Nature doesn't give a shit what we do. We don't have it in our capacity to make this world uninhabitable. . . . We would kill off ourselves long before killing [the hardier species]. . . . My point? People need to take climate change seriously without frothing at the mouth and declaring humanity doomed. Humanity isn't doomed, . ..
See, to me, if all that were going to happen were that we would change the climate enough to reduce the population of humans by a percent or so (65 million+ deaths), that'd be reason enough for a thorough, deliberate panic.
It seems likely that things will turn out somewhat worse than that.
To make a living, you must do something you do well enough that people will pay you well enough for it that you can live well.
Well, happily, we tend to love to do things that we do well. So long as that happens to be a thing that people will pay us well for, all's well as ends well.
(However, when your talents are mediocre or your passion is pointless, you're, well, "out of luck".)
I think patents are too expensive for the average individual and too cheap for the average corporation.
Hmmm. What to do? What to do? If only there were some way to charge big corporations a much higher fee that they charge individuals.
(The real money, of course, not in the PTO fees, but in the lawyers' fees to write up the patent and get it allowed. Raising the large entity fees by 10x would improve on half this issue, but the individuals still would have trouble affording a lawyer/agent.)
If beer.com sold for $7 million, then sex.com is worth at least $14 million. Sure, more people drink more beer than have sex, but these guys will be selling selling online -- you can't delivery beer through a browser.
The easiest way to game the system might be to simply enter your floor number over and over, to fool the computer into thinking there's an increased demand for that floor.
Would the system not simply ignore multiple identical entries (even where there really are multiple passengers)?
It seems that knowing that there are [one or more] people on 9 who want to go to 27 is reason enough to have a car bound for 27 stop at 9. Up to now, elevators have known only that [one or more] people on 9 want to go up. This system acquires a list of all the places they want to go before it routes them a car.
Knowing the numbers of passengers would be nice, but it's not necessary.
Bell South, like the-corporation-formerly-known-as-SBC, thinks it has a user base and that it should charge content providers for access to the userbase.
BS and SBC want a closed-content system. There were closed-content systems in the past: GEnie, Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. Users abandoned them for the open internet, where they could get any content they wanted. The number of households online skyrocketted.
If BS and SBC succeed in levying these fees, they may find users abandoning them, too. What user base will they sell to the content providers then? This plan is doomed.
If you have reason to believe a product is using your patent, you can file a challenge with the patent office stating so. The company offering the product has to respond saying that they are or are not violating your patent.
(a) The PTO generally doesn't deal with conflicts between parties. They're not good at that. They have no leverage to force people to appear or to discipline them. That's what courts are for. Why hand over something the courts are well suited to do to the PTO?
(b) Something like what you suggest already exists, though the time windows are much longer. When a patentee files suit, it can only claim damages back 6 years, even if the patent and the product are older than that. It would be simple enough just to shorten this, say to 1 year.
If . . . you, the patent holder, do not challenge such use, a license is automatically granted for that product. In trademark law, trademark holders have to construct elaborate enforcement programs to stomp on every person who makes even an incidental, limited use of the trademark. Importing that notion into patent law would be a terrible mistake. Small inventors couldn't afford to police their patents. Large patent holders would be forced to send reams of cease and desist letters each month to people they now let slide. Unlike trademarks, investigating whether some one might be infringing a patent is an involved, expensive process that often requires buying and tearing apart the device in question.
Rather than make patents like trademarks, consider making trademarks like patents. If trademark holders didn't risk loosing their marks for failing to police them, they could let the small fry slide rather than waste time and money. They could go after only the dangerous competitors.
Only a company beloved of Slashdot could receive this sort of reaction to a revelation that it had included spyware in its product. (And if something like this had been found in a Linux distro, some one would have published a distro "sans" by now.)
Sigh. Another patent article without the patent numbers (5,579,517 and 5,758,352). Of course, the old patent numbers are only half-useful, since the claims could have been amended during reexamination.
Does anyone know what the claims say now? I mean, half the posters here seem to think these patents cover all of FAT, not just VFAT.
'How can I do my thesis now?' a university student asked on another Chinese website.
Answer: the same way they did theses way back in 2000. Unless, of course, Wikipedia was in some way the subject of this poor unfortunate's research, in which case he is well and truly screwed. If so, he needs to pay a visit to Droz.
Droz: Okay, what's your major? Supplicant1: - Um, particle physics. Droz: - Ooh, that's a tough one. Let me see... Ooh. "Motion of Helium Atoms In An Excited State." Watch out. It's a scorcher.
Droz: - Next. Supplicant1:- Uh, Sanskrit. Droz: Sanskrit. You're majoring in a 5000-year-old dead language. Supplicant2: Yeah. Droz: Okay... Ooh. Latin. It's the best I can do.
Droz: - Next. Supplicant3:- Phys Ed. Droz: Phys Ed. Okay, you're out of my room. Seriously. Get out.
But I have always hated that we have to be defined, 24/7, by what we do to buy bread for the table. A dentist fixes teeth. Wow. It's a profession, not an identity.
A job may not be an identity, but a profession is. The dentists, the doctors, the lawyers, the nurses, the certified public engineers -- those professions do see being a professional as being part of their identity. Their members are put in positions of trust in society and they take that responsibility seriously.
Why? Because the public needs protection from bad service in these areas before the fact. When you walk into the dentist, you expect to walk out with your teeth. You cannot be made whole by any amount of money damages if the guy is so drunk that he destroys them.
These professions are not just dirty little guilds holding down supply to keep prices high. Every honorable member wants his fellow members to be honorable, too. This notion that you can have one set of ethics at work and a different one at home is dubious at best. A person is ethical and professional, or he's an ass, whether on the job or off.
If you want to trust your teeth to this guy, you go right ahead.
I really think this kid needs to say "NO! Fuck it, Im not accepting [it]" and just take it to a judge.
And the counterclaim will be for slander/libel. How, exactly, will the kid prove that his prof is "a cockmaster"? And how much will he owe for defaming the prof's proffessional reputation when he loses?
The other factor, which you did not address, is that people should have *choice* over their own treatments.
You're quite right, that's a long subject all by itself. It's hard to find a rule that allows appropriate levels of choice to, e.g., dying people, smart people, and dumb people. Enough people do dumb things with so-called herbal remedies that I have to support some limits on access to the really dangerous stuff.
The other player in this is marketing. Each time something goes OTC, marketing pressure is applied to 'sell' it to people -- some who need it and some who don't.
Antibiotics have been approved for use in general hand soap, and are widely used now. Doctors over-prescribe antibiotics in hospitals resulting in the problems you mention. Maybe the situation would be much worse without the need for prescriptions, but I'm by no means certain of that.
Of course, there's antibiotics and then there's ANTIBIOTICS. The later are tightly controlled, even among people with perscriptive authority. Full access to the tier two and up stuff would undoubtedly make things much worse.
As to the previous point about some antibiotics being fairly safe, I have to disagree. We depend on our beneficial bateria for too many things to be handed the means to kill them off without supervision. About the least nasty thing on the list of quite likely consequences is a happy, happy yeast infection.
Slashdot Mirror
We got our movie. Be content with that. If we keep flogging this thing, we could easily wind up with another "Highlander 2" on our hands. Let it lie.
Nature doesn't give a shit what we do. We don't have it in our capacity to make this world uninhabitable. . . . We would kill off ourselves long before killing [the hardier species]. . . . My point? People need to take climate change seriously without frothing at the mouth and declaring humanity doomed. Humanity isn't doomed, . . .
See, to me, if all that were going to happen were that we would change the climate enough to reduce the population of humans by a percent or so (65 million+ deaths), that'd be reason enough for a thorough, deliberate panic.
It seems likely that things will turn out somewhat worse than that.
'Nuff said.
The notion that any part of the law or the process of government can be owned is abominable.
From proprietary building codes to election mechanisms, we must demand that our system of government belongs to all of us, without restriction.
To make a living, you must do something you do well enough that people will pay you well enough for it that you can live well.
Well, happily, we tend to love to do things that we do well. So long as that happens to be a thing that people will pay us well for, all's well as ends well.
(However, when your talents are mediocre or your passion is pointless, you're, well, "out of luck".)
I think patents are too expensive for the average individual and too cheap for the average corporation.
Hmmm. What to do? What to do? If only there were some way to charge big corporations a much higher fee that they charge individuals.
(The real money, of course, not in the PTO fees, but in the lawyers' fees to write up the patent and get it allowed. Raising the large entity fees by 10x would improve on half this issue, but the individuals still would have trouble affording a lawyer/agent.)
$14 million? Is that all?
If beer.com sold for $7 million, then sex.com is worth at least $14 million. Sure, more people drink more beer than have sex, but these guys will be selling selling online -- you can't delivery beer through a browser.
I'm so tired of this "won't someone please think of the children" scenario.
Anyone who invokes "do it for the children" to support an argument for regulating adults has as good as violated Godwin's law.
The easiest way to game the system might be to simply enter your floor number over and over, to fool the computer into thinking there's an increased demand for that floor.
Would the system not simply ignore multiple identical entries (even where there really are multiple passengers)?
It seems that knowing that there are [one or more] people on 9 who want to go to 27 is reason enough to have a car bound for 27 stop at 9. Up to now, elevators have known only that [one or more] people on 9 want to go up. This system acquires a list of all the places they want to go before it routes them a car.
Knowing the numbers of passengers would be nice, but it's not necessary.
Bell South, like the-corporation-formerly-known-as-SBC, thinks it has a user base and that it should charge content providers for access to the userbase.
BS and SBC want a closed-content system. There were closed-content systems in the past: GEnie, Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. Users abandoned them for the open internet, where they could get any content they wanted. The number of households online skyrocketted.
If BS and SBC succeed in levying these fees, they may find users abandoning them, too. What user base will they sell to the content providers then? This plan is doomed.
If you have reason to believe a product is using your patent, you can file a challenge with the patent office stating so. The company offering the product has to respond saying that they are or are not violating your patent.
(a) The PTO generally doesn't deal with conflicts between parties. They're not good at that. They have no leverage to force people to appear or to discipline them. That's what courts are for. Why hand over something the courts are well suited to do to the PTO?
(b) Something like what you suggest already exists, though the time windows are much longer. When a patentee files suit, it can only claim damages back 6 years, even if the patent and the product are older than that. It would be simple enough just to shorten this, say to 1 year.
If . . . you, the patent holder, do not challenge such use, a license is automatically granted for that product.
In trademark law, trademark holders have to construct elaborate enforcement programs to stomp on every person who makes even an incidental, limited use of the trademark. Importing that notion into patent law would be a terrible mistake. Small inventors couldn't afford to police their patents. Large patent holders would be forced to send reams of cease and desist letters each month to people they now let slide. Unlike trademarks, investigating whether some one might be infringing a patent is an involved, expensive process that often requires buying and tearing apart the device in question.
Rather than make patents like trademarks, consider making trademarks like patents. If trademark holders didn't risk loosing their marks for failing to police them, they could let the small fry slide rather than waste time and money. They could go after only the dangerous competitors.
Only a company beloved of Slashdot could receive this sort of reaction to a revelation that it had included spyware in its product. (And if something like this had been found in a Linux distro, some one would have published a distro "sans" by now.)
Sigh. Another patent article without the patent numbers (5,579,517 and 5,758,352). Of course, the old patent numbers are only half-useful, since the claims could have been amended during reexamination.
Does anyone know what the claims say now? I mean, half the posters here seem to think these patents cover all of FAT, not just VFAT.
'How can I do my thesis now?' a university student asked on another Chinese website.
Answer: the same way they did theses way back in 2000. Unless, of course, Wikipedia was in some way the subject of this poor unfortunate's research, in which case he is well and truly screwed. If so, he needs to pay a visit to Droz.
Droz: Okay, what's your major?
Supplicant1: - Um, particle physics.
Droz: - Ooh, that's a tough one. Let me see... Ooh. "Motion of Helium Atoms In An Excited State." Watch out. It's a scorcher.
Droz: - Next.
Supplicant1:- Uh, Sanskrit.
Droz: Sanskrit. You're majoring in a 5000-year-old dead language.
Supplicant2: Yeah.
Droz: Okay... Ooh. Latin. It's the best I can do.
Droz: - Next.
Supplicant3:- Phys Ed.
Droz: Phys Ed. Okay, you're out of my room. Seriously. Get out.
OK. I'll feed the AC. Once.
Where, exactly, does a statement designed to damage someone in his professional reputation fall in that taxonomy?
But I have always hated that we have to be defined, 24/7, by what we do to buy bread for the table. A dentist fixes teeth. Wow. It's a profession, not an identity.
A job may not be an identity, but a profession is. The dentists, the doctors, the lawyers, the nurses, the certified public engineers -- those professions do see being a professional as being part of their identity. Their members are put in positions of trust in society and they take that responsibility seriously.
Why? Because the public needs protection from bad service in these areas before the fact. When you walk into the dentist, you expect to walk out with your teeth. You cannot be made whole by any amount of money damages if the guy is so drunk that he destroys them.
These professions are not just dirty little guilds holding down supply to keep prices high. Every honorable member wants his fellow members to be honorable, too. This notion that you can have one set of ethics at work and a different one at home is dubious at best. A person is ethical and professional, or he's an ass, whether on the job or off.
If you want to trust your teeth to this guy, you go right ahead.
I really think this kid needs to say "NO! Fuck it, Im not accepting [it]" and just take it to a judge.
And the counterclaim will be for slander/libel. How, exactly, will the kid prove that his prof is "a cockmaster"? And how much will he owe for defaming the prof's proffessional reputation when he loses?
Some one seems to be irony-impaired.
Hallelujah!
(The above is not to be construed as an endorsement of any particular religion, or religion in general.)
And don't forget to mention it to ESPN, ABC Sports, Fox Sports, and all the other networks who use them for their sports coverage.
Not for long. Every game that rated a blimp will have a mobile aerial camera soon.
The other factor, which you did not address, is that people should have *choice* over their own treatments.
You're quite right, that's a long subject all by itself. It's hard to find a rule that allows appropriate levels of choice to, e.g., dying people, smart people, and dumb people. Enough people do dumb things with so-called herbal remedies that I have to support some limits on access to the really dangerous stuff.
The other player in this is marketing. Each time something goes OTC, marketing pressure is applied to 'sell' it to people -- some who need it and some who don't.
Antibiotics have been approved for use in general hand soap, and are widely used now. Doctors over-prescribe antibiotics in hospitals resulting in the problems you mention. Maybe the situation would be much worse without the need for prescriptions, but I'm by no means certain of that.
Of course, there's antibiotics and then there's ANTIBIOTICS. The later are tightly controlled, even among people with perscriptive authority. Full access to the tier two and up stuff would undoubtedly make things much worse.
As to the previous point about some antibiotics being fairly safe, I have to disagree. We depend on our beneficial bateria for too many things to be handed the means to kill them off without supervision. About the least nasty thing on the list of quite likely consequences is a happy, happy yeast infection.
It's a good thing they didn't pick the one cursed by sudden and inevitable impalement.
So said Future Tense, when it covered the Pew survey last night.