It's not totally binary but large portions of it are. You just need to find a table that shows the relationships. The one I saw was in an old dictionary which I know longer have. Here's one table for volume measurements.
If you can find a chart of the old terms of English units of measure, you'll find everything was half or twice the the next unit of measure, i.e. 2 cups equal a pint, 2 pints equal a quart, etc... Most of the units have fallen out of usage so it's not as obvious anymore. The only advantage of metric is everyone is used to decimal fractions vs. binary fractions. I have a digital caliper which automatically converts between english and metric but it's difficult to whether a decimal measurement in english corresponds to a corresponding standard english size. E.g. is something closer to 15/64 or to 1/4? I have fractional caliphers which give an analog readout in english fractions and it's a lot easier to guess from that than from the digital calipher.
The big problem is mixing standard sizes from english and metric when some of them are close. Most pc's use a mix of M3 metric and #6 english screws which are different enough to keep straight. Once in a while you find some odd component with #4 which might look like M3 if you're not careful and you get some nice cross threading there.
These days they would have said, "Sorry Albert, but your current job is a patent clerk and we're looking for somebody with current experience as a theoretical physicist".
It will involve a conversion from the traditional ownership model of not just software and media, but of hardware as well. One of the reasons I haven't invested in any DVR schemes even though it would fit in very well with my TV viewing habits or more accurately, lack there of, is it would be a waste of money given most schemes are propietary and short lived. Going to a subscription model would be better since I'm not out anything if a vendor goes out of business or changes protocols and/or formats.
Some of us could certainly think of ways to easily identify video content. I've thought of a way. I don't know if it is feasible but I'm not going to post the idea here. If anything, I'd patent to to keep it from being used. Why help an industry who is so consumer unfriendly?
Normal high tempurature sterialization of surgical instruments that have been used for brain surgury doesn't destroy prions. You have to use more exotic techniques that are a little rougher on surgical instruments. It's a big problem for hospitals. So mere cooking wouldn't affect prions.
The prions that cause BSE are externally introduced through cattle feed. You'd have to have all the components of cattle feed be produced from prion free animals also. Not likely unless all cattle feed was constantly tested for the presence of any prions at all.
35 USC 102(a) says you can't patent something if it was known or published by someone else before you invented it. I think (b) means you can publish the invention up to a year before you apply for the patent. Otherwise, what would be the point of public disclosure if others could patent your ideas so easily?
Except that they're not the defendants in this case. Which is too bad since their twisted and distorted delusional logic would certainly support such an argument.
They can't. The American public is so stupid that they think they're being cheated if prices got rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Yes, stores could price everthing at 3 or 8 cents on the last digit but unless you buy everything a single item a time, things will work out. But lets say for the sake of argument that stores always got 5 cents extra. That just works out as part of the profit margin and unless you think there is no such thing as competition, stores will adjust their prices to compensate. In fact they should pass a law that stores have to truncate instead of rounding off. Stores will raise prices to compensate and stupid consumers will think they're getting a deal anyway. Win, win!
I never get asked for code. I have code samples all over usenet and in an open source project. Though it's probably a good thing that I've never been asked. It's mostly experimental prototype code and even I can't understand it if I haven't worked on it recently. A word of advice. Stay away from the advanced stuff. There's maybe 10 people in the world that actually understand stuff in the esoteric area I coded in. If they were hiring managers, I'd have it made. But they're not, so as far as real hiring managers are concerned, it really is spagetti code.
So pick something real simple that will demonstrate some clean design and coding principles. It will get complicated enough as it is.
Royalties are a percentage of revenue AFAIK. If the industry is getting less revenue, then they're *already* paying out less royalties. Is the RIAA assuming the public is as mathematically challenged as they are? What are they using for lawyers? Bugblatter beasts?
If they just scanned at roadblocks that would probably work. What they really need to do is have a network of sensors that log traffic. They can either track the car from the logs, or if plates were switched, figure out what plates were substituted and track that. Thieves probably aren't up on graph theory.
Most equipement in data centers are space heaters. Walk behind any piece of equipement such as a server, disk array, or network switch and while super cool air in going in the front, very warm or hot air is coming out the back.
Basically, the equipement vendors haven't figured out how to get performance without putting the fastest, and therefore the hottest, processors and disks they can get. I don't think the problem will get solved as long as their response is "we need to get a better and more reliable supply of electricity" instead of "we're using too much electricity. How can we change this?".
I don't see how this is going to help. And even if we could, how would that help everyone who is not a PHD. All the articles of this type see to imply there is some kind of trickle down effect that we haven't see so far. Who benefits from all this exactly? Sorry, this is yet more propaganda from industry who wants to maintain an oversupply of highly skilled labor.
There are companies that offer a service to scan code for known open source code so that propietary code doesn't get caught by GPL and other license issues. But you can't scan the other way around since propietary code is not always published.
The only thing you can do is verify the real identity of the contributers so they can be prosecuted if they do something bad and hope that serves as a deterrent.
This problem isn't exactly original with software. Plagiarism has affected publishing almost from the beginning. Stealing credit for other people's ideas is nothing new. The proto geek who invented fire probably had credit for it stolen from him by some hairy neanderthal type.
You can't change the size or shape of the currency. There's way too much currency handling equipement, e.g. bill counters, bill changers, and atm's, in place to be able to be able to handle that. Any encoding scheme like OCR, magnetic ink or rfid would require a reader device which might be awkward. The only thing I can think of is to punch holes in the money, a sort of negative braille. You'd have to arrange the hole patterns so that any attempt to modify them would produce an invalid pattern. And you'd want to reenforce the holes slightly so they wouldn't tear too easily.
The problem with nuclear power is that even though in theory it can be done safely, the nuclear power industry has consistently proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted to adhere to even minimal safety standards. They like to cut corners especially in personnel. Homer Simpson is not entirely a work of fiction. Go research all the news articles about undertrained staff and staff caught sleeping on the job. I remember one case there they traced some contamination back to some retard of a truck driver handling low level liquid waste who was just sloshing it all over the place while loading and unloading his tanker truck. Basically he didn't believe it was dangerous. There's a whole class of people who believe if something doesn't kill you instantly on the spot that it's not dangerous. They're stupid, work cheaply, and are the ideal nuclear industry worker as far as the industry is concerned.
Plus there's the slight problem of what to do with all the nuclear waste. It's going to be a burden on generations upon generations to come. But if you're the kind of moral slime mold that believes in taxing your children and grandchildren by borrowing to maintain your lifestyle, then sticking it to even later generations is an easy choice.
Basically OS2 took on more than they could handle and were out of their depth. They didn't have the kernel development experience that the other kernel development groups had. My impression is they didn't want to hire in people who knew more than they did since it would jepordize their big frog in small puddle status. This delayed things so when they were finally forced to add more people it was too late. The adding more people to a late project makes it later mythical man month thing. And the '93 layoff happened in that time frame and there were a lot of skilled people available. So no excuse that there was a shortage there.
I don't think any house is built to standard these days. If the standard says 3 nails per stud, you're lucky to get two nails per. The resulting house is so flimsy that you can literally grab a house by the corner post after the framing in done and wobble the entire structure back and forth. Sometimes even after the sheathing in put on. Sheathing isn't supposed to be the main factor in structural stability, it's there for insulation. Housing inspectors aren't a help here. They're incredibily corrupt.
IIRC, a lot of the damage from hurricanes was to houses not built to existing code. So unless they use these nails on the builders themselves, I don't think they'll do that much good.
This has nothing to do making patents and the whole concept of intellectual property logical, begging the fact that you could define logical in the first place. This is slashdot, remember?
This is about vested interests, corporations, not individuals, trying to maintain a system that so far has been to their advantage. Most of them got to where they are by being good at the present set of rules and they're not about to radically change those rules and lose that advantage.
The only chance you have of radically changing it would be to force it to break completely. You'd need to help the patent trolls get patents good enough to seriously threaten the present entrenched players, the big corporations. In theory the patent trolls could see through this scheme and realize that parasites that kill all of their hosts don't have long lifespans either. But trolls are greedy and they won't be able to help themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."
It's not totally binary but large portions of it are. You just need to find a table that shows the relationships. The one I saw was in an old dictionary which I know longer have. Here's one table for volume measurements.
If you can find a chart of the old terms of English units of measure, you'll find everything was half or twice the the next unit of measure, i.e. 2 cups equal a pint, 2 pints equal a quart, etc... Most of the units have fallen out of usage so it's not as obvious anymore. The only advantage of metric is everyone is used to decimal fractions vs. binary fractions. I have a digital caliper which automatically converts between english and metric but it's difficult to whether a decimal measurement in english corresponds to a corresponding standard english size. E.g. is something closer to 15/64 or to 1/4? I have fractional caliphers which give an analog readout in english fractions and it's a lot easier to guess from that than from the digital calipher.
The big problem is mixing standard sizes from english and metric when some of them are close. Most pc's use a mix of M3 metric and #6 english screws which are different enough to keep straight. Once in a while you find some odd component with #4 which might look like M3 if you're not careful and you get some nice cross threading there.
These days they would have said, "Sorry Albert, but your current job is a patent clerk and we're looking for somebody with current experience as a theoretical physicist".
It will involve a conversion from the traditional ownership model of not just software and media, but of hardware as well. One of the reasons I haven't invested in any DVR schemes even though it would fit in very well with my TV viewing habits or more accurately, lack there of, is it would be a waste of money given most schemes are propietary and short lived. Going to a subscription model would be better since I'm not out anything if a vendor goes out of business or changes protocols and/or formats.
I don't necessarily want to work for Google but it would be interesting to see the actual survey.
Some of us could certainly think of ways to easily identify video content. I've thought of a way. I don't know if it is feasible but I'm not going to post the idea here. If anything, I'd patent to to keep it from being used. Why help an industry who is so consumer unfriendly?
Normal high tempurature sterialization of surgical instruments that have been used for brain surgury doesn't destroy prions. You have to use more exotic techniques that are a little rougher on surgical instruments. It's a big problem for hospitals. So mere cooking wouldn't affect prions.
The prions that cause BSE are externally introduced through cattle feed. You'd have to have all the components of cattle feed be produced from prion free animals also. Not likely unless all cattle feed was constantly tested for the presence of any prions at all.
35 USC 102(a) says you can't patent something if it was known or published by someone else before you invented it. I think (b) means you can publish the invention up to a year before you apply for the patent. Otherwise, what would be the point of public disclosure if others could patent your ideas so easily?
Except that they're not the defendants in this case. Which is too bad since their twisted and distorted delusional logic would certainly support such an argument.
that cost me $14 at the time and supports switching to 4 different hosts?
They can't. The American public is so stupid that they think they're being cheated if prices got rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Yes, stores could price everthing at 3 or 8 cents on the last digit but unless you buy everything a single item a time, things will work out. But lets say for the sake of argument that stores always got 5 cents extra. That just works out as part of the profit margin and unless you think there is no such thing as competition, stores will adjust their prices to compensate. In fact they should pass a law that stores have to truncate instead of rounding off. Stores will raise prices to compensate and stupid consumers will think they're getting a deal anyway. Win, win!
I never get asked for code. I have code samples all over usenet and in an open source project. Though it's probably a good thing that I've never been asked. It's mostly experimental prototype code and even I can't understand it if I haven't worked on it recently. A word of advice. Stay away from the advanced stuff. There's maybe 10 people in the world that actually understand stuff in the esoteric area I coded in. If they were hiring managers, I'd have it made. But they're not, so as far as real hiring managers are concerned, it really is spagetti code.
So pick something real simple that will demonstrate some clean design and coding principles. It will get complicated enough as it is.
Royalties are a percentage of revenue AFAIK. If the industry is getting less revenue, then they're *already* paying out less royalties. Is the RIAA assuming the public is as mathematically challenged as they are? What are they using for lawyers? Bugblatter beasts?
If they just scanned at roadblocks that would probably work. What they really need to do is have a network of sensors that log traffic. They can either track the car from the logs, or if plates were switched, figure out what plates were substituted and track that. Thieves probably aren't up on graph theory.
Most equipement in data centers are space heaters. Walk behind any piece of equipement such as a server, disk array, or network switch and while super cool air in going in the front, very warm or hot air is coming out the back.
Basically, the equipement vendors haven't figured out how to get performance without putting the fastest, and therefore the hottest, processors and disks they can get. I don't think the problem will get solved as long as their response is "we need to get a better and more reliable supply of electricity" instead of "we're using too much electricity. How can we change this?".
would be more productive given some of the corporate scandles we've had. That's where the big losses have occurred.
I don't see how this is going to help. And even if we could, how would that help everyone who is not a PHD. All the articles of this type see to imply there is some kind of trickle down effect that we haven't see so far. Who benefits from all this exactly? Sorry, this is yet more propaganda from industry who wants to maintain an oversupply of highly skilled labor.
There are companies that offer a service to scan code for known open source code so that propietary code doesn't get caught by GPL and other license issues. But you can't scan the other way around since propietary code is not always published.
The only thing you can do is verify the real identity of the contributers so they can be prosecuted if they do something bad and hope that serves as a deterrent.
This problem isn't exactly original with software. Plagiarism has affected publishing almost from the beginning. Stealing credit for other people's ideas is nothing new. The proto geek who invented fire probably had credit for it stolen from him by some hairy neanderthal type.
You can't change the size or shape of the currency. There's way too much currency handling equipement, e.g. bill counters, bill changers, and atm's, in place to be able to be able to handle that. Any encoding scheme like OCR, magnetic ink or rfid would require a reader device which might be awkward. The only thing I can think of is to punch holes in the money, a sort of negative braille. You'd have to arrange the hole patterns so that any attempt to modify them would produce an invalid pattern. And you'd want to reenforce the holes slightly so they wouldn't tear too easily.
Plus there's the slight problem of what to do with all the nuclear waste. It's going to be a burden on generations upon generations to come. But if you're the kind of moral slime mold that believes in taxing your children and grandchildren by borrowing to maintain your lifestyle, then sticking it to even later generations is an easy choice.
Basically OS2 took on more than they could handle and were out of their depth. They didn't have the kernel development experience that the other kernel development groups had. My impression is they didn't want to hire in people who knew more than they did since it would jepordize their big frog in small puddle status. This delayed things so when they were finally forced to add more people it was too late. The adding more people to a late project makes it later mythical man month thing. And the '93 layoff happened in that time frame and there were a lot of skilled people available. So no excuse that there was a shortage there.
I don't think any house is built to standard these days. If the standard says 3 nails per stud, you're lucky to get two nails per. The resulting house is so flimsy that you can literally grab a house by the corner post after the framing in done and wobble the entire structure back and forth. Sometimes even after the sheathing in put on. Sheathing isn't supposed to be the main factor in structural stability, it's there for insulation. Housing inspectors aren't a help here. They're incredibily corrupt.
IIRC, a lot of the damage from hurricanes was to houses not built to existing code. So unless they use these nails on the builders themselves, I don't think they'll do that much good.
This is about vested interests, corporations, not individuals, trying to maintain a system that so far has been to their advantage. Most of them got to where they are by being good at the present set of rules and they're not about to radically change those rules and lose that advantage.
The only chance you have of radically changing it would be to force it to break completely. You'd need to help the patent trolls get patents good enough to seriously threaten the present entrenched players, the big corporations. In theory the patent trolls could see through this scheme and realize that parasites that kill all of their hosts don't have long lifespans either. But trolls are greedy and they won't be able to help themselves.