You dumbass! Do you have something against caribou?
Oh pulleeze. What so-called scientists think will happen to the herd depends largely on who funds them, and how PC they wish to appear at cocktail parties. The truth (warning, PDF) is that the carribou probably don't care. Also, surely there must be some endangered species in the other parts of the world where they drill oil. Why is the US the only country in the world cursed with endangered species in its oil fields? (that's a rhetorical question).
The amount of oil that would be produced is insignificant compared to US annual usage.
"A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." Sorry I can't remember who said that, but I think it's a good quote to use here. The "ANWR isn't very much" argument is usually based on oil coming from noplace but ANWR. True, in that case ANWR only supplies 6 months of oil, but of course we'd be idiots to try and 100% supply ourselves from anywhere, let alone ANWR.
What ANWR would give us is the ability to replace a 10% supplier for the next 5 years, or a 5% supplier for the next 10, or to not worry as much about the strategic reserve, etc.
Also, oil is a commodity. The idiot who said "most of that oil will go to Asia" had no clue. Of course it would go to Asia, thus freeing up more Gulf of Mexico/Mexican/Venezuelan oil to go to Texas refineries.
However, I will concede one point: ANWR isn't our best source of oil. By some estimates, the equivalent of an entire Saudi Arabia lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico, totally untapped.
Just think of what we could do with that. Arabs in a snit? Inflation wreaking havoc with the economy? No problem. Just increase the output. Not having enough local production is like not having enough control over the money supply. Greenspan can adjust the interest rate. We ought to be able to adjust our energy rates too.
You have to get the hydrogen from some energy-intensive process anyway. Either you are refactoring fossil fuels, or using nuclear to split water, or some other energy intensive process. Sure, you could use solar to do some of that, but you could use solar to charge electric cars too--if you want to turn the entire Desert Southwest into one giant panel farm. Of course, solar hurts the environment too. Yep, you heard me. That giant panel farm alters the "albedo" aka reflectivity of the Earth, which changes weather patterns. Nevermind that the shade would also alter the desert ecosystem.
What we should be doing is encouraging advanced modular hybrid technology. Idling and braking waste huge quantities of fuel. With modular hybrid systems (think, multiple small engines you can lift out of your car and swap like video cards) we would encourage innovation in conversion efficiency and alternative fuels. Also, drill ANWR. Yep, that's right. Drill the SOB. Send the environmentalists to the Middle East and see if they can persuade them to stop pumping for a change.
Just once I'd like to see our leadership encourage conservation and local production.
Republicans need to pull their heads out of their posteriors and realize that conservation!=anti business. Democrats need to do the same thing and realize that production!=destruction.
I'm not optimistic that any of this will happen anytime soon. It makes too much sense.
Yes, and it's very popular in the 3rd world. Of course this is Linux were talking about here. It doesn't come in a bottle. It comes in a burlap sack, and you have to configure it yourself, but it's definitely free.
This reminds me of the prof who told us about the "op-amp" from the tube days. For those not familiar, an op-amp is supposed to approximate infinite impedance on two inputs, and infinite gain on one output based on the difference between those two inputs. Modern op-amps are integrated circuits available in single-unit packages the size of a pinkie-nail. They have about 10-20 transistors in them.
With the addition of a few simple parts, op-amps can be used to build a wide variety of circuits such as oscillators, amplifiers, VCOs, etc. Of course these things can also be built without op-amps using fewer parts, but op-amps greatly simplify design and are a common teaching tool in electrical engineering courses.
The tube op-amp, in it's most refined form before the introduction of transistors, was described by this prof as "about the size of a can of soda, and hot as a firecracker".
It's why open source is a grass roots movement. We aim to capture hearts and minds on a fundamental and righteous level. We target the wallet second.
I don't see Open Source as grass roots. It has a decidedly elitist flavor to it. RMS attended MIT, and his FSF was bankrolled by the McArthur foundation and charitable donations, many from corporations. Linus Torvalds is a Finish expatriot. ESR and Bruce Perens splintered off from the FSF with aims to make Free Software more palatable for business. Many of the major contributors to FS/OSS work in an academic setting where pride in being "better than the unwashed masses" is a given. This can't be described as "grass roots", at least this is not the US concept of the term as I know it.
Open source saves the government money. Open source would create more governemnt jobs
At this point, my head almost exploded.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
The Left told us that we couldn't build smokestacks. So heavy industry left. The Left told us we couldn't drill for oil. So the rigs left. The Left told us we couldn't build nuke plants. So the nukes left. The Left drove union wages sky high. So the remaining non-polluting industrial jobs left.
Faced with this situation, the ever industrious people of the US turned to IP--"movies, music, and microcode" as it was so eloquently put, are now the primary engine of the economy. So naturally the Left hates that.
If you don't like an IP-based economy, fine. What are you going to replace it with?
OK, I don't oppose it totally, but I got your attention, didn't I? I oppose an ideological bent in either direction.
When the government decides what software to purchase, I want them purchasing what's best for the job. In a rapidly evolving field where improvements are still being made and maximum performance is critical, I don't want them installing OSS that's half the speed, purchasing twice the hardware, and training twice the staff just because "OSS is good".
OTOH, I don't want them mandating a "Windows only in department X" policy either; especially if department X is comprised of technicly literate people who "know how to handle their computers, thank-you very much".
I certainly don't want them installing $500 worth of MS server software when LAMP would have done just fine.
In other words, we don't need no stinkin' "you must consider OSS software" policy any more than we need a "you must use Windows" policy. They both suck equally.
And last but not least, I don't want the government developing software under GPL, EULA, or anything other than Public Domain, which is where all government works are supposed to be placed (of course, if they hired a contractor, then the contractor still gets to negotiate terms).
Actually, this is just another expression of a theme that runs through a lot of the stuff I write here: Ideological purity is always bad... except when it's good.
Here's why: Right now, the PTO is a cash cow for the government. They've got a nice little business going. PTO actually generates "profit" which helps the government fool us into believing they can balance a budget.
Filing and maintenance fees are only a small disincentive (if any) to wealthy lawyers and deep-pocketed corporations. Eliminating the fees won't spike the applications as much as you might think.
What would happen is that the PTO would have to be supported out of the general fund. They would have to figure out how to run on a budget, and what would they do? They would do many of the things that we want them to do: Stricter guidelines on what could be patented, elimination of the controversial software and business method categories, and fewer examiners.
Now, I wonder if we can slip this one in as "pro business" and fool them? Somehow I doubt it. Also, the city of Alexandria, Virginia would be pissed off because the huge new PTO complex being built there would have to find a new tenant.
Yeah. I ground up a Red Hat CD, and packed it into a cardboard tube; but when I lit the thing it just went "pfft".
This had been one of my pet peeves for a while, but I've pretty much given up on it. Time to face it: "powered" is now a synonym for "guided by", "makes up a major part of", "managed", "motivated", and perhaps others.
I can trace this back as early as the late 1970s Ramblin' Raft Race on the Potomac River. One of the boats had a big sign that said "POWERED BY BUD". Can anybody else cite an earlier usage?
I didn't say that cursive was as valuable as Shakespeare. I just said that it was valuable in a similar way. A laser printed e-mail is to a handwritten letter what "should I commit suicide?" is to "to be or not to be?".
Cursive isn't important, and if it died, we would be none the poorer for it.
Shakespeare isn't important, and if it died, we would be none the poorer for it.
/sarcasm. Good writing, like good literature, is art. It enriches our lives. After 3 years in a private school where we were made to do handwriting exercies as part of our morning routine, I had excellent script. It persisted until late highschool where it began to show signs of distress. It slowly declined and really started to die when I got a computer job. I miss it. I keep telling myself that at some point I'll find those tracing papers and take it up again... but I can't find the time. I used to get complements for it, and now I actually find that I'm uncomfortable writing, and there are times when writing is still very useful--like leaving notes by the phone and stuff.
A virtual balloon. In other words, the force-field isn't used to push the ship up. Instead, the force field is used to create a bubble on top of the ship, which is then evacuated of air. Helium balloons routinely lift payloads to 100,000 feet, or approximately 20 miles.
What keeps us using rockets to get off the launch pad is the incredible size of the balloon that would be required to lift a booster capable of covering the rest of the distance, and the awkward transition from buoyant flight to thrust flight.
With a force-field generated vacuum on the upper surface of the ship, the size of the balloon would be subject only to environmental concerns about displacing too much atmosphere, and the transition to thrusted flight wouldn't involve disposing a balloon or some other risky maneuver.
If the force-field didn't require too much power input (that's the big problem) then the first 20 miles would indeed be as free as the maximum altitude for a balloon.
Interesting side notes: At least one early science-fiction author suggested using evacuated metal spheres as a means of obtaining high-altitude flight, perhaps even space flight. Of course the problem there is that the spheres would have to be made of unobtanium. IIRC, at least one X-prize contestant has proposed using a balloon, but I haven't kept track of their progress.
Escaping the atmosphere. If the force-field can be generated without consuming too much power, then you can create a "virtual balloon" above your ship, and get the first 20 miles or so for nothing. Then you fire up the regular rockets.
Of course, since they are talking about temperaturs of 70,000K it doesn't sound like this will be competitive with rocket boosters anytime soon.
PNG allows up to 16-bits per channel and has full alpha last time I checked. It can store just about anything, and it's non-lossy.
OTOH, you've got the tools that are supposed to allow you to have only 2n image converters, but the interchange formats for that (PPM, PBM, PNM, others?) seem to always have some shortcoming, and they always have to introduce yet another interchange format! PNG does it all in one neat little compressed format.
So forget about scrapping GIF in favor of PNG. Instead, scrap PPM, etc. in favor of PNG. If it doesn't support it already, PNG could be made to support arbitrary bit depth, and arbitrary channels (inverse hyperkinetic bump blending, or whatever you can imagine).
For the web, in most cases, PNG's capabilities don't add much--unless you are doing something really flashy with your website, in which case you probably use Flash, in which case you have nothing meaningful to say so I ignore you anyway.:)
At any rate, PNGs (at least the RGB channels) are properly supported by all the major browsers, so if something happens to compress better in PNG, or if you really need full color depth in a non-lossy image, why not use PNG?
That about sums it up: GIF--color depth not important, crisp lines important, compression important. JPEG--color depth important, crisp lines not important, compression important. PNG--color depth and crisp lines both important, compression not as important (or the image just happens to compress well with PNG).
In some ways, this is a variation on the "better, faster, cheaper" dilemma.
Now, the scenario that favors PNG may be less common, but it's nice to know we can reach for it when we need it.
An even if Microsoft had a patent, you could still find plenty of reasons to sue.
That's a truism.
A patent doesn't mean you'll win a lawsuit, and not having a patent doesn't mean you can't sue.
I never made either statement. I simply said that having a patent makes it easier to win any potential suit, and less likely that you will be sued. If you are sued then by default, you are the patent holder, and the other guy has to overturn your patent.
Of course nothing can prevent you 100% from being sued, and no legal defense is 100% effective, but I think that goes without saying.
In other words, that's a truism.
I didn't prove your point, and I have no idea what would make you think that.
This boils down to a statement of opposition and nothing more.
You're argument seems to have evaporated like the Chesire cat, and left me with nothing but a grin.
Well, I could counterpoint with a long list of arguments backed up by logic, statistics, sources, and citations; but with a name like "Bunhill" why bother?
D***it. That's what I get for pressing TAB in an IE text entry window. Let me continue...
if (user_chooses(DOOR_NUMBER_1 | DOOR_NUMBER_3))
{ user=loser; }
Until they actually find code like that, they don't have perfect proof. However, given that the payout on this wager is a simple "double or nothing" I think we could expect the odds to be similar to the odds of double-or-nothing wagers in other types of gambling, which are not that long. So, they certainly have heavy empirical evidence of cheating.
This is interesting in another way. Are slot machines all over the place in the UK? Does every town have places with slots? Here in the US, you usually have to drive a good distance. Nearest slots that I can think of are an hours drive, and I live in a major metropolitan area.
Perhaps the UK should look to Las Vegas. I understand they take this kind of thing very seriously. People do real jail time for cheating in Vegas. After all, it's part of their claim to fame, and they are very concerned about protecting their rep for fair play. OTOH, if slots are in every corner bar, then you don't have the same kind of pride, and it doesn't surprise me that organizations are more willing to compromise their reputation like that. Also, I believe that in Vegas you have to have odds for everything on the machine posted; but I'm not sure about the time frame on the payouts for slots.
OK, so they can reload the previous state, but if the odds of winning are really long (as opposed to absolutely zero) then they could reload the previous state many times, not win, and have no real proof of cheating. The real proof would come with a line of code that went something like this:
The truth is, it takes nothing to start a lawsuit...
LEGALFEE.EXE has caused an invalid page fault in BILLABLE.DLL. This post will be shut down. If this problem persists, please think before you post or contact a lawyer who will start a lawsuit for nothing.
Either Verizon, as others have mentioned, or perhaps his older children (scroll to the bottom for a family photo).
"Daddy, you and your buddies are making lousy laws. Stop it!" in that whiney teenage voice can be pretty persuasive. "I'll promise to get off the phone more if you do something about it". "Repeal the DMCA or I'll pierce my tongue, and YOU CAN'T STOP ME".
There were five topic icons for this story: Security, Technology/IT, Software, Windows, and Operating Systems. Everything on/. is Technology/IT. Should that icon even exist? Windows* is a subset of Operating Systems, which is a subset of Software. Since we all know that, the last two are redundant.
The only topic icons that really make sense for this story are Windows and Security.
Is there a compelling reason to have so many topic icons, or are the/. editors just infatuated with their relatively new multiple-icon toy?
Slashdot Mirror
You dumbass! Do you have something against caribou?
Oh pulleeze. What so-called scientists think will happen to the herd depends largely on who funds them, and how PC they wish to appear at cocktail parties. The truth (warning, PDF) is that the carribou probably don't care. Also, surely there must be some endangered species in the other parts of the world where they drill oil. Why is the US the only country in the world cursed with endangered species in its oil fields? (that's a rhetorical question).
The amount of oil that would be produced is insignificant compared to US annual usage.
"A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." Sorry I can't remember who said that, but I think it's a good quote to use here. The "ANWR isn't very much" argument is usually based on oil coming from noplace but ANWR. True, in that case ANWR only supplies 6 months of oil, but of course we'd be idiots to try and 100% supply ourselves from anywhere, let alone ANWR.
What ANWR would give us is the ability to replace a 10% supplier for the next 5 years, or a 5% supplier for the next 10, or to not worry as much about the strategic reserve, etc.
Also, oil is a commodity. The idiot who said "most of that oil will go to Asia" had no clue. Of course it would go to Asia, thus freeing up more Gulf of Mexico/Mexican/Venezuelan oil to go to Texas refineries.
However, I will concede one point: ANWR isn't our best source of oil. By some estimates, the equivalent of an entire Saudi Arabia lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico, totally untapped.
Just think of what we could do with that. Arabs in a snit? Inflation wreaking havoc with the economy? No problem. Just increase the output. Not having enough local production is like not having enough control over the money supply. Greenspan can adjust the interest rate. We ought to be able to adjust our energy rates too.
You have to get the hydrogen from some energy-intensive process anyway. Either you are refactoring fossil fuels, or using nuclear to split water, or some other energy intensive process. Sure, you could use solar to do some of that, but you could use solar to charge electric cars too--if you want to turn the entire Desert Southwest into one giant panel farm. Of course, solar hurts the environment too. Yep, you heard me. That giant panel farm alters the "albedo" aka reflectivity of the Earth, which changes weather patterns. Nevermind that the shade would also alter the desert ecosystem.
What we should be doing is encouraging advanced modular hybrid technology. Idling and braking waste huge quantities of fuel. With modular hybrid systems (think, multiple small engines you can lift out of your car and swap like video cards) we would encourage innovation in conversion efficiency and alternative fuels. Also, drill ANWR. Yep, that's right. Drill the SOB. Send the environmentalists to the Middle East and see if they can persuade them to stop pumping for a change.
Just once I'd like to see our leadership encourage conservation and local production.
Republicans need to pull their heads out of their posteriors and realize that conservation!=anti business. Democrats need to do the same thing and realize that production!=destruction.
I'm not optimistic that any of this will happen anytime soon. It makes too much sense.
Oola.la!
I heard that there's a 'Linux' beer that's free
Yes, and it's very popular in the 3rd world. Of course this is Linux were talking about here. It doesn't come in a bottle. It comes in a burlap sack, and you have to configure it yourself, but it's definitely free.
This reminds me of the prof who told us about the "op-amp" from the tube days. For those not familiar, an op-amp is supposed to approximate infinite impedance on two inputs, and infinite gain on one output based on the difference between those two inputs. Modern op-amps are integrated circuits available in single-unit packages the size of a pinkie-nail. They have about 10-20 transistors in them.
With the addition of a few simple parts, op-amps can be used to build a wide variety of circuits such as oscillators, amplifiers, VCOs, etc. Of course these things can also be built without op-amps using fewer parts, but op-amps greatly simplify design and are a common teaching tool in electrical engineering courses.
The tube op-amp, in it's most refined form before the introduction of transistors, was described by this prof as "about the size of a can of soda, and hot as a firecracker".
Paragraph 1 I can agree with.
It's why open source is a grass roots movement. We aim to capture hearts and minds on a fundamental and righteous level. We target the wallet second.
I don't see Open Source as grass roots. It has a decidedly elitist flavor to it. RMS attended MIT, and his FSF was bankrolled by the McArthur foundation and charitable donations, many from corporations. Linus Torvalds is a Finish expatriot. ESR and Bruce Perens splintered off from the FSF with aims to make Free Software more palatable for business. Many of the major contributors to FS/OSS work in an academic setting where pride in being "better than the unwashed masses" is a given. This can't be described as "grass roots", at least this is not the US concept of the term as I know it.
Open source saves the government money. Open source would create more governemnt jobs
At this point, my head almost exploded.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
The Left told us that we couldn't build smokestacks. So heavy industry left. The Left told us we couldn't drill for oil. So the rigs left. The Left told us we couldn't build nuke plants. So the nukes left. The Left drove union wages sky high. So the remaining non-polluting industrial jobs left.
Faced with this situation, the ever industrious people of the US turned to IP--"movies, music, and microcode" as it was so eloquently put, are now the primary engine of the economy. So naturally the Left hates that.
If you don't like an IP-based economy, fine. What are you going to replace it with?
OK, I don't oppose it totally, but I got your attention, didn't I? I oppose an ideological bent in either direction.
When the government decides what software to purchase, I want them purchasing what's best for the job. In a rapidly evolving field where improvements are still being made and maximum performance is critical, I don't want them installing OSS that's half the speed, purchasing twice the hardware, and training twice the staff just because "OSS is good".
OTOH, I don't want them mandating a "Windows only in department X" policy either; especially if department X is comprised of technicly literate people who "know how to handle their computers, thank-you very much".
I certainly don't want them installing $500 worth of MS server software when LAMP would have done just fine.
In other words, we don't need no stinkin' "you must consider OSS software" policy any more than we need a "you must use Windows" policy. They both suck equally.
And last but not least, I don't want the government developing software under GPL, EULA, or anything other than Public Domain, which is where all government works are supposed to be placed (of course, if they hired a contractor, then the contractor still gets to negotiate terms).
Actually, this is just another expression of a theme that runs through a lot of the stuff I write here: Ideological purity is always bad... except when it's good.
Reduce the filing and maintenance fees to zero.
WHAT!!!???
Here's why: Right now, the PTO is a cash cow for the government. They've got a nice little business going. PTO actually generates "profit" which helps the government fool us into believing they can balance a budget.
Filing and maintenance fees are only a small disincentive (if any) to wealthy lawyers and deep-pocketed corporations. Eliminating the fees won't spike the applications as much as you might think.
What would happen is that the PTO would have to be supported out of the general fund. They would have to figure out how to run on a budget, and what would they do? They would do many of the things that we want them to do: Stricter guidelines on what could be patented, elimination of the controversial software and business method categories, and fewer examiners.
Now, I wonder if we can slip this one in as "pro business" and fool them? Somehow I doubt it. Also, the city of Alexandria, Virginia would be pissed off because the huge new PTO complex being built there would have to find a new tenant.
Yeah. I ground up a Red Hat CD, and packed it into a cardboard tube; but when I lit the thing it just went "pfft".
This had been one of my pet peeves for a while, but I've pretty much given up on it. Time to face it: "powered" is now a synonym for "guided by", "makes up a major part of", "managed", "motivated", and perhaps others.
I can trace this back as early as the late 1970s Ramblin' Raft Race on the Potomac River. One of the boats had a big sign that said "POWERED BY BUD". Can anybody else cite an earlier usage?
I didn't say that cursive was as valuable as Shakespeare. I just said that it was valuable in a similar way. A laser printed e-mail is to a handwritten letter what "should I commit suicide?" is to "to be or not to be?".
Never tell me the odds.
Cursive isn't important, and if it died, we would be none the poorer for it.
Shakespeare isn't important, and if it died, we would be none the poorer for it.
/sarcasm. Good writing, like good literature, is art. It enriches our lives. After 3 years in a private school where we were made to do handwriting exercies as part of our morning routine, I had excellent script. It persisted until late highschool where it began to show signs of distress. It slowly declined and really started to die when I got a computer job. I miss it. I keep telling myself that at some point I'll find those tracing papers and take it up again... but I can't find the time. I used to get complements for it, and now I actually find that I'm uncomfortable writing, and there are times when writing is still very useful--like leaving notes by the phone and stuff.
A virtual balloon. In other words, the force-field isn't used to push the ship up. Instead, the force field is used to create a bubble on top of the ship, which is then evacuated of air. Helium balloons routinely lift payloads to 100,000 feet, or approximately 20 miles.
What keeps us using rockets to get off the launch pad is the incredible size of the balloon that would be required to lift a booster capable of covering the rest of the distance, and the awkward transition from buoyant flight to thrust flight.
With a force-field generated vacuum on the upper surface of the ship, the size of the balloon would be subject only to environmental concerns about displacing too much atmosphere, and the transition to thrusted flight wouldn't involve disposing a balloon or some other risky maneuver.
If the force-field didn't require too much power input (that's the big problem) then the first 20 miles would indeed be as free as the maximum altitude for a balloon.
Interesting side notes: At least one early science-fiction author suggested using evacuated metal spheres as a means of obtaining high-altitude flight, perhaps even space flight. Of course the problem there is that the spheres would have to be made of unobtanium. IIRC, at least one X-prize contestant has proposed using a balloon, but I haven't kept track of their progress.
Escaping the atmosphere. If the force-field can be generated without consuming too much power, then you can create a "virtual balloon" above your ship, and get the first 20 miles or so for nothing. Then you fire up the regular rockets.
Of course, since they are talking about temperaturs of 70,000K it doesn't sound like this will be competitive with rocket boosters anytime soon.
PNG allows up to 16-bits per channel and has full alpha last time I checked. It can store just about anything, and it's non-lossy.
OTOH, you've got the tools that are supposed to allow you to have only 2n image converters, but the interchange formats for that (PPM, PBM, PNM, others?) seem to always have some shortcoming, and they always have to introduce yet another interchange format! PNG does it all in one neat little compressed format.
So forget about scrapping GIF in favor of PNG. Instead, scrap PPM, etc. in favor of PNG. If it doesn't support it already, PNG could be made to support arbitrary bit depth, and arbitrary channels (inverse hyperkinetic bump blending, or whatever you can imagine).
For the web, in most cases, PNG's capabilities don't add much--unless you are doing something really flashy with your website, in which case you probably use Flash, in which case you have nothing meaningful to say so I ignore you anyway. :)
At any rate, PNGs (at least the RGB channels) are properly supported by all the major browsers, so if something happens to compress better in PNG, or if you really need full color depth in a non-lossy image, why not use PNG?
That about sums it up: GIF--color depth not important, crisp lines important, compression important. JPEG--color depth important, crisp lines not important, compression important. PNG--color depth and crisp lines both important, compression not as important (or the image just happens to compress well with PNG).
In some ways, this is a variation on the "better, faster, cheaper" dilemma.
Now, the scenario that favors PNG may be less common, but it's nice to know we can reach for it when we need it.
An even if Microsoft had a patent, you could still find plenty of reasons to sue.
That's a truism.
A patent doesn't mean you'll win a lawsuit, and not having a patent doesn't mean you can't sue.
I never made either statement. I simply said that having a patent makes it easier to win any potential suit, and less likely that you will be sued. If you are sued then by default, you are the patent holder, and the other guy has to overturn your patent.
Of course nothing can prevent you 100% from being sued, and no legal defense is 100% effective, but I think that goes without saying.
In other words, that's a truism.
I didn't prove your point, and I have no idea what would make you think that.
This boils down to a statement of opposition and nothing more.
You're argument seems to have evaporated like the Chesire cat, and left me with nothing but a grin.
Well, I could counterpoint with a long list of arguments backed up by logic, statistics, sources, and citations; but with a name like "Bunhill" why bother?
Heh-heh. Bunhill. :)
D***it. That's what I get for pressing TAB in an IE text entry window. Let me continue...
if (user_chooses(DOOR_NUMBER_1 | DOOR_NUMBER_3)) { user=loser; }
Until they actually find code like that, they don't have perfect proof. However, given that the payout on this wager is a simple "double or nothing" I think we could expect the odds to be similar to the odds of double-or-nothing wagers in other types of gambling, which are not that long. So, they certainly have heavy empirical evidence of cheating.
This is interesting in another way. Are slot machines all over the place in the UK? Does every town have places with slots? Here in the US, you usually have to drive a good distance. Nearest slots that I can think of are an hours drive, and I live in a major metropolitan area.
Perhaps the UK should look to Las Vegas. I understand they take this kind of thing very seriously. People do real jail time for cheating in Vegas. After all, it's part of their claim to fame, and they are very concerned about protecting their rep for fair play. OTOH, if slots are in every corner bar, then you don't have the same kind of pride, and it doesn't surprise me that organizations are more willing to compromise their reputation like that. Also, I believe that in Vegas you have to have odds for everything on the machine posted; but I'm not sure about the time frame on the payouts for slots.
OK, so they can reload the previous state, but if the odds of winning are really long (as opposed to absolutely zero) then they could reload the previous state many times, not win, and have no real proof of cheating. The real proof would come with a line of code that went something like this:
Ahem, I meant that it doesn't take any real cause to start a lawsuit
JUDGE.EXE has caused a general protection fault in module VALIDCOZ.DLL...
If someone wants to sue Microsoft, they can find ample reason, wether Microsoft has a patent or not.
Yes. For example, "we're suing Microsoft because we hold the patent on Interactive Entertainment". Thank-you for proving my point.
The truth is, it takes nothing to start a lawsuit...
LEGALFEE.EXE has caused an invalid page fault in BILLABLE.DLL. This post will be shut down. If this problem persists, please think before you post or contact a lawyer who will start a lawsuit for nothing.
Either Verizon, as others have mentioned, or perhaps his older children (scroll to the bottom for a family photo).
"Daddy, you and your buddies are making lousy laws. Stop it!" in that whiney teenage voice can be pretty persuasive. "I'll promise to get off the phone more if you do something about it". "Repeal the DMCA or I'll pierce my tongue, and YOU CAN'T STOP ME".
You mean like the green and yellow rocks from The Land of the Lost?
Beware of Sleestak!
There were five topic icons for this story: Security, Technology/IT, Software, Windows, and Operating Systems. Everything on /. is Technology/IT. Should that icon even exist? Windows* is a subset of Operating Systems, which is a subset of Software. Since we all know that, the last two are redundant.
The only topic icons that really make sense for this story are Windows and Security.
Is there a compelling reason to have so many topic icons, or are the /. editors just infatuated with their relatively new multiple-icon toy?
This sounds a lot like nimdA. If it's using the same mechanism as nimdA then yes, they should have patched eons ago.