> For a pretty good wow factor, this site has an
> online calculator
Bah! I tried to calculate how fast a testicle would have to be going to wipe out the earth. At 4cm diameter, I found out the calculator only goes up to about 72km/s as a speed. Stupid artificial limitation by the programmer. A testical going at 99.999% the speed of light might be able to disrupt a star.
Ahh, cut the guy some slack. He's a professor trying to be cool, much like the nerdy, singing high school teachers played by Will Ferrel and Ana Gastronomyficator on SNL.
He does point out that blowing up a moon-sized asteroid with a few nukes is impossible, and that doing it within a few seconds of impact of Earth is pointless. We die. Death Star blows up, Endor dies. Mother ship in ID4 blows up, we die.
> I guess it's hard for some to realize there is
> actually a place called the real world where
> everything doesn't revolve around DECSS, the
> RIAA, and the MPAA.
...that doesn't reolve around DECSS, RIAA, MPAA, and PUNKTHEFTOFSTUFFTHATDOESN'TBELONGTOTHEM.
Home users won't have to worry -- Microsoft would never give another company an in via home use. Requiring home users to re-subscribe would invite competition for Office Suite products that weren't subscription, and they would win over MS and MS knows it. Win at home, and then win at work.
Therefore, we may conclude with mathematical certitude that Microsoft will not be applying this to home machines.
Since pictures are huge and even long text messages are short by comparison, you could encode it using the least significant BIT of each pixel and be even more unnoticeable, even in lossy jpeg (where you'd have to use the least significan preserved bit.)
Then again, all they really need to do is hide a few characters, perhaps a few dozen, in a multimegabyte song. You could, for example, delay or advance some notes by an unnoticeable fraction of a second to encode such data when compared to a pristine original.
Book makers have been using this for ages when doing their own printings of public domain works. They misspell a word here or there deliberately, then when someone copies their copyrighted version, they can prove the copier stole it from them rather than from a true public domain source because the copier has duplicated the deliberate errors.
> Yes, but as far as I know socialised health care
> does not mean that you can't buy health services
> if you want.
Ironically, in the Netherlands, the government gives a basic low level of care. You can buy better care on top of that. Although socialized medicine is bad, at least there you can still freely contract with other free medical providers if you desire and can afford it.
In Canada, and in what Billary Clinton tried to foist on us, purchasing additional care beyond what the government "permits" is outlawed.
In Canada, someone once tried to open a permium sports clinic to cater to rich professional sports players, and the government said no. Excuse me?
Under Billary's plan, if long lines and shortages formed (which they denied would happen) if you and a doctor wanted to, both of your own free will, contract for superior care without lines and shortages, that was to be illegal (which is VERY strange. That won't happen, but if it does, you go to jail if you don't want to suffer.)
Thank goodness that silliness was so outrageous that he crushed the effectiveness of his presidency before the first two years were up.
If I understand correctly, in England you have the government plan, but can opt out if you are rich (worth 5 million pounds or something.) I don't know if you can simply purchase additional coverage beyond the government-supplied stuff if you aren't rich.
Regardless of all that, it is immoral to force someone to only have available what the government provides (which is to say, what some people want to provide.)
> Their only real advantage is that most European
> countries have law upon law forbidding long
> hours, and most like those in France weren't
> done to benefit the employees, but to benefit
> the government by reducing unemployment.
Yes, this is the bass-ackwards static pie view of economics.
People working long hours increases productivity (however much the workers may not like the long hours.) Decreasing hours decreases productivity, and you get the resulting inefficient economy, with unemployment rates that actually increase.
It's easy to understand, but since it doesn't fit in with the politician-talking-to-idiots Level 1 problem solving method (grab the problem and attempt to force it into reverse through laws) it isn't followed. Predictable results follow.
Real gains in productivity, which mean real gains in quality of life, occur through advancing technology. Each person puts in the same hours as before, but they can accomplish more.
> In the self-portrait by the river, the water,
> unlike everything else in the picture, seems...
And in another picture, you can see a child moving. In others, skirts shift a bit, or people in the background oblivious to the photography are moving. You get separate images in each of the three colors.
They state the photos are taken on the same strip of film in "rapid succession". Hence the funny-looking water (and clouds and skirts) and ghosts of people in different colors.
I was impressed that the camel held still that long though. Some of the people posing weren't even that steady.
So was it RGB or CMY? CMY is additive for the projection, where RGB filters would be subtractive. Bah, let someone who want patents figure it out...
Is it patentable if the general, high-level idea is not immediately obvious, but once revealed, any number of solutions are immediately obvious?
The one-click buying thing is an example where the general idea was not obvious (buy with one click, no forms, no confirmation) but any number of programming methods to accomplish it are immediately obvious to any programmer once they hear the idea.
In this case, the utility of clipping avatars may not be immediately obvious (prior to hearing it) but once heard, any number of ways to do this are.
People thought about flying machines for a long time -- but you had to build a working one to get the patents.
People thought about light bulbs for a long time -- but you had to build a working one that lasted more than a few seconds to get the patent.
I think that's where a lot of stumbling is occuring in these current patents. The patent office people confuse the brilliance of a general idea with the obviousness of an implementation. Patents were to protect effort to develop working systems. If no effort is expended, why the patents?
Or are very simple concepts that have more than one step now patentable "systems"?
I mean, neural nets have been around for a long time (even neglecting the biology they're based on.) Yet if someone invented one that thought well enough to run around in a robot body, would it be patentable? Heck yes.
> To me EverQuest was never much more than a 3D chatroom.
Awww, you mean it wasn't fun playing a 10-foot tall, 4000-lb ogre with a giant sword pulled sideways out the ass of a dragon, chopping at an orc, whiffing most of the time, and when he did hit, hit as if he was using a wiffle bat? As if a wiffle bat swing by a baby?
> Someone should patent patents and then not give any more out.
Actually, if someone did that, they'd be a fool to NOT immediately give them out -- for a price -- and become the world's first trillionaire.
I could...not give them out, and silly patents would be stopped -- along with legitimate ones, and R&D would come to a grinding halt faster than a socialist could do it.
> If, however, someone came up with a novel way of
> achieving the door opening effect, that
> technology would be patentable.
Prior art in this case goes way back, waaaaaaaay back, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to the ancient Greeks.
They invented simple steam engines, and in one of the few non-toy applications, used them to open the doors of great temples.
Ahh, if someone had only put one on a cart, they'd have been on the moon 200 years before Jesus was born, and we'd all be in a super society today. In fact, it would be so advanced that people would probably not develop normally as childern, so children would probably be raised in a terrible virtual world so they would learn the meaning of pain, suffering, stupidity, and,
> So are all the car manufacturers pay Mr. Car
> for the use of his initial concept?
They actually just talked about this on TV.
Some guy actually had a patent on some simple kind of buckboard-with-a-motor. He had most auto makers signed up with him, but not Henry Ford.
Ford eventually showed his cars (and all cars by that point in time) were significantly advanced over what the patent described, so it didn't apply to them.
We're now at the point in the net/computer industry where people are saying, wait! I get the patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-HORN. No, wait! I get a patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-SPARE-TIRE-ONBOARD. No, wait! I get a patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-ROOF.
It's just silly.
Whatever happened to that claimed patent of rerendering 3D scenes rapidly such that an appearance of motion is achieved, aka a 3D game engine?
IANANG (I am not a net guru) but didn't Doom just run under IPX or whatever, and not TCP/IP, so it was "net", but not "internet"? You had to be lucky enough to have a workplace with networked computers. (Did it have serial for 2 machines?)
The first 3D game I remember that ran over the internet was Duke Nukem on T.E.N., and I think that just used a package to carry IPX over TCP/IP. Ehh, for serial, I used to play my boss and he used all the weapons, and I used Duke's Mighty Boot, and I would still smoke him.
Actually, the Quake chat is more advanced, technically, than most 3D worlds, believe it or not. Why? You can hide or show the chat window (tilde). A lot of these browser-based clodhopper constructions cannot.
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> For a pretty good wow factor, this site has an
> online calculator
Bah! I tried to calculate how fast a testicle would have to be going to wipe out the earth. At 4cm diameter, I found out the calculator only goes up to about 72km/s as a speed. Stupid artificial limitation by the programmer. A testical going at 99.999% the speed of light might be able to disrupt a star.
> the cast of Dawson's Creek.
Naahhhh, save Katie Holmes please. Never watch the show, but she's a little more than OK. 90120 cast, now there's something to send.
WTF, I have to wait 2 minutes between posts now? My clever ideas flow much faster than that. You guys think a bot can come up with this quality stuff?
Ahh, cut the guy some slack. He's a professor trying to be cool, much like the nerdy, singing high school teachers played by Will Ferrel and Ana Gastronomyficator on SNL.
He does point out that blowing up a moon-sized asteroid with a few nukes is impossible, and that doing it within a few seconds of impact of Earth is pointless. We die. Death Star blows up, Endor dies. Mother ship in ID4 blows up, we die.
> I guess it's hard for some to realize there is
> actually a place called the real world where
> everything doesn't revolve around DECSS, the
> RIAA, and the MPAA.
...that doesn't reolve around DECSS, RIAA, MPAA, and PUNKTHEFTOFSTUFFTHATDOESN'TBELONGTOTHEM.
Enterprise = corporate users
Home users won't have to worry -- Microsoft would never give another company an in via home use. Requiring home users to re-subscribe would invite competition for Office Suite products that weren't subscription, and they would win over MS and MS knows it. Win at home, and then win at work.
Therefore, we may conclude with mathematical certitude that Microsoft will not be applying this to home machines.
Since pictures are huge and even long text messages are short by comparison, you could encode it using the least significant BIT of each pixel and be even more unnoticeable, even in lossy jpeg (where you'd have to use the least significan preserved bit.)
Do current music or video encoders encode things like your machine name, "user name", etc.?
Do Microsoft compilers build into compiled programs similar information?
Then again, all they really need to do is hide a few characters, perhaps a few dozen, in a multimegabyte song. You could, for example, delay or advance some notes by an unnoticeable fraction of a second to encode such data when compared to a pristine original.
Book makers have been using this for ages when doing their own printings of public domain works. They misspell a word here or there deliberately, then when someone copies their copyrighted version, they can prove the copier stole it from them rather than from a true public domain source because the copier has duplicated the deliberate errors.
> I thought most hackers made their livings
> working for corporations.
During the day, yes. In the evenings, they turn into Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper PornSurfer and Wonder Online Gameplayer.
> Yes, but as far as I know socialised health care
> does not mean that you can't buy health services
> if you want.
Ironically, in the Netherlands, the government gives a basic low level of care. You can buy better care on top of that. Although socialized medicine is bad, at least there you can still freely contract with other free medical providers if you desire and can afford it.
In Canada, and in what Billary Clinton tried to foist on us, purchasing additional care beyond what the government "permits" is outlawed.
In Canada, someone once tried to open a permium sports clinic to cater to rich professional sports players, and the government said no. Excuse me?
Under Billary's plan, if long lines and shortages formed (which they denied would happen) if you and a doctor wanted to, both of your own free will, contract for superior care without lines and shortages, that was to be illegal (which is VERY strange. That won't happen, but if it does, you go to jail if you don't want to suffer.)
Thank goodness that silliness was so outrageous that he crushed the effectiveness of his presidency before the first two years were up.
If I understand correctly, in England you have the government plan, but can opt out if you are rich (worth 5 million pounds or something.) I don't know if you can simply purchase additional coverage beyond the government-supplied stuff if you aren't rich.
Regardless of all that, it is immoral to force someone to only have available what the government provides (which is to say, what some people want to provide.)
> Their only real advantage is that most European
> countries have law upon law forbidding long
> hours, and most like those in France weren't
> done to benefit the employees, but to benefit
> the government by reducing unemployment.
Yes, this is the bass-ackwards static pie view of economics.
People working long hours increases productivity (however much the workers may not like the long hours.) Decreasing hours decreases productivity, and you get the resulting inefficient economy, with unemployment rates that actually increase.
It's easy to understand, but since it doesn't fit in with the politician-talking-to-idiots Level 1 problem solving method (grab the problem and attempt to force it into reverse through laws) it isn't followed. Predictable results follow.
Real gains in productivity, which mean real gains in quality of life, occur through advancing technology. Each person puts in the same hours as before, but they can accomplish more.
Actually, on top of each other would have worked just as well. You'd just have to turn it sideways to appreciate the 3D effect.
However, his side-by-side, err, on-top was for projection only. The three photos were taken through the same lense in rapid succession.
> In the self-portrait by the river, the water,
> unlike everything else in the picture, seems...
And in another picture, you can see a child moving. In others, skirts shift a bit, or people in the background oblivious to the photography are moving. You get separate images in each of the three colors.
They state the photos are taken on the same strip of film in "rapid succession". Hence the funny-looking water (and clouds and skirts) and ghosts of people in different colors.
I was impressed that the camel held still that long though. Some of the people posing weren't even that steady.
So was it RGB or CMY? CMY is additive for the projection, where RGB filters would be subtractive. Bah, let someone who want patents figure it out...
> digicromatography
That's just a fancy word that's slightly shorter than "scanneditinandplayedwithitinphotoshop".
I did like his 3-lense projection system though. Color photography and viewing before there was color film...
I wonder where his "special" photos of his wife went...
> Some .comer's were just in it for the investors
...I know many people that did just that.
> money?
> Kinda sad
...that I wasn't able to fully partake in this.
Is it patentable if the general, high-level idea is not immediately obvious, but once revealed, any number of solutions are immediately obvious?
The one-click buying thing is an example where the general idea was not obvious (buy with one click, no forms, no confirmation) but any number of programming methods to accomplish it are immediately obvious to any programmer once they hear the idea.
In this case, the utility of clipping avatars may not be immediately obvious (prior to hearing it) but once heard, any number of ways to do this are.
People thought about flying machines for a long time -- but you had to build a working one to get the patents.
People thought about light bulbs for a long time -- but you had to build a working one that lasted more than a few seconds to get the patent.
I think that's where a lot of stumbling is occuring in these current patents. The patent office people confuse the brilliance of a general idea with the obviousness of an implementation. Patents were to protect effort to develop working systems. If no effort is expended, why the patents?
Or are very simple concepts that have more than one step now patentable "systems"?
I mean, neural nets have been around for a long time (even neglecting the biology they're based on.) Yet if someone invented one that thought well enough to run around in a robot body, would it be patentable? Heck yes.
> To me EverQuest was never much more than a 3D chatroom.
Awww, you mean it wasn't fun playing a 10-foot tall, 4000-lb ogre with a giant sword pulled sideways out the ass of a dragon, chopping at an orc, whiffing most of the time, and when he did hit, hit as if he was using a wiffle bat? As if a wiffle bat swing by a baby?
How would a game like that NOT be fun?!?!?!?
> Someone should patent patents and then not give any more out.
Actually, if someone did that, they'd be a fool to NOT immediately give them out -- for a price -- and become the world's first trillionaire.
I could...not give them out, and silly patents would be stopped -- along with legitimate ones, and R&D would come to a grinding halt faster than a socialist could do it.
Or I could have hundreds of billions of dollars.
Hmmmmmmm....you make the call...
A synchronization between video games over a network. From 1998?!?!?!?
That doesn't differ from computers with controllers (mouse, kbd, joystick) that were already playing linked games for years.
> If, however, someone came up with a novel way of
> achieving the door opening effect, that
> technology would be patentable.
Prior art in this case goes way back, waaaaaaaay back, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to the ancient Greeks.
They invented simple steam engines, and in one of the few non-toy applications, used them to open the doors of great temples.
Ahh, if someone had only put one on a cart, they'd have been on the moon 200 years before Jesus was born, and we'd all be in a super society today. In fact, it would be so advanced that people would probably not develop normally as childern, so children would probably be raised in a terrible virtual world so they would learn the meaning of pain, suffering, stupidity, and,
ummm
nevermind. Go back about your business.
> So are all the car manufacturers pay Mr. Car
> for the use of his initial concept?
They actually just talked about this on TV.
Some guy actually had a patent on some simple kind of buckboard-with-a-motor. He had most auto makers signed up with him, but not Henry Ford.
Ford eventually showed his cars (and all cars by that point in time) were significantly advanced over what the patent described, so it didn't apply to them.
We're now at the point in the net/computer industry where people are saying, wait! I get the patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-HORN. No, wait! I get a patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-SPARE-TIRE-ONBOARD. No, wait! I get a patent on a buckboard-with-motor-AND-ROOF.
It's just silly.
Whatever happened to that claimed patent of rerendering 3D scenes rapidly such that an appearance of motion is achieved, aka a 3D game engine?
IANANG (I am not a net guru) but didn't Doom just run under IPX or whatever, and not TCP/IP, so it was "net", but not "internet"? You had to be lucky enough to have a workplace with networked computers. (Did it have serial for 2 machines?)
The first 3D game I remember that ran over the internet was Duke Nukem on T.E.N., and I think that just used a package to carry IPX over TCP/IP. Ehh, for serial, I used to play my boss and he used all the weapons, and I used Duke's Mighty Boot, and I would still smoke him.
Actually, the Quake chat is more advanced, technically, than most 3D worlds, believe it or not. Why? You can hide or show the chat window (tilde). A lot of these browser-based clodhopper constructions cannot.
Ehh, Asheron's Call had a much better solution: randomly yank your virtual ass a hundred yards outta town.
Client-side clipping seems almost useless to me. You've still got the server sending position updates for all those hundreds of avatars.