Don't you get it? Stane is obviously a high profile journalist constantly declaring the current year to be "The Year of Linux on the Desktop", thereby getting hundreds of thousands of geeks to install Linux and waste their time trying to get their audio, DVD, and printing working. This results in millions of lost hours of work for their employers, driving up costs while providing no tangible benefit whatsoever. The economy is brought to its knees by this temporary reduction in productivity and Stane and his hordes swoop in to capitalize on the mayhem by selling more OSS services to "fix" the productivity problem.
The victims are forced onto the consultant treadmill and pay ever-increasing amounts of cash to Stane and his company.
Since 9/11, every goddamned thing is considered terrorism. Shoot a gun downtown? Terrorism. Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism. Ship cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. Yep, terrorism.
No! It's not! There are proper terms here, and by calling any crime terrorism you insinuate that the crimes are perpetrated by terrorists. That's giving a whole lot of credit to idiot criminals.
Installing Linux on the computers of unwitting Windows users may be a dumb plot, but it's hardly terrorism. If it were, every goddamned user on Slashdot would be a terrorist for trying to wrest Windows from Granny's warm, wet hands.
I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back). Geek Terrorist. Coming soon to a basement near you!
I've been wrong about this type of stuff before. A few years ago before LOTR was released, I made the assertion that only geeks would be interested in a movie about D&D characters. I predicted that for all the eye candy, the story wouldn't resonate with the average movie audience and that a lot of money was being spent on creating a huge movie with a small target audience.
Well, looking back on it now, I can say that I was totally wrong. Plenty of people are fascinated by pewter goblets and 20-sided dice. I never would have thought it, but apparently there is a very large underground geek community that is latent. It takes something like LOTR to bring them out, but when they are out, they bring with them tons of cash.
So I'm just going to go ahead and call this "NASCAR" of the skies a total flop. It's not interesting for anyone except geeks and only a small subset of geeks at that.
In two or three years when this rocket racing takes over the international sporting world, I'm prepared to eat my words.
In a nutshell, it's just an old way of saying "it runs programs".
Before we had the formal concept of "programs" (as defined and refined by Backus and Naur), computation machines calculated numbers based on information fed into them on paper tape. A full set of instructions on paper-tape was called a "tour", and while the program was running the computation machine was said to be "touring" or "turing" (Fr). When the end of the tape was reached, the computation machine was said to be in the "turing complete" state (i.e. the tour was complete).
The term "turing complete" came to mean any computer which could run any program fed into it to completion (assuming correct input, of course). We use the term "program" and "run" to talk about computer input nowadays, but we still use the term "turing complete" to describe our general purpose computation devices (computers).
If you had an infinite-length track, you could theoretically encode data which could itself be interpreted as processor instructions. Then, given these instructions, you could move back and forth within this track and read data and further instructions. With a fairly minimum number of instructions, it would be possible to synthesize more complex instruction batches.
This sounds like such a great idea. I wish I had it already!
For years some claymation movies were set up by hand and shot frame by frame in a process called stop motion. While adequate, the resulting film was typically unnatural and the movements very stiff compared to live actors.
Enter ILM and go motion. Instead of filming static scenes, the clay was moved slightly during the shot to create a blurry frame. This blurry frame made the scene seem more realistic. The blur is what the eye picks up in the movie frame, so an actor walking in a scene is not a set of pinpoint focus shots but a series of blurs as the man moves.
Ray tracing is great for static scenes. But movement is the key to games that require this much detail, and so each frame should not be beautifully rendered framebuffers, but a mix of several framebuffers over the span of one frame. Star Wars did it great. Most computer games, not so much.
The problem, as I see it, is not Vista itself. Rather, it is the slow but steady migration from PCs being central to computing tasks to reliance on servers for processing power and storage. Although Outlook client may run on your PC, the real work managing your company's mail is handled in the backrooms on server hardware. They aren't running client Windows back there.
So on the front end, as McNealy and Ellison have been saying for a decade, computers require less and less individual computing power, and backend servers need more and more. This is the problem for Windows because the growing requirements of the OS to do all the cool things that users like is outstripping the pace at which the needs of the users are growing. Translation: Vista does too much unnecessary stuff (however cool and flashy it might be.)
Apple does this too, but their hardware requirements are automatically met by virtue of them selling the hardware themselves. Linux, OTOH, is both a low-end client and a high-end server. It fills the roles needed by users without bringing with it a hefty cost per unit.
The upshot is that the PC as a computing platform is ailing. It will always have its place, and it will hang on for quite a while longer. However, the general trend towards less necessary functionality on the client end and more stability and power on the server side means that alternative systems now have a lower hurdle to gain a foothold in the upcoming paradigm shift.
We have already seen a huge shift away from laptops as the mobile computer towards dedicated devices like the Blackberry and smartphone. As we progress, many of the roles that the PC plays now will move closer to the user so that the usage scenario no longer is sitting in front of a glowing monitor but rather sitting back and doing the same job faster and more easily than currently performed. I, for one, welcome our new embedded overlords.
I know we all want to jump on the patent holder here, but here are the two salient parts of the article.
Primarily this is because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - and Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.
So SES is trying to get 50 million dollars from Boeing, and Boeing is using their patent as leverage to drop the lawsuit.
I wonder what the lawsuit is about.
and two:
SES has decided not to pursue any legal options against Boeing and wants to collect their insurance policy payout. However, their insurance company was not being fully briefed on the options and at this time is planning to pay the policy out.
SES is looking forward to a big payout in the case the satellite returns from orbit. They stand to lose nothing either way. However, the insurance company may step in and declare the policy void if it turns out SES can save the satellite. Interesting conundrum.
The barley yields have been underperforming since 2006, so this is cumulatively a big problem for the beer industry and its customers.
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived. A sudden price increase in beer will send drinkers to the arms of other libations. This should, in principle, keep the price of beer from fluctuating too wildly. In another couple years when barley yields are back at their maximums, this will all have been a bad memory.
May 13, 2009 Pixar sued by epileptics over controversial "3-D" movie C. Reston (staff reporter)
Shannon Flint didn't know what hit her. "I was putting on the glasses they handed out at the door and when I looked at the screen, I threw up and passed out." And she wasn't alone.
All across the country, long lines formed to get a glimpse of Pixar's newest creation "Up", a quirky comedy about lovelorn robots, but epileptics in the audience were also exposed to flashing lights from the 3D effects. Flashing lights are known to cause seizures in epileptics.
President Clinton has issued a statement demanding that Pixar and Disney be more careful with this new technology and has called for a 6 month moratorium on 3 dimensional movies. Pixar had no comment.
a bank account might fetch $10-$1000. With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it?
How much do you assume the average person has in their bank accounts? I realize that living at home with your parents and not having to pay for rent, utilities, food, and clothes may allow you to skate by with a very low monthly balance, but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand (in their checking account, anyway) to pay for all these necessities.
But I don't suppose someone whose name is "I don't believe in imaginary property" would have a very solid grasp of the real world.
It looks very similar to Amazon's EC2 hosted server service. They even have a simplified database system much like EC2. That in itself is enough to scare a lot of people away due to the pain of future migration.
However, the free 500MB worth of storage is really attrative for anyone who wants to try a few things out online. I wish it supported more than Python, but they say they are working on it now. Getting a few more programming languages supported will make this much more flexible.
I'm signing up for a block. Who knows what I'll do with it. But at no cost, what do I really have to lose?
Members shall confine limitations and exceptions to exclusive rights to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.
According to Wikipedia, the three steps are:
1) certain special cases 2) do not conflict with normal exploitation of the work 3) do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder
I'm no lawyer, so I don't have the background to understand that kind of gobbledygook. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe laws written for the sake of the governed should be written in a language they understand.
I knew a guy who claimed he was abducted and sodomized with various probes then dumped in a field in the middle of nowhere. Is he lying? He believes it.
Whether you know if someone is lying or not does not necessarily bring you closer to the truth.
It's not the funding or loss of funding that I'm primarily concerned about in this case. Rather, I feel that the government, having decided to provide the funding in the first place ought not be involved in the micromanagement of the usage of those funds, especially to encourage or discourage certain special interests, should provide the funds as a blanket payment and leave the specific spending management to the institution it is helping.
Whether the government should be involved in funding education is another issue altogether (an issue to which I believe should be resolved in the affirmative). But once having decided to provide Federal funding to educational institutions, the government ought not be involved in the day to day decisions of the school. IMO.
The real take away from this press release is that Google is expecting that the first phones based on Android will be released later this year. That is good news for those who are interested in open platforms and enjoy hacking. link
I wonder how happy Verizon's stockholders are going to be when they find out that Google was bidding up the price for essentially no reason at all and Verizon jumped in on top of that. not too bad, it seems
What really irks me the most is that the political party waving the flag of "small government" is the one most willing to get involved in the private lives of ordinary citizens. This is not just some abstract "government is intruding too much in our lives" type of complaint. Here, in this situation, we have government changing the behavior of a university. Tangible, real change.
I don't mind raised "sin taxes" or even school vouchers. In either case, the citizen can still partake in their favorite activity or service. But in this case the government has essentially squelched something it doesn't like without passing a law and without due process. Needless to say, due process would be an expensive tack to take. So are we going to give up all of our freedoms for this type of idiocy just because we can't afford to defend ourselves?
The spokesman for the BPI makes it sound like the relationship between ISPs and the music industry is symbiotic. They dress up the "responsibilities" of the ISP in pretty words that make it sound like shutting down users is the greatest thing in the world.
If you read the article, you'll find Geoff Taylor's doublespeak amazing.
At the heart of this issue is ensuring that creators are fairly rewarded in the digital age
Okay so far...
and we passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first-class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward.
Uh...
Here's the appropriate response to that idiocy from Charles Dunstone, TalkTalk head.
We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet.
DoubleClick has always been one of those weird companies that seems like they are everywhere, putting cookies in my cache, and tracking my online habits. But I've never been clear what their actual business model was.
I see now what Performix, the subcompany that Google is trying to sell, does. It sounds like SEO (search engine optimization => A process aimed at improving the search result ranking of a site by augmenting the site content and other factors to be more search engine friendly) for online search engine advertising. Oscar Mayer would hire Performix to get an idea of what keywords are most likely to be used by people interested in hotdogs or lunchables.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you get it? Stane is obviously a high profile journalist constantly declaring the current year to be "The Year of Linux on the Desktop", thereby getting hundreds of thousands of geeks to install Linux and waste their time trying to get their audio, DVD, and printing working. This results in millions of lost hours of work for their employers, driving up costs while providing no tangible benefit whatsoever. The economy is brought to its knees by this temporary reduction in productivity and Stane and his hordes swoop in to capitalize on the mayhem by selling more OSS services to "fix" the productivity problem.
The victims are forced onto the consultant treadmill and pay ever-increasing amounts of cash to Stane and his company.
The plan is almost perfect!
Since 9/11, every goddamned thing is considered terrorism. Shoot a gun downtown? Terrorism. Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism. Ship cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. Yep, terrorism.
No! It's not! There are proper terms here, and by calling any crime terrorism you insinuate that the crimes are perpetrated by terrorists. That's giving a whole lot of credit to idiot criminals.
Installing Linux on the computers of unwitting Windows users may be a dumb plot, but it's hardly terrorism. If it were, every goddamned user on Slashdot would be a terrorist for trying to wrest Windows from Granny's warm, wet hands.
I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back). Geek Terrorist. Coming soon to a basement near you!
I've been wrong about this type of stuff before. A few years ago before LOTR was released, I made the assertion that only geeks would be interested in a movie about D&D characters. I predicted that for all the eye candy, the story wouldn't resonate with the average movie audience and that a lot of money was being spent on creating a huge movie with a small target audience.
Well, looking back on it now, I can say that I was totally wrong. Plenty of people are fascinated by pewter goblets and 20-sided dice. I never would have thought it, but apparently there is a very large underground geek community that is latent. It takes something like LOTR to bring them out, but when they are out, they bring with them tons of cash.
So I'm just going to go ahead and call this "NASCAR" of the skies a total flop. It's not interesting for anyone except geeks and only a small subset of geeks at that.
In two or three years when this rocket racing takes over the international sporting world, I'm prepared to eat my words.
Oh, he's not dead... Not yet.
In a nutshell, it's just an old way of saying "it runs programs".
Before we had the formal concept of "programs" (as defined and refined by Backus and Naur), computation machines calculated numbers based on information fed into them on paper tape. A full set of instructions on paper-tape was called a "tour", and while the program was running the computation machine was said to be "touring" or "turing" (Fr). When the end of the tape was reached, the computation machine was said to be in the "turing complete" state (i.e. the tour was complete).
The term "turing complete" came to mean any computer which could run any program fed into it to completion (assuming correct input, of course). We use the term "program" and "run" to talk about computer input nowadays, but we still use the term "turing complete" to describe our general purpose computation devices (computers).
Nathan Myhrvold... Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
Deakin University
Sharman Lichtenstein
Uh-huh. Sounds like someone's already defaced the article...
If you had an infinite-length track, you could theoretically encode data which could itself be interpreted as processor instructions. Then, given these instructions, you could move back and forth within this track and read data and further instructions. With a fairly minimum number of instructions, it would be possible to synthesize more complex instruction batches.
This sounds like such a great idea. I wish I had it already!
Ray tracing is great for static scenes.
Where did you get that idea?
Are you saying it's not?
For years some claymation movies were set up by hand and shot frame by frame in a process called stop motion. While adequate, the resulting film was typically unnatural and the movements very stiff compared to live actors.
Enter ILM and go motion. Instead of filming static scenes, the clay was moved slightly during the shot to create a blurry frame. This blurry frame made the scene seem more realistic. The blur is what the eye picks up in the movie frame, so an actor walking in a scene is not a set of pinpoint focus shots but a series of blurs as the man moves.
Ray tracing is great for static scenes. But movement is the key to games that require this much detail, and so each frame should not be beautifully rendered framebuffers, but a mix of several framebuffers over the span of one frame. Star Wars did it great. Most computer games, not so much.
Michael Silver, it should be noted, is fairly neutral in his coverage of Microsoft. Here is a link to his past papers:
http://www.gartner.com/Search?op=16&f=2&keywords=&bop=0&op=16&sort=73&archived=0&simple1=0&n=8332&authorId=8332&resultsPerSearch=0&dir=70&sort=73&dir=70
The problem, as I see it, is not Vista itself. Rather, it is the slow but steady migration from PCs being central to computing tasks to reliance on servers for processing power and storage. Although Outlook client may run on your PC, the real work managing your company's mail is handled in the backrooms on server hardware. They aren't running client Windows back there.
So on the front end, as McNealy and Ellison have been saying for a decade, computers require less and less individual computing power, and backend servers need more and more. This is the problem for Windows because the growing requirements of the OS to do all the cool things that users like is outstripping the pace at which the needs of the users are growing. Translation: Vista does too much unnecessary stuff (however cool and flashy it might be.)
Apple does this too, but their hardware requirements are automatically met by virtue of them selling the hardware themselves. Linux, OTOH, is both a low-end client and a high-end server. It fills the roles needed by users without bringing with it a hefty cost per unit.
The upshot is that the PC as a computing platform is ailing. It will always have its place, and it will hang on for quite a while longer. However, the general trend towards less necessary functionality on the client end and more stability and power on the server side means that alternative systems now have a lower hurdle to gain a foothold in the upcoming paradigm shift.
We have already seen a huge shift away from laptops as the mobile computer towards dedicated devices like the Blackberry and smartphone. As we progress, many of the roles that the PC plays now will move closer to the user so that the usage scenario no longer is sitting in front of a glowing monitor but rather sitting back and doing the same job faster and more easily than currently performed. I, for one, welcome our new embedded overlords.
splash the satellite
That's a euphemism for having sex with a pregnant woman. Well, it is now.
I know we all want to jump on the patent holder here, but here are the two salient parts of the article.
Primarily this is because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - and Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.
So SES is trying to get 50 million dollars from Boeing, and Boeing is using their patent as leverage to drop the lawsuit.
I wonder what the lawsuit is about.
and two:
SES has decided not to pursue any legal options against Boeing and wants to collect their insurance policy payout. However, their insurance company was not being fully briefed on the options and at this time is planning to pay the policy out.
SES is looking forward to a big payout in the case the satellite returns from orbit. They stand to lose nothing either way. However, the insurance company may step in and declare the policy void if it turns out SES can save the satellite. Interesting conundrum.
SES sounds like a delightful company...
The barley yields have been underperforming since 2006, so this is cumulatively a big problem for the beer industry and its customers.
However, there are many other crops from which alcohol can be derived. A sudden price increase in beer will send drinkers to the arms of other libations. This should, in principle, keep the price of beer from fluctuating too wildly. In another couple years when barley yields are back at their maximums, this will all have been a bad memory.
May 13, 2009
Pixar sued by epileptics over controversial "3-D" movie
C. Reston (staff reporter)
Shannon Flint didn't know what hit her. "I was putting on the glasses they handed out at the door and when I looked at the screen, I threw up and passed out." And she wasn't alone.
All across the country, long lines formed to get a glimpse of Pixar's newest creation "Up", a quirky comedy about lovelorn robots, but epileptics in the audience were also exposed to flashing lights from the 3D effects. Flashing lights are known to cause seizures in epileptics.
President Clinton has issued a statement demanding that Pixar and Disney be more careful with this new technology and has called for a 6 month moratorium on 3 dimensional movies. Pixar had no comment.
You'd have to seriously hurt yourself to disable this biometric:
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/casestudies/WWW2_casestudy_BTM.html
a bank account might fetch $10-$1000. With those prices, I wonder how often they pay more for the bank account than is actually in it?
How much do you assume the average person has in their bank accounts? I realize that living at home with your parents and not having to pay for rent, utilities, food, and clothes may allow you to skate by with a very low monthly balance, but the vast majority of people who work for a living have to have the cash on hand (in their checking account, anyway) to pay for all these necessities.
But I don't suppose someone whose name is "I don't believe in imaginary property" would have a very solid grasp of the real world.
It looks very similar to Amazon's EC2 hosted server service. They even have a simplified database system much like EC2. That in itself is enough to scare a lot of people away due to the pain of future migration.
However, the free 500MB worth of storage is really attrative for anyone who wants to try a few things out online. I wish it supported more than Python, but they say they are working on it now. Getting a few more programming languages supported will make this much more flexible.
I'm signing up for a block. Who knows what I'll do with it. But at no cost, what do I really have to lose?
Members shall confine limitations and exceptions to exclusive rights to certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.
According to Wikipedia, the three steps are:
1) certain special cases
2) do not conflict with normal exploitation of the work
3) do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder
I'm no lawyer, so I don't have the background to understand that kind of gobbledygook. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe laws written for the sake of the governed should be written in a language they understand.
I knew a guy who claimed he was abducted and sodomized with various probes then dumped in a field in the middle of nowhere. Is he lying? He believes it.
Whether you know if someone is lying or not does not necessarily bring you closer to the truth.
It's not the funding or loss of funding that I'm primarily concerned about in this case. Rather, I feel that the government, having decided to provide the funding in the first place ought not be involved in the micromanagement of the usage of those funds, especially to encourage or discourage certain special interests, should provide the funds as a blanket payment and leave the specific spending management to the institution it is helping.
Whether the government should be involved in funding education is another issue altogether (an issue to which I believe should be resolved in the affirmative). But once having decided to provide Federal funding to educational institutions, the government ought not be involved in the day to day decisions of the school. IMO.
The real take away from this press release is that Google is expecting that the first phones based on Android will be released later this year. That is good news for those who are interested in open platforms and enjoy hacking. link
I wonder how happy Verizon's stockholders are going to be when they find out that Google was bidding up the price for essentially no reason at all and Verizon jumped in on top of that. not too bad, it seems
What really irks me the most is that the political party waving the flag of "small government" is the one most willing to get involved in the private lives of ordinary citizens. This is not just some abstract "government is intruding too much in our lives" type of complaint. Here, in this situation, we have government changing the behavior of a university. Tangible, real change.
I don't mind raised "sin taxes" or even school vouchers. In either case, the citizen can still partake in their favorite activity or service. But in this case the government has essentially squelched something it doesn't like without passing a law and without due process. Needless to say, due process would be an expensive tack to take. So are we going to give up all of our freedoms for this type of idiocy just because we can't afford to defend ourselves?
The spokesman for the BPI makes it sound like the relationship between ISPs and the music industry is symbiotic. They dress up the "responsibilities" of the ISP in pretty words that make it sound like shutting down users is the greatest thing in the world.
If you read the article, you'll find Geoff Taylor's doublespeak amazing.
At the heart of this issue is ensuring that creators are fairly rewarded in the digital age
Okay so far...
and we passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first-class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward.
Uh...
Here's the appropriate response to that idiocy from Charles Dunstone, TalkTalk head.
We are the conduit that gives users access to the internet. We do not control the internet, nor do we control what our users do on the internet.
Good job, Charles.
DoubleClick has always been one of those weird companies that seems like they are everywhere, putting cookies in my cache, and tracking my online habits. But I've never been clear what their actual business model was.
I see now what Performix, the subcompany that Google is trying to sell, does. It sounds like SEO (search engine optimization => A process aimed at improving the search result ranking of a site by augmenting the site content and other factors to be more search engine friendly) for online search engine advertising. Oscar Mayer would hire Performix to get an idea of what keywords are most likely to be used by people interested in hotdogs or lunchables.
But I still don't get DoubleClick.