Adobe owns the PDF standard outright, and the thing about proprietary formats is the originator can change the spec anytime they want without any input from anyone. Ultimately, what makes ODF attractive is that changes won't (or shouldn't) occur that way.
I really do wish them luck. The thing is the "document" and "content" companies are going to fight like hell to expand proprietary formats as they ultimately look to the MS word format, the sheer number of copies of MSOffice sold, and see the dollar signs available by controlling the format and making everyone dance to their tune. Anyone who remembers the fiasco that occurred when MSOffice 97 wasn't very compatible with the previous version will also remember that companies simply shelled out for converters etc until MS issued a patch. They had no choice.
While packages like open office etc exist, they have for a while and are perceived as "not being ready for prime time" by most businesses. The only advantage many see is the ability to save as PDF (another proprietary format). For ODF to take hold, governments and some very large publishing concerns are going to have to adopt it. Else, not much will change and the march towards increasingly proprietary formats will continue.
As long as there is big money to be made in medicine, this will be a problem. I'm not saying that doctors should work cheap. Just saying big money brings out the criminal element. No doubt they will find this has been going on a long time.
My experience anyway is that companies have gone to war against the consumer/customer. Sooner or later people will start to realize this and fight back the only way we can - by not buying, or buying as little as possible from "devil companies". They call some of us devil customers, well, it goes both ways.
I would be po'ed if I bought a card claiming to have HDCP and wanted it, but personally, I don't. I would rather watch 720p content max than buy into this, or any other DRM scheme. We live in an age when companies are at war with their customers, and in a free market economy, the only way for a consumer to fight back is to not buy. That hasn't started yet in earnest, but I imagine it will.
All the vid card manufacturers are to blame here, not just ATI as almost all have claimed this capability and don't deliver (only Sony does at present). What I am interested to see is all the HDTVs that have been sold over the last couple of year could potentially also get degraded signals if the DRM pundits get their way. I wonder what impact that will have on future sales.
No worries. I had actually forgot about that type of engine. I think Nieuport used them too. Funny to think that was almost 100 years ago. Actually I used to work with a Brit who had a Sopwith Camel back in Jolly Old.
I can't speak about production for the rest of the world, but in north america, there was a big gap between the RX-4 (which went like stink) and the RX-7, and then a long gap (mid-ninties to a couple of years ago) between the RX-7 and RX-8.
I imagine to use hydrogen, that Mazda must have solved the sealing problems in the engine. They first dropped the rotary because of it's poor mileage and leaky rotor seals. I know a number of RX-3s and 4s had horrible problems with their rotor seals. It looks like they corrected that enough for the RX-8 (the 7 had problems too) to be an efficient gasoline engine. Hydrogen seems dicier to me in the regard of sealing. If they haven't corrected the problem enough to do hydrogen over the long term, this will be a flop.
You may be thinking of a radial engine which was (and still is) used to many power prop driven aircraft. Mazda used to use rotary engines in the 70's, stopped for a while and re-introduced them in the RX-8. Mercedes tried them out too.
Another cheap trick brought to you by the folks in marketing. Really, they need people to buy Vista, as most productivity software will continue to run just fine on XP (and continue to be released for it as well), they need to start getting some hype going. This is only the early going and while Halo 2 may pale beside many of the FPS games out there, some will want it. On it's own it won't be enough to warrant the Vista buy, keep you eyes peeled for more on the home entertainment front. It is already known cable card will only be supported in Vista (on the ms side of things) for example.
Expect more Vista only over the next year, you ain't seen nothing yet.
They would love to do away the DIY market, not just for the mark-up they can hit people who want PVRs with, but because in the DIY market it is much harder if not impossible to enforce DRM. Having failed for the nonce with the broadcast flag, there are going to be other attempts to bring the hobbyist to heel. Cable card wars will be one of them.
My ISP is Shaw, and I pay for a 7 down 1 up service with 50 gigs down and 10 gigs up a month. I should get that with no shaping or other crap. If I exceed my limits, I can be charged extra. This throttling is crap. It is like buying a Ferrari with a governor on the engine. If I don't get that service I am being ripped off.
They have recourse other than throttling the user who pays for that bandwidth - and I do pay for it. That is what my bill says. Frankly it has more to do with the fact they are rolling out phone service over the same infrastructure and they are asking me to subsidise it by throttling my bandwidth.
So, yes, I will use encryption and guilt-free until they give me the premium back I pay over regular service.
Perhaps, but I somehow doubt it will make it through for a while. The conservative minority government is more of a caretaker government (especially with no natural allies in the house). While there will be hearings (there usually are), I think that not much at all is going to be passed for quite a while unless it is "feel good" kinds of legislation.
Your point is taken, but at present the mechanics of government are going to move much more slowly than usual. My gut says that the conservative will avoid sitting until fall if they can help it at all.
They tried this argument in court in Canada. The judge ruled that the simple act of putting a file in a shared folder is neither in and of itself intent, nor illegal. And the ruling has stood.
Another tired story about how "good" people are paying and playing ball with the RIAA etc in the first portion while the rest of the story spends its time hand-wringing over how pirates are taking everybody down the path to hell.
No doubt we will shortly hear of another round of single mothers being busted because their children have downloaded some songs onto their computers or more pressure being directed against Apple's unscrupulous pricing policies.
Funny how these things seem to be forming a pattern.
I suppose if you did outsource your homework, you would then get killed on exams because as other people have pointed out, you would be a practical dunce. But, let's say you didn't fail the exam and went out and successfully passed yourself off and got employed. You would then end up living under the stress of being found out. Ultimately that's one of the biggest problems with being a fraud, the fear that you will be found out and nailed. Every time you hear someone is going to be canned, you will have the nagging fear it will be you, and every time you get a difficult assignment, you will sweat bullets whether you can handle the assignment or not. Look closely at people you know lie a lot, they are not happy people. Makes for a crappy life.
Stress kills and the lies we tell are one of the biggest sources.
Looking at the difference in graphic quality between the older generation of cards and the newer generation of cards, there is a jump. But the real question, is it enough of a jump to warrant the cost of a new card over one you bought last year (assuming you bought a good card last year). And that being said, how much of a jump will you get with the generation after this? These companies put out new product every year with the hope they will sell like hot cakes because of what they added. Myself, I tend to upgrade every second generation, and sometimes three.
While these advances are all fine and good, how much of a jump would be worth say, a $500 dollar (assume you can get deals) outlay each year? While the new graphics are great, I can't say they are 500 smackers a year greater.
I suspect that keeping your focus on anything at a distance of about a foot to 18 inches for 15 hours a day is going to ultimately screw up your eyes ability to refocus. Your eyes are controlled by muscles and need a degree of exercise the same as any muscle in your body.
There is no such thing as a completely secure OS. As well, whether this is full of hot air or not, Micro$oft will never get a fair hearing in this place.
Yeah, what the guy says is true, and much more than that. Everybody wants a slice of that corporate pie. The profits are bigger and they have IT departments to handle the simple problems of deployment (which cuts the cost of service). It's why Intel is the biggest graphics manufacturer and why their CPUs outsell AMD despite AMD being the superior chip. The corporate PC manufacturer can source the cheapest parts by buying bulk and maximize profits. If a machine goes south (but most won't as they are not taxed doing most corporate work), it's cheap to replace it.
Windows seized that corporate market way back in the late eighties. That's why you get so much crap on windows machines. If Apple could crack the corporate market in a big way, or a major Linux/hardware partner, do you think they would not cater to that cash cow, bringing whatever computer hay it wanted? The holy grail for Linux is mass acceptance - and that really means corporate desktop acceptance. That would bring compromises that would spill over into the home market. You build a baseline for your hardware or software and branch from there. It's where the money is after all. If the baseline is the rich corporate mother lode, guess what even the home users get a flavour of? It's why I build my own machines and install my own software. Look no further that the recent reviews of the Dell gaming machine, loaded with crapware. Look at who their biggest customers are and you can see the packaged one size fits all mentality.
Yes, you will wait up to 190 days for a hip replacement, popping T3's all the way. But you will get it done, and it won't cost you $20,000. Most people who need hip replacements tend to be old, and less able to afford it. In places without universal health care, many of these people go without. Which is better? Having these people not get the surgery certainly will help wait times. It is inherent in any system that allows anyone to walk into a hospital anytime they are sick will have trouble meeting surges. The greying population is causing a run on hip replacements so that has been in the news. A real concern to be sure, and we can make things better.
190 days is bad.
Really bad. I wonder how long it takes to get the same free treatment in the US if you can't afford it? Or, if you do have insurance, how long does it take to wrestle with the HMO and get the requisite approvals? Unless you can afford Cadillac insurance, my understanding is that you don't pick your doctor, you HMO gives you a like it or lump it list.
I any event, I do agree though that we do need to do more to improve our system.
Unfortunately, I agree with your note about politicians, and there presence makes any solution harder.
You use their network to get out and frankly you'd better have a different kind of network to find a new job once you get spotted. And you will get spotted. Anybody who believes they have privacy on any employer's network is living in a fantasy world.
Here is what I really don't get. People are willing to risk multi-thousand dollar-a-year jobs for a few hundred bucks worth of what?
What is so important so important to get off the net that you can't do it at home and leave it there. If it's because you have dial-up at home or something, spend the money on a connection and you'll no doubt make your money back in entertainment in no time. Frankly there's nothing out there that's worth the risk.
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Adobe owns the PDF standard outright, and the thing about proprietary formats is the originator can change the spec anytime they want without any input from anyone. Ultimately, what makes ODF attractive is that changes won't (or shouldn't) occur that way.
I really do wish them luck. The thing is the "document" and "content" companies are going to fight like hell to expand proprietary formats as they ultimately look to the MS word format, the sheer number of copies of MSOffice sold, and see the dollar signs available by controlling the format and making everyone dance to their tune. Anyone who remembers the fiasco that occurred when MSOffice 97 wasn't very compatible with the previous version will also remember that companies simply shelled out for converters etc until MS issued a patch. They had no choice.
While packages like open office etc exist, they have for a while and are perceived as "not being ready for prime time" by most businesses. The only advantage many see is the ability to save as PDF (another proprietary format). For ODF to take hold, governments and some very large publishing concerns are going to have to adopt it. Else, not much will change and the march towards increasingly proprietary formats will continue.
As long as there is big money to be made in medicine, this will be a problem. I'm not saying that doctors should work cheap. Just saying big money brings out the criminal element. No doubt they will find this has been going on a long time.
My experience anyway is that companies have gone to war against the consumer/customer. Sooner or later people will start to realize this and fight back the only way we can - by not buying, or buying as little as possible from "devil companies". They call some of us devil customers, well, it goes both ways.
I would be po'ed if I bought a card claiming to have HDCP and wanted it, but personally, I don't. I would rather watch 720p content max than buy into this, or any other DRM scheme. We live in an age when companies are at war with their customers, and in a free market economy, the only way for a consumer to fight back is to not buy. That hasn't started yet in earnest, but I imagine it will. All the vid card manufacturers are to blame here, not just ATI as almost all have claimed this capability and don't deliver (only Sony does at present). What I am interested to see is all the HDTVs that have been sold over the last couple of year could potentially also get degraded signals if the DRM pundits get their way. I wonder what impact that will have on future sales.
No worries. I had actually forgot about that type of engine. I think Nieuport used them too. Funny to think that was almost 100 years ago. Actually I used to work with a Brit who had a Sopwith Camel back in Jolly Old.
I can't speak about production for the rest of the world, but in north america, there was a big gap between the RX-4 (which went like stink) and the RX-7, and then a long gap (mid-ninties to a couple of years ago) between the RX-7 and RX-8.
I know this, I said he (the parent) may be thinking of a radial engine. I do know the difference between a pratt and whitney wasp and a rotary engine.
I imagine to use hydrogen, that Mazda must have solved the sealing problems in the engine. They first dropped the rotary because of it's poor mileage and leaky rotor seals. I know a number of RX-3s and 4s had horrible problems with their rotor seals. It looks like they corrected that enough for the RX-8 (the 7 had problems too) to be an efficient gasoline engine. Hydrogen seems dicier to me in the regard of sealing. If they haven't corrected the problem enough to do hydrogen over the long term, this will be a flop.
You may be thinking of a radial engine which was (and still is) used to many power prop driven aircraft. Mazda used to use rotary engines in the 70's, stopped for a while and re-introduced them in the RX-8. Mercedes tried them out too.
Another cheap trick brought to you by the folks in marketing. Really, they need people to buy Vista, as most productivity software will continue to run just fine on XP (and continue to be released for it as well), they need to start getting some hype going. This is only the early going and while Halo 2 may pale beside many of the FPS games out there, some will want it. On it's own it won't be enough to warrant the Vista buy, keep you eyes peeled for more on the home entertainment front. It is already known cable card will only be supported in Vista (on the ms side of things) for example.
Expect more Vista only over the next year, you ain't seen nothing yet.
They would love to do away the DIY market, not just for the mark-up they can hit people who want PVRs with, but because in the DIY market it is much harder if not impossible to enforce DRM. Having failed for the nonce with the broadcast flag, there are going to be other attempts to bring the hobbyist to heel. Cable card wars will be one of them.
My ISP is Shaw, and I pay for a 7 down 1 up service with 50 gigs down and 10 gigs up a month. I should get that with no shaping or other crap. If I exceed my limits, I can be charged extra. This throttling is crap. It is like buying a Ferrari with a governor on the engine. If I don't get that service I am being ripped off.
They have recourse other than throttling the user who pays for that bandwidth - and I do pay for it. That is what my bill says. Frankly it has more to do with the fact they are rolling out phone service over the same infrastructure and they are asking me to subsidise it by throttling my bandwidth.
So, yes, I will use encryption and guilt-free until they give me the premium back I pay over regular service.
Profit before principles is as American as penny stocks and get rich quick schemes.
Perhaps, but I somehow doubt it will make it through for a while. The conservative minority government is more of a caretaker government (especially with no natural allies in the house). While there will be hearings (there usually are), I think that not much at all is going to be passed for quite a while unless it is "feel good" kinds of legislation.
Your point is taken, but at present the mechanics of government are going to move much more slowly than usual. My gut says that the conservative will avoid sitting until fall if they can help it at all.
They tried this argument in court in Canada. The judge ruled that the simple act of putting a file in a shared folder is neither in and of itself intent, nor illegal. And the ruling has stood.
Another tired story about how "good" people are paying and playing ball with the RIAA etc in the first portion while the rest of the story spends its time hand-wringing over how pirates are taking everybody down the path to hell.
No doubt we will shortly hear of another round of single mothers being busted because their children have downloaded some songs onto their computers or more pressure being directed against Apple's unscrupulous pricing policies.
Funny how these things seem to be forming a pattern.
I suppose if you did outsource your homework, you would then get killed on exams because as other people have pointed out, you would be a practical dunce. But, let's say you didn't fail the exam and went out and successfully passed yourself off and got employed. You would then end up living under the stress of being found out. Ultimately that's one of the biggest problems with being a fraud, the fear that you will be found out and nailed. Every time you hear someone is going to be canned, you will have the nagging fear it will be you, and every time you get a difficult assignment, you will sweat bullets whether you can handle the assignment or not. Look closely at people you know lie a lot, they are not happy people. Makes for a crappy life. Stress kills and the lies we tell are one of the biggest sources.
Looking at the difference in graphic quality between the older generation of cards and the newer generation of cards, there is a jump. But the real question, is it enough of a jump to warrant the cost of a new card over one you bought last year (assuming you bought a good card last year). And that being said, how much of a jump will you get with the generation after this? These companies put out new product every year with the hope they will sell like hot cakes because of what they added. Myself, I tend to upgrade every second generation, and sometimes three.
While these advances are all fine and good, how much of a jump would be worth say, a $500 dollar (assume you can get deals) outlay each year? While the new graphics are great, I can't say they are 500 smackers a year greater.
I suspect that keeping your focus on anything at a distance of about a foot to 18 inches for 15 hours a day is going to ultimately screw up your eyes ability to refocus. Your eyes are controlled by muscles and need a degree of exercise the same as any muscle in your body.
There is no such thing as a completely secure OS. As well, whether this is full of hot air or not, Micro$oft will never get a fair hearing in this place.
So, if I have this right, if you suck, it's free.
Yeah, what the guy says is true, and much more than that. Everybody wants a slice of that corporate pie. The profits are bigger and they have IT departments to handle the simple problems of deployment (which cuts the cost of service). It's why Intel is the biggest graphics manufacturer and why their CPUs outsell AMD despite AMD being the superior chip. The corporate PC manufacturer can source the cheapest parts by buying bulk and maximize profits. If a machine goes south (but most won't as they are not taxed doing most corporate work), it's cheap to replace it.
Windows seized that corporate market way back in the late eighties. That's why you get so much crap on windows machines. If Apple could crack the corporate market in a big way, or a major Linux/hardware partner, do you think they would not cater to that cash cow, bringing whatever computer hay it wanted? The holy grail for Linux is mass acceptance - and that really means corporate desktop acceptance. That would bring compromises that would spill over into the home market. You build a baseline for your hardware or software and branch from there. It's where the money is after all. If the baseline is the rich corporate mother lode, guess what even the home users get a flavour of? It's why I build my own machines and install my own software. Look no further that the recent reviews of the Dell gaming machine, loaded with crapware. Look at who their biggest customers are and you can see the packaged one size fits all mentality.
Yes, you will wait up to 190 days for a hip replacement, popping T3's all the way. But you will get it done, and it won't cost you $20,000. Most people who need hip replacements tend to be old, and less able to afford it. In places without universal health care, many of these people go without. Which is better? Having these people not get the surgery certainly will help wait times. It is inherent in any system that allows anyone to walk into a hospital anytime they are sick will have trouble meeting surges. The greying population is causing a run on hip replacements so that has been in the news. A real concern to be sure, and we can make things better.
190 days is bad.
Really bad. I wonder how long it takes to get the same free treatment in the US if you can't afford it? Or, if you do have insurance, how long does it take to wrestle with the HMO and get the requisite approvals? Unless you can afford Cadillac insurance, my understanding is that you don't pick your doctor, you HMO gives you a like it or lump it list.
I any event, I do agree though that we do need to do more to improve our system.
Unfortunately, I agree with your note about politicians, and there presence makes any solution harder.
You use their network to get out and frankly you'd better have a different kind of network to find a new job once you get spotted. And you will get spotted. Anybody who believes they have privacy on any employer's network is living in a fantasy world.
Here is what I really don't get. People are willing to risk multi-thousand dollar-a-year jobs for a few hundred bucks worth of what?
What is so important so important to get off the net that you can't do it at home and leave it there. If it's because you have dial-up at home or something, spend the money on a connection and you'll no doubt make your money back in entertainment in no time. Frankly there's nothing out there that's worth the risk.