Remember that a generic S-ATA or IDE hard disk writes at about 5-6MB/s and that can be a big bottlencek most of the time.
Nope, hard disk speeds are quoted in MB/sec, not Mbps. You're a factor of 8 out - 40-50MB/sec is more like it (and modern desktop drives are a bit faster than that).
So the 54Mbps connection you speak of is a total speed of ~7MB/s. That's not the internet speed. That's the LAN connection. So one person tries to send a large file to another on the network and all of a sudden we've hit that bottleneck and no one can even check their email.
You've never actually used a network somebody else is using, have you? Suggesting that when one user saturates the network nobody else can even check their email is quite simply wrong. Every shared networking technology in use today shares the bandwidth out pretty fairly and with modest overhead for a reasonable number of clients. You can reach a stage where there are so many clients simultaneously using bandwidth that overall throughput suffers, but it takes a damn sight more than one person sending one file to do it. I saturate my 54Mbps Wi-Fi connection every time I back up my laptop and not only can everybody else on the network (often me using another machine) check their email, they can stream hi-def content from the interwebs, send huge files and do pretty much anything else they'd normally do too. With at most half a dozen or so clients on my AP I've never seen overall throughput drop, the bandwidth just gets shared out fairly between the clients. If two try to send big files, of course they only get half the bandwidth each, but it still works just fine. With 100 clients doing P2P it would be a different matter.
They have to weigh the monetary incentive of licensing fees from one game against the monetary cost of a huge "[Sony|Microsoft|Nintendo] promotes ultra-violence" campaign. I don't think the game is likely to win that cost/benefit analysis.
Indeed they are, but you usually have quite a lot less than 30 years exposure time, so it's not quite such a big deal. For long CCD exposures (minutes to hours in astronomy), you can guarantee you'll see some cosmic ray effects. However, taking multiple exposures and combining them digitally is pretty much standard these days, so removing cosmic ray effects (which, unlike the astronomical objects, won't be consistent in all the individual exposures) is fairly trivial.
If they bring it back with "substitute raw materials and new manufacturing technologies," it won't be the same thing. Emulsions and our attachments to them are delicate things. Any change, however subtle, will kill the effect. The new film may be just fine. It may be sort of like the old film. But it won't be the same.
If the emulsion has been stored (even under the best conditions) for 30 years it's not very likely to be the same thing either, is it?
You may want to investigate "Graded-Z shielding". The name comes from the fact that it uses layers of shielding with decreasing atomic numbers. You might first have a layer of lead, then a layer of tin, then one of copper. The lead stops the cosmic rays (protons, electrons, light atomic nuclei), but generates X-rays in the process. These X-rays might also fog your film. The X-rays produced as the lead absorbs the cosmic rays have a characteristic energy (88keV) which is not well absorbed by the lead itself - that's where the tin comes in. Again, the tin stopping the X-rays from the lead generates X-rays with a lower characteristic energy (29keV, which is in medical X-ray energy territory), which it doesn't absorb too well. The copper absorbs the X-rays from the tin and again emits X-rays with a yet lower characteristic energy. I don't know if the 9keV X-rays produced by the copper are a problem for Velvia. If they are, you'll need a yet lighter layer; a glance at the periodic table shows aluminium is a likely candidate.
I have no idea about the sensitivity of Velvia to cosmic rays or X-rays, so can't suggest thickness of the materials. My wild-ass-guess is somewhere in the 10s of mm. 30 years is a hell of a long time though. There are companies which specialise in shielding of this type (search for 'radiation shielding', 'graded-z shielding' and the like), they may be able to provide advice and sell you enclosures.
You mean they didn't have anything in the way of the signal? Damn, I was thinking when they mentioned a mountain they were going through it, not using the top of it. Not only that but the damn cheats didn't even wait till it rained!
I've done some digging and apparently this kind of flagrant dishonesty is pretty widespread. Here are some more significant points omitted from stories elsewhere in the media:
Miss World was wearing her makeup.
The lap record at Indy wasn't set in the rain.
Asafa Powell didn't have a broken leg when he set the 100m world record.
The quoted 0-60 time of your car wasn't set with a family of 4, their dog and luggage for a months holiday on board.
The largest number of people ever to fit into a Mini were not all sumo wrestlers.
I should say that fostering competition and thus lower prices are a result of patents, but not the main aim. The aim is to foster innovation and for the results of that innovation to enter the public domain. I would say that your example of the booming market for e-cash in Japan shows that patents do in fact foster competition (which should also lower prices) - if these companies all sprang up when the important patents expired they must logically be using the same patented innovations. If they're all using the patented innovations the innovations must be good ones. And they're now in the public domain, free for anybody to use, complete with instructions. The 20 or 30 companies appearing at once is indicative of the innovation being widely understood, which is what patents are for. The fact that e-cash didn't take off while the patents were in force merely shows that the patent holders didn't do a very good job of licensing their patent; they failed to take full advantage of their temporary monopoly. The risk of the innovation being unavailable while the patent is in force is part of the deal with granting a monopoly and a big part of the reason why patents are temporary monopolies.
Now, if those innovations were obvious then patent shouldn't have been granted, that's why the 'non-obvious' criterion is there. Perhaps they weren't obvious 20 years ago but are obvious now, but that merely indicates that perhaps we need to review the period for which patents are valid in light of the increasing pace of technological advancement. Or perhaps, like many great innovations, they merely seem obvious when you know how they work.
I bet enough research into the way patents are used will show it results only in preventing competition and raising the price of the service, countering the intent of the patent in the first place.
I think you misunderstand the point of 'the patent' (assuming you meant patents generally). The point is not to foster competition and lower prices, but to avoid important inventions remaining trade secrets. Patents explicitly eliminate competition and allow the patent holder to control prices for a limited time in return for a detailed public description of the invention (a description sufficient that the invention can be replicated and the principles behind it understood). In return for granting the temporary monopoly, society gets to know exactly how the invention works.
Those are the "worthless" design patents. What most of us think of as a "patent" is an "idea patent" -- like "waterbeds" or "tapping a card", "one-click" or "how to make a cheap OLED."
There is no such thing as an "idea patent". There is such a thing as an "invention patent". You can't patent an idea. You can patent an implementation of an idea. Amazon's one-click patent doesn't patent the idea of one-click shopping. It patents the only practical implementation of one-click shopping, which isn't strictly the same thing. I could patent a hugely cumbersome version of one-click and license it, but nobody would buy a license, because it would be hugely cumbersome to implement (as in hamsters carrying postcards cumbersome). The problem with US patents at the moment is that patents like one-click, where the implementation is obvious to anyone skilled in the art, are granted and those patents do amount to patents on ideas because no other practical implementation is possible. Something like the limited slip differential is a better example of how patents should work - there are several different LSD designs which work, so if you didn't want to pay the cash to use a Torsen diff, you had other options to achieve a similar result. Money was made from the Torsen LSD patent because it was a good design for an LSD, not because it was the only practical way to make an LSD. One-click is indicative of a broken patent system, it isn't representative of the idea behind patents.
Freedom is dangerous. Free speech is dangerous. Whenever you have a free society, there is an inherent danger that someone might do something risky and/or undesirable.
However, if you look at history, authoritarian government is much more violent and dangerous that petty street criminals. And authoritarian governments usually do a poor job of controlling street crime for what it is worth.
So you are really making a deal with the devil. Enjoy the "safety" that fascism brings.
False dichotomy. The choice is not either (your idea of) freedom or fascist authoritarianism, there is a whole spectrum of degrees of freedom. If you were an anarchist I might have some respect for your black and white characterisation of freedom, but you're not an anarchist. You just think the degree of regulation you are willing to accept represents 'freedom' and any more regulation means fascist authoritarianism. That's pure bullshit.
Any law at all is a restriction of freedom. Are you against the laws which restrict my freedom to kick the fuck out of you because you looked at me funny? Assuming the answer is "no", can you elaborate on why laws regulating the physical harm we can inflict on one another are acceptable, but those regulating the psychological harm we can inflict on one another are not? You'll note that in both cases the law doesn't actually stop you doing those things, so you are in a sense still free to do them; the law merely punishes you after the fact.
In the UK, racist chanting at sporting events is illegal. That is a restriction of freedom of speech which is presumably unconstitutional in the US. I just can't see that as being indicative of a fascist government. It's no different to the laws which regulate where I can walk, how I can interact physically with others, the contracts I can enter into, how I must treat my animals or the laws regulating numerous other aspects of my life.
p.s. I'm speaking generally; I'm not arguing that this game causes psychological harm, or that it should be banned.
Taxes on telephone calls? Is that common? In the UK you get charged VAT (17.5%) on phone bills, but you would also get charged VAT on a game subscription or ISP account, so the tax burden is identical.
The Smart car has Mercedes engineering behind it, and crashworthiness is superior to anything put out from Toyota.
Smart cars do indeed survive crashes well; the safety cell is very robust. But they have absolutely no crumple zones at all, so while the Smart should survive the impact without crushing its passengers, the passengers inside will be injured far more than in a larger car by the near instantaneous deceleration. It's inherent in small car design that you don't have as much room in which to control deceleration in a crash, but the Smart doesn't even have a bonnet (hood) in which you can put a crumple zone - your feet are just a few inches from the front of the car. Till they put airbags on the outside of cars this will be a problem for all similarly tiny cars.
Mercedes and Lexus are two of the most common makes of cars used for taxis in the UK. 250,000 minicab drivers can't be wrong...
I live in the UK. From fairly recent personal experience, you do not get Mercedes and Lexus minicabs in London, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield or Newcastle. That's most of the major UK population centres. I doubt they're widely used as taxis anywhere else in the UK either. You get black cabs, which are typically LTI TXs and FXs - these are the classic London black cabs - or people carrier (minivan) conversions. Mercedes and Lexus aren't in that market because you can't get a wheelchair in one. You also get minicabs, which are universally bog-standard saloon cars - Vauxhall Vectras, Ford Mondeos and the like. I've not seen a single Lexus minicab in the UK and I've seen about two old Mercs.
Now, the kind of cars you get picked up in to go on your business class flight (I guess the equivalent of a limo in the US - I don't know what they're called, I just know them as cars rather than cabs or minicabs) are indeed often Mercedes or Lexus, but the cab you call to get home from shopping in the rain will almost certainly be a black cab or a standard saloon car.
I found that the menu has quite a bit more variety and flavor than slapping a slab of some random animal on my plate and calling it dinner.
And I find that my omnivorous diet has more variety than slapping a bowl of lentils on the table and calling it dinner. Straw men: delicious at any time of day.
Ahem, maybe you should RTFA. This whale was killed with a bomb lance. Either it wasn't killed by Inuits or Inuits do indeed hunt with bomb lances these days.
Yeah some are... but thing is, that paper isn't widely known and I'm willing to bet critical parts of my President's body that the GP didn't know that either and was simply talking out his ass.
The GP had posted a link to the paper 18 minutes before you cliam he was talking out of his ass and twelve hours before your post, which is prima facie evidence that you are utterly wrong. Please remove the body parts and put them through a mincer. Thanks for playing.
With no microwave, you have to spend more time preparing food (or going out to get food, which could be hindered by not owning a car).
With no microwave you spend the same amount of time preparing food, but instead of standing there waiting three minutes for it to cook you spend half an hour doing something else. Conventional cooking may take more time, but I find it wastes less of my time and the food tastes so much better.
I agree with you. The parent has misunderstood something, I think it should be apparent from the article he linked to. I didn't read it, this is/.:)
You really should try reading the article, because you wouldn't look like such an idiot if you did. You might even be able to add something to the discussion other than ill-informed noise. Slashdot may be full of morons who are proud of the fact that they feel qualified to comment on articles without even reading them, but that's no reason for you to be one of those morons too. Here's a little taster for you:
DRAM can also "remember" the last stored state, but in a slightly different way. It isn't so much that the charge (in the sense of a voltage appearing across a capacitance) is retained by the RAM cells, but that the thin oxide which forms the storage capacitor dielectric is highly stressed by the applied field, or is not stressed by the field, so that the properties of the oxide change slightly depending on the state of the data.
Read section 7 of this then come back when you have something intelligent to add.
So basically you're just telling me that the EU works as it is? So one group might try to push an unreasonable law, the others vote it down, and that's it. Sounds to me no worse than the USA or than the parliament of any of the EU members.
Not only is it no worse, it's actually much, much better than the USA or UK because you never end up with a single party with sufficient power to push through bullshit laws. The diverse views of the people actually get reflected in the legislative process, which is what democracy is supposed to be about. Two-party systems are barely democracies at all in my opinion.
Judges might no listen to arguments which start "But your honour, technically I only...", but they do listen to arguments which start "But your honour, according to [relevant law] I only...". Listening to those arguments is, erm, their job. Oh, and you can't retroactively apply a license. If you are using some code under GPL2 now you can use that code under GPL2 till the copyright expires (after which you can use it any way you like). If a future version of the GPL2 code is released under a new license which is incompatible with your proprietary code (say, GPL3) you can't use that new version, but it can't remove the rights to use the old version which have already been granted.
The thread consists of more than just the post you replied to. If you're not saying good AJAX code over GPRS would be better than regular web pages or local code, what are you saying good AJAX code over GPRS would be better than? The same AJAX code over a better connection? That makes no sense at all.
Slashdot Mirror
From the media to politics in the future? Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura...
Nope, hard disk speeds are quoted in MB/sec, not Mbps. You're a factor of 8 out - 40-50MB/sec is more like it (and modern desktop drives are a bit faster than that).
You've never actually used a network somebody else is using, have you? Suggesting that when one user saturates the network nobody else can even check their email is quite simply wrong. Every shared networking technology in use today shares the bandwidth out pretty fairly and with modest overhead for a reasonable number of clients. You can reach a stage where there are so many clients simultaneously using bandwidth that overall throughput suffers, but it takes a damn sight more than one person sending one file to do it. I saturate my 54Mbps Wi-Fi connection every time I back up my laptop and not only can everybody else on the network (often me using another machine) check their email, they can stream hi-def content from the interwebs, send huge files and do pretty much anything else they'd normally do too. With at most half a dozen or so clients on my AP I've never seen overall throughput drop, the bandwidth just gets shared out fairly between the clients. If two try to send big files, of course they only get half the bandwidth each, but it still works just fine. With 100 clients doing P2P it would be a different matter.
They have to weigh the monetary incentive of licensing fees from one game against the monetary cost of a huge "[Sony|Microsoft|Nintendo] promotes ultra-violence" campaign. I don't think the game is likely to win that cost/benefit analysis.
Indeed they are, but you usually have quite a lot less than 30 years exposure time, so it's not quite such a big deal. For long CCD exposures (minutes to hours in astronomy), you can guarantee you'll see some cosmic ray effects. However, taking multiple exposures and combining them digitally is pretty much standard these days, so removing cosmic ray effects (which, unlike the astronomical objects, won't be consistent in all the individual exposures) is fairly trivial.
If the emulsion has been stored (even under the best conditions) for 30 years it's not very likely to be the same thing either, is it?
You may want to investigate "Graded-Z shielding". The name comes from the fact that it uses layers of shielding with decreasing atomic numbers. You might first have a layer of lead, then a layer of tin, then one of copper. The lead stops the cosmic rays (protons, electrons, light atomic nuclei), but generates X-rays in the process. These X-rays might also fog your film. The X-rays produced as the lead absorbs the cosmic rays have a characteristic energy (88keV) which is not well absorbed by the lead itself - that's where the tin comes in. Again, the tin stopping the X-rays from the lead generates X-rays with a lower characteristic energy (29keV, which is in medical X-ray energy territory), which it doesn't absorb too well. The copper absorbs the X-rays from the tin and again emits X-rays with a yet lower characteristic energy. I don't know if the 9keV X-rays produced by the copper are a problem for Velvia. If they are, you'll need a yet lighter layer; a glance at the periodic table shows aluminium is a likely candidate.
I have no idea about the sensitivity of Velvia to cosmic rays or X-rays, so can't suggest thickness of the materials. My wild-ass-guess is somewhere in the 10s of mm. 30 years is a hell of a long time though. There are companies which specialise in shielding of this type (search for 'radiation shielding', 'graded-z shielding' and the like), they may be able to provide advice and sell you enclosures.
You mean they didn't have anything in the way of the signal? Damn, I was thinking when they mentioned a mountain they were going through it, not using the top of it. Not only that but the damn cheats didn't even wait till it rained!
I've done some digging and apparently this kind of flagrant dishonesty is pretty widespread. Here are some more significant points omitted from stories elsewhere in the media:
I guess you can't trust anybody these days, eh?
I should say that fostering competition and thus lower prices are a result of patents, but not the main aim. The aim is to foster innovation and for the results of that innovation to enter the public domain. I would say that your example of the booming market for e-cash in Japan shows that patents do in fact foster competition (which should also lower prices) - if these companies all sprang up when the important patents expired they must logically be using the same patented innovations. If they're all using the patented innovations the innovations must be good ones. And they're now in the public domain, free for anybody to use, complete with instructions. The 20 or 30 companies appearing at once is indicative of the innovation being widely understood, which is what patents are for. The fact that e-cash didn't take off while the patents were in force merely shows that the patent holders didn't do a very good job of licensing their patent; they failed to take full advantage of their temporary monopoly. The risk of the innovation being unavailable while the patent is in force is part of the deal with granting a monopoly and a big part of the reason why patents are temporary monopolies.
Now, if those innovations were obvious then patent shouldn't have been granted, that's why the 'non-obvious' criterion is there. Perhaps they weren't obvious 20 years ago but are obvious now, but that merely indicates that perhaps we need to review the period for which patents are valid in light of the increasing pace of technological advancement. Or perhaps, like many great innovations, they merely seem obvious when you know how they work.
I think you misunderstand the point of 'the patent' (assuming you meant patents generally). The point is not to foster competition and lower prices, but to avoid important inventions remaining trade secrets. Patents explicitly eliminate competition and allow the patent holder to control prices for a limited time in return for a detailed public description of the invention (a description sufficient that the invention can be replicated and the principles behind it understood). In return for granting the temporary monopoly, society gets to know exactly how the invention works.
There is no such thing as an "idea patent". There is such a thing as an "invention patent". You can't patent an idea. You can patent an implementation of an idea. Amazon's one-click patent doesn't patent the idea of one-click shopping. It patents the only practical implementation of one-click shopping, which isn't strictly the same thing. I could patent a hugely cumbersome version of one-click and license it, but nobody would buy a license, because it would be hugely cumbersome to implement (as in hamsters carrying postcards cumbersome). The problem with US patents at the moment is that patents like one-click, where the implementation is obvious to anyone skilled in the art, are granted and those patents do amount to patents on ideas because no other practical implementation is possible. Something like the limited slip differential is a better example of how patents should work - there are several different LSD designs which work, so if you didn't want to pay the cash to use a Torsen diff, you had other options to achieve a similar result. Money was made from the Torsen LSD patent because it was a good design for an LSD, not because it was the only practical way to make an LSD. One-click is indicative of a broken patent system, it isn't representative of the idea behind patents.
False dichotomy. The choice is not either (your idea of) freedom or fascist authoritarianism, there is a whole spectrum of degrees of freedom. If you were an anarchist I might have some respect for your black and white characterisation of freedom, but you're not an anarchist. You just think the degree of regulation you are willing to accept represents 'freedom' and any more regulation means fascist authoritarianism. That's pure bullshit.
Any law at all is a restriction of freedom. Are you against the laws which restrict my freedom to kick the fuck out of you because you looked at me funny? Assuming the answer is "no", can you elaborate on why laws regulating the physical harm we can inflict on one another are acceptable, but those regulating the psychological harm we can inflict on one another are not? You'll note that in both cases the law doesn't actually stop you doing those things, so you are in a sense still free to do them; the law merely punishes you after the fact.
In the UK, racist chanting at sporting events is illegal. That is a restriction of freedom of speech which is presumably unconstitutional in the US. I just can't see that as being indicative of a fascist government. It's no different to the laws which regulate where I can walk, how I can interact physically with others, the contracts I can enter into, how I must treat my animals or the laws regulating numerous other aspects of my life.
p.s. I'm speaking generally; I'm not arguing that this game causes psychological harm, or that it should be banned.
Taxes on telephone calls? Is that common? In the UK you get charged VAT (17.5%) on phone bills, but you would also get charged VAT on a game subscription or ISP account, so the tax burden is identical.
Oops, mea culpa.
Smart cars do indeed survive crashes well; the safety cell is very robust. But they have absolutely no crumple zones at all, so while the Smart should survive the impact without crushing its passengers, the passengers inside will be injured far more than in a larger car by the near instantaneous deceleration. It's inherent in small car design that you don't have as much room in which to control deceleration in a crash, but the Smart doesn't even have a bonnet (hood) in which you can put a crumple zone - your feet are just a few inches from the front of the car. Till they put airbags on the outside of cars this will be a problem for all similarly tiny cars.
I live in the UK. From fairly recent personal experience, you do not get Mercedes and Lexus minicabs in London, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield or Newcastle. That's most of the major UK population centres. I doubt they're widely used as taxis anywhere else in the UK either. You get black cabs, which are typically LTI TXs and FXs - these are the classic London black cabs - or people carrier (minivan) conversions. Mercedes and Lexus aren't in that market because you can't get a wheelchair in one. You also get minicabs, which are universally bog-standard saloon cars - Vauxhall Vectras, Ford Mondeos and the like. I've not seen a single Lexus minicab in the UK and I've seen about two old Mercs.
Now, the kind of cars you get picked up in to go on your business class flight (I guess the equivalent of a limo in the US - I don't know what they're called, I just know them as cars rather than cabs or minicabs) are indeed often Mercedes or Lexus, but the cab you call to get home from shopping in the rain will almost certainly be a black cab or a standard saloon car.
And I find that my omnivorous diet has more variety than slapping a bowl of lentils on the table and calling it dinner. Straw men: delicious at any time of day.
Ahem, maybe you should RTFA. This whale was killed with a bomb lance. Either it wasn't killed by Inuits or Inuits do indeed hunt with bomb lances these days.
The GP had posted a link to the paper 18 minutes before you cliam he was talking out of his ass and twelve hours before your post, which is prima facie evidence that you are utterly wrong. Please remove the body parts and put them through a mincer. Thanks for playing.
With no microwave you spend the same amount of time preparing food, but instead of standing there waiting three minutes for it to cook you spend half an hour doing something else. Conventional cooking may take more time, but I find it wastes less of my time and the food tastes so much better.
You mean when you get RSI?
You really should try reading the article, because you wouldn't look like such an idiot if you did. You might even be able to add something to the discussion other than ill-informed noise. Slashdot may be full of morons who are proud of the fact that they feel qualified to comment on articles without even reading them, but that's no reason for you to be one of those morons too. Here's a little taster for you:
Read section 7 of this then come back when you have something intelligent to add.
Not only is it no worse, it's actually much, much better than the USA or UK because you never end up with a single party with sufficient power to push through bullshit laws. The diverse views of the people actually get reflected in the legislative process, which is what democracy is supposed to be about. Two-party systems are barely democracies at all in my opinion.
Judges might no listen to arguments which start "But your honour, technically I only...", but they do listen to arguments which start "But your honour, according to [relevant law] I only...". Listening to those arguments is, erm, their job. Oh, and you can't retroactively apply a license. If you are using some code under GPL2 now you can use that code under GPL2 till the copyright expires (after which you can use it any way you like). If a future version of the GPL2 code is released under a new license which is incompatible with your proprietary code (say, GPL3) you can't use that new version, but it can't remove the rights to use the old version which have already been granted.
If the state of the planet is a 'personal agenda' then it's personal to every single human being on the planet.
The thread consists of more than just the post you replied to. If you're not saying good AJAX code over GPRS would be better than regular web pages or local code, what are you saying good AJAX code over GPRS would be better than? The same AJAX code over a better connection? That makes no sense at all.