Now, all the foreign governments like China and Iran have to do is flood the world with those borrowed US dollars to drive hyper-inflation in the US.
Just curious, but how does China benefit from a drastic devaluation of the currency of its largest export market? Sure, they could do it, by why would they scuttle the economy that buys more than 1/5 of their exports?
On the other hand, I haven't had any problem selling stuff on eBay, because I pick a reasonable starting price and charge fair shipping rates.
Yeah, people don't understand ebay. You can usually make more money starting an item off at $1.00 with no reserve. The possibility of a "great deal" sucks people in. They'll end up paying $75 for an item because they're determined to get it, while a similar item starting at $65 won't get a single bid! That and, as you say, charging fair rates on shipping helps a lot. Nothing bugs people like $35 shipping on an item that comes in a $4.85 flat-rate USPS box.
Telsa had a similar crackpot idea with the ionoshpere... and what a crackpot he turned out to be.
Actually, Tesla was only talking about transmitting energy via the ionosphere, not generating it. And basically all that was, in reality, was radio (and people think Marconi invented radio; hah!). In theory you could transmit enough power through the ionosphere to power stuff, but the losses would be prohibitive.
hahaha, your serious aren't you? look at some of the stuff "Patented" today, how much of that stuff do you honestly think will fall into the public domain in 20 years?
Name a single patent that has been in effect more than 20 years.
...patent for that machine would expire 20 years from its filing date and would then become public domain
Yeah, just like Disney's copyrights!
Copyright!=patent. They're not even handled by the same government office (US Copyright Office vs. Patent & TradeMark Office). Other than the fact that they're both covered by the bullshit term "intellectual property", they are two completely unrelated things.
That seem like a bad choice as usb has a lot of cpu over head firewire or e-sata wound of been better.
Firewire and e-sata would've added more cost. The USB also handles the printer for the print server. If anything, I think it's pretty clear that the RAID via USB capability was put in as an afterthought.
"Ass-u-ming" that you only use one frequency. That's a huge assumption. I can think of half a dozen ways around the problem and that's just off the cuff and using tech that I can talk about.
Given that the standard radio voice communication systems we boots on the ground have used for the last 10-15 years (SINCGARS) has been capable of freq hopping, I'd say that it's a really stupid assumption. Honestly, when people bring up the possibility of jamming as if the US military hadn't even thought of it, I gotta laugh. The military practically invented jamming!
Actually, it doesn't. You've watched Blue Thunder too many times. Near-infrared doesn't go through walls any better than visible light does, and longwave, far-infrared (AKA thermographic) only gives you and indication of the location of objects of a sufficiently different temperature from the wall, and then only if the wall isn't too thick and the object doesn't move much. It's radiant heat.
Being that they are "natural monopolies" they have much more to lose by refusing to cooperate with the government, actually. "Hippy McFreakington" by comparison has a lot less to lose (borrowed from "America the Book").
Nonsense. Being a huge corp in charge of a "natural monopoly" like the public telephone system essentially makes one an immovable object. What is the NSA going to do? Have the FCC "fire" them? Seize all their copper and operate the phone network themselves? Hippy McFreakington will end up in jail if he refuses to cooperate, because he's got a body they can grab and lock up. [AT&T|Verizon|et al] will simply end up with their lawyers talking to NSA lawyers endlessly, until a court ruling comes along one way or the other.
What dumb examples. I mean, if something's generating a lot of heat and getting too hot, the obvious thing to do is to stick a heatsink on it
Don't jump to conclusions. The patent isn't for just any heat sink. Heat sinks in general are as old as the hills. It's a specific design of integrated heatsink that's both non-obvious and particularly useful.
In my opinion patents should be treated as a monetary claim, not as a hostage taking device.
So you think Echostar ought only be required to pay off past infringement as a lump sum, and force Tivo to take them to court again if they don't stop infringing? That system pretty much guarantees that the smaller player will eventually be unable to support further litigation. Making someone pay for what they did wrong is stupid if you don't require them to also stop doing it.
AFAIK no one reads patents to advance their own tech... creating a product that infringes on someone else's patent, where they can show that you read their patent results in a greater reward (penalty) from the judge... so the lawyers tell the engineers to explicitly not read existing patents when they build something new (to them)...
No, you're confusing copyright with patents, I think. For example, Compaq engineers working to black-box reverse engineer the IBM-PC BIOS were specifically not permitted to see the IBM microcode. This ensured that no copying happened, even inadvertently. This is an iron-clad defense against a charge of copyright infringement. If you've never even seen it, it's impossible for you to make a copy. With patents, you need to see what's patented when designing a competing product in order to implement a non-infringing product. There does not exist an "ignorance" mitigation for patent infringement.
Does anyone else think that these terrorists' true purpose is not to kill the passengers on a few planes but to inconvenience travellers for years to come? Blowing up a plane is a one-time deal but scaring people into not taking drinks onto planes, making people take off their shoes before boarding, checking their ipods in with their luggage, these annoyances are going to be with us for decades to come! Why terrorize when irritating is so much easier?
It doesn't really fit with the mindset. For the most part, "terrorists" are just like any other group of combatants in an armed conflict. The reason they get called "terrorists" is because their numbers are so small that they are utterly incapable of mounting an organized attack on the level of an "army", or even "guerillas". The tools at their disposal and the general unpopularity of their cause mean that their efforts will ultimately be unsuccessful, and all they can do is strive for the greatest impact. The combatants in this conflict see it as war, plain and simple. Seriously they no more desire to achieve "annoyance" than the allies sought to annoy the Wehrmacht in WW2. What makes them so much more exasperating than "regular" combatants is that they're very difficult to demoralize because they get their motivation from their religion. Holy wars are tough to end.
It's also a medication. Has anyone ever determined how easy it is to concentrate Nitroglycerine from a medical prescription into something that can bring down a plane?
MacGuyver did that once. To break out of a European medical center (asylum perhaps?) he ground up nitro tablets, mixed them with something, and blew a hole in a cement wall. Then again, this is Macguyver we're talking here so I'm sure the writers could have had him create an explosion out of contact-lense solution if they wanted.
Yeah, "MacGuyver science" is the largest load of manure ever perpetrated on TV in the guise of ingenuity. Seriously, I have yet to hear of a single MacGuyver "jury rig" more complicated than a slingshot that would actually work in real life. Everything from a few pencil's worth of graphite in a toy balloon creating a sizeable opaque "smoke screen" when ruptured, to the aforementioned nitroglycerine vasodilator tablets into explosives*. Anyone who ever says "but I saw MacGuyver do it" needs to immediately have IDIOT branded on their forehead so in the future precious seconds aren't wasted when intelligent folks are engaged in real-world problem solving.
* Glyceryl trinitrate tablets generally contain no more than 500mcg of nitroglycerin. Even if there did exist a simple way to "strain out" the nitroglycerin from the tablets, it would take approximately 400 THOUSAND TABLETS to yield enough of the stuff to equal a very small 500g "stick" of 40% dynamite (dynamite is rated in ratio of nitroglycerin to binder, by weight). Given that they're doled out usually no more than 50 or so at a time, that's about hell of a lot heart patients he had to hit up at that asylum. Writers who create crap plot details like that need to be dragged out an shot. Don't even get me started on Lost or Alias.
Our fellow humans do not act civilized unless you can reach out and smack them... Then they act civilized.
in a car, online, they act like assholes. Always have and always will.
Trademarks must be defended or they are thrown out. I was under the impression that this was not the case for copyrights.
You are absolutely correct. No amount of infringement ever invalidates copyright. It is only trademarks which must be defended. Card is sorely ignorant. I cannot say that this surprises me. I have never been particularly impressed with the man.
Okay... If the task requires a field to be in all caps why didn't the programmer just convert what every was entered in that field in all caps???
It isn't that hard to convert a string in to all up case. In most programing languages it is a built in function.
I would say who ever wrote your billing software needs to be replaced.
Yeah, and if only Neville Chamberlain had brought along a gun, we might've avoided WW2. You're pointing out the obvious. The fact remains that there exists brain dead software written by brain dead programmers that requires all-caps input.
Re:Alternative approach for ethical coders
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EU Patent Wars to Resume
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Liberating patent technologies" is pretty non-ethical and can be classfied as the inappropriation of trade secret
You're stating the obvious. We've already established that one who would engage in the act of "liberation" is opposed to software patents, so the question of ethics has already been addressed. Ethics have a communal aspect, but in the end they are highly personal. The things most people agree are completely wrong have been codified into law. "Ethics" are a much larger set that includes things that are extremely vague.
As for misappropriation of trade secrets, well, that's obviously a possible legal risk, but again, if you think the attempted patent is itself immoral, then the risk may be worth taking. To torture an analogy: abolitionists broke the law helping escaped slaves to freedom. Were their actions unethical simply because they were illegal?
The problem with your "argument" is that the premise we're exploring has already settled the issues you bring up and are discussing the how. Standing there shouting "but technically that's illegal and unethical" is ridiculous.
And if you encourage violence what response do you expect in return? Hint, don't be shocked when "terrorists" blow up your shopping mall or airplane if you boast like louts about beating plowshares into swords. "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Of course all you you Christian Zionist supporters of violence have a rather selective memory for your "good book" quotations, don't you?
Huh? Your disjointed ramblings lack sense. Encourage violence? There's a very large gap between encouraging violence and pacifism. The entire point of this subthread is that pacifism is an extreme, and as such is not a panacea. Likewise, fomenting violence is another extreme. Come join us here in the middle, where the actual discussion is taking place, rather than standing there in the corner yelling at a strawman.
You obviously don't know the history of the British occupation of India very well, because many of Gandhi's followeres were massacred. More than once. But the survivors didn't let the threat of being killed stop them.
Oh, indeed. I never meant to imply that there was no violence. Only that the British Raj was loath to institute an official policy of violence. There's an important distiction between reactionary violence at the bottom, and an order to keep shooting until the opposition is all dead.
Truly written like someone who has never actually experienced war or conflict. Well done, armchair commando!
Sorry man, I've got just short of two very unpleasant years in Afghanistan with the US Army in my resume, and I'd tend to agree with him. What's your war experience?
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* Glyceryl trinitrate tablets generally contain no more than 500mcg of nitroglycerin. Even if there did exist a simple way to "strain out" the nitroglycerin from the tablets, it would take approximately 400 THOUSAND TABLETS to yield enough of the stuff to equal a very small 500g "stick" of 40% dynamite (dynamite is rated in ratio of nitroglycerin to binder, by weight). Given that they're doled out usually no more than 50 or so at a time, that's about hell of a lot heart patients he had to hit up at that asylum. Writers who create crap plot details like that need to be dragged out an shot. Don't even get me started on Lost or Alias.
"Addresses should be typewritten or machine printed in dark ink on a light background using uppercase letters."
As for misappropriation of trade secrets, well, that's obviously a possible legal risk, but again, if you think the attempted patent is itself immoral, then the risk may be worth taking. To torture an analogy: abolitionists broke the law helping escaped slaves to freedom. Were their actions unethical simply because they were illegal?
The problem with your "argument" is that the premise we're exploring has already settled the issues you bring up and are discussing the how. Standing there shouting "but technically that's illegal and unethical" is ridiculous.