It's already been done : IBM apparently filed this patent in April 2006. It was reported on/. but I can't seem to find the story right now.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/20/1031236
Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that... Aye, I thought it was hard to tell if they were serious, or if it was a bit of lawyer humor. The real question is, is it their intention to hit up the patent trolls for licensing fees whenever they use this "technology" (thereby getting in on the action), or to refuse to license it, so nobody (except themselves) can do it?
Sadly, prior art is to be found in all the idiotically-redundant "Duhhhh... I'm patenting patent trolling!" comments that have been attached to every "stupid-patent" thread over the years (which, admittedly, I did find funny... the first five thousand or so times... in 1996).
You're far too nice. When presented with such a stupid question as "the opening of the 1936 Olympics [...] how far has that signal gone so far?", the correct answer (in 2007) is "Well, I'm no astrophysicist, but I'm guessing... about 71 light-years". Or if you wanted to be really helpful, you'd convert the distance to football-fields.
Try to imagine a universe in which it is not true. What you have observed about light is logically necessary. If you have a quantity of anything, and it "fans out" from a point in all directions, you will find an (maybe we should say THE) inverse square law. Inverse-square laws are logically necessary. Of course it's true. But if you can't "imagine a universe in which it is not true", you're not trying hard enough. You've apparently never heard of the theory of Intelligent Falling.
Your "logical proof" assumes that light and gravitational effects (this applies to both) are in fact things that radiate uniformly from an object. It's an assumption that seems so obvious we may not realize that we're taking it for granted, but it's not something that's provable from first principles (or at least, you haven't given such a proof). The proof that the inverse-square law applies for any given phenomenon that does radiate from a point is valid -- but btw, it's a mathematical proof, not a logical one.
While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net. Yes, I, too, have heard rumors of such things... can it really be true? Is this technological wonder known as the Internet really being used as a vehicle for pornography? No hearsay, please -- does anyone here have a definite answer, from a credible source?
The OpenMoko people are at pains to point out that OpenMoko != Neo 1973. Just very closely related. True, I realize the platform is more than one specific device; I was referring to both, but specifically the device, and used the name loosely.
> but the ability to reliably make and receive phone calls, and send and receive SMS, isn't really negotiable
Oddly enough, that's the one thing I can wait for. Having a PDA/MP3 player/WiFi device is what I really want, all in one package (and the phone too of course, when that's ready - I don't have one now). *shrug* Different people, different needs. In my case, the device it'll be primarily replacing is a phone, and I can't really be without a working one.
Also, if you look back through the list and see how much progress they've made in the last few months, I'm pretty confident. True, I'm sure it'll mature quickly. It was just a surprise to see that, this late in the game, there should be any question of the basic cell-phone functions working. I would have expected stuff like that to stabilize first, with special features and spit-and-polish on the GUI coming after.
About the OpenMoko... I'm curious to see some more opinions on it. I was reading about it on their site and getting pretty excited, to the point that I'd just about decided on it as my next phone, as soon as the 2nd version comes out.
But then I read some things in the mailing-list archives that make it sound a lot further than I'd hoped from being "ready for prime-time". Even some of the most recent posts (like, within the past week or two) make it sound like basic cell-phone functionality has only just recently begun to be usable, and only barely so. Can that be true, this far into development?
I'm a developer, geek, OSS enthusiast, etc., and I'm as willing as the next geek to live with quite a lot of rough edges and all. But I do need a working phone. Everything else can be flaky, but the ability to reliably make and receive phone calls, and send and receive SMS, isn't really negotiable. Comments from anyone here with hands-on experience would be much appreciated.
>Say what you will about William Shatner, but... His cheesy, over-the-top style will be impossible to duplicate. But.... so... *easy*... to.... *imitate*! ...badly.
Ahem:
Computer games don't affect kids. I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." -Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc. 1989
(I've seen the quote all over, but hadn't seen the attribution until I went searching for it just now.)
Maybe it's just quibbling over terminology, but the way I figure, we're already in World War IV.
The Cold War wasn't "almost" WWIII, it was WWIII. The "almost" applies to the end-of-the-world (TM) nuclear war scenario that, thankfully, didn't happen. But the fact that that disaster didn't happen doesn't mean the entire conflict doesn't "count" as a "war". Otherwise, how come we call it "the Cold War"? And it was certainly global in scope, so I figure it deserves to be counted as the next in the series of "World Wars", even if it didn't play out the way it was expected to -- we all know the nature of warfare constantly changes, right? And by the same reasoning, it makes sense to think of the "War On Terror" as the next in the series, i.e., WWIV.
Occam's razor is useless in situations like this. Basically Occam's razor comes down to a judgment call. Right. Besides which, it's not a "Law Of Nature" anyway -- it's more a rule of thumb. Occam's Razor never "proves" anything. It just lets you make an educated guess as to which avenue of inquiry is, all else being equal (that part's important), more likely to be fruitful. (And thus, which one you'd be wiser to spend the effort to explore.)
Dude... I heard they're gonna skip Web 5.0 and go straight to Web 6.0 -- and it's gonna sooooo kick Web 4.0's ass! With that right around the corner, forget Web 3.0; I'm not even upgrading to Web 2.0. I mean what's the point?
Maybe it's like all those commercials for laundry/dish-washing detergent, where the advertised product is favorably compared to "The Leading Brand" (TM), never mind that the products in those commercials are themselves generally the best-known brands in their category (or at least, in the top two or three).
As in soap, so in unix: perhaps there needs to be a "Leading Brand" for all the others to be better than.
Im thinking fancy little window wipers like certain upscale cars use on their headlights... I would have assumed they'd have the ability to tilt the panels (to point them toward the sun), which is why I was surprised by this:
Mission managers directed the rover to head for the slope of the Victoria crater. This will mean the solar panels will be pointing directly at the sun, allowing the little craft to maximise its photon collection. If they have to move the whole rover to point the panels, that seems to imply that the panels aren't movable. But if they were, they'd be able to get another dust-removing mechanism almost for free, just by making the mounting's range of motion a bit wider, such that they could turn it upside-down to dump the dust.
What a stupid argument. How do you know if he was going to buy it? Once you give him a copy it is impossible to know if he would ever have bought it. Yes, and before you give him the copy, it's also impossible to know if he would ever have bought it. That's the problem with the RIAA's claims of "lost sales": The numbers they quote are based on the assumption that every single download corresponds to a lost sale, i.e., they assume that he definitely would have bought it. The truth is obviously somewhere in between.
Slashdot Mirror
This guy's obviously not one of us.
You're one of us. So are most of the people you know.
Hooray for Slashdot, where we can always count on people who don't get the joke to "inform" and/or down-mod those who do. Brillant!
WTF?!?!
Mr. President, we cannot ALLOW a body size gap!
It's already been done : IBM apparently filed this patent in April 2006. It was reported on /. but I can't seem to find the story right now.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/20/1031236 Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that... Aye, I thought it was hard to tell if they were serious, or if it was a bit of lawyer humor. The real question is, is it their intention to hit up the patent trolls for licensing fees whenever they use this "technology" (thereby getting in on the action), or to refuse to license it, so nobody (except themselves) can do it?Sadly, prior art is to be found in all the idiotically-redundant "Duhhhh... I'm patenting patent trolling!" comments that have been attached to every "stupid-patent" thread over the years (which, admittedly, I did find funny... the first five thousand or so times... in 1996).
You're far too nice. When presented with such a stupid question as "the opening of the 1936 Olympics [...] how far has that signal gone so far?", the correct answer (in 2007) is "Well, I'm no astrophysicist, but I'm guessing... about 71 light-years". Or if you wanted to be really helpful, you'd convert the distance to football-fields.
Your "logical proof" assumes that light and gravitational effects (this applies to both) are in fact things that radiate uniformly from an object. It's an assumption that seems so obvious we may not realize that we're taking it for granted, but it's not something that's provable from first principles (or at least, you haven't given such a proof). The proof that the inverse-square law applies for any given phenomenon that does radiate from a point is valid -- but btw, it's a mathematical proof, not a logical one.
Nah, they'd have to have it on a line, or something.
Oddly enough, that's the one thing I can wait for. Having a PDA/MP3 player/WiFi device is what I really want, all in one package (and the phone too of course, when that's ready - I don't have one now). *shrug* Different people, different needs. In my case, the device it'll be primarily replacing is a phone, and I can't really be without a working one. Also, if you look back through the list and see how much progress they've made in the last few months, I'm pretty confident. True, I'm sure it'll mature quickly. It was just a surprise to see that, this late in the game, there should be any question of the basic cell-phone functions working. I would have expected stuff like that to stabilize first, with special features and spit-and-polish on the GUI coming after.
About the OpenMoko... I'm curious to see some more opinions on it. I was reading about it on their site and getting pretty excited, to the point that I'd just about decided on it as my next phone, as soon as the 2nd version comes out.
But then I read some things in the mailing-list archives that make it sound a lot further than I'd hoped from being "ready for prime-time". Even some of the most recent posts (like, within the past week or two) make it sound like basic cell-phone functionality has only just recently begun to be usable, and only barely so. Can that be true, this far into development?
I'm a developer, geek, OSS enthusiast, etc., and I'm as willing as the next geek to live with quite a lot of rough edges and all. But I do need a working phone. Everything else can be flaky, but the ability to reliably make and receive phone calls, and send and receive SMS, isn't really negotiable. Comments from anyone here with hands-on experience would be much appreciated.
But.... so... *easy*... to.... *imitate*! ...badly.
Doh! Correction noted. Thanks, and sorry.
(I've seen the quote all over, but hadn't seen the attribution until I went searching for it just now.)
A suggestion: since not everyone may know what sort of paranoia you're referring to in your sig, you might consider adding a link.
Maybe it's just quibbling over terminology, but the way I figure, we're already in World War IV.
The Cold War wasn't "almost" WWIII, it was WWIII. The "almost" applies to the end-of-the-world (TM) nuclear war scenario that, thankfully, didn't happen. But the fact that that disaster didn't happen doesn't mean the entire conflict doesn't "count" as a "war". Otherwise, how come we call it "the Cold War"? And it was certainly global in scope, so I figure it deserves to be counted as the next in the series of "World Wars", even if it didn't play out the way it was expected to -- we all know the nature of warfare constantly changes, right? And by the same reasoning, it makes sense to think of the "War On Terror" as the next in the series, i.e., WWIV.
Dude... I heard they're gonna skip Web 5.0 and go straight to Web 6.0 -- and it's gonna sooooo kick Web 4.0's ass! With that right around the corner, forget Web 3.0; I'm not even upgrading to Web 2.0. I mean what's the point?
Maybe it's like all those commercials for laundry/dish-washing detergent, where the advertised product is favorably compared to "The Leading Brand" (TM), never mind that the products in those commercials are themselves generally the best-known brands in their category (or at least, in the top two or three).
As in soap, so in unix: perhaps there needs to be a "Leading Brand" for all the others to be better than.