Wrong country there, chief. It was New Mexico. (Although from what I understand, there are some ignorant doofs in the U.S. who think New Mexico is not part of the United States. Go figure.)
Re:What a historic year 1998 was....
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You know Napoleon wasn't actually French, right? His family was originally from Tuscany, and moved to Corsica. Corsica became a French territory just a year before he was born.
If I read the GP correctly, he was suggesting that you buy some kind of USB drive (with some kind of DRM hardware crap baked in) and take it to your local Blockbuster to have a movie loaded onto it. The DRM on the USB drive simultaneously locks the video to the drive and enforces whatever the time limit is on viewing the movie.
So the drive might be expensive, but a one-time purchase. Of course, if Blockbuster were to really push something like this, they might subsidize the cost of the drive in exchange for locking the customer into some kind of contract. Or maybe they'll just subsidize the cost of the USB stick altogether, since it might only be useful to someone who wants to transport Blockbuster films.
Considering how crappy broadband is still in most of the U.S. (and how limited the video-on-demand selection is through cable operators), video rental stores aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but I can see a huge advantage to reducing physical inventory at most stores. All modern game consoles have USB ports, so if a major player like Blockbuster parters with Sony or Microsoft, this idea could work.
But you're right, renting a USB drive would make little to no sense, unless the store (a) recycled [i.e., periodically reimage them with new movie data] the USB sticks -- kind of a given -- and (b) charged a very hefty replacement fee if you lost one. Letting the customer buy a specialized USB stick that can be reused over and over is probably the smarter way to make something like this work.
Yep, that's an adequate summary of this whole thread.
So far, looks like the parent post by circletimessquare got modded down as "Offtopic," which I think one could make a valid argument for (whether or not I think the moderation is "fair" being a different issue).
Seriously, why take this guy's bait? He's karma-whoring, IMHO.
For what it's worth, I think you had a valid point in that it's not a good idea for any Western power to get involved in these matters. We can certainly express an opinion, but when it comes to "calls to action" like circletimessquare seems to be advocating, do we really even know enough about these kinds of situations to inject ourselves into them and try to change them? What if we choose wrong and wind up creating more problems for ourselves (or the people we are ostensibly trying to help) in the long run?
I also want to take exception to circletimessquare's apparent assertion that asking "What if this happens here?" is somehow being selfish. (If that's not the point he was making, then I apologize, but that's what I gleaned from his comment.) I think that's a perfectly valid question being posed in the summary. Whether the current anti-government protestors are in fact anti-democratic (as many analysts believe) is not the point. The fact is that the democratic regime in Thailand which is currently in power undermines its own credibility when it tries to suppress dissent and shut down opposition web sites. This is a scary precedent, and I would hate to see something like that happen here.
In point of fact, according to Lawrence Lessig, we may already be heading in the direction that the Thai government is -- did you see the recent article on BoingBoing about the coming iPatriot Act? This legislation is sitting on a shelf or in someone's desk at the Justice Department, waiting for the right excuse to be dusted off and implemented. The video is embedded in the linked page -- Lessig's comments on the iPatriot Act are about 6 minutes in. Note that he also discusses how the Patriot Act was already pretty much completed long before 9/11 happened.
I don't think you understand what binary translation means. They're doing the x86 -> mips translation in software.
But TFA doesn't say "binary translation." At all. What it says is:
But engineers have added 200 additional instructions to Godson-3 to simulate an x86 chip, which allows Godson-3 to run more software, including the Windows operating system. And because the chip architecture is only simulated, there is no need to obtain a license from Intel.
Which implies strongly that this "simulation" is happening entirely in silicon -- if all they were doing is simply binary translation, why bother adding 200 new instructions to the chip? Sounds very reminiscent of Transmeta-style "code morphing" technology. I'm hard pressed to call this binary translation -- TFA makes it sound like you can feed an x86 binary directly to this chip, and it will run (albeit more slowly).
The Dragon CPU doesn't have an Intel-compatible ISA, so it doesn't automatically inherit all the Intel-only apps. It's based on the (unlicensed) Mips III ISA. The lack of a license is also why they don't advertise it as such.
But the cavalier attitude to IP is also what will bite them in the arse.
You said it! If you read TFA, you'd see that Godson-3 actually does claim to have x86 compatible instructions -- and runs at about 80% of the speed of a real Intel chip. One of Intel's people was mentioned in the article as being very interested when details of the chip are released, because he's curious how exactly they're virtualizing the x86 instruction set without a license. (IIRC, Transmeta had to license some Intel patents to make their Crusoe chips, and they were doing something similar.)
Psystar's ability to prevail on the issue of having the latitude to load Apple's OS on its own hardware, given it has a licensing agreement with the company, may prove an easier road to hoe, legal experts note.
Erm, what licensing agreement does Psystar have with Apple? My understanding was that they had none -- they were reselling shrink-wrapped copies of Apple's OS, and providing software tools to allow installation on their clone hardware.
Or am I totally misinterpreting what the author is stating here?
Not only does apple not use the TPM chip (it's completely absent on all recent Intel Macs), but they use EFI instead of a traditional BIOS. So yes, they are "ditching legacy crap," to paraphrase you. In fact, they also lack other legacy connectors typically found on most PCs (e.g., PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, parallel printer ports, and so on).
In fact, the presence of EFI created problems for people wanting to install alternate operating systems prior to the advent of BootCamp.
But while they've had their legendary failures(who hasn't? Hello, Apple Newton), we don't give them enough credit for what they do right.
Yes, except you're trying to equate the likes of "Bob" and the oh-so-many security flaws of Windows and IE with the Newton. While those other failures can be squarely attributed to (a lack of) technical merit, the Newton certainly didn't fail due to technical merit. There are still things that the iPhone and iPod Touch don't do that the Newton did remarkably well, and with fewer resources. The Newton was rushed to market because John Sculley was afraid that other products would beat the Newton to market and thus own that market; as it turns out, his fears were unfounded, because most first-gen PDAs were garbage. That the original interface was rushed, and the handwriting recognition would need one more iteration to be truly useful, was a major issue. As another commenter noted, poor marketing was another contributing factor, though I would argue not the only one.
The problem is, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. No matter how technically promising your idea might be, people are very unforgiving.
As for Microsoft developing good games before the Bungie acquisition... I think it's fair to say all of their game development talent was purchased; they had none to speak of to begin with. And since they have subsequently lost Bungie, I'd argue that this strategy doesn't work well in the long run.
furthermore, this observation of still making $ in a world without copyright can be extrapolated to any other media, even book writers. jk rowling would still be very rich in a world without copyright because she would sell all sorts of ancillary products and sell her script to hollywood.
And this is where you completely lose credibility. Let's analyze your reasoning here. You're saying J.K. Rowling is going to give away her books, which take a substantial amount of time to write. How is she going to pay the bills while she's working on her books? Oh, right, she has to get a job "like everybody else." Well, she did that until she got established as a writer and proved there was a market for her writing.
I don't know if you've ever done anything creative in your life (and low-budget horror movies don't necessarily count in my book), but it's substantially distracting and draining to try to hold down a "regular job" and do writing in your spare time. It's beyond doubt that Rowling's productive output would have been much lower if she were not able to reap the financial benefits of her writing, and I doubt she would have had the incentive to produce nearly as many Harry Potter books if she had been forced to work in a "straight" job. That, incidentally, is the stated goal of copyright law -- to provide that incentive, to provide a limited time monopoly on the rights to one's creative works in exchange for an incentive to produce more. (That copyright law has been perverted is a separate issue, and a legitimate one.) As an Anonymous Coward posted in another response, copyright law never existed simply because copying used to be difficult to do. Many advances in technology have made copying of bits easier -- let's not forget the printing press. There's nothing magic about electronic media; the only difference is that once the bits are in an electronic form, the speed of copying grows tremendously (exponentially if every consumer is a potential "printing press").
So maybe Rowling could leverage her books, as you claim, to sell ancillary goods and services, and that would provide the money to kick-start her next wave of book writing. Except many of those business deals take time to bring to fruition, and there's no guarantee that any will succeed. A reasonable person under such circumstances might give up on writing altogether, rather than wait for a paycheck that might never come.
Back to your thesis. Let's suppose, somehow, that Rowling gets over the energy hump necessary to crank out the first book or two under this hypothetical regime of yours. She's supposed to sell a script to Hollywood, you claim. How is that supposed to happen? Hollywood could hire any writer to adapt her books (remember, they're freely available in electronic format). Why pay her when they could get some cut-rate in-house writer to do the script and do it the way the studio wants? If copyright is dead, she can't assert her rights over the material, so what's to force a movie studio to give her any money or creative control? Nothing, that's what.
Let's pretend, then, that there's some magical way for Rowling to assert some kind of IP rights to the books that are freely available as bits in the Internet cloud, some way for her to force the studio to give her money for writing a screenplay. Sort of like copyright, except that copyright doesn't apply to bits in the electronic world, only to bits in the "real" world. How you draw that line isn't really clear to me, but whatever. Let's say Rowling has this ability to exert control over a movie studio that she doesn't have over any Joe Schmo with a computer and an internet connection.
But why would a movie studio bother to create a Harry Potter movie? Special effects and elaborate sets cost money. Once the movie is out in the real world, anyone can sit in a movie theater with a video camera and capture that film, then distribute it over the internet digitally. Even if that were not the case, as soon as the fil
It's a pity I don't have the mod points for you. I really don't understand why circletimessquare gets the mod points he does -- they're almost entirely undeserved, and that especially holds true in this case.
Somebody, please, mod this post up!
Your second paragraph alone is worth a +5 Insightful, IMHO.
I suspect that too many people who hate the RIAA are modding this guy (circletimessquare) up without considering the fact that his arguments are sheer crap. Just because the RIAA has abused copyright law doesn't make copyright law a bad thing intrinsically. You can oppose the RIAA and the MPAA and other copyright abusers without throwing out all copyright. (The same holds true for patent abusers not being sufficient justification for throwing away the patent system.) Reform is what's needed.
Well, for starters, there are a bunch of "Christians" out there (and I put that label in scare quotes for a reason, because I don't consider them true Christians, even though that's what they call themselves) who believe in a particular interpretation of the Book of Revelation as a literal prophecy of the future. These people want to hasten the coming of the Apocalypse so they can bring about the Second Coming, the Rapture, etc. In order to do so, they will pursue policies to hasten the coming of what they believe is the Apocalypse, by any means necessary. Paradoxically, some of these loonies are big supporters of Israel, but not because they truly love Israel or its people. (I see nothing intrinsically wrong with supporting Israel, it's just that these particular people have an agenda that's bad for the human race as a whole.)
Now, you could dismiss this as a fringe group, except that several preeminent politicians and ministers espouse this belief system. Of course, we have the Rev. John Hagee (who's been involved in a bit of controversy lately), but also political figures like Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich. At least one political figure (Gingrich, I believe, but not 100% certain on that) opined that it was OK for us to essentially destroy the environment because Jesus' return was imminent. It was a pretty famous quote at the time, but I've not been able to find it via Google search.
In the current White House administration, George W. Bush seems to be cut of this particular cloth; Cheney, perhaps less so, though I'm not really certain.
As for confiscation of his chemicals, it sounds like he had way more chemicals than he should need[...]
So the government is in the position to decide how much of something a person needs in their home? "Hey, this guy's a Mormon and he's hoarding a year's worth of food in his home! Nobody should need to keep a year's worth of food in his home!" (Many of my Mormon friends routinely keep that much food on hand, and I'm told this is common.) "Hey, this guy's an audiophile and he's got scads of speakers and amplifiers all over the place! Nobody needs that much consumer electronics in his home!" Or, particularly relevant to people in places like Arizona (where I live), "Hey, this guy has a huge gun collection! Nobody should ever need more than one firearm! Heck, who needs guns at all, unless they're in law enforcement?"
If you want to argue about proper storage, fine. But don't start talking about what you think someone needs or doesn't need. That's not for you to decide.
TFA also says that some were potentially explosive and doesn't mention his qualifications. [...] his qualifications sound like a hobbyist not a professional.
He's a retired chemist. That's plenty of qualification in my book!
In case you missed it, the first five words of TFA were:
Victor Deeb, the retired chemist[...]
How is it that you could miss the very first sentence of the article and say you don't see any mention of his qualifications, and then turn around and make the claim that you think you know what his qualifications "sound like"?
Also, it seems that logos can in fact be copyrighted. The current "5 interlocking rings" logo design was first widely used in 1920, so you'd think that the copyright would have expired by now.
The Olympic Movement is very protective of its symbols; among other things, it claims an exclusive copyright on any arrangement of five rings, irrespective of alignment, color or lack thereof, as well as to any use of the word Olympic. They have taken action against numerous groups seen to have violated this trademark[...]
This article is confusing because it uses "copyright" and "trademark" seemingly interchangeably. If you follow the link to the article about Legend of the Five Rings, a card game published by Wizards of the Coast, you find out that WotC ran afoul of the United States Olympic Committee because "a special Act of the U.S. Congress gave them the exclusive rights to any symbol consisting of five interlocking rings." So it seems that the IOC isn't the only rights holder here, and that special laws were enacted to grant perpetual rights to any variation of the logo that might be conceived.
It wouldn't surprise me if the legal situation at YouTube was that they yank any clip against which there is a properly filed copyright complaint, and that they follow up later on the actual applicability of copyright law.
It's hard to see, though, where the copyright claim comes in. The Olympic logo is trademarked, but copyright law doesn't apply, so it's not clear to me how a DMCA notice could be served, since the DMCA strictly deals with copyright and not trademark law. Maybe if the video in question uses elements from Olympic theme music. But even then, the SCOTUS has ruled that satire is a completely and absolutely protected form of speech, and this protest video surely qualifies -- even to the point of modifying the Olympic logo to turn the interlocking rings into handcuffs.
I think the telling point as to whether they cave to pressure from the IOC and China will be when their lawyers have a chance to review the footage and determine that there is nothing infringing going on, if they put the video back.
But it's not really up to Google's or YouTube's lawyers to do this. The people who posted the video in the first place have to file a DMCA counter-claim, either claiming that they do in fact own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice themselves do not own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice do not otherwise have the right to issue a take-down notice.
The DMCA has provisions to sanction those who issue false take-down notices. Specifically, filing a false notice opens one up to being sued for damages by the party affected by the take-down. Now, apparently a copyright holder doesn't have to take fair use into account when filing a take-down notice, but they open themselves up to all kinds of liability if the other party can make a valid fair use defense.
Oberg goes on to quote 'There is a widespread notion that meteorites falling to Earth arrive red hot.' He is correct here. In fact, meteorites falling through the atmosphere typically explode, shattering into dozens or hundreds of pieces; something that occurs at the point when the dynamic pressure on the leading face exceeds the yield stress of the material. This occurs for meteoroids of all compositions, including nickle-iron meteorites that are far more robust than hydrazine tanks. If the atmospheric entry of meteorites is relevant, it hardly bolsters the case that a tank will enter intact (and if it's not relevent, why did Oberg bring it up?)
I'm not sure why the submitter seems to have only partially quoted Oberg here (apparently out of context), and ignored the point Oberg was trying to make. Although meteorites entering the atmosphere generate a fireball, there seems to be ample evidence that the objects themselves remain cold even upon impact.
I'll cite a few articles here: From this NASA page titled "Hot Meteors and Cold Meteorites," under the section titled "Meteorites Don't Pop Corn," we have this salient paragraph:
Objects from space that enter Earth's atmosphere are -- like space itself -- very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. "The outer layers are warmed by atmospheric friction, and little bits flake away as they descend," explains Yeomans. This is called ablation and it's a wonderful way to remove heat. (Some commercial heat shields use ablation to keep spacecraft cool when they re- enter Earth's atmosphere.) "Rocky asteroids are poor conductors of heat," Yeomans continued. "Their central regions remain cool even as the hot outer layers are ablated away."
Some commentators have claimed that meteorites, especially those of moderate size like scientists believe this one was, are cold when they hit the ground -- not hot. However, there's no conclusive proof about whether meteorites are hot or cold upon impact. Available evidence indicates that just after landing, meteorites are cold or only slightly warm [source: Cornell University Astronomy Department]. Meteorite impacts aren't known to cause major fires or to scorch large areas.
A more nuanced perspective is provided by this amateur astronomer who specializes in the study of meteors (specifically meteor spectroscopy). It's a short read, but a little too long to block quote here. Suffice it to say, there are numerous factors, including the composition and albedo (reflectivity) of the object, whether it was camping out in the Earth's shadow prior to impact (and for how long), the trajectory and velocity upon entering the atmosphere, etc.
Seems to me that the submitter is conflating two separate thoughts. Oberg brings up meteorites because they can and do impact the Earth while still cold, or only moderately warm. That's as far as the analogy goes -- he apparently wants to make the case that an object can remain cold enough that hydrazine fuel inside the container in question might not vaporize prior to impact. Whether we want to extend the analogy to the question of whether the container will shatter during re-entry is a question best asked of metallurgists or material scientists, and that I suspect depends entirely on the composition and manufacture of the fuel tank. (For that matter, whether a meteorite shatters upon re-entry would seem to be a function of the composition of the object, as well as the stresses it encounters -- and those stresses would be a function of speed and trajectory, as well as shape, would they not?)
Actually, to be even more anal, the plural form "kelvins" should only be used to indicate temperature intervals (differences between temperatures); when indicating specific temperatures, the singular form is used. Take a gander at this section of the Wikipedia article for examples.
And remember, there's always a bigger pedant out there somewhere.:-)
He never said that. He said about 1/3 of the top 15 cards are what the "Crysis Crowd" would call obsolete -- in other words, not "shiny Crysis material." He never said any of the cards in that list were "Crysis material."
Besides the increased number of general purpose registers on x86-64, there's also the change in calling convention -- on 32-bit x86, function arguments are pushed onto the stack, whereas on x86-64, the arguments are passed via register. That's another reason that apps like Photoshop run faster when compiled as 64-bit x86 code.
Neurons are far too large to be affected by QM effects.
Not so fast. There are structures inside of neurons which are known to vibrate/resonate in ways that are describable in quantum-mechanical terms. Yes, Virginia, there is quantum chemistry, and there is quantum biology. These cytoskeletal structures (microtubules, IIRC) are offered up as a possible candidate structure for quantum-level computation.
Now, whether a quantum computer can actually do things that a conventional computer can not is a hotly debated topic, and recent thinking seems to suggest that there is only a limited set of problems for which quantum computers can actually benefit us -- you may never be able to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time with a quantum computer. The other question is whether a sophisticated computational structure inside a neuron provides any benefit over a relatively dumb computational mechanism (e.g., thresholding), since you still have a finite number of inputs and a finite output, and a very limited vocabulary with which to express yourself (i.e., you either fire or you don't).
In Arizona, it's nigh impossible to find a car that doesn't have air conditioning... unless you're talking about a historic/classic car. And even in those cases, the owners who rebuild the car often retrofit A/C into them because it's a modern amenity that nobody wants to live without.
Cars in the American Southwest really need to have air conditioning to be practical. I'm sure someone will make a snide comment about "unsustainable living in a desert," but in truth, we're probably a little better than some other parts of the country. Case in point, a recent Wired article on rethinking what it means to be green made the case that a typical Arizona home puts less carbon into the atmosphere due to air conditioning in the summer than a New England home puts into the atmosphere due to heating in the winter.
Re:The effect of being hit by an SUV; remember?
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It's awesome to hear from you again, man. I lost track of your situation for a while, so this was a welcome update. I also read your follow-up comment about the TDI -- I'd considered getting a VW diesel car when I was shopping about a year ago, but ultimately decided to get a Nissan Versa instead. Ultimately, I think it was all the horror stories I'd been hearing about VW cars recently (poor reliability, etc.) that steered me to the Versa, plus the lower cost of the Nissan offering.
You know, I was tempted to rag on you for your mis-use of "skewered" -- the word you're probably looking for is "skewed" -- but I think you're reaching a bit trying to equate racial bias to other forms of bias that have to do with other group affiliations. And to me, that's even more egregious than choosing the wrong word.
It's funny you bring up the OJ trial. I had an interesting discussion once with one of my doctors about that trial. My doctor stated unequivocally that it was clear that evidence was tampered with -- some blood samples from the crime scene and OJ's vehicle contained a substance that is used in vials of blood to prevent coagulation. My doctor put it thus: "It's possible that OJ did the crimes, and it's possible that he is innocent. But what likely happened is that the LAPD thought they had a good case, but not a great case, so they felt tempted to 'fortify' the evidence... and now because of that tampering, we'll never know what really happened."
If anything, the OJ trial was more about the racism endemic in the LAPD than it was about the racism of white people in general, or the "tribal prejudice" (there's a loaded, cringe-worthy term for ya!) of black people and white people.
I don't think nerds see themselves as a cohesive social group with a "common struggle" the way African-Americans do, so I'm skeptical of any attempt to draw parallels. While the United States has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, I don't think you can make the case that nerds and geeks have suffered the way other racial minorities have suffered.
It's true that Slashdot would not have covered Reiser's trial if not for ReiserFS and the Linux connection. Where I disagree with you is the statement that most "of us" would assume Hans' guilt. That's quite a bit of presumption. I have no hard evidence or models to suggest what the average Slashdot reader's reaction would or would not be under different circumstances, but I think it's a given that nerds aren't that unlike other people -- some will take an agnostic standpoint (i.e., they have no knowledge of whether he "did" or "didn't," and won't speculate), some will assume Hans' guilt, and some will insist he's innocent.
Presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of our legal system. Before the conclusion of the trial, I think anyone espousing the viewpoint that Reiser was innocent could be forgiven simply on those grounds alone. But even if someone still holds that viewpoint, or at the very least styles themselves a skeptic on the grounds that no body was ever produced (and the evidence is largely circumstantial), I don't think that gives you the right to accuse that person of being racially or "tribally" prejudiced.
As if nerds really see themselves as part of some tribe. I sure as hell don't, and I wouldn't give special treatment to some other nerd just because s/he is a kindred spirit.
FWIW, count me among the "he probably did it" crowd. I just find the lack of a body to be troubling.
People have even been grabbed off the street by the court sherrif (with the assistance of the police) when the jury pool was exhausted prematurely.
The same thing can and does periodically happen in Arizona (and I believe in California as well). There was a case that made local news in AZ a few years back -- a so-called "deadbeat dad" was in custody, but would have walked for lack of a jury. The judge felt that would be a miscarriage of justice, since the man in question was difficult to track down; the judge wanted to hold him responsible for child support payments he had been missing.
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Wrong country there, chief. It was New Mexico. (Although from what I understand, there are some ignorant doofs in the U.S. who think New Mexico is not part of the United States. Go figure.)
The Goog abides?
You know Napoleon wasn't actually French, right? His family was originally from Tuscany, and moved to Corsica. Corsica became a French territory just a year before he was born.
If I read the GP correctly, he was suggesting that you buy some kind of USB drive (with some kind of DRM hardware crap baked in) and take it to your local Blockbuster to have a movie loaded onto it. The DRM on the USB drive simultaneously locks the video to the drive and enforces whatever the time limit is on viewing the movie.
So the drive might be expensive, but a one-time purchase. Of course, if Blockbuster were to really push something like this, they might subsidize the cost of the drive in exchange for locking the customer into some kind of contract. Or maybe they'll just subsidize the cost of the USB stick altogether, since it might only be useful to someone who wants to transport Blockbuster films.
Considering how crappy broadband is still in most of the U.S. (and how limited the video-on-demand selection is through cable operators), video rental stores aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but I can see a huge advantage to reducing physical inventory at most stores. All modern game consoles have USB ports, so if a major player like Blockbuster parters with Sony or Microsoft, this idea could work.
But you're right, renting a USB drive would make little to no sense, unless the store (a) recycled [i.e., periodically reimage them with new movie data] the USB sticks -- kind of a given -- and (b) charged a very hefty replacement fee if you lost one. Letting the customer buy a specialized USB stick that can be reused over and over is probably the smarter way to make something like this work.
Yep, that's an adequate summary of this whole thread.
So far, looks like the parent post by circletimessquare got modded down as "Offtopic," which I think one could make a valid argument for (whether or not I think the moderation is "fair" being a different issue).
Seriously, why take this guy's bait? He's karma-whoring, IMHO.
For what it's worth, I think you had a valid point in that it's not a good idea for any Western power to get involved in these matters. We can certainly express an opinion, but when it comes to "calls to action" like circletimessquare seems to be advocating, do we really even know enough about these kinds of situations to inject ourselves into them and try to change them? What if we choose wrong and wind up creating more problems for ourselves (or the people we are ostensibly trying to help) in the long run?
I also want to take exception to circletimessquare's apparent assertion that asking "What if this happens here?" is somehow being selfish. (If that's not the point he was making, then I apologize, but that's what I gleaned from his comment.) I think that's a perfectly valid question being posed in the summary. Whether the current anti-government protestors are in fact anti-democratic (as many analysts believe) is not the point. The fact is that the democratic regime in Thailand which is currently in power undermines its own credibility when it tries to suppress dissent and shut down opposition web sites. This is a scary precedent, and I would hate to see something like that happen here.
In point of fact, according to Lawrence Lessig, we may already be heading in the direction that the Thai government is -- did you see the recent article on BoingBoing about the coming iPatriot Act? This legislation is sitting on a shelf or in someone's desk at the Justice Department, waiting for the right excuse to be dusted off and implemented. The video is embedded in the linked page -- Lessig's comments on the iPatriot Act are about 6 minutes in. Note that he also discusses how the Patriot Act was already pretty much completed long before 9/11 happened.
But TFA doesn't say "binary translation." At all. What it says is:
Which implies strongly that this "simulation" is happening entirely in silicon -- if all they were doing is simply binary translation, why bother adding 200 new instructions to the chip? Sounds very reminiscent of Transmeta-style "code morphing" technology. I'm hard pressed to call this binary translation -- TFA makes it sound like you can feed an x86 binary directly to this chip, and it will run (albeit more slowly).
You said it! If you read TFA, you'd see that Godson-3 actually does claim to have x86 compatible instructions -- and runs at about 80% of the speed of a real Intel chip. One of Intel's people was mentioned in the article as being very interested when details of the chip are released, because he's curious how exactly they're virtualizing the x86 instruction set without a license. (IIRC, Transmeta had to license some Intel patents to make their Crusoe chips, and they were doing something similar.)
From TFA:
Erm, what licensing agreement does Psystar have with Apple? My understanding was that they had none -- they were reselling shrink-wrapped copies of Apple's OS, and providing software tools to allow installation on their clone hardware.
Or am I totally misinterpreting what the author is stating here?
Not only does apple not use the TPM chip (it's completely absent on all recent Intel Macs), but they use EFI instead of a traditional BIOS. So yes, they are "ditching legacy crap," to paraphrase you. In fact, they also lack other legacy connectors typically found on most PCs (e.g., PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, parallel printer ports, and so on).
In fact, the presence of EFI created problems for people wanting to install alternate operating systems prior to the advent of BootCamp.
Yes, except you're trying to equate the likes of "Bob" and the oh-so-many security flaws of Windows and IE with the Newton. While those other failures can be squarely attributed to (a lack of) technical merit, the Newton certainly didn't fail due to technical merit. There are still things that the iPhone and iPod Touch don't do that the Newton did remarkably well, and with fewer resources. The Newton was rushed to market because John Sculley was afraid that other products would beat the Newton to market and thus own that market; as it turns out, his fears were unfounded, because most first-gen PDAs were garbage. That the original interface was rushed, and the handwriting recognition would need one more iteration to be truly useful, was a major issue. As another commenter noted, poor marketing was another contributing factor, though I would argue not the only one.
The problem is, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. No matter how technically promising your idea might be, people are very unforgiving.
As for Microsoft developing good games before the Bungie acquisition... I think it's fair to say all of their game development talent was purchased; they had none to speak of to begin with. And since they have subsequently lost Bungie, I'd argue that this strategy doesn't work well in the long run.
And this is where you completely lose credibility. Let's analyze your reasoning here. You're saying J.K. Rowling is going to give away her books, which take a substantial amount of time to write. How is she going to pay the bills while she's working on her books? Oh, right, she has to get a job "like everybody else." Well, she did that until she got established as a writer and proved there was a market for her writing.
I don't know if you've ever done anything creative in your life (and low-budget horror movies don't necessarily count in my book), but it's substantially distracting and draining to try to hold down a "regular job" and do writing in your spare time. It's beyond doubt that Rowling's productive output would have been much lower if she were not able to reap the financial benefits of her writing, and I doubt she would have had the incentive to produce nearly as many Harry Potter books if she had been forced to work in a "straight" job. That, incidentally, is the stated goal of copyright law -- to provide that incentive, to provide a limited time monopoly on the rights to one's creative works in exchange for an incentive to produce more. (That copyright law has been perverted is a separate issue, and a legitimate one.) As an Anonymous Coward posted in another response, copyright law never existed simply because copying used to be difficult to do. Many advances in technology have made copying of bits easier -- let's not forget the printing press. There's nothing magic about electronic media; the only difference is that once the bits are in an electronic form, the speed of copying grows tremendously (exponentially if every consumer is a potential "printing press").
So maybe Rowling could leverage her books, as you claim, to sell ancillary goods and services, and that would provide the money to kick-start her next wave of book writing. Except many of those business deals take time to bring to fruition, and there's no guarantee that any will succeed. A reasonable person under such circumstances might give up on writing altogether, rather than wait for a paycheck that might never come.
Back to your thesis. Let's suppose, somehow, that Rowling gets over the energy hump necessary to crank out the first book or two under this hypothetical regime of yours. She's supposed to sell a script to Hollywood, you claim. How is that supposed to happen? Hollywood could hire any writer to adapt her books (remember, they're freely available in electronic format). Why pay her when they could get some cut-rate in-house writer to do the script and do it the way the studio wants? If copyright is dead, she can't assert her rights over the material, so what's to force a movie studio to give her any money or creative control? Nothing, that's what.
Let's pretend, then, that there's some magical way for Rowling to assert some kind of IP rights to the books that are freely available as bits in the Internet cloud, some way for her to force the studio to give her money for writing a screenplay. Sort of like copyright, except that copyright doesn't apply to bits in the electronic world, only to bits in the "real" world. How you draw that line isn't really clear to me, but whatever. Let's say Rowling has this ability to exert control over a movie studio that she doesn't have over any Joe Schmo with a computer and an internet connection.
But why would a movie studio bother to create a Harry Potter movie? Special effects and elaborate sets cost money. Once the movie is out in the real world, anyone can sit in a movie theater with a video camera and capture that film, then distribute it over the internet digitally. Even if that were not the case, as soon as the fil
It's a pity I don't have the mod points for you. I really don't understand why circletimessquare gets the mod points he does -- they're almost entirely undeserved, and that especially holds true in this case.
Somebody, please, mod this post up!
Your second paragraph alone is worth a +5 Insightful, IMHO.
I suspect that too many people who hate the RIAA are modding this guy (circletimessquare) up without considering the fact that his arguments are sheer crap. Just because the RIAA has abused copyright law doesn't make copyright law a bad thing intrinsically. You can oppose the RIAA and the MPAA and other copyright abusers without throwing out all copyright. (The same holds true for patent abusers not being sufficient justification for throwing away the patent system.) Reform is what's needed.
Well, for starters, there are a bunch of "Christians" out there (and I put that label in scare quotes for a reason, because I don't consider them true Christians, even though that's what they call themselves) who believe in a particular interpretation of the Book of Revelation as a literal prophecy of the future. These people want to hasten the coming of the Apocalypse so they can bring about the Second Coming, the Rapture, etc. In order to do so, they will pursue policies to hasten the coming of what they believe is the Apocalypse, by any means necessary. Paradoxically, some of these loonies are big supporters of Israel, but not because they truly love Israel or its people. (I see nothing intrinsically wrong with supporting Israel, it's just that these particular people have an agenda that's bad for the human race as a whole.)
Now, you could dismiss this as a fringe group, except that several preeminent politicians and ministers espouse this belief system. Of course, we have the Rev. John Hagee (who's been involved in a bit of controversy lately), but also political figures like Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich. At least one political figure (Gingrich, I believe, but not 100% certain on that) opined that it was OK for us to essentially destroy the environment because Jesus' return was imminent. It was a pretty famous quote at the time, but I've not been able to find it via Google search.
In the current White House administration, George W. Bush seems to be cut of this particular cloth; Cheney, perhaps less so, though I'm not really certain.
So the government is in the position to decide how much of something a person needs in their home? "Hey, this guy's a Mormon and he's hoarding a year's worth of food in his home! Nobody should need to keep a year's worth of food in his home!" (Many of my Mormon friends routinely keep that much food on hand, and I'm told this is common.) "Hey, this guy's an audiophile and he's got scads of speakers and amplifiers all over the place! Nobody needs that much consumer electronics in his home!" Or, particularly relevant to people in places like Arizona (where I live), "Hey, this guy has a huge gun collection! Nobody should ever need more than one firearm! Heck, who needs guns at all, unless they're in law enforcement?"
If you want to argue about proper storage, fine. But don't start talking about what you think someone needs or doesn't need. That's not for you to decide.
He's a retired chemist. That's plenty of qualification in my book!
In case you missed it, the first five words of TFA were:
How is it that you could miss the very first sentence of the article and say you don't see any mention of his qualifications, and then turn around and make the claim that you think you know what his qualifications "sound like"?
Hate to reply to myself, but I guess I need to correct a couple things I said.
First, I meant to say "parody" and not "satire." It seems that there is a legal distinction between the two, and parody is considered a more protected fair use than satire.
Also, it seems that logos can in fact be copyrighted. The current "5 interlocking rings" logo design was first widely used in 1920, so you'd think that the copyright would have expired by now.
The Wikipedia article isn't exactly enlightening, either:
This article is confusing because it uses "copyright" and "trademark" seemingly interchangeably. If you follow the link to the article about Legend of the Five Rings, a card game published by Wizards of the Coast, you find out that WotC ran afoul of the United States Olympic Committee because "a special Act of the U.S. Congress gave them the exclusive rights to any symbol consisting of five interlocking rings." So it seems that the IOC isn't the only rights holder here, and that special laws were enacted to grant perpetual rights to any variation of the logo that might be conceived.
It's hard to see, though, where the copyright claim comes in. The Olympic logo is trademarked, but copyright law doesn't apply, so it's not clear to me how a DMCA notice could be served, since the DMCA strictly deals with copyright and not trademark law. Maybe if the video in question uses elements from Olympic theme music. But even then, the SCOTUS has ruled that satire is a completely and absolutely protected form of speech, and this protest video surely qualifies -- even to the point of modifying the Olympic logo to turn the interlocking rings into handcuffs.
But it's not really up to Google's or YouTube's lawyers to do this. The people who posted the video in the first place have to file a DMCA counter-claim, either claiming that they do in fact own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice themselves do not own the copyright to the work in question, or that the people issuing the take-down notice do not otherwise have the right to issue a take-down notice.
The DMCA has provisions to sanction those who issue false take-down notices. Specifically, filing a false notice opens one up to being sued for damages by the party affected by the take-down. Now, apparently a copyright holder doesn't have to take fair use into account when filing a take-down notice, but they open themselves up to all kinds of liability if the other party can make a valid fair use defense.
Standard "I am not a lawyer" disclaimers apply.
The submitter wrote:
I'm not sure why the submitter seems to have only partially quoted Oberg here (apparently out of context), and ignored the point Oberg was trying to make. Although meteorites entering the atmosphere generate a fireball, there seems to be ample evidence that the objects themselves remain cold even upon impact.
I'll cite a few articles here:
From this NASA page titled "Hot Meteors and Cold Meteorites," under the section titled "Meteorites Don't Pop Corn," we have this salient paragraph:
A slightly less assertive article on Howstuffworks is a little more reserved in its claims:
A more nuanced perspective is provided by this amateur astronomer who specializes in the study of meteors (specifically meteor spectroscopy). It's a short read, but a little too long to block quote here. Suffice it to say, there are numerous factors, including the composition and albedo (reflectivity) of the object, whether it was camping out in the Earth's shadow prior to impact (and for how long), the trajectory and velocity upon entering the atmosphere, etc.
Seems to me that the submitter is conflating two separate thoughts. Oberg brings up meteorites because they can and do impact the Earth while still cold, or only moderately warm. That's as far as the analogy goes -- he apparently wants to make the case that an object can remain cold enough that hydrazine fuel inside the container in question might not vaporize prior to impact. Whether we want to extend the analogy to the question of whether the container will shatter during re-entry is a question best asked of metallurgists or material scientists, and that I suspect depends entirely on the composition and manufacture of the fuel tank. (For that matter, whether a meteorite shatters upon re-entry would seem to be a function of the composition of the object, as well as the stresses it encounters -- and those stresses would be a function of speed and trajectory, as well as shape, would they not?)
Actually, to be even more anal, the plural form "kelvins" should only be used to indicate temperature intervals (differences between temperatures); when indicating specific temperatures, the singular form is used. Take a gander at this section of the Wikipedia article for examples.
And remember, there's always a bigger pedant out there somewhere. :-)
He never said that. He said about 1/3 of the top 15 cards are what the "Crysis Crowd" would call obsolete -- in other words, not "shiny Crysis material." He never said any of the cards in that list were "Crysis material."
Besides the increased number of general purpose registers on x86-64, there's also the change in calling convention -- on 32-bit x86, function arguments are pushed onto the stack, whereas on x86-64, the arguments are passed via register. That's another reason that apps like Photoshop run faster when compiled as 64-bit x86 code.
Not so fast. There are structures inside of neurons which are known to vibrate/resonate in ways that are describable in quantum-mechanical terms. Yes, Virginia, there is quantum chemistry, and there is quantum biology. These cytoskeletal structures (microtubules, IIRC) are offered up as a possible candidate structure for quantum-level computation.
Now, whether a quantum computer can actually do things that a conventional computer can not is a hotly debated topic, and recent thinking seems to suggest that there is only a limited set of problems for which quantum computers can actually benefit us -- you may never be able to solve NP-hard problems in polynomial time with a quantum computer. The other question is whether a sophisticated computational structure inside a neuron provides any benefit over a relatively dumb computational mechanism (e.g., thresholding), since you still have a finite number of inputs and a finite output, and a very limited vocabulary with which to express yourself (i.e., you either fire or you don't).
In Arizona, it's nigh impossible to find a car that doesn't have air conditioning... unless you're talking about a historic/classic car. And even in those cases, the owners who rebuild the car often retrofit A/C into them because it's a modern amenity that nobody wants to live without.
Cars in the American Southwest really need to have air conditioning to be practical. I'm sure someone will make a snide comment about "unsustainable living in a desert," but in truth, we're probably a little better than some other parts of the country. Case in point, a recent Wired article on rethinking what it means to be green made the case that a typical Arizona home puts less carbon into the atmosphere due to air conditioning in the summer than a New England home puts into the atmosphere due to heating in the winter.
It's awesome to hear from you again, man. I lost track of your situation for a while, so this was a welcome update. I also read your follow-up comment about the TDI -- I'd considered getting a VW diesel car when I was shopping about a year ago, but ultimately decided to get a Nissan Versa instead. Ultimately, I think it was all the horror stories I'd been hearing about VW cars recently (poor reliability, etc.) that steered me to the Versa, plus the lower cost of the Nissan offering.
That said, how is your new VW faring?
You know, I was tempted to rag on you for your mis-use of "skewered" -- the word you're probably looking for is "skewed" -- but I think you're reaching a bit trying to equate racial bias to other forms of bias that have to do with other group affiliations. And to me, that's even more egregious than choosing the wrong word.
It's funny you bring up the OJ trial. I had an interesting discussion once with one of my doctors about that trial. My doctor stated unequivocally that it was clear that evidence was tampered with -- some blood samples from the crime scene and OJ's vehicle contained a substance that is used in vials of blood to prevent coagulation. My doctor put it thus: "It's possible that OJ did the crimes, and it's possible that he is innocent. But what likely happened is that the LAPD thought they had a good case, but not a great case, so they felt tempted to 'fortify' the evidence... and now because of that tampering, we'll never know what really happened."
If anything, the OJ trial was more about the racism endemic in the LAPD than it was about the racism of white people in general, or the "tribal prejudice" (there's a loaded, cringe-worthy term for ya!) of black people and white people.
I don't think nerds see themselves as a cohesive social group with a "common struggle" the way African-Americans do, so I'm skeptical of any attempt to draw parallels. While the United States has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism, I don't think you can make the case that nerds and geeks have suffered the way other racial minorities have suffered.
It's true that Slashdot would not have covered Reiser's trial if not for ReiserFS and the Linux connection. Where I disagree with you is the statement that most "of us" would assume Hans' guilt. That's quite a bit of presumption. I have no hard evidence or models to suggest what the average Slashdot reader's reaction would or would not be under different circumstances, but I think it's a given that nerds aren't that unlike other people -- some will take an agnostic standpoint (i.e., they have no knowledge of whether he "did" or "didn't," and won't speculate), some will assume Hans' guilt, and some will insist he's innocent.
Presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of our legal system. Before the conclusion of the trial, I think anyone espousing the viewpoint that Reiser was innocent could be forgiven simply on those grounds alone. But even if someone still holds that viewpoint, or at the very least styles themselves a skeptic on the grounds that no body was ever produced (and the evidence is largely circumstantial), I don't think that gives you the right to accuse that person of being racially or "tribally" prejudiced.
As if nerds really see themselves as part of some tribe. I sure as hell don't, and I wouldn't give special treatment to some other nerd just because s/he is a kindred spirit.
FWIW, count me among the "he probably did it" crowd. I just find the lack of a body to be troubling.
The same thing can and does periodically happen in Arizona (and I believe in California as well). There was a case that made local news in AZ a few years back -- a so-called "deadbeat dad" was in custody, but would have walked for lack of a jury. The judge felt that would be a miscarriage of justice, since the man in question was difficult to track down; the judge wanted to hold him responsible for child support payments he had been missing.