I like Lessig's (I think) solution: allow multiple competing patent granting companies. The companies must comply with various federal regulations, probably being audited occasionally. Seems like this, done properly, could solve a lot of problems through good old fashioned competition (though it might cause many more problems).
Or how about this: we already press citizens into jury duty yes? Why not press them into reviewing patent applications? It could be like scientific journal peer review. If a large enough group was surveyed, you shouldn't need to worry about self approval too much. Review a patent? Get a tax break (money that otherwise would have funded patent review anyway).
Regarding lawyer speak, and the fact that nobody speaks it: if the average professional in the field is unable to understand the language of the patent application, then it probably shouldn't be granted anyway right? (since it isn't disclosing the patented device.)
It's not a question of linux supporting the soundcard or not, it's a
question a linux deciding which one to send audio to. Apparently, it
cannot make this decision dynamically based on whether or not the USB
thingy is plugged in where Windows can. These are the little things
that make Linux a pain. Sure, it can do everything, and supports all
manner of hardware (excluding wifi chipsets), but it just doesn't go
that extra mile.
It's hard to explain why the "new way" is harder to use but still
better because it is harder to use and that makes is
worse. If you tell me the new way is better for obscure
technical reasons, but by the way, you have to do backflips or it won't
work, then the new way can go fuck itself.
Is it so hard to have both a cached disk and one you can eject
whenever you want? The computer could maybe let you know when you
pulled the plug that not everything had finished and could finish if you
plug it back in for a sec right now, or maybe you'd just prefer to wait
for some other time to plug it back in. Isn't this what journaled fs's
are for? Atomic transactions? It's certainly within the realm of
possibility, and you should wish it existed for your GF's sake and for
all other people who don't have neither the time nor the inclination to
explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the
very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it!... er, I mean, have neither the time nor the inclination to babysit the
computer.
If you really need a disk that cannot be ejected until the computer
is ready, then design one that way. Mounted cdroms don't eject when you
press the button (they should unmount themeselves and eject, but that's
beside the point); they only eject when the computer releases them.
Another example: Is it so hard to have a computer that doesn't
require a "shut down"? Put a battery in there if you need a little time
for housekeeping before the power gets cut.
If you ever have to say "it's better, but oh it's worse, but it's
really still better", then you're doing something wrong. It really is
worse.
Now, sure, there are times you can't have your cake and eat it too.
But the examples above are not such times. Also, the road to perfection
may be long and arduous, but one shouldn't accept defeat, and one
certainly must not turn a blind eye to imperfections merely because it's
the "new way".
Diamond derives its hardness from the fact that each carbon atom is connected to four other atoms by strong covalent bonds. The new material is different in that it is made of tiny interlocking diamond rods. Each rod is a crystal that has a diameter of between 5 and 20 nanometres and a length of about 1 micron.
The bonds in the graphite form of carbon are stronger than those of the diamond form. However, the graphite bonds are all co-planar, so you can only make sheets (graphite), [nano] tubes, and [bucky] balls.
Hm. The right approach to solving the obesity problem is: exercise.
Ever been to Spain or France? I have not, but everyone I know who has
notices the distinct lack of obese people, unlike the United States.
Cities in Spain and France tend to be more walkable. It is common to
walk everywhere, occasionally taking a train. Every place I have lived
in the United States, it is common to drive everywhere.
As for natural foods being superior to processed foods, that seems
like a no brainer. Humans evolved to digest natural foods because
processed foods weren't around. This doesn't necessarily mean better
foods could not be engineered, but most processed foods seem to be
engineered for shelf life and looks, not health.
As for craving "bad" foods: Have you ever been in really good shape?
I have a couple times (well, I guess that's subjective. I could run for
about an hour every day, do a 12 miler at 7-7:30 min/mile pace, which is
about the best shape I've ever been in). The funny thing about being in
shape is that I actually crave "healthy" foods. Give me a salad loaded
with a variety of veggies. Give me whole grains. I completely dropped
soda, preferring water instead. The thought of McDonalds made me sick.
Needless to say, I felt a whole lot better too. Again, humans evolved
to be more active than a desk job allows. (I don't really get this
feeling doing only the shorter less frequent workouts I squeeze into my
day. It's quite frustrating; it takes a lot of dedication to get in
shape and stay there.)
I've heard from a tech company based in the US that it now costs the about same to manufacture a Silicon wafer in Asia as it does in the US. Not sure if we're talking bare Si, or an IC, or both. Also not sure if the reason is due to increased salary demands, or rising shipping costs or whatever, but I found it interesting.
I never quite understand everyone's obsession with Photoshop's "line tool". Not having used Photoshop much, I'll probably come across as ignorant... but the GIMP's model has a certain elegance to it: choose a "pen" (ink pen, pencil, airbrush, whatever) and draw with it. Any and all of these use the exact same drawing commands, and can draw straight lines with "shift", and straight lines snapped to common angles with "ctrl-shift". The action of drawing a line is seperate from the tool with which the line is drawn. How does the line tool in Photoshop decide how to draw the line?
Your evil index reminds me of the video game "Wizards and Warriors"
on the NES (great soundtrack). At the bottome of the screen was a hit
point meter marked "Evil". The meter only came into play when fighting
a boss; the bosses progressively started with more and more hit
points, and we joked that the later bosses were more "evil"...
We need a Google color of evil meter, like the terrorist threat
level. It's too much trouble to keep track of these things.
Today's Google Evil Level is: Yellow. An RSS or Atom feed of that
would be nice.
It's been a while since I looked at jabber (assuming Google talk will integrate with other jabber servers at large), and a quick search turns up little (some mailing list posts from 3 years ago implying there is no voice over jabber). Can anyone give a summary of voice over jabber (or whatever Google is using) and the chances of this working in Linux?
Perhaps your email client is significantly different from all I have
used, but I don't see how email could beat IM for speed of quick
conversations. Most email clients separate each message, making you
click or take some action to view a new message, while with IM you are
always seeing the same conversation. Email clients also have no support
for multiple concurent conversations (a la tabbed / multiple windows of
IM clients). (By "email clients" I mean things like pine, elm, mutt,
evolution, outlook, eudora, sylpheed, gnustep mail.app, balsa, kmail,
and probably more clients I have used, and I think they all suck for
reasons I won't bore you with at the moment.)
You have a good point though; IM and email are equivalent up to
the presence etc. I'd very much like to see an email client
that doesn't suck, and see no reason why that can't also be an IM client
with both email and IM using only a single protocol.
I'd like to take this opportunity to complain about the electronic safe at work.
To open the safe:
Turn the dial to the left repeatedly for about 30 seconds to charge up the electronics.
Turn the dial to the right to the first number in the combination.
Turn the dial slightly to the left because you overshot the first number.
Watch the numbers unexpectedly move backwards by tens.
Turn the dial more slowly to the right to the first number in the combination.
Wait for the electronics to register your selection of that number.
Turn the dial to right to the second number of the combination.
Watch the electronics run out of charge.
GOTO 1.
In summary, the stored charge is insufficient for all but a perfect shot, the feedback of turning the dial -> changing the number it points to is horrible, and I hate it. I suppose none of these are directly related to the electronics, just poor design.
If someone can tell me the advantage of an electronic safe over its mechanical counterpart, you'll get a cookie*.
* No you won't, but you'll complete my life, and I think that's a close second.
Yeah, I sorta realized that... after I hit submit. Oh well, it's no big surprise that I'm an idiot. Here's to hoping any email client *cough*Outlook*cough* implements PGP messages in a usable way.
Why doesn't everyone do this now? There are countless people between you and my email that could read it if they were so inclined. Adding "the cops" to that list won't change a thing.
No change it orbit of the center of mass of the earth-jumpers system, sure. But the earth itself would most certainly change its orbit. Of course, the earth's gravity would soon pull the jumpers back just as the jumpers' gravity would pull the earth back, and the earth's orbit would return to its initial orbit.
I really like CD Baby. I've used their "you might also like..." and many preview tracks to try out a few albums that I otherwise would not have found.
It would be cool if CD Baby preview tracks were available in iRate Radio ("radio" that gives you new songs based on your ratings of old songs), which I've just started using (again) (it seems to take a long time to get good tracks).
I read once read an eastern (China?) story about a couple brothers with super powers. One of the brothers could swallow the sea. A prince or someone important made him swallow the sea, then went into the dry sea bed to collect treasures. The brother began to get tired, and motioned the prince to return. The prince ignored him and was eventually drowned when the brother had to spit the sea back out... The brothers were then beheaded or something for killing the prince (I think they get away in the end, can't really remember). Not sure why I wanted to share that.
Ok, browsers have User Agent strings. Not all browsers are compatible with every web standard. Websites are becoming more complex (google maps etc.) and taking advantage of newer browsers. So, the question is, do we limit ourselves to the lowest common denominator (among browsers above a certain market share threshold at least), or do we make sites that can change depending on the browser?
If yes, then should the site do browser detection and serve up different pages? If not (and I think if certainly should be "not"), then how do we go about supporting an ever widening gap in browser features? Simply wait for all browsers above our threshold market share to catch up? I suppose that's what we do now, but it's quite annoying to not be able to use some nice features because of that.
Another thought: web apps (vs. installed apps) have the great advantage of being upgradeable with no user action. But eventually we get to the point where upgrades require the user to take action and upgrade her browser... So the web app just serves as a buffer to user action.
I don't myself understand how anyone could even believe that software is really patentable. All modern computer languages are context free grammars...
We've got to stop thinking of the law in these sort of terms. The law isn't written in stone so that interpretations may be debated forever (e.g. patents only apply to X. let's argue about the definition of X). The law changes. If we decide we want patents to apply to language, then patents apply to language. If ambiguity exists in the law, we can argue over how it does or does not apply to new situations, but at some point we need decide how we want it to apply to new situations and make it so.
Patent law was designed to to promote progress (which I define as "encourage more invention") by rewarding the work put into invention with exclusive rights. Is work put into computer programs? Yes. Will some sort of protection promote the invention of more computer programs? I think so. Does the patent system do this? Of course not; it's a complete mess. But my point is that arguing about things in terms of "well, technically it's just language" or "technically, it's the same as a mathbook" is not useful. We are free to make laws allowing the patenting of math; the above argument then boils down to "we can't patent math because it's math". We need to make the argument that these laws need to promote progress, nothing more. They are not currently doing so and are in serious need of reform. And we need to be very clear why the law should promote progess and what damage can and is being caused by the current state of things.
A good carpenter has lots of tools and uses the most suitable tool(s) for each task.
But he'll also often use a metal bit to drill wood... Who has wood bits anyway? There's a lot of overlap in tools. And not every task has a tool. Improvisation and creativity will always be important.
How about instead of putting a password on everyone's receipt, just have a
screen, only visible from the cash registers, with a password (a real word,
easy to remember from just a glance). This password would rotate every hour or
so. The newest and second-to-newest passwords would work (so as not to screw
customers arriving just before a change). This lowers the complexity, but is a
deterrent to freeloaders. It may not lower the complexity enough though, or be
enough of a detterent to make a difference ("hey neighbor, what's the
password?").
Anyway, I think some social shaming would be more effective and less
annoying than the technical password on the receipt scheme. Anyone have some
better ideas?
Regarding faster boot times, I want them very badly. If I could go from
cold to using the GUI in 7-8 seconds, I'd turn my computer off all the time
(saving power). As it is, I think I'm close to 20 or 30 seconds on Linux (have
yet to measure, but I really need to look into parallel init scripts).
I'd also need faster shutdown. Not really "faster", but guaranteed. On my
Windows machine at work, I "hibernate" which sometimes fails due to "lack of
resources", so I need to watch it to make sure it has shut down. Regular
shutdowns aren't much better. My Linux shutdowns often hang for some obscure
reason or other, so I typically babysit those as well. What I want is a real
power switch. The kind that physically breaks the power connection when I
switch it. I can't stand "soft" power switches because I'm constantly
wondering whether it's really off or not (this is true for more devices than my
computer). I think either a small battery or a capacitor could be installed to
power the system long enough to shut down properly, but the open switch would
guarantee that no matter what the thing would soon be "off", whether a proper
shutdown happened or not.
"Instant" (7-8 s) on and "guaranteed off" are definitely near the top of my
computer wishlist, particularly in a laptop situation but very much so for
desktops as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I like Lessig's (I think) solution: allow multiple competing patent granting companies. The companies must comply with various federal regulations, probably being audited occasionally. Seems like this, done properly, could solve a lot of problems through good old fashioned competition (though it might cause many more problems).
Or how about this: we already press citizens into jury duty yes? Why not press them into reviewing patent applications? It could be like scientific journal peer review. If a large enough group was surveyed, you shouldn't need to worry about self approval too much. Review a patent? Get a tax break (money that otherwise would have funded patent review anyway).
Regarding lawyer speak, and the fact that nobody speaks it: if the average professional in the field is unable to understand the language of the patent application, then it probably shouldn't be granted anyway right? (since it isn't disclosing the patented device.)
I thought "quantum encryption" was One Time Pad using a quantum technique to ensure uncompromised pad distribution?
It's not a question of linux supporting the soundcard or not, it's a question a linux deciding which one to send audio to. Apparently, it cannot make this decision dynamically based on whether or not the USB thingy is plugged in where Windows can. These are the little things that make Linux a pain. Sure, it can do everything, and supports all manner of hardware (excluding wifi chipsets), but it just doesn't go that extra mile.
It's hard to explain why the "new way" is harder to use but still better because it is harder to use and that makes is worse. If you tell me the new way is better for obscure technical reasons, but by the way, you have to do backflips or it won't work, then the new way can go fuck itself.
Is it so hard to have both a cached disk and one you can eject whenever you want? The computer could maybe let you know when you pulled the plug that not everything had finished and could finish if you plug it back in for a sec right now, or maybe you'd just prefer to wait for some other time to plug it back in. Isn't this what journaled fs's are for? Atomic transactions? It's certainly within the realm of possibility, and you should wish it existed for your GF's sake and for all other people who don't have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! ... er, I mean, have neither the time nor the inclination to babysit the
computer.
If you really need a disk that cannot be ejected until the computer is ready, then design one that way. Mounted cdroms don't eject when you press the button (they should unmount themeselves and eject, but that's beside the point); they only eject when the computer releases them.
Another example: Is it so hard to have a computer that doesn't require a "shut down"? Put a battery in there if you need a little time for housekeeping before the power gets cut.
If you ever have to say "it's better, but oh it's worse, but it's really still better", then you're doing something wrong. It really is worse.
Now, sure, there are times you can't have your cake and eat it too. But the examples above are not such times. Also, the road to perfection may be long and arduous, but one shouldn't accept defeat, and one certainly must not turn a blind eye to imperfections merely because it's the "new way".
Diamond derives its hardness from the fact that each carbon atom is connected to four other atoms by strong covalent bonds. The new material is different in that it is made of tiny interlocking diamond rods. Each rod is a crystal that has a diameter of between 5 and 20 nanometres and a length of about 1 micron.
The bonds in the graphite form of carbon are stronger than those of the diamond form. However, the graphite bonds are all co-planar, so you can only make sheets (graphite), [nano] tubes, and [bucky] balls.
Wow. You have some fscked up porn on there. Wow.
Some? Shouldn't that be "infinite"?
Hm. The right approach to solving the obesity problem is: exercise. Ever been to Spain or France? I have not, but everyone I know who has notices the distinct lack of obese people, unlike the United States. Cities in Spain and France tend to be more walkable. It is common to walk everywhere, occasionally taking a train. Every place I have lived in the United States, it is common to drive everywhere.
As for natural foods being superior to processed foods, that seems like a no brainer. Humans evolved to digest natural foods because processed foods weren't around. This doesn't necessarily mean better foods could not be engineered, but most processed foods seem to be engineered for shelf life and looks, not health.
As for craving "bad" foods: Have you ever been in really good shape? I have a couple times (well, I guess that's subjective. I could run for about an hour every day, do a 12 miler at 7-7:30 min/mile pace, which is about the best shape I've ever been in). The funny thing about being in shape is that I actually crave "healthy" foods. Give me a salad loaded with a variety of veggies. Give me whole grains. I completely dropped soda, preferring water instead. The thought of McDonalds made me sick. Needless to say, I felt a whole lot better too. Again, humans evolved to be more active than a desk job allows. (I don't really get this feeling doing only the shorter less frequent workouts I squeeze into my day. It's quite frustrating; it takes a lot of dedication to get in shape and stay there.)
I've heard from a tech company based in the US that it now costs the about same to manufacture a Silicon wafer in Asia as it does in the US. Not sure if we're talking bare Si, or an IC, or both. Also not sure if the reason is due to increased salary demands, or rising shipping costs or whatever, but I found it interesting.
Can you recommend a good window manager with tabs? I've used fluxbox and pwm somewhat, but found them lacking. Thanks.
I never quite understand everyone's obsession with Photoshop's "line tool". Not having used Photoshop much, I'll probably come across as ignorant... but the GIMP's model has a certain elegance to it: choose a "pen" (ink pen, pencil, airbrush, whatever) and draw with it. Any and all of these use the exact same drawing commands, and can draw straight lines with "shift", and straight lines snapped to common angles with "ctrl-shift". The action of drawing a line is seperate from the tool with which the line is drawn. How does the line tool in Photoshop decide how to draw the line?
Your evil index reminds me of the video game "Wizards and Warriors" on the NES (great soundtrack). At the bottome of the screen was a hit point meter marked "Evil". The meter only came into play when fighting a boss; the bosses progressively started with more and more hit points, and we joked that the later bosses were more "evil"...
We need a Google color of evil meter, like the terrorist threat level. It's too much trouble to keep track of these things.
Today's Google Evil Level is: Yellow. An RSS or Atom feed of that would be nice.
It's been a while since I looked at jabber (assuming Google talk will integrate with other jabber servers at large), and a quick search turns up little (some mailing list posts from 3 years ago implying there is no voice over jabber). Can anyone give a summary of voice over jabber (or whatever Google is using) and the chances of this working in Linux?
Perhaps your email client is significantly different from all I have used, but I don't see how email could beat IM for speed of quick conversations. Most email clients separate each message, making you click or take some action to view a new message, while with IM you are always seeing the same conversation. Email clients also have no support for multiple concurent conversations (a la tabbed / multiple windows of IM clients). (By "email clients" I mean things like pine, elm, mutt, evolution, outlook, eudora, sylpheed, gnustep mail.app, balsa, kmail, and probably more clients I have used, and I think they all suck for reasons I won't bore you with at the moment.)
You have a good point though; IM and email are equivalent up to the presence etc. I'd very much like to see an email client that doesn't suck, and see no reason why that can't also be an IM client with both email and IM using only a single protocol.
I'd like to take this opportunity to complain about the electronic safe at work.
To open the safe:
In summary, the stored charge is insufficient for all but a perfect shot, the feedback of turning the dial -> changing the number it points to is horrible, and I hate it. I suppose none of these are directly related to the electronics, just poor design.
If someone can tell me the advantage of an electronic safe over its mechanical counterpart, you'll get a cookie*.
* No you won't, but you'll complete my life, and I think that's a close second.
Yeah, I sorta realized that... after I hit submit. Oh well, it's no big surprise that I'm an idiot. Here's to hoping any email client *cough*Outlook*cough* implements PGP messages in a usable way.
Um, no.
Why doesn't everyone do this now? There are countless people between you and my email that could read it if they were so inclined. Adding "the cops" to that list won't change a thing.
No change it orbit of the center of mass of the earth-jumpers system, sure. But the earth itself would most certainly change its orbit. Of course, the earth's gravity would soon pull the jumpers back just as the jumpers' gravity would pull the earth back, and the earth's orbit would return to its initial orbit.
I really like CD Baby. I've used their "you might also like..." and many preview tracks to try out a few albums that I otherwise would not have found.
It would be cool if CD Baby preview tracks were available in iRate Radio ("radio" that gives you new songs based on your ratings of old songs), which I've just started using (again) (it seems to take a long time to get good tracks).
I read once read an eastern (China?) story about a couple brothers with super powers. One of the brothers could swallow the sea. A prince or someone important made him swallow the sea, then went into the dry sea bed to collect treasures. The brother began to get tired, and motioned the prince to return. The prince ignored him and was eventually drowned when the brother had to spit the sea back out... The brothers were then beheaded or something for killing the prince (I think they get away in the end, can't really remember). Not sure why I wanted to share that.
Ok, browsers have User Agent strings. Not all browsers are compatible with every web standard. Websites are becoming more complex (google maps etc.) and taking advantage of newer browsers. So, the question is, do we limit ourselves to the lowest common denominator (among browsers above a certain market share threshold at least), or do we make sites that can change depending on the browser?
If yes, then should the site do browser detection and serve up different pages? If not (and I think if certainly should be "not"), then how do we go about supporting an ever widening gap in browser features? Simply wait for all browsers above our threshold market share to catch up? I suppose that's what we do now, but it's quite annoying to not be able to use some nice features because of that.
Another thought: web apps (vs. installed apps) have the great advantage of being upgradeable with no user action. But eventually we get to the point where upgrades require the user to take action and upgrade her browser... So the web app just serves as a buffer to user action.
I don't myself understand how anyone could even believe that software is really patentable. All modern computer languages are context free grammars ...
We've got to stop thinking of the law in these sort of terms. The law isn't written in stone so that interpretations may be debated forever (e.g. patents only apply to X. let's argue about the definition of X). The law changes. If we decide we want patents to apply to language, then patents apply to language. If ambiguity exists in the law, we can argue over how it does or does not apply to new situations, but at some point we need decide how we want it to apply to new situations and make it so.
Patent law was designed to to promote progress (which I define as "encourage more invention") by rewarding the work put into invention with exclusive rights. Is work put into computer programs? Yes. Will some sort of protection promote the invention of more computer programs? I think so. Does the patent system do this? Of course not; it's a complete mess. But my point is that arguing about things in terms of "well, technically it's just language" or "technically, it's the same as a mathbook" is not useful. We are free to make laws allowing the patenting of math; the above argument then boils down to "we can't patent math because it's math". We need to make the argument that these laws need to promote progress, nothing more. They are not currently doing so and are in serious need of reform. And we need to be very clear why the law should promote progess and what damage can and is being caused by the current state of things.
A good carpenter has lots of tools and uses the most suitable tool(s) for each task.
But he'll also often use a metal bit to drill wood... Who has wood bits anyway? There's a lot of overlap in tools. And not every task has a tool. Improvisation and creativity will always be important.
How about instead of putting a password on everyone's receipt, just have a screen, only visible from the cash registers, with a password (a real word, easy to remember from just a glance). This password would rotate every hour or so. The newest and second-to-newest passwords would work (so as not to screw customers arriving just before a change). This lowers the complexity, but is a deterrent to freeloaders. It may not lower the complexity enough though, or be enough of a detterent to make a difference ("hey neighbor, what's the password?").
Anyway, I think some social shaming would be more effective and less annoying than the technical password on the receipt scheme. Anyone have some better ideas?
Regarding faster boot times, I want them very badly. If I could go from cold to using the GUI in 7-8 seconds, I'd turn my computer off all the time (saving power). As it is, I think I'm close to 20 or 30 seconds on Linux (have yet to measure, but I really need to look into parallel init scripts).
I'd also need faster shutdown. Not really "faster", but guaranteed. On my Windows machine at work, I "hibernate" which sometimes fails due to "lack of resources", so I need to watch it to make sure it has shut down. Regular shutdowns aren't much better. My Linux shutdowns often hang for some obscure reason or other, so I typically babysit those as well. What I want is a real power switch. The kind that physically breaks the power connection when I switch it. I can't stand "soft" power switches because I'm constantly wondering whether it's really off or not (this is true for more devices than my computer). I think either a small battery or a capacitor could be installed to power the system long enough to shut down properly, but the open switch would guarantee that no matter what the thing would soon be "off", whether a proper shutdown happened or not.
"Instant" (7-8 s) on and "guaranteed off" are definitely near the top of my computer wishlist, particularly in a laptop situation but very much so for desktops as well.