Lines? What is this plural of which you speak? Since "Brevity is the soul of wit", truly cool and efficient programmers code in suitably compact languages.
The cynic in me says that they would just extend copyright on the lot, for ever; claim tax exemption on the cost as 'necessary cost of doing business'; pass the extra costs on to the consumer; and also cut the payout to the artists.
As Orwell said: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.. But, as Kingsley Amis said in "New Maps of Hell" (paraphrasing from memory) "It doesn't much matter if the boot bears a picture of a swastika, or a Coca-Cola trademark, except that in the latter case the victim can be made to pay for the privilege of having his face stamped."
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.</ob1984>
Let's go back to first principles. What is a patent?
It's actually two things. It's a goal, and a mechanism.
The goal is to encourage inventors to release useful ideas into the public domain for the betterment of society.
That's what patents are supposed to do. If that's not what is happening, then the mechanism is busted and needs to be fixed.
At one time, people saw no financial incentive to disclose inventions. Invent a better mousetrap and you could make money selling mousetraps, but if your rival found out how it was done, then you got no benefit from your idea. For instance, the Chamberlen family invented obstetrical forceps in the early seventeenth century---and kept it a secret. Many women died needlessly in childbirth because it was more profitable to the Chamberlens to maintain their secret. Lacking the patent mechanism they kept it a trade secret. See here for a reference to a book about the subject.
(The trade secret option of course is still available today.)
If you were Isaac Newton you might invent---or discover---calculus, and your incentive might be fame or respect. Something like calculus or a new moon of Jupiter would be pretty useless as a trade secret.
Now comes the mechanism. Letters Patent were a means for the Crown (the government) to confer a monopoly. This became the patent mechanism we think of today. In return for disclosing the invention, which would thus become generally available, the inventor was granted a limited monopoly. Simpler and more elegant than the previous 'mechanism', which seemed to be to petition parliament to grant a pension in recognition and gratitude for your invention.
So, do we need patents to encourage software writers to write useful software? Evidentially not. Do we have an adequate mechanism to protect and reward software authors? Yes, it's called copyright.
As Booker T. Washington said We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
Thanks for that. For some reason I'd always assumed that a CD was poly-carb : Al : poly-carb : printing. I'm always happy to learn something new.
Google found this page which has some nice diagrams.
You already have an AirPort (to talk to your 11g/b equipped computer)
You talk to it directly with the 11b/g card in your computer (the one running iTunes) (Although in this case you would probably have some sort of wireless base station. But even if you don't have an AirPort base station this will still work)
You buy another one of these; plug it into the Ethernet and talk between them.
all in a very public place of which you can have no assumption of privacy
Why not? Do you mean that you have no objection to a stalker following you with a camera every time you leave your house. After all, you are in a public place with no expectation of privacy.
"But the camera is not on your property citizen. It is mounted on a pole located on city property, in such a location as to be able to observe your activities, which are , citizen".
(Yes, I know that one was repealed).
It's an Apple standard. It's not an IETF or IEEE standard. It may be documented and freely available, but I would still classify it as a proprietary protocol.
Actually, Apple uses AFP (Appleshare File Protocol), not AFS.
Mac OS X ships with AFP, SMB and NFS. Turning on 'file sharing' turns on AFP, which is proprietary.
Not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but the words mean totally opposite things.
I disagree that a homogeneous environment is better, because it's not practical. Do you never exchange documents with other organizations? Unless you can force the whole world (or at least the bits you communicate with) to use the exact same versions, you need to be able to support diversity. If you want everyone in your organization to use the same version, you can't upgrade anyone until you can upgrade everyone. Upgrades will be few and far between; painful, feared and hated.
Keep an eye out for V.150 (Modem over IP) support, which does exactly what you want as I understand it---except that there are not yet a lot of implementations.
V.150 is useful for other things than just faxes---security systems and environmental monitoring for instance. It's going to be a whole lot easier to accomodate existing systems by implementing V.150 in the new VoIP kit rather than waiting for everything to become IP enabled.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
No, it's not free. But it is very, very inexpensive.
For the volumes that most casual users require it is so inexpensive that it is cheaper for the ISP to charge a flat rate, rather than account for some fraction of a cent per email. It would cost the ISP more to do the accounting (you would be charged mainly for being sent the bill itself).
Spammers, with their huge volumes of email, actually do pay for the email they send. However, they send so much mail that the cost per message is vanishingly small.
This proposal attempts to stop spam by removing the financial incentive. But it does so by artificially inflating the price. The spammers pay more, and the ISPs make huge profit margins. Of course, this only works if there isn't another place the spammers can go that charges less. (In fact, there is now a huge incentive for ISPs to make money by undercutting the inflated rates. Possibly covertly. I.e. special rates for spammers. After all, who better qualifies for 'bulk discounts'?)
The only way this can work is if there is a monopoly, otherwise market forces will act to bring the price down.
So, the price of stopping spam is to confer a monopoly for email on MS and Yahoo, together with extraordinary profits. With the likelihood of a side order of corruption as spammers try to bypass the rates.
From the Silmarillion, and then from the Unfinished Tales and the rest of the volumes of JRRT's unpublished (at his death) work, plus analysis of same. The reference to Galadriel and Dol Guldur is in Appendix 1 of LOTR if I recall correctly.
In the Silmarilion there is some reference to Galadriel and her reasons for coming to Middle Earth, but it is easy to miss in the rest of what is happening. The story is elaborated in other bits of the Christopher Tolkein volumes, but as there are rather a lot of them I can't recall exactly where.
Not as much help as I'd like to have been I'm afraid.
It was her lack of wisdom---her willfulness and seeking of power, that led her to leave the West and visit Middle-Earth.
Likewise, Arwen is more fair, (consistent with the constant echoes of Beren/Luthien in the Aragorn/Arwen story.).
What Galadriel is is amazingly powerful. Close kin to Feanor, more powerful than any other in Middle Earth save Sauron. More powerful than Elrond (the lore master, the 'wise elf' if you will). More powerful than the Wizards (who were forbidden to use power in their mission).
After the war of the ring when Sauron has been defeated it is mentioned off-handedly that she went to Dol Guldur and overthrew it. With Sauron gone, Dol Guldur is nor more than a minor obstacle to Galadriel.
I dispute that she was as cool and calm as you suggest: for her, the ring was the most terrible temptation. She could use it to defeat her enemies, to destroy Sauron in a moment. However, during her long exile in Middle Earth she did learn wisdom, and she did step back from the brink.
I don't think that Cate Blanchett managed to convey that sense of power (but then, the actresses that might be able to do that tend to be rather older and hence unable to look like an eternally ageless elf queen on screen).
Well, according to this, it is worthwhile, although considering the source there may be some bias there. Analysis of the article seems to indicate that most steel from tin cans is recycled back into...tin cans! Note also that it is a UK site. The economics vary quite a lot according to region I believe. Here is an article from Spokane, which claims 28% of the tinplate is from scrap, but only 10% of this scrap is recycled cans.
Re:I read the article and I'm confused...
on
Microwave Steelmaking
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Even so, steel is very cheap to manufacture. By the ton, it is one of the cheapest structural materials. And I mean mild steel here, not pig iron. By contrast, Al and it's alloys are far more expensive, and plastics even more so.
However, most people are not very interested in mild steel by the ton. They want manufactured goods, and there things change. The hardness, toughness and high melting point of steel make it relatively expensive to manufacture. So much so that it's not really worth re-cycling iron scrap in small quantities---the raw material is so cheap that the processing and transportation costs make it uneconomic. It's easy to re-cycle beer cans though---just melt them at (relatively) low temperature and you have your raw material back for much less than it costs to process bauxite.
Plastics, despite the high raw material cost are typically extremely cheap to manufacture (though often expensive to recycle for various reasons).
So, if you can halve the cost of making mild steel, or even the cost of making pig iron, that's not going to add up to a lot of saving on the cost of your new car. It won't even halve the cost of the product leaving the steel factory's gates, since that product is , AFAIK, not 'raw' steel, but some form of at least partially manufactured product such as steel plate at the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
Line s ? What is this plural of which you speak? Since "Brevity is the soul of wit", truly cool and efficient programmers code in suitably compact languages.
Actually, sheet music format seems more appropriate to Gentoo than OpenBSD.
The cynic in me says that they would just extend copyright on the lot, for ever; claim tax exemption on the cost as 'necessary cost of doing business'; pass the extra costs on to the consumer; and also cut the payout to the artists. As Orwell said: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever. . But, as Kingsley Amis said in "New Maps of Hell" (paraphrasing from memory) "It doesn't much matter if the boot bears a picture of a swastika, or a Coca-Cola trademark, except that in the latter case the victim can be made to pay for the privilege of having his face stamped."
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.</ob1984>
It's actually two things. It's a goal, and a mechanism.
The goal is to encourage inventors to release useful ideas into the public domain for the betterment of society.
That's what patents are supposed to do. If that's not what is happening, then the mechanism is busted and needs to be fixed.
At one time, people saw no financial incentive to disclose inventions. Invent a better mousetrap and you could make money selling mousetraps, but if your rival found out how it was done, then you got no benefit from your idea. For instance, the Chamberlen family invented obstetrical forceps in the early seventeenth century---and kept it a secret. Many women died needlessly in childbirth because it was more profitable to the Chamberlens to maintain their secret. Lacking the patent mechanism they kept it a trade secret. See here for a reference to a book about the subject. (The trade secret option of course is still available today.)
If you were Isaac Newton you might invent---or discover---calculus, and your incentive might be fame or respect. Something like calculus or a new moon of Jupiter would be pretty useless as a trade secret.
Now comes the mechanism. Letters Patent were a means for the Crown (the government) to confer a monopoly. This became the patent mechanism we think of today. In return for disclosing the invention, which would thus become generally available, the inventor was granted a limited monopoly. Simpler and more elegant than the previous 'mechanism', which seemed to be to petition parliament to grant a pension in recognition and gratitude for your invention.
So, do we need patents to encourage software writers to write useful software? Evidentially not. Do we have an adequate mechanism to protect and reward software authors? Yes, it's called copyright.
As Booker T. Washington said We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
Thanks for that. For some reason I'd always assumed that a CD was poly-carb : Al : poly-carb : printing. I'm always happy to learn something new. Google found this page which has some nice diagrams.
He read today's userfriendly?
Why not? Do you mean that you have no objection to a stalker following you with a camera every time you leave your house. After all, you are in a public place with no expectation of privacy.
"But the camera is not on your property citizen. It is mounted on a pole located on city property, in such a location as to be able to observe your activities, which are , citizen". (Yes, I know that one was repealed).
It's an Apple standard. It's not an IETF or IEEE standard. It may be documented and freely available, but I would still classify it as a proprietary protocol.
Actually, Apple uses AFP (Appleshare File Protocol), not AFS. Mac OS X ships with AFP, SMB and NFS. Turning on 'file sharing' turns on AFP, which is proprietary.
"You yourself, Baron, could outperform those machines"
The entry for Marconi reads, in full, Italian Electrician.
This always seemed to me to be the most astonishingly unhelpful description imaginable.
Not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but the words mean totally opposite things.
I disagree that a homogeneous environment is better, because it's not practical. Do you never exchange documents with other organizations? Unless you can force the whole world (or at least the bits you communicate with) to use the exact same versions, you need to be able to support diversity. If you want everyone in your organization to use the same version, you can't upgrade anyone until you can upgrade everyone. Upgrades will be few and far between; painful, feared and hated.
This PDF has some more info.
V.150 is useful for other things than just faxes---security systems and environmental monitoring for instance. It's going to be a whole lot easier to accomodate existing systems by implementing V.150 in the new VoIP kit rather than waiting for everything to become IP enabled.
My point was rather to point out the humor of the less obvious antonym.
If this is XP light, then by implication, the current XP is "XP dark". Hmmm. No surprises there, except that they've finally admitted it.
For the volumes that most casual users require it is so inexpensive that it is cheaper for the ISP to charge a flat rate, rather than account for some fraction of a cent per email. It would cost the ISP more to do the accounting (you would be charged mainly for being sent the bill itself).
Spammers, with their huge volumes of email, actually do pay for the email they send. However, they send so much mail that the cost per message is vanishingly small.
This proposal attempts to stop spam by removing the financial incentive. But it does so by artificially inflating the price. The spammers pay more, and the ISPs make huge profit margins. Of course, this only works if there isn't another place the spammers can go that charges less. (In fact, there is now a huge incentive for ISPs to make money by undercutting the inflated rates. Possibly covertly. I.e. special rates for spammers. After all, who better qualifies for 'bulk discounts'?)
The only way this can work is if there is a monopoly, otherwise market forces will act to bring the price down.
So, the price of stopping spam is to confer a monopoly for email on MS and Yahoo, together with extraordinary profits. With the likelihood of a side order of corruption as spammers try to bypass the rates.
In the Silmarilion there is some reference to Galadriel and her reasons for coming to Middle Earth, but it is easy to miss in the rest of what is happening. The story is elaborated in other bits of the Christopher Tolkein volumes, but as there are rather a lot of them I can't recall exactly where.
Not as much help as I'd like to have been I'm afraid.
It was her lack of wisdom---her willfulness and seeking of power, that led her to leave the West and visit Middle-Earth.
Likewise, Arwen is more fair, (consistent with the constant echoes of Beren/Luthien in the Aragorn/Arwen story.).
What Galadriel is is amazingly powerful. Close kin to Feanor, more powerful than any other in Middle Earth save Sauron. More powerful than Elrond (the lore master, the 'wise elf' if you will). More powerful than the Wizards (who were forbidden to use power in their mission).
After the war of the ring when Sauron has been defeated it is mentioned off-handedly that she went to Dol Guldur and overthrew it. With Sauron gone, Dol Guldur is nor more than a minor obstacle to Galadriel.
I dispute that she was as cool and calm as you suggest: for her, the ring was the most terrible temptation. She could use it to defeat her enemies, to destroy Sauron in a moment. However, during her long exile in Middle Earth she did learn wisdom, and she did step back from the brink.
I don't think that Cate Blanchett managed to convey that sense of power (but then, the actresses that might be able to do that tend to be rather older and hence unable to look like an eternally ageless elf queen on screen).
Well, according to this, it is worthwhile, although considering the source there may be some bias there. Analysis of the article seems to indicate that most steel from tin cans is recycled back into...tin cans! Note also that it is a UK site. The economics vary quite a lot according to region I believe. Here is an article from Spokane, which claims 28% of the tinplate is from scrap, but only 10% of this scrap is recycled cans.
However, most people are not very interested in mild steel by the ton. They want manufactured goods, and there things change. The hardness, toughness and high melting point of steel make it relatively expensive to manufacture. So much so that it's not really worth re-cycling iron scrap in small quantities---the raw material is so cheap that the processing and transportation costs make it uneconomic. It's easy to re-cycle beer cans though---just melt them at (relatively) low temperature and you have your raw material back for much less than it costs to process bauxite.
Plastics, despite the high raw material cost are typically extremely cheap to manufacture (though often expensive to recycle for various reasons).
So, if you can halve the cost of making mild steel, or even the cost of making pig iron, that's not going to add up to a lot of saving on the cost of your new car. It won't even halve the cost of the product leaving the steel factory's gates, since that product is , AFAIK, not 'raw' steel, but some form of at least partially manufactured product such as steel plate at the very least.