Why do people lash out viciously at movies that actually make an attempt a real depth (LOTR), while simultaneously holding up the Matrix as the cinematic "Gold Standard?"
Why, oh why, is anyone "lashing out" at all? Me, I'm still deleriously happy that some one with reasonably good taste got himself ahold of an unlimited budget, and finally made a visually beautiful film of LotR. Then, my happiness is increased that some one else has written and made another interesting and visually spectacular sci-fi/fantasy trilogy in the Matrix.
You won't find me whining about whether my glass is half empty or half full -- because now I have two glasses, and there's tasty brew in both of them!
Of course, it would have been nice if some one had submitted this article yesterday.;) 2003-10-28 18:40:17 FTC Issues Report on Competition and Patent Policy (articles,patents) (rejected)
If you read the patent, you will see that TALK and other prior chat systems are mentioned in the references and body of the patent. The specific "innovation" here is that the system polls for activity on a timer, and turns on and off the "user typing" message based on activity during the timer period.
While I think that it is absurd that this was granted,...
So now, some one remind me again why we care? Does this "indication" feature seriously have enough importance that anyone will suffer without it? There are at least two good prior art ways to do IM. First, the TALK method of sending every character typed. Second, sending the whole message at once after typing is complete.
If you have mod points, mod parent up and ultimate parent down.
July 21, 1999 is when the original application was filed. (Read a little further down in the patent header to find that.) That determines the prior art date. They're not allowed to add new matter to the application after that; they may only change how they're claiming the things they've already described.
Nowadays, the original filing date also determines the expiration date: July 21, 2019 (i.e., 20 years from when they first filed).
The date (December 20, 2002) when they filed this latest set of claims to go with their old 1999 description has little importance any more. No matter how many child applications they spawn, they can't increase the length of their coverage.
His audience is varied but if anything, you will find a larger degree of "small govt. / no regulation" listeners. Many geeks and tech-savvy people listen to Rush. There have been several studies regarding his listeners, and you may be shocked. Half are democrats and/or liberals. He actually has a very hip audience, younger than himself.
Interesting. I looked for a while, but only found one study, and that was from 1996, so it's pretty out of date. It actually goes back to when I was still listening more regularly. What it reports seems similar to what I had assumed. See chart on page 17 using non-listener demographics as a baseline. (I also found these tidbits from a direct marketter.) Of course, I have no way of assessing the credibility of the numbers presented by either link.
Income levels aren't surprising to me, though education levels are higher than I had thought. Audience seems to be about 3:1 male. Anyway, I'd love to see some of the more recent stuff.
...what I find of most interest is that this is not a study by a university research team... The fact that this comes instead from AT&T should lend a little more credence to the report...
Right. AT&T has no motive for bias here. They're just a provider of bandwidth.
Re:Just english? and for all words?
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Also... what happen when the scrambled word is another valid word?
This sounds like a good way to confuse the ole word detector. Four variants spring to mind for an original word of n letters. In all variants, hold the first and last character constant and mix the interior letters. First, can a new n-letter word be formed. Second, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including the original first letter, but excluding the original last letter. Third, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including the original last letter, but excluding the original first letter. Fourth, can a new (n-2)-letter word be formed excluding both the original first and last letters. I suppose that if n is large (e.g. >= ~7), the pattern could be continued or multiple new valid words might be formed from the n letters.
The resulting false clues should tend to mislead the reader.
Another way to fool the old noggin would be to start with a misspelled original.
My opinion is that the Rush program works because it is not "all things for all people" but rather a very focused delivery system for specific content, . . . they have a ton of members and provide exceptional content for those who like it.
Consider this alternative: This charge-for-web-content business model works (assuming that it in fact does) for Rush's show because the core audience believes in such business models.
My guess (and it's no more than a guess) is that Rush's core audience is people who believe in strong, restrictive laws and do not cherish the idea of free goods or free news. How hard is it to convince a 55-year old white male listener that he should "get only what he pays for"? Many (though certainly not all) of Rush's audience are people who sit around from noon to 3pm, listening to the radio and buying products from telemarketers.
Come to think of it, Rush's audience overlaps quite a bit with the WSJ's readership, doesn't it?
(Flame me if you must, but know that I used to listen regularly and that I found Rush's analysis of most things +5 informative, -3 misleading, +4 insightful, -3 biased, and +1 funny: total +4 buyer beware.)
The most interesting part of Mr. Barry's article is not that it's been heard here before. The interesting part is what happened when it was heard from Mr. Barry's bully pulpit. What happened? The narod rose up and asserted themselves.
We can rant here among ourselves all we want, but we need them to make the changes we want actually happen.
Number (or percentage) of successful attacks against servers maintained by professionals, sorted by operating system.
Of course there are a lot of non-secure Linux systems on the net. Lots of amateurs use Linux. After all, it's free! Notice how much the statistics in the article changed when they leveled the playing field and looked only at servers in one industry: government? Keeping to one industry caused them to look at systems maintained by sysadmins with much more equal skill levels.
From the article: Microsoft Windows servers belonging to governments, however, were the most attacked (51.4 per cent) followed by Linux (14.3 per cent) in August.
Congress might be likely to pass a law making innovative software providers more liable for the copyright infringements of their customers in order to stop the public outcry over the RIAA lawsuits...
If "because it might be used for copying" is reason enough to make something illegal, then all such things must go. That means P2P, FTP, email, CD burners, floppy disks, PVRs, VCRs, dual cassette decks, keyboards that sample, guitars, pianos, . ..
Whatever happened to "personal responsibility"? We've been through this before in Sony v Betamax.
and if they don't, that says something about this "blind suing" that they claim to be doing.
Well, obviously they know the defendants' names. They might actually catch a famous name in the list. It's those pesky little details they don't have, like "this person is a 12-year girl". It's hard to say what they would do if they found a famous name. On the one hand, it would increase publicity. On the other hand, they've got a lot of publicity already and they should want to avoid creating a cause celebre. Oops, too late.
Who's taking odds on how long it will be before this girl is asked to testify before Congress?
Industrial baron Andrew Carnegie built libraries. Now Microsoft is funding a school. If there's a pattern here, it's one we should want to see extended.
The article fails to provide the measurements in standard units for NEOs. As is well known, all NEOs must be measured on the Volkswagon scale, the better to inspire the necessary panic.
In metric, 2003QQ47 has a length 1.2 km and a mass of 2.6 billion tons.
In Volkswagons (2003 model year), 2003QQ47 has a length of 293 beetles and a mass of 1.9 million beetles.
In American football units, 2003QQ47 has a length of 13 football fields and a mass of 930,000 twenty-two-man football teams.
In transatlantic oceangoing vessels, 2003QQ47 has a length of 4 QE2s and a mass of 37 QE2s.
In states, 2003QQ47 has a length 1/4 of 1% of the size of Texas.
You may now, if you are so inclined, panic porportionately.
I'd say that all women (in fact, all people) want to feel they have a high relative value to their mates, as well as a high absolute value. To be sure, some people are so self-assured that they take it for granted and need only infrequent reminders. Others are so insecure on this topic that they are obsessed with it. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.
Consider the converse. Do you know anyone who wants not to feel they are highly valued by their mate? What would you say to a person who selected a mate that did not value her highly? What odds would you give for the long-term success of that relationship?
I submit that it is not unreasonable for a woman to desire a small demonstration (a diamond being one possibility) of how highly her prospective mate values her before she commits her life to him. It's normal, not a 'minor personality disorder.' I suspect that many women don't think of it in these terms, but even so.
Remember also, that the woman is optimizing for a lot of qualities in her mate (intelligence, looks, humor, net worth, sexual prowess, sensetivity, accomplishments, loyalty, morality, and many others). To the woman some posters seem to want for a mate, the diamond will be, at most, one factor among many. If the diamond is the only thing she cares about, then she is a fit mate only for those who want a woman who cares more about diamonds than anything else.
Yeah, I was trying to hold all other variables constant. Which, of course, makes saying that we'd all choose rich over poor if all else were equal a pretty blindingly obvious statement.
To continue in this not terribly insightful vein... I couldn't say from personal experience with any large amounts of money, but it seems to me that money doesn't create problems in a marriage so much as it exacerbates them. Kind of like too much beer not making you into a jerk -- it just reveals what was supressed. I think, though, that my theory needs testing. Anybody got $5MM I can borrow for the next 5 years or so? I've always wanted to celebrate one of our anniversaries with a trip to Finland...
IMO, if the woman (and her family) can't grasp the "DeBeers is a cruel monopoly, I'm not buying a DeBeers diamond, what else would you like?" logic, then the marriage simply won't last.
The investment advisor would say: know your client. The psychologist would say: think motivations, not rationality. The enlightened master would say: know thyself. Sarek and his son would say: my logic is uncertain where my family is concerned.
Weddings, marriage, tradition, and expectations tend to interfere with, and sometimes trump, logic. Normally rational people sometimes want to indulge their fairy tale fantasies. It might be a little wasteful (and $12500/50000 is nuts IMHO), but so what?
Would my wanting a diamond and your wanting not to pay for one be a sign our marriage is doomed? Not necessarily. If we reach a compromise that we are both satisfied with, then that's actually a sign that our marriage has potential for great strength. If I want one and you don't care, we'll probably settle on getting one. If you feel that buying a diamond would be wrong and I don't feel strongly about it, we'll probably settle on a different symbol of affection (like a house). Most likely, we'll settle somewhere in the middle.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be a diamond that proves to a woman that she has a high relative and absolute value to her man. She might take it on faith. She might accept another gesture (such as a house, a trip, other jewelry, putting her through school, giving her control of all your finances, merely sharing decision-making authority with her, the options are endless -- be creative).
Here's one of the big keys to getting along with your spouse: an issue (like feeling valued) is important if she thinks it's important. If she cares about religion or money or politics or leaving the seat up or having a color pallette of all jewel tones in the house or calling ahead when you're going to be late, then that thing is important. Sure, you may not value it, but she does. This means that you may be able to score big points cheaply by satisfying an easy thing that she, in your opinion, overvalues. It also means that you can loose big points fast by failing at one of these things.
If the thing she wants is hard/expensive or is the opposite of something that is equally important to you, that's an area where you'll have to work out a compromise. But ignoring what she values because you think it's silly, that's just bad negotiating.
From the article: Congress is told by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) that file trading is theft. . . . If the existing record industry cannot adjust, someone new will come in to take their place and - like makers of $5.00 diamonds - will profit handily not by intentionally restricting sales, but through volume.
It's a pretty good analogy, if we're not talking about non-infringing goods. The $5 diamonds that are set to rock the diamond cartel are not the diamond cartel's diamonds. Similarly, the $0.25 songs that will really rock the music cartel are not the cartel's songs.
As indie bands cut more of their own tracks without any record cartel help and distribute them via P2P, these bands will challenge the cartel with good, cheap music. What technology is doing to music is to trivialize the means of production and distribution of music. In the brave new market, selling music will be all about quality and buzz.
Re:The names may change, but
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Money isn't everything. But men and women are alike on this point: Every one of us, if given a choice between two identical mates, one rich, the other poor, will take the rich one.
It's how alike they have to be before money becomes the deciding factor that measures the difference between a mercenary and a saint.
Re:The names may change, but
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Wait... you mean that you'd marry a girl like that?
What^H^H^H^H One thing a woman wants is to feel that her man values her more highly than all other things. And she needs a proof of this that is unambiguous and readily demonstrable to her friends/family. Jewelry serves this function well, since (1) the man gets no utility from it, (2) it not a dual-use item that might have been bought for its practical value, (3) it is portable.
A second thing a woman wants, in addition to knowing her man places a high relative value on her, is that she has a high absolute value. Jewelry readily demonstrates by its price just how much means her man possesses and that his means are at her disposal.
Why diamonds as opposed to other jewelry? Why, marketting, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
A subpoena usually asks for (a) some one to show up and testify or (b) a bunch of documents. These sound like the document kind.
So, anybody know what documents IBM asked these investors/analysts for?
Why do people lash out viciously at movies that actually make an attempt a real depth (LOTR), while simultaneously holding up the Matrix as the cinematic "Gold Standard?"
Why, oh why, is anyone "lashing out" at all? Me, I'm still deleriously happy that some one with reasonably good taste got himself ahold of an unlimited budget, and finally made a visually beautiful film of LotR. Then, my happiness is increased that some one else has written and made another interesting and visually spectacular sci-fi/fantasy trilogy in the Matrix.
You won't find me whining about whether my glass is half empty or half full -- because now I have two glasses, and there's tasty brew in both of them!
Executive Summary
;)
Official Press Release
Full Report: Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy
A Report by the Federal Trade Commission, October 2003
Of course, it would have been nice if some one had submitted this article yesterday.
2003-10-28 18:40:17 FTC Issues Report on Competition and Patent Policy (articles,patents) (rejected)
Has anyone actually RTFPA?
It's also informative to go to the Patent Application Information Retrieval system (PAIR) and look up the current status of the application. Search for: "US 2003-0200156 A1".
If you read the patent, you will see that TALK and other prior chat systems are mentioned in the references and body of the patent. The specific "innovation" here is that the system polls for activity on a timer, and turns on and off the "user typing" message based on activity during the timer period.
While I think that it is absurd that this was granted,...
So now, some one remind me again why we care? Does this "indication" feature seriously have enough importance that anyone will suffer without it? There are at least two good prior art ways to do IM. First, the TALK method of sending every character typed. Second, sending the whole message at once after typing is complete.
If you have mod points, mod parent up and ultimate parent down.
July 21, 1999 is when the original application was filed. (Read a little further down in the patent header to find that.) That determines the prior art date. They're not allowed to add new matter to the application after that; they may only change how they're claiming the things they've already described.
Nowadays, the original filing date also determines the expiration date: July 21, 2019 (i.e., 20 years from when they first filed).
The date (December 20, 2002) when they filed this latest set of claims to go with their old 1999 description has little importance any more. No matter how many child applications they spawn, they can't increase the length of their coverage.
His audience is varied but if anything, you will find a larger degree of "small govt. / no regulation" listeners. Many geeks and tech-savvy people listen to Rush. There have been several studies regarding his listeners, and you may be shocked. Half are democrats and/or liberals. He actually has a very hip audience, younger than himself.
Interesting. I looked for a while, but only found one study, and that was from 1996, so it's pretty out of date. It actually goes back to when I was still listening more regularly. What it reports seems similar to what I had assumed. See chart on page 17 using non-listener demographics as a baseline. (I also found these tidbits from a direct marketter.) Of course, I have no way of assessing the credibility of the numbers presented by either link.
Income levels aren't surprising to me, though education levels are higher than I had thought. Audience seems to be about 3:1 male. Anyway, I'd love to see some of the more recent stuff.
The problem is that the film industry has lost sight of what they "sell".
AT&T, on the other hand, may have their eyes fixed directly on what they sell. They sell bandwidth.
...what I find of most interest is that this is not a study by a university research team ... The fact that this comes instead from AT&T should lend a little more credence to the report...
Right. AT&T has no motive for bias here. They're just a provider of bandwidth.
Also... what happen when the scrambled word is another valid word?
This sounds like a good way to confuse the ole word detector. Four variants spring to mind for an original word of n letters. In all variants, hold the first and last character constant and mix the interior letters. First, can a new n-letter word be formed. Second, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including the original first letter, but excluding the original last letter. Third, can a new (n-1)-letter word be formed including the original last letter, but excluding the original first letter. Fourth, can a new (n-2)-letter word be formed excluding both the original first and last letters. I suppose that if n is large (e.g. >= ~7), the pattern could be continued or multiple new valid words might be formed from the n letters.
The resulting false clues should tend to mislead the reader.
Another way to fool the old noggin would be to start with a misspelled original.
My opinion is that the Rush program works because it is not "all things for all people" but rather a very focused delivery system for specific content, . . . they have a ton of members and provide exceptional content for those who like it.
Consider this alternative: This charge-for-web-content business model works (assuming that it in fact does) for Rush's show because the core audience believes in such business models.
My guess (and it's no more than a guess) is that Rush's core audience is people who believe in strong, restrictive laws and do not cherish the idea of free goods or free news. How hard is it to convince a 55-year old white male listener that he should "get only what he pays for"? Many (though certainly not all) of Rush's audience are people who sit around from noon to 3pm, listening to the radio and buying products from telemarketers.
Come to think of it, Rush's audience overlaps quite a bit with the WSJ's readership, doesn't it?
(Flame me if you must, but know that I used to listen regularly and that I found Rush's analysis of most things +5 informative, -3 misleading, +4 insightful, -3 biased, and +1 funny: total +4 buyer beware.)
that is a great idea. we'll call it slashdot.
The most interesting part of Mr. Barry's article is not that it's been heard here before. The interesting part is what happened when it was heard from Mr. Barry's bully pulpit. What happened? The narod rose up and asserted themselves.
We can rant here among ourselves all we want, but we need them to make the changes we want actually happen.
Number (or percentage) of successful attacks against servers maintained by professionals, sorted by operating system.
Of course there are a lot of non-secure Linux systems on the net. Lots of amateurs use Linux. After all, it's free! Notice how much the statistics in the article changed when they leveled the playing field and looked only at servers in one industry: government? Keeping to one industry caused them to look at systems maintained by sysadmins with much more equal skill levels.
From the article: Microsoft Windows servers belonging to governments, however, were the most attacked (51.4 per cent) followed by Linux (14.3 per cent) in August.
Congress might be likely to pass a law making innovative software providers more liable for the copyright infringements of their customers in order to stop the public outcry over the RIAA lawsuits...
.
If "because it might be used for copying" is reason enough to make something illegal, then all such things must go. That means P2P, FTP, email, CD burners, floppy disks, PVRs, VCRs, dual cassette decks, keyboards that sample, guitars, pianos, . .
Whatever happened to "personal responsibility"? We've been through this before in Sony v Betamax.
and if they don't, that says something about this "blind suing" that they claim to be doing.
Well, obviously they know the defendants' names. They might actually catch a famous name in the list. It's those pesky little details they don't have, like "this person is a 12-year girl". It's hard to say what they would do if they found a famous name. On the one hand, it would increase publicity. On the other hand, they've got a lot of publicity already and they should want to avoid creating a cause celebre. Oops, too late.
Who's taking odds on how long it will be before this girl is asked to testify before Congress?
Industrial baron Andrew Carnegie built libraries. Now Microsoft is funding a school. If there's a pattern here, it's one we should want to see extended.
In metric, 2003QQ47 has a length 1.2 km and a mass of 2.6 billion tons.
In Volkswagons (2003 model year), 2003QQ47 has a length of 293 beetles and a mass of 1.9 million beetles.
In American football units, 2003QQ47 has a length of 13 football fields and a mass of 930,000 twenty-two-man football teams.
In transatlantic oceangoing vessels, 2003QQ47 has a length of 4 QE2s and a mass of 37 QE2s.
In states, 2003QQ47 has a length 1/4 of 1% of the size of Texas.
You may now, if you are so inclined, panic porportionately.
I'd say that all women (in fact, all people) want to feel they have a high relative value to their mates, as well as a high absolute value. To be sure, some people are so self-assured that they take it for granted and need only infrequent reminders. Others are so insecure on this topic that they are obsessed with it. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle.
Consider the converse. Do you know anyone who wants not to feel they are highly valued by their mate? What would you say to a person who selected a mate that did not value her highly? What odds would you give for the long-term success of that relationship?
I submit that it is not unreasonable for a woman to desire a small demonstration (a diamond being one possibility) of how highly her prospective mate values her before she commits her life to him. It's normal, not a 'minor personality disorder.' I suspect that many women don't think of it in these terms, but even so.
Remember also, that the woman is optimizing for a lot of qualities in her mate (intelligence, looks, humor, net worth, sexual prowess, sensetivity, accomplishments, loyalty, morality, and many others). To the woman some posters seem to want for a mate, the diamond will be, at most, one factor among many. If the diamond is the only thing she cares about, then she is a fit mate only for those who want a woman who cares more about diamonds than anything else.
Gamers by Age and Gender
Girls 6 to 17 - 12%
Boys 6 to 17 - 21%
Women 18 or older - 26%
Men 18 and up - 38%
unknown - 3% (total 100%)
Adults over 50 - 17% (was 13% in 2000)
Average age - 29 (increased)
Time spent gaming/week
Overall average - 6.5 hrs/wk
Boys 6 to 17 - 7.3 hrs/wk
Poll based on a random national sample questioning 806 adults, reporting on the gaming habits of 1,048 game players including kids.
Yeah, I was trying to hold all other variables constant. Which, of course, makes saying that we'd all choose rich over poor if all else were equal a pretty blindingly obvious statement.
To continue in this not terribly insightful vein... I couldn't say from personal experience with any large amounts of money, but it seems to me that money doesn't create problems in a marriage so much as it exacerbates them. Kind of like too much beer not making you into a jerk -- it just reveals what was supressed. I think, though, that my theory needs testing. Anybody got $5MM I can borrow for the next 5 years or so? I've always wanted to celebrate one of our anniversaries with a trip to Finland...
Oh, _that's_ funny. So true.
IMO, if the woman (and her family) can't grasp the "DeBeers is a cruel monopoly, I'm not buying a DeBeers diamond, what else would you like?" logic, then the marriage simply won't last.
The investment advisor would say: know your client. The psychologist would say: think motivations, not rationality. The enlightened master would say: know thyself. Sarek and his son would say: my logic is uncertain where my family is concerned.
Weddings, marriage, tradition, and expectations tend to interfere with, and sometimes trump, logic. Normally rational people sometimes want to indulge their fairy tale fantasies. It might be a little wasteful (and $12500/50000 is nuts IMHO), but so what?
Would my wanting a diamond and your wanting not to pay for one be a sign our marriage is doomed? Not necessarily. If we reach a compromise that we are both satisfied with, then that's actually a sign that our marriage has potential for great strength. If I want one and you don't care, we'll probably settle on getting one. If you feel that buying a diamond would be wrong and I don't feel strongly about it, we'll probably settle on a different symbol of affection (like a house). Most likely, we'll settle somewhere in the middle.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be a diamond that proves to a woman that she has a high relative and absolute value to her man. She might take it on faith. She might accept another gesture (such as a house, a trip, other jewelry, putting her through school, giving her control of all your finances, merely sharing decision-making authority with her, the options are endless -- be creative).
Here's one of the big keys to getting along with your spouse: an issue (like feeling valued) is important if she thinks it's important. If she cares about religion or money or politics or leaving the seat up or having a color pallette of all jewel tones in the house or calling ahead when you're going to be late, then that thing is important. Sure, you may not value it, but she does. This means that you may be able to score big points cheaply by satisfying an easy thing that she, in your opinion, overvalues. It also means that you can loose big points fast by failing at one of these things.
If the thing she wants is hard/expensive or is the opposite of something that is equally important to you, that's an area where you'll have to work out a compromise. But ignoring what she values because you think it's silly, that's just bad negotiating.
From the article: Congress is told by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) that file trading is theft. . . . If the existing record industry cannot adjust, someone new will come in to take their place and - like makers of $5.00 diamonds - will profit handily not by intentionally restricting sales, but through volume.
It's a pretty good analogy, if we're not talking about non-infringing goods. The $5 diamonds that are set to rock the diamond cartel are not the diamond cartel's diamonds. Similarly, the $0.25 songs that will really rock the music cartel are not the cartel's songs.
As indie bands cut more of their own tracks without any record cartel help and distribute them via P2P, these bands will challenge the cartel with good, cheap music. What technology is doing to music is to trivialize the means of production and distribution of music. In the brave new market, selling music will be all about quality and buzz.
Money isn't everything. But men and women are alike on this point: Every one of us, if given a choice between two identical mates, one rich, the other poor, will take the rich one.
It's how alike they have to be before money becomes the deciding factor that measures the difference between a mercenary and a saint.
Wait... you mean that you'd marry a girl like that?
What^H^H^H^H One thing a woman wants is to feel that her man values her more highly than all other things. And she needs a proof of this that is unambiguous and readily demonstrable to her friends/family. Jewelry serves this function well, since (1) the man gets no utility from it, (2) it not a dual-use item that might have been bought for its practical value, (3) it is portable.
A second thing a woman wants, in addition to knowing her man places a high relative value on her, is that she has a high absolute value. Jewelry readily demonstrates by its price just how much means her man possesses and that his means are at her disposal.
Why diamonds as opposed to other jewelry? Why, marketting, of course.