I can't really tell by your post whether you have a problem with this development or not
Indeed, because I was simply making a factual point. Naturally everyone has to polarize to their sides though (see the other post classically bringing up Microsoft).
To preface I am neither for or against F/OSS. I'm just pointing out that the freedom that most people care about isn't what Mr. Stallman is talking about....the software that runs the telephone system, your bank...
Let's revisit this in 10 years. Virtually every vertical market is homogenizing on a couple of standard systems - banks will tell you that their core business is banking, and the IT needs are secondary, and if they can share some of their systems with their peers in the industry, they will (back-end IT systems aren't a competitive force anymore). Telephone companies are the same. Both of them have IT as a matter of need, but they see it as a nuisance rather than a benefit.
You touched on the most important aspect of the F/OSS movement - free as in beer. Many of the adoption of apps like OpenOffice, Linux, and GIMP, have occurred because they're monetarily free (yeah Redhat charges a couple of people, but the installed base of these apps is astronomically greater than the number of payers). I use GIMP not because I care about OSS, but because I'd rather shell out that $50 for the new deluxe collector's edition of The Lord of the Rings - A Journey Too God Damn Long than for a copy of JASC. Ultimately the software industry is being eaten inside out by this sort of "let it all be free!". What was a profession is turning into a hobby.
Cue the standard replies of "but the money will be made up in service!". That's what India is for. And anyways it ignores the reality that most organizations (and individuals) are trying to reduce their IT spending to $0, and they'll do whatever they can to achieve that.
I wouldn't call a BSOD a very critical vulnerability (it's annoying as hell, but generally you aren't opening ani files on your servers)- very critical is if the exploit can be used to execute malicious code. I still am unsure how this can be used to execute such code.
The "multi-languages" feature of.NET is a superficial feature, and it most certainly isn't the most important feature. As others have pointed out you certainly can do the same thing with Java.
The.NET platform, with its dependence on Microsoft BizTalk Server
Dependence? Biztalk is one possible solution for data-integration, but.NET certainly doesn't "depend" upon it -- you're fully capable of wrapping your own (which many do), and of course if you want to access data you have the massive library of OLEDB/ODBC drivers. You can even simulate a relational database using Datasets and overloads.
What a colossal load of bullshit. Given how big of a disruption this is to what obviously would be a publicly traded company, could you point to some press releases about this issue? Somehow I suspect that you're not going to be able to point out one given how ridiculous your "one day it just stopped working!" nonsense.
Does this sort of craptacular FUD make you feel better about your Java religion? Do you get a tattoo or something? Do you reach Level 5-Supreme Astroturfer?
Have you read the GPL? Much of it isn't legalese whatsoever, and this implication that it's just covering the legal bases in a thorough manner is ridiculous. I encourage you to pull up a copy at the fireside and read through it, and ask a lawyer friend to interpret it into distilled legal requirements.
The reality is that the verbosity of the GPL is because what legally is a very small block of conditions turned into a standard Stallman manifesto, espousing propaganda.
It's not irrelevant whatsoever - society puts differing forces on males and females, and as the GP points out it is extraordinarily rare to find a woman excel outside of "the system" (you'll find a good number of examples of men who persevered against the odds, pursuing success in non-traditional ways, but almost no women doing the same). This says more about society than woman, and I think it's largely because society encourages women who don't academically excel to become homemakers and baby machines (no I am not saying that homemakers and parents didn't academically excel, just that it does end up being the "default" profession of many woman in that situation).
Firstly, this is just a press release and the announced arrival is very similar to the announced arrival of blu ray devices in the North American market.
Furthermore, blu ray devices are available right now in Japan, and have been for a bit.
Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.
Obviously cameras don't reduce the gross flow of traffic, but they might help ensure that the traffic keeps flowing as smoothly as possible - for instance dispatching police, tow trucks, or other emergency crews where necessary. It can also be used for road condition analysis for display on information boards that might lead some to take alternate routes (just as the local media usually monitors them as well to gauge traffic patterns in real time).
In the Toronto area I find that the radio gets the traffic right very frequently, and I've changed routes quite a few times based upon it. The most valuable information is the accident reports, which are provided by the regional police forces - obviously accidents (usually laughable accidents) are one of the worst traffic problems.
Microsoft has had "beta" versions of their 64-bit software for years (and furthermore specific vendors released customized "official" versions for specific platforms). Feel free to download and install the betas from:
These are very robust, feature complete betas, however they have had limited saturation simply because there are a limited number of shops that have signed onto 64-bit yet, so Microsoft is playing very safe with them and hanging onto them until they are sure.
Indeed the contention that Microsoft is colluding with Intel seems a bit hard to accept - Microsoft and Intel have had a largely acrimonious relationship lately, and Microsoft has done a lot of PR ventures with AMD. Some have indicated that Intel's eventual acceptance of x86-64 was largely driven by Microsoft crowning it the evolution of 64-bit on the platform.
Are you seriously proposing that Intel plans to put two cores just to match the predicted transistor count? That is absolute absurdity. "Jesus, man, we're falling behind Moore's observation! Let's stick some L4 cache on this chip to catch up!"
Obviously they want to put two cores in a chip because, well, they can - at any given time there's going to be a "fastest core" with given design and fabrication constraints, and if they can close to double that by stick two in a chip then why not: It allows them to further segment their market.
Name a Point and Shoot gives you the capability to go from a focal length of 24mm all the way out to 1200mm?...
Fair enough, however to be reasonable such a long focal lengths almost certainly require a tripod (not only is the light hitting the CCD greatly reduced when zoomed so much, effective movement of subject matter is absolutely massive, leading to blur even at high shutter speeds. The whole point of P&S is portability, so this isn't compatible.
I do not know of any P&S Camera, digital or otherwise, that provides you with the capability of taking extra long exposures, which are perfect for taking lightning storm images among other types of shots.
This feature is standard on the mid to higher end P&S cameras, and has been for several years. Of course most people use it maybe once when playing around with the camera.
"paying $500-$800 for a point and shoot or "prosumer point and shoot instead of getting a rebel? that equates with pure stupidity."
I paid $650 CDN, or about $530 US, for a "P&S" camera. Am I stupid? Nah, I'm just wise (and I don't see the world in angry black and whites). I know from experience that where an SLR often goes unused, my little extraordinarily good quality P&S literally fits in my shirt pocket.
You see, that's a "feature": Actually having a camera that you bring around with you is a lot more valuable than having a technically superior camera sitting in the vault at home. Do you care around a backpack cellphone with "excellent frequency response", a 4 month battery time, and an antenna 4 feet over your head? I'll bet that technically it's a better choice.
I had a Canon S50, and this as exactly my issue - the focus wait times were ridiculous. I replaced it with a Sony DSC-P150 and the difference is night and day - in half decent light the new camera focuses almost instantly. It has buffers ot shoot 7MP pictures extremely quickly as well.
In other words I don't think this is a P&S versus SLR thing.
SLRs - generally large and bulky, and so valuable you'll be perpetually paranoid. You'll end up leaving it home or in the car most of the time rather than lugging it around. Wielding it makes you feel rather wanky as you're mixed in with the "Amapro Photographers" that appear in every public location in droves (to get that hopeful National Geographic photo of "bear scratching balls behind a scratched plexiglass window" at the zoo), and in any family event people will expect you to fill in as the "secondary event photographer".
P&S - Fantastic quality in current cameras, and small enough that you actually carry it around. Pull it out, snap a picture, and move on. The current crop have remarkable quality lenses, megapixels out the wazaoo, and they often have manual controls for the rare event that you want them.
I say the above with a full understanding of the technical merits of the nicer SLRs, and as a long time enthusiast lugging around a 35mm pro-quality SLR camera and various lenses. What I found, however, is that I almost never actually used it - I wouldn't bring it to outings, hated bringing it to family events, and hated the "wannabe pro" vibe that it gave off. After analyzing all of that I got a nice litte Canon "P&S" S50 and I've since taken thousands of pictures, and I bring it everywhere. The pictures in most conditions are stunning. I just upgraded and after considering the digital rebel, went with a new, even smaller P&S.
Wow. I thought I wasn't that old, having started my chops on a C64 (actually a Atari 400, but shortly thereafter upgrading to the 64), until I saw this (one of the Google Images result pages for the person in question) - it's pretty bad when 1/3 of your local regulars also appear in the "In Memoriam" section (notice how some nefarious agent photoshopped the shirt on Mr. Kirby, may he rest in peace, between the topmost photo and his memory photo).
A government granted monopoly is basically the same thing as a subsidy - Bell made a lot more money, with a lot more financial security (and thus ability to raise private funds) because of the government granted monopoly.
Re:To bad for the competition
on
230mph Electric Car
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car
More correctly, here it is purportedly damaging a very good car.
The reality is that these things are seldom as straightforward as they seem, and whenever someone claims that the industry is in some giant collusion to keep an innovation down (rather that the more credible scenario that they are mercilessly looking for an opportunity to devastate their competitors and capture the market) you really need to look for the tinfoil helmets, and look deeper than the surface.
In this case very little is said, at least in the non-slashdotted article, about things like range, yet that has traditionally been the killer of electric cars. The motors and other basic element of designs are very well understood (putting many motors on a car is hardly innovative), but without sufficient power reserves it simply won't sell -- the whole reason why hybrids exist is that they allow them to leverage the tremendous power reserves of gas because batteries on their own are insufficient. Hence why the industry has been vigorously exploring fuel cells and electricity storage systems, but the technology isn't there yet. The car part of the equation isn't the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
FUD is the enemy, whether it's against Linux or Microsoft. It's pretty sad when people need to contrive examples to support their religion.
What is your question again?
What's your point again?
I can't really tell by your post whether you have a problem with this development or not
Indeed, because I was simply making a factual point. Naturally everyone has to polarize to their sides though (see the other post classically bringing up Microsoft).
To preface I am neither for or against F/OSS. I'm just pointing out that the freedom that most people care about isn't what Mr. Stallman is talking about. ...the software that runs the telephone system, your bank...
Let's revisit this in 10 years. Virtually every vertical market is homogenizing on a couple of standard systems - banks will tell you that their core business is banking, and the IT needs are secondary, and if they can share some of their systems with their peers in the industry, they will (back-end IT systems aren't a competitive force anymore). Telephone companies are the same. Both of them have IT as a matter of need, but they see it as a nuisance rather than a benefit.
Nice strawman. Amazing how I said nothing about Microsoft, yet there it appears.
You touched on the most important aspect of the F/OSS movement - free as in beer. Many of the adoption of apps like OpenOffice, Linux, and GIMP, have occurred because they're monetarily free (yeah Redhat charges a couple of people, but the installed base of these apps is astronomically greater than the number of payers). I use GIMP not because I care about OSS, but because I'd rather shell out that $50 for the new deluxe collector's edition of The Lord of the Rings - A Journey Too God Damn Long than for a copy of JASC. Ultimately the software industry is being eaten inside out by this sort of "let it all be free!". What was a profession is turning into a hobby.
Cue the standard replies of "but the money will be made up in service!". That's what India is for. And anyways it ignores the reality that most organizations (and individuals) are trying to reduce their IT spending to $0, and they'll do whatever they can to achieve that.
I wouldn't call a BSOD a very critical vulnerability (it's annoying as hell, but generally you aren't opening ani files on your servers)- very critical is if the exploit can be used to execute malicious code. I still am unsure how this can be used to execute such code.
The "multi-languages" feature of .NET is a superficial feature, and it most certainly isn't the most important feature. As others have pointed out you certainly can do the same thing with Java.
.NET platform, with its dependence on Microsoft BizTalk Server
.NET certainly doesn't "depend" upon it -- you're fully capable of wrapping your own (which many do), and of course if you want to access data you have the massive library of OLEDB/ODBC drivers. You can even simulate a relational database using Datasets and overloads.
The
Dependence? Biztalk is one possible solution for data-integration, but
What a colossal load of bullshit. Given how big of a disruption this is to what obviously would be a publicly traded company, could you point to some press releases about this issue? Somehow I suspect that you're not going to be able to point out one given how ridiculous your "one day it just stopped working!" nonsense.
Does this sort of craptacular FUD make you feel better about your Java religion? Do you get a tattoo or something? Do you reach Level 5-Supreme Astroturfer?
Have you read the GPL? Much of it isn't legalese whatsoever, and this implication that it's just covering the legal bases in a thorough manner is ridiculous. I encourage you to pull up a copy at the fireside and read through it, and ask a lawyer friend to interpret it into distilled legal requirements.
The reality is that the verbosity of the GPL is because what legally is a very small block of conditions turned into a standard Stallman manifesto, espousing propaganda.
" Isn't that why we're all ditching existing radio and getting Sirius/XM?"
We are?
The fact that it's a "she", is irrelevant.
It's not irrelevant whatsoever - society puts differing forces on males and females, and as the GP points out it is extraordinarily rare to find a woman excel outside of "the system" (you'll find a good number of examples of men who persevered against the odds, pursuing success in non-traditional ways, but almost no women doing the same). This says more about society than woman, and I think it's largely because society encourages women who don't academically excel to become homemakers and baby machines (no I am not saying that homemakers and parents didn't academically excel, just that it does end up being the "default" profession of many woman in that situation).
How many hostile takeovers has Microsoft been involved with?
Firstly, this is just a press release and the announced arrival is very similar to the announced arrival of blu ray devices in the North American market.
Furthermore, blu ray devices are available right now in Japan, and have been for a bit.
Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.
s /camera/camhome.htm
Obviously cameras don't reduce the gross flow of traffic, but they might help ensure that the traffic keeps flowing as smoothly as possible - for instance dispatching police, tow trucks, or other emergency crews where necessary. It can also be used for road condition analysis for display on information boards that might lead some to take alternate routes (just as the local media usually monitors them as well to gauge traffic patterns in real time).
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/traveller/compas
In the Toronto area I find that the radio gets the traffic right very frequently, and I've changed routes quite a few times based upon it. The most valuable information is the accident reports, which are provided by the regional police forces - obviously accidents (usually laughable accidents) are one of the worst traffic problems.
Microsoft has had "beta" versions of their 64-bit software for years (and furthermore specific vendors released customized "official" versions for specific platforms). Feel free to download and install the betas from:
x 64/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/
These are very robust, feature complete betas, however they have had limited saturation simply because there are a limited number of shops that have signed onto 64-bit yet, so Microsoft is playing very safe with them and hanging onto them until they are sure.
Indeed the contention that Microsoft is colluding with Intel seems a bit hard to accept - Microsoft and Intel have had a largely acrimonious relationship lately, and Microsoft has done a lot of PR ventures with AMD. Some have indicated that Intel's eventual acceptance of x86-64 was largely driven by Microsoft crowning it the evolution of 64-bit on the platform.
Are you seriously proposing that Intel plans to put two cores just to match the predicted transistor count? That is absolute absurdity. "Jesus, man, we're falling behind Moore's observation! Let's stick some L4 cache on this chip to catch up!"
Obviously they want to put two cores in a chip because, well, they can - at any given time there's going to be a "fastest core" with given design and fabrication constraints, and if they can close to double that by stick two in a chip then why not: It allows them to further segment their market.
Name a Point and Shoot gives you the capability to go from a focal length of 24mm all the way out to 1200mm? ...
Fair enough, however to be reasonable such a long focal lengths almost certainly require a tripod (not only is the light hitting the CCD greatly reduced when zoomed so much, effective movement of subject matter is absolutely massive, leading to blur even at high shutter speeds. The whole point of P&S is portability, so this isn't compatible.
I do not know of any P&S Camera, digital or otherwise, that provides you with the capability of taking extra long exposures, which are perfect for taking lightning storm images among other types of shots.
This feature is standard on the mid to higher end P&S cameras, and has been for several years. Of course most people use it maybe once when playing around with the camera.
Wow, why the anger?
"paying $500-$800 for a point and shoot or "prosumer point and shoot instead of getting a rebel? that equates with pure stupidity."
I paid $650 CDN, or about $530 US, for a "P&S" camera. Am I stupid? Nah, I'm just wise (and I don't see the world in angry black and whites). I know from experience that where an SLR often goes unused, my little extraordinarily good quality P&S literally fits in my shirt pocket.
You see, that's a "feature": Actually having a camera that you bring around with you is a lot more valuable than having a technically superior camera sitting in the vault at home. Do you care around a backpack cellphone with "excellent frequency response", a 4 month battery time, and an antenna 4 feet over your head? I'll bet that technically it's a better choice.
I had a Canon S50, and this as exactly my issue - the focus wait times were ridiculous. I replaced it with a Sony DSC-P150 and the difference is night and day - in half decent light the new camera focuses almost instantly. It has buffers ot shoot 7MP pictures extremely quickly as well.
In other words I don't think this is a P&S versus SLR thing.
For most users a more important analysis would be
SLRs - generally large and bulky, and so valuable you'll be perpetually paranoid. You'll end up leaving it home or in the car most of the time rather than lugging it around. Wielding it makes you feel rather wanky as you're mixed in with the "Amapro Photographers" that appear in every public location in droves (to get that hopeful National Geographic photo of "bear scratching balls behind a scratched plexiglass window" at the zoo), and in any family event people will expect you to fill in as the "secondary event photographer".
P&S - Fantastic quality in current cameras, and small enough that you actually carry it around. Pull it out, snap a picture, and move on. The current crop have remarkable quality lenses, megapixels out the wazaoo, and they often have manual controls for the rare event that you want them.
I say the above with a full understanding of the technical merits of the nicer SLRs, and as a long time enthusiast lugging around a 35mm pro-quality SLR camera and various lenses. What I found, however, is that I almost never actually used it - I wouldn't bring it to outings, hated bringing it to family events, and hated the "wannabe pro" vibe that it gave off. After analyzing all of that I got a nice litte Canon "P&S" S50 and I've since taken thousands of pictures, and I bring it everywhere. The pictures in most conditions are stunning. I just upgraded and after considering the digital rebel, went with a new, even smaller P&S.
Wow. I thought I wasn't that old, having started my chops on a C64 (actually a Atari 400, but shortly thereafter upgrading to the 64), until I saw this (one of the Google Images result pages for the person in question) - it's pretty bad when 1/3 of your local regulars also appear in the "In Memoriam" section (notice how some nefarious agent photoshopped the shirt on Mr. Kirby, may he rest in peace, between the topmost photo and his memory photo).
"Bell was privately financed from the beginning."
A government granted monopoly is basically the same thing as a subsidy - Bell made a lot more money, with a lot more financial security (and thus ability to raise private funds) because of the government granted monopoly.
Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car
More correctly, here it is purportedly damaging a very good car.
The reality is that these things are seldom as straightforward as they seem, and whenever someone claims that the industry is in some giant collusion to keep an innovation down (rather that the more credible scenario that they are mercilessly looking for an opportunity to devastate their competitors and capture the market) you really need to look for the tinfoil helmets, and look deeper than the surface.
In this case very little is said, at least in the non-slashdotted article, about things like range, yet that has traditionally been the killer of electric cars. The motors and other basic element of designs are very well understood (putting many motors on a car is hardly innovative), but without sufficient power reserves it simply won't sell -- the whole reason why hybrids exist is that they allow them to leverage the tremendous power reserves of gas because batteries on their own are insufficient. Hence why the industry has been vigorously exploring fuel cells and electricity storage systems, but the technology isn't there yet. The car part of the equation isn't the problem.