Variable, flexible and soft is not liquid.
- liquid implies no strong bonding between neighboring particals, the particals are free to change their relationships with each other.
Remote control is not robot.
- robot is autonomous.
PC gameing is not dead. Probably more people playing longer and more often than ever before (Warcraft). Retail Box store sales of PC games is low compared to console sales.
Hours played of PC games: missing is Warcraft, web games,.... Sales: missing is Warcraft, online sales...
Blizzard gave the box stores a thank you for the Burning Crusade release. It could have totally be done with a download and all those stores would have had nothing (currently you can do a direct online, avoid the store upgrade).
Because PC's can download, even burn DVD's. New PC games can totally avoid the box stores in the future. If the box stores want to live they must champion the console games.
Valve could make extra cash by championing a download system, if they make it work out for more cash for a game maker than a box store. It could be the end of box stores.
IBM is still digging into SCO's near corpse to find the detials of SCO's accusations. Which were, are and for ever more shall be totally bogus.
Ballmer needs to stop saying "they stole our IP" and start citing versions, files, lines and patent numbers. Otherwise Microsoft looks like a bigger SCO. And that is not a pretty picture for a company like Microsoft intends itself to be.
Looking at ourselves the concept of an expansionistic society surviving its limits on its original planet is pretty much going to require a sustanable society, not an expansionistic society.
If we continue our expansionistic ways it looks like we are more likely to hit a collapse than actually make it off our poor little mud ball. If we are to survive long enough to get off the mud ball we will probably be sociallized to sustainable rather than expansionistic tendancies. Thus any society that reaches the ability to explore/populate the universe is not going to actually care to do so.
Also considering how easy it is to destroy planetary objects once you have common space technology any conflicts remaining are going to be pretty devistating dirt side. Again reinforcing the point that you don't get off the mud ball and into interstellar space if your society is conflict/expansionistically structured.
So most gene patents involve finding a gene that is already out there and patenting it.
Um, was that gene not already in existance, and already performing its function.
It is not a new invention. It is not a new application.
In many cases there are thousands, millions or even billions of people/things with that gene in billions of cells eash cell using it every day for the function in which it was patented.
How do these things qualify for patents?
To me it is like patenting gravity. Then applying it to moving water. It is a natural process.
Watch that old DOS. It will continue to grow, hogging more and more resources eventually slowing even the fastest systems. Reducing productivity and requiring lots of manual fixes. The old versions required user activity to update but the latest versions call home and self update. For the last 10 years or so they have been calling home with user info and restricting what you can do with the machine. Many crashes, data loss and other failures can be directly attributed to this virulent strain.
Security Threat high. Outbreak in progress. Latest version seen: Vista, many variants
Ok so how many north american students are ripping the authentication stickers off school owned Dell machines and keying the phone number to the BSA in as they read this.
Reporting your teacher/principal to the BSA, priceless.
So it looks like the Open Source community is now debugging Microsofts Document format. I am sure Microsoft does not itself know what is going on in here half the time and much of this document was generated by code scrappers looking for structures and interfaces.
Congrats to the world community but they should really submit a bill to Microsoft.
> We know that the earth's temperature cycles between Warm and Cold, but we don't know for sure what causes it.
Lost the reference to the paper. But there is some theory/research into the massively long cycles. Not the 25K glaciations but the bigger cycles.
Errosion + ocean life cycles recycling carbon dioxide. A big >1M year cycle. Sort of like how the coldest/hottest parts of the year do not match the equinoxes. The thing is our releasing of the C02 from the carbon syncs is throwing it out of wack early. Expect lots of heat and ocean algae blooms.
CO2->heat->increased errosion+life cycle boom->feeds itself until C02 absorbtion rate is very large. Then it collapses and the C02 is low and major planet wide ice age shuts it all down. Eventually thermic(volcanic) releases under ice pressures slowly build up C02 and return to the beginning. I may have messed up the explanation. I need to find that paper again.
SCO paid cold hard cash for their lawyers. Cash from Microsoft and Sun that Novell is claiming should have been forwarded to Novell. But it was cash. There was an early move to make BS&F get paid in shares and a percentage of an SCO buyout. BS&F dropped that very quickly, either because they got a good look at SCO's case or because it would put them in co-conspirator type position with respect to Lanham act and racketering charges for being a direct benefit from the false valuation.
SCO paid a "fixed fee" to BS&F to manage all cases through appeals, I believe it was $29M. There is also a refillable misc-costs bucket of $5M that has already been topped up twice. The misc-cost bucket sort of puts a lie to the "fixed fee" handling of the lawsuit.
In any case SCO is now facing Novell asking for a lot of cash that SCO no longer has.
But there is no way for SCO to avoid IBM's counter claims. Even in bankruptcy the trustee gets to decide to continue a case or just fold their side. The case still must have an outcome.
I lot of people playing WoW have said they used cut-and-paste on their password to avoid key loggers. (yea real smart having it in plain text in another file anyways). I wonder if they know about this vulnerability.
Microsoft products fail to meet expectactions and there is no alternative available out there for the standard user. If it was easy to use an alternative it would be seen that in most cases the alternative is no better. This would difuse the hatred. But because the average person must use the Microsoft,
if the computer becomes viris infested if word eats a document if DRM does not let someone copy a home video
it is all Microsoft's fault.
It there was an alternative. One could be happy the Microsoft screwed up less than the competition. Then Microsoft would be seen as the saviour.
This assumes that Microsoft would be able to produce a product better than the competition.
No matter how good something is. If that is all that is available it will be blamed for everything.
((ok no rants about Linux as an alternative here, the average home user, the average office users do not have Linux or OpenOffice available))
If Microsoft was really confident they would push people to try Linux and OpenOffice. Then come back when it failed to meet all expectations. "If you love something, set it free".
Why is it that manufacturing can move heaven and earth to avoid vendor lock in yet process/plant/assets is quite happy to be lead around by the nards year in year out.
I have heard of manufacturing 1) requireing a single source vendor to license IP to a second company. Then purchases were made from both suppliers. 2) going with a less desirable but second sourcable alternative
1) pay for movie, expiry time set to 4 days, download begins 2).... downloading.... 3).... 5 days later.... 4) download complete. 5) Your movie has expired. Would you like to renew your rental for 4 more days?
Can we say it is due to the usual x10 engineering safety margin?
90 sol * 10 -> 900. Sort of close to 1000%.
The engineers would have looked at MTBF (mean time between failures) of the components and probably designed for at least a 99% survivability to 90 sol. This might factor down to a 90% survivability to 900 sol depending on the failure curves for the parts. So the the probability of two surviving that long would be 0.9 * 0.9 = 0.81 or 81% chance.
> No, just block port 25 to all servers other than the ISPs for dynamic IP addresses.
I thought I paid for IP access. Deliberate port blocking by my ISP is blocking services I pay for.
IP access means IP access, it does mean port 80 web surfing only. Any steps toward that are plain wrong.
I agree it is a wild world out there but it is a problem of weak clients. The service provider should be blind unless a client is affecting network performance beyond their paid for slice. Then the client should be totally blocked.
Why were there no counter requests for 1) copy of hard drives of all spammers computers 2) list of all online identities and accounts used by spammer in last year
> Well since they'e not the government (officially), they can't actually ban such. They could impose a condition on whoever clicks through the EULA that heshe is responsible for EULA-violating behavior by anyone who ever uses the machine. In fact I wonder if there's such a condition floating around somewhere...
Just get some minor to click it. Or let your dog/cat play with the mouse.
Slashdot Mirror
Variable, flexible and soft is not liquid.
- liquid implies no strong bonding between neighboring particals, the particals are free to change their relationships with each other.
Remote control is not robot.
- robot is autonomous.
This was a rant.
Ok so it might work reliably now. The beta test is over and the actual product is shipping.
;-)
only half a
It is all about the metrics:
.... ...
PC gameing is not dead. Probably more people playing longer and more often than ever before (Warcraft).
Retail Box store sales of PC games is low compared to console sales.
Hours played of PC games: missing is Warcraft, web games,
Sales: missing is Warcraft, online sales
Blizzard gave the box stores a thank you for the Burning Crusade release. It could have totally be done with a download and all those stores would have had nothing (currently you can do a direct online, avoid the store upgrade).
Because PC's can download, even burn DVD's. New PC games can totally avoid the box stores in the future.
If the box stores want to live they must champion the console games.
Valve could make extra cash by championing a download system, if they make it work out for more cash for a game maker than a box store. It could be the end of box stores.
> The dominoes are beginning to fall.
Are they being hit by flying chairs, perchance?
IBM is still digging into SCO's near corpse to find the detials of SCO's accusations. Which were, are and for ever more shall be totally bogus.
Ballmer needs to stop saying "they stole our IP" and start citing versions, files, lines and patent numbers. Otherwise Microsoft looks like a bigger SCO. And that is not a pretty picture for a company like Microsoft intends itself to be.
So what do those of us in Canada do ?
Looking at ourselves the concept of an expansionistic society surviving its limits on its original planet is pretty much going to require a sustanable society, not an expansionistic society.
If we continue our expansionistic ways it looks like we are more likely to hit a collapse than actually make it off our poor little mud ball. If we are to survive long enough to get off the mud ball we will probably be sociallized to sustainable rather than expansionistic tendancies. Thus any society that reaches the ability to explore/populate the universe is not going to actually care to do so.
Also considering how easy it is to destroy planetary objects once you have common space technology any conflicts remaining are going to be pretty devistating dirt side. Again reinforcing the point that you don't get off the mud ball and into interstellar space if your society is conflict/expansionistically structured.
So most gene patents involve finding a gene that is already out there and patenting it.
Um, was that gene not already in existance, and already performing its function.
It is not a new invention. It is not a new application.
In many cases there are thousands, millions or even billions of people/things with that gene in billions of cells eash cell using it every day for the function in which it was patented.
How do these things qualify for patents?
To me it is like patenting gravity. Then applying it to moving water. It is a natural process.
> old DOS
Watch that old DOS. It will continue to grow, hogging more and more resources eventually slowing even the fastest systems. Reducing productivity and requiring lots of manual fixes. The old versions required user activity to update but the latest versions call home and self update. For the last 10 years or so they have been calling home with user info and restricting what you can do with the machine. Many crashes, data loss and other failures can be directly attributed to this virulent strain.
Security Threat high.
Outbreak in progress.
Latest version seen: Vista, many variants
Ok so how many north american students are ripping the authentication stickers off school owned Dell machines and keying the phone number to the BSA in as they read this.
Reporting your teacher/principal to the BSA, priceless.
So does this senator want to personally pay for all the then wasted resources the army has put into its whizz bang recruitment game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army
Or are they going to have to modify the game so nobody gets killed?
So it looks like the Open Source community is now debugging Microsofts Document format. I am sure Microsoft does not itself know what is going on in here half the time and much of this document was generated by code scrappers looking for structures and interfaces.
Congrats to the world community but they should really submit a bill to Microsoft.
> We know that the earth's temperature cycles between Warm and Cold, but we don't know for sure what causes it.
Lost the reference to the paper. But there is some theory/research into the massively long cycles. Not the 25K glaciations but the bigger cycles.
Errosion + ocean life cycles recycling carbon dioxide. A big >1M year cycle. Sort of like how the coldest/hottest parts of the year do not match the equinoxes. The thing is our releasing of the C02 from the carbon syncs is throwing it out of wack early. Expect lots of heat and ocean algae blooms.
CO2->heat->increased errosion+life cycle boom->feeds itself until C02 absorbtion rate is very large. Then it collapses and the C02 is low and major planet wide ice age shuts it all down. Eventually thermic(volcanic) releases under ice pressures slowly build up C02 and return to the beginning. I may have messed up the explanation. I need to find that paper again.
One simple step
1) Start moving cash to companies that provide audits of their social actions.
Once the money moves you can bet companies are going to start acting.
As long as we say "it is not possible" and do not try it remains not done.
But the only barrier is a lack of will power to commit.
SCO paid cold hard cash for their lawyers. Cash from Microsoft and Sun that Novell is claiming should have been forwarded to Novell. But it was cash. There was an early move to make BS&F get paid in shares and a percentage of an SCO buyout. BS&F dropped that very quickly, either because they got a good look at SCO's case or because it would put them in co-conspirator type position with respect to Lanham act and racketering charges for being a direct benefit from the false valuation.
SCO paid a "fixed fee" to BS&F to manage all cases through appeals, I believe it was $29M. There is also a refillable misc-costs bucket of $5M that has already been topped up twice. The misc-cost bucket sort of puts a lie to the "fixed fee" handling of the lawsuit.
In any case SCO is now facing Novell asking for a lot of cash that SCO no longer has.
SCO can drop their claims against IBM.
But there is no way for SCO to avoid IBM's counter claims. Even in bankruptcy the trustee gets to decide to continue a case or just fold their side. The case still must have an outcome.
I lot of people playing WoW have said they used cut-and-paste on their password to avoid key loggers. (yea real smart having it in plain text in another file anyways). I wonder if they know about this vulnerability.
Microsoft products fail to meet expectactions and there is no alternative available out there for the standard user. If it was easy to use an alternative it would be seen that in most cases the alternative is no better. This would difuse the hatred. But because the average person must use the Microsoft,
if the computer becomes viris infested
if word eats a document
if DRM does not let someone copy a home video
it is all Microsoft's fault.
It there was an alternative. One could be happy the Microsoft screwed up less than the competition. Then Microsoft would be seen as the saviour.
This assumes that Microsoft would be able to produce a product better than the competition.
No matter how good something is. If that is all that is available it will be blamed for everything.
((ok no rants about Linux as an alternative here, the average home user, the average office users do not have Linux or OpenOffice available))
If Microsoft was really confident they would push people to try Linux and OpenOffice. Then come back when it failed to meet all expectations. "If you love something, set it free".
These days your grahpics card does 3d transformations, even 4d with the physics models.
Many, many of these in parallel.
Good old 2d cartesian coordinates/imaginary numbers are no problem.
The real problem is irrational numbers.
PI, sqrt(2) sqrt(3), e
Why is it that manufacturing can move heaven and earth to avoid vendor lock in yet process/plant/assets is quite happy to be lead around by the nards year in year out.
I have heard of manufacturing
1) requireing a single source vendor to license IP to a second company. Then purchases were made from both suppliers.
2) going with a less desirable but second sourcable alternative
I wonder when the time out starts:
.... downloading .... .... 5 days later ....
1) pay for movie, expiry time set to 4 days, download begins
2)
3)
4) download complete.
5) Your movie has expired. Would you like to renew your rental for 4 more days?
6) Profit X 2
Can we say it is due to the usual x10 engineering safety margin?
90 sol * 10 -> 900. Sort of close to 1000%.
The engineers would have looked at MTBF (mean time between failures) of the components and probably designed for at least a 99% survivability to 90 sol. This might factor down to a 90% survivability to 900 sol depending on the failure curves for the parts. So the the probability of two surviving that long would be 0.9 * 0.9 = 0.81 or 81% chance.
> No, just block port 25 to all servers other than the ISPs for dynamic IP addresses.
I thought I paid for IP access. Deliberate port blocking by my ISP is blocking services I pay for.
IP access means IP access, it does mean port 80 web surfing only. Any steps toward that are plain wrong.
I agree it is a wild world out there but it is a problem of weak clients. The service provider should be blind unless a client is affecting network performance beyond their paid for slice. Then the client should be totally blocked.
Why were there no counter requests for
1) copy of hard drives of all spammers computers
2) list of all online identities and accounts used by spammer in last year
If they make it hurt for you, hurt back.
(I have been watching the SCO case)
> Well since they'e not the government (officially), they can't actually ban such. They could impose a condition on whoever clicks through the EULA that heshe is responsible for EULA-violating behavior by anyone who ever uses the machine. In fact I wonder if there's such a condition floating around somewhere...
Just get some minor to click it. Or let your dog/cat play with the mouse.
In any case how can they prove "YOU" clicked it.