If you think the Florida one was tampered with what makes you think they wouldn't be able to tamper with it if it was electronic (especially given the sorts of electronic voting systems they use or are proposing)?
At least with the Florida one people suspect something is fishy. With the usual "black box" voting, good luck detecting anything unless the perps are idiots (and do a 99% or even 101% win) or a verifiable system is used like the one I linked to.
In the country I'm in I strongly suspect the elections are being rigged, but they can only do it easily with postal votes and gerrymandering. So despite all that the corrupt ruling party (they are clearly corrupt, some practically even admitting it in the press) still lost many significant constituencies in the last election. If it was all electronic and online votes were allowed things might have been very different.
If you want to use your analogy and reasoning in this case the original right-owners would be the people who came up with the designs of the buildings and the bus.
Not the photographers who took a picture of them.
If you're going to say the photographer came up with a novel composition that's why it's copyrightable, then I'd say the two photos have very different composition. The first has bus, sky, skyline, _bridge_ (and stairs) and _water_, with the red bus being "in the middle offset". The other has bus, sky, building, road, with the red bus being "smack in the front".
If instead you're going to say "coloured iconic object in monochrome background" can be a monopolized idea, I think bet the original person who came up with this concept is not the complainant in this case, and it's ridiculous to allow such a monopoly. Any serious photographer would be insane to be happy with such a ruling, since it'd be hard to not infringe. Does that mean you can't take a picture of the "classic red telephone box"[1] and have the background in monochrome, because it would infringe on this concept too? How about red rose/apple and monochrome background? Or the many other images with a similar concept: http://goo.gl/VjRlb
Do people really want to spend more time in court than in taking photographs? If no, they should protest this ridiculous ruling.
Just because it takes lot of work and effort does not mean you deserve a _monopoly_ on the _concept_.
A bricklayer spends lots of time putting bricks on bricks to build a house, that should not give the bricklayer the right to prevent others from building a house by putting bricks on bricks. Even if it's a house with the same colour scheme (but different shape).
So what is covered? Does this ruling mean that any picture with "coloured iconic object in monochrome background" is now infringing?
I'm not photographer, but it seems silly for any photographers to be happy about this ruling. In my unlearned opinion what this ruling means is that just taking a picture of a famous monument that's been processed in some (not too trivial?) way would be infringing on any previous similar photos. You really sure you want that? You might not be able to do much non-infringing professional or "value-add" photography, or maybe if the judges get more insane, you might not be able to do much noninfringing photography of popular objects/sites.
The main difficulty is not ideas and concepts, the difficulty is coming up with a high quality result from the original idea. So giving a person a monopoly on a concept seems ridiculous. I can have plenty of ideas on photography - that does not mean I can produce a good "photo".
In fact to me the two photos are very different other than the colour schemes: one has sky, skyline, stairs, bridge and river. The other is sky, famous building, the bus on a long road and the bus is "smack in the front". As a result In the latter the bus is more prominent, more of a main subject, whereas the former, the bus is a highlighted object but in a more varied background.
There are often more than two candidates. But if two candidates combined get more than 98% of the votes, it just sends a message that those two combined are satisfying most of the voters who actually bother to vote, as much as possible, given the differences in what the voters want, and their priorities.
If the voters wish to send a different message, they should vote differently. Even if the other candidates do not win, if a 3rd candidate gets 30% of the votes, the "popular 2" candidates may consider changing stuff to win more votes (because the next round, the 3rd candidate might actually win if enough voters start to think the 3rd candidate might actually be a least bad and viable option).
If the voters are trying to game or "game theory" the system, and are regularly not satisfied with the results then they are doing it wrong.
Even if they had, nothing in this ought to be patentable anyway - it's all reasonably obvious to any practitioner in the field as soon as the technology
FWIW, I believe patents should be abolished. It's come to a point where patents cost society more than they benefit society, especially software and process patents.
Too many patents are used to stop someone else from doing something even if the patent holder can't do it as well or doesn't even intend to do it. Too many patents are used to stop people from doing something trivial.
It's ridiculous that patent defenders say patents are needed otherwise "important secrets" would be lost, and then others say that patents stop others from copying their stuff easily!
When an expert in the field in the same situation facing the same problem can _independently_ come up with the same solution within a short time, but the organization has to spend a longer time negotiating a patent license, progress is impeded.
Patents reward the trivial more than the innovative. Some really innovative stuff is so nonobvious that the market doesn't grok it till the patents are expired;).
As for an alternative, how about Prizes for Innovation instead (with categories similar to Hugo and Nebula awards, by public and experts in field). It's easier to reward in hindsight than for an overworked patent examiner to figure out whether something should be patentable.
Sure it means companies won't get monopolies on inventions, big deal. Anyone really believe that Apple wouldn't be making billions in a world without patents? Samsung may be selling a bit more, but Apple would still be raking in the billions. Even with drugs. Do you trust some Indian/Chinese pharmaceutical company to produce a "generic" of the same quality, purity and consistency? So some people will pay extra just to be safe.
In many countries the voters are unhappy when the vote counting is done behind closed doors- they know something fishy is going on (whether they can do anything about it is another matter).
One important requirement for a voting system is convincing enough of the losers that they've lost. So even if you have an electronic voting system that actually works properly[1], you need to convince the voters that it works properly.
Of course if most of the voters don't care that much then it doesn't matter.
[1] There are some electronic systems which seem like they might work properly and be verifiable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s But can you convince enough voters of that?
That said usually the people running/rigging the elections would prefer to use other methods instead;).
Anyway, the AC I was replying to was implying that only ionizing radiation can increase cancer rates. That's just wrong. The difference you'd normally notice it quickly if nonionizing radiation is damaging you[1].
Lastly, there are plenty of other things that increase cancer rates that do not involve ionizing radiation or breaking of molecular bonds breaking. Otherwise stuff like BPA wouldn't be increasing cancer rates. So thinking it's all so simple is ridiculous.
[1] FWIW exposing yourself to high dose nonionizing radiation (e.g. standing in front of very high powered radars or lasers[2]) reduces your odds of dying of cancer. Because you are likely to die from being cooked/burnt/"holed" first;)
As I said temperature is important. Stick your hand in warm water, nothing much happens to your hand. stick your hand in boiling water, something happens.
Don't believe me, try it out yourself, you can get that information in the kitchen directly for yourself.
Based on your reply I probably know and understand a lot more than you do. Microwave ovens use non-ionizing radiation to cook foods. That's why I said what I said.
It can increase the chances of cancer. It depends on the temperature, and which part of the body you heat.
You'd be very stupid and ignorant to think that heat cannot damage DNA and that only ionizing radiation can do it.
DNA and other parts of the cells will be affected by high temperatures. If you don't believe me, stick your hand in boiling water and send the results for lab analysis.
If you are not an adult please get the permission of your legal guardian first (e.g. mom/dad).
And rightly so as long as the voters "require" them.. That's what Democracy is about.
You don't like it, vote differently and persuade others to do so. If enough of you vote that way, you'll get what you want. Otherwise too bad, so sad. Better luck persuading, educating and convincing the rest to vote the way you want the next time.
FWIW, I doubt insulting or sneering at them works very well.
The US debt is in US dollars. Guess who can legally create US dollars? And has ALREADY created billions or even trillions of US dollars[1]?
So China isn't going to call in the US debt any time soon. That would be something like "mutual financial destruction".
It's not like you owing your bank half a million US dollars. You can't create half a million US dollars to pay the bank back.
[1] Google for federal reserve trillions. Loaning trillions at low interest rates is the same as creating billions at least. For example if the Federal Reserve loaned me 1 trillion out of thin air, and charged me 1% below market rate, I can "invest" the 1 trillion, wait, give the Federal Reserve back what they loaned me plus "interest" and keep the 1% difference = 10 billion. So at the minimum 10 billion has been created. At the maximum it depends on where I put the 1 trillion.
If we know how to make the vaccines, we can ramp up very quickly
How long does it take to make a vaccine for each new strain of flu? Can a single vaccine work on all strains? If yes then there is no great need for this research. If no, then you'd still be starting from scratch for each strain some crazy nut comes up with (presumably the crazy nut can buy your vaccine and test against it). So what's the point of allowing researchers to create new dangerous strains when "nature" or some nut will do it for you?
If it's to practice in creating flu vaccines quickly, do you really have to create very _lethal_ strains of flu to practice on, which this lab is doing? Why not create other strains? Just looking at their methods you can see they are purposely creating dangerous strains.
The more people improve the technology in creating dangerous flu strains the cheaper it gets to create a new strain. If an attacker only needs to spend 10 million to create 10 different strains and it cost USD10 per vaccine per person, and you need to vaccinate more than a billion people, who is going to pay to defend against them all? How much does it cost to create a new strain? So it is a losing defence strategy.
Quarantine is the main defence for pandemics. If you stop people from moving about and spreading the disease, the virus has to evolve to a less lethal form to spread. Or at least a more sneaky form - dormant but mildly infectious for one month then kill. So far there is not much selection pressure for flu viruses to evolve into such a virus (they seem successful enough) but if some crazy researchers try to do that, they might succeed.
What if one day we have the ability into researching the creation of a "Cheap Big Red Button that kills EVERYONE"? Should we allow it with the reasoning that if you don't someone else will?
IMO we should delay the development of any such technology till human society has reached a state where nobody would push such a button.
From what I see humans are closer to developing "big red buttons" than they are at "growing up" so as to never push them. Hence the effort should be towards developing the latter first and not the former.
If these guys don't do the research, someone else will
We have finite resources we should start to be wiser about prioritizing things. There are some things that should be done earlier, some things that should be done later, and some things that we should avoid doing.
IMO this research is definitely not one of the "do earlier" items. Tell me what's the potential benefit vs the potential cost?
If one day there exists a way to develop a "Big Red Button" that could kill more than 50% of the humans in the world, saying a country shouldn't make it illegal just because "someone else will do it" seems to be a stupid argument to support doing it.
As for developing cures, the main workaround for most of these sorts of diseases is the same- quarantine. Because when "stuff happens" even if a potential cure/vaccine may exist, you usually have no way or resources to get enough of it to everyone in time.
Not every country can afford to stockpile stuff that may or may not work or be needed (just like some did with Roche's Tamiflu).
Pirates don't even need to crack HD-DVD or blu-ray. Someone who only understands English can still photocopy a document in Russian and the resulting copy will still be readable by those who can read Russian. Heck some pirate DVDs I've seen still have the anti-piracy clips at the start!
And the protections in those discs are also (mainly?) to create artificial barriers to trade and for market segmentisation. But these often hurt the actual customers - someone I know had to buy another blu-ray player from a different country just to play his _legitimately_purchased_ blurays.
The industry will always try to push it through, there's no significant penalty/cost for failing. So they can just keep trying till one day it gets signed.
They may not need to bribe (directly anyway)- don't be surprised if many people just look at the title see stuff like "anti counterfeiting", "stop online piracy", "protect intellectual property", and then think yeah good idea.
The enterprise edition of Symantec has one redeeming quality, it doesn't expire. Some of my computers have been running it over 10 years with NO ransom fees, but without software support.
And it actually still gets virus signature/engine updates that can detect new viruses?
Slashdot Mirror
If you think the Florida one was tampered with what makes you think they wouldn't be able to tamper with it if it was electronic (especially given the sorts of electronic voting systems they use or are proposing)?
At least with the Florida one people suspect something is fishy. With the usual "black box" voting, good luck detecting anything unless the perps are idiots (and do a 99% or even 101% win) or a verifiable system is used like the one I linked to.
In the country I'm in I strongly suspect the elections are being rigged, but they can only do it easily with postal votes and gerrymandering. So despite all that the corrupt ruling party (they are clearly corrupt, some practically even admitting it in the press) still lost many significant constituencies in the last election. If it was all electronic and online votes were allowed things might have been very different.
color monochrome background works too. Hope the judge's ruling gets smacked down in some higher court.
Even if you don't live in the UK, the ruling can still affect other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_precedent
This might also put an end to "homage shots" in the film industry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomageShot
A weak flame sputters and shrinks from lighting other wicks. A strong flame spreads light and warmth without hesitation or waning.
If you want to use your analogy and reasoning in this case the original right-owners would be the people who came up with the designs of the buildings and the bus.
Not the photographers who took a picture of them.
If you're going to say the photographer came up with a novel composition that's why it's copyrightable, then I'd say the two photos have very different composition. The first has bus, sky, skyline, _bridge_ (and stairs) and _water_, with the red bus being "in the middle offset". The other has bus, sky, building, road, with the red bus being "smack in the front".
If instead you're going to say "coloured iconic object in monochrome background" can be a monopolized idea, I think bet the original person who came up with this concept is not the complainant in this case, and it's ridiculous to allow such a monopoly. Any serious photographer would be insane to be happy with such a ruling, since it'd be hard to not infringe. Does that mean you can't take a picture of the "classic red telephone box"[1] and have the background in monochrome, because it would infringe on this concept too? How about red rose/apple and monochrome background? Or the many other images with a similar concept: http://goo.gl/VjRlb
Do people really want to spend more time in court than in taking photographs? If no, they should protest this ridiculous ruling.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_telephone_box
Just because it takes lot of work and effort does not mean you deserve a _monopoly_ on the _concept_.
A bricklayer spends lots of time putting bricks on bricks to build a house, that should not give the bricklayer the right to prevent others from building a house by putting bricks on bricks. Even if it's a house with the same colour scheme (but different shape).
So what is covered? Does this ruling mean that any picture with "coloured iconic object in monochrome background" is now infringing?
I'm not photographer, but it seems silly for any photographers to be happy about this ruling. In my unlearned opinion what this ruling means is that just taking a picture of a famous monument that's been processed in some (not too trivial?) way would be infringing on any previous similar photos. You really sure you want that? You might not be able to do much non-infringing professional or "value-add" photography, or maybe if the judges get more insane, you might not be able to do much noninfringing photography of popular objects/sites.
The main difficulty is not ideas and concepts, the difficulty is coming up with a high quality result from the original idea. So giving a person a monopoly on a concept seems ridiculous. I can have plenty of ideas on photography - that does not mean I can produce a good "photo".
In fact to me the two photos are very different other than the colour schemes: one has sky, skyline, stairs, bridge and river. The other is sky, famous building, the bus on a long road and the bus is "smack in the front". As a result In the latter the bus is more prominent, more of a main subject, whereas the former, the bus is a highlighted object but in a more varied background.
There are often more than two candidates. But if two candidates combined get more than 98% of the votes, it just sends a message that those two combined are satisfying most of the voters who actually bother to vote, as much as possible, given the differences in what the voters want, and their priorities.
If the voters wish to send a different message, they should vote differently. Even if the other candidates do not win, if a 3rd candidate gets 30% of the votes, the "popular 2" candidates may consider changing stuff to win more votes (because the next round, the 3rd candidate might actually win if enough voters start to think the 3rd candidate might actually be a least bad and viable option).
If the voters are trying to game or "game theory" the system, and are regularly not satisfied with the results then they are doing it wrong.
Any comments on this:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt&showcomments=1
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt
Even if they had, nothing in this ought to be patentable anyway - it's all reasonably obvious to any practitioner in the field as soon as the technology
FWIW, I believe patents should be abolished. It's come to a point where patents cost society more than they benefit society, especially software and process patents.
Too many patents are used to stop someone else from doing something even if the patent holder can't do it as well or doesn't even intend to do it. Too many patents are used to stop people from doing something trivial.
It's ridiculous that patent defenders say patents are needed otherwise "important secrets" would be lost, and then others say that patents stop others from copying their stuff easily!
When an expert in the field in the same situation facing the same problem can _independently_ come up with the same solution within a short time, but the organization has to spend a longer time negotiating a patent license, progress is impeded.
Patents reward the trivial more than the innovative. Some really innovative stuff is so nonobvious that the market doesn't grok it till the patents are expired ;).
As for an alternative, how about Prizes for Innovation instead (with categories similar to Hugo and Nebula awards, by public and experts in field). It's easier to reward in hindsight than for an overworked patent examiner to figure out whether something should be patentable.
Sure it means companies won't get monopolies on inventions, big deal. Anyone really believe that Apple wouldn't be making billions in a world without patents? Samsung may be selling a bit more, but Apple would still be raking in the billions. Even with drugs. Do you trust some Indian/Chinese pharmaceutical company to produce a "generic" of the same quality, purity and consistency? So some people will pay extra just to be safe.
In many countries the voters are unhappy when the vote counting is done behind closed doors- they know something fishy is going on (whether they can do anything about it is another matter).
One important requirement for a voting system is convincing enough of the losers that they've lost.
So even if you have an electronic voting system that actually works properly[1], you need to convince the voters that it works properly.
Of course if most of the voters don't care that much then it doesn't matter.
[1] There are some electronic systems which seem like they might work properly and be verifiable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s
But can you convince enough voters of that?
That said usually the people running/rigging the elections would prefer to use other methods instead ;).
Nowadays is it reasonable to expect viewing from Google Maps (and streetview etc)? :).
http://g.co/maps/zqf5u
Depends on where they get scalded and how.
There have been studies that indicate that drinking liquids that are too hot increase the chances of getting esophageal cancer, and that the temperature makes a difference.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2773211/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11058886
BUT serious-burn victims have had lower rates of skin cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17028504
Anyway, the AC I was replying to was implying that only ionizing radiation can increase cancer rates. That's just wrong. The difference you'd normally notice it quickly if nonionizing radiation is damaging you[1].
Lastly, there are plenty of other things that increase cancer rates that do not involve ionizing radiation or breaking of molecular bonds breaking. Otherwise stuff like BPA wouldn't be increasing cancer rates. So thinking it's all so simple is ridiculous.
[1] FWIW exposing yourself to high dose nonionizing radiation (e.g. standing in front of very high powered radars or lasers[2]) reduces your odds of dying of cancer. Because you are likely to die from being cooked/burnt/"holed" first ;)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser
As I said temperature is important. Stick your hand in warm water, nothing much happens to your hand. stick your hand in boiling water, something happens.
Don't believe me, try it out yourself, you can get that information in the kitchen directly for yourself.
Based on your reply I probably know and understand a lot more than you do. Microwave ovens use non-ionizing radiation to cook foods. That's why I said what I said.
High temperatures can certainly denature DNA in flesh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturation_(biochemistry)#Nucleic_acid_denaturation
Smart people have already worked out roughly how much heat it takes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic_acid_thermodynamics#Methods_for_estimating_melting_temperatures
Does this mean that heat causes cancer?
It can increase the chances of cancer. It depends on the temperature, and which part of the body you heat.
You'd be very stupid and ignorant to think that heat cannot damage DNA and that only ionizing radiation can do it.
DNA and other parts of the cells will be affected by high temperatures. If you don't believe me, stick your hand in boiling water and send the results for lab analysis.
If you are not an adult please get the permission of your legal guardian first (e.g. mom/dad).
If non-ionizing radiation was so safe, you wouldn't be able to cook stuff with it.
If I regularly heat your tissues to more than 60 degrees C what makes you so sure that won't increase your chances of getting cancer?
Yes then the US can start returning to becoming a "land of the free and the home of the brave".
And rightly so as long as the voters "require" them.. That's what Democracy is about.
You don't like it, vote differently and persuade others to do so. If enough of you vote that way, you'll get what you want. Otherwise too bad, so sad. Better luck persuading, educating and convincing the rest to vote the way you want the next time.
FWIW, I doubt insulting or sneering at them works very well.
The US debt is in US dollars. Guess who can legally create US dollars? And has ALREADY created billions or even trillions of US dollars[1]?
So China isn't going to call in the US debt any time soon. That would be something like "mutual financial destruction".
It's not like you owing your bank half a million US dollars. You can't create half a million US dollars to pay the bank back.
[1] Google for federal reserve trillions. Loaning trillions at low interest rates is the same as creating billions at least. For example if the Federal Reserve loaned me 1 trillion out of thin air, and charged me 1% below market rate, I can "invest" the 1 trillion, wait, give the Federal Reserve back what they loaned me plus "interest" and keep the 1% difference = 10 billion. So at the minimum 10 billion has been created. At the maximum it depends on where I put the 1 trillion.
OK. Maybe a bug in Slashdot.
That said, I find in Slashdot's "fancy javascript" mode the threading/layout is really weird compared to the "classic mode".
If we know how to make the vaccines, we can ramp up very quickly
How long does it take to make a vaccine for each new strain of flu?
Can a single vaccine work on all strains? If yes then there is no great need for this research. If no, then you'd still be starting from scratch for each strain some crazy nut comes up with (presumably the crazy nut can buy your vaccine and test against it). So what's the point of allowing researchers to create new dangerous strains when "nature" or some nut will do it for you?
If it's to practice in creating flu vaccines quickly, do you really have to create very _lethal_ strains of flu to practice on, which this lab is doing? Why not create other strains? Just looking at their methods you can see they are purposely creating dangerous strains.
The more people improve the technology in creating dangerous flu strains the cheaper it gets to create a new strain. If an attacker only needs to spend 10 million to create 10 different strains and it cost USD10 per vaccine per person, and you need to vaccinate more than a billion people, who is going to pay to defend against them all? How much does it cost to create a new strain? So it is a losing defence strategy.
Quarantine is the main defence for pandemics. If you stop people from moving about and spreading the disease, the virus has to evolve to a less lethal form to spread. Or at least a more sneaky form - dormant but mildly infectious for one month then kill. So far there is not much selection pressure for flu viruses to evolve into such a virus (they seem successful enough) but if some crazy researchers try to do that, they might succeed.
What if one day we have the ability into researching the creation of a "Cheap Big Red Button that kills EVERYONE"? Should we allow it with the reasoning that if you don't someone else will?
IMO we should delay the development of any such technology till human society has reached a state where nobody would push such a button.
From what I see humans are closer to developing "big red buttons" than they are at "growing up" so as to never push them. Hence the effort should be towards developing the latter first and not the former.
The analogy clearly failed in explaining stuff to you.
But the analogy has absolutely nothing to do with credit card companies.
If these guys don't do the research, someone else will
We have finite resources we should start to be wiser about prioritizing things. There are some things that should be done earlier, some things that should be done later, and some things that we should avoid doing.
IMO this research is definitely not one of the "do earlier" items. Tell me what's the potential benefit vs the potential cost?
If one day there exists a way to develop a "Big Red Button" that could kill more than 50% of the humans in the world, saying a country shouldn't make it illegal just because "someone else will do it" seems to be a stupid argument to support doing it.
As for developing cures, the main workaround for most of these sorts of diseases is the same- quarantine. Because when "stuff happens" even if a potential cure/vaccine may exist, you usually have no way or resources to get enough of it to everyone in time.
Not every country can afford to stockpile stuff that may or may not work or be needed (just like some did with Roche's Tamiflu).
Pirates don't even need to crack HD-DVD or blu-ray. Someone who only understands English can still photocopy a document in Russian and the resulting copy will still be readable by those who can read Russian. Heck some pirate DVDs I've seen still have the anti-piracy clips at the start!
And the protections in those discs are also (mainly?) to create artificial barriers to trade and for market segmentisation. But these often hurt the actual customers - someone I know had to buy another blu-ray player from a different country just to play his _legitimately_purchased_ blurays.
What if you wrote reports/articles in such a way that the automated stuff would screw up when parsing it? :)
Of course you'd need to have some plausible deniability.
The industry will always try to push it through, there's no significant penalty/cost for failing. So they can just keep trying till one day it gets signed.
They may not need to bribe (directly anyway)- don't be surprised if many people just look at the title see stuff like "anti counterfeiting", "stop online piracy", "protect intellectual property", and then think yeah good idea.
I wonder if they could use dogs. They're portable, most are even happy to walk-around on their own without being carried ;).
And they can detect lots of things, you just need to get them to understand what you want them to detect, e.g. explosives, CD-Rs, cancer, dead bodies.
Main problem is they get bored after a short while and stop being effective.
The enterprise edition of Symantec has one redeeming quality, it doesn't expire. Some of my computers have been running it over 10 years with NO ransom fees, but without software support.
And it actually still gets virus signature/engine updates that can detect new viruses?