Here's one which was reported here in New Zealand, I think about a year ago. (I think it was around new year.)
Some teens decided to get high by inhaling a flamable gas (propane?) while sitting together in a car with the windows closed. Then one of them decided he wanted a smoke...
One died, as the mixture in his lungs happened to be in the explosive range. The rest were badly burned. However, the story disappeared off the news media without revealing whether the smoker was the one who died, so I couldn't submit it as a Darwin candidate.
Here is an example of computer generated trees (including flexing) from ~1990. I went to a talk by this guy. He was also working on 'artistic' genetic algorithms with human input: i.e. humans would judge how pleasing the output of various programs were, then those programs would be mutated to present more output to the human. I can't remember if he used this approach for the trees in this video.
A secretary is someone you can trust with your secrets. That is where the word comes from. If the CEO's secretary is selling the company out, having the boss's password won't increase the damage by much.
I've been using Unix for over two decades, Linux since pre 1.00, I've programmed an Apple II in hex and I deal with Greek letters on a daily basis (mathematics) but I still would have been thrown by that one.
It depends on whether the patch is a derivative work. It certainly doesn't stand on its own.
There has been a possibly analogous situtations with DVD bowdlerization. In the ClearPlay system, you have a special DVD player plus filter files for each movie. When you play a DVD, it looks at the filter file and skips stuff as required. Is the filter file a derivative work? The studios tried to challenge ClearPlay legally, but the suit was interupted when the Federal government passed a law explicitly allowing this - so no useful precident was set. I'm not sure if 'the filter file is a derivative work' was part of their argument - it might have been based on artistic control instead.
(There was also an outfit called CleanFlicks which would actually provide an edited DVD, having bought and destroyed a legal DVD of the movie for each edited one they sold. They did get shut down by a copyright suit.)
No, the MPAA can't necessarily just reissue the toolkit with source code and suffer no further consequences.
Once you violate the GPL, your right to distribute the licensed software is terminated. You can only start distributing it again if the copyright holder relicenses you to do so. In GPL violation disputes, the FSF have normally relicensed a distributer once they conform to the GPL's requirements - but this is not automatic, or written into the GPL.
From GPL v2:
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License."
There is no clause about reinstating rights under the license.
In other words - if any of the copyright holders in Xubuntu code insist, the MPAA can't ever distribute their software, even with source. IANAL, so I don't know if the courts would support this hard-line.
Kite surfers can tack into the wind, can't they? I don't see why this couldn't. The kite is steerable, so it doesn't have to be directly downwind of the ship.
Could you mount this system on any ship and expect it to work? Or do you (e.g.) need a purpose-designed hull (e.g. yacht-like keel) to resist sideways forces from the kite?
Also, I think you can tack into the wind with one of these. The kite is steerable, so it doesn't have to be directly downwind of the ship. It is just a scaled-up version of kite-surfing. (Tacking travels extra distance, of course, so it might not always be economic to use the kite.)
I use SpeedFan, but there is a lot it can't do: I can't tell where the motherboard temperature sensors are. It doesn't read temps or fan speeds or control fan speeds in the PSU. It doesn't read temps or fan speeds or control fan speeds in the GPU (unless I plug the fan into a motherboard fan header.) There is no standard hardware for attaching additional temperature probes.
In my case, some of this is moot - my GPU and PSU don't have fans. I take geek pride in having a quiet single fan system*. There are some excellent new PSUs, and I'd like to be able to use one and have the PSU fan take over from the case fan, but I can't safely do this, as I have no control over the PSU fan. Even if I hacked it to put the PSU fan under motherboard control, I would need both motherboard/CPU temps and PSU temps.
* Silverstone ST30NF PSU, passively cooled 7600GS GPU, Ninja CPU heatsink, Nexus 120mm case fan which runs at 40%-80% speed.
I guess it wasn't an option in the early 60s, but this could perhaps be fixed with a safety diode. Is this ever done with large electolytic capacitors? The diode would need suitably low leakage current, high breakdown voltage and low cost. I don't know if that combination is available.
I invented* "inverse Lotto" years ago. It goes like this: Choose $5 worth of numbers in your local lottery. Write them down, but DON'T buy a ticket. Watch the draw on TV.
If they didn't draw your numbers, you've just won $5!
If they did, you've just lost $370 million (or whatever.)
* although I'm sure I'm not the only one to have thought of this
I think the rant also included "Beduin nomads in the desert hate the phone company" but I couldn't find online confirmation of this.
(Incidentally, I don't have a cellphone. For a while I had which was given to me by my father - it had been given to him, and then he'd been given a better one. It was on a pay-per-call, no-monthly-fee scheme. The reason I don't have it anymore is that it was so obsolete that about 6 months ago, they dismantled the network it used.)
A universal Turing machine is one which can simulate any other Turing machine. There are very many non-universal Turing machines, such as one which just writes an infinite sequence of '1's.
If you buy licenses per-computer where needed, then the school has troubles figuring out what licenses it owns and where they are being used.
If (say) 90% of a school's computers are going to run the MS software, and MS is offering a 20% discount for site licensing, the school wins both in money and in admin hassle by taking the site license, even though some of the computers won't use the paid-for software.
(In this particular case, there is an additional complication that the site licensing is per-year, whereas perpetual licensing is one-time up-front.)
Natalie Portman has one of the better scores (Erdos 5 + Bacon 2 = 7). She did not (so far as I know) use her fame in her primary field (acting) to get preferential treatment in the other (science/maths.) There are scientists with a lower total, but I think they've all got an acting part on strength of their science fame (e.g. Stephen Hawking.)
According to Wikipedia, a few people have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers which appear to be 'clean', but I haven't heard of them before: Kiralee Hayashi (3+3), Danica McKellar (4+2), Barney Pell (3+2), John Platt (3+3), Karl Schaffer (3+2), Brian Wandell (3+2), Wendelin Werner (3+3).
This is different. You're describing rockets launched from a balloon. The stratoscopes where telescopes suspended from a balloon - no incenduaries required.
TFA: The balloon is designed to carry 6,000 pounds of equipment, including a 1-meter (39-inch) solar telescope...
Compare to: Stratoscope II was the largest and most sophisticated balloon-borne astronomical telescope flown in the 1960s and early 1970s. A follow-on project to Stratoscope I, a 12-inch balloon born telescope conceived by Martin Schwarzschild, it was a 36-inch reflector mounted in a 3.5-ton stabilized gondola and studied the infra-red molecular composition of planetary atmospheres, the atmospheres of red giant stars. (They had photos of this on the corridor walls when I studied astronomy at Princeton. It needed a substantial sized truck to carry it.)
I'm sure there is good, innovative stuff being done here - but merely using a balloon is not it. I expect that one advance is in mission duration. I didn't quickly find the flight duration for Stratoscope II, but likely it was a few hours, compared to "as long as two weeks" for this telescope. And, of course, it will have much superior detectors.
A typical desktop would idle at around 60W and peak at around 150W, so it is more like 10% of overall power consumption. A single-GPU gaming system (high-end CPU, GPU, mild overclocking) might consume about twice that.
Those >600W PSUs are just for people who need to psychologically compensate for something.
I've had a similar thought myself. Many of the objectionable patents are effectively patents on a problem, not on a solution. It may be hard to see the problem, but once you see it, the solution is obvious. For example, in 1985 I forsee the Y2K problem, and patent obvious ways of fixing the software. In 1997 everyone else gets worried about Y2K and I start charging them to use my patented fixing methods.
Patents-on-a-problem should not be allowed. Once you've found yourself in need of a solution, the problem is obvious. If the solution is also obvious, there should be no patent barriers to using it.
Re:Does any real-world problem translate into go?
on
Cracking Go
·
· Score: 1
There is a construct in Go known as a 'ladder'. Unless one player abandons their stones to capture, it grows diagonally across the board. If nothing else intervenes, when the edge of the board is reached, the endangered stones get captured. I recall seeing something where arangements of stones in the path of the ladder could be used to encode an NP-complete problem. Sorry, I can't find the reference.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's one which was reported here in New Zealand, I think about a year ago. (I think it was around new year.)
Some teens decided to get high by inhaling a flamable gas (propane?) while sitting together in a car with the windows closed. Then one of them decided he wanted a smoke...
One died, as the mixture in his lungs happened to be in the explosive range. The rest were badly burned. However, the story disappeared off the news media without revealing whether the smoker was the one who died, so I couldn't submit it as a Darwin candidate.
Here is an example of computer generated trees (including flexing) from ~1990. I went to a talk by this guy. He was also working on 'artistic' genetic algorithms with human input: i.e. humans would judge how pleasing the output of various programs were, then those programs would be mutated to present more output to the human. I can't remember if he used this approach for the trees in this video.
A secretary is someone you can trust with your secrets. That is where the word comes from. If the CEO's secretary is selling the company out, having the boss's password won't increase the damage by much.
Here is your registration code: Alpha One Five...
I've been using Unix for over two decades, Linux since pre 1.00, I've programmed an Apple II in hex and I deal with Greek letters on a daily basis (mathematics) but I still would have been thrown by that one.
It depends on whether the patch is a derivative work. It certainly doesn't stand on its own.
There has been a possibly analogous situtations with DVD bowdlerization. In the ClearPlay system, you have a special DVD player plus filter files for each movie. When you play a DVD, it looks at the filter file and skips stuff as required. Is the filter file a derivative work? The studios tried to challenge ClearPlay legally, but the suit was interupted when the Federal government passed a law explicitly allowing this - so no useful precident was set. I'm not sure if 'the filter file is a derivative work' was part of their argument - it might have been based on artistic control instead.
(There was also an outfit called CleanFlicks which would actually provide an edited DVD, having bought and destroyed a legal DVD of the movie for each edited one they sold. They did get shut down by a copyright suit.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanflicks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearPlay
IANAL, I'm just parroting what someone said on Groklaw who seemed to know what they were talking about.
"two Free Software groups to buy this commercial high-priced license from each other (net gain: $0)..."
Or possibly net loss $30,000 in taxes on two $50,000 sales. Check with your tax accountant before trying this.
No, the MPAA can't necessarily just reissue the toolkit with source code and suffer no further consequences.
Once you violate the GPL, your right to distribute the licensed software is terminated. You can only start distributing it again if the copyright holder relicenses you to do so. In GPL violation disputes, the FSF have normally relicensed a distributer once they conform to the GPL's requirements - but this is not automatic, or written into the GPL.
From GPL v2:
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License."
There is no clause about reinstating rights under the license.
In other words - if any of the copyright holders in Xubuntu code insist, the MPAA can't ever distribute their software, even with source. IANAL, so I don't know if the courts would support this hard-line.
Kite surfers can tack into the wind, can't they? I don't see why this couldn't. The kite is steerable, so it doesn't have to be directly downwind of the ship.
Could you mount this system on any ship and expect it to work? Or do you (e.g.) need a purpose-designed hull (e.g. yacht-like keel) to resist sideways forces from the kite?
Also, I think you can tack into the wind with one of these. The kite is steerable, so it doesn't have to be directly downwind of the ship. It is just a scaled-up version of kite-surfing. (Tacking travels extra distance, of course, so it might not always be economic to use the kite.)
Boy, you whacked him good and hard. That's one straw man that ain't walking away.
Or history.
vending machine gives face to you!
Likewise.
I use SpeedFan, but there is a lot it can't do:
I can't tell where the motherboard temperature sensors are.
It doesn't read temps or fan speeds or control fan speeds in the PSU.
It doesn't read temps or fan speeds or control fan speeds in the GPU (unless I plug the fan into a motherboard fan header.)
There is no standard hardware for attaching additional temperature probes.
In my case, some of this is moot - my GPU and PSU don't have fans. I take geek pride in having a quiet single fan system*. There are some excellent new PSUs, and I'd like to be able to use one and have the PSU fan take over from the case fan, but I can't safely do this, as I have no control over the PSU fan. Even if I hacked it to put the PSU fan under motherboard control, I would need both motherboard/CPU temps and PSU temps.
* Silverstone ST30NF PSU, passively cooled 7600GS GPU, Ninja CPU heatsink, Nexus 120mm case fan which runs at 40%-80% speed.
I guess it wasn't an option in the early 60s, but this could perhaps be fixed with a safety diode. Is this ever done with large electolytic capacitors? The diode would need suitably low leakage current, high breakdown voltage and low cost. I don't know if that combination is available.
I invented* "inverse Lotto" years ago. It goes like this:
Choose $5 worth of numbers in your local lottery.
Write them down, but DON'T buy a ticket.
Watch the draw on TV.
If they didn't draw your numbers, you've just won $5!
If they did, you've just lost $370 million (or whatever.)
* although I'm sure I'm not the only one to have thought of this
'Did you know even the stock holders of "The Phone Company" hate the phone company? '
--- The President's Analyst
I think the rant also included "Beduin nomads in the desert hate the phone company" but I couldn't find online confirmation of this.
(Incidentally, I don't have a cellphone. For a while I had which was given to me by my father - it had been given to him, and then he'd been given a better one. It was on a pay-per-call, no-monthly-fee scheme. The reason I don't have it anymore is that it was so obsolete that about 6 months ago, they dismantled the network it used.)
Sorry, but that is just flat wrong.
A universal Turing machine is one which can simulate any other Turing machine. There are very many non-universal Turing machines, such as one which just writes an infinite sequence of '1's.
I'll play devil's advocate here.
If you buy licenses per-computer where needed, then the school has troubles figuring out what licenses it owns and where they are being used.
If (say) 90% of a school's computers are going to run the MS software, and MS is offering a 20% discount for site licensing, the school wins both in money and in admin hassle by taking the site license, even though some of the computers won't use the paid-for software.
(In this particular case, there is an additional complication that the site licensing is per-year, whereas perpetual licensing is one-time up-front.)
I can't let this go past without bringing up Erdos-Bacon numbers.
Natalie Portman has one of the better scores (Erdos 5 + Bacon 2 = 7). She did not (so far as I know) use her fame in her primary field (acting) to get preferential treatment in the other (science/maths.) There are scientists with a lower total, but I think they've all got an acting part on strength of their science fame (e.g. Stephen Hawking.)
According to Wikipedia, a few people have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers which appear to be 'clean', but I haven't heard of them before: Kiralee Hayashi (3+3), Danica McKellar (4+2), Barney Pell (3+2), John Platt (3+3), Karl Schaffer (3+2), Brian Wandell (3+2), Wendelin Werner (3+3).
This is different. You're describing rockets launched from a balloon. The stratoscopes where telescopes suspended from a balloon - no incenduaries required.
TFA: The balloon is designed to carry 6,000 pounds of equipment, including a 1-meter (39-inch) solar telescope...
Compare to:
Stratoscope II was the largest and most sophisticated balloon-borne astronomical telescope flown in the 1960s and early 1970s. A follow-on project to Stratoscope I, a 12-inch balloon born telescope conceived by Martin Schwarzschild, it was a 36-inch reflector mounted in a 3.5-ton stabilized gondola and studied the infra-red molecular composition of planetary atmospheres, the atmospheres of red giant stars. (They had photos of this on the corridor walls when I studied astronomy at Princeton. It needed a substantial sized truck to carry it.)
I'm sure there is good, innovative stuff being done here - but merely using a balloon is not it. I expect that one advance is in mission duration. I didn't quickly find the flight duration for Stratoscope II, but likely it was a few hours, compared to "as long as two weeks" for this telescope. And, of course, it will have much superior detectors.
A typical desktop would idle at around 60W and peak at around 150W, so it is more like 10% of overall power consumption. A single-GPU gaming system (high-end CPU, GPU, mild overclocking) might consume about twice that.
Those >600W PSUs are just for people who need to psychologically compensate for something.
I've had a similar thought myself. Many of the objectionable patents are effectively patents on a problem, not on a solution. It may be hard to see the problem, but once you see it, the solution is obvious. For example, in 1985 I forsee the Y2K problem, and patent obvious ways of fixing the software. In 1997 everyone else gets worried about Y2K and I start charging them to use my patented fixing methods.
Patents-on-a-problem should not be allowed. Once you've found yourself in need of a solution, the problem is obvious. If the solution is also obvious, there should be no patent barriers to using it.
There is a construct in Go known as a 'ladder'. Unless one player abandons their stones to capture, it grows diagonally across the board. If nothing else intervenes, when the edge of the board is reached, the endangered stones get captured. I recall seeing something where arangements of stones in the path of the ladder could be used to encode an NP-complete problem. Sorry, I can't find the reference.