While I don't believe the singularity will happen in 20 years, it's reasonable to believe it'll happen in less than 1,000 years. Thus, in a couple billion years, we can either download our minds into probes or we'll have been replaced by robots or something like that. In any case, clinging to a physical existence will be considered highly overrated. Or we'll just have killed ourselves off in some way and some other species can scratch their heads about it. 70-something million years for mammals to evolve into us? There's time for at least 50 such cycles.
The Denver Post story nor the Slashdot write-up give any detail about what the exact claims where in this case, so while it *MIGHT* be a patent troll case (and given the judge's remarks, that seems likely), it's kind of hard to really tell, from what we know.
But, this is Slashdot, guilty as charged...
The link to the ruling above shows that this isn't really a patent trolling case. It started out as normal patent litigation but grew more and more complex. The initial claims were rebutted but the plaintiff's lawyers convinced the jury by misleading arguments despite being admonished by the judge several times. "The Court has already concluded that Medtronic engaged in litigation misconduct during the trial. That same misconduct also supports the conclusion that Medtronic continued this suit vexatiously after the claims were construed."
How come they talk about thousands of MIPS instead of just saying GIPS? Maybe because "Gips" in German means plaster or cast. That would sound like broken mainframe. Bad marketing.
No - because they are retaining the rights to sue entities that use the information for commercial purposes. Here's the text:
5. Open Source Compatibility. Microsoft will covenant not to sue open source developers for development and non-commercial distribution of implementations of these Open Protocols.
I can smell a rat here. Would that mean the FOSS apps using their "Open Protocols" could not be distributed in commercial distros like RHEL or SLES/SLED? Would fully free distros like Fedora use them? Would they sue commercial outfits like Ubuntu? Smells like an attempt at fragmenting FOSS space.
Come on. I lift 50 pounds and much more many times most days... and I pay for it! Think of it in terms of your health/fitness and gym membership fees you save.
Funny but, I couldn't shake the feeling that the reason conditions here on earth are so 'perfect' for life as we know it was more to do with life as we know it evolving to fit the conditions... Plus some serious selection bias. We still can't observe earth-sized planets directly, we can only infer their existence through microlensing in rare cases. As long as we can't routinely determine mid-sized planets' spectra we don't have any data to work on, just speculation.
And if you read "The Mating Mind" by Geoffrey Miller, he goes as far as saying that most of human culture has evolutionary roots - as ornaments of sexual selection. Makes a lot of sense to me if you look at things like music, art and fashion.
>Oh, it'll work out very well in the long term, that is, assuming the entire race isn't annihilated.
Reminds me of a quote from BBC's "Planet Earth" series (I'm paraphrasing): "Why are all species part of natural cycles? The ones that fouled their nest didn't make it for long."
People are used to thinking in decades or centuries. Obviously our path is not sustainable over millennia. So the question is, are we going to invent our way out of that natural resource crunch or not, and what will the collateral damage be?
That's what I think. Looks like they added a recovery mechanism where the system boots a working kernel and goes back to the updater.
And I wasn't trying to be funny with my GP post. Those BSODs have caused 4 systems to be converted to Linux so far, usually with older hardware. That IBM Intellistation with a 300 MHz PPro is still a decent file server. I think it's going to have its 10th birthday this year, running 24/7 the entire time (first NT4, then W2k which BSOD'd after an automatic update, then Fedora Core, now CentOS 4.)
>Your only valid point is that too much of the vegetables we buy comes from too far away
I bought a nice tray of tomatoes at Trader Joe's the other day and at home I saw "Product of Holland." WTF? Oil is obviously still way too cheap if that is economically viable.
I wonder why there is no GUI that expressly tries to clone a Windows UI, say XP (although I still like the W2k UI better than XP's candy.) The typical user doesn't care about what's going on under the hood, so as long as it walks like Windows and quacks like Windows it must be Windows. Or something like it. If the UI looks a little like Windows at first glance but then behaves differently users get confused. Cloning Explorer including the desktop and some basic applets like display, network and printer properties would make a big difference.
Let's see how long this will last if people start Web 2.0 storage sharing sites up there. They probably have deduplication and compression but that won't help if/when people put HD videos up there. Those TOS are temporary until MS takes over anyway.
In minutes? Wake me up when holographic images can be created in tens of milliseconds. Also, I demand a 20 cubic foot recessed tabletop display. Finally, it probably needs to cost under $500, so we can put one in every classroom.
OK, back to sleep now. Actually I keep wondering where the problem is with this. All you need is a spatial light modulator with a resolution significantly smaller than lambda. Why hasn't anybody built a DMD or silicon LCD with 100nm pixels?
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't believe the singularity will happen in 20 years, it's reasonable to believe it'll happen in less than 1,000 years.
Thus, in a couple billion years, we can either download our minds into probes or we'll have been replaced by robots or something like that. In any case, clinging to a physical existence will be considered highly overrated.
Or we'll just have killed ourselves off in some way and some other species can scratch their heads about it. 70-something million years for mammals to evolve into us? There's time for at least 50 such cycles.
But, this is Slashdot, guilty as charged...
The link to the ruling above shows that this isn't really a patent trolling case. It started out as normal patent litigation but grew more and more complex. The initial claims were rebutted but the plaintiff's lawyers convinced the jury by misleading arguments despite being admonished by the judge several times. "The Court has already concluded that Medtronic engaged in litigation misconduct during the trial. That same misconduct also supports the conclusion that Medtronic continued this suit vexatiously after the claims were construed."It's very easy to get a word hardwired into your fingers.
I still type "decnet" every single time I try to write "decent".
NFS and CIFS (SMB).
Smells like an attempt at fragmenting FOSS space.
>If they imagine Vista to be a horrible cancer, and SP1 to be chemotheraphy, then this all seems better
What about Vista-ectomy?
>How many people will change groups because one member says that he cannot access it with Firefox?
Many. Yahoo and Google have been meticulous about platform independence, that's part of what made them successful - as opposed to MSN for example.
I've been a paying Yahoo customer for many years and I'm ready to cancel as soon as the acquisition goes through.
Come on. I lift 50 pounds and much more many times most days... and I pay for it!
Think of it in terms of your health/fitness and gym membership fees you save.
I must be a true geek.
My first thought was what dating has to do with semaphores.
But then, at second thought, I Got It.
No, the government extends the patent term. Don't forget who's paying them.
http://xkcd.com/384/
And if you read "The Mating Mind" by Geoffrey Miller, he goes as far as saying that most of human culture has evolutionary roots - as ornaments of sexual selection. Makes a lot of sense to me if you look at things like music, art and fashion.
>Oh, it'll work out very well in the long term, that is, assuming the entire race isn't annihilated.
Reminds me of a quote from BBC's "Planet Earth" series (I'm paraphrasing): "Why are all species part of natural cycles? The ones that fouled their nest didn't make it for long."
People are used to thinking in decades or centuries. Obviously our path is not sustainable over millennia. So the question is, are we going to invent our way out of that natural resource crunch or not, and what will the collateral damage be?
That's what I think. Looks like they added a recovery mechanism where the system boots a working kernel and goes back to the updater.
And I wasn't trying to be funny with my GP post. Those BSODs have caused 4 systems to be converted to Linux so far, usually with older hardware. That IBM Intellistation with a 300 MHz PPro is still a decent file server. I think it's going to have its 10th birthday this year, running 24/7 the entire time (first NT4, then W2k which BSOD'd after an automatic update, then Fedora Core, now CentOS 4.)
>So in other words, it IS an improvement!
Exactly. Forces you to reinstall, which gives you a chance to reconsider the type of OS to install.
>Now how many times has this happened to people updating Windows?
Never.
So far my systems always BSOD'd when an automatic update went wrong.
Seriously, maybe they're just catching kernel errors, reboot and retry now.
TANSTAAFL.
>Your only valid point is that too much of the vegetables we buy comes from too far away
I bought a nice tray of tomatoes at Trader Joe's the other day and at home I saw "Product of Holland." WTF?
Oil is obviously still way too cheap if that is economically viable.
I wonder why there is no GUI that expressly tries to clone a Windows UI, say XP (although I still like the W2k UI better than XP's candy.) The typical user doesn't care about what's going on under the hood, so as long as it walks like Windows and quacks like Windows it must be Windows. Or something like it.
If the UI looks a little like Windows at first glance but then behaves differently users get confused. Cloning Explorer including the desktop and some basic applets like display, network and printer properties would make a big difference.
Let's see how long this will last if people start Web 2.0 storage sharing sites up there. They probably have deduplication and compression but that won't help if/when people put HD videos up there.
Those TOS are temporary until MS takes over anyway.
OK, back to sleep now. Actually I keep wondering where the problem is with this. All you need is a spatial light modulator with a resolution significantly smaller than lambda. Why hasn't anybody built a DMD or silicon LCD with 100nm pixels?
I thought MOND is pretty much dead after the Bullet Cluster X-ray/lensing observation.
Teat-hers?