First, people don't use their brakes to slow down 5MPH at freeway speeds, except in the the occasional emergency situation. The physics are such that wind and engine resistance
I think you're saying that the brake petal needs to be pressed for regenerative breaking to occur on a Prius. This is incorrect. The "no pedal" action of the Prius is a slight deceleration which will include some level of "regenerative breaking". A very slight press on the accelerator will give you something more akin to "coasting", particularly at speeds at or under 41mph (in my 2004 model) where the ICE can turn off as well.
You've missed my point. The post I responded to seemed to claim "It doesn't hurt you directly, why should it be illegal." The same can be said (modulo the damage to the lawn) of my campers. And yet you have demonstrated no qualms in suggesting that the camping wouldn't be ok, and thus (as near as I can tell) granted my conclusion.
You cant in the first place because there is a specific right for the owner to enjoy the view of his front lawn
Is there? What sense do you mean the word "right" in, legal, ethical, philosophical, religious? That right is not present in the thinking of (say) some Native American cultures. In what way is this right more fundamental than, say, the French concept of the right of an author to control the manner and presentation distribution of his artistic works?
The point of the camping analogy was merely to dispute the idea that "does it take something directly from you" was the only test of a fair copyright system. I believe that it was on-point.
I chose the camping analogy for another reason. The idea of "real property" (real as in real estate) is notoriously fussy and complex when you look beneath the surface. The idea that you don't own the land that you own is a pretty good model (just try and keep it without paying your property "tax"). That idea, of owning land, is also a social construct, one absent from (say) certain Native American cultures--the idea that there is some "pure" meaning of "property" for tangible objects but not intangible ones is a little too simplistic.
You and several respondents assumed that I supported this change to the copyright law--I don't, I think it's stupid and I think asset forfeiture is the devil, but I understand how your mistake might be a sensible guess given the context. My feelings on copyright law are neither "all copyright law is bad" nor "all copyright law is good".
By the way, you and several respondents assumed that I supported this change to the copyright law--I don't, but I understand how that might be a sensible guess given the context. My feelings on copyright law are a lot more nuanced, but I don't support the proposed change, and I find even current law to be just a little too strong.
If instead of stealing your car, I make a 1:1 copy if it, did I deprive you of anything?
To specifically address this analogy, let me offer another one.
May I camp for the next three years on your front lawn? I'll move out of the way when you're mowing the lawn, or playing outdoors, it won't deprive you of a thing.
If you grab an image and use it on a web site, the numbers are smaller, but still contribute to my budget for things like food and camera equipment. I know several photographers who have entirely pulled their work off the web because of image usage without permission.
There is no question that copyright is a social convention, one that people have "agreed" has some putative benefit to society. And I suspect you and I might be able to find some sympathy for each others opinion in how ridiculously exaggerated copyright law has become. But I don't think copyright law, in and of itself, is bad, and given what I do for a living, it's pretty unlikely you're going to convince me that I'm wrong.
Equating "piracy" with.... theft of physical goods is specious at best,
I don't see this particular comparison as "specious at best." That such a comparison can be made is inherent in the law of nearly every country in the world.
When the rule you suggest was the case, patenting software was easily handled by patenting the combination of a device with the underlying software. See, for example, US 4,490,811, which in essence patents not the software of the "proximity theta" algorithm but simply any electronic circuit running said algorithm.
My point is merely that you will find the line between a "software patent" and a "hardware patent" difficult to enforce a clear line around.
It's important to have accurate mileage ratings on cars, and it's hard to understand how the EPA could be so bad at it.
In terms of the way they do studies, it's because the way the car is driven is such a huge factor in performance (as are environmental factors.) I actually get near-EPA mileage on my Prius. But then, I'm a freak.
Here's a simple approach: When a car comes in for an oil change, read the mileage rating stored inthe on-board computer and upload it to an EPA database.
Because of what I just said. The average driver of a Prius is likely to drive a little differently than the average driver of a Pontiac Trans Am. While sampling might give a customer a better somewhat better estimate of what he or she might get in a given car they were going to buy, since they'd be more likely to be in the demographic of that car, sampling gives a worse answer to what most purchasers are actually asking, which is "which of these two cars gives me better gas mileage--and is that by a little, or by a lot?"
Sampling also runs into strange questions as to where you sample geographically. I'd expect Priuses to be rare in Alaska, would you include Alaska in the area you sample? Temperature has a large influence on observed gas mileage, etc.
What would you consider doing for a living, after being in a single field for so long?"
Five years ago I left technology for good to become a professional nature photographer. There are catches--the pay is terrible (but I made a lot of money in tech.) When I'm out in the field, particularly the far north in summer, the hours can truly suck (but I love every single minute of it, even if I don't... can't get enough sleep.) Some of the people in the art business are difficult to work with. (True anywhere, likely.)
On the other hand, I love my boss (myself), even when he's a hard taskmaster. My overall level of happiness and sanity has gone up--way up. Despite oft-long hours, a lot of flexibility in when that work gets done allows me an incredibly varied and rich social life, as well as to serve on the board of directors of a non-profit. People who don't pay me who appreciate my work often write me in appreciation of what I do.
There is an obsessiveness to the tech culture, a "60 hours a week or you suck", a cluelessness apparent in the constant dicksizing about how much one suffers at work. For many, this gets in the way of having a happy and grounded life. Don't get me wrong, I love technology and gadgets, I miss writing code (and still do now and then), but not for a moment in the last five years have I missed being pulled into the obsessiveness of the Silicon Valley tech work culture.
I'm not suggesting that you go become a nature photographer, that was my dream, not yours. And, as many other folks here suggest, don't rush into something. Make sure you take care of your future, don't leave yourself worried about how you're going to eat. Don't leave yourself to be asking "You want fries with that, sonny?" when you're 88.
BUT....
Do go out and find something you love. Something that lets you have whatever kind of life you'd like to have, while working. Life is too short to waste.
Sure, although that wouldn't leave you with the right lens information in place. Obviously, like any one-way has sort of security all of this is only as good as the ability of people to reproduce the hash.
Of course i can doctor my photo, print it and then rephotograph it. Damn analog hole.
Recording the lens used with the camera and an estimate of the focus distance (which Canon already does in their DSLRs, although not all of their lenses return distance information yet), and then using that as part of any cryptographic hash data verification would give you a little more protection.
Too late, It's already done. The Exif information from the cameras I use already includes the camera serial number. (Not that I'm disagreeing with your point.)
Canon's DSLRs do checksum the data, there's a verification tool as well. Of course that only works with the original uncropped data, but it does give you a fairly firm reference to which you can compare any derivative versions.
Long story short, Google affiliate advertising isn't a good use of our advertising dollar. We prefer to spend on better targeted opportunities that earn us more qualified leads.
Referrer logs can help you to some extent with the "where are my ads being placed" question. You an figure out which of those referred clicks are coming via ads by use of a URL parameter in the URL you ask Google to redirect ad clicks to.
Also (and now I'm just getting pedantic) I believe pr0n sites are not included in Google's program as per their TOS, but I'll grant it's simple enough to come up with trivial variations on this theme.
But all of this is a tempest in a teapot. While Google thinks I'm paying for "click-throughs", I'll tell you that in the end I judge my participation in Adwords by whether it makes money. How much does a month cost--and how many (say) rentals of the art fair equipment I rent out bring? I'm just not that fussy about how they deliver the goods, and I think the danger of my ads being run on sites that would "hurt my business" is negligible.
Touche. (As an aside, I got my BS in Mathematics there in 1984.)
I do agree with you that there are very real issues implied by the "doc monopoly," (although your sinus infection example would work differently in my own case, I'd likely just email my doctor and have her send an Rx to my local pharmacy--but I do still get your point.) I do agree that some "urgent care" and some simple daily health issues could be handled by an NP.
I don't entirely agree with your economic argument, in particular your targeting of individual doctors as the source of the problem. I am all for Adam Smith, and I agree that the "doc monopoly" has the effect of raising prices. The "doc monopoly" largely imposes a cost on prospective providers making it more expensive for them to become providers, I'd expect that this increase in provider cost would be mirrored, with markup, in a free market to the customers. So in this case "following the money" would lead one to medical schools (and hospitals, perhaps?), with less (but admittedly some) of the increase going to the doctors themselves.
Seems to me that what the doctors have is a relatively weak form of "trade union" compared to the sorts of trade unions enjoyed by (say) autoworkers, and I expect it's contribution to health care costs, while real, is modest in comparison with the costs of extreme administrative overhead relating to billing and insurance, and modest in comparison with the lawyering and malpractice insurance issues.
That much is certain. What about Engineers and Programmers? We go through the same crap, but we don't make near as much as you do.
Where did you do your residency?;)
As someone who spent twenty years writing software professionally at startups before taking on my current career, I'm callin' BS, there's no equivalent of residency in my old career.
I will never trust you. You are a doctor...
Wow, you sound very angry. Perhaps you, like I, have had some very bad doctors in the past. If that's the case, I'd suggest voting with your feet until you can find someone who is both highly competent and worthy of trust. Talk to your friends for recommendations, particularly ones who have had complex medical issues. (My current doctor was recommended to me by my gf, who is currently dealing both with rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto's.) While no first-line doctor is going to be an expert at every medical problem, but a good one should be able to delegate to specialists when necessary, as well as being able to listen well to what symptoms you report.
I do not mean to suggest that you should trust doctors because they are doctors, you should give due caution to conflict-of-interest issues and the quality of the care you receive. Yeah, it's gonna be a pain in the butt to sort through the ones who are just interested in getting through the day. And I don't mean to suggest that determining the competency of doctors is somehow trivial for those of us who aren't doctors, either.
Still, in the end, ethical, friendly and talented doctors exist. We needn't argue their relative rarity or frequency, my singular point is that you should accept nothing less, and if you aren't getting that right now, you should start voting with your feet until you do.
It is because of copyright law that we even need GPL.
Not entirely, lacking copyright law software creators could still just release binaries. Remember that part of the point of the GPL is the inherent disclosure of source it forces. (Of course, that "force" calls into the question the claim of GPL as being entirely about freedom, but nevermindthatrightnow.)
Discounting truly bad pixels, variations in the sensor readings on an even sky have two sources--pure sampling noise from the fact that the sensor is only reading a finite number of pixels, and a more constant, but still varying per-pixel offset. It's likely with a daylight shot that you're primarily seeing the former, the latter effects tend to be more significant during long exposures doing astrophotography. Check out the "Digital Rebel" astrophotography page here, it outlines a procedure for measuring and subtracting off this varying per-pixel offset, but notices you need to essentially compute the "dark frame" (or offset) for a particular set of conditions (temperature, ISO, exposure time). That subtraction could be done in PS, but again, you really need a new "dark frame" for each shot.
It is possible to smooth rough skies and such in Photoshop, I can't speak from personal experience with the GIMP but I'd expect something similar would work. I'd take the image, duplicate a regular (non-adjustment) layer on top of the main image, call that second one "smoothed"), blur it (Gaussian blur, fiddle with the radius to keep the effect gentle), add a layer mask to "smoothed" and paint it so that it only targets the sky in a shot. You may end up finding that you want to leave a little noise in the resulting image to avoid posterization, if your results are too smooth you can always adjust the opacity of the smoothed layer downward.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're saying that the brake petal needs to be pressed for regenerative breaking to occur on a Prius. This is incorrect. The "no pedal" action of the Prius is a slight deceleration which will include some level of "regenerative breaking". A very slight press on the accelerator will give you something more akin to "coasting", particularly at speeds at or under 41mph (in my 2004 model) where the ICE can turn off as well.
You've missed my point. The post I responded to seemed to claim "It doesn't hurt you directly, why should it be illegal." The same can be said (modulo the damage to the lawn) of my campers. And yet you have demonstrated no qualms in suggesting that the camping wouldn't be ok, and thus (as near as I can tell) granted my conclusion.
That's a nice axiom, but it doesn't hold with my counters. The right to a "view" is not a physical property right.
Is there? What sense do you mean the word "right" in, legal, ethical, philosophical, religious? That right is not present in the thinking of (say) some Native American cultures. In what way is this right more fundamental than, say, the French concept of the right of an author to control the manner and presentation distribution of his artistic works?
In fact, some argue that the very idea of property constitutes theft.
(But I grant the lawn damage. Don't worry, I'll replace it.)
I chose the camping analogy for another reason. The idea of "real property" (real as in real estate) is notoriously fussy and complex when you look beneath the surface. The idea that you don't own the land that you own is a pretty good model (just try and keep it without paying your property "tax"). That idea, of owning land, is also a social construct, one absent from (say) certain Native American cultures--the idea that there is some "pure" meaning of "property" for tangible objects but not intangible ones is a little too simplistic.
You and several respondents assumed that I supported this change to the copyright law--I don't, I think it's stupid and I think asset forfeiture is the devil, but I understand how your mistake might be a sensible guess given the context. My feelings on copyright law are neither "all copyright law is bad" nor "all copyright law is good".
By the way, you and several respondents assumed that I supported this change to the copyright law--I don't, but I understand how that might be a sensible guess given the context. My feelings on copyright law are a lot more nuanced, but I don't support the proposed change, and I find even current law to be just a little too strong.
To specifically address this analogy, let me offer another one.
May I camp for the next three years on your front lawn? I'll move out of the way when you're mowing the lawn, or playing outdoors, it won't deprive you of a thing.
I feel your analogy is poor.
If instead of stealing a digital copy of one of my Winter scenes of Mono Lake, you make a copy and then hand it to the Mono Lake Committee, then the Mono Lake Committee, when it publishes tens of thousands of copies of its calendar, hands you $250 instead of handing me $250.
If you grab an image and use it on a web site, the numbers are smaller, but still contribute to my budget for things like food and camera equipment. I know several photographers who have entirely pulled their work off the web because of image usage without permission.
There is no question that copyright is a social convention, one that people have "agreed" has some putative benefit to society. And I suspect you and I might be able to find some sympathy for each others opinion in how ridiculously exaggerated copyright law has become. But I don't think copyright law, in and of itself, is bad, and given what I do for a living, it's pretty unlikely you're going to convince me that I'm wrong.
I don't see this particular comparison as "specious at best." That such a comparison can be made is inherent in the law of nearly every country in the world.
When the rule you suggest was the case, patenting software was easily handled by patenting the combination of a device with the underlying software. See, for example, US 4,490,811, which in essence patents not the software of the "proximity theta" algorithm but simply any electronic circuit running said algorithm. My point is merely that you will find the line between a "software patent" and a "hardware patent" difficult to enforce a clear line around.
It's important to have accurate mileage ratings on cars, and it's hard to understand how the EPA could be so bad at it. In terms of the way they do studies, it's because the way the car is driven is such a huge factor in performance (as are environmental factors.) I actually get near-EPA mileage on my Prius. But then, I'm a freak. Here's a simple approach: When a car comes in for an oil change, read the mileage rating stored inthe on-board computer and upload it to an EPA database. Because of what I just said. The average driver of a Prius is likely to drive a little differently than the average driver of a Pontiac Trans Am. While sampling might give a customer a better somewhat better estimate of what he or she might get in a given car they were going to buy, since they'd be more likely to be in the demographic of that car, sampling gives a worse answer to what most purchasers are actually asking, which is "which of these two cars gives me better gas mileage--and is that by a little, or by a lot?" Sampling also runs into strange questions as to where you sample geographically. I'd expect Priuses to be rare in Alaska, would you include Alaska in the area you sample? Temperature has a large influence on observed gas mileage, etc.
Five years ago I left technology for good to become a professional nature photographer. There are catches--the pay is terrible (but I made a lot of money in tech.) When I'm out in the field, particularly the far north in summer, the hours can truly suck (but I love every single minute of it, even if I don't... can't get enough sleep.) Some of the people in the art business are difficult to work with. (True anywhere, likely.)
On the other hand, I love my boss (myself), even when he's a hard taskmaster. My overall level of happiness and sanity has gone up--way up. Despite oft-long hours, a lot of flexibility in when that work gets done allows me an incredibly varied and rich social life, as well as to serve on the board of directors of a non-profit. People who don't pay me who appreciate my work often write me in appreciation of what I do.
There is an obsessiveness to the tech culture, a "60 hours a week or you suck", a cluelessness apparent in the constant dicksizing about how much one suffers at work. For many, this gets in the way of having a happy and grounded life. Don't get me wrong, I love technology and gadgets, I miss writing code (and still do now and then), but not for a moment in the last five years have I missed being pulled into the obsessiveness of the Silicon Valley tech work culture.
I'm not suggesting that you go become a nature photographer, that was my dream, not yours. And, as many other folks here suggest, don't rush into something. Make sure you take care of your future, don't leave yourself worried about how you're going to eat. Don't leave yourself to be asking "You want fries with that, sonny?" when you're 88.
BUT....
Do go out and find something you love. Something that lets you have whatever kind of life you'd like to have, while working. Life is too short to waste.
The requirement to make a complete list of censored material is the most interesting, I wonder what we'd find getting blocked in the US?
Sure, although that wouldn't leave you with the right lens information in place. Obviously, like any one-way has sort of security all of this is only as good as the ability of people to reproduce the hash.
Recording the lens used with the camera and an estimate of the focus distance (which Canon already does in their DSLRs, although not all of their lenses return distance information yet), and then using that as part of any cryptographic hash data verification would give you a little more protection.
Too late, It's already done. The Exif information from the cameras I use already includes the camera serial number. (Not that I'm disagreeing with your point.)
Canon's DSLRs do checksum the data, there's a verification tool as well. Of course that only works with the original uncropped data, but it does give you a fairly firm reference to which you can compare any derivative versions.
And more power to you for that.
Also (and now I'm just getting pedantic) I believe pr0n sites are not included in Google's program as per their TOS, but I'll grant it's simple enough to come up with trivial variations on this theme.
But all of this is a tempest in a teapot. While Google thinks I'm paying for "click-throughs", I'll tell you that in the end I judge my participation in Adwords by whether it makes money. How much does a month cost--and how many (say) rentals of the art fair equipment I rent out bring? I'm just not that fussy about how they deliver the goods, and I think the danger of my ads being run on sites that would "hurt my business" is negligible.
Campaign Summary > [Campaign Name] > Site Exclusion
Touche. (As an aside, I got my BS in Mathematics there in 1984.)
I do agree with you that there are very real issues implied by the "doc monopoly," (although your sinus infection example would work differently in my own case, I'd likely just email my doctor and have her send an Rx to my local pharmacy--but I do still get your point.) I do agree that some "urgent care" and some simple daily health issues could be handled by an NP.
I don't entirely agree with your economic argument, in particular your targeting of individual doctors as the source of the problem. I am all for Adam Smith, and I agree that the "doc monopoly" has the effect of raising prices. The "doc monopoly" largely imposes a cost on prospective providers making it more expensive for them to become providers, I'd expect that this increase in provider cost would be mirrored, with markup, in a free market to the customers. So in this case "following the money" would lead one to medical schools (and hospitals, perhaps?), with less (but admittedly some) of the increase going to the doctors themselves.
Seems to me that what the doctors have is a relatively weak form of "trade union" compared to the sorts of trade unions enjoyed by (say) autoworkers, and I expect it's contribution to health care costs, while real, is modest in comparison with the costs of extreme administrative overhead relating to billing and insurance, and modest in comparison with the lawyering and malpractice insurance issues.
Where did you do your residency? ;)
As someone who spent twenty years writing software professionally at startups before taking on my current career, I'm callin' BS, there's no equivalent of residency in my old career.
I will never trust you. You are a doctor...
Wow, you sound very angry. Perhaps you, like I, have had some very bad doctors in the past. If that's the case, I'd suggest voting with your feet until you can find someone who is both highly competent and worthy of trust. Talk to your friends for recommendations, particularly ones who have had complex medical issues. (My current doctor was recommended to me by my gf, who is currently dealing both with rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto's.) While no first-line doctor is going to be an expert at every medical problem, but a good one should be able to delegate to specialists when necessary, as well as being able to listen well to what symptoms you report.
I do not mean to suggest that you should trust doctors because they are doctors, you should give due caution to conflict-of-interest issues and the quality of the care you receive. Yeah, it's gonna be a pain in the butt to sort through the ones who are just interested in getting through the day. And I don't mean to suggest that determining the competency of doctors is somehow trivial for those of us who aren't doctors, either.
Still, in the end, ethical, friendly and talented doctors exist. We needn't argue their relative rarity or frequency, my singular point is that you should accept nothing less, and if you aren't getting that right now, you should start voting with your feet until you do.
Not entirely, lacking copyright law software creators could still just release binaries. Remember that part of the point of the GPL is the inherent disclosure of source it forces. (Of course, that "force" calls into the question the claim of GPL as being entirely about freedom, but nevermindthatrightnow.)
They'll be having a field day with Svalbard, then.
It is possible to smooth rough skies and such in Photoshop, I can't speak from personal experience with the GIMP but I'd expect something similar would work. I'd take the image, duplicate a regular (non-adjustment) layer on top of the main image, call that second one "smoothed"), blur it (Gaussian blur, fiddle with the radius to keep the effect gentle), add a layer mask to "smoothed" and paint it so that it only targets the sky in a shot. You may end up finding that you want to leave a little noise in the resulting image to avoid posterization, if your results are too smooth you can always adjust the opacity of the smoothed layer downward.