Not arguing on the usefulness of Multi-touch but do you think it's actually an invention worthy of patents or simply a natural extension of touch screens?
Personally I don't think apple invented anything. I think the desire to use two or more fingers was a simple modification of the original invention of touch screens. I don't think it should have ever been patented and I think if Apple foolishly keeps pursuing them one of the dozens of courts they are pursuing cases in will invalidate the patents for exactly that reason. The statistics are clear, the more you pursue enforcement of a patent the higher the probability that it will be invalidated and Apples on a major lawsuit campaign against Android because its going to legitimately eat their lunch.
Nothing to worry about. Some very brave people have Forked it and created LibreOffice to replace it. Given the more flexible source contribution rules the development rate already exceeds that of OO.org. It's only a matter of time before Oracle isn't even relevant anymore in relation to office software. It's unfortunate that they didn't accept the LibreOffice request to coordinate development and direction as it will sideline them even more. Oh well.
FOSS projects only have to be in competition if they want to be, if they in fact want to cooperate it's still quite easy and being on each others boards would ensure competition.
I'll make the opposite prediction, LibreOffice (a much better name IMO than OpenOffice.org) will be dominant and OO will fade to only being available from Oracle. As of right now Fedora, Ubuntu and SUSE are switching that I know of, and I thought I heard nearly every Linux distribution has announced they are switching. That's signficant marketshare. Given that OO.org doesn't allow contributions without copyright assignment and LibreOffice is already moving at about twice the development pace because they accept contributions from everyone it doesn't take a crystal ball to see that LibreOffice will soon be the default very soon.
Oracle's made a big mistake on this front. They will be just like XFree86, completely irrelevant.
Maybe the founders of LibreOffice don't consider themselves in competition with Oracle and are simply forking because Oracle wasn't attending to what they felt were important issues. Forking a project in FOSS doesn't have to be competition, it can still be a quite cooperative arrangement. Apparently Oracle is of the opinion that if you aren't with them you are against them and that's a terrible position to be in. Oracle thinks like a private company and apparently considers a fork some kind of competitive betrayal which is quite sad really. Forked projects can be quite cooperative, sharing code, project direction and working together on everything but the few items they disagree on. That's apparently NOT the direction Oracle wants to go and wants to sideline themselves completely. Not to worry, LibreOffice is now the default in nearly all the major Linux Distributions and I have no doubt within a few years OO will be a footnote in history. Too bad Oracle's stupid.
It is FUD. There is no doubt. As you said not a single incident in here was a potential "nuking" of the US by itself. Reactor accidents are not nuclear explosions, not by any measuring stick in the world. Anyone that says they can be equivalent to a nuclear bomb either simply doesn't understand a meltdown or is spreading FUD deliberately. The other examples are really great examples of the safety procedures that were used and why accidents didn't happen but at no time did either case represent a potential nuking of the US by the US.
This post and story reads like something the anti-nuclear lobby would write, something that is 50-100% pure FUD, exaggerations and lies. This is also the primary reason there is such skepticism of the environmental movement in the US, because most of the environmental movements frequently lie through omission, exaggeration and outright deception. This results in serious problems like the US public not believing global warming is real.
People that truly care about the environment need to stop lying. The nuclear lobby needs to stop lying and present the real truth, even if it means that portions (maybe even most) of the population don't think the risks are that serious. All they do by over exaggerating the risk and deceiving the public with lies is give the people trying to cover up the risks legitimate truths about the environmental lobbies that alienate the public and make the public believe that the real risks are lies and exaggerations as well.
I consider myself a balanced environmentalist in that I believe risks need to be balanced, people still need to go on living but I cannot support organizations that lie, exaggerate and spread FUD to scare the public into action and I haven't found an environmental movement yet that believes in anything other than radical positions. Greenpeace is adamantly against carbon emissions but also opposes hydro power and nuclear power plants which are two of the most successful methods to reduce carbon emissions that exist right now. They won't support balancing risks, they simply oppose everything with any environmental risks even if they are less than the current power plants and as a result no progress can be made. I consider this unwillingness to compromise a serious problem, we could make some major progress reducing carbon emissions by moving coal to nuclear then in time moving to renewable resources but that path is continually blocked by the environmental movement because nuclear is "bad". These type of positions alienate the public and as a result nothing gets done.
You should wait so you can be denied the ability to cut/paste.
Android is the future, WP7 will be just as still born as Kin was. Well let me correct that, I doubt it will be as bad as kin, at best though it will sell as good as the palm pre with a modest early adopter then a steep falloff in demand. It's going to be either the 4th or 5th OS behind (not in any particular order) Android, iOS, Blackberry and maybe even Palm.
It was a nice try though I will admit that, it would have been a game changer 3 years ago. This is what happens when you let a product stagnate (windows mobile) because you are focused on everything else (xbox, antivirus, crm, etc). Windows Mobile was the number one smartphone OS several years ago. Then Crackberry came along and displaced them to second, then Apple and Android beat them to death. The best part of this is that WP7 won't run all the millions of Windows Mobile software out there because they wanted to create the app store model and take a cut of everyone else's software sales. They threw away the one major advantage they had (a massive existing software base) in some stupid plan to mimic Apple. If I was the COO of the mobile division I would be polishing my resume.
It's cultural, so I'm sure they'll be kicking us to the curb in a few decades once they start valuing results over hierarchy.
Good luck. Given the cultural proclivities in India I would give them just about a zero chance of ever exceeding American innovation. There are a LOT of really smart people in India, but the culture prevents innovation. Taking a risk that could pay off big or blow up in your face 100% of Indian's will choose the safe route and never innovate. You need to understand, if you don't get a positive letter of recommendation from your previous employer you will never find another job. That means you fuck up once and your career is over. Think that encourages innovation and risk taking?
The symptoms of this cultural problem are seen in the Indian Call centers and it's frequently what upsets American callers so much. No one working at the call center will deviate one tiny bit from the script, to do so could risk their letter of recommendation and doom them to never working again. If your problem isn't in the script you won't get help unless they transfer you to someone that has your problem in the script or that can connect you to someone that will deviate from the script (typically an American working in India or a call center in america).
You can't fix a problem like this without a major cultural shift and those take generations to occur. If or when India makes that cultural shift they might exceed American innovation but it's not going to happen until it does. Culture plays a big role in peoples lives.
There is an argument to be made that because of the very physics of the universe that life itself may be not only inevitable but practically guaranteed. This statement is made with consideration of organic chemistry and the pervasiveness with which hydrocarbons not only exist but seem to interact and react to other hydrocarbons. Carl Sagan was the biggest proponent of this hypothesis, that the physical laws of the universe predispose the creation of life. If the hypothesis is correct, that hydrocarbons are so common throughout the universe (which they are) and that their interaction to form amino acids and the basis of life itself is the end result of the laws of the universe (supposition at best) then if a planet is the right temperature, has water and carbon then life should form. (note mars isn't warm enough and has no free water and Venus is way way to warm, but Titan is literally covered in lakes of liquid hydrocarbons)
I agree the guy is a bad scientist for making such a claim, but if you believe this line of reasoning then if you can find a star with planets in the habitable zone, the right size, with water and enough carbon then you will have life "guaranteed". They are just on the cusp of having enough technology to see earth size planets, I think it will be just a mater of time till they can spectrograph the light bouncing off the planet and can find out which ones have oxygen in the atmosphere. Once you find oxygen you know you have life, at least minimal enough life to create free oxygen which can't exist without life because of it's highly reactive nature. I believe Carl was right, that life is an inevitable consequence of the universe, but until we have a better understanding of exosolar planets and that our solar system(and the earth itself with it's super-sized moon and high rotation) isn't unique we don't have the ability to say life is guaranteed anywhere and that's what makes his assertion so silly even if he believes Carl's hypothesis.
It's an interesting area, because you could test the theory. With some massive expenditures of cash it would be possible to stop the run away greenhouse effect on Venus. Once the planet cooled it would rapidly lose much of it's excess atmosphere and attain a condition not that much different than the early earth except for the very slow rotation and lack of a moon. That test would then prove whether the moon (tidal forces) and fast rotation (short nights) were special or essential in the creation of life. If those two variances are important than life could still be quite rare even with the universal predisposition to life from the right physical circumstances. It's been argued that life first started in the tidal pools on earth, without tides you don't get the periodic flooding that life in the current tidal pools needs to survive. Whether life can survive nights that last multiple days or even weeks is another argument that has little to no evidence to support.
Anyway, I don't agree with the scientists affirmation but I do understand why he would believe so strongly that life is guaranteed if the conditions are right.
Earlier in the decade economic retaliation against China would have been pointless, but at this point their is already social upheaval with even slight drops in the economic growth rates. If the US was willing to shoot the US economy dead and impose sanctions against China there is a fairly good chance the communist party would get strung up by the populace. Sure the people might look the other way when they rolled tanks over freedom protesters but they won't look the other way when they don't get paid. China's populace and economy has moved beyond a critical point where the people care very much about employment and a collapse in the export economy driven by their undervaluing the yuan against the dollar would cause some very serious social upheaval. Were it to happen I wouldn't be surprised if we saw French revolution levels of violence against the party.
The US, Europe and Japan all need to work together and show China a hard line on the Yuan, were we all to cooperate in a currency manipulation complaint we could force the Chinese to make changes with the threat of their own necks on the line if they don't comply. The key to such a complaint working is for the EU, the US and Japan to all work together on the complaint. Sadly I don't think it will happen.
The US by about 200%. The freedom of a country is most easily judged by how it treats it's assholes. If people don't have the freedom to be assholes and speak like assholes there isn't really any freedom except conformance with the majority and that's not freedom.
It's also easily, conveniently and consistently recycled where it costs 1/100th the amount of energy to reuse it. Aluminum is one of the successful recycling stories as it has real value and almost every bit that can be recycled is because of it's value. In addition the vast majority of it is produced with renewable energy (hydro). Aluminum is a renewable material and far more environmentally conscious than plastics.
Incorrect. Altria Group changed their name to reflect their conglomerate status where Phillip Morris was less than 50% of the company. Shortly after changing their name to Altria they spun off Phillip Morris and Kraft as separate companies that are no longer owned by Altria.
Choose a better example next time as the name Change by Phillip Morris was done with the knowledge that the real Phillip Morris (the part of the company that actually produced cig's) would be spun out as quickly as the SEC would allow Altria to split the company into 3 parts.
No kidding, Winnie the Zynga sounds like some mass murdering pedophile, Jiminy Zynga sounds like a pipe wielding Russian mobster, and Mary Kate and Ashley Zynga sound like and pair of assassins.
And the scariest thing about this ruling is that the Vernor is being punished for the actions of CTA. The court has imposed a third party agreement against a user that never clicked through. Although the copies may have been "illegal" in the sense that CTA should have destroyed them, the fact is the only remedy AutoCADD should have had was to sue CTA for the illegal sale and recover the full price. That the court turned around and punished an innocent third party here is the scandalous item. Vernor never agreed to the license, he was never a party to the initial transaction. The copies he had probably shouldn't exist, but that was a contractual violation by CTA, not Vernor.
It's a sad day in the USA when someone can sue you for the actions of a third party, not only that, but win and deprive you of property. Not only that but AutoDesk is a bunch of fucktards for suing a third party for a contractual violation by someone else. I really hope he takes this to the Supreme court and wins. It's unfathomable that a third party could be held to contractual terms he never agreed to.
Bing Bing Bing! We have a winner. This ruling can now be used to sue retailers demanding they accept returned software! As you didn't accept the contract and you have no resale rights, a refund will have to be issued. Either that or the court is going to have to rule that you aren't entitled to a refund (and become national news).
Mark my words, someone will use this to sue a retailer and software manufacturer demanding refunds. This is exactly the basis people used to demand windows refunds as they EULA said they could take it back to the retailer for a refund (even if the retailer didn't accept such).
5. Financial. There is no business case to be made to disclose this proprietary information. If I'm not going to make money from something, why should I spend the time/effort to open source it, and perhaps give away information that my competitor could use?
You might find this hard to believe but the large OEM's (HP, Dell and all the others) are demanding Linux driver compliance in their OEM selection process. Linux is huge in the server market, particularly in visualization, is taking over the cell phone market and will one day be in the home. If you don't OSS your drivers you will lose OEM contracts and likely won't be told that you lost because you didn't have Linux drivers.
Linux will one day be the dominant OS in all the backend servers, the dominant players in the largest percentage of Embedded devices (including cell phones) and in the future will dominate the desktop.
You don't actually think that you could move a house during an evacuation do you? If it's a double wide the house has to be sawed in half, packed up, a crane has to lift each half onto the trailer, then two trailers and two pilot cars drive the thing to it's destination at a rough top speed of 30mph.
You think that's going to happen during an emergency?
An Israeli attack isn't going to be a "war". It's going to be a hit and run attack like the attack on Saddam's Nuclear reactor. They will probably fly a few dozen planes into Iran and bomb the snot out of every facility they have intelligence on. Given Iran's preparations it will probably only destroy about 50% of the institutions in a best case scenario and likely have little to no effect other than a slight delay in production.
The solution to the Iranian problem is to bring their people to power and an attack on the Iranian nation would delay that solution.
And the best part is he actually thinks that either the local police who aren't enforcing the laws currently will suddenly jump on the opportunity to enforce it with these "technological" measures while at the same time giving the money collected back to them to use to expand the system or that he's going to create his own private police force to collect fines. Both are highly unlikely and either is likely to end up with one result, the OP going to jail or being harassed by the police who don't like their failings pointed out.
You can't correct a social problem with technology. Your problem is that your people don't care. They aren't getting government to serve the people, they aren't obeying the laws and there are no consequences for lawbreakers. Corruption and bad government cannot be fixed without the people. Now given that you are in the middle east there is a very good chance that your country isn't a democracy. In a normal democracy I would suggest doing what you can to fix the real problem, which is to mobilize the people to petition the government, but if you aren't in a democracy, publicizing the failings of government could be highly dangerous to your health.
You want to fix the traffic problem, first you need to fix the social problem that generated it and only you know how to fix the daunting problem of altering your government and culture.
The NSA creates a front company called Quantum Research and funds it with black project money.
DARPA creates a front company called Skynet Research Ltd and again funds it with black project money which is unreported to congress or the public.
Both companies then hire CEO's from the public sector and give them no knowledge who they really work for. Quantum Research then gets "VC Money" from Skynet Research and goes on a hiring spree to develop quantum computers and hires and provides grants to 50% of the quantum research field. After successfully creating a quantum computer and producing a few "prototypes" said company declares to their employers that the cash has run out and they are going into liquidation. Said prototypes appears to disappear into liquidation and are never "seen" again.
And because everyone thought the companies were legitimate businesses not government research no one is the wiser to what has occurred.
This is standard operating procedure for the spy agencies and research branches like DARPA. DARPA seeds the educational community across many apparently unrelated disciplines. The NSA then creates front companies with access to the DARPA research, drives the company like an innovative startup, once innovation or invention occurs the company is folded and the assets or inventions are sequestered to the NSA with a few key employees that all along knew they were working for the NSA who then take the prototypes, enchance them and working with defense contractors replicate and expand the computers.
Just FYI the NSA is building a 50,000+ square foot computer complex in Utah on a millitary base (Camp Williams) that is going to use so much power they have to build a power plant to power it.
Holy Smokes. He's got them by the balls. Unless they can find a state specific reason to invalidate the contract they are smoked beyond belief. There is no way they could make a settlement offer. This guy has a standard work for hire contract for Facebook. Zuckerberg never owned it, he was hired to develop it for $1000 dollars. I'll type up the key paragraph here as the PDF is a bitch to read:
"2. Entire Agreement The contract between the Purchaser and Seller as a purchase agreement and "work made for hire" reflects two separate business ventures, the first being the work to be performed directly for the StreetFax Database and the Programming language to be provided by the Seller. Second it is for the continued development of the software, program and for the purchase and design of a suitable website for the project Seller has already initiated that is designed to offer the student of Harvard university access to a website similar to a live functioning yearbook with the working title of "The Face Book".
It is agreed that Purchaser will own a half Interest (50%) in the software, programing language and business interests derived from the expansion of that service to a larger audience."
It's a standard pull out of a book and make some modifications work for hire contract and it appears he had his lawyer review and modify before everyone signed. These things are generally pretty simple (the entire agreement is 2 pages long) and they are very legally binding generally as all the terms are previously tested and pulled from successfully litigated contracts. It's got everything from Patent indemnification to Liens to Subcontracting rights, it's a very thorough and succinct contract. This Ceglia guy is in a very very good position. From the terms he owns more than 80% of Facebook (due to a late opening). Any value that Zuckerberg sold came out of the percentage that Zuckerberg owned, not Ceglia's portion. IMO the reason there is no settlement is that Ceglia is in such a good legal position he has no reason to settle and Facebook either wins or loses the whole company. His company "StreetFax" owns Facebook lock stock and barrel. Zuckerberg was hired to develop it and manage it, that's it and all for $1000. Call that the best investment of all time.
All I can say is WOW. Zuckerberg is history. Might take a few years with all the Legal wrangling and Zuckerberg is going to get his ass sued for failing to disclose this contract when he took the VC money and he might even end up in Jail if the VC guys can convince the government to prosecute for fraud.
And Apple Stole every aspect from the XEROX PARC development. They guy credited with creating the GUI and Mouse worked for Xerox, not Apple. Xerox let them steal it, no question, but don't give credit where it's not due, PARC is responsible for far more than what you are crediting to Apple. The only thing Apple did was make these software interfaces cost effective by using commodity hardware instead of PARC'a tendency to use specialty hardware.
And the heavy lifter fucked Utah out of a Contract to build solid rocket motors that they have been building for roughly 30 years. What you call Fucking I call restoring the status quo. ATK has been in this business for 30 years and the Bush administration and Congress fucked them out of their entire business by specifying a heavy lift rocket we don't need. Why should we throw out everything and start over? Why can't there be evolutionary changes instead of "throw everything out, cancel all existing contracts and start X new program whether or not it works or is cost effective". The reality is that right now the ATK boosters exist right now, their development is paid for. Why on earth are we throwing everything out and starting from scratch? So the program can fail or go way over budget (or both)?
Better push that doorbell in before you leave the house for good on your matchstick home.
The sole reason for building codes existing is to protect YOU the homeowner, buyer and builder. You might think it's Nanny government or whatever but you don't follow code (such as building your home with straw insulation) and you have a good chance that your home is NOT salable, is not insurable (oh they will take your money till you have a claim, first thing the adjuster will do is verify the home meets code, when it doesn't they will refund all your premiums and deny coverage, Code compliance is a conditional term for insurance and you are at fault for NOT telling them it doesn't meet code) and it's a very real risk to your future. You sell that home you built that doesn't meet code and the future owner can come back at you 20 years down the line for every single repair to bring the home up to code at the time of construction. The house burns down because it doesn't meet code? Welcome to the world of negligent homicide and a criminal conviction with a possible 10 year prison sentence (depending on jurisdiction of course).
The code exists to protect you by setting minimum standards (MINIMUM). Ignore it at your own risk as it's become the legal framework for minimum acceptable standards in the housing and building industry.
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Not arguing on the usefulness of Multi-touch but do you think it's actually an invention worthy of patents or simply a natural extension of touch screens?
Personally I don't think apple invented anything. I think the desire to use two or more fingers was a simple modification of the original invention of touch screens. I don't think it should have ever been patented and I think if Apple foolishly keeps pursuing them one of the dozens of courts they are pursuing cases in will invalidate the patents for exactly that reason. The statistics are clear, the more you pursue enforcement of a patent the higher the probability that it will be invalidated and Apples on a major lawsuit campaign against Android because its going to legitimately eat their lunch.
Nothing to worry about. Some very brave people have Forked it and created LibreOffice to replace it. Given the more flexible source contribution rules the development rate already exceeds that of OO.org. It's only a matter of time before Oracle isn't even relevant anymore in relation to office software. It's unfortunate that they didn't accept the LibreOffice request to coordinate development and direction as it will sideline them even more. Oh well.
FOSS projects only have to be in competition if they want to be, if they in fact want to cooperate it's still quite easy and being on each others boards would ensure competition.
I'll make the opposite prediction, LibreOffice (a much better name IMO than OpenOffice.org) will be dominant and OO will fade to only being available from Oracle. As of right now Fedora, Ubuntu and SUSE are switching that I know of, and I thought I heard nearly every Linux distribution has announced they are switching. That's signficant marketshare. Given that OO.org doesn't allow contributions without copyright assignment and LibreOffice is already moving at about twice the development pace because they accept contributions from everyone it doesn't take a crystal ball to see that LibreOffice will soon be the default very soon.
Oracle's made a big mistake on this front. They will be just like XFree86, completely irrelevant.
Maybe the founders of LibreOffice don't consider themselves in competition with Oracle and are simply forking because Oracle wasn't attending to what they felt were important issues. Forking a project in FOSS doesn't have to be competition, it can still be a quite cooperative arrangement. Apparently Oracle is of the opinion that if you aren't with them you are against them and that's a terrible position to be in. Oracle thinks like a private company and apparently considers a fork some kind of competitive betrayal which is quite sad really. Forked projects can be quite cooperative, sharing code, project direction and working together on everything but the few items they disagree on. That's apparently NOT the direction Oracle wants to go and wants to sideline themselves completely. Not to worry, LibreOffice is now the default in nearly all the major Linux Distributions and I have no doubt within a few years OO will be a footnote in history. Too bad Oracle's stupid.
It is FUD. There is no doubt. As you said not a single incident in here was a potential "nuking" of the US by itself. Reactor accidents are not nuclear explosions, not by any measuring stick in the world. Anyone that says they can be equivalent to a nuclear bomb either simply doesn't understand a meltdown or is spreading FUD deliberately. The other examples are really great examples of the safety procedures that were used and why accidents didn't happen but at no time did either case represent a potential nuking of the US by the US.
This post and story reads like something the anti-nuclear lobby would write, something that is 50-100% pure FUD, exaggerations and lies. This is also the primary reason there is such skepticism of the environmental movement in the US, because most of the environmental movements frequently lie through omission, exaggeration and outright deception. This results in serious problems like the US public not believing global warming is real.
People that truly care about the environment need to stop lying. The nuclear lobby needs to stop lying and present the real truth, even if it means that portions (maybe even most) of the population don't think the risks are that serious. All they do by over exaggerating the risk and deceiving the public with lies is give the people trying to cover up the risks legitimate truths about the environmental lobbies that alienate the public and make the public believe that the real risks are lies and exaggerations as well.
I consider myself a balanced environmentalist in that I believe risks need to be balanced, people still need to go on living but I cannot support organizations that lie, exaggerate and spread FUD to scare the public into action and I haven't found an environmental movement yet that believes in anything other than radical positions. Greenpeace is adamantly against carbon emissions but also opposes hydro power and nuclear power plants which are two of the most successful methods to reduce carbon emissions that exist right now. They won't support balancing risks, they simply oppose everything with any environmental risks even if they are less than the current power plants and as a result no progress can be made. I consider this unwillingness to compromise a serious problem, we could make some major progress reducing carbon emissions by moving coal to nuclear then in time moving to renewable resources but that path is continually blocked by the environmental movement because nuclear is "bad". These type of positions alienate the public and as a result nothing gets done.
You should wait so you can be denied the ability to cut/paste.
Android is the future, WP7 will be just as still born as Kin was. Well let me correct that, I doubt it will be as bad as kin, at best though it will sell as good as the palm pre with a modest early adopter then a steep falloff in demand. It's going to be either the 4th or 5th OS behind (not in any particular order) Android, iOS, Blackberry and maybe even Palm.
It was a nice try though I will admit that, it would have been a game changer 3 years ago. This is what happens when you let a product stagnate (windows mobile) because you are focused on everything else (xbox, antivirus, crm, etc). Windows Mobile was the number one smartphone OS several years ago. Then Crackberry came along and displaced them to second, then Apple and Android beat them to death. The best part of this is that WP7 won't run all the millions of Windows Mobile software out there because they wanted to create the app store model and take a cut of everyone else's software sales. They threw away the one major advantage they had (a massive existing software base) in some stupid plan to mimic Apple. If I was the COO of the mobile division I would be polishing my resume.
Good luck. Given the cultural proclivities in India I would give them just about a zero chance of ever exceeding American innovation. There are a LOT of really smart people in India, but the culture prevents innovation. Taking a risk that could pay off big or blow up in your face 100% of Indian's will choose the safe route and never innovate. You need to understand, if you don't get a positive letter of recommendation from your previous employer you will never find another job. That means you fuck up once and your career is over. Think that encourages innovation and risk taking?
The symptoms of this cultural problem are seen in the Indian Call centers and it's frequently what upsets American callers so much. No one working at the call center will deviate one tiny bit from the script, to do so could risk their letter of recommendation and doom them to never working again. If your problem isn't in the script you won't get help unless they transfer you to someone that has your problem in the script or that can connect you to someone that will deviate from the script (typically an American working in India or a call center in america).
You can't fix a problem like this without a major cultural shift and those take generations to occur. If or when India makes that cultural shift they might exceed American innovation but it's not going to happen until it does. Culture plays a big role in peoples lives.
There is an argument to be made that because of the very physics of the universe that life itself may be not only inevitable but practically guaranteed. This statement is made with consideration of organic chemistry and the pervasiveness with which hydrocarbons not only exist but seem to interact and react to other hydrocarbons. Carl Sagan was the biggest proponent of this hypothesis, that the physical laws of the universe predispose the creation of life. If the hypothesis is correct, that hydrocarbons are so common throughout the universe (which they are) and that their interaction to form amino acids and the basis of life itself is the end result of the laws of the universe (supposition at best) then if a planet is the right temperature, has water and carbon then life should form. (note mars isn't warm enough and has no free water and Venus is way way to warm, but Titan is literally covered in lakes of liquid hydrocarbons)
I agree the guy is a bad scientist for making such a claim, but if you believe this line of reasoning then if you can find a star with planets in the habitable zone, the right size, with water and enough carbon then you will have life "guaranteed". They are just on the cusp of having enough technology to see earth size planets, I think it will be just a mater of time till they can spectrograph the light bouncing off the planet and can find out which ones have oxygen in the atmosphere. Once you find oxygen you know you have life, at least minimal enough life to create free oxygen which can't exist without life because of it's highly reactive nature. I believe Carl was right, that life is an inevitable consequence of the universe, but until we have a better understanding of exosolar planets and that our solar system(and the earth itself with it's super-sized moon and high rotation) isn't unique we don't have the ability to say life is guaranteed anywhere and that's what makes his assertion so silly even if he believes Carl's hypothesis.
It's an interesting area, because you could test the theory. With some massive expenditures of cash it would be possible to stop the run away greenhouse effect on Venus. Once the planet cooled it would rapidly lose much of it's excess atmosphere and attain a condition not that much different than the early earth except for the very slow rotation and lack of a moon. That test would then prove whether the moon (tidal forces) and fast rotation (short nights) were special or essential in the creation of life. If those two variances are important than life could still be quite rare even with the universal predisposition to life from the right physical circumstances. It's been argued that life first started in the tidal pools on earth, without tides you don't get the periodic flooding that life in the current tidal pools needs to survive. Whether life can survive nights that last multiple days or even weeks is another argument that has little to no evidence to support.
Anyway, I don't agree with the scientists affirmation but I do understand why he would believe so strongly that life is guaranteed if the conditions are right.
Earlier in the decade economic retaliation against China would have been pointless, but at this point their is already social upheaval with even slight drops in the economic growth rates. If the US was willing to shoot the US economy dead and impose sanctions against China there is a fairly good chance the communist party would get strung up by the populace. Sure the people might look the other way when they rolled tanks over freedom protesters but they won't look the other way when they don't get paid. China's populace and economy has moved beyond a critical point where the people care very much about employment and a collapse in the export economy driven by their undervaluing the yuan against the dollar would cause some very serious social upheaval. Were it to happen I wouldn't be surprised if we saw French revolution levels of violence against the party.
The US, Europe and Japan all need to work together and show China a hard line on the Yuan, were we all to cooperate in a currency manipulation complaint we could force the Chinese to make changes with the threat of their own necks on the line if they don't comply. The key to such a complaint working is for the EU, the US and Japan to all work together on the complaint. Sadly I don't think it will happen.
The US by about 200%. The freedom of a country is most easily judged by how it treats it's assholes. If people don't have the freedom to be assholes and speak like assholes there isn't really any freedom except conformance with the majority and that's not freedom.
It's also easily, conveniently and consistently recycled where it costs 1/100th the amount of energy to reuse it. Aluminum is one of the successful recycling stories as it has real value and almost every bit that can be recycled is because of it's value. In addition the vast majority of it is produced with renewable energy (hydro). Aluminum is a renewable material and far more environmentally conscious than plastics.
Incorrect. Altria Group changed their name to reflect their conglomerate status where Phillip Morris was less than 50% of the company. Shortly after changing their name to Altria they spun off Phillip Morris and Kraft as separate companies that are no longer owned by Altria.
Choose a better example next time as the name Change by Phillip Morris was done with the knowledge that the real Phillip Morris (the part of the company that actually produced cig's) would be spun out as quickly as the SEC would allow Altria to split the company into 3 parts.
No kidding, Winnie the Zynga sounds like some mass murdering pedophile, Jiminy Zynga sounds like a pipe wielding Russian mobster, and Mary Kate and Ashley Zynga sound like and pair of assassins.
All Evil. Be Evil, Do Evil and Inspire Evil.
And the scariest thing about this ruling is that the Vernor is being punished for the actions of CTA. The court has imposed a third party agreement against a user that never clicked through. Although the copies may have been "illegal" in the sense that CTA should have destroyed them, the fact is the only remedy AutoCADD should have had was to sue CTA for the illegal sale and recover the full price. That the court turned around and punished an innocent third party here is the scandalous item. Vernor never agreed to the license, he was never a party to the initial transaction. The copies he had probably shouldn't exist, but that was a contractual violation by CTA, not Vernor.
It's a sad day in the USA when someone can sue you for the actions of a third party, not only that, but win and deprive you of property. Not only that but AutoDesk is a bunch of fucktards for suing a third party for a contractual violation by someone else. I really hope he takes this to the Supreme court and wins. It's unfathomable that a third party could be held to contractual terms he never agreed to.
Bing Bing Bing! We have a winner. This ruling can now be used to sue retailers demanding they accept returned software! As you didn't accept the contract and you have no resale rights, a refund will have to be issued. Either that or the court is going to have to rule that you aren't entitled to a refund (and become national news).
Mark my words, someone will use this to sue a retailer and software manufacturer demanding refunds. This is exactly the basis people used to demand windows refunds as they EULA said they could take it back to the retailer for a refund (even if the retailer didn't accept such).
You might find this hard to believe but the large OEM's (HP, Dell and all the others) are demanding Linux driver compliance in their OEM selection process. Linux is huge in the server market, particularly in visualization, is taking over the cell phone market and will one day be in the home. If you don't OSS your drivers you will lose OEM contracts and likely won't be told that you lost because you didn't have Linux drivers.
Linux will one day be the dominant OS in all the backend servers, the dominant players in the largest percentage of Embedded devices (including cell phones) and in the future will dominate the desktop.
You don't actually think that you could move a house during an evacuation do you? If it's a double wide the house has to be sawed in half, packed up, a crane has to lift each half onto the trailer, then two trailers and two pilot cars drive the thing to it's destination at a rough top speed of 30mph.
You think that's going to happen during an emergency?
An Israeli attack isn't going to be a "war". It's going to be a hit and run attack like the attack on Saddam's Nuclear reactor. They will probably fly a few dozen planes into Iran and bomb the snot out of every facility they have intelligence on. Given Iran's preparations it will probably only destroy about 50% of the institutions in a best case scenario and likely have little to no effect other than a slight delay in production.
The solution to the Iranian problem is to bring their people to power and an attack on the Iranian nation would delay that solution.
And the best part is he actually thinks that either the local police who aren't enforcing the laws currently will suddenly jump on the opportunity to enforce it with these "technological" measures while at the same time giving the money collected back to them to use to expand the system or that he's going to create his own private police force to collect fines. Both are highly unlikely and either is likely to end up with one result, the OP going to jail or being harassed by the police who don't like their failings pointed out.
You can't correct a social problem with technology. Your problem is that your people don't care. They aren't getting government to serve the people, they aren't obeying the laws and there are no consequences for lawbreakers. Corruption and bad government cannot be fixed without the people. Now given that you are in the middle east there is a very good chance that your country isn't a democracy. In a normal democracy I would suggest doing what you can to fix the real problem, which is to mobilize the people to petition the government, but if you aren't in a democracy, publicizing the failings of government could be highly dangerous to your health.
You want to fix the traffic problem, first you need to fix the social problem that generated it and only you know how to fix the daunting problem of altering your government and culture.
Real World:
The NSA creates a front company called Quantum Research and funds it with black project money.
DARPA creates a front company called Skynet Research Ltd and again funds it with black project money which is unreported to congress or the public.
Both companies then hire CEO's from the public sector and give them no knowledge who they really work for. Quantum Research then gets "VC Money" from Skynet Research and goes on a hiring spree to develop quantum computers and hires and provides grants to 50% of the quantum research field. After successfully creating a quantum computer and producing a few "prototypes" said company declares to their employers that the cash has run out and they are going into liquidation. Said prototypes appears to disappear into liquidation and are never "seen" again.
And because everyone thought the companies were legitimate businesses not government research no one is the wiser to what has occurred.
This is standard operating procedure for the spy agencies and research branches like DARPA. DARPA seeds the educational community across many apparently unrelated disciplines. The NSA then creates front companies with access to the DARPA research, drives the company like an innovative startup, once innovation or invention occurs the company is folded and the assets or inventions are sequestered to the NSA with a few key employees that all along knew they were working for the NSA who then take the prototypes, enchance them and working with defense contractors replicate and expand the computers.
Just FYI the NSA is building a 50,000+ square foot computer complex in Utah on a millitary base (Camp Williams) that is going to use so much power they have to build a power plant to power it.
Holy Smokes. He's got them by the balls. Unless they can find a state specific reason to invalidate the contract they are smoked beyond belief. There is no way they could make a settlement offer. This guy has a standard work for hire contract for Facebook. Zuckerberg never owned it, he was hired to develop it for $1000 dollars. I'll type up the key paragraph here as the PDF is a bitch to read:
"2. Entire Agreement
The contract between the Purchaser and Seller as a purchase agreement and "work made for hire" reflects two separate business ventures, the first being the work to be performed directly for the StreetFax Database and the Programming language to be provided by the Seller.
Second it is for the continued development of the software, program and for the purchase and design of a suitable website for the project Seller has already initiated that is designed to offer the student of Harvard university access to a website similar to a live functioning yearbook with the working title of "The Face Book".
It is agreed that Purchaser will own a half Interest (50%) in the software, programing language and business interests derived from the expansion of that service to a larger audience."
It's a standard pull out of a book and make some modifications work for hire contract and it appears he had his lawyer review and modify before everyone signed. These things are generally pretty simple (the entire agreement is 2 pages long) and they are very legally binding generally as all the terms are previously tested and pulled from successfully litigated contracts. It's got everything from Patent indemnification to Liens to Subcontracting rights, it's a very thorough and succinct contract. This Ceglia guy is in a very very good position. From the terms he owns more than 80% of Facebook (due to a late opening). Any value that Zuckerberg sold came out of the percentage that Zuckerberg owned, not Ceglia's portion. IMO the reason there is no settlement is that Ceglia is in such a good legal position he has no reason to settle and Facebook either wins or loses the whole company. His company "StreetFax" owns Facebook lock stock and barrel. Zuckerberg was hired to develop it and manage it, that's it and all for $1000. Call that the best investment of all time.
All I can say is WOW. Zuckerberg is history. Might take a few years with all the Legal wrangling and Zuckerberg is going to get his ass sued for failing to disclose this contract when he took the VC money and he might even end up in Jail if the VC guys can convince the government to prosecute for fraud.
And Apple Stole every aspect from the XEROX PARC development. They guy credited with creating the GUI and Mouse worked for Xerox, not Apple. Xerox let them steal it, no question, but don't give credit where it's not due, PARC is responsible for far more than what you are crediting to Apple. The only thing Apple did was make these software interfaces cost effective by using commodity hardware instead of PARC'a tendency to use specialty hardware.
And the heavy lifter fucked Utah out of a Contract to build solid rocket motors that they have been building for roughly 30 years. What you call Fucking I call restoring the status quo. ATK has been in this business for 30 years and the Bush administration and Congress fucked them out of their entire business by specifying a heavy lift rocket we don't need. Why should we throw out everything and start over? Why can't there be evolutionary changes instead of "throw everything out, cancel all existing contracts and start X new program whether or not it works or is cost effective". The reality is that right now the ATK boosters exist right now, their development is paid for. Why on earth are we throwing everything out and starting from scratch? So the program can fail or go way over budget (or both)?
A Slashdot post that is simply a PR post by a paid shill? Say it isn't so!
Better push that doorbell in before you leave the house for good on your matchstick home.
The sole reason for building codes existing is to protect YOU the homeowner, buyer and builder. You might think it's Nanny government or whatever but you don't follow code (such as building your home with straw insulation) and you have a good chance that your home is NOT salable, is not insurable (oh they will take your money till you have a claim, first thing the adjuster will do is verify the home meets code, when it doesn't they will refund all your premiums and deny coverage, Code compliance is a conditional term for insurance and you are at fault for NOT telling them it doesn't meet code) and it's a very real risk to your future. You sell that home you built that doesn't meet code and the future owner can come back at you 20 years down the line for every single repair to bring the home up to code at the time of construction. The house burns down because it doesn't meet code? Welcome to the world of negligent homicide and a criminal conviction with a possible 10 year prison sentence (depending on jurisdiction of course).
The code exists to protect you by setting minimum standards (MINIMUM). Ignore it at your own risk as it's become the legal framework for minimum acceptable standards in the housing and building industry.