Exactly! Because if everyone learned how to see for themselves, conduct experiments, and draw logical conclusions based on evidence instead of prejudices, they would all come to the conclusion that everyone can contribute to society regardless of race or sex; that wealth, not race, is the greatest dividing factor in society; that the key to social cohesion is people committed to love and help each other, not what stick goes in what hole; and that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
The hope would be that if one member broke their pledge, the free automatic license they got of everyone else's patents would be revoked and the entire pool would immediately sue them. The threat of that would be enough to keep them in line, if there are enough members.
The point is not that the members become immune to patent litigation, only that they get automatic licenses to the patents in the pool. It doesn't protect you from litigation over patents outside the pool. It is conceivable that members of the pool could start defending each other, but it couldn't be by proxy. Company A sues Company B, Company C themselves sue Company A and only settles when the suit against Company B is dropped. That would be harder to negotiate.
Hopefully when all those excess channels fail, the good programs will concentrate in the remaining ones and the chaff will be left out to dry. It seems like networks think they only need one hit show to justify their existence for the other 23 hours of the day, but they are so, so very wrong.
I think what the GP meant was obscene stupidity. If you can sell a thousand copies for $100 each, or a million copies for $10 each, and choose the former, the only thing to do is take your executives out to the barn with a shotgun. Or at the very least, not complain when people copy your shit.
By your logic, anything revealed simply by picking up the product should not be patentable, because it is disclosed by default. The wedge shape of this laptop is one of them. It is also a form factor that others have adopted, and not just in the last few years, so why should Apple get it? These are the reasons people love ragging on patents like this, there is no reason for them to exist other than for one company to screw another.
SpaceX is saving money by NOT cutting corners in the design phase. The biggest driver of operational cost in these projects is when something goes wrong in the design process and complicated procedures are added to avoid a total redesign. By getting it right the first time, or having the guts to step back and fix what's wrong instead of slapping on a bandaid, their system will be both cheaper amd more reliable in the long run.
Also, you underestimate how much overhead there is in a 3-tier contracting scheme. 3x cost would be just about believable.
My guess is the whole point of the space-plane is that it can easily land, refuel, reload, and get back in orbit. Therefore they can afford to have a larger fuel reserve for orbital maneuvers and you need fewer total craft in the sky to have strike-anywhere capability. Satellites could afford much more maneuvers if they were only expected to stay up for a year at a time rather than the decade(s) that many do now.
Actually, the biggest reason for being able to maneuver on orbit is stealth. It is much harder to keep track of an object that changes its course frequently, and even harder to intercept it when you have no idea where it will be at a given time. A craft like that could quite easily dodge a missile sent at it from the surface, but more importantly any warheads it drops will come from a random point in the sky, giving anti-missile defenses very little time to react.
Maybe the purpose of the mission is precisely to make the general community wonder what it is doing up there? To provide an environment for rumors and propaganda about our capabilities designed to scare our enemies? Not really too far-fetched. Besides, it's pretty difficult to hide something in orbit from the millions of amateur astronomers on the Internet, so better to let out the story that is is NOT a nuclear warhead than let the speculations get too carried away. Beyond that, what it's doing is still anyone's guess.
Right now, anything launching to the ISS undergoes the regulations of "We're NASA and we're paranoid, so shut up and show us every last detail or we won't let you near our launchpad or station". There is plenty of room to relax that standard and still remain safe and efficient.
lol no, SpaceX can do it with rockets that won't explode and/or vibrate shit to pieces, and actually abort non-catastrophically. The Congressional Launch System never had that kind of flexibility in design.
Presumably they have more information than just which cell tower you are most strongly connected to. Cell towers generally have directional antennas, and have more of them in denser areas, so they will have a pretty good idea what direction from the tower you are in. Then they measure the signal strength required to reach you, and that gives an approximate distance. If there are multiple antennas on the tower, they might even get an idea of what environment you are in based on multipath reflections and stuff. Take the heading/distance data from a couple of towers, and you can get a very accurate position without being anywhere near the towers themselves.
Your statistically-irrelevant anecdote has been duly acknowledged. You actually go to stores to buy things? You must be old. Just know that every $5 DVD you buy is likely a net loss for the store and possibly someone else up the chain. I have no basis to judge whether your situation is typical, other than that it sounds a lot like my parents. I will now respond with an anecdote of my own:
The idea of messing with clunky DVDs, watching all the ads on them, sitting through a movie which may or may not be worth it, then trying to store/dispose of the DVD afterwards is a lot more than I'm willing to put up with for $5. That's worth $1 tops, less if the adverts are annoying. Now, a downloadable file of a movie I know I will like, without any ads or hassle of physical media, and the ability to play on any of my devices, that would be worth $5 or even $10.
I am definitely inclined to wait until something shows up on Netflix streaming before watching it. I only torrent stuff if I really want to catch up with an airing season, or it's something good that's not available in this country yet. I also don't do a lot of reading, though the books I do read are usually ordered online. Mostly Terry Pratchett books (usually new ones), occasionally books I hear of on NPR (also new ones), textbooks (those get updated every few years), and translated Japanese books that I have previously read fan translations of (purchased shortly after their official release). So most of my purchases are of less-than-5 year-old material.
Your anecdote doesn't change the fact that in many fields, cinema especially, the overwhelming majority of profits are secured in the first five years, or even the first year. After that, sales trickle in, sure, but no one seriously relies on long-term sales to recoup their investment. After that, they're just sitting on it because they can.
The bigger problem that I see is not copyright itself, it is how companies are using it to abuse their customers and literally refuse to take my money in exchange for a product that I actually want. I don't WANT a million $5 DVDs lying around, but they don't have the sense to sell me digital media I can actually use. Also the fact that so many publishers, studios, and music labels do everything in their power to screw authors and artists. How do we put them back in their place? How do we make it so that publishers provide a service to authors, rather than vice versa? This is the question we really need to answer.
Any consumer who cares so little about it that he is willing to wait five years to get something for free is just as likely to download it illegally before that.
Publishers can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Once they get put in their rightful place and stop demanding your kingdom and first-born, creators will actually be able to keep their heads above water.
So copyright exists to discourage derived works? That is news to me. And what was your sacred "original source" derived from? There is nothing new under the sun. True, there are good derivations and bad derivations, but to claim that good art only happens when you put someone in a box to come up with something totally new makes you look like an idiot.
They are not attacking torrents in general. They are poisoning specific swarms, presumable *after* picking that particular file as a target. The accuracy of the selection can be called into question, but it's not a dragnet operation by any means.
Are you a member of Crunchyroll yet? They have a limited but growing selection of subtitled anime for streaming and have many shows *simulcasting* (available within 24 hours of airing). The translations are decent quality, and it's the best way I've found to get my money directly into the hands of anime producers. I'm going to maintain my subscription for several years even if I don't use it much to "make up for" the years of torrents I did before there was any alternative.
Why would you bother sending your own car out to get the groceries? Unless you are incapable of planning ahead more than a few hours, it would be more efficient to have the delivery trucks come to you and others at the same time. We already do this with humans (see Peapod and similar services in the USA). I can see the appeal of not having to rely on or wait for their truck to come, but it seems more like a Jetsons fantasy than an efficient reality.
Then again, every day driving to work I think about what an absurd world we live in, using so many cars for so few people. So I really can't say it won't come about, regardless of inefficiencies.
The child on a bicycle, at least, is fully within the capabilities of the computer to handle. The car will be able to see the kid and keep enough distance that it can stop on a dime if it gets in the way. It is really remarkable what modern cars can do when not held back by human reaction times.
Google cars actually know how to left turn on yellow. They also know how to be aggressive at stop signs when other people fail to yield properly.
Gridlock is more often than not caused by idiot humans blocking intersections when the light turns red. So much so that the traffic camera companies are working on systems to automatically enforce this behavior (since officer enforcement in this case is dangerous and near-impossible). Google cars will not do this, because it is illegal.
On freeways, the *worst* an automated car could do is improve everyone's gas mileage, since one cause of stop-and-go traffic is lead-footed idiots who think tailgating makes them go faster. The other cause is people trying to merge where no one will yield to them, so they have to come to a complete stop before doing so. We'd all be better off moving continuously at 10 mph than constantly going 20, then 0, then 20, then 0. But with a sufficiently high density of automated cars, they could start driving in convoys or helping people merge without stopping, and actually improve throughput.
I sure as hell hope these things are expensive enough that the rednecks don't get hold of them until they have a decent track record. Then when they do start falling off roofs we can chalk it up to natural selection and get on with our safer, more productive lives.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, at least his assertion that Swiss people are elitist was self-consistent.
Exactly! Because if everyone learned how to see for themselves, conduct experiments, and draw logical conclusions based on evidence instead of prejudices, they would all come to the conclusion that everyone can contribute to society regardless of race or sex; that wealth, not race, is the greatest dividing factor in society; that the key to social cohesion is people committed to love and help each other, not what stick goes in what hole; and that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
The hope would be that if one member broke their pledge, the free automatic license they got of everyone else's patents would be revoked and the entire pool would immediately sue them. The threat of that would be enough to keep them in line, if there are enough members.
The point is not that the members become immune to patent litigation, only that they get automatic licenses to the patents in the pool. It doesn't protect you from litigation over patents outside the pool. It is conceivable that members of the pool could start defending each other, but it couldn't be by proxy. Company A sues Company B, Company C themselves sue Company A and only settles when the suit against Company B is dropped. That would be harder to negotiate.
Hopefully when all those excess channels fail, the good programs will concentrate in the remaining ones and the chaff will be left out to dry. It seems like networks think they only need one hit show to justify their existence for the other 23 hours of the day, but they are so, so very wrong.
I think what the GP meant was obscene stupidity. If you can sell a thousand copies for $100 each, or a million copies for $10 each, and choose the former, the only thing to do is take your executives out to the barn with a shotgun. Or at the very least, not complain when people copy your shit.
By your logic, anything revealed simply by picking up the product should not be patentable, because it is disclosed by default. The wedge shape of this laptop is one of them. It is also a form factor that others have adopted, and not just in the last few years, so why should Apple get it? These are the reasons people love ragging on patents like this, there is no reason for them to exist other than for one company to screw another.
4-digit UID, maybe beh IS writing on an 80-character display without line wrapping.
Also, you underestimate how much overhead there is in a 3-tier contracting scheme. 3x cost would be just about believable.
Misunderstanding of the coloquial term "random" this deep often causes cryptographers' social failure.
Let's just say "unexpected based on the craft's trajectory during its last flyover and dependent upon commands which we have no way of intercepting."
If I've told you once, I've told you a million times, DON'T EXAGGERATE!
Also, all extremists should be shot.
Don't say that. Don't you know that all generalizations are wrong?
My guess is the whole point of the space-plane is that it can easily land, refuel, reload, and get back in orbit. Therefore they can afford to have a larger fuel reserve for orbital maneuvers and you need fewer total craft in the sky to have strike-anywhere capability. Satellites could afford much more maneuvers if they were only expected to stay up for a year at a time rather than the decade(s) that many do now.
Actually, the biggest reason for being able to maneuver on orbit is stealth. It is much harder to keep track of an object that changes its course frequently, and even harder to intercept it when you have no idea where it will be at a given time. A craft like that could quite easily dodge a missile sent at it from the surface, but more importantly any warheads it drops will come from a random point in the sky, giving anti-missile defenses very little time to react.
Maybe the purpose of the mission is precisely to make the general community wonder what it is doing up there? To provide an environment for rumors and propaganda about our capabilities designed to scare our enemies? Not really too far-fetched. Besides, it's pretty difficult to hide something in orbit from the millions of amateur astronomers on the Internet, so better to let out the story that is is NOT a nuclear warhead than let the speculations get too carried away. Beyond that, what it's doing is still anyone's guess.
They were only wearing a biohazard suit because the sponsoring congresscritter was on hand for the occasion.
Right now, anything launching to the ISS undergoes the regulations of "We're NASA and we're paranoid, so shut up and show us every last detail or we won't let you near our launchpad or station". There is plenty of room to relax that standard and still remain safe and efficient.
lol no, SpaceX can do it with rockets that won't explode and/or vibrate shit to pieces, and actually abort non-catastrophically. The Congressional Launch System never had that kind of flexibility in design.
Presumably they have more information than just which cell tower you are most strongly connected to. Cell towers generally have directional antennas, and have more of them in denser areas, so they will have a pretty good idea what direction from the tower you are in. Then they measure the signal strength required to reach you, and that gives an approximate distance. If there are multiple antennas on the tower, they might even get an idea of what environment you are in based on multipath reflections and stuff. Take the heading/distance data from a couple of towers, and you can get a very accurate position without being anywhere near the towers themselves.
Your statistically-irrelevant anecdote has been duly acknowledged. You actually go to stores to buy things? You must be old. Just know that every $5 DVD you buy is likely a net loss for the store and possibly someone else up the chain. I have no basis to judge whether your situation is typical, other than that it sounds a lot like my parents. I will now respond with an anecdote of my own:
The idea of messing with clunky DVDs, watching all the ads on them, sitting through a movie which may or may not be worth it, then trying to store/dispose of the DVD afterwards is a lot more than I'm willing to put up with for $5. That's worth $1 tops, less if the adverts are annoying. Now, a downloadable file of a movie I know I will like, without any ads or hassle of physical media, and the ability to play on any of my devices, that would be worth $5 or even $10.
I am definitely inclined to wait until something shows up on Netflix streaming before watching it. I only torrent stuff if I really want to catch up with an airing season, or it's something good that's not available in this country yet. I also don't do a lot of reading, though the books I do read are usually ordered online. Mostly Terry Pratchett books (usually new ones), occasionally books I hear of on NPR (also new ones), textbooks (those get updated every few years), and translated Japanese books that I have previously read fan translations of (purchased shortly after their official release). So most of my purchases are of less-than-5 year-old material.
Your anecdote doesn't change the fact that in many fields, cinema especially, the overwhelming majority of profits are secured in the first five years, or even the first year. After that, sales trickle in, sure, but no one seriously relies on long-term sales to recoup their investment. After that, they're just sitting on it because they can.
The bigger problem that I see is not copyright itself, it is how companies are using it to abuse their customers and literally refuse to take my money in exchange for a product that I actually want. I don't WANT a million $5 DVDs lying around, but they don't have the sense to sell me digital media I can actually use. Also the fact that so many publishers, studios, and music labels do everything in their power to screw authors and artists. How do we put them back in their place? How do we make it so that publishers provide a service to authors, rather than vice versa? This is the question we really need to answer.
Any consumer who cares so little about it that he is willing to wait five years to get something for free is just as likely to download it illegally before that.
Publishers can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Once they get put in their rightful place and stop demanding your kingdom and first-born, creators will actually be able to keep their heads above water.
So copyright exists to discourage derived works? That is news to me. And what was your sacred "original source" derived from? There is nothing new under the sun. True, there are good derivations and bad derivations, but to claim that good art only happens when you put someone in a box to come up with something totally new makes you look like an idiot.
It does if the EULA is deemed invalid/illegal in court. I assume Psystar was hoping this would happen, but it was not, so that's that.
They are not attacking torrents in general. They are poisoning specific swarms, presumable *after* picking that particular file as a target. The accuracy of the selection can be called into question, but it's not a dragnet operation by any means.
Are you a member of Crunchyroll yet? They have a limited but growing selection of subtitled anime for streaming and have many shows *simulcasting* (available within 24 hours of airing). The translations are decent quality, and it's the best way I've found to get my money directly into the hands of anime producers. I'm going to maintain my subscription for several years even if I don't use it much to "make up for" the years of torrents I did before there was any alternative.
Why would you bother sending your own car out to get the groceries? Unless you are incapable of planning ahead more than a few hours, it would be more efficient to have the delivery trucks come to you and others at the same time. We already do this with humans (see Peapod and similar services in the USA). I can see the appeal of not having to rely on or wait for their truck to come, but it seems more like a Jetsons fantasy than an efficient reality.
Then again, every day driving to work I think about what an absurd world we live in, using so many cars for so few people. So I really can't say it won't come about, regardless of inefficiencies.
The child on a bicycle, at least, is fully within the capabilities of the computer to handle. The car will be able to see the kid and keep enough distance that it can stop on a dime if it gets in the way. It is really remarkable what modern cars can do when not held back by human reaction times.
Google cars actually know how to left turn on yellow. They also know how to be aggressive at stop signs when other people fail to yield properly.
Gridlock is more often than not caused by idiot humans blocking intersections when the light turns red. So much so that the traffic camera companies are working on systems to automatically enforce this behavior (since officer enforcement in this case is dangerous and near-impossible). Google cars will not do this, because it is illegal.
On freeways, the *worst* an automated car could do is improve everyone's gas mileage, since one cause of stop-and-go traffic is lead-footed idiots who think tailgating makes them go faster. The other cause is people trying to merge where no one will yield to them, so they have to come to a complete stop before doing so. We'd all be better off moving continuously at 10 mph than constantly going 20, then 0, then 20, then 0. But with a sufficiently high density of automated cars, they could start driving in convoys or helping people merge without stopping, and actually improve throughput.
I sure as hell hope these things are expensive enough that the rednecks don't get hold of them until they have a decent track record. Then when they do start falling off roofs we can chalk it up to natural selection and get on with our safer, more productive lives.