Also for a real crew the excitement will wear off soon, after which boredom starts taking over. On the trip there is probably nothing to do on the ship, as the ship will fly itself (computer controlled with navigational commands sent from Earth). And when people have nothing to do they will stop paying attention, get lazy, sleep more, etc. The lack of sunlight is probably just a minor issue as that can be solved by having brighter artificial lighting.
For a government doing stuff in name of national security, cost shouldn't be an issue. Just look at the cost they spent on "regime change" in Iraq and Afghanistan, just to name some. Hiring a few of the brightest security experts to thoroughly test their equipment is just peanuts compared to that.
The only reason I can think of why they do not do that is political: wars are much more visible, and electors like to see results.
And now for extra confusion: the catties they use on the mainland are defined to be 500 gr, 1/2 kg, and a tael is 50 grs, this to have them fit nicely in the metric system.
In Hong Kong, a catty is about 600 grs and there are 16 tael in a catty. A tael is almost 38 gr. The pound is also used commonly here, and is the imperial pound at 452 gr (about 12 tael). So the catty is heavier, while the tael is lighter.
And in other places (Taiwan, Singapore) the tael has yet another value but those are very close to the value used in Hong Kong.
Pounds and catties are commonly used for food sales - vegetables are usually sold by the catty, fruits and meat by the pound. Expensive foodstuffs (some fish, crab, lobster, but also mushrooms) go by the tael. Very confusing - takes a while to get used to.
The difference is that in the first case this are county officials who refuse to do their duty. When in function they are to abide by the law, plain and simple. If they do not, they ought to be fired, just like any employee will be fired if they openly refuse to follow orders by their boss.
If such a county official thinks the law is not just, they should still fulfil their duties under that law, in this case providing the information. And after that they may go on TV or whatever, still in function, and say that they do not agree with these regulations and that they will work hard to have the law changed.
The second case is private citizens not abiding by the law, and by breaking it openly try to draw attention to this issue.
The first two sentences seem aimed at things like The Pirate Bay and other sites linking to illegal copies, which they think should be illegal under some kind of contribution theory.
Seem so maybe, but I think it is not. It is far broader.
If there is a link to copyright material, that is not necessarily infringing. Lots of material that can be found on TPB is infringing, though the links as such are then not infringing. Remember: when you are dealing with copyright material, you are not necessarily infringing on those copyrights.
Most material published on a newspaper's web site is not infringing; they either produced it themselves or they have a license to redistribute. So reading it directly on their site is fine, copying it to your own public blog for example is not. Linking from that public blog to the newspaper article on the newspaper's web site, is also considered not infringing.
To me it appears that the current copyright law is unclear when it comes to hyperlinking to copyrighted content - it is probably simply not part of copyright law now, which is not surprising as the www is a very young medium. And newspapers want hyperlinking to become part of the law, and they want it to be considered infringing even though now it's generally considered not infringing by the courts.
Examples (from over a decade ago in The Netherlands):
Billboards with advertising on one side, and a text like "look at the other side" on the back. These were condemned and possibly even forbidden for being considered an accident risk: many drivers would indeed try to look back to see what's written on the sign. And in the process of course not look at the road ahead.
Billboards with just a text like "coming soon" or "watch this space" caused quite a buzz, as many people were curious who was posting those ads. There were no brand names or anything on it, it was just a teaser for the actual sign that appeared a week or two later.
Both played on human curiousity, and definitely got extra attention that way. Asking people to look under a tarp may actually work - if only because the people that do look, pay really close attention to it.
More competition is always good. Keeps the rest on their toes. That's why I'd like to see MS succeed with their mobile offering - a third player is good, more competition - but unfortunately they messed it up quite thoroughly.
So well maybe Samsung can manage. They have good hardware for starters. Key problem is going to be the apps, of course. Both Android and iOS have created a very serious lock-in factor that way.
Day passes are a bit steep indeed, though I doubt many tourists will go to movie theatres to begin with. For a tourist there are usually much more interesting things to see/do than to go to a movie theatre which you can do just as well back home.
Sounds a bit like how karaoke is done here, but then with movies instead of music.
It may work - assuming there is a really good video system and a really large collection of video available - except for the licensing of content which most definitely will get in the way...
I don't have the actual costing of a movie theatre but $60k/mo sounds reasonable:
Purchase of equipment (spread out over a few years - those digital projectors are expensive)
Staff costs. Peope don't come cheap. That includes staff actually running the theatre (operating the projector, manning the bar, checking tickets, etc), and administration staff.
Venue rental. Even in a mountain community that will be significant as a movie theatre needs a decent sized unit.
Movie rental. Those movies do not come for free, the movie makers want to be paid - either in part of revenue, or a flat fee, I don't know how that works but it'll amount to a significant cost.
And for your local theatre: say every screen attracts on average 100 people a day for all screenings combined, say that's 300 tickets a day, ticket price you say cheap so let's put it at $8 average, for a gross receipt of $2400 a day, or $72,000 a month, and $864,000 a year. That's before sales of food and drinks, and revenue from commercials played before the main movie.
New digital projectors may easily cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars, that's a big investment on such a turnover.
Don't worry they will be around. They have so much cash on hand, they can probably survive for years without much income. And face it, while Win8 may not sell well, that must mean Win7 is still selling, as the computer market as a whole has not collapsed. And pretty much every single computer sold comes with a copy of Windows.
Somehow that is not considered an issue related to music people buy on-line. Or do iTunes, Amazon, etc. issue paper receipts for your purchases? I very much doubt it.
By the way if you buy a CD, make a copy of it for personal use, and then give away or sell the original disk, you should destroy the copy you made. As soon as the original CD leaves your possession, you lose the right to that copy. So even if you have the purchase receipt but not the CD, you're still in trouble if they were to knock on your door to check your drives. Which is not going to happen, unless you put those files on a public share or so.
Ah, didn't know that yet. Well when those final incandescents finally burn out (there for many years - not using them much) I'll check on it. Or maybe by then LEDs are a competitive option, currently they're just too expensive for me, at several times the price of CFLs.
You need special dimmers, which cost a multiple of dimmers for incandescents. And then the cost saving of using CFL over incandescents is less than the extra cost of the dimmer.
It is a DESIGN patent. Obviousness does not apply. And I think you're actually quite right, in that Samsung could patent a pink design. But remember they can then only patent the complete design, not just the pink part of it.
This design patent thing is related to branding, logos and trademarks, not technical innovations. When you go to buy an iPhone, you want an iPhone, not a Samsung rip-off. Or the other way around, of course. For that a company will design a phone with a certain look - and that look is patentable.
That applies not only for phones, but to any product - Rolex may have patents on their watch designs, for example. And yes, all other watches are also round with twelve ticks at regular intervals at the edge and three hands, one long, one short and one thin. Though the size of those hands, the size of those ticks, the design of the housing all are different. Basically anything with a special design can be patented. And how much different it has to be? Well, different enough that the average person is not confused between the two. And yes that's ambiguous, but you can not put a number on difference.
Rectangular with round corners, that's basically OK. But rectangular in the same dimensions, same corner ratio, same placement and size of the "home" button, similar circles on that button, same size borders around the display, same overall size: then you may cross the line and infringe the patent.
Lawyers do not take the initiative to initiate a suit. That's the people that hire those lawyers. A lawyer only does what his client tells them to. Now of course some lawyers actively recruit customers though that's typically those no-cure-no-pay claim suits, not patent suits.
I'm sure an actual judge can come up with a much better and more inclusive way than I could come up in the minute or so it took me to write that comment.
And the disease is not that easy to cure. A good starting point would be to kill off software and business method patents (things that were never meant to be patentable when the patent was invented), yet from the glance of it, it won't work here, as the cases mentioned in the summary have to do with actual physical inventions, which patents are supposed to cover.
Oh and these "rounded corners" patents that are design patents. Those overall also work wonders. Which basically means "you can't make something that looks exactly like my product", which is totally sensible, as there is no good reason why Samsung should be allowed to sell a phone that looks exactly like the iPhone (which is way more than just "rectangle with rounded corners").
Well, the blanket "lawyers don't produce anything useful" I really don't agree with. Sure there is a lot of bullshit going on (those medical and "you didn't prevent me from doing something totally stupid and now my ego is hurt" claim suits in the US are likely far more damaging and costly than all the patent wars all over the world together), it is the rule of law - and the related work of lawyers - that gives us the overall well regulated society we live in.
Have no lawyers, and with that no proper access to law and legislation for anyone (companies and individuals alike) and yes, the world as we know it will collapse. Wonder how such a world looks like? Try looking at Somalia, for example.
With all those companies suing and countersuing each other, what we really need is a judge that says "now all of you go sit around the table and settle your patent disputes, and let me know the result when you're done. And until you're finished, none of you is allowed to sell any of your tablets or smart phones in this jurisdiction.
"Patent claimants that do not have products on the market at this moment may join the negotiations, and will anyway be bound to the final agreement of all parties."
That should settle it once and for all. And the rest of the world can go on with their lives. The most likely outcome of those negotiations is an agreement between all those parties to not sue each other over current or future patents any more - it's basically the only option in such a situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Also for a real crew the excitement will wear off soon, after which boredom starts taking over. On the trip there is probably nothing to do on the ship, as the ship will fly itself (computer controlled with navigational commands sent from Earth). And when people have nothing to do they will stop paying attention, get lazy, sleep more, etc. The lack of sunlight is probably just a minor issue as that can be solved by having brighter artificial lighting.
For a government doing stuff in name of national security, cost shouldn't be an issue. Just look at the cost they spent on "regime change" in Iraq and Afghanistan, just to name some. Hiring a few of the brightest security experts to thoroughly test their equipment is just peanuts compared to that.
The only reason I can think of why they do not do that is political: wars are much more visible, and electors like to see results.
If they don't want made-in-China equipment, what are the alternatives? I don't think that doing without is much of an option.
And now for extra confusion: the catties they use on the mainland are defined to be 500 gr, 1/2 kg, and a tael is 50 grs, this to have them fit nicely in the metric system.
In Hong Kong, a catty is about 600 grs and there are 16 tael in a catty. A tael is almost 38 gr. The pound is also used commonly here, and is the imperial pound at 452 gr (about 12 tael). So the catty is heavier, while the tael is lighter.
And in other places (Taiwan, Singapore) the tael has yet another value but those are very close to the value used in Hong Kong.
Pounds and catties are commonly used for food sales - vegetables are usually sold by the catty, fruits and meat by the pound. Expensive foodstuffs (some fish, crab, lobster, but also mushrooms) go by the tael. Very confusing - takes a while to get used to.
The difference is that in the first case this are county officials who refuse to do their duty. When in function they are to abide by the law, plain and simple. If they do not, they ought to be fired, just like any employee will be fired if they openly refuse to follow orders by their boss.
If such a county official thinks the law is not just, they should still fulfil their duties under that law, in this case providing the information. And after that they may go on TV or whatever, still in function, and say that they do not agree with these regulations and that they will work hard to have the law changed.
The second case is private citizens not abiding by the law, and by breaking it openly try to draw attention to this issue.
You don't need to reiterate how much the US is a poor, developing country.
In most other countries, cops do not take their weapons home, and the police force has enough money to actually buy those weapons for them.
Newspapers as such remain needed. Not necessarily in print form, but the organisations around them remain as valid as they were a few decades ago.
And besides I'm buying a paper newspaper almost daily. I still prefer to read it that way.
The first two sentences seem aimed at things like The Pirate Bay and other sites linking to illegal copies, which they think should be illegal under some kind of contribution theory.
Seem so maybe, but I think it is not. It is far broader.
If there is a link to copyright material, that is not necessarily infringing. Lots of material that can be found on TPB is infringing, though the links as such are then not infringing. Remember: when you are dealing with copyright material, you are not necessarily infringing on those copyrights.
Most material published on a newspaper's web site is not infringing; they either produced it themselves or they have a license to redistribute. So reading it directly on their site is fine, copying it to your own public blog for example is not. Linking from that public blog to the newspaper article on the newspaper's web site, is also considered not infringing.
To me it appears that the current copyright law is unclear when it comes to hyperlinking to copyrighted content - it is probably simply not part of copyright law now, which is not surprising as the www is a very young medium. And newspapers want hyperlinking to become part of the law, and they want it to be considered infringing even though now it's generally considered not infringing by the courts.
Never underestimate human curiousity!
Examples (from over a decade ago in The Netherlands):
Billboards with advertising on one side, and a text like "look at the other side" on the back. These were condemned and possibly even forbidden for being considered an accident risk: many drivers would indeed try to look back to see what's written on the sign. And in the process of course not look at the road ahead.
Billboards with just a text like "coming soon" or "watch this space" caused quite a buzz, as many people were curious who was posting those ads. There were no brand names or anything on it, it was just a teaser for the actual sign that appeared a week or two later.
Both played on human curiousity, and definitely got extra attention that way. Asking people to look under a tarp may actually work - if only because the people that do look, pay really close attention to it.
More competition is always good. Keeps the rest on their toes. That's why I'd like to see MS succeed with their mobile offering - a third player is good, more competition - but unfortunately they messed it up quite thoroughly.
So well maybe Samsung can manage. They have good hardware for starters. Key problem is going to be the apps, of course. Both Android and iOS have created a very serious lock-in factor that way.
Good for them. They may actually survive then.
Day passes are a bit steep indeed, though I doubt many tourists will go to movie theatres to begin with. For a tourist there are usually much more interesting things to see/do than to go to a movie theatre which you can do just as well back home.
Sounds a bit like how karaoke is done here, but then with movies instead of music.
It may work - assuming there is a really good video system and a really large collection of video available - except for the licensing of content which most definitely will get in the way...
I don't have the actual costing of a movie theatre but $60k/mo sounds reasonable:
Purchase of equipment (spread out over a few years - those digital projectors are expensive)
Staff costs. Peope don't come cheap. That includes staff actually running the theatre (operating the projector, manning the bar, checking tickets, etc), and administration staff.
Venue rental. Even in a mountain community that will be significant as a movie theatre needs a decent sized unit.
Movie rental. Those movies do not come for free, the movie makers want to be paid - either in part of revenue, or a flat fee, I don't know how that works but it'll amount to a significant cost.
And for your local theatre: say every screen attracts on average 100 people a day for all screenings combined, say that's 300 tickets a day, ticket price you say cheap so let's put it at $8 average, for a gross receipt of $2400 a day, or $72,000 a month, and $864,000 a year. That's before sales of food and drinks, and revenue from commercials played before the main movie.
New digital projectors may easily cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars, that's a big investment on such a turnover.
You're being very generous on R&D, as currently they only get 20 years. And that's because R&D uses patents rather than a copyright.
Don't worry they will be around. They have so much cash on hand, they can probably survive for years without much income. And face it, while Win8 may not sell well, that must mean Win7 is still selling, as the computer market as a whole has not collapsed. And pretty much every single computer sold comes with a copy of Windows.
That "lone jerk" could single-handedly take down the complete online music industry. Not likely they will get far if they were to try.
Rational posts from ACs are really rare. Two in one discussion is even rarer.
Somehow that is not considered an issue related to music people buy on-line. Or do iTunes, Amazon, etc. issue paper receipts for your purchases? I very much doubt it.
By the way if you buy a CD, make a copy of it for personal use, and then give away or sell the original disk, you should destroy the copy you made. As soon as the original CD leaves your possession, you lose the right to that copy. So even if you have the purchase receipt but not the CD, you're still in trouble if they were to knock on your door to check your drives. Which is not going to happen, unless you put those files on a public share or so.
Ah, didn't know that yet. Well when those final incandescents finally burn out (there for many years - not using them much) I'll check on it. Or maybe by then LEDs are a competitive option, currently they're just too expensive for me, at several times the price of CFLs.
You can get CFLs usable with dimmers to.
You need special dimmers, which cost a multiple of dimmers for incandescents. And then the cost saving of using CFL over incandescents is less than the extra cost of the dimmer.
It is a DESIGN patent. Obviousness does not apply. And I think you're actually quite right, in that Samsung could patent a pink design. But remember they can then only patent the complete design, not just the pink part of it.
This design patent thing is related to branding, logos and trademarks, not technical innovations. When you go to buy an iPhone, you want an iPhone, not a Samsung rip-off. Or the other way around, of course. For that a company will design a phone with a certain look - and that look is patentable.
That applies not only for phones, but to any product - Rolex may have patents on their watch designs, for example. And yes, all other watches are also round with twelve ticks at regular intervals at the edge and three hands, one long, one short and one thin. Though the size of those hands, the size of those ticks, the design of the housing all are different. Basically anything with a special design can be patented. And how much different it has to be? Well, different enough that the average person is not confused between the two. And yes that's ambiguous, but you can not put a number on difference.
Rectangular with round corners, that's basically OK. But rectangular in the same dimensions, same corner ratio, same placement and size of the "home" button, similar circles on that button, same size borders around the display, same overall size: then you may cross the line and infringe the patent.
Lawyers do not take the initiative to initiate a suit. That's the people that hire those lawyers. A lawyer only does what his client tells them to. Now of course some lawyers actively recruit customers though that's typically those no-cure-no-pay claim suits, not patent suits.
I'm sure an actual judge can come up with a much better and more inclusive way than I could come up in the minute or so it took me to write that comment.
And the disease is not that easy to cure. A good starting point would be to kill off software and business method patents (things that were never meant to be patentable when the patent was invented), yet from the glance of it, it won't work here, as the cases mentioned in the summary have to do with actual physical inventions, which patents are supposed to cover.
Oh and these "rounded corners" patents that are design patents. Those overall also work wonders. Which basically means "you can't make something that looks exactly like my product", which is totally sensible, as there is no good reason why Samsung should be allowed to sell a phone that looks exactly like the iPhone (which is way more than just "rectangle with rounded corners").
Well, the blanket "lawyers don't produce anything useful" I really don't agree with. Sure there is a lot of bullshit going on (those medical and "you didn't prevent me from doing something totally stupid and now my ego is hurt" claim suits in the US are likely far more damaging and costly than all the patent wars all over the world together), it is the rule of law - and the related work of lawyers - that gives us the overall well regulated society we live in.
Have no lawyers, and with that no proper access to law and legislation for anyone (companies and individuals alike) and yes, the world as we know it will collapse. Wonder how such a world looks like? Try looking at Somalia, for example.
With all those companies suing and countersuing each other, what we really need is a judge that says "now all of you go sit around the table and settle your patent disputes, and let me know the result when you're done. And until you're finished, none of you is allowed to sell any of your tablets or smart phones in this jurisdiction.
"Patent claimants that do not have products on the market at this moment may join the negotiations, and will anyway be bound to the final agreement of all parties."
That should settle it once and for all. And the rest of the world can go on with their lives. The most likely outcome of those negotiations is an agreement between all those parties to not sue each other over current or future patents any more - it's basically the only option in such a situation.