When I opened my bank account (here in Australia) I had to go into the branch physically and sign up for it, including showing various forms of ID.
The only reason the US isn't as strict is that the banks have used their powerful influence to make sure that nothing gets in the way of their ability to offer vast amounts of credit (home loans, car loans, personal loans, credit cards etc) to anyone and everyone.
They want to make getting a credit card as easy as possible.
Given that most of the places where Malaria is a problem dont generally have populations with the money to afford expensive drugs and dont generally have much respect for western IP law, they probably decided that it wasnt worth the effort to commercialize a drug that most of the target market wouldn't be able to afford (or would be able to obtain through cheaper generics made by companies who dont respect western patents)
The problem is, with a few rare exceptions, you have a choice between a Democrat candidate who supports pork over principles and a Republican candidate who supports pork over principles.
The only difference is which particular items of pork they support (and that is determined by whether they choose to accept the suitcase of unmarked bills from lobbyist A or the suitcase of unmarked bills from lobbyist B)
Lets say you have 3 choices, main party candidate A, other main party candidate B and 3rd party candidate C. Lets assume that (as is highly likely in the US) that candidate C has no real chance of winning.
If someone who likes candidate C the most then candidate A then candidate B votes for candidate C, that's one less vote for candidate A. Which means its almost the same as voting for candidate B.
If the US had a proper preferential voting system, you could put candidate C as first choice, A as second and B as third.
If the FCC has the authority to classify ISPs as "telecommunications providers" instead of "information providers" it should do so regardless of what Congress says.
I wish more people in Washington had the guts to do what Julius Genachowski is doing and stand up to those "suits" in their fancy leather chairs in the executive offices at Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, Verizon, Sprint, Qwest and the other ISPs. Those ISPs do NOT have a right to make profit at the expense of consumers and I applaud the FCC for having the guts to do something about it.
Here's a tip for Comcast... Instead of blocking BitTorrent, just charge those customers who use more bandwidth (regardless of what they use it for) more money each month. And implement QoS that shoves BitTorrent packets to the back of the queue to give everything else a chance.
Of course, if they actually did that, people might stop paying for expensive cable channels and start downloading the content instead. Cant have that now can we:P
MPEG-LA claims that VP8 violates patents in their pools. Until such time as MPEG-LA has sued someone over an implementation of VP8 and won (or at the very least shown specific patents VP8 supposedly violates), what they say means nothing.
Except that such trouble would come from the license applied to the AACS copy protection attached to Blu-Ray disks and has nothing whatsoever to do with MPEG or any of the other video or audio codecs used in the Blu-Ray standards.
My guess is that the ONT will be a layer 2 device converting Optical Fiber to Ethernet, i.e. it replaces the DSL modem. To use it you will need to connect a device (either a computer of some sort or a dedicated router with a WAN port) that supports PPPoE into this wall socket.
Your ISP will give you a public IP address which is assigned to the WAN port or Ethernet card on the device plugged into the wall socket.
The point of TFA is to explain that you will get an Ethernet jack as the end of the connection and that you dont need an expensive proprietary "router" that supports Fiber just to plug into the Fiber network. The connection to the fiber will be an ONT. Whether the ONT will be an IP device or just a passive device that handles the network layer isn't clear.
The lesson is that you DON'T buy HP printers. HP printer ink (and toner) is expensive because HP makes it expensive. There are plenty of printers from other companies (ink-jet and laser) that dont require spending big bucks on ink.
Those who say "you can always get it refilled or use 3rd party cartridges", better answer is to buy a printer where the OEM cartridges are cheap enough that you dont NEED refills or 3rd party cartridges.
There is a simple solution. Change the patent system as follows: Anyone can submit prior art for any patent at any time (regardless of whether they may or may not be infringing on the patent in question). The PTO will then have x amount of time to examine the prior art. Should the PTO rule the prior art is genuine, the patent holder loses the patent and has to pay the PTO for the costs of the re-examination. Should the prior art not be genuine, the submitter has to pay the PTO costs.
Encourages patent submitters not to submit things where they believe prior art may exist (because of the costs should the patent be invalidated) and discourages submission of things that arent clearly prior art because the submitter has to pay the PTO costs.
Also, set up a "patent court" seperate from existing courts where patent cases are tried. Limit the amount of resources either side is allowed to bring into this patent court (so that the big boys cant overrun the little guy with litigation). Oh and make sure NONE of the judges serving in this court come from anywhere near Texas:)
Often the problem is that there are things that should be rewritten (either whole apps or specific sections of code) but no-one is willing to green-light such a rewrite even though the rewrite will take less time than bolting hack after hack on top of the old system.
They wouldn't have to join the pool, nor would they necessarily want to.
If Google has a patent that is required for the implementation of H.264, they could easily attach a license to that patent that said something like: We will grant you a license to use our patent which we believe is essential to H.264 on a royalty-free basis on the condition that you agree not to use any patents you may hold against someone who has implemented the WebM and VP8 specification. If you sue anyone over VP8 and WebM, you will loose all rights to use the invention described in patent .
Although I suspect MPEG-LA would simply ignore Google's patent knowing full well that the number of patents they hold that Google is violating is likely a fair bit bigger than the number of patents Google holds that they are violating.
If its better to join the pool than to fight on your own, how come AT&T (who claims patents over H.264 and has sued over said patents) hasn't joined the MPEG-LA H.264 pool?
Cap and trade just allows higher polluting companies (coal fired power plants for example) to buy carbon credits from lower polluting emissions without actually reducing their emissions.
A carbon tax forces the higher polluting companies to increase their prices (to cover the tax). This then causes people to switch to cheaper options (right now coal is popular because its cheap, with a carbon tax, coal would be more expensive and other options such as biofuels, nuclear and others might then be competitive with it and gain market adoption)
Tell that to all the people who are driving BMW Mini-E's or Telsa Roadsters or other pure electric cars out on the roads today (some as for-sale cars, some as test cars from the automakers and some as 3rd party conversions). Tell that to the people who have signed up to preorder/reserve cars like the Nissan Leaf electric car.
Firefox has support on a branch with open bugs and ongoing effort to merge it into trunk which will then flow into SeaMonkey and other Mozilla/Gecko based browsers. Chrome is getting support. Opera is getting support.
What will the others do? Will Google support VP8 on Android? Will Microsoft support VP8 in IE9? Will Apple support VP8 in Safari? (and Safari Mobile?)
Try and read aus.tv, aus.politics, aus.general or a number of other aus.* groups and you will see that far to many of the posts are garbage or SPAM vs legitimate postings.
If you want to see some top mods that are up there with the best commercial games, check out the following: Mideast Crisis 2: http://www.isotx.com/mec2/ A mod for Command and Conquer 3 that plays BETTER than many commercial RTS games. Red Alert: A Path Beyond http://www.apathbeyond.com/ A FPS game set in the Red Alert universe
C&C series is good for producing top of the line mods that are up there with the best commercial games.
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When I opened my bank account (here in Australia) I had to go into the branch physically and sign up for it, including showing various forms of ID.
The only reason the US isn't as strict is that the banks have used their powerful influence to make sure that nothing gets in the way of their ability to offer vast amounts of credit (home loans, car loans, personal loans, credit cards etc) to anyone and everyone.
They want to make getting a credit card as easy as possible.
Given that most of the places where Malaria is a problem dont generally have populations with the money to afford expensive drugs and dont generally have much respect for western IP law, they probably decided that it wasnt worth the effort to commercialize a drug that most of the target market wouldn't be able to afford (or would be able to obtain through cheaper generics made by companies who dont respect western patents)
The problem is, with a few rare exceptions, you have a choice between a Democrat candidate who supports pork over principles and a Republican candidate who supports pork over principles.
The only difference is which particular items of pork they support (and that is determined by whether they choose to accept the suitcase of unmarked bills from lobbyist A or the suitcase of unmarked bills from lobbyist B)
Thats exactly what I mean.
If you do no QOS at all, BitTorrent likes to suck up all available bandwidth and prevent other things from getting a go.
On a shared network such as Cable this can lead to one person with BitTorrent using bandwidth to the exclusion of others.
QoS and prioritizing is the solution to this problem.
Lets say you have 3 choices, main party candidate A, other main party candidate B and 3rd party candidate C.
Lets assume that (as is highly likely in the US) that candidate C has no real chance of winning.
If someone who likes candidate C the most then candidate A then candidate B votes for candidate C, that's one less vote for candidate A. Which means its almost the same as voting for candidate B.
If the US had a proper preferential voting system, you could put candidate C as first choice, A as second and B as third.
If the FCC has the authority to classify ISPs as "telecommunications providers" instead of "information providers" it should do so regardless of what Congress says.
I wish more people in Washington had the guts to do what Julius Genachowski is doing and stand up to those "suits" in their fancy leather chairs in the executive offices at Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Cox, Verizon, Sprint, Qwest and the other ISPs. Those ISPs do NOT have a right to make profit at the expense of consumers and I applaud the FCC for having the guts to do something about it.
Here's a tip for Comcast... Instead of blocking BitTorrent, just charge those customers who use more bandwidth (regardless of what they use it for) more money each month. And implement QoS that shoves BitTorrent packets to the back of the queue to give everything else a chance.
Of course, if they actually did that, people might stop paying for expensive cable channels and start downloading the content instead. Cant have that now can we :P
Epson?
MPEG-LA claims that VP8 violates patents in their pools.
Until such time as MPEG-LA has sued someone over an implementation of VP8 and won (or at the very least shown specific patents VP8 supposedly violates), what they say means nothing.
Except that such trouble would come from the license applied to the AACS copy protection attached to Blu-Ray disks and has nothing whatsoever to do with MPEG or any of the other video or audio codecs used in the Blu-Ray standards.
My guess is that the ONT will be a layer 2 device converting Optical Fiber to Ethernet, i.e. it replaces the DSL modem. To use it you will need to connect a device (either a computer of some sort or a dedicated router with a WAN port) that supports PPPoE into this wall socket.
Your ISP will give you a public IP address which is assigned to the WAN port or Ethernet card on the device plugged into the wall socket.
The point of TFA is to explain that you will get an Ethernet jack as the end of the connection and that you dont need an expensive proprietary "router" that supports Fiber just to plug into the Fiber network. The connection to the fiber will be an ONT. Whether the ONT will be an IP device or just a passive device that handles the network layer isn't clear.
The lesson is that you DON'T buy HP printers.
HP printer ink (and toner) is expensive because HP makes it expensive.
There are plenty of printers from other companies (ink-jet and laser) that dont require spending big bucks on ink.
Those who say "you can always get it refilled or use 3rd party cartridges", better answer is to buy a printer where the OEM cartridges are cheap enough that you dont NEED refills or 3rd party cartridges.
I have a Canon Pixma MP510 and even though I dont print all that often, I havent had any problems with ink drying up.
There is a simple solution. Change the patent system as follows:
Anyone can submit prior art for any patent at any time (regardless of whether they may or may not be infringing on the patent in question). The PTO will then have x amount of time to examine the prior art. Should the PTO rule the prior art is genuine, the patent holder loses the patent and has to pay the PTO for the costs of the re-examination. Should the prior art not be genuine, the submitter has to pay the PTO costs.
Encourages patent submitters not to submit things where they believe prior art may exist (because of the costs should the patent be invalidated) and discourages submission of things that arent clearly prior art because the submitter has to pay the PTO costs.
Also, set up a "patent court" seperate from existing courts where patent cases are tried. Limit the amount of resources either side is allowed to bring into this patent court (so that the big boys cant overrun the little guy with litigation). Oh and make sure NONE of the judges serving in this court come from anywhere near Texas :)
Often the problem is that there are things that should be rewritten (either whole apps or specific sections of code) but no-one is willing to green-light such a rewrite even though the rewrite will take less time than bolting hack after hack on top of the old system.
The way things are going, Solaris will be dead soon too (especially if Oracle keeps doing what its been doing)
They wouldn't have to join the pool, nor would they necessarily want to.
If Google has a patent that is required for the implementation of H.264, they could easily attach a license to that patent that said something like:
We will grant you a license to use our patent which we believe is essential to H.264 on a royalty-free basis on the condition that you agree not to use any patents you may hold against someone who has implemented the WebM and VP8 specification. If you sue anyone over VP8 and WebM, you will loose all rights to use the invention described in patent .
Although I suspect MPEG-LA would simply ignore Google's patent knowing full well that the number of patents they hold that Google is violating is likely a fair bit bigger than the number of patents Google holds that they are violating.
If its better to join the pool than to fight on your own, how come AT&T (who claims patents over H.264 and has sued over said patents) hasn't joined the MPEG-LA H.264 pool?
I cant think of ONE good thing to come out of Germany.
Scandinavia yes, germany no.
Oh wait, the Germans DO produce some good buses (at least Mercedes-Benz does). So that's one thing. But that's about it :)
If you say "cartoon" images of "child porn" are ok, where do you draw the line?
You can do some pretty realistic looking computer imagery these days (just look at Lord Of The Rings or Avatar)
Cap and trade just allows higher polluting companies (coal fired power plants for example) to buy carbon credits from lower polluting emissions without actually reducing their emissions.
A carbon tax forces the higher polluting companies to increase their prices (to cover the tax). This then causes people to switch to cheaper options (right now coal is popular because its cheap, with a carbon tax, coal would be more expensive and other options such as biofuels, nuclear and others might then be competitive with it and gain market adoption)
Tell that to all the people who are driving BMW Mini-E's or Telsa Roadsters or other pure electric cars out on the roads today (some as for-sale cars, some as test cars from the automakers and some as 3rd party conversions).
Tell that to the people who have signed up to preorder/reserve cars like the Nissan Leaf electric car.
Firefox has support on a branch with open bugs and ongoing effort to merge it into trunk which will then flow into SeaMonkey and other Mozilla/Gecko based browsers.
Chrome is getting support.
Opera is getting support.
What will the others do?
Will Google support VP8 on Android?
Will Microsoft support VP8 in IE9?
Will Apple support VP8 in Safari? (and Safari Mobile?)
Try and read aus.tv, aus.politics, aus.general or a number of other aus.* groups and you will see that far to many of the posts are garbage or SPAM vs legitimate postings.
If you want to see some top mods that are up there with the best commercial games, check out the following:
Mideast Crisis 2:
http://www.isotx.com/mec2/
A mod for Command and Conquer 3 that plays BETTER than many commercial RTS games.
Red Alert: A Path Beyond
http://www.apathbeyond.com/
A FPS game set in the Red Alert universe
C&C series is good for producing top of the line mods that are up there with the best commercial games.