Gates previously has rejected any suggestion that Microsoft share the so-called source code to its flagship product (emphasis mine)
Ah, see, that's why Windows is so screwed up. They don't really have any source code, only "so-called" source code.
Asked specifically about the prospect of opening Windows source code, Gates told Time magazine in November: ``The only thing we know for sure would be bad for consumers is anything that blocks us from being able to innovate Windows or anything that made it so that when people buy Windows they don't know what's in it.''
But when people buy Windows now, they don't know what's in it, so what's the difference?:-)
In the future of Star Trek, they never seem to have trouble figuring out that collections of similar-looking small loose objects are data storage devices. And they always seem to manage to figure out how to read the things, too. Of course, after 400 years of people coming out with new data storage devices every few years, maybe they would have invented every possible mechanism for storing data.:-)
I think Microsoft is most likely to follow the version numbering plan used by the X Window System.
X happened to be on version 11 when it caught on and became really widespread, so they just started making X Version 11 Release 2, 3, etc., often written as X11 Release N, incorporating the ancient version number "11" into the name of the product. I first used X about 10 years ago and it was already X11 Release some such thing (2, I think, with 3 six months later) and they're still using this number system, and they've had some decimalized minor releases along the way. So the next MS OS a couple years after Windows 2000 could be Windows 2000 version 2.
They have done this somewhat anyway with the service packs for NT and the Windows 98 Second Edition. It's only a small step (for MS anyway) to apply this name to a "new version" as opposed to an upgrade.
ElvenKnight wrote: I'm surprised no one mentioned this before..
I have a Diamond V770 Ultra (TNT2-Ultra) with 32megs of RAM. I also have a "21 monitor which claims to have a max resolution of 1600x1200.
BUT..
In Win98 I run at a res of 2048x1536.
[...]
My monitor is a Hitachi CM751U.. Its specs are:
Horizontal - 31-95 kHz Vertical - 50-160 Hz
Your Horizontal sync limit is going to kill your refresh rate here. 95000 lines/sec divided by 1536 lines per screen leaves you at a max of 61.8 Hz. After you take into account the extra time needed at the end of a scan of the screen, you'd be lucky to make 60 Hz in that mode without exceeding your monitor's horizontal sync limit. I recommend you check what refresh rate that Windows 2048x1536 mode is running at, and if it's more than 60 Hz -- well, you've been warned.
/dev/joe
Re:Some of these laws are (apparently) real
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
Same for Massachusetts.
I've only been living in this state for a year, but I've heard about the ban on tattooing (really, a ban on tattoo parlors; there's a big business for tattoo parlors just across the state lines) and the restrictions on liquor stores except 10 miles from the NH/VT borders. (Apparently, the idea on this last one is to avoid the loss of tax money to those other states from people running across the border to buy alcohol on Sunday, by moving the boundary in 10 miles.) On the other hand, I lived in Texas for most of my life before that, and I never heard of any of the ones listed there, except for the one about two trains which I'm sure is from the fortune file.
When Price Waterhouse merged with Coopers and Lybrand, they did something similar -- took three of their four collective names (likely the result of old mergers or partnerships from years ago), and ran them together to make a single huge multicapitalized word.
At least their marketers had a sense of humor -- when they started using the name, they used the slogan "The Biggest Name in the Business".:-)
I do most of my home browsing with netscape (4.7 these days) as well, and use plug-ins (flash, which has been available in a quite stable beta for months now, and plugger which allows most of the standard stuff to run as plugins) a fair amount, and netscape crashes a fair bit, but my crashes usually aren't associated with the plug-ins. My crashes usually occur with java applets. Some applets I can't run at all; netscape either crashes or hangs while loading the page, or shortly after getting the applet running. Other applets work fine if I start a fresh netscape session, but may crash if I run them after doing other stuff in netscape for an hour, several hours, days, etc.
What I want is a browser which can run java applets without crashing! (and on which all the standard HTML/CSS/etc. stuff works correctly, or at least mostly correctly like netscape does now).
Microsoft has made mice with scroll-wheels ubiquitous in the PC world. Why not use the mouse for the two most common dimensions of movement (up-down and left-right, for a window manager) and use the scroll wheel to move forward and backward? Then, if you're stacking your apps one behind another, you'll use the mouse like normal to move around its window, and the wheel to jump from one app to another (although with that somewhat-disorienting walking-through-walls effect).
/dev/joe
But Flash Player is out for Linux.
on
Nitrozac Answers
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· Score: 1
Go download Flash 4 Player for Linux Netscape from Macromedia.
Even if the bill is defeated, however, Internet users around the world should continue to be cautious about purchasing commercial encryption products that originate inside the U.S.; you never know what may be lurking within.
That the US government's muddled encryption policy has made US encryption products something to be wary of is the true failure of that policy.
Yeah, ever since they started using the new server
on
Linux Turns 8
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· Score: 1
Ever since they started using the new server, all the articles have been displaying the wrong time, 4 hours early (in EDT, anyway). It has been mentioned repeatedly. I suspect that they are getting a double time-zone correction somewhere (so, in another month and a half when we switch back to standard time, it should be an extra hour off, if it is not fixed yet. The posting times on the articles are never affected; they must be handled differently.
This is exactly why we should do what WowMan said -- establish a database of prior art on common software technology to make it easier for companies to fight lawsuits based on overbroad patents. It seems to me that this is in the realm of the Free Software Foundation's activities, or at least something they would fund. Vendors of Linux distributions would also benefit from the existence of such a thing.
Bits and pieces of this already exist for some kinds of things, such as the RFCs for internet protocols. Previous (overbroad) patents, even if nonenforceable, still show prior art. But the point would be to put all this stuff together in one place, with verifiable sources for the dates.
The comment in the BBC article that implies one of the robots suffered physical damage made me wonder if anybody tried throwing the ball at the other robots as a tactic to intentionally damage them. Might be some problems powering a mechnism to throw a softball if the robots had to be that small. I'm imagining one robot that goes and gathers up the ball (the real problem, anyway), and the other is a catapult.
And I suppose there were size limits on the robots, too, or else a simple non-moving ramp that covers the entire playing area would pretty much be unbeatable, since they were just having to roll the ball back into the opponents' territory. (Unbeatable without violent tactics, anyway.:-)
I'd say this is sub-nano. not really more than a neat chemical trick. Interfacing it with current nanotech devices would be like fitting a toy car motor to a monster truck.
I think you misunderstand the meaning of nanotech. Technology on the nanometer scale goes hand-in-hand with molecular-scale technology, because molecules are roughly nanometer-sized. Atoms are sub-nano, but molecules more than a few atoms wide will be more than a nanometer in size. Now, admittedly, not everything that is nanoscale is molecular, as with the nanoscale pen and ink we had on/. yesterday (but which seems to be gone, now) but it's still going to be on the scale of something only a few atoms or molecules across.
Slashdot Mirror
Gates previously has rejected any suggestion that Microsoft share the so-called source code to its flagship product (emphasis mine)
Ah, see, that's why Windows is so screwed up. They don't really have any source code, only "so-called" source code.
Asked specifically about the prospect of opening Windows source code, Gates told Time magazine in November: ``The only thing we know for sure would be bad for consumers is anything that blocks us from being able to innovate Windows or anything that made it so that when people buy Windows they don't know what's in it.''
But when people buy Windows now, they don't know what's in it, so what's the difference? :-)
In the future of Star Trek, they never seem to have trouble figuring out that collections of similar-looking small loose objects are data storage devices. And they always seem to manage to figure out how to read the things, too. Of course, after 400 years of people coming out with new data storage devices every few years, maybe they would have invented every possible mechanism for storing data. :-)
X happened to be on version 11 when it caught on and became really widespread, so they just started making X Version 11 Release 2, 3, etc., often written as X11 Release N, incorporating the ancient version number "11" into the name of the product. I first used X about 10 years ago and it was already X11 Release some such thing (2, I think, with 3 six months later) and they're still using this number system, and they've had some decimalized minor releases along the way. So the next MS OS a couple years after Windows 2000 could be Windows 2000 version 2.
They have done this somewhat anyway with the service packs for NT and the Windows 98 Second Edition. It's only a small step (for MS anyway) to apply this name to a "new version" as opposed to an upgrade.
I'm surprised no one mentioned this before..
I have a Diamond V770 Ultra (TNT2-Ultra) with 32megs of RAM. I also have a "21 monitor which claims to have a max resolution of 1600x1200.
BUT..
In Win98 I run at a res of 2048x1536.
[...]
My monitor is a Hitachi CM751U.. Its specs are:
Your Horizontal sync limit is going to kill your refresh rate here. 95000 lines/sec divided by 1536 lines per screen leaves you at a max of 61.8 Hz. After you take into account the extra time needed at the end of a scan of the screen, you'd be lucky to make 60 Hz in that mode without exceeding your monitor's horizontal sync limit. I recommend you check what refresh rate that Windows 2048x1536 mode is running at, and if it's more than 60 Hz -- well, you've been warned.
I've only been living in this state for a year, but I've heard about the ban on tattooing (really, a ban on tattoo parlors; there's a big business for tattoo parlors just across the state lines) and the restrictions on liquor stores except 10 miles from the NH/VT borders. (Apparently, the idea on this last one is to avoid the loss of tax money to those other states from people running across the border to buy alcohol on Sunday, by moving the boundary in 10 miles.) On the other hand, I lived in Texas for most of my life before that, and I never heard of any of the ones listed there, except for the one about two trains which I'm sure is from the fortune file.
At least their marketers had a sense of humor -- when they started using the name, they used the slogan "The Biggest Name in the Business". :-)
What I want is a browser which can run java applets without crashing! (and on which all the standard HTML/CSS/etc. stuff works correctly, or at least mostly correctly like netscape does now).
We covered this a few weeks back on slashdot.
That the US government's muddled encryption policy has made US encryption products something to be wary of is the true failure of that policy.
Oh, and Happy birthday Linux!
Bits and pieces of this already exist for some kinds of things, such as the RFCs for internet protocols. Previous (overbroad) patents, even if nonenforceable, still show prior art. But the point would be to put all this stuff together in one place, with verifiable sources for the dates.
And I suppose there were size limits on the robots, too, or else a simple non-moving ramp that covers the entire playing area would pretty much be unbeatable, since they were just having to roll the ball back into the opponents' territory. (Unbeatable without violent tactics, anyway. :-)
I think you misunderstand the meaning of nanotech. Technology on the nanometer scale goes hand-in-hand with molecular-scale technology, because molecules are roughly nanometer-sized. Atoms are sub-nano, but molecules more than a few atoms wide will be more than a nanometer in size. Now, admittedly, not everything that is nanoscale is molecular, as with the nanoscale pen and ink we had on /. yesterday (but which seems to be gone, now) but it's still going to be on the scale of something only a few atoms or molecules across.