Now, imagine what our scientists and engineers could do with that same budget, but also with a directive to use it in the areas that will best help our country.
It would be an endless dollar sucking black hole. Not only because there are 1x10^10 different ideas about what will 'best help the country, but also because research without concrete goals is an endless gravy train.
One of the reasons military research is so effective is because it almost always has a goal, sometimes somewhat fuzzy, sometimes hard and specific, but almost always a goal of some kind.
Gov can do R&D into things like cheap medicine made from easily found natural ingredients and things like that. Stuff that has tremendous use but little in the way of profit margin.
Even if a company like Merck were 100% ethically run they wouldn't do this sort of stuff because there is no profit margin.
Yet somehow the agriculture industry makes billions (trillions?) a year on 'easily found natural ingredients' - everything from food to flowers. Then there are loggers, fisheries, leather, liquor and beer, pulp and paper, etc... etc... The opportunities to make a profit from natural materials, even with competition, are legion.
I'm starting to think the claim you make above (and many others make) should be filed alongside 'cars that run on water', and all the other silly claims that people make to invoke an Evil Big Business conspiracy.
Parsing the questions in natural language, which is the goal here, is however very much *not* trivial.
That and the fact that they don't lead with questions on Jeopardy!, they challenge with the *answer*, the proper question is then required in order to score. Or, am I the only one here who has seen the show?
Or, in other words, the questions on Jeopardy! are phrased in the form of an answer. Or, in other words, my phraseology was correct and you're just being pedantic.
It seems the guys who wrote Paranoid Linux are like most Slashdotters - they know shit about security and surveillance. It doesn't matter how much chaff they throw up, because traffic analysis will neatly sort the wheat from the chaff. (And the coolest part? Traffic analysis is easily automated. All the government agents need to do is check their email from time to time to see if the program has generated a result.)
I no longer have any hope for Great Britain. The country that spawned the magna carta is on an irreversible spiral into a police state.
Well, those who've studied history know two things: First, the Magna Carta was meant to protect the rights of the upper classes, not the common man. Second, Great Britain has bordered on being a police state for decades. People are just now getting around to noticing.
Organized Criminals and terrorists will just start using payphones and traditional mail (post).
Good! Traditional mail is slower and has lower bandwidth than the 'net, and payphones (unless the UK is very different from the US) are becoming scarcer are cell phones become common. Even when there are payphones available, they're great for sending messages but suck badly for receiving them. Not to mention payphones are generally in public places, so someone repeatedly hanging about has an increased chance of being noticed by a witness.
So forcing them to use these services makes their communications slower, asynchronous, and raises the chance of them making a mistake. From the POV of law enforcement these are all Good Things.
Seriously, many Slashdotters don't seem to realize that many security measures aren't meant to catch bad guys - they aren't traps. They're meant to make the bad guys lives more difficult and to increase the chance they'll make (and hopefully repeat) a noticeable mistake.
Parsing the questions in natural language, which is the goal here, is however very much *not* trivial. Doubly so since the clues and questions in a Jeopardy! game are usually at least somewhat obfuscated, contain puns, double entendres, etc...
Had he mentioned sewing, you'd have a point. Even so 'sewn binding' describes a family of bindings (only some of which resemble his vague description, not a single specific binding.
You mean "the problem with glue binding". Real perfect binding - individual sections attached to the backing which is then bound into the cover - is neither fast nor cheap, but it is durable.
No, I mean the problem with perfect binding, which is individual sheets glued into a cover. What you describe as 'real perfect binding' doesn't even appear to have a name.
PU burst binding for paperbacks is quite durable and not too expensive.
Burst binding is more expensive than perfect binding because of the increased number of operations and handling required. Considerably more expensive.
One real disadvantage of a good one off machine for conventional publishers is that the cost of publication and promotion enables them to be gatekeepers, to protect their revenue model (just like the recording industry.) If Joe Bloggs can write his book, get it imposed as a PDF and make it available for on demand printing, the entire vanity press world just went out of the window.
Apples and oranges. The vanity press industry is fairly small, and could vanish overnight without notably altering the publishing landscape - they aren't the same people as your 'gatekeepers'. (Vanity presses have already been badly hurt by the rise of computers and places like Kinko's anyhow.)
We've had the technology for in-store print on demand for at least a decade.
Sure, but the problem is the machinery is very expensive (which means the books are expensive on a per copy basis), the quality of the print is mediocre, and the quality of the binding is at best mediocre. I.E. having the technology to produce a product is meaningless when the price and quality are so badly mismatched, and there isn't significant demand to start with.
The fact that this is not already common (at $10 or less per 300 pages) is due to stupid business decisions all through the publishing chain, not to lack of technology.
No, it's due the quality/price mismatch discussed above and the fact that print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem. The vast majority of out of print books that are in demand are trivially locatable via ABE, Alibris, or Amazon. There's little to no demand by the consumer for print on demand, despite it being rolled out to great hype on a fairly regular basis over the last fifteen years. (Disclaimer: I owned a used and rare bookstore during this period, as well as working closely with new bookstores.)
Well, that's the problem with perfect binding. It doesn't handle thin books too well, and it doesn't handle thick books to well either. It's only advantage is that it's fast and cheap.
In 1961 the Apollo program was founded when US President John F. Kennedy announced a goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969 it was accomplished when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. It took eight years.
40 years later we carry computers in our pocket that have more power than all the computers in the world at that time. Our cars have better navigational equipment. It has been done before. The problem has been solved - we've done it many times. The physics, mechanics and materials are well understood. But now we can't figure out a way to do this again in under a decade.
Well, you're a bit confused about the timeline. It only seemed to take eight years - but in reality it took over a decade to get all the pieces in place for the 1969 landing. Development of the F1 engine started in 1956, and development of the Apollo capsule in 1960.
Apollo also had virtually a blank check, which the current program does not.
It had never been done before. Practically none of the necessary materials science, engineering and physics were even understood at the time.
That's what nearly forty years of NASA propaganda, journalistic hype, and urban legend would lead you to believe. But it's completely wrong. In reality, NASA managers explicit avoided new technology and risky development wherever possible. (Just one example: This is why the Apollo inertial platform had three gimbals, rather than four. The design was frozen in 1963 - before four gimbal systems were proved in flight by the Gemini program.) They took, wherever possible, existing pieces or technologies well along in development.
Almost certainly due to the power of suggestion - as the majority flavor of Guinness and other stouts comes almost solely from the deep roasted malts used.
You're being silly - the flavor profiles of stout and porter (and many other beers, particularly dark one, for that matter) are derived almost exclusively from the malts used. Yeast can't make porter crisp and light, and even if it could it would then be a pale ale rather than a porter.
This "always-be-upgrading-the-latest-spec" is fine for hardcore users, but for everybody else, "good enough" happened quite a few hardware generations ago. The sad part is that we're only now having this conversation.
Except we aren't really having this conversation. As you said, the revolution is over and nobody noticed.
The TFA isn't about the 'good enough' revolution, it's just yet another in a long line of Linux fanboi porn spinning a fantasy tale of the Death Of Microsoft.
With defense appropriated funds accounting for a large chunk of the USA's annual budget, you'd think they could use something newer than 1970's era technology for long range com.
Believe it or not, but when the military spends billions of dollars on something - they do try and get the maximum return on the taxpayers dollars. With thousands of transmitting and receiving stations, all the procedures for communications, etc... etc... There has to be a damn good reason to completely upgrade - 'woah, shiny' simply isn't enough.
That being said, these (FLTSATCOM) birds are already in the process of being replaced and are essentially being used in an 'end-of-life' mode. They're their, their paid for, so they'll be used until the constellation degrades to a point where it is no longer useful. Tactical communications have already been shifted to the follow on (UFO) constellation, and day-to-day communications are in the process of being shifted over.
TFA (as is usual with journalists) over dramatizes the situation considerably.
just like hacker vs cracker, that battle was 'lost' many decades ago, probably before you were even born.
Probably before his great grandparents were born - the usage of the term 'pirate' (in reference to copyright violations) goes back to the early 1800's.
Why bank it in batteries when you can bank it a bank? I.E. sell the excess power during the day, with the cash thus received purchase whatever power is required at night.
You're not going to get "a lot of hard work and attention to detail" from the testers of your commercial product unless they're being paid. The fun of playing the game early is a form of payment, but if you're asking them to forgo that fun in order to only do the work part then you're insane.
I'm guessing you've never actually part of gaming beta. I all of the ones I've been in (about nine so far), finding people willing to work hard and pay attention to detail has been pretty easy.
It just goes to show you how little honesty and integrity people have when they treat "I want it, and I'll hold my breath until I turn blue if I don't get it" as an excuse to break the law.
Given the length of copyright term and the ever decreasing costs of storage, there are works, and will continue to be works that are within the term of copyright, but which have no (knows) extant owner. This is an issue.
Why is it an issue? The law guarantees protection for the owner of the rights - not access to the works by the public.
What you and this farcical 'settlement' want to do is to subvert the law so that rather protecting the rights holder you create a situation where the author has whatever rights $COMPANY lets them retain, regardless of the law. And that's a problem. A *big* problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be an endless dollar sucking black hole. Not only because there are 1x10^10 different ideas about what will 'best help the country, but also because research without concrete goals is an endless gravy train.
One of the reasons military research is so effective is because it almost always has a goal, sometimes somewhat fuzzy, sometimes hard and specific, but almost always a goal of some kind.
Yet somehow the agriculture industry makes billions (trillions?) a year on 'easily found natural ingredients' - everything from food to flowers. Then there are loggers, fisheries, leather, liquor and beer, pulp and paper, etc... etc... The opportunities to make a profit from natural materials, even with competition, are legion.
I'm starting to think the claim you make above (and many others make) should be filed alongside 'cars that run on water', and all the other silly claims that people make to invoke an Evil Big Business conspiracy.
Or, in other words, the questions on Jeopardy! are phrased in the form of an answer. Or, in other words, my phraseology was correct and you're just being pedantic.
So facts are modded -1 troll now? (Shakes head.) Slashdot, where anti government FUD is more important than facts.
It seems the guys who wrote Paranoid Linux are like most Slashdotters - they know shit about security and surveillance. It doesn't matter how much chaff they throw up, because traffic analysis will neatly sort the wheat from the chaff. (And the coolest part? Traffic analysis is easily automated. All the government agents need to do is check their email from time to time to see if the program has generated a result.)
Well, those who've studied history know two things: First, the Magna Carta was meant to protect the rights of the upper classes, not the common man. Second, Great Britain has bordered on being a police state for decades. People are just now getting around to noticing.
Good! Traditional mail is slower and has lower bandwidth than the 'net, and payphones (unless the UK is very different from the US) are becoming scarcer are cell phones become common. Even when there are payphones available, they're great for sending messages but suck badly for receiving them. Not to mention payphones are generally in public places, so someone repeatedly hanging about has an increased chance of being noticed by a witness.
So forcing them to use these services makes their communications slower, asynchronous, and raises the chance of them making a mistake. From the POV of law enforcement these are all Good Things.
Seriously, many Slashdotters don't seem to realize that many security measures aren't meant to catch bad guys - they aren't traps. They're meant to make the bad guys lives more difficult and to increase the chance they'll make (and hopefully repeat) a noticeable mistake.
Parsing the questions in natural language, which is the goal here, is however very much *not* trivial. Doubly so since the clues and questions in a Jeopardy! game are usually at least somewhat obfuscated, contain puns, double entendres, etc...
Had he mentioned sewing, you'd have a point. Even so 'sewn binding' describes a family of bindings (only some of which resemble his vague description, not a single specific binding.
No, I mean the problem with perfect binding, which is individual sheets glued into a cover. What you describe as 'real perfect binding' doesn't even appear to have a name.
Burst binding is more expensive than perfect binding because of the increased number of operations and handling required. Considerably more expensive.
Apples and oranges. The vanity press industry is fairly small, and could vanish overnight without notably altering the publishing landscape - they aren't the same people as your 'gatekeepers'. (Vanity presses have already been badly hurt by the rise of computers and places like Kinko's anyhow.)
Sure, but the problem is the machinery is very expensive (which means the books are expensive on a per copy basis), the quality of the print is mediocre, and the quality of the binding is at best mediocre. I.E. having the technology to produce a product is meaningless when the price and quality are so badly mismatched, and there isn't significant demand to start with.
No, it's due the quality/price mismatch discussed above and the fact that print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem. The vast majority of out of print books that are in demand are trivially locatable via ABE, Alibris, or Amazon. There's little to no demand by the consumer for print on demand, despite it being rolled out to great hype on a fairly regular basis over the last fifteen years. (Disclaimer: I owned a used and rare bookstore during this period, as well as working closely with new bookstores.)
Well, that's the problem with perfect binding. It doesn't handle thin books too well, and it doesn't handle thick books to well either. It's only advantage is that it's fast and cheap.
I love it when people without a fucking clue claim I haven't any legal knowledge.
The EFF has it wrong on two counts:
Well, you're a bit confused about the timeline. It only seemed to take eight years - but in reality it took over a decade to get all the pieces in place for the 1969 landing. Development of the F1 engine started in 1956, and development of the Apollo capsule in 1960.
Apollo also had virtually a blank check, which the current program does not.
That's what nearly forty years of NASA propaganda, journalistic hype, and urban legend would lead you to believe. But it's completely wrong. In reality, NASA managers explicit avoided new technology and risky development wherever possible. (Just one example: This is why the Apollo inertial platform had three gimbals, rather than four. The design was frozen in 1963 - before four gimbal systems were proved in flight by the Gemini program.) They took, wherever possible, existing pieces or technologies well along in development.
Almost certainly due to the power of suggestion - as the majority flavor of Guinness and other stouts comes almost solely from the deep roasted malts used.
You're being silly - the flavor profiles of stout and porter (and many other beers, particularly dark one, for that matter) are derived almost exclusively from the malts used. Yeast can't make porter crisp and light, and even if it could it would then be a pale ale rather than a porter.
Except we aren't really having this conversation. As you said, the revolution is over and nobody noticed.
The TFA isn't about the 'good enough' revolution, it's just yet another in a long line of Linux fanboi porn spinning a fantasy tale of the Death Of Microsoft.
Believe it or not, but when the military spends billions of dollars on something - they do try and get the maximum return on the taxpayers dollars. With thousands of transmitting and receiving stations, all the procedures for communications, etc... etc... There has to be a damn good reason to completely upgrade - 'woah, shiny' simply isn't enough.
That being said, these (FLTSATCOM) birds are already in the process of being replaced and are essentially being used in an 'end-of-life' mode. They're their, their paid for, so they'll be used until the constellation degrades to a point where it is no longer useful. Tactical communications have already been shifted to the follow on (UFO) constellation, and day-to-day communications are in the process of being shifted over.
TFA (as is usual with journalists) over dramatizes the situation considerably.
Probably before his great grandparents were born - the usage of the term 'pirate' (in reference to copyright violations) goes back to the early 1800's.
Um, this is Vatican City we're talking about.
Why bank it in batteries when you can bank it a bank? I.E. sell the excess power during the day, with the cash thus received purchase whatever power is required at night.
I'm guessing you've never actually part of gaming beta. I all of the ones I've been in (about nine so far), finding people willing to work hard and pay attention to detail has been pretty easy.
It just goes to show you how little honesty and integrity people have when they treat "I want it, and I'll hold my breath until I turn blue if I don't get it" as an excuse to break the law.
Why is it an issue? The law guarantees protection for the owner of the rights - not access to the works by the public.
What you and this farcical 'settlement' want to do is to subvert the law so that rather protecting the rights holder you create a situation where the author has whatever rights $COMPANY lets them retain, regardless of the law. And that's a problem. A *big* problem.