It would seem more pragmatic, if results are the true goal of this lawsuit, to develop a set of browser tools for the blind to use for surfing, rather than for the public to be forced to convert their millions of web pages to a blind-friendly format.
The simplified browsers of the wireless WAP world are certainly a good step in this direction. Though not intended to help the blind and near-blind, they provide that `simple web page layout' so necessary for text-to-speech and automatic braile technologies to be able to work effectively.
The plate tectonics-driven Carbon Cycle is sufficient to explain the hydrocarbons percolating through the mantle and of the persistence of oxygen in the atmosphere. For those who may find the above lecture note too long, the carbon cycle starts with the absorption of carbon-laden sediments into the mantle at subduction zones, followed by a multimillion year period where the carbon compounds circulate in the mantle, before resurfacing, mostly as gasses from volcanos, and perhaps enhancing existing petroleum deposits.
Most of the Earth's carbon has been locked up in the mantle by the Carbon Cycle. That's a good thing, since there it has no opportunity to recombine and eliminate the atmospheric oxygen.
I *really* hope this isn't a hoax. Not knowing anything about the camera, my only concern is that a typical digital camera wouldn't normally have the processing power or memory to run this.
My thought exactly. I've given up running MAME on my 120MHz Pentium because it is too slow. And they are claiming useable results with a 66MHz processor and zilch cache. I just don't know.. I will have to see it to believe it.
That server will someday be a sealed white box, bought off-the-shelf from K-mart right next to the phones. It will be about the size of today's external modems and will be your firewall, ISP, email, ftp and web server. It can sit unobserved and unmaintained in the attic and will survive power outages and spikes about as well as your toaster does today. You will expect it to remain powered up 24/7 and run flawlessly, just as you expect your refrigerator to do.
Most likely it will fully autoconfigure itself the first time it is plugged into a wire and turned on, perhaps asking a few questions of its new owner as it configures itself (eg, what emails accounts do you want to set up?).
There is nothing intrinsically complex about servers and someday basic server functionality will be this simple to acquire and administer; and this, the reputed final domain of the home PC, will also disappear into the specialized device world.
I just wrote to RedHat with a suggestion on how they might be able to donate more than $1-per-sale to the FSF. It's based on what my power company (FPL) does in their billings. There is a fill-in box where the customer (me) can write in a small amount, say $2, that is to go into a fund to help pay the power bills of low income folk. Whatever is written in is tacked onto the required payment for that month.
Now I, and I presume others, wouldn't mind having a similar check-off box on my RedHat online purchase order form. It would be an easy way for me to slip a few extra dollars to the Cause, without antagonizing my wife too much:)
Of course, I could be wrong.. I might be the only one interested in this. Am I?
Please explain to me why the FSF, or any of a number of democratic open-source initiatives should not start patenting many of the advances made in the course of developing open source software.
Because it's expensive?
because it's a slimy lawyerly thing to do?
because playing lawyer isn't fun?
because it goes against the principles of openness which is the heart of what the GPL is trying to accomplish?
because once an algorithm appears in an OSS package, it becomes published, meaning that one year later the algorithm will become truly free, according to the principles of our movement?
The article reads as if the author had strung together all the one-sentence Linux cliches floated over the last half decade. Notice how disjoint the sentences read? Some of the cliches are true (or used to be); nevertheless, that doesn't excuse putting forth a quickie hack as a considered piece of research.
Check out almost any topic or opinion posted on Slashdot. Even here, there's usually one or more - frequently lots more -- messages declaring that a person or idea doesn't belong here or shouldn't be expressed, assuming that the offending idea hasn't already been moderated into oblivion.
Jon, I agree with you in general, but I think you (and others) are defining too much legitimate behavor as `censorship'. Take the above quote. To me, censorship is not the vehement expression of a contrary opinion to another opinion. A slashdot poster who appends a rant to an `offensive' statement is contributing to a discussion, not invoking censorship. Even when the rant asks for the original post to be deleted or moderated down. IMHO, a call for censorship is not censorship. It is only if the call for censorship is acted on has censorship occured.
Now if the original post had been deleted or replaced with a distorting paraphrase, as is common in newspapers, would slashdot have suffered censorship. That is not what happens here. The original poster's statement is still present on slashdot, for all to read, in his or her own words.
IMHO, the ranter has just as much right to complain about inappropriateness as the orginal poster had for posting. The ranter may even be right.
It is a common mistake to confuse highly charged dissent of dissent (counterdissent?) with censorship. True censorship tries to replace valid argument, ranting and raving with mechanisms that operate outside of the discussion. For example, threats to job and life. Crushing distribution.
There *is* a link between Intelligence and myopia.
The size of the eyeball is determined by a feedback mechanism that operates during a child's growth period; it grows to the size needed to focus naturally at the viewing distance a child uses most.
Therefore, heavy reading at a young age leads to larger eyeballs which leads to a preponderance of myopia.
[from memory of a long ago article, probably in Science News]
One point: China is not the USA. The GPL is a USA based copyright. It wouldn't apply to China unless China has previously agreed to honor USA copyrights.
Assembling a dual Celeron 1100MHz is a trivial project, suitable for hardware newbies. Leo LaPorte built one on ZDTV a few weeks ago for about $1500. Erecter Set engineering, bolt together and turn on. Fun to do, but no big deal other than a careful selection of parts with special emphasis on cooling.
Joe
Slashdot's new slogan: news for nerdy wannabees. Stuff that's simple.
For those interested in exactly how Huffman encoding works, click here for a brief and wonderfully lucid account. (This is my private archive of a long-dead web page by John Morris).
[from memory] Will Durant, in the celebrated The Story of Civilization:The Life of Greece, mentioned in passing that the ancient Greeks combined euthanasia and adoption in an interesting way: parents placed unwanted babies into clay bassinet-like jars made available just for them outside of the temple. Childless couples would then examine the jars every morning for new arrivals. If that special one was found, it was taken home, and the act of taking a baby home formally adopted it.
Those babies never adopted eventually die of exposure. It was the duty of the temple priests to give these truly unwanted babies a proper sendoff to the hereafter.
I've never forgotten this incident. Somehow, this practice seems more humane, more natural, than our current system.
Poor software is a result of the failure of the software business model, not of the technical model. Only if and when software companies become legally liable for what their products do, in the same way auto companies are liable, will there be a sea-change in software quality. With the liability comes the corporate-wide desire to do the job right, by any means possible.
The article was not saying that Linux didn't have threads. It was saying that Linux threads were not compatible with the threads provided by other Unices. And that's true.
It is meaningless for Congress to pass a law banning Internet taxes. When the day comes that they/want/ to tax the net, they need merely pass another law permitting it.
It's been my belief that Apple doesn't do well with competition.
Microsoft doesn't do well with competition either. It hasn't hurt them.
Apple's real problem is that they are too vertically integrated. The PC market is so much more successful because it is sliced horizontally..Microsoft owns everything to do with OS and some apps and nothing else, Intel owns everything to do with CPU and support chips and nothing else, a handful of companies (Dell, Gateway, emachines) own most of the integration market, and lots of small companies fight it out for the various device markets, each staking out one corner of it or another. Apple, on the other hand, tries to Own It All. For this, they fail to conquer and will always fail to conquer. I doubt they will ever mend their ways.
It's really amazing how the world's journalists keep pretending that cyberwar is as horribly effective, ugly, and nasty as a real war. Well, it ain't. In a real war people die, people are displaced, people are terrorized, tortured, and raped, people's livelihoods are ruined, people lose their governments and their institutions. Nothing like that is even remotely possible as a result of cyberbattles. So why does everyone pretend they are equivalant?
I'm sorry, but I don't see cyberwar replacing real war in effectiveness for a long long time. If ever.
Re:Every toaster on the internet?
on
CNN On IPv6
·
· Score: 1
I'd like to be able to telnet into your cash registers too!!
I used to program cash registers. Do you know how much I would have given to be able to telnet to a misbehaving register on the other side of the country?
I see a future which does not contain `database compilation companies', spending millions to collect and correlate data then charging users to view. I see a future where automatic database generation technologies, which do the equivalent work for low cost, becomes the predominate method of correlating data. Think Altavista. Think Google. Think of these not as search engines, but as as automatic database generators.
The article mentioned one database company that gathers together Massachusetts court records and then charged fees for viewing. In the perfect, future world, each court would instead make the raw data of all its decisions available directly on the web. Researchers then mine this raw data to their heart's content. In this scenerio there is no place for database compilation company to insert added value.
Therefore, Congress should not pass any laws giving special protection to these dinosaurs.
Slashdot Mirror
The simplified browsers of the wireless WAP world are certainly a good step in this direction. Though not intended to help the blind and near-blind, they provide that `simple web page layout' so necessary for text-to-speech and automatic braile technologies to be able to work effectively.
You probably got cheated with a reconditioned unit. The Sony 520GS lists for $999 and the best Pricewatch price is $808.
Most of the Earth's carbon has been locked up in the mantle by the Carbon Cycle. That's a good thing, since there it has no opportunity to recombine and eliminate the atmospheric oxygen.
My thought exactly. I've given up running MAME on my 120MHz Pentium because it is too slow. And they are claiming useable results with a 66MHz processor and zilch cache. I just don't know .. I will have to see it to believe it.
Most likely it will fully autoconfigure itself the first time it is plugged into a wire and turned on, perhaps asking a few questions of its new owner as it configures itself (eg, what emails accounts do you want to set up?).
There is nothing intrinsically complex about servers and someday basic server functionality will be this simple to acquire and administer; and this, the reputed final domain of the home PC, will also disappear into the specialized device world.
Even Slashdot, the champion of individual choice, has started to do this. Scroll back to the top of this page and look.
The funniest thing about the above post is that it was written using Microsoft Explorer!
Now I, and I presume others, wouldn't mind having a similar check-off box on my RedHat online purchase order form. It would be an easy way for me to slip a few extra dollars to the Cause, without antagonizing my wife too much:)
Of course, I could be wrong .. I might be the only one interested in this. Am I?
Because it's expensive?
because it's a slimy lawyerly thing to do?
because playing lawyer isn't fun?
because it goes against the principles of openness which is the heart of what the GPL is trying to accomplish?
because once an algorithm appears in an OSS package, it becomes published, meaning that one year later the algorithm will become truly free, according to the principles of our movement?
The article reads as if the author had strung together all the one-sentence Linux cliches floated over the last half decade. Notice how disjoint the sentences read? Some of the cliches are true (or used to be); nevertheless, that doesn't excuse putting forth a quickie hack as a considered piece of research.
Jon, I agree with you in general, but I think you (and others) are defining too much legitimate behavor as `censorship'. Take the above quote. To me, censorship is not the vehement expression of a contrary opinion to another opinion. A slashdot poster who appends a rant to an `offensive' statement is contributing to a discussion, not invoking censorship. Even when the rant asks for the original post to be deleted or moderated down. IMHO, a call for censorship is not censorship. It is only if the call for censorship is acted on has censorship occured.
Now if the original post had been deleted or replaced with a distorting paraphrase, as is common in newspapers, would slashdot have suffered censorship. That is not what happens here. The original poster's statement is still present on slashdot, for all to read, in his or her own words.
IMHO, the ranter has just as much right to complain about inappropriateness as the orginal poster had for posting. The ranter may even be right.
It is a common mistake to confuse highly charged dissent of dissent (counterdissent?) with censorship. True censorship tries to replace valid argument, ranting and raving with mechanisms that operate outside of the discussion. For example, threats to job and life. Crushing distribution.
Joe
The size of the eyeball is determined by a feedback mechanism that operates during a child's growth period; it grows to the size needed to focus naturally at the viewing distance a child uses most.
Therefore, heavy reading at a young age leads to larger eyeballs which leads to a preponderance of myopia.
[from memory of a long ago article, probably in Science News]
Anandtech GeForce 256 Review
Ace's Hardware GEForce 256 Review
RivaExtreme GeForce 256 DDR Review
The FiringSquad GeForce 256 DDR Review
GA Source Guillemot 3D Prophet Review
3DGPU Geforce 256 DDR Review
Fast Graphics Guillemot 3D Prophet Review
CGO GeForce 256 Preview
Shugashack GeForce, V3 and TNT2 benchmark roundup
Riva3D Full GeForce 256 DDR Review
GeForce 256 DDR Review at Planet Riva
One point: China is not the USA. The GPL is a USA based copyright. It wouldn't apply to China unless China has previously agreed to honor USA copyrights.
Joe
Slashdot's new slogan: news for nerdy wannabees. Stuff that's simple.
Joe
Those babies never adopted eventually die of exposure. It was the duty of the temple priests to give these truly unwanted babies a proper sendoff to the hereafter.
I've never forgotten this incident. Somehow, this practice seems more humane, more natural, than our current system.
Poor software is a result of the failure of the software business model, not of the technical model. Only if and when software companies become legally liable for what their products do, in the same way auto companies are liable, will there be a sea-change in software quality. With the liability comes the corporate-wide desire to do the job right, by any means possible.
I guess K-mart will soon have some new employees for their Blue Light Special...
The article was not saying that Linux didn't have threads. It was saying that Linux threads were not compatible with the threads provided by other Unices. And that's true.
It is meaningless for Congress to pass a law banning Internet taxes. When the day comes that they /want/ to tax the net, they need merely pass another law permitting it.
Microsoft doesn't do well with competition either. It hasn't hurt them.
Apple's real problem is that they are too vertically integrated. The PC market is so much more successful because it is sliced horizontally..Microsoft owns everything to do with OS and some apps and nothing else, Intel owns everything to do with CPU and support chips and nothing else, a handful of companies (Dell, Gateway, emachines) own most of the integration market, and lots of small companies fight it out for the various device markets, each staking out one corner of it or another. Apple, on the other hand, tries to Own It All. For this, they fail to conquer and will always fail to conquer. I doubt they will ever mend their ways.
I'm sorry, but I don't see cyberwar replacing real war in effectiveness for a long long time. If ever.
I used to program cash registers. Do you know how much I would have given to be able to telnet to a misbehaving register on the other side of the country?
The article mentioned one database company that gathers together Massachusetts court records and then charged fees for viewing. In the perfect, future world, each court would instead make the raw data of all its decisions available directly on the web. Researchers then mine this raw data to their heart's content. In this scenerio there is no place for database compilation company to insert added value.
Therefore, Congress should not pass any laws giving special protection to these dinosaurs.