Bah. I don't know why, but the second link got stripped. (Did it think there was a domain mismatch between wunderground.com and WeatherUnderground? Or does someone elsewhere just not like sites named for 60s domestic terror groups?]
He could just check a site that doesn't use unblockable advertising pop-ups, like Intellicast Local Weather or The Weather Underground. Indeed, I find Weather Underground to be much better than weather.com, with more realtime data options and user-customizable maps.
> That's exactly the point. There is no set of people for whom "ooh, my name, it must be legit" is true.
Actually, there are. And they are precisely some of the biggest phishing targets.
Take eBay. In the past (their help pages are too labyrinthine for me to completely check out their current advice) eBay EXPLICITLY said to check for your real name in the greeting to separate genuine eBay emails from phishing. Others (including, I'm sad to say, some banks) followed this "expert" lead. Millions of slightly-savvier-than-average recipients use that rule today.
Now it's too late for eBay to reliably advise people that use of their real name in the greetings is NOT a reliable test, because their (deliberately?) convoluted help pages are a poor way to update customers (who don't want to spend half an hour digging) and the phishers will be sending apparently authentic emails saying otherwise ("Check that your correct name is at the top of this message. Scammers will not have access to that information"). Since it's not their fault, They'll likely decide it's not their problem.
Yes, but the ASM-135 you refer to was an air-launched missile, with no operational copies in existence, which never went into deployment, and could only be launched from ONE SINGLE aging F-15 (Celestial Eagle 76-0084, used in the Solwind test, now assigned to the Florida Air National Guard) and I doubt it is still modified to fire the now-nonexistent ASM-135 today, anyway.
History makes my point: An Army Nike Zeus missile destroyed an orbiting satellite in May 1963. We don't have any of those anymore, but exactly one missile from this system (Project MUDFLAP and later Project 505) was available for launch until 1967, when a USAF Thor anti-satellite system (Program 437) did a successful satellite intercept and replaced it. The Program 437 Thor missile system was in (very) limited deployment until 1975, and we don't have any of them, anymore, either.
Not that we'd want them. Both the above were nukes, and would make a make a mess of our recon sats.
The US had NO formal ASAT capability from 1975 to 1985 (the "Solwind" P-78 test you referred to) -- and only a very limited theoretical capability since then: AFAIK, only the test F-15 was modified to be capable of firing the ASM-135 before the USAF offered the program for cancellation in 1987. The fleet of ASAT-modified F-15s was never built, and only 15 of the missiles were ever produced.
On 13 September 2007, Capt. Todd Pearson, the SON of the ONLY pilot to ever fire an ASM-135 flew the ONLY jet to ever launch an ASM-135 for the 22nd anniversary of that ONE launch.
It's kind of strange to say that a single successful air-launched missile intercept, 20+ years ago, which never went into operational deployment proves anything about a sea-launched missile today. You may as well claim that we could go to the moon today, because we did it ~40 years ago. Military technology is hardware in operational deployment, not ethereal knowhow.
Furthermore, even though this satellite was so low that it would spontaneously deorbiting itself through atmospheric friction in 3 weeks, the RIM-161 SM-3 had never been launched even *that* high before. This was by far a new record for a missile that had only been tested for ballistic missile defense, not anti-satellite use. Even now, we've only demonstrated a crude minimal ASAT capability, not a practical ability to intercept the great majority of operational satellites, which orbit much higher than 130 miles. The Chinese test, by contrast, was at 513 miles, IIRC.
I'm not going to take a stand on the desirability of the test, but your post implied that we have decades of ASAT defense, when in actuality we had NOTHING in our ASAT armory until this test.
You point is quite well taken, but 12600 km is an incorrect figure.
For the sake of other readers (since you post was marked "informative"), GPS satellites orbit at an altitude (AGL or "Above Ground Level") of ~20,200 km. The orbital radius (from the center of mass of the earth) is of course even higher (~26,600 km), for those who want to check my numbers manually
GPS satellites orbit twice per sidereal day (or once per 11h 58m 2s) in order to repeat the same ground track. this Earth orbit period calculator confirms my approximation for an altitude (AGL) of 20,200 km
HIPAA is very strict about medical information, compared to the rest of IT. I've seen people fired for "three strikes" -- three emails were sent to patients with excessive/disallowed information. I don't recall the exact details, but the release was "excessive" because it contained a combination of common identifiers, such as the patient's full name, not because of the info itself.
It's one area where you can report the problem directly to an enforcing agency and heads will roll, rather than reporting it to the offender, so they can cry foul.
In the first place, I'd like to clarify. Pilots do not need perfect vision, I've been a pilot for over 25 years, and my uncorrected vision hasn't qualified me to *drive a car* without glasses in all that time. My reliance on glasses for mild myopia and astigmatism wasn't a problem.
Secondly, you *can* get a pilots license for the same qualifications as a driver's license. Not a Private Pilot's license but a Sport Pilot license. In fact, presenting a valid state driver's license plus a signed statement that you don't have certain medical conditions is all you need to qualify initially. No physical is presumptively required.
I'm not sure about all the details of the requirements for a Light sport Aircraft, but the plane in question would meet all the ones I can think of: at 400lb, it meets the weight limit (1320lbs=600 kg), it has fixed landing gear; it can hover so it has a maximum stall speed of under 45 knots (51mph); 1-2 person occupancy; reciprocating engine, and it appears to have fixed "propellers" albeit in an unconventional configuration. Since this is a new class I'm sure the Sky Commuter wasn't registered as a LSA (the auction made that clear as well), but it may be registerable in that class.
[b]Your firmware might react to being associated with a network enough to eavesdrop it by also responding to low-level configuration traffic. If that happens, even if you don't send any data the firmware may respond to probes, letting the network know you're listening.[/b]
It is fairly cheap and easy to set up a listen-only client using hardware whose transmitter is easily disabled. A few minutes with a razor blade or soldering iron, and I don't need what the proprietary firmware *tries* to do. If I want an actual connection, I'll plug in a different card.
When it comes to sniffing, wireless can be more like a hub-based network than it pretends to be.
Darn right, a total air leak of this magnitude (1.3 kg/day = 40 kg/mo -- call it a welding tank a month) would hardly be noted on a nuclear submarine on a multi-month submerged mission. Yes, leaks are more worrisome in space where air cannot be replenished readily, and every kilogram of supplies is expensive -- but it's still well under the mass of personal consumables for a single crewman, and crew supplies are a modest fraction of the content of each resupply mission.
Ignore it? Of course not. But put to scale (or compared to on-board reserves), it's less significant than a car that uses a quart of oil every month or three.
It was entirely unnoticed by all earlier testing until the most recent "fine scale" tests, just as you might never know you were riding in a car that was burning a little oil, or a home furnace that could be better tuned. Again, yes, lifting supplies to orbit is expensive, but 1.3 kg/d requires no change the capacity or frequency of resupply missions, even if it were ignored. It's not a big deal to the people who actually have to deal with it, but apparently some armchair geeks are worried.
While meta-studies sound good in principle, I find that that are consistently the *home* of bad analysis. They are cheap ways to squeeze out a publication/evidence without the bother of doing actual studies or research. They are often pure epidemiological number crunching that ignores major differences between study conditions because frankly, heeding those differences would eliminate data sources, and often publishability. If studies/experiments are well-replicated in the literature, that is stronger evidence than a metastudy; if the are not, they are weak bases for a metastudy because the author must overlook possibly relevant differences to perform the metastudy at all. This has been well-noted and -argued in editorials in JAMA, NEJM, and other leading journals in the past decade.
If I read you thought experiment correctly, you are positing that there is some means of locally determining if an atom is entangled or not. This does not follow, and may not be at all possible.
To make a poor analogy: two people may be twins, but there is not, even in principle, any test that you can perform on one twin that will tell you if s/he *has* a twin (e.g. s/he may have been a singleton fetus, a twin who lost its partner in utero, or the other twin, light years away, may have died months or years ago). Being entangled not a quantum number or property of either individual atom. It is a property of the pair taken together.
There is also the problem of measurement interaction. As Heisenberg showed, taking a measurement intrinsically, unavoidably changes the state of the object being measures. measure its mass to exquisite precision, and you will alter its velocity or position hugely, etc. This is not readily observed on a macroscopic scale because the product of the uncertainties (Dirac constant = Planck constant/2 = 1.054 x 10-34 J-sec) is quite small compared to macroscopic objects, but it is quite large on the scale of atomic properties.
What measurement would you take to determine if the two atoms are still entangle? entanglement is only useful if you know the remote atom won't change. If, in principle, either end could measure (say) the left-spin of its atom at an arbitrary time, either side could measure and breakthe entanglement *by the act of the measurement* but NEITHER end could know if the entanglement had already been broken by the other, and therefore neither end would know the state of the remote atom at the moment of their measurement.
Entanglement is not very durable. You can't "edit", or even view, a message encoded in quantum entangled atoms on your end, and have the message change on the remote end.
Actually, superluminal expansion has nothing to do with time dilation (which operates in the other direction, anyway -- *slowing* time). In fact, one of the fundamental bases of relativity is that gamma (= sqrt(1 - v/c) the common factor in most relativistic phenomena -- and the addition thereof -- will not allow any sum of effects to exceed the speed of light. Velocities don't add linearly, for example, that's just a pretty good approximation of the actual equation when you are operating at a small fraction of c.
Superluminal expansion is just a known optical illusion one an astronomical scale.
Let's say that a mass of plasma exploded on Jan 1, 1707, from a star 300 ly away at.99c, headed directly at Earth. Let's call the explosion P-1707 (the Point in spacetime where the plasma was on New Years Day 1707). 150 years later (New Years Eve 1857), it would have travelled 135 ly (150 years *.99 c) towad us, and still be 165 ly from us. (Let's call that point P-1857.)
However, an Earth astronomer couldn't see the plasma at all until 2007, when the light from the explosion finally reached Earth (traveling 300 ly at c). That much is straightforward. The illusion arises as the astronomer continues to observe. For example: the light from the plasma reaching P-1857 (165 ly years away) would reach us in 15 years later in 2022 (165 years after 1857). Therefore it would appear (to someone who assumed the observations reflected an instantaneous truth) that the plasma covered 135 ly in 15 years at 9c!
This may seem more straightforward, if you imagine a continuous film of the plasma, starting with the explosion (seen by Earth in 2007) and ending with the plasma hitting the Earth in 2010 (after covering 3000 ly in 303 years, traveling.99c) The film would obviously run a hair over 3 years (2007-2010), but would cover 300 years of the events on the plasma ball. This isn't time dilation, it's an observational illusion.
What's the difference? Well, for one thing, time dilation make time appear to move more slowly. The superluminal fireball appears to move *faster* than it can. On a more physical level, imagine that the explosion fired an asteroid made of 100% Fe-55, an iron isotope with a half life of 2.73 years. If it were a genuine time effect, rather than an illusion, the asteroid would "experience" a hair over 3 years, and would be a little under half Fe-55 when it hit the Earth. However, since it was an illusion, it would have experienced 111 half-lives, and even a star-sized mass of Fe-55 wouldn't (statistically) have a single Fe-55 atom left. It would be ~100% Mn-55, a stable manganese isotope
I respect Opera's philosophy --or at lest what it was back when I had in stalled on my systems, alongside others-- but that has nothing to do with the comparison.
1. Mandarin and Spanish have more native speakers than English. Hindi and Arabic have more "second language" speakers than English. The exact numbers are the subject of debate, but it wouldn't matter if I chose other examples: the intended audience of that comparison are much more likely to grasp and appreciate a comparison to English grammar than Mandarin or Hindi. It has nothing to do with the merits or popularity of the languages.
The intended audience for that remark are much more likely to be familiar with the *latest versions* and future plans for Firefox than Opera. Those who know Opera well enough to appreciate a point-by-point comparison will probably be better equipped to make it themselves, based on the information given. MSIE is reacting (in the market) to FF, not Opera, and that is reflected in the feature set, making the comparison extremely apt. Why must they learn Mandarin for you?
2. Opera is also a poor comparison on another level. When I used it, they were devoted to adherence to the standards: if they required something, Opera had it, but proprietary/variable bells and whistles were specifically avoided. If that's still the defining philosophy then anyone can write the comparison you request, sight unseen: "MSIE has these new features. Firefox has *those* new features. Opera mostly doesn't, because they're not standards." Was that informative?
Opera *shouldn't* feature prominently in the comparison, because its specific philosophy largely excludes it from that arena. If I'm comparing the rates of the newest sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy in urban teenagers, I'd compare it to (e.g.) suburban teens, not Catholic priests, because *in principle* Catholic priests shouldn't be an informative comparison. (and any surprising finding it would say more about Catholic priests than urban teens)
Similarly, a comparison or MSIE and Opera would tell people more about Opera than MSIE --which I suspect you'd like (and that's fine), but the article was about MSIE, not Opera
Um... Payola is illegal (in the US, anyway: YCMV) precisely because it was determined to be bribery. Originally "Payola" [Pay + Victrola] was a newspaper-coined name for a 1950s music industry scandal which resulted in fines and criminal convictions.
Today (well, for almost 50 years, really), the industry gets around the FCC regs and Payola laws by hiring "independent record promoters (not to be confused with "independent record producers"). They pay regional promoters, and the promoters pay the local radio stations. Indeed that is the sole function of these promoters, per first hand accounts, frequent reporting in the media, songs by popular groups and even Slashdot, where this issue has been discussed several times a year for ages (2001 article)). Sadly there is little political capital (and even fewer music/advertising industry contributions) to be found in pursuing it, and the FCC has turned a blind eye.
It's not just tickets to concerts or athletic events, it's expensive junkets and outright cash to program directors and radio stations, often billed as "promotion funding" (e.g. they give $1000 or some knickknacks to the radio station to be used as a prizes in a station promotion, and another $1000 or $5000 to the manager/director or station to pay for "administering" the promotion itself. The result is precisely the same as the outright bribery of the original scandal.
In recent years, NY State Atty Gen Elliot has prosecuting some of these these third party promoter arrangements as violations of his state's payola laws. Unless/until some federal prosecutor takes a case to court and gets a precedent saying it is an illegal circumvention of the payola rules/laws, it remains a legal loophole on the federal level.
There used to be some jigsaw puzzle generators that allowed you to specify basic types of shapes, which might obscure the picture you are "jigsawing" enough to entertain a preschooler.
For many years, starting in 1975, IIRC, the Financial Times of London) did an annual survey of resale values of gem diamonds, by getting offers on actual gems and jewelry from a variety of jewellers and other gem sources. (I believe they still do these periodically, but not annually) They found the 'base value' was about 50% of the "appraised value", even from the originall seller, and actual cash offers were as little as half of the base value. Since then many marketing gimmicks have spread ("Guaranteed to appraise at twice the sale price", "We will buy your diamond back at any time"), but all have had some catch
(e.g. the 'buyback' may not be cash on the barrelhead, but instead a credit towards a more expensive diamond, making it an upgrade, not a refund. This is very profitable for the jeweller, enabling them to effectively sell you the gem you can afford now vs. a decade ago, to collect additional revenue, while recouping the full 'buyback' price by selling the 'returned' diamond to a new customer at full price)
Appraised price is meaningless and unattainable, making diamonds a poor investment for those outside the trade.
When I was in high school, I admired the "tough" teachers, who gave hard exams and had "old fashioned standards", three of my math teachers were like that. They were proud that they routinely gave homework problems that even engineer parents couldn't solve (with the limited methods the kids had been taught).
I left high school early, and got an A in Calculus at Harvard, where the course was rather loosely structured: lecture attendance was optional; you took exams when you felt like it; and there was a pool of fresh exams, so you could take a different exam on each topic (up to twice) if you later gained a deeper insight into a concept, emphasized the wrong concepts in your self-study or simply blew a test.
My high school calc teacher was rather offended by my departure (she'd openly said I'd never amount to anything) and when I mentioned my Harvard "A" to the department chairman on a return visit, she challenged me to take HER final [She'd apparently done this with other students who'd left early, and none had passed.) I passed, but I didn't do particularly well. (Much as the engineering parents might've done, I suppose)
However, I stayed in touch with several of my fellow Honors Math students who had aced her course and went to college in Cambridge. I think they'd all agree that I remained better and more creative in basic calculus than them -- even the ones who went to MIT (I'm not dissing MIT; I've long been associated with that school)
Though I have always been a big fan of alternative approaches to education, it was over ten years and two doctorates later before I realized that these "tough, old-school" teachers hadn't been teaching very well at all. Their "tough" problems really tested how well you retained the trickier examples from of their homework problems.
Though they were quite good at instilling the fundamentals of Algebra 2, Calculus, etc., they hadn't really given their students much skill at "free-form" math. Sadly, in the real world, all math problems are free form: creativity and insight are invaluable, but limiting yourself to specific chosen techniques is almost always a meaningless exercise.
It really saddens me, because I still have a profound respect for "old school" teachers. The problem is: just being "tough" and "old school" isn't enough, and I think many such dedicated teachers would change their methods somewhat and become even more outstanding teachers, if only someone could make them fully understand this one weakness in their teaching, but instead they believe that their daily experience reaffirms the validity of their methods.
I was fortunate to have one teacher, in two different high school courses, who had been a former engineer and valued creative solutions. He also became our Math League coach in those years, and suddenly we went from the bottom of our local league to the top of the state [I still grin when I remember walking through the cafeteria "staging area" for the meets, and hearing the former top schools asking "who are these guys] Our success wasn't just due to his teaching -we barely did any prep, compared to the Powerhouses in our league- but was equally due to his encouragement of creative thinkers, including freshmen (like myself and a coupple of others who I fully admit were more talented at math than I was). Before his tenure, only the Seniors with the best grades (and a few exceptional Juniors) were encouraged to join.
That last point is important: the juniors/seniors on the team when I was a freshman were good, and certainly knew more math than we underclassmen did, make no mistake, but we had, nonetheless, been near the bottom of our league, so I can only guess that they hadn't done well with problems for which they hadn't been specifically prepped, and our math league categories leaned heavily toward "free form" problems, as opposed to "solve this equation".
Suddenly I'm flooded with repressed high school memories. Man, what a waste of life tht would've been, If it hadn't been for the girls [who says geeks can't date like demons?]. Just for the record, though, this isn't high school bitterness. I'm a 40-something, and the past two decades have offered many fresher things to be bitter about!
There's a hard, probebly irremediable fact about Real Time Operating Systems: the price for being able to [i]guarantee[/i] a specific response time is a [i]slower overall response time[/i]. "Realtime" isn't magic (though, as with all buzzwords, people tend to act like it is). It still must heed all the inherent limitations of the hardware.
Imagine that you run a pizza shop that MUST meet a certain delivery time guarantee or fail (go out of business--an RTOS MUST meet the guarantee to "be in business" at all). Before you were an RTOS, you could afford to promise pizzas in 15 minutes, with a 90%+ success rate, but if your head will roll if you fail at all, you won't advertise anything better than 30 -or even 60- minutes. I mean, what happens if a custom pizza gets ruined in the oven? You need time to make a new one.
You'll also need more hardware for the same tasks (more delivery cars), restrict services (smaller delivery area, fewer options), and institute effort-intensive safeguards to assure that no pizza order slips through the cracks. As I said: RTOS isn't magic; adding NEW performance demands won''t magically enable you to do more with less. Quite the contrary, it usually means doing less with more -- but presumably doing it better (assuming that the new requirement *is* better for your specific needs).
Would you embrace a hardware technology that slowed down your computers, and offered little or no benefit for most (or all) of the tasks you do? There are plenty of examples in he market, and we rightfully shun them as "unnecessary for us". That's the choice Linus faces: most users won't experience any benefit, so why include it in the kernel and make everyone pay the (performance and complexity) price?
I applaud the availability of a Real-Time patch or variant (I've wanted one for a long time, and I've used Wind River for those applications), but for most people or even 99% of my applications, it's pure downside, even if reworking the kernel to allow its inclusion only decreases performance or complicates programming by 1%.
Sure, in time --maybe a couple of years-- it may be streamlined until the RTOS burden is miniscule. Until then, Let the Real Time people deal with the issues and limitations inherent in their task. 99.99% of us don't need the unnecessary baggage in our OS. It'd be like mandating infan/child car seats in all cars, whether they carry kids or not.
Yes, you can patent improvements, but if I understand your intent correctly, you are missing the point. You can *only* patent the improvement, so you'd still have to license the underlying patent. One good example was the now-famous example of Robert Kearns, who invented the delay windshield wiper (and then fought for over 25 years to get the automaker who stole it to pay up). The automakers didn't continue to use his 4 part (one moving part) 1962 design for decades without ever once improving it; they did improve it -and patented the improvements, but were still in violation, because they hadn't licensed the underlying patent.
In simple terms: Say I invent a fizzbin, and you improve it to make a faster fizzbin, a dual stage fizzbin, etc. I can't market a fizzbin with your improvements without licensing them -- but you can't market any fizzbins at all without a license from me. All your improvement patent entitles you to is the right to collect license fees on (or block, should you so desire) the use of your improvement.
That's US law. In other countries, like Japan, the practice is completely different (I don't know the actual law, but I do know many examples of how it is customarily applied) It is quite common for a large competitor to force a patent-holder into a "mutual licensing deal" by creating so many derivative patents that the original holder can't use or license their patent at all. (Their standard for patenting is looser, so if you invent a fizzbin lightbulb, and Mitsubishi wants to use it, they can patent "improvements" like colored fizzbin lightbulbs (including colored lenses and covers), "fizzbin lightbulbs for use at night" and separately "for use in day", "in displays", etc. -- pretty much any use a lightbulb already has, the idea of doing it with a fizzbin lightbulb is considered an improvement on both the use patent and the fizzbin lightbulb patent. Now *you* can't use your patent for any of those useful purposes, unless you cut a deal with them. They can afford to blitz the field with hundreds of patents, and to put a dozen salarymen on the task of listing common uses for existing lightbulbs; you can't.)
When Virgin went out of the Internet access business, four years ago, they behind a lot of of Webplayer personal appliances in their customers houses, and even more in their warehouses. The 200MHz CPU was adequate for most car uses (by the standards of the time), and the low power 256MB DiskOnChip could hold most common OSs. It had IDE, USB, built in NIC or modem, room to wedge in some surplus slimline laptop CD drives, a built-in 800x600 color LCD (the Webplayer was VGA, but the LCDs were physically 800x600, and needed only a simple driver upgrade) etc.
Total draw was under 1 amp at 5v.
You could buy them directly from the company for $100 (Boundless was selling them for a bit more through internet auction houses, years later). I bought a few through a group buy, and one of them ended up in a car, and ran perfectly for three years until the car was rear-ended, cracking the screen (no, the computer wasn't in use - in fact, the car was being driven by a family member who didn't realize it was there at all)
That was a trivial weekend's work and $200 in total parts (hard drive, USB accessories, power supply etc.) four years ago. The GPS was added some time later (it was initially an MP3 player)
There were many other similar 'web appliances' at the time that I wonder what makes this particular project worthy of/. today. Sure, it's nice -kudos to the builder- but 4 years is three cycles of Moore's Law, and scaling the cost/performance backwards, I get the feeling I must be missing some key feature. It only seems to be droolworthy for gawkers, not hands-on geeks.
Yeah, Moore's Law doesn't apply directly, but it's not a bad scaling metric for hobby project cost.
Car computers based on small surplus off the shelf systems are trivial for anyone interested in using them (vs. bragging rights for tech specs). If this article interests you, you could have a computer in your car two weeks from today, with minimal work (including eBay buying/shipping time)
That's where broadcast beats broadband any day: if you try to slashdot a TV show, they'll just sit back and grin like maniacs as the ratings mount. I wouldn't mind seeing SG-1 slashdotted that way.
[i]As much as I disliked Star Wars I, I really felt that it managed to hint at the size of the Star Wars galaxy in a way that no other Star Wars did, with the shots of Coruscant, the Senate, and a few other quick little strokes that were largely missing (IMHO) from the other movies.[/i]
I'm not sure what scenes you are talking about, but there were no Coruscant or Senate scenes in the original movie. (The name "Coruscant" was unknown to SW fans in the 70s; it entered the SW universe many years later.) Perhaps the reason you see so much more depth and background in "SW: A New Hope" (as it was renamed) is that you only know a version that was remade with more material at least twice since 1977 (once for video release, and again for DVD)
If the original seemed richer *when released* it was only because we viewed it as our one brief glimpse we'd get of that universe - as with any other SF (Movie sequels were rare before 1977, and many were based on pre-existing series (e.g. James Bond) We never imagined the sequelmania that would soon strike, fueled by movies like Rocky, Jaws, -and yes- Star Wars) If it looks richer today, it's because Lucas went back and enriched it with material, scenes and back story that was never in the original. That would make ANY movie better.
You have been reading the SCO playbook except you can use trade secrets and copyrights instead of patents.
Trade secrets are great as they are secret and the legimitate company has no clue until the extortion letter arrives. Just ask IBM and Linux users.
Actually, trade secrets are protected from theft, not independent discovery or invention. The burden is on the plaintiff to prove the theft. If they can, then the 'thieving' party is hardly innocent.
In some cases, there are substantial questions on whether the IP (e.g. code) was available for legal use by the defendant. Many have argued that this is true of the SCO case, but it seems to be far from a universal consensus, even among affected parties and interested bystanders siding strongly with the defendants. I'd agree that IBM-licensed and other derivative users may legitimately feel blind-sided by the suit, and also the demand for licensing fees, but they are not the defendants, and as have independent recourse (as unreasonable as it might be to pursue) against the defendant or anyone who made assurances of the legality of any code that was found to be infringing.
As for it being extortionate, I'd fully agree. There was ample time for warnings, and far more than ample time to explicate the specific charges, SCO's argument that they do not wish to reveal all the exact infringements because they could be readily worked around is, though not conclusive on it face, at least suspect: a copyright holder has a duty to minimize the extent of the infringement, not to maximize the potential award of a lawsuit.
I think SCO's actions stink. I also think that focusing on the correct specifics helps us, while general ungrounded accusations (whether by Darl or the user community) merely cloud the issues. When you're in the wrong (as I feel SCO is), clouding the issues is desirable, but since I feel we are demonstrably in the right, let's stick to the law.
Of course, since IANAL, I could be entirely mistaken, and would welcome specific authoritative citations of the law or legal principles that would educate me.
Twiddlingbits, I suspect that we'd agree on a great many things. I hope you won't mind a few quibbles and clarifications. Perhaps I missed the intent of your remarks.
twiddlingbits said: It's a well know standard of US Law that free speech is NOT 100% Free. You can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, you can't publish materials that might reasonably defame or slander someone, you can't publish an "unlawful threat," which the Supreme Court has ruled is "explicit language likely to cause imminent lawless action,". This standard has been tested many times and has always been upheld. Free speech has limits in THIS country, in other places it's worse!
I find the chosen example to be particularly poor. Schenck v. US, the famous "Crying fire in a crowded theater" ruling, is a terrible precedent. According to the ruling: "The document in question upon its first printed side recited the first section of the Thirteenth Amendment, said that the idea embodied in it was violated by the conscription act and that a conscript is little better than a convict. In impassioned language it intimated that conscription was despotism in its worst form and a monstrous wrong against humanity in the interest of Wall Street's chosen few. It said, 'Do not submit to intimidation,' but in form at least confined itself to peaceful measures such as a petition for the repeal of the act. The other and later printed side of the sheet was headed 'Assert Your Rights.' It stated reasons for alleging that any one violated the Constitution when he refused to recognize 'your right to assert your opposition to the draft,' and went on, 'If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.' "
Wow! How could any nation tolerate the quoting of its own constitution and arguments that one of its laws are unconstitutional and should be opposed? Yet Americans quote this ruling as common sense!
The Court later refined and limited this ruling, and similar SCOTUS rulings of that era (e.g. Debs v. United States).
Nailer replied: That last definition is fairly poor, and could be used to persecute someone. A better definition would be speech which specifically incites a crime.
To Which twiddlingbits replied: Yes, but I'm quoting from the US Supreme Court decision! Seems THEY can't quite nail down the issue either, kind of like what "porn" is. They know it when they see it (and I wouldn't doubt some of them see a lot of it!!).
You were indeed citing a Supreme Court decision, but Nailer would be more correct. based on the almost 90 years of Supreme Court rulings since. In fact, he rasied precisely the test that the Court term has used for most of the past century: incitement to immediate crime or harm.
In Abrams v. U.S. (1919), Justice Holmes modified his test to include only those present dangers which relate to immediate and illegal action. He stuck by his interpretation of protected speech through the next decade and, by the 1930's, it was accepted doctrine. With some modifications, it remains today, necessarily giving constitutional protection to a wide variety of "ugly" opinions (e.g. socialists, by the standards of the time) as long as they do not pose the imminent threat of illegal action, such as open incitement to riot.
Since Whitney v. California (1927), the determination has hinged on whether the speech, even if it advocated illegal acts, carried a tendency to incite illegal activity, or was part and parcel of an inherently dangerous organization, such as the Communist Party.
Also see Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): Since the statute, by its words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action, it falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedoms of speech and press do n
Slashdot Mirror
Bah. I don't know why, but the second link got stripped. (Did it think there was a domain mismatch between wunderground.com and WeatherUnderground? Or does someone elsewhere just not like sites named for 60s domestic terror groups?]
He could just check a site that doesn't use unblockable advertising pop-ups, like Intellicast Local Weather or The Weather Underground. Indeed, I find Weather Underground to be much better than weather.com, with more realtime data options and user-customizable maps.
> That's exactly the point. There is no set of people for whom "ooh, my name, it must be legit" is true.
Actually, there are. And they are precisely some of the biggest phishing targets.
Take eBay. In the past (their help pages are too labyrinthine for me to completely check out their current advice) eBay EXPLICITLY said to check for your real name in the greeting to separate genuine eBay emails from phishing. Others (including, I'm sad to say, some banks) followed this "expert" lead. Millions of slightly-savvier-than-average recipients use that rule today.
Now it's too late for eBay to reliably advise people that use of their real name in the greetings is NOT a reliable test, because their (deliberately?) convoluted help pages are a poor way to update customers (who don't want to spend half an hour digging) and the phishers will be sending apparently authentic emails saying otherwise ("Check that your correct name is at the top of this message. Scammers will not have access to that information"). Since it's not their fault, They'll likely decide it's not their problem.
Yes, but the ASM-135 you refer to was an air-launched missile, with no operational copies in existence, which never went into deployment, and could only be launched from ONE SINGLE aging F-15 (Celestial Eagle 76-0084, used in the Solwind test, now assigned to the Florida Air National Guard) and I doubt it is still modified to fire the now-nonexistent ASM-135 today, anyway.
History makes my point: An Army Nike Zeus missile destroyed an orbiting satellite in May 1963. We don't have any of those anymore, but exactly one missile from this system (Project MUDFLAP and later Project 505) was available for launch until 1967, when a USAF Thor anti-satellite system (Program 437) did a successful satellite intercept and replaced it. The Program 437 Thor missile system was in (very) limited deployment until 1975, and we don't have any of them, anymore, either.
Not that we'd want them. Both the above were nukes, and would make a make a mess of our recon sats.
The US had NO formal ASAT capability from 1975 to 1985 (the "Solwind" P-78 test you referred to) -- and only a very limited theoretical capability since then: AFAIK, only the test F-15 was modified to be capable of firing the ASM-135 before the USAF offered the program for cancellation in 1987. The fleet of ASAT-modified F-15s was never built, and only 15 of the missiles were ever produced.
On 13 September 2007, Capt. Todd Pearson, the SON of the ONLY pilot to ever fire an ASM-135 flew the ONLY jet to ever launch an ASM-135 for the 22nd anniversary of that ONE launch.
It's kind of strange to say that a single successful air-launched missile intercept, 20+ years ago, which never went into operational deployment proves anything about a sea-launched missile today. You may as well claim that we could go to the moon today, because we did it ~40 years ago. Military technology is hardware in operational deployment, not ethereal knowhow.
Furthermore, even though this satellite was so low that it would spontaneously deorbiting itself through atmospheric friction in 3 weeks, the RIM-161 SM-3 had never been launched even *that* high before. This was by far a new record for a missile that had only been tested for ballistic missile defense, not anti-satellite use. Even now, we've only demonstrated a crude minimal ASAT capability, not a practical ability to intercept the great majority of operational satellites, which orbit much higher than 130 miles. The Chinese test, by contrast, was at 513 miles, IIRC.
I'm not going to take a stand on the desirability of the test, but your post implied that we have decades of ASAT defense, when in actuality we had NOTHING in our ASAT armory until this test.
You point is quite well taken, but 12600 km is an incorrect figure.
For the sake of other readers (since you post was marked "informative"), GPS satellites orbit at an altitude (AGL or "Above Ground Level") of ~20,200 km. The orbital radius (from the center of mass of the earth) is of course even higher (~26,600 km), for those who want to check my numbers manually
GPS satellites orbit twice per sidereal day (or once per 11h 58m 2s) in order to repeat the same ground track. this Earth orbit period calculator confirms my approximation for an altitude (AGL) of 20,200 km
It's one area where you can report the problem directly to an enforcing agency and heads will roll, rather than reporting it to the offender, so they can cry foul.
Secondly, you *can* get a pilots license for the same qualifications as a driver's license. Not a Private Pilot's license but a Sport Pilot license. In fact, presenting a valid state driver's license plus a signed statement that you don't have certain medical conditions is all you need to qualify initially. No physical is presumptively required.
I'm not sure about all the details of the requirements for a Light sport Aircraft, but the plane in question would meet all the ones I can think of: at 400lb, it meets the weight limit (1320lbs=600 kg), it has fixed landing gear; it can hover so it has a maximum stall speed of under 45 knots (51mph); 1-2 person occupancy; reciprocating engine, and it appears to have fixed "propellers" albeit in an unconventional configuration. Since this is a new class I'm sure the Sky Commuter wasn't registered as a LSA (the auction made that clear as well), but it may be registerable in that class.
[b]Your firmware might react to being associated with a network enough to eavesdrop it by also responding to low-level configuration traffic. If that happens, even if you don't send any data the firmware may respond to probes, letting the network know you're listening.[/b]
It is fairly cheap and easy to set up a listen-only client using hardware whose transmitter is easily disabled. A few minutes with a razor blade or soldering iron, and I don't need what the proprietary firmware *tries* to do. If I want an actual connection, I'll plug in a different card.
When it comes to sniffing, wireless can be more like a hub-based network than it pretends to be.
Darn right, a total air leak of this magnitude (1.3 kg/day = 40 kg/mo -- call it a welding tank a month) would hardly be noted on a nuclear submarine on a multi-month submerged mission. Yes, leaks are more worrisome in space where air cannot be replenished readily, and every kilogram of supplies is expensive -- but it's still well under the mass of personal consumables for a single crewman, and crew supplies are a modest fraction of the content of each resupply mission.
Ignore it? Of course not. But put to scale (or compared to on-board reserves), it's less significant than a car that uses a quart of oil every month or three.
It was entirely unnoticed by all earlier testing until the most recent "fine scale" tests, just as you might never know you were riding in a car that was burning a little oil, or a home furnace that could be better tuned. Again, yes, lifting supplies to orbit is expensive, but 1.3 kg/d requires no change the capacity or frequency of resupply missions, even if it were ignored. It's not a big deal to the people who actually have to deal with it, but apparently some armchair geeks are worried.
Good lord, are you kidding me?
While meta-studies sound good in principle, I find that that are consistently the *home* of bad analysis. They are cheap ways to squeeze out a publication/evidence without the bother of doing actual studies or research. They are often pure epidemiological number crunching that ignores major differences between study conditions because frankly, heeding those differences would eliminate data sources, and often publishability. If studies/experiments are well-replicated in the literature, that is stronger evidence than a metastudy; if the are not, they are weak bases for a metastudy because the author must overlook possibly relevant differences to perform the metastudy at all. This has been well-noted and -argued in editorials in JAMA, NEJM, and other leading journals in the past decade.
To make a poor analogy: two people may be twins, but there is not, even in principle, any test that you can perform on one twin that will tell you if s/he *has* a twin (e.g. s/he may have been a singleton fetus, a twin who lost its partner in utero, or the other twin, light years away, may have died months or years ago). Being entangled not a quantum number or property of either individual atom. It is a property of the pair taken together.
There is also the problem of measurement interaction. As Heisenberg showed, taking a measurement intrinsically, unavoidably changes the state of the object being measures. measure its mass to exquisite precision, and you will alter its velocity or position hugely, etc. This is not readily observed on a macroscopic scale because the product of the uncertainties (Dirac constant = Planck constant/2 = 1.054 x 10-34 J-sec) is quite small compared to macroscopic objects, but it is quite large on the scale of atomic properties.
What measurement would you take to determine if the two atoms are still entangle? entanglement is only useful if you know the remote atom won't change. If, in principle, either end could measure (say) the left-spin of its atom at an arbitrary time, either side could measure and breakthe entanglement *by the act of the measurement* but NEITHER end could know if the entanglement had already been broken by the other, and therefore neither end would know the state of the remote atom at the moment of their measurement.
Entanglement is not very durable. You can't "edit", or even view, a message encoded in quantum entangled atoms on your end, and have the message change on the remote end.
Actually, superluminal expansion has nothing to do with time dilation (which operates in the other direction, anyway -- *slowing* time). In fact, one of the fundamental bases of relativity is that gamma (= sqrt(1 - v/c) the common factor in most relativistic phenomena -- and the addition thereof -- will not allow any sum of effects to exceed the speed of light. Velocities don't add linearly, for example, that's just a pretty good approximation of the actual equation when you are operating at a small fraction of c.
Superluminal expansion is just a known optical illusion one an astronomical scale.
Let's say that a mass of plasma exploded on Jan 1, 1707, from a star 300 ly away at .99c, headed directly at Earth. Let's call the explosion P-1707 (the Point in spacetime where the plasma was on New Years Day 1707). 150 years later (New Years Eve 1857), it would have travelled 135 ly (150 years * .99 c) towad us, and still be 165 ly from us. (Let's call that point P-1857.)
However, an Earth astronomer couldn't see the plasma at all until 2007, when the light from the explosion finally reached Earth (traveling 300 ly at c). That much is straightforward. The illusion arises as the astronomer continues to observe. For example: the light from the plasma reaching P-1857 (165 ly years away) would reach us in 15 years later in 2022 (165 years after 1857). Therefore it would appear (to someone who assumed the observations reflected an instantaneous truth) that the plasma covered 135 ly in 15 years at 9c!
This may seem more straightforward, if you imagine a continuous film of the plasma, starting with the explosion (seen by Earth in 2007) and ending with the plasma hitting the Earth in 2010 (after covering 3000 ly in 303 years, traveling .99c) The film would obviously run a hair over 3 years (2007-2010), but would cover 300 years of the events on the plasma ball. This isn't time dilation, it's an observational illusion.
What's the difference? Well, for one thing, time dilation make time appear to move more slowly. The superluminal fireball appears to move *faster* than it can. On a more physical level, imagine that the explosion fired an asteroid made of 100% Fe-55, an iron isotope with a half life of 2.73 years. If it were a genuine time effect, rather than an illusion, the asteroid would "experience" a hair over 3 years, and would be a little under half Fe-55 when it hit the Earth. However, since it was an illusion, it would have experienced 111 half-lives, and even a star-sized mass of Fe-55 wouldn't (statistically) have a single Fe-55 atom left. It would be ~100% Mn-55, a stable manganese isotope
I respect Opera's philosophy --or at lest what it was back when I had in stalled on my systems, alongside others-- but that has nothing to do with the comparison.
1. Mandarin and Spanish have more native speakers than English. Hindi and Arabic have more "second language" speakers than English. The exact numbers are the subject of debate, but it wouldn't matter if I chose other examples: the intended audience of that comparison are much more likely to grasp and appreciate a comparison to English grammar than Mandarin or Hindi. It has nothing to do with the merits or popularity of the languages.
The intended audience for that remark are much more likely to be familiar with the *latest versions* and future plans for Firefox than Opera. Those who know Opera well enough to appreciate a point-by-point comparison will probably be better equipped to make it themselves, based on the information given. MSIE is reacting (in the market) to FF, not Opera, and that is reflected in the feature set, making the comparison extremely apt. Why must they learn Mandarin for you?
2. Opera is also a poor comparison on another level. When I used it, they were devoted to adherence to the standards: if they required something, Opera had it, but proprietary/variable bells and whistles were specifically avoided. If that's still the defining philosophy then anyone can write the comparison you request, sight unseen: "MSIE has these new features. Firefox has *those* new features. Opera mostly doesn't, because they're not standards." Was that informative?
Opera *shouldn't* feature prominently in the comparison, because its specific philosophy largely excludes it from that arena. If I'm comparing the rates of the newest sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy in urban teenagers, I'd compare it to (e.g.) suburban teens, not Catholic priests, because *in principle* Catholic priests shouldn't be an informative comparison. (and any surprising finding it would say more about Catholic priests than urban teens)
Similarly, a comparison or MSIE and Opera would tell people more about Opera than MSIE --which I suspect you'd like (and that's fine), but the article was about MSIE, not Opera
Um... Payola is illegal (in the US, anyway: YCMV) precisely because it was determined to be bribery. Originally "Payola" [Pay + Victrola] was a newspaper-coined name for a 1950s music industry scandal which resulted in fines and criminal convictions.
Today (well, for almost 50 years, really), the industry gets around the FCC regs and Payola laws by hiring "independent record promoters (not to be confused with "independent record producers"). They pay regional promoters, and the promoters pay the local radio stations. Indeed that is the sole function of these promoters, per first hand accounts, frequent reporting in the media, songs by popular groups and even Slashdot, where this issue has been discussed several times a year for ages (2001 article)). Sadly there is little political capital (and even fewer music/advertising industry contributions) to be found in pursuing it, and the FCC has turned a blind eye.
It's not just tickets to concerts or athletic events, it's expensive junkets and outright cash to program directors and radio stations, often billed as "promotion funding" (e.g. they give $1000 or some knickknacks to the radio station to be used as a prizes in a station promotion, and another $1000 or $5000 to the manager/director or station to pay for "administering" the promotion itself. The result is precisely the same as the outright bribery of the original scandal.
In recent years, NY State Atty Gen Elliot has prosecuting some of these these third party promoter arrangements as violations of his state's payola laws. Unless/until some federal prosecutor takes a case to court and gets a precedent saying it is an illegal circumvention of the payola rules/laws, it remains a legal loophole on the federal level.
There used to be some jigsaw puzzle generators that allowed you to specify basic types of shapes, which might obscure the picture you are "jigsawing" enough to entertain a preschooler.
(e.g. the 'buyback' may not be cash on the barrelhead, but instead a credit towards a more expensive diamond, making it an upgrade, not a refund. This is very profitable for the jeweller, enabling them to effectively sell you the gem you can afford now vs. a decade ago, to collect additional revenue, while recouping the full 'buyback' price by selling the 'returned' diamond to a new customer at full price)
Appraised price is meaningless and unattainable, making diamonds a poor investment for those outside the trade.
When I was in high school, I admired the "tough" teachers, who gave hard exams and had "old fashioned standards", three of my math teachers were like that. They were proud that they routinely gave homework problems that even engineer parents couldn't solve (with the limited methods the kids had been taught).
I left high school early, and got an A in Calculus at Harvard, where the course was rather loosely structured: lecture attendance was optional; you took exams when you felt like it; and there was a pool of fresh exams, so you could take a different exam on each topic (up to twice) if you later gained a deeper insight into a concept, emphasized the wrong concepts in your self-study or simply blew a test.
My high school calc teacher was rather offended by my departure (she'd openly said I'd never amount to anything) and when I mentioned my Harvard "A" to the department chairman on a return visit, she challenged me to take HER final [She'd apparently done this with other students who'd left early, and none had passed.) I passed, but I didn't do particularly well. (Much as the engineering parents might've done, I suppose)
However, I stayed in touch with several of my fellow Honors Math students who had aced her course and went to college in Cambridge. I think they'd all agree that I remained better and more creative in basic calculus than them -- even the ones who went to MIT (I'm not dissing MIT; I've long been associated with that school)
Though I have always been a big fan of alternative approaches to education, it was over ten years and two doctorates later before I realized that these "tough, old-school" teachers hadn't been teaching very well at all. Their "tough" problems really tested how well you retained the trickier examples from of their homework problems.
Though they were quite good at instilling the fundamentals of Algebra 2, Calculus, etc., they hadn't really given their students much skill at "free-form" math. Sadly, in the real world, all math problems are free form: creativity and insight are invaluable, but limiting yourself to specific chosen techniques is almost always a meaningless exercise.
It really saddens me, because I still have a profound respect for "old school" teachers. The problem is: just being "tough" and "old school" isn't enough, and I think many such dedicated teachers would change their methods somewhat and become even more outstanding teachers, if only someone could make them fully understand this one weakness in their teaching, but instead they believe that their daily experience reaffirms the validity of their methods.
I was fortunate to have one teacher, in two different high school courses, who had been a former engineer and valued creative solutions. He also became our Math League coach in those years, and suddenly we went from the bottom of our local league to the top of the state [I still grin when I remember walking through the cafeteria "staging area" for the meets, and hearing the former top schools asking "who are these guys] Our success wasn't just due to his teaching -we barely did any prep, compared to the Powerhouses in our league- but was equally due to his encouragement of creative thinkers, including freshmen (like myself and a coupple of others who I fully admit were more talented at math than I was). Before his tenure, only the Seniors with the best grades (and a few exceptional Juniors) were encouraged to join.
That last point is important: the juniors/seniors on the team when I was a freshman were good, and certainly knew more math than we underclassmen did, make no mistake, but we had, nonetheless, been near the bottom of our league, so I can only guess that they hadn't done well with problems for which they hadn't been specifically prepped, and our math league categories leaned heavily toward "free form" problems, as opposed to "solve this equation".
Suddenly I'm flooded with repressed high school memories. Man, what a waste of life tht would've been, If it hadn't been for the girls [who says geeks can't date like demons?]. Just for the record, though, this isn't high school bitterness. I'm a 40-something, and the past two decades have offered many fresher things to be bitter about!
Probably because once you memorized your first incorrect digit going further would have been pointless. Pi is 3.141592653 5 ...
There's a hard, probebly irremediable fact about Real Time Operating Systems: the price for being able to [i]guarantee[/i] a specific response time is a [i]slower overall response time[/i]. "Realtime" isn't magic (though, as with all buzzwords, people tend to act like it is). It still must heed all the inherent limitations of the hardware.
Imagine that you run a pizza shop that MUST meet a certain delivery time guarantee or fail (go out of business--an RTOS MUST meet the guarantee to "be in business" at all). Before you were an RTOS, you could afford to promise pizzas in 15 minutes, with a 90%+ success rate, but if your head will roll if you fail at all, you won't advertise anything better than 30 -or even 60- minutes. I mean, what happens if a custom pizza gets ruined in the oven? You need time to make a new one.
You'll also need more hardware for the same tasks (more delivery cars), restrict services (smaller delivery area, fewer options), and institute effort-intensive safeguards to assure that no pizza order slips through the cracks. As I said: RTOS isn't magic; adding NEW performance demands won''t magically enable you to do more with less. Quite the contrary, it usually means doing less with more -- but presumably doing it better (assuming that the new requirement *is* better for your specific needs).
Would you embrace a hardware technology that slowed down your computers, and offered little or no benefit for most (or all) of the tasks you do? There are plenty of examples in he market, and we rightfully shun them as "unnecessary for us". That's the choice Linus faces: most users won't experience any benefit, so why include it in the kernel and make everyone pay the (performance and complexity) price?
I applaud the availability of a Real-Time patch or variant (I've wanted one for a long time, and I've used Wind River for those applications), but for most people or even 99% of my applications, it's pure downside, even if reworking the kernel to allow its inclusion only decreases performance or complicates programming by 1%.
Sure, in time --maybe a couple of years-- it may be streamlined until the RTOS burden is miniscule. Until then, Let the Real Time people deal with the issues and limitations inherent in their task. 99.99% of us don't need the unnecessary baggage in our OS. It'd be like mandating infan/child car seats in all cars, whether they carry kids or not.
Yes, you can patent improvements, but if I understand your intent correctly, you are missing the point. You can *only* patent the improvement, so you'd still have to license the underlying patent. One good example was the now-famous example of Robert Kearns, who invented the delay windshield wiper (and then fought for over 25 years to get the automaker who stole it to pay up). The automakers didn't continue to use his 4 part (one moving part) 1962 design for decades without ever once improving it; they did improve it -and patented the improvements, but were still in violation, because they hadn't licensed the underlying patent.
In simple terms: Say I invent a fizzbin, and you improve it to make a faster fizzbin, a dual stage fizzbin, etc. I can't market a fizzbin with your improvements without licensing them -- but you can't market any fizzbins at all without a license from me. All your improvement patent entitles you to is the right to collect license fees on (or block, should you so desire) the use of your improvement.
That's US law. In other countries, like Japan, the practice is completely different (I don't know the actual law, but I do know many examples of how it is customarily applied) It is quite common for a large competitor to force a patent-holder into a "mutual licensing deal" by creating so many derivative patents that the original holder can't use or license their patent at all. (Their standard for patenting is looser, so if you invent a fizzbin lightbulb, and Mitsubishi wants to use it, they can patent "improvements" like colored fizzbin lightbulbs (including colored lenses and covers), "fizzbin lightbulbs for use at night" and separately "for use in day", "in displays", etc. -- pretty much any use a lightbulb already has, the idea of doing it with a fizzbin lightbulb is considered an improvement on both the use patent and the fizzbin lightbulb patent. Now *you* can't use your patent for any of those useful purposes, unless you cut a deal with them. They can afford to blitz the field with hundreds of patents, and to put a dozen salarymen on the task of listing common uses for existing lightbulbs; you can't.)
When Virgin went out of the Internet access business, four years ago, they behind a lot of of Webplayer personal appliances in their customers houses, and even more in their warehouses. The 200MHz CPU was adequate for most car uses (by the standards of the time), and the low power 256MB DiskOnChip could hold most common OSs. It had IDE, USB, built in NIC or modem, room to wedge in some surplus slimline laptop CD drives, a built-in 800x600 color LCD (the Webplayer was VGA, but the LCDs were physically 800x600, and needed only a simple driver upgrade) etc.
/. today. Sure, it's nice -kudos to the builder- but 4 years is three cycles of Moore's Law, and scaling the cost/performance backwards, I get the feeling I must be missing some key feature. It only seems to be droolworthy for gawkers, not hands-on geeks.
Total draw was under 1 amp at 5v.
You could buy them directly from the company for $100 (Boundless was selling them for a bit more through internet auction houses, years later). I bought a few through a group buy, and one of them ended up in a car, and ran perfectly for three years until the car was rear-ended, cracking the screen (no, the computer wasn't in use - in fact, the car was being driven by a family member who didn't realize it was there at all)
That was a trivial weekend's work and $200 in total parts (hard drive, USB accessories, power supply etc.) four years ago. The GPS was added some time later (it was initially an MP3 player)
There were many other similar 'web appliances' at the time that I wonder what makes this particular project worthy of
Yeah, Moore's Law doesn't apply directly, but it's not a bad scaling metric for hobby project cost.
Car computers based on small surplus off the shelf systems are trivial for anyone interested in using them (vs. bragging rights for tech specs). If this article interests you, you could have a computer in your car two weeks from today, with minimal work (including eBay buying/shipping time)
[i]Slashdot Kree![/i]
That's where broadcast beats broadband any day: if you try to slashdot a TV show, they'll just sit back and grin like maniacs as the ratings mount. I wouldn't mind seeing SG-1 slashdotted that way.
[i]As much as I disliked Star Wars I, I really felt that it managed to hint at the size of the Star Wars galaxy in a way that no other Star Wars did, with the shots of Coruscant, the Senate, and a few other quick little strokes that were largely missing (IMHO) from the other movies.[/i]
I'm not sure what scenes you are talking about, but there were no Coruscant or Senate scenes in the original movie. (The name "Coruscant" was unknown to SW fans in the 70s; it entered the SW universe many years later.) Perhaps the reason you see so much more depth and background in "SW: A New Hope" (as it was renamed) is that you only know a version that was remade with more material at least twice since 1977 (once for video release, and again for DVD)
If the original seemed richer *when released* it was only because we viewed it as our one brief glimpse we'd get of that universe - as with any other SF (Movie sequels were rare before 1977, and many were based on pre-existing series (e.g. James Bond) We never imagined the sequelmania that would soon strike, fueled by movies like Rocky, Jaws, -and yes- Star Wars) If it looks richer today, it's because Lucas went back and enriched it with material, scenes and back story that was never in the original. That would make ANY movie better.
You have been reading the SCO playbook except you can use trade secrets and copyrights instead of patents.
Trade secrets are great as they are secret and the legimitate company has no clue until the extortion letter arrives. Just ask IBM and Linux users.
Actually, trade secrets are protected from theft, not independent discovery or invention. The burden is on the plaintiff to prove the theft. If they can, then the 'thieving' party is hardly innocent.
In some cases, there are substantial questions on whether the IP (e.g. code) was available for legal use by the defendant. Many have argued that this is true of the SCO case, but it seems to be far from a universal consensus, even among affected parties and interested bystanders siding strongly with the defendants. I'd agree that IBM-licensed and other derivative users may legitimately feel blind-sided by the suit, and also the demand for licensing fees, but they are not the defendants, and as have independent recourse (as unreasonable as it might be to pursue) against the defendant or anyone who made assurances of the legality of any code that was found to be infringing.
As for it being extortionate, I'd fully agree. There was ample time for warnings, and far more than ample time to explicate the specific charges, SCO's argument that they do not wish to reveal all the exact infringements because they could be readily worked around is, though not conclusive on it face, at least suspect: a copyright holder has a duty to minimize the extent of the infringement, not to maximize the potential award of a lawsuit.
I think SCO's actions stink. I also think that focusing on the correct specifics helps us, while general ungrounded accusations (whether by Darl or the user community) merely cloud the issues. When you're in the wrong (as I feel SCO is), clouding the issues is desirable, but since I feel we are demonstrably in the right, let's stick to the law.
Of course, since IANAL, I could be entirely mistaken, and would welcome specific authoritative citations of the law or legal principles that would educate me.
Twiddlingbits, I suspect that we'd agree on a great many things. I hope you won't mind a few quibbles and clarifications. Perhaps I missed the intent of your remarks.
twiddlingbits said:
It's a well know standard of US Law that free speech is NOT 100% Free. You can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, you can't publish materials that might reasonably defame or slander someone, you can't publish an "unlawful threat," which the Supreme Court has ruled is "explicit language likely to cause imminent lawless action,". This standard has been tested many times and has always been upheld. Free speech has limits in THIS country, in other places it's worse!
I find the chosen example to be particularly poor. Schenck v. US, the famous "Crying fire in a crowded theater" ruling, is a terrible precedent. According to the ruling: "The document in question upon its first printed side recited the first section of the Thirteenth Amendment, said that the idea embodied in it was violated by the conscription act and that a conscript is little better than a convict. In impassioned language it intimated that conscription was despotism in its worst form and a monstrous wrong against humanity in the interest of Wall Street's chosen few. It said, 'Do not submit to intimidation,' but in form at least confined itself to peaceful measures such as a petition for the repeal of the act. The other and later printed side of the sheet was headed 'Assert Your Rights.' It stated reasons for alleging that any one violated the Constitution when he refused to recognize 'your right to assert your opposition to the draft,' and went on, 'If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.' "
Wow! How could any nation tolerate the quoting of its own constitution and arguments that one of its laws are unconstitutional and should be opposed? Yet Americans quote this ruling as common sense!
The Court later refined and limited this ruling, and similar SCOTUS rulings of that era (e.g. Debs v. United States).
Nailer replied:
That last definition is fairly poor, and could be used to persecute someone. A better definition would be speech which specifically incites a crime.
To Which twiddlingbits replied:
Yes, but I'm quoting from the US Supreme Court decision! Seems THEY can't quite nail down the issue either, kind of like what "porn" is. They know it when they see it (and I wouldn't doubt some of them see a lot of it!!).
You were indeed citing a Supreme Court decision, but Nailer would be more correct. based on the almost 90 years of Supreme Court rulings since. In fact, he rasied precisely the test that the Court term has used for most of the past century: incitement to immediate crime or harm.
In Abrams v. U.S. (1919), Justice Holmes modified his test to include only those present dangers which relate to immediate and illegal action. He stuck by his interpretation of protected speech through the next decade and, by the 1930's, it was accepted doctrine. With some modifications, it remains today, necessarily giving constitutional protection to a wide variety of "ugly" opinions (e.g. socialists, by the standards of the time) as long as they do not pose the imminent threat of illegal action, such as open incitement to riot.
Since Whitney v. California (1927), the determination has hinged on whether the speech, even if it advocated illegal acts, carried a tendency to incite illegal activity, or was part and parcel of an inherently dangerous organization, such as the Communist Party.
Also see Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): Since the statute, by its words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action, it falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedoms of speech and press do n