Uh, to the best of my knowlege, SCO only controls one single patent. Infringing on that couldn't possibly be worth $3 billion. Info World must be mistaken, the litigation is obviously about a contract dispute.
"The Genus Poicephalus are small to medium sized, stocky birds with short, squarish tails and proportionately substantial bills." I guess it's just your basic African parrot, then. Funny, with the word "phalus" in it, I thought it would be something else...
What can an RTOS do that Linux can't that wouldn't be better handled in hardware? If responding to a given event is really THAT time critical, then perhaps you shouldn't be handing the event all the way up to your systems software for a response... In my experience, most problems that people claimed demanded "real time" to solve could be more easily solved by adding more buffers.
The "no comment" rule only applies if you are actually trying to WIN the litigation. If your plan is to pump and dump the stock then retire to Bermuda, then the more ridiculous statements you make the better! Who out there really thinks the SCO corporate officers will remain within the reach of the US legal system when this is all over?
Why would you not use it over an ATV? What's the range? Methinks walking out 10 miles carrying this pig when the battery goes dead would not be fun... A tank of gas has still got a lot more energy stored per unit weight than a battery!
will it be twice as useless? No, it will be twices as useful! Remember 2x0=0, but you can't get any more useless than completly, hopelessly, 100% useless.
Seamless leather clothes, grown exactly to your dimensions -- now that's something I'd pay money for! Most of my leather jackets seem to come apart at the seams after several years of continuous use and abuse... can they also genetically engineer these cells for different pigments and eliminate the dyeing done on most natural leather products?
Don't get me wrong, we do need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun. Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad... wouldn't shooting trash into the sun take more energy that all those SUVs combined? And personally, I think that todays garbage is tomorrows valuable resource -- all we need to do is figure out a way to store the trash for a few hundred years until the technology to economically extract resources out of today's trash is developed. Isn't all that fossil fuel actually yesterday's trash?
there aren't a lot of cities or heavy industry in the Western U.S., its mostly farms, desert and empty space. How true! Last time I was in Los Angeles, all I saw were farms, desert, and empty space! And by the way, doesn't Alaska get most if it's electricity from coal? Where is the red dot over Anchorage?
Actually, WinCE was non-functional until version 5.0... and Windows itself wasn't usable until version 3.1. But in general you are right, MS seems to have a philosophy of "Release it quickly and fix it later."
I've got a very expensive Sony Media Center PC. The program guide and remote control are nice, but the thing takes forever to switch channels, and video quality is poor (it appears to be dropping frames like crazy when receive standard broadcast TV with a lot of movement). Sure, I can pause live TV, but what good is that when it looks like crap? Of course, it is difficult to say how much of this is the fault of the software, and how much is because of the hardware -- but killing every other process running seems to help.
How the hell do distribution deals create music? Do you think all those musicians wait until they get a record company contract before they start writing songs, or do you think it's possible that most of the music that goes on their debut album was written BEFORE they had a contract? Yes, the potential for future monetary rewards may act as incentive to some artists. But really record companies are built on monopolization of the distribution channels. And by the way, weren't people writing music long before there was any such thing as copyright, or even any such thing as money? Changing the business model doesn't mean music will stop being created. It just means it might be harder to make a living at it. But then, every good musician I know isn't making their living from it anyway!
Worse yet, what could does it do to make something illegal in just one country, when there are hundreds of other countries out that that quite frankly don't give a darn about US intellectual property laws? All they can succeed in doing is driving innovation overseas.
Personally, I don't think it's completely about economics -- it's about control. Record company executives are used to having anybody who wants to succeed kiss their ass (and lord knows what other favors). Once anybody can distribute music cheaply and easily over the 'net, then nobody can pick and choose who will be successful -- only the consumers can decide. What happens to the star-maker machinery when everybody must compete on an equal footing, and word-of-mouth is the most effective advertising? Gee, maybe we'll start getting artists that actually sound good, rather than ones that just look good in videos!
Again, the fact that we see the same levels of microwave radiation in all directions pretty much argues for a topologically closed universe, doesn't it? For it to be topologically open, you'd have to throw out the big bang theory that the universe originated at a single point. Either that, or just all the mass/energy originated at a single point, and we're still closer to that point than most of the mass/energy out there. Yes, you've pretty much convinced me that 1) the universe is topologically closed and 2) FTL travel is possible, but only by warping space/time with energies like those present shortly after the big bang... ok, that's enough sci-fi story ideas for one day!
Actually, "most consumer electronics" are already running 32-bit ARM processors, e.g. just about every cell phone and PDA currently sold. What are they still using 4-bit processors in?
I hope you've got lot's of burn ointment, and big biceps to carry around all those batteries -- a full pentium-PC-on-a-chip would draw more power and disipate more heat that your average lightbulb -- not exactly what I'd want strapped to my wrist!
Hmm... aren't magnetic strips susceptable to being wiped out by strong magnetic field, e.g. by being set on top of a subwoofer or by an MRI scan? Surely it's not my fault if the magnetic strip no longer works, or if the RFID doesn't work after I accidentally put my RFID license in my microwave... and since I don't have a reader for these, how could I have known it was damaged?
You could still just borrow somebody else's driver's license! No, the only way to make this truly effective is to embed the RFID chip within our own bodies, so that it cannot be removed. For instance, implant it in everybody's forehead at birth... hmm, that sounds strangely familiar!
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...will it stand up to my 3-year old child?
Striping across 15k rpm drives is what's too expensive for me What?!? Can't you just buffer the entire disk image in RAM? ;-)
Yes, but for realism your reading of /. will have a 2-week latency...
Uh, isn't his name actually Vladimir Putin?
Uh, to the best of my knowlege, SCO only controls one single patent. Infringing on that couldn't possibly be worth $3 billion. Info World must be mistaken, the litigation is obviously about a contract dispute.
"The Genus Poicephalus are small to medium sized, stocky birds with short, squarish tails and proportionately substantial bills." I guess it's just your basic African parrot, then. Funny, with the word "phalus" in it, I thought it would be something else...
What can an RTOS do that Linux can't that wouldn't be better handled in hardware? If responding to a given event is really THAT time critical, then perhaps you shouldn't be handing the event all the way up to your systems software for a response... In my experience, most problems that people claimed demanded "real time" to solve could be more easily solved by adding more buffers.
The "no comment" rule only applies if you are actually trying to WIN the litigation. If your plan is to pump and dump the stock then retire to Bermuda, then the more ridiculous statements you make the better! Who out there really thinks the SCO corporate officers will remain within the reach of the US legal system when this is all over?
Why would you not use it over an ATV? What's the range? Methinks walking out 10 miles carrying this pig when the battery goes dead would not be fun... A tank of gas has still got a lot more energy stored per unit weight than a battery!
will it be twice as useless? No, it will be twices as useful! Remember 2x0=0, but you can't get any more useless than completly, hopelessly, 100% useless.
"Here honey, but this diamond ring on and then go punch that wall..."
Does the tanning process actually change the dimensions of the skin in question? Curing usually involves stretching the skin, doesn't it?
Seamless leather clothes, grown exactly to your dimensions -- now that's something I'd pay money for! Most of my leather jackets seem to come apart at the seams after several years of continuous use and abuse... can they also genetically engineer these cells for different pigments and eliminate the dyeing done on most natural leather products?
Why don't scientists instead concentrate on breeding a cow that enjoys being eaten and having it's skin made into leather goods?
Don't get me wrong, we do need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun. Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad... wouldn't shooting trash into the sun take more energy that all those SUVs combined? And personally, I think that todays garbage is tomorrows valuable resource -- all we need to do is figure out a way to store the trash for a few hundred years until the technology to economically extract resources out of today's trash is developed. Isn't all that fossil fuel actually yesterday's trash?
there aren't a lot of cities or heavy industry in the Western U.S., its mostly farms, desert and empty space. How true! Last time I was in Los Angeles, all I saw were farms, desert, and empty space! And by the way, doesn't Alaska get most if it's electricity from coal? Where is the red dot over Anchorage?
Actually, WinCE was non-functional until version 5.0... and Windows itself wasn't usable until version 3.1. But in general you are right, MS seems to have a philosophy of "Release it quickly and fix it later."
I've got a very expensive Sony Media Center PC. The program guide and remote control are nice, but the thing takes forever to switch channels, and video quality is poor (it appears to be dropping frames like crazy when receive standard broadcast TV with a lot of movement). Sure, I can pause live TV, but what good is that when it looks like crap? Of course, it is difficult to say how much of this is the fault of the software, and how much is because of the hardware -- but killing every other process running seems to help.
How the hell do distribution deals create music? Do you think all those musicians wait until they get a record company contract before they start writing songs, or do you think it's possible that most of the music that goes on their debut album was written BEFORE they had a contract? Yes, the potential for future monetary rewards may act as incentive to some artists. But really record companies are built on monopolization of the distribution channels. And by the way, weren't people writing music long before there was any such thing as copyright, or even any such thing as money? Changing the business model doesn't mean music will stop being created. It just means it might be harder to make a living at it. But then, every good musician I know isn't making their living from it anyway!
Personally, I don't think it's completely about economics -- it's about control. Record company executives are used to having anybody who wants to succeed kiss their ass (and lord knows what other favors). Once anybody can distribute music cheaply and easily over the 'net, then nobody can pick and choose who will be successful -- only the consumers can decide. What happens to the star-maker machinery when everybody must compete on an equal footing, and word-of-mouth is the most effective advertising? Gee, maybe we'll start getting artists that actually sound good, rather than ones that just look good in videos!
Again, the fact that we see the same levels of microwave radiation in all directions pretty much argues for a topologically closed universe, doesn't it? For it to be topologically open, you'd have to throw out the big bang theory that the universe originated at a single point. Either that, or just all the mass/energy originated at a single point, and we're still closer to that point than most of the mass/energy out there. Yes, you've pretty much convinced me that 1) the universe is topologically closed and 2) FTL travel is possible, but only by warping space/time with energies like those present shortly after the big bang... ok, that's enough sci-fi story ideas for one day!
Actually, "most consumer electronics" are already running 32-bit ARM processors, e.g. just about every cell phone and PDA currently sold. What are they still using 4-bit processors in?
I hope you've got lot's of burn ointment, and big biceps to carry around all those batteries -- a full pentium-PC-on-a-chip would draw more power and disipate more heat that your average lightbulb -- not exactly what I'd want strapped to my wrist!
Hmm... aren't magnetic strips susceptable to being wiped out by strong magnetic field, e.g. by being set on top of a subwoofer or by an MRI scan? Surely it's not my fault if the magnetic strip no longer works, or if the RFID doesn't work after I accidentally put my RFID license in my microwave... and since I don't have a reader for these, how could I have known it was damaged?
You could still just borrow somebody else's driver's license! No, the only way to make this truly effective is to embed the RFID chip within our own bodies, so that it cannot be removed. For instance, implant it in everybody's forehead at birth... hmm, that sounds strangely familiar!