There is nothing wrong with software copyrights because copyrights only cover that very literal piece of code and only factor in when that code has been copied. So if the code goes stale because of its short shelf life, then it doesn't matter if it cannot be copied.
Remember, with copyrights, if you write a program and I write one "just like it" that isn't _actually_ it, then there really isn't a conflict. Especially if there was no way I ever saw your code.
Also, you don't "own all code like yours" when you hold a copyright.
Software patents are bad because they grant a realm of control that extends beyond the scope of what you created (or might have thought about creatring) to give you dominion over all things kind-of like your theoretical thing. That's bad in the extreme.
Copyright is useful for software, and will remain so as long as we don't end up in the "copyrighted space" bull-pucky. (e.g. you can't take picutures in this public park without a paid permit because the sclupture is copyrighted, which is the bull actually happening of late.)
What *isn't* good is the ability to "copyright" "look and feel" (remember that old evil phrase?) because that becomes copyright of general concept, which is just erzats patenting but for longer terms.
A software only implementation of the controller would not infringe the brake patent.
-- realize that if the only thing that is unique about the "patented brake" is the way the standard brake is operated, it doesn't really deserve a patent. The system as a whole is patented, and the place where the software touches the world (e.g. the actual stopping of the car, with sensors and hydraulics or whatever) is the patented part.
-- also, mod-chipping a brake isn't an infringing act under this implementation, and why should it be? The customer has bought the brake system, so what legitimate innovative interest is served by preventing innovative use of the hardware?
A simulation of the entire braking system in a computer somewhere would not infringe the breaking patent because a simulated brake can only stop a simulated car. There is no legitimate innovative interest in preventing people from fully exploring the parameters and operation of a patented system, in fact that is the opposite of the declared purpose of patents.
And no, as someone suggested elsewhere, creating the simulation doesn't un-patent the brake.
On the other hand, if you come up with some patented gizmo to improve a braking system, and someone comes along and realizes that they can do everything your gizmo does just by reprogramming a stock brake, they aren't infringing your patent because they are just operating the stock brake within the natural range of its operational parameters. There is no legitimate public interest in making people add a part to a system in order to get the system to preform in a manner that it was already capable. This seems problematic at frist, but by analogy, if someone came up to you and said "you can't turn off that valve, you have to install my patented part if you don't want liquid to flow through that pipe" you would laugh at them and throw them off your property.
How much worse is "I have a patent on knowing when and why to turn off that valve"?
Oh, to amplify a bit. Consider, in your braking example, the lowly bolt. There are surely bolts involved in the assembly of the brakeing system. But the bolt itself isn't patentable. Software is a part, and quite an interchangable one.
You could argue that a radically new type of bolt can be patented, and then be tempted to say that radically new kinds of software should be patentable by extension.
The problem with _that_ analogy is that software can only do what the CPU is cabible of doing. So patenting software is actually like patenting the particular torque of a bolt in the braking system.
See software doesn't do anything that the machine cannot already do. Its like if I invented a sewing machine that could (mechanically) monogram fabric based on the settings of a series of levers and dials and you wanted to come along and patent a spesific set of settings that represent "a method of" monograming a pretty dasiy onto a t-shirt because dasies make people happy.
CPUs just have a heck of a lot of lever and dial equivelants.
Consider the first few software patents ever issued.
AT&T patented "backing store" which was the method of remembering what was already on a screen before a window popped up, so that it could be restored when the window was withdrawn. This was in 1985. It didn't patent "memory" it patented "using memory for a particular purpose". Lets not even think about the fact that I had seen the same technique used by Junior High students on TRS-80 in 1977.
The Desqview people patented several variations of using the 286/386's virtual memory system to intercept memory operations directed at the display adaptor in order to virtualize the display. So they patented using a virtual memory feature to virtualize the display memory (as opposed to any other kind of equally accessible memory). The computer is again not doing a single thing that it was not obviously designed to do, and yet there are the patents.
In the theoretical braking system, the patent protection on the force-feedback sensor and the brake shoe and god knows what else, are sufficent to offer you the protection you need. Being able to patent "tapping the brakes faster" or whatever the software does is just a matter of parameterizing how the already-protected components do their work.
The "new kind of car brake" is patented where the braking takes place, and the sensing takes place. Being able to patent the software as a separate thing, or being able to go after people who write similar software for non-similar brakes, is just plain bad for everything. It's like patenting a particular use of a relay or a lightbulb.
Hence "general purpose" and "comodity". Still, the car brake software, were it ported to and running on a GP computer would not be infringing. The exposure is not significant there. Also, given the whole rest of the braking system being a necessary part of the invention, the patent would hold just fine as the braking system would not be commodity.
The definition works (and I have written about itseveral times in more detail in groklaw posts as "BitOBear" no "I") to protect software as a necessary sub-system in an invention while ruling it out the possibility that someone can steal a program using a hardware patent.
I think I have also brought it up here at slashdot before.
-- Any implementation or partial implementaion of anything, when expressed as a program which can run on a general purpose computer, cannot be held to infringe any patent.
-- No patent shall issue or be considered valid, for any task which can be implemented as a program that can execute on commodity general purpose computing equipment.
-- "Business Processes" are not patentable.
The short version is that if you don't pick up a tool and use it, you aren't inventing anything.
If you perform "negative analysis" on most software patents, that is, you remove from the claims everything that isn't being "invented" or which cannot otherwise be patented alone, in the patent claims; you end up with a null set.
For instance, you get some patent on a distributed client server web application. They arn't inventing the client server model, you aren't supposed to be able to patent the divison of labor, they arn't inventing the web, or browser, or web server, they didn't invent the database and they didn't invet the computer. (etc, od nausium.) You are only left with a set of grand parameters that modify how an already atainable goal is reached.
A "software patent" is most identifiable by the addition of a "for a spesific purpose" clause that is tacked onto a basic sequence of common operations. It never "invents a garage roof" it describes "a means of protecting a vehicle by creating a shelter composed of a frame to which overlaping tiles of water resistent material are applied such that the water is directed into a redistribution channel." And the patent becomes all about "protecting a vehicle" and the inherent "but that's just a roof"(ness) disapears into a morrass of secondary claims.
Remember that "one click shopping" is indistinguisable from walking into a brick-and-mortar store with which you already have a relationship, picking up an object, and saying "put it on my tab." Or calling your milkman and saying "bring me an extra pint of milk this week." It is a transaction that has been going on for centuries in various forms and formats, but because it was "making it easy to shop by using a computer to phrase a simple request" (the purpose) the patent was upheld even though none of the _means_ were novel.
In short, in a software patent the invention is described after the purpose in the claims, so that even if the invetion is disallowed the purpose remains patented.
Think it through, he isn't bitching about the slashdot moderation system, he's talking about _actual_ _karma_. The thing being saved is the mission (not some post).
See, that makes it a classic contextual justaposititon, which is at least a little amusing. I beginto think that we really do need the imaginary TNT service from those TV comercials. You know "is this funny?" "Yes, sir, you may laugh, but not that much..."/sigh...
I wish the meta-moderation system would let me pick and choose what to meta-moderate...
The problem is that, among other things, if someone tortured you to sign a paper the corruption of self is limited.
If someone tortures you for your PIN, they then are you as far as the system is concerned and can use that PIN to "sign contracts" at places like car dealerships without dragging your bleeding carcass in to sign the papers. The exposure is, thereby, _much_ greater once you imbue this chip with proxy-youness for all sorts of unbounded contractual purposes.
And machines can't tell the difference between you and ersatz-you either.
And on the average you cannot be shoulder-surfed for a perfect copy of your signature (the way you can for a PIN/password) either.
So an all of the convenience of an single/central electronic ID doesn't just benefit the authorized ID holder, it equally or even disporportionately works to help the fradulent user. It also single-sources the problems reducing the breadth of the paper trail in the case of fraud.
Finally nobody can "deprive me access to my own signature by stealing it". If it becomes normal to use/require the digital ID then simple damage/theft would "temporarily" deprive you of basic citizenship until you could get it replaced etc.
As I said, its about compartmentalization and loss prevention. Put too much power on any one kind of access (and automate it too extensively) and it becomes a great gaping hole of problems.
If its Anonymous it cant function as an ID. It becomes "a ticket" and it only has limited applicability. That is, it will admit you to some service but it won't "identify" you at all. (All that is implicit in the definiton of the terms. 8-)
So if you have this ticket, it can not remain anonymous if you use it in conjunction with anything that is identifying. Read this weekends discussion of the Safeway Club Card leads to Arson Charge discussion. Get a completely "anonymous" club card and use it with a credit card or check or ATM card and it isn't anonymous any more.
And show me a government on the planet that is going to go into the business of issueing anoymous tickets to anything...?
Cash is anonymous, but only if nobody is looking hard enough. (Finger prints, serial numbers, DNA, etc.)
Yes, and the government will get all that straight, never link your old ID to you new ID once the old one is stolen, and _absolutely_ _never_ think of coordinating your data and charging you with arson because someone used your phone number to by an accelerant at Safeway on the same day that you bought a book on fire-safety using your computer.
Imagine the time you could save when the asshat that just punched you in the face and took your wallet uses your ID, withouth standing in line, to painlessly rent a car and cut it up for parts and then forward all your mail to the Costa Rica. You can land straight in debit all without having to fill in a single form!
Oh wait! There's a PIN. Nobody could get a PIN out of someone by shoulder-surfing or the threat of physical violence, if they could they'd have come up with a special name for shoulder-surfing instead of just the generic term.
The happy friendly government workers would be more than happy to cancel your ID and issue you a new one, without waiting in line (because we don't need lines any more) and it would happen so fast and reliably that nobody would ever have a chance to mis-use the stolen card or get your current one canceled by calling in a false fraud report. And all you have to do is pop out of your hospital bed, scamper down to the instant-service government ID office, prove who you are wihtout any ID, and you'll be back out on the street. A happy consumer, ready to figure out where the chop-shop has parked your shiny new Mercedies.
And of course biometrics would solve those pesky problems. If someone _did_ hack your card, you only have to change your retnia, or grow a new thumb with a new an dunique thumbprint to replace the one they cut off.
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These simple model ideas people bandy about have no basis in the way the world works when things go wrong. To paraphrase from motorcycle safety: "dress for the crash, not the ride." The quesiton is _NEVER_ really about how to make the smooth-running things run smoother. It's supposed to be about how the problems get resolved.
"Loss Prevention" is aobut compartmentalization. We back up the data we don't want to lose. (we do don't we?) and we don't hang our drivers license from our car/house keyring. We have our birth certificate and copies of important papers, and a photo-copy of our drivers license safely stowed away in case we are mugged. etc.
Piling all that stuff into one easily lost device is FARGING STOOOPID.
If you have never tried to get your drivers license re-issued after being mugged then you have *no* *clue* how bad an idea this one-card-does-it-all nonsense really is.
Step one: get home without any money Step two: get into your onw house with no keys and no ID (etc.)
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See, it's great that you have this public key crypto thing happening with your card and your pin and maybe your biometrics. But when your unique (anonymous?) ID is lost, stolen, run through the washer, or eaten by your 14-month-old how are you gong to get *back* everything that was "safe" and is now "lost"?
How do you then prevent an identity thief from doing to your live card the exact same thing you just proposed doign to replace your dead one?
If you have to use your card and a PIN or a biometric reader, what makes you think you won't be standing in lines to access the interface just like you never stand in line today while the bufoon in front of you is trying to figure out how to use the Club Card and their Check Card at the same time down at the supermarket? (look only two PINs to get your groceries! [because your banking and your shopping functions are compartmentalized remember?])
And if the same device is used to do all this private and government stuff, the government is going to want to control the private-stuff technology to prevent the private-stuff applications from working to cross purposes with the government-stuff.
Then the average clod user is going to have to know how to activ
See... one of the alien guys liked to collect old radios and technological antiques from his own cultures golden age and stuff. So first off we reverse engineered an old walkie-talkie and got the transistor. Then there was the microwave oven (it was strapped to the cubicle by period-accurate velcro, but of course that was generic hook-and-loop tape) and got the led display and microwave popcorn and the automatic lazy-susan from that. Then we moved on to the cute little sterio and got the CD, DVD and CSS/DRM (because the aliens would have never made it to the stars without Falmatrazze Spears music kept properly safe).
Now that they finally figured out how to get the elevator to work on the ship, we've gotten down to engineering and got a good solid tricorder opened and stole VLSI chip manufacture.
With the tricorder mostly reassembled we got the cover off the coffie machine and (and we all know how much aliens like their caffiene) and that super advanced machine is where we are getting all this hot cross-bar stuff.
Once we get some good alien caffiene in our systems (if we can find a frrozbat quarter to put in the machine) we will be wired up enough to give the shop manual a good looking over (it's worse than any VCR manual _ever_ conceived of by man) and we'll finally learn how to get the quantum computer (which was actually stolen form the elevator controls) to return an answer other than "basement".
See, you just have to know how to walk the tech tree. Once we have finished the earth-orbit section, we will send advanced teams to mars where they will find another alien ship, and they should have the transistor [the _martian_ transistor] for themselves to use in that round as soon as they can get 100 units of Vespene...
[And remember: watch out for the plutocrat-rush and the humanists will always send a hacked indistructable peon over into your base to try to get you all involved in a debate about abortion...]
Size, and particularly _area_, doesn't translate directly as cost.
You botched the scaling a bit. The ISS needs to be, among other things, habitable (and so air-tight, full of plumbing, etc). Another poster suggested a square of material with a rough size of 775m on the edge, and a third suggested his assumption of power available per unit of surface was 1/3 as much as it should have been (so the square would be a lot smaller).
So we are _really_ talking about a small equipment module to do the beaming and such, and a big square of laminated material. (e.g. solar-cell stuff applied to what amounts to a big parque floor or a bunch of ballons.)
The orbital power station losely proposed _should_ cost less, probably a *lot* less, than the ISS.
You have the privacy of the key and the door lock but your issuing authority has the ability to make another copy of the key "from their records" and unlock any door you have locked.
Contrapositively, any guy who muggs you and takes your house key isn't suddenly "you", but the same mugger who takes your ID is suddenly "you" "to the system" and will leave vapor-trail evidence of you-ness behind him as he goes.
Now if your ID card can't be authoratatively canceled and replaced then the thiefs access is total an perpetual. If it *can* be canceled and replaced, then the replacement ID still has to act as the "key" to open "the door". This, in turn, means that there is some fineite or infinite number of keys that can open your "door" because all of the old locked stuff needs to recognize every future permutation of your key.
Either that, or this is Palladium again, where there is nothing magical about the key and it is all in some central database that is actively scanned for each transaction, and so acts as real-time monitoring of the "identified" persons.
So, really, absolutely no privacy or completely illusitory security.
It's hard to tell... do you know that "K" is kelvin in this usage and the "k" in "killobyte" (etc) is suppposed to be written in lower case (Modern Komputer mis-Marketing asside 8-) as in "640k"?
I bemoan the death of precision... and the fact that I am the kind of guy likely to use the word "bemoan" 8-)
No, the record industry's Nazis will come kicking down your door for distributing anything that can be mistaken for copyrighted music by title, size, or popularity; or for that matter anything that catches the eye of an untrained lawyer-drone awash with dreams of averice.
The MP3 "sharers" asside for now, the general slashdot consensus on Intellectual Property is that there should be no software patents and Copyright should exist for an actually limited "limited time".
Translated to this circumstance Stan Lee isn't suing the maker of X-Men or The Incredibles for using his intellectual property right to "a method for portraying an individual with paranormal or 'super' abilities in media." That is, he doesn't claim to "own" the _idea_ of superheros.
He does however have a Copyright stake in the spesific copyrightable Spiderman and Hulk characters themselves. And he has a _contract_ where his business associates agreed to pay him in exchange for his copyright stake.
He _isn't_ however trying to make Xerox machines refuse to copy pages from his commic books, nor is he suing people who went out and got ro gave Spiderman tatoos. None of the parties are trying to enjoin everyone everywhere from using sipder-web imagery in thier art. Stan isn't suing people trying to get them to stop fair-using frames or samples or whatever.
And "copyright", and indeed "patents" and "trademarks" ARE NOT "PROPERTY" by any meaningful measure of that word. The is the same, simple, easy to understand concept as the statement "'murder' is not 'theft'". So while Stan has a copyright stake, and he is asserting same, that has nothing to do with the non-existence of "intellectual property".
And as for the "sharers", that isn't always all that black and white either, even if we mostly can agree that some people will "share" no matter what, while most people just want honest value for their money when they "buy".
And *none* of these issues are as simple as your "insightful" troll would like them to appear. You re guilty of unbrainmanlike conduct and deserve a two-liberty penalty... 8-)
God save us all from doofus engendered sound bites...
We US-uns do that all the time. See, it's not hard to get *in* to the US, it's hard to get *out* of Canada.
That is how we spin things like "Sadam tells Bin Laden 'hell no, I won't give you money'" into "a real and palpable connection between Iraq and Al Queda".
And once every random idea is automatically presumed to be a federal policy, we are hoping that nobody will notice when we come to take all your toys in the name of that policy.
It is The _New_ Carte Blanche, so I guess not every french idea is a bad one to this regeme...
As of this writing I cannot get Comcast (the Comcast.net people anyway) to appreciate that the fact that their main gateway boxes INCESSENTALLY arp. I receive something like FORTY (40) arp request a second from COMCAST OPERATED SERVERS. No, not just for me, for all manner of ip addresses, most of which are "forign" to my IP/netmask.
Clearly they have several problems with their administration and monitoring system. Either broadcasts just seep all through their backbone, or they have no concept of what a netmask is for.
I honestly beleive that they have some sort of probe running "as fast as possible" [e.g. anybody ever ask HP OpenView to ping the _entire_ internet? It's really easy... 8-)] and that the systems in question either don't have the arp-cache to hold the full region or the routers don't have the sense (settings) god gave a gnat to stay local.
I complain but I get no satisfaction.
The reason I complain is that it is several server doing this independently for different ranges of addresses, so I get (every couple of minutes) a "local maximum" confluence of noise that leads to drop-outs while gaming.
These people have their cable segments so clogged with crap out here in Seattle, that it is occasionally amazing that I can play (or work) at all.
I suspect that a lot of the problems go way back to the att broadband semi-static IP addresses, and the way they were mis-handled. But it's been like two years.
I start by saying I *use* open office for my work at home, and I date back to WordPerfect. I have also had to use-or-support Samna Word, some Dedicated IBM office gear from the 1970's and 1980's, and I remember Wordstar (and probably have it on floppy around here somewhere). My experience of word processors is "uncharacteristically vast". That being said...
OpenOffice *IS* (IMHO of course) very much less intuitive than Word, or WordPerfect. I will now cite examples:
1) On OO.o you don't "have outlines in your document", your entire document is *ONE* outline. This is a major P.I.T.A. if you want to, say, put an outline *IN* a document, and it is essentially impossible to put *TWO* outlines in one document. Most people can't even figure out how to change the styles that control what level of outline number is incremented by which bit of text. Word beats OO.o on this one, but is worlds *BEHIND* WordPerfect, which did outlining "right".
2) It is *IMPOSSIBLE* in OO.o, to separate the page format from the page break. That is, there are no manipulatable anchor object things that can be moved or copied or edited around. (The "non-printing characters" button should reveal formating anchors that can be manipulated.) The number of times I have removed a page break or carriage return only to have the paragraph that followed it lose it formatting is legion, and quite vexing.
3) I _defy_ you to describe how "Chapter number" (as in Insert->Fields->Other: Chapter: Chapter number) is controlled (or at least is _supposed_ to be controled); let alone "Chapter name". It took me hella-long to figure that out and "intuative" didn't enter in to _that_ at all. 8-)
4) Once you *do* understand how chapter number is controlled, I further defy you to put a prologue into the front of a document and end up with "Chapter 1" where the 1 is generated by the field in question.
5) Create a legal-style-numbered document in actual legal style, where the numbering is automatically controlled instead of just literal text, I dare you.
6) Just _try_ to make the lightbulb go away... That thing is OO.o's very-own clippy.
My list actually goes on for a bit, but the short version is that the product is "adequate" for casual business purposes, but for long documents with strict stylistic requirements it can be a pain in the ass. I have a 270,000 word novel in sxw format right here, and I _assure_ you, this is not a product that is "intuitive" for doing something as simple as "writing a book". God forbid this was a technical book with side-bars, insets, and grouped processes. This is just a straight-prose piece and it was hard enough in this beastie.)
Some of the OO.o assumptions just don't scale.
No really, it _is_ important to defend your Open Source projects with a suitably _critical_ eye. I use the thing, I just want to go back in time and club a person or two over the head. And I remember the old take-over the desktop StarOffice too, I have been using the thing that long.
Q: How many RIAA lawyers does it take to screw in a light blub?
A: We at the RIAA think we will never really know, as we are fairly sure that each lightbulb changed by a home internet user represents a lost lightbulb installation fee, which in turn affects the not just the RIAA lawyers but the Lighting Technicians and Carpenters and all the little people involved in music production to such an extent that we now have to over-task our lawyers to combat the menace of the Open Standard Lightbulb Organizations. Th pressure generated by these OSLOs, in turn, prevents us from determining the natural lawyer to lightbulb ratio. Until Congress acts to plug this fee-structure leakage with an appropriate rights management technology and enacts proper criminal penalties for circumvention of our natural right to control the exercise of the lightbulb changing task, we will be forced to file John Doe lawsuits in order to gain the suppoena power necessary to compel the lightbulb supply corporations with the names and addresses of their clearly infringing customers.
Yes, lets all remember that the construction guy and lighting guy, who have no equity stake in the music/video/movie etc [e.g. no front-end or back-end points] and who were paid before the production was even complete, are harmed immensly by the fact that you watched the movie/viedo or listend to the music TAHT YOU WEREN'T GOING TO BUY ANYWAY for free.
Their unionized jobs are threatened, threatend I tell you, by the possibility that the people that _do_ have the equity stake may consider that $100 million dollars is too little money for the effort, and will quit their industry to go on to a more rewarding job in the quick-serve food service industry.
The coke dealers, and those trendy pubs that have the Crystal opened and waiting for some extravagent personality to show up, are about the only secondary victims of a aught-point-nothing decrease in Britny's sales due to P2P software...
In iceland they use a HUGE amount of geothermal power, both to directly heat homes and to generate electricity. It is _not_ a truism that "electricity [] comes from fossil fuels" just because we do a lot of that here. Btu to a great extent, who cares?
The trifecta of power issues are Source, Storage, and Transportation (c.v. power distribution).
Hydrogen is a good answer to items two and three (Power Storage and Transportation) when you are talking about something like powering a car or a bus.
The informed know that Hydrogen isn't a power Source. The pusdo-intellectual and the rampant obstructionists pretend that there is no point in working on Storage and Transportation (e.g. Hydrogen Vehicles) until the new Sources are developed. Psudo-intellectuals and rampant obstructionists are nororious for fscking up the future in the name of the past. 8-)
So your question: How are they generating the hydrogen is largely moot. How are _we_ going to generate _our_ hydrogen is where your mind clarly is. That's largely moot too. If we _havne't_ changed over to using hydrogen for Transportation *before* we run out of oil, our infrastructure will colapse even if we get our final-hour hail-mary answer to the Sourcing issue. It's better to pay the extra expense (going hydrogen, puttin in insulation, whatever) now, in a time of glut, than to put it off until the time of famine.
So yep, good for them, Iceland can lord it over us all if we don't get our solar, wind, space-based-solar+microwave, and whatever Sourcing up and going soon. And there is nothing worse than dealing with a smug Icelander... 8-)
So I have already found three errors in the "beta" but there is (apparenty) no address or form which a user may use to report such failures.
This isn't a "beta", its a promotional stunt.
Error 1: When I click the cygwin icon on my desktop it runs cygwin.bat. The real-time protections pop-up a dialog box which "floats up" to just above your taskbar. If, however, your task bar is not on the bottom of the screen but on the left side of the screen (try it there, autohide, with the "desktop toolbar" btw) then the dialog box will float right up off the screen and cygwin will not run.
Error 2: so you move the start bar back down to the bottom of the screen to snag the dialog box so you can click "yes". And you click "yes" to let the "script" run. The window you receive when cygwin is started isn't possessed of all your settings for such a window. [e.g. I run cygwin in a 140x40 width/height window, the window that opens doesn't have these properties.] {If you click the "always run this" checkbox, the *next* and subsequent time you use the icon it will end up in the correct size window}.
Error 3: I can no longer run windows update. (Yes, my system is properly licensed and validated and such. When I run windows update I variously get IE Errors or, on one occasion, IE went on to open Mozilla for no apparent reason.) I suspect that one of the "restore IE Settings" actions, which I didn't perform, does some darker mistery thing.
Note 1: The MS anti-spyware has yet to detect anything on my computer that wasn't detected by *current* spybot and/or AdAware.
Note 2: When it complains about things you have installed (RealVNC in my case) don't select "Ignore" select "Always Ignore", as "Ignore" is really "Ignore Once". I would rather "aprove" which would approve of only those items in the current detected set of settings. "Aproval" is different than just ignorance.
In general, I am unsatisfied after one day of use.
So where is the link that doesn't want to "validate" my windows? My windows is valid, but they don't tell me what their "validation" is going to collect and transmit and dicker about on in my computer.
The path to comunisim is (whatever)->Socialisim->Comunisim. No government to date has made the last step. Communisim is what you would have *after* you dismantled the socialist "commities" (e.g. soviets) that "fairly re-apportioned" the labor.
There has yet to be an actually communist government enacted (disassembeled?) on the world stage.
The fact that true communisim was always a five-year-plan away, and that the communist ideals were being force-fed down the throat of the populace didn't mean it ever existed.
Communisim would be a _great_ system, if only there weren't any humans involved. It requires absolue honesty and self-effacement in the form of the individuals ability to recognize and respond to the needs of the populice. _THAT_ is just not human nature...
The numbers in the arbitrarily created sample do work with a fixed number of adults. I didn't mean to imply the gay person is an "extra" adult.
So with the given numbers, and six adults:
In the pure hetrosexual population you get three sets of 3.6 children, which you round down and then sum, and thus a total of nine (9) adults in the second generation.
If one of the adults is gay you get _two_ non-breeders in that set of six, one for the homosexual and the left-over adult. If you keep both non-breeders as providers you get two sets of 5.4 children, so ten (10) adults for the next generation.
If the "extra" non breeder is simply lost to another tribe then you get 3.6 and 5.4 children, so the same nine (9) adults for the next generation just like the three breeding couples *AND* your genetic traits spread to another tribe through the "lost" breeder.
If you get spesific and select for gay-male, then you potentially get two groups male-female-female and male-female-(gay-male). The male-female-female group may produce the next generation (of 5.4 adults) faster due to parallel gestation and then might even have time for a bonus child, which is a positive reenforcement of the gene. (In general polygamy(sp?) is a losing proposition because you end up having to "shed" [lose] a large number of the "extra" males after a generation or two; but as a rareified event (c.f. native american traditions and Jewish widdow must marry brother of husband tradition etc) it prevents excessive loss to irregular populations.
As stated, the model is incredibly simple, _over_ simple in fact, but it is generally keeping in line with the observed effect (particularly as observed in wolves, absent the third-case polygamy).
But at a minimum, the gay gene _would_ provide for maintaining its own presence in the line and does _tend_ to give a slight advantage to its line over a line that doesn't possess the gene. So there is a positive selection pressure for a small but statistically stable percentage of homosexual ofspring.
Slashdot Mirror
There is nothing wrong with software copyrights because copyrights only cover that very literal piece of code and only factor in when that code has been copied. So if the code goes stale because of its short shelf life, then it doesn't matter if it cannot be copied.
Remember, with copyrights, if you write a program and I write one "just like it" that isn't _actually_ it, then there really isn't a conflict. Especially if there was no way I ever saw your code.
Also, you don't "own all code like yours" when you hold a copyright.
Software patents are bad because they grant a realm of control that extends beyond the scope of what you created (or might have thought about creatring) to give you dominion over all things kind-of like your theoretical thing. That's bad in the extreme.
Copyright is useful for software, and will remain so as long as we don't end up in the "copyrighted space" bull-pucky. (e.g. you can't take picutures in this public park without a paid permit because the sclupture is copyrighted, which is the bull actually happening of late.)
What *isn't* good is the ability to "copyright" "look and feel" (remember that old evil phrase?) because that becomes copyright of general concept, which is just erzats patenting but for longer terms.
A software only implementation of the controller would not infringe the brake patent.
-- realize that if the only thing that is unique about the "patented brake" is the way the standard brake is operated, it doesn't really deserve a patent. The system as a whole is patented, and the place where the software touches the world (e.g. the actual stopping of the car, with sensors and hydraulics or whatever) is the patented part.
-- also, mod-chipping a brake isn't an infringing act under this implementation, and why should it be? The customer has bought the brake system, so what legitimate innovative interest is served by preventing innovative use of the hardware?
A simulation of the entire braking system in a computer somewhere would not infringe the breaking patent because a simulated brake can only stop a simulated car. There is no legitimate innovative interest in preventing people from fully exploring the parameters and operation of a patented system, in fact that is the opposite of the declared purpose of patents.
And no, as someone suggested elsewhere, creating the simulation doesn't un-patent the brake.
On the other hand, if you come up with some patented gizmo to improve a braking system, and someone comes along and realizes that they can do everything your gizmo does just by reprogramming a stock brake, they aren't infringing your patent because they are just operating the stock brake within the natural range of its operational parameters. There is no legitimate public interest in making people add a part to a system in order to get the system to preform in a manner that it was already capable. This seems problematic at frist, but by analogy, if someone came up to you and said "you can't turn off that valve, you have to install my patented part if you don't want liquid to flow through that pipe" you would laugh at them and throw them off your property.
How much worse is "I have a patent on knowing when and why to turn off that valve"?
Oh, to amplify a bit. Consider, in your braking example, the lowly bolt. There are surely bolts involved in the assembly of the brakeing system. But the bolt itself isn't patentable. Software is a part, and quite an interchangable one.
You could argue that a radically new type of bolt can be patented, and then be tempted to say that radically new kinds of software should be patentable by extension.
The problem with _that_ analogy is that software can only do what the CPU is cabible of doing. So patenting software is actually like patenting the particular torque of a bolt in the braking system.
See software doesn't do anything that the machine cannot already do. Its like if I invented a sewing machine that could (mechanically) monogram fabric based on the settings of a series of levers and dials and you wanted to come along and patent a spesific set of settings that represent "a method of" monograming a pretty dasiy onto a t-shirt because dasies make people happy.
CPUs just have a heck of a lot of lever and dial equivelants.
Consider the first few software patents ever issued.
AT&T patented "backing store" which was the method of remembering what was already on a screen before a window popped up, so that it could be restored when the window was withdrawn. This was in 1985. It didn't patent "memory" it patented "using memory for a particular purpose". Lets not even think about the fact that I had seen the same technique used by Junior High students on TRS-80 in 1977.
The Desqview people patented several variations of using the 286/386's virtual memory system to intercept memory operations directed at the display adaptor in order to virtualize the display. So they patented using a virtual memory feature to virtualize the display memory (as opposed to any other kind of equally accessible memory). The computer is again not doing a single thing that it was not obviously designed to do, and yet there are the patents.
In the theoretical braking system, the patent protection on the force-feedback sensor and the brake shoe and god knows what else, are sufficent to offer you the protection you need. Being able to patent "tapping the brakes faster" or whatever the software does is just a matter of parameterizing how the already-protected components do their work.
The "new kind of car brake" is patented where the braking takes place, and the sensing takes place. Being able to patent the software as a separate thing, or being able to go after people who write similar software for non-similar brakes, is just plain bad for everything. It's like patenting a particular use of a relay or a lightbulb.
I makes no sense to allow that.
Hence "general purpose" and "comodity". Still, the car brake software, were it ported to and running on a GP computer would not be infringing. The exposure is not significant there. Also, given the whole rest of the braking system being a necessary part of the invention, the patent would hold just fine as the braking system would not be commodity.
The definition works (and I have written about it several times in more detail in groklaw posts as "BitOBear" no "I") to protect software as a necessary sub-system in an invention while ruling it out the possibility that someone can steal a program using a hardware patent.
I think I have also brought it up here at slashdot before.
The entire thing can be settled as follows:
-- Any implementation or partial implementaion of anything, when expressed as a program which can run on a general purpose computer, cannot be held to infringe any patent.
-- No patent shall issue or be considered valid, for any task which can be implemented as a program that can execute on commodity general purpose computing equipment.
-- "Business Processes" are not patentable.
The short version is that if you don't pick up a tool and use it, you aren't inventing anything.
If you perform "negative analysis" on most software patents, that is, you remove from the claims everything that isn't being "invented" or which cannot otherwise be patented alone, in the patent claims; you end up with a null set.
For instance, you get some patent on a distributed client server web application. They arn't inventing the client server model, you aren't supposed to be able to patent the divison of labor, they arn't inventing the web, or browser, or web server, they didn't invent the database and they didn't invet the computer. (etc, od nausium.) You are only left with a set of grand parameters that modify how an already atainable goal is reached.
A "software patent" is most identifiable by the addition of a "for a spesific purpose" clause that is tacked onto a basic sequence of common operations. It never "invents a garage roof" it describes "a means of protecting a vehicle by creating a shelter composed of a frame to which overlaping tiles of water resistent material are applied such that the water is directed into a redistribution channel." And the patent becomes all about "protecting a vehicle" and the inherent "but that's just a roof"(ness) disapears into a morrass of secondary claims.
Remember that "one click shopping" is indistinguisable from walking into a brick-and-mortar store with which you already have a relationship, picking up an object, and saying "put it on my tab." Or calling your milkman and saying "bring me an extra pint of milk this week." It is a transaction that has been going on for centuries in various forms and formats, but because it was "making it easy to shop by using a computer to phrase a simple request" (the purpose) the patent was upheld even though none of the _means_ were novel.
In short, in a software patent the invention is described after the purpose in the claims, so that even if the invetion is disallowed the purpose remains patented.
Making it broken.
Some people have no sense of humor.
/sigh...
Think it through, he isn't bitching about the slashdot moderation system, he's talking about _actual_ _karma_. The thing being saved is the mission (not some post).
See, that makes it a classic contextual justaposititon, which is at least a little amusing. I beginto think that we really do need the imaginary TNT service from those TV comercials. You know "is this funny?" "Yes, sir, you may laugh, but not that much..."
I wish the meta-moderation system would let me pick and choose what to meta-moderate...
The problem is that, among other things, if someone tortured you to sign a paper the corruption of self is limited.
If someone tortures you for your PIN, they then are you as far as the system is concerned and can use that PIN to "sign contracts" at places like car dealerships without dragging your bleeding carcass in to sign the papers. The exposure is, thereby, _much_ greater once you imbue this chip with proxy-youness for all sorts of unbounded contractual purposes.
And machines can't tell the difference between you and ersatz-you either.
And on the average you cannot be shoulder-surfed for a perfect copy of your signature (the way you can for a PIN/password) either.
So an all of the convenience of an single/central electronic ID doesn't just benefit the authorized ID holder, it equally or even disporportionately works to help the fradulent user. It also single-sources the problems reducing the breadth of the paper trail in the case of fraud.
Finally nobody can "deprive me access to my own signature by stealing it". If it becomes normal to use/require the digital ID then simple damage/theft would "temporarily" deprive you of basic citizenship until you could get it replaced etc.
As I said, its about compartmentalization and loss prevention. Put too much power on any one kind of access (and automate it too extensively) and it becomes a great gaping hole of problems.
And (IMHO) you are missing *that* point.
If its Anonymous it cant function as an ID. It becomes "a ticket" and it only has limited applicability. That is, it will admit you to some service but it won't "identify" you at all. (All that is implicit in the definiton of the terms. 8-)
So if you have this ticket, it can not remain anonymous if you use it in conjunction with anything that is identifying. Read this weekends discussion of the Safeway Club Card leads to Arson Charge discussion. Get a completely "anonymous" club card and use it with a credit card or check or ATM card and it isn't anonymous any more.
And show me a government on the planet that is going to go into the business of issueing anoymous tickets to anything...?
Cash is anonymous, but only if nobody is looking hard enough. (Finger prints, serial numbers, DNA, etc.)
Yes, and the government will get all that straight, never link your old ID to you new ID once the old one is stolen, and _absolutely_ _never_ think of coordinating your data and charging you with arson because someone used your phone number to by an accelerant at Safeway on the same day that you bought a book on fire-safety using your computer.
Imagine the time you could save when the asshat that just punched you in the face and took your wallet uses your ID, withouth standing in line, to painlessly rent a car and cut it up for parts and then forward all your mail to the Costa Rica. You can land straight in debit all without having to fill in a single form!
Oh wait! There's a PIN. Nobody could get a PIN out of someone by shoulder-surfing or the threat of physical violence, if they could they'd have come up with a special name for shoulder-surfing instead of just the generic term.
The happy friendly government workers would be more than happy to cancel your ID and issue you a new one, without waiting in line (because we don't need lines any more) and it would happen so fast and reliably that nobody would ever have a chance to mis-use the stolen card or get your current one canceled by calling in a false fraud report. And all you have to do is pop out of your hospital bed, scamper down to the instant-service government ID office, prove who you are wihtout any ID, and you'll be back out on the street. A happy consumer, ready to figure out where the chop-shop has parked your shiny new Mercedies.
And of course biometrics would solve those pesky problems. If someone _did_ hack your card, you only have to change your retnia, or grow a new thumb with a new an dunique thumbprint to replace the one they cut off.
===
These simple model ideas people bandy about have no basis in the way the world works when things go wrong. To paraphrase from motorcycle safety: "dress for the crash, not the ride." The quesiton is _NEVER_ really about how to make the smooth-running things run smoother. It's supposed to be about how the problems get resolved.
"Loss Prevention" is aobut compartmentalization. We back up the data we don't want to lose. (we do don't we?) and we don't hang our drivers license from our car/house keyring. We have our birth certificate and copies of important papers, and a photo-copy of our drivers license safely stowed away in case we are mugged. etc.
Piling all that stuff into one easily lost device is FARGING STOOOPID.
If you have never tried to get your drivers license re-issued after being mugged then you have *no* *clue* how bad an idea this one-card-does-it-all nonsense really is.
Step one: get home without any money
Step two: get into your onw house with no keys and no ID
(etc.)
===
See, it's great that you have this public key crypto thing happening with your card and your pin and maybe your biometrics. But when your unique (anonymous?) ID is lost, stolen, run through the washer, or eaten by your 14-month-old how are you gong to get *back* everything that was "safe" and is now "lost"?
How do you then prevent an identity thief from doing to your live card the exact same thing you just proposed doign to replace your dead one?
If you have to use your card and a PIN or a biometric reader, what makes you think you won't be standing in lines to access the interface just like you never stand in line today while the bufoon in front of you is trying to figure out how to use the Club Card and their Check Card at the same time down at the supermarket? (look only two PINs to get your groceries! [because your banking and your shopping functions are compartmentalized remember?])
And if the same device is used to do all this private and government stuff, the government is going to want to control the private-stuff technology to prevent the private-stuff applications from working to cross purposes with the government-stuff.
Then the average clod user is going to have to know how to activ
See... one of the alien guys liked to collect old radios and technological antiques from his own cultures golden age and stuff. So first off we reverse engineered an old walkie-talkie and got the transistor. Then there was the microwave oven (it was strapped to the cubicle by period-accurate velcro, but of course that was generic hook-and-loop tape) and got the led display and microwave popcorn and the automatic lazy-susan from that. Then we moved on to the cute little sterio and got the CD, DVD and CSS/DRM (because the aliens would have never made it to the stars without Falmatrazze Spears music kept properly safe).
Now that they finally figured out how to get the elevator to work on the ship, we've gotten down to engineering and got a good solid tricorder opened and stole VLSI chip manufacture.
With the tricorder mostly reassembled we got the cover off the coffie machine and (and we all know how much aliens like their caffiene) and that super advanced machine is where we are getting all this hot cross-bar stuff.
Once we get some good alien caffiene in our systems (if we can find a frrozbat quarter to put in the machine) we will be wired up enough to give the shop manual a good looking over (it's worse than any VCR manual _ever_ conceived of by man) and we'll finally learn how to get the quantum computer (which was actually stolen form the elevator controls) to return an answer other than "basement".
See, you just have to know how to walk the tech tree. Once we have finished the earth-orbit section, we will send advanced teams to mars where they will find another alien ship, and they should have the transistor [the _martian_ transistor] for themselves to use in that round as soon as they can get 100 units of Vespene...
[And remember: watch out for the plutocrat-rush and the humanists will always send a hacked indistructable peon over into your base to try to get you all involved in a debate about abortion...]
Size, and particularly _area_, doesn't translate directly as cost.
You botched the scaling a bit. The ISS needs to be, among other things, habitable (and so air-tight, full of plumbing, etc). Another poster suggested a square of material with a rough size of 775m on the edge, and a third suggested his assumption of power available per unit of surface was 1/3 as much as it should have been (so the square would be a lot smaller).
So we are _really_ talking about a small equipment module to do the beaming and such, and a big square of laminated material. (e.g. solar-cell stuff applied to what amounts to a big parque floor or a bunch of ballons.)
The orbital power station losely proposed _should_ cost less, probably a *lot* less, than the ISS.
You have the privacy of the key and the door lock but your issuing authority has the ability to make another copy of the key "from their records" and unlock any door you have locked.
Contrapositively, any guy who muggs you and takes your house key isn't suddenly "you", but the same mugger who takes your ID is suddenly "you" "to the system" and will leave vapor-trail evidence of you-ness behind him as he goes.
Now if your ID card can't be authoratatively canceled and replaced then the thiefs access is total an perpetual. If it *can* be canceled and replaced, then the replacement ID still has to act as the "key" to open "the door". This, in turn, means that there is some fineite or infinite number of keys that can open your "door" because all of the old locked stuff needs to recognize every future permutation of your key.
Either that, or this is Palladium again, where there is nothing magical about the key and it is all in some central database that is actively scanned for each transaction, and so acts as real-time monitoring of the "identified" persons.
So, really, absolutely no privacy or completely illusitory security.
It's hard to tell... do you know that "K" is kelvin in this usage and the "k" in "killobyte" (etc) is suppposed to be written in lower case (Modern Komputer mis-Marketing asside 8-) as in "640k"?
I bemoan the death of precision... and the fact that I am the kind of guy likely to use the word "bemoan" 8-)
No, the record industry's Nazis will come kicking down your door for distributing anything that can be mistaken for copyrighted music by title, size, or popularity; or for that matter anything that catches the eye of an untrained lawyer-drone awash with dreams of averice.
Excelent use of a distracting sound-bite...
The MP3 "sharers" asside for now, the general slashdot consensus on Intellectual Property is that there should be no software patents and Copyright should exist for an actually limited "limited time".
Translated to this circumstance Stan Lee isn't suing the maker of X-Men or The Incredibles for using his intellectual property right to "a method for portraying an individual with paranormal or 'super' abilities in media." That is, he doesn't claim to "own" the _idea_ of superheros.
He does however have a Copyright stake in the spesific copyrightable Spiderman and Hulk characters themselves. And he has a _contract_ where his business associates agreed to pay him in exchange for his copyright stake.
He _isn't_ however trying to make Xerox machines refuse to copy pages from his commic books, nor is he suing people who went out and got ro gave Spiderman tatoos. None of the parties are trying to enjoin everyone everywhere from using sipder-web imagery in thier art. Stan isn't suing people trying to get them to stop fair-using frames or samples or whatever.
And "copyright", and indeed "patents" and "trademarks" ARE NOT "PROPERTY" by any meaningful measure of that word. The is the same, simple, easy to understand concept as the statement "'murder' is not 'theft'". So while Stan has a copyright stake, and he is asserting same, that has nothing to do with the non-existence of "intellectual property".
And as for the "sharers", that isn't always all that black and white either, even if we mostly can agree that some people will "share" no matter what, while most people just want honest value for their money when they "buy".
And *none* of these issues are as simple as your "insightful" troll would like them to appear. You re guilty of unbrainmanlike conduct and deserve a two-liberty penalty... 8-)
God save us all from doofus engendered sound bites...
We US-uns do that all the time. See, it's not hard to get *in* to the US, it's hard to get *out* of Canada.
That is how we spin things like "Sadam tells Bin Laden 'hell no, I won't give you money'" into "a real and palpable connection between Iraq and Al Queda".
And once every random idea is automatically presumed to be a federal policy, we are hoping that nobody will notice when we come to take all your toys in the name of that policy.
It is The _New_ Carte Blanche, so I guess not every french idea is a bad one to this regeme...
As of this writing I cannot get Comcast (the Comcast.net people anyway) to appreciate that the fact that their main gateway boxes INCESSENTALLY arp. I receive something like FORTY (40) arp request a second from COMCAST OPERATED SERVERS. No, not just for me, for all manner of ip addresses, most of which are "forign" to my IP/netmask.
Clearly they have several problems with their administration and monitoring system. Either broadcasts just seep all through their backbone, or they have no concept of what a netmask is for.
I honestly beleive that they have some sort of probe running "as fast as possible" [e.g. anybody ever ask HP OpenView to ping the _entire_ internet? It's really easy... 8-)] and that the systems in question either don't have the arp-cache to hold the full region or the routers don't have the sense (settings) god gave a gnat to stay local.
I complain but I get no satisfaction.
The reason I complain is that it is several server doing this independently for different ranges of addresses, so I get (every couple of minutes) a "local maximum" confluence of noise that leads to drop-outs while gaming.
These people have their cable segments so clogged with crap out here in Seattle, that it is occasionally amazing that I can play (or work) at all.
I suspect that a lot of the problems go way back to the att broadband semi-static IP addresses, and the way they were mis-handled. But it's been like two years.
Ah the joys of living under the monopoly thumb.
I start by saying I *use* open office for my work at home, and I date back to WordPerfect. I have also had to use-or-support Samna Word, some Dedicated IBM office gear from the 1970's and 1980's, and I remember Wordstar (and probably have it on floppy around here somewhere). My experience of word processors is "uncharacteristically vast". That being said...
OpenOffice *IS* (IMHO of course) very much less intuitive than Word, or WordPerfect. I will now cite examples:
1) On OO.o you don't "have outlines in your document", your entire document is *ONE* outline. This is a major P.I.T.A. if you want to, say, put an outline *IN* a document, and it is essentially impossible to put *TWO* outlines in one document. Most people can't even figure out how to change the styles that control what level of outline number is incremented by which bit of text. Word beats OO.o on this one, but is worlds *BEHIND* WordPerfect, which did outlining "right".
2) It is *IMPOSSIBLE* in OO.o, to separate the page format from the page break. That is, there are no manipulatable anchor object things that can be moved or copied or edited around. (The "non-printing characters" button should reveal formating anchors that can be manipulated.) The number of times I have removed a page break or carriage return only to have the paragraph that followed it lose it formatting is legion, and quite vexing.
3) I _defy_ you to describe how "Chapter number" (as in Insert->Fields->Other: Chapter: Chapter number) is controlled (or at least is _supposed_ to be controled); let alone "Chapter name". It took me hella-long to figure that out and "intuative" didn't enter in to _that_ at all. 8-)
4) Once you *do* understand how chapter number is controlled, I further defy you to put a prologue into the front of a document and end up with "Chapter 1" where the 1 is generated by the field in question.
5) Create a legal-style-numbered document in actual legal style, where the numbering is automatically controlled instead of just literal text, I dare you.
6) Just _try_ to make the lightbulb go away... That thing is OO.o's very-own clippy.
My list actually goes on for a bit, but the short version is that the product is "adequate" for casual business purposes, but for long documents with strict stylistic requirements it can be a pain in the ass. I have a 270,000 word novel in sxw format right here, and I _assure_ you, this is not a product that is "intuitive" for doing something as simple as "writing a book". God forbid this was a technical book with side-bars, insets, and grouped processes. This is just a straight-prose piece and it was hard enough in this beastie.)
Some of the OO.o assumptions just don't scale.
No really, it _is_ important to defend your Open Source projects with a suitably _critical_ eye. I use the thing, I just want to go back in time and club a person or two over the head. And I remember the old take-over the desktop StarOffice too, I have been using the thing that long.
Q: How many RIAA lawyers does it take to screw in a light blub?
A: We at the RIAA think we will never really know, as we are fairly sure that each lightbulb changed by a home internet user represents a lost lightbulb installation fee, which in turn affects the not just the RIAA lawyers but the Lighting Technicians and Carpenters and all the little people involved in music production to such an extent that we now have to over-task our lawyers to combat the menace of the Open Standard Lightbulb Organizations. Th pressure generated by these OSLOs, in turn, prevents us from determining the natural lawyer to lightbulb ratio. Until Congress acts to plug this fee-structure leakage with an appropriate rights management technology and enacts proper criminal penalties for circumvention of our natural right to control the exercise of the lightbulb changing task, we will be forced to file John Doe lawsuits in order to gain the suppoena power necessary to compel the lightbulb supply corporations with the names and addresses of their clearly infringing customers.
Yes, lets all remember that the construction guy and lighting guy, who have no equity stake in the music/video/movie etc [e.g. no front-end or back-end points] and who were paid before the production was even complete, are harmed immensly by the fact that you watched the movie/viedo or listend to the music TAHT YOU WEREN'T GOING TO BUY ANYWAY for free.
Their unionized jobs are threatened, threatend I tell you, by the possibility that the people that _do_ have the equity stake may consider that $100 million dollars is too little money for the effort, and will quit their industry to go on to a more rewarding job in the quick-serve food service industry.
The coke dealers, and those trendy pubs that have the Crystal opened and waiting for some extravagent personality to show up, are about the only secondary victims of a aught-point-nothing decrease in Britny's sales due to P2P software...
Yea, not funny, but it bears repeating.
Nice myopic question...
In iceland they use a HUGE amount of geothermal power, both to directly heat homes and to generate electricity. It is _not_ a truism that "electricity [] comes from fossil fuels" just because we do a lot of that here. Btu to a great extent, who cares?
The trifecta of power issues are Source, Storage, and Transportation (c.v. power distribution).
Hydrogen is a good answer to items two and three (Power Storage and Transportation) when you are talking about something like powering a car or a bus.
The informed know that Hydrogen isn't a power Source. The pusdo-intellectual and the rampant obstructionists pretend that there is no point in working on Storage and Transportation (e.g. Hydrogen Vehicles) until the new Sources are developed. Psudo-intellectuals and rampant obstructionists are nororious for fscking up the future in the name of the past. 8-)
So your question: How are they generating the hydrogen is largely moot. How are _we_ going to generate _our_ hydrogen is where your mind clarly is. That's largely moot too. If we _havne't_ changed over to using hydrogen for Transportation *before* we run out of oil, our infrastructure will colapse even if we get our final-hour hail-mary answer to the Sourcing issue. It's better to pay the extra expense (going hydrogen, puttin in insulation, whatever) now, in a time of glut, than to put it off until the time of famine.
So yep, good for them, Iceland can lord it over us all if we don't get our solar, wind, space-based-solar+microwave, and whatever Sourcing up and going soon. And there is nothing worse than dealing with a smug Icelander... 8-)
So I have already found three errors in the "beta" but there is (apparenty) no address or form which a user may use to report such failures.
This isn't a "beta", its a promotional stunt.
Error 1: When I click the cygwin icon on my desktop it runs cygwin.bat. The real-time protections pop-up a dialog box which "floats up" to just above your taskbar. If, however, your task bar is not on the bottom of the screen but on the left side of the screen (try it there, autohide, with the "desktop toolbar" btw) then the dialog box will float right up off the screen and cygwin will not run.
Error 2: so you move the start bar back down to the bottom of the screen to snag the dialog box so you can click "yes". And you click "yes" to let the "script" run. The window you receive when cygwin is started isn't possessed of all your settings for such a window. [e.g. I run cygwin in a 140x40 width/height window, the window that opens doesn't have these properties.] {If you click the "always run this" checkbox, the *next* and subsequent time you use the icon it will end up in the correct size window}.
Error 3: I can no longer run windows update. (Yes, my system is properly licensed and validated and such. When I run windows update I variously get IE Errors or, on one occasion, IE went on to open Mozilla for no apparent reason.) I suspect that one of the "restore IE Settings" actions, which I didn't perform, does some darker mistery thing.
Note 1: The MS anti-spyware has yet to detect anything on my computer that wasn't detected by *current* spybot and/or AdAware.
Note 2: When it complains about things you have installed (RealVNC in my case) don't select "Ignore" select "Always Ignore", as "Ignore" is really "Ignore Once". I would rather "aprove" which would approve of only those items in the current detected set of settings. "Aproval" is different than just ignorance.
In general, I am unsatisfied after one day of use.
So where is the link that doesn't want to "validate" my windows? My windows is valid, but they don't tell me what their "validation" is going to collect and transmit and dicker about on in my computer.
United Soviet Socialist Republic.
The path to comunisim is (whatever)->Socialisim->Comunisim. No government to date has made the last step. Communisim is what you would have *after* you dismantled the socialist "commities" (e.g. soviets) that "fairly re-apportioned" the labor.
There has yet to be an actually communist government enacted (disassembeled?) on the world stage.
The fact that true communisim was always a five-year-plan away, and that the communist ideals were being force-fed down the throat of the populace didn't mean it ever existed.
Communisim would be a _great_ system, if only there weren't any humans involved. It requires absolue honesty and self-effacement in the form of the individuals ability to recognize and respond to the needs of the populice. _THAT_ is just not human nature...
I was in a hurry when I submitted the above...
The numbers in the arbitrarily created sample do work with a fixed number of adults. I didn't mean to imply the gay person is an "extra" adult.
So with the given numbers, and six adults:
In the pure hetrosexual population you get three sets of 3.6 children, which you round down and then sum, and thus a total of nine (9) adults in the second generation.
If one of the adults is gay you get _two_ non-breeders in that set of six, one for the homosexual and the left-over adult. If you keep both non-breeders as providers you get two sets of 5.4 children, so ten (10) adults for the next generation.
If the "extra" non breeder is simply lost to another tribe then you get 3.6 and 5.4 children, so the same nine (9) adults for the next generation just like the three breeding couples *AND* your genetic traits spread to another tribe through the "lost" breeder.
If you get spesific and select for gay-male, then you potentially get two groups male-female-female and male-female-(gay-male). The male-female-female group may produce the next generation (of 5.4 adults) faster due to parallel gestation and then might even have time for a bonus child, which is a positive reenforcement of the gene. (In general polygamy(sp?) is a losing proposition because you end up having to "shed" [lose] a large number of the "extra" males after a generation or two; but as a rareified event (c.f. native american traditions and Jewish widdow must marry brother of husband tradition etc) it prevents excessive loss to irregular populations.
As stated, the model is incredibly simple, _over_ simple in fact, but it is generally keeping in line with the observed effect (particularly as observed in wolves, absent the third-case polygamy).
But at a minimum, the gay gene _would_ provide for maintaining its own presence in the line and does _tend_ to give a slight advantage to its line over a line that doesn't possess the gene. So there is a positive selection pressure for a small but statistically stable percentage of homosexual ofspring.