Your GPS also receives data at a rate of about 50 *bits* per second. Good luck finding a voice CODEC that doesn't need at least 20x that bandwidth to make you not sound like a robot.
Also, the CDMA chip sequences used by the GPS system effectively act like a lock-in amplifier, which increases the signal-to-noise ratio tremendously.
I understand that civil court does not have the same strict rules about how clear cut the case must be, but...
I hate to be an ass, but I don't think you do. Civil court is all about perponderance of evidence, not reasonable doubt. If I claim you infringed my copyright because I saw my copyrighted work being uploaded from your router's IP address, you saying, "But it could have been anyone!" doesn't cut it. If I provide evidence (no matter how superficial or circumstantial it might be) that tends to point to your guilt, and you provide nothing, then I win. I don't have to show that the file is the actual movie (although it would help my case to do so). In a criminal case, those might not be terrible defenses, because they introduce reasonable doubt as to whether any law was actually broken and as to whether you were the person who broke it.
To win in your example, you'd probably need (at the very least) to come up with a plausible explanation for how and why someone else was using your IP. Even then, it comes down to which legal theory does the jury find more convincing and/or likely: the plaintiff's (that the defendant infringed copyright) or the defendant's (that s/he didn't--but that the infringement happened with his/her ip--and that some unknown person somehow accessed the defendant's network for the purpose of infringement). All I say is, "good luck with that one."
And just to be clear: I'm not arguing that it should be so easy for the plaintiff to win these civil cases, just that it is.
And not only doctoral theses. My undergrad university (and I'm sure many others) prohibited turning in work that had been originally done for a previous course. It really doesn't seem that unreasonable: if the courses are so similar that you can reuse substantial parts of your prior work, then why should you get course credit? You don't usually get credit for taking a course twice (yes, yes, advanced topics / independent study / etc. aside)
(Physicist here) That's correct, though in practice most powered hubs will let you take 500 mA per port without negotiation, and the newer ones that support the USB 2.0 charging spec will let you take even more (~1.8A if you touch the data lines just right). The voltage is also allowed to sag, IIRC, 5% and still be in spec, so assume 4.75 V. That gives a power of 4.75 V * 1.8 A = 8.5 W per port. Times 30, and you could have around 250 W of cooking power. Some of the cheaper hubs (which don't follow the USB spec rigorously) will even allow you to take all the available current through one port, instead of cutting you off at.5 A per, like the better ones do; so, a cheap 4-port hub might have 2 A available on any one port, but not on all simultaneously.
I wouldn't say that the cost of creating content is negligible. A friend of mine is currently trying raise money to produce a high-production-values science fiction miniseries. (shameless plug) From what I understand, $10k per episode (which I wouldn't call negligible) is a pretty shoestring budget for that sort of thing, even without paying the talent while it gets off the ground.
To add to the parent's point--even if most pilots didn't insist on doing a pre-flight inspection, the FAA still would. But this brings up an interesting point: Has anyone else noticed *all* of Terrafugia's videos show the airplane taxiing off the runway, folding its wings, and then driving home, while none show the reverse? Yea, that's because pulling out of your garage, hitting the 'unfold the wings' button, and launching into the wild blue yonder would be illegal. Somewhere in the bowels of Terrafugia's website they even mention that the folding mechanism must be inspected prior to flight.
Google for "PCI PCI-e expansion box" (no quotes). One of the first few hits should be for a box that turns a 1x PCI-e slot into 4 33MHz/32bit PCI slots. We recently considered buying one for our PCI National Instruments boards because there are fewer cheap, commodity motherboards with lots of PCI slots.
Where did you go to college? My undergrad professors told me that as far as money was concerned, I should simply not go to a school that does not offer me some kind of fellowship or RA position. Perhaps that advice is confined to my field (computer science)?
No, your experience pretty common in the sciences. In fact, I received exactly the same advice from one of my undergrad professors (physics); friends in other departments have reported similar advice. To the *parent: Nobody ever said you could live a life of luxury or support a family on grad student wages, but they keep me fed and sheltered in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the US.
Let's say an apple farmer gives his apple pickers faulty ladders to work with and, as a result, dozens of workers every year fall and break their necks. Are you saying this would be the fault of consumers who purchase apples? Should people reduce their consumption of apples to fix this problem? Or does the fault lie with the farmer and have nothing at all to do with the people who purchase the apples?
Substitute farmer and apples with BP and oil.
If the consumers in your world don't like the fact that the faulty ladders are killing the workers, then perhaps they should look for alternatives. Maybe they could reduce their consumption of apples by purchasing oranges.
It probably has more to do with the fact that people think physicists can solve anything. I don't know where this comes from.
It probably comes from physicists telling people we can solve anything. The public's belief in the awesomeness of physicists helps take away the sting of spending a decade in the post-secondary education system.
Mpeg-2 has been around since the late 80s and yet just about every video player out there will handle mpeg-1 just fine. You could probably rip a laserdisc and play it with VLC.
Sweet! I've been looking for a digital media player that can handle the NTSC codec for the longest time! I'll have to check out this VLC thing.
o instead of leaving for work 20 minutes before I need to be there, I need to leave 1.5 hours early so I can bike there for 1 hour and spend 1/2 hour showering and dressing for work.
Well, there's no reason to shower twice in the morning. Just shower once you get to work instead of before leaving home. How much time does it take to park your car and walk to the office? I, too, live about 10 miles from work, and driving really only saves at most 10 minutes on the morning commute, less if I go during rush hour.
Aren't you required to vigorously defend your trademark or else stand to lose it?
You can also offer others a license to use your mark for some nominal fee, I believe. From a legal perspective (IANAL, by the way) I think that's probably just as good as litigating it. The problem probably comes from disagreement about what constitutes a reasonable nominal fee, and the licensee's concerns about their ability to control the use of their mark (eg, if someone who doesn't like the licensee tried to "steal" their mark by going through the licensor).
"TCP/IP doesn't allow for that, that I know of"
It sure does - it doesn't care what route the packets took - just that they got there. THe problem is if you split the stream over 3 links with varying latency - you won't see the performance gains you wan t- it'll more likely hurt.
The problem is that many stacks treat out-of-order packet reception as packet loss, which causes the sender to throttle the outgoing stream. When the GP said "TCP/IP doesn't allow for that," they probably meant, "The congestion-control algorithms used by TCP/IP work very poorly when you try to distribute the packets over multiple links, especially when they have different speeds and latencies."
If the actual packet loss on the link is low, it seems like this could probably be addressed with a sort of re-ordering buffer that holds out-of-order packets for, say, 2x the average latency of the slowest link (and releases them to the receiver if the intermediate packets don't show up in that time). I'm sure this causes other problems that I haven't thought of, though.
I personally don't care if people know how I vote and I think I should have the option of it being public.
However, *I* do personally care if people know how you voted because it makes it far easier for someone to pay and/or intimidate you to vote a certain way.
The Business and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 have a built in Windows XP virtualization for exactly that reason.
Pray tell, will all of my DAQ drivers and real-time acquisition VIs work the same under virtualization as they do under native XP? Maybe, but I'm not counting on it.
Your comment about businesses refusing to upgrade is spot-on--that's exactly our position, albeit on a lower scale, monetarily. I have a feeling that business apps will be happier under virtualization than most scientific/engineering apps, though.
[snip]
You're forgetting a very large demographic: The people who already have old hardware and/or software, and need an OS compatible with it. And, by hardware, I don't just mean CPUs, motherboards, disc controllers, etc. I'm really talking about *expensive* hardware, like the data acquisition cards, and *expensive* software, like LabVIEW and Origin, that professional scientists use.
I mean, seriously, have you ever looked at the list price for a full version of LabVIEW? It's like $20k *per* *seat*. Oh, and the older versions are not compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. In our case, being forced to buy new licences for application software make upgrading our data acquisition systems from XP to a newer version of Windows about a $45k affair. And what new value to we get for it? Nothing. Abso-fracking-lutely nothing that we don't already have from XP.
And don't talk to me about RAM. 640MB ought to be enough for anybody.
[/rant]
I can't watch TV all day now want to buy a paper (which also costs money b.t.w.)
Newspapers only charge for copies so that they can go to advertisers and say, "Look at how many people buy our paper every day! Wouldn't you like to place some ads in a venue where you know they'll be seen and be seen by people who have money to buy your products?" Seriously, the printing cost of most papers is at least 10x the cover price, so the vast majority of revenue, and all of the profit comes from ads.
That simply isn't true in Physics, and I suspect that it isn't true in any other discipline, either. Professors write textbooks on their own time--they just happen to also be employed by a university. It's like if you had a job at McDonald's and a second job at Wendy's--McDonald's isn't paying you to work at Wendy's, you just have two jobs.
And, to head another myth off at the pass, professors who choose to use a textbook they helped write for a course they teach are not allowed to keep the profits. That why you so often see photocopied/laser printed editions when the professor is using his/her own book. Nowdays, they often they just give the students a PDF version.
Even in Los Angeles (the city of the car) cycling to work isn't so bad. 9 miles takes about 45 minutes with traffic and lights vs. about 30 minutes in the car (including finding parking) means that you can do 1.5 hours of exercise in just 30 minutes.
Sure, but there are other ways to do it. For example, you could define a hybrid as a gasoline powered car with an assistive electric motor of at least 33% the power of the engine, and a battery pack capable of delivering full power to the motor for 5 minutes. There's nothing special about those numbers, but I think they're a pretty reasonable place to start the discussion. Also, I think a 33%/5 rule comes pretty close to includes all the cars most people consider "real" hybrids, while omitting those considered "mild" hybrids.
Under the GP's state's definition, a car could be considered a hybrid, even without an electric motor (save for the starter), which is just stupid.
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Also, the CDMA chip sequences used by the GPS system effectively act like a lock-in amplifier, which increases the signal-to-noise ratio tremendously.
I hate to be an ass, but I don't think you do. Civil court is all about perponderance of evidence, not reasonable doubt. If I claim you infringed my copyright because I saw my copyrighted work being uploaded from your router's IP address, you saying, "But it could have been anyone!" doesn't cut it. If I provide evidence (no matter how superficial or circumstantial it might be) that tends to point to your guilt, and you provide nothing, then I win. I don't have to show that the file is the actual movie (although it would help my case to do so). In a criminal case, those might not be terrible defenses, because they introduce reasonable doubt as to whether any law was actually broken and as to whether you were the person who broke it.
To win in your example, you'd probably need (at the very least) to come up with a plausible explanation for how and why someone else was using your IP. Even then, it comes down to which legal theory does the jury find more convincing and/or likely: the plaintiff's (that the defendant infringed copyright) or the defendant's (that s/he didn't--but that the infringement happened with his/her ip--and that some unknown person somehow accessed the defendant's network for the purpose of infringement). All I say is, "good luck with that one."
And just to be clear: I'm not arguing that it should be so easy for the plaintiff to win these civil cases, just that it is.
A taxi driver with a loose license is shirley more likely lose it than is one with a firm grip.
And not only doctoral theses. My undergrad university (and I'm sure many others) prohibited turning in work that had been originally done for a previous course. It really doesn't seem that unreasonable: if the courses are so similar that you can reuse substantial parts of your prior work, then why should you get course credit? You don't usually get credit for taking a course twice (yes, yes, advanced topics / independent study / etc. aside)
(Physicist here) That's correct, though in practice most powered hubs will let you take 500 mA per port without negotiation, and the newer ones that support the USB 2.0 charging spec will let you take even more (~1.8A if you touch the data lines just right). The voltage is also allowed to sag, IIRC, 5% and still be in spec, so assume 4.75 V. That gives a power of 4.75 V * 1.8 A = 8.5 W per port. Times 30, and you could have around 250 W of cooking power. Some of the cheaper hubs (which don't follow the USB spec rigorously) will even allow you to take all the available current through one port, instead of cutting you off at .5 A per, like the better ones do; so, a cheap 4-port hub might have 2 A available on any one port, but not on all simultaneously.
What about MP3s from Amazon? Their downloader adds them to your iTunes music database (if you're into that kind of thing) and there's no DRM.
I wouldn't say that the cost of creating content is negligible. A friend of mine is currently trying raise money to produce a high-production-values science fiction miniseries. (shameless plug) From what I understand, $10k per episode (which I wouldn't call negligible) is a pretty shoestring budget for that sort of thing, even without paying the talent while it gets off the ground.
To add to the parent's point--even if most pilots didn't insist on doing a pre-flight inspection, the FAA still would. But this brings up an interesting point: Has anyone else noticed *all* of Terrafugia's videos show the airplane taxiing off the runway, folding its wings, and then driving home, while none show the reverse? Yea, that's because pulling out of your garage, hitting the 'unfold the wings' button, and launching into the wild blue yonder would be illegal. Somewhere in the bowels of Terrafugia's website they even mention that the folding mechanism must be inspected prior to flight.
Google for "PCI PCI-e expansion box" (no quotes). One of the first few hits should be for a box that turns a 1x PCI-e slot into 4 33MHz/32bit PCI slots. We recently considered buying one for our PCI National Instruments boards because there are fewer cheap, commodity motherboards with lots of PCI slots.
No, your experience pretty common in the sciences. In fact, I received exactly the same advice from one of my undergrad professors (physics); friends in other departments have reported similar advice. To the *parent: Nobody ever said you could live a life of luxury or support a family on grad student wages, but they keep me fed and sheltered in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the US.
If the consumers in your world don't like the fact that the faulty ladders are killing the workers, then perhaps they should look for alternatives. Maybe they could reduce their consumption of apples by purchasing oranges.
Surely you aren't suggesting that users are actively violating the Terms of Service by connecting more than one computer to the network?
It probably comes from physicists telling people we can solve anything. The public's belief in the awesomeness of physicists helps take away the sting of spending a decade in the post-secondary education system.
Sweet! I've been looking for a digital media player that can handle the NTSC codec for the longest time! I'll have to check out this VLC thing.
Well, there's no reason to shower twice in the morning. Just shower once you get to work instead of before leaving home. How much time does it take to park your car and walk to the office? I, too, live about 10 miles from work, and driving really only saves at most 10 minutes on the morning commute, less if I go during rush hour.
You can also offer others a license to use your mark for some nominal fee, I believe. From a legal perspective (IANAL, by the way) I think that's probably just as good as litigating it. The problem probably comes from disagreement about what constitutes a reasonable nominal fee, and the licensee's concerns about their ability to control the use of their mark (eg, if someone who doesn't like the licensee tried to "steal" their mark by going through the licensor).
The problem is that many stacks treat out-of-order packet reception as packet loss, which causes the sender to throttle the outgoing stream. When the GP said "TCP/IP doesn't allow for that," they probably meant, "The congestion-control algorithms used by TCP/IP work very poorly when you try to distribute the packets over multiple links, especially when they have different speeds and latencies."
If the actual packet loss on the link is low, it seems like this could probably be addressed with a sort of re-ordering buffer that holds out-of-order packets for, say, 2x the average latency of the slowest link (and releases them to the receiver if the intermediate packets don't show up in that time). I'm sure this causes other problems that I haven't thought of, though.
Are the laws people break in their homes likely to cause me to die? No? Then I guess it isn't really the same, now is it?
However, *I* do personally care if people know how you voted because it makes it far easier for someone to pay and/or intimidate you to vote a certain way.
Pray tell, will all of my DAQ drivers and real-time acquisition VIs work the same under virtualization as they do under native XP? Maybe, but I'm not counting on it.
Your comment about businesses refusing to upgrade is spot-on--that's exactly our position, albeit on a lower scale, monetarily. I have a feeling that business apps will be happier under virtualization than most scientific/engineering apps, though.
[snip] You're forgetting a very large demographic: The people who already have old hardware and/or software, and need an OS compatible with it. And, by hardware, I don't just mean CPUs, motherboards, disc controllers, etc. I'm really talking about *expensive* hardware, like the data acquisition cards, and *expensive* software, like LabVIEW and Origin, that professional scientists use. I mean, seriously, have you ever looked at the list price for a full version of LabVIEW? It's like $20k *per* *seat*. Oh, and the older versions are not compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. In our case, being forced to buy new licences for application software make upgrading our data acquisition systems from XP to a newer version of Windows about a $45k affair. And what new value to we get for it? Nothing. Abso-fracking-lutely nothing that we don't already have from XP. And don't talk to me about RAM. 640MB ought to be enough for anybody. [/rant]
Newspapers only charge for copies so that they can go to advertisers and say, "Look at how many people buy our paper every day! Wouldn't you like to place some ads in a venue where you know they'll be seen and be seen by people who have money to buy your products?" Seriously, the printing cost of most papers is at least 10x the cover price, so the vast majority of revenue, and all of the profit comes from ads.
That simply isn't true in Physics, and I suspect that it isn't true in any other discipline, either. Professors write textbooks on their own time--they just happen to also be employed by a university. It's like if you had a job at McDonald's and a second job at Wendy's--McDonald's isn't paying you to work at Wendy's, you just have two jobs.
And, to head another myth off at the pass, professors who choose to use a textbook they helped write for a course they teach are not allowed to keep the profits. That why you so often see photocopied/laser printed editions when the professor is using his/her own book. Nowdays, they often they just give the students a PDF version.
Even in Los Angeles (the city of the car) cycling to work isn't so bad. 9 miles takes about 45 minutes with traffic and lights vs. about 30 minutes in the car (including finding parking) means that you can do 1.5 hours of exercise in just 30 minutes.
Sure, but there are other ways to do it. For example, you could define a hybrid as a gasoline powered car with an assistive electric motor of at least 33% the power of the engine, and a battery pack capable of delivering full power to the motor for 5 minutes. There's nothing special about those numbers, but I think they're a pretty reasonable place to start the discussion. Also, I think a 33%/5 rule comes pretty close to includes all the cars most people consider "real" hybrids, while omitting those considered "mild" hybrids. Under the GP's state's definition, a car could be considered a hybrid, even without an electric motor (save for the starter), which is just stupid.