I find the phrasing pretty weak, about being hard to come up with a label "people" would trust. Sounds like hedging between saying "we don't want to trust the lable" but not wanting to call anyone a liar. People trust the label on organic foods; why would this be harder?
To me labeling isn't the interesting question (but then, I'm no vegitarian). To me the interesting question is economic, and only if the economics make this product something uninteresting to me do the labeling issues even come into play. I can see three possible outcomes:
1) This approach hits a dead end, and it turns out you just can't make high-quality meat that's fit for human consumption in a lab. The researchers seem convinced that won't happen, so moving on...
2) The approach works, but the cost to make this meat exceeds the cost of doing it the old-fashioned way. I'm optimistic enough to doubt this; consider all of the energy costs involved in raising livestock. But who knows what will be required to make "good" artificial meat; maybe this is how it goes down. In that case, it won't add noticably to the food supply in an economic sense, and it becomes uninteresting to me. It remains intersting to PETA (since they don't want to eat "real" meat). There's niche demand for it, but it's more expensive than "real" meat - conditions that would make it possible to have mis-labeling if the food manufacturers were very careful about it.
3) The approach works and produces meat more cheaply than you can raise "real" meat. This is the only case where I care about the idea, because in this case you actually increase the food supply; but in that case, nobody has a reason to mislabel a more expensive product and sell it to you as a less-expensive product. Even if they were just jerks who wanted to trick you into eating something you don't want to eat, they'd never be able to pull it off. (How do you hide a slaughtering operation from regulators?)
He's classified as a contractor, but the odds are he'd legally be considered an employee were the company audited for payroll taxes. Could even run into labor law co-employment issues. Basically the company is doing exactly what those laws aim to prevent - getting full-time services from an employee without paying for that employee's benefits.
More to the point, this company is his only customer; he reports in the office 40 hours a week, just like an employee, and he gets paid for those 40 hours, just as though he were salaried. He probably isn't in a position where he wants to just shrug them off as "a non-paying customer"; that's not the nature of their relationship in anything but name.
The company decided they could have their cake and eat it too, and so far nobody's called them on it. It's a pretty sweet deal for them if they don't get caught.
He says he has an oral agreement (which would be a valid contract, but hard to prove) that says he should be paid hourly. He might be able to start reporting the time he actually works off-hours and try to treat it as breach of contract if they won't pay for those hours. However, an adversarial approach does carry risks, especially when your current business relationship is really outside the legal bounds of how things are supposed to be done.
Getting compensation for hours of merely being reachable would be much harder without a contract that specifically provides for such pay.
Before I start on this, I do want to acknowledge that in my book labels like "environmentally friendly" are by nature relative, and if this is less harmful than the current alternatives that do the same thing then I don't have a problem with the label myself. But I do have a problem with the parent post...
"Then I'd argue you're a moron. Aluminum is what is commonly known as a basic element. It's not a compound of anything, it isn't created in a lab, it's dug up out of the earth."
I, in turn, will argue that you're a hair-splitting pedant who can't bother with reading comprehension once he's decided to disagree with someone.
Yeah, when I read the first sentence of GP's post, I had a similar "WTF are you talking about" reaction. Then I read the rest of it and said, "ah, the point is about the energy cost of refining aluminum".
"getting it into a useable form requires processing, but so do algae pellets, bio fuel, orange juice and that nice, tasty steak"
So there's no such thing as a matter of degree in your world? If everything takes some energy to refine, then it doesn't matter how much energy it takes to refine something? Interesting.
"You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as a naturally occurring substance, which is obviously false."
No, he seems to be saying that algae pellets, bio fuel, orange juice, and steak are not naturally occuring substances. Show we where to find any of those thigns in nature.
(And no, I do not consider a cow a steak. If you place one on your plate you will quickly understand why.)
"Furthermore, aluminum is extremely recyclable"
Which is fine when we're talking about aluminum cans; maybe airframes... whatever. I'm not so sure you can reclaim aluminum that's been used as rocket propellant, though I'd be happy to look over a citation that says otherwise if you can provide one. I'd also like to know how pure recycled aluminum from other applications is, and whether it would in fact be possible to use recycled aluminum in this process.
If, as I assume, this is an end-of-life application for aluminum, then every pound used in this way should be accounted as a pound that has to be refined from scratch even if the input might have been recycled previously.
"Also, one of the primary goals of the industry is reducing the cost of refinement, which is directly related to the energy consumption and environmental impact."
It's nice to have goals. Seems to me GP was talking about current-state.
What you are saying is true, but it misses the point. I suspect you might need to go back to the top of the thread and review the context.
The point is that you can't apply the rules/calculations of the special case to problems whose conditions only match the general case. So as you say, you can describe what's happening in the "twin paradox" - or any other scenario - as long as you either (1) measure from a frame that matches the SR assumptions, or (2) use the GR calculations. But what you cannot do, is measure from an accelerating frame while using SR calculations, and this confuses many people who are learning about relativity. They think they see a paradox in the workings of SR, because they try to apply it from the traveler's frame of reference (which is accelerating).
I bring this up as an analogy to the fact that the theory in TFA would be a further generalization beyond GR; it would impose assumptions on GR so that only when those assumptions are met can the rules of GR be applied. (Specifically, it says GR describes spacetime except when energy is sufficiently high).
It had been suggested that a model that separates time from space might be "bad" because it might allow FTL propagation of inforamtion. Since this theory only separates time from space at high energies, presumably it would not allow FTL propagation at low energies where GR "works". So the GR result that FTL propagation could lead to information traveling back in time would not apply to cases where this model might allow FTL propagation, and again the apparent paradox is only an illusion resulting from application of special-case rules to general-case conditions.
SR only describes the twin paradox correctly from the non-traveling individual's frame of reference. The need for GR during acceleration is exactly the point I was making.
Unless I'm missing something... and I'll grant I'm being to lazy to RTFA this time...
What makes you think they stored any number as a string? It looks to me like they made a programming error, where a number was treated as "number of Euro" in one routine and as "number of Euro cents" in another. If a person made this error, you would say they misplaced the decimal point (er, comma I suppose); and since we like to personify computers and pretend they made a mistake when a buggy program executes, by analogy we say the ATM misplaced the decimal.
You're letting the punctuation confuse you. The computer doesn't use punctuation to represent the number.
The error was essentially that a number of Euro cents was interpreted as a number of Euro.
So if someone entered 11500 euro cents (115.00 Euro using American punctuation, 115,00 using European punctuation - which seems fair since we're counting Euros), and the display showed them that this is what they had entered, but the computer interpreted it as 11500 euros (11,500 using American punctuation, 11.500 using European). Just as TFS says.
"without _moving_ the seperator (or omitting it completely)"... which is exactly what the summary says happened. Hell, did you even read the headline?
FWIW, I'm not sure that a historically-inept attempt to identify file-sharers on a network implies that such identification is never possible on any network, but it does make for a good sound bite:)
All the extensive checking in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't know the conditions under which to look for it.
Pre-Einstein someone could test for time dilation, but they would be unlikely to stumble on the conditions where it occurs. If they were working on a theory that predicted time dilation, would they be wise to throw it out because it predicts something they've perhaps looked for but never seen?
If we had experimental evidence that GR results holds at the energies where this theory says it doens't, then FTL propagaton of information would be the least of the problems with this theory. Once you've said "GR may not always be accurate", the breakdown of one particular GR result (under such conditions as you think GR may not be accurate) is not additional reason to doubt.
Not exactly. To start, I'll assume you meant general relativity (since it's widely accepted that SR only describes certain frames of reference, hence "special").
There are a lot of experiments that show the macroscopic structure of spacetime is well-predicted by GR under the conditions of those experiments. Any model that does not agree with GR under those conditions is likely to be false. Included in that, any model that allows FTL information propagation under those conditions is likely to be false.
The model in TFA proposes that GR doesn't describe spacetime at high energies. We don't have experimental evidence to support or refute that, really. If the model allows FTL information propagation at high energies, that may not imply sending information back in time; that's a conclusion from GR, which wouldn't be accurate at those energies.
Consider this: Many people when learning relativity start with SR. They reach a level of understanding where they think it's a paradox, that if I'm on Earth while you travel away from Earth at relativistic speeds, each of us would perceive the other's clock to be running slow. They ask who will appear to have aged more upon your return. The answer is predicted clearly by GR (I will have aged more), but it seems like a paradox if you apply the rules of the SR model to a situation outside the parameters where SR is accurate - specifically, as the traveler you must accelerate at some point and therefore cannot use SR to watch my clock throughout your journey.
The same may apply here. There is no reason to assume that it's "unlikely" for conditions to exist where GR doesn't hold. If such conditions exist, then we can't use results from GR to constrain what the rules might be under those conditions, as doing so might lead us to conclude paradoxes result from scenarios that are perfectly well defined under a model that accurately describes those conditions.
I guess I'm not sure what you want to talk to my printer about. Maybe you're alluding to some story I haven't haerd, but taking it at face value...
1) The network traffic associated with a printer doesn't look much like the network traffic associated with file-sharing clients.
2) I rarely print mp3's.
3) Which networks' admins is this going to confuse, anyway? The LAN admin can see the network address of the printer and sift that out as noise pretty easily. If the LAN is connected (say, via a NAT router) to the Internet, the ISP network never sees that printer traffic anyway; so it's not going to matter to their admins' analysis either.
I think you have the tail wagging the dog there. Whether there is an efficient way to solve NP problems is an open question. Why would the fact that a physical phenomenon would lead to such a solution method make that phenomenon invalid?
In any case, experimental evidence doesn't show us that things are impossible; it shows agreement (or disagreement) with theories (models of the world), and those models may imply that something is impossible. The GR model says that FTL information propagation is impossible, and as we've never observed information propagating FTL we're ok with that, at least for now.
Whether it's a feature or a bug depends on whether it reflects reality.
It's strange to me that Dvali would abandon his model for allowing FTL propagation of information unless he experimentally checked the conditions in question to see if information really could propagate FTL in those cases. I have to assume he did not - lacking clarification on the matter I'm left to assume that the conditions were not something simple he could test no a whim.
Without the experimental results, it's meaningless to call such an artifact in the model "good" or "bad".
It's not about store-branded packaging of the same product.
It's about an inferior product sold using the same brand, same packaging - essentially sold as "the same product" (unless you compare the mfr model #).
I woudl guess they're applying the first condition (by means of intimidation, physical force or interference). Specifically, they're probably saying that his refusal to cooperate constituted interference with their attempt to perform their duties.
I'd leave the laptop at home; but you're not me, so YMMV.
It's not about the hassle of setting it up. Sure, you need to be aware of the different voltage and all that; but now that you know that, it's easy to deal with.
But, first of all, for a two week trip, I can carry enough media for my camera that I don't have to off-load images (but then, some people take more pictures than I do; I don't believe that just because I'm not spending film means I should make it harder to sift through my pictures later).
There's really just no need IMO to lug a computer along, taking up a good chunk of your carry-on alotment for the flight. In fact, when I'm on a short trip to Europe, the last thing I want to do is waste time at a computer while I'm there. I do sign on once or twice to check email and send a message home if there's anything that noteworty - like the time my hotel room was robbed - but there are Internet cafes everywhere and they're not that expensive when you don't need much time.
The other reason I don't travel with a laptop is related to that hotel robbery I mentioned. Not saying that crime is any higher there than here, but as a tourist you're out of your element and it shows. Plus, if your laptop does get stolen in Europe, it could be somewhat more hassle than if it's stolen here.
But mostly, I just think a 6,000-mile trip is an opportunity to do and see things you wouldn't be doing at home; I'd think I was wasting time and money to take along my laptop.
Since you've already ignored the explanation of why your assertion is incorrect, I don't know why I'm bothering to repeat it, but here we go anyway:
You do not patent "doing something". The thing being done doesn't have to be novel. You patent a device or method for doing something. The device or method must be novel. That you could pay someone to do the task without the device or method does not bear on whether the device or method is novel.
Re-phrasing the assertion that "you could pay someone a wad of cash to do it" in such a way as to obscure the distinction of whether "it" means the task or the method/device, is also not novel.
I always wonder how far people are willing to push the "if you want to do business there, you play by their rules" argument. In a literal sense, I agree; the problem I have is that many people stick on an implied "and it's too big a market to give up". (I'm not sure I understand a business model with Opera well enough to know why they would think this - isn't the software free, in fact?)
Now, if a company came out and said "we don't hold that this censorship violates anyone's basic rights", then at least they'd be taking a stance based on principles. They would be demonstrating that they're principles contradict my idea of morality and they would lose me as a customer...
And so many try to avoid that, by saying "oh, yes, we agree with you, but look at the economic harm it would do us if we stood up for that principle". (Or if the company itself doesn't say this, outsiders justifying the decision to tolerate such behavior do.) In other words, "we value money more than morals". Oh, but it's a lot of money? Ok, well, now I know your price tag.
If the U.S. government truly believed - as the founding documents say - that certain rights are basic and inalienable to all people (who were, after all, created equal), then we would force companies to make a choice. It would be illegal to conspire to violate those rights anywhere in the world. We say you can't help oppress people through censorship, and China says you have to if you're going to do business there? Then I guess you'd better decide which market you're going to do business in, because you can't do both.
But instead, we treat the rights as granted by the government, and leave it up to each nation's laws to decide what a company based here can do there. To pay a U.S. citizen less than minimum wage would be inhumane, but contract to have a child in China do the job for less, and apparently humanity doesn't apply. Same principle.
"the thing IS, in fact, obvious *specifically* because it isn't novel"
So I'll repeat my question: if that's so, why isn't anyone doing it? There may be a legitimate answer to this, but I notice that instead of offering one to further the discussion, you've opted to repeat the asswertion that prompted the question in more aggressive terms. That suggests to me that you probably don't have an answer.
"Your "objective, healthy skepticism" is not warranted in the field of patents... they've been too thoroughly abused for far too long (and Amazon is one of the very worst abusers, mind you) to go tiptoeing around wondering if maybe our backlash is a tad too judgemental. YOU go read the patent and scratch your head. The rest of us see that the house is on fire."
I'm curious to meet this "the rest of us" you think you speak for.
Well, "the house is on fire" could accurately describe many innser cities. People get robbed, murdered, etc. This abuse has been going on far too long (and the poor are among the worst abusers, mind you). So following your logic, should the court system do away with the "objective, healthy skepticism" that leads us to presume any given defendent guilty (at least when the defendent is poor and from the inner city)?
If you want to call waiting to hear the facts and arguments "tiptoeing around", so be it. You certainly can choose to see the house on fire and react by throwing more fuel if you really think that's gonig to help.
Apparently you don't know what's wrong with Glenn Beck's form of questioning; or else you're in such a hurry to discredit those you disagree with that you're willing to deliberately slur over the truth.
Here's a hint: the problem isn't that he mentions the need to ask questions (which I have also done). The problem is that he asks insanely leading questions and then tries to claim he doesn't hold the position implied by the questions (something i have not done).
There may be something worth talking about in the rest of your reply, but I'll never know; I don't read past minless ad hominem.
I don't know what you mean by "the source is other than giver or receiver"; but since you're comparing it to Santa Clause, I assume you mean the origin of the delivery. Since that is how every catalog or online shopping service works - the source is a warehouse somewhere - there would be a tidal wave of prior art, if that were what the patent covers. But it isn't.
I'm sure if I give a strong guy a buck he'll crack a walnut for me, but a nutcracker is still an invention.
The method, not the thing being done, is what is patented. An automated way of doing something you'd otherwise have to pay a person to go to the trouble of doing manually is pretty much the definition of an invention. That you suspect you could get someone to do the task without the invention has no bearing on whether the invention is novel.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the phrasing pretty weak, about being hard to come up with a label "people" would trust. Sounds like hedging between saying "we don't want to trust the lable" but not wanting to call anyone a liar. People trust the label on organic foods; why would this be harder?
To me labeling isn't the interesting question (but then, I'm no vegitarian). To me the interesting question is economic, and only if the economics make this product something uninteresting to me do the labeling issues even come into play. I can see three possible outcomes:
1) This approach hits a dead end, and it turns out you just can't make high-quality meat that's fit for human consumption in a lab. The researchers seem convinced that won't happen, so moving on...
2) The approach works, but the cost to make this meat exceeds the cost of doing it the old-fashioned way. I'm optimistic enough to doubt this; consider all of the energy costs involved in raising livestock. But who knows what will be required to make "good" artificial meat; maybe this is how it goes down. In that case, it won't add noticably to the food supply in an economic sense, and it becomes uninteresting to me. It remains intersting to PETA (since they don't want to eat "real" meat). There's niche demand for it, but it's more expensive than "real" meat - conditions that would make it possible to have mis-labeling if the food manufacturers were very careful about it.
3) The approach works and produces meat more cheaply than you can raise "real" meat. This is the only case where I care about the idea, because in this case you actually increase the food supply; but in that case, nobody has a reason to mislabel a more expensive product and sell it to you as a less-expensive product. Even if they were just jerks who wanted to trick you into eating something you don't want to eat, they'd never be able to pull it off. (How do you hide a slaughtering operation from regulators?)
I'm guessing you didn't RTFA.
He's classified as a contractor, but the odds are he'd legally be considered an employee were the company audited for payroll taxes. Could even run into labor law co-employment issues. Basically the company is doing exactly what those laws aim to prevent - getting full-time services from an employee without paying for that employee's benefits.
More to the point, this company is his only customer; he reports in the office 40 hours a week, just like an employee, and he gets paid for those 40 hours, just as though he were salaried. He probably isn't in a position where he wants to just shrug them off as "a non-paying customer"; that's not the nature of their relationship in anything but name.
The company decided they could have their cake and eat it too, and so far nobody's called them on it. It's a pretty sweet deal for them if they don't get caught.
He says he has an oral agreement (which would be a valid contract, but hard to prove) that says he should be paid hourly. He might be able to start reporting the time he actually works off-hours and try to treat it as breach of contract if they won't pay for those hours. However, an adversarial approach does carry risks, especially when your current business relationship is really outside the legal bounds of how things are supposed to be done.
Getting compensation for hours of merely being reachable would be much harder without a contract that specifically provides for such pay.
Before I start on this, I do want to acknowledge that in my book labels like "environmentally friendly" are by nature relative, and if this is less harmful than the current alternatives that do the same thing then I don't have a problem with the label myself. But I do have a problem with the parent post...
"Then I'd argue you're a moron. Aluminum is what is commonly known as a basic element. It's not a compound of anything, it isn't created in a lab, it's dug up out of the earth."
I, in turn, will argue that you're a hair-splitting pedant who can't bother with reading comprehension once he's decided to disagree with someone.
Yeah, when I read the first sentence of GP's post, I had a similar "WTF are you talking about" reaction. Then I read the rest of it and said, "ah, the point is about the energy cost of refining aluminum".
"getting it into a useable form requires processing, but so do algae pellets, bio fuel, orange juice and that nice, tasty steak"
So there's no such thing as a matter of degree in your world? If everything takes some energy to refine, then it doesn't matter how much energy it takes to refine something? Interesting.
"You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as a naturally occurring substance, which is obviously false."
No, he seems to be saying that algae pellets, bio fuel, orange juice, and steak are not naturally occuring substances. Show we where to find any of those thigns in nature.
(And no, I do not consider a cow a steak. If you place one on your plate you will quickly understand why.)
"Furthermore, aluminum is extremely recyclable"
Which is fine when we're talking about aluminum cans; maybe airframes... whatever. I'm not so sure you can reclaim aluminum that's been used as rocket propellant, though I'd be happy to look over a citation that says otherwise if you can provide one. I'd also like to know how pure recycled aluminum from other applications is, and whether it would in fact be possible to use recycled aluminum in this process.
If, as I assume, this is an end-of-life application for aluminum, then every pound used in this way should be accounted as a pound that has to be refined from scratch even if the input might have been recycled previously.
"Also, one of the primary goals of the industry is reducing the cost of refinement, which is directly related to the energy consumption and environmental impact."
It's nice to have goals. Seems to me GP was talking about current-state.
What you are saying is true, but it misses the point. I suspect you might need to go back to the top of the thread and review the context.
The point is that you can't apply the rules/calculations of the special case to problems whose conditions only match the general case. So as you say, you can describe what's happening in the "twin paradox" - or any other scenario - as long as you either (1) measure from a frame that matches the SR assumptions, or (2) use the GR calculations. But what you cannot do, is measure from an accelerating frame while using SR calculations, and this confuses many people who are learning about relativity. They think they see a paradox in the workings of SR, because they try to apply it from the traveler's frame of reference (which is accelerating).
I bring this up as an analogy to the fact that the theory in TFA would be a further generalization beyond GR; it would impose assumptions on GR so that only when those assumptions are met can the rules of GR be applied. (Specifically, it says GR describes spacetime except when energy is sufficiently high).
It had been suggested that a model that separates time from space might be "bad" because it might allow FTL propagation of inforamtion. Since this theory only separates time from space at high energies, presumably it would not allow FTL propagation at low energies where GR "works". So the GR result that FTL propagation could lead to information traveling back in time would not apply to cases where this model might allow FTL propagation, and again the apparent paradox is only an illusion resulting from application of special-case rules to general-case conditions.
You cannot use SR in an accelerating frame of reference.
The traveler's frame of reference has to accelerate, at least some of the time.
If you ignore this and do the calculation from the traveler's POV you will get the wrong answer and an apparent paradox.
If you don't believe me, go look it up.
SR only describes the twin paradox correctly from the non-traveling individual's frame of reference. The need for GR during acceleration is exactly the point I was making.
Unless I'm missing something... and I'll grant I'm being to lazy to RTFA this time...
What makes you think they stored any number as a string? It looks to me like they made a programming error, where a number was treated as "number of Euro" in one routine and as "number of Euro cents" in another. If a person made this error, you would say they misplaced the decimal point (er, comma I suppose); and since we like to personify computers and pretend they made a mistake when a buggy program executes, by analogy we say the ATM misplaced the decimal.
You're letting the punctuation confuse you. The computer doesn't use punctuation to represent the number.
The error was essentially that a number of Euro cents was interpreted as a number of Euro.
So if someone entered 11500 euro cents (115.00 Euro using American punctuation, 115,00 using European punctuation - which seems fair since we're counting Euros), and the display showed them that this is what they had entered, but the computer interpreted it as 11500 euros (11,500 using American punctuation, 11.500 using European). Just as TFS says.
"without _moving_ the seperator (or omitting it completely)" ... which is exactly what the summary says happened. Hell, did you even read the headline?
Aha. Thanks for the clarification.
FWIW, I'm not sure that a historically-inept attempt to identify file-sharers on a network implies that such identification is never possible on any network, but it does make for a good sound bite :)
All the extensive checking in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't know the conditions under which to look for it.
Pre-Einstein someone could test for time dilation, but they would be unlikely to stumble on the conditions where it occurs. If they were working on a theory that predicted time dilation, would they be wise to throw it out because it predicts something they've perhaps looked for but never seen?
If we had experimental evidence that GR results holds at the energies where this theory says it doens't, then FTL propagaton of information would be the least of the problems with this theory. Once you've said "GR may not always be accurate", the breakdown of one particular GR result (under such conditions as you think GR may not be accurate) is not additional reason to doubt.
Not exactly. To start, I'll assume you meant general relativity (since it's widely accepted that SR only describes certain frames of reference, hence "special").
There are a lot of experiments that show the macroscopic structure of spacetime is well-predicted by GR under the conditions of those experiments. Any model that does not agree with GR under those conditions is likely to be false. Included in that, any model that allows FTL information propagation under those conditions is likely to be false.
The model in TFA proposes that GR doesn't describe spacetime at high energies. We don't have experimental evidence to support or refute that, really. If the model allows FTL information propagation at high energies, that may not imply sending information back in time; that's a conclusion from GR, which wouldn't be accurate at those energies.
Consider this: Many people when learning relativity start with SR. They reach a level of understanding where they think it's a paradox, that if I'm on Earth while you travel away from Earth at relativistic speeds, each of us would perceive the other's clock to be running slow. They ask who will appear to have aged more upon your return. The answer is predicted clearly by GR (I will have aged more), but it seems like a paradox if you apply the rules of the SR model to a situation outside the parameters where SR is accurate - specifically, as the traveler you must accelerate at some point and therefore cannot use SR to watch my clock throughout your journey.
The same may apply here. There is no reason to assume that it's "unlikely" for conditions to exist where GR doesn't hold. If such conditions exist, then we can't use results from GR to constrain what the rules might be under those conditions, as doing so might lead us to conclude paradoxes result from scenarios that are perfectly well defined under a model that accurately describes those conditions.
I guess I'm not sure what you want to talk to my printer about. Maybe you're alluding to some story I haven't haerd, but taking it at face value...
1) The network traffic associated with a printer doesn't look much like the network traffic associated with file-sharing clients.
2) I rarely print mp3's.
3) Which networks' admins is this going to confuse, anyway? The LAN admin can see the network address of the printer and sift that out as noise pretty easily. If the LAN is connected (say, via a NAT router) to the Internet, the ISP network never sees that printer traffic anyway; so it's not going to matter to their admins' analysis either.
I think you have the tail wagging the dog there. Whether there is an efficient way to solve NP problems is an open question. Why would the fact that a physical phenomenon would lead to such a solution method make that phenomenon invalid?
In any case, experimental evidence doesn't show us that things are impossible; it shows agreement (or disagreement) with theories (models of the world), and those models may imply that something is impossible. The GR model says that FTL information propagation is impossible, and as we've never observed information propagating FTL we're ok with that, at least for now.
Whether it's a feature or a bug depends on whether it reflects reality.
It's strange to me that Dvali would abandon his model for allowing FTL propagation of information unless he experimentally checked the conditions in question to see if information really could propagate FTL in those cases. I have to assume he did not - lacking clarification on the matter I'm left to assume that the conditions were not something simple he could test no a whim.
Without the experimental results, it's meaningless to call such an artifact in the model "good" or "bad".
I don't think you understand what GP's saying.
It's not about store-branded packaging of the same product.
It's about an inferior product sold using the same brand, same packaging - essentially sold as "the same product" (unless you compare the mfr model #).
I woudl guess they're applying the first condition (by means of intimidation, physical force or interference). Specifically, they're probably saying that his refusal to cooperate constituted interference with their attempt to perform their duties.
I'd leave the laptop at home; but you're not me, so YMMV.
It's not about the hassle of setting it up. Sure, you need to be aware of the different voltage and all that; but now that you know that, it's easy to deal with.
But, first of all, for a two week trip, I can carry enough media for my camera that I don't have to off-load images (but then, some people take more pictures than I do; I don't believe that just because I'm not spending film means I should make it harder to sift through my pictures later).
There's really just no need IMO to lug a computer along, taking up a good chunk of your carry-on alotment for the flight. In fact, when I'm on a short trip to Europe, the last thing I want to do is waste time at a computer while I'm there. I do sign on once or twice to check email and send a message home if there's anything that noteworty - like the time my hotel room was robbed - but there are Internet cafes everywhere and they're not that expensive when you don't need much time.
The other reason I don't travel with a laptop is related to that hotel robbery I mentioned. Not saying that crime is any higher there than here, but as a tourist you're out of your element and it shows. Plus, if your laptop does get stolen in Europe, it could be somewhat more hassle than if it's stolen here.
But mostly, I just think a 6,000-mile trip is an opportunity to do and see things you wouldn't be doing at home; I'd think I was wasting time and money to take along my laptop.
Well, I know I was joking, but I can't figure the mods out today.
Since you've already ignored the explanation of why your assertion is incorrect, I don't know why I'm bothering to repeat it, but here we go anyway:
You do not patent "doing something". The thing being done doesn't have to be novel. You patent a device or method for doing something. The device or method must be novel. That you could pay someone to do the task without the device or method does not bear on whether the device or method is novel.
Re-phrasing the assertion that "you could pay someone a wad of cash to do it" in such a way as to obscure the distinction of whether "it" means the task or the method/device, is also not novel.
Apparently the future has given up its battle against the LHC. Take that, Nature!
I always wonder how far people are willing to push the "if you want to do business there, you play by their rules" argument. In a literal sense, I agree; the problem I have is that many people stick on an implied "and it's too big a market to give up". (I'm not sure I understand a business model with Opera well enough to know why they would think this - isn't the software free, in fact?)
Now, if a company came out and said "we don't hold that this censorship violates anyone's basic rights", then at least they'd be taking a stance based on principles. They would be demonstrating that they're principles contradict my idea of morality and they would lose me as a customer...
And so many try to avoid that, by saying "oh, yes, we agree with you, but look at the economic harm it would do us if we stood up for that principle". (Or if the company itself doesn't say this, outsiders justifying the decision to tolerate such behavior do.) In other words, "we value money more than morals". Oh, but it's a lot of money? Ok, well, now I know your price tag.
If the U.S. government truly believed - as the founding documents say - that certain rights are basic and inalienable to all people (who were, after all, created equal), then we would force companies to make a choice. It would be illegal to conspire to violate those rights anywhere in the world. We say you can't help oppress people through censorship, and China says you have to if you're going to do business there? Then I guess you'd better decide which market you're going to do business in, because you can't do both.
But instead, we treat the rights as granted by the government, and leave it up to each nation's laws to decide what a company based here can do there. To pay a U.S. citizen less than minimum wage would be inhumane, but contract to have a child in China do the job for less, and apparently humanity doesn't apply. Same principle.
"the thing IS, in fact, obvious *specifically* because it isn't novel"
So I'll repeat my question: if that's so, why isn't anyone doing it? There may be a legitimate answer to this, but I notice that instead of offering one to further the discussion, you've opted to repeat the asswertion that prompted the question in more aggressive terms. That suggests to me that you probably don't have an answer.
"Your "objective, healthy skepticism" is not warranted in the field of patents... they've been too thoroughly abused for far too long (and Amazon is one of the very worst abusers, mind you) to go tiptoeing around wondering if maybe our backlash is a tad too judgemental. YOU go read the patent and scratch your head. The rest of us see that the house is on fire."
I'm curious to meet this "the rest of us" you think you speak for.
Well, "the house is on fire" could accurately describe many innser cities. People get robbed, murdered, etc. This abuse has been going on far too long (and the poor are among the worst abusers, mind you). So following your logic, should the court system do away with the "objective, healthy skepticism" that leads us to presume any given defendent guilty (at least when the defendent is poor and from the inner city)?
If you want to call waiting to hear the facts and arguments "tiptoeing around", so be it. You certainly can choose to see the house on fire and react by throwing more fuel if you really think that's gonig to help.
Apparently you don't know what's wrong with Glenn Beck's form of questioning; or else you're in such a hurry to discredit those you disagree with that you're willing to deliberately slur over the truth.
Here's a hint: the problem isn't that he mentions the need to ask questions (which I have also done). The problem is that he asks insanely leading questions and then tries to claim he doesn't hold the position implied by the questions (something i have not done).
There may be something worth talking about in the rest of your reply, but I'll never know; I don't read past minless ad hominem.
I don't know what you mean by "the source is other than giver or receiver"; but since you're comparing it to Santa Clause, I assume you mean the origin of the delivery. Since that is how every catalog or online shopping service works - the source is a warehouse somewhere - there would be a tidal wave of prior art, if that were what the patent covers. But it isn't.
I'm sure if I give a strong guy a buck he'll crack a walnut for me, but a nutcracker is still an invention.
The method, not the thing being done, is what is patented. An automated way of doing something you'd otherwise have to pay a person to go to the trouble of doing manually is pretty much the definition of an invention. That you suspect you could get someone to do the task without the invention has no bearing on whether the invention is novel.