That may be so, but it's also a practice they haven't excercised much lately. I'd say it's an interesting precident that they're actually reexamining a high profile case.
Try learning for a change. You would be amazed at what you find out.
Try not being an ass for a change. You'd be surprised at how nice everybody else suddenly becomes.
That's arguably true, but it's still abusively fuzzy language. It's about like saying "tobacco law restricts" the use of drugs. It's completely true, but it's phrased in such a way that it would confuse anybody who doesn't know enough about the topic.
I know that was funny, but it's also true. Exactly what purpose does a patent have other than suing people who infringe upon it? I guess you could sell it to some other company (who would in turn sue those who infringe upon it). Have you got another use for it? I guess it'd make a decent coaster.
The only possible show stopper I see here is that I'm not so sure it would benefit anyone to join this proposed community of "patent clerks." They are hoping for an army of people to read over patents and notice similarities or infringements for proposed patents.
I suspect that the most productive part of this army will be people hired by the companies most likely to be hurt by bad patents. Companies likely to be hurt by a bad patent in a particular industry will quickly find it worth their while to invalidate all the patents in that industry they can find holes in. Do you think IBM, Intel and AMD would like to make sure that no bad chip patents get through? They would, and it's worth good money to them. Don't you think Sony and RIM can think of a few patents currently on the books they wish they'd had a crack at before they were granted? Even Microsoft would love to make sure nobody else gets a potentially competing software patent if they can possibly find prior art or any other hole in the patent application. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Any patent that has flaws that invalidate it should be invalidated. It's the bad patents that screw up everything.
With all of the companies potentially hurt by bad patents, I can assure you that enough volunteer patent examiners will show up out of the woodwork. Sure there will be people who don't have a financial stake in it, but I think in the long run folks like run-of-the-mill slashdotters will be in the minority.
Another reply mentioned willful infringement claims. For the average-joe inventor/programmer/etc. this is a danger, but a big company with an interest in this would just hire different people to do the R&D from those hired to bust bad patents.
Azureus is licensed under the GPL. The license danger with Azureus isn't the source itself, but the VM. As far as I know, you need Sun's JVM to run the blamed thing, and that is NOT free software or open source or even very nicely licensed.
for now. Remember, Microsoft has automatic-update capability on those. Once Vista comes out, you'll be surprised at the kind of "performance enhancing" patches they come out with for XP. We'll see that SP2 was only the beginning of the slowdown and incompatibility.
Oh wait. Microsoft are the good guys. They'd never take advantage of their current market position to sell more of a new product.
I recently spent about 20 hours (including 2 reinstallations) trying to get a sound driver on Windows to work properly. Does that mean Windows is a bad OS? No, it just means that it has its flaws. Keep this in mind: one flaw that happens to really bug you doesn't mean that the underlying product is without value.
The "rarely used" state secrets privilege may indeed have been rarely used once, but since Bush's actions started to become unpopular it's sure been in the news a lot. I can't think of a case involving the NSA lately that DIDN'T invoke the privilege.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, and I do appreciate that someone brought up the software aspect of this item, but the software just doesn't add any value to this deal (scam).
The software is exactly what adds value to this deal. If you run the storing/spending of battery power backwards from how you should, then you lose as much money using the device as you should gain from it. If the software turns it on and off randomly, then you'd average zero income. The software has to work properly to make (or save) money.
I wonder if the off peak electricity is generated with a more efficient power source than the peak electricity.. which might make the the system as a whole (from generation to consumption) more energy efficient, thus using less energy (not less electricity) in total.
Usually the main power supply is a big plant with cheap fuel like nuclear or coal (usually with a touch of solar and wind thrown in). At peak times, that power source is often supplemented by another power plant with more expensive fuel, like oil-fired or natural gas turbines. So yes, the system does gain something by converting off-peak power into peak power.
That doesn't mean the whole thing is necessarily a good idea. It just means that there are arguments for it as well as against it.
Of course they can't afford to build new capacity. They're spending all their cash on free windows and audits and power from Canada.
Re:Greenies have had this choice for a while.
on
Store Your Own Juice
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· Score: 1
From the power company's perspective, this is a lot like Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity, except that with pumped storage "approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained", which I'd guess you'd be hard-pressed to get from a battery-based system.
You're making the wrong assumptions. Remember that in most states, you can resell "excess" power to the grid (where "excess" = "power you stored up when it was cheap"). Based on this, you could actually get cheques from the power company every month rather than the other way around. If prices are different enough between peak and off-peak, and therefore those cheques are big enough, it could pay off sooner than you guessed in the parent post.
The assumption is that they've worked out the software to calculate storing/selling power so that even with the loss due to inefficiencies, you'll still make money.
That doesn't mean that they did it right, of course. How would you feel to buy a machine like this, plug it in, and find out a month later that it was storing/discharging at completely wrong times and it has been costing you $300/day all month?
No, you do get something else. You get the computer program to decide when to store up power and when to deplete the batteries. This isn't terribly impressive, but it's not quite as simple as it sounds.
You don't just "store" or "deplete". You also have to choose how fast to store up or deplete. You get better efficiency when you only charge a battery with a trickle than when you try to run really high current through it. Similarly, if you draw current out of batteries too quickly, they get hot. When most types of batteries get hot, they tend to lose some of their charge. You have to choose to charge the battery quickly when the price is really cheap, slowly when it's kind of cheap, discharge slowly when it's kind of expensive, and discharge pretty quickly when it's very expensive.
The other problem being that if enough people go to this, then there suddenly IS no off-peak period, and no slack in the system that can absorb a jump in demand.
End result - a more fragile power net for everyone.
Where do you get this no slack business? There will always be some difference between peak rate and off-peak, because once the difference is low enough it's not worth buying another one of these devices. Since machines like this have less than 100% efficiency at turning power on the grid at one time into power on the grid at another time, (I'd guess a little under 50%, but I don't really know) there is a minimum difference between peak and off-peak rate to make a machine profitable. Even if you do make money each day off it, you also have to make enough to pay back the purchase price of the batteries before they wear out.
Power companies will install more capacity whenever the math says that it'll pay to do so, just as they do now. The net result is that this would be a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. The power company saves money, and consumers get more reliable power supply. What's more fragile about that?
Note: In the case of using one of these to power your business, insert "save money" wherever I wrote "make money".
I'm pretty sure that your account has been throttled for heavy usage. The more you rent the farther netflix makes the return facility and thereby increases your turn around time.
It contains a code identifying the USPS customer (netflix, for example), as well as some arbitrary data supplied by netflix - probably including a customer id and 'movie id' of some sort.
The bar codes you refer to are affixed to the internal envelope around the DVD itself. Since these bar code labels always seem to be about as old as the envelope they're attached to, my guess is that they remain in place until they or the envelope wear out. For that to be the case, the data they contain is probably the netflix code and a unique ID for the specific copy of the DVD ie "Netflix, copy #218 of Dawn of the Dead" would be a reasonable english translation.
You're right about the shipping address translation too. I have two netflix envelopes in front of me; one shows shipping to "nearest netflix facility, PO box whatever, St. Louis MO", and the other shows it in Greensboro NC. I'm pretty sure, however, that they'll actually go to Fargo ND, which is by far the closest netflix shipping place to me (only about 45 miles).
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The parent comment was potentially very confusing. If you had trouble, read up here folks.
Re-exam is an old and well-established practice.
That may be so, but it's also a practice they haven't excercised much lately. I'd say it's an interesting precident that they're actually reexamining a high profile case.
Try learning for a change. You would be amazed at what you find out.
Try not being an ass for a change. You'd be surprised at how nice everybody else suddenly becomes.
That's arguably true, but it's still abusively fuzzy language. It's about like saying "tobacco law restricts" the use of drugs. It's completely true, but it's phrased in such a way that it would confuse anybody who doesn't know enough about the topic.
I know that was funny, but it's also true. Exactly what purpose does a patent have other than suing people who infringe upon it? I guess you could sell it to some other company (who would in turn sue those who infringe upon it). Have you got another use for it? I guess it'd make a decent coaster.
The only possible show stopper I see here is that I'm not so sure it would benefit anyone to join this proposed community of "patent clerks." They are hoping for an army of people to read over patents and notice similarities or infringements for proposed patents.
I suspect that the most productive part of this army will be people hired by the companies most likely to be hurt by bad patents. Companies likely to be hurt by a bad patent in a particular industry will quickly find it worth their while to invalidate all the patents in that industry they can find holes in. Do you think IBM, Intel and AMD would like to make sure that no bad chip patents get through? They would, and it's worth good money to them. Don't you think Sony and RIM can think of a few patents currently on the books they wish they'd had a crack at before they were granted? Even Microsoft would love to make sure nobody else gets a potentially competing software patent if they can possibly find prior art or any other hole in the patent application. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Any patent that has flaws that invalidate it should be invalidated. It's the bad patents that screw up everything.
With all of the companies potentially hurt by bad patents, I can assure you that enough volunteer patent examiners will show up out of the woodwork. Sure there will be people who don't have a financial stake in it, but I think in the long run folks like run-of-the-mill slashdotters will be in the minority.
Another reply mentioned willful infringement claims. For the average-joe inventor/programmer/etc. this is a danger, but a big company with an interest in this would just hire different people to do the R&D from those hired to bust bad patents.
That would be nice. I hope it's true.
Azureus is licensed under the GPL. The license danger with Azureus isn't the source itself, but the VM. As far as I know, you need Sun's JVM to run the blamed thing, and that is NOT free software or open source or even very nicely licensed.
If they make it annoying at all... SOMEONE WILL FORK IT. It's still open source. That's part of the beauty of open source software.
That's great, but it ruins the whole funeral when the guy pushes the "Revellie" (morning wake-up) button by mistake.
...and the old version is pretty stable
for now. Remember, Microsoft has automatic-update capability on those. Once Vista comes out, you'll be surprised at the kind of "performance enhancing" patches they come out with for XP. We'll see that SP2 was only the beginning of the slowdown and incompatibility.
Oh wait. Microsoft are the good guys. They'd never take advantage of their current market position to sell more of a new product.
I recently spent about 20 hours (including 2 reinstallations) trying to get a sound driver on Windows to work properly. Does that mean Windows is a bad OS? No, it just means that it has its flaws. Keep this in mind: one flaw that happens to really bug you doesn't mean that the underlying product is without value.
So you're using the fact that a specific other operating system doesn't have the same specific bug to prove... what again?
This one's tagged as both "greed" and "greedy". Sony must suck.
The "rarely used" state secrets privilege may indeed have been rarely used once, but since Bush's actions started to become unpopular it's sure been in the news a lot. I can't think of a case involving the NSA lately that DIDN'T invoke the privilege.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, and I do appreciate that someone brought up the software aspect of this item, but the software just doesn't add any value to this deal (scam).
The software is exactly what adds value to this deal. If you run the storing/spending of battery power backwards from how you should, then you lose as much money using the device as you should gain from it. If the software turns it on and off randomly, then you'd average zero income. The software has to work properly to make (or save) money.
I didn't say it was worth the price, I just wanted to talk about the software aspect of it. This IS slashdot, right?
I wonder if the off peak electricity is generated with a more efficient power source than the peak electricity.. which might make the the system as a whole (from generation to consumption) more energy efficient, thus using less energy (not less electricity) in total.
Usually the main power supply is a big plant with cheap fuel like nuclear or coal (usually with a touch of solar and wind thrown in). At peak times, that power source is often supplemented by another power plant with more expensive fuel, like oil-fired or natural gas turbines. So yes, the system does gain something by converting off-peak power into peak power.
That doesn't mean the whole thing is necessarily a good idea. It just means that there are arguments for it as well as against it.
Of course they can't afford to build new capacity. They're spending all their cash on free windows and audits and power from Canada.
From the power company's perspective, this is a lot like Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity, except that with pumped storage "approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained", which I'd guess you'd be hard-pressed to get from a battery-based system.
You're making the wrong assumptions. Remember that in most states, you can resell "excess" power to the grid (where "excess" = "power you stored up when it was cheap"). Based on this, you could actually get cheques from the power company every month rather than the other way around. If prices are different enough between peak and off-peak, and therefore those cheques are big enough, it could pay off sooner than you guessed in the parent post.
The assumption is that they've worked out the software to calculate storing/selling power so that even with the loss due to inefficiencies, you'll still make money.
That doesn't mean that they did it right, of course. How would you feel to buy a machine like this, plug it in, and find out a month later that it was storing/discharging at completely wrong times and it has been costing you $300/day all month?
No, you do get something else. You get the computer program to decide when to store up power and when to deplete the batteries. This isn't terribly impressive, but it's not quite as simple as it sounds.
You don't just "store" or "deplete". You also have to choose how fast to store up or deplete. You get better efficiency when you only charge a battery with a trickle than when you try to run really high current through it. Similarly, if you draw current out of batteries too quickly, they get hot. When most types of batteries get hot, they tend to lose some of their charge. You have to choose to charge the battery quickly when the price is really cheap, slowly when it's kind of cheap, discharge slowly when it's kind of expensive, and discharge pretty quickly when it's very expensive.
The other problem being that if enough people go to this, then there suddenly IS no off-peak period, and no slack in the system that can absorb a jump in demand.
End result - a more fragile power net for everyone.
Where do you get this no slack business? There will always be some difference between peak rate and off-peak, because once the difference is low enough it's not worth buying another one of these devices. Since machines like this have less than 100% efficiency at turning power on the grid at one time into power on the grid at another time, (I'd guess a little under 50%, but I don't really know) there is a minimum difference between peak and off-peak rate to make a machine profitable. Even if you do make money each day off it, you also have to make enough to pay back the purchase price of the batteries before they wear out.
Power companies will install more capacity whenever the math says that it'll pay to do so, just as they do now. The net result is that this would be a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. The power company saves money, and consumers get more reliable power supply. What's more fragile about that?
Note: In the case of using one of these to power your business, insert "save money" wherever I wrote "make money".
I'm pretty sure that your account has been throttled for heavy usage. The more you rent the farther netflix makes the return facility and thereby increases your turn around time.
Can't be. My turnaround time is ~3 business days.
It contains a code identifying the USPS customer (netflix, for example), as well as some arbitrary data supplied by netflix - probably including a customer id and 'movie id' of some sort.
The bar codes you refer to are affixed to the internal envelope around the DVD itself. Since these bar code labels always seem to be about as old as the envelope they're attached to, my guess is that they remain in place until they or the envelope wear out. For that to be the case, the data they contain is probably the netflix code and a unique ID for the specific copy of the DVD ie "Netflix, copy #218 of Dawn of the Dead" would be a reasonable english translation.
You're right about the shipping address translation too. I have two netflix envelopes in front of me; one shows shipping to "nearest netflix facility, PO box whatever, St. Louis MO", and the other shows it in Greensboro NC. I'm pretty sure, however, that they'll actually go to Fargo ND, which is by far the closest netflix shipping place to me (only about 45 miles).