A better solution would be to design the tests such that no matter how many programs you have on your calculator, you still need to actually understand the math in order to figure out the right buttons to press. Having done various levels of math over the years, I see no reason it cant be done.
It compares one kind of nuclear (Uranium in a PWR or BWR) with one kind of solar (solar PV) and ignores other kinds of nuclear such as Thorium and breeder reactors that could make nuclear cheaper as well as the fact that there is no solar technology available yet that can produce baseload power (even solar thermal is not going to produce much output if it rains for a week straight)
Given that there ARE situations where various kinds of organizations (private companies, local government, community organizations) have wanted to build out infrastructure (usually wide area wireless or fiber optic lines) and have been blocked by local and/or state governments thanks to telco lobbying, governments at all levels SHOULD end any and all monopoly or limits on build-out and let anyone who actually WANTS to install infrastructure do so.
Lets hope someone who was sued is willing to take this all the way and get the patent overturned (especially in light of what was said in Biski) instead of just caving in and writing this scumbag a cheque to make them go away.
At the very least, someone needs to appeal this to a higher court than the one in Texas. The court of appeals for the federal circuit is less likely to just rubber stamp things in the way the courts in Texas seem to do.
Motorola have been using RSA protection on their firmware (preventing the loading of unsigned software) for years (long before Android existed) and people found ways around it before. I for one have a Motorola Z6 linux phone with a hacked bootloader to disable the RSA protection and a self-compiled kernel.
The problem with net neutrality is that the current proposals (including proposed legislation and proposed regulations by the FCC) all seem to allow ISPs to be non-neutral when it comes to illegal traffic. This in and of itself is not bad but the wording of "illegal traffic" is such that ISPs can interpret it to cover network protocols with both legal and illegal uses such as BitTorrent.
Any open source Flash clone that added support for the encrypted version of the RTMP streaming protocol (which is what Hulu and others use) would be hit by a DMCA lawsuit. If Adobe doesn't do EVERYTHING it can legally do to prevent programs that can save encrypted RTMP streams (or programs that can be modified to save such streams) sites like Hulu will go to their competitor or shut down altogether.
Hell will freeze over before NBC, Fox and ABC (the owners of Hulu) will allow their content to be distributed in a way that would allow people to save permanent unprotected copies to their PCs.
Why don't airlines actually ENFORCE the carry-on bag size limits. Weigh/measure all carry-on bags at check-in (and again at the gate if necessary for people such as first/business class travelers who dont need to check-in at a check-in desk)
By enforcing size rules at check-in, you dont have fights over the overhead lockers. People who have bags that are too large will have no option but to check their bag. Plus, by weighing carry-on bags at check-in, it gives them slightly more accurate numbers for the total take-off weight of the aircraft (weighing passengers would give an even more accurate number but that wouldn't be very popular)
Design the calculators and OS to allow full hackability. But provide a hardware reset button that can reset it to a known hack-free state (i.e. official TI software)
Satisfies all the hobbyists who want to mess with the calculators. And it allows the exam supervisors in the cases where they dont want people to bring programs/hacks/notes in to reset the calculators to a known-safe state with the hardware reset
I would change the DMCA take down provisions in 5 ways: 1.Penalties for anyone who sends bogus take down notices 2.100% protection for any service provider for content that passes over their network (but is not hosted by them) including protection that gives ISPs 100% immunity for copyright violations carried out by their users (and without any legal requirement for the ISP to cooperate with copyright holders in order to maintain the immunity) 3.Protection for providers like YouTube where copyright holders cant argue that "YouTube isn't doing enough to deal with copyright violations" even though YouTube IS complying with the take down notices they get sent. 4.A requirement for anyone who wants safe harbor protection to respond to counter notices within a reasonable period of time ("reasonable period of time" to be defined in the law). This for example would mean that if Apple wants to maintain safe harbor protection for the App Store, then they need to restore Apps that have been taken down because of bogus take down notices (like all the times when Apps that copy the gameplay of another game but not the artwork or trademarked names and then get shutdown for it, the Tetris people are most known for this) and 5.A ban on automated take down notice sending, i.e. it has to be sent by a human instead of computers (like the way some media companies are now doing to YouTube with automatic notices for content they own)
If www.freemovies.org is hosting illegal copies of a film, the copyright holder can go to court and sue the owners of www.freemovies.org for copyright violation. (usually after asking them to take the content down first)
If you cant find the person who is violating copyright (e.g. all you have is an IP address) you go to court and file a "john doe" lawsuit, present the evidence and subpoena the ISP to provide customer details so you then have someone to sue.
I own a Motorola Z6 phone running Linux (this is a feature phone that predates the Android efforts at Moto). I have compiled my own kernel for this phone and am running it.
I have owned 3 Motorola phones up to this point (an E378i,a L6 and now the Z6). I USED to be loyal to Motorola but now my next phone will likely be either a HTC Android device or a Maemo/MeeGo device depending on who is first to come up with a phone with free turn-by-turn navigation for Australia.
Most companies dont care about their customers. But most sane companies havent adopted a "screw the customer, who cares if they stop being our customer" model like Skype or eBay or Games Workshop has.
Take Skype for example, one would assume that its in their best interests to have as many users possible (since AFAIK their profit comes from their users paying them money for the services Skype offers). Logically therefore, it would appear to be in the best interests of Skype to provide support for the platforms their customers (or potential customers) are using.
However, Skype has chosen to ignore the 1000s of users worldwide who use Android phones in favor of a special deal with a single US carrier (Verizon Wireless). This means that the vast majority of Android Users who might use Skype (or already use Skype on other platforms) are being driven towards competitors instead, all because Skype wants to do special deals with carriers instead of offering people who WANT to use their service (and pay whatever it costs to do so) the option to do so.
The things Skype has done lately demonstrate that Skype can be added to the list of "companies that dont care about their customers anymore".
By not releasing an Android client (for anyone other than Verizon customers) or a better iPhone client, all they are doing is driving customers to their competitors.
Although maybe some of this business model comes from top people put in place during the time Skype was controlled by eBay.
Here in Australia, I can transfer money from my bank account to any other bank account in Australia with ANY bank and I dont pay a cent. (other larger and greedier banks may have different fee structures) And I dont have to worry about my account being frozen or transactions being reversed because the other guy filed a complaint.
Creativity is disappearing for many reasons
on
The Creativity Crisis
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
1.Kids arent being allowed to be kids anymore. When I was a kid in primary school, I used to take my 2 bucks pocket money on a Saturday morning and go tearing out of the house, down the street and across the local oval to the local shop to spend the 2 bucks on assorted lollies, most likely shouting who knows what at the top of my lungs at the same time.
Kids need to be kids, they need to be allowed to go outside and play, to kick a footy (Aussie Rules football) or a soccer ball with their mates, to get out in the fresh air.
2.TV, kids are watching more of it than ever (and what they DO watch gets worse and worse, a lot of what passes for kids TV these days is pathetic compared to what was on when I was a kid)
3.Lack of creative toys. These days parents are more likely to buy their kids a Nintendo Wii instead of toys that encourage creativity and imagination. Instead of playing with a GI-JOE action figure or a pack of army soldiers making "Pew Pew" noises, kids are playing video games where the "Pew Pew" noise is created by some guy in a sound studio.
4.The ever increasing pressure on schools to "perform" (and to "perform better" than the school one suburb over). This leads to pressure on politicians to institute measuring systems (usually in the form of standardized tests) so that they can see which schools are doing well and which schools arent. Then, the school principals (fearful that bad scores will negatively impact the schools funding) force teachers to "teach to the test" so that schools can get higher scores (and keep their funding). Courses and lessons like music, art, dance and drama are being removed from schools as they continue to focus more on academic performance and (for those kids who show talent) performance on the football pitch or the basketball court or whatever.
At the high end they are being beaten by the iPhone & Android. In the middle companies like Sony Erricson, Samsung and LG are more popular with carriers looking for phones to subsidize. And at the low end, no-name companies like ZTE and others are producing product to be re-badged with carrier branding.
It depends on the course, the school and the teacher. Sometimes submitting work you have previously published (e.g. submitted for another course or posted online) may not be allowed.
I bought an OzStick USB joystick for MAME (its got a standard joystick, 2 rows of 3 buttons for street fighter plus 3 buttons at the top that I can map to coin/start/etc
Its GREAT for playing most of the MAME games I wanted it for.
The cops (and rent-a-cops) are being told to look for "suspicious activity" by their bosses (without being told what "suspicious activity" actually is). Ultimately, the harassment of photographers is a "cover your ass" move by the cops and security.
No-one wants to be the one who was on duty when the bad guys cased the station before carrying out the next terror attack on a major transit network (remember the Sarin Gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the Madrid bombs and the London Underground bombs, all 3 were terror attacks on transit systems)
Slashdot Mirror
A better solution would be to design the tests such that no matter how many programs you have on your calculator, you still need to actually understand the math in order to figure out the right buttons to press.
Having done various levels of math over the years, I see no reason it cant be done.
It compares one kind of nuclear (Uranium in a PWR or BWR) with one kind of solar (solar PV) and ignores other kinds of nuclear such as Thorium and breeder reactors that could make nuclear cheaper as well as the fact that there is no solar technology available yet that can produce baseload power (even solar thermal is not going to produce much output if it rains for a week straight)
Given that there ARE situations where various kinds of organizations (private companies, local government, community organizations) have wanted to build out infrastructure (usually wide area wireless or fiber optic lines) and have been blocked by local and/or state governments thanks to telco lobbying, governments at all levels SHOULD end any and all monopoly or limits on build-out and let anyone who actually WANTS to install infrastructure do so.
Lets hope someone who was sued is willing to take this all the way and get the patent overturned (especially in light of what was said in Biski) instead of just caving in and writing this scumbag a cheque to make them go away.
At the very least, someone needs to appeal this to a higher court than the one in Texas. The court of appeals for the federal circuit is less likely to just rubber stamp things in the way the courts in Texas seem to do.
Motorola have been using RSA protection on their firmware (preventing the loading of unsigned software) for years (long before Android existed) and people found ways around it before. I for one have a Motorola Z6 linux phone with a hacked bootloader to disable the RSA protection and a self-compiled kernel.
The N900 is great and all but you cant get one from ANY of the carriers here in Australia. But you can get Android handsets from all of them.
The problem with net neutrality is that the current proposals (including proposed legislation and proposed regulations by the FCC) all seem to allow ISPs to be non-neutral when it comes to illegal traffic. This in and of itself is not bad but the wording of "illegal traffic" is such that ISPs can interpret it to cover network protocols with both legal and illegal uses such as BitTorrent.
Any open source Flash clone that added support for the encrypted version of the RTMP streaming protocol (which is what Hulu and others use) would be hit by a DMCA lawsuit.
If Adobe doesn't do EVERYTHING it can legally do to prevent programs that can save encrypted RTMP streams (or programs that can be modified to save such streams) sites like Hulu will go to their competitor or shut down altogether.
Hell will freeze over before NBC, Fox and ABC (the owners of Hulu) will allow their content to be distributed in a way that would allow people to save permanent unprotected copies to their PCs.
If you are flying for business reasons, there may be a requirement to take the cheapest flight.
Why don't airlines actually ENFORCE the carry-on bag size limits. Weigh/measure all carry-on bags at check-in (and again at the gate if necessary for people such as first/business class travelers who dont need to check-in at a check-in desk)
By enforcing size rules at check-in, you dont have fights over the overhead lockers. People who have bags that are too large will have no option but to check their bag. Plus, by weighing carry-on bags at check-in, it gives them slightly more accurate numbers for the total take-off weight of the aircraft (weighing passengers would give an even more accurate number but that wouldn't be very popular)
Design the calculators and OS to allow full hackability.
But provide a hardware reset button that can reset it to a known hack-free state (i.e. official TI software)
Satisfies all the hobbyists who want to mess with the calculators.
And it allows the exam supervisors in the cases where they dont want people to bring programs/hacks/notes in to reset the calculators to a known-safe state with the hardware reset
If there isn't, why is character 20A8 called "Rupee Sign" then?
I would change the DMCA take down provisions in 5 ways:
1.Penalties for anyone who sends bogus take down notices
2.100% protection for any service provider for content that passes over their network (but is not hosted by them) including protection that gives ISPs 100% immunity for copyright violations carried out by their users (and without any legal requirement for the ISP to cooperate with copyright holders in order to maintain the immunity)
3.Protection for providers like YouTube where copyright holders cant argue that "YouTube isn't doing enough to deal with copyright violations" even though YouTube IS complying with the take down notices they get sent.
4.A requirement for anyone who wants safe harbor protection to respond to counter notices within a reasonable period of time ("reasonable period of time" to be defined in the law). This for example would mean that if Apple wants to maintain safe harbor protection for the App Store, then they need to restore Apps that have been taken down because of bogus take down notices (like all the times when Apps that copy the gameplay of another game but not the artwork or trademarked names and then get shutdown for it, the Tetris people are most known for this)
and 5.A ban on automated take down notice sending, i.e. it has to be sent by a human instead of computers (like the way some media companies are now doing to YouTube with automatic notices for content they own)
There IS. Its called a Courtroom.
If www.freemovies.org is hosting illegal copies of a film, the copyright holder can go to court and sue the owners of www.freemovies.org for copyright violation. (usually after asking them to take the content down first)
If you cant find the person who is violating copyright (e.g. all you have is an IP address) you go to court and file a "john doe" lawsuit, present the evidence and subpoena the ISP to provide customer details so you then have someone to sue.
I own a Motorola Z6 phone running Linux (this is a feature phone that predates the Android efforts at Moto). I have compiled my own kernel for this phone and am running it.
I have owned 3 Motorola phones up to this point (an E378i,a L6 and now the Z6). I USED to be loyal to Motorola but now my next phone will likely be either a HTC Android device or a Maemo/MeeGo device depending on who is first to come up with a phone with free turn-by-turn navigation for Australia.
Most companies dont care about their customers. But most sane companies havent adopted a "screw the customer, who cares if they stop being our customer" model like Skype or eBay or Games Workshop has.
Take Skype for example, one would assume that its in their best interests to have as many users possible (since AFAIK their profit comes from their users paying them money for the services Skype offers). Logically therefore, it would appear to be in the best interests of Skype to provide support for the platforms their customers (or potential customers) are using.
However, Skype has chosen to ignore the 1000s of users worldwide who use Android phones in favor of a special deal with a single US carrier (Verizon Wireless). This means that the vast majority of Android Users who might use Skype (or already use Skype on other platforms) are being driven towards competitors instead, all because Skype wants to do special deals with carriers instead of offering people who WANT to use their service (and pay whatever it costs to do so) the option to do so.
The things Skype has done lately demonstrate that Skype can be added to the list of "companies that dont care about their customers anymore".
By not releasing an Android client (for anyone other than Verizon customers) or a better iPhone client, all they are doing is driving customers to their competitors.
Although maybe some of this business model comes from top people put in place during the time Skype was controlled by eBay.
Here in Australia, I can transfer money from my bank account to any other bank account in Australia with ANY bank and I dont pay a cent. (other larger and greedier banks may have different fee structures)
And I dont have to worry about my account being frozen or transactions being reversed because the other guy filed a complaint.
1.Kids arent being allowed to be kids anymore. When I was a kid in primary school, I used to take my 2 bucks pocket money on a Saturday morning and go tearing out of the house, down the street and across the local oval to the local shop to spend the 2 bucks on assorted lollies, most likely shouting who knows what at the top of my lungs at the same time.
Kids need to be kids, they need to be allowed to go outside and play, to kick a footy (Aussie Rules football) or a soccer ball with their mates, to get out in the fresh air.
2.TV, kids are watching more of it than ever (and what they DO watch gets worse and worse, a lot of what passes for kids TV these days is pathetic compared to what was on when I was a kid)
3.Lack of creative toys. These days parents are more likely to buy their kids a Nintendo Wii instead of toys that encourage creativity and imagination. Instead of playing with a GI-JOE action figure or a pack of army soldiers making "Pew Pew" noises, kids are playing video games where the "Pew Pew" noise is created by some guy in a sound studio.
4.The ever increasing pressure on schools to "perform" (and to "perform better" than the school one suburb over). This leads to pressure on politicians to institute measuring systems (usually in the form of standardized tests) so that they can see which schools are doing well and which schools arent. Then, the school principals (fearful that bad scores will negatively impact the schools funding) force teachers to "teach to the test" so that schools can get higher scores (and keep their funding). Courses and lessons like music, art, dance and drama are being removed from schools as they continue to focus more on academic performance and (for those kids who show talent) performance on the football pitch or the basketball court or whatever.
At the high end they are being beaten by the iPhone & Android. In the middle companies like Sony Erricson, Samsung and LG are more popular with carriers looking for phones to subsidize. And at the low end, no-name companies like ZTE and others are producing product to be re-badged with carrier branding.
It depends on the course, the school and the teacher. Sometimes submitting work you have previously published (e.g. submitted for another course or posted online) may not be allowed.
Since this is China and since the Chinese government answers to no-one, the government can revoke Google's license any time they choose to.
I bought an OzStick USB joystick for MAME (its got a standard joystick, 2 rows of 3 buttons for street fighter plus 3 buttons at the top that I can map to coin/start/etc
Its GREAT for playing most of the MAME games I wanted it for.
I am not sure but I suspect World Of Goo was allowed because it was already successful on other platforms.
The cops (and rent-a-cops) are being told to look for "suspicious activity" by their bosses (without being told what "suspicious activity" actually is). Ultimately, the harassment of photographers is a "cover your ass" move by the cops and security.
No-one wants to be the one who was on duty when the bad guys cased the station before carrying out the next terror attack on a major transit network (remember the Sarin Gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the Madrid bombs and the London Underground bombs, all 3 were terror attacks on transit systems)