It is a one fault tolerant system from a computer hardware perspective, which is typically all that a home user needs. Buying two and storing one off-site would be a truly one fault tolerant system, two fault at the computer level.
Using a single ex drive means you are giving up on the fire/lightning strike/natural disaster angle, but it does square the probability that you will loose your data to a computer fault (i.e. hard drive failure). Since the chance of failure in any given year is fairly small (probably less than 1%), you're reducing your chances of data loss in a year to less than one in ten thousand. Also, with two drives, the chance of recovering all of your data through (expesive) data recovery is increased, as even a failure of both drives will likely not destroy both copies identically. That's good enough for home users.
and it could easily top $3B. Don't sell yourselves short - remember, it's not your money you're spending! After all, he mangaged to make the $3M Sundial footbridge into a $23.5M masterpiece!
I figured but it still made me chuckle. Actually if you consider the time it takes, especially on a slow DSL connection (heaven for bit you are on dialup), $2 is a bargain.
How come you can't post to multiple stories in quick succession. Heck, it only takes me 15 minutes to read and reply to a gaggle of/. stories, but it takes another 15-20 to post them.
300%...I think you overestimate the wholesale value of the merchandise. Most items can be mail ordered in qty 1, with shipping, for comparable money. Radio Shack is fro when you have to have it *right now* and don't care that you're going to throw away a few dollars to have it.
Well, since we're submitting anecdotal evidence, I have two Dell servers which have been running for 2 and 3 years straight without a single failure of any type. I have a laptop which recently had a mobo problem, and after calling in and getting a rep in under 2 minutes (yes, I have the corporate service, though I only have 4 employees), and after 15 minutes of trouble shooting (half of which was win boots), he authorized a replacement, and it arrived and was installed the next day at 10am. He also sent a replacement cover which I mentioned had some cosmetic damage, as well as a couple extra of the ubiquitous "pop off feet" Dell insists on using (I find epoxy works better than their PSA in keeping them in place).
And I usually buy an extra black toner before I run out of the color. I'm just about to switch printers now. The good thing is that the unit degrades in quality fairly quickly, so a whol enew unit after a full set of toners is probably a good thing.
I've got a Dell 5100 color laser as well that I picked up on sale for $680 new - networked, duplexer, 25/35ppm rated (about 10-15 in real life for large color jobs), comes with full 9kB/8kCMY toners. 9k black toners are $50. The down side is that 8k color toners are something like $175 each, and the fuser is another $300, so - once again - when the color runs out, I'm buying a new unit. Well, maybe not a new 5100cn, 'casue the out put is "fuzzy" when compared to a good HP.
Oh, my workhorse is an HP5siMX. $250 off of ebay, plus $125 to ship the monster. Prints all day, all night without a problem, and it's $15 for a 15k toner refill. Swap the toner cart with an OEM or reman one every other (or third) fill for $90. It's so cheap to print on, and so reliable, I will be sad the day it dies or I replace it (might get a xerox multi-function this fall to replace it...I need 11x17 copying).
Yeah, but have you seen all the freakin' error reports on those humans? The compression is super lossy, and degrades - sometimes catastrophically - over time. Not to mention that there's just no good way to back up a human and get even a small portion of the data to replicate.
If I didn't know better, I'd say these "human" storage devices were designed and built by the content industry for the specific purpose of being endless consumers of media.
You don't need to look online for the free-due-to-advertising model. There have been advertisers giving away free, unrelated product for decades, if not centuries in return for eyeballs. Ever listen to the radio, or watch TV? People are already used to this stuff...the water is already boiling.
Aside: Advertisers are the scourge of the earth, and they may actually rank _below_ lawyers, as at least some lawyers are honest. No, I haven't met one personally, but they supposedly exist whereas there are no honest advertisers almost by definition. Advertisers are at the root of most sports-related inflation. They get owners addicted to the cash like heroin, then claim they need to have more and more exposure to geep that cash coming. as the money filters down, everybody gets greedy, and you end up with $8 beers, $5 hot dogs, $300 bleacher seats, and some guy who can't even spell his name making $80M over 4 years right out of college because he can run a 4.2 40 and throw a pigskin 80 yards.
Computers are tangible goods, and have a tangible value. Software is bits on a disc, which costs pennies to reproduce. For thousands of years, the cost of a product has been the cost to produce times a markup factor. The first copy of a piece of commercial software might cost $10M, but the next one only costs $0.15. You aren't buying the first one, right?
Professional services are similar. How much do you think you would pay an Architect to design your new $376k home. Would you shell out $24,000 before even choosing a contractor for a stack of 20 sheets of paper? Think hard about that - nobody is going to loan you the money, you've got to take the price of a mid-level car out of your pocket to pay for 7 oz of paper, and will be worthless to just about anyone else. What if you were going to sell that $400,000 house. Would you pay someone $410,000 for that same dream house if you just got a beautiful, functional house when you signed the loan paperwork at the end? Most people would pay the extra 10k and be happy because they perceive that they got more value.
Nontangable items carry less value. It's not about the digital age - it's been this way for thousands of years. It's just that only recently has the "thought" been separated from the "product. "
but someone esle in the test should reply as AC with all the gory details. At least tell us who it is so that we can either be looking for it or give up all hope of getting it in our area.
You also must have missed the parts about restricting IP rights only for the advancement of arts and sciences (not directly for financial gain, or preservation of markets solely for financial gain), and the part where the citizens are given all rights except those not specifically curtailed by the government.
No, the cost of the computing cycles is worth more than the money to pure research. It may not be efficient, but the cost (both dollar and environmental) to buy/manufacture the processors and run them would be far greater than just running existing processors. Yes, there's the inherent inefficiency of distributed computing, but there is also sever inefficency in the process of donating, adminstrating, allocating, purchasing, monitoring, and replacing physical assets.
Put another way, is it cheaper to identify, buy, assemble, build, maintain, and power a computer, or is it cheaper to just power the computer, even if the power-Flop ratio might only be 1:0.5. Buildings and people are expensive when compared to energy costs.
Sure, you might have to defend them in courst, but you could still squash every small business without a 6-7 figure legal budget.
You wouldn't have to "defend" anything. The only time you would go to court is if you wanted to *sue* someone else over your patent. And in that case you would first have to establish that your patent is valid. This would make patent trolling much harder. Currently, the patent is *presumed valid* when you go to court even though the patent office does not examine the patent applications.
Sort of like defending yourself against a claim of online copyright infringement by the RIAA? I mean, some of those appear to be totally baseless, and yet people can't afford to pay the legal costs to go to court, even though the RIAA has burden of proof (preponderance). How many small businesses have $100,000 to defend a small patent claim - or would they just settle for $10,000 or $20,000 and a small licensing fee to make the lawyers go away. Hell, I couldn't afford to look at a 6 figure bill and expect my (very) small company to exist if someone patented IP that I use everyday in my operations. It would, indeed, be cheaper to just pay $100 per document set I send out than have to fight it in court. We've all seen cases where the judge is clueless of what is or isn't obvious, and anybody can spend $500 an hour and get an expert witness who sides with their viewpoint. Even if you can afford to afford to fight it, can you afford to lose and appeal? I can't.
It is an interesting video, but seems skewed to the opinion that the election was rigged. Also, the programmer began to stray from his knowledge when asked about the exit polling data, which he took to be infallible. Does anyone have a transcript, and is there an identification of the party affiliations of the questioners?
This is one of the problems with political commmitee hearings. They are looking for an answer, and tend only to look in the places that give them the answer they want. The testimony concerning Feeney's staffer correcting the course of his work - that Feeney wanted to hide code to rig an election, not to know how to detect sowfware that could rig an election as he had originally provided - could be quite damning. Nonetheless, proof-of-concept viruses are also written by white-hat hackers for new exploits, so it could be entirely on the up and up. Of course, this research should have been made public. Does anyone know how Feeney has voted or testified when confronted with digital ballot machines? Is he publically for or against paper trails?
Witch hunts and lynchings are not my cup of tea, nor should their methods be used in civilized discussions. Sadly, most Americans are too ignorant of computer operation to make an informed decision concerning this type of thing. Even otherwise intellegent people do not understand the technology which goes into software and coding; these are black boxes which operate like a microwave oven or an alarm clock.
Note: I'm a democrat and always have been. I voted against GWB both times. And have had some very nice (unspoken) "I told you so" moments with my wife since 2004 (she's a long time republican and voted for GWB).
Perhaps the material acts like steel instead of aluminum (I'm not a big CF guy, I don't know). Steel has a limit where it can withstand "infinite" cycles of low stress. Aluminum just keeps degrading each cycle 'til it fails. The term is...damned it...too late to think tonight. Chances are, they figure if the stresses don't make it fail after 10^6 cycles (or whatever they use) it's hit its proportional limit (shit, it that the term I was looking for?) and it won't fail, except due to growth of fatigue cracks.
I'd say that a factor of 4 really isn't that much of a stretch (ha! get it...I made a funny!). If the technology is that cheap, you could just bundle it with the light source and make it a 2000hr user replaceable item, just like projector lamps are today.
Well, they're talking about two things, they probably mean that the modulus of elsticity (the "stiffness", based on Young's Modulus, expressed in psi or pascals) is double that of silicon, but the yield point, or flexibility (how far it can bend before it permanently deforms) is 10 times that of silicon. It's a dumbing down of the mechanical properties using common language and, no, it really doesn't make sense the way they've presented it if you try and apply logic to the langugae they've used.
If it can be demonstrated that the current law is HAMPERING the progress of science, would that not make overreaching patent law unconstitutional?
Of course not, this isn't about law, it's about money and power. Law is always about preserving money and power. Should anyone question that fact, it generally means that they do not understand who's money and power is being affected.
What is the "discovery" related to this particular patent?
I know it's a rhetorical question, but for the younguns among us, writings and discoveries are simply a non-specific, but generally accpeted all inclusive, way of saying creative and scientific works, which has been expanded in recent years to include novel ideas (software/IP, and business method patents). Let's not get into constitutional semantics, I mean "all men are created equal" has been taken to mean all people, men and women, when the intent was "all white male land owners of age"; or "shall not be infringed" referring to the right to bear arms in the absence of the purpose clause being about militias (also known as the state national guard units). Both have taken on new and expanded meanings. There is no reason that "men" shouldn't mean everyone, nor is there a reason that "arms" should not include high powered firearms as well as fighter jets, tanks, explosives, poisons in large quntity, or nuclear weapons of any size. Both the KKK and the BATFE would argue those expanded definitions. The fact is, regardless of your view on any particular issue, there is a currently held (but dynamic) view of such vague language. I really can't be sure whether the founders are laughing at us or crying over our trespasses, to be honest.
The danger with that system is that there is no value to the patent, and any patent would be granted to anyone with the money to buy one. It would be the network equivalent of people buying every 2,3,4,5 and 6 letter domain name in a new TLD. If you had a few million bux, it would be yours. Sure, you might have to defend them in courst, but you could still squash every small business without a 6-7 figure legal budget.
I'm okay with your proposal with one addition: mandatory licensing of technology and 3-5 year patent rights on any non-physical patent. Licensing would be based on total potential market, as assessed by the USPTO examiner first, and verified each year of the patent or as each threshhold was crossed. For inventions with less than 1000 potential endusers, a fee of $100; 10,000 = $10 fee, 100,000 users = $1 fee, and 1 million or more users would net a $0.10 fee. All but $1 of the larger fees would be placed in escrow for the term of the patent, with refunds given to the original purchasers as the threshholds were crossed. Refunds would be reduced by an allowable escrow processing fee to be set (similar to medical "usual and customary" fees). After 3-5 years, the invention goes into the public domain. OF course, limitations of liability to the original inventor need to be enacted, with the inventor being shielded from any liability for statutory licensed technology - i.e.: if you choose statutory licensing, YOU are responsible for verifying the veracity of the inventors claims and the safety of the product.
Hell, while we're at it, the same licensing scheme should be used for copyright works as well. It would certainly put a crimp the the "vault" style marketing used by Disney.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, except it will take you 18 hours to fill it up, since the write speed is only 1MB/s (according to the page).
It is a one fault tolerant system from a computer hardware perspective, which is typically all that a home user needs. Buying two and storing one off-site would be a truly one fault tolerant system, two fault at the computer level.
Using a single ex drive means you are giving up on the fire/lightning strike/natural disaster angle, but it does square the probability that you will loose your data to a computer fault (i.e. hard drive failure). Since the chance of failure in any given year is fairly small (probably less than 1%), you're reducing your chances of data loss in a year to less than one in ten thousand. Also, with two drives, the chance of recovering all of your data through (expesive) data recovery is increased, as even a failure of both drives will likely not destroy both copies identically. That's good enough for home users.
and it could easily top $3B. Don't sell yourselves short - remember, it's not your money you're spending! After all, he mangaged to make the $3M Sundial footbridge into a $23.5M masterpiece!
(Who is Santiago Calatrava?)
I figured but it still made me chuckle. Actually if you consider the time it takes, especially on a slow DSL connection (heaven for bit you are on dialup), $2 is a bargain.
How come you can't post to multiple stories in quick succession. Heck, it only takes me 15 minutes to read and reply to a gaggle of /. stories, but it takes another 15-20 to post them.
300%...I think you overestimate the wholesale value of the merchandise. Most items can be mail ordered in qty 1, with shipping, for comparable money. Radio Shack is fro when you have to have it *right now* and don't care that you're going to throw away a few dollars to have it.
"We tried to get people to buy a Knoppix LiveCD from us... "
Good for a laugh first thing in the morning. Thanks!
But where do you stop?
Violent naughty pictures?
Naughty pictures?
Violent pictures?
Violent pames?
Violent movies? (Everybody liked Saw, right?)
Violent sports (UFC, WWF)?
All contact sports?
How about in the non-content arena?
Alcohol?
Caffeine?
Cars with HP to exceed 75MPH or torque to better than 0-60/8sec?
Well, since we're submitting anecdotal evidence, I have two Dell servers which have been running for 2 and 3 years straight without a single failure of any type. I have a laptop which recently had a mobo problem, and after calling in and getting a rep in under 2 minutes (yes, I have the corporate service, though I only have 4 employees), and after 15 minutes of trouble shooting (half of which was win boots), he authorized a replacement, and it arrived and was installed the next day at 10am. He also sent a replacement cover which I mentioned had some cosmetic damage, as well as a couple extra of the ubiquitous "pop off feet" Dell insists on using (I find epoxy works better than their PSA in keeping them in place).
And I usually buy an extra black toner before I run out of the color. I'm just about to switch printers now. The good thing is that the unit degrades in quality fairly quickly, so a whol enew unit after a full set of toners is probably a good thing.
I've got a Dell 5100 color laser as well that I picked up on sale for $680 new - networked, duplexer, 25/35ppm rated (about 10-15 in real life for large color jobs), comes with full 9kB/8kCMY toners. 9k black toners are $50. The down side is that 8k color toners are something like $175 each, and the fuser is another $300, so - once again - when the color runs out, I'm buying a new unit. Well, maybe not a new 5100cn, 'casue the out put is "fuzzy" when compared to a good HP.
Oh, my workhorse is an HP5siMX. $250 off of ebay, plus $125 to ship the monster. Prints all day, all night without a problem, and it's $15 for a 15k toner refill. Swap the toner cart with an OEM or reman one every other (or third) fill for $90. It's so cheap to print on, and so reliable, I will be sad the day it dies or I replace it (might get a xerox multi-function this fall to replace it...I need 11x17 copying).
Yes, but more important is who will be the 1,000,000th UID on slashdot, and will we see an insane registration season to try and be UID 1,000,000.
And, of course, with 7 digit UIDs, will those of us with six get more respect?
Yeah, but have you seen all the freakin' error reports on those humans? The compression is super lossy, and degrades - sometimes catastrophically - over time. Not to mention that there's just no good way to back up a human and get even a small portion of the data to replicate.
If I didn't know better, I'd say these "human" storage devices were designed and built by the content industry for the specific purpose of being endless consumers of media.
You mean like the three breasted...oh, right. Ewwww, that's gross. ;-)
'Cause we all have a little mac fanboi hiding inside us
*ducks*
You don't need to look online for the free-due-to-advertising model. There have been advertisers giving away free, unrelated product for decades, if not centuries in return for eyeballs. Ever listen to the radio, or watch TV? People are already used to this stuff...the water is already boiling.
Aside: Advertisers are the scourge of the earth, and they may actually rank _below_ lawyers, as at least some lawyers are honest. No, I haven't met one personally, but they supposedly exist whereas there are no honest advertisers almost by definition. Advertisers are at the root of most sports-related inflation. They get owners addicted to the cash like heroin, then claim they need to have more and more exposure to geep that cash coming. as the money filters down, everybody gets greedy, and you end up with $8 beers, $5 hot dogs, $300 bleacher seats, and some guy who can't even spell his name making $80M over 4 years right out of college because he can run a 4.2 40 and throw a pigskin 80 yards.
Computers are tangible goods, and have a tangible value. Software is bits on a disc, which costs pennies to reproduce. For thousands of years, the cost of a product has been the cost to produce times a markup factor. The first copy of a piece of commercial software might cost $10M, but the next one only costs $0.15. You aren't buying the first one, right?
Professional services are similar. How much do you think you would pay an Architect to design your new $376k home. Would you shell out $24,000 before even choosing a contractor for a stack of 20 sheets of paper? Think hard about that - nobody is going to loan you the money, you've got to take the price of a mid-level car out of your pocket to pay for 7 oz of paper, and will be worthless to just about anyone else. What if you were going to sell that $400,000 house. Would you pay someone $410,000 for that same dream house if you just got a beautiful, functional house when you signed the loan paperwork at the end? Most people would pay the extra 10k and be happy because they perceive that they got more value.
Nontangable items carry less value. It's not about the digital age - it's been this way for thousands of years. It's just that only recently has the "thought" been separated from the "product. "
but someone esle in the test should reply as AC with all the gory details. At least tell us who it is so that we can either be looking for it or give up all hope of getting it in our area.
You also must have missed the parts about restricting IP rights only for the advancement of arts and sciences (not directly for financial gain, or preservation of markets solely for financial gain), and the part where the citizens are given all rights except those not specifically curtailed by the government.
No, the cost of the computing cycles is worth more than the money to pure research. It may not be efficient, but the cost (both dollar and environmental) to buy/manufacture the processors and run them would be far greater than just running existing processors. Yes, there's the inherent inefficiency of distributed computing, but there is also sever inefficency in the process of donating, adminstrating, allocating, purchasing, monitoring, and replacing physical assets.
Put another way, is it cheaper to identify, buy, assemble, build, maintain, and power a computer, or is it cheaper to just power the computer, even if the power-Flop ratio might only be 1:0.5. Buildings and people are expensive when compared to energy costs.
Sure, you might have to defend them in courst, but you could still squash every small business without a 6-7 figure legal budget.
You wouldn't have to "defend" anything. The only time you would go to court is if you wanted to *sue* someone else over your patent. And in that case you would first have to establish that your patent is valid. This would make patent trolling much harder. Currently, the patent is *presumed valid* when you go to court even though the patent office does not examine the patent applications.
Sort of like defending yourself against a claim of online copyright infringement by the RIAA? I mean, some of those appear to be totally baseless, and yet people can't afford to pay the legal costs to go to court, even though the RIAA has burden of proof (preponderance). How many small businesses have $100,000 to defend a small patent claim - or would they just settle for $10,000 or $20,000 and a small licensing fee to make the lawyers go away. Hell, I couldn't afford to look at a 6 figure bill and expect my (very) small company to exist if someone patented IP that I use everyday in my operations. It would, indeed, be cheaper to just pay $100 per document set I send out than have to fight it in court. We've all seen cases where the judge is clueless of what is or isn't obvious, and anybody can spend $500 an hour and get an expert witness who sides with their viewpoint. Even if you can afford to afford to fight it, can you afford to lose and appeal? I can't.
It is an interesting video, but seems skewed to the opinion that the election was rigged. Also, the programmer began to stray from his knowledge when asked about the exit polling data, which he took to be infallible. Does anyone have a transcript, and is there an identification of the party affiliations of the questioners?
This is one of the problems with political commmitee hearings. They are looking for an answer, and tend only to look in the places that give them the answer they want. The testimony concerning Feeney's staffer correcting the course of his work - that Feeney wanted to hide code to rig an election, not to know how to detect sowfware that could rig an election as he had originally provided - could be quite damning. Nonetheless, proof-of-concept viruses are also written by white-hat hackers for new exploits, so it could be entirely on the up and up. Of course, this research should have been made public. Does anyone know how Feeney has voted or testified when confronted with digital ballot machines? Is he publically for or against paper trails?
Witch hunts and lynchings are not my cup of tea, nor should their methods be used in civilized discussions. Sadly, most Americans are too ignorant of computer operation to make an informed decision concerning this type of thing. Even otherwise intellegent people do not understand the technology which goes into software and coding; these are black boxes which operate like a microwave oven or an alarm clock.
Note: I'm a democrat and always have been. I voted against GWB both times. And have had some very nice (unspoken) "I told you so" moments with my wife since 2004 (she's a long time republican and voted for GWB).
Perhaps the material acts like steel instead of aluminum (I'm not a big CF guy, I don't know). Steel has a limit where it can withstand "infinite" cycles of low stress. Aluminum just keeps degrading each cycle 'til it fails. The term is...damned it...too late to think tonight. Chances are, they figure if the stresses don't make it fail after 10^6 cycles (or whatever they use) it's hit its proportional limit (shit, it that the term I was looking for?) and it won't fail, except due to growth of fatigue cracks.
I'd say that a factor of 4 really isn't that much of a stretch (ha! get it...I made a funny!). If the technology is that cheap, you could just bundle it with the light source and make it a 2000hr user replaceable item, just like projector lamps are today.
Well, they're talking about two things, they probably mean that the modulus of elsticity (the "stiffness", based on Young's Modulus, expressed in psi or pascals) is double that of silicon, but the yield point, or flexibility (how far it can bend before it permanently deforms) is 10 times that of silicon. It's a dumbing down of the mechanical properties using common language and, no, it really doesn't make sense the way they've presented it if you try and apply logic to the langugae they've used.
If it can be demonstrated that the current law is HAMPERING the progress of science, would that not make overreaching patent law unconstitutional?
Of course not, this isn't about law, it's about money and power. Law is always about preserving money and power. Should anyone question that fact, it generally means that they do not understand who's money and power is being affected.
What is the "discovery" related to this particular patent?
I know it's a rhetorical question, but for the younguns among us, writings and discoveries are simply a non-specific, but generally accpeted all inclusive, way of saying creative and scientific works, which has been expanded in recent years to include novel ideas (software/IP, and business method patents). Let's not get into constitutional semantics, I mean "all men are created equal" has been taken to mean all people, men and women, when the intent was "all white male land owners of age"; or "shall not be infringed" referring to the right to bear arms in the absence of the purpose clause being about militias (also known as the state national guard units). Both have taken on new and expanded meanings. There is no reason that "men" shouldn't mean everyone, nor is there a reason that "arms" should not include high powered firearms as well as fighter jets, tanks, explosives, poisons in large quntity, or nuclear weapons of any size. Both the KKK and the BATFE would argue those expanded definitions. The fact is, regardless of your view on any particular issue, there is a currently held (but dynamic) view of such vague language. I really can't be sure whether the founders are laughing at us or crying over our trespasses, to be honest.
The danger with that system is that there is no value to the patent, and any patent would be granted to anyone with the money to buy one. It would be the network equivalent of people buying every 2,3,4,5 and 6 letter domain name in a new TLD. If you had a few million bux, it would be yours. Sure, you might have to defend them in courst, but you could still squash every small business without a 6-7 figure legal budget.
I'm okay with your proposal with one addition: mandatory licensing of technology and 3-5 year patent rights on any non-physical patent. Licensing would be based on total potential market, as assessed by the USPTO examiner first, and verified each year of the patent or as each threshhold was crossed. For inventions with less than 1000 potential endusers, a fee of $100; 10,000 = $10 fee, 100,000 users = $1 fee, and 1 million or more users would net a $0.10 fee. All but $1 of the larger fees would be placed in escrow for the term of the patent, with refunds given to the original purchasers as the threshholds were crossed. Refunds would be reduced by an allowable escrow processing fee to be set (similar to medical "usual and customary" fees). After 3-5 years, the invention goes into the public domain. OF course, limitations of liability to the original inventor need to be enacted, with the inventor being shielded from any liability for statutory licensed technology - i.e.: if you choose statutory licensing, YOU are responsible for verifying the veracity of the inventors claims and the safety of the product.
Hell, while we're at it, the same licensing scheme should be used for copyright works as well. It would certainly put a crimp the the "vault" style marketing used by Disney.