Because I'm a patent examiner I'm not supposed to go on record as saying something is or isn't patentable, but I would like to point out that "means for" is not "complicated legalese" by any stretch of the word and a bookmark cited as prior art would still be sufficient to deny your "invention" a patent.
As for the state of the prior art with the case in question, I won't comment because I have not done extensive research into art which visually displays information concerning origin of voicemail to be selected (which is lay terminology for what is being patented) but I bet the fact they were visually displayed (as defined by the specification) vastly limited the prior art for this case. Also this was originally filed in 1994 with priority to 1992, so while you may be correct about selecting them from a list, selecting them from a visual list with caller ID info may be much more sparse.
You can go on all day about him using this patent irresponsibly and I would tend to agree, but I think he has a better claim to a patent than a fair portion of the/. community is giving him credit for.
There are a lot of people (see above) that are just saying "Whoda thunk there's misinformation on the internet," but this is not the point of the article. The point is that misinformation is being ranked higher than videos showing the scientific truth. Now for entertainment sake, that's fine. In this case however, many of the videos were meant to be informative or persuasive instead of strictly entertainment.
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. I don't know of too many people who think their car will randomly transform into a robot or their body is being used as a battery to power a giant ai network. The problem the article is hinting at is many of these videos are supposed to be informative and we break into the realm of documentaries or informational movies (i.e. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc.) Now I don't want this debate to get political (although I think it may) but we'll further examine Fahrenheit 9/11. I personally am a democrat and when I saw this movie, I believed much more than I should of to be the absolute truth. Later on a fair portion of the movie was debunked, but because it was a compelling story in line with my own viewpoint, it was easy to believe.
To add to this, I have heard many people tell urban legends to me (which I knew to be untrue) as the absolute truth. The point is that humans tend to believe what makes a good story and not necessarily the truth, which in many cases is too bad.
I don't think it's unlikely or unheard of that there's misinformation on the net and I really don't feel that's what this article is getting at. Instead the article is pointing a blame-ful finger at the gullibility of human kind.
Sometimes lies may be fun, but take them only at face value.
In fact, the patent doesn't actually list any claims regarding how do what the other claims describe. So essentially he patented only the obvious parts of visual voicemail. I just have to chime in here because the claims only have to describe the invention itself unless it is an improvement that needs a specific implementation. The specification is needed to describe the how of the patent claims.
Additionally, in order for it to be obvious in a court of law, there must be prior art which does something very similar and is generally more of a combination of art than a random step included by an examiner unless it's a very small step. (larger steps are generally seen as hindsight which is even easier to do for an invention this old). The gpp post is actually fairly on-target in pointing out that this is now an invention that's over a decade old and references were probably very scarce for such a system.
... that when I saw the title, the first question I had is "well how are they quantifying momentum? Is the MP3 format going much slower than the speed of light or do they have to include a Lorentz factor? It the MP3 format actually traveling faster or did it just have a large thanksgiving dinner with lost of leftovers?"
I'd like to chime in here, because while I don't appreciate how religion was dragged into all of this, there's something I simply cannot let slide from the parent post.
Data is only data by agreement. The number 0, invented by religious nuts way back, only has meaning because we agree it does. Sure, there are repeatable, measurable structures within the universe, but the measurements and the meaning we give them are just what we agree on. That is truth. Reality is regardless of truth.
We agree on these because they do have repeatable, measurable structures. If you have three bananas, some may "agree" you have three bananas, some may think you have tres plátanos and still others may think you have drei bananen. This is irrelevant because no matter what verbalization you use, the actual property is the same. I don't understand quite what you mean what "reality is regardless of truth" but the goal of science is to find the truth to reality.
We cannot know for sure that R=E/I because resistance, electric potential and current were all invented by humans as part of a model and there may well be an electromotive fairy manipulating the effects behind the scenes for her own amusement. The fact that it's consistant could well be her little running joke. Sure, it's a stupid argument and I don't personally subscribe to it, but it's possible. My point is that, while that's not useful, it's also not really harmful, so why worry about it? You can't prove it isn't so. No worthy scientist can.
The point is not to prove or disprove. The religious viewpoint has (and always will) avoid the scientific method because they are somehow above it. You are correct that science cannot currently disprove that god exists, but it can provide degrees of unlikelihood. Because you suggested it, let's visit your fairy example because (I think) we both agree it is a preposterous example.
Anyone can make a crazy claim, but just because it is made, doesn't mean it is true. If I imagine a brand new Prius sitting outside of my office newly registered in my name with all payments made, it doesn't mean that when I go downstairs I'll be able to drive away in a new Toyota. It's a simple fact that thought != reality and just because you can think it doesn't make it real.
Even if we ignore the fact that thought != reality, we have a backup check in science. You are correct that physical constants may suddenly change, but hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of years of documented evidence shows that these physical constants are just that - constant. With each passing day, the probability of these constants suddenly (or even gradually) changing becomes less likely. While it is true that this graph is a 1/x graph with an asymptote at 0 which will only be reached in an infinite time, we are showing how unlikely such a change is. Let us additionally say (simply for the sake of argument) that the initially postulated theory shows this fairy has a control room on Uranus full of knobs and lights and electrical gadgets (an equally ridiculous claim to go with the first one). I'm sure that science would love to get a probe up there and take a look around. Let's say they do and don't see anything, well Uranus is a gas planet, so the "fariest" would postulate the room is submerged in the gas clouds. While this makes it slightly more unlikely, I would tend to agree with the "fariest" that location wasn't specified. Let's then say science sends another probe up, this time with a magnetic field sensor to try and find the big electrical room the fairy is in, but that also turns up nothing. This is where the story has to change to avoid science. All of a sudden it becomes a minutely small room, or suddenly the knobs are made of cabbage and the room is a sailboat and suddenly there's no electronics, or maybe the fairy made sure to magnetically shield her domain. The point is, while these "theories" (term very loosely used) can be postulated and never fully and 100% disproved, science can show
Wow. I never claimed to "represent" you. The initial response was a joke (rather apparently so), and additionally in case you didn't realize: joking != truth.
My initial response was only showing how the (now ggggpp) original post did nothing but flame/troll by even mentioning religion.
There's a time and place for these types of discussions, but mainly when a religious or semi-religious topic comes up. Helium leading to geothermal activity has nothing to do with religion. It shouldn't have even been mentioned... because it was, he fully deserves his flamebait moderation and all subsequent offtopic mods too.
Why would you presume to know how atheists would react to his post? Actually because I am an atheist myself, so I'm pretty sure that would qualify to react.
Does your superstition preclude a sense of humor? Only when it deals with alienating a group based upon culture or belief. I believe the lay term for that is stereotype.
Additionally ggpp lacked any form of humor that I could detect.
We could just pray to find the geothermal sources. *it is at this point in your post, both religious and nonreligious moderators get ready with their -1 Flamebait moderation but are still timid.
Where could he be going with this: personal experiences? A joking suggestion? or are you attempting to alienate ~90% of the world population.
Except that doesn't work. *I see you've chosen the alienation route... it's not too late, you can still recover. I suggest making a joke here.
...and before you mod that down as flamebait (I know you will), ask yourself: Do YOU think it would work? *ooh, the "don't mark me flaimbait" tactic, the serious route will be a tough one at this point.
at least you still have your atheist readers on your side.
Superstition is crap. Science works, bitches. *ahh, strike three. You've just finished by alienating everybody. Even your atheist buddies are afraid to look you in the eye now.
Too bad this time. While you will be enjoying a flaimbait moderation from almost everyone in the world, I hope you tune in next time to...
The Slashdot Moderation Game!
And may I be the first to say...
on
Futurama Returns!
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I take it you don't object to the police searching your house or randomly stopping you and giving you a cavity search either? That could also help in catching criminals. There's a very large difference between giving fingerprints and having your house or rectum searched.
There are two components to gathering fingerprints: The initial fingerprinting and the "match" found at an incriminating location.
Your privacy only becomes violated by fingerprints when a crime is comitted AND it can additionally provide evidence you were NOT in said location if your status as a criminal is ever questioned.
Fingerprinting is not a slippery-slope scenario as you are making it out to be.
People sign up for social networks to be in a social network and they sign up for E-mail to get E-mail. I would much like to keep the frilly "crap" separate from my day-to-day email.
When Hotmail started throwing for-pay spam to my inbox and cluttered many of their pages with ads, I made a switch to Gmail. If Gmail throws a round of unnecessary social networking (especially without me opting-in) It may just be time to move along again.
Most large-scale power plants have some bad impact on the environment. Oh... you just need to put a positive spin on it!
Burning carbon - air pollution We prefer to call it "oxygen enhancement"
Wind farms - dead birds But they make very good and nutrient-rich fertilizer!
Hydroelectric - dams and all that this implies Be like the beavers, go for hydroelectric!
Nuclear - nuclear waste disposal It's warm AND it glows! What can be cooler than that!
Until we get something cheap with a light footprint, it's a game of "pick your poison." Oh no, the glass will be half full even if there's a whole in the bottom!
When I try to explain the benefits of Nuclear power to some of my friends, many come back with the (rather cliché) horror stories of Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. What many don't know is the computational power to safely keep a reactor going was generally greater than what was available and the failsafes there were not entirely figured out or developed. We have had many years to develop the technology and as TFA points out:
among the 104 reactors currently online in the United States, none have had any disasters since the infamous Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The technology has vastly improved, the safety measures are in place, it's time to go Nuclear.
Is there a general rule for figuring out how many BTUs of cooling you need for a given wattage of power supplies? I actually found a good article about this earlier on and it helped me purchase a window unit for a closet turned server-room. Hope that helps out a bit.
Then it just draws EXTRA power while running, to charge the capacitors. Electricity can't be produced from nothing. Yes, but it only draws enough electricity to fill the capacitors instead of constantly drawing enough power to bring the monitor out of standby.
Sure you're going to use some extra electricity to come out of standby, but this does cut down on that amount in a vast manner.
The link I provided is to msnbc's hardball interview and I have watched many other interviews with him. He may break character at times, but most of the time he segues back into them as quickly as possible.
Yes, candidates will go back on some campaign promises and that needs to be factored in. Yes I could have gone into a detailed description of exactly how there's a correlation between campaign promises kept and voting history. That was not the point of the blog and I don't have the time to write about every political nuance which may come up as being loosely related.
What should be focused upon is a candidate's beliefs, views, and voting record. With that said, Colbert may be an even worse choice. There is a strict difference between Colbert and the mainstream candidates in that Colbert will never take anything seriously. Colbert would not dare break character for a second because how dare he sacrifice comedy for realism.
If you watch his Hardball interview it's downright uncomfortable for that simple fact. I expect candidates to go back on a few of their promises in general which is something that is unfortunate, but yes it happens. Colbert at this point is throwing himself into the ring for the sake of comedy and disruption. People should vote for a real platform.
Slashdot Mirror
Because I'm a patent examiner I'm not supposed to go on record as saying something is or isn't patentable, but I would like to point out that "means for" is not "complicated legalese" by any stretch of the word and a bookmark cited as prior art would still be sufficient to deny your "invention" a patent.
/. community is giving him credit for.
As for the state of the prior art with the case in question, I won't comment because I have not done extensive research into art which visually displays information concerning origin of voicemail to be selected (which is lay terminology for what is being patented) but I bet the fact they were visually displayed (as defined by the specification) vastly limited the prior art for this case. Also this was originally filed in 1994 with priority to 1992, so while you may be correct about selecting them from a list, selecting them from a visual list with caller ID info may be much more sparse.
You can go on all day about him using this patent irresponsibly and I would tend to agree, but I think he has a better claim to a patent than a fair portion of the
There are a lot of people (see above) that are just saying "Whoda thunk there's misinformation on the internet," but this is not the point of the article. The point is that misinformation is being ranked higher than videos showing the scientific truth. Now for entertainment sake, that's fine. In this case however, many of the videos were meant to be informative or persuasive instead of strictly entertainment.
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. I don't know of too many people who think their car will randomly transform into a robot or their body is being used as a battery to power a giant ai network. The problem the article is hinting at is many of these videos are supposed to be informative and we break into the realm of documentaries or informational movies (i.e. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc.) Now I don't want this debate to get political (although I think it may) but we'll further examine Fahrenheit 9/11. I personally am a democrat and when I saw this movie, I believed much more than I should of to be the absolute truth. Later on a fair portion of the movie was debunked, but because it was a compelling story in line with my own viewpoint, it was easy to believe.
To add to this, I have heard many people tell urban legends to me (which I knew to be untrue) as the absolute truth. The point is that humans tend to believe what makes a good story and not necessarily the truth, which in many cases is too bad.
I don't think it's unlikely or unheard of that there's misinformation on the net and I really don't feel that's what this article is getting at. Instead the article is pointing a blame-ful finger at the gullibility of human kind.
Sometimes lies may be fun, but take them only at face value.
Additionally, in order for it to be obvious in a court of law, there must be prior art which does something very similar and is generally more of a combination of art than a random step included by an examiner unless it's a very small step. (larger steps are generally seen as hindsight which is even easier to do for an invention this old). The gpp post is actually fairly on-target in pointing out that this is now an invention that's over a decade old and references were probably very scarce for such a system.
... that when I saw the title, the first question I had is "well how are they quantifying momentum? Is the MP3 format going much slower than the speed of light or do they have to include a Lorentz factor? It the MP3 format actually traveling faster or did it just have a large thanksgiving dinner with lost of leftovers?"
Data is only data by agreement. The number 0, invented by religious nuts way back, only has meaning because we agree it does. Sure, there are repeatable, measurable structures within the universe, but the measurements and the meaning we give them are just what we agree on. That is truth. Reality is regardless of truth.
We agree on these because they do have repeatable, measurable structures. If you have three bananas, some may "agree" you have three bananas, some may think you have tres plátanos and still others may think you have drei bananen. This is irrelevant because no matter what verbalization you use, the actual property is the same. I don't understand quite what you mean what "reality is regardless of truth" but the goal of science is to find the truth to reality.
We cannot know for sure that R=E/I because resistance, electric potential and current were all invented by humans as part of a model and there may well be an electromotive fairy manipulating the effects behind the scenes for her own amusement. The fact that it's consistant could well be her little running joke. Sure, it's a stupid argument and I don't personally subscribe to it, but it's possible. My point is that, while that's not useful, it's also not really harmful, so why worry about it? You can't prove it isn't so. No worthy scientist can.
The point is not to prove or disprove. The religious viewpoint has (and always will) avoid the scientific method because they are somehow above it. You are correct that science cannot currently disprove that god exists, but it can provide degrees of unlikelihood. Because you suggested it, let's visit your fairy example because (I think) we both agree it is a preposterous example.
Anyone can make a crazy claim, but just because it is made, doesn't mean it is true. If I imagine a brand new Prius sitting outside of my office newly registered in my name with all payments made, it doesn't mean that when I go downstairs I'll be able to drive away in a new Toyota. It's a simple fact that thought != reality and just because you can think it doesn't make it real.
Even if we ignore the fact that thought != reality, we have a backup check in science. You are correct that physical constants may suddenly change, but hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of years of documented evidence shows that these physical constants are just that - constant. With each passing day, the probability of these constants suddenly (or even gradually) changing becomes less likely. While it is true that this graph is a 1/x graph with an asymptote at 0 which will only be reached in an infinite time, we are showing how unlikely such a change is. Let us additionally say (simply for the sake of argument) that the initially postulated theory shows this fairy has a control room on Uranus full of knobs and lights and electrical gadgets (an equally ridiculous claim to go with the first one). I'm sure that science would love to get a probe up there and take a look around. Let's say they do and don't see anything, well Uranus is a gas planet, so the "fariest" would postulate the room is submerged in the gas clouds. While this makes it slightly more unlikely, I would tend to agree with the "fariest" that location wasn't specified. Let's then say science sends another probe up, this time with a magnetic field sensor to try and find the big electrical room the fairy is in, but that also turns up nothing. This is where the story has to change to avoid science. All of a sudden it becomes a minutely small room, or suddenly the knobs are made of cabbage and the room is a sailboat and suddenly there's no electronics, or maybe the fairy made sure to magnetically shield her domain. The point is, while these "theories" (term very loosely used) can be postulated and never fully and 100% disproved, science can show
Wow.
I never claimed to "represent" you. The initial response was a joke (rather apparently so), and additionally in case you didn't realize: joking != truth.
My initial response was only showing how the (now ggggpp) original post did nothing but flame/troll by even mentioning religion.
There's a time and place for these types of discussions, but mainly when a religious or semi-religious topic comes up. Helium leading to geothermal activity has nothing to do with religion. It shouldn't have even been mentioned... because it was, he fully deserves his flamebait moderation and all subsequent offtopic mods too.
Additionally ggpp lacked any form of humor that I could detect.
Where could he be going with this: personal experiences? A joking suggestion? or are you attempting to alienate ~90% of the world population. Except that doesn't work. *I see you've chosen the alienation route... it's not too late, you can still recover. I suggest making a joke here.
...and before you mod that down as flamebait (I know you will), ask yourself: Do YOU think it would work? *ooh, the "don't mark me flaimbait" tactic, the serious route will be a tough one at this point.at least you still have your atheist readers on your side. Superstition is crap. Science works, bitches. *ahh, strike three. You've just finished by alienating everybody. Even your atheist buddies are afraid to look you in the eye now.
Too bad this time. While you will be enjoying a flaimbait moderation from almost everyone in the world, I hope you tune in next time to...
The Slashdot Moderation Game!
All Hail Hypnotoad!
It's not that they're against innovation as much as crap like this.
There are two components to gathering fingerprints: The initial fingerprinting and the "match" found at an incriminating location.
Your privacy only becomes violated by fingerprints when a crime is comitted AND it can additionally provide evidence you were NOT in said location if your status as a criminal is ever questioned.
Fingerprinting is not a slippery-slope scenario as you are making it out to be.
People sign up for social networks to be in a social network and they sign up for E-mail to get E-mail. I would much like to keep the frilly "crap" separate from my day-to-day email.
When Hotmail started throwing for-pay spam to my inbox and cluttered many of their pages with ads, I made a switch to Gmail. If Gmail throws a round of unnecessary social networking (especially without me opting-in) It may just be time to move along again.
If you want 100% uptime, it's important to have back up power for the cooling as well as the server systems themselves.
Is this really news?
Sure you're going to use some extra electricity to come out of standby, but this does cut down on that amount in a vast manner.
Isn't it obvious!?
Anyone with half a brain, well...
is probably being attacked by a zombie.
I was simultaneously looking up laptop parts on ebay so they were on my mind at the time.
The link I provided is to msnbc's hardball interview and I have watched many other interviews with him. He may break character at times, but most of the time he segues back into them as quickly as possible.
Yes, candidates will go back on some campaign promises and that needs to be factored in. Yes I could have gone into a detailed description of exactly how there's a correlation between campaign promises kept and voting history. That was not the point of the blog and I don't have the time to write about every political nuance which may come up as being loosely related.
What should be focused upon is a candidate's beliefs, views, and voting record. With that said, Colbert may be an even worse choice. There is a strict difference between Colbert and the mainstream candidates in that Colbert will never take anything seriously. Colbert would not dare break character for a second because how dare he sacrifice comedy for realism.
If you watch his Hardball interview it's downright uncomfortable for that simple fact. I expect candidates to go back on a few of their promises in general which is something that is unfortunate, but yes it happens. Colbert at this point is throwing himself into the ring for the sake of comedy and disruption. People should vote for a real platform.
He could further disrupt a nation already in trouble.
I've already written a full opinion on the matter in my blog
Is that an actual job title these days, or is that just his hobby? I thought it just meant he posts on
Assuming the ground below is at or near sea level... I'm guessing (65000/5280) or 12.31 miles.