> You need to understand maths to, for example, predict what a particular SQL query will do,
You don't need to understand a lot of math to predict what most SQL queries will do, anymore than a basketball player needs to understand a lot of physics and maths to shoot 3 pointers.
Understanding how that particular DB works and its idiosyncrasies (some DBs interpret/parse queries differently) will be more useful than "knowing math".
I know that requires logical thinking and the able to grasp abstract concepts, but if we keep broadening what we mean by math, then those basketballers are math geniuses too. And similarly by that definition most programmers already do math. Which is not that useful given the topic of this article/story.
Who is really driving innovation- someone who only collects/files patents and waits to sue infringers, or someone who actually builds products and makes them available to people.
If you think just "thinking up great ideas" is enough for reward, then the patent system even fails in that regard, since the people who think of really great ideas tend to be so far ahead of their time that any patents would have expired by the time the products reach the general public.
For example: Douglas Engelbart and his team. He and his team actually implemented stuff (didn't just sit around filing patents), but it was only decades later before the masses managed to get some of the stuff (there are still a bunch of good ideas of his or his team which don't have mass adoption). Was what he did thus useless? No, some people actually saw what his team did and reimplemented some stuff much later.
Instead the patent system rewards "innovators" who come up with pretty vague patents to cover most obvious ways of doing "obvious next step" in a field.
And look at Rambus. They're not innovators, sure their patents were approved, but in no way an expert in the field would regard what they came up with as nonobvious. Note: I'm not saying that those who colluded against Rambus were right either.
> Do you think it is fair for Iranians to pirate U.S. property?
It's not fair if they are pirating it according to "pirating" as defined by Iranian laws and laws applicable to the whole world.
"International" laws that the USA comes up with and tries to push to the whole world don't count till the countries agree to them.
Other than that, if a country's law says what a citizen does is "fair use" and the USA disagrees and uses this legislation to label that country a criminal haven, this is a bad thing and _unfair_.
Just because other countries have freedoms the USA doesn't have should not make them criminal havens.
> neither should Canadian citizens receive immunity when facing international copyright charges
Depends on what those "international copyright" charges are, and what laws they are based on.
If they are not actually international copyright laws, but just some stuff that the USA is trying to push to Canada, but Canada hasn't accepted it, then I don't see why Canadian citizens should have to follow those. Especially laws like the DMCA.
The Canadian citizens already pay a levy. And strangely enough the Media Companies in Canada are the ones not paying the artists.
quote: "After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid. Indeed, they are also seeking punitive damages, arguing "the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers."
Given the track record for such legislation and the way the recording companies and their friends behave, I doubt this legislation is really going to be used mainly for shutting down botnets.
I'm fine if the legislation is only about shutting down botnet command centers, spammers and malware.
Not fine if it includes stuff like "if you don't have DMCA laws, you're a criminal haven - since criminals (from the US POV) can reverse engineer and break DRM, even if your country says that is not a criminal act". Same if those countries just happen to have different copyright laws (e.g. Canada).
A lot of legislation has very nice titles, e.g. "No Child Left Behind Act", but the details are what count.
You pick a good name and enough people might believe what they want about it and thus support it without looking too closely at the details.
Same like those "investment" funds - "High-Grade Structured Credit Fund" or "High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund";).
Am I right that if they only distribute the patched binaries to customers who have support contracts, they only need to make the source available to those customers?
Can they also add clauses to the support contracts so that if those customers are found distributing the source code to others, they don't get to sign up for future support?
> OpenBSD seems to do just fine, with a bigger codebase, written in C.
They just ship OpenBSD with most services disabled by default, and then claim it is safe by default.
That's similar to Microsoft's shipping IE on their server O/S with most stuff disabled by default, and then claiming that IE is not vulnerable on their server O/Ses by default.
Yes they are safe by default just like a car with its wheels, engine and battery "disabled" by default is safe from most carjackers.
> Where is the big financial payoff for going into space? > If we get to Mars, how is that going to provide a financial windfall for the country that does it?
OK instead of the economic benefits of going to space how about sending to space;).
How about we send choice politicians to Mars? One way/return...
The following domains were available when I last checked:
votethemofftheplanet.org votethemofftheplanet.com
I'm sure more than a few viewers might be interested in such a reality TV show too;).
I'd be willing to spend a dollar or more voting for certain politicians... Even if the end result is just symbolic - "for fun".
> Every time I turn on the tv I see news from the US and every time it is about being scared or about why you should be scared and every time it turns out to be a lie.
Because the USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Slashdot Mirror
> You need to understand maths to, for example, predict what a particular SQL query will do,
You don't need to understand a lot of math to predict what most SQL queries will do, anymore than a basketball player needs to understand a lot of physics and maths to shoot 3 pointers.
Understanding how that particular DB works and its idiosyncrasies (some DBs interpret/parse queries differently) will be more useful than "knowing math".
I know that requires logical thinking and the able to grasp abstract concepts, but if we keep broadening what we mean by math, then those basketballers are math geniuses too. And similarly by that definition most programmers already do math. Which is not that useful given the topic of this article/story.
He's clearly not using the literal meaning of literally.
On the other hand some studies have shown that restriction of methionine intake has increased lifespan in many animals.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/12/04/caloric_restriction_and_lifespan_without_the_caloric_restriction.php
Exactly.
Who is really driving innovation- someone who only collects/files patents and waits to sue infringers, or someone who actually builds products and makes them available to people.
If you think just "thinking up great ideas" is enough for reward, then the patent system even fails in that regard, since the people who think of really great ideas tend to be so far ahead of their time that any patents would have expired by the time the products reach the general public.
For example: Douglas Engelbart and his team. He and his team actually implemented stuff (didn't just sit around filing patents), but it was only decades later before the masses managed to get some of the stuff (there are still a bunch of good ideas of his or his team which don't have mass adoption). Was what he did thus useless? No, some people actually saw what his team did and reimplemented some stuff much later.
Instead the patent system rewards "innovators" who come up with pretty vague patents to cover most obvious ways of doing "obvious next step" in a field.
And look at Rambus. They're not innovators, sure their patents were approved, but in no way an expert in the field would regard what they came up with as nonobvious. Note: I'm not saying that those who colluded against Rambus were right either.
> Do you think it is fair for Iranians to pirate U.S. property?
It's not fair if they are pirating it according to "pirating" as defined by Iranian laws and laws applicable to the whole world.
"International" laws that the USA comes up with and tries to push to the whole world don't count till the countries agree to them.
Other than that, if a country's law says what a citizen does is "fair use" and the USA disagrees and uses this legislation to label that country a criminal haven, this is a bad thing and _unfair_.
Just because other countries have freedoms the USA doesn't have should not make them criminal havens.
> But in waiting they are showing that publicity is more important than getting the knowledge out, making me lose some respect for them.
Publicity gets the knowledge _in_ to more people. Publicity is important for many leaks.
Just getting the knowledge out is useless if only a handful of people know of it.
I don't know what is the best way for them to get the desired levels of publicity.
How so? It's more likely that Apple & Co will just pay that company.
Especially if that company doesn't make a single thing (except lawsuits), and thus infringes on zero patents.
How's that for patents encouraging innovation...
> neither should Canadian citizens receive immunity when facing international copyright charges
Depends on what those "international copyright" charges are, and what laws they are based on.
If they are not actually international copyright laws, but just some stuff that the USA is trying to push to Canada, but Canada hasn't accepted it, then I don't see why Canadian citizens should have to follow those. Especially laws like the DMCA.
The Canadian citizens already pay a levy. And strangely enough the Media Companies in Canada are the ones not paying the artists.
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/735096--geist-record-industry-faces-liability-over-infringement
quote:
"After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid. Indeed, they are also seeking punitive damages, arguing "the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers."
Given the track record for such legislation and the way the recording companies and their friends behave, I doubt this legislation is really going to be used mainly for shutting down botnets.
I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
I'm fine if the legislation is only about shutting down botnet command centers, spammers and malware.
;).
Not fine if it includes stuff like "if you don't have DMCA laws, you're a criminal haven - since criminals (from the US POV) can reverse engineer and break DRM, even if your country says that is not a criminal act". Same if those countries just happen to have different copyright laws (e.g. Canada).
A lot of legislation has very nice titles, e.g. "No Child Left Behind Act", but the details are what count.
You pick a good name and enough people might believe what they want about it and thus support it without looking too closely at the details.
Same like those "investment" funds - "High-Grade Structured Credit Fund" or "High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund"
Looks like the answers are: consult a bunch of lawyers :).
And I guess Oracle has enough money for lawyers.
Does buying UPSes for my computers count?
> they'll obviously have to figure out some way to filter out the thoughts that randomly pass through people's minds
Trivial to solve: they could use escape sequences.
> You wouldn't want this in your vehicle.
How about a nuclear powered semi-autonomous military vehicle?
Radiation leakage might then be considered a feature...
Am I right that if they only distribute the patched binaries to customers who have support contracts, they only need to make the source available to those customers?
Can they also add clauses to the support contracts so that if those customers are found distributing the source code to others, they don't get to sign up for future support?
Which radar are they talking about?
I thought the radar on passenger planes is just weather radar?
e.g. it detects clouds and not other planes.
OK there's also the "going to hit the ground" detection stuff, but I don't think that's what the story is about.
> OpenBSD seems to do just fine, with a bigger codebase, written in C.
They just ship OpenBSD with most services disabled by default, and then claim it is safe by default.
That's similar to Microsoft's shipping IE on their server O/S with most stuff disabled by default, and then claiming that IE is not vulnerable
on their server O/Ses by default.
Yes they are safe by default just like a car with its wheels, engine and battery "disabled" by default is safe from most carjackers.
> Where is the big financial payoff for going into space?
;).
;).
> If we get to Mars, how is that going to provide a financial windfall for the country that does it?
OK instead of the economic benefits of going to space how about sending to space
How about we send choice politicians to Mars? One way/return...
The following domains were available when I last checked:
votethemofftheplanet.org
votethemofftheplanet.com
I'm sure more than a few viewers might be interested in such a reality TV show too
I'd be willing to spend a dollar or more voting for certain politicians... Even if the end result is just symbolic - "for fun".
> the more space on the sensor is dedicated to overhead instead of picking up light.
Not a big problem if you build stuff in 3D.
Some modern sensors have microlenses in front of the actual detectors.
http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/technology/d-technology/imagingsensor/iso/img/cp_02.gif
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=246
Look at how much the USA spends on healthcare and what it gets for that spending.
That's the funny thing, the US people are already paying a lot of money for healthcare. More than the other first world countries.
And still so many think their system is better.
The insurance companies must be very happy to have so many suckers. Despite being such huge parasites they still got bailouts.
> Are they going to imprison you for succeeding?
They might put you in solitary confinement - one of those wooden boxes.
Carousel time for you!
I take it you've played Civilisation before?
:).
Should I send my good old veteran[1] Phalanxes or Nuke em...
[1] Yeah they're definitely veterans by that stage
> I understand that you didn't read the article, no one ever does, but to not read the summary?
:).
Sorry, was going to wait for the dupe
Maybe the Chinese universities would be happy to take him, let him do his research and publish his stuff.
Just like the other researchers they are welcoming:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/global/18research.html
> Every time I turn on the tv I see news from the US and every time it is about being scared or about why you should be scared and every time it turns out to be a lie.
Because the USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave!