The days of the spark-ignition internal-combustion engine are numbered. If emissions controls don't eventually kill off that technology, the depletion of oil reserves will.
There are only two viable alternatives that can be marketed without new infrastructure - the internal-combustion diesel engine and the external-combustion steam engine.
Did I just say steam? Yes. The steam engine was a viable competitor to the internal combustion engine until the 1920's, when the invention of the self starter allowed the IC engine to start more quickly than the steam engine. Until then, there were steam engines in some models of cars and even motorcycles.
The steam engine has several advantages over the IC engine. It can run on any fuel that can be burned to create heat, thus freeing the world from reliance on limited petroleum reserves. It does not require any computer control to run effectively. It does not require a complex transmission. It burns the fuel more completely, thus having lower emissions if the right fuels are employed. There are fewer moving parts, which means fewer points of failure: most of the required maintenance to steam engines is the regular oil changes. The steam engine consumes a lot less fuel when idling.
The steam engine is not without its disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the relatively slow startup time, but modern designs for steam engines have devices such as flash boilers that can cut startup time to 30 seconds for a cold engine. The automotive steam engine must also overcome legislative barriers that may inhibit its adoption, such as its ability to run on untaxed fuel. This will be difficult while the USA has an ex-oilman for a president.
Yes, it is an annular/total solar eclipse. The article states:
It will be a partial eclipse rather than a total one
However, the article forgets to add that the eclipse is a partial eclipse as seen from the continental United States.
It annoys me when people do this. Whether it's Americans forgetting the existence of the rest of the world, or northern hemisphere residents being blind to the existence of the southern hemisphere, it's really annoying. It's even worse when such a cavalier parochial attitude leads to factual errors.
As to the eclipse itself, it is an unusual type of eclipse known as an annular/total eclipse. The vertex of the moon's shadow will actually intersect the surface of the earth during the eclipse. Thus, people at both ends will see a narrow annular eclipse, and people in the middle will see a short-duration total eclipse. Even though the majority of the eclipse path is over the Pacific ocean, die-hard eclipse-chasers will have rented ships to observe the eclipse because of its unusual nature.
The most interesting points on the eclipse path is where the nature of the eclipse is intermediate between annular and total. When the apparent size of the Sun is larger than the bottoms of the lunar valleys, but smaller than the mountaintops of the moon, you get a broken annular eclipse of just a few seconds' duration.
They gave a verbal ok that the code would remain his. That's the problem right there.
If the company is mandating the signing of employee agreements which state A, if you want to do B that conflicts with A, you must get the OK to do B IN WRITING. If they agree to B verbally, your immediate response to B must be "Can I have that in writing?" If they balk at putting permission to do B in writing, then don't do B. It's no loss of yours; either the company puts B in writing or you find another way of doing B on company time.
Most news in the U.S. skews to the left. Obviously you don't watch Fox. To Murdoch, "Fair and balanced" means giving 83% of air time to the Republican party. (Source: "Outfoxed" documentary)
Problem with politicians is that they don't react to a problem until after it has grown out of control. And they don't listen to the people who do see it coming.
Oh, they listen all right, but only after you've opened that shiny black briefcase you've brought with you and shown them their bribe^Wcampaign contribution. It's better if you can pay them to write the laws for them, that's how the DMCA was born.
That depends on what you and the company agree is the EULA.
From the article:
Most of them do hold up in court as long as they are reasonably clear, according to Parry Aftab, an attorney specializing in Internet privacy and security law (www.aftab.com). "The courts have said that if you click on something saying 'I agree' then it's legal consent." There are exceptions however. "If it's not legally clear enough, you haven't given consent to anything because there is no meeting of the minds. It goes back to basis of contract law from 500 years ago. You have to both agree on what you are agreeing on." In other words, if the agreement is incomprehensible, it may be unenforceable, according to Aftab.
In the preceding paragraph is a loophole in the presentation of many EULA's that is waiting to be exploited. One common method used to display many EULA's is to display the EULA in a small textbox, that you are expected to scroll to read the agreement in full. However, if they don't specifically instruct you to scroll through the textbox to read the EULA in full, then what happens? To what are you agreeing? You could be agreeing to only that part of the EULA that is currently visible on screen, or the whole EULA even though they do not instruct you to scroll through the box to read the EULA in full.
It could be interesting to defend such an ambiguous EULA in court because it would be difficult to claim commonsense as a defense. Anyone who has worked in tech support knows about the startling lack of commonsense displayed by some computer users. It would not be difficult for the plaintiff's legal representatives to construct a case where the plaintiff did not know how to work the scrollbar in a text box.
I would dearly love such a case to succeed. Then the companies would be forced to display the EULA in a format that is readily accessible. Displaying a 2,500 word EULA in a textbox that is ten lines high is just wrong; who has the patience to scroll through such a tiny textbox line by line? It's almost as if they are trying to hide something. Surely not?
TCO = Total Cost of Ownership, right? But one doesn't own software these days, one licenses it. Surely the acronym should be TCL (Total Cost of Licensing)?
According to sources, NBI raided the admins homes today and seized all the computer equipment and storage media for further investigation, but released the suspects shortly after the raid. The site itself has been down since early hours of today. This is why a good disaster recovery plan is essential, along with offsite backups. If you lose your equipment by fire, theft or a police raid, then you can use your disaster recovery plan and offsite backups to get back online quickly.
An example with Microsoft Word: set an image as the background of every page of the document. Said image consists of a few overlaid random patterns of little yellow dots.
Print the document. Now the background is *covered* in little yellow dots. Good luck trying to find the real dots....
This method reminds me of a cover of Mad Magazine from c. 1978 (#198) when they were required to print a UPC barcode on the cover for the first time. They blew up the barcode and used it as the cover (with the small UPC barcode in the corner).
http://ksacomics.com/mad/17.htm
Re:Nice work, but the guy seems way too gleeful...
on
RF Connector Chess Set
·
· Score: 1
I guess that explains why "Dad lost the first game".
"Under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited."
Hold on one moment here. This has nothing to do with copyright. The fundamental premise of copyright law is that it gives the owners of the rights an exclusive right to distribute copies of those works. It has nothing to do with how copies of those works that have been legally purchased may be used by those who purchase them, otherwise known as "fair use".
What comes next in the outlawing of our legitimate fair-use rights? Outlawing the use of newspapers to wrap up fish and chips? Making it illegal to use CDs as coasters?
You know, you just might be on to something here. Republicans are also more likely to be able to afford overseas holidays. American tourists are not known for their nice manners in other countries. If they were all Republicans it makes sense.
Whenever two companies do business with each other, it is a common practice for them to sign confidentiality agreements. By contrast, customers of any company or retailer just assume that their business with that company is confidential. More and more businesses of all kinds are abusing this trust.
One rule of business to live by: TRUST NO ONE.
It is clear that the time has come for consumers to start issuing confidentiality agreements of their own. Therefore, what we as consumers should do is start insisting on confidentiality agreements with all companies that we do business with.
My plan to do this: Hire a lawyer to have a boilerplate confidentiality agreement drafted. Don't be afraid to make the terms of the agreement restrictive; companies do that all the time so why shouldn't you? Don't overdo it; you want them to sign the agreement.
When that form agreement is drawn up, send two copies by registered post to all that we do business with. Send with the agreement a covering letter that states the following: * Both copies of this agreement must be signed by a representative of that company who is authorised to sign such agreements. * If the agreement is not signed and retured within 14 days, we terminate our business with that company within 30 days. * The agreement must be signed as is. It is a standard agreement that you use for all companies, and you are unwilling or unable to pay your lawyer extra to look at customised agreements.
What do you put in the agreement? This is a question to ask your lawyer, but I would seek to place as many restrictions on disclosure as possible. Don't exclude reasonable disclosure to bodies like credit reporting agencies and law enforcement with a warrant. Most other restrictions are fair game, especially those disclosures to other businesses that they don't tell you about. After all, if they tell a third party about your business dealings, but they don't want you to know that they have discussed your business with someone else, there's something going on. It is these kinds of shady dealings that the agreement must be designed to prevent. You can also include clauses that ban your details being used for direct mail solicitations and the like.
Put in the agreement a schedule of prescribed penalties for breaching the agreement. $5000 per breach or $25000 per breach that is taken to court are reasonable charges. The $5000 figure is about the maximum figure that is large enough to be a deterrent but small enough to be not worth the trouble for the company to fight in court. You may be able to get the company to pay reasonable enforcement costs as well (legal fees and the like).
I am not a lawyer, and the above isn't legal advice. If you want legal advice, or an agreement drafted, hire a lawyer.
I wonder how quick Creationsits would be to embrace the "God did it" philosophy if their three-year-old broke a vase and the child claimed that "God did it"? Would they question it?
I believe gravity does. Don't believe me? Try dropping it off a building. That depends on how tall your building is, what the apple is made of and how the apple is protected.
If I enclosed the apple in six layers of bubble wrap with the bubbles on the inside, encased the bubble wrap in three inches of loose polystyrene beads, enclosed the polystyrene beads in three inches of low-density foam, enclosed the low-density foam in three inches of high-density foam, enclosed the high-density foam in a double-thickness corrugated cardboard box, enclosed the cardboard box in two layers of egg cartons and enclosed the egg cartons in another cardboard box, the apple isn't going to be damaged if I dropped it off the roof of my house.
The mentality is intentional. If you have to use the original media all the time, you increase the chance of it wearing out. Tapes get eaten. Discs get scratched. Then you have to buy it again. If it was ripped once and then stored, you would only buy it once, and that's not a pleasant thought for the execs.
Because the corporations and politicians are intentionally using emotive language to engender a desired emotional response in the listener. IMO, the correct term is "copyright infringement" if their lawful distribution rights have been breached or "fair use" if they have not.
By itself, the act of downloading music files is not illegal, otherwise iTunes would not be in business. What is illegal is the act of making music files available for downloading by others because that is distribution without authorisation.
It is easier to prove that someone is uploading than downloading, and it is likely to be these people who are targetted by the RIAA's goons using legislation passed by the RIAA's bribed legislators.
Slashdot Mirror
They are known within the industry as "bottom feeders" who don't show any brand or merchant loyalty.
In the marine world, a bottom feeder is an animal that finds its food on the bottom of the ocean.
If online bargain shoppers are "bottom feeders", then the unscrupulous online merchant must be "sharks".
The days of the spark-ignition internal-combustion engine are numbered. If emissions controls don't eventually kill off that technology, the depletion of oil reserves will.
There are only two viable alternatives that can be marketed without new infrastructure - the internal-combustion diesel engine and the external-combustion steam engine.
Did I just say steam? Yes. The steam engine was a viable competitor to the internal combustion engine until the 1920's, when the invention of the self starter allowed the IC engine to start more quickly than the steam engine. Until then, there were steam engines in some models of cars and even motorcycles.
The steam engine has several advantages over the IC engine. It can run on any fuel that can be burned to create heat, thus freeing the world from reliance on limited petroleum reserves. It does not require any computer control to run effectively. It does not require a complex transmission. It burns the fuel more completely, thus having lower emissions if the right fuels are employed. There are fewer moving parts, which means fewer points of failure: most of the required maintenance to steam engines is the regular oil changes. The steam engine consumes a lot less fuel when idling.
The steam engine is not without its disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the relatively slow startup time, but modern designs for steam engines have devices such as flash boilers that can cut startup time to 30 seconds for a cold engine. The automotive steam engine must also overcome legislative barriers that may inhibit its adoption, such as its ability to run on untaxed fuel. This will be difficult while the USA has an ex-oilman for a president.
There was an article on similar technology in the May 2004 edition of Scientific American. More info here: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009FCA 4-1A8F-1085-94F483414B7F0000&sc=I100322/.
How about a food fight with people who throw slices of beetroot?
It annoys me when people do this. Whether it's Americans forgetting the existence of the rest of the world, or northern hemisphere residents being blind to the existence of the southern hemisphere, it's really annoying. It's even worse when such a cavalier parochial attitude leads to factual errors.
As to the eclipse itself, it is an unusual type of eclipse known as an annular/total eclipse. The vertex of the moon's shadow will actually intersect the surface of the earth during the eclipse. Thus, people at both ends will see a narrow annular eclipse, and people in the middle will see a short-duration total eclipse. Even though the majority of the eclipse path is over the Pacific ocean, die-hard eclipse-chasers will have rented ships to observe the eclipse because of its unusual nature.
The most interesting points on the eclipse path is where the nature of the eclipse is intermediate between annular and total. When the apparent size of the Sun is larger than the bottoms of the lunar valleys, but smaller than the mountaintops of the moon, you get a broken annular eclipse of just a few seconds' duration.
They gave a verbal ok that the code would remain his.
That's the problem right there.
If the company is mandating the signing of employee agreements which state A, if you want to do B that conflicts with A, you must get the OK to do B IN WRITING. If they agree to B verbally, your immediate response to B must be "Can I have that in writing?" If they balk at putting permission to do B in writing, then don't do B. It's no loss of yours; either the company puts B in writing or you find another way of doing B on company time.
Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.
Obviously you don't watch Fox. To Murdoch, "Fair and balanced" means giving 83% of air time to the Republican party. (Source: "Outfoxed" documentary)
Oh, they listen all right, but only after you've opened that shiny black briefcase you've brought with you and shown them their bribe^Wcampaign contribution. It's better if you can pay them to write the laws for them, that's how the DMCA was born.
From the article:
In the preceding paragraph is a loophole in the presentation of many EULA's that is waiting to be exploited. One common method used to display many EULA's is to display the EULA in a small textbox, that you are expected to scroll to read the agreement in full. However, if they don't specifically instruct you to scroll through the textbox to read the EULA in full, then what happens? To what are you agreeing? You could be agreeing to only that part of the EULA that is currently visible on screen, or the whole EULA even though they do not instruct you to scroll through the box to read the EULA in full.
It could be interesting to defend such an ambiguous EULA in court because it would be difficult to claim commonsense as a defense. Anyone who has worked in tech support knows about the startling lack of commonsense displayed by some computer users. It would not be difficult for the plaintiff's legal representatives to construct a case where the plaintiff did not know how to work the scrollbar in a text box.
I would dearly love such a case to succeed. Then the companies would be forced to display the EULA in a format that is readily accessible. Displaying a 2,500 word EULA in a textbox that is ten lines high is just wrong; who has the patience to scroll through such a tiny textbox line by line? It's almost as if they are trying to hide something. Surely not?
TCO = Total Cost of Ownership, right? But one doesn't own software these days, one licenses it. Surely the acronym should be TCL (Total Cost of Licensing)?
According to sources, NBI raided the admins homes today and seized all the computer equipment and storage media for further investigation, but released the suspects shortly after the raid. The site itself has been down since early hours of today.
This is why a good disaster recovery plan is essential, along with offsite backups. If you lose your equipment by fire, theft or a police raid, then you can use your disaster recovery plan and offsite backups to get back online quickly.
An example with Microsoft Word: set an image as the background of every page of the document. Said image consists of a few overlaid random patterns of little yellow dots.
Print the document. Now the background is *covered* in little yellow dots. Good luck trying to find the real dots....
This method reminds me of a cover of Mad Magazine from c. 1978 (#198) when they were required to print a UPC barcode on the cover for the first time. They blew up the barcode and used it as the cover (with the small UPC barcode in the corner).
http://ksacomics.com/mad/17.htm
I guess that explains why "Dad lost the first game".
"Under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited."
Hold on one moment here. This has nothing to do with copyright. The fundamental premise of copyright law is that it gives the owners of the rights an exclusive right to distribute copies of those works. It has nothing to do with how copies of those works that have been legally purchased may be used by those who purchase them, otherwise known as "fair use".
What comes next in the outlawing of our legitimate fair-use rights? Outlawing the use of newspapers to wrap up fish and chips? Making it illegal to use CDs as coasters?
You know, you just might be on to something here. Republicans are also more likely to be able to afford overseas holidays. American tourists are not known for their nice manners in other countries. If they were all Republicans it makes sense.
Wal-Mart downsized them
Please don't use corporate newspeak. If they were fired, say so.
Whenever two companies do business with each other, it is a common practice for them to sign confidentiality agreements. By contrast, customers of any company or retailer just assume that their business with that company is confidential. More and more businesses of all kinds are abusing this trust.
One rule of business to live by: TRUST NO ONE.
It is clear that the time has come for consumers to start issuing confidentiality agreements of their own. Therefore, what we as consumers should do is start insisting on confidentiality agreements with all companies that we do business with.
My plan to do this: Hire a lawyer to have a boilerplate confidentiality agreement drafted. Don't be afraid to make the terms of the agreement restrictive; companies do that all the time so why shouldn't you? Don't overdo it; you want them to sign the agreement.
When that form agreement is drawn up, send two copies by registered post to all that we do business with. Send with the agreement a covering letter that states the following:
* Both copies of this agreement must be signed by a representative of that company who is authorised to sign such agreements.
* If the agreement is not signed and retured within 14 days, we terminate our business with that company within 30 days.
* The agreement must be signed as is. It is a standard agreement that you use for all companies, and you are unwilling or unable to pay your lawyer extra to look at customised agreements.
What do you put in the agreement? This is a question to ask your lawyer, but I would seek to place as many restrictions on disclosure as possible. Don't exclude reasonable disclosure to bodies like credit reporting agencies and law enforcement with a warrant. Most other restrictions are fair game, especially those disclosures to other businesses that they don't tell you about. After all, if they tell a third party about your business dealings, but they don't want you to know that they have discussed your business with someone else, there's something going on. It is these kinds of shady dealings that the agreement must be designed to prevent. You can also include clauses that ban your details being used for direct mail solicitations and the like.
Put in the agreement a schedule of prescribed penalties for breaching the agreement. $5000 per breach or $25000 per breach that is taken to court are reasonable charges. The $5000 figure is about the maximum figure that is large enough to be a deterrent but small enough to be not worth the trouble for the company to fight in court. You may be able to get the company to pay reasonable enforcement costs as well (legal fees and the like).
I am not a lawyer, and the above isn't legal advice. If you want legal advice, or an agreement drafted, hire a lawyer.
I wonder how quick Creationsits would be to embrace the "God did it" philosophy if their three-year-old broke a vase and the child claimed that "God did it"? Would they question it?
I believe gravity does. Don't believe me? Try dropping it off a building.
That depends on how tall your building is, what the apple is made of and how the apple is protected.
If I enclosed the apple in six layers of bubble wrap with the bubbles on the inside, encased the bubble wrap in three inches of loose polystyrene beads, enclosed the polystyrene beads in three inches of low-density foam, enclosed the low-density foam in three inches of high-density foam, enclosed the high-density foam in a double-thickness corrugated cardboard box, enclosed the cardboard box in two layers of egg cartons and enclosed the egg cartons in another cardboard box, the apple isn't going to be damaged if I dropped it off the roof of my house.
Q: What's your take on making Windows Media compatible with Apple?
... BWWAAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAAAHHAAAA!!!!!!
I think the question is the wrong one to ask for the interopability answer.
The questions that really should be asked are:
Q: What's your take on making any third-party software product compatible with Windows? (Bill won't like this: no more hidden APIs)
Q: What's your take on making Windows fully compliant with established industry standards? (Bill won't like this: no more Embrace, Extend, Extinguish)
But the parent is right
"this will stop those evil hackers taking over your system."
Instead we will have evil corporations taking over our systems.
The mentality is intentional. If you have to use the original media all the time, you increase the chance of it wearing out. Tapes get eaten. Discs get scratched. Then you have to buy it again. If it was ripped once and then stored, you would only buy it once, and that's not a pleasant thought for the execs.
Why they always have to call it piracy.
Because the corporations and politicians are intentionally using emotive language to engender a desired emotional response in the listener. IMO, the correct term is "copyright infringement" if their lawful distribution rights have been breached or "fair use" if they have not.
That's so true. Whenever I plonk down the military base in Sim City 3000, crime goes sky-high in the surrounding areas.
By itself, the act of downloading music files is not illegal, otherwise iTunes would not be in business. What is illegal is the act of making music files available for downloading by others because that is distribution without authorisation.
It is easier to prove that someone is uploading than downloading, and it is likely to be these people who are targetted by the RIAA's goons using legislation passed by the RIAA's bribed legislators.