Many actors, directors, and other talent have contracts that require the studios to send out screeners -- so that they have a chance in the Oscar competition. Not to cast aspersions on particular movies, but I don't think we would have gotten some of these films if it weren't for contractual obligations. I don't think the MPAA can abrogate these contracts post hoc, although they may not get written in the future.
The other issue is that the Awards show has been moved up this year, to the point where screeners will probably have to be sent out well in advance of the theatrical release of films -- especially of films released in December targeted at the Academy nominating process.
The biggest problem with the MPAA's proposal is that it won't work -- perhaps the quality of the pirated movies will go down somewhat without screeners, but there are so many ways of pirating films that it will still happen.
There aren't all that many Academy members -- burning 6000 individually customized DVDs wouldn't be too hard. The other award-granting bodies are significantly smaller, still. And what could be more rewarding to somebody to get a customized DVD -- "This movie is for the private screening of Joe Member only". It sounds like a good business model to me, the business of making customized screeners.
My Toyota MR2 Spyder (lovely car) has electrical power steering. There are a number of reasons (excuses) for this, the biggest one is that the engine is in the back, and running hydraulic lines from the back to the front would be heavy, expensive, and prone to failure.
One surprising result of the electric power steering is that it doesn't turn on when the car is push started. It's a whole different beast without the power steering, especially at low speeds. The car is basically a go-kart, with extremely quick steering ratios, but those ratios only work if you have power steering -- even with only 35% of the weight on the front wheels.
I believe that these fines will not be automatic, you would have to bring a suit to collect. The alleged spammer would have to be found liable by the standards of civil law; which is to say that the proponderance of evidence would have to show that they violated the law.
I don't think that that you could attack somebody this way very easily at all, the victim should be able to prove by headers and other means that they were not the source of the spam.
This is the same mechanism that works in every civil (as opposed to criminal) law. It works pretty well.
One of the very nice features of the PCI Express graphics cards is that PCI Express is fast in both directions, finally allowing you to (drivers permitting) get data back out of the graphics card at a reasonable speed. There are many applications for this, from array processing to high-quality rendering -- but they are not viable today because it takes forever (say, large fractions of a second) to read an image back from the graphics card.
I'll be first in line to buy one of these when they become available. I can't wait.
Most systems that shared memory with the CPU only shared up to 32 MB or so, at least the ones that I've seen. It seems like a very poor compromise to me -- as the demands on video and main memory are so different. 32 MB of memory could only add a couple of dollars at most to the cost of a card, it's just not that big a deal.
Well, yes and no. The white paper also says that for outdoor in-sun use, vigorous steps must be taken to keep the temperature of the panel at the proper level. So, when they say that it draws no power when the display is static, that's really not true -- on a sunny summer day you will be air-conditioning the hell out of it.
There were a series of article written back in the early 80's in Sport Aviation, the house organ of the Experimental Aviation Association, about a radar system for light planes that worked in a similar way. The guy had built extremely cheap, short range (two miles, say) radars out of coffee cans. He mounted two of them in an airplane, pointed 45 degrees to the left and right of the centerline, and rigged stereo headphones to them. The idea would be that you could hear other traffic in the air, and then locate them with your eyes to see and avoid them.
It's surprisingly hard to pick up light planes visually, they are tiny specks right up until the time that they fill the windshield. The response of the FAA has been the TCAS systems -- which are extremely complex and eyewateringly expensive (about $1M per system) This makes sense for jetliners, but is out of the question for light planes.
As near as I can tell, nobody did anything with the BINCAS system after the articles came out. It was a cool idea, though.
I have been following hybrid cars since their commercial debut with the Honda Insight. The two major hybrid cars out now are the Honda Civic hybrid and the Toyota Prius.
The Honda has a pancake-shaped electric motor bolted to the engine where the flywheel originally was. This is simple and straightforward, and it means that they can (and do) treat the hybrid as just another option in the car, like leather seats. The significant downside is, though, that the electric motor and gasoline motor must always run at the same speed -- there is no way to run just on the electric engine (say).
The Prius uses a planetary gearbox to mix the outputs from the gasoline and electric motors. The gearbox acts as a mechanical 'adder', adding the two outputs together regardless of their relative speed. This allows the Prius to be much more flexible in how it runs its motor -- allowing significantly increase in-city fuel economy. Astonishingly, the Prius's city MPG numbers are higher than their highway MPG numbers, because the car can often run on purely electric power in stop-and-go traffic. Also, because the car's computer has flexible and complete control over the gas engine, they can make the engine significantly lighter and more efficient -- because they can ensure (for instance) that it is never over-revved.
The new Prius a huge advance over old one. The original had the same body as the Toyota Echo, perhaps the ugliest car every built. The new one is bigger, sleeker, much more practical with a big hatchback, and gets significantly better fuel economy than the old one. It's a true 21st century car. The New York Times review, two weeks ago, was a flat-out rave.
The only criticism I have of the Prius is that it is quite complex mechanically -- and those mechnical things can go wrong. Like any other Linux user, I feel somewhat bad about handing over so much control to the car's computer, even though I know in my heart that it's the right thing to do.
At the latest Siggraph conference in July, there were quite a number of papers describings systems that used these new graphics cards in novel ways. There is a tremendous amount of horsepower available, but it is often not obvious how to apply that horsepower to your particular computation.
Graphics cards seem to be increasing performance on a faster curve than CPUs these days, so people hope that the effort made in restructuring programs to use these graphics cards will pay off big down the road a year or two.
The biggest problem with using these cards is that they are changing so fast the documentation and tutorials are woefully out of date. Still, the promise is so great it's often worth the effort.
The reason to do this is to allow supersonic transports to fly over inhabited areas. The sonic boom from the Concorde, for example, is shockingly loud, it would never be tolerated.
What the article doesn't say, but was reported in Aviation Week a few weeks ago, is that this technique (and certainly this airplane) only reduces sonic booms -- it doesn't eliminate them. This demonstration is to show people that the math is right; that the sonic booms can be reduced through shaping. It is still unclear whether it is possible to build a practical airplane with a tolerable (negligible) sonic boom. Perhaps this could be combined with other techniques (the Russians have been working with exciting a plasma in front of the airplane, for instance) and together you could get a minimal boom.
Probably the parent article was questioning the need for supersonic travel at all -- whether it's worth the cost. It will almost certainly be less fuel efficient than subsonic travel. Travel in general is less fuel efficient than staying home. Living is less fuel efficient than dying.
I believe that the reason that this is coming up with a vote at all is that the WIPO requires 'harmonization' of patent laws in all WIPO-member countries, and everybody is being encouraged to harmonize to the insane US status quo ante.
Let us hope that the EU can stick to their principles and stand up to US hegemony on this issue. It's not unrealistic to think that a software-patent-free-Europe could have dramatically stronger growth in software than it would have otherwise. Software patents will force force Europe into second-class status for decades.
The open source movement, and GNU/Linux in particular, has shown that software is fundementally different than 'things' -- people will create it on a large scale just for the pleasure of doing so.
It doesn't appear to me that centershift has been down at all, based on the netcraft pages...
Do I smell a rat?
thad
Things I like about Armadillo Aerospace's program
on
X Prize and John Carmack
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I admire and respect Carmack's space program. He is doing a number of innovative things.
His program of building control systems and then big rockets is mentioned in the article. It's unfortunate that so far whenever they've tried to launch a rocket the computer has immediately crashed -- but they seem to have a handle on why this is happening and the current computer construction and mounting system is far better than the previous ones. He also has a tremendous amount of telemetry, and analyzes the inevitable failures exhaustively.
They is now using a fairly innovative mix of medium-strength hydrogen peroxide and some fuel to power the rocket. Other people (and Armadillo, previously) have used highly purified hydrogen peroxide, but that is hard to get (and expensive) in the quantities that they need. This mixed monopropellant has a higher specific impulse, too.
They are using a innovative final recovery system -- the ship lands nose first on a long aluminum cone that crushes to absorb energy. Unique, cheap, and innovative -- if funny-looking.
The thing I like the most, though, is his website http://www.armadilloaerospace.com (it will surely be slashdotted for the next couple of days.) Carmack is religious about posting the results of the last weeks efforts, warts and all. It appears that he receives substantial insight from people responding to these progress reports (apparently the mixed monopropellant research was instigated by somebody posting results of German WW2 torpedo experiments.) This kind of openness is quite rare in aerospace research.
Anyway, all the best to Carmack et al. I think that Rutan's Spaceship One project may win the X prize, but maybe not -- his system depends on a lot of planning and simulation being accurate, whe re Armadillo can respin the project many ways if things don't work out the first (or second) try.
Well, I can't mod the parent up because I commented on the story, but this is great news! So, patent reexaminations are not nearly as scary as they used to be -- they don't taint the presented prior art the way that they used to. Thanks for pointing this out, AC!
What usually happens with reexamination is that the patent office works with the party who received the patent, to narrow the scope of the claims. This unfortunately usually doesn't let one off the hook, as the claims can be narrowed, but still be focused on the infringement in question.
The other problem with reexamination is what happens to all the documentation submitted to the PTO to cause the reexamination to happen. If the patent is allowed to stand but the scope of the claims is narrowed, the new documents are added to the list of 'known prior art' in the patent. These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete -- as the PTO has in effect 'blessed' those documents, asserting that the patent is valid in spite of them.
So, reexamination is a double edged sword. You may end up with stronger patent, and all of your best ammunition voided.
IANAL, but I have fought a couple of patents. Won one and lost one.
On the subject of diamond coating, I recall reading an article in Aviation Week quite a few years ago about the lenses in the front of the Comanche helicopter's vision system being coated with 'hard carbon.' This is not long after the complaints about $1,000 hammers and $10,000 coffee pots on Air Force planes, so you can imagine them not wanting to talk about diamond-coated lenses. Still, it was pretty funny.
I heard this article this morning, it was amazing. The woman was shocked to hear that she couldn't possibly be the mother of the children she distinctly remembered giving birth to. They tested the father as well, and it was clear that he was indeed the father -- so it wasn't a case of kids being switched at birth. It took quite a while for them to determine that she was a chimera. [That's KY-mer-a, I had always pronounced it SHIM-er-a].
She was somewhat worried that her kids wouldn't think of her as her mother, but now that she understands it better she sees that she's both the mother and aunt of her kids.
The article said that scientists make chimeras of other animals all the time, and sometimes even between one species and another. There are 'geeps' which are chimeras of goats and sheep, for example.
As other people mention, they have found larger percentages of chimeras in in vitro conceived children; which makes sense because they usually implant multiple embryos.
Anyway, it's one of those articles that makes NPR worthwhile:)
I think that the opening section of your draft strategy is the best summary of the current state of the world of open-source/closed-source detente. It's exactly right that proprietary solutions are failing, and will fail with increasing rates, as open source proliferates and hardware increasingly becomes a commodity.
I have two issues with the summary. The first is that it a strategy should be a long-term document, something that might be as valid five or ten years from now as it is today (this compares to a tactical position.) I don't think that the current stated strategy, while appropriate to this time of flux, will be appropriate then.
Second, I just have a issue with the 'Sorry Vendors' line at the end of the first section -- everything else in the document is straightforward, concise, and emotion-free.
Indeed, Ms Spaink is one of the most intrepid voices on the 'net. More power to her.
The Scientologists have sued her some (long) time ago over a copyright issue, and she won. They've sued her again, and that trial is in an extremely weird state -- the judgement keeps getting delayed. Every day when the judgement becomes due (the Dutch courts apparently say in advance when they will have a decision) the court announces that the judgement has been delayed a few or many months, and announce that new date. So far, it has been delayed, I believe, 6 times, and is coming up for a new date very soon -- when it will probably be delayed again.
This is old technology. The Acron and the Macon, the two giant helium-filled airships built after WWII, recovered their exhaust gases and condensed the water out of them to keep the mass of the airship relatively constant. You lose the carbon from the gasoline, but you get the oxygen from the air, so it works out pretty even.
The Acron and Macon weren't blimps, but were dirigibles, but the same idea applies. It would be easier to build exhaust condensers than fuel cells.
Not that that should stop them! A fuel-cell powered blimp would be extremely cool indeed.
Like RADAR, RFID range depends on the fourth power of the transmitter. If you go twice as far away, the signal at the tag is 1/4 as strong (inverse-square law), but then that 1/4 strong echo has to go twice as far, so it's diminshed to 1/4 its power. 1/4x1/4 = 1/16.
So, if you wanted to read tags in my house from the street 40 feet away instead of the normal 2 feet, you'd need 20^4 or 160,000 times the power. As I'd be toasted to a crisp, I'd doubt that I'd mind you reading the tags.
I believe the correct interpretation of what FutureMark is saying is that the game writers are building their games differently for the different boards that are out there. That's what they mean by "manufacturer-specific code path optimization is directly in the code source." The source code they are referring to are UT and Q3, as examples.
They are saying that the boards have become different enough that game writers are coding differently for them. Not too surprising, really. That's the way it's always been.
This makes writing a synthetic benchmark extraordinarily difficult, needless to say. I don't know if it's even possible in this case. Perhaps rather than try to come up with one number that specifies how fast a board is, you can come up with a series of metrics for each capability.
While I'm sure that FutureMark has had some pressure applied to them to make this statement, it's not an unreasonable statement on its face. It's just the path they took to get there that is questionable.
Heard the Q&A session, missed the prepared tex
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
There were 11 questions asked after the prepared text was presented, basically divided evenly between the Linux press and large financial firms.
Several people questioned how SCO was claiming copyright over this code, and SCO's response was two fold.
It doesn't matter to the current litigation with IBM, that is purely a contract matter.
SCO believes that the rights they purchased to in fact include the copyright rights. The contract just didn't say so explicitly.
They sent a letter to Novell asking for them to 'clarify' this (implying that they wanted Novell to just hand over the copyright explicitly.) Apparently Novell declined to do so. So, SCO is going to litigate to show that they have the copyright rights. SCO claims that the 58 pages of the contract with Novell contains everything but the explicit turnover of copyright, and SCO believes that they can argue successfully that they can infer the copyright rights from that contract.
Somebody (Steve Nicholas?) noted that SCO and Caldera worked a long time on Linux and Unix, trying to build a unified system [you remember Monterey? I didn't think so.] How could SCO be sure that it wasn't SCO that added these lines? SCO just says that they didn't do it. They blame IBM for wasting two years of their time on Monterey, then walking away from it.
In closing, Darl said that "Everybody who really knows, knows that SCO has a strong position. How is it going to get resolved? Will it be by attacking us, and destroying us, before the issues are heard in court? We are very comfortable with our position. We understand that the battle is fierce, but we will continue it because we have the rights and these are our crown jewels."
They say that they are going to show hundreds of lines of infringement, starting in June. June will be "show and tell" month.
thad
Re:SCO Call is Closed - At Least to Novell Employe
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 1
Interesting, because during the Q&A period at the end of the conference call Darl specifically spoke to "the people from Novell listening to this call." Basically saying that he didn't hold the employees responsible, just your corrupt leaders. What a guy, the Darl.
Slashdot Mirror
Many actors, directors, and other talent have contracts that require the studios to send out screeners -- so that they have a chance in the Oscar competition. Not to cast aspersions on particular movies, but I don't think we would have gotten some of these films if it weren't for contractual obligations. I don't think the MPAA can abrogate these contracts post hoc, although they may not get written in the future.
The other issue is that the Awards show has been moved up this year, to the point where screeners will probably have to be sent out well in advance of the theatrical release of films -- especially of films released in December targeted at the Academy nominating process.
The biggest problem with the MPAA's proposal is that it won't work -- perhaps the quality of the pirated movies will go down somewhat without screeners, but there are so many ways of pirating films that it will still happen.
There aren't all that many Academy members -- burning 6000 individually customized DVDs wouldn't be too hard. The other award-granting bodies are significantly smaller, still. And what could be more rewarding to somebody to get a customized DVD -- "This movie is for the private screening of Joe Member only". It sounds like a good business model to me, the business of making customized screeners.
thad
My Toyota MR2 Spyder (lovely car) has electrical power steering. There are a number of reasons (excuses) for this, the biggest one is that the engine is in the back, and running hydraulic lines from the back to the front would be heavy, expensive, and prone to failure.
One surprising result of the electric power steering is that it doesn't turn on when the car is push started. It's a whole different beast without the power steering, especially at low speeds. The car is basically a go-kart, with extremely quick steering ratios, but those ratios only work if you have power steering -- even with only 35% of the weight on the front wheels.
thad
[mod me down for OT, it's probably warranted]
I believe that these fines will not be automatic, you would have to bring a suit to collect. The alleged spammer would have to be found liable by the standards of civil law; which is to say that the proponderance of evidence would have to show that they violated the law.
I don't think that that you could attack somebody this way very easily at all, the victim should be able to prove by headers and other means that they were not the source of the spam.
This is the same mechanism that works in every civil (as opposed to criminal) law. It works pretty well.
thad
One of the very nice features of the PCI Express graphics cards is that PCI Express is fast in both directions, finally allowing you to (drivers permitting) get data back out of the graphics card at a reasonable speed. There are many applications for this, from array processing to high-quality rendering -- but they are not viable today because it takes forever (say, large fractions of a second) to read an image back from the graphics card.
I'll be first in line to buy one of these when they become available. I can't wait.
Most systems that shared memory with the CPU only shared up to 32 MB or so, at least the ones that I've seen. It seems like a very poor compromise to me -- as the demands on video and main memory are so different. 32 MB of memory could only add a couple of dollars at most to the cost of a card, it's just not that big a deal.
thad
Well, yes and no. The white paper also says that for outdoor in-sun use, vigorous steps must be taken to keep the temperature of the panel at the proper level. So, when they say that it draws no power when the display is static, that's really not true -- on a sunny summer day you will be air-conditioning the hell out of it.
There were a series of article written back in the early 80's in Sport Aviation, the house organ of the Experimental Aviation Association, about a radar system for light planes that worked in a similar way. The guy had built extremely cheap, short range (two miles, say) radars out of coffee cans. He mounted two of them in an airplane, pointed 45 degrees to the left and right of the centerline, and rigged stereo headphones to them. The idea would be that you could hear other traffic in the air, and then locate them with your eyes to see and avoid them.
It's surprisingly hard to pick up light planes visually, they are tiny specks right up until the time that they fill the windshield. The response of the FAA has been the TCAS systems -- which are extremely complex and eyewateringly expensive (about $1M per system) This makes sense for jetliners, but is out of the question for light planes.
As near as I can tell, nobody did anything with the BINCAS system after the articles came out. It was a cool idea, though.
thad
I have been following hybrid cars since their commercial debut with the Honda Insight. The two major hybrid cars out now are the Honda Civic hybrid and the Toyota Prius.
The Honda has a pancake-shaped electric motor bolted to the engine where the flywheel originally was. This is simple and straightforward, and it means that they can (and do) treat the hybrid as just another option in the car, like leather seats. The significant downside is, though, that the electric motor and gasoline motor must always run at the same speed -- there is no way to run just on the electric engine (say).
The Prius uses a planetary gearbox to mix the outputs from the gasoline and electric motors. The gearbox acts as a mechanical 'adder', adding the two outputs together regardless of their relative speed. This allows the Prius to be much more flexible in how it runs its motor -- allowing significantly increase in-city fuel economy. Astonishingly, the Prius's city MPG numbers are higher than their highway MPG numbers, because the car can often run on purely electric power in stop-and-go traffic. Also, because the car's computer has flexible and complete control over the gas engine, they can make the engine significantly lighter and more efficient -- because they can ensure (for instance) that it is never over-revved.
The new Prius a huge advance over old one. The original had the same body as the Toyota Echo, perhaps the ugliest car every built. The new one is bigger, sleeker, much more practical with a big hatchback, and gets significantly better fuel economy than the old one. It's a true 21st century car. The New York Times review, two weeks ago, was a flat-out rave.
The only criticism I have of the Prius is that it is quite complex mechanically -- and those mechnical things can go wrong. Like any other Linux user, I feel somewhat bad about handing over so much control to the car's computer, even though I know in my heart that it's the right thing to do.
thad
At the latest Siggraph conference in July, there were quite a number of papers describings systems that used these new graphics cards in novel ways. There is a tremendous amount of horsepower available, but it is often not obvious how to apply that horsepower to your particular computation.
Graphics cards seem to be increasing performance on a faster curve than CPUs these days, so people hope that the effort made in restructuring programs to use these graphics cards will pay off big down the road a year or two.
The biggest problem with using these cards is that they are changing so fast the documentation and tutorials are woefully out of date. Still, the promise is so great it's often worth the effort.
thad
The reason to do this is to allow supersonic transports to fly over inhabited areas. The sonic boom from the Concorde, for example, is shockingly loud, it would never be tolerated.
What the article doesn't say, but was reported in Aviation Week a few weeks ago, is that this technique (and certainly this airplane) only reduces sonic booms -- it doesn't eliminate them. This demonstration is to show people that the math is right; that the sonic booms can be reduced through shaping. It is still unclear whether it is possible to build a practical airplane with a tolerable (negligible) sonic boom. Perhaps this could be combined with other techniques (the Russians have been working with exciting a plasma in front of the airplane, for instance) and together you could get a minimal boom.
Probably the parent article was questioning the need for supersonic travel at all -- whether it's worth the cost. It will almost certainly be less fuel efficient than subsonic travel. Travel in general is less fuel efficient than staying home. Living is less fuel efficient than dying.
thad
I believe that the reason that this is coming up with a vote at all is that the WIPO requires 'harmonization' of patent laws in all WIPO-member countries, and everybody is being encouraged to harmonize to the insane US status quo ante.
Let us hope that the EU can stick to their principles and stand up to US hegemony on this issue. It's not unrealistic to think that a software-patent-free-Europe could have dramatically stronger growth in software than it would have otherwise. Software patents will force force Europe into second-class status for decades.
The open source movement, and GNU/Linux in particular, has shown that software is fundementally different than 'things' -- people will create it on a large scale just for the pleasure of doing so.
thad
It doesn't appear to me that centershift has been down at all, based on the netcraft pages...
Do I smell a rat?
thad
I admire and respect Carmack's space program. He is doing a number of innovative things.
His program of building control systems and then big rockets is mentioned in the article. It's unfortunate that so far whenever they've tried to launch a rocket the computer has immediately crashed -- but they seem to have a handle on why this is happening and the current computer construction and mounting system is far better than the previous ones. He also has a tremendous amount of telemetry, and analyzes the inevitable failures exhaustively.
They is now using a fairly innovative mix of medium-strength hydrogen peroxide and some fuel to power the rocket. Other people (and Armadillo, previously) have used highly purified hydrogen peroxide, but that is hard to get (and expensive) in the quantities that they need. This mixed monopropellant has a higher specific impulse, too.
They are using a innovative final recovery system -- the ship lands nose first on a long aluminum cone that crushes to absorb energy. Unique, cheap, and innovative -- if funny-looking.
The thing I like the most, though, is his website http://www.armadilloaerospace.com (it will surely be slashdotted for the next couple of days.) Carmack is religious about posting the results of the last weeks efforts, warts and all. It appears that he receives substantial insight from people responding to these progress reports (apparently the mixed monopropellant research was instigated by somebody posting results of German WW2 torpedo experiments.) This kind of openness is quite rare in aerospace research.
Anyway, all the best to Carmack et al. I think that Rutan's Spaceship One project may win the X prize, but maybe not -- his system depends on a lot of planning and simulation being accurate, whe re Armadillo can respin the project many ways if things don't work out the first (or second) try.
thad
Well, I can't mod the parent up because I commented on the story, but this is great news! So, patent reexaminations are not nearly as scary as they used to be -- they don't taint the presented prior art the way that they used to. Thanks for pointing this out, AC!
thad
What usually happens with reexamination is that the patent office works with the party who received the patent, to narrow the scope of the claims. This unfortunately usually doesn't let one off the hook, as the claims can be narrowed, but still be focused on the infringement in question.
The other problem with reexamination is what happens to all the documentation submitted to the PTO to cause the reexamination to happen. If the patent is allowed to stand but the scope of the claims is narrowed, the new documents are added to the list of 'known prior art' in the patent. These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete -- as the PTO has in effect 'blessed' those documents, asserting that the patent is valid in spite of them.
So, reexamination is a double edged sword. You may end up with stronger patent, and all of your best ammunition voided.
IANAL, but I have fought a couple of patents. Won one and lost one.
thad
This is exactly right. Thank you guys. In the end, there really is no choice; you have to support free software, even for people you despise.
thad
On the subject of diamond coating, I recall reading an article in Aviation Week quite a few years ago about the lenses in the front of the Comanche helicopter's vision system being coated with 'hard carbon.' This is not long after the complaints about $1,000 hammers and $10,000 coffee pots on Air Force planes, so you can imagine them not wanting to talk about diamond-coated lenses. Still, it was pretty funny.
thad
I heard this article this morning, it was amazing. The woman was shocked to hear that she couldn't possibly be the mother of the children she distinctly remembered giving birth to. They tested the father as well, and it was clear that he was indeed the father -- so it wasn't a case of kids being switched at birth. It took quite a while for them to determine that she was a chimera. [That's KY-mer-a, I had always pronounced it SHIM-er-a].
:)
She was somewhat worried that her kids wouldn't think of her as her mother, but now that she understands it better she sees that she's both the mother and aunt of her kids.
The article said that scientists make chimeras of other animals all the time, and sometimes even between one species and another. There are 'geeps' which are chimeras of goats and sheep, for example.
As other people mention, they have found larger percentages of chimeras in in vitro conceived children; which makes sense because they usually implant multiple embryos.
Anyway, it's one of those articles that makes NPR worthwhile
thad
Bruce,
I think that the opening section of your draft strategy is the best summary of the current state of the world of open-source/closed-source detente. It's exactly right that proprietary solutions are failing, and will fail with increasing rates, as open source proliferates and hardware increasingly becomes a commodity.
I have two issues with the summary. The first is that it a strategy should be a long-term document, something that might be as valid five or ten years from now as it is today (this compares to a tactical position.) I don't think that the current stated strategy, while appropriate to this time of flux, will be appropriate then.
Second, I just have a issue with the 'Sorry Vendors' line at the end of the first section -- everything else in the document is straightforward, concise, and emotion-free.
thad
Indeed, Ms Spaink is one of the most intrepid voices on the 'net. More power to her.
The Scientologists have sued her some (long) time ago over a copyright issue, and she won. They've sued her again, and that trial is in an extremely weird state -- the judgement keeps getting delayed. Every day when the judgement becomes due (the Dutch courts apparently say in advance when they will have a decision) the court announces that the judgement has been delayed a few or many months, and announce that new date. So far, it has been delayed, I believe, 6 times, and is coming up for a new date very soon -- when it will probably be delayed again.
Go Karin!
thad
This is old technology. The Acron and the Macon, the two giant helium-filled airships built after WWII, recovered their exhaust gases and condensed the water out of them to keep the mass of the airship relatively constant. You lose the carbon from the gasoline, but you get the oxygen from the air, so it works out pretty even.
The Acron and Macon weren't blimps, but were dirigibles, but the same idea applies. It would be easier to build exhaust condensers than fuel cells.
Not that that should stop them! A fuel-cell powered blimp would be extremely cool indeed.
thad
Like RADAR, RFID range depends on the fourth power of the transmitter. If you go twice as far away, the signal at the tag is 1/4 as strong (inverse-square law), but then that 1/4 strong echo has to go twice as far, so it's diminshed to 1/4 its power. 1/4x1/4 = 1/16.
So, if you wanted to read tags in my house from the street 40 feet away instead of the normal 2 feet, you'd need 20^4 or 160,000 times the power. As I'd be toasted to a crisp, I'd doubt that I'd mind you reading the tags.
thad
In possibly related news the SEC has charged officers of Gemstar with fraud for inflating revenues by some $223 Million.
thad
I believe the correct interpretation of what FutureMark is saying is that the game writers are building their games differently for the different boards that are out there. That's what they mean by "manufacturer-specific code path optimization is directly in the code source." The source code they are referring to are UT and Q3, as examples.
They are saying that the boards have become different enough that game writers are coding differently for them. Not too surprising, really. That's the way it's always been.
This makes writing a synthetic benchmark extraordinarily difficult, needless to say. I don't know if it's even possible in this case. Perhaps rather than try to come up with one number that specifies how fast a board is, you can come up with a series of metrics for each capability.
While I'm sure that FutureMark has had some pressure applied to them to make this statement, it's not an unreasonable statement on its face. It's just the path they took to get there that is questionable.
Several people questioned how SCO was claiming copyright over this code, and SCO's response was two fold.
It doesn't matter to the current litigation with IBM, that is purely a contract matter.
SCO believes that the rights they purchased to in fact include the copyright rights. The contract just didn't say so explicitly.
They sent a letter to Novell asking for them to 'clarify' this (implying that they wanted Novell to just hand over the copyright explicitly.) Apparently Novell declined to do so. So, SCO is going to litigate to show that they have the copyright rights. SCO claims that the 58 pages of the contract with Novell contains everything but the explicit turnover of copyright, and SCO believes that they can argue successfully that they can infer the copyright rights from that contract.
Somebody (Steve Nicholas?) noted that SCO and Caldera worked a long time on Linux and Unix, trying to build a unified system [you remember Monterey? I didn't think so.] How could SCO be sure that it wasn't SCO that added these lines?
SCO just says that they didn't do it. They blame IBM for wasting two years of their time on Monterey, then walking away from it.
In closing, Darl said that "Everybody who really knows, knows that SCO has a strong position. How is it going to get resolved? Will it be by attacking us, and destroying us, before the issues are heard in court? We are very comfortable with our position. We understand that the battle is fierce, but we will continue it because we have the rights and these are our crown jewels."
They say that they are going to show hundreds of lines of infringement, starting in June. June will be "show and tell" month.
thad
Interesting, because during the Q&A period at the end of the conference call Darl specifically spoke to "the people from Novell listening to this call." Basically saying that he didn't hold the employees responsible, just your corrupt leaders. What a guy, the Darl.
thad