Furthermore, if one looks at just about any flying creature now or in the past, the leading edge of their "wing" has always been protected by bone, feather or both.
That's not true. The leading edge of a bird's wing is called the patagium, and is simply skin that is stretched from the humerus to the carpal joint. The leading edge of a bat wing is similar, but in bats, all the skin of the wing is referred to as the patagium, while the leading edge is called the propatagium. In either case, the leading edge of the wing is very vulnerable to damage; one of my veterinarian friends, who volunteers at a raptor rehabilitation center, sees many cases where the bird's patagium has been torn (bird vs. cat, bird vs. barbed wire fence, etc), and generally in those cases the bird never flies again. It's actually one of the most vulnerable areas on a bird.
most night photography books tell you to treat moonlight as if it were sunlight, because it is; it's just sunlight bouncing off a big gray rock. the only correction you usually have to make is to bump the lens down a stop or two to make up for the fact that the moon doesn't light the whole sky.
Her ex-husband (Englishman Jonny Lee Miller, or "Dade Murphy", or "Crash Override", whichever you prefer) IMHO had the brat thing going for him in Hackers, and though he supressed his accent for the movie, I'm sure Angelina could do an excellent impression of him for her upcoming role.
does this mean that you are locked into using their ISP for as long as you own the device? in order to cancel, do you have to send them the shards leftover from taking a sledgehammer to it?
How exactly would a large satellite "clean up the junk?" Would it eat the dead satellites? You can't just clean them up. They have mass, they take up space. The only way you can get rid of them is to push them into the atmosphere. However, do you want to be the president of a company that starts pushing 17-ton satellites into the atmosphere hoping that they burn up on reentry or land in an ocean?
Why does everyone insist that Nature exists only on Earth? Does it not bother anyone that the 10,000 pieces of man-made debris surrounding the earth looks like this? That the University of Chicago and NASA launched a satellite in January 1999 to monitor the debris? That an international committee(the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, of which NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Chinese Space Agency are a part) has been formed in order to manage the garbage? That each piece of debris, moving at tens of thousands of km/h, poses a threat to future satellites? I'm sure people would care if we started trashing the moon, but that's even farther away. Just because it's vacuum doesn't mean it's not worth taking care of.
I won't speak for you, but I don't particularly find attractive the possibilities of thousands of 17-ton satellites dying and either plummetting to a fiery death in our atmosphere or continuing to float around derelict and contributing to the growing problem of satellite collision. It is precisely the attitude that "space isn't Nature" that will help companies justify space pollution.
It seems to me that we should be thinking smaller, not heavier, when anticipating future satellite demands.
According to the Goddard Space Flight Center, over 3500 satellites (active and dead) are already in orbit. In April 1991, the Atlantis shuttle carried the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite into orbit, which, weighing in at 17 tons (38,000 pounds or 17,273 kilograms), was, at the time, the heaviest shuttle payload ever launched. The full BA-2 rocket, according to Beal's site, has the capacity to carry a 37,400 pound payload into low earth orbit or 13,200 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit.
... you have a market for satellites, and the rockets to launch them, that could reach into the thousands -- all paid for with private money. All of a sudden, satellites and launch vehicles are no longer a glorified hand-craft, turning out a dozen or so literally hand-made models a year. They are a real industry mass-producing commercial products on assembly lines... [but] no matter how many satellites are launched and how much data each satellite can transmit, supply simply cannot catch up to demand.
What's going to happen when media conglomerates decide to upgrade their orbiting infrastructure with a new, 2000-era mindset of "bigger is better, and hell, now it's cheap too?"
It's long been known that large companies care little about such problems. Many agricultural companies care little for the land they desecrate, and I doubt that media companies will show any more compassion toward the limits of Nature (whether terrestrial or in orbit). It seems our only hope lies with governmental regulations, but I fear that in the future the mighty dollar may prove to be greener than Nature.
For over 200 years, the basic role of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has remained the same: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for
limited times to inventors the exclusive right to their respective discoveries (Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution). (italics are mine, and the exact quote from Article 1, Section 8 is that "[Congress shall have the power to] promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.")
It seems to me that Bezos is perfectly justified to, at least for a limited time, attempt to regulate the use of a new way of approaching the internet shopping idea. Take for instance the "Flaming Moe's" episode of The Simpsons. According to my interpretation of the patent classification system as described on the PTO's site, Homer could have indeed patented his drink and/or the process for making it. After Moe stole it from him, Homer was out of luck, and had no recourse other than to beat the tar out of him (which he didn't). When Homer eventually went nuts and told a barful of people the secret ingredient to the "Flaming Moe(/Homer)," everybody and their brother picked started up their own "Flaming Something" stand, and, because of the lack of centralized control over the public use of the recipe, the marketing of the drink was ruined for everybody, and, I'm sure, after a few weeks, nobody would want one ever again. I guess it's kind of like coffee in Seattle. The explosion was neat for a while, but then suddenly it was everywhere, and it was just too much.
Granted, Amazon's 1-Click approach to internet shopping doesn't seem quite as patentable as a mixed drink, but I feel Bezos does have some claim to the centralized control over how widespread the distribution of 1-Click "technology" goes. Were everyone to suddenly latch on to this idea, Bezos in effect loses some of the fruits of his labor. Sure, he and the Amazon staff dreamed up 1-Click to make shopping easier, but they also did it to turn a profit, to drive people away from traditional "shopping cart" sites and onto theirs. If everyone turns into a little Amazon, Bezos loses -- but so does everyone else.
I've been thinking of something along the lines of this (though completely unrelated) for the last few days. I recently found out from a residence hall neighbor that every hotel room within 50 miles is already booked solid for my 2003 graduation. I had no idea people would think so far ahead -- I certainly didn't! When I asked why this was so, he told me the hotels had booths at freshman orientation and took reservations on the spot. It occurred to me that, at some point, one hotel had decided that they were going to solicit business at freshman orientations, and started doing so, and for one orientation reaped great benefits. However, after that first year, I'm sure every hotel with a little money to spare for a booth set one up and started doing the same thing.
It made me wonder; by setting up booths, were the hotels helping or hurting customers? For those who stopped at the booths and inquired why they were there, perhaps it was a help. I don't think, though, that this idea was ever intended to be a service to the customers. It was meant for one hotel to beat out the others by getting a huge head start on reservations. So, for those like my family, who will now have little to no chance of finding a place to stay (four years in advance!), I see this as something of an annoyance, that within the span of a few days, hotel rooms for the families of 3,000 students for four years in advance are reserved unnecessarily. After that first year, this "innovation" ceased to be an innovation and became a necessity to keep up with the competition. So the hotels gain little (their rooms would have been booked anyway, and they're not getting a head start anymore), but some customers are greatly hurt.
1-Click may follow the same pattern, if its use is not regulated. After widespread use is implemented, it may prove to be a burden for customers. Perhaps a spike in internet sales will follow as people start impulse buying. Maybe soon after this buying spike an online depression will result as people shy away from internet resellers because it's too easy to drop a lot of money on 1-Click impulse buying sprees. I'll admit that right after Christmas this year I fell victim to such a disease, so I turned off 1-Click as fast as I could and now keep away from Amazon and other online department stores because I'm just too tempted to buy stuff. I'm just speculating, of course, but I do think that, for at least a limited period of time, it would be useful for someone interested in the future of internet commerce have control over where, how, and when such features are implemented.
And from the summary of a Congressional recommendation report by the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown regarding intellectual property rights and the National Information Infrastructure (NII):
Creators and other owners of intellectual property rights will not be willing to put their investments and their property at risk unless appropriate systems are in place -- both in the U.S. and internationally -- to permit them to set and enforce the terms and conditions under which their works are made available in the NII environment. Likewise, the public will not use the services available on the NII and generate the market necessary for its success unless a wide variety of works are available under equitable and reasonable terms and conditions, and the integrity of those works is assured.
I wanted to talk about this passage a little also, and how, though it's really intended toward situations like the DVD fiasco, it also applies to the stuff I said above. However, it's getting pretty late, I can't hardly keep my eyes open, and I'm starting to write gibberish, so I'll quit for now.
Respond with questions, concerns, or, if you live within 50 miles of Ithaca, NY, and have a spare room for ma familia in May 2003, your phone number and address.:)
Way back when I was in college, the big rage was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Buy like 5 boxes for 1-2 dollars and you were good to go!
I grew up on macaroni and cheese. One of the first things I did when I came home after my first night back for winter break was make myself a box of the stuff and sit down and watch Army of Darkness (but that's another obsession for another time.) The problem with macaroni and cheese when living by one's self in a dorm (especially a single like mine) is milk. First, microwaved M&C (made with water and a cheese sauce that includes dehydrated milk) sucks, and the community kitchenware is always kinda sketchy. Also, I don't drink enough milk while I'm in my room to warrant stocking it in my fridge, and usually when I get a craving for food while I'm in my room it's too late (or too much of a hassle) to run out and buy a pint of milk to I can make macaroni. And milk is expensive! The relatively inexpensive macaroni (like eighty cents a box) is offset somewhat by the three or four dollars for milk, most of which I usually end up throwing away a week later. So, sadly, I turned to ramen. Granted, ramen is good stuff, but I still can't wait until spring break:)
If price is a factor then sphagetti or pasta is available for slightly more. It takes about the same time and tastes a lot better.
Ramen's price is definitely it's biggest benefit. I usually buy mine in packages of twenty for about two dollars. Spaghetti was never this cheap. Also, making spaghetti in a microwave is impossible -- simply too much boiling water is needed. Two cups of water in a Pyrex measuring cup for about two minutes usually does the trick for superheated pseudo-boiling water in my microwave (your mileage may vary.) And I personally think chicken ramen soup tastes pretty good, kinda like Campbell's with a twist.
As for pizza, my freezer's usually stocked with Papa John's leftovers or Bagel Bites. (Unfortunately, the latter are pretty expensive by ramen standards, costing about $2.50 per package, which for all intents and purposes constitutes one serving.)
Sure, steaks and cookies are great for dinner parties, but while studying the night before a midterm or for a quick midnight snack, cold pizza or a bowl of ramen generally holds me over until I can get my hands on real food.
There should be a Surgeon General's warning on those packages, though -- as a result of the "flash-frying" process used to preserve the noodles, a package of ramen usually makes up about 40% of your RDA of saturated fat. Mmmm...
enmity. 'For want of a [microwaveable steak], the whole kingdom was lost.'
I followed a link to the Cornell Society for Women Engineers from our CS homepage and also found a 404. It just happened to be an out-of-date link, though -- I ran a site search and it turned up a bunch of the CSWE's (active) pages. So it's not that bad (unless, of course, you don't go to Cornell. then you should tell your web guys (girls!) to get back to work.)
First of all, for all who haven't read it, it's very good reading, from both legal and open-source standpoints (again, here's the link.) But anyway, I'd like to make a few comments on the hearing from what I understand of the transcript, and (no flames, please) attempt to give an objective outlook for the trial.
To start out with, I generally have good faith in US judicial system, and from what I've read of Judge Kaplan, I think he's a decent judge with 30 years experience and an impressive base of knowledge about the subject (for example, he knew that the acronym DVD had been changed from Digital Video Disc to Digital Versatile Disc.) I think he's a fair judge to try this case before. And I disagree that he's biased -- first, it's reflected in the transcript that he has worked with the plaintiff's law firm before (page 80 line 24), which would explain his congeniality. Second, his curtness (especially with defense atty. Robin Gross) is understandable given some of the arguments the defense tried, and is best summed up on page 28 line 25:
Now, look, Ms. Gross, please. I really think that it's a mistake to assume that you're talking to a moron.
Gross, in leaving out words as she read a section which, edited, helped her case, committed, in my opinion, one of the worst sins of legal debate.
What you [Gross] did is left out the [words] that hurt you. It says, "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations or defenses to copyright infringement" -- those are the words you left out -- "including fair use." In other words, were you being sued for copyright infringement, nothing here would take away your fair use defense. But you are not being sued for copyright infringement.
I merely think the defense could have been much better were it more organized and better prepared. Unfortunately, that could not be helped, as this injunction hearing was held a mere six days after the lawsuit was filed. But don't look at that statistic as if it were solely intended to put the defense at a disadvantage; I'm sure the plaintiffs lost little sleep over leaving the defense scrambling, but the primary purpose of an injunction is to issue a 'cease and desist' sort of order to stop an activity perceived as destructive that otherwise wouldn't end until after a long, possibly drawn-out trial, by which time the plaintiffs claim the damage would have already been done.
I don't think this hearing could have gone any other way. The judge had a good, working knowledge of the DMCA, arguably a much better grasp of it than either side's lawyers. I noticed few arguments made by the defense which I agreed with, after going over the text of the DMCA again while reading the judge's interpretation.
I was incredibly impressed by Judge Kaplan's handling of the DeCSS link issue (page 85 line 1) as different enough from posting the content itself that he refused to include linking in the injunction (for now.) And I think his almost equally curt treatment of the plaintiff's lawyers during that discussion helps further reduce the notion of judicial bias.
We have obtained the transcript of the preliminary injunction hearing that was held on January 20 and which wound up going against us. Exchanges like this show why this happened:
MR. LEVY: I'm sorry, your Honor. I actually have a technology expert with me. Would the Court like to or would they agree to hear a very brief statement on this point from that expert?
THE COURT: No.
Though this exchange does look pretty bad, you have to realize a few things: first, Levy's teleconferencing from California. It's not good legal practice to take a statement from a "technology expert" over the phone; I'm sure anyone who's ever called any kind of tech support agrees with me on that. Second, this is a hearing, not a trial -- there are no witnesses. It's nothing more than a discussion between both parties' lawyers and the judge. It's really not as bad as it seems.
In fact, most of this hearing wasn't as bad as it seems. The court granted an injunction -- so what? That just means that DeCSS may pose a threat to the DVD industry, and Judge Kaplan is giving them the benefit of the doubt, since he decided the injunction was consistent with the doctrine of prior restraint (one of the exceptions to the First Amendment that allows the courts to preclude certain types of speech) and thus does not pose a threat to the defendants' First Amendment rights. However, that can all be overturned, whether it be trial, appeal, or judicial review. Don't let the injunction get you down -- it's just something to shut the MPAA up while the defense gets to work.
I'll apologize in advance for the length of this posting. Congress certainly has a way with words.
Excerpts from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act full text available here.
Section 1201
(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
... (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- ... (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
1201(a)(2)(B) is what I assume will be the MPA[A]'s reponse to the defense that DeCSS was written to bridge the gap between DVD and Linux -- they'll make an effort to show that the possible illegal uses of DeCSS, regardless of its intended use, mean that Johansen should go to jail. that's kind of like trying to outlaw FTP servers because software piracy can happen there.
...to 'circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.
the following section will probably be DeCSS's defense; however, this probably would not save anyone from the Xing EULA. however, i think that violation of the EULA is a purely civil matter, not a criminal one, and wouldn't involve any jail time -- I've been wrong before though, does anyone else have any knowledge? does the EULA itself say?
(f) REVERSE ENGINEERING- (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
(2) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
(3) The information acquired through the acts permitted under paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may be made available to others if the person referred to in paragraph (1) or (2), as the case may be, provides such information or means solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section.
Cyclopropene, C3H4, has an even higher degree of ring strain resulting from a C=C double bond, but ring strain really only dictates how unstable the compound is, not necessarily how explosive. There is extreme ring strain in both compounds, but neither cyclopropane's 3 C-C bonds and 6 C-H bonds nor cyclopropene's 2 C-C bonds, 1 C=C bond, and 4 C-H bonds don't hold nearly as much energy per molecule to outdo the energy released by breaking the 12 C-C bonds and 8 C-H bonds in cubane. Using a table of bond enthalpies, we can find out how much energy is contained within a mole of each substance:
So cyclopropene is most likely to spontaneously blow up, but releases the least amount of energy per mole; cubane (with bond angles of 90 degrees everywhere) is the most stable of the three but also releases the most energy.
Keep in mind that some of the energy released is used up in forming the products of the reaction, so the values above do not represent the net energy; I'm just too lazy to track down the equations and calculate the delta-H.
I haven't been around the block much as far as Java is concerned, but from what I've seen in the last few months as I taught myself to code in Java, the freejava IDE (http://www.freejava.co.uk/) has proven to be incredibly satisfactory.
I read another comment posted in regards to this topic as to what a Java IDE had over a text editor besides color context, etc -- but it seems to me that freejava, coupled with the latest JDK and Franck Allimant's winhelp versions of Sun's JDK help files (available free at http://www.confluent.fr/javadoc/indexe.h tm) becomes to Java what I remember Turbo C++ for Windows to be -- a sleek, simple developing environment with enough functionality to satisfy both hobbyists and serious codehackers at the same time. (I won't claim to be more than a quasi-serious codehacker though, so don't come to me if freejava doesn't have enough oomph for your projects!)
(freejava can even be configured to use those winhelp files at the touch of the F1 key -- by far the most useful of its features for someone like me.)
True, the broadcast networks (BNs) do get an audience increase as a result of icravetv, but do they stand to benefit from the increase? As it stands now, no, because icravetv's viewers go unrecorded. BNs make money from advertisers who pay based on the projected number and quality of users -- ie, beer companies pay lots of money for Super Bowl advertising because hey, beer-drinkin' men watch the Super Bowl and there's a damn lot of them.
Now, if icravetv struck a deal with the BNs, started taking user profiles, surveys and statistics, and expanded to the US, suddenly the BNs would be able to reach college kids like myself stuck deep in the hills far from broadcast reception and a they'd notice an increase (and a profitable one at that!) in their 18-25 audience base. I personally think it is more likely that this case will settle before trial with such an arrangement than be simply shut down.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, if one looks at just about any flying creature now or in the past, the leading edge of their "wing" has always been protected by bone, feather or both.
That's not true. The leading edge of a bird's wing is called the patagium, and is simply skin that is stretched from the humerus to the carpal joint. The leading edge of a bat wing is similar, but in bats, all the skin of the wing is referred to as the patagium, while the leading edge is called the propatagium. In either case, the leading edge of the wing is very vulnerable to damage; one of my veterinarian friends, who volunteers at a raptor rehabilitation center, sees many cases where the bird's patagium has been torn (bird vs. cat, bird vs. barbed wire fence, etc), and generally in those cases the bird never flies again. It's actually one of the most vulnerable areas on a bird.
most night photography books tell you to treat moonlight as if it were sunlight, because it is; it's just sunlight bouncing off a big gray rock. the only correction you usually have to make is to bump the lens down a stop or two to make up for the fact that the moon doesn't light the whole sky.
enmity
> can't middle click to spawn
try shift-click.
enmity.
Her ex-husband (Englishman Jonny Lee Miller, or "Dade Murphy", or "Crash Override", whichever you prefer) IMHO had the brat thing going for him in Hackers, and though he supressed his accent for the movie, I'm sure Angelina could do an excellent impression of him for her upcoming role.
enmity.
does this mean that you are locked into using their ISP for as long as you own the device? in order to cancel, do you have to send them the shards leftover from taking a sledgehammer to it?
enmity.
How exactly would a large satellite "clean up the junk?" Would it eat the dead satellites? You can't just clean them up. They have mass, they take up space. The only way you can get rid of them is to push them into the atmosphere. However, do you want to be the president of a company that starts pushing 17-ton satellites into the atmosphere hoping that they burn up on reentry or land in an ocean?
Why does everyone insist that Nature exists only on Earth? Does it not bother anyone that the 10,000 pieces of man-made debris surrounding the earth looks like this? That the University of Chicago and NASA launched a satellite in January 1999 to monitor the debris? That an international committee(the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, of which NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Chinese Space Agency are a part) has been formed in order to manage the garbage? That each piece of debris, moving at tens of thousands of km/h, poses a threat to future satellites? I'm sure people would care if we started trashing the moon, but that's even farther away. Just because it's vacuum doesn't mean it's not worth taking care of.
enmity.
I won't speak for you, but I don't particularly find attractive the possibilities of thousands of 17-ton satellites dying and either plummetting to a fiery death in our atmosphere or continuing to float around derelict and contributing to the growing problem of satellite collision. It is precisely the attitude that "space isn't Nature" that will help companies justify space pollution.
enmity.
According to the Goddard Space Flight Center, over 3500 satellites (active and dead) are already in orbit. In April 1991, the Atlantis shuttle carried the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite into orbit, which, weighing in at 17 tons (38,000 pounds or 17,273 kilograms), was, at the time, the heaviest shuttle payload ever launched. The full BA-2 rocket, according to Beal's site, has the capacity to carry a 37,400 pound payload into low earth orbit or 13,200 pounds to geostationary transfer orbit.
As Donald Robertson states in a 1995 article on commercial satellites,What's going to happen when media conglomerates decide to upgrade their orbiting infrastructure with a new, 2000-era mindset of "bigger is better, and hell, now it's cheap too?"
It's long been known that large companies care little about such problems. Many agricultural companies care little for the land they desecrate, and I doubt that media companies will show any more compassion toward the limits of Nature (whether terrestrial or in orbit). It seems our only hope lies with governmental regulations, but I fear that in the future the mighty dollar may prove to be greener than Nature.
enmity.
It seems to me that Bezos is perfectly justified to, at least for a limited time, attempt to regulate the use of a new way of approaching the internet shopping idea. Take for instance the "Flaming Moe's" episode of The Simpsons. According to my interpretation of the patent classification system as described on the PTO's site, Homer could have indeed patented his drink and/or the process for making it. After Moe stole it from him, Homer was out of luck, and had no recourse other than to beat the tar out of him (which he didn't). When Homer eventually went nuts and told a barful of people the secret ingredient to the "Flaming Moe(/Homer)," everybody and their brother picked started up their own "Flaming Something" stand, and, because of the lack of centralized control over the public use of the recipe, the marketing of the drink was ruined for everybody, and, I'm sure, after a few weeks, nobody would want one ever again. I guess it's kind of like coffee in Seattle. The explosion was neat for a while, but then suddenly it was everywhere, and it was just too much.
Granted, Amazon's 1-Click approach to internet shopping doesn't seem quite as patentable as a mixed drink, but I feel Bezos does have some claim to the centralized control over how widespread the distribution of 1-Click "technology" goes. Were everyone to suddenly latch on to this idea, Bezos in effect loses some of the fruits of his labor. Sure, he and the Amazon staff dreamed up 1-Click to make shopping easier, but they also did it to turn a profit, to drive people away from traditional "shopping cart" sites and onto theirs. If everyone turns into a little Amazon, Bezos loses -- but so does everyone else.
I've been thinking of something along the lines of this (though completely unrelated) for the last few days. I recently found out from a residence hall neighbor that every hotel room within 50 miles is already booked solid for my 2003 graduation. I had no idea people would think so far ahead -- I certainly didn't! When I asked why this was so, he told me the hotels had booths at freshman orientation and took reservations on the spot. It occurred to me that, at some point, one hotel had decided that they were going to solicit business at freshman orientations, and started doing so, and for one orientation reaped great benefits. However, after that first year, I'm sure every hotel with a little money to spare for a booth set one up and started doing the same thing.
It made me wonder; by setting up booths, were the hotels helping or hurting customers? For those who stopped at the booths and inquired why they were there, perhaps it was a help. I don't think, though, that this idea was ever intended to be a service to the customers. It was meant for one hotel to beat out the others by getting a huge head start on reservations. So, for those like my family, who will now have little to no chance of finding a place to stay (four years in advance!), I see this as something of an annoyance, that within the span of a few days, hotel rooms for the families of 3,000 students for four years in advance are reserved unnecessarily. After that first year, this "innovation" ceased to be an innovation and became a necessity to keep up with the competition. So the hotels gain little (their rooms would have been booked anyway, and they're not getting a head start anymore), but some customers are greatly hurt.
1-Click may follow the same pattern, if its use is not regulated. After widespread use is implemented, it may prove to be a burden for customers. Perhaps a spike in internet sales will follow as people start impulse buying. Maybe soon after this buying spike an online depression will result as people shy away from internet resellers because it's too easy to drop a lot of money on 1-Click impulse buying sprees. I'll admit that right after Christmas this year I fell victim to such a disease, so I turned off 1-Click as fast as I could and now keep away from Amazon and other online department stores because I'm just too tempted to buy stuff. I'm just speculating, of course, but I do think that, for at least a limited period of time, it would be useful for someone interested in the future of internet commerce have control over where, how, and when such features are implemented.
And from the summary of a Congressional recommendation report by the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown regarding intellectual property rights and the National Information Infrastructure (NII):I wanted to talk about this passage a little also, and how, though it's really intended toward situations like the DVD fiasco, it also applies to the stuff I said above. However, it's getting pretty late, I can't hardly keep my eyes open, and I'm starting to write gibberish, so I'll quit for now.
Respond with questions, concerns, or, if you live within 50 miles of Ithaca, NY, and have a spare room for ma familia in May 2003, your phone number and address.
enmity.
Way back when I was in college, the big rage was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Buy like 5 boxes for 1-2 dollars and you were good to go!
:)
I grew up on macaroni and cheese. One of the first things I did when I came home after my first night back for winter break was make myself a box of the stuff and sit down and watch Army of Darkness (but that's another obsession for another time.) The problem with macaroni and cheese when living by one's self in a dorm (especially a single like mine) is milk. First, microwaved M&C (made with water and a cheese sauce that includes dehydrated milk) sucks, and the community kitchenware is always kinda sketchy. Also, I don't drink enough milk while I'm in my room to warrant stocking it in my fridge, and usually when I get a craving for food while I'm in my room it's too late (or too much of a hassle) to run out and buy a pint of milk to I can make macaroni. And milk is expensive! The relatively inexpensive macaroni (like eighty cents a box) is offset somewhat by the three or four dollars for milk, most of which I usually end up throwing away a week later. So, sadly, I turned to ramen. Granted, ramen is good stuff, but I still can't wait until spring break
enmity.
the cheesiest.
If price is a factor then sphagetti or pasta is available for slightly more. It takes about the same time and tastes a lot better.
Ramen's price is definitely it's biggest benefit. I usually buy mine in packages of twenty for about two dollars. Spaghetti was never this cheap. Also, making spaghetti in a microwave is impossible -- simply too much boiling water is needed. Two cups of water in a Pyrex measuring cup for about two minutes usually does the trick for superheated pseudo-boiling water in my microwave (your mileage may vary.) And I personally think chicken ramen soup tastes pretty good, kinda like Campbell's with a twist.
As for pizza, my freezer's usually stocked with Papa John's leftovers or Bagel Bites. (Unfortunately, the latter are pretty expensive by ramen standards, costing about $2.50 per package, which for all intents and purposes constitutes one serving.)
Sure, steaks and cookies are great for dinner parties, but while studying the night before a midterm or for a quick midnight snack, cold pizza or a bowl of ramen generally holds me over until I can get my hands on real food.
There should be a Surgeon General's warning on those packages, though -- as a result of the "flash-frying" process used to preserve the noodles, a package of ramen usually makes up about 40% of your RDA of saturated fat. Mmmm...
enmity.
'For want of a [microwaveable steak], the whole kingdom was lost.'
I followed a link to the Cornell Society for Women Engineers from our CS homepage and also found a 404. It just happened to be an out-of-date link, though -- I ran a site search and it turned up a bunch of the CSWE's (active) pages. So it's not that bad (unless, of course, you don't go to Cornell. then you should tell your web guys (girls!) to get back to work.)
enmity.
tsia.
enmity.
ugh, i can't believe i just wrote that.
[Y]ou name a more complicated invention than a piece of software that manipulates billions of microscopic switches billions of times per second.
Er, how about the little thingy with the billions of microscopic switches on it? That's a pretty complicated doohickey.
enmity.
spoken like a true EE major.
Do you work for the MPA[A]? :)
enmity.
To start out with, I generally have good faith in US judicial system, and from what I've read of Judge Kaplan, I think he's a decent judge with 30 years experience and an impressive base of knowledge about the subject (for example, he knew that the acronym DVD had been changed from Digital Video Disc to Digital Versatile Disc.) I think he's a fair judge to try this case before. And I disagree that he's biased -- first, it's reflected in the transcript that he has worked with the plaintiff's law firm before (page 80 line 24), which would explain his congeniality. Second, his curtness (especially with defense atty. Robin Gross) is understandable given some of the arguments the defense tried, and is best summed up on page 28 line 25:Gross, in leaving out words as she read a section which, edited, helped her case, committed, in my opinion, one of the worst sins of legal debate.I merely think the defense could have been much better were it more organized and better prepared. Unfortunately, that could not be helped, as this injunction hearing was held a mere six days after the lawsuit was filed. But don't look at that statistic as if it were solely intended to put the defense at a disadvantage; I'm sure the plaintiffs lost little sleep over leaving the defense scrambling, but the primary purpose of an injunction is to issue a 'cease and desist' sort of order to stop an activity perceived as destructive that otherwise wouldn't end until after a long, possibly drawn-out trial, by which time the plaintiffs claim the damage would have already been done.
I don't think this hearing could have gone any other way. The judge had a good, working knowledge of the DMCA, arguably a much better grasp of it than either side's lawyers. I noticed few arguments made by the defense which I agreed with, after going over the text of the DMCA again while reading the judge's interpretation.
I was incredibly impressed by Judge Kaplan's handling of the DeCSS link issue (page 85 line 1) as different enough from posting the content itself that he refused to include linking in the injunction (for now.) And I think his almost equally curt treatment of the plaintiff's lawyers during that discussion helps further reduce the notion of judicial bias.
I noticed this on 2600's lawsuit news page:Though this exchange does look pretty bad, you have to realize a few things: first, Levy's teleconferencing from California. It's not good legal practice to take a statement from a "technology expert" over the phone; I'm sure anyone who's ever called any kind of tech support agrees with me on that. Second, this is a hearing, not a trial -- there are no witnesses. It's nothing more than a discussion between both parties' lawyers and the judge. It's really not as bad as it seems.
In fact, most of this hearing wasn't as bad as it seems. The court granted an injunction -- so what? That just means that DeCSS may pose a threat to the DVD industry, and Judge Kaplan is giving them the benefit of the doubt, since he decided the injunction was consistent with the doctrine of prior restraint (one of the exceptions to the First Amendment that allows the courts to preclude certain types of speech) and thus does not pose a threat to the defendants' First Amendment rights. However, that can all be overturned, whether it be trial, appeal, or judicial review. Don't let the injunction get you down -- it's just something to shut the MPAA up while the defense gets to work.
enmity.
Sorry, I actually meant to apply that statement to the lawsuits in CA, NY, and NJ brought against the three men whose names at the moment escape me.
enmity.
Excerpts from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
full text available here.
Section 1201
1201(a)(2)(B) is what I assume will be the MPA[A]'s reponse to the defense that DeCSS was written to bridge the gap between DVD and Linux -- they'll make an effort to show that the possible illegal uses of DeCSS, regardless of its intended use, mean that Johansen should go to jail. that's kind of like trying to outlaw FTP servers because software piracy can happen there. the following section will probably be DeCSS's defense; however, this probably would not save anyone from the Xing EULA. however, i think that violation of the EULA is a purely civil matter, not a criminal one, and wouldn't involve any jail time -- I've been wrong before though, does anyone else have any knowledge? does the EULA itself say?
enmity.
Cyclopropene, C3H4, has an even higher degree of ring strain resulting from a C=C double bond, but ring strain really only dictates how unstable the compound is, not necessarily how explosive. There is extreme ring strain in both compounds, but neither cyclopropane's 3 C-C bonds and 6 C-H bonds nor cyclopropene's 2 C-C bonds, 1 C=C bond, and 4 C-H bonds don't hold nearly as much energy per molecule to outdo the energy released by breaking the 12 C-C bonds and 8 C-H bonds in cubane. Using a table of bond enthalpies, we can find out how much energy is contained within a mole of each substance:
cyclopropane: 3522 kJ/mol
cyclopropene: 2963 kJ/mol
cubane: 7480 kJ/mol
So cyclopropene is most likely to spontaneously blow up, but releases the least amount of energy per mole; cubane (with bond angles of 90 degrees everywhere) is the most stable of the three but also releases the most energy.
Keep in mind that some of the energy released is used up in forming the products of the reaction, so the values above do not represent the net energy; I'm just too lazy to track down the equations and calculate the delta-H.
enmity.
I haven't been around the block much as far as Java is concerned, but from what I've seen in the last few months as I taught myself to code in Java, the freejava IDE (http://www.freejava.co.uk/) has proven to be incredibly satisfactory.
I read another comment posted in regards to this topic as to what a Java IDE had over a text editor besides color context, etc -- but it seems to me that freejava, coupled with the latest JDK and Franck Allimant's winhelp versions of Sun's JDK help files (available free at http://www.confluent.fr/javadoc/indexe.h tm) becomes to Java what I remember Turbo C++ for Windows to be -- a sleek, simple developing environment with enough functionality to satisfy both hobbyists and serious codehackers at the same time. (I won't claim to be more than a quasi-serious codehacker though, so don't come to me if freejava doesn't have enough oomph for your projects!)
(freejava can even be configured to use those winhelp files at the touch of the F1 key -- by far the most useful of its features for someone like me.)
enmity.
True, the broadcast networks (BNs) do get an audience increase as a result of icravetv, but do they stand to benefit from the increase? As it stands now, no, because icravetv's viewers go unrecorded. BNs make money from advertisers who pay based on the projected number and quality of users -- ie, beer companies pay lots of money for Super Bowl advertising because hey, beer-drinkin' men watch the Super Bowl and there's a damn lot of them.
Now, if icravetv struck a deal with the BNs, started taking user profiles, surveys and statistics, and expanded to the US, suddenly the BNs would be able to reach college kids like myself stuck deep in the hills far from broadcast reception and a they'd notice an increase (and a profitable one at that!) in their 18-25 audience base. I personally think it is more likely that this case will settle before trial with such an arrangement than be simply shut down.
enmity.