I would amend one caveat. There should be a due diligence criteria. If the prior art was something they should have known about (which in this case it was), then they should be prosecuted for fraud.
I don't even take it that far. The summary simply states one problem that needs to be solved with Wind Power. It never mentions environmentalists, or Wind proponents or any of the other stuff that people seem to be reading in to it. . And I'm glad to see this story existing in a vacuum. They could have just as easily gone the "oh noes! Wind has problems, time to switch to something else!" route or the "nothing to see here...bunch a trucker bitchin' cuz that's what they do" route, but the article addressed it as simply "here's what is happening".
Have you ever read closed captioning on television? I sometimes wonder if they don't have a drunken frat guy typing furiously to get it done in real time. Believe me, if closed captioning is good enough, then a South African who know some English is above and beyond.
Maybe, but I suspect that European businessmen are no more altruistic than American businessmen. So where is the catch? Is it just heavy population density? Is there any kind of price regulation in Austria? (For the record, 19.50 EUROS comes up to ~$27.75 per month. I'm paying $115 per month, after taxes and an 8% discount, for 750 minutes per month shared between me and my wife, 250 text messages each and a data plan that applies only to my phone. The data plan alone was $30 extra)
Maybe not. Taking the claim at face value, then we'll never be quite dead: there will be always a copy of our brain somewhere ready to be loaded into a VM by some system admin.
How is a computerized brain different from a biological one? . If a computer is emulating a state of fear, then it may be just another state, But the same can be said for a human being. Love, hate, fear, pain. They're all just different states, so from an ethics standpoint, when someone is afraid, does it matter if the right chemicals are present, or if activity is happening in one side of the brain or another? If so, then are we feeling fear, or is it the chemicals? If the ability to produce one substance or another were disabled, then would we be less human, or would our requests not "count"?
I was going to mention the same thing. They could make you crazy for five minutes, hit the reset button, and through the process learn more about how it works, possibly finding help for the aforementioned "hobos" (who, given effective treatment, could then adopt the orphans. Everybody wins!). . And then there is the fact that we cannot induce the exact dysfunction we want to study on a homeless person.
"instead of learning the lesson that SMTP taught US 25 years ago " which lesson in particular are they ignoring?
As for the thick app argument, why do you care? Seriously, if the solution works it works. The toggle switch guys scoffed at the punch card guys, the punch card guys scoffed at the interactive asm editor guys, the asm guys scoffed at the C guys, the C guys scoffed at the Java guys, the Java guys scoff at the Ruby/Python/PHP/JS guys. You don't see the trend?
No. Speaking as a PHP guy, will I finally get someone to make fun of?
I wasn't thinking fusion specifically. It may be an exception, since, it may get lumped in under the "nuclear" umbrella.
I am saying:
A. No solution is perfect and there is no reason why we should expect all the world's power to come from one source.
B. That we should be careful not to put all our eggs in one basket, as this will lead to a repeat of what is happening now (namely that we have known for decades that we should move to new technology, and are fighting it for as long as possible).
Yes. Compared to all the shows they normally would have had in the 10pm slot, Jay Leno's talk show is a real bargain. As for the pilots, I figure that if they're going to make them anyway, then why not let people watch them? . Of course, I guess the flaw in my logic is that if they are spending all their time trying to figure out ways to avoid producing new shows, then there won't be many new pilots to air.
Don't be silly. Our current president is much smarter than that.
He understands that opposing nuclear technology is much more valuable to him politically than using the technology to reduce our carbon emissions in a significant fashion. And maintaining power is more important than the environment.
Because if he doesn't then that power will be snatched up by Sarah Palin in 2012. And how screwed will we all be then?
One way to do it is to frame it not as accuracy, but simply as candidate reduction. It reduces the size of the haystack by 90%. We're still looking for a needle in a haystack, but now the haystack is one tenth the size it originally was.
I agree with you about nuclear energy, or at least feel that it is a viable solution, but your problem in dismissing all the alternatives is that you seem to be making it an all or nothing deal. If we expect to gain 100% of our power from any one technology, then we will see a problem in the next 100 years, and the next century will be a fight between people who want to stick with what we have, damn the consequences, and those who say that it's time to move on to the next thing. (I am referring to peak production, unforeseen environmental consequences, and the emergence of more efficient technologies) . At least getting energy from a variety of sources (including Nuclear) will accomplish a couple of things. Because we are not going to blanket the world in one specific type of factory, we will not have to face environmental issues on a global scale, as we are now, and diversified technologies will prevent us from becoming dependent upon one technology and flying into a state of analysis paralysis (like the one we have now), when the time comes to change.
You completely missed the point. The company in the article was not patenting something that was just lying around. They were patenting an application of knowledge. So the question was "why is their application of what we know about nature different from somebody else's application of what we know about nature"?
All patents either "cite a natural phenomenon" or imply it. It's the act of applying that knowledge in a new and non-obvious way that makes it patent worthy. So, are they arguing that this procedure is obvious to anyone who understands basic science (and if so then wouldn't there be a mountain of prior art to nullify that patent)? . Or am I missing something?
Don't be a jackass. Their market share has nothing to do with the article. I don't care about Opera but the story is still funny as hell and worth repeating. I just wish that kind of stuff happened to me at work.:(
Well, all you have to do is write bad code that pisses your boss off. Then you'd have a story!
If the number of car accidents has gone down, then that either means that talking on a cell phone makes us safer drivers, or that there are other factors not being taken into account. You may want to dig a little deeper.
Lets say you block cell phone usage. Does your technology exclude calls to emergency services? If not that's going to lead to deaths.
Most technologies that "block cellphones" only do so while the car is moving. You can still dial 911, as long as you aren't trying to during the collision.
Slashdot Mirror
I would amend one caveat. There should be a due diligence criteria. If the prior art was something they should have known about (which in this case it was), then they should be prosecuted for fraud.
I don't even take it that far. The summary simply states one problem that needs to be solved with Wind Power. It never mentions environmentalists, or Wind proponents or any of the other stuff that people seem to be reading in to it.
.
And I'm glad to see this story existing in a vacuum. They could have just as easily gone the "oh noes! Wind has problems, time to switch to something else!" route or the "nothing to see here...bunch a trucker bitchin' cuz that's what they do" route, but the article addressed it as simply "here's what is happening".
Have you ever read closed captioning on television? I sometimes wonder if they don't have a drunken frat guy typing furiously to get it done in real time. Believe me, if closed captioning is good enough, then a South African who know some English is above and beyond.
Oh, so when someone says sh!t, c0cks%ck3r, or t*rdf@c3, they're just using Speech 3.0? How does that help Business 3.0?
He wants to keep his idea confidential and you're suggesting he tell it to a woman?
Maybe, but I suspect that European businessmen are no more altruistic than American businessmen. So where is the catch? Is it just heavy population density? Is there any kind of price regulation in Austria? (For the record, 19.50 EUROS comes up to ~$27.75 per month. I'm paying $115 per month, after taxes and an 8% discount, for 750 minutes per month shared between me and my wife, 250 text messages each and a data plan that applies only to my phone. The data plan alone was $30 extra)
Aw, shit. We're all gonna die..
Maybe not. Taking the claim at face value, then we'll never be quite dead: there will be always a copy of our brain somewhere ready to be loaded into a VM by some system admin.
Bad news. It's not a VM. It's virtual PC.
How is a computerized brain different from a biological one?
.
If a computer is emulating a state of fear, then it may be just another state, But the same can be said for a human being. Love, hate, fear, pain. They're all just different states, so from an ethics standpoint, when someone is afraid, does it matter if the right chemicals are present, or if activity is happening in one side of the brain or another? If so, then are we feeling fear, or is it the chemicals? If the ability to produce one substance or another were disabled, then would we be less human, or would our requests not "count"?
I was going to mention the same thing. They could make you crazy for five minutes, hit the reset button, and through the process learn more about how it works, possibly finding help for the aforementioned "hobos" (who, given effective treatment, could then adopt the orphans. Everybody wins!).
.
And then there is the fact that we cannot induce the exact dysfunction we want to study on a homeless person.
So how is this not evil? It looks like they are taking money from one near monopoly and using it in anti-competitive ways.
"instead of learning the lesson that SMTP taught US 25 years ago " which lesson in particular are they ignoring?
As for the thick app argument, why do you care? Seriously, if the solution works it works. The toggle switch guys scoffed at the punch card guys, the punch card guys scoffed at the interactive asm editor guys, the asm guys scoffed at the C guys, the C guys scoffed at the Java guys, the Java guys scoff at the Ruby/Python/PHP/JS guys.
You don't see the trend?
No. Speaking as a PHP guy, will I finally get someone to make fun of?
I can see that. Do something about today's problems, while planning for tomorrow's problems. That makes perfect sense.
I wasn't thinking fusion specifically. It may be an exception, since, it may get lumped in under the "nuclear" umbrella.
I am saying:
A. No solution is perfect and there is no reason why we should expect all the world's power to come from one source.
B. That we should be careful not to put all our eggs in one basket, as this will lead to a repeat of what is happening now (namely that we have known for decades that we should move to new technology, and are fighting it for as long as possible).
Yes. Compared to all the shows they normally would have had in the 10pm slot, Jay Leno's talk show is a real bargain. As for the pilots, I figure that if they're going to make them anyway, then why not let people watch them?
.
Of course, I guess the flaw in my logic is that if they are spending all their time trying to figure out ways to avoid producing new shows, then there won't be many new pilots to air.
Here I thought he would be suing his readers.
I thought he was going to stop paying his writers.
Don't be silly. Our current president is much smarter than that.
He understands that opposing nuclear technology is much more valuable to him politically than using the technology to reduce our carbon emissions in a significant fashion. And maintaining power is more important than the environment.
Because if he doesn't then that power will be snatched up by Sarah Palin in 2012. And how screwed will we all be then?
One way to do it is to frame it not as accuracy, but simply as candidate reduction. It reduces the size of the haystack by 90%. We're still looking for a needle in a haystack, but now the haystack is one tenth the size it originally was.
I agree with you about nuclear energy, or at least feel that it is a viable solution, but your problem in dismissing all the alternatives is that you seem to be making it an all or nothing deal. If we expect to gain 100% of our power from any one technology, then we will see a problem in the next 100 years, and the next century will be a fight between people who want to stick with what we have, damn the consequences, and those who say that it's time to move on to the next thing. (I am referring to peak production, unforeseen environmental consequences, and the emergence of more efficient technologies)
.
At least getting energy from a variety of sources (including Nuclear) will accomplish a couple of things. Because we are not going to blanket the world in one specific type of factory, we will not have to face environmental issues on a global scale, as we are now, and diversified technologies will prevent us from becoming dependent upon one technology and flying into a state of analysis paralysis (like the one we have now), when the time comes to change.
Stupid question: Do bats have their own sonar "voice"? I.E., can a bat distinguish it's own sonar from someone else's?
There's an app for that...
So...umm....did he get to meet iGod?
You completely missed the point. The company in the article was not patenting something that was just lying around. They were patenting an application of knowledge. So the question was "why is their application of what we know about nature different from somebody else's application of what we know about nature"?
All patents either "cite a natural phenomenon" or imply it. It's the act of applying that knowledge in a new and non-obvious way that makes it patent worthy. So, are they arguing that this procedure is obvious to anyone who understands basic science (and if so then wouldn't there be a mountain of prior art to nullify that patent)?
.
Or am I missing something?
Don't be a jackass. Their market share has nothing to do with the article. I don't care about Opera but the story is still funny as hell and worth repeating. I just wish that kind of stuff happened to me at work. :(
Well, all you have to do is write bad code that pisses your boss off. Then you'd have a story!
If the number of car accidents has gone down, then that either means that talking on a cell phone makes us safer drivers, or that there are other factors not being taken into account. You may want to dig a little deeper.
Lets say you block cell phone usage. Does your technology exclude calls to emergency services? If not that's going to lead to deaths.
Most technologies that "block cellphones" only do so while the car is moving. You can still dial 911, as long as you aren't trying to during the collision.