Alternators are just generators with electromagnets in place of real magnets(because electromagnets, for the same size, can produce FAR stronger magnetic fields.)
Most generators use electromagnets. Some have a small permenent magnet generator on the same shaft, powering the field coils.
Depending upon the vehicle, the output of the alternator is actually controlled by varying the current through the field coil.
Or by using a voltage regulator. Sicne the voltage needs to be kept constant, regardless of the engine RPM.
Oh...also...alternators produce AC which is converted to DC. Internally they have diode packs(they look like little buttons) which are arranged to give you DC from the AC.
An AC generator is easier and cheaper to build than a dynamo.
Gossip is always legal. Its never illegal. Gossip is just that. If you take gossip at face value you are an idiot.
This includes being able to recognise "gossip" even when it perports to be something else. Or is uttered by a "journalist" or politican.(Indeed especially from the latter.)
If i were to do something legal in Country A, and travel to Country B, i also find it illogical that i could be tried for breaking Country B's laws when i did not commit the act on thier soil.
Unless, it appears, country B is the USA. e.g. the Skylaroff case. There are also sound countries which attempt to apply their own laws to their citizens, whereever they may happen to be.
Presumably refering to the idea of Osama Bin Laden suing news agencies. Claiming that the information is true is a possible defence. But the defendant would need to be able to demonstrate that they at least had good reason for believing it to be true. When it comes to Osama Bin Laden we have perported "evidence" and conspiracy theories with strong government and press backing. Hardly real evidence of any of the claims made. Given an impartial court he'd probably win...
What, apart from PAL, the colour system used in most of the world?
PAL isn't perfect, by any means. Then the French wanted to do something different and came up with SECAM.
IIRC it was developed around the same time as the US developed NTSC, but provides superior quality, without the colour drift that NTSC suffers from.
PAL is effectivly NTSC V2. Whilst you don't need "tint" controls on PAL receivers, IIRC, it is worst than NTSC when it comes to colour fringing artefacts.
Nobody much cares about how much noise a missile engine makes -- key criteria are cost, fuel efficiency, power to weight and reliability.
It would also help if you can get your missile to go supersonic, then no matter how much noise it makes no-one is going to know it's comming...
If you've every stood close to a turbojet engine when it's running, you'll also become very quickly aware of the fact that *all* jet engines make a hell of a lot of noise.
Or you could fly in a 727 and sit near to 3 of them.
Car would keep running on ewsistant ethonol/oil mixtures with minimal modifications. Boats can be ethenol or nuclear powered. The only thing which breaks down is the airplanes.
Actually a gas turbine engine can be a lot less fussy than a piston engine. There is a Russian figher which will run on anything which is liquid and will burn.
Plus, everyone who is saying this suff would cause a disaster is an idiot. It would not spread that fast. Bugs just don't spread like they do in the movies.
This isn't just any old load of bugs it's a weapon. Weapons are generally transported according to the whim of people.
This is mostly a tool for fucking up the millitary capacity of underdeveloped nations without causing too many casualities.
It'll probably work even better against someone with a large military then....
You are talking years for a weapon used in Afganistan to effect Europe, much less the U.S especially when the U.S. quarentiens its boarders and only accepts north and south American oil.
Considering that huge quantities of illegal drugs, arms and even people manage to enter the US each day it seems very likely that such a bioweapon could get a "return to sender"... Even diseases can be spread around the globe at the speed of jet planes. Even without deliberate attempts to spread them.
You don't get it. The government is losing the battle of public opinion over the drug war, so they need a new FUD machine to keep the people scared.
There are a few lined up. Consider the neat timing of discovering the body of Ms Levy, just as some embarrasing questions are asked of Mr Bush.
No one wants to treat the causes in cases like these, their jobs depend on treating the symptoms, and never actually making any real headway, just like the drug war.
Assuming the people supposedly opposing it are not actually involved in keeping it going. Which has certainly been the case in the "war on drugs".
A good point. We get approximately 3 minutes of adverts for every 15 minutes of television. So in an half hour programme you'll have one advert break and in a whole hour you'll (only) have three interruptions.
Possibly three quite long breaks if the programme was made in the USA/Canada. Since the programme itself is only actually round 42-45 minutes long. With some of the "advertising" being trailers and self promotion. Also in the US they don't tend to show adverts between programmes. Which is probably part of the reason most North American produced TV drama has up to 5 minutes pre title "teaser".
If that's the case, then how can Consumer Reports and Ms Magazine both publish regularly without charging exorbitant subscription fees and without accepting advertising?
The former because accepting advertising would make in less valuable, since there would be questions of impartiality raised. The latter because it has a powerful political organisation as patron.
You can digitally remove and replace almost anything these days; they've been doing it for years. For instance, when Demolition Man was made, the restaurant that was a Taco Bell in America was a Pizza Hut in Europe. They redubbed the lines and digitally replaced the logos.
They might have on some versions shown in Europe. The version shown in the UK used "Taco Bell".
Sweeps are a giant con game except that the mark is fully aware of what's going on and goes along with it anyway.
Which leads to the question of why US networks continue to do things this way. Since the only noticable effect is to annoy the viewers. Maybe the root of the problem is that these organisations are highly conservative.
If the Pentagon doesn't issue a general order for the use of free software to be banned, I'm sure the next thing we'll read about is the BSA telling all branches of the military to complete a software audit in a very short amount of time.
To which the BSA will be told "national security, go away"... Dosn't the US militry have soveriegn immunity anyway?
No, and the Navy wouldn't have to. They have these newfangled devices called radios that can transmit data over long distances.
Just hope it dosn't happen in the middle of a war. Any enemy who has anti-ship weapons also probably has radio jammers. A radio transmitter makes a nice target for a missile...
When I worked in SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) a few years back, it was more typical than not to get source to the system. Many contracts required it. Why? Because these systems were specified and expected to serve for 20 or more years. Without source, you can't expect it to be supported that long.
Probably considerably longer. Remember that the USAF recently dropped huge quantities of high explosive on Afganistan using a bomber designed in the 1940's. As well as the B52 there is also the KC135, airlines stopped flying 707s years ago.
Not many Windows customers get source, from what I've heard. I think that source distribution was far more common 20 years ago and it's only been in the era of shrinkwrap software that it's diminished. Maybe it's a good idea whose time has returned!
IIRC Bill Gates originally came up with the shrinkwrap software idea in the 1970's.
BUT; no creative work is created without a frame of reference, some nod to the past which acknowledges prior artists. Or, to put it another way, ALL art is, in some respect, derivative. Indefinite copyright will act to stifle artistic creation by making it more difficult for an artist to derive a new work.
Especially for independent authors. Big corporate copyright holders can quite easily licence other copyright works held by other big corporates.
You're talking rubbish. It does nothing to bring it in to line with European copyright law, which already has shorter terms than the United States.
It's not just a matter of term, there is also the matter of scope. e.g. US copyright law has always been very draconian with respect to derived works. (Which wasn't an especially big issue where copyright was fairly short term anyway.) Up until 1988 UK copyright law, whilst fairly long term, tended not to view creating many derived works as potentially infringing. Indeed it would be perfectly possible to create something which was entirely derived from other works and meet the 1956 acts definition of "original". In 1956 the idea that creative works are often inspired by and derived from other works was apparenly well understood, at least in London. More recently we have had rounds of "harmonization", which appears to translate in taking the most extreme parts of copyright laws from all over the world and putting them all together.
The Copyright Act of 1976 did this as well, but it took people a while to complain about it. Before THE 1976 ACT, copyright terms were for a fixed amouNt of time: 28 years per term, renewable once. Since the 1976 act, the term has been life of the author plus 50 years, and now 70 years.
Linking copyright to the death of an author makes finding the copyright expirary date non obvious (especially for a lesser known author). Also linking copyright expiary to the author's death makes asasination a possibility. Whilst no person would wait 50-70 years a corporation might think on that timescale. It comes from the Bern convention, maybe the US could put it's well known habit of ignoring treaties to good use for once.
Copyright has become corrupted to such a degree that it's now an instrument of censorship, as Dmitri Sklyarov and Edward Felten can tell you.
Which is back to where it was 300 odd years ago. Except with CEO's rather than kings doing the censoring.
Well, thankfully, Disney can't bribe the Justices with money for their reelection coffers.
They can however bribe justices with money, free movie showings, food, etc.
And what is Disney's business plan anyway? To have copyrights extended whenever Mickey Mouse risks becoming public domain?
The really ironic thing is that the early Mickey Mouse movies may well be public domain anyway. Since apparently Disney didn't comply with the copyright law en force in the 1920-30's.
A starving artist gets nothing from an extension. His copyright had no value before (that is why he is starving), and similarly, it not likely to have value later.
Or their copyright may well have value, but they assigned it to someone else. So the copyright term on the work means absolutly nothing to the artist in the first place.
This one isn't $M bashing! It's STUPID SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR/STUPID DBA bashing.
And who marketed their systems on the basis of not needing well trained administrators? That's right Microsoft...
NOTE: They make their products so even a stupid administrator can install it, and this worm is proof of that!
That's half the problem, they make systems the stupid think they can administer. Making something easy to install has very little to do with if it is easy to administer.
Re:Copyrights and patents
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
Copyright terms should be standard lengths, one-size-fits-all regardless of when anyone dies, is born, gets incorporated, or achieves spotted purple enlightenment with bells on.
It would also make sense for any copyright notice to be printed something like "Copyright XYZ until 22nd May 2002". This does still allow for different terms for different types of works.
Slashdot Mirror
Alternators are just generators with electromagnets in place of real magnets(because electromagnets, for the same size, can produce FAR stronger magnetic fields.)
Most generators use electromagnets. Some have a small permenent magnet generator on the same shaft, powering the field coils.
Depending upon the vehicle, the output of the alternator is actually controlled by varying the current through the field coil.
Or by using a voltage regulator. Sicne the voltage needs to be kept constant, regardless of the engine RPM.
Oh...also...alternators produce AC which is converted to DC. Internally they have diode packs(they look like little buttons) which are arranged to give you DC from the AC.
An AC generator is easier and cheaper to build than a dynamo.
Gossip is always legal. Its never illegal. Gossip is just that. If you take gossip at face value you are an idiot.
This includes being able to recognise "gossip" even when it perports to be something else. Or is uttered by a "journalist" or politican.(Indeed especially from the latter.)
"US Government will sue the British government for "talking about illegal things such as freedom", because those pages can be seen from America"
Or even more ironically the US attempts to sue the Russian newspaper, Pravda.
If i were to do something legal in Country A, and travel to Country B, i also find it illogical that i could be tried for breaking Country B's laws when i did not commit the act on thier soil.
Unless, it appears, country B is the USA. e.g. the Skylaroff case.
There are also sound countries which attempt to apply their own laws to their citizens, whereever they may happen to be.
It's not libel if it's true. F**king arab.
Presumably refering to the idea of Osama Bin Laden suing news agencies.
Claiming that the information is true is a possible defence. But the defendant would need to be able to demonstrate that they at least had good reason for believing it to be true. When it comes to Osama Bin Laden we have perported "evidence" and conspiracy theories with strong government and press backing.
Hardly real evidence of any of the claims made. Given an impartial court he'd probably win...
What, apart from PAL, the colour system used in most of the world?
PAL isn't perfect, by any means. Then the French wanted to do something different and came up with SECAM.
IIRC it was developed around the same time as the US developed NTSC, but provides superior quality, without the colour drift that NTSC suffers from.
PAL is effectivly NTSC V2. Whilst you don't need "tint" controls on PAL receivers, IIRC, it is worst than NTSC when it comes to colour fringing artefacts.
Nobody much cares about how much noise a missile engine makes -- key criteria are cost, fuel efficiency, power to weight and reliability.
It would also help if you can get your missile to go supersonic, then no matter how much noise it makes no-one is going to know it's comming...
If you've every stood close to a turbojet engine when it's running, you'll also become very quickly aware of the fact that *all* jet engines make a hell of a lot of noise.
Or you could fly in a 727 and sit near to 3 of them.
Car would keep running on ewsistant ethonol/oil mixtures with minimal modifications. Boats can be ethenol or nuclear powered. The only thing which breaks down is the airplanes.
Actually a gas turbine engine can be a lot less fussy than a piston engine. There is a Russian figher which will run on anything which is liquid and will burn.
Plus, everyone who is saying this suff would cause a disaster is an idiot. It would not spread that fast. Bugs just don't spread like they do in the movies.
This isn't just any old load of bugs it's a weapon. Weapons are generally transported according to the whim of people.
This is mostly a tool for fucking up the millitary capacity of underdeveloped nations without causing too many casualities.
It'll probably work even better against someone with a large military then....
You are talking years for a weapon used in Afganistan to effect Europe, much less the U.S especially when the U.S. quarentiens its boarders and only accepts north and south American oil.
Considering that huge quantities of illegal drugs, arms and even people manage to enter the US each day it seems very likely that such a bioweapon could get a "return to sender"... Even diseases can be spread around the globe at the speed of jet planes. Even without deliberate attempts to spread them.
You don't get it. The government is losing the battle of public opinion over the drug war, so they need a new FUD machine to keep the people scared.
There are a few lined up. Consider the neat timing of discovering the body of Ms Levy, just as some embarrasing questions are asked of Mr Bush.
No one wants to treat the causes in cases like these, their jobs depend on treating the symptoms, and never actually making any real headway, just like the drug war.
Assuming the people supposedly opposing it are not actually involved in keeping it going. Which has certainly been the case in the "war on drugs".
A good point. We get approximately 3 minutes of adverts for every 15 minutes of television. So in an half hour programme you'll have one advert break and in a whole hour you'll (only) have three interruptions.
Possibly three quite long breaks if the programme was made in the USA/Canada. Since the programme itself is only actually round 42-45 minutes long. With some of the "advertising" being trailers and self promotion.
Also in the US they don't tend to show adverts between programmes. Which is probably part of the reason most North American produced TV drama has up to 5 minutes pre title "teaser".
If that's the case, then how can Consumer Reports and Ms Magazine both publish regularly without charging exorbitant subscription fees and without accepting advertising?
The former because accepting advertising would make in less valuable, since there would be questions of impartiality raised.
The latter because it has a powerful political organisation as patron.
You can digitally remove and replace almost anything these days; they've been doing it for years. For instance, when Demolition Man was made, the restaurant that was a Taco Bell in America was a Pizza Hut in Europe. They redubbed the lines and digitally replaced the logos.
They might have on some versions shown in Europe. The version shown in the UK used "Taco Bell".
Sweeps are a giant con game except that the mark is fully aware of what's going on and goes along with it anyway.
Which leads to the question of why US networks continue to do things this way. Since the only noticable effect is to annoy the viewers. Maybe the root of the problem is that these organisations are highly conservative.
If the Pentagon doesn't issue a general order for the use of free software to be banned, I'm sure the next thing we'll read about is the BSA telling all branches of the military to complete a software audit in a very short amount of time.
To which the BSA will be told "national security, go away"... Dosn't the US militry have soveriegn immunity anyway?
I also know about 1) how navies work (everything has to be mil spec, so they generally do not have the latest and greatest;
Having something which works is generally of far more importance. An older system will have tended to have more bugs shaken out.
bandwidth limitations apply to ship-to-shore traffic (especially while at sea), etc.);
It's also a good idea to avoid "using the radio made us miss that missile being locked onto is" type senario. Which isn't a hypothetical issue.
No, and the Navy wouldn't have to. They have these newfangled devices called radios that can transmit data over long distances.
Just hope it dosn't happen in the middle of a war. Any enemy who has anti-ship weapons also probably has radio jammers. A radio transmitter makes a nice target for a missile...
When I worked in SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) a few years back, it was more typical than not to get source to the system. Many contracts required it.
Why? Because these systems were specified and expected to serve for 20 or more years. Without source, you can't expect it to be supported that long.
Probably considerably longer. Remember that the USAF recently dropped huge quantities of high explosive on Afganistan using a bomber designed in the 1940's. As well as the B52 there is also the KC135, airlines stopped flying 707s years ago.
Not many Windows customers get source, from what I've heard. I think that source distribution was far more common 20 years ago and it's only been in the era of shrinkwrap software that it's diminished. Maybe it's a good idea whose time has returned!
IIRC Bill Gates originally came up with the shrinkwrap software idea in the 1970's.
BUT; no creative work is created without a frame of reference, some nod to the past which acknowledges prior artists. Or, to put it another way, ALL art is, in some respect, derivative. Indefinite copyright will act to stifle artistic creation by making it more difficult for an artist to derive a new work.
Especially for independent authors. Big corporate copyright holders can quite easily licence other copyright works held by other big corporates.
You're talking rubbish. It does nothing to bring it in to line with European copyright law, which already has shorter terms than the United States.
It's not just a matter of term, there is also the matter of scope. e.g. US copyright law has always been very draconian with respect to derived works. (Which wasn't an especially big issue where copyright was fairly short term anyway.)
Up until 1988 UK copyright law, whilst fairly long term, tended not to view creating many derived works as potentially infringing. Indeed it would be perfectly possible to create something which was entirely derived from other works and meet the 1956 acts definition of "original". In 1956 the idea that creative works are often inspired by and derived from other works was apparenly well understood, at least in London.
More recently we have had rounds of "harmonization", which appears to translate in taking the most extreme parts of copyright laws from all over the world and putting them all together.
The Copyright Act of 1976 did this as well, but it took people a while to complain about it. Before THE 1976 ACT, copyright terms were for a fixed amouNt of time: 28 years per term, renewable once. Since the 1976 act, the term has been life of the author plus 50 years, and now 70 years.
Linking copyright to the death of an author makes finding the copyright expirary date non obvious (especially for a lesser known author). Also linking copyright expiary to the author's death makes asasination a possibility. Whilst no person would wait 50-70 years a corporation might think on that timescale. It comes from the Bern convention, maybe the US could put it's well known habit of ignoring treaties to good use for once.
Copyright has become corrupted to such a degree that it's now an instrument of censorship, as Dmitri Sklyarov and Edward Felten can tell you.
Which is back to where it was 300 odd years ago. Except with CEO's rather than kings doing the censoring.
Well, thankfully, Disney can't bribe the Justices with money for their reelection coffers.
They can however bribe justices with money, free movie showings, food, etc.
And what is Disney's business plan anyway? To have copyrights extended whenever Mickey Mouse risks becoming public domain?
The really ironic thing is that the early Mickey Mouse movies may well be public domain anyway. Since apparently Disney didn't comply with the copyright law en force in the 1920-30's.
A starving artist gets nothing from an extension. His copyright had no value before (that is why he is starving), and similarly, it not likely to have value later.
Or their copyright may well have value, but they assigned it to someone else. So the copyright term on the work means absolutly nothing to the artist in the first place.
This one isn't $M bashing! It's STUPID SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR/STUPID DBA bashing.
And who marketed their systems on the basis of not needing well trained administrators? That's right Microsoft...
NOTE: They make their products so even a stupid administrator can install it, and this worm is proof of that!
That's half the problem, they make systems the stupid think they can administer. Making something easy to install has very little to do with if it is easy to administer.
Copyright terms should be standard lengths, one-size-fits-all regardless of when anyone dies, is born, gets incorporated, or achieves spotted purple enlightenment with bells on.
It would also make sense for any copyright notice to be printed something like "Copyright XYZ until 22nd May 2002".
This does still allow for different terms for different types of works.