Really. So the year you spent in the garage devising you new compression method was not labor.
Moreover if the result of your cogitations can be built in fine Taiwanese plastic, you get 17 years protection, but if it's embodyment is a floppy disk you get zero years protection.
IF fostering inventions is a worthwhile social goal, it surely is worthwhile for mechanical, chemical (such as drugs) and software discoveries.
At any rate, you are still missing the point. Hypothetically, if city council makes a motion to turn your house into a public park, I'll vote in favor since I like green spaces, while you of course will vote against it, because you would loose your house.
Questioning both of our motives (yours and mine) makes eminent sense, and in the hypothetical house case, property rights would back you up.
When somebody opposes "all software patents" as opposed to just patently stupid ones (pun intended) we should question the motives behind this masive appropriation of intelectual labour by the state.
I think all software patents are wrong. I do not allow exceptions.
I'm sure your opinion would change --along with almost everyone else's here-- if you had spent a year and your entire savings designing a revolutionary compression algorithm that fits every movie ever made in a 1GB memory stick, only to have Real Audio rip said algorithm off and incorporate it in their player with no payments to you.
Essentially, you speak from the high moral ground afforded to you because by having nothing at stake in software patents, yet having much to loose (at least in principle) shall software patents continue to exist.
Disclaimer: None of the above justifies stupid patents.
Re:James P. Hogan: "Suggested NASA Experiment" 199
on
Testing Relativity
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The only way to test this empirically would be to sit on an incoming muon and observe whether the laboratory clocks (at rest in the field) also slow down (as the observer-referred SRT holds) or speed up (as a field-referred theory would predict). This has never been done. (A whole literature exists on all this, but I don't think that here would be the place to elaborate further.)
This has been done, many times. Parent post is a crackpot.
Many friends had to scour heaven and earth to find brand name laptops without Windows on them. A mere few years ago the same applied to desktops, only after the previous monopoly settlement did it become somewhat less cumbersome to buy a brand name non-Windows PC.
There is significant artwork extant showing that the U imposed on an S is the basis of the 'dollar sign.' Mexican nationalism and pride all aside.
All this proves is that the US was making variations on a theme that was already well established. To wit:
One of the most popular theories is that the dollar sign is derived from the initials of the United States. If you superimpose a capital "U" on a capital "S" then drop the lower part of the "U", what you end up with is a version of the dollar symbol with two strokes. This theory was endorsed by the American libertarian philosopher and staunch defender of capitalism, Ayn Rand, in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Chapter 10 is entitled the Sign of the Dollar. Rand claimed the dollar sign was the symbol not only of the currency, but also the nation, a free economy, and a free mind.
The Peso Abbreviation and Piece of Eight Theories
However, a more widely accepted theory nowadays is that the sign owes its origins to the Spanish peso.
One version of this theory is that the standard abbreviation of "peso" was simply "P", but the plural form was a large "P" with a small "s" above it and to its right. This was simplified by retaining only the upward stroke of the "P" and superimposing the "S" upon it. Hence the symbol of the dollar.
See:
Dreyfuss, Henry Symbol source book : an authoritative guide to international graphic symbols. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1972.
If the peso abbreviation theory is the correct one why is the US dollar sign sometimes written with two vertical strokes? A possible explanation is that the best known Spanish Peso coin had two pillars engraved on the reverse side to symbolise the "Pillars of Hercules" at Gibraltar and the words "Plus Ultra" indicating that beyond the Pillars of Hercules there were other lands. That coin was called the Pillar Dollar in the British colonies in North America and the two pillars may have become the two strokes in the Dollar sign.
For brief information on the "Pillar Dollar" see:
Nussbaum, Arthur A history of the dollar. New York : Columbia U.P., 1957.
In the early date, the coinage of New Spain and Mexico runs into billions, and their Pieces of Eight (Silver Reales) and pesos served as the standard medium of exchange in the United States, the Philippines, China, and many European markets. The first, or Continental currency of the United States of America, was made payable in Spanish milled dollars. The Mexican Silver Peso and its subdivisions were legal tender in this country until February 21, 1857, when by Act of Congress, all laws authorizing its circulation and acceptance were repealed. Up to June 30, 1862, the sum of $2,103,275.74 in Mexican coins had been accepted by the United States Federal offices.
The historical meaning of $ is a U superimposed on an S.
You need to review your history, back to the day when the Mexican silver peso was the main mode of currency in the US (silver dollars, while struck not long after independence were not in widespread circulation until the mid XIX century).
The dollar symbol comes from the columns of Hercules in the Spanish crown crest. Crest that naturally was struck in the back of Mexican silver pesos during the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries (you do know Mexico was once part of Spain, don't you?).
In fact, Polaroid (IIRC)in its previous incarnation invented the first megapixel digital camera back in 1990 or so.
Actually Kodak was hard at work on digital photograpy before that. When they realized there was a good chance they would lose the Polaroid lawsuit, Kodak went full force ahead trying to develop a passable quality digital camera that would produce instant or near instant pictures. The failed result of those efforts was marketed as the Kodak disk.
The article alleges that current search services like Google manage to access less than 1% of the web.
There's a useless statistic if you ask me.
I just wrote a cgi script that, upon requesting the url "http://bogus.com/nnnnn" returns a page with the text "nnnnn" where nnnnn is any number up to 1000 digits long. So there, I just added 10^1000 pages to the "deep web" of which google indexes none! (gasp).
So there, Google now indexes less than 0.001% of the deep web.
I think humbleness is sorely lacking amongst people with talent.
Is it? I never heard people bitching about Tiger or Shaq or Favre for stating that they intended to win the championship. On the contrary people would praise their go-get-em attitude. But if a bright scientist states that he intends to win the Nobel prize, eyes roll and people say he isn't humble... why the diff?
I have learned, from extensive experience, that news reporting as to details is terribly weak.
That was my experience with the (in)famous McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit. When I first heard about it I thought it was the dumbest thing I ever heard. Then on a whim I took the time to read through the entire court papers and learning about the details that get left out of the press reports and suddenly the thing makes a lot of sense. One can certainly see why the jury ruled the way they did.
I shouldn't have to say this, but "ideally" (in planet Nice, with the pink fluffy rabbits) a project manager would take note about wether you hide behind a nickname to flame and troll, wether you were quick to anger, etc. (the qualities that make you less fit for a job involving human relationships) and not your opinions.
I don't know if the comparison is relevant. It is a bit like trying to predict how you will behave in a business meeting judging from a tape of the football game you attended with your buddies last weekend. Not much can be inferred, if you ask me./. is an informal forum of peers. Work is a professional setting with colleagues. Sure, extremely aggressive behaviour in/. is unlikely to be curtailed when at work, but if we are to extend this to general pettiness, I think this pretty much would disqualify anybody who ever posted or moderated here in/.
You forget that the settlements in Mars would surely be built around the Equator. The mean surface temperature at the equator is a good 60F degrees higher. I would pressume it would get very cold at night, though, just like in Earth's deserts.
I doubt it. Search engine land was taken over by the 64 bit federation in 1996 or so...
Seriously, I bet they delta-encode most of their page numbers, which means that for most space sensitive usage both 4-byte and 8-byte result in the same amount of space usage...
Then again, barring a definitive statement from a googler it could be either way.
This might have more to do with you not being very familiar with the topics touched in NKS than with actual original contributions of Wolfram. A friend who is well versed in CA, who thoroughly read the book, and wasn't particularly negative on it (lukewarm would be a better word), still said: "AFAICT there is only one new result in the book, the proof of universality of rule 1XX".
Wolfram is indeed a genius.He is up there with the likes of Stephen Hawking, just in a different field.
Wolfram has made no major contributions to science since his days at Caltech. Mathematica and NKS are minor incremental efforts over what was out there. This is in contrast to, say, Newton, who while building on others results, invented Calculus along the way.
Slashdot Mirror
No one appropriated intellectual labor,
Really. So the year you spent in the garage devising you new compression method was not labor.
Moreover if the result of your cogitations can be built in fine Taiwanese plastic, you get 17 years protection, but if it's embodyment is a floppy disk you get zero years protection.
IF fostering inventions is a worthwhile social goal, it surely is worthwhile for mechanical, chemical (such as drugs) and software discoveries.
Does not make what true?
At any rate, you are still missing the point. Hypothetically, if city council makes a motion to turn your house into a public park, I'll vote in favor since I like green spaces, while you of course will vote against it, because you would loose your house.
Questioning both of our motives (yours and mine) makes eminent sense, and in the hypothetical house case, property rights would back you up.
When somebody opposes "all software patents" as opposed to just patently stupid ones (pun intended) we should question the motives behind this masive appropriation of intelectual labour by the state.
I think all software patents are wrong. I do not allow exceptions.
I'm sure your opinion would change --along with almost everyone else's here-- if you had spent a year and your entire savings designing a revolutionary compression algorithm that fits every movie ever made in a 1GB memory stick, only to have Real Audio rip said algorithm off and incorporate it in their player with no payments to you.
Essentially, you speak from the high moral ground afforded to you because by having nothing at stake in software patents, yet having much to loose (at least in principle) shall software patents continue to exist.
Disclaimer: None of the above justifies stupid patents.
The only way to test this empirically would be to sit on an incoming muon and observe whether the laboratory clocks (at rest in the field) also slow down (as the observer-referred SRT holds) or speed up (as a field-referred theory would predict). This has never been done. (A whole literature exists on all this, but I don't think that here would be the place to elaborate further.)
This has been done, many times. Parent post is a crackpot.
you'd find that the PC's popularity had more to do with the fact that it wasn't locked to one particular manufacturer.
Nope. It was also critical that once the BIOS was cloned, you could get your hands on the OS.
Otherwise the Mac would have been cloned too long ago.
OpenLook? NeWS?
Best described as "embarrasingly amateurish" and "made motif look like Venus de Milo".
But, see, in his world, if you can do this at all, he wins his argument.
I'm not debating the bigger argument. I'm taking issue with the blatantly false statement that it is easy to get PCs without windows: It is not.
You can easily buy a PC without Windows on it...
This is false.
Many friends had to scour heaven and earth to find brand name laptops without Windows on them. A mere few years ago the same applied to desktops, only after the previous monopoly settlement did it become somewhat less cumbersome to buy a brand name non-Windows PC.
All this proves is that the US was making variations on a theme that was already well established. To wit:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/dollar.html
As I said you need to check your history:
In the early date, the coinage of New Spain and Mexico runs into billions, and their Pieces of Eight (Silver Reales) and pesos served as the standard medium of exchange in the United States, the Philippines, China, and many European markets. The first, or Continental currency of the United States of America, was made payable in Spanish milled dollars. The Mexican Silver Peso and its subdivisions were legal tender in this country until February 21, 1857, when by Act of Congress, all laws authorizing its circulation and acceptance were repealed. Up to June 30, 1862, the sum of $2,103,275.74 in Mexican coins had been accepted by the United States Federal offices.
http://www.wscoin.com/Info/Oct1003.htm
The historical meaning of $ is a U superimposed on an S.
You need to review your history, back to the day when the Mexican silver peso was the main mode of currency in the US (silver dollars, while struck not long after independence were not in widespread circulation until the mid XIX century).
The dollar symbol comes from the columns of Hercules in the Spanish crown crest. Crest that naturally was struck in the back of Mexican silver pesos during the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries (you do know Mexico was once part of Spain, don't you?).
In fact, Polaroid (IIRC)in its previous incarnation invented the first megapixel digital camera back in 1990 or so.
Actually Kodak was hard at work on digital photograpy before that. When they realized there was a good chance they would lose the Polaroid lawsuit, Kodak went full force ahead trying to develop a passable quality digital camera that would produce instant or near instant pictures. The failed result of those efforts was marketed as the Kodak disk.
The article alleges that current search services like Google manage to access less than 1% of the web.
There's a useless statistic if you ask me.
I just wrote a cgi script that, upon requesting the url "http://bogus.com/nnnnn" returns a page with the text "nnnnn" where nnnnn is any number up to 1000 digits long. So there, I just added 10^1000 pages to the "deep web" of which google indexes none! (gasp).
So there, Google now indexes less than 0.001% of the deep web.
I think humbleness is sorely lacking amongst people with talent.
Is it? I never heard people bitching about Tiger or Shaq or Favre for stating that they intended to win the championship. On the contrary people would praise their go-get-em attitude. But if a bright scientist states that he intends to win the Nobel prize, eyes roll and people say he isn't humble... why the diff?
I have learned, from extensive experience, that news reporting as to details is terribly weak.
That was my experience with the (in)famous McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit. When I first heard about it I thought it was the dumbest thing I ever heard. Then on a whim I took the time to read through the entire court papers and learning about the details that get left out of the press reports and suddenly the thing makes a lot of sense. One can certainly see why the jury ruled the way they did.
I shouldn't have to say this, but "ideally" (in planet Nice, with the pink fluffy rabbits) a project manager would take note about wether you hide behind a nickname to flame and troll, wether you were quick to anger, etc. (the qualities that make you less fit for a job involving human relationships) and not your opinions.
/. is an informal forum of peers. Work is a professional setting with colleagues. Sure, extremely aggressive behaviour in /. is unlikely to be curtailed when at work, but if we are to extend this to general pettiness, I think this pretty much would disqualify anybody who ever posted or moderated here in /.
I don't know if the comparison is relevant. It is a bit like trying to predict how you will behave in a business meeting judging from a tape of the football game you attended with your buddies last weekend. Not much can be inferred, if you ask me.
You forget that the settlements in Mars would surely be built around the Equator. The mean surface temperature at the equator is a good 60F degrees higher. I would pressume it would get very cold at night, though, just like in Earth's deserts.
Antarctica is more hospitable,
This is questionable. Mars is substantially warmer, for one.
RTFA. He explictly addresses this issue in the backgrounder to his latest article.
And that is exactly the type of denial that has Kodak trading at a twenty year low.
You must be a manager.
I doubt it. Search engine land was taken over by the 64 bit federation in 1996 or so...
Seriously, I bet they delta-encode most of their page numbers, which means that for most space sensitive usage both 4-byte and 8-byte result in the same amount of space usage...
Then again, barring a definitive statement from a googler it could be either way.
Videotoaster was very famous in its time. What would be the comparable tool today for that type of video editing?
and decided it wasn't to your taste.
I decided that it was wrong, which is a very different thing than "not to my taste".
I got quite a lot more out of the book than that.
This might have more to do with you not being very familiar with the topics touched in NKS than with actual original contributions of Wolfram. A friend who is well versed in CA, who thoroughly read the book, and wasn't particularly negative on it (lukewarm would be a better word), still said: "AFAICT there is only one new result in the book, the proof of universality of rule 1XX".
Wolfram is indeed a genius.He is up there with the likes of Stephen Hawking, just in a different field.
Wolfram has made no major contributions to science since his days at Caltech. Mathematica and NKS are minor incremental efforts over what was out there. This is in contrast to, say, Newton, who while building on others results, invented Calculus along the way.