Actually reading claim 1, we see a patent for a handheld computer containing a camera, that uses a radio to transmit the pictures. In claim 2, this is specified to be the cellular phone network. Now what's interesting is that the first cell-phone cameras came to market in the summer of 1997. Surely this is prior art, yes? And the whole patent is invalid?
So, I ask you, before 1995 did we have the technology for a computer to transmit images of a camera over a network? The answer, of course, is in 1991 someone had a webcam which showed the coffee pot.
From the same link, the first commercial webcam was available in 1994, which is now a year before your lower bound. So by then we'd had cameras sending stuff over the network via a computer for years.
So, now walk me through this one, since I'm apparently quite slow... if I take something which is already being done "on a computer" and "using a network", which specific part of "hand-held computer" and "cellular network" causes this to be an "invention"?
We already had desktop computers. We already had some inklings of hand held computers. We could already hook a camera up to a computer and send images over a network. And, by 1990 we had already reached the point of being able to generalize the concept of 'network' to include arbitrary transport mechanisms (IP over Avian Carrier), so a cellular network is a specific variant of networking instead of something fundamentally new. The general problems of networking had been well discussed for years.
So, given that several years before this patent was even applied for we had mechanisms to "allow a computer to transmit the output of a semi-conductor camera over a network" -- I find it awfully difficult to figure out how this represents anything other than taking several already common things, and putting them into a smaller device which uses a cellular network.
Small isn't magic. Radio isn't magic. Cellular networks aren't magic. So to me, the first web cam of how much coffee was left covers almost all of the functional aspects of this patent -- except in a smaller box. And the last I checked "in a smaller box" isn't really sufficient to differentiate yourself as a distinct patent.
If someone had shown me this patent in 1997, I would have said the same thing -- in what way is taking something you can already do, but on a different device something which merits a patent?
Probably true, but Apple has been suing the hell out of everyone with the same kind of flimsy portfolio. Sauce for the goose.
Maybe, maybe not.
Unfortunately, with the way the patent system is structured, every company wants to/has to patent as many things as they possibly can. And every company wants to use patents to skew the market in their favor -- either by insisting on licensing of patents which are absurd, or preventing competitors from selling similar products.
At a certain point, the lawyers do well with it, and the consumers (who invariably get all of these legal fees passed onto them) suffer.
From what I've been able to see, patents don't lead to innovation -- they lead to endless bickering among companies about who invented a rectangle with square corners, and who owns the rights to a "Device for personal communications, data collection and data processing, and a circuit card".
So many of these patents either cover something which should be fairly obvious to anybody in the field (the "with a computer" patents), or end up covering something which other people invented and have been doing for a while. I can't remember what it was, but I remember seeing something in the last 5-10 years which was the topic of a patent lawsuit, and it covered stuff I'd learned in school and which people had been talking about for a while.
This is just pissing contests between multi-nationals for the most part.
U.S. patent 6,427,078, which covers a data processing device
Is so broad as to cover everything like a computer, but smaller.
From the actual patent:
The object of the invention is a device for personal communication, data collection and data processing, which is a small-sized, portable and hand-held work station comprising a data processing unit (2); a display (9); a user interface (10, 11); a number of peripheral device interfaces (12, 17); at least one memory unit (13); a power source, preferably a battery (3); and an application software. According to the invention the device also comprises a camera unit (14). The camera unit (14) comprises a camera (14a), preferably a semiconductor camera, and optics (14b) connected thereto, which are placed in the housing (1) of the device. Alternatively, the camera unit (14) is fitted on a PCMCIA card (15) which can be connected to the PCMCIA card slot (16) of the device. An object of the invention is also a PCMCIA card (15) provided with a camera unit (14).
I'm sorry, but that's Von Neumann architecture with some form of camera attached.
Since it starts with the definition of work-station and then simply says it is hand held, it basically is one of those "with a computer" (or in this case cell phone) patents.
I'm not going to go through each of the claims on the patent, but I'm not seeing anything in here that sounds like an invention -- just a description of a small computer with its own display. Which to me, means this patent should have never been granted.
I've never seen any monitor with anything other than square pixels.
I have never personally seen a platypus either.
Your comment about 1024x768 makes me think you are confused as the widescreen monitors with a 768 height are 1366 wide not 1024.
Well, you can think that all you like. I'm not confused, I had to sit at my desk with this POS for well over a year.
This was probably 4 years ago now. It was a Dell monitor. But in it's native resolution was a 4:3 pixel layout, in a physically wider format (well, more accurately, the screen resolution and physical aspect ratio didn't match).
So basically, as a computer monitor, it was lousy... at the native resolution, circles were flattened ovals. Any attempts at non-native resolution suffered lots of other issues.
My guess it was something intended to be sold to consumers so they could watch widescreen movies on the desktop, but it had the effect of making the monitor absolute crap for computer work.
But in the manual that came from them, they listed the 'optimal' resolution for the screen, and at that resolution, the pixels weren't square.
They were real monitors, and they were really crap. My company had bought them for a bunch of us, and pretty much everybody figured out pretty quickly they were lousy.
People have complained and the market did not fix itself so now government has to step in. I'm no fan of big government either.
And when, exactly, does the 'market' ever 'fix itself'?
This notional abstraction of the 'market' as an entity which resolves problems for the better is, well, a myth. It's missing all of the mechanisms which would cause it to self correct.
Instead the corporations typically do what they want, and the governments have given them the ability to do it.
The market solution which would correct this would take decades on its own, if at all. Because first you'd need viable competition to the cable companies so there was any consumer choice so they could choose a provider which didn't do this. And the barrier of entry to that is so enormous, that it won't happen. And then they'd need to either stick with the idea, or give up and decide there's more money to be had.
As it exists, the 'market' doesn't naturally settle on an optimal outcome except for the corporations, who basically set the rules themselves. Instead, it's more like a dog which will eat all of the food until it gets sick, and then start all over again.
This idealized entity which everyone thinks is mostly infallible is so heavily skewed and manipulated that it isn't capable of generating the outcomes ascribed to it. And, in reality, that idealized 'market' has only ever existed on paper -- there's always been corruption, collusion, cheating, bribing, self interest and other things. The consumers lack perfect information and make irrational choices. The assumptions on this perfectly even-handed entity are largely erroneous.
Every time someone talks about the 'market' finding a solution I cringe, because the only solution it will ever come to is the one which maximizes profits by any means necessary.
The market doesn't 'choose' to not sell baby formula with melamine in it -- it has to be told, and it's not like "over time people will simply choose to not buy baby formula with melamine in it" solves the issue.
I don't know what it sounds like through the TV speakers since I always play my TV through my amp, but when you have the volume set for a TV show and suddenly a commercial comes in which is markedly louder... yes, it's extremely annoying.
Some commercials are played at a significantly higher volume than the rest of the stuff being aired. Presumably to make damned sure you can hear the commercial.
It can be the difference between a comfortable listening volume and "WTF just happened". It's just the advertisers being asshats, and someone has finally told them they can't do it.
Is this a real pixel aspect ratio, or a stupid artifact and trickery?
I've seen "widescreen" monitors that take a 4:3 aspect ratio pixel count into a widescreen monitor (*cough* Dell *cough*).
It's maybe useful for people who want to use their computer to watch movies, but as an actual computer monitor it was a complete joke. A circle drawn on screen was an oval, text was wide and flat. It was 'widescreen' only in the imaginations of marketing.
Any time I look at a widescreen monitor now, I check the specs, and a lot of them have this crap. Or they've made a slightly wide screen version of 1024x768 -- woo, you extended a resolution we had in '91. For working on a monitor, I don't see a lot of value in this format.
And, really, anything trying to introduce a new aspect ratio is like someone trying to introduce yet another TV spec or a DVD variation -- why the heck would I gamble on a new format that is new, unsupported, and not likely to last? A handful of people will buy these, and then discover it was something which didn't catch on and goes unsupported before long.
LOL, but if you burn an image of Jesus or The Virgin Mary onto toast you can sell it for a fortune, right?
But, yes, a web-enabled toaster sounds monumentally pointless. As would a fridge, a toilet, a chair, or my stove.
At a certain point, this is just adding internet support for the sake of saying you have it. I'm sure someone out there is going "ZOMG, but it's an internet enabled toaster", and they can spend their money on it -- I on the other hand will stick with the boring old toaster I have now, it even does bagels.:-P
Just give me a basic 42-50 inch monitor with speakers, a few HDMI ports and an ATSC tuner
Completely agreed. For the last 10 years or so, my 'TV' is basically functioning as a dumb monitor.
The speakers are permanently muted, and it's just displaying whatever my amplifier is telling it to. It doesn't change channels, it just displays an image as sent to it via a single HDMI cable.
It's not downloading from netflix, it's not getting me weather updates, and I'm not surfing the web with it. I simply don't see any value (for me) of having a TV with a network connection.
I've always been leery about everything wanting to have internet access.
Partly because I don't see any benefit from the features of having my TV connect to the internet, and partly because I don't trust that vendors have any clue about security.
If you're going to run things like this, you should definitely have a firewall to keep the outside world at bay. The fact that Samsung has no fix for this tells me there's probably loads of devices like this which will prove to be insecure.
I've never even plugged my Blu Ray player into the network, and I'm getting close to the point of disconnecting my XBox from the network because I don't use any of the on-line features and the ads which have started showing up in games is annoying.
If you need an internet connection for me to play a game on a console... well, I simply won't buy your product. And I didn't buy the box to be marketed to.
Microsoft provided them with documentation and helped them with interoperability testing.
Well, then allow me to say... holy crap. As much as I have a hard time believing "Microsoft is committed to support for interoperability across platforms". They haven't historically been interested in that.
I'm assuming if Microsoft could legally stop this, they would.
Likely the interfaces aren't copyrightable and this is probably a clean implementation -- but I'm sure if Microsoft could trot out a patent or something else to stop people they would.
I can't imagine they want implementations of their stuff out there. (Granted, they mostly started out by implementing other people's stuff, so there may not be much they can do about it.)
The overwhelming majority of CCTV cameras are privately owned (therefore they must be good in Slashdot groupthink) and not controlled by/accessible to the government/police/spooks
Why would we think that?
In the US, the PATRIOT act can compel someone to hand over the information without any real judicial oversight and a requirement they don't tell anybody. I assume the UK is about the same.
Increasingly, the data private industry collects on us can get into government hands quite readily.
And that might be well one of the few things they agree on. Almost everything else about what a government is for and should be doing isn't going to match up at all.
Though, nowadays it seems like everybody is pushing for more surveillance and erosion of rights in the name of security theater.
Sadly, everyone who loudly says governments should be backing off and not be so intrusive, be they 'left' or 'right' leaning, are all lumped into the category of "crazy" and dismissed.
I'm pretty sure this might be one of the few issues where the ACLU and the Libertarians agree on much.
I also think the "crazy libertarians" line is a little weird, especially for somewhere like Slashdot which has generally liberal views on technology and privacy
Are you aware of the fact that liberals and libertarians aren't necessarily the same set?
Paul Ryan is a Libertarian. Kennedy was a liberal.
And, in this case, for a fee store C will accept a delivery on on behalf of the patron of store B, and repackage the like bread from Store A.
Store C then makes it possible to access the loaf of bread you bought from store B while you are in store A, and store A will be none the wiser and the patron can enjoy the benefits of both stores.
Then they will sit around saying that people should stop complaining about the price of bread in store A, since it's reasonably priced.
I find the notion that when these countries do not tax the revenue (in this case store C) they are 'stealing' a little odd... They are choosing the banking revenue over the tax revenue, but I am sure those countries get a little vigorish themselves. And it is the rules in those countries which allows a non-taxable entity to do business in their own countries. They let a company say "oh, gee, we don't want to pay the cost of your bread but we're just going to hang out anyway".
Do I agree that these companies should be able to just skip out on paying taxes? Nope. Do I think this is really any different than Hollywood accounting? Not really. Same shell game, just against the governments.
In the end, I am betting those loopholes exist because someone lobbied the government to add them, and they did it. The whole deck is stacked for corporations, why should governments suddenly feel like they are the only ones who get screwed?
As with anything like this, the more sensitive you make it, the more you might have to deal with false positives.
I can only imagine someone going around bumping into people at the airport making sure they all smell like something which will trigger something like this.
It wouldn't be anything more disruptive than suddenly loads of people in the airport get checked for bombs, but I bet you could terribly mess up an airport if you suddenly had a handful of people testing positive.
Of course, to be going around doing this you'd need to smell of bomb residue and probably be seen on surveillance cameras doing it. But for all I know some common household chemicals could cause this now.
Oh really? So the entire evolution of computer science wasnt based on "But what if we could do more?"
Are you really trying to tell me that we're at the end of progress?
No, I'm telling you you're saying one set of words, and then retroactively saying they mean something else.
You said nothing at all about progress, or what we could do in the future, you said, and I quote again:
EVERY tablet user has said "This is great, but its limited" or "This is great, but imagine if i could do more, like run photoshop on this"
I pointed out that at best this was hyperbole. Now you're whining that I'm arguing against progress, which is a completely erroneous conclusion.
The entire rest of your argument doesn't stem from anything you said at the time, and is specious because you're now trying to claim you said an entirely different set of words with a different intent.
So, read what you said, read what I said, and then go tell someone who might care how you think you've said other things. You're simply expanding the scope of what you said to include an entirely different set of arguments about other things, and you're making up things that both you and I said -- and I'm not going to debate you on what you think I've said, because you're so completely missing the point it's not funny.
The article makes the astounding claim that this animal "hasn't evolved for 300 million years". Sounds like hogwash to me, but is there any indication that this is true?
Sure, fossil records. Let's go with NOAA since they're fairly well respected:
Hagfish is considered to be the most primitive vertebrate species either living or extinct (Collette and Klein-MacPhee 2002, Powell et al 2005). Hagfish evolved over at least 300 million years and have the same basic morphological traits of fossilized specimens (Bardack 1991).
The only fossil hagfish is Myxinikela siroka, a Pennsylvanian find from the Francis Creek Shale of northeastern Illinois (Bardack, 1991). The fossil was found within a siderite (iron carbonate) concretion, and preserves the paired tentacles, internal organs, and detail of the head and jaws. The similarity to modern hagfishes is striking, and suggests that there has been little evolutionary change in this group over the last 300 million years.
So, yes, is there is strong evidence that the morphology of hagfish hasn't changed in 300 million years. That's not to say there has been zero changes to it, but nothing radical.
If you can compare a modern specimen to a 300 million year old fossil and fine no differences, you pretty much conclude that it hasn't significantly evolved. Think coelacanth. Think crocodilians. Think MPAA.;-)
Misunderstood, my ass. Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest.
Yeah, I'd have to say this is a willful 'misunderstanding'.
Facebook's commodity is your data. That's how they make money. They don't want to be told that they would be required to delete your data upon request.
Any time you see Facebook saying "Privacy laws would harm privacy", the real thing they're saying is "but that would cut into profits".
EVERY tablet user has said "This is great, but its limited" or "This is great, but imagine if i could do more, like run photoshop on this"
Bullshit. Have you polled every user who owns a tablet to confirm they've said that? I've never said it, I assume other people have never said it, so "EVERY" in this case is mere hyperbole to suit your argument.
Battery life is not an excuse to limit functionality as long as you have the option to plug things into a wall.
Yeah, lets design a small, portable device with lousy batter life so we can run photoshop on it. If you know you're going to have to plug it into the wall, why not use a desktop and a mouse? I'm not looking to give up my battery life so you have a drawing tablet.
There are many situations when I as an artist
Ah, and there's the crux of it isn't it? This is about what you want, not what the general market for tablets want. What percentage of people who own tablets want that? And has anybody so far designed a tablet with the express needs of an artiste in mind? No, they've designed a general consumer device. There's probably no money to be made in making a specialized device which covers what you're looking for -- at least not yet, and not without charging you obscene amounts of money for it. I don't want to pay more for my device so you can have the device of your dreams, and nobody else will want to either.
That is why Windows 8 is superior, because it can do both, and its up to you.
No, it's better for you, and what you feel you need. Which, as you say, is fine. 'Better' is and always will be a purely subjective measure, it's not an objective fact.
Thats fine, but to deny the ability is now a user choice is just bad.
I'm not denying anybody their choice, but it's not my job to provide it -- nor is it Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, or anybody else. I'm choosing to stay the hell away from Windows 8; and from what I've read about it being a bad mash-up of desktop and tablet, and the fact that Microsoft has barely sold 1 million units tells me that other people are making the same choice.
All that you've said is that for you, as an artist, want features not in most tablets. All I've said is that, as someone who has had a tablet for a couple of years now and quite likes it, I don't use it anything like my desktop, and I'm not interested in one which replaces my desktop.
At the end of the day, do you know who gives a shit about my and your opinions? Me and you respectively. And if the market isn't looking for a tablet like you describe, there's no incentive for anybody build it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I ask you, before 1995 did we have the technology for a computer to transmit images of a camera over a network? The answer, of course, is in 1991 someone had a webcam which showed the coffee pot.
From the same link, the first commercial webcam was available in 1994, which is now a year before your lower bound. So by then we'd had cameras sending stuff over the network via a computer for years.
So, now walk me through this one, since I'm apparently quite slow ... if I take something which is already being done "on a computer" and "using a network", which specific part of "hand-held computer" and "cellular network" causes this to be an "invention"?
We already had desktop computers. We already had some inklings of hand held computers. We could already hook a camera up to a computer and send images over a network. And, by 1990 we had already reached the point of being able to generalize the concept of 'network' to include arbitrary transport mechanisms (IP over Avian Carrier), so a cellular network is a specific variant of networking instead of something fundamentally new. The general problems of networking had been well discussed for years.
So, given that several years before this patent was even applied for we had mechanisms to "allow a computer to transmit the output of a semi-conductor camera over a network" -- I find it awfully difficult to figure out how this represents anything other than taking several already common things, and putting them into a smaller device which uses a cellular network.
Small isn't magic. Radio isn't magic. Cellular networks aren't magic. So to me, the first web cam of how much coffee was left covers almost all of the functional aspects of this patent -- except in a smaller box. And the last I checked "in a smaller box" isn't really sufficient to differentiate yourself as a distinct patent.
If someone had shown me this patent in 1997, I would have said the same thing -- in what way is taking something you can already do, but on a different device something which merits a patent?
Maybe, maybe not.
Unfortunately, with the way the patent system is structured, every company wants to/has to patent as many things as they possibly can. And every company wants to use patents to skew the market in their favor -- either by insisting on licensing of patents which are absurd, or preventing competitors from selling similar products.
At a certain point, the lawyers do well with it, and the consumers (who invariably get all of these legal fees passed onto them) suffer.
From what I've been able to see, patents don't lead to innovation -- they lead to endless bickering among companies about who invented a rectangle with square corners, and who owns the rights to a "Device for personal communications, data collection and data processing, and a circuit card".
So many of these patents either cover something which should be fairly obvious to anybody in the field (the "with a computer" patents), or end up covering something which other people invented and have been doing for a while. I can't remember what it was, but I remember seeing something in the last 5-10 years which was the topic of a patent lawsuit, and it covered stuff I'd learned in school and which people had been talking about for a while.
This is just pissing contests between multi-nationals for the most part.
Is so broad as to cover everything like a computer, but smaller.
From the actual patent:
I'm sorry, but that's Von Neumann architecture with some form of camera attached.
Since it starts with the definition of work-station and then simply says it is hand held, it basically is one of those "with a computer" (or in this case cell phone) patents.
I'm not going to go through each of the claims on the patent, but I'm not seeing anything in here that sounds like an invention -- just a description of a small computer with its own display. Which to me, means this patent should have never been granted.
I have never personally seen a platypus either.
Well, you can think that all you like. I'm not confused, I had to sit at my desk with this POS for well over a year.
This was probably 4 years ago now. It was a Dell monitor. But in it's native resolution was a 4:3 pixel layout, in a physically wider format (well, more accurately, the screen resolution and physical aspect ratio didn't match).
So basically, as a computer monitor, it was lousy ... at the native resolution, circles were flattened ovals. Any attempts at non-native resolution suffered lots of other issues.
My guess it was something intended to be sold to consumers so they could watch widescreen movies on the desktop, but it had the effect of making the monitor absolute crap for computer work.
But in the manual that came from them, they listed the 'optimal' resolution for the screen, and at that resolution, the pixels weren't square.
They were real monitors, and they were really crap. My company had bought them for a bunch of us, and pretty much everybody figured out pretty quickly they were lousy.
And when, exactly, does the 'market' ever 'fix itself'?
This notional abstraction of the 'market' as an entity which resolves problems for the better is, well, a myth. It's missing all of the mechanisms which would cause it to self correct.
Instead the corporations typically do what they want, and the governments have given them the ability to do it.
The market solution which would correct this would take decades on its own, if at all. Because first you'd need viable competition to the cable companies so there was any consumer choice so they could choose a provider which didn't do this. And the barrier of entry to that is so enormous, that it won't happen. And then they'd need to either stick with the idea, or give up and decide there's more money to be had.
As it exists, the 'market' doesn't naturally settle on an optimal outcome except for the corporations, who basically set the rules themselves. Instead, it's more like a dog which will eat all of the food until it gets sick, and then start all over again.
This idealized entity which everyone thinks is mostly infallible is so heavily skewed and manipulated that it isn't capable of generating the outcomes ascribed to it. And, in reality, that idealized 'market' has only ever existed on paper -- there's always been corruption, collusion, cheating, bribing, self interest and other things. The consumers lack perfect information and make irrational choices. The assumptions on this perfectly even-handed entity are largely erroneous.
Every time someone talks about the 'market' finding a solution I cringe, because the only solution it will ever come to is the one which maximizes profits by any means necessary.
The market doesn't 'choose' to not sell baby formula with melamine in it -- it has to be told, and it's not like "over time people will simply choose to not buy baby formula with melamine in it" solves the issue.
I don't know what it sounds like through the TV speakers since I always play my TV through my amp, but when you have the volume set for a TV show and suddenly a commercial comes in which is markedly louder ... yes, it's extremely annoying.
Some commercials are played at a significantly higher volume than the rest of the stuff being aired. Presumably to make damned sure you can hear the commercial.
It can be the difference between a comfortable listening volume and "WTF just happened". It's just the advertisers being asshats, and someone has finally told them they can't do it.
I wonder if this means an update to the Google map application which came with the original iPad.
Since the iOS 6 doesn't support that, those devices never lost the original Google app.
Of course, that doesn't help the fact that you won't be getting any real OS updates anymore.
I think that's already underway. Many cameras are moving in that direction, I am not sure you could still buy a 4:3 monitor any more.
That aspect ratio may have been around since the ancient Greeks, but it's quickly going away.
Is this a real pixel aspect ratio, or a stupid artifact and trickery?
I've seen "widescreen" monitors that take a 4:3 aspect ratio pixel count into a widescreen monitor (*cough* Dell *cough*).
It's maybe useful for people who want to use their computer to watch movies, but as an actual computer monitor it was a complete joke. A circle drawn on screen was an oval, text was wide and flat. It was 'widescreen' only in the imaginations of marketing.
Any time I look at a widescreen monitor now, I check the specs, and a lot of them have this crap. Or they've made a slightly wide screen version of 1024x768 -- woo, you extended a resolution we had in '91. For working on a monitor, I don't see a lot of value in this format.
And, really, anything trying to introduce a new aspect ratio is like someone trying to introduce yet another TV spec or a DVD variation -- why the heck would I gamble on a new format that is new, unsupported, and not likely to last? A handful of people will buy these, and then discover it was something which didn't catch on and goes unsupported before long.
LOL, but if you burn an image of Jesus or The Virgin Mary onto toast you can sell it for a fortune, right?
But, yes, a web-enabled toaster sounds monumentally pointless. As would a fridge, a toilet, a chair, or my stove.
At a certain point, this is just adding internet support for the sake of saying you have it. I'm sure someone out there is going "ZOMG, but it's an internet enabled toaster", and they can spend their money on it -- I on the other hand will stick with the boring old toaster I have now, it even does bagels. :-P
I believe that took a court order to make that happen.
Let's not pretend there's any altruism here. If Microsoft hadn't been compelled to license this, they sure as hell wouldn't have.
Completely agreed. For the last 10 years or so, my 'TV' is basically functioning as a dumb monitor.
The speakers are permanently muted, and it's just displaying whatever my amplifier is telling it to. It doesn't change channels, it just displays an image as sent to it via a single HDMI cable.
It's not downloading from netflix, it's not getting me weather updates, and I'm not surfing the web with it. I simply don't see any value (for me) of having a TV with a network connection.
I've always been leery about everything wanting to have internet access.
Partly because I don't see any benefit from the features of having my TV connect to the internet, and partly because I don't trust that vendors have any clue about security.
If you're going to run things like this, you should definitely have a firewall to keep the outside world at bay. The fact that Samsung has no fix for this tells me there's probably loads of devices like this which will prove to be insecure.
I've never even plugged my Blu Ray player into the network, and I'm getting close to the point of disconnecting my XBox from the network because I don't use any of the on-line features and the ads which have started showing up in games is annoying.
If you need an internet connection for me to play a game on a console ... well, I simply won't buy your product. And I didn't buy the box to be marketed to.
Well, then allow me to say ... holy crap. As much as I have a hard time believing "Microsoft is committed to support for interoperability across platforms". They haven't historically been interested in that.
I'm assuming if Microsoft could legally stop this, they would.
Likely the interfaces aren't copyrightable and this is probably a clean implementation -- but I'm sure if Microsoft could trot out a patent or something else to stop people they would.
I can't imagine they want implementations of their stuff out there. (Granted, they mostly started out by implementing other people's stuff, so there may not be much they can do about it.)
Why would we think that?
In the US, the PATRIOT act can compel someone to hand over the information without any real judicial oversight and a requirement they don't tell anybody. I assume the UK is about the same.
Increasingly, the data private industry collects on us can get into government hands quite readily.
And that might be well one of the few things they agree on. Almost everything else about what a government is for and should be doing isn't going to match up at all.
Though, nowadays it seems like everybody is pushing for more surveillance and erosion of rights in the name of security theater.
Sadly, everyone who loudly says governments should be backing off and not be so intrusive, be they 'left' or 'right' leaning, are all lumped into the category of "crazy" and dismissed.
I'm pretty sure this might be one of the few issues where the ACLU and the Libertarians agree on much.
Are you aware of the fact that liberals and libertarians aren't necessarily the same set?
Paul Ryan is a Libertarian. Kennedy was a liberal.
They mean different things.
And, in this case, for a fee store C will accept a delivery on on behalf of the patron of store B, and repackage the like bread from Store A.
Store C then makes it possible to access the loaf of bread you bought from store B while you are in store A, and store A will be none the wiser and the patron can enjoy the benefits of both stores.
Then they will sit around saying that people should stop complaining about the price of bread in store A, since it's reasonably priced.
I find the notion that when these countries do not tax the revenue (in this case store C) they are 'stealing' a little odd ... They are choosing the banking revenue over the tax revenue, but I am sure those countries get a little vigorish themselves. And it is the rules in those countries which allows a non-taxable entity to do business in their own countries. They let a company say "oh, gee, we don't want to pay the cost of your bread but we're just going to hang out anyway".
Do I agree that these companies should be able to just skip out on paying taxes? Nope. Do I think this is really any different than Hollywood accounting? Not really. Same shell game, just against the governments.
In the end, I am betting those loopholes exist because someone lobbied the government to add them, and they did it. The whole deck is stacked for corporations, why should governments suddenly feel like they are the only ones who get screwed?
Speak for yourself. ;-)
As with anything like this, the more sensitive you make it, the more you might have to deal with false positives.
I can only imagine someone going around bumping into people at the airport making sure they all smell like something which will trigger something like this.
It wouldn't be anything more disruptive than suddenly loads of people in the airport get checked for bombs, but I bet you could terribly mess up an airport if you suddenly had a handful of people testing positive.
Of course, to be going around doing this you'd need to smell of bomb residue and probably be seen on surveillance cameras doing it. But for all I know some common household chemicals could cause this now.
No, I'm telling you you're saying one set of words, and then retroactively saying they mean something else.
You said nothing at all about progress, or what we could do in the future, you said, and I quote again:
I pointed out that at best this was hyperbole. Now you're whining that I'm arguing against progress, which is a completely erroneous conclusion.
The entire rest of your argument doesn't stem from anything you said at the time, and is specious because you're now trying to claim you said an entirely different set of words with a different intent.
So, read what you said, read what I said, and then go tell someone who might care how you think you've said other things. You're simply expanding the scope of what you said to include an entirely different set of arguments about other things, and you're making up things that both you and I said -- and I'm not going to debate you on what you think I've said, because you're so completely missing the point it's not funny.
Sure, fossil records. Let's go with NOAA since they're fairly well respected:
And, then there's Berkeley:
So, yes, is there is strong evidence that the morphology of hagfish hasn't changed in 300 million years. That's not to say there has been zero changes to it, but nothing radical.
If you can compare a modern specimen to a 300 million year old fossil and fine no differences, you pretty much conclude that it hasn't significantly evolved. Think coelacanth. Think crocodilians. Think MPAA. ;-)
Yeah, I'd have to say this is a willful 'misunderstanding'.
Facebook's commodity is your data. That's how they make money. They don't want to be told that they would be required to delete your data upon request.
Any time you see Facebook saying "Privacy laws would harm privacy", the real thing they're saying is "but that would cut into profits".
Bullshit. Have you polled every user who owns a tablet to confirm they've said that? I've never said it, I assume other people have never said it, so "EVERY" in this case is mere hyperbole to suit your argument.
Yeah, lets design a small, portable device with lousy batter life so we can run photoshop on it. If you know you're going to have to plug it into the wall, why not use a desktop and a mouse? I'm not looking to give up my battery life so you have a drawing tablet.
Ah, and there's the crux of it isn't it? This is about what you want, not what the general market for tablets want. What percentage of people who own tablets want that? And has anybody so far designed a tablet with the express needs of an artiste in mind? No, they've designed a general consumer device. There's probably no money to be made in making a specialized device which covers what you're looking for -- at least not yet, and not without charging you obscene amounts of money for it. I don't want to pay more for my device so you can have the device of your dreams, and nobody else will want to either.
No, it's better for you, and what you feel you need. Which, as you say, is fine. 'Better' is and always will be a purely subjective measure, it's not an objective fact.
I'm not denying anybody their choice, but it's not my job to provide it -- nor is it Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, or anybody else. I'm choosing to stay the hell away from Windows 8; and from what I've read about it being a bad mash-up of desktop and tablet, and the fact that Microsoft has barely sold 1 million units tells me that other people are making the same choice.
All that you've said is that for you, as an artist, want features not in most tablets. All I've said is that, as someone who has had a tablet for a couple of years now and quite likes it, I don't use it anything like my desktop, and I'm not interested in one which replaces my desktop.
At the end of the day, do you know who gives a shit about my and your opinions? Me and you respectively. And if the market isn't looking for a tablet like you describe, there's no incentive for anybody build it.