Let me begin by saying that this post is *NOT* a deliberate troll.
Although I recognize that it might sound like one. It is actually a sincere question. I'm not taking sides here, I am simply trying to project what I think might potentially happen as a result of things like this. I am prefacing my comment with this disclaimer, because the one other time I pointed out what I am going to say below on slashdot, I ended up getting flagged at -1 troll within about 15 minutes or so of my post, from which I can only infer that people were not understanding my meaning, since I'm was not making the point to start an argument, rather because I wanted (and still want) people to think about the possible repercussions.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, does anyone think that it is possible that prolonged disputes like these might actually end up slowing the widespread adoption of IPv6? With IPv4, the number of potential addresses to have to block to effectively blacklist a site that the recognized powers have deemed offensive is substantially smaller than it could be with IPv6. Even though there may be many v4 IP's available right now, that number is still shrinking daily, and cannot possibly last more than a few more years. With a full-scale move to IPv6, even *hoping* to block an organization by IP would be completely impossible on any sort of time scale that humans could identify with, so would the organizations that are trying to shut off places like the pirate bay be lobbying to try to slow (or even halt) the adoption of IPv6, so that what they are trying to do here doesn't end up becoming completely unworkable? Why? Or why not?
I live in Western Canada, and we were supposed to get as much as 80% coverage of the sun at my location, near sunset. I even managed to secure some solar glasses especially for watching the event. It had been sunny for almost two whole weeks before the event, with barely a cloud in the sky. The eclipse happens and BAM... it's so freakin' overcast and rainy that you can't even tell which way the sun *IS*.
Before sunset the next day, the clouds had cleared, and it's been sunny ever since.
I would have thought it impossible to disable the VMWare service from *within* a VM... that one would require a special tool that effectively runs outside of any VM to do it.
Processes aren't necessarily abstract ideas either. Although you're right that patents can apply to things other than physical inventions, they are *NOT* supposed to apply to abstract ideas.
What's the emulated hardware organization like? The 6502 didn't actually have designated input or output instructions, so as I recall, a programmer had to read or write to specific memory locations that were hardware mapped to various devices, especially peripheral devices.
Discounting the memory mapped IO locations, how much RAM does the emulated system have to play with? What sort of firmware is loaded into the emulated ROM?
A given connection uses the same power, regardless of the amount of data which is transferred.
If that is the case, it is only because the amount of power being used is being regulated, regardless of what data is being transmitted, not because the amount of power actually needed is the same. Specifically, the amount of power being used in such a case would have to be sufficient to achieve whatever the maximum data transfer speed is. In reality, however, lower data transfer speeds literally *DO* take less power to achieve. If it's taking up the same power at a lower data transfer speed, then it is wasting energy.
Again, this is something that you could learn from any college level textbook on data communications.
No, actually, it's not bullshit. Higher data transfer rates genuinely do have higher power demands (and therefore consume more energy in a shorter duration) than lower data transfer speeds. Reductions in power at higher data transfer speeds that have been achieved so far are the result of improving technology that would actually save even more power at lower data transfer speeds, but in the end they are still facing an uphill battle. Just because you don't understand the laws of physics and their application to real-world data communications does not mean they do not actually exist.
I've had 4 terabytes of storage now for quite a few years and my actual total usage seems to have peaked at around 2 terabytes about a year ago. It hasn't changed much since.
Crime stats have indeed been falling in many areas... but those statistics are generally only per-capita. Populations, on the other hand, have always been growing. In general, populations tend to grow faster than how fast crime rates shrink, so the end result with all growing populations, even though crime rates can certainly be down, is that there is always more crime, overall, which requires more policing.
I have no problem with patents... I *DO* have a problem with patents being applied to things that the patent system explicitly says it's not supposed to be applied to: natural laws, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.
Mathematics is almost all (if not entirely) abstract ideas.... that you can sometimes do useful things with it simply follows from the usefulness of logic itself.
If you are having dinner with your friends, and they want to talk about the ending of Avengers, are you the guy who puts his fingers in his ears saying 'la la la la' don't tell me anything, and shutting down the conversation your friends are having?
No... I'm the guy with friends who have far more interesting things to talk about than just the ending to a popular TV show or movie they happened to recently see, so they will usually ask if I've already seen it and if the answer is no, it's no loss for them to not talk about it right then and there.
Math is not supposed to be patented though. Mathematics qualifies as an abstract idea, and abstract ideas are *explicitly* excluded from patentability (as are laws of nature and physical phenomena). It just gets muddier when somebody is able to demonstrate a practical application to such an abstract idea.
Next thing you know, somebody's going to be patenting trigonometry because of its application in determining the distance of objects using just two reference points and a third point on the object.
I was really excited to see this kind of technology until I saw the following on their website:
Leap Motion technology is a breakthrough in computer interaction, using a patented mathematical approach to 3D....
Patented? Mathematical? It's bad enough that companies are patenting software that is just obscured math, but now they are effing patenting mathematics itself????
This has so many levels of wrong written all over it, I can't begin to explain...
Detecting not only when you physically touch the screen, but also being able to detect where your hands or fingers are even *near* the screen? There could be some seriously cool applications for that.
1) There's no good way to generate DC using a mechanical system.
Actually, there is. A conductive disk in a magnetic field and spun such that its axis of revolution is parallel to the field will generate a measurable DC voltage between the center of the disk and its edge. Faraday had discovered this back in his day, and the underlying principle behind its operation baffled many people for many years (some would say that questions remain about it even today). It's an millivoltsextremely efficient generator, actually, but the single biggest problem with it is that the voltages produced from it are typically very low, generally only fractions of a single volt (although Faraday noted that the current produced is actually exceptionally high). Its mode of operation can trivially reversed to produce a DC motor that does not require any sort of commutator. It actually could have stood to be an extremely practical style of generator except for, as you noted...
2) There was no good way to convert DC voltage.
... so while in theory there's a good way to generate as much DC as you want, in the end it's just not very practical for much beyond a "wow, look at that" sort of home experiment.
To be fair, it is sort of neat to see it actually operating before your eyes when one is only accustomed to knowing how AC motors and generators work.
Disclaimer, this post is probably going to offend some people.
I don't care. Really... I mean it. I had given some thought to trying to be say this delicately, but then I realized that there really wasn't much of a point.
So to that end... why bother pirating a TV series at all?
I mean, everything on television that is actually worth watching (and there certainly isn't very much of it) is more than likely going to be worth waiting a few months for to get the entire season on DVD.
But oh noes! Then you can't watch it right now! Really? Is your life so devoid of anything with meaning and direction that you can't pull yourself away from yet another mindless TV show? That, to me, doesn't say that the TV series is necessarily any good... all it does is speak volumes about people's priorities and lack of self-restraint.
That said... given this show's obvious popularity, I do think it's incredibly self-defeating of HBO to not put the episodes up on iTunes at least within a few days of airing. They could stand to make a killing.
That sufficient mass is well in excess of anything that could possibly be manufactured on earth... or anywhere else in the solar system, for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me begin by saying that this post is *NOT* a deliberate troll.
Although I recognize that it might sound like one. It is actually a sincere question. I'm not taking sides here, I am simply trying to project what I think might potentially happen as a result of things like this. I am prefacing my comment with this disclaimer, because the one other time I pointed out what I am going to say below on slashdot, I ended up getting flagged at -1 troll within about 15 minutes or so of my post, from which I can only infer that people were not understanding my meaning, since I'm was not making the point to start an argument, rather because I wanted (and still want) people to think about the possible repercussions.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, does anyone think that it is possible that prolonged disputes like these might actually end up slowing the widespread adoption of IPv6? With IPv4, the number of potential addresses to have to block to effectively blacklist a site that the recognized powers have deemed offensive is substantially smaller than it could be with IPv6. Even though there may be many v4 IP's available right now, that number is still shrinking daily, and cannot possibly last more than a few more years. With a full-scale move to IPv6, even *hoping* to block an organization by IP would be completely impossible on any sort of time scale that humans could identify with, so would the organizations that are trying to shut off places like the pirate bay be lobbying to try to slow (or even halt) the adoption of IPv6, so that what they are trying to do here doesn't end up becoming completely unworkable? Why? Or why not?
No. Their requirement is that Siri be disabled, not that nobody have an iPhone.
News is, by definition, anything new or recent. Regardless of how frequently it happens or has happened in the past.
There is no strict mandate that news be interesting.
Anyone else see the irony here?
Porn has been around since, well... the dawn of humanity. Heck, there are cave drawings that were probably considered porn back then.
I live in Western Canada, and we were supposed to get as much as 80% coverage of the sun at my location, near sunset. I even managed to secure some solar glasses especially for watching the event. It had been sunny for almost two whole weeks before the event, with barely a cloud in the sky. The eclipse happens and BAM... it's so freakin' overcast and rainy that you can't even tell which way the sun *IS*.
Before sunset the next day, the clouds had cleared, and it's been sunny ever since.
The universe hates me.
Nope... I think this one qualifies for that distinction.
I would have thought it impossible to disable the VMWare service from *within* a VM... that one would require a special tool that effectively runs outside of any VM to do it.
Processes aren't necessarily abstract ideas either. Although you're right that patents can apply to things other than physical inventions, they are *NOT* supposed to apply to abstract ideas.
Not really... I was talking about programming it in assembly, not from inside the Forth operating system.
Although it is apparent that it can be expanded to 64K of RAM... I also get the impression that there is no firmware.
Nonetheless how do you program this in native 6502? Effectively making one's own operating system?
What's the emulated hardware organization like? The 6502 didn't actually have designated input or output instructions, so as I recall, a programmer had to read or write to specific memory locations that were hardware mapped to various devices, especially peripheral devices.
Discounting the memory mapped IO locations, how much RAM does the emulated system have to play with? What sort of firmware is loaded into the emulated ROM?
If that is the case, it is only because the amount of power being used is being regulated, regardless of what data is being transmitted, not because the amount of power actually needed is the same. Specifically, the amount of power being used in such a case would have to be sufficient to achieve whatever the maximum data transfer speed is. In reality, however, lower data transfer speeds literally *DO* take less power to achieve. If it's taking up the same power at a lower data transfer speed, then it is wasting energy.
Again, this is something that you could learn from any college level textbook on data communications.
No, actually, it's not bullshit. Higher data transfer rates genuinely do have higher power demands (and therefore consume more energy in a shorter duration) than lower data transfer speeds. Reductions in power at higher data transfer speeds that have been achieved so far are the result of improving technology that would actually save even more power at lower data transfer speeds, but in the end they are still facing an uphill battle. Just because you don't understand the laws of physics and their application to real-world data communications does not mean they do not actually exist.
I've had 4 terabytes of storage now for quite a few years and my actual total usage seems to have peaked at around 2 terabytes about a year ago. It hasn't changed much since.
Does that line of reasoning not also mean that if you are breathing air that you didn't pay for, then you are stealing air?
Crime stats have indeed been falling in many areas... but those statistics are generally only per-capita. Populations, on the other hand, have always been growing. In general, populations tend to grow faster than how fast crime rates shrink, so the end result with all growing populations, even though crime rates can certainly be down, is that there is always more crime, overall, which requires more policing.
I have no problem with patents... I *DO* have a problem with patents being applied to things that the patent system explicitly says it's not supposed to be applied to: natural laws, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.
Mathematics is almost all (if not entirely) abstract ideas.... that you can sometimes do useful things with it simply follows from the usefulness of logic itself.
No... I'm the guy with friends who have far more interesting things to talk about than just the ending to a popular TV show or movie they happened to recently see, so they will usually ask if I've already seen it and if the answer is no, it's no loss for them to not talk about it right then and there.
Math is not supposed to be patented though. Mathematics qualifies as an abstract idea, and abstract ideas are *explicitly* excluded from patentability (as are laws of nature and physical phenomena). It just gets muddier when somebody is able to demonstrate a practical application to such an abstract idea.
Next thing you know, somebody's going to be patenting trigonometry because of its application in determining the distance of objects using just two reference points and a third point on the object.
I was really excited to see this kind of technology until I saw the following on their website:
Patented? Mathematical? It's bad enough that companies are patenting software that is just obscured math, but now they are effing patenting mathematics itself????
This has so many levels of wrong written all over it, I can't begin to explain...
Detecting not only when you physically touch the screen, but also being able to detect where your hands or fingers are even *near* the screen? There could be some seriously cool applications for that.
Actually, there is. A conductive disk in a magnetic field and spun such that its axis of revolution is parallel to the field will generate a measurable DC voltage between the center of the disk and its edge. Faraday had discovered this back in his day, and the underlying principle behind its operation baffled many people for many years (some would say that questions remain about it even today). It's an millivoltsextremely efficient generator, actually, but the single biggest problem with it is that the voltages produced from it are typically very low, generally only fractions of a single volt (although Faraday noted that the current produced is actually exceptionally high). Its mode of operation can trivially reversed to produce a DC motor that does not require any sort of commutator. It actually could have stood to be an extremely practical style of generator except for, as you noted...
... so while in theory there's a good way to generate as much DC as you want, in the end it's just not very practical for much beyond a "wow, look at that" sort of home experiment.
To be fair, it is sort of neat to see it actually operating before your eyes when one is only accustomed to knowing how AC motors and generators work.
Disclaimer, this post is probably going to offend some people.
I don't care. Really... I mean it. I had given some thought to trying to be say this delicately, but then I realized that there really wasn't much of a point.
So to that end... why bother pirating a TV series at all?
I mean, everything on television that is actually worth watching (and there certainly isn't very much of it) is more than likely going to be worth waiting a few months for to get the entire season on DVD.
But oh noes! Then you can't watch it right now! Really? Is your life so devoid of anything with meaning and direction that you can't pull yourself away from yet another mindless TV show? That, to me, doesn't say that the TV series is necessarily any good... all it does is speak volumes about people's priorities and lack of self-restraint.
That said... given this show's obvious popularity, I do think it's incredibly self-defeating of HBO to not put the episodes up on iTunes at least within a few days of airing. They could stand to make a killing.
That sufficient mass is well in excess of anything that could possibly be manufactured on earth... or anywhere else in the solar system, for that matter.
Reaction of what? People? Or the sun? The answers are quite different.