Slashdot Mirror

So much right-to-repair, right-to-own, right-to-modify law is based on an 1800s cotton baling wire case. We are happy that USA Supreme Court has routinely sided with refurbishers (Fuji vs. Jazz Camera, Lexmark vs. Arizona Ink Cartridge Remanufacturers), and the WTO defense of Remanufacturers in the Doha Round of NTTBs was great http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/t... However, just as alarming are the cases going the other way in other countries (Fuji won vs. Jazz Camera in Japan). As the USA recedes from its role as the largest consumer market, it seems that Chinese precedent might go either way. Will the future of copyright law in other countries follow the First Use Doctrine?

See thyroid cancer.

See yellow line on graph depicting Chernobyl children as adults.

Start at page 16.

Plus we won't bother discussing that hundreds of square miles around the area remain off limits due to the continued threat of radiation poisoning.

Despite routinely traveling and working within 2km of a 40 year old reactor, I have no phobias regarding nuclear power. But, to suggest that there have been no deaths, let alone injuries and cancers, is a bald faced troll.

Nuclear power has numerous inherent and extreme dangers. Whether or not we can mitigate them effectively does not mean that the dangers do not exist.

Two years on, the Fukushima exclusion zone still exceeds a 20km radius. It will be 20 years before we see some of the effects form that accident and there will be detractors saying that the illnesses are unrelated despite a clear correlation and highly likely causation.

Fix the management issues how? You are volunteering?

Do you want to see another disaster? One that could have been avoided with the appropriate management decisions? (... we can always say in hindsight.) One that is leaving behind a huge mess to clean up? That has also caused evacuations and has taken lives?

Here.

A little explanation. Check the links at the bottom of that page for more, because it wasn't just Sendai.

(I assume you will find the Japanese no problem to read?)

Oh. And if you are having a hard time finding the latest information on the nuclear power plants, look here. The IAEA also has some information, although you might find it rather cryptic.

A better source for more detailed information is the government website at NISA (nuclear and industrial safety agency) here., with the latest report at here. It's got pressures and temperatures, as much as they know. On the other hand, it is scary how much they don't know. They have no idea of the temperature of the spent fuel pools in #1, 3, and 4, or the water temperatures inside the reactor vessel in #1, 2, or 3. (They are monitoring the external temperature of the reactor vessel.) That's not good enough -- couldn't they just drop in a remote temperature sensor into the spent fuel pools? How hard can that be?

A better source for more detailed information is the government website at NISA (nuclear and industrial safety agency) here., with the latest report at here. It's got pressures and temperatures, as much as they know. On the other hand, it is scary how much they don't know. They have no idea of the temperature of the spent fuel pools in #1, 3, and 4, or the water temperatures inside the reactor vessel in #1, 2, or 3. (They are monitoring the external temperature of the reactor vessel.) That's not good enough -- couldn't they just drop in a remote temperature sensor into the spent fuel pools? How hard can that be?

Here is the last post from IAEA:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident Update (28 March, 23:00 UTC)
Japan Confirms Plutonium in Soil Samples at Fukushima Daiichi.

After taking soil samples at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese authorities today confirmed finding traces of plutonium that most likely resulted from the nuclear accident there. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told the IAEA that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had found concentrations of plutonium in two of five soil samples.

Traces of plutonium are not uncommon in soil because they were deposited worldwide during the atmospheric nuclear testing era. However, the isotopic composition of the plutonium found at Fukushima Daiichi suggests the material came from the reactor site, according to TEPCO officials. Still, the quantity of plutonium found does not exceed background levels tracked by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology over the past 30 years.

Also, Japan's NISA has this report:
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110329-5.html
That points to TEPCO's original analysis:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110328e14.pdf

The most useful reporting I've found so far has been from World Nuclear News' regularly update article, along with the and the NISA press releases/

Methinks big Japanese corporations are legally obligated to use a small part of their budget (say 1%?) for humanitarian purposes. Toyota may have many robotic divisions, but the one I'm familiar with is the Partner Robot Division, and there's an Assistance group there IIRC. It's what you think it is: assistance robots, to help in the care of elderly and disabled. The violin thing is just PR and probably was done by a couple guys who thought "hey, we can do *that*", and got green-lighted. It all comes from that same division.

The Japanese government has an official policy of furthering the development of humanoid robots.

Every industrial giant in japan has invested in accordance with that policy (there's tax credits IIRC), and the trend that I observe is that they all decided to concentrate on one aspect. Honda concentrated on the legs, Toyota on the hands, others are working at facial expressions, etc.

I gave a link in an earlier reply to Toyota's robot page, you can see they had a wheeled robot with nimble fingers back when honda had a walking robot with claw hands. They're competing against each other on details but cooperating on the bigger picture: Japanese domination of the humanoid robot market.

Japan . . . they aren't as encumbered by patents as we

You're kidding, right? In Japan, patent infringement is a crime punishable by five years in prison. I'll even provide a source (the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry -- in Japanese). It says at the end of the page (translated quickly)

". . . persons who infringe patents are subject to up to 5 years in prison or a 5 million yen fine . . ."

I would guess that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is in charge of the Gundam TV series and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is in charge of the much more profitable Gundam toys and models.

As I understand it (and I've been out of patent examining for a few years so I'm quite rusty) TRIPS places a requirement on the US patent system to include some compulsory licensing to enable patented technologies to be exploited.

So, if Verizon were to sit on the tech and not exploit it (a defensive patent) then Vonage could force them to accede to a reasonable license term.

If Vonage simply didn't know about the patent and Verizon are using it themselves (which it seems they are), all Vonage can hope is that they'll get a license. It's tough but that's what "granting a monopoly on exploitation of a novel technology" means - only one company / person goes home with the money.

Of course it's probably better for Verizon to offer a license unless they can take over Vonage's customers for themselves.

It does seem hard on Vonage, but they should have done their research. If they too have made some novel advances in this field then things usually get resolved in some cross-licenseing agreement (involving cloaks and daggers!). So this is the patent system working properly - the innovators win ... that's the point.

I've not looked in detail but the patent in question may be one of the so-called submarine patents that used to be a feature of the US system but which now (see eg http://www.meti.go.jp/english/report/data/g400112e .html) are avoided by early "A"-publication (#1) in the US in common with JPO, EPO, UKPO, etc.. In which case it wouldn't matter if Vonage did do their homework, but I think the compensation requirements are severely reduced under such circumstances.

---

#1 - thus now ungranted patents are published in the US which has led the uninitiated to believe that the USPTO grants everything, commonly the initial filing is published then only the amended claims (which define the monopoly) are re-published.

The m17n library allow you to view and type complex text languages like Indic, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages. While this is possible by using QT3.2+ & GTK2.0+pango, this restricted one to just 2 toolkits and to two heavyweight desktops(XFCE4 is the exception though). The library is also a good compromise between a toolkit dependent solution like pango/QT3.2 and Server based solutions like the doomed Indix and STSF.

The screenshots here show firefox and magicpoint, applications that use different toolkits displaying multilinugal texts. I have even seen but not used windowmaker rpms compiled with m17n support.

A very practical example would be something like Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty lightweight live CD in both disk size (~50 MB) and Memory usage (runs on 64 MB RAM). This was ideal for a school near my place that wanted to use it as a teaching resource but wanted it in their native language. I finally am settling for XFCE4 and GTK2 applications like OO.o, Firefox.

The keyboard solutions were too rudimentary, in the case of xkb for phonetic keymaps for indian languages or too buggy and complex, in the case of IIIMF. M17n was a joy to use from day one and rpms for Mandrake 10.1 & debs for Ubuntu/Debian unstable are available.

The m17n library allow you to view and type complex text languages like Indic, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages. While this is possible by using QT3.2+ & GTK2.0+pango, this restricted one to just 2 toolkits and to two heavyweight desktops(XFCE4 is the exception though). The library is also a good compromise between a toolkit dependent solution like pango/QT3.2 and Server based solutions like the doomed Indix and STSF.

The screenshots here show firefox and magicpoint, applications that use different toolkits displaying multilinugal texts. I have even seen but not used windowmaker rpms compiled with m17n support.

A very practical example would be something like Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty lightweight live CD in both disk size (~50 MB) and Memory usage (runs on 64 MB RAM). This was ideal for a school near my place that wanted to use it as a teaching resource but wanted it in their native language. I finally am settling for XFCE4 and GTK2 applications like OO.o, Firefox.

The keyboard solutions were too rudimentary, in the case of xkb for phonetic keymaps for indian languages or too buggy and complex, in the case of IIIMF. M17n was a joy to use from day one and rpms for Mandrake 10.1 & debs for Ubuntu/Debian unstable are available.