I would like to see a competition calling for teams to send vehicles to the REAL moon, just like the Ansari X-Prize winners had to actually go into space.
First off, the contest was for a lunar lander not for a vehicle that can go to the moon, another vehicle to orbit the moon, and another vehicle to land on the moon, because that is what it would take.
I fear the day some Linux company opens shop in Nigeria..
Hello, my name is Matthew J. Szulik and I am CEO and President of Red Hat. We have recently moved our headquarters to Nigeria. I respectfully invite your kind attention to the transfer of U.S. $25 million into your personal/company offshore account...
It's a definite statement of confidence by Apple that they will *support* the means to run a competing OS on their system.
No. Boot Camp is currently unsupported. Apple also refuses to provide support for running Windows on the machine.
While there may be drivers lacking initially, I have full confidence that the open source community will fill this void.
I sincerely doubt that many from the "open source community" are going to step up to write drivers for closed hardware running on a closed-source OS. Now Linux or *BSD drivers for the Apple hardware are more likely to happen. But writing drivers for closed hardware is difficult enough without having to write them for an operating system that doesn't provide you with source code.
Benjamin Franklin - "They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither."
Could be rewritten/interpreted as "They that would trade essential liberty for a little convenience deserve neither."
That's the problem with people these days -- they don't want to put any effort into anything and so they're more than willing to give away their rights and their privacy if it means they get through the line quicker at Wal*Mart.
Offering plug-in support isn't the same as having no vendor lock-in.
Think of it this way: plug-ins are like little apps that run on top of an existing application to extend its functionality in some way. If extrapolate that for a moment and say that applications are like operating system "plugins" -- they are apps that run on top of the OS and extend its functionality in some way. If we take this analogy to its logical extreme, then Windows doesn't do any vendor lock-in because it runs apps from other companies.
Don't be ridiculous -- if you run Windows application then you are stuck with Windows. The ODF plugin might allow cross-compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org -- but just like the Word plugin for OOo, don't count on the translation being 100%, supporting all of the features and functionality of Microsoft Office. For instance, plugin filter or no plugin filter, I guarantee you that a document that depends on VBA macros contained in it is *still* not going to work on anything but Microsoft Office.
As the USA concetrates on the development of these so called lasers, al-Qaida and its affiliates will enter the USA through the porous southern and norther borders and do greater harm.
Al-Qaeda is already here, living among us. Haven't you been paying attention? The 9/11 hijackers were all living in the United States at the time of the attack. Some of them were here for 10 years prior to the attack. Do you think that these were the only ones? Do you think that just because the government arrested a handful of operatives that there are no more remaining? Do you think that heightened security has kept more from entering the country via airports?
Nevermind the porous northern and southern borders. Entering the United States is just plain not difficult -- no matter where you're from.
I don't know... it looks like sony might give it a shot;)
Of course, Sony is in a better position than 3DO was. Sony is already pretty entrenched in the market. Still, if PS3 is too expensive, it might not compete well with Xbox 360.
Time has shown us time and time again that even entrenched players have lost due to the release of a product that's priced above what the market will bear. IBM, Apple, and even Microsoft have made this mistake in the past.
No, but Discreet became Kinetix, which in turn became part of Autodesk. So for Autodesk, Kinetix (3D Studio Max) became Autodesk 3D Studio Max. That's what he means by "Bungie Studios (Halo) became (Microsoft) Halo".
Wow! With a record like that he was destined to work for Microsoft.
In all seriousness, in the tech industry failures can be more valuable than success. The important thing about a failure is that you learn what won't work. Microsoft Windows was a complete failure until version 3.0. Microsoft had a rash of failures with various databases until they came up with Access (low-end) and SQLServer (high-end). The failure of 3DO shows that you that overdesigning a game console and putting cutting edge technology and then slapping a price tag on it more than 3x that of your competition in a well-saturated market just ooesn't work either.;)
That's because that's exactly how the marketeers of closed source software have you trained.
The Firefox team isn't trying to make software that has to sell at Best Buy. They're making a web browser that's designed to perform well and be secure.
If you don't think there's a point in upgrading, then don't. No skin off the developer's nose -- they don't have any financial incentive to get you to to upgrade.
Indeed. While IANAL, I don't think that intercepting unencrypted communications on a public network such as the Internet constitutes an 'illegal wiretap'. And we already know that the CIA and the FBI have had various projects to scan the internet (Carnivore, etc.), so why not the NSA too?
All the more reason to make sure that your private communications on the Net are encrypted appropriately. (Remember, the NSA can't break strong encryption, that's why they won't let you give it to foreign countries)
Fast forward to 2006 and world is different place. Terrorism has replaced Communism and the many of those same armchair anticommunists are now demanding the very things that they derided during the cold war in communist countries.
Terrorism is an excuse to exert control. We're no safer from terrorists now than we were before we started all these new laws and regulations. In fact, in many ways, we're less safe.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. With no other credible superpower to challenge it, America has become the new Nazi Germany.
I never used CDE, but it just seems like 'a GUI by UNIX gurus' has come and, depending on how you look at it, gone.
CDE isn't 'gone'. It's still in Solaris by default and is still the desktop of choice for tons of UNIX CAD workstations.
CDE, though, is wayyyy dated. It was fine in the early 90s, but it lacks decent file management, easy applications installation, and many of its settings are managed solely by text files.
FTFA: The applications also share a Save dialog -- or "Directory Displayer," as ApplixWare calls it -- with several features that I'd like to see on modern programs, including a complete directory tree, a history, and the ability to set permissions as a file is saved.
While I think a complete directory tree is unnecessary (personally, I think the way GTK 2.6 and KDE/QT handl directories are both fine, with the "bookmarks" along the left side like in Windows XP file dialgs, though I am partial to the GTK 2.6 dialog), I do think that adding the ability to set permissions on a file would be a welcome addition to the GTK 2.6+ dialog box.
But I have to ask, what is the point of Microsoft splitting Vista into however many different versions if not to have a granular response to problems like this? Many of XPs problems are related to its homogeneity...
Could it be that splitting Vista into many different versions means that they can have many different price points, and hence, they can make more money?
Sure there is. Sun has been trying to break into Web services -- witness OpenOffice.org, various Java initiatives, grid farm, etc. Google has Web services down, since that's all they do, so such a merger would be beneficial to Sun.
For Google, the benefits are more dubious. Sure, they get OpenOffice.org, but don't they have Sun talent working on an AJAX OpenOffice.org already? Plus, they have Writely, now. Plus, OpenOffice.org is LGPL, so Google can pretty much do what it wants. OTOH, the OpenOffice.org source code is about as comprehensible as a program written in Brainf*ck or Perl, so maybe that's what it's about for them.;)
I don't think Google is at all interested in Sun's hardware business, and, well, why do anything with OpenSolaris when you have so many Linux hackers on staff already?
As much as I love the idea of the sweet justice of Microsoft getting slammed by a nuisance patent suit, I gotta say that I can't understand why the jury awarded damages other than Colvin was "the little guy."
I'm a CAD and PDM systems analyst, and I know for a fact taht Autodesk has been using their current product activation scheme at least since AutoCAD R13 was released, I think in 1996 or so. I think they may also have used it in R12, R11, and R10, but I'm not sure if it's the exact same one they are using now. As the parent poster noted in a different post, Colvin got his patent in 2000.
OTP is NOT unbreakable if the "opposition" gets the a hold of the pad somehow.
So, employed correctly implies that 1) you only use the pad once, 2) the pad is distributed to both A and B in secrecy, the the opposition (C) getting it, and 3) that pad is truly random. (IOW, it can't be some obvious pattern).
Those three conditions are a heck of a lot harder to implement than you might think because at some point, the key (the pad) must be distributed to A and B or from A to B in plaintext.
Wow! I am like TOTALLY SHOCKED that something that Apple says is *beta* and that they refuse to, at this time, provide technical support for, is buggy!
After reading this thread, I was totally amazed at how many of the people didn't bother to back up their disk before installing something that alters your system's hard disk partitions. Duh. What do you expect?
The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system. The same goes for Ireland too. do you think the 1801 Union Act still applies there because it predates their constitution?:P
True enough. But...
In the British legal system a contract is formed when the following are all true:
1. There is an offer
2. There is consideration of the offer - i.e. Goods or Services exchanged for money or other services.
3. There is acceptance of the offer
Wow. What an amazing coincidence! It's exactly the same in the American legal system!
That's not really shocking and I am, of course, being humorous. The fact is that the a major component of the American legal system (common law) is very much based on the British Common Law. While Americans are not subject to British law due to a little scuffle we had that started about, say, 230 years ago or so this July 4, British Common Law has been used to establish legal precedence in cases involving American common law.
So, a law that appers in 17th century British Common Law doesn't apply to American Common Law -- but it may if an American judge so rules based on this precedence.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to see a competition calling for teams to send vehicles to the REAL moon, just like the Ansari X-Prize winners had to actually go into space.
First off, the contest was for a lunar lander not for a vehicle that can go to the moon, another vehicle to orbit the moon, and another vehicle to land on the moon, because that is what it would take.
Do you have idea what the costs involved are in building a rocket capable of lifting a vehicle away from the earth's orbit so it can travel to the moon? According to this article, one of the biggest reasons the Apollo program was cancelled was the cost: It cost $1.2 billion to launch a Saturn V in 1966, with a total allocation for the saturn program of $6.5 billion.
Putting that in perspectve and adjusting for inflation in terms of 2005 dollars, the cost today would be about $205 billion.
Not even Bill Gates has that kind of money.
I fear the day some Linux company opens shop in Nigeria..
Hello, my name is Matthew J. Szulik and I am CEO and President of Red Hat. We have recently moved our headquarters to Nigeria. I respectfully invite your kind attention to the transfer of U.S. $25 million into your personal/company offshore account...
It's a definite statement of confidence by Apple that they will *support* the means to run a competing OS on their system.
No. Boot Camp is currently unsupported. Apple also refuses to provide support for running Windows on the machine.
While there may be drivers lacking initially, I have full confidence that the open source community will fill this void.
I sincerely doubt that many from the "open source community" are going to step up to write drivers for closed hardware running on a closed-source OS. Now Linux or *BSD drivers for the Apple hardware are more likely to happen. But writing drivers for closed hardware is difficult enough without having to write them for an operating system that doesn't provide you with source code.
Benjamin Franklin - "They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither."
Could be rewritten/interpreted as "They that would trade essential liberty for a little convenience deserve neither."
That's the problem with people these days -- they don't want to put any effort into anything and so they're more than willing to give away their rights and their privacy if it means they get through the line quicker at Wal*Mart.
*sigh*
Offering plug-in support isn't the same as having no vendor lock-in.
Think of it this way: plug-ins are like little apps that run on top of an existing application to extend its functionality in some way. If extrapolate that for a moment and say that applications are like operating system "plugins" -- they are apps that run on top of the OS and extend its functionality in some way. If we take this analogy to its logical extreme, then Windows doesn't do any vendor lock-in because it runs apps from other companies.
Don't be ridiculous -- if you run Windows application then you are stuck with Windows. The ODF plugin might allow cross-compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org -- but just like the Word plugin for OOo, don't count on the translation being 100%, supporting all of the features and functionality of Microsoft Office. For instance, plugin filter or no plugin filter, I guarantee you that a document that depends on VBA macros contained in it is *still* not going to work on anything but Microsoft Office.
As the USA concetrates on the development of these so called lasers, al-Qaida and its affiliates will enter the USA through the porous southern and norther borders and do greater harm.
Al-Qaeda is already here, living among us. Haven't you been paying attention? The 9/11 hijackers were all living in the United States at the time of the attack. Some of them were here for 10 years prior to the attack. Do you think that these were the only ones? Do you think that just because the government arrested a handful of operatives that there are no more remaining? Do you think that heightened security has kept more from entering the country via airports?
Nevermind the porous northern and southern borders. Entering the United States is just plain not difficult -- no matter where you're from.
I don't know... it looks like sony might give it a shot ;)
Of course, Sony is in a better position than 3DO was. Sony is already pretty entrenched in the market. Still, if PS3 is too expensive, it might not compete well with Xbox 360.
Time has shown us time and time again that even entrenched players have lost due to the release of a product that's priced above what the market will bear. IBM, Apple, and even Microsoft have made this mistake in the past.
No, but Discreet became Kinetix, which in turn became part of Autodesk. So for Autodesk, Kinetix (3D Studio Max) became Autodesk 3D Studio Max. That's what he means by "Bungie Studios (Halo) became (Microsoft) Halo".
Wow! With a record like that he was destined to work for Microsoft.
;)
In all seriousness, in the tech industry failures can be more valuable than success. The important thing about a failure is that you learn what won't work. Microsoft Windows was a complete failure until version 3.0. Microsoft had a rash of failures with various databases until they came up with Access (low-end) and SQLServer (high-end). The failure of 3DO shows that you that overdesigning a game console and putting cutting edge technology and then slapping a price tag on it more than 3x that of your competition in a well-saturated market just ooesn't work either.
No. Shortly thereafter the spammers will bomb a naval base in Hawaii.
it crashes consistently
Oh, that feature's been in there at least since 4.0!
That's because that's exactly how the marketeers of closed source software have you trained.
The Firefox team isn't trying to make software that has to sell at Best Buy. They're making a web browser that's designed to perform well and be secure.
If you don't think there's a point in upgrading, then don't. No skin off the developer's nose -- they don't have any financial incentive to get you to to upgrade.
Indeed. While IANAL, I don't think that intercepting unencrypted communications on a public network such as the Internet constitutes an 'illegal wiretap'. And we already know that the CIA and the FBI have had various projects to scan the internet (Carnivore, etc.), so why not the NSA too? All the more reason to make sure that your private communications on the Net are encrypted appropriately. (Remember, the NSA can't break strong encryption, that's why they won't let you give it to foreign countries)
Fast forward to 2006 and world is different place. Terrorism has replaced Communism and the many of those same armchair anticommunists are now demanding the very things that they derided during the cold war in communist countries.
Terrorism is an excuse to exert control. We're no safer from terrorists now than we were before we started all these new laws and regulations. In fact, in many ways, we're less safe.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. With no other credible superpower to challenge it, America has become the new Nazi Germany.
-- A concerned American
I never used CDE, but it just seems like 'a GUI by UNIX gurus' has come and, depending on how you look at it, gone. CDE isn't 'gone'. It's still in Solaris by default and is still the desktop of choice for tons of UNIX CAD workstations. CDE, though, is wayyyy dated. It was fine in the early 90s, but it lacks decent file management, easy applications installation, and many of its settings are managed solely by text files.
FTFA:
The applications also share a Save dialog -- or "Directory Displayer," as ApplixWare calls it -- with several features that I'd like to see on modern programs, including a complete directory tree, a history, and the ability to set permissions as a file is saved.
While I think a complete directory tree is unnecessary (personally, I think the way GTK 2.6 and KDE/QT handl directories are both fine, with the "bookmarks" along the left side like in Windows XP file dialgs, though I am partial to the GTK 2.6 dialog), I do think that adding the ability to set permissions on a file would be a welcome addition to the GTK 2.6+ dialog box.
But I have to ask, what is the point of Microsoft splitting Vista into however many different versions if not to have a granular response to problems like this? Many of XPs problems are related to its homogeneity... Could it be that splitting Vista into many different versions means that they can have many different price points, and hence, they can make more money?
Sure there is. Sun has been trying to break into Web services -- witness OpenOffice.org, various Java initiatives, grid farm, etc. Google has Web services down, since that's all they do, so such a merger would be beneficial to Sun.
;)
For Google, the benefits are more dubious. Sure, they get OpenOffice.org, but don't they have Sun talent working on an AJAX OpenOffice.org already? Plus, they have Writely, now. Plus, OpenOffice.org is LGPL, so Google can pretty much do what it wants. OTOH, the OpenOffice.org source code is about as comprehensible as a program written in Brainf*ck or Perl, so maybe that's what it's about for them.
I don't think Google is at all interested in Sun's hardware business, and, well, why do anything with OpenSolaris when you have so many Linux hackers on staff already?
As much as I love the idea of the sweet justice of Microsoft getting slammed by a nuisance patent suit, I gotta say that I can't understand why the jury awarded damages other than Colvin was "the little guy."
I'm a CAD and PDM systems analyst, and I know for a fact taht Autodesk has been using their current product activation scheme at least since AutoCAD R13 was released, I think in 1996 or so. I think they may also have used it in R12, R11, and R10, but I'm not sure if it's the exact same one they are using now. As the parent poster noted in a different post, Colvin got his patent in 2000.
Let's be a little more clear.
OTP is unbreakable through direct cryptanalysis.
OTP is NOT unbreakable if the "opposition" gets the a hold of the pad somehow.
So, employed correctly implies that 1) you only use the pad once, 2) the pad is distributed to both A and B in secrecy, the the opposition (C) getting it, and 3) that pad is truly random. (IOW, it can't be some obvious pattern).
Those three conditions are a heck of a lot harder to implement than you might think because at some point, the key (the pad) must be distributed to A and B or from A to B in plaintext.
Wow! I am like TOTALLY SHOCKED that something that Apple says is *beta* and that they refuse to, at this time, provide technical support for, is buggy!
After reading this thread, I was totally amazed at how many of the people didn't bother to back up their disk before installing something that alters your system's hard disk partitions. Duh. What do you expect?
Find the link between PIGS and APES and you'll have something.
I think I just did.
If this is Web 2.0, can we just skip to Web 3.0?
The USA declared independence and is therefore independant of the British legal system. The same goes for Ireland too. do you think the 1801 Union Act still applies there because it predates their constitution? :P
True enough. But ...
In the British legal system a contract is formed when the following are all true:
1. There is an offer
2. There is consideration of the offer - i.e. Goods or Services exchanged for money or other services.
3. There is acceptance of the offer
Wow. What an amazing coincidence! It's exactly the same in the American legal system!
That's not really shocking and I am, of course, being humorous. The fact is that the a major component of the American legal system (common law) is very much based on the British Common Law. While Americans are not subject to British law due to a little scuffle we had that started about, say, 230 years ago or so this July 4, British Common Law has been used to establish legal precedence in cases involving American common law.
So, a law that appers in 17th century British Common Law doesn't apply to American Common Law -- but it may if an American judge so rules based on this precedence.
+5 Funny?
For some reason, I'm not entirely certain that he was joking.
*shudder*