making those "tap dancing" storm troopers into "River Troops"? Yeh, River-Dancin' Stormtroopers with those tough boots of theirs they can probably tear up the dance floor something fierce.
A nice touch might be to put laser reflectors on their knees so that the light bounces all over the ceiling. Maybe the audience will need welders' googles or UV lenses or such to protect themselves from laser dazzling.... while Yoda yodles and Chewie chews...
Now, just mix Yoda with BlueMan. Wait, not, put Chewie with Blueman... When he's done eating them, they can be Capsicum Blue
JTK: And, M-5, what is the punishment for murder?
M5: This... Unit... Must... Die...
JTK: Scotty, GET down TO ENgiNEEEEring-- KWIKK! PULL the PLUGGGG Scotty...
~~~~~~~~~ Meanwhile, in another timeline....
SON: Ensign Kim, would you like to copulate?
EHK: Hey baby, assimilate ME!
SON: Resistance is FYOO-TYLE! Bend Over Ensign Harry Kim while I plug you into the Borg Vinculum and neutralize your pain receptors...This is going to get hairy, Harry.
EHK: But, Seven, what's with that Balun?
SON: Relax, I must unbalance your annular confinement corridor in order to insert my Borg tubules... This will not hurt
~~~~~~~~~
Between pulling plugs and grafting code, how long will it take for tiger to tire out or panther to start panting? It becomes unbearable for the bear, fishy for the fish, a dog-day for the dog, for-the-birds for the birds.... and code-dead for the dead code...
(Yeh, it's been a looonnnnngggg day....)
image-word: preserve...
Why not mirror windoze? Have "driver signing" or a widely-disseminated "HCL: Hardware Compatibility List" such as Linux Hardware's?
The "friendly" manufacturers who "play ball" should be rewarded as "vendor of preference" for those corporates still sitting on the fence.
Those corporates found to be or *seeming* to be injecting viscious or cunning "proprietary and hi-hijack-potential" code should be on the "Red List" of companies whose software or contributions are fraught with potential licensing or other issues.
I'm not all that much *against* proprietary drivers as long as they play ball are are not greedy bastards trying to undermine Linux, O/S, F/LOSS and so on.
If a flag can be put into Linux, one such as the broadcast flag/ad-insert flag" and so on, then the USER or ADMIN of the system in use can set a policy to allow some, all or NO proprietary flagged hardware or software to be used.
Someone would have to be a maintainer, but if the list is sanitized daily it might server as a prototype until a better, more dynamic and real-time policy manager can be implemented.
Is it really that hard?
David Syes
The Pirates (next month) then fire back with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give Youuuu Uhhhhpppp... Never gonna desert youuuuuu".
... Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut DUH.... DUH-THUH......" I think that newsclip went on for about 4 minutes from many angles, elevations, light levels and audio reverbs...
Then the target/victim will fire back with a deluge of Kenny G's Christmas Specials... By Valentine's day, one of them will be playing "Arrow Through My Heart"...
Eventually, one of them will be playing a library track from the opening of "Deep Rising", that catchy, military-like/adventuresome tune... (Which, I might add, was a weird juxtaposition I saw on NHK or one of the local stations around 1/05... It was played over and over as restaurant owners showed their sticky-tape anti-rat tactics. The hidden cameras caught and replayed the red of the rats' eyes as they struggled to rip themselves off the sticky tape, only bleeding to death as they left limbs on the tape..." Dah-thut duh.. Dah-thut duh.. Dah-thut duh.... Dah-thut duh...Dah-thut duh...Dah-thut duh
Oh, but about those sea rats...
I beg to differ with you. Cell phone video does NOT suck, depending on the analog station which is pumping out the broadcast. I bought a Vodafone V-3 series (click my name and see the URLs I submitted today) phone in Tokyo in December. Some of the stations are sharp as hell. Here in SF, some stations, notably the English/"domestic" stations tended to SUCK because the broadcast manager was probably not pumping the db levels the Spanish and DW World from Germany (broadcasting in the bay area) on KTSF were.
In the "right places", the signal is VERY sharp and clear, and the "Silicon" screen made the images look as sharp as DVD/Hi-Def. I've shown people who'd prefer the ANALOG over that v-cast crap that some of us don't like. I personally prefer to hook my phone into AC and just watch TV on the desk at home. On buses and at boring locations, I use the battery (which lasted 1.2 to 1.5 hours depending on the brightness level I set and whether the audio is high or low.
Sadly, I got bum information about the 402-SH and other *02-sh models coming to the US. They'd have had GSM, and the tuner would have been adjusted to this hemisphere. I heard it was likely to cost some US$300 or higher. I got mine cheaper than that in Shinjuku. But, though it came out in June or so of 2004, by December it was "obsolete" to the Japanese market in only 6 months. Here, in the US, I taunted and teased Verizon, Cingular and mom&pop kiosks and stores, and one offered me up to $200 for the phone.
DS
Try the phones from Sharp... I had a Vodofone Sharp 402-sh/v3 series phone (but lost it in San Fran recently...
2 sh/
h tml
n e+tv+
p .html
1 e.pdf
r p-trial-digital-tv-on.html
Check out these URLs...
TV
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/kisyu/v60
the phones in a lineup...
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/domestic.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sharp+vodafo
MPEG stuff
http://shopping.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/ss_vodafone_shar
http://www.vodafone.jp/english/release/2005/05013
http://www.idiottoys.com/2005/05/vodafone-and-sha
So, what have we got here? "Virtual Hell"? or "Literal Hell"?
Hmmm, I suppose virtual/animated snowballs now CAN stand a chance in "hell"...
Apparently, considering the polite responses, it was NOT off-topic.
I'd like to MySQL a front end that feels like a client/server interface that is user-friendly. I'd like something like Lotus Approach, which connects to over 8 or 10 database types, but runs only on windoze, necessitating use of Win4Lin. Approach has forms, charts, crosstabs, worksheets, scripting, macros, and more. Unfortunately, it doesn't support nor have sliders to allow multiple columns of data to be shown on a detail panel on a form, although there is a slider for multiple rows. Nicely, Approach won't let you design a bad formula that doesn't evaluate to find, change or add data to the back-end table.
I **suppose** (sighing in despair) I'll take yet **another** look at ooo2.0, crossing my fingers that they don't tax my resources, don't demand I include umpteen megabytes of Java, and don't have difficult-to-edit elements.
word image: smother
GODDD, is this news? I wonder what they're doing for security.
Even before following TFA's link, I recalled hearing or reading about this when I was in Japan from Dec 04 to Feb 05. So, for this response, I "googled" it, and though I left on 24 Feb, and these links I'm supplying are dated 28 Feb, the news is sourced from material in the making long before that.
OMRON Announces 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor', World's First Face Recognition Biometric for Mobile Phones
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=9494
Face-recognition security comes to mobile phones
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS7172421600.html
As for the Omron URL, this is an excerpt:
"To use the unit, the user simply takes his or her own photo. The 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' will automatically detect the user and unlock the unit. The identification process takes less than a second from snapping the photograph. Further, their is no need to adjust the camera position when taking the photo. If the face is included in the photo, the sensor will detect the owner automatically."
However, it says nothing to ally to allay fears that a thief could place before the camera a picture of the owner of a stolen camera. It might be possible that the camera may someday have strobes or some thermal sensors that try to detect heat from a human body temp range, but that could be fooled with a transparent "Mission: Impossible" mask of the Gerry Anderson type (I purposely ignored the recent MI stuff since I loath money-grabbing remakes or remakes-in-title).
I suppose a good security feature set would include:
1. thumb or finger sensor with thumb print/fingerprint biometrics
2. retinal scan (with enhancements to determine live/dead eyeballs
3. breath, saliva or mucous tissue sample scan and later match/compare
4. electrolytic sample (to determine voltage of live/dead person)
If they can do that (put a mini-lab in the phone) then probably only CIA, NSA, MI6 and Japan's pending MI6, Mossad, and others would surely buy up these phones, or any other devices so equipped/secured.
Image word: entice, just as this "article" was "enticing"...
(First, I haven't read (at least not recently) the Title 17 and by no means am I a lawyer...)
It sounds/sounded like you are saying that the Title 17 says a purchaser of a copy can continue to make copies. Does this apply to paper AND digital products?
Suppose I sell blueprints of things I design (say notional/concept homes, or cars or ships or rockets). Now, some end-user (consumer) buys a copy from me or from a retail location. They may be the first-sale user, but I believe copyright law still prohibits them from making more copies and then selling them for profit. I realize that academic institutions can make copies for educational purposes, but even so, by their large-scale use in an academic setting is pretty tantamount to "commercial gain", since if they find it useful or tantalizing enough to put into their curricula, then they are likely doing it to improve the sign-up rate to that instructor's lineup. They're not going to add trivial or silly material for a course from they expect to recoup the instructors' and campus' operational costs.
Now, suppose the blueprints are useful in the digital gaming realm (say, something more detailed than a mere "level" or floorplan in some FPS/RPG), and an author of that material is the copyright holder, designer, and more, (but, for a twist, say the person cannot afford to obtain a patent immediately) and then from the outset offers "licensing" to use the material for certain purposes. In that case, should "first-sale doctrine" allow the first or second or any subsequent author to hijack that. I realize that in the real world, devious, shifty characters will do more than modify "10%"; they'll cobble together or shave off enough and amass their lawyers to bypass the poor inventor.
In my opinion, though, "first sale doctrine" is not worthy of respect if it allows second or subsequent parties (technology companies or consumer/users) to just stomp all over a property creator.
Please tell me if I rambled or duplicated material already here.
However, as far as a PC with windows goes, if they're cheap enough to buy in bulk and were I selling PCs without warranties, I'd buy up a boatload of the Dells and then just purge them of windoze and install whatever OS my business model was structured for and the market allows me to sell in business-sustaining quantity.
As far as ms putting their "authentic" whatever stickers on the sides of PCs, they have NO right to bind the OS to the hardware unless they outright hijack or buy up every single PC manufacturer on the planet and then somehow manage to get passed laws that allow them and ONLY them to own all past, existing and future patents and rights to build and ship PCs of any kind (naked or loaded with an OS). But, I don't think that will happen because I suppose ONLY some company of US origin will try to be that stupid, and once that happens, the rest of the world would gang up on the US. That's just one possible scenario.
No one company should be allowed to exist unscathed should it go to that extreme. So, since Linux, Apples, and other operating systems exist, then as long as they can keep up with the needs of users, their existence should be allowed and not outlawed. If that crimps ms, then TOUGH. Everything has a lifespan, and companies have an opportunity, not a RIGHT to "make" money/income. Unfortunately, again, in the "real world" politics and corrupted politicians in ANY government will pander to whomever puts down $1,000 a plate for a fundraiser.
Not quite a Eurythmic "DoublePlusGood", but it's funny when run through "Speak"... but would be funnier if the spacing or pauses were set up a bit better.
In Nam, the claimed average life expectancy for snipers was 38 seconds.
So, with this thing out there, things might be TriplePlusBad...
I wonder... would being sniped by the Anti-sniper vacuum machine "suck" or "blow"; would it SUCK you off the tree, or BLOW you away? Either way, one helluva hose/blow job...
Paradigm? Does that by necessity/definition have to be painful?
(Think along the lines of an Ambien commercial)...
Imagine a world where you press the button and your computer boots up and stays up, thanks to a BIOS replacement that makes the software you WANT to use independent of the OS you've been FORCED to use...
Imagine a world where you surf the internet, unsavaged by virii and worms and other maladies perpetuated by an obsequious, puerile, lumbering, megalomaniacal, manifest destinest corporation that will live without honor and pull every ingracious dirty trick in the book to keep you on the hook...
Imagine a world where it wouldn't matter whether you used Linux, or some variant of it, or Apple's Tiger, Panther, Cheeta, or Orangutan, or Panthgutan, or Cheerilla (created to survive by morphing into something mshaft could not destroy)...
Imagine a world where Disney FINALLY is so enamored with Open Source tools that they throw in the towel and apologize for foolishly and wastefully criminalizing individuals who would have paid $3.00 for a license rather than become outright code busters in the name of playing on WHATEVER hardware they wanted the CD or DVD they purchased...
Imagine a world in which Asian power turns out to be one sky-shot anvil that lands on mshaft's back, skull and crazy-straw-twisted loinal probiscus, and Europe the other sky-shot anvil that flies from the sound f speed and beyon light of speed straight up mshafts rear end, and doesn't stop until it arcs and sparks along their bitter, vertebrae, shorting it out as it increases speed on its journey into the mshaft skull, only to further increase speed, increasing its magnetic properties and scores, pits and gyrates the inner side of the mshaft skull...
Imagine a world overrun buy cheap to produce hardware, easy to embed software, and profitable to distribute products to loyal customers who finally wake up and use their brains and decide that business are indeed responsible for having morals...
Imagine the possibilities...
Linxien, a product that frees your mind to the possibilities...
They won't do that yet. It's not in the cards. The wealthy heads of commerce have not yet entered their yacht-based, offshore, missile-battery-protected conference in MeetingMaker yet.
Give it a little while. If/once they learn to see ms as a copy-catting, unctuous, obsequious has-been, they might then see some value in deprecating mcrosioft a little bit. (ms' name deprecation intentional/perpetual with me)
Hmmm.... word image was "epistles"... I wonder if ms will be damned according to the word in some epistle...
Now that I actually perused the material that was returned by the URL at msn search:
c h_type=0&q=what+is+this+shit%3F
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=START3&sr
I must say: I.am.shocked. But, not quite amazed or aghast.
So much for a ms being a family-values company, or did I imagine they claimed to have such values?
is there...
c h_type=0&q=what+is+this+shit%3F
(What the HELL is this:
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.8).)"
What a lame lameness filter... for text?
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 22.0)." (must be the clarity/separation dashes...)
sheesh!!!
Let's see:
http://www.start.com/
just returns a blank, bannerless page, having the words "start" in white, each letter surrounded by a colord disk, followed by same-colored ellipsis
====
http://www.start.com/1
"©2005 Microsoft Corp - Feedback - This site is not an officially supported site. It is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. For other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ Enjoy!"
=============
Hmmm, let's try
http://www.start.com/2
We get:
http://www.start.com/2/default.aspx
which produces:
"Add my IE favorites to this page
Import OPML
Show removed items
Favelet:Add to Start
Loading...
©2005 Microsoft Corp - Feedback - This site is not an officially supported site. It is an incubation experiment and doesn't represent any particular strategy or policy. For other incubation experiments, see http://sandbox.msn.com./ Enjoy!"
=============
http://www.start.com/4
"The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."
===========
Hmm, while I don't give a rat for ms, the grandparent's reference doesn't immediately jump out as:
"the layout and use of javascript is strikingly similar to Google's. Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site.""
Well, if one goes and plays numbers on the location bar, different things tend to pop up.
As for the original URL in the byline, I typed into the search box:
"what is this shit?"
and out popped to the URL/location bar:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=START3&sr
sigh....
----
Isn't ms getting stale by the day? But, I guess I wasted about 10 minutes adding my 40 cents worth of time. (Yep, added
and changed to HTML Formatted and the lame anti-lameness message went away...a 40-second check)
A rather telling indicator of what many employers think about ms office is:
.pdf files. Why? In almost every instance (ok, in a number of them) where I've seen this request, they specifically say this measure is to avoid a virus attack. Some places even ask for fax or paper resumes. So much for anti-virus tools and ms office, particularly with ms word having vb and other useless junk turned on by default. It will be QUITE a while before all those previously endangered installs are cleaned up by IT departments, either due to serendipity or some major patch that ONLY turns off the dangerous features and which doesn't require a 550 MB download to do shit ms should have fixed before letting the malignant horse out the gate.
"Please do NOT send your resume as an attachment; rather, please send as text, in the body of the message."
Some don't even want
As for Open Source apps, yeh, I think we need something that showcases the BEST, not the half-baked stuff. One section for purely command line stuff, and one for GUI/Eye-Candy stuff. I think a blending of Linux.org and Sourceforge:
http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html
http://sourceforge.net/index.php
but with thumbnails of the stuff showing something other than a desktop and kicker. The activity stats need to be there, and it would be nice if many of these corporations that secretly crave cheaper software costs would actually openly and/or silently donate via PayPal or some mechanism they consider to be low-risk to them.
Actually, these corporations and donors should take the politics out of the process, remove the chance of ms infiltrating them, and make the donations easier and pain-free (relatively) by setting up a line item in their budget, sort of to help foster or steer the development of a given or favored project.
Many sites do ask for donations, but it's saddening that so many promising projects wither or languish and then die due to lack of interest or worse, a lack of resources. I don't propose that every bottom-feeding/leech-like weed of a project get funded. There needs to be merit, uniqueness, and viability and future sustainability in a supported project for it to receive funding.
Many Open Source and mixed/dual license apps, however, could signal the death knell for many proprietary, stodgy, intransigent companies which make nice, but astronomically (elitism?, cache? status?, exclusivity?, branding?) priced apps and suites that could be broken down into low-, medium- and upper-end pricing to gain a bigger footprint in the market. Maybe they could even do what some of the food and tire makers do: spin off or distribute excess lots or lesser-capable versions of a product through another entity or subdivision. Not every company can afford to divide this way, but the current and foreseeable economy will continue forcing companies and inventors to reinvent themselves or die at the hands of steadily improving free (cost or licensing) and proprietary (low-cost and costly) software.
Another way software can be exposed is simply if IBM and others finally pull the ms probiscus out of their rears. We need, DESPERATELY, some major companies with backbone who'll create or support an infrastructure through which low-cost laptops can be deployed for rent, lease, sale, or barter (social work, tutoring, community cleanup, use your imagination) and which have Open Source-friendly tools loaded on them. I'm not talking about 2 GHz, nor 400 MHz laptops. They could be highly-optimized 800 MHz-1 GHz laptops (how many hundreds of thousands of these things must be still in boxes, in inventory, or going to secondary markets, or returned and destroyed rather than kept floating on the market?) meant for kids to use at school, on the bus, and in other places. They're lugging some 15-25 pounds of books now, and the paper industry needs to be forced down or compelled to take their monkeys off the spines of grow