I used to run a computer lab several years ago (Windows 2000 based) and one of the problems I found on more than one occasion was programs that would try to reregister all of their.DLLs when the program was started. The programmer was probably trying to make sure that their program didn't end up in.DLL hell, but I had to make sure all the requisite registry keys were writeable for all users. That's a real pain in the ass to do without opening the system up across the board. A lot of programs have gotten better about running as a normal user on XP.
Wouldn't it be possible to have the OS manage installations, and thus, manage complete uninstalling?
Oh, would that this were the case. Unfortunately, the OS in no way even remotely works that way, although I have, in the past, argued that it should. It would require a fundamental shift in both the OS and the thinking in Redmond. Software needs to be encapsulated. It needs to become fundamentally impossible for programs to alter the underlying OS or for them to alter any other program on the system. Unfortunately, this pretty much breaks legacy compatibility. So then you have to have another layer for legacy type programs where they can run wild but can only destroy the legacy layer/sandbox. Sort've like the WoW layer for running 16-bit programs.
Have you even read the decision or background on the case? The very narrow issue decided here is whether or not an injuction should automatically be granted in infringement cases. The ruling means, that courts have to follow a set of criteria in determining if an injunction should be granted or if damages should be resolved in some other fashion (ie, pay a boatload of money). Injuctive relief will still be granted in the vast majority of cases. The court is just reminding us that it is not an automatic remedy. Allow me to cite the important part of the ruling:
Held: The traditional four-factor test applied by courts of equity when considering whether to award permanent injunctive relief to a prevailing plaintiff applies to disputes arising under the Patent Act. That test requires a plaintiff to demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction. The decision to grant or deny such relief is an act of equitable discretion by the district court, reviewable on appeal for abuse of discretion. These principles apply with equal force to Patent Act disputes.
If that were the case, you would expect to see brain tumors from anyone working in the top floor of a building that had a mobile phone tower on top. If that were the case, there would be overwhelming evidence all over the country. But there isn't. It's far far more likely that there is a chemical reason behind this cancer cluster. A cleaning agent or fumigant used at some point on the floor would be the first place I would look. I can't rule out the possiblity that the construction of the tower focuses the right frequency of radiation somewhere on that floor, but it wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list of suspects.
It's a drop compared to consumption, but you're asking the wrong question: Is this a worthwhile endeveor? They expect to produce about a million liters a year. Right now, diesel fuel wholesales for, let's say, $.60/liter so the plant should see revenues of $600K/year. Now if they can operate and pay off the construction costs for less than $600K/year, then this is a good idea and should be implemented where possible. (Please note that I just plucked my numbers out of the air. I leave it to a trained professoinal to do an actual feasibility study. I'm also assuming a constant price of oil and we all know that it is anything but.)
Really, because I tend to think of IBM as the Microsoft of Linux. Or maybe the McDonalds of Linux. In any event, they've got the problem solved: There's not much money to be made in putting together a distro. On the other hand, they're raking it in on hardware and services.
They can record any call that touches the public telephone network - which nearly all VoIP calls do. Strict IP to IP they can't do much about - yet. But it's only a matter of time until they infiltrate ISPs and start logging IP (x.x.x.x) connected to port Z on (y.y.y.y). And then it will grow from there. Then VoIP will implement end to end encryption and the governement will mandate key escrow and it will only grow from there.
You're being much to charitable. Jack Thompson has far more in common with Fred Phelps. Dvorak makes wild predictions to draw in readers. Jack, like Fred, makes raving baseless accusations for reasons I can't understand. And how this article made the front page without the Monty Python Foot icon, I'll never know.
Over the past 6 months or so, I've been finding a lot of link farms in my search results. Oh, irony or irony, SEOs are making search results worthless.
Apparently you haven't studied quantum mechanics. Because this is just quantum mechanics on a very large scale. See, until we actually measure it, it both expands and crunches. Then, because we measured it, it changes the result, so we still don't actually know anything. I suppose that's fitting becuase there are far more important topics we could be studying instead of pulling shit out of our ass.
Well, I've certainly seen far worse patents, but I don't think this is any great invention either. It's just running an audio stream through a voice recognition package and filtering the output stream based on keyword hits. In the abstract, that's not much of an invention. There might be some interesting details in their implementation worthy of protection, but that's the problem with patents. They're protecting the generic idea instead of the details of the implementation. But beyond that, I've got no problem with Microsoft. I'm fine with non-governmental censorship, and I have no quarrel with software patents so long as they're good inventions and not something trivial and obvious.
As for autism, much of it is just more liberal diagnosing of the disease. Anyone remotely borderline gets labeled because that leads to subsidies for parents and schools.
There are also a growing number of religious sects that seem to feel that vaccines are somehow wrong or immoral. Frankly I think there ought to be special schools set up for these people so they can infect themselves and not bother the rest of us.
And can someone tell me why Mumps and Polio haven't been wiped from the face of the earth yet? I mean, we did it for smallpox. Is there some sort of zoonotic reinfection path? I would think that it would be economically worthwhile as a worldwide cure would save the cost of innoculating millions of children every year (after year after year). I suppose someone could run the numbers... how much it costs to innoculate children in the first world countries on an annual basis compared to about 5% of the cost of wiping out the disease.
I bought a Packard Bell in early 1993 and it came full of crap. Of course, it was easier to clean the crap off it back then, but that's hardly the point. Whenever friends and family buy a new PC, they usually have me wipe it clean for them before they start using it.
Really, this is where I think it ought to be. I generally find outbound firewalls to be more of a hassle than they are worth. Now, if Microsoft would give me a decent firewall where I could define my own zones and rules beyond what their dopey little interface provides, then I'd be much happier.
Actually, the examiners in the PTO are probably fairly well educated in the fields that they're examining patents on. The problem is the standard that they use for non-obvious and prior art. If they can't find a trade journal article or prior patent describing the application as submitted, they're pretty much obligated to approve it. You and I know that this is obvious (and that the prior art is off the charts), but the standards of the PTO are far far too low.
Well, I suppose that gets to the heart of the matter -- Is the new controller something truly revolutionary or just a silly gimick. I mean, kudos to Nintendo for trying something very different, but until I get my hands on it, I can't say if it's the Next Big Thing or a hinderance.
Really? Because I happen to be opposed to open document standards. They stifle innovation. You get boxed into a shortsighted format that's usually inadequate for your needs. While the idea of a generic standard that you can use with any program sounds appealing, in practice, it just doesn't work. It's kinda like communism. In any event, there are a plethora of generic open formats out there for use if people so choose. Plain text, RTF, DBF, just to name a few of the less exotic ones.
But the problem here is that no one is actually buying and no one is actually selling the property in question. Symantec "licensed" it to a foreign subsidiary. I'm not sure that any money actually changed hands. As far as I can tell (and the article is pathetic on the details) this is all about an entry in a ledger that the IRS feels is too small. There is no market for the "property" in question and no way to determine a price for it.
I don't think it's xenophobia. My wife, a longtime ThinkPad user, is ready to jump ship because it's just not IBM anymore. It's a strong sense of brand loyalty. In her case, she's loyal to IBM, not the ThinkPad. Lenovo just doesn't have a name in the US for most consumers yet and it's rather silly to think that this is going to happen overnight.
The signifigance would be a machine that has been stolen and you either want to decrypt some data or impersonate the rightful owner of the machine. Either way, the practical considerations of implementing such an attack are so far out there that I can't imagine even the spookiest government agencies trying this one for real.
Ah, it's nice to see that the X-Box replicates the PC playing experiance. Crashes, bugs, the fun of getting knocked past a wall boundry and falling into the infinite sea. Ah, the joys. But at least I'm not paying Microsoft for content.
But we also need to study the teachings of Bob Ross. I.e., we don't make mistakes - we just have happy accidents. I actually spent a lot of time painting with Bob. My first few canvases were pretty bad. After I'd done about 9 or 10 (and bought some better brushes and paints) they were starting to look like actual landscapes.
And if WalMart's employees aren't happy with their benefits, they ought to work somewhere else. Walmart gets away with neglecting their employees because there are so many governement benefits out there. Take away Medicaid and the WalMart workers will get serious about working somewhere else. It's a pretty simple equation. Government subsidies put employers like Target and CostCo, who treat their employees relatively well, and a competitive disadvantage.
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I used to run a computer lab several years ago (Windows 2000 based) and one of the problems I found on more than one occasion was programs that would try to reregister all of their .DLLs when the program was started. The programmer was probably trying to make sure that their program didn't end up in .DLL hell, but I had to make sure all the requisite registry keys were writeable for all users. That's a real pain in the ass to do without opening the system up across the board. A lot of programs have gotten better about running as a normal user on XP.
Wouldn't it be possible to have the OS manage installations, and thus, manage complete uninstalling?
Oh, would that this were the case. Unfortunately, the OS in no way even remotely works that way, although I have, in the past, argued that it should. It would require a fundamental shift in both the OS and the thinking in Redmond. Software needs to be encapsulated. It needs to become fundamentally impossible for programs to alter the underlying OS or for them to alter any other program on the system. Unfortunately, this pretty much breaks legacy compatibility. So then you have to have another layer for legacy type programs where they can run wild but can only destroy the legacy layer/sandbox. Sort've like the WoW layer for running 16-bit programs.
Have you even read the decision or background on the case? The very narrow issue decided here is whether or not an injuction should automatically be granted in infringement cases. The ruling means, that courts have to follow a set of criteria in determining if an injunction should be granted or if damages should be resolved in some other fashion (ie, pay a boatload of money). Injuctive relief will still be granted in the vast majority of cases. The court is just reminding us that it is not an automatic remedy. Allow me to cite the important part of the ruling:
Held: The traditional four-factor test applied by courts of equity when considering whether to award permanent injunctive relief to a prevailing plaintiff applies to disputes arising under the Patent Act. That test requires a plaintiff to demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction. The decision to grant or deny such relief is an act of equitable discretion by the district court, reviewable on appeal for abuse of discretion. These principles apply with equal force to Patent Act disputes.
If that were the case, you would expect to see brain tumors from anyone working in the top floor of a building that had a mobile phone tower on top. If that were the case, there would be overwhelming evidence all over the country. But there isn't. It's far far more likely that there is a chemical reason behind this cancer cluster. A cleaning agent or fumigant used at some point on the floor would be the first place I would look. I can't rule out the possiblity that the construction of the tower focuses the right frequency of radiation somewhere on that floor, but it wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list of suspects.
It's a drop compared to consumption, but you're asking the wrong question: Is this a worthwhile endeveor? They expect to produce about a million liters a year. Right now, diesel fuel wholesales for, let's say, $.60/liter so the plant should see revenues of $600K/year. Now if they can operate and pay off the construction costs for less than $600K/year, then this is a good idea and should be implemented where possible. (Please note that I just plucked my numbers out of the air. I leave it to a trained professoinal to do an actual feasibility study. I'm also assuming a constant price of oil and we all know that it is anything but.)
Really, because I tend to think of IBM as the Microsoft of Linux. Or maybe the McDonalds of Linux. In any event, they've got the problem solved: There's not much money to be made in putting together a distro. On the other hand, they're raking it in on hardware and services.
They can record any call that touches the public telephone network - which nearly all VoIP calls do. Strict IP to IP they can't do much about - yet. But it's only a matter of time until they infiltrate ISPs and start logging IP (x.x.x.x) connected to port Z on (y.y.y.y). And then it will grow from there. Then VoIP will implement end to end encryption and the governement will mandate key escrow and it will only grow from there.
You're being much to charitable. Jack Thompson has far more in common with Fred Phelps. Dvorak makes wild predictions to draw in readers. Jack, like Fred, makes raving baseless accusations for reasons I can't understand. And how this article made the front page without the Monty Python Foot icon, I'll never know.
Over the past 6 months or so, I've been finding a lot of link farms in my search results. Oh, irony or irony, SEOs are making search results worthless.
Apparently you haven't studied quantum mechanics. Because this is just quantum mechanics on a very large scale. See, until we actually measure it, it both expands and crunches. Then, because we measured it, it changes the result, so we still don't actually know anything. I suppose that's fitting becuase there are far more important topics we could be studying instead of pulling shit out of our ass.
Well, I've certainly seen far worse patents, but I don't think this is any great invention either. It's just running an audio stream through a voice recognition package and filtering the output stream based on keyword hits. In the abstract, that's not much of an invention. There might be some interesting details in their implementation worthy of protection, but that's the problem with patents. They're protecting the generic idea instead of the details of the implementation. But beyond that, I've got no problem with Microsoft. I'm fine with non-governmental censorship, and I have no quarrel with software patents so long as they're good inventions and not something trivial and obvious.
As for autism, much of it is just more liberal diagnosing of the disease. Anyone remotely borderline gets labeled because that leads to subsidies for parents and schools.
There are also a growing number of religious sects that seem to feel that vaccines are somehow wrong or immoral. Frankly I think there ought to be special schools set up for these people so they can infect themselves and not bother the rest of us.
And can someone tell me why Mumps and Polio haven't been wiped from the face of the earth yet? I mean, we did it for smallpox. Is there some sort of zoonotic reinfection path? I would think that it would be economically worthwhile as a worldwide cure would save the cost of innoculating millions of children every year (after year after year). I suppose someone could run the numbers... how much it costs to innoculate children in the first world countries on an annual basis compared to about 5% of the cost of wiping out the disease.
I bought a Packard Bell in early 1993 and it came full of crap. Of course, it was easier to clean the crap off it back then, but that's hardly the point. Whenever friends and family buy a new PC, they usually have me wipe it clean for them before they start using it.
Really, this is where I think it ought to be. I generally find outbound firewalls to be more of a hassle than they are worth. Now, if Microsoft would give me a decent firewall where I could define my own zones and rules beyond what their dopey little interface provides, then I'd be much happier.
I prefer to play Trade Wars over at the Game Castle myself.
Actually, the examiners in the PTO are probably fairly well educated in the fields that they're examining patents on. The problem is the standard that they use for non-obvious and prior art. If they can't find a trade journal article or prior patent describing the application as submitted, they're pretty much obligated to approve it. You and I know that this is obvious (and that the prior art is off the charts), but the standards of the PTO are far far too low.
Well, I suppose that gets to the heart of the matter -- Is the new controller something truly revolutionary or just a silly gimick. I mean, kudos to Nintendo for trying something very different, but until I get my hands on it, I can't say if it's the Next Big Thing or a hinderance.
Really? Because I happen to be opposed to open document standards. They stifle innovation. You get boxed into a shortsighted format that's usually inadequate for your needs. While the idea of a generic standard that you can use with any program sounds appealing, in practice, it just doesn't work. It's kinda like communism. In any event, there are a plethora of generic open formats out there for use if people so choose. Plain text, RTF, DBF, just to name a few of the less exotic ones.
But the problem here is that no one is actually buying and no one is actually selling the property in question. Symantec "licensed" it to a foreign subsidiary. I'm not sure that any money actually changed hands. As far as I can tell (and the article is pathetic on the details) this is all about an entry in a ledger that the IRS feels is too small. There is no market for the "property" in question and no way to determine a price for it.
I don't think it's xenophobia. My wife, a longtime ThinkPad user, is ready to jump ship because it's just not IBM anymore. It's a strong sense of brand loyalty. In her case, she's loyal to IBM, not the ThinkPad. Lenovo just doesn't have a name in the US for most consumers yet and it's rather silly to think that this is going to happen overnight.
The signifigance would be a machine that has been stolen and you either want to decrypt some data or impersonate the rightful owner of the machine. Either way, the practical considerations of implementing such an attack are so far out there that I can't imagine even the spookiest government agencies trying this one for real.
Ah, it's nice to see that the X-Box replicates the PC playing experiance. Crashes, bugs, the fun of getting knocked past a wall boundry and falling into the infinite sea. Ah, the joys. But at least I'm not paying Microsoft for content.
I'm waiting until they can grow a replacement brain. I think one could really help my wife.
But we also need to study the teachings of Bob Ross. I.e., we don't make mistakes - we just have happy accidents. I actually spent a lot of time painting with Bob. My first few canvases were pretty bad. After I'd done about 9 or 10 (and bought some better brushes and paints) they were starting to look like actual landscapes.
And if WalMart's employees aren't happy with their benefits, they ought to work somewhere else. Walmart gets away with neglecting their employees because there are so many governement benefits out there. Take away Medicaid and the WalMart workers will get serious about working somewhere else. It's a pretty simple equation. Government subsidies put employers like Target and CostCo, who treat their employees relatively well, and a competitive disadvantage.