Typewriters make many copies
- The paper copies
- all the drafts you have to redo.
- the ribbon, especially film ribbons which often make a nearly perfect unencrypted ticker tape copy
- the carbon paper between sheets
- the impression on the platten
- The unique accoustic signature of each key
- the electrical signature on an electrical typewriter which is radiated through the air and power line.
In addtion, sensors can easily be put in the typewriter and some typewriters have electronics that can be tapped into. Documents are stored in the filing cabinet unencypted and any copy logging has to be done manually. The typewriter doesn't log when someone accesses a document or types up a copy. It dowsn't lock automatically when you walk away from your desk. To make up for the lost efficiency, entire armies of near minimum wage typists and filing clerks (two legged security holes) will be needed.
Considering that the blog post which complains about the awful spec gives as its primary argument that (unambiguous) copy and pasted C code was used instead of (ambiguous) English, that argument doesn't carry much weight. You can mechanically compare any alternative implementation with the results of the C code and see if it complies. Ppsuedo-code (or real code) is a valid form of specification.
What the code as spec doesn't allow you to do is come up with an alternative implementation that does not produce the exact same results but produces results which are good enough (but possibly much more efficiently). But that would alter the contents of your reference frames vs the reference frames generated internally by the encoder and since the same algorithms can get repeatedly applied to the same pixels, a difference that might be perceptually insignificant the first time could possibly mushroom into a serious error.
JVC didn't invent the VCR. VHS didn't even come along until 5 years after the first home videocassette recorder with TV tuner and timer, and reel to reel units without tuner/timer existed before that.
First there was audio reel to reel tapes. Those were more or less replaced with audio cassettes.
There were various generations of video tape recorders.
First video tape recorder, 1956, Ampex, commercially produced in 1961, with 2" video tape, transverse scan 1964 Phillips 1" reel to reel video tap recorder domestic/professional 1965 Ampex 1" reel to reel video tape recorders were released, 1" helical scan. domestic/professional 1967 Sony 1/2" reel to reel video tape recorders 1968 Phillips 1/2" reel to reel mass produced domestic Then (1971) there was sony u-matic which used a 3/4" tape, helical scan, and a cassette. mostly pro use. 1971 Phillips N1500 with 3/4" tape cassettes, first TV tuner and timer Then (1975) there was sony betamax. 1/2" tape cassette, 1 hour/tape initially. 1 loading pole. Then (1976) there was VHS. 2 hour/tape cassete initially, trading quality for recording length. 2 loading poles. Note that they had been working on videocassettes for 6 years. Then (1979) Phillips introduced V2000 which they had been developing for 15? years. 4 hours per side. Then (1980) RCA introduces a play only format
Matsushita/Quasar/Panasonic, which was developing a competing format (working on video tape for 15 years), dropped it in favor of VHS. Matsushita was part owner of JVC, Quasar, and Panasonic. Telefunken, Thompson, Thorn, GE, and RCA licensed VHS. Sony and Phillips eventually did as well. JVC profits increased tenfold by 1982 and the video division went from 6% of company sales to 69%.
The very success of VHS was dependent on JVC encouraging companies to compete with it and on cutting margins to the bone. JVC wasn't big enough to supply the demand alone.
Not that there was actually that much original technology that was new to VHS.
- The two loading pole mechanism
- DL-FM system
- PS Color process. Basically, a not-so-innovative tape load mechanism and analog video compression.
The video-cassette would have happened without JVC. There were 4 companies working on it. And I suspect JVC could have paid off their R&D costs without collecting a dollar of royalties from other companies. JVC's strategy was to have a piece of a bigger pie.
Note that many of the other formats were superior for recording original material. VHS was good enough for home consumer use with over the air or commercial tapes.
I seriously doubt they spent a billion on VHS R&D. But they apparently made billions off of VHS.
No, copyright doesn't stop at the particular format in which it is presented in the handbook. Mechanically derived works are not exempt from the original restrictions. Copyright is limited to the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself but there is more to the particular expression than the formatting or even the words. If you translate a book into a foreign language, the original expression of the idea and copyright remains even though you have changed all the words and some of the sentence structure.
Individual formulas might be exempt from copyright, as "facts" or as fair use, not to mention they weren't really created by Abramowitz and Stegun or NIST. But a sequence of formulas in a mathematic proof might not be exempt. theories and hypotheses may be considered "ideas" not "facts". Exemption may not apply for a collection of facts - i.e. which facts are included vs which are not, if the criteria are non-obvious. A list of all listed phone numbers in the state of Virginia, is a collection of facts with an obvious boundary between what is included and what is not, but some subsets may not be exempt.
Suppose you were to create a set of flash cards from DLMF with all the formulas on one side and the names on the other. Suppose you sell them. Is this even covered by the copyright? You still maintain their selection of which facts are included and which are not. You still have their selection of which variable names are used for placeholders, which are not inherent to the facts expressed in the formula. Are you allowed to do so under the Educational/Academic clause of the license or prohibited under the no-comercial use clause? What if your customers are private users vs public schools (which are allowed to use the material under the commercial clause). What if some of the formulas are in error and therefore not facts? I knew a jerk who deliberately included transcription errors (when transcribing a public domain autobiography) in an attempt to assert copyright. Well, it apprears that errors can be used to trace the origins and have lead to lawsuits but errors in fact are no more copyrightable than facts. What if instead of selling them, your intent is to give them away online for anyone to use in any way the please, including printing them and selling them? If it is that confusing in such a deliberately trivial example, what about something more complicated like a symbolic math program or the documentation for said program?
Suppose you were to copy from DLMF into wikipedia on a scale beyond fair use. That uses the nightmarish GNU Free Documentation License, which does not allow you to incorporate the restrictions imposed by the original license. Viral licenses (copyleft) are particularly nasty as they dictate the terms of other works. They not only put onerous restrictions on the terms under which you can distribute your work if their material is incorporated, they can be incompatible with the terms of other third party materials. So, even if you are allowed to incorporate viral licensed work A and non-viral licensed work B with your own materials C to produce derivative work D in your intended application and license, the inclusion of A can prevent the inclusion of B.
Should all the government's classified information be made public domain immediately because it was created with public money?
Protection of classified materials is done through a mechanism separate from copyright, with much higher penalties. Likewise, private information is protected by privacy laws. But what is published by the federal government for the consumption of he general public is supposed to be public domain.
Should members of the public be able to reproduce without attribution my scientific papers because the research was supported by tax dollars? I hope not. (This is what "public domain" means: far more than free access.)
You appear to work for a contractor. Your work was supported by tax dollars but not performed by employees of the federal government. The copyright status depends on the contract terms. There is also a specific exemption for scientific papers written by contractors. But there are some serious erosions of the publics rights with more and more work being contracted out (due among other things to a foolish cap on the number of government employees). In some cases, contractors double dip and charge the government the entire price of producing a work, then turn around and charge the public to use the intellectual property that has already been paid for. For example, maintenance of the DOD public domain MIL-HDBK-5J was turned over to the FAA and multiple agencies pay the cost of maintaining it and was renamed MMPDS-01. The FAA contracted the work out to Batelle, who asserts copyright on it, restricts its use, and charges the public for it. As far as I know, batelle is not even footing a portion of the cost. I have been in the situation of having a government agency trying to hire me through a contractor and the contractor was trying to claim ownership of the work I would be doing entirely funded by the government.
Be aware that frequently authors, illustrators, and photographers do not receive credit, even in the original work, when that is done for an employer. For example, most product manuals.
I tend to look favorably on attribution-only licenses and would not have much trouble with such a license on government works, but even attribution can become a burden when you are compiling from many sources or using the work in an area where there isn't an ability to display the attribution. Where is the attribution, for example, on pieces of code contained in your car's cruise control? You could technically put it in the car's owner's manual, but in practice this is never done. In practice, government agencies in some cases ask, but do not require, that you provide attribution.
The online version of the handbook is free and provided in a convenient form. What would we gain if it were placed in the "public domain"?
Free-for-use-in-its-original-form-only-for-limited-purposes isn't free. It is only free of charge for certain limited uses. In no way is this an acceptable substitute for public domain. You can't, for example, use it in commercial software and you can't use it in permissively licensed or copylefted software because those do allow commercial use.
You keep using words that I don't think you quite grasp the true meaning of.
Oh, I understand the contextually appropriate meanings of the words. You failed to identify the words you thought were misused or what your (mis)understanding of their true meaning is.
"Digital Library". Their choice of words, not mine. This could refer to a library of books, movies, sound recordings, documents, etc. stored in a digital format. Not here. Calling a updated version of a single book a library is quite a stretch. And we were not promised a digital library of books or documents about mathematics, we were promised a "Digital Library OF Mathematical Functions". The objects in the library, therefore, are mathematical functions, not documents. Consider libraries of software functions, schematic symbols, printed circuit board symbols, other CAD libraries (such as for mechanical parts), VHDL/verilog libraries, standard cell libraries, spectral libraries, etc. These tend to have sufficient semantic information that you can automatically search, extract the appropriate objects, link the objects together, evaluate, execute, transform, analyze, synthesize, compare, display, validate, etc. A digital library in the technical sense, not the lay usage, is a collection of objects in a form that can be processed using the specialized tools appropriate to the trade, not merely cut and pasted. Sure, you can do a little processing on MathML but as the math and the processing become non-trivial, it is likely to break down due to the lack of high level abstract information.
"semantics"/"presentational": The OpenMath creators, who have significant overlap with the MathML creators (I.E. many worked on both projects), use the same two words to describe the difference: "MathML deals principally with the presentation of mathematical objects, while OpenMath is solely concerned with their semantic meaning or content. " You can mix MathML and OpenMath.
And special fail for bringing up OpenMATH.
It was relevant. Even many of the folks who worked on MathML also saw the need for OpenMath and worked on that project as well.
The continuous wearing/implanting of RFID tags has extreme privacy issues and enormous ability for abuse. But most of us are already tagged and trackable, and many don't realize it (see below).
To be fair, I did suggest something similar back during Hurricane Katrina, though with some level of privacy controls. Boat comes up and rescues you, dead or alive. You are given a numbered wristband with RFID/barcode. You are given a chance to enter, or not enter, identifying information and select which info is searchable and which is viewable. GPS based point of rescue information is recorded. The boat relays that information up to the next helicopter that flys over via a ad-hoc store and forward WiFi network or any other stationary or mobile access point in range. When you reach a shelter, hospital, etc. you are scanned in. When you leave to go on a bus/train, you are scanned out of the shelter and onto the bus/train. You are basically tracked like a package for as long as you want to be and friends and family inside or outside the disaster zone with the right information to search by can find out where you are. Rescue/shelter/hospital personnel can spend more time helping people and less time trying to locate missing persons. Less load on cell phone networks. If you have a stalker or outstanding warrants, you don't give any identifying info. Still lots of subtle issues with privacy and technical implementation.
Today, you might just do a mobile update of your facebook status; facebook being a whole different set of privacy issues, and use direction finders on cell phones.
And we are already tagged and trackable via our cell phones (hackers can access GSM network location and ID info). And many of the RFID attacks can be applied to any active cell phone, only worse. SIM number, bluetooth/WiFi/WiMaX MAC addresses. A cell phone is an RFID chip from hell with a long range and even a preexisting network which can be exploited to further extend the range to the entire world. At least you can yank the battery when you really need to disappear.
Thermostats: One is a marginally valid, but still pretty trivial, claim of a specific application within a technology to a specific problem. The other is an attempt to patent the application of an entire field (embedded computing) to a specific application area (thermostats). It is equivalent to patenting the very idea of using ANY mechanical system to control temperature or ANY application of the physical properties of materials to control temperature.
Any idiot knows that it is possible to make money selling a touch screen phone. That doesn't mean that anyone who tries will succeed. User interface patents are ridiculous. Image what would happen if we pattented the use of a steering wheel, brake, and accelerator pedal for controlling an automobile. We would have ended up with gratuitous incompatibilities in user interfaces for cars, with massive amounts of trouble as a result.
Second, they call it a "digital library" but it isn't. It is more or less a book in html by chapters. They used MathML instead of OpenMATH. MathML is too presentational and not sufficiently semantic. You should be able to configure OpenMATH or MathML or PNG produced from the OpenMath and you should be able to download OpenMath content dictionaries.
It is still useful as a free-for-viewing-only ebook, but that is only a tiny fraction of what it should have been. Tax payers got gyped. We paid perhaps 90% of the cost for 20% of the result, and the copyright even interferes with someone else finishing the job.
And in the end, all this inconvenience to cell phone, PDA, media player, netbook, and laptop users (not to mention American's with Disability Act violation - some people need cameras) will be about as successful as drug interdiction at the border.
Joe consumer can buy a camera (still and video with audio) disguised as, for example, a working ball point pen (doubles as a 4GB USB flash drive) for $35.17, delivered (lower end model under $20). Another is rather poorly disguised as an ID badge (required in many places where cameras are banned); poor implementation but you can see where that is headed. Another is disguised as a wrist watch. Another as a necktie. Another small model. Miniaturization has made camera interdiction at the border all but impossible. Unless you are going to strip search and body cavity search everyone, provide them with substitute clothing, and prevent them from taking anything inside, cameras will get in.
Ironically, before all this stuff was available to the consumer for the price of dinner, there were government facilities that had these kinds of no camera security precautions while on the inside engineers were developing spy cameras that were small enough to circumvent the exact same security provisions at the other country's facilities.
Miniature equipment has been available for over a hundred years if you had the cash. And if the stakes were high enough to justify banning cameras, the camera cost was minor compared to what the pictures were worth.
The only difference with your portable electronics gear is plausible deniablity if you get caught before you snap the pictures.
This will cause your laptop to ping your desktop machine once every 5 minutes with a particular data pattern. If your laptop is stolen, fire up wireshark/ethereal on your desktop and watch for ping packets with your particular data pattern in it. Then traceroute back to the ip address revealed there. And maybe remote login using ssh and run some programs like tcpdump or a sniffer to capture login information if the thief logs into any websites.
This requires that you have a fixed machine with a static IP address or set up to register with a dynamic DNS services somewhere at home, at work, or at a friends house. This only uses one packet in each direction. And it doesn't fill up your process table with multiple copies of wget if your machine is offline. The cron version is less likely to be noticed since it usually won't show up in "ps" output. And this method doesn't clutter up your web logs.
Of course, all of these systems assume the thief will succeed in getting the machine online. You may help by setting the machine up in a way that it will automatically connect when an ethernet cable is plugged in or it comes in range of an open wireless access point.
Another variation is to simply set up your laptop to register with a dynamic DNS service. Then you can just use "dig" to look it up. Or log into the dynamic DNS website to check the timestamp when it was last updated, which an ISP will need to trace a dynamic connection to a particular account.
Many things that we may think are diseases may simply be adaptation for different conditions. And science tells us that conditions can and will change. And in a lot of cases where people may appear maladapted to our current society it is actually the society that is maladapted to them.
I had a girlfriend with cerebral palsy. One of the treatments for CP is injections of botulinum toxin, one of the most deadly toxins known. What happens if the next global pandemic produces Botulinum Toxin, or something similar? You might end up with a world where people with CP are able to function better than before (or at least survive) and the rest of us are dead.
She was singled out for the highest award her department gives to undergrads and is now close to finishing her PhD. Ever noticed that those who contribute most to society usually have some serious "flaw" that would be likely to selected against in a eugenics program? How many people on/. have aspergers or dyslexia, for example? The accomplishments of ordinary people tend to be just that, ordinary.
There is a deleted scene on the Gattaca DVD gives a short list of people who would never have been born if we discriminated against those with medical conditions, including Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln, and Ray Charles.
How many people have handicaps that are really just a different set of capabilities that include considerable strengths in other areas? How many people develop strengths they might otherwise not have to compensate for a handicap?
My comment "Men are driven by sex, so once denied the man will leap hurdles to get it back again" did not say women will or should deny you sex if you don't leave the toilet seat down.
Did not assume that it did.
Sorry, I have a habit of letting my words speak for me without factoring in that sometimes certain keywords trigger irrational responses.
Nothing even slightly irrational in my response. I was responding to the thread in general, though it all applies to the behaviors described in your post (whether or not they are your behaviors or you advocate such behavior).
your memory of being "once denied" will drive many decisions throughout your life
I agree, for people in general.
Women also respond to the threat of being denied. For example, they may give a blow job in the car on the first date for fear of being denied snuggling, companionship, etc.
Malicious denials, however, lead to a lot of problems including misogeny and misandry.
Power in a relationship stems largely from what options each partner has outside the relationship and from what each brings to
the table in the relationship. When women were not allowed to work, for example, this created an imbalance (lack of outside
options). If either partner fails to sexually satisfy the other, this creates a power imbalance. Abusing power, however, can
negate that power. Alienation of affection is grounds for terminating a relationship.
In sex, I concentrate on satisfying my partner rather than in getting my own rocks off. I bring something to the table. And my
partners tend to respond by trying to satisfy me without my having to ask. Their turn to bring something to the table.
My own personal experience has been the opposite. No woman has ever punitively denied me sex in the context of an existing sexual relationship. They stand to lose more than I. Women in general tend to have more powerful sexual responses than men but often a higher threshold to trigger those responses. Unfortunately, the Locker Room Academy of Male Sexual Technique is not an accredited institution of higher learning. Even women who appear to have significant sexual dysfunction can be orgasm machines. I can also go without sex longer. And I can also satisfy myself which is not the case for some of my lovers. I have the power but I do not use it punitively. I say this not to brag but to point out to men that if you are having this kind of problem you should consider whether exercising more due diligence in the bedroom (including learning more) would help.
I did have a girlfriend who refused to let me hug her during a heated argument. I called an immediate time out and explained that not only was she cutting off an important channel of communication but that it was perceived as emotional violence. Solved that problem.
Some things I never do during a fight:
- refuse to receive basic physical affection (hugs, snuggling, sleeping together)
- refuse to give basic level of physical affection
- withhold sex in order to hurt, manipulate, or punish
I might conceivably delay it, explicitly, until I was not distracted from doing it properly.
- say anything for the purpose of hurting her.
Hurt may be an unavoidable side effect of something that is said but it is never the reason something is said. Those would tend to be emotional violence.
Ah, but does (normally) leaving the seat down really lower the probability of sitting in the bowl? Men are accustomed to the seat being in different positions and very rarely make that mistake (maybe once every 20 years). However, if a woman is accustomed to the seat being always down, then there is a high probability that on those ocassions (guests, trembling-hand, men using the ladies room, ladies room being cleaned, etc) when there is an exception to the rule of the seat being down that they will sit in the bowl. So leaving the seat up may actually reduce the occurance. If sitting in the bowl happens in a public rest room, it is also significantly more traumatic than when it occurs at home (where you likely know the health of the people using it). So much for the study's assertion that leaving the seat down is trembling hand perfect. There are two different probabilities that she will sit in the bowl depending on whether she has been properly potty trained by having the seat left up regularly. If the ratio of those probabilities exceeds the probability of an error in seat position, then leaving the seat down is not trembling hand perfect. If you want to assert that leaving the seat down is trembling-hand perfect, you need to study in much more detail and ultimately it will depend on the specific people involved.
The study neglected to consider a lot of things. Sitting on the rim or bowl accidently, males who flunked potty training (urinating on seats), and "Waaaaaa! you don't love me!".
My rules:
- when sharing a living space with women, always leave the seat down. Unless you have discussed all the ramifications.
This is in contradiction to the explanation above and has to do with women's perceptions.
- when using a public mens room, always leave the seat up, even if you have to lift it to do so, particularly where lower class
males, drunks, or both may be present. Otherwise, the seat may be covered in urine next time you use it.
- when using a public women's room (potty parity reverses after midnight at many bars, for example), always leave the seat down and
clean unless you know the next person using it will be male.
The secret of happy relationships where at least one of the parties is female: it is better to annoy women deliberately than through neglect. Most women need frequent reminders that you care about them. If you leave the seat up, women tend to see this as a sign you don't care enough about them to lower the seat - annoyance through neglect. When you deliberately annoy them (within reason), however, they see this as a sign of affection. They may say "Hey, cut that out!" but really they are flattered as you can tell from their tone of voice. It is like when you are reading and your cat comes and lays down on top of the book; annoying, but in a good way. Besides, women will find something to be annoyed about anyway (and will much more actively look for something if you are not deliberately annoying them) - best to make the annoyances positive ones. Also, deliberate annoyances add an element of unpredictibility and playfullness that helps keep the relationship from becoming bland. So, by all means, surprise her with a pinched nipple or a swat on the ass when she isn't expecting it (and even when she is), just don't overdo it. If you don't, things like the position of the toilet seat become elevated to a litmus test.
Manufacturers produced SD cards that were more or less upwards compatible with MMC (there are some slight differences in initialization) some older devices need a firmware upgrade) in 1 bit SPI mode. SD also allowed the option of thicker cards so cards don't necessarily fit in older MMC slots. But it is possible to support add SD card support, without licensing fees, to a device by basically treating it as an MMC SPI device and using the newer sockets but speed is reduced (though fine for cameras, MP3 players, etc). And SD slots normally supported MMC cards.
SD added high speed 4 bit wide modes and DRM to MMC and dropped the ability to daisychain multiple card slots. MMC later added high speed modes of its own and its own DRM. SD added a lock switch. However, it is a gimmick since it is mechanical not electrical. It works like the tab on a floppy but unlike floppies where all drives implemented it some SD devices ignore it and even those that honor it probably do so in software so it can be overridden.
MMC does not have licensing fees for the basic standard but you have to pay for the spec (but basic info is available without the spec). $500 for the old spec, $1000 for the new. Card manufacturers need to join for $2,500 a year.
The curious part about the new miCard is that now instead of needing a USB adapter to plug it in to a PC you need an SD adapter (comes with?) to plug it into standard MMC/SD card slots and it appears that it will not fit into mini/micro SD slots.
XD and memory stick have no valid reason for existing. They had no real advantages and exist for proprietary reasons. And they had considerable disadvantages in comparision. The corporations behind them didn't want to pay licensing to SD card but created new "standards" where others would have to pay licensing fees to them. So they had no advantage to any other company and just drove up the cost of general purpose card readers which now had to add more sockets and pay more licensing fees.
1 bit SPI mode is included in both the MMC and SD card specs, with some slight differences.
One possible implementation of the miCard would be USB for high speed PC transfers and 1 bit SPI MMC mode for device transfers that would be compatible with most MMC or SD slots. Since you have USB, you can discard the expensive (licensing) SD fast transfers. MMC and USB have no licensing fees for readers. In addition, it probably supports the higher speed MMC modes (no licensing, but $1000 for the spec). While some slots might not support the high speed MMC modes, they are likely to support the slower 1 bit SPI mode which is fast enough for most portable devices (indeed it is the only mode used by many devices). Maybe the new standard eliminates the need for card manufacturers to join the MMCA as well (which might be the case if they only used 1 bit SPI mode since MMCA IP would be reduced to just the command sequences), although the card manufacturers are probably members anyway.
"distill it to 100%, which uses a ridiculous amount of energy (10 times more to get it from 95-100 than from 20-95)."
Thats why it is pure folly in the long run to distill it to 100%. 100% is only used so you can blend it with gasoline so you can use it in unmodified gasoline vehicles. But it only costs something like $200 to modify a car to run on 85% ethanol/15% water. And that is much cheaper (and more environmentally sound) than spending many thousands to convert a car to fuel cell or replace the vehicle with a fuel cell vehicle. And the energy that goes into distilling to 85% can easily be supplied by solar (solar stills have been around for decades and are very simple). In the near term, it makes much more sense for 30% of the fleet to run on straight ethanol than for 100% to run on 30% ethanol/70% gasoline. That does require some widespread, but simple (no worse than the transition from leaded to unleaded gasoline or adding biodiesel), infrastructure changes. The market itself will tend not to make the transition by itself (gas stations wait for cars to switch, cars wait for gas stations), though, so it needs a kick in the ass to get the ball rolling. The government could pay outright for every gas station to install pumps and storage tanks for ethanol and biodiesel for far less than we have spent killing people in Iraq. 126,000 gas stations with two tanks at $10,000 each (guess) is 2.5 billion (a little more than the cost of one cruise missile). One third of gas trucks get washed out and converted to ethanol. Pipelines are a little trickier but ethanol can be produced closer to the point of use. Solar still and vehicle conversion technology is around 30 years old. There are around 200 million cars and other vehicles in the US. Converting 30 of them would cost around $12 billion, less if you just convert the ones that are using the most fuel. It is just an inefficient market (lack of critical mass) and artificiaally low gasoline prices (with military subsidies) that has prevented us doing this. We would need to put an awful lot of land into fuel production, possibly around 10% of US land area.
While the research under discussion holds some long term promise, it probably has a long way to go before it is practical. Eventually, the higher conversion efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell might be a significant benefit which is needed for a 100% reduction in petroleum fuels. But if you are going to compare it to ethanol, compare it to ethanol done right. We can spend the next decade or two sitting on our asses waiting for hydrogen technology to be viable or we can cut our gasoline consumption, greenhouse emissions, and dependency on foreign oil 30% while letting the cars currently on the road serve out their useful lifetimes over the span of a few growing seasons. And we could have done this 30 years ago. Or more. 30 years ago there was renewed interest due to a fuel crisis but ethanol and biodiesel have been around longer than gasoline.
While I am all for technological improvements, the real problem has always been political.
Nomination seems like a silly idea. Just look at the web logs and sort the pages by frequency of access (combine all languages). Then stuff them on various size media (CD, DVD, various sized SD cards for PDAs, etc) in that order till you run out of room. Much less work and more likely to satisfy the bulk of users needs. Internal and external (google) links might also be considered but for the most part frequency of access will account for that.
Selecting based on article quality is kinda silly. If an article is popular, it will probably be improved to a reasonable quality. In the time it takes to nominate and review articles, the articles will probably be brought up to snuff anyway. Release early and often.
The exception is if you are targeting a significantly different demographic. For other countries, you may want to start with the native language versions. For repressive regimes, you might want to emphasize politics, sexual practices, history, and other stuff that is censored. For developing countries, emphasise how to information, medical information, appropriate technology, etc. And you can do a lot of this automatically by filtering web logs by country of origin, traffic coming through anonymizer services, and cross links from sites categorized by the open directory project. People without internet access might have lower average intelligence and education but if they are interested in an encyclopedia they are trying to better themselves so it should not be dumbed down so what might be the biggest difference between online and offline audiences is of no relevance.
Articles on celebrities, which should be easy enough to identify automatically, might get downgraded a bit compared to their popularity because this is one category where popularity and importance might diverge. But it might be a mistake to lower them too much. People without net access reading the newspaper might want to know who the hell is Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith, if only to realize they aren't important. In general people still living might be downgraded slightly (persondata template). Articles on celbrities might be truncated to the first paragraph rather than eliminated entirely. Politicians, though usually of little value to the human race often pose significant threats to the common good and are often mentioned in newspapers and so should be included.
Articles which have a short term peak popularity vs a long term popularity might be downgraded (basically use web logs for a full year). Most important articles have been around for a while so the penalty this will impose on new articles will mostly be justified.
Anywhere the automatic process encounters problems is a good candidate for better semantic markup. For example, the Anna Nicole Smith article contains the word Celebrity but is not in a celebrity category (though categories such as Playboy Playmates are an indication, they should be recategorized to Person:: Celebrities:: Playboy Playmates). And before you dismiss Anna Nicole Smith too much, it might be worth noting that her article has been translated into something like 32 languages. John Kerry 31. Einstein about 94. USB about 40. Mango 33. Angelina Jolie about 40. Gandhi around 77? Plate tectonics 31 . Evolution 44. Aluminum 68. France about 143. Xylene 16. Acetone 32. Jerry Falwell 3. Cunnilingous 11. Monroe Doctrine 18.
Bayesian filters can be used.
Overall, though, with a few adjustments for frivolous information (celebrities, etc), web stats are probably a better indication of relevance than you are likely to get through a nomination process (the current nomination list is biased towards NBA stars at the moment).
Also worth considering is creating a download process that downloads individual articles based on selection criteria. Language, Global web stats, national or regional web stats, etc, Category weights, total size cutoff, number
That depends on your location. If you are close to the central office, DSL is an alternative to T1. But the range of DSL is limited to a couple miles (varies by type) with bandwidth dropping with distance. T1 can be run thousands of miles but at a substantial cost per mile. T1 requires expensive repeaters every 3/4 mile or so. Those repeaters are not located indoors so they have to be rated for industrial temperature range (or even military temperature grade in harsh locations). Now, that is based on traditional ways of doing things. Those repeaters need enclosures and electrical power. Theoretically, there is no reason you couldn't put repeaters on DSL lines but I think it was only in the past year or so that you could actually buy them and they are still probably rather expensive.
Normal DSL equipment, DSL modems and DSLAMs, are more of a mass market commodity item than T1 equipment. T1 equipment could be manufactured cheaply, probably cheaper than DSL, in quantity but manufacturers and telcos are probably reluctant to make a large investment in equipment that is likely to be on its way out. Telco's are used to amortizing equipment costs over 30 years or so. Investing in T1 equipment when you know that it probably will not be wanted for either voice or data traffic a few years down the line doesn't have much appeal. DSL equipment probably also won't be useful for 30 years, either, but it has more potential life than T1 equipment. Old DSL equipment may be relocated (when better options take over in the cities) to climate controlled enclosures in rural neighborhoods that are dense enough but still far from a central office. New T1 circuits are probably reusing T1 equipment freed up when old T1 circuits were upgraded so there isn't much of a market for mass produced T1 equipment or much of a surplus either; basically, T1 is probably a stagnant market.
T1 prices have traditionally been compared to the cost of 24 telephone lines. And people are just used to paying more for T1.
In most places near a central office you may be better off negotiating for DSL line with a T1 level Committed Information Rate (CIR) and service level guarantees than a T1; i.e. a business class DSL. T1 makes sense in locations that are too far from the central office, particularly if it is a location where there is already T1 infrastructure, such as along a major highway that already has T1 lines (and thus enclosures in which to put repeaters) or in isolated rural business districts that have existing T1 lines. T1 may also be appropriate if you want mixed voice and data traffic and your TELCO doesn't have a VoIP based infrastructure yet.
Ethernet is not designed for exterior long haul use. Ethernet based circuits are likely to be available in districts that have SONET rings or bare fiber, and in colocation facilities and unavailable elsewhere.
Contrary to the original post, T1 circuits probably are much cheaper than they used to be in most markets. You can get a T1 line for under $400/mo in many markets. Last time I used T1 was around ten years ago, it was $1400/mo for frame relay (i.e. less than full T1). Local loop alone was $400/mo. http://www.megapath.com/ offers 384K fractional T1 for $259 and full T1 for $359. Speakeasy $400/mo for full T1. Both include a free router (used to be $1500) and no setup costs. I probably had one of the first two DSL lines in my city, before the local telcos adopted T1. We installed a DSLAM at the office and purchased dry pairs from the telco and used MVL which had a distance of 2 miles (1 mile to the central office and 1 mile to our homes). My boss and I got the first lines. Cost around $14,000 in equipment but the monthly cost per line was only around $15, not including the upstream T1.
Just look at what Hershey and similar brands are already doing.
Replacing cocoa butter with vegetable oil.... Notice that they left of the word "hydrogenated" which would, of course, be necessary to produce a solid "chocolate". The hydrogenated oils are unhealthy compared even to saturated fats. And of course, the vegetable oils will be heaviliy refined, removing all the healthy nutrients found in vegetable oils in their natural state. "Vegetable Oil" sounds better than "Fully Hydrogenated refined hot-pressed vegetable oil".
My house mate brought home a bag that was labeled something like "Hershey's white chips". Yep, they couldn't legally call it white chocolate since there was no cocoa butter. They assume that consumers will assume it is chocolate because it says "Hershey's". What is the defining ingredient in white chocolate? Cocoa Butter. Likewise, "Nestle Toll House Premier white morsels". Basically, they are trying to sell hardened margarine chunks with sugar, whey, fake? vanilla flavor, and a few other ingredients as white chocolate. Such "white chocolate" products do not contain any part of the cocoa plant.
That was a very interesting post, though prone to exaggeration. Your attitude seems to be that if American's change a foreign dish, we get credit for it but if someone else changes an American dish, we still get credit.
Bananas did not originate from Hawaii, though bananas were probably introduced there between 500 and 700AD. According to wikipedia: "They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia."
One of my ancestors, an American by the name of Minor Cooper Keith, was responsible for the global banana trade (before it became exploitative), starting around 1873. Although a few banannas had been imported to the mainland US, and probably other areas like Europe as well, by sailors, they were something that you would only eat on a dare (imagine a banana after a multi-month sea voyage). He created an enormous infrastructure to bring these highly perishable fruits to the US from Central America, including the worlds first fleet of refrigerated steamships and dedicated ports to take the fruit quickly (under 60 hours) from harvest to hold. The railroad express shipment within the US had to be orchestrated and retailers had to be specially trained in how to handle and ripen the fruit. He discovered the bananas while building the first transcontinental railroad (before the panama canal) across Central America, along with his Uncle Henry Meiggs who built the first railroad in Chile. Meiggs died during the building of the transcontinental railroad along with around 4000 people (mostly American's from New Orleans) building the railroad through territory the natives were wisely afraid to visit. The workers from the US did not follow recommended safety precautions but workers who were imported from Barbados survived to complete the railroad. The fruit company they founded has been known over the years as United Fruit Company, United Brands Company, and Chiquita Brands International and has had a checkered history since Keith's death. Keith himself meddled in the politics of Costa Rica backing benevolent dictators during the country's transition to the first stable democracy (he married the daughter of the first president) in the region (other attempts to transition to democracy in the region, which was unaccustomed to citizen participation, were unsuccessful and bloody). He refinanced the debts of several Central American countries, built hospitals, schools, and railroads throughout the region, and paid workers enough to get ahead (double what other workers in the region were paid).
Given that bananas existed for well over a thousand years in many parts of the world before Keith introduced them to Europe/America, I suspect that there are many banana dishes that are not of American origin. Likewise, although the tomato originated in South America and was common in the US (but thought poisonous before Jefferson rehabilitated it here), the tomato's history in England dates to around 1590, around the 18th century in France, and around 1550 in Italy. By the mid 18th century, tomato consumption in Italy was widespread. So I am sure that the Italian's and others would take exception to the notion that anything with tomatoes not of hispanic origin is created here. http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabl etravelers/tomato.html
The American hot dog is a perversion of the german Wurst (pronounced Vurst) or Wiener, though the National Hot dog council, according to wikipedia, credits a butcher in Germany, not an American, with the invention of the Hot Dog (the bland miniature version).
The Hawaiians had a very healthy diet before western influence, now the Hawaiians are the highest per-capita consumers of Hormel products (or so I was told in Hawaii).
Part of the reason (heterosexual) men will go for the job that pays well or negotiate more strenuously may be that they have to or they are royally screwed in the dating game.
Men tend to be more mercenary in the workplace while women tend to be more mercenary in social spheres. Men are "provider objects". When a man and woman meet, there is a high probability that he will be judged on how much money he makes and a low probability that she will be judged on how much money she makes. Some men are even intimidated by a woman who makes more money than they do so a woman making a good salary might even be at a disadvantage. Men generally could care less if a woman owns a house. Men don't tend to care if a woman lives in a one room apartment. Men generally don't expect women to buy them drinks, dinner, or gifts of any value. And women are more likely to find a man to take care of them in a time of financial crisis than vice versa. If a man is forced to move in with his parents, he is toast; a woman in the same situation will be at a slight disadvantage, mostly due to concerns about parental meddling. Women are almost never asked by their partners parents how they will provide for the partner. If she can't afford a kid, she can choose to have an abortion; men can get saddled with child support payments and can actually be put in jail if they can't afford to pay them, even when unemployed (which hurts their possibilities for future employment). While there are many women who are not this mercenary, the dating game tends to be constructed in such a way as to reduce the positive effect for both the men and the women.
This mercenary dating can hurt women, too. Men who make more money often do so by screwing over other people and this can carry over into the relationship. The man who spends the fruit of other peoples labors on a woman is, ironically, perceived as generous compared to the man who makes considerable self sacrifice for the greater good. And the men who spend money on women tend to expect something in return.
The dating game tends to favor superficial qualities. Looks in women and money in men. If you are a woman who is not attractive or a man who doesn't have a lot of money, you are at a significant disadvantage. Some men (such as artists and musicians) can escape it because they have a chance to display their positive qualities before the financial triage occurs. If a woman is a lesbian, was born with bad genes in the looks department, or has lost her looks due to neglect and/or age, then she loses a lot of the advantages which is why a lot of the early feminists fell into those categories, leading to "ugly" or "lesbian" stereotypes. Men who are looking for traditionally female roles get screwed all around.
Slashdot Mirror
Typewriters make many copies
- The paper copies
- all the drafts you have to redo.
- the ribbon, especially film ribbons which often make a nearly perfect unencrypted ticker tape copy
- the carbon paper between sheets
- the impression on the platten
- The unique accoustic signature of each key
- the electrical signature on an electrical typewriter which is radiated through the air and power line.
In addtion, sensors can easily be put in the typewriter and some typewriters have electronics that can be tapped into. Documents are stored in the filing cabinet unencypted and any copy logging has to be done manually. The typewriter doesn't log when someone accesses a document or types up a copy. It dowsn't lock automatically when you walk away from your desk. To make up for the lost efficiency, entire armies of near minimum wage typists and filing clerks (two legged security holes) will be needed.
Considering that the blog post which complains about the awful spec gives as its primary argument that (unambiguous) copy and pasted C code was used instead of (ambiguous) English, that argument doesn't carry much weight. You can mechanically compare any alternative implementation with the results of the C code and see if it complies. Ppsuedo-code (or real code) is a valid form of specification.
What the code as spec doesn't allow you to do is come up with an alternative implementation that does not produce the exact same results but produces results which are good enough (but possibly much more efficiently). But that would alter the contents of your reference frames vs the reference frames generated internally by the encoder and since the same algorithms can get repeatedly applied to the same pixels, a difference that might be perceptually insignificant the first time could possibly mushroom into a serious error.
JVC didn't invent the VCR. VHS didn't even come along until 5 years after the first home videocassette recorder with TV tuner and timer, and reel to reel units without tuner/timer existed before that.
First there was audio reel to reel tapes. Those were more or less replaced with audio cassettes.
There were various generations of video tape recorders.
First video tape recorder, 1956, Ampex, commercially produced in 1961, with 2" video tape, transverse scan
1964 Phillips 1" reel to reel video tap recorder domestic/professional
1965 Ampex 1" reel to reel video tape recorders were released, 1" helical scan. domestic/professional
1967 Sony 1/2" reel to reel video tape recorders
1968 Phillips 1/2" reel to reel mass produced domestic
Then (1971) there was sony u-matic which used a 3/4" tape, helical scan, and a cassette. mostly pro use.
1971 Phillips N1500 with 3/4" tape cassettes, first TV tuner and timer
Then (1975) there was sony betamax. 1/2" tape cassette, 1 hour/tape initially. 1 loading pole.
Then (1976) there was VHS. 2 hour/tape cassete initially, trading quality for recording length. 2 loading poles. Note that they had been working on videocassettes for 6 years.
Then (1979) Phillips introduced V2000 which they had been developing for 15? years. 4 hours per side.
Then (1980) RCA introduces a play only format
Matsushita/Quasar/Panasonic, which was developing a competing format (working on video tape for 15 years), dropped it in favor of VHS. Matsushita was part owner of JVC, Quasar, and Panasonic. Telefunken, Thompson, Thorn, GE, and RCA licensed VHS. Sony and Phillips eventually did as well. JVC profits increased tenfold by 1982 and the video division went from 6% of company sales to 69%.
The very success of VHS was dependent on JVC encouraging companies to compete with it and on cutting margins to the bone. JVC wasn't big enough to supply the demand alone.
Not that there was actually that much original technology that was new to VHS.
- The two loading pole mechanism
- DL-FM system
- PS Color process.
Basically, a not-so-innovative tape load mechanism and analog video compression.
The video-cassette would have happened without JVC. There were 4 companies working on it. And I suspect JVC could have paid off their R&D costs without collecting a dollar of royalties from other companies. JVC's strategy was to have a piece of a bigger pie.
Note that many of the other formats were superior for recording original material. VHS was good enough for home consumer use with over the air or commercial tapes.
I seriously doubt they spent a billion on VHS R&D. But they apparently made billions off of VHS.
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:Development_of_VHS,_a_World_Standard_for_Home_Video_Recording,_1976
http://books.google.com/books?id=rgvGFiiYCXYC&pg=PA49
http://www.rewindmuseum.com/home.htm
No, copyright doesn't stop at the particular format in which it is presented in the handbook. Mechanically derived works are not exempt from the original restrictions. Copyright is limited to the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself but there is more to the particular expression than the formatting or even the words. If you translate a book into a foreign language, the original expression of the idea and copyright remains even though you have changed all the words and some of the sentence structure.
Individual formulas might be exempt from copyright, as "facts" or as fair use, not to mention they weren't really created by Abramowitz and Stegun or NIST. But a sequence of formulas in a mathematic proof might not be exempt. theories and hypotheses may be considered "ideas" not "facts". Exemption may not apply for a collection of facts - i.e. which facts are included vs which are not, if the criteria are non-obvious. A list of all listed phone numbers in the state of Virginia, is a collection of facts with an obvious boundary between what is included and what is not, but some subsets may not be exempt.
Suppose you were to create a set of flash cards from DLMF with all the formulas on one side and the names on the other. Suppose you sell them. Is this even covered by the copyright? You still maintain their selection of which facts are included and which are not. You still have their selection of which variable names are used for placeholders, which are not inherent to the facts expressed in the formula. Are you allowed to do so under the Educational/Academic clause of the license or prohibited under the no-comercial use clause? What if your customers are private users vs public schools (which are allowed to use the material under the commercial clause). What if some of the formulas are in error and therefore not facts? I knew a jerk who deliberately included transcription errors (when transcribing a public domain autobiography) in an attempt to assert copyright. Well, it apprears that errors can be used to trace the origins and have lead to lawsuits but errors in fact are no more copyrightable than facts. What if instead of selling them, your intent is to give them away online for anyone to use in any way the please, including printing them and selling them? If it is that confusing in such a deliberately trivial example, what about something more complicated like a symbolic math program or the documentation for said program?
Suppose you were to copy from DLMF into wikipedia on a scale beyond fair use. That uses the nightmarish GNU Free Documentation License, which does not allow you to incorporate the restrictions imposed by the original license. Viral licenses (copyleft) are particularly nasty as they dictate the terms of other works. They not only put onerous restrictions on the terms under which you can distribute your work if their material is incorporated, they can be incompatible with the terms of other third party materials. So, even if you are allowed to incorporate viral licensed work A and non-viral licensed work B with your own materials C to produce derivative work D in your intended application and license, the inclusion of A can prevent the inclusion of B.
Should all the government's classified information be made public domain immediately because it was created with public money?
Protection of classified materials is done through a mechanism separate from copyright, with much higher penalties. Likewise, private information is protected by privacy laws. But what is published by the federal government for the consumption of he general public is supposed to be public domain.
Should members of the public be able to reproduce without attribution my scientific papers because the research was supported by tax dollars? I hope not. (This is what "public domain" means: far more than free access.)
You appear to work for a contractor. Your work was supported by tax dollars but not performed by employees of the federal government. The copyright status depends on the contract terms. There is also a specific exemption for scientific papers written by contractors. But there are some serious erosions of the publics rights with more and more work being contracted out (due among other things to a foolish cap on the number of government employees). In some cases, contractors double dip and charge the government the entire price of producing a work, then turn around and charge the public to use the intellectual property that has already been paid for. For example, maintenance of the DOD public domain MIL-HDBK-5J was turned over to the FAA and multiple agencies pay the cost of maintaining it and was renamed MMPDS-01. The FAA contracted the work out to Batelle, who asserts copyright on it, restricts its use, and charges the public for it. As far as I know, batelle is not even footing a portion of the cost. I have been in the situation of having a government agency trying to hire me through a contractor and the contractor was trying to claim ownership of the work I would be doing entirely funded by the government.
Be aware that frequently authors, illustrators, and photographers do not receive credit, even in the original work, when that is done for an employer. For example, most product manuals.
I tend to look favorably on attribution-only licenses and would not have much trouble with such a license on government works, but even attribution can become a burden when you are compiling from many sources or using the work in an area where there isn't an ability to display the attribution. Where is the attribution, for example, on pieces of code contained in your car's cruise control? You could technically put it in the car's owner's manual, but in practice this is never done. In practice, government agencies in some cases ask, but do not require, that you provide attribution.
The online version of the handbook is free and provided in a convenient form. What would we gain if it were placed in the "public domain"?
Free-for-use-in-its-original-form-only-for-limited-purposes isn't free. It is only free of charge for certain limited uses. In no way is this an acceptable substitute for public domain. You can't, for example, use it in commercial software and you can't use it in permissively licensed or copylefted software because those do allow commercial use.
Thanks for pointing that out. Credit card info needed to be updated due to expiration and reissue.
You keep using words that I don't think you quite grasp the true meaning of.
Oh, I understand the contextually appropriate meanings of the words. You failed to identify the words you thought were misused or what your (mis)understanding of their true meaning is.
"Digital Library". Their choice of words, not mine. This could refer to a library of books, movies, sound recordings, documents, etc. stored in a digital format. Not here. Calling a updated version of a single book a library is quite a stretch. And we were not promised a digital library of books or documents about mathematics, we were promised a "Digital Library OF Mathematical Functions". The objects in the library, therefore, are mathematical functions, not documents. Consider libraries of software functions, schematic symbols, printed circuit board symbols, other CAD libraries (such as for mechanical parts), VHDL/verilog libraries, standard cell libraries, spectral libraries, etc. These tend to have sufficient semantic information that you can automatically search, extract the appropriate objects, link the objects together, evaluate, execute, transform, analyze, synthesize, compare, display, validate, etc. A digital library in the technical sense, not the lay usage, is a collection of objects in a form that can be processed using the specialized tools appropriate to the trade, not merely cut and pasted. Sure, you can do a little processing on MathML but as the math and the processing become non-trivial, it is likely to break down due to the lack of high level abstract information.
"semantics"/"presentational": The OpenMath creators, who have significant overlap with the MathML creators (I.E. many worked on both projects), use the same two words to describe the difference:
"MathML deals principally with the presentation of mathematical objects, while OpenMath is solely concerned with their semantic meaning or content. " You can mix MathML and OpenMath.
And special fail for bringing up OpenMATH.
It was relevant. Even many of the folks who worked on MathML also saw the need for OpenMath and worked on that project as well.
The continuous wearing/implanting of RFID tags has extreme privacy issues and enormous ability for abuse. But most of us are already tagged and trackable, and many don't realize it (see below).
To be fair, I did suggest something similar back during Hurricane Katrina, though with some level of privacy controls. Boat comes up and rescues you, dead or alive. You are given a numbered wristband with RFID/barcode. You are given a chance to enter, or not enter, identifying information and select which info is searchable and which is viewable. GPS based point of rescue information is recorded. The boat relays that information up to the next helicopter that flys over via a ad-hoc store and forward WiFi network or any other stationary or mobile access point in range. When you reach a shelter, hospital, etc. you are scanned in. When you leave to go on a bus/train, you are scanned out of the shelter and onto the bus/train. You are basically tracked like a package for as long as you want to be and friends and family inside or outside the disaster zone with the right information to search by can find out where you are. Rescue/shelter/hospital personnel can spend more time helping people and less time trying to locate missing persons. Less load on cell phone networks. If you have a stalker or outstanding warrants, you don't give any identifying info. Still lots of subtle issues with privacy and technical implementation.
Today, you might just do a mobile update of your facebook status; facebook being a whole different set of privacy issues, and use direction finders on cell phones.
And we are already tagged and trackable via our cell phones (hackers can access GSM network location and ID info). And many of the RFID attacks can be applied to any active cell phone, only worse. SIM number, bluetooth/WiFi/WiMaX MAC addresses. A cell phone is an RFID chip from hell with a long range and even a preexisting network which can be exploited to further extend the range to the entire world. At least you can yank the battery when you really need to disappear.
Thermostats: One is a marginally valid, but still pretty trivial, claim of a specific application within a technology to a specific problem. The other is an attempt to patent the application of an entire field (embedded computing) to a specific application area (thermostats). It is equivalent to patenting the very idea of using ANY mechanical system to control temperature or ANY application of the physical properties of materials to control temperature.
Any idiot knows that it is possible to make money selling a touch screen phone. That doesn't mean that anyone who tries will succeed. User interface patents are ridiculous. Image what would happen if we pattented the use of a steering wheel, brake, and accelerator pedal for controlling an automobile. We would have ended up with gratuitous incompatibilities in user interfaces for cars, with massive amounts of trouble as a result.
I have been waiting for this to come out for a while but I see a number of reasons for disappointment.
First, a big part of the reason for having a library of mathematical functions compiled by a government agency is to have a public domain source that can be reused for any purpose in any field of endeavor. They screwed that up royally: "© 2010 NIST". Commerfcial use is specifically prohibited. Ironic considering that NIST is part of the US Department of Commerce. And since comercial use is prohibited, it can't be used in software distributed under a permissive license which allows commercial use.
Second, they call it a "digital library" but it isn't. It is more or less a book in html by chapters. They used MathML instead of OpenMATH. MathML is too presentational and not sufficiently semantic. You should be able to configure OpenMATH or MathML or PNG produced from the OpenMath and you should be able to download OpenMath content dictionaries.
It is still useful as a free-for-viewing-only ebook, but that is only a tiny fraction of what it should have been. Tax payers got gyped. We paid perhaps 90% of the cost for 20% of the result, and the copyright even interferes with someone else finishing the job.
And in the end, all this inconvenience to cell phone, PDA, media player, netbook, and laptop users (not to mention American's with Disability Act violation - some people need cameras) will be about as successful as drug interdiction at the border.
Joe consumer can buy a camera (still and video with audio) disguised as, for example, a working ball point pen (doubles as a 4GB USB flash drive) for $35.17, delivered (lower end model under $20). Another is rather poorly disguised as an ID badge (required in many places where cameras are banned); poor implementation but you can see where that is headed. Another is disguised as a wrist watch. Another as a necktie. Another small model. Miniaturization has made camera interdiction at the border all but impossible. Unless you are going to strip search and body cavity search everyone, provide them with substitute clothing, and prevent them from taking anything inside, cameras will get in.
Ironically, before all this stuff was available to the consumer for the price of dinner, there were government facilities that had these kinds of no camera security precautions while on the inside engineers were developing spy cameras that were small enough to circumvent the exact same security provisions at the other country's facilities.
Miniature equipment has been available for over a hundred years if you had the cash. And if the stakes were high enough to justify banning cameras, the camera cost was minor compared to what the pictures were worth.
The only difference with your portable electronics gear is plausible deniablity if you get caught before you snap the pictures.
Here is another incantation that can be inserted in /etc/rc.local or equivalent to start. If you want to use it from cron, add "-c 1" to it.
ping -n i 300 -p "0123456776543210" -W 1 mydesktop.dynalias.org >/dev/null 2>&1
This will cause your laptop to ping your desktop machine once every 5 minutes with a particular data pattern. If your laptop is stolen, fire up wireshark/ethereal on your desktop and watch for ping packets with your particular data pattern in it. Then traceroute back to the ip address revealed there. And maybe remote login using ssh and run some programs like tcpdump or a sniffer to capture login information if the thief logs into any websites.
This requires that you have a fixed machine with a static IP address or set up to register with a dynamic DNS services somewhere at home, at work, or at a friends house. This only uses one packet in each direction. And it doesn't fill up your process table with multiple copies of wget if your machine is offline. The cron version is less likely to be noticed since it usually won't show up in "ps" output. And this method doesn't clutter up your web logs.
Of course, all of these systems assume the thief will succeed in getting the machine online. You may help by setting the machine up in a way that it will automatically connect when an ethernet cable is plugged in or it comes in range of an open wireless access point.
Another variation is to simply set up your laptop to register with a dynamic DNS service. Then you can just use "dig" to look it up. Or log into the dynamic DNS website to check the timestamp when it was last updated, which an ISP will need to trace a dynamic connection to a particular account.
Many things that we may think are diseases may simply be adaptation for different conditions. And science tells us that conditions can and will change. And in a lot of cases where people may appear maladapted to our current society it is actually the society that
/. have aspergers or dyslexia, for example?
is maladapted to them.
I had a girlfriend with cerebral palsy. One of the treatments for CP is injections of botulinum toxin, one of the most deadly toxins known. What happens if the next global pandemic produces Botulinum Toxin, or something similar? You might end up with a world
where people with CP are able to function better than before (or at least survive) and the rest of us are dead.
She was singled out for the highest award her department gives to undergrads and is now close to finishing her PhD.
Ever noticed that those who contribute most to society usually have some serious "flaw" that would
be likely to selected against in a eugenics program? How many people on
The accomplishments of ordinary people tend to be just that, ordinary.
There is a deleted scene on the Gattaca DVD gives a short list of people who would never have been born if we discriminated against those with medical conditions, including Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln, and Ray Charles.
How many people have handicaps that are really just a different set of capabilities that include considerable strengths in other areas?
How many people develop strengths they might otherwise not have to compensate for a handicap?
Did not assume that it did.
Sorry, I have a habit of letting my words speak for me without factoring in that sometimes certain keywords trigger irrational responses.Nothing even slightly irrational in my response. I was responding to the thread in general, though it all applies to the behaviors described in your post (whether or not they are your behaviors or you advocate such behavior).
your memory of being "once denied" will drive many decisions throughout your lifeI agree, for people in general.
Women also respond to the threat of being denied. For example, they may give a blow job in the car on the first date for fear of being denied snuggling, companionship, etc.
Malicious denials, however, lead to a lot of problems including misogeny and misandry.
Power in a relationship stems largely from what options each partner has outside the relationship and from what each brings to the table in the relationship. When women were not allowed to work, for example, this created an imbalance (lack of outside options). If either partner fails to sexually satisfy the other, this creates a power imbalance. Abusing power, however, can negate that power. Alienation of affection is grounds for terminating a relationship.
In sex, I concentrate on satisfying my partner rather than in getting my own rocks off. I bring something to the table. And my partners tend to respond by trying to satisfy me without my having to ask. Their turn to bring something to the table.
My own personal experience has been the opposite. No woman has ever punitively denied me sex in the context of an existing sexual relationship. They stand to lose more than I. Women in general tend to have more powerful sexual responses than men but often a higher threshold to trigger those responses. Unfortunately, the Locker Room Academy of Male Sexual Technique is not an accredited institution of higher learning. Even women who appear to have significant sexual dysfunction can be orgasm machines. I can also go without sex longer. And I can also satisfy myself which is not the case for some of my lovers. I have the power but I do
not use it punitively. I say this not to brag but to point out to men that if you are having this kind of problem you should
consider whether exercising more due diligence in the bedroom (including learning more) would help.
I did have a girlfriend who refused to let me hug her during a heated argument. I called an immediate time out and explained that not only was she cutting off an important channel of communication but that it was perceived as emotional violence. Solved that problem.
Some things I never do during a fight:
- refuse to receive basic physical affection (hugs, snuggling, sleeping together)
- refuse to give basic level of physical affection
- withhold sex in order to hurt, manipulate, or punish
I might conceivably delay it, explicitly, until I was not distracted from doing it properly.
- say anything for the purpose of hurting her.
Hurt may be an unavoidable side effect of something that is said but it is never the reason something is said.
Those would tend to be emotional violence.
Gotta run...
Ah, but does (normally) leaving the seat down really lower the probability of sitting in the bowl? Men are accustomed to the seat being in different positions and very rarely make that mistake (maybe once every 20 years). However, if a woman is accustomed to the seat
being always down, then there is a high probability that on those ocassions (guests, trembling-hand, men using the ladies room, ladies room being cleaned, etc) when there is an exception to the rule of the seat being down that they will sit in the bowl. So leaving the seat up may actually reduce the occurance. If sitting in the bowl happens in a public rest room, it is also significantly more traumatic than when it occurs at home (where you likely know the health of the people using it). So much for the study's assertion that leaving the seat down is trembling hand perfect. There are two different probabilities that she will sit in the bowl depending
on whether she has been properly potty trained by having the seat left up regularly. If the ratio of those probabilities exceeds
the probability of an error in seat position, then leaving the seat down is not trembling hand perfect. If you want to assert
that leaving the seat down is trembling-hand perfect, you need to study in much more detail and ultimately it will depend on
the specific people involved.
The study neglected to consider a lot of things. Sitting on the rim or bowl accidently, males who flunked potty training (urinating on seats), and "Waaaaaa! you don't love me!".
My rules:
- when sharing a living space with women, always leave the seat down. Unless you have discussed all the ramifications.
This is in contradiction to the explanation above and has to do with women's perceptions.
- when using a public mens room, always leave the seat up, even if you have to lift it to do so, particularly where lower class
males, drunks, or both may be present. Otherwise, the seat may be covered in urine next time you use it.
- when using a public women's room (potty parity reverses after midnight at many bars, for example), always leave the seat down and
clean unless you know the next person using it will be male.
The secret of happy relationships where at least one of the parties is female: it is better to annoy women deliberately than through neglect. Most women need frequent reminders that you care about them. If you leave the seat up, women tend to see this as a sign you don't care enough about them to lower the seat - annoyance through neglect. When you deliberately annoy them (within reason), however, they see this as a sign of affection. They may say "Hey, cut that out!" but really they are flattered as you can tell from their tone of voice. It is like when you are reading and your cat comes and lays down on top of the book; annoying, but in a good way. Besides, women will find something to be annoyed about anyway (and will much more actively look for something if you are not deliberately annoying them) - best to make the annoyances positive ones. Also, deliberate annoyances add an element of unpredictibility and playfullness that helps keep the relationship from becoming bland. So, by all means, surprise her with a pinched nipple or a swat on the ass when she isn't expecting it (and even when she is), just don't overdo it. If you don't, things like the position of the toilet seat become elevated to a litmus test.
"It would simply mean removing the individual DC/AC converters and using one big one."
If they are designed properly, this is unnecessary. Good inverters are designed to be paralleled.
Manufacturers produced SD cards that were more or less upwards compatible with MMC (there are some slight differences in initialization) some older devices need a firmware upgrade) in 1 bit SPI mode. SD also allowed the option of thicker cards so cards don't necessarily
fit in older MMC slots. But it is possible to support add SD card support, without licensing fees, to a device by basically treating it as an MMC SPI device and using the newer sockets but speed is reduced (though fine for cameras, MP3 players, etc). And SD slots
normally supported MMC cards.
SD added high speed 4 bit wide modes and DRM to MMC and dropped the ability to daisychain multiple card slots. MMC later added high speed modes of its own and its own DRM. SD added a lock switch. However, it is a gimmick since it is mechanical not electrical. It works like the tab on a floppy but unlike floppies where all drives implemented it some SD devices ignore it and even those that honor it probably do so in software so it can be overridden.
MMC does not have licensing fees for the basic standard but you have to pay for the spec (but basic info is available without the spec).
$500 for the old spec, $1000 for the new. Card manufacturers need to join for $2,500 a year.
The curious part about the new miCard is that now instead of needing a USB adapter to plug it in to a PC you need an SD adapter (comes with?) to plug it into standard MMC/SD card slots and it appears that it will not fit into mini/micro SD slots.
XD and memory stick have no valid reason for existing. They had no real advantages and exist for proprietary reasons. And they had considerable disadvantages in comparision. The corporations behind them didn't want to pay licensing to SD card but created new "standards" where others would have to pay licensing fees to them. So they had no advantage to any other company and just drove up
the cost of general purpose card readers which now had to add more sockets and pay more licensing fees.
1 bit SPI mode is included in both the MMC and SD card specs, with some slight differences.
One possible implementation of the miCard would be USB for high speed PC transfers and 1 bit SPI MMC mode for device transfers that
would be compatible with most MMC or SD slots. Since you have USB, you can discard the expensive (licensing) SD fast transfers.
MMC and USB have no licensing fees for readers. In addition, it probably supports the higher speed MMC modes (no licensing, but $1000 for the spec). While some slots might not support the high speed MMC modes, they are likely to support the slower 1 bit SPI mode which is fast enough for most portable devices (indeed it is the only mode used by many devices). Maybe the new standard eliminates the need
for card manufacturers to join the MMCA as well (which might be the case if they only used 1 bit SPI mode since MMCA IP would be
reduced to just the command sequences), although the card manufacturers are probably members anyway.
"distill it to 100%, which uses a ridiculous amount of energy (10 times more to get it from 95-100 than from 20-95)."
Thats why it is pure folly in the long run to distill it to 100%. 100% is only used so you can blend it with gasoline so you can
use it in unmodified gasoline vehicles. But it only costs something like $200 to modify a car to run on 85% ethanol/15% water.
And that is much cheaper (and more environmentally sound) than spending many thousands to convert a car to fuel cell or replace
the vehicle with a fuel cell vehicle. And the energy that goes into distilling to 85% can easily be supplied by solar (solar stills
have been around for decades and are very simple). In the near term, it makes much more sense for 30% of the fleet to run on straight
ethanol than for 100% to run on 30% ethanol/70% gasoline. That does require some widespread, but simple (no worse than the transition
from leaded to unleaded gasoline or adding biodiesel), infrastructure changes. The market itself will tend not to make the transition by itself
(gas stations wait for cars to switch, cars wait for gas stations), though, so it needs a kick in the ass to get the ball rolling.
The government could pay outright for every gas station to install pumps and storage tanks for ethanol and biodiesel for far less
than we have spent killing people in Iraq. 126,000 gas stations with two tanks at $10,000 each (guess) is 2.5 billion (a little more
than the cost of one cruise missile). One third of gas trucks get washed out and converted to ethanol. Pipelines are a little trickier but
ethanol can be produced closer to the point of use. Solar still and vehicle conversion technology is around 30 years old. There are around 200 million cars and other vehicles in the US. Converting 30 of them would cost around $12 billion, less if you just convert the ones that are using the most fuel.
It is just an inefficient market (lack of critical mass) and artificiaally low gasoline prices (with military subsidies) that has prevented us doing this.
We would need to put an awful lot of land into fuel production, possibly around 10% of US land area.
While the research under discussion holds some long term promise, it probably has a long way to go before it is practical.
Eventually, the higher conversion efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell might be a significant benefit which is needed for a 100% reduction in petroleum fuels.
But if you are going to compare it to ethanol, compare it to ethanol done right. We can spend the next decade or two sitting on our asses waiting for hydrogen technology to be viable or we can cut our gasoline consumption, greenhouse emissions, and dependency on foreign oil 30% while letting the cars currently on the road serve out their useful lifetimes over the span of a few growing seasons. And we could have done this 30 years ago. Or more. 30 years ago there was
renewed interest due to a fuel crisis but ethanol and biodiesel have been around longer than gasoline.
While I am all for technological improvements, the real problem has always been political.
One reason not to recirculate might be microbial growth.
Also, ironically, flushing the system once a month might violate EPA regulations which may regulate in PPM rather than total contaminants released.
Nomination seems like a silly idea. Just look at the web logs and sort the pages by frequency of access (combine all languages). Then stuff them on various size media (CD, DVD, various sized SD cards for PDAs, etc) in that order till you run out of room. Much less work and more likely to satisfy the bulk of users needs. Internal and external (google) links might also be considered but for the most part frequency of access will account for that.
:: Celebrities :: Playboy Playmates). And before you dismiss Anna Nicole Smith too much, it might be worth noting that her article has been translated into
Selecting based on article quality is kinda silly. If an article is popular, it will probably be improved to a reasonable quality. In the time it takes
to nominate and review articles, the articles will probably be brought up to snuff anyway. Release early and often.
The exception is if you are targeting a significantly different demographic. For other countries, you may want to start with the native language versions.
For repressive regimes, you might want to emphasize politics, sexual practices, history, and other stuff that is censored. For developing countries, emphasise how to information, medical information, appropriate technology, etc. And you can do a lot of this automatically by filtering web logs by country of origin, traffic coming through anonymizer services, and cross links from sites categorized by the open directory project. People without internet access might have
lower average intelligence and education but if they are interested in an encyclopedia they are trying to better themselves so it should not be dumbed down so what might be the biggest difference between online and offline audiences is of no relevance.
Articles on celebrities, which should be easy enough to identify automatically, might get downgraded a bit compared to their popularity because this is one category where popularity and importance might diverge. But it might be a mistake to lower them too much. People without net access reading the newspaper might want to know who the hell is Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith, if only to realize they aren't important. In general people still living might be downgraded slightly (persondata template). Articles on celbrities might be truncated to the first paragraph rather than eliminated entirely.
Politicians, though usually of little value to the human race often pose significant threats to the common good and are often mentioned in newspapers and so should be included.
Articles which have a short term peak popularity vs a long term popularity might be downgraded (basically use web logs for a full year). Most important articles
have been around for a while so the penalty this will impose on new articles will mostly be justified.
Anywhere the automatic process encounters problems is a good candidate for better semantic markup. For example, the Anna Nicole Smith article contains the
word Celebrity but is not in a celebrity category (though categories such as Playboy Playmates are an indication, they should be recategorized to Person
something like 32 languages. John Kerry 31. Einstein about 94. USB about 40. Mango 33. Angelina Jolie about 40. Gandhi around 77? Plate tectonics 31
. Evolution 44. Aluminum 68. France about 143. Xylene 16. Acetone 32. Jerry Falwell 3. Cunnilingous 11. Monroe Doctrine 18.
Bayesian filters can be used.
Overall, though, with a few adjustments for frivolous information (celebrities, etc), web stats are probably a better indication of relevance than
you are likely to get through a nomination process (the current nomination list is biased towards NBA stars at the moment).
Also worth considering is creating a download process that downloads individual articles based on selection criteria. Language, Global web stats, national or regional web stats, etc, Category weights, total size cutoff, number
That depends on your location. If you are close to the central office, DSL is an alternative to T1. But the range of DSL is limited to a couple miles (varies
by type) with bandwidth dropping with distance. T1 can be run thousands of miles but at a substantial cost per mile. T1 requires expensive repeaters every 3/4 mile or so. Those repeaters are not located indoors so they have to be rated for industrial temperature range (or even military temperature grade in harsh locations). Now, that is based on traditional ways of doing things. Those repeaters need enclosures and electrical power. Theoretically, there is no reason you couldn't put repeaters on DSL lines but I think it was only in the past year or so that you could actually buy them and they are still probably rather expensive.
Normal DSL equipment, DSL modems and DSLAMs, are more of a mass market commodity item than T1 equipment. T1 equipment could be manufactured cheaply, probably
cheaper than DSL, in quantity but manufacturers and telcos are probably reluctant to make a large investment in equipment that is likely to be on its way out.
Telco's are used to amortizing equipment costs over 30 years or so. Investing in T1 equipment when you know that it probably will not be wanted for
either voice or data traffic a few years down the line doesn't have much appeal. DSL equipment probably also won't be useful for 30 years, either,
but it has more potential life than T1 equipment. Old DSL equipment may be relocated (when better options take over in the cities) to climate controlled
enclosures in rural neighborhoods that are dense enough but still far from a central office. New T1 circuits are probably reusing T1 equipment freed up when
old T1 circuits were upgraded so there isn't much of a market for mass produced T1 equipment or much of a surplus either; basically, T1 is probably a stagnant
market.
T1 prices have traditionally been compared to the cost of 24 telephone lines. And people are just used to paying more for T1.
In most places near a central office you may be better off negotiating for DSL line with a T1 level Committed Information Rate (CIR) and service level guarantees than a T1; i.e. a business class DSL. T1 makes sense in locations that are too far from the central office, particularly if it is a location where there is already T1 infrastructure, such as along a major highway that already has T1 lines (and thus enclosures in which to put repeaters) or in isolated rural business districts that have existing T1 lines. T1 may also be appropriate if you want mixed voice and data traffic and your TELCO doesn't have a VoIP based infrastructure yet.
Ethernet is not designed for exterior long haul use. Ethernet based circuits are likely to be available in districts that have SONET rings or bare fiber, and in colocation facilities and unavailable elsewhere.
Contrary to the original post, T1 circuits probably are much cheaper than they used to be in most markets. You can get a T1 line for under $400/mo in many markets.
Last time I used T1 was around ten years ago, it was $1400/mo for frame relay (i.e. less than full T1). Local loop alone was $400/mo. http://www.megapath.com/ offers 384K fractional T1 for $259 and full T1 for $359. Speakeasy $400/mo for full T1. Both include a free router (used to be $1500) and no setup costs.
I probably had one of the first two DSL lines in my city, before the local telcos adopted T1. We installed a DSLAM at the office and purchased dry pairs from
the telco and used MVL which had a distance of 2 miles (1 mile to the central office and 1 mile to our homes). My boss and I got the first lines. Cost around $14,000 in equipment but the monthly cost per line was only around $15, not including the upstream T1.
Just look at what Hershey and similar brands are already doing.
Replacing cocoa butter with vegetable oil.... Notice that they left of the word "hydrogenated" which would, of course, be necessary to produce a solid
"chocolate". The hydrogenated oils are unhealthy compared even to saturated fats. And of course, the vegetable oils will be heaviliy refined, removing all the
healthy nutrients found in vegetable oils in their natural state. "Vegetable Oil" sounds better than "Fully Hydrogenated refined hot-pressed vegetable oil".
My house mate brought home a bag that was labeled something like "Hershey's white chips". Yep, they couldn't legally call it white chocolate since there
was no cocoa butter. They assume that consumers will assume it is chocolate because it says "Hershey's". What is the defining ingredient in white chocolate? Cocoa Butter. Likewise, "Nestle Toll House Premier white morsels". Basically, they are trying to sell hardened margarine chunks with sugar, whey, fake? vanilla flavor, and a few other ingredients as white chocolate. Such "white chocolate" products do not contain any part of the cocoa plant.
That was a very interesting post, though prone to exaggeration. Your attitude seems to be that if American's change a foreign dish, we get credit for it but if
someone else changes an American dish, we still get credit.
Bananas did not originate from Hawaii, though bananas were probably introduced there between 500 and 700AD.
According to wikipedia: "They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia."
One of my ancestors, an American by the name of Minor Cooper Keith, was responsible for the global banana trade (before it became exploitative), starting around 1873. Although a few banannas had been imported to the mainland US, and probably other areas like Europe as well, by sailors, they were something that you would only eat on a dare (imagine a banana after a multi-month sea voyage). He created an enormous infrastructure to bring these highly perishable fruits to the US from Central America, including the worlds first fleet of refrigerated steamships and dedicated ports to take the fruit quickly (under 60 hours) from harvest to hold. The railroad express shipment within the US had to be orchestrated and retailers had to be specially trained in how to handle and ripen the fruit. He discovered the bananas while building the first transcontinental railroad (before the panama canal) across Central America, along with his Uncle Henry Meiggs who built the first railroad in Chile. Meiggs died during the building of the transcontinental railroad along with around 4000 people (mostly American's from New Orleans) building the railroad through territory the natives were wisely afraid to visit. The workers from the US did not follow recommended safety precautions
but workers who were imported from Barbados survived to complete the railroad. The fruit company they founded has been known over the years as United
Fruit Company, United Brands Company, and Chiquita Brands International and has had a checkered history since Keith's death. Keith himself meddled in
the politics of Costa Rica backing benevolent dictators during the country's transition to the first stable democracy (he married the daughter of the
first president) in the region (other attempts to transition to democracy in the region, which was unaccustomed to citizen participation, were unsuccessful
and bloody). He refinanced the debts of several Central American countries, built hospitals, schools, and railroads throughout the region, and paid
workers enough to get ahead (double what other workers in the region were paid).
http://www.freelabs.com/~whitis/clan/empire.html
Given that bananas existed for well over a thousand years in many parts of the world before Keith introduced them to Europe/America, I suspect that there are
many banana dishes that are not of American origin. Likewise, although the tomato originated in South America and was common in the US (but thought poisonous
before Jefferson rehabilitated it here), the tomato's history in England dates to around 1590, around the 18th century in France, and around 1550 in Italy. By
the mid 18th century, tomato consumption in Italy was widespread. So I am sure that the Italian's and others would take exception to the notion that anything
with tomatoes not of hispanic origin is created here. http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/publications/vegetabl etravelers/tomato.html
The American hot dog is a perversion of the german Wurst (pronounced Vurst) or Wiener, though the National Hot dog council, according to wikipedia, credits a butcher in Germany, not an American, with the invention of the Hot Dog (the bland miniature version).
The Hawaiians had a very healthy diet before western influence, now the Hawaiians are the highest per-capita consumers of Hormel products (or so I was told
in Hawaii).
As for chee
Part of the reason (heterosexual) men will go for the job that pays well or negotiate more strenuously may be that they have to or they are royally screwed in the dating game.
Men tend to be more mercenary in the workplace while women tend to be more mercenary in social spheres. Men are "provider objects".
When a man and woman meet, there is a high probability that he will be judged on how much money he makes and a low probability that she will be
judged on how much money she makes. Some men are even intimidated by a woman who makes more money than they do so a woman making a good salary
might even be at a disadvantage. Men generally could care less if a woman owns a house. Men don't tend to care if a woman lives in a one room
apartment. Men generally don't expect women to buy them drinks, dinner, or gifts of any value. And women are more likely to find a man to take
care of them in a time of financial crisis than vice versa. If a man is forced to move in with his parents, he is toast; a woman in the same
situation will be at a slight disadvantage, mostly due to concerns about parental meddling. Women are almost never asked by their partners parents
how they will provide for the partner. If she can't afford a kid, she can choose to have an abortion; men can get saddled with child support payments
and can actually be put in jail if they can't afford to pay them, even when unemployed (which hurts their possibilities for future employment).
While there are many women who are not this mercenary, the dating game tends to be constructed in such a way as to reduce the positive effect for both
the men and the women.
This mercenary dating can hurt women, too. Men who make more money often do so by screwing over other people and this can carry over into the relationship.
The man who spends the fruit of other peoples labors on a woman is, ironically, perceived as generous compared to the man who makes considerable self
sacrifice for the greater good. And the men who spend money on women tend to expect something in return.
The dating game tends to favor superficial qualities. Looks in women and money in men. If you are a woman who is not attractive or a man who doesn't
have a lot of money, you are at a significant disadvantage. Some men (such as artists and musicians) can escape it because they have a chance to display their positive qualities before the financial triage occurs. If a woman is a lesbian, was born with bad genes in the looks department, or has lost her looks due to neglect and/or age, then she loses a lot of the advantages which is why a lot of the early feminists fell into those categories, leading to "ugly" or "lesbian" stereotypes. Men who are looking for traditionally female roles get screwed all around.
Gender roles can hurt both genders.