Some of you may not realize this, but the Federal government supports F/OSS. Several state governments (I know Texas does for certain) have passed mandates and recommendations that encourage and/or require state agencies to consider F/OSS solutions over proprietary solutions.
Unfortunately, much of this information is squelched by the press, since the press has shown to be woefully ignorant of F/OSS concepts. I would imagine many state and Federal agencies routinely violate rules requiring them to review F/OSS software due to ignorance. I've identified several instances of such a failure in the community college district where I work: Purchases and bids for proprietary software are routinely approved, and when I ask for a list of F/OSS alternatives that were considered, I'm greeted with a blank stare.
The bottom line is that F/OSS has made inroads, but without oversight from the F/OSS community, many of these initiatives are simply ignored and routinely violated.
KISS and BEST are two other nationally-recognized robotics programs. While KISS uses Legos, don't be fooled -- you have two embedded systems to work with (Lego's RCX and the MIT-developed Handy Board microcontroller), and the designs get pretty outrageous. BEST has students building robots from scratch.
Most Palms seem to go to great lengths to hide details of the filesystem from the user. The workaround I've found is to simply store all user data on the removable flash memory, plug it into my flash memory reader and access it that way. I don't have a T3, but I'm able to work with the filesystem directly on several of the m-series Palms.
I agree, there seems to be very little forward movement in significant functionality in the Palm world. Can I be so bold to suggest that this lack of innovation might be due to the lack fo significant competition for Palm?
Last time I listened to a modern rock music station, for example, I was surprised to hear words edited out of at least 5 songs within an hour or two's time. In at least 3 or 4 of these cases, I had never even noticed the singer was singing a "curse word" before, except they made it obvious by chopping it out of the middle of the music.
Tell me about it...I've been listening to the Who for at least 30 years, and didn't discover until recently that the background vocals in "Who Are You" consist partially of "Who the fuck are you?" I found out exactly as you describe: Listening to the radio one day, there was a distinct "break" in the song. Had to dig out the original to verify that my mind wasn't playing tricks.
No more of that "funky shit going down in the city." It's a sad world we live in...
Let's see...NeoOffice on my iBook and G4 PowerMac...OpenOffice under Windows...and my Linux box knows only XFree86, which seems to like OpenOffice just fine.
I see a far more sinister motive here...raise your hands if you think the government sees our colleges and universities as breeding grounds for future terrorists caught up in the free-thought environment where the open exchange of ideas is not only tolerated but encouraged?
RFID has been with us since WWII. It's not new technology, and like anything else, it can be abused. What Roland probably doesn't know is that detecting RFID tags is kids' play. He doesn't realize that the cutting edge in RFID technology is presence sensing: How is an RFID tag associated with its taggee? How do you track both the RFID tag and the thing it's supposed to track? And even more importantly: How do you track direction? Goods moving off a truck are a good example: How do you differentiate goods being offloaded from goods being onloaded? What's to prevent a thief from passing detached RFID tags through a sensor, and simply driving off with the load? How do you verify the association between tag and good?
These are the real issues being addressed today in the RFID world. So many think that RFID is new technology, when in fact it's very old technology that is just now becoming the center of focus for industries that are trying to remove as many humans as possible from the supply chain. If there's an inherent danger to the proliferation of RFID, it's not whether we can be tracked (we can, get over it), but how many jobs will be subsumed by the growth of automation that technologies such as RFID have to offer.
Back in the day when school was uphill both ways, we used to make holographs by taking a coffee can with the bottom cut out and wrapping a sheet of AGFA red-sensitive photo paper around the inside of the can. We'd set the coffee can on the table, empty end down, and set a small eraser in the middle. The eraser had a small hollow with a single drop of mercury. Put an item of interest somewhere between the erasure and the film, then illuminate the mercury with a laser that's suspended overhead. Develop, and then view the paper backlit by the laser. Instant holograph!
The effect was very impressive. I guess nowadays, you'd have the most trouble finding mercury...
What recourse does a company asserting a patent have against an end user? The end user isn't violating the patent in question -- the alleged violation was committed by the creator of the work. I simply don't see how patents can be used to "scare people away from Open Source solutions."
...and one I was hoping Mr. Rosen had an answer for: Exactly who does one sue for patent infringement when it comes to OSS? Once OSS has been "released", you can't call it back. In many cases, alleged infringers are given the opportunity to either license the patented technology, or to no longer use the technology.
Although IANAL, I maintain that patents pose no real threat to OSS development, since authorship of OSS is a "moving target" (especially where derivative works come into play). Most OSS author are not likely to agree to royalty payments, so exactly what recourse does the accuser have at that point?
The average middle manager wouldn't know a Linux User's Group if it jumped out of their ass and did the tap number from 42nd street.
While certainly deserving of being modded "Funny," it's equally deserving of "Overated," possibly "Untruthful." The North Texas Linux Users' Group job opportunity list routinely sends out requests for assistance, sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time, sometimes contract. Over the years I have participated in a few contact jobs as a result of posts to the LUG mailing list. Contrary to the parent poster's message, there are people out there who recognize the value of networking and the value of targeting a select group of individuals who, on average, will generally have a more appropriate skill set than, say, the population exposed to a newspaper classified.
Find the LUGs in your area, as well as other UGs and subscribe to their job lists. It's probably one of the more underated activities and least time-consuming you can add to your job search techniques.
This isn't news...this is simply the latest in series of advertisements thinly disguised as "editorials." So tell us, Roblimo, how much of a kickback have you gotten from Joel for the last 5 ads of Spolsky's posted on/.?
According to the Stuff article, the meteor was "hot to touch" after it landed. Guess that bunk about a meteor being cold when it hits the earth was just a lot of hot air from pseudo-scientists.
Then again: Thanks to such blunders I know what equipment not to buy.
The fundamental problem here is that we're running out of vendors! Linksys and Belkin are on the shitlist; now NetGear. Who, exactly, does that leave for consumer-grade networking equipment? I don't know about where you live, but where I live, these are about the only three vendors that show up on the computer store shelves (well, there are some cheapo brands, but they suffer even worse quality control problems).
Personally I'm proud of CMU for their continued support of this country's preoccupation with war. There's no need to dodge the draft...just send your child to CMU, where they can get a fine education in the art of war and surveillance without ever leaving the country.
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Some of you may not realize this, but the Federal government supports F/OSS. Several state governments (I know Texas does for certain) have passed mandates and recommendations that encourage and/or require state agencies to consider F/OSS solutions over proprietary solutions.
Unfortunately, much of this information is squelched by the press, since the press has shown to be woefully ignorant of F/OSS concepts. I would imagine many state and Federal agencies routinely violate rules requiring them to review F/OSS software due to ignorance. I've identified several instances of such a failure in the community college district where I work: Purchases and bids for proprietary software are routinely approved, and when I ask for a list of F/OSS alternatives that were considered, I'm greeted with a blank stare.
The bottom line is that F/OSS has made inroads, but without oversight from the F/OSS community, many of these initiatives are simply ignored and routinely violated.
Now, I would be impressed if this was a vector graphics tool. But I simply don't see an MS Paint clone taking over the world.
KISS and BEST are two other nationally-recognized robotics programs. While KISS uses Legos, don't be fooled -- you have two embedded systems to work with (Lego's RCX and the MIT-developed Handy Board microcontroller), and the designs get pretty outrageous. BEST has students building robots from scratch.
Most Palms seem to go to great lengths to hide details of the filesystem from the user. The workaround I've found is to simply store all user data on the removable flash memory, plug it into my flash memory reader and access it that way. I don't have a T3, but I'm able to work with the filesystem directly on several of the m-series Palms.
I agree, there seems to be very little forward movement in significant functionality in the Palm world. Can I be so bold to suggest that this lack of innovation might be due to the lack fo significant competition for Palm?
Tell me about it...I've been listening to the Who for at least 30 years, and didn't discover until recently that the background vocals in "Who Are You" consist partially of "Who the fuck are you?" I found out exactly as you describe: Listening to the radio one day, there was a distinct "break" in the song. Had to dig out the original to verify that my mind wasn't playing tricks.
No more of that "funky shit going down in the city." It's a sad world we live in...
Let's see...NeoOffice on my iBook and G4 PowerMac...OpenOffice under Windows...and my Linux box knows only XFree86, which seems to like OpenOffice just fine.
So what's your point?
I see a far more sinister motive here...raise your hands if you think the government sees our colleges and universities as breeding grounds for future terrorists caught up in the free-thought environment where the open exchange of ideas is not only tolerated but encouraged?
<doffing tin foil hat>
What sigs? I don't ever see poster sigs...oh wait, that's probably because I chose not to...
RFID has been with us since WWII. It's not new technology, and like anything else, it can be abused. What Roland probably doesn't know is that detecting RFID tags is kids' play. He doesn't realize that the cutting edge in RFID technology is presence sensing: How is an RFID tag associated with its taggee? How do you track both the RFID tag and the thing it's supposed to track? And even more importantly: How do you track direction? Goods moving off a truck are a good example: How do you differentiate goods being offloaded from goods being onloaded? What's to prevent a thief from passing detached RFID tags through a sensor, and simply driving off with the load? How do you verify the association between tag and good?
These are the real issues being addressed today in the RFID world. So many think that RFID is new technology, when in fact it's very old technology that is just now becoming the center of focus for industries that are trying to remove as many humans as possible from the supply chain. If there's an inherent danger to the proliferation of RFID, it's not whether we can be tracked (we can, get over it), but how many jobs will be subsumed by the growth of automation that technologies such as RFID have to offer.
Back in the day when school was uphill both ways, we used to make holographs by taking a coffee can with the bottom cut out and wrapping a sheet of AGFA red-sensitive photo paper around the inside of the can. We'd set the coffee can on the table, empty end down, and set a small eraser in the middle. The eraser had a small hollow with a single drop of mercury. Put an item of interest somewhere between the erasure and the film, then illuminate the mercury with a laser that's suspended overhead. Develop, and then view the paper backlit by the laser. Instant holograph!
The effect was very impressive. I guess nowadays, you'd have the most trouble finding mercury...
So I can serve up my MP3's more than once?
How valuable is a block of encrypted e-mail?
I'm still waiting for my $100 rebate.
...of the stock market are fear and greed. Once Mandelbrot can find a pattern in these two uniquely human traits, his problem will have solved itself.
What recourse does a company asserting a patent have against an end user? The end user isn't violating the patent in question -- the alleged violation was committed by the creator of the work. I simply don't see how patents can be used to "scare people away from Open Source solutions."
...and one I was hoping Mr. Rosen had an answer for: Exactly who does one sue for patent infringement when it comes to OSS? Once OSS has been "released", you can't call it back. In many cases, alleged infringers are given the opportunity to either license the patented technology, or to no longer use the technology.
Although IANAL, I maintain that patents pose no real threat to OSS development, since authorship of OSS is a "moving target" (especially where derivative works come into play). Most OSS author are not likely to agree to royalty payments, so exactly what recourse does the accuser have at that point?
I'm surprised the author didn't link directly to Microsoft as well...here's the missing link.
...any landing you walk away from is a good landing!
The average middle manager wouldn't know a Linux User's Group if it jumped out of their ass and did the tap number from 42nd street.
While certainly deserving of being modded "Funny," it's equally deserving of "Overated," possibly "Untruthful." The North Texas Linux Users' Group job opportunity list routinely sends out requests for assistance, sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time, sometimes contract. Over the years I have participated in a few contact jobs as a result of posts to the LUG mailing list. Contrary to the parent poster's message, there are people out there who recognize the value of networking and the value of targeting a select group of individuals who, on average, will generally have a more appropriate skill set than, say, the population exposed to a newspaper classified.
Find the LUGs in your area, as well as other UGs and subscribe to their job lists. It's probably one of the more underated activities and least time-consuming you can add to your job search techniques.
This isn't news...this is simply the latest in series of advertisements thinly disguised as "editorials." So tell us, Roblimo, how much of a kickback have you gotten from Joel for the last 5 ads of Spolsky's posted on /.?
Now imagine this was SourceForge...
According to the Stuff article, the meteor was "hot to touch" after it landed. Guess that bunk about a meteor being cold when it hits the earth was just a lot of hot air from pseudo-scientists.
Then again: Thanks to such blunders I know what equipment not to buy.
The fundamental problem here is that we're running out of vendors! Linksys and Belkin are on the shitlist; now NetGear. Who, exactly, does that leave for consumer-grade networking equipment? I don't know about where you live, but where I live, these are about the only three vendors that show up on the computer store shelves (well, there are some cheapo brands, but they suffer even worse quality control problems).
Personally I'm proud of CMU for their continued support of this country's preoccupation with war. There's no need to dodge the draft...just send your child to CMU, where they can get a fine education in the art of war and surveillance without ever leaving the country.
Did you know these are also known as "Botts dots"? (Named after their inventor.) Read that in, of all places, a Playboy story...
Back to normally-scheduled programming...