Dealing on a scale of Kilobytes, the difference between 10^2 and 2^10 is 24 bytes, and who's going to quibble over 24 bytes? Pretty much no one. The two values are "approximately" equivalent withing a tolerable margin of error.
But scale this up to a Gigabyte, and the margin of error expands. A base-10 GB is 10^9 bytes, or 1,000,000,000. A base-2 GB is 2^30 bytes, which comes to 1,073,741,824.
So for each "GB" of storage on your HDD, you're shorted ~73.7 million bytes. Multiply this out by 100-200 gigs, and you're suddenly missing quite a bit of space.
So, yeah, 24 bits per k isn't all that much. Geeks should get lives.
But I'll tell you what -- why don't you let me hang on to your money for you? I'll store it very well, and you can have immediate access to your funds at any time of the day. There's just one small clause I'd like you to initial on our contract -- for every $1000 you ask for, I'll keep $24 of whatever you've given me and just put it in my pocket.
If you DID manage to increase the rate of return on spam, it would mean that the people receiving it are actually receiving messages they want. Or that the people who don't wish to receive spam are being hit with spam less often.
Well, figure how much money the telemarketing lobby paid the judge, then ask the DNC Americans to cough up $1-2 each and direct it to a Swiss bank account that the judge can have access to, and that'll probably tip the scales back in the People's favor.
Sony isn't being sued because GTA was PS2-only, they're being sued because GTA was available on the PS2.
If it had been available on other platforms, the other companies probably would be named in the suit also.
Of course, that's stupid if you assume (as is most plausible) that the kids probably only would have played the game on a single platform of their choice, whatever they happened to own.
But then, the very idea of suing a game manufacturer because their game inspired real-life crime is stupid.
People are responsible for their actions. Actually committing a crime? That's a crime. Depicting fictionalized crime as a form of entertainment? Not a crime. There shouldn't be any civil liability either -- all liability should fall on the heads of the dumbasses who thought it'd be a good idea to imitate pixels.
Set up a closed room and start reverse-engineering a port of it the day it comes out. Start up a project on SourceForge called OpenHalfLife2 and quit yer whining.
Half the fun is in specing out the project anyway.
In very simple terms... If I discover that I can get the answer "5" by instructing the computer to add 2+3, and I apply for a patent on a method for computing the number 5, someone who discovers a way to get to "5" by adding 1+4, or subtracting 4 from 7 should not be found to be infringing on my patent.
That's exactly what Eolas is trying to do with this patent -- they've found an "answer" and patented a particular method at arriving at that solution. That shouldn't stop other people from developing alternate methods of arriving at this answer. I doubt very much that the code to implement this functionality is identical, so why does this patent have any sway over what other browser developers come up with for their particular solution?
Why not just take a picture of Gamespot's picture? Then you'd be doing the equivalent of taking a photograph of Gamespot's IP, which is a photograph of a screen capture that is the game developer's IP.
If this is the way copyright laws really work, copyright law is ridiculous.
It wouldn't be a copyright infringement, it would be a violation of the terms of the license. License infringement is not copyright infringement. Licenses originally weirdly extended copyright law to do stuff that copyright law was never intended to do, but they've evolved to include many other terms that have nothing to do with copyright. It's better to think of EULAs as contracts -- but horrible, not-really-legally kosher, unenforceable contracts.
I wouldn't word it like that -- it could be interpreted to mean that the agreement no longer exists, and therefore you no longer have any licensed right to use the software.
I'd say something like, "You agree that I am hereby released of any obligations or restrictions found in the terms of any prior EULAs, and may use my equipment and software in an unlimited, unrestricted context. Oh, and you now agree to warranty my software and hardware."
So you have a 96-bit ID number. That means you have 2^96 unique numbers.
Make a tag for each one.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the tags weigh 0.01 grams.
Now make all 2^96 of them. You have just created 792,281,625,142,643,375,935,439.50336 kg of tags.
That's a shitload of tags! For reference, Planet Earth has a mass of 5.972e24kg. Your tags would weigh 1/132 as much as the entire planet.
That's less than 1%, but that's still a MAJOR volume of tags. We'd be choking on them. They'd be everywhere.
At 1,000,000 tags per second, how long would it take to manufacture 2^96 tags? 7,922,162,514,264,337,593,543 seconds. That's 2,512,308,552,583,217 years.
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It gets worse and worse the larger storage gets.
Dealing on a scale of Kilobytes, the difference between 10^2 and 2^10 is 24 bytes, and who's going to quibble over 24 bytes? Pretty much no one. The two values are "approximately" equivalent withing a tolerable margin of error.
But scale this up to a Gigabyte, and the margin of error expands. A base-10 GB is 10^9 bytes, or 1,000,000,000. A base-2 GB is 2^30 bytes, which comes to 1,073,741,824.
So for each "GB" of storage on your HDD, you're shorted ~73.7 million bytes. Multiply this out by 100-200 gigs, and you're suddenly missing quite a bit of space.
So, yeah, 24 bits per k isn't all that much. Geeks should get lives.
But I'll tell you what -- why don't you let me hang on to your money for you? I'll store it very well, and you can have immediate access to your funds at any time of the day. There's just one small clause I'd like you to initial on our contract -- for every $1000 you ask for, I'll keep $24 of whatever you've given me and just put it in my pocket.
Any takers?
Um, we've been hit by asteroids before. I mean, actually hit. Surely that's closer than a near earth object.
To hell with modding it, why doesn't someone finish the damn game and release it already??
Perhaps not, but anyone who graduated from high school SHOULD.
Thrust that comes out of the fuselage?
If you DID manage to increase the rate of return on spam, it would mean that the people receiving it are actually receiving messages they want. Or that the people who don't wish to receive spam are being hit with spam less often.
Either of those are good things, if you ask me.
I SSH phone users all the time. Not only is it easy to do, but fun and rewarding as well.
First I start by holding up my index finger in front of my lips, then...
I'm already boycotting faces. They'll never catch me.
Well, figure how much money the telemarketing lobby paid the judge, then ask the DNC Americans to cough up $1-2 each and direct it to a Swiss bank account that the judge can have access to, and that'll probably tip the scales back in the People's favor.
Sony isn't being sued because GTA was PS2-only, they're being sued because GTA was available on the PS2.
If it had been available on other platforms, the other companies probably would be named in the suit also.
Of course, that's stupid if you assume (as is most plausible) that the kids probably only would have played the game on a single platform of their choice, whatever they happened to own.
But then, the very idea of suing a game manufacturer because their game inspired real-life crime is stupid.
People are responsible for their actions. Actually committing a crime? That's a crime. Depicting fictionalized crime as a form of entertainment? Not a crime. There shouldn't be any civil liability either -- all liability should fall on the heads of the dumbasses who thought it'd be a good idea to imitate pixels.
You want a Half-Life 2 Linux client?
Set up a closed room and start reverse-engineering a port of it the day it comes out. Start up a project on SourceForge called OpenHalfLife2 and quit yer whining.
Half the fun is in specing out the project anyway.
Lady Liberty is up to her neck, and you've got to find a way off this blasted rock... get yer hands offa me, you damn dirty ape!
See, all those jokes about overclocked Athlons contributing to global warming are now coming true.
OK, so my math isn't so hot today. Sue me. No, wait, I was just thinking about programming for Intel processors. Yeah, that's it.
In very simple terms... If I discover that I can get the answer "5" by instructing the computer to add 2+3, and I apply for a patent on a method for computing the number 5, someone who discovers a way to get to "5" by adding 1+4, or subtracting 4 from 7 should not be found to be infringing on my patent.
That's exactly what Eolas is trying to do with this patent -- they've found an "answer" and patented a particular method at arriving at that solution. That shouldn't stop other people from developing alternate methods of arriving at this answer. I doubt very much that the code to implement this functionality is identical, so why does this patent have any sway over what other browser developers come up with for their particular solution?
Error 404: Server not found. User has been pantsed.
That's ok, we already thought of that: The poor won't be able to afford these clothes.
But we don't want them to feel left out, either, so we've created these handy ID-tracker collars for them... they're very hip, urban, and fashionable.
My question is, why wearable? Why not implants, directly interfaced with the host's neurons? Surely, there's more geek factor in that.
Simson GarFINKEL, not Garfield. Who's editor today, George W. Bush?
That was Hale-Bopp, not Halley's Comet.
Why not just take a picture of Gamespot's picture? Then you'd be doing the equivalent of taking a photograph of Gamespot's IP, which is a photograph of a screen capture that is the game developer's IP.
If this is the way copyright laws really work, copyright law is ridiculous.
So what happens if I search Kazaa for "kazaa lite"? Oh, good. Bye, google.
It wouldn't be a copyright infringement, it would be a violation of the terms of the license. License infringement is not copyright infringement. Licenses originally weirdly extended copyright law to do stuff that copyright law was never intended to do, but they've evolved to include many other terms that have nothing to do with copyright. It's better to think of EULAs as contracts -- but horrible, not-really-legally kosher, unenforceable contracts.
I wouldn't word it like that -- it could be interpreted to mean that the agreement no longer exists, and therefore you no longer have any licensed right to use the software.
I'd say something like, "You agree that I am hereby released of any obligations or restrictions found in the terms of any prior EULAs, and may use my equipment and software in an unlimited, unrestricted context. Oh, and you now agree to warranty my software and hardware."
So you have a 96-bit ID number. That means you have 2^96 unique numbers.
Make a tag for each one.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the tags weigh 0.01 grams.
Now make all 2^96 of them. You have just created 792,281,625,142,643,375,935,439.50336 kg of tags.
That's a shitload of tags! For reference, Planet Earth has a mass of 5.972e24kg. Your tags would weigh 1/132 as much as the entire planet.
That's less than 1%, but that's still a MAJOR volume of tags. We'd be choking on them. They'd be everywhere.
At 1,000,000 tags per second, how long would it take to manufacture 2^96 tags? 7,922,162,514,264,337,593,543 seconds. That's 2,512,308,552,583,217 years.