Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there
on
More Microsoft Patents
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· Score: 1
No, for US patents to become irrelevant you have to move the market as well. There is lots of stuff you can do in other coutries that would be infringing on legitimate US patents if it was marketed in the US. But these rarely become big, bacause most of the time, and especially in IT, you really don't want to exclude american customers from your market base. Of course you can still make a profit in other large markets, but the US is a lot of people with lot of spending power, and not easy to ignore unless your product is inherently local somewhere else.
Yabbut containing the radiation from the actual reactor is not really the problem with today's nuclear technology either. You just build suitable shielding and don't go in there. The real issues stem from that (a) the materials used are inherently radioactive, both the fuel and the waste, so they continue to radiate if they escape from any step in the process, and (b) the reaction is self-sustaining, so you can get runaway reactions.
Fusion has none of these (well, at least the waste problem is tiny compared to fission). And you probably could even walk ino the shielded reactor area if you just stop the process first.
Fire isn't physical property, it's knowing how to make fire that's valuable, and that's intellectual property
Well, it would have been, if only the Gods had bothered to patent it. At the time it probably seemed provocative but still legal for good all Promo to grab some. Unfortunately, unlike greek city-states, Olympia is not a democracy in any sense of the word, has no checks and balances in place, and gods generally have no inhibitions at all in making their rulings retroactive...
"Burying it is perfectly safe" You gotta be kidding. You must go to the ostrich school of nuclear waste disposal, just bury it, out of sight out of mind, trust us it will be OK.
Not that I'm advocating carefree burying all over the place, but burying intact pebbles from the new reactor type (each one small, individually sealed, really really strong, and containing very little material each to leak out should one somehow manage to acidentally crack one open) would be a very different matter from disposing of conventional rods. Deep tunnels in really geologically stable rock probably really would be a safe haven for them. The locals might not like the idea, but They would be in very little danger.
I'd be more worried about the pebble production facilities which will have to refine and handle the "bare" live material.
And then there's the inescapable distribution network for the pebbles, which are after all intensely radioactive and can cause serious local harm without leaking. Especially the fresh ones. OTOH, the risks there are not all that different from shipping toxic conventional chemicals, which goes on all the time. The probalem could also be mitigated by placing plants at or near the mines. Not very efficient if it produces straight for long-range power lines, but you produce hydrogen in stead it could be viable.
My understanding of speaker technology is that at it's most basic, a cone is held attached in some way to a magnet, which is moved by modulating the intensity of an opposing magnetic field. The movement of the cone produces sound.
You suppose you could create some sort of sound that way, given enough power, but generally you let the magnet remain stationary and attach the much lighter copper windings that produce the oscillating field to the cone.
If the new material is insanely much more magnetic than current permanent magnets I guess you could turn it around. But the magnetinc film on the cone would have to be lighter than the current copper windings and still exert a magnetic field on the scale of big-ass ferrous magnets. Doens't sound extremely likely to me.
The US restrict free speech as well. Everyone does. I know of no country that doesn't.
What those restrictions should be is an important debate (and advocating "none" is a valid position in that debate, but not he only one), but please don't treat it as a black-and-white issue with the US on the right side, or as an obvious case of the US set of restrictions being the obvious One True Set Of Restrictions.
Why scary? OK, so you have a verdict against you in France. That will basically amount to nothing unless you have a presence in France. If you do have or start a legal presence in France, French governments' well-known problems with your conduct swings into action. Where is the problem?
Of course they can't get the US to enforce their verdict, and I don't think they expect to.
To present a different perspective: consider a fictional business practice that is considered perfectly OK in many countries, but fraudulent in the US. It is perfectly natural that the US can convict an elbonian in absentio for defrauding US customers even though he broke no elbonian law, and equally natural that this verdict has no effect until the the elbonian enters US jurisdiction.
I know fraud is different from selling something banned that the customer wants, but the point here was the jurisdiction issue.
Swing is terribly verbose. And complex, unintuitive and simply a pain to use. Java itself isn't bad. There are some areas where C# improves the language and its compactness itself: I'd love to have delegates in stead of using inner classes that do basically nothing except work around a missing fundamental language feature for event-based programming, and not having to explicitly call get/set-functions is a bit addictive.
But mostly C# is such a joy to use because the newer APIs from MS are much slicker. Plus: everyone starts using C# in a proper IDE that helps you figure out what objects can do in stead of leaving you to wade through slow HTML docs looking for simple things like what that member variable was called again. Sure, there are brilliant IDEs for Java that can do the same and more, but they're not part of everyones first impression of Java like they are for C#. Same with interface builders:.Net's may be hell to do advanced layout in, but at least you can get going with the easy stuff straight away. Never seen a java-based one that does that.
Not that I would imagine that Paul Graham considers C# cool either, but who cares? OK, so he does present some very sharp and well reasoned insights in his essays sometimes, and has the talent to convey them well. I'll give him that. Unfortunately he seems completely incapable of separating those from his own pretentious gut-feeling post-rationalisations. And I held that position before he published that eloquent but ultimatley pathetic "java sucks" drivel.
Java had a lot of good stuff, but has been superseded by C# (if one considers the language itself only), which had the opportunity to keep al trhe good stuff and fix the glitches that Java has to keep for compatibility reasons. There are other language directions to eveolve in, that help with different types of tasks.
the 'nerd' type will sit and create, and the 'social networker' type will form a overclass that ultimately decides the atmosphere and direction of the community.
There are always lots of people with no prior opinion. Best spin wins.
Not just in politics: I constantly hear people who should know better use the term "intellectual property", and I'm pretty sure it does help the other side that their "property" view of the matter is affirmed a little more pretty much every time anyone says anything about the (specific and limited) priviliges society has seen fit to grant the originators of intellectual works.
I'm pretty sure that the enviromental effects were considered, as it's far better to shut stupid Greenpeace hippies up before they can start their jaw flapping.
If they have that effect on projects, maybe they're not so stupid after all...
Actuallty, reason would instantly reveal that your premises do not contain enough information to work out anything at all, and that the supposition that you could depends on solar radiation being comparable to AM transmitters. Which would prompt you to check if that assumption holds before posting.
No, that is not the primary purpouse. Many types of small sailboats have small and light keels that providde no significant counterweight. They do still provide direction by "braking" sideways movement and thus "extracting" the forward component of the incoming force, and translating some of the sideways force into forward force. Without one you would more or less blow uselessly in the direction of the wind no matter what you did with the sail.
But as has been pointed out, solar sails have some different tricks up their sleeve: unlike air sails, the direction that the incoming "wind" is reflected will affect the direction of the resulting force. And once within the significant gravity of a star, you can navigate in and out by altering your speed only.
I guess we all agree that curling up in a big comfy chair for a nice read with an e-book would be unpleasant.
I don't. I know many feel that way, but I believe most of them are making way too many unconscious assumptions that the qualities of the device would resemble those of current desktop gear.
Of, course, having grown up with books I will personally will probabaly never feel as comfortable with eBooks, but then I have that feeling about owning a physical CD with an original case too. I have no illusions that most of the mp3-generation growing up now will harbour any such reservations, provided they are offered all the equivalent content and usability electronically (liner notes and all).
Remember: the mature ebook doesn't have to be beige or silver or black, the screen won't glow (unless you need it to), it will be completely silent and vibration free, you won't see any pixel artifacts from the typical reading distance, the white of the page will be as creamy and calm as paper (if you want it to), the casing can be anything from pink fluff to silky oiled wood or real leather, and it will need 0-to very few visble buttons that remind you it's a machine.
Imagine a sheet of solid quality paper pasted on a nice wooden plaque, but which can change its print dynamically. We are talking about a long way away from today's PDA or XP-powered tablet PC.
RTFA. The story is not about a file format for reading books on your PC, it is a new device that uses a 170dpi high-contrast reflective e-ink display. It will feel totally different from an emissive display or current reflective screens. And will improve from there in the coming years.
And good idea or not, what decides if it succeeds is whether it amkes market sense, not what is best for future generations. Do you worry about the duarbility beyond your own life of many books you buy?
What I believe it will take for e-books to succeed is:
a) Really good, crisp, reflective display. This is finally arriving, at least for b/w.
b) Functionality equivalent to the "old way". Learn from iTunes. Let DRM make copying difficult since people aren't used to copying books anyway, but the content must _not_ expire, and you should be able to borrow a book from a friend. This can technically done right now, (doesn't need to be watertight, just make it more convenient to go legal and the majority market will). You just need to get the major right holders in on all this. That will be difficult.
c) A razor-style pricing scheme: give them the device (more or less) and sell them books. Even with subsidised devices, that means manufacturing costs need to go way down from now. This will take some time.
One pesky thing to get right is the immediacy of leafing through a book, or opening at folded corner. It will take some creative solutions to make e-books as easy to use, but on the other hand, it can always remember where it was last open.
Slashdot Mirror
No, for US patents to become irrelevant you have to move the market as well. There is lots of stuff you can do in other coutries that would be infringing on legitimate US patents if it was marketed in the US. But these rarely become big, bacause most of the time, and especially in IT, you really don't want to exclude american customers from your market base. Of course you can still make a profit in other large markets, but the US is a lot of people with lot of spending power, and not easy to ignore unless your product is inherently local somewhere else.
Yabbut containing the radiation from the actual reactor is not really the problem with today's nuclear technology either. You just build suitable shielding and don't go in there. The real issues stem from that (a) the materials used are inherently radioactive, both the fuel and the waste, so they continue to radiate if they escape from any step in the process, and
(b) the reaction is self-sustaining, so you can get runaway reactions.
Fusion has none of these (well, at least the
waste problem is tiny compared to fission). And you probably could even walk ino the shielded reactor area if you just stop the process first.
Fire isn't physical property, it's knowing how to make fire that's valuable, and that's intellectual property
Well, it would have been, if only the Gods had bothered to patent it. At the time it probably seemed provocative but still legal for good all Promo to grab some. Unfortunately, unlike greek city-states, Olympia is not a democracy in any sense of the word, has no checks and balances in place, and gods generally have no inhibitions at all in making their rulings retroactive...
I say he was framed.
"Burying it is perfectly safe"
You gotta be kidding. You must go to the ostrich school of nuclear waste disposal, just bury it, out of sight out of mind, trust us it will be OK.
Not that I'm advocating carefree burying all over the place, but burying intact pebbles from the new reactor type (each one small, individually sealed, really really strong, and containing very little material each to leak out should one somehow manage to acidentally crack one open) would be a very different matter from disposing of conventional rods. Deep tunnels in really geologically stable rock probably really would be a safe haven for them. The locals might not like the idea, but They would be in very little danger.
I'd be more worried about the pebble production facilities which will have to refine and handle the "bare" live material.
And then there's the inescapable distribution network for the pebbles, which are after all intensely radioactive and can cause serious local harm without leaking. Especially the fresh ones. OTOH, the risks there are not all that different from shipping toxic conventional chemicals, which goes on all the time.
The probalem could also be mitigated by placing plants at or near the mines. Not very efficient if it produces straight for long-range power lines, but you produce hydrogen in stead it could be viable.
At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable situation
Do you think the cameras will go away if you suddenly get a government you don't trust?
My understanding of speaker technology is that at it's most basic, a cone is held attached in some way to a magnet, which is moved by modulating the intensity of an opposing magnetic field. The movement of the cone produces sound.
You suppose you could create some sort of sound that way, given enough power, but generally you let the magnet remain stationary and attach the much lighter copper windings that produce the oscillating field to the cone.
If the new material is insanely much more
magnetic than current permanent magnets I guess
you could turn it around. But the magnetinc film on the cone would have to be lighter than the current copper windings and still exert a magnetic field on the scale of big-ass ferrous magnets. Doens't sound extremely likely to me.
The US restrict free speech as well. Everyone does. I know of no country that doesn't.
What those restrictions should be is an important debate (and advocating "none" is a valid position in that debate, but not he only one), but please don't treat it as a black-and-white issue with the US on the right side, or as an obvious case of the US set of restrictions being the obvious One True Set Of Restrictions.
Why scary? OK, so you have a verdict against you in France. That will basically amount to nothing unless you have a presence in France. If you do have or start a legal presence in France, French governments' well-known problems with your conduct swings into action. Where is the problem?
Of course they can't get the US to enforce their verdict, and I don't think they expect to.
To present a different perspective: consider a fictional business practice that is considered perfectly OK in many countries, but fraudulent in the US. It is perfectly natural that the US can convict an elbonian in absentio for defrauding US customers even though he broke no elbonian law, and equally natural that this verdict has no effect until the the elbonian enters US jurisdiction.
I know fraud is different from selling something banned that the customer wants, but the point here was the jurisdiction issue.
First of all, zionism != supporting any and all policies any israeli administration might have.
Secondly, I believe MLKs statement here is just plain wrong, or at least would be if it was uttered today.
Swing is terribly verbose. And complex, unintuitive and simply a pain to use. Java itself isn't bad. There are some areas where C# improves the language and its compactness itself: I'd love to have delegates in stead of using inner classes that do basically nothing except work around a missing fundamental language feature for event-based programming, and not having to explicitly call get/set-functions is a bit addictive.
.Net's may be hell to do advanced layout in, but at least you can get going with the easy stuff straight away. Never seen a java-based one that does that.
But mostly C# is such a joy to use because the newer APIs from MS are much slicker. Plus: everyone starts using C# in a proper IDE that helps you figure out what objects can do in stead of leaving you to wade through slow HTML docs looking for simple things like what that member variable was called again. Sure, there are brilliant IDEs for Java that can do the same and more, but they're not part of everyones first impression of Java like they are for C#. Same with interface builders:
Not that I would imagine that Paul Graham considers C# cool either, but who cares?
OK, so he does present some very sharp and well reasoned insights in his essays sometimes, and has the talent to convey them well. I'll give him that. Unfortunately he seems completely incapable of separating those from his own pretentious gut-feeling post-rationalisations. And I held that position before he published that eloquent but ultimatley pathetic "java sucks" drivel.
Java had a lot of good stuff, but has been superseded by C# (if one considers the language itself only), which had the opportunity to keep al trhe good stuff and fix the glitches that Java has to keep for compatibility reasons.
There are other language directions to eveolve in, that help with different types of tasks.
the 'nerd' type will sit and create, and the 'social networker' type will form a overclass that ultimately decides the atmosphere and direction of the community.
Just like real life.
There are always lots of people with no prior opinion. Best spin wins.
Not just in politics: I constantly hear people who should know better use the term "intellectual property", and I'm pretty sure it does help the other side that their "property" view of the matter is affirmed a little more pretty much every time anyone says anything about the (specific and limited) priviliges society has seen fit to grant the originators of intellectual works.
Only if you actually did record it.
I'm pretty sure that the enviromental effects were considered, as it's far better to shut stupid Greenpeace hippies up before they can start their jaw flapping.
If they have that effect on projects, maybe they're not so stupid after all...
Do you dismiss many discoveries on the grounds that they have not been discovered before?
Actuallty, reason would instantly reveal that your premises do not contain enough information to work out anything at all, and that the supposition that you could depends on solar radiation being comparable to AM transmitters. Which would prompt you to check if that assumption holds before posting.
Self-righteous prejudice on the other hand...
It's ugly, but you can read it. This you can't.
Well, evidently evolution can run backwards sometimes:
They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks.
The monkeys actually have one up on us!
Me, I'm still holding out for a monkey with four asses.
No, that is not the primary purpouse. Many types of small sailboats have small and light keels that providde no significant counterweight. They do still provide direction by "braking" sideways movement and thus "extracting" the forward component of the incoming force, and translating some of the sideways force into forward force. Without one you would more or less blow uselessly in the direction of the wind no matter what you did with the sail.
But as has been pointed out, solar sails have some different tricks up their sleeve: unlike air sails, the direction that the incoming "wind" is reflected will affect the direction of the resulting force. And once within the significant gravity of a star, you can navigate in and out by altering your speed only.
And you get free earth-style gravity on board too!
How do you plan to implement the keel? Have you ever tried to tack without one?
I guess we all agree that curling up in a big comfy chair for a nice read with an e-book would be unpleasant.
I don't. I know many feel that way, but I believe most of them are making way too many unconscious assumptions that the qualities of the device would resemble those of current desktop gear.
Of, course, having grown up with books I will personally will probabaly never feel as comfortable with eBooks, but then I have that feeling about owning a physical CD with an original case too. I have no illusions that most of the mp3-generation growing up now will harbour any such reservations, provided they are offered all the equivalent content and usability electronically (liner notes and all).
Remember: the mature ebook doesn't have to be beige or silver or black, the screen won't glow (unless you need it to), it will be completely silent and vibration free, you won't see any pixel artifacts from the typical reading distance, the white of the page will be as creamy and calm as paper (if you want it to), the casing can be anything from pink fluff to silky oiled wood or real leather, and it will need 0-to very few visble buttons that remind you it's a machine.
Imagine a sheet of solid quality paper pasted on a nice wooden plaque, but which can change its print dynamically. We are talking about a long way away from today's PDA or XP-powered tablet PC.
RTFA. The story is not about a file format for reading books on your PC, it is a new device that uses a 170dpi high-contrast reflective e-ink display. It will feel totally different from an emissive display or current reflective screens. And will improve from there in the coming years.
:
And good idea or not, what decides if it succeeds is whether it amkes market sense, not what is best for future generations. Do you worry about the duarbility beyond your own life of many books you buy?
What I believe it will take for e-books to succeed is
a) Really good, crisp, reflective display.
This is finally arriving, at least for b/w.
b) Functionality equivalent to the "old way". Learn from iTunes. Let DRM make copying difficult since people aren't used to copying books anyway, but the content must _not_ expire, and you should be able to borrow a book from a friend. This can technically done right now, (doesn't need to be watertight, just make it more convenient to go legal and the majority market will). You just need to get the major right holders in on all this.
That will be difficult.
c) A razor-style pricing scheme: give them the device (more or less) and sell them books. Even with subsidised devices, that means manufacturing costs need to go way down from now.
This will take some time.
One pesky thing to get right is the immediacy of leafing through a book, or opening at folded corner. It will take some creative solutions to make e-books as easy to use, but on the other hand, it can always remember where it was last open.
page sez:
Designed for two to six year olds with a range of cognitive and physical abilities,
So if you have a six year old with only one cognitive or physical ability, this is not for them.
Nonononono, that sort of thing is so easy to filter out. Use believable fake info to make the statisics truly useless.