Having just gone through this process, allow me to pass on what I learned about the process.
1) Know what you are getting into. Ebooks have some great advantages. However: * DRM is common * books are pricey * selection is very limited
If you're still interested, continue.
2) LCD vs Eink I read a lot on my Palm. Now that I have an eink reader, I'm not going back, I never thought LCD was "hard" to read on until I read on something else. However, eink means $$$ and few choices, while there's a number of established as well as new LCD devices for much, much less. LCDs can also scroll, while the eink has a.5-2 second refresh time. LCDs can have color while eink hasn't gotten that far.
Your question implies you've picked, so we'll continue on, but others are recommended to visit a Borders and take a peek at a demo Sony Reader - the viziplex screen is pretty much the same for all the major eink readers.
3) Pros and Cons There are basically 4 readers to choose from here (ignoring the fringe players): Bookeen Sony Kindle Iliad
Iliad has some real perks, but I wanted a reader not a computer, and certainly not $700 worth.
Bookeen has some nice features, but after my painful Zaurus experience, I wanted to stick to something intended for my language and a little more commercial support. When I bought my reader, the Cybook was still finishing off the rough spots. It may now be worthy of consideration, as it has a much wider selection of formats than the Sony Reader.
Kindle - though it wasn't out when I got my reader, it came out shortly afterward. Major Pros are wireless access to snag books, improved book selection (still limited), and much better prices on books. Major Con is the highly restrictive DRM. That latter is what kept me content with my Sony.
Sony - My eventual choice. It takes props as one of the only technology choices I didn't quickly regret. It has its limitations, most notably the crappy book selection, even crappier prices, and the eink refresh time. But it does what it tries to do reliably well.
Here are the things about the Sony reader that the review may not cover (505 only, not always true for 500)
It's a USB Mass storage device - so you can install books from any computer. What's more, it takes SD cards (and memory sticks, but I haven't mucked with that), and when the card is in the reader and the reader is connected to the computer, the card also appears as a drive on the USB device. I've been able to use my Reader on multiple computers, Windows and Linux, with no issue. There is no need to use the Sony software except to download from their crappy bookstore.
You may see talk of a credit at the bookstore - that's for "Sony Classics" only, i.e. books you can grab off of Gutenburg for free. I recommend you turn to mobileread.com for your ebook needs and wait for Amazon et al to get a clue like they have (started) with Mp3s. Either way, don't factor the $100 credit into your comparison.
The Sony Reader can handle LRF (it's propriety but not necessarily DRM'ed format) well, offering hyperlinking and 3 levels of magnification along with landscape/portrait modes. It can also handle TXT (I believe the zoom offerings are the same). PDF is also handled, but (1) Not "Digital Editions" (Adobe's DRMed books) and (2) It only offers 2 "sizes". Most PDF books come across as very small even when I have it zoomed and landscape. RTF doesn't resize in my experience, but it works well enough. Notably HTML, Mobi, Palmdoc, Word doc, and Openoffice formats aren't supported.
Installing a book can be done with their crappy wanna-be Itunes like software...or you can drag and drop via USB and ignore that. I recommend the latter.
The charge for me, reading a couple of hours each day, is a little less than a week. It charges off of USB no problem, standard mini connector. Your current position in books is lost if it goes dry, but nothing else, including hard boo
Assuming you're instead artificially joining gametes from two females (this process can't create a male without further tinkering) and ignoring the possibility for cross-over or other mutational effects, yes. The basic odds are small. (Bad at statistics, that'd be a 1 in 2^23 chance of the sibling having the exact opposite paring?).
However, the paper reporting on this notes that there was significant crossover involved in the process, which is part of the reason it took 1 1/2 years since the thought was first raised (the panel investigating Hwang's work noted parthenogenesis as a possibility) to prove the case.
Once again for those following along at home: (This is simplified and doesn't cover the "special cases" but is a lot better than you'll find in the media.)
DNA can be thought of as a big zipper: each tooth is a paring of bases. 4 bases, representing 2 pairs, each base will only connect to its partner. Unzipped, each half can recreate the original (no information is lost).
During cell replication, this is what happens (that's how each child cell has a complete DNA set). However, despite the zipper analogy, this is still a big molecule with all sorts of things that can go wrong. One particular risk is that segments from one chromosome will "swap" with the (sometimes) matching segments from it's partner chromosome: In essence allowing genes to not be tied to the other genes on the chromosome. Of course, such crossovers don't have to happen cleanly: It may not fall on a gene-boundry, the chromosomes may not be perfectly aligned, and lots of other things.
This is "crossover mutation". It's just one of the many ways that alterations happen in the genetic sequence. In whatever process Hwang's team used, it appears to have happened a lot more than normal.
End result? This process is "messy" parthenogenesis, and the resulting child cell is apparently far from a 100% match to a single chromosome set from the donor.
Just to add to this, if a woman is color-blind, then I believe it follows that her offspring will indefinitely be color-blind as well, as the husband has not the genetic material to supply for color-vision? Close. All of the woman's sons will be color-blind (She has two defective X's of which they'll each get one, and the father donates only a Y chromosome.). Her daughters still get an X from the father, so they'd be color-blind only if he was also color-blind (his sole X was defective).
You cant just trick the cell into doing cytokinesis I can't just trick a cell into anything:) But Hwang's group apparently created a parthenogenetic line from a human female ova, so they came up with something that the cell doesn't normally do: a trick.
All genes on the Y chromosome are certainly not recessive I oversimplified: Any gene on the Y chromosome that isn't on the X [I don't know if any duplicate, but most certainly don't] will have only one copy, and thus expresses even if "recessive" (assuming the gene is active at all). There is no other copy of the gene to interfere.
All cells has condensed chromatin, not just 'female' cells True, but I'm unaware of any other chromosomes forming Barr bodies. PARTS of the chromosome go inactive (part of the differentiation process) in other cells, but only the extra X forms a Barr body.
For those following along from home:
Differentiation: the process by which a cell expresses in a specialized way. (e.g. your liver cells are different from your brain cells, even though both have the same genetics). Learning how to "un-differentiate" a cell (i.e. create "stem" cells) is a big desire in biology, because it would open the door to all sorts of treatments. [Actually, we want to be able to control the differentiation process - regrow limbs, spinal cords, muscle tissue - but to get that far we need to study stem cells]. Differentiated cells tend to STAY differentiated.
Barr Body: The condensed extra chromosome in a woman's cell. It's _mostly_ inactive.
Geeks should love genetics - it's hacking the big one.
Disclaimer: I'm no scientist, and I only skimmed the paper, but I have an interest in genetics and an interest in seeing this better covered than the mass media is doing. Corrections most welcome.
I'm shooting for the non-geneticist version:
Basic Version: a normal human cell has 2 copies of 22 non-sex chromosomes, and 2 sex chromosomes. The "copies" are almost certainly NOT identical to one another, but basically similar. These cells are "diploid" (having 2 of each chromosome) and are considered "somatic cells".
During normal reproduction, each person will contribute a "germline cell", an ova or a sperm, in which only 1 copy of each chromosome exists ("haploid"). These germline cells merge to create a "zygote" (which is diploid), which eventually becomes an embryo.
Parthenogenetic reproduction takes a germline cell, and duplicates the genetic material, making a diploid out of a haploid. Such replication happens with normal cells during the process of cell division ("mitosis"), so the real trick is (1) convincing the cell to do this duplication outside the cell division process and (2) convincing the cell that it is no longer a differentiated (specialized) cell, but instead a stem cell.
One interesting result here is that the parthenogenetic cell is NOT a clone of the parent cell - it will have two copies each of ONE of the copies of each chromosome from the parent, determined effectively at random. In some ways this means a parthenogenetic stem cell is less valuable than a cloned stem cell - it will not be a 100% match, though it will not contain any DNA foreign to the donor. In other ways it opens up all sorts of new areas of study.
One particular result is that it opens the opportunity for recessives to be studied. (Chromosomes have genes, each that code various proteins that run the bodies mechanics. Most people will therefore have two copies of every gene (having two copies of the chromosomes). Those genes may not be identical. Some genes only have their effects seen ("express") if there isn't another, different, copy of the gene present, and are called recessives. (blue eyes are a common example: A blue-eyed person has both genes as expressing "blue". Two blue eyed parents, having only the "blue" gene (hah!) to pass on to a child, will have a blue-eyed child (barring mutation). (Of course, the body is a big nasty mess of self-referencing code with lots of gotos, so examples tend to be oversimplified). Anyway, most recessives tend to be fairly rare in expressing, since any dominant gene will cover them up. Many recessives are bad. (Cystic Fibrosis is the most common example: 1 bad gene, okay. 2 bad genes: You die) A parthenogenetic process would allow for the study of recessives because you can take ova from a carrier (someone who has 1 copy of the bad gene), find one with the defective gene, put it through the parthenogenesis process, and bam, able to study the effects free of the presence of any other (different) copy of the gene.
Fun Fact: For 22 Chromosomes, people have two copies of most genes. Sex Chromosomes are not created equal. The X chromosome (every human has 1) has valuable and nifty genes. The Y chromosome (only in men) has very few genes (relatively). As a result, on Men X chromosomes express all recessives, and not on women. (The common example here is red-green colorblindness. Men with a defective gene are out of luck: Color-blind. Women with a defective gene get by if the other copy of the X chromosome has a functioning one. Result: Men are much more likely to be red-green color-blind. Some papers a few months ago got some press for exploring the possible effects of this. (Men can serve as a "testing ground" for new mutations on the X chromosome, while women can serve as a judge of whether they are valuable without taking on the extra risk. Practiced through natural selection.)
Fun Fact #2: Women's cells don't just function with twice the number of X chromosomes though (We tend to react poorly to extra copies
1) You understand that a die isn't "random", but the number of factors involved make it unpredictable by you.
2) Machines, however, are built to _be_ predictable. While you throw the die with a variable amount of force, a variable height over the surface - you have a hard time doing otherwise, machines will have a likewise difficult time being random. We built them to be reliable and predictable.
3) That's why all good pseudo-random number generators look for sources of randomness. Over the years, many have been tried only to find that they're fairly deterministic. (I recall an article on here a few years ago about some group that had hooked up a webcam to a lava lamp and used the images as a source of randomness).
It's not hard to get a number that _seems_ random. Heck, take the milliseconds for that. But it's not random to a determined attacker, precisely because it's a single source of (not-very) randomness, versus the many variables that make up any biological+physical process.
Have you ever tried to do one? It's almost entirely impractical, and you'll end up coming to the conclusion that "printf("Hello world\n");" infringes on someone's patent.
(One of) The tragedy here is that the patent system is supposed to reward innovators in exchange for the recording and propagation of their idea. Pre-patent times, inventors (allegedly, I don't know the actual history) would secret away their creations, afraid that it'd be copied. Theoretically, many inventions were lost wit the death of their creator, only to be reinvented by someone else. Publication and recording is part of getting a patent, with one of the goals being that we don't spend ingenuity reinventing the wheel.
If no one is consulting these patent records for how to solve a problem, we're not achieving a lot of the intended goal.
Re:All of these frameworks are mostly overkill
on
GWT Java AJAX Programming
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Until the moment you need to do something that the framework does not do
One point of a framework is to standardize the things that you do, and do all the prep work to do them. There are good frameworks (ooh, a compiler that does linking!) and bad frameworks (Yay! Frontpage!). To say that a framework is a bad idea because you might need to work outside it is to argue a vague point. Pick the right framework and that doesn't happen.
Now, if you said GWT doesn't handle that, and provided examples, you may well have won me over. As it is, you sound like someone that wants to implement all libraries yourself in assembler. (Yes, a strawman exaggeration. No, I'm not claiming you said that. I'm saying I have nothing better to work with from your argument)
most things that need to be done can be done with very little of very simple javascript.
GWT provides me:
* ease of maintenance
* tested compatibility across browsers
which your "simple javascript" does not. Were I a JS programmer that kept current on all the trends, I would likely agree. GWT likely isn't written with you as an audience though.
That you don't understand why your comment was marked as "Funny" ( I know I thought you were trying for it) indicates to me that you're missing something.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument why Babbage's engine, which uses physical mechanical gears to implement an algorithm, is inherently more patentable than the same algorithm in software.
First, when discussing patents (or copyright), everyone must agree that this is an artificial concept developed to try and achieve a purpose. The purpose in the U.S. is (arguably) to promote innovation. There's no natural or inherent quality of such concepts beyond an inconsistent and ill-defined sense of possessiveness.
Second, with that in mind, if we look at your question, there are a few ways to approach it. "more patentable" could mean a few different things. I'll argue the discussion about "should be more patentable" i.e. I'll be arguing achieving the purpose, not the current letter of the law legality, of which I'm not fully clear (patents aren't copyright, and that's where the bulk of my limited legal knowledge is).
When a device is patented, there are a few areas of benefit:
1) The industry benefits, because the patent is (theoretically) detailed and recorded, meaning that the knowledge will not be lost, and that knowledge will eventually become public domain.
2) The inventor benefits, because his/her device is recorded, and for a time, no one can use that device or claim credit for it without getting permission.
3) Licensees benefit, because they can develop new inventions that improve upon or use or otherwise rely upon the patented device.
4) Competitors benefit, because there is new idea introduced, and though they can't copy that implementation, they can try their own ways of achieving that idea. (knock-offs) In some cases, these prove to have some benefit over the original (a better method, cheaper production, etc)
I would argue that #4 is why algorithms, business processes, and the like shouldn't be patented. Patenting Babbage's engine doesn't prevent the next guy from trying his luck at building a better mousetrap, so long as he doesn't actually copy Babbage. Patenting the algorithm (effectively the concept) does. Less competition means less benefit, and if I build a better mousetrap that doesn't rely on anything from your mousetrap, I'm not violating your work.
That's a "should" argument from my personal views. It could well be that patents expressly try to protect ideas and concepts, though I suspect otherwise.
Forcing them to license their product is a violation of their property rights...creates more government interference and regulation
"property rights" ARE "government interference and regulation". Property rights are granted by the government to encourage and reward innovation. I don't consider "you can't use this without paying me $$$" to be innovation.
The modern PC is a great example of how innovation is helped by open specs, but open specs help the market and thus society, not the creator. Perhaps the government should lighten up on their "interference and regulations" and we could see some real improvements in consumer tech.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
on
More A's, More Pay
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
Wrong question - Can you find poor areas that don't have Wal-Marts? While I don't know about Wal-Mart itself, I do know that a lot of businesses avoid high-crime, low-income areas, which are generally the areas that are suffering the most from the inadequacies of the current system.
Competitive markets are based on two things: profit margins, and that some companies will fail. Regularly and often. While we have failing schools today, they are still the exception. I don't want a system that presumes that school A can fail and it's OKAY. School B might come along, but the two years it can take for a new business to take over a market represents a significant chunk of the education of a child. That's half of an american high school experience, and 2/3 to 1 junior high/middle school experience. Once you fall behind, you tend to stay behind.
Competitive markets are a strong, good system. Nonetheless, there's a reason people entrust the government with certain duties rather than markets -- they tend to be duties where reliability is valued over efficiency. Not to say that the current public education system doesn't have serious issues, but scrapping the system will simply get you a new set of problems, and in this case the new system's problems are inherent to the system.
I know a lot of lawyers, and some of your statements I find highly out-of-character from what they were taught in law school. (Unlike many posters, I'll reserve my anti-lawyer sentiments for only those that deserve it.)
Foremost that you're willing to make any sort of definitive conclusion based on this vague hearsay, but we'll let that slip since you did it as an AC.
For two firms to have done so means that this person submitted to all sorts of pre-screening, interviews, and reference-checking.
This indicates no experience with large firms where someone assumes that someone else has handled that detail. Even if you worked at a small law firm, any experience with class action suits should reveal that mistakes happen because flesh-and-blood people will assume that someone else has followed procedure.
A firm does not need a written agreement to use a person as a lead plaintiff
There's a lot I don't know about class-action suits. Perhaps they are all done in Federal Court, and thus follow the same Rules of Procedure. But a "lawyer" speaking on the internet without leaving clauses for different jurisdictions makes me leery.
Without question, he did.
Your only evidence for this is that a firm would be foolish to move forward without it. You cite nothing other than procedural incentives for the conclusion of an act. I might say that NASA would never smash a satellite because no one checked Imperial/Metric conversions. Or perhaps you could say that a major energy company would never create fictional trading partners to hide debt? Or perhaps you could say that the TSA procedures mean that no one would ever smuggle bomb-like equipment on planes.
In each case, procedure wasn't enough, and a lawyer should be well aware of it.
If he never wanted to be a part of this suit? Why didn't he go public immediately?
A lawyer never wants a client to go public without careful scrutiny. Why are you recommending it?
A lawyer is well aware that clients will have diverse motivations (such as this person's claimed desire for privacy).
I could go on, but you get the idea. The man is lying through his teeth.
You have a post that is half useful-details, half this-sort-of-conclusion-without-evidence. _No_ lawyer I know would make that sort of one-sided conclusion based on this little evidence. Obviously this man put out a letter slanted towards his view. But to conclude that he's "lying through his teeth" based only on three facts:
The suit was filed with him as lead plaintiff
He claims that he did not desire this
He has made a _public_ objection only now.
On this you will determine the truth? Do you also conclude your research with the first case you find?
Please sir, list your firm so that I can steer everyone I know away from you.
Those examples might be dumb, but the point is that you can take the concept of "user" with regards to the GPL arbitrarily far, and I really don't think it's a good idea for the FSF to go down that road.
Not dumb at all, for the reasons you specify. However, in a better example above, I pointed out making an Office version that was web-based and build on OpenOffice code, and selling accounts. This is not appreciably different than distributing binaries, except that it is legally different. GPLv3 wants to consider these topics.
If you think the GPLv3 should allow these things, well, that's a good reason to participate. No one is presenting the changes as a final package yet...they're getting feedback and input. Go to it!
Perhaps I used a poor example. The concern comes when services become all server-based.
If MS made a version of Word that worked like Writely for example, and used OpenOffice.org as its code base, they could put the bookmark on very Windows PC and sell accounts for 1 Gajillion dollars, but never distribute a _binary_, and thus never have to redistribute their code changes.
Where is the line between an application being server-based (and thus not "distrubted") and being client based? With the GPLv2, that line is all on one side. GPLv3 wants to debate that topic and possibly move that line.
There are a few issues that the GPLv2 doesn't cover, or is a bit too vague on. As I understand the desired improvements, some big points are:
* Language that is happier with different jurisdictions. (some legal terms have very different meanings in different countries) * Patents. Patents Icky. Dealing with Patents Icky. * Wrapping binaries. I think some parties want some more clear language here to prevent violations of the spirit of the GPL. * with GPLv2, if you expose the service of the software but not the binary, you don't have to distribute changes. So I could take slash code (if it's GPL, which I don't recall), hack some changes, and sell access to the website using those changes, and never have to share my code, which violates the spirit of the GPL.
I don't think the idea is to toss the GPLv2, but instead to keep doing the same thing...only more so.
1) There are reasons to use Perl. Nothing REQUIRING it, granted, but that's true of any language. Python and Ruby inhabit similar but not identical niches.
2) Line noise reputation aside, Perl can be _very_ readable. Concise done correctly means that it says what it does and does it, without unnecessary compiler syntax effort. Concise done wrong means it's not obvious what you are doing. Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself...kind of like computers, and open source in general.
3) As far as the book goes, I was eager to get my hands on it and learn, but worried that I'd find it too limiting and restrictive. The tips ranged from the obvious (strict and warnings), the non-syntactical useful (use code and documentation template for new projects), to the small but fascinating (make your hash names end it words like "for" or "of", so that normal usage is self documenting: $name_of{$user} ). Very few of the tips did I disagree with, and even though the book talks about the importance of HAVING standard practices over what those practices are, I'm moving my dept to adopting the standards in the book because my preference is often habit over any calculated reason.
Perhaps 50% of the tips have nothing or little to do with Perl and everything to do with programming, programmers, or users.
This is not a life altering book. It is, however, a high quality book with some very good tips.
The article doesn't make it very clear what this is talking about, but here's what I've pieced together from the various links:
* "The ART Act amends section 408 of the Copyright Act to add a new subparagraph (f), which directs the Register of Copyrights to allow reregistration for any work that is in a class of works that the Register determines has had a history of infringement prior to authorized commercial distribution."
In other words, if in danger of infringement, you can register your copyright in advance. (Remember that under U.S. (and many others) law, you HAVE copyright from the moment of creation, but REGISTERING lets the government know. I'm guessing from context that they normally only let you register upon publication.
So this is enacting a law to let studios sue more easily when their movies get pirated on day 0.
Later:
* "Therefore, this notice seeks information whether any potential preregistration filers would have difficulties using Internet Explorer (version 5.1 or higher) to file preregistration claims, and if so, why. More generally, in the interest of achieving support for browsers in the Office's preregistration processing environment, this notice inquires whether (and why) an eligible party who anticipates preregistering a claim on the electronic-only form will not be able to use Internet Explorer to do so, or will choose not to preregister if it is necessary to use Internet Explorer."
So: Unless you are someone who is going to file one of these, they don't care about your comments. Slashdotting the postal system isn't likely to get a response. (Of course, they COULD respond to the comments anyway, but they aren't asking for them)
Your reply is missing a few facts that would let me see if you are correct or not.
"even if they last slightly longer than a throw-away inkjet printer and a mountain of inkjet cartridges"
What is slightly longer? Inkjets cartridges die within a few months regardless, laserjets last for years, depending on use.
"Unlike a college dorm room student, my wife and I require printing in both B&W and Color"
I have not been a college dorm room student for a decade, and my needs don't include color. As you didn't elaborate on WHY you need color, I can't comment usefully. Perhaps you'll be more explicit.
"I am neither going to fuck around trying to find a way to print color"
It's a matter of cost-benefit. I save hundreds of dollars a year by not printing color, and I have faster, more reliable B+W printing for all my needs, and only need to bother with buying new toner every other year. If the extra cost, time, and loss of reliability is worth it to you, go ahead, but you haven't explained why.
So you're paying ~$250/year for color printing. How much color do you actually need? If you do need it, I see (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=color+Laser+P rinter&scoring=p) Color Lasers for ~$300-350, with the added convenience of not having to go out and buy something every month.
I don't see the math. Unless you're one of those that constantly prints digital photos alluded to elsewhere in the comments, (I'm not, so I can't comment on the viability of a color laser for that) why would you go through the expense and inconvenience of inkjets?
Thirded. I spent $100 on an ML-1710. I alternate between heavy and no usage, and I I'm running 1.5 years/toner (at $85 for toner, and I'm sure I could find it cheaper if I shopped around). I estimate my costs at about $.05/page. (Note that, just as with inkjets, the "starter" toner is about 1/3 full)
My Inkjet experiences were far worse: * Many models don't warn you when you're low, and refuse to print if they decide you're out. On a laser, you just shake the toner cartridge and you're good for another 50 pages:)
* Linux compatibility is a crapshoot with inkjets. Lasers are more often for a mutli-OS office environment and "just work" more.
* Inkjet cartridges dry out regardless of use, and cost $30-$60, so the "long haul" argument doesn't require that long of a haul.
* Inkjet cartridges get out of date quickly (as in, you can't find them to buy them easily).
* Laser is FAST. I get my first page in 10 seconds, and can put out 10+ pages/min after that.
* Color costs extra on laser, but really, when do you use color? Directions and manuals are my major printing requirements, and neither requires color. Color, by and large, is for ads. I've never had the desire to print out a digital photo, but if I did it'd be much more cost effective to drop it on to some media and run to the corner drugstore.
You missed several details when RTFAing, apparently.
if people run and use White Wolf games at conventions
Actually, they explicitly EXCLUDED conventions.
and charge people money to play for a *profit*,
Actually, they simply said "charge". Breaking even paying for the venue was specficially used as an example requiring a license.
I actually think that is fair, if people are using White Wolf IP to make a profit, White Wolf deserves the right to ask for a cut.
Well, that's an opinion, so you aren't wrong, but I strongly disagree. White Wolf sold those books with the intention of USE. As another reader pointed out, teachers don't have to get a license to teach from textbooks. The legality of this is highly questionable.
Heck, D20 system is "open"...they don't ask for anything in return other than the basic acknowledgement.
They actually also require you to agree to a contract where you give up certain rights you would have otherwise had. (Many consider that more than fair, I'm simply pointing out that they ask for more than "acknowledgement") The relevance of the OGL to White Wolf's license is fairly thin either way.
Actually, IIRC, the IRS allows them to report income and pay taxes on it. I'm not sure if that's WHY they were able to get Capone, or as a result of that, but you can report income on illegal gains and pay taxes on it, and they can't use that record against you.
Note the headline of that page: "Trust gets personal with Thawte's Web of Trust (WOT)"
This is not a discussion of the Web of Trust concept as a whole, but of Thawte's use of the terminology in their little setup. As they are trying to make money off the deal, you can expect them to be slightly skewed.
Note also that their system starts by awarding Trust Points for showing up in person. The Web of Trust PKI concept doesn't care WHO you are, so much as that you are the same person every time, and if you are (whatever you claim to be). So the above poster's hope is that spammers would be unable to be marked as useful/acceptable by anyone within your web of trust. Simple, beautiful.
(The unfortunate weakness, however, is that it just takes 1 security hole on any system in the web of trust, or 1 clueless user, to insert tainted approvals, which can then start spreading. There are fixes to this, but the fundamental simplicity is lost when you insert stupid (read: normal) users.)
Slashdot Mirror
The Hammer is my...filesystem
Having just gone through this process, allow me to pass on what I learned about the process.
.5-2 second refresh time. LCDs can have color while eink hasn't gotten that far.
1) Know what you are getting into.
Ebooks have some great advantages. However:
* DRM is common
* books are pricey
* selection is very limited
If you're still interested, continue.
2) LCD vs Eink
I read a lot on my Palm. Now that I have an eink reader, I'm not going back, I never thought LCD was "hard" to read on until I read on something else. However, eink means $$$ and few choices, while there's a number of established as well as new LCD devices for much, much less. LCDs can also scroll, while the eink has a
Your question implies you've picked, so we'll continue on, but others are recommended to visit a Borders and take a peek at a demo Sony Reader - the viziplex screen is pretty much the same for all the major eink readers.
3) Pros and Cons
There are basically 4 readers to choose from here (ignoring the fringe players):
Bookeen
Sony
Kindle
Iliad
Iliad has some real perks, but I wanted a reader not a computer, and certainly not $700 worth.
Bookeen has some nice features, but after my painful Zaurus experience, I wanted to stick to something intended for my language and a little more commercial support. When I bought my reader, the Cybook was still finishing off the rough spots. It may now be worthy of consideration, as it has a much wider selection of formats than the Sony Reader.
Kindle - though it wasn't out when I got my reader, it came out shortly afterward. Major Pros are wireless access to snag books, improved book selection (still limited), and much better prices on books. Major Con is the highly restrictive DRM. That latter is what kept me content with my Sony.
Sony - My eventual choice. It takes props as one of the only technology choices I didn't quickly regret. It has its limitations, most notably the crappy book selection, even crappier prices, and the eink refresh time. But it does what it tries to do reliably well.
Here are the things about the Sony reader that the review may not cover (505 only, not always true for 500)
It's a USB Mass storage device - so you can install books from any computer. What's more, it takes SD cards (and memory sticks, but I haven't mucked with that), and when the card is in the reader and the reader is connected to the computer, the card also appears as a drive on the USB device. I've been able to use my Reader on multiple computers, Windows and Linux, with no issue. There is no need to use the Sony software except to download from their crappy bookstore.
You may see talk of a credit at the bookstore - that's for "Sony Classics" only, i.e. books you can grab off of Gutenburg for free. I recommend you turn to mobileread.com for your ebook needs and wait for Amazon et al to get a clue like they have (started) with Mp3s. Either way, don't factor the $100 credit into your comparison.
The Sony Reader can handle LRF (it's propriety but not necessarily DRM'ed format) well, offering hyperlinking and 3 levels of magnification along with landscape/portrait modes. It can also handle TXT (I believe the zoom offerings are the same). PDF is also handled, but (1) Not "Digital Editions" (Adobe's DRMed books) and (2) It only offers 2 "sizes". Most PDF books come across as very small even when I have it zoomed and landscape. RTF doesn't resize in my experience, but it works well enough. Notably HTML, Mobi, Palmdoc, Word doc, and Openoffice formats aren't supported.
Installing a book can be done with their crappy wanna-be Itunes like software...or you can drag and drop via USB and ignore that. I recommend the latter.
The charge for me, reading a couple of hours each day, is a little less than a week. It charges off of USB no problem, standard mini connector. Your current position in books is lost if it goes dry, but nothing else, including hard boo
Assuming you're instead artificially joining gametes from two females (this process can't create a male without further tinkering) and ignoring the possibility for cross-over or other mutational effects, yes. The basic odds are small. (Bad at statistics, that'd be a 1 in 2^23 chance of the sibling having the exact opposite paring?).
However, the paper reporting on this notes that there was significant crossover involved in the process, which is part of the reason it took 1 1/2 years since the thought was first raised (the panel investigating Hwang's work noted parthenogenesis as a possibility) to prove the case.
Once again for those following along at home: (This is simplified and doesn't cover the "special cases" but is a lot better than you'll find in the media.)
DNA can be thought of as a big zipper: each tooth is a paring of bases. 4 bases, representing 2 pairs, each base will only connect to its partner. Unzipped, each half can recreate the original (no information is lost).
During cell replication, this is what happens (that's how each child cell has a complete DNA set). However, despite the zipper analogy, this is still a big molecule with all sorts of things that can go wrong. One particular risk is that segments from one chromosome will "swap" with the (sometimes) matching segments from it's partner chromosome: In essence allowing genes to not be tied to the other genes on the chromosome. Of course, such crossovers don't have to happen cleanly: It may not fall on a gene-boundry, the chromosomes may not be perfectly aligned, and lots of other things.
This is "crossover mutation". It's just one of the many ways that alterations happen in the genetic sequence. In whatever process Hwang's team used, it appears to have happened a lot more than normal.
End result? This process is "messy" parthenogenesis, and the resulting child cell is apparently far from a 100% match to a single chromosome set from the donor.
For those following along from home:
Differentiation: the process by which a cell expresses in a specialized way. (e.g. your liver cells are different from your brain cells, even though both have the same genetics). Learning how to "un-differentiate" a cell (i.e. create "stem" cells) is a big desire in biology, because it would open the door to all sorts of treatments. [Actually, we want to be able to control the differentiation process - regrow limbs, spinal cords, muscle tissue - but to get that far we need to study stem cells]. Differentiated cells tend to STAY differentiated.
Barr Body: The condensed extra chromosome in a woman's cell. It's _mostly_ inactive.
Geeks should love genetics - it's hacking the big one.
Disclaimer: I'm no scientist, and I only skimmed the paper, but I have an interest in genetics and an interest in seeing this better covered than the mass media is doing. Corrections most welcome.
I'm shooting for the non-geneticist version:
Basic Version:
a normal human cell has 2 copies of 22 non-sex chromosomes, and 2 sex chromosomes. The "copies" are almost certainly NOT identical to one another, but basically similar. These cells are "diploid" (having 2 of each chromosome) and are considered "somatic cells".
During normal reproduction, each person will contribute a "germline cell", an ova or a sperm, in which only 1 copy of each chromosome exists ("haploid"). These germline cells merge to create a "zygote" (which is diploid), which eventually becomes an embryo.
Parthenogenetic reproduction takes a germline cell, and duplicates the genetic material, making a diploid out of a haploid. Such replication happens with normal cells during the process of cell division ("mitosis"), so the real trick is (1) convincing the cell to do this duplication outside the cell division process and (2) convincing the cell that it is no longer a differentiated (specialized) cell, but instead a stem cell.
One interesting result here is that the parthenogenetic cell is NOT a clone of the parent cell - it will have two copies each of ONE of the copies of each chromosome from the parent, determined effectively at random. In some ways this means a parthenogenetic stem cell is less valuable than a cloned stem cell - it will not be a 100% match, though it will not contain any DNA foreign to the donor. In other ways it opens up all sorts of new areas of study.
One particular result is that it opens the opportunity for recessives to be studied. (Chromosomes have genes, each that code various proteins that run the bodies mechanics. Most people will therefore have two copies of every gene (having two copies of the chromosomes). Those genes may not be identical. Some genes only have their effects seen ("express") if there isn't another, different, copy of the gene present, and are called recessives. (blue eyes are a common example: A blue-eyed person has both genes as expressing "blue". Two blue eyed parents, having only the "blue" gene (hah!) to pass on to a child, will have a blue-eyed child (barring mutation). (Of course, the body is a big nasty mess of self-referencing code with lots of gotos, so examples tend to be oversimplified). Anyway, most recessives tend to be fairly rare in expressing, since any dominant gene will cover them up. Many recessives are bad. (Cystic Fibrosis is the most common example: 1 bad gene, okay. 2 bad genes: You die) A parthenogenetic process would allow for the study of recessives because you can take ova from a carrier (someone who has 1 copy of the bad gene), find one with the defective gene, put it through the parthenogenesis process, and bam, able to study the effects free of the presence of any other (different) copy of the gene.
Fun Fact: For 22 Chromosomes, people have two copies of most genes. Sex Chromosomes are not created equal. The X chromosome (every human has 1) has valuable and nifty genes. The Y chromosome (only in men) has very few genes (relatively). As a result, on Men X chromosomes express all recessives, and not on women. (The common example here is red-green colorblindness. Men with a defective gene are out of luck: Color-blind. Women with a defective gene get by if the other copy of the X chromosome has a functioning one. Result: Men are much more likely to be red-green color-blind.
Some papers a few months ago got some press for exploring the possible effects of this. (Men can serve as a "testing ground" for new mutations on the X chromosome, while women can serve as a judge of whether they are valuable without taking on the extra risk. Practiced through natural selection.)
Fun Fact #2: Women's cells don't just function with twice the number of X chromosomes though (We tend to react poorly to extra copies
1) You understand that a die isn't "random", but the number of factors involved make it unpredictable by you.
2) Machines, however, are built to _be_ predictable. While you throw the die with a variable amount of force, a variable height over the surface - you have a hard time doing otherwise, machines will have a likewise difficult time being random. We built them to be reliable and predictable.
3) That's why all good pseudo-random number generators look for sources of randomness. Over the years, many have been tried only to find that they're fairly deterministic. (I recall an article on here a few years ago about some group that had hooked up a webcam to a lava lamp and used the images as a source of randomness).
It's not hard to get a number that _seems_ random. Heck, take the milliseconds for that. But it's not random to a determined attacker, precisely because it's a single source of (not-very) randomness, versus the many variables that make up any biological+physical process.
Make sense?
(One of) The tragedy here is that the patent system is supposed to reward innovators in exchange for the recording and propagation of their idea. Pre-patent times, inventors (allegedly, I don't know the actual history) would secret away their creations, afraid that it'd be copied. Theoretically, many inventions were lost wit the death of their creator, only to be reinvented by someone else. Publication and recording is part of getting a patent, with one of the goals being that we don't spend ingenuity reinventing the wheel.
If no one is consulting these patent records for how to solve a problem, we're not achieving a lot of the intended goal.
One point of a framework is to standardize the things that you do, and do all the prep work to do them. There are good frameworks (ooh, a compiler that does linking!) and bad frameworks (Yay! Frontpage!). To say that a framework is a bad idea because you might need to work outside it is to argue a vague point. Pick the right framework and that doesn't happen.
Now, if you said GWT doesn't handle that, and provided examples, you may well have won me over. As it is, you sound like someone that wants to implement all libraries yourself in assembler. (Yes, a strawman exaggeration. No, I'm not claiming you said that. I'm saying I have nothing better to work with from your argument)
most things that need to be done can be done with very little of very simple javascript.
GWT provides me:
* ease of maintenance
* tested compatibility across browsers
which your "simple javascript" does not. Were I a JS programmer that kept current on all the trends, I would likely agree. GWT likely isn't written with you as an audience though.
That you don't understand why your comment was marked as "Funny" ( I know I thought you were trying for it) indicates to me that you're missing something.
First, when discussing patents (or copyright), everyone must agree that this is an artificial concept developed to try and achieve a purpose. The purpose in the U.S. is (arguably) to promote innovation. There's no natural or inherent quality of such concepts beyond an inconsistent and ill-defined sense of possessiveness.
Second, with that in mind, if we look at your question, there are a few ways to approach it. "more patentable" could mean a few different things. I'll argue the discussion about "should be more patentable" i.e. I'll be arguing achieving the purpose, not the current letter of the law legality, of which I'm not fully clear (patents aren't copyright, and that's where the bulk of my limited legal knowledge is).
When a device is patented, there are a few areas of benefit:
1) The industry benefits, because the patent is (theoretically) detailed and recorded, meaning that the knowledge will not be lost, and that knowledge will eventually become public domain.
2) The inventor benefits, because his/her device is recorded, and for a time, no one can use that device or claim credit for it without getting permission.
3) Licensees benefit, because they can develop new inventions that improve upon or use or otherwise rely upon the patented device.
4) Competitors benefit, because there is new idea introduced, and though they can't copy that implementation, they can try their own ways of achieving that idea. (knock-offs) In some cases, these prove to have some benefit over the original (a better method, cheaper production, etc)
I would argue that #4 is why algorithms, business processes, and the like shouldn't be patented. Patenting Babbage's engine doesn't prevent the next guy from trying his luck at building a better mousetrap, so long as he doesn't actually copy Babbage. Patenting the algorithm (effectively the concept) does. Less competition means less benefit, and if I build a better mousetrap that doesn't rely on anything from your mousetrap, I'm not violating your work.
That's a "should" argument from my personal views. It could well be that patents expressly try to protect ideas and concepts, though I suspect otherwise.
"property rights" ARE "government interference and regulation". Property rights are granted by the government to encourage and reward innovation. I don't consider "you can't use this without paying me $$$" to be innovation.
The modern PC is a great example of how innovation is helped by open specs, but open specs help the market and thus society, not the creator. Perhaps the government should lighten up on their "interference and regulations" and we could see some real improvements in consumer tech.
Wrong question - Can you find poor areas that don't have Wal-Marts? While I don't know about Wal-Mart itself, I do know that a lot of businesses avoid high-crime, low-income areas, which are generally the areas that are suffering the most from the inadequacies of the current system.
Competitive markets are based on two things: profit margins, and that some companies will fail. Regularly and often. While we have failing schools today, they are still the exception. I don't want a system that presumes that school A can fail and it's OKAY. School B might come along, but the two years it can take for a new business to take over a market represents a significant chunk of the education of a child. That's half of an american high school experience, and 2/3 to 1 junior high/middle school experience. Once you fall behind, you tend to stay behind.
Competitive markets are a strong, good system. Nonetheless, there's a reason people entrust the government with certain duties rather than markets -- they tend to be duties where reliability is valued over efficiency. Not to say that the current public education system doesn't have serious issues, but scrapping the system will simply get you a new set of problems, and in this case the new system's problems are inherent to the system.
Foremost that you're willing to make any sort of definitive conclusion based on this vague hearsay, but we'll let that slip since you did it as an AC.
For two firms to have done so means that this person submitted to all sorts of pre-screening, interviews, and reference-checking.
This indicates no experience with large firms where someone assumes that someone else has handled that detail. Even if you worked at a small law firm, any experience with class action suits should reveal that mistakes happen because flesh-and-blood people will assume that someone else has followed procedure.
A firm does not need a written agreement to use a person as a lead plaintiff
There's a lot I don't know about class-action suits. Perhaps they are all done in Federal Court, and thus follow the same Rules of Procedure. But a "lawyer" speaking on the internet without leaving clauses for different jurisdictions makes me leery.
Without question, he did.
Your only evidence for this is that a firm would be foolish to move forward without it. You cite nothing other than procedural incentives for the conclusion of an act. I might say that NASA would never smash a satellite because no one checked Imperial/Metric conversions. Or perhaps you could say that a major energy company would never create fictional trading partners to hide debt? Or perhaps you could say that the TSA procedures mean that no one would ever smuggle bomb-like equipment on planes.
In each case, procedure wasn't enough, and a lawyer should be well aware of it.
If he never wanted to be a part of this suit? Why didn't he go public immediately?
I could go on, but you get the idea. The man is lying through his teeth.
You have a post that is half useful-details, half this-sort-of-conclusion-without-evidence. _No_ lawyer I know would make that sort of one-sided conclusion based on this little evidence. Obviously this man put out a letter slanted towards his view. But to conclude that he's "lying through his teeth" based only on three facts:
- The suit was filed with him as lead plaintiff
- He claims that he did not desire this
- He has made a _public_ objection only now.
On this you will determine the truth? Do you also conclude your research with the first case you find?Please sir, list your firm so that I can steer everyone I know away from you.
TFA says that a version was released that is both out-dated (doesn't match the binary version) and doesn't compile.
He's had to repeat himself a few times in the comments, and includes links there.
Actual truth is unknown to me, I'm RTFAing.
Not dumb at all, for the reasons you specify. However, in a better example above, I pointed out making an Office version that was web-based and build on OpenOffice code, and selling accounts. This is not appreciably different than distributing binaries, except that it is legally different. GPLv3 wants to consider these topics.
If you think the GPLv3 should allow these things, well, that's a good reason to participate. No one is presenting the changes as a final package yet...they're getting feedback and input. Go to it!
Perhaps I used a poor example. The concern comes when services become all server-based.
If MS made a version of Word that worked like Writely for example, and used OpenOffice.org as its code base, they could put the bookmark on very Windows PC and sell accounts for 1 Gajillion dollars, but never distribute a _binary_, and thus never have to redistribute their code changes.
Where is the line between an application being server-based (and thus not "distrubted") and being client based? With the GPLv2, that line is all on one side. GPLv3 wants to debate that topic and possibly move that line.
There are a few issues that the GPLv2 doesn't cover, or is a bit too vague on. As I understand the desired improvements, some big points are:
* Language that is happier with different jurisdictions. (some legal terms have very different meanings in different countries)
* Patents. Patents Icky. Dealing with Patents Icky.
* Wrapping binaries. I think some parties want some more clear language here to prevent violations of the spirit of the GPL.
* with GPLv2, if you expose the service of the software but not the binary, you don't have to distribute changes. So I could take slash code (if it's GPL, which I don't recall), hack some changes, and sell access to the website using those changes, and never have to share my code, which violates the spirit of the GPL.
I don't think the idea is to toss the GPLv2, but instead to keep doing the same thing...only more so.
As a perl programmer, I can assure you that:
1) There are reasons to use Perl. Nothing REQUIRING it, granted, but that's true of any language. Python and Ruby inhabit similar but not identical niches.
2) Line noise reputation aside, Perl can be _very_ readable. Concise done correctly means that it says what it does and does it, without unnecessary compiler syntax effort. Concise done wrong means it's not obvious what you are doing. Perl gives you enough rope to hang yourself...kind of like computers, and open source in general.
3) As far as the book goes, I was eager to get my hands on it and learn, but worried that I'd find it too limiting and restrictive. The tips ranged from the obvious (strict and warnings), the non-syntactical useful (use code and documentation template for new projects), to the small but fascinating (make your hash names end it words like "for" or "of", so that normal usage is self documenting: $name_of{$user} ). Very few of the tips did I disagree with, and even though the book talks about the importance of HAVING standard practices over what those practices are, I'm moving my dept to adopting the standards in the book because my preference is often habit over any calculated reason.
Perhaps 50% of the tips have nothing or little to do with Perl and everything to do with programming, programmers, or users.
This is not a life altering book. It is, however, a high quality book with some very good tips.
The article doesn't make it very clear what this is talking about, but here's what I've pieced together from the various links:
* "The ART Act amends section 408 of the Copyright Act to add a new subparagraph (f), which directs the Register of Copyrights to allow reregistration for any work that is in a class of works that the
Register determines has had a history of infringement prior to authorized commercial distribution."
In other words, if in danger of infringement, you can register your copyright in advance. (Remember that under U.S. (and many others) law, you HAVE copyright from the moment of creation, but REGISTERING lets the government know. I'm guessing from context that they normally only let you register upon publication.
So this is enacting a law to let studios sue more easily when their movies get pirated on day 0.
Later:
* "Therefore, this notice seeks information whether any potential preregistration filers would have difficulties using Internet Explorer (version 5.1 or higher) to file preregistration claims, and if so, why. More generally, in the interest of achieving support for browsers in the Office's preregistration processing environment, this notice inquires whether (and why) an eligible party who anticipates preregistering a claim on the electronic-only form will not be able to use Internet Explorer to do so, or will choose not to preregister if it is necessary to use Internet Explorer."
So: Unless you are someone who is going to file one of these, they don't care about your comments. Slashdotting the postal system isn't likely to get a response. (Of course, they COULD respond to the comments anyway, but they aren't asking for them)
Your reply is missing a few facts that would let me see if you are correct or not.
"even if they last slightly longer than a throw-away inkjet printer and a mountain of inkjet cartridges"
What is slightly longer? Inkjets cartridges die within a few months regardless, laserjets last for years, depending on use.
"Unlike a college dorm room student, my wife and I require printing in both B&W and Color"
I have not been a college dorm room student for a decade, and my needs don't include color. As you didn't elaborate on WHY you need color, I can't comment usefully. Perhaps you'll be more explicit.
"I am neither going to fuck around trying to find a way to print color"
It's a matter of cost-benefit. I save hundreds of dollars a year by not printing color, and I have faster, more reliable B+W printing for all my needs, and only need to bother with buying new toner every other year. If the extra cost, time, and loss of reliability is worth it to you, go ahead, but you haven't explained why.
$33 * 12 = $396
P rinter&scoring=p) Color Lasers for ~$300-350, with the added convenience of not having to go out and buy something every month.
Laserjet = $150
So you're paying ~$250/year for color printing. How much color do you actually need? If you do need it, I see (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=color+Laser+
I don't see the math. Unless you're one of those that constantly prints digital photos alluded to elsewhere in the comments, (I'm not, so I can't comment on the viability of a color laser for that) why would you go through the expense and inconvenience of inkjets?
Thirded. I spent $100 on an ML-1710. I alternate between heavy and no usage, and I I'm running 1.5 years/toner (at $85 for toner, and I'm sure I could find it cheaper if I shopped around). I estimate my costs at about $.05/page. (Note that, just as with inkjets, the "starter" toner is about 1/3 full)
:)
My Inkjet experiences were far worse:
* Many models don't warn you when you're low, and refuse to print if they decide you're out. On a laser, you just shake the toner cartridge and you're good for another 50 pages
* Linux compatibility is a crapshoot with inkjets. Lasers are more often for a mutli-OS office environment and "just work" more.
* Inkjet cartridges dry out regardless of use, and cost $30-$60, so the "long haul" argument doesn't require that long of a haul.
* Inkjet cartridges get out of date quickly (as in, you can't find them to buy them easily).
* Laser is FAST. I get my first page in 10 seconds, and can put out 10+ pages/min after that.
* Color costs extra on laser, but really, when do you use color? Directions and manuals are my major printing requirements, and neither requires color. Color, by and large, is for ads. I've never had the desire to print out a digital photo, but if I did it'd be much more cost effective to drop it on to some media and run to the corner drugstore.
You missed several details when RTFAing, apparently.
if people run and use White Wolf games at conventions
Actually, they explicitly EXCLUDED conventions.
and charge people money to play for a *profit*,
Actually, they simply said "charge". Breaking even paying for the venue was specficially used as an example requiring a license.
I actually think that is fair, if people are using White Wolf IP to make a profit, White Wolf deserves the right to ask for a cut.
Well, that's an opinion, so you aren't wrong, but I strongly disagree. White Wolf sold those books with the intention of USE. As another reader pointed out, teachers don't have to get a license to teach from textbooks. The legality of this is highly questionable.
Heck, D20 system is "open"...they don't ask for anything in return other than the basic acknowledgement.
They actually also require you to agree to a contract where you give up certain rights you would have otherwise had. (Many consider that more than fair, I'm simply pointing out that they ask for more than "acknowledgement") The relevance of the OGL to White Wolf's license is fairly thin either way.
Actually, IIRC, the IRS allows them to report income and pay taxes on it. I'm not sure if that's WHY they were able to get Capone, or as a result of that, but you can report income on illegal gains and pay taxes on it, and they can't use that record against you.
Note the headline of that page:
"Trust gets personal with Thawte's Web of Trust (WOT)"
This is not a discussion of the Web of Trust concept as a whole, but of Thawte's use of the terminology in their little setup. As they are trying to make money off the deal, you can expect them to be slightly skewed.
Note also that their system starts by awarding Trust Points for showing up in person. The Web of Trust PKI concept doesn't care WHO you are, so much as that you are the same person every time, and if you are (whatever you claim to be). So the above poster's hope is that spammers would be unable to be marked as useful/acceptable by anyone within your web of trust. Simple, beautiful.
(The unfortunate weakness, however, is that it just takes 1 security hole on any system in the web of trust, or 1 clueless user, to insert tainted approvals, which can then start spreading. There are fixes to this, but the fundamental simplicity is lost when you insert stupid (read: normal) users.)