I'm appalled. It could easily be that, in general, the roads are getting much safer, but that *of the pedestrian accidents* a disproportionate quantity are by electric/hybrid vehicles. It could be that the roads are getting safer *because* there are many electric/hybrid vehicles on the road and people drive them like they are on novocaine. Assuming a proportional result from an overall quantity seems, to me, highly suspect.
In a sense, it is. One of the big problems with US cities is that their low-density is designed around, and encourage, car use. The provision of parking lots and wide roads mean that the density drops to where public transit is not so viable. Solutions to longer-distance movement that help keep cities dense and transit shared are a part of a solution. I rode the TRR, I've been on the levels in Hong Kong, and in societies...well, that are societies in the sense that people realize that there are other people around...people stand to one side and walk the other. Moving walkways work well for medium distances under those circumstances, and they can manage a higher density, and hence rate, than plain walking (either people walk as well, or they stand closer together than when walking).
"the disgust with which most people feel when maths and logic are turned into private possessions" -- sort of like the disgust when math and logic are turned into an ingenious machine, or chemistry is turned into an ingenious process? After all, chemistry is how matter works, how could you patent that?
The idea of a 'software patent' is a strawman. Technologies are patented, they are ways of doing things. Sometimes they can be implemented in software, for sure. Codecs patent signal processing and data compression and error recovery, for example. Build hardware, write software, the same thing is happening.
There are techniques now implemented in software which used to take dedicated machines. Ignoring that the patents have probably expired, what makes the software expression of that technique any less protectable than the machine was?
The patents in codecs are mostly on signal processing. What technology you use (hardware, software, firmware) is irrelevant, roughly as the phrase 'software patents' is meaningless.
re: "They are a licensor in the h.264 patent pool (just like Apple) so it does not cost them anything"
You have evidence for this? A heavy user, but minority patent owner, can easily pay more than they get.
re: "For example, show where the licensing authority says it's okay to make an open-source free version. Oh, you can't - because they refused!"
Citation please. reference code is *required* by the ISO and ITU standards efforts, and it is available to all. There are also open-source projects such as x.264. Finally, I do not believe that either MPEG or MPEG-LA would make such a statement (and they are, in case you don't understand this, quite distinct bodies).
"Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec" is hard to reconcile with http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video (and the same document is available at the W3C, O doubters). It seems (gasp) that several sources can be...wrong!
actually, 44.1 kHz is an 'interesting number' -- it is the product of the squares of the first four prime numbers, that is, 2**2 x 3**2 x 5**2 x 7**2. It therefore has a whole host of small integer factors. I don't believe that such relationship came about 'accidentally'.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm appalled. It could easily be that, in general, the roads are getting much safer, but that *of the pedestrian accidents* a disproportionate quantity are by electric/hybrid vehicles. It could be that the roads are getting safer *because* there are many electric/hybrid vehicles on the road and people drive them like they are on novocaine. Assuming a proportional result from an overall quantity seems, to me, highly suspect.
In a sense, it is. One of the big problems with US cities is that their low-density is designed around, and encourage, car use. The provision of parking lots and wide roads mean that the density drops to where public transit is not so viable. Solutions to longer-distance movement that help keep cities dense and transit shared are a part of a solution. I rode the TRR, I've been on the levels in Hong Kong, and in societies...well, that are societies in the sense that people realize that there are other people around...people stand to one side and walk the other. Moving walkways work well for medium distances under those circumstances, and they can manage a higher density, and hence rate, than plain walking (either people walk as well, or they stand closer together than when walking).
"the disgust with which most people feel when maths and logic are turned into private possessions" -- sort of like the disgust when math and logic are turned into an ingenious machine, or chemistry is turned into an ingenious process? After all, chemistry is how matter works, how could you patent that? The idea of a 'software patent' is a strawman. Technologies are patented, they are ways of doing things. Sometimes they can be implemented in software, for sure. Codecs patent signal processing and data compression and error recovery, for example. Build hardware, write software, the same thing is happening. There are techniques now implemented in software which used to take dedicated machines. Ignoring that the patents have probably expired, what makes the software expression of that technique any less protectable than the machine was?
The patents in codecs are mostly on signal processing. What technology you use (hardware, software, firmware) is irrelevant, roughly as the phrase 'software patents' is meaningless.
re: "They are a licensor in the h.264 patent pool (just like Apple) so it does not cost them anything"
You have evidence for this? A heavy user, but minority patent owner, can easily pay more than they get.
re: "For example, show where the licensing authority says it's okay to make an open-source free version. Oh, you can't - because they refused!"
Citation please. reference code is *required* by the ISO and ITU standards efforts, and it is available to all. There are also open-source projects such as x.264. Finally, I do not believe that either MPEG or MPEG-LA would make such a statement (and they are, in case you don't understand this, quite distinct bodies).
She should state that she will turn off transmitters on random half-days, and ask him to identify those half-days. I bet he can't.
"Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec" is hard to reconcile with http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video (and the same document is available at the W3C, O doubters). It seems (gasp) that several sources can be...wrong!
I have a friend who did this very simply with standard 802.11 base stations and a pair of parabolic directional antennae
actually, 44.1 kHz is an 'interesting number' -- it is the product of the squares of the first four prime numbers, that is, 2**2 x 3**2 x 5**2 x 7**2. It therefore has a whole host of small integer factors. I don't believe that such relationship came about 'accidentally'.