Forget biases, plans, etc
on
Mock World Vote
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The reality is that control of Congress is not going to change with this election. The current administration is too efficient at implementing its agenda. I'd be saying this if they were all Democrats, too.
Getting opposite parties between Congress and the Presidency is one simple, overriding reason to vote for Kerry. Extremes at both ends will get blocked out by one party or the other. What *really* needs to get done will get done because both will work together on it.
Most of what both left and right really want to get done, doesn't really need to be done. The *real and immediate* needs of the country *will* get done, under thread of the voters' wrath. Unfortunately those less obvious *needs* probably won't get done, but they probably wouldn't have under same-party rule, either.
The mooon flight happened for ME. I was 13 then, and glued to the TV that whole day watching the coverage. Position the rapid progress of the Lunar mission against the-pop culture like "2001: ASO," and I actually thought I might, as an ordinary person, be able to make an admittedly expensive vacation into orbit during my lifetime.
YOU want it during YOUR lifetime? I'd like to see us not have dropped the ball completely, during MY lifetime, which is about half-over. Hopes for middle-class-afordable orbital access are pretty much shot. Heck, hopes for continuing existence of the middle class seem to be going down the drain, too.
As for a ark? For Mars, I favor the "Pork Chop Express," (with a wink'n'nod to Kurt Russell, in "Big Trouble In Little China") named after the so-called pork-chop plot of Earth/Mars transit orbits. Picture a habitat (or several) of some sort remaining in the Earth/Mars transition orbit. When the right time comes around, boost from Earth and match speed with the habitat. Get in and ride to Mars. At Mars, get out and de-boost in another vehicle into Mars orbit.
The key is to boost your Earth/Mars transfer vehicle (the habitat) into that orbit *once*. Thereafter, you only boost people and supplies. That lets the habitat become more spacious and better shielded, since its recurring costs are lowered. The trip is supposed to be the worst part, after all. There's only an opportunity for Mars every two years or so, but the window is a few months wide. Eventually it would be nice to have several transfer habitats.
Read "On beyond Zebra," by Dr. Seuss, for some more letters after Z. We made the mistake of buying that book for our son before he had his alphabet fully crystalized. (or frozen, integrated, internalized, or whatever term you want to use.) We had to hide the book, and it took a while to break him of the 'extra letters' after Z. They had much better pictures and rhymes than the plain old alphabet.
Our patent attorneys always told me that you couldn't patent a new use of an old idea. For me, that meant that simply taking an old off-chip function and moving it on-chip was not patentable. What WAS patentable the other bits and pieces necessary to moving that function on-chip. Seldom can you take an idea from one realm and move it directly to another, it takes work and adaptation. I was told to focus on that work and adaptation for patentability.
By that light, it would not be application of seacrete to coral reefs or sculptures that is itself patentable. Rather it would be other specifics that makes seacrete usable for coral reefs or sculptures that are patentable.
But then, I received my patent education in the 'old days,' possibly even before many/.'ers were born. Things have changed, IMHO largely for the worse.
I believe others have said this, but it bears repeating.
In order to diversify from the current two-party system, we'd need a different method of counting votes. With the current simple method, voting for a third-party is usually the same as discarding your vote. Alternative voting schemes would allow for things like second-choice, etc. Schemes like this would permit the emergence of third parties, by allowing you to vote FOR someone while still effectively voting AGAINST someone else. The Liberal could vote FOR the Greens without it effectively becoming a vote for the Republicans. Likewise the Conservative could vote FOR the Libertarian without it effectively becoming a vote for the Democrats.
Interestingly enough, a change like this does not have to happen at a national level. The Constitution confers rights for running elections to the States. Voting changes could happen on a state-by-state basis. But even at a State level, Republicans and Democrats probably wouldn't like the idea.
Do you mean 'win the election' or 'legitimately win the election?' The big fun about electronic voting, as emerging into practice, is that it makes it impossible to tell the difference.
Actually, you can patent "apparatus" and "methods" of implementing an idea. Apparatus is a set of things, and methods are effectively algorithms. But I believe methods require apparatus, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
Step out of software for a moment and think in the old days of hardware. Let's say I design a circuit for autocalibrating I/O strength of a chip. (I actually haven't, but it's a good example.) The gates, FETs, etc that implement that circuit are the apparatus part of the patent. The algorithm I imbed on the tester/controller/CPU/whatever becomes the method part of the patent. I don't believe I would be able to patent a method on top of someone else's apparatus. But the method is a key part of describing my apparatus and its operation.
I usually agree with you. For that matter, I was disappointed when the original War of the Worlds came out, because they'd moved the setting into contemporary times. I was hoping to see the big mechanical tripods, but I like the retro look, so I'm also looking forward to seeing Sky Captain.
But I have one counter example: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
I first saw this as a low-budget PBS movie starring Raol Julia. Sometime later, I came across the short story by John Varley. It seemed to me that the short story had a bunch of excess crap, and the movie cut right to the core theme. I wonder if this is because I saw the movie first. I wonder if I had read the story first, I would have thought, "They cut out all the details!"
Out of curiousity, what *are* the right materials for storing hydrogen? What are some common hydrogen diffusion rates?
A quick search on "hydrogen" "storage" or "hydrogen" "storage" "diffusion" turned up lots of hits about metal hydrides, and how they can store it more densely than H2 gas or even liquid.
As long as the code stays open, and as long as there isn't skullduggery where netApp gets a change pushed into the kernel for the purpose of hindering one of their competitors.
Before and after corporate involvement, Linux was about the struggle for excellence. That aligns simply with corporations and others, since they want the best computing base they can get. As long as coporate contributions are pushing in that same direction, great.
I don't see any kernel maintainers knowingly including skullduggerous code.
To give them a little (very little) slack... Some form of the password has to be stored away, so you can validate the user-input password. But this shouldn't be rocket science, since SSH, PGP, GPG, and even PasswordSafe have done exactly this type of thing for aeons. All Lexar has done is put it on a little piece of solid-state removable storage.
Either they're horribly naive about this stuff, and could/should have done a better job; Or the constraints of the device wouldn't let (How can this be on a multi-MB device, I dunno.) do a better job, in which case they shouldn't have brought it to market.
Then add the INDUCE act, and the chilling effect it will have on new products, and there will be even *more* incentive to do business in China, including R&D.
Example: You invent the new Gizmo, and it starts to look like a market success. But then someone discovers that you can use it to store/swap music. Then it comes to the attention of the RIAA, who notifies the DA that the Gizmo has become a "criminal copright-breaking device." Litigation time!
Instead: Do all of the R&D in China. Sell in China, export to the US. When threatened in the US under INDUCE, simply withdraw Gizmo from the US market. Is the US market worth the legal hassles? If need be for additional protection, make sure Gizmo is developed and manufactured by a corporate shelter of some sort in China. Then the US company "just" markets it, and can completely disassociate itself from the product. I presume investment/ownership of the shelter company can be properly hidden by the right legal constructs.
Still, the net effect is that innovation has been driven out of the US. Voting this morning was really tough, because Leahy was in the Primary this morning, and I had to decide between the lesser of two evils, the INDUCE Act or giving up a senior spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller rode the Comet. I was even posted on Slashdot: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115312 &cid=9770946 In Penn's article, he mentions another noteworthy Vomit Comet expedition: The filming of the Pr0n movie, "The Uranus Experiment."
Oops. I just saw someone else referring to Vivendi.
Last I heard about ownership of Beatles music was when Sesame Street was getting sued over the song "Letter B," (obviously) a take-off of "Let It Be." I guess it didn't fall under fair use.
They ended up paying the check to Michael Jackson. At the time, the former members of the Beatles didn't even want to sue - they thought was Sesame Street had done was funny. But they didn't own their music, any more. Incidentally, the suit wasn't initiated by Michael Jackson, but some prior owner of the rights.
Just a few feet further and we can privatize the roads. Then put tollbooths on our sections. Won't need a speedtrap too, since the tollbooths won't let you get up any speed, to speak of.
I'm sure Vivendi doesn't want Apple Computer to get out of this simply. The iPod and iTunes are a threat to their business model, and I'm sure they would like to see both just go away. Never mind that others have the same concept, let's squash this one. Next...
I wasn't talking control. On that, I agree with you. I was talking merely about license implications of sendmail caving. I'll presume if/when Microsoft were to assert licensing fees, it would be interesting to see who they went after for sendmail. (sendmail, inc or users) No doubt they'd offer them a nifty deal on switching to Exchange.
But sendmail has both free and paid versions. How many sendmail installations use the paid version, and how many use the free? Has sendmail released a free version with the Microsoft art? Can they, legally?
Just looked, and free sendmail was released under BSD, so it looks like they really have caved.
Anyone familiar with licensing of qmail, Postfix, and Exim?
Because most companies want to just go on making money the same way they did, yesterday and the day before that. To try making money another way is to RISK, and once a company has 'made it,' RISK is one of the last things they want.
It doesn't matter that they might make more money by changing - they might not. It's the small companies with little to lose that take risks. To give credit, some large companies take risks, too.
But I suspect government-regulated monopolies are amoung the most risk-averse companies.
Slashdot Mirror
The reality is that control of Congress is not going to change with this election. The current administration is too efficient at implementing its agenda. I'd be saying this if they were all Democrats, too.
Getting opposite parties between Congress and the Presidency is one simple, overriding reason to vote for Kerry. Extremes at both ends will get blocked out by one party or the other. What *really* needs to get done will get done because both will work together on it.
Most of what both left and right really want to get done, doesn't really need to be done. The *real and immediate* needs of the country *will* get done, under thread of the voters' wrath. Unfortunately those less obvious *needs* probably won't get done, but they probably wouldn't have under same-party rule, either.
The mooon flight happened for ME. I was 13 then, and glued to the TV that whole day watching the coverage. Position the rapid progress of the Lunar mission against the-pop culture like "2001: ASO," and I actually thought I might, as an ordinary person, be able to make an admittedly expensive vacation into orbit during my lifetime.
YOU want it during YOUR lifetime? I'd like to see us not have dropped the ball completely, during MY lifetime, which is about half-over. Hopes for middle-class-afordable orbital access are pretty much shot. Heck, hopes for continuing existence of the middle class seem to be going down the drain, too.
As for a ark? For Mars, I favor the "Pork Chop Express," (with a wink'n'nod to Kurt Russell, in "Big Trouble In Little China") named after the so-called pork-chop plot of Earth/Mars transit orbits. Picture a habitat (or several) of some sort remaining in the Earth/Mars transition orbit.
When the right time comes around, boost from Earth and match speed with the habitat. Get in and ride to Mars. At Mars, get out and de-boost in another vehicle into Mars orbit.
The key is to boost your Earth/Mars transfer vehicle (the habitat) into that orbit *once*. Thereafter, you only boost people and supplies. That lets the habitat become more spacious and better shielded, since its recurring costs are lowered. The trip is supposed to be the worst part, after all. There's only an opportunity for Mars every two years or so, but the window is a few months wide. Eventually it would be nice to have several transfer habitats.
Read "On beyond Zebra," by Dr. Seuss, for some more letters after Z. We made the mistake of buying that book for our son before he had his alphabet fully crystalized. (or frozen, integrated, internalized, or whatever term you want to use.) We had to hide the book, and it took a while to break him of the 'extra letters' after Z. They had much better pictures and rhymes than the plain old alphabet.
Our patent attorneys always told me that you couldn't patent a new use of an old idea. For me, that meant that simply taking an old off-chip function and moving it on-chip was not patentable. What WAS patentable the other bits and pieces necessary to moving that function on-chip. Seldom can you take an idea from one realm and move it directly to another, it takes work and adaptation. I was told to focus on that work and adaptation for patentability.
/.'ers were born. Things have changed, IMHO largely for the worse.
By that light, it would not be application of seacrete to coral reefs or sculptures that is itself patentable. Rather it would be other specifics that makes seacrete usable for coral reefs or sculptures that are patentable.
But then, I received my patent education in the 'old days,' possibly even before many
I believe others have said this, but it bears repeating.
In order to diversify from the current two-party system, we'd need a different method of counting votes. With the current simple method, voting for a third-party is usually the same as discarding your vote. Alternative voting schemes would allow for things like second-choice, etc. Schemes like this would permit the emergence of third parties, by allowing you to vote FOR someone while still effectively voting AGAINST someone else. The Liberal could vote FOR the Greens without it effectively becoming a vote for the Republicans. Likewise the Conservative could vote FOR the Libertarian without it effectively becoming a vote for the Democrats.
Interestingly enough, a change like this does not have to happen at a national level. The Constitution confers rights for running elections to the States. Voting changes could happen on a state-by-state basis. But even at a State level, Republicans and Democrats probably wouldn't like the idea.
Do you mean 'win the election' or 'legitimately win the election?' The big fun about electronic voting, as emerging into practice, is that it makes it impossible to tell the difference.
When you say 'extends' are you meaning an extension of your own patent, or extending someone else's?
If you're extending someone else's, I thought you had to have some apparatus, as well as method.
Wanted: Quantum Mechanic, must bring own tools.
Actually, you can patent "apparatus" and "methods" of implementing an idea. Apparatus is a set of things, and methods are effectively algorithms. But I believe methods require apparatus, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
Step out of software for a moment and think in the old days of hardware. Let's say I design a circuit for autocalibrating I/O strength of a chip. (I actually haven't, but it's a good example.) The gates, FETs, etc that implement that circuit are the apparatus part of the patent. The algorithm I imbed on the tester/controller/CPU/whatever becomes the method part of the patent. I don't believe I would be able to patent a method on top of someone else's apparatus. But the method is a key part of describing my apparatus and its operation.
IANAL
But their bosses did care about humanity's heritage.
If you liked "Childhood's End", try reading "The Harvest" by Robert Charles Wilson. After that, read "Blood Music" by Greg Bear.
I usually agree with you. For that matter, I was disappointed when the original War of the Worlds came out, because they'd moved the setting into contemporary times. I was hoping to see the big mechanical tripods, but I like the retro look, so I'm also looking forward to seeing Sky Captain.
But I have one counter example: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
I first saw this as a low-budget PBS movie starring Raol Julia. Sometime later, I came across the short story by John Varley. It seemed to me that the short story had a bunch of excess crap, and the movie cut right to the core theme. I wonder if this is because I saw the movie first. I wonder if I had read the story first, I would have thought, "They cut out all the details!"
I tried to say that, in the next paragraph. I'm not worried.
>Should we stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia? Buying oil from a despotic Saudi Arabia gives me the freedom to drive an SUV without paying 5$/gallon.
You forgot the smiley on that.
I hope.
Out of curiousity, what *are* the right materials for storing hydrogen?
What are some common hydrogen diffusion rates?
A quick search on "hydrogen" "storage" or "hydrogen" "storage" "diffusion" turned up lots of hits about metal hydrides, and how they can store it more densely than H2 gas or even liquid.
As long as the code stays open, and as long as there isn't skullduggery where netApp gets a change pushed into the kernel for the purpose of hindering one of their competitors.
Before and after corporate involvement, Linux was about the struggle for excellence. That aligns simply with corporations and others, since they want the best computing base they can get. As long as coporate contributions are pushing in that same direction, great.
I don't see any kernel maintainers knowingly including skullduggerous code.
To give them a little (very little) slack... Some form of the password has to be stored away, so you can validate the user-input password. But this shouldn't be rocket science, since SSH, PGP, GPG, and even PasswordSafe have done exactly this type of thing for aeons. All Lexar has done is put it on a little piece of solid-state removable storage.
Either they're horribly naive about this stuff, and could/should have done a better job;
Or the constraints of the device wouldn't let (How can this be on a multi-MB device, I dunno.) do a better job, in which case they shouldn't have brought it to market.
Then add the INDUCE act, and the chilling effect it will have on new products, and there will be even *more* incentive to do business in China, including R&D.
Example: You invent the new Gizmo, and it starts to look like a market success. But then someone discovers that you can use it to store/swap music. Then it comes to the attention of the RIAA, who notifies the DA that the Gizmo has become a "criminal copright-breaking device." Litigation time!
Instead: Do all of the R&D in China. Sell in China, export to the US. When threatened in the US under INDUCE, simply withdraw Gizmo from the US market. Is the US market worth the legal hassles? If need be for additional protection, make sure Gizmo is developed and manufactured by a corporate shelter of some sort in China. Then the US company "just" markets it, and can completely disassociate itself from the product. I presume investment/ownership of the shelter company can be properly hidden by the right legal constructs.
Still, the net effect is that innovation has been driven out of the US. Voting this morning was really tough, because Leahy was in the Primary this morning, and I had to decide between the lesser of two evils, the INDUCE Act or giving up a senior spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller rode the Comet. I was even posted on Slashdot: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115312 &cid=9770946
In Penn's article, he mentions another noteworthy Vomit Comet expedition: The filming of the Pr0n movie, "The Uranus Experiment."
Oops. I just saw someone else referring to Vivendi.
Last I heard about ownership of Beatles music was when Sesame Street was getting sued over the song "Letter B," (obviously) a take-off of "Let It Be." I guess it didn't fall under fair use.
They ended up paying the check to Michael Jackson. At the time, the former members of the Beatles didn't even want to sue - they thought was Sesame Street had done was funny. But they didn't own their music, any more. Incidentally, the suit wasn't initiated by Michael Jackson, but some prior owner of the rights.
Now we just have to hope that this map doesn't get put to terrorist uses. Maybe Homer should moonlight for DHS, next season.
Just a few feet further and we can privatize the roads. Then put tollbooths on our sections. Won't need a speedtrap too, since the tollbooths won't let you get up any speed, to speak of.
I'm sure Vivendi doesn't want Apple Computer to get out of this simply. The iPod and iTunes are a threat to their business model, and I'm sure they would like to see both just go away. Never mind that others have the same concept, let's squash this one. Next...
I wasn't talking control. On that, I agree with you. I was talking merely about license implications of sendmail caving. I'll presume if/when Microsoft were to assert licensing fees, it would be interesting to see who they went after for sendmail. (sendmail, inc or users) No doubt they'd offer them a nifty deal on switching to Exchange.
But sendmail has both free and paid versions. How many sendmail installations use the paid version, and how many use the free? Has sendmail released a free version with the Microsoft art? Can they, legally?
Just looked, and free sendmail was released under BSD, so it looks like they really have caved.
Anyone familiar with licensing of qmail, Postfix, and Exim?
Because most companies want to just go on making money the same way they did, yesterday and the day before that. To try making money another way is to RISK, and once a company has 'made it,' RISK is one of the last things they want.
It doesn't matter that they might make more money by changing - they might not. It's the small companies with little to lose that take risks. To give credit, some large companies take risks, too.
But I suspect government-regulated monopolies are amoung the most risk-averse companies.