Do you see DaimlerChrysler suing Ford for stealing styling ideas on pickup trucks? Or Kenworth, International, et. al. suing DaimlerChrysler for borrowing styling from big rig trucks? Actually, the auto industry in general - there's a LOT of "stealing" of features and styling cues. But no one suing. Because that industry has matured past that point.
Rolls-Royce has sued people over their hood ornament. I suspect other companies would do the same if you copied a design element that was strongly associated with a brand.
If you started selling a car that looked just like a Mercedes, minus the badge, Daimler-Chrysler would probably go after you.
There is a difference between stealing a general idea, like Ford's "jelly bean" body designs, and cloning someone else's design.
Everyone's probably heard the story about the space pen- the Americans needed something that can write in zero-g. They spent a million dollars developing a pen that can write upside down, underwater and even in zero-g. The russians used pencils. That sums up the difference in principle between the two approaches.
I've heard the story, too bad it isn't true. Please stop spreading this myth.
Paul Fisher invested several million dollars of his own money to develop and patent the space pen. See this page.
By the way, pencils are a bad idea. They generate airborne graphite particles that contaminate the crew compartment.
There is more to it than "protecting an American monopoly". The production of launch vehicles is a strategic industry. For national security, the USA must have a viable, domestic launch capability. Some payloads are too sensitive to be launched on foreign launch vehicles. The Russians and French may not always be willing to launch American satellites. It is in the USA's interest to keep both the Russian and American industries healthy.
V.92 is supposed to have better compression, a faster uplink and other features. Many people do not have access to cable modems or DSL. Dialup modems are going to be around for a long time.
If you are peddling your butt on the street corner, don't complain if you get treated like a whore.
Several magazines that I read and trust, have a policy of buying review items off-the-shelf. They sell or auction off the items after they are done with the review.
While many things could survive the demise of intellectual property, what about things with high capital costs, such as movies and drugs?
An argument could be made that a legal system that makes it possible to produce and profit from a movie with a $200 million budget is not socially beneficial. Does society need $200 million movies?
What about drugs, something with more obvious social benefits? It costs a huge amount of money to develop, test and get approval for modern drugs.
What will the drug industry do when someone invents a cheap molecular synthesizer? Do you want 100 grams of the latest antibiotic (or cocaine)? Just type in the chemical formula and come back in an hour.
Why should gamma rays and a hard vacuum be any more difficult to survive if it is in space?
The near-Earth space environment is more complex than "gamma rays and a hard vacuum". There is the solar wind and solar radiation, cosmic rays, microgravity etc.
The experiment is a hitchhiker on a sounding rocket used for solar research, so it isn't costing the taxpayer big bucks.
In most of the USA, employment is "at will", meaning you can be fired for any or no reason. The exceptions are reasons that are against public policy, such as age/gender/racial discrimination. There is no right to due process.
I've heard of people getting fired for pr0n, games, and sex in the office, but that is the first I've heard of people getting fired for MP3s.
It was also asserted by said prof that MULTICS was shelved so that it wouldn't compete with a proprietary OS by the same company.
I believe the competing operating system was GE/Honeywell's GCOS. As far as I know, they kept on selling Multics until the hardware, which had special features to support the operating system, was discontinued. Security conscious users, such as the NSA, liked Multics. NSA's dockmaster system ran Multics.
I think the problem with spacecraft reentry is that you must get rid of a huge amount of kinetic energy, the difference between orbital velocity and a reasonable velocity in the atmosphere. You want to convert kinetic energy to thermal energy at a rate slow enough that the spacecraft doesn't burn up.
Bendix's Kansas City Division (and the rest of Bendix) became part of AlliedSignal, and currently Honeywell International, after various mergers and acquisitions.
After doing some reading, I've found that there appear to be certain situations where a confidentiality notice makes sense.
Patient Medical Records
Trade Secrets
Privileged Legal Documents
Business Plans
Some lawyers recommend putting a confidentiality notice on every fax and email. I'm not sure that is a good idea. It devalues the meaning of the notice when it is applied without thought. It might backfire in court if you are trying to convince a judge/jury that you took reasonable precautions to protect the confidentiality of some information and the opposing lawyer can argue that the only steps you took were to automatically append some legal boilerplate to every fax and email.
I think it is on a large (non-atomic) scale. You have soft x-rays from the primary flowing down the radiation channel, ablating materials, being reflected/absorbed, compressing the secondary, which has a Pu-239 fission "sparkplug" in its center. During all of this, the materials in the secondary and bomb jacket are being transmuted to other elements. There are a lot of complicated things going on in a very short amount of time. I would love to see a simulation of the process, but then they would have to shoot me:-).
Cable is a monopoly is most areas. Theoretically you could build a second system, but the economics make it difficult. DBS is the only real competition for most cable systems, and even that is a duopoly. Where I live, the over-the-air signals are poor and DBS is not an option. I can either pay for cable from the local monopoly or do without TV. The local cable company, since acquired by a big company, got its exclusive franchise by bribing local government officials. So it is hypocritical for them to preach about free markets.
Free is nice but Linux is starting to become more popular for ground based systems at NASA because of its reliability. Most people at NASA don't care what operating system is used for a system, as long as it works reliably and doesn't screw up the schedule or budget.
Most spacecraft use custom operating systems or real-time executives in ROM. I think JPL has used VRTX on some of their spacecraft. You don't want to use a hard disk on a spacecraft.
NASA's concept of reliability is different than Microsoft's. Some of the people I talk to at NASA have become disillusioned with Windows NT due to bad experiences with it in deployed ground systems, such as crashing or not working properly under high loads.
There is also the problem that commercial hardware and software has a short life cycle in comparison to many government computer systems. This makes it difficult to support older systems when you can't get replacement parts and the software is not supported. It isn't unusual for some of these systems to be in use for 15-20 years before they are replaced. Many systems are being retired early because of hardware and software support issues.
One of the ground systems that I worked on uses OS/2 and ISA I/O cards. Those were the best choices when the system was developed. Today it is a problem. There isn't much support for OS/2 and ISA slots are disappearing from commodity PCs. If I designed a system today, with Windows 2000 and PCI I/O cards, how many years would it take before I was in the same situation?
In my 2nd week of employment I began looking at logs and emails and it was through looking at the emails that I discovered that 1 individual (along with a few others) in particular was spending at least 2 hours a day on the net hitting all kinds of sites, porn included.
What the fsck were you doing looking through people's emails? Being a network administrator is not a license to indulge one's voyeuristic tendencies. Just because you have the technical means to do something doesn't mean that it is moral or legal.
From what I've read, Peltier devices are not very efficient (< 10%). Wouldn't this just make the problem worse? Instead of removing 30W of heat from a CPU, you now have to remove 300W of heat from the hot side of the Peltier device.
You are assuming there is a free market in video playback devices, there isn't. The DVD folks have everything locked up with trademarks, patents and a cartel^H^H^H^H^H^Hassociation. I would like to see the Justice Department and the EU investigate them for antitrust violations.
Frequency allocations are specified by the ITU and the FCC (in the USA). It is common to have multiple services (radionavigation, amateur, police) assigned to a given frequency band. There is usually a hierarchy of primary and secondary services. Secondary services are not allowed to interfere with primary services and must accept interference from the primary services. Consumer electronics equipment is usually at a level even lower than the secondary services. The general idea is to allow multiple services to share a frequency band, with a set of rules that says who wins if there is a conflict between two services. For example, some of the wireless LAN products share frequencies with the amateur radio service. The FCC rules give the amateur radio service precedence over "part 15" devices, such as wireless LANs, in this frequency band. If my amateur radio station wipes out your LAN, assuming I am following the FCC's regulations and technical standards, that is your tough luck. If your LAN causes harmful interference to my amateur radio station, I can (theoretically) get the FCC to order you to cease interference with my amateur radio station. Each frequency band has an associated list of primary and secondary users and rules on who wins in disputes over interference.
If we can map the universe at every wavelength, won't this be data enough to deduce the particle laws? Is there still any reason to waste any money on accelerators?
You need both. Telescopes tell you about the behavior of large collections of atoms. Accelerators tell you about the behavior of individual atoms and particles. If you are interested in how stars evolve, you need to know the behavior of atoms on both the large and small scale.
I was just reading a book that pointed out the fact that Earth based neutrino detectors only detect about 1/3 as many neutrinos as predicted by our models of the Sun. Is the Sun running cooler than predicted by the models, or is our understanding of the neutrino incorrect?
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Rolls-Royce has sued people over their hood ornament. I suspect other companies would do the same if you copied a design element that was strongly associated with a brand.
If you started selling a car that looked just like a Mercedes, minus the badge, Daimler-Chrysler would probably go after you.
There is a difference between stealing a general idea, like Ford's "jelly bean" body designs, and cloning someone else's design.
How can NASA spend billions on X while children are starving in blah, blah, blah...
clickety, click, click
LASER CHARGING...
ZAP!
I want to see Natalie Portman, naked and $F*($G
NO CARRIER
I've heard the story, too bad it isn't true. Please stop spreading this myth.
Paul Fisher invested several million dollars of his own money to develop and patent the space pen. See this page.
By the way, pencils are a bad idea. They generate airborne graphite particles that contaminate the crew compartment.
There is more to it than "protecting an American monopoly". The production of launch vehicles is a strategic industry. For national security, the USA must have a viable, domestic launch capability. Some payloads are too sensitive to be launched on foreign launch vehicles. The Russians and French may not always be willing to launch American satellites. It is in the USA's interest to keep both the Russian and American industries healthy.
LEO orbital velocity is about 18,000 miles/hour. The orbital velocity gets smaller as the distance from Earth increases.
V.92 is supposed to have better compression, a faster uplink and other features. Many people do not have access to cable modems or DSL. Dialup modems are going to be around for a long time.
Several magazines that I read and trust, have a policy of buying review items off-the-shelf. They sell or auction off the items after they are done with the review.
An argument could be made that a legal system that makes it possible to produce and profit from a movie with a $200 million budget is not socially beneficial. Does society need $200 million movies?
What about drugs, something with more obvious social benefits? It costs a huge amount of money to develop, test and get approval for modern drugs.
What will the drug industry do when someone invents a cheap molecular synthesizer? Do you want 100 grams of the latest antibiotic (or cocaine)? Just type in the chemical formula and come back in an hour.
- Zip's "click of death" problems.
- Iomega was screwing customers on rebates.
- SuperDisk drive can read/write 1.44M floppies.
I have been very happy with my SuperDisk drive. The drive and diskettes have been error free.The near-Earth space environment is more complex than "gamma rays and a hard vacuum". There is the solar wind and solar radiation, cosmic rays, microgravity etc.
The experiment is a hitchhiker on a sounding rocket used for solar research, so it isn't costing the taxpayer big bucks.
I've heard of people getting fired for pr0n, games, and sex in the office, but that is the first I've heard of people getting fired for MP3s.
I believe the competing operating system was GE/Honeywell's GCOS. As far as I know, they kept on selling Multics until the hardware, which had special features to support the operating system, was discontinued. Security conscious users, such as the NSA, liked Multics. NSA's dockmaster system ran Multics.
I think the problem with spacecraft reentry is that you must get rid of a huge amount of kinetic energy, the difference between orbital velocity and a reasonable velocity in the atmosphere. You want to convert kinetic energy to thermal energy at a rate slow enough that the spacecraft doesn't burn up.
Bendix's Kansas City Division (and the rest of Bendix) became part of AlliedSignal, and currently Honeywell International, after various mergers and acquisitions.
- Patient Medical Records
- Trade Secrets
- Privileged Legal Documents
- Business Plans
Some lawyers recommend putting a confidentiality notice on every fax and email. I'm not sure that is a good idea. It devalues the meaning of the notice when it is applied without thought. It might backfire in court if you are trying to convince a judge/jury that you took reasonable precautions to protect the confidentiality of some information and the opposing lawyer can argue that the only steps you took were to automatically append some legal boilerplate to every fax and email.I think it is on a large (non-atomic) scale. You have soft x-rays from the primary flowing down the radiation channel, ablating materials, being reflected/absorbed, compressing the secondary, which has a Pu-239 fission "sparkplug" in its center. During all of this, the materials in the secondary and bomb jacket are being transmuted to other elements. There are a lot of complicated things going on in a very short amount of time. I would love to see a simulation of the process, but then they would have to shoot me :-).
Cable is a monopoly is most areas. Theoretically you could build a second system, but the economics make it difficult. DBS is the only real competition for most cable systems, and even that is a duopoly. Where I live, the over-the-air signals are poor and DBS is not an option. I can either pay for cable from the local monopoly or do without TV. The local cable company, since acquired by a big company, got its exclusive franchise by bribing local government officials. So it is hypocritical for them to preach about free markets.
Most spacecraft use custom operating systems or real-time executives in ROM. I think JPL has used VRTX on some of their spacecraft. You don't want to use a hard disk on a spacecraft.
NASA's concept of reliability is different than Microsoft's. Some of the people I talk to at NASA have become disillusioned with Windows NT due to bad experiences with it in deployed ground systems, such as crashing or not working properly under high loads.
There is also the problem that commercial hardware and software has a short life cycle in comparison to many government computer systems. This makes it difficult to support older systems when you can't get replacement parts and the software is not supported. It isn't unusual for some of these systems to be in use for 15-20 years before they are replaced. Many systems are being retired early because of hardware and software support issues.
One of the ground systems that I worked on uses OS/2 and ISA I/O cards. Those were the best choices when the system was developed. Today it is a problem. There isn't much support for OS/2 and ISA slots are disappearing from commodity PCs. If I designed a system today, with Windows 2000 and PCI I/O cards, how many years would it take before I was in the same situation?
What the fsck were you doing looking through people's emails? Being a network administrator is not a license to indulge one's voyeuristic tendencies. Just because you have the technical means to do something doesn't mean that it is moral or legal.
From what I've read, Peltier devices are not very efficient (< 10%). Wouldn't this just make the problem worse? Instead of removing 30W of heat from a CPU, you now have to remove 300W of heat from the hot side of the Peltier device.
There are always going to be movies that aren't released in the USA or are released in a butchered version. It isn't a matter of price.
You are assuming there is a free market in video playback devices, there isn't. The DVD folks have everything locked up with trademarks, patents and a cartel^H^H^H^H^H^Hassociation. I would like to see the Justice Department and the EU investigate them for antitrust violations.
Frequency allocations are specified by the ITU and the FCC (in the USA). It is common to have multiple services (radionavigation, amateur, police) assigned to a given frequency band. There is usually a hierarchy of primary and secondary services. Secondary services are not allowed to interfere with primary services and must accept interference from the primary services. Consumer electronics equipment is usually at a level even lower than the secondary services. The general idea is to allow multiple services to share a frequency band, with a set of rules that says who wins if there is a conflict between two services. For example, some of the wireless LAN products share frequencies with the amateur radio service. The FCC rules give the amateur radio service precedence over "part 15" devices, such as wireless LANs, in this frequency band. If my amateur radio station wipes out your LAN, assuming I am following the FCC's regulations and technical standards, that is your tough luck. If your LAN causes harmful interference to my amateur radio station, I can (theoretically) get the FCC to order you to cease interference with my amateur radio station. Each frequency band has an associated list of primary and secondary users and rules on who wins in disputes over interference.
Your name and address has been forwarded to the American Physical Society :-).
You need both. Telescopes tell you about the behavior of large collections of atoms. Accelerators tell you about the behavior of individual atoms and particles. If you are interested in how stars evolve, you need to know the behavior of atoms on both the large and small scale.
I was just reading a book that pointed out the fact that Earth based neutrino detectors only detect about 1/3 as many neutrinos as predicted by our models of the Sun. Is the Sun running cooler than predicted by the models, or is our understanding of the neutrino incorrect?