5 years ago, you could argue that they were trying to understand this new market.
No, the pre-recorded music industry has been fighting digital music for much longer than that.
Consider that wonderful innovation of the 1980's that made a brief appearance in Japan and was fought tooth and nail in the USA so that it never really took off for widespread consumer use.
about 60,000 years ago, the population of homo sapiens sapiens was reduced to ~2000. The current hypothesis is that the supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted and caused world-wide havoc on the ecosystem causing mass die-offs in populations.
Yes, about 74,000 years ago.
Yes, there is a supervolcano under Yellowstone. And it could blow anytime on a geological time scale. But it hasn't erupted for about 600,000 years.
The Toba supervolcano in Indonesia is deemed responsible for the genetic bottleneck observed in human DNA, IIRC.
Something like 6% of males in China share a common Y chromosome that dates back about 600-700 years. The reasoning is Genghis Khan and the customs of the times. [I think something like this existed in West Asian cultures, too, that kings had some right to bed any woman of the realm.]
Perhaps Wilt Chamberlain's much rumoured progeny will be similarly noticed a century from now.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call those MIT guys with the paper generator so we can start work in a random post generator.
Sounds to me like you've been had just like the conference organizers that accepted the random paper.
Slashdot has always had its share of random troll/disparagement/insult bots jumping out of the low score cesspool trying to get a response from a real person.
Just don't look down below into the festering fetid pool that is Score:0 posts replying to yours and you'll be fine.
So you seem to be saying that it is impossible for Microsoft to accomplish the job
The complete job, yes.
Specific jobs for specific applications and environments, then, yes, MS could easily do it. I stand corrected.
They probably would do it if made business sense for them to do this kind of niche work. Since they're always looking for ways to grow their business, maybe some day they'll do it - but probably by just buying out one or more of the little outfits.
The scary thing is that this fact is worthy of a post, and is informative.
Patches that do not break anything should be the rule, not the exception.
You'd think. You'd hope. But it's not to be.
Realistically, there are too many nonlinear interactions between the universe of Windows applications and the OS for even Microsoft, with all its resources, to test exhaustively. [I know, clean interface design would cure or substantially reduce those side effects, but there's too much water under the bridge now.]
That's why there's outfits that specifically try to pull apart and find out what happenned each month that Patch Tuesday occurs.
The African exodus I think is pretty well understood. Although, there seems to have been multiple exodi (?) of hominid species that did not survive in the long term (such as the Neanderthal in Europe).
From what I understand, the story gets harder to piece together in the last part of the European migrations from Central Asia.
A couple of interesting TV shows on this were The Real Eve (which does the mitochondrial trace through maternal ancestral lines), and Journey of Man, which relates to the more difficult task of tracing mutations in the Y chromosome handed done through paternal lines.
One of the earlier pioneers in the field, Brian Sykes of Oxford, started up a side business where you can send swabs to obtain information about maternal and paternal markers in your genetic makeup (IIRC, about US$225).
A few years ago I got the analysis done and sent the results back to Ma 'n Pa for Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts.
If a hardware vendor officially supports Linux, they'll likely get my business over a competitor who doesn't, regardless of whether their drivers are GPL or not.
When I put together or spec out a new computer I'm very careful to look for Linux support of any kind, how much chatter on the newsgroups is there about the video card, the raid card, system board, etc. before I make my purchasing decision.
But, yes, my confidence in a hardware vendor is greater if they release and maintain source code modules for Linux for their product.
Which the parents agreed to. Imagine the alternative
Gladly.
As part of the effort to rid American citizens of the much-hated "death tax" (you wouldn't believe all the griping and complaining I hear about this down at the break room at McDonalds, people whining about how much of their supersized legacy to their heirs is going to get taken away by that greedy S.O.B. Uncle Sam) there will be a new provision, one which didn't quite make it into the recent revision of bankruptcy laws, where VISA bills and house mortgage obligations will be passed on to heirs whether they want them or not.
"We figured that hardworking American families deserve to be able to pass on the traaditionally American family values of indebtedness and passing the buck to future generations", said an administrative spokesman. "If the government can pass on debt to future generations, then why not average citizens? They have a right to. After all, it's their debt!"
Officials did not return our calls about a new private venture for constructing and operating debtors' prisons and work farms in west Texas.
It took me a little while to get past the anxiety flashbacks of having a stack of finals due
You don't have to visit the beautiful Caltech campus to get those anxiety flashbacks.
The blood empties out of my head every time I hear the The Ride now:)
[Note to nonalumni: finals week at Caltech consists of heavy duty studying, late at night, taking final exams at all hours of the day or night, tests frequently lasting 3 hours, and then being woken up by a humongous stereo at 7am playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
That's right. Caltech's Honor System meant students were entrusted to take
limited-time,
closed-book,
non-collaborative,
take-home
final exams.
I was disappointed as an MIT graduate student to have to herd into some lecture hall with dozens of other unshowered half-awake students to take a proctored test at some weird time like 8:00 AM.]
As I recall, the British proposed some similarly silly rule requiring ISPs to "log everything" about 5 years ago.
I haven't heard of it since, so I presume the proposal died a whimpering quiet death unclaimed by anyone.
Free from any requirement to compromise, the Argentine president looks to one-up their old nemesis (of Falklands/Malvinas dispute) by actually trying to revive this rotting corpse of an idea.
What's next for Argentina? A clipper chip?
Of course, none of this compares with the tragedy of decades under juntas and the legacy of los desaparecidos.
Not to mention the economic collapse from naively expecting that IMF policies and democracy can co-exist.
They are not going to be writing Linus's next SCM system.
But, if any of those laid off folks were talented enough to write Linus' next SCM system - and I have heard that Linus is a picky customer and that his product is showcased to the most elite nerderati - then they would have marquee billing.
Then consider the application of the same ideas about evolving organisms (eyes, parasites, etc.) to human societies or groups of humans.
I don't know if it was Guns, Germs & Steel or another book along the same topic that enlightened me to the whole concept that many human organizational power structures and governments in particular could be thought of in terms of parasites (get past the bad connotation of parasite and think purely of their functionality.) People in positions of power feed off the labors of people in positions of subjugation. Probably the relationship is somewhat symbiotic, where govt provides protection against violent individuals at the subjects provide taxes.
Someone else (Crichton, perhaps?) suggested that the human brain itself qualified as a successful parasite operating on the human species (maybe that accounts for ending in the cult movie Pi).
I honestly have no issue with 10cm resolution being available to the general public. No tin foil on my head.
I agree. Tin foil hats are so 20th century.
This year's Geek spring fashion show includes new hats with LCD panels pointed skyward, realtime cameras pointed downwards, with the ability to keep images of a virtual untrodden-by-the-geek-wearer ground playing for the satellite observers.
No paranoid geek should be without one of these Must-Have items this summer. In fact, the recent sign on of Paris Hilton as Linux spokemodel was motivated by her desire to hide under scanty LCD panels with geeks that can protect her from the kinds of hacking intrusions upon her privacy that have already made her life miserable.
Fall fashions will include panels that expand emission beyond the visible spectrum so that those pesky IR satellites can also be held at bay from observing nerd behavior.
The problems do relate to "real world" life insofar as you might be faced with problems like these during a job interview with companies such as Google.
From what I saw of a Google questionaire, they're likely to ask questions far enough outside the box, say about 10 parsecs, that getting such questions right is a reliable indicator that you have so much innate intelligence that you can easily handle "real world" questions that are likely to arise inside the confines of a (2 meter)^3 cubicle.
Rosenzweig 'tends to view privacy as something to be circumvented.'
I think he's right.
A little less privacy at the highest levels of government and in the corporate ranks would do wonders for increasing their dismal reputations for hiding incompetance and fraudulent behavior.
Perhaps this new found penetration of privacy could be applied to the Vice President's meetings with business officials to come up with an energy policy. God knows we're ready for one.
Evidently the recent decision was due to OSDL's decision to keep paying a developer who was working on reverse engineering BitKeeper... What tool Linus will move to is still being determined.
Considering what has transpired, the obvious choice is subversion:)
"Economies and nations need intellectual property (IP) to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."
when all evidence is that developing nations need technology, education, capital as well as respect for a functional legal system. That would include know-how that is gotten by any means, including even using industrial espionage. Consider Samuel Slater "stealing" the intellectual property of British textile manufacturers to establish factories in America - he was applauded by some American Founding Fathers.
The progress of science has been enabled by open publication of theories and experiments. This same openness allows the best ideas to flourish and for development of technology-based industry wherever conditions permit, including lesser developed nations. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is not just a brake on the efficient operation of the free market system, but also impedes the progress of science and technology as a whole, progress which has helped improve the lives of millions.
Some resources are of limited supply and exhaustible; ideas are not such a resource.
I really wonder if the E.U. would find it worth the diplomatic row this would create with the U.S.
Yes. I could see where MS non-compliance could be used as a poker chip in larger negotiations between the EU and the US about WTO grievances, eg. about Airbus gov't subsidies vs Boeing's defense contracts, farming subsidies that both sides have traditionally dealt out, etc.
From my perspective, MS doesn't need to release its source code. It would be unfair to make them reveal a trade secret about how they implement a functionality if they don't want to.
But, MS should be required to release complete, accurate interfaces and specifications of functionality to anyone that wants to look at them, no strings (NDA, RAND royalities, etc.) attached.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone who works within the polling field is well aware that small changes in wording can affect the ways in which respondents answer questions.
Such as "Would your opinion of John McCain be different if you knew he fathered an illegitimate black child ?"
"Joe, I don't do 'nuance'."
Perhaps the US should outsource its tax collection to the UK.
Actually, we use to have an arrangment just like that.
From what I understand, it didn't work out very well.
Why would we want your sucky government when we have a perfectly fine sucky government right here at home?
5 years ago, you could argue that they were trying to understand this new market.
No, the pre-recorded music industry has been fighting digital music for much longer than that.
Consider that wonderful innovation of the 1980's that made a brief appearance in Japan and was fought tooth and nail in the USA so that it never really took off for widespread consumer use.
DAT
most people don't give a shit about feature XYZ they just want to play their music.
Well, yeah. Until they've owned their iPod a few months and hear from the friends about the various aftermarket add-ons they can get.
about 60,000 years ago, the population of homo sapiens sapiens was reduced to ~2000. The current hypothesis is that the supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted and caused world-wide havoc on the ecosystem causing mass die-offs in populations.
Yes, about 74,000 years ago.
Yes, there is a supervolcano under Yellowstone. And it could blow anytime on a geological time scale. But it hasn't erupted for about 600,000 years.
The Toba supervolcano in Indonesia is deemed responsible for the genetic bottleneck observed in human DNA, IIRC.
Something like 6% of males in China share a common Y chromosome that dates back about 600-700 years. The reasoning is Genghis Khan and the customs of the times. [I think something like this existed in West Asian cultures, too, that kings had some right to bed any woman of the realm.]
Perhaps Wilt Chamberlain's much rumoured progeny will be similarly noticed a century from now.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call those MIT guys with the paper generator so we can start work in a random post generator.
Sounds to me like you've been had just like the conference organizers that accepted the random paper.
Slashdot has always had its share of random troll/disparagement/insult bots jumping out of the low score cesspool trying to get a response from a real person.
Just don't look down below into the festering fetid pool that is Score:0 posts replying to yours and you'll be fine.
So you seem to be saying that it is impossible for Microsoft to accomplish the job
The complete job, yes.
Specific jobs for specific applications and environments, then, yes, MS could easily do it. I stand corrected.
They probably would do it if made business sense for them to do this kind of niche work. Since they're always looking for ways to grow their business, maybe some day they'll do it - but probably by just buying out one or more of the little outfits.
The scary thing is that this fact is worthy of a post, and is informative. Patches that do not break anything should be the rule, not the exception.
You'd think. You'd hope. But it's not to be.
Realistically, there are too many nonlinear interactions between the universe of Windows applications and the OS for even Microsoft, with all its resources, to test exhaustively. [I know, clean interface design would cure or substantially reduce those side effects, but there's too much water under the bridge now.]
That's why there's outfits that specifically try to pull apart and find out what happenned each month that Patch Tuesday occurs.
The African exodus I think is pretty well understood. Although, there seems to have been multiple exodi (?) of hominid species that did not survive in the long term (such as the Neanderthal in Europe).
From what I understand, the story gets harder to piece together in the last part of the European migrations from Central Asia.
A couple of interesting TV shows on this were The Real Eve (which does the mitochondrial trace through maternal ancestral lines), and Journey of Man, which relates to the more difficult task of tracing mutations in the Y chromosome handed done through paternal lines.
One of the earlier pioneers in the field, Brian Sykes of Oxford, started up a side business where you can send swabs to obtain information about maternal and paternal markers in your genetic makeup (IIRC, about US$225).
A few years ago I got the analysis done and sent the results back to Ma 'n Pa for Mother's Day and Father's Day gifts.
If a hardware vendor officially supports Linux, they'll likely get my business over a competitor who doesn't, regardless of whether their drivers are GPL or not.
When I put together or spec out a new computer I'm very careful to look for Linux support of any kind, how much chatter on the newsgroups is there about the video card, the raid card, system board, etc. before I make my purchasing decision.
But, yes, my confidence in a hardware vendor is greater if they release and maintain source code modules for Linux for their product.
Maybe this way?
Which the parents agreed to. Imagine the alternative
Gladly.
As part of the effort to rid American citizens of the much-hated "death tax" (you wouldn't believe all the griping and complaining I hear about this down at the break room at McDonalds, people whining about how much of their supersized legacy to their heirs is going to get taken away by that greedy S.O.B. Uncle Sam) there will be a new provision, one which didn't quite make it into the recent revision of bankruptcy laws, where VISA bills and house mortgage obligations will be passed on to heirs whether they want them or not.
"We figured that hardworking American families deserve to be able to pass on the traaditionally American family values of indebtedness and passing the buck to future generations", said an administrative spokesman. "If the government can pass on debt to future generations, then why not average citizens? They have a right to. After all, it's their debt!"
Officials did not return our calls about a new private venture for constructing and operating debtors' prisons and work farms in west Texas.
It took me a little while to get past the anxiety flashbacks of having a stack of finals due
You don't have to visit the beautiful Caltech campus to get those anxiety flashbacks.
The blood empties out of my head every time I hear the The Ride now:)
[Note to nonalumni: finals week at Caltech consists of heavy duty studying, late at night, taking final exams at all hours of the day or night, tests frequently lasting 3 hours, and then being woken up by a humongous stereo at 7am playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
That's right. Caltech's Honor System meant students were entrusted to take
- limited-time,
- closed-book,
- non-collaborative,
- take-home
final exams.I was disappointed as an MIT graduate student to have to herd into some lecture hall with dozens of other unshowered half-awake students to take a proctored test at some weird time like 8:00 AM.]
As I recall, the British proposed some similarly silly rule requiring ISPs to "log everything" about 5 years ago.
I haven't heard of it since, so I presume the proposal died a whimpering quiet death unclaimed by anyone.
Free from any requirement to compromise, the Argentine president looks to one-up their old nemesis (of Falklands/Malvinas dispute) by actually trying to revive this rotting corpse of an idea.
What's next for Argentina? A clipper chip?
Of course, none of this compares with the tragedy of decades under juntas and the legacy of los desaparecidos.
Not to mention the economic collapse from naively expecting that IMF policies and democracy can co-exist.
you indeed will still dissipate ~88MJ.
No problem. Many of us have dissipated this level of energy, many times over.
Wait. You mean you want me to dissipate 88 MJ in 0.001 second?!?
Nevermind.
They are not going to be writing Linus's next SCM system.
But, if any of those laid off folks were talented enough to write Linus' next SCM system - and I have heard that Linus is a picky customer and that his product is showcased to the most elite nerderati - then they would have marquee billing.
Yes, do RTFA.
Then consider the application of the same ideas about evolving organisms (eyes, parasites, etc.) to human societies or groups of humans.
I don't know if it was Guns, Germs & Steel or another book along the same topic that enlightened me to the whole concept that many human organizational power structures and governments in particular could be thought of in terms of parasites (get past the bad connotation of parasite and think purely of their functionality.) People in positions of power feed off the labors of people in positions of subjugation. Probably the relationship is somewhat symbiotic, where govt provides protection against violent individuals at the subjects provide taxes.
Someone else (Crichton, perhaps?) suggested that the human brain itself qualified as a successful parasite operating on the human species (maybe that accounts for ending in the cult movie Pi).
I honestly have no issue with 10cm resolution being available to the general public. No tin foil on my head.
I agree. Tin foil hats are so 20th century.
This year's Geek spring fashion show includes new hats with LCD panels pointed skyward, realtime cameras pointed downwards, with the ability to keep images of a virtual untrodden-by-the-geek-wearer ground playing for the satellite observers.
No paranoid geek should be without one of these Must-Have items this summer. In fact, the recent sign on of Paris Hilton as Linux spokemodel was motivated by her desire to hide under scanty LCD panels with geeks that can protect her from the kinds of hacking intrusions upon her privacy that have already made her life miserable.
Fall fashions will include panels that expand emission beyond the visible spectrum so that those pesky IR satellites can also be held at bay from observing nerd behavior.
The problems do relate to "real world" life insofar as you might be faced with problems like these during a job interview with companies such as Google.
From what I saw of a Google questionaire, they're likely to ask questions far enough outside the box, say about 10 parsecs, that getting such questions right is a reliable indicator that you have so much innate intelligence that you can easily handle "real world" questions that are likely to arise inside the confines of a (2 meter)^3 cubicle.
Especially this year, since the changeover, the change in my mood has been dramatic
The change in my mood has been dramatic since the changeover, too, but not quite the same way.
What used to be a 0430 alarm now goes off in the middle of the night.
when he says
I think he's right.A little less privacy at the highest levels of government and in the corporate ranks would do wonders for increasing their dismal reputations for hiding incompetance and fraudulent behavior.
Perhaps this new found penetration of privacy could be applied to the Vice President's meetings with business officials to come up with an energy policy. God knows we're ready for one.
Considering what has transpired, the obvious choice is subversion:)
The progress of science has been enabled by open publication of theories and experiments. This same openness allows the best ideas to flourish and for development of technology-based industry wherever conditions permit, including lesser developed nations. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is not just a brake on the efficient operation of the free market system, but also impedes the progress of science and technology as a whole, progress which has helped improve the lives of millions.
Some resources are of limited supply and exhaustible; ideas are not such a resource.
I really wonder if the E.U. would find it worth the diplomatic row this would create with the U.S.
Yes. I could see where MS non-compliance could be used as a poker chip in larger negotiations between the EU and the US about WTO grievances, eg. about Airbus gov't subsidies vs Boeing's defense contracts, farming subsidies that both sides have traditionally dealt out, etc.
From my perspective, MS doesn't need to release its source code. It would be unfair to make them reveal a trade secret about how they implement a functionality if they don't want to.
But, MS should be required to release complete, accurate interfaces and specifications of functionality to anyone that wants to look at them, no strings (NDA, RAND royalities, etc.) attached.