While I'm sure there's a certain subset of people who read this article and immediately turns to a friend and says, "Do you even BEGIN to realize the profound effect this development will have on laptop cases?!?" the idea of super-thin bullet-proof vests are probably a lot more exciting to most people.
Tell you what, rebuild the original Apollo system EXACTLY the way they did it the first time, crappy computers and missing airlocks and all, and see if there is anyone willing to take the same risks those astronauts did in the 60s.
I'm guessing just about every pilot in NASA and 50 million people who AREN'T in NASA will volunteer.
So the capsule is "unfriendly" and the whole setup is fairly dangerous. IT'S THE FREAKING MOON.
None of this info really seems useful or reliable.
13% don't use antivirus... how many are Mac or Linux users?
30% don't use anti-spyware stuff... how many are running OSX or Linux (again), or are browsing with scripts and other stupid things turned off?
73% don't report using anti-phishing software... doesn't IE have that on by default now? So the users are almost CERTAINLY misinformed about this one; they've got protections running they don't even know about.
Same for firewalls. I know both OSX and Windows XP and Vista have software firewalls, and I think the Windows one is on by default. (I recall having to manually activate the OSX one, for some reason.) So how many of those users just don't know they have a firewall running, or that the shiny shield icon in the "security" panel is called a "firewall"?
Seems to me that the biggest tragedy about all this isn't that the languages THEMSELVES are lost, but that the stories, knowledge, and cultural traditions are lost with them.
A lot of people take this as evidence that we should strive to keep these languages alive. I take it the other way - get everyone speaking a universal (or at least popular) language quickly, so that all those people's NEW stories and knowledge can be communicated widely.
Here comes the crappy analogy I promised. When Slashdotters complain that Microsoft's formats lock us in and may one day be obsolete, do we suggest preserving for all time the true Microsoft Word '95 binaries, so that we may always gaze upon those documents in their original splendor? Hell no! We try to get everyone using our shiny new formats as soon as possible, and we hope that the "open" nature of those new formats will keep our documents intelligible for longer. (I'm not gonna try to work "vendor lock-in" into the analogy too much, but it should be obvious why something written in Spanish or English or Mandarin will be easier to read a thousand years from now than something written in a rare dialect that we've got almost no written records of.)
Heck, it may well be that most obscure Native American dialects are already better-understood than a twenty-year-old.doc file...
I guess the real price is buried in Microsoft's contract with retailers, but I'm thinking $250 is at least an order of magnitude too high of an estimate on what Dell et al pay for an OEM copy of Windows.
Heck, they've had PDAs and cell phones in that price range forever running Windows CE, right?
It now costs $100 more than an iPod Touch with the same features. If you didn't have an iPod or cell phone and wanted both, and if AT&T service was decent in your area, $400 would be a fairly good price.
Personally, I'm fine with my $20 phone and the Nano that came free with my laptop.
I think that the argument the photographer could make -- and a pretty good one IMO -- is that simply by putting up the photo under the BY-SA license (or whatever license he chose that wasn't one of the 'NC' ones), he *did not* make any representations that it was OK to use commercially. He may have waived his own copyright, and said that he had no problem with it being used commercially, but he didn't say that the image was clear of other IP claims.
That's a pretty crucial difference: "I don't prohibit you from using this commercially," is a very different statement from "this image is OK to use commercially." Only in the latter case is the photographer making any representations about the suitability of the photo for a particular use. In the former, he's just saying 'I don't have a problem with commercial use,' the implication being that someone else might, and it's on you to check.
IANAL, but here's what would seem to be the relevant disclaimer in the CC license:
UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT OF ANY RIGHTS HELD IN THE LICENSED WORK BY THE LICENSOR. THE LICENSOR MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MARKETABILITY, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SUCH EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
Actually, I'm guessing the RIAA wants all the "bad" publicity it can get on cases like this.
It's been said before that there's a reason the individual record labels file suit through the RIAA: The RIAA as a group is INTENDED to appear scary and evil. They sue little old ladies, twelve-year-old girls, the terminally ill and handicapped - ANYONE who "screws with them." They even (IIRC) make press releases about how kids who they accuse should drop out of college and get a low-wage job to make their settlement payments.
What does Joe Public hear? The RIAA is a bunch of hardasses who'll jump all over me if I even THINK about downloading Limewire. But not those groovin' guys at Virgin Records or wherever; they're still cool.
In other words... by helping to villify the RIAA, Slashdot may actually be HELPING their PR push.
Want to know why authors continue to make money when they're dead? Because people continue to pay for their work once they're dead.
An analogy: let's say you sell me a car and I agree to pay you $1000 a month for a year, and you die a week after we make the deal. Do I get the car for free? Hell no, I've got to fork over the cash to your heirs, even though you're dead.
There's a difference: the move from 2d to 3d-rasterized DID open up a lot of new gameplay opportunities, because for the first time you could create true-3d worlds with free cameras, et cetera. For example, even if a game like Virtua Fighter or Tekken looked a little graphically primitive compared to the 2d fighters out at the time, it allowed 3d movement and new camera angles that changed the way those games could be played.
As far as I can see, raytracing is purely an eye-candy upgrade. There will never be a time when a slightly gritty raytraced game is preferable to a polished rasterized game, because the raytraced game doesn't have anything else to offer.
This argument amuses me, because it always makes me imagine the world as some kind of FPS level with semi-automatic weapons lying about in unmarked crates all over the place.
The idea is that gun laws would make it HARDER for would-be criminals to ACQUIRE guns, not that it would cause moral qualms once they'd already found them.
Yes, the Mafia and drug-runners and ninja assassins will still manage to get their hands on weapons, even with strict gun control laws. But disturbed teenagers and random jerks on the street are a different story.
I dunno, I'd say that Eee (ee?) is after a different demographic.
Does the Asus have its own manual power source, like the OLPC's crank or pedal? Nope? There goes everyone in the world without reliable electricity.
Does it have super-idiot-proof software? Not really. Heck, even I (as a fairly experienced computer-user) don't instantly understand half of OpenOffice's features. How is that gonna work for people who've (a) never used a computer before and (b) have no access to tech support?
Is it durable? Like, durable enough to make up for the fact that some potential users would have no access to any sort of computer repairs?
And so on. I'd personally prefer the Asus one, living here in the US with regular electricity, WiFi, and so on, but a whole lot of the OLPC's target audience would be using the Asuses (Asi?) as paperweights pretty quick.
Libertarianism speaks to our common selfishness while making for good sound bytes. And it's far enough out of the realm of political possibility that it allows you to make bold and sweeping suggestions with no fear of the actual consequences. "All drugs should be legalized" - yeah, because what this country needs is Philip Morris marketing heroin to twelve-year-olds (and pretending to market it to eighteen-year-olds). "Get rid of federally-funded schools and give us vouchers" - great, so middle- and upper-class kids go to private schools and the poor kids whose parents don't care about education never even learn to read. I'm sure a huge, illiterate underclass wouldn't have any negative effects on our society, economy, etc. "Get rid of tariffs and let free trade rule the market" - but don't let too many Indians get tech jobs, or you'll hear the whining again here on Slashdot!
motion to strike n. a request for a judge's order to eliminate all or a portion of the legal pleading (complaint, answer) of the opposition on any one of several grounds. It is often used in an attempt to have an entire cause of action removed ("stricken") from the court record. A motion to strike is also made orally during trial to ask the judge to order "stricken" answers by a witness in violation of rules of evidence (laws covering what is admissible in trial). Even though the jury is admonished to ignore such an answer or some comment, the jury has heard it, and "a bell once rung, cannot be unrung."
First result of a Google search for "motion to strike." It would have been faster to look it up than to post a complaint.
I like levels at a low number. For a lot of intents and purposes, 20 is enough.
What kind of reasoning is that? What makes 20 a more palatable number than 15, or 30, or 50? Level numbers are completely arbitrary.
I used to DM, and have been since First Edition AD&D. In campaigns, levels were there, but they were mainly a gauge of progress, of what difficulty I needed to make encounters. Characters had a lot more ways to progress and gain in power. They could gain reputation by pushing back orc scout parties, learn spells (In First Ed., magic items were VERY rare, and a +1 sword would be something that would be a 3-4 session campaign, but worth obtaining.), and perhaps travel, guarding trade caravans (or waiting until the caravan was alone, then sacking the people on it.) As the party grew, they became impressed into a local ruler's service as a scout group for taking care of enemies and seeking relics, then the party eventually was able to start their own kingdom after a number of fights, and having to not just go head off places, but make sure the kingdom was in good order while they were gone.
Having 30 levels does absolutely nothing to impair any of what you mention here.
To make it a bit more exact, how about intelligence as "complexity that is most effectively/efficiently understood through analogy to one's own thought processes?" That seems to be how philosophers argue against solipsism, and it also explains why, for example, complex systems like the weather and astrophysics used to be explained by appealing to a human-like (divine) intelligence, until our understanding of those systems grew sophisticated enough to supersede that appeal.
The downside of this definition is that when we learn enough about neurology and psychology to explain and predict human behavior and thought processes well enough, we all slide right back into solipsism... or at least the philosophers do.
The "best qualified" workers are probably the guys looking for green cards - otherwise, why would HR go through all this rigmarole to keep them hired? It's not even like they're paying these immigrant employees less, because if that was the case they could just post ads openly and know that no American would be willing to work for the advertised salary.
IANAL, but it sounds like the law requires them to hire any American applicant who is QUALIFIED, not preferable. So these companies are afraid they're going to have to fire Amir, the extremely talented programmer who designed half their system and knows its vagaries inside and out, and replace him with Jim, the lazy American guy who isn't really that great, but looks good enough on paper that the law considers him "qualified" to take Amir's job.
Are they honestly crying in public because a competitor wants to... compete with them?
Firefox has managed to get a 25% marketshare against Microsoft, on their own OS. Hell, I'm typing this from Firefox on a Mac right now, because I like the addons. If Safari is trying to "edge out" Firefox, they just need to make sure Firefox is a significantly better browser. If it's not, well, you can hardly blame Apple for making a better product.
I remember hearing way back when that the Human Genome people were doing their job more quickly by only mapping the active DNA and skipping the "junk"... if that "junk" is in fact active, does that mean they have a lot more mapping to do? Or is my info just hopelessly out of date?
Slashdot Mirror
While I'm sure there's a certain subset of people who read this article and immediately turns to a friend and says, "Do you even BEGIN to realize the profound effect this development will have on laptop cases?!?" the idea of super-thin bullet-proof vests are probably a lot more exciting to most people.
Tell you what, rebuild the original Apollo system EXACTLY the way they did it the first time, crappy computers and missing airlocks and all, and see if there is anyone willing to take the same risks those astronauts did in the 60s.
I'm guessing just about every pilot in NASA and 50 million people who AREN'T in NASA will volunteer.
So the capsule is "unfriendly" and the whole setup is fairly dangerous. IT'S THE FREAKING MOON.
None of this info really seems useful or reliable.
13% don't use antivirus... how many are Mac or Linux users?
30% don't use anti-spyware stuff... how many are running OSX or Linux (again), or are browsing with scripts and other stupid things turned off?
73% don't report using anti-phishing software... doesn't IE have that on by default now? So the users are almost CERTAINLY misinformed about this one; they've got protections running they don't even know about.
Same for firewalls. I know both OSX and Windows XP and Vista have software firewalls, and I think the Windows one is on by default. (I recall having to manually activate the OSX one, for some reason.) So how many of those users just don't know they have a firewall running, or that the shiny shield icon in the "security" panel is called a "firewall"?
Seems to me that the biggest tragedy about all this isn't that the languages THEMSELVES are lost, but that the stories, knowledge, and cultural traditions are lost with them.
.doc file...
A lot of people take this as evidence that we should strive to keep these languages alive. I take it the other way - get everyone speaking a universal (or at least popular) language quickly, so that all those people's NEW stories and knowledge can be communicated widely.
Here comes the crappy analogy I promised. When Slashdotters complain that Microsoft's formats lock us in and may one day be obsolete, do we suggest preserving for all time the true Microsoft Word '95 binaries, so that we may always gaze upon those documents in their original splendor? Hell no! We try to get everyone using our shiny new formats as soon as possible, and we hope that the "open" nature of those new formats will keep our documents intelligible for longer. (I'm not gonna try to work "vendor lock-in" into the analogy too much, but it should be obvious why something written in Spanish or English or Mandarin will be easier to read a thousand years from now than something written in a rare dialect that we've got almost no written records of.)
Heck, it may well be that most obscure Native American dialects are already better-understood than a twenty-year-old
I guess the real price is buried in Microsoft's contract with retailers, but I'm thinking $250 is at least an order of magnitude too high of an estimate on what Dell et al pay for an OEM copy of Windows.
Heck, they've had PDAs and cell phones in that price range forever running Windows CE, right?
And to build on this point, if $50 for Episode 2 and HL2 and whateverelse feels like too much, wait a couple months and get it for $20.
By unlocking the phone, you void the warranty, according to Apple.
You mean there was no need for copyright laws before printing presses? Shocking!
It now costs $100 more than an iPod Touch with the same features. If you didn't have an iPod or cell phone and wanted both, and if AT&T service was decent in your area, $400 would be a fairly good price.
Personally, I'm fine with my $20 phone and the Nano that came free with my laptop.
IANAL, but here's what would seem to be the relevant disclaimer in the CC license:
Actually, I'm guessing the RIAA wants all the "bad" publicity it can get on cases like this.
It's been said before that there's a reason the individual record labels file suit through the RIAA: The RIAA as a group is INTENDED to appear scary and evil. They sue little old ladies, twelve-year-old girls, the terminally ill and handicapped - ANYONE who "screws with them." They even (IIRC) make press releases about how kids who they accuse should drop out of college and get a low-wage job to make their settlement payments.
What does Joe Public hear? The RIAA is a bunch of hardasses who'll jump all over me if I even THINK about downloading Limewire. But not those groovin' guys at Virgin Records or wherever; they're still cool.
In other words... by helping to villify the RIAA, Slashdot may actually be HELPING their PR push.
Want to know why authors continue to make money when they're dead? Because people continue to pay for their work once they're dead. An analogy: let's say you sell me a car and I agree to pay you $1000 a month for a year, and you die a week after we make the deal. Do I get the car for free? Hell no, I've got to fork over the cash to your heirs, even though you're dead.
There's a difference: the move from 2d to 3d-rasterized DID open up a lot of new gameplay opportunities, because for the first time you could create true-3d worlds with free cameras, et cetera. For example, even if a game like Virtua Fighter or Tekken looked a little graphically primitive compared to the 2d fighters out at the time, it allowed 3d movement and new camera angles that changed the way those games could be played.
As far as I can see, raytracing is purely an eye-candy upgrade. There will never be a time when a slightly gritty raytraced game is preferable to a polished rasterized game, because the raytraced game doesn't have anything else to offer.
This argument amuses me, because it always makes me imagine the world as some kind of FPS level with semi-automatic weapons lying about in unmarked crates all over the place.
The idea is that gun laws would make it HARDER for would-be criminals to ACQUIRE guns, not that it would cause moral qualms once they'd already found them.
Yes, the Mafia and drug-runners and ninja assassins will still manage to get their hands on weapons, even with strict gun control laws. But disturbed teenagers and random jerks on the street are a different story.
I dunno, I'd say that Eee (ee?) is after a different demographic.
Does the Asus have its own manual power source, like the OLPC's crank or pedal? Nope? There goes everyone in the world without reliable electricity.
Does it have super-idiot-proof software? Not really. Heck, even I (as a fairly experienced computer-user) don't instantly understand half of OpenOffice's features. How is that gonna work for people who've (a) never used a computer before and (b) have no access to tech support?
Is it durable? Like, durable enough to make up for the fact that some potential users would have no access to any sort of computer repairs?
And so on. I'd personally prefer the Asus one, living here in the US with regular electricity, WiFi, and so on, but a whole lot of the OLPC's target audience would be using the Asuses (Asi?) as paperweights pretty quick.
Libertarianism speaks to our common selfishness while making for good sound bytes. And it's far enough out of the realm of political possibility that it allows you to make bold and sweeping suggestions with no fear of the actual consequences. "All drugs should be legalized" - yeah, because what this country needs is Philip Morris marketing heroin to twelve-year-olds (and pretending to market it to eighteen-year-olds). "Get rid of federally-funded schools and give us vouchers" - great, so middle- and upper-class kids go to private schools and the poor kids whose parents don't care about education never even learn to read. I'm sure a huge, illiterate underclass wouldn't have any negative effects on our society, economy, etc. "Get rid of tariffs and let free trade rule the market" - but don't let too many Indians get tech jobs, or you'll hear the whining again here on Slashdot!
First result of a Google search for "motion to strike." It would have been faster to look it up than to post a complaint.
Step 1: Patented behavior-prediction computer
Step 2: Beowulf cluster
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Psychohistory!
To make it a bit more exact, how about intelligence as "complexity that is most effectively/efficiently understood through analogy to one's own thought processes?" That seems to be how philosophers argue against solipsism, and it also explains why, for example, complex systems like the weather and astrophysics used to be explained by appealing to a human-like (divine) intelligence, until our understanding of those systems grew sophisticated enough to supersede that appeal.
The downside of this definition is that when we learn enough about neurology and psychology to explain and predict human behavior and thought processes well enough, we all slide right back into solipsism... or at least the philosophers do.
The "best qualified" workers are probably the guys looking for green cards - otherwise, why would HR go through all this rigmarole to keep them hired? It's not even like they're paying these immigrant employees less, because if that was the case they could just post ads openly and know that no American would be willing to work for the advertised salary.
IANAL, but it sounds like the law requires them to hire any American applicant who is QUALIFIED, not preferable. So these companies are afraid they're going to have to fire Amir, the extremely talented programmer who designed half their system and knows its vagaries inside and out, and replace him with Jim, the lazy American guy who isn't really that great, but looks good enough on paper that the law considers him "qualified" to take Amir's job.
"XX-page document" is reporter code for "so long I feel justified not having read it."
Are they honestly crying in public because a competitor wants to... compete with them?
Firefox has managed to get a 25% marketshare against Microsoft, on their own OS. Hell, I'm typing this from Firefox on a Mac right now, because I like the addons. If Safari is trying to "edge out" Firefox, they just need to make sure Firefox is a significantly better browser. If it's not, well, you can hardly blame Apple for making a better product.
Because your land area includes a huge percentage of barren, lifeless regions with no notable human settlements, like the Yukon and Quebec.
I remember hearing way back when that the Human Genome people were doing their job more quickly by only mapping the active DNA and skipping the "junk"... if that "junk" is in fact active, does that mean they have a lot more mapping to do? Or is my info just hopelessly out of date?