Exactly. They swear at me every time I open a dictionary and they insult my intelligence by changing the order and adding all the extra words as filler. When will artists understand that we can't take creativity from them. If something doesn't sell, then it sucked. That's how the market reacts to other things. But with so-called "IP" the market isn't allowed to decide. Go Google!
Who said that simplicity sacrificed features? iPod is intuitive; it always has been. If there were an iVid, it'd be intuitive. It would still play music and videos and whatever else. That said, iVids would be a mistake; existing devices like it are a small niche. Radio would be nice, but would it be worth it? Bluetooth 2 would be very nice. I'd love to sync my iPod with my computer wirelessly as well as broadcast music. All in all, I love my iPod, and it loves me.
Although I am morally opposed to DRM, I have to give Jobs his props. Not only did he pioneer a successful music store, but now he's refusing to bow to the man's demands. The RIAA is a bunch of whiny white-collar assholes who know nothing about music or the consumer. They think that "IP" entitles one to rule the frigging world. Jobs had to put the DRM in there just for them. And now he refuses to raise the price. I'm glad that he is standing up for us (at least somewhat) and I am glad Apple is taking a different stand than Microsoft, who basically jumped unerneath the covers with the RIAA. I think we'd all agree that musicians should be paid for their work. I think we'd all agree that the ideas of "royalties" and "licenses" are out of date. Finally, I think we'd agree that artists aren't getting the fair share of their money. My question is how do we have music that doesn't violate Constitutional rights (DRM, namely), and is fair to artists as well? The last concept is that derivative works MUST be allowed. That restriction is completely biased toward the artist. The Constitution clearly states that copyrights can be levied by congress for the progress of the sciences and useful arts. The RIAA has this attitude that by copying music, "pirates" are taking something from the musicians. The musicians either have talent or they don't. You can't take talent from someone who has it just like you can't give it to someone who doesn't. The RIAA tries, but WYSIWYG...GIGO. I've thought a lot about the "perfect" model for musicians, but I can't seem to determine how to compel people to pay artists for copied music. I figure they can still sell albums and such. Once someone owns the CD (in a personal property sense) then he or she owns the atoms of that CD. Therefore, he or she should be extended the same property rights he or she would be if he or she owned a chair or a desk or any other object. The RIAA has said, however, that music is "licensed" to buyers and therefore they don't own the CD. I never read or signed nor agreed to any license when I bought any CDs. Their rights end where mine begin, and vice versa. I can't tell them what music to make, so they can't tell me how to use my music. Imagine if when you bought a chair, you were required simply by buying the chair to use it only in a specific way, such as a dinner-table chair. What if you needed to use a chair in your living room for some reason? Too bad, a new chair would have to be bought.
I'm a "wikipedian" and I think uncyclopedia is funny as hell. I don't go to uncyclopedia for factual info and I don't go to wikipedia for satirical. What's the beef?
What the hell are you talking about? How ignorant you are. The media in general is a waste. Where do you think your media gets its footage? You hippocrite. Europeans all but allow genocide to happen in your back yards. Your sad excuse for an "economic union" has failed because you couldn't agree enough to ratify a constitution. The Russian and French Revolutions were violent...and they didn't happen in America, they happened in Europe. I'm American and am no fan of the media, the RIAA, or any of the other corporate dirt bags that exist. But when global warming does happen and the precious gulf stream no longer gives you cold weather, I'd happily laugh because apparently you know how to handle this type of thing. Go sit in your own filth. I lived for three years in Europe after three years in Japan. I've seen my share of society from around the world. I loved Europe, but Europeans are without a doubt the most racist people on the planet. Always have been. And another thing, We feel obligated to do the decent thing is a total lie. Europeans have historically not done the decent thing. Take World War I for example. The treaty of Versailles was a miserable failure. And the reason? Because it penalized an already shot Germany and the Europeans took NO INITIATIVE WHATSOEVER! I am no fan of Bush, but at least in the USA we have balls. Europeans run around shooting their mouthes off about how Americans are so outrageious. Fortunately our founding fathers were much more visionary than yours. And consider this as well: the US government has survived longer than any in mainland Europe. Our country is young, just approaching a 400th anniversary of the British settling in America. But when we felt our rights were violated, we revolted and fought and died for what we believed. The French fought and died because they hated an oppressive aristocracy. The Russians fought and died for what they believed was right, although it was definitely misguided and definitely brutal. Communists failed because you can't impose vision on people, no matter what the circumstances. Who saved Europe's ass after World War II? America and the UK. France can do its part and host invasions for all I care. Or perhaps sell weapons to brutal dictators. Or perhaps raise pander about a stupid union that will never amount to anything but a trade bloc. European economy is rotten. America has the best economy and best military in the world. Sorry, folks, you lose. Should have repealed the Stamp Act earlier. I'd like to let you know as well from when I lived in Europe that the footballers were the most violent people I've ever seen. Our sports fans are nothing like those in Europe. And our government doesn't control the media. Learn to think objectively, not hypocritically. Your racism is showing. Africa colonization, Asian colonization, holocaust, and then genocide in the balkans. This is outrageous that you are lecturing us about "the decent thing." Go sit in your own filth.
Well between you and me (and the rest of/. for that matter), Euler's Equation is without a doubt the most beautiful mathematical equation ever. And you are correct about its derivation with Taylor series'. My mistake. In trig especially, the pythagorean theorem can be employed to derive almost all identities. http://oakroadsystems.com/twt/ has a good index of it. I found it when I was studying trig and had questions my math teacher didn't answer because she wanted us to memorize. It's great. I love trig and always have. I'm excited to see how this guy has done "rational trig". Calculus solves all of the transcendental problems, but they are still "aproximations", granted that a limit is mathematically "exact." Computers are where the line is blurred. If this guy is correct, I could see some areas such as weather forecasting experiencing a quantum leap. Quantum Mechanics still remains the main physical mystery, but at least transcendental functions can be conquered. I'd be interested if this guy could in some way find a way to solve logs and exponential equations as well without memorization or calculators or calculus. Very exciting!
Ah, yes, teaching one mindless identity is much better than 10. Really, it's just the same as anything. I find that the Pythagorean theorem is as usefull as Euler's. No one should be taught by the formula. That is the problem. Perhaps teaching how Euler got his formula, or how Pythagoras got his. But this sounds pretty cool, nonetheless.
I read that and at first I was struck oddly by the numbers, but a half-second later i knew the truth. IE came out a long long long time ago. There hasn't been a new version in YEARS. Firefox is an infant compared to IE. Also, OSS and FSF software lend themselves to being secured; the code is visible to anyone anywhere. With IE, only the select demigods (and I use that term loosely) get to view the code. As another user said, the ActiveX promises were either undertested or badly designed. I second that...for both. It was and still is just a browser to edge out competition. It is tied to the platform and is volitile. Arbitrary statistics don't really give any information about either of the two browsers. In fact, since "no hackers would work on hacking firefox" since IE still is such the kingpin, how were so many security holes found and sealed? Refer to my OSS/FSF statement.
Commercial software (really the copyrighted stuff and crap EULAs) is a plague on software that served a purpose until the advent and wide use of the internet. Programmers will still be able to make money, and a good amount of it at that. But software firms will have some different business models. We can already see it beginning. The beginning is with the old empire, the RIAA, MPAA and others. Too much power for an obsolite organization. Now Microsoft is reported to be internally fighting due to their fat fuck CEO. Apple and Google are at unprecidented profit levels (although GOOG is very dubious). Linux is gaining more popularity. Vista is subject of scorn and the brunt of jokes. M$ is not the monopoly it used to be. They never really came up with anything innovative (Xerox had GUIs before either Apple or Microsoft did), and they only had marketing staff. Gates understood the tech aspect, but he's not a terribly creative man. Definitely visionary, definitely intelligent, but not the greatest innovator or creative person. He doesn't see products that revolutionize. Apple does. They may not have the vision (although in recent years since baApple, they've got much more of a "vision"), but they can sure as hell invent or borrow another idea and make it dead sexy. Case in point: iPod. Though Creative did actually come out with a device first, Apple made the iPod so sleek that it was an instant hit. OS X is probably the greatest Unix shell out there. These are exciting years for big business and software.
btw my little security word is "reefer"...wonder what dictionary generated that random word...
I'm paying for that asshole to get free cable, free food and drink, free shelter, and for him to associate with other short-term sentenced criminals. This sounds like a damn good idea to me. Parade the fuckers around the streets. It may be creul, but not unusual. That's what the stocks did in the old days. The Constitution clearly uses the word "and" to speak of punishments, and programmers everywhere know that "and" requires both statements to be true. Obviously this guy has some "issues" and he is a black hat cracker (those damn bastards, giving hackers a bad name), but locking him up is just stupid. And no internet/cell phone or whatever? That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's not like 2 years would stop someone like that. In 2 years, security will be improved, but someone can still get around the weakest parts of security. Passwords and underpaid employees alike are easy to crack. The fraud is much more serious to me than the fact that he broke into the phone. I think T-Mobile should be slapped with some sort of punitive measure for using crap devices. If they didn't tie their hardware to their network, that would be one scenario. But since they did, and their employees provided the initial passwords, they need to have some sort of injunction as far as privacy security.
Exactly. Ya know why health-insurance premiums are high and HMOs are degrading the value of health-care? Because good doctors no longer wish to become things like OB/GYNs. As Bush attempted to say, too many good doctors are not going into the high-risk fields. A lot of specialists are becoming doctors like dermatologists. Not that becoming a dermatologist is bad, it's just that there is a market for only so many dermatologists. As for doctors suing patients,/. would love to take the side of the patient immediately, and when I read the title, I was struck a little odd by it. But we must understand, there are a few greedy people out there who would love to grossly profit at the expense of the rest of the system. These people are lower than scum-sucking bastard-assholes. These people are like the junky mentioned in parent. Keep in mind that some doctors are quacks and they do practice malpractice. For example, a few years back a girl needed a liver transplant and got it, but then died because her body rejected the liver. They found out it was the wrong blood-type. That is an obvious oversight for something so particular, and action should be taken. She was expected to live had the liver been the correct type. This is a human life. And imagine if a system crashed containing records of thousands of people's credit card records. The programmer would have to fix it fast or would lose his job. This isn't allowed to happen--well, it is (there is Windoze)--in good software organizations.
The issue raised in this article is about free speech. What we must remember and consider the ramifications of is that false speech with the intent of being false is not protected under the constitution. This constitutes slander (as well as the written form, libel). If you tell your friend to go to Dr. Pat because of x, y, and z, the speech is protected; the Dr. can't sue you. But if you just have a vendetta against him or her and want to ruin his or her life, your speech isn't protected, and damages can be sought against you. Tort lawsuits have gone too far; it is far to easy to sue your way out of something. The fact that we have more lawyers per capita than any other country makes it worse. I'm not anti-lawyer, I'm against the blood-sucking ones. Now as far as lawyers go, lots of people became lawyers after law shows came on TV. They saw the dramatized cases in programs like LA Law and Law and Order. Unfortunately for them, trying law can be very demanding and very boring. Plus there are so many lawyers that some wouldn't have much of a job if they weren't ambulance chasers. So they are. Responsibility has escaped the lexicon of too many, or perhaps the loudest voices.
It's just that women pass on the sex-linked problems that counterintuitively men are victim to, such as "male-pattern baldness." A woman could have male patern baldness, but it is much rarer than a man. For a woman to have male patern baldness, her father would have to have it and her mother would have to have at least one of the genes contributing to it. For a man to get it, he just has to have one gene from his mother. This has nothing to do with gay people or anything like that. I'm surprised by your ignorance.
Uh, commerical dominance? Besides China's movement toward capitalism, they still have many of the old communist functionalities (such as rotten banking [practices such as 0% loans to businesses promoting gross inefficiency or complete non-efficiency]). The second problem regards your signature which should read "In Patriot Act America, the library books scan you." Post-Patriot Act America is a place we're trying to go.
If people (parents in particular) are so pissed about it, why not monitor the video games your kid plays and/or determine the content of the game before your kid buys it. I could get reams of data off of the web in minutes. Listen to the title: Grand Theft Auto. I don't think the company is to blame for putting "explicit" content in their game. It's like viagra commercials. If you don't like em, don't watch. Your TV has a mute button. It also has a power button. This is why we are considered free. FCC and all the other "protection" agencies can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
When I hear the "O'Reilly Factor" podcast, then I'll know that the apocolypse is upon us.:-D Does this mean that lies masquerading as "fair and balanced" "news" will be brought to the internet? I'm really wondering, however, what Murdoch attempts to gain in these ways. I have no experience with IGN, but MySpace is terrible software. Sure, it's convenient for me to use the social-networking aspects, but the underlying code is obviously horrible. It uses ColdFusion, so that explains some of the issues, but there are tons of issues with database design (someone over there needs to define the word "nth normal form"), user profiles, server rendering, among others, such as the deleted comments (after a comment is deleted, it still keeps the old number for the count instead of going commentCount--, so you may only have 2 comments posted, but it may list more than that). I think a few trained monkeys could do a better job than this. This leads me to beleive that they don't have any intention of "producing a high-quality internet service" or anything like that. They may use it as a springboard for other technologies, but ultimately they want the exposure to users, especially young ones. They reallize that people are more and more getting their news online, and they want to let people know that they are providing their "news" and other shows (possibly) on the net. Not a bad business move.
Now there will be those who may take offense to my speaking against Fox News and its associates. To let you know, I am not a die-hard liberal nor do I hold liberal views (although no one should be ashamed to be liberal). I am against most, if not all, of the major media outlets. In light of current events, one can obviously consider the irrelevance of stories presented on the news. Meaningful information getting the scope of the damage and of the human crises would be very engaging, but hearing Kanye West say that "George Bush doesn't like black people" is just stupid. What the fuck does race have to do with anyway? Condy, arguably the top cabinet member, is black. Colin Powell is black. Back to the media rant. I prefer news that isn't so "proud" of its own abilities nor buries its errors on page 2 behind the almanac. The media is just too motivated to get sensational and irrelevant stories. Instead of saying something constructive about the damage, such as how people can help, as well as how people in the future can prepare, and possibly some of the lessons of the hurricane, they focused immediately on the large numbers of poor people left back home. There has been insufficient time to come up with any sorts of conclusions! But then again, how do stereotypes come about?
My point: the media is a collective, closed-minded organization, interested in its own vested interests and doing the most half-assed job possible. Refer to Crossfire with Jon Stewart...case closed.
Well I'm sure we could arrange a review of M$ Student as well as Apple Keynote, etc./. doesn't do reviews./. anounces other articles and how they relate to various nerdy fields (most of the time, anyway). Some of the stuff doesn't really matter in nerdom, but it's usually OK. I'm surprised you could actually want to stick up for M$ after reading this or reading what Mr. Balmer said the other day. His remarks were more outrageous than Dick Cheney's remarks on the Senate Floor. M$ doesn't do completely bad things. Their software is very prototype-esque. Bugs aren't worked out. They come up with (or copy) a mediocre to good idea that is relatively user-friendly and is (used to be) cheap. If you look at their software, people would not hate them for just that. What people hate M$ for are their business tactics many (including myself) consider highly unethical. Saying that you are going to "fucking kill google" and "fucking bury [Eric Schmidt] like I did before" is not professional speech nor ethical business practice. M$ is a convicted monopolist here in the US, but they got lucky with a very light sentence. They should understand that they are lucky to get this rather light sentence. Just over $600 million is a small amount to them.
"What do you call a person without a soul nor conscience? A corporation..." -Andrew Elgert
For the last 10 years or so, I have wondered about a few ideas in computer science. First, I believed then that we would be moving back toward a more mainframe-dumbterminal model of the past. This seems to be true with "client-server" relationships that we now have and the use of such mechanisms as web services (be they rich client or web application [like AJAX or whatever its name of the week is]). The second debate in my mind is the possibility of moving back to solid-state mediums as the major storage mechanism (after a very long time) of the primary storage being disk-based. This has no real relevance, although I still believe that disk-based storage mechanisms will give way to newer solid-state mechanisms such as those being developed at Atom Chip Corp.. The final belief of mine had to do with UI. I wondered 10 years ago whether or not GUI would have a permanent place in computing and UIs would only evolve from GUI or whether a re-emergence of text-OSs would take place. I believed (and still do to some extent) that OS GUIs are just crappy. They simply are good concepts in a beta or even alpha-testing exoskeleton. The most I can as the user define a GUI is what "theme" it is. Consider that this is on most GUIs; some apps provide more support for GUI-customization. The fourth and fifth ideals I held were that a) the filesystem is just too arbitrary and b) the Unix-style structure to accomplishing tasks, with smaller more focused functions was more powerful than using a large application that most likely reused old code and provided limited flexibility. In fact, I am a staunch opponent of the filesystem model. This seems anti-Unix, yet I am a proponent of Unix.
This article falls because it does not describe wht the future should hold for computers. It simply lists a problem. I find a few solutions, each with interesting consequenses. The first is that data is not stored in files. This seems odd, Unix revolves around the philosophy of the file, but today we have grown beyond odd, arbitrary aggregations of code that are arranged into odd, arbitrary hierarchies. I want access to my data quickly. I want to be able to search for instances of a persons name in document files as well as contact files. I can do this with current filesystems, but it takes a while to search (I do not have Tiger yet, although OSX on x86 calls...) Data-storage and manipulaiton is the purpose of computing. The days of a text-terminal are gone and will be forever. But the days of strict GUIs will not last forever either. We don't still need icons to interact with computers, and most of us/.ers never did.
A friend and colleague of mine, a rather revoultionary thinker in computers, suggests that instead of storing the current state of data, the computer stores the actions that got the data to its current state. In his words, "a painting is the sum of the artist's brushstrokes." If we did store actions rather than data state, consider some of the possiblities. I think that this is the next generation of Unix. Instead of files, actions dictate everything. Interfaces with these actions are not precisely dictated. A user could interface via phone, browser, rich client, local machine, etc. As long as the major assholes of computing stay far enough behind (the MA's being DRM proponents and convicted monopolists), computing will continue to amaze all of us. Ten years ago I was 6 and dreaming about what we are beginning to see today. Imagine what the children of today are dreaming about. Then imagine that it will become reality.
In a reactor the energy of the neutrons would be used to generate electricity without the emission of greenhouse gases or the generation of long-lived nuclear waste.
Right, but what about the next generation that will end up sounding like the lolly-pop guild? Granted, it'd be funny as hell.
Why would MySQL AB work with them? Because SCO's dollars buy as much as anyone else's dollars. MySQL hasn't changed its license from the GPL. If it did, I'd stop using them, and so would many other geeks/nerds out there. Hold your horses. McBride may be a major-league asshole, as our President would say, but that doesn't mean SCO Group as a whole is. With their cases losing ground, they've begun to actually make some innovations. Maybe it's like the early evolution of our species. We were very few and far between living in a desolate climate (deserts in Africa) and therefore Homo sapiens adapted ways of surviving. SCO seems to finally be doing this. I don't favor the company for their stupid litigation, and I think they are still a dying company, but perhaps they will turn away from Satan and find a balance between commercial software and free softawre. One can hope, anyway...
Of course, I wouldn't put it too far out of probability that SCO will accuse MySQL AB of violating trade secrets and breach of contract. Who knows...
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Exactly. They swear at me every time I open a dictionary and they insult my intelligence by changing the order and adding all the extra words as filler. When will artists understand that we can't take creativity from them. If something doesn't sell, then it sucked. That's how the market reacts to other things. But with so-called "IP" the market isn't allowed to decide. Go Google!
From TFO: copyright laws that long preceded the Internet look to be headed for a digital-age test..
Haven't napster et al demonstrated that already?
Who said that simplicity sacrificed features? iPod is intuitive; it always has been. If there were an iVid, it'd be intuitive. It would still play music and videos and whatever else. That said, iVids would be a mistake; existing devices like it are a small niche. Radio would be nice, but would it be worth it? Bluetooth 2 would be very nice. I'd love to sync my iPod with my computer wirelessly as well as broadcast music. All in all, I love my iPod, and it loves me.
Although I am morally opposed to DRM, I have to give Jobs his props. Not only did he pioneer a successful music store, but now he's refusing to bow to the man's demands. The RIAA is a bunch of whiny white-collar assholes who know nothing about music or the consumer. They think that "IP" entitles one to rule the frigging world. Jobs had to put the DRM in there just for them. And now he refuses to raise the price. I'm glad that he is standing up for us (at least somewhat) and I am glad Apple is taking a different stand than Microsoft, who basically jumped unerneath the covers with the RIAA. I think we'd all agree that musicians should be paid for their work. I think we'd all agree that the ideas of "royalties" and "licenses" are out of date. Finally, I think we'd agree that artists aren't getting the fair share of their money. My question is how do we have music that doesn't violate Constitutional rights (DRM, namely), and is fair to artists as well? The last concept is that derivative works MUST be allowed. That restriction is completely biased toward the artist. The Constitution clearly states that copyrights can be levied by congress for the progress of the sciences and useful arts. The RIAA has this attitude that by copying music, "pirates" are taking something from the musicians. The musicians either have talent or they don't. You can't take talent from someone who has it just like you can't give it to someone who doesn't. The RIAA tries, but WYSIWYG...GIGO. I've thought a lot about the "perfect" model for musicians, but I can't seem to determine how to compel people to pay artists for copied music. I figure they can still sell albums and such. Once someone owns the CD (in a personal property sense) then he or she owns the atoms of that CD. Therefore, he or she should be extended the same property rights he or she would be if he or she owned a chair or a desk or any other object. The RIAA has said, however, that music is "licensed" to buyers and therefore they don't own the CD. I never read or signed nor agreed to any license when I bought any CDs. Their rights end where mine begin, and vice versa. I can't tell them what music to make, so they can't tell me how to use my music. Imagine if when you bought a chair, you were required simply by buying the chair to use it only in a specific way, such as a dinner-table chair. What if you needed to use a chair in your living room for some reason? Too bad, a new chair would have to be bought.
Microsoft pays you...in NDAs.
I'm a "wikipedian" and I think uncyclopedia is funny as hell. I don't go to uncyclopedia for factual info and I don't go to wikipedia for satirical. What's the beef?
Yeah, in Europe it's called VAT -- "Value Added Tax." It's part of their outrageous system of over-taxation and stagnation of progress.
What the hell are you talking about? How ignorant you are. The media in general is a waste. Where do you think your media gets its footage? You hippocrite. Europeans all but allow genocide to happen in your back yards. Your sad excuse for an "economic union" has failed because you couldn't agree enough to ratify a constitution. The Russian and French Revolutions were violent...and they didn't happen in America, they happened in Europe. I'm American and am no fan of the media, the RIAA, or any of the other corporate dirt bags that exist. But when global warming does happen and the precious gulf stream no longer gives you cold weather, I'd happily laugh because apparently you know how to handle this type of thing. Go sit in your own filth. I lived for three years in Europe after three years in Japan. I've seen my share of society from around the world. I loved Europe, but Europeans are without a doubt the most racist people on the planet. Always have been. And another thing, We feel obligated to do the decent thing is a total lie. Europeans have historically not done the decent thing. Take World War I for example. The treaty of Versailles was a miserable failure. And the reason? Because it penalized an already shot Germany and the Europeans took NO INITIATIVE WHATSOEVER! I am no fan of Bush, but at least in the USA we have balls. Europeans run around shooting their mouthes off about how Americans are so outrageious. Fortunately our founding fathers were much more visionary than yours. And consider this as well: the US government has survived longer than any in mainland Europe. Our country is young, just approaching a 400th anniversary of the British settling in America. But when we felt our rights were violated, we revolted and fought and died for what we believed. The French fought and died because they hated an oppressive aristocracy. The Russians fought and died for what they believed was right, although it was definitely misguided and definitely brutal. Communists failed because you can't impose vision on people, no matter what the circumstances. Who saved Europe's ass after World War II? America and the UK. France can do its part and host invasions for all I care. Or perhaps sell weapons to brutal dictators. Or perhaps raise pander about a stupid union that will never amount to anything but a trade bloc. European economy is rotten. America has the best economy and best military in the world. Sorry, folks, you lose. Should have repealed the Stamp Act earlier. I'd like to let you know as well from when I lived in Europe that the footballers were the most violent people I've ever seen. Our sports fans are nothing like those in Europe. And our government doesn't control the media. Learn to think objectively, not hypocritically. Your racism is showing. Africa colonization, Asian colonization, holocaust, and then genocide in the balkans. This is outrageous that you are lecturing us about "the decent thing." Go sit in your own filth.
Well between you and me (and the rest of /. for that matter), Euler's Equation is without a doubt the most beautiful mathematical equation ever. And you are correct about its derivation with Taylor series'. My mistake. In trig especially, the pythagorean theorem can be employed to derive almost all identities. http://oakroadsystems.com/twt/ has a good index of it. I found it when I was studying trig and had questions my math teacher didn't answer because she wanted us to memorize. It's great. I love trig and always have. I'm excited to see how this guy has done "rational trig". Calculus solves all of the transcendental problems, but they are still "aproximations", granted that a limit is mathematically "exact." Computers are where the line is blurred. If this guy is correct, I could see some areas such as weather forecasting experiencing a quantum leap. Quantum Mechanics still remains the main physical mystery, but at least transcendental functions can be conquered. I'd be interested if this guy could in some way find a way to solve logs and exponential equations as well without memorization or calculators or calculus. Very exciting!
Ah, yes, teaching one mindless identity is much better than 10. Really, it's just the same as anything. I find that the Pythagorean theorem is as usefull as Euler's. No one should be taught by the formula. That is the problem. Perhaps teaching how Euler got his formula, or how Pythagoras got his. But this sounds pretty cool, nonetheless.
I read that and at first I was struck oddly by the numbers, but a half-second later i knew the truth. IE came out a long long long time ago. There hasn't been a new version in YEARS. Firefox is an infant compared to IE. Also, OSS and FSF software lend themselves to being secured; the code is visible to anyone anywhere. With IE, only the select demigods (and I use that term loosely) get to view the code. As another user said, the ActiveX promises were either undertested or badly designed. I second that...for both. It was and still is just a browser to edge out competition. It is tied to the platform and is volitile. Arbitrary statistics don't really give any information about either of the two browsers. In fact, since "no hackers would work on hacking firefox" since IE still is such the kingpin, how were so many security holes found and sealed? Refer to my OSS/FSF statement.
Commercial software (really the copyrighted stuff and crap EULAs) is a plague on software that served a purpose until the advent and wide use of the internet. Programmers will still be able to make money, and a good amount of it at that. But software firms will have some different business models. We can already see it beginning. The beginning is with the old empire, the RIAA, MPAA and others. Too much power for an obsolite organization. Now Microsoft is reported to be internally fighting due to their fat fuck CEO. Apple and Google are at unprecidented profit levels (although GOOG is very dubious). Linux is gaining more popularity. Vista is subject of scorn and the brunt of jokes. M$ is not the monopoly it used to be. They never really came up with anything innovative (Xerox had GUIs before either Apple or Microsoft did), and they only had marketing staff. Gates understood the tech aspect, but he's not a terribly creative man. Definitely visionary, definitely intelligent, but not the greatest innovator or creative person. He doesn't see products that revolutionize. Apple does. They may not have the vision (although in recent years since baApple, they've got much more of a "vision"), but they can sure as hell invent or borrow another idea and make it dead sexy. Case in point: iPod. Though Creative did actually come out with a device first, Apple made the iPod so sleek that it was an instant hit. OS X is probably the greatest Unix shell out there. These are exciting years for big business and software.
btw my little security word is "reefer"...wonder what dictionary generated that random word...
I'm paying for that asshole to get free cable, free food and drink, free shelter, and for him to associate with other short-term sentenced criminals. This sounds like a damn good idea to me. Parade the fuckers around the streets. It may be creul, but not unusual. That's what the stocks did in the old days. The Constitution clearly uses the word "and" to speak of punishments, and programmers everywhere know that "and" requires both statements to be true. Obviously this guy has some "issues" and he is a black hat cracker (those damn bastards, giving hackers a bad name), but locking him up is just stupid. And no internet/cell phone or whatever? That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's not like 2 years would stop someone like that. In 2 years, security will be improved, but someone can still get around the weakest parts of security. Passwords and underpaid employees alike are easy to crack. The fraud is much more serious to me than the fact that he broke into the phone. I think T-Mobile should be slapped with some sort of punitive measure for using crap devices. If they didn't tie their hardware to their network, that would be one scenario. But since they did, and their employees provided the initial passwords, they need to have some sort of injunction as far as privacy security.
Exactly. Ya know why health-insurance premiums are high and HMOs are degrading the value of health-care? Because good doctors no longer wish to become things like OB/GYNs. As Bush attempted to say, too many good doctors are not going into the high-risk fields. A lot of specialists are becoming doctors like dermatologists. Not that becoming a dermatologist is bad, it's just that there is a market for only so many dermatologists. As for doctors suing patients, /. would love to take the side of the patient immediately, and when I read the title, I was struck a little odd by it. But we must understand, there are a few greedy people out there who would love to grossly profit at the expense of the rest of the system. These people are lower than scum-sucking bastard-assholes. These people are like the junky mentioned in parent. Keep in mind that some doctors are quacks and they do practice malpractice. For example, a few years back a girl needed a liver transplant and got it, but then died because her body rejected the liver. They found out it was the wrong blood-type. That is an obvious oversight for something so particular, and action should be taken. She was expected to live had the liver been the correct type. This is a human life. And imagine if a system crashed containing records of thousands of people's credit card records. The programmer would have to fix it fast or would lose his job. This isn't allowed to happen--well, it is (there is Windoze)--in good software organizations.
The issue raised in this article is about free speech. What we must remember and consider the ramifications of is that false speech with the intent of being false is not protected under the constitution. This constitutes slander (as well as the written form, libel). If you tell your friend to go to Dr. Pat because of x, y, and z, the speech is protected; the Dr. can't sue you. But if you just have a vendetta against him or her and want to ruin his or her life, your speech isn't protected, and damages can be sought against you. Tort lawsuits have gone too far; it is far to easy to sue your way out of something. The fact that we have more lawyers per capita than any other country makes it worse. I'm not anti-lawyer, I'm against the blood-sucking ones. Now as far as lawyers go, lots of people became lawyers after law shows came on TV. They saw the dramatized cases in programs like LA Law and Law and Order. Unfortunately for them, trying law can be very demanding and very boring. Plus there are so many lawyers that some wouldn't have much of a job if they weren't ambulance chasers. So they are. Responsibility has escaped the lexicon of too many, or perhaps the loudest voices.
It's just that women pass on the sex-linked problems that counterintuitively men are victim to, such as "male-pattern baldness." A woman could have male patern baldness, but it is much rarer than a man. For a woman to have male patern baldness, her father would have to have it and her mother would have to have at least one of the genes contributing to it. For a man to get it, he just has to have one gene from his mother. This has nothing to do with gay people or anything like that. I'm surprised by your ignorance.
Ah, remember from our pointy-eared friend, "only Nixon could go to China."
Uh, commerical dominance? Besides China's movement toward capitalism, they still have many of the old communist functionalities (such as rotten banking [practices such as 0% loans to businesses promoting gross inefficiency or complete non-efficiency]). The second problem regards your signature which should read "In Patriot Act America, the library books scan you." Post-Patriot Act America is a place we're trying to go.
If people (parents in particular) are so pissed about it, why not monitor the video games your kid plays and/or determine the content of the game before your kid buys it. I could get reams of data off of the web in minutes. Listen to the title: Grand Theft Auto. I don't think the company is to blame for putting "explicit" content in their game. It's like viagra commercials. If you don't like em, don't watch. Your TV has a mute button. It also has a power button. This is why we are considered free. FCC and all the other "protection" agencies can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
When I hear the "O'Reilly Factor" podcast, then I'll know that the apocolypse is upon us. :-D Does this mean that lies masquerading as "fair and balanced" "news" will be brought to the internet? I'm really wondering, however, what Murdoch attempts to gain in these ways. I have no experience with IGN, but MySpace is terrible software. Sure, it's convenient for me to use the social-networking aspects, but the underlying code is obviously horrible. It uses ColdFusion, so that explains some of the issues, but there are tons of issues with database design (someone over there needs to define the word "nth normal form"), user profiles, server rendering, among others, such as the deleted comments (after a comment is deleted, it still keeps the old number for the count instead of going commentCount--, so you may only have 2 comments posted, but it may list more than that). I think a few trained monkeys could do a better job than this. This leads me to beleive that they don't have any intention of "producing a high-quality internet service" or anything like that. They may use it as a springboard for other technologies, but ultimately they want the exposure to users, especially young ones. They reallize that people are more and more getting their news online, and they want to let people know that they are providing their "news" and other shows (possibly) on the net. Not a bad business move.
Now there will be those who may take offense to my speaking against Fox News and its associates. To let you know, I am not a die-hard liberal nor do I hold liberal views (although no one should be ashamed to be liberal). I am against most, if not all, of the major media outlets. In light of current events, one can obviously consider the irrelevance of stories presented on the news. Meaningful information getting the scope of the damage and of the human crises would be very engaging, but hearing Kanye West say that "George Bush doesn't like black people" is just stupid. What the fuck does race have to do with anyway? Condy, arguably the top cabinet member, is black. Colin Powell is black. Back to the media rant. I prefer news that isn't so "proud" of its own abilities nor buries its errors on page 2 behind the almanac. The media is just too motivated to get sensational and irrelevant stories. Instead of saying something constructive about the damage, such as how people can help, as well as how people in the future can prepare, and possibly some of the lessons of the hurricane, they focused immediately on the large numbers of poor people left back home. There has been insufficient time to come up with any sorts of conclusions! But then again, how do stereotypes come about?
My point: the media is a collective, closed-minded organization, interested in its own vested interests and doing the most half-assed job possible. Refer to Crossfire with Jon Stewart...case closed.
"What do you call a person without a soul nor conscience? A corporation..."
-Andrew Elgert
iPod nano: iPod mini meets Motorola Razr
For the last 10 years or so, I have wondered about a few ideas in computer science. First, I believed then that we would be moving back toward a more mainframe-dumbterminal model of the past. This seems to be true with "client-server" relationships that we now have and the use of such mechanisms as web services (be they rich client or web application [like AJAX or whatever its name of the week is]). The second debate in my mind is the possibility of moving back to solid-state mediums as the major storage mechanism (after a very long time) of the primary storage being disk-based. This has no real relevance, although I still believe that disk-based storage mechanisms will give way to newer solid-state mechanisms such as those being developed at Atom Chip Corp.. The final belief of mine had to do with UI. I wondered 10 years ago whether or not GUI would have a permanent place in computing and UIs would only evolve from GUI or whether a re-emergence of text-OSs would take place. I believed (and still do to some extent) that OS GUIs are just crappy. They simply are good concepts in a beta or even alpha-testing exoskeleton. The most I can as the user define a GUI is what "theme" it is. Consider that this is on most GUIs; some apps provide more support for GUI-customization. The fourth and fifth ideals I held were that a) the filesystem is just too arbitrary and b) the Unix-style structure to accomplishing tasks, with smaller more focused functions was more powerful than using a large application that most likely reused old code and provided limited flexibility. In fact, I am a staunch opponent of the filesystem model. This seems anti-Unix, yet I am a proponent of Unix.
This article falls because it does not describe wht the future should hold for computers. It simply lists a problem. I find a few solutions, each with interesting consequenses. The first is that data is not stored in files. This seems odd, Unix revolves around the philosophy of the file, but today we have grown beyond odd, arbitrary aggregations of code that are arranged into odd, arbitrary hierarchies. I want access to my data quickly. I want to be able to search for instances of a persons name in document files as well as contact files. I can do this with current filesystems, but it takes a while to search (I do not have Tiger yet, although OSX on x86 calls...) Data-storage and manipulaiton is the purpose of computing. The days of a text-terminal are gone and will be forever. But the days of strict GUIs will not last forever either. We don't still need icons to interact with computers, and most of us /.ers never did.
A friend and colleague of mine, a rather revoultionary thinker in computers, suggests that instead of storing the current state of data, the computer stores the actions that got the data to its current state. In his words, "a painting is the sum of the artist's brushstrokes." If we did store actions rather than data state, consider some of the possiblities. I think that this is the next generation of Unix. Instead of files, actions dictate everything. Interfaces with these actions are not precisely dictated. A user could interface via phone, browser, rich client, local machine, etc. As long as the major assholes of computing stay far enough behind (the MA's being DRM proponents and convicted monopolists), computing will continue to amaze all of us. Ten years ago I was 6 and dreaming about what we are beginning to see today. Imagine what the children of today are dreaming about. Then imagine that it will become reality.
Right, but what about the next generation that will end up sounding like the lolly-pop guild? Granted, it'd be funny as hell.
Why would MySQL AB work with them? Because SCO's dollars buy as much as anyone else's dollars. MySQL hasn't changed its license from the GPL. If it did, I'd stop using them, and so would many other geeks/nerds out there. Hold your horses. McBride may be a major-league asshole, as our President would say, but that doesn't mean SCO Group as a whole is. With their cases losing ground, they've begun to actually make some innovations. Maybe it's like the early evolution of our species. We were very few and far between living in a desolate climate (deserts in Africa) and therefore Homo sapiens adapted ways of surviving. SCO seems to finally be doing this. I don't favor the company for their stupid litigation, and I think they are still a dying company, but perhaps they will turn away from Satan and find a balance between commercial software and free softawre. One can hope, anyway...
Of course, I wouldn't put it too far out of probability that SCO will accuse MySQL AB of violating trade secrets and breach of contract. Who knows...
"The Geneva convention is quaint and irrelevant..."
http://news.com.com/Hollywood%2C+Microsoft+align+o n+new+Windows/2100-1025_3-5844393.html
This was the article I meant to include, but the other works too. Hope it helps!