Sysadmins of large, public websites know this one all too well. Well planned data center moves may set the TTL to 5 minutes, but that doesn't mean anyone will respect your TTL.
Once it's in DNS, it's going to stay there for a long time. Any transition plan has to monitor traffic on the old IP over the course of days to see when 99% of the traffic has tailed off. It sucks, but there it is. He who owns the DNS server, 0wnz the net.
We'll do our best to be fair with story selection. We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.
If you can't be fair, at least be honest. It doesn't sound like your hearts are truly behind fairness (too many ideologies), but instead behind something akin to the 'fairness doctrine'/'equal airtime'. In a collaboratively edited media, this could end up meaning only 'anyone can post something inflammatory, so we're fair'.
Try instead to pursue truth in reporting. Use the most basic of your geeky logic tools (Occam's Razor, bogosity meter, hype sensors, and holding your story to a 'preponderance of the evidence' standard) and try to elevate the discussion, not wallow in it. If your only source is the Drudge Report or a MoveOn.org press release, don't (re)print it. If the story is factually challenged, wait for the first factual refutation (and rebuttal, if you can) and (re)print that. Is the story more gossip than politics? Don't bother posting it. There are enough venues for that kind of tripe.
Many of us want to hold Slashdot to a higher standard, some of us just want it to hold itself to any standard at all. Here's a chance for Slashdot to regain some of the cred it has lost over the years. Slashdot has a chance to delight its (many) readers and be more than yet another blathering voice in the blogosphere... Don't let this opportunity slip by.
You take out your cellphone, and take a snapshot (read: scan) the semacode. Your cellphone loads up the appropriate URL, giving you information about the room.
Through the website, you find out what the room is used for, who the technicians / professors are using the room, what the class schedule for the room is, when the professor has open office hours, who is responsible for maintenance of the room, what the phone extension in the room is, etc. And you get a bunch of links to follow from there.
It'll never happen -- at least, not because of this technology. Going from cameraphone snapshot to URL is not the tricky part. It's *trivial* and if it isn't today, it will be very very soon.
The real money spinner is finding a way to make available all of the information you want 'in an instant' and make the management costs effectively zero. Anything more expensive than zero is too much for a classroom. Hell, the problem of double-booking classrooms (and other rooms) is still not solved in a ubiquitous manner and it's a very simple and well understood scheduling problem.
What makes you think this quirky technology is going to be the gateway that brings a universe of information to your fingertips, when that information is not yet gathered? Where's the percentage in giving away information it costs serious money to gather? Unless you barcode 10% or more of the relevant objects in the area, why would I even bother investing in the tech (on the user or infrastructure side)?
Museums and other public attractions with electronic talking guides or some other location based technowidget usually charge a couple bucks for the use of the widget. How are you going to charge a cell phone user for the equipment they already hold in their hand? And without the income stream, how are you going to keep the location based nuggets of information relevant? You're not. It's a waste of time and money unless the cost of gathering, managing, and presenting that information is effectively zero.
It really is just the CueCat rehashed. Move along.
One reason I still use Windows is the ease of organizing files with it. All the work can be done from the keyboard and can be done quickly. If I change to a new folder, the time to display that folder is minimal. When I need quick access to a folder, WindowsKey+R brings up the Run dialog and c:\blah\blah\blah<enter> gets you there. Dragging and dropping with the appropriate (and by now well-learned) keyboard accellerators is fast 99% of the time and just plain reliable even when it throws an hourglass at me. But as I said, the instances of explorer UI freakout and extremely low on my systems (more on this below) and the UI is more responsive than I've ever felt Konqueror to be.
Of course, Microsoft has gone out of its way to ruin the Win95 explorer's big advantage: Responsiveness. In a modern XP install, I need to go to Windows Classic explorer, turn off every toolbar but the Menu Bar, remove the sidebar, and change about 10 options (don't hide system files, show all extensions, etc.) before it really resembles the old Explorer. Then... load up TweakUI and ditch any of the animations associated with explorer (fade-in menus can be awful on poor video cards, yet it's on by default). Okay, no wonder it's fast. All the MSCruft(tm) has been dumped for the standards of 1995!
The one thing that has not gotten better in years (and is considerably worse in my install of Win2k) is the ability to use a non-standard icon/display size in Explorer. I can make List the default for my current window. I can tell Explorer to make all folders like my current one. But every new folder created defaults to Large Icon view. And I can't find an obvious way to solve this (though another run by Annoyances.org says there might be a registry key deletion in my future).
Yes, I already know that Win95's Explorer UI sucks for things like discoverability and crimes against humanity. But I got used to it a while ago and it's the standard no Linux file manager has surpassed yet, in my eyes. Sad, but true.
iChat AV -- Technology Test or Trojan Horse?
on
FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm not surprised in the least that the current (toothless) incarnation of the FCC is letting AOL slide into video chat without getting anything in return. However, I had forgotten about this restriction when iChat AV came out and now my mind is filled with all sorts of questions.
How closely did Apple work with AOL on iChat AV? I thought the borked SIP implementation was to promote Apple hardware (iChat AV only videoconferences with iChat AV... which only runs on Macs), but now I wonder if that was a result of negotiations with AOL. AOL's IM, at the time, was the only major IM service to not support video, right? So, was the iChat AV-only restriction a way to prevent Yahoo IM/MSN Messenger growth on the back of Mac-to-PC video chat?
Was the borked implementation just a proof of concept for AOL IM-only video chat? (I find this hard to believe, as it implies AOL drives iChat develpment. iChat AV was an obvious evolution of the original iChat, which included some of the iChat AV widget images hidden/unused in the resources of pre-AV builds.)
Was iChat AV a way to build up a large (fanatical) user base for AIM video chat while working under the FCC restriction? A trojan horse that would give AOL an edge once the FCC (inevitably) caved? Only time will tell, but this would be my bet. Look for iChat AV to AIM video chat soon(-ish) and continued incompatibilities.
I mean, how likely is it that AIM will be able to video chat with MSN and YIM? If they were going to go for compatibility, they would have done it already (and by doing so, had the restriction lifted honestly -- by meeting the FCC's original concerns).
Last I checked, Photoshop was around $600 per workstation. XP Pro is $200/station, and I think licenses for NT/2K/2K3 server are around $100/seat. So really, Windows ended up being the cheaper part of of the equation, at $300 per station.
Start here:
Today, Brooks runs Photoshop 7.0 on CrossOver Office on more than 200 workstations. CrossWeavers, in turn, has added support of Photoshop 7.0 to its CrossOver Office product.
So we're talking about 200 times whatever you get hit with under their licensing agreement (Licensing 6.0, anybody?)...
Development of the porting solution, including site licenses, cost Disney less than $15,000. Had he opted to run Photoshop on Windows machines, it would have cost upward of $50,000 just in annual licensing fees, said Brooks. He estimates support would have been an additional $40,000 a year.
So, any way you look at it, they're site-licensing Photoshop, so take it out of the equation. Once you do that, this makes sense. 200*250 = 50,000 in licensing per year (let's hear it for subscription software!) and the 40K is presumably for the highest available level of support straight from MS.
On the other hand, $15k was kicked over to CodeWeavers (along with whatever the other two 'mystery studios' kicked in) so they would focus on Photoshop support in Crossover Office. Presumably, the actual licenses and support deals came out of the same bucket. This is quite likely, as Codeweavers offers terrific support with any purchase, let alone 200 licenses!
I applaud the effort to move off Windows, and I'm glad to see that WINE is of this caliber quality, but don't justify your switch with a bunch of nonsense numbers.
The nonsense numbers are purely your own, I assure you.
'Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.'
Wine has been under the LGPL for a while now... anyone know more about this 'cribbing'? What exactly was copied, and from what tree?
I haven't heard that the voting system code is available under the LGPL... in fact, I've heard that secret source code is quite important to keep ahead of competitors.
OTOH who is going to try to make a go of AMD/64? For sure not any of the system vendors who have commited to IA64. That means no Dell, no IBM, no HP. So there is an opportunity for Sun.
While there are no announcements out of Dell yet, Infoworld published this article back in November, saying:
A high ranking executive at a Dell partner has said, on condition of anonymity, that Dell will likely ship an Opteron-based server manufactured by Newisys Inc. Both Newisys and Dell are based in Austin, Texas.
The Register published their take on the situation. It may never come to pass, but I'd be surprised if Dell wasn't at least looking at such a plan.
my iPod is behaving horribly with VBR-encoded files (firmware 1.2.1, mine cuts off the end of the track if you pause or fast forward/rewind)
This is, AFAIK, a known problem with MP3's without the Xing VBR header. There are utilities out there to 'repair' your existing mp3's to add the appropriate header. My experience with just such a tool was a success (but it was such a pain that I didn't bother doing it with the whole library yet).
It doesn't matter if the article was posted before or after it was broadcast, because lots of people (particuarly on/.) time shift, and there are countries that lag by entire seasons, so even if the article was put up an hour or a day after the episode was broadcast, it would have been a stupid article.
I am amazed that any writer would actually put a major spoiler "above the fold" with no warning.
I am even more amazed that no editor caught it before it went up, and f-ing stunned that after people started screaming they didn't reword it with a warning, pushing the actual spoiler behind the "read more" link.
Self-centered jerks.
I'm quoting most of your reply because it needs to be said again and again. Pulling this stunt was a very stupid move by chrisd and his update would have been laughable if it weren't so lame. The non-apology ('Oops, sorry about the spoiler' is not an apology, it's a brush-off) itself appeared 'below the fold'. To call Slashdot a Mickey Mouse operation is disrespectful because at least the mouse is a professional. They will never get a subscription fee out of me because Slashdot continues to fall below even the lowest web publishing standards.
Never is a long time, but I'm fairly confident that this problem will never be solved. There is no chance I will be proven wrong on this point. At least a few years ago the deterioration could be blamed on the lame posters. Now it's the 'editors' who I blame.
Define 'serious action'. To me, it's a meaningless term. Do we mean quantity of players right now, number of games sold, or how many 'hardcore' gamers are spewing nonsense about these games on web discussion boards? Regardless, you've shot yourself in the foot with your #2...
The article specifically mentions the deliberate mod-ability in The Sims. Both games have sold large numbers of expansion packs (which are really just company-driven mods, rather than community driven). Both core games have been out longer than any of the console games you listed in #1, in the exact same format. The strength of the mods (both designed into the game, like rollercoaster building, and available on the shelves) is what keeps the demand up for these games, just like CounterStrike continued to drive demand for Half-Life.
As for the lack of innovation in Unreal mods, I can't speak to it. But it's telling that you choose to focus on the weaker mod community to draw your conclusion that modders are "isolated". Are the DoD developers, in your opinion, "isolated"? How did this detract from or contribute to their amazing success? In fact, I wonder if you dispute that a bunch of mod developers have achieved a level of success (both technically and commercially, i.e. by volume) than most professionally produced games will. Doesn't sound self-serving and isolated to me. In fact, it sounds like a good reason to write large numbers of articles on (gasp) gaming news sites.
One thing that bothers me about the change is the (lack of) reasoning for it. I like Free Software, don't get me wrong. I prefer it. However, I am paying for my subscription to TransGaming's WineX and have no problem with supporting the company or the product. I have my reasons:
If the subscription numbers reach TG's goal (meaning they're earning a healthy return on their investment), TG will give its code to WineHQ. By supporting them, I'm doing my part to get this code released to the community.
TransGaming has accepted the risk involved in hiring top-notch developers. This is not a trivial amount of risk. The payoff comes on the back end, not the front. By this, I mean they make it off of products and subscriptions and in an ideal world other Wine-dependant companies would sponsor/pay them to release code bits under a free license early. This contrasts with a consulting contract that guarantees money for services and software. Already, their DCOM work has lost its value in a sponsorship scheme because someone else developed it separately and released it under the Wine license. TG took the risk and ate the cost and their programmer still got paid.
TG gets results. In just a couple of months, they've advanced WineX to support DirectX 8. Earlier today, they put out a press release announcing support for Max Payne. For $5, you can get a copy of WineX with copy-protection support or get it free from CVS without copy-protection under the AFPL.
As a subscriber, I see my monthly contribution to TransGaming as a contribution to Wine development. TG keeps key portions of its code close to its chest (or as close as you can get with the AFPL license), but they have donated a lot of code (See http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/02/0646.html for a short list) and they will in the future.
But now, I fear that my contribution will be devalued by the added cost of TransGaming/WineHQ cooperation. If it costs TG more to prepare a patch for the LGPLed WineHQ tree, it's like losing subscribers. Or looking at it another way, it's like my money didn't go to contributing back to WineHQ. Instead, it got lost to the 'overhead' introduced by this push toward 'Free Software'.
>How many games can you name that use a retained mode API?
Until recently: EverQuest. And let me tell ya, it's been a real thorn in the side of us TransGaming subscribers (and certainly more so for the developers). Well, you asked.:)
Info on the Retained Mode API usage here:
http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=1 0
ElComSoft's chief executive, Alex Katalov, said he was pleased that the company, not Sklyarov, would bear sole responsibility for the charges.
Hands down, Mr. Katalov is the coolest employer I've ever seen. Since Dmitry's arrest, he had been front-and-center, doing what it took to get Dmitry free regardless of the risk. Thomas C. Greene raised this issue in an article in The Register a while back and it got my attention. But I am very impressed that he continued to put responsibility on his company when Dmitry would have provided a convenient scapegoat.
I will agree with you about The Simpsons, especially the re-hashed "Flaming Moe's" episode where Moe makes his bar into some trendy place and alienates Homer, etc... Sounds all too familiar:)
A useful observation, and I'm sorry to see it marked down as flamebait <RANT>I suppose it's because of the negative opinion of Futurama. Note: This is Slashdot. Negative opinions are not tolerated in general. If you can be long-winded about it, you'll get mega-ratings even if (or especially if) you don't make any real sense. Please conform or confuse.. it's your only real hope of getting along here.</RANT>
Another episode came to mind when I saw this same episode. The one where Moe turns his bar into a family restaurant. Perhaps this recycled crap is the result of a cut-n-paste session with old episodes. Or perhaps earlier generations of Simpsons writers have left Mad Libs for the current team. Either way, I find it grimly amusing when 'worst episode ever' is mocked by the exact people who make it apply week after week. Gallows humor from the writing team, I guess. It seems they'd rather take potshots at the rabid fanbase they used to have instead of making the show watchable again.
I gave the subject some thought after you pointed the subject out, and I'm convinced that it was more a reference to J.S. Mill's views Re: Free Will. IIRC, he didn't believe in it, which would make this a non-issue.
That's why the line in the Bruces' Philosophers Song is so amusing:
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Okay, I realize that this article is now in the dustbin, but I gotta rant for a little bit about the apparent blindness of the appeals court. According to a number of news sources today, the judges believe Judge Jackson didn't make it clear what the browser market is and therefore this case is likely to be sent back down for clarification. And of course, the M$-friendly icing on the cake is that Jackson probably won't be allowed near the case. (More on this later)
Now, I've been looking at this page of the Findings Of Fact, and I think it's pretty clear that the market for Web Browsers is the market for products that provide "the ability for the end user to select, retrieve, and perceive resources on the Web." The fact that M$ integrated this into their OS doesn't mean it can't be separated from the OS experience. This is made quite clear in the FoF, but the appellate judges seem to be ignoring it. The FoF should be nearly unassailable, but instead we're starting from the (unconventional, to say the least) assumption that the FoF are wrong.
This pisses me off. Judge Jackson turned out to be the most clueful government employee I have ever seen and I want to defend him. This man does not deserve to be the target of M$ character assassination because he's honest. For some reason, these proceedings started with the assumption that Jackson was biased and that the FoF are tainted as a result. Play along with me for a moment as I think this through.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're a reasonably bright judge who has a big case in front of him. After months of listening to the defendant plead innocence and attempt to prove it using ethically (and legally) questionable tactics, a star witness for the defense admits that the defendant is guilty as sin. From this, you determine the defendant is full of shit and from that conclusion, you are suddenly able to examine the facts with perfect clarity. While things are so clear to you, it also becomes apparent that the defense was doing everything it could to prevent you from achieving this kind of clarity, because confusion works in their best interest.
I believe it was from this perspective that Judge Jackson wrote the FoF. From the moment of their release, M$ questioned him and screamed to every reporter who would listen that Jackson was 'clearly erroneous'. Now, given his enlightened perspective, and the barely hidden contempt for Judge Jackson, is anyone going to fault him for being angry with M$? That he spoke out was unfortunate, but given the context (post-M$ trial antics), what he said drew upon a rich history of dealing with the company in court.
Judge Jackson is worthy of our defense, and if the Government isn't capable of defending one of their own, what can we do to protect him? What can we do to influence the future of this important case?
>Eventually people will do _everything_, both good and bad, with science and knowledge.
'everything' is an infinite set, limited first by imagination and second by physical laws. Someone still has to think up the 'bad' ways to use the knowledge and then lack the morals that would otherwise prevent them from harming someone.
In other words, I just don't buy what you're saying. For many reasons, this among them.
I am astounded by the nerve of Jack Valenti, who repeatedly defended his positions merely by pointing out that Congress saw fit to grant him gawdlike powers to the detriment of fair use. "If you want to change it... call your congressman." he repeated often. Sure, they may not like the level of violence in his wares, but don't be fooled.. Jack has much better access to them than you'll ever enjoy.
Back during the GOP convention, Jack threw a party for the rich and powerful that Roll Call listed like so:
The real action will heat up at Latin Night at Shampoo night club (417 N. Eighth St.). Plenty of stars should show up for this "sizzling" fiesta billed as "the hottest party of the convention." The event is hosted by Valenti and the MPAA; Walt Disney; Viacom and Seagrams-Universal Studios; America Online, Inc.; and Time Warner and will honor Foley and the Entertainment Task Force.
This is the party where Dick Armey made a naughty joke that made headlines a few months back. If it weren't for his mistake, that small blurb might have been the only the the press bothered to mention this party. Why bother the sheep with news that their lawmakers are easily bought off with parties?
Every time I hear Jack or one of his flacks suggest that the laws are being made in the interest of the 'vast majority of Americans', I want to vomit. Sorry, Jack, but those laws are only truly benefitting the minority you belong to: The ones with access to the powerful. It's just that most Americans aren't quick enough to catch you at it.
Until this system of legalized bribery is brought to an end, we will continue to be called a thieves every time Jack gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
When I read this article 24 hours ago, I got very nervous by the headline that seemed to claim targeted advertising based on your watching habits. However, after reading the article, I could find nothing to support such claims, but instead sensed some key TiVo features are being taken out of context.
While the TiVo can and probably does monitor what you watch, claim I've seen is that this data is aggregated and never used on the individual level, nor sold to third parties. I personally see no problem in calculating an in-house version of the Nielson Ratings. In fact, I encourage it.:)
The 'targeted ads' bit is more than likely a reference to the TiVoMatic function, also known as TiVo Takes. This is used on a handful of networks right now as a way of scheduling programming on a 'See it. Want it. Get it.' basis. Basically, it's a hyperlinked embedded in an ad to let you schedule the program in the ad for later viewing. I personally want to see more of this, so ads have some use to me and so I don't have to click away from live tv in order to schedule a program.
Finally, for those concerned about the Suggestions being used by TiVo, you can put your black helicopter theories back in the Paranoia Bin. The processing for preferences is done on the box itself, as has been proven by hackers that can make the listing re-gen on demand. It would seem an awful waste to have these centrally processed anyway, since the CPU on a TiVO is mostly idle.
Personally, I do have a problem with this sort of thing. I will agree that the ratings system is being used the way it was supposed to be here, I support the ratings system, and these companies are doing what they should have been doing all along. However..
Every time another company makes a move toward restriction on violent games or movies these days, it perpetuates the myth that this is what's wrong with our society. In this post-Columbine world, the geeks lost, folks.
I recall countless posts on how upset/.-ers were that Doom was painted as training software for the murderers and multiple rational posts on how games don't make kids killers. And that went over quite well here on/., but we didn't do enough to get the message out of our own circles.
It is now apparent that video games are being used as a smokescreen to cover up the unprofitable fact that teen violence continues to decline. The inconvenient fact that well adjusted people might want to play games riddled with pseudo-satanic images. And the fact that some parents don't mind if their kids watch South Park. These facts confuse the closed minded and those who want to make money off of them (like K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and politicians).
Every time one of these policies is put in place, it adds more fuel to the 'Think of the children!' bonfire and increases the possibility that those kids with permissive parents will be as shut out from these games as kids whose parents legitimately do not want Junior to have Quake 3. It happened a year ago with South Park and will continue happening because if there's one thing we humans (especially Americans) are good at, it's the classic Overcorrection.
So in summary, I don't mind the policy, I just hate the timing, which will undoubtedly cause some unfair restrictions all in the name of some bogus crusade.
But you can't argue that DeCSS is not used in significant part for piracy. That's simply not true. The defendants' suggestion that is true is more than a little disingenuous.
Well, it's painfully obvious that the MPAA never proved it was used for piracy, period. They proved it can be used for piracy, but did not, with its near limitless resources, prove it ever was. In the absence of proof, Kaplan is groping for anything to cling to, and so he's willing to commit a logical fallacy known as Post hoc, propter hoc ("after the fact, therefore because of the fact"). Look at it again:
And although the Court does not accept the list, which is hearsay, as proof of the truth of the matters asserted therein, it does note that advertisements for decrypted versions of copyrighted movies first appeared on the Internet in substantial numbers in late 1999, following the posting of DeCSS.
What he's straining for here is very much a logical error. Just because DeCSS came out and afterwards more DVDs piracy websites went up does not mean they were using DeCSS. And why is it any less hearsay that these sites 'advertise' decrypted DVDs. Bringing one of these website operators into court and getting them to testify under oath that they used DeCSS would have at least provided some evidence directly linking DeCSS and piracy, instead of hearsay.
First, Section 1201(f)(3) permits information acquired through reverse engineering to be made available to others only by the person who acquired the information. But these defendants did not do any reverse engineering. They simply took DeCSS off someone else's web site and posted it on their own.
Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information available extends only to dissemination solely for the purpose of achieving interoperability as defined in the statute. It does not apply to public dissemination of means of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms. These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS solely to achieve interoperability with Linux or anything else.
This interpretation is unconstitutional on its face. (IANAL, just pissed off) What Kaplan is saying here is that the right to report the results of reverse engineering is restricted not only to the person who directly reverse engineered but when it is reported it must be done with the intent to achieve interoperability.
Which form of speech has been restricted in this manner previously, that would allow Kaplan to get away with it here?
Slashdot Mirror
Sysadmins of large, public websites know this one all too well. Well planned data center moves may set the TTL to 5 minutes, but that doesn't mean anyone will respect your TTL.
Once it's in DNS, it's going to stay there for a long time. Any transition plan has to monitor traffic on the old IP over the course of days to see when 99% of the traffic has tailed off. It sucks, but there it is. He who owns the DNS server, 0wnz the net.
We'll do our best to be fair with story selection. We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.
If you can't be fair, at least be honest. It doesn't sound like your hearts are truly behind fairness (too many ideologies), but instead behind something akin to the 'fairness doctrine'/'equal airtime'. In a collaboratively edited media, this could end up meaning only 'anyone can post something inflammatory, so we're fair'.
Try instead to pursue truth in reporting. Use the most basic of your geeky logic tools (Occam's Razor, bogosity meter, hype sensors, and holding your story to a 'preponderance of the evidence' standard) and try to elevate the discussion, not wallow in it. If your only source is the Drudge Report or a MoveOn.org press release, don't (re)print it. If the story is factually challenged, wait for the first factual refutation (and rebuttal, if you can) and (re)print that. Is the story more gossip than politics? Don't bother posting it. There are enough venues for that kind of tripe.
Many of us want to hold Slashdot to a higher standard, some of us just want it to hold itself to any standard at all. Here's a chance for Slashdot to regain some of the cred it has lost over the years. Slashdot has a chance to delight its (many) readers and be more than yet another blathering voice in the blogosphere... Don't let this opportunity slip by.
You take out your cellphone, and take a snapshot (read: scan) the semacode. Your cellphone loads up the appropriate URL, giving you information about the room.
Through the website, you find out what the room is used for, who the technicians / professors are using the room, what the class schedule for the room is, when the professor has open office hours, who is responsible for maintenance of the room, what the phone extension in the room is, etc. And you get a bunch of links to follow from there.
It'll never happen -- at least, not because of this technology. Going from cameraphone snapshot to URL is not the tricky part. It's *trivial* and if it isn't today, it will be very very soon.
The real money spinner is finding a way to make available all of the information you want 'in an instant' and make the management costs effectively zero. Anything more expensive than zero is too much for a classroom. Hell, the problem of double-booking classrooms (and other rooms) is still not solved in a ubiquitous manner and it's a very simple and well understood scheduling problem.
What makes you think this quirky technology is going to be the gateway that brings a universe of information to your fingertips, when that information is not yet gathered? Where's the percentage in giving away information it costs serious money to gather? Unless you barcode 10% or more of the relevant objects in the area, why would I even bother investing in the tech (on the user or infrastructure side)?
Museums and other public attractions with electronic talking guides or some other location based technowidget usually charge a couple bucks for the use of the widget. How are you going to charge a cell phone user for the equipment they already hold in their hand? And without the income stream, how are you going to keep the location based nuggets of information relevant? You're not. It's a waste of time and money unless the cost of gathering, managing, and presenting that information is effectively zero.
It really is just the CueCat rehashed. Move along.
One reason I still use Windows is the ease of organizing files with it. All the work can be done from the keyboard and can be done quickly. If I change to a new folder, the time to display that folder is minimal. When I need quick access to a folder, WindowsKey+R brings up the Run dialog and c:\blah\blah\blah<enter> gets you there. Dragging and dropping with the appropriate (and by now well-learned) keyboard accellerators is fast 99% of the time and just plain reliable even when it throws an hourglass at me. But as I said, the instances of explorer UI freakout and extremely low on my systems (more on this below) and the UI is more responsive than I've ever felt Konqueror to be.
Of course, Microsoft has gone out of its way to ruin the Win95 explorer's big advantage: Responsiveness. In a modern XP install, I need to go to Windows Classic explorer, turn off every toolbar but the Menu Bar, remove the sidebar, and change about 10 options (don't hide system files, show all extensions, etc.) before it really resembles the old Explorer. Then... load up TweakUI and ditch any of the animations associated with explorer (fade-in menus can be awful on poor video cards, yet it's on by default). Okay, no wonder it's fast. All the MSCruft(tm) has been dumped for the standards of 1995!
The one thing that has not gotten better in years (and is considerably worse in my install of Win2k) is the ability to use a non-standard icon/display size in Explorer. I can make List the default for my current window. I can tell Explorer to make all folders like my current one. But every new folder created defaults to Large Icon view. And I can't find an obvious way to solve this (though another run by Annoyances.org says there might be a registry key deletion in my future).
Yes, I already know that Win95's Explorer UI sucks for things like discoverability and crimes against humanity. But I got used to it a while ago and it's the standard no Linux file manager has surpassed yet, in my eyes. Sad, but true.
I'm not surprised in the least that the current (toothless) incarnation of the FCC is letting AOL slide into video chat without getting anything in return. However, I had forgotten about this restriction when iChat AV came out and now my mind is filled with all sorts of questions.
How closely did Apple work with AOL on iChat AV? I thought the borked SIP implementation was to promote Apple hardware (iChat AV only videoconferences with iChat AV... which only runs on Macs), but now I wonder if that was a result of negotiations with AOL. AOL's IM, at the time, was the only major IM service to not support video, right? So, was the iChat AV-only restriction a way to prevent Yahoo IM/MSN Messenger growth on the back of Mac-to-PC video chat?
Was the borked implementation just a proof of concept for AOL IM-only video chat? (I find this hard to believe, as it implies AOL drives iChat develpment. iChat AV was an obvious evolution of the original iChat, which included some of the iChat AV widget images hidden/unused in the resources of pre-AV builds.)
Was iChat AV a way to build up a large (fanatical) user base for AIM video chat while working under the FCC restriction? A trojan horse that would give AOL an edge once the FCC (inevitably) caved? Only time will tell, but this would be my bet. Look for iChat AV to AIM video chat soon(-ish) and continued incompatibilities.
I mean, how likely is it that AIM will be able to video chat with MSN and YIM? If they were going to go for compatibility, they would have done it already (and by doing so, had the restriction lifted honestly -- by meeting the FCC's original concerns).
Last I checked, Photoshop was around $600 per workstation. XP Pro is $200/station, and I think licenses for NT/2K/2K3 server are around $100/seat. So really, Windows ended up being the cheaper part of of the equation, at $300 per station.
Start here:
So we're talking about 200 times whatever you get hit with under their licensing agreement (Licensing 6.0, anybody?)...
So, any way you look at it, they're site-licensing Photoshop, so take it out of the equation. Once you do that, this makes sense. 200*250 = 50,000 in licensing per year (let's hear it for subscription software!) and the 40K is presumably for the highest available level of support straight from MS.
On the other hand, $15k was kicked over to CodeWeavers (along with whatever the other two 'mystery studios' kicked in) so they would focus on Photoshop support in Crossover Office. Presumably, the actual licenses and support deals came out of the same bucket. This is quite likely, as Codeweavers offers terrific support with any purchase, let alone 200 licenses!
I applaud the effort to move off Windows, and I'm glad to see that WINE is of this caliber quality, but don't justify your switch with a bunch of nonsense numbers.
The nonsense numbers are purely your own, I assure you.
'Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.'
Wine has been under the LGPL for a while now... anyone know more about this 'cribbing'? What exactly was copied, and from what tree?
I haven't heard that the voting system code is available under the LGPL... in fact, I've heard that secret source code is quite important to keep ahead of competitors.
While there are no announcements out of Dell yet, Infoworld published this article back in November, saying:
The Register published their take on the situation. It may never come to pass, but I'd be surprised if Dell wasn't at least looking at such a plan.
This is, AFAIK, a known problem with MP3's without the Xing VBR header. There are utilities out there to 'repair' your existing mp3's to add the appropriate header. My experience with just such a tool was a success (but it was such a pain that I didn't bother doing it with the whole library yet).
Reminds me of the distance hack in the Infinite Corridor. From hacks.mit.edu:r ods/ r ods/poster_text.html
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1997/infinity_
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1997/infinity_
It doesn't matter if the article was posted before or after it was broadcast, because lots of people (particuarly on /.) time shift, and there are countries that lag by entire seasons, so even if the article was put up an hour or a day after the episode was broadcast, it would have been a stupid article.
I am amazed that any writer would actually put a major spoiler "above the fold" with no warning.
I am even more amazed that no editor caught it before it went up, and f-ing stunned that after people started screaming they didn't reword it with a warning, pushing the actual spoiler behind the "read more" link.
Self-centered jerks.
I'm quoting most of your reply because it needs to be said again and again. Pulling this stunt was a very stupid move by chrisd and his update would have been laughable if it weren't so lame. The non-apology ('Oops, sorry about the spoiler' is not an apology, it's a brush-off) itself appeared 'below the fold'. To call Slashdot a Mickey Mouse operation is disrespectful because at least the mouse is a professional. They will never get a subscription fee out of me because Slashdot continues to fall below even the lowest web publishing standards.
Never is a long time, but I'm fairly confident that this problem will never be solved. There is no chance I will be proven wrong on this point. At least a few years ago the deterioration could be blamed on the lame posters. Now it's the 'editors' who I blame.
Define 'serious action'. To me, it's a meaningless term. Do we mean quantity of players right now, number of games sold, or how many 'hardcore' gamers are spewing nonsense about these games on web discussion boards? Regardless, you've shot yourself in the foot with your #2...
The article specifically mentions the deliberate mod-ability in The Sims. Both games have sold large numbers of expansion packs (which are really just company-driven mods, rather than community driven). Both core games have been out longer than any of the console games you listed in #1, in the exact same format. The strength of the mods (both designed into the game, like rollercoaster building, and available on the shelves) is what keeps the demand up for these games, just like CounterStrike continued to drive demand for Half-Life.
As for the lack of innovation in Unreal mods, I can't speak to it. But it's telling that you choose to focus on the weaker mod community to draw your conclusion that modders are "isolated". Are the DoD developers, in your opinion, "isolated"? How did this detract from or contribute to their amazing success? In fact, I wonder if you dispute that a bunch of mod developers have achieved a level of success (both technically and commercially, i.e. by volume) than most professionally produced games will. Doesn't sound self-serving and isolated to me. In fact, it sounds like a good reason to write large numbers of articles on (gasp) gaming news sites.
As a subscriber, I see my monthly contribution to TransGaming as a contribution to Wine development. TG keeps key portions of its code close to its chest (or as close as you can get with the AFPL license), but they have donated a lot of code (See http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2002/0
But now, I fear that my contribution will be devalued by the added cost of TransGaming/WineHQ cooperation. If it costs TG more to prepare a patch for the LGPLed WineHQ tree, it's like losing subscribers. Or looking at it another way, it's like my money didn't go to contributing back to WineHQ. Instead, it got lost to the 'overhead' introduced by this push toward 'Free Software'.
>How many games can you name that use a retained mode API?
:)
1 0
Until recently: EverQuest. And let me tell ya, it's been a real thorn in the side of us TransGaming subscribers (and certainly more so for the developers). Well, you asked.
Info on the Retained Mode API usage here:
http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=
ElComSoft's chief executive, Alex Katalov, said he was pleased that the company, not Sklyarov, would bear sole responsibility for the charges.
Hands down, Mr. Katalov is the coolest employer I've ever seen. Since Dmitry's arrest, he had been front-and-center, doing what it took to get Dmitry free regardless of the risk. Thomas C. Greene raised this issue in an article in The Register a while back and it got my attention. But I am very impressed that he continued to put responsibility on his company when Dmitry would have provided a convenient scapegoat.
I will agree with you about The Simpsons, especially the re-hashed "Flaming Moe's" episode where Moe makes his bar into some trendy place and alienates Homer, etc... Sounds all too familiar :)
A useful observation, and I'm sorry to see it marked down as flamebait <RANT>I suppose it's because of the negative opinion of Futurama. Note: This is Slashdot. Negative opinions are not tolerated in general. If you can be long-winded about it, you'll get mega-ratings even if (or especially if) you don't make any real sense. Please conform or confuse.. it's your only real hope of getting along here.</RANT>
Another episode came to mind when I saw this same episode. The one where Moe turns his bar into a family restaurant. Perhaps this recycled crap is the result of a cut-n-paste session with old episodes. Or perhaps earlier generations of Simpsons writers have left Mad Libs for the current team. Either way, I find it grimly amusing when 'worst episode ever' is mocked by the exact people who make it apply week after week. Gallows humor from the writing team, I guess. It seems they'd rather take potshots at the rabid fanbase they used to have instead of making the show watchable again.
I gave the subject some thought after you pointed the subject out, and I'm convinced that it was more a reference to J.S. Mill's views Re: Free Will. IIRC, he didn't believe in it, which would make this a non-issue.
That's why the line in the Bruces' Philosophers Song is so amusing:
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Okay, I realize that this article is now in the dustbin, but I gotta rant for a little bit about the apparent blindness of the appeals court. According to a number of news sources today, the judges believe Judge Jackson didn't make it clear what the browser market is and therefore this case is likely to be sent back down for clarification. And of course, the M$-friendly icing on the cake is that Jackson probably won't be allowed near the case. (More on this later)
/., of course...
Now, I've been looking at this page of the Findings Of Fact, and I think it's pretty clear that the market for Web Browsers is the market for products that provide "the ability for the end user to select, retrieve, and perceive resources on the Web." The fact that M$ integrated this into their OS doesn't mean it can't be separated from the OS experience. This is made quite clear in the FoF, but the appellate judges seem to be ignoring it. The FoF should be nearly unassailable, but instead we're starting from the (unconventional, to say the least) assumption that the FoF are wrong.
This pisses me off. Judge Jackson turned out to be the most clueful government employee I have ever seen and I want to defend him. This man does not deserve to be the target of M$ character assassination because he's honest. For some reason, these proceedings started with the assumption that Jackson was biased and that the FoF are tainted as a result. Play along with me for a moment as I think this through.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're a reasonably bright judge who has a big case in front of him. After months of listening to the defendant plead innocence and attempt to prove it using ethically (and legally) questionable tactics, a star witness for the defense admits that the defendant is guilty as sin. From this, you determine the defendant is full of shit and from that conclusion, you are suddenly able to examine the facts with perfect clarity. While things are so clear to you, it also becomes apparent that the defense was doing everything it could to prevent you from achieving this kind of clarity, because confusion works in their best interest.
I believe it was from this perspective that Judge Jackson wrote the FoF. From the moment of their release, M$ questioned him and screamed to every reporter who would listen that Jackson was 'clearly erroneous'. Now, given his enlightened perspective, and the barely hidden contempt for Judge Jackson, is anyone going to fault him for being angry with M$? That he spoke out was unfortunate, but given the context (post-M$ trial antics), what he said drew upon a rich history of dealing with the company in court.
Judge Jackson is worthy of our defense, and if the Government isn't capable of defending one of their own, what can we do to protect him? What can we do to influence the future of this important case?
Aside from rant on
>Eventually people will do _everything_, both good and bad, with science and knowledge.
'everything' is an infinite set, limited first by imagination and second by physical laws. Someone still has to think up the 'bad' ways to use the knowledge and then lack the morals that would otherwise prevent them from harming someone.
In other words, I just don't buy what you're saying. For many reasons, this among them.
Back during the GOP convention, Jack threw a party for the rich and powerful that Roll Call listed like so:
This is the party where Dick Armey made a naughty joke that made headlines a few months back. If it weren't for his mistake, that small blurb might have been the only the the press bothered to mention this party. Why bother the sheep with news that their lawmakers are easily bought off with parties?
Every time I hear Jack or one of his flacks suggest that the laws are being made in the interest of the 'vast majority of Americans', I want to vomit. Sorry, Jack, but those laws are only truly benefitting the minority you belong to: The ones with access to the powerful. It's just that most Americans aren't quick enough to catch you at it.
Until this system of legalized bribery is brought to an end, we will continue to be called a thieves every time Jack gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
MirCorp is a joint venture between the Gold & Appel Transfer S.A. holding company and RSC Energia...
Why is it that I imagine the winner being given a ride to Atlantis in a golden submarine instead?
Yeah, I know it's been said before, but the reference still amuses me greatly.
When I read this article 24 hours ago, I got very nervous by the headline that seemed to claim targeted advertising based on your watching habits. However, after reading the article, I could find nothing to support such claims, but instead sensed some key TiVo features are being taken out of context.
:)
While the TiVo can and probably does monitor what you watch, claim I've seen is that this data is aggregated and never used on the individual level, nor sold to third parties. I personally see no problem in calculating an in-house version of the Nielson Ratings. In fact, I encourage it.
The 'targeted ads' bit is more than likely a reference to the TiVoMatic function, also known as TiVo Takes. This is used on a handful of networks right now as a way of scheduling programming on a 'See it. Want it. Get it.' basis. Basically, it's a hyperlinked embedded in an ad to let you schedule the program in the ad for later viewing. I personally want to see more of this, so ads have some use to me and so I don't have to click away from live tv in order to schedule a program.
Finally, for those concerned about the Suggestions being used by TiVo, you can put your black helicopter theories back in the Paranoia Bin. The processing for preferences is done on the box itself, as has been proven by hackers that can make the listing re-gen on demand. It would seem an awful waste to have these centrally processed anyway, since the CPU on a TiVO is mostly idle.
Personally, I do have a problem with this sort of thing. I will agree that the ratings system is being used the way it was supposed to be here, I support the ratings system, and these companies are doing what they should have been doing all along. However..
/.-ers were that Doom was painted as training software for the murderers and multiple rational posts on how games don't make kids killers. And that went over quite well here on /., but we didn't do enough to get the message out of our own circles.
Every time another company makes a move toward restriction on violent games or movies these days, it perpetuates the myth that this is what's wrong with our society. In this post-Columbine world, the geeks lost, folks.
I recall countless posts on how upset
It is now apparent that video games are being used as a smokescreen to cover up the unprofitable fact that teen violence continues to decline. The inconvenient fact that well adjusted people might want to play games riddled with pseudo-satanic images. And the fact that some parents don't mind if their kids watch South Park. These facts confuse the closed minded and those who want to make money off of them (like K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and politicians).
Every time one of these policies is put in place, it adds more fuel to the 'Think of the children!' bonfire and increases the possibility that those kids with permissive parents will be as shut out from these games as kids whose parents legitimately do not want Junior to have Quake 3. It happened a year ago with South Park and will continue happening because if there's one thing we humans (especially Americans) are good at, it's the classic Overcorrection.
So in summary, I don't mind the policy, I just hate the timing, which will undoubtedly cause some unfair restrictions all in the name of some bogus crusade.
But you can't argue that DeCSS is not used in significant part for piracy. That's simply not true. The defendants' suggestion that is true is more than a little disingenuous.
Well, it's painfully obvious that the MPAA never proved it was used for piracy, period. They proved it can be used for piracy, but did not, with its near limitless resources, prove it ever was. In the absence of proof, Kaplan is groping for anything to cling to, and so he's willing to commit a logical fallacy known as Post hoc, propter hoc ("after the fact, therefore because of the fact"). Look at it again:
And although the Court does not accept the list, which is hearsay, as proof of the truth of the matters asserted therein, it does note that advertisements for decrypted versions of copyrighted movies first appeared on the Internet in substantial numbers in late 1999, following the posting of DeCSS.
What he's straining for here is very much a logical error. Just because DeCSS came out and afterwards more DVDs piracy websites went up does not mean they were using DeCSS. And why is it any less hearsay that these sites 'advertise' decrypted DVDs. Bringing one of these website operators into court and getting them to testify under oath that they used DeCSS would have at least provided some evidence directly linking DeCSS and piracy, instead of hearsay.
Say goodbye to academic journals:
First, Section 1201(f)(3) permits information acquired through reverse engineering to be made available to others only by the person who acquired the information. But these defendants did not do any reverse engineering. They simply took DeCSS off someone else's web site and posted it on their own.
Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information available extends only to dissemination solely for the purpose of achieving interoperability as defined in the statute. It does not apply to public dissemination of means of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms. These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS solely to achieve interoperability with Linux or anything else.
This interpretation is unconstitutional on its face. (IANAL, just pissed off) What Kaplan is saying here is that the right to report the results of reverse engineering is restricted not only to the person who directly reverse engineered but when it is reported it must be done with the intent to achieve interoperability.
Which form of speech has been restricted in this manner previously, that would allow Kaplan to get away with it here?