Microsoft, ironically enough, is a big part of the reason Apple made it out of the mid 90's in business.
Microsoft's role is somewhat overblown. The 150 million from MS was to settle a lawsuit and represented 7.5% of Apple's cash reserves at the time.
Not to speak for GP, but I think it's less about the 150 million as it is about Microsoft's decision to continue to support Office for Mac, even though it helped leach sales away from Windows. Without Office on the Mac in 1995, the decision to buy a Mac in a business environment would have been much harder for businesses to needed to share documents with Office users (which was just about everyone back then).
Aside from that, its an excellent example of why multiculturalism should not exist. My daughter gains nothing by the existence of that culture. Let american consumerism steamroll it out of existence, no substantial loss.
Right, because the American culture is the One True Culture. Your ridiculous statement implies a false choice: American culture vs. poisoning girls who want to go to school. This is, in fact, a great argument for multiculturalism. If Afghanistan were more of an educated multi-cultural society, these nutjobs would have a harder time getting a following. As it is, when everyone only sees one culture (their own), treating women like this is the only "normal" they know.
but I can see why they'd want to protect ownership of a valuable property.
Me too, but what the fuck does ownership of property have to do with copyright?
(SPOILER ALERT: "Nothing.")
Not sure if there's any legal basis for that. How can the concept of ownership not apply to copyright? If I create a work, I own the copyright for that work. It is a tangible and potentially marketable asset and I can transfer that asset to someone else. With that copyright, I have the legal right to control (subject to some limits, such as fair use) how that asset is used.
I know this isn't a popular idea here, but copyright is, in principle, a good thing. The length of time we're giving it is ridiculous, and the way the *AAs are handling it is problematic, but to listen to many people here, they think that "information wants to be free" so there should be no basis for copyright. Using this logic, should it be illegal to create a work and not publish it at all? Would that even be within my rights? Of course it would. If I have the right to publish or not, clearly I should have some types of rights to control how it is disseminated after I publish.
I fully reject the idea that once I create a work of art that I'm morally or in any other way required to give it to the world to use as they see fit. The creator of a work does own the copyright for that work, and can do with it as he sees fit.
Most would-be muggers are quickly deterred by the sight of the 1911 strapped to my hip. You want my celly? Come and get it.
Contrary to what anti-2nd Amendment advocates want you to think, not all gun owners are psycho cowboys looking to get into a shootout; most of us are just law abiding citizens who know better than to expect the government to protect us.
That's funny, because you sound exactly like a psycho cowboy looking to get into a shootout.
Back in the 90s, I was a middle school math teacher. I always felt my job as a teacher was to educate a rounded person, so I included non-math discussions and assignments from time-to-time. One of my classes was Algebra II, taught to 8th and 9th graders. These were advanced students, and I enjoyed teaching about things outside the math world, some of which related to math, some of which didn't.
For this class, I generally offered some extra credit points to students who completed an out-of-class reading assignment. I listed books like Flatland, The God Particle, and yes, Ender's Game. I warned my students that it had some violence and harsh language, and left it up to them to decide. Never got any complaints from any parents, fortunately. After reading this, that book would probably go off my list.
I do agree it showed bad judgement to read this book to a classroom, full of students with varying levels of maturity, and students with vastly different tastes for violence and strong language. I would have never done that. Firing the teacher? Calling the book pornographic? That simply ludicrous
The author has obviously not driven a GM vehicle lately. Let me count the problems with my two year old Pontiac...
So let me get this right. You have problems with your Pontiac, so all GMs are bad. I really expect more out of the/. crowd. Anecdotes are not data. Never have been and never will be. What we have here is data that shows that all cars are getting better in quality (including GM), and you're single data point that disagrees with the large data set. Which one shall we throw out....?
Awesome. I noticed they feature a Noah's Ark exhibit. Of all the crazy Old Testament stories to hang your pseudo-scientific hat on, are you sure that the ship that carried two of each of the millions of known species that currently exists (since, you know, evolution isn't true) is the one you're gonna pick?
Are you aware of any real implementations for this? I see so many hurdles that making this happen "swiftly" is probably not going to happen. For instance:
How do you ensure all nodes have a unique IP address routeable from every other node?
How do you maintain reliable name services?
How do you bootstrap a project like this? Without a huge majority of users moving, with no guarantees, almost simultaneously. This concept couldn't handle a sparse array.
I'm sure there are theoretical solutions to all of these problems, but anything realistic?
Here's a simple solution that could be built in - a gps check to see if the phone is travelling too fast to be a human on foot - and disable the keypad.
That would also keep passengers from using their devices, including people in taxis, trains and buses. It'll never fly. You take away one of the top use cases for mobile devices in urban areas.
Beg to differ, but the Risk officer should definitely not be the CFO, nor report to the CFO. In a large org, ideally the Chief Risk Officer should report to the Board, and should be independent from the CEO, CFO and CIO, where significant amounts of risk lie. The purpose of the CRO is to make risk assessments and corrections independent of the other officers, who each have different priorities and reasons to ignore risk. Of course, in reality, the CRO often reports to the CEO, but having the CRO be the CFO or report to the CFO can cause a huge conflict of interest.
The mailing list has been awash in outrage and suprise as prices rise much higher than most can support
This is one reason I'm always critical of people who blindly say "Move your $X to Google $SERVICE! It's free for $PREDICATE usage!"
TANSTAAFL, even if it is Google. Sooner or later (usually based on how fast $SERVICE reaches some critical mass) you better be willing to pay up. At least the classic software model tells you how much it costs up front.
This is one reason I'm always critical of people who blindly say "Move your $X to Google $SERVICE! It's free for $PREDICATE usage!"
TANSTAAFL, even if it is Google. Sooner or later (usually based on how fast $SERVICE reaches some critical mass) you better be willing to pay up. At least the classic software model tells you how much it costs up front.
I know what you mean, my monthly fees for Google Search, Google Maps, and GMail are *killing* me.
Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).
Not sure why you're so worried about protecting your real name, Ron, considering you link straight from your Slashdot profile to your personal website with your name and photo. Are you really that concerned about your privacy, or is this just privacy theater?
no it doesn't. not everyone wants to be julia roberts or another top tier star. they don't even make that much money after all the taxes and agent fees are accounted for.
The idea of being taken over by apes is not very convincing. Even if apes are twice as smart as a human (which is not possible, due to energy constraints). We humans are 6 billion entities 1/12 has guns. On the other side, there are at top most a million apes (I doubt that there are still that many of them) without guns. And the very idea of fire weapons is, that physical power does now longer count. So the apes are largely outnumbered and outgunned.
I guess you didn't actually see the movie. That specific point is taken care of very well in the movie. I think the foreshadowing done at the end of the movie provides for a very nice transition from the world we know to the world of Planet of the Apes.
There are lots of people here hating this movie on spec. That's fine, I guess, if you don't want to see it. But please don't comment about plot holes or other issues if you haven't bothered to see the damn thing.
I was surprised to not see any comments on/. about the portrayal of science in general, and medical research companies specifically. The biomed company portrayed in this film has to be the worst company with some of the worst practices and leadership ever shown in a movie. I was amazed at the incompetency of the company. Some incredible items were:
- Immediately ending a very expensive and potentially profitable research product because of one unexpected result (the chimp's rampage at the beginning), apparently without any attempt to locate a root cause.
- Not tracking their medication samples so researchers can just steal medication for home trials (REALLY?)
- Completely inadequate security measures
- This isn't the company, but Franco's character shows a complete lack of respect for proper testing procedure, for medical ethics or for anything else that a good researcher would be very careful about.
Overall, science and technology companies really got the short end of the stick in this movie. That said, I can pick nits with almost every film. It was entertaining and fun. Definitely worth seeing in my opinion.
99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.
That's true, and there have been many discussions here (and on other sites) about the "loudness war". Let me give you a counter-argument about why dynamic range compression is happening, and a use case for it.
35 years ago, if you listened to music, you were probably listening to it at home. There were almost no portable music devices, and most cars had radios. Home is a great place to listen to nuanced music, as you have a lot of control over the ambient sound levels. You could enjoy both the softest whispers and the loudest crashes just fine.
Now the situation is very different. I'd guess that most music listening is done in cars or using portable players. Now these recordings with great dynamic range are harder to listen to. Take, for instance, my SACD of the Mahler 2nd Symphony. When the choir comes in in just a whisper in the 5th movement, the effect at home is simply chilling. However, when I play my CD of the same recording in my car, I'm constantly having to adjust the volume up or down to be able to hear the soft parts without the loud parts causing my brain to explode. While the overall effect wouldn't be as awesome as it is at home on the SACD, listening to the recording while mobile would be actually easier (and probably more enjoyable) if there were some dynamic range compression thrown in.
Why not give a small amount, even 10% of that research money go towards helping alternative medicine practitioners prove that their work is actually effective? We know it it from the millions of satisfied patients, now we just need some money and lab space to prove it.
There is plenty of money in the Alternative Medicine industry. Have you been seen what they charge for useless homeopathic medicines? Tell you what, why don't you put some of your money into just a few peer-reviewed scientifically sound research projects that don't rely on anecdotal evidence to prove their conclusions. Once you get something that proves your basic approach to medicine is sound, then we'll start throwing money at you. Until that, why should you get any more money than astrologists, psychics, or perpetual motion "inventors"?
Wallets aren't only used to carry money or credit cards.
Right. It's a ridiculous statement on the surface, and the concept of everyone using mobile payments is also ridiculous. My mom won't use a debit card, and refuses to purchase anything online. She also uses a basic phone with almost no features. Unless he's planning on knocking my mom off in the next four years, his prediction isn't going to come true.
It certainly is, but that's not really the point. People are people, and they exhibit stupid, careless and random behavior. Even careful people make mistakes.
Good security design assumes that people do things they shouldn't and designs around it. That was never the case with most implementation of USB drive stacks, which errs quite clearly on the side of ease-of-use over security. I'd like to see this change, but there's a lot of market inertia on the ease-of-use side. You can get software that locks down USB mass storage, any many companies have it, but there are almost always usability issues with those solutions.
I think an export/import facility should be standard, normal, required functionality.
Facebook already has this functionality and it works quite well. You can get an export of your wall and all of your photos. It comes as an HTML-formatted document and a folder of the pictures. Building a parser to grab the HTML document into a database or spreadsheet would be trivial.
Just because you're imagination is limited, doesn't mean we shouldn't.
Just because someone doesn't like this, or doesn't think this is a good idea doesn't mean their imagination is limited. I can imagine lots of uses for this, and in some limited areas it might have an application. But would I ever install a system like this in my home? Probably not. I just don't think it would lead to an improvement in my enjoyment of a movie or TV show.
I see this as somewhat akin to 3D technology. Yeah it's there, and some people like it. Personally I hate 3D and don't see movies in 3D, and never plan to view movies in 3D at home. Doesn't mean I lack imagination, just means I have my own preference.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, Microsoft's lawyers for each case probably wasn't aware of the other case.
I know we love to hate Microsoft here, but this is not just Microsoft behavior. This is the behavior of almost all large companies with IP portfolios.
The problem is the direction IP law has gone and continues to go. Don't hate the player, hate the game
he'll probably get fired. under US law i think its illegal to have a company officer with a felony conviction
That may be true, but a Vice President isn't generally an officer of the company, particularly in a large org with hundreds of VPs.
You must be single, or have a very understanding partner who lets you bring a cell phone while making love or cuddling.
How understanding is your partner if you pause mid-thrust to check your watch?
Microsoft's role is somewhat overblown. The 150 million from MS was to settle a lawsuit and represented 7.5% of Apple's cash reserves at the time.
Not to speak for GP, but I think it's less about the 150 million as it is about Microsoft's decision to continue to support Office for Mac, even though it helped leach sales away from Windows. Without Office on the Mac in 1995, the decision to buy a Mac in a business environment would have been much harder for businesses to needed to share documents with Office users (which was just about everyone back then).
Who said that Slashdot was only about technology news? "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." This matters.
Aside from that, its an excellent example of why multiculturalism should not exist. My daughter gains nothing by the existence of that culture. Let american consumerism steamroll it out of existence, no substantial loss.
Right, because the American culture is the One True Culture. Your ridiculous statement implies a false choice: American culture vs. poisoning girls who want to go to school. This is, in fact, a great argument for multiculturalism. If Afghanistan were more of an educated multi-cultural society, these nutjobs would have a harder time getting a following. As it is, when everyone only sees one culture (their own), treating women like this is the only "normal" they know.
but I can see why they'd want to protect ownership of a valuable property.
Me too, but what the fuck does ownership of property have to do with copyright?
(SPOILER ALERT: "Nothing.")
Not sure if there's any legal basis for that. How can the concept of ownership not apply to copyright? If I create a work, I own the copyright for that work. It is a tangible and potentially marketable asset and I can transfer that asset to someone else. With that copyright, I have the legal right to control (subject to some limits, such as fair use) how that asset is used.
I know this isn't a popular idea here, but copyright is, in principle, a good thing. The length of time we're giving it is ridiculous, and the way the *AAs are handling it is problematic, but to listen to many people here, they think that "information wants to be free" so there should be no basis for copyright. Using this logic, should it be illegal to create a work and not publish it at all? Would that even be within my rights? Of course it would. If I have the right to publish or not, clearly I should have some types of rights to control how it is disseminated after I publish.
I fully reject the idea that once I create a work of art that I'm morally or in any other way required to give it to the world to use as they see fit. The creator of a work does own the copyright for that work, and can do with it as he sees fit.
Most would-be muggers are quickly deterred by the sight of the 1911 strapped to my hip. You want my celly? Come and get it.
Contrary to what anti-2nd Amendment advocates want you to think, not all gun owners are psycho cowboys looking to get into a shootout; most of us are just law abiding citizens who know better than to expect the government to protect us.
That's funny, because you sound exactly like a psycho cowboy looking to get into a shootout.
Back in the 90s, I was a middle school math teacher. I always felt my job as a teacher was to educate a rounded person, so I included non-math discussions and assignments from time-to-time. One of my classes was Algebra II, taught to 8th and 9th graders. These were advanced students, and I enjoyed teaching about things outside the math world, some of which related to math, some of which didn't.
For this class, I generally offered some extra credit points to students who completed an out-of-class reading assignment. I listed books like Flatland, The God Particle, and yes, Ender's Game. I warned my students that it had some violence and harsh language, and left it up to them to decide. Never got any complaints from any parents, fortunately. After reading this, that book would probably go off my list.
I do agree it showed bad judgement to read this book to a classroom, full of students with varying levels of maturity, and students with vastly different tastes for violence and strong language. I would have never done that. Firing the teacher? Calling the book pornographic? That simply ludicrous
The author has obviously not driven a GM vehicle lately. Let me count the problems with my two year old Pontiac...
So let me get this right. You have problems with your Pontiac, so all GMs are bad. I really expect more out of the /. crowd. Anecdotes are not data. Never have been and never will be. What we have here is data that shows that all cars are getting better in quality (including GM), and you're single data point that disagrees with the large data set. Which one shall we throw out....?
Awesome. I noticed they feature a Noah's Ark exhibit. Of all the crazy Old Testament stories to hang your pseudo-scientific hat on, are you sure that the ship that carried two of each of the millions of known species that currently exists (since, you know, evolution isn't true) is the one you're gonna pick?
Are you aware of any real implementations for this? I see so many hurdles that making this happen "swiftly" is probably not going to happen. For instance:
How do you ensure all nodes have a unique IP address routeable from every other node?
How do you maintain reliable name services?
How do you bootstrap a project like this? Without a huge majority of users moving, with no guarantees, almost simultaneously. This concept couldn't handle a sparse array.
I'm sure there are theoretical solutions to all of these problems, but anything realistic?
Here's a simple solution that could be built in - a gps check to see if the phone is travelling too fast to be a human on foot - and disable the keypad.
That would also keep passengers from using their devices, including people in taxis, trains and buses. It'll never fly. You take away one of the top use cases for mobile devices in urban areas.
Beg to differ, but the Risk officer should definitely not be the CFO, nor report to the CFO. In a large org, ideally the Chief Risk Officer should report to the Board, and should be independent from the CEO, CFO and CIO, where significant amounts of risk lie. The purpose of the CRO is to make risk assessments and corrections independent of the other officers, who each have different priorities and reasons to ignore risk. Of course, in reality, the CRO often reports to the CEO, but having the CRO be the CFO or report to the CFO can cause a huge conflict of interest.
The mailing list has been awash in outrage and suprise as prices rise much higher than most can support
This is one reason I'm always critical of people who blindly say "Move your $X to Google $SERVICE! It's free for $PREDICATE usage!"
TANSTAAFL, even if it is Google. Sooner or later (usually based on how fast $SERVICE reaches some critical mass) you better be willing to pay up. At least the classic software model tells you how much it costs up front.
This is one reason I'm always critical of people who blindly say "Move your $X to Google $SERVICE! It's free for $PREDICATE usage!"
TANSTAAFL, even if it is Google. Sooner or later (usually based on how fast $SERVICE reaches some critical mass) you better be willing to pay up. At least the classic software model tells you how much it costs up front.
I know what you mean, my monthly fees for Google Search, Google Maps, and GMail are *killing* me.
Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).
Not sure why you're so worried about protecting your real name, Ron, considering you link straight from your Slashdot profile to your personal website with your name and photo. Are you really that concerned about your privacy, or is this just privacy theater?
no it doesn't. not everyone wants to be julia roberts or another top tier star. they don't even make that much money after all the taxes and agent fees are accounted for.
You're right, I'll be she can barely scrape together the money make the payment on her $20 Million house in Malibu, or her two ~$4 Million apartments in Mahnattan. I just don't know how she survives.
The idea of being taken over by apes is not very convincing. Even if apes are twice as smart as a human (which is not possible, due to energy constraints). We humans are 6 billion entities 1/12 has guns. On the other side, there are at top most a million apes (I doubt that there are still that many of them) without guns. And the very idea of fire weapons is, that physical power does now longer count. So the apes are largely outnumbered and outgunned.
I guess you didn't actually see the movie. That specific point is taken care of very well in the movie. I think the foreshadowing done at the end of the movie provides for a very nice transition from the world we know to the world of Planet of the Apes.
There are lots of people here hating this movie on spec. That's fine, I guess, if you don't want to see it. But please don't comment about plot holes or other issues if you haven't bothered to see the damn thing.
This comment has several spoilers, so be warned.
I was surprised to not see any comments on /. about the portrayal of science in general, and medical research companies specifically. The biomed company portrayed in this film has to be the worst company with some of the worst practices and leadership ever shown in a movie. I was amazed at the incompetency of the company. Some incredible items were:
- Immediately ending a very expensive and potentially profitable research product because of one unexpected result (the chimp's rampage at the beginning), apparently without any attempt to locate a root cause.
- Not tracking their medication samples so researchers can just steal medication for home trials (REALLY?)
- Completely inadequate security measures
- This isn't the company, but Franco's character shows a complete lack of respect for proper testing procedure, for medical ethics or for anything else that a good researcher would be very careful about.
Overall, science and technology companies really got the short end of the stick in this movie. That said, I can pick nits with almost every film. It was entertaining and fun. Definitely worth seeing in my opinion.
99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.
That's true, and there have been many discussions here (and on other sites) about the "loudness war". Let me give you a counter-argument about why dynamic range compression is happening, and a use case for it.
35 years ago, if you listened to music, you were probably listening to it at home. There were almost no portable music devices, and most cars had radios. Home is a great place to listen to nuanced music, as you have a lot of control over the ambient sound levels. You could enjoy both the softest whispers and the loudest crashes just fine.
Now the situation is very different. I'd guess that most music listening is done in cars or using portable players. Now these recordings with great dynamic range are harder to listen to. Take, for instance, my SACD of the Mahler 2nd Symphony. When the choir comes in in just a whisper in the 5th movement, the effect at home is simply chilling. However, when I play my CD of the same recording in my car, I'm constantly having to adjust the volume up or down to be able to hear the soft parts without the loud parts causing my brain to explode. While the overall effect wouldn't be as awesome as it is at home on the SACD, listening to the recording while mobile would be actually easier (and probably more enjoyable) if there were some dynamic range compression thrown in.
Why not give a small amount, even 10% of that research money go towards helping alternative medicine practitioners prove that their work is actually effective? We know it it from the millions of satisfied patients, now we just need some money and lab space to prove it.
There is plenty of money in the Alternative Medicine industry. Have you been seen what they charge for useless homeopathic medicines? Tell you what, why don't you put some of your money into just a few peer-reviewed scientifically sound research projects that don't rely on anecdotal evidence to prove their conclusions. Once you get something that proves your basic approach to medicine is sound, then we'll start throwing money at you. Until that, why should you get any more money than astrologists, psychics, or perpetual motion "inventors"?
Wallets aren't only used to carry money or credit cards.
Right. It's a ridiculous statement on the surface, and the concept of everyone using mobile payments is also ridiculous. My mom won't use a debit card, and refuses to purchase anything online. She also uses a basic phone with almost no features. Unless he's planning on knocking my mom off in the next four years, his prediction isn't going to come true.
Couldn't it still be a little of both?
It certainly is, but that's not really the point. People are people, and they exhibit stupid, careless and random behavior. Even careful people make mistakes.
Good security design assumes that people do things they shouldn't and designs around it. That was never the case with most implementation of USB drive stacks, which errs quite clearly on the side of ease-of-use over security. I'd like to see this change, but there's a lot of market inertia on the ease-of-use side. You can get software that locks down USB mass storage, any many companies have it, but there are almost always usability issues with those solutions.
I think an export/import facility should be standard, normal, required functionality.
Facebook already has this functionality and it works quite well. You can get an export of your wall and all of your photos. It comes as an HTML-formatted document and a folder of the pictures. Building a parser to grab the HTML document into a database or spreadsheet would be trivial.
Just because you're imagination is limited, doesn't mean we shouldn't.
Just because someone doesn't like this, or doesn't think this is a good idea doesn't mean their imagination is limited. I can imagine lots of uses for this, and in some limited areas it might have an application. But would I ever install a system like this in my home? Probably not. I just don't think it would lead to an improvement in my enjoyment of a movie or TV show.
I see this as somewhat akin to 3D technology. Yeah it's there, and some people like it. Personally I hate 3D and don't see movies in 3D, and never plan to view movies in 3D at home. Doesn't mean I lack imagination, just means I have my own preference.