The Canadian entry is headed up by two beer-loving hosers from the great white north, eh? Otherwise known as Bob and Doug McKenzie of Strange Brew fame.
With all of the existing computer technician certifications (MCSE, database, or whatever) that are offered by the industrial sector, it sounds to me like the government is catching on to this wave a little bit too late. I think half of it is the motivation of governments to try and collect some revenue from the ever-decreasing tax supply. TV repair shops will also benefit from the rights to advertise the license. The general public won't give a rat's ass!
Actually, what probably happened that they're not telling us, is that the publisher probably tried to tell the author (Katie Tarbox) that the domain name was already in use by someone. But Katie T. probably through a hissie-fit and whined and cried to her daddy saying, "gimme gimme gimme! I want! I want! I want!" And her father, not having the b***s to tell her, "no, that domain name belongs to someone else," went ahead and told the publishing company to publish the book anyway, thinking that once the book is published, they'd be able to get the domain name anyway.
Of course, this is the sad truth that you won't hear in the news, or elsewhere, because it makes Katie T. look like the whiney little b***h that she really is, instead of the innocent victim role that she's supposed to play in the book.
I'd probably bet good money that the actual scenario that took place was pretty darn close to this,...
Does anyone know what happened after the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty put several people's real telephone numbers as God's phone number on the pager in the movie? Instead of using the traditional 555 prefix, they used a real seven digit phone number, which actually belonged to several people (a woman's cell phone in Florida, a minister in North Carolina, a colorado radio station, among others). The movie producers only looked to see if the number was not available in the Buffalo, NY, area, and not anywhere else. But once the movie got released, anyone who had that phone number had their phone ringing off the hook.
It seems to me like this case is somewhat similar. Instead of a movie production company stealing someone's phone number for the movie, a book publisher stole someone's domain name for use in a book. Seems to me like the issue of trademark should be irrelevant here - why the hell would a private citizen see the need to trademark their domain name - they don't need to trademark their phone number! In this case, Katie Jones is simply using (or was using, before this whole thing happened) her domain name, as a means of personal contact for herself, similar to the way you'd use a telephone number (although websites offer much more communication options than phone numbers, that part is irrelevant).
Penguin's lawyers are obviously stupid (or at least living in a cave somewhere). They must have been, since they obviously haven't seen Bruce Almighty (or the whole phone number thing that was highly publicized a year ago after the movie came out).
Jon Carmack is contributing to society in the same way that other artists, playwrights, and musicians contribute to society. Ok, so maybe a bit more violent - you've apparently never been to a Shakespeare play before, either.
Not everyone in the world is given the gift of contributing to society by making scientific or engineering accomplishments. Society needs art, and pleasure, and ways to relax. Or else we'd be a group of 6 billion super geeks with absolutely no life and solving relativistic and calculus equations instead of getting laid! Or, think of a world in which every single person on the planet was a/. user!! Ahh!:-)
Sometimes, we just need to relax and chill for awhile. There's nothing wrong with that.
$54.95 is not really a totally out of the world price for games. A lot of games, even 5-6 years ago, would release on day one at around $50. The price would rapidly drop soon after. I wouldn't be too surprised to see Doom 3 at $39.99 by Christmas, and at $29.99 by this time next year. Two years from now, it'll be $9.99!
The gaming industry moves at a fairly rapid pace. Part of the reason for this is that the average lifespan of some of these games is short. Gamers (usually 15-24 year olds), typically have short attention spans. They will focus on this game for the next week or two, blow through all of the levels of the game and get to the end, learning all the cheat codes to get them through it if they have to. Once they're done, they'll play multiplayer for awhile (perhaps a few months). By January 2005, they'll definitely move on to something else, if they haven't done so by then. So that's why the price will drop dramatically by X-mas, so as to attract the next **batch** of gamers - those that want to try the game but aren't die-harders and maybe more on a budget.
Linux has a reputation for performance, reliability and low cost, though Microsoft and others have questioned whether it's in fact faster, cheaper and more secure in the long run than proprietary operating systems.
This is a riot!! Micro$oft is questioning whether linux is more secure than Winblows?!?! Yeah - and cows are flying out of my butt, too!!
Or you could just blame it on all of the lusers in the world that are stupid enough to actually open such a blatantly obvious virus-laden email attachment!
if the description doesn't fit the checkout assistant won't allow the sale.
Uh,... yeah, right!! Probably something like 90% of all checkout clerks really don't pay attention to these things. They are paid (not much) to ring things up and get the customer out quickly - they are paid for speed. If something comes up wrong, they probably would just blame it on some, "computer glitch," and move on. It's the same way with alcohol. How many times do clerks check IDs for alcoholic beverage purchase? Heck, on my 21st birthday I didn't even carded!! I should've gone out the night before!!
Oddly enough, one of the major proponents of Directed Panspermia is none other than Francis Crick! Here's an excerpt from http://www.wikipedia.org/:
"A second prominent proponent of panspermia is Nobel prize winner Francis Crick, along with Leslie Orgel who proposed the theory of directed panspermia in 1973. This suggests that the seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation. Crick argues that small grains containing DNA, or the building blocks of life, fired randomly in all directions is the best, most cost effective strategy for seeding life on a compatible planet at some time in the future. The strategy might have been pursued by a civilisation facing catastrophic annihilation, or hoping to terraform planets for later colonisation."
I think in this case, the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in Watson & Crick's (or should it be Crick & Watson - I heard they actually flipped a coin - Watson won - anyways,...) favor. While there might be some room for skepticism back the 50's, the double-helical structure of DNA is pretty well documented. With 2,467 nucleic acid structures in the nucleic acid database http://ndbserver.rutgers.edu/, it's pretty hard to dispute. One might think that if it's been crystallized that many times, they would've gotten it right at least more than once!
It's also very important to realize that DNA does not only form double-helical structures. Granted, that's the conformation that it is preferred in genomic DNA, most of the time. However, when undergoing replication and transcription, it may form other structures, such as hairpin looks, single-stranded, etc. Two conformations of DNA that are currently being analyzed in cancer research (among other areas) are triplex DNA (yes, three-stranded DNA - which forms Hoogsteen sp? base pairs with the third strand), as well as the G-quadruplex structure, where DNA can fold back upon itself (usually under high potassium ion concentration) to form four-stranded DNA. Without going into too much detail, it is the stabilization of the G-quadruplex structure by various DNA-binding drugs, that may one day be able to cure cancer!
But Watson & Crick's research started this trend of DNA research, and had they not discovered their double-helical structure when they did, we probably wouldn't even know about some of the other conformations of DNA, either!
That's ironic. I'm just setting up a new lab this week and installing new computers in the lab. Two of our computers, I named watson (mine) and crick, my boss'. Several other computers in the lab are named after the four base pairs of DNA (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). Strangely enough, I came up with the naming scheme about two weeks before today's news article was posted.
Our laboratory focuses on biophysical measurements, experiments, and QSAR of nucleic acid binding compounds.
Actually, that's a bunch of hogwash! Congress and the President have little to do with the development of the Internet and Broadband (other than the fact that the US Department of Defense (and later Commerce) started the whole thing (sorry, it wasn't Al Gore).
Development of the internet and the pace at which new developments take place, has more to do with the economy and the US Consumer (yes, that's you and me, not some schmuck in Washington). As much as we're led to believe to the contrary, the government has little control over the economy overall.
Broadband will take over not because the R or the D in the white house wants it to take over - it will take over because of supply and demand. The more people that want it, the cheaper it will become. Just look at Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is spreading like wildfire (no pun intended) - mainly because corporations and businesses see the benefits and are willing to pay for it. They also see the fact that by offering free (or even cheap) Wi-Fi in their retail establishments, they will drive customers into the store. Even smaller mom-and-pop restaurants and bars are seeing this, and deploying Wi-Fi in their establishments. The government isn't driving this at all - but they want you to believe they are, because that's how they win elections!
Somebody needs to tell Bush that NASA has found Saddam's WMD... and we need to launch a mission to Saturn's moon to deal with this! Then watch NASA's budget quadruple!;-)
In completely unrelated news, NASA astronomers have found evidence of oil on Uranus.
I would like to see versions of Netscape 7.2 for both Tru64 and SGI IRIX, but I doubt it will happen. If I knew who to contact, I would at least try to argue my case.
Forget that! SGI already has Mozilla, which isn't Firefox, but it's still better than Netscape 4.7,...
I'm just hoping that they'll port Doom 3 over to SGI IRIX 64,... that would just kick major ass!! It will run great on my new SGI Tezro!! Who knows, they've already got a port of Doom 2 on the SGI, so anything's possible,...
It's really not hard convincing other people to use other browsers. Most of your average users on the internet (the non-techies, mom-and-pops, teeny boppers, etc) just use whatever comes with the computer because they don't have the knowledge to starting making additional major changes to their computer (or they just don't want to screw it up because they don't want to pay their geek friends to come and fix it - and laugh at them miserably - when they do screw it up). So that's exactly why IE is the browser of choice for 94% of the web.
Once these same people start using the web a bit more, get used to things better, and finally get fed up with all the damn spyware, spamware, pop-ups, and start complaining to their techie friends about it, they realize that their techie friends haven't even used IE since like, the dark ages (if ever). So by word-of-mouth, they'll finally upgrade to something decent - hopefully that will be Mozilla Firefox (because it rules).
I've also noticed that the G4/TechTV show, The Screen Savers, regularly plugs Firefox as it's browser of choice whenever someone asks what is a good browser replacement for IE (The Screen Savers rule!).
Check out http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/this article [slate.msn.com]. It discusses PC viruses, and how Internet Explor^H^H^H^H^H^H is far more susceptible to viruses than other browsers. The author has downloaded Mozilla Firefox, and finds it superior. And the best part about this story - it's hosted by an MSN WEBSITE!! I guess da Bill hasn't found this one yet,...
Perhaps Paul Boutin (article's author) will be searching for a job pretty soon,...;-)
That's what I like about Mozilla's Firefox, which I've been using for about a month now (previously using Opera, but Firefox I have found is far superior). With Firefox, you download a really light, simple browser. Then, if you want additional functionality, go to their extensions page and simply add-in what you want to add. With Netscape, they give you all this stuff you don't need - email app, netscape composer, etc. Although the Winamp and AIM apps are useful, and I do use that - just not Netscape's versions - I prefer to download those separately, so they're not connected to my browser. Still, Netscape's far better than - *gag* *choke* - Internet Explor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H...
Actually, in terms of sales success, they probably would be more "productive" with it, but not in the sense that you and me think of the word. They would be more productive in the sense that when they're doing a demonstration for a client and whip this ol' bad boy out, the client will go, "WOW!" and it will immediately generate a response by them that tells them that this salesperson is slick and organized, and on top of things (it will also probably help the poor slackers get laid, too). So in the long run it might actually generate something like a 10% increase in sales success rate, nothing more.
However, in terms of real productivity, like generating reports and doing serious work, there will probably be a -25% drop in productivity, just due to the nature of the beast. So in the long run, I'm not sure if it's worth it.
I wouldn't want to use that computer to play games, though! The screen is way too small and I don't see how the sound would be good, either. Not to mention that they've probably skimped on the graphics card, too (Doom 3 probably wouldn't even run - at least according to the specs I've seen).
Yes, this thing is definitely meant for very specific users - I don't even think Sony is thinking of selling more than 10,000 of them (if even that many). This is very similar to the Toshiba Libretto, which came out in the late 1990s and was very similar in size. The Libretto was neat to look at, and play with, and it was a great little *gadget*. But even for your average businessperson, it was almost just too small to use, even on a plane (unless you had really small fingers).
I wouldn't even go so far as to call Sony's device a notebook. It's more of a, "Super PDA," or one might use the term, "notebook replacement," (like one refers to a "desktop replacement" notebook PC).
20GB in a handheld does sound pretty good. I always worry about how you get these things repaired, though, especially when they're on the cutting edge like this.
You don't get it repaired. If it breaks, you ship the thing back to Sony, or wherever you bought it from. And *hopefully* you've bought one of their expensive *extended warranties* that they want you to buy with it so that they can ship you a new one. Otherwise, you're screwed!
So if you don't spend boo-coo $$$ on the extended, you better pray that nothing happens to it after the regular.
Of course, it would be nice if they would have stuck with the *old days*, where you could get something electronic repaired inexpensively from your local mom-and-pop shop, or something. But the big corporations don't like this. Instead, they can skimp on parts and make things that are more or less disposable, such that when and if it does break, you just ship it back to them,... that makes it easier for them to collect more of your money in an extended warranty,... Gotta love capitalism!
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Well, at least they have the mouse part down! That's about it,... ;-)
Take off, eh?
Perhaps computer technicians should join the janitors' union, instead of TV repairmen!
Of course, this is the sad truth that you won't hear in the news, or elsewhere, because it makes Katie T. look like the whiney little b***h that she really is, instead of the innocent victim role that she's supposed to play in the book.
I'd probably bet good money that the actual scenario that took place was pretty darn close to this,...
It seems to me like this case is somewhat similar. Instead of a movie production company stealing someone's phone number for the movie, a book publisher stole someone's domain name for use in a book. Seems to me like the issue of trademark should be irrelevant here - why the hell would a private citizen see the need to trademark their domain name - they don't need to trademark their phone number! In this case, Katie Jones is simply using (or was using, before this whole thing happened) her domain name, as a means of personal contact for herself, similar to the way you'd use a telephone number (although websites offer much more communication options than phone numbers, that part is irrelevant).
Penguin's lawyers are obviously stupid (or at least living in a cave somewhere). They must have been, since they obviously haven't seen Bruce Almighty (or the whole phone number thing that was highly publicized a year ago after the movie came out).
Not everyone in the world is given the gift of contributing to society by making scientific or engineering accomplishments. Society needs art, and pleasure, and ways to relax. Or else we'd be a group of 6 billion super geeks with absolutely no life and solving relativistic and calculus equations instead of getting laid! Or, think of a world in which every single person on the planet was a /. user!! Ahh! :-)
Sometimes, we just need to relax and chill for awhile. There's nothing wrong with that.
The gaming industry moves at a fairly rapid pace. Part of the reason for this is that the average lifespan of some of these games is short. Gamers (usually 15-24 year olds), typically have short attention spans. They will focus on this game for the next week or two, blow through all of the levels of the game and get to the end, learning all the cheat codes to get them through it if they have to. Once they're done, they'll play multiplayer for awhile (perhaps a few months). By January 2005, they'll definitely move on to something else, if they haven't done so by then. So that's why the price will drop dramatically by X-mas, so as to attract the next **batch** of gamers - those that want to try the game but aren't die-harders and maybe more on a budget.
Linux has a reputation for performance, reliability and low cost, though Microsoft and others have questioned whether it's in fact faster, cheaper and more secure in the long run than proprietary operating systems.
This is a riot!! Micro$oft is questioning whether linux is more secure than Winblows?!?! Yeah - and cows are flying out of my butt, too!!
Fast Pentium 4 3.02 GHz processor
512 MB RAM (upgradeable to 2 GB)
17" widescreen display
80 GB HD
2X DVD burner
56G Wi-Fi
I know of several that have installed linux to this notebook as well, and it runs fine.
Or you could just blame it on all of the lusers in the world that are stupid enough to actually open such a blatantly obvious virus-laden email attachment!
Uh,... yeah, right!! Probably something like 90% of all checkout clerks really don't pay attention to these things. They are paid (not much) to ring things up and get the customer out quickly - they are paid for speed. If something comes up wrong, they probably would just blame it on some, "computer glitch," and move on. It's the same way with alcohol. How many times do clerks check IDs for alcoholic beverage purchase? Heck, on my 21st birthday I didn't even carded!! I should've gone out the night before!!
"A second prominent proponent of panspermia is Nobel prize winner Francis Crick, along with Leslie Orgel who proposed the theory of directed panspermia in 1973. This suggests that the seeds of life may have been purposely spread by an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation. Crick argues that small grains containing DNA, or the building blocks of life, fired randomly in all directions is the best, most cost effective strategy for seeding life on a compatible planet at some time in the future. The strategy might have been pursued by a civilisation facing catastrophic annihilation, or hoping to terraform planets for later colonisation."
It's also very important to realize that DNA does not only form double-helical structures. Granted, that's the conformation that it is preferred in genomic DNA, most of the time. However, when undergoing replication and transcription, it may form other structures, such as hairpin looks, single-stranded, etc. Two conformations of DNA that are currently being analyzed in cancer research (among other areas) are triplex DNA (yes, three-stranded DNA - which forms Hoogsteen sp? base pairs with the third strand), as well as the G-quadruplex structure, where DNA can fold back upon itself (usually under high potassium ion concentration) to form four-stranded DNA. Without going into too much detail, it is the stabilization of the G-quadruplex structure by various DNA-binding drugs, that may one day be able to cure cancer!
But Watson & Crick's research started this trend of DNA research, and had they not discovered their double-helical structure when they did, we probably wouldn't even know about some of the other conformations of DNA, either!
Our laboratory focuses on biophysical measurements, experiments, and QSAR of nucleic acid binding compounds.
Development of the internet and the pace at which new developments take place, has more to do with the economy and the US Consumer (yes, that's you and me, not some schmuck in Washington). As much as we're led to believe to the contrary, the government has little control over the economy overall.
Broadband will take over not because the R or the D in the white house wants it to take over - it will take over because of supply and demand. The more people that want it, the cheaper it will become. Just look at Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is spreading like wildfire (no pun intended) - mainly because corporations and businesses see the benefits and are willing to pay for it. They also see the fact that by offering free (or even cheap) Wi-Fi in their retail establishments, they will drive customers into the store. Even smaller mom-and-pop restaurants and bars are seeing this, and deploying Wi-Fi in their establishments. The government isn't driving this at all - but they want you to believe they are, because that's how they win elections!
In completely unrelated news, NASA astronomers have found evidence of oil on Uranus.
Forget that! SGI already has Mozilla, which isn't Firefox, but it's still better than Netscape 4.7,...
I'm just hoping that they'll port Doom 3 over to SGI IRIX 64,... that would just kick major ass!! It will run great on my new SGI Tezro!! Who knows, they've already got a port of Doom 2 on the SGI, so anything's possible,...
Once these same people start using the web a bit more, get used to things better, and finally get fed up with all the damn spyware, spamware, pop-ups, and start complaining to their techie friends about it, they realize that their techie friends haven't even used IE since like, the dark ages (if ever). So by word-of-mouth, they'll finally upgrade to something decent - hopefully that will be Mozilla Firefox (because it rules).
I've also noticed that the G4/TechTV show, The Screen Savers, regularly plugs Firefox as it's browser of choice whenever someone asks what is a good browser replacement for IE (The Screen Savers rule!).
Perhaps Paul Boutin (article's author) will be searching for a job pretty soon,... ;-)
However, in terms of real productivity, like generating reports and doing serious work, there will probably be a -25% drop in productivity, just due to the nature of the beast. So in the long run, I'm not sure if it's worth it.
Yes, this thing is definitely meant for very specific users - I don't even think Sony is thinking of selling more than 10,000 of them (if even that many). This is very similar to the Toshiba Libretto, which came out in the late 1990s and was very similar in size. The Libretto was neat to look at, and play with, and it was a great little *gadget*. But even for your average businessperson, it was almost just too small to use, even on a plane (unless you had really small fingers).
I wouldn't even go so far as to call Sony's device a notebook. It's more of a, "Super PDA," or one might use the term, "notebook replacement," (like one refers to a "desktop replacement" notebook PC).
You don't get it repaired. If it breaks, you ship the thing back to Sony, or wherever you bought it from. And *hopefully* you've bought one of their expensive *extended warranties* that they want you to buy with it so that they can ship you a new one. Otherwise, you're screwed!
So if you don't spend boo-coo $$$ on the extended, you better pray that nothing happens to it after the regular.
Of course, it would be nice if they would have stuck with the *old days*, where you could get something electronic repaired inexpensively from your local mom-and-pop shop, or something. But the big corporations don't like this. Instead, they can skimp on parts and make things that are more or less disposable, such that when and if it does break, you just ship it back to them,... that makes it easier for them to collect more of your money in an extended warranty,... Gotta love capitalism!