Hmm... I guess you don't know what "opportunistic" means in this context.
Opportunistic infections are those that will usually not strike a healthy person. If you look at it from the perspective of the bacterium (or virus, or whatever), then it might be better described as "ineffective"; but if you look at it in terms of human social impact, "opportunistic" describes it pretty well.
And I know that personally one of the things that I generally do after a long day with little to no sleep or food, when I'm feeling bad... is take a shower.
Very good. And how many times has it made you sick?
Of course, with the degree to which the mind influences the immune system, it might make you sick the next time you do it...
From the (somewhat incomplete) information in TFA, I think you're right that running the water before stepping in helps. Not sure about whether the fact you're taking a shower at the time matters, as the concern is inhaled bacteria.
It also seems that metal shower heads are not as bad as plastic.
Oh, and the bacteria in question are opportunistic - healthy people rarely get sick from them. So maybe it makes sense to give small children more baths than showers (which is what my family always did when I was growing up anyway); to consider taking baths when sick; and to consider what this implies for care of the elderly.
Other than that, this just seems a bit over-hyped. (Not seeing what the comparison to TB adds to the story beyond sensationalism, for example.)
Don't know what PG means in.au, but around here it's generally accepted to mean "yeah, maybe a baby shouldn't see it, but basically kid-friendly; parents with particular sensitivities WRT what their child sees might want to keep an eye on it".
I'll ask the same question I ask every time I see this kind of material: How much real insight do you have into the workings of Chinese society and citizen/government interaction? I admit mine is heavily filtered through others with political agendas, and I'm guessing you're in the same boat.
It looks to me like your biases may be influencing your analysis. You think it's likely that the government is at once strict enough to punish someone for saying Green Dam was harmful but too stupid to impose the same consequence on implying the same by saying it "influenced" things and is therefore being removed? More likely, in fact, than that it's a quirk in the translation?
I'm just saying, I don't think I've ever seen a translation from Chinese to English that wasn't qualified wtih "literally these characters would mean X, but really it's best rendered as Y".
It seems like a bone marrow transplantation would be a more appropriate and permanent solution.
If it seems like that, I suggest you take a deeper look at the situation.
First, let's realize that the scneario of a patient becoming permanently medicine-dependent as a result of the type of treatment described in TFA is entirely speculation on the part of a/. poster. We don't know whether a treatment based on this protein would have side effects, and while this postulated side effect may sound intuitive to you, it sounds extremely far-fetched to me.
Then consider that, as your own link points out, the treatment you're suggesting has significant risks - so much so that it's only used in severe situations.
I'm also curious how you know, before any specific treatment has been developed and tested, that any case where such treatment would be applied is also a case that bone marrow transplantation could address, even if the risks and benefits were as you portray them.
If only there were some process by which they could build on these findings, testing for the possible scenarios you describe. We should invent such a process. Perhaps we'll call it "science".
Meanwhile the ability to test NK cells' involvement in various diseases depends not at all on whether they can safely use this gene to stimulate NK cell production. It depends only on the NK-free model they've created asa result of their work to date.
Does the EULA actually say that tethering will be allowed? An "understanding" outside the contract is not a contract term.
It may be that your contract with your service provider says something about tethering. Apple is most likely not a party to that contract, so they can't really breach it. I suppose depending on the provider's relationship with Apple a court might find that your provider is responsible for ensuring that Apple provides a compatible product for the features you've contracted to use, but I'm not holding my breath. (If I sign on for picture/video/data service, my dog eats my phone, and I buy a cheap replacement that doesn't support those features, is my provider somehow liable? If not, how is this situation different from your provider's perspective?)
It seems to me that the oldest lesson in the book (buyer beware) applies to complex multi-party arrangements even more than to simple exchanges.
If I trying to indicate that a plan were truly unlimited, I would not capitalize "unlimited"; I would be using the adjective in the normal way, and in the English language an adjective is not capitalized in normal usage. I would avoid this usage if describing something that is not, in fact, unlimited.
If, on the other hand, I were talking about a plan named the Unlimited Plan, I might well capitalize it; particularly if that's how it's branded. This usage would be applicable whether or not the plan were truly unlimited.
I guess I'm just not sure of a usage pattern where extra capitalization makes something More True.
How strange, then, that the same 120V house circuit can power both a 25W CFL light bulb and a 1600W hair dryer (for example).
Electrical power does require a voltage source, but volts and watts measure fundamentally different thigns, and they do not correspond in the way the summary implies (unless you hold certain other quantities constant).
Do you mean, you think you could've gotten an individual's medical records in MA for less than $20? Or maybe you can't see why someone would dig up an individual's medical records? (I can think of many... but then my employer was extorted by someone who'd stolen a bunch of medical-related data from them not that long ago.)
I think I hear a bit of "nobody would go to all that trouble" in your message. If in the early days of WiFi networks I described to you in tedius yet vague terms how to compromise WEP encryption, you probably would've thought the same thing. Today anyone who cares to can break WEP using readily available tools - it's really no bother at all if you're even slightly inclined to do it.
I've seen companies with contractual and regulatory obligations to protect data privacy make half-gestures to make it look like they're honoring privacy while still engaging in whatever easy-money scheme or shortcut they want. Shedding light on why those half-gestures don't work is a big deal.
After filtering out your sarcasm, I must say you are completely correct. How dare AC ask for further explanatino of the topic? The Scientists know everything, so nobody else needs to know anything! If The Scientists say its a monopole, that should be all you need to know, so go back to your video games.
I didn't study enough physics to know much about monopoles. The physics majors I knew told us of a lot of things you could prove, if you knew that a monopole existed. (I never asked, and they never elaborated.) That being the case, what constitutes a monopole probably has a lot more to do with setting up the conditions for those proofs, and a lot less to do with what seems (to the AC, myself, or anyone else) to be the intuitive meaning.
That being the case, it would be nice if someone who knows that they're talking about were to provide more explanation. Instead all we get is noidentity mocking an AC for asking what is really a pretty reasonable question.
A self-selecting subset of viewers voluntarily sending unverifiable messages over a social network will prove to be a useful solution to the problem "how do we tell how many people are watching Channel X"?
I doubt it. Your viewing habits are already being tracked by means far more reliable. (And simpler.)
So, close but no cigar. Show me a problem that this technique actually solves but to which it is not an obvious solution, and then if this patent had been filed as "a method to (solve that problem)" I'd believe it was a valid patent.
If you're willing to answer "yes and yes" to questions that absurd without explanation, then I'm not going to spend much time arguing with you. I'll simply say that you're entitled to your opinion, but I hope I never have to depend on you as a juror if that's what you believe.
As to your question - I assume it's rhetorical as I've made my opinion perfectly clear.
Sure. Now let's just remember what a trademark is actually for - it protects the trademark holder's reputation by preventing others from passing themselves, their products and/or services, or (to an extent) their views as those of the trademark holder.
Do the passengers on this other tour line get to a certain point in their tour, play with duck calls for a moment, and suddently think "wait, am I on that other carrier's tour?"
Is a passerby likely to see the tour boat, hear the duck calls, and associate it with the other carrier, perhaps tracking the boat to port so they too can get a tour from this well-reputed carrier, only to find themselves duped into taking someone else's tour?
A trademark is a symbol - it identifies a product, but it is not part of the product. You hear the NBC chimes coming over a speaker, you think to yourself "ah, I'm listening to NBC programming; what I'm about to hear is a product of NBC"; but you don't listen to NBC to hear the chime.
This is a case where one tour operator is trying to force another to change the product itself - the experience of the tour. Their being very clever about it; but as I do with any IP-abuser, I hope they suffer an expensive failure in this effort.
How easy it is to build a prototype really doesn't matter.
What does matter is whether the approach is novel. A novel approach can be very easy to implement once you have the key insight, and reaching that insight (not constructing a prototype) is the work that earns patent protection.
My problem with this patent is this: I don't think you can state a problem to which this is a novel soltuion. The reason this hasn't been done isn't that nobody could figure out how - it's that nobody cared. If somebody had said "I want to do X", what aspect of the patented invention wouldn't have been an obvious part of the solution?
This patent covers a solution looking for a problem. In a certain demographic, it may carry a certain "cool" factor that allows it to catch on. "Hey, cool, I hadn't thought to do what this invention does." But that's not what patents are for.
Don't get me wrong - it's possible to have a "solution looking for a problem" that is novel and merits a patent. In those cases, when someone hears about the invention they would say "hey, cool; I hadn't thought of it, but I'd like to do that... however, I can't say I understand how you did it".
...which interesting as it may be, fails to address the issue.
Yes, there can be any number of reasons to hypothesize that Tetris is linked to brain growth. Various similar-but-different experiments using different stimuli and a different species of animal can make it appear that this might well be the case.
And then, to find out, you run a controlled experiment. No control group = no valid conclusion.
I don't think you've thought through the end-to-end cost of providng a replacement. It's not just the material cost of pressing the disc.
If the retailer trades on a "no questions asked" return policy or something like that, then there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of it in a case like this; but otherwise, it's not reasonable to expect the retailer to absorb costs by treating end-user destruction of the product as a "valid return".
What GP could have done to minimize the cost of getting a replacement, was to deal further up the supply chain. Perhaps the manufacturer has a replacement program. You still shouldn't expect it to be free - there are still costs involving shipment, not to mention paying someone to process your request - but it may well be cheaper than buying a new copy at retail.
And if the manufacturer doesn't offer such a program? Well, they're under no obligation as far as I can tell.
Bottom line: GP may not have considered all available options, but his (her?) attitude is correct. Expecting others to absorb the costs of your mistakes is just greedy.
If I'm reading this right, you're considering Christianity tolerant because at least the punishment it prescribes for homosexuality isn't death? Maybe your own attitude isn't as well "fixed" as you think.
That the idea of an apology to a dead person would be considered an onerous demand further suggests to me that England (and America) have not, in fact, gotten past being biased on this topic. I always thought that when you had found and fixed a mistake was indeed the correct time to say you're sorry. (When the demands go beyond an apology, then there's more to debate.)
To your other point, yes - there are groups and cultural leaders who are worse offenders than mainstream England (or America) on matters of bias, be it regarding sexual orientation, race, gender... From those groups, it is too soon to talk about apologies. An apology from someone who still institutionally believes in the things they would apologize for would be flimsy, meaningless, and worth far less than actually working toward a reformed point of view.
Besides, morality isn't like running from a bear. Being better than the worst guy isn't automatically good enough. Nobody's right when everybody's wrong.
I don't think it's a question of having matured. I admit I'm speculating some here, but I think they just see the two situations as different.
I think they're counting on the fact that Google Voice competes with a core function of the product. Should they lock out competition with services that are not the core function of the phone, and should a court be overly-narrow in defining the market in which the iPhone competes (as the market's evolution shows they did to MS, though nobody around here wants to recognize it), then they could be found to have used a monopoly market position as leverage in another market.
Yeah, and if you think that's bad, I can't run anything custom on my Samsung! How sad is that!...because the iPhone is a general-purpose computer, right?
Is it also sad that your local cable company doesn't let you run whatever software you want on the set-top box? I guess RMS probably thinks so. Maybe you do, too. I think what they're selling is a special-purpose device that includes software of their specification.
The iPhone is somewhere in between. If you bought it thinking it was a free computing platform, the fault is yours. Apple's decision was to let 3rd-party developers extend the product subject to their terms. Maybe that's not a good deal for the developers; but then, they know the score when they choose to develop on that platform.
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Hmm... I guess you don't know what "opportunistic" means in this context.
Opportunistic infections are those that will usually not strike a healthy person. If you look at it from the perspective of the bacterium (or virus, or whatever), then it might be better described as "ineffective"; but if you look at it in terms of human social impact, "opportunistic" describes it pretty well.
And I know that personally one of the things that I generally do after a long day with little to no sleep or food, when I'm feeling bad... is take a shower.
Very good. And how many times has it made you sick?
Of course, with the degree to which the mind influences the immune system, it might make you sick the next time you do it...
From the (somewhat incomplete) information in TFA, I think you're right that running the water before stepping in helps. Not sure about whether the fact you're taking a shower at the time matters, as the concern is inhaled bacteria.
It also seems that metal shower heads are not as bad as plastic.
Oh, and the bacteria in question are opportunistic - healthy people rarely get sick from them. So maybe it makes sense to give small children more baths than showers (which is what my family always did when I was growing up anyway); to consider taking baths when sick; and to consider what this implies for care of the elderly.
Other than that, this just seems a bit over-hyped. (Not seeing what the comparison to TB adds to the story beyond sensationalism, for example.)
???
Don't know what PG means in .au, but around here it's generally accepted to mean "yeah, maybe a baby shouldn't see it, but basically kid-friendly; parents with particular sensitivities WRT what their child sees might want to keep an eye on it".
I'll ask the same question I ask every time I see this kind of material: How much real insight do you have into the workings of Chinese society and citizen/government interaction? I admit mine is heavily filtered through others with political agendas, and I'm guessing you're in the same boat.
It looks to me like your biases may be influencing your analysis. You think it's likely that the government is at once strict enough to punish someone for saying Green Dam was harmful but too stupid to impose the same consequence on implying the same by saying it "influenced" things and is therefore being removed? More likely, in fact, than that it's a quirk in the translation?
I'm just saying, I don't think I've ever seen a translation from Chinese to English that wasn't qualified wtih "literally these characters would mean X, but really it's best rendered as Y".
It seems like a bone marrow transplantation would be a more appropriate and permanent solution.
If it seems like that, I suggest you take a deeper look at the situation.
First, let's realize that the scneario of a patient becoming permanently medicine-dependent as a result of the type of treatment described in TFA is entirely speculation on the part of a /. poster. We don't know whether a treatment based on this protein would have side effects, and while this postulated side effect may sound intuitive to you, it sounds extremely far-fetched to me.
Then consider that, as your own link points out, the treatment you're suggesting has significant risks - so much so that it's only used in severe situations.
I'm also curious how you know, before any specific treatment has been developed and tested, that any case where such treatment would be applied is also a case that bone marrow transplantation could address, even if the risks and benefits were as you portray them.
Okay, but I'm not asking about warantee clauses.
I'm asking where in any contract to which Apple was a party did Apple agree to provide for tethering?
You talk about a feature being bought in "the original contract" - what original contract, between whom and whom?
If only there were some process by which they could build on these findings, testing for the possible scenarios you describe. We should invent such a process. Perhaps we'll call it "science".
Meanwhile the ability to test NK cells' involvement in various diseases depends not at all on whether they can safely use this gene to stimulate NK cell production. It depends only on the NK-free model they've created asa result of their work to date.
Does the EULA actually say that tethering will be allowed? An "understanding" outside the contract is not a contract term.
It may be that your contract with your service provider says something about tethering. Apple is most likely not a party to that contract, so they can't really breach it. I suppose depending on the provider's relationship with Apple a court might find that your provider is responsible for ensuring that Apple provides a compatible product for the features you've contracted to use, but I'm not holding my breath. (If I sign on for picture/video/data service, my dog eats my phone, and I buy a cheap replacement that doesn't support those features, is my provider somehow liable? If not, how is this situation different from your provider's perspective?)
It seems to me that the oldest lesson in the book (buyer beware) applies to complex multi-party arrangements even more than to simple exchanges.
That's an interesting way to look at it.
If I trying to indicate that a plan were truly unlimited, I would not capitalize "unlimited"; I would be using the adjective in the normal way, and in the English language an adjective is not capitalized in normal usage. I would avoid this usage if describing something that is not, in fact, unlimited.
If, on the other hand, I were talking about a plan named the Unlimited Plan, I might well capitalize it; particularly if that's how it's branded. This usage would be applicable whether or not the plan were truly unlimited.
I guess I'm just not sure of a usage pattern where extra capitalization makes something More True.
How strange, then, that the same 120V house circuit can power both a 25W CFL light bulb and a 1600W hair dryer (for example).
Electrical power does require a voltage source, but volts and watts measure fundamentally different thigns, and they do not correspond in the way the summary implies (unless you hold certain other quantities constant).
Do you mean, you think you could've gotten an individual's medical records in MA for less than $20? Or maybe you can't see why someone would dig up an individual's medical records? (I can think of many... but then my employer was extorted by someone who'd stolen a bunch of medical-related data from them not that long ago.)
I think I hear a bit of "nobody would go to all that trouble" in your message. If in the early days of WiFi networks I described to you in tedius yet vague terms how to compromise WEP encryption, you probably would've thought the same thing. Today anyone who cares to can break WEP using readily available tools - it's really no bother at all if you're even slightly inclined to do it.
I've seen companies with contractual and regulatory obligations to protect data privacy make half-gestures to make it look like they're honoring privacy while still engaging in whatever easy-money scheme or shortcut they want. Shedding light on why those half-gestures don't work is a big deal.
...that when the EFF does it, it's a heroic effort to educate the ignorant government regulators, but when the **AA do it, it's badgering?
Was the submitter afraid we wouldn't know whether this was good or bad without the slanted language? Just curious...
After filtering out your sarcasm, I must say you are completely correct. How dare AC ask for further explanatino of the topic? The Scientists know everything, so nobody else needs to know anything! If The Scientists say its a monopole, that should be all you need to know, so go back to your video games.
I didn't study enough physics to know much about monopoles. The physics majors I knew told us of a lot of things you could prove, if you knew that a monopole existed. (I never asked, and they never elaborated.) That being the case, what constitutes a monopole probably has a lot more to do with setting up the conditions for those proofs, and a lot less to do with what seems (to the AC, myself, or anyone else) to be the intuitive meaning.
That being the case, it would be nice if someone who knows that they're talking about were to provide more explanation. Instead all we get is noidentity mocking an AC for asking what is really a pretty reasonable question.
A self-selecting subset of viewers voluntarily sending unverifiable messages over a social network will prove to be a useful solution to the problem "how do we tell how many people are watching Channel X"?
I doubt it. Your viewing habits are already being tracked by means far more reliable. (And simpler.)
So, close but no cigar. Show me a problem that this technique actually solves but to which it is not an obvious solution, and then if this patent had been filed as "a method to (solve that problem)" I'd believe it was a valid patent.
If you're willing to answer "yes and yes" to questions that absurd without explanation, then I'm not going to spend much time arguing with you. I'll simply say that you're entitled to your opinion, but I hope I never have to depend on you as a juror if that's what you believe.
As to your question - I assume it's rhetorical as I've made my opinion perfectly clear.
Sure. Now let's just remember what a trademark is actually for - it protects the trademark holder's reputation by preventing others from passing themselves, their products and/or services, or (to an extent) their views as those of the trademark holder.
Do the passengers on this other tour line get to a certain point in their tour, play with duck calls for a moment, and suddently think "wait, am I on that other carrier's tour?"
Is a passerby likely to see the tour boat, hear the duck calls, and associate it with the other carrier, perhaps tracking the boat to port so they too can get a tour from this well-reputed carrier, only to find themselves duped into taking someone else's tour?
A trademark is a symbol - it identifies a product, but it is not part of the product. You hear the NBC chimes coming over a speaker, you think to yourself "ah, I'm listening to NBC programming; what I'm about to hear is a product of NBC"; but you don't listen to NBC to hear the chime.
This is a case where one tour operator is trying to force another to change the product itself - the experience of the tour. Their being very clever about it; but as I do with any IP-abuser, I hope they suffer an expensive failure in this effort.
How easy it is to build a prototype really doesn't matter.
What does matter is whether the approach is novel. A novel approach can be very easy to implement once you have the key insight, and reaching that insight (not constructing a prototype) is the work that earns patent protection.
My problem with this patent is this: I don't think you can state a problem to which this is a novel soltuion. The reason this hasn't been done isn't that nobody could figure out how - it's that nobody cared. If somebody had said "I want to do X", what aspect of the patented invention wouldn't have been an obvious part of the solution?
This patent covers a solution looking for a problem. In a certain demographic, it may carry a certain "cool" factor that allows it to catch on. "Hey, cool, I hadn't thought to do what this invention does." But that's not what patents are for.
Don't get me wrong - it's possible to have a "solution looking for a problem" that is novel and merits a patent. In those cases, when someone hears about the invention they would say "hey, cool; I hadn't thought of it, but I'd like to do that... however, I can't say I understand how you did it".
...which interesting as it may be, fails to address the issue.
Yes, there can be any number of reasons to hypothesize that Tetris is linked to brain growth. Various similar-but-different experiments using different stimuli and a different species of animal can make it appear that this might well be the case.
And then, to find out, you run a controlled experiment. No control group = no valid conclusion.
What on Earth makes you think "too early to apologize" has anything to do with "innocent"?
Idiot.
I don't think you've thought through the end-to-end cost of providng a replacement. It's not just the material cost of pressing the disc.
If the retailer trades on a "no questions asked" return policy or something like that, then there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of it in a case like this; but otherwise, it's not reasonable to expect the retailer to absorb costs by treating end-user destruction of the product as a "valid return".
What GP could have done to minimize the cost of getting a replacement, was to deal further up the supply chain. Perhaps the manufacturer has a replacement program. You still shouldn't expect it to be free - there are still costs involving shipment, not to mention paying someone to process your request - but it may well be cheaper than buying a new copy at retail.
And if the manufacturer doesn't offer such a program? Well, they're under no obligation as far as I can tell.
Bottom line: GP may not have considered all available options, but his (her?) attitude is correct. Expecting others to absorb the costs of your mistakes is just greedy.
If I'm reading this right, you're considering Christianity tolerant because at least the punishment it prescribes for homosexuality isn't death? Maybe your own attitude isn't as well "fixed" as you think.
That the idea of an apology to a dead person would be considered an onerous demand further suggests to me that England (and America) have not, in fact, gotten past being biased on this topic. I always thought that when you had found and fixed a mistake was indeed the correct time to say you're sorry. (When the demands go beyond an apology, then there's more to debate.)
To your other point, yes - there are groups and cultural leaders who are worse offenders than mainstream England (or America) on matters of bias, be it regarding sexual orientation, race, gender... From those groups, it is too soon to talk about apologies. An apology from someone who still institutionally believes in the things they would apologize for would be flimsy, meaningless, and worth far less than actually working toward a reformed point of view.
Besides, morality isn't like running from a bear. Being better than the worst guy isn't automatically good enough. Nobody's right when everybody's wrong.
I don't think it's a question of having matured. I admit I'm speculating some here, but I think they just see the two situations as different.
I think they're counting on the fact that Google Voice competes with a core function of the product. Should they lock out competition with services that are not the core function of the phone, and should a court be overly-narrow in defining the market in which the iPhone competes (as the market's evolution shows they did to MS, though nobody around here wants to recognize it), then they could be found to have used a monopoly market position as leverage in another market.
Yeah, and if you think that's bad, I can't run anything custom on my Samsung! How sad is that! ...because the iPhone is a general-purpose computer, right?
Is it also sad that your local cable company doesn't let you run whatever software you want on the set-top box? I guess RMS probably thinks so. Maybe you do, too. I think what they're selling is a special-purpose device that includes software of their specification.
The iPhone is somewhere in between. If you bought it thinking it was a free computing platform, the fault is yours. Apple's decision was to let 3rd-party developers extend the product subject to their terms. Maybe that's not a good deal for the developers; but then, they know the score when they choose to develop on that platform.
Yes, but normally when you bribe a politician you do it in such a way that they know who's paying.