SELECT Results, TestingLab FROM SteroidTests WHERE LastName = 'DiMaggio' AND FirstName = 'Joe' does not mean that SELECT * FROM SteroidTests is in plain sight.
Especially since large databases keep track of more and more things (like your credit cards, names, address, ssn, what you last purchased, credit scores,...) legitimate seizures of data should be severely limited by the judges issuing a warrant. Right now the feds can get away with: "Judge, this terrorist location is stored in this companies database, let's seize all the database servers of the company" and the judge not understanding how records are stored or how databases work practically gives a warrant for all the data the feds can find including 'collateral' records.
DC at those low voltages is pretty hard to distribute actually - you'll lose a lot of power in the wires which in turn also presents a fire hazard. Especially if you have a house with somewhat older wiring I wouldn't trust a high amped DC on the line. A turbine of some sorts (water, solar, wind, nuclear) most likely will generate AC internally anyway (you know with the coils and everything) and the infrastructure for AC is already there. High Voltage DC however works fine for a lot of reasons but for internal wiring, AC will probably always prevail.
Excuse me, but both Linux and Mac OS X have very, very good support for 32-bits apps under a 64-bit OS. The only ones that don't seem to be able to pull it off is Microsoft. I had to install Windows XP 64-bit last week for someone trying to access all memory in their machine and a) none of the drivers worked, even for simple things like USB and other 'generic' hardware where in Linux or Mac you can load 32-bits kernel extensions or generic USB and network controller drivers b) SP3 is not even available yet for Windows XP 64-bit c) the system is slow and doesn't run half the software.
Make sure to label the socket as well saying it still runs on 110V if you're in the America's. By then I hope the US has fully switched to 220VAC for high power or 12/24VAC for sockets (in order to easily integrate with small wind or solar powered setups)
None of which cover what was going on at The Pirate Bay
The fair use clause of the copyright laws are there to enforce the end user, not the distributor. So if have content that I own and I am authorized to make a copy or distribute it (either by law or by license) then announce it on the Pirate Bay (that is what is technically happening - TPB doesn't host any files themselves), that would be completely legal given that I am authorized.
When you download it you have to adhere to your copyright law, neither I nor TPB should enforce that. There are plenty of countries where sharing/downloading is legal, there is nothing you can do against it. In most countries offering/selling content is still legal. If your country puts restrictions on what you can buy then you have to adhere to the laws of your country. To give you an example: Alcoholic beverages are restricted in many middle-eastern countries. If I have a website somewhere in Asia that sells alcohol and you buy from me, I can't do anything about it, you pay for the product and I'll send it to you. If you get busted, you will go to jail, I won't. That the RIAA is trying to change that doesn't mean it is so.
The people being sued were those sharing the content and willfully facilitating copyright infringement. This isn't a fair use right in any country.
The world is bigger than the USA. I doubt anyone in North Korea would object to you ripping off the American media. All the people being sued in the US so far have not (always) willfully facilitated copyright infringement. The dead grandmother probably didn't know anything about it. Then there are those programs like Kazaa and Limewire that share everything on your drive without you knowindg. There are also virusses and scripts that will take over a bad configured host and start hosting content without the administrator knowing.
WIPO treaties
Ah, the UN's RIAA. 1st of all: it's a treaty. Doesn't mean all countries that signed it have put it into law (the US and EU did). Doesn't mean all countries are in the agreement either (Pakistan, Taiwan among others are not in it). It still doesn't remove the rights of fair use and it still puts the responsibility at the end user, not a search engine or a distributor.
I did not make that assumption. I have been in court before more than once for things I did or did not do. As you said: you went over the evidence that was presented but the System (let's call it that, the collection of government, judicial and police agencies) collects the evidence and bases their case on what the System says. There is no place for alternative thinking or for a third party to collect evidence or at least monitor/audit the evidence collection. Placing 'evidence' has been done before and probably has seen to many unrightfully convicted ones and in my case the prosecution often doesn't mention or doesn't even collect certain evidence that would be against their case (instead you have to have other proof or let an (pay-out-of-pocket) third party collect the evidence (if still available). Unless you have a very expensive lawyer you won't get out of it even if you're innocent.
One of the simplest cases: speeding tickets. The cop holds (or has mounted) a device that collects 'evidence' that an object seems to be moving at a certain speed by calculating the time it takes between two 'pings'. If another object (it might be as small as a bird or as large as a car trying to pass you or changing lanes) it will give a wrong reading. Even if the cop does it correctly, you still have to adjust for the angle, timing errors in the device etc. Then he reads it from a screen, he pulls you over and writes you a ticket based on what he read. If the cop is misreading (eg. dyslexic) or the sun reflection makes it seem a digit is lit up or whatever the case he will still write you a ticket for that. There is no printout or log that the device has. The only evidence against you is what the cop thinks he saw at that particular moment and it will usually be held up in court especially in smaller or rural areas where it pays the judge (who is also a business owner) and the road repairs in that town (easier access to the business). In New York State it's actually worse in bigger cities since they don't have traffic court or judges anymore and instead have some pencil pushers approve the tickets and write out the fines. Even a lawyer can hardly get anything against it.
Just because you didn't obtain consent doesn't mean it was illegal. If I use that piece as a fair use (eg. scientific research or artistry) then in the US it would be legal according to copyright law. Most civilized countries do not have copyright violations in their penal code and have fair use clauses so it would not be illegal for them to download anything in the first place and it might actually help them complete a task or do their job.
It may be immoral (as cheating on your spouse is) and it might accrue some unquantifiable damages (as while a transport company moves furniture and scratches it) if you do it for entertainment purposes but you don't go to jail for it just like you don't got to jail for cheating on your spouse or scratching someone's furniture - you just pay for the damages one can prove or repair it and that's it.
AGAIN: IT IS LEGAL - THE RIAA SAYS IT'S ILLEGAL, DOESN'T MEAN IT IS AND CERTAINLY DOESN'T MEAN IT IS SO EVERYWHERE AND ON EVERY OCCASION.
You sir, have never been in court have you. First of all, they bring you in with an orange jumpsuit and chains, the jury already subconsciously condemned you to a lower position since YOU are in jail and THEY are not. Then they start incriminating you with a bunch of 'evidence' like DNA evidence, bullet matching, unrelated accounts of your credit or criminal history and a story to make it all fit. Especially if a cop or another uniformed person is involved as a witness (even if they aren't an eyewitness, they sometimes can witness on your past conduct), they get their gala-uniform out with the shiniest brass/gold. Of course they are not supposed to lie according to the prevailing societies standards. And wait until they hear that you are or were affiliated with some kind of religious or ideological group or organization (even if it's unrelated to the crime).
The jury self is just a 'random' set of people (not necessarily your peers) just large enough to become a sheepish group with an average IQ of 85. Hopefully you can afford your own attorney since the fresh out of college one they assign to you isn't going to help you very much.
With tires you can indeed do that. If you prefer eg. Yokohama tires instead of Goodyear and your Goodyear tires are new or have a certain amount of thread remaining they will refund you an amount of money depending on the amount of thread you have left.
To go with your car analogy, Windows is like an option you didn't ask for on a new car. If the dealer puts the option on and charges you for it anyway by either burying it under some other charges, increasing the price of the car or putting in a part that requires a lot of maintenance for 'free' (some chummy dealers actually do any or all of the above), you can still ask for a refund for that particular option since you a) didn't order it and b) don't want to be paying maintenance on that option.
Windows is an options that costs money and costs maintenance (malware, virus scanners and reinstalls), the laptop manufacturer doesn't get it for free nor does Windows come standard with the computer (since you have to agree to a separate EULA). However the manufacturers just bury it in the rest of the costs and give it for 'free'.
In my opinion, the problem is not that people have been patenting business processes but they have been patenting the end result, the very basics (one-click or how to make purchases on the internet) or the very starting point (the mathematics (algorithms) behind it) of processes.
Wasn't SLI only supposed to be for being able to talk to multiple chips for a single output? OpenCL (and NVidia's CUDA) however don't need SLI in order to talk to multiple GPU's. I have a machine with 4 GPU's and CUDA works just fine. I really don't see the advantage of SLI other than bragging rights and the difference between 200fps and 300fps, most games (and other real time video outputs) have enough with a single video card and all others (scientific output) like to save their output on disk so stuff doesn't have to be rendered again.
I don't buy it. I just don't know why anyone would like them except for strong marketing and radio exposure. That's my main issue - that I have to keep changing radio stations every 5 minutes.
There will be DRM in it. There is no other reason to come up with a new format that has no added value and it comes from the industry that has been pushing DRM for the last decade or so. It's kinda like saying the latest Microsoft next software release will use and adhere to fully open standards - it's just not going to happen. Everything that they have released or said so far is against customers interests, I don't see why this would change it.
Technically, there should be such a benefit that the company can fully deduct from their taxes or whatever. This might be the only way that plug-in electrics are going to work. Currently the issues are: too short of a range, too long of a commute, no (convenient) charging stations in between. If you can do one way on a charge, charge at work and do the other way home on a charge that would benefit all of us and allow most commuters to buy a plug-in electric car for commuting purposes.
Seriously, have you ever even bought a full album of any of those so-called pop stars? Look at Britney Spears' or Miley Cyrus' most recent albums. Do you even know more than 3-5 of the songs on there. I surely don't and even the children that listen to it don't know about them, that's why I don't buy that kind of crap.
Why would the analysis be out of date? Britney's music hasn't changed a bit. It's the same music that was produced for her before, the stuff Britney herself has to lip-sync to. Same with Kanye West. If you heard his performance on American Idol (my wife records that show on DVR and she let me hear it) you know for a fact that the dude can't sing - the only way his voice sounds good on stage is when he goes loud (or is amplified) enough for the voice synthesizers to kick in (and I worked on the sound systems backstage before, I know exactly the kind of equipment being used to make voices sound better) and a lot of his effects seem to have been ripped off from Daft Punk.
There is no Value Added content in this format. The only Value it Adds is for the benefit of the music execs (DRM). We can already have record sleeves and lyrics embedded in the songs. iTunes Store does it as well as other stores and plugins to media players. You can embed it in MP3 (ID3v2) or in AAC and other formats support it as well.
Make a law saying a company holding a later invalidated patent will be fined 1% of their profits that year, and I promise you, this shit will stop.
No it won't. The only thing this will do is get even more companies to set up shell companies to hold their patents for them. Those companies won't be making any profit so even if you fined 50% of it you still won't be getting any of it. They already do it for questionable legal procedures (RIAA), questionable monetary flows (Cayman Islands, products sold in Cuba) or for questionable products (Made in China) thus leaving the parent company protected from any blame or harm. All the parent company does is say: it was our vendor/upstream sales/foreign manufacturer that did it, we promise we will be more careful in the future and we won't be buying from them again.
As soon as we get a decent IPTV offering but in the Westerner (Europe or USA) world we still don't have ANY providers that can give us select channels nor bundled channels over IP even if you're willing to pay double or triple for it. Sure they'll give you a set top box connecting to an encrypted or proprietary solution in select areas but nobody wants to provide to a single Internet-only subscriber with a third-party IPTV receiver. In areas like Asia and even more in the Middle East and Africa you can get an offer comparable to cable (~100 International channels - including ABC/CNN/NBC- for $30) but they don't offer in the US and apparently some have even made a deal with the content providers not to broadcast to the US while others quote issues with latency and bandwidth costs.
The only offering you can get over IPv4 is a distribution license (~100k/month) but even if you're willing to pay for that (eg. a large company like a hospital or a hotel chain) you can't get until you can prove several thousands of subscribers.
Apple doesn't have to release drivers for it. They are standard Intel or NVidia chipsets (depending on the model of hardware). Apple does provide all necessary 'stable' drivers through a single/simple installation procedure though but if you go look in the directories of the Mac OS X Installation DVD's you'll find that they're just stock or branded Intel, Broadcom, NVidia,... driver packages.
EFI just emulates the BIOS (no driver needed) for Windows XP but doesn't necessarily have to emulate for Windows 7 or Linux. That's why you can install Windows XP or even MS-DOS without needing a special driver slipstreamed into the installer. Calls to the BIOS are hardly made by modern operating systems except for some (not all) hardware detection, the BIOS gets circumvented very early on while bootstrapping so processing power for translating BIOS calls would be hard to believe.
Boot Camp just resizes the hard drive so it can accomodate a Windows install and then you are able to dual-boot your system. It's also possible to install Linux on the other side for example. So it seems like Windows has an issue with the Intel or NVidia chipset, the processor or just plainly consumes more resources than Mac OS.
A good comparison would be to install Linux on the other side and see what it's battery life is then. Mac OS X offloads a lot (all) of the desktop rendering to the GPU while the Windows XP desktop doesn't and although Vista's top-end version does, it is offset by the amount of graphics that need to be rendered and the low-end version still doesn't.
There is a reason that the battery dies quicker and since there is no layer of Mac OS X between Windows and the hardware I doubt it's because Apple did something wrong. It's either Windows or the Intel or NVidia drivers. You can't really compare VMWare or Parallels performance because it's running Windows on top of Mac OS X, it is of course going to consume more resources.
The first thing you need to define is: what would be the goal of the game. It's probably not for time consuming leisure but to get the kids to learn something. But what do you want them to learn? Do you want them to learn math, then you'll need to integrate math somehow, for reading you should integrate words somehow, if you want to increase reaction time or cognition then you'll have to probably build a shooter. It also has to be fun and rewarding, if the kid doesn't like playing with it then they are going to get disengaged and not learn anything. If it takes to long to learn how to play the game or it gets too difficult too quick, the kids won't like it, likewise if it is going to be too easy for too long, they will again get bored. Maybe an algorithm that detects the rate of speed the kid is learning at or the level the kid is at already would be helpful. Then you will also require the story of the game to be involved in whatever you want to learn them. If for example you are trying to teach reading (and subsequently writing) you might not want to have too much multiple choice or clicking answers but have them type in answers. If you are trying to teach math they again will have to somehow learn math through involvement in the story. Math (addition, substraction, multiplication) is fairly simple for most but thinking about how to solve a math problem (understanding the problem) is much more involved and that is what they are going to need. Example: A company charges a flat rate of 7c per minute for a phone call but always charges at least 70c. What is the actual per minute cost of a 7 minute call. That is a question that I recently saw on an entrance exam for a college and a question that most of the students struggled with answering correctly.
Some general guidelines. - Refrain from including a commercial character (eg. Spongebob or Teletubbies), that way you won't run into copyright issues and the game will also not become boring or old very quickly (whenever a new character comes out) - Make sure you understand the level of understanding of your audience as well as their progress and at what point it is too easy, too difficult or too boring. - Make sure you concentrate on a good story and a good involvement of your subject into that story. - Make sure that the game makes the kids feel rewarded or feel better. If they are going to see it as a classroom/schooling instead of a game they will not get engaged in it. - Ask an actual kid what they think about it at certain points. Make a storybook and ask them if that's something they'll like. Talk to child psychologists and teachers as well.
You can get a brand new Mac Mini and a cheap screen for that price and it got practically the same specs as the laptop. You need to hook it up to power anyway on location. You will spend another 200-1000 on your sound interface though and it's usually going to be connecting over FireWire.
The internal sound cards of Dell, Apple and any other machine simply does not have the power nor the features that many musicians would need (balanced inputs, phantom power, low-noise ADC and DAC, MIDI,...). If you ever have the opportunity to amplify your standard sound card output you might just hear the sound of your hard drive or the hum of power conversion somewhere in the machine and you'll know what I mean.
I remember when firmware updates meant baking your chips in uv light and then plugging it into something you soldered on a perf-board and connected to the parallel port.
These days most Radio Shack's don't even carry those things anymore. There is a small drawer with some very generic components in most of the stores but usually they're out of whatever you need. When you ask if they have them in stock in back they stare dumbfounded at you and say something like:
* Whad'dya say? What are you trying to resist? What is XLR? * Huh? The guy that knows about electronics isn't here today (or he quit a while ago). * Let me call corporate to see what the item number is what is it you need again? -after a lot of explaining- * Oh, you mean this, then they show you a 3.5mm jack or something completely unrelated. * I don't think we carry this - maybe you should try the other store across town. * We can always order it, it'll be here next week.
Fixing a bug by changing the source code and then recompiling it is creating a derivative work. When you have access to the source code, it doesn't always mean you are allowed to make a 'better' version of it. A few years ago, we had access to the Windows (NT/2000) source code but it's still not legal for me to fix their bugs and then install it on my computer.
No it's not. Tivo-ization is where you disallow the code you distribute to run on the target platform through restrictions in the hardware or in the code (eg. requiring a special signature to be there). You can require it to be signed but according to the GPLv3 you also have to give the key or mechanism to sign it with.
There is nothing in the iPhone that restricts you from running your own compiled version of this package, there is nothing these developers have done to restrict you from compiling and installing it on the platform. You can either apply for a developers login and compile it, then re-sell it. You can also compile it, then run it on your personal iPhone or sell/distribute it through one of the non-official channels. Or you are allowed to compile and install apps on your iPhone for personal enjoyment without a developers license or having to pay Apple for it.
Slashdot Mirror
SELECT Results, TestingLab FROM SteroidTests WHERE LastName = 'DiMaggio' AND FirstName = 'Joe' does not mean that SELECT * FROM SteroidTests is in plain sight.
Especially since large databases keep track of more and more things (like your credit cards, names, address, ssn, what you last purchased, credit scores, ...) legitimate seizures of data should be severely limited by the judges issuing a warrant. Right now the feds can get away with: "Judge, this terrorist location is stored in this companies database, let's seize all the database servers of the company" and the judge not understanding how records are stored or how databases work practically gives a warrant for all the data the feds can find including 'collateral' records.
DC at those low voltages is pretty hard to distribute actually - you'll lose a lot of power in the wires which in turn also presents a fire hazard. Especially if you have a house with somewhat older wiring I wouldn't trust a high amped DC on the line. A turbine of some sorts (water, solar, wind, nuclear) most likely will generate AC internally anyway (you know with the coils and everything) and the infrastructure for AC is already there. High Voltage DC however works fine for a lot of reasons but for internal wiring, AC will probably always prevail.
Excuse me, but both Linux and Mac OS X have very, very good support for 32-bits apps under a 64-bit OS. The only ones that don't seem to be able to pull it off is Microsoft. I had to install Windows XP 64-bit last week for someone trying to access all memory in their machine and a) none of the drivers worked, even for simple things like USB and other 'generic' hardware where in Linux or Mac you can load 32-bits kernel extensions or generic USB and network controller drivers b) SP3 is not even available yet for Windows XP 64-bit c) the system is slow and doesn't run half the software.
Make sure to label the socket as well saying it still runs on 110V if you're in the America's. By then I hope the US has fully switched to 220VAC for high power or 12/24VAC for sockets (in order to easily integrate with small wind or solar powered setups)
None of which cover what was going on at The Pirate Bay
The fair use clause of the copyright laws are there to enforce the end user, not the distributor. So if have content that I own and I am authorized to make a copy or distribute it (either by law or by license) then announce it on the Pirate Bay (that is what is technically happening - TPB doesn't host any files themselves), that would be completely legal given that I am authorized.
When you download it you have to adhere to your copyright law, neither I nor TPB should enforce that. There are plenty of countries where sharing/downloading is legal, there is nothing you can do against it. In most countries offering/selling content is still legal. If your country puts restrictions on what you can buy then you have to adhere to the laws of your country. To give you an example: Alcoholic beverages are restricted in many middle-eastern countries. If I have a website somewhere in Asia that sells alcohol and you buy from me, I can't do anything about it, you pay for the product and I'll send it to you. If you get busted, you will go to jail, I won't. That the RIAA is trying to change that doesn't mean it is so.
The people being sued were those sharing the content and willfully facilitating copyright infringement. This isn't a fair use right in any country.
The world is bigger than the USA. I doubt anyone in North Korea would object to you ripping off the American media. All the people being sued in the US so far have not (always) willfully facilitated copyright infringement. The dead grandmother probably didn't know anything about it. Then there are those programs like Kazaa and Limewire that share everything on your drive without you knowindg. There are also virusses and scripts that will take over a bad configured host and start hosting content without the administrator knowing.
WIPO treaties
Ah, the UN's RIAA. 1st of all: it's a treaty. Doesn't mean all countries that signed it have put it into law (the US and EU did). Doesn't mean all countries are in the agreement either (Pakistan, Taiwan among others are not in it). It still doesn't remove the rights of fair use and it still puts the responsibility at the end user, not a search engine or a distributor.
I did not make that assumption. I have been in court before more than once for things I did or did not do. As you said: you went over the evidence that was presented but the System (let's call it that, the collection of government, judicial and police agencies) collects the evidence and bases their case on what the System says. There is no place for alternative thinking or for a third party to collect evidence or at least monitor/audit the evidence collection. Placing 'evidence' has been done before and probably has seen to many unrightfully convicted ones and in my case the prosecution often doesn't mention or doesn't even collect certain evidence that would be against their case (instead you have to have other proof or let an (pay-out-of-pocket) third party collect the evidence (if still available). Unless you have a very expensive lawyer you won't get out of it even if you're innocent.
One of the simplest cases: speeding tickets. The cop holds (or has mounted) a device that collects 'evidence' that an object seems to be moving at a certain speed by calculating the time it takes between two 'pings'. If another object (it might be as small as a bird or as large as a car trying to pass you or changing lanes) it will give a wrong reading. Even if the cop does it correctly, you still have to adjust for the angle, timing errors in the device etc. Then he reads it from a screen, he pulls you over and writes you a ticket based on what he read. If the cop is misreading (eg. dyslexic) or the sun reflection makes it seem a digit is lit up or whatever the case he will still write you a ticket for that. There is no printout or log that the device has. The only evidence against you is what the cop thinks he saw at that particular moment and it will usually be held up in court especially in smaller or rural areas where it pays the judge (who is also a business owner) and the road repairs in that town (easier access to the business). In New York State it's actually worse in bigger cities since they don't have traffic court or judges anymore and instead have some pencil pushers approve the tickets and write out the fines. Even a lawyer can hardly get anything against it.
Just because you didn't obtain consent doesn't mean it was illegal. If I use that piece as a fair use (eg. scientific research or artistry) then in the US it would be legal according to copyright law. Most civilized countries do not have copyright violations in their penal code and have fair use clauses so it would not be illegal for them to download anything in the first place and it might actually help them complete a task or do their job.
It may be immoral (as cheating on your spouse is) and it might accrue some unquantifiable damages (as while a transport company moves furniture and scratches it) if you do it for entertainment purposes but you don't go to jail for it just like you don't got to jail for cheating on your spouse or scratching someone's furniture - you just pay for the damages one can prove or repair it and that's it.
AGAIN: IT IS LEGAL - THE RIAA SAYS IT'S ILLEGAL, DOESN'T MEAN IT IS AND CERTAINLY DOESN'T MEAN IT IS SO EVERYWHERE AND ON EVERY OCCASION.
You sir, have never been in court have you. First of all, they bring you in with an orange jumpsuit and chains, the jury already subconsciously condemned you to a lower position since YOU are in jail and THEY are not. Then they start incriminating you with a bunch of 'evidence' like DNA evidence, bullet matching, unrelated accounts of your credit or criminal history and a story to make it all fit. Especially if a cop or another uniformed person is involved as a witness (even if they aren't an eyewitness, they sometimes can witness on your past conduct), they get their gala-uniform out with the shiniest brass/gold. Of course they are not supposed to lie according to the prevailing societies standards. And wait until they hear that you are or were affiliated with some kind of religious or ideological group or organization (even if it's unrelated to the crime).
The jury self is just a 'random' set of people (not necessarily your peers) just large enough to become a sheepish group with an average IQ of 85.
Hopefully you can afford your own attorney since the fresh out of college one they assign to you isn't going to help you very much.
With tires you can indeed do that. If you prefer eg. Yokohama tires instead of Goodyear and your Goodyear tires are new or have a certain amount of thread remaining they will refund you an amount of money depending on the amount of thread you have left.
To go with your car analogy, Windows is like an option you didn't ask for on a new car. If the dealer puts the option on and charges you for it anyway by either burying it under some other charges, increasing the price of the car or putting in a part that requires a lot of maintenance for 'free' (some chummy dealers actually do any or all of the above), you can still ask for a refund for that particular option since you a) didn't order it and b) don't want to be paying maintenance on that option.
Windows is an options that costs money and costs maintenance (malware, virus scanners and reinstalls), the laptop manufacturer doesn't get it for free nor does Windows come standard with the computer (since you have to agree to a separate EULA). However the manufacturers just bury it in the rest of the costs and give it for 'free'.
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
In my opinion, the problem is not that people have been patenting business processes but they have been patenting the end result, the very basics (one-click or how to make purchases on the internet) or the very starting point (the mathematics (algorithms) behind it) of processes.
Wasn't SLI only supposed to be for being able to talk to multiple chips for a single output? OpenCL (and NVidia's CUDA) however don't need SLI in order to talk to multiple GPU's. I have a machine with 4 GPU's and CUDA works just fine. I really don't see the advantage of SLI other than bragging rights and the difference between 200fps and 300fps, most games (and other real time video outputs) have enough with a single video card and all others (scientific output) like to save their output on disk so stuff doesn't have to be rendered again.
I don't buy it. I just don't know why anyone would like them except for strong marketing and radio exposure. That's my main issue - that I have to keep changing radio stations every 5 minutes.
There will be DRM in it. There is no other reason to come up with a new format that has no added value and it comes from the industry that has been pushing DRM for the last decade or so. It's kinda like saying the latest Microsoft next software release will use and adhere to fully open standards - it's just not going to happen. Everything that they have released or said so far is against customers interests, I don't see why this would change it.
Technically, there should be such a benefit that the company can fully deduct from their taxes or whatever. This might be the only way that plug-in electrics are going to work. Currently the issues are: too short of a range, too long of a commute, no (convenient) charging stations in between. If you can do one way on a charge, charge at work and do the other way home on a charge that would benefit all of us and allow most commuters to buy a plug-in electric car for commuting purposes.
Seriously, have you ever even bought a full album of any of those so-called pop stars? Look at Britney Spears' or Miley Cyrus' most recent albums. Do you even know more than 3-5 of the songs on there. I surely don't and even the children that listen to it don't know about them, that's why I don't buy that kind of crap.
Why would the analysis be out of date? Britney's music hasn't changed a bit. It's the same music that was produced for her before, the stuff Britney herself has to lip-sync to. Same with Kanye West. If you heard his performance on American Idol (my wife records that show on DVR and she let me hear it) you know for a fact that the dude can't sing - the only way his voice sounds good on stage is when he goes loud (or is amplified) enough for the voice synthesizers to kick in (and I worked on the sound systems backstage before, I know exactly the kind of equipment being used to make voices sound better) and a lot of his effects seem to have been ripped off from Daft Punk.
There is no Value Added content in this format. The only Value it Adds is for the benefit of the music execs (DRM). We can already have record sleeves and lyrics embedded in the songs. iTunes Store does it as well as other stores and plugins to media players. You can embed it in MP3 (ID3v2) or in AAC and other formats support it as well.
Make a law saying a company holding a later invalidated patent will be fined 1% of their profits that year, and I promise you, this shit will stop.
No it won't. The only thing this will do is get even more companies to set up shell companies to hold their patents for them. Those companies won't be making any profit so even if you fined 50% of it you still won't be getting any of it. They already do it for questionable legal procedures (RIAA), questionable monetary flows (Cayman Islands, products sold in Cuba) or for questionable products (Made in China) thus leaving the parent company protected from any blame or harm. All the parent company does is say: it was our vendor/upstream sales/foreign manufacturer that did it, we promise we will be more careful in the future and we won't be buying from them again.
As soon as we get a decent IPTV offering but in the Westerner (Europe or USA) world we still don't have ANY providers that can give us select channels nor bundled channels over IP even if you're willing to pay double or triple for it. Sure they'll give you a set top box connecting to an encrypted or proprietary solution in select areas but nobody wants to provide to a single Internet-only subscriber with a third-party IPTV receiver. In areas like Asia and even more in the Middle East and Africa you can get an offer comparable to cable (~100 International channels - including ABC/CNN/NBC- for $30) but they don't offer in the US and apparently some have even made a deal with the content providers not to broadcast to the US while others quote issues with latency and bandwidth costs.
The only offering you can get over IPv4 is a distribution license (~100k/month) but even if you're willing to pay for that (eg. a large company like a hospital or a hotel chain) you can't get until you can prove several thousands of subscribers.
Apple doesn't have to release drivers for it. They are standard Intel or NVidia chipsets (depending on the model of hardware). Apple does provide all necessary 'stable' drivers through a single/simple installation procedure though but if you go look in the directories of the Mac OS X Installation DVD's you'll find that they're just stock or branded Intel, Broadcom, NVidia,... driver packages.
EFI just emulates the BIOS (no driver needed) for Windows XP but doesn't necessarily have to emulate for Windows 7 or Linux. That's why you can install Windows XP or even MS-DOS without needing a special driver slipstreamed into the installer. Calls to the BIOS are hardly made by modern operating systems except for some (not all) hardware detection, the BIOS gets circumvented very early on while bootstrapping so processing power for translating BIOS calls would be hard to believe.
Boot Camp just resizes the hard drive so it can accomodate a Windows install and then you are able to dual-boot your system. It's also possible to install Linux on the other side for example. So it seems like Windows has an issue with the Intel or NVidia chipset, the processor or just plainly consumes more resources than Mac OS.
A good comparison would be to install Linux on the other side and see what it's battery life is then. Mac OS X offloads a lot (all) of the desktop rendering to the GPU while the Windows XP desktop doesn't and although Vista's top-end version does, it is offset by the amount of graphics that need to be rendered and the low-end version still doesn't.
There is a reason that the battery dies quicker and since there is no layer of Mac OS X between Windows and the hardware I doubt it's because Apple did something wrong. It's either Windows or the Intel or NVidia drivers. You can't really compare VMWare or Parallels performance because it's running Windows on top of Mac OS X, it is of course going to consume more resources.
The first thing you need to define is: what would be the goal of the game. It's probably not for time consuming leisure but to get the kids to learn something. But what do you want them to learn? Do you want them to learn math, then you'll need to integrate math somehow, for reading you should integrate words somehow, if you want to increase reaction time or cognition then you'll have to probably build a shooter. It also has to be fun and rewarding, if the kid doesn't like playing with it then they are going to get disengaged and not learn anything. If it takes to long to learn how to play the game or it gets too difficult too quick, the kids won't like it, likewise if it is going to be too easy for too long, they will again get bored. Maybe an algorithm that detects the rate of speed the kid is learning at or the level the kid is at already would be helpful. Then you will also require the story of the game to be involved in whatever you want to learn them. If for example you are trying to teach reading (and subsequently writing) you might not want to have too much multiple choice or clicking answers but have them type in answers. If you are trying to teach math they again will have to somehow learn math through involvement in the story. Math (addition, substraction, multiplication) is fairly simple for most but thinking about how to solve a math problem (understanding the problem) is much more involved and that is what they are going to need. Example: A company charges a flat rate of 7c per minute for a phone call but always charges at least 70c. What is the actual per minute cost of a 7 minute call. That is a question that I recently saw on an entrance exam for a college and a question that most of the students struggled with answering correctly.
Some general guidelines.
- Refrain from including a commercial character (eg. Spongebob or Teletubbies), that way you won't run into copyright issues and the game will also not become boring or old very quickly (whenever a new character comes out)
- Make sure you understand the level of understanding of your audience as well as their progress and at what point it is too easy, too difficult or too boring.
- Make sure you concentrate on a good story and a good involvement of your subject into that story.
- Make sure that the game makes the kids feel rewarded or feel better. If they are going to see it as a classroom/schooling instead of a game they will not get engaged in it.
- Ask an actual kid what they think about it at certain points. Make a storybook and ask them if that's something they'll like. Talk to child psychologists and teachers as well.
You can get a brand new Mac Mini and a cheap screen for that price and it got practically the same specs as the laptop. You need to hook it up to power anyway on location. You will spend another 200-1000 on your sound interface though and it's usually going to be connecting over FireWire.
The internal sound cards of Dell, Apple and any other machine simply does not have the power nor the features that many musicians would need (balanced inputs, phantom power, low-noise ADC and DAC, MIDI,...). If you ever have the opportunity to amplify your standard sound card output you might just hear the sound of your hard drive or the hum of power conversion somewhere in the machine and you'll know what I mean.
I remember when firmware updates meant baking your chips in uv light and then plugging it into something you soldered on a perf-board and connected to the parallel port.
These days most Radio Shack's don't even carry those things anymore. There is a small drawer with some very generic components in most of the stores but usually they're out of whatever you need. When you ask if they have them in stock in back they stare dumbfounded at you and say something like:
* Whad'dya say? What are you trying to resist? What is XLR?
* Huh? The guy that knows about electronics isn't here today (or he quit a while ago).
* Let me call corporate to see what the item number is what is it you need again?
-after a lot of explaining-
* Oh, you mean this, then they show you a 3.5mm jack or something completely unrelated.
* I don't think we carry this - maybe you should try the other store across town.
* We can always order it, it'll be here next week.
Fixing a bug by changing the source code and then recompiling it is creating a derivative work. When you have access to the source code, it doesn't always mean you are allowed to make a 'better' version of it. A few years ago, we had access to the Windows (NT/2000) source code but it's still not legal for me to fix their bugs and then install it on my computer.
No it's not. Tivo-ization is where you disallow the code you distribute to run on the target platform through restrictions in the hardware or in the code (eg. requiring a special signature to be there). You can require it to be signed but according to the GPLv3 you also have to give the key or mechanism to sign it with.
There is nothing in the iPhone that restricts you from running your own compiled version of this package, there is nothing these developers have done to restrict you from compiling and installing it on the platform. You can either apply for a developers login and compile it, then re-sell it. You can also compile it, then run it on your personal iPhone or sell/distribute it through one of the non-official channels. Or you are allowed to compile and install apps on your iPhone for personal enjoyment without a developers license or having to pay Apple for it.