That is true, and yet I'm pretty sure that I've seen statistics that show that your per-trip risk, your per-mile risk, and your per-minute risk are still lower on an airline vs. in a car. That's pretty incredible, if you think about it.
I'll see if I can dig up some references for each of those and add them as a reply to this comment. Anyone else who finds them first (or references that contradict this) is also welcome to reply.
D2 is the diatomic molecule for deuterium gas, which is the normal state of deuterium at STP (standard temperature and pressure).
It's sometimes hard for people to bear in mind, but isotopes actually DO behave almost identically to each other in most non-nuclear chemical reactions.
I found it very interesting when I was doing NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance; used to help determine molecular structures) work in the labs, we had to use deuterated solvents, so that they would resonate differently and therefore could be removed from the resulting data. Therefore, I would use D2O (deuterated water) and other common solvents that had all the hydrogens replaced with deuterium. Aside from the very expensive pricetag, you'd never have known the difference.
Before I take my life into my hands and play devil's advocate here:
<disclaimer>I think this is a stupid patent and is not sufficiently original to truly deserve protection</disclaimer>
That being said, those who read the patent application very carefully will notice that this patent isn't for the general idea of double-clicking, but rather covers a much smaller range. Specifically, Microsoft has been granted a patent on a PDA-type device ("limited resource computing device") that has physical buttons on the outside of the device (i.e. "Mail", "Calendar", "Contacts" etc) that cause different actions to occur based on how long or in which sequence they are pressed.
An example of the patented method in action would be if you created a device on which pressing the mail button once would open a list view of recent emails, pressing and holding it for 2 seconds might initiated a POP3 session to the server, "double-clicking" the button might bring you to a "new email" form, and pressing and holding the button longer than 3 secs would be assume to be accidental and would do nothing.
This does NOT appear to be relevant to any non-PDA device, nor does it appear to apply to any kind of buttons that do not physically exist on the outside of the device. I still think it's pretty stupid and obvious, but it's nearly so stupid as it would appear at first glance.
That being said, does anyone have any specific prior art to overturn this with?
Copying what I wrote from the last time, I'm continually amused at the people who are disagreeing with you. Basically, all this bill is proposing to do is punish BLATANT direct copies of a database or large portion thereof. Note the following exceptions to the law, from the last time I looked at it:
SEC. 4. PERMITTED ACTS.
(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
(b) ACTS OF MAKING AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE BY NONPROFIT EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS- The making available in commerce of a substantial part of a database by a nonprofit educational, scientific, and research institution, including an employee or agent of such institution acting within the scope of such employment or agency, for nonprofit educational, scientific, and research purposes shall not be prohibited by section 3 if the court determines that the making available in commerce of the information in the database is reasonable under the circumstances, taking into consideration the customary practices associated with such uses of such database by nonprofit educational, scientific, or research institutions and other factors that the court determines relevant.
(c) HYPERLINKING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict the act of hyperlinking of one online location to another or the providing of a reference or pointer (including such reference or pointer in a directory or index) to a database.
(d) NEWS REPORTING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict any person from making available in commerce information for the primary purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering, dissemination, and comment, unless the information is time sensitive and has been gathered by a news reporting entity, and making available in commerce the information is part of a consistent pattern engaged in for the purpose of direct competition.
I won't annoy all of you by requote the whole text of the bill (which I highly recommend you read before flaming). However, from my reading of it, all it seems to prohibit is for someone to make available significant amounts of a commercial database for their own profit. Basically, you can't spider Lexis-Nexis or the like and sell the info, but you CAN independently collect that data from direct sources and compete with them.
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Again, read the bill first though, before you spew fire.
Why don't you try playing single player, or perhaps set up a LAN game filled with some bots while you bring yourself up to speed with the games?
I know that the question specified "online", but if you consider yourself a beginner, then you probably need to practice some before you get online and swim with the sharks. Many of the current FPS games allow for single-player with bots, and the bots are often good enough to mimic real players, with the useful difference that you can adjust their difficulty. I know that my officemates and I practiced with Tribes 2 that way for several hours when we bought the game before we logged into the online servers, and it made a world of difference in our enjoyment.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format. There are dead tree versions and unhelpful govt workers, but these are annoying to deal with.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in an easy-to-use format. Problem is that they charge more than you want to pay.
Therefore, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're mad that you can't take their data and republish it. Since that's all that I can see is prohibited; you're still free to hassle that clerk until they cough up the codes and then publish THAT. In fact, the only way you can get in trouble is if you republish a lot of this data and can't prove you got it from anything else except the commercial database.
So, while I can sympathize with your dilemna, you might direct your anger more towards the useless govt workers who aren't publishing the codes in a useful manner than the DB company that spent a lot of time trying to make them more usable (if more costly).
Unless you're ripping these prices off of the store's own database, then you have no issue. If you somehow collect these prices independently, then go for it.
If you ARE ripping this data directly out of their database, then yes, you are liable. But then again, they've spent time and money preparing such a list of prices, so they have a case about not wanting people to republish them in bulk.
However, note the provision allowing for hyperlinking (and specifically, deep-linking). If you were to give a list of hyperlinks that showed pages for identical items from Best Buy and Circuit City, that would be permitted.
Finally, the intent to which you use that price data would also probably be significant. If you were using them specifically to show price comparisons in a non-biased manner, you might be able to make a convincing argument that you were reporting news.
(1) PROTECTION NOT EXTENDED- Subject to paragraph (2), protection under section 3 shall not extend to computer programs, including any computer program used in the manufacture, production, operation, or maintenance of a database, or to any element of a computer program necessary to its operation.
I don't see what's wrong here
on
Who Owns The Facts?
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· Score: 4, Informative
Ok, I was all ready to go ballistic over this one, but after reading the text of the bill, I'm not really seeing the issue.
A few quick notes:
SEC. 4. PERMITTED ACTS.
(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
(b) ACTS OF MAKING AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE BY NONPROFIT EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS- The making available in commerce of a substantial part of a database by a nonprofit educational, scientific, and research institution, including an employee or agent of such institution acting within the scope of such employment or agency, for nonprofit educational, scientific, and research purposes shall not be prohibited by section 3 if the court determines that the making available in commerce of the information in the database is reasonable under the circumstances, taking into consideration the customary practices associated with such uses of such database by nonprofit educational, scientific, or research institutions and other factors that the court determines relevant.
(c) HYPERLINKING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict the act of hyperlinking of one online location to another or the providing of a reference or pointer (including such reference or pointer in a directory or index) to a database.
(d) NEWS REPORTING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict any person from making available in commerce information for the primary purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering, dissemination, and comment, unless the information is time sensitive and has been gathered by a news reporting entity, and making available in commerce the information is part of a consistent pattern engaged in for the purpose of direct competition.
I won't annoy all of you by requote the whole text of the bill (which I highly recommend you read before flaming). However, from my reading of it, all it seems to prohibit is for someone to make available significant amounts of a commercial database for their own profit. Basically, you can't spider Lexis-Nexis or the like and sell the info, but you CAN independently collect that data from direct sources and compete with them.
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Again, read the bill first though, before you spew fire.
A single identity card that would allow you to bypass invasive security screening. Because obviously, if you've never done anything wrong in the past, you clearly won't in the future.
I have to agree with all the people who are pointing out that this introduces a single point of failure into any system that honors it, but what's worse is that it seems to ignore the point of security checkpoints, which is not so much to merely identify people as it is to prevent the entry of weapons into a vulnerable area REGARDLESS of their identity.
This is actually fairly common for medium to large companies with regards to things like copier service calls, since anyone who has worked in an office with a copier knows that seems like someone is out to service it every other week. Therefore, people have figured out that if you send invoices for copier service, they tend to get paid.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that you can actually use the ESRB Rating Search Engine to show all the games that contain blood, gore, and violence. She went on to comment that she was sure it wasn't their intention, but that they've provided a great way to find good games.:)
Companies that have any telemarketing (or potentially telemarketing; there are some grey areas you wouldn't expect) aspects already have the database. It's a 500 MB compressed download, and let me tell you, inserting 50+ million rows into a database was a bit of a rush, since it was by far the largest insert that I've ever run. Never seen the database CPU/DiskAccess chart read quite like that before:)
As for destroying the database, why? The table has two fields: areacode and phonenumber. I can't think of any useful purpose that telemarketers would have for it, given that you can get an electronic copy of whitepages from any number of sources that have addresses and names.
The poster obviously missed a significant point, that this is the largest arctic ice shelf, not the largest ice shelf. While still quite significant, that is not quite as ominous as the article would indicate
I was about to look up that link. Funny that you found it before I did:).
Incidentally, as a rather pointed casestudy, you really need to grab a copy of Tron 2.0. Spent a good portion of the weekend playing it and it's easily the best single-player FPS since Half-Life. It's easily better than TRON the movie was, and would probaly make a rather good movie by itself.
This is not copyright infringement, this is patent infringement.
If someone accuses you of infringing on their copyright by stealing sourcecode, you can disprove them if you show that your sourcecode bears no resemblance to theirs.
If someone accuses you of violating their patent, you must prove that your invention falls outside the scope of their patent OR that their patent is invalid due to prior art.
Therefore, your questions of how they got the code aren't terribly relevant. As for how InterTrust noticed that they were using patented techniques, well, I assume they probably keep up in the field and read some of Microsoft's whitepapers. Again, patents cover a scope of techniques, rather than an exact set of code instructions, so it's possible to gauge infringement without a sourcecode comparison in some cases.
I'd have to say that you're pretty much on target here.
The problem with micropayments is that most implementations I've heard of try to solve the problem in a general sense rather than tied it directly to the content provided on a website, which you addressed with your comment about metering. Taking that a step further, the problem with validating the transaction is even worse, since you either have to annoy the user with a confirmation box EVERY time a debit is made, or you have to face the potential consequences of allowing unnoticed debits to be charged against the customer's account. While few people will quibble about 5 cents here or there, I would not want to browse through all of PA, for example, at 5c a comic and suddenly discover that I owed $25 or something.
Realistically, novel approaches are needed based on the individual site. You've done a fairly good job of making a go through merchandise, from what I gather. Alternately, another possible method that I pondered before would be that a webcomic like yours could charge a subscription fee to view the most recent comic, with the archives remaining free. This would allow those who must have their fix (and are therefore costing you a lot of bandwidth with the 2am MWF reload fests) to help pay their share, while still allowing more casual readers the opportunity to browse for free a day behind the storyline. Charge for instant gratification.:)
Another example would be a fiction website that I have considered creating. Author X writes a 10 chapter sci-fi story and uploads to this website. He marks chapters 1-7 as free, and 8-10 as requiring a one-time payment of $2. A reader then gets on the site and gets hooked on the story. He's read enough to know that he likes the story and wants to see how it ends, so he sets up an account on the site and paypals in the $2 to unlock the story.
Neither of these scenarios require any new "micropayment" system. In fact, neither one would require more technical expertise than a paypal account and a database login system. However, they both would probably work quite well given enough high quality content.
Erris has it right here. You seem to have stumbled upon a fairly well-known engine design for torpedoes that's been around since the 60s I believe. Unfortunately, high concentration H2O2 is a very dangerous oxidizer that can do quite nasty things if not treated VERY carefully. The russian sub Kursk was sunk when one of these torpedoes caused an explosion in the forward torpedo room and blew out the front side of the hull.
Well, I have a good example of a quasi-legitimate use for one.
I'm on WinMX, which I use heavily for the downloading of anime files. In this endeavour, I (and many others on the network) try to follow the rule of not sharing any files that are commercially available in the United States. At the moment, I have probably 40 GB of fansubbed episodes that I share to others, while downloading stuff that I don't yet have.
The nice thing about this is that the filesharing actually aids some of the US distributors by introducing new series to the US while they are still being shown in Japan (I had translated episodes of Chobits a week after their first viewing!) and helps the US Distributors gauge which series have gotten the most attention and would be good candidates to purchase the rights to.
As I said, this is quasi-legitimate, since it is still technically a copyright violation; I rationalize that by the fact that it is commerically unavailable and I remove the files when they get licensed. Additionally, I will often buy or rent the series when they come out on DVD, so the producers DO get their money.
Actually, I wasn't even referring to theft. I was pointing out that they will merely break, the way that every other damned shopping cart in the local grocery store seems to. Although I have to say that the auto-locking wheels sound like yet another way for them to screw up:)
Do we really think this has a chance in hell of working? No, I'm not talking about whether it's technically feasible or not, I'm referring to the fact that it's nigh impossible to find a shopping cart that has four functioning wheel as it stands.
Do you really think that there is a chance that ANY of these carts would be working after about 2 months, let alone the in-store network that they're supposed to interface with?
...the fanbase in mainstream America simply isn't large enough to support such a small group of Anime fans, as obsessive as they are.
IMHO, you are both right and wrong with this assertion. I think the number of anime fans that are interested in the shows that Cartoon Network is showing and the editing that they do is a relatively small number of people. Overall, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people that consider themselves "Anime Fans" is actually quite large.
Frankly, I haven't watched any anime on Cartoon Network in the last 1 1/2 years. However, I can assure you that does not exclude me from being an "Anime Fan". Instead, I tend to rent stuff from the local anime rental store (yes, I actually live within 2 mi of a store that specializes in renting anime... House Of Anime).
For those that don't have that option, Netflix also has a very large supply of rentable anime at a very reasonable month membership price, and they seem to be getting larger and larger quantities of it due to it's popularity.
Finally, for those of us who have generally seen most of the good US-available shows or merely want to preview stuff before they bother renting it, USENET (alt.binaries.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.repost) and winmx have a large number of digital fansubs that are often within a week of the current Japanese tv schedule. I'm sure Kazaa and the other filesharing programs have a lot too, but winmx seems the most popular among the IRC crowd I hang with. I generally watch stuff that won't be available in any american store within the next year.
So considering all of those competing sources, you start to see why the small number of relatively old anime shows that Cartoon Network shows just don't hold the audience that they seem to expect. On the other hand, if someone started a cable channel that broadcast near-current, English-subtitled anime 24/7, I think that they would find themselves with ratings that would have advertisers queuing up at their door.
Ok, this is just one of those stupid theories that won't die because it's gotten too much discussion. I am happy that you seem to indicate the dubious nature of it, but people need to start looking in other places.
Epidemiologic studies have shown no relationship between MMR vaccination in children and development of autism:
* In 1997, the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) was examined to see if there was any link between measles vaccine and neurological events. The researchers found no indication that measles vaccine contributes to the development of long-term neurological damage, including educational and behavioral deficits (Miller et al., 1997).
* A study by Gillberg and Heijbel (1998) examined the prevalence of autism in children born in Sweden from 1975-1984. There was no difference in the prevalence of autism among children born before the introduction of the MMR vaccine in Sweden and those born after the vaccine was introduced.
* In 1999, the British Committee on Safety of Medicines convened a "Working Party on MMR Vaccine" to conduct a systematic review of reports of autism, gastrointestinal disease, and similar disorders after receipt of MMR or measles/rubella vaccine. It was concluded that the available information did not support the posited associations between MMR and autism and other disorders.
* Taylor and colleagues (1999) studied 498 children with autism in the UK and found the age at which they were diagnosed was the same regardless of whether they received the MMR vaccine before or after 18 months of age or whether they were never vaccinated. Importantly, the first signs or diagnoses of autism were not more likely to occur within time periods following MMR vaccination than during other time periods. Also, there was no sudden increase in cases of autism after the introduction of MMR vaccine in the UK. Such a jump would have been expected if MMR vaccine was causing a substantial increase in autism.
* Kaye and colleagues (2001) assessed the relationship between the risk of autism among children in the UK and MMR vaccine. Among a subgroup of boys aged 2-5 years, the risk of autism increased almost 4 fold from 1988 to 1993, while MMR vaccination coverage remained constant at approximately 95% over these same years.
* Researchers in the U.S. found that among children born between 1980 and 1994 and enrolled in California kindergartens, there was a 373% relative increase in autism cases, though the relative increase in MMR vaccine coverage by the age of 24 months was only 14% (Dales et al., 2001). For more on this study, see California Data on Theory of Autism and MMR Immunization.
* Researchers in the UK (Frombonne & Chakrabarti, 2001) conducted a study to test the idea that a new form, or "new variant," of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) exists. This new variant IBD has been described as a combination of developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms occurring shortly after MMR immunization. Information on 96 children (95 immunized with MMR) who were born between 1992 and 1995 and were diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder were compared with data from 2 groups of autistic patients (one group of 98 born before MMR was ever used and one group of 68 who were likely to have received MMR vaccine). No evidence was found to support a new syndrome of MMR-induced IBD/autism. For instance, the researchers found that there were no differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups with regard to when their parents first became concerned about their child's development. Similarly, the rate of developmental regression reported in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups was not different; therefore, there was no suggestion that developmental regression had increased in frequency since MMR was introduced. Of the 96 children in the first group, no inflammatory bowel disorder was reported. Furthermore, there was no association found between developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms.
* Another group of researchers in the UK (Taylor et al., 2002) also examined whether MMR vaccination is associated with bowel problems and developmental regression in children with autism, looking for evidence of a "new variant" form of IBD/autism. The study included 278 cases of children with autism and 195 with atypical autism (cases with many of the features of childhood autism but not quite meeting the required criteria for that diagnosis, or with atypical features such as onset of symptoms after the age of 3 years). The cases included in this study were born between 1979 and 1998. The proportion of children with developmental regression or bowel symptoms did not change significantly from 1979 to 1988, a period which included the introduction of MMR vaccination in the UK in 1988. No significant difference was found in rates of bowel problems or regression in children who received the MMR vaccine before their parents became concerned about their development, compared with those who received it only after such concern and those who had not received the MMR vaccine. The findings provide no support for an MMR associated "new variant" form of autism and further evidence against involvement of MMR vaccine in autism.
Very few commercial planes travel above Mach 1. In order to get a package into orbit, it has to be going quite a bit faster. For example, geostationary orbit (orbiting once every 24 hours at 22,300 mi altitude/ 35,000 mi from center of earth) requires the satellite to be moving at about 9,000 mph. Given that Mach 1 is about 750 mph, that means that our satellite is traveling above Mach 12.
Frankly, that's the real threat of an ICBM. It's extraordinarily difficult to shoot down something moving at 12 times the speed of sound and your decision time to engage is very small. Therefore, you are correct that Commercial Aviation does have this type of hazard, but I think you'll agree that the magnitude of danger is quite different.
As funny as it is, this is actually pretty much the heart of why it costs so much to launch satellites: any rocket capable of putting something into orbit is realistically an ICBM.
Near the anniversary of Sputnik (which I think was last week), I'd remind everyone that it was this fact that was why Sputnik was so frightening to Americans; if the Soviets could put a beeping piece of metal into orbit, they could just as easily have made it come down near us instead.
Therefore, any company that is capable of putting cargo into space is very likely to find itself under strict regulation, due to the potential for that cargo to be miss orbit either accidentally or purposely.
Slashdot Mirror
That is true, and yet I'm pretty sure that I've seen statistics that show that your per-trip risk, your per-mile risk, and your per-minute risk are still lower on an airline vs. in a car. That's pretty incredible, if you think about it.
I'll see if I can dig up some references for each of those and add them as a reply to this comment. Anyone else who finds them first (or references that contradict this) is also welcome to reply.
D2 is the diatomic molecule for deuterium gas, which is the normal state of deuterium at STP (standard temperature and pressure).
It's sometimes hard for people to bear in mind, but isotopes actually DO behave almost identically to each other in most non-nuclear chemical reactions.
I found it very interesting when I was doing NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance; used to help determine molecular structures) work in the labs, we had to use deuterated solvents, so that they would resonate differently and therefore could be removed from the resulting data. Therefore, I would use D2O (deuterated water) and other common solvents that had all the hydrogens replaced with deuterium. Aside from the very expensive pricetag, you'd never have known the difference.
Before I take my life into my hands and play devil's advocate here:
<disclaimer>I think this is a stupid patent and is not sufficiently original to truly deserve protection</disclaimer>
That being said, those who read the patent application very carefully will notice that this patent isn't for the general idea of double-clicking, but rather covers a much smaller range. Specifically, Microsoft has been granted a patent on a PDA-type device ("limited resource computing device") that has physical buttons on the outside of the device (i.e. "Mail", "Calendar", "Contacts" etc) that cause different actions to occur based on how long or in which sequence they are pressed.
An example of the patented method in action would be if you created a device on which pressing the mail button once would open a list view of recent emails, pressing and holding it for 2 seconds might initiated a POP3 session to the server, "double-clicking" the button might bring you to a "new email" form, and pressing and holding the button longer than 3 secs would be assume to be accidental and would do nothing.
This does NOT appear to be relevant to any non-PDA device, nor does it appear to apply to any kind of buttons that do not physically exist on the outside of the device. I still think it's pretty stupid and obvious, but it's nearly so stupid as it would appear at first glance.
That being said, does anyone have any specific prior art to overturn this with?
Copying what I wrote from the last time, I'm continually amused at the people who are disagreeing with you. Basically, all this bill is proposing to do is punish BLATANT direct copies of a database or large portion thereof. Note the following exceptions to the law, from the last time I looked at it:
SEC. 4. PERMITTED ACTS.
(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
(b) ACTS OF MAKING AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE BY NONPROFIT EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS- The making available in commerce of a substantial part of a database by a nonprofit educational, scientific, and research institution, including an employee or agent of such institution acting within the scope of such employment or agency, for nonprofit educational, scientific, and research purposes shall not be prohibited by section 3 if the court determines that the making available in commerce of the information in the database is reasonable under the circumstances, taking into consideration the customary practices associated with such uses of such database by nonprofit educational, scientific, or research institutions and other factors that the court determines relevant.
(c) HYPERLINKING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict the act of hyperlinking of one online location to another or the providing of a reference or pointer (including such reference or pointer in a directory or index) to a database.
(d) NEWS REPORTING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict any person from making available in commerce information for the primary purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering, dissemination, and comment, unless the information is time sensitive and has been gathered by a news reporting entity, and making available in commerce the information is part of a consistent pattern engaged in for the purpose of direct competition.
I won't annoy all of you by requote the whole text of the bill (which I highly recommend you read before flaming). However, from my reading of it, all it seems to prohibit is for someone to make available significant amounts of a commercial database for their own profit. Basically, you can't spider Lexis-Nexis or the like and sell the info, but you CAN independently collect that data from direct sources and compete with them.
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Again, read the bill first though, before you spew fire.
Why don't you try playing single player, or perhaps set up a LAN game filled with some bots while you bring yourself up to speed with the games?
I know that the question specified "online", but if you consider yourself a beginner, then you probably need to practice some before you get online and swim with the sharks. Many of the current FPS games allow for single-player with bots, and the bots are often good enough to mimic real players, with the useful difference that you can adjust their difficulty. I know that my officemates and I practiced with Tribes 2 that way for several hours when we bought the game before we logged into the online servers, and it made a world of difference in our enjoyment.
Er, no, I still don't see it.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're aggravated because your city/county/state has building codes (and other laws) and they're being a bunch of slack bastards about publishing them in an easily used format. There are dead tree versions and unhelpful govt workers, but these are annoying to deal with.
Now, some other company was started by someone who also noticed what a pain in the ass it was to deal with these codes and figured people might pay to be able to access them in an easy-to-use format. Problem is that they charge more than you want to pay.
Therefore, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're mad that you can't take their data and republish it. Since that's all that I can see is prohibited; you're still free to hassle that clerk until they cough up the codes and then publish THAT. In fact, the only way you can get in trouble is if you republish a lot of this data and can't prove you got it from anything else except the commercial database.
So, while I can sympathize with your dilemna, you might direct your anger more towards the useless govt workers who aren't publishing the codes in a useful manner than the DB company that spent a lot of time trying to make them more usable (if more costly).
Unless you're ripping these prices off of the store's own database, then you have no issue. If you somehow collect these prices independently, then go for it.
If you ARE ripping this data directly out of their database, then yes, you are liable. But then again, they've spent time and money preparing such a list of prices, so they have a case about not wanting people to republish them in bulk.
However, note the provision allowing for hyperlinking (and specifically, deep-linking). If you were to give a list of hyperlinks that showed pages for identical items from Best Buy and Circuit City, that would be permitted.
Finally, the intent to which you use that price data would also probably be significant. If you were using them specifically to show price comparisons in a non-biased manner, you might be able to make a convincing argument that you were reporting news.
From the Bill:
SEC. 5. EXCLUSIONS.
(stuff deleted)
(b) COMPUTER PROGRAMS-
(1) PROTECTION NOT EXTENDED- Subject to paragraph (2), protection under section 3 shall not extend to computer programs, including any computer program used in the manufacture, production, operation, or maintenance of a database, or to any element of a computer program necessary to its operation.
A few quick notes:
I won't annoy all of you by requote the whole text of the bill (which I highly recommend you read before flaming). However, from my reading of it, all it seems to prohibit is for someone to make available significant amounts of a commercial database for their own profit. Basically, you can't spider Lexis-Nexis or the like and sell the info, but you CAN independently collect that data from direct sources and compete with them.
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Again, read the bill first though, before you spew fire.
A single identity card that would allow you to bypass invasive security screening. Because obviously, if you've never done anything wrong in the past, you clearly won't in the future.
I have to agree with all the people who are pointing out that this introduces a single point of failure into any system that honors it, but what's worse is that it seems to ignore the point of security checkpoints, which is not so much to merely identify people as it is to prevent the entry of weapons into a vulnerable area REGARDLESS of their identity.
This is actually fairly common for medium to large companies with regards to things like copier service calls, since anyone who has worked in an office with a copier knows that seems like someone is out to service it every other week. Therefore, people have figured out that if you send invoices for copier service, they tend to get paid.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that you can actually use the ESRB Rating Search Engine to show all the games that contain blood, gore, and violence. She went on to comment that she was sure it wasn't their intention, but that they've provided a great way to find good games. :)
Companies that have any telemarketing (or potentially telemarketing; there are some grey areas you wouldn't expect) aspects already have the database. It's a 500 MB compressed download, and let me tell you, inserting 50+ million rows into a database was a bit of a rush, since it was by far the largest insert that I've ever run. Never seen the database CPU/DiskAccess chart read quite like that before :)
As for destroying the database, why? The table has two fields: areacode and phonenumber. I can't think of any useful purpose that telemarketers would have for it, given that you can get an electronic copy of whitepages from any number of sources that have addresses and names.
I was about to look up that link. Funny that you found it before I did :).
Incidentally, as a rather pointed casestudy, you really need to grab a copy of Tron 2.0. Spent a good portion of the weekend playing it and it's easily the best single-player FPS since Half-Life. It's easily better than TRON the movie was, and would probaly make a rather good movie by itself.
This is not copyright infringement, this is patent infringement.
If someone accuses you of infringing on their copyright by stealing sourcecode, you can disprove them if you show that your sourcecode bears no resemblance to theirs.
If someone accuses you of violating their patent, you must prove that your invention falls outside the scope of their patent OR that their patent is invalid due to prior art.
Therefore, your questions of how they got the code aren't terribly relevant. As for how InterTrust noticed that they were using patented techniques, well, I assume they probably keep up in the field and read some of Microsoft's whitepapers. Again, patents cover a scope of techniques, rather than an exact set of code instructions, so it's possible to gauge infringement without a sourcecode comparison in some cases.
I'd have to say that you're pretty much on target here.
:)
The problem with micropayments is that most implementations I've heard of try to solve the problem in a general sense rather than tied it directly to the content provided on a website, which you addressed with your comment about metering. Taking that a step further, the problem with validating the transaction is even worse, since you either have to annoy the user with a confirmation box EVERY time a debit is made, or you have to face the potential consequences of allowing unnoticed debits to be charged against the customer's account. While few people will quibble about 5 cents here or there, I would not want to browse through all of PA, for example, at 5c a comic and suddenly discover that I owed $25 or something.
Realistically, novel approaches are needed based on the individual site. You've done a fairly good job of making a go through merchandise, from what I gather. Alternately, another possible method that I pondered before would be that a webcomic like yours could charge a subscription fee to view the most recent comic, with the archives remaining free. This would allow those who must have their fix (and are therefore costing you a lot of bandwidth with the 2am MWF reload fests) to help pay their share, while still allowing more casual readers the opportunity to browse for free a day behind the storyline. Charge for instant gratification.
Another example would be a fiction website that I have considered creating. Author X writes a 10 chapter sci-fi story and uploads to this website. He marks chapters 1-7 as free, and 8-10 as requiring a one-time payment of $2. A reader then gets on the site and gets hooked on the story. He's read enough to know that he likes the story and wants to see how it ends, so he sets up an account on the site and paypals in the $2 to unlock the story.
Neither of these scenarios require any new "micropayment" system. In fact, neither one would require more technical expertise than a paypal account and a database login system. However, they both would probably work quite well given enough high quality content.
Keep up the good work with MT, btw.
Erris has it right here. You seem to have stumbled upon a fairly well-known engine design for torpedoes that's been around since the 60s I believe. Unfortunately, high concentration H2O2 is a very dangerous oxidizer that can do quite nasty things if not treated VERY carefully. The russian sub Kursk was sunk when one of these torpedoes caused an explosion in the forward torpedo room and blew out the front side of the hull.
Well, I have a good example of a quasi-legitimate use for one.
I'm on WinMX, which I use heavily for the downloading of anime files. In this endeavour, I (and many others on the network) try to follow the rule of not sharing any files that are commercially available in the United States. At the moment, I have probably 40 GB of fansubbed episodes that I share to others, while downloading stuff that I don't yet have.
The nice thing about this is that the filesharing actually aids some of the US distributors by introducing new series to the US while they are still being shown in Japan (I had translated episodes of Chobits a week after their first viewing!) and helps the US Distributors gauge which series have gotten the most attention and would be good candidates to purchase the rights to.
As I said, this is quasi-legitimate, since it is still technically a copyright violation; I rationalize that by the fact that it is commerically unavailable and I remove the files when they get licensed. Additionally, I will often buy or rent the series when they come out on DVD, so the producers DO get their money.
Actually, I wasn't even referring to theft. I was pointing out that they will merely break, the way that every other damned shopping cart in the local grocery store seems to. Although I have to say that the auto-locking wheels sound like yet another way for them to screw up :)
Do we really think this has a chance in hell of working? No, I'm not talking about whether it's technically feasible or not, I'm referring to the fact that it's nigh impossible to find a shopping cart that has four functioning wheel as it stands.
Do you really think that there is a chance that ANY of these carts would be working after about 2 months, let alone the in-store network that they're supposed to interface with?
IMHO, you are both right and wrong with this assertion. I think the number of anime fans that are interested in the shows that Cartoon Network is showing and the editing that they do is a relatively small number of people. Overall, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people that consider themselves "Anime Fans" is actually quite large.
Frankly, I haven't watched any anime on Cartoon Network in the last 1 1/2 years. However, I can assure you that does not exclude me from being an "Anime Fan". Instead, I tend to rent stuff from the local anime rental store (yes, I actually live within 2 mi of a store that specializes in renting anime... House Of Anime).
For those that don't have that option, Netflix also has a very large supply of rentable anime at a very reasonable month membership price, and they seem to be getting larger and larger quantities of it due to it's popularity.
Finally, for those of us who have generally seen most of the good US-available shows or merely want to preview stuff before they bother renting it, USENET (alt.binaries.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime, alt.binaries.multimedia.anime.repost) and winmx have a large number of digital fansubs that are often within a week of the current Japanese tv schedule. I'm sure Kazaa and the other filesharing programs have a lot too, but winmx seems the most popular among the IRC crowd I hang with. I generally watch stuff that won't be available in any american store within the next year.
So considering all of those competing sources, you start to see why the small number of relatively old anime shows that Cartoon Network shows just don't hold the audience that they seem to expect. On the other hand, if someone started a cable channel that broadcast near-current, English-subtitled anime 24/7, I think that they would find themselves with ratings that would have advertisers queuing up at their door.
The following data is lifted directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/autism/au
Epidemiologic studies have shown no relationship between MMR vaccination in children and development of autism:
* In 1997, the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) was examined to see if there was any link between measles vaccine and neurological events. The researchers found no indication that measles vaccine contributes to the development of long-term neurological damage, including educational and behavioral deficits (Miller et al., 1997).
* A study by Gillberg and Heijbel (1998) examined the prevalence of autism in children born in Sweden from 1975-1984. There was no difference in the prevalence of autism among children born before the introduction of the MMR vaccine in Sweden and those born after the vaccine was introduced.
* In 1999, the British Committee on Safety of Medicines convened a "Working Party on MMR Vaccine" to conduct a systematic review of reports of autism, gastrointestinal disease, and similar disorders after receipt of MMR or measles/rubella vaccine. It was concluded that the available information did not support the posited associations between MMR and autism and other disorders.
* Taylor and colleagues (1999) studied 498 children with autism in the UK and found the age at which they were diagnosed was the same regardless of whether they received the MMR vaccine before or after 18 months of age or whether they were never vaccinated. Importantly, the first signs or diagnoses of autism were not more likely to occur within time periods following MMR vaccination than during other time periods. Also, there was no sudden increase in cases of autism after the introduction of MMR vaccine in the UK. Such a jump would have been expected if MMR vaccine was causing a substantial increase in autism.
* Kaye and colleagues (2001) assessed the relationship between the risk of autism among children in the UK and MMR vaccine. Among a subgroup of boys aged 2-5 years, the risk of autism increased almost 4 fold from 1988 to 1993, while MMR vaccination coverage remained constant at approximately 95% over these same years.
* Researchers in the U.S. found that among children born between 1980 and 1994 and enrolled in California kindergartens, there was a 373% relative increase in autism cases, though the relative increase in MMR vaccine coverage by the age of 24 months was only 14% (Dales et al., 2001). For more on this study, see California Data on Theory of Autism and MMR Immunization.
* Researchers in the UK (Frombonne & Chakrabarti, 2001) conducted a study to test the idea that a new form, or "new variant," of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) exists. This new variant IBD has been described as a combination of developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms occurring shortly after MMR immunization. Information on 96 children (95 immunized with MMR) who were born between 1992 and 1995 and were diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder were compared with data from 2 groups of autistic patients (one group of 98 born before MMR was ever used and one group of 68 who were likely to have received MMR vaccine). No evidence was found to support a new syndrome of MMR-induced IBD/autism. For instance, the researchers found that there were no differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups with regard to when their parents first became concerned about their child's development. Similarly, the rate of developmental regression reported in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups was not different; therefore, there was no suggestion that developmental regression had increased in frequency since MMR was introduced. Of the 96 children in the first group, no inflammatory bowel disorder was reported. Furthermore, there was no association found between developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms.
* Another group of researchers in the UK (Taylor et al., 2002) also examined whether MMR vaccination is associated with bowel problems and developmental regression in children with autism, looking for evidence of a "new variant" form of IBD/autism. The study included 278 cases of children with autism and 195 with atypical autism (cases with many of the features of childhood autism but not quite meeting the required criteria for that diagnosis, or with atypical features such as onset of symptoms after the age of 3 years). The cases included in this study were born between 1979 and 1998. The proportion of children with developmental regression or bowel symptoms did not change significantly from 1979 to 1988, a period which included the introduction of MMR vaccination in the UK in 1988. No significant difference was found in rates of bowel problems or regression in children who received the MMR vaccine before their parents became concerned about their development, compared with those who received it only after such concern and those who had not received the MMR vaccine. The findings provide no support for an MMR associated "new variant" form of autism and further evidence against involvement of MMR vaccine in autism.
Very few commercial planes travel above Mach 1. In order to get a package into orbit, it has to be going quite a bit faster. For example, geostationary orbit (orbiting once every 24 hours at 22,300 mi altitude/ 35,000 mi from center of earth) requires the satellite to be moving at about 9,000 mph. Given that Mach 1 is about 750 mph, that means that our satellite is traveling above Mach 12.
Frankly, that's the real threat of an ICBM. It's extraordinarily difficult to shoot down something moving at 12 times the speed of sound and your decision time to engage is very small. Therefore, you are correct that Commercial Aviation does have this type of hazard, but I think you'll agree that the magnitude of danger is quite different.
Near the anniversary of Sputnik (which I think was last week), I'd remind everyone that it was this fact that was why Sputnik was so frightening to Americans; if the Soviets could put a beeping piece of metal into orbit, they could just as easily have made it come down near us instead.
Therefore, any company that is capable of putting cargo into space is very likely to find itself under strict regulation, due to the potential for that cargo to be miss orbit either accidentally or purposely.