Posts by Rob Dobs 408 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Mar 2008
OK so i had suspicions on this one: freeware or Unix patent and or Apple taking something over are super common fools material.
Shame on anyone who didn't catch the good one-liner of the Lawyer being attributed to commenting under anonymity and then being named in the same sentence.
Arguing that prices will go up by raising taxes is a completely false argument here.
Most companies in these countries are already paying these taxes, its a few bad players that playing lose and risky with the interpretation of these laws. Once they have to pay the same fair share as everyone else, they have a choice... loose the ill gotten added profits that they were originally stealing, or raise their prices to keep the same level of income. If they decide to raise their prices, the rest of the market that was already paying taxes suddenly becomes a lot more attractive to the end customer, and is a lot more competitive because of it.
Its the same principal that the Cess-filled wastes of human skin that call themselves the Walton use when running Walmart.. they refuse to pay fair wages and play by the full/part time laws... all their employees are part time and only subsist of off government dole and welfare. If they had to play be the rules, their prices would now longer be able to undercut everone else, and consumers would then have a real choice of going with competing companies that are not made of the same pile of stinking bile that makes up Walmart.
RE Adam Smith, Google makes the most income and should therefore be paying the most tax.
Taxes are certain, its loopholes and illegal interpretations of the law that allow this, if the governments take a few simple steps to clarify a minimum alternative taxe (no matter the loopholes you at least pay this much) then it would certain and simple)
Paying quarterly through automatic bank deductions is way more easy that Smith could have ever imagined a bank transaction to be. He did not have accounting software or electronic payments
See above about collection... should cost almost next to nothing to collect.. Now enforcement of law breakers may cost some, but should be able to pay for itself with the deterrence and regained monies collected.
Corporate tax does pretty well on all four parts if you remove these kinds of crap loopholes that only a few are able to take advantage of
But it does... see a patent needs to be unique inventive and non-obvious.
Once Tesla showed this off (for free) to everyone... ANY patents resulting from just simple mundane alterations of the the basic idea and technology are not INVENTIONS.. or if you want to calm that, they are certainly OBVIOUS ones. Its same thing with all these RETARDED internet inventions.
Say you have a process ....something like associating a name with a number in a filing cabinet....
Then the internet gets invented (Internet was new and worthy of maybe a few patents) just because you now associate a name with number on internet does not make it worthy of Patent!!!!
That's the part these trolls don't get, and that our governments don't understand..... Patents are not just because you got there first. All the finger gestures in the world will be figured out and used eventually by every company... NOW that touch screens are cheap and popular. CRAPPLE does not get to PATENT and own this technology just because they have the cash to file patents.
I propose we make a change in the law and when a company files a patent where it can be shown that a simple search would have shown the prior art, or where the invention on review is an obvious one... the loose the patent and get a fine for filling a frivolous patent..... these funds would then be used to review more similar frivolous patents.
Crapple and certainly all the patent trolls would be bankrupt in 2 years time.
Who ever gets there fist owns it.
Who ever can defend it keeps it.
And unless/until a good system of elections/government is in place: the one who is strongest/smartest/fastest to kill any opposition will lead it.
And yes it make absolute sense to not only have robots do the work, but plenty of pre-mapping of the planet first... which would mean we are decades away from this...
Much better to land in a large crater that was shielded from the worst dust storms, had an abundance of frozen ice, and maybe even some gold and iron deposits near by rather than say a vast desert of sand.
I agree fully.... maybe you don't like the guy as a person.. but it is not unreasonable to begin planning for a day (decades off still, but you have to start or never get there) in the future where we can colonize the moon and mars. The main reason being that is ice (which also means oxygen) and other precious resources (including physical space or room to grow). No he by far not the first to envision this, but he is rich enough and willing enough to be the first to accomplish it. I have to say I was mightily impressed when a private citizens company built a rocket that DID successfully dock with the international space station..... that achievement adds at least a little credibility to his further ventures in the same arena.
Very simple, same reason they came to the US, and other Americas:
You Own It. You can escape religious or societal prosecution and set up your own envisioned ideal isolated life system. Ironically the only group of people that I see in the world today that could really pull off these early stages of life there successfully would be the Amish or Mennonites here in the U.S. the have a pretty isolated sustainable culture that uses simple tools/resources.
You Take It. The other reason people flocked to the new world, (or that other historical empires expanded). You go there you find and take the resources that are there for the taking... use these resources to build your own society while at the same time sending back the precious resources to Earth in exchange for valuable earth commodities like Beef and technology. The plan will be of many to go, make their fortunes and return to the old world...though I bet just like with the new world here on Earth... once they get there, establish positions of ownership and leadership and develop a infinitival for their new way of life most will end up staying in the new world.
Here is the problem though... (Its only good as others have already stated) from your end point to the endpoint of the line (usually the local telco).
This solution sounds like it is great for intra-office connections, government and military uses, where they have self-run dedicated lines... not for the average Joe.
For your home, you are still having to rely that your local ISP that is bringing this cable to you has good enough security that the routers/servers that your connection is passing through is not compromised. Even further you have trust that some rogue employee is not sniffing out your communications themselves (and last time I checked most telco/ISP's don't even drug test, let alone do comprehensive background checks.
And then finally you have to trust that telco to not allow taping of the device by feds/police or just outright collecting the data and handing it over to whichever government agency requests it.
I remember when VoIP was first deployed it ran under the radar for about a year, and then all the VoIP providers (like Vonage, LIngo etc) all got a personal call from the FBI.... place these routers in your data center cages, or you are out of business....
So I don't see most Governments even allowing such lines being sold to the public (and mob, terrorists etc) without the ability of the ISP to intercept the stream of data once it is off the initial first connection.
Again, this only seems of use to me if you (your organization anyway) are in physical control of BOTH ends of the line, then you can perceive interruptions to the line in transit.... otherwise this has no value to the home user.....
Besides there are things line Tor, encryption VPN's etc that already allow secure comms for the private individual. You can protect the data stream via encryption, but you will never (via Tor or any other method) really truly hide the connection itself.... its just the nature of networks, they are trackable.
The only to not have the start and end points of your communication is to effectively disappear in the noise (not have anyone looking at you so to speak)
Hasn't anyone ever seen the Star-Trek T-shirt from the 60's-70's "I Grok Spock" ?
In the episode where William Shatner absolutely ridicules the Star Trek fans I believe that Jon Lovits is the one wearing it.....
if you haven't seen it, it is a pretty hilarious sketch....
"look at you have you ever even kissed a girl?.... You've taken something I did as lark years ago and turned in to a colossal waste of time!!" Two of the best Shatner lines in history
So no its not a Unix thing to separate normal people from the Nerds. Its just a nerd thing... and its been around a long time (coined by Robert Heinlein in 1961)
And yes I am nerd.
And Jake.... I understand where you are coming from but please try opening your world a bit...
I know lots of Command Line ONLY types, mostly old Unix Guru's, I also know a butch of young whipper-snapper types that install and try out EVERY new GUI that comes out, I also know lots MS Gurus that can make Active Directory and and a Windows Server dance and do all kinds of neat Unix-like tricks....
The problem is the Unix/DOS Command Line types too often shun GUI's, Windows etc. entirely as if they are some kind of inferior technology they refuse to stoop to. The MS gurus typically get a scared look if they have to use even a DOS prompt, and typically have no Unix/Linux experience. The young guns always know the hot new apps and programs, but don't usually have a real understanding of the underlying system, and couldn't write even a simple shell script.
Trust me when I say this, I have seen thousands of different types of experts in my long Career (have met the founders of the Internet, the WWW, coders of many kernels and OS... etc....etc The most effective people on a computer in general are the ones that can do it all, and don't put themselves into a box.... A guy who can hop back and forth from the command line to the GUI, that go into a GUI code and tweak the program to let him do the task he wants with a visual click that is familiar will run circles around any of the types I described above... and that included CLI die-hards like yourself Jake.
Hard truth is there are some things a GUI can do faster, and you must live a very sheltered life if indeed you NEVER need to open a Word Doc... it is the typical format for businesses and there is no way around it. Sure you can use Libre office or something else, but your not going to get by with just VIM or a txt reader in the command line. (Insurance policies, offer letters, resumes etc....) If this is true you must be self employed and happy with your tiny niche in the world.... but like most CLI gurus I know.. you probably have an old Windows 98 VMware you fire up just for those times when you must interact with the real world
It's not that he doesn't want the card... it's that he is a sleeze opportunist lawyer who saw an opening.
He probably didn't even want the surface... just somewhere he saw it advertised "32GB of space" and when he figured out there was only 16GB of "FREE" space he took his opportunity.
He is the lawyer.. so he is only wasting his own time... sadly the chances of MS successfully counter suing him, or him facing any kind of reprimand from the State Bar or other legal authority is almost Zero... so no risk to him.
Class action gives him all the benefit... MS will have to shell out the difference in space $10-20 for a 16GB SD card? They will update their advertising information going forward, so lets say they have sold 200,000 devices by then... that's $2million that MS would have to shell out for the CLASS ACTION... all this money basically goes into a bank account held by same said waste of life lawyer.... MS provides all the customer contact information they have to lawyer for the 200,000 customers. Lawyer spends 6 months sending out notices to each customer that (after Attorney fees, mailing expenses etc they are each due $7-8,, they just need to mail their RECEIPT and fill our this form to claim their money.... a few thousand AT MOST will actually still have the receipt a year after purchase, and bother to send in for the money... If even a thousand do, he cuts 1000 $8 checks and ends up pocketing 1.9 million for himself.
CLASS ACTIONS are the most OUT OF CONTROL SLEAZY SUIT THAT EXISTS TODAY (Except maybe for patent and copyright infringement which is also out of control..
People who are harmed by a company in multiple small ways need a way to redress in the courts, and class actions provide this service... HOWEVER we should place CAPS on what percentage the lawyer of the case can take (should be like 3-5% MAX) and the rest that is unclaimed should either go to Charitable causes that counter the damage or just be collected by the Courts and put into government coffers.
GIMP because lawyers like this deserve the GIMP treatment just like pulp fiction
Good game designers are not resting on their laurels... Maybe WOW hasn't evolved much, but games like Crysis II (a bit on the old side), Half-Life 3 (coming soon), Skyrim, Dishonored, etc are pushing the boundaries.
You really CAN'T play these games on a console... yes I know Skryim was dumbed down a little bit for consoles, but this is easily fixed with the High-Res texture package (all 2GB+ worth) and dozens and dozens of mods/improvements to the game that just AREN'T there for the console. And the very bottom of the barrel graphics version of the game pales in comparison to even the medium/high version of the PC game with a few good effects added on... Add all the effects, use high res and bump up to the ultra quality settings and its like a different game altogether.
DirectX11, PhysX, there are all kinds of new affects and graphical detail that just were not around 4-5 years ago.
I am really expecting EVEN MORE from titles to come out at the end of the year and into the next... Half Life III will hopefully be a game changer, I would not be shocked to see a lot of the old-timer gamers here saying "mmm time to upgrade and give this one try" real soon.
Most console games are not rendered at 1080p,
maybe 720, or using other graphics tricks, but the Video cards in 5 year old consoles were not equipped to play games at that resolution...
Only now over the last year have video cards come down to the prices of $100-150 that can support game play with effects on at those resolutions and maintain playable frame rates. And that is just the Video card price.
If the are running at that resolution, then they are only pulling it off by having terribly low bit-depth on textures, and the like, no anti-aliasing, etc etc to manage it.
Modern games PC's not only run at 1080, but do so with 8-16 Anti aliasing, 8x Anisotropic filtering, shadows and reflections of the entire world being rendered, view distances increased etc,etc
There is a world of difference and it shows that you have not had a chance to see what modern games look like on a new system by your comments and opinion.... I really urge you to go to a buddies house, or view a high end system on display a game expo, high end PC retailer etc (or just buy a new machine for like $1500-1800 and you will see the REMARKABLE difference.
There are two major aspects at play here with the lower sales:
1) has already been touched on, that essentially a 2-3 year old machine is plenty good enough for the large majority of users to make documents, browse the web, watch HD video and maybe play occasional games.
2) The Global Economy (especially the US and Europe) is very depressed right now... when its not feeling so sad in few years I expect PC sales to pick up again.
Here is why:
For one, for browsing and documents, even a 10 year old computer could do all that was needed for 90% of the people out there. But then, as we will again in the future, we buy things we don't need. We buy them to have bragging rights, we buy them for future proofing and caution, we buy them to expand our computing capability. And when money was more expendable, we bought them more frequently than we needed to.
Second,
There is a lot more you can do with a real PC these days, and the Operating systems, and set up of services is easier that it ever was.
- Sure you can play Minecraft or similar games on a tablet or old PC, but on a new PC I can play and host my server
- On a PC I can rip by Blue-ray and DVD disks, and re-format the movies to fit smaller sized screens like my smartphone or tablet... a fast computer will do such actions with few clicks and only takes a few minutes. Its faster than say even downloading an illegal already formatted for Smartphone version of the movie from bit-torrent or similar file share.
- I can stream music and videos from my main new PC to the older weaker PC's, smart phones and tables in the house (or over the net even) A Modern PC can host 6-12TB of data easily, which will usually hold all your pictures, and your entire movie and music collections of the average person
-Security and Multitasking.... unlike the older PC my new PC can do all of the things listed above, but it can also run multiple Security programs AT THE SAME TIME.
Anti-virus, Firewall, Anti-spyware (3 versions), Anti-Trojan (two versions) and other programs like Windows defender, Linux Firewallls and root kit detectors etc.
Smartphones and tablets are neat, but the large majority of them don't have on access virus detection, firewalls or other typical security features that PC's do. Old PC's can run these security programs too, but only with a serious performance hit.
Gaming: This one for me is a no-brainer....I will be buying a new $1500 gaming machine at least every 2-3 years for the long forseeable future (and that's a bit of a compromise budge gaming rig, they can run $3,000-4,000) PC gaming always has been, and will continue to be a world apart from console gaming. There is usually a very brief period when a console first come out that it is maybe comparable... but still lacking, within 6 months they aren't even close. PS3 and Xbox are over 3 years old, and even 3 years ago a $1500 machine would beat the pants off of them. Just 2 years ago progress in the PC marketplace had put these kiddie boxes to shame. Games like Skyrim, COD, are getting photo-realistic and attracting larger audiences. As kids grow up from consoles, I expect a lot of them (the serious gamer ones anyways) will naturally progress to PC gaming and all the great worlds it opens up.
PC's aren't; going away any time soon, though manufacturer should be getting smart about how to keep their numbers up, as tablets, old and budget PCs and smart phones will continue to eat away at their market share.
If I were running a PC business today, I would be looking to load a dual/boot Windows 7 and Linux (Ubuntu or other) as a default image... and load up the Ubuntu side with plenty of tutorials and free software.
USING FINGERS - which have been around forever and already used to control everything imaginable in every conceivable way possible IS NOT AN INVENTION.
Different or not NETHER COMPANY should have a patent on using two fingers to control your phone.
ALL FINGER Control movements ARE OBVIOUS.
Now if say you invented a phone that took a picture of you when you picked your nose.... maybe a phone that called 911 when your finger became disconnected from your body... well then maybe... but swiping a screen ANY Way with really ANY appendage JUST SHOULD NOT BE PATENTABLE!! ITS TOO Obvious.
Even the exemptions I mentioned above should not longer be patentable as they are now ideas in the public domain....
Mentioned Oracle, but not that they would be as likely as HP.
The love owning full top to bottom silo, and AMD would allow them to sell servers to run Oracle/Sun etc on x86 as cheaper alternative to Sun acquisitions.
I could see Samsung or Amazon as mentioned above due to the high value of the Fusion/Trinity chips for laptops and mobile devices. (HTC, Nokia, etc would be interested, but probably don't have the cash)
Microsoft or Apple could be a real option here as well for the same reason. They would basically banish AMD from the desktops as a favor to Intel and use AMD on mobile devices. Apple would be more likely candidate here, as they loved the wall garden, but M$ is trying real hard to be more like apple these days, and take more control over the windows "experience"
Google is a likely suitor as well... unlike most of the companies listed, (except Apple) they actually have the cash sitting around to do this. AMD would get rolled into the Google servers, and they would use fusion on the mobile/Motorola offerings. And the ATI side of the company is actually a good money maker still.
With a fusion/trinity APU stuffed in a microATX form factor, Google could release media theater TV's that could play HD movies, and the latest PC gaming titles, and offer something Apple can't with Apple TV.
(Course Samsung could do the same)
I don't see IBM as getting in,, they have amazingly high profit margins on all their other business, and have the clout and position to stay in those types of markets, there is just not large enough profit margin on chips these days for them to bite (not as a 2nd place x86 competitor)
If they get low enough, Nvidia could make a run at it, they no longer have to worry about monopoly as they could at least cover themselves with Intels Video integrated offerings (and Power VR and other companies are still around)
Lenovo, Hauwei etc, are not likely to bite, due to the government contracts with x86 manufactures, its not likely that they would allow the deal to go through, the fear of it (and costs of failure) would keep them away.
RedHat however has a lot cash and has not been mentioned yet. It would give them a more like Sun Like OS and Hardware integration, and they could use the merger to push RedHat branded Servers and Desktops. (Ubuntu could be interested too, but likely don't have the cash).
Really and Server maker, or for that matter Network device maker that basically sells custom purpose servers for network use (Riverbed, Juniper, etc) would make a good merger partner as well, giving them a hardware integration edge that their competition lacks.
The answer is elementary my dear...
If still alive, Zorin, would have gone after one of the few high tech industries that was a necessity for the computing industry, but that was highly or completely centralized in a single geographic location... like hmm say Hard Drive Manufacturing!?!?!
And he would repeat his same trick he tried in the movie, making the massive terrorist attack appear to be a natural disaster like hmmm..... say a FLOOD!?!!?!?! That would drive the products prices through the roof, reaping record profits from the secret production surplus that he had been storing in Mexico.
And after the flooding you would see a quick purchase and consolidation of the industry like hmm... WD buying Hitachi and Seagate buying Samsung <cue detective realization noise --- DA DA DUMMMM!!!)>
So there you have it, Zorin did survive the fall, and now Zorin Industries is the secret majority shareholder (hidden behind shell company pension fund managers) as the Majority holder in both Seagate and Western Digital. He is reaping record profits.
I would be quaking in my boots if I were a Toshiba HD exec right now... don't go into any rooms alone with a pretty lady for say the next ten years!!
And of course the sequel will be when he uses these record profits to create a massive underwater layer/submarine that is capable of creating seismic waves strong enough to create a massive earthquake and fulfil his original plan to destroy TSMC and UMC in Taiwan and wipe out the majority of the worlds Silcon Chip Production!!!!! (he just can't let a good plan die can he.)
I believe Lumia uses Nokia's own mapping system, which from what I understand is second only to Google.
I wonder if AAA (American Auto Assoc. for you Brits) has sold their maps to someone. Pre internet days they were the best and only game in town as far maps in the US and traveling went. Or did they just miss the boat completely?
$60 Billion in Cash, means that Juries could find against them for willful infringement and award in the billions without worrying at all that it is too much.
Apple should care about the public backlash too. Even if they keep winning on very Obvious patents, they will just push the masses to rise up against them, in the form of boycotts and Patent reform, both which would hurt them dearly.
I would say the Judge having a pre-formed opinion and making comments to that effect are pretty good grounds for appeal.... the Jury foreman having personal interest in seeing outrageous patents being upheld as he holds one himself if a pretty serious conflict of interest... again good grounds for appeal. Further in the appeal process Samsung has a second chance to more clearly display the vast mountain of prior art that should invalidate these so-called patents.... further the Jury nor judge did not ever seem to weigh these patents on their actual inventiveness (i.e. non obvious) burden as they don't even need the tons of prior art to show that they way it was done (round corners, square apps on a grid, pinch to zoom etc) were all the OBVIOUS way that any engineer approaching the problem would have handled it.
No headlock here, many other cases looked worse and were Completely and utterly reversed.... remember with evil microsoft finaly lost in court and was ordered split into three distinct and separate companies.... that happened... oh wait no it didn't, because it was completely reversed on appeal.
And you can bet that Apple is really in a long term no-win situation here.... people are already starting to get up in arms in the US over paten abuse and failures... even if apple wins on appeal, they are only more likely to push for massive lobbying by both companies and citizens for broad sweeping patent reform that will invalidate such decisions anyways.... certainly a loss of battle for Samsung, but wars can be very long and tides can certainly turn.
Poppycock I say!! I had a HP ipaq little mobile PC that did much more than iphone years before it came out. My Palm Centro had similar look and feel BEFORE the iphone came out... KyoCera had a great smartphone too. and both had cut and paste when the crippled copy-cat iphone came out it couldn't even do that. Centro played videos, had office apps for word/excel etc and could surf the net.... was only missing GPS and WIFI and other models of Palm had both of those (just too pricy for me at the time).
Apple got to market with a larger screen, and it had NOTHING to do with their innovation..
Shrewd business men maybe... the flat screen companies that actually made the screens had finally got down the process for making a small good screen like that for a reasonable price... and Apple went and bought up all their forseeable future inventory... good (maybe illegal) business move, but not patentable and certainly not creative...
You really need to re-examine what was out there before making such statements... just because YOUR iphone was the first phone you saw with those features doesn't make it true for the world.
If Judge made comments that showed and Opinion before the case was presented it sounds like Samsung has a very strong case for appeal and expectation to do much better next time.
Despite comments above, even though the Samsung team acted like amateurs and presented it poorly (or failed to in some cases) the truth is that Apple's patents were all shown pretty clearly to be based on or copying ideas and form factors from other previously existing technology.
Christ square app buttons... not only did the case coverage show that Samsung gave examples, (HP mobile devices for example) but my old Palm, and even Windows App Icons, already had this format for the last 20 years. Look at the Register of comment icons when comment here... looks too much like apple iph*Ck phone to Apple I am sure, but to anyone else with a brain its standard computing.... Hell, books, and other media have used similar pictures for thousands of years as well
Sham of a trail... stupid decision, and yes I dislike Apple even more now than before..... At least previously their despicable behavior was reserved for their willing customers who signed up and paid for the dishonor... now they are like a spoiled kid trying to ruin it for everyone else when they loose. F@#$ apple and the horse they rode in on....this whole case was a joke coming from a company that stole and copied so much to get their riches, and the own fearless leader even made the now famous comment about good companies "stealing" ideas
Bad Example... Col Sanders spent almost TWO years! that Two whole years living out of the back of his car trying to get restaurants to license his recipe in exchange for a share of the additional profits they would make. He really worked his ass off to start and run that corporation to the giant it was... After he sold the chain to investors he was maybe more like a figurehead, but at this point he was not in charge and no control over the company.... more of a mascot if anything. I agree with your original point, and love the Inigo quote to call it out, but bad choice of figurehead, Sanders was a very hardworking shrewd business man who cared very much about his employees and company and was VERY involved with the creation and running of the entire enterprise, from the original recipe to the menu items etc.
Um, no...
To own a copyright you have to have created it or bought the rights, this gives you ownership over this content. A trademark is different. A trademark is just a "mark" under which your are trading your goods. You have to register the mark and what the goods are to protect you from others selling goods under the same mark.
Apple owns that mark for computers, but there is Apple, reality, Apple education products etc that are different companies. Apple took there name from Apple records (another mark) and ran into trouble when the started selling music and not just computers.
There is Infinity Realty, but they have no relation the car company etc.
You can trademark something that is in public domain, but you have to specify what goods you are selling under that Mark. This is how company's like Banks Use Ben Franklin's name, or Baby Einstein uses old Albert's name.
Some one could easily open a car dealership under the name Google or IBM.
Maybe the U.S. was very different than U.K but the last lines of the Article, "by 84 all kids had a computer, and adults were looking to buy CD players" just did not ring true to me.
So yeah I got my Apple II+ in 84, but less than half my friends had ANY PC at this point.
And CD players? Sure the technology may have existed, but I got my first one 89.
And in 89, only 3-4 small shelves (like 10% or less of store) were actually CD-ROMs, most of the Store was Tapes and even still some records! My very first CD's (which were still back then $25 each or so) were Paula Abdul, The Shocker Soundtrack and few others... not because I even really wanted this music, it was just the lesser evil of the limited selection (Nirvana Bleech, Pumpkins Gish, or for that matter any Zeppelin, Who, Metallica, Etc was simply not available.
Maybe UK was very different, but I think it was at least 88 before anyone could find hardly ANY music on CD, let alone a good selection.
That's funny, you say "everything is vendor lock-in" and then mention Linux as a Vendor.... Linux is open source, as is Android, hence multiple vendors running similar/same software. I can buy an HTC and if I don't like it I can go to a Samsung, etc etc and still expect use the majority of the same apps and have an easy time transferring my data, contacts etc.
And he makes a valid point, this survey about people saying they are willing to buy the phone without having a set price or feature set yet, says more about the people than the phone.
funny and brilliant and sadly too true.... I'm afraid you've played you hand to quick though... You should have filed patents for this idea, incorporated a company called iLife (Apple does own i-x) and then sell the company to Apple for a cool 100 mil.... now they will just take the these ideas and use them... just watch.
None of these are worthy of a Darwin award.... you seem to not understand the meaning of the award.
You need to either die, or at least loose your ability to pro-create through a act of self stupidity.
The first one is at best an honorable mention, due to the stupidity of the act, but your article gives no reference to the shotgun idiot getting castrated, just injured.
The second story sounds like it would have been really cool to see, and was caused surely by stupidity, but your article doesn't even mention that the bloke was injured, let alone killed or castrated.
Your third and final example appears to be the only case where anyone dies, and the person being stupid (blame either the mother or the kid) were not the ones killed. The one killed was a completely innocent 8 year old girl who happened to be a bystander.
An somewhat interesting area with several stupid people? Sure, but a AOONS site... don't see the evidence here.
You really should look more to Florida where there are face eaters, and Darwin award winners galore.
While I would agree, double tap is the rule for normal bullets and weapons.
However, as the previous poster pointed out, a 12 gauge sized slug will leave NO head left to speak off....
No need to double tap... a headless zombie is a dead zombie.
As Shotgun slugs are extremely large and heavy, if you go wasting your ammo shooting a second empty bullet into the space where they head used to be, you will much quicker run out of ammo, and that much quicker join the zombie horde. Waste your ammo if you want to, but If you do it right the first time no need to double-tap.
Looks like they have a design that would allow you to remove a single rack server.
You would need a rack like a dish rack to catch all the dripping oil, and would certainly take some time to clean up your hands afterwards too.
Not a very efficient way to replace parts like HD that need frequent maintenance in a high capacity data center.
Also worried about leaks in the "capsule" that protects the HD.
Agreed this idea has been around for many decades, military and industrial use of oils, flouronert etc are common and old.
You miss the power calculations though, they didn't just remove the fans on the PC, they can also remove or severely downsize the HVAC/CRAC cooling units for the Data Center room, and the result of that is the ability to reduce the sizing on the UPS units. Both of these factors result in a large amount of savings, there are much better ways than the proposed to solve this....but I can't give away all my good ideas for free... :-)
They have several problems with their demo:
Mineral oil doesn't remove heat, it absorbs it (to a point) and then releases it into the room its housed in. This works great for home PC's that you heat up all evening playing games, and then cool down overnight, but would be terrible for a non-stop international supporting data center. They are glossing over that their demo is in a giant super AC cooled exhibit room.
Mineral oils also tend to work the stickers off of the MB, cards etc. Easy enough to remove these by hand for 20 servers for a demo, but not a realistic practice for 20,000 servers in a data center.
Also their Data Center would have to be a like a clean room, the open top would attract dust, hair etc and would become murky and dirty, and that could clog any pumps fans etc that are used to circulate the mineral oil over the hotter parts of the PC (PSU and CPU)
Liquids are like 3000 times more effective at cooling than air though.
I've seen working models, and proposals for liquid metals for cooling (not direct contact of course) alcohol (yikes) and many other industrial chemicals including and similar to flouronert.
Still good on them for trying and making people think
If you can use these enzymes to turn off and on an arbitrary bit, then (with further research and understanding of course) it is very logical to think we could identify the DNA code that makes us age (this happens by design to make way for new improved DNA generations) and use the same enzymes to turn the DNA code off for the aging process, or for a type of cancerous cell etc.
this a proof of concept for read/write to DNA the real use will come down the road when we are read writing things we want to change in our DNA (like changing genetic diseases etc)
This may be a newsfeed (press release) article, but I disagree with your comment:
Relevant news is several companies (including EMC, Intel, Seagate, VMware etc) have donated materials to this project.
Other relevant news is that results will be available to open source communities.
Both of these are significant developments and of great interest to those of us interested in Hadoop or even just large scale data processing.
Remains to be proven, but the article states that "IPAD" was not going to compete with Proview.
As Proview makes Screens and of course the posibilty of touch screen devices, it would be clear misrepresentation on Apples part (big surprise there). The Judge didn't rule on this aspect, he mere pointed that the the plaintiff (Proview) was the one that requested the court venue of Chine, so the case should be decided there.
Of course I think Apple is the looser as China is more corrupt than Apple, and will be more likely to have a favorable ruling for a Chinese company rather than a Irish/Dutch* one.
*Yes Apple is NOT an American company, they pay what little taxes they do to Irish and Dutch governments. As a non-American company they really should be forced to pay a duty on the slave labor they use to produce their products, that honest American companies, paying livable wages can't really compete fairly with.
Just because these companies spend less on security after moving to the cloud in no way imply, prove or show factual data that they are indeed more secure.
I would propose quite the opposite even. They have relinquished control and actual knowledge of this security completely to an outside organization, and have no way of knowing their security level once this has been done.
All this study shows is that people who move to the cloud feel comfortable that security is now a problem for someone else to handle, which to me seems a bit myopic and naive. This isn't really news, as they were already a willing customer of moving to the cloud. One would expect that expenditure for other IT costs will also be reduced as well (data storage, etc)
An interesting Development, but not sure of significance. How many games run on OpenGL now?
Until its a significant portion of the game market, DirectX will continue to dominate and help keep MS in the OS monopoly business.
Great move in the right direction, but gamers need to keep at and step up efforts to not only reward games build on OpenGL by buying them, but also actively reaching out to gaming developers and expressing their desire to see cross platform capable games that run on OpenGL. Surprised that Apple doesn't have their wicked little fingers in pushing this along, as they would benefit from more games available to MAC if more games were based on OpenGL instead of DirectX
Not just technology either
Swing, Jazz, Rock, Rap all various forms of devil music to different generations.
The internet in general for over a decade now is constantly predicted as the end of social interaction between humans....
And regarding the above's post about addicts...
Heroine, alcohol, cigarettes and similar drugs have a definitive affect on the body... if you have been addicted to even cigarettes you understand this. Everything else, Music, games, gambling, internet, facebook etc. are NOT addictive. They may be fun, they may inspire addictive natures in people, but they don't chemically affect your body like an addiction does. Someone who has problems with facebook now, had problems with TV back then and will have problems with the next fun cheap entertainment also.. its the person not having the sense to set reasonable self control on themselves, not addiction that causes this. The moniker of addiction seems to give excuse to this behavior as if they just can't control themselves, when the truth is they just choose not to. Its high time everyone stop promoting this lie and hold people to more self control and responsibility. You wanna see addiction, go to a restroom in a bad part of the city and see people performing sex acts for $10 just to get a drug fix....That's addiction. Spent 10 hours on Facebook or video game yesterday.... that's you being a poor human being and a lazy ass.
You may not bother, but your competition will.
7-10million already sold...5.5 million last quarter - and that just the 1st round in 2011 of Kindle Fires.
If your too lazy, someone else wont be.
Sure Amazon can discount, but they loose money from their 30% as well, and they have to fund and pay for the actual marketplace from their cut. Also do you $5.00 time 10,000 or $0.50 times 5 million? If you are a good developer having Amazon feature your app as a promotion at discounted prices should give you a change to gain new market share.... you can always charge full price for the next version to much larger base...if your app is worth the money.
Not saying that I think its the best model, but its not a completely unreasonable one, and though I may not be buying a fire anytime soon, I know people that have and love them, and if I were a developer I would certainly be including them in plans as they will represent a significant portion of the app market in the foreseeable future.
funny you use that analogy.... receivers from the 50's and 60's with their analogue dials, tend to pick up signals far better than their modern digital counterparts. Vacuum tubes also seem to reproduce the sound MUCH better than digital circuits that approximate the wave.
also Lightsquared is different from other LTE and ground operators due to the adjacent proximity (similar signals) to the GPS signal, the further away on the spectrum, the less similar they are, and less likely to cause interference. It why your microwave doesn't usually cause your FM radio to get signal distortion, but can really screw up a 2.4 ghz wireless phone.
with their profit margins and the billions they have made in the U.S. the only ethical thing to do would to bring these jobs back to the U.S.
If they don't they are traitors of the worse kind, and making the enemies of the U.S. strong, and making their own homeland weak. They will regret this when 50 years from now their grandchildren are working for Chinese overlords, under similar conditions.
missed the 2.5" part, first reply was mainly regarding the normal sized 3.5" IDE/SATA drives
But the answer is some what the same.. yes I have.
Granted the 2.5" drives tend to be in more portable, banged around devices like laptops, so its no surprise they fail more often, but that said I have owned, and seen several laptops drives last from 3-5 years. Its alot to do with how they are treated. Still have a 10GB drive in a old 200mhz CPU Toshiba laptop that still boots and runs fine (think its a quantum, but not sure).
have two WD laptops drives that are pushing 2-3 years now, and an older one that was a cast-off from work (320GB WD) that is pushing 5 years.
I would expect due to tech improvements, that drives should start hitting 5-10TB withing the next year or so. Remember some tech discoveries yield more than others... its possible Mechanical drives could make a major leap and hit 50-100TB within a year or two.
There is no way SSD's will be able to keep pace.
There are now two distinctly viable medium, one for performance, one for storage. SSD's will continue to be used for System, apps and games, while Mechanical disks are used for volume storage.
I could maybe see HD taking over for Tape, but really that still has its place in locations that require massive amounts of data to be backed up daily.
Both drive types will be around for a long time to come.
Only when flash chip technology starts putting out chips that have comparable capacity to current model mechanical drives, can you even start to speculate on their demise. And even then it will only happen if said chips are produced at a price that is equal or cheaper.
My two oldest drive still in my system are 2x 120GB drives from Western Digital. I have them in a stripped array (I know ..how daring of me) so I get a 240GB drive that runs almost double performance. After about three years of "living on the edge" so to speak, I went ahead and got another 2 Western Digital drives. At first I was going to mirror these, and use them to make a real reliable back-up of the stripped 240GB drive, but when they actually arrived, my hands seemed to have a mind of their own, and insisted in setting up another stripped array, this time a nice 500GB drive, (again with double the performance speed). I duplicated all my important files from the old stripe to the new stripe, and still have yet to have any problems. I'm about to upgrade my whole system, but mainly for graphics, as this creaky old beast still sports only and AGP port for graphics, and I have already dropped a 3850 in, which is about all the AGP port can take. I'll either migrate these drives to other systems, or re-use them as extra OS test drives in the new system.
To answer in short, yes a pair of stripped WD 120GB are running for WELL OVER 5 YEARS now, with no issues whatso-ever, and the second pair is running for over 3 years now, also with no issues.
And yes in case you are wondering, I use the shit out of them. I have wiped and filled the entire drive on many occasions, have used them to host files for games (meaning lots of read and writes, for about 2 years the oldest pair also hosted my OS swap file. So they have gotten a lot usage. I used to turn on/off my system daily, so they got over 1000 power cycles easily, but for the last year or so I tend to just leave the system running., so they have also managed to stay on for a long time too.
I also have a few Quantum 10GB, WD 40GB and Seagate 80GB drives, (all of which seem to be the size of each manufacturers prime days) and all are still running. I have used them off and on to set up many temp systems for testing, or just as large transfer disks to migrate 10's of GB of data). The 40GB drive even spent a few years as a DVR disk so it really got written/wiped a lot of times.
All of them are pushing 10 years and all run just great.
Sure I've had a few failures, but for the most part they have been VERY reliable drives, though I tend to buy the more reliable (enterprise/RE/Black) level of Western Digital drives too.
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