Well, I knew this cult would cost a lot of time and money. Fellow Apple fanboys, gather
your shovels and pickaxes. There is much work to be done before morning! Steve Jobs,
thine will be done.
When will the hurting stop? Bandwidth is measured in kbit/s, Mbit/s, etc. Please express this in some rate related to seconds if you're going to use it because the phrase "unlimited bandwidth" means to me that I should be able to sit down and at the drop of a hat (or the spinning of several platters) have a DVD from my friend's computer located on my computer.
I think a more appropriate term would be something like "no monthly download limit" or some such thing... not as seksi as bandwidth but for the love of god please keep these ideas separate. Unless you're going to start talking about bandwidth as in GB/month or TB/month which would drive the hardware and network guys nuts because that is a meaningless metric.
HONEY LOVE
YOU ARE MY DEAR PASSION: MY ADORABLE FERVOUR: MY ARDENT INFATUATION: MY ARDENT DEVOTION. MY PASSIONATE LUST BREATHLESSLY HOPES FOR YOUR LIKING.
YOURS BURNINGLY
M. U. C.
Now that's some vintage computer porn!
But seriously, I'm interested in how the Manchester Mark 1 implemented its random number instruction (to select the phrases for the love poems). Was it von Neumann'smiddle square method from 1946? Does anyone know?
I remember lengthy discussion in my undergrad days of how a completely logical computer could come up with a truly random number and talking about the theory that every software solution is pseudorandom. I'm just wondering what the first computer had implemented.
What happens if two people have the same idea and both apply for patents?
This happens sometimes. When the Patent and Trademark Office receives two patent applications for the same inventions, the cases go into an interference proceeding. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences then determines the first inventor who thus may be entitled to a patent based on the information provided by the inventors. This is why it is so important for inventors to keep good records.
And also
How can I find out if my invention has or hasn't been invented by someone else?
Inventors can make a search of patents already granted, text books, journals and other publications to be sure that someone else has not already invented their idea. They may hire someone to do it for them or may do this themselves at the Public Search Room of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Arlington, Virginia, on the PTO web page on the Internet, or at one of the Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries across the country.
The site only says that "abstract ideas" cannot be patented. I apologize for following the law but when I said "while at the same time licensing that idea to other companies" it is not an abstract idea but instead a very specific idea with an implementation already at hand. I would be more happy than if I were meeting Alan Turing if what you said was true but the link you provided did not really back up your claims.
What is the motive behind this new license? To cherry pick a few of the ideals of Open Source Software (OSS)?
It sounds like, from the license, that they want the openness of many eyes reviewing and improving the code with derivative work while at the same time licensing that idea to other companies. Which, frankly, I cannot comprehend as any company would just opt for the open source community code to integrate into their product than pay the patent holder to roll their own. Or are they planning on charging you for the "open source" version like normal software? If so, how is that any difference from a commercial license modified so that you receive the code to review with the product?
I mean, I'm happy for them to do whatever they feel like... I don't mind more licenses and I think the MPL was a step in the right direction but not perfect. Either way, observers can be sure of one thing, there are at least some aspects of open source that appeal very much to a lot of people. It will be interesting to see what results from this endeavor.
The New York Times reports that many YouTube users have found themselves in the same position as high school sophomore Juliet Weybret, who posted a video of herself playing piano and singing "Winter Wonderland."
Troy McClure: Oh, how darling! That is one swinging rendition, Juliet! Troy McClure: But today I'm going to teach you the magic of copyrights! Do you know that you're violating the law? *Juliet shakes her head* Troy McClure: GOOD! That just might hold up as a defense in court if you look a little more sweeter and innocent. But your fate is up to the RIAA to decide! Troy McClure: You see, Juliet, copyright law is designed to be much too complex for any normal citizen to understand for a reason: so that you, the average citizen, will always lose. Now where did you learn that song from? Juliet Wybret: My grandma. Troy McClure: Jackpot! The RIAA loves to interact with the elderly that can't understand technology. I'm certain she paid a handsome sum to play that song for you though otherwise the two of you are thieves. You're not a thief, are you Juliet? Juliet Wybret: I don't think so. Troy McClure: Of course not! You see there is a simple law that states for works created after 1978 copyright lasts 70 years after the last surviving author's death (in the case of joint) and works between 1964 and 1977 are the same except were under the old model which had terms of 28 years starting in 1923 but they had to be renewed in order to enjoy the benefit of the full 95 year term after the last surviving author's death. Easy to remember, right? So you see, Winter Wonderland was composed by Felix Bernard who died in 1944 and the lyrics were written by Richard B. Smith who died in 1935. The good news is that you can publicly say the lyrics after 2030 and play the music on piano after 2039! So you're almost there! Juliet Wybret: Bu... but my grandma and mom play this song for the whole family every Christmas... Troy McClure: Easy there, Juliet! The RIAA's got enough ammo against you as it is. Remember, the Senators and Congresspeople who represent you and your interests want it this way so be an American Patriot and embrace the law! They were only thinking of a fair system for you and the artists when they made these laws. See you next time!
The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics states that bodies in a system must remain in equilibrium. So if we're experiencing global warming where are we getting that energy from? It must be coming from somewhere?
The answer, fellow scientists, is that we are stealing that energy from the Sun.
Yes, my charts and ramblings reveal that our greenhouse gases are trapping sunlight... sunlight that would return to the Sun and heat it back up causing sunspots. I am currently drafting a bill that will move sunspots to the endangered phenomena list. That same bill will introduce that list and hopefully this will be reason enough to form it unlike Senator Kerry's attempt to create the list when he saw Rosie O'Donnell exercising (or so he thought).
Gentlemen, we must act now. There is no more time for debating and arguing. The sunspots are going away and without that, we may lose our natural magnetic storms and maybe even the precious Aurora Borealis. Our Northern Lights are in danger while you sit back here comfortably in your chairs. Today we are polluters in the hands of an angry environment tomorrow we may be dead. We have angered the environment and now we must face the wrath of the environment. Including, but not limited to, the loss of sunspots.
I don't know about you but when I was a kid, we celebrated sunspots with our parents. Upwards we gazed directly into the sun, fueling the optometry industry. Yes, sunspots create jobs and foster growth. Do you want to share sunspot gazing with your children and their children? I know I do.
But all is not lost. The environment is injured and may be weak enough for us to stop it before it kills us all. I propose a preemptive strike now while we still have time. We could sneak in special units disguised in ponchos and Birkenstock's with thermonuclear weapons that would devastate the environment and save us from certain death at its hands. China has already rendered the environment obsolete and it is our turn to follow suit. Gentlemen, the question today is not if we should deal a final blow to the environment but when.
I think what you are looking for is something called "document management" software. As far as FOSS goes, KnowledgeTree offers a community version that might be down your alley. They have an online demo if you're interested. There's also Alfresco but I haven't tried either of these.
From the sound of it, you want to verify that your product supports document tagging (not unlike Slashdot's tagging system I guess) so that he can attach his categories to documents as he puts them in (or more likely as you do the manual labor, right?).
... where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords?
So, my big concern is the part where you said he scans things from books and articles and so some of the PDFs might just be massive images, right? I don't think you're going to find systems with OCR built in so you might have quite the chore on your hands. If you don't have it electronically or if it's just an image electronically, you may have to implement some sort of process for getting a doc into this system so it can be searched, right? Look into GOCR or Tesseract if this is the case.
Also, judging by your nickname ("Sooner Boomer"), you're at the University of Oklahoma. Why in the world would you name yourself after a group of people who not only disobeyed the Indian Appropriation Act but also moved out onto Native American territory before it was officially declared property of the United States? And then you also chose "Boomer" which refers to "white settlers who believed the Unassigned Lands were public property and open to anyone for settlement, not just Indian tribes. Their reasoning came from a clause in the Homestead Act of 1862, which said that any settler could claim 160 acres of public land. Some boomers entered and were removed more than once by the United States Army." If you are a descendant of either a Sooner or a Boomer, I respectfully do not agree with their actions.
Unless somebody comes up with a novel technical use for an entire TLD
From the article,
To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as.cereal or.detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, says Levins, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding war.
So ICANN has reinvented the.com bidding war and they're the money makers because they missed out on auctioning cereal.com and cereal.org etc. Also, if the company's dropping $185k on the application fee, I think I would sell my stock anyway.
Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in.philly.
Or maybe.pa or maybe even.penn or maybe even.hist or maybe even.bells or maybe even.revwar? Or maybe tourists will have to check all of those since they're all valid categories? And maybe the site www.ushistory.org/libertybell/ will have to register in all of those categories?
A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in.hiphop.
Or maybe.music or maybe.ryhme or maybe.lyric or maybe.album or maybe.songs or maybe.r for "Rapper" or maybe.rap? Or maybe I want to target fans of said rapper and register his name dot whatever on one of those and post it all over message boards. On the site would be a link saying "click here for the latest album free!" where they enter their address and name? Then I Google bomb said rappers name on forums and boards with my site so that it shows up as number one in Google. If I get sued for it, just give it up and dream up another TLD that could dupe a fan. Let's not even get started on my vast collection of www.google.cmo, www.google.ocm, www.google.moc, etc.
I'm just going to throw out the idea that TLDs were never intended to be a complete ontology of all things. And you're making a whole lot of problems (security and logistical) for people so that you can make clever domain names. Is this really necessary?
The article makes them sound ridiculously expensive... what exactly is the point of this again? An ICANN get rich quick scam?
On his blog, entitled "Google Public Policy", Alexander Macgillivray weighed in as well (and since he's Associate General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property for Google this may have more weight than the CEO).
He makes a pretty common argument that Google News actually helps every news service as opposed to the AP's claims of hurting them (maybe even stealing from them).
And then he defaults to fair use:
In the U.S., the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the US Copyright Act allows us to show snippets and links. The fair use doctrine protects transformative uses of content, such as indexing to make it easier to find. Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index -- all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards such as robots.txt or metatags.
And remember folks, he is a lawyer (although I am not).
They are not without flaw though, even their Barracude by Heart is a confusing $1.29 (must have been an expensive song to produce) and I also rarely find their $0.79 tracks. I think albums on both sites are a standard $10 though, correct? So it's not that big of a difference for people like me that are interested in the artist and the album as a whole when the other 11 tracks aren't phoned in. Sometimes I find shorter albums a few bucks cheaper on Amazon. Haven't cared to check iTunes for that.
Hope the Amazon US site follows suit with that 29 pence action.
Much of the hearing today focused on what transpired during an April 15, 2008, interview with the key witness, Bill Allen. During that interview, according to notes taken by two of the prosecutors, Allen said he did not recall talking to a friend of Stevens's about sending the senator a bill for work on his home, according to Sullivan.
Under oath at trial, however, Allen testified that he was told by the friend to ignore a note Stevens sent seeking a bill for the remodeling work.
"Bill, don't worry about getting a bill" for Stevens, Allen said the friend told him. "Ted is just covering his [expletive]."
Ok, so we have Ted Stevens asking for a bill on the remodeling, like he should. But it sounds like one was never received or produced. So what was Stevens convicted of?
After a month-long trial, Stevens was convicted of not reporting on Senate disclosure forms that he accepted about $250,000 in gifts and free renovations to his home in Girdwood, Alaska. Most of the gifts and free remodeling work were supplied by Bill Allen, chief executive of Veco, a now-defunct oil services company.
Ok, regardless of whether or not an invoice was ever produced, the Senate is required to report things like this on their financial disclosure forms so that under the table payments can be discovered. It still sounds like he's guilty for failing to put "I just got these bitching additions to my house from this contractor for $0." Which should spark an investigation.
My point is whether they find him guilty or not, he failed his duties as a senator. It's a shame the prosecution botched this case and withheld that evidence from the court as he's still guilty of failing to disclose this information publicly on his financial disclosure form.
Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 -- more than 7 years after the war began.
1 - Tell someone a story.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to someone else.
3 - Sue.
A great plan indeed. I can't foresee any way it may fail.
I think it's kind of different. They are gaining revenue for telling the story. And it's not fictional... and they will be held accountable if they get some facts wrong. And also that's how they make their money.
A more accurate analogy (though still flawed) would be:
1 - Do a lot of footwork to find the facts and tell them to someone to make a tiny sum of money.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to 10,000 other people with your exact words and little to no attribution to you and he makes a nominal sum of money.
3 - Sue.
Not really a plan, as step 2 requires action on someone else's part. Hey, I don't predict this to fail the way the MPAA/RIAA are being backed by congress and the courts. Legal or legislative action is at the AP's disposal.
The article correctly noted that craigslist's staggering success is not the real story here. Craigslist has been growing quite nicely for sometime. Also, it is not Craigslist that has grown drastically but Craigslist Cities custom category's number of visits went up 90% between Feb '08 and Feb '09 and all other classifieds grew 22 percent. Craigslist cities is below all other classifieds in the graph on their blog which contradicts what the article is saying. So that 90% figure is a bit misleading and I think it is a particular custom division of Craigslist.
The news is that they think the recession is causing this thrift explosion. From the article:
So it seems the recession is more or less rescuing some classifieds sites while acting as a rocket booster for Craigslist. This meshes well with last week's info about Craigslist replacing MySpace as the top U.S. search term.
And from Hitwise's blog:
Market share of US Internet Visits increased 90% to the Craigslist Cities custom category year over
year in February 2009 while visits to All Other Classifieds grew 22%.Visits to All Other Classifieds had been declining for most of 2008 with visits starting to increase in January and February. This suggests that the worsening US economy may be boosting visits to classifieds websites, and contributing to the recent up tick in visits to both Craigslist Cities and All Other Classifieds.
I'm not sold on their evidence. I don't see a huge jump since February of '08 in search popularity. Why do we do this with percentages? We break them down into categories and play the telephone game to distort them for the sole purpose of shock-and-awe reporting leading to ad revenue?
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
I mean, I've got Linux running on my Nintendo DS from a community effort and it seems to support much of the DS' devices like the touch screen. You're telling me Google or Samsung or interested parties couldn't do the same for an existing phone? Am I missing something regarding hardware requirements? I mean, I know it uses Java libraries for the applications but a lot of existing phones should be beefy enough for that, right?
In 2002 4 or 5 of the 13 root servers were big news... although we've come a long way since then, I think the integrity of the internet still depends on these things.
Given this impression and add to it the fact that the botnets seem to grow in tandem with the internet, I wouldn't be surprised to see an attack take her down in 30 minutes although I'm no expert. I think 30 minutes is a generous amount of time if one of the larger botnets turned its attention on the root servers for a DDOS attack. You'd have some fail overs and some courageous engineer might save the day but I'd put my money on the bad guys.
I would be surprised if it was down for more than 24 hours following that though.
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and
makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton,
head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly.'
Your resistance is futile. It perplexes me that you -- a university librarian -- cannot
see what is so obvious to me but I will spoon feed it to you. We live in a capitalistic
society where supply rises to meet demand. I am a ravenous consumer of books and for
sometime have desired an all-encompassing repository of books. You, the writers guilds,
the publishers, the industry as a whole have failed to meet this demand for sometime now.
Unfortunately for you, the early bird gets the worm. The early bird being Google, the worm
being my rewarding eyeballs and possibly pocketbook. I may have been the minority of your
consumers but that has changed and it is no longer you against a few nerds. It's you
against the world. You will lose. Your industry has successfully prevented this. Why,
I'm not quite sure. Greed? Stupidity? There are so many good words to pick from.
You will have to forgive me when I lack sympathy for your position on the books your
archaic publishing system fails to make available to me. Oh no, no one will ever be able
to publish them now! Alas, woe is me. Instead of being permanently unavailable to me,
they will soon be available to everyone... I'm not even going to get into the jump they
see in sales when their books are digitized.
If Google's inevitable monopoly is nigh, why don't you draw up your own business plan to
garner venture capital and get all the universities to back you on it? Google's taking a
risk and in the end, it's going to be good for the end consumer.
Either shit or get off the toilet. You had your chance, you squandered it. This should
have been started almost a decade ago and completed five years ago. I'm sick and tired of the greed factor inhibiting such a useful tool for mankind. As head of an ivy league university library, I would have guessed support for what could well be the modern digital version of Alexandria before it was burned. I'm shocked a librarian would take this stance.
In case you want to discuss the review, here it is (don't read if you hate spoilers):
Yes, I've seen "X Men Origins: Wolverine." It wasn't at a screening, either. I found a work in progress print of it, 95 percent completed, on the internet last night. Let's hope by now it's gone.
But the cat is out of the bag, as they say, and the genie is out of the bottle. There's no turning back. But no, I will not tell you the big twist/surprise toward the end. Not now, a whole month away from release. That wouldn't be nice.
Right now, my "cousins" at 20th Century Fox are probably having apoplexy. I doubt anyone else has seen this film. But everyone can relax. I am, in fact, amazed about how great "Wolverine" turned out. It exceeds expectations at every turn. I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer.
I don't know what the really big headline is here: the fact that "Wolverine" is so good, or that I also found the current top 10 movies in theaters, as well as a turgid domestic drama called "Fireflies in the Garden" with Ryan Reynolds and Julia Roberts -- the latter in a minor role while her husband, Danny Moder, is credited as director of photography.
I did find the whole top 10, plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room? Later tonight I may finally catch up with Paul Rudd in "I Love You, Man." It's so much easier than going out in the rain!
But back to "Wolverine": this is the prequel to the first "X Men" movie. Directed by Gavin Hood, the film is as cutting edge as it is old fashioned. This may be the big blockbuster film of 2009, and one we really need right now. It's miles easier to understand than "The Dark Knight," and tremendously more emotional. Hood simply did an excellent job bringing Wolverine's early life to the screen.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, of course, and he is more a movie star in this movie than ever before. It doesn't hurt that he's spent every waking minute in the gym. Hood doesn't hide that. Jackman fans will get their fill of their hero. He's joined by a phenomenal cast, too â" Liev Schreiber as his evil but equally clawed brother, Victor, aka Sabretooth; Ryan Reynolds (he gets a lot of work, that's for sure) as Deadpool; Dominic Monagan as Beak; Kevin Durand as the Blob; and the sensational sort of Han Solo-ish Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. There's also sultry Lynn Collins as Wolverine's love interest, and Danny Huston as the villainous Colonel Stryker.
I do think the film works so beautifully because the screenplay is so streamlined. David Benioff (whose real name, I read, is David Friedman -- he's married to Amanda Peet) carefully delineated these characters and did a smashing job. I had less trouble following this story than the one in "Fireflies in the Garden." He's made "Wolverine" just the right kind of summer entertainment -- a thrill ride with lots of emotional investment and a hero simply bigger than life. That's all you can ask for.
Now, I did see "Wolverine" on a large, wide computer screen, and not in a movie theater, but it could not have played better. Still, this was a workprint and there were about a dozen things not finished. A couple of times it was possible to see the harnesses on the actors. It didn't take away from the film at all. But obviously someone who had access to a print uploaded the film onto this website. This begs several questions about security. Time to round up the usual suspects!
... I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers...
Oh, how pleasent, what a smart move for IBM.
... and related technology.
Woh. Hold on. Wait. Please, I beg of you, save Sun's software from IBM's slow moving process and lack of usability.
I must confess that while I have used Solaris, the only thing I have ever cared about from Sun enough to bitch is Java and Java related thingies. Now, I'm not saying that this is going to fall apart if/when it transfers to IBM's hands and I certainly hope that the people involved in those projects stay there but if I look at the products of the two companies I must say that Sun is far better at Software.
This hasn't always been the case but let's look at web application servers. The free open source Glassfish container has been one of my favorites for development. Websphere, on the extreme other side of the spectrum, was the bane of my existence for a very short time in my life causing me to lose sleep night after night. I would take Weblogic, Tomcat, Resin, anything over Websphere. Please, baby Jesus, if you can hear me do not let this happens and if it does, let Glassfish be the source code they stick with moving forward.
Although I'm sure you'd love to hear me bitch for hours about Rational products, I'm just going to say that I think competition is healthy and also I prefer Sun Software to remain Sun Software. I hope this deal falls apart. I've loved IBM's tutorials but do not care for their software.
From 2007, the modular data center patent (where the bottommost image of the article comes from). There's no lack of patents revealing piece by piece how their power management setup works.
Ah, the catch--22 of the patent--being forced to reveal your hand in order to protect it while underpaid workers at Baidu figure out how to integrate your ideas into their hardware.
Let me just point out that it's very cold in space. Even with the sun nearby, I think we'd all experience at least a little bit of shrinkage if we were in Jupiter's position and it's not fair for the other planets to laugh at him.
Disclaimer: I do not care for (nor own but a couple) manga, comic books or 'graphic novels.'
But when I was bored out of my mind one day I picked up the first of a six part series called "Origin" issued by Marvel in 2001.
The story was good (not great) but the art was phenomenal. I am glad they re-worked Wolverine's origin story from whatever they had alluded to before and I recommend you view this series based purely on its art.
I can't find any indication of which story they are basing this film on. I only hope the movie can live up to the beautiful imagery and settings in this series.
I also hold the very unpopular viewpoint that it's basically a slap in the face to an artist to view their work before they're done with it. I also find it laughable that anyone would seek this out aside from people involved in movie production or people interested in this process to study. Do I think it will hurt the movie or cause any amount of financial loss? No, it's merely disrespectful and actually kind of humorous that anyone would ruin the initial exposure of what could amount to a great film.
Oh how true that is. I myself love to criticize things (I'm reading Slashdot, after all). But why don't I constructively criticize Linux?
I think a lot of has to do with what every argument or analysis starts with: base assumptions. So let's start with comparing Linux to the leading commercial operating systems and the most important thing to consumers--price. And the guy mentions this in his blog. But we can't get to questions like "Is feature X really worth Y dollars to me?" Because Linux does not cost money to install. It's like dividing by zero. It makes criticism of a missing component difficult because it doesn't cost me anything! How can I criticize it?! You will see people like Steve Ballmer have to dig and dig into imaginary costs of retraining, supporting and maintaining Linux to give it a "hidden cost" so that Windows can even begin to contend with Linux in price (you'll notice these concerns were suspiciously left out of advertisements when discussing the switch from XP to Vista).
Another important aspect of operating systems (at least to me) is security. And, being a pedantic ass, I cannot even comment on the security of the Microsoft operating system because I have no idea what they are doing. I can get the Linux source code pretty quickly if I felt the need to understand why it is that the userspace/kernelspace concept has failed (although, I have never done this, the option is there). So, again, we enter this point where I can't even get to criticizing Linux for susceptibility to a botnet or trojan because it doesn't practice security through obfuscation like leading operating systems.
On top of this, as a Linux user (and as evidenced above) my priorities and performance parameters are all out of whack and completely divorced from the mainstream (or so my perception goes). If they weren't, I would be using Windows primarily at home.
So I think that unless more free open source operating systems arise to compete with Linux, criticism will remain low. And you've got the cult barrier to break down where people have lived with the burden of paying out their ass for software so how can you criticize something after suffering for so long under the blah blah blah religious spiel blah blah blah.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple Promises Motherload to Billionth App Downloader
They promise to deliver Bristol's massive storm water drain system?! But how will they deal with flooding?! I am dubious.
Well, I knew this cult would cost a lot of time and money. Fellow Apple fanboys, gather your shovels and pickaxes. There is much work to be done before morning! Steve Jobs, thine will be done.
Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150
When will the hurting stop? Bandwidth is measured in kbit/s, Mbit/s, etc. Please express this in some rate related to seconds if you're going to use it because the phrase "unlimited bandwidth" means to me that I should be able to sit down and at the drop of a hat (or the spinning of several platters) have a DVD from my friend's computer located on my computer.
... not as seksi as bandwidth but for the love of god please keep these ideas separate. Unless you're going to start talking about bandwidth as in GB/month or TB/month which would drive the hardware and network guys nuts because that is a meaningless metric.
I think a more appropriate term would be something like "no monthly download limit" or some such thing
HONEY LOVE
YOU ARE MY DEAR PASSION: MY ADORABLE FERVOUR: MY ARDENT INFATUATION: MY ARDENT DEVOTION. MY PASSIONATE LUST BREATHLESSLY HOPES FOR YOUR LIKING.
YOURS BURNINGLY
M. U. C.
Now that's some vintage computer porn!
But seriously, I'm interested in how the Manchester Mark 1 implemented its random number instruction (to select the phrases for the love poems). Was it von Neumann's middle square method from 1946? Does anyone know?
I remember lengthy discussion in my undergrad days of how a completely logical computer could come up with a truly random number and talking about the theory that every software solution is pseudorandom. I'm just wondering what the first computer had implemented.
What happens if two people have the same idea and both apply for patents?
This happens sometimes. When the Patent and Trademark Office receives two patent applications for the same inventions, the cases go into an interference proceeding. The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences then determines the first inventor who thus may be entitled to a patent based on the information provided by the inventors. This is why it is so important for inventors to keep good records.
And also
How can I find out if my invention has or hasn't been invented by someone else?
Inventors can make a search of patents already granted, text books, journals and other publications to be sure that someone else has not already invented their idea. They may hire someone to do it for them or may do this themselves at the Public Search Room of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Arlington, Virginia, on the PTO web page on the Internet, or at one of the Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries across the country.
The site only says that "abstract ideas" cannot be patented. I apologize for following the law but when I said "while at the same time licensing that idea to other companies" it is not an abstract idea but instead a very specific idea with an implementation already at hand. I would be more happy than if I were meeting Alan Turing if what you said was true but the link you provided did not really back up your claims.
What is the motive behind this new license? To cherry pick a few of the ideals of Open Source Software (OSS)?
... I don't mind more licenses and I think the MPL was a step in the right direction but not perfect. Either way, observers can be sure of one thing, there are at least some aspects of open source that appeal very much to a lot of people. It will be interesting to see what results from this endeavor.
It sounds like, from the license, that they want the openness of many eyes reviewing and improving the code with derivative work while at the same time licensing that idea to other companies. Which, frankly, I cannot comprehend as any company would just opt for the open source community code to integrate into their product than pay the patent holder to roll their own. Or are they planning on charging you for the "open source" version like normal software? If so, how is that any difference from a commercial license modified so that you receive the code to review with the product?
I mean, I'm happy for them to do whatever they feel like
The New York Times reports that many YouTube users have found themselves in the same position as high school sophomore Juliet Weybret, who posted a video of herself playing piano and singing "Winter Wonderland."
Troy McClure: Oh, how darling! That is one swinging rendition, Juliet! ... but my grandma and mom play this song for the whole family every Christmas ...
Troy McClure: But today I'm going to teach you the magic of copyrights! Do you know that you're violating the law?
*Juliet shakes her head*
Troy McClure: GOOD! That just might hold up as a defense in court if you look a little more sweeter and innocent. But your fate is up to the RIAA to decide!
Troy McClure: You see, Juliet, copyright law is designed to be much too complex for any normal citizen to understand for a reason: so that you, the average citizen, will always lose. Now where did you learn that song from?
Juliet Wybret: My grandma.
Troy McClure: Jackpot! The RIAA loves to interact with the elderly that can't understand technology. I'm certain she paid a handsome sum to play that song for you though otherwise the two of you are thieves. You're not a thief, are you Juliet?
Juliet Wybret: I don't think so.
Troy McClure: Of course not! You see there is a simple law that states for works created after 1978 copyright lasts 70 years after the last surviving author's death (in the case of joint) and works between 1964 and 1977 are the same except were under the old model which had terms of 28 years starting in 1923 but they had to be renewed in order to enjoy the benefit of the full 95 year term after the last surviving author's death. Easy to remember, right? So you see, Winter Wonderland was composed by Felix Bernard who died in 1944 and the lyrics were written by Richard B. Smith who died in 1935. The good news is that you can publicly say the lyrics after 2030 and play the music on piano after 2039! So you're almost there!
Juliet Wybret: Bu
Troy McClure: Easy there, Juliet! The RIAA's got enough ammo against you as it is. Remember, the Senators and Congresspeople who represent you and your interests want it this way so be an American Patriot and embrace the law! They were only thinking of a fair system for you and the artists when they made these laws. See you next time!
The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics states that bodies in a system must remain in equilibrium. So if we're experiencing global warming where are we getting that energy from? It must be coming from somewhere?
... sunlight that would return to the Sun and heat it back up causing sunspots. I am currently drafting a bill that will move sunspots to the endangered phenomena list. That same bill will introduce that list and hopefully this will be reason enough to form it unlike Senator Kerry's attempt to create the list when he saw Rosie O'Donnell exercising (or so he thought).
The answer, fellow scientists, is that we are stealing that energy from the Sun.
Yes, my charts and ramblings reveal that our greenhouse gases are trapping sunlight
Gentlemen, we must act now. There is no more time for debating and arguing. The sunspots are going away and without that, we may lose our natural magnetic storms and maybe even the precious Aurora Borealis. Our Northern Lights are in danger while you sit back here comfortably in your chairs. Today we are polluters in the hands of an angry environment tomorrow we may be dead. We have angered the environment and now we must face the wrath of the environment. Including, but not limited to, the loss of sunspots.
I don't know about you but when I was a kid, we celebrated sunspots with our parents. Upwards we gazed directly into the sun, fueling the optometry industry. Yes, sunspots create jobs and foster growth. Do you want to share sunspot gazing with your children and their children? I know I do.
But all is not lost. The environment is injured and may be weak enough for us to stop it before it kills us all. I propose a preemptive strike now while we still have time. We could sneak in special units disguised in ponchos and Birkenstock's with thermonuclear weapons that would devastate the environment and save us from certain death at its hands. China has already rendered the environment obsolete and it is our turn to follow suit. Gentlemen, the question today is not if we should deal a final blow to the environment but when.
From the sound of it, you want to verify that your product supports document tagging (not unlike Slashdot's tagging system I guess) so that he can attach his categories to documents as he puts them in (or more likely as you do the manual labor, right?).
... where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords?
So, my big concern is the part where you said he scans things from books and articles and so some of the PDFs might just be massive images, right? I don't think you're going to find systems with OCR built in so you might have quite the chore on your hands. If you don't have it electronically or if it's just an image electronically, you may have to implement some sort of process for getting a doc into this system so it can be searched, right? Look into GOCR or Tesseract if this is the case.
Also, judging by your nickname ("Sooner Boomer"), you're at the University of Oklahoma. Why in the world would you name yourself after a group of people who not only disobeyed the Indian Appropriation Act but also moved out onto Native American territory before it was officially declared property of the United States? And then you also chose "Boomer" which refers to "white settlers who believed the Unassigned Lands were public property and open to anyone for settlement, not just Indian tribes. Their reasoning came from a clause in the Homestead Act of 1862, which said that any settler could claim 160 acres of public land. Some boomers entered and were removed more than once by the United States Army." If you are a descendant of either a Sooner or a Boomer, I respectfully do not agree with their actions.
Unless somebody comes up with a novel technical use for an entire TLD
From the article,
To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, says Levins, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding war.
So ICANN has reinvented the .com bidding war and they're the money makers because they missed out on auctioning cereal.com and cereal.org etc. Also, if the company's dropping $185k on the application fee, I think I would sell my stock anyway.
Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly.
Or maybe .pa or maybe even .penn or maybe even .hist or maybe even .bells or maybe even .revwar? Or maybe tourists will have to check all of those since they're all valid categories? And maybe the site www.ushistory.org/libertybell/ will have to register in all of those categories?
A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop.
Or maybe .music or maybe .ryhme or maybe .lyric or maybe .album or maybe .songs or maybe .r for "Rapper" or maybe .rap? Or maybe I want to target fans of said rapper and register his name dot whatever on one of those and post it all over message boards. On the site would be a link saying "click here for the latest album free!" where they enter their address and name? Then I Google bomb said rappers name on forums and boards with my site so that it shows up as number one in Google. If I get sued for it, just give it up and dream up another TLD that could dupe a fan. Let's not even get started on my vast collection of www.google.cmo, www.google.ocm, www.google.moc, etc.
... what exactly is the point of this again? An ICANN get rich quick scam?
I'm just going to throw out the idea that TLDs were never intended to be a complete ontology of all things. And you're making a whole lot of problems (security and logistical) for people so that you can make clever domain names. Is this really necessary?
The article makes them sound ridiculously expensive
He makes a pretty common argument that Google News actually helps every news service as opposed to the AP's claims of hurting them (maybe even stealing from them).
And then he defaults to fair use:
In the U.S., the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the US Copyright Act allows us to show snippets and links. The fair use doctrine protects transformative uses of content, such as indexing to make it easier to find. Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index -- all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards such as robots.txt or metatags.
And remember folks, he is a lawyer (although I am not).
Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42).
At the risk of sounding like an Amazon shill, Engadget helps those of you looking to get this week's disposable music that's shoved down your gullet on the radio.
They are not without flaw though, even their Barracude by Heart is a confusing $1.29 (must have been an expensive song to produce) and I also rarely find their $0.79 tracks. I think albums on both sites are a standard $10 though, correct? So it's not that big of a difference for people like me that are interested in the artist and the album as a whole when the other 11 tracks aren't phoned in. Sometimes I find shorter albums a few bucks cheaper on Amazon. Haven't cared to check iTunes for that.
Hope the Amazon US site follows suit with that 29 pence action.
Much of the hearing today focused on what transpired during an April 15, 2008, interview with the key witness, Bill Allen. During that interview, according to notes taken by two of the prosecutors, Allen said he did not recall talking to a friend of Stevens's about sending the senator a bill for work on his home, according to Sullivan.
Under oath at trial, however, Allen testified that he was told by the friend to ignore a note Stevens sent seeking a bill for the remodeling work.
"Bill, don't worry about getting a bill" for Stevens, Allen said the friend told him. "Ted is just covering his [expletive]."
Ok, so we have Ted Stevens asking for a bill on the remodeling, like he should. But it sounds like one was never received or produced. So what was Stevens convicted of?
After a month-long trial, Stevens was convicted of not reporting on Senate disclosure forms that he accepted about $250,000 in gifts and free renovations to his home in Girdwood, Alaska. Most of the gifts and free remodeling work were supplied by Bill Allen, chief executive of Veco, a now-defunct oil services company.
Ok, regardless of whether or not an invoice was ever produced, the Senate is required to report things like this on their financial disclosure forms so that under the table payments can be discovered. It still sounds like he's guilty for failing to put "I just got these bitching additions to my house from this contractor for $0." Which should spark an investigation.
My point is whether they find him guilty or not, he failed his duties as a senator. It's a shame the prosecution botched this case and withheld that evidence from the court as he's still guilty of failing to disclose this information publicly on his financial disclosure form.
Aside from that, business as usual I guess. No point in getting rid of all the cool toys the last guy left lying around, right?
On another note, have you begun your responsible phased withdrawal from Iraq you promised me when I voted for you, Mr. Obama?
Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 -- more than 7 years after the war began.
How's that going, by the way?
1 - Tell someone a story. 2 - Wait till he tells the same story to someone else. 3 - Sue.
A great plan indeed. I can't foresee any way it may fail.
I think it's kind of different. They are gaining revenue for telling the story. And it's not fictional ... and they will be held accountable if they get some facts wrong. And also that's how they make their money.
A more accurate analogy (though still flawed) would be:
1 - Do a lot of footwork to find the facts and tell them to someone to make a tiny sum of money.
2 - Wait till he tells the same story to 10,000 other people with your exact words and little to no attribution to you and he makes a nominal sum of money.
3 - Sue.
Not really a plan, as step 2 requires action on someone else's part. Hey, I don't predict this to fail the way the MPAA/RIAA are being backed by congress and the courts. Legal or legislative action is at the AP's disposal.
The news is that they think the recession is causing this thrift explosion. From the article:
So it seems the recession is more or less rescuing some classifieds sites while acting as a rocket booster for Craigslist. This meshes well with last week's info about Craigslist replacing MySpace as the top U.S. search term.
And from Hitwise's blog:
Market share of US Internet Visits increased 90% to the Craigslist Cities custom category year over year in February 2009 while visits to All Other Classifieds grew 22%.Visits to All Other Classifieds had been declining for most of 2008 with visits starting to increase in January and February. This suggests that the worsening US economy may be boosting visits to classifieds websites, and contributing to the recent up tick in visits to both Craigslist Cities and All Other Classifieds.
I'm not sold on their evidence. I don't see a huge jump since February of '08 in search popularity. Why do we do this with percentages? We break them down into categories and play the telephone game to distort them for the sole purpose of shock-and-awe reporting leading to ad revenue?
It's my understanding that Android is a mobile OS based in Linux so why do we need to feature new phones? Can't we take an already popular model (like the Chocolate or Razr or whatever the devil it is the kids consume these days) and just compile it down to match the architecture and write the drivers for the devices on the phone?
I mean, I've got Linux running on my Nintendo DS from a community effort and it seems to support much of the DS' devices like the touch screen. You're telling me Google or Samsung or interested parties couldn't do the same for an existing phone? Am I missing something regarding hardware requirements? I mean, I know it uses Java libraries for the applications but a lot of existing phones should be beefy enough for that, right?
In 2002 4 or 5 of the 13 root servers were big news ... although we've come a long way since then, I think the integrity of the internet still depends on these things.
Every so often we get reports that the internet is a rickety old jalopy on it's last leg.
Given this impression and add to it the fact that the botnets seem to grow in tandem with the internet, I wouldn't be surprised to see an attack take her down in 30 minutes although I'm no expert. I think 30 minutes is a generous amount of time if one of the larger botnets turned its attention on the root servers for a DDOS attack. You'd have some fail overs and some courageous engineer might save the day but I'd put my money on the bad guys.
I would be surprised if it was down for more than 24 hours following that though.
The settlement, 'takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,' said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. 'Google will be a monopoly.'
Why is it that books -- of all things -- should be the last thing to be digitized?
... I'm not even going to get into the jump they
see in sales when their books are digitized.
Your resistance is futile. It perplexes me that you -- a university librarian -- cannot see what is so obvious to me but I will spoon feed it to you. We live in a capitalistic society where supply rises to meet demand. I am a ravenous consumer of books and for sometime have desired an all-encompassing repository of books. You, the writers guilds, the publishers, the industry as a whole have failed to meet this demand for sometime now. Unfortunately for you, the early bird gets the worm. The early bird being Google, the worm being my rewarding eyeballs and possibly pocketbook. I may have been the minority of your consumers but that has changed and it is no longer you against a few nerds. It's you against the world. You will lose. Your industry has successfully prevented this. Why, I'm not quite sure. Greed? Stupidity? There are so many good words to pick from.
You will have to forgive me when I lack sympathy for your position on the books your archaic publishing system fails to make available to me. Oh no, no one will ever be able to publish them now! Alas, woe is me. Instead of being permanently unavailable to me, they will soon be available to everyone
If Google's inevitable monopoly is nigh, why don't you draw up your own business plan to garner venture capital and get all the universities to back you on it? Google's taking a risk and in the end, it's going to be good for the end consumer.
Either shit or get off the toilet. You had your chance, you squandered it. This should have been started almost a decade ago and completed five years ago. I'm sick and tired of the greed factor inhibiting such a useful tool for mankind. As head of an ivy league university library, I would have guessed support for what could well be the modern digital version of Alexandria before it was burned. I'm shocked a librarian would take this stance.
Yes, I've seen "X Men Origins: Wolverine." It wasn't at a screening, either. I found a work in progress print of it, 95 percent completed, on the internet last night. Let's hope by now it's gone.
But the cat is out of the bag, as they say, and the genie is out of the bottle. There's no turning back. But no, I will not tell you the big twist/surprise toward the end. Not now, a whole month away from release. That wouldn't be nice.
Right now, my "cousins" at 20th Century Fox are probably having apoplexy. I doubt anyone else has seen this film. But everyone can relax. I am, in fact, amazed about how great "Wolverine" turned out. It exceeds expectations at every turn. I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer.
I don't know what the really big headline is here: the fact that "Wolverine" is so good, or that I also found the current top 10 movies in theaters, as well as a turgid domestic drama called "Fireflies in the Garden" with Ryan Reynolds and Julia Roberts -- the latter in a minor role while her husband, Danny Moder, is credited as director of photography.
I did find the whole top 10, plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room? Later tonight I may finally catch up with Paul Rudd in "I Love You, Man." It's so much easier than going out in the rain!
But back to "Wolverine": this is the prequel to the first "X Men" movie. Directed by Gavin Hood, the film is as cutting edge as it is old fashioned. This may be the big blockbuster film of 2009, and one we really need right now. It's miles easier to understand than "The Dark Knight," and tremendously more emotional. Hood simply did an excellent job bringing Wolverine's early life to the screen.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, of course, and he is more a movie star in this movie than ever before. It doesn't hurt that he's spent every waking minute in the gym. Hood doesn't hide that. Jackman fans will get their fill of their hero. He's joined by a phenomenal cast, too â" Liev Schreiber as his evil but equally clawed brother, Victor, aka Sabretooth; Ryan Reynolds (he gets a lot of work, that's for sure) as Deadpool; Dominic Monagan as Beak; Kevin Durand as the Blob; and the sensational sort of Han Solo-ish Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. There's also sultry Lynn Collins as Wolverine's love interest, and Danny Huston as the villainous Colonel Stryker.
I do think the film works so beautifully because the screenplay is so streamlined. David Benioff (whose real name, I read, is David Friedman -- he's married to Amanda Peet) carefully delineated these characters and did a smashing job. I had less trouble following this story than the one in "Fireflies in the Garden." He's made "Wolverine" just the right kind of summer entertainment -- a thrill ride with lots of emotional investment and a hero simply bigger than life. That's all you can ask for.
Now, I did see "Wolverine" on a large, wide computer screen, and not in a movie theater, but it could not have played better. Still, this was a workprint and there were about a dozen things not finished. A couple of times it was possible to see the harnesses on the actors. It didn't take away from the film at all. But obviously someone who had access to a print uploaded the film onto this website. This begs several questions about security. Time to round up the usual suspects!
... I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers ...
Oh, how pleasent, what a smart move for IBM.
Woh. Hold on. Wait. Please, I beg of you, save Sun's software from IBM's slow moving process and lack of usability.
I must confess that while I have used Solaris, the only thing I have ever cared about from Sun enough to bitch is Java and Java related thingies. Now, I'm not saying that this is going to fall apart if/when it transfers to IBM's hands and I certainly hope that the people involved in those projects stay there but if I look at the products of the two companies I must say that Sun is far better at Software.
This hasn't always been the case but let's look at web application servers. The free open source Glassfish container has been one of my favorites for development. Websphere, on the extreme other side of the spectrum, was the bane of my existence for a very short time in my life causing me to lose sleep night after night. I would take Weblogic, Tomcat, Resin, anything over Websphere. Please, baby Jesus, if you can hear me do not let this happens and if it does, let Glassfish be the source code they stick with moving forward.
Although I'm sure you'd love to hear me bitch for hours about Rational products, I'm just going to say that I think competition is healthy and also I prefer Sun Software to remain Sun Software. I hope this deal falls apart. I've loved IBM's tutorials but do not care for their software.
From 2007, the modular data center patent (where the bottommost image of the article comes from). There's no lack of patents revealing piece by piece how their power management setup works.
Ah, the catch--22 of the patent--being forced to reveal your hand in order to protect it while underpaid workers at Baidu figure out how to integrate your ideas into their hardware.
Scientists know about shrinkage, right?
Let me just point out that it's very cold in space. Even with the sun nearby, I think we'd all experience at least a little bit of shrinkage if we were in Jupiter's position and it's not fair for the other planets to laugh at him.
Disclaimer: I do not care for (nor own but a couple) manga, comic books or 'graphic novels.'
But when I was bored out of my mind one day I picked up the first of a six part series called "Origin" issued by Marvel in 2001.
The story was good (not great) but the art was phenomenal. I am glad they re-worked Wolverine's origin story from whatever they had alluded to before and I recommend you view this series based purely on its art.
I can't find any indication of which story they are basing this film on. I only hope the movie can live up to the beautiful imagery and settings in this series.
I also hold the very unpopular viewpoint that it's basically a slap in the face to an artist to view their work before they're done with it. I also find it laughable that anyone would seek this out aside from people involved in movie production or people interested in this process to study. Do I think it will hurt the movie or cause any amount of financial loss? No, it's merely disrespectful and actually kind of humorous that anyone would ruin the initial exposure of what could amount to a great film.
Linux Needs Critics
Oh how true that is. I myself love to criticize things (I'm reading Slashdot, after all). But why don't I constructively criticize Linux?
I think a lot of has to do with what every argument or analysis starts with: base assumptions. So let's start with comparing Linux to the leading commercial operating systems and the most important thing to consumers--price. And the guy mentions this in his blog. But we can't get to questions like "Is feature X really worth Y dollars to me?" Because Linux does not cost money to install. It's like dividing by zero. It makes criticism of a missing component difficult because it doesn't cost me anything! How can I criticize it?! You will see people like Steve Ballmer have to dig and dig into imaginary costs of retraining, supporting and maintaining Linux to give it a "hidden cost" so that Windows can even begin to contend with Linux in price (you'll notice these concerns were suspiciously left out of advertisements when discussing the switch from XP to Vista).
Another important aspect of operating systems (at least to me) is security. And, being a pedantic ass, I cannot even comment on the security of the Microsoft operating system because I have no idea what they are doing. I can get the Linux source code pretty quickly if I felt the need to understand why it is that the userspace/kernelspace concept has failed (although, I have never done this, the option is there). So, again, we enter this point where I can't even get to criticizing Linux for susceptibility to a botnet or trojan because it doesn't practice security through obfuscation like leading operating systems.
On top of this, as a Linux user (and as evidenced above) my priorities and performance parameters are all out of whack and completely divorced from the mainstream (or so my perception goes). If they weren't, I would be using Windows primarily at home.
So I think that unless more free open source operating systems arise to compete with Linux, criticism will remain low. And you've got the cult barrier to break down where people have lived with the burden of paying out their ass for software so how can you criticize something after suffering for so long under the blah blah blah religious spiel blah blah blah.