One of the fun points about this is that the current Administration was elected (partially) on their supposed business expertise. Which appears to be actually true as many major businesses flub their own large scale IT projects.
First, TFA says $2.2 billion to $3 billion. Second, TFA says only some of those costs are associated with the handhelds vs. paper issue; the rest is due to increases in other costs (mainly gas and postage). Third, the original contract was for $595 million for devlopment. It is unclear how much of that was spent. They seem to have cancelled the project because they didn't believe the vendor would deliver. The extra funds are primarilly required to hire more people, pay for their workspace, and print the paper.
Isn't the Republican party traditionally the one that raises the biggest fuss about the Bill of Rights?
Yes, except in regards to:
flag burning, removal of christianity from government, pornography, right to protest, right to assemble, right to criticize the government.
Should have been clearer that my atomic warhead is protected, so that I can save my soul from pictures of vaginas.
No problems yet, but, don't you support our troops? Why not give them a place to kick back....
See article
Waterboarding still allows you to refuse to incriminate yourself. Use eminent domain to build shopping centers.
Doesn't apply to 'enemy combatants'. That habius corpus thing was an issue too. Poor people shouldn't get public defenders.
Jury nullification == bad. Cap jury awards. Again, with the enemy combatants. Who are they to insist on non-military tribunals?
This just coddles criminals. Throw the whole thing out.
No privacy, abortion, well, pretty much they only read the enumerated rights. Anything else is liberal activist judges.
They're fine with not allowing the federal government to spend money to expand it's powers. However, anything that would keep morality from being applied nationwide (assisted suicide in Oregon/medical marijuana/gay marriage/etc.) is a subversive liberal plot.
im all for a right to bear arms, albeit with some gun control, but try to imagine the type of political character it would take to incite enough gun owners to rally together in a semi-organized mass in order to cause a specific revolution. it wont happen, and if it did, the outcome would suck horribly. anyway, youd need a huge portion of the military to go with the revolutionary side, or it would last about 20 minutes.
I understand the romantic appeal of 'retaining the right for armed rebellion'. But that didn't work in Pennsylvania. It didn't work with the Confedercy (where they did have 1/2 the army.) And that was back when anyone owning as dangerous a weapon as they want was a valid option.
Nowadays, there is no way I trust any individual with a weapon of mass destruction. Or an anti-aircraft missile. Or a gernade launcher. Or a machine gun. The potential damage an unhinged person could do is huge.
So, if that justification for the second amendment is obsoleced, then the only real justifications are hunting, protection, and for sport. Which makes me feel fine tolerating pretty restrictive gun control.
f *I* were the judge, I would be sorely tempted to rule that since a fine, upstanding corporation like MS would never cheat on taxes or lie in court, they must have enclosed the EULA in error since it cannot be compatible with a sale.
Which is why you are not a judge. Because, then, Microsoft would say, "these people still need to buy a EULA in order to install/use our software. All they bought was one copy, not any rights to reproduce it in RAM or create a derivative product on their hard drive." Oops.
I agree with GP. Yes, they all can deal with the hardware. But frankly, I don't know how to use most software packages as well as less 'technical' people. I don't want to debug someone else's program (I get to do enough of that with my own.)
I don't want to figure out what the UI designer somewhere else thought was a good idea. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the innane (but understandably important) ideas I get from the users about the UI.
Frankly, unless it's a command line program, or designed for developers, somewhat took teh time to try to make it user-friendly. Which is fine, except many developers don't think like that.
So, yes, while I am capable of deciding that I want to install some new software (e.g. Firefox), and capable of doing so, I don't want to deal with problems that arise. I want to ask the IT guy to fix it for me. Cause, frankly, I don't care why it doesn't work.
Books on patent claim drafting ("Landis on Claim Drafting" is a golden oldie) - I can read that one. I assume Landis is a person's name and not an olde English word that indicates its obsolete?
reading case law - Have a good site to suggest? This course of action seems endless, and a book or two is a far more finite (absent needing to know a specific answer), and thus easier for me to convince myself to do.
working at a patent law firm - Not planning on leaving my job now, but I'll keep that in mind.
Or ask a friendly lawyer - used these up already on a variety of other bits of information
No one tells you when you're studying for the patent bar why you use "comprising" instead of "consisting of" in the claims (it's because "comprising" is open ended, and doesn't foreclose any other elements being added to a claimed invention, "consisting of" limits your invention to the elements claimed)
Interesting... other than law school, is there a way of finding out all these extremely specific word meanings?
But what is the significant difference between dithering at the subpixel level and dithering between pixels?
The resolution of my screen is measured in pixels. Even if dithering did work as well (it doesn't), that would mean that I have less resolution than promised. Apple didn't sell a "millions of colors" screen. They sold one that was 1920x1280. And that was measured in pixels, not dithered pixels.
There are three possibilities: Dell UK sells all its laptops with 8 bit screens. Or Dell is lying. Or someone made a mistake.
It is a well-known fact that, in the UK, everyone has had their lens removed via cataracts surgery. This condition enables one to see UV light, Dell obviously sells 4-color screens, with 6-bits per channel.
Who, in the name of all that is holy, modded the above informative?
Actually as far as colors actually being produced by the monitor it is multiplicative and thus 766.
766 factors to 2 * 383, so not much chance of that. Besides, it's clearly wrong. Your claim is that R:2 G:2 B:0 is equivalent to R:1 G:2 B:1 which is equivalent to R:0 G:0 B:4. Yes, each of three sub pixels can produce one of 255 different colors. But that means there are 255^3 combinations. As an analog, use base 10 digits, XYZ. Each can clearly have one of ten values (0-9). However, there are 1000 (10^3) numbers that can be produced, in spite of the fact that if each digit is looked at in isolation there are only 30 possible values. Subpixels combine to form one color value.
if I can combine red and blue subpixels to make purple, why not combine pixels of two different shades of red to make a third shade of red?
Two reasons. One, the red and blue subpixels excite different physical cones in your eye. The two red pixels both excite the same cone. Second, even if it were true that you could have your eye bleed between them and get unique values (if you were at the proper distance, etc.) you would lose resolution. Because, instead of using two different pixels to reflect values of red, you have to use two pixels to represent one 'dithered' color.
My mac screen uses dithering and it can get millions of colors on ALL RESOLUTIONS just like they advertised
No, something in the above statement is a lie. Just like if you claimed to achieve a lossless compression algorithm that worked for all inputs, one would not need to check to call you a liar. Mathematically creating data where none can exist is impossible.
I suppose the OS could have lied to you, if that makes you feel better. Or maybe you don't have a screen that dithers.
How do you know you got millions of colors as opposed to 282,000ish?
they just said they can produce millions of colors.
At a specific resolution. Even if you buy that dithering is equal to color depth, you cannot deny that it requireds combining neighboring pixels. Which means that the 1920x1280 resolution (which is in pixels, not subpixels) is a lie.
Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768)
Let's start with, it's multiplicative, not additive. That's 255^3, not 255*3. This is because, as you mentition later, the eye combines all three subpixels into a new color.
And if you want to get really picky, you can only display three colours
If you interpert color as a wavelenght of light as opposed to relative excitment of the three colored cones in your eye, then yes. But no one thinks of that definition. Instead, the obvious usage is 'colors preceived'. Even when you talk about color of a pure wavelength, you can only interpert it as combinations of your three cones.
Whether an individual subpixel can display 256 levels is quite irrelevant since dithering is capable of producing a higher colour depth at the expense of colour resolution
So, even if one were to concede all your points, these aren't really 1920x1280x24 displays are they then. Because that 1920x1280 resolution has to get shortchanged for the dithering. So you can say that Apple lied about the resolution instead of the color if you like, but it's awful pedantic.
Yes, it is possible to build CCDs where the R, G and B are cosited, nobody actually uses the Foveon sensor because the difference in the capture picture is not discernable.
I know people who paid a lot more to get a camera with a Foveon sensor, actually. While I might be unable to notice the quality, they (and their clients) can. And you better believe they would be pissed if they ended up with a Bayer filter instead.
If you want to say that the difference is small, and unnoticible to most people, so that is the optimal thing to make, fine. I respect that, and agree with you. But this is flagrant false advertising. A 1920x1280x24 screen was advertised and not delivered. Bitch about Apple's behavior just like any other major company's.
The fact is that most people can't tell the difference, and aren't interested in paying four times as much to get a product that isn't noticably better unless you make your living working with colour.
Good thing Apple doesn't advertise it's products as professional level video/photo/layout editing, with that functionality bundled with the OS. And good thing most professional artists don't use Apple products. And good thing that widely known fact doesn't weigh at all on amateur's brand-purchasing decision.
It's called a submarine patent. They call it that because it lurks there and lets you get all confident before it surfaces and torpedos your business.
Actually, a submarine patent is one during the first 18 months of the approval process. During that time, the records are not publicized (for valid reasons including the ability to make a second attempt if you FUBAR your patent and national defense: not showing China how to make the nurse-shark mountable laser). Hence, during that time, you can actually manage to hid your patent pending status, and seek to get the techonology used.
This is not a submarine patent because you could have found the patent by searching the USPTO, etc.
if I remember correctly, before that, some technomoron judge actually ordered them to keep logs of everything in ram at all times.
Not really. What the judge said was that writing information to RAM is the equivelent of creating a record, so the 'we don't, as a principle, keep any records' defense against the subpoena was not valid. So, they were required to start keeping logs of user's IPs. And, no, a RAM dump would not have worked, it was required to be in usable form.
I don't know where I stand on the issue. Certainly, legally RAM seems to be considered a place where records exist (hence your need for a EULA to run a program). And certainly, I consider it a statement like a petulant child to claim that logging is somehow impossible because no records are currently kept. The purpose of a subpoena, in that case, was to force records retention that otherwise would not exist; a legitimite use of a subpeona.
On the other, I'm not sure if I buy the current interpertation that data in RAM is a record or a copy. Mostly because concept of a EULA to use a program seems strange.
I'm going to take that back, there ARE mod chips, but any game that doesn't fit on a single DVD isn't going to work (the only modchip/programs i've seen are for DVD sized games)
That's fine, becaue the only games I've seen are DVD-sized games. The HD-DVD addon was only for movies. And now even that is dead.
. At work I've downloaded a Linux DVD in like 7 minutes. Really, that is to the point where extra speed wouldn't make a ton of difference. In this case, we are talking speed in excess of what a harddrive can handle.
But when you can download the whole distro in seven seconds, then you can start seeing a return to dumb terminals in public places, as everyone can boot off their own hard drive over the internet.
This preview window is horribly laid out, and I cannot continue my point.
I would say that the problem comes from democracy and disparity. You have geniuses who invent atomic weapons, but 51% of the morons can vote on who gets to use them. Decoupling control from ability can lead to some nasty consequences due to forseeable "unforseeable consequences".
You have the God given right to pursue happiness, to speak your mind, to think whatever you want, etc. However, no serious philospher I've ever read has claimed a God given right to fuck yourself over (in a permenant way). Nor does any major religion. If I am mistaken, please point it out to me, but even the most utter libertarians forbide, for example, contracting yourself into permentant slavery. Or at least the enforcement of such a contract.
The point isn't that I'm doing something stupid, there are a lot of things that have been discovered by people doing stupid things such as playing with radioactive material or experiments with electricity.
That's totally different. First, at the time it's typically not thought to be stupid, because not enough is known about the subject. Now, however, if you advocated "playnig with radioactive material" without safety regulations, it would be considered stupid. It's learning from the past. People in the past did lots of things (believe the earth was flat), which, because we have learned from those stupid things, we no longer do.
Lets have an example here, say you're riding a motorcycle without a helmet. You crash and die from a head injury, who's fault is it that you're dead? Under the nanny logic obviously it's the state's fault for not making you wear a helmet, so you may have lived.
The notion that one actor is somehow responsible is a false dillema brought up in situations like this. In reality, you should have volunitarily worn a helmet, and the state should have forced you to wear one. Only someone expressly trying to make a point about allowing self-distruction would ignore the added costs borne by society in the event that you die. These are personal (familiy/friends), business (your employer), societal (makes society seem more dangerous), and governemental (the government will pick up the tab of trying to save your life, thus enabling hospitals to treat before checking credit.)
And, in case you want to start spreading the blame amongst those actors, do you really want the pervasive intelligence about you that allows hospitals to check your credit in the emergency room (leaving aside the moral dilemma of whether that is desirous). Do you want an employer to be able to know enough about you to trust whether you will ride without a helmet?
Also good for you not using drugs, get off the high horse though as your morality is not necessarily my morality. Do you drink alcohol though?
Actually, my point was I don't do it because it's illegal. I don't know what I would do if it was legal.
I drink and enjoy it a lot.
As for my morality not being your morality, sure it is. There is but one moral way to act. The fact that there are many views of it does not mean that any of them are equally permissable. Just as in science, sometimes there are contradictory theories, only one of which is true, but is uncertain which is the case. Sometimes, one set of rules works in the vast majority of cases, but fails around the fringe (I think the golden rule and Newtonian physics both fit the rule of "generally valuable, but incomplete".) Sometimes things just need to get replaced.
But morality is defined by its very nature as being universalizable.
On the flip side though, 33% of the time there's a fatal accident and some of the occupants wore seatbelts and some didn't, those that did were the one's that died. Everything is the same, except wearing of the seat belt.
Citation please. It's clearly demonstrable that not everything is the same. For instance, if the collision was the same, then the people were sitting in different seats. Conversly, if they were sitting in the same seat, then the collision was different, and many things could have changed. So let's assume it is the same collision.
Typically, people in the rear are not required to wear a seatbelt. In large part, it is because the people in the backseat are safer. So, it could be that the correlation between sitting in a dangerous area and wearing a seatbelt, and the other correlation between sitting in a dangerous area and dying, combine to for a non-causal correlation.
Pretty much it boils down to this, do not protect me from myself
The vast majority of the time someone is being protected from themselves, they are doing something stupid. What do you want to do that's so brilliant that you are being kept from doing.
Let's leave drug laws off the table however. To properly understand the effects of drugs and their levels of pleasure/harmlessness, I would have to have experience with them; I am and always was a goody-goody in that regard.
In ATL, the citizens at least could use the 5th Amendment's taking clause to get just compensation for any property lost to the government.
Better than that. In ATL, if you decide to sue the government over the proposed compensation, and are awarded any higher amount, the government picks up all costs (including lawyer fees.) Because of that, you tend to get pretty fair valuations.
but you can ignore it if it gives you no opportunity to read the licence *before* accepting, and you can ignore it if it gives you no opportunity to refuse
Well, I bet that the iTunes EULA includes somewhere in it the rights to expand the scope, yada, yada.
I imagine that there is an anti-trust suit waiting to happen, since Apple has a near-monopoly on music downloads, which requires the iTunes player, which pushes Safari... If it's good enough for MS, it's good for Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
First, TFA says $2.2 billion to $3 billion. Second, TFA says only some of those costs are associated with the handhelds vs. paper issue; the rest is due to increases in other costs (mainly gas and postage). Third, the original contract was for $595 million for devlopment. It is unclear how much of that was spent. They seem to have cancelled the project because they didn't believe the vendor would deliver. The extra funds are primarilly required to hire more people, pay for their workspace, and print the paper.
Comcast is enough.
Yes, except in regards to:
I understand the romantic appeal of 'retaining the right for armed rebellion'. But that didn't work in Pennsylvania. It didn't work with the Confedercy (where they did have 1/2 the army.) And that was back when anyone owning as dangerous a weapon as they want was a valid option.
Nowadays, there is no way I trust any individual with a weapon of mass destruction. Or an anti-aircraft missile. Or a gernade launcher. Or a machine gun. The potential damage an unhinged person could do is huge.
So, if that justification for the second amendment is obsoleced, then the only real justifications are hunting, protection, and for sport. Which makes me feel fine tolerating pretty restrictive gun control.
I agree with GP. Yes, they all can deal with the hardware. But frankly, I don't know how to use most software packages as well as less 'technical' people. I don't want to debug someone else's program (I get to do enough of that with my own.)
I don't want to figure out what the UI designer somewhere else thought was a good idea. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the innane (but understandably important) ideas I get from the users about the UI.
Frankly, unless it's a command line program, or designed for developers, somewhat took teh time to try to make it user-friendly. Which is fine, except many developers don't think like that.
So, yes, while I am capable of deciding that I want to install some new software (e.g. Firefox), and capable of doing so, I don't want to deal with problems that arise. I want to ask the IT guy to fix it for me. Cause, frankly, I don't care why it doesn't work.
Interesting... other than law school, is there a way of finding out all these extremely specific word meanings?
Whew. These both look the same to me, on my shiney new iMac 20"
The resolution of my screen is measured in pixels. Even if dithering did work as well (it doesn't), that would mean that I have less resolution than promised. Apple didn't sell a "millions of colors" screen. They sold one that was 1920x1280. And that was measured in pixels, not dithered pixels.
It is a well-known fact that, in the UK, everyone has had their lens removed via cataracts surgery. This condition enables one to see UV light, Dell obviously sells 4-color screens, with 6-bits per channel.
Who, in the name of all that is holy, modded the above informative?
766 factors to 2 * 383, so not much chance of that. Besides, it's clearly wrong. Your claim is that R:2 G:2 B:0 is equivalent to R:1 G:2 B:1 which is equivalent to R:0 G:0 B:4. Yes, each of three sub pixels can produce one of 255 different colors. But that means there are 255^3 combinations. As an analog, use base 10 digits, XYZ. Each can clearly have one of ten values (0-9). However, there are 1000 (10^3) numbers that can be produced, in spite of the fact that if each digit is looked at in isolation there are only 30 possible values. Subpixels combine to form one color value.
Two reasons. One, the red and blue subpixels excite different physical cones in your eye. The two red pixels both excite the same cone. Second, even if it were true that you could have your eye bleed between them and get unique values (if you were at the proper distance, etc.) you would lose resolution. Because, instead of using two different pixels to reflect values of red, you have to use two pixels to represent one 'dithered' color.
No, something in the above statement is a lie. Just like if you claimed to achieve a lossless compression algorithm that worked for all inputs, one would not need to check to call you a liar. Mathematically creating data where none can exist is impossible.
I suppose the OS could have lied to you, if that makes you feel better. Or maybe you don't have a screen that dithers.
How do you know you got millions of colors as opposed to 282,000ish?
At a specific resolution. Even if you buy that dithering is equal to color depth, you cannot deny that it requireds combining neighboring pixels. Which means that the 1920x1280 resolution (which is in pixels, not subpixels) is a lie.
Let's start with, it's multiplicative, not additive. That's 255^3, not 255*3. This is because, as you mentition later, the eye combines all three subpixels into a new color.
If you interpert color as a wavelenght of light as opposed to relative excitment of the three colored cones in your eye, then yes. But no one thinks of that definition. Instead, the obvious usage is 'colors preceived'. Even when you talk about color of a pure wavelength, you can only interpert it as combinations of your three cones.
So, even if one were to concede all your points, these aren't really 1920x1280x24 displays are they then. Because that 1920x1280 resolution has to get shortchanged for the dithering. So you can say that Apple lied about the resolution instead of the color if you like, but it's awful pedantic.
I know people who paid a lot more to get a camera with a Foveon sensor, actually. While I might be unable to notice the quality, they (and their clients) can. And you better believe they would be pissed if they ended up with a Bayer filter instead.
If you want to say that the difference is small, and unnoticible to most people, so that is the optimal thing to make, fine. I respect that, and agree with you. But this is flagrant false advertising. A 1920x1280x24 screen was advertised and not delivered. Bitch about Apple's behavior just like any other major company's.
Good thing Apple doesn't advertise it's products as professional level video/photo/layout editing, with that functionality bundled with the OS. And good thing most professional artists don't use Apple products. And good thing that widely known fact doesn't weigh at all on amateur's brand-purchasing decision.
Actually, a submarine patent is one during the first 18 months of the approval process. During that time, the records are not publicized (for valid reasons including the ability to make a second attempt if you FUBAR your patent and national defense: not showing China how to make the nurse-shark mountable laser). Hence, during that time, you can actually manage to hid your patent pending status, and seek to get the techonology used.
This is not a submarine patent because you could have found the patent by searching the USPTO, etc.
Not really. What the judge said was that writing information to RAM is the equivelent of creating a record, so the 'we don't, as a principle, keep any records' defense against the subpoena was not valid. So, they were required to start keeping logs of user's IPs. And, no, a RAM dump would not have worked, it was required to be in usable form.
I don't know where I stand on the issue. Certainly, legally RAM seems to be considered a place where records exist (hence your need for a EULA to run a program). And certainly, I consider it a statement like a petulant child to claim that logging is somehow impossible because no records are currently kept. The purpose of a subpoena, in that case, was to force records retention that otherwise would not exist; a legitimite use of a subpeona.
On the other, I'm not sure if I buy the current interpertation that data in RAM is a record or a copy. Mostly because concept of a EULA to use a program seems strange.
That's fine, becaue the only games I've seen are DVD-sized games. The HD-DVD addon was only for movies. And now even that is dead.
But when you can download the whole distro in seven seconds, then you can start seeing a return to dumb terminals in public places, as everyone can boot off their own hard drive over the internet.
This preview window is horribly laid out, and I cannot continue my point.
I would say that the problem comes from democracy and disparity. You have geniuses who invent atomic weapons, but 51% of the morons can vote on who gets to use them. Decoupling control from ability can lead to some nasty consequences due to forseeable "unforseeable consequences".
You have the God given right to pursue happiness, to speak your mind, to think whatever you want, etc. However, no serious philospher I've ever read has claimed a God given right to fuck yourself over (in a permenant way). Nor does any major religion. If I am mistaken, please point it out to me, but even the most utter libertarians forbide, for example, contracting yourself into permentant slavery. Or at least the enforcement of such a contract.
That's totally different. First, at the time it's typically not thought to be stupid, because not enough is known about the subject. Now, however, if you advocated "playnig with radioactive material" without safety regulations, it would be considered stupid. It's learning from the past. People in the past did lots of things (believe the earth was flat), which, because we have learned from those stupid things, we no longer do.
The notion that one actor is somehow responsible is a false dillema brought up in situations like this. In reality, you should have volunitarily worn a helmet, and the state should have forced you to wear one. Only someone expressly trying to make a point about allowing self-distruction would ignore the added costs borne by society in the event that you die. These are personal (familiy/friends), business (your employer), societal (makes society seem more dangerous), and governemental (the government will pick up the tab of trying to save your life, thus enabling hospitals to treat before checking credit.)
And, in case you want to start spreading the blame amongst those actors, do you really want the pervasive intelligence about you that allows hospitals to check your credit in the emergency room (leaving aside the moral dilemma of whether that is desirous). Do you want an employer to be able to know enough about you to trust whether you will ride without a helmet?
Actually, my point was I don't do it because it's illegal. I don't know what I would do if it was legal.
I drink and enjoy it a lot.
As for my morality not being your morality, sure it is. There is but one moral way to act. The fact that there are many views of it does not mean that any of them are equally permissable. Just as in science, sometimes there are contradictory theories, only one of which is true, but is uncertain which is the case. Sometimes, one set of rules works in the vast majority of cases, but fails around the fringe (I think the golden rule and Newtonian physics both fit the rule of "generally valuable, but incomplete".) Sometimes things just need to get replaced.
But morality is defined by its very nature as being universalizable.
Citation please. It's clearly demonstrable that not everything is the same. For instance, if the collision was the same, then the people were sitting in different seats. Conversly, if they were sitting in the same seat, then the collision was different, and many things could have changed. So let's assume it is the same collision.
Typically, people in the rear are not required to wear a seatbelt. In large part, it is because the people in the backseat are safer. So, it could be that the correlation between sitting in a dangerous area and wearing a seatbelt, and the other correlation between sitting in a dangerous area and dying, combine to for a non-causal correlation.
The vast majority of the time someone is being protected from themselves, they are doing something stupid. What do you want to do that's so brilliant that you are being kept from doing.
Let's leave drug laws off the table however. To properly understand the effects of drugs and their levels of pleasure/harmlessness, I would have to have experience with them; I am and always was a goody-goody in that regard.
Better than that. In ATL, if you decide to sue the government over the proposed compensation, and are awarded any higher amount, the government picks up all costs (including lawyer fees.) Because of that, you tend to get pretty fair valuations.
Well, I bet that the iTunes EULA includes somewhere in it the rights to expand the scope, yada, yada.
I imagine that there is an anti-trust suit waiting to happen, since Apple has a near-monopoly on music downloads, which requires the iTunes player, which pushes Safari... If it's good enough for MS, it's good for Apple.