Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Transparency, USB, Europatents
Now even less than a week ... mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, although I am still looking for further confirmation, it seems like the EU vote on software patentability has been moved from the late fall to June 30, 2003. Yes, that is in one (1) week. If you have more information and another source - please comment on this news item."
Mikael writes: "Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing from a democracy perspective that this proposal seems to be fast-tracked in the middle of the summer, when most Europeans want to focus on whether they should have strawberry or vanilla ice cream. In Sweden, we also got our Swedish version of the DMCA this week. I guess the ice cream will have to wait."
DoSthAboutIt points out that "A 'Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents' has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.' The whole article can be found here, including some statistics like signatories by country"
The story of Peng. mantispraying writes "Looks like the college student who settled with the the RIAA for $12,000, his entire life savings, has recouped all of his money thanks to a very generous file sharing community. Also, the search engine he created that got him in trouble is back online, for demonstration purposes only, of course."
Reader T points out that while one of the students who lost his life savings to RIAA has made it back through PayPal donations, "the other, Dan Peng, is still short about $12,000. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
I'd prefer the garrote and the stick, but hey. Mark Ferguson writes: "I attended the FTC spam forum. It seems I was on their call list :-) I parlayed that into getting several others on the panels as well. While there I spoke with bulk emailers and other industry folks. Some people defined Confirmed OPT-IN to mean you sending a confirmation that the email address was subscribed so they were doing double, confirmed OPT-IN.
My heads spins.
What I figured from what I learned was these folks truly refused to accept real definitions the Service Providers have been using for years so I decided to do a site for just this. ... Anyway, reboot, aka Andrew Cockrell myself and another built The Carrot and the Stick to explain email, define the best practices and to get people to abide by them.
Thoughts, comments and/or suggestions?"
Sooner or later, that DeLorean's going to land someone in jail. hackwrench writes "According to channel WSMV news, Alternate Energy Inventor Carl Tilley's compound was raided. Tilley was previously mentioned on Slashdot here."
Tilley had announced the then-upcoming demonstration of his perpetual-motion DeLorean.
My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots! Rocky Rawstern writes "I recently had the distinct pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Wil McCarthy. Upon completing three of his latest books - two sci-fi and one work of non-fiction - I realized that others would probably enjoy his ponderings as much as I. The questions for this interview stem from my own interest in programmable matter, and the awe-inspiring possibilities raised by Wil in his book Hacking Matter."
How to succeed (not necessarily) in business. jameshowison writes "A few months ago Ask Slashdot published Kevin Crowston's question on what makes open source software successful ... well the results are in and the paper typed. We ran the responses through a funky content analyser (called Grad Students). The metrics that academics and the industry have used for years simply don't work for OSS.
More and more it seems that we'll need to survey the number of job offers developers get and the size of the community to get at this one ..."
You sound very familiar to me. Interested Observer writes "Thanks to a slashdot article discussing false positives using Soundex I thought if Soundex can be used for something as important as "no-fly" lists then certainly we should be able to get some entertainment value out of it! See if your Soundex last name-counterparts show up in a Google News search."
A member of the USB-IF Administration writes to dispel the confusion raised by the seeming conflict between many USB products' labels and their actual data-transfer speeds:
"The source of confusion derives from the fact that USB specification revision numbers and data-transfer rates are often being used in place of the logo on consumer packaging, a purpose for which they were not originally intended. The USB-IF's recommended nomenclature for consumers is 'USB' for slower speed products (1.5 Mb/s and 12Mb/s) and "Hi-Speed USB" for high-speed products (480Mb/s), as signified in the USB logos that were introduced in late 2000. In short, consumers wishing to be certain they are getting the performance they paid for in their USB products can use the logo for clarification.
The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed USB products, as listed at the website http://www.usb.org/developers/packaging, state that such products can carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states "Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and posted on the website in August 2002.
The USB-IF is a nonprofit industry organization. We do not and cannot control how manufacturers label their products. We do work continuously with system and peripheral manufacturers, striving to provide consistency in the use of this nomenclature and the logos. The logo indicates that a product's performance against and conformance with the standard have been tested, and that the product has passed the USB compliance program.
Anyone having questions about the performance of a product should contact the manufacturer for clarification.
For a brief Q & A on this topic, please visit our website at http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature."
Anytime you call something a compound, the government raids it. He should have called it a campus, or research park, or something
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
If you are an EU citizen and care about this don't wait for other people to take action - contact your MEP and make sure they are familiar with the issues! You can read my email to my MEP in my /. Journal and you are welcome to borrow ideas from it if you like.
Investigators from the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance raided the Tilley complex and wer head to say "In this state we obey the laws of PHYSICS!"
This will be interesting.... as they will either announce to the world that it was all a scam, or in the court cases that will ensue, the entire process/design will become public and the world will change overnight....
but the way this crackpot acted..... I'm interested how devilish his scam was....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Can he not show us the inside of the box because then the cat will be dead?
I support jobs for US software engineers. Hence, I do not support open-source.
Time to look at the people that support the OSS movement, guys. They are all very much left-wing, and are all acting under the orders of foreign governments. They are seeking to undermine our American way.
I used to run Linux, but never again. A chill wind blows through this country, and its name is 'open-source'.
Think about it.
If it is real, will he have legal grounds to take against the govt dept's of TN to recoup lost technologies. If so, is there a legal limit? For example, if it was real, and he wasn't generous about his technology, he would easily be one of the richest men on Earth.
Can he sue them for a few trillion dollars?
Its probably not real, but the implications of it being an actual working device are astronomical.
k03 - ne
That's my question.
Kevin "KevX45" Myrick
"Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky"-Pink Floyd
This is seriously a lot of topics to even focus on in one go. My head is spinning just trying to decide on which topic to respond to... When faced with large numbers of topics to read and respond to, people as a large group will invariably choose the same ones and ignore others.
So, I am now taking bets on which topic will be the unpopular one!
My bet is the "My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots" story. **YAWN**
Of course, by submitting this, I have now created a discussion thread on that topic, thereby invalidating my bet. DOH!
Hmmm...
The only chance you have is to let the genie out of the bottle and licence your device as GNU/Energy.
You will become world famous overnight and will still make a fortune in grants, speaking engagements, and probably the Nobel Prize.
Of course, if your just making stuff up and ripping people off, then I hope they send you to Federal "pound me in the ass" prison.
In light of the fact the RIAA is suing everyone left and right and is now going after more individual users there is a potential that I might get sued. As I don't distribute copyrighted material, I don't know HOW this would be possible, but I'm not about to think the RIAA will do something as simple as "Follow the law". I'm sure there's something I've done wrong that can cause them to force me into a settlement.
Anyways I expect this to cost somewhere in the ballpark of $130,230.34. That amount was literally randomly typed and it seemed like a real big amount. If I don't get sued, rest assured I will go forth and break the law because there really is no recourse for my actions. Even if I do "break the law" I can still count on the internet community to bail me out.
The internet is such a great thing and thank you in advance!!
SuperDuG
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
What, are you supposed to just grab the door and climb in as it whizzes by, or what? Does it circle the 7-11 for you on autopilot while you're inside getting your Hostess cupcakes and lottery tickets?
The mind boggles.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
"150,000 signatures" ... "2000 company owners"
But how much did you PAY the politicians to vote the way you want them to. Yea... I thought so...
Geeks just don't get it.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
If it were a perpetual motion machine or the like, the government would declare it top secret and/or a threat to national security, or barring that, would try to make it and the inventor out to be a crackpot like they did with Tesla... The uspto is just the gov's way of sifting out all the really usefull items from public knowledge and so they can maintain control. (sorry.. rant over. touched a nerve there... I have special nerve endings just for when stories of inventions like this come up)
On that EU petition. IBM is one of the most patent-laden companies in the US, yet some of their officers are signing onto a petition to prevent such a rush in the EU. What does this tell you about the US patent process? Patents and lawsuits are the price of doing business in the US. Meanwhile countries with more SANE "IP laws" are going to command more and more of the market share in an increasingly competetive world market.
You want a "Plan for Spam" or a "End to all ends"??? Here ya go. You take all these lowlife scum bandwidth hogging email clogging horrible pieces of rat shit they are. Take them into the streets and beat them until they are a soupy mess on the floor that can only be cleaned up with a hose.
AND TELEVISE IT, that way anyone else thinking about joining the industry can see the example of "what will happen to you" and find another way to make their dirty money. I say we throw telemarketers ans sex criminals in the same boat, all of them. Put um all together and just beat them with a small stick.
That's my plan for spam. If we can bomb the hell out of a country for no reason then goddammit america can beat spammers to a pulp as well.
So yeah, that's my plan.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
So, where do I click to order transparent Europatents with USB connection?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
the perpetual motion DeLorean
Sounds like you could end up inadvertently careening way, way, farther back or forward in time than you ever wanted to go...
The coolest voice ever.
If you don't have a "compound, you're not a "cult leader". And if you're not a "cult leader", you're not allocated any "devoted followers". And if you don't have any "devoted followers" how are you supposed to get a date?
It looks like we've gotten all worried over pretty well nothing.
I admit I was upset to hear the news about the Pseudo USB 2.0, but looking at the logos that manufacturers are supposed to use, it looks like everything should make perfect sense.
Glad to see its been all straightened out.
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
For the rest of the site, uh, well, no comments. ;-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
And we thought lawyers couldn't read....
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Wow, a dupe in the comments for the original story -- that's the fastest yet!
After trying the Soundex tool, I am just bewildered how anyone could think this algorithim is appropriate for a no-fly list. Example:
Name: Hughes
Soundex code: H220
Matches: haessig hages haggis haghighi hagos hajek hakes hasak hasas haschke hasegawa hasek hassick hassig haukaas hawkes haycock haycook heacock heacox hecox heikes heschke hescock heziak hickock hickok hickox higashi highshaw higuchi hikes hiscock hiscox hojczyk hojeij hokes hoosock hosack hosaka hoschek hoseck hosek hosick hossack hougas hoysock huges hugghis hughes hughs hugus husak husayko hykes housekeeper
Hawkes? Housekeeper? Hickox?
No wonder there's so many complaints!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
If many of us just sent $1.00 to Peng's fund we could make a big difference and help fight the RIAA instead of just complaining about them.
I just sent a dollar. I realize it isn't much but I am unemployed.
Donate a dollar right here.
Thanks,
Loomis
Now thats funny.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
(Accidently posted this AC the first time sorry)
If many of us just sent $1.00 to Peng's fund we could make a big difference and help fight the RIAA instead of just complaining about them.
I just sent a dollar. I realize it isn't much but I am unemployed.
Donate a dollar right here.
Thanks,
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Tilley/fraud/rai d/index.html
There is some sort of forum there, and people are going crazy about how Tilley's rights were violated when the government seized his stuff. Personally, I don't see that as seizure of property as much as it is seizure of evidence- the guy supposedly had cash lying around everywhere in common objects like coffee cans. Besides, how is the government supposed to test his devices if it doesn't have them?
I don't know what's funnier though - the actual post, or the fact that (at the moment at least), 30% of the mods have modded as "Informative".
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
-- . . ramblin' . . .
OK I think I figured out his trade secret enough radioactive material cramed inside a simple coil generator works nearly forever well longer then your life expantancy sitting that near to a hot pile :) And when will people learn call it a compound and every F?? out there is looking at you. Now granted not letting investors look inside the black box is one thing but from the sounds of it his partners didnt get to see either.
No sir I dont like it.
only returns 4 surnames.[p] cabinilla cabanillas chiappinelli cauffman [p] supercalafragilisticexpyalladocious returns 116
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
At least to a US economy. It won't shock me if it turns out to be a hoax, but it probably scares some people that it might not be. This could be the basis for a push to the "raid the compound" stage instead of less aggressive measures. If the invention is not snake oil, the crude oil industry would like to know before it's released. I'm not screaming conspiracy, but it's realistic that people in oil would nudge investors and the govt. in this direction. "Hey, don't you want to know what he's doing with all that money?"
Just suppose for a moment that he stumbled on easy cold fusion, and then actually started to produce a product. Then release the details the day before the product ships. There is no time for FUD, and the economy could go into a tail spin. People doubting the value of cars, oil, etc. I'm all for free energy, but don't start a fire under a snow covered tree.
My other first post is car post.
Well that was interesting. I just did the soundex test, and the soundex code S450 sure looked familiar. That's because it's the first four characters of my Illinois drivers license number. Aha! I had been wondering about that part of the code for years.
I now know that the coding (for males) is:
aaaa-bbbc-cddd
aaaa = soundex of last name
bbb = ?
cc = year of birth
ddd = (month of birth - 1) * 31 + day of birth
I seem to recall that ddd is altered for females.
Anyone have a decoding for bbb? I'm guessing that it's just a serial number to ensure unique IDs.
Hmmm. According to the Soundex, I'm a haggis.
Does that mean I'm not fit to fly?
fluffy will still be alive. Hypothetically at least.
Ironic that so long as the cat isn't with us, it is still half alive.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I don't think they are going to raid that any time soon
Free cell phone tracking
For things like this I believe the US needs a court to listen to grevances citizens have from other countries.
So you're saying a pussyfart from his mom is that cold wind he feels blowing?
Somebody should tell him that that wasn't the "open" that "open source" was talking about!
After he saw back to the future a few times and thought hey the delorean would make a great car not only for time travel but perpetual motion!
After all these years I thought perpetual motion was a myth, little did I know it would only take a DeLorean to accomplish this great feat of impossibility.
Are they still in business?
Do they know what mister Tilley does with their cars?
And if Tilley is right, and he does have a secret to energy such as he's claiming, there's no way we'll ever get it since our economy is largely based on the sale of oil. Not to mention the USAs entire government (Republican) gets large amounts of cash for oil. It is not in their interests to have any kind of alternative energy. This may sound like a 'wild, crazy, conspiracy' theory, but if we had the right kind of motivation all across congress and the world we'd have an alternative energy for practical use within 5 years.
It's just nobody profits from a reusable resource, and with oil everybody profits. Except the consumer.
It must be great to sell oil, and go to the gas station and get practically free gas. I'm sure GWB has his own gas stations. Haha. And his own car lanes, but anyways power to alternative energy sources, but perpetual motion? Sounds doubtful.
G'day ladies.
I believe a solution may end up coming in an unlooked direction like IBM or Intel...maybe.
DeLorean?
Energy Machine?
Sounds like a plot to get 1.21 GigaWatts!
"Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.'"
I'm not impressed by this list of harware companies companies that don;t support software patents. Of course they don't want software patents. Then they'll need to pay for the software to run on their hardware. They'd rather have no sw patents so they can copy the ideas of software designers and screw them out of any profit.
Vote for Pedro
Citizens might take vacation, but then Democracy does too. Most of the ugly things the Government
wants to pass goes through "debate" during the summer, when all the blockbusters are coming on screen and entertainments are making their year profits.
The only way to know that your representatives are doing a good job is to control their work at all time. It's a matter of citizenship, even if it does mean droping your hollidays for that matter.
1.2 Email spam quite simply put is;
1.2.1. sending email unsolicited to individuals you have no personal relationship with.
(...)
Exactly which part of the Laws of Thermodynamics did you not understand... that energy could be neither created nor destroyed, or that all systems tend towards maximum entropy?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
That reminds me the Monty Python body building ad parody where ad claims gain up to 40 lbs and the disclaimer states that the term "up to 40 lbs" clearly includes naught.
"I also do not play movies with the windows open for fear that there may be an unlicensed viewer watching through the window. Let us all do our part to protect "intellectual property" and screw free expression."
Screw "free expression" and charge everyone else to watch.
...pass the law and get some patents before americans patent everything that is patentable (and beyond)
To which I replied:
"Now that's funny."
at plus 2. Immediately some moderator is modding down the entire thread to -1. The thing was funny. My reply was ontopic.
I don't know who the moderator is, but I hope he meets the "IF I EVER MEET YOU ILL BEAT YOUR ASS" guy. Where's he been anyway?
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Terrorists can't beat a system like that. No matter what fake name they chose, they are on the list. That no one else can fly is just a small inconvenience. The terrorists will never win this one.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
has anyone got a simple(ish) alternative to soundex ? or is soundex the best public domain sound-a-like algo we have ?
Do you really know all the ventures where Siemens operates? Calling them and IBM "hardware companies" is like calling Disney "a company that sells cartoons."
Last time I checked, anyway...
The DeLorian may be a perpetual machine, but it's maximum speed is 87mph. Anything over that and the car mysteriously disappears.
Governments drew a line in the sand at what can and can't be patented. Discoveries can't (ie you can't patent Newtons laws) and algorithms can't either (which is why up until recently it was required to discribe software as an invention comprising of a computer with said computer having of display unit, random access memory, etc etc and then start talking about your software as part of this computer invention).
The reason to not allow software patents follows in the same theme. Is it or is it not in the best interest of the public to allow patenting of software? Most software people would probably say no but unfortunately what's in the public interest and what makes money generally don't coincide.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
They're all dead!
> looks like everything should make perfect sense
Yeah, it "looks."
Now someone tells me - I gotta find a sighted individual
every time I want to make a USB purchase. Fsck.
huh?
At least the double opt in website was consistent with the write up: made no sense whatsoever. If I were a telemarketer, that would do very little to sway me either way.
My head spins too.
Witnesses saw investigators "haul off Tilley's electric DeLorean, his electric boat and an electric ATV."
;-)
Of course they had to haul off his vehicles. No intelligent person could expect them to be driven under their own power.
He's gone to meet people.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
The DeLorean's top speed with time circuits on would be 87.999999999...mph. With time circuits off, you could probably go up above 100.
"A system or collection of software functions and/or programs which instruct a computer's processing unit(s) to perform a specified task or set of tasks defined by either a human operator or another computer system or software."
There that should cover just about anything you can do with a computer (aside from using it as a paper weight or a foot rest...)
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
This story sounds almost identical to that of Madison Priest's "Magic Box". Basically the guy promised this pie-in-the-sky high-quality video delivery system over regular phone lines. He would demo it but would never let anyone inspect the equipment or see the device. Turns out he was just using a VCR and hiding a cable in the power cord. He got plenty out of investors.
Homer: "Lisa, in this house, we obey the laws of THERMODYNAMICS!"
He met Old Ike.
They now live together in a small town in Georgia, running a diner by day, and training parrots at night.
If you're a tech crackpot claiming something impossible like PM, then getting raided by the Feds is the ideal exit strategy.
If done properly, you can create a cult of dreamers and conspiracy theorists who will claim the Feds stole and suppressed your technology.
Be sure to study the laws carefully before choosing this course. Choose something likely to net you less than a year in prison. Get a good lawyer. Chances are this is your first offense, so you should get off easy. However, be mindful of the judge who might try to "make an example out of you". Be cool while your case is pending. You don't want to get "Mitnicked".
Then when you get out you do the circuit of late night talk radio, alternative newspapers, self-published newsletters, websites, books, and even college campus talks. Unless you're really famous you won't be rolling in dough from this; but you can survive and within certain circles there will be lots of people happy to give you free meals.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Finally, he was convicted, but the ironic thing is, it was drug-related. In this nation, is it really that hard to convict someone of fraud, even when it's that apparent?
Moreover, when do people ever learn? I didn't read Tilly's website real carefully, but he seems to claim that this is a car that generates electricity, but takes no electricity OR gasoline. Something about that is very hard to believe, yet, many people have invested. Apparently, they didn't bother asking for a fuel source, and just went on, hoping that the laws of thermodynamics would not hold true or something. Instead of a lawyer, these people should hire a physicist before investing in such things.
Sure, there are "trade secrets", but then again, sometimes it's a curtain for a scheme to take place. That's what patents are for. If you have a brilliant idea, patent it. Then, you have nothing to fear as you reveal your brilliant idea to the world.
nuf said.
We need all that soul-fragmentation energy to power the massive submarine batteries in the you-know-whats that only last for five friggen minutes.
Or we can power a fleet of electric Beetles. Deloreans are too heavy. Hmm... either way, we win.
Prepare to die, Sailor Sluts!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
But is Generalissimo Francesco Franco still dead? Has anyone opened the box?
This means WAR!
I'm sorry, but I just can't seem to take this seriously.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
You just have to love the Internet:
When a noun is hyphenated with an adverb or preposition, the plural is formed on the noun.
When neither word is a noun, the plural is formed on the last word.
In forming the plurals of compound terms, the significant word takes the plural form.
Significant word first:
Significant word in middle:
Significant word last:
Both words equally significant:
No word significant in itself:
from an example that I can recall in recent history, claiming weapons of mass destruction and not finding them wouldn't have changed anything. The smarter animals on the Animal Farm (the pink ones) would have changed the writing on the barn.
A donkey can remember and know the truth, but cannot do anything. (was it a donkey? I can't remember)
According to linuxfr the vote has been definitly delayed to september.
If anybody would have bothered to read the article, you'd know that his "compound" wasn't raided; his "complex" was raided.
As a sometime English teacher, I must remind you that the difference between a "compound" and "complex" is huge: compounds have all the required parts in each section. Complexes have multiple instances of the same required parts, together
That said, more than I'm inclined to believe our government raided him for making false statements to his investors [ummm, let's look at exhibit A, Kenneth Lay], I'm inclined to believe that our government thinks he violated the 2nd law of thermo, and can produce energy for free, and wants in on the action [exhibit B, Iraq].
Idjits. [But we always knew that].
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
This guy only made $500K off his scheme, over more than a decade. This was a low-rent scam. Makes me wonder if he believed his own hype. There are easier ways to make $50K/year.
... just not the way the University of Utah claimed, and it's definitely not easy.
To get cold fusion, you need a molecule with few enough degrees of freedom, and an explosive bond that will get to hydrogen nuclei within the tunnelling distance, say, with a 1% chance of tunnelling.
Do that, and you will end up with successful cold fusion.
However, to make this molecule would take tons of design first using chemistry modellers; then you'd have to figure out a way to assemble the parts, and finally how to activate the explosive bond.
It is not easy. Yes, I can imagine that this guy could do something of the sort. But if he did, then why hide it? Why not just sign up as a member of the American Physical Society, and then bring it in, and say "look. Check the radiation when I heat it up past 40 degrees...." and so on.
I don't think this guy has found cold fusion.
But yes, I do consider it quite possible that the government raided him because they think he has something valuable and wish to steal it, and less likely that they raided him because he was defrauding investors.
On the other hand, maybe he defrauded the wrong investors. That seems to be the theme these days: it's not what you do, it's who you do it to, who benefits, who's hurt, which is important.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
My name has the same soundex as Saif al-Adil, who is apprently one of Al-Quaida's most senior operatives.
Well, I can tell my next trip to visit my fiancee's family in Washington DC is going to be fun...
I think you'll need a lot for your hat.
I bet that getting his machines hauled away by the feds was probably not in the plan. They'll have some certified engineer take a glance at the black boxes and he'll the discover garden variety lead batteries hidden behind the "Flux Capacitor" panel where all the flashing LEDs are mounted. Scam over. He'll probably try again in a few years. Probably not with a DeLorean next time.
Most of these schemes end with the Device mysteriously exploding on the big demo day just about the time the battery woulda run out. (The 'bad wheel bearing' thing on the race track demo seems to coincide with this pattern nicely. I recall one such demo where an onlooker got hurt or killed by the mandatory demo day explosion.
Anyway, it's interesting that he had more than one vehicle. If he was intending to demo them all at the same time, that would have seemed to preclude a plausible demo day explosion unless the whole fucking garage was supposed to blow...
It stands to reason that a genuine free energy invention would be a monumental world-changing discovery. Why tinker on a silly little gadget car in the garage, funded only by petty donations by smalltime individual investors? Think big! Nikola Tesla partnered with Westinghouse and demo'ed his monumental, world-changing Alternating Current system by harnessing the hydro power of the Niagara Falls, powering thousands of homes.
Only a fool throws a dollar after a black box.
Tesla had a system that actually worked, with both theories, engineering drawings and elaborate patent papers to back them up. At no point were Westinghouse and other corporate investors required to just believe his word when he claimed that his system worked. He let anyone visit his lab and play with his machines, none of which were black boxes.
Patents, obnoxious such as they are, provide adequate protection against asset hijacking, the 'big secret' can be out in the open and well known, and you can still be the one who makes all the money from it.
..well, it was1935. They don't live for ever, you know..
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
.... nobody loves you.
Did you know that in most EU countries you can't buy adds on TV?
Did you know that the political parites can;t accept companies' contributions?
Di you know that the European comission has struck down big mergers due to competition concerns?
Look little USie, USia is not evil (not its people, we will talk about politicians another day) but in modern Europe democracy is a real way of life, not a pretense in which the rich and powerful pretend to represent the people.
As for Africa and Latin America being victims, look pal, the US has invaded most countries in Latin America one time or another and has crashed elected goverments and even has created puppet countries (Panama). You will never understand the damage colonialism has done, it is very easy to dismiss the state of victimhood of the African continent unless you live there and you learn all what the colonial power have done (and continue to do in some instances) to the African people.
Just a quick example: Mobute in Congo was the best buddy of the US during the cold war. A fucking genocidal cleptocrat. Why the US did not find an ally with democratic credentials is your guess, but that "friendship" allow that tyrant to brutalize his people for a couplke of decades. If I was a congolese I would feel agravated and would put some amount of blame in the US foreign policy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Politics don't work like that in the EU. Pressure groups of organized citizens (NGOs, unions) have as much weight as big corps, this is thanks to strict laws on campaign financing which don't make politicians slaves of their donors.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You can copyright an implementation of an idea, that is not going away.
But patenting ideas is just plain stupid. You should be able to patent physical things, but patenting software is akin to patenting mathematics, i.i plain stupid.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Hmmm...so what if a door were suspended and a dog placed on one side of it. Wouldn't the door start to rotate so that the dog was always on the wrong side of it??
:)
Brings to mind another perpetual motion idea: As buttered toast always lands butter side down, and a cat always lands on it's feet..if you strap a piece of buttered toast to a cat's back and drop it, the cat will continue to rotate in mid-air in perpetuity.
I tried Asshole and that what I got:
Accala Accola Achille Ackley Acly Acquilla Agcaoili Agel Agle Aguallo Aguele Aguila Aichele Ajello Akal Akel Akley Aquil Asaeli Asal Ascol Asel Ashely Ashley Ashly Ashwell Asiello Asley Assael Auckley Augello Augle Aujla Ausiello Ausley Axel Axley Azoulay Azulay Achilles
"When this baby hits 88 Miles Per Hour, you're going to see some SERIOUS SHIT!"
-Doc Brown
Nice choice in cars for the unit tho. Sportier than a Honda Insight.
Relive the BBS Past - One Byte at a Time! www.ssabbs.com
Brings to mind another perpetual motion idea: As buttered toast always lands butter side down, and a cat always lands on it's feet..if you strap a piece of buttered toast to a cat's back and drop it, the cat will continue to rotate in mid-air in perpetuity. :)
You'd also have to make the sure the carpet was sufficiently expensive to ensure the toast *always* landed butter side down. And find some way of clearing up the cat puke.
You built a perpetual-motion machine... out of a DeLorean?
I have constructed a device that requires no external energy input, has minumal mechanical complexity and is capable of speeds in excess of 500,000 Miles per hour. Want to invest? Of cousre to observe this you need to stop rotating around the Milky Way.
In the universe:
"Everythings Relative"
In West Virginia:
"Everyones Relatives"
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Does Linus have a compound?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well, he doesn't have to be that slick. He is from Tennessee after all.
Hey maw, come look at this crazy batrey powrd cor! And brang the mattress money, we'z gonna make us an investment.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Here is a link to the official list of all MEPs by country and political grouping. All MEPs have a good contact page that can be reached by following the links on this page.
"Unfortunately the laws of thermodynamics are based on human observation and humans make mistakes."
Its like I've been telling the bank.
I have $1000 I put into the bank. I should be able to write as many checks against that $1000, because the $1000 is only electronic and doesn't exist.
But its only because of limited understanding of the rules of accounting this can't occur.
Sort of like a lot of people want to believe that 2 + 2 is 4. But its 5. Only our limited understanding of the laws of arithmetic keep believing that 2+2 is 4. It might be 7. We just don't know.
the photos of the various parts and signage for his 'building power system' are here. I think it's the book 'Voodoo Science' that includes a chapter on it, also? (i think. Have to go home and check.) But this guy's a treat. I'm not surprised to find out about the heist. I AM alarmed that this guy has any credibility at all, but i guess there's always someone willing to believe...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
2+2?5
The soundex is part of my maryland number, too:
S-sss-###-###-###
Where S-sss is the soundex (and I thought the first digit was an 'M' for maryland, but it's really part of the Soundex for Morcheeba!)
It's better than VA where the driver's license number was your SSN
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
A recall vote is essentially when enough people get a petition together to "recall" a politician, then the politician is no longer authorized to act on the people's behalf, and there must be a new election. That new election can reinstall the pol, or not, but it definitely is a sign that a major fraction of the people are dissatisfied with the pol.
I saw some British Lord demanded a recall of some MEP under Google, but I don't see a lot about recalling MEPs. Still, it should be possible to find out, shouldn't it?
Or are democratic processes strictly verboten?
Regarding socialists and conservatives, the Republicans call themselves conservatives and are all the time railing against "socialism", but if you see what they vote for, they are definitely socialists. The socialists meanwhile rail against the Republicans, but if you see what they vote for, it is the same thing as the Republicans. So really they are identical. My brother (a conservative libertarian) calls it socialist, my uncle (a strongly liberal green) calls it fascist. They're both right.
Here in Europe, the Socialist and Conservative leadership were working together to try to push the software patents through on the fast track. It makes me think maybe they're becoming the same party.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
What the crap are you on about? Software is a huge part of IBM's business, and I'm pretty sure Nokia also have a reasonable number of developers, who most likely do the same thing I've done: Come up with a great idea, and say "Thank god I don't have to worry about patenting that, I don't need $100,000 and a team of rabid lawyers, plus a desire to play crazy-person legal poker, I can just write the code and move on with my life". Honestly, patents are a tool for huge companies with huge budgets to bludgeon the crap out of smaller ones, and the less can be patented, the better.
Recent current events might have introduced you to commanders-in-chief, chiefs of staff, prisoners or war, and presidents-elect.
You may be driving around, past a series of culs-de-sac, looking on at the passersby. You might be on your way to visiting sons-, brothers-, or even mothers-in-law.
Then, in the evening, you munch on a couple of crepes suzette, chased down by a few gins and tonic. Finally, you turn on the TV to catch a pastiche starring all living Doctors Who.
-Tez
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
Having a name common in India may not help you with the no-nothings in America. Heard a news report t'other day about a bunch of yahoos that beat up this "Arab" or "Muslim" who turned out to be a Hindu. Given that Hindu/Muslim antagonism was the root cause of the split of Pakistan off from India*, if you know anything about the folks involved, you'd know that a Hindu isn't a Muslim, and would be much less likely to be an anti-American terrorist. Anti-Pak terrorist, maybe, but these were American thugs. Ed
That was on topic and funny.
I'm not trying to troll... I just want to make sure he did something worthy.
Jesse Jordan wrote a search engine, registered a cool domain name, then used the site to clearly document his fight. To top it all off, he cut off donations when he made back the $12k, and implores us to send our donations to...
The other guy, Daniel Peng. His website is just a single page -- tiny by comparison. But he comes highly recommended, by Slashdot and the afore-mentioned Jordan.
Other than that, can y'all remind me why I should support Peng?
By the way, I'd ask Paypal folks to please contribute more than a buck. Paypal fees (30c + 2.9%) will turn your $1 contribution into a 67c contribution, but he'll get about $4.55 if you give $5.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Whoever modded above comment off-topic should screw his brain back in before he mods next time.
It is funny, on-topic and a right-on-the-spot comment.