I'd love to see 150,000 court cases brought every day, all for downloading a couple of mp3s but the sad fact is that most cases won't go much further than sending a letter or two.
presuming that downloading those mp3s was not authorized......isn't "won't go much further than sending a letter or two" exactly the intent of the three strikes model? Those two letters being the first two strikes? If it does go further than that, it's Strike 3 and the court actually -should- come into play if that strike is contested. ( I'm more curious about if/how one might contest Strike 1, though. )
Doing nothing at all is cheaper, faster and.. well, not more effective, but it's not particularly all that much -less- effective.
Here's the rub.. if your content is popular - and I'm guessing it is - then it will end up on YouTube. So what do you do.. A. Pay a staffer to monitor YouTube continually and a legal department (or lawyer) to draft legal complaints (DMCA takedown notice if applicable), send this to Google, wait for reply and video takedown, then wait some more to see if the person who uploaded is feeling fresh and decides to tell Google that they think the upload was fair use or somesuch, and you get to write some more legal documents, or they just bow their heads and admit that it was infringement at no cost to them beyond reading the youtube e-mail subject (don't even bother with the body content). In the mean time, start your work with the legal peeps to deal with the other 2 videos of the exact same show, uploaded while you were dealing with the aforementioned. After all.. Google isn't obligated to remove -all- the videos.. just the one you complained about.. and you can only complain about one.
B. Try to sue Google to get them to implement better filtering methods, fingerprinting, removal of -all- the videos that match ones you've already complained about, etc. and spend a whack of cash... that you would've been spending under A anyway.. but of course go nowhere because the courts do firmly side with Google on this.
C. do nothing.
of course there's also...
D. upload the videos yourself, be the official channel for that show, and people will have less of a reason to visit JoePirate's version of the video with crappy compression and "A JOOOOOEEEEEEEEE PIIIRAAAAAATE production!!!!" leader in front of it with its feeble "I'm not the copyright holder - I do not mean to infringe on any copyright!" description that would make me wonder about the uploader's frame of mind if not for the fact that this is, after all, YouTube.
To some, though, option B may seem more attractive.. perhaps it'll fly in some jurisdiction eventually.. but option A is certainly completely pointless. Option C is the only worthwhile approach if you abhor option D for some reason.
I was thinking something along the same lines. Proposing that maybe this would be possible.. and if it isn't possible, why not - and how CAN they make it possible? After all, ACTA is being negotiated with quite a few other nations and it would be nice for the U.S. government if they can invoke that agreement to shut down sites within/access to sites from other nations as well; as a side-benefit, all the funny business about piracy would get accepted as well. Like a 'rider' attached to a bill.. except that riders are used to 'ride along with' the general consensus on the bill.. and this would almost be the reverse case.. pushing through ACTA -because- it'd then allow the shutdown of e.g. wikileaks, not because of its original intent.
Except that perhaps you'd want them much, much, much, etc., further apart if you want to directly resolve parallax in objects at interstellar distances.
+, enter, ctrl+m, alt+f, ^.*-.*-\s, alt+x, enter Total Commander - at your service.
The only reason "the gui" (which one are you referring to?) is apparently more difficult than figuring out your bash script is because nobody bothered to make that gui work for the user.
There are certainly times where a CLI, or a semi-programmable (filesystem) processor, reigns supreme - but for most cases, a GUI will do just fine or even do better. I certainly much prefer moving/resizing partitions visually than punching numbers into the CLI only to have it complain about the new partition being too large for the drive given the pre-existing partitions' sizes, or that I `can't` move a partition to a particular location because another partition is already there (duh - I know that. resize the other partition to make room for this one!). But to each their own.
Frankly, I'm surprised Sony is working with libraries at all given their previous stances on sharing copyrighted material.
I don't think they've ever had issues with sharing copyrighted material (okay, maybe somewhere in a board room they do) beyond the typical*. But neither a library nor filesharing are 'sharing' of the copyrighted material. A library lets you borrow the material. Once you borrow it, the library no longer has it. Filesharing on the other hand involves making a copy, and then distributing that copy. If they had issues with 'sharing' then you'd be looking at them having issues with e.g. a whole family watching a movie.. and not just the single person that bought the DVD/BluRay. * Of course when you extrapolate from there and start showing that DVD to a room of 50 total strangers, they may take issue with that.
A true HDR *display* [...] would offer no advantage to a tone-mapped image, as your eye still can't see more than a certain range at any given time.
I don't think you would have said that if you'd seen the BrightSide display at Siggraph 2005.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies..though I'll agree that ideally you'd have as little ambient light as possible, it was fine at the show floor with tons of different, flashing, lights around.
I think I've noted it in a previous discussion on 3D displays... once they're done poking around at that, I'd love it if display manufacturers would go back to figuring out a way to make HDR displays cheaply along with industry-wide standards on how to address such displays.
1. And the problem with that is...? I mean.. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there.. that hackers should go for higher level hacks first so that maybe in the next generation of the hardware they can still use those hacks? Wouldn't that lofty idea go against your remaining points, though?
2. I'm not sure what part you're relying on when you lose a piece of hardware that is dissimilar from another piece of hardware - even if that hardware is only slightly dissimilar - nor what role a jailbreak plays in this.
3.honestly? you think it's only semi-legal? You do realize it's -your- device, right? and you care that Apple wouldn't like you?
4. Yes, you do lose support. How often have you had to get support for the device, and how many of those times did you not have a choice but to go to Apple? Losing your -warranty- is a bigger issue, methinks.
5. Companies -could- target the jailbreaks, but probably not in a form that they would be -based- on them. How silly a business model would that be? But why would that matter for the userbase? There only needs to be only a single app that is worth it for somebody to jailbreak their device. Whether any other company then cares about having that person as a potential client or not is up to them.
6. See 3.
7. I'm not sure how there wouldn't be -any- profit in it. Let's say you're some lone developer, you make an App that only works on jailbroken devices, and you toss that up on your website that you're already running, behind a small PayPal paywall that you're already using for other software anyway. I'm pretty sure every single sale would be 'profit' if you don't count the time you worked on the App as an offset cost; Some people go watch a movie, other people use the 2 hours to knock up a little app. Seems to me going to the movies is a bigger cost.
That said.. I'm all for people just using a more open platform to begin with - but people seem to want their cake and eat it too ( not that there's anything wrong with that.. what else would to do with a cake, unless you're a clown? ) - so the truly open platforms tend to be more of a niche market than the popular platforms.. regardless of their level of openness.
That fade-in effect is just for their additional services. The main search field was always immediately visible. I didn't see the problem months ago (see other comment thread on this very thing), I still don't see it now.
That said.. maybe they heard you and others.. www.google.com no longer fades anything in. www.google.nl still does. I don't care either way as I use the search box in the browser and can refine on the results page if I need to.. I practically never see the main google webpage.
So... how will putting phone-scannable barcodes on stamps actually help?
by generating press attention and (subsequent) revenue, they'll help the postal services - and, in this case, perhaps the railways.
And what do I need it for?
Unless you print barcodes on your envelopes that are tied to e.g. a business mailing account.. you'd need it to send snailmail with. You don't necessarily need -these- stamps, of course. You can use any stamps. These are just for the aforementioned reasons.
Personally I think it's a rather weak stamp. A QR code or whatever it is (didn't bother with the article) to get more information online? How about just printing e.g. www.dft.gov.uk on there in plain ol' letters? What's going to be next? You can download an Augmented Reality App from the postal services and, in conjunction with special stamps with corner markers, you can stick some random object onto the stamp if you hold it up in front of your webcam? *yawn*
And on the topic of postal services milking the philatelists.. how about the Royal Mint with their City Maps struck coins - using data from, among other, Google Earth - http://www.knm.nl/Zilveren-Citymaps/nl/page/458/ - that's pretty cool.
I'll admit that my source for this is the Sunshine DVD's commentary track, but...
The surface of the sun is not nearly as hot as the re-entry temperatures for some of the probes returning to Earth; and they don't plan on going anywhere near the surface of the sun with the Solar Probe.. 2 million kilometers or something (according to that same DVD).
They'll be fine with the tech for shielding against heat that we've already got.
You claim here that you can run homebrew, even though you go on to state there is no graphics access which makes your whole statement pointless with regards to games.
Because you need access to all the juicy parts of the graphics processor in order to write games? How did people on an ATARI ever get by?
and here you say it prevents them from running homebrew. You can't even agree with yourself which is pretty funny.
Maybe you could re-read what I wrote. They couldn't write their envisioned games they couldn't write because of the limited access. E.g. high quality 3D graphics games. That didn't prevent them from writing simpler games.
There is no contradiction in my statements *unless* you generalize 'homebrew development' to require full access to everything; which is simply not true. There's plenty of homebrew apps in the iPhone app store - despite the fact that those apps don't exactly get to do whatever they want, access every single chipset in the device, or even run as root.
As far as piracy goes, I wouldn't know the situation in Asia - I'll take your word for it. But I guess if everybody's got a chipped PS3 anyway, then that patch to allow 'backups' is superfluous. In the U.S. and Europe, it's not exactly like you can just waltz into a BestBuy or MediaMarkt/Saturn and walk out with a modded -anything-, though. But to draw an analogy.. don't count on the R2 and equivalent cards being primarily or even moderately used for 'backups' in e.g. The Netherlands.. except if you count 'backups' found on download sites.
I never quite understood that "If only they'd allowed homebrew, none of this* would have happened!" reasoning.
After all, you can certainly run homebrew on a PC, but this* still happens.
In addition, you -could- run homebrew on the PS3. You didn't get access to the BD, you didn't get full access to the graphics bits and pieces, but you could run homebrew. Apparently that wasn't enough for some, somebody decided to poke at the hypervisor to gain access to these resources, and once they started succeeding a bit, OtherOS was nixed on the older models as well, citing 'security concerns'.
*"this"?
Get the Atmel code from GitHub [which] by itself [...] lets you run unsigned code
Seems like homebrew and linux were possible right there and then...
and apply a small patch which will enable backup play
Right. Backups. I guess that's really what "this" is.
Sounds rather threatening. Open your platform to homebrew, without restriction, or else we'll open it for you - and make it stupid-simple for this* to happen as a(n un)fortunate 'side-effect'.
That out of the way.. I'm looking forward to an actual thriving homebrew scene for the PS3, with lots of indie developers making the games for PS3 they always wanted to but never had the funds to become a licensed developer, and didn't have the access they needed to develop their envisioned games.
Yes-and-no. The numbering system wasn't changed and a patent in 1810 wouldn't have a different number than the one it has today simply because the patent from 1810 didn't have a number; they were identified by date and inventor name (or company name? I'm fuzzy on that one). But as far as actual numbers as in "Patent No. #######" goes, there's been no change; and you can still look up the older patents if you have the date/name/company information, of course.
Unless you actually -believe- what he said/wrote, of course. But given the forum being Slashdot while the subject is most likely entirely unknown to the poster, you have no reason to; the poster has no good standing in these matters.
The girl would have to seriously argue that, for example, a Google search for her name wold now come up with that sentence associated with it, she was in fact damaged by the statement (e.g. finding out a potential employer - a daycare center, perhaps - decided against employing her because of the statement).
If a product has no current patents, you could copy any functionality of said product without having to look anything up.
And how, exactly, are you going to know that it has no current patents without looking anything up?
I have in front of me a DVD case from Amaray (I used it in another comment) that has the patent # in it. I can look that up. Oh hey, it's still valid.
I also have in front of me a wheeled cutter. It says "patent pending". Well I bought that about 2 years ago.. does that have an active patent? I have no idea. I guess I'll have to pay a patent lawyer to figure that out for me.
I also have in front of me a small solar calculator. It doesn't have any patent markings that I can see. Odds are it is, or was, patented... but I see no markings. So can I just duplicate it and go to market with it? Well, I can, but the patent holder (if there is one, with an active patent), upon finding out about my copy, would happily sue the heck out of me. So I'd still have to hire a patent lawyer.
So no.. I can't just copy the functionality and market it without looking anything up.
Having the markings on there is a -good thing-... not just for the patent holders, but also for everybody who's thinking about copying the invention, as they do not need to go through the time and money to figure out what immediate patents apply.
The law in question should be changed to take into account progress made in information retrieval. It no longer requires sending somebody by horse to a remote patent office, having them dig through mounds of paperwork, and return 2 months later, which most certainly -could- "stifle competition". ( above scenario based on an assumption - the law in question isn't cited, so I have no idea when it was actually instated. )
Why is it that we here at/. [...] apparently have no such anger directed at other companies using false patent information, we even defend them
Probably because most of us realize that those companies aren't using 'false patent information' that we know of. When I look at some product with its patent info.. I dunno, this DVD case from Amaray (surprisingly few items in my immediate vicinity even have patent info on them)... all it says is "US Pat No. 5788068". It doesn't say that the patent will be valid forever and ever and ever. It's a simple piece of information that they voluntarily (I presume, as otherwise.. why are all these other items around me missing that information?) stamped on there so that others - manufacturers - can look up the patent and reference it directly if they want to license it or build on it or whatever, and so that it is clear that a patent for it -does- exist. Want to know if it's active or expired? Look it up; That number doesn't magically disappear or get re-assigned to something else. Patent #0000001 is still the same patent covering the same invention it did well over 200 years ago. So there is nothing -false- about that information.
The law that says that a patent number is not allowed to be used on the products that are described in that patent as soon as it expires is the real 'troll' here.
It also mentions, however, that Garmin will be adding a spacer between the battery and the PCB.
So, speculation time... 1. the battery's casing may not have been up to spec and under some circumstances can lead to a conductive area that is -not- one of terminals being exposed and 2. the battery's proximity to - possibly direct contact with - the PCB actually made this into an issue simply because a soldered pin may end up touching the exposed area and shorting the battery or otherwise causing a too high draw bypassing the safety systems usually in place. Wouldn't be the first time.. but, again, speculation.
Except that it is exactly what Apple did and does.
They only accepted devices that claimed to be Apple iPods when they were indeed Apple iPods.
No - initially they merely accepted devices for iTunes built-in synching that claimed to be an iPod or iPhone (I'm not sure what the status of the iPad would be in all this). It's only when Palm decided to make the Pre claim to be an iPod or iPhone (I believe it was an iPhone) that Apple added another check so that it had to be an -Apple- iPod or iPhone. Not a Palm 'iPhone'. I.e. they added a check for the Vendor ID. The end result in either scenario and any further scenarios in the cat-and-mouse game (change Manufacturer ID, change handshake, etc.), however, is exactly the same; Apple only allowing their own devices to use iTunes' built-in synching, and that's just the way things are because the USB guys said Apple as OK to do this and Palm needed to sod off.
So yes - it is exactly what Apple did right from the get-go without even involving the Palm Pre & iTunes story at all.
You would have a point if the Palm Pre claimed it was a Palm Pre and was rejected
And it was, and is. So is a Creative Zen. So is a Microsoft Zune. So is a, I dunno, Fujiyama F-MP57 (random google hit).
Now whether one agrees with that or not is completely besides the point and material for another discussion - one that was held dozens of times well over a year ago when this was still a hot topic. Nowadays nobody cares anymore.. you either have an iPhone/iPod and enjoy iTunes internal syncing, or you get to use the device vendor's separate syncing application.
But the 'for security reasons' angle is absolute and complete bollocks. This wasn't Palm making use of a unpatched security hole like it seems to be the case for e.g. the earlier iPhone jailbreaks and the PS3 story where absolutely that should be patched and tough luck that it just so happens to also break these hacks - regardless of whether that was the true intent of patching. Palm's modus operandi with the Palm Pre dealt only with the syncing in the exact same way that an iPod or iPhone - If there were a security issue there at all, then that same security issue would exist for those devices and Apple would have been right to patch that in the name of security. Presumably syncing would continue to work for the iPod and iPhone and so would Palm Pre's shenanigans.. without any security issue whatsoever.
As far potential contracts with the music industry goes.. possibly; I wouldn't know. But since when is that a security issue?
the Palm Pre had a USB interface that claimed there was an Apple iPod, so that iTunes would transfer music to the device. Then Apple added code to iTunes to detect devices that _claimed_ to be Apple iPods, but were not actually Apple iPods, so this Palm Pre feature broke, and after another round of changing the Palm Pre interface and Apple again detecting it, Palm gave up.
Palm 'gave up' because the USB peeps told them to quit using Apple's IDs, which is against regulations - in response to Palm saying Apple were abusing the USB conformation specs by using portions of it as an access rights mechanism. There's no technical reason Palm couldn't have added whatever Apple ended up checking next to their device and had seamless sync continuing with iTunes; the game of cat & mouse would have left ever-fewer options with ultimately Palm as the winner. But that win would come at the cost of being kicked out of the USB club and then they'd have bigger problems to worry about.
As for the rest of your post.. yes - that's why Company X is quite right to only accept Company X keyboards, mice and webcams, and Microsoft-approved external drives, printers, scanners, etc. to connect to their computers and/or interface with their software. You know.. for security reasons.
It's already explained in the replies to this post... http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768072&cid=33391128...so no need to rehash here.. but in summary: there's two ends to a USB cable. In the first line you quoted he's talking about the device end, and in the second line you quoted he's talking about the computer end.
Slashdot Mirror
presuming that downloading those mp3s was not authorized... ...isn't "won't go much further than sending a letter or two" exactly the intent of the three strikes model? Those two letters being the first two strikes? If it does go further than that, it's Strike 3 and the court actually -should- come into play if that strike is contested. ( I'm more curious about if/how one might contest Strike 1, though. )
Doing nothing at all is cheaper, faster and.. well, not more effective, but it's not particularly all that much -less- effective.
Here's the rub.. if your content is popular - and I'm guessing it is - then it will end up on YouTube. So what do you do..
A. Pay a staffer to monitor YouTube continually and a legal department (or lawyer) to draft legal complaints (DMCA takedown notice if applicable), send this to Google, wait for reply and video takedown, then wait some more to see if the person who uploaded is feeling fresh and decides to tell Google that they think the upload was fair use or somesuch, and you get to write some more legal documents, or they just bow their heads and admit that it was infringement at no cost to them beyond reading the youtube e-mail subject (don't even bother with the body content). In the mean time, start your work with the legal peeps to deal with the other 2 videos of the exact same show, uploaded while you were dealing with the aforementioned. After all.. Google isn't obligated to remove -all- the videos.. just the one you complained about.. and you can only complain about one.
B. Try to sue Google to get them to implement better filtering methods, fingerprinting, removal of -all- the videos that match ones you've already complained about, etc. and spend a whack of cash... that you would've been spending under A anyway.. but of course go nowhere because the courts do firmly side with Google on this.
C. do nothing.
of course there's also...
D. upload the videos yourself, be the official channel for that show, and people will have less of a reason to visit JoePirate's version of the video with crappy compression and "A JOOOOOEEEEEEEEE PIIIRAAAAAATE production!!!!" leader in front of it with its feeble "I'm not the copyright holder - I do not mean to infringe on any copyright!" description that would make me wonder about the uploader's frame of mind if not for the fact that this is, after all, YouTube.
To some, though, option B may seem more attractive.. perhaps it'll fly in some jurisdiction eventually.. but option A is certainly completely pointless. Option C is the only worthwhile approach if you abhor option D for some reason.
oh silly me.. wrong blob. north east california it is; in or near Alturas
I was thinking something along the same lines. Proposing that maybe this would be possible.. and if it isn't possible, why not - and how CAN they make it possible? After all, ACTA is being negotiated with quite a few other nations and it would be nice for the U.S. government if they can invoke that agreement to shut down sites within/access to sites from other nations as well; as a side-benefit, all the funny business about piracy would get accepted as well. Like a 'rider' attached to a bill.. except that riders are used to 'ride along with' the general consensus on the bill.. and this would almost be the reverse case.. pushing through ACTA -because- it'd then allow the shutdown of e.g. wikileaks, not because of its original intent.
I haven't poked at the actual data, but just by looking at the map for 2009... ...and then the one for 2010... ...aside from seeing a bunch of new restaurants opening, a bunch of restaurants shifting (corrections in data or stores moving locations), there's the one obvious 'big blob' one that disappears near the west coast. But not in California, I guessed.
http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/maps/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds/
http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/maps/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds-sept-2010/
Overlaying it on Google Maps... ...the big blob that disappeared actually seems to be centered on the location at Tonopah... ...which is in Nevada, not California.
You need to rotate the map CCW a fair bit.. just match up LA, SF and SLC and if you search for "McDonald's" the blobs from the map should line up with several of the Google Maps blips along the I80 - e.g. at Winnemucca, Battle Mountain and Elko
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=mcdonald's&ll=38.153997,-117.004395&spn=1.187873,2.469177&z=9&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=38.056254,-117.216531&panoid=0l-zQQd6AtlI4McY-UjHkg&cbp=12,47.78,,0,5.25
Any Tonopahians around?
You mean like STEREO?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/main/index.html
Except that perhaps you'd want them much, much, much, etc., further apart if you want to directly resolve parallax in objects at interstellar distances.
+, enter, ctrl+m, alt+f, ^.*-.*-\s, alt+x, enter
Total Commander - at your service.
The only reason "the gui" (which one are you referring to?) is apparently more difficult than figuring out your bash script is because nobody bothered to make that gui work for the user.
There are certainly times where a CLI, or a semi-programmable (filesystem) processor, reigns supreme - but for most cases, a GUI will do just fine or even do better. I certainly much prefer moving/resizing partitions visually than punching numbers into the CLI only to have it complain about the new partition being too large for the drive given the pre-existing partitions' sizes, or that I `can't` move a partition to a particular location because another partition is already there (duh - I know that. resize the other partition to make room for this one!). But to each their own.
I don't think they've ever had issues with sharing copyrighted material (okay, maybe somewhere in a board room they do) beyond the typical*. But neither a library nor filesharing are 'sharing' of the copyrighted material. A library lets you borrow the material. Once you borrow it, the library no longer has it. Filesharing on the other hand involves making a copy, and then distributing that copy. If they had issues with 'sharing' then you'd be looking at them having issues with e.g. a whole family watching a movie.. and not just the single person that bought the DVD/BluRay. * Of course when you extrapolate from there and start showing that DVD to a room of 50 total strangers, they may take issue with that.
I don't think you would have said that if you'd seen the BrightSide display at Siggraph 2005.. ..though I'll agree that ideally you'd have as little ambient light as possible, it was fine at the show floor with tons of different, flashing, lights around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies
I think I've noted it in a previous discussion on 3D displays... once they're done poking around at that, I'd love it if display manufacturers would go back to figuring out a way to make HDR displays cheaply along with industry-wide standards on how to address such displays.
1. And the problem with that is...? I mean.. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there.. that hackers should go for higher level hacks first so that maybe in the next generation of the hardware they can still use those hacks? Wouldn't that lofty idea go against your remaining points, though?
2. I'm not sure what part you're relying on when you lose a piece of hardware that is dissimilar from another piece of hardware - even if that hardware is only slightly dissimilar - nor what role a jailbreak plays in this.
3.honestly? you think it's only semi-legal? You do realize it's -your- device, right? and you care that Apple wouldn't like you?
4. Yes, you do lose support. How often have you had to get support for the device, and how many of those times did you not have
a choice but to go to Apple? Losing your -warranty- is a bigger issue, methinks.
5. Companies -could- target the jailbreaks, but probably not in a form that they would be -based- on them. How silly a business model would that be? But why would that matter for the userbase? There only needs to be only a single app that is worth it for somebody to jailbreak their device. Whether any other company then cares about having that person as a potential client or not is up to them.
6. See 3.
7. I'm not sure how there wouldn't be -any- profit in it. Let's say you're some lone developer, you make an App that only works on jailbroken devices, and you toss that up on your website that you're already running, behind a small PayPal paywall that you're already using for other software anyway. I'm pretty sure every single sale would be 'profit' if you don't count the time you worked on the App as an offset cost; Some people go watch a movie, other people use the 2 hours to knock up a little app. Seems to me going to the movies is a bigger cost.
That said.. I'm all for people just using a more open platform to begin with - but people seem to want their cake and eat it too ( not that there's anything wrong with that.. what else would to do with a cake, unless you're a clown? ) - so the truly open platforms tend to be more of a niche market than the popular platforms.. regardless of their level of openness.
That fade-in effect is just for their additional services. The main search field was always immediately visible. I didn't see the problem months ago (see other comment thread on this very thing), I still don't see it now.
That said.. maybe they heard you and others.. www.google.com no longer fades anything in. www.google.nl still does.
I don't care either way as I use the search box in the browser and can refine on the results page if I need to.. I practically never see the main google webpage.
by generating press attention and (subsequent) revenue, they'll help the postal services - and, in this case, perhaps the railways.
Unless you print barcodes on your envelopes that are tied to e.g. a business mailing account.. you'd need it to send snailmail with.
You don't necessarily need -these- stamps, of course. You can use any stamps. These are just for the aforementioned reasons.
Personally I think it's a rather weak stamp. A QR code or whatever it is (didn't bother with the article) to get more information online? How about just printing e.g. www.dft.gov.uk on there in plain ol' letters? What's going to be next? You can download an Augmented Reality App from the postal services and, in conjunction with special stamps with corner markers, you can stick some random object onto the stamp if you hold it up in front of your webcam? *yawn*
At least the Dutch TNT seems to be coming out with a fun new one in a few weeks' time - a little full-color motion stamp using a lenticular printing process - showing 30 frames from a 1-second 'movie'.
http://www.tntpost.nl/overtntpost/nieuwspers/persberichten/2010/09/carice_van_houten.aspx
And on the topic of postal services milking the philatelists.. how about the Royal Mint with their City Maps struck coins - using data from, among other, Google Earth - http://www.knm.nl/Zilveren-Citymaps/nl/page/458/ - that's pretty cool.
I'll admit that my source for this is the Sunshine DVD's commentary track, but...
The surface of the sun is not nearly as hot as the re-entry temperatures for some of the probes returning to Earth; and they don't plan on going anywhere near the surface of the sun with the Solar Probe.. 2 million kilometers or something (according to that same DVD).
They'll be fine with the tech for shielding against heat that we've already got.
ah yes, they added that little X to the changed-over ones.. I guess technically that makes it NaN as well ;)
Because you need access to all the juicy parts of the graphics processor in order to write games? How did people on an ATARI ever get by?
Maybe you could re-read what I wrote. They couldn't write their envisioned games they couldn't write because of the limited access. E.g. high quality 3D graphics games. That didn't prevent them from writing simpler games.
There is no contradiction in my statements *unless* you generalize 'homebrew development' to require full access to everything; which is simply not true. There's plenty of homebrew apps in the iPhone app store - despite the fact that those apps don't exactly get to do whatever they want, access every single chipset in the device, or even run as root.
As far as piracy goes, I wouldn't know the situation in Asia - I'll take your word for it. But I guess if everybody's got a chipped PS3 anyway, then that patch to allow 'backups' is superfluous. In the U.S. and Europe, it's not exactly like you can just waltz into a BestBuy or MediaMarkt/Saturn and walk out with a modded -anything-, though. But to draw an analogy.. don't count on the R2 and equivalent cards being primarily or even moderately used for 'backups' in e.g. The Netherlands.. except if you count 'backups' found on download sites.
I never quite understood that "If only they'd allowed homebrew, none of this* would have happened!" reasoning.
After all, you can certainly run homebrew on a PC, but this* still happens.
In addition, you -could- run homebrew on the PS3. You didn't get access to the BD, you didn't get full access to the graphics bits and pieces, but you could run homebrew. Apparently that wasn't enough for some, somebody decided to poke at the hypervisor to gain access to these resources, and once they started succeeding a bit, OtherOS was nixed on the older models as well, citing 'security concerns'.
*"this"?
Seems like homebrew and linux were possible right there and then...
Right. Backups. I guess that's really what "this" is.
Sounds rather threatening. Open your platform to homebrew, without restriction, or else we'll open it for you - and make it stupid-simple for this* to happen as a(n un)fortunate 'side-effect'.
That out of the way.. I'm looking forward to an actual thriving homebrew scene for the PS3, with lots of indie developers making the games for PS3 they always wanted to but never had the funds to become a licensed developer, and didn't have the access they needed to develop their envisioned games.
Yes-and-no. The numbering system wasn't changed and a patent in 1810 wouldn't have a different number than the one it has today simply because the patent from 1810 didn't have a number; they were identified by date and inventor name (or company name? I'm fuzzy on that one). But as far as actual numbers as in "Patent No. #######" goes, there's been no change; and you can still look up the older patents if you have the date/name/company information, of course.
Neither, probably.
Unless you actually -believe- what he said/wrote, of course.
But given the forum being Slashdot while the subject is most likely entirely unknown to the poster, you have no reason to; the poster has no good standing in these matters.
The girl would have to seriously argue that, for example, a Google search for her name wold now come up with that sentence associated with it, she was in fact damaged by the statement (e.g. finding out a potential employer - a daycare center, perhaps - decided against employing her because of the statement).
IANAL, though
And how, exactly, are you going to know that it has no current patents without looking anything up?
I have in front of me a DVD case from Amaray (I used it in another comment) that has the patent # in it. I can look that up. Oh hey, it's still valid.
I also have in front of me a wheeled cutter. It says "patent pending". Well I bought that about 2 years ago.. does that have an active patent? I have no idea. I guess I'll have to pay a patent lawyer to figure that out for me.
I also have in front of me a small solar calculator. It doesn't have any patent markings that I can see. Odds are it is, or was, patented... but I see no markings. So can I just duplicate it and go to market with it? Well, I can, but the patent holder (if there is one, with an active patent), upon finding out about my copy, would happily sue the heck out of me. So I'd still have to hire a patent lawyer.
So no.. I can't just copy the functionality and market it without looking anything up.
Having the markings on there is a -good thing-... not just for the patent holders, but also for everybody who's thinking about copying the invention, as they do not need to go through the time and money to figure out what immediate patents apply.
The law in question should be changed to take into account progress made in information retrieval. It no longer requires sending somebody by horse to a remote patent office, having them dig through mounds of paperwork, and return 2 months later, which most certainly -could- "stifle competition".
( above scenario based on an assumption - the law in question isn't cited, so I have no idea when it was actually instated. )
Probably because most of us realize that those companies aren't using 'false patent information' that we know of. When I look at some product with its patent info.. I dunno, this DVD case from Amaray (surprisingly few items in my immediate vicinity even have patent info on them)... all it says is "US Pat No. 5788068". It doesn't say that the patent will be valid forever and ever and ever. It's a simple piece of information that they voluntarily (I presume, as otherwise.. why are all these other items around me missing that information?) stamped on there so that others - manufacturers - can look up the patent and reference it directly if they want to license it or build on it or whatever, and so that it is clear that a patent for it -does- exist. Want to know if it's active or expired? Look it up; That number doesn't magically disappear or get re-assigned to something else. Patent #0000001 is still the same patent covering the same invention it did well over 200 years ago. So there is nothing -false- about that information.
The law that says that a patent number is not allowed to be used on the products that are described in that patent as soon as it expires is the real 'troll' here.
1. you think 'Snoop' approached Symantec/Norton on this, rather than the other way around?
2. who?*
* spoken from the point of view of a marketing person.
According to the Dutch site tweakers.net ( http://tweakers.net/nieuws/69349/garmin-roept-nuvi-navigatiesystemen-terug.html ), the supplier of the battery will take on the cost of replacing the battery. So it seems there's at least an issue with that battery and who knows if other devices may also be affected.
It also mentions, however, that Garmin will be adding a spacer between the battery and the PCB.
So, speculation time... 1. the battery's casing may not have been up to spec and under some circumstances can lead to a conductive area that is -not- one of terminals being exposed and 2. the battery's proximity to - possibly direct contact with - the PCB actually made this into an issue simply because a soldered pin may end up touching the exposed area and shorting the battery or otherwise causing a too high draw bypassing the safety systems usually in place. Wouldn't be the first time.. but, again, speculation.
Except that it is exactly what Apple did and does.
No - initially they merely accepted devices for iTunes built-in synching that claimed to be an iPod or iPhone (I'm not sure what the status of the iPad would be in all this).
It's only when Palm decided to make the Pre claim to be an iPod or iPhone (I believe it was an iPhone) that Apple added another check so that it had to be an -Apple- iPod or iPhone. Not a Palm 'iPhone'. I.e. they added a check for the Vendor ID.
The end result in either scenario and any further scenarios in the cat-and-mouse game (change Manufacturer ID, change handshake, etc.), however, is exactly the same; Apple only allowing their own devices to use iTunes' built-in synching, and that's just the way things are because the USB guys said Apple as OK to do this and Palm needed to sod off.
So yes - it is exactly what Apple did right from the get-go without even involving the Palm Pre & iTunes story at all.
And it was, and is. So is a Creative Zen. So is a Microsoft Zune. So is a, I dunno, Fujiyama F-MP57 (random google hit).
Now whether one agrees with that or not is completely besides the point and material for another discussion - one that was held dozens of times well over a year ago when this was still a hot topic. Nowadays nobody cares anymore.. you either have an iPhone/iPod and enjoy iTunes internal syncing, or you get to use the device vendor's separate syncing application.
But the 'for security reasons' angle is absolute and complete bollocks. This wasn't Palm making use of a unpatched security hole like it seems to be the case for e.g. the earlier iPhone jailbreaks and the PS3 story where absolutely that should be patched and tough luck that it just so happens to also break these hacks - regardless of whether that was the true intent of patching. Palm's modus operandi with the Palm Pre dealt only with the syncing in the exact same way that an iPod or iPhone - If there were a security issue there at all, then that same security issue would exist for those devices and Apple would have been right to patch that in the name of security. Presumably syncing would continue to work for the iPod and iPhone and so would Palm Pre's shenanigans.. without any security issue whatsoever.
As far potential contracts with the music industry goes.. possibly; I wouldn't know. But since when is that a security issue?
Palm 'gave up' because the USB peeps told them to quit using Apple's IDs, which is against regulations - in response to Palm saying Apple were abusing the USB conformation specs by using portions of it as an access rights mechanism. There's no technical reason Palm couldn't have added whatever Apple ended up checking next to their device and had seamless sync continuing with iTunes; the game of cat & mouse would have left ever-fewer options with ultimately Palm as the winner. But that win would come at the cost of being kicked out of the USB club and then they'd have bigger problems to worry about.
As for the rest of your post.. yes - that's why Company X is quite right to only accept Company X keyboards, mice and webcams, and Microsoft-approved external drives, printers, scanners, etc. to connect to their computers and/or interface with their software. You know.. for security reasons.
It's already explained in the replies to this post... ...so no need to rehash here.. but in summary: there's two ends to a USB cable. In the first line you quoted he's talking about the device end, and in the second line you quoted he's talking about the computer end.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1768072&cid=33391128