This is the same as other collectibles like Beenie Babies or Magic: The Gathering cards. Yes you can make money at it but it is a tiny market and carries a lot of risk, particularly inventory risk, liquidity risk, and demand risk. It's one thing to buy Legos at wholesale and sell at retail. It is quite a lot more difficult to make money trading on volatility and relative scarcity. Furthermore this only works if there is a relatively small number of people doing it who have knowledge of the market that is not widely known. If it becomes a Beenie Baby craze, people will jump in and turn it into a bubble that will inevitably pop.
Ashame, my only heater is electric, and draws a heck of a lot more amps than a lightbulb when it cycles on.
Drawing more amps is irrelevant in this instance. Your heater will not be on constantly and what matters is how effectively it turns power inputs into useful (heat in this case) output. The efficiency of a light bulb in creating heat is not much different than an electric heater but the effectiveness is significantly different. While there are some cases where a light bulb is appropriate for use as a heat source, this is not typically the case in home heating applications.
There are several factors you do not seem to be considering: 1) You (probably) do not need to operate your furnace all year. This means that you are wasting large amounts of energy from the light bulbs any time you are not utilizing them as a heat source which in most of the world is the majority of the year. If you are running an air conditioner then you are generating unnecessary waste heat from the light bulbs which you then have to use additional unnecessary energy to remove from the building. This effect greatly reduces the utility and net efficiency of light bulbs as heat sources. A furnace is only turned on when you need/want heat but is off otherwise. This is not true for light bulbs. 2) Light bulbs are not designed as heat sources so they tend not to disperse the heat they generate in a particularly effective distribution. The heat will tend to be conducted locally and usually relatively high in the room which since heat rises isn't especially useful. Your heater on the other hand has ducting or other systems to distribute the heat it generates in a much more effective manner. 3) Light bulbs aren't useful as a heat source when you want heat but not light. Such as when you are trying to sleep.
Employers can NOT ask how old you are? Seems that would matter in some jobs.
No. Companies have to tread very carefully when asking about age, marital status, race, gender and a number of other protected categories. Indiscreet questions expose the company to potential liability for discrimination should someone want to pursue it. There are ways of dancing around this issue while staying within the law but significant care is required.
Plus most jobs have your fill an application, which requests your date of birth.
Due to the recent school shooting, they have put a ton of restrictions on schools.
Umm, maybe in a few places but mostly things are unchanged. I coach at a high school and there has been pretty much no change in any of the 50 or so high schools in our county since the recent shooting in New England. Some understandable discussions regarding what would be appropriate action but there hardly has been any knee jerk reaction in most places.
TSA is there to make sure we don't forget that someone tried to light a sneaker on fire on a plane.
The TSA is there because some crazy people flew airplanes into buildings. That's not to excuse some of the ridiculous behavior of the TSA but it is there because we told our elected officials that a bunch of rent-a-cops weren't doing an adequate job of airport security before 9/11 which is arguably true. The TSA seems to be quite the overreaction but it is there because we collectively were afraid and our government did what we wanted them to do at the time.
And there is a ton more that has happened in the last 10 years that has shown that we are heading towards a police state.
A conveniently vague argument. If you really think the US is turning into a police state then why don't you move somewhere else?
One of the biggest clues is we have Wars on things.
Right, the War on Poverty really is a sign that we are oppressed. Terrible thing that our government did trying to help people.
They've been figuring it out for over half a century. If they haven't got it yet, they never will.
We got space travel in movies perfect in 1960 right? Clearly nothing has improved since then. [/sarcasm] Some technologies take a long time to work out. Realistically the technology has only really been vaguely feasible in the last 10 years or so and the economics are just now starting to make some sense. Movies in the 1970s with the old red/blue glasses were a cute novelty but not really ready for serious use. The technology is still developing and will continue to do so.
There are movies out there that make good use of 3D. There are more that make poor use of it - especially 2D movies converted to 3D. If 3D remains a theater experience people are willing to pay extra for, it will get better in time. All the tricks directors have learned in the last century have to be reconsidered when filming in 3D and only certain types of movies really benefit from the technology. A typical romantic comedy is probably not greatly improved whereas a space opera stands to gain a lot. It makes the most sense when you need to be visually immersed in the scene. Flight, combat, horror, scenic vistas, etc. And then you have to film it in 3D but not pander too much to the technology. Like good CGI it needs to be seamless before it really works.
Do they say "License it on Blu-Ray or DVD today?" No, the advertisements say "Own it on Blu-Ray or DVD today!"
That's an excellent point however you haven't considered a few things.
The first is who is advertising. I pretty confident that it is that in most cases it is not the actual copyright holder making that statement - instead it is a retailer who cannot sell you ownership of the work. I agree it is sloppy and should cause some theoretical legal headaches for the copyright holders were someone sufficiently motivated to pursue the issue but it isn't an actual offer from the copyright holder to transfer ownership of their property.
The second and more important thing is that they can simply say they are offering you ownership of the license on DVD or Blueray. They say "own it" which is probably purposefully vague. "It" can very easily be interpreted as a license.
Because a patent is temporary monopoly on the right to produce an invention in exchange for details on how it works. If you have no right to produce said invention then there is no point in granting the monopoly. No one would bother to go through the expense of getting a patent if they could not profit from it in some way.
Einstein and Szilard probably never intended to start manufacturing refrigerators. However, not wanting some competitor to start manufacturing refrigerators, Electrolux bought Einstein and Szilards patents.
What you are describing is essentially outsourced R&D. They invented something useful and sold it to someone with the resources to actually make the product. Obviously they did intend to profit from their work. If they had no intention of going in to production then there is no point in going through the expense of getting a patent. They simply can release the information on how to make their invention to the world if they don't need the monopoly. Once it is in the public domain it should not be possible to get a patent on it at that point.
The benefit we get from this isn't that someone would start manufacturing novel refrigerators (because electrolux didn't), but in getting information about Szilard's and Einstein's idea. If they hadn't decided to patent it the design might not even be known today.
So you are saying that buying a patent and burying the technology for 20 years somehow is a good thing? If someone has a patent and they do not begin production on it in some relatively short time frame (5-8 years maybe? Something reasonable), then the patent should expire early. It should not be possible to buy a patent and just bury a technology for 20 years. That does not benefit society.
48fps made the 3D better, but the 2D version of the hobbit was still better.
The problem with 3D in The Hobbit is that they created a bunch of unnecessary quasi-floating environments where none really needed to be. There really was no reason for the goblin caves or the dwarf kingdom of Erebor to be a bunch of platforms suspended the way they were. Logically it makes little sense (think about the physics of hollow mountains) and there was no storytelling reason to do that. They did it simply to make it "more 3D" and I don't think it helped the story at all. 3D is fine but it still needs to make sense within the context of the story.
Difference is that color actually added to the ability to tell a story, using color to evoke emotion or focus the viewer's attention.
There is no reason why 3D cannot do the same thing if used properly. 3D can create a sense of space or vastness or depth. Flight is inherently a 3D experience which is hard to properly capture in 2D. Just because movie makers have done a generally poor job of using the technology does not have anything to do with the potential uses of 3D if done well.
I have yet to see any 3D scene where the 3D is used as a storytelling device rather than just a fancy special effect.
There's nothing wrong with fancy special effects (color is one) though I understand what you are saying. Bear in mind that movie directors mostly still don't know what to do with 3D yet. They're still figuring out where it makes sense. The only way to figure it out is to try a bunch of stuff and see if it works. This means 3D is going to be used badly quite a bit for a good long while. Eventually they'll settle down as they figure out what works and what doesn't. This happens every time there is some new innovation in movies. Stop motion, bullet time, CGI,
It might even be the case that the inventor doesn't have the right to manufacture his invention due to his invention being covered by another's patent.
If they don't have the right to manufacture their invention then it isn't worthy of being granted a patent. Without making even a proof of concept product there is no way to be certain that it will work as designed. If it cannot proven to work then there is no way the patent office should be permitted to grant a monopoly on the idea. Granting a monopoly to someone who cannot possibly take advantage of that monopoly is a pointless endeavor and a waste of money, brains and time for everyone involved.
ARM doesn't build their own processors. Should they be able to have patents?/quote
They don't actually have to do the manufacturing themselves to get a prototype. They are perfectly capable of contracting with a foundry to have one made and that is fine. The point isn't who actually did the manufacturing, it's that there is a tangible prototype made of some original design. Software largely doesn't meet this standard because no tangible product is being made - it is merely instructions to a device created by someone else. If you don't have the resources to make even a prototype, there really is no point in issuing a patent to you because you certainly aren't going to product the item.
Firstly, not everyone that has a great idea has the resources to build a working prototype, this could be a huge hit to "the little guy".
If you don't have the resources for a prototype you sure as heck don't have the resources to go into production. If you have no plans to go into production then you really don't need a patent. The ONLY party that benefits from having patents on things they don't build are patent trolls.
Second; so what if it ends up being unfeasible then the patent simply has no value, so long as it isn't so broad that it stops an actual working innovation.
You can build a physical prototype of a useless device. Don't know why you would but you can do it. However if it cannot be built then there shouldn't be a patent.
So which is more intelligent? The German Shepard police dog or the talking Basset?
Which German Shepard Dog and which Basset Hound specifically are we talking about? You cannot compare a specific dog of one breed to the general tendencies of another. If you are talking about the breeds in general then you are going to find each to *generally* be fairly good at specific tasks and *generally* struggle with others. GSDs are regarded as "intelligent" due to a proven ability to problem solve and to some degree because of their ability to absorb training. Basset Hounds are know to *in general* be more difficult to train and do not seem to pick up concepts as easily. They can be trained but it is usually more work to get the same results and hence they are considered less intelligent. There are exceptions - some GSDs aren't so easily trained and I've met a handful of Basset Hounds that are shockingly easy to train.
Most dogs are smarter than people give them credit for. Usually people are just quite bad at training and very very lazy about it. I work with a rescue group and we see dogs all the time that simply were ignored. If no one ever attempted to seriously communicate with you then you would probably be regarded as not so bright. I've seen very smart deaf people often treated like they are stupid because other's cannot be bothered to learn to communicate with them.
You should NOT need a working product to get a patent, and most definitely should not need one that you can sale. This would pretty much eliminate any "little guy" from ever getting a patent.
If you cannot get the invention to work then there is no way to know if the idea works in the real world. If it can't be proven then it isn't real and is not worthy of a patent. Just having an idea first is not a sufficient standard. Building a prototype will not keep "the little guy" out any more than it does already. A prototype or early model doesn't have to be a final perfected version - just something that works. Someone with the resources to create something useful isn't going to have a hard time getting funding to build a working model. I don't think the sale requirement adds anything to the argument but I definitely think the requirement to build a tangible working model is a useful idea. Patents worthy of the a government sponsored monopoly have to be more than just someones random idea's written down.
While I think software patents are nonsense, I'm not sure how your "runs on someone else's product" should eliminate it.
I think he is saying that you have to provide a tangible product that YOU created. If your product is merely operating instructions to someone else's invention then you haven't invented a tangible product. Problem with his logic is that it doesn't work for vertically integrated companies like IBM or HP which are capable of manufacturing entire computers (or purchasing the suppliers who do) and thus circumventing his plan. Much easier to just say that machine instructions, mathematics, language, meta-data, business methods and intangible products and ideas can not be patented.
Case law matters. Common law legal systems consider precedent when making decisions. While it is not always binding, it does shape decisions and there is a strong reluctance to deviate from prior decisions without good cause. If the law changed once it could change again and if the case law supports acts of institutional hatred, then it will matter. I realize it is unlikely to be a problem but there is the possibility that it could matter someday.
Setting aside the reasonability of the law itself, on a binary "did he or didn't he" basis he WAS guilty of breaking that law.
Even when true that does not require the judgement to remain standing. Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong - sometimes logically and sometimes morally. Seems appropriate to try to right the wrongs and ensure they never happen again if possible.
OK in 2012, everyone's cool with Turing being gay today...but honestly, when does this shit stop? Retroactive pardons? Retroactive suspension of the conviction and expunging of the record?
The problem is that the legal precedent stands and can be used to support future cases. I agree that apologizing to the dead is quite silly but changing bad legal precedent is an extremely good idea. The point is to prevent future acts of malice by the government. If we honor the contributions of the victim in the process then that is just a bonus.
'A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense.'"
Lots of things are criminal offenses that should not be. The fact that it may have been the law at the time does not make it in any way justifiable. A pardon would hurt nothing, cost (almost) nothing, and show that we've evolved. While I think that apologizing to a dead person is a ridiculous idea, the idea of overturning a terrible legal precedent is not silly at all. In theory this verdict could be used to support future government sponsored lynchings if it is not overturned.
The government is already handing out ID cards and passports, which are essentially the same thing except they can't be used in the digital world.
A signature is very different from an ID. Signatures are evidential marks indicating the identity and will of someone one a document. However they cannot confirm identity by themselves which is why you typically are required to provide some form of identification in addition to authenticate the signature. A digital signature is very similar to a traditional signature with some advantages (harder to forge if done properly) and some disadvantages (complicated to use) but it cannot by itself serve as a form of identification.
An ID is a document used to prove that the person standing right in front of you holding that document is indeed who they say they are. This gives two of the three things you need for authentication (something you have which is reasonably likely to be unique and something you are). Signatures provide a weak form of a third confirmation (something you know), but is not something you have nor is it something you are and thus needs corroboration to be useful for authentication - for instance in the form of a notary or a witness.
Furthermore the only reason I have a driver's license or a passport or a social security card is because I legally need them to travel and work. I did not get them because I regard the government as a trusted third party but rather because there was no realistic alternative. In fact I'm old enough that my social security card actually says "not to be used as a form of ID" right on the card even though that totally gets ignored because it was convenient to do so. No one has those documents aside from me (unless they have forged a copy) and almost every use of them requires my physical presence. A signature is a convention by which we indicate that we have seen and possibly agreed to the contents of some document. The confirmation of my identity is made separately in most cases.
Even if we trust the government as a third party, it doesn't really solve the other problems with digital signatures. People still have to understand how to create them, distribute them, revoke them, how to know when they are compromised and how to actually use them. I don't see an easy solution to those problems.
1) Always have a signed written contract and PO whenever you deal with a large corp 2) Get paid up front before work is performed. 3) If you can't get these things then don't do business with them. Find some other sucker to do it and act as a sub.
Not possible in most cases to get paid before work is performed. Maybe for certain services but that would be the exception. In manufacturing you'll be lucky to get better than Net 60 day terms with a large corp. Don't like it? Too bad. Doesn't matter much what it says on the invoice you send them either. They'll pay you when they want to and they sure as hell aren't paying you up front.
What can a small company do to fight a big corp that's NASDAQ listed and has an army of lawyers?
There are a few options but only one of them is actually good. Most big companies are actually pretty good about paying though they may stretch out the terms to unreasonably long time frames. Occasionally things fall between the cracks so don't assume malice unless you are sure it is not incompetence. My company deals with much larger companies all the time and most problems we have are simply due to the fact that we are simply an insignificant amount of business to them. $10,000 in parts is huge to us but would be a rounding error to them.
1) You can halt deliveries/services until they make their account current. This hurts you as well (no revenue coming in) but sometime you have to play a game of chicken. If the product is important, you'll get their attention in a hurry. This is most effective for just-in-time deliveries where they cannot get the parts anywhere else easily or quickly. 2) Contact a lawyer. This usually isn't an option for the small guy just because they don't have the revenue to fund a court battle. This is a last resort. 3) Embarrass them publicly. Hard to do and usually not very effective. High chance of backfiring if you plan to ever do business with this customer again. 4) Nag. Call the local accounts payable people every day. Twice a day if you need to. Be extremely polite but firm. This will not make them happy but it does tend to get some results. 5) Best option is that you have to make friends with someone in accounts payable or vendor relations. If you have someone who will go to bat for you then you'll get paid.
If the company isn't paying you because of their own financial problems, you may be screwed. If someone in management doesn't like you, you'll have to play hardball.
The way I see it, the main problem with digital signing is that you need to manually retrieve the signature of someone...
The problems are more basic than that. First off, very few people even know what a digital signature is. The name is misleading because they aren't signing anything in a sense that resembles what they consider a signature. Even if you show them one, to them it's just a bunch of random characters (which is almost correct) that bears no resemblance to anything in their actual life that they can wrap their head around. Then if you get over that hurdle (big if), they have to know how to create a digital signature, properly publish the keys, include it in their email, and revoke/maintain keys when necessary. Not one piece of that is particularly easy. They basically have to become a expert in a basic form of public/private key cryptography. Worse, for any of this to be of any use the recipient has to understand all of that just as well as the sender. Every single step in this process currently fails the so called Mom Test. (could you explain this to your technologically illiterate mother?)
What is telling is that even the geeks who hang out here on slashdot almost never use digital signatures in spite of their calls for their use. They're too much of a pain to use even for the people who are capable of understanding all the stuff I outlined above.
I believe that if governments provided a trusted online database with the signatures of all citizens it would make things significantly easier to use.
As soon as you involve a third party, you have all kinds of potential trust problems. I don't really regard the government as any more trustworthy than a private enterprise and in some ways I find government less trustworthy. Digital signatures work precisely because they don't really require a trusted third party.
The only way to guarantee that someone sending an email is really who he claims to be is digital signing, and for some reason no one uses it.
No one uses digital signatures because hardly anyone understands digital signatures. Seriously, I can count one one hand the number of people among my family and close friends that understand what a digital signature is, why they should care about them and are able to figure out how to use one. Even if I sent one, virtually no one I email would have the slightest idea what I was doing. And 99.9999% of the time a digital signature would be of no value even if I did use it because it's quite rare that someone tries to spoof my email. I'm not even convinced the tools CAN be made simple enough to bother, though I recognize the potential value of digital signatures. Maybe they can be made easy enough to use but certainly no one has accomplished that feat yet.
You mean people who recognize that others have better things to do than waste their time learning a needlessly complex device? People like you are the reason Apple and Google are worth billions and you aren't because they understand design and you pretty clearly do not.
Computers are working tools, and manipulating a tool is something that must be learned.
So we should make tools intentionally difficult to use? I should have to learn a programming language to adjust the temperature on my thermostat? If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. That is 100% the fault of the designer. While there is a learning curve to everything, it is a question of degrees. A tool that is unnecessarily hard to learn just because the designer could not be bothered to make it simpler is a bad tool. (and the designer of that tool is bad at design) Just because you can figure it out with sufficient effort doesn't mean it is a useful application of time and effort to do so.
Many people seem to be strongly opposed to trying to understand how a computer works to use it, but sorry, that's just the way things work.
So you know everything about how how an airplane works? You know enough to do all your own home repairs, no matter how complex? You know everything about engine repair and never need a mechanic? Of course you don't. Computers are tools and you can get useful work out of a tool without knowing all the details about how it works. In fact it would be a HUGE waste of money, brains and time for you to try to learn all of that.
People not trained in the use of machine tools are not allowed to use them, it should arguably be the same thing for computers.
I run a manufacturing company that uses machine tools. Very few of our employees know how to use even most of the features of them and yet they are able to do their jobs and do them well. They are trained on the bits that apply to their job and we try to keep those as simple as possible. They don't care about all the arcane details of the tools and they don't need to. If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. Computers are no exception.
Except the use of violence against someone, at least in my opinion, follows from an estimation of the danger of that someone.
Self defense is a different matter than attacking someone. If someone attacks you then you have every right to be as violent as you need to be but that is not the point. There is NO justification you can make based on gender that makes it more acceptable to attack a man than a woman. The fact that women on the whole tend to be physically weaker is completely irrelevant. The whole "I'd never hit a woman" meme is a bunch of parochial nonsense based out of some bizarre and outdated sense of chivalry. The fact that I happen to be a man should not make it more socially acceptable to attack me than anyone else not matter what their gender.
There's natural gas generators which are extremely clean and efficient. Higher end generators are really quiet.
They are not extremely clean (compared to wind or solar) and they are less efficient than the power you get from the grid. Personally I've never seen a home generator I'd describe as quiet though some are quieter than others and maybe they've come out with something I'm not aware of.
I've never understood why every home isn't built with one these days (other than the power companies oppose them for profit reasons).
Economics. They are expensive, see only occasional use, and are less efficient than grid power. I'm a big supporter of the concept of distributed power but the economics of it are still iffy. The paybacks tend to be measured in years (and for a backup generator you'll never recoup the cost) and the up front costs are high. Many people can't really justify the thousands of dollars it would cost to install such systems. I looked into the cost of a windmill sufficient to power my house and the cost was in the tens of thousands of dollars. A natural gas generator would cost me $5,000 minimum and might get used once or twice a year for a few hours.
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This is the same as other collectibles like Beenie Babies or Magic: The Gathering cards. Yes you can make money at it but it is a tiny market and carries a lot of risk, particularly inventory risk, liquidity risk, and demand risk. It's one thing to buy Legos at wholesale and sell at retail. It is quite a lot more difficult to make money trading on volatility and relative scarcity. Furthermore this only works if there is a relatively small number of people doing it who have knowledge of the market that is not widely known. If it becomes a Beenie Baby craze, people will jump in and turn it into a bubble that will inevitably pop.
Ashame, my only heater is electric, and draws a heck of a lot more amps than a lightbulb when it cycles on.
Drawing more amps is irrelevant in this instance. Your heater will not be on constantly and what matters is how effectively it turns power inputs into useful (heat in this case) output. The efficiency of a light bulb in creating heat is not much different than an electric heater but the effectiveness is significantly different. While there are some cases where a light bulb is appropriate for use as a heat source, this is not typically the case in home heating applications.
There are several factors you do not seem to be considering:
1) You (probably) do not need to operate your furnace all year. This means that you are wasting large amounts of energy from the light bulbs any time you are not utilizing them as a heat source which in most of the world is the majority of the year. If you are running an air conditioner then you are generating unnecessary waste heat from the light bulbs which you then have to use additional unnecessary energy to remove from the building. This effect greatly reduces the utility and net efficiency of light bulbs as heat sources. A furnace is only turned on when you need/want heat but is off otherwise. This is not true for light bulbs.
2) Light bulbs are not designed as heat sources so they tend not to disperse the heat they generate in a particularly effective distribution. The heat will tend to be conducted locally and usually relatively high in the room which since heat rises isn't especially useful. Your heater on the other hand has ducting or other systems to distribute the heat it generates in a much more effective manner.
3) Light bulbs aren't useful as a heat source when you want heat but not light. Such as when you are trying to sleep.
Employers can NOT ask how old you are? Seems that would matter in some jobs.
No. Companies have to tread very carefully when asking about age, marital status, race, gender and a number of other protected categories. Indiscreet questions expose the company to potential liability for discrimination should someone want to pursue it. There are ways of dancing around this issue while staying within the law but significant care is required.
Plus most jobs have your fill an application, which requests your date of birth.
You can provide this after being interviewed.
Due to the recent school shooting, they have put a ton of restrictions on schools.
Umm, maybe in a few places but mostly things are unchanged. I coach at a high school and there has been pretty much no change in any of the 50 or so high schools in our county since the recent shooting in New England. Some understandable discussions regarding what would be appropriate action but there hardly has been any knee jerk reaction in most places.
TSA is there to make sure we don't forget that someone tried to light a sneaker on fire on a plane.
The TSA is there because some crazy people flew airplanes into buildings. That's not to excuse some of the ridiculous behavior of the TSA but it is there because we told our elected officials that a bunch of rent-a-cops weren't doing an adequate job of airport security before 9/11 which is arguably true. The TSA seems to be quite the overreaction but it is there because we collectively were afraid and our government did what we wanted them to do at the time.
And there is a ton more that has happened in the last 10 years that has shown that we are heading towards a police state.
A conveniently vague argument. If you really think the US is turning into a police state then why don't you move somewhere else?
One of the biggest clues is we have Wars on things.
Right, the War on Poverty really is a sign that we are oppressed. Terrible thing that our government did trying to help people.
They've been figuring it out for over half a century. If they haven't got it yet, they never will.
We got space travel in movies perfect in 1960 right? Clearly nothing has improved since then. [/sarcasm] Some technologies take a long time to work out. Realistically the technology has only really been vaguely feasible in the last 10 years or so and the economics are just now starting to make some sense. Movies in the 1970s with the old red/blue glasses were a cute novelty but not really ready for serious use. The technology is still developing and will continue to do so.
There are movies out there that make good use of 3D. There are more that make poor use of it - especially 2D movies converted to 3D. If 3D remains a theater experience people are willing to pay extra for, it will get better in time. All the tricks directors have learned in the last century have to be reconsidered when filming in 3D and only certain types of movies really benefit from the technology. A typical romantic comedy is probably not greatly improved whereas a space opera stands to gain a lot. It makes the most sense when you need to be visually immersed in the scene. Flight, combat, horror, scenic vistas, etc. And then you have to film it in 3D but not pander too much to the technology. Like good CGI it needs to be seamless before it really works.
Do they say "License it on Blu-Ray or DVD today?" No, the advertisements say "Own it on Blu-Ray or DVD today!"
That's an excellent point however you haven't considered a few things.
The first is who is advertising. I pretty confident that it is that in most cases it is not the actual copyright holder making that statement - instead it is a retailer who cannot sell you ownership of the work. I agree it is sloppy and should cause some theoretical legal headaches for the copyright holders were someone sufficiently motivated to pursue the issue but it isn't an actual offer from the copyright holder to transfer ownership of their property.
The second and more important thing is that they can simply say they are offering you ownership of the license on DVD or Blueray. They say "own it" which is probably purposefully vague. "It" can very easily be interpreted as a license.
Why would this be true?
Because a patent is temporary monopoly on the right to produce an invention in exchange for details on how it works. If you have no right to produce said invention then there is no point in granting the monopoly. No one would bother to go through the expense of getting a patent if they could not profit from it in some way.
Einstein and Szilard probably never intended to start manufacturing refrigerators. However, not wanting some competitor to start manufacturing refrigerators, Electrolux bought Einstein and Szilards patents.
What you are describing is essentially outsourced R&D. They invented something useful and sold it to someone with the resources to actually make the product. Obviously they did intend to profit from their work. If they had no intention of going in to production then there is no point in going through the expense of getting a patent. They simply can release the information on how to make their invention to the world if they don't need the monopoly. Once it is in the public domain it should not be possible to get a patent on it at that point.
The benefit we get from this isn't that someone would start manufacturing novel refrigerators (because electrolux didn't), but in getting information about Szilard's and Einstein's idea. If they hadn't decided to patent it the design might not even be known today.
So you are saying that buying a patent and burying the technology for 20 years somehow is a good thing? If someone has a patent and they do not begin production on it in some relatively short time frame (5-8 years maybe? Something reasonable), then the patent should expire early. It should not be possible to buy a patent and just bury a technology for 20 years. That does not benefit society.
48fps made the 3D better, but the 2D version of the hobbit was still better.
The problem with 3D in The Hobbit is that they created a bunch of unnecessary quasi-floating environments where none really needed to be. There really was no reason for the goblin caves or the dwarf kingdom of Erebor to be a bunch of platforms suspended the way they were. Logically it makes little sense (think about the physics of hollow mountains) and there was no storytelling reason to do that. They did it simply to make it "more 3D" and I don't think it helped the story at all. 3D is fine but it still needs to make sense within the context of the story.
Difference is that color actually added to the ability to tell a story, using color to evoke emotion or focus the viewer's attention.
There is no reason why 3D cannot do the same thing if used properly. 3D can create a sense of space or vastness or depth. Flight is inherently a 3D experience which is hard to properly capture in 2D. Just because movie makers have done a generally poor job of using the technology does not have anything to do with the potential uses of 3D if done well.
I have yet to see any 3D scene where the 3D is used as a storytelling device rather than just a fancy special effect.
There's nothing wrong with fancy special effects (color is one) though I understand what you are saying. Bear in mind that movie directors mostly still don't know what to do with 3D yet. They're still figuring out where it makes sense. The only way to figure it out is to try a bunch of stuff and see if it works. This means 3D is going to be used badly quite a bit for a good long while. Eventually they'll settle down as they figure out what works and what doesn't. This happens every time there is some new innovation in movies. Stop motion, bullet time, CGI,
It might even be the case that the inventor doesn't have the right to manufacture his invention due to his invention being covered by another's patent.
If they don't have the right to manufacture their invention then it isn't worthy of being granted a patent. Without making even a proof of concept product there is no way to be certain that it will work as designed. If it cannot proven to work then there is no way the patent office should be permitted to grant a monopoly on the idea. Granting a monopoly to someone who cannot possibly take advantage of that monopoly is a pointless endeavor and a waste of money, brains and time for everyone involved.
ARM doesn't build their own processors. Should they be able to have patents?/quote
They don't actually have to do the manufacturing themselves to get a prototype. They are perfectly capable of contracting with a foundry to have one made and that is fine. The point isn't who actually did the manufacturing, it's that there is a tangible prototype made of some original design. Software largely doesn't meet this standard because no tangible product is being made - it is merely instructions to a device created by someone else. If you don't have the resources to make even a prototype, there really is no point in issuing a patent to you because you certainly aren't going to product the item.
Firstly, not everyone that has a great idea has the resources to build a working prototype, this could be a huge hit to "the little guy".
If you don't have the resources for a prototype you sure as heck don't have the resources to go into production. If you have no plans to go into production then you really don't need a patent. The ONLY party that benefits from having patents on things they don't build are patent trolls.
Second; so what if it ends up being unfeasible then the patent simply has no value, so long as it isn't so broad that it stops an actual working innovation.
You can build a physical prototype of a useless device. Don't know why you would but you can do it. However if it cannot be built then there shouldn't be a patent.
So which is more intelligent? The German Shepard police dog or the talking Basset?
Which German Shepard Dog and which Basset Hound specifically are we talking about? You cannot compare a specific dog of one breed to the general tendencies of another. If you are talking about the breeds in general then you are going to find each to *generally* be fairly good at specific tasks and *generally* struggle with others. GSDs are regarded as "intelligent" due to a proven ability to problem solve and to some degree because of their ability to absorb training. Basset Hounds are know to *in general* be more difficult to train and do not seem to pick up concepts as easily. They can be trained but it is usually more work to get the same results and hence they are considered less intelligent. There are exceptions - some GSDs aren't so easily trained and I've met a handful of Basset Hounds that are shockingly easy to train.
Most dogs are smarter than people give them credit for. Usually people are just quite bad at training and very very lazy about it. I work with a rescue group and we see dogs all the time that simply were ignored. If no one ever attempted to seriously communicate with you then you would probably be regarded as not so bright. I've seen very smart deaf people often treated like they are stupid because other's cannot be bothered to learn to communicate with them.
You should NOT need a working product to get a patent, and most definitely should not need one that you can sale. This would pretty much eliminate any "little guy" from ever getting a patent.
If you cannot get the invention to work then there is no way to know if the idea works in the real world. If it can't be proven then it isn't real and is not worthy of a patent. Just having an idea first is not a sufficient standard. Building a prototype will not keep "the little guy" out any more than it does already. A prototype or early model doesn't have to be a final perfected version - just something that works. Someone with the resources to create something useful isn't going to have a hard time getting funding to build a working model. I don't think the sale requirement adds anything to the argument but I definitely think the requirement to build a tangible working model is a useful idea. Patents worthy of the a government sponsored monopoly have to be more than just someones random idea's written down.
While I think software patents are nonsense, I'm not sure how your "runs on someone else's product" should eliminate it.
I think he is saying that you have to provide a tangible product that YOU created. If your product is merely operating instructions to someone else's invention then you haven't invented a tangible product. Problem with his logic is that it doesn't work for vertically integrated companies like IBM or HP which are capable of manufacturing entire computers (or purchasing the suppliers who do) and thus circumventing his plan. Much easier to just say that machine instructions, mathematics, language, meta-data, business methods and intangible products and ideas can not be patented.
But hasn't the law been changed?
Case law matters. Common law legal systems consider precedent when making decisions. While it is not always binding, it does shape decisions and there is a strong reluctance to deviate from prior decisions without good cause. If the law changed once it could change again and if the case law supports acts of institutional hatred, then it will matter. I realize it is unlikely to be a problem but there is the possibility that it could matter someday.
Setting aside the reasonability of the law itself, on a binary "did he or didn't he" basis he WAS guilty of breaking that law.
Even when true that does not require the judgement to remain standing. Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong - sometimes logically and sometimes morally. Seems appropriate to try to right the wrongs and ensure they never happen again if possible.
OK in 2012, everyone's cool with Turing being gay today...but honestly, when does this shit stop? Retroactive pardons? Retroactive suspension of the conviction and expunging of the record?
The problem is that the legal precedent stands and can be used to support future cases. I agree that apologizing to the dead is quite silly but changing bad legal precedent is an extremely good idea. The point is to prevent future acts of malice by the government. If we honor the contributions of the victim in the process then that is just a bonus.
'A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense.'"
Lots of things are criminal offenses that should not be. The fact that it may have been the law at the time does not make it in any way justifiable. A pardon would hurt nothing, cost (almost) nothing, and show that we've evolved. While I think that apologizing to a dead person is a ridiculous idea, the idea of overturning a terrible legal precedent is not silly at all. In theory this verdict could be used to support future government sponsored lynchings if it is not overturned.
The government is already handing out ID cards and passports, which are essentially the same thing except they can't be used in the digital world.
A signature is very different from an ID. Signatures are evidential marks indicating the identity and will of someone one a document. However they cannot confirm identity by themselves which is why you typically are required to provide some form of identification in addition to authenticate the signature. A digital signature is very similar to a traditional signature with some advantages (harder to forge if done properly) and some disadvantages (complicated to use) but it cannot by itself serve as a form of identification.
An ID is a document used to prove that the person standing right in front of you holding that document is indeed who they say they are. This gives two of the three things you need for authentication (something you have which is reasonably likely to be unique and something you are). Signatures provide a weak form of a third confirmation (something you know), but is not something you have nor is it something you are and thus needs corroboration to be useful for authentication - for instance in the form of a notary or a witness.
Furthermore the only reason I have a driver's license or a passport or a social security card is because I legally need them to travel and work. I did not get them because I regard the government as a trusted third party but rather because there was no realistic alternative. In fact I'm old enough that my social security card actually says "not to be used as a form of ID" right on the card even though that totally gets ignored because it was convenient to do so. No one has those documents aside from me (unless they have forged a copy) and almost every use of them requires my physical presence. A signature is a convention by which we indicate that we have seen and possibly agreed to the contents of some document. The confirmation of my identity is made separately in most cases.
Even if we trust the government as a third party, it doesn't really solve the other problems with digital signatures. People still have to understand how to create them, distribute them, revoke them, how to know when they are compromised and how to actually use them. I don't see an easy solution to those problems.
1) Always have a signed written contract and PO whenever you deal with a large corp
2) Get paid up front before work is performed.
3) If you can't get these things then don't do business with them. Find some other sucker to do it and act as a sub.
Not possible in most cases to get paid before work is performed. Maybe for certain services but that would be the exception. In manufacturing you'll be lucky to get better than Net 60 day terms with a large corp. Don't like it? Too bad. Doesn't matter much what it says on the invoice you send them either. They'll pay you when they want to and they sure as hell aren't paying you up front.
What can a small company do to fight a big corp that's NASDAQ listed and has an army of lawyers?
There are a few options but only one of them is actually good. Most big companies are actually pretty good about paying though they may stretch out the terms to unreasonably long time frames. Occasionally things fall between the cracks so don't assume malice unless you are sure it is not incompetence. My company deals with much larger companies all the time and most problems we have are simply due to the fact that we are simply an insignificant amount of business to them. $10,000 in parts is huge to us but would be a rounding error to them.
1) You can halt deliveries/services until they make their account current. This hurts you as well (no revenue coming in) but sometime you have to play a game of chicken. If the product is important, you'll get their attention in a hurry. This is most effective for just-in-time deliveries where they cannot get the parts anywhere else easily or quickly.
2) Contact a lawyer. This usually isn't an option for the small guy just because they don't have the revenue to fund a court battle. This is a last resort.
3) Embarrass them publicly. Hard to do and usually not very effective. High chance of backfiring if you plan to ever do business with this customer again.
4) Nag. Call the local accounts payable people every day. Twice a day if you need to. Be extremely polite but firm. This will not make them happy but it does tend to get some results.
5) Best option is that you have to make friends with someone in accounts payable or vendor relations. If you have someone who will go to bat for you then you'll get paid.
If the company isn't paying you because of their own financial problems, you may be screwed. If someone in management doesn't like you, you'll have to play hardball.
The way I see it, the main problem with digital signing is that you need to manually retrieve the signature of someone...
The problems are more basic than that. First off, very few people even know what a digital signature is. The name is misleading because they aren't signing anything in a sense that resembles what they consider a signature. Even if you show them one, to them it's just a bunch of random characters (which is almost correct) that bears no resemblance to anything in their actual life that they can wrap their head around. Then if you get over that hurdle (big if), they have to know how to create a digital signature, properly publish the keys, include it in their email, and revoke/maintain keys when necessary. Not one piece of that is particularly easy. They basically have to become a expert in a basic form of public/private key cryptography. Worse, for any of this to be of any use the recipient has to understand all of that just as well as the sender. Every single step in this process currently fails the so called Mom Test. (could you explain this to your technologically illiterate mother?)
What is telling is that even the geeks who hang out here on slashdot almost never use digital signatures in spite of their calls for their use. They're too much of a pain to use even for the people who are capable of understanding all the stuff I outlined above.
I believe that if governments provided a trusted online database with the signatures of all citizens it would make things significantly easier to use.
As soon as you involve a third party, you have all kinds of potential trust problems. I don't really regard the government as any more trustworthy than a private enterprise and in some ways I find government less trustworthy. Digital signatures work precisely because they don't really require a trusted third party.
The only way to guarantee that someone sending an email is really who he claims to be is digital signing, and for some reason no one uses it.
No one uses digital signatures because hardly anyone understands digital signatures. Seriously, I can count one one hand the number of people among my family and close friends that understand what a digital signature is, why they should care about them and are able to figure out how to use one. Even if I sent one, virtually no one I email would have the slightest idea what I was doing. And 99.9999% of the time a digital signature would be of no value even if I did use it because it's quite rare that someone tries to spoof my email. I'm not even convinced the tools CAN be made simple enough to bother, though I recognize the potential value of digital signatures. Maybe they can be made easy enough to use but certainly no one has accomplished that feat yet.
People like you are the real problem.
You mean people who recognize that others have better things to do than waste their time learning a needlessly complex device? People like you are the reason Apple and Google are worth billions and you aren't because they understand design and you pretty clearly do not.
Computers are working tools, and manipulating a tool is something that must be learned.
So we should make tools intentionally difficult to use? I should have to learn a programming language to adjust the temperature on my thermostat? If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. That is 100% the fault of the designer. While there is a learning curve to everything, it is a question of degrees. A tool that is unnecessarily hard to learn just because the designer could not be bothered to make it simpler is a bad tool. (and the designer of that tool is bad at design) Just because you can figure it out with sufficient effort doesn't mean it is a useful application of time and effort to do so.
Many people seem to be strongly opposed to trying to understand how a computer works to use it, but sorry, that's just the way things work.
So you know everything about how how an airplane works? You know enough to do all your own home repairs, no matter how complex? You know everything about engine repair and never need a mechanic? Of course you don't. Computers are tools and you can get useful work out of a tool without knowing all the details about how it works. In fact it would be a HUGE waste of money, brains and time for you to try to learn all of that.
People not trained in the use of machine tools are not allowed to use them, it should arguably be the same thing for computers.
I run a manufacturing company that uses machine tools. Very few of our employees know how to use even most of the features of them and yet they are able to do their jobs and do them well. They are trained on the bits that apply to their job and we try to keep those as simple as possible. They don't care about all the arcane details of the tools and they don't need to. If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. Computers are no exception.
Except the use of violence against someone, at least in my opinion, follows from an estimation of the danger of that someone.
Self defense is a different matter than attacking someone. If someone attacks you then you have every right to be as violent as you need to be but that is not the point. There is NO justification you can make based on gender that makes it more acceptable to attack a man than a woman. The fact that women on the whole tend to be physically weaker is completely irrelevant. The whole "I'd never hit a woman" meme is a bunch of parochial nonsense based out of some bizarre and outdated sense of chivalry. The fact that I happen to be a man should not make it more socially acceptable to attack me than anyone else not matter what their gender.
There's natural gas generators which are extremely clean and efficient. Higher end generators are really quiet.
They are not extremely clean (compared to wind or solar) and they are less efficient than the power you get from the grid. Personally I've never seen a home generator I'd describe as quiet though some are quieter than others and maybe they've come out with something I'm not aware of.
I've never understood why every home isn't built with one these days (other than the power companies oppose them for profit reasons).
Economics. They are expensive, see only occasional use, and are less efficient than grid power. I'm a big supporter of the concept of distributed power but the economics of it are still iffy. The paybacks tend to be measured in years (and for a backup generator you'll never recoup the cost) and the up front costs are high. Many people can't really justify the thousands of dollars it would cost to install such systems. I looked into the cost of a windmill sufficient to power my house and the cost was in the tens of thousands of dollars. A natural gas generator would cost me $5,000 minimum and might get used once or twice a year for a few hours.