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One point where Open Street Map shines is that it has actual roads and trails in such places as National Parks and forests...where the commercial maps have nothing but blank green areas.

Yep. For example, here is a place in the Alps in openstreetmap, and here is the same place in google maps, and here is the same thing in routes.tomtom.com. Only openstreetmap shows the hiking trail (as well as peaks with their elevations, and mountain huts). This is a really good thing for hikers, runners and mountain bikers.

You can also get topo maps based on OSM data from toposm.com, although this still seems pretty primitive and they only cover the US. Google's maps with contour shading are OK, but they don't let you print them through their web interface (although you can always print a screenshot), and they don't show contour lines.

What isn't so great about OSM is that driving directions from yournavigation.org are not usable at all. Also, the search functionality is (not surprisingly) inferior to the one in google maps -- if you don't put in exactly the right form of the name, it doesn't work.

I live in a city with over 15 million people that looks like this:

http://wpjrnl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wpid1574-Buenos-Aires-aerial-view-at-night.jpg
http://www.congresstour.cl/destinos/ciudades/910-avenida-9-de-julio,-buenos-aires,-argentina.jpg

But our barbecues still look like this:

http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/3043946.jpg
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/28/fc/83/asado-tipico-argentino.jpg
http://fotos-imagenes-gratuitas.com/carne-asada-asado-fotos/images/02.jpg

You don't need higher tech. Cut the meat properly (The cuts used in the US just plain suck), make a nice fire using actual wood, preferably quebracho (very hard wood) and light it the traditional way (using no flammable fluids or other fire starters). Let it consume, and when it's mostly ashes, cook it slowly for several hours. Serve hot with nothing but salt.

You won't ever eat something more delicious.

and I know damn well if the top 10% pay 70% of the tax burdon (true) than the distribution of weath is not going in their favor

Without comparing how much wealth the top 10% have it is meaningless to suggest that because they pay 70% of the taxes that the distribution of wealth is not in their favor. Estimates I've seen show the top 10% having around 3/4 of the wealth so they pay 70% of the taxes and have 75% of the wealth. Or the bottom 90% have 25% of the wealth and pay 30% of the taxes.

I think you are wrong and here is why: X86 has gotten so insanely powerful that it simply can't be replaced by ARM for a lot of jobs and with its 10 years of support per version any user that doesn't like a release can just skip it. Hell i didn't even get XP until someone traded in a box that made a good nettop with it in 2008, because I simply went from Win2K pro to XP X64 (which is just Server 2K3 Workstation with an XP skin) and so was able to skip it. same with Vista, while I had a machine test bed Vista i didn't care for it so I likewise skipped it completely and went XP X64 to Win 7 X64.

The other reason I think you're wrong is twofold, one it is frankly easier for businesses to write to Windows because Linux is a fractured mess, even the main version like Ubuntu change enough guts that what worked last year may not work this year, and that MSFT has such economies of scale on Windows they could sell Home for $50 and pro for $100 (which they did for nearly a year for Win 7 to build momentum) and frankly still make assloads of cash.

Finally there is the fact that as long as Linus has a pulse drivers will suck in Linux. look at how FF first had to disable GPU acceleration before finally giving up altogether because the video stack sucks ass, with things such as video buffers which have been around for ages on Windows (1997 I do believe) simply not working correctly in Linux. Linus can poo poo on it all he wants but without a stable ABI to write drivers to you have guaranteed that Linux drivers will always be poor, simply because the math doesn't work. for an excellent take on why the devs simply will never keep up you might enjoy this article written by not some blogger but Ingo Molnar who is one of the big devs at Red hat. he points out there is simply no damned way in hell to QA hundreds of millions of lines of code and tens of thousands of packages which is why so much shit breaks all the time, it is simply impossible to dedicate enough man hours to testing without making development slow to a crawl.

As I see it there is simply no compelling reason for linux on the desktop and that simply isn't gonna change. there is no Linux only killer apps for the masses, but a hell of a lot that doesn't run that the masses want, the OEMs get Windows cheap enough that in the case of home the crapware they install probably pays for Windows and with such a long support cycle anybody who doesn't like version 8 can simply stay on 7 and wait for 9 which is what I believe the majority will do. With the switch to the new driver model and making user software run as user instead of admin MSFT fixed the biggest flaw in windows so frankly other than GUI changes there really isn't much that needs changing, most users are happy with win 7 so no glaring failures there, and with such wide hardware support and drivers that can literally be used for a decade without rewrite there is no reason for most of the OEMs to waste money on Linux drivers. There really is no selling point other than cost for Linux on the desktop and most would rather pay the cost upfront than pay an IT guy to keep Linux running. Its just not a good value on the desktop, no matter how you slice it friend, take it from me as a retailer, I've tried every consumer friendly version and they all don't work worth a crap.

If the military publishes it, let 'em try and sue. How do you sue the Pentagon?

Ask them

quality.

If you want, we can segue into an argument over the article, too. However, from my cursory perusal of it, I get the impression that it largely reflects Lowery's self-image; it starts with several slides solely about himself, rather than the topic --- in order to set himself up as an "authority". He throws around all kinds of anecdotal numbers and talks about "14 academic papers", but doesn't give us any references or actual access to his data or data collection protocol, so we cannot actually judge to what degree his adamant backing of his argument is due to confirmation bias rather than him actually being correct. Because of his Techdirt run-in, he feebly tries to discredit Masnick's report on the music industry:

Totally misleading fake studies. Like the Computer and Communications Industry Association’s ”The Sky is Rising” Report. First off this was passed around as independent research when it was actually industry lobby generated propaganda. Among the most outrageous obfuscations and bizarre metrics: Including gaming revenue to help disguise recorded music revenue decline, Not mentioning the drop in live music revenues in North America, and creating the bizarre metric of “number of recorded music transactions” instead of using recorded music revenues. Recorded music transactions are up because people buy individual tracks now instead of 1 album of 10 songs. Get it?

When he dismisses Masnick's report, his main argument in doing so is because it is sponsored by a particular group (it's rather typical that people who argue from authority use ad-hominem attacks to discredit other points of view). He continually calls it various names, like "fake", "propaganda". His actual attacks target a few specific points without quoting the paper itself, and are largely specious (if you want, we can address them in further discussion). In comparison, the paper's intro to the music industry section starts with this paragraph:

Defining the music industry is tricky -- it can be defined in several different ways and each method can leave out significant segments of the market. For instance, various music organizations and government statistics don't count (or vastly under-count) contributors to the music industry, such as self-employed artists who might work part-time or musicians working for non-profit entities like schools, churches or other cultural venues. There are also several independent music distributors that aren't counted in mainstream music industry statistics. Ultimately, music is a pervasive part of life, and the music industry is not a centralized, monolithic business. The music industry is made up of several music industries -- ranging from the major labels to piano teachers. If the book industry looked almost too vast to account for, then the music industry could seem even more daunting.

Personally, I find that so refreshing compared to Lowery: "reality is complex and hard to understand" vs. "I'm an expert and you can rely on my understanding of the music business".

Within the context of Lowery's emphasis of his own expertise, the Techdirt post is actually cogent. He complains that "he gets the digital world" while at the same time he laughably threatens "i mean if i wanted to fucking sue you i could?" --- even more pathetically, he's threatening to sue Mike Masnick, coiner of the term "Streisand effect". Riiiight.

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2857487&cid=40128305

* Yes folks - it's TRULY that simple to dispatch off-topic illogical failing ad hominem attack utilizing trolls...

APK

P.S.=> Especially ones that obviously have SOME sort of "issues" that stalk/harass others online with quotes like these:

"but ... but ... Peter, I truly do love you ! like any man on earth would instantly fall in love with you. you're so great. why do you reject me like that ?" - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27, @11:30AM (#40128537)

Whew... Man, YOU'RE "StRaNgE", no questions asked.

(Seriously: I don't need your stalking & that's breaking laws too on your part... you are indeed, "troubled" to say the least).

Now, lastly, as far as my being "great"? Hey - thanks, IF YOU SAY SO, for once you MAY be correct (quite a change for you, eh? LOL!)

Makes me feel like Duke Nukem & his NEW BOOK (lol) "Why I'm SO great" -> http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22Duke+Nukem+Why+I'm+so+great%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1&sei=SE7CT4CiL_G36QHW9qmvCg

You must know my sister! She went on for 45 minutes about what she did and did not want, but then said it just *had* to be available in pink! I was thinking of getting her a cheapo Toshiba and can of spray paint.

There are a LOT of pink covers for MacBook Pros, actually. (No gay jokes, please).

There. Problem solved. And she still gets to have a great laptop. You can even turn the keyboard pink (yeccch!)...

Browser and Add-on

Or you can start from scratch, and write new specs for the system and build a system with new kick ass functionality, then you end up spending millions getting the stakeholders together to write the specs, then millions more actually writing the new kick ass software, and decade later, it's been deployed with all of the major bugs worked out (or worked around). Except that whatever kick ass software you chose to write it in is no longer kick ass, so you need to start over again with something more kick ass.

This is what the US government has been doing since the 90's. Except the deployment part. And several of the failed projects are in the hundreds of millions per failure.

Have these guys had a successful large scale federal software project yet? They appear to be the "something more kick ass" failure phase.

Posted by an active 60 year old IBM midrange RPG programmer (AS/400, iseries, IBM i, etc.) in response to the dude that thinks 60 year old IBM programmers are an hallucination.

My RPG open source site:
http://code.google.com/p/rdwrites/downloads/list

"There is no reason to believe, as the research is scant at best, that Google even respects a robots.txt file.

From the preceeding link: "Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Webmaster Tools.

"There is no reason to believe, as the research is scant at best, that Google even respects a robots.txt file.

From the preceeding link: "Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://code.google.com/web/controlcrawlindex/docs/faq.html to learn how to instruct robots when they visit your site. You can test your robots.txt file to make sure you're using it correctly with the robots.txt analysis tool available in Google Webmaster Tools.

Looking voer your links, link one comes from a report by 'Coalition for GM-Free India,' which I suppose I'd have to look over, but given that those claims contradict data and those organizations with GMO Free in the title rarely have a reputation of honesty (which I know is a poor argument but giving their report a quick look over doesn't really blow me away), it isn't high on my to do list. Link two is about resistance, and that has more to do with cultivation issues, in not unique to any strain of resistant plant, GE or not, so to call it a failure is not very nuanced or accurate. Third links is the same source as the first, and the fourth mentions that there has been a downward trend from earlier years, and even mentions Bt cotton as a reason.

Huber's work was never published. He made some pretty extraordinary claims, then never published his data, so if you are calling that important research, well, that isn't good. I can't really comment on it besides pointing out some of the absurdity and inaccuracy of his claims because there is nothing but claims, no fact, to talk about. You can not disprove him because he has nothing solid to disprove. The CSMonitor link isn't too hot either, failing to consider a number of important details. The Séralini study in the next link has been widely criticized for shoddy methodology and unsupported conclusions, including by the EFSA, FSANA, and the French HCB. Citing him does not advance your position among those who closely follow this topic, nor does citing Huber.

As for the next two links, it would not hesitate to believe them. I do not mean to imply that Monsanto does no wrong, especially with some of the chemicals they have produced in the past. The EPA link looks like they made made a mistake (since companies don't normally not brand their premium products). The bribery link is bad, although hardly unique for a company, and usually is unfortunately required to do business in certain places (not that this excuses it, just that you are talking about big business, not solely Monsanto). As for the last link, biopiracy is a stupid crime designed to get money from companies, and IIRC (it would be akin to me saying that because I live in an area where mayapple naturally grows that I deserve a cut from the profits of a company using the podophyllotoxin in mayappe to produce cancer drugs), Monsanto filed the proper paperwork, and someone else made the mistake elsewhere. Not really damning. The link in you second post looks like a mix of fact, science by jury (and a French one at that), and hot air (and naturally doesn't mention them doing things like compensating farmers in South Africa for their wrongly hybridized corn seed).

So, I stand by what I said. Most of the things out there about Monsanto are baseless. If they are so bad, base the accusations on fact. Also, since you bring up biodiversity, GE is a way of improving plants, biodiversity is what you grow. Two different things, and while you could accuse companies of reducing biodiversity, that is what agri

Ever since Tienanmen Square, I've wanted to avoid buying anything Chinese.

If you think the PRC's government was evil in its handling of the Tienanmen Square affair, then check out
the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
It involves deaths by the dozens of millions. It includes Marxist ideologues brainwashing children into spying
in their own homes and reporting their parents to the authorities for not being Marxist enough.
And while people focus on China's current growth, they forget the decades of economic disaster (including
catastrophic famines) that followed the Marxist Coup d'état in 1949. They also forget that Taiwan has 7 times the
GDP percapita of the PRC. If the Coup d'etat had never happened, the Chinese people would be today enormously
better, both in material terms but most importantly in human rights terms.

And the evil continues.

The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as
tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated
that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed
43 people in 2011).
See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q [google.com]
It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government,
and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into
vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children
a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History,
such as North Korea.

PRC is not Pinochet-style of evil. It is Pol Pot-style of evil.

What angers me the most? Left-wing psychopaths praising China
for "lifting people from poverty", and capitalist morons (useful idiots)
praising China for attracting investment.

IMAO the worst problem is funding a totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.

The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as
tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated
that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed
43 people in 2011).
See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q
It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government,
and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into
vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children
a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History,
such as North Korea.

The PRC is, by far, the most evil government among big countries.

Here's Van Jacobson's Tech Talk at Google in 2006: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 I didn't know much about Van Jacobson's work on networking before that, I found it quite informative, thought I'd post it here.

So, I'd say you are probably a Linux administrator, and not a windows one. Windows also have logging facilities, and a pretty complete statistics monitor to help you diagnose/troubleshoot problems (and probably can gather metrics with far more detail than you would on a Linux system). That said, there are some issues an lot of badly designed software out there. But unfortunely (sic), that's not Windows-specific.

I'm a Windows administrator. Card-carrying Microsoft-Certified Geek Extraordinaire, as a matter of fact. For several years, I was the Network/Systems Admin for every other municipality from New Orleans to San Antonio. I also administer some Linux Systems.

Unfortunately, rev0lt, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. Linux logging facilities give you specific, text-based error messages indicating what the problem is and when/where it occurred without needing to look up some esoteric (and numeric) error code on Microsoft's web site to even guess what the problem might be related to. To restate that concept: Linux error messages tend to be something intelligible without requiring internet access; Microsoft error "messages" tend to be strings of numbers that mean absolutely nothing without digging through support websites.

As an aside, I have never had a Linux system give me an error that included the text "The operation completed successfully". I'll leave that google search for you to laugh at.

And what about scientists who say it is harmful

Depends on whether they actually publish their results in a peer reviewed journal or not. I looked for that study in NIH and darnedest thing, couldn't find it. As far as I know, the Ermakova study was never actually published in a peer reviewed journal. If you want to case doubt on the safety of GE crops, you're going to have to do better than that. even Andrew Wakefield managed to get his study in NIH. And for that one study, here's a couple hundred more to look over. Fact is, GE crops have been extensively tested, and there is no convincing evidence whatsoever to suggest that currently used GE crops are harmful to human health.

why isn't there a google alternative that is worth a damn, that isn't in the US, isn't hosted in the US and doesn't use a US-controlled TLD, and thus, not subject to this DMCA bullshit?

The Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. is 15 trillion dollars and the Population of the U.S. is 312 million.

Only the EU as a whole produces wealth on anything like this scale.

The geek may fret and fume and claim otherwise.

But, realistically, your people and operations based in the states will be quite safe from mob violence, religious persecution, political and economic upheavels of every sort.

The search provider is, of course, only a half step away from becoming a content provider, with its own IP and revenue streams to protect.

why isn't there a google alternative that is worth a damn, that isn't in the US, isn't hosted in the US and doesn't use a US-controlled TLD, and thus, not subject to this DMCA bullshit?

The Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. is 15 trillion dollars and the Population of the U.S. is 312 million.

Only the EU as a whole produces wealth on anything like this scale.

The geek may fret and fume and claim otherwise.

But, realistically, your people and operations based in the states will be quite safe from mob violence, religious persecution, political and economic upheavels of every sort.

The search provider is, of course, only a half step away from becoming a content provider, with its own IP and revenue streams to protect.

"Or, put another way, turning a lump of steel into a car only costs time and effort, so why should the auto worker be compensated beyond the cost of the steel that went into it, right?"

As an iron mine worker and part-time smelter, I demand proper compensation for the effort that it took to mine and process the iron ore into steel. What's that? There's "no shortage of iron" in the world, it being the fourth most abundant element in the crust of the Earth, and the supply therefore being "almost infinite"? Also, you want to pay "nothing" because with modern technology it costs mere pennies (hypothetically) to ship the steel once it it made? Go ahead: open your own iron mine and steel smelter (with blackjack, and hookers).

You are right. Restricting compensation to the cost of copying alone is missing the point. How do you get it in a form that is so easy to copy in the first place? That's the hard part, and that's what copyright tries to provide the incentive to do. While the balance between copyright and users has been tilted horribly in recent decades, that doesn't mean the principle is bad. It is useful and it can be fixed.

Putting it another way:

No compensation other than the cost of moving the bits around that represent the copying of the photo? Fine. Then either take your own damn picture of Houston or find someone who will give you one for free. You don't have to use that one, and photos of Houston aren't scarce. The original poster was right that scarcity matters to the equation, but the constraint isn't number of copies or cost of copying, it is the number of people who have taken the time to put something into copyable form and on the Internet, and how difficult that is to achieve (if you want a good photo of Houston it's harder than a crappy one, and skill is scarce). The cost of copying is almost irrelevant now because most of the effort happens before the copying starts. When creators do make the effort it isn't unreasonable for them to set terms like "Free, but attribution required" or "No commercial use without permission", and then dispute other people's use of the work if they don't respect those terms.

Unfair? Then make your own stuff if it is so easy. Competition is healthy.

I think Houston's best marketing attorny [sic]...

She's not even Houston's best marketing attorney. She's in marketing FOR attorneys. And it doesn't even look like real marketing, more internet "marketing" such as web design, SEO, social media, etc. You'd think that Houston's best attorney marketing would at least be on the first page of google results for "Houston attorney marketing".

I'm not, it's one of the things I like about Android, sorry that could have been clearer. On the Android I'm using PortForward with AndroidVNC for VNC over an SSH tunnel.

I'm not, it's one of the things I like about Android, sorry that could have been clearer. On the Android I'm using PortForward with AndroidVNC for VNC over an SSH tunnel.

How do I find out who uses my pictureson the internet?

http://images.google.com/ of course

We use the command-line implementation http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwsafe integrated revision control. It has a 2-way merge feature, which makes it mostly usable with revision control, even though it's a little more tedious than necessary, since you have to manually accept or reject individual changes. For a while I've wanted to implement 3-way merge so that most merges can be automatic but I will probably never get around to doing so.

The downside of the CLI pwsafe is that it supports only v2 PasswordSafe databases which fortunately works with most other interfaces but lacks some features. The other downside (especially in comparison with a GPG-encrypted file) is the lack of an agent, which regrettably means that very often terminal access is done by 'pwsafe --exportdb | less'.

There is also at least one Android app that can read the database file format: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jefftharris.passwdsafe

This is the best solution that I've found.

It IS odd, but my roommate came up with a VERY GOOD "equitable solution", stalling the service that powers the scheduled & realtime scans that MS Security Essentials does. We know this because the screensaver I wrote for him no longer "lags" as I noted!

AND

Now, he just does manual scans instead once a week. Yes, this is a "Trade Off" for safety in 'realtime' (using the term loosely) scans of files, especially executables that are accessed, but it took out the lag AND the 90-100% CPU usage that the MS Security Essentials service was without question consuming.

Disk I/O being the worst part of it imo, because his disks are from an OLD laptop (thus, probably 4,500-5,400 rpm disks & not much "buffer" either & certainly NO 'caching controller' w/ own processor onboard to offload the system CPU like I use (Promise Ex8350 128mb ECC Ram + Intel "RISC processor" onboard itself)) & not a "super-powered CPU", in an Intel Celeron @ 1.6ghz speed + SINGLE CORE...

I would actually guess, and MORE than guess (hypothesis), that this is what PROBABLY made the program "defy" it's own methods/facilities in its options to DOWN the max CPU possible it can or could, demand... but, that doesn't stop the things it calls on (disk & filesystem drivers!

Yes - they'll "step up" too if 'burst read/write' is demanded) from "punching up" their priority possibly in combination with CPU usage to do the scan, even more. For example, I've SEEN that same behavior in multicampus remote DB engine's I've written over time (30++ enterprise class systems so far since 1994) where the middleware would act FINE on a "normal LAN/WAN" setup part of it (local network clients) but "go nuts" CPU-wise thru remote Citrix/Terminal Server clients (really a single SHARED session/desktop only for multiple remote clients, which is often used to save money on leasing bigger/fatter pipes etc.). The middleware drivers for the DB turned up the issue since it was a single session shared by MANY remote campus users many miles away from "homebase" (which NEVER had a problem but, didn't run via Citrix/TS either). The fix? A Sleep API call in loops for populating the return recordsets did the trick, taking it DOWN from 100% usage of CPU & flooring ALL remote clients, down to only 4% max... it worked.

Was ALL timeslicing needed & HOW (because in VB6, DoEvents, which IS based off the Sleep API call wasn't doing it oddly... using the API Sleep, directly in loops? Did!). I/O oriented drivers & middlewares CAN thus, cause that... & the results here seem to mirror it.

Yes, just theory, but... one I can based on actual experience coding multithreaded code since 1995 onwards, & single threaded code for a GOOD decade++ before it.

Multithreaded code CAN & DOES actually have overheads that make it run SLOWER on single cpu/single core systems, just a "fact of life"... & per all of the above, and the results?

I would actually "go with that" were I to make a suggestion to MS on this - that being to put in CPU/core detection in code, and IF A SINGLE CPU/CORE SETUP? Do exception branching around ANY "CreateThread" API calls & NOT TO DO THEM on a single cpu/core setup... especially one that "sub 2ghz speed" etc./et al.

APK

P.S.=> I ran other scanners (antivirus in Clam, Comodo, AntiVir trials only + Spybot Search & Destroy along with AdAware - & I also secured his system on "DAY #1" using this -> http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000/XP%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1&sei=_6a_T8z0NsTM6QGkiujMCg & yes, it actually works (part tweaking, part end-user education)) on his rig!

Nothing showing bad, thusfar @ least, PLUS the "CPU usage problem's solved" (but tradeoff) & really shouldn't EVER per t

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+7+filetype%3Atorrent

Never mind found it in the FAQ: they removed 97% of search results specified in requests received between July and December 2011. The cases they talk about declining to remove are a laugh.

In case anybody is interested, I found the FAQ here.

Here are a few examples of requests that have been submitted through our copyright removals process that were clearly invalid copyright removal requests.

        A major U.S. motion picture studio requested removal of the IMDb page for a movie released by the studio, as well as the official trailer posted on a major authorized online media service.
        A U.S. reporting organization working on behalf of a major movie studio requested removal of a movie review on a major newspaper website twice.
        A driving school in the U.K. requested the removal of a competitor's homepage from Search, on the grounds that the competitor had copied an alphabetized list of cities and regions where instruction was offered.
        A content protection organization for motion picture, record and sports programming companies requested the removal of search results that link to copyright removal requests submitted by one of their clients and other URLs that did not host infringing content.
        An individual in the U.S. requested the removal of search results that link to court proceedings referencing her first and last name on the ground that her name was copyrightable.
        Multiple individuals in the U.S. requested the removal of search results that link to blog posts and web forums that associated their names with certain allegations, locations, dates or negative comments.
        A company in the U.S. requested the removal of search results that link to an employee's blog posts about unjust and unfair treatment.

We did not comply with any of these requests.

Hey! On a related note now there is a list of all file sharing domains in one place: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=all-time - neatly organized.

That's ... somewhat disturbing, but not all that surprising.

I did see a result that caught my attention as a "how the fuck have they not secured their site?!?", and did a bit more digging:

This document is confidential site:corp.bankofamerica.com

They need to make a +1 awesome mod for your post. What design did you use for the amp? I've been considering building one myself, and keep looking at replicating a Trainwreck, the costs of the transformers are quite prohibitive though. I have quite a few old valve amps spare, but they never seem to have enough current on the HT

Sorry, just noticed your reply.

Wow, thanks for the kind words!

Unless you plan on gigging in some fairly large venues, a Trainwreck clone may be a bit much power/volume-wise. Those things are *loud*! I know from personal experience. And, they don't really get into their "sweet-spot" until you get some serious volume going. A basement/garage/bedroom amp it is not. I don't even know of a club in my area where I could really play one.

Now, the Phat-Ass is much more bar/club and even home-jammer friendly, depending on which power tubes you stick in it.

The design is a custom design based partially off of a combination of a Matchless Spitfire/Lite-IIb preamp utilizing both triodes of the 12AX7 preamp tube in parallel, rather than the more common cascaded triode gain stages found in most guitar preamp designs, with a custom power supply and custom power amp sections based on the Weber Speakers "Smokin' Joe II" 18 watt EL84-based amplifier and the legendary Marshall 1974 18W amp.

As a matter of fact, the majority of parts for the build can be sourced through Weber.

Here's a rough BOM (Bill Of Materials): https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AvaJlN_t-xVwdDR1T05nN2UwcGNDd1EtY1o4MmVSNGc&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Here's a chassis layout: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16_layoutfromsjII.jpg

And a schematic: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Tech/PhatAss16rev3.jpg

One of the Weber Kit Builders Forum members, ScottVA, did most of the development and prototyping of this design, with some help and suggestions from me via the Weber forum, I'm quite proud to say.

Most people buy the basics of a Weber "Smokin' Joe II" amplifier kit, with some items of the SJ-II BOM either dropped or substituted as shown in the above PA16/PA26 BOM link. For instance, instead of the stock Chinese electrolytic power supply filter caps, I used much higher quality German F&T brand electrolytic caps, and instead of the stock generic Chinese coupling caps, I substituted them for Mallory 150 series caps.

Weber is extremely flexible in this regard, and will let you substitute or drop/add just about anything in their amp kits. You don't have to buy stuff you don't need or don't want. The big advantage is the savings in getting almost everything needed from one source and with one shipping charge.

You could probably buy 90%-plus of the entire PA16/PA26 BOM for the prices I've seen just for one of the Trainwreck transformer sets from some boutique suppliers. It's ridiculous. The Weber iron works fine, costs a fraction of those "boutique" transformers, and sounds fantastic.

The same Weber iron set also works great for all the common power tube choices for this design...6V6, 6L6, EL34/6CA7, and KT66. Just change the power tube cathode resistor value (or add a switch to change between values) to use a different power tube set.

Whatever you do, please, *PLEASE* learn and observe electrical safety rules and procedures. Even a small tube amp can kill you easily or cripple you for life.

You can start here: http://www.weberorders.com/forum/index.php?topic=944.0

(I'm the first poster)

There's

Try one of these...

Telecrapper 2000

When you get bored, listen to your victims discovering what they have been pitching to...

A negative story about politician doesn't provide political affiliation of said politician?
It's time to play the classic game of: Name that Party.

And I agree, abstract processes - a subset of "processes" - are not patentable.

...patents on pure software (which, I may add, don't exist)...

The patent for the Hilbert-Huang transform is a patent on a mathematical procedure; note that the patent is considered applicable to use on a general computing device. This example makes it a bit more obvious to non-programmers that it is indeed math (as is all software, but that's not apparent to most people) and patented.

A patent on a computer running an algorithm explicitly does not cover performing the algorithm in your head, on a pad of paper, inherently when you do some other function, etc. It is quite distinguishable.

I contend that this distinction is artificial. An algorithm running on a generic computer does not transform a physical substance or object any more than running it in your head does. The general computer on which some algorithm is run may have hardware outputs which actuate various industrial controls, but that is a different matter, and part of a separate (perhaps patentable) process.

Don't even get me started on "business process" patents...

- T

Google is actually good about publishing this data (much more than any other company I know of online). Would be good if they broke it down further by requester and state, but at least you get an idea from last years data: 5950 requests, complied with 93%, disclosed info on 11057 users. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/US/?p=2011-06

And that will stop digital distribution how?

If you are more paranoid than average you can use a second address set to auto-forward as the base.

Most people are not going to be familiar with the system enough to know what you mean by this. Google's FAQ will help:

Gmail doesn't offer traditional aliases, but you can receive messages sent to your.username+any.alias@gmail.com. For example, messages sent to jane.doe+notes@gmail.com are delivered to jane.doe@gmail.com.

Obviously any spammer can figure out that your real address is jane.doe@gmail.com with such a system. Your solution, to chain the alias account to a secondary real account to a primary real account does hide the primary address, but exposes the secondary address, which is just as bad. You can't close that down, or all your aliases stop working.

I haven't used Yahoo!'s system, so I can't speak to whether or not it is better. The best approach is to use spamgourmet's service and watch words, which is essentially what Yahoo and Google were both copying in the first place. It will, of course, work with any email account. They explain watch words here:

Watchwords (the new way) are similar except that they must be contained in the word for the new address to be created. They use regular expression matching (if you know what that is) so you can come up with all sorts of interesting approaches. For a simple example, if you have rope and soap as watchwords, these addresses would work:
saddlesoap.4.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com
ouch-ropeburn.4.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com
but this would not:
someotherword.4.spamcowboy@spamgourmet.com

I've been using spamgourmet before gmail even existed, and am up to 609 created disposable addresses now. It's amazed me which retailers have sold off my address to spammers. For the record, Sony Online Entertainment and Sam's Club were the biggest surprises. I get "Viagra from Canada" spam from the addresses that I created specially for SOE and Sam's Club.

I really do not know why spamgourmet never gets the attention that they deserve. It really is about the greatest free service I've ever found.

http://www.google.com/patents/US6384822

This seems pretty "pure mathematics" to me. I suppose the phosphors of a monitor count as a physical material, but I think that's stretching it a bit.

Claim 1: "1. A 3-D graphics method performed by a computer for real-time rendering of shadows in 3-D scenes to be displayed on a computer monitor..."

The claim explicitly requires a computer and a monitor. That's not pure mathematics. The pure mathematical algorithm is outside of the claims - if you did it in your head, by definition, you could not possibly infringe the patent.

OK, we can go through these patents, if you want:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6563928

Claims must be read in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The "broadest possible reading" of a term applies during prosecution, but in litigation, the claims must be interpreted more narrowly based on the spec. In this case, the claims recite correspondents, which the spec describes as including a random number generator and performing computing functions. While it's possible to read these as humans, I think a more reasonable reading is that they're computers.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100
Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

That one's even easier. Claim 1 recites a cryptosystem, which is illustrated in FIG. 2 including an ALU and RAM.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759
Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

Claim 1: "1. A method of generating in a digital data processor..."

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

There you go. In all cases, pure math - or performing the steps in your head or on a pad of paper - would not be covered by the patent claims. Therefore, they can't be claiming pure math.

OK, we can go through these patents, if you want:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6563928

Claims must be read in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The "broadest possible reading" of a term applies during prosecution, but in litigation, the claims must be interpreted more narrowly based on the spec. In this case, the claims recite correspondents, which the spec describes as including a random number generator and performing computing functions. While it's possible to read these as humans, I think a more reasonable reading is that they're computers.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100
Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

That one's even easier. Claim 1 recites a cryptosystem, which is illustrated in FIG. 2 including an ALU and RAM.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759
Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

Claim 1: "1. A method of generating in a digital data processor..."

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

There you go. In all cases, pure math - or performing the steps in your head or on a pad of paper - would not be covered by the patent claims. Therefore, they can't be claiming pure math.

OK, we can go through these patents, if you want:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6563928

Claims must be read in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The "broadest possible reading" of a term applies during prosecution, but in litigation, the claims must be interpreted more narrowly based on the spec. In this case, the claims recite correspondents, which the spec describes as including a random number generator and performing computing functions. While it's possible to read these as humans, I think a more reasonable reading is that they're computers.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100
Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

That one's even easier. Claim 1 recites a cryptosystem, which is illustrated in FIG. 2 including an ALU and RAM.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759
Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

Claim 1: "1. A method of generating in a digital data processor..."

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

There you go. In all cases, pure math - or performing the steps in your head or on a pad of paper - would not be covered by the patent claims. Therefore, they can't be claiming pure math.

http://www.google.com/patents/US6384822

This seems pretty "pure mathematics" to me. I suppose the phosphors of a monitor count as a physical material, but I think that's stretching it a bit.

a data communication system

Which may not even refer to a machine, since we can communicate by shouting at each other across a room, by writing numbers of sheets of paper, etc. This is not even a formal reference to using a computer; it is just a vague reference to the concept of communicating electronically. Otherwise, these claims all cover pure math.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100

Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759

Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

a data communication system

Which may not even refer to a machine, since we can communicate by shouting at each other across a room, by writing numbers of sheets of paper, etc. This is not even a formal reference to using a computer; it is just a vague reference to the concept of communicating electronically. Otherwise, these claims all cover pure math.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100

Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759

Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

a data communication system

Which may not even refer to a machine, since we can communicate by shouting at each other across a room, by writing numbers of sheets of paper, etc. This is not even a formal reference to using a computer; it is just a vague reference to the concept of communicating electronically. Otherwise, these claims all cover pure math.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6782100

Tell me if you can find a claim that even vaguely refers to a machine, because I cannot.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5854759

Again, I am not seeing a claim that mentions a machine, but maybe you can point it out for me.

The ball is in your court; tell us how these patents are somehow not actually patents on pure math.

What, exactly, does Yahoo! have that Gmail doesn't have? Other! Than! Excessive! Punctuation!

Mail stationery. http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/3tbpqlWw3CI

Here is a search of the ACL Anthology for Speech recognition. As you can see, the term is widely used by actual computer scientists. Linguistic Audio Parsing, by contrast, is a term you coined just now.

Converting speech to text does have some drawbacks, but it has many advantages as well. First among these is the ability to apply the vast amount of work which has been put into parsing and understanding text. Furthermore, there's no need to lose the additional information carried by tone and other speech patterns, you can simply annotate the text you produce with tags denoting, for example, sarcasm. The actual problem with translating speech to text then applying the usual sentence parsing algorithms is that spoken text and written text actually have distinct grammars. They are like different dialects of the same language.

Any one else think we need CARPA - the Civilian Advanced Research Project Agency? Preferably one that has nothing to do with the government.

Based on the amount of money US companies invest in R&D, I think the answer is self-evident: no, no one else thinks that.

Exception: Google does spend a metric shitload of money on R&D, but since their main business is spying on you and stealing intellectual property they didn't produce, that kind of calls into question the public benefit of their "research".