Being in a jury selection process myself recently, the lawyers barely talk about the parties at all. In fact, they are as round-about and obtuse as possible, to the point of asking nearly idiotic questions like "do you have any preconceived notions about patents?". So unless he was following Seagate's progress on a daily basis for 15+ years, he was without a doubt NOT informed during the process of selection that Samsung had a share in Seagate. He probably didn't know that Seagate owns Maxtor. Or that Apple owns a stake in Akamai. Such things are not really common knowledge except maybe here at slashdot.;)
Very few lawyers go to the trouble of posting a list of every company and sub-company that a corporation of that size owns and all of the stock options that it also holds (it's unlikely that such information would be easily available, as well), and then asking jurors to announce if they ever had dealings with any of these dozens of companies. They hardly even mention the company's name if they can help it.
In every instance that I have seen, they ask the potential jurors if they are able to be impartial. If the defendant says yes, and they don't do any followup, it's the lawyer's decision. Even then, even if there IS a bias, the lawyers have the option to excuse the person. Though they also always ask "Will this bias keep you from making an impartial decision in this specific case?" before deciding to finally get rid of you or not. Sometimes they do not as they have bigger idiots and problems to get rid of (like a juror that is too smart or opinionated or conservative or...) and then run out of options. Sometimes they simply don't ask any more questions and move on.
If the lawyers say the jury that they have selected is acceptable, it's not the jury's fault any more.
Lying to the court is still misconduct, so whether or not his personal feelings were allowed at that point they shouldn't have reached that point.
True. But it could just as easily be claimed that he personally didn't know that Samsung owned the company in question. Do you know all of the companies that, say, G.E. owns? In any case, his being impartial despite his past dealings with a subsidiary of Samsung likely wasn't a factor. Until the judge said basically, "figure it out yourself, the trial is a disaster."
In any case dealing with patents and copyrights, the onus is on the defendant to prove that they didn't break the law. It's contrary to most other forms of law in that the defendant is assumed to be guilty first and has to prove their innocence. If they can't, then as I stated originally, it's over. I thought this was obvious, so I condensed my original post to reflect this fact.
Samsung can't defend versus the charges. They lose at that point, no matter what Apple is or is not doing.
There's a big difference, though. The judge did effectively say that both companies should be considered to be acting in such a manner, but the instructions against Samsung (as the defendant) obviously carried far more weight. And it allowed (legally) personal feelings to be part of the decision making process at that point by the jury. At that point, from a practical standpoint, Apple didn't really have to show everything (that's what the upcoming counter-suit is all about - watch Apple get reamed for the same reasons, most likely) to make its case at that point. If the Jury could basically be as impartial to both as it wished, well Samsung simply loses, as I said.
Samsung also has a history of doing this in 2004. Apple's errors were of omission and basically refusing to show all of its evidence.(basically being asses and cock-blocking everything) Samsung's errors were clearly destruction of evidence on a massive scale, as is their long-standing policy. They basically chose to ignore discovery laws in North America and follow what's legal in South Korea. Which is apparently almost anything you want to do by comparison. Thumbing your nose at the courts in the U.S. and refusing to comply pretty much gets you a pounding every time. Samsung's misdeeds here are far more severe than Apple's.
To clarify: Judge: "They both were lying asshats. Assume Samsung is guilty and unable to make an adequate defense against the charges. Assume Apple's claims are overblown. Feel free to be as impartial as you see fit. I'm done with this." Jury:"Awesome. "We'll be back in a few hours after we figure out what charges Samsung can't defend against and which ones Apple is going overboard on."
“Apple sought a finding that Samsung spoliated evidence, and as a sanction for such conduct, an adverse inference jury instruction “to the effect that: (1) Samsung had a duty to preserve relevant evidence, including emails; Samsung failed to preserve large volumes of relevant emails and other documents; Samsung acted in bad faith in failing to preserve the relevant documents; and the jury may presume that the documents that Samsung failed to preserve would have been favorable to Apple's case and unfavorable to Samsung; and (2) if the jury finds infringement of any Apple patent, trademark, or trade dress, that jury may infer that the infringement was intentional, willful, and without regard to Apple's rights.”
The jury was issued an Adverse Inference Instruction by the judge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference Quote from Wikipedia: "The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit pointed out in 2004, in a case involving spoliation (destruction) of evidence, that "...the giving of an adverse inference instruction often terminates the litigation in that it is 'too difficult a hurdle' for the spoliating party to overcome. The court therefore concluded that the adverse inference instruction is an 'extreme' sanction that should 'not be given lightly'...".
Judge: "Assume Samsung is guilty. Feel free to be as impartial as you wish to be." Jury: "Sweet. We'll be back in a few hours and can go home early."
The critical point in all of this is that Velvin Hogan's personal feelings were legally allowed to be part of the decision making process at that point. There is no misconduct.
Physical copies are a different story. Almost nobody expects physical copies to exist any more since emails and computers have been the norm for a few decades now. Note - if you did run a business purely by phone and on paper, you could get around much of this. But it would have to quite literally be 100% offline. Of course, failure to have physical copies at that point pretty much tanks your case. It's why a lot of companies that are still paper-based have sometimes decades of files in storage. Just in case.
Electronic copies are to be kept for whatever is required by law. Any gaps are considered to be essentially willfully done or done via negligence by the courts. If there's say, a fire, then it's more of a gray area, of course. A lot of companies aren't remotely in compliance with data retention laws, unfortunately, and get an earful (or more) when they get in front of a judge. Some just settle as well because the second that they look into the laws and realize that they never did anything correctly, it's better than get reamed in court.
It used to be a lot more lax, but in the last decade, the laws have gotten almost a bit crazy.
Obviously the rules differ by industry as well as for data type. Also, by jurisdiction (with, for instance, California and New York being among the most strict about it) Government projects, defense contractors, and so on have a lot more leeway. But 98% of the time, we're talking about email and database records that mysteriously go missing (which is all the courts really seem to actually care about unless it's relevant to the case itself, like a specific patent or piece of code). The general consensus is that you keep email backups forever. Some mid-size companies even have a dedicated person in IT who manages all of this and knows the laws regarding this.
http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/ Improper data retention was a major factor in the Samsung vs Apple case, in fact. And this same messup will likely crush them in their counter-suit since the judge will likely tell the jury to assume the worst concerning Samsung since they pretty much destroyed documents on purpose.
One downside, though, of the design was that you had to adjust the valves every year or two. The low weight certainly helped as well, what with a Civic now weighing 3000lbs+
True. There's the above-ground ideas and potential market for this kind of product (and why you absolutely DO get the permits and business license as the creator) and the real less than honest reason which is what usually ends up happening to good intentions.
I smell legislation with the government coming down on this sort of printing like a bag of hammers in 5...4... 3...
Moral of the story: Get your ducks in a row before doing anything that is a legally or socially gray area. A couple of hundred dollars and a business license would have saved him a lot of angst and likely kept if from hitting the fan.
That's not actually true. It's smog control devices that mandate lower compression ratios in order to limit emissions. You can make a car that runs on any compression ratio that you desire. But good luck getting it to pass smog if it's much above 12:1.
Note - the 2012 Civic runs at a 10.6:1 ratio. Much lower since smog limits are so crazy as of late. The engine has a lot less power (actual torque) and it needs an extra gear in the transmission to keep fuel economy up.
People were doing this type of "conversion" back in the 70s. With exactly the same sort of pathetic 30-45 mile range. For half the cost, even adjusted for inflation. It would have been news. 40 years ago.
Personal rant: Is anyone at Slashdot actually taking time to double-check submissions any more? Most of what I see as of late isn't actually news or is news that you see everyplace else as well.
But this is a huge gray area since making it "one click" simple eventually, to make these at home is essentially distributing firearms. I suppose a judge would have to rule on it, but given the government's lack of humor about such things in the past, I'm not expecting the small guy to win here.
When you can print a lower for $5 in materials, and you can save half a pound off the weight of, say, a typical 1911, you've got a potentially marketable product. And as far as the money goes, the government doesn't care if he's making a a hundred dollars or ten cents in donations - it's going to make them mad at you if you don't have the proper licenses. No money, no items, and no blueprints/software/etc are allowed to change hands without it being considered to be a business by them.
He just screwed up by not filling in the right paperwork first. So the printer company yanked his lease to be safe. (I suspect a simple business license would have been enough, actually, to avoid all of this) Also, there's nothing to say that as a business, he couldn't be offering the plans for free. Some businesses offer free versions of their products. Free if you want, already completed and ready to purchase if you don't have a printer and a few dozen hours to mess with getting it calibrated and working right.
The home based 3d printing community actually follows this exact business model. Free if you want to DIY, or buy it ready to go. Open Source and Commercial working side by side without conflict.
I used to work for a data forensics company a few years ago and trust me. It's never gone. Don't even bother to try to hide it or destroy it. (the act of destruction alone is seen as admitting guilt to the courts - and there are huge fines as well) It's also why 90% of most lawsuits settle out of court. Every company does morally questionable practices and sometimes outright illegal ones, so getting a look at their data is the last thing they want their competition or lawyers to be able to do.
But, while it is not illegal to make a firearm for your own use. But he's got a major problem as the government sees "donations" and "selling" as pretty much the same thing when it comes to this. He's taking money in in some form and offering essentially DIY gun kits. Bad move. He's a moron for not paying the fees and doing the paperwork and then doing what hundreds of other companies small and large are doing legally. Firearms are BIG money in the U.S. He can then go one step further and offer the things as working cheaper alternatives, offer cheaper replacement parts, and so on.
That's how he makes money at this. Not via donations, but via running a proper business. After all, have you SEEN the price of most firearms lately? A half or quarter-priced alternative would sell like crazy. He'd probably get a major retailer interested as well if the designs were properly safe and functional. As that show Son of Guns says, "If you're properly trained; if you're properly licensed, and you follow all of the laws, you too can do this." It never ceases to amaze me how many people out there make their lives difficult when a few dollars and some forms would have solved everything. Get your paperwork in order and you're golden. Forget about it and you're going to be dealing with people with little or no sense of humor.
He had a genius idea and should have run it as a business. Now, he's given most of the info away and is stuck without the right permits and even a printer.
There's also the what emergency room workers call motorcycle riders who don't have helmets.
"Organ donors"
A shocking 42% of motorcycle deaths are attributed to not having a helmet. Now, true, some would have died anyways. Nothing's going to save you being launched 500 ft when you hit something at 150mph. But that also doesn't factor in the secondary issues like concussions, brain damage, and having half of your face ground off instead of your helmet taking the abrasions.
The evidence is clear Motorcycle helmets do save lives and are an absolute requirement if you plan on living to see your grandchildren as a rider. The only difference between a motorcycle and a bicycle is one typically goes 2-3 times faster than the other.(if you are obeying the law, naturally)
Some study in Europe is meaningless. Here in America, people drive massive 3 ton SUVs at 45mph just getting their kids to school on time. We consistently drive faster than any other nation on the planet, have more vehicles, more miles of paved roads, and our cars weigh the most on average. Getting hit by one of these yuppie idiots who is on their phone in their urban assault tank while on a bike is like being hit like a ping pong ball. Of course you wear a helmet. It's your only chance to even end up in the hospital instead of a coffin.
Imposing them? Well, I personally favor Darwinism for the stupid. But you're stupid to not wear one, law or not.
The main issue with running under WINE is that they have to use proprietary code for the mouse and input drivers.
What this means is that the mouse doesn't work in 80%+ of games. It's a known issue and they refuse to deal with it, despite having had a working solution when they were still offering their commercial product. They pontificate on their forums about how they support free software only and take the usual neckbeard cave-dweller *IX hard-line about "no commercial anything anywhere, any time." All the while while they HAVE the code.
They even go so far as to delete posts and requests about mouse problems from their forums and claim that there's no problem, or that it works fine. Wine are complete assholes about it. I can run Mass Effect 1 perfectly except there's ZERO control of the character with the mouse - it's just dead. No fix at all.
When I had Cedega, it ran perfectly. They killed Cedega and presto - everything simply broke due to worthless drivers.
You can bet that Steam will have no such issues getting the mouse and joystick working properly.
So after both parties come apart at the seams, what's going to happen? It is rather appalling that they have managed to shift politics so far to the right that basically we have New Republican and Fundamentalist to chose from. There isn't even a real moderate position, let alone anything truly progressive, liberal, libertarian, or that supports The Constitution.
I used to joke that it's a choice between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Now, It's not really that funny any more.
Romney's ambition has always been to be President, but things have gotten so much worse in the last few years. He's kind of got no options - either join up with the devil and pretend to be one of them, (like half of the members of Congress I suspect) or be his real self and not get the nomination. I find it almost comical how the RNC can't get candidates that legitimately win by a healthy margin(Bush being elected by the Supreme court's 5-4 decision is not a "win") because anyone who would get the nomination is unelectable, and anyone who would win the election can't survive the primaries.
Republicans love to say how great Regan was. Today, he wouldn't make it to the convention. Jeb Bush (as an example) was thinking about running at one point but gave up as it was clearly a waste of time to try to compete with the fundamentalist fist-pounding, rage-hate about Obama (mostly for no real reason, since he does what Congress wants anyways), and political agenda that was lifted from Ayn Rand. The RNC has completely self-destructed. And now they are throwing Romney under the bus because he's not good enough. No, it's not their morally bankrupt, bigoted, money-worshiping agenda. Of course it isn't. It has to be Romney that's the problem.
As for Ron Paul, you could see it when abortion, religion, and Obamahate(tm) came up. "me too" was pretty much his answer and he quickly moved on. And there's a TON of stuff he had to leave out because the other candidates would have looked at him like he was from Mars. (instead of like he was from some foreign country, like they did)
The President sends Congress a wish-list of what he wants them to do, but it's largely ignored by Congress. (this has been the pattern for several years now, actually). So, yes, Obama's. "budget" was not passed as he initially submitted it to them.. They basically told him where to stick it and did their own thing instead. Eventually the President had to cave in to Congress' demands. But a budget was actually passed. Just not really the one Obama wanted.
Congress passes a budget every year. Sometimes late, but they do actually get one passed.
Romney does come from one of the most liberal states in the country. So much so that he's not likely to even win his own state in the election. He's closer to, say, a Texas Democrat or Oregon Republican (read: fairly moderate) than the asshat fundamentalist that he's been trying to portray himself as in order to get the nomination. So of course nothing much makes sense. He's not being himself in any of this and refuses to say anything lest he be branded as a liberal by most of the extreme right in his party. After all, his positions ARE pretty similar to Obama's.
The problem is that he was a moderately conservative (his being a complete jerk aside) governor in an extremely liberal state who was pushed into the feeding frenzy that is Washington politics. So of course he got blind-sided. What he considered normal conservative practices and ideology wasn't even on the same planet as what the embittered fanatics in the RNC were espousing on a national level. Note how even Ron Paul also got pushed so hard to the right that he wasn't even able to say much of anything about his core Libertarian beliefs in the primaries.
As for Torvalds, he's as much of a spokesperson for Linux and its various distros and forks as Bill Gates is for Microsoft at this point. He has some connection to the product that he created, but essentially doesn't actually do anything meaningful at this point.
The Devs of Mint have their own version, Cinnamon, that they use and work on. I highly recommend it, since it's basically a front-end replacement for KDE. Very fast and slick. All of the newest fixes and apps and so on are being developed there first from what I can tell. It's a simple install, as it's really a re-worked shell and not a full distro.
Cinnamon is just awesome. A different interface look to be sure, but it isn't Unity BS or Gnome bloat.
I'm running Mint with Cinnamon added. I also added a dock and a couple of monitoring apps. It basically runs like a much faster, more streamlined version of Apple's OS. Cinnamon is the Mint developer team's personal customized setup/project and represents a departure as it operates a lot more like Linux 12 interface-wise (though the core is up to date, naturally). A lot of people like myself are upset at the move towards making everything look and feel like a tablet or iPhone.
Mint 13 takes care of the drivers and other issues - it simply works out of the box (as it were). Cinnamon fixes the whole interface and makes it work in a fairly intelligent and seamless manner. The apps make sense and it looks great. Speed is very good, even on older machines, as it appears to be KDE based.
The community site is largely worthless for tech fixes, but at least they see the wisdom of using proprietary codecs and apps when required to instead of having this insane "100% free or nothing at all for you" attitude that is causing most of the other distros to stagnate. ie - you can't have seamless integration and cross-platform compatibility with hardware and software without allowing commercial code to also run side-by-side with your OS. Unless you really want to live in 1999 again.
I also installed the OEM NVidia drivers. I even managed to get Portal 2 (yes, and Steam of course) running under Wine.
Note - the release of NVidia's drivers happened less than a year ago. Most people still don't know about it.
Oh, don't worry. We'll have killed off our oceans long before then at this rate. The real issue nobody seems to be dealing with is our oceans and how polluted they are.
Of course, even if it only worked 1/10th as well as it could, consider what that would do to conventional drives. Getting rid of the effect of mass even to a very reasonable amount would allow us to either make much larger ships to, say, get to Mars, or it would allow us to get there in weeks or days. The original design says that it would allow for speeds up to 10x, but it also would allow a ship to go the speed of light (or close enough so that it doesn't matter) with a small fraction of the energy. That's impressive any way you slice it.
Slashdot Mirror
Being in a jury selection process myself recently, the lawyers barely talk about the parties at all. In fact, they are as round-about and obtuse as possible, to the point of asking nearly idiotic questions like "do you have any preconceived notions about patents?". So unless he was following Seagate's progress on a daily basis for 15+ years, he was without a doubt NOT informed during the process of selection that Samsung had a share in Seagate. He probably didn't know that Seagate owns Maxtor. Or that Apple owns a stake in Akamai. Such things are not really common knowledge except maybe here at slashdot. ;)
Very few lawyers go to the trouble of posting a list of every company and sub-company that a corporation of that size owns and all of the stock options that it also holds (it's unlikely that such information would be easily available, as well), and then asking jurors to announce if they ever had dealings with any of these dozens of companies. They hardly even mention the company's name if they can help it.
In every instance that I have seen, they ask the potential jurors if they are able to be impartial. If the defendant says yes, and they don't do any followup, it's the lawyer's decision. Even then, even if there IS a bias, the lawyers have the option to excuse the person. Though they also always ask "Will this bias keep you from making an impartial decision in this specific case?" before deciding to finally get rid of you or not. Sometimes they do not as they have bigger idiots and problems to get rid of (like a juror that is too smart or opinionated or conservative or...) and then run out of options. Sometimes they simply don't ask any more questions and move on.
If the lawyers say the jury that they have selected is acceptable, it's not the jury's fault any more.
Lying to the court is still misconduct, so whether or not his personal feelings were allowed at that point they shouldn't have reached that point.
True. But it could just as easily be claimed that he personally didn't know that Samsung owned the company in question. Do you know all of the companies that, say, G.E. owns? In any case, his being impartial despite his past dealings with a subsidiary of Samsung likely wasn't a factor. Until the judge said basically, "figure it out yourself, the trial is a disaster."
In any case dealing with patents and copyrights, the onus is on the defendant to prove that they didn't break the law. It's contrary to most other forms of law in that the defendant is assumed to be guilty first and has to prove their innocence. If they can't, then as I stated originally, it's over. I thought this was obvious, so I condensed my original post to reflect this fact.
Samsung can't defend versus the charges. They lose at that point, no matter what Apple is or is not doing.
http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/
There's a big difference, though. The judge did effectively say that both companies should be considered to be acting in such a manner, but the instructions against Samsung (as the defendant) obviously carried far more weight. And it allowed (legally) personal feelings to be part of the decision making process at that point by the jury. At that point, from a practical standpoint, Apple didn't really have to show everything (that's what the upcoming counter-suit is all about - watch Apple get reamed for the same reasons, most likely) to make its case at that point. If the Jury could basically be as impartial to both as it wished, well Samsung simply loses, as I said.
Samsung also has a history of doing this in 2004.
Apple's errors were of omission and basically refusing to show all of its evidence.(basically being asses and cock-blocking everything) Samsung's errors were clearly destruction of evidence on a massive scale, as is their long-standing policy. They basically chose to ignore discovery laws in North America and follow what's legal in South Korea. Which is apparently almost anything you want to do by comparison. Thumbing your nose at the courts in the U.S. and refusing to comply pretty much gets you a pounding every time. Samsung's misdeeds here are far more severe than Apple's.
To clarify:
Judge: "They both were lying asshats. Assume Samsung is guilty and unable to make an adequate defense against the charges. Assume Apple's claims are overblown. Feel free to be as impartial as you see fit. I'm done with this."
Jury:"Awesome. "We'll be back in a few hours after we figure out what charges Samsung can't defend against and which ones Apple is going overboard on."
Samsung was destroying emails and manipulating the discovery process.
http://internationaledisclosure.blogspot.com/2012/09/apple-v-samsung-largest-international.html
Here's what the judge had to say:
“Apple sought a finding that Samsung spoliated evidence, and as a sanction for such conduct, an adverse inference jury instruction “to the effect that: (1) Samsung had a duty to preserve relevant evidence, including emails; Samsung failed to preserve large volumes of relevant emails and other documents; Samsung acted in bad faith in failing to preserve the relevant documents; and the jury may presume that the documents that Samsung failed to preserve would have been favorable to Apple's case and unfavorable to Samsung; and (2) if the jury finds infringement of any Apple patent, trademark, or trade dress, that jury may infer that the infringement was intentional, willful, and without regard to Apple's rights.”
The jury was issued an Adverse Inference Instruction by the judge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
Quote from Wikipedia:
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit pointed out in 2004, in a case involving spoliation (destruction) of evidence, that "...the giving of an adverse inference instruction often terminates the litigation in that it is 'too difficult a hurdle' for the spoliating party to overcome. The court therefore concluded that the adverse inference instruction is an 'extreme' sanction that should 'not be given lightly'...".
Judge: "Assume Samsung is guilty. Feel free to be as impartial as you wish to be."
Jury: "Sweet. We'll be back in a few hours and can go home early."
The critical point in all of this is that Velvin Hogan's personal feelings were legally allowed to be part of the decision making process at that point. There is no misconduct.
Physical copies are a different story. Almost nobody expects physical copies to exist any more since emails and computers have been the norm for a few decades now. Note - if you did run a business purely by phone and on paper, you could get around much of this. But it would have to quite literally be 100% offline. Of course, failure to have physical copies at that point pretty much tanks your case. It's why a lot of companies that are still paper-based have sometimes decades of files in storage. Just in case.
Electronic copies are to be kept for whatever is required by law. Any gaps are considered to be essentially willfully done or done via negligence by the courts. If there's say, a fire, then it's more of a gray area, of course. A lot of companies aren't remotely in compliance with data retention laws, unfortunately, and get an earful (or more) when they get in front of a judge. Some just settle as well because the second that they look into the laws and realize that they never did anything correctly, it's better than get reamed in court.
It used to be a lot more lax, but in the last decade, the laws have gotten almost a bit crazy.
Obviously the rules differ by industry as well as for data type. Also, by jurisdiction (with, for instance, California and New York being among the most strict about it) Government projects, defense contractors, and so on have a lot more leeway. But 98% of the time, we're talking about email and database records that mysteriously go missing (which is all the courts really seem to actually care about unless it's relevant to the case itself, like a specific patent or piece of code). The general consensus is that you keep email backups forever. Some mid-size companies even have a dedicated person in IT who manages all of this and knows the laws regarding this.
http://www.dredlaw.com/2009/07/new-e-discovery-rules-in-california.html
As I said, it's gotten a bit crazy as of late.
http://nextpoint.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/learn-how-to-avoid-a-case-killer/
Improper data retention was a major factor in the Samsung vs Apple case, in fact. And this same messup will likely crush them in their counter-suit since the judge will likely tell the jury to assume the worst concerning Samsung since they pretty much destroyed documents on purpose.
One downside, though, of the design was that you had to adjust the valves every year or two. The low weight certainly helped as well, what with a Civic now weighing 3000lbs+
True. There's the above-ground ideas and potential market for this kind of product (and why you absolutely DO get the permits and business license as the creator) and the real less than honest reason which is what usually ends up happening to good intentions.
I smell legislation with the government coming down on this sort of printing like a bag of hammers in 5...4... 3...
Moral of the story: Get your ducks in a row before doing anything that is a legally or socially gray area. A couple of hundred dollars and a business license would have saved him a lot of angst and likely kept if from hitting the fan.
That's not actually true. It's smog control devices that mandate lower compression ratios in order to limit emissions. You can make a car that runs on any compression ratio that you desire. But good luck getting it to pass smog if it's much above 12:1.
Note - the 2012 Civic runs at a 10.6:1 ratio. Much lower since smog limits are so crazy as of late. The engine has a lot less power (actual torque) and it needs an extra gear in the transmission to keep fuel economy up.
People were doing this type of "conversion" back in the 70s. With exactly the same sort of pathetic 30-45 mile range. For half the cost, even adjusted for inflation. It would have been news. 40 years ago.
Personal rant: Is anyone at Slashdot actually taking time to double-check submissions any more? Most of what I see as of late isn't actually news or is news that you see everyplace else as well.
But this is a huge gray area since making it "one click" simple eventually, to make these at home is essentially distributing firearms. I suppose a judge would have to rule on it, but given the government's lack of humor about such things in the past, I'm not expecting the small guy to win here.
When you can print a lower for $5 in materials, and you can save half a pound off the weight of, say, a typical 1911, you've got a potentially marketable product. And as far as the money goes, the government doesn't care if he's making a a hundred dollars or ten cents in donations - it's going to make them mad at you if you don't have the proper licenses. No money, no items, and no blueprints/software/etc are allowed to change hands without it being considered to be a business by them.
He just screwed up by not filling in the right paperwork first. So the printer company yanked his lease to be safe. (I suspect a simple business license would have been enough, actually, to avoid all of this) Also, there's nothing to say that as a business, he couldn't be offering the plans for free. Some businesses offer free versions of their products. Free if you want, already completed and ready to purchase if you don't have a printer and a few dozen hours to mess with getting it calibrated and working right.
The home based 3d printing community actually follows this exact business model. Free if you want to DIY, or buy it ready to go. Open Source and Commercial working side by side without conflict.
I used to work for a data forensics company a few years ago and trust me. It's never gone. Don't even bother to try to hide it or destroy it. (the act of destruction alone is seen as admitting guilt to the courts - and there are huge fines as well) It's also why 90% of most lawsuits settle out of court. Every company does morally questionable practices and sometimes outright illegal ones, so getting a look at their data is the last thing they want their competition or lawyers to be able to do.
But, while it is not illegal to make a firearm for your own use. But he's got a major problem as the government sees "donations" and "selling" as pretty much the same thing when it comes to this. He's taking money in in some form and offering essentially DIY gun kits. Bad move. He's a moron for not paying the fees and doing the paperwork and then doing what hundreds of other companies small and large are doing legally. Firearms are BIG money in the U.S. He can then go one step further and offer the things as working cheaper alternatives, offer cheaper replacement parts, and so on.
That's how he makes money at this. Not via donations, but via running a proper business. After all, have you SEEN the price of most firearms lately? A half or quarter-priced alternative would sell like crazy. He'd probably get a major retailer interested as well if the designs were properly safe and functional. As that show Son of Guns says, "If you're properly trained; if you're properly licensed, and you follow all of the laws, you too can do this." It never ceases to amaze me how many people out there make their lives difficult when a few dollars and some forms would have solved everything. Get your paperwork in order and you're golden. Forget about it and you're going to be dealing with people with little or no sense of humor.
He had a genius idea and should have run it as a business. Now, he's given most of the info away and is stuck without the right permits and even a printer.
There's also the what emergency room workers call motorcycle riders who don't have helmets.
"Organ donors"
A shocking 42% of motorcycle deaths are attributed to not having a helmet. Now, true, some would have died anyways. Nothing's going to save you being launched 500 ft when you hit something at 150mph. But that also doesn't factor in the secondary issues like concussions, brain damage, and having half of your face ground off instead of your helmet taking the abrasions.
The evidence is clear Motorcycle helmets do save lives and are an absolute requirement if you plan on living to see your grandchildren as a rider. The only difference between a motorcycle and a bicycle is one typically goes 2-3 times faster than the other.(if you are obeying the law, naturally)
Some study in Europe is meaningless. Here in America, people drive massive 3 ton SUVs at 45mph just getting their kids to school on time. We consistently drive faster than any other nation on the planet, have more vehicles, more miles of paved roads, and our cars weigh the most on average. Getting hit by one of these yuppie idiots who is on their phone in their urban assault tank while on a bike is like being hit like a ping pong ball. Of course you wear a helmet. It's your only chance to even end up in the hospital instead of a coffin.
Imposing them? Well, I personally favor Darwinism for the stupid. But you're stupid to not wear one, law or not.
The main issue with running under WINE is that they have to use proprietary code for the mouse and input drivers.
What this means is that the mouse doesn't work in 80%+ of games. It's a known issue and they refuse to deal with it, despite having had a working solution when they were still offering their commercial product. They pontificate on their forums about how they support free software only and take the usual neckbeard cave-dweller *IX hard-line about "no commercial anything anywhere, any time." All the while while they HAVE the code.
They even go so far as to delete posts and requests about mouse problems from their forums and claim that there's no problem, or that it works fine. Wine are complete assholes about it. I can run Mass Effect 1 perfectly except there's ZERO control of the character with the mouse - it's just dead. No fix at all.
When I had Cedega, it ran perfectly. They killed Cedega and presto - everything simply broke due to worthless drivers.
You can bet that Steam will have no such issues getting the mouse and joystick working properly.
So after both parties come apart at the seams, what's going to happen? It is rather appalling that they have managed to shift politics so far to the right that basically we have New Republican and Fundamentalist to chose from. There isn't even a real moderate position, let alone anything truly progressive, liberal, libertarian, or that supports The Constitution.
I used to joke that it's a choice between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Now, It's not really that funny any more.
Romney's ambition has always been to be President, but things have gotten so much worse in the last few years. He's kind of got no options - either join up with the devil and pretend to be one of them, (like half of the members of Congress I suspect) or be his real self and not get the nomination. I find it almost comical how the RNC can't get candidates that legitimately win by a healthy margin(Bush being elected by the Supreme court's 5-4 decision is not a "win") because anyone who would get the nomination is unelectable, and anyone who would win the election can't survive the primaries.
Republicans love to say how great Regan was. Today, he wouldn't make it to the convention. Jeb Bush (as an example) was thinking about running at one point but gave up as it was clearly a waste of time to try to compete with the fundamentalist fist-pounding, rage-hate about Obama (mostly for no real reason, since he does what Congress wants anyways), and political agenda that was lifted from Ayn Rand. The RNC has completely self-destructed. And now they are throwing Romney under the bus because he's not good enough. No, it's not their morally bankrupt, bigoted, money-worshiping agenda. Of course it isn't. It has to be Romney that's the problem.
As for Ron Paul, you could see it when abortion, religion, and Obamahate(tm) came up. "me too" was pretty much his answer and he quickly moved on. And there's a TON of stuff he had to leave out because the other candidates would have looked at him like he was from Mars. (instead of like he was from some foreign country, like they did)
The President sends Congress a wish-list of what he wants them to do, but it's largely ignored by Congress. (this has been the pattern for several years now, actually). So, yes, Obama's. "budget" was not passed as he initially submitted it to them.. They basically told him where to stick it and did their own thing instead. Eventually the President had to cave in to Congress' demands. But a budget was actually passed. Just not really the one Obama wanted.
Congress passes a budget every year. Sometimes late, but they do actually get one passed.
You can check it if you want:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
You can click on the 2011 above the little picture to go to 2011 and 2012's pages. See the "passed" and the date on every page?
Romney does come from one of the most liberal states in the country. So much so that he's not likely to even win his own state in the election. He's closer to, say, a Texas Democrat or Oregon Republican (read: fairly moderate) than the asshat fundamentalist that he's been trying to portray himself as in order to get the nomination. So of course nothing much makes sense. He's not being himself in any of this and refuses to say anything lest he be branded as a liberal by most of the extreme right in his party. After all, his positions ARE pretty similar to Obama's.
The problem is that he was a moderately conservative (his being a complete jerk aside) governor in an extremely liberal state who was pushed into the feeding frenzy that is Washington politics. So of course he got blind-sided. What he considered normal conservative practices and ideology wasn't even on the same planet as what the embittered fanatics in the RNC were espousing on a national level. Note how even Ron Paul also got pushed so hard to the right that he wasn't even able to say much of anything about his core Libertarian beliefs in the primaries.
As for Torvalds, he's as much of a spokesperson for Linux and its various distros and forks as Bill Gates is for Microsoft at this point. He has some connection to the product that he created, but essentially doesn't actually do anything meaningful at this point.
The Devs of Mint have their own version, Cinnamon, that they use and work on. I highly recommend it, since it's basically a front-end replacement for KDE. Very fast and slick. All of the newest fixes and apps and so on are being developed there first from what I can tell. It's a simple install, as it's really a re-worked shell and not a full distro.
Cinnamon is just awesome. A different interface look to be sure, but it isn't Unity BS or Gnome bloat.
I'm running Mint with Cinnamon added. I also added a dock and a couple of monitoring apps. It basically runs like a much faster, more streamlined version of Apple's OS. Cinnamon is the Mint developer team's personal customized setup/project and represents a departure as it operates a lot more like Linux 12 interface-wise (though the core is up to date, naturally). A lot of people like myself are upset at the move towards making everything look and feel like a tablet or iPhone.
Mint 13 takes care of the drivers and other issues - it simply works out of the box (as it were). Cinnamon fixes the whole interface and makes it work in a fairly intelligent and seamless manner. The apps make sense and it looks great. Speed is very good, even on older machines, as it appears to be KDE based.
The community site is largely worthless for tech fixes, but at least they see the wisdom of using proprietary codecs and apps when required to instead of having this insane "100% free or nothing at all for you" attitude that is causing most of the other distros to stagnate. ie - you can't have seamless integration and cross-platform compatibility with hardware and software without allowing commercial code to also run side-by-side with your OS. Unless you really want to live in 1999 again.
I also installed the OEM NVidia drivers. I even managed to get Portal 2 (yes, and Steam of course) running under Wine.
Note - the release of NVidia's drivers happened less than a year ago. Most people still don't know about it.
When a full blown hurricane hits D.C., then they'll pay attention. Any bets on how many years before that happens?
Oh, don't worry. We'll have killed off our oceans long before then at this rate. The real issue nobody seems to be dealing with is our oceans and how polluted they are.
The big deal is that the warming water in the oceans warms up the surrounding land masses and they lose their glaciers and ice.
Greenland is actually turning green again it's getting so warm as of late.
Of course, even if it only worked 1/10th as well as it could, consider what that would do to conventional drives. Getting rid of the effect of mass even to a very reasonable amount would allow us to either make much larger ships to, say, get to Mars, or it would allow us to get there in weeks or days. The original design says that it would allow for speeds up to 10x, but it also would allow a ship to go the speed of light (or close enough so that it doesn't matter) with a small fraction of the energy. That's impressive any way you slice it.