This is sheer stupidity on the side of the PKD estate. If they would just shut up, they might be contacted by Google for some neat comarketing thing. But noooo.
Perhaps the Nexus One is inspired not by PKD but by the science of nexialism from General Semantics as explained by A. E. Van Vogt. link 1link 2
Here's a question. The Electric Sheep Screensaver is a distributed fractal movie calculation engine which is pretty cool and the name comes from PKD's title "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (the alternate title of Bladerunner IIRC). So if they tried to make money at it would the esteemed, stupid estate try to sue them too? If a literary work produces strong memes that become part of mainstream culture, which seems to be one of the goals of a writer in general, then is it ethical for the writer to try to control how people use that meme?
My impression (without reading TFA) is the estate wants a judicial finding that Google is trying to associate their product with a work of PKD's and reap some extra cash through that association. The association might be true but the reference is so obscure, and Google makes no attempt to mention PKD. The word used of itself is still in the realm of mainstream language and there are many other science fiction (and other) usages of "android" and "nexus". The estate hears everything through a filter of being a PKD expert but it is not conclusive that Google was taking advantage of them.
Next question: If the branding person at Google admits the android and nexus names were homages to PKD, then is the estate justified in suing? This is the main legal question. Unless Google tries to leverage it by use of additional imagery or text from PKD works, such that the use of the name is not an homage but a hook into the creative asset of the estate, I think not. But I'm not a lawyer. I think Google could get away with it if they stop picking PKD words to use as product names in the future.
As for the screensaver, I have no idea what the answer is. It's free but what about T-shirts? (the ones they sell don't say "electric sheep"). Actually it is neat that they call individual fractals "sheep" too. At this point I think we are talking about the culture taking possession of a meme and the original author is no longer involved with it. (i.e. you could make a t-shirt that says "Get Sheep" on it, I'd expect).
Hi, I'm the GP. I was talking to an iPhone salesman at Bic Camera in Yurakucho, Tokyo. He is the one who told me all providers start throttling silently after 300GB/mo. is crossed, which sounds if true like a cartel. I'm interested since it would affect some startups I know involved in p2p movie distribution.
My own data is from what the iPhone salesman told me. He said all providers in Japan silently start throttling down at 300GB/month not per day. I have not heard this anywhere else yet myself.
Help with documentation. Give presentations about the solutions you have and how you have saved much money with these open source apps. Tell open source vendors whose apps you use, that it was very helpful, and why, so they can sell to similar government offices. Tell colleagues and people in other offices about it. Keep track of how much you are spending for commercial, and for open source software. Later write a report on cost of ownership.
This post once again made me feel extremely nauseated about Microsoft and it got me thinking. People are people all around the world, we are taught different things but there is some kind of psychological DNA if you will, maybe it's based on brain structures or the lack of them, but I have a feeling you will find similar types of personalities in different places. It is why art and stories written centuries ago still strike a chord, why movies from other countries can be endearing. I imagine the Microsoft attracts more pathologies than most companies, and I wonder what positions in society those types of personalities would occupy. I imagine Microsoft execs would feel quite at home sitting on the ruling council of a religious fanatic society in the Middle East. I wonder where in Africa you will find similar personalities.. and where in the U.S. you will find those of the criminal exec-types found in those countries? We should try and recognize a pathology and do something about it, instead of just turning our eyes away. It is gross, nauseating, yes it might make you want to kill yourself if you have to actually have a conversation with these horrible individuals at Microsoft, but maybe we should actually try to remove them from their posts and give them intensive professional counseling before they get taken seriously and have stupid ideas actually implemented. On the other hand, doing nothing is perhaps safest. At least they aren't being handed live weapons.
Yes I agree and am using OOo right now since I switched to a Mac and have not copied my PC over into VMware.
But can you tell me why OOo (and even NeoOffice) are SLOW running on my spanking new MacBook Pro?
I'm seriously considering buying the native MS Office. Not sure if that would be better than using the windows version I already have in VMware though.
No they can't if they have a draconian security policy like our client did, as I posted above. Not even sure it would solve the problem we had with color palette incompatibility.
And how do you upgrade the PAYING customer with the draconian security policy?
A totally cynical decision by Microsoft to make color palettes INCOMPATIBLE in when Office was upgraded has caused major troubles in our project. The Excel files we made, which need to use color in order to communicate complex data sets, get shown in front of large meetings and emailed to participants. I had to hand-edit many times to avoid embarrassment, the guys who didn't got embarrassed of course.
FWIW I heard from a wireless provider's salesperson that all of the major Internet Service Providers in Japan have a policy that after 300GB traffic per month connection speed will be throttled down.
I calculate this means that a 1Mbps video connection 24x7 would barely fit under this threshold. 1 mbit/sec *3600 = 3600 mbit/hr 3600 / 8 = 400 MBytes/hr 400 * 24 * 30 = 288000 MB/mo. = 288 GB/mo.
I wouldn't mind paying more if the companies would just stop adding all kinds of crazy rules. The worst is the huge amount paid for access speeds which while respectable themselves, are being sold at many times the effective rate. ISPs should be required to sell unfettered access at the same rate they pay for it, plus a fixed rate (say 5-10%) to ensure market growth.
And that's why America sucks these days and is a laughing stock. The most visible fruits of the current system, as seen by the Internet-connected population, are: - RIAA lawsuits for sharing of intangible rights (which was legal in analog era)... despite ability to build models that could benefit artists and consumers alike while allowing sharing. - Monopolist software company created by world's richest man, patenting "price gouging of the least influential", despite having the resources to build new better software packages. - Google CEO disavowing responsibility to protect user privacy.. despite being in a position to protect it strongly. - First black U.S. President, having not accomplished anything yet, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize... despite being in a position to give a great example of character to blacks, whites, and all races alike.
Influential entities like the above which inhabit influential positions in the world, find it much more profitable to act cynically than to do the right thing. This is why the dollar gets torpedoed and the U.S. is losing relevancy.
These issues are all vulnerable to information sharing via the media, in particular Microsoft, which I think should be the test case since they deserve it. - Purchasers should post what they paid for a product - The purchaser then learns what segment Microsoft considers them to inhabit - Lower ranked segment inhabitants are encouraged to post reviews and letters. The intent being to invert the Microsoft cynical agenda (as exemplified in their ideal pricing structure) and force the monopolist to sell its product to the entire market at the minimum price for which it sells in any market segment worldwide. They also should have the antimonopoly hearings reconvened and be fined for attempting to patent something which so clearly goes against the spirit of that ruling. Finally I would like to say that I have decided to fine MS one user license worth myself, as I will not tell my nephew to buy MS Office.
FWIW it says take a photo with your cell phone, send it in and the response arrives. They have variations in sepia, wine red, midnight blue, and a puzzle game -- but all are sold out.
By the way JIGAZO actually is how you read the three character name, which means "your own image" or maybe "self portrait image".
Here is what the separate white panel looks like: here
And here is a blog, showing the process: "I made the Jigazo puzzle!" I'm not going to translate it entirely, but he says the pieces are nice and thick, and well formed. Also there is a guide image on the back of each piece and also, a light version of it is shown on the front of the piece as well so it's easy to understand. It comes out looking quite good, the key is to look at it as if looking far away, with squinty eyes.;) It took him 90 minutes to make his first one, then the second time he got faster.
Translation..
Use the 300 pieces in the box and you can make anybody's face. First in the World, a jigsaw puzzle that can do your face! Jigazo Puzzle
Can you believe it?! All the sample images shown here were made with the same 300 pieces. In order to make your own face... When you send a photo by cell phone email a response image will be sent back immediately. Just put the pieces together the way it shows and voila!
By repositioning the same 300 pieces you can make images as varied as these! 1. Send your image to the email address printed in the included instruction manual 2. A response image with the answer arrives in your cell phone 3. When you line up the 300 pieces according to that, then your face is complete. You can use anyone's face!
(small print) Sending your photo, and receiving the response image will incur packet communications charges according to your cell phone service provider's contract. If you are going to be using it repeatedly, we recommend you use your service provider's fixed price unlimited packet plan. Note that the creation of the response image by our company is without cost no matter how many times you use it.
Set contents 300 piece puzzle. Color of pieces differs depending on the set type. Piece set-up tray Starch adhesive and applicator spatula (or something like that) Manual. Includes instruction images for the Mona Lisa, Girl with Pearl Earrings, Natsume Soseki (the author), Kennedy (JFK), President Obama, Beethoven's face. You can immediately start playing with these faces without using a cell phone.
Other things you need: A cell phone with camera functionality, from NTT DoCoMo, AU, Softbank Mobile (Disney Mobile and iPhone also included). * When displaying your finished puzzle, please use separately sold 300 piece (white) panel specially for JIGAZO puzzles.
Price is 1890 yen, a bit over 20 bucks.
JIGAZO FAQ
Q1. When I send in a portrait photo with my cell phone, do you mail me back a finished puzzle? A. No, that is incorrect. Your face is created only out of the 300 pieces in the box.
Q2. How do you do that? A. There are 300 pieces in the box with slightly different tones.A program finds the tones closest to those of your face and sends back to your cell phone a response image specially for your face.
Q3. How quickly does the response image get sent back? A. It depends on the state of the communications network, but in about 10 seconds it should be sent back and then you can immediately start playing.
Q4. How do you put the puzzle together? A. Each of the pieces has a hint image on it, so you position the pieces as shown by the response animation. Enjoy watching your face gradually start to appear.
Q5. Can I only put the pieces together once? A. No, you can redo it any number of times, and make anyone's face.You can pl
Well, Anonymous Coward "Pierre", that was quite insulting and exactly what I'm talking about.
While it is entirely possible that you have a large conspiracy against you, it is also possible that you have a medium-sized conspiracy and that is inflated by sick individuals who just like to kick someone who sounds paranoid, and then of course being paranoid and imagining enemies who don't exist like me.
This is bad for business since all the other posters here were just calling you insane for pushing C based scripts in a closed source web server when there are open source alternatives, but now it also is clear that you see enemies everywhere even people who might be friendly. You need to chill out, you sound utterly rabid.
You may have made some good software (I have no idea though it sounds popular to be sure) but your total thermonuclear war jihad on people is self-defeating and boring.
In case you must know, my name is Matt Rosin and you can email me if you like. mattr atnospam telebody dotdotdot net. My consulting company Lawrence is too small for you to have heard about it frankly. I will answer your email, if it is not insulting.
Yes actually I spent my unpaid time (though since I am owner of my own company I guess that is debatable) to read it. I also speak some French so I skimmed the French ones. I might have missed some important detail, sorry if so. I certainly did my best. I am spending more unpaid time now (don't worry it's well after midnight).
I understand what you say. I have not seen info about the license agreement, sorry. Also I did not see anything about the key generator, maybe I missed something about that buried in one of these docs. My time is not exactly free.
That said, maybe you really should hire a PR company to help you! Really this is likely a good idea.
I am really honestly saying this because if you freak out you could indeed get in trouble with the heavy handed authorities, especially now that you have contacted Sarkozy himself. You don't understand the characteristics of people in power and have a complex that makes you believe you are invincible. Well, maybe you are safer now living in Switzerland but still I would get a lawyer and a PR firm. Don't slug it out on your own, hire someone who sounds calm and uninterested to do it for you.
And yes, I know what an unsigned int is thank you very much. My point is simply that even if the company illegally installed the software, the calculation for a fine would be based I imagine (IANAL though) on the actual number of licenses used, multiplied by some punitive factor, and then perhaps add something extra for their circumvention of protection and hiding of evidence.
In other words, there is no understandable reason to create 250,000 licenses even if they are free, and I don't even know if it is physically possible to do so.
If you are as paranoid as I think, you will imagine I am arguing for a reduced sentence!;) That is not the case though.
I'm not arguing for the criminal, but even though it sounds neat to bill for that many licenses, and may even be allowed to by your license agreement which I haven't read, it does not make sense to bill for more licenses than there are employees. Also you made it sound like heavy customers are only buying in the tens of thousands of licenses. It would make more sense to bill for the number of employees and multiply it by a number like 3 for punishment, and then add on some damages for their circumvention / theft. That is what a judge would be thinking, if he wasn't fed up and thinking it's bullshit with no evidence.
You might need to hire a detective too you know, to find out why they said there are no such machines.
So in the pdf I saw with a table that included the number 65535 a lot and no explanation I saw (I might have missed it though I read it 3 times), that number looked fishy. Yes I would believe it came from a keygen, which was installed by someone illegally, but how much disk space would it take
I can't tell if sane or not but it certainly sounds like he is putting much effort into some software. So it would help to defuse the impression of insanity that most of the posters here are suggesting. He doesn't sound insane at least not for a French programmer who has left the country due to corruption apparently.
Personally I would suggest an online explanation in more detail of two points: 1) Would he offer source to a company/institution that will sign an NDA? I bet he would sell it to say Facebook if they wanted to compile their own. It isn't a crime to do closed source software although to my mind not offering the source in any way is going to slow adoption. 2) I took the time to read the blog and pdfs. His legal problems seems to have started when he caught a bank using his software. See: groupama.pdf
This refers to software he makes (in Switzerland now), Remote Anything
Okay. First, the pdf shows they have installed packs of 65535 units of his software. This makes no sense at all and looks like a dumb programming bug. He doesn't show the evidence he has, or how he got the reports. I imagine he has a phone home routine in his program. This is maybe why it gets called a virus too I could imagine, if that is the app he is talking about. The $200M fine he is seeking is therefore either crazy, a lie, or else based on such strong evidence I can't imagine not mentioning it. I think he needs to explain what the evidence is, how he got it, and why the numbers suggest some binary math errors. He has four lines that look like "64 DS + 256 Masters + 65536 Slaves = 34 million euros" and this is totally crazy. He seems to be suggesting they are using 250,000 clients if I am correct. His own site says Fortune 500 companies often buy tens of thousands of licenses. He should explain the discrepancy.
I think if he does these two things then he could expand his market more. If he doesn't want to go open source fine but comparing it to open source projects then should include this caveat. Maybe he could get a university or famous security company to audit the code.
On closer reading of part 2 I notice the iPod was a last minute solution to using the antenna before they made it impossible to do so, so this part was a neat hack. Still I have problems with the artist's basic lack of interest in sending a message that can be understood (beyond providing punctuation). A bitmap made from his iSight and edited down to icon size would have been better. He could have made a flip book animation even. Ah well, he did it, I didn't.
It is nice he provided a good bit of PR on the web for Arecibo. The bit about using an iPod is essential to his artistic statement I suppose, "coolest iPod in the world" is maybe something that could have gotten Apple to fund Arecibo if he had been at all interested in it. That would have gotten the director on his side too.
May I suggest the one thing we should NOT send is our DNA sequences.
1) Low security. If they were able to do anything with it I would be pretty worried! Sending them the key to our metabolism is a Bad Idea. 2) Impossible to fully decode without knowledge of Earth biology. 3) A very inefficient signal. A better message could have been devised, with much more fun and stimulation, by a competent university department. 4) I have a problem with a guy who says this sort of thing to Arecibo's interim director. It is typical wannabe bullshit. I've worked with artists but none would have the balls to go to a scientific research center and tell them that SETI is not about finding aliens. As if he had never read Contact.
I explained that projects concerned with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence are really more about a search for ourselves; that they make us look much more intensely at ourselves than we look away into space and that nobody seems to see that part of it. I wanted to make clear to him that this was not really a project about “aliens”.
I just skimmed 50 text files that picked up on searches of a few phrases I made up. Certainly no scientific analysis. But from what I have seen, I don't see a conspiracy as suggested by the Air website which seems pretty wacky and unscientific and reactionary. Could be me but..
I met a researcher who contributed to one of the larger climate reports, and listened to his talk and that of other researchers. His key point, which everyone seemed to agree on, is that while there remains much to learn and there are various opinions, EVERY REPUTABLE SCIENTIST AGREES that temperatures are going up quickly. They only differ on how fast. The hockey stick graph is apparently correct. The only question is, will we have massive destruction of our way of life in the next 20-30 years or not. Basically by 2050 you want to be on high ground IIRC.
This man was from Melbourne. In the U.S. perhaps Lamont-Doherty is a good place to ask perhaps.
That said, I attended another much smaller group talk, this was a polar survey (joint Swedish and Japanese teams) and if I understand correctly, they found a flow of different temperature water from one hemisphere to another that was very significant. I think the answer is you have to find a scientist you feel you can trust as a person, and then ask his opinion. Don't start with a reactionary type who has just absorbed 176MB uncompressed of data.
People also seem to think remediation (focusing solar power, seeding clouds) is a scary idea. You don't know what input will mess with a chaotic system in feedback, is my understanding. And there is a risk of scary events like poison gas suddenly bubbling from under the oceans or other things. To me this means we must take major steps now just to reduce our input of greenhouse gases, as we cannot afford to wait until we understand it better. Not when our major cities are on COASTS.
IANAEE but it seems strange there is no home battery that would blur usage, rather energy spikes are passed to the grid. Put another way, what happens when lightning strikes? Is there a spike passed back?
A home ought to be able to hide usage of a kettle by drawing from a secondary battery which fills up gradually from the grid, my understanding is that in fact this should be happening and the battery works at night when power is cheaper.
Must the smart grid operate at high resolution to be efficient? Most high energy usages by homes would be happening at the same time of day I'd imagine. More danger would come I expect from being able to detect when a home is unoccupied.
I don't know about you, but I feel WAY SAFER now that Nathan Myhrvold is staying away from Microsoft and spending his time having fun with his molecular gastronomy investigation venture. I mean, this is the guy who was going to take over the world with a micropayments scheme. He could mess up your world if he really was a black hat. But if you want to you just don't have to eat his cooking... well unless it's THAT good.;)
Of course, if you consider how much El Bulli's cookbook cost, if he could release it on the net for free he would really make friends.
I'd also like to know how he is organizing the whole project. What software does he use to handle the data? Don't tell me it's SourceSafe!
It sounds like he's having fun and if he discovers new things that's great. In case people don't know it, real chefs do know a bit of molecular gastronomy though not as equations maybe. Probably most chefs don't think of the intentional molecular gastronomists as so relevant to everyday customers but I'd like to try it some time. Of course the cheapest result of this field I expect could be found at McDonalds. He sounds like he is having fun but a dedicated chef goes about fun by working in the kitchen, a billionaire chef creates a whole documentary with cooking staff he supervises, I guess! I'd like to see one of his recipes without the gastronomy. Slow food style. Maybe Nathan's next project?
P.S. ditto what the guy below said and the owner of one of the top 3 phone companies is the owner of Yahoo, and it comes with a Y! button on the phone. I dunno why else except it makes sense of the net and people in Japan like that. They like google too but maybe it is a bit freewheeling vague and all reaching into teh cloud. Oh and there's Yahoo Auction.
FWIW I suggested rendering and compositing multiple video streams into a single one then download to a local mobile terminal a number of years ago. I guess you just wait until you get good enough hardware and then when you hit the sweet spot everything just materializes.
If you are fighting about 1000 vs. 1024 cores, you haven't got enough of them yet.
10^8 cores isn't that much. Human body: 10^14 cells, 10^11 neurons, 10^14 synapses. It would be enough to simulate a brain maybe if each core simulated 1000 neurons and it is interconnected as well as a brain. Basically if it's a brain.
You could simulate a brain at 1000 neurons per core but it has to be cheap enough, small enough, low enough power consumption and dissipation, well enough interconnected and - okay basically you have to have a brain.
It would be very useful in biology, though even at the recent petacomputer discussions there was question about whether data should really be stored, it is so expensive to do so. Ideally you would put a drop of blood in and the data would be driven in real time through the system, which would The problem is data storage. I was in a seminar about the petacomputer being built in Japan. The people were saying that there is a real question about whether data should be stored and how.
1. He wants to get into a spending fight with Google, which has tons of cash and good will. Is it really in the nation's interest to try and buy off customers to feed a convicted monopolist? It would explode when the first company leaks the news.
2. He suggests the value to a company of being listed in Google is just a matter of money and picking which is cheaper? But it's not. There's the impression of instant accessibility, relevance to needs, timeliness, existence in the key market, communications, etc. If you are not in Google, all the work you put into leveraging your brand with original content is lost.
3. Google's customers are people looking for something they want. The 100 top sites are known, their domains are known. They already have plenty of links from other sites. It will hurt the big customers more. Look at BMW which got blacklisted by Google temporarily for trying to fool it with black SEO. And what about international and mobile customers?
4. It won't stick. Even if a lot of money was paid out, the companies could take the money and then leave. Or is that money supposed to be for an indefinite period of time without performance guarantees? The best thing Microsoft could do frankly is buy stock in Google.
Slashdot Mirror
This is sheer stupidity on the side of the PKD estate. If they would just shut up, they might be contacted by Google for some neat comarketing thing. But noooo.
Perhaps the Nexus One is inspired not by PKD but by the science of nexialism from General Semantics as explained by A. E. Van Vogt.
link 1 link 2
Here's a question. The Electric Sheep Screensaver is a distributed fractal movie calculation engine which is pretty cool and the name comes from PKD's title "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (the alternate title of Bladerunner IIRC). So if they tried to make money at it would the esteemed, stupid estate try to sue them too? If a literary work produces strong memes that become part of mainstream culture, which seems to be one of the goals of a writer in general, then is it ethical for the writer to try to control how people use that meme?
My impression (without reading TFA) is the estate wants a judicial finding that Google is trying to associate their product with a work of PKD's and reap some extra cash through that association. The association might be true but the reference is so obscure, and Google makes no attempt to mention PKD. The word used of itself is still in the realm of mainstream language and there are many other science fiction (and other) usages of "android" and "nexus". The estate hears everything through a filter of being a PKD expert but it is not conclusive that Google was taking advantage of them.
Next question: If the branding person at Google admits the android and nexus names were homages to PKD, then is the estate justified in suing? This is the main legal question. Unless Google tries to leverage it by use of additional imagery or text from PKD works, such that the use of the name is not an homage but a hook into the creative asset of the estate, I think not. But I'm not a lawyer. I think Google could get away with it if they stop picking PKD words to use as product names in the future.
As for the screensaver, I have no idea what the answer is. It's free but what about T-shirts? (the ones they sell don't say "electric sheep").
Actually it is neat that they call individual fractals "sheep" too. At this point I think we are talking about the culture taking possession of a meme and the original author is no longer involved with it. (i.e. you could make a t-shirt that says "Get Sheep" on it, I'd expect).
Hi, I'm the GP. I was talking to an iPhone salesman at Bic Camera in Yurakucho, Tokyo. He is the one who told me all providers start throttling silently after 300GB/mo. is crossed, which sounds if true like a cartel. I'm interested since it would affect some startups I know involved in p2p movie distribution.
My own data is from what the iPhone salesman told me. He said all providers in Japan silently start throttling down at 300GB/month not per day. I have not heard this anywhere else yet myself.
Help with documentation.
Give presentations about the solutions you have and how you have saved much money with these open source apps.
Tell open source vendors whose apps you use, that it was very helpful, and why, so they can sell to similar government offices.
Tell colleagues and people in other offices about it.
Keep track of how much you are spending for commercial, and for open source software. Later write a report on cost of ownership.
This post once again made me feel extremely nauseated about Microsoft and it got me thinking.
People are people all around the world, we are taught different things but there is some kind of psychological DNA if you will, maybe it's based on brain structures or the lack of them, but I have a feeling you will find similar types of personalities in different places.
It is why art and stories written centuries ago still strike a chord, why movies from other countries can be endearing.
I imagine the Microsoft attracts more pathologies than most companies, and I wonder what positions in society those types of personalities would occupy.
I imagine Microsoft execs would feel quite at home sitting on the ruling council of a religious fanatic society in the Middle East.
I wonder where in Africa you will find similar personalities.. and where in the U.S. you will find those of the criminal exec-types found in those countries?
We should try and recognize a pathology and do something about it, instead of just turning our eyes away. It is gross, nauseating, yes it might make you want to kill yourself if you have to actually have a conversation with these horrible individuals at Microsoft, but maybe we should actually try to remove them from their posts and give them intensive professional counseling before they get taken seriously and have stupid ideas actually implemented.
On the other hand, doing nothing is perhaps safest. At least they aren't being handed live weapons.
Yes I agree and am using OOo right now since I switched to a Mac and have not copied my PC over into VMware.
But can you tell me why OOo (and even NeoOffice) are SLOW running on my spanking new MacBook Pro?
I'm seriously considering buying the native MS Office. Not sure if that would be better than using the windows version I already have in VMware though.
No they can't if they have a draconian security policy like our client did, as I posted above. Not even sure it would solve the problem we had with color palette incompatibility.
And how do you upgrade the PAYING customer with the draconian security policy?
A totally cynical decision by Microsoft to make color palettes INCOMPATIBLE in when Office was upgraded has caused major troubles in our project. The Excel files we made, which need to use color in order to communicate complex data sets, get shown in front of large meetings and emailed to participants. I had to hand-edit many times to avoid embarrassment, the guys who didn't got embarrassed of course.
FWIW I heard from a wireless provider's salesperson that all of the major Internet Service Providers in Japan have a policy that after 300GB traffic per month connection speed will be throttled down.
I calculate this means that a 1Mbps video connection 24x7 would barely fit under this threshold.
1 mbit/sec *3600 = 3600 mbit/hr
3600 / 8 = 400 MBytes/hr
400 * 24 * 30 = 288000 MB/mo. = 288 GB/mo.
I wouldn't mind paying more if the companies would just stop adding all kinds of crazy rules.
The worst is the huge amount paid for access speeds which while respectable themselves, are being sold at many times the effective rate. ISPs should be required to sell unfettered access at the same rate they pay for it, plus a fixed rate (say 5-10%) to ensure market growth.
And that's why America sucks these days and is a laughing stock. The most visible fruits of the current system, as seen by the Internet-connected population, are:
- RIAA lawsuits for sharing of intangible rights (which was legal in analog era)... despite ability to build models that could benefit artists and consumers alike while allowing sharing.
- Monopolist software company created by world's richest man, patenting "price gouging of the least influential", despite having the resources to build new better software packages.
- Google CEO disavowing responsibility to protect user privacy.. despite being in a position to protect it strongly.
- First black U.S. President, having not accomplished anything yet, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize... despite being in a position to give a great example of character to blacks, whites, and all races alike.
Influential entities like the above which inhabit influential positions in the world, find it much more profitable to act cynically than to do the right thing. This is why the dollar gets torpedoed and the U.S. is losing relevancy.
These issues are all vulnerable to information sharing via the media, in particular Microsoft, which I think should be the test case since they deserve it.
- Purchasers should post what they paid for a product
- The purchaser then learns what segment Microsoft considers them to inhabit
- Lower ranked segment inhabitants are encouraged to post reviews and letters.
The intent being to invert the Microsoft cynical agenda (as exemplified in their ideal pricing structure) and force the monopolist to sell its product to the entire market at the minimum price for which it sells in any market segment worldwide.
They also should have the antimonopoly hearings reconvened and be fined for attempting to patent something which so clearly goes against the spirit of that ruling.
Finally I would like to say that I have decided to fine MS one user license worth myself, as I will not tell my nephew to buy MS Office.
NICE TRY. You can't restart a dead meme that easily, especially when the article is positive about France.
Mod parent DOWN.
FWIW it says take a photo with your cell phone, send it in and the response arrives.
They have variations in sepia, wine red, midnight blue, and a puzzle game -- but all are sold out.
By the way JIGAZO actually is how you read the three character name, which means "your own image" or maybe "self portrait image".
Here is what the separate white panel looks like:
here
And here is a blog, showing the process: "I made the Jigazo puzzle!" ;)
I'm not going to translate it entirely, but he says the pieces are nice and thick, and well formed. Also there is a guide image on the back of each piece and also, a light version of it is shown on the front of the piece as well so it's easy to understand.
It comes out looking quite good, the key is to look at it as if looking far away, with squinty eyes.
It took him 90 minutes to make his first one, then the second time he got faster.
Translation..
Use the 300 pieces in the box and you can make anybody's face.
First in the World, a jigsaw puzzle that can do your face!
Jigazo Puzzle
Can you believe it?!
All the sample images shown here were made with the same 300 pieces.
In order to make your own face...
When you send a photo by cell phone email a response image will be sent back immediately.
Just put the pieces together the way it shows and voila!
By repositioning the same 300 pieces you can make images as varied as these!
1. Send your image to the email address printed in the included instruction manual
2. A response image with the answer arrives in your cell phone
3. When you line up the 300 pieces according to that, then your face is complete. You can use anyone's face!
(small print)
Sending your photo, and receiving the response image will incur packet communications charges according to your cell phone service provider's contract.
If you are going to be using it repeatedly, we recommend you use your service provider's fixed price unlimited packet plan.
Note that the creation of the response image by our company is without cost no matter how many times you use it.
Set contents
300 piece puzzle. Color of pieces differs depending on the set type.
Piece set-up tray
Starch adhesive and applicator spatula (or something like that)
Manual. Includes instruction images for the Mona Lisa, Girl with Pearl Earrings, Natsume Soseki (the author), Kennedy (JFK), President Obama, Beethoven's face. You can immediately start playing with these faces without using a cell phone.
Other things you need:
A cell phone with camera functionality, from NTT DoCoMo, AU, Softbank Mobile (Disney Mobile and iPhone also included).
* When displaying your finished puzzle, please use separately sold 300 piece (white) panel specially for JIGAZO puzzles.
Price is 1890 yen, a bit over 20 bucks.
JIGAZO FAQ
Q1. When I send in a portrait photo with my cell phone, do you mail me back a finished puzzle?
A. No, that is incorrect. Your face is created only out of the 300 pieces in the box.
Q2. How do you do that?
A. There are 300 pieces in the box with slightly different tones.A program finds the tones closest to those of your face and sends back to your cell phone a response image specially for your face.
Q3. How quickly does the response image get sent back?
A. It depends on the state of the communications network, but in about 10 seconds it should be sent back and then you can immediately start playing.
Q4. How do you put the puzzle together?
A. Each of the pieces has a hint image on it, so you position the pieces as shown by the response animation. Enjoy watching your face gradually start to appear.
Q5. Can I only put the pieces together once?
A. No, you can redo it any number of times, and make anyone's face.You can pl
Add a 'C' like the Europeans do, and call it ICT. Sounds better all ready!
P.S. I forgot to mention that maybe you can sue the bank in Switzerland too if they have an office there. But you probably know that.
Good Luck
--Matt
Well, Anonymous Coward "Pierre", that was quite insulting and exactly what I'm talking about.
While it is entirely possible that you have a large conspiracy against you, it is also possible that you have a medium-sized conspiracy and that is inflated by sick individuals who just like to kick someone who sounds paranoid, and then of course being paranoid and imagining enemies who don't exist like me.
This is bad for business since all the other posters here were just calling you insane for pushing C based scripts in a closed source web server when there are open source alternatives, but now it also is clear that you see enemies everywhere even people who might be friendly. You need to chill out, you sound utterly rabid.
You may have made some good software (I have no idea though it sounds popular to be sure) but your total thermonuclear war jihad on people is self-defeating and boring.
In case you must know, my name is Matt Rosin and you can email me if you like. mattr atnospam telebody dotdotdot net. My consulting company Lawrence is too small for you to have heard about it frankly. I will answer your email, if it is not insulting.
Yes actually I spent my unpaid time (though since I am owner of my own company I guess that is debatable) to read it. I also speak some French so I skimmed the French ones. I might have missed some important detail, sorry if so. I certainly did my best. I am spending more unpaid time now (don't worry it's well after midnight).
I understand what you say. I have not seen info about the license agreement, sorry. Also I did not see anything about the key generator, maybe I missed something about that buried in one of these docs. My time is not exactly free.
That said, maybe you really should hire a PR company to help you! Really this is likely a good idea.
I am really honestly saying this because if you freak out you could indeed get in trouble with the heavy handed authorities, especially now that you have contacted Sarkozy himself. You don't understand the characteristics of people in power and have a complex that makes you believe you are invincible. Well, maybe you are safer now living in Switzerland but still I would get a lawyer and a PR firm. Don't slug it out on your own, hire someone who sounds calm and uninterested to do it for you.
And yes, I know what an unsigned int is thank you very much. My point is simply that even if the company illegally installed the software, the calculation for a fine would be based I imagine (IANAL though) on the actual number of licenses used, multiplied by some punitive factor, and then perhaps add something extra for their circumvention of protection and hiding of evidence.
In other words, there is no understandable reason to create 250,000 licenses even if they are free, and I don't even know if it is physically possible to do so.
If you are as paranoid as I think, you will imagine I am arguing for a reduced sentence! ;) That is not the case though.
I'm not arguing for the criminal, but even though it sounds neat to bill for that many licenses, and may even be allowed to by your license agreement which I haven't read, it does not make sense to bill for more licenses than there are employees. Also you made it sound like heavy customers are only buying in the tens of thousands of licenses. It would make more sense to bill for the number of employees and multiply it by a number like 3 for punishment, and then add on some damages for their circumvention / theft. That is what a judge would be thinking, if he wasn't fed up and thinking it's bullshit with no evidence.
You might need to hire a detective too you know, to find out why they said there are no such machines.
So in the pdf I saw with a table that included the number 65535 a lot and no explanation I saw (I might have missed it though I read it 3 times), that number looked fishy. Yes I would believe it came from a keygen, which was installed by someone illegally, but how much disk space would it take
I can't tell if sane or not but it certainly sounds like he is putting much effort into some software.
So it would help to defuse the impression of insanity that most of the posters here are suggesting. He doesn't sound insane at least not for a French programmer who has left the country due to corruption apparently.
Personally I would suggest an online explanation in more detail of two points:
1) Would he offer source to a company/institution that will sign an NDA? I bet he would sell it to say Facebook if they wanted to compile their own.
It isn't a crime to do closed source software although to my mind not offering the source in any way is going to slow adoption.
2) I took the time to read the blog and pdfs. His legal problems seems to have started when he caught a bank using his software. See: groupama.pdf
This refers to software he makes (in Switzerland now), Remote Anything
Okay. First, the pdf shows they have installed packs of 65535 units of his software. This makes no sense at all and looks like a dumb programming bug. He doesn't show the evidence he has, or how he got the reports. I imagine he has a phone home routine in his program. This is maybe why it gets called a virus too I could imagine, if that is the app he is talking about. The $200M fine he is seeking is therefore either crazy, a lie, or else based on such strong evidence I can't imagine not mentioning it. I think he needs to explain what the evidence is, how he got it, and why the numbers suggest some binary math errors. He has four lines that look like "64 DS + 256 Masters + 65536 Slaves = 34 million euros" and this is totally crazy. He seems to be suggesting they are using 250,000 clients if I am correct. His own site says Fortune 500 companies often buy tens of thousands of licenses. He should explain the discrepancy.
I think if he does these two things then he could expand his market more. If he doesn't want to go open source fine but comparing it to open source projects then should include this caveat. Maybe he could get a university or famous security company to audit the code.
On closer reading of part 2 I notice the iPod was a last minute solution to using the antenna before they made it impossible to do so, so this part was a neat hack. Still I have problems with the artist's basic lack of interest in sending a message that can be understood (beyond providing punctuation). A bitmap made from his iSight and edited down to icon size would have been better. He could have made a flip book animation even. Ah well, he did it, I didn't.
It is nice he provided a good bit of PR on the web for Arecibo. The bit about using an iPod is essential to his artistic statement I suppose, "coolest iPod in the world" is maybe something that could have gotten Apple to fund Arecibo if he had been at all interested in it. That would have gotten the director on his side too.
May I suggest the one thing we should NOT send is our DNA sequences.
1) Low security. If they were able to do anything with it I would be pretty worried! Sending them the key to our metabolism is a Bad Idea.
2) Impossible to fully decode without knowledge of Earth biology.
3) A very inefficient signal. A better message could have been devised, with much more fun and stimulation, by a competent university department.
4) I have a problem with a guy who says this sort of thing to Arecibo's interim director. It is typical wannabe bullshit. I've worked with artists but none would have the balls to go to a scientific research center and tell them that SETI is not about finding aliens. As if he had never read Contact.
I just skimmed 50 text files that picked up on searches of a few phrases I made up. Certainly no scientific analysis. But from what I have seen, I don't see a conspiracy as suggested by the Air website which seems pretty wacky and unscientific and reactionary. Could be me but..
I met a researcher who contributed to one of the larger climate reports, and listened to his talk and that of other researchers. His key point, which everyone seemed to agree on, is that while there remains much to learn and there are various opinions, EVERY REPUTABLE SCIENTIST AGREES that temperatures are going up quickly. They only differ on how fast. The hockey stick graph is apparently correct. The only question is, will we have massive destruction of our way of life in the next 20-30 years or not. Basically by 2050 you want to be on high ground IIRC.
This man was from Melbourne. In the U.S. perhaps Lamont-Doherty is a good place to ask perhaps.
That said, I attended another much smaller group talk, this was a polar survey (joint Swedish and Japanese teams) and if I understand correctly, they found a flow of different temperature water from one hemisphere to another that was very significant. I think the answer is you have to find a scientist you feel you can trust as a person, and then ask his opinion. Don't start with a reactionary type who has just absorbed 176MB uncompressed of data.
People also seem to think remediation (focusing solar power, seeding clouds) is a scary idea. You don't know what input will mess with a chaotic system in feedback, is my understanding. And there is a risk of scary events like poison gas suddenly bubbling from under the oceans or other things. To me this means we must take major steps now just to reduce our input of greenhouse gases, as we cannot afford to wait until we understand it better. Not when our major cities are on COASTS.
IANAEE but it seems strange there is no home battery that would blur usage, rather energy spikes are passed to the grid.
Put another way, what happens when lightning strikes? Is there a spike passed back?
A home ought to be able to hide usage of a kettle by drawing from a secondary battery which fills up gradually from the grid, my understanding is that in fact this should be happening and the battery works at night when power is cheaper.
Must the smart grid operate at high resolution to be efficient? Most high energy usages by homes would be happening at the same time of day I'd imagine. More danger would come I expect from being able to detect when a home is unoccupied.
I don't know about you, but I feel WAY SAFER now that Nathan Myhrvold is staying away from Microsoft and spending his time having fun with his molecular gastronomy investigation venture. I mean, this is the guy who was going to take over the world with a micropayments scheme. He could mess up your world if he really was a black hat. But if you want to you just don't have to eat his cooking... well unless it's THAT good. ;)
Of course, if you consider how much El Bulli's cookbook cost, if he could release it on the net for free he would really make friends.
I'd also like to know how he is organizing the whole project. What software does he use to handle the data? Don't tell me it's SourceSafe!
It sounds like he's having fun and if he discovers new things that's great. In case people don't know it, real chefs do know a bit of molecular gastronomy though not as equations maybe. Probably most chefs don't think of the intentional molecular gastronomists as so relevant to everyday customers but I'd like to try it some time. Of course the cheapest result of this field I expect could be found at McDonalds. He sounds like he is having fun but a dedicated chef goes about fun by working in the kitchen, a billionaire chef creates a whole documentary with cooking staff he supervises, I guess! I'd like to see one of his recipes without the gastronomy. Slow food style. Maybe Nathan's next project?
P.S. ditto what the guy below said and the owner of one of the top 3 phone companies is the owner of Yahoo, and it comes with a Y! button on the phone. I dunno why else except it makes sense of the net and people in Japan like that. They like google too but maybe it is a bit freewheeling vague and all reaching into teh cloud. Oh and there's Yahoo Auction.
FWIW I suggested rendering and compositing multiple video streams into a single one then download to a local mobile terminal a number of years ago. I guess you just wait until you get good enough hardware and then when you hit the sweet spot everything just materializes.
If you are fighting about 1000 vs. 1024 cores, you haven't got enough of them yet.
10^8 cores isn't that much.
Human body: 10^14 cells, 10^11 neurons, 10^14 synapses.
It would be enough to simulate a brain maybe if each core simulated 1000 neurons and it is interconnected as well as a brain. Basically if it's a brain.
You could simulate a brain at 1000 neurons per core but it has to be cheap enough, small enough, low enough power consumption and dissipation, well enough interconnected and - okay basically you have to have a brain.
It would be very useful in biology, though even at the recent petacomputer discussions there was question about whether data should really be stored, it is so expensive to do so. Ideally you would put a drop of blood in and the data would be driven in real time through the system, which would
The problem is data storage. I was in a seminar about the petacomputer being built in Japan. The people were saying that there is a real question about whether data should be stored and how.
Backwards in several ways actually.
1. He wants to get into a spending fight with Google, which has tons of cash and good will. Is it really in the nation's interest to try and buy off customers to feed a convicted monopolist? It would explode when the first company leaks the news.
2. He suggests the value to a company of being listed in Google is just a matter of money and picking which is cheaper? But it's not. There's the impression of instant accessibility, relevance to needs, timeliness, existence in the key market, communications, etc. If you are not in Google, all the work you put into leveraging your brand with original content is lost.
3. Google's customers are people looking for something they want. The 100 top sites are known, their domains are known. They already have plenty of links from other sites. It will hurt the big customers more. Look at BMW which got blacklisted by Google temporarily for trying to fool it with black SEO. And what about international and mobile customers?
4. It won't stick. Even if a lot of money was paid out, the companies could take the money and then leave. Or is that money supposed to be for an indefinite period of time without performance guarantees? The best thing Microsoft could do frankly is buy stock in Google.