"these types of posts...only provide superficial information an a subject that almost everyone knows about"
Well, to be absolutely frank, I didn't have any idea what Inkscape was about, neither after reading the initial writeup nor the supplied links. Only that it was some sort of "SVG tool". Which was great if you were one of the "almost everyone" who knew what "SVG" meant. Unfortunately, that group doesn't include me, so I went and dug up some quick information about it and tried to explain it as well as possible with my limited information.
Thank you for your additional information! Every day is a chance to learn something new.
Inkscape's FAQ describes the software package as a way to create SVGs. So I was curious as to what exactly "SVG" means. It turns out that it is a type of graphic that is Scalable because it is based on Vectors (Scalable Vector Graphics, heh). Like TrueType fonts, the graphics itself is described in a data file and the rasterization engine figures out how to plot each line and curve.
Another common type of graphic is the raster bitmap in which the data file describes the absolute positioning of pixels in the resulting picture. Scaling (changing size) of such a picture is troublesome because it requires some loss of data if the graphic is shrunk and some interpolation of data if the graphic is stretched.
Vector graphics do not have this problem as they do not exist as mere picture elements in a determined plot. Since they are described in terms of elements with properties, the plotter is able to render the resulting graphic as it sees fit, to any level of resolution it can handle. In some ways, it is very much like povray graphics which are as detailed as you want to make it, at any resolution.
Using this type of graphic is especially helpful in document layout design like brochures and pamphlets where you don't know exactly how big your eventual product will be. I've never used it personally, but this seems like a very cool alternative to more unwieldy software packages like PS and Gimp.
I do believe that there are many distractions that may take our minds of our work. The phone ringing, the pager going off, the bright blue sky outside with flocks of geese slowly migrating back to their Canadian homes. All these things are distractions that may harm productivity.
But I don't think that productivity is being harmed to such an extent that a fuss must be raised over it. Projects are still being finished, people are still getting paid, and products are still being sold. It's not that there are so many more distractions than before, it's simply that we can quantify (and villify) one particular set of distractions.
Maybe it's just me, but sometimes taking a time out to stare out the window at the horizon helps me feel a lot better about sitting in front of the computer.
However, with exception of when we deliberately seek out bias, it is pretty much irrelevant. We play games because they are fun. Whether the game designer has some ulterior motive or not is only important as far as it affects the playability of the game. Good games succeed, bad games fail.
To argue that bias somehow affects the player subliminally, influencing the player towards the bias of the game designer, is to say that people are influenced significantly by what they play or see. However, I have to reject this, from my own experience. I have known many people who play violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and its ilk who have no inclination to go out and commit those crimes shown in the game.
Bias is inherent in any human action. To make it a central pillar of a video game is foolish because it is uninteresting to anyone not interested in it. Game makers, for the most part, sublimate their biases and focus on gameplay. Whether they succeed or not is debatable, of course.
the hit and run guy gets to wash curtains upstate under the watchful eye of Tiny, his short-tempered, amply muscled roomie
I am going to have to take issue with this comment and the thinking behind it. While you don't mention it, implicit in the above quote is that one aspect of incarceration ought to be forcible rape of inmates by other inmates. This is something joked about all too often, and it is hardly a laughing matter.
Inmates, as wretched as they may seem to the general public, are still human beings and ought to be afforded some level protection such that they don't have to fear for their lives while they are a ward of the State. By putting people in jail, in a sense they take guardianship of them. To allow (and that's the word that describes what goes on) inmate on inmate rape to occur is a complete shirking of the State's responsibilities to its prison population.
That punishment doesn't fit the crime. In many ways our justice system makes victims out of the perpetrators of crimes when the punishment is way out of proportion to the actual crime committed. When that happens, the justice system is perpetrating an injustice on the person found guilty in court.
I don't like how some people think that just because someone is obnoxious or causes minor damage (and let's face it, virus infestations are fairly minor compared to the gamut of actual crimes that people are let off the hook with much less punishment) that they should be put away for ever or even put to death. I think it reeks of a completely blown sense of proportion. Unfortunately, the voters who think this way are more prone to vote than people who are more sanely-minded.
Should the punishment for releasing a virus be tough? I don't think so. I think that it is a pretty benign "crime". It is crucial that we keep a sense of proportion when discussing the sentencing stage of justice.
The idea of downloading movies over the net is certainly intriguing, and for many people who are unable or unwilling to leave the house to see a movie at the theater it seems to be a real boon. However, I wonder what sort of bandwidth is necessary to make the download of a movie bearable. Even the most rudimentary calculations reveal that most current bandwidth levels require an overnight download.
On the other hand, with sufficient bandwidth there is a major market for online movies, I think. With modern computers and video cards surpassing the video output ability of standard televisions, using the home PC as a video player is one possible evolutionary path for PC operating systems.
I certainly don't have enough bandwidth here that would make net downloads feasible, but I'm sure that the market exists.
The ability to reduce the number of cables is absolutely outstanding. A console that can be attached to the Internet without having to run a wire from the router or wireless hub to the box is a godsend. The ping times might suffer a little, though, I bet.
I can't understand why Sony would want to withdraw WiFi from the PS3 spec, though. If it is a technical issue, then you can bet they will come back later with an add-on WiFi dongle. If it is something else, then they've got me in the dark as to why they would reduce the spec at this stage when PS3s aren't even scheduled to hit the stores yet.
But as wireless networking becomes faster, and broadband providers start providing wireless router modems, this kind of thing is going to become the norm. Not only games, of course, but almost anything that needs to "think" more than a "dumb" device will be designed to take advantage of the home-wireless LAN.
I run a firewall, I have my operating system completely patched, and I never open attachments from people I don't know.
Imagine my surprise when I ran AdAware just today and discovered 7 infections.
The real problem is not that there is a bunch of computer illiterate grannies opening every attachment they receive. While that is a factor, the real vulnerability is in the hubris of "power users" who think they can't get infected because they take all the precautions. But as I learned today, sometimes even that is not enough to be completely protected.
The push to promote "legal music downloads" on college campuses is only going to come back and bite these schools in the rear. Once they start taking it upon themselves to monitor network usage and to some small extent regulate it as well, they forego their Common Carrier status and put themselves at risk of being held liable when the student users behave badly.
By not restricting the network, they can always claim ignorance and place all the responsibility on the students themselves. The students are the ones breaking or obeying the law, and it is they who ought to be responsible for their actions. The school, by becoming a sort of network nanny, takes an amount of responsibility and can be held responsible because of that.
I think that the schools should either get out of the internet provider service altogether or just let the kids do what they want to do. Trying to ride both sides of the fence is just going to lead to headaches down the road.
The press release (at least the translation) doesn't make any mention of what the HOAP-3 is actually useful for. Rather, Fujitsu is releasing the internal specs and interface specs to the robot, so it seems like it is actually up to the owner to figure out what to do with the thing.
I imagine that learning how to control the hardware through existing device drivers and then eventually through writing your own device drivers would be an absolutely fun way to go about studying the subject. I am trying to study device driver development on my own time, but it is slow going. A project like the HOAP-3 would be really nice to have.
The real problem with this move is that even though they have a sort of "first mover" advantage, Opera is at the mercy of the Firefox/Mozilla developers with regards to this feature. Some enterprising Open Source developer will be able to incorporate BitTorrent into the Firefox browser without much trouble, and then Opera, the only significant for-pay browser left, will turn back into an also-ran.
The key for Opera is to get into niches where they stand a chance, handheld computers and cellphones are one area they are very active in. Per-unit licensing for their browser on cellphones makes them a lot of money. I hope they do well into the future.
I'm not saying that the technology didn't exist 20 years ago when Go was making their Pen-based computer. However, the computing world back then didn't take it seriously, and until the PalmPilot III was released less than 10 years ago, using a stylus was simply not a reasonable way to enter data into a computer.
20 years ago, there was no mobile computing world to speak of, and Microsoft's monopoly did not extend into that field at all. Their first real forays into the mobile computing world, with the Casio Aladdin and eventually the Cassiopeia, weren't even pen-based, as such. They were more like the original HVGA HPCs.
I don't feel this case has any merit. Microsoft's power did not extend to the area that Go contends they were forced out of. And when someone (Palm) serious came along with a viable mobile operating system, Microsoft was caught way off guard and stumbled quite a bit.
There is a theory that says that it is possible to store any amount of data on a finely-machined metal rod.
First, take any data (for example the text to Moby Dick) and turn each character into a digit. A=01, B=02, etc. Then string them all together into one long stream of digits. Once the text is translated into this long number, add a decimal to the front of the string.
Now you have a fractional number. 0.0301...
Measure out *exactly* that length in relation to the length of the metal rod and machine a line at that offset. Voila, you've stored the entire text on a metal rod.
Of all the Star Wars props I'd want, I think that Queen Amidala's throne from The Phantom Menace would be thing I would want more than anything else from the series. It is huge, regal, studded with rhinestones, and *doesn't* scream, "Hey, I'm a Star Wars nerd!"
I'd like to think that in my lifetime I'd be able to accomplish something as phenomenal as Lucas' Star Wars series. Lucas will go down in history, remembered among the greats such as Poe, Thoreau, and Seuss. Unfortunately, no one seems interested in my stuff.:-)
"You don't patent a mathematical formula, for software is merely a connection of a mathematical formula," said Michel Rocard, the former French Prime Minister who was in charge of steering the parliament debate.
Rocard, a deputy for the Socialist group, said patents worth tens of billions of dollars (euros) were potentially at stake and, in terms of impact on businesses, the bill was the most important piece of legislation the assembly has ever dealt with.
The patent system seems to work best when patents cover things. It seems to cause real damage when it covers such things as mathematical knowledge and software. Broader than just those two, though, is the application of patents to "systems" wherein the thing being patented is just a step of instructions. It is a far cry from a tangible item to a way to do something.
Some 178 amendments to the bill were tabled by lawmakers before the vote. In the end parliament decided to vote down the law, fearing the amendments would dilute it and make it an inadequate compromise.
"It was a mess. Better no directive than a bad directive," said Tony Robinson, spokesman for the Socialists.
Unfortunately, that seems to mean that the topic may come up again, only in a more streamlined and possibly more palatable bill. It is nice that OSS advocates are crying foul against the patent system, but the real change will come when private businesses understand the threat posed by an all-encompassing patent system.
It is clever in that it uses a "real" AI which does its best to draw the player into the game world. However, it seems like it would suffer from the same type of problems that any AI suffers from, that is it can't understand everything the user types.
It also suffers from cutscene-mania. The game itself is a series of cutscenes that progresses even without user interaction. Though cutscenes have their place in games, building a game around them is a surefire way to limit replayability.
When I was watching Amazon years ago, it seemed like it was destined to go out of business. With their seemingly pointless acquisitions of unrelated companies and the building of zShops, it was (at that time) a foregone conclusion that Amazon was buying itself into bankruptcy and that the company would be out of business before it ever showed a profit.
In that time, it has turned itself into a profit center and the foremost bookseller not only on the web but even among the traditional bricks and mortar book companies.
Who would have thought that such a reversal of fortune could be possible? Absolutely amazing to see what a company can do when led appropriately.
The woman is suing the government for depriving her of her ability to make an income in her current profession. Her allegation is that the government (through NASA) has fundamentally shifted the course of celestial bodies with the impact and that she is entitled to monetary recompense.
This is so similar to how the record companies are fighting tooth and nail to stop people from changing the RIAA's business model.
Is someone entitled to make a living? Should the government be in the business of putting people out of work?
I look forward to trying it out myself
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 1
Although I am looking forward to trying out the system myself when possible, I am afraid that it will not be enough to induce me to switch until I buy a new PC altogether.
Microsoft more or less peaked with Windows 2000, both functionality-wise and UI-wise. Even when I use WindowsXP, I find myself reverting the UI to the original Windows 2000 theme before being able to do any work.
The one big issue with all Windows operating systems after Windows 2000 is the problem with installation restrictions that prevent me from reinstalling the OS easily when I seem to have trouble. Not that Windows XP needs to be reinstalled very often, but I'd at least like the ability to do so without having to call up the Microsoft helpdesk. I am afraid that Longhorn will have the same issue, and that single issue will keep me from appreciating the operating system's other good features.
It is not so much the spam itself (though I have to question why they refer to the emails as spam when it seems that they were primarily informational emails), but the constant suggestion to live right and healthily that put the idea into the recipients' heads to do just that.
It is very similar to the rise in karate school enrollments after a popular martial arts movie like The Karate Kid is released. People take whatever they can from any message and sometimes those messages can lead to action. In this case it was towards weight loss, in others it is towards violence, in others it is towards humanity towards fellow humans.
There are several non-commercial distributed computing systems, so the GridMP system isn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking. However, in companies that run very resource intensive applications and simulations, such a distributed system that uses unused CPU cycles has some serious applications.
However, the most critical aspect of this type of system is not just that the application in question is just multithreaded, but that it be multithreaded based on the GridMP APIs. To do such would require either a significant rewrite of existing code or a rewrite of it from scratch. This is not a minor undertaking, by any means.
If the performance of the application and every cycle counts, then that investment is definitely worth it.
The basic point of the ruling is that you need to be able to have plausible deniability when it comes to promoting illegal actions.
Bitorrent, for example, is able to get away with aiding mass piracy because the primary use for it is to disseminate large binary files. Those files can be anything, but one major use of bitorrent is to ease the spread of Linux distributions and other Open Source binaries.
Grokster (and its workalikes) is designed, advertised, and used as a way of illegally distributing copyrighted materials. The court just found that if you run a service designed to help people break the law that you will have some amount of responsibility in the acts.
I'm not saying that I think that "bullet makers" should be held responsible for the actions of a select few of their customers, but I do think that there is a certain amount of discretion that companies riding the razor's edge ought to employ.
Of the little I've read of Raymond Kurzweil, he seems like a pure genius. From his ability to program computers at only 12 years old, to his AI and nanobot research, he is a modern day "Renaissance man" with his hand in many different aspects of technology.
His immortality stuff is a little out-there, but we all have our little quirks:-)
Slashdot Mirror
"these types of posts...only provide superficial information an a subject that almost everyone knows about"
Well, to be absolutely frank, I didn't have any idea what Inkscape was about, neither after reading the initial writeup nor the supplied links. Only that it was some sort of "SVG tool". Which was great if you were one of the "almost everyone" who knew what "SVG" meant. Unfortunately, that group doesn't include me, so I went and dug up some quick information about it and tried to explain it as well as possible with my limited information.
Thank you for your additional information! Every day is a chance to learn something new.
Inkscape's FAQ describes the software package as a way to create SVGs. So I was curious as to what exactly "SVG" means. It turns out that it is a type of graphic that is Scalable because it is based on Vectors (Scalable Vector Graphics, heh). Like TrueType fonts, the graphics itself is described in a data file and the rasterization engine figures out how to plot each line and curve.
Another common type of graphic is the raster bitmap in which the data file describes the absolute positioning of pixels in the resulting picture. Scaling (changing size) of such a picture is troublesome because it requires some loss of data if the graphic is shrunk and some interpolation of data if the graphic is stretched.
Vector graphics do not have this problem as they do not exist as mere picture elements in a determined plot. Since they are described in terms of elements with properties, the plotter is able to render the resulting graphic as it sees fit, to any level of resolution it can handle. In some ways, it is very much like povray graphics which are as detailed as you want to make it, at any resolution.
Using this type of graphic is especially helpful in document layout design like brochures and pamphlets where you don't know exactly how big your eventual product will be. I've never used it personally, but this seems like a very cool alternative to more unwieldy software packages like PS and Gimp.
I do believe that there are many distractions that may take our minds of our work. The phone ringing, the pager going off, the bright blue sky outside with flocks of geese slowly migrating back to their Canadian homes. All these things are distractions that may harm productivity.
But I don't think that productivity is being harmed to such an extent that a fuss must be raised over it. Projects are still being finished, people are still getting paid, and products are still being sold. It's not that there are so many more distractions than before, it's simply that we can quantify (and villify) one particular set of distractions.
Maybe it's just me, but sometimes taking a time out to stare out the window at the horizon helps me feel a lot better about sitting in front of the computer.
However, with exception of when we deliberately seek out bias, it is pretty much irrelevant. We play games because they are fun. Whether the game designer has some ulterior motive or not is only important as far as it affects the playability of the game. Good games succeed, bad games fail.
To argue that bias somehow affects the player subliminally, influencing the player towards the bias of the game designer, is to say that people are influenced significantly by what they play or see. However, I have to reject this, from my own experience. I have known many people who play violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and its ilk who have no inclination to go out and commit those crimes shown in the game.
Bias is inherent in any human action. To make it a central pillar of a video game is foolish because it is uninteresting to anyone not interested in it. Game makers, for the most part, sublimate their biases and focus on gameplay. Whether they succeed or not is debatable, of course.
the hit and run guy gets to wash curtains upstate under the watchful eye of Tiny, his short-tempered, amply muscled roomie
I am going to have to take issue with this comment and the thinking behind it. While you don't mention it, implicit in the above quote is that one aspect of incarceration ought to be forcible rape of inmates by other inmates. This is something joked about all too often, and it is hardly a laughing matter.
Inmates, as wretched as they may seem to the general public, are still human beings and ought to be afforded some level protection such that they don't have to fear for their lives while they are a ward of the State. By putting people in jail, in a sense they take guardianship of them. To allow (and that's the word that describes what goes on) inmate on inmate rape to occur is a complete shirking of the State's responsibilities to its prison population.
What if someone raped your child or SO?
Perhaps "how you feel" should not be a factor in the severity of the sentencing.
Justice should be served cold, not hot. Too often logic and reason gives way to emotions and the public's desire for a lynching. That is a travesty.
That punishment doesn't fit the crime. In many ways our justice system makes victims out of the perpetrators of crimes when the punishment is way out of proportion to the actual crime committed. When that happens, the justice system is perpetrating an injustice on the person found guilty in court.
I don't like how some people think that just because someone is obnoxious or causes minor damage (and let's face it, virus infestations are fairly minor compared to the gamut of actual crimes that people are let off the hook with much less punishment) that they should be put away for ever or even put to death. I think it reeks of a completely blown sense of proportion. Unfortunately, the voters who think this way are more prone to vote than people who are more sanely-minded.
Should the punishment for releasing a virus be tough? I don't think so. I think that it is a pretty benign "crime". It is crucial that we keep a sense of proportion when discussing the sentencing stage of justice.
The idea of downloading movies over the net is certainly intriguing, and for many people who are unable or unwilling to leave the house to see a movie at the theater it seems to be a real boon. However, I wonder what sort of bandwidth is necessary to make the download of a movie bearable. Even the most rudimentary calculations reveal that most current bandwidth levels require an overnight download.
On the other hand, with sufficient bandwidth there is a major market for online movies, I think. With modern computers and video cards surpassing the video output ability of standard televisions, using the home PC as a video player is one possible evolutionary path for PC operating systems.
I certainly don't have enough bandwidth here that would make net downloads feasible, but I'm sure that the market exists.
The ability to reduce the number of cables is absolutely outstanding. A console that can be attached to the Internet without having to run a wire from the router or wireless hub to the box is a godsend. The ping times might suffer a little, though, I bet.
I can't understand why Sony would want to withdraw WiFi from the PS3 spec, though. If it is a technical issue, then you can bet they will come back later with an add-on WiFi dongle. If it is something else, then they've got me in the dark as to why they would reduce the spec at this stage when PS3s aren't even scheduled to hit the stores yet.
But as wireless networking becomes faster, and broadband providers start providing wireless router modems, this kind of thing is going to become the norm. Not only games, of course, but almost anything that needs to "think" more than a "dumb" device will be designed to take advantage of the home-wireless LAN.
I run a firewall, I have my operating system completely patched, and I never open attachments from people I don't know.
Imagine my surprise when I ran AdAware just today and discovered 7 infections.
The real problem is not that there is a bunch of computer illiterate grannies opening every attachment they receive. While that is a factor, the real vulnerability is in the hubris of "power users" who think they can't get infected because they take all the precautions. But as I learned today, sometimes even that is not enough to be completely protected.
The push to promote "legal music downloads" on college campuses is only going to come back and bite these schools in the rear. Once they start taking it upon themselves to monitor network usage and to some small extent regulate it as well, they forego their Common Carrier status and put themselves at risk of being held liable when the student users behave badly.
By not restricting the network, they can always claim ignorance and place all the responsibility on the students themselves. The students are the ones breaking or obeying the law, and it is they who ought to be responsible for their actions. The school, by becoming a sort of network nanny, takes an amount of responsibility and can be held responsible because of that.
I think that the schools should either get out of the internet provider service altogether or just let the kids do what they want to do. Trying to ride both sides of the fence is just going to lead to headaches down the road.
The press release (at least the translation) doesn't make any mention of what the HOAP-3 is actually useful for. Rather, Fujitsu is releasing the internal specs and interface specs to the robot, so it seems like it is actually up to the owner to figure out what to do with the thing.
I imagine that learning how to control the hardware through existing device drivers and then eventually through writing your own device drivers would be an absolutely fun way to go about studying the subject. I am trying to study device driver development on my own time, but it is slow going. A project like the HOAP-3 would be really nice to have.
The real problem with this move is that even though they have a sort of "first mover" advantage, Opera is at the mercy of the Firefox/Mozilla developers with regards to this feature. Some enterprising Open Source developer will be able to incorporate BitTorrent into the Firefox browser without much trouble, and then Opera, the only significant for-pay browser left, will turn back into an also-ran.
The key for Opera is to get into niches where they stand a chance, handheld computers and cellphones are one area they are very active in. Per-unit licensing for their browser on cellphones makes them a lot of money. I hope they do well into the future.
I'm not saying that the technology didn't exist 20 years ago when Go was making their Pen-based computer. However, the computing world back then didn't take it seriously, and until the PalmPilot III was released less than 10 years ago, using a stylus was simply not a reasonable way to enter data into a computer.
20 years ago, there was no mobile computing world to speak of, and Microsoft's monopoly did not extend into that field at all. Their first real forays into the mobile computing world, with the Casio Aladdin and eventually the Cassiopeia, weren't even pen-based, as such. They were more like the original HVGA HPCs.
I don't feel this case has any merit. Microsoft's power did not extend to the area that Go contends they were forced out of. And when someone (Palm) serious came along with a viable mobile operating system, Microsoft was caught way off guard and stumbled quite a bit.
There is a theory that says that it is possible to store any amount of data on a finely-machined metal rod.
First, take any data (for example the text to Moby Dick) and turn each character into a digit. A=01, B=02, etc. Then string them all together into one long stream of digits. Once the text is translated into this long number, add a decimal to the front of the string.
Now you have a fractional number. 0.0301...
Measure out *exactly* that length in relation to the length of the metal rod and machine a line at that offset. Voila, you've stored the entire text on a metal rod.
Of all the Star Wars props I'd want, I think that Queen Amidala's throne from The Phantom Menace would be thing I would want more than anything else from the series. It is huge, regal, studded with rhinestones, and *doesn't* scream, "Hey, I'm a Star Wars nerd!"
:-)
I'd like to think that in my lifetime I'd be able to accomplish something as phenomenal as Lucas' Star Wars series. Lucas will go down in history, remembered among the greats such as Poe, Thoreau, and Seuss. Unfortunately, no one seems interested in my stuff.
From the article:
"You don't patent a mathematical formula, for software is merely a connection of a mathematical formula," said Michel Rocard, the former French Prime Minister who was in charge of steering the parliament debate.
Rocard, a deputy for the Socialist group, said patents worth tens of billions of dollars (euros) were potentially at stake and, in terms of impact on businesses, the bill was the most important piece of legislation the assembly has ever dealt with.
The patent system seems to work best when patents cover things. It seems to cause real damage when it covers such things as mathematical knowledge and software. Broader than just those two, though, is the application of patents to "systems" wherein the thing being patented is just a step of instructions. It is a far cry from a tangible item to a way to do something.
Some 178 amendments to the bill were tabled by lawmakers before the vote. In the end parliament decided to vote down the law, fearing the amendments would dilute it and make it an inadequate compromise.
"It was a mess. Better no directive than a bad directive," said Tony Robinson, spokesman for the Socialists.
Unfortunately, that seems to mean that the topic may come up again, only in a more streamlined and possibly more palatable bill. It is nice that OSS advocates are crying foul against the patent system, but the real change will come when private businesses understand the threat posed by an all-encompassing patent system.
It is clever in that it uses a "real" AI which does its best to draw the player into the game world. However, it seems like it would suffer from the same type of problems that any AI suffers from, that is it can't understand everything the user types.
It also suffers from cutscene-mania. The game itself is a series of cutscenes that progresses even without user interaction. Though cutscenes have their place in games, building a game around them is a surefire way to limit replayability.
I would love to try the game, personally.
When I was watching Amazon years ago, it seemed like it was destined to go out of business. With their seemingly pointless acquisitions of unrelated companies and the building of zShops, it was (at that time) a foregone conclusion that Amazon was buying itself into bankruptcy and that the company would be out of business before it ever showed a profit.
In that time, it has turned itself into a profit center and the foremost bookseller not only on the web but even among the traditional bricks and mortar book companies.
Who would have thought that such a reversal of fortune could be possible? Absolutely amazing to see what a company can do when led appropriately.
The woman is suing the government for depriving her of her ability to make an income in her current profession. Her allegation is that the government (through NASA) has fundamentally shifted the course of celestial bodies with the impact and that she is entitled to monetary recompense.
This is so similar to how the record companies are fighting tooth and nail to stop people from changing the RIAA's business model.
Is someone entitled to make a living? Should the government be in the business of putting people out of work?
Although I am looking forward to trying out the system myself when possible, I am afraid that it will not be enough to induce me to switch until I buy a new PC altogether.
Microsoft more or less peaked with Windows 2000, both functionality-wise and UI-wise. Even when I use WindowsXP, I find myself reverting the UI to the original Windows 2000 theme before being able to do any work.
The one big issue with all Windows operating systems after Windows 2000 is the problem with installation restrictions that prevent me from reinstalling the OS easily when I seem to have trouble. Not that Windows XP needs to be reinstalled very often, but I'd at least like the ability to do so without having to call up the Microsoft helpdesk. I am afraid that Longhorn will have the same issue, and that single issue will keep me from appreciating the operating system's other good features.
It is not so much the spam itself (though I have to question why they refer to the emails as spam when it seems that they were primarily informational emails), but the constant suggestion to live right and healthily that put the idea into the recipients' heads to do just that.
It is very similar to the rise in karate school enrollments after a popular martial arts movie like The Karate Kid is released. People take whatever they can from any message and sometimes those messages can lead to action. In this case it was towards weight loss, in others it is towards violence, in others it is towards humanity towards fellow humans.
There are several non-commercial distributed computing systems, so the GridMP system isn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking. However, in companies that run very resource intensive applications and simulations, such a distributed system that uses unused CPU cycles has some serious applications.
However, the most critical aspect of this type of system is not just that the application in question is just multithreaded, but that it be multithreaded based on the GridMP APIs. To do such would require either a significant rewrite of existing code or a rewrite of it from scratch. This is not a minor undertaking, by any means.
If the performance of the application and every cycle counts, then that investment is definitely worth it.
The basic point of the ruling is that you need to be able to have plausible deniability when it comes to promoting illegal actions.
Bitorrent, for example, is able to get away with aiding mass piracy because the primary use for it is to disseminate large binary files. Those files can be anything, but one major use of bitorrent is to ease the spread of Linux distributions and other Open Source binaries.
Grokster (and its workalikes) is designed, advertised, and used as a way of illegally distributing copyrighted materials. The court just found that if you run a service designed to help people break the law that you will have some amount of responsibility in the acts.
I'm not saying that I think that "bullet makers" should be held responsible for the actions of a select few of their customers, but I do think that there is a certain amount of discretion that companies riding the razor's edge ought to employ.
Of the little I've read of Raymond Kurzweil, he seems like a pure genius. From his ability to program computers at only 12 years old, to his AI and nanobot research, he is a modern day "Renaissance man" with his hand in many different aspects of technology.
:-)
His immortality stuff is a little out-there, but we all have our little quirks
I can't wait to read some of these essays.